Roses

by Leila Meacham

  Meanwhile, she missed Percy sorely and wondered if that wasn’t his intention. He’d played this waiting game before. Was he trying to impress upon her how lonely she was and how much she needed and wanted him? If that was so, it was working, especially when she considered the paralyzing possibility that he might be seeing other girls.

  A visit from Ollie forced her to agree to one small ceremony held Christmas Eve. “I won’t take no for an answer,” he said. “Percy and I will drop by Christmas Eve with gifts and champagne. So dress up in your best party dress, Mary Lamb, and ask Sassie to make some of her divine cheese crackers. Shall we say eight o’clock?”

  Mary gave the order for the cheese crackers and decorated a small Christmas tree in the parlor. To prepare for the evening, she manicured her nails and spent time soaking in a long, fragrant bath. She dressed in the dark green velvet gown she had worn the night Richard Bentwood kissed her under the mistletoe, and with Sassie’s help, she coiled her shining, shampooed hair into a party creation atop her head. She borrowed her mother’s pearls for her ears and throat, and when she inspected the result in her mirror, she hardly recognized the girl staring back at her.

  Neither did Percy or Ollie. “What’s the matter?” She laughed at their amazed faces when she answered the door. “Haven’t you ever seen a girl in a party dress?”

  Mary pretended to be unaware of their close observance of her through the exchange of gifts and champagne toasts—Percy’s expression guarded and Ollie’s frankly awed. Feeling gauche and a little like a doe run to ground by two rutting bull elk, she avoided their gazes from a lack of knowing how to handle the attention.

  “Ollie, how thoughtful!” she exclaimed when she unwrapped his gift of a delicate silver pencil disguised as a handsome brooch. “You remembered that I’m forever misplacing my pens.” She pulled the pencil on a retractable chain from its holder. “I’ll be sure not to lose sight of this one.” She smiled at him and got up from her chair to kiss his round, rubicund cheek.

  Percy’s gift was a pair of ladies’ finely sewn work gloves of buttery leather, dainty but durable. She flushed at their implication. “How thoughtful of you as well, Percy, but they’re much too fine for what they’re intended.” A note was tucked inside one of the cuffs, and she deliberately appeared not to notice it. She’d read it later, away from Percy’s disturbing scrutiny.

  “Not for your hands,” he said, catching her eye in a way that made her heart leap as she bent to deliver the same reward she’d given Ollie.

  Her gift to Ollie was a volume of verse by Oscar Wilde, his favorite writer, and for Percy, a pictorial history of North American trees. When the evening was over, she saw them both to the door, Percy seemingly not of a mind to stay behind for a private word.

  “Wish you were going with us,” Ollie said.

  “Next year, perhaps.” She smiled, determined that they not sense her loneliness. They were off to Ollie’s, where Abel was hosting his usual Christmas Eve party for friends and their families. It seemed so many years ago since her own family—her mother swathed in fur and herself skipping along in a white fox muff and matching hat—had walked hand in hand to the party and returned home singing “Silent Night” under the star-filled sky.

  “We’ll hold you to it, Mary,” Percy said, and she found herself missing his nickname for her.

  When they had gone, she leaned against the closed door for a few moments, listening to their male repartee as they went down the steps. Then, despondent, she returned to the parlor, banked the fire, and took the remainder of the champagne to the kitchen, where she poured it down the sink. She gathered her gifts and later in her room ensconced herself on her window seat to read Percy’s note by the light of the moon: “For the hands I want to hold for the rest of my life. Love, Percy.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Your mama wants to see you, Miss Mary.”

  At her father’s desk, Mary looked up with arched brows from the ledger where she was calculating expenses and profits for the coming year. It was the first of January 1920. “Mama wants to see me? What for?”

  Sassie lifted her shoulders. “Don’t ask me, but your mama is sittin’ up in bed, pretty as a picture. She got herself bathed this mornin’ all by herself, combed her hair, and tied it with a pretty blue ribbon. She wants me to dress her to come downstairs after her nap.”

  Mary rose with cautious hope from the desk, glancing at the clock on the mantel. If this was another game of her mother’s, she really hadn’t time to play it. She must have her figures in order before meeting at noon with Jarvis Ledbetter, a neighboring planter. But if her mother had turned a corner…

  Mary marked her place in the ledger. “What’s come over her, do you suppose?”

  “I don’t know, Miss Mary. Somethin’s goin’ on behind them yellow eyes of hers.”

  “I don’t know what could be going on that we don’t know about. She’s been nowhere, seen no one in over a year. Did she get a letter from Miles?”

  “If she did, I didn’t take it up to her.”

  Mary patted Sassie’s shoulder. “I’ll go see what she wants. Bring us up some coffee, will you, and didn’t I smell cinnamon rolls a while ago? Put a couple of those on a plate, and maybe she’ll eat one.”

  “You smelled ’em all right. I expect Mister Ollie by this afternoon, and you know how that man do love my cinnamon rolls.” She chuckled, following Mary out into the hall. “He’s a man I sure wouldn’t mind cooking for. Mister Percy, neither, though he don’t get the pleasure out of food that Mister Ollie does.”

  Mary studiously avoided a return comment by tying her green hair ribbon more firmly in place before going upstairs. Sassie’s hints that it was time she married were about as subtle as pitched bricks. Already, since he rarely came calling anymore, their faithful old housekeeper considered Percy a lost hope.

  As she started up the stairs, Mary thought of him with the usual curling of anxiety in her stomach. Had he truly lost interest in her? Was he banking on her loneliness to send her running into his arms? Did his absence mean he agreed that their union was hopeless? Daily she recalled the words he’d written on the note slipped into the cuff of her Christmas present: “For the hands I want to hold for the rest of my life.”

  Mary hesitated before knocking on her mother’s door, dreading the gravelly, woeful “Come in” that marked the beginning of every distasteful visit. Mary never heard it without feeling a prick of annoyance. One had only to look at how Ollie was dealing with his situation to feel scornful of the way Darla Toliver was handling hers. No sulks or self-pity for Ollie! After a short hospitalization in Dallas, he’d returned to work in the executive offices of the DuMont Department Store, wielding his onyx-and-silver-headed crutches like a fashion extension of his smashing wardrobe.

  “Come in!” Darla’s voice, strong and vibrant, answered her knock. Surprised, Mary opened the door and peeked in cautiously.

  “Why, Mother, how… how lovely you look,” Mary declared in astonishment. She could not remember when she first began calling her mother “Mother.” It had evolved out of the distance that had grown between them, the years of estrangement. “Mama” was an endearment; “Mother,” an address.

  At once, Mary saw that “lovely” was not the word. She doubted that her mother would ever look lovely again after such prolonged abuse to her health. But today, propped up in bed on clean pillows, scrubbed and combed and dressed in a filmy peignoir like the kind she’d worn when Mary’s father was alive, she looked fresh and rested. Mary approached the bed. “What’s the occasion?” she asked, shocked to see that without the dark accumulation of oil and sweat, her mother’s hair was streaked with gray.

  Darla laughed in her natural, light way, a sound Mary hadn’t heard in years, and flung a flaccid arm toward the windows. Sassie had pulled open the draperies to a pale January sun, the first outside light that had been allowed to enter the room since Mary’s father’s death. “The new year—that’s the occasion. I want to ce
lebrate it, get up out of this bed, leave this room. I want to walk out into the fresh air and feel the sun on my face. I want to feel alive again. Do you think it’s too late for that, Mary, my lamb?”

  My lamb. It had been four years since her mother had called her that. Mary’s throat tightened at the echo from their past. “Mama,” she murmured sadly. There had been these mood changes and resolutions before that had proved to be ruses to gain freedom of the house and access to a hidden bottle.

  “Mary, I know you’re skeptical,” Darla said, ducking her chin to give her daughter a fond look. “You think I want to get out of here only so that I can run down a drink somewhere, but frankly, I’m out of ideas as to how to go about that. I… simply want to feel human again, darling.”

  At the foot of the bed, Mary squeezed her eyes shut to stanch the sudden rush of tears. Darling. She was stunned at how starving her heart was for that word of affection.

  “Oh, my darling, I know….” Darla threw back the covers and swung her frail, ghostly pale legs to the floor. “I know… I know,” she crooned, tottering unsteadily in the diaphanous gown toward Mary. “Come to Mama, precious child.” She held out her arms, and Mary went into them, allowing herself to be stroked and petted as if she’d come in from play with a scraped knee. She submitted with a desperate hunger even while a long-embedded wariness warned this could be another game whose objective only her mother knew.

  Nonetheless, she held her hands when they were seated on the chaise longue and asked, “What do you want, Mother? What would you like to do that would make you happy?”

  “Well, first, I’d like to take a stroll about the house to regain some strength in my legs. Then I was wondering if I might help Toby do a little tilling of the garden. Sassie tells me he’s got some potatoes ready to go into the ground.”

  Mary had been studying her mother as she spoke. She saw none of her former craftiness, the quick shift of her eyes that betrayed another motive behind her requests. Had she forgotten that the vegetable garden had yielded its last bottle of bourbon years ago, turned over by Toby’s hoe?

  Darla read her concern and squeezed her hands. “Don’t worry, darling. I know there’s nothing left to dig up. I just want to feel the earth again, plant some things. I’m sure Toby can use the help.”

  “You know someone will always have to be with you,” Mary reminded her gently.

  “Yes, I realize that. Well, Toby can watch me in the garden in the mornings, then I’ll take a nap after dinner and be locked in as usual. Sassie can stand guard over me in the parlor in the afternoons. I’d like to sit in there and read. Do we still take the Woman’s Home Companion?”

  Mary winced at the cruel-sounding words, but Darla spoke without rancor, using the matter-of-fact tone with which she once apprised her family of their schedules at the breakfast table.

  “I’m sorry, we don’t,” Mary said, “but we still have the copies from a few years ago. There seemed no point in continuing the subscription….”

  Mary drew in her breath, expecting to see Darla’s golden eyes smolder with offense at her reasoning, but she said, “That was wise since I was the only one in the house to read the magazine. I know we’re poor. No use spending money on things we don’t need.” She withdrew her hands. “I won’t ask how things are going out at Somerset. As well as anyone could hope, I imagine, with you in charge. You are spending most of your days there?”

  Mary looked for signs of her old wounded anger, but Darla had put the question mildly, as a matter of curiosity. Perhaps she had finally emerged from the dungeon of her bitter resentment after all. “Yes, ma’am. We’re getting the fields ready for the spring.”

  “Well, no need to feel bad about having to spend time at the plantation. When you and Sassie are tied up, maybe Beatrice can sit with me. I know she’s offered countless times. How does she look, by the way?”

  “Much better now that Percy’s home and she’s no longer wearing black.”

  “I always thought that was a mere affectation, a way to gain sympathy and be noticed. We all had sons in the war. But I’d love to see her. Will you arrange it for tomorrow? I have something I want her to do for me.” She cocked her head in the saucy way Mary thought of as singularly her mother’s, opening a bank of memories and a well of despair.

  “Is it something that I can do for you instead?” Mary asked, suspecting the worst. Everybody in town, including the Warwicks, had stored up liquor before the passage of the National Prohibition Act, which forbade the buying and selling of alcohol for consumption after midnight, January 16.

  Darla clearly perceived the reason for her question. She waved a clawlike hand. “Silly girl, I’m not going to ask her to part with a bottle, if that’s what’s worrying you. No, I want her to help me to plan a party.”

  “A party?”

  “Yes, my lamb. You know what’s coming up at the beginning of next month?” Darla giggled at Mary’s astonished expression. “Yes, darling, your birthday! Did you think I’d forgotten? We’ll have something elegant but simple and invite the Warwicks and Abel and Ollie, and even the Waithes, if you’d prefer. I haven’t seen the boys in a long while, have I?”

  “No, Mother,” Mary said quietly. “Not for a few years.” Of course she hadn’t forgotten the date of her birthday. She would become twenty, one year removed from the time she would take full control of Somerset. She was simply surprised that her mother had remembered. There was the thump of Sassie’s footsteps on the stairs and the rattle of china cups. “Sassie is bringing us coffee and cinnamon rolls,” she said. “Shall we have a tea party like the old days and discuss what you have in mind?”

  “Oh, let’s!” Darla patted her hands together. “But I can’t discuss everything I have in mind, Mary Lamb. I want to surprise you so there will be no doubt of the love I bear you.”

  Later, returning the coffee tray to the kitchen, Mary asked, “Well, what do you think, Sassie?”

  “She puttin’ on, Miss Mary. I know your mama, and just as sure as my rheumatism tell me when we in for rain, I know she be up to somethin’.”

  Mary wasn’t so sure. The house and garden and grounds, the gazebo, carriage house, and tool shed, had been thoroughly searched for contraband liquor. Of course, her mother might believe they’d missed a bottle or two, but if that was the case, she’d have tried to get out of bed earlier. Escape was out of the question. She had no money, no way of getting any, and no place to go even if she had the strength to get there. She had seemed genuinely, pathetically contrite for her behavior these past years and determined to make up for it.

  “Did you notice that all the family pictures are gone on the mantel ’cept the one of Mister Miles in his army uniform?” Sassie asked.

  “I noticed. She took them down after Papa died.”

  “Well, your mama can have a little fire in her fireplace like she done have me lay this mornin’, and she can have me open the drapes, and she can get herself all fixed up, but until I see them pictures of you and your papa and the whole family back out, I ain’t gonna believe nothin’ she say.”

  Mary nodded thoughtfully. “That would be a sign of her sincerity,” she agreed, doubtful that she and Sassie would ever see photographs of her family smiling from their silver frames on her mother’s mantel again.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Driving out to the Ledbetter plantation later that morning in the only horse-and-buggy conveyance still used among Howbutker’s elite, Mary ruminated alternately between the latest caprice of her mother’s and Jarvis Ledbetter’s reason for sending around an invitation asking her to “luncheon.” It was common knowledge that a big eastern bank, like other distant investors seeking to buy up ever more of the rich farmlands of the Cotton Belt, had approached the old gentleman with an offer for his plantation. His only children, twin daughters, had married disappointingly, and he had often hinted that he would rather sell his plantation, Fair Acres, and live in grand style off its proceeds than leave it to his daughters for their husb
ands to do likewise. Mary believed the invitation was for the purpose of offering her the first chance to buy Fair Acres.

  Fair Acres was a long, narrow stretch of cotton land situated between Somerset and the strip along the Sabine that Miles had inherited. On it sat a handsome plantation home that would be included in the land sale. Mary had been up since dawn calculating the financial feasibility of purchasing the acres that would unite the Sabine strip to Somerset and provide a convenient home away from home on Toliver acres.

  It had always been her father’s dream to acquire the two sections that severed Somerset. He envisioned a sea of Toliver cotton stretching from one unbroken boundary to another, but no matter how Mary manipulated the figures, the ledger showed that the dream was not to be. The only extra money constituted no real surplus at all, but funds held in reserve as a hedge against disaster. Even if this coming harvest was wiped out, there would be money to pay those bloodsuckers in Boston who waited each year for her to go under. They’d never get the satisfaction. She had scrimped and saved, sacrificed and endured, to make sure of that. Within two years, the Tolivers would be in sole possession of Somerset once again.

  Mary lived for the day the deed would arrive. She would have a party, a huge bash to show Howbutker that her father had been wise in leaving her Somerset. Everyone would see that under her hand it had become a mighty plantation again. Quietly, the household would emerge from its penury. She’d hire help for Sassie, install modern bathrooms to replace the privy in the far corner of the backyard and the honey pots under the beds. She might even buy a motorcar and retire old Shawnee, their faithful Arabian who’d outlived his buggy mate. Her mother would want for nothing. She could hold her head up again, under the finest hat money could buy. Knowing Darla, once she was dressed in the latest fashion and the house was restored to its former grandeur, she would not care whose hand provided her the best. She would take as much pride in the fact that it was her daughter’s as she had when it was her husband’s.