The Body in the Gazebo (8 page)

Tom had gotten in touch with him immediately. No better place to be while you decided whether you wanted to be in a parish than actually in a parish. Albert had arrived and stayed.

“Albert is going to be very upset about all this,” Tom said.

“Should you call him when we get home? Give him a heads-up? He’s bound to hear the moment he comes to work tomorrow.” Faith didn’t know the young man very well. He lived in Cambridge and had continued to attend Memorial Church in Cambridge with the minister the Reverend Peter Gomes, limiting his First Parish contact to workdays.

“You’re right. I hate to do it by phone, though.”

“Tell him what’s going on briefly and have him come in early. You can head over to the Minuteman Café to drown your sorrows in coffee and buttermilk pancakes. You’ll need plenty of sustenance before you go to the bank.”

Tom slung his arm over his wife’s shoulders. He was feeling better and he could tell from her suggestion that she was, too. When Faith’s thoughts turned in their natural direction—food—he always knew she was okay. A mix-up of some sort. That’s all this would turn out to be. He was beginning to think it was a good thing Sherman had brought in the outside CPA and this had come to the vestry’s attention. Keep church business on the up and up. It would all get straightened out tomorrow.

They were both reluctant to end the day and sat watching the kids.

Faith had told Tom a little of what Ursula had related the day before and they talked some more about it, both agreeing that Faith should try to spend as much time as possible with her while Pix was away. Wherever the story was going, it was obviously of great importance to Ursula, and it could only help her recovery to have a sympathetic listener. Tom had been as surprised as Faith to hear that Ursula was not an only child. She had often mentioned her parents to Tom, as well as cousins she’d been close to, all of them gone now, but never a brother.

Their conversation turned to Niki.

“I’m worried about her,” Tom said. “I wish she’d tell Phil right away. Okay, it’s not the best time to break the news, but the longer she waits the worse he’s going to feel when he does find out. If it were me, I’d be upset that my wife didn’t think I could handle it all. And this isn’t macho stuff. Partners, best friends, plus all those words that get said at the altar. You don’t keep secrets from each other.”

Faith had a very fleeting moment of remorse, remembering secrets she had kept from Tom, mostly having to do with dead bodies, but never secrets about things like a future visit from the stork.

“Absolutely, honey,” she said.

T
he next morning Amy missed her bus again, and after dropping her off at school, Faith arrived at work feeling annoyed with her daughter. This was happening more and more frequently. Amy seemed to have no concept of time, and Faith hated playing the heavy, telling her to hurry up over and over again each morning.

The Ganley Museum Café was closed, like the museum, on Mondays, but Faith wanted to make up two soups—squash with apples and mulligatawny—for tomorrow. Other than the Ganley, the only obligation the catering firm had until the weekend was a dessert buffet for a library fund-raiser. Have Faith was doing it at cost. Libraries were a special passion of Faith’s starting in childhood with her neighborhood branch in Manhattan and continuing to the present with Aleford’s superlative library. Cutbacks both on the state and town level meant that the library had taken a hit, hence the pressing need for fund-raisers of all sorts. The tickets for the event Thursday night included desserts, beverages, and the opportunity to mingle with a number of local authors who would be signing their books—a portion of the sales would go to the library, too. Exposure for the writers, money for the library—win, win. And it wouldn’t hurt Have Faith, either. They’d been prominently featured in the advertising. Niki was planning to feature several trays of rich butter cookies shaped like volumes and brightly iced with the titles of well-known books, including those by the attending authors. She was also doing several kinds of cakes that would look like fanned-out pages.

Niki was at the counter surrounded by springform pans. She greeted Faith with a grin.

“Never let it be said that my mother shirks from any opportunity to help her children. And said help has resulted in a multitude of orders for cheesecakes. Saturday night was Ladies’ Night at bingo. I don’t even want to think about how she got these orders, but I understand threat of the evil eye may have been involved.”

Faith was relieved to hear the old Niki, and her lighthearted tone must also mean she’d told Phil the news.

“I’m sure Phil was overjoyed about being a dad. What did he say? And any nibbles from the networking golf? That’s not the right word, but I don’t know what else to use. Divots?”

“Turns out the guy is about to lose
his
job and he was hoping Phil had nibbles, divots, or whatever, for him.”

“Oh dear,” Faith said, hanging up her jacket.

“And I haven’t told Phil yet,” Niki mumbled.

“Oh dear,” Faith said again. She pulled a stool over to the counter and sat down.

“You don’t understand,” Niki said. No mumbling now. She spoke defiantly. “A Greek man’s whole identity is based on his work, his being able to take care of his family. At the moment, Phil only has a wife—an employed wife—so, not so much pressure. I’m not going to burden him with this until he at least has a viable offer.”

“Not to be pessimistic, but you’re the one who said how bad the job market in the Boston area is right now for MBAs. It could be a while. And what happens when he finds out that you’ve kept it from him all that time?” Faith recalled what Tom had said. “You’re supposed to be partners—for better or worse. How will he feel when he discovers you’ve been going solo?”

“I don’t know and I’m not thinking about it now! I’m just going to make and deliver these cakes!” Tears were streaming down Niki’s cheeks. “Damn. Can you get me a Kleenex? I don’t want salt dripping in the batter.”

Faith pulled a carton from under the counter and moved the bowl away.

“I cry all the time when Phil isn’t around,” Niki admitted.

“Hormones,” Faith said, stirring. It
was
hormones, but it was also Faith’s words. She’d made her friend cry. “Look, you do what you think is best. I shouldn’t be pressuring you. You know what’s right for the two of you. Maybe it’s a Greek thing, maybe not—”

Niki interrupted her. “Forget ‘best.’ I have no idea what I’m doing, boss. And don’t shut up. Besides being creepily unnatural for you, I need to hear the other side. You could be right. You’re probably right. Oh, I don’t know.”

“Go wash your face and I’ll help you finish the cheesecakes and then we can get the Ganley stuff for tomorrow squared away. I’m spending the afternoon with Ursula.”

“How is she doing?”

“Much better, and I’m hoping by the time Pix comes back, she’ll be on her feet again.”

“Pix at Hilton Head. It sounds like some kind of book. You know, like
The Bobbsey Twins at the Seashore
. My mother bought the whole series at some rummage sale when she first got here. She thought it was what American girls should read. I’m surprised I’m not named Nan or Flossie.”

“I talked to Pix on the phone yesterday. She’d left one of her cryptic messages on the answering machine. I still don’t know what it’s all about. She couldn’t talk and was going to call back, but so far no word from the South except that she’d been drinking mimosas, was going to have her first massage, and had encountered something larger than a breadbox, most likely a person, that she wanted to tell me about.”

“Mimosas,” Niki said wistfully. “No booze for the next eight or so months. You hear that, kid? Mommy’s already sacrificing.” She paused. “Omigod, I sound just like my mother.”

I
t’s a great deal to ask,
Ursula Lyman Rowe said to herself as she waited for Faith Fairchild to arrive. She thought of the envelope tucked under the cushion of the window seat opposite her bed. She fancied she could see its shape outlined in the William Morris fabric slipcovering, and if she stared at it long enough she might make the paper rise, burning its way through the linen to the surface.

There’s no turning back now, though
. She knew Faith. She wouldn’t let Ursula stop the story. She knew it was something important. Yet, what she didn’t know was that at the end she’d have to make a decision herself.

Ursula sat up straighter. Tomorrow she’d insist that Dora let her sit up in her chair. The overstuffed armchair that Arnold had lugged home from an auction downtown. “A perfect reading chair,” he’d said. And so it had been, by oneself or to a child curled comfortably on one’s lap.

She was feeling better. Saturday night she had slept straight through until morning, not needing Dora to help her to the bathroom and especially not awakening unable to return to sleep—her mind filled with upsetting images.

She heard light steps in the hall. Faith had come.

“Hello, dear. It’s so good of you to give up your time this way.”

Faith bent over to kiss Ursula’s cheek.

“It’s a pleasure,” she said, and meant it. She’d been looking forward to stepping back into Ursula’s long-ago world all day, and not simply as a distraction from the preoccupations of this one. Tom had called to tell her briefly there wasn’t much to tell. He’d go over it with her later.

“Open up my top dresser drawer,” Ursula said. “At the bottom of my handkerchief box, there’s a folder with a photograph. Would you bring it here, please?”

Faith did as she was asked. The box was square and covered in quilted satin that must have once been a brighter rose. A long narrow box that matched it was on the other side of the drawer. Gloves.

She lifted the lid and then carefully removed the stack of embroidered Irish linen handkerchiefs Ursula kept there, along with one of the sachets she and Pix made each summer from the lavender they grew in their herb garden at The Pines on Sanpere. Underneath was the flat cardboard folder with the name of a Boston photography studio in fancy script across the front. Faith took it out, replaced everything, closed the drawer, and walked back over to Ursula.

“Open it up,” she said.

Inside was a sepia oval portrait of a man. Just his face. His hair was carefully parted in the middle and he was staring straight at the camera. Although he wasn’t smiling—it looked to be a graduation shot or some other momentous occasion—the curve at the corners of his mouth and a glint in his eye suggested that the moment after the shutter snapped, he’d jump up laughing. There was a subtle energy in the face. He was very handsome—and very young.

“That’s Theo,” Ursula said.

Her next words took Faith completely by surprise.

“Have you ever been to Martha’s Vineyard?”

Bewildered at Ursula’s sudden change in topic, Faith answered, “Yes, I’ve been to Martha’s Vineyard, but I don’t know it well.”

Fleeting images of freshly painted white clapboard, bright red geraniums in hanging baskets, wicker porch furniture, American flags, and a genuine Coney Island carousel where she once snatched the brass ring passed through her mind, as well as the Vineyard’s “Hollywood East” reputation.

“That’s where it happened. On Martha’s Vineyard. In a gazebo.”

Chapter 4

U
rsula pulled her arms out from beneath the light throw Dora had spread over her and folded her hands together. She was stretched out on the chaise. The signal was clear. She was ready to pick up her tale.

“There was a catastrophic winter storm on Sanpere in 1929. Trees came down all over the island and it took many months to repair the damage, and even so just the worst of it. There were several large tamaracks near our house, and with their shallow roots, I imagine they must have been the first to go, stoving in the entire back roof. A big pine took care of much of the front. Father was able to arrange for a temporary fix to keep the weather out, but for the rest he had to wait his turn. As long as he was going to have to do such major repairs, he decided to enlarge the kitchen and add two more bedrooms over it plus a new bath that Mother had been wanting for ages. I was excited about the plans until I heard it meant we wouldn’t be able to be there for the summer.”

Faith nodded in commiseration. The idea of Sanpere in the summer without Ursula and her family was akin to the swallows giving Capistrano a miss in March.

“Father rented a very large house on Martha’s Vineyard that one of his friends from the Somerset Club owned. The man and his wife were taking their daughter, who was just out, to England. No doubt her mama wanted to capture a title for the family. People did in those days.”

“Consuelo Vanderbilt,” Faith commented.

“Oh yes, the poor Duchess of Marlborough. Her life could have been written by Edith Wharton. In any case, the house on the Vineyard was much grander than either of our houses and I began to feel very guilty at how much I was enjoying the summer.”

Ursula’s family belonged to the Teddy Roosevelt school of rustication, Faith reflected. Plunges into the frigid deep at dawn, hearty hikes, plain food—as much simple living as money could buy.

“The cottage—that’s what the owner called it—was in Oak Bluffs at the end of a long dirt road. It was set overlooking the water with open fields on one side and forest on the other. There were stairs down to the beach and the water was quite warm. I can still smell the beach roses, the same
Rosa rugosas
we have in Maine, but the scent was stronger, or perhaps that’s a trick of memory. Along the front of the gray-shingled house, there were rows of hydrangeas with blooms the size of beach balls—quite impossible, but again that’s how I see them in my mind’s eye. Behind the house there was a massive garden with vegetables as well as flowers. The gardener told me it had been planted before construction was finished so it would look as if it had always been there. The house must have been about twenty years old and there were wide porches and verandas that went around it—we sat out there for tea and often in the evenings. I’m sure the whole thing would now be judged an architectural monstrosity with all sorts of conflicting styles—Arts and Crafts eyebrow windows, Gothic turrets, a Federalist widow’s walk—but I adored it. My room was in one of those turrets and at night I could hear the sea and the faint rustle of eelgrass in the soft wind. The weather was perfect that summer. No storms. Blue skies and just the right amount of wind every day. The sailors were in heaven.”

She reached for her water glass.

Faith said, “Let me get some fresh water for you, or would you like juice?”

“Water is fine.”

“I’m not tiring you, am I?”

“Not at all, Faith dear. I haven’t felt this well in weeks.”

After she drank some water, Ursula continued. She was talking a bit more quickly now, as if she wanted to get to a certain point before stopping for the day. The almost dreamlike reminiscence gave way to narrative. Faith was pulled in once more. Ursula’s description had been so vivid that Faith could clearly visualize the house and surrounding landscape.

“Mother liked it that Father was able to be with us more than he could when we spent the summer in Sanpere. He would often take a Monday to make a long weekend, spent a week in July and planned another in August. Despite the drive and the ferry, it was easier to get to the Vineyard than to The Pines. There was always someone coming or going. With so much space, Mother indulged her love of company. Her sister, my aunt Myrtle, visited a few times with my cousins, who were between Theo and me in age. The two sisters were very close. The flu epidemic in 1918 had taken their parents and their two younger brothers. We used to skip rope to ‘I had a little bird / Its name was Enza / I opened the window / And in-flu-enza.’ We had no idea what it meant and that millions had died, including our relatives. Mother never said anything. People didn’t—at least in our family. Illness was never mentioned. I discovered what happened when I was older and living out in Aleford.”

Faith was only too aware of this early-twentieth-century pandemic. The H1N1 swine flu had been the same strain as “the Spanish Flu” or “la Grippe” and there had been some tense weeks before the vaccine was available for the Fairchild children when a cough or slight fever was anxiously watched.

“Other friends of Mother’s from the Fragment Society would arrive, and of course my parents knew many people from town who summered on the island.”

“Town.” Faith was amused at Ursula’s Brahmin reference. “Town” always meant “Boston”—as if no other existed.

“Life on Martha’s Vineyard was much more social than life on Sanpere. There were Theo’s Harvard friends coming for the weekend or dropping in from their parents’ places on the island. Father wasn’t so keen on all of them. He didn’t care for Charles Winthrop, who was older and in a rather fast set at the college, or a girl named Violet Hammond. She wasn’t at Harvard, only men in those days. Father did like Schuyler Jessup, who was a great pal of Theo’s. Scooter—he was always called that—was often around and usually brought a girl named Babs Dickson, whose parents were friends of Father and Mother’s, with him. They later married. She was one of those athletic young women who always seemed to have a tennis racquet or a golf club in her hand. She wasn’t in college, but some sort of finishing school. I have no idea what she could have been doing there in those days. Certainly not learning to embroider and curtsy. Her father thought college courses put too great a strain on a woman’s mind. Such nonsense. What did he think? Her brain would suddenly explode? He didn’t seem to mind her straining her body, and I remember thinking how beautifully she moved—very feline, and with all this pent-up energy.

“The weekends Father stayed in town, the group would always come down. At night they’d roll up the rugs in the living room and dance. Mother didn’t mind. And all day long they kept the Victrola going. Rudy Vallee, Bix Beiderbecke, Louis Armstrong. There was a piano, too. Someone always seemed to be playing it. Scooter was the best. He had a very pleasant voice. Whenever I hear certain Cole Porter songs, they take me back to that summer.”

Ursula gazed across the room at the large window. Faith had the feeling that it had become a kind of screen and Ursula was watching these figures from her childhood cavort across the sunlight.

“Theo had passed his English literature course on the condition that he write several papers over the summer. But he had failed mathematics, so would have to repeat it. Father hired a tutor, a serious young man who had just graduated and was entering the law school in the fall. He was from the Midwest, an only child, and neither parent was living, so he had to make his own way in the world—a scholarship student, which was rare in those days. He’d been the teaching assistant in Theo’s medieval history class, and Father was convinced that their study sessions were the reason Theo had passed, and he was no doubt right. Theo called him ‘the Professor’ and soon everyone, even Father, did. I remember the first time I saw him. He had the most beautiful eyes I had ever seen—brown with tiny flecks of gold.”

This brought a smile to Faith’s face. A crush. Growing up, she’d had many herself.

“There weren’t any children my age, and except for the people I’ve mentioned, no one was living at the house that summer besides the servants, although those who were local went home at night. I didn’t mind. There was the whole outdoors to play in and my books to read indoors, and out. I also learned a new language—Martha’s Vineyard Sign Language. I thought it was great fun. There was an extremely high percentage of hereditary deafness on the island dating back to the eighteenth century, peaking in the mid-nineteenth, but still quite prevalent, especially in Chilmark, well into the twentieth. The gardener was deaf, as were several of the kitchen help. One of them, who was very young and very pretty, made rather a pet of me. I learned to sign by watching the servants talk—all of the ones from the island used it, even the ones who weren’t deaf. When I became adept, which was rather quickly—children pick up these things so much more easily than adults—I discovered that they liked my mother, feared my father, and thought Theo and his friends were very funny.

“I thought all the grown-ups were endlessly fascinating and I became very clever at finding places where I could observe them undetected. Under the piano in the living room was a good place. And then there was my own special place—not so much a place from which to watch people, but a kind of fort I’d made for myself underneath the rhododendrons next to a gazebo. It was quite an elaborate one that the owners had had constructed in the woods—more like a summerhouse or folly—a screened-in octagon with a wide bench around the sides. When I first happened upon it, I thought it belonged in something like Frances Hodgson Burnett’s
The
Secret Garden,
but upon reflection I decided it was more suited to Grimm. It was set away from the main house, deep in the woods down a dark, narrow path, nothing like a garden gazebo. It became my favorite spot. That hiding place by the gazebo . . .”

“You just don’t trust me, Father! Dash it! The Professor’s a good chap and I’m all for helping him out, but I don’t need a tutor down at the Vineyard this summer. I’m more than capable of writing the papers myself, and as for the math, I would have passed the exam if I had felt better.” Theo stopped short. He didn’t want to go into the reason for the monstrous headache that had caused the numbers to swim before his eyes and the feeling that he might retch at any moment, which kept him from putting down what little he did know on the paper before him. It had been foolish to go off with Charles, but it was only going to be for a quick bite at Jim’s Place in the Square, and then Violet had appeared with a friend. It would have been rude not to ask them to a show in town and supper afterward.

Violet. Theo tried to concentrate on what his father was saying. It should have been easy. The old man was shouting. But he kept seeing Violet’s face—that impossibly alabaster skin, ruby lips, flashing sapphire eyes. He wished he were a poet. Maybe he’d give it a try. “Thine eyes like pools of melted sky.” Not bad. Not bad at all.

“Theo! Have you heard one word of what I’ve been saying?”

“Of course, sir. You think I’m a ‘wastrel’ and need a watchdog. I give in. I’ll let the Professor keep my nose to the grindstone.”

Theo had absorbed enough from his English courses to know he had muddled any number of metaphors. He found himself trying hard not to smile. His father was right. He wasn’t taking all this seriously. Slacker fellows than he was had graduated. It had been important to protest at the start, but Theo knew this was one he couldn’t win so there was no need to drag the unpleasantness out.

Theodore Artemus Lyman—he’d given his son a different middle name, Speedwell, which seemed enormously ironic at the moment—sighed heavily and got up. “See that you do. I’ll be getting weekly reports, and those papers must be submitted to the college by the end of July.”

“Don’t worry, Father. It’s going to be a wonderful summer.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of,” Mr. Lyman muttered as his feckless son escaped out the door.

Ursula crouched lower behind one of the tall blue and white Japanese porcelain jars that stood in the hallway on either side of the library door. Soon she wouldn’t be able to fit into the space between the jar and the wall—it was getting to be a tight fit—and one of her favorite hiding places would be gone. You could hear everything that was said in the library, especially if the door hadn’t been closed all the way as today. She loved the jars, with their misty scenes of landscapes that came straight from one of Andrew Lang’s fairy-tale collections. She leaned her cheek against the jar’s cool surface and closed her eyes, gently tapping the rim. She imagined that the soft, clear note was a temple gong and shadowy figures were moving in a rapid wave toward a shrine.

She leaned back against the wall and opened her eyes, in no hurry to move. School was over for the year and the house was in an uproar of cleaning and packing. Most of the rooms would be shut, the furniture draped like so many ghosts. Father would dine at his club and only use his library, one sitting room, and his bed and dressing rooms.

Poor Theo! It was a shame that he’d have to spend his summer studying, but Ursula was glad the Professor would be with them. When she had been introduced to him, she’d immediately asked him if he liked birds, and instead of answering “Only songbirds, kiddo,” as Scooter had, the Professor had replied, “All birds or specifically shore, meadow, or woodlands?” He wouldn’t be working with Theo every minute, and she’d already packed the Leitz binoculars she’d asked for and received for her birthday plus her little life-list notebook bound in bright red Moroccan leather, hoping he would join her when she searched for new sightings to add.

She was worried about what the storm on Sanpere had done to her things—her bedroom was in the back of the house, which had received the worst damage. Was her fern collection safe? She’d spent hours neatly pressing, labeling, and gluing them into a scrapbook. And what about the abandoned birds’ nests she’d found and arranged on a shelf in her room? For all she knew they could be in a sodden heap in the middle of the floor. It was exciting to go to a new place, but she wished they could go to Sanpere for just a little while, even if they had to stay elsewhere. Her father had promised a full account of her things. He was going up in August to check on the work. She sighed. It was a long time to wait.