Meg at Sixteen Read online

  “I wish Megs would come downstairs already,” Evvie said. “Clark is coming over in an hour or so, and we have a lot of things to do this evening.”

  “Let her stay up there as long as she wants,” Thea said. “The longer she stays there the less it feels like she’s getting married tomorrow.”

  “She needs the time alone,” Sybil said. “She’s burying a few of her own ghosts this afternoon.”

  The sisters were silent for a moment, then Thea changed the subject.

  “Do you really think you’ll be happy here?” she asked Sybil. “Megs can rent out the house, you know, and you could get an apartment, or live in university housing. You don’t have to stay here, if you don’t want to.”

  “I want to,” Sybil said. “I’ve wanted to since the moment we first moved here. Evvie may hate this house, but it’s where I feel strongest. It’s funny. I even walk better here.”

  “It’s all yours, as far as I’m concerned,” Claire said. “I promise if I marry Schyler or what’s his name, Donald, I won’t reproduce.”

  “I wish I had time to,” Thea said. “I wish I had time to sneeze. They run you ragged when you’re an intern.”

  “And you love it,” Evvie said. “Admit it, Thea.”

  “I love it,” Thea said. “And I love all of you, my lousy mood notwithstanding. I even love Clark. What’s he going to think if the bride to be is hiding in the attic reading old love letters when he comes in?”

  “I doubt he’ll be surprised,” Evvie said. “Clark doesn’t have any illusions.”

  “Clark is nothing but illusions,” Sybil said. “He even thinks we’re wonderful.”

  Claire laughed.

  “You too,” Sybil said. “He had your first Vogue cover framed, and gave it to Megs. I thought that was a wonderful thing for him to do.”

  “I’ll be nice to the old goat today, I promise,” Claire said. “Sybil, you absolutely have to straighten out this room. I cannot bear to see such chaos.”

  “Help me, then,” Sybil said.

  “We all will,” Evvie said. “Come on, Thea. Let’s show some family unity here.”

  Thea nodded. “Family unity,” she said. “I like the sound of that.”

  The sisters threw Sybil’s things around, trying to make some order out of the mess. They worked mostly in silence, and could hear the sounds of their mother in the attic, moving boxes, pausing to examine things.

  “Margaret Winslow Sebastian,” Evvie said suddenly. “I guess today she’s putting that name to rest as well.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  “What a dump,” Margaret Winslow whispered, and then, as she was in the habit of doing at her aunt Grace’s home, she looked around to confirm no one had heard her.

  Not that there were spies listening to her every word. Far from it. As far as Meg could see, no one cared a whit what she said, or why she said it. But there was so much Aunt Grace disapproved of, and calling perfectly lovely places dumps would probably rank high on her list.

  Meg examined her bedroom at Aunt Grace’s summer cottage in Eastgate. It was, she knew, a perfect room. One window overlooked the gardens, the other window showed the ocean. Aunt Grace had had the room redecorated three years ago when Meg had officially moved in with her, and given Aunt Grace’s rather peculiar attitudes toward what young girls liked, she had done a fine job. Or the decorator had, and Aunt Grace hadn’t cared enough to argue. The walls were powder-blue, the woodwork a gleaming white, and there was even a canopy bed. The first time Meg had seen that bed, she’d burst into tears, and that had precipitated one of those dreaded confrontations between her and her aunt.

  “What’s wrong with it?” Aunt Grace had demanded, not unreasonably, Meg knew then and now.

  “It reminds me of the one I used to have,” Meg wept.

  That turned out not to be an adequate enough reason to get rid of it, so the canopy, and for that matter, Meg, remained. In three years’ time, Meg had learned to like the bed. She liked the room too, she supposed, at least as much as any other room she’d stayed in since her parents’ deaths.

  Meg sighed deeply, and looked through the window toward the ocean. It was her sixteenth birthday, and she knew she shouldn’t be spending it thinking about her parents. There was no point thinking about them anyway; dead was dead and they would never come back and rescue her. The thought made her smile. Before her parents had died, her favorite book had been A Little Princess. In there, the orphan truly needed rescuing. Only by Meg’s own lonely standards, could she claim to be so burdened.

  Birthdays, Meg realized suddenly, were the worst, the absolute worst. She’d been unhappy the entire week, without being able to figure out why, and now the truth was staring right at her. She hated her birthday. When her parents were alive, her birthdays were splendid, filled with festivities, and presents, and sweets. There were at least twenty children at her party, and for weeks, she and her mother would conspire about all the details, going shopping for new dresses for both of them, having endless discussions with the cook about just how the birthday cake should be decorated, debating which lucky children should be invited, and which should be left out. Her birthday plans had been fun, and the days themselves were never anticlimactic. She could still remember the morning she woke up to find the four-foot-high doll-house in her bedroom, with real electricity, and the most cunning furniture: a Queen Anne style dining room, and a perfect Victorian parlor, which, now that she thought about it, bore a strong resemblance to Aunt Grace’s Beacon Hill parlor. Had the furniture been commissioned to match? She would never know, since with her parents’ deaths, the dollhouse, like so much else of their lives, vanished, sold or put away in storage, or given to some cousin or other, to help pay off her father’s debts. Not for the first time, Meg was uncomfortably aware of how similar the words death and debt were.

  But that dollhouse! It had simply materialized in her room that day. She woke up to find it there. How had her parents managed that? It seemed magical to her then, and now as well, now that she lived with Aunt Grace, whose every footstep seemed to thunder through the houses she owned.

  Meg turned away from the ocean and tried to remind herself how fortunate she was. When her parents had died, she’d been left with nothing. Her parents, Aunt Grace had explained to Meg on more than one occasion, thought the sole function of money was to spend it. Meg couldn’t see what else one was supposed to do with it, but she was always too frightened to challenge Aunt Grace on that, or any other subject. What few assets did remain, though, Aunt Grace, and Uncle Marcus, Aunt Grace’s younger brother, managed to save and invest, and turn into what was always referred to as a “small” trust fund for Meg. How small Meg was never sure, but she assumed it was very small indeed.

  “You are fortunate you have family to provide for you,” Aunt Grace had declared at the funeral. That was the only real memory Meg had of the funeral, that, and the strange feeling she had because such an important dress had been bought for her without the help of her mother. It couldn’t have been easy to find a black dress for an eleven-year-old. It was velvet, Meg remembered, and hot in the early-fall weather. It had a white lace collar, but so many ladies had bent down to kiss her that the collar ended up permanently stained with lipstick and powder, and the dress had been given to the poor. They were welcome to it.

  Meg tried to remember if her eleventh birthday had been her most perfect one, but it didn’t seem any better than any of the others she could remember. The dress, the cake, the party, the gifts, nothing stood out at the time or now. A week later, she and her parents had taken the Queen Mary to England, and spent the summer traveling around Europe. She remembered Switzerland the most fondly, but she’d always loved Switzerland. They’d spent a winter there, when she was younger, and it was a magical country. Meg had flown home alone, to start the school year at Miss Arnold’s School, which she had begun attending the year before, and her parents had flown to Kenya for a safari. It was in Kenya that their plane had crashed, a small char
tered airplane, whose pilot had made a fatal miscalculation. The communication system was so primitive that Meg’s parents had been dead for almost a week before anybody knew. Their bodies, Uncle Marcus had explained to her, had been destroyed so badly that cremation was the only proper thing to do. Meg supposed the bodies had burned, but possibly the heat had swollen them, or animals had eaten them. No one told her, and the choice of nightmares kept her awake for many, many nights thereafter.

  So the funeral had been closed casket, and almost two weeks after the actual deaths, and someone had bought a black velvet dress for her to wear. “Miss Arnold wishes to see you. There’s been some bad news.” The memories were all a jumble, and in her dreams, Miss Arnold frequently turned into a lion or a hyena, who threatened to eat her while Meg’s parents stood by helplessly. Of course, Miss Arnold had actually been very nice about it, and had attended the funeral, and seen to it that all the girls at her school treated Meg kindly for the first few days. After that, Meg no longer cared how she was treated. Not that anyone was cruel. No one was ever cruel to her, not even Uncle Marcus’s endless noisy children, with whom Meg was forced to spend that Christmas. Sometimes they’d even stop playing when she entered the room, as though games were an affront to her mourning. They weren’t cruel to her that summer either, or the following Christmas, or even that following summer, so no one was able to understand, not even Meg, why on her thirteenth birthday she’d gone swimming in the ocean, well after everyone else had gone to bed, and swum so far out that her obvious intention was never to swim back. Only the good fortune of a pair of young lovers on the beach, seeing what she was doing and having the strength to swim out after her and pull her back to shore, had kept her from drowning. Meg’s life was filled with good fortune.

  “I wash my hands of her!” Uncle Marcus had declared, and there was only Aunt Grace left to take her in. Meg’s mother had been an only child, and her parents had died within a year of their daughter’s accident. So Aunt Grace had the bedroom at Eastgate redecorated with a canopy bed, and Meg had moved in.

  It wasn’t so bad, she knew. Her school year she continued to spend at Miss Arnold’s, and Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter were spent in Beacon Hill. Summers at Eastgate were all right, even with Aunt Grace’s many restrictions. Not too much sun. No unsupervised swimming (well, she’d brought that one on herself). No socializing with the year-rounders (but then, none of them were supposed to do that, including Isabelle Sinclair, who was madly in love with the grocery bag boy). No excursions without Aunt Grace’s explicit permission. No fun, really, but then Meg wasn’t sure she remembered what fun was anymore. She supposed she must occasionally have fun at Miss Arnold’s, all the other girls did, and they didn’t shun her, as they did some of the more studious, less entertaining girls. She knew she had gone from Poor Meg to Meg at some point during her years there, but she couldn’t spot the exact moment, and she couldn’t recall ever really enjoying herself. But that didn’t matter. Nothing mattered.

  I’m sixteen, Meg thought. Today I am sixteen. In two more years, I’ll be finished with high school, and I’ll make my debut. All her friends were already discussing what they would wear at their coming-out parties. Meg hoped Aunt Grace wouldn’t be offended if she got one of her friends’ mothers to help her with the gown. Aunt Grace had the most abominable taste in clothes. Not her own, which were tweedy in the wintertime, and floral in the summer, but in the ones she selected for her niece.

  Meg tried to imagine herself in her first formal evening gown. She knew she’d be pretty; everyone always said she was, and that wasn’t the sort of thing people lied about. Boys would dance with her all night long. It wouldn’t matter that all she had left to her was a small trust fund. She was Grace Winslow’s ward, and Grace was a wealthy woman. That made Meg an heiress, as Aunt Grace was fond of pointing out to her. “You can never be too careful about the boys you get to know. Some of them can smell money a mile away. They’ll pretend to be in love with you, only because of your relationship with me, and then they’ll steal your money and break your heart. You must only see suitable young men, young men who come from your own world. No one else can be trusted.” That speech, Meg knew, was the equivalent for Aunt Grace of the birds and the bees.

  Only suitable boys, then, would be asked to her coming-out party, and Meg supposed that a year or two after, she would marry one of them. She didn’t know which one yet, or care. Maybe she’d met him, maybe she hadn’t. She’d go to college for a year or so, then announce her engagement, and get married, probably by the time she was twenty. Being married had to be better than living with Aunt Grace.

  Meg hated herself when she felt like that, disloyal to the only member of her family who was willing to put up with her. She knew she should love Aunt Grace, or at least be grateful to her, or at the very least respect her, but mostly all she could manage was dread. Just being in the same room with her frequently made Meg shiver. And when Aunt Grace turned her full focus of attention on her, Meg didn’t know how she survived.

  “What a dump,” she whispered again. It was a catchphrase she used to give herself strength. Bitsy Marshall had taught it to her. Bitsy’s mother said it all the time. Bitsy’s mother went to the movies, and could do imitations of all the stars, but her best was her Bette Davis, and Bette Davis had said “What a dump” in some movie or another, so Bitsy’s mother said it, and Bitsy said it, and Meg said it too, when no one was listening. It wasn’t as though she could do a Bette Davis imitation, so she didn’t try. She just said it, mostly to herself, but sometimes under her breath. “What a dump.” It kept her going, that phrase. She frequently felt grateful to Bette Davis for ever having said it.

  There was a knock on the door. Meg flushed with guilt. Had someone heard her saying it, and did they think she was complaining about her room? “I will not tolerate whining and complaints,” Aunt Grace had said to her shortly after she’d moved in. “You are a most fortunate child, and you should appreciate all the kindness you’ve been shown.”

  “Come in,” Meg said, hoping her voice hadn’t cracked with terror. Aunt Grace didn’t like that either.

  Aunt Grace walked in. “Your dress has arrived,” she declared. “I thought I would bring it to you myself. Happy birthday, Margaret.”

  “Thank you,” Meg said. She’d risen from her chair as soon as Aunt Grace had walked in, and now, she knew, she was expected to walk over to her aunt and give her a kiss, as well as take the box from her. She willed herself into action. Aunt Grace’s skin was as soft as her face was hawklike. Meg brushed her lips against her aunt’s cheek in what passed as a gesture of affection in that household.

  “I trust you’ll like the dress,” Aunt Grace said.

  “I’m sure I will, Aunt Grace,” Meg said.

  “What’s that you said?” Aunt Grace asked. “You must learn to speak up, Margaret. This mumbling of yours is a disgusting habit.”

  “I’m sorry,” Meg said. She didn’t think she mumbled, although it was true she spoke softly, and many people had to ask her to repeat what she’d said. It surprised her that anybody cared enough to want to hear. She would have to learn to speak louder, she supposed. “I said I was sure I would like the dress, Aunt Grace.” Lies had to be spoken loudest of all.

  “Your guests will be arriving shortly,” Aunt Grace said. “Have you bathed?”

  Meg nodded. “I’m all ready, except for the dress,” she said.

  “Very well,” Aunt Grace said, and then she cleared her throat. Meg immediately tensed up. “You are sixteen now, Margaret. I suppose a mother’s duty on her daughter’s sixteenth birthday is to discuss with her some of life’s harsher truths.”

  There had been no harsh truths in her mother’s heart, Meg knew. And Aunt Grace wasn’t her mother. She felt herself getting faint with resentment.

  “When a girl is sixteen, she is physically capable of bearing children,” Aunt Grace declared. “Her body is eager for that sort of animal labor, so her emotions turn to boys, who
can give her their seed. She mistakes those feelings for love.”

  Meg nodded. It was the only action she was capable of.

  “Boys will of course take advantage of this confusion,” Aunt Grace continued. “The male of the species enjoys nothing more than taking advantage of a female’s need to reproduce. They whisper words of love that the female wants to hear, promise her a future together, and then they have their way with her. Do you know what having their way actually means, Margaret?”

  “I think so,” Meg said. It seemed the safest response.

  “In any decent society, a girl’s reputation is paramount,” Aunt Grace said. “A girl who allows a boy to have his way with her is thought of as cheap. Such a girl never makes a good marriage, but goes on to a life of sin and degradation. True, she may marry, but if she does, it will be to a man of a lower social order, one who will not treat her with respect, and indeed, she doesn’t deserve that respect. No girl who goes to her marriage bed impure deserves the respect of her husband. Virginity is the one true gift a bride can offer her groom. Am I making myself clear?”

  “Yes, Aunt Grace,” Meg said.

  “Very well,” Aunt Grace declared. “I know your parents would have wanted you to be informed of such matters. Your mother might not have been from Boston, but she was a fine girl just the same, from an excellent family, and I regard your care as a sacred trust. I’m sure if they were alive, they would wish you a very happy birthday and tell you how proud they are of you. Stand up straight, Margaret. Nothing is less appealing than stooped shoulders.”

  “Thank you, Aunt Grace,” Meg said, trying to unstoop her shoulders.

  “Because it is your birthday, you may stay up until midnight,” Aunt Grace said. “The band has been hired to play only until eleven-thirty. I know many of your friends have parties that last until one or two o’clock, but I do not approve of that sort of revelry for a girl so young. You must dance with any of the young men who ask you. I’m sure they all will, because it’s your birthday, and they will be disappointed if you seem to favor one of them over the others. You will be allowed one glass of champagne, when the toast is made. You are to thank each person who brings you a gift, and those who do not, you must thank as well, for attending the party. Tomorrow you will spend writing thank-you notes for whatever gifts you may receive. You are not to wander off from the party with any of your friends. I want to know where you are at all times. If you need to excuse yourself, please inform me first.”