William Lashner - Bitter Truth

LAST NIGHT I DREAMTI went to Veritas again. I was at the base of the long grassy hill just inside the great wrought-iron gates with the forged design of vines and cucumbers that barred the entrance to the drive. The moon was bright and cold, the grass devoid of all color in the darkness. Behind, a stream swept past, its black water swirling around heavy, sharp-faced rocks. Two massive sycamores stood side by side, sentries at the base of that hill, and I stood between them, looking up the long sweep of grass to the stone portico that guarded the formal front of the great Reddman house. The wind was fragrant with the soft scent of spring flowers, with lilacs, with the thick grassy smell of a perfectly manicured lawn. Rolling down from the top of the hill, stumbling uneasily down like a drunken messenger, came the sound of music, of violins and trumpets and snappy snare drums. There were lights shining high over my head, there was the sound of gaiety, of laughter, of a world drinking deep drafts of promise. Veritas, on the crest of that hill, was alive once again.

I began to walk up the hill toward the party. The music, the laughter, the light in that dark night, I wanted to see it, to be a part of it all. I was in jeans and a tee shirt and as I got closer and began to hug my bare arms from the cold I wondered where was my tuxedo. I owned one, I knew that, and mother-of-pearl studs and a cummerbund, but why wasn’t I wearing it? I patted my pants. No wallet, no keys, no invitation. Where was my invitation? Where were my pearls? I felt the sense I feel often of being left out of the best in this world. I thought of turning back but then the music swept down for me. I heard a car engine start, coughing and sputtering like something ancient, I heard the neighing of a horse, I heard voices that sounded like guards. I dropped to my knees and began crawling, hand over hand, up the steep hill.

My knees slid over grotesque fingers of roots that jutted from the soil. Pebbles embedded themselves into the flesh of my palms. I heard the faint buzz of beetle swarms infesting the lawn. I thought about stopping, about letting myself go and rolling down the hill, but the music grew louder and swept down once more for me. The violins drowned out the buzzing of the insects and the laughter turned manic. My jeans ripped on a stone, my palms bled black in the moonlight, but I kept moving toward the joy, reaching, finally, the encircling arms of the front portico’s stairwell that would take me to it. On the wide swooping steps that led up to the house I crouched and slowly climbed, steadying myself with a hand on the step above my feet, my blood smearing black on the stone. I could hear distinctions in the voices now, hearty men, laughing women. Snatches of conversation flew over my head as I rose to the top of the stairs. A group, standing outside on the drive that circled the surface of the portico, seemed not to notice me as I slipped across. I was certain the guests would see me but they didn’t; even as they turned to me they looked right through me. They were handsome, pretty, they laughed carelessly, they were sure of their places in the world and I realized that for them, of course, I would not exist. I stood, slapped the dirt off my ripped pants, walked past the group to one of the large bay windows to the right that studded the grand ballroom wing of the house.

It was a party like every party I had never been invited to. Fabulously dressed women, men in white tie and tails, champagne and butlers with tiny foods and dancing. The women wore gloves, they had dance cards, the men waltzed as though they actually knew how to waltz. The celebrants stood straight and showed white teeth when they laughed. I pressed my nose to the glass. I watched their revelries and felt again what I had felt in high school and college and through my career as a lawyer, the sheer desperate pain of wanting to be inside. But where was my tuxedo, where was my invitation? I was no longer in tee shirt and jeans. I was now wearing a navy blue suit, black wing tips, a tie from Woolworth’s, but still it was not enough. A pretty girl in a white dress walked by without noticing me stare at her with great longing through the window. And then I recognized him, standing tall and grand in the middle of his ballroom, recognized him from the pictures and the histories, from the portrait on the billions and billions of pickle jars. Claudius Reddman.

He was an imposing figure, with a deep chest and arrogant stance and perfectly trimmed white beard. His eyes bulged with power, his pinprick nostrils flared, his mouth stretched lipless and wide, and he was alive and in his certain glory in that room. His three young daughters, on the threshold of their womanhood, stood with him for a moment before breaking away as if on cue to their separate fates. The eldest was small and frail, her pale hair tight to her skull. She coughed delicately into a handkerchief and sat on a chair by her father’s side and watched the party with a wrenching sadness. The youngest, tall and buxom, slipped from the room with a man far older than she and stood with him on the portico, talking intimately, smoking. She was the only woman in the whole of that party who was free enough to smoke. The middle child, with flowers twined in her hair, was now dancing with a strong young man, dancing beautifully, gracefully, her head lying back, pointing her raised toe. There was a drama to her movements as she swooped around the dance floor, greedily carving space for herself and her partner among the other dancers until the floor was cleared of all revelers but the two. As she spun in his arms she turned her head and stared at me and for the first time in the whole of that night I was noticed. Her mouth twisted into an arrogant smile. Her pale blue eyes glinted. Her head whipped back from the force of her ever more ferocious spins; her mouth opened with abandon; the lights of that great room bounced off the whites of her teeth with a maniac’s glee.

“My grandmother was one of three children, all girls,” said Caroline as we drove slowly through a crashing rain toward Veritas. “The fabulous Reddman girls.” Caroline laughed out loud at the thought of it. “The Saturday Evening Post did a spread about them when my great-grandfather’s pickles were becoming all the rage. Three debutantes and their fabulously wealthy father. Men came from all over the East Coast to court them. My great-grandfather threw lavish balls, sent invitations to every young man in Ivy at Princeton, in Fly at Harvard, in Scroll and Key at Yale. They should have had the most wonderful of lives. Hope, Faith, and Charity. I suppose my grandfather named them after the virtues to guard them from tragedy but, if so, he failed miserably.”

A bolt of lightning ripped open the black of the sky; the lashing rain raised welts on its own puddles. My Mazda hit a pool of black water, slowing as the undercarriage was assaulted by a malicious spray. I had picked up Caroline outside her Market Street building with the rain just as thick. She had been a dark smudge waving at me before she opened the door and ducked inside the car. She dripped as she sat next to me, but there was something ruddy and scrubbed about her. Even her lipstick was red. She seemed almost as nervous at seeing her family as I was.

“The first daughter, Hope, died just before my father was born,” continued Caroline. “Consumption we think, it was the glamorous way to expire then. Grammy always told us how wonderfully talented she was on the piano. She would play for hours, beautiful torrents of music, for as long as she had the strength. But as she grew older she grew more sickly and then, before she turned thirty, she faded completely away. Grammy cared for her until the end. Apparently, my great-grandfather was devastated.”