by Denney, Hope
“I’ve tried to make us closer,” said Somerset.
“You’re hundreds of miles away from me, and you live with family who bemoans the day I laid eyes on their son. How close did you think we were going to be? You’ve never been realistic.”
“I thought there was more to you if Theodore married you,” interjected Joseph. “I thought family would be important to you because it was to him.”
“Would you listen to yourselves? You’re as bad as Blanche. He isn’t going to come down those stairs any minute, you know. He isn’t going to upbraid me for being rude to you. He’s gone. You of all people, Joseph, should accept that. You scraped him off the cement.”
Amelia rose and threw wide the wooden shutters and gestured to the plants that seemed to multiply into an endless sea.
“I’ve been widowed twice. My daddy died before Teddie. That leaves me to keep the foundry up and running if I want my children—Teddie’s children—to have their inheritance. I don’t have time to bring Theodore and Elizabeth for forays to the country or pen interesting letters for you all to read around the supper table. I have to sell this place or work to keep it. Teddie loved this foundry, and I’m working to keep the dream alive for our family. Before it was my husband’s, it was mine. My family has been growing and processing indigo for nearly a century. Do you think I can stand to lose it?
“You’re the most self-obsessed group of individuals I’ve ever met. I’ve spent a few days total with you over the years but you’re always bleating about Teddie, about Blanche, about lost dynasties in Baton Rouge, in Richmond, in Century Grove. Did you know that everyone else in existence feels the same way about their families? Did you know other people think their loved ones are just as important?”
Somerset stood.
“We’ll go now.”
“No! I loved my husband and I’m not throwing his kinfolk into the streets. You aren’t listening to what I’m saying. I’m telling you that I don’t find you practical. I’m working for my children’s futures, and you think that because I’m busy, I’ve wronged you all. Well, I haven’t. My life is every bit as large as yours and you can’t see it.”
Amelia left the shutters open, and Somerset sat listening to the rattle of indigo seed pods, the sound of bones rubbing together in an inhospitable land.
“I’m not sitting up at night, rubbing my palms together, dreaming of spending Phillip’s money,” said Somerset. “I’m going to work, maybe even going to school if I can find a program. All of us have wounds you can’t see. Just because I’m acting friendly doesn’t mean I’m not hurt on the inside. We’re all hurt, Amelia, just like you.”
“One person caused all that hurt.” Amelia pulled her handkerchief out and rubbed her eyes; the skin around them shone pink as salmon flesh.
“She did. That she did,” agreed Joseph. “I won’t argue with you there. None of us would argue that point.”
“I loved Theodore,” said Amelia. “Not because he was handsome or wealthy. Not because he could devise a sermon or argue a court case and win or take over a business he knew nothing about. I loved the man, all of him, and I never had all of him because he was her favorite. We never made a decision in our seven-year marriage without thinking of Orchard Rest first, about what the fair queen would think.
“I could see from the moment I laid eyes on her that she would never let her children grow up. I might have settled closer to Orchard Rest if she hadn’t been mad with jealousy from the moment we met. I was the older widow to her. My five years with Theodore might as well have been fifty from the way she carried on. Teddie and I had a good life here, and if she knew how much a part of it she was, she might not hate me. I’d still despise her.”
Ivy leaned toward Amelia in her peony-tapestried seat.
“I know how it feels,” she said. “They’re all so loud, so intelligent, so endlessly funny. This one is a legend. That one is a beauty. The other one is a rake. It never ends, does it? They love each other while coveting each other’s strengths. They dislike each other but can’t stay away from each other. It’s exhausting to watch, and in the end, no one sees you because all eyes are always on them. It’s the same as being a grain of sand in a pile of sea glass. It’s awful to feel that insignificant.”
Somerset caught her cup as she almost upended it off the edge of the table. She knew Ivy had appealed to Amelia’s loneliness to try to appease her, but she recognized truth when she heard it. It rang in Ivy’s thin, light voice. The words were as close to anything coarse or unladylike as Ivy would ever say, but her admission that it got old to reside in the shadows would never be absent from Somerset’s mind.
“And yet you married Joseph,” finished Amelia. “We have more in common than I thought.
“I shouldn’t have said those things to you, Somerset, but I doubt I’ll have the opportunity another time without Blanche present. You’ve watched her suffer because I never bring the children by, but what about my side of the story? Would you want your children being idolized by her?”
“You’ll see us at my wedding. I imagine we’ll see each other all the time, Amelia, with you and Phillip being such powerful business people. If you got to know me, we might have something more in common than Theodore.”
“The children aren’t home this week. Mother took them to a family wedding so you won’t be seeing them. Let me show you to your rooms,” said Amelia. Her smile frightened Somerset because she tried to instill genuineness in it, and Somerset realized, be it six months or six years down the road, Amelia would always be the wealthy widow who slipped in and out of the Grove in the blink of an eye and took her brother with her. Friendship would not be forthcoming.
***
“It all went better than I thought it would,” said Joseph as he helped Ivy take a seat in Amelia’s luxurious closed carriage.
Somerset couldn’t tell if he was making a joke. She arched an eyebrow at him as he snuffed out a cigar and climbed in.
“I’d sooner spend a night anywhere than where someone tries to be nice to me,” said Somerset. “I was more comfortable at the Marsh. You know what you’re getting with Grandmother.”
“I feel sorry for her,” said Joseph. “She got the same rough deal Teddie got, and now she’s alone with two small children. Any man who wants her will only be interested in her assets and she’s smart enough to know it. You didn’t come see her when Teddie died. You can’t fathom how bad she was after the foundry explosion.”
“I wonder what Theodore saw in her,” said Ivy.
Somerset watched Joseph look at her with a ready answer, let it die on his lips, and then gave her the same appreciative expression he wore when he noticed her perception at the Russell ball. He pressed his lips to her bone-white forehead and let them linger there while Somerset looked the other way.
“She wasn’t born the way she is now,” said Somerset. “At least, I hope she wasn’t.”
“Did you send word to Turning Tide?” asked Ivy.
“No. I want to see the expression on his face when I appear out of nowhere. Will he stammer? He’s probably never stammered in his life. Will he catch me up in his arms? Will he scold me for being reckless? There are millions of endings to this day, and we’re about to find out which one happens.”
“We’ll be lucky to find him,” said Joseph. “If he works as much as I think he does, we might wait for him all evening to turn up or not at all if he’s traveling.”
“That’s the fun of surprise.”
***
When the carriage stopped and they disembarked, Somerset was gleeful. The white double house on the corner of the street was old enough to make Orchard Rest seem shiny and new. While the Greek revival homes of Century Grove always lacked what she felt they were intended to be, Turning Tide was mellow with history. The three stories towered over her in such a way that said it was happy to be her home for now but it would go on existing long after she was gone. The Ionic, Doric, and Corinthian columns that lined the piazzas were lovel
ier than anything Eric had managed to put on the Unnamed House before he died. Turning Tide was graceful over its grandeur, like a beautiful old lady at a ball who knows she has nothing to be ashamed of.
“Why are all those people lined up all the way out of the house and down the street?” asked Ivy.
Somerset looked again, ignoring the finer points of her new home. At least one hundred people waited on the street. They chatted in straggly lines around the house and stood on the high whitewashed steps of the house on the curving entryway and even waited in the open doorway. They were dirty, garbed in stained rags, with unwashed, work-worn bodies.
“I guess they could be employees of the mine,” said Somerset as she adjusted the dyed purple feather in her hat and moved toward the house. “It could be payday, although I can’t see Phillip paying our employees out of our home.”
They eased up the steps past the line. Rheumy, bloodshot eyes trained on them from every angle. Women pressed tired, crying children to their patched skirts. Men chewed tobacco and spat over the railing of the front walkway. The onion odor of unwashed bodies wafted to Somerset’s nose. She paused in the doorway where a butler with more dignity than she could acquire over a lifetime rushed to assist her.
“We’re looking for Mr. Phillip Russell,” she said.
The butler’s mouth curved down as if he expected no better than this request from her. It was a request he heard fifty times a day from the way his ancient chin pointed at her. Somerset stood up so straight that her flaring skirt and cascading train pushed into the indigent beside her and tried to assume the look she imagined Phillip’s wife would have.
“I didn’t give notice of my arrival,” she said, “but I’m Somerset Forrest, and Mr. Russell will want to see me.”
The butler’s snowy eyebrows rose at her name, and he shouted instructions in French to an elderly lady in a stiff black uniform who could have only been the head housekeeper. She rushed from the room with a squeak and returned with Phillip’s resonant voice trailing her.
“I tell you it’s impossible,” the voice rumbled as it advanced in the hall and then he was standing in front of them.
“What was that you told me about the most unlikely things being probable?” asked Somerset.
“I don’t believe it,” Phillip said.
He closed the feet between them and crushed her in his arms in a hug that made Somerset realize how he soothed her and how ruffled her spirit had been. The kiss he pressed to her brow was suitable for the dozens of eyes trained upon them, and she felt lighter when he placed her on the ground.
“Mr. and Mrs. Forrest,” he said as his eyes fell on her escorts. “You must be famished. Louis, escort Mr. and Mrs. Forrest to the piazza and serve them whatever they want to eat. I look forward to catching up with you both, but you, being newly married, can understand why I want to catch up with my intended first.”
Phillip’s eyes radiated joy as he took Somerset by the hand and walked her into the parlor and shut the door.
“It’s been a handful of days since I saw you last, but time has passed in a slow, cruel way,” he said. “I can’t complete an hour’s work without stopping to wonder how you are, where you are, or what you might be saying at any given moment.”
Somerset tilted her head back and kissed him with enough enthusiasm that her new hat tumbled off her head, but neither one of them made a move to retrieve it. The familiar clasp of his hands on her waist was far better than any silk bonnet with ostrich feathers. There was no sweetness in the kiss. He wanted her to know how much he missed her, how much he wanted her. She broke the kiss but stayed in his embrace so he wouldn’t feel rebuffed.
“How did you come to be here, dearest?” he asked.
“I was in Richmond for my trousseau, and our stay at the Marsh wasn’t as peaceful as I hoped it would be. I wasn’t about to go back to Orchard Rest without seeing you. Are you mad that I didn’t telegram? It was worth it to see your incredulous face when you stepped out of the hall. I’ll relive that moment in my head for the rest of my life.”
“Mad? When have I ever been mad at you? I haven’t found fault with you yet. This hour has brought me the best surprises of my life.” He kissed her cheek and led her to the settee. “Where are you staying? A hotel?”
“With Teddie’s widow.”
“Amelia.”
“Yes.”
“Was she glad to see you?”
“No, but I think she wishes she could be glad to see us, which is an improvement according to Joseph. She’s made up her mind things can’t be made right, and I can’t argue with her. She’s the one with a family and no husband. I hoped she’d make up her mind to be friends. It’s going to feel absurd in the spring when we’re traveling in all the same circles. No town is large enough to hide from family in—not even this one.
“Speaking of close quarters, Phillip, who are all those people in the street filing through the house?”
“You came on the best possible day, my love. I’ve explained to you how unpopular I am in certain circles because of my success in an era where success is a rare animal. This is a way to combat that popular sentiment, and I believe in what we’re doing here. The first and third Thursdays of the month I run a free soup and bread kitchen out of Turning Tide. Half the town is starving to death, and some Thursdays I think I feed half of Charleston.”
“Do you serve them?”
“I can’t be here every time we run a kitchen, but I do help with the serving when I am here.”
“I can’t wait to help with all of it! To think that I sneaked into town and could have caught you doing anything, but this is what I walk in on. I’m the smuggest woman in existence right now. What a pair we make, Phillip.”
He kissed her hand and pulled her closer into his corner so that her hand was on his heart and her face against his shoulder.
“We can’t stop with the soup kitchen,” she murmured. “There are endless opportunities to improve this city. We could fund a new hospital or a free clinic. Dentistry, this city needs more dentists. Half the people in that line had issues with their teeth, even the children.”
“With you on board, I won’t have to worry about rehabilitating my image long,” said Philip into her hair. “Whatever you want, you only have to ask. What do you think of your home?”
“It’s a living entity like Somerset Manor. There’s a perfection to it from witnessing history and housing people that you can’t purchase from an architect. It looks like your home: solid, timeless, and gracious. I don’t think I’ll feel as exposed here in town as I feared, but I still prefer Amelia’s seclusion in the country. I envy Joseph and Ivy eating on the gorgeous piazza, but they haven’t been alone in days. They’re probably glad to be rid of me.”
“Would you like to see the house?”
“It’s been hard paying attention to what you’re saying. I’m so intrigued by Turning Tide that I thought I was going to have to ask to see it.”
“The house was built in 1819 by George Perkins Edisto,” said Phillip, leading her back to the foyer. “He wasn’t of the same tribe that inhabited Edisto Island, but he did have interest in purchasing a sea island cotton plantation on that same island. He and his wife died of malaria the year they came to Charleston and the house was owned by the bank until I decided I wanted it.”
Curious, watery eyes met Somerset’s at every turn. The hungry wanted to know who she was, but it was evident that they resented her and admired her beauty as she stood with her black shiny boots peeping out from her mauve underskirt and pearls grating against each other with every movement. Phillip waved at them.
“Hello, all. I’m pleased you joined me at my home tonight. While I do enjoy seeing all of you, I thought you’d forgive me for stepping out of the kitchen tonight in light of my new bride coming into town to surprise me. This is the future Mrs. Russell.”
Somerset didn’t know whether to speak or wave so she nodded her head and managed a small smile. Several of the women and a
ll of the children returned her greeting, but their red-rimmed eyes didn’t contain even the dullest spark of interest as they surveyed her in her finery.
A man in a dirty brown derby hat wiped at his face with a holey handkerchief.
“Congratulations, boss,” he coughed.
“Thank you for the well wishes,” smiled Phillip and he took Somerset up the straight, wide maple staircase. “There is a drawing room, a study, a kitchen, and a parlor on the ground floor along with several offices and a room that adjoins the parlor that I keep as a ballroom.”
“Should we go upstairs together?” asked Somerset.
“Why shouldn’t we? This house is better staffed than most debut balls. There are two of us and twenty servants. We have nothing to hide.”
“That man downstairs is an employee of yours?” asked Somerset.
“He’s worked for me for the past eight years.”
“Yet he stands in line for free food.”
“I’m doing all I can for him.”
“I don’t understand. Wouldn’t it be easier to pay him decent pay rather than open up your home twice per month to negate the fact that you don’t?”
Phillip stopped outside one of the rooms.
“I’ve told you before that I’m in charge of too many employees to do that. I pay much better than most mines in town. Ask questions about my competitors if you want proof, but I can’t pay every man what he is worth or I lose everything. Then I can’t fund charities, soup kitchens, or prospective free clinics. Charleston was hit harder than anyone in the war, Somerset. Reconstruction is going to go on indefinitely. Social reform won’t happen overnight, my girl. It’s more a matter of tiny, clumsy steps toward the goal.”
He opened the door in front of them.
“This is your room, my love,” he said.
Somerset stepped over the door sill.
“It needs some renovations. It was the original lady of the house’s room so it’s been unused except for the few months she lived here. The crown molding needs replacing, and the new carpeting has been ordered. I chose a blue as close as I could find to the color of your eyes. It comes next week. I thought I might steal in here after a long day of drudgery and remember you better when swathed in a room of that color. I got rid of the canopy on the bed and am having the walls painted. This part of the room is a gem, I think. Your sitting area opens up onto a private balcony. The help tell me it’s beautiful in spring.”
