Bright Young Things

  Twenty or so men were standing on the porch, huddling around one of the floral sofas. Though no one was speaking, the atmosphere was distinctly grim. Many of them were wearing dark suits, and the backs of their jackets formed a wall, which Charlie and Cordelia had to push through to see what they were all looking at.

  “Charlie,” Elias Jones said, when he saw him. He stepped away from the others and put his arms forward to stop the younger man in his tracks. “Everyone out.”

  As the wall of men began to break apart, Cordelia noticed the blood on the floor, spreading under the soles of their shoes.

  “No!” That was Charlie‧s voice, but it wasn‧t like any human utterance she had ever heard. It was the kind of wail of fear and rage that one hears late at night, in very desolate parts of the country, when an animal has lost one of its young.

  Then she realized that it wasn‧t Thom but her father whose blood was spilled all over the white and turquoise tile.

  “Oh, no,” she heard herself say, as her eyes fell shut and the muscles in the back of her neck grew rigid.

  Meanwhile, the men shuffled backward, but they did not leave the room completely. Charlie was pushing against Jones. “Where is the doctor?” he was yelling. “Why hasn‧t anyone gone for the doctor?”

  “He said he didn‧t want ‘im,” said Len, the cook. The big fellow‧s complexion was ashen, and his eyes were rimmed with red. “Said it would be too late when he got here, and a man oughta know when his number‧s up.”

  Finally Charlie overpowered Jones and sank down at his father‧s side. To her surprise, Charlie called out for her. “Cordelia?” he said, without turning to meet her eyes. “Cordelia, come here.”

  Those thick-bodied men blocking the door watched as she stepped forward and went down on her knees next to Charlie. She had not shaken that sense that he hated her, and was surprised when she felt her brother‧s arm around her shoulder. He was trying, she realized, to comfort her. For a moment she couldn‧t tell whether or not her father was still alive. The collared ivory shirt he had been wearing was soaked with dark red blood. But then he opened his eyes, and though they were murky, she knew he saw them, because he said, through labored breathing, “My children.”

  Charlie took one of Darius‧s hands, and she took the other. His blood was slick and warm, on his hands and everywhere, and soon theirs were covered in blood, too.

  “You are both my heirs,” he said. Then his eyes closed, and they did not open again.

  For a long time they knelt like that, while the light in the room faded from the burnt oranges and reds of sunset to crepuscular blues. No one switched on the lamps, and the shadows under their burning eyes became pronounced. Once, when she was a girl, she had seen a man pulled under his tractor who later bled to death. This was nothing like that. She could sense that her father was in pain, but he bore it stoically, with none of the wild screaming she remembered on the farm. Both she and Charlie watched him, until she heard Jones say, “He‧s gone.” By then her face was wet with silent tears.

  Both Grey siblings were covered in blood. Charlie stood up first, and then Cordelia followed.

  “How …?” she whispered.

  “We don‧t know. There was only one man. No one recognized him, though he must have been one of Hale‧s, and it seems he went out through the—” Jones glanced up at Grey‧s men, lined up and watching, and then shook his head as if to say that nothing really mattered anymore. “Through the tunnel. Eddie and Wilson chased him, but he had a good start and he was fast, and when they came out the other end, he was already in a motorboat and racing away.”

  Cordelia buried her face in the crook of her elbow, as she tried to wipe away her tears without getting blood all over her face.

  “Both of you go wash up,” Jones said. His tone was as even-keeled as ever, except with a faint hint of sorrow. “There‧s much to decide, but later.”

  She nodded and glanced at Charlie. But the spirit with which he had put his arm around her was gone. There was a blackness over his irises now, something seething within him, and the ferocity with which he had sped up the hill was now focused entirely on her. It was only in the ensuing silence that she remembered how few people knew of the tunnel. Her mind raced, but she couldn‧t bring herself to think that Thom could do a thing like this, that she could possibly be in any way to blame. So she passed Charlie, walking out into the hall and toward the stairs.

  She took the steps of the first flight slowly, and her weariness and shock briefly crowded out any thought of Thom or Charlie, or how any of it had happened, or why. There was only the stark fact that her father was gone. She thought of him, yesterday afternoon, on the porch, looking somewhat older than usual, telling her that her aim was getting better and what a good shot she‧d soon become. It was after she had rounded the first landing and begun ascending the second flight of stairs that she became aware of feet falling behind her. They sounded menacing against the hard wood, and they exactly matched her pace. Her pulse quickened; Charlie was following her. Fear spread through her veins, and though she tried hard to think what to do, she could not begin to imagine how she could help herself if Charlie brought the full brunt of his anger against her.

  When she reached the third-floor hall, she turned around and faced him.

  “Where did you think you were going, there on the road?” he demanded as he came up behind her.

  She stared at him, her face broken by sorrow and trepidation, but could not think of how to answer that question.

  “It was Thom, wasn‧t it?” he continued, circling her. “You‧re still seeing him, aren‧t you?”

  “What does it matter?” she replied tiredly. “What does any of it matter now?”

  “It matters,” Charlie returned, yelling now. “It matters because someone has to pay. You told him, didn‧t you? You told him about the tunnel.”

  Cordelia shook her head and covered her face with her hands.

  “Charlie!” It was Jones on the first floor, his voice urgent and demanding. “Charlie, come down now. I need you. You can wash up later.”

  Though her eyes were still covered, there was no doubt of Charlie‧s presence as it drew nearer to her. When he spoke, his words were quieter, but in their terse precision, they had become more violent. “He used you. He used you like a whore. He used you to get to Dad, and now Dad is dead. You are useless.” His breath by then was hot on her ear. “You are worse than useless. This is your fault.”

  “No …,” she wailed, but he was already walking away, his feet hitting against the polished steps so hard, they echoed up to the ceiling. Anyway, she wasn‧t sure what she was saying no to anymore. She wanted none of it to be true, but however much it stabbed at her, she knew that to be impossible.

  On the first floor, Charlie and Jones were speaking, but she couldn‧t make out any of their conversation, so she turned and made her leaden feet carry her to her room. When she opened the door, her maid stood up from the edge of the bed where she had been sitting with her hands folded in her lap.

  “What is it? What happened?” Milly asked, her terrified eyes darting back and forth.

  “They killed him.” Cordelia choked up and brought her fist over her mouth. “Father is … dead.”

  “Oh.” Milly shifted, still frightened and now confused, too. “Oh, no.”

  Cordelia‧s fist opened, and she spread her palm over her belly. She forced herself to take a long breath and appear somewhat composed. “Don‧t you fall apart now,” she said, and though she had meant to sound kind, she knew that it came out more like a threat. “I need you to draw me a bath.”

  The maid nodded and went to do as she was told. Once the sound of water rushing into a porcelain tub could be heard in the next room, she returned and pulled Cordelia‧s dress over her head. She paused, staring at it, as though she were thinking how she would go about cleaning the bloodied garment.

  “Just throw the damn dress out,” Cordelia said. Then she walked into the bathroom and clos
ed the door.

  At first she yearned to know where Thom was and what he was thinking, and hear his explanation, and then afterward to be comforted by him. But as she stepped into the steaming water, the more she felt like the horrible word Charlie had called her. She was an idiot and a whore, and she had been used, in the most obvious way possible. The water felt as if it would scald her skin, but then she became used to it and was relieved that it was that hot, almost as though it might melt away her whole self and the multitude of things she‧d done wrong.

  For a long while she sat in the bath, and by the time the water had grown cold on her long, goosefleshed limbs, she decided that Thom had never really cared for her. He had never cared for her, and he had taken from her the lone person in her life who had fully embraced and protected her. She began to cry again, her tears streaming down her body into the bathwater. She cried for being so stupid, and she cried for the man who‧d lost his life, for the things she‧d known about him and the things she would now never know, and she cried for the carefree, privileged world that had been hers for only a few glorious weeks, and she cried for all the years no one had loved her and all the many future years when no one would love her again.

  When her tears were gone, she got out of the bath and put on the robe her father had bought her so that she would be warm on cool nights. Everything was very stark within her, and when she went to the French doors and stood on the threshold of the balcony, she saw that the darkness at Dogwood was the same as it was everywhere else.

  25

  “WHERE‧D YOU GET THE FANCY DRESS?”

  Letty‧s eyes were sealed shut, and short strands of dark hair were plastered to her face with sweat. The voice was Fay‧s, she decided after a moment. So she was home; that was something. But her head was foggy, and the skin around her left eye socket was terribly tender. After a moment, she got up the courage to open her eyes, but this proved to be an error.

  “Ohhhh …,” Letty moaned. She flinched at the bright light and the sight of her three roommates, standing over her. They were wearing those festively colored robes, and their heads were all cocked at unfriendly angles.

  Then the memory of her humiliation at the St. Regis came back to her, and she had to cover her face. Somewhere along the path home, she had found herself in a second-story speakeasy which looked down on a purple street, where an older gentleman with a well-tailored suit and bad teeth, who claimed to be a Vanderbilt, had bought her drinks. Later on, she had been relieved to find that there was enough gin left over in the icebox to put her to sleep. She was still wearing her new dress, although in its current wrinkled state, it didn‧t look nearly so glorious.

  “Heard any rumors about the midnight gin thief?” Kate seconded. When Letty parted the fingers that covered her eyes, she saw that the brunette was holding up an empty bottle accusatorily.

  “What happened to your eye?” Paulette put her hands over her mouth, as though it pained her to see her friend like this, but when she spoke again she, too, had a hostile tone. “Mr. Cole was furious you didn‧t show at work last night. He said you‧re not to come back—and he put me on Mondays, and took me off Saturdays, for having wasted his time with you.”

  Letty rolled over and buried her face in the threadbare sofa‧s velvet cushions. Her stomach whined and churned. None of her roommates moved, and in the silence, she could hear Good Egg running circles around the couch. An image of Amory‧s friends staring at her as she stood on the stage at the St. Regis flashed in her memory like a knife.

  “Did you make any money last night?” Fay asked.

  “No,” Letty whimpered.

  “Then you‧ll have to leave,” Kate snapped.

  “What?” Letty rolled over and her eyes got wide. A cold panic was flowing through her body.

  “Oh, honey, don‧t let the big blues well up, it‧ll just make it harder for everyone,” Fay said, in a not entirely unkind voice.

  Letty‧s eyes shifted to Paulette, who had turned around to sit in a wooden chair by the wood-burning stove. For a while she wouldn‧t meet her friend‧s gaze. When she did, she lifted a delicate mauve chiffon evening dress with looping silver beading all over the bodice. In her other hand were a needle and thread, as though she had been trying to repair the garment. “Did Good Egg do this?” she said slowly, holding up the ragged, torn part of the skirt. There was a pile of similarly torn garments in a basket by her feet.

  At the sound of her name, Good Egg came racing around again, a thundercloud-colored streak, and began wagging her tail furiously by Letty‧s legs. “Oh, dear …,” Letty said. “Oh, dear. Oh, Good Egg!”

  Good Egg threw herself down at Letty‧s feet and gazed up guiltily with those almond-shaped eyes.

  “I‧ll buy you a new one, I promise!” Letty wailed.

  “With what money?” Fay placed a hand on her hip and widened her eyes.

  “If Amory Glenn had paid me the thirty-five dollars …,” Letty began, but she trailed off when she remembered what the thirty-five dollars had really been for.

  “Amory Glenn told you he‧d pay you what? Just to sing?” Fay hooted. “And you believed him,” she added, tsk-tsking.

  “I‧m sorry, Letty,” Paulette said. “You have to go. The dog‧s ruined some of my nicest things, and anyway Clara needs a bed, and I told her she could have your place.”

  “Clara Hay?”

  The three roommates nodded. Letty felt as though the Earth was falling away beneath her.

  “But I‧ll pay you back … I‧ll give you all the money I have saved up now, as an advance on rent!” Letty pleaded, grabbing Good Egg‧s collar gently to make her quiet down. Sensing her mistress‧s urgency, the dog did pause, letting out a slight whimper, but continuing to wag her tail. “Please, don‧t put me out. I‧ll get a job. Good Egg will behave, won‧t you, baby? Won‧t you?”

  “How much do you have?” Paulette asked.

  Letty closed her eyes. After the money she had spent on the dress, that left … “Five dollars?” she said, as though it were a question. As the paltry sum hung in the air, she realized that it was too late for her. She didn‧t deserve to stay.

  Fay sighed loudly. “Save your money, honey, and use it for the next train back to Kansas.”

  “I‧m sorry,” Paulette said. “Clara‧s got a job, and you haven‧t, and I can‧t stick my neck out for you anymore.”

  With the troublesome greyhound at her heels, Letty returned to her room and, trying not to cry, began to pack her things into the old duffel she‧d carried all the way from Union. The clothes she‧d brought from Ohio looked even drabber to her now than they had before. The dresses that Paulette had let her wear had felt like hers, but that had been only a temporary illusion. Friendship, she was beginning to see, could be awfully fleeting.

  Before she could help it, she was thinking of Cordelia—but though the memory of her old friend made her sad, she found some strength there, too. She tried to do what Cordelia would have done—she unbuttoned the collar of her old black dress, pressed her straight black hair down over her forehead, and lipsticked her mouth. She bent and looked into Good Egg‧s eyes and whispered, “We‧re going to be all right,” even though her voice was shaking.

  When she came back into the living room, her head was held high. The duffel bag over her shoulder was not, she knew, particularly ladylike, but she found that despite the trouble Good Egg had caused, the greyhound buoyed Letty‧s spirits and was rather elegant to boot.

  “Well, I‧ll see you around.” Letty gave a wave and walked toward the door, with what dignity she could muster.

  Fay closed the magazine she had been reading and let her features assume a mask of sentimental concern. “Don‧t fall in with any Amory Glenns out there,” she said, from the couch.

  Without returning her comment, Letty left the apartment behind and stepped, as bravely as she could, onto the sidewalk. The day was clear and new, and she could tell how warm it was going to be once the sun got high in the sky. But that would
only shine a cruel light on her hopelessness. There were little pink flowers on the branches of the trees, and people all around, and none of them seemed particularly interested in her or the rough way she‧d been treated the night before. They were all just going about their business, as though the girl with the helmet of black hair didn‧t exist.

  “Wait!”

  She turned and saw Paulette coming up the three steps to street level, offering her a weak smile with one corner of her mouth.

  “Here,” she said. The fluttery black dress that Letty had worn the night Amory Glenn took her to the Grotto was scrunched up in her hands, and she quickly folded it into a neat square. “I want you to have this. It doesn‧t fit me anymore anyway. Really, it looked better on you. And this,” Paulette said, handing Letty a ten-dollar bill. She shrugged apologetically. “It‧s all I can spare right now.”

  Good Egg sat down beside her on the walk, and looked up inquisitively at the taller of the two girls.

  “I couldn‧t.” Letty set her lips together and shook her head. “I‧ve already cost you so much already.”

  “Who cares?” Paulette said, throwing her arms up. “Anyway, we‧ll see—maybe someday you‧ll pay me back with interest.”

  “Thank you.” Letty pushed the dress into her duffel and carefully placed the bill in her pocket.

  Paulette bent and kissed Letty on the cheek. “Toughen up, honey,” she said with a sigh, and then turned and went back into the apartment.

  “Well, Good Egg, where to now?” Her headache was ebbing, and there were still pink flowers on the trees, and Paulette had been kind, even though she probably didn‧t deserve to be treated nicely anymore. Letty bent on one knee and drew her hand along her dog‧s slender head. “I‧m glad I have you, anyway,” she said, and for a moment she shuddered, remembering how narrowly Good Egg had escaped the slaughter, and thinking what might have happened if Grady hadn‧t been there, with five dollars to give that beastly man.