43
An album
Whatever had knocked loose from me had rolled out of sight by the time I’d finished making a Bombay Breakfast for Aurora. What inspired this new drink was the bottle of gin in the back office safe called Bombay. The finished drink, I thought, surpassed the Appledew. Besides the rum, the Jack Daniel’s, and the Curaçao (which I discovered had an orange flavor), I put in orange juice, pineapple juice, and half a mashed banana, which I whisked together with one of the broken eggs Walter had saved. (This also felt thrifty.) The whole thing struck me as a very healthful drink. The egg especially gave it an honorary breakfast standing.
“This ain’t an Appledew,” said Aurora Paradise, complaining right off.
Still, she looked at the tall glass with an air of expectation. For had I ever let her down? I had also found among Mrs. Davidow’s souvenir swizzle sticks one with a camel sitting atop it. It made, I thought, a nice Bombay-ish touch.
She sipped and smacked her lips. “This is a good drink, Missy.” She took another, longer swallow and said it again.
“I’m glad you like it, but don’t expect it every morning. It takes a lot of trouble.”
She flicked her fingers at me. Today her crocheted mittens were pale olive green with tiny darker green leaves done in satin. I wondered if she had made all of these mittens herself. I couldn’t imagine her having the patience. “Oh, you’re just so all-fired lazy.”
“No, I’m not. Listen: I can’t be making you drinks every time you get a mind for one, remember. Mrs. Davidow will be back soon and I can’t be getting stuff out of her safe all the time.”
“Well, I’ll give you some money and you can go to the liquor store.”
I rolled my eyes at this crazy suggestion. “I’m twelve, remember?”
“Then send that man.”
“Look, we had a bargain you’d show me that photo album, there.” It sat on the side table at her elbow.
She slid a glance that way, then gave me a sly look. “How about doing the pea-trick first?”
“No! It’s not even a trick because you hide the walnut shells right from the start.”
She sighed. “Oh, all right, if you’re going to be contrary.” She set aside the drink and picked up the album. It was covered in an olive-green silk the color of her mittens. It was water stained and a little threadbare. She turned a few pages quickly as if she knew exactly which one she wanted, and said, “There!” Her finger tapped one of the snapshots.
A young pale-haired woman sat on the top rung of a wooden fence; the dark-haired young man leaned against it. They were both smiling happily.
I gasped. They were Rose Devereau and Ben Queen.
“Couldn’t’ve been more’n twenty when that was took.”
Questions tumbled in my mind. I picked one. “Where are they?”
“Spirit Lake, looks like.”
“There’s no sign of the lake.”
Aurora looked again. “Could be Paradise Valley or Cold Flat Junction.” She shrugged. “Could be anywhere, I guess.”
Most places seemed to be so hard to pin down they did seem “anywhere.” It was important to anchor the two to a particular place. While I was studying the snapshot for clues, she whipped the album out of my hands.
“That ain’t all!” Now she flipped to another page and turned the album so I could see it. Here was another couple, and this snapshot was older than the one of Rose and Ben. They were posing, she awkwardly, he easily, as if used to the camera’s attention. He was dressed in a dark blazer and light trousers and was very good-looking. She was wearing an embroidered white dress. His smile was brilliant. He was the young man in the old photograph Dwayne had shown me.
“That there is Isabel Devereau.”
I couldn’t help it; I snatched the album from her. Isabel Devereau! Younger than in the snapshot my mother had of the sisters, and almost pretty—at least, not as grim. Her expression was softer. “Who’s he?”
“Jamie Makepiece is what I believe his name is. I thought she had a beau. That’s him right there. I remembered when I found this album. I thought it was lost and I found it over there where Jen Graham keeps her stuff. Someone had removed it from amongst my possessions.”
“Well, don’t look at me.” She sounded so self-righteous, but I didn’t want to get her off on another subject.
“When I saw this picture, it all came back. Isabel Devereau and Jamie Makepiece. Why, that was fifty years ago. When I myself was eighteen—” She slid me a glance to see if I bought this point, which I didn’t, but again I didn’t want to argue.
“There was talk of marrying. But then they didn’t. He was from New York and you can see by how he dresses he’s a city boy. A sharpie and a ladies’ man. This was taken”—here she tapped the snapshot again—“when he come to visit one summer, visited some relation in Spirit Lake, I don’t know who. “Actu’ly”—she primped her hair with her bony, mittened hand—“he was sweet on me, I could tell.”
I kept from pointing out that Jamie was a good twenty years younger than she was, like Ben Queen (who, she’d said, also had a crush on her).
“But that ain’t the reason he left before any marrying could take place. No sirree!”
I waited. She was silent. “Well, why did he?” I shifted my small tray from under one arm to the other. I must admit I was on pins and needles for I was sure there was more to come. But her thin mouth had swung shut like a letter box. I should have known.
She snatched up her empty glass and moved it back and forth. “I’ll just have another Bombay Brunch before I continue my story.”
“‘Breakfast,’” I corrected her. “It’s too early even for brunch. How could you drink another when it’s hardly nine A.M.”
“I’ll push myself.” She raised the glass.
This was so maddening. I went through some pretantrum motions of whining and stomping my foot, knowing it would do no good but not being able to help myself. It might be surprising to hear that when I was little I had a leaning toward temper tantrums, though not anymore of course. It got to be all I wanted to do was throw my physical self around, even while knowing this wouldn’t get the outcome I desired. But here I was so irritated the tale of Jamie and Isabel was being interrupted I could hardly keep myself from doing something physical. My feet seemed to have a mind of their own, like Frankenstein feet. They stomped several times. Aurora just sat with her album clamped to her chest, her lips sealed.
“Oh, all right!” I grabbed the glass and left with my tray and stomped downstairs until I was out of earshot. Then I ran.
Walter had gone up to Britten’s store, so I was alone in the kitchen watching the liquor, a banana, and a fresh egg I’d broken sweep around in the blender. I decided to pour in everything and let the blender whirl it all together.
Jamie Makepiece. Another character added to the story, an even older story; another player to add to the Mr. Ree game. Jamie Makepiece and Isabel Devereau. It was hard imagining one of the Devereau sisters having a romance, especially with a good-looking New York society ladies’ man. If Aurora remembered all of this right. Back then she would have been in her thirties, I figured, and fifty years ago—why, Rose Devereau would have been only ten years old. Younger than I was now. And the same went for Ben Queen. And my mother would have been just a girl. It was so hard to imagine these people as children. It was hard to imagine one of the dour Devereau sisters in a party dress, to tell the truth.
I was pouring the frothy drink into Aurora’s glass and nearly dropped the pitcher. I saw the awkward Isabel in her white dress, embroidered with dark little flowers whose color didn’t show in the picture but which I’d bet several years’ worth of tips was blue.
The same material as Mary-Evelyn’s dress, the same blue silk flowers, only a different design. I remember how Miss Flagler, who owns the gift shop, had talked about one of the Devereau sisters as being an accomplished seamstress, and how a Devereau dress was to be coveted then much more than anything Heather Gay Struther could come up with now. Miss Flagler had said whenever she saw Mary-Evelyn, the child was beautifully dressed. And I’d seen those dresses, for they were still hanging in the closet of Mary-Evelyn’s room. Still in mint condition forty years later. I had tried them on, so I knew.
Floating in the thick water growth of lily pads and grass, Mary-Evelyn had been wearing her white ruffled dress, made from the same material Isabel Devereau must have kept for ten years. But it was not this which had caught my attention—the two dresses made of like material. No, what kept me standing and staring out of the window by the icebox was what I’d been trying to remember when I woke up. It was the doll Maud had been holding in that bedroom of the house on White’s Bridge Road, dressed in white organdy with little blue flowers sewn onto it. What was that doll doing in Brokedown House?
It was in a kind of stupor that I walked the Bombay Breakfast up to the fourth floor. I think I might have walked it all the way to Bombay and hardly noticed. It kept going through my mind: the doll, the photograph—what were they doing in the Calhoun house? For I have no doubt the doll was Mary-Evelyn’s. Miss Flyte hadn’t said the Devereau sister made doll clothes to sell. And the Calhouns were a whole different society from the Devereaus. They wouldn’t have mingled. It appalled me to think I would have to go back even further in time and consider things done then, fifty years ago, but I recollected the story of Agamemnon and his family and realized fifty years of revenge was just an eye blink for the Greeks.
“You in a coma?”
I had got to Aurora’s room and handed her the drink (at least I guess I had, since she was drinking it) and must not have been wearing my usual know-it-all expression. I wondered how much the album had shaken loose in her memory. If nothing else, there was still more of the Jamie Makepiece story. “You agreed to tell me why Jamie left,” I said testily, to let her know I was out of my coma.
Slowly she sipped her drink, then set it aside and made a few small movements, such as resting her hands in her lap, as if gathering herself together. She looked pleased to death with herself, as she usually does when she has information I want. “There was talk.”
“About Jamie and Isabel?”
“About Jamie and Iris.” She delivered up this name with a little hiss as if the name were dangerous.
Wide-eyed, I jumped back. “Iris? But you said Isabel before. Isabel was Jamie’s girl.”
She nodded. “Um-hmm.”
It was almost as bad sometimes as talking to Ree-Jane, the way she held on to information I wanted, but was quick to give me information I didn’t want, like what was on my X-rays, if I’d had any taken. “Are you saying he was both of theirs?”
“That was the talk, that Iris got him away from Isabel. Now, I can’t say if he broke off with Isabel and picked up with Iris, or if he started seeing Iris on the sly behind Isabel’s back. But then he left real quick, that’s what was said. Talk was, all the girls were after him. Well, as you can see, he’s right handsome. I didn’t have time for him; I had other fish to fry.”
“How long was he here?”
“All that summer, if memory serves.”
Memory wasn’t serving very well if she couldn’t recall this when I first asked about the Devereaus several weeks ago.
“That was one fine summer, indeed. We went swimming almost daily in Lake Noir”—surprisingly, she was one of the few people around who could say it right—“and had weenie roasts nearly every night beside the lake. That water was cold as ice and clear as glass. And we’d take boats out on Spirit Lake, too. At night when the moon was up, we’d just drift and drift around.”
It sounded more like some movie about high school kids than something that really happened. Why would she be attending weenie roasts at her age? That was the trouble with her stories; you never knew what part to believe in. But something told me it was true about Isabel, Iris, and Jamie Makepiece.
“Then Elizabeth stepped in; Elizabeth took over like always.”
This detail surprised me. “What did she do?”
“Why, she sent him packing’s what I heard. Elizabeth was pretty much boss, being the oldest. I guess he went back to New York and his New York ways. Elizabeth sent Iris off to relatives. That was her punishment. I can believe it.” Here she slewed a look around at me as a relative, then picked up her drink and sipped it.
I stood looking at her intently, as if my look were a kind of hypodermic syringe that could siphon more of the Iris and Jamie story out of her. Imagine Iris going back finally to the Devereau house and that grim fate.
“Did anyone ever see him again?” I was getting concerned for Jamie for some reason. Isabel, of course, would blame Iris and hardly attach any blame at all to Jamie, as she would want to think it was her, Isabel, he truly loved and had just slipped for a moment. At least that’s the way I’d do it if it were me.
Aurora held up a mittened hand, palm out, as if to push my questions back. “That is all I recall.”
I was frowning in simple frustration at not getting more details. “Why didn’t you tell me this when I first asked about the Devereaus.”
Complacent, she was shuffling her tattered deck of cards. “When you get old you start remembering things that happened long, long ago.”
“You’re hardly three weeks older than you were when I asked.”
She didn’t reply, just started laying out the cards. I couldn’t stop here forever hoping for more of the story, and I had no desire to watch her cheat at solitaire, so I left.
My mind ran down names of people who were old enough to have been here and heard this “talk.” There weren’t many. Miss Flyte and Miss Flagler, in their sixties and seventies, respectively, would have been young, back then. Miss Flagler owns a gift shop in La Porte, and Miss Flyte has a candle store next to it. The two of them would sometimes invite me to their morning coffee breaks. It was more often cocoa for me and coffee for them. I knew Miss Flagler recalled something of the Devereau sisters, certainly of the one who was the seamstress, for she gave me a description of an ice-green organdy and silk dress sewn by one. So she seemed to remember that time pretty clearly.
Miss Flyte, though, was the one with the greater imagination, so even if she’d only been in her teens, things might have impressed her more. I’m only twelve, and things impress me, though I tend to be more literal and go by evidence more (somewhat in the way of the Sheriff). Miss Flyte (for instance) could probably take a trip on the Tamiami Trail and to the Rony Plaza without even having to tape up pictures or make a palm tree, or bring in a fan or play records on a phonograph. Her imagination is such that she doesn’t need props.
What other seventy- to ninety-year-olds did I know? There was Dr. McComb, of course, but he would have mentioned it if he knew about Isabel and Iris and Jamie. It would have been a bit of a scandal, I would guess. There were probably dozens of people still around who might have heard about Jamie, but they were probably all in Weeks’s Nursing Home. No, I could think of no one more likely than Miss Flagler, so I called Axel’s Taxis to come and pick me up just before ten.
The Oak Tree Gift Shoppe is the next shop up from the Candlewick, separated by a narrow alley. Inside, it appears not to have changed in a hundred years, though I know Miss Flagler changes her window display every week. I studied it now. That thing that makes it look always the same is that what Miss Flagler puts in looks like what she takes away. The little silver fox that sat beside the porcelain bowl looks like the silver pig she had moved somewhere else. The blue-flowered bowl sat in the same place as had a pink-scrolled china bowl; a gold bracelet had taken the place of last week’s silver; amethyst earrings had replaced emerald; a single strand of pearls replaced a double. I loved to look in this window because I found it restful. No, a better word is “comfortable.” It was the comfort of seeing small changes occurring within a background that never does, that was dependably always the same. This was the opposite feeling to what I’d felt yesterday, leaning on the kitchen counter—the feeling that enormous changes would come. I placed my palms and my forehead on the gift shop window, willing the fox to come back if the pig left, the amethyst to replace the emerald earrings—anything like that except to find the window barren, swept clean.
I saw Miss Flagler coming through the curtained alcove behind the counter and I suspected it was time for her to change the OPEN clock-sign to the one that said BACK IN. She always moves the hands to show “15 minutes,” which was never enough time, for her tea and coffee breaks always took a half an hour to forty-five minutes. But she explained that she did not want to discourage trade, and any customer happening along would go off and do something else for an hour or so, and then return.
She was surprised to see me at the window and gave a little wave, which I returned. She opened the door and told me that Miss Flyte was in the kitchen and invited me to join them. She turned the clock hands to “Back in 15 minutes.”
Miss Flagler is tall and thin and Miss Flyte is short and thin, but aside from that, age seems to have made them sisters. I’ve noticed this age thing the few times I’ve been to Weeks’s Nursing Home to deliver cakes and pies my mother donates. The old people all look strangely alike, as if age is another country, a country of relations, and anyone not a relative (such as me) stands out like a sore thumb.
Both Miss Flagler and Miss Flyte have gray hair, worn similarly in a bun, and filmy blue eyes, like one of those rainy-day skies where the blue is glazed over. They dress differently, though. Miss Flyte likes wool sweaters and skirts and Miss Flagler always wears gray dresses and cashmere cardigans. (Her dress indicates family money, or money from another source than her gift shop, whose profits wouldn’t run, probably, to silk and cashmere.)
Hello, hello, hello, I said, the third hello being directed to Albertine, Miss Flagler’s queenly white cat, who also joins us during coffee breaks. Albertine likes to sit on a painted shelf right above my chair, sometimes lightly chewing at the crown of my hair. Miss Flagler busied herself at the big cast iron stove, having offered me, as she always does, a choice of tea or cocoa. (Dr. McComb is the only one who has me down as a coffee drinker.) I chose cocoa, as always. Miss Flyte must have started the percolator, for it was perking away.
“Emma,” said Miss Flagler, “has something to ask us. Some business.”
It seemed to please both of them that I was there on business and not simply in my cocoa-drinking capacity. Even Albertine sat alert instead of lying down on the shelf.
“Really?” said Miss Flyte, with enthusiasm. She made it sound like my “business” was important (which shows how uneventful life can be around here, aside from the ongoing recent mystery). She laced her fingers on the table as Miss Flagler set down her coffee. The cocoa had been made earlier and had only to heat. My cup was served with two marshmallows and I was glad Mr. Butternut wasn’t here to compete for them. I quickly stirred the cocoa to keep a skin from forming.
We three settled now, I began: “It’s those Devereau sisters. You remember, we were talking about the Devereaus. They were Elizabeth, Isabel, and Iris—”
“Iris!” said Miss Flagler. “That was her name; Iris was the one who sewed so wonderfully. Do you remember her?” Miss Flagler had turned to Miss Flyte.
Miss Flyte pursed her lips. “Vaguely. I’d have to think.” Her brow furrowed.
“Iris Devereau made me a dress. I believe I told you that?” said Miss Flagler.
I nodded. “You said it was ice-green silk or organdy. It was a garden party and Mary-Evelyn Devereau was there, handing sandwiches around.”
“Indeed, she was. Such a solemn child. But such pretty clothes. Her Aunt Iris must have sewn them too. Iris was quite famous for her dresses. Everyone wanted a Devereau dress. She wouldn’t sew for just anyone, either. I remember Helene Baum—well, she wasn’t Baum back then, of course; she was Helene Smith—anyway, Helene, who was only a teenager then, nearly had a fit when Iris Devereau wouldn’t make her a gown to wear to some dance. I myself felt quite flattered that she made one for me.”
“What was she like except being a great dressmaker?”
Miss Flyte said, “What I remember is I thought it just a shame she lived with the other two. Elizabeth and—?”
“Isabel.” I said.
“Yes. Well, Iris was the youngest and pretty, while the others were plain—grim, really—and I imagined they resented Iris. All three of them living together like that, and with that little niece to take care of, I’ll bet they were rife with resentment.”
It was strange to me that again Rose had been left out. “Four of them.”
The two looked at me, quizzically, at first. Then Miss Flyte said, “You mean Rose? Yes, that’s right. But Rose was a Souder, only a half sister, and she looked so different. She was blond and quite beautiful. You recall her, Eustacia?”
This was Miss Flagler’s first name. I thought it suited her.
“Now, didn’t she run off and get married?”
Neither recalled this so I told them.
“Queen?” said Miss Flagler. “But that’s the name of the woman who was shot over near White’s Bridge, isn’t it?”
I didn’t want to get off on that as it would keep us sitting here all day. “Yes. But I was wondering about Iris. Going back, going back ten years before, do either of you recollect a man from New York City. His name was Jamie Makepiece. He might have been engaged to one of them.” I didn’t want to put memories in their mouths.
“You know, I always wondered why those girls never married,” said Miss Flagler. “I mean none of them. Especially Iris. But now you mention this Makepiece fellow ... Yes, I do recollect something. There was a row—now, where was this? I honestly think it was at the Hotel Paradise. Yes, it was. Fifty years ago, how it does take me back.”
Her voice was sad now, whether at what was there fifty years ago, or what isn’t here now, I don’t know.
“Your own mother was just a child, back then. It’s hard to believe, isn’t it?”
Miss Flyte said, “Jamie Makepiece. At the time, I could only have been, oh, thirteen. But I remember him. He cut an elegant figure, let me tell you, and I think all us girls were a little silly about him, flighty. Tipsy.” She smiled. “Even me, young as I was.”
In my mind’s eye I pictured that old photograph on the wall in the Devereaus’ parlor. It was hard to imagine those women in their high-necked dresses and pulled-back hair and serious, reproachful faces as ever having been flighty or tipsy. Except, that is, for the fourth one, Rose.
Miss Flagler had stopped, back there fifty years ago. I wanted her to go on. “What about this row you overheard. Was he—Jamie—fighting with someone?”
She had started to raise her coffee cup, and, perhaps realizing it was cold, put it down again. “Yes, with one of the Devereau women.”
“Did you hear them?” My cocoa almost forgotten (I was letting the marshmallows melt), I scrunched forward on my chair.
“Well ... no ... I honestly can’t remember. My goodness, I’m amazed at any of this coming back after fifty years.”
“My great-aunt Aurora Paradise says that as you get older you remember more from the far past.” I hastened to add, “Of course she’s a lot older than you.”
“Elizabeth.” Miss Flagler’s look was vacant, as if her mind were seeing, not her eyes.
We both looked at her. “Elizabeth?” I said.
“It was she, the one who was arguing with Jamie Makepiece.”
I waited, but it seemed her mind wasn’t going to turn up any more of this scene. I thought for a moment. “What happened to them? To the Devereaus?”
Miss Flyte answered: “They just left, didn’t they, Eustacia?”
Miss Flagler nodded. “After the drowning death of poor Mary-Evelyn, yes.” She added, “No, but wait: one of them died, remember? I think Iris. Yes, it was the youngest one. I recall that because people commented that it was a pity it should be the youngest. The most talented. Mind you, the other two weren’t all that much older—five or ten years, perhaps. They just acted so old, so set in their ways. As I said—grim. Even Iris soured, later in her life, like milk gone off.” Miss Flyte picked up the snapshot and gazed at it. “Can you imagine the life that poor child would have led in that house? With those dour old maids?”
Miss Flagler poured more coffee, which had been sitting forgotten on the table between them. “I suppose people say the same of us.”
Miss Flyte laughed. “Not ‘dour,’ not ‘grim,’ I hope.”
“Nobody ever says anything about you that’s not complimentary,” I said. It was true, except for Lola Davidow, who got mad because the McIntyre wedding party wanted Miss Flyte to light the reception for them. I said, “The Devereaus left nearly everything behind. They even left Mary-Evelyn’s dresses.”
“How do you know that, Emma?”
“I’ve been there.”
“Really? It’s sad to think, but perhaps they wanted no reminders with them.”
I was suddenly overtaken by a surge of loneliness. There were pictures in the house of the three sisters and even of the black sheep, Rose. But none of Mary-Evelyn. This hadn’t occurred to me before. All we had to remind us of her was this snapshot under the porte cochere, this and memory. And the sisters even wanted to wipe out memory.