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Keeper of the Cormorant
- The University of Alabama Press
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She stands in the drive. She wears the navy crepe—a summer wool, for travel. (Though the husband often comments on the impracticality of skirts.) The hat is matching, or off by just a shade. The shoes are slim and laced (perhaps too tight—something pinches at the tongue), and also blue, but more a midnight blue or ink. She prefers the smaller heel, and suede. And on the hat: the veil, caught in a fold along the brim, and extending just below the cheek (a mere web, lending a sadness, Sources have confirmed that aviator Charles Lindbergh and his wife, Anne Morrow Lindbergh, have left their Hopewell estate for an undisclosed location. The twostory house, site of the kidnapping of their first child, has been donated to the county and will be converted into a home for wayward boys. The Jersey Reader May 15, 1933 Keeper of the Cormorant 140 Pamela Ryder shall we say? or an air of mourning?—yes, let us say “lending an air of mourning” to the eyes). “Mosquito netting,” he liked to tell her, as a joke. The scarf is silk, of a color sometimes known as ivory, or eggshell, or candlelight, although the downstairs maid (the one now dead) once called it “China White.” He liked to say he owed his life to silkworms when recounting the ditches, the crack-ups. She knows the story of the tailspin north of Peoria and the collapsed chute south of St. Louis; about the bailouts into potato patches and barbed wire, and that crash landing in a field of wheat. She has heard about the rip cord he had to pull twice. But there was always someone—always—who still wanted to hear; always someone in the crowd with a camera: “Colonel Lindbergh! Look this way! How about one of you and the missus ?” She has taken to keeping an undersized handkerchief ready in her sleeve. She wears a brooch on the lapel—gold, of course, in the form of a miniature hand wearing on its finger a tiny ring set with the smallest pearl. The matching strand (the hand motif repeated at the clasp) had long been packed away. Freshwater ones they were, these pearls she wore most often —discovered in a village port along the Yangtze. The Year of the Dog, was it? Or the Snake? Or the Rat? (Well, no.) But, of the Flood, nevertheless: the yellow river, brimless. The woman in a hat of woven reed dredged the mud between her toes and turned the mollusks up. “Silt,” the husband said, “or particle of river sand.” She did not tell him that she knew the way that pearls are made, or that she knew the way a strand of what is genuine should feel when rubbed against the teeth. She did not tell him [44.221.43.88] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 00:16 GMT) Keeper of the Cormorant 141 of the ones she had worn when just a girl—seed pearls woven in a choker—a gift from a Pacific king (though Siam is what she would remember) at a dinner given by her father for the heads of state. Silver service. Monograms. A silent butler for the crumbs. A short recital while dessert was served: Madeira and mousse au chocolat. Sisters in taffeta of a color the mother called “daffodil”—Elizabeth, Constance, and Anne taking their turns at the freshly tuned piano: “Country Gardens,” “Clair de Lune.” The Parisian aide-de-camp asked her to dance, noticing (indeed) the décolletage above the shirring (it is called shirring, is it not?) at her breast? “Tum-tuma-tum-tum,” sang the German diplomat (as one would expect). Cigar ash on the hassock. Candle wax on the damask. Peonies on the baby grand. A ring left on the ebony—a defect in the glazing of the vase. That, too, long ago put away—the attic of her mother’s house? A shelf in the cellar? Or found out and never kept. But the pearls, she was sure, were with the rest of what the butler’s wife had helped her pack: a needlepoint in progress (ducklings, boots, the requisite puddle), the Book of Baby’s Progress (first steps, et cetera), a bonnet for the sun (“Oh, but leave the tam-o’-shanter on its little peg!” she had said), the coverlet of the crib (the Singapore shawl—or was it Peking?). The pearls, the husband said, could later be strung. He...