A second letter detailed his first full week and gave the outline of his days. Breakfast in a café on the street. A mile’s walk to the Smithsonian, the sidewalk skirting a city rose garden. Kate conjured just the way his thin hair lifted in the breeze. Mornings in the library stacks, working in his carrel. Lunch with other fellows in a common room. Each Friday someone presented his research. Her father’s topic was the use of conscription during the Civil War.
In the third letter, he mentioned someone named Louise. Kate was surprised, never having considered that a woman might be working alongside her father at the Smithsonian. She thought perhaps she should know who this was—a family friend, a distant cousin?
Louise Martin and I have been selected to have monographs published at the end of the summer. She’s the only woman here and not surprisingly, a little nervous. I offered to read her draft when she’s ready. She reminds me of you and causes me to miss you, my love.
The romantic touch gave Kate a jolt. Though her parents were devoted to each other, her father had never used terms of endearment. My love? Kate felt like a voyeur. These letters were not for her. But she couldn’t stop herself.
In every letter her father asked about Kate and Brian and sent his love. Kate could not remember her mother sharing these sentiments, though she must have. In fact, Kate couldn’t remember ever seeing the letters, but that was because she was volunteering at Baptist Hospital and her mother had received them during the day. They must have sustained her through that long summer of separation. Kate worried she might arrive at a paragraph that carried too private a message, but at the same time she was avid for it. But by the middle of the stack no such paragraph had appeared, though in every one her father began, My dearest Virginia.
Louise’s name popped up now and then, along with Joe Clarke, a fellow from Colorado, whose research was in Civil War medicine. The three of them had gone out for Chinese food. Kate formed a picture of Louise: middle-aged with tie-up shoes and a haircut like Mamie Eisenhower, beautifully bland—until she arrived at the second-to-last letter.
It’s only fair to tell you, Virginia. I have strong feelings for Louise. I have not broken our vows. But I am torn. Louise and I have been working together all summer. Whatever happens, I will always love you and the children.
The children? She and Brian were now the generic children? Kate set the letter down. A sickening feeling spread through her like poison. She tore the letter in half, made wads of each half, and threw the malignant paper into the trash can before stalking into the yard and picking up the rake—it was still there after all these days—and hitting the long handle against the tree. Her arms rang with the effort.
Just there was the back fence her father had put up; they had painted it white together. Briefly she remembered the Negro with the milk bottle. Then the back of her father’s head appeared in her mind’s eye. There was one letter more. Kate ran to the patio and ripped it open.
I understand if you prefer I not come home. I can rent a room in a house near the college and send for the things I’ll need. Louise has been offered a research position at Duke for a year.
Louise was no longer a plain-looking woman. She was Grace Kelly with blond hair and long legs, wearing a pale green skirt and matching summer sweater, dark glasses, her feet shod in leopard-dotted heels, a slip of white scarf around her neck.
The universe became unmoored.
Kate’s mother had sat right here at the picnic table on the patio and opened the letter, and her heart had broken as the white pages fell to the ground. How could her father have betrayed them? How had Kate not known? She retrieved the torn letter from the trash can. At the kitchen counter she smoothed the pieces back into alignment so she could reread it, but there was nothing she had missed, no hint of family loyalty above all. Her father had fallen in love with Louise, had suggested he might take lodging near his work, and in the last letter he did not mention Kate by name. She folded each letter and inserted it into its corresponding envelope. When she was through, she stacked all of the letters and set them on the breakfast table, wondering if a match could be set to them without harm to the table, for she never wished to touch them again.
She sought to recall any detail she could from that August. There had never been a break in her parents’ marriage. She remembered finishing her volunteer job at Baptist Hospital, receiving a blue autograph book as a parting gift—full of heart shapes and Xs for kisses. Otherwise her memory was blank. She sat down again at the threshold of the door, hand resting on the warm brick of the stoop, looking out at her father’s garden. She closed her eyes. A little later, she lay back on the cool kitchen floor and turned her head sideways. From here she could see under the kitchen cabinets. All manner of dirt and dust and who knew what else was under there. Why had no one in a million years cleaned under those cabinets? For a moment she almost forgot the letters, gazing absentmindedly at the detritus, and then her father’s words hit her again and she turned on her side.
She fingered the collar of her shirt and recalled how her mother had sewn her dresses with waistbands and pockets and round collars. The summer her father was gone, she went on a sewing spree, cutting patterns on the dining table for days on end so that they ate all their meals in the kitchen. She had her sewing machine installed in the dining room too. Fabric and patterns covered every surface. Once the dresses were sewn, Kate had to stand on a stool in front of the window where the light was best and turn in a circle while her mother turned up each hem and pinned it. She recalled a particular dress she had loved, short-sleeved, low-waisted, with a pleated skirt. It had a V-neck and a large square collar down the back and a knotted ribbon in front so that it looked nautical, sailor-like. She’d worn it when they went to the beach.
And just like that she remembered what had happened when her father returned from that summer in D.C. They had gone to Ocracoke and he had drowned. Kate sat up. Had he done it on purpose? Viperous thought. She drew her legs to her chest and held them.
Moments later, she found herself opening the kitchen cabinet and rummaging around for the cooking sherry. She held her nose and took a sip. Then, comprehending that she must eat, she took two pieces of bread out of the bread box, tore one slice into four pieces, and ate. She took another sip of sherry, this one warmer, and her head swam a little as she ate the rest of the bread. Another good sip of the sherry and she put the bottle down. The tiles of the backsplash went as fuzzy as caterpillars. Kate took one more swig of sherry and felt a peeling sensation, as if someone had pulled a tight swim cap from her head. The floor seemed as good a place as any to rest.
* * *
• • •
KATE DOZED, HER head pillowed by her bent arm. She woke and turned onto her back, staring at the ceiling. How could she stay in this house and how could she not? The past was ruined. The doorbell rang. She burped and felt the sour heat of sherry in the back of her throat. The person at the door must go away. Why had her mother kept the letters? Perhaps because even so awful a reminder was an indissoluble bond. She saw her mother’s fine hands blurred with paint, her father’s gold wedding band, heard the click of her father’s briefcase opening, the snap of her mother’s compact closing, saw the waves at Ocracoke bleached white.
The clock chimed and Kate wondered mildly if Aunt Mildred—if that was who it was—would come around to the back door and find it open and her splayed out on the floor. The doorbell rang again.
Oh. It might be Tacker. Kate sat up, her hands going to her breasts.
Don’t leave. I’m coming.
She could see Tacker through the beveled glass at the side of the front door, only it was about four Tackers, the way the glass multiplied him: several sets of legs and arms and torsos and heads. Don’t leave! Racing down the hall, Kate wiped her face and plumed her hair. She yanked the door open.
Chapter Eight
TACKER WAS OFF for the afternoon and had a hankering to see Kate. Why he’d waited so long,
he couldn’t say, except that he didn’t want to hex his future again by acting precipitously. As he had with Anna Becker. Still, he went without calling. But Kate didn’t appear to be home. He had just turned to leave when the door flew open.
“You’re here,” Kate said.
She wore Keds and old jeans, her hair falling out of a ponytail.
“Are you okay?”
“Better now,” she said. A smile ticked briefly on her lips as she showed him into a room to the left of the foyer and pointed to a butter-colored sofa next to an ornate chair. “I’ve got a headache. I’ll be right back.”
She padded off. He could hear a cabinet open and shut and water running and shutting off. In a moment she was back with a glass of water and aspirin. She placed the tablets on her tongue and drank, her throat tilted up.
“Oh,” she said. “I forgot to offer you something.”
“I’m okay,” he said.
“Can you stay?”
“Sure,” he said, his chest unlocking. “You left these on the table the night we went to the Toddle House.” He reached into his coat pocket and brought out a pair of gloves. “I’m sorry it’s taken me so long to get them to you. I’d put them in the handlebar bag on my bike and forgot all about them.”
“I wondered where those were,” she said. “Thanks.”
She went off and blew her nose. Then she was back in her sock feet, her hair still up in its uncombed mass. She settled on the other end of the sofa and tucked her legs under. On the coffee table sat a large glossy book about Greece.
“Have you been?” Tacker said, gesturing toward the book.
“That was my mother’s.” Kate tilted her face to one side.
“I’ve come at a bad time,” he said.
“Oh no,” she said. Yet she sat within her own circle, composed in whatever it was she was managing.
“I always liked your yellow hair,” she said finally.
“Thank you,” he said, touching his hair. Had she been drinking?
Kate unfolded herself and stood, moved to a wingback chair—that must have been her father’s chair; the ornate one had belonged to her mother. Kate lifted an afghan, swirled it around her until she was papoosed. Then she came to where he sat, lifted his hands, sat beside him, and leaned into his chest.
“Hold me,” she said.
Tacker brought his arms down around her.
If he had not been to Nigeria this would be odd, sitting in a house he had never before entered with a girl he knew but didn’t really know. But it was not odd because of all those mammy wagon rides where complete strangers—men, women, and children—fell asleep against him. Mothers gave him babies to hold while they rearranged their layered outfits. When floorboards were wedged full of chicken baskets and yams, people found any kind of way to accommodate their legs, sometimes in Tacker’s lap.
Kate’s repose made more sense than most things that had happened in the past year. Tacker studied the room. Two walls had built-ins, full of books and artifacts. In Nigeria it would be library enough for a high school. Over the fireplace hung an oil painting of a woman who must be Kate’s mother, though Tacker didn’t remember her well enough to know. The head was too large but the mouth was mobile and full and the skirt of her red dress seemed to move out of the canvas into the room. The hearth was granite, maybe from right around Winston. But the mantel was pink marble, carved to reveal an image of a tree branch in bloom. It was a surprising combination in a Craftsman house and Tacker felt he had seen into the family’s character, observing this point.
His stomach growled. Kate shifted her position.
He gazed at the open door to the left of the fireplace. He could make out a rattan chair and a curtained window. He thought of the bottle-lined room at Frances’s house, the thrumming sound he took for the furnace, how he had gazed into the room and seen everything but Gaines. How Gaines had then walked into the kitchen, how the house itself seemed to breathe, the smell of coffee, how that house was brown and narrow and this one light and spacious. Tacker’s father had agreed to let him hire Gaines on a trial basis. Kate’s head settled onto his lap. As he breathed, it rose and fell, wisps of dark hair hovering around her face. A crease settled on her forehead. He smoothed her hair, thinking of Valentine, Gaines’s little sister, born on Valentine’s Day.
Kate opened her eyes.
“Sorry,” Tacker said, pulling his hand back.
“Don’t stop,” she said. She put her hands to her face and pulled her tucked legs closer.
“What’s wrong?”
“Oh,” she said. She pushed herself up and turned so her breasts met the back of the sofa.
“Hey,” Tacker said. “What’s up?”
Her eyes welled with tears.
“Here,” he said, handing her his handkerchief.
“My parents,” she said, taking the handkerchief, wiping her eyes.
“I know.”
“No, you don’t.”
She maneuvered until she was sitting forward, her legs crossed, looking at the painting.
“That’s my mother’s self-portrait,” she said.
“Amazing.”
“I know. She took painting lessons when I was in high school. Have you got a cigarette?”
“Ah, no,” Tacker said. She smoked? He hadn’t expected it.
They sat. She all inwardness. Tacker with his hands on his knees, looking at the mother’s portrait.
“Some things should not be opened,” she said.
“Like Pandora’s box,” he said.
They laughed together at how quickly he said it.
She sobered. “Too bad someone didn’t remind me when I went looking for old letters.”
“Sorry.”
“It was a stupid accident that I found them, even though I was looking. I could have missed them altogether.”
She told him how her mother had whispered about letters in the hospital, how she had searched, exhausting every possibility. “Then this morning I decided to clean out the pantry. She always kept an old Saltines can. I figured the crackers were stale so I opened the tin to throw them out. Bingo.”
Tacker thought again about how he hadn’t read Samuel’s letters. Every passing day worsened the crime of omission. Yet he feared—what? Some requirement or request he could not honor? Some news to prove again his unworthiness? Kate was quiet again.
“You’ll think awful things about my family.”
I’m thinking them about myself. “You don’t have to tell me,” Tacker said.
“I need to tell someone.”
She looked at him. He nodded. It was good to be able to listen to someone else, help ease another’s troubles for a change.
“My dad had an affair. He wrote to confess to my mom.” She pulled her hair loose and combed through it with her fingers. “I really wish I had a cigarette.”
Tacker had a vague recollection of her father, eccentric in the store, his coat open, hat tipped back, oldish-looking. Who would be tempted by him? “Can I help you with supper?”
Kate looked at him, that quick tick of smile again. “I’m not very hungry.” She brooded. “You know how he died,” she said.
Was that a question?
“He drowned,” she said. “Now I wonder if he meant to.”
“That seems a stretch,” he said, though his mind churned at the thought.
“You hardly knew him.”
Tacker recalled her father again in his loose-fitting coat. Some element of his bearing affirmed his stolidity. “I could make a fire,” he said.
“That would be nice.”
“Things will look different in the morning.”
* * *
• • •
TACKER WOKE TO the smell of bacon and the sound of pots banging in the kitchen. Kate had gone to bed and asked him to stay. He’
d slept on the sofa. It was still dark outside. His mouth was dry as a shoe. He turned on a lamp. “Hello?” he called.
“The bathroom is down the hall on the right,” she said.
In the kitchen she’d set out plates, bacon already on them. She was scrambling eggs, still in her jeans but now in an oversize sweater. When she looked at him her eyes appeared violet and he thought of the rose stained-glass window in the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine that he had seen on his three-night stopover in London on the way to Nigeria.
“You got hungry,” he said, still waking, observing the well-preserved house with its pedestal columns and dark wood accents. He figured the time before looking at his watch. Maybe four a.m. He was right on the money.
“I’m starving,” she said. “You’re working today?”
“Yeah.”
“I shouldn’t have asked you to stay—I hope you know I don’t usually do things like that. And you probably didn’t sleep well.”
“I slept fine. You mean you don’t usually ask for company when you’re sad?”
She tilted her head. A habit, Tacker thought, something like the maneuver of an animal wishing not to be sighted. “I guess I’ve learned not to.”
He waited for her to say more.
“My roommate, Janet, used to say I’m a loner. Except with her. She’d drag me to this bar down by Emory. We’d take a taxi, and then she’d fight off the boys—they were after her, you understand, not me—and we’d sit there and drink a beer and leave alone.
“So, what brought you back to Winston?” she said, spooning eggs onto the plates. “Sounds like you had the world in front of you. You know all about me now.”
I know almost nothing about you, he thought. The evening at the Toddle House had been all surface, like skating on ice. Where had this direct-talking, vulnerable girl come from? Tacker considered the house again. Maybe her folks had money. Maybe money made girls confident. Maybe Atlanta did that. Or having your parents dead. Was it the artificial light or were the walls of the house pale pink? He wondered if Kate was a virgin, and this possibility as well as its opposite intensified his impression of pink.
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