“He doesn’t,” I broke in.
“Well, what I’m hearing is that the two of you – but that’s not the worst of it …” His hands clenched and unclenched.
“Robert, this is silly,” Mama said, patting his leg. “You’re going to get upset all over again over lies.”
“You heard that I’m already married, didn’t you?”
“Bess has an explanation for all of this, don’t you Bess?” Mama said, her eyes pleading with mine to agree with her.
“I have one but you won’t like it.”
Mama’s shoulders sagged a little. Papa closed his eyes. What if the news of my secret marriage to Jere weakened my father to death? How would Mama ever forgive me? How could I forgive myself? Besides, I hurriedly reasoned, I’m no longer married. Mr. McCorriston said the annulment meant the marriage no longer existed. I could live with that.
“You’re right, Mama, it is all lies. Today as we speak, I am not married. But …” My hand clutched my handkerchief. “Mr. Pickering and I are engaged to be married.”
Relief wiped Mama’s worried brow smooth. “Bess, you are going to be married! See, Robert, I told you she would marry some day.”
Papa gave me a weak smile. “That fellow must be as old as I am. You certainly took a damn long time to do it.”
Mama frowned at him for his use of language and turned a smile to me. “Bess, I’m happy for you. And to Mr. Pickering of all people. He is a respected man and he will make a fine husband. He certainly made Cady one; I remember envying her for his support in her fight for women’s suffrage. Why, he had an open debate with this same Mr. Groves in City Hall Park just over that very thing, his arm fast around Cady, and their love for one another there for all to see. Oh and my first ride in a motor car was with Mr. Pickering. I can still remember the smell of the leather and the sound of that engine. We seemed to be moving so fast.”
“Too fast for my liking, if I recall, dear,” Papa said with a grimace. “You did not receive a warm reception when you arrived home in that contraption.”
“We won’t discuss that any further,” Mama said. “I did what I had to do and you did what you had to do.”
“What did you do?” I asked, glad to have the conversation switch.
“I spanked her,” Papa said.
“Robert, don’t,” Mama said.
“Just like the spoiled child that she was,” Papa continued, ignoring his wife’s embarrassed blush. “If a wife doesn’t know how to behave, it is the man’s responsibility to teach her.”
“Papa, you hit Mama?” More of a scold than surprise. I had heard as much coming from their bedroom when around eleven years of age.
“Bess, that was a long time ago,” Mama said. “We won’t discuss this any further. Your father and I both grew up after the birth of our Little Cady, may God rest her soul. This strong heroine medication your father takes is making him blurt out whatever is on his mind.”
“It’s a truth serum,” Papa said. “Something you and Bess should be taking from the sound of it.”
“Have you set a date yet?” Mama asked.
“Yes, it’s set for Christmas Day. We haven’t discussed the details.” For example, can I go through with it? I added silently.
“Mercy! So soon and on Christ’s birthday. I suppose you could wear your grandmother’s dress. I was married in it. Light blue, blousy sleeves, high neck, lace collar, scratchy if I recall.”
“How appealing,” I said with a sardonic smile.
“Of course,” Mama said, understanding. “More and more girls wear white these days.”
Papa closed his eyes. A wedding for his oldest daughter; something he had waited for, for a very long time, and he would not be able to give me away to my husband. Of course he no longer owned me to give away, but any walk down an aisle would be impossible for him at this stage. I would have to think on this some more.
“Can I go?” asked Mary Sue.
“Definitely not,” I said.
“After dishes,” Lizzie said to her, “I’ll help you study.”
Mary Sue rolled her eyes. “Darkies can’t read!” She ran out of the room.
A night out with Thomas alone! And to a movie house! What had taken us so long to do this? We were so accustomed to routine, as if marriage had already taken place.
Without discussion we turned toward downtown, instead of toward the motor car. We trekked the ten blocks that I took to and from the newspaper office, while Thomas gave me his day’s campaigning events, brightly colored with anecdotes. “I challenged him on the facts in his story – his brain is like a coconut in a boxcar – and told him to stop pissing on my leg and telling me it’s raining.” He seemed more relaxed when not under the watchful eye of Lizzie and Mary Sue. They both appeared ready to answer his beckoning, but for different reasons. He seemed more comfortable as “boss” in the office, than as “master” of the house.
Outside the movie house stood a cardboard figure, as tall as I, of a man in baggy, tattered pants, worn down shoes that were ridiculously large, a coat and vest, and a weather-beaten derby hat, with the inscription I AM HERE TODAY. Charlie Chaplin dolls and comic books were in the shops so I certainly wasn’t surprised he was here, too. Thomas promised that Chaplin’s first full-length feature film, The Kid, would be well worth our walk. He was right as usual. Charlie as the infamous Tramp, finds a baby and raises him on his own until five years later when the boy’s mother wants him back.
“The scenes of a man caring for a growing boy were absurd and I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry,” I said as we exited the dark inner room. I dabbed at my eyes with a handkerchief, blinking at the bright lights of the lobby.
“Looks to me like you made a decision,” said Thomas. “Here, permit me to bring your smile back.” And there on the sidewalk he imitated the comic walk of The Tramp, feet out to the sides, short struts, however Thomas reminded me more of a toy soldier whose wind-up march was winding down.
I laughed in spite of the passers-by. “I didn’t know you were such a fan of this man.” I tugged on his arm to stop, please. “You have succumbed to the ‘Chaplinitis’ going around.”
He tucked my hand around his elbow and patted it as if to say, there, there, no more foolishness. “I’ve been watching his films since 1914. The Immigrant, The Tramp, The Idle Class. He loves to play on our sympathies for the poor, and our intolerance of the rich. He understands both. He grew up as an impoverished orphan in England and now is making more money than any actor in the world, perhaps more than any one person in the world, at ten thousand a week. He writes and directs all his films and his past continues to creep into those slum scenes, reminding me of Dickens novels. You haven’t been to a Chaplin film?”
“I haven’t been to a movie house before. I didn’t understand the attraction to a silent movie. You know me; speeches are the best form of communication. But I was truly amazed at how he could convey emotions so well through facial expressions.”
“I thought the story suited you. That’s why I brought you here.”
“On the contrary. Facial expressions are not my strong suit.”
“I’m talking about Mary Sue, dear. She’s much like this little boy, longing for love and attention, wanting to belong. Although you’re not her mother, she needs your nurturing to bring out the best in her.”
“Thomas, you’re being as melodramatic as Charlie tonight. What Mary Sue longs for is to go back home and she’d love it if you’d go back with her. And not as Uncle Thomas either.”
Thomas looked down at me with a father’s disapproving scowl. “I think you, too, have the potential for melodrama.”
“And I think you have the potential to look at her as a little girl when in fact she’s a grown woman. And a mean-spirited one at that. She spells trouble, Thomas, and I don’t like it.” My tone sounded harsh. This conversation had slipped down into our first argument.
“And I think you are jealous, and this is very unbecoming. Particularly when the
jealousy is of a poor little hillbilly.”
“And I think you are insensitive, particularly when you want to be an uncle.”
I had hit rock bottom and I looked up for a way out of this banter. I saw him smiling.
“I’d prefer to be a father. Do you think that someday you could help me out in that department?”
I smiled back, relieved he gave me a lift. “As a mother, you mean?”
“That would be the most enjoyable way, yes.”
“This requires marriage you know.”
“To keep the gossip down, yes. I’m prepared to do things in their proper order.”
“I suppose I could accommodate your request. But do you think a baby should be placed in a sling, hanging from the rafters as Charlie did tonight?”
“No, but a sling would be necessary to hang from your back, so that the baby doesn’t slow you down in marching for your next cause.”
“Oh, but a baby would settle me down for certain, Thomas.”
“I’m not so certain as you. I think when you were old enough to walk, your mother taught you instead to march. You may know no other way. We’ll see.”
The wintry night and the strong breeze cleared my clouded mind of the movie’s events. We walked by Hullabaloo’s where the music’s blare and smoky stale air seemed in competition with its customers to get outside. We walked more briskly and soon the downtown stretched out and settled into sleepy homes and fresh currents of air.
We stopped on the boardwalk in front of the Lighthouse, aptly named tonight for its warm light reaching out through all the windows, more so than just the two on the front porch that always burned. Always a signal that one of us was out. The front door would also be unlocked as always in case a frightened woman needed shelter in a hurry.
“I’ve been thinking,” Thomas said, his hands on my shoulders. “When this becomes our home, it will only be our home. Do you understand? No more Lighthouse. No more woeful women. No more debates. No more back parlor strategies to beat the men. No more war. I want peace. I’ve earned it and so have you. I’m entering the sunset of my life and I wish to spend it quietly with you over morning coffee and afternoon tea. No more speakeasies. Understood?”
“Not even the smallest smidgeon of drink at your birthday parties?” I asked, batting my eyes, playing the tease.
“If you like. But remember, you’ll be my wife then and I won’t stop at a kiss.”
I gave him a light one on the cheek and whispered, “I’ll hold you to that promise.”
The wind whipped colder around my legs when he walked away, as if he held the only heat in the night. I gazed up to the white stone and blue shutters of his manor, the promise of warmth coming through the lighted windows, and thought of the many times I had hobbled up to the door in exhaustion from marches and petitions and travels. It had opened its doors to the weak and the weary, the tears and the fears, and to the strong ready to right the wrong. It would all be over soon. But it would always be a Lighthouse to me.
A letter arrived from the Annan Elementary School. January and seventh grade loomed ahead. I found Mary Sue at the back parlor’s roll-top desk writing letters to her father and each of her siblings. These letters seemed to be getting longer and longer and her face told the story of another case of homesickness. Misty eyes and a down-turned mouth, one hand propping up the head as the other hand wrote in her large block letters. She had dressed in one of her two old “back-home” calico dresses, faded, loose around the waist with no belt. I hoped school and friends would make living away from home easier – if she passed the test. I thrust the letter out to her.
“This is the moment we’ve been waiting for, Mary Sue. Open it!”
“It don’t matter,” she said, at once irritating me with her southern slang. Her pen continued its slow movements of letters into words, words into sentences.
“Of course it matters, Mary Sue. We’ve worked - you’ve worked hard for this.” I waited. My arm dropped to my side. Why was she always bursting my bubbles? “Don’t you want to see if you passed?”
“I doubt if I did, and if I did, it don’t matter.”
“Why?” My voice had gone up an octave and I stood ready to shake her. She had labored through a four-hour exam. “Mary Sue, what is wrong?”
“Everything. I don’t like it here, first of all.”
Stupid hillbilly, horse’s ass, stubborn mule … no matter what moved around her, she seemed determined to stand still.
I placed my hands on my hips ready for another debate. “Why do you continue to bite the hand that feeds you?”
She threw her pen down and folded her arms across her chest as always, accepting the challenge. Her light blue eyes met mine head on. “Because you might feed me poison someday. You don’t like me. Lizzie don’t like me either. You both just boss me around. Write this, Mary Sue. Wash that, Mary Sue. You look at what I’m wearing, you look at what I’m doing, but never at what I’m feeling. Daddy always asked me how I was feeling.” This last statement brought on tears. “Besides, my daddy needs me. My brother is real sick.” She sniffed noisily.
I had an urge to correct her grammar, but with one goal: to get Mary Sue educated and out of here. I hadn’t realized until now I must go through her heart to do that. I felt inept as I looked down at her tear-stained face. I didn’t know how to attach through emotion. My only way of reaching out to my sister was through a newspaper article, for goodness sake. How much better could I be to a stubborn mule? Somehow I needed to go deeper. This effort made me weary and I sat with a sigh in the chair across from her.
“Do they know why your brother’s ill?”
“Doctor thinks he got polio.”
“Oh dear, that is serious. But really, there’s nothing you can do about it.”
“Maybe there is. Maybe I can help. But I can’t from here.”
I leaned forward to where I could meet her at eye-level. “First we’ll open this letter and see if you passed your exams. We’ll write your father then and give him the news, and ask him what he thinks is best. Do you remember what Mr. McCorriston told us on our way back to Nashville from your home? He told us that new schools are being built in Tennessee ever since the compulsory school attendance law was passed in 1913. If that’s so, then perhaps within the next year, you’ll be able to continue with high school back home. Let’s not give up so soon, agreed?”
I waved the envelope in front of her as a tantalizer. “It may be good news!”
She snatched it from my hands and opened with a faster speed than I could have hoped for. Her mouth moved silently as her eyes moved across each line. I expected the worst, while waiting for a sign.
Suddenly her arms were about my neck and she was crying. Crying harder than I’d witnessed before.
“Oh Mary Sue, we’ll try again. You’ll study harder and take the exams again.”
She shook her head on my shoulder. “No, no. I passed, Miss Wright, I passed!”
“Oh Mary Sue, yes, yes!” I squeezed her hard, feeling like I’d passed the test, too.
She straightened and accepted my clean handkerchief with a bright smile, her eyes glistening with fresh tears. “I’m not ignorant after all. I’m as smart as any city folk.”
“Yes ma’am, you are! We must celebrate.” I ran to the door. “Where’s Lizzie? We must have a festive dinner and we can celebrate with Thomas.”
“Thomas,” she said softly, her eyes on a distant view I sought to block. “Thomas will know I’m smart now.”
Desperate to talk with Thomas alone before dinner with Mary Sue, I paced in front of the front parlor windows until his arrival. The grandfather clock tolled seven times and supper was nearly on the table before his Duesenberg finally pulled up. There was no time. He looked more tired than usual, his hair disheveled and deeper lines under his eyes. He paused long enough for me to give him a kiss and smooth his hair, before rushing to the dining room. He knew that Lizzie did not take kindly to late arrivals for dinner, although why he w
orried what our colored help thought was beyond my understanding.
“I do apologize much, Lizzie,” he said as a preemptory strike.
Her feathers settled some at his sincere tone and she acquiesced with a nod and a shake of her cane.
“What do we have here?” he said with forced enthusiasm as he sat and laid his napkin on his leg. “Our best china and roses from the garden?”
“And I pressed our best linen table cloth,” I said, showing off my contribution.
“I brought in the roses,” said Mary Sue.
“This child is good in the garden,” Lizzie said, placing the platter of roast pork by Thomas’ plate.
“That’s a good girl,” Thomas said, slicing the pork. He sounded absent-minded, not giving Mary Sue his usual interest. “Bess, come into my office tomorrow. I’ve decided on another campaign promise to impose limitations on outdoor advertisements. I’m finding them everywhere; painted on rocks and trees, on the sides of buildings and barns. It’s taking away from our natural scenery. You will also write a speech to the Women’s Committee for Pure Foods. We’ll need to add something about the milk—”
“I passed,” Mary Sue called out.
He paused in his slicing. “Pardon?”
“I passed. That’s why we have all this. We’re celebrating!” She gave him a smile of expectation.
He looked to me for explanation. “We got the letter today from the school,” I said. “Mary Sue passed her exams and is entering into seventh grade next month.”
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