The Uncertain Season

by Ann Howard Creel

  Ira smiled and nodded. “You’re excited about this. But let me warn you. For the most part, this work has its rewards, but other times we are disappointed when someone doesn’t do the things we would choose for them.”

  “I won’t try to choose for her.”

  “Very well,” he said. “But don’t think of the alleys as a laboratory, Grace. People’s lives are fragile, especially down here.” He looked away and then back at me. “Sometimes people live as they do, I’ve found, because they want to.”

  “But, Ira, you of all people know that sometimes they live as they do because they have no other choices, because they are trapped. This girl has captured my imagination, and I want to help her. I have so much, you see.”

  Hesitantly, he said, “For the most part, I prefer that we focus on those who desire our help. You mustn’t force . . .”

  “Is that what I’m doing? Forcing myself? Being pushy?”

  “I’m sorry. I’m only trying to explain.”

  My eyelids stung and I had to look away. “Pushy.”

  “I don’t want to discourage you, Grace, but you must exercise caution. It’s a difficult balance to maintain.”

  I needed this now. And there was no way to hide it. Ira knew me, as if I’d removed my heart and handed it to him. “I have much to learn.”

  “If it’s your wish to pursue the matter further, I won’t stop you.” He waited. “Just be careful.”

  I couldn’t answer. Ira stood quietly, waiting, and his concern, his sincerity, were almost overwhelming. But the concern I saw went beyond issues of our work down here. There was something longing, something yearning in those soft pond-water eyes of his, and it settled on me like silt. He opened his mouth to speak, and I had the feeling that he was about to say something important, perhaps something that would change everything between us, but a rap on the door stopped him.

  Joseph stood on the doorstep. He wanted to tell me about the high marks he’d just received in school. By the time I finished congratulating him and praising him for his work, Ira was standing behind his desk with a letter in his hand, and the moment had passed.

  After Joseph left us alone again, we went back to talking about the girl. “If she resists me,” I said, “I promise you I’ll stop.”

  “Very well.”

  I began to move about the room, gathering up donations and sorting them into crates to pass out later. But as I worked, I felt Ira’s eyes following me.

  The room in which we worked was small, and Ira and I often brushed up against each other. My skirt sometimes fell across his shoes, or my elbow grazed his. Often I didn’t take notice of the touches until I realized how much Ira had. He seemed shaken by them, but today I was the one so hindered. I moved my skirt out of his way and could hear his breathing, which was matching mine. I could scarcely wait to escape the close proximity that brought forth in me odd involuntary thoughts, such as How would it be to kiss him?

  Did he feel the same way I did? Was he falling in love with me? Yet if that were true, he would probably never say so, since my mother had sent me to him, and this was supposed to be sacred work.

  That evening, I sorted through my wardrobe and pulled out two dresses: a pink day dress with a matching jacket, and a pale-blue party dress I hadn’t worn in years. I had intended to give her both, but I paused. Ira was concerned that I might be overstepping, and so I selected only one dress to give her now, thinking I would save the other for later. I wondered what she had done with the pastels and the sketch pad I’d sent to her.

  The pink day dress would have been more practical, but I imagined her thrilled reaction to the blue party dress. Its color was very much like her eyes, and so I settled on it. Of course she would have no use for a party gown, except for dress-up, but still, it was the choice I made.

  I filled an old traveling satchel with the slate board and chalk I’d managed to borrow, and then I folded the dress, slipped in the book of poetry, along with a handkerchief and some undergarments I was certain she could use.

  As I undressed for bed that night, I wondered about my body as I’d never done before. I had no idea how I looked from another’s eyes, a man’s eyes. It would be completely inappropriate to study myself in a mirror, but I wished I could. Thoughts of Ira drifted down my body like my silky nightgown. I lay awake for hours, feeling as if I’d been kidnapped by him in the middle of a life journey that had previously been so carefully arranged.

  When I arrived the next morning, the sun was bright and hot, and streams of dusty light slanted into the office through the only window. Ira, as usual, was there before me, and he glanced at the bag I’d brought along from home, then went on as if it didn’t exist.

  I tried to make light of his reaction. “I contained myself, I assure you. I could’ve given away so much more. In fact, I will go ahead and donate many other articles. Now that I see such need around me, it seems ever so silly and wasteful to keep the amount of clothing I have in my wardrobe.”

  Ira smiled my way and then lifted a stack of letters and began to sort through them.

  “If you’re concerned, Ira, I won’t push ahead. Truly, I would do nothing willingly to cause you any trouble. I don’t have to find her again if you don’t want me to.”

  He looked up from the letters. “Have you learned of her whereabouts?”

  “Just yesterday I was finally told by one of the children. She’s living in a backyard near here, in the servants’ quarters. It’s close by. I can easily walk there and find her.”

  “Would you like me to accompany you?”

  “No, thank you. I think I’d be less threatening on my own.”

  His voice lowered and softened. “I happened across someone like her once, a young boy. He had a lame foot—a clubfoot, I think it was—and all the other boys teased him. I paid him special attention and gave him extra things. I even slipped him money. But as a result all I did was make it harder on him. People teased him even more. They called him my cabin boy.”

  “Oh . . . Ira.”

  He tried to smile, but the pain of that memory was still shining in his eyes.

  “What happened to him?”

  “He turned away from me and from the faith. He fell in with the first group of people who accepted him as an equal. Gangsters, I’m afraid.”

  I managed a weak “You tried.”

  “Yes, but I tried too hard.” He gazed down. “Often we make mistakes. Often we push too hard.” He looked back at me then and held my gaze with a quivering in his eyes, and I already knew that he was also trying perhaps too hard with me, and he knew it. As I stood there, recognizing it for what it was, something silent and powerful plunged inside me, a sand fall of feelings.

  But I was engaged to another man.

  I dropped my arms to my sides and tried to act normal, but inside me the sand fall continued to pour off the rim.

  As the day wore on, I grew more troubled. I kept myself busy with numerous projects, including reading to the children, attending a wake, and distributing some old hats and boots we’d received. In the heat of afternoon, I took the loudest, largest group of children I’d ever handled down to the beach for wading. The ocean was testing us that day, rolling and heaving loudly and boisterously, then retreating with a sucking pull.

  I thought of the girl and not of Ira, but I ended up delaying my pursuit of her until the next day. The sea stirred up the disquiet within me, making me doubt myself as never before. Ira was here because of a faith larger than mine. He maintained an abiding belief in the goodness of humanity, especially goodness aimed at others, and yet he was skeptical we could benefit the girl. His words kept returning to me. Don’t think of the alleys as a laboratory, Grace. People’s lives are fragile.

  Over a meal of roast duckling with sweet potatoes that night, Mother informed me that one of her china collections was cracking. Clorinda had discovered the problem.

  I wondered about Clorinda as I never had before. She had been with us for all of my life, and yet
I barely knew anything about her. Of course I knew the servants had lives beyond our house, and that Clorinda’s revolved mainly around her church. My mother took pride in paying the servants well, perhaps as some type of penance for how the family money had originally been made. We had a house bigger than most just for the servants; they didn’t live in shacks and sheds—in fact, nothing close to it.

  “Such a shame. I don’t think the pattern is made anymore. I won’t be able to replace the pieces.” She was still talking about the china.

  “Buy a new set.”

  Mother stiffened. “Of course I can order a new set. But the pieces have sentimental value to me. It was our wedding china, you see, your father’s and mine, and I’d planned to always hold on to it. Someday it was to be yours, Grace.”

  “If you wish to donate the china, I’ll make good use of it.”

  But Mother looked pained, and I regretted my impulsive suggestion. “I thought you would still want it, despite the imperfections.”

  Mother would never use cracked china, and when I married Jonathan, I wanted to start anew. “I’m not marrying for another year. Why not give the set away and let someone else make use of it now?”

  Etta, who had been listening intently, sat back in her chair and appeared aghast. “You would take your mother’s china down into the alleys? At the very least find some nice family home, where it could be given proper use.”

  “Proper use?” I looked into her dark eyes that even in the gentle wavering candlelight were animated. “I used to believe as you do. That the poor have no use or no appreciation for fine things. But it isn’t true.”

  Etta shook her head.

  “They have likes and dislikes and tastes that run the gamut.”

  Etta appeared as if she wanted to say something, but she stopped herself and deferred to Mother, who said, “I see you’re learning about the lower classes, and I’m pleased. I sent you there to learn. But didn’t a wise man once say that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing?”

  Not responding, I steeled myself against more criticism I was sure would come.

  Etta said, “Are we to feel guilty because we have more than others?”

  “No.”

  And then Mother added, “Be careful that you don’t begrudge us what we have, Grace, simply because others have less.”

  “I wouldn’t dare,” I said.

  Later Jonathan arrived, and I found him outside on the front portico with Etta. It was a gentle, warm evening, the smell of oleanders and beach fires in the air. Etta and Jonathan had been sharing a quiet conversation. I couldn’t say that Jonathan seemed particularly pleased to see me as I walked up and gave him a smile, but I also couldn’t say that I blamed him. For the past six weeks, it was as though I’d been sleepwalking through my evenings, my thoughts focused on the day I’d just completed or on the day of work ahead of me.

  Something else: Jonathan had stopped whistling again, particularly around Etta, something he ceased only when troubled. And so I stopped seeing Etta’s beauty as a flower, not even a wild Indian paintbrush, but instead a twisting vine.

  Perhaps Jonathan had come over in hopes of talking to Etta instead of me. I was capable of jealousy, but now, if a threat did exist to my relationship with Jonathan, then it was fated to be that way, and I would do nothing to intervene. And I was hardly blameless.

  Ira . . .

  I ended up leaving them to their conversation, and as I passed my mother, sitting at the cherry table in the family dining room, she was looking over the pieces of china, sighing and lamenting the fact that so many were ruined. She held a teacup up to the light. “There they are. See them, Grace. Cracks everywhere.”

  Webs of fine cracks ran through the cup, almost indiscernible to the eye. The cracks were fine enough that the cup could still hold liquid, but bothersome to Bernadette. To me, the imperfections demonstrated character, like the wrinkles in a good pair of leather gloves, or in a learned face.

  “I can’t part with the good ones,” said Mother. “Some of them are still intact. But I will turn over these more damaged ones to you, my dear. You may take them to your mission if you please.”

  “Thank you, Mother.”

  She couldn’t let go of much, but she could part with those things she deemed less than perfect, that failed her touchstone, that were, in her mind, damaged goods.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  ETTA

  Curiosity and that clenching ache of being left out were driving her to distraction, so Etta considered her options. Her aunt had a cherrywood secretary in the library, where she kept papers and such. Etta could nose about at night, but she was fearful of being caught. There were simply too many other people in the house. Besides, she didn’t know what she would be looking for, and she assumed any papers of real importance were probably kept in a locked box at the bank.

  Her next idea was to write a letter. She knew the address of the large plantation home outside Houston, but she did not know the name, if it indeed had a name, nor did she know the name of anyone who lived or worked there. But she quickly decided to simply write a letter addressed “To Whom It May Concern,” acting as a domestic inquiring about work, and ask about the type of business that was run there in an effort to explore their needs. To be convincing as a servant, she would have to write the letter carefully, without her usual flair, but she could do it.

  But then came the manner of how to obtain a reply. All mail that came to the house was passed first to her aunt Bernadette, and should she see a letter to Etta from that place, she would know that Etta had followed her. Etta considered renting her own postal box in town, where she could receive anything she wanted in secret, but she then decided she didn’t want to wait that long. Instead, she would observe her aunt longer and follow her again on her next mysterious “business” trip.

  She took several excursions with Wallace, who had not let their last meeting discourage him. She went as his date, sometimes alone but more often with others. Each time she saw him, she hoped for something to flame alive: a sense of excitement, an increasing attraction, even more humor and conviviality.

  One day on a beach picnic with a small group, she grew tired of the discussion about art and music that was consuming the others, and she excused herself to take a walk alone at sunset. At the water’s edge, the sky was burnished copper and deepest blue, striped with clouds that looked lit from within.

  She unlaced her shoes, rolled down her stockings, then left it all in a pile. She picked up her skirt and walked briskly, while memories of her moments with Philo filled the chambers of her mind. He had been surfacing more and more, against her will. She walked so far she could scarcely see where she’d left the others, who were sitting around in a circle on porch chairs brought to the sands by servants.

  Eventually she stopped, breathing deeply. It was exhausting working so hard to become one of them, to be one of the pampered, clear-eyed girls of the elite, with all their inborn confidence and sense of entitlement. Sometimes she couldn’t follow what they were saying; it was if they were speaking in a foreign language. During those times she had to plaster on a look of interest and understanding and simply nod like an idiot. And yet she wanted to be here, needed to be here, if she was going to have a winning future. What, pray tell, was waiting for her in Nacogdoches? She had to proceed cautiously. Being different and fresh was one thing, but she couldn’t distinguish herself to such an extent that no young man would find her worthy. She was walking a tightwire.

  Damn. Not thoughts of the circus again!

  Removed and utterly alone, she stared out at a blackening sea shimmering with quicksilver until she felt a presence. A figure was approaching from the direction of the others. Wallace. He was carrying her shoes and stockings. Standing before her now, he explained, “The sun is almost down. There’ll be no moon tonight, and you won’t be able to see your way back.”

  “Dear Wallace,” she breathed and looked up at the sky. The stars were already beginning their eter
nal wheeling around the Earth. “How kind of you.”

  He held the shoes out to her, and it was tough to face his eager, luminous eyes.

  She smiled a tired smile. “Where am I to sit? I can’t very well don them while standing.”

  “I’ll hold you up,” he said.

  “Very well.”

  He held her about the waist while she slipped the stockings and shoes on first one foot and then the other. All she had to do was turn around and she’d be in his arms. She battled with herself all the while she was tying her shoes. It would be easy to start something. They were alone. No one would see. One kiss from her and he would be enraptured.

  But in the end she couldn’t do it. She finished tying her shoes and walked back to the others at his side, not touching or talking at all.

  Etta lay in wait for another man who would affect her the way Philo had, while also lying in wait for her aunt. When Bernadette interviewed chefs for Grace’s engagement party, to be held at the end of August, Etta watched. The house chefs couldn’t come up with something special enough for the engagement gala, and so her aunt was interviewing chefs from all over the city, and even a few from the mainland, too.

  After she had released today’s chef interviewee, Bernadette sat quietly and thumbed through the newest issue of Harper’s Weekly. The library smelled of knowledge and worldliness, and the sound of her aunt turning the pages was the only thing breaking the silence. Etta studied her aunt’s face, where she could now see flashes of her mother—or rather, how her mother might have looked at this age if all the cooking and ironing and washing had not destroyed her appearance.

  “Are you happy here?” Bernadette asked so quietly that Etta almost didn’t hear her.

  “I’m sorry, I don’t understand.”

  He aunt gazed up from the pages and met Etta’s eyes. “Are you adjusting? Are you doing well?”

  Her aunt’s scrutiny was so different from others’. It penetrated her skin and made her squirm. A touch of fear jumped into Etta’s throat. Had she done something wrong? Or even worse, did her aunt know that Etta had followed her to Houston? “Yes,” said Etta. “Splendid.”