Fair and Tender Ladies

by Lee Smith

  I remain your loving,

  MAMA.

  Sept. 7, 1956.

  Dear Ethel,

  I am sorry to hear that Victor is not doing too good, but as long as he stays off the bottle I guess that is all we can hope for. May be he was just too old to move, and too set in his ways. Or may be you all just want something big to fight over! I did not think he would like it down there. I am surprised to hear that you like it as good as you do. I guess it helps to have the job, you always were a good hand to sell things, it ought to keep you and Victor out of each other’s hair some. It is just like you Ethel, to retire down to Florida and start working all over again! You are as bad as me.

  But I am writing today because I have got some sad news to tell you. Beulah is dead. She has been dead for a year now. Of course she has been dead to us for years anyway. However it is tragic, to learn that this is real. The way I know this is Curtis Bostick, who came up here to visit in a big gray car that had fishtail fins on it.

  Here is how it all happened.

  Maudy was up here Saturday playing her record player, Heartbreak Hotel by Elvis Presley who I like almost as much as she does. I think he is so good to his mother. Anyway, Maudy was playing Heartbreak Hotel over and over and kind of dancing around the house like she does, she is the flittingest girl! And bye and bye she stops dancing and stands looking out the open door and says, Mama, they is a strange man coming up here. He has parked his car down the holler.

  What kind of man? I said, and Maudy starts giggling. A big old fat one, she says.

  What kind of a car? I says, trying to figure it out.

  The biggest Buick you ever saw, Maudy says. Gray.

  So I go over there and stand looking down the holler. It is a cloudy, edgy day.

  Who is it? Maudy asks me.

  I said, for I knew him right off the bat, I swan. It couldn’t be.

  Couldn’t be who? Maudy says, who is dancing.

  Curtis Bostick, I said, but she could not hear me over Elvis who was singing, I’m so lonely, I’m just so lonely I could die. Curtis climbed the hill real slow and dignified. If he looks like anybody it is Herbert Hoover. So you can immagine, Ethel! But it is a funny thing, I would of knowed him anyplace. Lord he has gotten fancy however. I guess he has come up in the world. He has finally gotten as important as he thought he was! He wore a striped suit with a gold watch chain hanging out of his pocket, a black hat, a red silk tie, soft black leather shoes that were getting muddy. Curtis Bostick ought to of known better than to wear such shoes up here!

  That is your uncle, I said to Maudy. The husband of your Aunt Beulah that we have not set eyes on for years and years.

  Since the dinosaur days, Maudy said. She did not seem one bit interested which made me recall what she told Mr. Jennings, her ninth grade history teacher, that she did not want to learn about anything that happened before she was born. Well Maudy, that cuts out a lot! Danny Ray said then.

  I did not have time to get fixed up.

  I stepped out on the porch just as Curtis Bostick reached the steps.

  Ivy! he said. He just stood there staring. He liked to of stared a hole through me. Then he held out his hands and I went over there and took them. Curtis Bostick’s hands were as soft as a pretty woman’s.

  I’ve thought—he started to say. Lord I have immagined—he said.

  Then to my complete surprise he started crying, sobbing just like a little boy. This even got Maudy’s attention. She came and stood out on the porch to see him cry. It’s down at the end of Lonely Street, it’s Heartbreak Hotel, Elvis sang.

  Honey go turn that down I told Maudy, who did.

  I took him by the hands and led him to the steps and sat him down. Curtis, it is so good to see you after all these years, I said even though that remained to be seen at the time. Now where is Beulah? I asked him for I could not wait to know.

  But I read the answer in his face before he spoke.

  Beulah is dead, he said. She died a year ago next month. He wiped his face with a fine handkerchief that had his initials on it, C.N.B. Try as I might, I couldn’t remember what the N. was for. I bet he made it up so he would have three initials.

  Maudy, go get us some ice tea, I said.

  Then I asked him, Dead of what?

  Curtis took a deep breath. Well, it is hard to say, Sirrosis of the liver primarily, but it is more than that.

  You know how bad she wanted to leave Diamond, he said.

  I remember, I said.

  Well it may be that we should not have done it, Curtis said slowly. Because in some way she was never again the same woman that she was here. Charleston was too much for her, he said. The rest of her life was too much for her.

  What do you mean? I asked.

  Her nerves went bad, Curtis said. I blame myself for it. I was so busy at the time, working day and night, but I thought Beulah was happy. Hell, she should have been happy! She wanted so many things, and I gave them all to her. I gave her everything. She had everything she ever wanted, Ivy, believe me. Everything! A big house on the hill, a cook, a hired girl, the best of everything for those kids. Summer camps, private schools—

  Curtis fumbled around in his pocket and got a cigarette out of a silver case, and lit it, and went on. But I don’t know, Ivy—it was like, the more she had, the more she wanted. Not things—I see that now—I just thought it was things. I was killing myself, buying them so many things.

  What did she want then? I asked. Thank you honey, I said to Maudy who had finally brung the ice tea.

  I don’t think she knew, Curtis said. But I think she was desperately lonely.

  She never wrote me back, I said. We never heard word one.

  I think she was scared to. Beulah wanted to get away from her past, from where she’d come from, what she’d been. From you. From all of you. She felt like the past was holding her back, Curtis said. She wouldn’t let my mother visit either, or my brother Ricky, and she wouldn’t let me talk about any of you-unses or find out what you were up to.

  Curtis had got so worked up that he said you-unses like he had never left this county. But I don’t think he even noticed it. It was like she couldn’t find enough things to fill up her day, he said. Why, she was the head of every club in Charleston, there for a while. She was real important.

  But, I said.

  But she was drinking, Curtis said. Drinking sherry all day long. For years I didn’t know it. Nobody knew it except the cook. But then there came the years when she was sick so much, when finally I did know, and everybody else knew too.

  What did you do then? I asked.

  Well, there wasn’t much I could do for a long time, Curtis said. Beulah denied that there was any problem at all, and the kids were growing up fine on their own, we had sent them away to school because of the situation, and of course I did not want to embarass Beulah. You know how much she hated to be embarassed, Curtis said, and I nodded. Well I remembered that! And I was working double time, what with the war and all—Curtis took the last drag of his cigarette and threw it out in the yard—Anyway, finally, her liver went. Just like that. Curtis snapped his fingers and looked around. Then he seemed to remember something. He reached in his breast pocket and pulled out a little parcel wrapped in tissue. I looked at him. It is for you, Ivy, Curtis said.

  I took it and unwrapped it carefully.

  It was Momma’s brooch, that little spray of violets with tiny purple stones, held together by the pretty golden bow.

  Did Beulah say for you to give this to me? I asked Curtis, for you know that Beulah and I had not parted on the best of terms.

  I am giving it to you, Curtis said. It belonged to your mother.

  I know, I said. I pinned it to my dress. Curtis watched me.

  Did she say anything? I asked.

  When?

  When she died.

  Curtis lit another cigarette and thought for a while.

  Not right then, he said. But about three days prior, she sat straight up in the bed
and said, A true lady will not let a silence fall.

  Beulah said that?

  Curtis nodded. I think it was from a book she had.

  I could see that book in my mind’s eye still—red, worn, with illustrations. The ladies in the illustrations were very thin.

  That sounds like Beulah! I had to smile.

  Curtis had been staring at my yard. Now he stared at me.

  What are you doing with all these crazy animals up here, Ivy? he asked.

  Those animals were made by my late husband, I said.

  Your late husband, Curtis repeated.

  Yes, I said.

  Well, he said after a while. I’m so sorry.

  But I didn’t think he was. Don’t you remember Oakley Fox? I said. From down on Home Creek? That was my husband, I said.

  I never had the pleasure, Curtis said.

  He was looking at me again, the way he had stared when he first came up here. It made me feel so funny. I wished Maudy would come out on the porch but I could hear her back in the kitchen, banging things around. This is how Maudy cooks, she will mess up every pot and pan in there to make one thing.

  I was getting nervous. Tell me about your children, then, I said real cheerful. I wanted to know in particular about John Arthur since I used to take him downtown at Diamond, to see the train.

  John Arthur is a banker now in Pittsburgh, Curtis said. He is much like me, God help him, Curtis said.

  I let that go. And the others? I asked.

  Curtis Junior died in the Korean War, Curtis said. He had turned wild and had gotten into a lot of trouble, so I paid him out of it and forced him to enlist. I forced him. Sometimes even now at night before I sleep, I hear that conversation over and over in my head. I made him go. I killed him, Curtis said.

  Oh Curtis, I said. Then I asked, Delores?

  Delores is a housewife in Cincinnati, Curtis said. She married a doctor.

  Well that sounds good, I said. I reckon.

  Then he fell silent. But I had run out of things to say too, and I hated that awful staring.

  What about Franklin Ransom? I asked finally, surprising myself.

  He’s dead too, Curtis said, he has been dead for six or seven years now. You remember how wild he was.

  I nodded. I had to smile.

  Well, he got himself a private plane and took up barnstorming, Curtis said. Lord, he flew everyplace! And there was no trick he couldn’t do. In fact he was in a fair way to get famous right before the war, but then he enlisted of course, and came home a hero with one foot gone. He had been shot down over Italy. He was a genuine war hero.

  Then what happened?

  Hell, Ivy, I don’t know. He has been quoted as saying that it was all nothing after the war.

  What was all nothing? What did he mean?

  Life, I reckon, Curtis said. He was the kind of a man that needed a war to fight in, and once the war was over, he couldn’t stand it. The lack of a war was what killed him, in my opinion.

  How did he die? I asked.

  Curtis took a deep breath. He flew that pretty little red plane into the face of the cliff at Stone Mountain, Georgia, in the middle of an air show. A thousand people watching. I’m surprised you didn’t see it in the paper, Curtis said. It was in all the papers.

  I don’t read too many papers, I said.

  You used to read a lot, Curtis said.

  Yes, I answered.

  There was a lot of talk about it at the time. They are sure it was suicide, Curtis said.

  I just sat there. I could see it all in my mind real clear—I could imagine Franklin flying, flying, doing tricks—turning over and over in the clear blue Georgia air and then all of a sudden pointing his plane at the gray cliff face and crashing, burning. I could see it all. I could see how he did it and why he wanted to. And I could immagine Beulah drinking herself to death out of little bitty crystal glasses and never once allowing, to herself or anybody else, that it was happening. I remembered, as if it was yesterday, how Beulah stuck her little finger out when she held a glass, how she had done it that way her whole life long, even way back when we used to play Party.

  It runs in the family I reckon, I said, and when Curtis looked at me hard, I said, Drinking.

  Curtis stood up very formal and pulled me up too, beside him. He cleared his throat.

  Oh no! I thought, for in that moment I knew—though I could not have said how I knew it—what was coming next.

  Ivy, my life is empty, Curtis said.

  One thing about Curtis is, and you will remember this, Ethel, I know—whatever he says, he sounds like he is making a speech.

  Back when you were living with us up on Diamond, he went on, I wanted you. I wanted you so much. Don’t you remember? And you were going with that sorry Franklin Ransom?

  Oh yes, I said. I remember. And I did too. I remembered the way Curtis looked at me that morning I came in after I’d stayed up at the Ransoms all night, and the way he looked at me the day they drove away.

  Well, Curtis was saying now. All of a sudden his whole face seemed to break up into a million pieces, so all I could see there was need.

  Nobody ever gets really old, do they, Ethel? I guess we are alive until we die.

  Well, what about it, Ivy? What do you say? Will you give me a chance? Curtis Bostick’s face was the funniest mix-up of young and old.

  And as for me, I felt a stirring that I had not felt since Oakley’s death. Yes! For that old, fat man. I turned away.

  I remember one time when I came back from work early and you were in the house alone washing yourself, Curtis said. You had your blouse pulled down to your waist. I stood in the door, he said. You never saw me.

  I stood looking out in the yard, at Oakley’s stump-creatures.

  Curtis, Curtis, we are too old, I said. The time is gone. It is too late now, I told him.

  Ivy, please. Curtis had begun to cry. It looked so funny to see such an important gentleman crying. You could tell he wasn’t used to it, either. It was like it hurt him. I went over to him and held him for a long time, and after a while he quit.

  Ethel, Curtis begged me to go back up to West Virginia with him, but of course I would not go. So that possibility is done with.

  Oh I will admit I was tempted. But only for a minute, because Curtis Bostick and me are as different as day and night, and both of us know it. If Beulah was too high-falutin for him, I am not high-falutin enough. He is going to have to find himself a woman in between. But you know he won’t, because he doesn’t really want one. If he really wanted one, he would not have come searching me. He would have come after somebody suitable. What Curtis held about me—what brung him all the way up here—was a notion he had. Men are like that. They will do anything on the basis of a notion, even old men. May be they are the worst! For poor old Curtis Bostick would not want me at all if he knowed me, which he does not. All he has got is an idea, which is more important to him than I could ever be. Naturally I did not explain this to him, nor even try.

  But Curtis stayed on for an hour or more, catching up on all that had happened, and Maudy came out with some pizza pie which she learned to make on the M.Y.F. trip to Myrtle Beach. I never heard of it before she started making it, now I think it is real good. Curtis left at 4 p.m. He is a serious man, I think he is a good man. It grieves me to know, as I do, that I will never see him again.

  And so, Ethel, I remain,

  Still Single!

  IVY.

  May 18, 1961

  Dear Joli,

  I don’t reckon David has got himself in any trouble that we can’t fix. Send him on, honey. I am liable to slap his face first then give him a big kiss and set him to working with Rufus. It is good for a boy like that to work with wood. Don’t worry. We will get him straightened out bye and bye.

  And thank you for sending your book which I sat down and read in one sitting, it was pretty good although I think you could of used more of a love interest. Or may be that is just me! Anyway it was real good eve
n if they do just think an awful lot. You might put some more plot in it next time, for an awful lot does happen in this world, it seems to me. Oh honey, I am real proud of you! But I wonder, why don’t you write about New York City, since you have been up there for so long? Or about Norfolk and the newspaper life? It seems like that would be more exciting than these mountains which nobody wants to read about, honey. By the way I read a good book the other day, The View from Pompey’s Head by Hamilton Basso, there is also A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith, both have plenty of plot and kissing. Raintree County is another one, it’s a real humdinger. But this is all just a thought. You know I am behind you one hundred per cent.

  And now for some news. I have got some good news and some bad news, as the man said.

  Ethel finally had to put Victor in the V.A. Hospital down there in Florida.

  But, he likes it fine! Ever since the war, Victor has been lazy without much aim in life. He likes to be waited on hand and foot, and since Ethel hates to wait on anybody, this has kept them busy fighting for twenty years. But now in the V.A. Hospital, he is waited on plenty and Ethel does not have to do it. Plus he has got a whole bunch of old men to talk to, which is what he loves. Ethel says when she goes over there to see him, he is just about too busy to see her. He’s out back in the sandy lot under the scrub pines at this table they’ve got set up out there, dealing five card stud, wearing a baseball cap. Orioles. Somebody gave it to him. She says he looks up and grins and says Hey there Ethel! real jaunty, like he used to do. Ethel says that the way they sit around that table reminds her of how the old men used to sit around the stove in Stoney’s store, Victor right in amongst them of course. He never got over those days, and now he has got them back.

  Ethel herself has been up here with her new husband Pete Francisco, lord you ought to get a load of him as Maudy says. He is real fat and about a foot shorter than Ethel, with long white hair that looks like a wig or like a star’s hair. In fact Pete Francisco looks like a star. He looks like somebody on the Opry. He was wearing a bigweave white suit with a white tie and a dark shirt, I think it was black, kind of shiny. He smiles all the time, but I think it is a real smile, nonetheless. He seems to be so pleased with Ethel, who dresses just as plain as she ever did, and seems as sour and practical as ever.