Chapter 2 #3
‘That’s it,’ Betsy said, gracefully brushing a spider’s web from her shoulder.
Her shining brown hair caught the light, gleaming like toffee, and she gave a great sigh.
‘I guess the Lord’s plan for us is that we keep on turning, turning, till we come ’round right again, though I sure as heck don’t know when that will be, and what Meemaw would make of it all I couldn’t tell you. ’
Betsy had been carefully raised, then gone through what she thought of as a rebellious phase when she moved to Manhattan aged twenty-two to work in a clothes store (the right kind of clothes store, approved by her mother).
As she told it, she had gone wild, going to jazz clubs, and, once, she told Alice seriously, having an egg cream in Central Park with a cousin of the Roosevelts.
She referred to this period often, sometimes with a world-weary shrug of the shoulders, as if she had lived a life and understood the gamut of human experience as a result.
But Alice knew, because her dad had told her, that Betsy had been as miserable as anything while she was a big city girl.
She wanted a home like the one she’d had as a girl, which sounded like something out of Meet Me in St Louis : – ice-skating and picnics and dances.
So Alice knew that when her mother mentioned Meemaw, her rigidly correct mother, who had died before Alice was old enough to remember her, she really was upset.
Alice pulled the apple cart carefully along to the store. First they unloaded the produce in silence, the sweet smell of apples and hay and heat making her even more drowsy than usual, then they made their way to the gatehouse.
The gatehouse had been built for a family of four, and Alice often wondered if they’d been animals from a children’s book, a family of dormice, perhaps squirrels at a pinch.
It had three floors, and, while one wall was flat against the perimeter wall of the Kynaston Estate, the rest were gently rounded.
In essence it was a tower, Rapunzel-style, and, when eight-year-old Alice first moved in, she had delighted in the novelty, as had her friends.
But the gatehouse was not something out of a picture book.
It was dark, surrounded by trees, cold in winter, hot in summer.
There were one and a half rooms on each floor, the winding, wide staircase taking up much of the space.
The apartment in town where they’d lived before had one big room with two tiny bedrooms off it.
Alice’s first memories were of toddling from one side to the other, its vastness like the plains.
Here, everything was slightly too small.
Though she had never admitted it, one of the reasons why Alice enjoyed visiting Teddy was Valhalla’s sense of space – she could flop out and stretch on the porch, enjoy the sky and trees overhead, the horizons.
On the kitchen table was a wicker basket filled with apples, and next to it a basket with peelings, ready to go on the vegetable patch.
There were four chairs, a grey range and some tired ochre curtains coated in a light film of greasy dust. Every few months over the past eight years Alice’s mother or father would say something like ‘Let’s put up a picture!
’ or ‘Let’s buy that delightful wooden coat rack’ or ‘Let’s buy those new coffee cups!
’ and every time they would think of the dark, strangely cavernous kitchen, a kind of black hole, that was not really theirs, and somehow the items never made it into the house.
They were not allowed to hammer into the walls or change the layout, and, while Betsy sometimes wistfully said they should put up some new drapes, they never did.
It did not really feel like home; home was always going to be where they ended up next, when the apple business succeeded, when their luck changed.
Their entrance woke a wasp, which started buzzing angrily around them.
The sound in the echoing kitchen was too loud, like a drill.
Alice hit the insect with a fly-swatter and to her surprise it fell to the ground.
She crushed its sides between her fingers, as her father used to, avoiding the sting. It felt good.
Her mother stood watching, not saying anything.
It is as if we are both in a daze, Alice thought, drugged by something.
She thought often of Little House in the Big Woods , of how Jack the brindle bulldog one night barked and barked so much they nearly shot him, but it turned out he was barking to save them from a bear.
Alice often found herself thinking: no one alerted us to the bear, to the deer, to the train, not till it was too late.
‘Alice –’ Her mother was calling her.
‘Hey, Mom,’ she said gently.
Her mother was facing away from her. ‘Alice, I’m falling. I can’t seem to stop.’
‘I know,’ Alice said, trying to keep despair from her voice.
She was so tired of it all: of dragging this misery around with her, of the shame and anger and heaviness that came with it, of how weak she felt. I can’t help you, Mom. No one can help us.
‘Tell me one of your stories.’ Her mother had bowed her head so low it was almost in her lap.
‘What story do you want?’
‘One of the treasures.’ When she was little, she and her father used to make up stories about the treasures. Where the elephant had come from, and the cats which were Chinese princesses under a spell, and the dogs which had roamed the streets of Baltimore as a pack.
Alice sucked in her breath. ‘I rearranged the elephants the other day. They’re so friendly, you know?’
‘Remind me what they look like.’ Her mother’s breathing was rapid, her voice faint.
‘One’s that rainbow-stone colour, and he’s my favourite.’
‘That’s onyx, honey. Rainbow onyx. Your dad bought it for me on our third date.’
‘Where was your third date, Mom?’
‘We went to Times Square. We saw It’s a Wonderful Life .
’ She paused. ‘We had mulligatawny soup afterwards, at a little diner off Broadway. A most elegant place, despite the location. He gave it to me then. He said elephants never forget. And I remember, Allie’ – her breathing was steadying, her voice calmer – ‘he had a book in his jacket pocket. I was always so impressed with that. How bohemian it seemed to be.’
‘What was the book?’
‘It was Wuthering Heights , or something like that. You know he always wanted to go to England –’ She broke off. ‘Tell me where the elephant is now, Allie.’
‘Okay. He’s on the bottom shelf. I just moved him, and the brass one too. They seem like they should be the first ones you see.’
‘Tell me about the others.’
‘Sure. There’re the two blue china cats – you remember, you got them from the lady in the apartment below you –’
‘’Course I do. Laurey and Curly. Curly’s smiling at Laurey.’
‘That’s it,’ Alice said, nodding.
‘And there’s one black bird with a chipped wing.
And the dormouse – he’s on a piece of corn.
An ear of corn.’ Her mother cleared her throat.
She seemed to be regaining her equilibrium.
‘I love that blackbird, you know. Your father was given it. Someone knew he was collecting treasures for you. When you were born.’
‘They did?’
‘Sure they did,’ said her mother, and her smile was so sad. ‘Your dad was the proudest dad there ever was. Mayor Cooper said he’d never known a father more convinced everything their daughter did was right. He even believed you when you said you’d seen that ghost.’
‘Mom! I did see a ghost.’
Little Alice – a determined, blonde-haired girl who said, ‘Oh biscuits!’ when she was annoyed about something; who could read by the time she was four and who liked following her dad around everywhere – had once told stories, just like he had.
Famously, walking back from the Cemetery Supper one evening aged eight, she had seen a man in uniform on a horse; he had ridden up to her and said hello.
Riding with him was a young girl about her age, who had offered her a bunch of flowers that dissolved into dust when Alice reached up and took hold of them.
She had written about it at school. Miss Harman, her second-grade teacher, had sent her home with a gold star and a note.
Alice wrote a terrific story. She is always truthful even when she’s making it up.
As Alice chattered, her mother relaxed. Alice kept on talking, glancing around the kitchen to see what they might cook for supper, or at least suggest to her mother what they might cook, for, if Betsy thought she was being ‘handled’, her reaction was much worse.
Her mother looked at the clock. ‘Heavens. You must want feeding, honey: I’ll put supper on. Corn, ham, apple sauce – does that sound good?’
But a light, pleasant voice called behind them.
‘That sounds marvellous , Betsy.’
They both jumped. For a split-second Alice thought – and she knew her mother thought the same – it was a dream. He’s back.
In the open window, smiling through at them, was Wilder Kynaston.
He was city smart, in a three-piece linen suit and a cream panama hat on his head, removing the latter as he spoke. He leaned on the windowsill, glancing from Alice to Betsy, and said:
‘Well, hello, Miss Alice – haven’t you grown since I last saw you? I hardly recognized you.’ He turned to her mother. ‘Why Betsy, are you all right?’
‘You startled me. We’d heard you were coming up tomorrow, Mr Kynaston,’ Betsy said, polite enough but in a cool tone.
‘It’s far too hot in Manhattan still, and I missed this place too much. This is my favourite time of year. I had to come back. I’m terribly sorry for giving you a fright, Betsy, my dear.’
Her mother walked toward the open window. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said, obviously seeing he really looked contrite. ‘Please, won’t you come in?’
‘I’d be delighted to, but only if you’re not too busy.’ He took her hand and patted it, holding it for a moment afterwards. ‘Betsy – I do apologize, you know.’