Chapter 7 Mourning Dove #2
Kate Spade bag you paid $1500 for to carry a wallet, a lipstick, and some Kleenex? I do, and I think that if you can afford
to, it’s okay. It lessens the value, but I think that Kate would like it.”
In the eighteenth century, the Japanese artist Gechu fashioned from ivory a four-inch carving of a shaggy dog with her pup,
a “netsuke.” It had a function, as a fastener for the belt of a formal kimono. In 2022, that carving sold at Bonhams in New
York, where the sale of ivory is outlawed unless it is more than a hundred years old, for nearly half a million dollars.
I got my minifeature approved and sent Marcus the number of one of the photographers who’d been taking pictures.
It felt like an accomplishment. I could still do that.
Still, it took a toll. Hours later in my childhood room, after I showered and slipped into pajamas I’d had since high school,
I laid myself slowly on the bed, as if too abrupt a movement could break me. Against my stomach, I curled the pillow that
still smelled of Sam’s light lavender aftershave. I placed my phone right beside my head, for wasn’t it possible that he was
as lonely as I was and might call any moment? Like a ninth grader, I checked my phone ten times a day, tested the ringtone,
pushed his number over and over, and hung up before it could ring. Finally, as two days became five became eight, I silenced
the phone.
Work.
Coffee and work.
I could do that.
Eating, not so much.
A thesis had begun to take shape: Maybe the puzzle of why Felicity turned to sex work could remain a puzzle. Everyone said
she was the last person to have done that. At least in high school, she seemed almost allergic to romantic interest in boys.
She was the sort of antislut, a goddess like Diana the Huntress who ran from men. Finding that answer, or not finding it,
would be the conclusion, the murder trial part of the exploration.
I wanted to explain it to Sam.
I couldn’t, so I wondered, was it because of my past or our agreement that he didn’t call? It didn’t matter. I willed myself
to stop thinking about it.
Fat chance.
And yet (move forward, move forward) I called Ruth Wild’s sister, also Felicity, who was called Fay. She lived in Minneapolis
and still used her unmarried name, Copeland.
Right away, she said, “Reenie! You remember me from when you were kids. Of course, I’ll talk to you. Where are you?”
I confessed that I was currently in Madison but, on impulse, said that I would get a flight next morning so that she and I and the third sister, Claire, could speak in person. I couldn’t wait to get away even for a day. I asked, had Ruth contacted her?
“I have no idea where Ruth is. Our parents must be sick with worry though they aren’t saying much. They’re pretty stoic. I’ve
tried over and over to talk to Felicity, but she won’t answer my letters or phone calls. I asked her lawyer, Sam, I think
his name is . . . ”
“Yes, Sam,” I said, as eager to speak the name of the beloved, only to have it sour in my mouth.
“Such a nice man. He told me she won’t talk to anyone, but she sends her love. What do you think that’s about, Reenie?”
“I’m the wrong one to ask. She won’t talk to me either.”
“It’s crazy. It’s just unthinkable. Claire and I are just obsessed with this, that brilliant, beautiful girl, my little namesake,
the best of us, why she would do those things to herself . . . ? It makes no sense.” Fay sighed. “You must plan on staying
overnight, right here with me and David and our sons. Please, it’s no imposition, I insist. I’d love to see you again. Of
course, I wish it was for a happier reason. It’s been years, Reenie, since you were in college.”
I arrived the next morning, cabbing from the airport.
Fay, who taught earth science at the local junior college, had rearranged her schedule to accommodate me. (“Don’t worry about
it, Reenie. There’s no greater gift a professor can give than a sign on the door that says class is canceled . . .”) Like
all mothers, it seemed, she had also assumed that I hadn’t eaten for the previous two weeks: She’d made tuna Nicoise salad,
a cold cucumber soup, lemonade with mint, croissants, and homemade cinnamon ice cream, which she said was nothing, you just
dumped everything in the little machine and pressed Go.
I consumed seconds of everything. It felt safe to eat in the presence of a mother.
We sat on the screened porch overlooking one of the myriad Minnesota lakes, where sailboats tacked back and forth in the distance
like bright toys, and presently, the third sister, Claire (Felicity Wild’s other namesake), showed up. It was like seeing
a composite portrait of features made from Ruth and Felicity. All of these Copeland women had those arresting leonine eyes.
Claire said, “We hoped that you had news. It’s been months now, Reenie. We fear for her. To just vanish? I know she’s been
going through a complete, well, you’ll pardon me, a crucifixion. Not only that bastard’s disgraceful behavior but taking the
boys?”
I didn’t have the strength to explain, and it didn’t matter in any case. I couldn’t yet face the grandparents, who’d lost
a daughter and a granddaughter as well—not that Felicity was going anywhere. If she were convicted, they would know exactly
where to find her: for a long, very long time at Manoomin Correctional Facility for Women, a forty-minute drive from where
they lived.
The elder Copelands were over eighty by now and fully retired. After leaving NASA and then his teaching post at Minnesota,
Hal had apparently moved to Sheboygan to be nearer his wife Alice’s family and to consult for an aeronautics firm that paid
him whatever he wanted for as much as he wanted to do. Alice objected at first; she’d had enough of moving around. She was,
however, comforted knowing she’d be able to spend more time with Ruth’s family, just down the road. Alice never liked Roman
Wild. Hal tolerated him, but they adored Felicity and Jay and Guy and established a fragile peace.
“The truth was, they were his kids, not Ruth’s.
They were his heirs. They looked like him and they acted like him, and even when they were little, he didn’t really correct them when they weren’t very respectful to Ruth because she was a woman,” said Fay.
“It was a different story with Felicity. Felicity was everything to Ruth. She was determined that Felicity would be a shining light, not ‘poor Ruth’s’ daughter.
And Felicity was just that. She adored her mother.
” She added, “When Ruth found out, it must have broken her.”
“We hated how meek Ruth was with him,” Claire continued. “Remember, Fay, that time you said to him, ‘Ruth’s not your child,
Roman, she’s a grown woman . . .’”
“About swearing. Because she said, ‘those goddamn creeps,’ that was it, about men in show business taking advantage of women.”
“And he said, ‘Ruth, no profanity!’”
“He didn’t allow her to swear?” I asked. “He corrected her in front of people?”
“Absolutely,” Claire said. “And not only that—”
Fay said, “Claire! Let her get a word in edgewise!”
Claire ignored her. “Come on. This is Reenie. All of us, Ruth too, we thought Felicity was going to Costa Rica for field studies
with her birds. Shock doesn’t begin to describe it! I may just be a Minnesota housewife . . .”
“Oh please, Clary, with a PhD and a standing offer from—” Fay began.
Claire, the youngest sister and clearly the favored baby, mother of four-year-old twins, retorted, “Maybe someday, when my
boys are older.”
Fay said, “Ruthie was the giant brain, the jewel in the crown, even smarter than Claire, until Felicity, that is. There was
nothing Felicity couldn’t do, arts, math, music, which makes it more devastating . . .”
“Not that we’re elitist jerks . . .”
Not jerks, I thought, but certainly elitist daughters of the rocket scientist and the mathematician mom.
“And imagine how it was for them when Ruth was describing herself as a submissive wife.”
Then Claire said, “There was that one time,” and Fay nodded. I was reminded of Nell and me. Sisters don’t need complete sentences.
“What one time?”
They exchanged glances, clearly not sure if they should tell me.
Finally, Fay continued. “He grabbed Felicity by the arm, not hard, but hard enough. She fell. She hit her head on the corner
of the door. I will say that he didn’t mean to hurt her, he was just so big and Felicity so slight . . . I remember she was
supposed to jump right up and clear the table, house rules, but she wasn’t doing her chores, she was all excited telling my
parents about this birding trip she wanted to take, an Earthwatch trip. The boys were little, just starting grade school.
They were big enough to help, but they just sat there, Roman didn’t require them to do kitchen work. What was it, Thanksgiving?”
Claire nodded.
Felicity jumped up right away, not really hurt, only upset and insulted. She ran upstairs. Nobody knew what to say. Roman
began to apologize.
Fay went on, “But Ruthie’s face just went blank. Her eyes, I’ll never forget this, were black, all pupils.”
“Ruth’s face scared me,” said Claire. “She followed Felicity upstairs. The meal ended right then. Roman cleared the dishes
himself. My mother helped, I guess.”
“Was that the end of it?”
“No,” Fay said. “Far from it.”
I asked, “She was still expected to jump up and clear the dishes instead of the younger kids doing it?”
“She was a woman,” Claire said. “It was that kind of house.”