“Oliver and I didn’t break up,” I say, easing into the confession. “It’s more complicated than that.”
She raises a hand, silencing me. “I know that, dear.”
I shake my head. She must be confused. “No, you’re not understanding.”
“Something happened here the night you called off your engagement. Something you’ve been trying to hide. And I could never judge you for it.” She exhales, as though she’s been keeping what she’s about to say next inside for a long time. “I think it’s time I tell you the truth about your grandfather.”
37
Marmee closes her eyes,the lines around her temples more pronounced, either from lack of sleep or from the exhaustion of keeping secrets all these years.
“What do you mean?” I ask. “You said my grandfather fell down the stairs.”
“He did. I’m not talking about his death. You need to know about his life,” she says. “He wasn’t a good man.”
For years, I’ve had an image in my mind of the grandfather I never met. Confident. Caring. Flawed, made evident through his excessive drinking, but isn’t everyone allowed a vice? All the other positive attributes still applied. How could Marmee say that man never existed?
“You’ve never said that before.”
“I wanted you to trust that men could be good. Your father was always in and out of your life. You needed to believe that you came from decent people, but the truth is, your grandfather was not.
“I thought he was once. That’s why I married him. When Benny and I first met, I thought he was the most interesting person I’dever encountered. I was completely enamored. Let all the little red flags go.”
As she talks, I try imagining her story in my mind. Picture the beautiful woman in the portraits I’m used to fawning over, her timeless face decorating the various rooms of this house. Instead, I envision Oliver and me. I made the same mistake with him. Concocting excuses for all his shortcomings.
“His true colors started to show on our honeymoon,” she says. “And the more time I spent with him, the more his cruelty became harder to ignore. How he treated the staff, bothered other women. But I was in no position to divorce him, and by then, I was already pregnant with your father. So, I stayed quiet. Looked the other way. If he was getting what he wanted, he never turned his callousness on me.
“Sometimes I think that’s my biggest sin. Knowing what kind of man my husband was and allowing it to continue. It was a selfish choice. Putting my own well-being over that of others.”
“You had a child to protect,” I say, compelled to defend her.
“That I did,” she says. “But it was more than that. I was protecting the image I wanted the world to see. We were the It Couple. Wealthy. Young. Beautiful. I can’t tell you how many women would refer to me as lucky for being the woman he’d chosen.” She pauses. “Those same women would look at me in panic whenever I caught them sneaking out of our house after one of our late-night parties. I’ll never know if it was because of shame or because of fear. Your grandfather didn’t always know how to take no for an answer.”
Repulsion, oily and twisted, roils inside my gut.
“What happened the night he died?”
“Our staff was like a revolving door in those days,” she says. “After your grandfather had had his way with the women, he’d cut them loose. And the men often got angry with his antics and refusal to pay them a decent wage.
“We brought on Mrs. Wilson to nanny for your father. She’d recently graduated nursing school and decided hospital life wasn’t for her. I thought it was a great fit, having another young woman in the house.Someone I could relate to. Someone who I could wholly trust with my son when I wasn’t around. I thought your grandfather would have the decency to leave her alone, considering she wasn’t here for our enjoyment, but for our son.
“We’d had one of our fabulous parties. I had too much to drink. I always found myself drinking more in those days. I think it was to block out the truth of what I was facing. The truth of who your grandfather was.
“Phillip wasn’t yet five. Mrs. Wilson would stay in the house on those nights, taking the room beside his bedroom. It was necessary there was an adult available whenever he might need someone if he woke up in the middle of the night.
“I’d had too much to drink and ended up in my bedroom before the party ended. As usual on those nights, I’d wake up restless. My throat was dry, a hangover already beginning to set in. The party had long ended. I could tell by how quiet the house was.
“And then I heard someone crying. At first, I thought it was Phillip. I rushed into his room, but he was sound asleep. That’s when I realized the sobbing was coming from the room next door.
“Your grandfather was in there, and he was out of control. I caught a whiff of booze as soon as I opened the door. He was halfway undressed, trying to coax Mrs. Wilson onto the bed. She was terrified, backing herself into a corner to try and get away from him. I’d imagined his treatment of others before, but I’d never witnessed it. Seeing the look on her face, the horror. And the determination on his. I knew in that moment he was a monster.”
“Did he attack Mrs. Wilson?”
Marmee shakes her head. “Thank God, I heard her crying before anything else happened. But it didn’t matter. I was furious. I grabbed the first thing I could find, a vase, and hurled it across the room. The crash was enough to scare him. He went running down the hallway, but I couldn’t let him go. I started chasing him.
“I caught up to him at the top of the stairs, but by then, he’d already tripped. He lay in the middle of the foyer with a broken neck.”
I close my eyes, trying to blink away the vision in my mind. Thebeautiful entrance with its delicate lighting and ornate floor and antique furniture, all that eloquence tarnished by the gruesome scene of a dead body. My grandfather’s body. In the next second, his image is replaced by the memory of Marlowe outside, as if one ghost from the past has been resurrected to escort another beyond the veil.
