We picked up a cab on Belmont and rode down to the Trefoil Hotel on the Gold Coast. Darraugh got us one of the little tables in the corner that overlooks Lake Michigan, ordered a dry martini for himself, Black Label for me, sent the waiter about his business.
He made a job out of his lemon peel, rubbing it around the rim of his glass, twisting it until it broke apart. I wasn’t about to try to help him. “Larchmont is a terrible house-sucks the life out of everyone who comes near it,” he said, tearing the peel into smaller pieces. “I should have known when Mother told me she was seeing lights-should have known disaster would follow. You did well. Under the circumstances, very well. No one else could have been as effective with my mother.”
“She’s a remarkable woman. It’s a pity she let your grandmother dominate her life.”
A muscle twitched in his jaw. “Laura Taverner Drummond was a
dreadful person. She did terrible damage to everyone around her. When my father died-she made my life hell. I didn’t talk to her for ten years, until I married and my wife insisted we make some kind of effort at reconciliation. And then my grandmother tried to belittle Elise in the eyes of everyone out in that wasps’ nest of a village. Elise was the gentlest person who ever lived, and Laura-but that’s neither here nor there.”
He swallowed half the martini, then spoke rapidly, not looking at me. “I found my father’s body. I know Mother told you that. She doesn’t know I found his suicide note.”
I put my glass down so fast that whisky slopped over the rim.
“It was meant for her, for Mother. If he’d known I was going to find his body, he would never have killed himself as he did, or where he did. Exeter sent us home in a hurry because three of the boys came down with polio. I didn’t bother to telegraph them. I was used to coming home alone and I knew Mother was in Washington. With Calvin.
“There’s a study on the first floor, where my father would read, watch television. I went to look for him when I arrived, hoping he was in. And found him hanging over the desk. It was-” He covered his face with his hands. The image was vivid in his head even fortyfive years later.
“I cut him down, I tried to give him artificial respiration-they taught us that at summer camp or someplace. All I could think was that Grandmother must not know. She hated my father using the study: it was a man’s room, she said, built by her husband for doing man’s work, so she would never enter it, once my father took it over. I covered his face with my coat. And then I saw the note.” He took his wallet from his breast pocket and removed a much-creased sheet of paper. A schoolboy’s round hand covered the page.
Did you begrudge me a little love, Geraldine? I never held your loves against you, but you’ve used mine to help your own lover. I know Olin and Calvin have always been at odds. I know Olin believes things that no right-minded person can support, but love’s a malady without a cure, and I loved Olin. Now that you’ve seen us together, and told Calvin, Olin plans to tell the world that I tried to seduce him, that I shocked him with my homosexual declarations.
The truth is-no one knows the truth. Olin and I recognized each other the first time we met. We fell in love. We snatched odd meetings in New York or Washington. And now he plans to betray me to the world to save his own skin-no, not even that, to gain advantage over Calvin.
I am sick in heart and body and mind and there is no cure, no way to continue on this planet, watching you helplessly in love with Calvin while he abandons you, watching Olin betray me, watching your mother watch us all with her malevolent glare. Only Darraugh ties me to the earth and he will soon be in the wider world, leaving me behind. Do as you will when you find me.
When I handed it back, Darraugh continued harshly, “We didn’t talk about homosexuality when I was a teenager, not the way they do now. I was shocked. Everything that afternoon was a shock. I was like young Catherine, reeling from watching my universe disintegrate. Sitting there with my father’s body, my one thought was to protect him. From my grandmother, my mother, Olin. I didn’t know anyone to talk to. In my panic I chose Renee. I thought she was an outsider, a newcomer, she could keep Olin from doing what he threatened. I showed her the letter and she said she could manage things to protect my father’s secret.”
“I see,” I said. “Renee must have used the letter to force Olin to end his interrogation of Calvin. I haven’t been able to understand why Olin kept Calvin’s sins to himself, even after homosexuality in public life ceased to be so shocking. But all these years Renee must have used the note as an enforcer: if Olin betrayed Calvin, she would show the world the kind of man he was-not his being queer, but his willingness to betray your father to save his skin. And he kept quiet, until Marcus Whitby came along.” Darraugh finished his martini and ordered a second.