Beloved (14 page)

Bing put his arm around her and walked with her from the room.
"
I guarantee you
'
re as safe as gold bullion here. I
'
ll see you next weekend.
"

He brushed her lips with his own and released her.
"
And see about getting a phone.
Not
because I fear for your life,
"
he added.
"
But because it would be nice to hear your voice before Friday.
"

"
Maybe I will.
"

He took up his attaché case and swung open the kitchen door with great drama.
"
I
'
m off! For the sake of art!
"
The wind ripped through Jane as she watched him charge through the snow, turn and wave madly, and then disappear. She came back in, touching her fingers to her lips, thinking of the kiss. His breath was very nice, warm and intimate
and ..
. very nice.

Gawd.
Here she was, going on about a man
'
s breath. It was pathetic. How long had it
been
since she was with someone? She remembered, then blushed, remembering. The guy had worked with her at the ad agency. They
'
d dated for weeks and weeks, and he
'
d begun to press. She liked him, and she
'
d been without someone for what seemed like forever, and so she went to bed with him. Once.

It was a disaster. They were as different as could be. He
'
d kept a television on his dresser turned on to the Financial News Network the whole time. As a courtesy, he
'
d kept the sound off. When they were done, he
'
d turned that on, too. Jane remembered Cissy
'
s complaint about her football-crazed husband and smiled grimly. Football came to an end, eventually. But money
—
money was always in season.

****

For the next week Jane kept her nose pretty much to the grindstone. On Tuesday she had a message relayed to her through Cissy that Bing was not going to be coming to the island for the weeken
d. Phillip seemed to have disap
peared and Mac as well. Jane began to understand Cissy
'
s lament that on
Nantucket
"
the dead of winter
"
was not just an idle expression. The only breaks in the sounds of Jane
'
s silence were in Cissy
'
s visits and in the tour Jane gave to Mrs. Crate and Dorothy when they stopped by.

She spent the week stripping old, painted-over wallpaper, which was dull and slow but oddly pleasant work; it left her mind free to daydream about life, and where she was going, and why. She
'
d begun, lately, to think about opening her own ad agency with the proceeds from the sale of Lilac Cottage.

Why not? Sooner or later every bad economy turns around, and when it did, she
'
d be positioned to turn around with it. She was experienced in logo design, brochure and catalog layouts, magazine ads. Heck, she could write commercial jingles if she
were
forced to. The important thing, the critical thing, was to be her own boss. Never again did she want to be confronted with a pink slip. Never again would she trust a company that promised her the moon and then pulled the rug out from under her as she reached for it.

My
own
boss.
The words lingered sweetly
in her mind
as she scored and soaked the painted wallpaper, then peeled it away in long, ragged strips.

By Friday, Jane
'
s shoulder ached so much she wasn
'
t able to continue, so she dropped in at the emergency room of Cottage Hospital. A physician looked at the rosebush scratch, which was healing very slowly, and ordered a blood analysis; but he seemed as puzzled as Jane was about the cause of her pain. He put her on antibiotics and sent her packing.

On her way back to Lilac Cottage, Jane detoured for groceries into the A&P, where she ran into Adele Adamont working behind the checkout counter. Mrs. Adamont was the type never to forget a face; she recognized Jane instantly from her visit to the funeral home.

She took Jane
'
s bag of A&P coffee and dumped it into the hopper for grinding.
"
I understand you
'
re living in your Lilac Cottage while you fix it up for sale. And have you decided definitely to redo the kitchen?
"

It really
was
a small community
,
Jane thought, surprised by the woman
'
s up-to-the-minute analysis of her life.
"
If I do, it will be a very limited redo,
"
she said over the whirr of the coffee grinder.
"
I
'
ve knocked out a wall, and I
'
ll be having cabinets and new linoleum put in. That
'
s about it.
"
And unless I get my hands on some cash, the
cabinets are going to be made from appliance boxes
.

"
Yes, I expect you
'
re feeling the pinch like the rest of us,
"
said Mrs. Adamont. It wasn
'
t a probing remark
—
simply one of her statements of fact.

Sighing, Jane nodded and opened her wallet. It had not escaped her attention that food cost more on an island than on the mainland. She wondered how ordinary
Nantucket
folk managed. Maybe the checkout clerks got discounts on the merchandise.

Mrs. Adamont plucked out the Sarah Lee coffee cake from Jane
'
s groceries and said,
"
Don
'
t buy this. We have a bake sale going on at St. Michael
'
s bazaar tonight. It
'
s a good cause
—
for abused children on the island
—
and
my
coffee ring is ten times better than store-bought.
"

She laid the Sarah Lee aside, just like that, and rang up the rest of Jane
'
s purchases, giving her directions to St. Michael
'
s Day Care.
"
You make sure you come, now. Seven o
'
clock. There
'
ll be games of chance.
"

Jane walked out clutching her paper bags, briefly tempted to drive to the other, newer supermarket for the darn Sarah Lee. But that would mean going right back where she
'
d come from; and besides, after shopping at the A&P for the past couple of weeks she felt a surprisingly strong loyalty to the old store.

Good lord
,
she thought as she eased her car out of the pretty, cobblestoned lot.
I
'
m bonding.
In her whole life
she
'
d never felt loyalty to a supermarket, probably because she
'
d moved so many times:
Providence
,
Boston
,
New York
,
New Haven
. Wherever the meat was cheapest, that was good enough for her.

So many moves, so many jobs, and where had it got her? Clinging to a career ladder with broken rungs and living in a condo that she couldn
'
t sell if she wrapped a big red ribbon around it and threw in her Volvo. No wonder she liked
Nantucket
so much: it was someplace to run, someplace to hide.

After she got home, Jane decided against doing any heavy work and contented herself with sorting through some of the boxes in the room that her aunt had used for storage. They were filled with the usual leftovers of a long life lived without heirs: clothes too good to toss, too tight to wear; appliances that stayed broken because there was no husband to fix them, no money to pay someone else; pots that were too big to cook with for one; and photos and prints with broken frames or no frames at all.

One box, and one box alone, interested Jane. It wasn
'
t very big, just big enough to hold a harmonica, a slender bundle of airmail letters bound in a faded blue ribbon, and a group photo of a dozen or so World War I soldiers. There was an empty bottle of
Paris
perfume, very old, called
Dangereuse.
A newspaper clipping, and that was all.

It was obvious that the items were all related and had had some significance for Aunt Sylvia. But in that case, why hadn
'
t she taken the box with her to the nursing home? Jane untied the brittle ribbon from the letter packet and lifted the top one from the rest. It was addressed in a different hand from the others
—
French, judging from the stylized numeral
"
one
"
and the slashed
"
seven
"
in the address. Jane unfolded the single sheet of onionskin. It was dated December 3, 1918, from the French town of
Sedan
.
 

Dearest Sylvie,

This is the hardest thing I ever had to write. I won
'
t be coming back
.
I
'
ve thought about it until my head hurts, but I can
't leave
Sedan
. Ever
ything I want is here. I
'
ve fallen in love, Syl. With a Frenchwoman. She
'
s married too. I didn
'
t mean to and neither did she. But when the armistice was signed three weeks ago, we both knew I couldn
'
t go back to the States.

You can have the house, Syl. It
'
s the least I can do and I know you
'
re fond of it. I didn
'
t mean to hurt you, honest. If you want a divorce, that
'
s all right too, but I don
'
t know if they
'
ll let you divorce a fellow you can
'
t find. I
'
m sending along the harmonica your dad gave me. I never learned to play it and I know he had it all his life. I don
'
t know what else to say.

Your dearest husband,

Sam

Shocked, Jane sat there for a stretch of time, then automatically slipped the letter into its envelope and put it back, as if she
'
d stumbled into an extremely intimate scene between a man and a woman. This was a secret her aunt had very nearly carried with her to the grave: of a husband who had betrayed her in the worst possible way.

It explained so many things. Was it any wonder that Sylvia spent the rest of her life withdrawn from the
Nantucket
community? What would her choices be whenever the subject of her husband came up? To lie, or to humiliate herself.
Dear, poor Aunt Sylvia.
No wonder they thought she was a witch.

It explained something else as well: her aunt
'
s vague story that she had had her husband
'
s remains cremated and scattered at sea. The real reason there was no grave was because Sam had never come back.

Jane couldn
'
t imagine what it must have been like to open the envelope addressed in someone else
'
s hand; to read the crushing message within; to fold the letter up and put it away; and
—
eventually
—
to make supper, or do the laundry, or a little Christmas shopping. In short, to go on living, in the house Sam was letting her keep as a consolation prize.

In the house that Sylvia had bequeathed to Jane.

Good God
,
she realized suddenly.
The house may not even be mine to have.
What if Sam
were
still alive, or had remarried
—
did Aunt Sylvia ever divorce him? Or what if he had children in
France
? And how had Sylvia Merchant managed to convince her attorney that she was a widow? Overwhelmed by the possibilities, Jane went back to the cardboard box, looking for an answer.