A Star for Mrs. Blake (24 page)

“You hear that sound? That’s the sound of civilization.”

It was impossible not to feel noble, arranged in chairs with the delicate play of water before them, surrounded by relaxed conversation in many languages. Late afternoon and she wasn’t working! Not cleaning or cooking or trudging over the baking hot, pine-dusted trail from the cannery, sticky and stinking of gutted sardines. Near a marble wall in the garden two lovers were arguing, making large gestures at each other, until finally the young dark man with black hair and a sweeping raincoat walked off.

“Une affaire vite résolue!”

“What’d he say?”

“It’s open and shut!”

Reed drew a small notebook from his breast pocket.

“You’re writing that down?” she asked incredulously.

He nodded, slipping into that agreeable state of mind both drowsy and awake that would lead him through the wings and back onstage to an ongoing and brightly lit piece of his own private drama—a short story that he was secretly mulling over.

He closed the book. Cora pulled the skirt of her dress beneath her knees and sat up primly on the chair. They watched for a while without talking. Girls were playing a clapping game and church bells struck.

“I think I’m homesick for Maine,” she said.

“I read somewhere that Maine is the place you’re homesick for, even when you’re there.”

She looked at the French colors flying from the top of a white palace. The clouds opened up to a silver sky and the breeze was fresh and sinuous, everything in flux.

“How can I be homesick when this is all so beautiful?”

“You can have both,” Reed said.

They sat quietly. “You miss your son,” he said matter-of-factly.

She nodded. “Maybe that’s Sammy, up there.”

A lone seagull was crossing the sky.

“What about Sammy’s father?” he asked. “What does he think of your coming here?”

“Sammy doesn’t have a father,” Cora said briefly. “I was never married.”

Her fingers rose to cover her mouth as if to suppress the words, but she found she’d rather let them go.

“But you’re a ‘Mrs.,’ aren’t you? Or is that a false identity and you’re really a German spy?”

He’d meant it as a lark and was surprised to discover it was partly true. She found herself continuing: “I got pregnant by a teacher my second year in Colby College. I was living in the dormitory. We were supposed to get married. He had a cottage almost an hour away, and I kept saying, Why do you want to be so far from Waterville, because that’s where the school was, and then, when push came to shove, I finally found out that he was already married, with a wife and three children living in another town.”

Reed moved closer, encouraging her to go on.

“He offered me the privilege of being his mistress and said he would pay for the child. I hated him. It destroyed my life. I left school, never finished, came home, and moved in with Mother on the family farm. It’s called Tide’s End, and it’s on an island. My dad was a sea captain, he came and went, but when he retired he was very close to my son, Sammy. I made up a story that my husband died of cholera. His real name was Curtis Westcott and he taught chemistry. I made up the name Mrs. Curtis Blake. Want to know how I came up with that? Six months pregnant, on the train back home from Waterville, I saw an advertisement in a magazine for Mrs. Blake’s All-Purpose Tonic.”

“Brilliant!”

“But it’s a lie and I’ve lived it all my life.”

“What else could you do? Give the baby away?”

“Oh, that would have been fine with Sammy’s father. He didn’t care about the baby. He just wanted me to keep quiet so it wouldn’t cause a scandal at the college.”

“There’s nothing to be ashamed of, Cora. You believed this guy. You were young. How could you know?”

“But I’m not who I say I am, and thank God nobody in town found out the truth. They all believed that Curtis died of cholera. In a way, I killed him. I never told Sammy—that’s what I feel the worst about. If Sammy had lived longer, he might have gotten to meet his father and decide things for himself—I don’t know—but you see, it’s my fault that he never had the choice.”

“From what you say,” Reed answered, “there was nothing to be gained from Sammy’s knowing that his father was a louse.”

Cora looked at him curiously. She had just entrusted her deepest secret, without hesitation, to a perfect stranger. Well, he had already come to her rescue once. She thought about what Reed had jokingly said about a false identity. If “Mrs. Blake” was a disguise, what had been underneath all this time? It struck her deeply that if she wanted to, she could discard that mask, unlike her heartrending companion. They rested peacefully for a moment.

“Look at those flowers!” she exclaimed, pointing to the banks of yellow and orange zinnias, light and dark purple morning glories, black-eyed Susans, and geraniums that encircled a fountain.

“Which do you like best?”

“All, except for the geraniums,” she answered finally.

“Why pick on poor geraniums?”

“The day before I had to take the train to New York City, I was walking to the neighbor’s, my friend Elizabeth Pascoe, just outside the village, to buy some sausage. It was a fair day and I was thinking,
I should be happy
.”

“You
should
be happy?”

“I was going to see my boy.”

He said nothing.

“There’s a patch of red geraniums by the side of the road, growing wild. Have you ever noticed that geraniums smell like they’re dying?”

“No.”

“They smell like turpentine.”

Reed did not point out that the sense of smell was something he’d lost a lifetime ago.

“They smell like heat and dying. I always take the road past the graveyard. Why do I do that, when I could just as well go the other way? You know, the pastor said if I really loved my boy, I would be glad that he was dead. I should give his clothes to the poor, and be thankful that God had taken Sammy into Himself.” She waited. “It’s shameful, but I think that’s a lot of bunk.”

“I bet a lot of people feel that way but nobody has the guts to say it.”

“Still, it’s right for the country.”

“That you’re here?”

She nodded and stood up, stiff from sitting in the low-slung chair and the cooling down of the day.

“I should get back to the hotel.”

He offered to accompany her and they started back on the long gravel path.

“What do you write for the newspaper?”

“I don’t write anymore. I used to fix other people’s stories, but the paper closed.”

“You could still write.”

He tapped his metal cheek. “Subjects don’t like to talk to me.”

She laughed. “I guess I’m the big exception, shooting my mouth off.”

He didn’t answer, but she could feel the strength of understanding that seemed to come off his body.

“I’ve never told anybody the truth about Curtis. Not even my sweetheart at home.”

“Ah,” he said. “You have a sweetheart.”

“You’re surprised?”

“Not at all. I would be surprised if you didn’t.”

“His name is Linwood Moody.”

“Rest assured, I won’t tell Linwood. What does he do?”

“He teaches geology. He does soil surveys for the government.”

Reed stopped in the middle of the path and took both her hands.

“I’m very happy for you, Cora.” His touch was warm and sincere. “Maybe there is some happiness in the world.”

“There is.” She swallowed hard. “There can be.”

They squeezed hands and then let go.

“You know what I’m thinking?” he asked as they walked on.

She dabbed the corner of her eye. She wished that he could have some happiness. “No. What?”

Reed pretended not to notice. “I’m thinking there’s a good story here. Yours and Sammy’s. You coming to France.”

“Oh, come on, there’s nothing special about it. There were four hundred ladies on that ship.” She sniffed and gave a sideways glance. “Why? You think there is?”

“I’m not going to hustle you like that jerk in the hotel.”

“I never thanked you properly for that.”

“Not necessary.”

“If you were going to write something,” she ventured, “… what would it be?”

“Well, I’d have to know more about you and Sammy. That’s the story. A mother. A son. A war. Universal.”

“Go on,” she said impulsively. “Get out that little book.”

Now he seemed to reverse direction, almost apologetic. “I might not get anyone to print the thing—”

“I don’t care.”

“Why?” he asked meaningfully. “You might not like a word I write.”

“It doesn’t matter,” she said. “I want to tell you. I don’t know why.”

They walked through the park and continued along Boulevard Saint Michel, the words freely bubbling out, about how Sammy had joined the army after his grandfather died, the prayer she repeated several times a day while he was overseas, neighbors who helped with the farm work, the shameful wish that somewhere along the line she’d had another baby. The writer listened, the notebook filled up, and Cora could feel something lift, as if she’d tossed that thorny secret over her shoulder, left it to the pond and the flower beds and the bittersweet afternoon light.

When they reached the hotel, she and Griffin Reed said goodbye, shook hands, and wished each other well, both of them satisfied that an exchange had been made that was of lasting consequence. Later she would mark that moment, when they passed through the gold-kissed gates of the Luxembourg Gardens and she trusted him enough to tell her story, as the one that changed her life.

The road out of Paris followed the river, close to the tree-lined quays where early morning strollers were walking dogs not much bigger than their purses. The Seine was the color of cold green marble, as sluggish as the barges that moved so slowly they barely broke the surface. Hammond watched with mounting anxiety until they reached their first landmark, the Vélodrome de Vincennes, where the cycling track for the 1924 Summer Olympics had been built. He checked his watch.

“Right on time,” he told Lily, who was beside him, up front near the driver. Party A took up two more rows, and beyond that it was a full house, with every seat taken by other pilgrims wearing their summer dresses and hats, chattering away beneath an invisible cloud of face powder.

“At this rate, including a rest stop at Montmirail and lunch, we should get to Verdun exactly on time. We’d better, or General Perkins will bust my buns. He always meets the buses himself.” He sighed. “This is like transporting a division.”

“Good practice,” Lily murmured. She was deeply into her paperwork, filling out the health forms from yesterday.

“Right, if you had to move an army to India.”

After the incident at Notre-Dame, formality between them had given way to comradely accord, and they rested their feet together on Hammond’s banjo case, which lay on the floor of the bus, writing in the leather folders open on their laps, like two industrious college students.

“What are you putting down about the departure this morning?” he asked, peering at her notes.

Lily read out loud: “
‘The pilgrims were cooperative and alert. Mrs. Seibert requested an anti-nausea tablet for the bus. Then Mrs. Russell wanted one also.’
”

“Did you give it to them?”

“No, I said once we were on the bus, we’d see how they felt.”

“Be sure to put that in the report.”

“Why?”

“So nobody thinks you weren’t on the ball.”

Lily looked down at the page, still puzzled. “Why would they think that?”

“In case Mrs. S and Mrs. R heave all over Mrs. Q and you get blamed for not giving them the pills.”

“Oh, Thomas—” Lily began in protest.

“You have to protect your ass, excuse my French. It’s the name of the game in the army. Anyway, nobody’s going to get sick. The road is straight as an arrow.”

He stared out the window. The bus rolled under bridges and through an industrial sector until the houses thinned away and they were miles from Paris, traveling due east. They passed through acres of combed green flatland, then another stone church identical to the last, presiding over the same-looking clusters of red-roofed houses.

“Hard to believe it,” he mused. “What my father went through. What this must have looked like after the Battle of Verdun. I mean, literally, it was a bloodbath, hundreds of thousands of French casualties. God knows what he saw, whatever was left after the trench rats had their fill, it must have been an open graveyard—like Halloween for real—do you know, after a while the French just piled all the bones together and buried them in a huge ossuary? That would be something to see. Luckily the Americans didn’t have to do anything like that, we had the luxury so to speak of individual burials, well, because we scarcely lost as many as our allies—”

“Thomas.” Lily had to repeat his name to stop the excited flow of words. “Why did you ever go to West Point?”

“Following my father. Why not? He graduated with MacArthur in 1905, became a colonel, won the Distinguished Service Award from
the army, and now he’s just been appointed a commissioner of New York City. You can go anywhere from the academy. It gives you an enormous boost. I remember my dad showing me his gas mask and it was so exciting and strange, I thought the army must have sent him to outer space.”