A knock has just sounded on the door, and Miss Portia has brought in some warm milk to help me sleep. She is our housekeeper, as you may recall from my earlier letters, but more than that: she is really a kind of manager for the plantation itself, and we have worked together closely on all aspects of the repair of the house and the orchards. I should tell you that I have recently discovered something rather shocking about her. Prepare yourself. Having observed her appearance and education and her fierce loyalty to Maitland, I often wondered whether she has some deeper connection to the place, and it seems I was right. She is in fact Lydia’s natural half-sister, a few years younger, conceived—I am afraid—during the course of the Gibbonses’ marriage, when Mr. Gibbons came to visit my father here at Maitland. Her mother was the schoolteacher for the children of the workers, back when the place was in some sort of order and harvests were regular. I suppose that explains her passionate love for this place, to say nothing of her tenderness to me, which I don’t flatter myself I did anything particular to deserve.
In any case, I do hope you won’t hold her birth against her, though I believe you never would; you are too kind and fair-minded for that. I suppose, in God’s eyes, she has just as much right to this business as I do. I mean to ask her, one day when we know each other a little better, how well she knew her father, and whether he took much interest in her upbringing. Whether Mrs. Gibbons knew of her existence, and whether she cared.
Are you the jealous sort, love? If you are, you never gave me the slightest hint. Somehow I think you would hold out the branch of forgiveness, in Mrs. Gibbons’s place, and would love the child itself regardless of the shame of its conception. But maybe I have only begun to idealize you in my mind, to hang virtues upon you as Portia and Sammy and I hung our makeshift tinsel upon the tree this evening.
I believe I had better finish my milk and go to sleep now, dearest wife. I hope you have spent your Christmas Eve in joy, surrounded by the love of your sister and father. You have certainly been well loved here, inside the heart of your faithful husband,
S.F.
Chapter 16
Maitland Plantation, Florida, July 1922
Do you know how long it takes to grow an orange? Why, all year, almost! The blooms first come out in the spring, just as they do on the fruit trees back home, but the harvest doesn’t begin until winter. And in the meantime, those trees just keep blooming and blooming, for no reason I can see. Miss Bertram says they tend to put out new blossoms after a good fall of rain—hedging their bets, I suppose—but as we get regular cloudbursts in the afternoons, I don’t see why those trees should take it personally like that.
Anyway, I don’t mind. It’s such a heady fragrance, mingled with the ripening citrus flavor of the oranges themselves, so that when the wind is just right, passing through the orchard to your open window, it fills your head like a drug of some kind. A most marvelous medicine. Miss Bertram always makes sure a vaseful ends up in my room, and I sink my face into the blooms at morning and at night, every chance I get. Every time I gather enough strength to rise from my bed and drag my unwilling body across the room.
Everything you seek is here.
Five simple words, so familiar a young child could read them, and yet I still can’t quite grasp their meaning. Maybe it’s the fog in my head. But what did the author mean? Everything I seek is here in the room? Inside the house itself? Or all of Maitland Plantation? Well, it doesn’t matter. I’m not going anywhere, am I?
I haven’t left this room since the second morning after my arrival.
The doctors, I think, are stumped, although they pretend not to be. Doctors can’t show that kind of weakness, can they? Not in front of the patient herself. They examine me knowingly, making all the right noises of assurance and professional competence, and then they retire with Miss Bertram to confer. I have been given various pills and ointments and elixirs, all of which I refused to take, hiding them instead under my mattress or down the drain of the bathroom sink—an act of rebellion that required a supreme physical effort. It’s not that I don’t trust them. Why, Miss Bertram couldn’t be more concerned about me. You ought to see her face, all compressed with worry, her eyebrows nearly meeting in the middle. She brings Evelyn to see me twice a day, and Evelyn sits on the bed and plays card games with me until my brain can’t keep up, until the effort of keeping track of the cards overwhelms me. That’s when Miss Bertram purses her lips and plucks Evelyn from the bed and whisks her away, because Mama needs her rest so she can get all better, isn’t that right?
But Mama’s not getting any better.
I figure it must be my head. The feeling, you know, is not dissimilar to the way I felt after an accident at the end of the war. My head took a bad knock then, too, and I lay in a hospital bed for months. My memory of that time remains hazy to this day. So this mental strain, this sort of febrile disorientation (though I haven’t got a fever, haven’t got measurable symptoms of any kind) isn’t entirely unknown to me.
But I’m not foolish, even if I can hardly make it to the bathroom under my own power, and require Miss Bertram’s help to bathe properly. I won’t take their medicine, which isn’t going to help anyway. I won’t take palliatives of any kind. Except aspirin for my headaches, one at night and one in the morning.
That’s all.
When Evelyn’s taking her nap and Miss Bertram’s other duties aren’t claiming her, she comes to sit with me in my bedroom. That’s when she brings the fresh flowers and lemonade and we talk. For as long as my mind can hold a conversation, that is.
She’s worried about me, of course. She smooths my pillow and straightens my blankets, and I can tell she’s keeping busy because she doesn’t want me to see the expression on her face. She asks me how I’m feeling. I always say I’m feeling better. I don’t want to disappoint her. This particular morning, which I believe to be the second week of July, though I can’t be absolutely sure, I add something more, for effect. Something about how Maitland Plantation is better than any hospital for the recovery of one’s head after a blow like that.
“I’ve always thought so,” she agrees, pouring the lemonade, “though I guess I’ve never taken a blow to the head, myself.”
“They heal so slowly, you know. Brain injuries, I mean. I saw so many of them among the soldiers. You start to think you’re feeling better, but you’re really not yourself. Not for some time. So you want to be somewhere safe. Like an animal in its den.”
“I see. And Maitland’s your den?”
“Yes, it is. I am so glad Clara brought me here.”
“So am I, Mrs. Fitzwilliam. You can stay just as long as you like, you know. No need to go dashing off back to New York.”
“New York? Of course not. Not yet, anyway. I find I’m liking Florida far more than I thought I would, when I first arrived.”
“The state does grow on a person, I’m told. I guess I was just lucky to be born here, so I never had to experience much else.”
“Never? You’ve never been outside of Florida?”
She lifts a shortbread from the tray. There are always shortbreads, too, though I never eat any. Only Miss Bertram does. “Except for college, I guess.”
“College!”
“I went away to Radcliffe for a couple of years.”
“Radcliffe! In Massachusetts? You went to Radcliffe?”
“Yes, indeed. The very one. I think I told you my mama was a schoolteacher? She had such hopes for me. Such big old dreams. And my daddy, why, he would do anything my mama asked of him. He doted on us both.”