Chapter 26
Englebert has been in possession of the Burlington paper’s review of Macbeth for three days, and he has not stopped carrying it around the house.
Of course, he can’t actually physically carry it, so really, he’s been ordering for it to be relocated. The review has now traveled from the kitchen table to the parlor to the front hall, ferried by whichever human happens to be passing, so that Englebert can sit beside it in whatever room he’s in.
He asked me to underline the sentence he likes best, which reads: ‘Damien Carter delivers the performance of his career, a Macbeth of such command and vocal architecture that one struggles to believe it emerged within a converted basketball court.’
“Vocal architecture,” Englebert says, for perhaps the fortieth time. “That critic has an ear.”
“That critic has no idea they reviewed a cat,” Pru says.
The run closed Sunday after two weeks, six performances, and six sold-out houses. Zero incidents were entered into Emma’s log.
Byways took my final piece and ran it as the print edition’s lead feature. ‘CURTAIN CALL IN DUSKBORO.’ My editor was thrilled, and asked in a follow-up email that I reach out to discuss what I can do for them next.
Skye’s video of the banquet scene — filmed from the back row, on her phone, in defiance of at least two of Dana’s posted rules — has done numbers online.
It was seen by an unfathomable number of people, including a producer in New York who called Damien’s agent Monday morning to ask whether he was available in the spring for a revival.
Damien said yes, of course.
“I am delighted for Mr. Carter,” Englebert says. “Delight is the entirety of what I feel. A director’s work lives in his actors. That is the covenant of the theater. The coach does not run onto the field to collect the trophy.”
“You’ve mentioned,” I say.
“Because it bears mentioning.”
“Four times this morning.”
“Some covenants require maintenance.” He arranges his tail over his feet and looks out the window.
Englebert was credited, technically. The program lists the full company, the crew, Lily (“Crime Scene by Lily Archer”), and, as executive producer, one Englebert G. Wardwell.
Nobody knows where the ‘G.’ came from. Dana typed the programs herself, and insists that Englebert insisted on it. It has since become a matter of communal obsession.
“Gregory,” Hannah guesses.
“No.”
“Gielgud,” Gabe offers.
“Flattering, but no.”
“Garrick” was Rupert’s guess, which he submitted via text from his home in Pennsylvania.
“Tell the scholar I appreciate his gusto,” Englebert says, “but also, the answer is no.”
“Gwendolyn,” says Lily.
“No,” he says, after a pause, “but of every guess made this week, that is the one I regret declining.”
“Then what does it stand for?” I ask.
“It stands,” Englebert says, “in the program. Which is where it will remain.”
“Refusing to answer is only going to make it worse. There’s a thread about it in the town Facebook group. Dorcas has a poll going at the bakery.”
“A company requires a mystery in the off-season,” he says, “the way a field requires a cover crop.” He steps off the table and leaves the room, and that is the last word anyone gets out of him on the subject.
* * *
Pru comes by in the afternoon, and another bouquet of flowers is in the passenger seat of her car. She brings them inside.
“They need water,” she says. “My office gets too much sun.”
She gets a vase down from my mother’s cabinet. I make sandwiches and don’t ask. She trims the stems at the sink.
We have lunch at the kitchen table with the flowers between us, and it’s the longest I’ve gone without asking a question since I learned to talk.
Pru is rinsing her plate when she finally mentions it. “I’m not being mysterious to torture you.”
“I know.”
“It’s new. It’s — new things are hard, and I’m out of practice. Everything at the beginning is made of tissue paper. You breathe on it wrong and it falls apart. So I’m keeping it in my pocket a while longer.”
“I understand.”
“For the record, I know who it is,” Englebert says.
“You do not.”
“Of course I do, Marigold. I knew in the second week.” His tail curls over his feet, deeply content. “And unlike you, I shall be saying nothing, because I was asked for discretion by a member of my company, and my discretion is absolute.”
“Thank you, Englebert,” Pru says.
* * *
Genie is the on porch at Hemlock Hill when we pull in, with the Burlington paper’s review on her lap and my Byways feature folded on the little table, weighted down by an empty honey jar.
“There they are,” she says. “The reporter and the crown.”
We’ve brought two jars of honey, a crossword book, another crossword book, and, as always, a bag from the bakery. Dorcas packed herself with an itemized receipt, signed with her name affirming that there are no seeds involved. Genie inspects the bag and nods .
“You came to the show,” Pru says. “You didn’t tell us you were coming to the show.”
“The van was going and I got in the van.”
“You could have come backstage and said hello.”
“And stand in line? Half the state was in that lobby.” She waves this off. “I saw what I came to see. You were the best one. I’m allowed to say that because I’m your mother. But also, it’s true.”
She turns to me. “And Betty’s girl,” she says.
“Tiffany?”
“Yes, yes,” she taps the review, pointing to a paragraph praising the production’s seamless stagecraft. “That one worked harder than anyone in the building.”
We didn’t tell her about anything, but Genie always seems to know.
“Well,” she says. “Except perhaps the cat. Wretched old thing, but he put on a good show.”
We stay an hour. She asks if we’ve eaten, as always, and tells Pru the flowers were nice. Pru presumably never told her about any flowers.
“You still owe that girl a phone call,” she says, when we’re gathering up to leave. “The Hartford girl. When you call her, tell her it was the boy. Vain as always. Just like I told you.”
She’s right. Damien turned up at the Manor yesterday afternoon, walking now, no wheelchair.
He sat on my porch steps, declined coffee, and told me, off the record, that he’d been the one responsible for the tabloid leak.
He sent it from an email account he made for the purpose, and then he sat back and waited.
“I’d rather be a scandal than a comeback story nobody covers,” he said. He said scandals get follow-ups.
“He potentially blew up Vivian’s marriage,” Pru says. “For coverage. Dana wouldn’t ride in the same car as her wife for two weeks.”
“He knows. That’s why he wanted to confess. He’d already been to see Vivian and Dana that morning. He’s paying for the article to be retracted, not that a retraction undoes anything.”
“And the photos,” Genie says. “The girl.”
“The photos were Skye’s,” I say. “She takes pictures of him constantly. She has thousands. He went through her camera roll one night while she slept and lifted them. She recognized her own photos in the story.”
“She knew?” Pru says. “That whole time?”
“She knew, and of course she covered for him.”
“They’re a matched set,” Pru says. “Good lord.”
* * *
In the car, I call Kayla, off the record, as promised. She listens to the whole thing and laughs for a while.
“A press kit for himself, about himself, leaked by himself,” she says. “Unsurprising, I guess.”
We’re barely out of the Hemlock Hill driveway when my phone rings again. It’s my parents — both of them, on speaker.
“Marigold,” my mother says.
“Yes?”
“The Hendersons have offered us the cottage through September,” she says. “The light on the bay in September is apparently something people speak about. Your father wants to see the light.”
“I want to see the light!” my father calls out.
“We’re planning to stay through the month,” my mother says, “if that’s all right.”
“It’s all right,” I say. “The wards are settled. The water heater and I have an understanding. Englebert has announced he’s wintering in the parlor.”
“And you have no plans for immediate return to Boston?”
It stings a bit, but she’s right. “Not at the moment,” I say.
“Good,” my mother says. “Then it’s arranged. Also, Marigold. The magazine piece was good. Just like the last one. Your father cut it out and stuck it on the refrigerator.”
She hangs up, as she does.
“On the refrigerator,” Pru says. “Wow. That’s basically a Harriet Wardwell Pulitzer.”
* * *
Family breakfast has started to become a tradition, even outside of lesson days. Today, Hannah brings donuts.
Lily’s fixation this week is, for some reason, on labor law. She’s appointed herself to Bandit’s cause and prosecutes it at every opportunity.
“He performed,” she argues at the counter, holding the butter dish. “He was Banquo at a very important time. He never got paid.”
“He was compensated in muffins,” I say.
“Muffins aren’t butter.”
She takes the butter dish to the door and sets it on the porch boards. Bandit picks up the entire half-stick in both hands and holds it to his chest.
“This town,” he says through the screen with real emotion, “has changed my life.”
“Do not weep on the butter,” Englebert says. “Eudora’s dishes have witnessed enough.”
* * *
I put the breakfast dishes into the sink, and when I return to the dining room, I find Addie at the table with her composition book, Englebert on the windowsill, and Maude on the floor below him.
“We’re having a ceremony,” Addie says.
“What kind of ceremony?”
“Official business,” Englebert says. He rises, arranges himself at the sill’s edge, and looks down at my Maude, who looks at the wall.
“For countless decades,” Englebert begins, “the morning light of this window has fallen upon this sill, and upon me. I have greeted every administration of this house from this position. I considered the arrangement permanent, in the way one considers all good arrangements permanent, which is to say, thoughtlessly.” He pauses.
“This summer, a challenger arrived. I viewed this challenge as an affront. I have since had occasion to review the record.”
Addie’s pencil is going.
“The record shows a colleague,” Englebert continues, “who declined a role most creatures would have seized, which is a discipline I have witnessed in rarely in my long life. He conducted his entire campaign for this sunbeam without once raising his voice, a strategy I would do well to study and never will.” He draws himself up.
“Accordingly. By the authority vested in me, by myself, the morning sunbeam of the east window is hereby ceded, in perpetuity, to Maude, of this house. The evening sill remains mine. Borders are what make good neighbors, and I intend for us to be excellent ones.”
Maude, hearing his name, yawns enormously.
“He says—” Addie starts.
“I heard what he said,” Englebert says. “There is no need to enter the yawn into the record.”
Maude hops onto the sill.
“Ingrate,” Englebert says, with something dangerously close to affection.
Maude produces, from within the sunbeam, a low sustained purr.
* * *
After we clean up, we all head out to the yard. We know the nice summer weather is soon to be behind us, and we need to take advantage of it while we can.
Addie sits under the apple tree with her eyes closed while Annabel names birds and Addie tells her what they’re worried about, which is mostly the cold coming and one hawk in particular who keeps circling their nest.
On the patio table, there’s a candle.
Annabel set it down on her way past, mid-conversation with Hannah about gutters.
I sit down in front of it while everyone occupies themselves around me. Lily is narrating something to Bandit. Gabe is on the porch steps with his coffee, watching me over the rim of the cup while pretending to watch Addie on the lawn.
I hold my intention like a match, and I offer it to the wick.
The candle lights.
A flame, ordinary and yellow, stands up off the wick, bending a little in the breeze.
Annabel looks up, notices the flame, smiles, and goes back to her conversation with Addie and the birds.
Gabe comes down off the steps and looks at the candle with me. “Attempt nineteen?”
“Attempt nineteen.”
Englebert, who has been sitting at the head of the table, ostensibly asleep, rises, stretches and steps up next to the lit candle.
“Now that the company is assembled—” he says.
“The company isn’t assembled,” Gabe says. “None of us were even in the play.”
“I was Blood Assistant!” Lily protests.
“Now that the company has been assembled,” Englebert repeats, evidently oblivious to the jeers. “I have an announcement to make, and that announcement is that auditions for the Duskboro Community Theatre’s spring production will be held in March. The season has been selected.”
“By who?” Hannah asks.
“By the executive producer, in consultation with the casting director.”
“You’re both of those things.”
“The consultation was brief and productive.” He lifts his chin. “In the spring, this company will mount Hamlet.”
“There’s a ghost in that one, too,” Emma says.
“There is.”
“You always say you’re not a ghost,” Addie says, from under the tree.
“Indeed, I am not a ghost,” Englebert says.
“But I have faith I could portray one faithfully. Ghosts, like kings, are best played by those with no personal stake in the matter.” He sits.
“I have already spoken with Mrs. Reagan. Her rate has gone up, which I respect, and her terms have been accepted. This time the glamour will be built to my specifications, and the program” —a slow blink, savoring it— “will carry my own name, in a leading role, in full.”
“The full name,” I say. “Including the G.”
“The role of the Ghost,” Englebert says, “will be listed as played by Englebert G. Wardwell.”
The candle burns down on the table between us, all afternoon. It seems a shame to blow it out.
* * *
Thank you for reading!