Family Tree Part 30

"Please do." He paused. "I love you."

"We'll talk later," she said quietly, and ended the call.

Hugh finished feeding Lizzie, but by the time she had burped, he was focused on what Dana had said. Mothers did play a special role. They were there when no one else was, seemingly bound by an unwritten contract with the child they had nurtured since birth.

Hugh had a mother. If she felt bound to him by such a contract, he needed to know. He picked up the phone.

Chapter 23.

Hugh figured that two hours had pa.s.sed since he had left Old Burgess Way. Lunch would be over. Larry Silverman would have left. Eaton would be in his library brooding, and Dorothy, as always, would answer the phone.

Her h.e.l.lo had none of its normal brightness.

"It's me," he said.

There was a second's pause, then an indignant "What did you say to your father, Hugh?"

"Didn't he tell you?"

"Not one word. He yelled out to us that there was an emergency, and proceeded to shut himself in the library. When I knocked and told him that Larry Silverman was leaving, he said he was on the phone. It was embarra.s.sing, Hugh. Very rude. He answers me each time I call him, but he won't come out. What did you say?"

Hugh couldn't tell her. It wasn't his place. Eaton would have to find a way-have to find the courage-to do that. He should have told Dorothy years ago. It boggled Hugh's mind that the man had let his wife go through two pregnancies without alerting her to those rumors. If the lawyer on the island had been one-half black, Eaton was one-quarter so.

That made Hugh one-eighth black. It was surreal.

But he wasn't telling his mother any of it. His father would have to do that.

"I have an emergency here, Mom. Dana's grandmother had a stroke." Dorothy gasped. "They're just now at the hospital, trying to figure out what caused it. I really need to be with Dana, but I don't know how long it'll be. I could take the baby with me, but the hospital isn't a good place for an infant. I need someone to stay with her here. Can you?"

"Uh..."

"I know you were here before."

"Your father doesn't," Dorothy said, sounding frightened. "What will I say to him?"

"That I need you," he suggested. "That my baby needs you. I know I'm putting you in a difficult position, but there's no one else I trust." They hadn't hired a baby nurse and didn't yet have a babysitter. He could call a service and hire a stranger. Or call David, or Tara. But Dorothy was his mother, and Lizzie was her flesh and blood. "I need to be there for Dana. The last couple of weeks have been difficult. I haven't been as supportive as I should have been. I owe her."

"Owe her? Is it an obligation?"

"I'll rephrase that. I've behaved badly and need to make amends."

"Badly, how?" Dorothy asked.

"With the race thing. Mom, I can't go into this now, and as for Dad, he and I had a personal disagreement. You'll have to ask him the details."

"He won't tell me. He's angry, and you're putting me in a difficult position. I don't know what to do."

"Tell him about Ellie Jo," Hugh said. "Tell him that Dana's alone. He'll understand."

"I don't think so."

"Trust me. He will."

Dorothy studied the library door. Crafted of solid mahogany, it had eight raised panels, each with a slight variant of grain. She ran her fingers over the texture of one, then knocked. "Eaton? Open the door, please."

His voice was muted. "Not now, Dorothy."

"There's a situation I need to discuss."

"It can't be urgent."

"It is," she called, and flattened her hand on a panel. "Dana's grandmother had a stroke. Dana is with her at the hospital. Hugh wants to join her there, but he doesn't want to take the baby with him. He asked if I'd sit with her while he's gone."

From the other side of the eight-paneled door came silence.

"Eaton?" she called, jiggling the k.n.o.b. "Please open this door. Please tell me what's wrong." He said nothing. "Eaton."

"Go to Hugh's," he called.

"I told him he was putting me in an untenable position, because you don't want me going there, but I do agree that he should be with his wife."

"Go to Hugh's," Eaton called, more insistent this time.

"Dana must be out of her mind with worry, because her grandmother has been everything to her, so I can understand why Hugh wants to be with her. If they'd known something like this might happen, I'm sure they'd have made other arrangements. It had to have been hard for Hugh to call and ask this favor of me, what with all that's been going on between us. But these things take you off-guard, and I am family, and what with their having a brand-new baby at home-"

"Dorothy! Go!"

"But you're my husband," Dorothy said, bracing herself on yet another panel, "and you're upset. I should be with you."

There was silence. The door opened so quickly she jerked back in surprise.

"Dorothy." He scowled at her. "I told you to go."

Dorothy was not rea.s.sured by Eaton's appearance. His hair was rumpled, his face pale, his eyes tired. "Good Lord, you look like death warmed over."

He sighed and pushed a hand through his hair, a gesture Hugh often made. The resemblance between the two had always been marked. "I have things on my mind, Dot."

"What things?"

"I think publication of this book should be postponed."

She was appalled. "But the book is already in print. The tour is set. We have several hundred people coming to a book party in the Sycamore Room at the University Club a week from Tuesday."

"Some of the facts in it may be wrong."

Dorothy let out a small breath. "All right. This is normal. You're having last-minute jitters, like you always do on the eve of a book's publication, but I also know that you don't make mistakes when it comes to facts. You are a stickler for facts. Between Mark and you, everything is checked and double-checked."

He seemed all the more weary. "Go help Hugh. He needs to do this for Dana."

"That's what he said," Dorothy remarked, but Eaton's agreement puzzled her all the more. "Something's going on with you."

"I told you. I'm worried about the book."

"You've never cared about Dana before."

"Dorothy."

She figured it was as good a time as any. "I went to see her, you know. Last Tuesday." She waited for Eaton to explode. When he didn't, she said, "I saw the baby. I held her. She's a very sweet child."

"Please, Dot. Just leave."

"I'm taking an overnight bag," she warned. "I may not be back until tomorrow."

He stared at her long and hard.

"Fine," she said. "I'm going."

Eaton left the door open and returned to the large oak writing table that he had inherited from a succession of relatives to whom he was not, apparently, related. He didn't sit, but stood in front of it, head bowed, listening to Dorothy's progress. It was only when he heard the click of the back door and the muted roar of her car that he let out a breath.

Raising his eyes, he ran them over shelf after shelf of books. The same volumes that had brought him comfort in the past now p.r.i.c.ked his conscience. The books he had written himself were the worst offenders.

Hugh was right. What had possessed him to write One Man's Line? Arrogance? Self-absorption? Complacency?

Dismayed, he wandered out of the library. The living room, too, was steeped in history, all of the furniture arriving in America soon after the first of the Clarkes. Upholstery had been replaced and wood restored as the pieces had descended the generations, but each piece still bore the personal sign of its maker.

Portraits of the family lined the walls, each signed by the artist who had painted it, all known in their time and some famous still. Miscellaneous relatives, captured in smaller sizes, hung in groups above an engraved chest, a drop-leaf table. Great-grandparents on Eaton's mother's side flanked the hall. To the left of the secretary hung large renditions of his paternal grandparents. Eaton's own parents, larger yet, had the place of honor over the sofa.

Eaton had idolized his father, had been respectful and agreeable to a fault, desperate to please the man. His father was named Bradley, as was his first-born son, who favored him both in apt.i.tude and looks. Both of these Bradleys were men of vision, born leaders who relied on employees to see to the vision's daily execution. Conversely, Eaton was his mother's son, with the same attention to detail, the same creative bent.

Eaton recalled his mother doing the things that women of her cla.s.s did at the time-sewing and needlepoint and gardening, none of it necessarily practical. It wasn't necessarily creative, either, he realized now.

"G.o.d d.a.m.n it," he swore at the oil rendition of his mother. "Did you truly think I'd never find out? Did it never occur to you that I had a right to know? Would it have been so difficult to tell me? You had ten years after Dad died to do it." He had a thought. "And what about Thomas Belisle? Were you with him after Dad died? Did he ever know about me, or did you lie to him, too?"

He turned on his father. "And what about you, leaving her there summer after summer, did you never imagine-but no, you wouldn't have. You were used to people doing the bidding of the chairman of the board. If you couldn't fathom my becoming a writer, you sure as h.e.l.l wouldn't have fathomed your wife being with another man. She slept with another man!" he shouted.

"But maybe you knew. Maybe you knew and refused to admit it, refused to so much as breathe it aloud lest it hurt your social status. Or maybe you knew and didn't care. Maybe it was like your business, someone else seeing to the details that you didn't have the time or inclination to address. Is that what he did, Mom? Did he know and not care? Did he not care about me, either?"

He took a short breath and said to them both, "There were all those rumors, but you didn't say a G.o.dd.a.m.ned word! I always knew you were cold, but what you did was selfish and-and shortsighted. Didn't you think I'd ever have kids? Didn't you think they had a right to know? What kind of people are you, to hide something as basic and consequential from someone you call your son?"

But they didn't call him son anymore. They had gone to their graves believing their secret was safe.

In the end, Eaton knew that. Blaming his parents was useless, because he wasn't blameless himself. He knew the rumors. Hugh was right. He might have tracked down the truth. He hadn't, because he hadn't wanted to know. It was as simple and shameful as that. He led the life of a Boston Brahmin. Becoming African American meant rocking the boat.

But now he knew. And Hugh knew.

Dorothy had to be told first. He couldn't begin to think of how to tell Brad and Robert, much less his publisher. But he couldn't lie next to Dorothy in bed again until she knew. To perpetuate a lie, now that he knew it as such, would be compounding the wrong his parents had done.

Leaving the living room, he took his keys from the rosewood hall table and, in the process, caught sight of himself in the ornate hall mirror. Dorothy was right. He looked awful. Still, he didn't bother to even comb his hair, didn't want to linger lest he lose his nerve. He went through the kitchen to the garage, started his car, pulled out onto Old Burgess Way, and headed north.

It wasn't an easy drive. More than once, he considered turning back. What Dorothy didn't know wouldn't hurt her, his reasoning went. What Dorothy didn't know, no one else had to know-and it wasn't that he feared she would tell. She knew what to say and what not to say.

Once he told her, though, she would be implicated in any further lie. He wasn't sure that was fair.

Then again, maintaining the lie might be impossible, thanks to the birth of Elizabeth Ames Clarke.

Robert wouldn't be pleased. He joked about being his uncle Bradley's illegitimate son. The truth would be worse in his eyes. Robert was one-eighth African American. His four children were each one-sixteenth.

Robert had to be told. But Dorothy first.

Eaton drove on. He hesitated once more when he left the highway, and again just before Hugh's house came into sight. But his foot stayed on the gas. By the time he pulled into the driveway behind Dorothy's car, he knew there was no turning back.

He went to the front door and rapped lightly. Her face quickly appeared in the side window, puzzled until she saw him, then startled. She pulled the door open.

"Eaton!" she cried in a half-whisper that suggested the baby was asleep.

He nodded. When an explanation seemed called for, he just said, "I thought I'd come."

"Hugh has already left."

"That's okay. Good, actually." He didn't know where to begin.

"What's wrong?"

"Why does something have to be wrong?" he asked softly.

"You haven't been in this house since the baby was born," she said. "And you don't look well."

He sighed. "May I come in?"

She stepped back, scolding quietly, "Of course. This is as much your house as it is mine, even though it doesn't belong to us, though we did give Hugh the money he used to buy it."

"Dorothy." He went past her into the hall. "He gets the same dividends we do. And he earns good money. He bought this house on his own."

"Probably, Eaton, but I'm just worried about why you drove all the way up here. Is it something about your health, something you haven't told me?"

"My health is fine." He wandered into the living room, knowing she would follow. He opened his mouth, then closed it and looked around. Hugh's living room was a newer, younger version of their own. He spotted several pieces that had come down through the family, but they were set off cleverly with more modern touches. He stared at the portraits. He wasn't sure he even knew whose face was in each. He sensed they were here more for their artistic value than for any specific sentimental connection.

That was probably good, he realized. Hugh might not be related to any of these forebears.

"Eaton?"

He looked back at Dorothy. "Any word from Hugh?"