Sister Noon (27 page)

A tall vase near Lizzie was stuffed with fresh-cut branches of lilac. They smelled wonderful. Mrs. Putnam had dressed in a harmonious plum. She took her usual chair and told Lizzie she’d met a family whose daughter went to the Sacred Heart Convent in Oakland. This was the same school Marie Bell attended. The prohibition on
seeing Mrs. Pleasant apparently would never dampen Mrs. Putnam’s need to discuss her.

Mrs. Putnam had learnt that Marie was a taciturn child, but that, in itself, spoke volumes. She was often visited by Mrs. Pleasant, but never by her father or mother. Mrs. Pleasant was also thought to have chosen the school, since she was a practicing Catholic and the Bells were not, though Mrs. Pleasant did occasionally appear also on the donors’ list at the African Methodist Episcopal church. Say what you would, that woman took care of her own.

Marie was a pale, plump girl with hair like straw and cheeks like strawberries. “Not the beauty her mother was, I’m told,” said Mrs. Putnam, “but that might be all to the good.” Beauty was perilous to girls just as often as it was advantageous, and while Mrs. Putnam was not one who liked to pass judgment, it must be remembered that Marie did not have the sort of mother who could guide her to respectability.

Poor Marie was not even lively. “Everyone who knows her can tell,” Mrs. Putnam informed Lizzie, “that something is terribly wrong in that house.” Meanwhile, she had it on good authority that Fred Bell, the oldest boy, had been sent to military school in the East, but he’d run off with a dancer, or else he’d been expelled for setting a fire. Either way, it was awful, and he was back in San Francisco, but not at the House of Mystery, as his father refused to speak to him.

“There was some testimony about the Bell children during the Sharon trial,” Lizzie said. “But I can’t quite remember it.”

“Oh, I paid no attention to the Sharon trial,” Mrs. Putnam said. “No one I know did.”

“A degrading business. It reflected so poorly on the city. Why can’t the papers publish the nice things people do?” Behind Mrs. Mullin, the fern was a fountain of green feathers rising from her head like the war bonnet of an Indian. “And the way they persisted in printing every sordid detail! As if decent people cared to read such things!”

On the street outside, a man was shouting at his horse or his wife. Mrs. Putnam put down her tea and moved to close the window. She stood between the dotted-muslin curtains in a dazzling cone of sunlight so that Lizzie could hardly see her. This gave her voice an oracular authority. “It was when Mr. Bell was called to the stand,” she said. “This was during the first trial. Five, six years ago. Sharon’s lawyer—”

“William Barnes, it was then,” Mrs. Mullin offered helpfully.

“Mr. Barnes said that one of the Bell twins was actually the daughter of a German Jew working at the Palace as a maid—”

“Until she became the Bell twins’ wet nurse.”

“She was not a married woman. She gave her baby to Mrs. Pleasant, who promised to find a loving family. But then, Barnes said, Mammy Pleasant palmed Bertha’s baby off on Thomas Bell and let Bertha nurse her right in the Bell home. Tricked that old coot into thinking he was the proud father of twins.”

“Mrs. Pleasant denied every jot of it, but she refused to say where Bertha’s baby had gone. The Bells sued the
Alta
just for publishing the testimony. They said it was libel to the family—”

“Until they dropped the suit,” Mrs. Mullin noted. “They didn’t want a lot of lawyers poking around the House of Mystery!”

Lizzie remembered it now. “How old would that baby be?” she asked, even though she knew the answer would be too old. Jenny could certainly be Jewish, with her dark hair and dark eyes.

“Oh, goodness, I don’t know, dear. Seven or eight, I suppose.” Mrs. Putnam returned to her seat so that her voice came again from her mouth and not from a pillar of fire. Inevitably her credibility suffered. “It was Mr. Barnes’s contention that Mrs. Pleasant manufactured the whole case against Sharon. Paid every witness. Forged the wedding contract. Coached poor, dim Allie. Hoodwinked Mr. Bell along with everyone else.”

“She doesn’t feel about family the way we do. No colored person cares about blood.”

“How could they?” Mrs. Putnam asked. “In all fairness, it’s a matter of history, not race. Sold away from your mother and denied by your father. A white man, let’s face that fact. That’s why she does that baby-farming, shuffling children into any old family. Why should she care who belongs to whom? Whoever cared for her?” She paused a moment, shaking her head from the pity of it.

“They do say one of the Bell children is colored.” Mrs. Mullin’s eyes were big and round, and she blinked them slowly. “But no one knows which.”

And Lizzie went on saying nothing. She didn’t, as was customary, pay with stories of her own. She told no one about
the red bedroom, the nursery with its staring dolls, or the murder of Malina Paillet, much as they would have loved it. She didn’t mention Jenny Ijub or Mr. Finney’s preposterous accusations, much as they would have hated it. She wasn’t even sure why she kept silent. In spite of her protestations, her interest in the Bell family had become proprietary; her position, implicated. Listening to these stories made Lizzie feel guilty.

Something had begun to nag at her, something she’d remembered only just now, just here in the Putnams’ house. She turned it over and over in her mind, tried to worry or argue it away. It kept resurfacing. Wood floating on water. Lizzie’s imagination was tougher than she was, exactly as her mother had always contended.

Blythe came in and Lizzie watched her collect the tea things. The cups were British, gold handles and tiny blue forget-me-nots. The pot was from China, very fat and painted white with blue willow trees, temples, and doves. The tea inside was a black Ceylon. “How are the boys, Blythe?” Lizzie said, forgetting she had already asked.

“I’ve no complaints,” Blythe answered.

Lizzie stood. “I think I’ll go say hello to Mr. Putnam.”

Invading Mr. Putnam’s library was not her usual routine, and she saw it noted, but it was unimpeachable, so she wasn’t stopped. He was reading the paper. Some men grew more corpulent as they aged. Mr. Putnam was the sort who shrank. Folds of skin lay across his neck as a result of his slow disappearance.

The curtains were closed here, so it was much darker than the conservatory. Mr. Putnam read by the light of a
small bright lamp. Lizzie’s father used to do the same. Lizzie’s mother had said he kept the curtains closed to fool himself into thinking it was late enough in the day for a drink. A glass of port sat on a mahogany table, close to Mr. Putnam’s right hand.

He stood up politely. “Why, Lizzie,” he said. “What a pleasant surprise. But you look tired.”

Lizzie
was
tired. She sank into a seat across from him. He returned to his chair. The room smelled strongly of books, a smell she loved above all things, and the usual male odors of liquor and old cigars. The same as in her father’s study. Many months after her father’s death, Lizzie had moved into her mother’s bedroom. She changed the rugs, the curtains, the position of the bed (her mother was a great believer in Dr. Crittenton’s analysis of magnetic fields and healthful westward orientation during sleep). It was hard at first, but the room was large, with good light, and now it was hers.

In contrast, she’d entered her father’s study only once since his death, when she met there with the family’s solicitor, Mr. Griswold, and heard the terms of her father’s will. There’d been an ashtray on the table with some parings of her father’s fingernails in it. Lizzie supposed they’d been thrown out by now, but not by her.

Her heart quickened. She picked up a tasseled cushion, held it in her arms across her chest, against that beating. “Mr. Putnam,” she said. She had trouble going on. She started again. “Mr. Putnam.”

“Did you wish to see me about something particular?”

In the glow of the lamp Mr. Putnam’s face took on a yellowish alarm. Lizzie knew him well. He didn’t mind
talking to women if he could stick to rehearsed compliments. He fancied himself good at these; he imagined women enjoyed them. An old-fashioned gallant.

But a genuine conversation was sure to tax him. It was unkind to force one on him. She waited while he took a sip from his drink, then spoke quietly. “Some time ago you said that someone had told you the sorts of foods Mrs. Pleasant served at her table. I was wondering who that someone was.”

Mr. Putnam’s expression intensified into one of trapped horror. Lizzie, who’d merely hoped to set her mind at rest, was surprised. This was a bad result; she shouldn’t have come.

Paradoxically, it had a calming effect on her. His reaction was so extreme; it was as if he had taken her anxiousness away and added it to his. She was able to set the pillow back, breathe more evenly. “I was wondering if it was my father,” she said. There. She’d thought it, she’d said it. No way to unmake this moment.

He responded with a fit of coughing. Lizzie fetched him water, but he’d already gulped his port, which made him sputter all the more. She waited through this, making small noises of concern and sympathy, the same she would make to a nervous horse. Really, she thought, she had her answer. If this answer hadn’t raised other questions she would have taken pity on him and excused herself. He kept sneaking looks at her, hoping she had done so.

But when he finally responded, his voice was nothing but kind. “What brings these questions, my dear?”

Why lie? The Putnams were her parents’ oldest friends; she’d known them all her life. “I’ve been told I have a sister.
A half sister. Actually, I think I’m being blackmailed. Please don’t tell Mrs. Putnam. She’d be so distressed.”

As was he, of course. “Oh, my dear!”

“So you can see I really must know the truth. Sparing me won’t spare me now.”

Mr. Putnam stared at the empty glass in his hands. He poured himself another two fingers. “May I get you something?” he asked.

“No,” said Lizzie. Eventually she would have to rejoin the women. Nothing would rouse their suspicions faster than liquor on her breath. Best to see this straight through straight.

“You must never tell Mrs. Putnam I’ve said a word.” Mr. Putnam shook his head morosely. “I can’t tell you how I wish you didn’t know. Mind you, I don’t believe that part about a sister. I never did. I told your father so.

“What mischief could he get up to, at his age? It was a fleecing, wolves to a lamb. He was a good man, Lizzie, or there’d have been no point. Your mother was already dead. A man—a man is different from a woman. He installed the child in the country, down south where you used to camp summers.”

Down by the big trees. Lizzie remembered trunks like houses, a stream that dried by July, pine needles covering the ground so your feet sank when you walked. High, windy cliffs over foam. This all arrived in a moment, a flood of smells and sounds.

“There was a weathervane,” she said sadly. “Carved like a flock of flying ducks. It clacked when the wind blew. Every year my father let me repaint it. I used to love doing
that.” She was so astonished she could feel nothing else besides.

“He made one condition. It was as much to protect you, Lizzie, as himself. The mother was a grasping, mendacious woman, not at all fit to raise a child, and he saw she would only increase her demands once she’d made a start. So he said he’d refuse all support if she ever contacted him again. He swore if she came even once to see the girl, he would cast them both off. After his death, we were forced to do that. Is she the one blackmailing you? She can’t prove any of it. You pay her nothing.”

“It’s not the mother. Do you know where she is now?”

“I don’t know anything about her. Which is as much as I wish to know.”

“How does Mrs. Pleasant figure in?”

“Mrs. Pleasant helped arrange a nursemaid for the child. Is she the one blackmailing you?”

“No.”

“But she’s in back of it. Got to be. Who else? That child is not your sister, Lizzie, and no one says she is, excepting a couple of women who were born telling lies. Don’t you pay a single cent. Mrs. Pleasant knew your father a long time, since the first days when she cooked at Case and Heiser and he supplied the meat. She made it her business to know the up-and-comers, and she found the way to work him.”

“Your mother was a saint. How she suffered!” Mrs. Putnam stood in the doorway. Lizzie didn’t know whether she had just arrived or had been standing outside for a while, hearing every word.

She shut the door and came into the room with her wide plum skirt sweeping the floor like a furious pendulum. Lizzie had never seen such a set of high red blotches on her cheeks. “When poor Harriet came all the way back from the grave to warn you! When I learnt that Mrs. Pleasant was making her afterlife a misery as well as her life!”

“Your father was a good man, Lizzie,” Mr. Putnam repeated. He looked appealingly at his wife for confirmation, for forgiveness. “Lizzie already knew,” he told her. “She came asking.”

The color went down in Mrs. Putnam’s face. She shifted with visible effort into briskness and efficiency. “
You’re
a good man,” she said. “Better than I ever deserved, and don’t I know it. But you talk too much. This hasn’t a thing to do with Lizzie, and it would hurt her mother horribly. I thank God she’s dead! The past must bury the past.