The final envelope was a thick bundle that felt, from the outside, not unlike a bundle of hundred-dollar bills. Caroline opened the envelope and reached in and pulled out a sheaf of papers separated by clips into four separate sections, the whole bundle bound with twine. The papers were old, each about the size of a small envelope, yellowed, covered with the tight narrow handwriting that was already familiar, the handwriting of Faith Reddman Shaw. One edge of each of the papers was slightly ragged, as if it had been cut from a book of some sort.
Caroline looked at the top page, and then the next, and then the next. “These look to be from my grandmother’s diary, but that can’t be possible.”
“Why not?”
“She burned them all shortly before she died. She kept volumes and volumes of a diary from when she was a little girl, she would scribble constantly, but she never let anyone see them and a few years back she burned them all. We begged her not to, they were such a precious piece of our history, but she said her past was better forgotten.”
“I guess there were some pages,” I said, “she couldn’t bear to incinerate.”
Caroline, who was scanning through the excerpts, said, “This first one is about meeting my grandfather.”
“Maybe there are clues in these diary pages of who these people in the photographs, they are,” said Morris, “and why your grandmother, she kept this box buried like she did. We should maybe be reading these pages, no?”
“It’s up to Caroline,” I said.
She looked up and shrugged.
We all took seats around the table. The rusted and mangled box sat between us. We leaned forward and listened carefully as Caroline read out loud the surviving sections of her grandmother’s diary, one by one, the sections torn from the bound volumes before they were burned, the sections that her grandmother could not suffer to destroy. Halfway through, Caroline’s voice grew hoarse and Beth took over the reading. It grew still in the room, except for the song of the reader’s voice, as strangely foreign to the two women who shared the reading as if channeled from the dead Faith Reddman herself. At one point, while Beth read, Caroline suppressed a sob, and then waved us away when we offered comfort and told Beth to keep reading. The last line was a fervent wish for peace and love and redemption and after it was over we sat in silence for a long time, still under the spell of that voice from long ago.
“I think,” said Morris, “I know now who are these people in the photographs, but the crucial questions I can’t yet figure out.”
“Like what?” I asked.
“Like why these pictures are in her box, or who it is that killed the woman you found in the ground,” said Morris.
“Don’t you see?” said Caroline. “Isn’t it clear?”
“No,” said Beth. “Not at all.”
Caroline took the Distinguished Service Cross from around her neck and tossed it into the box, where it clanged, steel on steel. “My grandmother only said the kindest things about him. She worshiped him as if he was the most wonderful, most gentle man in the world. A war hero, she said, and so how could we think otherwise. Even in her diary she could barely say ill of him, but it’s all there, beneath her words of love and devotion, it’s all very clear. How could we ever have known it, how could we ever have imagined that our grandfather, Christian Shaw, was an absolute monster?”
33
I
May 24, 1911
Three new young men came for tea today, bringing to only twelve the number that have called this month. It would have been more, I am certain, except for those ugly rumors that continue to plague us. Is there no way to halt the lies? I fear if it weren’t for my mother’s wondrous teas, with her sugared almonds and her famous deep-fried crullers, we wouldn’t have any visitors at all, and I don’t understand it, I don’t understand why they insist on being so mean to us, I simply don’t. Of today’s young men one was fat and one was a dwarf, but one was interesting, I must admit. He is a Shaw of the department store Shaws. Their fortunes have declined in the last decades, but what matter is that to me? Why else would my father have given so much and fought so hard to earn his money if not to allow his daughters to be free of such worries, and so I won’t judge him by his lack of wealth, but by his pleasing manner and the way his suit drapes his thick shoulders. I think him even more splendid than Mr. Wister of the other day.
We were sitting on the lawn, having tea, the two other men and Christian Shaw, that is his name, and Mother, who was knitting, and Charity, who was sitting on the grass looking up at us as we spoke. Hope was playing the piano and despite Mother’s entreaties wouldn’t join us, but her music, floating from the instrument room, added the perfect note to the afternoon. The men promised to come to our ball and seemed genuinely excited at the prospect. We talked of school and Mr. Taft’s bathtub and we all laughed and laughed. Someone mentioned that awful Mr. Dreiser and his harsh books and then Mother mentioned the poetry she had studied as a girl in Europe. Suddenly Christian Shaw started reciting something beautiful. He is obviously well read and can quote poetry at length to great effect. The poem was about a lover’s tears at parting, the best I could grasp it, but as he spoke he spoke at me, as if the others were no more than statues, and the words ceased to have meaning beyond their music. It was only the sound his voice made as he pronounced the verse and the look in his eye that mattered. I could feel the blush rising in my cheeks. It ended with clapping and Charity said that Lord Byron was her favorite too and there was much gaiety as I fought to compose myself. For the rest of the afternoon I could barely look at his sharp features and yet I could not bear to look away.
I’ve already made certain his name has been added to the list for the ball. I learned today that the Scotts are having an affair that same weekend, which is spiteful of them, but Naomi Scott is such a plain old thing and, besides, Father has more money than Mr. Scott, which would be of interest, of course, to a Shaw. So I think I have good reason to hope to share a waltz with our Mr. Shaw sometime soon and the thought of it makes my breath all fluttery.
June 16, 1911
What a simply horrible horrible day! I was told today that old Mrs. Poole was to be invited to the ball and I was horrified. I had a terrible row with Mother about it that lasted much of the afternoon. When Father came home I stamped my foot and insisted but he refused to talk about it so that I knew it was his doing that added her to the list. He has done enough for that woman and I told him so. Must she haunt us for the rest of our lives? They sit in that house, the two of them, mother and daughter, taunting us with their very silence. But it was not Father’s fault that the pinched old man drank himself to ruin, it was not Father’s fault that Father had vision where the other had only a bottle. The great cat of tragedy that smote their lives was born on their own doorstep. Father was more than kind to that man after the dissolution of their business partnership and what did Father get in return? Spite and vindictiveness and a smear campaign that has survived that man’s suicide and spoilt our standing. And still it continues. Father should have simply put them in a farmhouse in New Jersey and been done with them but, ever the humanitarian, he wanted to keep an eye on their affairs. Had they any pride they would have refused his kindness, but they have no pride, no sympathy, nothing but their cold sense of deprivation, and I won’t stand for it. It is evil enough to have them so close we can smell them from the lawn, but to have them at our affairs in addition is too much. How can we be joyous and gay when they stand, the two of them, side by side, staring at us, their mouths set sternly, their figures a constant reproach.