“That wasn’t necessary. It wasn’t about the money, at least on my side.”
Miss Bertram barks. “Oh, honey, everything’s about the money.”
“Not to me. I hate it. It distorts everything; it obscures what really matters. People will lie and cheat and do all kinds of things for money, and when they have it, they aren’t any happier than they were before.”
“Is that true? I guess I wouldn’t know. Sure is nice to have enough money, I’ve always thought.”
I turn away from the bench to face her. “Of course no one wants to be poor. But wealth . . .”
“Then I guess it’s a shame you’ve got so much, isn’t it?”
“I haven’t got it. I’ve made sure of that. It’s all gone—or going—to Evelyn. In trust.”
Miss Bertram’s expression goes all bemused. She’s stopped halfway across the garden, just on the other side of the miniature canal, and under the shade of the garden her complexion loses its honeyed undertone, so that she appears almost as a shadow herself. Except for her eyes, which are bright and curious, riveted to my face, and more specifically to my lips, from which those rather bold and revealing words have just escaped.
“To Evelyn?”
I hesitate. But the secret’s already out, isn’t it? “Yes.”
“Well,” she says. “Well.”
“I just don’t want it. I don’t want to wonder whether someone’s making love to me because of my money. And the attention. The way the newspapers—the newspapers—” I seem to run out of breath. Or words, or something. The will to speak.
“I see.”
“Do you?”
She shrugs her shoulders. “You can do as you like, I guess. But it seems to me, you’ve just made your money poor Evelyn’s problem instead. You’ve made her the object of all this unseemly desire. And poor child, she’s not yet three.”
My lips move, shaping words that don’t come out. A bird starts singing in the trees nearby, and such is my ignorance of birds and their distinct voices, my city dweller’s inattention to the details of nature, that I don’t have the slightest clue which bird it is. A faint panic stirs at the base of my brain, from which I’m told such instincts rise.
And maybe Miss Bertram recognizes my panic, or maybe she thinks she’s overstepped her bounds. The sharp, bemused position of her face softens, and she holds out her hand. “Come. Come on back to the house, Mrs. Fitzwilliam. Evelyn’s having her cookies. And you look as if you could use a glass of lemonade.”
“Do I?”
“Yes. Come on, now.”
I start forward obediently. She takes my hand to help me over the canal, before she tucks it into her elbow, and we leave the garden so quickly, I don’t have a chance to say good-bye. Just a quick glance over my shoulder before the bench disappears from view, and then we strike off through the rows and the beds, toward the main house and the promised lemonade.
December 24, 1919
Dearest V,
I imagine I really shouldn’t write to you just now, as I’m feeling immensely sorry for myself and have, in consequence, drunk far too much wine at dinner. You see, this is not quite how I imagined my first Christmas Eve as a married man. I had dreamt of a roaring fire, and a tree trimmed with all sort of ridiculous objects, and a dog at my feet, and Sammy in his pajamas, and best of all my wife at my side, curled up perhaps on an old and venerable sofa. Possibly she should be in the family way by now, and I should be rubbing her poor feet, as properly belongs to a husband who has got his wife in an interesting condition. We should be speaking of the happy year just past, and the delights to come in the year ahead. When the hour is ripe, we should retire upstairs to our bedroom, where I should make my wife comfortable in whatever way she likes best, or at the very least provide a warm shelter in which to give her rest during the holy Christmas night.
Alas, my dream remains inside my head. There is no fire, roaring or otherwise, as the temperature hovered around seventy-three degrees for much of the afternoon; no dog, no comfortable sofa. Sammy and the other children are all abed. The tree is a meager one, hung with tinsel made hastily from old wrapping paper by my heroic housekeeper, who realized my melancholy around four o’clock this afternoon, I believe, and did her best to lift my holiday spirits.
But worst of all, there is no wife. Dogs and trees and sofas may be dispensed with, but Virginia is essential to my Christmas contentment, and so I have retired to bed in hopes of conjuring her here somehow, at least in spirit: so far I have succeeded in picturing your hair and your face and that glorious, supple tall figure of yours, but for some reason I cannot find your eyes, even though I know their color and shape. I cannot picture them somehow, and it grieves me so much, I can hardly hold this pen to paper. Forgive me. I hope I haven’t upset you. Or perhaps I hope that very thing: isn’t that why I’m writing these letters to begin with? To move you, to soften you toward me, so that this dream of mine may become reality by next Christmas.
Next Christmas! There we are. I’ll think of that instead. The house will be finished by then. This room will be new-painted and furnished. I have tried to imagine how you would want our bedroom to look, and I’m afraid it’s rather hard going, as the decoration of houses was the very last thing we were ever inclined to discuss. But I have the feeling you would like something in the classical style, with plenty of light from a series of tall French windows, one of which should open onto a balcony—what they call sleeping porches here, because it grows so hot and close during the summer, you would rather sleep outside, on a balcony screened against the mosquitoes. I think you would like something open and airy and light in color, and simple furniture, and plenty of shelves for books. I hope you won’t be disappointed when you see what I’ve done, though of course you can redecorate in any style you like.
A knock has just sounded on the door, and Miss Portia has brought in some warm milk to help me sleep. She is our housekeeper, as you may recall from my earlier letters, but more than that: she is really a kind of manager for the plantation itself, and we have worked together closely on all aspects of the repair of the house and the orchards. I should tell you that I have recently discovered something rather shocking about her. Prepare yourself. Having observed her appearance and education and her fierce loyalty to Maitland, I often wondered whether she has some deeper connection to the place, and it seems I was right. She is in fact Lydia’s natural half-sister, a few years younger, conceived—I am afraid—during the course of the Gibbonses’ marriage, when Mr. Gibbons came to visit my father here at Maitland. Her mother was the schoolteacher for the children of the workers, back when the place was in some sort of order and harvests were regular. I suppose that explains her passionate love for this place, to say nothing of her tenderness to me, which I don’t flatter myself I did anything particular to deserve.
In any case, I do hope you won’t hold her birth against her, though I believe you never would; you are too kind and fair-minded for that. I suppose, in God’s eyes, she has just as much right to this business as I do. I mean to ask her, one day when we know each other a little better, how well she knew her father, and whether he took much interest in her upbringing. Whether Mrs. Gibbons knew of her existence, and whether she cared.
Are you the jealous sort, love? If you are, you never gave me the slightest hint. Somehow I think you would hold out the branch of forgiveness, in Mrs. Gibbons’s place, and would love the child itself regardless of the shame of its conception. But maybe I have only begun to idealize you in my mind, to hang virtues upon you as Portia and Sammy and I hung our makeshift tinsel upon the tree this evening.
I believe I had better finish my milk and go to sleep now, dearest wife. I hope you have spent your Christmas Eve in joy, surrounded by the love of your sister and father. You have certainly been well loved here, inside the heart of your faithful husband,
S.F.
Chapter 16
Maitland Plantation, Florida, July 1922
Do you know how long it takes
to grow an orange? Why, all year, almost! The blooms first come out in the spring, just as they do on the fruit trees back home, but the harvest doesn’t begin until winter. And in the meantime, those trees just keep blooming and blooming, for no reason I can see. Miss Bertram says they tend to put out new blossoms after a good fall of rain—hedging their bets, I suppose—but as we get regular cloudbursts in the afternoons, I don’t see why those trees should take it personally like that.
Anyway, I don’t mind. It’s such a heady fragrance, mingled with the ripening citrus flavor of the oranges themselves, so that when the wind is just right, passing through the orchard to your open window, it fills your head like a drug of some kind. A most marvelous medicine. Miss Bertram always makes sure a vaseful ends up in my room, and I sink my face into the blooms at morning and at night, every chance I get. Every time I gather enough strength to rise from my bed and drag my unwilling body across the room.
Everything you seek is here.
Five simple words, so familiar a young child could read them, and yet I still can’t quite grasp their meaning. Maybe it’s the fog in my head. But what did the author mean? Everything I seek is here in the room? Inside the house itself? Or all of Maitland Plantation? Well, it doesn’t matter. I’m not going anywhere, am I?
I haven’t left this room since the second morning after my arrival.
The doctors, I think, are stumped, although they pretend not to be. Doctors can’t show that kind of weakness, can they? Not in front of the patient herself. They examine me knowingly, making all the right noises of assurance and professional competence, and then they retire with Miss Bertram to confer. I have been given various pills and ointments and elixirs, all of which I refused to take, hiding them instead under my mattress or down the drain of the bathroom sink—an act of rebellion that required a supreme physical effort. It’s not that I don’t trust them. Why, Miss Bertram couldn’t be more concerned about me. You ought to see her face, all compressed with worry, her eyebrows nearly meeting in the middle. She brings Evelyn to see me twice a day, and Evelyn sits on the bed and plays card games with me until my brain can’t keep up, until the effort of keeping track of the cards overwhelms me. That’s when Miss Bertram purses her lips and plucks Evelyn from the bed and whisks her away, because Mama needs her rest so she can get all better, isn’t that right?
But Mama’s not getting any better.
I figure it must be my head. The feeling, you know, is not dissimilar to the way I felt after an accident at the end of the war. My head took a bad knock then, too, and I lay in a hospital bed for months. My memory of that time remains hazy to this day. So this mental strain, this sort of febrile disorientation (though I haven’t got a fever, haven’t got measurable symptoms of any kind) isn’t entirely unknown to me.
But I’m not foolish, even if I can hardly make it to the bathroom under my own power, and require Miss Bertram’s help to bathe properly. I won’t take their medicine, which isn’t going to help anyway. I won’t take palliatives of any kind. Except aspirin for my headaches, one at night and one in the morning.
That’s all.
When Evelyn’s taking her nap and Miss Bertram’s other duties aren’t claiming her, she comes to sit with me in my bedroom. That’s when she brings the fresh flowers and lemonade and we talk. For as long as my mind can hold a conversation, that is.
She’s worried about me, of course. She smooths my pillow and straightens my blankets, and I can tell she’s keeping busy because she doesn’t want me to see the expression on her face. She asks me how I’m feeling. I always say I’m feeling better. I don’t want to disappoint her. This particular morning, which I believe to be the second week of July, though I can’t be absolutely sure, I add something more, for effect. Something about how Maitland Plantation is better than any hospital for the recovery of one’s head after a blow like that.
“I’ve always thought so,” she agrees, pouring the lemonade, “though I guess I’ve never taken a blow to the head, myself.”
“They heal so slowly, you know. Brain injuries, I mean. I saw so many of them among the soldiers. You start to think you’re feeling better, but you’re really not yourself. Not for some time. So you want to be somewhere safe. Like an animal in its den.”
“I see. And Maitland’s your den?”
“Yes, it is. I am so glad Clara brought me here.”
“So am I, Mrs. Fitzwilliam. You can stay just as long as you like, you know. No need to go dashing off back to New York.”
“New York? Of course not. Not yet, anyway. I find I’m liking Florida far more than I thought I would, when I first arrived.”
“The state does grow on a person, I’m told. I guess I was just lucky to be born here, so I never had to experience much else.”
“Never? You’ve never been outside of Florida?”
She lifts a shortbread from the tray. There are always shortbreads, too, though I never eat any. Only Miss Bertram does. “Except for college, I guess.”
“College!”
“I went away to Radcliffe for a couple of years.”
“Radcliffe! In Massachusetts? You went to Radcliffe?”
“Yes, indeed. The very one. I think I told you my mama was a schoolteacher? She had such hopes for me. Such big old dreams. And my daddy, why, he would do anything my mama asked of him. He doted on us both.”
“Your father? Does he live here, too?”
She laughs. “Oh, no, ma’am. My daddy’s passed on, a few years back. And he never did live with us. I was born on what we call the wrong side of the blanket, you know. My daddy’s a white man, a businessman who used to come out here from time to time. He was friends with old Mr. Fitzwilliam, though Mr. Fitzwilliam visited the place but once or twice. But my daddy met my mama here, one of those times, and they fell in love, and—well, here I am. Not of one world nor the other. Betwixt and between.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Nothing to be sorry about. You can’t change folks, and you make yourself unhappy trying. Why, I was lucky, by any measure. I had everything I needed. My daddy did love my mama, loved her dearly, even if he had a wife elsewhere. A family elsewhere. He was one of those fellows who possessed what you might call an excess of love for the female sex. And he did want the best for me. He surely did. Paid for me to go up north and study at the finest college money could buy. But we didn’t suit, Radcliffe and me.”
“Oh, dear.”
“Now, Mrs. Fitzwilliam, don’t you go giving me that look.”
“What look?”
“That pity look. Poor little Negro, she woulda had such a bad time among all the white folks. It wasn’t like that. No, ma’am. I was their pet darkie. You just about had to invite me to lunch or to teatime, if you wanted to pass muster your first semester. All those clever, rich Brahmin girls, they simply couldn’t wait to be my bosom friend.” She plucks at the cookie, examining each piece against the light before popping it into her mouth, so that I can’t help wondering what she’s looking for.
“So what happened?”
“I got homesick. Who wouldn’t?” She makes a long gesture of her arm, toward the tall French windows. “For one thing, Florida’s got all these characters. It’s like the Wild West sometimes. Billy the Kid got nothing on some of these moonshiners and gladesmen.”
“I wish I could meet one of them.”
Miss Bertram snorts. “No, you don’t, Mrs. Fitzwilliam. Not especially in the state you’re in.”
“Why, what state am I in?”
She sets down the remains of the shortbread, dusts the crumbs from her fingers, and strokes my hand. “I’m going to tell you a little story, Mrs. Fitzwilliam. I think it’s about time you had to know it.”
“Know what?”
“It’s about Mr. Fitzwilliam. It was just after Christmas, you see. He’d had a big old dustup with his brother, over there in Cocoa. Had to do with all those ships and what they were carrying.”
“Moonshine.”
“Oh, so y
ou figured that out, did you?”
“It wasn’t hard.”
“Well, but you’re just a New Yorker, Mrs. Fitzwilliam. You don’t know from moonshine. Anyway, it wasn’t just what was going out, you see. It was what was coming in. Rum, mostly. Rum from Cuba, rum from the Bahamas. A nice little business. Anyway, you know how it is with business. Once you start to make a little money, other folks want a piece of your action. And the folks who wanted a piece of Mr. Fitzwilliam’s action, well, they weren’t nice folks. So Mr. Fitzwilliam, like a good gambler, he decided he was going to quit while he was ahead. He was going to use that profit to pay off the outlaws once and for all and go back to the ways things were. Honest cargo.”
Her voice, low and sort of rhythmic, affects me like a lullaby. I have to fasten on each word, to concentrate, to part the veils of fog in my head. To remind myself that this is important, Virginia, important. Pay attention. Simon and Samuel, they had a fight.
I say, “And I suppose Samuel didn’t agree. He liked the dishonest cargo just fine.”
“That he did. You see, Master Samuel, he still wanted to make some money. I guess he didn’t feel the orchards and the ships were making enough. And he and Mr. Fitzwilliam, they had a big old fight, and Mr. Fitzwilliam came home and told me about it. He said Mr. Samuel had offered to buy out the shipping business from him, and he said no. And he told me he thought Mr. Samuel was in deeper than he was letting on. And he said he was going to do something about it.”
“Like what?”
“That, I don’t know. He wouldn’t say. But he did tell me this, Mrs. Fitzwilliam.” She squeezes my hand and leans closer, almost over my face itself, so I can smell the sweet shortbread on her breath. The tang of lemonade. “He said I was to watch out for you. If you was to come down here to Florida, looking for him, I was to keep you safe. He said to me, Portia, if anything happens to my wife, why, I’d never forgive myself. She is the most important thing in the world to me. Everything I do, I do for her sake.”