Pushing Up Daisies

They both had gates to keep out undesirables. Otherwise, Chestnut Hill, New York, was as far away from Somerville, Connecticut, as you could get, the kind of place where every few years some yahoo caused a stir by trying to park his Cessna on his front lawn.

As I drove on, the houses got bigger and more elaborate. It reminded me of that old joke. A guy gets a flat in an upscale neighborhood. He doesn't have a jack, and it takes him a while to walk back to the last house to borrow one. It starts to rain, and he's muttering about his bad luck, his crummy car, and the undeserved affluence around him, and by the time he rings someone's doorbell, he says, 'Screw you and your jack.'

An unseen person buzzed me through the wrought-iron doors that then swung closed behind my car. I continued around the well-tended circular drive to the front door of a huge Tudor house, where Hillary Gibson came out to greet me. She wore a blue cashmere sweater, a white shirt with the collar turned up, and wide-legged pants. She extended her hand.

'Ms. Holliday, please come in. I rather thought I'd hear from you sooner.'

I left the car where it was and followed her up the short steps to the house. The center hall was large, with a sweeping staircase off to the right. To say it was simply decorated was an understatement. It was practically empty. Just a few Oriental rugs and lots of plants. She anticipated my reaction.

'I know,' she explained. 'Friends tell me I really need to get some furniture. My former husband's taste was so execrable that when he left I couldn't wait to get rid of everything. And I've taken my time replacing things. I like it sparse.'

'So do I,' I fibbed, thinking of my own tchotchke-crammed house.

Hillary's former husband had made a fortune in insurance. Dubious business practices had earned Randall Adams an eighteen-month stay in a minimum-security prison in Danville, Pennsylvania. As expected, Hillary stood by her man during the scandal, but they parted quietly shortly after his release. She kept the house, and a ton of dough, most of which was hers anyway; he got to disappear, probably avoiding further prosecution, with his twenty-three-year-old surgically enhanced secretary. Hillary didn't seem to mind and, in fact, couldn't wait to jettison the Adams name and have it chiseled off the stone pillar in the front of the house, which remained tellingly blank.

Her low heels clicked on the marble tiles as she led me through a garden passageway to a P-shaped conservatory overlooking a small stream. The conservatory was classic Victorian—all mahogany and leaded glass with solid brass handles and fittings. The roof vents were automatically controlled but had a manual override to let the air in on cool, sunny days. Hillary raised them as we entered.

The room held three enormous date palms. A bird's-eye maple vanity with a triple-paned mirror served as a sideboard, where tea and cookies were waiting for us.

'Please sit down.' She motioned to a grouping of mis-matched faux bamboo furniture and, without asking, started to pour the tea.

'What a wonderful space,' I said, taking the cup. 'Doesn't the humidity ruin the furniture, though?'

'The green house hasn't really been used for years. It's been my sitting room. That may change.'

'Well, it's lovely. Perfect,' I added.

'Not quite,' she said, 'but almost.'

I wondered what she thought was missing. 'I see you're something of a gardener yourself,' I said, eyeing the landscape outside.

'I've always enjoyed the peacefulness of the garden and the beauty, but not the work. Gerald was always the hard worker of the two of us.'

Hillary's family had lived on the same block as the Peacocks for years; some distant cousins had even married. For as long as she could remember, though, it had just been the two women, Dorothy and Renata. As a child, Hillary was treated to the best side of her sometimes antisocial neighbors. She had the run of the gardens and the maze, which she'd mastered by the age of seven. Only the herb garden was off limits.

By the age of twelve, Hillary was old enough to realize others thought her friends strange, but she didn't care. Especially that summer, when Adonis appeared in their garden, in the form of Gerald Fraser. He was handsome, tanned, terribly serious, and, at fifteen, an older man. Despite her parents' protests, their friendship evolved, eventually deepening into love.

'Your parents didn't approve of Gerald?' I interrupted.

'He was poor and they were snobs,' she said matter-of-factly. 'Gerald worked harder and studied more than anyone I ever knew. He got a scholarship to study art abroad,' she added with pride. 'Gerald was all set to leave when his father had a stroke. Eventually, his father recovered, but Gerald's mother never did. She was as helpless as a child, didn't even know how to write a check. It took all the money Gerald had saved for the family to get back on their feet.'

She took a sip of tea and broke off a small piece of cookie but didn't eat it.

'Dorothy Peacock pleaded with Gerald to take a gift or a loan from her, but his father wouldn't hear of it. So Gerald stayed here, helped his family, and commuted to Teachers College. Eventually I went off to Vassar.' She sounded guilty, even after all these years.

'One day,' she continued, 'just before I left for school, Gerald and I were strolling through the maze, daydreaming about the future and what we might do. Exiting the maze at the white garden, we came upon Dorothy and Renata. They were . . . embracing. Only then did we realize why they'd been so reclusive and why there was this fiction about Renata's frailty when she always seemed perfectly healthy to us.'

'So they were lovers. Ms. Gibson, do you know what happened to the real sister?'

'The real Rose Peacock was frail; she'd suffered from rheumatic fever as a child, and it weakened her heart. She never fully recovered. That's why it was so easy to convince people the woman they thought was Rose was sickly.

'As soon as Rose arrived in Italy, she fell ill and was confined to her bed. Rose never even learned of the accident that killed their parents; she died soon after.

'Renata was a wealthy English girl studying art in Florence. She and Dorothy were close before, but inseparable after Rose's death. When Dorothy decided to return to America, she convinced Renata to join her— as Rose.'

'Why not as herself?' I asked.

'It was an accident, really. Renata used Rose's return ticket onboard ship. The purser knew, of course, but everyone else thought the two were sisters. They decided to continue the ruse after arriving in Springfield. That way they could live together and no one would suspect.'

'Nobody noticed?'

'Their social circle was small. They didn't see the butcher and the mailman every day the way you or I would. And William was such a small child when Rose left, he wouldn't have known.'

'And when they had their annual party,' I added, 'Renata stayed indoors, watching from the library.' That part I'd read in the papers. 'Which was the reason everyone believed she was sickly.'

'Just in case,' Hillary said. She took a deep breath. 'Lesbianism wasn't chic in those days, the twenties were over and the seventies hadn't arrived yet. They said William was crushed when he found out. He was only a boy, fourteen or fifteen when he left Springfield, bitter, confused, and vowing to never return.'

'Did he ever return?'

'He might have come back once—I can't say for sure. I was rather young at the time. The sisters always spoke so fondly of him. They kept thinking he'd show up one day, and then their little family would be complete.'

'People seemed to think he went west.'

'That's possible; a lot of people did in those days.'

'It can't have been easy to keep up a charade like that for so many years. I feel rather sorry for them,' I said.

'They had each other and friends, I believe, in other cities.'

'That would account for the trips to out-of-town specialists.'

'Yes. Everyone's life is different,' she added a little sadly. 'Don't feel too sorry for them. They brought each other a lot of joy. Not many heterosexual couples stay together for over sixty years.' She straightened up in her chair, possibly thinking of her own unhappy marriage.