Whitefern

  “Yes, she was.”

  “That’s a tragedy we don’t want repeated,” she said, the corners of her mouth drawn in.

  “I hope not,” I said. “The very thought terrifies me.”

  “As it should anyone. Well, let’s get to it. Where’s your sister?”

  “She’s in her room. I’ll take you there. You understand what she’s like?”

  “Mentally retarded. I would hate to count how many girls like that I’ve delivered or assisted in delivering. Nature gave them the ability to produce offspring but left them unprotected when it comes to sexual matters, not that some of the smartest girls don’t get into trouble. I’ve had plenty of them, too. Whenever I see that, I believe there very likely is a vengeful God.”

  “I wouldn’t categorize her as mentally retarded. She’s slow to understand things, but that’s because she was underdeveloped when she was born prematurely and—”

  “Call her what you want. I know what to expect.”

  “She’s very, very sensitive, Mrs. Matthews. She has the body of a woman but the emotional development of a little girl.”

  She turned to me, the corners of her mouth drawn in again as she pressed her upper lip over the lower one before speaking. “I think I’ve been doing this long enough to know how to handle a pregnant girl regardless of her mental and emotional age. The physical aspects aren’t different. Shall we get on with it? According to Mr. Lowe, you’re not even certain she’s pregnant, and it could be that this is all idle chatter.”

  “I am sure of it, I’m afraid,” I said. “I don’t have medical training like you do, but there are things a woman can sense.”

  She raised her eyebrows. “We’ll soon see.”

  I nodded and led the way to the stairs. After I started up, I realized she wasn’t following. She had paused at the bottom and stood looking up. “Something wrong?” I asked.

  “Any bedrooms downstairs?”

  “There are two in the rear of the house, but neither one has been used for ages, decades, really. They were meant for servants, and we’ve never even thought of them as part of the house. They don’t have fireplaces and haven’t even been cleaned for ages. Why?”

  “I don’t fancy climbing up and down the stairs between the kitchen and her room as many times as I might have to. If she is indeed pregnant, at one point I’ll be attending to your sister closely, and it will be easier if she is down here. It’s also wise to avoid any possibilities of falling when you’re pregnant, and I think we both know that stairways can be deadly. If she’s pregnant, you’ll put her in one of the rear bedrooms,” she declared with the tone of a fait accompli.

  “But . . . they don’t even have heat. The central heating my father had installed didn’t provide for them.”

  “You’ll get portable heaters. Really, this is not a world-shattering problem.”

  “It will be for Sylvia. She is very comfortable in her room. She’s been there ever since she was brought home from the hospital. It’s not easy for her to adjust to changes.”

  She made a humph sound. “Imagine the changes that come over you when you get pregnant. She’ll have a lot to adjust to. This should be the least of it.” She started up after me, glaring at me when I didn’t move.

  “What about her going up to her studio to do her art?” I asked.

  “Are you serious? Send her up another flight of stairs for a hobby?”

  “It’s not a hobby for her. It’s very important to her.”

  She sighed deeply and shook her head. “Bring her art supplies down to her room.”

  “But—”

  “Am I to see her or not?”

  “I’m sorry,” I said, and continued up quickly. I led her to Sylvia’s bedroom. When we entered, Sylvia was at her vanity table. She had brushed her hair and tied it with a red ribbon. Now she was putting on lipstick, too.

  “What is she doing?” Mrs. Matthews asked. “We’re not taking pictures for a maternity magazine.”

  “Sylvia, don’t you remember I said Mrs. Matthews was coming to examine you this morning?”

  “Oh, yes, Audrina.” She smiled. “I just wanted to look nice for her.”

  Mrs. Matthews’s thin, mostly gray eyebrows knitted, and then she stepped further into the room. “Hello, Sylvia,” she said. “I’m Helen Matthews. I’m here to see what’s going on with you.”

  “We’re having a baby,” Sylvia said.

  “Perhaps,” Mrs. Matthews said, not picking up on the “we.” “Let’s check you out. Just lie down on your bed, please. Nothing will hurt, I promise.”

  “It hurts when the baby comes out, but it doesn’t last long. Papa told me that.”

  “Hopefully that’s so,” Mrs. Matthews said. She looked at me and almost, I thought, smiled.

  I stood back to watch her. Sylvia watched her, too, her eyes wide with interest after Mrs. Matthews had put on plastic gloves. Sylvia’s face was full of surprise, but she did not utter a sound when Mrs. Matthews had her bend her legs and spread them.

  “Can you see the baby?” Sylvia asked. I brought my hand up to cover my smile.

  Her innocent trust never ceased to amaze me. It was probably the main reason Papa had made me swear I would always look after her. But I hadn’t done that very well, I reminded myself.

  “Not yet,” Mrs. Matthews said. When she stepped back, she took off her gloves and turned to me. “We can confirm it with a urine sample, but I would say she’s a good six weeks along.”

  “Six weeks? You’re sure.”

  “I said we’d confirm it with a urine sample, but yes, I’m sure. I’ve seen more wombs than Henry the Eighth,” she added, which was a line I imagined she had used often.

  “Hello!” We heard Arden shout from below. He had come in and was heading up the steps.

  “I’ll see to the urine test,” Mrs. Matthews said. She turned to Sylvia. “Let’s go into the bathroom, Sylvia. We have one more thing to do today.”

  I stepped out into the hallway as Arden turned toward Sylvia’s room.

  “Well?” he asked.

  “She’s confident it’s a yes. Six weeks, probably, which makes it right when Mr. Price was giving her art lessons. She’s conducting a urine test to confirm it.”

  He nodded, not looking as upset as I felt or as I’d imagined he would be. “Well, then, there’s nothing to do but go forward with our plan.”

  “Your plan,” I said. He looked at me sharply. “But a plan, yes. I understand. It’s just that now that it’s all true, I feel a bit numb.”

  “You’ll get over it,” he said. He walked past me to the bathroom and stood in the doorway, looking in. “Hi, Helen,” he said. “When you’re finished here, Audrina will show you to my office downstairs, and we’ll discuss the arrangements. Come quickly, as I have to get back to my office.”

  From the way he spoke to her, the tone of his voice, I concluded he’d been telling the truth; he did have some secret he could hold over her. Did he have such confidence in her that he didn’t have to wait for a confirmation? How did he know so much about her abilities? All sorts of suspicions burst like fireworks in my mind.

  He walked past me without another word and hurried down the stairs. I heard Sylvia return to her room and went there. She was sitting comfortably on the bed, her hands in her lap. She didn’t look at all disturbed or upset, so I had to conclude that Mrs. Matthews did know how to turn on good bedside manner when it was necessary. But that didn’t give me full confidence in how she would handle Sylvia. After all, Mr. Price’s assurance that he knew how to handle special education students was what had brought us here.

  “You don’t have to do it right away,” Mrs. Matthews said, “but prepare that bedroom downstairs. The test confirms it.” She closed up her satchel methodically. “I’ll look into prenatal vitamins. Of course, I’m assuming you and Mr. Lowe want
to keep the baby.”

  “Yes,” I said. I knew I sounded weak and indecisive, but she chose to ignore it.

  As she started out, Sylvia called to her, and the prickly woman turned back.

  “Don’t you have to do it to Audrina, too?” my sister asked. “Audrina has to pee on that little stick.”

  Mrs. Matthews looked at me, squeezing her nose and pursing her lips as if a whiff of something rotten had flown under her nostrils.

  “She’ll do it in my bedroom, Sylvia,” I said. Mrs. Matthews shook her head and stepped out. “I’ve got to show Mrs. Matthews something first. I’ll be right back.”

  “Pray tell, what was that about?” Mrs. Matthews asked.

  “My husband will explain it, Mrs. Matthews. Right this way,” I said, and started down the stairs.

  She followed me, and when we arrived at Arden’s office, he looked up from his desk.

  “Mrs. Matthews wants to know why Sylvia thinks I’m pregnant, too, Arden.”

  “Thank you, Audrina,” he said. He stood up and came around his desk to the door. “Why don’t you go back to see if everything is all right with Sylvia while I speak with Mrs. Matthews and explain it all.” He smiled with his all-too-familiar self-confidence.

  I looked at her and nodded. The moment I stepped back, Arden closed the door.

  Secrets had a natural life here, I thought as I went back upstairs. They were born and nurtured like precious flowers. They never died in revelation, either. They stuck to our walls and our lives.

  “While I was peeing, I told Mrs. Matthews I had drawn and painted the baby,” Sylvia said, as soon as I returned to her room. She was lying on her bed, staring up at the ceiling.

  “Did you?”

  “Yes, and told her that’s why I knew the baby was coming. I told her it might be a boy, too.”

  “Was she surprised?”

  “No. She said boys are harder. What’s that mean?”

  “Harder to bring up, I imagine.”

  “Because they get dirty and get into fights?”

  “Among other things, yes,” I said. “Let’s get you dressed. Today we’re supposed to clean the pantry, remember?”

  “No.”

  “Well, we are. You go there and start taking everything out the way we did a few months ago.”

  “Is there going to be a mouse again?” she asked, sitting up and making a scrunched-up face.

  “I hope not.”

  “Maybe there’ll be one dead in the trap. Don’t worry. I’m not afraid of it.”

  “I know you’re not, Sylvia, but remember not to touch it. They can carry diseases, and you can’t get sick now.”

  “I can’t?”

  “I mean you shouldn’t. Not when you’re pregnant.”

  “Then you can’t get sick, either?”

  “Right. Let’s go.”

  When we went downstairs, she went off to the pantry, and I returned to Arden’s office. Mrs. Matthews was already gone, and he was on the phone. He put his hand up, finished his call, and turned to me.

  “It’s all set,” he said.

  “What’s all set?”

  “What I described we would do, Audrina. She’s fully aboard. She understood completely and will play along with your being pregnant, and Sylvia, as far as the world outside is to know, is not.” He sat back, smiling. “She’s even going to come up with a sort of girdle apparatus that you can wear to show the months as time goes by.”

  “I wish I knew why you were so confident in her, Arden.”

  “You’ll have to trust me.” He stood. “Now, I have to go back to the office.”

  “She wants me to move Sylvia into one of the rear bedrooms downstairs.”

  He nodded. “Yes. She mentioned that.”

  “They’ll need portable heaters and more light, and we’ll have to bring her art supplies down. She won’t like it.”

  “Don’t worry. We’ll clean up both of those rooms and make them comfortable.”

  “Both? Why both?”

  “What Sylvia has to do you’ll have to do, right? She’ll put up with it if you are doing it, too. We’ll have to prepare one of the rooms for Mrs. Matthews. She’ll move in after a while, Audrina. It will be like having a private-duty nurse around the clock. Don’t worry about it,” he said. He kissed me quickly on the cheek and started to leave.

  “But why would we have a private-duty maternity nurse, Arden?” I asked, chasing after him.

  He paused. “Because you will be said to have problems with the pregnancy, and that’s why you can’t leave the house. See? It’s a perfect plan.” He smiled and continued out.

  I stood there thinking. I recalled one of Momma and Aunt Ellsbeth’s Tuesday teatimes in which Momma, playing Aunt Mercy Marie, had pointed her finger accusingly at Aunt Ellsbeth and shouted with venom, “Lies are like rats. You give them a home, and they will devour it and everyone in it.”

  “Why?” Vera had asked. She always loved to sit on the floor and watch them go at each other, taking turns to be Aunt Mercy Marie.

  Momma had turned to her, her eyes narrowed. “Because one lie begets another, and that begets another, and woe be to anyone who swims in that swamp.”

  Vera hadn’t been afraid of anyone or anything, even Papa. She’d giggled.

  Momma had turned to Aunt Ellsbeth and, pointing to Vera, said, “See?”

  I hadn’t been sure what she meant by that, but in time, I understood. Aunt Ellsbeth’s whole life with Vera was born from a lie.

  Now I went to join Sylvia to try to keep her busy and not thinking about what lay ahead—for both of us.

  The next day, Mrs. Matthews brought Sylvia her prenatal vitamins and a bottle full of the same pills for me, telling me it couldn’t hurt me to take vitamins. She checked Sylvia’s vitals, blood pressure, and temperature and, with Sylvia watching, did the same for me.

  “She has better blood pressure than you do,” Mrs. Matthews muttered.

  How could she not expect that? Sylvia was totally relaxed and trusting; I was the one who was tense and nervous. No matter what Arden had agreed to with Mrs. Matthews, I was still embarrassed by the deception.

  “As I understand it, your sister performs many household duties?” Mrs. Matthews asked.

  “She helps out, yes.”

  “At one point, we’ll want to restrict her activities. I encourage walking, but you have a special circumstance here, so you’ll have to restrict that after a while to inside only.”

  The full impact of all this subterfuge hit me, and for a few moments, I was stunned. Too often, I remembered how restricted I had been when I was growing up. Papa wouldn’t let me go to school for years, and I practically never left the house, except for church and visits to “my” grave in the cemetery.

  “My goodness,” Mrs. Matthews said, seeing the expression on my face. “You’ve not been sentenced to life imprisonment. Frankly, I think your husband has come up with a very clever plan. Just think of all the nastiness you’ll avoid. Believe me, people are unforgiving and eager to pounce when they have an opportunity to take joy in someone else’s misery. I’ve seen plenty of that,” she added, and closed her satchel.

  “Yes, so have I,” I said.

  “Then you understand.” She smiled, if I could call it that. Her skin seemed to fold in at her cheeks, and her thin lips stretched so that I could see tiny ripples in them. Her smile was more like a flashbulb going off, an instant of light and gone. “I’ve put my telephone number on the refrigerator. Call me if there is the slightest problem. You want to watch for unexpected bleeding, shortness of breath, sudden dizziness, or any swelling and pain in her calf muscles.”

  I didn’t think Sylvia was listening. She seemed absorbed in one of my new fashion magazines. But without looking up, she asked, “Audrina, too?”

  We both looked
at her and simultaneously said, “Yes.”

  I glanced at Mrs. Matthews, realizing I had a co-conspirator.

  “I’ll stop by every two days for the time being and then more frequently,” she said. She nodded at Sylvia and left.

  “She’s very nice,” Sylvia said. “You were right, Audrina. She told me she gave birth to a boy.”

  “I can’t imagine what his life was like,” I muttered, and went into the Roman Revival salon to ponder the journey we were embarking on, as short as it might seem. There were months to go, and I painfully recalled how slowly time would pass when I was confined. I hated the thought that I might once again be sitting by a window, gazing out, and dreaming of going off to be with other girls and boys my age, something that should have been so natural and easy to do.

  Every day now, I tried to forget all that by working harder in the house. In the weeks that followed, I prepared the two unused bedrooms in the rear. I wanted to give their walls a fresh coat of paint, but Mrs. Matthews thought the odor would disturb Sylvia. Arden brought home the portable heaters and hooked them up. He moved some lamps and even rolled one of our bedroom rugs up and carried it with Mr. Ralph to the bedroom he’d decided I would be using. I wanted him to put it in Sylvia’s, but he insisted, claiming that I was the one who was making the greater sacrifice.

  Although Mr. Ralph was as trusted a servant as anyone could have, he naturally was curious about why we were preparing the rooms. I heard Arden explain that I was pregnant and the maternity nurse had insisted on my not having to go up and down the stairs. There could be a lot of medical attention needed.

  “Sylvia,” he said, “is so dependent on Audrina, as you know. She imitates everything she does.”

  The explanation satisfied Mr. Ralph. Arden whispered something to him that caused him to laugh. I nodded to myself, thinking that Arden really was good at handling people. He could be charming and convincing when he had to be. In more and more ways, he reminded me of Papa. They were both comfortable with lies.

  For now, he had nothing more to explain. Sylvia wasn’t showing, of course. That didn’t happen until she was in her fourth month, and it was then that Mrs. Matthews brought the customized girdle for me to wear in public. Sylvia didn’t have to move downstairs yet, and I was still permitted to leave the house to do basic shopping, but Sylvia was not. I had to do it while she was taking a nap or involved in her art up in the cupola. Enough people saw me and believed that I was pregnant. Arden would brag about who had been deceived and how well our plan was working.