Catherine knew that I was trying to build a case against Renee for Marcus Whitby’s murder, but Whitby had never existed for her. One evening, after I’d been on the phone with Stephanie Protheroe in the DuPage sheriff’s office, going over Theresa Jakes’s statements about how much of her medication had disappeared, Catherine asked if I couldn’t just let it go.
“I know Granny behaved terribly, but I don’t want her to go to prison.” “You want two things that can’t both happen,” I started to say, then told her instead to come for a ride with me.
“Not home,” she said suspiciously.
“Not home. I want you to meet someone.”
We drove to the South Side, where I introduced her to Harriet Whitby. “This is Catherine Bayard. Her arm’s in a cast because some excitable deputies shot her a couple of weeks back. Tell Catherine about Marc; I want her to know what kind of man your brother was.”
Harriet thought for a minute. “He was a writer. He was a careful man, quiet and private, really quite shy, but when he’d made up his mind to stand up for someone, he could be fierce, and always loyal. When I was six and he was twelve, I had a bad infection on my face, some kind of out-ofcontrol acne.
“Some kids used to wait for me and taunt me on my way to school, until it got to the point where I would leave home in the morning, then hide in the park all day. When Marc found out I was skipping school, he told me I would go, that no bully could keep me from my right to an education, and he walked me to school, holding my hand. When we got to the waiting children, he stopped and said, `This is my sister, who is a beautiful black girl child. I expect you to recognize her beauty and respect her.’ He said it as calmly as if he were reading the weather report. He walked me to school every morning for three months, and fought five of them, two of them more than once, and I will never know a better man if I live to be a hundred and twenty.”
Catherine didn’t say anything on the ride home, but the next afternoon when I got in from work, she tried to sort out her complicated feelings. “I loved Granny. I thought she and Grample were the most wonderful people on earth. I thought of them the way Harriet thinks of her brother. So how could they give Kylie Ballantine’s name to that creep Olin and then set themselves up as the biggest free speech defenders in the universe?” She was sitting on my living room floor with her good arm around Peppy.
I shifted in my chair: these same questions had been churning in my own mind. “Everyone has a different breaking point. And a different fear point. The things you can’t bear to face, I mean. The McCarthy and HUAC blacklists shattered lives. People never worked again, or never worked well. They were ostracized, they lived in terrible poverty. Some committed suicide. Many went to prison, only for their beliefs, not for anything they’d done-not in China or Iraq, but right here in America.
“You don’t race to embrace that kind of martyrdom. At the same time, your grandfather feared for the future of Bayard Publishing. Geraldine Graham’s mother was constantly threatening to give her shares in the company to Olin Taverner. If Laura Drummond had known your grandfather supported a group that she thought was a Communist front, she’d certainly
have given Olin her shares. And that would have turned Bayard into a rightwing organization. They wouldn’t publish the great magazines they do today, such as Margent, or writers like Armand Pelletier and the guy you worked with last summer, Haile Talbot.”
“So you think Grample was right to betray Kylie Ballantine and Pelletier and-whoever else he did betray? To save the press?” Her eyes blazed. “No. I don’t think it was right. I don’t believe that considering the greater good-the integrity of Bayard Publishing, in this case justifies betraying friends.”
“And now, with his mind gone, I can never ask him what he was thinking, why he did it!” she cried. “I can’t stand any of this. Seeing him sick when I loved him so much-I used to feel so smug, knowing Granny and Grample were my family, compared to the kind of people my friends have, the kind who only think about money all the time! And now-my family is thinking, maybe not about money, but they don’t think about people and how to live a principled life, like they always claimed they did.”
“You and I are judging this in the calm and safety of my living room,” I said. “We’re not facing a congressional inquiry that would use our beliefs to turn us into criminals. If that ever happens to us, then we’ll know what we’re made of. I spent a month in prison once. It was a terrible experience, one that very nearly destroyed me. If I knew I had to go to prison again, I don’t know how strong I would be in standing up for my values. I hope strong to the end, but even more, I hope I never have to find out. I’m only trying to say that what your grandfather did makes me-oh, incredibly sad, heartbroken, really. But I can’t judge him, because I haven’t been on that battlefield, looking into the mouths of those cannons. But your grandmother crossed a different river when she resorted to murder. And I want to see her pay the price she earned by killing Marcus Whitby. Which is why you should move out, instead of staying here to watch me do it.”
“But how can I ever live with them again?”
“You could go to Washington with your father,” I suggested. “Yeah. You know he calls me every hour on the hour.”
It wasn’t quite that often, but he did call from Washington once or twice a day, alternatively cajoling and ordering Catherine to follow him east.
“Daddy can’t believe I’m not ready to embrace the right. He thinks seeing that Grample was a fraud means I should abandon all his and Granny’s ideals. Daddy’s fed up with me trying to defend them.”
“So I gathered. You can’t stay here forever, you know. After a while, the romance of living on a trundle bed would pall; you’d start wanting your private bath, your wide-screen television and all the other simple pleasures of home. Anyway, aside from your grandmother, you need to be in school.”
“Back to Vina Fields, with everyone staring at me and talking about me?” I grinned. “A chance to show what you’re made of But you’re a rich girl, and a smart one: you have choices. You can go to Washington, but insist on a school with more progressive values than the one your father picked out. You could go to boarding school-doesn’t your family have a tradition with Exeter? But you only have one more year after this one; transferring for your senior year might not be in your best interest. Isn’t there a friend you could stay with?”
She muffled her face in Peppy’s fur. “I’ve been through too much this winter. None of my friends is close enough to understand. And anyway, school seems totally pointless. Lacrosse, who’s dating who, it’s like-after seeing Benji die, none of it means anything.”
“You could take a year off to work with Habitat for Humanity or a similar group that tries to help people as poor as Benji’s mother. My lover-if Morrell-when Morrell comes home, he can help you find a good program.”
That suggestion appealed to her at once. We spent the next several days discussing hows and whens. Catherine finally decided to finish out her year at Vina Fields, since she couldn’t do much until her arm recovered, then try to start in a program like Habitat during the summer.
I hadn’t heard from Darraugh since the night I’d abandoned him in his bedroom, but he surprised me again after Catherine had decided to go back to schooclass="underline" he called to offer her a home for the balance of the school year. To my relief, Catherine accepted: I was more than ready for someone else to have care of an ardent adolescent.
She decided to spend a weekend in New Solway with her grandfather. She would collect her things and move in with Darraugh on Monday
morning. She talked to Renee, making her promise to stay in town, and on the last weekend in March, when daylight savings time began, climbed with me into the Mustang for the drive west.