Miss Julia Speaks Her Mind

by Ann B. Ross

  “Seems to me you’ve already thought it out pretty well. Let’s hope Coleman can find his mother, and she can make better arrangements. If she can’t”—he shrugged his shoulders—“well, you’re doing the only decent thing you can do. I hate to see any child get put into the system. But, Julia, be careful, people don’t like too much flaunting. You may not care what they say about W.L., or you, but they could hurt that little boy out there.”

  “Just let them try,” I said, wringing my handkerchief until it was stretched out on the bias. “If I take that child under my wing, they’ll have to deal with me first!”

  “Well, I sure wouldn’t want to tangle with you,” Sam said. Then, rising from his chair, he added, “Unless it was on my terms.”

  I NEVER SPENT such a miserable night as I did the first night that child was in my house. I was so edgy and shaky that I couldn’t bring myself to do anything for him.

  “Lillian,” I said, “would you please stay a little longer and get that child to bed for me? I just don’t think I can touch him or anything that belongs to him.”

  “You better get over that,” she told me. “If you gonna do like you said and put on a good show, you got to make out like you glad to have him. And that means takin’ care of that baby.”

  “I know it. I know it. You don’t have to tell me. I declare, my mind is so jumbled, all I can think of is how bad that child needs a haircut. Now, with all I have to worry about, you’d think something besides a shaggy head of hair would be weighing on my mind.” Appearances are important, I’ve always thought, but to tell the truth, it was my appearance with that child in tow that was bothering me.

  “Huh,” she said, heading back to the kitchen, where the boy was waiting. “Jus’ get him one, and that be it. Another worry’ll pop up to take its place.”

  There were plenty of worries waiting in line, I thought, as I heard the two of them go up the stairs. Lillian put fresh sheets on the bed in the room across the hall from mine, tucked the child in along with his paper sack, and, before leaving for her own house, told me to go to bed and quit worrying.

  Easy to say, for it was the worst night of my life, and I’m including the night I found Wesley Lloyd draped over his steering wheel, his eyes and mouth wide open as if he’d had the surprise of his life.

  I’d been sleeping the sleep of the just when I heard his car pull in the driveway about midnight, no different from any other Thursday night for ten years or more. Wesley Lloyd believed in routine, and his never changed from sunup to sundown. Except on Thursdays, when I thought he worked late to prepare for the Friday morning meetings in the boardroom of the Springer Bank and Trust. I’d turned over and waited to hear the car door slam, the jingle of his keys, and his heels clicking on the cement walk. But I’d heard nothing.

  After some little while of lying there wondering what was keeping him, I’d put on a robe and gone downstairs to see about him. I tell you, when Wesley Lloyd’s routine changed, it had to be for a good reason. And it was, because he was dead as a doornail. Right in our driveway. In his new Buick Park Avenue. Steel gray with…but I’ve already told that.

  It was awful and I never wanted to go through another experience like it. I didn’t intend to, either, since I didn’t plan to marry or bury another husband. Well, the burying part hadn’t been so hard, what with the way this town and my church comfort the bereaved. They came with piles of food and flowers and donations to my favorite charity, and somebody sat with me every minute of the day ready to fulfill my every wish. I felt like the star of Wesley Lloyd’s funeral. Queen for a day or two, until they figured it was time for me to manage on my own. And I’d done that with Lillian’s help, and Binkie’s. Sam’s, too. In fact, it’d been so easy that I didn’t know why in the world a widow woman would ever remarry. You might find out what kind of man you were yoked to after it was too late to do anything about it, like I had.

  Not that I’d’ve known what to do if I’d known what Wesley Lloyd was up to before he passed on. But all through that long night as I stared in the dark on my lonely bed, thinking about that child across the hall, I kept telling myself I’d have done something.

  BUT YOU HAVE to know about something before you can do anything about it. And I didn’t know a blessed thing until the results of it showed up on my doorstep. Blindest woman in North Carolina. Believed everything anybody’d ever told me, especially if it was a man doing the telling. That’s the way I was raised, Southern and Presbyterian. But no, I take that back. I only believed it was gospel truth if it came from Larry T. Ledbetter, my preacher, or Sam Murdoch, my lawyer, or Wesley Lloyd Springer, the man I’d been married to for forty-four years.

  I’d been proud of that. Proud that I was married to a man of means and position, one of the few men left in the state who owned his own bank, and solid as a rock, too. Both him and the bank. People trusted him with their money and, I gave him credit, their money was always safe in the Springer Bank and Trust.

  We had a good marriage. I thought. He’d found me at my papa’s home down in South Carolina, when he was looking at some new ways of running the bank his daddy had left him. Wesley Lloyd was a progressive thinker even then. He was a churchgoer, too, and that’s where I met him—after Sunday services at my home church. He was always in church whenever Sunday rolled around, didn’t matter where he was or what he was doing. “Sunday’s the Lord’s day, Julia,” he told me. “And the Lord’s house is where we ought to be on it.” So there he was, shaking hands with the preacher, and then with me, as soon as the benediction and the seven-fold amen was over that Sunday so many years ago.

  I was the oldest girl in the family, the last one left. My two sisters had already married, and everybody figured I’d be a spinster the rest of my life. Twenty-three years old, unmarried, and no prospects. Sounds pitiful today, doesn’t it? Why in the world I didn’t think of going out on my own and making a life for myself, I don’t know. But that was another small town, choked to the gills with the traditions of the past. I’d gone a while to the teacher’s college at Winthrop, but when Papa needed help at home, guess who was picked? When Papa said, “Jump,” I was always the first one in the air. I knew he’d have preferred one of my sisters—have you ever noticed how the one who wants to please never does?—but he was stuck with me. Until Wesley Lloyd Springer showed up.

  Sounds like a love story, doesn’t it? Well, it wasn’t much of one, but I was grateful for it. Wesley Lloyd never was one for romance and sentiment and all the things you read about. He was a businessman, knew what he wanted and how to get it. That’s the way he proposed to me. Everybody thought it was a whirlwind romance because it all came about so fast. But Wesley Lloyd, being some years older than me, always had his head on his shoulders.

  “I need a wife of a certain character and background,” he’d said to me. We were sitting in the front parlor of Papa’s house, and I was studying the half-carat solitaire in its blue velvet box that he’d handed to me. “I have a position to maintain,” he went on as he pulled his gold watch from his vest and glanced at it. That was a habit that never left him. Time is money, he always said. “And I need a wife who’ll keep my house and be a helpmate in my town. I’m not what some would call wealthy, but you’ll never want for anything.”

  I took the ring out of the box and turned it round and round. Then I tried it on, and the fact that it fit seemed a sign to me. I was always on the lookout for signs so I’d know the right things to do. I accepted Wesley Lloyd’s proposal without any of the bells and music I’d heard at the picture show on Saturday afternoons. And I didn’t miss it. My sisters had married with stars in their eyes, and after only a few years their eyes had dimmed with the despair of niggling over every penny. I prided myself on making my choice based on sensible grounds and figured, on the basis of our mutual levelheadedness, that Wesley Lloyd and I made a good match. I wanted my own household with a man who could afford it, and I got exactly that.

  He brought me to this house forty-four years
ago, and I guess I’ll live here till I die. But I’ll be blamed if I’ll die hanging over the steering wheel of a Buick Park Avenue. The house was new then. Brick, two stories with a front veranda that provided an unhampered view of all the comings and goings at the First Presbyterian Church. Only a couple of blocks from Main Street, so I’ve been situated in the middle of everything. Wesley Lloyd said he built the house for his bride, and I remember being so pleased and proud. It took a while for me to realize he’d built it before he ever met me. But that was Wesley Lloyd for you, always thinking ahead, always prepared. I thought.

  I fit into this town like I’d been born to it. Wesley Lloyd Springer’s wife had a built-in place, and I slid into it like butter on a biscuit. I learned right quick that everybody in Abbotsville had the same respect and high esteem for Wesley Lloyd that I had. It didn’t matter that other men towered over him or that they had deeper voices and stronger muscles. When Wesley Lloyd studied a loan application, there wasn’t a bigger man in town. People listened to him and heeded his advice, and not just in his office at the bank. Town commissioners consulted him, lawyers telephoned him, businessmen pleaded with him, and the First Presbyterian Church of Abbotsville didn’t spend a penny without his approval. He was a leader of men, and everybody knew it.

  And, oh, I’d been so proud of who I was. Julia DeWitt Springer. Wesley Lloyd Springer’s wife.

  Dumbest woman in town.

  CHAPTER SIX

  IT’S A WONDER I slept a wink that night. How could I with my husband’s bastard child in my guest room right across the hall? I’d never been so torn up in my life. The idea of Wesley Lloyd betraying me, breaking his vows, living a life of hypocrisy, fornicating not once but, I now realized, every Thursday night for years upon years.

  And who knew if the Puckett woman was the first, or even the only, one? My whole life, everything I’d relied on and believed in, was like dust under my feet. I told myself that there was not one thing I could do about the past, that I had to clear the fog I’d been living in and face everything clear-eyed and levelheaded. I had to call a spade a spade and let the chips fall.

  When daylight finally came, I got out of bed with my mind made up and my resolve thoroughly firmed.

  There was one thing I could and would do—flatly refuse to sugarcoat or whitewash what that man had done to me. Wesley Lloyd had been a hypocrite of the first order, but there was no reason for me to be. A whited sepulchre was what he’d been, clean on the outside but rotten to the core. Oh, I was mad at him, mad at what he’d done to me and mad that he didn’t have to live with the disgrace. During that long night, I had come to an understanding of how easy it would be to wring a husband’s neck.

  Now if you think those boiling feelings came from love and jealousy, you’d be wrong. I always thought I loved Wesley Lloyd; after all, I was married to him, wasn’t I? But I didn’t give a lick about that. I raged at him, not out of love or because of his betrayal of the marriage bed, but because he’d demanded such a high level of conduct from me, lecturing, criticizing, and quoting Scripture at me, and all the while he was jumping weekly into another woman’s bed.

  Don’t get me wrong; there was no other bed I wanted to jump into, Lord, no. Too old for it, for one thing. But it was the principle of the thing.

  I moved from ranting and raving at him to cringing in humiliation at what the town was going to do with this juicy item. It was going to take everything I had to hold my head up and ignore their smirking faces. I just wished Wesley Lloyd could be there to see how strong I was going to be. I’d show him a thing or two about strength of character. After all, I was already doing things he’d never credited me with the ability to do. Like keeping records. And writing checks. And balancing my checkbook.

  Binkie Enloe, at that first meeting I’d had with her, could hardly believe how Wesley Lloyd had protected me from the harsh realities. I was sitting there in her law office in my gray crepe, my Red Cross shoes, white because Labor Day was still a while away, clutching my pocketbook in my lap while Binkie explained the facts of finance to me. She’d looked at me over the gold-rimmed glasses she used only for close work and said, “Miss Julia, I didn’t know there was a woman in the world who didn’t know how to write a check.” “Yes,” I’d said with a prideful smile, “Mr. Springer always took good care of me.” Binkie blew out a breath, then commenced to show me how to write checks and keep records, and it was ever so easy. I don’t know why Wesley Lloyd thought I didn’t have a head for figures.

  BY SIX-THIRTY that morning I was dressed and ready to march downtown to Binkie’s office. It was going to be a long wait until eight when she was usually behind her desk. I started downstairs and found the boy sitting on the stairs, dressed in the same chintzy clothes he’d had on the day before, including the clip-on bow tie. I hadn’t heard a peep out of him all through that long night, now here he was, up and dressed, with his suitcase and Winn-Dixie grocery sack beside him.

  I stood two steps above him and looked him over as he hunched against the wall. He slid the grocery sack closer to clear the stair, and glanced quickly up at me. The sack looked flat and half empty, rolled down the way he had it, but he seemed to like having it close by. I’d heard about little boys’ treasures, so I didn’t want to think what might be in it.

  “Up pretty early, aren’t you?” I asked. What do you say to a nine-year-old first thing in the morning?

  “Is my mama coming back today?” he asked.

  I took a deep breath, not knowing exactly how to answer him. But the truth is always the best. “Not likely,” I said. “Now come on to the kitchen. Lillian’ll be here soon and we’ll have breakfast. Leave your things here.”

  He followed me down the stairs and into the kitchen, scrunching his shoulders so that he reminded me of a little old man. He looked like Wesley Lloyd, but he didn’t act like him. Wesley Lloyd had not been a tall man, but he stood as straight as a poker and walked with purpose, shoulders back and heels clicking.

  I pointed Little Lloyd to a chair while I started the coffee. The day looked to be a fine one, sun shining, birds singing in the backyard, impatiens heavy-headed with a sprinkling of dew. The world was going on as if the earth hadn’t shifted under my feet since I’d stood at that same window yesterday morning.

  I poured two cups of coffee and set one before the boy. He looked quickly up at me and then down again. Lillian needed to get out the Windex and clean those glasses. I shoved the cream and sugar beside his cup and said, “Fix it the way you like it.”

  He poured cream to the top of the cup and stirred in two spoonfuls of sugar. Leaning over, he tasted the coffee with the cup still in the saucer, screwed up his face, and put in two more spoonfuls. Not much of a coffee drinker, I thought as I sat down across from him and occupied myself with my own cup.

  I couldn’t look at him except out of the corner of my eye and then I realized he was watching me the same way. We had little to say to each other, and I wished I’d turned the radio on while I’d been up. I racked my brain to come up with something to talk about, believing that ease of conversation is the mark of a cultured person.

  I put down my cup and said, “Have you had a movement since you’ve been here?”

  Coffee sloshed over into his saucer. “Ma’am?”

  “Your bowels. Have they moved yet?”

  His eyes veered wildly behind his glasses as he looked from one side of the kitchen to another. “Yessum. A little.”

  “Well, you need to have a good one today. I’ve always found that you can handle problems better if you have regular movements on a daily basis. I have some Ex-Lax if you need it.”

  “No’m, I don’t need it.”

  He kept his head down over his coffee, and that was the end of the conversation. I gave up trying to draw him out. A little later he ventured to ask where Deputy Bates was. I told him Deputy Bates worked nights and would be home in a little while to go to bed, so we couldn’t be running and jumping and making a lot of noise. That seem
ed to satisfy him, but it was a relief when Lillian came in the back door. She put the Abbotsville Press on the table, then looked sternly at me.

  “You givin’ that chile coffee?”

  “And why not? He could use a little perking up.”

  She shook her head, then began pulling out bacon and eggs. The boy turned out to be a picky eater, which I’d noticed the night before at supper. He tried everything without complaining, but it was plain that he didn’t have much appetite. I made a mental note to get him a tonic from the drugstore. And a haircut at Buddy’s.

  At seven-forty-five, I stood before the hall mirror and adjusted my hat. Then, taking my pocketbook, I left the house for Binkie’s office. I got to the sidewalk, then turned back. Might as well face the music from the start.

  “Little Lloyd!” I called from the front door. “I want you to go with me.”

  He came, carrying his grocery sack, but he looked more like he was headed for a dentist’s office than a lawyer’s. Miserable looking, if you want my opinion, but it wasn’t my fault.

  “You want to leave that sack here?” I asked, thinking he’d look a lot less trashy without it.

  “No’m.” He clutched it to his chest, so I rolled my eyes and started off again.

  “Stay right with me, now,” I said. “We’ve got business downtown.”

  He walked by my side, but a half step behind, those shoulders hunched over so bad that I was beginning to worry about his posture as a grown man. You can freeze in unattractive ways, you know.

  It was too early to meet anybody on the sidewalk, but several people in cars waved to me. I could see them adjust their rearview mirrors to get a better look as they passed.