by Janis Owens
So perhaps she was right after all when she said these things didn’t come free, but I had little room to complain, taking a seat and making an Ira-like dent in the incredible feast while Myra waited on me as assiduously as she did her husband, her eye on my coffee cup, her excuses vague in answer to my repeated invitations she join us. Invitations I noticed her husband never extended. In fact, he didn’t speak to her at all beyond an occasional question or request, though he did seem pleased with my company, setting aside his inevitable sports page to tell me news of his world, which had indeed shrunk into the pounding walls of Sanger Manufacturing. Union talk, mostly, though it was union talk with a twist, since Lafayette Street had long been infested with a small pro-union taint, unheard of in the South, and apparently just as unwelcome at the table of my brother, who made no bones about the fact that his late nights and early mornings were partly due to an all-out effort to nip this union nonsense in the bud once and for all.
When I tried to enlighten him on the roots and history of American trade unionism in an attempt to win his interest, he only went back to his breakfast with a laugh and a shake of his head. Something in the sight of Michael consumed in his opulence and Myra engulfed in her thinness and me and the poor suckers at Sanger left hung out to dry with our credit lines got me back in the writing mode, and one night in a fit of blind inspiration, I put aside my notes and retitled my manuscript: Peculiar Institutions and One Lost Cause, then, below, in one of those catchy subheadings popular at the time, Why the South Lost the War of Rebellion.
I was absurdly pleased with my little angle, one that would not only allow me to dissect battles, which was my specialty, but also insert a little provocative social commentary. The results might not be exactly objective, but Harvard was to blame for that, and I made no apologies to anyone, scribbling out my little popular history from daybreak till noon, surrounded by legal pads full of notes and texts for reference, pinning battle sites along the walls when it got too confusing to follow by ear. Rappahannock and the Rapidan Basin stretched from the kitchenette to the bathroom, the Petersburg Area filled the wall just above my head, and when I ran out of space in the living room, I stacked them two and three high, even in the bathroom, where I could ponder Cold Harbor and smirk at Stuart while I bathed in the old clawfoot tub.
But this was only necessary for the actual battles; the social commentary, namely a scathing exposé of the practice of chattel slavery, I wrote freehand, with only a few notations from my old Archives notes. From the first word to the last, I wrote with a vengeance, pleased in some obscure way with spitting in bulldogs’ faces, for slavery was usually set aside as a cause and then forgotten, while I was drawing it in as not only a forerunner, but also an actual participator in the South’s defeat. Which took a little doing, I can grant you that, but I managed to pull it off, at least in rough draft, then moved on to the fighting, where I took great inexhaustive pleasure in nailing Forrest’s tail to the wall, but for some reason, found myself going easy on Stuart, deciding he was too easy game. I mean, everyone knew he was a poor ass; anybody who’d wear plumes like that was too stupid to take seriously But Nathan B., now, he was pure delight, and I wrote actual reams on the Fort Pillow Massacre, then without missing a beat, accused him of losing Chattanooga for Bragg.
I truly enjoyed doing this little number on that son of a bitch, but whether the writing was going well or crawling, I always knocked off after lunch and went downstairs to sit with Myra and sometimes be talked into the water by the children, who, after their initial shyness, seemed to find me the best toy since Play-doh.
Starved for attention, I thought them, and spent hours flipping Missy off my shoulders, time and again, her face squealing and excited, while Sim waited on the board, bouncing and impatient, begging me to teach him to swan dive.
Myra herself seldom touched the water, unless Missy made one of her suicidal leaps into the deep end, but she was our ever-present audienee, clapping for Sim, fussing at Missy, rubbing coconut-smelling oil on my back with small, warm hands that made my skin crawl and a slow heat burn somewhere in the pit of my stomach.
Something was building here, I could see that fairly early on, something that might catch and set this house on fire, and for a few days I sought to avoid it by saving my writing for the afternoon, making varied excuses to a disappointed Sim.
“But I wanna dive,” he’d whine, standing on the stairs in his towel.
“Baby, I’m busy. I need to work. I got bills to pay.”
“Grannie says you lay up here and sleep.”
“Your Grannie doesn’t know her tail from third base, and you can tell her I said so.”
Then, seeing his downcast face, I’d relent. “Call me when you’re on the board. I’ll watch from the window.”
And all afternoon long, while the bruised gray clouds slowly lined up for a late evening shower, I’d sit at the window and outline troop movements at Chickamauga, while Simon’s voice piped through the gathering dust, “Uncle Gabe! Look! Look! I’m ready!”
And I’d look all right, not at his clumsy little outstretched arms, poised above the steel blue of the water, but at his mother, sitting with her feet on the steps, her shoulders bowed, her face tired and empty, much like it’d been when she’d had her short reign as queen of Magnolia Hill. It was an odd expression, really, the vacant expectancy of someone waiting on a phone call, and I could feel a response beginning to gather in my stomach, a tiny lick of fire that kept my eyes on her long, drooping neck.
She was hurting, that much was clear, and it occurred to me that she had left the close, privileged borders of her childhood horror only to land in another Babygirl Paradise, this one complete with white oak floors and a marble pool and two truly lovely children.
But she never let on that anything was amiss, never mentioned Michael to me at all, much less to complain, and I thought her loyal, for if any man had ever abandoned a family for a career, it was he. That’s why I was such an oddity to the children, an actual flesh-and-blood man who spent more than ten minutes a week around the house, and the next time Simon knocked at my door and I gave my excuses, I stood firm. Myra had begun wearing a bikini lately, a simple black one with a loose halter, but I was too old to enjoy being tormented by an untouchable body and preferred tracing casualty rolls and weather conditions of a hundred-year-old war to sweating a nipple by a marble pool.
On the third afternoon, however, Simon proved himself a very fine budding tactician, truly a child after Mama’s own heart, when he forewent his usual outright begging to press his face to the crack under the door and call, “Uncle Gabe? Uncle Gabe? We’re swimming now. We’re down ther by the pool. We got us some brownies down ther, by the pool.” There was a sly pause. “Pecan brownies.” Then a final, desperate tag, “Right down ther by thet pool.”
Well, the brownies didn’t do the trick, but his shifting, conniving little voice did, and I opened the door and shouted into his face, “Brownies? Pecan brownies? By thet pool down ther?” And said to hell with it, what good was that hot Florida sun without a little casual lust around to give it that tiny sting? Hell, I was a grown man, I’d been around the block, I could handle myself. Hey, maybe it was time we sat down and talked about this thing—
But she wasn’t even in her bikini that day; she was wearing a one-piece Olympic-inspired racer suit that was fairly modest when dry but had all the nail-tearing cling of a dripping T-shirt when wet. By chance or fortune, it was a day Missy chose to make her dive-bombs into the deep end, and as Myra pulled her out time and again, wet and worried and promising to whip her, I treaded water under the diving board, telling Simon to keep his neck arched, making a few promises of my own.
But not a word was spoken, not a glance or half-touch, until the children were being dried off and readied for their naps. Then, with the blood pounding in my ears, I told her we needed to talk, and she only looked at me mildly, with no surprise at all, just a calm, slow nod that made my heart beat so loudly I could har
dly hear her reply.
“I have to read Sim his story first,” she said, and I told her sure, fine, to take her time, that I’d wait downstairs.
So I kissed them good night and waited in the sunroom, pacing the length of the couch, the pound of blood slowly gathering in my forehead as I listened for her footsteps on the stairs. Ten minutes passed, then twenty, and still she didn’t come, and as the minutes stretched out, I began looking around the room, at the carefully restored floors, the flowers on the mantle, and suddenly, I knew I could not do this thing to my brother in his own house. It was simply beyond me, beyond the borders of my own morality, and I left quickly, without a word, taking the stairs to the apartment two at a time, and bursting in on the airless little room that looked particularly vacant in the motionless glare of the afternoon sun, closing the door behind me and lying on the soft, narrow bed. The blood was still pumping in my head, but it had dulled to a flat, sickening headache that I closed my eyes against, trying to will away, when I heard something outside, a click. Not the click of a car door, but the muffled click of a carefully closed French door, and I stopped rubbing my eyes, straining to hear as a silence gathered for a few seconds, then was broken by the soft pad of bare feet on the old stairs.
Up, up they came, and when she made the door, she didn’t bother to knock, but walked right in, calling, “Gabrielle?”
She was still the only person on earth who called me that, and when she saw me there, not answering, but only watching her, she crossed the quiet, sullen heat and stood beside the bed.
“Did you need to talk to me?” she asked. Then, “Are you all right?”
I couldn’t answer, but only look at her: the sweet, flat eyes; the odd, sun-stained skin; the relentless thinness about her neck and shoulders that gave her always-melancholy face a slide into hunger, into despair.
“I love you, Myra,” I finally said, whispered, in honest confession. “I’m tired of pretending I don’t.”
For a moment, she only stood there, looking down with a face of perplexity, softened by the kindness, the slant of worry. Then she smiled, a small, wry smile, acknowledging what couldn’t have been a surprise to her, and hesitantly reached out one small hand and laid it against my cheek, her voice quietly singsong. “He looked like an angel when he was born and she named him for an angel.”
It was as if she were making a tired, sad commentary on all our wasted dreams, on all the obstacles that had seen fit to separate us, and something in her gentle, puzzled reply bridged the gap between the then and the now and somehow became the words I’d waited for all those cold nights on Magnolia Hill, the words that took me around the corner to the bedroom where she waited alone, betrayed and voiceless, for my brother Michael.
They were the incantation that broke the spell of my reticence, and with no more words, no clumsy explanation or strained excuse, I caught the front of her bathing suit and pulled her to me and kissed her, slow and long and deep, for I’d waited long enough, thirteen years, and as she gave in to me softly, her stomach and chest resting against me, it was suddenly too late. Too late for discussion, too late for regret, too late for anything but the hard points of her breasts, her damp, silky, woman-smelling hair, her hot skin that I freed from the wet, clinging bathing suit in one clean jerk, and when I finally had her on her back, between the bed and the wall and the window, it was sweet, it was almost too sweet, it was right on the border of something unbearable, like the pound of an abscessed tooth. I couldn’t think, I was so consumed by it; I couldn’t call her name or be a lover. All I could do was get it out, get it out, and when it had all burst, the room hot and still and, I don’t know, different (even the light subtly changed, the maps standing dimmer on the walls, the pool smooth again and reflectionless beneath the window), I was left with a small shaking in my body, like I’d lost something, given it away.
Something deep-rooted and familiar, some awful pent-up burden that was a relief to lose, and at first I thought it was the pressure of the long years of denial, but later, when she’d left to check on her children and I was alone again, a small Baptist voice whispered that perhaps it was my soul. But I cared not, not at all, for when it burst upon me like that, so white and hot that I cried aloud, I was through with death and history and commandments carved on stone. I was born again, alive and well and living in the land of dreams. And I was in love.
Stone cold in love. Heart-pounding, manic love.
Instead of satisfying me, her touch was like gasoline on dying coals; it burned, it burned, it made me twist on the bed, seeking a cooler spot. When twilight fell, I tried to write, but my mind was too centered downstairs, watching for a glimpse of Myra’s legs through the French doors as she took care of her evening routine, cooking supper, caring for her children. I toyed with the idea of going down very innocently to borrow sugar or play with Simon just to be near her, but there was a terrible demon of honesty about me, and I was afraid if Michael came home early and asked how my day had gone, I’d smile and say fine, that I’d finally crossed the line to adultery, but it was the best thing that ever happened to me, and if he didn’t mind, I’d like to live upstairs in the servant’s quarters forever.
So I stayed holed up in my room like an animal, scribbling a few insights on Bragg between watching the French doors, just biding my time till one o’clock came around, when I could emerge on the deck in perfect innocence and play in the water with the children. At first it seemed like an eternity away, and I could hardly sleep. Then morning dawned and Michael left for work and I felt a little better. Then as the sun began its full possession of the sky, Simon was knocking on my door, asking me to pleeese come down and swim, that his Mama had brought out some Coke and said I could have as much as I wanted.
The very wording of this little phrase pleased me very much, and as I changed into my bathing suit, I told myself yes, and I was going to drink it up, every drop. Which I did, as often as I could, once, sometimes twice an afternoon, and after a fortnight, was satiated enough to be generous, in love with the world. Everything Myra touched was suddenly dear to me, her house, her children, even her husband, and I faced him without fear that guilt would betray me, joining him at breakfast, and again talking of routine matters, how the union was faring, the possibility the Braves might change owners, how such a change might affect their performance. The rationale that made me as innnocent and pure as a newborn babe was the determination that Michael’s marriage was nothing more than a small legal technicality, while my and Myra’s love not only outdated it, but had also stood the test of time and separation. I knew instinctively that with his business mind and sharp creases, he might not appreciate this small revision, but I certainly did. I understood it intimately, and it comforted me so much that I had no worries for tomorrow, just a brilliant glory in the day. Love had won. Neither perverse fathers nor scheming mothers had separated us, and when Myra dressed in the afternoon to return to her children, I’d get as manic as a wild man, stomping my foot, shouting that I loved her, loved her, loved her.
She’d only smile, not even shaking her head, and when she was gone and the room was quiet again, quiet and dull and smelling of all the things I’d introduced to it that day, coffee and suntan oil and sex, I’d go back to my books with a shrug and a smile, telling myself that it was just fine, it was OK, it was just some hold-over loyalty to Michael that made her stop short of saying she loved me. Nothing to worry about, nothing to let grind me in the night when the lights from their bedroom dimmed and the dark house hung among the Spanish moss like an old, sullen dreamscape.
However, as the weeks went by, my opinion of my brother did continue its imperceptible shift, and by early summer, his even features had begun to take on the relentlessness, the same pitiless glare, of my old nemesis, Nathan Bedford Forrest, as he squashed the Union single-handedly. I did not bother to hide my disgust the morning he calmly announced the vote had been sixty-nine to thirteen, though he only smiled and folded his paper,
“Boy, you been
up north too long,” he said as Myra poured his coffee, not bothering to give her so much a glance, but speaking only to me. “I can’t have those idiots telling me how to run my business. Anyway,” he sipped his coffee, “I got plans of my own.”
Myra was replugging the coffeepot, frowning at a spark from the outlet, and I looked away, afraid my eyes would betray me, thinking don’t we all, brother, don’t we all.
However, it wasn’t until summer was fully upon us, hot, humid, West Florida summer, the air thick and pregnant all afternoon long, but never giving in to water, only hanging there above the trees in clouds as ripe and pendulous as the belly of a cow, that I finally saw a glimmer of escape, when Ira, now a civilian machinist working for the Navy in Jacksonville, called one morning during breakfast with the news his wife had borne their first child, a son, but was feeling poorly.
“Youngun cries all the damn time,” he told Myra, who’d answered the phone and was sympathetic.
“Try sugar water.”
“Done tried that, tried everything. May try putting a gun to my head, I don’t get some rest around here soon.”
Once this image settled in Myra’s brain, she was quiet and preoccupied, not even cooking or pouring coffee, so that even the General noticed and asked her why didn’t she go over there and help Dana out? That she was good with babies, it’d give them a break.
Myra looked a little stunned at the possiblitiy, but I was suddenly as sharp as a tack, keeping my eyes on the newspaper in my hands.
“The children—” she murmured.
Michael, standing and stretching his arms over his head, said, “Mama’ll keepem. She’s always fussing about how she never gets to see Missy.”
Myra was still reluctant. “It’s so far away, I never drove that far alone.”
That was when, with a total lack of guile that would have made my mother proud, I looked up. “I need to go to Gainesville sometime here soon. Can go today, if you need a ride.”
