I held on to one end of the photograph. He held on to the other.
“Dinner is served,” Patricia said. “Come along, Max. Bring her in to dinner.”
There was asparagus casserole and roast beef and hot homemade bread. There was wine, and later salad. I picked at the food, and chattered away about my family and Vanderbilt and my exploits with Charles William. My voice rose and fell. I drank more wine. I was charming. I was undone. I was elated.
“Clay made the bread,” Patricia said. “Isn’t it delicious?”
“You made the bread?” I answered. “How did you know how?”
“She taught me.” He laughed uproariously at that. Everything seemed to make him laugh. There was no aggression in the young man, no secrets, nothing I could recognize.
“We can go into town after dinner and find some people,” I said. “We can go over to Charles William’s house and you can meet him. You want to do that?”
“That would be wonderful,” Patricia said. “Oh, Clay, you should do that. Rhoda can introduce you to people.”
“We can go to the pool if it doesn’t rain,” I added. “We go out there a lot at night. Do you like to swim at night?”
“Of course he does.” This from Dr. Morgan. “Who wouldn’t go swimming at night with a pretty girl?”
Clay had gotten up and was taking the plates and salad plates to the kitchen. He was waiting on the table. A boy who made bread and waited on the table. I had never seen such a thing. I jumped up and began to help him.
“There’s peach cobbler,” Patricia began. “Rhoda, you can help Clay serve it. The ice cream’s in the freezer on the porch.”
“I’d love to help him.” I met his eyes. We smiled together. Then we moved the rest of the plates and serving dishes and served the dessert and dessert wine and coffee and brandy. We were a family. Max and Patricia and Clay and I. We were a family in a dream. A family waiting on each other. I drank the sweet white wine and Dr. Morgan got up and filled my glass. Then I drank my brandy and he refilled that.
“Tell me how they do it,” I asked. “Tell me how they make carpet out of oil.”
“It’s all sun,” he began. “It all begins as hydrogen.”
Later, when we had done the dishes and talked on the porch awhile, I called Charles William and told him we were coming over. Then Clay and I got into my mother’s car and I began to drive down the two-lane asphalt road leading into Dunleith. There were no seat belts in cars back then. We had never even thought of having them. “Your parents are the nicest people I’ve ever met,” I began. “Where did they go to school? Where do you go to learn things like that?”
“She went to Vassar.” He was sitting beside me in the dark front seat. I was driving sixty miles an hour, then sixty-five, as fast as I could drive and make the curves. “And he went to the University of Chicago. My brother was going there before he died. But I go to Brown. Do you know where that is? Maybe you should turn on the windshield wipers, Rhoda. It’s starting to rain.”
“Okay. If I can find them. This is Mother’s car. I haven’t driven it very much.” I reached for the switch to turn on the windshield wipers. Then the car began to skid and I threw my foot on the brake and the car began to spin. It spun around once and then again and again and again. I put my hand on Clay’s knee. “Nothing can happen to me,” I said. The car stopped and lights were coming toward us and then the car exploded and sailed out across the road and I heard the sound of gravel underneath the wheels. I felt my head hit against the side of the window.
When I woke rain was falling and men were leaning over me and somewhere, in a world I could barely see, Clay was being lifted from the seat and put upon a stretcher.
“He’s dead,” I heard someone saying.
“No, he’s not,” a second voice answered. “He’s breathing. Goddammit, Joe. He’s breathing.”
Men were all around me. Someone gave me a shot. Then I was being moved and stars were falling all around me. A sea of stars was falling on my arms and legs and belly and shoulders and face. It was a baseball field full of stars. It was a baseball field or a pillow. It was dark in the room and my mother was sitting by the bed and a nurse was leaning over me.
“Is he dead?” I asked. “Is Clay dead?”
“Yes,” my mother answered. “Go back to sleep, Rhoda. It wasn’t your fault. Please go back to sleep.”
“I don’t know what happened. I don’t know how it happened. I don’t know what happened to the car.”
“You spun the car around and a car hit its side. It wasn’t your fault. Try to go back to sleep. You’ve had a concussion, Rhoda. You have to stay still.”
“What happened to him?” I was beginning to cry. Tears were rolling down my cheeks and onto the pillow. I couldn’t move my head to get the tears away. My head hurt so much I could barely move it. My mother had my hand in her small tight hand. She was squeezing my hand. It was too dark in the room. “Turn on the lights,” I was screaming. “I don’t know what happened. I can’t see anything in here.” Then the nurse left and when she returned other people were with her. Someone took my arm and gave me a shot and my mother kept holding on to my hand.
The funeral was in Saint James’s Church at ten o’clock in the morning a few days later. I was dressed and wearing bandages on my head and my mother and father and brothers were all around me. My mother and Fannin and my sister-in-law had dressed me and done my hair. “You have to go,” my mother kept saying. “You have to be there.”
“It’s not your fault, Sweet Sister,” my father was saying. “There were brand-new tires on that car. It’s that goddamn asphalt. I’ve been telling them to modernize that road. That old asphalt’s a hazard when it rains.”
“Oh, Daddy, I’m so sorry. I don’t know why you’re all being so nice to me. Someone should be mean to me. I think I was driving too fast.”
“No. You weren’t driving too fast. Ariane, hurry up and finish whatever you’re up to with her hair. Come on, let’s get going.” He had moved out into the hall outside of Momma’s bedroom. My sister-in-law, Annie, was sitting on the bed. Momma was combing my hair. “I want you to go on and sign up to go to the university, Sister. I want you down here near us, especially after this.”
“Then call them up and tell them I’m coming.” I looked at him. He was so good to me, so perfect, he never let anything happen to me. No matter what happened he would fix it. “Tell someone to call and get an application. I made A’s at Vandy, Daddy. I can go to college anywhere I want to.”
“I’ll take care of it this afternoon. Come on now, Sister, let’s get on down to the church and get this over with.” I walked to the door and he took my arm and led me down the stairs and put me in the front seat of his Cadillac with Momma on the other side. My little brothers rode with Dudley and Annie.
When we got to the church, Charles William and Irise were waiting on the sidewalk and walked in with us. The coffin sat on a stand before the altar. The priest intoned the service with tears rolling down his cheeks. “I am the resurrection and the life saith the Lord: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: and whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die.
“I know that my redeemer liveth: and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth: and though this body be destroyed, yet shall I see God: whom I shall see for myself, and mine eyes shall behold, and not as a stranger.”
* * *
Doctor Morgan and Mrs. Morgan sat on the front row with people from Chemistrand and their old friends and brothers and sisters who had chartered a plane to come and be with them. Their other child was buried in Massachusetts, but for some reason they had decided to bury Clay here, in the cemetery behind the church. Although there had not been any room in the cemetery for years, a plot was found for them and a stone put into place. A tall plain stone of Carrera marble. “Clay Alexander Morgan, 1934–1954. ‘I Have Let Fall Death.’ Hadrian, A.D. 1.”
After the service and the burial, my family and
I went out to the Morgans’ house and stayed a long time on the screened porch talking to people and standing shoulder to shoulder with our hands folded. At some point my mother led me back to Patricia’s bedroom and the three of us talked for a while. “You mustn’t blame yourself,” she said. “I gave you the wine.”
“It was the rain,” I answered, as I had every time we had the conversation. We had had the conversation in the hospital after Clay died and in the church before the ceremony and now we were having it again. “It was the rain, not the wine.”
“It’s not a judgment,” Patricia said. “It’s only that he’s gone.” She was sitting on the bed and my mother was sitting beside her and I was standing. One of the Morgans’ friends from Massachusetts came into the room.
“There’s nothing to do now,” she said, “but go on. We have to go on, Patricia. You have to go on for Max.”
“Where is Max?” she asked. “He should come and talk to Rhoda.”
“He’s out by the root cellar,” she answered. “He was out there with Drew and Arthur. He told them to leave. He said he wanted to be alone.”
“Go out and talk to him,” Patricia said to me. “He wants to talk to you, Rhoda. He’s worried about you. He talked about you last night. He doesn’t blame you. No one blames you.”
“They should blame me. It’s my fault. It was my car. I was driving the car. I was driving it too fast.” It was the second time that day I had said it. I looked straight at my mother as I said it. I couldn’t believe I had said it again. It was wonderful to say it. I wanted to say it over and over again. Light poured in the windows as I said it. Light was everywhere. “I was driving sixty-five miles an hour. I was driving like a maniac. I shouldn’t have been driving that fast. I did it to show off.” My voice was rising. I felt the light penetrate me and blow me open. My mother jumped up from the bed and came to me. “No, Rhoda,” she said. “Not now. Don’t do this to Patricia. Come on, let’s go outside and talk to Doctor Morgan.” She tried to lead me from the room, but I didn’t want to go. I wanted to scream my crime. I wanted to tell Patricia what I had done. All of a sudden I could see Clay, in this room, beside his mother, his gentle body folded over hers, his head beside her head, his hand on her arm.
“Come on, Rhoda,” my mother said. “Please, honey, for God’s sake, come with me.” She got me to the door, then I broke away from her and began walking down the long hall that led to the backyard.
“Where are you going?” she asked. “I’m going to go and get your father.”
I turned around. I became very cool and poised. “Please, Mother, I have to go and talk to him. Please don’t follow me. I’m okay now. I swear I am.” I stood very still and she waited, then began to back off.
“All right,” she said. “Go on.”
I walked past the kitchen full of people making drinks and eating food and talking. I walked all the way down the old board hallway and out onto the unused back porch and down the back steps toward the root cellar. Doctor Morgan was standing there, by the closed door to the cellar. Just standing there, staring at the mound of earth and the closed door. Beyond the mound the soft hills of summer rose up in brilliant greens. Clouds were moving in from the north. It would rain again by evening and wash all this away.
He heard me walking toward him and he turned and looked at me.
“I’m so sorry,” I began. “So terribly sorry. I will never be the same now that I killed Clay. I killed him, Doctor Morgan. I killed your son.”
“No.” He reached and took my hand. “Come here, Rhoda. I want to show you something.” He led me back toward a row of apple trees. Old thick trees with blossoms and leaves and fallen apples piled on the ground beneath them. There was a smell of apples there. Of apples and fallen death and decomposition. He led me to a tree and reached up and laid his hand on a branch. “Atoms into molecules,” he began. “Molecules into bases, into amino acids, into proteins, into cells, into tissues, into simple animals, into complex animals, into you and me. I want you to remember that. I want you to remember that I told you that.” His voice had not changed as he spoke, had not risen or fallen, had not accused or begged or charmed or forgiven. He kept on holding on to my hand as if he could impart something by osmosis.
“Oh, Doctor Morgan. I can’t live after this. I won’t ever forget it. What can I do? There is nothing I can do.”
“You can learn to think, Rhoda. You can think harder than you do. You can do better than you’re doing. You can learn.”
“I don’t know what that means. You hate me. You think I killed him.”
“No. Look at this.” He pulled the branch toward me. “Look at it. Find out what it means. I don’t hate you and I don’t want you to feel guilty. I know you wouldn’t kill another human being. You would never kill anyone, would you? Would you?” He had let go of the branch and was holding my arms. “Would you kill someone? Even to save your life?”
“To save myself I would.” I was fixed by his eyes. It would have been impossible to lie to him, even if I wanted to.
“Did you need to save your life on Saturday night?”
“No. I don’t think so. I wanted him to like me, though. I was driving fast to show off for him. Maybe that was to save my life. Why did I drive so fast?” I kept looking at him. He was still, then he let go of my arms.
“Because we let you drink wine. Because we gave you wine. Because we wanted you to like us and take Clay off our hands and reconcile him to this place.” He walked a few feet away from me and stuck his hands into his pockets and turned his fierce and brilliant eyes on me. This time they were different eyes. This time there was nothing to recognize.
“I’m going to raze this house,” he said. “And build a modern house with concrete floors and modern materials. You can put the heating of a house into the floors now, Rhoda. Did you know that? You can build windows that catch the sun and then you don’t need fires. You can get fire from the sky.” He rounded his shoulders down around his chest and stuck his hands deeper into his pockets. “Shall we go in?” he asked. “Let’s go in now and see who needs us.” I moved beside him. I took his arm, which was fixed deep down into his pocket, and we began to move back toward the house. Cars were still driving up from everywhere. Muted voices and the clink of bottles and glasses from the kitchen flowed out into the yard. It made us a wave of sound to follow. A little path, or current, or drag, or magnetic field. We followed it like pilgrims. Nothing we did or said on that or any other day was going to stain the white radiance of eternity to which Clay had returned his colors.
Later, on our way home from the Morgans’ house, Daddy started in on me again. We were alone in his car, Mother had gone ahead with Dudley and Annie and my younger brothers. “Mighty hard,” Daddy said, as we passed the place where Momma’s car had been dragged up from the ditch. “Mighty hard to know what to do with you, Sister. Your momma said you showed your ass in front of that dead boy’s momma.”
“I did not. What did she say? God, she says anything she wants to about me.”
“She said you acted like a fool and went spouting off about driving fast. Those people could sue me for everything I own. Do you know that, Sister? Goddammit, you’re the most selfish little girl I’ve ever seen. Your mother said you were spouting off about how fast you were driving with everyone listening. I don’t know, Sister. I just don’t know.” He shook his head, then continued. “I brought you back here where you could be somebody. Your ancestors came here as pioneers and made this country for you. My people have been respected down here for two hundred years and you and Dudley are going to ruin all that for me, it looks like. You’ve been running all over town with that Waters boy, he’s a queer duck if I ever saw one. Everybody in town talks about how crazy you talk and act. I just don’t know, Sweet Sister. Well, I’ll get some applications to the university and maybe if you go down there you’ll settle down. Maybe you got all those crazy ideas up at Vanderbilt. I hated having to raise you kids in the North but I had to do it until
I could make my stake. I’ve been working twenty hours a day all my life to give you a chance to make something of yourself and this is how you pay me back.”
“It’s your fault,” I screamed. “You’re the one who did it. Every time I start doing good you make me move. You made me leave Harrisburg and you made me leave Franklin. Now you want me to leave Vanderbilt. I don’t know what to do. I’m tired of trying. I can’t start over every time I turn around. I don’t want to go to Tuscaloosa. I want to go back to Vanderbilt and finish my life there.”
“I thought you hated it so much. You said you hated the sorority. You told me I’d ruined your life by sending you there. Now you’re going to change your mind about that? Is that the ticket now?”
“I don’t care. Who cares? What difference does it make?” I was crying now. “I hate you so much, Daddy. I killed someone. I killed him right here on this road. Stop the car. I want to get out and walk. Stop the car. I want to walk home.” I pulled on the door handle but he reached across me and grabbed it and pulled it shut and locked it and kept on driving. I grabbed his arm and bent my face down to bite him but he stopped the car and took my arms and held them to my sides. “You stop all this crazy acting, Sister. You killed that boy but now it’s done. I don’t want to hear any more about how fast you were going. I don’t want to hear any more out of you about anything until we get home. You just suck up your guts and get a hold of yourself.”
Net of Jewels Page 7