Those Harper Women (8 page)

Then he would turn to her bank statement, matching the canceled checks with the stubs—but this was awkward because there were almost never any canceled checks. He would stare, perplexed, at the unfolded statement, poring over the non-existent entries, and then say, “Well, you've certainly been a thrifty princess. I suppose that's good.”

She wanted him to love her, and she wanted him to pity her. She spent no money because she wanted him to know how little in the world there was that interested her beyond this. Oh, she had wanted to buy a cow. She had wanted a cow more than anything, but she was sure that if she told him about the cow he would laugh at her, and so she never told him, and never had a cow.

“No trinkets that have caught your eye in the shops?”

She shook her head.

“Well, perhaps when we get to Paris.…”

Once, during one of their meetings, a native houseboy came in with a letter for her father. He was a new boy in the house, which meant that he had just been elevated from work in the yard. The boys all liked housework, her father said, because the work was clean, there was less to do, there were more opportunities to steal, and there were more corners for them to fall asleep in unobserved. The boy's gray jacket, Edith remembers, was a fusillade of proud brass buttons, and his black face gleamed with the importance of delivering a messsage to Meredith Harper. Her father clapped his hands over the open set of company books—though surely this boy was no different from any of the others and could not read or write.

“How many times have you been told to knock before coming in here?” her father demanded. The boy gaped. “Now go out and try it again.” The boy tiptoed out, and closed the door behind him. Then he knocked.

“Come in.”

The boy opened the door again.

“That was better,” her father said. “Now take off that uniform and report back to the yard.” You paid them the equivalent of three dollars a month in St. Thomas in those days, and you expected strict obedience. The greatest danger with native servants was that they would become too familiar. “They'll learn,” her father said.

He returned to the problem of her bank statement. “Well—” he said, and Edith is certain now that he did not pity her for having nothing she wanted to spend her money on. Probably he only thought her dull. Finally he folded the statement, put it in the strongbox with the others, and locked the box. The safe was in a closet. He put the locked strongbox in the safe, then locked the safe, then locked the closet.

He would give her a sad little smile, “Well, run along now, princess,” he would say. “See what your mother's up to.”

The house at Sans Souci was large and sprawling, and what her mother was usually up to was cleaning it. Edith remembers her hands—thin and long-fingered and strong, forever reaching out, straightening and tugging at things, at each bedspread and dresser scarf, each sofa cushion and table runner. It was the era of the Turkish corner and the era of cut glass and the era of tiny pillows gritty with beads, and her mother's hands would fuss at, and pat, and plump up, and rearrange the multitude of beaded and embroidered and tasseled cushions of the Turkish corner. Her hands would pat and tug at Edith too, when she appeared—at hairbows, skirts, shirtwaists, hair. She had a habit of referring to Edith as a thing: “You're an untidy thing.” “You're a spoiled thing.” “You're a dirty thing—run and wash.”

Cleanliness obsessed her. She followed her servants around the house, repeating their work after them. Her silver gleamed because much of it was polished twice a day—once by the girls, once by her. One day Meredith Harper found his wife down on her hands and knees, waxing the ballroom floor. “Dolly!” Edith's father shouted. “Get up off your knees! I won't have my wife on her knees.”

Though Dolly Harper may have understood the value of anonymity, she was rocketed into a kind of celebrity when she became a rich man's wife. Still, she took comfort in the fact that she was a Bruce from Boston—an old New England family. “Remember,” she once said to Edith, “that for all the talk of Meredith Harper and his money, you are also a Bruce. The name Bruce is more important than the name Harper, which is why you are called Edith Bruce. When I married your father, I was considered to have married beneath me,” she said. “They were afraid he couldn't provide.” She had trouble sleeping and, when she did sleep, she often had nightmares. Late at night, she would slip into Edith's room and Edith would wake to find her mother lying across her with her arms around her, holding Edith so tightly that she could feel the thin bands of muscle in her long arms. They would lie like that for what seemed hours, like two spoons nested in a drawer. “What did you dream about, Mama?” Edith would ask her. The dream was always the same. “I dreamt that your Papa went away and left us all alone,” she would say.

And Edith remembers one night in the Morristown house when she was twelve. The air was chilly, but the house was new, and all her bedroom windows were opened wide to carry out the paint smell. Her head ached and she couldn't sleep, and downstairs in the drawing room she could hear her mother and father quarreling. She got out of bed and went down the hall to the top of the stairs.

Her mother was sitting in one of the French chairs with a copy of the
Delineator
spread open in her lap. “There's absolutely nothing here that I like,” she said, and snapped the book closed.

Meredith Harper walked across the room to her. “How can you sit and look at dresses when we're discussing a thing like this?” he said.

“Meredith, please,” she said in a tired voice. “I've said all I can.”

He stood over her, staring down at her. It was the year Sargent painted him. Tall, straight, in his black velvet smoking jacket with braided cuffs, his eyes glittered. “You still refuse? Very well,” he said.

“Please,” she said again, her hand across her eyes. “I can't.”

“It's not that you can't, is it? It's that you won't. But very well.”

“I can't take the risk.”

“I take risks every day, to give you the things you've got. But very well, Dolly. Very well.”

“Stop saying ‘very well,'” she said. “Can't you understand? It nearly killed me having Edith, you know that. Doctor Mallory said that I mustn't have another—ever.”

“You listen to what some country doctor said years ago? When now you can afford to have the best medical attention in the country? But
very well
, Dolly. The subject is closed.”

She reached up and touched his hand. “Forgive me,” she said. “He made me promise him.”

He smiled at her then. “And what about your promises to me when we were married, Dolly?”

Her hand withdrew. “You haven't exactly suffered in the meantime, have you, Meredith?” she said.

The room was very still for a moment. Then he said, “You're quite right, Dolly. I haven't suffered.”

“Have I ever criticized you for that? Haven't I tried to understand—even when there were things that seemed to me impossible to understand?”

He turned away from her, walked across the room, and sat down in a chair, crossing his legs. “Why don't you look through some other magazines, Dolly? You might find a dress that would amuse you.”

“Why do you want this so much?”

“I want a son.”

“We have our family! We have Edith!”

“I need a son. What good is Edith? What good is a fool daughter ever going to be to me? I need a son. Or two sons. Or three.”

“
Why?
So you can found a dynasty?”

“I need sons to carry on.”

“And you'd risk my life to get them!”

“No,” he said carefully. “I wouldn't. There is another solution, Dolly, to this problem. I could find, my dear—rather easily—another wife.”

She stood up and went to the small commode where the sherry decanter stood on a footed tray. She lifted the decanter, her hand trembling very lightly, and filled a glass. Then she stood holding the glass in front of her with both hands like a small chalice, shoulders hunched, head bent over the glass, taking little sips. She said something then that Edith could not hear, and apparently her father had not heard it either, for she heard him say sharply, “What?”

“A threat,” she said. “Isn't it?” She sipped her wine.

“Not really. I'm just being honest with you, Dolly.”

She laughed, but there was an edge of fear in the laugh. “You mean a divorce? How could you? What would people say? Your position. Your reputation. Your precious name. Your pride. The scandal.”

“But Dolly, it would be your scandal—not mine. It's you who've made our marriage what it is.”

“Wait,” she said. “Have you forgotten? We agreed long ago—”

“No, it would be your own private little scandal, Dolly.” And he smiled. “I'd have to see to that. And will.”

Reaching for the decanter she filled her glass again. Then she filled another glass. “Come, let's have some wine and talk. Forgive me, my nerves are bad. Do you remember, in the old days, years ago—”

He stood up. “The subject is closed.”

“We used to say never let the sun set on a quarrel. Remember?” With a laugh that was almost gay, she stepped toward him. “I've been in an irritable mood, this is all my fault. Come, we'll drink to—”

“I don't care for any wine, Dolly.”

The glasses shook in her hands, and wine spilled across her fingers. She set the glasses down. “Meredith—” she whispered.

“I'm going to my room. Excuse me.”

She blocked his path. “Meredith, listed—you know how much I love you. It never had anything to do with not loving you. It was what Mallory said—”

“Please get out of my way.”

She cocked her head coyly on one side, facing him. “Meredi-i-th!” she said. “Ah, don't you look so cross!” She reached up and touched his mouth. “Do I taste like wine? Darling, listen—”

“Stop this, Dolly.”

“Listen—perhaps with a
good
doctor—perhaps you're right. Come sit with me for just a minute.”

“No.”

Her arms went around his middle. “I love you so. Oh, remember … remember.” He tried to pull away but she held him. “Wait,” she said. “The big copper beech tree in that field outside Malden, when we—”

“Let … me … go … please.” Carefully, he disengaged her hands from about his waist.

She sank to the floor at his feet and seized his legs. “Don't you know I'd do anything for you?” she said. “Papa? You're my precious Papa. I'll try—I'm saying that I'll try. Oh love … let me try.”

“How naked you make yourself, Dolly.”

“Wait,” she moaned. Her hands curled around his thighs and her cheek was pressed against his dark trouser leg. “Please—no more cruel things. Wait. I'll try!” He was moving across the floor, pulling her with him.

“Go back to your magazines,” Edith heard him say.

Her voice rose to a scream as his feet moved to untangle themselves from the weight of her. “Meredith—wait! Dear God, I love you so—let me try! I'll try so hard! Love—can't you let me try?”

Edith turned and ran back down the hall to her room and buried her face in the satin comforter to drown her mother's screams. She lay shivering, not crying, and even today, the smell of fresh paint makes her think of her mother screaming. Then Edith believes she did cry herself—but rather abstractedly, as only a twelve-year-old can cry, for nothing in particular as well as for everything, for the things she had understood and for the things she had not, for a part of himself that one of the colored boys in the yard had showed her, for the whole race of adults.

Later she realized that the house was quiet, though she had not heard either of them come up. She got up and went to the top of the stairs once more, and when she looked, they were dancing—dancing! They moved slowly and silently about the floor, between tables and chairs and lamps and pieces of bronze statuary (shiny and new, all the new things of that new house) in each other's arms. There was no music, but they danced as though they heard music, and now each of them held a wine glass in one hand, and her mother was smiling. Periodically they paused and took sips. Once her mother put her head back and laughed—an unfamiliar, throaty laugh. “I need more wine!” she said, holding out her glass.

Her father stepped to the commode, filled her glass, and they returned to their dance. Her mother's arms went up, around his neck, and she bent backward, and they curved together, making one silhouette. An expression of absolute absorption was on Dolly Harper's face.

When Edith woke the next morning, she found an explosion of bright blood in her bed, and her first thought was that someone had come into her room in the night and stabbed her in her sleep.

Some fourteen years later, before Diana was born, she suddenly remembered that night in Morristown again. Her pains had begun, and Charles was with her, and she gripped his hand in her own. “I'm frightened, Charles,” she said. “What if it should kill me? What if I should die?”

“You won't die, Edie. It will be all right, Edie,” he said. “It will take more than having a baby to kill you, Edie.”

She had thought it an odd remark for him to make, and she had looked at him. But his eyes were merry, and she knew he had not intended it to hurt her but to cheer her. “Are you sure?” she asked.

“Quite sure,” he said. “Remember you're a fighter, and be brave.”

And, of course, it was all right.

Sometimes Edith has imaginary conversations with Diana. It is not true, as Leona—who does not get on with her mother—once said, that Diana has icewater in her veins. It is certainly not true in the conversations Edith has with her. She lets Diana talk to her.

“What is wrong, Mother” [Diana says] “with having a daughter who looks well in clothes? What is wrong with that? I am proud of my figure, my hips are good, and my legs are slim and long and do not possess a single vein. I know what my good points are, but I'm not as vain as many women because I also know my bad. I have never been a beauty. I have been called striking, because I happen to be tall, and because I have nice hair (oh, yes, I dye it now; I'm forty-nine years old, nearly fifty; what is wrong if I dye my hair?)—and striking because I work rather hard at it because I know that striking is about all I can look. I spend money on my clothes, yes. But then I
have
money. And I don't spend as much as many women do. Take the Duchess of Windsor. Does she actually buy her clothes, or do the couturiers give them to her free? I happen to know that the Duchess of Windsor
pays
for her clothes and, to say the least, she spends more than I. I make a good dress do for years. Take my oatmeal suit.… Why do you look at me like that? You're giving me your policewoman look again; you look exactly like a matron in a girls' reformatory, or one of those stiff little
gendarmes
that stand outside the Meurice, glaring at every automobile that comes along the Rue de Rivoli. What is wrong?