Lady (42 page)

"What did you say?"

"I said send for a priest. I want to confess."

"You mean the minister -- Mr. Tuthill?"

"No. The priest. Father O'Brien."

Father O'Brien had been dead more than fifteen years. "You mean Father Huegenay."

"It doesn't matter. Any priest will do." And as I left her I heard her murmuring to herself. "I wonder what that fight was all about?"

She held on through the week, and though Dr. Brainard said she might go at any time, still she lingered. On Saturday Father Huegenay was sent for to administer extreme unction; afterward, he left with an awed expression, even as Father O'Brien had thirty years before.

She died on Sunday morning. I had gone to First Church with Teresa, and afterward we drove over to Lamentation Mountain. I don't know why I decided to go there, except I wanted Teresa to see it. I told her about the day Blue Ferguson had come home, and repeated parts of Lady's story to her. Parts only, for still there were pieces lacking, ones I was sure I would never have, and that the story would end there, unsatisfactorily. I repeated what I could remember, but the missing pieces were to elude me for another ten years, until I learned the last astonishing facts.

Gazing down at the river, I recalled my visit with Lady to Lamentation Mountain six years earlier. Had it really been six? Today, with Teresa, past, present, future seemed one together. Over toward Pequot, there were the roofs and chimneys at the Center, and the familiar steeple. First Church, that was the past; George Washington had worshiped there. The present was the oil-storage tanks out near the airfield; where there had been two, now there were half a dozen, with smoking barges moored at the dock pumps. The future? I thought I knew where that lay. I looked at Teresa's finger, and the ring I had given her two nights ago.

We spoke quietly of the town where we had lived, had discovered each other in the accidental way people can, and of how we planned on leaving together. We spoke again of Adelaide Harleigh, and at that moment it seemed to me that I could see the town with her eyes, she who had loved it. She had known it to its core, could recognize most of its citizens by face and name. She had been able to see their faults with humor, their virtues with pride, for though she was not born there, she was of Pequot Landing. Born a Strasser, raised on Knobb Street, she lived a Harleigh of Broad Street, on the Green. She would die a Lady.
There
was a past, and a present, and a future, and they, too, seemed all one.

Later, I was sure we had been speaking of her at the moment of her death. When we drove back to the Green, Mr. Foley was coming out the front door, and it was he who gave us the news.

"Well," he said, "she had a nice life, didn't she, Lady Harleigh?"

"Yes," I said, "she did."

All roads may lead to Rome; they do not lead, however, to Pequot Landing. But I have lived to discover that as a road can carry one away, so again it can carry one back. Interstate 91 has brought me back so many times since I left. It cuts across the edge of town between the Great South Meadow and the village cemetery. Coming off the parkway, you can see the cemetery markers below the First Church steeple. When I die, my ashes will be scattered, but if truth were known I would rather be there, in that churchyard, by that church, in the shadow of that steeple. I like the notion of being buried near to where Lady Harleigh lies. We would be old friends yet, sharing that close green Connecticut acreage.

I find it easier going back now, though for a time I did not, and I remember my first visit after having been away for more than ten years. We came back, Teresa and I, to a family reunion, in October. We had been married when I graduated from college. We lived for a time in New York, where our oldest boy was born. We named him Lewis, after my brother. Our two daughters, Addie and Susan, were born in California. Addie, naturally, had been christened Adelaide. The occasion for the reunion was Papa Marini's eightieth birthday, and we brought the children back for it. I had mixed feelings about returning. Ma had died, Nonnie was married and living in Michigan, Kerney was studying languages in Europe, Harry worked for an oil refinery in New Orleans, Nancy was gone. The only one of us left was Ag. She had married Rabbit Hornaday, who ran a thriving practice as a veterinarian. Ag took care of the office for him.

Making the curve at River Road, I slowed the car and looked in through the cemetery gates. I could see Edward and Lady Harleigh's matching headstones, and I felt a strange sensation. Perhaps it was nothing more than just feeling that I was a stranger in my own hometown -- perhaps it was more. But as we drove down Main Street, that glimpse into the graveyard made me feel alien, and everything seemed different to me. The Spragues had lived in that house -- they were dead; who lived there now? I had no idea. Keller's drugstore was gone, and the Pilgrim was a supermarket. The Noble Patriot (its black proprietor, Andy Cleves -- dead also?) was now a cute Colonial-type beauty parlor. The Academy Hall was now a museum. There was no more Academy Parliament, nor indeed any Town Meeting. Teresa's brother, Johnny, was the mayor of Pequot Landing, which was run by a town manager. The library was larger and elsewhere, likewise the post office. There was a modern steel and glass structure in place of that Gothic pile, the Chester Welles Grammar School. Miss Grimes was dead, Miss Bessie worked for an advertising firm in New York. Everywhere I sensed the cunning hand of Time at work. It was changed, all changed.

Still the same trees billowed (but haven't they grown, Teresa said. I, too, remembered them as much smaller), and still the houses along Broad Street (but don't they seem little? Teresa said. I, too, thought they had shrunk) presented their handsome fronts to us as we passed, boasting fresh coats of paint with carefully considered colors on shutters and doorways, where their owners had hung raffia baskets filled with straw flowers of seasonal colors, where they had polished their street numbers, manicured their lawns, and shined their windows. Yet who were they, these owners of the houses? No one knew. Strange faces, strange children, strange cars. Strange, all strange.

Before pulling in at the Marini farm I drove down the road so the kids could see where "Daddy used to live." Who lived there now? The house had twice been bought and sold. The Sparrows were dead, Gert Flagler was dead, Dr. Brainard had moved to Vermont. But Miss Berry, as we had heard, was still going. There was no sign of her as we passed; we made the turn at the old trolley stop, and then were in front of Lady's. Her estate had been divided between Elthea Griffin and me, with generous bequests to various town funds. The house, also left to me, I had sold to another of Teresa's brothers, Dr. Robert Marini, a dentist.

There was a bike on the lawn, other signs of playthings. The birch trees in front never looked so fine as the elms. Different, all different.

And the Great Elm was gone. Like Lady, it had died piecemeal, branch by branch, haggard, lopsided, grotesque, pathetic. It had been felled at last by the Dutch blight. I remembered a time when I had thought that, like life, it would go on forever. I told the kids how we used to stand, three, four, five of us, trying to measure our own growth against it, to girdle with our outstretched arms and clasped hands its immense girth, feeling the scrape of bark against our cheeks as we leaned against it. "Gee, Dad, that must have been some tree," they said -- but after all it was only a tree.

Before dinner I took the kids out on the Cove. One of Teresa's cousins had a motor launch and I suggested going downriver. I shouldn't have. Hermitage Island was gone. It simply wasn't there at all, and from my reckoning the river had taken a different course entirely where it used to flow by both sides of the island. It was as if it had never been.

Gone, all gone.

Back at the Marini farm, things were different, too. Most of the acreage had been sold off for building lots; what remained was unfilled. Papa Marini was on easy street. Big, blustering Mama seemed smaller and quieter, though she cooked as much as ever. There were aunts and uncles and cousins and nephews and nieces and sisters and brothers, and I had trouble making out the faces I should have remembered. Ag came, and Rabbit, and it was good to see them. Rabbit got along very well with prosthetic devices, and Ag proudly showed off their boy and girl. Rabbit said that after we ate, he would take all the children to see the fat badger he'd recently gotten.

After dinner, on the excuse of going to the store for cigarettes, I went around the Green again, this time trying to scent out the strangenesses and differences. I went down to our old house and had another look. Poor old house, it was more ramshackle than ever. There appeared to be nobody home, so I walked down the drive, to see how Pa's fruit trees had grown. When I came around the side of the garage, I stopped and stared. The trees, four cherry, four pear, four quince, four plum, had been chopped down. The stumps remained, sticking up through the unmowed grass. I couldn't believe it. Who would cut down those trees, for what reason? I felt heartsick.

Gone. Changed.

Everything but --

Out on the street again, I saw Miss Berry sitting in her sun parlor. They said she was in her nineties. She saw me, adjusted her spectacles when I waved, but did not recognize me until I had rung her bell and she opened the door. I went in for a visit, and as the door closed behind me and she took me into the sun porch, the years seemed to gather me up and draw me backward. At Miss Berry's, nothing had changed. It was like a small time capsule of my childhood. Here were the same old pieces of furniture, the same rugs, the descendants of dogs I had known, even a canary in the cage -- not the same canary but a canary all the same -- even, as she herself pointed out, the same sansevieria in the blue pot.

Even Miss Berry herself seemed the same, her manner still brisk, her mind agile. She was humorous, kindly, interested. As we talked, I thought of all the years she had inhabited that sun parlor, that little piece of space leased for her lifetime, as if she had long ago staked it out for her old age.

We spoke of Gert Flagler, who had died during Truman's term, which Miss Berry regarded as a mercy; Gert had not seen the Republicans come to power again. We spoke of Eamon Harmon, who had once ridden a horse as Jared Ingersoll in the pageant, and who now rode a chair lift up and down stairs. Both he and his wife, Eva, had given up drinking and smoking. Thin Eva was now plump. We spoke of Colonel Blatchley, who had sold his house and was living in a retirement apartment down in Two Stone. We spoke of Mr. Keller, the druggist, who was dead, but whose son ran the business in a new store on the highway. We spoke of Lew, dead for twelve years, of Blue Ferguson, dead even longer, and of Elthea, who unfailingly sent a Christmas card each year, and at last we spoke of Lady. It was like leaving the best for last. The brick house, Miss Berry said, ' was very well maintained by Robert Marini. His wife, a pretty Polish girl, kept the gardens nicely and, having found the empty pedestal at the end of the brick walk, had replaced the gazing-globe with another one. Robert was amused by and friendly with the Old Guard, made his own wine, kept large dogs, and found the Great South Meadow good for hunting. Their four children were as bright and incorrigible as ever we had been. Of course, they hadn't
known
Lady Harleigh, but surely, she said, they had
heard
of her.

I suppose they must have. No one cares much now who are lovers, if they are black and white, mismatched by color, sex, age, or whatever one may miss by. Lady Harleigh loved her butler, was all that people said, not much more. Yet, if they knew it, there was more. Had been more, all along, the missing pieces. I got them now from Miss Berry, and if the pieces did not spell "Eternity," they furnished enough detail to complete the picture of a woman I had known as Lady Harleigh, friend of my youth.

As we reminisced about our old neighbor, Miss Berry slid effortlessly into her story. I did not have the feeling she was unburdening herself to me, but merely that close to the end of her long tenure she wanted to round out for me the story of Lady Harleigh's life. She was a comfortable old lady in her comfortable old parlor, telling me a tale. I listened.

"You have been fortunate in your friend. I should say
our
friend, for she was mine, too. She loved you very much, you know that -- you were like a son to her. If she were still alive, I wouldn't say anything, she wouldn't want me to. Still, Lady Harleigh can't always have her own way." She gave a little laugh of amusement, frail sounds that fluttered soft as a butterfly's wings. "You're a grown man now, but who knows what the future holds, eh?"

"Yes," I agreed, "who knows?"

"You know she was living over there with her houseman, of course. The whole town does. No matter, it was what she wanted. People never know what it takes to make another person happy. In any case, she led a trapped life. Trapped by that dreadful mother, Frau Strasser, trapped by that dreadful father-in-law, Ellsworth Harleigh. I know -- I was there."

I looked steadily at her and said nothing. She continued.

"Edward Harleigh was a ne'er-do-well from the beginning. If his father didn't hate him, he knew well enough what sort of son he was raising. There was one thing he wanted before he died: an heir. It was an obsession with him, to see the family name carried on. When the lawyers advised him to draw up his last will, he gave Edward two choices: either to go his own way and be cut off, or to marry and have a child, in which case he and the wife would inherit equally.

"It was Mr. Harleigh who decided Edward should marry Lady. He'd seen her when she came to the house to help her mother fit dresses for Mrs. Harleigh. Took a shine to her, as you might say. He liked what he saw: a sensible, realistic girl, who could hold Edward in check, and with plenty of robust life in her to assure an heir. He'd seen enough of those watered-down girls with names and money and no milk in their paps. So he decided Edward must have Adelaide Strasser of Knobb Street.