He opened a file folder and began reading. I remained in place, in a state of disbelief. He finally glanced up and must’ve read the hurt look on my face at such a dismissal. He sighed. “Bess, it’s only temporary. It will work out best for all of us. Tell Lizzie to pull out my wife’s old school textbooks. She taught the same elementary years and reading, writing, and arithmetic haven’t changed. Remember: teach, don’t preach, so save women’s rights for last, if you can. I’ll come over for dinner tonight and meet your little scholar.”
Thomas returned to his papers and I walked out, feeling rejected. I would miss the harried newspaper deadlines and political discussions on his upcoming election. I had hoped I added more value to the workplace than this. I shook it off, feeling particularly sensitive to Thomas nowadays. Didn’t he understand that I’d not only follow him anywhere, but I wanted to be beside him, under him, one with him? Mate and have children, if children were what he wanted. I was his - I could only hope he would treat my enlarged heart with care.
Without a smile, Mary Sue made a place for me beside her on the front porch step, tucking her thin cotton dress around her legs. She jerked her chin toward our colored gardener, Eddie. “If your nigger’d mixed wood ash with manure he’d get prettier blooms.”
Eddie was the house gardener for as long as I’d been around here. According to Thomas, he worked for “peanuts”, just wanting a little extra money for doing something he loved. He looked older than dirt but he said gardening kept him going. Lizzie said “thank God” for him, because her slave days hadn’t trained her to work outside. She’d been an inside darkie as a youth, many years ago.
“Eddie does what he can with what he knows,” I said. “There’s at least an acre here that must be mowed and trimmed. Any blooms are a blessing. This estate is certainly not like it used to be - flowers, rose bushes, rock gardens - but he can only keep up to a few nowadays.” I patted her knee. “How are you today? Sorry I couldn’t join you for breakfast on your first day here, but I met with your school principal and then went to the newspaper office to pick up some work.”
Mary Sue remained quiet with her chin on her hand, gazing out with misty light blue eyes. “I’m homesick.”
With hesitance, I placed my arm around her shoulders. She didn’t tense so I relaxed a little. “You haven’t been away from home before, have you?” I figured as much when she said her goodbyes to her daddy and siblings. There wasn’t a dry eye in the house. Their sobbing had irritated me so that I was tempted to cry out, she’s not dying for goodness sake!
She shook her head, her eyes becoming more liquid. “I want to go home.”
“Give it a chance, Mary Sue. This squeeze for home you feel will ease up, you’ll see. When I was about your age, I traveled to New York City for a few weeks and I experienced the same thing. At the time, I was taking classes here at the Lighthouse on how to lobby for the women’s vote. Mrs. Catt took our entire class of fifteen to the big city to meet with the city council and participate in a women’s march. We marched right down Fifth Avenue, if you can imagine. I was not only homesick but also terrified of so many people and so much noise. I missed Mama, as I missed her in any marches I participated in. When I was eleven I saw her in a July Fourth march. I’d never seen her look so alive before, her sign raised high, her step was high and keeping rhythm to the school band. She looked like a pretty canary who had been let out of her cage for a short time to sing.” I gazed out too, thinking I should go pay a visit to Mama. Ah, but wait a minute – this is Jere’s daughter! This should be an interesting introduction.
“At least you have a mommy,” Mary Sue pierced into my thoughts. “And I heard what you said to Daddy that morning you left us. About him loving your mommy. That’s a lie. He only loved my mommy.”
How had she heard that? I felt a surge of guilt.
“Yes, I’m certain he loved your mother. He’s a caring man. But don’t be homesick. Here you’ll have less physical labor and more mental exercise. You may not want to go back.”
She jerked her shoulder. I got the hint and moved my arm away. “I’m going back alright. Maybe not now, but as soon as I’m smart. I’m not a quitter and I’m not a deserter either.”
I realized then that she would be my penance for leaving her father.
Thomas took her under his wing, as if needing to nurture. I had no idea where his paternal instincts came from. He gave me money as a father would to a mother saying, “Those pitiful dresses have to go or she’ll be the brunt of jokes at school. Buy her what she needs; take her to your seamstress or dress shop or wherever you girls go these days.” His attendance at our dinner table improved and his attention to Mary Sue’s learning never ceased. As a result, I developed a report sheet to show him her subjects and progression. School textbooks had questions at the end of each chapter and these I graded and entered into the report. Thomas reviewed these carefully, commenting on good and bad, but only in an encouraging way. This was a reprieve for her and me, for I had the tendency to lose my patience. I had three school years to cram into a sometimes slow-moving, slow-speaking stubborn sally who was accustomed to her own daily schedule ‘back home’. She resisted my efforts more than once.
On one such day we sat in the front parlor, Mary Sue at the big oak desk and I on the sofa. I handed the marked arithmetic quiz back to Mary Sue and wiped my brow with my handkerchief. Opening a window, I said, “Study your times tables again, Mary Sue. Work on your flash cards after dinner tonight and then re-do this. Most of these answers are wrong. Take out your lined paper now and practice your penmanship.” I turned back toward the sofa to work on an advertisement for Lux laundry suds, sensing her eyes boring a hole through the back of my head. I turned back to face her. “Yes, Mary Sue?”
“I’m tired of these numbers. Mr. Todd, my school teacher back home, said girls shouldn’t worry about numbers. He said many girls had lost their souls to such study. Besides, I can’t think when we’re sweating here like pigs. Back home, we always had cool breezes coming through. Why do towns have to stink and sweat?”
One more story about ‘back home’ and I was surely going to scream.
“I suppose you’ll learn why towns sweat in geography,” I threw back. “Luckily for both of us, that’s one subject we don’t have to worry about this year. As far as arithmetic hurting girl’s spirits, this is a common misconception brought about by narrow-minded men.” From my stack of books on the table, I brought out a poem written by Alice Duer Miller in 1915 called The Maiden’s View. I read a verse out loud:
‘Though permutations and combinations
My woman’s heart allure,
I’ll never study algebra,
But keep my spirit pure.’
“She used satire to bring out the ridiculousness of anti-suffrage sentiment. Now doesn’t it sound ridiculous to say that girls’ spirits will be damned by learning numbers?”
Mary Sue shrugged. “You swore just now. That’s not right either.”
I sighed in resignation. “Well, let’s just move on with this then.”
“That’s what Mr. Pickering always says, but he never says it like you do. He says it nice but you’re just too bossy!” She folded her arms across her chest, her expression daring me to move her. She had none of the dark Indian characteristics of her father and I could only guess her dark brooding manner, fair skin and light blue eyes had come from her mother’s side.
I returned her stare, neither one of us willing to give in to look away. I was becoming angrier by the moment. I narrowed my eyes at her. “I do not sweat like a pig and you are one lucky hillbilly to have a town that is willing to take you in and teach you what ‘back home’ should have taught you years ago!”
“Maybe so,” Mary Sue drawled. “But at least back home we don’t just have a lot of hot air blowing. If we do, it comes from the weather, not from people.”
I sat down hard on the sofa, my eyes not leaving her face. She at least had the courtesy to blush from this last insinuat
ion and our flushed faces raised the temperature in the parlor by ten degrees, I’m certain of it. “Stop acting like an ignorant—”
A bell tinkled outside. Charlie’s bell. A look through the window verified his presence on his bike, pulling his ice cream wagon. Good ol’ Charlie with his white hair, white suit, and vanilla ice cream. He and his cooling balm would soothe the inflammation of our minds. I hesitated in rewarding her bad behavior with such a treat, but I couldn’t, with any conscience, eat ice cream in front of her, so I swallowed my stinging - or, according to Mary Sue, stinking - vanity.
I motioned with my head for her to follow me. “We’ll both feel better after an ice cream.”
She stood up unhurriedly. “What is ice cream?”
I tried to calm my urge to run out doors after Charlie, before he got away. “You’ve never had ice cream?” I could understand her never riding a train before our trip, but ice cream?
“Stop talking to me like I’m ignorant. I ain’t.”
“Fine Mary Sue, you’re not ignorant. Let’s hurry.”
I literally ran down the boardwalk after him, so happy I was for a cool treat and a break from Mary Sue’s heated glare.
Charlie had mounded two cones and accepted payment before Mary Sue sauntered to the wagon. I made the introductions and Charlie and I both watched her expectantly.
She licked gingerly at it, like a cat might for water. “It’s not as good as a snow cone.”
“What is a snow cone?” I asked and then bit my tongue.
Her eyes lit at her opportunity. “You’ve never had a snow cone before?” She imitated the same unbelieving tone I had used.
Charlie patted her head. “With that accent, you come from the hills, don’t you girl? Yesiree you do, and snow cones taste fine indeed. You bring in new-fallen snow, mound it in a bowl, and pour fresh cream over it.” He winked at me. “It’s almost as good as my wares but not quite. The only difference is I don’t have to wait for winter’s cold to make it. Modern technology gave me ice in warm weather when folks most want to eat frozen things.”
Yes, try to top that ‘back home’, I thought. I smiled at Charlie’s deeply wrinkled mug, and at our own small victory. I was snatching them however I could.
I was beginning to believe that Thomas and I would never wed. Our discussions became superficial, only surrounding our external events, never our internal emotions. I repeatedly played over in my mind his proposal to me and how much more romantic this could have been, if not for that one technicality. I had poured a bucket of water on his passion for me and I seemed to be having difficulties in waiting for that water to dry enough to start another spark. I hoped his flame hadn’t died out altogether. A goodnight kiss on the cheek each night after dinner hardly gave indication he desired me.
He had not yet mentioned any calls from Mr. McCorriston and my pride in appearing too eager would not allow me to ask him. So I spent my time with him listening to everything I didn’t want to hear and saying what I didn’t care to talk about. I wanted to be grounded with meaningful issues, such as love and fulfilling my longings, but for some reason he was not allowing us to touch the ground. We were floating in newspaper facts and figures, campaign numbers and votes, school reports and grades. Perhaps he looked at me differently now, as a married woman already given to another man. Perhaps he no longer saw me as “an innocent dispassionate suffragist trying to right the homes of women but with little understanding, for the poor girl has no home of her own”, as he’d once introduced me, wearing that mischievous grin. Perhaps he relished the idea of saving me, only to find out someone else had found me first. But I hadn’t been saved then, and I didn’t need to be saved now. Only loved. Perhaps his image of me was no longer of a virgin, pure and white, but of a divorcee, tarnished with Tennessee coal.
I could no longer pretend that all was fine with the world and none of it mattered to me. Thomas mattered and he mattered a great deal, more than I wished he had. I began to wish I didn’t have such a strong attachment to someone so tangible, so real as to be physically painful. It was much simpler to love the floating image of Billy, who I could move to the front or the back of my mind at will. It was much easier to work the theories of suffrage, than to work the real life issues of caring for others. Love might fulfill me, but it could also bog me down and I certainly didn’t want to drag and shuffle my feet when grounded, only walk lightly with my feet under my control.
These were my thoughts as I sat at dinner one such evening, only slightly aware of Lizzie and Mary Sue’s chatter to Thomas over their plates. While Mary Sue sat erect and tense, watching every move Thomas made, he seemed as distracted as I, his eyes darting to my distant stare to see if I was still there.
“Bess, you’re being quiet this evening,” Thomas finally said.
“She’s probably tired from pushing me around all day,” Mary Sue said to Thomas, those woeful eyes looking for sympathy. “Thomas, help me with my arithmetic tonight. I’m having trouble with long division. You’re the smartest person I know.” She gave him her only smile of the day.
Lizzie’s furrowed brow deepened. “Child, you say, Mr. Pickering, would you please help me. Make it a question and use your manners. Don’t go telling Mr. Pickering what to do. You know your place.”
I didn’t know if Lizzie noticed, but Mary Sue seemed to always look straight through Lizzie like she was a large hole in the wall. Mary Sue’s pleading eyes remained fixed on his face.
“Would you, Thomas? Maybe you could help me every night and I’d get to school a lot faster.” Thomas hesitated and Lizzie appeared to read his thoughts.
“Child, Mr. Pickering is tired too. Miss Bess, I hope you’re not too tired,” Lizzie said to me, “I’ll need help changing and washing that bed linen upstairs. Mr. Pickering, sir, that family of darkies you sent up here from Georgia – you know, the ones where her husband was lynched? Well that Mrs. Cosman had a time with her five children last night. That little Isaac, Miss Bess? Well, he wet the bed and that sent his brothers to sleep in the other two bedrooms too. She can’t control her own children. She thinks because she comes up here, she’s in high cotton now. I’m right glad, Mr. Pickering, that you found her a job and a place of her own. I can’t sleep when there’s so much foot-stomping above me. Who’s this no-good man with them that Isaac calls ‘uncle’? I found him sniffin’ in the kitchen like a blind dog in the smokehouse. They’re no-good niggers in my opinion.”
“Lizzie!” I said. “Aren’t you feeding them?” There’s a sign by the front door for the coloreds to go around the back and enter into Lizzie’s kitchen where they eat their meals.
She dipped her hand to me. “Don’t go up on your soapbox, Miss Bess.” She scooted her chair from the table. “I’m just tired like the rest of you. My day is gone. We’ll change those sheets tomorrow. Goodnight.”
With a worried brow, Thomas watched her hunched backside shuffle to the kitchen, her cane thumping a loud support. “She’s not well,” he mumbled. “She’s getting too old to keep up with the Lighthouse.” He drummed his fingers on the table for a moment. “Bess, meet me in the library. I wish to discuss a private matter with you.”
As I followed Thomas, I felt relief in hearing the clatter of dishes. Mary Sue was going to wash the dishes on her own. Good; one less evening to prod.
Along side one table lamp, sat the only one winged-back chair in the small library, surrounded by bookshelves. This he sat in, while I folded my hands in front of me, at a loss as to what to do. He showed me by patting his knees. I raised my eyebrows in surprise, but he insistently patted his legs again. “Close the door and come here.” I did just that. “Now sit here on my lap like a good little girl.”
“No, Thomas, I—”
“Don’t argue. Do as I say. You’re my fiancé, aren’t you?”
“Well, I don’t know, Thomas. That’s something we need to discuss, isn’t it?”
He pulled me down to where he intended me to sit. He wrapped his arms around my w
aist and looked up into my eyes. “Don’t look so disheartened. I still want to marry you. You’re a free woman now.”
“Mr. McCorriston?”
“He sent the documents last week.”
“Last week? This is my life you’re holding, Thomas!”
“I know very well what I’m holding,” he said and squeezed. His eyes heated in that sensuous way of his.
“Thomas, don’t toy with me.” I attempted to get up.
“Sit still. We need to talk.” He held on firm.
“I’m listening.”
“Oh, so I’m to begin, am I? This is unusual. Fine.” He gave my arm a light kiss. “Let’s set a date, shall we?”
“A date for what?” I said coyly.
“You know damn well for what,” he said.
There were questions running through my mind that I wanted answered, like why did he wait so long to tell me the news of the annulment? But to query him might only dampen his fervor toward me and I had done enough of that before now. I took a deep breath and relaxed. I returned his gaze and let his warmth come in. I smoothed his hair back, looking closely at the gray and blond strands, the gray undeniably taking over like weeds in a garden.
He backed his head away. “Don’t look too close at this old man, or you’ll change your mind.” He pulled my chin down so that I would meet his eyes. “You do realize that I’m twenty years older than you, don’t you?”
“That much?” I pretended surprise. Mocking Mary Sue’s southern drawl, I said. “Then I reckon I’ll have to call you daddy.”
He laughed good-naturedly and squeezed me hard. “Ah, there’s the Bess I know. Your spirit seemed strangely stifled here lately but it has miraculously re-emerged.”
“All it takes is a caring hug, Thomas. Women are not so mysterious but you should know that, being the world-traveled reporter. You certainly are talking like a reporter. ‘Spirit miraculously reemerged’? Is re-emerged a word?”
Four of a Kind: A women's historical fiction Page 28