Chapter Two #3
“And when your Ruthie is a bit older, I naturally recommend Mrs. Howland’s books,” Judith said.
Her smile hinted they should all understand her emphasis on “naturally,” though Anna did not see why.
Mrs. Howland’s books were popular twenty or thirty years ago, but they were so pious they made Little Prudy seem racy and had fallen quite out of favor.
Reading had come easily to Julia, and her tastes were beginning to emerge. Unfortunately, she seemed most attracted to William’s dime novels, the more elementary of which she could now tackle.
They were terrible dreck, but Anna understood why Julia liked them. Boys in books went on adventures, faced down dangers, while girls were depicted leading proscribed lives. Why are they so excited about a stupid picnic? Julia would ask.
Julia had also begun to pick up on some common themes. Last week, she sat on her bed in her nightdress while Anna read her a story. Suddenly, Julia slumped back onto her pillow, closed her eyes, and groaned.
“What is it?” Anna asked.
“Why are girls always reading at someone’s sickbed!?”
Anna was growing tired of Judith’s preening and Lillian’s fawning, so she was relieved when Elizabeth announced it was time for dessert and led them from the dismal dining room into the gothic parlor, with its ponderous velvet sofas, gloomy oil paintings, and surfaces cluttered with gilded gewgaws.
On a round mahogany table stood a three-tiered cake, with pale yellow fondant and Lillian’s initials at the center.
After they all applauded the accomplishment of Lillian blowing out a single candle (Elizabeth knew better than to have the representative number), the guests moved to seat themselves about the room.
Clarissa followed Lillian so closely in an effort to claim a spot beside her, Anna wondered if the birthday girl could feel the breath on her neck. In the end, Lillian sat with a triumphant Clarissa to her left and Judith to her right.
Soon after the cake was served, Rosemary escorted Julia into the room.
Lillian eyed the child closely, but fortunately, there was nothing in Julia’s appearance to add evidence to the case she seemed constantly to be building against her.
Julia, who had her mother’s dark hair and blue eyes, looked tidy and pretty in a white cashmere dress with navy ribbons at the shoulders.
Julia approached Lillian, planted a kiss on the proffered cheek, and said, “Happy birthday, Grandmother Lillian, and many happy returns.”
“Thank you, Julia.”
“I like your gown. It’s very beautiful!” Julia added. (Unlike most Boston Brahmin women, who were known for their thrift and lack of interest in fashion, Lillian was terribly vain. Anna always advised Julia to compliment her.)
“Very pretty of you, Julia,” Lillian said, with a nod. Her approval was provisional, of course, but better than the alternative.
Julia moved on to greet Clarissa with a similar cordiality. She looked over Clarissa’s ensemble, a rather hectic chiffon-and-silk affair in varying shades of green, with many frills and flounces.
“Your gown is so pretty, too, Grandmother Clarissa. Like a cucumber!” Fortunately, Julia’s tastes were not well-developed, because her seemingly genuine admiration mitigated the effect of her words.
“Oh,” Clarissa said primly.
Elizabeth had a good sense of humor, but her meticulous manners would never allow her to betray amusement in such circumstances, and she maintained an impassive expression.
Other guests, however, were clearly struggling to contain laughter.
Julia made her rounds, politely greeted the other women, and then bade them all adieu, with only a brief, longing glance at the cake in the corner of the room.
“Well,” Clarissa sniffed, once Rosemary had escorted Julia out.
“Oh, don’t be absurd, Clarissa,” Lillian said. She turned and looked Clarissa up and down, then returned her attention to her cake, muttering, not quite under her breath, “She was not off, really.”
Anna said a silent prayer of thanks that Julia had bestowed her wayward compliment on Clarissa.
Elizabeth would have had an earful later had Julia’s cucumber comment been directed at someone Lillian actually liked.
She also could not help but enjoy seeing her stepmother get her comeuppance, even if it was at Lillian’s hands.
If her life had depended on it, Clarissa could not have done a more thorough job of erasing all evidence of Anna’s mother.
Within a year of marrying Father, she had transformed their home in Cambridge, which had been simply decorated but warm and welcoming, into a bad imitation of the Borghese Palace.
She persuaded Father to sell the little lakeside cottage in Western Massachusetts where Elizabeth and Anna spent all their childhood summers, and buy a “snug little property in Newport.”
Worst of all was her interference in Elizabeth’s relationship with her longtime sweetheart from the lake, Calvin Stannarius. They discovered Clarissa’s deceit in rather dramatic circumstances, but by then, Elizabeth was married to Jerome Demarest, with a two-year-old son and Julia on the way.
Having finally cajoled Father into retirement, Clarissa had officially prevailed in her battle against all Anna’s family had once held dear.
So there was some consolation in Clarissa’s failure to realize her other chief ambition: advancing herself in society through friendship with Lillian Demarest.
After the other guests left, Lillian and Judith lingered in the parlor. Anna glanced out the window and spotted Julia, who was supposed to be in her room, sitting in the tree in the corner of the backyard, talking over the fence to Katie, the servant girl next door.
It was unfortunate that Lillian chose that moment to approach the window and see if the rain had let up, as Julia was breaking several of her grandmother’s cardinal rules by escaping the confines of her room, perching in a tree in a most unladylike fashion, and consorting with a person of “the lower orders.”
Lillian spun around and glared at Elizabeth. “What is Julia doing out there?”
Anna would dearly love her sister to look out the window, smile innocently, and say, It seems she has climbed the tree, but as usual, she said nothing.
“Where is her nurse?” Lillian demanded.
“Rosemary went to pick up William at a friend’s,” Elizabeth replied. An instant later, they heard the front door close. “That must be them.”
When Rosemary and William appeared at the door of the parlor, Lillian wagged a finger out the window and addressed Rosemary without preamble.
“The child is in the tree,” she said sharply.
After the nurse left to fetch Julia, Lillian scowled and said, “Why you have that Rosemary looking after Julia, I cannot fathom.” (She always referred to her as “that Rosemary,” as if it were a double name, like Mary Ellen.) “Mrs. Stith was vastly more qualified, and had a far firmer hand, which the child needs above all things.”
Elizabeth virtually never stood up to Lillian.
She had kept the house as a museum to Jerome’s childhood, and allowed Lillian to behave as if she still owned it.
(Lillian once pointed to a worn spot on one of the velvet sofas and said, “My man is coming to fix that next week”—the sort of attention one welcomes in a landlord, but not in a mother-in-law.)
Anna had been so proud of Elizabeth when she got rid of Mrs. Stith, whom Lillian had foisted upon her, but she soon learned her sister might not have taken a stand after all.
“But Father didn’t like Mrs. Stith,” William said, as he shoveled a bite of cake in his mouth.
“What’s that?” Lillian spun around, evidently also surprised.
“He said she was an old sourpuss, and he didn’t like having her around.”
Lillian looked at Elizabeth, who merely shrugged, leaving her (and Anna) to wonder if Mrs. Stith would still be in residence, if not for Jerome’s interference.
Judith, meanwhile, had been observing these proceedings from the settee with a look of keen interest. As Anna watched out of the corner of her eye, Judith deliberately softened her expression.
“I am sure you wonder why I go on and on about Emily’s school, but I cannot say enough good about it.” She spoke with saccharine sympathy, as if the “problem” with Julia was so self-evident, it made perfect sense to begin discussing the solution.
“The child is not five years old!” Anna said before she could stop herself.
It was too infuriating. Prior to this infraction, which anyone but Lillian would consider barely worthy of comment, Judith’s only experience of Julia Demarest had been the child’s unimpeachable behavior a half hour earlier.
Judith was a quick study, though. She had shrewdly perceived Lillian’s fixation on breaking her granddaughter’s spirit and decided to help.
“It’s never too early to begin thinking about her future,” Lillian remonstrated. “Especially for a child as willful as Julia.”
Elizabeth flushed but said nothing.
Later, Anna lay on her bed, looking up at the ceiling.
Anna had promised herself she would only live with her sister as long as she felt useful and welcome. She knew she was useful, at least to Julia, but she had begun to worry about whether she was truly welcome.
Elizabeth had taken it as a given when Anna finished college four years ago that she would move in with her and Jerome.
Unmarried women were expected to shelter with family.
No siren song had called Anna to another city, and she had no bachelor brother who needed her to manage his affairs.
She could not return to Cambridge. Thanks to Clarissa, living at home during college had been almost unendurable.
Anna also knew her sister would never treat her as the servile resident spinster, a trial that many of her unmarried friends had endured at the hands of their relations.
When Anna first moved in, however, Lillian had tried valiantly to force Anna into the role of obsequious poor relation.
To Anna’s great amusement, Elizabeth had unwittingly foiled her mother-in-law.
Whenever Lillian remarked on Anna’s good fortune to live with her son and daughter-in-law, Elizabeth invariably jumped in and said, with great earnestness, Oh, no.
I am the fortunate one. It is a great comfort to have my sister with me!
If Lillian tried to get Anna to run a little errand for her—Oh, dear, I seem to have forgotten my scissors.
Anna, would you mind…?—Elizabeth handled the task herself or called for a servant.
Elizabeth was exquisitely sensitive to Lillian.
She simply had no frame of reference for what her mother-in-law was trying to accomplish.
Their own mother had not taught them that unmarried women should live lives of grateful self-abnegation, and Elizabeth married so young, she never even contemplated spinsterhood.
That, however, had been a rare defeat. Lillian was desperate for her son’s attention and deference, and to remain the central authority in this family.
Jerome was a man mostly concerned with his own comfort, and he was largely impervious to his mother’s criticisms. That said, he reflexively deferred to his mother on domestic matters (Oh, I daresay Mother’s right…), and Anna was definitely a domestic matter.
She rose and went to the stack of boxes that had been delivered from Father’s office, which contained the sum of their research into Margaret Fuller. She opened one, noted the disarray, and felt like closing it again, but she knew she had to press forward.
If Lillian turned against Anna, Jerome would likely accede to her judgment, if only to stop her badgering, and there was no reason to believe that Elizabeth would put up a fight.
Anna needed to get on her own two feet, and soon.