Tea Cups & Tiger Claws (7 page)

It was
Judith and Abigail. She just knew it. Who else could it be? And while Dorthea dreaded being seen herself, she didn’t mind turning the table on her sisters and seeing them, secretly, maybe even when they didn’t
want
to be seen. That possibility felt especially tempting.

She
briefly thought about the price to be paid if her dad caught her running off, and then she slid back over to the driver’s side, opened the door, and eased out of the truck. She walked along the shrubbery next to the house until coming to the big hedge at the back of the truck. Hugging the hedge, she crept to the end of it, looked around the corner for any sign of her dad, and to make sure nobody had come out onto the back porch, and then darted across the gravel driveway, across a strip of lawn, and down the garden path. When she felt sufficiently covered by the trimmed canopy of the willow trees, and clear from any eyes that might happen to look out a window from up at the house, she ducked behind a tree trunk. She looked back and still saw part of the pointy roof of the house through the branches, but not the truck. She hadn’t yet gone all that far, she assured herself, and had no intention of going much farther at all. She turned her attention back to the voices, which now sounded louder, and heard more laughing, and made out some words, but also something else: a boy’s voice, which she found interesting, because Judith and Abigail didn’t have any brothers.

She pushed off from the tree and headed down the path,
her sixteen-year-old brain eagerly considering the devilish possibilities that accompanied boys and girls her age alone in nature. Cautiously, she followed the voices, like a trapper, slowing at every bend, ready to catch sight of her prey at any second, but each time finding nothing but an empty path surrounded by trees and shrubbery, which increasingly looked less manicured, and more rustic; the trimmed willow trees and shaped bushes had given way to scraggily oaks and untamed deer bush. But the voices, which she now felt certain belonged to a single girl and boy, grew ever louder and clearer, so she pushed forward until she came upon a small stream, where the trail turned to the right and followed the stream down the hill.

Once again she
stepped off the path, hid behind a tree, and looked ahead. Nothing. Just voices. She looked up the path from where she had come and thought about turning back. That’s when she heard the girl say the name “Billy.” At first she doubted herself, but then the girl said it again, and Dorthea completely understood the meaning of it.

Every town in America had plenty of Billys. Billy boys, Billie girls, Billys old and young, not to mention all the dignified Williams
and Bills who answered to Billy whether they liked it or not. You couldn’t get more common than Billy…unless you lived in Prospect Park and your name happened to be Billy Newfield, only child of Archibald and Agnes Newfield, and the prince of the city. In that case there was nothing common about you at all.

Dorthea knew her shortcomings intimately, but knowledge of her most troubling
defects didn’t come to her naturally, parceled out in normal fashion as she grew and learned, succeeded and failed, and witnessed one childlike notion after another settle with a dusty thud into unpleasant adult reality; they came unnaturally, abnormally, shoved into her face and pressed onto her conscience every day by people, both good and bad, who saw the splendor of her wonderful sisters and then took it upon themselves to compare them to her. Judith and Abbey were as perfectly identical to her as nature allowed, but as perfectly superior as could only be allowed by providential judgment. And a harsh judgment it had been. Just a look at them, even fleeting, or even the mention of their names, and Dorthea, by comparison, instantly looked like dog shit on the doormat. She knew it and so did everyone else.

A strong personality provided a degree of shelter against this assault, but so did a carefully constructed fantasy world
. Sunny Slope Manor and the Newfield family occupied the chief cornerstone of this world. Judith and Abbey might fancy themselves something special, but someday, with the help of the Newfields, she’d put them in their place and show the world some real splendor. Depending on the mood and current wretchedness of her life, this turn of events came about in a number of ways, but always featured the Newfields’ dramatic recognition of her true superiority, and her moving into Sunny Slope Manor where she ruled over and looked down upon the humiliated Judith and Abbey forevermore. It never ever included any sort of friendliness between the Newfields and her sisters, especially with the young prince Billy, most especially of the romantic variety.

Not that she entertained
romantic fantasies about Billy Newfield herself, because she didn’t. At this point in her life, Dorthea’s romantic fantasies revolved around money and power and revenge. She didn’t dream about sweet nothings whispered into her ear, she dreamed about whispering them herself, into the ears of her enemies, as their heads lay on chopping blocks. Billy, as with all the Newfields, occupied her fantasies as no more than a means to that end.

She stepped
out into the middle of the path and started marching. There would be no turning back until the identity of this particular Billy had been discovered.

As the girl’s voice grew loud and
giggly and talked about dance cards and ugly sideburns, Dorthea noticed that the scenery at the end of the path had begun to change: the streaky browns, endless greens, and pale yellows of nature turned into the canned blues, billboard greens, and fantasy yellows of the human hand. Fuzzy borders became straight and exact. Accidental patterns turned into geometric shapes that Dorthea’s human eye easily recognized from thirty yards out as three large playhouses in a clearing, each brightly painted and ornate, just like Toomington Hall. Even the trees and bushes around the playhouses looked unnatural, having changed back to the rigid, perfectly shaped specimens Dorthea had seen up at the house. Still mindful of the voices, but not seeing anybody by the playhouses, she continued down to the opening of the clearing where she once again stepped behind a tree and studied the surroundings.

Almost immediately she saw the boy and girl.
In another clearing down past the playhouses, on the other side of a small footbridge that spanned the little stream, they sat on a bench under a willow tree. Their backs faced Dorthea but the girl looked at the boy as she talked and Dorthea saw the side of her face. He had his arm behind her, resting on the back of the bench. Despite the distance, and the fact that she wore a modern hat with a big brim which drooped stylishly down and hid part of her face, Dorthea recognized her sister, though which one she couldn’t say. She talked fast and bobbed her head as the words dropped from her mouth. Of her dress, partially hidden by the bench, Dorthea only saw that it matched the rose color of the hat and that it was sleeveless. But it didn’t matter if she saw it clearly or not. It was perfect. It had to be because it belonged to her perfect sister who sat under the perfect weeping willow listening to the gurgle of the perfect stream. But what about the boy, who wore a flat cap and a biscuit colored tweed coat, was he perfect too? Was he more than perfect?

Dorthea
knew Billy Newfield from pictures in the newspapers and glimpses around town. The boy on the bench looked like him but she needed to get closer to make sure. Waiting for the right moment, when her sister looked forward, she scrambled down to the front of the playhouses.

From their narrow width, they looked
normal enough—playhouses for rich kids—but from their height they looked like more than that; the front doors looked almost as tall as the real thing, and they each had second story windows. Definitely big enough to hide her from view.

With her back to the
first house, she crept to her left until coming to the end. In between the end of this house and the beginning of the next, she saw smallish shrubs on both sides of a walkway. She stood and listened to their voices shoot through this gap like voices from a gramophone. The girl did most of the talking, at a mile a minute.

“I have ways of finding out, you know I do, and all I’m saying is that if
your name is still on her dance card tonight at seven o’clock, Herbert is going on mine…three times.” She giggled like a chipmunk.

“
Three for one, that’s not a very fair bargain,” said the boy, with a hint of mock despair in his voice.

“It’s very fair, more than fair, just
ask any girl who’s teaching a boy a lesson. Lillie Logan put Edwin Meely, on her card 5 times when she caught Desmond flirting with Eugenia Wyler behind a pillar next to the coatroom.”

“Yes
, but this isn’t flirting. My father does business with her family, and I was told to dance with her. If I back out now, whole economies might fail. Do you want to be responsible for that?”

“Will I go in
to the history books?”

“Yes
, Right next to Mata Hari.”

“Billy Newfield!” she said with a shriek. “You are a beast!”

Billy Newfield. Now she knew. She knew what she already knew. That’s what the day had been about anyhow. She knew her sisters had it good. Now she knew how good, and she didn’t care. She’d seen the big gate and the guard who got paid to say “howdy.” She’d driven up a driveway long enough to be on a map. She’d seen the fairytale house surrounded by fairytale trees. And now she’d seen her sister, dressed like Clara Bow, flirting with Billy Newfield. She’d taken the plunge and it felt good because now there would be no more nightmares where imagination takes the bit into its teeth and drags her through a never ending chain of enchanted castles, always home to magnificent beauties named Judith and Abigail, always perfect, but never quite perfect enough to satisfy a gnawing suspicion that the full extent of her sisters’ glory has yet to be discovered; when given free rein and the whip of a tormented soul, jealous imagination can run forever. But now she knew. She slew imagination in favor of bleak reality and found it more to her liking.

Yes, she’d taken the plunge. Or had she? Maybe it was more of a cautious dip.
After all, she still hadn’t gotten a good look at them, especially Billy Newfield, and that seemed a shame, considering how far she’d come.

After turning
in place, she slowly tilted her head past the corner of the house, but didn’t see anything except the walkway which led down to the bridge. She took a step into the opening and saw Billy Newfield’s right arm resting on the armrest of the bench. She took another step and saw the rest of him, from the back. He sat upright, polite, dignified, left arm still draped behind her on the back of the bench. Her sister eagerly leaned toward him. She stabbed the air with her finger and jabbered away. He tried to say something. She slapped his leg playfully but then let her hand rest on his leg. He took her hand into his and then leaned forward and kissed her on the lips. She kissed him back and then looked around to make sure they hadn’t been seen. Dorthea ducked back behind the playhouse.

He
’d kissed her. Unbelievable. But what choice did he have? She did everything to get that kiss just short of hanging an “open for business” sign around her neck. Dorthea had seen enough. She crept back along the front of the playhouse, muttering about sluts and hussies, until she got to the steps of the porch. All she had to do now was peek around the far end of the porch to see when her sister turned her head away and then run up and out of the clearing.

She
climbed the first step, but then something above caught her eye. It was a placard hanging from the wall that overhung the front porch. She stepped back onto the walkway and looked at it. With fancy woodworked edges and a glossy white background, it said “Judith’s House” in a flowing purple painted script. She stepped back again, looked at the next house to her right, and saw the same type of placard over the steps, but this one said “Abigail’s House.” Naturally wondering who the third house belonged to, since the duchess had never had kids of her own and had never adopted any others besides Judith and Abigail, she crept over to it, taking care not to be seen through the gaps between the houses, and found another placard, which simply said “Billy” in a crude, shaky hand, maybe even in pencil. It didn’t have the carved edges. And the glossy paint looked uneven and blotchy, like the back of something not meant to be seen. Maybe it
was
the back. Maybe she’d find a different name painted on the front. She tiptoed up one wooden step, closed her eyes when it creaked, and then quickly climbed two more up to the porch where she reached up and pulled the placard off its hooks. Even before lowering it to eye level, the name jumped out at her. There, inside the fancy woodworked edges, written in same frilly purple script as the other ones, she saw, “Dorthea’s House.” Barely believing her eyes, she studied it closely.

“Hello Dorthea.”

She gasped and jumped. The placard slipped out of her hand. She bobbled it like a circus clown. It crashed loudly onto the wooden porch, bounced end over end down the steps, and came to rest on a stepping stone with her name facing up. Dorthea looked up and saw her sister, smirking, standing three feet away on the walkway in front of the porch steps. Behind her, Billy Newfield had just rounded the front of the first playhouse and was also approaching.

“No, no…I’m not....” she
stammered, mindful that a denial was in order, but not sure exactly what to deny.

“Not what?” asked
her sister. “Dorthea? Of course you are. I know it as sure as I know my own reflection.”