Leeway Cottage Page 5

  “We might try my coral beads, but the color is risky …you know what I’d like to see? I’d like to see you try your grandmother’s pearls.”

  The pearls! Annabee turned from the mirror to look at her mother, eyes shining. “Could I?” She had thought she’d have to be ancient as Granabelle before she could wear those pearls.

  “Of course you can. Just call Mr. Christie and he’ll get them out of the vault for you.”

  Oh! Imagine this dress, and those pearls! She’d be stunning, she’d be like her grandmother, she’d walk into the room and all heads would turn!

  “They may not suit, you can’t tell till you try,” said Candace. “Would you like me to call him for you?”

  The afternoon of the party it snowed without ceasing, but the snow stopped toward evening. Annabee put on her dress at last and went to join her mother. Candace was wearing a long strapless gown of bottle green velvet. Annabee helped with her last hooks and eyes. Together they chose evening bags and perfume; together they sprayed the air before them and then stepped into the cloud of fragrance. When Mr. Christie finally arrived, on the dot of eight, they were ready and waiting.

  “Ask him to come up, Maudie,” Candace called down the stairs, when she heard the male voice in the hall. Mr. Christie duly appeared, his cheeks pinker than ever. “Good evening, ladies. Oh, my, I’ll be the envy of the town.”

  Annabee had stood, to honor her elder, but also to show her dress to full advantage. “You are a vision,” he said to her, bowing. “Your pearls, madam.” He took a long narrow case of green kid from an inside pocket of his coat and handed it to her.

  Annabee opened the case. The pearls were larger than she remembered, and the color even warmer.

  “Well,” said Candace. “Let’s have the full effect…”

  Watching herself in the mirror, Annabee lifted the pearls and fastened them around her neck.

  She looked at herself. She stood, she turned. Mr. Christie took a step back and cocked his head. No one spoke. Annabee walked into the dressing room and looked in the full-length mirror. She came back out.

  “The length is just wrong, isn’t it.”

  It was. All three knew it; the bottom of the rope hit the neckline in a way that hid rather than enhanced the effect. She took off the pearls, before anyone told her to, feeling very mature. There would be other evenings, and other dresses.

  Candace went to her jewel box, took out the string of coral beads, and tried them around Annabee’s neck. They hung perfectly, framed by the V of the neckline.

  “The color is wonderful…” said Mr. Christie, doubtfully.

  “Wait,” said Candace. She took back the coral beads and produced instead a pair of diamond clips. She clipped them to the sides of Annabee’s neckline. “There! Now that’s better—now the jewel you see is the girl herself!”

  “Candace, you’re a witch,” said Bernard. “It’s quite, quite perfect.” And Annabee could see that it was. She began to smile. Diamonds! And before she was out!

  “All right, ladies? Shall we be off?”

  “Yes, just a minute, what am I going to wear?” said Candace. “I’m going to be completely upstaged by my daughter.” She sounded pleased about it.

  “Mother, you wear the pearls.”

  Candace turned from her jewel case to look at Annabee.

  “You wear them. They’ll be perfect. It’s a shame to have them out of the vault and not use them.”

  Candace looked as if she had never been more pleased with her child than she was at that moment.

  “Well, thank you, lovey.” She had the pearls on in an instant and didn’t need a mirror to tell her how they looked. Mother and daughter beheld each other, smiling.

  “Well!” said Bernard. “Ladies—your chariot awaits.”

  They had dinner downtown at a new French restaurant. It began to snow again as Mr. Christie drove them toward the Mayfield Club, but nothing happened to prevent their arrival, and finally, there they were in the receiving line, moving toward Mr. and Mrs. Talbot, who stood with Alice between them, all smiling and shaking hands.

  The ballroom was hung with dark green swags and fairy lights. The room was filled with girls in long gowns, boys in white tie, talking, flirting, drinking champagne. Annabee sat with her mother and Mr. Christie at a table where they would have a view of the dancing. At midnight, Alice came in with her father, and the orchestra began “The Most Beautiful Girl in the World” as they waltzed alone on the floor. Annabee suddenly was near tears. All the years ahead of her, of missing her father. He couldn’t see her in her dress from Paris, at her first ball. He would never dance the first waltz with her at her own debut, or walk her down any aisle.

  Mr. Christie was standing before her. “May I dance with the most beautiful girl in the world?” She looked at her mother, who was lighting a cigarette and nodding.

  Mr. Christie was about the same height as her father, and he danced very smoothly. In a moment Toby Talbot cut in, and Annabee’s evening began.

  She danced far more than she sat out, in spite of her mother’s warnings to expect to be a wallflower. Champagne had made her cheeks bright, and unlike her dancing-school partners, these boys were taller than she, and held her close enough that she could follow. She might not be Miss Popularity at Hathaway Brown, but boys got a look at her bustline, and maybe her diamonds, and trotted right over. This confused and surprised her, but appeared to get her mother’s attention. Annabee was sorry when supper was over and her mother announced it was time to go home.

  “Next year, you can stay till dawn,” said her mother.

  Annabee slept almost to noon the next morning. When she came downstairs, she found that a boy from the party had sent her flowers, with an invitation to the club dance on New Year’s Eve. Her mother was vastly amused. “You made your first conquest, my dear,” she said. Then instructed her how to word her regret.

  1937

  Unfortunately, the Christmas brightness did not survive the New Year, and it was a long sad winter for Annabee. She ached for her father, and her mother didn’t want to hear about it. A girl in her class whom she thought was a friend had turned against her; she had no idea why. She took up smoking and for a while she was welcomed by the popular girls who talked slang and accepted car rides from boys. She carried a stash of matches and Tangee lipstick in her purse, and hoped, daily, that she’d be given the nod when the group decided where they were meeting to light up after school. But then she won a part in the spring musical, which the popular girls thought was hopelessly SS & G, and there were no more whispered messages or notes slipped into her desk. Her new ex-friends went out the side door, laughing, as Annabee reported to the gym to rehearse.

  “Sweet, simple, and girlish, oh, lord,” said Candace. The girls of her youth who’d been branded that were pretty tragic, and she wasn’t one of those mothers who blamed the crowd who ostracized her child. Candace identified with the ostracizers. She, too, thought all these rehearsals and gingham costumes were fairly wet. It would be one thing if Annabee wanted the part because there were boys in the play, which there were, but that had nothing to do with it. Annabee wanted the part because she wanted to sing. (Candace rolled her eyes, and the word “showoff ” could be overheard in her supposedly sotto voce conversations with friends.) Gone was Annabee’s hope that she’d finally gained a mother.

  Tech and dress rehearsals ran quite late the week before the performances. (“Two whole performances! My,” Candace said.) The Hawken boy playing the lead kept going up in his lines, and a doltish girl from the freshman class could not hit her marks and kept delivering her big number from the dark next to the spotlight.

  “I’m sorry, Ralph,” said Annabee, when she found him asleep in the car waiting for her.

  “That’s all right, Miss Anna. I have to go fetch your mother later anyway.”

  “Do you? Where is she?”

  “At the Playhouse. There’s some big do there.”

  Annabee made herself a cup o
f cocoa in the kitchen, then settled down in the den to wait for her mother. Both of them coming in late from their busy lives involved with the theater.

  When Candace walked in, she saw the light in the den and came to the door. There was her daughter, half asleep, with a mug in her hand, wearing pancake makeup with painted freckles and a cocoa mustache.

  Annabee looked up. Before her stood her richly upholstered mother, with her ermine capelet over her arm, wearing a long dress of ice blue peau de soie and the triple rope of Grannabee’s pearls.

  “You’re up late,” Candace said.

  “Long rehearsal,” said Annabee.

  “What are you looking at? Is something showing?” Candace felt for the shoulders of the gown to see if a lingerie strap had escaped.

  “No.”

  “Oh.” She then laughed trippingly, as if it had just this moment come to her. “The pearls. They’re perfect with this dress, aren’t they?”

  “Yes, but…”

  “Yes?”

  “I thought you would ask me.”

  “Did you? Why?”

  “Well, because…”

  “You didn’t need them yourself tonight, did you? They don’t really go with your getup…” When Annabee still didn’t speak, Candace said, in a brisk and dismissive tone, “But if you want pearls so badly, of course you can have them.”

  “My father gave them to me.”

  “All right, Anna. Good night.”

  Candace turned and disappeared. Annabee could hear her open and close the door of the downstairs closet. She heard her mother climb the front stairs, go into her room, and close the door. Annabee was wretched.

  She went through the next day feeling sick. The final dress rehearsal was a disaster. At home she couldn’t rest or eat. Her mother wasn’t home and would be out for dinner, Velma said.

  Annabee lay in her room angry and jumpy and growing more wound up by the minute. Finally she got up and crept to her mother’s door. She stood listening hard. Then she turned the knob and went in, half expecting to find Candace on the chaise longue lying in wait for her.

  The room was empty. Annabee went to the dressing room and stood facing the jewel case. She listened to her blood pound through her heart, expecting her mother to spring at her from somewhere.

  The case wasn’t locked.

  She had the lid up. Annabee looked at the little plush compartments full of gold and silver, onyx and pearl, topaz and sapphire.

  She lifted the top tray out. Underneath was a shallow compartment with necklaces, amber and jet and garnet, old-fashioned and rarely worn.

  She opened the drawers. There were jewelers’ pouches and bags of softest suede; she went through them all. No pearls.

  At a noise in the hall her heart nearly stopped.

  “Oh, it’s you, Miss Anna,” said Maudie in the doorway. “I saw the light in here and I thought, Now who is in there?”

  “Sorry—I must have scared you.”

  “That’s all right.”

  Annabee walked past Maudie and went back to her room without explaining herself.

  The opening night was a triumph. Annabee was surrounded afterward by parents of girls who barely talked to her, saying how wonderful she’d been. Her teachers said the same. One said Annabee should go to New York and study, she really should. Annabee said thank you, thank you, thank you. She felt a distance away from herself the whole night.

  When she got home, her mother was in the library. “I’m in here, lovey,” she called.

  Annabee went to the door.

  “How did everything go?”

  “It went well.”

  “I’m so glad to hear it. I’ll be there tomorrow, with bells on, so will Bernard.”

  “Okay.”

  “Are you going straight to bed?”

  “I guess so.”

  “Sleep well, then.”

  Annabee went up to her room. When she turned on the light, the first thing she saw, lying on her dresser, seeming to pulsate, was the green kid necklace case.

  She nearly wept with relief. She went to it. She stroked it. She pushed the round gold hook of the case clasp out of its eye, then pushed it back. She kissed a finger and tapped the case with it. Hello, Granabelle. Hello, Daddy. She put the case into her drawer under her sweaters, and noticed she was famished. She went down the back stairs to the kitchen and made an enormous sandwich from the cold chicken left from the supper she hadn’t touched.

  The performance Saturday evening was almost as good as the first. Mr. Christie was wildly enthusiastic.

  “You have star quality, young lady. When you held that high note, I felt chills up my spine. I did. You could be on Broadway.”

  Annabee wriggled with pleasure.

  “I’d like to try classical,” she said shyly.

  “Even better!” cried Mr. Christie. “The Juilliard School! You’re a shoo-in—”

  “Bernard, don’t give her mad ideas. You were just fine, lovey. Much better than the lead, really.”

  “Thank you, Mother.” She wished that in her mother’s world success didn’t require someone else’s defeat, but still. She was here. She hadn’t said anything mean. She’d returned the pearls.

  There was a cast party, at which Annabee was not a wallflower. There was euphoria. For some there was also letdown, especially for the boy who learned he had played the whole last act with his fly open. But not for Annabee; she had a beautiful green kid case in her drawer and inside it the most beautiful pearls in the world. From her grandmother, who had loved her, from her father, whom she adored, and now, too, from her mother. They were hers, her heritage, they were love.

  That night, after a hot bath, wearing a clean nightgown, she climbed into bed. In her hand she had the green leather necklace case. She waited a long moment, thinking of her grandmother, her father, and of her mother down the hall. Then she opened the case.

  Inside was the single string of pearls Candace had resented all these years, since the moment James gave the heirloom pearls to Annabee.

  “My father gave those pearls to me when Granabelle died. To me!” Annabee was standing in the door of the sun porch where her mother was eating breakfast and reading her mail.

  “You’re much too young for pearls like that. Where would you wear them?” Candace didn’t look at her daughter. She swallowed a bite of soft-boiled egg and took up another letter.

  “He gave them to me. You were right there, you heard him.”

  Candace finally looked up. “You know, Anna, your father wasn’t at all well, those last years.”

  She returned to the egg in her egg cup, scooping at it daintily with a tiny silver spoon.

  Annabee had a tight knot of rage and tears in her throat, and it ached. With her face flaming, she stormed back upstairs.

  On Monday morning she took the Rapid to Public Square to see Mr. Christie. He met her at the door of his office, all hail-fellow-well-met.

  “You’re looking lovely, Anna.” He took her elbow and guided her to his inner office. “Are you sure you won’t let me give you lunch?”

  She shook her head and took the chair she’d been steered to.

  She didn’t know how to begin. Mr. Christie assumed a blank, pleasant expression. She could see in his eyes that he would be entirely pleasant and correct, but not helpful. He was her lawyer and trustee, the only one she had, but she was not his only client.

  “When my grandmother died, my father gave me her pearls. That you brought me the night of the dance.”

  “Did he?”

  “Didn’t you know that?”

  Mr. Christie steepled his fingers.

  “Just a moment.” He rang a bell, and a secretary appeared. “Mrs. Doughty, will you bring me Mrs. Annabelle Brant’s will? And Mr. James Brant’s. Thank you.”

  “He gave them to me the morning of the funeral. My mother saw him.”

  The wills were brought in and laid on his desk. He turned to glance at one, then the other.

  “For such
a large estate, your grandmother’s will was quite simple,” he said. “She set up an education trust for you when you were born, but everything else, except for the usual bequests to servants and charities, was left to your father. Cash, securities, all real and personal property.”

  Annabee looked at him. She could see how this was going to play out, and she longed to slap his cute pink cheeks.

  “So the pearls were my father’s that morning, and he gave them to me.”

  “So you say.”

  “He gave them to me! He did and she knows he did!”

  “Anna, Anna.”

  “Do you think I’m a liar?” She couldn’t keep the ugly word from popping out like a toad, because someone here was a liar.

  “I have no idea. I wasn’t there.”

  She shouldn’t have said that word. If he had liked or felt kindly toward her up to now, he did no longer.

  “Your father’s will…” He turned to it and gave himself some time to turn the pages. Then put it down, folded his hands, and met her eyes. “Is equally straightforward. Half the value of his estate is yours outright when you turn eighteen. The other half, including all real and personal property, is your mother’s for her lifetime, with the balance to go to you at her death.”

  “I see. And her half. She can do whatever she wants to? Give it to the poor, spend it on her nephews in Knoxville, throw it out the windows?”

  “She can do anything she wants with the income, which is not small, including throw it out the windows. With the principal she can do what she needs to do for her reasonable maintenance.”

  “And who decides what is reasonable?”

  “The bank and the trustee.”

  “And the trustee is …?”

  “I.”

  Of course. There was a long silence in which they looked at each other. At least he didn’t smirk.

  “And the real property?”

  “The house in Dundee is hers for her lifetime, but not to sell unless you agree. The Cleveland house is hers outright, with all contents.”