Penumbra

by Carolyn Haines

  The house was set back off the road a little piece, enough to keep the chickens that persisted in getting out of the pen safe from the occasional car. Once the house had belonged to Emma Grey, but she’d passed on, and Miss Lucille had bought it after her daughter married into the Bramlett money. Not that it was the most expensive house in town, but it did sit on a hill and caught the infrequent summer breezes. No, it wasn’t a real expensive house, but there was just something about it. Jonah Dupree knew that if he could have his pick of all the houses in the world, it would be this one.

  He waded through a dozen Rhode Island reds as he went to the porch. He’d worn his best suit, the pants pressed so many times the crease was shiny like a blade. Miss Lucille had sent word that he was to drive her to the hospital today.

  He’d heard the talk about what happened to Miss Marlena, and his heart was sorely troubled. Marlena had never hurt a living soul, as far as he knew, excepting maybe herself. On the day of her wedding to Lucas Bramlett, Marlena had stepped off the edge of a cliff. Pouring drinks for all the teetotalers in town, Jonah had watched the couple say their vows in the outdoor garden of the house Lucas had already bought and decorated. His bride was the finishing touch to the décor, her blond looks the perfect complement to the life Lucas had so carefully designed. Jonah had stood in his starched shirt and black bow tie and watched Lucas slip a gold ring on Marlena’s trembling hand, and Jonah had felt that an inevitable tragedy had been set in motion. Marlena looked more dazed than happy, and he understood why. Lucas Bramlett had been an ambition, like a college degree or a certain job. Marlena had got him. Now she would have to be his wife, and she wasn’t prepared for what that meant. That had been sixteen years ago. Marlena had been married to Lucas for almost half as long as she’d been alive.

  Jonah blinked the past out of his eyes and was frowning when he went around the porch that circled three sides of the house and knocked at the side door by the kitchen. Miss Lucille would be there, having her coffee and toast. He saw his wife, Ruth, at the stove, the dripolator in her hand. She poured a steady stream into the cup in front of Lucille, but her gaze was on Jonah.

  “Press my teal dress,” Lucille said to Ruth, her voice sloppy at the end of the sentence.

  Jonah stood at the screen door, waiting until the currents of the room were established. If Miss Lucille had been drinking, things would be a lot different than he’d imagined as he came up the road from Drexel.

  “Yes, ma’am,” Ruth said in her Sunday voice.

  Jonah didn’t know what to make of that. Ruth hated Miss Lucille with a pure flame. For thirty-seven years, though, she’d never missed a day of work. She came and she cooked, cleaned, and tended the woman’s needs. She listened to her talk and her bragging. Not once, in all that time, had Ruth ever let on how she really felt. Jonah considered that and realized there were things about his wife that frightened him.

  He’d worked for Lucille Sellers Longier for nearly forty years. Had, in fact, met his wife at Miss Bedelia Sellerses’ Christmas party in 1915, back when her pale gold daughter’s dream of catching a rich man had not yet been tainted by her actions. As it was, in 1918, Lucille had married Jacques Longier, a man forty-two years her senior. A foreigner, Longier hadn’t cared that Lucille had a scandalous past. He’d married Lucille, taken over control of the Sellerses’ money, and bought the town’s silence with total ruthlessness.

  Old Lizzie Tolbert had found out the price of a loose tongue. She’d made it a point to call Lucille a slut and a nigger-lover. Two days later, the Tolbert house burned to the ground. Lizzie’s son had died in the flame. The Tolberts left Drexel. Jacques bought the Tolbert homestead and donated the property to the Mt. Pleasant Baptist Church, a black congregation.

  That lesson had never had to be repeated. Folks began to focus on who Lucille was now, not what she’d been in the past.

  In a strange way, Jacques had been Jonah’s benefactor. The Frenchman had come on the scene shortly after Lucille had gotten herself in trouble. Had Lucille wanted to raise the baby girl who was the product of her penchant for drink and a black jazz man, she would have lost Jacques. So Jade—a gift worth any amount of suffering—had been given to him and Ruth, and Lucille’s honor had been restored.

  Jonah felt his wife’s hot glare on him, and he watched as she left the kitchen, going to iron, as Miss Lucille had directed her. Jonah tapped on the screen door. “Miss Lucille, I’m here to drive you whenever you’re ready.”

  “Come in, Jonah,” she said, her back still to the door.

  He stepped into the coolness of the house, amazed anew at how this one house seemed to keep out the August heat. He stopped halfway across the kitchen, not knowing exactly where he should go.

  “Sit down,” Lucille said, waving at the chair across from her. She had her makeup on and her hair fixed, but she was still in her turquoise dressing gown. She’d always favored bright colors. Her lipstick was bright, too, a contrast to her pale skin, which sagged around her jawline.

  Jonah felt apprehension seep into his bones. Lucille was not a woman who asked her hired help to sit at the table with her. “Pour yourself a cup of coffee,” she said.

  He made no move to get a cup. “What time you want to go to the hospital?” he asked. “I could work on the scuppernong arbor until you’re ready to go.”

  “Sit down,” she said.

  He eased into the chair, his hands on his thighs. He looked into her eyes, the blue of a morning sky. His heart was beating too fast, and he tried to find something of the past in her intense gaze. It was gone, though, just as the fresh beauty that had once held him spellbound was gone. Miss Marlena had captured that beauty, and he wondered for the first time if Lucille hated her own daughter.

  “How long have you been working for me, Jonah?” she asked.

  “Close on to forty years,” he said, knowing that there was something behind the question. Miss Lucille had become an expert at making layers of things.

  “And Ruth, how long for her?”

  “Thirty-seven years.” Jonah decided to say what he knew. Not even Miss Lucille could change a fact. “How is Jade?”

  The abrupt change in the subject alarmed Jonah. In all the years that Jade had lived with them, Miss Lucille had never asked about Jade’s well-being. Other than to say do this or do that, he didn’t think Jade’s name had ever passed Lucille’s lips.

  “She’s doing just fine.” That was enough. Just an answer, no details.

  “Lucas called me this morning. He wants Jade to stay with Marlena. On a permanent basis.”

  There it was. The daughter Miss Lucille had kept needed care. “Jade’s got a business to run.” It wasn’t really an answer, just a statement of fact.

  He saw the subtle shift in Lucille’s expression, more a tightening of the flesh around the eyes. “It would put Jade in a good light to help Lucas out.”

  Jonah saw the way she was going to play it. Not an outright order, but a subtle application of pressure. She’d learned that from her first husband. Old Jacques had been an expert at such tactics. Jonah shrugged. “That’s up to Jade. She’s plenty grown.”

  Ruth came back into the room with the freshly ironed dress hanging from a wire hanger. She stopped so abruptly the dress swung on the hanger like a gust of wind had entered the room. “What’s up to Jade?”

  Jonah kept his eyes fixed on Lucille. “They want Jade to sit with Miss Marlena while she heals.”

  “Jade has a business to run.” Ruth’s tone said that was the end of it.

  “Folks tend to do better in business when they have Lucas Bramlett behind them.” Lucille’s hands had pulled into fists so tight the big ruby ring she wore seemed to glow against her white skin. “She should be happy to tend to Marlena.”

  “We’re all real sorry about what’s happened. Jade is fond of Suzanna, and Miss Marlena, too.” Ruth hung the dress on the molding over the door. “I’m sure Jade will do what she can when she isn’t working.” She smoothed the hem of
the dress, focusing on the teal material. “I think I’m coming down with something, Miss Lucille. I’m gone go home and rest up. Might be I can help some with Marlena if it turns necessary.”

  Ruth walked across the kitchen and out the side door. There was the sound of her too-big shoes clapping on the porch boards, and then she was gone.

  Jonah thought about offering to give his wife a ride, but he knew it was best to let Ruth walk, even if she felt bad. Ruth wouldn’t want to be in the car with Miss Lucille, and Jonah surely wouldn’t get the car unless its owner was riding with him. He thought he heard his wife’s footsteps in the dirt, and then there was only the sound of Miss Lucille’s breath. He tried not to hear it, tried not to remember another time when her breath had come all rushed and fast. She’d been different then, and it had almost ruined her.

  “I would have thought Ruth would be more concerned about Marlena,” Lucille said, anger in her voice.

  Jonah thought about the last forty years. Lucille had not been bad to work for. She was demanding, and sometimes so self-involved as to be comical. But she’d given him something that was more valuable to him than his own life. For that, he would always owe her. “Ruth is worried, Miss Lucille. She’s worried about your daughter and her own.”

  There it was, just out in the open. He held steady, forcing his gaze to meet hers. She lifted a hand as if she intended to strike him. There had been some of that, too, in the past. He saw she remembered it and lowered her hand.

  “How dare you speak to me in that way,” she managed.

  “The day you gave Jade to us, Ruth and I knew there would never be a way we could repay you. We’ve tried, through the years, to show our gratitude. Ruth has never missed a day of work. I’ve missed two, when I hurt my hand in the car motor. But the hard truth is, you never wanted Jade. Never. Neither did her daddy. He was on the road and gone before you could tell him you were in trouble. Ruth and I were more than glad to take that precious baby girl and raise her. What I’m getting to is that Ruth don’t owe you anything. Neither does Jade.”

  Jonah saw the shift in her eyes. “I’ve paid you for every day you’ve worked. And Jade, too. Everything she’s ever done for Marlena and Suzanna, she’s been paid for.” Lucille’s voice quivered.

  “Because that’s how you wanted it.”

  “I can’t believe this conversation. I’ve never known such ingrates. I can’t remember a time when I’ve been more shocked.”

  “I’ll tell you what I remember. I remember a time before Jacques Longier.”

  The shock of his words caused her to inhale sharply. “I should fire you.”

  At last he understood. “Yes, ma’am, you probably should.” But she wouldn’t. He finally had hold of the truth of it. She kept him because he reminded her of the past. He’d thought for so long that she hated the past, but now he saw that she didn’t.

  “You gave me your daughter,” he said quietly, “and then I gave her to herself. What Jade does is her choice. And that’s the way it’s going to be.”

  He got up from the table and walked out the screen door. When the door slammed behind him, he turned back. “I’ll be getting the car ready for when you want to go to the hospital to see Miss Marlena.”

  7

  The sun was halfway up the sky by the time Jade got to Hollywood Styles. Dotty Strickland had been nearly two hours late in arriving at the hospital, and Jade hadn’t even had time to go home and take a bath. She parked her secondhand Hudson, bought in Mobile from the only colored car lot in the southeastern part of the state, and walked to the front door of her shop. The sign in the window, a bright pink, was the only neon in Drexel. The first word was block letters, like the ones on the hillside in Los Angeles, while Styles was cursive, fast and sleek. The sign had been crafted by a glass worker in Gulfport and was Jade’s biggest extravagance. It had paid for itself nine times over. Drexel was as far removed from Hollywood as it was New York City, but the women of the small town craved cosmopolitanism. They wanted to look glamorous, or at least elegant, while retaining the privilege of provincialism. The sign allowed them to bask in the idea of Hollywood without keeping company with the actors and actresses they viewed as deviants and moral degenerates.

  Jade unlocked the door of her shop and stepped inside. Large photographs of Veronica Lake, Marilyn Monroe, Joan Crawford, Grace Kelly, Bette Davis, Deborah Kerr, Joan Fontaine, and the most popular, Vivien Leigh, hung around the large room. Jade had written the various movie studios and asked for the poster-sized black-and-white photos of the stars. No one in town could figure how she’d gotten them, and it gave the beauty shop another little boost of exclusivity.

  From a picture in a magazine, Jade had gotten the idea for the black sinks and fixtures, the black-and-white tiled floor. In Drexel, the decor was thought of as deliciously avant-garde. Titillation was a large draw in a population that believed pleasure to be a trap of Satan.

  Jade had long ago given up thinking about the perversity of her clientele. Women who considered her a social inferior begged for hair appointments, and within the confines of the shop, she was their superior. They deferred to her judgment and taste. Jade had come to believe that she was lucky. There had been no mirror of society to reflect her image, so she’d learned at a young age to see herself. The women whose hair she cut and styled had no clear picture of themselves. They depended on others to tell them who they were and what they should look like. The movies shaped their view of glamour; men defined their sexuality and their roles as wives and mothers. Having lived outside society, in a world where she was neither black nor white, Jade had developed a unique sense of style that took into account only the shape of her own face, her skin, her hair, and her eyes.

  She worked alone in the shop because no white woman would work for her, and her clients wouldn’t allow a “real” Negro woman to touch their hair. Jade was an anomaly. Her talent wasn’t necessarily styling hair or choosing cosmetics, though she was good at that, it was being able to see another’s fantasy and then bridge the gap between that and the reality of what she had to work with. Women who snubbed her in public left her shop feeling that she’d touched them with magic. Two of her clients were women who drove the forty miles from Mobile once a week for a cut and style. Jade long ago accepted that vanity was stronger than prejudice. This knowledge was just one of the many reasons that she remained in Drexel against her parents’ wishes. It wasn’t that Ruth and Jonah didn’t love her. Her adopted parents had given her every ounce of love they had, to the point that there was nothing left to give each other. She recognized that in many ways, she was the spoke that kept the wheel of their marriage rolling, just as she was the counterweight that gave balance to Suzanna Bramlett’s life.

  She thought of the little girl and felt dread squeeze down so hard that she leaned against the back of a chair for support. To most folks, Suzanna was an ill-behaved and spoiled child. They saw her as the daughter of the wealthiest man in town, with a doting mother who gave into the child’s every whim. They had no real idea of Suzanna’s life. The young girl was a ghost in her own house. She flitted from room to room, maybe breaking something valuable or banging on the piano, or screaming and kicking. She did that because no one saw her. Lucas and Marlena looked right through her. Jade understood, probably better than most, what that felt like.

  Jade pulled down the penciled note that Jonah had taped to the glass, proud of her father’s penmanship, his neat letters and proper grammar. “Jade is at the hospital,” was all the note said. She went to the appointment book and made a list of the women she’d have to call and apologize to. Her clients were mighty particular about their hair appointments. There would be tears, perhaps ugliness. Dependency often created anger. She read down the list of appointments. Coming in at ten-thirty was Betsy McBane. Jade sighed, blowing the breath up so that her soft bangs lifted for a moment. She thought about putting the note back up, locking the door, and hiding until Mrs. McBane left. She didn’t, though.

  Th
e chemical odor of perms was overpowering. Jade opened the windows and the back door, hoping a cross current would pull the smell into the street. She had a full day, one appointment after the next without even a lunch break, and she was bone tired. It was better to stay busy, though. That might keep the worry about Suzanna at bay, at least enough for her to get through until she heard something from Frank. Once he knew something for positive, he’d come and tell her. Frank might not understand her affection for Suzanna, but he knew it was there. He’d tell her what he knew, even if Marlena’s husband wouldn’t remember to.

  Thinking about Lucas was a waste of good energy. Jade had never shown the discomfort he made her feel. She was afraid if she did, he wouldn’t allow her to baby-sit Suzanna. Lucas had never done a single thing to make Jade uneasy, but she felt his gaze on her when her back was turned, and there was strong emotion in it. What upset Jade the most was that she recognized her likeness to Lucas Bramlett. He lived as he chose, because he was strong enough to do so. Most folks thought it was money that gave Lucas his power, but Jade knew differently. The money was part of it, but mostly it came from his character. Like her, he was outside the bounds of society.

  Lucas never hesitated to call Jade when he wanted someone to keep Suzanna for an afternoon, or an evening, or a weekend, or a three-week cruise. Would he bother to tell her if there was a ransom demand? She doubted it, but Huey Jones couldn’t keep his mouth shut to save his life. If there was a ransom demand, it would be all over town.

  It occurred to Jade that Lucas wouldn’t pay for something he didn’t value, and she felt a surge of desperation. Public opinion would force him to pay the ransom, though. He was outside society, but not inured to it. That thought brought a bit of comfort, even when she knew that Lucas had never shown the first glimmer of joy at his daughter. Not at her birth and not at her first step. Not when she did well in school or excelled at the piano. Nothing the little girl did could capture his praise or pleasure. Sadness like a weight pressed on Jade’s chest. Folks were always making the comment that she could do better in a big city. Even Ruth had joined in that refrain. Ruth wanted her to marry and have babies. In Drexel, she was too white for the black men and too black for the white. In a place like New Orleans, she could have her pick of either.