Roses

by Leila Meacham

  “Yes, Mother. You have a separate account at the bank to which I’ve monthly deposited your twenty percent.”

  She regretted mentioning the amount set aside from the profits the minute she said it for fear of refueling her mother’s resentment against her father and the will, but Darla’s expression remained only one of concern. “Oh, I don’t want to bother with going to the bank. Can’t you lend me the money and next month deduct the cost of my purchase from the amount you’d deposit?”

  Relieved, Mary said, “Of course I can, but you don’t need to make me anything, Mama. It’s all I could ask that you’re up and getting on with things again. That’s present enough.”

  “No, it isn’t,” Darla disputed with a smile, and caressed her daughter’s cheek. “It’s been a long time since I made my lamb something with my own hands. What I have in mind is something you’ll have to remember me by always.”

  “I’ll have you, Mama,” Mary said.

  “Not always, darling. Time is not that kind.” She drew back her hand. “I’d like to get started as soon as possible. Will you be free to drive me to town tomorrow afternoon for a little shopping? We’ll avoid Abel’s. I’m sure he has nothing I can afford to buy.” Her pale brow contracted when she saw Mary wince. “What’s the matter? Will that inconvenience you?”

  “No, of course not.” Mary forced a smile. She’d already promised the morning to Sassie, and if she drove her mother to town in the afternoon, she’d lose a whole day at the plantation. The drainage ditches were scheduled to be cleaned out tomorrow, but her crews would have to start without her supervision. It was more important that her mother get out of the house. “We’ll enjoy a full, lovely day together,” she said, “and when we get in from our outing, we’ll take the chill off with a good cup of hot chocolate, like we used to when we’d come home from shopping.”

  “That will be very nice,” Darla said, and snapped the paper back to its original folds in a way that suggested to Mary that she did not like her raking up memories of their bygone days but preferred they remain under the leaves of the past. They were too painful. From now on, she’d make references only to the future.

  Later in the kitchen, Mary questioned Sassie about her mother’s tour of the grounds. “Did she visit the rose garden?”

  “Uh-huh,” Sassie said.

  “Do you think she remembers the last time she visited it?”

  “Uh-huh. You can’t tell me she don’t remember takin’ a crowbar to it. Toby say she stop a few minutes in front of the Lancasters, then went on without sayin’ nothin’. I tell you, she up to somethin’, that one.”

  “For goodness’ sakes, Sassie,” Mary remonstrated her sharply. “What would you expect her to say? How terribly sorry and humiliated she feels? Have a little heart for all the woman’s been through.”

  “I’ll try for your sake, Miss Mary,” Sassie said.

  At the appointed time the next afternoon, Darla was dressed for her first appearance in town since walking out of Emmitt Waithe’s office. The fashion world had revolved 180 degrees since it favored her large bird’s-nest hat and modified bustle. Mary felt shame and embarrassment watching her come downstairs pulling on her long gloves, regally unconscious of her pathetically outdated attire.

  As they entered Main Street in the buggy, Darla exclaimed, “Good Lord! Look at all these horseless carriages! Why, they’ve quite taken over Courthouse Circle.”

  “We’ll have a motorcar one of these days, Mama.”

  “I wouldn’t think in my lifetime, Mary Lamb,” Darla said.

  At Woolworth’s, Darla made her purchases. To Mary’s relief, the store was practically deserted of other customers, and Darla had the salesclerk to herself. Together they collected rolls of knitting yarn in a soft cream that they heaped upon the counter. Wary of letting her mother out of her sight, Mary hung anxiously out of earshot of their whispered conversation. At one point, Darla instructed, “Now, Mary, turn your head. I absolutely cannot have you peek at my next purchase.”

  Mary obeyed, and a hushed consultation between Darla and the clerk followed. She heard the sound of something unrolled from a spool, a snip of scissors, and then the crackle of tissue paper as the item was packaged. “There now,” her mother said in satisfaction. “You can turn around.”

  Her mother’s color was rosy and she was smiling to herself as they bounced along in the buggy toward Houston Avenue. A thrill of delight at the pure joy on her face caused Mary to ask, “Happy, Mama?”

  Darla turned her bright countenance to her daughter. “I haven’t felt this happy in a long time, Mary, my lamb,” she said.

  Mary flicked the reins over Shawnee’s back. She would have to write Miles to tell him the news of their mother’s resurrection—that Darla Toliver had finally made it home from the dead.

  Chapter Twenty

  At the end of the first week in January, Mary purchased Fair Acres. A dour Emmitt Waithe reluctantly opened his office late Saturday afternoon for the transaction, and by five o’clock the deed was signed. Ordinarily, Emmitt would have brought out a bottle of whiskey on hand to toast such momentous legal occasions, but the Wild Turkey stayed in his desk.

  The news was out by Monday. Ollie and Charles Waithe dropped by with congratulations, but Percy did not appear. A reporter from the Gazette called upon her, asking for an interview. Mary granted it only because he was a school classmate back in town to work for the paper and was desperate for a byline. He wished to write an article on the modern woman’s role in society, politics, and business from the perspective of the youngest mistress of one of the largest plantations in Texas, he explained. Mary did not feel particularly modern when she saw the photograph that accompanied the article. Until she saw herself, unsmiling, in a blouse with muttonchop sleeves and high collar, her long hair tied back in a wide bow, she had not realized how seriously out of fashion she’d become.

  With the purchase of Fair Acres, Mary’s days were filled from before dawn to long after dark. In addition to overseeing the chores reserved for the winter months at Somerset, there was much to do to acquaint herself with her new property. In the buggy, she rode out to visit with each of the Fair Oaks sharecroppers, meeting their children and drinking untold cups of coffee in their mean little shacks, which she hoped someday to replace with the three-room cabins and separate kitchens Vernon Toliver had built for his tenants. She inspected her new fields, fences, equipment, storage sheds, and the plantation house that Jarvis was busy vacating before he set sail for Europe in February.

  Apprehension and fatigue were her constant companions. Worry went to bed with her at night and awoke with her in the morning.

  Her speculations concerning Percy lay like a shadow over her days. She still had not heard from him. Her last contact was on Christmas Day when he came by to wish her a Merry Christmas and to ask if she would join his family for the holiday meal. She declined, explaining that she must stay with her mother. Sassie balked at preparing another Christmas dinner for appetites as small as theirs, and Mary sent her to be with her granddaughter on Christmas Day and Toby to his brother’s. After that, Percy and Ollie took off to Dallas to serve as groomsmen in an army buddy’s wedding, Ollie’s crutches notwithstanding. They were back by New Year’s Eve, and Mary learned Percy had squired Isabelle Withers, a banker’s daughter, to the dance at the country club.

  Even with her mind in turmoil over plantation concerns, she had burned with jealousy for days. Isabelle was the porcelain-skinned, blond, blue-eyed Dresden type she’d described to Lucy as the kind of woman Percy preferred. She remembered how Lucy had scoffed. Dresden and porcelain be damned. He likes a woman he doesn’t have to worry about breaking, that he can grab hold of, that can match him thrust for thrust….

  Ruthlessly, she closed off that mental picture, forcing her mind to other daily tortures. Percy had every right to see other women. He was a man with a man’s needs, and what did she expect, if she wasn’t willing to satisfy them? But why did it have to be Isabell
e, that silly, simpering simpleton? She was sure he had taken great umbrage at her purchase of Fair Acres. He would know what that would exact in tolls of time and commitment and look upon this latest folly as the final scuttling of the deal they’d made.

  She would know more how things stood between them when he came to her party.

  It was an event she both welcomed and dreaded. She had no time for such foolishness, but it would be a “coming out” party for her mother, and she was grateful the occasion had given Darla impetus to concern herself with her appearance. “I must eat more to get some flesh on my bones,” she’d say to explain her second serving at meals. “I must exercise to get color into these cheeks,” she’d say when Mary came upon her wielding her spade in the garden. And while the results were slow in showing—Sassie reported that often she’d seen evidence that her mother had thrown up her meals—her former imperious mien and manner reasserted themselves.

  “I believe I preferred your mother outta my way and off my nerves,” Sassie commented after one particularly trying day.

  Mary returned a sympathetic smile, thrilled but a little alarmed at her mother’s high-handed demands of the household now that she was back in charge. “Bite your tongue, Sassie, but I well understand what you mean.” Still, she reveled in the tender affection that Darla, unlike in former days, went out of her way to show her and the relief she felt to know that Darla now had a reason to get out of bed in the mornings. Ever since their trip into town, she’d rise at dawn, dress, and come downstairs to commence knitting the cream yarn into something whose purpose stumped all who saw the growing pile in the basket beside her rocker.

  “What all that yarn goin’ to be, Miss Darla?” Sassie inquired.

  “Never you mind, Sassie girl. This is to be a surprise for Mary on her twentieth birthday. All will be revealed then.”

  “I know you don’t want to hear it, Miss Mary, but I don’t like this one little bit,” Sassie confided. “She gives me the willies sittin’ there in the parlor rockin’ and smilin’ to herself, them needles flashin’ away, like she got a secret. She up to somethin’, mark my words.”

  “She’s simply lost in the past, Sassie, reliving some amusing moment when she was young and beautiful. Leave her to the comfort of her memories. And have you noticed that the family pictures are back on the mantel?”

  So she and Sassie and Toby prepared for the party. Invitations were written and delivered, the menu planned, the food purchased, the house cleaned and aired. The Warwicks, Ollie and Abel, several other neighbors, and Emmitt Waithe and his family were invited. Mary shook out an outdated red taffeta evening gown from the back of her wardrobe for herself—risking Abel’s ceiling-cast eyes when he saw her in it—but ordered an amber velvet creation from his store for her mother.

  “Lawsey, Lawsey! What we goin’ to have to do without to pay for that?” Sassie moaned when the dress was delivered.

  “Meat for the next month,” Mary answered, taking the gilded box upstairs to surprise her mother. “Be sure and cancel our delivery, Sassie.”

  The night of the party, she dressed joylessly in her antiquated red taffeta. It required she wear a corset, though corsets were passé now, replaced by brassieres, which Mary didn’t own. She looked tired, strained, dated, and plainly not in the mood for a party. At least her hands were in fair shape. She had started wearing work gloves, but not the ones Percy had presented her at Christmas. Those she had put away with the note because they were too lovely for fieldwork. Nonetheless… looking at herself in the mirror, she knew she didn’t stand a chance against Dresden.

  “Now get that frown off your face and them worry lights out of your eyes, chile,” Sassie commanded, coming into the room and catching her forlorn inspection. “This is your night to howl, and I want to hear some howlin’.”

  Mary had adjusted the festive twist of plaits she’d pinned on top of her head while Sassie was downstairs tending to last minute refreshments. The arrangement did little to elevate her appearance. “I’m afraid I don’t feel much like howling. Have you checked on Mother?”

  “I tried to, Miss Mary, but she say go ’way. Wouldn’t let me in. Say she can get herself dressed, and she don’t want nobody to see her ’fore she make an appearance.”

  “I wonder what she’s going to do with all those strips she knitted.”

  “I wish I knew. They all be part of your present, but what that goin’ to be, I guess we all have to wait to find out.”

  “I’ll come show you and Toby once I’ve opened it. Now I’d better go make sure she’s all right.”

  Going down the hall, Mary reflected on the long, dogged hours her mother had plied her knitting needles in the parlor in what was plainly a sincere effort to ask her forgiveness. A simple red rose would have served as well, and she in turn would have done something creative with the Snow Whites pictured in the seed catalogs to assure her that all was forgiven. Only twice had her mother ever made her a garment. Once, a scarf, and long ago for Christmas, a pair of mittens. Other mothers, when she was growing up, embroidered smocks and bonnets, crocheted dresses and shawls, and knitted sweaters and hats for their daughters, but Darla preferred to needlepoint samplers. Mary told herself that whatever the present, or her distaste for the party, she would show just appreciation for her mother’s gift and be grateful the dark days were over.

  She knocked on her door. “Mama, are you all right? Don’t you need help dressing?”

  “Absolutely not!” Darla’s answer came with a fluting laugh. “The dress is smashing, darling. You’re going to love me in it. Now run downstairs and let me prepare my grand entrance.”

  Mary turned away, disappointed, wanting to be the first to see her in her new finery, as she’d been allowed to admire her all those many social seasons ago. Once a little girl, always a little girl, when it came to seeing her mother in a party dress, she thought.

  Starting down the stairs, she caught sight of Percy’s hatless blond head through the fanlight above the front door. He was coming up the walk, early and alone. The panic that had been lying at low ebb all these past weeks surged through her like a tidal wave, and she descended at a breathless run, yanking open the door before he reached for the bell pull.

  She knew at once what he’d come to say. His eyes were colorless as glass and his jaw hard as rock. “I know I’m early, Mary, but I have a few things I want to say before the others get here. Mother and Dad are coming in their car later. I walked to get some air into my lungs.”

  Her smile flickered. “You must have a lot to say.”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  “On my birthday?”

  “It can’t be helped.”

  “Well, then, do come in. Mother’s not down yet.”

  “Mother?” He frowned at the unfamiliar reference.

  “I… suppose I’ve taken to calling Mama that sometimes….” She flushed under his measured squint. “Here, let me take your coat.”

  “That won’t be necessary. I’m not staying.”

  His words struck like a blow. “Percy, you can’t mean that. It’s my birthday.”

  “You don’t care a fig that it’s your birthday, other than it brings you one year closer to taking possession of Somerset.”

  “This is about my buying Fair Acres, isn’t it.” Pressure was mounting in her solar plexus, threatening to close off her breath. “You view it as sealing my commitment to Somerset.”

  “Doesn’t it?”

  “Percy…” Mary searched her mind wildly for a convincing explanation. “Buying Fair Acres wasn’t a choice between you and Somerset. It was an opportunity I couldn’t afford to pass up. My decision had nothing to do with you. I… I had so little time to consider. I didn’t even think of you at the time, how buying it might affect us… how you’d think it would affect us.”

  “If you had, would it have made a difference? Would you have gone ahead and bought it anyway?”

  She felt trapped. How could she make him understand that she’d
had no choice? She stared at him wordlessly, anguish burning in her chest.

  “Answer me!” he thundered.

  “Yes,” she blurted.

  “That’s what I thought.” His nostrils flared. “I wonder what that cost you—besides me. God, Mary—” He raked his gaze down the length of her, and she cringed inwardly, imagining how overblown she must look in her outmoded taffeta with its nipped-in waist and her breasts pushing for attention above the lace trim of her bodice. Loose waistlines and flattened chests were the fashion of the day, the likes of which he must be accustomed to admiring on Isabelle Withers.

  “You’re halfway through your youth, and you haven’t known a day of it,” Percy said, his mouth twisting contemptuously. “You ought to be going to parties and dances, wearing pretty clothes and flirting with the boys, but look at you. You’re drawn, worn out, putting in eighteen hours a day working like a field hand, and for what? To live in poverty, with continuous worry about where you’ll get the next loaf of bread? To wear clothes that went out with high-button shoes? To relieve yourself in a bucket and read by the light of a kerosene lamp? You’ve lost a brother and a mother, and now you’re about to lose a man who loves you, who could give you everything, and all for the sake of a backbreaking, heart-shattering plantation that will never, ever make your sacrifices worth it.”

  “It won’t always be this way.” Mary held out her hands to him. “In a few years—”

  “Of course it will always be this way! Who are you kidding? You made sure of that when you bought Fair Acres. I don’t have a few years!”

  “Wha-what are you telling me?”

  He turned away, his handsome face crumpling. She had never seen him cry before. She stepped toward him, but he held up a hand to stop her, while the other snapped out a handkerchief from inside his coat. “I’m telling you what you’ve tried to tell me all along. I thought I could lure you away from Somerset, but I see now that I can’t. Your buying Fair Acres proved that. I kept away from you to give you time to realize how much you need and want me, but you simply filled it up with more land, more work… like you’ll always do to handle days when we’re divided. They’ll tear the guts out of me, but, hell, you’ll simply plant another row of cotton.”