Ella in Bloom

by Shelby Hearon

  “So she said. Wonderful seafood.”

  Had I said seafood? Had she embellished? Was he testing me? Shit. I closed my eyes, then changed the subject. “She told me you’d had lots and lots of people visiting, from West Texas, friends. I guess they’re harder hit out there by the drought even than here. Here at least you have the lake.”

  “She liked company,” he said. “The boys miss that, I suspect.”

  I started to rise, thinking I’d fetch us iced coffee. Surely Mother couldn’t object to that. But then there was Birdie, come to join us.

  “My boys giving you a hard time?” Red asked her, pulling up a spare chair.

  “They were just doing what boys do, Uncle Rufus. Boys are competitive all the time, every minute, and when they’re trying to be nice, they tell girls how they can look as good as the girls they think are cute. They can’t help doing that. They don’t have brains that can understand that I don’t want to look like the girls in West Lake Hills where they used to live.”

  Red nodded. “We’re like that,” he admitted. “I know your aunt often wished she’d had a daughter.”

  “That’s why I’m named Robin, because Aunt Terrell liked that name and she didn’t have a girl.” Birdie looked at me, pleased at herself for knowing this.

  I wished, actually, at that exact moment that my mother would join us on the porch, scold us for something in her mannered way. Any interruption to prevent Red from saying what he was bound to say next.

  “I bet your aunt called you ‘Robin’ when she came to visit you last year, didn’t she?”

  Birdie looked at him, then at me, as if I might be holding a cue card. “I didn’t see Aunt Terrell since I was nine, did I? Mom?”

  Red waited, that same patient, expectant look on his face, more lined, less tanned than I remembered.

  Birdie stared at me—no doubt reading panic. Hesitant, she suggested, “Maybe I was at school?”

  “In the summer?” He shook his head.

  For a moment the three of us sat there, not moving, me biting my lip because my promise to Terrell had got my daughter in this bind. Then, in half-time, Birdie loosened the gray tie, letting her hair fall in waves about her shoulders. She stood, still, the way she did, composing herself, before she drew her bow across the cello. Before a performance. She gave a little laugh. “I forgot, Uncle Rufus. I forgot it was summertime. That’s when I was gone on our String Project retreat. I and Felice do that every year.”

  Red looked at my daughter as if his ace had been trumped, but the glance was fond. He gave the slightest (so slight I might have imagined it) nod in my direction.

  I let out my breath.

  Birdie smiled at us and drifted back into the living room to join the boys, where my daddy was pontificating on the history of higher education. Something Birdie said earlier nagged at me. “What did Birdie mean, saying ‘West Lake Hills where the boys used to live’?” I remembered my daddy saying that some changes had already been made, when I’d asked about Terrell’s big house on the lake, but then Mother had put an end to that talk.

  “We moved.” Red laced up his shoes, rubbing an ankle. He sat up, putting his tie back on. His eyes looked tired, though he kept them on me. “I moved, and then, after the crash, they moved in with me.” He reached for glasses that weren’t there, then clasped his hands, leaning forward. “Actually, we’re in my dad’s house, out in Pflugerville. When I decided to leave the law firm, I made inquiries about buying it back.” He cracked his knuckles. “I’ll give you our new address.”

  “I don’t understand, Red. You moved out?”

  “It’s a long story.”

  He stood. “Give me your address. I’ll send you a copy of today’s best photo.”

  “When did you move?”

  He stood there a spell, his hazel eyes fixed on mine. “I left, thinking the boys would stay behind with her, the weekend before she died.”

  9

  We—my parents, Birdie, and I—saw Red and his boys to the door. There wasn’t a lot of talk. Mother’s party was over. Borden and Bailey must have been eager to get back to their own life; Daddy looked sad to see them go. “Don’t wait so long,” he said, giving each grandson a vast two-armed hug. “Don’t forget we need to see you.”

  “Sure, Granddad,” both boys told him.

  Red had put his navy sports coat back on and he looked again like R. Rufus Hall, attorney-at-law. He patted his shirt pocket, which held my address. I nodded, indicating I remembered I had his. He was going to send us a photo, and that would be nice, to frame one of Birdie, with a real family. I’d promised to write sometime, let him know how we were doing. Not an appealing idea: lying to someone else by mail was at the bottom of my list.

  “So long, Ella,” he said.

  “Take care of yourself, Red,” I told him.

  Birdie leaned up and kissed his cheek, which he seemed to appreciate. “Can I ask you something, Uncle Rufus?”

  “Shoot.”

  “Why does my mom call you Red, and everybody else calls you Rufus?”

  “When I met your aunt and your mother, I was still going by the nickname I grew up with. But ‘Red Hall’ didn’t seem like much of a name for a grown man.”

  “How come they called you that? You don’t have red hair.”

  “My daddy named me Rufus,” he explained, “after my granddad, whom he admired considerably. But my mom couldn’t abide the name. He always joked she called me ‘Red’ after a football player she’d dated.”

  Birdie nodded. “I bet she didn’t like it because it sounded like a black name. I have a friend, Felice Roberdeau, she plays the flute, and the teachers are always getting us mixed up. I mean, who would you think is the black kid—Felice Roberdeau or Birdie Hopkins?” She blared out a laugh.

  “You could be right,” he conceded. “But my mom would never have admitted to it.”

  “Our teachers don’t either.”

  When they had gone, Daddy took my daughter off into the library to look at his CD collection, or she took him, maybe, and Mother and I sat together on the porch, I in one wicker chair, she in the other, on each side of the glass-topped table where she’d carefully set her half-empty china cup. She’d removed her pearls, but remained in her yellow silk dress. No mention had been made during the morning about missing church for brunch, and I wondered if she still ever went to the old downtown Episcopal church. Some young clergyman from across the lake had done the memorial service for Terrell. To my knowledge, Mother hadn’t gone for years. If she had, my sister hadn’t mentioned it.

  “That was a thoughtful thing, Ella, to send the old-fashioned chain letter that the friend of yours found. I do recall that era—goodness, I would have been younger than Robin. That seems another life, of which I haven’t thought in years. We also sent one another handkerchiefs, and, I believe, candies and valentines, and even poems.” She looked amused. “Young girls.”

  “I thought you might have saved—”

  “Not so much as a canceled stamp, dear. When I married your dad and moved here to Austin, I quite left everything else behind.”

  “I’d like to have seen some of your letters.”

  Mother gestured toward my dress. “I noticed you have a streak of some sort across the shoulders of that nice green linen. Could the dry cleaners, do you think, have been careless?”

  “The sun may have faded it,” I said, seeing she’d put an end to any talk of her girlhood, about which I knew so little. “I wore it outdoors to a tea at Belle Vue—”

  “Yes. That’s a shame.”

  After a silence, in which I cast about for something safe to talk about, I said, “The photographs should be wonderful. That last one, especially. Those boys are growing so fast; it’ll be good to catch them at this stage.”

  “I’m sorry, Ella,” Mother replied, picking up her fragile cup and draining it, “that you didn’t see fit to join us for the picture-taking.”

  “What?”

  “You had the opportu
nity to provide us with three generations. I’d thought that the point in having the young people here.”

  Please, please, don’t let her put it this way, me refusing to be photographed. I shut my eyes, at a loss. “It was supposed to be you with the grandchildren, Mother. Daddy planned it that way.”

  “Judah,” she said. “Your father.” She blinked back tears. “He arranged this for me, yes”—her voice rose—“as if I would not notice the absence of my missing daughter.”

  I watched as she pinched her nose to stop the tears and took a shallow breath. She stared out at her baking, dried-out yard (where my roses lay discarded, turning to sachet in the heat). “You fixed us a lovely meal,” I ventured.

  “My woman does a good job with crêpes.” She continued to gaze out through the glass, composing herself. “Do you let that girl of yours, Robin, play with—what does one say at her age? associate with—? I was standing right there, when she told Rufus about that friend, so uncalled for.”

  “Oh, Mother.” I made my voice light. “The Creoles attend the best schools in Old Metairie. Felice comes from an old family; she’s an accomplished musician.” Actually her mother sewed for a living, but, in a city with legions of balls and costume parties, that made for success. As for old, well, to be sure, most black families in Louisiana had been around a lot longer than the rest of us.

  “I must say, dear, she gets that thoughtless way of speaking before she thinks from you. Calling my grandsons, your sister’s fine outstanding sons, Barnum and Bailey. I thought I would fall right through the very floor with embarrassment.”

  “Mother, that was a slip.” I’d been here less than twenty-four hours and had already offended her in more ways than all the grains of sand and the distant stars. How was it possible?

  My sister, I recalled, had been able to talk to my mother for half an afternoon, for most of a morning, about almost nothing, making my mother’s cheeks flush with pleasure. Terrell would mention a shirt she’d seen—she didn’t know, maybe the neckline was too low, on the other hand, the color matched her skirt exactly. A vase she’d bought—with a sailboat etched into the crystal, so perfect for them, still, too narrow at the top for a real spray. Yet I always offended, saying too little, caring too much, bearing gifts that did not meet her standards: the antique roses, the flimsy blue purloined hanky letter, this secondhand celadon dress.

  “My heart breaks for them,” Mother said at last, her voice cracking. “Out there by the lake in that beautiful home she worked so hard to create, rattling around without her.”

  “They’re not there anymore,” I protested, stopping short. “You must know that. You must know they moved. Daddy said—”

  “That’s a lie. How dare you come to town and tell me what’s what? You have no idea what you’re talking about. Rufus reclaimed his old family home, a pioneer family, for a rental property. Terrell told me so herself. I’m sure they are staying there now only as a temporary measure while they make some changes in their fine home, which anyone can understand. How can they go on with all her things just where she left them, painful reminders?” She pressed a damp fine linen handkerchief to her eyes.

  “Mother, you can’t believe that—? You have to know that he moved out—”

  “Stop it,” she commanded, slamming her cup down in the saucer so hard the heirloom china cracked in two. “That’s enough.” She began to weep. “Go home, Ella. You should never have come back.”

  10

  Sitting upstairs in the large double room which once had been mine, I tried to cool off in the airy space kept shady by an ancient live oak on the west and deep eaves on the east, the central air-conditioning blowing the thin yellow curtains. Still stung, heated, from Mother’s outburst, I crossed my bare feet and made myself breathe in and out. If I’d been living at home, I’d have hurled the empty rose vase at the floor and slammed the door.

  But I’d already done that once. Run away.

  Holing up until time for Daddy to call us a cab, I chased a memory of my sister, whose presence lingered in this room. A memory of the last time I’d seen her, the last visit we’d had together, five years before.

  Something she’d said which I had not heard, or, hearing, had not picked up on, not understood. Small wonder: I’d been overwhelmed by her, by this poised, beautiful, above all affluent, person she’d become. Someone I scarcely knew who called to invite me to go to the market with her, to watch her buy and spend.

  I asked if I could take Robin, as we called Birdie then, but Terrell had waved the idea away. What child wanted to be dragged through produce aisles? Besides, she’d lowered her voice on the phone, she had a confession to make.

  Getting in her chilled new-model Volvo, I felt somewhat like a CARE package, a good deed she was doing in the name of kinship. That she might need something from me never crossed my mind. Here she was, forty-two and looking twenty-five to my eyes, looking terrific in beige linen shorts, white linen sleeveless shirt, tan espadrilles, her hair freshly highlighted a golden blond. I felt as awkward as a teenager, scruffy in old denim shorts and a T-shirt that had seen better days (saving my one decent blue bias-cut skirt and boat-necked blouse for Mother’s sixty-fifth birthday lunch). I hadn’t expected to hear from Terrell; I’d just washed my hair. Was staying out of trouble and Mother’s way, as now, until time to make an appearance.

  Terrell told me she had weekend guests from West Texas, come to go sailing in the afternoon, staying for supper, and friends from Houston late tomorrow. This was her only free time. She thought we ought to have a minute, just the two of us. Her life too incredibly busy to believe.

  She’d appeared at the door, swinging car keys to indicate she couldn’t stay, bringing a glow to Mother’s face. “Why, look who’s here! Can’t you tarry for a cup of coffee, dear? See, I’ve already got the good Meissen out for tomorrow. Nice things should be used, I always say.”

  She drove us first by a new public walking garden called Central Park, planted where once only the back grounds of the state mental hospital had been, stopping in traffic so I could admire the star-shaped bed of Texas wildflowers—yellow coreopsis, orangey-red Indian paintbrushes, cerulean bluebonnets—blooming far past their natural season. Then we parked and entered a labyrinth of cavernous connecting rooms filled with more edibles and perishables than I had ever seen: Central Market, the Louvre of food.

  Feeling like a refugee, a charity case, I tagged along behind her through warehouse-size spaces heaped with pyramids of potatoes, mountains of rare mushrooms, lettuces beyond imagining, imported cheeses and butters from every corner of the earth, flavored milks thick as cream, loaves of crusty buttermilk bread, still-warm scones fragrant as perfume. Meat rooms bejeweled with filets of beef and racks of lamb. Fish rooms studded with shellfish on ice, overlapped like roof tiles.

  Silent, I watched while Terrell selected her heart-healthy foods. An orange roughey from New Zealand, a yellowfin tuna from Japan, each costing more per pound than I spent for meat in a week, baby spinach, hearts of romaine, freerange chicken breasts without the skin, melons whose names I’d never heard. Pausing while the fishman packed her seafood in bags of ice, she explained that she’d got Rufus on a low-fat, low-salt diet. Lawyers, she explained, were under so much stress. They didn’t watch their cholesterol. Staring at the calorie-skimping opulence, I’d tried to imagine the law student that I’d known eating such fare, the Red who’d lived on hamburgers and ice cream, who’d kept a can of salted peanuts in his packed car. His Peugeot a snack on wheels.

  “I used to bring things to the folks, but they have their set ways. I don’t bother anymore. Daddy is going to cook what he has a mind to. I got tired of shelling out a small mint for something, knowing it would spoil in the back of the fridge over there.”

  Her car packed (the most perishable items in a small ice chest), she led me to a slatted wooden deck under an air-cooled canopy and we had designer coffee and just-baked Belgian-chocolate croissants. “I love this stuff,” she said, lick
ing a bit of the bitter sweet from her manicured nail, “but I don’t keep it at home.”

  Tongue-tied, not able to think of anything to ask her, not comfortable bringing up our early times, I watched young mothers nearby in Bermuda shorts and tennis shoes herding small children in bike shorts and muscle shirts. Everyone eating: Blue Bell Supreme Homemade Vanilla dripping at ten o’clock in the morning.

  I’d tried to fit the Red I’d known, the one who’d doted on her, waited so long to marry her, into this abundant world. I remembered him hanging around, with his unruly hair and horn-rims, my daddy saying, “Here comes Clarence Darrow.” My mother, not amused, replying, “I’m sure once Rufus takes the bar, such a stress for a young man, up all night studying, they have to, for those grades, he’ll leave certain things behind, that little boy’s nickname.… Such a fine young man, his family settling on all that fertile farmland when Texas was scarcely a state.” And she’d been right; gradually Red had cleaned up his act. So that when I saw him at his wedding to my sister it was almost as if they’d catered him along with the food and what flowers weren’t blooming in my mother’s showcase late-spring garden.

  The summer I’d seen him when I’d been pregnant with Birdie, fifteen years ago now, I’d hardly recognized him in the polished, urbane attorney who came in with Terrell. Yet when he walked right up to my so-obvious belly and asked me straight out, “Who’s the daddy?” and I could say, which all of them must have wondered, “It’s okay, it’s legal,” he seemed the same old Red. I’d wanted to ask him how he felt about his new establishment life. But by my next trip home when they were fighting, and by the funeral, of course, it was too late. By then, anyway, we were both in shock.

  “So,” Terrell had asked me, under Central Market’s courtyard canopy, “what happens now, with Buddy gone? Did you ever see him anymore? How did they find you to let you know? Do you miss him?”