A Drowned Maiden's Hair_ A Melodrama - Laura Amy Schlitz [90]
“Are you saying this is my fault?” Mrs. Lambert glared through her tears. “Are you saying it’s my fault that people like you prey upon me — offer me comfort and then snatch it away? Oh, God!” She covered her face and curled forward, weeping.
Maud hunkered down beside her. She was reminded of the evening on the shore, when they knelt together to make the sand crocodile. With all her heart, she wished she had told the truth then. She spoke again, without thinking. “Mrs. Lambert, what did you say that day?”
Mrs. Lambert uncovered her face. “That day?”
“The day Caroline drowned.”
Mrs. Lambert swallowed. To Maud’s surprise, she answered, speaking in a hoarse and hurried whisper, as if this were her only chance to be rid of the thing that haunted her. “That morning, I — I wanted to pack. We were about to go home. It was the fifteenth — the seventeenth was Caroline’s birthday. I had a surprise party planned for her, but there was still so much to do.”
Maud waited.
Mrs. Lambert wiped the tears from her face. “I wanted Caroline — to help me pack — just her little things — but she wanted to go to the ocean one last time. And she wanted to ride the merry-go-round. She wouldn’t help and she teased me so. I have — a dreadful temper. People don’t expect it, because I’m patient — most of the time. But that day I lost my temper and I told her to go. I emptied my purse and let the coins fall to the floor and told her to take them. I told her” — her voice sank — “that I would be better off without her. I only meant the packing!” Her eyes were dazed with pain. “I meant I would be better off packing!”
Some instinct told Maud to answer matter-of-factly. “She prob’ly knew that,” she commented. After a moment, she ventured, “She prob’ly knew she was making you mad, too. When I make people mad, I always know.”
“Oh, she knew.” Mrs. Lambert’s mouth twisted. “She knew. I made her promise she wouldn’t go into the water — only to the carousel — but when she was at the door, she taunted me. She tossed my purse into the air and caught it and said, ‘For once, I’m going to ride as long as I want! And you can’t stop me!’ And I said, ‘I don’t want to stop you. It’s worth the money to get rid of you. Go!’”
She put her hands back over her face.
Maud said cautiously. “Is that all?”
Mrs. Lambert gave a hysterical little laugh. “Yes, that’s all. I told my child I would be better off without her. I told her I wanted to be rid of her — and she granted my wish. She drowned. Isn’t that enough?”
Maud hesitated. “Mrs. Lambert, I really am sorry.” She twisted her fingers. “I know you feel bad, but why do you keep doing this?”
“Doing what?”
“This.” Maud waved her hands back and forth, as if to indicate Mrs. Lambert’s weeping, her abject position on the carpet. “I don’t know what you call it, but you’re making yourself feel worse. I don’t think Caroline would like it.”
At the sound of her daughter’s name, Mrs. Lambert went rigid. She drew herself up, resuming her height, her status as an adult, her position in the world. “What do you know about Caroline?”
Maud quailed. All at once she saw what Caroline had been up against. Mrs. Lambert was sweet and generous and slow to anger, but once roused, she was iron and ice. Maud mirrored the woman’s actions. She got to her feet and braced herself.
“I know a lot about Caroline. Hyacinth made me learn about her. She made me memorize a whole list about Caroline — and I pretended to be her — and I dreamed about her almost every night. That’s how I knew she walked on the jetty.” She broke off, confused. Had she dreamed that Caroline fell from the jetty? Or was it she who fell? Fragments of her dreams surfaced and scattered like sea foam on the shore. It was no longer clear what she had dreamed and what she had imagined.
“I believed that,” Mrs. Lambert said in a low voice. “It helped me to believe that. I wanted to think her death was an accident — that she didn’t kill herself because of what I said.”
“Her death was an accident,