Part 8 (1/2)

This Julian fellow was the original owner of Fool's House. And yes, they'd played backgammon together. But Lydia didn't win the house from him that way. She bought it from him, paying off her debt over a period of about a decade, from the sound of it, with money she'd carefully saved and invested wisely. He made it sound as if he had given her a very good price on it because he wanted her to have it, for it to be a place where they could be together and be free. They'd been friends up to that point, but then they fell in love. Or he did.

”Listen to him, he was absolutely insane insane for her.” Peck read some of the words aloud. ” 'I can't eat. Or if I do, I taste nothing. I can't sleep. Or if I do, I'm tormented by dreams of you until I awake in a sweat, imagining you with someone else.' ” As we read on, it became evident that Lydia was not waiting around for her married lover to be available while his wife wasn't paying attention. Lydia had other company. A lot of company, from the sound of it. Not to mention some of those young artists and writers who took up residence above her garage each summer. for her.” Peck read some of the words aloud. ” 'I can't eat. Or if I do, I taste nothing. I can't sleep. Or if I do, I'm tormented by dreams of you until I awake in a sweat, imagining you with someone else.' ” As we read on, it became evident that Lydia was not waiting around for her married lover to be available while his wife wasn't paying attention. Lydia had other company. A lot of company, from the sound of it. Not to mention some of those young artists and writers who took up residence above her garage each summer.

”What a naughty thing she was,” Peck said, in an admiring tone. ”Can you imagine having her as a teacher?”

”If he was so in love with her, why didn't he leave his wife?” I asked, as I read on. ”And why did Lydia never mention him?”

”The wife might have had the money,” Peck said, flipping ahead. ”Were there any kids?”

”Listen to this,” I said, reading aloud. ” 'Did you ever find the silver c.o.c.ktail shaker that belonged to Grandma Nonah?' Who was Grandma Nonah? Her grandmother? Or his?”

Peck looked up. ”I think we might have had a Nonah somewhere in the family. Is that the c.o.c.ktail shaker on the bar cart? Or another one?”

I read on. ” 'I suspect the ghost of Fool's House,' he writes. 'You know I have always told you the house is haunted but in the most amiable way. Our specter would enjoy a c.o.c.ktail or two, of that I'm certain.' ”

”I thought he he was the ghost,” Peck complained. She slumped back on her heels again. ”Now we find out there was another ghost? A previous one? Was he one of her lovers too? G.o.d, this is all so confusing. How come we know so little about our ancestors? And I'm afraid Aunt Lydia was rather a s.l.u.t.” was the ghost,” Peck complained. She slumped back on her heels again. ”Now we find out there was another ghost? A previous one? Was he one of her lovers too? G.o.d, this is all so confusing. How come we know so little about our ancestors? And I'm afraid Aunt Lydia was rather a s.l.u.t.”

”Shut your piehole,” I said, borrowing one of her expressions. ”Lydia was not a s.l.u.t. She embraced life.” I was never a believer in ghosts and always a.s.sumed Lydia's tales of her haunted house were, as they say, strictly for entertainment purposes. ”Maybe in her mind her ghost was Julian. And his was a different, earlier version.”

We went back to our reading, handing over each letter as we finished it, reading aloud the bits that we couldn't resist sharing. ” 'I will never forget the image of you in that white dress with your feet on the porch railing as you squinted at the words on the page, bringing them to life for me the way you must have done for your students,' ” Peck intoned, giving dramatic voice to Julian's words. ” 'I'm now convinced all of them, and their fathers too, must have been in love with you and I am madly envious of the hours they would have spent watching you move before them, your hair all done up in a bun. I certainly hope you never wore a sleeveless dress such as that one when you taught a cla.s.s of teenaged boys, for they would have been helpless to concentrate in the face of the vision of your slender, shapely arms. Lydia, you have the most beautiful arms.' ”

”He sounds a bit crazed,” I said.

”She did have beautiful arms, though,” Peck added. ”You have the same ones, Stella. I've always been madly envious that you got the Moriarty arms.” Arms were the kind of feature about which Peck would profess envy while making it clear that she didn't actually feel at all strongly about them, not when she knew full well that b.o.o.bs such as hers were far more likely to make other women jealous.

Then I came to a letter in which Julian mentioned-in the same flowery language Lydia had always favored-the ”darling niece” who was living with her. ” 'Darling niece,' ” I read aloud with a jolt. ”Is he talking about you or me?”

This darling niece, according to the letter, had lived with Aunt Lydia from the sound of it, and as I read on, it became evident that it was I who had spent a full year with her when I was two, while Eleanor followed the Grateful Dead to Europe and didn't return.

This came as a shock. It was a version of the story I'd never heard or even suspected. I'd always been told by my mother, and by Lydia too, that the reason my mother never wanted to come back to the United States was because it was too painful for her after my father died. I always understood that she'd left with me after after he was killed. They were deeply in love, I was told, and this great pa.s.sion was the rationale for his behaving callously toward his first wife. But from Julian's allusions, it seemed my mother had already moved on almost a year before my father's accident, a year that I apparently spent living with Lydia, first in Southampton, right there at Fool's House, and then in New York when the summer ended and it was time for Lydia to go back to teaching. Presumably my father lived with us too, or stayed at Fool's House that summer, although Julian didn't mention him. he was killed. They were deeply in love, I was told, and this great pa.s.sion was the rationale for his behaving callously toward his first wife. But from Julian's allusions, it seemed my mother had already moved on almost a year before my father's accident, a year that I apparently spent living with Lydia, first in Southampton, right there at Fool's House, and then in New York when the summer ended and it was time for Lydia to go back to teaching. Presumably my father lived with us too, or stayed at Fool's House that summer, although Julian didn't mention him.

I felt slightly dizzy, reading that letter, and I handed it to Peck before leaning back against the door to regain my equilibrium. My mother's few stories rushed through my brain, a torrent of words always delivered, as I remembered them, in the slightly ironic tone that allowed her to keep her distance and turn them into anecdotes. She'd take on a conspiratorial tone, as though sharing a confidence. But then she'd end up revealing so little. I knew next to nothing about any of them, not my father, not her parents, or his. ”It could have been worse,” I could hear her saying, with a laugh ready to burst forth each time. ”They could have played 'Bertha.' ”

Peck read through the letter quickly and then looked up at me, her eyes s.h.i.+ning with tears. ”You didn't know.” It wasn't a question but a statement of fact. She gave me a look of frank sympathy.

”Did you?” I asked.

She shook her head. ”I didn't realize she left you here. Mum did tell me about your parents as a cautionary tale. She told me they fell out of love and that your mother went to Europe to get away from a needy husband who quickly grew too demanding. Mum wanted me to know the truth, that no matter how much in love you think you are, it fades. Inevitably it fades, even the grandest of loves.” She paused, as though thinking of her own situation. ”I was only seven when he died, so it was later, of course, when she told me this as a warning. By the time I started to get to know you, there didn't seem to be any reason to share this information.”

”I wish I'd known,” I said simply.

”What difference did it make if they were still in love or not when he died?” She reached out and patted my knee with one hand. ”You couldn't change the ending of that story.”

”I called my mother the queen of the unreliable narrators,” I said, as the rush of words in my brain abated.

”I thought I I was the queen of the unreliable narrators,” Peck said, only half kidding. was the queen of the unreliable narrators,” Peck said, only half kidding.

”I suppose we all are,” I said. ”That's what I'm starting to realize. We all tell our stories the way we want to. And sometimes those stories have nothing to do with reality.”

Peck was clutching a handful of letters and she shook them in my face. ”That's exactly exactly what happened with me and Miles. I got stuck in my version of the story. And I could never move on. I believed this fiction about the one true love. That's a bulls.h.i.+t story if there ever was one. Why is the whole world obsessed with this myth of true love?” what happened with me and Miles. I got stuck in my version of the story. And I could never move on. I believed this fiction about the one true love. That's a bulls.h.i.+t story if there ever was one. Why is the whole world obsessed with this myth of true love?”

I nodded. ”I've wondered that. Even as I read these letters, they sound like fiction to me.”

”That's because you've never been in love,” she said matter-of-factly. I must have given her a look, because she added, ”Don't get your panties in a wad. You know it's true. You got married because you thought it was time and you didn't want to be alone. You told yourself a romantic story-talk about an unreliable narrator-and you wanted to believe it. Of course you did. You're a writer, aren't you?” Peck shrugged. ”We're all storytellers. We choose to tell ourselves the kind of tale we want to hear.”

I took up another of the letters, ready to continue. ”I don't remember Lydia ever mentioning that I'd lived with her. Not even after my mother died.”

”She probably didn't want to hurt your feelings,” Peck said gently. ”It didn't mean your mother didn't love you. She must have been going through a lot.”

According to Julian, who, in some of the letters, seemed to be writing from a kind of sanitarium or rehab center where telephone privileges were limited, Lydia used me, the darling niece, as an excuse not to see him. He complained that she was always giving him the brush-off, that he'd opened his heart to her and she'd tossed it into the wastebasket, much as he predicted she would toss his letters into it after reading them.

Then we came to another revelation: Lydia had been married. It was a brief alliance, no more than a year from the sound of it, with a younger man she met at the school where she worked. He was the father of one of the students, and his first wife had died in a fire. She married him to spite Julian, or that's what Julian seemed to want to believe. The marriage fizzled in a short time, and when they were divorced, Lydia surprised Julian, who was himself still married, even more by not rus.h.i.+ng to be with him again.

”Wow,” I said, after I read through to the end of the letter for Peck's benefit. ”Another thing she never told us. Lying by omission.”

”Doesn't this sound like That-Awful-Jean-Paul? The first husband who didn't work out?” Peck glanced over at me. ”Everyone makes mistakes. Even Lydia.”

”We talked so often when I was going through my divorce,” I said, thinking about the phone conversations with Lydia. ”I can't believe she wouldn't have mentioned this then. She was so sympathetic. And encouraging. I kept wanting to believe there could be a happy ending. And she'd say, 'Sometimes you have to sc.r.a.p your first draft and start over.' ”

When we'd finished reading all the letters, I gently placed the stack back into the safe, leaving the door open. ”Seems kind of anticlimactic, doesn't it?” I said. ”An affair with a married man? That was the big secret hidden in the safe?”

”I know,” Peck said. ”Kind of trite for someone with Lydia's imagination. The cheating husband, the tiny cottage by the beach where the lonely mistress would wait for him to be free, feeling justified when her attentions were drawn to other company.”

”I was expecting something more dramatic,” I said.

”Stella,” Peck intoned, ”I go through life life expecting something more dramatic. That's expecting something more dramatic. That's my my downfall. And yours is that you don't expect downfall. And yours is that you don't expect enough enough.”

We sat there for a while, crouched on the floor near the open closet door in Lydia's cluttered bedroom, filled with things we needed to make decisions about. Most of it would go to charity- there was a thrift shop affiliated with the school where she had taught for so many years-but what of the rest? The strange thing was, I kept feeling like Lydia would be home soon, so we could ask her about it. That's what went through my mind: we can ask Lydia when she gets home. My brain had played the same tricks on me when my mother died.

Peck suddenly jumped up. ”Literally, if I don't get some grease in me I'm going to pa.s.s out. Let's get out of here.”

Later, after we'd stuffed ourselves on eggs and bacon, we sat quietly on the porch together. The rain had stopped but the sky was still a cozy pale gray. Peck lit a cigarette and when she put the pack down on the table I took one for myself. She would never comment on such a decision. She wouldn't welcome it too exuberantly, the way some smokers would, making you want to quit right away before the thing was even lit. She wouldn't raise her eyebrows in question or nod knowingly or look shocked or do anything to acknowledge the cigarette in the hand of a nonsmoker. I loved this about her.

I inhaled deeply, enjoying a newfound feeling of closeness between my sister and me that was almost tangible. We fell into a companionable silence, rocking back and forth in the old chairs, looking out at the small raggedy lawn and the tennis court, smoking. Something had s.h.i.+fted between us.

”Our family was f.u.c.ked up,” she said, after a while.

”All families are f.u.c.ked up.” I took comfort in that knowledge, and in the obvious but suddenly poignant realization that my sister and I were each other's family, f.u.c.ked up or not. She was all I had. ”I'm named after a Grateful Dead song they didn't play the night I was born. For all I know, they weren't even at the show. Maybe he didn't even like like the Dead!” the Dead!”

”Oh, he loved the Dead all right,” Peck said. ”It was when he started getting into music that everything went south with Mum. She was never never going to go to a Dead show with him. She blamed the music. All of a sudden her husband grew his hair long and started playing the guitar and claiming his great lament was that he hadn't gone to Woodstock. She didn't know who he was.” going to go to a Dead show with him. She blamed the music. All of a sudden her husband grew his hair long and started playing the guitar and claiming his great lament was that he hadn't gone to Woodstock. She didn't know who he was.”

”That's pretty funny,” I said. ”Because my mother said he was very square. But she said it like it wasn't a bad thing.”

After a pause Peck waved her cigarette in my direction. ”Did I ever tell you about my my first Dead show?” first Dead show?”

I nodded.