A Summer of Kings

by Han Nolan

  FIVE

  I watched my mother coming down the hall and wondered what King-Roy thought of her. Had his mother told him how beautiful she is? Did his mother even know? Our mothers had been best friends up until the third grade, but then they had to stop being friends in public because people in town didn't like it. Mother said King-Roy's mother could have gotten hurt if they were seen playing together, so they had stopped and only saw each other on occasion and in secret, and eventually, they drifted apart.

  Most people say Mother looks like Jackie Kennedy, only prettier. She's tall and slender, with a small waist and perfect posture, and she's a brunette and she has almond-shaped brown eyes and her rounded chin sticks out just the slightest bit at the end. My little sister is going to grow up to look just like her, as far as I can tell.

  I waited until my mother got close enough to us that I didn't have to raise my voice before I said, "Mother, this is Mr. King-Roy Johnson." My mother didn't like me to raise my voice. She always said my voice was so loud it could shatter glass.

  Mother's smile broadened and she extended her hand toward King-Roy. "I'm so pleased to meet you," she said. "I'm sorry I wasn't here to greet you when you arrived. You're early today, I believe, and yesterday, when you were supposed to come, you got lost?"

  Mother tilted her head, still smiling, and yet I saw in her eyes a flash of annoyance. I hoped that King-Roy didn't see it. The look came and went so fast, and I figured since King-Roy didn't know Mother yet, he wouldn't catch it; but I saw by the way he drew back from her, even taking a step back with one foot, that he had.

  "Yes, ma'am, I got lost in New York City yesterday, and today I'm early," he said, without stammering or looking away. "I didn't know how long it would take me to get here. I'm sorry if I arrived at an inconvenient time."

  "Not at all," Mother said, even though her eyes said, "Of course you did."

  Mother turned to me. "Esther, I went shopping on my way home. Would you go downstairs and unload the groceries, please?"

  "But I was showing King-Roy the house. I wanted to show him his rooms. I wanted to be the one to show him."

  Mother closed her eyes a moment, then opened them again. "The ice cream is melting, Esther. I'll show Mr. Johnson his rooms."

  I didn't want to leave. I wanted to show King-Roy the house. I was so proud of our house—my house. Someday, I would own this house. That was my dream. I knew that my parents didn't hold out much hope for my success in life, but my dream, my fantasy, was to someday walk up to my parents and surprise them with buckets of money and say, "I'd like to buy this house from you—in cash."

  I saw Stewart and Sophia coming down the hallway, still in their audition outfits of matching stretch pants and tops, looking both so adorable. Sophia was a miniature of my mother and had her hair pulled up in a perfect little bun, and Stewart, with his mop-top head of golden curls, looked like a little prince. I saw my mother's eyes light up. She lifted her head and said, "Ah, here they come." She held out her hand, and Stewart and Sophia trotted up to Mother. "Mr. Johnson, these are my other two children. Sophia, Stewart, say hello to Mr. King-Roy Johnson."

  Sophia, being the little charmer, curtsied and said, "Roy is French for 'King,' so your name is really King-King, did you know that?"

  Before King-Roy could answer, Stewart said, "Of course he knows that; everybody knows that, even Esther." He held out his hand and said, "It's very nice to meet you," all in his sweet high-pitched little voice.

  King-Roy leaned forward and took each hand and shook it saying, "It's nice to meet y'all. Miz Sophia, you're mighty pretty, and, Mr. Stewart, you look right tall for a boy of ten."

  King-Roy had said just the right thing. Sophia and Stewart both beamed.

  Then Mother said, "Stewart, Sophia, I'd like you to show King—"

  I knew what was coming and I tried to head it off by jumping in and saying, "But Mother, I was showing him the house. Please, please let me show it to him—please."

  "Esther, enough. Sophia and Stewart can show—"

  Again I didn't let her finish. I raised my voice to block out hers. "No! Mother, please, let me show him." I could hear the whine in my voice and I knew I sounded like a baby, but I just wanted to be the one. I wanted King-Roy to be my special friend. Mr. Vichy thought Stewart was the greatest boy child in the world, brilliant and handsome and complex, and Beatrice doted on Sophia. Everyone always doted on the beautiful little genius, Sophia. I wanted King-Roy to like me, especially me. I wanted him to tell me about the moment that changed his life and for it to be a secret between us. For once, I wanted a visitor to like me best.

  I felt tears stinging my eyes. I blinked several times, refusing to cry. "Mother, I can run down and put up the groceries and then show him the house. I'll be really quick and—"

  Mother took a deep breath and then in a firm voice said, "Esther Josephine Young, do as you are told!" Then she glared at me as if she wanted to rip my throat out of my neck. I knew she was more furious than usual because I had created a scene in front of our new guest. Mother hated scenes, particularly mine.

  I swallowed hard and nodded. "Yes, Mother. I'm sorry." I looked at King-Roy, who stood with his head bent and his arms down in front of him, one hand folded over the other, his hat dangling between two fingers, as if he were praying. I said to him in a voice that imitated my mother's exactly, "I'm sorry for my behavior, King-Roy. You must think that I am very silly. Stewart and Sophia will show you your rooms while I put up the groceries. If you will please excuse me."

  I broke through the group standing there, pushing aside Stewart and Sophia just the littlest bit to get through, and headed toward the stairs. I moved slowly, listening to my mother make her excuses for my behavior.

  "She just gets herself so wound up sometimes. I'm sure she talked your ear off. I'm sorry if her little scene has upset you."

  "No, ma'am. Miz Esther has been good company and I've been most glad to have it."

  When I heard King-Roy say that, I wanted to make the biggest scene ever. I wanted to turn around and run down the hallway to Mr. King-Roy Johnson and throw my arms around his neck. Even if he didn't mean it, even if he said it just to be polite, he had contradicted Mother. He had stood up for me. I made a run for the stairway, quickly, before I found myself making a scene that would get both King-Roy and me in trouble.

  SIX

  I had just put away the last of the groceries, hiding the cookies and pies so Auntie Pie wouldn't find them and dig into them before anyone else had a chance to eat any, when Beatrice glided in with the Beast in her arms.

  Beatrice Bonham, the bottle-blond actress, had arrived with her enormous bosom and her pesky dog, Prissy, a shih tzu, three years ago, and, as far as I knew, had no intention of ever leaving.

  The shih tzu was the devil herself and tore up my favorite pair of sneakers—a pair of boy's Converse All Stars that I had found in the lost-and-found at school. They hadn't been claimed in over a year, and Coach O'Keefe said I could have them. I could have strangled the little Beast for eating those sneakers, and I refused to allow Beatrice or the Beast in my room, but I knew she came in anyway when I wasn't there. I once found one of little Prissy's red hair ribbons on the floor of my room, and on that same day, my 1922 silver Peace Dollar disappeared out of my piggy bank—my only silver Peace Dollar. Mother had once warned us that Beatrice could be a little light fingered, and apparently she was. If she could figure out a way, she'd steal my bedroom right out from under me while I slept and leave me lying in the mud.

  Beatrice came into the kitchen that afternoon dressed in a shimmery peignoir set just when I was finally free of the groceries and could rush out to the gatehouse and try to convince Auntie Pie not to tell Mother about finding a gun in King-Roy's suitcase. I couldn't bear it if Mother found out and sent him packing. I just couldn't bear the thought of it, but Beatrice liked getting attention, needed attention, and even though I was always her last and worst choice for somebody to talk to, I was there and I co
uld see she wanted to talk, so I stayed put. Before she could open her mouth, though, I said, hoping to hurry her on her way, "You know Mother doesn't like the Beast in the kitchen, near the food."

  Beatrice sniffed. "And I don't like my little Prissy being called the Beast, especially today. Don't you have any sensitivity at all?"

  I had forgotten. Last night had been Beatrice's last performance. She was officially out of a job, and as I had learned the last time she was between plays, nothing was worse than Beatrice with time on her hands.

  "Sorry," I said. "I forgot. How did it go—your last performance?" I glanced out the window, checking to see if Auntie Pie was coming. She wasn't.

  Beatrice slid into a chair at the kitchen table and set her bosom and the Beast down on top. "I got a standing ovation, as a matter of fact. Too bad no reviewers were there to see that!" She fiddled with her flowing gauzy sleeves and watched me while I hunted around for a hiding place for the last bag of cookies, then she said, "Hey, how about handing me some of those. Might as well have a few before Auntie Pie gets hold of them. And some tomato juice, if you've got any. Would you do that for me, hon?"

  I set the bag on the table and the Beast crept toward it as if she thought it was an exploding dog turd. Before she could figure out it was something to eat, I shoved the bag toward Beatrice and got out the tomato juice.

  "Oh, by the by," Beatrice said. "I noticed the old station wagon was out of the garage. I notice those things, you know, since all my rooms overlook the garages and the porte cochere—the servants' view, you know. You'd better get your aunt to move that old bus out of sight before your mother finds it. I don't think I could stand your mother in one of her moods today. I'm just too tired." Beatrice put the back of her hand up to her forehead and added, "It's been a ghastly week."

  I set a glass and the can of juice on the table and said, "Too late. Mother is already upset with me."

  Beatrice picked up the can and set it down again with a bang, which I knew hurt her with her hangover more than it hurt me. "You and your scenes. Honestly, Esther, when are you going to grow up?"

  I ignored her question, figuring it was rhetorical, and said, "I'd better go find Auntie Pie and warn her—uh, tell her—about the car."

  I turned to leave, and Beatrice grabbed my arm. Her hand was cold, and her glossy pink nails dug into my flesh.

  "Wait," she said. "Has Mr. Johnson, that Negro, arrived?"

  I nodded and removed my arm from her grasp. "Yes, he did. He sure did. He arrived early, before Mother got back from the auditions."

  "And? What's he like? Is he handsome?"

  "I think so," I said with my face turned toward the window so Beatrice couldn't see me blush.

  "Oh really?"

  I heard the curious tone in her voice and turned around.

  Beatrice had sat up and was patting the back of her over-sprayed coiffure. I watched her glance slide sideways—her scheming and conniving look. "Hmm," she said, finally. "Too bad he's a Negro, but just the same..."

  I stepped away from the window and glared at her. "You'd better leave him alone. I know just what you're thinking," I said. "You think you're going to have some kind of—of exotic romance with him or something—a summer fling. Well, you'd just better give it up," I said, disgusted with her all of a sudden. "Just leave King-Roy alone. Anyway, he's not your type."

  "Oh? And whose type is he? Yours, perhaps?"

  I felt my face flush again and I turned back to the window. "He's only eighteen years old. He's way too young for you, and anyway, men fall all over themselves to get at you. You don't need to chase after King-Roy."

  Beatrice sniffed and said, "Just how old do you think I am?"

  I turned to look at her. I figured it had to take at least forty years to build a bosom like hers, so I said, "Forty, forty-five, maybe."

  Beatrice's eyes almost fell out of her head. "I'll have you know I am just thirty-three years old, thank you very much."

  "Well, that's still too old for King-Roy."

  Beatrice shrugged and her peignoir slipped off her right shoulder. She didn't fix it. "Some men prefer older women," she said.

  "Yeah, well, he's not one of them, so leave him alone."

  "Honey pie, I don't know a teenage boy alive who isn't interested in an older woman showing him the ropes, so to speak."

  Beatrice always turned everything into some kind of sex-talk innuendo thing and I hated it. I wanted to tell her to go wash her filthy mouth out with soap, but before I could say anything I heard Mother coming down the back stairs and I sprang away from the window. I didn't have a reason. I hadn't done anything wrong that I could think of, but I made a quick inventory of my actions over the last half hour to be sure.

  Beatrice jumped up from the table and grabbed the Beast. "I wasn't here," she whispered, before scurrying toward the other end of the kitchen, where the laundry room and another set of back stairs that went to the servants' quarters were.

  When Mother opened the door at the bottom of the stairs and entered the kitchen, she saw me standing in front of a plate with one cookie left on it and a half-drunk glass of tomato juice. I hadn't had a snack that day, but it was close to dinnertime so I knew she wouldn't be pleased.

  She sighed when she saw the snack on the table and said in a voice that told me she'd had enough of me for one day, "It's close to dinnertime. You know better than that. When are you going to grow up?"

  I shrugged and stood there like a dumb stick.

  She grabbed up the plate with the cookie and carried it to the sink. Then with her back to me and ice in her voice, she said, "That was quite a little scene we had upstairs."

  "I'm sorry, Mother," I said, "but it's just that I was the one who had fixed up his room for him. Even though I thought of him as a murderer then, I fixed it up nice. I made his bed real neat, with hospital corners, and I picked flowers from the garden and put them in a crystal vase, and I dusted the table and plumped the pillows in his sitting room and vacuumed—I did it all. I just wanted to show him what I had done."

  "If you had paid that kind of attention to your schoolwork this year, maybe your report card would have been better. You realize, don't you, "—Mother turned around—"I've just given up on you, Esther. I've given up. No tutors this summer. You're on your own in school next year."

  "Yes, Mother, and I appreciate it, I really do."

  That seemed to infuriate her. I could tell by the way her face broke out in red blotches.

  "You appreciate it? I tell you I've given up on you and you appreciate it?"

  I knew if my mother could only see things from my side, she'd understand. I was free. This summer would be my first real vacation since my second third grade. Being on the receiving end of too much of my mother's attention was too much of a bad thing in my book, but I could see from my mother's point of view that she was wanting to make me feel ashamed of myself, so I'd try harder in school and she wouldn't have to give up on me. I didn't want to encourage her, so I just stood there and said nothing in response. Mother didn't need encouragement. She went on without it.

  "You got a C in French," Mother said. "With Mr. Vichy living with us and speaking French all the time. It's shameful."

  Since the only thing Mr. Vichy said in French were insults to me and praises for Stewart and Sophia, I didn't pay much attention to him or his language.

  "Okay, Mother, I'll try harder next year," I said without feeling.

  "I'm sure you will," Mother said, turning to me and forcing a smile—the sign that her pick-on-Esther jag was over for the moment.

  "Now come on and help me get dinner ready. Our Mr. Johnson has not started off on the right foot here, has he? First he gets lost between getting off the bus and finding the train station, and then he arrives early today, when Daisy has the day off, and when we're not ready to receive him properly."

  "But you cook great, Mother, just as good as Daisy, and the house is still clean from yesterday. Anyway, he can't help it if he got lost. He di
d his best to get here real fast. You said he had to get out of town," I said, glancing out the window for Auntie Pie, then following my mother to the refrigerator. "You said he'd been on the bus all day and all night to get here and he had almost no money and nowhere to go, remember? I bet he was scared last night, lost in a big city like New York."

  "Esther, don't tell me what I've said. I know what I've said. The whole thing's just very inconvenient." Mother handed me the broccoli and a bunch of carrots with the tops still on. I carried them over to the counter.

  "You sound like you don't trust him all of a sudden, when you were the one who said he was okay, and, Mother, he is," I said, turning back to the refrigerator and taking the swordfish out of Mother's hands. "He's great, just like you said he was going to be." I set the fish in the sink and dug a broiling pan out from under the counter.

  Mother grabbed a bib apron and tied it over her green shift with the belt that cinched in her waist so it looked real small and gave her skinny hips some shape.

  "I know I never said he was great, Esther. Do I speak like that?"

  "You know what I mean. You said you loved your maid Cassie and her two children more than anybody. You said Cassie was like a mother to you and her girl Luray was your best friend when you were little. You said any kin of theirs would always be welcome in your house and you said—"

  "Esther, what did I just get through telling you?"

  "Not to tell you what you said?"

  "Exactly. Now, Cassie has been very honest with me about King-Roy's troubles at home and—"

  I interrupted, "And you said it was up to us to show Mr. Johnson that not everyone who comes from the South is prejudiced against Negroes." I nodded.