Big Lies in a Small Town

by Diane Chamberlain

  “For the whole gallery?”

  “No,” Lisa said. “For you. For you to restore the mural. Fifty K, plus another several thousand for any supplies you need.”

  Fifty thousand dollars? Incredible. Even if I’d gotten my degree, I doubted I could have found a job that would pay me that much in a year’s time, much less for two months’ work. Two months’ work I had no idea how to do. I tried to keep my self-doubt from showing on my face. Uniquely qualified? Not hardly.

  “This is your ‘get out of jail free’ card, Morgan.” Andrea leaned forward, her red lips forming the words slowly and clearly. “If you hold up your end of the bargain—finishing your work—quality work—on the mural by the fifth of August—you’ll be out on parole and will never have to set foot in this place again. If I were you, I’d start reading up on restoration.”

  I looked toward the doorway of the small room. I imagined walking through it and down the hallway to the front entrance and freedom. I imagined twirling in circles outside, my arms stretched wide to take in the fresh air. I didn’t think I’d ever be completely free of this place, though. I’d always carry my prison with me. I felt that imaginary prison closing around me even as I sat there, even as I imagined walking out the front door.

  Still, I would rather an imaginary prison than this hideous real one.

  “I’ll do it,” I said finally, sitting back.

  How I would do it, I had no idea.

  Chapter 2

  ANNA

  December 4, 1939

  Edenton, North Carolina

  From the United States Treasury Department, Section of Fine Arts

  Special 48-States Mural Competition

  November 27, 1939

  Dear Miss Anna Dale,

  The Section of Fine Arts is pleased to inform you that you are one of the winning artists in the 48-States Mural Competition. Your sketch for the proposed mural to adorn the Bordentown, New Jersey, Post Office received many positive comments from the judges. Unfortunately, a different artist has been awarded the Bordentown Post Office, but the judges were sufficiently impressed with your work that they would like you to undertake the creation of the mural for the post office in Edenton, North Carolina. This will require that you send us a sketch for the Edenton assignment as soon as possible. Once you receive the Section’s approval on the sketch, you can begin the actual work on the (full size) cartoon and, finally, the mural itself. The size of the Edenton mural will be 12′ by 6′. The project is to be completed by June 3, 1940.

  It is suggested that artists become familiar with the geographic area surrounding their assigned post office and make a special effort to select appropriate subject matter. The following subjects are suggested: Local History, Local Industries, Local Flora and Fauna, and Local Pursuits. Since the location of Edenton, North Carolina, was not your first choice and you are therefore most likely not familiar with the town, it is strongly suggested you make a visit there as soon as possible.

  The payment for the mural will be $720, one third payable on the approval of your sketch, one third payable on the approval of your cartoon, one third payable upon installation of the final mural. Out of this amount, you will pay for your supplies, models if needed, any travel, and all costs related to the installation of the mural.

  Sincerely,

  Edward Rowan, Art Administrator, Section of Fine Arts

  Anna arrived in Edenton for her planned three-day visit late on the afternoon of December 4. She could have taken the overnight train, but at the last minute she decided to drive. The ’32 navy blue Ford V8 still held her mother’s scent—the spicy patchouli fragrance of the Tabu perfume she’d loved—and Anna needed that comfort as she set out on this new, very adult venture. Her first paying job. Her first time away from home. Her first everything, really.

  The car skidded on a patch of ice as she turned onto Broad Street in the fading sunlight, and for a moment she was certain her introduction to the town would consist of slamming into a row of parked cars, but she managed to get the Ford under control. As soon as she did, she found herself behind a cart drawn by a horse, or perhaps a mule. She couldn’t get a good look at the animal and wasn’t sure she’d know one from the other anyway. She didn’t see many of either in her hometown of Plainfield, New Jersey.

  She slowed down, thinking she should get a good look at the little town that would be the subject of her mural. When she’d viewed Edenton in the atlas, it had been a watery-looking place, nothing more than a speck surrounded by a bay and a river. Even on the map, it had looked strangely foreign to her, and she’d closed the atlas with a worried sigh.

  She hadn’t expected to win the competition, and the timing could not have been worse. She’d just buried her mother. Her best friend. The one person in the world whose love and nurturing Anna could always count on. But she couldn’t turn down work, not with jobs so impossible to find. Not when her mother was no longer around to bring in the sewing money that had paid for their food and expenses. No, she needed to be grateful for this opportunity, even if it meant she had to travel more than four hundred miles to “become familiar with the geographic area” she was to immortalize in the mural.

  She’d never had any yearning to travel south of the Mason-Dixon line, and she was glad she’d only be here for a few days. The South seemed so backward to her. Segregated schools and ridiculous laws about keeping colored and white apart on buses and at water fountains and in restrooms. She’d had a few colored classmates at Plainfield High School and she’d counted a couple of the girls as friends. They’d been on the basketball team and in glee club together.

  “You’re looking at Plainfield through rose-colored glasses,” her mother would have said. Even in Plainfield, those colored girls Anna thought of as her friends couldn’t go into certain shops or restaurants with her, and one of them told her they had to sit in the balcony at the Paramount Theater. The roller rink had a “colored night” set aside for them each week and they—as well as Anna’s Jewish friends—were unwelcome at the country club. But still, everyone knew it was worse in the South. They actually lynched Negroes in the south.

  She’d considered simply doing her research for the mural in the Plainfield Public Library, knowing the drive to Edenton would take her two full days, but she’d read and reread the letter from the Section of Fine Arts that advised her to visit the little town. Her mother would have told her to do the job properly. Anna imagined her saying “be grateful for the work, sweetheart, and embrace the challenge.” Her friends who had graduated with her from the Van Emburgh School of Art in Plainfield were still hunting for jobs that simply didn’t exist, with the economy the way it was. Many of them had also tried to win the Section of Fine Arts competition and Anna knew how lucky she was to have been given the honor. She would do everything she could to make the Section glad they put their trust in her.

  A few days before she died, her mother had given Anna a journal. The book of blank pages was bound in velvety-soft brown leather, the cover fastened together with a simple gold lock and key. So beautiful. Her mother had known then that it would be the last gift she would ever give her daughter, but Anna hadn’t known. It angered her when she realized the truth, and she didn’t want to feel that emotion toward her mother. In a fit of rage, she’d tossed the journal in the kitchen trash can, but she dug it out again, cleaned it off, and now it was packed in her suitcase. She wouldn’t throw away anything connected to her mother again. She needed to hold on to it all.

  She also had her mother’s camera with her. Anna had choked up as she sat at the kitchen table winding a new roll of film into the Kodak Retina. She pictured her mother’s hands doing the same task over the years … although when Anna thought about it, she realized many months had passed since her mother had picked up the camera. Photography had been her passion. It brought in no money, but had given her great pleasure during her “lively spells.” The doctor called them “manic episodes” but Anna preferred her own term. The lively spells were alw
ays a relief to Anna when they followed the days—sometimes the weeks—when her mother could barely get out of bed. The lively spells came without warning, often with behavior that was impossible to predict. She’d awaken Anna early to inform her she was skipping school, and they’d take the bus to New York where they’d race through museum after museum or roller-skate through Central Park. One time, when Anna was about twelve, they slipped in the rear door of Carnegie Hall, found a couple of empty box seats, and watched an orchestra perform. It wasn’t the music Anna remembered from that day. It was the sheer joy of sitting next to her mother, leaning her head against her shoulder, feeling her wired energy. Knowing that, for as long as the lively spell lasted, their days would be joy-filled.

  When the good spells came during the spring, as they often did, one of her mother’s favorite activities was to walk at a brisk clip through Plainfield’s neighborhoods, carrying her camera, snapping pictures of people’s gardens. She adored flowers and she’d walk up the driveways of strangers to reach window boxes overflowing with geraniums, even ducking behind the houses to capture backyard gardens filled with roses and hydrangeas and peach-colored daylilies. As far as Anna knew, no one ever badgered her mother about the intrusions. Maybe people had thought of her as a bit of a kook. Or perhaps they’d felt sorry for her, a woman widowed young with a daughter to raise. Or maybe they knew the truth—Mrs. Dale was not a well woman—and they kindly let her be.

  Anna fended for herself when her mother’s spirits were low. She’d cook for both of them, although her mother ate almost nothing during those times. She’d clean the house and do the laundry. She did it all with patience, with love, waiting out the melancholia. There was one terrible time when Aunt Alice dragged Anna’s mother to a psychiatrist who insisted she be hospitalized. For two long months, Anna, then fourteen, lived with her aunt and uncle, angry at them both for putting her mother in that terrible place. When her mother was finally released, there were gaps in her memory, precious moments the hospital seemed to have stolen from her, and Anna vowed she would never let anyone lock her away again. She tried to keep her mother’s low moods a secret from her aunt after that, making light of them, riding them out. Perhaps, though, she’d made a mistake this last time. Perhaps this last time, her mother had needed more help than Anna had been able to give her. She tried not to think about that. She’d simply been waiting for the lively spell to return. She’d lived with her mother long enough to know that, in time, the smiling, happy mother she adored would come back, full of crazy ideas that would leave both of them giggling with wonder.

  “Never be afraid to try something new, Anna,” her mother would say.

  That’s what Anna was doing now, wasn’t it? Driving for two whole days through unfamiliar territory, landing in a tiny town where she didn’t know a soul. From somewhere in the heavens, her mother was applauding.

  * * *

  The letter from the Section of Fine Arts had arrived with a list of the winners of all forty-eight states. Anna had felt embarrassed and intimidated when she looked at that list. The contest had been anonymous, which she assumed was the only reason she’d been able to win. Still, many of the other winners were famous artists. There was So and So, from New York City, president of the League of Artists, studied in Europe, experienced muralist, had one-man exhibitions in New York and Los Angeles, and on and on. Winner after winner had accolade after accolade. And then there was Anna: Anna Dale. Plainfield, New Jersey. Born 1918. Graduate of Van Emburgh School of Art. And that was it. She thought the panel of judges must have been stunned into silence when they opened her envelope to discover the inexperienced girl they’d selected. She had to keep reminding herself that they’d legitimately picked her, fair and square, and she remembered what Mrs. Van Emburgh had whispered in her ear when she handed Anna her graduation certificate: “You are a standout, Anna,” she’d said. “You have a future in the art world.” Her words still sent a shiver up Anna’s spine. She’d told no one about them, not wanting to appear conceited, but she clung tight to the compliment now that she’d won the competition. Now that she was, so completely, on her own.

  She had to come up with a whole new idea for a sketch very quickly, and the thought overwhelmed her. The concept for her Bordentown sketch had come to her easily. Clara Barton had founded the first free public school in Bordentown, so Anna had painted her ringing the school bell outside a little redbrick schoolhouse with lines of children walking and skipping to the school. She was proud of the way she captured the swish of the girls’ skirts and the energy of the boys. Too bad she wouldn’t be able to paint that mural now. The memory of her eager, happy production of that sketch, before everything changed, seemed to be from another lifetime.

  She did have an idea for the Edenton mural, though. In the Plainfield library, the librarian pointed her toward the American Guide Series’ book on North Carolina. In it, she read about the “Edenton Tea Party,” an eighteenth-century women’s movement in which fifty-one women signed a petition to boycott all English products. She thought that might make an intriguing mural and wouldn’t be too challenging to paint. The idea seemed so simple to her at first that she thought she might not even have to travel to Edenton to do her research, but then she realized she actually wanted this trip. She needed to get away for a few days. She needed an escape from the sadness in the little house where she expected to see her mother every time she walked into another room.

  King Street. She spotted the sign and turned left to see a big brick block of a building. The Hotel Joseph Hewes. It would be her home while she was in this town she knew as well as she knew Jupiter or Saturn. She drove into the parking lot, heart pounding, hands sticky on the steering wheel, wondering what the next few days would hold.

  Chapter 3

  MORGAN

  June 13, 2018

  I blinked against the bright sunlight as I walked with Lisa toward the silver sedan in the prison parking lot. The only words Lisa had said to me so far were “do you have everything?” and the two of us were quiet as we left the building. I breathed in the sweet air of freedom, but my stomach was full of knots. I held my chin high, though. Put on the tough-girl look I’d perfected inside. I’m not afraid of anything, I told myself … though the truth was, I was undeniably intimidated by the woman at my side. Lisa was Jesse Jameson Williams’s daughter, which was enough to intimidate anyone, but it was more than that. I couldn’t read her. Her brittle silence, for starters. What was that about? Her upright carriage and no-nonsense speed walk as she headed toward the car while checking her phone every two seconds. Her unsmiling, clenched-teeth expression. Anger bubbled just below the surface in this woman, I thought, and I didn’t like the fact that she held all the cards for my future.

  I hadn’t anticipated the unease I felt getting into a car. It had been a bit more than a year since I’d been in any sort of vehicle, and my fingers froze on the outside handle of the car door. Lisa was already in the driver’s seat by the time I managed to pull myself together enough to open the door. Even then, I stood there holding the plastic bag of my very few belongings at my side, the muscles in my legs locked in paralysis.

  “Come on, get in,” Lisa called.

  I climbed into the car and sat down on the leather seat, dropping the bag of belongings at my feet. I pulled the door closed, then buckled the seat belt with fingers that felt ice-cold despite the warm spring weather.

  Lisa stuck her phone in the holder on the dashboard, then started the car, still not speaking. Of course, I wasn’t speaking, either. I wanted to say thank you for doing this, but that would make me sound more vulnerable than I wanted to appear. I felt so strange, like I was attempting to step back into the person I used to be. For the first time in a year, I was wearing my small silver hoop earrings, the silver stud in my nostril, and my old blue sleeveless shirt. Not that I’d selected the shirt from my closet; I’d been wearing it the day I got locked up, so that was all I had with me. Still, I was glad I had on this particular shirt, n
ot only because the day was warm, but because I wanted Lisa to see my tattoo in its entirety. The intricacy of the lacy design. It was the only thing I had with me to illustrate that I had any artistic talent. But Lisa said nothing about it.

  Why was this woman wound so tight? Did she resent the fact that I was a criminal she’d been forced to spring from jail? Or that she was conservatively dressed and groomed within an inch of her life—I could smell jasmine-scented perfume in the air—while I sat there in my torn-at-the-knee jeans with a tattoo on my arm? Or that some of the money Lisa stood to inherit was going into my pocket? Or maybe that I was white on top of it all? I had no idea. All I knew at that moment was that Lisa was too close to the car in front of us while driving sixty-five miles per hour. You were supposed to allow a car length for every ten miles per hour. I remembered the rule from driver’s ed, though I’d probably never followed it myself. But that was before. Now I had to fight the urge to press an imaginary brake on the floor to slow Lisa down. This is the new Morgan, I thought sadly to myself. The Morgan afraid of the outside world.

  We’d ridden ten minutes in silence before Lisa finally spoke.

  “The government never fully paid the artist—Anna Dale—for the mural, so after she went crazy—or whatever happened—it essentially became my father’s property to do with as he pleased,” she said. “But since the gallery is a gift to the community, your work on the mural becomes a sort of community service.” She glanced at me, and the smallest of smiles lifted the corners of her lips. “So says Andrea.”

  The rationale seemed quite a stretch and I waited for her to continue, unsure of her point. “I understand,” I said when it was clear Lisa had nothing more to say on the subject. “But why did the mural end up with your father?”

  She shrugged. “No idea,” she said. “He didn’t leave me much in the way of details. I’m just following his orders.”