Dodging and Burning Read online

  “Are you sure?” Jay asked, hovering above me, a shadow against the high white cloud passing behind him. A few stray hairs on his head flipped up in the breeze and glowed in the hazy sun like lightbulb filaments. “We wrote letters a lot, but he never mentioned taking his journal with him when he enlisted. I guess that’s why I forgot about it. It’d be swell to have something of his.”

  “He told me if I ever read it,” I said, “he’d box my ears.”

  Jay laughed. “That sounds like him.” He sat on the edge of the tree and slid to the ground.

  “Besides, Mama doesn’t like me messing with his things. She’d be so mad if she caught me in his room.”

  “But you swiped his magazines, didn’t you?”

  “Some of them—but I wasn’t supposed to.”

  He looked at me for a minute or two, turning something over in his mind, his eyes flashing as the clouds parted and the sun fell directly on his face. “Cee, look, it’d be bad if your mama or papa found his journal. There could be more in it than just stories, you know.”

  “Yes,” I said, but I didn’t know. I’d seen you writing in it, but I’d never dared look. None of my business; you made that clear.

  “Trust me.” He reached out and touched the side of my arm. “Can you do that?”

  “He wouldn’t want us reading it.”

  The corner of his mouth trembled, and his expression narrowed. “Please. Do some detective work and find it. I’d feel better if I knew it was safe.”

  “Okay. I’ll look.” But I wasn’t sure I would.

  1

  A DATE WITH

  DEATH

  The Letter

  “I didn’t know you was married,” the mail boy said, his dopey eyes drooping at the edges like a sad puppy. “Mrs. Addison.” He grinned, showing his crooked front teeth, and handed her an envelope. It was addressed to Waverly Insurance Co., Attn. Mrs. Kenneth Addison, 402 West 92nd Street, New York, NY.

  Addison. The name put a bad taste in her mouth, like stale bread. Soon Sheila would no longer be Mrs. Kenneth Addison. She frowned at the boy, making her lips an upside-down horseshoe. He knew to leave her alone.

  The envelope was of heavy paper, very official. It was from the law firm of Morgan and Ayres. Perhaps Kenneth’s lawyers? She opened it quickly, stabbing her finger at it. The paper slit her fingertip, and she let out a little cry. She sucked her finger to stop the bleeding. The other girls in the room glanced up like chickens at feeding time. The clacking of typewriter keys stopped.

  They were foolish, these girls, typing up insurance claims by day, dressing up and hunting for beaus by night. “Chickens” was right. Be careful what you wish for, gals, she thought. Once you snag your prince, he might turn into a frog. She shot a smile at them and reassured them she was fine, just fine. Then, she read the contents of the envelope:

  Dear Mrs. Addison,

  I regret to inform you that your aunt Majestica Fury of 300 Meadowlark Lane, Berlin, New Hampshire, passed from this world on November 13th. You are the sole beneficiary of her estate, including her home, Brimblevine House …

  Sheila read on. Her face flushed with excitement, and she could feel herself sit up straighter, chills flowing through her in waves. Her great-aunt had left her a treasure, a hoard, a pot of gold! She had landed at the end of the rainbow, and right when she was feeling so blue. Golly!

  She knew nothing about her aunt other than she had called herself “Madame Majestic” and was lousy with cash after conning the New York elite into believing she could tell their fortunes. She had fled the city and retreated into the White Mountains of New Hampshire to avoid scandal—and the clink.

  Sheila’s father, who had owned a dirty little potato farm outside of Parsippany, New Jersey, considered her aunt a dark stain on her God-fearing family’s honor. He’d once shown Sheila a newspaper clipping of the notorious woman. In it, Madame Majestic wore an elaborate silk turban iced with an expensive brooch, heavy diamond earrings, and a triple-strand pearl choker. Her raccoon eyes peered out from a smooth white face and sparkled with an uncanny light.

  “She’s a jezebel,” Sheila’s father had told her. “She had a different man on her arm every time I saw her. We don’t speak to her anymore. A shameful woman.” Sheila had thought she was beautiful and exotic. She had wished she could meet her. If she could only be as glamorous at her aunt, she could wash off the farm once and for all!

  “What are you smiling about, Sheila?” Betty Blakely said. “You look like the cat that ate the canary.” Betty was her prim, bespectacled desk-mate, and Sheila disliked her and her tight sausage curls. What a busybody!

  “Some good news.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I’m rich. I just received word—”

  “No?”

  “I’m an heiress.”

  “Girls! Did you hear that? Sheila’s a woman of means.”

  The girls began chattering and asking Sheila questions. She enjoyed their attention, their jealousy. She was about to burst her cocoon and turn into a butterfly and fly away from them all.

  In the midst of the commotion, she thought of her soon-to-be ex-husband, Kenneth. She was divorcing the no-good, two-timing scoundrel, because he had broken her heart to be with a cheap floozy who performed in sequins at the Pink Elephant. He would never touch her aunt’s money. Never.

  During lunch, she would visit Morgan and Ayres. Until then, she daydreamed … What was her aunt’s house like? Was it romantic? Was it at the end of a long driveway? Did it have marble bathrooms? What would she do with all that loot? Would she sell it and travel the world? Would she have an affair with a handsome Englishman, a blueblood, like she read about in the pulp romances? Possibilities floated out in front of her. She wanted to reach out and take each one, make them all hers. She wanted to leave memories of her shabby Parsippany upbringing behind; she wanted to walk out of Waverly Insurance and never look back; and most of all, she wanted to forget she had ever been Mrs. Kenneth Addison.

  4

  BUNNY

  Several weeks after my eighteenth birthday, Jay invited me over to peruse the photos he’d taken at the party. I wore a thin, gray dress, cinched at the waist with a strip of red patent leather, and applied a thick layer of lipstick to match the belt. I held an umbrella over my curled hair to protect the entire ensemble from the damp summer weather. I wanted Jay to see me as mature and womanly, and to forget the horrible business at Culler’s Lake.

  In the years after George Greenwood died but before Jay went to war, the Greenwood home hadn’t yet taken on its gothic cast. The large Victorian still retained its white paint and glossy green trim. The windows were clean and the front walk swept. The lawn was freshly mown and lush in the rain. Several potted geraniums burst forth, bright red, on the front porch. Letitia Greenwood had managed to maintain the house with what she’d made in the sale of Dixie Dew, but it would be only a few years before that resource ran dry.

  I wanted to avoid Letitia, so it was an absolute relief when Jay answered the door. He looked particularly handsome that day, not in the casual way I had come to expect. His hair was greased and combed, and his white shirt, its sleeves rolled to his elbows and smooth across his chest, was tucked into his linen pants. His brown suspenders matched his polished brown loafers. Before he welcomed me in, I felt a rush of emotion—a very definite and identifiable attraction to him, but less mysterious, less dangerous than what I felt at the party. Or so I thought. All the feelings of embarrassment over being stranded alone in the middle of the lake and my subsequent plunge back into the water lifted. Jay had cleaned up and dressed up for me.

  I offered my hand to him, and he took it and held it firmly. A muscle in his forearm twitched, and a thought entered my mind, something particularly carnal and lovely. It felt good to feel that way, to have identified what I wanted.

  He showed me through the house to the conservatory that would become his shrouded lair when he returned from the war. The walls then were foggy glas
s panes fused together with lead and wood supports. Above, reinforced with steel rods, was a domed roof made of the same damp glass, glowing from the cloud-muted sunshine and echoing the soft patter of rain. The moist air smelled clean and rich with oxygen. Potted plants of various sizes—ferns, violets, cacti, evergreens, even a lemon tree—thrived in the corners and along the edges of the room. It was the Greenwoods’ private jungle.

  Jay gestured toward a wrought iron patio chair. I positioned myself on it and he sat casually on a matching settee, catty-corner from me. As we fumbled through a few remarks about the weather, he rubbed his knees, unintentionally drawing attention to the way his tight pants pulled against his crotch. I was a little embarrassed for him, or perhaps I was embarrassed by my own desire to touch him. Not knowing what to do, I blurted out a question: “So when did you take up photography as a hobby?”

  His eyes brightened, and he leaned forward. “A while ago, Grandma ordered me to clean out my father’s closet in his study. I found a dusty leather case behind some old boxes, and inside was his old camera. After lots of trial and error, I figured out how to use it. Eventually it broke, but I bought a new one with my allowance, the Miniature Graflex I still have now.”

  “Was it expensive?”

  “Yeah—but it was worth it. I’d fallen in love at that point.”

  “In love?” Disappointment slipped into my voice.

  “A love triangle, really.”

  “Sorry, I don’t understand.”

  “It’s like this: I walk around outside, or wherever, usually when the weather or the light is doing something interesting, and I search for the right moment, where everything is balanced. Like bright leaves against a stormy sky, that sort of thing. And then I stop it, just like that. That moment is my first love.”

  “And your second?”

  “When I develop it. The black-and-white image adds something new to the original moment, a layer. Once the process is over, I usually can’t decide what I love more, the experience of taking the photo or the photo I took of it. The two are inseparable, beyond comparison.”

  I lingered in silence.

  “I should’ve asked,” he said, standing up and startling me a little. “Do you want something to drink?”

  “A glass of water?”

  He left the room, and when he returned, he had an envelope, presumably the photographs, tucked under his arm.

  “Some of these turned out nicely,” he said.

  “Good,” I said, taking the glass of water and the envelope.

  “I didn’t expect them to.”

  “Too dark?”

  “I just didn’t expect them to. My concentration was off that night.”

  “You were distracted, a bit self-involved—” I caught myself. “I don’t mean that as a criticism. It’s just—”

  “I had a lot on my mind.”

  “Of course you did.”

  “Would you like to look at them?”

  I sipped my water, which he then gingerly lifted from my hands and placed on the tile floor beside his seat. I slipped my finger under the flap of the envelope and, being careful not to bend the photographs, slid them out. The first few were panoramic shots of the party before dusk. They were well composed but not especially remarkable. We noted some of the bad dresses and laughed at the unfortunate facial expressions on several of the guests—eyes half shut, double chins, that sort of thing. There was a photograph of my mother and father dancing; my father’s eyes were a bit dim and my mother’s arms were loose around his neck. Her chestnut hair was pulled back carelessly, and her silver half-moon earrings reflected light onto her face, warming the hollow under her high cheeks and softening her jawline. They appeared tipsy, and their posture was a little inappropriate.

  “I don’t like this one,” I said.

  Jay removed the photo and flipped it facedown beside him. He didn’t seem offended.

  The photographs of me were at the bottom of the stack.

  This is what I expected to see: A lovely young woman with rich, dark hair in a clean white cotton dress, posing playfully in front of the camera. There would be equal amounts of carelessness and caution to the image. The right arm stretched out, the left hand planted firmly on a hip, leaning forward a little, inviting the viewer, but gently, with grace—the same poise I had always admired in my mother. This young lady would be bright about the eyes, might even be thought flirtatious, but not indiscreet. She would approximate the perky Carole King dress models in Ladies’ Home Journal, or an elegant fashion model juxtaposed with a handsome military man in Life magazine.

  Oh, what vanity.

  A few years ago, I stumbled upon a retrospective of Weegee’s work. His photographs of the underbelly of New York City during the 1940s—the winos, the prostitutes, the exotic dancers, the transvestites, the crooks, the dead bodies, his obsessive love for sensational grit—reminded me of these photographs.

  These images were phantasmagoric, a sort of nightmare of myself. The background of each was inky darkness, and in the foreground, I glowed so white that the folds of my dress had disappeared and my skin shone pale gray, almost two-dimensional. My face, however, was distinct in each photograph. In one, the expression was exceedingly desperate, almost angry. In another, slack-jawed and empty-eyed, arms straight at my sides—graceless, even absurd. The last image had me bending forward, my cleavage luridly, if carelessly, accentuated. I looked to be folding in on myself, white enveloping white, a phantom preparing to vanish in a ripple of cold vapor.

  I touched the surface of that final photo, leaving my fingerprint over my face. Jay caught my hand, gently moved it away, and said, “I dodged it in the darkroom to make that effect.”

  I liked that he was touching me. “What does that mean?” I asked.

  “I covered you with a piece of cardboard for a few seconds during exposure to create more contrast between you and the night sky. I wanted you to float in the darkness, like a white bird.”

  I thought he was telling me my photos were beautiful, that the real me, the absurd, frightened, desperate me, was something extraordinary and desirable. If I had stripped down in front of him, I thought, it wouldn’t have been more intimate than those photographs.

  Of course, that wasn’t the case. But I didn’t know it at the time, so I kissed him.

  He returned the kiss forcefully, earnestly, surprising me a little. He pushed us together into a wider, deeper connection. His arms went around me, and he hoisted me onto his lap, opening my thighs with his knees. His hand slid up the back of my leg, under my dress. He fumbled with my garter belt. He seemed urgent, impatient, even schoolboy-ish. He was releasing something in me—a rougher, less mannered passion, part of me I didn’t understand yet.

  But the way he was handling me, and the way his kisses met mine, was awkward and faltering. At last, he stopped, and we deflated like punctured balloons, the air seeping slowly out. I panicked, aware how delicate young men’s egos were, but, to be honest, more deeply afraid of being rejected myself. I quickly covered our failure with a more acceptable anxiety—Letitia. I wanted her to walk in right then. I wanted to shock her and lay claim to Jay, to see her curse and carry on, her bile uniting us against a common enemy.

  I said, “Your grandmother might—”

  “Yeah, you’re right,” he said, and helped me off him.

  His starched shirt was wrinkled, and his suspenders were loose at his shoulders. His face was smeared with lipstick. He looked dopey and sweet.

  “I love you,” I said stupidly. His face went blank. “I’m sorry. That’s not what I meant to say.”

  “It’s okay.”

  “Those pictures you took of me are … I’m not sure I can …”

  “When I turn eighteen, I’m enlisting. Like Robbie.”

  “I know.”

  “I’m not sure what to tell you.”

  We stared at each other for a moment, a long moment. Finding it unbearable, I directed my eyes out at the rows of vegetation and the foggy
glass panels. “In all those pictures, there’s not a single picture of you,” I said.

  “It’s the burden of being the photographer. Always behind the lens.”

  “May I have a picture of you?”

  He didn’t answer. He just gestured toward his lips and said, “Your lipstick.”

  “You need to clean up too.”

  “There’s a bathroom just inside the door.”

  “What about you?”

  “I’ll use my handkerchief.”

  The windowless bathroom, which reeked of developer and fixer, was Jay’s makeshift darkroom. There, two years later, with the greatest care, he would develop the photos of poor, murdered Lily. Back then, it was strung with drying photos and cluttered with trays, bottles, and stacks of photographic paper. The enlarger sat on a table over the toilet. I found the sink, washed my face, and straightened my dress. I decided we needed to approach our mutual attraction in a more conservative, more appropriate fashion. I would be frank with him. He needed to know I was falling for him but also that untamed passion could run amok and cause problems. He also needed to know that I would wait for him to return from the war. I was loyal.

  When I returned to the conservatory, he was gone. He had left the envelope containing the photos propped up on the settee. On the side of the envelope was scrawled:

  Dear Bunny,

  Had to go. Please take the photos and let yourself out.

  Yours, J

  The door to the porch was open, and the gray sky still hung low over the mountains. I angrily snatched up the photos and my umbrella and stepped out into the dripping afternoon. I opened my black canopy against the sky.

  It was only after Jay left for boot camp that I looked at those photos again. That’s when I discovered he had included one of himself, the only photo I still have of him.

  He is leaning against the side of a building, the clapboard sloughing off paint in wide strips as thin and curled as birch bark. His shirt is unbuttoned, and the collar is pulled back from his neck, revealing the smooth hollow of his collarbone. He is smiling a particularly wry smile, his eyes squinting a little.