Under Magnolia : A Southern Memoir (9780307885937)

by Mayes, Frances

  A week there and I make a call and catch the next bus, then train, to visit Oliver in Birmingham. I wish I were going to visit Rena but she’s married the herpetologist. Oliver, a Princeton boy I’d met on another visit to Rena, picks me up at the station and we drive down to Montevallo, where Rena and her husband have set up house on a shady street near the college where he will begin to teach in the fall. Lizards, snakes, and toads. Looking around at Rena’s tasteful lamps and cups and candlesticks and her mother’s paintings, I feel sad that we never sailed to Piraeus. No more May baskets filled with poems and flowers. No more Beethoven turned up to the max as we painted our nails or sat cross-legged on our beds reading Yeats aloud. As she made coffee in the kitchen, I whispered a little about Paul.

  Oliver and I are both quiet as we drive back to Birmingham to his family pillared home, firmly anchored in a century of southern charm and conservative history. In the pristine guest room that night, I hear handsome Oliver cough across the hall in his room decorated with lacrosse gear and model airplanes. He always seems to be congested. His mother has a library of leather books and reigns as the perfect mother and the consummate hostess. Willowy and slim, she stares at me with a slight bird-of-prey look. The father seems like most fathers—a remote figure, gracious but quick to hide behind the newspaper. This was my preferred trajectory according to Frankye: Houdini escape from Fitzgerald with a city boy from a good family. Junior League, a beach house, country club lunches and dinners ad infinitum, some “nice” church, not Baptist.

  In a fetal curl, I relive my early and certain love for David, now lost, and my passionate connection with Paul, who is presumably proceeding down the primrose path with the New Orleans girlfriend. Then there’s smart, funny, liberal Gary, and Joseph from Miami, a big crush who resists me because I’m not Jewish, and several others whose romantic overtures keep me bound to the quest for the jolt that arrives with love. I want ardent notes, wildflower bouquets left wedged inside the doorknob, poetry books wrapped in tissue, first kisses, the lips at my ear, the soft words, the moment of being, dance cards with tassels, midnight walks through old neighborhoods, laughter reaching up to the moon in the palms. Oliver and I, earlier, were lying in the grass kissing, kissing. For a moment I pretended that he was Paul but then I felt with my tongue his front teeth, one slightly crossing over the other. I turned away and nuzzled my face into his neck. A thread snapped. There, it’s happened again. Even in the short run, he’s not going to work for me.

  I kick off the bedspread and bicycle in the air, my legs white scissors cutting the dark. I have been gone all summer. Time to go home.

  With Rena married, I moved into the Chi Omega house on Panhellenic Drive, all graceful old brick with wrought iron porches framed by long skeins of moss. Romantic, but a poor second to the Hellenic Destiny sailing for Greece. After Frankye asked them, my older sister and her husband offered to pay my fees (not easy for them with three small children). The Trust Company of Georgia, Daddy Jack’s executor, refuses to allow her any money, despite the wording in the will that funds can be withdrawn from the corpus for “comfort, maintenance, and support.” Every time I hear the word “corpus,” I imagine Daddy Jack’s rotund body in his casket, wormy and oozing. “Three years of college is more than sufficient for a young woman,” the prim executor told her. Now Frankye becomes determined that I will finish college. When I revisit my impulse to work for TWA and travel, she throws a fit and starts one of her filibusters: “You are not going to end up in some dead-end or be like the dead-end Mayes family or live in death-in-life Fitzgerald or marry some dead-ignorant pilot or crash dead into the ocean—over my dead body.”

  Frankye spirals ever downward. What ever will lift her up? Red veins shoot through her blue-blue eyes. Her own sister Mary is so angry she barely speaks to her. She was always spoiled rotten. My sisters take her to their houses but all the encouragement goes nowhere. How to hold onto a falling star? Until now, Frankye could rally for visits from Mary or my sisters—camellias floating in a glass bowl, oyster stew, pound cake, new magazines on the coffee table, as if she cared what anyone in Harper’s Bazaar wore to a benefit ball a thousand miles away from our little house in the pine barrens. Daddy long gone, Willie Bell gone, Daddy Jack gone, me gone to college: the shaky scaffolding has collapsed upon itself. Rising after ten, she skips coffee and goes straight to her tumbler. If I peek into her room, she’s lying on her side looking out the window, frozen and silent. “Hey, Frankye, let’s ride over and see Grace. She said to come pick some zinnias. Or Gladys. She’s always fun.” I stand in the doorway, half-hoping for her to jump up and say, “Let’s go!” No answer. I would like to grab her ankles and pull her out of bed. I would like to shout Get up this minute. “Wonder if Mr. Bernhardt got in some corn today?” Finally, I back out and go to my books.

  At times she waxes the kitchen floor at three in the morning or polishes all the silver. I try talking sense for the thousandth time. “There’s AA in Macon. We could stay overnight. You could live with your cousin and go to meetings.”

  She sneers. “That’s for bums and derelicts and hobos.”

  “Hobos? There are no hobos anymore. You are just alien. Do it for us! Your life is a blur.” I’m shouting.

  “Do what for you? I do everything for you. If it were not for you, I would not be in this two-bit place, and besides I don’t have to drink anything; I can stop anytime I please.” She’s always slyly shifting the blame for her drinking onto me but I know in some sure place that I am not the cause, and neither is the two-bit place. Other people live vivid and valid lives here. I could stay if David and I had not canceled our love.

  When she says, “I’m the best friend you’ll ever have,” I think I’d hate to see the worst. When she says, “I’m the only one who loves you,” I talk back.

  “That’s what you think. Lots of people love me.” My ephemeral romances slide across my mind and out. Am I worthy of anyone’s love? “If you loved anybody, you wouldn’t drink—what do you even mean by ‘love’? Love! Damn, Frankye, you’re committing slow suicide.” My throat feels like a swarm of bees. I won’t, won’t cry.

  “You have no idea what you’re talking about. Don’t cry for me; cry for yourself. You think you’re so smart, but you’re going nowhere fast.”

  “I’m going somewhere fast and that’s out of here.” I slam my door and crawl under the covers. Adrenaline feels like liquid hate coursing through my body. I am so angry that I think I could black out or go into a seizure. I’m appalled that I said “slow suicide.” I’ve named it. The aftershock of that keeps shaking me.

  An hour later, she pushes open the door and brings in a tray with Coca-Cola and warm brownies. “I thought you might be hungry. A slice of lemon in your Coke, just the way you like it. Brownies, your favorite.” I bite into one. She has forgotten to add the sugar.

  Fall, my senior year, and I must move back into communal living. My new roommate, Saralyn, and I share a corner room in the sorority house, perfect for stepping out onto the balcony for fraternity serenades when one of our sisters gets pinned. I’m on foot again. Frankye capriciously gave Daddy Jack’s Oldsmobile to the yardman. A double blow—loss of the sunny apartment and of my wheels. I return to school with new determination to step closer to maturity. What will I be? Well, what else in the world is as riveting and important as writing? Since I first turned the pages of Dick and Jane, I wanted to write books. I will prepare myself to by analyzing the structures of books—outline enough plots and surely I will know how to do it—and I will keep my ideas in notebooks. What will I write about? Ezra Pound became famous with a single image: petals on a wet black bough. This was supposed to be equivalent to faces at the metro, but I just liked the fragile flowers and the contrast to the slick, stark branch. Since I love imagery, I will practice writing as though I were painting, as if my words could re-create a single glimpse of a panel of sunlight on the grass, the flash of a fish, antique gold in the murky pond, the first scent of wet lilacs, and
then the underscent of ashes and rain. The blank leather book Rena gave me is where I will begin. I fill my pen with lavender ink.

  Joseph, my big crush from last year, finally asks me out for the Florida State weekend. We stop in front of the sorority house a few minutes before curfew and sit in his car talking. The next day a committee of three takes me aside and informs me that Chi Os don’t date the Jewish boys. Of course, they are very nice boys, but just different. I hate to get off on the wrong foot, but I smile and say firmly, “You all, I’m going to date anyone I want to. Wouldn’t you, seriously, go out with him if he ever asked you?” I am not sure they get my little dig, but they never mention it again. During rush week, we cross off girls for the tackiness of their earrings, their hick accents (there’s a sliding scale of southern accents), or simply their not-like-us qualities—too serious, too fat, too loud. A figure like a deflated beach ball. A Fernandina girl I champion is not Chi Omega material. I suspect that if I were going through rush, I would be cut after the first tea: bad attitude.

  Once the pledging ends, a houseful of thirty girls, all Chi Omega material, settle in for the semester: shaving cream fights, three a.m. laughing shrieks in the hall, pajama study groups, chapter meetings with secret rituals, dinner served by fraternity boys, hall phone constantly ringing, communal bathroom steaming with scents of lime shampoo, Chanel No. 5, hair spray, and menstrual blood.

  With no privacy available, I soon discover the library’s music carrels, essentially closets with stereos, that I can sign out by the hour. I love to close the door and write in my notebook while listening to Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde and Bach’s cello suites, which sound like music the heart would write if it could. I’m taking aesthetics, Renaissance lit, Shakespeare tragedies, French, individual work in religion, history of art—an intense schedule I devised to keep myself swamped with work. I will graduate and somehow work in Europe, where I will write novels. I’ll play. I’ll party. But I will not fall for anyone, not even the divine Joseph, whose wit keeps me laughing and whose walk seems smooth and oddly motionless, an animated Egyptian statue. The grader in my Shakespeare class asks me out, saying he’d like to talk about my Lear paper. After two dates, I don’t want to see him again and my A papers are suddenly B papers. I drop Buzz, who has gained fifteen pounds. Even Gary moves on to another girlfriend.

  In late October, I walk into the student union with Saralyn, and she stops to talk to a group of boys playing cards. One of them fans out his royal flush on the table and leans back in his chair. We look at each other and he stands up. “Hey, I’m Frank.” His eyes are Atlantic green with flecks like mica. He’s wearing a white dress shirt with jeans. Cool. I’ve never seen him before but I recognize him immediately.

  I run into him the next night at Gatorland and we dance. He can dance! The way he holds his head back and tilted as he looks down at me reminds me of my father. His eyes are like David’s. He’s tensile and lithe. He seems like the boy I would want to be if I were a boy. Does this explain the familiarity I feel as we dance to “Unchained Melody”? The melody builds slowly, inevitably, rising like warm bread dough in a bowl. I-I-I neeeed your love … At the high trembling, heart-cracking neeed, Frank tightens his arms, pulling me closer. I’ll be coming home, wait for me. Next, the jukebox plays Ray Charles singing “Georgia on My Mind.” He whispers in my ear, “Hey, Georgia.” The road leads back to you. Right then I thought, I’d dance with him for the rest of my life.

  Letter to Rena:

  Rena, Rena—

  My favorite kind of moon is tonight and Frank is tonight. Cool is tonight and I am content for the moment with two hours of my own, then a big red sweater, beer in front of a fireplace, and Mike in the background playing the piano.

  It is different from the U. of F. of last year—like transferring again. Frank and I continue. Yesterday marked a month gone by. We have a riotous time together, we are enormously attracted to each other, we are alike in ways which will probably prove fatal (independent), and we still pretend to be playing the cool game although it has outgrown its purpose.

  I miss you so much but I am glad you are not here. You were through with all this. I wasn’t but I will be when I leave. I am glad for this year.

  Oh, next day. I am sitting under the dryer. Frank and I are going to the SAE house for lunch, then to a circus with a group. Tonight is a party at Bob’s apartment, The

  Bad Pad.

  Tra la la la la.

  Normal girl. Later in the year, I write to Rena:

  Rena dearie,

  Astronomy and Folklore finals today. Both were arduous struggles. But: fini! As are French, forever amen, and Romantic Poetry. Two left: Great Books Friday and History Saturday.

  Mother came by today on her way home. I was completely surprised. She had a little trouble finding me, went in the A∆Π house, missed the turn twice. She was with another lady who was sort of dizzy too. Hope they found their way to Fitz. She still hasn’t met my true love. He had a test today. I haven’t told my family yet, but Frank and I have decided, or rather Frank has asked me to marry him. It will be at midnight sometime in late, late summer. He has told his parents. They are agreeable. We have made no further plans. We are in love and it is new every day. We are the same and different. I can’t imagine being without him and I am sure that if I were I would die of the Hopkins malady quietly without another word.

  There was a full rainbow in the sky this afternoon with another one above it.…

  From one who is writing exams in water …

  Rena and I often had laughed over Gerard Manley Hopkins’s description of nuns as dying of ingrown virginity.

  Frank and I meet each other’s family over spring break, spending Easter at his house in Pensacola, where we walk the sublime Gulf beaches, so undeveloped and serene, and buy a bucket of shrimp from the dock. I love the history of the town and the exotic street names: Zaragoza, Miramar, Salamanca, Palafox. I don’t warm to his parents. His grumpy father props in his armchair smoking. Because of my rigorous training, I know a tyrant when I meet one. His mother waits on him like a servant. She’s gracious and welcoming to me and I know Frank spent his high school years helping her peel and chop on Saturdays, while they listened to opera together in the kitchen. Sometimes one image can stand for a whole relationship and I take that as who they are together. Frankye always has advised, “Marry an orphan,” but that is not going to happen.

  Whatever they are, the visit is fun. We picnic at the Civil War fort among the wildflowers and I read Yeats aloud and Frank shows me his old schools and friends’ houses. Voltage runs between us, the exhilarating feeling I always have when I fall in love, but this time there is a calm, certain center. With others, I always snagged on “but.” But he has a girlfriend, but he’s going to live a stodgy life, but he’s not that smart … Now, we walk into a clearing, two would-be adventurers. A future to invent.

  As it has to be, traveling to Fitz is fraught. I forewarn, but nothing prepares Frank for the moment when he asks Frankye for my hand in marriage. He sits down with her in the living room. “Frances and I, as you know, want to marry. I surely would like your blessing.”

  Without a pause, she replies, “That is the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard of.”

  “Boy,” he says later, “how did you survive all this?” I introduce him to some of my friends, then we visit the church where the ceremony will take place. Late in the afternoon, we walk over to see The House. Hazel has restored it on the outside. Inside it’s still burned. Peering in we see her charred piano, blistered walls, and the staircase sagging along the wall. Flowers line the front walkway. The brass door knocker gleams as though polished this morning. I’m relieved that he still loves me after we return to school.

  I finish the year with a hideous case of poison ivy. Frank and I usually meet in class gaps and walk down to a sinkhole pond to talk and watch a granddaddy gator on the other side snapping at insects. We sit in lush weeds. The poison ivy starts on my inside arm, just w
here I had it when I was in my sister Nancy’s wedding at age thirteen. Then, Daddy was busy dying, my sister about to move to French Morocco, my mother dancing on the head of a pin. I lather myself in chamomile lotion. The poison turns systemic. Soon it spreads to my face, which looks like the surface of the moon, then to my legs and arms—an advanced stage of jungle rot. I am allergic to chamomile. The doctors become alarmed at my listlessness and start me on steroid shots. Gary gives me a bell to ring, like a medieval leper. I stay in my room, reading Candide and swabbing myself with baking soda and water. In some odd way I cannot understand, the poison ivy eruption seems as though it comes from my fear of school ending and of making an enormous decision. My life has sped up, hurling me along toward the unknown. Should I stop it? Go home and try to force Frankye … I take long showers. The hot water on my live skin produces exquisite pleasure/pain. You do have to cast your bread upon the waters, yes? I’m not going home.

  Frank sends flowers, via Saralyn, and she looks out for me. While the rash subsides, I have euphoric surges, a reaction to the steroids. With the energy of a ten-year-old, I return to class and write what I consider brilliant papers. They come back marked “I don’t follow you here,” and “This paragraph shows you know something more than the rest of the paper indicates.” My make-up phys ed class is bait casting. We toss slow and elegant casts across a field, with Mr. Philpot shouting encouragement. It’s all in the wrist. On one long and elegant maneuver, my line soars, then as it sinks, the fishhook embeds in Mr. Philpot’s shiny bald head. A friend drives him to emergency, where the silver barb is—painfully—extracted. Graciously, he awards me a B for the class.

  For a six-week session in the summer, I move to a dorm for my last gasp of requirements. Frank has gone home to work by day as a roofer and on weekends as a draftsman in a real estate office. He’s saving for a car. What thrills me most about him is not his handsome face. He’s not just smart, he’s brilliant, though he maintains that he never does more than what’s necessary to make an A. And he’s open to living in Europe, not at all headed for the accepted idea of the future. We talk about living in England. He will be an Oxford don and I will write novels. He’s sailing through a five-year engineering program. Since we must be in Gainesville another year, I line up my first job ever at a clothing shop. I’d applied for a social worker position but my whole family disapproved and, on second thought, I didn’t want to be around more down-and-out problems when my home front was bad enough without further misery.