The Tale-Tell Heart
It was a beautiful morning, sunny but not too warm, when they started out for Longford. Will drove so that he could show her “the scenic route.” The farther they got from Woodburn Hall, the more his mood seemed to lift. They drove through the shady streets of the old town, the very streets Ava had driven just a day before, and he pointed out sites of interest: the first African-American school in the county, a house with a cannonball still visibly lodged in its outer wall, a leftover from a Civil War skirmish known as the Battle of Harpeth Hill. From time to time, in between showing her the elementary school he had attended or the creek where he first learned to fish for crawdads, he remarked quietly, “It’s a great place to raise a family.”
He was proud of his hometown, Ava could see, and she regretted now the times she and Michael had teased him at Bard about being from Hambone, Tennessee, the Chitlin’ Capital of the South. He had taken their teasing with a great deal of good-natured resignation but she realized now, having witnessed the courteous way Southerners treated one another, that he must have been appalled by their lack of manners and knowledge of geography.
They turned onto the highway and crossed the bridge over the river, following the route Ava had taken earlier.
“This is the old road to Longford,” he said. “It used to take almost a day of hard traveling by wagon to get to town. Now it only takes ten minutes.”
She stared at the green fields and the distant rim of blue mountains. “What’s a vivisectionist?”
He glanced at her and then back at the road, his expression a mix of annoyance and mild amusement. “I see you’ve been talking to the aunts about Great-Uncle Jerome.”
“They’ve been filling me in on some of the sordid family history. So what’s a vivisectionist?”
“Someone who dissects living organisms to see how they work. In the 1840s dissection of a human body was illegal, so doctors had to make do with what they could scrounge up—dogs, cats, birds.”
Ava said, “Isn’t that what serial killers do?”
He laughed, and she was glad to see laugh lines crinkling the corners of his eyes. She was anxious to recapture some of the free and easy camaraderie she had felt with him at Bard. He had seemed like such a good sport to her then: shy, self-conscious, but intelligent and quietly humorous, too. The kind of guy she never would have fallen for in college.
In college she and Michael had teased each other cruelly. He insisted that he could always spot a girl with “daddy issues” because she invariably kept cats. (Ava didn’t particularly like cats but she had rescued a big black-and-white feline named Figaro her freshman year). She claimed she could always spot a “good” man by how he treated his mother. (Michael sulked and refused to speak to his mother when she denied him anything. He could go months without talking to her.)
Their relationship had been less like a love affair and more like a fight to the death.
Will had laugh lines around his eyes, but Ava had no way of knowing how he had treated his mother. She had died when he was six. Josephine had been a surrogate mother, he once told Ava. After his parents died and he came to live with the aunts, it was Josephine who helped him with homework, played ball with him in the yard, and volunteered as a den mother for his Cub Scout troop. Fanny and Maitland were always away, traveling the world.
And his conduct toward Josephine, Ava had noted, was one of courteous and respectful affection.
“And why in the world didn’t you tell me you were related to Zelda Fitzgerald?”
He gave her a mocking, martyred look. “Oh, God,” he said.
“Despite the fact that it is universally accepted that Zelda was crazy as a loon, they seem to prefer to call her breakdowns ‘nervous spells.’ ”
He laughed again. “It’s all a matter of perspective,” he said.
They had stopped at a railroad crossing at the edge of a soybean field for a slow-moving train. He put the windows down and they sat for a minute listening to the pleasant rumbling, feeling the warmth of the sun on their arms.
He put his head back and closed his eyes. “How do you picture it?” he asked.
“Picture what?”
“Longford.”
“Oh, I don’t know.” She slipped her feet out of her sandals and put them up on the dash, hugging her knees. “Kind of like Tara, I guess. A big white house with columns across the front and girls in hoop skirts on the lawn.”
He smiled indulgently, keeping his eyes closed. “Everyone expects Tara,” he said.
The train passed and the crossing guard went up. They drove on.
“I hope you won’t be disappointed,” he said.
In college he had spoken with an almost neutral accent but down here he lapsed into the soft accents of his youth. When they passed a car or truck on the road, he lifted his hand off the steering wheel and waved. It was a small gesture, really, a slight lifting of a couple of fingers, but everyone did it.
“Is that like some kind of secret handshake?” Ava asked him, after they had passed an old man standing at his mailbox and the two of them had exchanged the “wave.”
“Just being friendly,” Will said. “You’ll get used to it.”
She told him about the crazy old woman at the gas station who had shared the rambling tale of her father falling off the roof.
He grinned and shook his head. “Down here we don’t say ‘crazy,’ ” he said. “We say ‘eccentric.’ ”
Despite his obvious pleasure in showing her the house, he seemed in no particular hurry to reach Longford. They turned off the highway and drove aimlessly down country roads that meandered past fields, roadside vegetable stands, distant farmhouses, and every so often, a new brick ranch house set back from the road in a patch of green lawn. The sun had reached its zenith, and the light had changed to a hazy yellow-green, shimmering and rising off the asphalt in the distance like a mirage. In between the fields and clearings, tall trees lined the road, covered in some type of broad-leafed ivy. The ivy draped from power lines and mounded over the trees and greenery, and Ava was reminded again of the fantastic landscapes of fairy tales and dreams.
“What is that stuff?” she said.
“Kudzu. It covers everything in its path, growing up to a foot a day. They originally brought it in from the Orient to use as cattle feed and for erosion control, and now it covers the South.”
“How do you kill it?”
“Goats.”
“Goats?”
“They eat it. Frost also kills it. It dies back in the winter, thank God. When I was a boy we used to build forts in there. You can stand up under it and walk for miles. It’s like a big green circus tent.”
He had left the windows down, and the air was fragrant with the scent of newly mown grass. She had always loved long drives in the country. When she was in high school in Chicago, she had befriended a girl who lived in a large rambling Victorian house close to the University of Chicago. Margaret Stanley’s grandfather had started Sentry Insurance, and although they attended the same private Catholic school (Ava as a scholarship student), Margaret was head and shoulders above Ava, socially and financially. They had met in honors English, bonding over Beowulf, and Ava would spend weekends and go for long drives in the country with Margaret and her parents.
Mr. Stanley didn’t work. He spent most of his days on the golf course, and Mrs. Stanley spent most of hers shopping or playing bridge or drinking martinis in the kitchen with the maid, Frances. Margaret was an only child. (“Adopted,” she confided in Ava, “because Mother is barren.”) They giggled over this, making up tragic stories about Margaret’s “real” parents, who they called Mr. and Mrs. Ortho Slogett. Mr. Slogett was an alcoholic with a wooden leg who couldn’t find work, and Mrs. Slogett was so immensely obese she couldn’t get out of bed, and that’s why they had given Margaret up for adoption. Ava was good at this; like many children who spend a lot of time alone, she was a natural-born storyteller. And she had by this time settled on her dream of being a writer, although she didn’t tell anyone of this, not even Margaret, keeping her dream wrapped up and locked away where she could take it out in private and marvel at its cool, redeeming brilliance.
Ava loved the Stanleys. She loved the casual elegance of their lives: Mrs. Stanley wrapped in a fur coat sipping endless martinis, Mr. Stanley coming in from the golf course with grass stains on his pants and his face ruddy with health and happiness. Trouble did not seem to darken the Stanleys’ door; misfortune seemed incapable of finding them. They never worried about debt collectors or paying bills or being evicted. And it seemed to Ava that this was the wonderful thing about having money; not that it could buy you things, but that it kept the wolves at bay. It gave you security and stability. Freed from worry and care, it allowed you to live your life with oblivious abandon, taking everything for granted, even good fortune.
And, oh, what a life they led!
“Daddy, let’s go for a ride,” Mrs. Stanley would call to Mr. Stanley when he came in from the golf course. Wrapped in her fur, clutching her martini glass with jeweled fingers, she would climb into the front seat of the Lincoln Continental beside Mr. Stanley, and Ava and Margaret would climb into the back. They would drive out into the western suburbs and beyond, out into the country past dairy farms and Catholic shrines, and Mrs. Stanley would pour martinis from a little silver shaker for her and Mr. Stanley, and he would tell them stories of his youth. Sometimes they wouldn’t return home until late in the evening and Clotilde would be furious, threatening not to let Ava go anywhere with those “arch-Republican Stanleys.” But under Ava’s relentless pleading she would eventually give in.
Mrs. Stanley had sized Clotilde up pretty quickly and she would have nothing to do with her, but she seemed genuinely fond of Ava. Ava had the feeling that she would adopt her, too, if given the chance, and she spent a lot of time fantasizing about becoming one of the fabulous Stanleys.
Ava stuck her arm out the window and let it undulate in the wind like a snake fighting a swift current. All along the road were masses of greenery: tulip poplars and hickory trees and wild azaleas. They passed small shotgun houses with cars rusting in the yard and a lone trailer set back from the road beneath a sodium vapor lamp. They passed a boy riding a four-wheeler along a dusty road, and a flock of goats standing in the shade of a sycamore tree.
“All this used to be Woodburn land,” Will said.
“It doesn’t look very prosperous now.”
“The town grew to the north and the west. I suppose that’s why the family stopped living out here after the Civil War.”
“But they held on to the property?”
“Yes. They rented the land first to sharecroppers and later to big farmers, but after a while the taxes and upkeep got to be too much. The aunts didn’t want to sell it. They were afraid it would be snatched up by some big developer and turned into McMansions on postage-stamp-sized lots and that’s why they gave it to me.”
“Wow. Some gift.”
He seemed amused by her reaction. “I inherited it when I turned twenty-one. It was in trust, and as the Colonel’s only remaining male heirs, it could have gone to either Sumner or me.”
“Who’s Sumner?”
“Fanny’s son. Her only child.”
“So you got the family farm and Sumner didn’t? He must really like you.”
He smiled ruefully and glanced in the rearview mirror. “He doesn’t like any of us much, I’m afraid.”
She turned her face to the window. The scattered farmhouses and trailers gave way now to wide rolling fields of alfalfa and soybeans. Far off in the distance the land rose gradually to a prominent ridge crowned by a grove of tall trees.
“Longford,” Will said, pointing to the grove.
She couldn’t see the house. Even after they turned off the main road onto a narrow paved drive, it was still hidden by the trees. A white fence ran along both sides of the drive, flanked by a row of old oaks.
“This used to be a dirt road,” Will said. “They’ve only recently paved it.”
The sun glittered along the windshield as they broke from the trees into a wide grassy clearing. The house was not what she had expected, no thick white columns, no ornate antebellum splendor. Instead it was a rather simple-looking two-story brick house with a white portico across the front. The windows were bare and shutterless.
It was one of the most beautiful houses she had ever seen.
Seeing her expression, Will laughed. “I told you it wasn’t Tara.”
“It’s beautiful,” she said.
They got out of the car and stood in the yard. The drive circled in front of the house and ran around the western side to a small graveled parking lot. Beyond the parking lot Ava could see a barn and several scattered log outbuildings, and farther on a grove of trees.
“Come inside,” Will said.
A brick sidewalk ran from the parking area to the front of the house. It was very quiet here; no sounds from the modern world broke the stillness of midday. She climbed the stairs and stood beside Will on the porch while he fumbled with the lock, listening to the gentle sighing of the breeze through the trees, the steady chanting of insects in the grass. He turned the key and swung open the front door, stepping aside for her to enter.
Like Woodburn Hall, the house was bisected by a wide central hallway. A graceful staircase coiled upward from the first floor. The rooms opening off either side of the hall were large, with high ceilings and long windows overlooking the fields, but because they were so sparsely furnished, and the windows were clear of shutters and drapes, the light fell through unimpeded. It was marvelous, really, the quality of light slanting through the house. Whereas Woodburn Hall had a slightly damp, melancholy atmosphere, Longford felt bright and welcoming.
I could be happy here, Ava thought.
The walls were painted in various shades of slate blue and cream or covered in faded French wallpaper. Every room contained a fireplace and a marble mantel, and overhead a large brilliant chandelier.
“I’m especially proud of those,” Will said, flipping a switch so that the chandelier overhead glittered suddenly with light. “They’re original to the house. They were made to hold candles, and I had them taken down and shipped to a place in Memphis that electrified them. It took almost nine months but it was worth it, I think.”
“Incredible.” She stood in the middle of the room, turning slowly, admiring the way the large gilt-framed mirror over the mantel reflected the light. It seemed to Ava that she could imagine the house as it must have been two hundred years ago, the endless days and the quiet, because that’s the thing modern people with their constant noise and hurrying couldn’t imagine, the quiet stillness of places like this.
She closed her eyes, struck suddenly by a memory of her mother standing in an empty room. “Do you think that houses soak up the energies of the people who have lived there?”
He stood watching her with an amused, baffled expression on his face. “What do you mean?”
“Do you think there’s some kind of residual energy left behind? Voices, emotions, images?”
He laughed. “Do you mean like ghosts? Remember, I was a chemistry major. We have our feet firmly planted in the soil of scientific skepticism.”
“You could have just said no,” she said.
None of the rooms on the first floor were furnished but upstairs in one of the bedrooms overlooking the fields he had arranged a platform bed and several chests and chairs. A small television sat atop a tall dresser in the corner.
“I pretty much live up here,” he said. “In these three rooms.”
Despite its collection of furniture, the room still felt large and grand. The bed was very neatly made, and there were no clothes or books or used dishes scattered about. The energy here was slightly different, very left-brained and orderly.
A door to the left led into a large bathroom. At the opposite end of the room was another closed door.
“What’s in there?” Ava said, and he hesitated just long enough to make her curious, standing with his hand on the knob. As she approached, he leaned suddenly and threw open the door.
It was a recording studio, complete with several guitars propped on stands, and various amps and speakers scattered around. A computer sat on a narrow table crowded with monitors and microphones, and beside it stood an electric keyboard.
“Wow,” Ava said.
“It’s just a hobby,” he said. “A way to pass the time.” He seemed shy again, his face beneath his summer tan flooded with color. Ava guessed he hadn’t told many about his music.
“What’s that?” she asked politely, pointing.
“An electronic drum kit.”
“Do you play all these instruments?”
“Yes. I write the music and then record it.”
“Everything?”
“I lay down one track at a time. It gives me more control, and I don’t have to depend on anyone else to show up and play.” He watched her move around the room. “What are you thinking?” he said.
“I’m thinking you’re a very interesting guy.”
He wouldn’t play anything for her but he did give her a CD, sliding it into her purse. “Listen to it later,” he said. “When I’m not around. And then give me your honest opinion.”
They went back downstairs into the kitchen, which was the only room in the house that seemed to be undergoing renovation. The walls were stripped down to the lathing, and he had left the old brick of the fireplace exposed. A bank of dilapidated cabinets stood along the back wall, crowded beneath a window overlooking the porch and the distant fields.
“This was added later by one of the tenants, and they did a terrible job,” he said, standing in the doorway with his shoulder against the jamb. “When the house was originally built, the kitchen was a separate building out back. They did that to prevent fires.”
“When was it built?”
“Randal started construction in 1806 and finished in 1810. There was an old log cabin just to the east of here where he lived until then. There’s nothing left now, just an indentation in the earth and what remains of an old stone fireplace. A group of archeology students from Harvard came down a couple of summers ago and excavated the site, as well as some of the other outbuildings. They found all kinds of interesting things: iron nails, buttons, broken pieces of pottery and china.”
“I like the way you’ve left the brick exposed,” she said, running her fingers across the rough surface. She went over to the old farmhouse-style sink and flipped on the tap, letting the water run before shutting it off.
“Are you thirsty?” he asked. “Would you like some lunch?”
She turned and leaned against the sink, giving the kitchen a doubtful look. “Should we go back to town and pick something up?”
He grinned and walked over to the back door, swinging it open. Outside on the porch was a table covered by a white linen tablecloth, set with a picnic lunch.
A two-story white columned gallery ran across the back of the house. The bottom floor held a line of rocking chairs and several large pots of flowering plants, as well as the small table where Ava and Will sat enjoying their lunch. Beyond the scattered outbuildings a patchwork of rolling fields, hazy beneath the noonday sun, stretched beneath a wide blue sky.
“This is delicious,” Ava said, chewing slowly with her eyes closed. She didn’t know what else to say. No one had ever made her a picnic lunch before.
“Uncle Mait made the chicken salad,” he said. “It’s his grandmother’s recipe.”
“He’s quite the gourmet chef.”
“It’s his hobby, the way music is mine.” He had finished eating and sat watching her with a bemused expression, two fingers tapping softly against the table.
Ava had been surprised that Maitland did most of the cooking. She would have expected a cook or a housekeeper in a house as large as Woodburn Hall, although perhaps Will was right; she had read too many English novels, had watched too many old movies. The aunts had a cleaning service that came once a week but Maitland prepared all the evening meals. He was addicted to the food channel, and would spend long hours watching Bobby Flay whip up Fried Chicken with Ancho Honey or Black Pepper Biscuits with Orange-Blueberry Marmalade. Josephine handled breakfast and lunch.
“And the woman who lives behind the house?” Ava asked hesitantly.
“Clara?”
“Yes. Clara. She never worked for the aunts as a housekeeper or a cook?”
He seemed surprised by her question, a faint frown appearing above his brow. “No. Clara grew up with the aunts. Her mother, Martha, was the cook and her father, John, was the chauffeur for their parents. But Clara was a schoolteacher.”
“So Clara and her parents lived in the little yellow cottage behind the garden?”
“Clara and the aunts were girls together?”
“Yes.”
He stood and began to gather the dishes from the table. A shaft of sunlight illuminated his face, the strong chin, the fine clean line of his jaw. “When you’re finished,” he said, “there’s something I want to show you.”
After lunch they packed the leftover food in the old Philco refrigerator and stacked the dishes in the sink.
“I have a surprise for you,” he said, and she followed him out the back door and across the yard to a small barn. The afternoon had warmed considerably, but there was an occasional breeze, and in the shade it was not unbearable.
The old barn was filled with a treasure trove of discarded machinery and farm equipment. A tractor sat in one corner beneath a wall hung with various tools and gardening implements. Sunlight slanted through the weathered boards, hazy with pollen and dust. He walked over and pulled a plastic tarp off a monstrous four-wheeler.
“Would you like to take a ride?” he said, and without a moment’s hesitation, she grinned and climbed on behind him.
She had never ridden a four-wheeler before and so she was unprepared for how exhilarating it was, flying up and down the green rolling hills, the wind in her face, rolling along darkly forested trails. He was a cautious driver, taking just enough risks to make her scream with laughter without fearing that they might flip over. They roared through gullies and creeks, up steep inclines and down steeper ones. She held tightly to him, resting her face against his shoulder when the climb became too steep or perilous. He took her all the way around the boundaries so she could see how far Longford stretched. They climbed to the top of a small rise, where he switched off the engine and they sat for a while, enjoying the quiet. To their left rose a tall stand of forest. Birds sang in the brush, flitting through the gloom like brightly colored wraiths.
Below them a wide field sloped down to a narrow wash before rising again to the distant ridge where the house sat. From this rear angle it did indeed look like Tara, with its white-columned gallery gleaming in the sun. The prospect was so pleasing that Ava couldn’t help smiling, having thought of Elizabeth Bennett’s comment upon being asked when she first loved Darcy. I believe I must date it from my first seeing his beautiful grounds at Pemberley.
“What’s so funny?” he said, leaning to one side so he could see her better.
“Nothing.” She raised her hand and pointed to the far field, to a distant island of gravestones surrounded by a wrought-iron fence. “What’s that?” she said.
“The family cemetery. Randal and Delphine and all of their children except for Isaac and Jerome are buried there.”
At the bottom of the ridge, behind the house, she could see the place where the slave cabins once stood. A grassy gully ran behind the staked plots, the remains of an ancient drainage ditch. She wondered where the slaves were buried. She wouldn’t ask him. She had seen from his expression when she asked about Clara that race was not something openly discussed down here. She felt like a blind woman feeling her way along a rocky precipice. She would have to go slowly. She would have to learn to keep her mouth shut.
He turned his head. “What do you think?”
She could smell the scorched cloth scent of his T-shirt, the faint fragrance of his cologne. “I think it’s beautiful.”
“Come on. There’s something else I want to show you.”
And restarting the quad, he accelerated, and they headed down to the river.
They rode for a while through the dappled woods until they came to a strip of sandy beach spread between a jumble of large boulders. It was at a bend in the river where the water widened and slowed.
“My swimming hole,” he said, holding her arm so she could climb off the back.
“Are there snakes?”
“Probably.”
He laughed at her expression. After a few minutes of awkwardness, they stripped down to their underwear, Ava flinging her clothes atop a flat boulder while Will folded his carefully. He took her hand and they walked to the edge of the water. He was very tanned, with a slight sprinkling of freckles across his shoulders. The fact that he was attractive had not registered with her in college. Caught up in her dysfunctional relationship with Michael, she had hardly noticed what went on around her.
He let go of her hand, grinning. “I’ll go in first and scare off the snakes.” He dived, a pale swift shape in the clear green water.
She smiled, watching him surface.
Amazing how a few years of maturity could change your view of the world.
They swam for a while, laughing and splashing each other like exuberant children. He showed her which rocks were safe to jump from and which ones were to be avoided. Afterward they stretched out on their backs in the hot sand.
“Do you come here often?” she asked him. She could feel the warmth of the sun creeping through her drowsy limbs.
“Every day.”
She turned her head and looked at him, shielding her face with one hand. “So what’s a typical day in the life of Will Fraser? I’m trying to figure out how you spend your time.”
He kept his eyes closed, lying on his back. “It’s not that exciting. I rise pretty early, around seven o’clock, and then I work on the house until lunch. Then I spend a couple of hours in the studio before coming down here to swim. After that I get dressed and drive in to join the aunts and Maitland for Toddy Time.”
“The life of a country gentleman. It sounds pretty idyllic to me.”
He grinned. “It’s not too bad,” he said.
“And do you do the work yourself? On the house, I mean.”
“Some of it I subcontract but a lot of it I do myself. It’s a labor of love.”
The sun had begun its slow plummet in the western sky. The edge of the beach was bathed in shade. Will sat up, resting his arms on his knees.
“What about you?” he said. “What’s it like to be Ava Dabrowski?”
“Endless boredom followed by moments of intense anxiety.”
“Have you considered medication?”
“Constantly.”
She thumped him playfully on the back, and that’s how it began. He leaned and tickled her around her waist, and she laughed and squirmed, and he pulled her against him and kissed her. Perhaps it was the slumberous spell of Longford that made her return the kiss. Or perhaps it was gratitude for the wonderful day, the first she had spent in a long time not thinking about her mother.
She didn’t mean for it to go any further than a kiss. Even now she could feel herself withdrawing, retreating.
“I don’t want to ruin a perfectly good friendship,” she said.
“We won’t.”
She sighed. What she took for a mild flirtation, he would take for something else entirely. She knew this about him, could see it in his earnest expression, in the slight trembling of his hands. “Look, Will, I just got out of a bad relationship.”
He let go of her. “I know that, Ava.”
“I’m sorry if you thought …”
“No. Of course not. It was my fault.” He rested his arms on his knees and stared at the glistening water, his hair curling damply against his ears.
A row of tattered clouds sailed across the pink sky. She had not consciously planned for this to happen and yet she had known it might. She had known last night in the hallway when he touched her back.
She slapped the sand off her legs. She had gone into the woods earlier and she now noticed several red welts around her ankles. “I hope I don’t show up at your aunts’ house with poison ivy on my ass. That might be hard to explain.”
“You’re more likely to show up with chigger bites on your ass.”
“What are chiggers?”
“Blood-sucking insects the size of fleas that live in tall grass.”
“Great,” she said. “Now you tell me.” She hoped things wouldn’t be awkward between them. She thought of everything she had given up to follow this dream. She couldn’t just turn around and go back to Chicago.
As if to reassure her, he nudged her with his shoulder and she smiled in relief and said, “So tell me this, Will Fraser. How has a guy like you managed to stay single?”
He stood and leaned to help her up. “I’m a sprinter,” he said. “No one can catch me.” His eyes were more blue than gray in the slanting light.
“I’m sure they’ve tried,” she said. She grinned, tilting her head and tapping her chin with her fingers. “But wait, there was someone. I remember now. A fiancée. In college. Michael told me you were engaged, although I never met her. What happened?”
His face changed suddenly; the happiness went out of it as swiftly as the falling of a curtain. Behind his head, a bank of feathery clouds drifted slowly across the sky.
“We’d better go,” he said, turning and leaning to pick up his clothes. “They’ll be waiting for us.”
He took her back to Woodburn Hall, staying for cocktails but not for supper. Ava felt wretched in the awkward silence that had fallen between them, wishing she could take back what she’d said about the fiancée. But later, when she was alone, getting ready for bed, she felt a quiver of anger. How was she to know that the broken engagement was a sore subject? It had happened eight years ago. Shouldn’t he be over it by now?
She was always saying the wrong thing, always wounding male vanity in some small unintentional way. It was a pattern she had followed in all her previous relationships. She didn’t know how to talk to men, how to flatter. But then, why would she, when she had grown up without a father, when it had been only her and Clotilde against the world?
She turned off the lamp and lay down in bed, listening to the sounds of the old house settling around her. Strands of moonlight pushed their way through the shutters. On the bedside table, the letter from the man purporting to be her father glimmered palely. She reached out and touched it with a tentative finger. She kept it there so that she could see it every evening when she went to bed and every morning when she woke up. The paper had gone frail and gauzy with her continued reading of it. I was so sorry to hear about your mother. She loved you very much. She had kept the envelope, too, turning it over and rereading the address until she had it memorized.
All the time she was talking to Will on the phone and trying to decide whether to come south, she had been weighing what to do. He had signed his name, Frank. The envelope return address read, Frank Dabrowski, 1645 Hennipen Street, Garden City, Michigan. The father on her birth certificate was listed as Frank Dabrowski. It must be the same person.
But how could she be sure? Would she know him if she saw him?
She had the photograph she had found among her mother’s belongings, the one of Clotilde with a tall, long-haired boy. On the back of the photo, “Frank,” written in Clotilde’s beautiful script.
By the time she accepted Will’s invitation to come south, she had decided.
Before Ava headed south to Tennessee, she first took a detour to Garden City, Michigan. She took her time driving from Chicago to Detroit. The fields were flat and brown, still swollen with the spring rains. From time to time she passed a barn painted with a black-and-white portrait mural: Ben Franklin, Beethoven, Paul Revere.
Ava had no recollection of her father; according to Clotilde, they had broken up not long after Ava began walking. “It was no big deal. He was a nice guy, but we just didn’t get along. He wanted someone who could stay put and I couldn’t. Besides, we figured it would be best for you, not being around all those bad vibes.” Ava would have liked a say in what was best for her, but she never got one. She stopped waiting soon after her tenth birthday for cards and Christmas presents that never came. When she was ten, Clotilde told her that Frank had been killed in an ice-fishing accident on the Detroit River. “He was drinking,” she said, “and fell into the fishing hole he’d cut. They found him later, several miles downriver, staring up through the ice.”
They were living in Stevens Point, Wisconsin, at the time, house-sitting for a professor at the university where Clotilde had gotten a secretarial job. Clotilde had awakened one night to find Ava standing at the foot of her bed like an apparition, and when she swore and flipped on the lamp, Ava had stared for a moment, and without a word, turned and walked back to her bedroom. The next morning she remembered nothing.
“You scared me to death,” Clotilde said. “You were sleepwalking.”
“No, I wasn’t,” Ava said.
But the episodes became more frequent. Clotilde would hear her padding through the house, or awaken to her small dark figure standing eerily beside the bed. And when they moved to a big Victorian house it was even worse, because then Clotilde would hear her walking up and down the tall staircase in the dark. Ava never stumbled, she never lost her footing, although if Clotilde flipped on the light she would stand like a zombie, and then, blinking, turn and head back to her room. She never said a word, never responded to questions, and in the morning she had no recollection of the episodes.
Clotilde did what she always did when one of them was sick. She went to the health food store, bought a bunch of foul-tasting herbs, and brewed a tea that she made Ava drink daily.
“Can’t I just see a doctor?” Ava asked belligerently.
“The body will heal itself,” Clotilde said sweetly, “given the proper nutrients. If this doesn’t work we’ll try a hypnotherapist,” she added.
For a while the sleepwalking episodes did become less frequent. But that was only because the disorder was changing, metamorphosing into something more terrible, as Ava discovered not long after their move to Indianapolis. She was in the seventh grade when she had her first attack of sleep paralysis and awoke to what she perceived as a room full of small dark men touching her arms and legs with long spidery fingers.
This time Clotilde had no choice. She took Ava to a doctor.
The doctor asked Ava if she began dreaming immediately upon falling into sleep and if she dreamed in color. Ava responded, “Yes.” Didn’t everyone?
“Are you sleepy during the daytime?”
“Of course,” Ava said.
“Narcolepsy,” he said resolutely. “With symptoms of hypnogogic sleep paralysis.” He ordered a sleep study and put her on medication that made her nervous and forgetful, or dull and zombie-like, depending on the dosage.
The daytime sleepiness and medication issues made school difficult, and she had to work twice as hard as everyone else to compensate. It also made sleepovers with friends difficult, as Ava was always nervous about having an episode in front of someone. When she moved to Chicago and began high school, the episodes gradually became less frequent, and she slowly weaned herself off the medication. By the time she graduated from college they had become an unpleasant memory, like so much else that she took pains to overcome and hide, and throughout most of her twenties she had been able, for long periods, to forget about the sleep disorder entirely.
She stopped for a cup of coffee at a fast-food restaurant just off I-94. The skies above the landscape were gray and wintry. The closer she got to Detroit, the more nervous she became. What would she say to Frank? What if he didn’t want to see her?
Her stomach lurched suddenly, and she pulled to the side of the road and was sick.
Garden City was a neat little blue-collar suburb of small houses and big trees. She drove slowly down the narrow streets, crisscrossing Hennipen until she gathered the courage to turn onto the street.
It was a tiny green cement-block house nestled beside a towering hemlock tree. A swing set and colored plastic toys littered the yard, which surprised Ava, because it meant some of his children were young. She sat for a long time staring at the house, trying to work up the courage to knock on the door.
While she sat waiting, the door opened and a large heavyset woman stepped out onto the stoop, eyeing Ava suspiciously. The two stared at each other for a brief moment and then Ava looked away, pulled slowly into the street, and, without a backward glance, drove away without ever having met her father.
The day after their trip to Longford, Will showed up for Toddy Time with a bouquet of wildflowers. Ava was in her room, sitting at her desk overlooking the garden. She had spent the day reading through the Longford plantation journals, an occupation she found much more agreeable than working on the outline for her novel. She was beginning to understand that daydreaming about writing a novel and actually writing it were two very different things.
He tapped lightly on the door and when she said, “Come in,” thinking it was one of the aunts come to check on her, he opened the door and stepped inside.
“For you,” he said. He had already put the flowers in a vase and he set it down on the nearest dresser. He seemed jovial and relaxed, and Ava was glad to see that whatever trouble had passed between them yesterday seemed to have been forgotten. She stood, going over to the mirrored armoire to check her appearance.
“Do I?”
“Yes.”
He clasped her wrist, delicately yet exactingly, as if preparing to sweep her into a dance.
She said, “Behave.”
He kissed her lightly and let her go. She ran her fingers through her hair until it stood up in short curling tufts around her face. He sat on the edge of the bed watching her with such a look of frank admiration and respect that Ava averted her eyes in embarrassment. It wasn’t in her nature to be so openly amazed and worshipful.
“I came to remind you that today you meet my cousin Fraser, Alice’s son.”
“He’s the one who dresses like Edgar Allan Poe?”
“Right.”
She smirked, and was rewarded by a faint flush of color in his face. “And why does he dress like a dead poet?” she asked innocently.
“It started in college. He was asked to join the Raven Society up at UVA. They’re the ones who keep Poe’s room as it was when he was there, who leave a glass of cognac and three roses out every year on his birthday. It’s really a big deal to be asked to join. It’s one of the oldest societies on campus, and Fraser picked up his interest in Poe while there. Plus he double majored in history and drama.”
“That would explain it.”
His manner was casual, complacent. He acted as if nothing had happened between them yesterday, which she found somewhat jarring. She had the impression that she should not mention it at all. So much of what happened down here seemed to pass beneath the surface: thoughts, desires, hurts trolling like icebergs beneath a placid sea. She wondered if she had the subtlety for it.
“There’ll be a crowd today,” he said. “In addition to Fraser, several of the neighbors are invited round for drinks.”
“More cocktails?” she said. “Good God, they don’t drink every day, do they?”
“How is it they’re not all alcoholics?”
“They drink less than you might think. And I’ve never seen any of them drunk. It’s a generational thing, a social ritual, like the English drinking tea.”
“Right. Eighty proof tea.”
“How’s the work coming along?”
“It’s not, I’m afraid.”
He looked around the room, mildly alarmed. “They haven’t been bothering you, have they?”
“Who?” She stared at him in the mirror. “The aunts?”
“They promised to leave you alone to write.”
“They’ve been lovely. No noise. No interruptions. They left breakfast on the stove with a note, and lunch was chicken salad on the verandah, just the four of us.”
He seemed relieved. “I knew you’d like them,” he said.
“Josephine is a bit cool. I’m not sure she likes me.”
He shook his head. “You mustn’t read too much into her manner. She’s that way with everyone. Very reserved and private.”
She turned to face him, smoothing her skirt with her hands. “What’s her story, anyway? She never married?”
“No. There was someone. A long time ago. I don’t know who, I’ve just always heard that she was unlucky in love.”
“That’s a nice way of putting it.”
“Yes,” he said. “I thought you’d like that.”
Later, standing in the library with a glass of red wine in her hand, Ava was amazed at Fraser Barron’s resemblance to Poe. He had come in with Alice, and was dressed in a long black frock coat and carried a gold-headed walking stick. He was a small man, no taller than five feet three or four, and he wore his hair in damp curls around his face.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Ava said to Will in a low voice.
“I told you.”
Fraser advanced across the room toward them with a strange, high-stepping gait, his hand extended, and Ava fought a sudden desire to giggle. Will leaned against her, as if to check the impulse.
“William,” Fraser said in a slightly effeminate voice, firmly shaking Will’s hand.
“Fraser.” Will turned to Ava. “This is my friend, Ava.”
“Yes, yes, I’m so excited to meet you,” he said, taking Ava’s hand in his small, soft one. “My mother’s said so many wonderful things about you.”
“I like your walking stick,” Ava said.
“Thank you.” Pleased, he held it up for her review. “I order them specially from the UK. They’re so hard to find in the States.”
“Fraser, we were just talking about the time Edgar Allan Poe spent up at UVA. Ava was questioning why he’d left without graduating.” Fraser immediately launched into a lengthy discourse on the poet, and Will excused himself, giving Ava a slow grin, and went to refill his drink. Most of what Fraser said was interesting. Ava had read Poe’s literary criticism in college, and was a fan of the gothic genre, preferring Poe’s fiction to his poetry, but after a while her attention began to drift.
Across the room, Maitland and Will were discussing baseball, while over by the sideboard Fanny and Alice stood talking to a couple of neighbors. Alice turned her head, noting Ava with Fraser. She smiled and went back to her conversation. She was an attractive woman but somewhat domineering. Her husband had died young, leaving her to bring Fraser up on her own, which she had done admirably, the aunts agreed. No one mentioned Fraser’s eccentric dress and preoccupation with a dead poet; he was family (in addition to being Fanny’s sister-in-law, Alice was also a distant cousin) so that excused any censure they might have heaped upon an outsider.
As far as Ava could tell, eccentricity in the Woodburn family was not necessarily frowned upon. What was frowned upon, however, were members who didn’t appreciate the family’s history and standing, “sellouts” who promoted progress that threatened the “old ways.”
Disloyalty in any form was never tolerated.
She could see Josephine sitting on a long sofa, deep in conversation with Clara. One fair, one dark, they were a striking contrast; yet there was something similar in their profiles, something kindred in their height and bearing and grace. Ava had been curious about Clara from that first night at Woodburn Hall, pelting Will with questions. But in that teasing manner he had with her, slightly amused, mildly offended, he’d told her just enough to make her more curious. Clara lived on the block behind the aunts. Her parents had worked for the family when Josephine and Fanny were girls. She had grown up with the Woodburn girls as a sister might. “As part of the family,” Will had told her.
“Only she didn’t go to Vanderbilt,” Ava had remarked innocently.
“No,” Will said, his smile fading. “She didn’t go to Vanderbilt.”
Sunlight fell in large bands across the library’s faded Oriental carpet. The sofas, seen in the bright slanting light, seemed somewhat threadbare and worn, although the room was scrupulously clean, the woodwork newly painted and gleaming.
Beside her Fraser droned on about Poe in his soft little singsong voice. Will, noting that Ava’s attention had wandered, lifted his glass and motioned for Fraser to join him and Maitland.
“Excuse me, I’m being summoned,” Fraser said breathlessly. He put one small hand lightly on Ava’s arm. “I’m so looking forward to Mother’s barbecue. It’ll be such fun to introduce you around because I can assure you” (and here he leaned toward her, glancing around the room) “we’re not all this stodgy!” He giggled and walked off in that odd, straight-backed manner he had, like a tiny soldier on parade.
“Ava, come sit with us,” Clara called, patting the sofa between her and Josephine. Ava sat down, smiling at Clara, who squeezed her hand gently, then let it go. There was something warm about Clara, something so welcoming that you couldn’t help but feel comfortable in her presence. Fanny, too, made her feel instantly at home, and Maitland was like a charming, overindulgent grandfather. Josephine, on the other hand, seemed cordial but distant. There was something of Miss Havisham in Josephine. You had the feeling that beneath her polished exterior beat the heart of a woman capable of anything.
Alice was loudly telling a joke. “How many Episcopalians does it take to change a lightbulb? Ten. One to change the bulb and nine to say how much they liked the old one.”
The room exploded in laughter but they were all Episcopalians and you could see that they were proud of it.
“You know what they say,” Maitland said, lifting his glass. “For every four Episcopalians you’ll find a fifth.”
Fraser whooped with laughter, then stopped and checked his appearance in the heavy gilt-framed mirror above the sideboard. Beside him, Will stood smiling at Ava, his back to the glass.
Josephine said, “He’s a handsome young man, isn’t he?”
“Yes,” Ava said. She finished her wine.
“I see something of my father in him, although he’s dark like all the Frasers.” Josephine was quiet for a moment, her eyes fixed fondly on Will. As if guessing that they were talking about him, he excused himself to Fraser and Maitland and came across the room to join them. “My father was stern, but he was very loving,” Josephine continued. “Unusual in a man of those times.”
“He was a good man,” Clara said. Will stopped in front of them, smiling.
“He loved my mother, and when she died, soon after Celia’s birth, he never remarried. And he could have, if he’d wanted to! He was the most eligible widower in town, young, handsome, a man of property.” She stopped abruptly, looking down at her glass. “Well, he had everything, and many were the women who set their caps for him and tried to catch him.”
“But he was too wary for that,” Will said. He had obviously heard this story many times before.
“People who’ve been wounded in love are often wary,” Josephine said, lifting her chin. She and Will exchanged a long look, and Ava saw something pass between them. He leaned over and reached for Ava’s glass.
“Let me get you another drink,” he said.