Poison to Purge Melancholy (19 page)

“Negligence, like as not. One of the actors presumably failed to remember he’d put a ball in his gun, no doubt due to the excess of drink that this season inspires in such men. The fellows ran away in fear and the constable searches for them this instant. As I was close at hand, I saw to Mr. Brennan myself, but he was past aid.”

I heard the loose floorboard near the windows creak, as if the doctor or Mother now stood looking out.

“I took the liberty, Madame,” Dr. Riddick continued, “of arranging for Brennan’s burial in the potter’s field. He was not a member of Bruton Parish and I believe has no family close by—”

“None at all, that I know.”

“As you say. I thought you would not want a wake here? Few mourners would come, at any rate, save the curious.”

“You did quite right, Doctor. I can ill afford the expense. And I suppose the burial fee—”

“Settled, Madame,” said Dr. Riddick, “by recalling one of my old debts. In fact, I ask you not to mention the matter about town, lest it cause embarrassment to a certain party.”

Mother, relieved to be spared any expenditure at all, readily agreed.

First thing I saw
when I opened my eyes was Rudolph’s nose blinking on and off.

Beth Ann’s hands still gripped mine. Turning my head to look at her, I saw her gaze, troubled, focused down on the ring. When she realized I was back from wherever it is I go during these episodes, she let go and with a scowl, jammed her fists into her jacket pockets.

Miss Maggie pursed her lips. “Did you see the girl Beth Ann saw?”

“Not exactly. I saw out of her eyes. At least, I assume it was her. She felt like a teenager—all hormones. Her name was Polly Carson. This is the room she slept in.”

“Polly. I should have known.” Miss Maggie nodded to herself. “She was the only girl to grow up in this house during that era. Josiah Carson, her grandfather, had only boys, as did Polly herself—”

“Wait, wasn’t Josiah Carson Elizabeth’s father-in-law?”

“Right.”

“So Elizabeth was Polly’s mother?
That
was Elizabeth?”

“You saw her?”

“I heard her.” I related the scene to Miss Maggie and Beth Ann, the kid doing her darnedest to seem apathetic.

Miss Maggie rubbed her hands together like a miser with a new shipment of gold. “First thing is to write down those names before you forget them.”

“I have my notebook,” Beth Ann volunteered. Sort of. She didn’t actually move to retrieve it until Miss Maggie waved her arms wildly in encouragement. She pulled from her suitcase a blue spiral-bound.

“Give it to Pat,” Miss Maggie said. “I don’t have my reading glasses.”

Beth Ann took out a box of colored pencils and selected the brown one, saying, “I’ll write.” Message: the book was her territory. She flipped through it, past her many sketches of wild plants, looking for a blank page.

“Let’s see.” Miss Maggie paced in the small space. “The doctor’s name was Riddick—spell it the same as that real estate firm in Stoke for now. And the dead man was John Brennan. Spell it how it sounds. And Dunbar—did you say he taught Polly singing? Beth Ann, write ‘music master’ next to his name.”

“Walker was another,” I said, “and Parker.”

“No further clues about them, though,” Miss Maggie mused, “other than that they’d taken Polly’s brother out mummering. So they were probably in the working classes.”

“And Captain Underwood.” Good name for a character from a Saturday morning cartoon, if you asked me.

“Him I’ve heard of,” Miss Maggie said. “Gilbert Underwood was an officer in the Revolution. He moved west sometime in the 1780s, I believe, to seek his fortune in the Ohio Valley. We should be able to narrow down the year by finding out when he left versus when Polly was in her teens.”

A knock came at the door, making us all jump. “Beth Ann?” Hugh called. “Come on, we’re opening presents in the parlor.”

“We’re coming!” Miss Maggie hollered back, reaching over to tear the page from Beth Ann’s notebook. “I’ll hold onto this.” She folded it three times and stuffed it in her stretch pants pocket. “Let’s go.”

As we got up to leave, Beth Ann hooked a hand into the crook of my arm. I glanced back but she was doggedly not making eye contact. She was, I realized, touching me, reluctantly, to protect me from demons. I kept my trap shut, so as not to dissuade her.

Miss Maggie intercepted Horse in the hallway and sent him to the kitchen to fetch our bag of gifts. Glad, already changed into a powder blue sweatsuit, and Evelyn, now in chinos and a flannel shirt, were carrying presents down from upstairs. In the parlor, Miss Maggie, Beth Ann, and I were waved toward the sofa by Glad, who sat down in one of the chairs, looking worried and mumbling things about having to get dinner under way. Evelyn went off to bring extra chairs from the dining room.

Acey came in after us with her three gifts. Rich wasn’t overcome by Southern chivalry enough to offer her the other armchair. In fact, since no one had expected him, and gifts to and from him had already been sent and received by mail last week, Rich rudely continued to read his medical journal and ignore the gathering horde. Acey seemed more at ease sitting on the floor anyway, cross-legged beneath her African caftan.

Hugh also settled to the floor beside Beth Ann’s end of the sofa. Today he wore a navy pullover of ultra soft fleece—the kind that begs to be touched. Not that I needed encouragement.

Miss Maggie turned to Rich and asked him if he had this year’s school photos of his kids yet. He laid aside his journal and pulled out his wallet. His three boys—ages seventeen, twelve, and ten—all had the Lee red hair. The youngest two, he bragged, were on the honor roll. The eldest had failed math his first term, simply because he hadn’t done his homework, not that it mattered (according to Rich) since he intended to major in theater arts instead of pre-med. Said with a sneer.

Hugh rolled his eyes. “Bob’s a good actor. I’ve seen him in his school plays.”

“He could do it as a hobby,” Rich maintained, “the way Foot used to. He should have a real career.”

“He doesn’t
have
to be a doctor—”

“Where
is
Francis?” Glad asked, anxious to avert an argument between her sons.

“In the kitchen,” Acey replied, “on his cell with Irene. Maybe she’s blowing us off again today. Foot must have told her about us and she’s running scared. Not like Pat here. She’s got guts. Has to if she’s marrying Hugh.”

I felt Beth Ann’s arm go tense beside mine, but at least she didn’t pull away. So far, I wasn’t having the weird symptoms of the night before and I didn’t want to start. Time to change the subject before Beth Ann stomped out of the room. “Foot mentioned his wife working late yesterday. What does she do?”

“Department store clerk,” Acey said, “and that’s about all we know of her. None of us have met the little gold digger.”

“Now, Acey—” Glad began.

“Really, Ma, why else would anyone marry a curmudgeon like Foot except for his money? Though I guess I could say that about all his wives.”

“Not Katharine,” Hugh murmured.

Acey agreed with a nod. “No, Foot was up to his ears in debt then. They were both young—must have been all hormones—”

“Acey—” Glad’s tone was less tolerant this time.

Hugh broke in. “His loan was paid off by the time he married Rita, but you couldn’t call him well off.”

“Rita felt sorry for him,” Acey maintained. “She was one of those women who prey exclusively on widowers. Like the one who chased after you when Tanya died. What was her name?”

“Ann Carter, stop it now!” Glad exclaimed, though she didn’t possess a voice that could sound threatening. Had my mom uttered those words, I’d have hidden under a table for an hour.

Acey smiled. “Ma, be realistic. You have to admit Rita got a great divorce settlement by the time she and Foot split up. So did Leslie, although she didn’t last half as long. And now we have Irene, four years younger than me. People must think she’s Foot’s daught—” She broke off, her smile widening, and I realized she’d been watching the doorway in case the brother in question showed up, which he had. “Pull up a piece of floor, Foot.”

His smirk said he didn’t do floors. He held four presents, all wrapped in non-Christmas paper that boasted the names of the dot-coms where he’d purchased them online.

Horse came in with our presents, yawning like he’d just pulled himself out of bed, though his hair was combed, his chin shaved, and his hooded sweatshirt wrinkle-free.

I didn’t have much to contribute to the proceedings, outside of a wrapped can of biscotti and sesame seed cookies for Hugh’s mom and a small gift for Beth Ann. Since my budget was tight this year and the kitchen was where I felt most competent gift-wise, I’d gone the food route. For Miss Maggie, I’d made low-fat, no-cholesterol pizzelles and oat bread. Hugh and Beth Ann got three kinds of cookies, including chocolate pizzelles. All these were presented the night before we left for Williamsburg so they wouldn’t turn to crumbs during the trip. I’d also given Hugh an IOU for one homemade and very romantic dinner per month for a year, not something I wanted him to open and read aloud in front of his whole family. Miss Maggie, too, opted to give me her gift in private: a check for a whole lot of money.

“It’s what you need most right now,” she’d said. “Your health insurance alone’s eating all your earnings from the fall.”

Thinking about that, I wondered what percentage I’d have to shell out for Monday’s blood tests and lung scan.

Anyway, I didn’t have much to do after I unwrapped my two gifts—one, a pretty purple sweater from Hugh and Beth Ann. The other was from Glad: two pounds of flour and a pound of Scotch oatmeal from the Raleigh Tavern Bake Shop, “stone ground in the same manner as it was in 1740.” Hugh told her I liked to cook, she explained. Odd, but at least useful.

Everyone opened gifts at the same time. Oh, we Montellas do the same thing, with all of us thanking each other, craning our necks to see what everyone else got, commenting, laughing, teasing, then more laughing. That is, all of us talking at once and delighting in each other’s delight. Here with the Lees, gift-opening seemed like a chore. The mood was subdued, the remarks, polite. Except for Miss Maggie, no one’s face lit up. LAGs abounded.

Beth Ann analyzed the little plastic greenhouse plant starter kit I gave her a bit longer than the Christmas socks she got from her Uncle Horse, but not as long as the meditation crystal from her aunt. I couldn’t tell if she liked any of them.

The gifts seemed to fall into predictable patterns. Horse gave funny presents, Foot’s were straitlaced and expensive, like the tie he gave Hugh (though Hugh hardly ever wore ties). Glad’s were purchased at the shops of Colonial Williamsburg, all evoking the eighteenth century in some way.

Acey’s offerings were meant to improve physical and spiritual existence. For instance, she gave her mother a tabletop electric water fountain with a Japanese garden design, to “help relieve stress” and “make you sleep better.”

Among themselves, the siblings did a rotating gift exchange. Hugh had Acey this year, and I’d helped him pick out a sweater for her (not unlike the one he’d bought for me—men can be so unimaginative). Had I known her then, I’d have suggested a sari instead.

Horse gave Foot a genuine whoopie cushion, which evoked the first emotional response—the laugh Horse got from seeing his brother’s appalled face.

Acey nudged Rich hard on his leg. “Did you get my present?”

He didn’t look up from the article he was reading. “It arrived.”

“Did you open it?”

He grunted.

She took that to mean “yes,” and turned to the rest of us. “I sent him an aromatherapy heating pad. Thought it might warm his disposition.”

Rich closed his journal. “You could have picked a better scent than eucalyptus.”

“I tried, but they don’t make them in
eau de old fart
.”

I bit my lip to keep from laughing aloud, but Foot, of all people, let out what could only be called a guffaw. To everyone’s surprised look, he said, “Oh, come on. It’s the funniest thing Acey’s said in ten years.”

“More like twenty,” Rich said, but his habitual scowl had softened.

And suddenly the mood in the room relaxed to the point where, for the first time, I could almost picture this crew growing up together.

“Your turn, Horse,” Acey said. “Tell us what Rich sent you. A white lab coat like the one I got last year? Even though he knows neither of us wears them.”

Horse hesitated enough, glancing at Rich, that Foot suggested, “A rectal thermometer?”

“Actually, uh—” Horse began.

“He didn’t get anything.” Rich surveyed the faces around him as if judging whether he should say more. Then he reached into his cardigan pocket and took out a flat object wrapped in green foil. “It—I didn’t put it in the mail soon enough, so I brought it along instead. I’m sorry it’s not much this year.”

“A CD,” Acey guessed as Rich handed the gift to Horse.

“Music?” Beth Ann said, as if questioning her Uncle Rich’s taste in such things.

Foot shook his head. “More like the Physician’s Desk Reference on CD-ROM. Pirated, of course, or it’d be in a nice box.”

“You’re all wrong. It bends.” Horse flexed the item a few times, then tore the paper off. Inside was a plastic sandwich bag and inside that, something that made Horse’s jaw drop in shock. “My God, I haven’t seen one of these in thirty years.”