Alice’s head was whirling with unknowns. With wild possibilities. Doubts. Questions she might never have answers to. Had Constance suspected Benton had another wife? No, who on earth could possibly suspect such a thing as that? Suspected he had another woman somewhere? What if the “young man” Constance had shown up at her door? Alice felt near to collapsing.
She wanted to run. Flee. Escape. But where? And to what? She could never escape her own mind, her own feelings. There was no escape for that. Not now. Not ever. This was the nail now driven into her life, to hold her very being nailed to her own cross. There would never be a place from which, in which, she would be free of this again.
This stark revelation had become her life. In an instant. She would drag it with her wherever she might be, for as long as she lived.
The sound of Analee opening the door coincided with Alice’s gasp of comprehension.
“Sorry, Miss Alice. Didn’t mean to scare you so.”
Alice turned and stared, overcome by such an excess of thought and emotion that her mind had gone empty, but the urge to flee still impelled her.
“Is you all right, Miss Alice? You ain’t took to laboring, now, is you?”
Alice shook her head.
“You don’t look so good, honey. You might best sit yourself down in that chair. Maybe you breathing too much dust up here. I should have come with you. Actually, I should have come got those baby clothes for you.”
The strength of Analee’s support, the firm clasp of her hands on Alice’s arms helped settle her back into the chair, brought some semblance of presence back into Alice’s shocked reality. As she assisted Alice into the chair, Analee kicked the suit out of the way, reached down to lift the wedding dress and draped it over the side of the trunk. Alice sat, the photo held loosely across her abdomen, where the baby kicked. This baby, fathered by her phantom husband, Howard Butterworth—the murdered Benton Halstead.
“Well, I see you found out the truth,” said Analee.
Analee knew the truth? How could Analee know? What did she know? That Benton was also her lost husband? No, she couldn’t know that, could she? That Constance had been there on that train?
“She followed him that day,” Analee said quietly. “She was desperate to know what he was up to. She didn’t kill him. But she hold herself responsible anyhow. She think if she hadn’t been there, they wouldn’t have killed him. But she’s wrong. Them devils would have killed him no matter. Wasn’t nobody’s fault but his.”
Analee knelt before her, slipped the picture from her hand. “I should have come got them baby clothes myself. Don’t know what I was thinking.”
Alice watched Analee slip the photo back into the envelope, twist the string back and forth around the two buttons to close it. She laid it back at the bottom of the trunk, out of sight. But the image of that impossible double husband had seared itself into Alice’s brain.
Did Constance know? Oh God, did the Black Hand know? They seemed to know everything. But maybe only locally. Should she tell Constance? Why had he married both of them, had children with both of them? And, oh God, two infant sons dead.
“You all right, Miss Alice?”
Alice tried to focus, look Analee in the eye, and nod.
“Now you know the truth. That man weren’t no good, Miss Alice. She didn’t know what he was up to, but he was deviling her for money. And he was gone when he oughtn’t be.” Analee hesitated. “I’m gone tell you something, Miss Alice. I’m right sure . . . Well, I should say I suspect Mr. Halstead had a hankering after other men, young ones. I heard his stories about where he was, doing what, and sometimes they made sense and sometimes didn’t make no sense at all.”
The chair felt hard and sharp to Alice. She shifted. Other men? Men? Her wedding night flashed before her, and so many subsequent nights, Howard’s barely disguised distaste for her body, her small-breasted, small-hipped body, her boy-like body. Why had he married her at all? She was a woman who had fit the shape of his desire. A woman who could legitimize him as a man. One wife had not been enough to prove he was a man?
“She’s a good woman, Miss Alice.”
Who was Analee talking about? Alice’s mind refused to function.
“You seen that yourself,” Analee continued. “She just needed to know the truth. They was going to kill him, anyway. He owed them too much money, and she made the mistake to be there. She ain’t done nothing wrong.”
She just needed to know the truth. And so, did I, Alice thought. But the truth was so much more than either one could have known! So much more than Alice could have had any concept of. And more than Constance could yet begin to know. So, Constance must not have even guessed Alice’s existence, let alone her marriage to this man, this double husband to them both. In truth, such a thing was not to be guessed. Another woman, perhaps. Another wife? No. Constance could not even now be imagining such a thing, and never would. Alice was the one who knew. The only other one who knew was dead. He had betrayed them both, beyond the wildest scope of betrayal. And for what? To prove he was a man? To whom? Himself? His father? For what?
*
In the following days, Alice kept to her room. Constance and Analee fretted over her, came and went with food and drink, a book to read, a little vase of fresh flowers from the spring garden. Alice tried to be companionable and decently social. For the most part, she offered fatigue as the excuse for her lethargy. The truth she now held in secret felt heavier than the child she carried, but with no promise of life. Struggle as she might, Alice had no possible concept of what to do with this secret information. Constance had become her friend. The friend of depth she had never had out on the plains. The friend she now loved as she imagined loving the sister she had never had.
There were afternoons when she tried to go outside, drink lemonade with Constance, and watch the girls at play. But that very joy she witnessed between the sisters and in their mother watching their frolic drove Alice back up to her room in unexpected guilt. How could she feel such shame? She was not some mistress, some other woman on the side. She was Howard’s wife. She had borne him a son, a son whom she would mourn her whole life, as she knew Constance would mourn baby David. The convolution of it all was terrible to bear.
To further the complexity, Alice now knew that Constance had witnessed Howard-Benton’s murder, that she had carried the secret of her presence at his death through every episode that followed: the burden of telling the children, the burial, the visits from the police, the horrifying harassment by the Black Hand, or at least, by the offshoot rogue with the sinister mustache. Alice grieved as much for Constance as for herself. How could either of them find the strength to bear such betrayal? Each of them carried enough.
Now Alice carried this new child, her husband’s child, but also the child of Constance’s husband. She lay on her bed, hearing Constance outside singing some little ditty with the girls over and over, the accompanying rhythm of clapping hands, and Analee’s melodic voice creating a kind of descant over it. She knew this was not carefree. These women were lending their strength to entertain and protect the girls. All while each carried her own burdensome secret. Even the silence between them now was a burden, a weight under which none of them could have the comfort of being who she was. Alice turned her head when she heard one of the girls take a fall and begin to whimper. She could hear the other’s consolation and Constance’s admonition to “be a big girl now.” To be a big girl. There it was, childhood’s primary remedy for every sort of thing that could go wrong. Be a big girl. Could she do that now? Draw upon that strength drilled into her all along her journey to womanhood?
Alice let go a deep sigh, rolled from the side of the bed, and drew the window curtain aside. Below, she recognized two women doing all they could to manage the unknown sharing of mutual burdens, doing their best to be big girls. She opened her door and went to join them.