Sandra Lee’s mouth fell open and she tripped over Harold’s foot, but she recovered enough to say, “Gee, thanks, Addie!”
Tom danced with me twice all the way to the end of both dances. Even Harold danced with me once, which turned out to be enough because he was wearing his hair tonic that made me long for Uncle Ben’s gas mask. I didn’t have to hide in the back for the contest, because, although Tom escaped and went home ahead of time and I didn’t have a partner, I had danced enough to feel generous, so I stood around talking to Denise and Elizabeth and practicing my new smile on the chaperones.
“Well, Addie,” Miss Rush said at the end of dancing school, “you were the belle of the ball!”
“The dress,” I murmured, wondering why grown-ups say stupid things.
“No, my dear,” she said, terribly pleased with herself. “Just Addie, undisguised by Lily Dior.”
“Thank you, Miss Rush,” I said politely, and got away as quickly as possible. I ended up walking home with Harold and Sandra Lee, surprised at how much nicer they seemed. Maybe Tom was right about the way I treated Sandra Lee.
Tom was right about Sandra Lee. The day after he left for North Carolina, Sandra Lee just up and said, “I have decided that I owe more to my very own blood cousin than to the members of the Secret Society. Here are two of my extra Ovaltine tops!”
It took two weeks for my badge to come, but after that I was a spy! No longer an Outsider! I could decode the secret message, and I’d never even taken a sip of Ovaltine.
Life was tolerable, until one afternoon at the end of April.
“Aunt Eveline, I’m home!” I hollered from the foot of the stairs, wondering why she wasn’t bustling around. It was our afternoon to go to the park, but it was cold and cloudy. I thought that maybe we could paint a still life inside. I ran up the stairs, and just before I burst into her room, I heard her cough.
“Aunt Eveline . . .”
She was lying in bed, saying her rosary. Her hair was loose, and from the doorway she looked like a young girl, but when I went over to her bedside, I saw she looked old—really old! Like Aunt Kate when she was preparing for the next life. I wanted to yell, “Get up, Aunt Eveline, it’s too soon to prepare!” Instead, I mumbled something about painting. I felt weak in the knees and sick in the stomach.
“Oh, Addie,” Aunt Eveline said in a funny voice after she’d answered, yes, dear, a still life, now nice. “Addie, I wanted to ask a favor of you.”
“Hunh?” I couldn’t concentrate.
“Addie.”
“I mean, what is it, Aunt Eveline?”
“Well, you’ve heard of double weddings, dear, and this would be— something like that. He’s bound to be gone now, of course.”
“Who, Aunt Eveline?”
“Ben. So I can go to Saint Louis #2. And if, at the same time, we bring Katie—space would hardly be a problem for her at this point—dust to dust, you know—why, with Pasie there, we’d all be together!”
Aunt Eveline was talking about dying! Herself! Aunt Eveline meant Aunt Kate was a little pile of dust now, easy to move. She was talking about mass burial at Saint Louis #2!
“Would you ask Toosie to do this for me?”
“Aunt Eveline! You can’t die! Oh, please Aunt Eveline!”
“Now, Addie, everyone has to pass on, and when the Lord calls, if one hasn’t excellent reasons for delay, one should answer, ‘Yes, Lord, I am ready!’ and now that I see you have grown up so much, Addie, if I could just solve this nagging problem of Kate! Stuck out there! Miles away! In a hole in the ground! If I could just know Kate was settled in—oh, Addie—I’m tired. I see no reason for keeping the Lord waiting.”
“No, Aunt Eveline!” I yelled. “Please!”
“Addie, dear, won’t you do this for me?”
She meant it.
“Please, Addie?”
“Yes, I’ll do anything you say. And I’ll never aggravate you again! But listen, Aunt Eveline, you can’t—”
“Thank you, dear!” Aunt Eveline chatted on about seeing to it Toosie didn’t do anything bohemian, and about what she wanted to wear for the occasion, “the grey scarf, dear, in my top drawer, dear, the one your father gave me, will be quite appropriate with Uncle Ben’s Navy League pin, but not, please, that lavender polka-dotted thing, I’ve always hated it.”
I sat there in shock. There were a million things I wanted to say, like, “I can’t go on without you, Aunt Eveline!” but that sounded melodramatic even though it was true. What would I do without her? I couldn’t say any of it.
Aunt Eveline, between coughs, hadn’t stopped talking. “And, now, dear, you must remember not to go to that place either!”
“What place, Aunt Eveline?” I asked, numb.
“Metairie Cemetery!” she said emphatically. “Just be careful and remember: it’s merely a question of timing!”
Chapter XXIV
It was just as Aunt Eveline wanted, including the Aunt Kate part. They were all together now, Eveline, Kate, and Pasie, part of the crowd at Saint Louis #2 waiting for the Last Day. All we could do was bring flowers to the cemetery and remind the Lord not to call us unless there was a vacancy.
My only trouble was tears. I couldn’t stop crying. I had lost the person I loved best. Sandra Lee cried too, and, for once, she didn’t bother to toss her curls or seem to care that her eyes were puffy and her nose so swollen and red, it wouldn’t have twitched if she’d tried.
I wanted to turn back the clock and prove to Aunt Eveline that I understood the loving-kindness she’d always shown me—and my mother. But besides gratitude for all of that, I desperately wanted her to know I loved her because—well, because she was Aunt Eveline.
When we knelt in Saint Louis #2, I prayed: Please, God, let her know all of that! And give unto her a good seat in Heaven, next to Pasie, and near a window where she can hear when I call!
Nini had come to live at our house during the short time Aunt Eveline was sick, but when the funeral was over, she announced that since Holly was coming for good, she was going to retire and keep house for Holly while she got her education.
“I’ll see you, now, Addie, make no mistake! And I’ll help you all when I can, but, just think, Holly’ll be here all the time! That girl is some smart! She . . .” The only way to stop Nini was to quit listening.
If ever I had wanted to be Jane Whitmore, it was the day after the funeral. I lay in bed that last morning at Three Twenty and shut my eyes tight.
“Add-dee! Ah-de-lah-eed, dear!” Aunt Toosie’s voice bounced cheerfully up the steps.
It wouldn’t work. I opened my eyes.
“Addie!” Aunt Toosie was coming down the hall. “Come get your breakfast, dear!” The door opened. “Addie, come, dear. Your room is ready too, dear. Right next to Sandra Lee’s. And Uncle Henry will move your bed over today. Come, dear.”
I got out of bed, pulled my nightgown over my head and stepped first into my underpants, then into my cotton plaid with the smocked front. Jane Whitmore would never have stepped into a dress; she would have slipped into a dress. She would have . . .
I went next door. I walked by way of the sidewalk instead of through the cherry laurel hedge. My place was set between Uncle Henry and Sandra Lee. They looked at me as I stood in the doorway. Slowly, in a courtly fashion, Uncle Henry rose, dabbing his mouth with his napkin.
“Sit here, Addie.” Sandra Lee touched the chair next to her.
The kitchen smelled of bacon and buttered toast and the slightly burnt starch in Aunt Toosie’s red and white checked cloth. Uncle Henry pulled the chair out for me. Aunt Toosie had cooked crisp bacon and fluffy scrambled eggs. No prunes. No wrinkled prunes floating in brown juice. No ghastly, slimy things to get down. No Aunt Eveline to make me do it. I put my hands over my face and sobbed. Aunt Toosie’s arms came around me and she said, “It’ll be all right, Addie, dear! Just cry. Cry every single tear out, and it’ll be all right.”
The next week someone bought Three Twenty A
udubon Street, and “modernized” it. They enclosed the front screen porch and painted the old house a tacky yellow with fake white shutters on the front. They draped the windows in chintz and organdy. It was as though the poor old house, in a fit of envy, was trying to look like its young neighbor full of ruffles. I was embarrassed for Three Twenty. By the time the work was complete, at least I could take comfort knowing Holly and Tom would soon be home.
Then one morning in June, I heard Pumpkin barking wildly. “Addie! Addie!” Tom hollered as he crashed through Aunt Toosie’s kitchen door. “You’ve got to come see it!”
“See what?” I hollered back from upstairs, thinking how very little that young man had changed since Christmas, whereas I had grown serene and mature and could no longer be mistaken for a boy.
“Wait till you see it!” he said when I stood next to him. Tom seemed to be looking down at me from much farther up than before. His cheekbones were different and so were his eyebrows. Paler freckles covered a straight, short nose, and his smile was . . . I liked his smile.
“Hi,” I said shyly.
“Come on,” he said. I was very conscious of his hand pulling mine.
It was a good thing I’d grown up since Christmas and learned serenity and tolerance, because he never stopped talking the whole way to his house. I didn’t hear exactly what he was saying, because I was intent on a squeak in every tenth word or so, as though he needed oiling.
“There!” he said, finally throwing open Uncle Malvern’s door. Uncle Malvern was seated on top of his invention, which was much more complicated than before, and now grew from the floor almost to the ceiling. It was turned on and gave the impression of forward motion, because the head of Tom’s old rocking horse was stuck at one end and the tail at the other.
“It’s a modern Trojan horse!” cried Uncle Malvern from near the ceiling.
“It’s not so bad, is it?” Tom whispered to me. “Poor guy! Say something nice to him.”
“It’s very nice, Uncle Malvern,” I said.
“You bet!” Uncle Malvern replied. “Giddy yap!”
“Addie,” Tom said, suddenly and without a squeak, “you’re so pretty! But then, you always were.”
“Oh,” I said. “Uh. Urn.”
It wasn’t until after I went to bed that night that I thought up an answer: “It is the inner, spiritual self, Tom, that has grown serene and lovely, shining through. It is that you perceive.”
“It is all of you, inside and out!” Tom said, his voice breaking with emotion.
I blushed becomingly and answered, “I am more than pleased, Tom, to glimpse in you, too, signs of maturation, such as your more compassionate treatment of your uncle, and—and, I like what your mouth does when you smile.”
It was just as well I hadn’t said it; best to let him see for himself, rather than tell him, how modest and mature I’d become.
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A LONG DAY IN NOVEMBER by Ernest Gaines. Told from the perspective of a six-year old boy, this unforgettable story leads the reader through an eventful day on a Southern sugarcane plantation in the 1940s.
HAPPY ENDINGS ARE ALL ALIKE by Sandra Scoppetone. At a time when girls were only allowed to date boys, Jaret and Peggy know they had to keep their love a secret.
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WRITTEN IN THE STARS: Early Stories by Lois Duncan. From the master of thrillers and the supernatural comes a collection of her earliest stories that have never been published before in book form.
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Secret Lives Page 14
