“What?”
Gillis’s eyes were gentle. “You’ve done what you thought God wanted, but perhaps you were incorrect. The answers to our questions to God are sometimes difficult to discern. I ask you this—is Frances worthy of your loyalty? Is there any question in your mind about that? If there isn’t, there should be.” He reached over and put a hand on Nathaniel’s shoulder. “Please give serious thought to what I’m saying to you now. You need to go home and ask your wife some hard questions about how she spends her time.” He turned his gaze back to the cross.
“What do you know that I don’t?”
“It’s not my place to say. I’ll say only this. Secrets will destroy you if you let them, but you must discover this for yourself. Go home, Nathaniel. Sort through your life and see it clearly without the constraints of the rules you’ve given yourself. Keep only that which is good, that which doesn’t threaten to ruin you. This is what God wants for you.”
“How can you be so sure?”
He smiled and rose from the bench. “Because He speaks to those who will listen.”
Nathaniel walked blindly, not realizing he was home until he almost stepped on the neighbor’s tabby cat asleep on the sidewalk. At his driveway, he leaned against the back of his parked car, trying to muster the energy to go into the house. A cigarette. That’s all he wanted. Just one. Remembering a pack of cigarettes in the glove box, he took one and lit it, taking a deep drag and blowing the smoke into the sticky air.
The neighbor’s young son Homer sat on the steps of his front porch, tossing pebbles into a bucket. Nathaniel lifted his hand in a wave, and Homer waved back, grinning and yelling over to him. “Hey, Professor, I lost another tooth.”
“Good man.”
Homer’s mother appeared on the front porch, dish towel in her hand. Nathaniel nodded in greeting, but she stared through him. She said something in Homer’s ear, a stern look on her face. Homer shrugged and kicked the grass. Without a word they both disappeared into the house. Despite the heat, Nathaniel felt an ominous chill run through him. Stubbing out his cigarette, he headed around to the back of his house.
He wiped his forehead with his handkerchief as he put the key into the lock, but then hesitated, steeling his resolve, one hand frozen on the doorknob, kicking at the dry grass that grew in yellow tufts near the stairs.
As he entered, the phone began to ring. “Hello?” he answered.
“Nate?”
“Clare?”
Her voice had the thickness of sorrow. “I’ve received a call from Frances.”
He sat down at the table, hard.
“She told me about Jes and Whit.” Her voice cracked, and then she cleared her throat. “She’s threatening to tell everyone unless I send 15,000 dollars. Nate, why does she need money? Are you in trouble?”
His heart pounded in his chest, somewhere between rage and horror and worry. “Clare, it’s not for us. It’s for her. The actress thing. She’s talking incessantly about California.”
“That’s what this is about?” He heard Clare crying softly into the phone, picturing the way she crossed her arms over her stomach when she was upset. “Why didn’t you tell me about Jes and Whit?”
“Cassie wanted it kept secret. From everyone. Including Whit. She wanted Jes to give the baby away so no one would ever know.”
“How did I not see it? Cassie never let on one thing. Nate, I can’t help but think both their lives are ruined.”
He spoke as gently as he could, “They love each other. And they’ll have a chance in France.”
“But Nate, we might never see them again.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Honestly, I couldn’t care less what people think. Let all of Atlanta find out for all I care, as long as the kids are safe. But it’s Frank. I can’t get the money without him knowing what it’s for. I’m afraid of what he’ll do if I tell him the truth.” Silence on the other end of the phone went on for what felt like minutes. When she spoke her voice was stronger. “We have to send Frances away.”
“Clare, I don’t know.”
“Think of what she’s done.”
“But those places. I’m afraid of what they’ll do to her there. And she’s sick. This fixation of hers is nothing more than that.”
“They’ll cure her, and then she can come home.”
He sighed. “Clare, I don’t know if they can.”
“I have to believe that.” A pause. “Nate, I’m her mother.”
Still, he couldn’t bring himself to agree to it. “I don’t know.”
“I’ll call her later and tell her I’m getting the money for her but that it might take a few days.” The phone line crackled, and he thought he heard her sigh. “I’ll make the arrangements for one of the resting homes I found. Until then, keep her away from Jeselle and Whitmore.” Another pause. “And Nate, you need to file for divorce. It’s been long enough. Frances is my problem from now on. You hear me?”
Before he could reply, she’d hung up.
Nathaniel still had his briefcase in his hand as he walked into the front room. He set it near the piano and poured himself a large tumbler of whiskey. He gulped the drink and played a D-minor chord. When his glass was empty, he went upstairs, the creak of the floorboards sounding loud in the quiet house. Frances’s bedroom door was wide open. He stepped into the room. One of the windows was open and the screen removed. The bed seemed hastily made, the pillows askew, and the quilt folded over on itself in several places.
The room had an odd smell to it. What was it? A scent familiar to him. After a moment, a sick feeling washed over him. He was outside his own flesh now, hovering above, everything clear all at once. It was the smell of human bodies intertwined, the salty scent of sweat and sex and Frances’s perfume. Frances, after lovemaking. He knew the odor like he knew certain pieces of music from his youth, deeply embedded in forgotten recesses of his mind. She’d been in this room only moments before with someone. Of this he was certain.
He moved to the foot of the bed, the image of her here with a man as clear as if he were watching as it happened. The only thing missing was the man’s face, and then he realized it was his own face that he saw—the ghost of his passion for her all those years ago, the remembrance of her pale cool skin and how his obsession for her had brought him to this very moment.
She had never loved him and never would. He was a fool. Divorce her, Clare had said. He should have divorced her years ago. Why hadn’t he? This he would ask of himself for the rest of his life, he figured, staring into the yard from the open window.
How had Frances and her lover gotten out of the house so quickly and without detection? He leaned out of the window, examining the side of the house for a possible escape route. That’s when he saw slabs of wood nailed into the side of the house, hidden behind the magnolia tree so that they couldn’t be seen unless one looked from this angle. Four footholds, just the right amount to be able to reach the ground safely. How many times had she sneaked in and out? Where did she go and to whom?
Reeling, he left Frances’s bedroom, his legs shaking so hard he had to put his hand on the stairwell to keep from falling. He tried to think clearly, but nothing came, just numbness that seemed to extend even to the nerve endings of his lips.
Once downstairs, Nathaniel poured another drink, with trembling hands, and then sat down at his piano. This room smelled of fading roses. The vase near the couch was filled with them, cut a week ago, the stems bowed over. The petals, once lush pink, were now dull, shriveling, their sweet smell lingering even as they died.
His stomach was empty, and the whiskey made him feel like he was in a cloud. Who had been here? Had they really climbed out the window while he smoked in the driveway, thinking of how to dull the pain of sending Lydia away? He drank again from his tumbler of whiskey, staring at the keys of his piano.
His mind shifted, allowing this new information in. Was this the first time, he wondered? Or were there others? Had there always been men a
nd he was too naïve or stupid to see it? Nathaniel had seen Frances’s flirtatious behavior as part of her illness, as an extension of her compulsion to be noticed. But perhaps it reached further than that. He was a fool, he thought again. He understood it but could not fathom it at the same time. But no, perhaps this was all just his imagination—merely a lonely man’s paranoia. And yet he knew in his bones, in his heart, that it was true.
He finished his drink in one gulp. The screen door in the kitchen slammed. A moment later, Frances stood near the doorway to the kitchen. “Darlin’, I didn’t expect you home.” He heard a slight apprehension to her voice even as the lilt of her accent carried into the room like a jingle.
He couldn’t speak. Stay at the piano, he thought. Feed upon it as a source of power and comfort, as it had always been. She looked lovely—lovelier than he’d ever seen her. She wore a soft green dress that flowed softly around her thighs, and her hair was tousled, her cheeks flushed. No lipstick. No purse.
“I’ve had a call from your mother.” He stood, pouring himself another whiskey. “She told me of your phone conversation.”
Frances’s face drained of color. “I’m surprised. I thought she’d keep it from you. She’s always afraid you’ll run off and leave me.”
“I’ve been sitting here wondering how you could do such a thing.” He moved toward her, the whiskey sloshing in his glass. “Why, Frances? Why couldn’t you just leave it alone, let Whitmore go?” He waved his hand around the room in a way that he meant to be dramatic but was only a small, tired flutter. “What does it matter to you?”
Frances’s eyes flickered, and her chin moved slightly toward the ceiling, like a small child trying to assert a stubborn independence, her eyes blazing. “Because I asked you to give me the money for California, and you dismissed me like I was a silly girl.” She calmed suddenly, putting a finger through the curl next to her ear. Her voice was smooth and detached now, almost sounding playful. “And Whitmore ruining our bloodline that way makes me sick.” She lowered her eyes to the floor, speaking softly. “And the way you look at Lydia Tyler.”
“What did you say?”
She raised her chin. “You heard me.”
His voice was raw and hoarse when he managed to speak. “That’s pretty amusing, Frances, considering.”
She twitched and put her hand on the back of a chair but didn’t say anything.
“What did you plan to do? Just leave if you got the money? Without telling me?”
“I hadn’t thought that part through yet.”
“You’re a liar. Everything you do is calculated. I see that now.” He swallowed a gulp of whiskey, and it burned down his throat and into his gut. “Where have you been?”
Her eyes widened as she took a step backward. “Out. For a walk.”
She swallowed hard; he saw her neck muscles move. He moved closer. Right next to her now, he felt her breath on his neck. “Who is it, Frances? Who was here?”
She took another step backward, her fingers at her neck. “No one was here. Just me.”
“I saw the makeshift ladder.” He put his hands on the sides of her face, wanting to scare her, to feel her tremble under his hands. The rage pulsated like something alive in him. He spoke through clenched teeth. “Who was here?”
“No one.”
He slid his fingers around her neck. “Tell me who.” His voice was louder this time. “Now.” He shook her by the shoulders. “Tell me the damn truth.”
He felt her tremble. “You’re frightening me.”
“Am I? Good, I think that’s right after all this time. Because after all these years, all this time I’ve devoted to you and your health—getting repaid with this.” He tossed her from him with force, seeming to have no control over his own body. She slumped against the wall, staring at him with big, frightened eyes. It did not soften him. “You let me think all these years that it was the horror of that night that kept you from wanting a man’s touch. And yet you’ve betrayed me.” He paused, shaking his head. He felt himself crumpling, turning from rage to despair. He grabbed her about the shoulders once again, shaking her. “Why, Frances? I want to know why.”
She spit out the words, “Because your touch repulses me. I cannot, could not, stand the thought of you anywhere near me after that child we made together.”
A wail escaped from somewhere inside him. “He was our son.”
“See there. Just that. You think it’s been easy for me living with Saint Nathaniel? I’ve pined for a new life, a chance to start over, a chance to be with a man I can actually stand to be in the same room with. A man who has something, anything, to say or do besides sit at that ridiculous piano day and night. A man who will give me what I want.”
He felt his legs start to give way beneath him. Stumbling, he sank onto the piano bench. “Have you found that, Frances?”
She came toward him, her arms crossed over her chest like armor. “For now.”
“Tell me who it is.”
“I don’t know why it matters to you. But it’s Mick Landry.”
He stared at her before an abrupt, scornful laugh escaped from inside his dry throat. “You can’t be serious. Frances, he’s a fake, a con man. What could you possibly think he could offer you?”
Her eyes were haughty, but her voice betrayed the smallest edge of doubt. “At least he can fuck me properly.”
Her cruelty took his breath away. He shook his head in disbelief. “Get out.”
Her face turned from sorrow to contempt and then rebellion, all within seconds. “There was no other way to get away from this life that’s killing me. I’m a woman with nothing to rely on but my beauty and my wit. He’s offered me a way out.”
“With what? The man’s obviously broke.” The truth came to him suddenly. “So that’s it. You want money so you can run off with Landry? How can you love a man like that?”
She had a drink in her hand now. A brief smiled passed over her face before her eyes turned cold. “That’s the problem with you, Nate. You don’t understand anything about me. He sees opportunity in everything. Including in me. You see nothing, like a man already dead.” She paused, the drink hovering at her mouth. “And he provides what I want.”
“And I never could. Is that it?”
“No, you never could. Others provided what you couldn’t.”
New rage welled in him as he realized what she meant. “There were others?”
“So many I can’t count.”
He knew then how much she wanted to hurt him. And the truth came to him, the horrible truth that he’d denied to himself all these years. “The man at the lake, was he your lover?”
She whispered, her face dark, “He was no one to me, but yes, I went up there with him. I didn’t mean for anyone to get hurt. I’ve been sorry for it.”
“I lost everything that mattered to me when he stabbed me.” He began to sob. “Everything.”
“You never loved me like you love the piano. I knew eventually you’d divorce me. I’d be a divorcee with no prospects but to live with my parents. And all the time—everyone fawning over you. I was barely discernible to anyone, and I went looking for something, for someone, who could see me.”
He stared at her, trying to get control of the rage that made him want to crush her in his hands, to make her suffer.
She continued, her voice soft now, “Don’t pretend like you’ve been happy or that you haven’t wished to be rid of me and start over. The only difference between you and me is that I’m brave enough to go get it.”
“Then go get it, Frances. By all means, go get it.” He stood, holding on to the piano for support. “Your mother wants to put you into one of those rest homes. But I don’t want you there, sucking up funds when you’re not sick. I don’t want to ever see your lying face again. You have two hours to get your things and get out. Expect divorce papers in the mail.” He moved toward the front door without looking at her. “And don’t expect a dime from me. Or your mother.”
She ran
after him, her voice a screech, “I’ll make you sorry for this. I’ll tell everyone in this town what you and Lydia Tyler did for Jeselle. They’ll lynch you all. Don’t think I won’t do it.”
“Goodbye, Frances.”
He heard a crashing glass hit the front door. But by that time he was already down the steps.
Part VI
From Jeselle Thorton’s journal.
* * *
June 20, 1934
* * *
I think of Mrs. Bellmont tonight. Did it occur to her that treating Whit and me the same in regard to our studies might indicate to us that we were equals in all ways? Was it a conscious decision, knowing that it would begin a chain of tolerance in the mind of her son? Or was it just her instinct to teach, no matter who it was, her inclinations toward learning dwelling so deep within her character? I might never know.
But I know this: every moment of our childhood led us to this very moment. Her kindness changed the trajectory of my life and of Whit’s life. It was Mrs. Bellmont’s day-to-day decisions that taught Whit and me there was no difference between us. He does not see the color of my skin as an indication that I am his lesser. He simply does not see it at all. He sees only me.
Chapter 47
Whitmore
* * *
Whitmore slept hard, dreaming of the lake house. He and Jeselle were young and unencumbered, scampering up the wishbone stairs. Their footsteps made a thudding sound on the dark wood floors. They laughed, and the air smelled of steamed peaches and dried sunshine on their skin.
He was jarred from sleep, a smile still at the corners of his mouth. The thud in his dream was really a pounding at the door of his boarding house room. It was deadly dark, and he fumbled to turn on the lamp. There was a sound of splintering wood, and the door swung open, giving the room partial light. Whit squinted in an attempt to understand what he saw. Spilling in from the hallway were five men in white hooded robes, slits for eyeholes, bringing the smell of whiskey and men’s sweat. He didn’t know where to look; they all came at him at once. Rough hands grabbed him, tossed him to the floor. A boot came down on top of his head, pinning him there, the heel pushing into his ear. He cried out in pain as another boot crashed into his gut and then his spine. The boot lifted from his head, and Whit put his hands over his face and tried to curl into a ball, but it was too late. The same boot smashed into his nose. Hot, red blood gushed out, tasting of metal down the back of his throat. The smell of gasoline. Oh, God, help me, he begged silently. Someone poured something cold on him. Gasoline. They were going to set him on fire. He felt his bowels begin to loosen. He called out, “Please, no.” Then he heard shouting from outside the room. The deafening sound of a gunshot. Something crashed to the floor behind him, near some of the men. Maybe it came from the ceiling or from somewhere high, like a shelf. The men’s boots were moving away from him. He moved his head to look up and saw the sisters, both holding shotguns. “I’d sure love to blow one of you idiots to kingdom come,” said Alba.
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