On Anna, the sun didn’t burn so much as kiss; she was a fashionable pale biscuit color, her hair strikingly blond against her tanned face. Her minidress wasn’t at all the thing for a funeral, but at least she’d worn black. Addie had wondered if she would. Anna liked to provoke, sometimes just to provoke, but she had known better this time.
Addie’s heart felt as though it would crack, as though everything in it would leak out through the broken shards until there was nothing more than a puddle on the hardwood floor, a puddle and a confusion of black clothes and Bea’s diamond clip sparkling in the midst of it all.
Anna murmured something in the playwright’s ear. In her ridiculously high shoes, she was tall enough that she had to lean to speak in his ear. She had Frederick’s height, Anna—Frederick’s and Bea’s. Next to them, Addie had always felt like a charwoman who had strayed into Olympus. Even now, her stepdaughter could make her feel the same way.
They’d brought the playwright’s son, nine and solemn, with a bowl haircut and a bow tie. Seeing him made Addie think painfully of Teddy at that age. Not that Teddy had ever been quiet or solemn; he had always been outgoing and assured. But, then, Teddy had had the advantage of two parents who openly adored him, sisters who cosseted him, not like this poor boy, dragged willy-nilly into an alien tribe, caressed and cooed at by a mother he had known for a month.
Anna stroked the boy’s head in a careless caress. She played at mother the way small girls played house, dropping the doll as soon as a more entertaining toy came along. Addie would have thought that Anna, of all people, would have known better, would have remembered how much it hurt to be left behind.
Perhaps it might have been different if Anna had had one of her own; perhaps then her mothering instinct might have been more, well, steady. Addie wondered about that, from time to time.
At the time, it had seemed so simple.
Anna had come to her in confidence. The father was married, she said. One of her professors. She hadn’t apologized, she’d simply stated the facts, and Addie had been reminded, again, of Bea, who was always most brazen when she knew herself most likely in the wrong. Anna wanted the child “taken care of” and she assumed that Addie, with her connections to natal hospitals, would be able to help—without telling Frederick.
She had arranged it all: the flight to Switzerland, the clinic. Frederick had thought Anna was skiing with friends. It had hurt Addie terribly, lying to him—he was her other half, a piece of herself—but Anna had been adamant; her father wasn’t to know. If Addie wouldn’t promise, Anna would take care of matters herself. So Addie had promised, telling herself that it was for the best, that it freed Addie to have the chances that Bea hadn’t. Besides, there would always be more children, children with the right person.
But there had been no children after that. Anna had dropped out of art school and grad school and the curatorial training program at Sotheby’s. She had flitted from career to career, setting herself up as an interior decorator one month, a fashion designer the next. Mostly, she did exactly what her mother had done. She married and married and married again.
Addie wondered how long this one would last. Anna had made short work of the first four. In the case of the last one, the divorce had taken longer than the actual marriage.
And then there was Marjorie, moving efficiently through the crowd with her tray of canapés, making sure glasses were placed on coasters and used napkins discarded. She was a fighter, Marjorie. Addie just wished she hadn’t had to fight quite so much. She had wanted so much more for her, for both Bea’s girls. At least Marjorie was back in New York now, not out in California with that dreadful Bill. And she had brought Clemmie with her.
Clemmie was holding out a tray of canapés, her mother’s chosen delegate. “Would you like a cheese puff, Granny Addie?”
For a moment, Clemmie looked so like Bea that it staggered her, not Bea as she had been at the end, but Bea as she had first met her. They’d had velvet dresses like that for best, she and Bea, black velvet with a broad white lace collar and thick stockings underneath. Nanny had tied back their hair at the sides with broad velvet bows.
“Granny?” Clemmie said, and the accent was wrong, American, slightly nasal, not Bea’s cut-glass tones, not Bea at all, but Clemmie.
“No, thank you, darling,” Addie said. “Have you brought one to Grandpa?”
Clemmie dutifully trotted off, holding the tray very carefully, making sure the cheese puffs didn’t skid. She took her duties as passer of hors d’oeuvres very seriously. She took everything seriously, not at all like Bea, who, even in her and Addie’s childhood, had blazed through life with careless panache.
Addie watched as Clemmie held out the tray to Frederick, and the expression of love on his face made her heart twist. He bent, painfully, to take a cheese puff from the tray. He never could say no to any of the grandchildren.
He looked so old, her Frederick. Those lines, when had they had the time to etch themselves so deeply in his face? When had his back begun to stoop, his chin begun to sag? She hadn’t noticed it until now, until Teddy’s death took the certainty from Frederick’s step and the smile from his face. It was like viewing a distorted mirror, on the one side the Frederick she remembered, forever twenty-one, a young man in evening togs holding out a mouse, on the other side this strange old man, twisted and gaunt, bent double with a hacking cough that wouldn’t go away. She’d tried to get him to see a doctor, but he’d sworn it was nothing, it would clear up soon enough. Cough and cough and cough, all through the long, sleepless night.
Overnight, they were old, truly old. It boggled the mind to think that if Bea had lived, she would have been old now, too. Addie remembered how panicked Bea had been, at the ripe old age of twenty-eight, to be losing her bloom. Perhaps it was kinder that she hadn’t lived, hadn’t lived to see her skin sag under her chin, as Addie’s did, hadn’t lived to see her belly crease with babies who were never born, hadn’t lived to see her children die before her, a pain almost beyond bearing.
Over the long, prosperous years, Addie had felt sorry for Bea, for all she had missed—sorry and a little bit afraid, as though, if she weren’t careful, she might glance over her shoulder and find Bea following her, come to demand her forfeit, her price for all those years of happiness Addie had stolen from her, her husband, her children.
Was Teddy the price?
She was being absurd. It was only in Victorian fairy tales that one found such direct equivalencies, a child for a child, a loss for a loss. It did seem frighteningly neat, though; she had been so scared for Teddy’s sake, all those years, chivvying her family from Nairobi to New York, always afraid for Teddy, for Teddy’s place in the world. She had felt so guilty sometimes, so guilty for being grateful that her cousin was dead, her cousin whom she had once loved more than anyone else in the world; she had felt guilty for the thrill of panic she had felt when Anna called Bea’s name in the Nairobi bazaar, for the late-night pacing and planning that followed. Addie had refused to entertain the very possibility; she had shut her eyes and her ears—for Teddy, for Teddy’s sake.
But Teddy was gone.
She wondered what Bea would look like now, what sort of lines life might have driven into her face, lines from joys and griefs and everything in between. Would she have grown into herself eventually? Would she have quieted, in her older age, from that madcap thing she had become? Or would she have gone the route of so many of her friends, taking ever younger and younger lovers, her elegance a thing of paint and illusion, addicted to the drugs that had once been playthings?
It was nothing but speculation, of course. Bea had been gone forty-four years now: three years longer than Teddy had been alive.
But Addie couldn’t stop remembering, after all these years, a child’s cry in the Nairobi bazaar and a discarded shoe that ought to have been green instead of blue.
New York, 2000
Clemmie loitered outside the faculty offices in Fayerweather Hall, pretending interest in a
bulletin board that advertised historical Pictionary for grad students, extra tutoring for undergrads, and ten bucks a pop for inclusion in someone’s psych experiment.
In her heavy jeans and sweater she felt like she was unsuccessfully undercover. Male and female alike seemed to wear the same uniform of jeans and sweatshirt, women with their hair twisted into scrunchy buns, a handful of the men sporting the goatee du jour. A harried grad student, dressed all in black, coffee cup in one hand, armload of papers in the other, hurried along the hallway, miraculously managing to keep her coffee upright while juggling fifty-odd midterms.
The door in front of Clemmie was a careful inch ajar, just far enough that she could hear the murmur of voices, one young and very unhappy. The card on the door read: JONATHAN SCHWARTZ, and under it, in smaller letters, ASSISTANT PROFESSOR.
The door opened and an undergrad trudged out, L.L. Bean backpack hanging from one shoulder. She didn’t look at Clemmie. Her stacked loafers scuffed against the floor of the hallway.
Clemmie waited until the undergrad was halfway down the hall and then knocked gently on the door.
“Come in,” said Jon’s voice, sounding very authoritative and un-Jon-like.
It wasn’t a large office. What there was appeared to be composed entirely of books, books slapped onto shelves seemingly haphazardly, some with plastic bindings, others with the faded faux leather of earlier editions. Jon sat at a large desk in the middle of it all, papers scattered in front of him. With his glasses on, surrounded by the tools of his trade, he looked more like Indiana Jones than ever. Minus the hat and whip, of course.
“Come in and take a seat,” he said in a monotone, making a final note in a ledger. He looked up and his whole expression changed. “Clemmie! Hey!” He looked pleased, she thought, pleased and a little bit wary. He jumped up and waved her in. “Is this about my grade on your midterm?”
Clemmie nudged a pile of books out of the way with her boot. “Is it midterm season already?”
“High midterm season.” Jon moved around her to shut the door before hurrying to shovel off a chair for her. “They got their grades back this morning. Since then, I’ve been the subject of an inventive mix of threats and cajolery.”
Standing in front of the desk, Clemmie pursed her lips. “Cajolery. Nice word. Any of it work?”
Jon forced a grin. “I was tempted by the bottle of wine, but figured that would count against me when it came to tenure decisions, so I told him to bring it to the department chair instead.”
Clemmie idly turned over a paper on Jon’s desk, a printout of a book review from a periodical called Past & Present. It looked more past than present. “What did you give the guy?”
“A B minus.”
The Ivy League equivalent of an F. “Ouch.”
“Trust me, it was deserved.” Jon leaned across the desk, just a little too eagerly. “Please. Sit down. Can I get you anything? A soda, some coffee? The department machine ain’t much, but it’s vaguely potable.”
“No, no, really, I’m fine. I pre-caffeinated. See? Full sentences.”
Jon sank back down into his chair. “That one wasn’t.”
Clemmie made a face at him. “Picky, picky.”
“Sit down at least. It’s good to see you.” There was a question tacked on, a question Clemmie wasn’t sure how to answer. He quickly added, “What are you doing out in the middle of the day?”
“The official story is that I’m taking some vacation time.” Clemmie dropped into the chair in front of his desk. It was vaguely eggshell shaped and made her recline farther than she would have liked. “The real story is that I didn’t make partner.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be.” Clemmie squirmed upward, pushing against the pull of the chair. She planted her feet firmly on the floor. “I’m looking at some other options. One of our clients has already offered me a job in-house.”
It had been PharmaNet, of all people, PharmaNet, who had complained about her to Paul. Not that Paul had needed much impetus to blackball her. He’d disliked her from day one. The PharmaNet people had told her they liked her spunk and they wanted her on board. It wasn’t what she had planned, but she was intrigued, all the same. She could have a hand in shaping some of the policies that had bothered her; she would be on track for a general counsel job at a large corporation. Not to mention some other benefits of a slightly pettier nature.
“The plus side,” said Clemmie, “is that I’d get to give orders to my old boss. Oh, and it’s in London.”
“Are you going to take it?”
Clemmie settled back in the eggshell chair. “I might. It’s tempting.” She’d already spoken to her new friend, Tony, about possibly spending a few days at Rivesdale House while looking for a flat. She wished she were more romantically interested in Tony. It would tie everything up so neatly. “I’ve never lived in London, or anyplace other than New York. The longest I ever stayed anywhere else was—”
“Rome,” Jon filled in for her.
Their eyes met across the pile of papers.
“Mm-hmm,” Clemmie said quickly. “And that was just one semester. Anyway, it’s about time, don’t you think?”
Jon’s hand stilled on the handle of his coffee mug. His hazel eyes were steady on her face. “So is this a good-bye visit?”
“No! Nothing like that. Nothing’s decided yet.” Although PharmaNet was pressing her for an answer. “I had something else I wanted to talk to you about. Are you sure I’m not keeping you from your undergrads?”
“Quite sure.” He leaned forward, pushing miscellaneous papers out of the way. “I had something I wanted to talk to you about, too. On New Year’s Eve—I owe you an explanation—”
“No you don’t.” The chair creaked as Clemmie pushed it back. “Really, no explanations required. If you and Caitlin are back together, that’s great.”
“Together?” Jon rescued his coffee just in time to keep it from splashing onto someone’s midterm. The cup had a faded history department logo on it, now severely coffee stained. “We’re not back together. Caitlin just had a layover in New York. She needed someplace to stay. That’s all.”
It hadn’t looked like that was all. “It doesn’t matter,” said Clemmie with forced cheer. “As long as you’re happy—”
“We’re not back together,” Jon repeated more forcefully, then glanced guiltily over his shoulder. “She caught a plane to Paris the next day and that was that.”
Clemmie knew she should change the subject, but she couldn’t quite resist saying, “You looked pretty cozy.”
“We were married for three years,” said Jon. Looking down, he played with his cup, creating a pattern of overlapping coffee stains. “It had been a tough day. The idea of being with someone from a completely different part of my life was tempting—for about five minutes. It was just so easy. Until it wasn’t. We’re not right for each other and we never will be.”
Clemmie hated herself for how happy that made her. “I thought you’d decided no one would ever be right for you. The whole too screwed up to love thing.”
Jon winced. “It wasn’t a good time. I— Let’s just say seeing Caitlin helped clear some stuff up.”
“Hmm.” Clemmie decided to let it go for the moment. This wasn’t the time or the place. She crossed one leg over the other, against the general will of the chair. “Anyhoo,” she said, striving for cool, “I don’t want to waste your time during midterm season. I really came here to ask you a favor.”
Papers crunched under Jon’s elbows. So that was why academics liked to wear leather patches on their sleeves. “What kind of favor?”
“A research favor.” Clemmie took a deep breath. “I met up with Aunt Anna last week. She has a theory; that is, she thinks … that her mother—her real mother—didn’t die in Kenya.”
“Ah,” said Jon.
“Ah?” She didn’t like the sound of that “ah.” “You know about this.”
“I’ve heard her story,” Jon sai
d carefully. “The death that wasn’t, all that sort of thing.”
“You don’t believe it.”
“I don’t have sufficient information to believe or disbelieve.”
Clemmie rolled her eyes. “That’s a cop-out.” With more force than she’d intended, she said, “I can’t believe that Grandpa Frederick murdered her. Or Granny Addie.”
“No,” said Jon, “neither can I. But”—she knew she wasn’t going to like that “but”—“you can’t rule out pure accident. They were on safari; it was dangerous. People died that way and the bodies were never found. People still die that way.”
“But what if she didn’t?”
“So what?” Jon lifted his glasses to rub his eyes. “Even if she were alive then, she’d be dead now. Long dead. She was older than your grandmother—than Addie, I mean. What does it matter whether she died then or later?” In a gentler voice he added, “You can’t find a replacement for Addie that way.”
“I’m not trying to find a replacement!” Catching herself, Clemmie eased back in her chair. “I just want to know what happened.”
“I don’t want to be a downer—” said Jon.
“A downer?”
“—but you might never know that.” Jon ignored the slur on his undergrad slang. “The sources might not be there. Or even if they are, they might be open to multiple interpretations. The facts might lead in multiple, inconclusive directions. That’s one of the downsides of professional history,” he added. “Most of the time, there is no truth, only various levels of interpretation. Fact is a construct we provide to the public.”
“Welcome to my life,” said Clemmie. “What do you think I do every day? I weave fact into argument. There are two stories for every single set of facts. In this case, though, there’s a simple answer. She died or she didn’t. If she didn’t, I want to know what happened.”
Jon held her gaze. “Why?”
She knew what he was fishing for and he was wrong. She wasn’t looking for a replacement for Granny Addie—well, not entirely. But this woman, this stranger, was a part of Clemmie somehow. She wanted to know what had happened to her. She wanted to know why her mother never spoke about her. She just wanted to know. And if it was as simple as it seemed, if she really had been eaten by a lion on safari, then that was that.