The Hundred-Year House (25 page)

After a long time, she heard a wail from the kitchen, a cry that wasn’t sudden or surprised, more like part of an ongoing tantrum. There was talking—several voices, all female—and then a low, constant sob. Grace considered heading back there, but it was on principle that she didn’t. Dinner was fourteen minutes late. The cook could apologize when she emerged.

The crying got louder before it stopped altogether. When Rosamund walked out, she didn’t have a single dish in her hands. Her face was red, but Grace could tell immediately she hadn’t been the one crying. She’d known all along, really, that it was Amy. Rosamund stood inside the door, her arms folded across her waist, and she said, “I can’t do it any longer. I’d gladly stay on for you, but I won’t work for
him
. I refuse.”

“He’s not even here tonight,” Grace said. “He took the Darrin out again. And you haven’t served him a meal in five days.”

“Listen.” She had lowered her voice, though she didn’t come any closer to Grace. Why didn’t she talk like a servant? None of these American ones did. “I apologize for my language. But, ma’am—he’s raped her.” Her nostrils flared and she put her hand to her earlobe, but she kept her eyes straight on Grace. All Grace could think of was throwing a plate right at Rosamund’s mouth until she stopped talking, until she vanished from the earth. “She’s been in there two hours, and she won’t stop to breathe. Beatrice is giving her tea. He took her into the Longhouse and he forced himself on her.”

“Well,” Grace said. And she spoke on instinct, or at least she said what she imagined her mother might say, even though she didn’t know what that would be till she heard it come out of her mouth. “I very much doubt that’s true. If you must know, Amy lies and steals, and she’s quite in love with George. He’s had his way with her, I do know that, I’m not blind. But I’ve
seen
her. She was quite willing. I’m afraid she’s played you for a fool.”

“Now why would she do that?”

Grace stood from the table and left her chair out, and pushed past the cook into the kitchen. Amy was perfectly well clothed, her dress not even ripped or stained, except that someone had draped a kitchen towel around her shoulders. She and Beatrice sat side by side on chairs, Beatrice still in her gardening boots. Grace wanted to stick all three women into the Frigidaire and lock the door.

“Amy,” she said. “Are you with child?”

Amy looked up with red, swollen little eyes. She choked out a whisper: “No, ma’am. I don’t think the timing—no.”

“Then I don’t understand the change. It’s all been fine with you up till now. Or perhaps it’s because I caught you stealing. The
thing of it, Amy, is that you aren’t going to wedge us apart. If I leave George, or if George leaves me, it won’t be because of some thieving girl.”

Amy screamed into her hands and rocked forward, and Beatrice bent over her and rubbed her back. Beatrice said, “I found her outside the Longhouse.”

“But you didn’t hear her when she was
in
the Longhouse, did you? She must not have screamed very loudly. Beatrice, I haven’t invited you into my kitchen.”

Beatrice looked shocked, but then, as Grace had known she would, she nodded and walked slowly to the back door. She said, “Amy, I’ll be in the garden cottage.”

There was soup boiling on the stove, getting too thick, prob-ably.

Grace said, “Amy, are you quitting your job?”

“No, ma’am.”

“
I’m
the one quitting,” Rosamund said. “And, forgive me, you ought to quit too, ma’am. You ought to leave this house and get back to Canada before he slices you to bits. And Amy ought to leave, and Beatrice ought to leave, and anyone with any sense should get out of here. But as it seems I’m the only one with a backbone, I’ll be leaving alone tonight.” She whipped her apron off, as if more drama were necessary, and left it behind her on the counter.

She was gone, and it was just Grace and Amy, alone in the kitchen.

Grace said, “You’ll have to serve the soup then.”

“Yes.”

She didn’t know what to think. How could she possibly know what to think? But she did have one clear and horrible realization, as she sat back at the dining table. The drama she had sought in George, the lust and fire, would never involve her anymore,
because she was the one married to him. He might gash her face, but he wouldn’t ravish her, wouldn’t focus his whole being on her seduction. The drama would always be, from now on, about other women.

Amy brought her the soup, clattering the bowl on the saucer and hyperventilating the whole way. Cream of squash, cooked to a gelatinous mess.

Grace wanted to sob until she flowed to the floor and out of the house and into Lake Michigan.

She said, “Amy, I’ll want more water.”

And when Amy brought her more water, she sent her back for another roll.

And when she brought the roll, she told her to take the soup away because it wasn’t any good.

—

The next day there was a telegram from Toronto:
FATHER GRAVELY ILL. TWO OR THREE WEEKS LEFT PLEASE COME HOME.

She wouldn’t do it. She couldn’t face him now. He’d see right through everything, he’d see that she knew about his degeneracy, and he’d see that he’d been right about George, and she’d break down screaming and she’d tear her clothes and move back to Toronto forever. And do what? And live how? And George would follow her there, and ruin everything for everyone, for her brother and her mother, and the whole city would see her as the girl who came home broken, rather than the girl who ran off for love.

And then she sat and cried all afternoon. Because if it was true that her father was dying, and if George was right that no one would ever visit her here, and if she was too stubborn to go home, then she’d never see any of them again.

—

Three days later, she went to the coach house when Amy was busy in the kitchen. Amy was cooking everything now, though Grace knew Beatrice snuck in there, whenever she could, to help. The
food was dreadful: browned meat covered in sour cream and baked for an eternity; chopped celery covered in cheese and baked; sliced apples for dessert, smothered in a mash of cream cheese and powdered sugar. Grace wanted her gone, wanted her back wherever she’d come from, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it, not least because Amy might go to the police then, might say enough that word would spread, as word always spreads, and word could reach Canada. It could reach her father on his deathbed.

But she did have a plan, and having one made her feel better. It came together just when the greenhouse plans came together, as if she were turning out, after all, to be the architect of her own life.

She found Max in the garage and asked him to walk with her to see the digging. “I want your opinion,” she said, though it made no sense why someone would have any particular opinion about a hole in the ground. They walked to the far end of the house and stared into the rectangular hollow for the greenhouse foundation. Ludo and two Negroes and a red-haired man all stood in it, poking around the edges of the steps that currently led down from the door of the solarium. They’d have to pull out those steps like decayed teeth, and the concrete floor of the greenhouse would come even with the door. Max greeted the men and looked without great interest at their progress, and when she asked if she might speak to him on the terrace, he nodded and followed her around the corner. They sat looking out at the fountain and the paths that spread from it like rays, and the fire pile growing tall back by the woods, and the Longhouse, and the little studio behind that and, on the far side, the cottage studio that used to house composers and was now the shed for Ludo and Beatrice. Next to the cottage, Beatrice’s vegetable garden was finished and brown.

Grace said, “Max, I’m going to ask a favor of you. Amy’s been here quite a while now, and it’s time for her to move on. You know
she’s become a terrible distraction to everyone. I think she’s begun stealing things, as well.”

“You’d be out a cook.”

“She’s no cook. And you’ve seen how unhappy she’s been, these past few days.” Max looked puzzled, and she wondered if Amy and Beatrice had managed to keep all the hysterics from him. “Don’t you think you can send her home now?”

He rested his hands on his legs as if he were keeping them still only through great effort. “It would be difficult.”

Grace reached into her coat pocket and brought out a key ring with four small keys. “I thought I’d offer you my keys to the artists’ studios. You could use them however you’d like. You know—” and she was glad he was gazing out at the grounds in confusion, and not at her “—sometimes I think about those boys at the college. I worry about them, so far from home. If you meet any who are in need of a good meal, or a place to rest, you could invite them to visit you here, and they might even use the daybeds in the studios. Surely there’s someone who wants a quiet space.”

She hadn’t been sure, when she’d rehearsed this, what his reaction might be. Shame, perhaps, and a grateful exchanging of favors. Or he might be angry and take it as blackmail, which would work as well. She wasn’t prepared for him to turn and grin at her. She’d never even seen such an expression on his face. All the composure, all the reserve she’d come to know as Max, fell away in that moment, and she was looking at someone she’d never met.

“I already have keys,” he said. “You should hold on to those.”

“She’s not your niece,” Grace said.

“Not technically.”

“But she’ll listen to you. I don’t imagine she’s in
love
with you.”

He laughed softly. “No. She’s quite naïve, I think. She’s not like you, she doesn’t realize how I am, but she’s fond of me. And Grace, I’ll say quite plainly that I won’t send her home.” Only a
moment later did she realize that he’d not only defied her, he’d called her Grace. And what could she do about any of it? Threaten to tell her father, when she had no idea what history lay between them? If she couldn’t dismiss him, and he wouldn’t do what she said, then it was quite obvious that he was really the one in charge. He said, “Some fellow brought her to Chicago, is what happened. He convinced her to leave Florida with him, which, from what I understand, likely saved her life. But it turned disastrous. As those things tend to. She’s only eighteen. Do you know how she came to us? Beatrice found her outside the gate, peering in. She’d been knocking on every door down the street, looking for work. She’s remarkably resourceful. In Chicago, before she left the man, she asked around where the nicest houses were, and someone said she ought to come up here. She told me she figured that even if she failed, no one in a small town would let her sleep on the street. Whereas in the city . . . She’d been to a hundred houses before she met Beatrice.”

“How lucky that she found us.” She was amazed, really, at how sharp her voice was, how mean. It was exactly like her mother’s.

“This has always been a place for strays. The people who need to find Laurelfield always find it. Listen, Grace, she’s got nothing back home. A horrible family. A whole family of Georges. I can’t send her.”

“Why don’t you just marry her, then? If you care more about Amy than your employment here. Are you capable of being with a woman? It would be a happier marriage than some, even if it were a farce. And then you could keep her out of everyone else’s business, and maybe you could leave alone poor Sid Cole of Indianapolis.”

Max did look startled now, and perhaps Grace shouldn’t have let on that she had Sid’s name. He’d been impressed with her intuition, her worldliness, and now he knew she was just a snoop.
He stood, and at first she thought he was stalking off, but he came instead and knelt down in front of her chair, right on the stone floor, right in the dead leaves.

He said, “You don’t look good.”

It ought to have insulted her greatly, but it didn’t. Maybe it was a relief to have someone in charge, someone who cared if she lived or died. He was trying to get her to look at him, right at him. That was why he’d gotten down so low. And she couldn’t do it. She looked over his shoulder, out at the dry fountain.

“Grace,” he said. “Aren’t you the one who needs to get out of here?”

She kept staring until the fountain became a gray blur, no closer or farther than the trees beyond.

“Grace. We’re similar, you know. Maybe it’s something I shouldn’t say, but it’s true. Did you read that poem?”

“It didn’t apply.”

“The point is to reinvent yourself.”

She felt like reaching out to touch Max’s dark hair. She might push a small dent into it with her finger, and it might stay that way. Instead she stood to leave, while she still had some small remnant of dignity.

He said, “I’d marry you myself.”

“That’s very kind.”

—

Saturday was Guy Fawkes Day. No one in the States seemed to celebrate it, but when George showed up at breakfast—Grace was mildly surprised to see him, as he hadn’t slept in their bed—she suggested they do a bonfire that night. The burn pile was so tall.

George said, “That’s a fine plan.”

He was lit by the sun, black curls in every direction, eyes bright green and unclouded. She loved him at breakfast. If she kissed him she would taste like Listerine, and when he stretched his arms and back she could hear the cracks. In the morning he
was like a small, clean snowball—one that would roll downhill all day, picking up rocks and darkness and growing enormous and sharp.

A shaking Amy brought coffee without looking at either of them. It smelled terrible, acrid and offensive, and Grace thought she might retch. She said, “Amy, can you take this away? There’s something wrong with it.”

George tasted his. “It’s perfectly fine.”

But Grace handed her cup to Amy, who hurried it back to the kitchen.

“If you drop dead from poison, I’ll know who did it,” Grace said.

—

Grace asked Ludo to plan the bonfire, and she thought she and George might even have dinner on the inner terrace, after the blaze was going. But by three in the afternoon George was roaring drunk, and he found her sitting on the bed with the telegram that had just arrived from Toronto. All it said was
FATHER WORSENING, PLEASE ADVISE IF COMING
, but she couldn’t keep from staring at it, as if it would update itself every time there was a change, every time her father sat up to eat a bite of soup. George yanked it from her and she told him what was happening, but that she didn’t think she’d go.