“Gail? You saved my life.” Hanna sounded like herself again. “Mama told me. I don’t even remember it.”
“I’m just glad you’re okay.” What did Hanna remember? “When will I see you again?”
“Don’t know,” Hanna replied.
The aroma of the cherry pie was dizzying. No one made cherry pies as good as Sophie’s. Gail picked up a knife, intending to cut herself a small slice, but the latticed crust reminded her of a swimming-pool drain. There could have been bright red blood trickling down the concrete. Ambulance sirens.
She set the knife aside. “What if I went to your school?”
“You can’t,” Hanna said quickly.
“I might be able to, if I lived at your house.”
“You can’t, because your parents wouldn’t like it, and then your mother would fire my mother.”
“Okay. Bad idea.”
“Mama’s going to take me to the jail.” Hanna sounded excited. “Not tomorrow. I guess it’s not open on Christmas. But soon.”
“Maybe you should sing for Del. That way he’ll know he’s your father.”
“Legally he is, since he’s married to my mother.”
“What does Jeremiah think?”
Hanna lowered her voice. “He says he’s my brother no matter what.”
“Is he there with you now?”
“Yeah.” Hanna giggled. “Guarding me like I’m Fort Knox.”
For Hanna, things were changing for the better. She had her own family now, her own home. Had she been joking around on the board, or was she really planning to jump? Gail couldn’t ask, not on Christmas Eve, maybe not ever.
“Call me, okay?” Gail said. “After you visit the jail.”
“Maybe. I’ll see how it goes.”
“Merry Christmas, then,” Gail said. “See ya next year.”
“Merry Christmas.” And Hanna hung up.
Be that way, Gail thought, replacing the receiver. She shoved open the swinging door to the dining room. Swish, swish, it went in the empty house.
In the living room, she turned on the Christmas tree lights. Tinsel glistened. Three empty stockings hung from the mantel.
No presents, yet, under the tree. Her parents had learned the hard way: party guests stepped on wrapped gifts, sometimes even swiped a few.
Sophie was on her way home to Hanna. Jeremiah was already there, keeping his sister company, making sure she was okay. Gail was completely alone.
She went to the front window and stood staring out at the hickory tree. Did her parents not love her? Where were they?
Charlotte’s Birthday
Knoxville, Tennessee, 1958
HALF AN HOUR EARLIER, BEFORE her mad dash to the faculty parking lot, Bessie had glanced at her desk calendar and realized that tomorrow, Friday, she was supposed to have lunch with her friend Charlotte, at Charlotte’s house. How could she have forgotten?
Now, while parked beside West High School, waiting for Gail and the rest of the carpool to trickle out, it hit her. Tomorrow, September 12, was Charlotte’s birthday. She’d forgotten that, too.
What was wrong with her? The last two months were what.
In July, after giving two weeks’ notice, Sophie had moved away, with her family, to Philadelphia. The timing could not have been worse. For Gail, the double whammy of losing both Hanna and Sophie was soon compounded by the stress of strange faces and unfamiliar routines at a new school.
Gail wouldn’t talk about any of it. Some days she barely spoke at all.
Bessie had proposed a farewell picnic with Sophie and Hanna, by the swimming pool, but Gail was adamant. A picnic, fine, but not by the pool. The dining room, then? Bessie suggested. Where Hanna and Sophie were never allowed to eat? Gail shot back.
So they’d carried four dining room chairs and TV tables outside and set them under the mimosa tree. Bessie boiled hot dogs and heated a can of baked beans. Gail made a big pitcher of lemonade.
On that sweltering July day, Hanna, in lime-green shorts and a matching top, exuded the icy poise of a contestant in a beauty contest. She’d always been taller than Gail. At fifteen, she also looked older, more mature.
Gail handed Hanna a box neatly wrapped in blue paper. Inside was a blue box containing blue stationery.
“Blue, because I’m sad you’re leaving,” Gail said. “Write to me as soon as you get to Philadelphia. Send me your address so I can write back.”
Hanna nodded.
“Promise me,” Gail said. “Say it out loud.”
“I promise. You better write back, though.”
“Of course I will,” Gail said.
Bessie glanced over at Sophie, who was smiling, both of them thinking the same thing. The girls would stay in touch. The mothers? Probably not.
There was no city bus service between the Madisons’ neighborhood and the high school—which was three miles away, across a busy highway, across a set of railroad tracks. Bessie had been counting on Sophie to drive Gail to and from school. But now that the Pontiac and Sophie were both in Philadelphia, that would not happen.
The easy solution, a neighborhood carpool, didn’t happen, either. Bessie received one refusal after another. If only you’d asked back in June. So very sorry—our carpool is full up.
For years, Gail’s only friends at school had been girls like her, who didn’t quite fit in. This fringe group included Marcie Jones, whose Quaker parents were rumored to be communists, as well as Deborah Horowitz and Nicole Goldberg, who made no secret of their Jewish heritage, just as Gail made no secret of her friendship with Hanna, which had continued—after Hanna and Sophie moved out—with long telephone conversations. Occasionally, on a Saturday, Gail took the bus downtown to meet Hanna. Knowing the two of them wouldn’t be able to eat together or shop together or even go to a movie, Bessie once asked Gail how they’d spent the afternoon. Sitting on the library steps, talking, was the reply.
On the one hand, Bessie was proud of her daughter. She was. On the other, Gail’s rejection by her peers had been painful for a mother to watch.
Fortunately, Marcie’s and Deborah’s parents were happy to form a carpool. Nicole lived close enough to the high school to walk.
As for her neighbors’ carpools, Bessie tried not to check on how full they actually were. Tried not to wonder what was really behind the refusals. Antipathy toward Gail? Or toward the parents who had permitted their daughter to have a colored girl for a friend?
With the three girls seated behind her, Bessie asked if they’d mind stopping at the drugstore. Fifteen minutes later, the girls were sipping Cokes at a Formica-topped table while Bessie rejected one birthday card after another. Too sentimental. Too corny. Then a mournful hound dog caught her eye, a possible relative of Charlotte’s beloved beagle, Snuffy. The sentiment inside? “Cheer up. It’s only a birthday.”
As she paid for the card, Bessie did the math. Charlotte was six years older than she was. This wasn’t just any old birthday. Tomorrow, Charlotte Buchanan would turn fifty.
Bessie had classes to teach in the morning. Girls to drive home this afternoon. A family dinner to throw together. No two ways about it. The perfect fiftieth-birthday present for her dearest friend would have to be purchased this very afternoon.
“Back in a minute,” she said to the girls.
Once outside, she considered the possibilities. A grocery store. A gift-and-clothing shop owned by the sister of a woman who’d claimed to have no room for Gail in her carpool. A bank. A barber. A florist.
A bell clanged as she entered the florist’s. The young man behind the counter smiled at her, then asked how he could help.
“Is there some sort of traditional present for a fiftieth birthday?”
His green eyes lit up. “You mean, like fifty red roses?”
Bessie shook her head. That would be overdoing it. “May I look around?”
“Take all the time you want. I’ll be right here if you have any questions.”
“Does Rhode Island have a
state flower, do you happen to know?” Charlotte had grown up in Providence.
He said there were some books in the back. He’d find out.
The mixture of scents in the shop was dizzying. Bessie went down two steps into a room full of hanging plants, recently watered and dripping onto the concrete floor. In the shelves along one wall she spotted another hound, this one a gold, brown, and white ceramic planter. Neat black script along its side proclaimed, “You ain’t nothin’ but a hound dog.” She picked it up, checked the price. Charlotte was a secret fan of Elvis Presley.
“Violets,” the young man said from the doorway. “Rhode Island’s state flower.” He pointed. “We have purple ones and white ones. They’re African violets, though, if it makes a difference.”
“Don’t think it matters a bit,” Bessie said. “Would some of the purple ones fit in this?” She held up the planter.
“They sure would.”
“Can you transplant them for me? Fairly quickly?”
As they headed for home, Gail was in the passenger seat, Deborah and Marcie in back. That Gail had chosen to sit up front was oddly comforting. Bessie liked having her daughter beside her.
Soon they were alone in the car, sharing a peaceful silence. Finally, stopped at their mailbox, Bessie retrieved a few bills and the latest issue of the New Yorker and handed them to Gail.
“I’m worried about Hanna,” Gail said. “She promised to send me her new address. You heard her.”
It had been two months. During that time, Gail had not mentioned Hanna. Not once.
“She’s just busy, like you. New school, new friends.” Bessie drove slowly up the driveway and turned into the garage.
“How long does it take to write down an address? You haven’t been hiding her letters, have you?”
“Why on earth would I do that?”
“Never mind, then. Have you heard from Sophie?”
“I don’t really expect to,” Bessie said.
“Well, I sure expect to hear from Hanna. We’re going to room together in college, you know.”
Bessie did not know. “Not Knoxville College, I hope.”
“Hanna doesn’t want to come back here. She was thinking maybe Howard University.”
Then maybe Georgetown for you, Bessie kept herself from saying. Nor did she point out that college was an opportunity to make new friends. Maybe even find a husband.
“Your father and I would need to discuss that,” Bessie said.
“Discuss?”
“Talk it over. We want what’s best for you.” Bessie opened the car door and stepped into the dark garage.
Gail got out, too. “Being with Hanna is best for me—you know that.”
“Then let’s wait and see if Hanna even goes to college.”
“Of course she will.” Standing in the sunny driveway, Gail went carefully through the mail again, examining each envelope.
What would you like for dinner? Bessie almost asked. But why embarrass herself? She didn’t know how to fry chicken or pork chops or anything else.
“Want to see what I got Charlotte for her fiftieth birthday?” she said instead.
“Who’s Charlotte?” Gail asked, without looking up.
My best friend, Bessie did not say.
Charlotte Buchanan lived in a white brick house on a heavily wooded lot sloping down to a creek. A few of the leaves were beginning to turn. Autumn in Knoxville would be beautiful but muted and would make Bessie long for the dazzling foliage of New England.
Both friend and colleague, Charlotte was an English professor at UT. She was also, like Bessie, a New Englander. Having noticed how Southerners preferred other Southerners, those of their own kind, who spoke their language, Bessie had been surprised to realize she felt the same way about her own clan. Charlotte quenched her thirst from a bubbler, not a water fountain, and boiled water on a stove’s burner, not its eye. For Bessie, spending time with Charlotte was almost as good as a trip home to Connecticut.
Before Bessie could knock on the front door, it opened. “You shouldn’t have,” Charlotte said. “Violets. My very favorite. And you know how I feel about Elvis.” She swiveled her hips. “Come on in.”
A glassed-in porch off the living room served as the studio where Max, Charlotte’s husband, constructed and furnished his beautiful dollhouses. Bessie said hello to him from the doorway, but Max sat staring out into the woods and didn’t respond. The term shell-shocked dated back to the First World War, but World War II had produced its own share of traumatized soldiers. Max was one of them.
Stone-deaf Snuffy was asleep on the rug by the fireplace. Charlotte took his ceramic counterpart into the dining room and placed it on a windowsill.
“First time you water the violets, you’ll want to remove the plug and place a saucer underneath,” Bessie said.
“How often do they need water?” Charlotte asked.
Bessie shrugged. “When they droop?”
The table was set for two. Heavenly smells came from the kitchen. Julia, Charlotte’s maid, brought out two shrimp cocktails, then returned with two mint juleps.
Bessie never drank bourbon, but, on this very special birthday of a very special friend, it seemed rude to refuse. She would sip slowly.
“This is such a treat for me.” Using the small fork, Bessie dipped a shrimp in the cocktail sauce and popped it into her mouth. Having some food in her stomach would help. “I’m already tired of my own cooking. Charles is, too, I’m afraid.”
“Sophie was a treasure,” Charlotte said. “How are you getting along without her?”
A treasure? Honest and dependable, yes. A wonderful cook, yes. Terrific with the girls, yes. But Sophie had been, at times, secretive and sullen. Until Del was arrested, Bessie had believed him to be abusive. She’d attributed Sophie’s moodiness to the need to protect both herself and her daughter. Why hadn’t Sophie ever confided in the woman who’d been kind enough to provide thirteen years of refuge? Bessie would have listened, perhaps even found a way to help.
“I don’t mind doing my own cleaning,” Bessie said, though this wasn’t entirely true. “But I never was much of a cook. All I can remember my mother serving us for dinner is meatloaf.”
No one in their neighborhood in Hartford had had a maid. In Knoxville, household help was easily affordable because of the large labor pool, women for whom no other jobs were available.
“My mother thought it was a waste of heat to cook things separately,” Charlotte said. “We usually had stews and casseroles. At Christmas she’d slice those green olives with pimentos and add them to spaghetti sauce to give it what she called the holiday look.”
“Sounds very festive.” Bessie’s own mother had passed away eight years earlier. Last year, her beloved father had died, leaving Bessie, at forty-three, an orphan. She thought of her father nearly every day, wishing she’d never let Charles talk her into leaving New England. She should’ve been there to care for her dad. Instead, he’d died alone.
To hide sudden tears, Bessie took a sip of the mint julep, then another, and another.
“What about hiring a woman to cook for you?” Charlotte asked. “Julia might know someone.”
Julia appeared, as if on cue. She cleared away the shrimp cocktail bowls, then asked if they were ready for another drink.
“Julia’s husband tends bar at the country club,” Charlotte said. “He taught her the secret of a perfect mint julep.”
“This is delicious, all right.” Bessie raised her glass and drained it. “Could I trouble you for a glass of water, too?” Water would dilute the bourbon.
“Yes, ma’am,” Julia said. “Ice water?”
Yes, ma’am, Bessie was nearly tipsy enough to say. “Please,” she said.
Julia brought out two steaming bowls of fettuccine Alfredo and two plates of salad, then ice water and fresh mint juleps.
“How’s Gail getting along?” Charlotte asked, very softly, after Julia had returned to the kitchen.
Bessie shru
gged. Was Gail still being ostracized, Charlotte was asking, or had that changed now that Hanna was out of the picture? Bessie hadn’t told Charlotte about the neighborhood carpool debacle. Now was not the time for that sorry tale. Julia might be listening in.
Gail wants to go to a colored college, Bessie wished she could say. With Hanna. What should I do? That conversation, too, would have to wait.
“Gail’s fine,” Bessie said, then lowered her voice. “Let’s try to have lunch, on campus, sometime soon.”
Charlotte nodded. “Next Friday?”
Charlotte was Bessie’s only real friend in Knoxville. Over the years, Charles’s friends, most of whom he’d grown up with, had been kind to Bessie. Their wives had always been courteous. They didn’t include her in their daytime socializing, but then how could they? She was teaching. None of those women worked.
Bessie took another bite of the fettucine. “This is absolutely delicious.”
“And fattening,” Charlotte said. “Eat up. You’re looking a bit peaked.”
Pique Ed, Bessie heard. A class on how to deal with resentment. She lubricated the pasta with a sip of mint julep and glanced over at the violets. Outside the window was a huge sycamore, a twin of the one in the yard of her childhood home in Hartford.
As a young girl, Bessie had often helped her father rake the golden leaves into piles. Usually, the two of them worked in silence, but one afternoon, his breath visible in the chilly autumn air, he surprised her by saying, “We humans never really understand each other.”
“Why not?” she dared ask.
“We don’t try hard enough.”
Even now, Bessie was not sure what he’d meant.
“Bessie, dear, what’s wrong?” Charlotte said gently.
“I’m so sorry,” Bessie said. “I was a million miles away. How are your classes going?”
“They’re going. And yours?”
But this was not the time to talk about work. It was Charlotte’s birthday, her fiftieth. Max wouldn’t be taking her out to dinner tonight to celebrate. Max didn’t drive. He rarely left the house. Their children wouldn’t be calling with good wishes. Max and Charlotte had no children. Bessie was it.
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