Out of the Attic Read online

  She laughed, her hazel eyes brightening with her soft, almost little-girl smile. Her small teeth were nearly perfectly straight. Her lips were thinner than mine and just a little crooked because of the way her cheek tightened on the right more than on the left when she smiled. Only someone who had been contrasting herself with other girls and young women all her life would be as quick to pick up any imperfections in her competition. But I had immediately liked her when we had been introduced in the department store. In some ways, she reminded me of my best friend at home, Daisy Herman.

  Like Daisy, despite her social position and her being older than I was, Melinda Sue had the excitement of a farm girl brought to her first fair. Her eyes darted about the entryway in her ravenous effort to capture and memorize everything in and about Foxworth Hall as quickly as she could. I was sure, like my mother, who had been keen to request a report whenever I had visited a girlfriend, hers had told her to look at everything and take mental notes so she could report back. Or maybe the other members of her Charlottesville social club had given her that assignment. She’d probably have some negative things to say. Because of Garland’s loyalty to his mother’s choices and designs for Foxworth Hall, I was confident that my home was surely not as fashionable as any one of theirs. Changes here came as slowly as human evolution.

  “I assume you’ve never been to Foxworth,” I said.

  “Oh, no, never, but I’ve always wanted to see it. Whatever my friends who have been to Foxworth tell me about it always makes me more excited about seeing it. It’s so impressive when you drive up to it or look up at it.”

  “It is a house that cannot suffer exaggeration,” I said, stealing one of Garland’s frequent descriptions of his home to strangers.

  “Yes, exactly.”

  “Let me take you for a tour of the downstairs,” I said. Clearly, she was champing at the bit for just such an offer. “And then we’ll go to our lunch just off the kitchen, where it is bright and cheery. Unfortunately, so much of this mansion, like most of them its size, has darkness and deep shadows practically painted on its walls. Well, maybe Foxworth has a bit more.”

  She looked up at the array of family portraits. “Who are they all?”

  “Those are my husband’s ancestors. As you can see, each one of them, even the women, must have suffered from gout at the time their portraits were done.”

  “Gout?”

  After a moment she realized the sarcasm, laughed, and reached out for my hand. “Oh, how funny and probably true,” she whispered, checking to be sure no one could overhear her. Her eyes were full of mischief and delight.

  All of what I had left behind me when I was swept from my youth came rushing back as if my memories and not Melinda Sue’s had accompanied her to rush through an opening in the fortress of Foxworth. In my mind I heard the laughter of my friends back then. A young girl’s laugh was so innocent and underdressed. The subtlety of a smile, the awareness of her volume when she spoke, and the awkwardness she might convey were of no concern yet. We were all some dozen steps or so from feminine wiles, some more like a thousand.

  I was the first in my group of friends to get there, and get there so quickly and completely the others were truly in awe. It was why I seemed so wise and aware of the sexual maze we’d all find ourselves in eventually. However, that might not have been the advantage I thought it was back then. It made me too arrogant and less cautious. Surely it was their unbridled adoration of me that had most to do with my super self-confidence and unfortunate foolish mistakes. I was too eager to accept compliments, which I learned makes you less able to see the truth.

  “It takes two sets of stairs to get up there,” Melinda Sue remarked, astonished when she looked up at the second floor. “How high. You have to go up there daily?”

  “Yes, all the bedrooms are up there. There are thirty-six rooms in this mansion,” I said. “Even after all these years, there are some I have barely seen myself. I mean, what would be the point of spending any time in a room that hasn’t been used for over fifty years, if not more?”

  She nodded, amazed. Her gaze moved quickly to the library.

  “Are you a reader?” I asked. “We have hundreds of books, some first editions.”

  “It’s the biggest I’ve seen in any home!” she cried, following me to the doorway. “We all read the latest popular novels. Myrtle Howard is the best reader in our little group. She’s been reading a serialized story in the new magazine, Harper’s, called ‘The Simpletons,’ but she says it’s been censored. My mother doesn’t want me reading it even though Myrtle says it’s been hacked to death.”

  “Then I guess we should try to get the uncensored version,” I said, and she laughed harder and squeezed my arm.

  “Oh, you’re so perfect for our club,” she squealed.

  “Sounds terribly improper. I don’t know if I can risk my pure and angelic reputation.”

  “Fiddlesticks,” she said, and giggled.

  I showed her the dining room, which she said was the biggest she had ever seen, and then I took her to the ballroom. Her small eyes seemed to double in amazement. Malcolm and Dora were upstairs in his room for his schooling. I explained why the toy train and little village were there and then suggested we have our lunch before we saw anything more of Foxworth.

  “Yes, we’ll need the energy,” she said. “How do you look after something as immense as this?”

  “I don’t,” I said. “I’ve never touched a mop or a dust cloth and couldn’t tell you where to find any.”

  She giggled and again claimed I was perfect for their club. “We’re all quite spoiled.”

  “I wouldn’t know any other way to be,” I said. Her giggling was beginning to sound quite immature. Anything I uttered would bring it on.

  Finally, she grew more serious when I led her to the kitchen nook.

  “How pretty,” she said when we sat at the table. “This is the Foxworth emblem, isn’t it?” she asked, putting her napkin on her lap.

  “Yes, Garland designed it himself, but he wanted my opinion,” I said, “before he confirmed it.”

  Now I truly wondered if he had or if he had asked just to impress me more that night that led to my being here. When I looked back at the details I recalled, so much seemed planned, contrived. I was quite gullible for someone who thought she was so sophisticated.

  “What a beautiful flower arrangement. Everything is so perfect. Thank you. How happy you must be with all this at your beck and call.”

  I held my smile but didn’t reply. Now she reminded me more of a little girl on Christmas morning, maybe myself. There was a time when I was like this, I thought, excited about everything and wide-eyed. Something deep inside me longed for that again. Was it normal to be so nostalgic so young?

  Mrs. Wilson and Mrs. Steiner brought out the finger sandwiches and condiments, and Mrs. Steiner poured us glasses of wine, her face barely masking what looked to me to be disapproval. Then they left us. Melinda Sue was looking so intensely at the wine that I wondered if I had made some sort of faux pas by telling Mrs. Wilson to bring white.

  “Something wrong? This is an Italian wine my husband brought back from one of his business trips. Would you like me to ask for red wine instead?”

  “Oh, no. I just…” She leaned toward me. “We drink wine at our girls’ social gathering, but otherwise I never have anything alcoholic without my father or my husband present. Naturally, we keep what we do at our club secret.”

  “How wicked,” I said, half-kidding, mostly sarcastic.

  “Our husbands have secrets, why not us?” she asked, pursing her lips like some debutante putting on her trifling indignation. I wondered if she used all this on her husband. Garland wouldn’t even notice me doing it.

  “Yes, why not us?” I parroted.

  She smiled, and then she lifted her glass of wine. I did, too, and we toasted.

  “To our secrets,” she said, and tittered as though she had already drunk too much.

  We dr
ank, our eyes fixed on each other’s. Which one of us would spill a secret first? I wondered. It did remind me of my younger days, when Daisy Herman and I squeezed the deepest, most tightly held ones out of our much less sophisticated girlfriends and even ourselves when we wanted to sound shocking.

  We started to eat.

  “Thank you for inviting me.”

  “Thank you for coming.”

  She looked more comfortable, comfortable enough to risk some intimate thoughts.

  “You were so lucky to fall in love so young with a man so handsome and so established,” she said. “Your parents didn’t have time to plan your life.”

  “Is that what yours did to you?”

  She tilted her head to the right, obviously considering whether she should be candid or not, and then nodded. “My parents were afraid I’d make a terrible mistake. I was sort of seeing a young man who didn’t come from a family on our level. His father was a plumber, and his mother worked in one of the Foxworth paper mills. He made enough money after a few years to go to college to become a lawyer, but my father didn’t believe he ever would succeed and made me stop seeing him. Any note he sent was torn up at the door.”

  “How dreadful,” I said, not denying to myself that my father would have done something similar.

  “Yes. He brought my future husband to dinner at our home one night and encouraged our relationship until it was consummated in our marriage. Hammered and nailed in place. Now here I am, Mrs. Clarence Henry Carter. I often wake up hoping it was just a dream.”

  “So you’re not in love with your husband?”

  “Let’s say I’m in like,” she said, and laughed. Then she sighed. “I did complain to my mother before I took my vows, but she insisted that love is an illusion. ‘You grow accustomed to someone,’ she said. ‘That’s the best you can hope for.’ I’m sure that isn’t true for you, not with a man as handsome and as charming as Garland Foxworth.”

  She probably thought my silence was curious, but she didn’t pursue it. We drank our wine and ate.

  “So beautiful here,” she said, looking out the windows. “How’s your little boy? What is he, about five?”

  “Yes. He’s fine. A handful, or two handfuls,” I said, deciding that was all I would say about Malcolm.

  “We’re going to start a family this year. Clarence plans everything we do like it’s part of my father’s accounting records or something.”

  “He uses protection?” I asked.

  She wasn’t shocked by my question. She looked happy that I had asked it, in fact. “Yes. When we do it, I mean. I find it all quite unromantic, not that we’re ever that romantic anyway. I never told this to a soul, even my girlfriends at the social club, but for some reasons I can’t describe, I don’t mind telling you.”

  “What?”

  “My husband makes love the same way for the same amount of time every time as if he has a stopwatch for a heart. He often does it leaving most of my clothing on.”

  She took another long sip of her wine. It was giving her courage, that and my expressionless face. She could see I wasn’t someone easily shocked.

  “I know I’m not unpleasant to look at, but he doesn’t seem to need any additional encouragement. I’m sure your lovemaking is quite different.”

  “Yes, my husband can be quite romantic, and usually it’s somewhat different each time,” I told her, because it was what she wanted to hear. Besides, I didn’t want to in any way suggest my marriage was anything but as spectacular as they all seemed to think, listening to her.

  “Mr. Foxworth is always quite debonair. I wish my husband kept in style the way yours does. He has a half dozen suits and never looks to buy anything new. Your husband does. He keeps up with fashion.”

  “He does that, yes,” I said. I smiled at her. “How do you notice him so often?”

  “Oh, it’s not that often,” she said, looking as guilty as a little girl caught shoplifting.

  Mrs. Steiner came in to pour us each another glass of wine.

  “Everything all right, Mrs. Foxworth?”

  “Yes, thank you, Mrs. Steiner.”

  She smiled at Melinda Sue and left us.

  “I was thinking of having Lucas, our driver, take you and me for a ride on the estate. We’d end up at the lake. I wouldn’t attempt to take a rowboat out. One of us would develop calluses quickly.”

  She laughed. “Perhaps Mr. Foxworth will be home by then and he could take us?”

  “No. I’m afraid he left on the train for a business trip very early this morning.”

  She held her glass on her lips and did not sip her wine. Then she lowered it slowly. I saw the way she was avoiding looking directly at me.

  “But…”

  “But what, Melinda Sue?” I sat back, smiling.

  “But on my way here… I saw him going into the Caroline House. That couldn’t have been more than an hour ago,” she said.

  I held my smile and stared at her. “Are you sure you saw him?”

  “Oh, you couldn’t make a mistake when it comes to your husband, Corrine.”

  “Maybe something happened with his travel arrangements,” I said. She was holding back something more. “Was he with some people?”

  “How difficult it must be for you to have him gone so long,” she said, rather than answering.

  “Well, I don’t know exactly how long, but yes, it is difficult, but my husband has a great many successful business enterprises.” I stared at her. “You saw him with other people?”

  “Not people,” she said, so low that I almost didn’t hear.

  “Do you know who was with him?”

  She looked just like someone who had been knocked over a bit by the wine and who had uttered something she now regretted. As my father would say, the horse was out of the barn. No point in closing the door.

  “Do you?”

  “Mrs. Catherine Francis,” she said. “She’s a widow. Her husband died in a carriage accident two years ago. They were only married four years. She inherited a lot of money.” She smiled. “I doubt your husband would be interested in her for any reason other than business. He’s probably courting her to invest in one of his enterprises. Has he mentioned her?”

  “I don’t recall,” I said, “but I don’t pay attention to business talk.”

  She nodded but kept her gaze lowered.

  “However, I’m sure,” I continued, “that my husband meets with rich women as well as rich men. To him money is money regardless of whose pocket it comes out of.”

  “Oh, of course.”

  I studied her a moment. The silence was thunderous.

  “But that’s not what you were really thinking when you saw him earlier with this Catherine Francis, was it?” I asked sharply.

  “Oh, I swear, I… didn’t mean to imply anything…”

  “Of course not.” I dabbed my lips with my napkin and smiled. “Tell me more about your women’s social club. When and where do you meet next?”

  “My house next Tuesday. Everyone is hoping you’ll be there. I mentioned seeing you at the department store, and we had a meeting at Bessie Lawrence’s home that night. I must say you were the main topic of conversation. Few have seen that much of you, and only one had attended your wedding, Lillie Chester. Her father is president of the Charlottesville National Bank.”

  “I don’t remember her. There were so many at the wedding. What exactly do you do at your club meetings besides sneak in glasses of wine?”

  “We discuss fashions, food, some of the new entertainment. Very little politics, if you’re worried about that.”

  “And gossip?”

  “Oh, I won’t deny it. My father always says, ‘A woman’s work is never done if there’s one more rumor to spread.’ ”

  “Maybe you should tell me all the rumors about me before I meet with your friends, before I walk into the lion’s den, Melinda Sue.”

  I heard the sharpness in my voice. She sat back as if I might sting her like a bee.

/>   “Oh, dear, I’ve somehow upset you. I’m so sorry.”

  “I’m not upset. I’m curious,” I said, smiling but with a chill in my eyes for sure. “My father used to say, ‘There are two mirrors, one in which you see yourself and one in which you see yourself through the eyes of others. Best to know how others see you before you meet them if you can.’ ”

  “How wise.”

  “I agree. So?”

  She looked down. I poured some more wine into her glass, and she looked up.

  “Oh, dear, I think it’s going to my head.”

  “Stomach first,” I said, and she laughed as if she would never stop.

  She reached for her glass of wine and sipped. “Well, most think of you to be like the Lady of Shalott imprisoned in a tower of sorts, Foxworth Hall. No one has seen you alone anywhere except the department store. Like the lady who sees the world only through a mirror, you, especially you, see it only through your husband. Although I’m sure he’s seen enough for two. You’re such a mystery,” she quickly added.

  “Maybe it’s better we leave it at that,” I said, and her smile faded. I squinted. “More interesting, don’t you think? I’m afraid I’d spend most of my time at your club meetings answering questions about my private life and what my husband does or doesn’t do when he’s not at Foxworth Hall.”

  She was speechless.

  I stared out the window. “It looks quite breezy suddenly. Perhaps we should postpone the ride around the estate and going to the lake. It might not be pleasant.”

  “Of course. Whatever you think.”

  “It’s something we can do another time.”

  “Oh, I’d like that very much.”

  “Perhaps in the spring,” I said.

  Mrs. Steiner came in quickly. “Did you want me to prepare your tea, Mrs. Foxworth?”

  “No,” I said. “Thank you. Maybe later,” I added. “Could you inform Lucas that I’ll need him to take Mrs. Carter home soon?”

  She looked as stunned as Melinda Sue. “Very good, Mrs. Foxworth,” she said, and left.

  I turned back to Melinda Sue. “I’ve suddenly developed a headache. I hope you don’t mind.”