Net of Jewels

by Ellen Gilchrist

  This time he was bearing flowers but they were not for me. They were for Donie. I could smell the whiskey as soon as he came in the door. A dank unclean smell of cleaning fluid and whiskey. A thought crossed my brain. A terrible memory of the summer before. Lights coming out of nowhere. A two-lane highway in the dark and Clay’s body being lifted on a stretcher. Most of the time I managed to forget that night. I had stuffed it so far back into my mind that whole days went by when I never thought of it. Then something would trigger it and I would think, Death is all around us. We walk around as though we will live forever, we won’t live forever, we could die at any moment. At any moment death is stalking us, stalking our friends, anyone we love, anyone we could meet. It snuffed me like a light to think such thoughts and took my power away.

  “Well, you’re mighty dressed up,” Stanley said. “I hope you can wear those shoes where we’re going. It’s out in the country. It’s very rustic.”

  “I can wear them. I don’t have any flat shoes that match this suit.”

  “You could change clothes. Do you want to change?”

  “No. I want to get out of here. It’s almost eight o’clock. Can we go now?” My power returned. I looked him in the eye. Wearing heels I was almost as tall as he was. I was in no danger from this soft laconic law student. I had been fighting better men than he was all my life. I had fought my brother Dudley, who had won the Junior Olympics in the four-forty and the hundred-yard dash. A big soft law student couldn’t threaten me. Especially one who smelled like cleaning fluid. “Let’s go. Come on, I want to get out of here.”

  “What about these flowers? I wanted to give these flowers to Donie.”

  “Give them here.” I took the flowers and walked into the hall and handed them to a pledge. “Okay,” I said, coming back into the living room. “Let’s go. Let’s get out of here.”

  We walked awkwardly down the sidewalk to his car and he held open the door and I got in. It was dark and cooler now. The suit would be all right. I would make it through the night in my Davidow.

  “I love the stars,” I began. “They remind me of infinity. A boy I used to go with told me about infinity. He’s dying of cancer. He has about two years to live.”

  “Well, look, you want a drink? There’s a bottle in the glove compartment. As soon as we get to the Ferry I’ll stop and get something to mix it with. It’s this place we always stop at on the way to Big Momma’s. Fiddler’s Ferry, it’s this old place.”

  “He plays the saxophone. He taught me to listen to jazz. Do you like jazz? My absolute favorites are Coleman Hawkins and John Coltrane and Illinois Jacquet. Mostly Coltrane, of course. Coltrane’s the master. Jazz is like infinity if you think of it. It’s like the art of fugue because it never stops or gives you a cheap thrill and makes you think you got somewhere. That’s why jazz artists take a lyric and do riffs on it. So you’re never finished or satisfied.”

  “You want a drink or not? Get the bottle out.” I opened the glove compartment and got out a pint bottle of whiskey. I opened it and took a drink, then passed the bottle to Stanley.

  “Infinity goes on forever,” I continued. “It might go on forever in both ways. Have you ever thought of that? I mean, inside your head might be the whole history of everyone who ever was kin to you all the way back to the beginning of time when people began to think. Every single one of them and all their memories could be inside your head. In the other direction is infinity of the stars. I told a psychiatrist my brother brought home last summer about that and he said he thought so too. This psychiatrist who went to school with my brother. He isn’t finished yet. He’s just in medical school. It was about ten o’clock in the morning and I was sitting on the arm of his chair. This blue chair my mother loves. I can remember exactly when he said he thought so too. I looked at my watch so I’d know exactly what time it was.”

  “You want another drink? Have another drink.”

  “How far is it to this place?”

  “About ten minutes more to the Ferry. Do you always talk this much? Have another drink.”

  “Jesus Christ. Well, look, tell me about your dad. He’s the lieutenant governor? Where do you all live?”

  “Just in a house in Montgomery. We don’t live in the mansion. The governor lives in the mansion.”

  “Big Jim Folsom?”

  “Yes.”

  “My dad showed him to me at a football game. He was drunk. Two men were having to lead him up the stairs.”

  “We don’t see him much. If you aren’t going to drink that, pass it back to me.” I handed him the bottle and he took a drink and kept it. I stared out the window at the stars. I lit a Parliament. They were my favorite cigarettes but usually I didn’t buy them because they cost fifty cents a box. I had bought these several weeks before and they were stale. I inhaled, blew the smoke out the window. We drove in silence, past darkened hills and banks of trees.

  “We’re almost to the Ferry,” he said at one point. “We’re almost there.”

  I followed a high white star into a reverie. Bob Rosen was beside me on the seat. He pulled me over close to him and held me in the crook of his arm. He took the cigarette I lit for him. He kissed me with his soft sweet mouth. He laughed and began to tell me stories about jazz. He told me about the time his mother cursed out the vice-mayor of Chicago. He told me about Illinois Jacquet and Jo Jo Jones and Sarah Vaughan. He sang for me. “If I should write a book for you, that brought me fame and fortune too, that book would be, like my heart and me, dedicated to you.” You can do anything you want to, Rhoda, he had told me. Don’t let anything stop you. Don’t let anything get in your way.

  “There’s the Ferry,” Stanley said. “I don’t see any cars there. I guess everyone’s gone on to Momma’s.” He stopped the car beside a wooden building and turned off the lights. He laughed happily. He had successfully completed phase one of his date.

  He got out and came around and opened my door and escorted me into a plank-floored room. An old country man was standing beside a stove, drinking a beer. There was a bar with glasses and bottles and jars of pickled eggs and pickled pig’s feet. There was a display rack of cigarettes and one of potato chips.

  “This is my date, Miss Manning,” he said. “Could you fix us a drink? A scotch and water.”

  “Sure can. You want anything else?”

  “A pickled egg. You want one, Rhoda? They’re great.”

  “God, no. I wouldn’t eat one of those in a million years. You know what this place reminds me of, Stanley? It reminds me of this place I went to where the Ku Klux Klan has its meetings. In Warwick County where this friend of mine took me to a cockfight.”

  “Hey. Don’t talk so loud. He might hear you.” The proprietor had gone behind the bar and was making the drinks. “You sure you don’t want an egg? You don’t want anything to eat?”

  “I guess I’ll have some potato chips. Get him to give me some potato chips.”

  “That’ll ruin your dinner.”

  “You asked me if I wanted anything.” I went over and sat on a stool by the bar and took down a sack of potato chips and opened them and started to eat. The bartender handed me the drink. I sipped it. It was bitter and I shuddered at the taste but I kept on sipping. I finished the potato chips and drank some more. Meanwhile the bartender had supplied Stanley with his egg. He was holding it in a napkin and biting it. “This is great,” he said and finished it and asked for another one. He drank his drink and I drank mine and we got into a better mood. He ate a third egg. The smell and boring dark dead-end feeling of the Ferry lifted. I began to like the place.

  “This psychology teacher I have was telling us all about how people date someone who reminds them of their father. Or else their mother. Their opposite parent. They have this ideal they’re trying to meet so they can make up for not being able to take their father away from their mother. I mean, they don’t want to marry him. They want him to always be looking at them so they won’t get sucked back into nothingness. You know what
happens to baby bats? If they fall off the ceiling of the cave the bugs on the floor eat them up in about two minutes. They never have a chance. Well, we used to be like that when we were evolving. We were in danger all the time and babies are still in danger so they want somebody looking at them every minute. I was a pretty bad little girl. I’d do anything to get attention.” I stuffed a potato chip in my mouth and chewed it up. The bartender was leaning back against a counter listening intently. Stanley was staring down into his drink. “Of course a lot of people don’t believe in evolution. My father doesn’t believe in it. He says he isn’t descended from any monkeys much less bats. I argue with him all the time about it. Well, I sure don’t believe there’s some big God up there bossing everyone around. If he was there, there wouldn’t be death. Who would invent death? Who would hold something that they made responsible for itself? That’s what I’d like to know.”

  “Rhoda.” Stanley had gotten up from the bar stool. He was putting money on the counter. He and the bartender were looking at each other. “Let’s be moving on.”

  “Of course the world will always be full of stupid people. They don’t want to know anything. I’m getting up some study periods for the Chi O’s. To teach them Shakespeare. I’ll say this, once you read it to them they start getting interested in it. I had one the other night and everyone thought it was great. We’re doing Henry IV, Part Two, but I told you that. It’s all about how Henry betrays his friend when he gets to be king. At first it’s okay to run around with Falstaff and get drunk with him, but after Henry gets his crown, he betrays him and won’t let him come to the palace. It kills Falstaff for him to stop hanging out with him. ‘We have heard the chimes at midnight. Oh, the times that we have seen.’ That’s what Falstaff says to his other friend, this guy named Shallow. It’s about how they used to get drunk with each other and get in trouble.”

  “Well, let’s be moving on.” Stanley had my arm. He was leading me to the car. “Three more miles. I can’t wait to get to Momma’s. Everyone goes there on Friday nights. You can hardly get in the place.”

  “Do you want to hear the rest of the play?”

  “Save it for later, will you? You can tell it to me another time.”

  * * *

  Big Momma’s was an old farmhouse that had been turned into a restaurant. It sat on top of a hill surrounded by maple trees. The trees stood like sentinels in the dark. Light from the windows made a mosaic on the porches and the yard. Wind moved the leaves, the light became a kaleidoscope. Inside, fires raged in the old brick fireplaces, black servants in white coats cooked and served the food, high hilarity reigned. We were greeted at the front door by a tall black man in a dinner jacket. “Oh, Mr. Stanley, we’re so glad you made it. Come on in. Who’s that lovely lady you got on your arm?”

  “This is Miss Manning, Archibald. This is Archibald, Rhoda. He’s named for a brand of whiskey, aren’t you, Archie?” Stanley laughed and handed Archibald a dollar. “You got a table ready? Is anybody here? Any of my friends here yet?”

  “There’s a whole table of them in yonder. Not any room left at that one. You want one in that room? Table for two?”

  “Well, I guess so. Sure, that will do.” Archibald led the way into a crowded parlor filled with tables covered with white tablecloths. Drunk fraternity boys were eating steaks at every table. It looked very grand to me, crowded and noisy and smoky and impenetrable. Exciting. I pulled in my stomach and stood up straight and tucked in my chin and smiled and smiled and smiled. Archibald led us to a table and I sat down and continued to smile.

  “What do you want?” Stanley asked. “What do you want to eat?”

  “I don’t care. Whatever you want.”

  “Well, make up your mind. Read the menu. You want a fillet? The girls usually get fillets.”

  “Sure. That’s fine.”

  “How do you want it cooked?”

  “I don’t care. However you have yours.”

  “A fillet,” he told the waiter. “Medium rare, for the lady, and I’ll have the ten-ounce strip, rare. And bring us a martini. Doubles. Two of them.”

  “With olives,” I said. “I want a lot of olives.”

  “A lot of olives. Give her lots of olives.”

  * * *

  The table next to us had noticed us at last. The young men called over to Stanley, teasing him and asking who I was. I guess I was very beautiful, with my golden skin and hair, in my Davidow, the suit of all suits, my face soft and golden in the candlelight, my terrible innocence and golden youth. Sometimes I knew that I was lovely. Sometimes I knew it and drew strength from the knowledge. Sometimes I even knew that I was smart, smarter than almost anyone I knew, smarter than the rest of them. But mostly I thought I had to work to make them like me.

  “We ought to be sitting over there,” Stanley said. “Archibald should have saved me a place at the big table.”

  The martinis came. We drank them. Talk flowed back and forth from our table to the next. I was introduced. A boy who knew my brother got up from the big table and came to ours and kissed my hand. “Dudley’s sister,” he exclaimed. “This girl is Dudley Manning’s sister. Her brother’s famous. Her brother’s the craziest boy in the South.”

  “I didn’t know you had a brother,” Stanley said. “You didn’t tell me that.”

  “He trained for the Olympics in the four-forty,” my hand-kissing admirer said. “He’s a god. He beat me in every meet last year.”

  “He’s good at sports,” I said. “He’s a genius. He has a photographic memory. He lost his eye. He can only see out of one eye but he was great at basketball anyway. He turns his head to shoot. Still, he had to be a guard. He would have been a forward.”

  “He could spark a team,” my admirer said. “I played against him when he was at CMA. You let me know if you get rid of this guy,” he added. “When you get tired of him, let me know.”

  “What’s your name?” I looked up at him. He was sandy haired and blue eyed and laughing. He was a boy you could get to know. “Where did you go to school?”

  “Get out of here, Shelby,” Stanley said. “Stop bird-dogging on my date.”

  * * *

  The steaks came and we ate them and had another martini and I guess one after that. We got up from the table and danced on the crowded dance floor. We talked to people. We smoked. My girdle was killing me. My shoes were killing me. The room was hot. I was burning up. I wanted to find Shelby and talk to him some more. Instead I was dancing with Stanley. A deliberate two-step. His hands clenched me around the waist. The flesh on my waist was squeezed in by the elastic top of the girdle, then covered with my slip, then my blouse, then the jacket of my Davidow, then Stanley’s hand. I felt his heaving breath. I felt his legs soft against my legs. When I danced with Bob Rosen we were music. Each other and laughter and music. This was heaving ego and sorrow.

  “Rhoda.” It was May Garth, touching me on the shoulder. “Oh, Rhoda, I’m so glad you’re here. Look here, my cousin’s with me. You remember him, my cousin Sheffield Hughes. Sheffield, it’s Rhoda.” She had me by the arm. Sheffield was right behind her. There would be no escaping her. Everyone would know she was my friend. This girl whose family was not received.

  “This is May Garth,” I said to Stanley. “This is her cousin Sheffield.”

  “Is your father Cal Sheffield?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “This is Stanley Mabry,” I said. “I’ve got a date with him. We’re with all those people over there.”

  “I couldn’t believe it when I looked out and there you were.” She kept on trying. She stretched her hand out to me but I backed away. I wasn’t going to ruin my chances of being somebody by being seen with May Garth out in public.

  “Well, I’m glad you’re here,” I answered. I looked at Sheffield. He was very quiet, very thoughtful. He would grow up to be the president of a great university. He would fulfill his genes. But on this night he was only a twenty-year-old boy. Gangly and unfinished and out with hi
s first cousin trying to figure out how to act at a nightclub.

  “Come sit at our table,” he said. “Come and talk to us.”

  “We can’t,” I answered. “We were just fixing to leave. I have to get back or I’ll be late for curfew.”

  “I’m staying in town,” May Garth said. “Sheffield’s momma came with him. We’re staying with her. I can stay out all night if I want to.”

  “Well, that’s good.”

  “Nice to meet you.” Stanley took my arm and began to lead me back to our table.

  “Let’s get out of here,” I whispered to him. “I want to go home now.”

  We paid the bill and walked out into the cooling night. We got into the car and I rolled down my window and looked up at the stars. He began to talk. “So that’s Cal Sheffield’s daughter. God, she’s ten feet tall. I guess the Hughes boy is Burdette Hughes’s son. They’re rich as Croesus but that whole family’s looney. They send them up North to school. I used to wish they’d send me to a prep school. Now I’m glad they didn’t. It’s better to stay in the state and get to know everybody. Well, the night was okay, wasn’t it? I think you passed muster. You looked great in that suit.”

  “She isn’t ten feet tall. She’s just tall.”

  “What did you say?”

  “Nothing. It doesn’t matter.” We drove along in silence. I felt bad. Everything was going wrong. The night had gone downhill. I could have stayed with Spooky and ordered sandwiches from the Sandwich Wagon. I could be lying in my bed reading a book or listening to “Moonglow with Martin.” Nothing was going right. My whole life was a flop.

  “Yeah, I think the night was a success.” He turned from the highway onto a dirt road.

  “Where are you going? Turn the radio on, will you? Can you get New Orleans? There’s a station I like to listen to.”

  He stopped the car beside a pasture. He turned to me. “Come here,” he said. “Come over here to me.”

  “I wish you’d turn the radio on. What time is it anyway, Stanley? I have to be back by twelve, you know that.”