Page 43 of The Golden Spoon
“You built your whole career on the back of my mother. You stole her recipes. And what did she ever get from any of you Graftons?”
Betsy is standing now, ready to confront me. “Agnes gave menothing. I didn’t need her to teach me to stir some flour. I didn’t need her at all!”
“I saw the recipes, Betsy,” Stella says, her hand clutching her heart like she’s physically hurting. “You are a total fake! I can’t believe I worshipped you!”
“Oh, get over yourself. All of you! A bunch of nobodies!” Betsy shouts. Her shoulders rise and fall. Her eyes are like pinpricks.
Pradyumna puts his hand on my shoulder. “Lottie, I’ve just realized something. Agnes wasn’t afraid of Richard Grafton. She was afraid of Betsy.”
BETSY
They’ve trapped her, cornered her in her own home. She wants to lash out at them, to scratch and kick. She has been trying to contain her rage for so long. Becoming Betsy Martin, America’s Grandmother, has been a way for her to heal, to prove to herself that she’s in control, but seeing Elizabeth has shaken something loose in her. She feels herself reverting to that child she once was. That terribly angry little girl.
“I killed her, is that what you want to hear? And I’d do it again,” Betsy explodes. White spots flicker in her vision. Betsy sees Lottie’s jaw drop open, but she can’t stop herself. “She deserved it.” The words tear from somewhere inside Betsy, shooting out in a ragged scream. Lottie and the rest lean back from her, afraid. She should stop, pull herself together, save the remaining scraps of her career, her rapidly unraveling reputation. But she finds herself unable to control the torrent of rage. The anger has overwhelmed her now. It feels good to give into it. Betsy is lost, swirling back in time, reliving the injustice of all she endured at the expense of Agnes.
Betsy remembers her father and Agnes stumbling into the conservatory one afternoon when she was playing there. The way they looked,her father smiling back at Agnes as he pulled her into the room with him, told her their meeting was a secret. Betsy had hidden behind a crate and watched as Agnes, flushed and happy, reached for her father’s face, pulling it toward her, kissing him on the mouth. It was all Betsy could do not to retch and give away her hiding spot. Their lips were stained with wine. She’d watched through the slats as her very own father, all smiles, kissed the maid. Her father’s face was full of desire, his hands traveling up the bodice of Agnes’s uniform. He never looked at Betsy’s mother that way. For years Betsy watched as her mother would try to engage with him. “How was your sleep?” she’d ask at breakfast each morning, but her father would shake the newspaper open to a new page, pretend not to have heard. Beyond the pages, her mother’s face would drop, the smile fading from her face. As the years passed it hardened there. A mask of disappointment she never removed. There were days before finding out when Betsy had felt an almost uncontrollable anger at her, lying there, letting it happen. Those days she’d go back to her room and break something her mother had bought her. She’d crack a glass doll or rip the seams from one of her dresses. But after seeing her father acting so full of life with another woman, she was no longer furious with her mother. Betsy could see that she was only trapped in the unhappy situation her father and Agnes had created.
Then one night as she crept downstairs for a glass of milk and one more slice of cake, she’d heard her father and Agnes plotting in the kitchen. Her father would move away, it was decided. Agnes and Elizabeth would go with him. What a happy little family. Their plotting was so brazen; they hadn’t even left the manor. Her mother could have heard. She couldn’t blame her father. It was Agnes’s fault. It was her spell he was under. She ran back to her room feeling physically sick. His words to Agnes echoed in her mind. “It isyouwho I love, my darling, and our precious girl deserves more than the life of a servant. You both do.” She had to do something. She had to stop them.
The night it happened, Agnes was trying to make things rightwith Betsy. They’d both come out onto the landing at the same time, Betsy from the East Wing and Agnes from the West. She had an apron around her waist, was heading down to the kitchen to clean up the remnants of the family dinner. As they met on the landing, Betsy turned her head away from Agnes, not wanting to even look at her. It had been like this for weeks. Every time they saw each other, Betsy would twist away angrily so that Agnes knew how she felt. She wanted her to see how much her mere presence hurt Betsy. She wanted to see the hurt in Agnes’s eyes when she rejected her. This time, though, Agnes blocked her path, gently touching Betsy on the arm. “I know that you are upset with me,” Agnes had told her, lowering herself to Betsy’s eye level. “And I want you to know that I care so much about you, Betsy. You are like a second daughter to me.”
Betsy jerked away from Agnes as though being burned, turning back and glaring at her with what she hoped was absolute hatred in her eyes. The absolute hubris with which Agnes, the homewrecker, was trying to appeal to Betsy was too much for her. “Well, you are just the maid to me,” she’d spat out, the anger rising up inside, overwhelming her. “I hate you,” she’d hissed. Agnes stood up in surprise as Betsy took off at a run and barreled into her with all her might, pushing her head into Agnes’s stomach and sending her flying back against the railing. Agnes, gasping, caught herself against the ledge. For a few sickening seconds, she teetered above the foyer. All Betsy had to do was shove her once more, catching her square in the shoulders and pushing with all her might. Agnes’s eyes were wide, her mouth open in a wordless scream. Her arms reached out for Betsy as she fell backward, tipping over the edge of the railing, headfirst. She landed on the flagstone with a loud crack. Betsy didn’t run for help, didn’t budge from the landing. She just waited, watching as a trickle of blood escaped from Agnes’s head onto the tile.
It was a cry for help from a neglected child. That’s what Betsy’s mother had told her father, whispering it forcefully in his ear as he sat on a chair, his head drooping into his palms. “If it wasn’t for thatwoman trying to steal you away from your family, none of this would have happened,” she’d hissed. The body was already gone from where it had fallen, the blood scrubbed clean. They sent Elizabeth away to some far-off relatives’ house and hired new help, sealed off the fourth floor. But her father couldn’t erase it. She never saw him happy again. Betsy still hated Agnes for it.
“They were going to get married! I couldn’t let him leave my mother for her. It was preposterous. Agnes was going to ruin our lives! I had no choice, don’t you understand?” Betsy looks around the group, searching for a face of reason, someone who can comprehend where she is coming from. But she sees only fear and shock in their eyes. She should have known better than to expect empathy from this bunch.
“What about me?” Lottie cries, her voice sounding like that of a frightened child. So irritating.
“My father knew he had to protect me, or my life would be ruined. So he took care of it. We couldn’t have you around asking questions, reminding us.” Betsy breathes heavily, winded from the outburst. After Agnes died, her father shuffled through the halls of Grafton defeated, shoulders slumped. “He’ll get better,” Betsy’s mother often said those first years, but she was wrong. If anything, he retreated into himself more as the years passed, engaging with Betsy and her mother only when it was absolutely necessary. Every day the old Richard Grafton faded until there was barely a whisp of the man he’d once been, and then even that vanished. She hated him as well.
After her outburst Betsy’s throat feels raw, like she has swallowed glass. Pradyumna steps toward her gently, as if he is coaxing a wild animal from a cave.
“WhereisAgnes, Betsy?”
Before she can stop herself, Betsy’s eyes flick to the window. She looks out at the dark shapes of the lawn just starting to become visible under the early morning sky. Lottie follows her gaze, steppingpast her and up to the window, pressing her fingers against the glass. The clouds have broken, and the first morning light catches on a lone dogwood tree glowing a ghostly white in the garden.
Betsy is exhausted now, spent from her outburst. She falls back into the chair in surrender. The rage she’d been feeling is dissipating like a storm. It’s funny, she thinks, how anger does that.
There is a low wail of sirens, growing louder. A flicker of blue-and-red light at the windows as a row of police cars and ambulances pulls up the drive.
Gerald holds up his cell phone. “Based on traffic times, even accounting for the storm, I deduced that there was no call put in yet to the police so I did it myself.”
ONE YEAR LATER
STELLA
I open my eyes, and for a moment I forget where I am. The bed I’m sleeping on is plush, covered with luxurious pillows. The molding in the corners of the ceiling curves toward a gold chandelier that dangles precariously above me. I throw the blankets back and push myself upright, rubbing my eyes. Sun streams in through the tall paned window. I blearily stand up and wander over to it, looking out onto Grafton’s lawn. I’m in a different room than the last time I was here. This one looks out over the vast front lawn where the tent would have been. Now the tent is gone. There’s no sign that it ever existed, except for the faintest hint of brighter green from the fresh sod. You’d never know that just a year earlier it had been the scene of such horror. Nervousness creeps up into my chest, but I take a deep breath and it dissipates, quickly. I’m much better at controlling my anxiety now. I don’t even have to count anymore.
On the heels of Archie’s death and Betsy’s incarceration, my story turned out to be so much more than I could have imagined. I focused the article on Archie’s seduction of young, female chefs onThe Cutting Board, leaving out Hannah’s experience with Archie. With all the speculation after Archie’s murder and Betsy’s arrest, it was only fair that she be allowed to get her life back together. She was aninvaluable resource to my writing, though, giving me inside information that helped me pinpoint the way Archie seduced and groomed women. On the heels of such a big scandal, the story immediately went viral. I started getting calls from radio and TV programs, wanting me to comment on what happened, to offer my unique perspective being both a journalist and aBake Weekcontestant. It wasn’t long before I received messages from literary agents wanting to sign me and then, much to my delight, a book deal. I love being a journalist again. I can feel myself growing more confident with each day that passes, building back up a stronger and healthier version of myself. Now that this project is over, the first draft of the book already with my publishers, I find myself excited to keep going. I am determined to tell stories that will help empower people who have lived in fear for too long.
It is easy to get wrapped up in it all. Sometimes I even have to remind myself that I went onBake Weekto be a contestant, not as some kind of undercover journalist. When I think of Archie, dead in the tent, or Betsy, stuck in some women’s prison with no one to make her tea, I almost feel guilty at how well everything has worked out for me.Almost.
The most important thing I’ve done since last year has been to start with a new therapist, one who can help me do more than just count backward when I’m stressed. She has helped me realize that so much of my stress comes from unresolved trauma that took place far before my time atThe Republic. That I suffered from a lack of nurturing and stability as a child. Now when I feel anxious, I know how to nurture myself. Not that there still aren’t times when I struggle. I almost cried when I saw Lottie again. We’d stayed in touch of course, but there was something about being back at Grafton, coming up the main drive yesterday evening and seeing her open the front door, that knocked the wind out of me. I had to stand in the foyer and catch my breath, laughing and crying as we embraced. Seeing everyone back at the house has been cathartic too.
We’re all here for the documentary. Hopefully it will explain what happened so that people can move on. I don’t think any of us want to be forever associated with something so dark and twisted. I think of Lottie, and my heart breaks for her, being so closely connected with Grafton she doesn’t really have a choice. But even she seems more at peace than I’ve seen her. She’s really settled into herself. We’ve all grown from this in some ways, I think.
Even Gerald is back for the documentary. “I made the calculation that you needed me here to provide my objective take on the experience for it to be factually accurate,” he’d said before I threw my arms around him. He cleared his throat uncomfortably, but when I pulled away, he had a small smile on his face.
