Mine to Tell Page 19

  You’ve not written to him since we’ve been married, from what I can tell, and I’m not foolish enough to put our address on this so that you might resume, in case it’s a simple matter of you not knowing where he lives. My hope is that you’ve truly left him alone these several years and that I’m not just being naïve. If I am being naïve, I beg you to please discontinue all contact with John. It’s been painful having three in our brief courtship, three at my wedding, and three in my bed. I don’t think I’ve ever known my husband in any real way, and I don’t think I can bear any more of this. I fear that he can’t, either.

  For his sake, for our children’s sakes, and for mine, please leave us be if you’ve any contact with him at all.

  John’s wife,

  Ellen Baxter

  ~*~

  Kyle put the letter back in the envelope.

  The house was quiet. Too excruciatingly quiet. “I can’t go on with this story,” I shouted, destroying the solitude. Kyle looked up at me. “It’s going to have a bad ending. I promised my grandfather it wouldn’t, and now I don’t know. I feel in my heart my great-grandmother did nothing that wasn’t justified, but the circumstances are so…so…”

  “Suggestively incriminating?” Kyle finished for me.

  “Kind of like that.” I glanced away. This wasn’t helping. If I had just moved here quietly and not tried to justify my actions to everyone by saying it would make a good renovation story, I could have discovered the truth about my great-grandmother and then put the story away quietly. But now…now that Trevor had exposed my great-grandmother to the world, well, to my hometown, and the truth wasn’t panning out the way I’d planned… “I may have made a huge mistake,” I said in one breath. “I should have let everyone think what they wanted and not added fuel to their fires. My poor grandpa!”

  “Mine to tell,” Kyle said, breaking into my wallowing.

  “What?”

  “That’s what your great-grandmother said about her story, and that’s what you should call it.”

  “Call it? Call what?”

  “Her story.”

  “I’m not going to finish it. I can’t!”

  “You don’t have to finish it. She already did. All you’re doing is discovering it.”

  I was breathing hard, the kind of short deep breaths you take before you hit someone. My eyes narrowed as I homed in on my victim.

  “It’s not yours,” he had the audacity to continue, oblivious to the danger he was in. “It’s hers. Mine to tell. Don’t you believe she had a reason for it? Let her tell it. You’re just a vessel.”

  I released an exasperated burst of air. I wanted to argue with him, but I couldn’t. He was right. Again. She wouldn’t have told her story if there was nothing to tell other than what the rumor mongers were already pedaling.

  “So, title her story and publish it for her.”

  “I can’t do that!” My eyes grew wide. “My family has suffered enough. They’d never approve of that. I haven’t even been able to get up the courage to ask them about letting AP have it, and my editor’s waiting for an answer.”

  “You ever notice how the ones closest to you are the hardest obstacles to overcome? Or at least they create them.”

  I thought of Paul Junior and Trevor and nodded. I looked at Kyle and wondered who in his family was his obstacle.

  “I’ll ask them tomorrow,” I conceded in a sigh. “And I imagine after that I’ll have to burn my birth certificate and change my identity. They certainly won’t want me anymore.”

  He laughed a gentle laugh and scooted over next to me. “You want to go back to Chicago together?”

  He caught me off guard. Yes, I wanted to go, but with him? What did he mean by that? My female psyche kicked in, analyzing his motives, worrying whether my hair was combed. I opened my mouth, hoping the right answer would magically come out.

  “Good. When should we go?” he asked, grinning.

  I couldn’t believe this shy, retiring young man was taking charge of me this way. I opened my mouth again, not sure what I was going to say.

  “I could be ready tomorrow, say late morning. Right after you tell your parents Edith is interested in letting the story go to AP. Good time for you to get out of town, don’t you think?”

  I closed my mouth. I didn’t have anything else to say, since he was saying it all for me. I nodded, the only comment I was apparently going to get in this one-sided conversation.

  “And we’ll drive. I’ll be here about eleven. Be ready and I’ll pick you up.”

  He squeezed my knee and stood. “Might gather up some things we could show John’s son. We might not need them in the end, but let’s have things with us, just in case.”

  And then he was gone.

  The door closed behind him, and I whispered, “Okay.”

  Chapter 43

  “I have done wrong. Return from me;

  whatever you impose on me I will bear.”

  I asked Isaac if I might go away for awhile. He didn’t answer me when I asked, but I didn’t expect him to. There was no way to bring the matter up and discuss it. We never discussed anything, we had no rapport. If we had, I would have described for him the theater, the music I’d heard, my life before and after Chicago. I would have told him those things ages ago, but we never spoke. If we spoke now, I would tell him about being forgiven. I would tell him how freeing it is, but we never talked of spiritual things, just like we didn’t of worldly things.

  I was at peace. And in my peace I wanted to go away. Just for a bit, not long. I wanted to see Henrietta and heal our wounds, go to a play, eat someone else’s cooking, wear a nice dress. These are worldly things insofar as they are things a woman wants. They are spiritual, too, mending, healing, helping me be whole again.

  Rather than answer me, Isaac began to avoid me. He walked in large circles around me. I let him, I knew he was afraid and the fear would only turn into anger if I spoke too soon. When the circles became smaller with time and he was closing in, I knew he’d made his decision.

  “We can’t spare you,” he finally said at the table one night. The boys looked up, curious what he meant. I didn’t look up because I knew. I kept eating as if he wasn’t talking to me. “You boys keep eating. Never you mind what I’m talking about.”

  I could feel his frown leave them and turn on me. I chewed nothing. I had already swallowed, but I didn’t want to take another bite, let him know my mouth was empty and I could speak. I just looked at my food and kept chewing. Eventually I heard him resume eating. We ate in silence. His circle had tightened and fallen around me.

  ~*~

  Scenery rushed past as Kyle drove us to Chicago. I laid my notebook down on my lap. He’d asked me to read while he drove, to pass the time and to keep us honed, to keep Julianne with us and the center of our trip. I looked at the passing grasses and telephone poles. I knew that circle she was talking about. I hadn’t lived it, but I recognized it. It was around my mother, around other women I knew, even my grandfather and my father, tighter and tighter and tighter until they no longer functioned as individuals, their boundaries drawn close, too close to move.

  Kyle pulled off the highway into a small town and found a place to buy coffee. We got out, and I caught my reflection in my car door’s window as I closed it. I looked nice. My sweater hit just at the top of my hips and my blue jeans fit snugly below it. I glanced up to see if Kyle noticed I was scrutinizing how I looked. He was eyeing the café, but he was intuitive, and I blushed, figuring he probably sensed I’d stayed up until past midnight packing, unpacking, and then repacking my suitcase for this trip. On my first trip to Chicago, I’d thrown some things into my case and charged out the door. But this one, going with him at his bidding, had confused me. I’d packed casual clothing, then worried about eating together in restaurants, so I’d unpacked the casual and replaced them with nice outfits. Then I’d felt too obvious and unpacked the nice and put in a blend. Then I’d undone it again and wadded up casual and tossed t
hem in.

  My night had been a worry of clothing, makeup, perfumes, and dread mingled with anticipation. I stole one last glance at my reflection and caught up with him.

  We took a booth instead of cups to go, and settled across from each other while the waitress brought us coffees and a roll for him. I watched Kyle butter his already decadent roll, and he watched me pollute my coffee with cream.

  “Get your circle off me,” I teased. “If I want to adulterate my coffee like you did that roll, then that’s the way it will be.”

  He grinned and eyed me approvingly. “Want to bet your great-grandmother said the same thing in her mind? I mean, not about what they ate, but do you think she was chewing on that very idea when her mouth was empty and Isaac was staring?”

  I looked at him. “My goodness, I hope so.”

  He cut his roll in half and put one of the halves on another plate. He shoved it across the table to me. “Sharing circles is better than drawing them,” he said.

  My female psyche kicked in again. Did he want to share more than just rolls? Did I have enough heart for something like this yet? I smiled at him and pulled the plate in front of me. “You’re welcome to some of my creamy coffee if you want.”

  “Attractive offer,” he said picking up his own steaming cup, “but I need it strong and black.”

  I smiled and dove into the half roll he’d given me, digging my way through butter and sugar. I’d just avoid my reflection when we returned to the car. After this, my tight blue jeans would look hideous.

  Chapter 44

  “That no root of bitterness springing up causes trouble, and by it many be defiled.”

  Kyle was happy to stay at the same hotel-by-the-week I’d used before, the other colorful tenants causing a slight lift to his eyebrows. We went to our separate rooms, which were side by side, to relax and freshen up. Alone in the familiar, musty, veneer-and-Formica room, I unpacked my odd assortment of clothing and laid all of my makeup across the sink’s countertop in the bathroom, every cosmetic I owned, most of which I’d never worn before. I was ready. Ready for what, I wasn’t sure, but whatever evolved on this trip with Kyle, I was at least cosmetically prepared for it.

  I went to the phone and called my mother to see how she was managing after our conversation. No one else had been at home when I went there, making the AP discussion easier, yet still hard. She was bearing the family burden alone that way, and she took that responsibility as personally and as painfully as if it was she who had disappeared and shamed the family.

  I hadn’t tried to influence her one way or the other. I’d just said the worst had already happened since the local people now knew, but if they didn’t want the story to go AP from here, it wouldn’t. Unless Trevor continued to act like a…

  She’d asked some meaningless questions while she sorted through how she felt about it. And I knew that how she felt about it was merely the sum total of how she feared everyone else felt about it.

  She finally worried herself into a corner and said she’d have to talk to my father, my grandfather, and my great-uncle who lived far away but apparently still cared. At least Paul Junior wasn’t on the list. His opinion was as weak as hers, neither one of them reaching their own logical conclusion, she reacting from the circle drawn around her and he reacting from the determination to draw circles.

  “Hello, Mama,” I said when she answered. “How are you doing?”

  “Oh, I don’t have an answer for you yet,” the wringing was in her voice, and probably in her hands, as well.

  “I’m not calling for an answer. I just want to know how you’re doing.”

  “Oh. Well, I’m worried, but, I guess I’m all right.”

  I tried not to roll my eyes, even when I knew she couldn’t see me, because she gave me so many reasons to roll them that I knew eventually I’d slip up and do it in front of her.

  “You have a good day so far?” I tried another tack.

  “Well, it’s been all right, I guess.” And she went into a list of the duties she took care of every day, duties I knew well because they never changed. While she was talking, a soft knock came at my door. I laid the phone down and let her ramble on while I darted to it, swung it open for Kyle, and put a finger at my lips to let him know to be quiet. I ran back and picked up the phone. “And now I’m working on our supper,” she was saying.

  Kyle dropped into a chair across the room and waited while I tried to soothe my mother. Soothing her was no easy task, but I was the best at it in our family, so I let her go on, knowing she was glad for my listening ear. Kyle hopped up and went into my bathroom, closing the door behind him. I felt my cheeks turn scarlet as I stared wide-eyed at the door, wishing I hadn’t arranged my troves of makeup and perfumes across the sink like I was about to host an Avon party.

  “Might rain tomorrow, so your father is thinking about working on the dryer for me, just in case.” She went on, saying nothing significant, just glad for the attention and relieved I wasn’t talking about Julianne.

  Another knock came at the door, a loud knock that interrupted my mother.

  “I’ll get it,” Kyle said as he stepped through the bathroom door and went to open it. A mix of male voices filled the room as the manager informed him there was a scheduling mistake and we’d have to move to new rooms tomorrow.

  “Who’s that?” my mother asked, all of her former self pity gone.

  “No one,” I said quickly. “Finish what you were saying.” The voices behind me rose in their confusion over the rooms, destroying my attempt at deception.

  My mother was quiet. I knew her. She was listening to what they were saying.

  “Is that Kyle?” she asked. “I thought you were in Chicago.”

  I hesitated, wondering how many lies I could keep track of. “I am in Chicago,” I said.

  She was quiet again, the truth suspended in the air as the men debated where to put us after tonight to resolve the scheduling conflict.

  “What’s he doing there with you?” Her voice was quiet, but it was amplified with three generations of tainting.

  “He’s helping,” I said, ridding my voice of any guilt history was trying to inflict on me. “If it weren’t for him I wouldn’t be as far as I am.”

  My mother’s voice changed, then, all of the pressure she’d been trying to hold back coming out like a valve that had broken. Anguish wrung her words into sounds that coerced her toward defying the fact that I was her daughter and she loved me. It was a war. A war between reputation and kinship, a war Julianne had lost and I was about to.

  “I can’t believe you’re doing this,” she wailed. “This whole thing is going to be the death of us all over again, and now you, too. If only you’d married Trevor like you were supposed to, then maybe none of this would be happening. But now that you’re…”

  “Mama,” I cut in. She was going nowhere with this agonizing, and eventually she was going to say things at least I would regret. She didn’t argue, so I continued, picking my words with the same care I’d use to pick my steps through a minefield. “I know you don’t fully understand how important the truth is to me, but please try to understand that it’s important to you, too. To our family and to women everywhere. If that weren’t true, the column wouldn’t be so popular.”

  “But what if…” she began, and I knew the “what if” she was worried about.

  “It’s not going to turn out that way,” I said quickly, looking to heaven with a prayer. “I just know inside that Julianne isn’t what everyone says she was. Whatever she did and wherever she went, I know it’s okay.” I took a deep breath and waited for my mother’s retort.

  “Let’s hope so,” she said quietly. “But I doubt it.”

  Kyle was standing in front of me, the manager gone. He had two papers in his hands, waiting to show me the room changes. I glanced at the bathroom and thought of the makeup I had arranged across the sink, ready for a relationship emergency, and how I’d have to pack it all back up again. I looked at him wh
ile I listened to my mother breathing on the other end of the line. Maybe it was just as well that we would move and start over. I’d scoop everything into my bags and just dump it all in a heap in the next room I was given. Maybe I wouldn’t even wear makeup.

  “I’m not telling anyone he’s there,” my mother spoke again, demoting Kyle from a neighbor and friend with a name to just a “he.”

  “It’s okay, Mama, we’re in separate rooms.”

  “Doesn’t matter, and you know it doesn’t.”

  She was right. Julianne went somewhere, maybe with no one, and she was called a harlot.

  “I’ll talk to you tomorrow,” I said, and we both hung up.

  Chapter 45

  “They return at evening, they howl like a dog,

  and go around the city.

  They wander about to devour,

  and growl if they are not satisfied.”

  September 4, 1916

  Dear Julianne,

  Forgive me. Forgive me for writing, and forgive me for not. I’ve wanted to every second, but didn’t. Longed to, but gave us grace to continue our lives. But now my hand is forced. There is something I must tell you, something you must know. It’s urgent, it’s imperative. Please write back. Please let me know it’s all right to contact you. I’m doing it under Henrietta’s name again. Write soon, say it’s good, and I’ll tell you this thing that’s come about.

  Please soon,

  John

  ~*~

  Kyle read the short letter before we drove to John’s son’s home. We sat perched on my bed, my things packed around me so we could switch rooms before we left.

  “It’s not easy hearing one side of the story and not knowing how my great-grandmother reacted. Did she react? Did she contact him? Did her hands tremble like mine would have?”

  “We’re going to find out,” Kyle said, tucking the letter away. “Maybe not today, but we’re eventually going to know.”

  “Well, something happened with John. We know that. He wasn’t around when his wife left the house. It has to be tied to whatever is bothering him now.” I looked at Kyle. “Doesn’t it?”