The Time of Her Life (33 page)

Even though Leo had forced the sturdy trunks of the catalpas to extend straight up about nine feet before they branched, each
tree assumed the self-contained shape of a softened, rounded obelisk. Their crowns didn’t form the leafy vault he had hoped
for—the branches didn’t
arch
, didn’t intermingle overhead, really, as he had envisioned. And each year, when the catalpas’ fringed and ruffling flowers
bloomed and produced their startlingly phallic, cigar-brown fruit, and when those flowers began to shed in stringy drifts
of petals and oily pollen so that guests arrived showered with residue from the burgeoning branches, Audra would declare that
the trees should be taken out.

“They’re a nuisance, Leo. I always think that if you want a flowering tree you can’t go wrong with a dogwood. Dogwoods
won’t get so tall, of course, but they are such beautiful trees. And more restrained when they’re in bloom. Oh, and sometimes
in the spring when the dogwoods bloom early, it looks to me like the whole tree has burst into white lace.” But the catalpa
trees remained, and Leo’s garden and the wide yards of Scofields became the geographical context of the childhood of each
of those three children born coincidentally on September 15, 1888.

Robert Butler was a ruddy, brown-haired child, and Warren Scofield, too, was sturdy and round limbed. They were little boys
who seemed all of a piece, whereas Lily’s pale, attenuated arms and legs, her fragile neck, her knobby wrists and ankles seemed
flimsy, as if, in her always hectic activity, she might fly apart, although for a long time it was clearly Lily who was the
center and star of that inseparable threesome. At four or five or six years old, Robert wouldn’t have known how to articulate
the impression that sometimes, in the blue or brassy light of any given day, a word Lily spoke—just the plain, flat sound
of it—exploded cleanly into the moment, like a brilliant asterisk glinting through the atmosphere. Nor could he have explained
that occasionally Lily’s movements, a sweep of her arm, an abrupt turning of her head, would break through some ordinary instant
with a flicker of blank white clarity.

And, of course, Robert had no way to know that his was a kind of perception lost to adults and older children. His mother
was happier to see him only in Warren’s company. Mrs. Butler didn’t dislike Lily; it was only that it gave her a sense of
satisfaction to see those two healthy boys absorbed entirely in the company of each other. Robert and Warren appeared to strike
a natural balance between them that was disturbed when little Lily was with them, directing them to do this or that, dreaming
up fantastic games with evolving rules that were played out for days at a time.

One summer afternoon Mrs. Butler was in the yard of the parsonage cutting flowers for a bouquet and inspecting the rosebushes
for disease when the three children came tearing
through the yard brandishing sticks, their heads wrapped turbanlike in white damask napkins, with Lily bringing up the rear,
urging the boys on in her high-pitched voice. “Gallop, Warren! Gallop, Robert! We must not let them escape! We must run! We
must run like the wind!”

Martha Butler’s good mood was spoiled as she watched them race across the lawn and down the slope toward the creek. When she
mentioned it to her husband that evening—mentioned that the two little boys never had a chance to play together without Lily—he
wasn’t interested, said he couldn’t see what difference it made. And Martha herself couldn’t puzzle out her objection, couldn’t
understand why their
threesomeness
disturbed her. “It isn’t natural, somehow, Daniel,” she said to her husband. “Three never works out. There’s always someone
left out. Though, I don’t know, not with those three…. But it doesn’t seem at all right… not
healthy
in some way. Well, I just don’t know.” And she let the subject drop.

But Robert’s mother’s censure emanating from the vicinity of the rosebushes that afternoon had overtaken and enveloped Lily
as she herded their band onward, and she hesitated at the edge of the creek while the boys forged ahead. She was stricken
for the first time in her life with self-consciousness. She unwrapped the napkin from around her head and was never again
able to lose herself entirely in an imagined universe. She sometimes cringed in embarrassment when she remembered urging Robert
and Warren to “run like the wind.” She had only been eight years old, but for the rest of her life she could not forgive herself
that moment of blatant melodrama.

Lily and Warren’s uncle George returned from a business trip to New York one year with a remarkably fine set of marionette
puppets for his niece and nephew’s tenth birthday. George was an elusive and therefore romantic figure to the children and
such a favorite of their parents because of his various endearing eccentricities that neither Leo and Audra nor Warren’s parents,
John and Lillian, let him know that such intricate toys were far too complicated for Lily and Warren. But as it
turned out, the marionettes were immediately popular with Lily and Warren and Robert, too, and for the next five years or
so they mounted numerous and increasingly elaborate shows. Robert wrote the plays, Warren took on the most difficult roles,
and Lily kept everything organized and filled in wherever she was needed. All during their growing up, Lily relieved Robert
and Warren of the effort of choreographing their own childhoods. Lily was forever keeping them from careening off on some
tangent or another. It was clear to her that without her guidance they would not
progress
. And she loved Robert Butler always and thought of herself as one half of the whole of herself and her cousin Warren.

For Warren’s part, his whole idea of himself until he was about eleven years old was as one third of this triumvirate. Answering
Mrs. Butler’s question, for instance, as to what the three of them had been up to all day, he knew instinctively to turn and
weave all their disparate activities into a narrative that satisfied adults. Although he often interchanged the actions of
any one of their threesome with those of another, he wasn’t even aware of it; he was only reacting to some parent’s slight
uneasiness—only shifting the
details
of the truth to ensure serenity all around.

One afternoon when the three of them arrived at Robert’s house dripping wet, Warren gave an enthusiastic account of his failed
plan to build a fort and laboratory in the big low-branching cherry tree over the horse pond.

“A laboratory! Well, a laboratory. That’s where so many of my canning jars have disappeared to, I guess!” Mrs. Butler said,
but her initial alarm at the sight of them had softened. Later Robert reminded Warren that the whole thing had been Lily’s
idea. Robert was surprised that Warren had taken the credit, but Warren only looked at Robert, perplexed. Warren knew intuitively
that Robert’s mother would never have been pleased with the actual account of their afternoon’s enterprise. Lily was their
inspiration; Robert was their conscience; Warren was their ambassador to the outside world. So deeply was each
child connected to the other two that each one’s loyalty was unconsidered, their mutual devotion fundamental.

But as they grew older, and by the time they were putting on their puppet shows for children’s birthdays and at the county
fair, Robert himself was unable to recall or name the quicksilver charisma Lily possessed that had captured his sensibilities.
As an adult, whenever he thought back about his childhood, he remembered Lily always in motion, full to the brim with ideas
and energy, but he lost the ability to remember the incandescence with which she had imbued the long hours of his early days.
And Warren, too, as he grew older, translated all the emotion of their passionate connection into a manageable version of
nothing more than a warm childhood friendship. Only Lily, left behind at the age of twelve when the boys went off to boarding
school, understood that it was she alone who was likely to lose the underpinnings of the pleasure of her life, and she was
single-minded in her determination that nothing of the sort would happen.

Lillian Marshal Scofield and Robert Crane Butler were married in her father’s garden in an extravagant ceremony on a very
hot Saturday in the summer of 1913. In spite of the heat and a long dry spell that caused the broad catalpa leaves to lose
their lazy flutter, to pucker and droop a bit; in spite of a succession of cloudless, dusty days that dulled the glisten of
all the foliage in the garden, the wedding was as splendid as Leo Scofield had hoped it would be.

There is a way in which a town the size of Washburn, Ohio, with perhaps six thousand residents, comes to a collective judgment,
and communally the town had become fond of Lily, who had been in residence all year round when she attended the Linus Gilchrest
Institute for Girls. She was among them as she gradually lost her childhood look of frailty and took on a wiry athleticism.
Nevertheless, even during her late adolescence, Lily was eclipsed by the celebrated beauty of her mother and aunt—the former
Marshal sisters—and by her distinguished and handsome father, her
two tall, striking uncles, and especially by her constant summer companions, Robert Butler and her astonishingly good-looking
cousin Warren.

No one knew how or why Lily Scofield and Robert Butler decided, in December of 1912, that they would marry the following summer
when he returned from New England, where he had gone to college. He had stayed on as an instructor at Harvard to continue
his studies and to teach for several academic years. No one knew the details, but, on the other hand, no one was particularly
surprised. Lily had gone east to college, too, to Mount Holyoke in western Massachusetts, but had been at home again for almost
three years, courted by several hopeful suitors, and she was nearly twenty-five years old.

In fact, Robert had come home for a week that Christmas, and one morning he asked Lily to come along with him to Stradler’s
Men’s Clothiers and help him select a gift for his father. He wanted to ask her advice about the right tack to take with a
young woman he had seen a good deal of in Cambridge who was his good friend David Musgrave’s sister. The weather was crisp
but not cold for December, and Lily had on a dark green suit and a brimmed hat that dipped over her face so that Robert could
only catch glimpses of her expression. She carried a small, sleek brown muff from which she withdrew one hand or the other
to illustrate some point. The muff intrigued him, with Lily’s pretty hands plunged into the brown fur, and then he caught
sight of her wide orange-brown eyes under the hat brim and stopped still, putting his hand on her arm to make her hesitate.
She turned back to glance at him, perplexed, peering out from under her dark, winged Scofield brows, which were so striking
in contrast to the puff of bright blond Scofield hair beneath her hat. She was telling Robert all about her father and mother’s
recent trip to Chicago, where everything had gone amiss.

But Robert interrupted her. “Ah, well, Lily. Your father wouldn’t care if he was stranded in the middle of a desert as long
as your mother was with him. I’ve never known a man to
admire his wife as much as your father admires your mother,” Robert said. “With plenty of reason, of course,” he added. “But
I don’t know when I’ve ever been in his company for very long without hearing him talk of those ‘Marshal girls.’ Of the day
he first met your mother. Their ‘blue gaze,’ he calls it. I’ve always remembered that phrase.”

Claire Musgrave had wide, sweet blue eyes. But as he gazed at Lily it suddenly seemed to him that there was no glance more
engaging than Lily’s warm, golden brown consideration. He was disconcerted for a moment thinking of himself and Claire Musgrave
closed away together in a tall house somewhere in Cambridge or Boston while Lily carried on, both participating in and wryly
observing the familiar life around her. He stood there with Lily and all at once found himself bereft at the idea of being
always away from her.

“Why, Lily,” he said, “Lily? I wonder if you’d ever think of marrying me?” Lily’s expression was no longer vexed; she had
assumed a placid look of waiting as she gave him her full attention. She wasn’t exactly assessing him, but he saw that she
was waiting to hear more. He was still catching up to what he had already said. He hadn’t had any idea that he was going to
ask Lily to marry him, although he didn’t have a single qualm now that the words had been said. In fact, all the disparities
and loose ends of his life suddenly seemed to cohere and his world to settle into its proper orbit.

“You’re the smartest girl I know, Lily,” he went on, in an attempt to explain. “It’s not long before you realize that the
world’s full of pretty girls. Everyone I knew at school seemed to have a sister. A pretty cousin… but none with a mind like
yours. Or your sense of… honor. In all the time I’ve known you—well, my whole life—I’ve never heard you say an unkind thing
about a single person! You’d be surprised to hear a girl say terrible things about someone who’s supposed to be her dearest
friend.” But Lily still stood quietly, looking at him with a mildly curious expression, so he tried to make it clear even
to himself.

“There’s no other girl I’ve ever met who I could ever care so much about. I must have always been in love with you.” And though
he was startled to hear himself say it he knew at once that it was the truth—so vigorous and absolute that suddenly the possibility
of her refusal became dreadful. “I don’t know that I’d ever be happy if I thought I’d go through my whole life and you wouldn’t
be with me. I think that all my life… Well, I can’t imagine there would ever in the world be anyone else I would ask to marry
me.”

Lily continued to gaze at him in frank appraisal of his earnest brown head, his pleasant and familiar face. She tucked her
arm through his and moved them along down Church Street toward Stradler’s clothing store. “Of course I’ll marry you, Robert.
I’ve always thought I would.”

In May of 1913, Robert returned from Boston, and, in late June, Warren traveled back from a branch office of Scofields & Company
in Pennsylvania to serve as Robert’s best man. On the afternoon of Saturday, June 28, Warren stood next to the groom in the
oppressive two o’clock heat of Leo Scofield’s garden and looked on placidly with a polite air of expectation.