by Dot Jackson
“Oh, yes.” But as she opened the front door for us, she said warily, “I hope things are pleasant. We have had some hard times here, I must tell you. Please, Sister, don’t be hurt if Hubert shows himself tonight.” I patted her shoulder and bit my tongue.
We went straight back to the kitchen and Mit flung down her egg beater and we were all hugged up when Foots came flouncing in, with Miss Lilah a few respectful steps behind. I remember he had on a red brocade dressing gown over his pajamas, with a slightly rumpled hanky in the pocket. “Well, well,” he said, “Mittie, have you had our visitor sign the guest book?” He snatched me backwards and gave me a fish-kiss on the cheek. I could feel my gut knotting.
“Ummm-UMMM!” he said, “How lonely I have been for my dear little wife.”
“Put de supper ’pon de table,” Mit said to Camp, not a bit impressed. When we had all sat down, and Hugh had been pressed to ask the blessing, I began to notice things. There were candles on the table, in little dimestore glass holders. When I picked up my fork I noticed it was very large; I turned it over and it had U. S. stamped on the back of the handle. I glanced at Louise’s silverware, next to me, and saw I had fared better. Her fork had tines so snaggle-toothed it wouldn’t pick up rice. Now, I was not proud, or anything, just curious.
“Aunt Mit,” I said, “Is the silver put away?”
“No’m.” she said, hustling off to the kitchen.
“Hubert, where is the silver?” I said.
“Where is my car?” he said impudently. And he did his eyebrows up and down, with meaning. That infuriated me.
“I sold it,” I said.
“Precisely,” he said. “We had to eat here, too.”
I didn’t need to look at her to know Louise was in a panic. “Tell us about your visit with your people,” she said, with a tremble in her voice.
“It was a revelation,” I said. “There were some sad times; my cousin died suddenly.”
“We read about it in the paper,” Foots said. “Such a scandal! It must have been exciting!” That was a complication I was not prepared for. I decided to ignore it.
“And then my father’s aunt was sick for several weeks, and died,” I said. “But it meant more than I can ever say that I was able to know them.”
“We’ve had sad times here too,” Foots said. “I have been very sick. VERY sick. But I am sure that didn’t matter to you.”
“Hubert…” Louise said, barely audible.
“Hubert has been very sick!” Miss Lilah said, glowering at her. “You know he has been under de doctor fo’ six months!” Well, the image tickled me so I nearly spit my tea. Hugh and Pet looked at me and struggled against giggles. To make bad matters worse, in that moment of levity, Hugh picked up a fried shrimp with his fingers and put it in his mouth.
“Young man,” Foots yelled, with his face all purple, “That will be enough out of you. You think because your mother has come back you’ve got a ticket to behave like hillbilly trash and get by with it. I will thrash you, that’s what I’ll do!”
He hunched his chair back from the table and started to get up. Pet beat him to it. She jumped up like a cat. “You touch him again and I will kill you,” she said, brandishing her fork with its two lonely sharp tines.
Uncle Camp was standing beside me with a pitcher in his hand. The white bones were shining in his knuckles. Hugh sat immobile, his mouth stalled in half chew. I put down my glass, and folded my napkin, and rose and clasped my hands in front of me, and all eyes turned.
“Uncle Camp,” I said, “will you be so kind as to show Mr. Lamb and all his belongings to the door? If he is not out of this house within an hour, I shall kick his sorry ass across the bay.” Foots bounced up like his spring was overwound, and botted off up the stairs. Of course Miss Lilah threw back her head and gasped, and clapped her hands over her face in horror. Pet and Hugh looked radiant. Louise looked down at her plate.
“Yes, mam,” said Camp, and he went off to put the pitcher down. I sat down, then, and said, “Please excuse me, I am sorry I was unpleasant,” and I commenced to eat my supper.
Well, Miss Lilah was all adither. “Louise!” she shrieked, “Don’ let this give you a heart attact.”
“My heart is fine,” Louise said. “I won’t let it give me a fit, either.” And Miss Lilah, her world undone, leapt up with more energy than I had ever seen her expend, and flew upstairs to comfort Hubuht. Mit came in with a bowl of floating island, then, and Louise and the kids and I finished our supper in pretty good cheer. There was considerable slamming and bumping around upstairs, but we ignored it. We were still sitting there, talking placidly, when the invalid came barreling down the stairs, again, with Uncle Camp struggling along behind with two suitcases. They went out the kitchen door.
“He has no money. Where will he go?” Louise said, very flatly, dawdling with her spoon.
“I ’spect he’ll go to Denby Turnham’s, won’t he?” I said.
“He won’t go to Denby’s,” she said. “Denby got married.”
“Denby Turnham got married?” I said. “When? To what?”
“I didn’t write you? It’s been maybe four or five months. He married Fant Carson’s widow. Everybody was talking about it. She’s so much older, you know. She has a lot of property, I hear. Hubert was incensed about it,” she said. “He wouldn’t even go to the wedding. He’s been on his high horse, really, ever since. I don’t understand him. Why can’t he just live and let live?”
Poor Foots, I thought. His only port in the storm, and it closed.
“Oh, I wanted to tell you,” Louise said. “I’m so sorry about the silver. I knew he had sold it. He told us Mit stole it. ’Course I knew it wasn’t so; that was just so he’d have an excuse not to pay her.”
“She’s not been paid?” I said. I was mortified.
“Well, she finally quit coming. For months she didn’t come. She came back this week when I told her you were coming home. She came to clean up and get ready for you.”
“What else do you reckon he’s sold?” I said. “Have you looked into the jewelry?”
Louise smiled. “I know he’s sold all of mine. That birthstone ring that Daddy gave me when I was twelve and my locket with the baby curl in it. You better see about yours. But what good will it do? What if it’s gone?”
“I’m sure it’s gone,” I said, “but that’s the least of our worries. It’s not gone far.”
Neither had Foots, of course, as I was sure it would turn out. I had sent the children to bed; I had promised to come visit each one before they went to sleep. Louise went up to comfort her mother, who had prostrated herself in grief. After a couple of hours of riding up and down every street and cobblestone alley in Charleston, Uncle Camp came driving home, with Foots and his suitcases still in the back. He parked out front and came in.
“What must I do wid ’im, Miss?” Camp said. “He ain’ got a dime fo’ stay in no boardin’ house.”
“Bring him in,” I said. “Put him back upstairs. I shall have to make it clear to him exactly how he is going to behave, as long as he lives in this house.”
And I did. Plainly. And that was the beginning of the rest of my life with Foots, in what I am sure was a thoroughly wondered-about arrangement. From that night on we saw each other at meals, spoke when necessary, and never, never lived together again like married people. After a few days, when I got around to it, I consulted the memoir of the Reverend Sydney Smith for a little help and went downtown to Siggie Bonenblume’s jewelry shop. With great delight, from the dark dusty chambers behind the store Siggie was able to produce exactly what I was shopping for: a silver tea service with the Twyning coat of arms on it; a set of silver flatware, candlesticks and trays and jewelry I hadn’t even missed, even a little birthstone ring and a locket with a baby curl inside. All of it was redeemed for very little, “Cost plus nothing,” Siggie explained. “I hope you don’t think I’d give that bastard what it was worth when I knew you were going to want it back.”
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br /> Things settled down, day by day, month by month, to the normal Charleston turtle-pace. It was like I had not been gone. The ladies of our house put up a united front and went forth to teas and meetings of the Daughters of the Confederacy. Sometimes we were the hostesses ourselves. Louise was, as always, my dearest friend. Miss Lilah prudently held her tongue, which must have been a struggle and a half. Foots spent most of his days at the Bon Homme Club, in the company of others who did not earn a living.
It was no grand situation. But the children relaxed and did fairly well. In some things they did remarkably. Hugh began to lead his class consistently at school. Louise taught them both music; she had several students who came regularly for piano lessons. When Pet was fifteen, she began to study voice with a teacher at the Latin School. First it was one of those niceties our parents make us do so we will be ladies.
Then it was in earnest. By the end of that year, Mama and Dr. Rehnwissel had come home to stay, and it was everything. “Papa,” as Pet called him, had a new cause and new life in the refinement of my child’s vocal cords.
When there was news of some import, I would hear from Caney Forks. Rose was not exactly a fount of chatty prose; she wrote when she had something to say and said it. Like about six months after I was gone, she wrote and said, “The new big man at the lumber co. wants to buy Aunt Nam’s house. He is nice but sort of braggy. What do you think? I think no. All well here. I miss you.”
I took her word and thought no, too. We decided to rent to the braggy man instead. And I missed Rose, in a way there were no words for. When one of those rare letters came, I always got tears behind my eyes. She wrote once, “Cousin Barz wants to pasture cows down at The Birches. I think you might ought to let him, it would keep the brush down. I told him I would ask you.”
I had the letter in my hand, with my head down crying, and Louise came in and got terribly concerned. “Oh, Sister,” she said, “is it something bad?” I raised up and couldn’t help but laugh, and said no, it was just that an old man wanted a place to run his cattle. And I told her a little bit about Barz, how scared he had been of me, and I told her the truth about the car, and how it got traded for a mule we nearly had to chew for, and about the cow we called Miss Murchie. And we laughed. But there were tears in her eyes, too, and I loved her for it.
It was the next spring, a year gone, when Rose wrote again. “Dear Cousin Sen,” she said, “The last Friday in May Cole is coming here to marry me. It would be real nice if you and Pet and Hugh could come.” I let out a joyful shriek although of course it was no surprise. I wrote back yes we would, with bells on. It didn’t occur to me at the time that Pet was going to sing at the Latin School commencement that same day. And then, that week, after I had made peace with Pet about it, Louise had her first bad spell in a very long time, while she was pressing the ruffles on Pet’s new dress. She grabbed at the iron as she went down and burnt her arm so bad the doctor had to graft new skin.
So, at the last minute, I sent a telegram full of regrets and loving wishes. It was no lie when I said my heart was right beside her, when Rose came down the stairs to Ans and Myrtle’s parlor, so happy.
As I suspected, and Rose chose not to say, Cole was going to be out of a job at the end of the term. Rose was in no financial straits of course. But I wrote and suggested that they might want a place to stay and some crop land that wouldn’t need clearing, and that they ought to think about moving to The Birches. It was the most fitting thing, and they accepted. I could see Rose keeping order there; she would not let the weeds grow up to the door, nor have the mice take over the kitchen. I could see her rocking pretty babies there, in front of Daisy’s fire. I dreamed about these things, and that sometime I would go see them. I would go home, and there would be life in that house. Someone living, who belonged there, would come to the door.
The years slipped by; I guess it was the third winter after Rose and Cole were married that I had a letter in a strange hand from the Forks. We had been down to Savannah for a wedding, one of Foots and Louise’s cousins got married and there was close to a week of parties and all that, and the day we got back there was this letter from Myrtle.
“My dear Sen,” she said, “It hurts me so to tell you that Rosannah slipped away from us Sunday. You knew, I am sure, she had TB. Ansel thought she was doing so well, she had just come through pneumonia and had gone back down to The Birches, saying she felt just fine. She had a hemorrhage and was gone before Cole could get here with her. We tried to telephone you all that day, and the next, but got no answer. So we laid her to rest in the Steele cemetery. I believe that is what she told me the two of you had once decided. We have Cole here with us, for a while. He is so lost. The boys are heartbroken. All of us are—She would want me to tell you that she loved you very much. I know, for she told me so. Many times.”
There wasn’t any duty to stand in the way of grief. I took to my room and closed the door and the curtains. I simply could not bear it. It alarmed the household. Aunt Mit and Louise would bring up trays of the nicest food I couldn’t begin to eat. Even Miss Lilah came and looked in on me, in the dark. I knew they didn’t understand, and how could I tell them? I couldn’t hardly say what that regal, golden child represented to me. How could I say that in the color of her eyes, and in the cleft in her chin, and in so many attitudes and gestures her father had still lived. Through her, alone, the family had still lived, in all its inbred peculiarity. I couldn’t tell them any of it. But they accepted it, that it had been some private devastation. And they were kind.
My mother was a godsend in that time. My mother took most matters of consequence very lightly; the things she took seriously were parties and flirtations and social intrigues. She was always on the move, into something; she was always leaving a little breeze behind her, full of some perfumer’s notion of spring bouquet. And my mother, as I well recalled, was not one for long mourning.
She gave me a week and then she and Pet came in and packed my clothes and strong-armed me to the train and we went to New York, to the opera and the ballet and the stores. My unusual non-living arrangement with Foots did not embarrass Mama like it did me, I mean about having big parties and things at the house. So she began to plan some for me. It was not really all that rare for people to wholly ignore (and abhor) each other, while happily married—if we only knew what went on beyond the piazzas and the fan lights, she said, with a knowing lift to her brow.
As for Dr. Rehnwissel, he was never young, I am sure, when he was young, and he was growing more frail and fretful in his island exile. He lay in his hammock a lot, when it was warm, fanned by moss and seabreeze, reading his papers and cursing Adolph Hitler, whom he saw inevitably ascending. He yearned for the more decorous days of Der Kaiser, upon whose printed visage he once had been moved to spit.
But we began to have music at the house again. The Saturday musicales, little recitals by local “talent,” some of which would have been totally unpalatable (and unattended) without the little cakes and punch. The doctor himself was down to one pupil. He would have only one, and it was Pet. He had made a tolerable—no, a very good singer of my mother. He had a better voice to work with, and a much more single-minded creature, in my daughter. The Saturdays he had her sing for us even I looked forward to, though Lord knows we heard her daily, and near around the clock.
On the other hand, Hugh was very little seen or heard. He had his own pursuits. He had a paper route, for one thing, and besides a little money he made friends. And a lot of them didn’t live on our street. One night while Pet and Papa were doing Mahler in the music room, I went back to the kitchen to see if I could help Mit cook supper. Just as I went to push the swinging door I heard something I couldn’t quite fathom. This utterly ecstatic sound. And I listened, and it stopped my breath. I looked in and Hugh and a couple of colored boys were in there, sitting in the corner in kitchen chairs. They had a beat-up banjo apiece; they were bent over them, with their heads together. They were playing “Blackberry Blossom.” I le
t the door close back, quietly, and cried into the wall.
There were times like that, that the darkest, deepest loneliness rose and bubbled over. Those times belonged mostly to the night. Sometimes I would dream about The Birches, some wistful, ungraspable, undefinable dream, full of morning light and fog, and I would wake up, trying to bring it back.
Years went by after Rose was gone that I heard nothing, except a Christmas card or so, from Red Bank or the Forks. I did get a letter from Galveston, Texas, an engraved announcement that Irvin Harmon Garrison had joined the law firm of something and somebody. He had written across the bottom of it, “If you get in dutch in Texas, call on me.” That was one of those low moments.
Then I got a letter from the Caney Valley Power Company. That was something I had never heard of. It said they were surveying for a hydroelectric project, and they wanted to verify ownership of properties in Big Caney Township.
I wrote at once to Ans. He wrote back that this was some big new thing backed by the federal government and that the word was out that they were intending to dam the river, just above Boney Creek. It would back water over the Forks and way on upstream, nearly to the river’s source. He and Myrtle were distraught. I wrote back that though I owned very little there I was with them, against it, as long as we could fight.
It was a lost cause; the lumber company announced it was moving and that left no industry to keep the Forks alive. And very few landowners; most of the people in the valley had by one means or another become Ben Aaron’s tenants.
So Ans had the best of Nam’s stuff moved to The Birches. It crossed my mind that they would consult Sophia about moving that solitary grave. I wondered where she would tell them to re-bury that old drum of fish scraps and chicken bones. I thought about the displaced Presbyterians, too.
