Anna Godbersen: Rumors

They had just reached the second-floor landing when she saw her aunt Edith’s head emerge over the rail. “Elizabeth!” she shouted. She held on to the banister, but otherwise her body moved downward at a run. When she came onto Mrs. Holland and Elizabeth, she threw her arms around the younger girl. “How can this be?” she whispered, pulling back. Her cheekbones protruded, shiny and definite from her thinning skin, but she otherwise retained that Holland beauty she had been known for in her youth. Elizabeth looked into the small, round eyes and saw that she was overcome.

“Perhaps we all should sit somewhere?” Elizabeth suggested, and then the two older women ferried her into the master bedroom. Elizabeth and her aunt went to the armchairs by the fireplace, and Mrs. Holland went to the window, where she pushed back the calico valance and peered down on the street. She continued to fuss with the lace undercurtains as she did.

Words still had not presented themselves. The Elizabeth whom she’d been taught to be was back with her now, and to such a girl as she had been there was no way to explain what had taken her west. But her aunt was urging her with a look. Her mouth flexed as though she might cry, and there were stars of light reflected in her eyes. The moments stretched out in front of them, and then Elizabeth saw that she would have to be the first to speak. Once she began, she found that she couldn’t stop.

“I couldn’t marry Henry Schoonmaker. I couldn’t do that. I couldn’t be married to him and I had to stop it. I love Will, Mother.” Elizabeth looked but saw no change in her mother’s expression. This revelation was apparently too much for Edith, however, who now lowered her eyes. “He had already gone when I realized it. That is, I knew I loved him already, but he was gone when I realized that I couldn’t live without him. That I couldn’t marry Henry. So I followed Will and I found him, in California. He was working in a shipping yard and saving money to lease a piece of land down near Los Angeles. He always works so hard for things, and he had saved a lot. Even from before, from out here in New York. He had a hunch there would be oil there, and now we’ve found it. Will says there’s so much of it we’ll be rich…and then we can help you, Mother. Will wants that too.”

“Oh, Elizabeth.” Her mother let out a breath that might have sent a hot-air balloon soaring. “I had such hopes for you.”

“I know.” Elizabeth’s eyes stung, and for the first time that day she found herself unable to look at her mother. She looked around the room, which she had barely entered since her childhood, with its imposing four-poster bed and flocked, wheat-colored wallpaper. The room was not large, and the women were situated close enough to each other that Elizabeth felt their discomfort and confusion almost physically. “I know you did.”

“It sounds like one of your father’s schemes,” her mother went on dismissively.

There was the suggestion of a reply on Edith’s lips, but in the end she said nothing.

Mrs. Holland let go of the valance, and when she spoke, her voice was bitter. “You could have married anyone.”

“I might have,” Elizabeth carefully corrected her. “But when it came to it, I couldn’t.”

“I see.” Her mother turned away from the window and looked at her for a long, sad stretch. The dust was streaming down, visible in the light. “Oh, Elizabeth,” she said finally. “To have you back and find that it isn’t you.”

“But it is me, Mother, and we’re going to be rich again. We all are, because of Will.”

Mrs. Holland was unmoved by this. She had begun shaking her head back and forth, and her hands were working together nervously. “It’s all too wild, Lizzie. I don’t know where you got the idea that you can just do as you please. Running off. Do you know what you’ve done to this family? Do you know what you’ve done to me?”

Elizabeth’s voice might have been coming from the other room. “I do know.”

“Well, you’re not going back to California, not as I live and breathe. You’re not seeing Will Keller again—”

“Louisa.” Edith could not bring her eyes to meet those of her sister-in-law, but the tone of her voice signified real conviction. “My brother always liked the boy, and anyway, you know nothing good ever comes of separating lovers.”

Elizabeth was fairly certain the word lover caused as much discomfort to her mother as it did to her. The pause that followed was so long, however, and the change in her mother’s face so significant that she wondered if they hadn’t touched on some corner of family history that she wasn’t privy to.

“Oh!” her mother said after a time. She put her hands over her face, and her shoulders fell. “Oh, Elizabeth.”

Meanwhile, downstairs, the Holland house was thrown into movement. Diana was relieved to see that Snowden didn’t seem to have noticed that he had been so calculatedly deceived. “What a miraculous day this is,” he said as Diana descended the stairs from her bedroom, where she had changed from her dressing gown into a skirt patterned with many stripes of horizontal green, and a black chiffon shirtwaist. “How lucky I am to be here for Miss Holland’s return.”

“And how lucky we are to have you here to celebrate with us,” Diana said. She was still feeling a little guilty over her falsehood, and so was trying to be especially respectful of him. “It wouldn’t have been much of a celebration without you,” she added, truthfully, since his entourage had made itself busy carting in the necessary foodstuffs for a proper Christmas feast. They were all over the house, shaking out old linens and polishing what silver was left. They crisscrossed the floors with new candelabras and vases and chair cushions.

“Since your mother and sister are busy, perhaps you could consult on the dinner menu with Miss Broud and me before it is finalized?” He paused and gave her a shy smile. “As long as we’re waiting for the others for luncheon.”

“Of course, Mr. Cairns—” Diana broke off when she saw a figure through the door glass. Her body grew buoyant and inclined in his direction when she realized who it was. “Mr. Cairns, would you excuse me just one moment?”

“Of course.”

Diana walked quickly to the door and went out onto the enclosed filigreed-iron porch where Henry stood, three steps up from the street, in a black coat and hat. She pulled the door behind her, but when she looked back, she saw that Snowden had not moved from the place in the middle of the foyer.

“We’re being watched, Henry.” She tried to speak with composure and not to smile too much. The air came right through her thin shirt and chilled her skin. “So don’t do anything rash,” she added with a wink, and so playfully that she might almost have been encouraging the opposite.

“I have to talk to you,” he said. He was looking at her intensely, and his eyes were round with feeling. They were worried, sleepless eyes. She had found their separation to be so agonizing that it was almost a physical affliction, but now she saw that for Henry it had been much worse. She had heard that lack of gratification could be very hard on men, and she supposed that explained the difference.

“I can’t now, Henry,” she replied. She felt naughty, just standing with him this way in public, and she thought that she could hear his pulse even with so much space between them. It was getting harder by the second, standing right in front of him and not reaching out to touch his face. “There’s such news, and the house is full of activity. I will be missed now.”

“But Diana—” Henry took a step toward her, and she almost moved in to kiss him despite everything. But Snowden was still there in the hall — she could feel his eyes on them. She knew that she would betray herself some way if she went on talking to Henry, so she stepped away and put her hand on the door handle.