Legacy of Lies

  Some of that traditional airplane food I’d turned down was looking pretty good now. I sampled the green beans, then gobbled them up.

  “Try your stew,” Grandmother ordered.

  I pulled the bowl closer and spooned lumps of grayish-white stuff.

  “They’re not raw,” Matt said, “not when they’re in the stew.”

  “What’s not raw?” I asked, setting down my spoon.

  “The oysters.”

  I ate one mouthful. It was the slimiest seafood I’d ever tasted, swimming in heavy cream. “May I have the green beans, please?”

  “You’re not a vegetarian, are you?” Grandmother asked. “I refuse to feed you if you are.”

  “I’m trying a little of everything, Grandmother,” I replied patiently, “but I have always liked green beans.” I used to like biscuits, I thought, taking another bite of the hard, flat thing.

  “It would be just like her parents to raise her as an animal rights extremist,” Grandmother said to Matt. “The two of them have always had strange ideas.”

  It annoyed me to be referred to in the third person, and it hurt to hear my parents put down, but I kept my cool.

  “Dad doesn’t like hunting,” I admitted, “which isn’t real surprising since he’s a vet. But as you know, Grandmother, his father was an Eastern Shore farmer. Dad was raised on meat and still eats it.”

  “It’s unnatural to avoid meat,” she went on.

  “Look,” I exclaimed, frustrated, “1 am not a vegetarian! Though the paintings in this room are pushing me in that direction.”

  Matt’s eyes flicked around the room, then came back to me. His dark gaze was unreadable, but at least he’d given up the pretension of not seeing me.

  “So what is your mother up in arms about these days?” Grandmother asked. “Migrant workers, I bet.”

  She knew Mom better than I thought. Two letters on migrant living conditions had been sent to senators last week.

  To Matt, Grandmother said, “Carolyn marched for integration, raising taxes for education, luxury condos for chickens-for everything but common sense.”

  “That’s an exaggeration,” I countered. “For the chickens she supported two-bedroom apartments.”

  Matt’s mouth twitched, but he remained silent. Grandmother grimly ate her ham and biscuits. Obviously, she had no sense of humor, which meant I wasn’t going to be able to joke my way out of an argument.

  “College ruined her,” Grandmother went on. “It made her a sloppy thinker.”

  “Mom says that when she arrived at college she found out how narrow-minded she was.”

  Grandmother laid down her fork. “There was nothing narrow about Carolyn’s mind. When she left my house she saw the world clearly and knew right from wrong. After four years away she became hopelessly muddled.”

  “It is easy to see clearly, when all you see are black and white,” I argued, “when you believe that everything has to be one or the other. But it doesn’t.”

  “What is clear to me is that you weren’t raised with manners,” Grandmother countered, her eyes glittering. She didn’t like me, but she liked conflict. “You weren’t taught respect for your elders.”

  “I was. But I don’t fake well, and despite what Mom and Dad say, I don’t respect people who don’t respect others.”

  A long silence followed. I chewed and listened to the clink of silverware.

  At last Matt pushed back his chair. “I’m going to a movie tonight. Alex is picking me up.”

  “What movie?” Grandmother asked.

  “Sheer Blue. It just opened at the theater on High Street.”

  “That film got a great review in the Tucson paper,” I said. “I’ve been wanting to see it.” Maybe he’d take the hint and ask me along. I was eager to be with kids my own age. “The chase sequence is supposed to be fantastic,” I added.

  “That’s what everyone says,” he replied. “I’ll be home by one o’clock,” he told Grandmother, then rose and picked up his dishes.

  I wasn’t going to be invited.

  “You mean twelve-thirty,” Grandmother told him. “Who’s going besides Alex?”

  “Kristy, Amanda, and Kate.”

  “Oh, the girls you were studying with today,” I ventured casually.

  He turned around, surprised.

  “It’s just Alex that he studies with,” Grandmother informed me.

  “Really?”

  Matt gave me a look, which translated into something like drop dead, then left.

  I sat sipping water, waiting for Grandmother to finish her meal. When she pushed back her chair, I did the same. “Do you have any special instructions for washing dishes?” I asked.

  “We each do our own.”

  “I’ll do yours,” I offered. “You did the cooking.”

  “Nancy does the cooking,” she corrected me.

  “Well, I’m still glad to do them for you.”

  But, as she said, we each did our own. Grandmother could not bend in any of her ways.

  When the kitchen was cleaned up, she told me it was her custom to read in the evening. I could sit in the library with her, as long as I did not talk or listen to music. Her invitation didn’t give me warm and cozy feelings. And I doubted she’d approve of the book I’d picked up at the airport: The cover showed a woman with a torn dress and half-bared breasts running from a big house on a stormy night.

  As it turned out, sitting inside a cozy circle of lamplight on the high four-poster bed, with the dense night falling around Grandmother’s house, was the perfect way to read a gothic romance. When I heard Grandmother come up, I changed into my nightgown but kept turning pages. The face of the deranged housekeeper started to look like Nancy’s and the warm-hearted cook spoke with Ginny’s voice. The story melted into the events of the day and my eyes closed.

  Two hours later I sat straight up, knocking my book off the bed.

  I had been dreaming about the house again, playing in the same cozy room with the sloped ceiling and dormer windows. But my old dream had become so clear, so real, I could hardly believe I was awake in a different room. In the dream I had a new toy: a doll-house that was a miniature of Grandmother’s house.

  I threw back the quilt and slid off the edge of the bed. The night was brighter than when I’d fallen asleep, the air colder. I pulled a sweatshirt on over my nightgown, then stood at the window that looked down on the herb garden. The late-rising moon silvered the roofs of the back wing, both the shiny tin over the kitchen porch and the duller wood shingles that peaked above each second-floor window. Dormer windows and a sloped roof! Was my playroom in the back wing? Was it real?

  I snatched up my purse and dug for my key chain. It had a penlight anchoring it which, with the moonlight, was bright enough to show my way. I eased open the bedroom door. The hall was lit dimly by a lamp on a side table. All the doors were shut, just as they had been earlier in the day.

  I glanced back at my alarm clock: 11:59. I doubted Matt would be home before curfew. I slipped down the wide stairway, hurrying past the grandfather clock. In the shadows it seemed like another person, standing stiff and tall on the landing, watching me with disapproval. Just as I reached the bottom of the steps, it began its long toll of twelve.

  A lit wall sconce in the lower hall guided me through the door that led into the back hall. I passed the service entrances to the dining room and library and tiptoed down the steps to the rear wing. I walked through the kitchen and opened a door next to the big hearth, then followed a hall that ended at a corner stair.

  As I reached the stair, the sound of an engine caught my attention. Matt was being dropped off. I quickly climbed the narrow, triangular steps.

  The room at the top had a low, sloping roof, peaked in the middle, with dormer windows on each side, just as in my dream. But it was empty. I played my penlight over the walls. Its beam flashed off a bright object, a knob. I outlined the rectangle of a built-in cupboard, then walked over and opened it.

  S
omething ran across my feet. I jammed my hand in my mouth to keep from screaming, and then to silence my laughter-nervous laughter. The mouse was probably just as rattled. I shone the penlight inside the cupboard and my grip tightened. There it was, the dollhouse, a smaller version of Scarborough House, accurate down to the dormer windows in the back wing where I was standing.

  I slid the house out of the cupboard and into a pool of moonlight, then knelt before it. There were large hinges on the corners which allowed the entire front to be opened as one panel. I gently pulled it back. Inside was miniature furniture, replicas of that in the real house.

  I sat back on my heels, trying to come up with a reasonable explanation for dreaming about something Td never seen, then seeing it for real. As a little kid, I used to pretend I was going inside the pictures of my books. I’d imagine fairy-tale castles in three dimensions and daydream about living inside them. Among the photos Uncle Paul had sent Mom, I remembered a picture of her Barbie doll. It was possible that the doll-house was in those photos and that I had imagined going inside it, until it became a house in my dreams.

  As for the similarity between this room and my dream room, there were many ways to account for that. The lodge where my family vacationed in Flagstaff had a sloping roof and dormer windows, and I’d always liked the place. It figured that I’d turn it into a playroom inside my dream house.

  I closed the front of the dollhouse and slid it back inside the cupboard. When I stood up, I noticed a door that might lead back to my room by an upstairs route, but played it safe and left the way I had come. At the bottom of the narrow stairs I clicked off my penlight and walked noiselessly toward the kitchen. After making sure that Matt wasn’t having a late-night snack, I tiptoed through the kitchen and up the steps connecting the wing to the main house. In the back hall I stopped abruptly.

  Matt was in the library, sitting at Grandmother’s desk, his back to me. He was leaning over a drawer, searching it, opening files and boxes, sifting through contents that I couldn’t see. What was he up to?

  For a moment I thought of bursting in and asking him, but then I’d have some explaining to do as well. I slipped down the hall and padded upstairs to my room.

  four

  Saturday morning Matt and I arrived downstairs at the same time, close to ten o’clock. Grandmother greeted me first. “You’ve wasted a fine morning.”

  And good morning to you, too, I thought. But it was a new day and I was determined to make it start out well. “I wish I’d gotten up earlier,” I said. “I guess I’m still on Arizona time.”

  She turned to my cousin. “I don’t like being left with the chores, Matt.”

  “What chores, Grandmother?” he asked, then leaned down from the waist in a runner’s stretch.

  He was wearing shorts and a T-shirt, which showed off the muscled body of a guy who worked out often. Stop looking, Megan, I told myself.

  “You live here,” Grandmother answered him sharply. “You know what has to be done.”

  “Yes,” he replied, his voice patient, “but what exactly did you need done?”

  “My car has to be washed.”

  “I did it Thursday afternoon, remember?”

  “The house gutters must be cleaned.”

  “I’ve done most of that. I’ll finish up after the football game this afternoon.”

  “There is raking.”

  “It would make more sense in another week.”

  “Is there something I can do?” I asked.

  Matt gave me a cool look. I mirrored it, then saw the spark in Grandmother’s eye. She enjoyed the fact that we didn’t get along.

  “I can handle things,” he told me.

  What was his problem? Did he think I was competing for brownie points? He seemed too sure of himself to worry about being anything less than “number one” with her. And even if some of that confidence was an act, he knew how Grandmother felt about adopted children.

  As irritated as I was with Matt, I was even more annoyed with myself for continuing to give him chances to be rude. But something defiant in me, something that refused to believe this was the genuine Matt, kept trying.

  “Are you going for a run?” I asked.

  He nodded.

  “Can I go with you?”

  He picked up a plastic bottle from the kitchen counter and twisted off the top. “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “I’m doing serious running.”

  I prickled. “Meaning you don’t think I can keep up with you?”

  “Maybe you can,” he said with a shrug, then took a vitamin.

  “Then why not? In twenty-five words or more,” I added, tired of his short answers.

  He gazed at me with dark brown eyes. “I work hard year-round to keep in shape for lacrosse. I run crosscountry, not little loops around a track.”

  “At home my dad and I do trails through the Catalinas,” I told him. “They’re low mountains, but next to the Eastern Shore, they look like the Rockies.”

  He nodded, unimpressed, then opened a different bottle and took another vitamin.

  “Tell me,” I said, “what kind of supplement do you take to grow an attitude like yours?”

  A crack of a smile, just a crack. Then he pushed both bottles toward me. “Help yourself, though I think your attitude’s developed enough.”

  I glanced at the bottles, which contained ordinary vitamins, then sat down at the kitchen table to drink my juice. I wished I had a newspaper to read, something to page through casually while waiting for him to leave. I grabbed a cereal box and studied that until I heard the screen door bang shut. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Grandmother mark a page in her Bible, then put it on a shelf by the window.

  She returned to the table, resting her hands on the back of a chair. “You’re not at all like your mother.”

  I glanced up, surprised. What an odd comment from someone who never forgot I wasn’t related by birth! “Did you expect me to be?”

  “Children learn from the person with whom they live. Even as a teenager, your mother was always sweet-natured and gentle with people. She never had a harsh comment for anyone.”

  “Still doesn’t,” I said, setting aside the cereal box.

  “So where did you get that sharp tongue?” Grandmother asked.

  I sighed and stood up. “Don’t know. Where did your child get her gentleness?”

  I went for a run by myself that morning, following Scarborough Road away from town, passing field after field of harvested corn. I knew better than to expect an invitation to the football game that afternoon. After a long shower and a quick brunch, I asked Grandmother if she wanted to do some shopping in town. She informed me that she only mixed with “the riffraff” when absolutely necessary.

  “I shall tell Matt to drop you off,” she added.

  “Thanks, but I can get there myself.”

  I figured it was only a twenty-minute walk to the stores on High Street, and I was too proud to accept any ride she had commanded.

  In the early afternoon I crossed the bridge over Wist Creek. When I turned onto High Street, I saw a sign advertising “Sidewalk Saturday.” About four blocks from the harbor, the shopping district turned into one long sale. Paperbacks were piled in wheelbarrows by the steps of Urspruch’s Books. Mobiles and wind chimes dangled from the sycamore tree in front of Faye’s Gallery. Teague’s Antiques had transformed its patch of bricks into a Victorian parlor with chairs and a sofa. Groups of people strolled in and out of the small shops, some of the crowd walking in the street. Cars crept along, apparently used to this weekend style of life.

  When I arrived at Yesterdaze, Ginny barely had time to say hello. Her shop clerk had gone home ill, which left Ginny trying to guide shoppers and cover the register.

  “Want some help?” I asked. “I work at Dad’s animal hospital. I know how to count change and do credit card purchases.”

  “Oh, honey, it’s your vacation.”

  “But I’d like to,” I told her
. “Matt doesn’t want to hang out with me. Grandmother doesn’t want to hang out with anyone. This would give me something to do.”

  Ginny played with the amber beads around her neck. “Well, I could sure use a hand,” she admitted, her eyes darting after a customer. “You’re on.”

  Wearing a work apron embroidered with the shop’s name, armed with credit forms and a money box, I took my place at a table outside. I bagged and boxed. I read price tags and squinted at driver’s licenses, copying their numbers onto checks. Some customers were locals, but more were visitors, many from Baltimore and Philadelphia. I enjoyed watching the parade of people and listening to the conversations around me. I learned that shoppers are not as easy to deal with as dogs and cats.

  A senior citizen with salon-molded hair argued with Ginny for selling a jacket she had asked Ginny to hold over two months ago. Her nurse companion, a heavyset woman, forty-something, picked through the lace handkerchiefs on the table next to me. “She’ll go on like this for another five minutes,” said the aide. “Maybe ten. We’ve argued our way down two blocks of High Street. Always do.”

  “Sounds like you don’t have an easy job,” I replied sympathetically.

  She shrugged. “Easier than the last one. Pay’s better too. Mrs. Barnes thinks it’s still 1950.”

  I looked up from the roll of quarters I had just cracked open. “Mrs. Barnes?”

  “Out Scarborough House.” The woman kept wrinkling her nose and sniffling, while looking at the elegant handkerchiefs. I was afraid she was going to use one.

  “Guess you’re not from these parts,” she said.

  “I, uh, just arrived.”

  “Well, let me put it this way. Mrs. Barnes makes ner”-she gestured toward the older woman-“seem like a saint to live with. As for that spooky old house on the Wist, where she’ll let you board ’cause she’s paying you peanuts, well, I wouldn’t live there for any amount of money.”

  “How come?” I asked, curious.

  “It’s haunted.”

  My eyes widened. The woman saw she had an interested audience.

  “My sister warned me,” she chattered on. “Said it wasn’t just the house. It was the family. None of them Scarboroughs was quite right in the head. That’s why Mrs. Barnes’s daughter ran off like she did. She had to get away.”