Venom and the River (24 page)

9.

The story came slowly at first. Roberta curled her legs up in the chair and stared at the Seville as she spoke. It began with a June car trip up the coast, she explained. She and her husband were on an anniversary getaway. No schedule, no firm plans. On the third day, they passed through Bertle, Maine, and Roberta thought she remembered it from the editor’s memoir. She insisted they stop for lunch.

There was a rambling old house for sale across from the café. Fifteen rooms, four baths, ocean view. By late afternoon their offer had been accepted. They moved in August.

A fresh start. Bennett, her husband, was a stockbroker. He was tired of the relentless day to day crush of the business. She was struggling with her first novel. The nest was empty. Yes, Maine would be a fresh start.

The novel was worse than a struggle, she explained. What she’d written, she confessed, was just plain awful. A children’s novel, a tribute to Ida May, her life-long inspiration. “Oh god Mom,” her oldest daughter said after reading it, “Don’t let them publish this.”

One day her next-door-neighbor came by. It was a first visit, though she and Bennett had been in Bertle a month. That’s how the people were in Maine: polite, not warm. Wary, not welcoming.

But old Gwen Ferguson warmed up, Roberta recalled. Day after day, they’d sit on the porch in the afternoon, talking, and drinking coffee laced with liberal shots of Bailey’s. Gwen was nearly ninety and had lived all her life in town. When she was a girl her parents had been the live-in cook and caretaker for the Dunbars, the couple that owned the big house Roberta now owned. As a child Gwen had lived with her parents in an apartment over the Dunbar’s garage.

The Dunbar’s oldest daughter, Lila, owned the little house next door. A wild one, Gwen said. Every summer she hosted a non-stop house party for her arty friends from New York and Boston. Women friends.

The daughter died in the early forties, and she left her house to the family cook and caretaker. The Dunbars didn’t want their hired help as property-owning neighbors, so they sold out and moved to Florida.

By the time the Garibaldis had moved to Maine, Gwen Ferguson was widowed and living alone in the little house. She told Roberta she often heard ghosts. Loud ones, having a good time.

One afternoon Gwen arrived at Roberta’s with a box. She’d been clearing junk out of the house, giving things to the proper friends before it was too late and her kids had their say with it all. She’d found the box in a trunk in the attic of her house. Poems and pictures and the like, she said, probably done by all the friends of the daughter. Gwen gave the box to Roberta. She died two days later.

“You can guess the rest,” Roberta said.

“The outlines were in the box.”

Roberta nodded. “And two Sevilles—not Little Girl illustrations, but originals all the same. But what could I do with them? How could I explain how I came to possess them? One thing might lead to another. Bennett was gone on a fishing trip with old friends when Gwen gave me the box, and by the time he returned I’d discovered the outlines, and I knew I couldn’t tell him. I’d started writing the first one by then, and dear god, I couldn’t tell him. My husband worships me. And now…” She kneaded a temple.

“How did you know the outlines weren’t already novels? How could you be sure Julia hadn’t shown them to someone else? How did you dare risk that?”

“Basic reporting. I spent hours, days, in libraries, looking through every literary reference book and database. I checked plot summaries and reviews of all the published fiction from the twenties and thirties. Nothing. As for someone else who might have read it—do the math. What friends of hers could possibly still be alive? Julia herself died ages ago. I never found out much about her, but I did track down a death certificate. July 2, 1952. Cancer.”

“A real ghost writer.”

“Yes, I guess you could say that. But one who could not compose a decent complete sentence, though she had a good feel for story.” Roberta folded her hands and stared at Leigh. “I continued to play detective even as I was writing. By the time I was done with the first novel, I was certain my secret was safe.”

“And you were right.”

Roberta said nothing for a moment. Then: “It’s obvious what you want, Leigh.”

Was it? Was it obvious to this other woman that Leigh longed for Emily’s love and respect? That she wanted to know Phil Chesney better and have many more nights in his bed? That she wanted to see her writing, her good writing, in print and in public?

She said, “What do I want, Roberta?”

“My silence in exchange for yours.”

“Yes.”

“It hardly equates, though, does it? I mean, come on.”

“Because you have so much more to lose—your husband, children, work, fame? All that?”

Roberta looked away.

“And all I have is what I’ve scratched together after losing all that. So, really, Roberta—who stands to lose more?”

Roberta picked up
Paris Nocturne
from the coffee table. “These are my words, Leigh. I put them together, one by one.”

They both heard the voices at the same time and turned toward the window. Marti and Emily were hurrying down the path. Marti saw them watching and waved something over her head.

“Do we have a deal?” Leigh said.

Roberta nodded. “A deal.”

Marti and Emily burst through the cottage door. “Time to go, ladies,” Marti called. “The Little Girls are on break and the next round of sessions starts up in twenty minutes.”

Roberta set down her mug. Her hand lingered on it a moment as she took a deep breath. She fixed a smile and stood up. “This will be a test, I confess. I am the least crafty woman on the planet, and I’m not sure I can feign interest in dollhouses for an hour.” Her eyes met Leigh’s. “But I promised.”

Leigh rose. “Roberta’s a better person than I am. I’m backing out.”

“I heard you tell that professor you’d go to her session,” Emily said.

“So did I,” said Marti. “Last night between Cher numbers you seemed very interested in learning about the influence of Mdewankton culture on the Little Girl books.”

“Last night was last night. I’ll look for the woman at Roberta’s talk tonight and apologize.”

Emily brushed against her mother as she walked to the Seville. “Figures,” she muttered.

“I heard that!” Marti said. “Good lord, Emily, I can’t control how you and your mother wrestle when it’s just the two of you, but you do not talk to my friend that way when I’m around. Watch it, or I’ll spill what I know about a certain person.”

“That sweet boy who was at the lunch with us yesterday?” Roberta said. “Peach’s son?”

Marti zipped her lips.

“Oh god,” Emily said, shaking her head. She lifted the Seville off the wall, sat on the coffee table, and turned the picture over on her lap and started pulling loose the tacks holding down the frame’s back.

“What are you doing?” Leigh said.

“I bought a new frame at the convention gift shop,” Marti said. “We always carry a supply of consignment crafts from the members. Wipe that panic off your face. It’s not lilac colored and painted with pansies. Jill O’Toole is an exquisite woodworker. That old one is appalling, and the drawing should be under glass.” She sat on the window seat, opened the bag in her hand, and pulled out a large frame. “The vice president should get it professionally matted, of course, but this will have to do until then.”

“I’m not even sure we should do this,” Leigh said. “It belongs to Terry, not me.”

“For its own good,” Emily said. She lifted the final tack out of the frame, then pried the backboard up with a fingernail. She set that aside, then tipped everything over, letting the drawing and its cardboard backing fall onto her lap.

“Careful,” Leigh said. “That’s a valuable drawing and I’m responsible for it.”

Emily carefully lifted a corner of the Seville. “Hey,” she said. “There’s another one.”

The women crowded around Emily as she peeled away the top drawing.

Leigh held her breath. The naughty Seville.

Three naked teenaged girls lounged on a beach, water lapping their feet. They were discreetly but provocatively positioned: one stretched across her friends’ laps. Those two were kissing, while each had a hand on the girl in their laps.

Across the bottom, a message:

Jasper, my rascally friend. I hope my sketch lifts your spirit. Love, Dara S.

Marti laughed first, and then Leigh joined in. Emily looked at them and made a face. “It’s not that funny. It’s sort of not funny at all.”

Leigh rubbed her daughter’s shoulder. “Oh, darling, yes it is. This is very funny.”

Roberta said, “It’s just like one of the real illustrations. That’s Maud with her glasses, Lucy’s got the locket, Laura’s hair is done up in that knot. Little Girl, Big River, the high school years.”

“Which book?” Leigh asked. “Which chapter?”

Marti shook her head. “Haven’t ever read this one. I can’t wait to show it to the Little Girls.”

“You can’t do that,” said Emily.

Leigh closed her eyes and saw Peach leaping out of her SUV and coming at her in a swirl of lilac organdy…the woman’s sly expression as she made her insinuating appraisal of little Tucker’s good looks…Peach and Petra jostling to be first into the cottage…the sour frown on Wally Beadle’s face as he looked at the Red Lady. She said, “Oh yes we can; we can do anything with this we want. Roberta, how about making a little visual addition to your speech tonight? What do you say we splash some tits up on the screen and see what happens?”

“Mom!”

Marti clapped her hands together. “Perfect! And she’s already doing a PowerPoint; I’ve got it loaded on my computer. Roberta, let’s go to my office and scan this and put it in now. The dollhouses can wait.”

Roberta said, “How do we explain where it came from? Jasper Bancroft, Dara Seville, Ida May. There will be questions. Leigh, we can’t. I mean, what do we say?”

“Just that we found a drawing in the cottage, which is true. It will cause a stir, all right. I think it would be a good idea. Add a little texture to the myth. Throw a little light on things. Didn’t you tell me, Marti, that people have wondered about Ida May and her mother’s lover? Now we know something. I wonder how the Bancroft girls will feel about that. We’d better share this before they decide to hide it.” She nodded and whispered, “Tits.”

“God, Mother, are you crazy? I can’t believe you want Roberta to do that. It’s just so mean. I mean sure, show it to everyone in a newsletter or something, but come on—the last night of the convention? This is the big night and you want to play a joke on them? You can’t ruin tonight for people, and splashing this unannounced on a big auditorium screen will do that.”

“It will end things with a bang,” Leigh said. “The Little Girls claim to be interested in all the details of Ida May’s life; well, this picture is a detail.” She turned to Roberta. “Dara Seville visited the cottage and became friends with Jasper Bancroft. I have a note that proves she was here in 1925. We’ll share that note and the one that came with this picture. And that’s the whole story.”

“No, the whole story is something else,” Emily said. “The whole story is about you and that you’re just so bitter about your messed up life and you hate it that the Little Girls are in Pepin to have fun when you’re stuck here writing a book for someone that has to be a secret. If you do this, Mom, you’ll never get to work for Joe’s mom. You’ll blow the first chance you’ve had in years for a decent job.”

“It’s not a job I want, Emily, not as long as I’d be tethered to a very short leash, especially when the woman yanking that leash has…” Leigh looked away from Emily’s suddenly indigo eyes.

“Has what?”

Leigh stiffened. “Has her other arm wrapped around you.”

Emily tossed the pictures on the coffee table and stood up. “No one’s got an arm around me. Don’t you get it? No one. That’s why I came here in the first place, to be with my mother, but you’re too stupid to see.” Emily pushed past Leigh and rushed out, letting the screen door slam. Leigh stepped to the window and pressed a hand to the glass as she watched her daughter run from the cottage.

10.

The only PowerPoint additions to Roberta’s speech were scans of the innocent Seville and Ida May’s first note to Jasper Bancroft. Leigh, sitting alone near the back of the auditorium was more interested in the audience than the images on the screen.

Emily sat in the front row next to Joe.

Emily had been right about the importance of the evening to the women and she’d been right about the naughty drawing and Roberta’s speech. Right from wrong—her daughter had learned to care about the difference. In a backhand way, couldn’t she take credit?

Peach’s son reached around Emily and stroked her shoulder as he whispered something.

No one’s got an arm around me.
Leigh folded her hands and took a few deep, calming breaths. She’d just had the first opportunity in ten years to play mother for any length of time and she’d been a bonehead and her daughter had gone straight to the nearest sympathetic boy.

Roberta brought her speech to a close and stepped back from the podium with a small bow as the audience applauded wildly. Leigh slapped her palms together lazily. It had been a very nice speech; she could honestly congratulate Roberta on that. The crowd certainly loved it, and everyone was rising to a standing ovation. Leigh rose too.