Now, there was a novel idea. Wait a minute, Will, she wanted to turn around and holler, as if he could hear her across three-and-a-half states. I didn’t do this alone. If, in my marrying Jesse, his being black was the frosting on the cake, why the hell did he marry me? Huh? Answer that, Mr. Know-It-All, Mr. Five-Cent Psychiatrist. Why’d he hitch up with Miss Scarlett?
I don’t have time to work this out, she thought then. Just passed Winnsboro. Before much longer, I’ll be in West Cypress.
Why did people marry, anyway? If it weren’t race that was standing between them, there were always a million other things, though granted, race was a big one. But what about religion, politics, preference for bedroom temperature, windows open or closed, peanut butter crunchy or smooth, left or right side, faster, slower, or not at all? Sometimes she thought it was a miracle that two people stayed in the same room for more than five minutes without shooting each other, much less signing on for life.
Well, she had, hadn’t she? But she hadn’t meant it. Will was right. Probably right.
She flipped an imaginary coin in the air then, as she often did, to see not which way it landed, but how she felt about it.
Heads, she’d go back to Jesse. Well, sure, they could work it out. They could both try really hard. They could make more compromises.
Tails. She flipped again. Tails. The third time, too. Whereupon, she exhaled a sigh of relief. It was a little scary. But, oh Lord, how good it would feel to be free.
Well, she was going to be free anyway, wasn’t she, in Europe for at least six months? And Jesse had been pissing in the wind when he said he was coming over after Christmas. He wasn’t going anywhere. He was going to rot up there in Skytop.
How quick you are to feel angry at him again, Emma. Can’t you remember any of the good times? Can’t you give the man a break?
As she drove the last few miles into West Cypress, she did. She looked out at the scenery she’d passed a million times as a girl and recalled loving times with Jesse, her husband, the man whom nobody, nobody in this, her hometown, knew about.
Soon she’d be driving past her Aunt Janey’s house, where Aunt Janey still lived with her son Cooter. Emma remembered how she and Jesse used to lie in bed, her telling stories about Cooter and his made-up religion, their almost dying laughing.
She remembered the time she and Jesse had taken a picnic to the amphitheater at Stanford to lie on the grass and listen to the Preservation Hall Band.
She remembered that flight from the Silver Dollar Saloon to Yosemite, their honeymoon suite at the Awahnee.
She remembered the first time they ever made love.
She remembered her eyes in that painting on Skytop’s wall.
She remembered Jesse smacking her in the head with the door of that restaurant in Los Gatos and carrying her up the stairs.
Ah, Miss Scarlett, she thought then. What if after you decide that you don’t want him, you double back and change your mind? And what if he doesn’t give a damn?
But in her heart of hearts she knew it was over. All over but the shouting. Will was right. It was time to move on, to drop the Tree from her procession of names and get back to being Emma Fine, Emma Whatsit.
* * *
Rosalie was standing out in the yard when Emma drove up.
“Goodness gracious, sakes alive, you almost scared me to death,” she said. “What on earth are you doing here?”
“I thought I’d come visit for a few days. Is that okay?”
“Okay? Why, it’s wonderful!” Rosalie’s heart was palpitating. “Did you just drive here all the way from California?”
“Well, I sort of moseyed my way here. I took my time.”
But didn’t I just talk with you three or four days ago? Rosalie thought, and then she bit her tongue. Whatever, Emma was here, it didn’t matter. “Here, let me help you carry your things in.”
“No, that’s all right. Let’s leave them where they are for a while.” Emma glanced around the front yard. “It always looks so pretty. I wish I had your green thumb.”
“It just takes patience,” Rosalie said, smiling, pleased with the compliment, breathing a little easier. Oh, how she always wanted to see Emma, lived for it, always had, but somehow things never seemed to go right. That, of all the sadnesses she’d known, was the biggest one in her life. “Putting things in the dirt and letting them grow is all I do. Of course, if I don’t like what they’re doing, I pull them up, try another spot.”
“Did you plant that tree?” Emma pointed to the middle of the yard, to a big pin oak.
“I did. I planted it the week we moved in here. That was over ten years ago. It’s doing well, isn’t it?”
“I don’t remember it being that tall.”
“Well, it wasn’t.” Rosalie laughed. “I mean it’s grown. Come on around back. I’ll show you my winter garden.”
But just then Jake came bustling out the side door.
“I thought you were napping,” Rosalie cried, “or I would have called you.”
“Daddy!” Emma threw her arms around him.
“Emma!”
She whispered into his ear, “I tried to call, but…”
He just nodded. He’d worried. He’d cried himself to sleep after Rosalie was snoring, torturing himself with his transgressions. Then, finally, Rosalie said Emma had called, and he’d breathed easier. And now she was here. She’d come home. He stepped back and looked into her face. She winked at him, and he dissolved into tears. He thought his heart would burst.
“Why, Jake,” Rosalie said, laughing a little, for when had she ever seen such emotion? “You’re getting to be just like me, a foolish old woman.”
“Yes,” he cried then, laughing at the same time, “I guess I am.” They went on a tour of the garden, Jake trailing a little behind, Rosalie pointing out her compost heap, the winter squash, the cabbages, the turnips, the remains of her grapevines.
“I made 22 pints of jam,” she said. “I thought about making some wine.”
“Why, goodness!” Emma said, teasing, pretending to be shocked. “Wine!”
Rosalie laughed. “You can never tell what mischief a woman is going to get into in her old age. I was reading in one of those Sunset gardening books you sent me from California, and it didn’t seem like it would be so hard.” And then she waited, she waited for Emma to tell her that she didn’t know what she was doing, but Emma didn’t.
Instead, as if she’d been rehearsing for it earlier, just a little while ago as she’d approached West Cypress trying to remember the good times with Jesse, Emma remembered an even earlier good time.
“Do you recall when you used to teach in that three-room country school?”
“In Mayhew.”
“Yes, and when I was little, before I started school, you used to take me with you sometimes?”
Rosalie nodded. Of course she remembered. She remembered every second of those golden days, Emma’s early childhood.
“And out behind the school there were those plum trees. At lunch I’d go out with the big kids and we’d pick plums and eat until we were sick? And you kept saying we ought to save some for jelly, but we never left a one?”
“The school pageant that once?” Rosalie was warming to her own memories of that time. “When we did Tom Thumb? And you were his wife?”
Jake spoke up, “Ro stayed up all one night making your costume. I remember that. It was pink.”
“Maybe that’s why it’s always been my favorite color,” Emma laughed. “And when it was really cold, the minute we got there you’d make a fire in the woodstove in the middle of the room? Do you remember that?”
“I’d take cans of chicken soup and put them in a pot on top of that stove and we’d have it for dinner.” And then she corrected herself, as Emma had corrected her so many times, “I mean lunch.” Lunch was what Emma called dinner, and dinner for supper, and there was no supper in her vocabulary at all.
“Speaking of lunch, or dinner, could I have some?”
“Why, of course,” Rosalie said, “let’s go on in the house. I’ve got some okra and some butter beans left over. We ate a while ago. But I’ll warm some up.”
“And some cornbread?”
“No…” Rosalie hesitated.
“That’s okay. Later I’ll make some.”
And on it went like that. It wasn’t so hard, Emma thought. Not hard at all, as long as she kept it light. As long as they just made small talk. Later that evening, after dinner, supper, she started to tell them about her trip to Italy and France.
“Well, I don’t know, Emma,” Rosalie started. “It seems like an awfully big gamble to be taking.”
Emma felt her back start up. “Why?”
“To throw over what you already have for something you don’t know about.”
“But I do know about cooking. I’ve been doing it for years now. The catering, working with Tony—”
“Who?”
And suddenly Emma realized, no, of course, they didn’t know. She hadn’t ever talked about any of that. She’d written, occasionally, a line or two, but how could they know what it was all about?
So she explained. She told them how it had all started the first time she’d gone to France, how she almost felt like she’d lived there in a former life, how familiar everything had tasted. She looked at Jake. He was grinning. And Rosalie listened, nodded, asked a question from time to time.
“Well,” she said finally, “I guess you don’t have anything to lose. I mean, you can always go back to teaching, can’t you, if it doesn’t work out.”
But it will, it will, don’t you see, don’t you have any faith in me? Emma started to say, and then she didn’t. Because of course Rosalie would want to know that she had a safety net, that she wouldn’t starve, that it wouldn’t be the way the Depression had been for her.
“Of course,” she said. “Of course I could.”
* * *
It was shortly after that, when Rosalie left the kitchen, where they’d been sitting around the table, to go to the bathroom, that Emma reached over and squeezed Jake’s hand.
“It’s okay, Daddy,” she whispered so that Rosalie wouldn’t hear. “It’s all right.”
His eyes filled with quick tears. “I…I…” he stuttered—well, part of it was stuttering, and part of it was that he couldn’t find the words.
“I know you did what you thought was right. And it was right, Daddy. You did the right thing.”
“I love you, Emma,” he whispered.
“I love you too,” she said.
* * *
“Well,” said Rosalie a little while later, “I guess we all ought to be going to bed. It’s been a long day.”
“You’re right,” agreed Emma. “And a long road.”
“I know that driving’s tiring. I’ll go and put some covers on your bed.”
“Just leave it. I’ll do it. But first there’s a phone call I need to make.”
Rosalie’s heart sank. She was going to start lining up all her friends, her escapes out of the house, as always.
“I need to call someone in California,” Emma said. “I’ll reverse the charges.”
“That’s okay,” Jake said, without even looking at Rosalie, the keeper of the purse strings. “Just make your call.”
And with that they both headed down the hallway toward the bedrooms.
Emma looked at the phone on the wall beside the refrigerator. She hadn’t talked to Jesse since she’d left him well over a week ago. Jesus, it seemed like so much longer. It always did when you traveled, like you were moving and everything else was standing still. She smiled then. Was Jesse still standing there in his paisley robe, waiting for her to come home and make his dinner?
She’d driven halfway across the country and a good piece back. But California seemed like the end of the world from this vantage point. And so much had transpired in that short time—her daddy’s secret, Miss Carrie and finding out about Mutt and her grandmother, that they’d been in Atlanta, maybe there were relatives there still. Well, she could go back and find them someday, if she wanted to, but that didn’t seem so important now. And Will. Gorgeous, too-smart-for-his-own-britches Will. Where did he get off, thinking he knew so much about her? Was he right? Well, so far it felt like he’d been right about her parents—her parents, Rosalie and Jake.
But, and then the thought niggled at a corner of her mind, wasn’t it weird, wasn’t it strange? They weren’t, really. So who did that make her? Who was she?
Then she heard herself running down River Road, a week or so ago, running from what Jake had told her, calling her own name. Emma. Emma. As if she had to say it over and over to hold on. To hold on to her identity.
And then she’d asked him, hadn’t she? She’d asked Jake, “But who am I?” as if he were one of those daddies, one of those other girls’ daddies she’d always admired, the ones who were so sure of themselves, who were so strong, who always had the shoulder to lean on, the answer to every question, she’d cried out to him, lying in the dirt of River Road Park, “But who am I?”
And he’d given her the answer, hadn’t he, without a moment’s hesitation. He didn’t stutter. He didn’t even have to think. He said, “You’re still Emma Fine, of course.”
She was, wasn’t she? She was the same willful, headstrong, independent, what had Will said, conundrum, a hey-diddle-diddle, a piece of work? She grinned then.
It didn’t matter, did it? She was Emma Rochelle Fine, Southern Baptist-Jew, child of Rosalie and Jake, child of Herman, child of Helen and whoever that slippery devil was (maybe he died, Emma, maybe he fell down a hole, yes, and maybe he was the King of Mesopotamia, what difference?), child of everyone she’d ever known, child of herself—of her own making. And she’d keep on creating herself, wouldn’t she, on and on, keep on making herself up as she went along.
But first, first things first, she had to call Jesse. It was time.
She dialed the number and held her breath. And in that breath, and in those four rings, she practiced, running the words through her mind at the speed of light. “I’m flying home tomorrow, Jesse. But just to pack. Just to pick up my things. I’m leaving my car here, because I don’t have much time left, and I need to talk to you. I need to explain why I’m not coming back again to stay, why I’m leaving you. After Europe, I’m striking out again on my own. We’ll both be better for it, Jess, both of us are better alone.”
After the fourth ring he answered, “Hello.”
“Jesse,” she began.
“This is the residence of Jesse Tree. After the tone, please leave your message. Thank you and goodbye.”
Emma stood there stunned. Jesse’s baritone was still ringing in her ears.
And then she laughed. She stood in Rosalie’s kitchen and laughed out loud. Jesse didn’t need her anymore, either. He’d even figured out how to answer the phone.
She left no message, other than her laughter, that deep rejoicing that seemed to burst out of her in these past few days.
“What’s so funny?”
Emma jumped. It was Rosalie.
“I made your bed,” Rosalie said. And then her curiosity got the better of her, though she knew Emma hated her prying into her business, and she didn’t want to ruin the lovely time they’d had so far. She couldn’t help herself. “Who was that you were laughing with on the phone?”
Well, here it was. She could tell Rosalie something consequential. She could jump over all that small talk and get down to the heart of something.
Okay, Will, you talk about my being hard-assed secretive. I can tell her something. I can show those people, who’ve asked me that question ever since I married Jesse: “A Southern girl marrying a black man. Well, you must have done it out of rebellion. Didn’t you do it to show your parents something?” Well, Emma, this is your big chance.
She could say it now. “I have a good-news/bad-news joke for you, Rosalie. The bad news is I’m married to a black man. The good news is I’m getting div
orced.”
Rosalie was still looking at her, waiting for an answer to her question.
Emma said, “I was calling Jesse Tree. But he wasn’t home.”
Rosalie looked at her and nodded. And because the name meant absolutely nothing to her, because she’d never heard it before in her entire life, she smiled and said, “Well, maybe you can try him again tomorrow.”
“I’ll do that, Momma,” Emma said.
And Rosalie, who hadn’t heard Emma say that word in so many years that she’d given up hope of ever hearing it again, turned and put her arms around Emma.
“It’s good to have you home,” she said, “even if it’s for a short visit.”
“And it’s good to be here.” Emma hugged her back. “It truly is.”
Then Rosalie switched out the light, and both she and her daughter tiptoed out of the dark kitchen—tiptoed so as not to wake the already snoring Jake who was dreaming about sailing on the blue Pacific with his little girl Emma—tiptoed to their bedroom doors, whispered good night and went to bed.
Keeping Secrets Page 35
