Adele Griffin: Picture the Dead

As I try to catch bits of talk, it dawns on me that Aunt Clara hasn’t once consulted my opinion on these arrangements.

As if to emphasize this point, as we turn up the churchyard gates, Aunt jerks forward, her palm outstretched. “Why, Jennie, you are still wearing your engagement ring!” she exclaims. “Of all preposterous sights. Give it here at once, before anyone in the congregation sees it on your finger.”

“Clara, dear,” says Uncle Henry. “Now is hardly the time.”

“That ring is no longer hers to wear. It is a Pritchett heirloom. Unless one is a nun, one cannot be engaged to…a spirit.”

“Yes, of course, but…” Uncle Henry lapses off, astonished, as always, by Aunt’s vile outburst but unable to find the words to refute her. He rubs the back of his head.

“Will was far too sentimental,” Aunt continues, daubing her eyes. “Any adult can see this for what it was a fickle vow from a boy too young for marriage to a girl too giddy to know better.”

“He loved me,” I whisper. “And that ring belonged to Grandmother Pritchett. Surely I can keep it?”

Nobody answers. The silence has hard corners.

Aunt Clara is wrapped head to toe in crepe so stiff she appears almost inhuman. She is a lump of coal in the corner of the carriage, her outstretched hand insistent as a beggar maid. If Will were here, we’d have been able to laugh at her. Alone, I find her quite terrifying.

The ring catches on the net of my glove and grips the bone of my finger. I wince as I pull it off. Aunt snaps the ring into her purse.

“I have Will’s favorite hymn,” I murmur in Uncle Henry’s direction.

I think of it, written out in Will’s fine script, pressed into my scrapbook with a lock of his hair. “He would have wished it sung for him. At the service.”

But Uncle will not look at me.

“Then what did she do?” Rosemary’s quick breath frosts the air.

“After screaming like a banshee and running up and down the stairs? She pulled the pine garlands off the banister, ” I recall. “And she ordered the hired man to take away the Christmas tree and the ivy wreaths.” I’ve been saving up this story and am probably too satisfied with the shock in the girls’ faces, though it’s all true.

Besides, the Wortley sisters indeed, all of Brookline must have heard some version of how Aunt Clara first took the news of Will’s death.

“Mrs. Pritchett’s got a boiling-hot temper.” Flora shakes her head in dismay. “She would have been a fright to behold.”

Christmas service is over. The familiar faces in the pews, the flickering candles in the stained-glass windows, the timeworn story of the baby in his crèche, and the hot cider and gingerbread in the long room afterward have given me a small and temporary peace.

Arm in arm, Flora, Rosemary, and I now walk the pebbled pathway that winds down to the Walnut Street Cemetery. My hands hold a single poinsettia, stealthily broken off the altar arrangement, to place on Toby’s grave.

Aunt Clara and Uncle Henry linger near the vestry, consulting with Reverend Meeks, but I don’t want to hear Aunt insisting that Will’s service is given proper fanfare. Especially when Toby was buried in the same pine box he came home in and Aunt wore black for less than a month.

“Poor Mrs. Pritchett,” murmurs Rosemary. “To bury a son. Not that it isn’t deeply affecting for you, Jennie, only you’re so young and sweet. Love will find you again. But Mrs. Pritchett is past forty. She has nothing to look forward to but the grave.”

“She has venom in her yet. She took back the ring Will gave me.”

“Nooo…” Flora’s primmed face reminds me of when, in our last year at Putterham School, we’d stuck a clothespin on her nose to try to straighten it last minute, before the end-of-year class portrait.

“She wrenched it off my finger. She nearly drew blood,” I embellish. “She despises me because she thought Father was common and Mother a heathen to marry him. Aunt Clara is a hideous, beastly thing.” After all these weeks of being shut in that house, my words huff like an engine whistle pitched high and strong.

Too high, too strong. In fact, Rosemary has broken her link through my elbow and drops pace so that our skirts no longer swish in tandem. “She is your guardian,” she murmurs, both arms crossed in the clutch of her Bible to her bosom. Flora’s teeth gnaw her thin bottom lip.

I have overstepped. These girls like to gossip but are easily cowed. Quickly I change the subject. “Is there news of your brother?”

The sisters’ words tumble over each other. “Silas is well ”

“And stationed in Franklin, Tennessee ”

“Quite far from the fray!”

Twenty minutes ago the congregation was voicing prayers for the Godspeed return of all our soldiers. My resentment of Silas Wortley’s safety is positively unchristian. “Well,” I say, fixing a smile to my face. “Thank heaven.”

“But tell us, Jennie. We hear from the servants that poor Quinn’s gone…off,” says Flora. “That he talks to himself and hides the family portraits, and that he roams the garden at unearthly hours!”

“They say he is addicted to opium…and that it makes him quite mad,” adds Rosemary, with a smug flourish.

“All nonsense.” I scoff, even as I feel my cheeks redden. “Quinn walks ’round the garden three times a day on the doctor’s orders, because he needs the fresh air. And yes, we’ve hung some crepe over the mirrors. Just like any other house in mourning. But I suppose that’s how these silly stories get started.”

The Wortleys nod, seeming to accept this, but I’ll have to speak with Mavis about being more careful about what she says to Betsey.

Because some of what they say is true. Only two days ago Quinn tore down the portrait of himself and Will that hung in the hall and flung it across the room, cracking the frame and smashing a wall sconce beyond repair. Nobody has dared to rehang it, and so I have wedged the damaged frame into the back of the guest room armoire and pasted the photograph in my book for safekeeping.

Rosemary speaks in a burst. “What are you going to do, Jennie, dear? Without Will to marry you, Mrs. Pritchett might just snap her fingers and force ”

“Hush, Rosemary!” Flora’s eyes shoot daggers at her younger sister. “I’m sure Mrs. Pritchett would never dare. Let’s speak of pleasanter things.”

I hesitate, then plunge. “Might I pay a call to your family next week?” A despairing edge grates my voice and embarrasses me, but I press on. “Say, Tuesday? I’d be so glad to steal away for a few hours.”

“Oh. Lovely.” But Rosemary gives care to her next words. “If you could arrange your carriage to arrive by half past two? For that’s when we’ll be finished with dinner.”

I am mute with mortification. Both girls know that Aunt Clara would never permit me use of the carriage for my own amusement. In the pause neither sister offers use of the Wortley coach yet of course they’d be priggishly aghast if I arrived at their doorstep, my hem muddy from walking.