Lookaway, Lookaway

by Barnhardt, Wilton

  Or maybe it was not so vain because it was not so serious. Maybe it was merely how Southern society women did things, an excuse to socialize, meet, play at importance while the men were at the club golfing or out shooting something, away from the little ladies. Kate had decided additionally that she was done—done for the rest of her life, mission project or no mission project—with Southern-lady rituals and the sooner she got back to straight lines, plain speech, hard work, the happier she would be.

  But as she entered the Mint and was greeted by the longtime docent, Miss Maylee, ghostly frail and in her seventies (if not eighties), she felt a twinge of importance.

  “I think, Mrs. Johnston, you are the first to arrive,” said Miss Maylee.

  Kate was about to insist upon being called “Kate” but she was brought up short, realizing she did not know Miss Maylee’s name either. Was that a last name or was—as Norma taught her—she a younger sister and was Maylee her first name?

  “And how is Reverend Johnston?”

  “Bo is fine, thank you for asking,” Kate said, smiling back. Miss Maylee had one of those minds for people and their kin, could connect all the cousins and knew husbands’ and children’s names. Kate did well at church but she could have used a dose of what Miss Maylee had; so many of their congregants were just familiar faces to her, classified in her mind by type of complaint or illness.

  “The other Mrs. Johnston hasn’t called to say whether she and Mrs. Baylor want tea. Do you have any idea?”

  “I do not. Wait, it’s not all the trustees? Just Jerene—um, Mrs. Johnston and Mrs. Baylor?”

  “Yes, that’s what I understand.”

  Land o’Goshen. Maybe Kate could disappear before the two titans battled it out. Although … an initial dread soon gave way to curiosity. Having studied and speculated about Jerene as a zoologist would study a rare species, Kate supposed she owed it to her accumulated knowledge to observe what she could.

  She strolled around the museum, waiting for the titans. After she quit the Jarvis Trust she may never enter this place again. Once she had imagined Jerene asked her to join the trustees in order to educate her in the ways of women of a certain station, to make Kate a protégée since her daughters had disappointed her in this regard. But that wasn’t it. Jerene never covered up Kate’s dispossessing past or apologized for her rougher edges; no Pygmalion-like instruction was ever attempted. Kate even once wondered if this was an unconscious cruelty on Jerene’s part, a way to force Kate to contrast herself with the wellborn others and see how she would never “fit in,” should never have married into Southern society, for that matter. But Jerene wasn’t petty; she didn’t waste time on elaborate insults or passive-aggressive gestures. Jerene was aggressive-aggressive, nothing passive about her.

  Kate looked up to see the name JARVIS embossed in gold above the door to Jerene’s gallery. She once again walked around the room looking at the collection. The portrait by Cropsey, some grand Tory lady of the late eighteenth century, the landscape by Inness (one of his “storm” series, gray roiling skies over a farmhouse), a Church tropical valley from his mid-nineteenth-century Andes tour, landscapes by Heade and Whittredge.

  Kate stared at the misty vale rendered by Frederick Edwin Church, the precipitous slopes of palms and flowering trees, the frothy torrents raging between the peaks, joining in a verdant valley and cascading into a great bottomless seam in the valley’s floor, the mists rising from the falls, joining the morning mists, the mists around the ice-bound Andean peaks … pure fantasy, Kate suspected, an artist finding paradise and then exaggerating it on the canvas to produce an awe equal to his own. Kate hoped a year from now she was in the tropics. There was no returning to the Peace Corps, her happiest time, when her youth and undiluted faith all combined for a full heart, for real joy. Once the heat and humidity kick in, once she is trapped for the night behind mosquito netting, might she even miss the Mint Museum and these genteel afternoons? Kate wondered if she had been too knee-jerk about the Jarvis Trust. The shallow society-woman nonsense was all silly but there was a breath of civility here, refinement, an escape from the muck of ministerial duties. She checked the eyes of Cropsey’s grand colonial lady and found complicity.

  Kate heard distant laughter and she walked back to the lobby. It was Liddibelle Baylor sharing pleasantries with Miss Maylee. Kate wagered to herself that when Liddbelle sees Jerene they air-kiss each other’s cheeks, take each other’s hands, lament this unpleasant business that will be over soon … while each woman could, if granted immunity, cut the other one to pieces with a razor. I won’t miss that about High Society either, Kate thought.

  And now Jerene appeared. “Liddie…”

  “Oh my dear Jerene…”

  Yep, thought Kate, with something not quite a smile and not quite disgust on her face, watching these women hug and clasp each other’s hands.

  Jerene: “How have you been holding up, my dear? I know you’re not a suing person and this must be distressing for you.”

  Liddibelle: “Can you ever forgive me, Jerene? My lawyer’s put me up to it, and the insurance people. I keep being told it’s the way to proceed.”

  Jerene: “Well, I’ve secured Darnell McKay—you remember him, all those years ago, after I ceded the field with Becks to you, we double-dated at the Founder’s Cotillion, you and Becks, Darnell and me—”

  Liddibelle: “Of course I remember him! I was secretly envious of you—he was so handsome, and I thought to myself, now Liddie, you cannot date all of Jerene’s boyfriends when she’s done with them, she’ll come to resent it.”

  Jerene: “I could never resent you, Liddie—not even for this! We go back too far, and have come through so much together.” Jerene offered Liddibelle her arm as they strolled toward the conference room where the Trust meetings were held. “Oh hello, Kate. So good of you to make it. And Miss Maylee, lovely to see you. I thought there would be tea made.”

  “Tea, why of course,” said Miss Maylee, looking a little confused and abashed.

  Jerene had said nothing about tea to this woman, Kate understood, but Miss Maylee laughed lightly and said she must have forgotten, she would see to it right away. So many small sacrifices of justice and surrenders of pride to attain this highest level of Southern manners, Kate thought, knowing her nature had never adapted.

  Jerene cried out, “But not another word before you tell me how Skip is.”

  “He’s bearing up,” Liddibelle uttered. “He’s never been disabled in any way; the boy never had as much as a cold growing up.”

  Kate, following the women into the dark wood-paneled room where the Jarvis Trust met, had heard elsewhere that Skip was up and about, driving his car, out on the town, so the idea of him as some kind of invalid struck her as false as it must have struck Jerene. But Kate sensed Jerene’s sympathy was genuine. “And so he doesn’t know how to recover properly, hm? You have to be willing to let the rehab people and the doctor tell you what to do.”

  “He wants to hop out of bed too soon and go jogging or something foolish.”

  “Of course he does! And he will be able to, soon, Liddibelle. I pray he’ll be back at it in no time and all this will be just a little blip in his wonderful life.”

  “I do hope so,” said his mother, whose eyes seemed to dazzle.

  “Now what we have, this lawsuit, this is business and it will play out however it plays out, but you must know, Liddibelle—you must know, as long as we have been dear dear friends, that I think the world of Skip. I just love him to death. I wouldn’t see a hair of his head harmed, and nor would Jerilyn, who’s in an awful state.”

  Liddibelle blanched at the mention of Jerilyn, but her manners won out and she asked, “How is the poor thing?”

  “Just a mess! She’s lost a boy like Skip which would be tragedy enough for one lifetime, but you can imagine how upset she is. Oh I suppose when this is all over we might have to see a counselor—I’d take her to see an African witch doctor if I thought it’d help but …
but she’s not getting over this. And between you and me, Liddibelle, who is going to come courting now? The girl who accidentally shot her husband.”

  Liddibelle nodded, maybe feeling a pang of sympathy she hadn’t counted on.

  “And you know, Liddie, I have always looked out for you.”

  “I know that, Jerene.”

  “Whether it was my parting ways from Becks so you could date him or putting you up for Theta Kappa Theta or inviting you along to be a trustee or making that phone call for the Myers Park Country Club—”

  “Of course, I know so well all that you’ve done for me.” Liddibelle put both hands on top of Jerene’s nearest hand. Kate wondered if maybe Jerene’s nonchalance about this lawsuit might, after all, have been justified. Liddibelle Baylor seemed quite pliable under Jerene’s barrage of talk.

  Jerene went on. “And even with this business between us, I am going to look out for you as I always have, as you shall soon see.” Jerene had been holding a manila envelope which she now set before them on the table.

  Liddibelle didn’t seem to notice the envelope, saying, “Well. This might be the one time, my dear dear sister—and that’s just what you are, just like a sister!—but this may be the time where we have to let the lawyers do what we pay them to do. However disagreeable.”

  Jerene said this with such a level tone, it was hard to know if she meant it as an accusation or a mild question: “Like your detectives looking into our past? Apparently my bank records have been opened to you like a children’s book.”

  Liddibelle reddened, but composed herself. “Oh the lawyers said that was necessary too. I hope you … I know you … Well, I know you know, Jerene, how little I credit of what they told me. These lies some people were telling.”

  Jerene said nothing. Kate saw that Liddibelle was steelier than she thought. She was warming up to blackmail Jerene Johnston. Was she after a big settlement so the civil suit and its attendant revelations would not go forward? Liddibelle then glared meaningfully at her. “Maybe you don’t want Kate, Jerene, to hear what we both know they have turned up?”

  Kate shifted to excuse herself when Jerene touched her shoulder lightly. “Why Kate and I are family, and there’s nothing that you might discuss that she is not allowed to hear.”

  “Well, those audits. By the Mint. Some talk that much of the Mint by Gaslight money went into your personal account.”

  “My name is on the Trust’s account, of course, so you see the confusion. All of that was looked into and dropped.”

  “And big five-figure payments from people who … Well, Mecklenburg Country Day said they paid out ten thousand because you were going to press an action about that art teacher making a pass at Joshua, which later proved to be false—”

  “I believe he was eventually dismissed.”

  “And when your daughter Annie had a marriage annulled, you received a five-figure payout from the Costa family of Salvador, Brazil, you didn’t report on your taxes.”

  “There were certain expenses…”

  “And this business in Durham,” Liddibelle went on, checking her notes again, clearly uncomfortable. “That awful man who said that Jerilyn … that you were going to make a rape accusation against his son unless you received thirty thousand dollars in hush money.”

  Jerene let out a puff of surprise. “Don’t these sound preposterous on their face, Liddibelle?”

  “I swear I didn’t believe that or any of the things about Jerilyn. The behavior at Carolina, the reputation she came to have, of promiscuity—”

  “Oh now you know today’s young women, Liddie. You didn’t have a daughter. But they’re all down there on the pill, having a Roman orgy. Now we were the sixties girls and we weren’t exactly prim little virgins ourselves. Or do I have to remind you.”

  Liddibelle laughed, and looked happy to have an excuse to be light. “Oh goodness no, our mothers would have killed us if they knew what we did on some of those weekends.”

  “So what some bitter sorority sister says about Jerilyn or Skip for that matter—Jerilyn told me that he was quite the ladies’ man. The Zeta Pis had a designated sex room in their house and Skip—well, never you mind. And marijuana and cocaine down there, and Skip … well, your detective may have filled you in on your son’s reputation in that regard, but neither of our children needs for those sorts of youthful indiscretions to be dragged out in court. I know it suits your lawyer to make my Jerilyn out as some crazed, psychologically damaged hussy, but what does it say about Skip that he would marry someone like that?”

  Liddibelle was quiet a moment. She looked at Kate, again concerned.

  “Well, the lawyer thinks … wants to put forward that perhaps there was an instability in the family.”

  Again Jerene, her face perfectly pleasant, said nothing.

  Liddibelle, her eyes darting between Kate and Jerene, fell to a whisper: “You know what I’m referring to.”

  “I’m not sure I do, darling.”

  “Like mother, like daughter, I think is what the lawyer wants to say.”

  Jerene gave a small social, insincere laugh. “That is your lawyer’s case? That the women in the Johnston family are a bit off? I’ve never shot anyone. Yet, I mean.” Another theatrical laugh without any mirth behind it.

  “He thinks there is a certain lack of control, an impulsiveness.” Liddibelle was truly distressed. Jerene was exacting a price by making her say these things. Liddie closed her eyes and whispered, “September third, 1966.”

  Kate had had just about enough of this small, vicious, cowardly woman and her shakedown attempt. “Mrs. Baylor,” she began—

  “Kate.” Jerene sensed what was coming and stopped her. Then she announced: “I had a child out of wedlock. Given away for adoption back in the sixties.”

  Kate was now speechless.

  There was a knock at the door. Miss Maylee and the tea service.

  “Your generation had abortion as an option,” Jerene followed up, “and we didn’t as a rule, though my mother had found a woman in South Carolina who did those things. I insisted instead on a private, anonymous country house in Asheboro where a young woman could finish out her pregnancy and they would take the child to the Children’s Home. Lots of white girls from Charlotte went there. I was not being heroic having the baby, or particularly moral. It’s just that I had heard of another girl in another sorority who had a private abortion from a man somewhere down east and who bled to death a few days later. I was too scared for it, so I hid out in Asheboro. Dillard was with me.”

  Another knock at the door.

  Kate said, “I’m so sorry, Jerene.”

  “Why on earth should you be sorry? I paid a very small price for what could have been a ruinous mistake. The child was put into a proper home, we all got on with our lives. Kate, if you would be so kind to bring in the tea?”

  Kate unsurely got to her feet. Fertile bunch, the Jarvis-Johnston clan, Kate found herself thinking. Jerilyn’s abortion that she announced at Christmas Dinner, Annie’s abortion (well, if she didn’t make it up for show). Aunt Dillard, who had to marry a ne’er-do-well husband and delay her college graduation when she had become pregnant from a single post-cotillion tryst.

  And Kate thought about her own quickly ended pregnancy at sixteen, how she was taken to the clinic by her censorious aunt. Bo suggested this trauma had made her swear off ever having children. He knew her preference when he married her—she was not interested in childbearing—and yet he had been hinting again about them possibly having children. Another reason to get out of town for a while. Do the Lord’s work in Honduras rather than one’s wifely duty in Charlotte. But is it really the Lord’s work, that familiar voice inside asked, a voice she had never been able to get rid of or silence and she had come to think of as God, if the true purpose of your performing charity is running from your husband and the issues of your marriage? Kate pinched the bridge of her nose, before taking a breath and then opening the conference room door.

 
“So sorry to bother you,” said Miss Maylee, tremulously. “Here’s the tea.”

  Kate remembered there having been a tea trolley that the tea things were rolled in on, but to her horror Miss Maylee was holding—had been standing there for some time holding—a silver tray with three cups, bowls of different sweeteners, a small ewer of cream, and a heavy silver teapot. “Oh my, Miss Maylee … no, let me…” Kate took over the tea tray a handle at a time. It was heavy for Kate to lift! “You are stronger than you look, ma’am.”

  “Just habituated to that ol’ tray. That tray has been here long as I have.”

  “Well, you’re both indestructible.”

  Miss Maylee smiled and went back to wherever it was she worked. Did they give the docents an office? Kate with difficulty turned and tried to sideways push back the stiff door which was adjusted to swing shut automatically when open. She brought in the tea things and set them down on the table. But … now Liddibelle was standing, gathering her things. Jerene now stood, too.

  “I cannot find the words to tell you, Jerene…”

  “I know but, darling, you had no way of knowing.”