The Invisible Hour, page 9
“You don’t have to worry about him. He doesn’t know where you are and he is never getting you back,” Constance assured Mia. “Sarah and I wouldn’t allow it. If we need to, we’ll hire a lawyer and have you declared an emancipated minor.”
Mia was grateful, and after that she told Constance she was able to sleep, but it wasn’t the truth. Sometimes, when she was in bed trying to fall asleep, she thought she heard him rattling the windows in her bedroom, a goblin from the past who wouldn’t leave her alone. Once she went out to the garden, and there on the iron table was a perfect apple tree leaf. It might have been coincidence, it might have drifted over from a tree in a neighbor’s yard, all the same, after that Mia always got out of bed to make sure the locks on the door were bolted.
Some things could break you once you brought them back to life. Some things were best forgotten. Mia did her best not to think of the past, but it did no good. The days were fine, but once night fell, she remembered it all. Her mother laughing in the dark woods. The cemetery ringed with ferns and the mountain beyond. The rocks in her backpack on the bank of the Last Look River. The smell of books when they were burned on a bonfire. The inscription in the book written in blue ink. Running past the dogs to the gate with her heart pounding. The promise she had made herself that she would never go back.
* * *
AT SCHOOL, THEY WERE studying the genealogy of several of the writers who had lived in Concord, with Mia’s presentation on Nathaniel Hawthorne earning her an A+. She found herself more and more curious about her mother’s past. What sort of life might have driven Ivy to a place like the Community? Did she not have another soul to turn to, someone who might have taken her in? Mia recalled hearing people gossip out in the fields and in the dining hall, saying that Ivy was a spoiled rich girl. When Mia began to research the Jacob family of Boston, she discovered the gossip hadn’t been entirely wrong. One of the Jacobs had run for governor in the 1950s and another had been on the board of Massachusetts General Hospital. Her grandfather was a real estate banker from an old Massachusetts lineage, a descendant of a line of the family who had, oddly enough, settled in Berkshire County after arriving from Amsterdam. One of her relatives, John Jacob, had been the first pastor in the town of Blackwell. A cousin, Lucy Jacob, had been murdered on Route 17, the same road Mia had walked each time she’d gone into town. Her grandmother’s people had come over on the Mayflower and had been among those who managed to survive the first deadly winter of the original settlement, one of the few who had seen the buds of spring in the colonists’ first year.
One Saturday Mia took the train to Boston. She told Miss Allen she was visiting friends, not that she had any. Mia had been to Boston several times with Miss Allen and easily found her way to Beacon Hill. When she came to Louisburg Square, perhaps the most elegant address in the city, she stood outside the Jacobs’ large brick townhouse. It was October by then and the air was spicy and smelled like smoke. The Jacobs’ house was so big it reminded Mia of a library. She shivered and buttoned her sweater and was glad she was wearing her mother’s boots, which always kept her feet warm. The girls at the Community had called them witch’s boots, but Mia had never cared. She knew what was beautiful and what was not. She knew her mother would have wanted her to have them. Standing there, Mia closed her eyes and tried to envision Ivy when she lived here, but all she could imagine was a beautiful woman whose hair had been shorn, who wished she had lived west of the moon.
The brick sidewalks were slippery now, slick with fallen leaves. Mia went past the black wrought-iron gate and up the path. On the door was a brass knocker in the shape of a lion, which she used to rap three times, quietly at first and then more insistently. No one responded, but she noticed there was a rusty buzzer that rang a bell, and she tried that. She could feel the vibration of the ringing bell travel along her finger to her wrist. There was a moment when she might have changed her mind and run, but she stayed rooted to the ground, the leaves from a tall oak tree falling around her.
A maid answered the door, out of breath and surprised, having run down a flight of stairs when she heard the bell, for no one ever came to call. “Did you want something?” she asked. There had been three women on the housekeeping staff years ago, along with a cook who came in on the weekends, but things had changed.
Now that Mia was here, she was tongue-tied. “I’m here to see Mr. and Mrs. Jacob,” she managed to say.
“When it comes to him, that will be difficult,” the maid said. “He’s dead.”
“Is Mrs. Jacob here?”
The maid was Helen Connelly, and she saw something she recognized in Mia. Her heart softened when she realized who the girl was. She had been waiting for this day. “Mrs. Jacob is having tea. I’ll bring you in.”
Mia followed Helen through the hallway into the vast, chilly entrance hall. There was a black-and-white marble floor, and the walls were painted blue. The paint was cracking from water damage.
“Plumbing,” Helen said when she noticed Mia staring. “There was a leak.”
They went to a glass bubble of a room filled with plants, some alive, others wilting, with wintry brown leaves and spent flowers. Mia supposed such a room was called a conservatory. There was an older woman with silvery hair, still in her nightgown, there at the table reading the Boston Globe. The teapot was in the shape of a goose and tea poured from the goose’s beak. The tea was always served weak, no sugar, no milk. That was the way she liked it.
“You have a visitor,” Helen said.
“Do I?” Mrs. Jacob said. She gazed up, uninterested until she spied the slender girl in the doorway. She knew right away. The shape of the girl’s face and her pretty, wide mouth. And of course, there was that brilliant red hair falling straight to her chin, the same vivid color Mrs. Jacob’s own mother had possessed. She had thought the day might come when somebody would arrive wanting something. There was no reason to make it easy. No one had made it easy on her.
“I think we might be related,” Mia said.
“Go out and close the door,” Mrs. Jacob told Helen. “Come back in ten minutes.” Helen turned and went to leave the room, then stopped when Mrs. Jacob called out that she had changed her mind. “Make it five,” she told Helen.
“Talk as long as you’d like,” Helen told Mia before she closed the door.
Mia was studying her grandmother. She hadn’t known what a heavy drinker looked like until today. Pale, ashen skin and runny eyes, a tremor in both hands, pursed lips. She couldn’t for the life of her imagine Ivy in his house.
“How much were you intending to ask for?” Mrs. Jacob said, her voice dry with sarcasm.
Under the bitter scrutiny of her grandmother, Mia wilted and felt utterly out of place. Even though she was wearing the new sweater and jeans Constance had bought her, she knew she was under-dressed.
“Or is Ivy the one who sent you? Unfortunately, she’s waited too long. There’s not as much in the bank as there once was.”
“This has nothing to do with her.” Mia had a vision of her mother in her gray overalls, her hands muddy from working in the garden, the scent of apples in her black hair.
“I know all about that Community of hers,” Mrs. Jacob spat, her eyes fixed on the girl before her. A stranger, really, nothing more. “I found the articles about them in my husband’s study after he died. She destroyed our lives for that nonsense. And, by the way, she’s not getting a dime. Tell her that.”
“I can’t tell her anything,” Mia said. “She died.”
That stopped Mrs. Jacob. Her face sank and she looked so old. She looked like a woman who had lost everything.
“It was an accident,” Mia went on. “During apple season. A truck backed over her.”
Mrs. Jacob turned her head away for a moment and made a sound in her throat that frightened Mia. It was the way a sob sounded when it was choked back and swallowed.
“I expected as much,” Mrs. Jacob said when she had gained control of herself. She wasn’t about to feel anything for this girl standing before her. She hadn’t felt anything for years. “And now you’re here. If you don’t want money, what is it you want?”
Mia wanted to say, What do you think I want? A family, a grandmother, someone, anyone who might be interested in me, anyone who might possibly love me, who might want to know what happened to me. Instead, she lifted her chin. “Just to say hello.”
“Well, now you’ve said it.” They stared at one another. “Is there anything more?”
Mia didn’t know if her grandmother had always been this cruel, or if losing her child and her husband had made her so. “I guess not,” she said.
“When I think of it, it’s really all your fault,” Mrs. Jacob said, her eyes trained on Mia. “Ivy becoming pregnant with you started the whole journey down the road to hell.”
“Where do you think I was?” Mia said, provoked. “West of the moon?” She was embarrassed when her voice broke with emotion, but she knew which of the two of them had been to hell.
“That moon nonsense Ivy used to talk about was the beginning of things going wrong. All those fairy tales she read. That’s probably how she wound up with you.”
“Didn’t you worry about what had happened to me?” Mia asked.
When her grandmother looked blank, Mia realized Mrs. Jacob hadn’t thought about her at all. She hadn’t thought of Mia as anything other than a sin and a burden and the reason everyone’s life had been destroyed.
“You ruined your mother’s life.” Mrs. Jacob’s pinched face was flushed with emotions that she didn’t even think she had anymore. She had lost a daughter and a husband and now she was old. She really didn’t care whose feelings she hurt.
“Maybe you ruined her life,” Mia said softly. “And mine.” She was beginning to understand how Ivy might have wound up at the Community, with nowhere to turn and nowhere to run. “I came here to see you,” Mia said. “And now I have.”
Helen was standing in the doorway waiting for her. More than five minutes had passed, but time didn’t really matter anymore. “Shall we?” Helen said to Mia, signaling for her to follow.
Mia trailed after Helen. “She’s hateful,” Mia said.
“Mrs. Jacob lost her husband and her child,” Helen replied. “But yes, she can seem harsh. I wish she would have said how sorry she was about the loss of your mother.” Mia looked at Helen closely. If she wasn’t mistaken, the maid had tears in her eyes. Perhaps she’d overheard Mia speak of her mother’s death. “I didn’t know,” Helen explained. Her gaze fell on Mia and she made a decision right then and there. Instead of escorting her to the door, Helen headed for the staircase, then looked back. When Mia hesitated, Helen urged, “I thought perhaps you’d like to see your mother’s room.”
Mia could feel her heart beating against her ribs. She felt dizzy, the way she had after her mother’s death, when she knew some things would never be possible. She knew that now she would never have a grandmother or be part of her mother’s family, but all the same she nodded and followed Helen up to the third floor. It was dark and dusty in the narrow hallway and the window shades were drawn. Clearly, no one came up here anymore.
Helen pulled open the door to a bedroom. “They didn’t change a thing.” She gestured for Mia to go inside. “That should tell you something. They did love her, they just didn’t know how to deal with her. They grew up in a different time.”
Mia was reluctant to go farther, yet she was entranced to think she could finally have access to her mother’s world. She stepped inside and caught her breath. Ivy’s room was exactly as it had been on the night she left Louisburg Square, except that the bed had been made. That had been Helen’s handiwork, otherwise the blanket would likely still be thrown upon the floor. Mr. Jacob had never again entered the room, but for many years, Mia was told, Mrs. Jacob would sit up here, in the pink and white chair in the corner. She would come here and cry.
There were posters of France on the wall, of Monet’s garden and the Eiffel Tower.
“She had big plans,” Helen said. “Once upon a time.”
On the desk stood a framed photograph of Ivy at sixteen, a beautiful girl with masses of black hair, wearing jeans and sneakers, her eyes made up with black eyeliner, a grin flickering across her face.
Mia moved on to the bookshelf. She thought of her own books tossed on a bonfire in the cow field, how each page became a spark in the dark, open sky. Here on the shelf, Mia spied Beloved, along with Wuthering Heights and Thoreau’s Walden. Helen went to the closet and opened the door so that Mia might have a look there as well. There were filmy dresses perfect for formal dances and cashmere sweaters, but also piles of raggedy jeans and T-shirts. There were Converse sneakers and high black boots, and on a wooden hanger there was a forest-green winter coat. Mia ran her hand over the sleeve.
“Looks like your size,” Helen said. “It’s cold out there today. You could use it.”
Helen gestured for Mia to try on the coat. It was a perfect fit. Wearing it felt like a warm embrace. It reminded her of the nights in the woods when she and her mother were invisible and could do as they pleased, even for an hour or two.
Helen closed the closet door and a world closed along with it.
“Your mother was sweet and dear, and she knew how to have fun, but back then, things were different, and it was an especially different time for women and girls. I fear that time is with us once again, and women don’t have the right to make decisions about their own bodies. It was a disgrace to be pregnant and unmarried at such a young age, at least among those here on the hill. Especially in this house. They had a dream for her, and that wasn’t it. But she had a dream, too.”
“We should have run away from the farm,” Mia said. If she’d had a daughter, she would have done exactly that.
“If your mother had told me about her situation, I would have had her come and live with me,” Helen went on. “Then I’d be your grandmother of a sort. I’ve thought about that many times.”
“But she didn’t tell you?” Mia asked.
“No. And the truth of the matter is, I didn’t ask.”
“I wish you were my grandmother.” Mia imagined going home with Helen, sitting at her kitchen table, having tea with sugar and cream. “But you’re not.”
“People make mistakes,” Helen mused. “You hear that all the time, but it’s very true. They can’t guess the results of their actions. They don’t mean to hurt you, but they do.” There was a pink leather jewelry box on the bureau, and when Helen opened it, a ballerina danced in a circle surrounded by a jumble of necklaces and hoop earrings and a faded envelope that was addressed to Helen.
“She sent me a letter to give to you if you ever came here. She wrote it after you were born.”
The two went downstairs together, not speaking until they reached the front hall.
“Don’t forget to read the letter,” Helen urged her.
“Thank you for showing me her room,” Mia said.
“She was only a girl,” Helen said. “Remember that. But she should have had the choice to decide what to do with her own body and her own fate.”
Helen threw her arms around Mia’s shoulders, then quickly backed away.
After the door closed, Mia stood outside for a while wearing the green coat, eyes fixed on the house. She saw that the black paint on the window shutters was peeling. Pigeons were nesting on the rooftop, and no one had bothered to chase them off. She couldn’t imagine what it might have been like to grow up here and what limits had been placed on her mother, she only knew that she was glad she had come, and even happier to be walking away with a message from her mother. She went to the Boston Common, sat on a bench, and watched the leaves fall and be carried away by the rising wind, and then she unfolded the letter.
Dearest Mia,
If you are reading this letter you have left the Community, and for that I am grateful. Perhaps I am about to tell you too much, but perhaps it is better than too little. Perhaps I should have told you while we were together, but I am hoping it’s not too late. My parents thought they knew what was best, and because I was sixteen and had no legal rights, they made plans for me to give you away. They planned to steal everything I cared about. My freedom, my ability to make choices, and you. More than anything, you.
I let you grow up believing things that weren’t true because I thought the outside world was dangerous. I let you believe that we were safe where we were, and that wasn’t true either. But I want more for you than I wanted for myself.
Here is the truth: There was a boy I loved, who I thought loved me, but when I told him about my situation, he said it was my problem. But you were never my problem. You were my joy. He was at Harvard and had a bright future, and he cared what other people thought. He begged me to keep his secret and tell no one who the father was. I could have gone to his parents, I could have destroyed him in their eyes, but what good would that have done?
You were mine and mine alone. You were the best thing that ever happened to me.
It was a time when unmarried girls were shamed for getting pregnant, as if pregnancy was a crime they had to pay for with their suffering. I pray that by the time you read this letter, the world will have changed, and girls can make their own choices about what they do with their bodies.
I went to Western Massachusetts, where the Community said that kindness was the only rule. That wasn’t true, but I didn’t know that evil can look like something it is not. I did not know that until I saw it right before me. I had a hole in my heart and Joel Davis filled it. I believed I had fallen in love. I gave my life over to him because I was too young and too exhausted to do anything else. To the untrue man, the whole universe is false, and he convinced me of that so that I could not trust a single person outside the gates of the farm. He was not your father, but he promised he would always be there for us. He told me that if I ever left him, he would keep you. He would find you and take you from me, and that wasn’t a bargain I was willing to make. You were mine and mine alone.
