I Married A Dead Man (10 page)

               
"I hope you don't mind the white collar on that dress, Patrice. I purposely saw to it there was a touch of color on everything I picked out, I didn't want you to be too--"

               
"Oh, some of those things are so lovely. I really hadn't seen half of them myself until I unpacked just now."

               
"The only thing that I was afraid of was the sizes, but that nurse of yours sent me a complete--"

               
"She took a tape-measure all over me one day, I remember that now, but she wouldn't tell me what it was for--"

               
"Which kind for you, Patrice? Light or dark?"

               
"It really doesn't--"

               
"No, tell him just this once, dear; then after that he won't have to ask you."

               
"Dark, then, I guess."

               
"You and me both."

               
He spoke a little less frequently than the remaining three of them. Just a touch of shyness, she sensed. Not that he was strained or tonguetied or anything. Perhaps it was just his way; he had a quiet, unobtrusive way.

               
The thing was, who exactly was he? She couldn't ask outright now any longer. She'd omitted to at the first moment, and now it was twenty minutes too late for that. No last name had been given, so he must be--

               
I'll find out soon, she reassured herself. I'm bound to. She was no longer afraid.

               
Once she found he'd just been looking at her when her eyes went to him, and she wondered what he'd been thinking while doing so. And yet not to have admitted that she knew, that she could tell by the lingering traces of his expression, would have been to lie to herself. He'd been thinking that her face was pleasant, that he liked it

               
And then after a little while he said, "Dad, pass the bread over this way, will you?"

               
And then she knew who he was.

16

               
Episcopal Church of St. Bartholomew, social kingpin among all the churches of Caulfield, on a golden April Sunday morning.

               
She stood there by the font, child in her arms, immediate family and their close friends gathered beside her.

               
They had insisted upon this. She hadn't wanted it Twice she had postponed it, for two Sundays in succession now, after all the arrangements had been made. First, by pleading a cold that she did not really have. Secondly, by pleading a slight one that the child actually did have. Today she hadn't been able to postpone it any longer. They would have finally sensed the deliberation underlying her excuses.

               
She kept her head down, hearing the ceremony rather than seeing it. As though afraid to look on openly at it As though afraid of being struck down momentarily at the feet of all of them for her blasphemy.

               
She had on a broad-brimmed hat of semi-transparent horsehair and that helped her, veiling her eyes and the upper part of her face when she cast it down like that.

               
Mournful memories, they probably thought Grief-stricken.

               
Guilty, in reality. Scandalized. Not brazen enough to gaze at this mockery unabashed.

               
Arms reached out toward her, to take the child from her. The godmother's arms. She gave him over, trailing the long lace ceremonial gown that--she had almost said "his father"--that a stranger named Hugh Hazzard had worn before him, and that his father, Donald, had worn before him .

               
Her arms felt strangely empty after that She wanted to cross them protectively over her breast, as though she were unclad. She forced herself not to with an effort. It was not her form that was unclad, it was her conscience. She dropped them quietly, clasped them before her, looked down.

               
"Hugh Donald Hazzard, I baptize thee--"

               
They had gone through the parody of consulting her preferences in this. To her it was a parody; not to them. She wanted him named after Hugh, of course? Yes, she had said demurely, after Hugh. Then how about the middle name? After her own father? Or perhaps two middle names, one for each grandfather? (She actually hadn't been able to recall her own father's name at the moment, it came back to her some time after, not without difficulty. Mike: a scarcely remembered figure of a looming longshoreman, killed in a drunken brawl on the Embarcadero when she was ten.)

               
One middle name would do. After Hugh's father, she had said demurely.

               
She could feel her face burning now, knew it must be flushed with shame. They mustn't see that. She kept it steadily down.

               
"--in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen."

               
The minister sprinkled water on the child's head. She could see a stray drop or two fall upon the floor, darken into coin dots. A dime, a nickel, two pennies. Seventeen cents.

               
The infant began to wail in protest, as numberless infants before it since time immemorial. The infant from a New York furnished rooming house who had become heir to the first, the wealthiest family in Caulfield, in all the county, maybe even in all that State.

               
"You have nothing to cry about," she thought morosely.

17

               
There was a cake for him, on his first birthday, with a single candle standing defiantly in the middle of it, its flame like a yellow butterfly hovering atop a fluted white column. They made great to-do and ceremony about the little immemorial rites that went with it. The first grandson. The first milestone.

               
"But if he can't make the wish," she demanded animatedly, "is it all right if I make it for him? Or doesn't that count?"

               
Aunt Josie, the cake's creator, instinctively deferred to in all such matters of lore, nodded pontifically from the kitchen-doorway. "You make it for him, honey; he git it just the same," she promised.

               
Patrice dropped her eyes and her face sobered for a moment.

               
Peace, all your life, Safety, such as this. Your own around you always, such as now. And for myself--from you, someday-- forgiveness .

               
"You got it? Now blow."

               
"Him or me?"

               
"It count just like for him."

               
She leaned down, pressed her cheek close to his, and blew softly. The yellow butterfly fluttered agitatedly, shrivelled into nothingness.

               
"Now cut," coached the self-imposed mistress of ceremonies.

               
She closed his chubby little hand around the knife-handle, enfolded it with her own, and tenderly guided it. The mystic incision made, she touched her finger to the sugary icing, scraped off a tiny crumb, and then placed it to his lips.

               
A great crowing and cooing went up, as though they had all just been witnesses to a prodigy of precocity.

               
A lot of people had come in, they hadn't had so many people all in the house at one time since she'd first been there. And long after the small honor-guest had been withdrawn from the scene and taken upstairs to bed, the festivities continued under their own momentum, even accelerated somewhat. In that way grown-ups have of appropriating a child's party, given the slightest encouragement.

               
She came down again, afterward, to the lighted, bustling rooms, and moved about among them, chatting, smiling, happier tonight than she ever remembered being before. A cup of punch in one hand, in the other a sandwich with one bite gone, that she never seemed to get around to taking a secpnd bite out of. Every time she raised it toward her mouth somebody said something to her, or she said something to somebody. It didn't matter, it was more fun that way.

               
Bill brushed by her once, grinning. "How does it feel to be an old mother?"

               
"How does it feel to be an old uncle?" she rejoined pertly over her shoulder.

               
A year ago seemed a long time away; just a year ago tonight, with its horror and its darkness and its fright. That hadn't happened to her; it couldn't have. That had happened to a girl named--No, she didn't want to remember that name, she didn't even want to summon it back for a fleeting instant It had nothing to do with her.

               
"Aunt Josie's sitting up there with him. No, he'll be all right, he's a very good baby about going to sleep."

               
"Coming from a detached observer."

               
"Well, I am detached at this minute, so I'm entitled to say so. He's all the way upstairs and I'm down here."

               
She was in the brightly lighted living-room of her home, here, with her friends, her family's friends, all gathered about her, laughing and chatting. A year ago was more than a long time away. It had never happened. No, it had never happened. Not to her, anyway.

               
A great many of the introductions were blurred. There were so many firsts, on an occasion like this. She looked about, dutifully recapitulating the key-people, as befitted her role of assistant hostess. Edna Harding and Marilyn Bryant, they were those two girls sitting one on each side of Bill, and vying with one another for his attention. She suppressed a mischievous grin. Look at him, sober-faced as a totem pole. Why, it was enough to turn his head--if he hadn't happened to have a head that was unturnable by girls, as far as she'd been able to observe. Guy Ennis was that dark-haired young man over there getting someone a punch-cup; he was easy to memorize because he'd come in alone. Some old friend of Bill's, evidently. Funny that the honeybees didn't buzz around him more thickly, instead of unresponsive Bill. He looked far more the type.

               
Grace Henson, she was that stoutish, flaxen-haired girl over there, waiting for the punch-cup. Or was she? No, she was the less stout but still flaxen-haired one at the piano, softly playing for her own entertainment, no one near her. One wore glasses and one didn't. They must be sisters, there was too close a resemblance. It was the first time either one of them had been to the house.

               
She moved over to the piano and stood beside her. She might actually be enjoying doing that, for all Patrice knew, but she should at least have somebody taking an appreciative interest.

               
The girl at the keyboard smiled at her. "Now this." She was an accomplished player, keeping the music subdued, like an undertone to the conversations going on all over the room.

               
But suddenly all the near-by ones had stopped. The music went on alone for a note or two, sounding that much clearer than it had before.

               
The second flaxen-haired girl quitted her companion for a moment, stepped up behind the player's back, touched her just once on the shoulder, as if in some kind of esoteric remonstrance or reminder. That was all she did. Then she went right back to where she'd been sitting. The whole little pantomime had been so deft and quick it was hardly noticeable at all.

               
The player had broken off, uncertainly. She apparently had understood the message of the tap, but not its meaning. The slightly bewildered shrug she gave Patrice was evidence of that.

               
"Oh, finish it," Patrice protested unguardedly. "It was lovely. What's it called? I don't think I've ever heard it before."

               
"It's the Barcarolle, from Tales of Hoffman ," the other girl answered unassumingly.

               
The answer itself was in anticlimax. Standing there beside the player, she became conscious of the congealing silence immediately about her, and knew it wasn't due to that, but to something that must have been said just before. It had already ended as she detected it, but awareness of it lingered on--in her. Something had happened just then.

               
I've said something wrong. I said something that was wrong just now. But I don't know what it was, and I don't know what to do about it .

               
She touched her punch-cup to her lips, there was nothing else to do at the moment.

               
They only heard it near me. The music left my voice stranded, and that only made it all the more conspicuous . But who else in the room heard? Who else noticed? Maybe their faces will tell--