VOYAGERS Page 6

  Over the last several months breakfast had become a peculiar thing. Her father had become addicted to the newspaper. He had always enjoyed reading it at morning table, but Greta could recall when he had used it rather like a conversation piece. He would bring this article or that column to her mother's attention. He would ask Greta which of the illustrated ladies' fashions would be her favorites, if she were all grown up. Of late, though, he held the paper before him like a mask and barely uttered a word until breakfast came. He'd gobble up the food, his eyes fixed to it, and gulp down his coffee. A quick peck of a kiss upon his wife's cheek, one planted atop Greta's braided auburn hair, a brief report on when to expect him home: that was all there was to breakfast anymore.

  Things seemed better at supper. Her parents dedicated their conversation to their daughter. Only now, looking back on that time, did Greta realize that this attention, which felt so good to her at five years old, was a way for them to avoid talking to one another. Lawrence no longer seemed interested in keeping his wife informed about the engine's prototype. He didn't relate with amusement his stories of the nervous banker, making weekly visits to the chandlery, ostensibly for a friendly hello ("By the by, how're those trials coming along?").

  When the time came for good nights Greta never found them reading to each other in the parlor any more. Oh, they'd be in the parlor, and they'd be reading. But their necks were bowed, their eyes so rigidly fixed to the print that Greta understood that this silence had been in place since the meal had ended. This, of course, only when her father came home at a decent hour. Over the past two years, once or twice a week he wouldn't return at all until after Greta's bedtime. Work, he had told her, when she had complained of it. His work was keeping him away.

  Greta always awoke when he came home on those nights. Somehow, no matter how quietly her father might manage it, her eyes would pop open as soon as she heard the slight press of his shoes against the upper hall's floorboards. She would pretend to sleep as he came to her door, a glass of brandy in his hand. In he would come, check the latch on her window, and stare at her so long she was sure he'd discover her awake and scold her. But he never did.

  Over the last several months, though, something had changed. Her father's late nights away from the family had ceased. Yet his mood had grown worse. Greta remembered how this had perplexed her then. His work wasn't keeping him away as much. That made Greta happy. Why wasn't it making Daddy happy, and Mama, too? Instead, her parents seemed more sullen than ever. And so came the memory of this particular morning, humid and sticky. Someone rang the doorbell. Greta's father jerked the newspaper away from his face and stared after Little Bit as she left the dining room, his eyes as round as though he had been startled awake.

  Georgia's voice had an irritable edge to it, when she said, "For Heaven's sake, Lawrence, whatever is the matter?"

  He didn't have time to reply before they heard the door thud shut. Little Bit came into the dining room with a gilded envelope. It even had an elaborate wax seal.

  "Personal messenger," she announced, smiling with delight.

  "Pretty," little Greta cried out, taken with the shiny embossing. "May I? Oh, may I be the one to open it?"

  Greta's mother shook her head. "It's addressed to Daddy. It's his to open."

  Little Bit still held it in her hand. Greta's father stared at it. Georgia's attention was drawn from her breakfast plate to her husband. For the first time in months she seemed concerned for him.

  "Lawrence?"

  Finally, Greta's father took the envelope. The mood in the dining room had a near physical crackle to it, and Little Bit left hastily, using some excuse that Greta was only dimly aware of as she watched her parents. How confused she had been. The envelope was a festive one, a carrier of some good news. Yet her parents' mood clouded as if it were a funeral notice. Witnessing this memory, however, Greta was no longer confused. She knew what her father held in his hand.

  Familiar now, to become more familiar as the years progressed, was her mother's icy voice, when she asked, "Aren't you going to open it?"

  Greta's father looked up at his wife, holding her gaze for an uncomfortable moment before he suddenly popped open the elaborate wax seal. He pulled out the notice. His Adam's apple bobbed.

  Then he said, handing the whole thing to his wife, "Why it's a...birth announcement. From the Fieldings. How charming."

  His voice was much too flat. Georgia was already taking the announcement when her husband spoke these words. She looked into his eyes, then looked down at the card and envelope in her hand. Her cheeks reddened, and her eyes darted toward Greta before she set the announcement, face down, beside her husband's plate.

  "Well." Greta's mother speared some eggs with her fork and poised the mouthful before her lips, staring as if the food were her husband. "You'll need to send your congratulations."

  "We," Greta's father countered, trying to seem normal. "We'll need to."

  Georgia set the food down and looked at her husband. Her voice trembled. "It was addressed to you, Lawrence. Odd, that a birth announcement was addressed to you and not the family."

  Greta's father leaned toward his wife, his attention more imploring and tender than little Greta had seen in months. "Georgia. It was a mistake, that's all."

  Greta's mother craned her neck toward the doorway. "Little Bit, we're done with breakfast."

  "But I'm not," young Greta chimed in. "And what's the baby? What's the baby, a boy or girl? You never said."

  "Greta, not now," her father warned.

  "A boy," Greta's mother replied, sharply. "You don't want to be late, Lawrence."

  She was already rising from the table. Lawrence Roscoe didn't rise with his wife, but only looked up at her, his expression stricken. Watching this memory, Greta was embarrassed for her father's sake; recalling her innocence, her stubbornness, refusing to let her parents ignore her curiosity. She had been too young then to realize what was happening, but she had thought she understood one thing.

  "But, Daddy, what's wrong? It's a good thing to have a baby. Don't you and Mama feel happy for those people?"

  Little Bit was at the table, rapidly clearing the places, and Greta's father stood to leave.

  "You go help Little Bit with the dishes, Greta," he said. "Daddy will see you after work."

  "But aren't you happy? Isn't Mama?"

  "Now, go do as you're told, Greta."

  "Are you going to be late tonight? Please, you won't start being late again," Greta dared, disgruntled with being ignored once again.

  Her father looked away uncomfortably. "No, I won't be late."

  Her parents had not entertained the Fieldings since that night two years before, though they had sometimes encountered them when attending certain social functions. Since Greta's father had designed the engine and had begun perfecting the prototype her parents were being courted regularly by investors--just as Greta's mother had predicted--who often moved in the same circles as the Fieldings'. Greta had no idea what may have passed between her parents and the Fieldings whenever they crossed paths. But her family's history proved that something passed between her father and Madeline. Now, two days after the birth announcement had darkened the breakfast table, Burgess Fielding came to call on Lawrence Roscoe at the chandlery.

  Greta was working that day. Yes, at five years old, she was working at the chandlery. But her duties were hardly strenuous. The idea was to give her a sense of the value of money; something her parents thought should be learned at as early an age as possible. Her chores at home were required without compensation. But the simple tasks she performed at the chandlery earned her two cents a week. Her mother thought this excellent discipline for when she would be married and managing her own household expenses.

  So Greta was brought to the chandlery three times a week to spend an hour in the afternoon dusting the shelves she could reach, re-filling the boxes of miscellaneous nuts and bolts; whatever was needed. Greta smiled at the memory. The chores she was assigne
d were all done with ample help from her father, who could have done them much more efficiently alone than with his tiny employee. But each Saturday, just before Mama returned to take her home, her father placed two pennies in her hand and plenty of praise in her mind. And Greta's mother never forgot to ask her all she had accomplished at the chandlery, and listened patiently during the carriage ride home.

  It happened to be one of those Saturdays when Burgess Fielding invaded the chandlery. Greta's father was at her side, tilting a heavy crate of screws and pushing them with his free hand into the scoop Greta clutched in both fists. She was dumping the scoopful into the appropriate supply drawer when the little brass bell atop the front door was jostled into alarm. Both she and her father looked up.

  She hadn't remembered Burgess Fielding, of course. But looking back at these freshened memories, Greta noticed that he was much the same as when he glowered at her in the parlor two years before. The arrival of his newborn son didn't seem to fill out his mood any more than the past two years had trimmed down his stature. He was still a scary presence to one so young. Greta's father rose, and the first expression to come to his face was clearly fear. But a moment more and his countenance hardened, as though he were facing his doom and was determined to do so in a manly fashion.

  Burgess' mouth jerked into a malevolent smile. "Got the announcement, eh? I wanted you to be the first to know."

  Lawrence Roscoe swallowed hard, and brave as he was trying to be, his voice was reedy, when he replied, "You have my family's hardiest congratulations."

  "I'm gonna have your hide, too. I'm gonna mount it in my wife's bedroom. That way, she won't have to sneak off to the Baden Inn to enjoy it."

  Greta remembered how paralyzed she had been, staring at the frightening behemoth before her. So riveted was she that she didn't realize that her father was bending over her and forcing her fingers around one of the peppermint sticks that had been in his vest pocket minutes before.

  His voice was thin and fragile, when he said, "Greta, go into the storage room."

  Greta moved close against her father's leg, never taking her eyes off Burgess. "No, Daddy."

  "Yes," her father replied, managing some authority in his voice. "Do as I say."

  Greta's father ushered her roughly behind the counter and over the threshold of the storage room before closing the door. But no sooner had he closed it than Greta opened it again, wide enough to reveal her face. Neither her father nor Burgess seemed to notice. She watched her father return to the counter and stand rigidly behind it as though it were a defensive wall between him and his adversary.

  "You have a foul mouth, sir," her father said, but his voice was trembling as he struggled to find words. "You insult me. And you insult your own wife, implying whatever it is you're trying to...to imply."

  "I'm gonna ruin you, Roscoe. I'm gonna take your business, I'm gonna take what puny status you've got in this city. I'm gonna put you so low, you'll be looking up through the silt of the Mississippi."

  "I don't know what you're talking about. You leave now. You leave my property."

  Burgess' ugly smile curled even more tightly. It was clear to Greta, as it had not been when she was that five-year-old staring horror-struck at the scene, he was gloating. He thrust one of his beefy hands into the air and Greta's father spasmed backward, as though afraid of being struck. Burgess laughed as he curled his fingers into a fist.

  "I got you, Roscoe. Right here. Feel the squeeze? I got you now."

  "I said get out! I don't know what...you have nothing."

  "Don't I? I got your son…"

  "No. You do not. He is yours and you are...despicable to deny your own..."

  "He's your bastard. I got my own poor health to prove it and a slut of a wife willing to tell the courts everything, as long as I don't throw her out in the street. That's where you'll be soon, Roscoe. You and the Mrs...." Burgess turned his gargoyle visage directly toward Greta. "And that pretty little girl of yours."

  Greta's father swiveled his entire body in her direction, but Greta was too stricken to move. Neither did her father, staring at her, sweat trickling down his temples. That was when it happened, that very moment. Greta hadn't remembered that she had been a witness to it. Lawrence Roscoe's face contorted, seemed to crumple into itself, a perfect reflection of his soul as it began to wither.

  He couldn't even face his enemy, as he asked in a voice as strangled as his spirit, "For the love of God, what is it you want?"

  Burgess kept a strategic silence, gazing at Lawrence's desolation as though he were admiring a fine sculpture. Finally, he stuffed one hand into his trouser pocket and turned to amble toward the door. He opened it, the brass bell complained feebly, and just before he left, he said, "Be at my office tomorrow at 3:00. We'll work out the details with my attorney."

  Burgess closed the door and the little bell shuddered against his exit, its voice fading into the oppressive silence. Greta could only stare at her father, who had not moved, except that his head was bent upon his neck. Then sometime later--a long time later--her father whispered, as though he thought Burgess was still there…

  "But tomorrow's the Lord's Day."

  Chapter Seven

  The Pestilence That Walketh in Darkness

  "Tell me why. Tell me why."

  Greta's mother was screaming, heedless of anyone else in the house. Heedless of Little Bit, pretending she could hear nothing as she finished drying the Sunday dishes. Heedless of Greta, who was sitting on the hallway floor outside the parlor, her back against the seam of the pocket doors, her face tucked into the cocoon of her folded arms and doubled knees.

  Greta's throat clinched as she watched herself huddled there. The sleeves upon her five-year-old arms were limp with spent tears. How that screaming had terrified her. Yet she was drawn to it, simply couldn't help herself. Once Little Bit tried to coax her away, begging in urgent whispers, but the nurse was afraid to linger, afraid that any moment her employers might burst into the hallway. So, she gave up on Greta, fleeing back to the safety of the kitchen.

  "Tell me, damn you. Tell me."

  "Georgia, please..." Lawrence Roscoe was raising his voice, too, but his tone was a desperate plea to be heard.

  "You gave him everything? You signed away everything?"

  "Not everything. We're in partnership, that's all. It's a partnership. And the house. The house is still ours."

  "Fifteen percent. Fifteen percent and the house, Oh, God. Oh, dear God in Heaven. Lawrence, what have you done?"

  "Now, Georgia, you simply don't understand business. This is a sound business decision in the long run. If you'll just listen. I did it for you. I did it for Greta."

  There was a long silence, then a plaintive sobbing. The sound renewed Greta's own tears, and she heard her mother's voice, thick with a struggle for control. "Tell me why he's doing this to us, Lawrence. You have to tell me."

  "Please. My precious Georgia. If only you'll trust me. I know what I'm doing." Lawrence's voice trailed off as it had done in the chandlery the day before.

  "Tell me!" Greta's mother screamed.

  "Now, here. Now, you listen. I know what I'm doing." Pitiful, her father's attempt at bravado.

  "If you don't tell me, I'll find out from Burgess Fielding myself, Lawrence, I swear on the very name of God."

  "No, you will not. I'm still the master of this household."

  "Then act like it and tell me. Tell me to my face."

  Yet again came the silence through the doors. When words were finally spoken, they were whispered, and Greta--looking back upon this horrible moment--wondered how it could be that she was hearing her father so clearly:

  "There's nothing to tell. There's nothing that matters. I know what I'm doing."

  Greta's father did not tell his wife. He didn't confess that Marshall was his son. Greta knew that, as surely as she knew that her mother understood who Marshall really was. It was Lawrence Roscoe's incredible denial, it was Burgess Fielding's ruthles
s blackmail, it was Georgia Roscoe's inability to forgive her husband; not so much for his affair with Madeline as for his refusal to own up. For his desperate willingness to put his whole family under the Fielding yoke. These were the things that destroyed Greta's family. And as Greta grew up, she learned to despise her parents as much as she despised Burgess Fielding.

  Tess was the only one she allowed herself to love. Tess was the result of a feeble attempt at reconciliation, and her advent was as much of a surprise to her parents as to Greta. But neither Lawrence nor Georgia could sustain for long. By the time Tess was a year old and Greta 13 her parents had utterly given up. Their attention to their children, let alone one another, became purely form. Greta's mother threw herself into an exhausting cycle of charitable duties, leaving Tess in Greta's care. Lawrence plodded off to the chandlery every day, even Sundays, when he would stock shelves and do paper work, and sealed himself into his study with a liquor bottle every night.

  The family's financial status remained stable, but modest. At one of the Fielding factories across the river, in Alton, the Roscoe engine went successfully from prototype to production. It sold remarkably well, but Greta's father--who might have been bolstered by all this once--no longer had his heart in the project. Within a few years, competing designs had caught up and the sales of the engine settled, though remained profitable.

  Greta didn't know if her father ever saw Madeline Fielding again. Marshall's birth had left her weak and sickly. At least, Greta assumed it was his birth that had done so; it would only be appropriate for the wormy little bastard to come into the world in such a way. But maybe--separated from what little love she may have known with Greta's father--Madeline had simply begun to wither. She died just before Marshall's third birthday.

  Greta didn't see Burgess Fielding again for years. Indeed, the household settled into a routine, a dull steady gait of sorts, though never one of peace. As soon as Greta had become old enough to take charge of the household, Little Bit had been dismissed to save expenses. From time to time, Greta disturbed her parents' respective hibernations and tried to coax them into family activities. And, from time to time, she succeeded. But as the years passed, her successes became even rarer. By her sixteenth year, Greta's focus was dedicated to a fiery desire to get out to the world as soon as she could, to leave her parents behind, and to take Tess with her. So, it surprised young Greta when her mother announced at the breakfast table one early autumn morning that the family would be hosting a party in honor of Greta's sixteenth birthday.