For years, she had been the better half of Buster and Mae, the stars of the Whitesboro High School Royalty Revue. One day, she would no longer be Mae Compton. She would become Mrs. Buster Meade. It had all been decided forever. Actually, it was never decided. It simply was.
At the beginning of summer, Buster’s letters had been poetic, urgently and plaintively declaring his love with words he never used when they talked. Mae was the woman of his dreams. The light of his life. His princess. He could not breathe without her. Without her he was only half a man. She had not known he had it in him.
He wrote to her every day, faithfully, despite working long hours six days a week. He signed his letters, “Please come home. Your loving Buster Bear.” But the plea accompanying Buster’s sign-off eventually bled into the preceding paragraphs. “Must you stay in Shreveport, my love, my darling? Wouldn’t it be better for us to be together? Think about it, will you?”
As more weeks went by, Buster lost all patience with indulging Mae’s whim. His letters began and ended with piteous wheedling or angry browbeating, depending—Mae suspected—on how his day had gone. The dried ink of his tight, angular pen spun off the page in brittle, accusing strands that made her feel as guilty as sin and choked the joy out of her afternoons. By the time summer’s heat began to slack off, so had Mae’s interest in what her fiancé had written. Some days, she found herself refolding his letter before she had finished reading it. Stuffing it back into the envelope without bothering to take care for the corners.
Mae had not gone home since Sissy’s wedding, an unkindness that made her feel like a heel and gutted the devoted platitudes she penned in her own letters. Everything she had been doing—all the fun she had not written about—made her feel even worse. Lies of omission piled up between Buster and her in a big, stinking heap. She had not written to her fiancé about flying in an airplane on the Fourth of July, or dancing with a black man, or drinking gin until she was tipsy. Nor did she mention any of these adventures in their brief Sunday afternoon telephone calls.
Mae had not written a single word about Registration Day and the excitement of six hundred bright and privileged scholars bringing their glory to the Centenary campus. She had not told Buster about her new friends, Miriam and Micah Landau. Buster would have been jealous, and he would have told Sissy, making sure she felt as jilted as he. Mae did not recount the thrills of the Saturday football games he refused to attend. She left that to her father, who had managed to make it to two home games, even though he was much busier than Buster.
Mae did not write and tell Buster about the weekend the Landau family invited her to go with them to watch Micah run against the Aggies at Texas A&M. Miriam’s father, who had hardly said a word during the drive to Texas, hooted and hollered until he was hoarse. Even Mrs. Landau, who was the picture of decorum, stood up and whooped when Micah scored a touchdown. After the game, they ate supper at a fancy restaurant, and everyone drank red wine with the meal, even Mae, as if it were nothing at all.
“I thought alcohol was illegal,” Mae whispered to Miriam after the waiter poured her a glass the color of rubies.
“Daddy brought it. No one cares if you bring your own.”
They spent the night in the modern LaSalle Hotel in Bryan, and Mae and Miriam shared a room and stayed up late talking about everything they loved and hated about Centenary. On Sunday morning, they ate breakfast in the hotel’s sunny dining room before driving back to Shreveport, and for the first time in Mae’s memory, she missed church when she was as fit as a fiddle.
But she did not write to Buster about any of it, and eventually she realized she was only writing the same thing over and over again—a paragraph or two.
“Miss you so.”
“Life is so dull without you.”
“Wish you were here.”
While she penned, “Wish you were here,” Mae had the sudden and unsettling thought that she most certainly did not wish for Buster to come to Shreveport, where he could lay his heavy, protective arm across her shoulders and put a stop to all her running around.
Mae surprised herself one day when she passed the Centenary office—where the assistants mimeographed copies of lessons for the students—and the thought occurred to her that she could mimeograph a letter and save herself a week’s worth of coming up with something to say.
Buster became irritable during their brief Sunday afternoon long-distance telephone calls. Mae always did the calling—it was she who was away—and she paid Aunt Vida from her allowance every month when the bill came. Most Sundays Mae spent more time waiting for the operator to set up the circuit to Whitesboro than actually talking to Buster. When they finally were connected, he gave clipped, one-word responses that made him sound even farther away than the scratchy connection.
“Don’t you want to talk?” Mae asked.
“It’s long distance, Mae. It costs a fortune. Wouldn’t cost a dime for you to come home.”
“Try and be patient, B-Bear, it’s only a couple of weeks ‘til I’m home for Thanksgiving.”
“Well, I’ll see you then, I guess.”
“I love you.”
“Most fellas wouldn’t put up with this, Mae. I hope you know that.”
“We agreed about me coming to school.”
“No, I never agreed.”
Mae hesitated.
“I’ll see you in a couple of weeks,” Buster said. “Bye.”
“Bye, honey,” Mae said, but he had already hung up.
Buster did not write any letters after that, and Mae did not try to call the following Sunday.
She was as nervous as a cat the afternoon before Thanksgiving when the train pulled into the tiny Whitesboro depot, and she saw Buster standing beside her father. Buster wore dark slacks, a gray vest, and shirtsleeves. He looked grown up. And thin.
Her father wore a suit and tie. He took her valise and hugged her tightly as soon as her foot touched the platform, smelling—as he always did—of Aqua Velva. “Got somebody here who wants to see you,” Her daddy stepped aside. “Do you know this guy?”
Mae looked up at Buster and smiled sheepishly.
“You sure are a sight for sore eyes, Mae Pearl Compton,” Buster said. He opened his arms. “Come here, you.”
“I’m sorry, honey,” she whispered when she hugged him because he was crying.
“Maypearl!” cried Vic when Mae opened the screen door into the kitchen, “It’s been for-ever!“ Mae’s younger sister, Victoria, had run Mae’s first and middle names into a single word ever since she could talk.
“Look at you! We’re gonna have to put a brick on your head.”
“I’m the tallest girl on the basketball team now,” Vic said proudly.
“Oh my.”
“I like it. I want to be tall. And I’ll marry me a big tall man, and we’ll have a passel of tall kids. I like tall people!”
Mae laughed. “Well, I don’t guess I can call you Little Bit anymore.
“Sure you can.”
“All right, honey. Where’s Mama?”
“She’s out back cutting collards. She wanted to get a frost on them, but Daddy says it’s not gonna get cold enough.”
“Let me get out of these travel clothes, and I’ll help.” Mae squeezed her sister. “It’s so good to see you. My goodness, it’s nice to be home.”
Mae went to her room by way of the living room, where Buster and her father had settled in to read the newspaper. Her daddy looked up from the paper and said, “Sure feels good having my college coed home.”
Mae bent and kissed him on the cheek. “I love you, Daddy.”
Buster put down his newspaper and winked at her. He sprawled on the couch, as he had always done. Mae’s house was his home away from home and seeing him here with her family felt as comfortable and right as slipping her feet into a pair of well-worn shoes. Everything fit. Everything made sense. And there weren’t any questions looking for answers.
Buster hung around until Mae was finished hel
ping her mother. Then the two of them went for a drive in his truck. It had been five months, but when she climbed in and sat close to him on the bench seat, it seemed as if she hadn’t been gone at all. The truck smelled of engine oil and vinyl and Buster. Most of all it smelled like the past and the future.
Buster drove through Whitesboro and stopped in front of a shotgun cottage at the edge of town. The narrow, deep house was set back from the street, and in the waning light Mae could see that it was in good repair and freshly painted. A blue flower box was attached below the single window beside the front door. The yard was clipped and free of rubbish.
“Fella at work owns the place,” said Buster, “but he’s willing to sell. Says it’s been hard to keep it rented since the Crash. Wanna have a look?”
“Okay.”
Buster came around and opened her door. He held her hand as they walked up the sidewalk and climbed the two steps to the front porch. He opened the door, and they walked into the living room. It was plain and square. Buster walked across the room to another doorway, his dress shoes tapping in the hollow space, and Mae walked past him into a second room just like the first. She did not stop but went directly through the third doorway, which led to a kitchen the same size as the other two rooms.
On the back wall was a wide farm sink—its white enamel lightly stained—set in a tiled counter. An electric icebox hummed in the quiet of the empty house. Mae walked across the room and looked out the window over the sink. Autumn had been dry, and the unfenced backyard was mostly bare dirt, with patches of brown grass here and there. She turned around and looked at the open door to a bathroom that had been sectioned off from the kitchen. She could see a sink, a toilet, and a claw-footed bathtub.
“It’s not the Taj Mahal,” Buster said, “but it’s not bad. The company’s already given me a raise, and the boss says I ought not to have any trouble making foreman if I keep my nose clean.”
“Your friend has taken really good care of it.”
“Well, like I said, it’s no mansion, but I’ve saved enough money to buy it.”
“Gosh, honey.” Mae looked around. “Wow.”
Buster walked across the kitchen and stood beside her at the sink. They both looked out the window. “I can picture us washing the dishes together,” he said. “Well, you wash, and I’ll dry. Think you could be happy here for a while, at least until we can afford something bigger? Maybe we can build our own house in a couple of years. We could buy a few acres out in the country, and you could design our dream house.” He squeezed Mae. “What do you think?”
“It’s not that I don’t like it. It’s just that maybe we should wait until I get out of school. It’s such a long time, and who knows what we can afford by then.”
“About that. It’s too long, Mae. Four years is just too long.” Buster folded his arms across his chest.
Mae bumped against him playfully. “It’s not so long when you think about our whole lives.”
“Well, it’s too long for me.”
Mae could see that no amount of wheedling would move him. She was to come home, marry him, and get on with it. That was all there was to it. “Let me finish out the school year,” she said. “Daddy’s already paid for it.”
“Then you’ll come home?”
“I’ll come home when school’s out.” Mae did not say aloud the rest of the sentence that ran through her mind, “. . . for the summer anyway.”
“Okay.” Buster unfolded his arms and pulled her close. “Now we’re getting somewhere.” He lifted her face and kissed her. They necked for a little while, then Mae pulled back.
“I better get home. Mama will be wondering.”
“She knows you’re with me.”
“Yes, but still.” Mae backed up, away from his reaching arms. “I need to help her finish getting the food ready. I still think you should wait on this house.”
“Just leave that to me, babe. And don’t worry about anything. I’ll take good care of us.”
It was late that evening when Buster finally drove home, and Mae knew he would be back early the next morning to see her. To sit at the kitchen table and watch her fry bacon and three eggs sunny-side-up in the grease. To watch her pull two slices of crisped bread from the toaster and smooth butter on them. To have her set the plate of food in front of him and pour his coffee, as if she were already his wife.
Mae walked into the kitchen after kissing Buster goodnight on the front porch and found her mother sitting at the Formica table drinking her Ceylon tea. “Have some tea, honey?” she said.
“Yes’m. Don’t get up. I’ll fire the kettle.” Mae made her tea and poured a little more scalding water into her mother’s cup. Her mother bobbed the infuser in the hot water to get the last of the flavor. “Buster took me to a house he wants to buy. For us.”
“He told your daddy and me about it.”
“It’s a little soon. I’m just starting school.”
“He won’t wait for you to graduate, Mae. You know that.”
“I got him to agree to wait until summer. I’m really enjoying Centenary, and I don’t want to leave. I’ve made some friends, and I like most of my classes. Some of the classes are hard. Really hard. One class is just a bunch of facts and figures and formulations about the cotton business. I’m bored to tears in there, really. But I like Centenary, and I like Shreveport. A lot.”
“Listening to you makes me wonder if you can be happy in Whitesboro.”
“I think about that sometimes too.” The truth was that Mae thought about it constantly. What she would really like to do is get a job, maybe a secretarial position, and work in one of the tall buildings in downtown Shreveport. For the first time in her life, the dream of being on her own seemed to be within reach.
“You need to know something,” her mother said. “We haven’t said anything to Vic, so you’re going to have to keep it to yourself.”
“What is it?”
“Your daddy’s being promoted.”
“Oh, Mama, that’s wonderful!”
“Well, yes, it is. We’re very happy, but it means a move. He’s going to Fort Worth after Christmas to find us a house, and Vic and I will move there when school lets out in May. This house,” her mother looked around the kitchen, “is the only home your sister has known.”
“She’ll be happy. Vic loves an adventure.”
“You’re right. I’m not worried about her.”
After a moment Mae said, “I can’t imagine living in Whitesboro without y’all around.”
“No, daughter, I didn’t think you could.”
Chapter Thirty-Three
A week after Thanksgiving, on a Friday afternoon, Mae showed up at the dry cleaners for the first time in a fortnight. Jax said hello and asked if she had a good Thanksgiving as she pulled out her textbook and thumbed through the pages.
“Sure, it was fine,” she said.
“That’s nice.”
Mae did not look up again to invite conversation.
Jax hung around, trying to look busy. The afternoon’s tickets were on a shelf under the big cash register, so he picked them up and began sorting through them. He leaned against the counter while he looked through the slips of paper, pretending to tally the afternoon’s business in his head. He happened to glance up and see Cargie Barre through the half-open door to the little office, where she holed up all the time like a troll in a cave. She stared at him as if she had caught him dead to rights with his hand in the till. He glared back, but Cargie did not even have the good sense to look away.
“What?” he mouthed.
Cargie got up from her desk and came out of the office, never breaking eye contact with him. She parked herself in front of him and stuck out her hand, palm up. Cargie had recently given birth and returned to her Olive Oylness. She was taller than Jax by a couple of inches, and even more so with him slouched against the counter. He stood up straight and glanced toward Mae to see if she was watching, but she was focused on her studies. Mr. Cole was in
the cleaning hall.
Jax had the urge to punch Cargie Barre right in that homely puss of hers, she was so damned uppity. She and Bill Cole carried on as if neither of them realized she was only a bookkeeper and colored to boot. She had a superior air about her too, like she thought she was better than Jax. He glanced at Mae again, who had looked up and was watching the face-off. Watching Cargie with her outstretched palm. Looking at the wrinkled tickets in Jax’s clenched fist. Jax stuck out the tickets, just a little bit, so Cargie had to reach for them. She snatched them and went back into the little office and shut the door behind her. Jax turned to Mae and smiled. But she had already put her attention on her textbook again.
Before Mr. Cole closed up and drove Mae home, Jax nonchalantly mentioned he was flying down to Baton Rough the following day.
“With Ned?” Mae asked.
“No, I’m flying on my own these days—a nifty little red coupe. Say, maybe you’d like to ride along and see the Louisiana State campus.”
A pause.
“That is, if your Saturday plans are flexible. It’s a real pretty flight.”
“Sure,” she said finally. “Why not?”
“Pick you up at nine?”
“Okay.”
Jax grabbed his hat and said goodbye before Mae had a chance to think about it and change her mind.
Jax dreaded facing Vida Cole again, so he was thrilled when Mae came out the front door the minute he pulled to the curb. He jumped out of the Sixteen and opened the door for her.
“Let’s go,” she said.
“Sure thing.”
He wasted no time pulling away and driving to the airfield, where the Monoprep sat in front of the hangar like a proud winter cardinal, Jax having wrestled it out early that morning before he picked Mae up.
“It’s so pretty,” she said.
“She’s a dream to fly. You’ll love her.”
The morning was chilly, and Jax opened the heater valve as soon as the engine had warmed.
“Oh my,” Mae said. “That’s nice.”
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