Mormama

by Kit Reed

  She said, “Our matched set. A boy and a girl. Just think how darling they’ll be when Nurse puts them in their matching outfits and takes them out in the pony cart.”

  Like a fool I thought: Now. Our real lives together will begin now, but weeks before we knew that I’d planted her next baby inside her, Manette had carpenters paneling the second-class boudoir because with her new daughter, and she was sure it would be a daughter, there was no room for me in hers.

  Her next baby, mind you, not ours. The other children were never ours and certainly not mine. Until Manette tired of them, they were hers. Then Tillie took care of them.

  “Walnut paneling for you,” she said, planning my exile for the second time, the first being as soon as she had Dakin Junior safely in the world. “I’m having the men stain it black, of course, ebony’s brittle and much too hard to work with over a certain size.” Generous girl, she added that as soon as Dr. Woods told her she was expecting, I was welcome to return to the chaise longue in her dressing room for as long as it took to perfect the décor because of course the help needn’t know what we did behind closed doors. “Maroon velvet portieres for you, I think,” she said, and she was practically singing as she laid out the details. “So manly. And I’ll find the perfect Persian rug to match. And a leather easy chair. The ideal setting for my handsome husband! And,” she added, “when it’s done, perhaps I’ll let the girls at the club add our house to the tour of stately homes.”

  To keep the peace, I agreed to this. Then this. Then more. There was always more.

  It was a Saturday when we finally came down to it, Manette and I, so I couldn’t pretend I had business at the office, my usual mode of escape. On weekdays the office routine keeps me safe for the while, but never for long enough. There would always be dinner, the two of us. Her lust for the perfect thing.

  That Saturday morning she used me hard. I did this errand, then that. Fortunate, I suppose, because most of them took me out of the house. After our lunch Tillie brought little Dakin down from the nursery and I took him to the park to spin out the afternoon, but eventually the children’s hour ended and it was dinnertime again.

  Tillie would feed Dakin Junior in the nursery, but Manette and I?

  Until the boys were old enough to sit up at the long mahogany table and that would be years later, we dined alone. I would persist in my manly duties until she had the daughter-to-be firmly planted and then we would be done. Everything else in her life proceeded in order. Was I not giving her everything she asked?

  Still, I was trapped at that table until the last dish was served. And what drove me out of the house on that Saturday? It was the pony cart. The day I saw you on the river walk, I had walked out on the special pony cart my wife conjured out of a few pictures and thousands of words. We’d need it to carry Dakin Junior and our pretty daughter into the park, which came as news to me. Of course she’d be pretty. Of course it would be a girl. “They’ll be darling in the pony cart. Idiot, how could you forget?” Manette drove me to it, and she rode me hard, as though it was fait accompli. She dithered over whether we should have the cart custom made in Paris, what kind of fittings we needed, what color pony, black would be very nice, would a red patent-leather harness with little bells be vulgar, would it be appropriate to have a matching coat for Nurse to wear on chilly days and what would the children wear, would we need to expand the stables to accommodate it, perhaps we needed to hire a groom. I kept my temper. I always do. I told my wife exactly what she told me whenever I tried to draw her to me for any show of warmth, “We’ll see.”

  Then I escaped. I left the house in a walk, but once I passed the Cummers’ house near the river, I exploded. Sylvie, I was forbidden to shout. Manette would say, “Dakin, hush! What will people think?” Instead, I pounded along in miserable silence, brutalizing the pavement with every step until I rounded the last corner and saw the river.

  And I saw you, stalking along the path. You were pitched forward at an angle no respectable Southern lady would ever take, head down, shoulders hunched. I saw that you were even angrier than I. We didn’t talk about it that day or ever, really. You never told me much. You strode along and I strode along until we reached the end of the pier just off the point. Then we stopped and without speaking, we watched the river together, letting our rage follow the current until the last of it flowed away.

  Enough. I told you everything! You never told me that your situation was tenuous. I knew that you cared for your mother in the rooms she took after she moved out of her home in Massachusetts and came here for the sake of her health, but you never told me that the funding would evaporate the day she died. We both know how and why we fell in love. I cherish the desperate arrangements we made to be together once everything between us was understood and I know that it was glorious, oh my darling, oh, God!

  You never told me when your mother passed away. Or that you were pregnant when you hugged me close and confided that you needed to leave Jacksonville to move your mother to Asheville for the mineral springs; you said you loved me, you said you hoped you wouldn’t be gone for too long. By that time Manette was overwhelmingly pregnant, although her date was months away.

  Overbearing, too. She expected me to be available at all times. “In case,” she said, never guessing that her newest acquisition would be stillborn. She still doesn’t know.

  And you! My dearest Sylvie, thank God the hospital called me in time. Thank God you had the wits to give them my name because you were so certain that our baby would kill you and you wanted him to be safe. I think you expected to die: your just punishment for lying with me, close for a while, so happy in our love. Oh, Sylvie, you broke my heart. They took me for your employer, but Dr. Woods knew.

  He told me what he knew that Manette never would. She was carrying death. Her baby died in the womb too close to the end of term for him to interfere; she was due to deliver within the week. He understood our situation, yours and mine, and it was he who decided what came next. He showed me the paperwork, and I had him move you from the ward into a private room where I could love my new son and we could be happy in what little time we had.

  I went to you as soon as you and our son were settled in the private room. And for the first few hours, we were together, loving mother, devoted father, beautiful infant son. Together, we named him. Then we embraced, holding on for as long as we could before Dr. Woods a-hemmed outside the door and negotiations began.

  That day you and I sealed the bargain. You let me think that I could divorce Manette, and as soon as I made the necessary arrangements, we would marry and raise Randolph together, we named him for your father, and you? Oh, my dearest dear, I thought I was helping you!

  Instead, you gave me the saddest, finest gift of my life!

  Manette’s Brucie would be born dead the next day, thanks to Dr. Woods. He introduced the magic of twilight sleep, and my voracious Manette slept for two days and woke up with Randolph in her arms. Our beautiful boy. Because I feared the woman as much as I used to imagine that I loved her, I stayed the night with them: her face when she woke up and saw that it was a boy. Her face! She studied him as though examining an antique that had come to her without her trusted dealer’s pedigree: the appraiser’s skeptical squint.

  My dear, that night turned into many nights because I was afraid to leave him alone with her. More than anything, I wanted to be with you, but I had to stay with the woman day and night as long as our baby slept in a cradle handcrafted to match her frilly bedroom. Her newest acquisition was a disappointment. She wanted a girl.

  And, Randolph? Dear God, I was protecting him!

  For too many days I brought Manette this, handed her that: the silver-backed hairbrush and the silver-backed hand mirror, fetching Tillie to do certain things for her, because I had to stand watch. I spent too many nights in Manette’s hand-carved rocker with ruffled cushions, fearful and half-awake, and that was my mistake.

  It was almost two weeks before my wife tired of her new toy and handed
him off to Tillie and banished our Randolph to the wet nurse’s room just off the stairs.

  I should have taken you out of St. Luke’s that very day, doctor’s orders notwithstanding. I should have booked a stateroom on the steamer leaving Mayport that very night. I would have come back to Jacksonville to do the necessary paperwork, ceding the house to Manette, with everything else set by with provisions for Dakin Junior to inherit, for I’m a responsible man, and if maintaining them cost me every penny I would ever make, so be it.

  We would still be together, you and Randolph and I.

  By the time I came back to St. Luke’s and the private room I had arranged for you, there was a new patient lying in your bed. Dr. Woods, the floor manager said, was operating and must not be disturbed. I confronted the nurses, the orderlies, even the women who cleaned the rooms. Where was he, where were you, why wasn’t I told? By the time I stormed down to confront the people in the office, he was at the bottom of the stairs. He backed me up the steps, one at a time, so that we had the conversation, as it were, hanging in space.

  “I tried to keep Mrs. Marden,” he said. He said “Mrs.” to protect your reputation. “I tried to keep Mrs. Marden at least until she had stopped bleeding, but she insisted on being allowed to convalesce in her own bed. I begged her to stay long enough to let our nurse bind her breasts, but she said her mother was a trained midwife, and knew all about such things.”

  I left before he could pretend that I needed him to give me your address. I knew where you and your mother lived, at least for a while, I knew which rooming house on which street in the poorer section of Jacksonville, and when you refused to let me move the two of you to something better— for your mother’s sake, I told you, for all the good it did me. I argued. I pleaded. I grieved.

  I went to the place where you used to live, but your rooms were empty and the landlady told me that you had cleared out months ago, soon after your mother died, no, no forwarding address, no point in leaving a message. For years I combed Jacksonville, thinking you had found lodging here. I hoped, I studied the death notices, and during the terrible spring after we lost Teddy I looked for you in Savannah and in Charleston, going on foot from door to door, and under orders, I did my duty, for Manette was obsessed.

  In a fit of acquisition, she demanded her pretty, perfect daughter. “The image of her mother,” she said. “Then you can stop.” No, Teddy would not do, not even Everett, although he came closer than any of the daughters that followed.

  In the end I euchred Manette into visiting Asheville to take the waters for her health— too many babies, none of them good enough, until the surgery after Leah’s birth ended it. She needed a spa! I put her to bed in the family guesthouse at Biltmore— of course she leapt at the chance. Cachet!

  In Asheville I walked the streets day and night, desperately looking for you, oh, Sylvie, I miss you so much, and you aren’t anywhere! I search, I hope and I grieve, because you are well and truly gone from my life and now, in the wake of his rage and my folly, our handsome, angry boy is just as gone.

  I will not see you again in this lifetime, my dear, but, sweet love! If God is kind, I’ll join you in eternity sooner, rather than later. I am sick of waiting.

  CHAPTER 40

  Lane

  Day three of the deluge, I think, but the way things are going, I can’t be sure. I can’t be sure of anything except the hard, flat rain. It’s gone on for so long that the whole house groans like a hippo in labor, and everything about today scares the crap out of me.

  It’s the entrapment thing.

  T. and I are trapped with these people, at least until it stops, and the tension is rising. So’s the water. May Street is its own river, with my getaway car standing in water up to the hubcaps under sheets of rain, with more to come. Even if it stops this minute, T. and I are stuck until the brakes dry out, and pretty much surrounded by the aunts. They come at me with: am I sure I shut all the upstairs windows, would I check again, for safety’s sake, will I please run upstairs one more time and lock them like they told me to the first time, and which I did, although there’s no convincing them.

  All right, Elena, just double-check for your crippled Aunt Iris, won’t you, dear? I’m in too much pain to go up and down stairs once a day, you know. Oh, and while I’m up, why don’t I run down to the corner for some fresh candles, three new flashlights, a shortwave radio and by the way our flashlights all need new batteries, we have absolutely no way to find out what’s happening when the lights go out, they always do when it rains this hard, thank God Father built us high off the ground like the Hopswee plantation house, so 553 isn’t privy to flood, dear Mama demanded it, all three of them are mired up to the hubcaps in their shared ancestral fantasy, poor old things! The air is filled with the rattle of fretful Iris and Rose nattering in counterpoint, while Ivy, who’s the real cripple here, murmurs, “Leave the poor child alone,” while they jabber on and on and on after that, tipping me and Theo into their Möbius strip, trapping us in the loop.

  Stranded.

  As of today, I’m technically screwed. Don’t have enough money to leave 553, can’t get a job even on sunny days, can’t even get an interview, and given that Barry left Deland with everything of value packed in his U-Haul, I don’t have anything left to sell.

  You bet I’m pissed off and anxious, but I’m not desperate. I survive on variations of Plan B.

  If the rain keeps up I can always riffle through the few books the aunts keep in the house, trolling for abandoned bills, or, worst-case, I’ll go up in that hellish attic and rummage through generations’ worth of junk, looking for loose change. I was up there once when I was thirteen, but it was so spooky that I never made it past the first wave of monumental crap. It’s scary. Terrifying, really. As though the house is plotting to trap us under an avalanche of junk or, oh, shit!

  Fixing to swallow us whole.

  We have to go! All I need is cash. If we raid Rose’s larder before we take off, we can eat what we take and sleep in the car and pray to God that the car doesn’t crap out on us before we make it to the next gas station. Wait too long and archaeologists will dig us up a thousand years from now. Ossified, like the bodies at Pompeii.

  Theo is wilting too. My big boy is so depressed that he slouches away whenever he sees me coming, and if I catch up and ask him a question, for God’s sake all I want is a little conversation, he’ll answer, but he won’t look at me.

  And the aunts, the aunts. They’re so sad and, I don’t know, so sort of perpetual, as though this is how it’s always been, and they think this is the way it should be until the end.

  I can’t stand one more of Rosemary’s awful lunches, her lame leftovers and their crap table talk over stale beer, and I’m too depressed to sit through another of her dinners, which are always worse. At night we have to sit down in that big old dining room, with generations’ worth of china facing us down in the corner cabinets. The twins start up even before we sit down: how lovely it was when Cook was still here and William brought hot biscuits to the table and there were finger bowls and people who waited on you always said, Yes Ma’am. They threnodize about the days when Mama, their sacred, holy Mama coached her darlings on etiquette, “Take your oar out of your boat, dear,” and “Ladies never, ever talk with their mouths full,” and then Iris tells us how Mama told them that her dear Mother, and she doesn’t mean their living grandmother, even though she’s sitting right there at the table, oh holy shit, that would be Mormama, who are these people?

  Don’t ask, you already know. Take care, lady, or you and your tough kid Theo will be trapped, like them. Iris, ranting on about how Mama used to lift the elbow of the offending child and put a hot biscuit under it like a sweet little pillow. Object, humiliation. Unspoken message embedded. Polite children never, ever put their elbows on the table, Rosemary explains, hung up on lore that’s come down through, ack! Generations.

  As though Mormama really is still here, more or less as I told Theo because you have to com
e up with something when your kid freaks. You just do.

  OK, at first he and I loved to mock the aunts and laugh a little bit, but we’re over it. We’re over them. Until or unless I can find us a way out of this, these dinners will go on forever, with the rain coming down in a dismal counterpoint that is, to me … Never mind what it is. I’m afraid to name it.

  When Theo escapes those dinners (“Now, say, ‘May I please be excused, Aunt Iris?’” which he must do to her satisfaction) Iris and Rosemary grill me about my expectations, now that I’ve let myself go (“Elena, your hair,” “Elena, you can’t go out wearing that,” and, “Elena, those awful purple shoes of yours, Elena, a lady’s naked toes are her personal business”).

  They mean: since I let myself go and lost my handsome man because I look like something that the cat dragged in. As I lost my handsome man, what am I going to do about it? When am I going to take care of myself? They mean: pluck, shave and perfume and get a beauty parlor perm like theirs. Pull myself together and shop for some decent clothes so I can dress up and go out and get him back, or at least start hunting for a suitable replacement?

  As if I accidentally dropped Barry while I was stepping into my purple slides and he rolled under the dresser. They yammer on at me while Ivy goes back inside her head and pulls down all the shades because for once I and not Ivy, the foolish girl who lost control of her horse and the use of her lower body, am the target of the nightly Inquisition.

  I hope Ivy dreams, although it’s possible that she just shuts down, conserving energy. I never know, but today I seize on her and lay my path to escape, at least until dinnertime.

  It’s mid-afternoon, and we’re still sitting at the lunch table. I start with how peaky Ivy looks, how hard it must be for her, stuck in the house for days, can’t go anywhere without our help, poor old lady at our mercy, she needs a little fresh air.

  The aunts bridle at “old” but I lift my shoulders in the definitive fuck you and grasp the handles on Scooter and wheel her out of the room before they can protest, buying off Rosemary with, “Leave the dishes on the table, Aunt Rosemary. With Iris laid up in that cast, you’re cooking for us and doing all the cleanup too. I’ll take care of it, I promise. As soon as I take poor Ivy out on the porch for a little fresh air.”