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  And Claire herself, constantly prying into Serena’s life, meddling where she had no right. Did she look upon Serena and Roman fondly, hoping to help them in some way because their love had been forbidden, or was she contriving something else for them? If so, was her housekeeper, Helga Reinschmidt, in on it too? Was Helga’s trip to San Antonio that summer only a cover for something which lay ahead?

  And the others … Professor King of the traveling band, who bore a striking resemblance to Rubin Garret; Mrs. McCambridge, who stayed with Janet and kept a proprietary eye on Serena …

  And of course Nick Weaver, everyone’s idea of a fine Christian fellow, a little self-righteous as he pored over his organ music, Serena Garret’s “intended” in everyone’s mind except her own.

  And Porky, her boon companion and James’s friend, who made me wish I’d had the experience of owning a dog. And of course Charles Becker, Claire’s dead husband, about whom James had so far said so little, yet hinted so much …

  It was almost too much to be taken in at once, all the faceless people with private motives that somehow came together like the center of a spider web by the summer’s end. But how? James had a way of organized, point-by-point storytelling, that threatened to put an end to my sanity once and for all. Why couldn’t he just stop and say right out what happened that day he thought she was killed? Was he taking his time, still reluctant to come to that part?

  His face had clouded up as he neared the end of the tale. Then suddenly it brightened. He’d remembered a picture he owned of my mother that he’d taken himself.

  “My gosh, I can’t believe I just thought of it! You can even see a little of her house in it,” he’d said, and darted out to his quarters in Tannery Hall to get it, leaving me so stunned at the sudden prospect of seeing my mother for the first time that all I could do was give him a gaping stare.

  He’d been gone for a few minutes when, impatient suddenly at all the loose ends of the story still dangling before me, I stretched and took a stroll around the room to pass the time. Books lined almost all the wall space, floor to ceiling, and there were three full shelves of The Literary Digest, each volume placed in order with the next. Two filing cabinets in one corner, James’s desk and leather swivel chair, and two wooden armchairs made up the rest of the simple furnishings. There were no pictures on the desk, no family articles that one always found in the principal’s office at school while nervously awaiting a dressing down. There was, however, a small oil painting on one wall, which I’d only then noticed.

  A young girl with light, flowing hair and small features. Something about her brown eyes was enchanting. I gazed at it, almost mesmerized by the face, which was turned not quite straight ahead, the unusual angle adding to its coyness. I was still gazing at the painting when James returned.

  “She’s beautiful, is she not? My mother, Ruth.”

  “Enchanting.”

  “Janet painted it in 1879, some years before her accident, and Serena gave it to me when I visited Galveston twenty years later. But here’s the picture you’ve been waiting for.”

  I took it hungrily and stared at it, trying to take it all in.

  My mother leans on pointed toe in a ballerina pose, her arms upraised and arched inward, forming a frame around her head. Behind her stretches the wide verandah of her house on Avenue L. To her right two great windows yawn. A Gulf breeze, ever so slight, has blown a wisp of hair across her forehead. The expression on her young face is one of rapture.

  I went on looking at it, trying to comprehend this was really my mother and I’d found her at last, and suddenly I realized tears were streaming down my cheeks. I replaced the picture on the desk and James continued, handing me a tissue as though I were a student he was consoling over some mishap. “She would have made such a lovely dancer,” he said.

  “Would have?”

  “Yes, within a couple of days after I shot that photo, it came to light Father Garret was frightfully in arrears about paying for her dance lessons, and she was forced to give them up. This, of course, made her even more determined to run away with Roman Cruz, once he’d promised to take her. You can imagine how pent up she must have felt … on the one hand, expected to marry Nick Weaver; on the other, expected to look after Janet; and worrying constantly over her father. Lord, it would have been enough to make me steal away on a merchant ship, I can tell you.”

  “Yet she, being a woman, found it more difficult to get away …”

  “Yes, indeed, but determination always plays a big role in success. Well, to get on … Many mornings when I was thought to be crabbing with Tommy Driscoll, I would be following Serena at safe distance, watching to be sure she met with Roman. If one day he failed to be waiting for her, I’d be close by to comfort her.

  “You see, I never felt I could trust him completely, not till the end. If you’d known the kind of mystic quality about him, you would have understood. And I was so fond of Serena, would have done anything in the world to save her being hurt. It was the reason I gave her my addresses—in case anything should happen to her and she have need of me.

  “It never happened, of course, that he stood her up. I know now he was as much in love with her as she with him, yet it bothered me, this romance between them. The mythology book never paired Apollo with Aphrodite. It made me think he might be stringing her along for the summer, a typical Apolline tactic. I never dreamed I could have been correct in believing the romance wasn’t to be, but to be so wrong about the reasons. My father was right in his conviction one can always find truth in books, but sometimes the truth is clothed in deception.”

  He went to get more coffee for us.

  I picked up my mother’s picture again. This time she seemed almost to come to life, as though the verandah she posed on were instead a stage with splendid footlights. Soon, she would move her arms and body to an etude, and after perfect execution of the dance, would be given cheers by the audience, and dozens of roses sent by admirers. She’d be perspiring some, the hair around her face damp, forming little ringlets … Was this what Roman promised her, a career in front of the footlights? Did he tell her, “Stick with me, baby; we’ll go to New York together, and I’ll make you a star”?

  This is what I asked James when he returned to the office.

  “You’re remarkably perceptive, Willa. Yes, I think he did intend helping her get into a school that he knew of in New York. Of course he didn’t know you were on the way till the end. She might have been frightened to tell him, afraid he’d be put off by her clumsiness or lack of caution, and would leave her stranded. I wish you could have known Roman. Of course, most of my acquaintance with him has been in retrospect. You understand, I’ve had years to put these things together, to remember small items here and there, little things said and done.” He placed the coffee between us.

  “Sorry I took so long. I ran into Perkins, one of the teachers staying on for the holidays. He couldn’t decide where to put up the tree for our little party.”

  “Oh, am I interrupting anything? I never thought—”

  “Not at all. We plan to do our quiet celebrating on Christmas Day. You know, this is the first year since my tenure as administrator began, that all the students have had a place to go for the holidays. Only people left here are bachelor teachers—five of us—who’ve nowhere else to go particularly.

  “You may not appreciate that, unless you’ve ever gone to boarding school. The holidays are dreadfully lonely for the kids who have no place to go. I learned that as I was shifted about, year after year. I went to a total of five boarding schools before finishing, and only a couple of times was I able to spend a holiday away from school. In summer I was sent to camp …”

  “But your grandfather—”

  “He was ninety when Mother and Father were killed. He died in the fall of 1900. I was truly alone after that. Lucky some distant relatives of my father’s looked after my estate. The money from it kept me out of their hair and in schools.

  “At any rate,
this year we went on a campaign to see all the students had a place to go. Some went home with fellow students, if they had no place else to go. It gave me a good feeling, sending them off happy.”

  “You take your job seriously, that’s obvious. How long have you been here?”

  “Five years. Began as a history instructor. It wasn’t really what I wanted most of all, but because I was taken away from this area before I was ready, I always hungered to get back, under any condition.”

  “Do you still teach, or just supervise?”

  “I have several classes a week—history, English, geography. Depends on how our staff is running from year to year. You know, we have both boys and girls here now, whereas in the old days before I took over, it was a school for girls. We’ve changed the name to the Tannery Institute of Learning—you may have noticed the sign at the edge of the grounds—in honor of the original owner. My mother and even Claire and Betsey went here when it was the Pedagoguery.

  “Well, something else occurred to me as I poured the coffee just now … Porky was poisoned toward the end of that summer. We didn’t know who’d done it then, of course, but we soon found out. In fact, it might have been because of Porky’s death that Serena confided in me her plans to leave Galveston with Roman Cruz.

  “I was heartbroken about Porky. I wasn’t a strong child at all, and after he was buried I went back to Claire’s and vomited up everything in my stomach. I’d even fainted a few times in my life … once in Galveston, early in the summer after I was stung by a man-of-war in the Gulf, and was being carried home by Roman and Serena. They never knew, though, and I’d have been mortified if they’d guessed.

  “Anyway, back to Porky, I did have some of my savings left which I kept hidden in my closet at Claire’s. That, plus my earnings from the sale of crabs, came to something like twenty dollars, I think. There was a pet shop in downtown Galveston, and I went to Serena’s house that night to offer to buy her another dog there.

  “Serena was grateful, but turned down the idea, and that was when she told me she was running away. She gave me no details, and at the time I’m not sure she knew all of them herself. It didn’t matter, though. The fact was, she was leaving, and it broke my heart. I was no good at making friends, and I’d counted so on her friendship, then to have it blown away as with the wind … I was worried about her, too. Even at this point, I still wasn’t positive Roman could be trusted, although I realize now this was only because I loved her so, nobody would have measured up as good enough to take her away from me.

  “On the morning of September 7, I stopped next door to give Serena that slip of paper you brought today, then went with Tommy Driscoll crabbing. We caught three dozen good-sized ones and had them sold within an hour.

  “Serena hadn’t even said when she was leaving. Roman had probably urged her not to take any unnecessary chances that I might spill the information to someone. I knew the departure was to be soon, because the band had to go back to New York. I figured I could find out anyway, by just keeping my eyes open. That night I went up to my room after supper and watched her house, to see if there was any sign of her sneaking out. The house was quiet. The light stayed on in her mother’s room, across from my own, till sometime after ten o’clock, and then shortly after, the downstairs lights went out.

  “If I put my face to the glass and moved back as far as possible toward the window facing, I could just see someone walking from the Garret house down their front walk. I watched for Serena to depart until after midnight, then, tired out and with a crick in my neck, I went to bed, knowing I’d guessed wrong about a nighttime rendezvous. And that winds up the background of the summer.”

  He paused there, rose from his chair, walked over to the window, and lifted the shade. I could tell we’d come to the part that was painful to him, the part that perhaps made him wish I’d never showed up at his office door, but I couldn’t let him stop now …

  He cleared his throat and stared out the window, and folded his arms in front of him as though to shield himself from some sort of purge. His voice was low as he continued …

  “Willa, I think it only fair that I tell you … because of what I did that next day, your mother is certain to have suffered severe disfigurement for the rest of her life.”

  I caught my breath as I thought of her again, imprisoned somewhere in an institution. Before, the conjecture had seemed almost foolish, yet now …

  Chapter 10

  “It was blazingly hot that morning of September eighth, hotter than it had been all summer long. When I woke up my clothes were sticking to me and I’d soaked a big spot on my pillow with perspiration. I got up and dressed and started downstairs. I was planning to follow Serena to the beach, but Claire had something else in mind.

  “‘And where are you off to this morning?’ she asked.

  “‘Oh, just around.’

  “‘My, aren’t we secretive. Well, not today. I want you to help me rearrange some boxes up in the attic, to make room for some things I’m going to move up. It won’t take long.’

  “Thus I was stuck, unable even to check on whether Serena went to the beach, and angry for having my plans foiled. We moved boxes and stacked junk in the attic until ten-thirty or so, then Claire sat down and said, ‘Whew, it is stuffy up here, isn’t it! Tell you what, here’s a quarter. You go down to Schott’s for two chocolate sodas. Hurry back, now, and we’ll get to work and finish this by noon.’

  “I did as she said, looking forward to the chocolate soda but still wishing I’d been able to follow Serena to the beach. I stole a glance down that way as I walked out the front gate, and even was tempted to bolt, but I couldn’t see anything anyway, and didn’t want to be faced with having disobeyed Claire.

  “When I came back, Claire was standing at the fence, motioning for me to hurry. ‘It’s Serena’s mother, taken ill,’ she said. ‘Mrs. McCambridge can’t locate Rubin, so we must find Serena and get her home. Do you know what part of the beach she’d be on? Or is she there today?’

  “I stood tongue-tied for a minute, knowing to tell would be to betray my only friend in the world.

  “‘Well? You must know?’

  “‘I’ll go and get her,’ I said finally.

  “‘Nothing doing. We’ll board the rig and go together. It’ll be twice as fast. Janet is very ill, you see, and time is of the utmost …’

  “She was walking toward the barn as she spoke to me, and I was following her numbly, my knees like jelly. Perhaps they were already gone, I thought, and if so, all the better. Except Serena would want to be with her mother if Mrs. Garret needed her. She’d never forgive me if I failed to get her in time, and the way my cousin had explained the situation, I was sure Janet Garret must be dying.

  “The wind had begun to take on a kind of chill as we pulled out of the barn and headed down L—we’d had no rain the whole of August, and everything was dry as overcooked chicken. The sun had disappeared; the sky was turning sad. Claire kept repeating, ‘Oh, I hope it won’t rain. This time of year one never knows—oh, it mustn’t rain now.’

  “I thought it odd she should mind, after having tapped her barometer all month long in hopes it would show a good shower in store, and griping about the effects of baking sun on the flowers in her care at the church garden. Then I realized she probably feared a hard rain would impede our speed in returning Serena to her mother’s bedside.

  “I directed her to the right once we got to the beach, and the closer we came to the Seaside Pavilion, the more frightened I got at this thing I was doing. Perhaps Serena would be mad; maybe she wouldn’t want to know if her mother was ill. What if I’d ruined her plans with Roman by telling where she was?

  “Maybe they weren’t even there. Maybe Serena had gone off somewhere else. I was so busy worrying about betraying her that I almost forgot to tell Claire to stop in front of the Seaside Pavilion.

  “It didn’t matter, though. She already knew.

  “She pulled up about a hundred feet from the
door, and said, ‘This is it, isn’t it?’ And I knew then poor Serena hadn’t kept her secret after all.

  “‘I think so,’ I said.

  “‘Very well, then. You run along and get her. I’ll wait for you here.’

  “The wind was really kicking up, whipping the flags on the building as I walked up to the door. The Seaside Pavilion was a conglomeration of turrets and battlements, and projections coming out in all directions, and flags flying everywhere—I believe I counted twenty-nine flags altogether one time. I really hoped the place would be deserted, but when I looked up at the towers, I saw the candle burning in the window of one. They must have only just lit it, as the sky was now turning dark gray.

  “I didn’t want to be there. I wanted to be anywhere else in the world right then, but I tried the front door, found it unlocked, and stole in. Serena had told me once that they met sometimes in the tower, but I’d never been up there. I went into a little hallway and faced a tall, spiraling stairway. I still couldn’t make up my mind, knew that hesitation might keep Serena from seeing her mother before she died, but I knew too that what I was doing might forever make her look upon me as a traitor. I stood at the railing for a moment, my perspiring hand gripping it as though it were the line of a lifebuoy. Then I walked up.

  “I could hear their voices inside. By this time the whole of the band was gone from the premises. The musicians hadn’t come from their hotel in town that morning because the shows were over and they had only to go straight to the Union Depot. Just as I lifted my hand to knock, I thought I heard a door open somewhere downstairs, but it was a flash across my mind, nothing more. The thunder outside was rumbling like a cannon in a battle far away. I was sweating like a field hand, but resigned at last to go through with it.

  “‘Yes, what is it?’ It was Roman’s voice, angry. A chill went through me. I couldn’t take lightly the anger of Roman Cruz. There was a hesitation, a rustling, and I knew Serena was there too. Yet I asked anyway. ‘What business is it of yours?’ Roman demanded.