The Ada Decades

by Paula Martinac

  “You’ll get a reputation, hanging out with me,” Cam warned her, only half-joking.

  But it wasn’t Cam who had tainted how other faculty members saw her; her own response to Virgil Chance had done that. “Looks like we got us another one,” Ada heard a faculty member whisper one day as she left the faculty lounge.

  As the weather cooled and leaves crackled beneath her feet, Ada’s thoughts still turned to Mary. Was she adjusting to her new surroundings? Had she made friends? Would she ever attend school in Charlotte again? The girl’s features blurred in Ada’s memory, but she still held a clear picture of her stoic demeanor.

  In late October, a package addressed to School Librarian arrived at Central. Inside was the school’s copy of Little Women wrapped in tissue, accompanied by a note written on ivory stationery. A one-dollar bill was tucked inside. My daughter forgot to return this book before she left Central, read the note. She didn’t mean to, and she is very sorry. I have enclosed a dollar to cover overdue fines. Thank you for understanding. Sincerely, Mrs. Theo Burney, Charlotte, North Carolina.

  Ada had forgotten about the novel. The sleeve inside the book bore the stamped date when Mary had checked it out. From the circulation files, Ada dug out the matching card, which carried Mary’s round, childish signature. Ada had commended her choice, and the gesture had made Mary smile.

  Now the volume felt like an artifact—no longer just a library book, but proof that Mary had been there and that something had happened at the school. At the end of the day, Ada deposited it on the cart for re-shelving, and Mrs. Pierce put it back in place without knowing where it had come from or that it was very overdue.

  Ada would tell Cam about it later. But in the meantime, she penned a note to Mrs. Burney, returning the dollar. She had to start it over twice, writing several lines and crossing them out, rewriting and crossing them out again, until she was left with a single, unsatisfying sentence: Please tell Mary I wish her all the best in wherever the future takes her. Yours truly, Ada Jane Shook, Librarian.

  The Book Club

  1958

  “Everybody calls me Lu,” the woman in a pearl necklace and flowered sheath said. Ada recognized her immediately; she’d seen her at the movies with Cam.

  Lu was dressed for a garden party, even though Cam had assured Ada the get-together at her apartment was “casual.” Ada tugged at her simple pleated skirt, wishing she had worn her go-to-church dress instead.

  As if she were the hostess, Lu poured Ada a cup of punch. “Cam asked me to make my famous Pink Paradise. You are in paradise after one sip!” The drink was fortified with something far stronger than Ada was accustomed to, and whatever rendered it pink seemed like an afterthought. Without any fanfare, Ada found a spot to abandon her cup behind a vase of daffodils, and popped a potato chip into her mouth to take away the bitter taste.

  The second-story apartment hummed with the laughter of young women and a couple of men who obviously knew each other well but didn’t get together often enough. At the center was Cam, who had begged Ada to come to the launch of her new book club.

  “You will just love these folks,” Cam said. Ada thought knowing a few more people outside of her job might be nice, and folks who read books and joined a club to talk about them were likely friends for a junior high school librarian. But really she had come for Cam. Over the course of a few months, they had become fast friends, meeting after school for coffee most days after Cam’s basketball coaching.

  At the book club, though, Cam left her to her own devices, and Ada felt a twinge of disappointment. She milled around the apartment, impressed that Cam had her own place, with two full bedrooms and a separate dining room—an apartment designed more for a small family than a single girl. Maybe she got help from her parents, Ada thought. Ada still lived at home, and it was hard to imagine managing rent on her salary. “You’ll be married soon enough,” her mother said when she got prickly about returning every evening to her tiny bedroom.

  But she hadn’t been on a single date with any of the men her mother and other church ladies introduced her to every Sunday. She kept waiting for marriage to interest her. “If you aren’t careful, Ada Jane,” a friend of her mother’s commented, “men will get the wrong idea about you. They’ll think you are a career girl.” It wasn’t the wrong idea at all. Ada had seen the lives of millworkers’ wives up close and couldn’t imagine relinquishing her hard-won education and position for their daily drudgery.

  The tables and shelves of Cam’s apartment were littered with framed photos—scenes of Cam at the beach, at a putt-putt range, at a wedding, a bar, another bar, always with friends, many of the same faces at the book club. In each shot, Cam’s face filled with a big, easy-going grin as she draped an arm around someone’s shoulders like it belonged there. She looked like happiness itself.

  And then there were at least a dozen photos of her with a middle-aged man who had the same square jaw as Cam, the same deep-set eyes and effortless smile. They were on horses, in a park, next to a Christmas tree, in front of a sign that read Davidson College.

  Cam appeared out of nowhere and tapped her shoulder,

  making Ada jump. “Sorry, darlin’, I didn’t mean to scare you.” She placed a hand on the small of Ada’s back, an intimate gesture Ada had only experienced with men who wanted something from her. When Cam did it, though, it just felt comfortable. “You getting to know people?”

  “Some,” Ada said. “I don’t like to just barge in on conversations.”

  “Talk to Auggie,” Cam suggested, pointing to a slender youth with a cowlick shooting up from his ginger hair. He looked like a teenager and reminded Ada a little of her younger brother,

  Foster. “He’s one of my favorite people.”

  But Ada found small talk laborious, trying to think up things to say to strangers. To shift attention away from her poor social skills and keep Cam close by, she asked, “Is that your father in these photos?”

  “Yes, ma’am. Thomas Jackson Lively—chair of English at Davidson College. Named for Stonewall, but he has spent his entire life decrying the Confederacy.”

  “You sure have a lot of photos of him.”

  “I don’t!” A twinge of defensiveness crept into her voice, but then she laughed it off. “Well, I guess I do, if you start counting.”

  “You look like you get along right well.”

  “We do, most times. He can be pig-headed, but then folks have said that about me, too. How about you and your father? You get along?”

  Ada took a deep breath while she considered how to answer. Her daddy had never gone past eighth grade and seemed to resent that his daughter won a scholarship to college. Ada was about to admit that to Cam when the woman named Lu turned up next to them. “You talking about T.J.?” she said. “Handsome devil, isn’t he? I’ve always had a bit of a crush on him.”

  “Lu and I went to school together in Greensboro,” Cam explained. “Woman’s College, class of ’54. Her folks live all the way over in Edenton, so she used to come home with me to Davidson some weekends.”

  “We were roommates two full years,” Lu added. The coy way she said roommates made her even more of a mystery.

  The mention of college launched Lu and Cam into a rapid-fire exchange of reminiscences (“Remember when you. . . ?” “That is pure exaggeration, girl, and you know it!”), while Ada stood by like the proverbial third wheel. At a break in the small talk, she finally asked outright, “When do you think we’ll start talking about the book?”

  “You’re the librarian, aren’t you?” Lu said, as if nothing else could explain the desire to talk about a book at a book club.

  “I am.” Ada had taken time out of her regular reading schedule to fit in The Grass Harp by Truman Capote. She had jotted her mixed responses to the story in a leather notebook Natalie had given her for graduation. Ada used the notebook sparingly,

  saving each page for something important, and her preparation for the book club had taken up two full sheets. Havin
g put that much effort into it, she was darned well going to discuss the book.

  “Well, honey, most of us are just here to drink and gossip!”

  “Deluth, please,” Cam said, and placed a hand on her friend’s forearm. “Let’s let everyone refresh their drinks and then we’ll start the discussion, how’s that sound?”

  It sounded fine to Ada, although she was wondering what kind of name “Deluth” was and what sort of discussion could possibly take place among folks who were there for other reasons entirely.

  Indeed, when Cam announced that discussion was going to commence, some of the guests spilled out onto the front porch, which overlooked the oak-lined road. Gauzy curtains blew in the breeze, cutting the glare of the afternoon sun. “Not too loud, please,” Cam admonished them. “Mind the neighbors.”

  Of those remaining in the living room, Lu and a girl named Shirley Ann admitted they hadn’t gotten past the first few pages of the novel. Auggie, who was older than he seemed from across the room, had finished about half the volume, as had the young man named Twig who sat next to him, closer than men were supposed to. Some others had “almost” finished, and Cam said she had turned the last page just that morning. “I was busy grading papers,” she said.

  “That what they call it nowadays?” Lu asked.

  “That’s one of my lines,” Auggie said.

  “Behave yourselves, y’all,” Cam replied. She turned to Ada, who sat across from her on a stiff dining-room chair. “Ada, you okay on that chair? There’s room on the sofa next to Auggie.”

  “Yeah, you’re just a little bitty thing,” Auggie agreed, making more space. “Twig, scoot down.”

  Ada changed seats, her shoulder brushing Auggie, who smelled like a delicious sprig of mint.

  “Ada, I truly apologize for my friends. I bet you read the whole book, and you’re thinking we’re all just a bunch of yahoos.”

  Ada opened her mouth to respond, but Lu cut in again. “I for one don’t understand why you picked this book, Cam. Or maybe Ada chose it? Maybe if you’d picked something more interesting by the little sissy, I would’ve bothered to read it, like the one about the transvestite. What’s that one called again?”

  “I didn’t pick anything,” Ada said. “I’m not very familiar with Truman Capote.”

  “It’s Capo-tee, dear,” Lu corrected.

  Ada had never heard anyone pronounce his name and could feel herself reddening right down to her chest.

  “Lu, don’t you need to get yourself a drink or something?” Twig asked.

  “I picked the book,” Cam said. “I thought you’d want to read something newer. And he didn’t write a novel about a transvestite. It has a transvestite character, that’s all.”

  “People say the ending means the main character is a homosexual,” Lu said. “Now that would have been interesting reading, don’t you think, Ada?”

  “Oh,” Ada said, startled to be singled out. “I couldn’t say.” She meant about the book, but it came out wrong, like a defense. In church, the lesson of Sodom and Gomorrah was one of the preacher’s fallback sermons, and she had heard plenty of derogatory names for men who liked other men. But she had never been in casual company—and mixed company, at that—where someone spoke the word homosexual out loud.

  “Why, honey, you are blushing,” Lu said.

  “Leave her alone,” Auggie said. “You are always trying to stir up trouble. Don’t pay her any mind, Ada.”

  Cam turned to Lu. “Since you haven’t read the book, maybe you’d like to join the others on the porch.”

  “Aren’t we touchy today,” Lu said. “Aunt Flo must be visiting. I wasn’t trying to hurt anybody. It just seemed obvious you didn’t warn Ada.”

  The only sound was soft conversation from the direction of the porch.

  “Warn me about what?”

  “Why, about us, honey. About this very . . . queer assortment of folks.”

  Ada scanned the circle of faces. Auggie’s was so close he seemed slightly distorted, like in a fun house. Even Cam, with whom she’d spent so many hours discussing books and work, looked unfamiliar. Ada’s own face was burning, but she wasn’t sure why. She smiled feebly, but the preacher’s face as he raved about fire and brimstone kept popping into her mind.

  “Will you excuse me a minute?” she said, making a move to get up. Auggie leaned over and whispered in her ear.

  “Please don’t leave. Miss Pardue is nothing but a troublemaker,” he said, attaching yet a third name to Lu.

  “I just need to use the ladies’,” she said. Cam offered to show her the way, but she waved her off, grabbed her pocketbook, and found the bathroom on her own.

  Ada dabbed cool water on neck. In the mirror, she could read the fear in her look, the wide eyes that popped when she felt cornered, but she wasn’t sure what there was to be afraid of. Except for Lu, they seemed like friendly, accommodating folks. She could get used to their light banter. Just spending time with Cam after school had made the words flow more easily out of her.

  Ada’s eyes took in the reflection of the room, the Carolina blue towels, the neat black and white tiles. At the sink, a white clam-shell cradled a bar of Ivory soap. She knew she shouldn’t, but she opened the medicine cabinet, where she found a women’s razor, a half-used bottle of Bayer aspirin, and a tube of lipstick. In the six months she’d known her, Ada had never seen Cam wear any makeup at all. The shade, when she uncapped it, was a vivid coral, marked with someone’s lip print. Ada wondered if it belonged to a woman in the book group, like Lu.

  Cam had dropped plenty of hints about being an independent woman and a free-thinker, and she’d talked about admiring writers like Lillian Smith, who never married. Cam’s talk hadn’t scared Ada off. In fact, it intrigued her; it offered the possibility of an alternate life path. Even Miss Ruthie shared her home with a woman named Miss Cicely, and she did seem fulfilled.

  Still, Ada hadn’t really considered that women might keep their lipstick in the medicine cabinet for the next morning. The thought made her feel a little dizzy, and she closed the cabinet.

  Auggie was waiting outside the bathroom door, leaning against the wall. “Sorry I took so long,” she said, startled.

  “I was waiting for you, hon,” he said. “You looked a tad peaked.” He took her hand and pulled her through a door that was slightly ajar. The curtains in the bedroom were drawn, and everything was in casual disarray. Auggie clicked his tongue as he shoved aside a copy of the Sunday paper from the rumpled bedclothes. “She’s a secret slob,” he said, “but we love her just the same. Here, come sit with me.”

  They perched together on the edge of the bed, which faced a diminutive writing desk stacked so high with papers and books that it looked like it might buckle under the weight. It was hard to imagine Cam’s tall frame fitting comfortably at something so petite, clearly meant for a lady who better suited the name Camellia. Ada pictured Cam at something like a sturdy oak library table, polished to a warm amber.

  “It’s tiny,” she said out loud, and Auggie’s eyes followed hers to the desk.

  “Well, it is, isn’t it? I never noticed before, as many times as I’ve been here.” It sounded as if he’d frequented Cam’s bedroom, and that made Ada’s hands go clammy.

  “Ooh, you are nervous,” he said, dropping her hand. “I understand, honey, truly.”

  She scanned his face for a hint that he did, indeed, understand. His eyes were a delicate green, like the leaves just starting on the willow oaks, and his nose was dusted with freckles. A thin gap separated his lips, from one front tooth that stuck out a little farther than the other. It was an endearing flaw, something folks probably didn’t notice until they were up close.

  “Let’s take a walk,” he said.

  “Now?” She wondered what was going on in the other room, if folks were talking about them or if the conversation had flitted to something else. She pictured Cam casting glances down the hallway, but maybe she was so involved in talking to the woman who’
d left behind her lipstick that she didn’t even notice their absence.

  “Why not? I didn’t much like the book, did you?” Auggie said. “A little boy and two old ladies who make potions? Ho-hum. That’s why I didn’t finish. Let’s go see something that’s tons more interesting.”

  Ada wiped her hand on her skirt just before he grabbed it again and headed for the hallway. “We shall return!” he called to Cam, who seemed to be listening to a story Twig was telling, but whose face registered bewilderment and something else, almost like pain. Still, she lifted her punch cup toward them in a half-salute.

  “Where are we going?” Ada asked when they were on the sidewalk. Voices and laughter from Cam’s porch drifted like petals to the street.

  “I love this street, don’t you? It’s so elegant . . . in a shabby kind of way.”

  Ada had never thought of the boulevard as anything but grand. The streetcar suburb of Dilworth was quite a few rungs above her parents’ neighborhood of North Charlotte, which was the very definition of shabby—houses never stood higher than one story and yards were red clay that turned to slop in the rain. Having four or five rooms instead of the standard three was considered deluxe. Here, in contrast, roofs kissed the trees, climbing two stories or more. Instead of narrow roads where cars took turns to pass, Dilworth boasted a paved boulevard and wide sidewalks with room to breathe. The air was purer, too, at a greater distance from the cotton mills.

  They had walked silently for one long block when Auggie broke into a happy trot and pointed with excitement. “There it is!” A sprawling white frame bungalow, set back from the street and guarded by a majestic oak, came into view. With its modest height and lack of trim, it was not the peer of its neighbors, but Ada recognized its charm even if she didn’t understand Auggie’s excitement.

  “It’s pretty,” she said.

  “That, dear librarian, is where Carson McCullers lived, oh, twenty years ago,” Auggie said with a sigh. “She started writing The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter right there in that house.”