Ladies In The Parlor

by Tully, Jim

  Instead, she told Dr. Haley that she was “that way for a baby.”

  Feeling that he was the only man in her life, he gave her medicine that she did not take, and when she became slightly hysterical, he soothed her with money.

  When her imaginary danger had passed, both doctors breathed more freely.

  Leora and her aunt laughed about the incidents as they strolled through the hickory woods in front of Red Moll’s house.

  “Men are like children,” said Red Moll, “they’re fraid of the dark.”

  Leora watched the evening star appear and made no answer.

  Her aunt resumed, “Men are smart not to want children—it’s the women who are dumb. They chatter about motherhood, and get old and gray and fat for kids who’ll cut their throats in the end.” She pulled a piece of hickory bark from a tree. Beneath the bark were two insects fastened together. “You see,” she said, “wherever you go it’s the same thing. I get so sick of it I could crawl away and die.”

  “But didn’t you ever care—?” asked Leora.

  “No—not even when I was your age—it’s all so damned messy,” replied her aunt.

  Leora was silent as she watched the two insects crawl away.

  “It’s not what I thought it was either,” she said at last. “I could go on forever without it.”

  “It’s a good way to get money though—but whatever you do, don’t be cheap,” advised her aunt. “You’ll get more out of men if you’re not cheap.”

  Such talks may have helped to shape Leora’s life.

  She looked again at the evening star. Her head raised upward gave the lovely contour of her white throat. A slight ripple of wind blew the red-brown hair about her temples. It blew the collar of her silk blouse until the upper part of her breast was exposed.

  Her aunt, gazing at her in the dying light of the day, said more quickly than usual, “You’re beautiful as the devil, Leora.”

  “Was the devil beautiful?” Leora asked without blushing.

  “They say he was,” replied Red Moll. Pulling another piece of bark from the tree, she added, “It’s no wonder he went to hell.”

  Turning again to Leora, she said, “I don’t know who you got your good looks from.”

  “Wasn’t mother good-looking?” she asked.

  “Yes,” was her aunt’s reply, “she had good hair and teeth, and her face wasn’t bad—but she was not like you—you have everything—I wonder what’ll become of you.”

  “So do I,” returned Leora.

  “And I wonder what’ll become of your mother if she keeps on having babies—she’s going to have another, you know.”

  Leora’s voice raised, “Is she—oh dear!”

  “Yes,” Red Moll mused, “it’s too bad—I feel so sorry for her.”

  Leora returned home late. Her mother was sewing. All the children were in bed.

  Mrs. Blair was bent over a dress, her red hand pulling a needle back and forth.

  The three top buttons of her calico dress were open. Her faded hair, that had once been tinted with the sun, was now projected in two long straggles, like bent horns from her head.

  She looked up wearily and asked, “Is that you, dear?”

  “Yes, it’s me,” replied Leora, entering the room. “Is it true what aunt has told me?” she asked.

  Knowing Leora’s meaning, the mother bowed over the dress in her hand and said, “Yes.”

  “This is terrible, Mother, it’s a sin.”

  Her mother made no answer.

  Leora looked at a red mark around a figure on a full calendar. It indicated that a menstruation period had been two months passed for the forlorn woman.

  Her mother bit the thread at the end of a seam, and laid the dress down, when Leora turned impulsively and exclaimed, “My God, Mother—it’s one squalling brat after another.”

  Her mother made no reply and Leora went on, “You’ve got to stop some time.”

  “What can I do?” asked the mother.

  “You might shoot him if he ever touches you again—he’s just a God-damned animal.”

  “You mustn’t talk that way about your father,” said the mother tiredly.

  “I’ll talk worse when I see him,” was Leora’s rejoinder.

  “Please don’t,” pleaded her mother, “it ain’t his fault —what’s a man to do?”

  Mrs. Blair bent toward Leora, who stared at her with set face.

  “Don’t look at me that way, dear—can’t you see I need you— I’m the most alone person in the house—I’m so alone I could cry—” She buttoned the top part of her dress—”it’s just no use—I can’t figure it all out,” she moved closer to her daughter. “Now just suppose I didn’t want to have you—where would you be, dear?” She began to cry; then said between sobs, “Some day, Leora, when you’re married and a baby begins to come, you’ll understand.” She looked with apprehension at her still stern daughter, “You wouldn’t kill it, would you?”

  “Yes, I would,” was the sharp answer, “it’s not murder to kill what’s never lived.”

  “Are you sure, Leora—maybe it’s a soul tryin’ to get back to the world again.”

  “Well, it wouldn’t come to this house if it had any sense—and you haven’t got any right to bring it here either.”

  The mother took Leora’s hand when she had finished speaking.

  “Leora,” she said slowly, “there’s times I don’t know you, you’re so strange—you’re more like the Blairs than my people—the Flemings were never like that—my mother’d of crawled to save a baby.”

  “And what for—I’d like to know,” snapped Leora.

  “Because she felt it had as much right in this world as she had—that’s why.”

  A thought came to Leora. Her face brightened, “But, Mother,” she said, “It may be you’re not that way at all—suppose I talk to Dr. Haley in the morning—he’s very kind, and he’ll examine you and not charge me anything.” She began to soothe her mother.

  “All right,” returned the worn woman—”maybe you’re right—but I’m so tired—won’t you come up, Leora dear, and stay with me until I go to sleep?”

  “Sure, Mother,” was the answer. Leora picked up the kerosene lamp and lighted her mother’s steps up stairs.

  She sat on her mother’s bed for some moments. Hearing her regular breathing, she undressed and lay down beside Sally.

  She stared into the darkness for a long time, and then, as was her habit, she went to the window and looked at the silent river. Rain began to fall. She listened to it rattle on the roof until her eyes became heavy.

  Again she lay upon the bed.

  The noises of the night became vague and far away.

  Soon the beautiful and turbulent daughter of William Blair was at rest for the night.

  Chapter 5

  When Leora came down to breakfast, her brothers and sisters were already jangling their mother’s nerves, “Ma, get me this,” and “Ma, where are my clean stockings?” and “Ma, can I go to the picture show this afternoon?” The mother, patient as the future, tried to be everywhere at once and help Sally get breakfast for a hungry brood at the same time.

  The spick-and-span Leora ignored all the tribe but Sally, who was bent over the stove. “I want to talk to you after breakfast, Sal,” she said.

  Sally, the indomitable, merely said, “All right, Lee,” and went on with her cooking, while two other children rattled the dishes into place on the table.

  The heat from the stove flustered Sally. Her red, round face was already perspiring.

  “Take it easy, Sal,” suggested Leora.

  The gas was weak that morning. Breakfast cooked slowly. “Everybody’s usin’ too much at once,” observed Sally.

  “Yes,” returned her mother, “everybody’s hungry at this hour.”

  “Pa’ll be home and breakfast won’t be ready,” worried Sally.

  “That’ll be too bad,” said Leora, going to the window of the living-room and looking out upon
the withered grass of the yard. She could hear men returning from labor at night, dragging their feet along the quiet street that ran in front of the house.

  Soon her father turned in at the broken gate. She walked to the kitchen just as he clattered his tin dinner pail on the sink.

  “Hello there,” said the mother wearily.

  In return he asked, “Ain’t breakfast ready yit?”

  “No,” answered Sally, “the gas is awful weak.”

  “Well gol darn it—you’d have the same story if I got here at noon.”

  Suddenly Leora stood before him.

  “Mother’s not feeling well.” Her body rigid with anger, she spoke calmly, “And there’s going to be no scolding around here.”

  The father stepped backward. Leora, still in front of him, said, “You know what I mean—I can’t keep you from doing a lot of things—but you’re going to be quiet now.”

  The mother stood, her hands on the back of a chair, while Sally, after brushing the hair from her eyes, poured a mixture of mush into a dish.

  Blair for a second was in the mood to rebel. And then, beaten by more than his daughter, he went to the living-room until breakfast was announced.

  The meal was cold before the mother could eat. For in spite of Sally and Leora offering to help, she insisted on serving the children.

  Leora might have been a society girl slumming, so out of place did she seem.

  She looked about at her greedy brothers and sisters in the manner of one who hated poverty with every fibre of her being.

  It was at such moments that a shrewd observer might have sensed her greatest quality—a prescience as delicate as the whiskers of a cat—that would pay no price for so-called sin, and while she might go through life with lighter baggage than the philosopher, she would still have, in her own way, as much wisdom.

  In school she had slipped through her grades without effort. She might have had a harder time without Sally. But then, there was Sally. And if Sally had not been there, Leora would have found a neighbor girl. Though life may have ground her a grisly flour, according to our notions, she was not one to be without bread.

  Sally had perhaps a better mind than Leora in school, or, at least as good. She had to make an effort. Leora made none.

  She now ate daintily and precisely, and when the breakfast was over, she took Sally into the living-room.

  “Mother’s that way again,” she confided.

  “Yes,” returned Sally, “I know.”

  “How did you know?” asked Leora.

  “I could feel it,” answered Sally.

  “But she’s not going to have it,” said Leora.

  “Why, Leora!” said Sally.

  “I mean it.” Leora looked defiantly at the dingy street.

  “But—but—” Sally groped for words, “it’s sent here —God’s sending it.”

  “Let Him send it somewhere else—we’ve got enough.” Leora took Sally’s arm. “Now I want you, Sally, to tell Mother you just know she caught cold—you can tell her I told you what Aunt told me—and I’ll talk to Dr. Haley today—he might do something in a minute to change everything when he examines her, and she’ll never know the difference.”

  While Sally was trying to comprehend, Leora took her other arm, and turned her so they faced each other —”Then Sally—they’ve just got to sleep alone—if he,” she said the word with contempt, “wants a woman, let him go to Maggie Queery down the track.”

  “But Leora,” Sally could say no more.

  “Now you talk to Mother today—do you hear.”

  “Yes, Lee—I will.” With eyes full of tears, Sally held her beautiful sister in her arms for a moment.

  Leora, not responding to the gesture of affection, stepped away, saying, “Now don’t forget what I’ve told you.”

  “I won’t,” returned Sally and went to bring Leora’s wrap.

  Before leaving, Leora went to her mother. Kissing her cheek as a bird would peck it, she said quickly, “Now cheer up, Mother.”

  Ignoring her father and the other children, she left the house.

  Leora always arrived an hour earlier at the doctor’s office. It gave her time with the doctor before the office opened.

  The doctor was beyond fifty, and he believed that the night was useful for restoring the battery of life.

  Before Leora allowed him to caress her she said to the doctor, “I want to ask you one favor.”

  “What is it?” he asked impatiently.

  “My mother thinks she’s that way again, and I want you to examine her.”

  The doctor, old in the ways of bringing and detouring babies, replied,

  “Certainly—she’s perhaps not that way at all. She probably caught cold.”

  “That’s what I told her,” lied Leora, “but she wants to come to you and make sure.”

  “All right, my dear—tell her to come tomorrow afternoon.”

  Leora put her arms about the doctor. For several minutes the man of medicine forgot his trade.

  Later, the radiant Leora asked, “Doctor—are things a sin when people are not married?”

  It was the doctor and not the deacon who answered. As usual with men of science, he asked another question while answering with,

  “Is it a sin to be alive?”

  “No—I think it’s grand,” Leora replied.

  “That’s your answer,” said the doctor, as the first caller rang the bell.

  Leora’s mind was full that day. How different people were. It occurred again and again to her, as she went about her duties.

  She had heard Dr. Farway refer to Dr. Haley as a big man. She had wondered at the time what he meant. She still wondered.

  Brusque as the wind, he would snap orders to his patients, and scold little children. He never sent bills to the poor. She had often seen him take half the amount offered by a working man. Many times she had heard him say to a poor woman, “What’s it worth to you—pay it when you get rich.”

  Patients who had certain ailments he would send to Dr. Farway. “He’s better than I am on such things—but don’t tell him I said so—or that I sent you.” When one patient had gone, Leora heard the doctor say, “I can’t do it all—and Farway is better,” he sighed, “and younger.”

  “But, Doctor,” put in Leora, “why can’t he cure his own wife?”

  “Maybe he doesn’t want to,” snapped Dr. Haley.

  When Leora returned home that evening, her mother was packing her husband’s lunch.

  “Mother, I’ve arranged for Dr. Haley to examine you tomorrow.”

  The tired woman promised to see the doctor.

  There was a bustle in the house as she made ready to go. For the first time in weeks she looked in the mirror, and drew back, with her hands before her eyes. She knew what the doctor would say. Mechanically she bade the children good-bye and went to the street-car. The words of Leora kept drumming in her ears. They had not made her bitter, just more tired. Words no longer bothered her. Of late, her runaway son had obsessed her. He might have written to her, she thought, as the wheels of the street-car clicked over the uneven rails.

  Leora did not want another baby around the house. It was a squalling brat to her. In spite of all her years with Blair, his taunts about her getting in the family way always stung Leora’s mother. No matter what happened, she could not destroy the baby. She recalled her first baby, born dead. The memory of what that child might have been still haunted her in the night. Being gone, it now lived in her fancy. The reality of her living children helped her not at all in imagining what the unformed might have been.

  It would soon be three months. In fear she held the secret from the rest of the family and then, in fear, she had told her sister-in-law. She shuddered again at the thought of not having the baby. That would be murder.

  She left the car as it stopped, and waited for one returning home.

  The children, in the absence of their mother, were playing somewhere else. Except for Piebald, the large black
and white cat, the house was deserted. She stared at the picture of a movie actress in tights which Leora had placed near the living-room door. The thumbtack was loose in one corner. She fastened it again. Then her gaze wandered, unseeing, about the room.

  The cat walked across the table in the kitchen. She tried to make it get on the floor; then dropped her hand in weariness and stumbled up stairs.

  The cat followed her.

  She walked in and out of the pine-boarded rooms. A pain gripped her body. She doubled and clenched her teeth, then stumbled forward once again. To stop her teeth from clattering together, she bit her lower lip. Tears dropped out of her eyes. She sat on the bed where Leora and Sally slept; then bit her lower lip again to drive the sobs back in her throat. With her feet still on the floor, she twisted her body and buried her face in Leora’s pillow.

  The cat jumped on the bed.

  Mrs. Blair sat erect and drove the sobs back in her throat.

  She stroked the cat’s head as it tried to get into her lap.

  She then rose and stumbled to the bathroom.

  Several of the children returned home an hour later and shouted, “Mother.”

  There was no answer. Anxious for play, they rushed out of the house again.

  Sally returned in a short while, and called, “Mother, are you home?”

  The echo of her words returned to her.

  She went into the kitchen and saw the havoc caused by the cat.

  A sickly yellow fluid dribbled out of the hole in the can of condensed milk. She picked it up, wiped it, then placed it in the cupboard.

  After arranging the dishes on the sink, she went up stairs.

  Her mother was stretched across the bed, while the cat sniffed at her body. Sally screamed, and threw a shoe at the cat. It scampered down the stairs in a snarl. She rushed to her mother, then into the yard where the other children were playing. “Run and get Dr. Farway!” she shouted, “Mother’s ill!”

  The children hurried for the doctor, while Sally ran to the house of a neighbor, and breathless, asked, “Please, may I telephone my sister—my mother’s very sick.”

  “You know where it is, Sally.” Old Mrs. Ridge pointed her thumb over her shoulder, and remained seated in her chair, a clay pipe gripped in her hand.