“Foolhardy!” Aunt Eveline cried when I wanted to get up the next day. “You have to recuperate!”
I had just convinced her that I could recuperate as well at the track meet when Holly came.
“Why don’t you come back after lunch?” I said to Holly. “I have to go somewhere this morning.”
She looked at me carefully. “I have to go somewhere this afternoon,” she said.
“Can’t you go in the morning?”
“No.”
Pause.
“I wrote a story for you. Shall I read it?”
“By all means,” I answered. My sarcasm was always lost on Holly.
“I’ve used Jane Whitmore, of course.”
“Of course.”
“It takes place when your mother—I mean, Jane, has returned home after studying in Italy. Listen! It’s called ‘The Scarves.’ ” Holly cleared her throat and read:
“Jane Whitmore had just gotten back from Florence looking as gorgeous as ever. One afternoon, she was downtown shopping for Christmas presents when she saw George, looking lost, wandering around a counter full of scarves, a saleslady behind him, looking impatient. Jane walked over to him.
“ ‘George,’ she said softly, watching him jump.
“ ‘Oh! Oh, hello, Jane. I was trying to find something for Eveline. They all look alike.’ He picked up a scarf and looked at Jane helplessly.
“ ‘How’s this one, George?’ Jane asked, tying a white silk scarf over her hair so that just a few curls peeped out. She was standing close to him and looked up shyly.
“ ‘You—that’s a lovely scarf, Jane!’ he said.
“ ‘Now, isn’t that a perfect scarf, sir?’ the saleslady said. ‘The young lady does look sweet.’
“ ‘Yes, perfect,’ George said. ‘I’ll take it—and the grey one there. Wrap them as gifts, please. Separately.’ George smiled down at Jane.”
Holly looked at me. “The end,” she said.
“Jane wouldn’t have done that!” I said. I opened my mouth to say more and burst into tears instead.
Holly turned motherly. “Now, that’s good for you,” she said. “Cry it all out, Addie!”
I ran upstairs and threw myself on the bed. By the time I’d pulled myself together, I’d missed the track meet and there wasn’t enough left of the morning to do anything. Aunt Eveline took in my puffy red eyes and nose, and suggested that sunshine might further my recuperation, and would Holly and I like a picnic in the yard?
“How jolly!” I said, but was ignored by Holly and Aunt Eveline. Aunt Eveline made a big show of slicing cold chicken, stuffing eggs, and packing the picnic basket. We trooped out for a grand total of twenty feet and spread the checked picnic cloth, and ate in silence. After lunch we sat on the grass making clover chains and being polite to each other.
“Harold beat Tom!” Sandra Lee shrieked. She was in such a hurry to tell me, she started yelling halfway down the block.
“So what?” I yelled back, tearing the clover chain to pieces.
“Please,” said Aunt Eveline, rocking and fanning herself on the front porch, “don’t let me hear that expression. It’s common.”
Nothing about Sandra Lee and “it’s rude to shriek at people half a mile away.”
“Sandra Lee,” I said with quiet dignity, now that she stood panting over me, “if Harold beat Tom, it means nothing to me.”
“It was so exciting! Tom had the school record until today! Then, Harold jumped a whole inch higher!”
“Tom and Harold do not jump, they pole-vault.”
“Now, Addie, don’t be disagreeable over a technicality,” Aunt Eveline butted in. “Sandra Lee has been sweet enough to run over and tell you the news and . . .”
It was too much. I marched into the house.
“Harold asked me for every contest for the next three weeks!” Sandra Lee shouted after me.
I gave Sandra Lee and Holly enough time to get sick of Aunt Eveline and go away, then I sneaked down the back steps and over to Tom’s house. I threw a small handful of gravel at his window.
Tom came to the window. “You’re supposed to throw pebbles at closed windows,” he said.
He took the shortcut through the oak tree to the ground. He was carrying a book called Wild Animals I Have Known.
“I’m sorry Harold beat you, Tom.”
“He didn’t beat me. He pole-vaulted higher and beat the school record.”
“Well, I’m sorry about that, then.”
“Don’t be sorry. He just pole-vaulted higher. What’s there to be sorry for?”
“I didn’t mean—I mean—I wish you’d won.”
“Let’s just stop talking about it, huh? Why didn’t you show up at the track meet?”
“My friend came over again.”
“I’m sick of that friend. Not much school spirit either.”
“You don’t have to get mad. I was sick besides. I’m only trying to be nice.”
“If you can’t be nice, don’t try. It ruins it.” Tom’s freckles were turning dark.
“What ruins what?” I asked, fascinated.
“If you’re not sincere, if you have to try. That ruins it.”
“I am extremely sincere. I came here just to tell you how sorry I am you lost the track meet.”
I counted four very dark freckles sprinkled in the shape of the Big Dipper across Tom’s nose. His cheekbones stood out and his lips were thin.
“Yeah, you really knocked yourself out. You couldn’t make the track meet, but you came all the way next door. Here’s a book I like,” he said with an effort, tossing it to me and turning on his heel in an exit worthy of Edmond.
I would have enjoyed the scene more if, before Tom went inside, I’d thought up the line, “Tom, what a trying fellow you are!” Still, it was a pretty good scene, for real life. I went home, fixed a lemonade to go with the lace cookies Nini had just baked, and went out on the porch to enjoy my full recuperation and try out a new code on the diary.
Chapter XIV
The next day began like every other one, with Aunt Eveline coming into my room to wake me up. But this time she was holding herself more stiffly than ever. She was dressed up more than usual, and around her neck she wore the grey silk scarf saved for special occasions. Her hair was pulled back in her no-nonsense way, and the plain tortoise-shell combs she wore to trap her curls were so firmly planted on either side of her head that she gave the impression of having been recently scalped.
“Addie, dear, Aunt Kate has passed on.”
It took me a minute to catch on, to remember that in this family no one dies; they go to their reward, depart this vale of tears, or pass on to eternal rest, with, of course, the all important stopover at Saint Louis #2. Aunt Eveline was saying that Aunt Kate had died! I felt a little thrill of fear.
“I’m sorry, Aunt Eveline,” I said; but I was thinking, I’ll be rid of the cloves; and then, what is wrong with me? Aunt Kate has died. Adelaide Aspasie, don’t you care about anything?
“. . . her heart . . . in her sleep.” I was barely listening. I’m not normal, not even sorry when my own aunt dies. I don’t love my own aunt! I’m not even sure I love my own mother. Lord, make me love somebody! I managed one small tear that wouldn’t even spill, and then a fearful thought: Do I love Him? Aunt Eveline had stopped talking, with her voice going up at the end in a question I hadn’t heard.
“I’m sorry, Aunt Eveline. What did you say?”
“I said, Addie, that when you have finished eating your prunes, you and Sandra Lee are going with Aunt Toosie to Saint Louis #2 to make sure the cleaning men have done everything they are supposed to do and the place is ready.”
This was Aunt Eveline’s delicate way of saying we were to make sure Uncle Ben was no longer there; to see to it that when the cleaning men opened the tomb, they burned what was left of the wooden casket so that it would fall through the grill to the earth below, along with Uncle Ben’s bones.
“I am staying with Kate, o
f course, and . . .”
I didn’t hear the rest. Staying with Kate—staying with a body—a dead person. I couldn’t wait to leave. I ate my prunes, gagging worse than ever, because at that moment the florist brought in a blanket of oversweet lilies, smelling heavy enough to hide even cloves.
“Now, Toosie,” Aunt Eveline said, as Sandra Lee and Aunt Toosie, both crying buckets, appeared in the hall. “You’ll have to wear gloves, and something suitable, Toosie, dear. That yellow linen you have on has no sleeves. How about the lavender polka-dotted dress and jacket hanging in my armoire? The size is indeterminate and fits anyone. And you, Addie, may carry my bag and pay the cleaning men, how much do you think, Toosie, I’m sure five dollars is more than enough?” On and on as though no one had sense. “And make sure there are no weeds; the tomb was freshly whitewashed when Ben moved in, so that’s no problem, but it’s truly a worry about Ben, it’s so soon, you know, and the men may not do the right thing.”
As far as I could tell, Aunt Eveline had not shed one tear. Of course, she knew Aunt Kate was going straight to Heaven, since Aunt Kate had made the Nine First Fridays when she was only eight, and had worn out goodness knows how many rosaries since then. But didn’t Aunt Eveline feel sad? It didn’t show. Aunt Kate was moving on, and all of Aunt Eveline’s concern seemed to be over the next stop.
Finally, the three of us escaped, Aunt Toosie draped in lavender polka dots, and me trying to keep Aunt Eveline’s enormous handbag from bumping against my knees. Sandra Lee skipped all the way to the Avenue, where we caught the streetcar. We paid our seven cents each and marched to the front for a long side seat, slightly ashamed that we might enjoy ourselves. It was nice to rock along Saint Charles Avenue, a breeze coming in the window, while Aunt Toosie remembered out loud who’d lived in which houses when she was growing up.
I felt guilty that no one seemed to care much that Aunt Kate had died. I hoped people would cry buckets over me when my time came. Dear, dear, Addie! What a loss to the world—a great talent cut off in its prime! I was so moved, tears came to my eyes. When Sandra Lee looked at me, I smiled bravely through the tears, knowing she thought I was crying for Aunt Kate.
The streetcar clanged its way around Lee Circle, with General Lee on his pedestal facing “the North he’d never turned his back on,” according to Aunt Eveline. Aunt Toosie said she felt like a girl again, on her way to Canal Street to meet a friend under the clock at Holmes. Then she saw my tears and brave smile, and, sighing, sat quietly until we transferred to the Canal Street car. We rode as far as Claiborne and walked the rest of the way to Conti Street and Saint Louis #2.
Some people call it “the City of the Dead,” and it does look like a little town with small, white stucco houses, all closed in by high walls. The walls are really vaults, stacked three high, where poor people have been buried. They are called ovens, because on the inside of the cemetery wall, small doors for caskets are oven-size. In places, the plaster has fallen away and the brick shows through, with ferns growing in the cracks. It’s as though someone felt sorry for the scarred walls and planted fern to hide the neglect.
We passed the few trees and walked down the path between the little houses that stood crowded together, leaning toward each other like old friends. They were separated sometimes by a plot of weeds where long ago one had given up and tumbled down. Some tomb-houses were big and had iron grille fences forming small yards in front, but ours was small and boxlike and stood alone at a drunken angle. No one could remember when the marble slab with our name on it had been broken and lost, exposing the roughly plastered, oversize door, but the rest of the tomb was whole and, thanks to Aunt Eveline, covered with snow-white paint.
Aunt Toosie stepped carefully through high weeds, brushing fuzzy seeds off the polka dots as she wove her way between some neglected tombs toward ours. We followed single file. Even with the sun out and the sky bright, there was a stillness that made us intruders, guests calling at the houses of the dead. I stayed close behind Aunt Toosie, so close that when she let out a little cry and stopped suddenly, Sandra Lee and I ran into her back like actors in a comedy. I looked up to see what had startled her. There in front of us was our tomb. And in front of the tomb was—Uncle Ben! I recognized his grey pin-striped suit, the stiff-collared shirt, and the very tie Aunt Toosie had given him for Christmas! Missing were his chiseled features and his white, slightly drooping mustache stained with orange soup. Of course, he was lying down in his open, wooden coffin, but I thought I saw the front of his suit rise in a breath. Next, he would sit up and make his perennial joke, “Hi, there, Toosie-Woosie! You’re not a floosie, are you?” Aunt Toosie gasped, and as though her breath set air in motion, a soft sigh of a breeze passed over Uncle Ben and his clothes began to vanish, suit, shirt, tie, leaving, oh horrors, only what was left of Uncle Ben himself. I stared, glued to the ground, as the breeze blew dust around a skeleton. Aunt Toosie and Sandra Lee were screaming, and the workmen Aunt Eveline had hired to clean the tomb came hurrying over.
“Ah, miss, don’t take on! You shouldn’t have come. We were taking care of this.”
But Aunt Toosie and Sandra Lee turned and ran, dropping gloves in the weeds, tripping over stones, while I stood completely transfixed. There on the ground just inside the mouth of the tomb, almost covered by a few bones, lay something—something I recognized. I took a deep breath, walked over to it, grabbed it, and ran after the others. Panting, I caught up with Aunt Toosie and Sandra Lee at the gate.
“Ben,” Aunt Toosie said feebly. “The bones . . .” She turned quickly toward Canal Street and the streetcar, and we followed breathlessly. The streetcar was coming, its wheels clacking crazily: The hip bone’s connected to the—thigh bone . . . them bones, them bones, them—dry bones . . . hear the word of the Lord!
We ran to meet the car, climbed on, and fell into seats. The thing I’d found was like a presence hiding in Aunt Eveline’s bag, almost as frightening as seeing Uncle Ben’s speedy departure. The streetcar rocked gently, the breeze soothed, and the lullaby wheels now repeated only the last line of “Dry Bones.” I tried not to think about Uncle Ben.
Suddenly, I noticed we were going in the wrong direction. We had boarded the car heading away from the river and the old part of town. We were going toward the lake. I realized Aunt Toosie had done it on purpose when the car arrived at Metairie Cemetery. There was the towering Moriarty tomb with its four life-size female figures Aunt Eveline called “Faith, Hope, Charity, and Mrs. Moriarty.” Aunt Toosie marched purposefully to the door. Sandra Lee and I had all we could do to follow her out, across the street, and into the cemetery office.
By the time we got home, Aunt Toosie had collected herself, all except the gloves. “We can’t,” she told Aunt Eveline. “Kate just can’t go to Saint Louis #2. The place isn’t ready.”
“Isn’t ready? Didn’t the men come?”
“Eveline, he’s still there! Ben is still there!”
“How still there? How much of him?”
“Eveline, for God’s sake! The cleaning men had already opened the tomb and taken the coffin out and—and Ben was still—was still a skeleton!”
“But if it’s just the bones, the men will burn the casket, and the bones will drop through the grill to the bottom, making space for Kate, and . . .”
“Eveline, stop I I’ve already done it. I took the streetcar to Metairie. I’ve talked to the people in the office there. I put my name, the family name, in the contract. We have a plot in Metairie.”
Aunt Eveline sat down. “We have a plot? Under the ground? You intend for Katie to move into a strange place? Under the ground?”
“Aune Eveline, it’s not fair to Uncle Ben!” I said. “There’s no room for Aunt Kate right now unless . . . it’s not fair.”
Aunt Eveline’s straight back curved. Parts of her face drooped. Her hands twisted the grey silk scarf at her neck. In a moment, she might fall apart like Uncle Ben. But the moment passed, and she turned her blue eyes on Aunt Toosie. “To
osie, you are bohemian! How can we—but—what can I do? I suppose—I suppose it’s not as bad as not even knowing where Pasie is.”
Aunt Eveline put her hands in front of her face. I couldn’t tell whether her tears were for Aunt Kate, my mother, or Aunt Toosie’s bohemian ways, but it was the only time I ever saw Aunt Eveline weep. Sandra Lee had disappeared into her house the minute we got home, and I found myself crying with Aunt Eveline, real tears at last. I cried because I couldn’t stand to see her cry, and I cried because the thing I’d found in the tomb was the gold heart my mother had on in the portrait. I was afraid to know what it was doing in Saint Louis #2.
Chapter XV
Aunt Eveline made Sandra Lee and me kneel by the open coffin in the living room to say a prayer for Aunt Kate’s soul. I watched Sandra Lee cast her eyes down to her folded hands, her yellow curls hiding her face. I made myself look in the coffin. Aunt Kate lay under a blanket of death lilies with just enough of her showing to catch the waxlike hands clutching her worn rosary. I stared at the hands so as not to look at the face. Then, forgetting to pray, I jumped up.
Tom had walked in with Aunt Mable and Uncle Malvern and stood by me until we had to leave for church.
The hardest part was over, and the rest went like a bad dream. They closed the coffin, and we climbed into long, black cars and followed Aunt Kate in her even longer black car, first to church for mass, and then to Metairie. Aunt Eveline sat very straight and stared ahead. Sandra Lee and Aunt Toosie sniffed and blew.
I took Aunt Eveline’s cold hand and she clasped mine and did not let go until after Aunt Kate had been lowered into a hole dug in the ground, too dry for floating, and, it seemed to me, too firm for even spiritual escape. I felt my first real pity, if not love, for Aunt Kate. I thought that even tidal waves were better than that hole, and the little white house in Saint Louis #2, where my whole family rested together, was cozy by comparison.
Secret Lives Page 8