Beacon Street Mourning Page 10

  Having been lulled into a sense of security by Michael’s excellent choice of an engagement ring, I threw caution to the winds and said I would trust him to choose my wedding band on his own; not only that, but I didn’t even want to see it until the moment he put it on my finger. Which brought to mind the fact that we must set a date for the wedding.

  We chose Saturday, the twenty-seventh of March, with the hope that in the intervening weeks Father might regain enough strength to join us for the ceremony. I thought this might provide an incentive for him. Certainly there is no more self-fulfilling prophecy than an attitude of despair, and my father had been subjected to quite enough of that already.

  I did not want to make our wedding a public spectacle, but I did rather want Edna and Wish Stephenson to be there, and my friend Meiling Li. But if I invited them, then Father would think it peculiar if I did not invite some from my old circle of Boston friends as well, and then the first thing you know, their parents would have to be invited, and so on and so on, and the spectacle I did not want would be upon us. So Michael and I decided, once again with remarkably little discussion and no disagreement, to have a quiet wedding with only Father and Augusta as witnesses.

  As to where and by whom we would be married, that was to be discussed with Father. I wanted him to decide both the place and the person to marry us; this was surely best, since I knew nothing of ministers and churches—not to mention that I was doing this for him. Always in the back of my mind there was the thought that, if need be, if Father’s health took another downward turn, Michael and I could always be married on short notice in the parlor at Beacon Street.

  Of course, I would never tell Michael I was marrying him only to make my father happy—and sometimes, in the heat of this or that moment of excitement, I forgot it myself.

  AUGUSTA SHOWED SOME SENSE and hired a cook. Otherwise Mary Fowey had to manage on her own, because Augusta did no work around the house that I could see. What she did all day I had no idea; I stayed out of her way and she stayed out of mine. We encountered each other occasionally in Father’s room, where we seemed to have worked out an unspoken agreement that whichever one of us was present would leave when the other arrived. Generally Augusta and I had to be together only in the dining room for the evening meal, which was tolerable because Michael would be there too, and in his presence she was invariably at her most charming.

  All in all, living under the same roof as Augusta was working out better than I’d expected. She had not made major changes to the furnishings of the house, only in minor things such as a new china pattern, and an unfortunate tendency to clutter up the tops of things with insipid porcelain figurines of Germanic origin.

  Because I found myself rather often at loose ends, I helped Mary Fowey in her work when I thought I could get away with it. She’d been so shocked at first that I’d had to persuade her I was only following the example of my own mother, which was true. Mother had liked to (using her own quaint expression) “turn a hand at housework” now and again. She’d been especially fond of trying new recipes, then teaching them to Myra, who probably would have preferred she stay out of the kitchen in the first place.

  While I’d inherited none of my mother’s culinary talents, I was far from helpless around the house; and in San Francisco I had not had help, so I was accustomed to doing things myself. Here at Beacon Street, regardless of what my habits might have been when I was the daughter of the house, I now made my own bed daily, took care of my clothes, and took a turn at dusting—once I’d found where Mary kept the dusting cloths. And I might casually wander back to the drying room just at the time when there was laundry to be taken down and folded, and so on, as various occasions presented themselves. Once she saw that I was really working too, not just trying to catch her in a mistake, Mary and I became friendly. At least, probably as friendly as it was possible to be with her, since Mary was by nature both shy and reticent.

  It would have been nice if I’d been able to find a way to be friendly with Father’s nurses, but I could not. Their names were Martha Henderson, who worked in the daylight hours, and Sarah Kirk, who came at night. These two paragons of rectitude and strict routine had been chosen by Searles Cosgrove’s Nurse Bates—chosen for their nursing skills, which were considerable, not their social skills, which were none.

  Augusta had been bound to hate the nurses no matter what, but in a way, after dealing with them myself I could hardly blame her. A nurse was always in the room when one went to see Father, day or night. After a while one came to regard her as a piece of the furniture—a strangely shaped chair with book-holding attachment, perhaps, or a floor lamp in the configuration of a woman reading a book—for both these women, when they were not fussing over Father, were constantly reading. They did not converse at all with any of us, and very little with their patient that I ever heard.

  Nevertheless Father thrived in their care, and that was what was most important. In fact it was rather dramatic how much he improved. His color went from that unhealthy yellowish shade to something much nearer a normal flesh tone, though still with a slight yellow tinge; the whites of his eyes became clearer; his appetite improved, and he began to put on weight.

  By way of explanation for this upturn, Searles Cosgrove said the human liver has an ability to heal itself. Although he’d thought Father’s illness too far advanced for that, and had believed Father’s organs were failing in a way that is always fatal, perhaps (the doctor modestly conceded) he had been wrong. Perhaps (he said) the liver was beginning to do its job, which is somehow regulatory.

  I confess I did not entirely understand. This was not due to any willful ignorance on my part, but rather to Dr. Cosgrove’s inability to explain the function of the liver in general or the exact nature of my father’s illness in particular.

  At any rate the most important point was that by the third week after returning to Beacon Street from the hospital, my father had made so much positive progress that no one was thinking he’d come home to die. Rather we had firm plans for my wedding on March 27 at King’s Chapel. The ceremony was to be performed by a Unitarian minister of my father’s acquaintance, whom I had not yet met. I kept putting it off; the thought of meeting the minister made me curiously uneasy.

  I did, however, meet with the dressmaker for my wedding dress. I chose a two-piece pattern, a suit of very simple lines, with a long fitted jacket over a moderately full skirt with a bit of a train. The fabric was ivory brocade. In the matter of a veil I demurred, and on a hat too—though eventually I would have to decide on one or the other. I rather dreaded it, as I have an aversion to all manner of head coverings.

  The one and only fly in the ointment, so to speak, was that Michael had not yet found a suitable apartment available for a three months’ rental—which was the maximum length of time we could stay in Boston after the wedding, given our ongoing business obligations in San Francisco. Meanwhile he was indulging his fascination with the Vendome on Commonwealth Avenue, and had moved from the Parker House to a suite there.

  I was teasing him about this one evening. We had just left Father’s room and were on our way downstairs for dinner. Michael had tucked my left arm tightly beneath his, in a particular way that places his arm equally tight against my breast; I think he thinks I don’t notice, which is rather endearing, but of course I do. This sort of surreptitious physical contact is one of life’s little thrills. That evening I regarded it as a small reward for my recent graduation to the use of only one cane when I am indoors. When outdoors I still use two.

  I said, “I wonder if the Vendome is a nest of spies. It has that still-elegant-yet-past-its-prime sort of European look, as befits a place of espionage. Is that the attraction? Do you feel at home there?”

  Michael chuckled. “Clever woman. You’ve found me out.”

  “No, really, what is it that attracts you?”

  He lowered his head and nuzzled my temple. “You do,” he said in a voice so low and thrilling only I could hear him.


  “And you me,” I replied, feeling it all the way to my toes, “but still I really would like to know what it is about the Vendome. The place is not at all fashionable these days.”

  “Really, it is something like that. You are not so far off the mark. And besides, neither of us is a slave to fashion.”

  We descended the stairs very slowly, Michael carefully matching his steps to mine and taking part of my weight on his arm.

  I frowned, thinking of Michael’s determination to get out of the spying game. The problem with his extricating himself has been that neither country, Russia nor the United States, wants to let him go. In a way the United States is more problematic about this, because our country says he is no longer under any obligation, yet still they’ll call him back “just one more time.” The Czar of Russia has been much more straightforward, simply saying, “No, you have a hereditary title in this country and an obligation that goes with it, and that is that”—or words to that effect. At least in the Russian way one knows where one stands.

  So I said, “Please stop being so cagey and tell me straight out what you mean.”

  “It’s nostalgia, that’s all, nothing important. That building reminds me of a place I lived in in St. Petersburg for a winter, long ago. I’m indulging myself—shall we say—in a last fling of bachelorish memories.”

  “Katya?” I whispered.

  Michael squeezed my arm in a way that was meant to be reassuring but almost pulled me off balance. “Yes, in part I’ve been thinking of her. But it’s more just what I said, simple nostalgia for the past. The snow, the cold air, the Vendome’s ambience both inside and out—these are all things we don’t have anywhere on the West Coast, and I’m enjoying the difference. It reminds me of Russia. That’s all.”

  We reached the bottom of the stairs and Michael released my arm. He took my hand instead.

  “That makes a certain amount of sense,” I said. “If you find it is not entirely unsuitable, I suppose we could both live there after the wedding. As you said, neither of us is a slave to fashion. Certainly the location is convenient.”

  “Yes, and Back Bay is crowded. Rental properties are scarce, the landlords are taking full advantage.”

  I had told Michael I preferred Back Bay if there were nothing on Beacon Hill. As we reached the door to the drawing room I simply nodded my recognition of what he’d said.

  Augusta was already seated on a sofa at right angles to the door, talking animatedly to someone I couldn’t see. I hadn’t known we were expecting anyone; in fact, I’d been somewhat dismayed by the fact that none of our old family friends had come to the house to visit—though of course I had not remarked on this to her. I was trying my best to keep peace, but I did wonder.

  Tonight Augusta had almost outdone herself—she looked extremely fetching in a rose-colored dress with a wide collar of white lace. A three-strand choker of pearls clasped her neck, and her hair had been artfully arranged so that a couple of curls fell just so, down her nape, accentuating both the gleam of pearls and the line of her throat.

  I glanced at Michael and caught the beginning of a smile on his face. Yes, there was no question Augusta knew how to handle men. I supposed if I wanted to learn a trick or two I should pay more attention to her. I might as well. One never knows when free lessons will come in handy.

  I tapped my cane against the side of the door as if I had bumped it, my intention being to warn her of our approach. I wanted to see if she would stop her conversation abruptly or keep on talking while we entered the room, as most people would.

  She heard me. She stopped talking immediately, turned her head, saw Michael, and not only smiled but popped up and came quickly toward us. The rose-colored dress rustled softly as she moved; at closer range its material proved to be silk faille. Very nice. I would not have minded owning such a dress myself.

  “I’m so glad you’ve come down at last,” Augusta said effusively, taking Michael’s arm, which had the effect of separating him from me. Then with only the smallest hesitation, she stretched up on tiptoes—I am two or three inches taller—to place her cheek next to mine in familial fashion. That was something she had never done before, so I guessed it was for the benefit of the person watching, on whom I still had not laid eyes. She was standing in the way.

  “There’s someone here I’ve been so anxious for you to meet,” she said, pulling Michael farther along and leaving me to follow.

  This person Augusta was anxious for us to meet proved to be a young man, in his early twenties I guessed. As we approached he slowly, as if acquiescing to an inconvenience, obeyed the demands of good manners and stood. He was not long enough out of adolescence to have gained the easy command of his body more mature men possess. Yet he did not have the look of a college boy, either. In the main he simply appeared … unfinished. Without much presence or character.

  “Fremont Jones, Michael Kossoff,” Augusta said, her face glowing, “may I present my son, Lawrence Bingham.”

  Son! How could I have forgotten about the son?

  “How do you do, Lawrence,” I said with a nod, not offering my hand, as for a woman it is not required, and I did not feel so inclined.

  All at once I recalled what Father had told me about Augusta’s son during his visit to San Francisco the year before: “the boy’s a ne’er-do-well,” and “he has been a plague upon us.”

  Bingham? I speculated on this, wondering if Augusta could have borne her son out of wedlock? Perhaps that was the reason she had concealed his existence from Father until they’d been married for over a year. Not that it would have mattered to Father; he was not the type of man to change his mind for such a reason.

  While I had been occupied with these thoughts, Michael was shaking hands with Lawrence, and Augusta was explaining to her son about our upcoming marriage. Then it was time for seating maneuvers, in which Augusta returned to the sofa, Michael went with her, and I took a chair near the one in which Lawrence had been sitting. He looked for a moment as if he would have preferred to find another place, but then, with a shrug he didn’t quite manage to check, he sat down again where he had been.

  I was in a wickedly light mood. I felt as if I could take on all comers, and so I said to Lawrence, “From something my father said some months ago, I had the impression you were living here at Beacon Street, with him and Augusta. So where have you been? Off to school perhaps?”

  He hunched his shoulders and looked at me from the corners of his eyes, then looked to his mother as if for permission to speak.

  In the meantime she answered for him: “Larry is a journalist, isn’t that so, son?” Of course she didn’t give him time to respond but went right on: “He has been working in New York City, but now that Leonard is better, well, I wanted my boy back at home with us. I’m sure you can understand how that is.”

  “Of course,” Michael said.

  I was certain Father would not feel the same, but I would take that up with him later.

  “How fascinating,” I said to Lawrence. “I should think journalism would be an interesting profession to follow. For what newspaper did you work in New York, Lawrence?”

  “Larry, my byline’s Larry Bingham. Wrote for the Daily News. Nothing much under my belt yet, so to speak, you unnerstand,” he said, his voice trailing away in a mumble. Then he rubbed at the corner of his mouth, which had the apparently miraculous effect of restoring his speech. “I was a—whatchacallit—an apprentice.”

  I raised my eyebrows; politely, I hoped, if skeptically. At least I did not openly question the young man, who had most likely had a tendency to be less than truthful passed on in his mother’s milk. So far as I knew, junior journalists were not called apprentices. The only apprentices at a newspaper worked with those huge presses, doing the typesetting. But then, I could be wrong—it was not something I had ever looked into thoroughly.

  Michael was kinder than I. He sought to put Augusta’s son at ease by mentioning a certain Manhattan crime that had been so much in the n
ews at Christmastime that even the San Francisco papers had picked up on it. Larry claimed insider knowledge—due to his job at the newspaper—and discussed the case with an eagerness that might have seemed to me merely pathetic, had my father not already predisposed me to be on my guard with the young man.

  Perhaps because I was thus predisposed, I saw instead in Larry a degree of fascination with evil that bordered on the morbid. When speaking of these matters the young man’s unfinished features acquired a look of cunning, and a vivid alertness that both attracted and repelled. I believe Michael saw the same, even without Father to predispose his observations, for Michael steered the conversation back in a similar direction again and again throughout the evening.

  In the crime at Christmas—to which I hadn’t paid that much attention at the time—a man had been fatally stabbed on the steps of a church and left there to bleed to death, at an hour not long before people began to arrive for the traditional midnight services. No one had been arrested yet. The police had not found a single witness to the stabbing. Larry claimed to have much more information than the police had allowed the newspaper to report, and he proceeded to tell us all about it.

  I observed quietly, my former teasing mood forgotten. I became impressed all over again, or perhaps it was more than ever before, by my partner’s skill in drawing out the young man, providing him opportunities to say more and more and more. There was no question in my mind that Larry Bingham was building himself a cage of lies from which there would be no escape—had we any reason to trap him in it, but we did not.

  But then, after a while, I saw something else, something that did at last make me feel sorry for the young man: Larry was performing for his mother. She believed every word. She was proud of him. Augusta was the reason for all these lies.