The Mulberry Tree

“Such hostility! My goodness. I never knew. If I had known, maybe you and I could have been friends.” At that, Arleen gave another one of her cackles. “Anyway, that night, as usual, we’d all had much too much to drink, and Bandy asked James to tell us his secret for a happy marriage. I’m sure you know that, usually, you were off-limits to the rest of us. When James was around, your name wasn’t mentioned. But that night, James talked. Maybe he was drunk, I don’t know. And, too, he was in a good mood because he’d just met that starlet, the one with the red hair and the heart tattoo on her arm. She couldn’t act, but she was divine looking. What was her name?”

“Chloe,” Bailey said in a whisper.

“Ah, yes, Chloe.” Arleen stubbed out her cigarette and lit another one. “So anyway, James was in a talking mood that night, and he said that the secret was in finding a girl who didn’t have anything, a girl—he said gir

l, not woman, I remember clearly—who was loved by no one on Earth, and had no ambition to be anything. ‘An empty bottle waiting for me to come along and fill her up,’ is what James said. ‘And if you fill her up with love, that’s all that’ll matter to her.’ ”

Arleen paused to draw deeply on her cigarette. “And you know James. Once he started talking, he didn’t stop. Not that he ever told much about himself, but Bandy could get things out of him now and then. James said, ‘Now take . . .’ Oh, what was her name? That model before Chloe? That Italian girl?”

“Senta,” Bailey whispered.

“Yes, Senta. James said, ‘Now take Senta. She would make a dreadful wife. Too beautiful. Too ambitious. Too full of herself. There wouldn’t be room for me in there. Women like that, you use them for what they were made for, then you get rid of them when they bore you.’

“ ‘But not Lillian,’ Bandy said, and I can tell you that we all held our breath. You know what James’s temper was like. He could put up with a person feeding off him for years, but then that person could rub James the wrong way just once, and James would never see him again, never speak to him, and—in my set, worse—never pay his bills again.”

“What did Jimmie say about me?” Bailey asked, her voice so low she could hardly hear herself.

“He said that he made sure that you had no one but him to love. He said that if you started to get bored and wanted to actually do something, he’d whisk you off to someplace new. ‘Lillian’s problem,’ James said, ‘is that she’s smart. She may not seem so with the way she doesn’t say much, but what you people don’t realize is that in the mornings while the whole worthless lot of you are sleeping off the night before, Lillian is in the kitchen with the chefs, picking their brains. Or she’s out with the gardeners, or with the mechanics. She likes to learn things.’ ‘But never gets to use them,’ Bandy said, then James laughed. He said, ‘That’s the key. If you marry a stupid woman, you have to live with her. If you marry a smart woman, in this day and age, she turns around and starts competing with you.’ ‘You mean a career,’ Bandy said. ‘But you couldn’t really think that Lillian could compete with you.’ ‘Not with making money, but a business would take her mind off of me.’ ‘Is that why you sent the man from Heinz away?’ Bandy asked.”

Arleen stopped talking and looked at Bailey for a moment. “Do you remember the time that man from Heinz was doing some business with James? I think we were staying in the house in Antigua then.”

“No,” Bailey said softly. “The castle in Scotland.”

“Oh, yes,” Arleen said. “That’s where you had the hundred-thousand-dollar kitchen put in and then lived in it. Jimmie said you were too cold in the rest of the house, but we all knew you couldn’t abide us.”

“What about the man from Heinz?” Bailey asked, unable to look into Arleen’s eyes.

“He ate some of those jams of yours, and he wanted to franchise you, but James wouldn’t let him. James said that you had no interest in having a business, but Bandy said behind James’s back that he was the only business you were allowed to have. Do you remember any of this?”

Bailey kept her eyes downward. She’d asked Jimmie to ask the man from Heinz if maybe he could help her start a line of specialty items. All that day, Bailey had been a nervous wreck while waiting for the man’s answer. But when Jimmie came home that night with a huge bouquet of roses in his arms, she knew what it was.

Jimmie had been wonderful that night, holding her, making her laugh after he said that the man had turned down her idea. Jimmie said, “I didn’t tell him who made the jams he was eating, because I wanted an honest reaction, but I can tell you that I wanted to hit him when he said they were ‘ordinary’ and ‘nothing special.’ ” When Bailey heard that, she’d had to work hard not to burst into tears. Over the years many people had told her that what she made was delicious and extraordinary, different from anything they’d ever eaten before. But it looked as though they’d been politely lying.

When Jimmie saw that she was close to tears, he’d become very angry and said that he’d buy her a factory for making jams if she wanted one. “We’ll call them Lillian’s Jams,” he’d said. “Hey! I know what I’ll do. How about if I buy Heinz for you?” His righteous indignation had been so sincere that he’d made her laugh.

But the rejection had so hurt Bailey that she hadn’t canned anything for months after. Now Arleen was telling her that the man from Heinz had wanted Lillian’s preserves so much that he’d had a contract drawn up giving Lillian complete control of that branch of the company.

“You should have seen him at breakfast that morning,” Arleen was saying. “The man was nearly begging Jimmie. He said that the gourmet market was just opening up, and your products would be perfect for taking Heinz into it.”

Bailey looked down at her hands and saw that her nails were cutting into her palms. That morning she’d wanted to go to breakfast and tell the Heinz man just what she thought of him. She’d wanted to show him all the blue ribbons she’d won over the years in contests and at fairs. But Jimmie had told her that he was going to “take care” of the man, and when he’d said it, his face had been full of rage. “Let me do it, Frecks,” he’d said. “I’m better at revenge than you are.”

So Bailey had stayed in their bedroom until she saw the man get into the car that would drive him back to the airport. Later, she’d wanted Jimmie to tell her the details of what rotten thing he’d done to the man, but all he’d said was, “You can be sure that he won’t be coming around here again,” and the way Jimmie had said it made Bailey believe that he was her champion.

“So how’s your life now?” Arleen was asking.

“I—” Bailey said, but then couldn’t seem to form any more words. What was she going to say? That she was already living with another man, and cooking for him while he paid for nearly everything? And that she was going to be working for him, doing about one percent of the planning in the man’s new business venture? In other words, that in just a few weeks she had come close to re-creating her life with Jimmie.

“I bought this place,” Bailey heard herself say as she thrust the brochure across the table at Arleen. “I’m going into business with two other women, and we’re creating a line of specialty foods.”

“Really?” Arleen asked, looking at Bailey through a haze of cigarette smoke. “You in business?”

“None of you ever really knew me,” Bailey said, taking a deep breath. “And none of you ever knew how deeply involved I was in Jimmie’s businesses. I did more than just follow him around, more than just—” She couldn’t say any more, as what Arleen had told her was ringing in her head. “A girl who didn’t have anything,” Jimmie had said. “Who was loved by no one on Earth and had no ambition to be anything.”

“An empty bottle waiting for me to come along and fill her up.” She knew they were Jimmie’s words; she could hear him saying them.

“And what about a man?” Arleen asked. “Or did Jimmie sour you for all men?”

“There’s a man,” Bailey said, her jaw rigid. “Blue-blood type on his mother’s side. You’d probably know the family name if I said it, but I really would like to keep my anonymity.”