But today, Estelle erred. She poked her head into the kitchen (Lillian did not eat in the dining room when she ate her herring) and asked, “You need anything else, Mrs. Lillian? You all right?” She had heard Lillian’s telephone call. She had seen her shaking. Estelle recalled the lieutenant as nothing but a gentleman, but gentlemen could fool you, she had to give Mrs. Lillian that, and besides, Estelle loved Bea as if she were kin. She worked for Mrs. Lillian in Mrs. Lillian’s house but half the time she was thinking of the girl. So she rooted for her, and therefore for Mrs. Lillian, that the man would turn the thing off.
“Fine,” Lillian said. “Go take your walk.” But her shaking grew worse. Estelle’s interruption, her question, You all right? flipped her upside down, grayed the fish on her plate, made the stink unbearable. Lillian pushed it away. It was not triumph she felt now but desperation. He had not made any promise, after all—she had hung up before he could do that. She had felt like Buster Keaton rescuing Annabelle from the Union guards in The General. But she was not Buster Keaton, she was Mrs. Henry Haven, wife, mother. It was the mother in her who despaired now: for Bea, who would not talk to her about her episode, and for herself, who had so often done wrong by her daughter. Bea didn’t know that Lillian knew this, but she did. She had known it for a long time, known it since the night she pushed the lieutenant on her. She knew it when she lied to the women at the Draper House about Bea being pregnant. (She was avoiding the place for a while, allowing them to think Bea had suffered a loss without having to say it herself.) Now her daughter at twenty-seven fell apart as if she were still eighteen and Lillian knew it more certainly, and more painfully—the pain was blinding. And because she was not a lawyer, or a businessman, because she was only a mother, her failure was total. Some use you make of yourself, her mother used to say. Dead so many years now. And still Lillian had not made herself of use.
She prayed, under her breath, for the whistle buoy’s removal. Then she left the herring and went to bed.
Nineteen
The dismantling of Ira’s bed was dismayingly easy—two pulls and it split into parts. Bea didn’t understand exactly how Emma had been charged with the decision to move the bed downstairs, but she also didn’t consider herself deserving of an explanation. She was embarrassed by her willful defiance of the facts, which now appeared plain: Ira had not been pretending lameness. He couldn’t walk.
Emma and Albert had already carried down the headboard with its sizable posts, inflicting scratches and dents upon the walls as they went. Now Bea, trying to prevent more damage, was directing the journey of the footboard.
“There. No, there! This way, Emma! Albert, not there . . .”
“Bea! This is completely unhelpful.” Albert set his end on a stair and dragged his forearm across his brow. “Did I never teach you left and right?”
Emma laughed. “Don’t tease her.”
Albert grinned up at Bea. “Why don’t you pour us some ice water? It’s hot as hell.”
There wasn’t space to get down around them, so Bea went back up, through the halls, down the back stairs, and into the cool of the kitchen. Like all the rooms in the house that had been built for servants, the kitchen faced north to little sunlight, and Bea found herself retreating here often on hot days. She pressed her forehead against the cabinet glass, letting Albert and Emma’s banter trickle through her. She was in love with the sensation of being their hinge, despite knowing that their light, sweet talk was meant to soothe and keep her calm. She resented their eggshell treatment. So the night of July third had been a disaster. So she’d had another fit. Nearly two weeks had passed—why should it still stand shadowlike behind her, making everyone itch? Yet Bea understood. Bea couldn’t shake it either. Even when she succeeded in forgetting, the absence of the whistle buoy reminded her: on a breezy day like this one, she tensed for a cry that never came.
All Lillian would say about that was “Your nerves suffered, I pulled some threads.”
The icebox opened with a squeal, closed with a thud. (Vera had bought a refrigerator the year she died, but it had no freezer compartment, so Ira still had his ice delivered, and stored it in a seaweed-insulated chest.) Bea set the glasses on a tray, tied on an apron, and walked out upright and bright-eyed, calling, “Come and get it!”
Albert and Emma stared. She couldn’t remember now what she’d intended with the apron—to show that she could tease herself, too? To prove that she was fine?