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PART III
GLADYS

80

N O V E M B E R  1 9 2 9

TREY’S GRANDPARENTS were, in fact, lovely people. They did make her feel welcome and cared for. Not loved, because she wouldn’t know. Like a child? Not quite, although they did their best. Marina knew it was too late for that, and after having had the kind of freedom she had with Trey, it was difficult to be herded. However, it was far more difficult to think, so she did the easier thing. And being herded wasn’t so bad when Grandmother Susanna herded her to high-culture amusements.

The ballet— The trick is to know the story before you go. The opera— I hate that warbling, but don’t tell my friends. The symphony— Gershwin cannot be matched. The theater— Sweet Adeline … Oh, I know I shouldn’t sing because I am so bad at it, but I love being in New York too much not to! Shopping at all the best stores— You would make the Machine and Mafia wives positively green with envy. To her and her friends’ tea parties and outings— They think you’re adorable.

The ballet was pretty.

The opera was awful.

The symphony was melancholy.

The theater was funny.

New York and Washington DC and Boston and Philadelphia were magnificent, the train ride soothing, and seeing the country exciting.

Shopping was overwhelming.

Grandmother Susanna’s friends were lovely.

Their daughter and son-in-law, Trey’s aunt and uncle, were also nice.

She read as much as she wanted and discussed the books with Grandfather Elliott, who seemed hungry for such conversation, as Grandmother’s eyes could not withstand reading for long periods of time anymore and she hated being read to. Marina learned as much about culture and the arts as her tired brain would hold. She went to mass or not as she cared to.

One week after Trey left, Grandmother Susanna took Marina to Chicago to retrieve Gladys’s money. Grandmother hired a Pinkerton man to accompany them to confront Marina’s real father and Marina did, indeed, look like him and he was, indeed, ugly as a rotten (now elderly) scarecrow. His wife was sporting a black eye not so artfully disguised and looked twice his age.

He wanted Gladys’s money and he even threatened the Pinkerton man to get it, but their bodyguard was not to be intimidated and he threatened suitable violence. Neither Grandmother Susanna nor Marina was perturbed by the confrontation. Thus, Marina decided Gladys had had a better life than that awful man’s wife, and the hurt that had driven her to suicide had to be worse than that.

She indulged Grandfather in his obsession for his family’s history, which was fascinating. He hinted that she should name a baby girl Celia in honor of the rumored pirate Dunham matriarch, and a boy Elliott, after the pirate earl. She didn’t mind; she did like the names and it was a small way to honor these people who had taken her in with no questions and made her feel wanted. Heaven knew, Marina had no one else to honor thusly.

She listened to his and Grandmother’s table conversation about the stock market and investing, why the Crash happened, what that meant for them, for Marina, for the rest of the country, for the world. If the next harvest or two around the world were good, everyone had a better chance to survive. They explained why they wanted Trey and Marina to keep their money out of the bank, as all the big money men in the country were selling off their investments and stuffing their own mattresses. If Rockefeller did it, so should Elliott and so should Trey. Marina listened to their explanations of why, with Kansas City’s flagrant flouting of Prohibition, it would fare better than most. Crime did pay, but Marina already knew that. In Kansas City, it paid for a whole lot of innocent people too.

“But only with Boss Tom,” Grandfather was careful to tell her, “because his older brother taught him genuine charity. It doesn’t work that way with the Mafia. I don’t know if he would be that charitable if he weren’t getting rich at the same time.” Trey and Marina’s conversation about the parable of the talents flashed through her head and then was gone, because she was too tired to think about it.

Under other circumstances, Marina would have had a grand ol’ time and wished Dot were with her—or at least, the Dot she’d grown up with, not the one who was so angry with her she refused to write.

“What a childish girl,” Grandmother said derisively. “Her parents should be ashamed.”

Marina opened her mouth to protest—

“I am sorry to malign your rescuers, dear, but Dot’s behavior is simply inexcusable. I would thrash a daughter of mine who was such a brat, provided I had raised such a brat, which I didn’t although it was a battle.”

Marina wished she could have been allowed to be a child like Dot. “Dot’s parents love her,” she said quietly, leaving it unsaid: Dot’s spoiledness was a small price to pay if one’s parents loved her.

Grandmother Susanna said only, “Children can be awful,” leaving Marina to wonder if she really wanted to be a child after all, or if she was an awful child. Grandmother said nothing more about Dot, but each day that passed without a letter her mouth tightened in anger on Marina’s behalf. Marina liked that. It softened the blow, made her understand she was not wrong about Dot’s willfulness, nor had she mistaken Dot’s resentment at being deprived of Marina’s attention.

That didn’t mean Marina didn’t miss Dot, but Marina didn’t have the energy to be angry after the first three weeks passed, and after a month, she stopped writing.

But no matter how wonderful and encouraging she found her stay with the Grandparents Dunham, she could only enjoy it quietly, with small smiles. No one questioned her lack of enthusiasm. She was pregnant after all, and when the grandparents asked, very kindly, if she was enjoying herself, she protested, “Oh, very much! But I was trained not to show it.”

She didn’t explain how little she wanted to feel happiness because it came with a steep price she didn’t want to pay. The past Sunday’s mass had focused on the opposite: the hurt was what made happiness so valuable. Marina would rather not hurt than suffer to be happy for a little bit, knowing something else would come along to punish her for being happy.

“I appreciate your kindness,” she said sincerely. “Very much. You didn’t know me and didn’t have to do this. You didn’t have anything to do with this.”

They looked at each other, then away. Not at Marina.

“Did I say something wrong?”

“No,” Grandmother Susanna rushed to say. “You didn’t do anything wrong at all. We’re … um, we’re sad for you.”

She was lying, but Marina couldn’t figure out why because it was a perfectly normal response. But instead of sad, they seemed … guilty. She let that mystery go. She knew she didn’t have enough information, there would be no big reveal, and her brain was too tired to care.

She had prayed for rescue. The Jewel Tea man rang the doorbell.

She had prayed for refuge. Trey had sent her to safety.

She had prayed for someone to take care of her. The wealthy Dunhams had thrown their home open to her, where the only thing she had to do was stay alive, stay healthy, and, hopefully, enjoy herself.

She had asked. She had been given.

Did that mean God existed?

And if he did, where had he been when Gladys Truesdell needed him? Did heaven exist and if so, what was it like? Was Gladys with him now, in heaven? Some religions said people who committed suicide went straight to hell. But Dot said there was no hell, only regret to contemplate in a pretty park while picking peonies.

Right now, the Dunhams’ home in St. Louis was about as close to heaven as she could imagine without dying to find out.

80

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