Summer in the South

by Cathy Holton

  “And now I have these two sons,” Grayson continued, waving her empty glass in the air in front of her, “and they’re as cute as can be. You’ve seen pictures of them?” she asked, and Ava smiled and nodded her head. Dear God, don’t let her take out the photos again.

  “They’re as cute as can be and they’re sweet, quiet boys just like their father, and they don’t have any friends. Well, not very many anyway, not like I did when I was a child. I was very popular.” She looked at Ava. “Were you popular when you were a girl?”

  “Not really.”

  “Oh.” Grayson frowned, as if struggling to understand this. “What was I talking about?”

  “Your sons.”

  “Oh, yes! Do you know how many kids showed up for Caldwell’s birthday?” She put the glass down and held up five fingers. “That’s right,” she said. “Four.”

  Fraser had stopped to say hello to someone he knew and Ava stared at him, willing him to look at her.

  “Four out of ten invites,” Grayson said, sniffing.

  “Well, that’s almost fifty percent,” Ava said bravely. She wasn’t trying to make light of Grayson’s pain. Clotilde had once thrown a surprise party for Ava’s thirteenth birthday for which no one showed up, but it turned out later that Clotilde had put the wrong date on the invitation and everyone showed up a week later. (“Oops!” Clotilde had said, laughing.) So maybe it wasn’t the same thing at all.

  “Hello, girls,” Fraser said. He had come up while Ava had her head down, remembering her dismal thirteenth birthday party. He had toned down the Edgar Allan Poe tonight, wearing a pair of dark slacks and a dark silk shirt opened at the throat to show a simple gold crucifix.

  “Hello, Fraser,” Grayson said brightly, dabbing at her eyes. “Excuse me. I have to run to the little girls’ room.”

  He sat down and they watched Grayson push her way through the crowd. “Trouble in paradise?” he asked, arching one brow.

  “Just girl talk,” Ava said.

  “Well, then you can tell me, silly.”

  “Kids,” she said. “Don’t ever have any.”

  He leaned forward, smiling smugly. “And speaking of spilling the beans.”

  “Were we?”

  “How was lunch with Jake Woodburn?”

  She looked at him uneasily. “How did you know about that?”

  “Honey, the whole town knows about it.”

  She was quiet for a moment, wondering which lunch he was talking about. She decided it had to be the barbecue place. Battle Smoove. She sat back, running her hand through her hair, pulling it forward around her face. “It was just lunch. It wasn’t sex in the afternoon. It wasn’t anything sordid.” Despite her insistence that there was nothing wrong with it, Ava felt her face flushing.

  Fraser, noting her discomfort, grinned and said, “I’m not blaming you. Isn’t he delicious? And so very bad. Who can resist?”

  “What is it exactly that he’s done that makes him such an outcast in this town?”

  “Well.” Fraser crossed his legs and rested his hands on one knee. “He’s kind of a lone wolf, if you know what I mean. He doesn’t mix much with the town, doesn’t go to parties or barbecues, doesn’t date debutantes.”

  “None of that makes him an outcast in my book.”

  “The biggest thing, of course, is that he went up against the Woodburns. You know that old saying you don’t bite the hand that feeds you? Well, Josephine and Fanny paid for him to go to prep school, they paid for his college. He was living in a trailer with his mother on the wrong side of town and when Fanny found out, she went out there and talked to his mother. She insisted that the Woodburns would pay for his education, and they did. And that’s what made it so much worse, later, when he broke up Will and Hadley. He could have had any girl he wanted but he set his sights on Will’s fiancée and that’s what caused the rift.”

  Ava felt a little quiver of alarm. She said, “Jake dated Will’s fiancée?”

  “Well, technically they weren’t engaged yet. That came later. I don’t know if Jake dated her but he certainly slept with her. They were sleeping together while they were at Sewanee. While Will was up at Bard but before he and Hadley got engaged.”

  She remembered Jake’s face the day she asked him if the breach between him and Will was over a girl. “Was it serious?”

  “Between Will and Hadley? Of course it was! They started going together their sophomore year of prep school. He was crazy about her. She wasn’t from around here. Birmingham, I think, or maybe Mobile.”

  “No. Between Jake and Hadley.”

  Fraser waved animatedly at someone he knew. He turned his attention back to Ava. “Who knows?” he said, shrugging. “It’s hard to tell with Jake. Although he must have felt something for her because he dropped out of school and went to California after she and Will got engaged.”

  She was quiet for a moment, wondering what upset her more, the fact that Jake had lied when he said it wasn’t a girl that caused his break with Will, or the fact that he might have been in love with that girl. She supposed she wasn’t really surprised. What was it Darlene Haney had said about him? “We’re risking our reputations just standing here talking to him.” He was obviously the kind of man whom women flocked to against their better judgment.

  “So Will didn’t know about Hadley and Jake when he asked Hadley to marry him?”

  “No. He found out two years later and then he broke off the engagement.”

  “It was a sleazy thing to do,” she said quietly. “But obviously Hadley chose Will over Jake. She got engaged to Will. So maybe Will should have just forgiven everybody and gone on with his life.”

  Fraser fussed with his sleeves. “Will didn’t see it that way, of course. He took it as a personal betrayal. So did Josephine. And you know how those Woodburns are, they can carry a grudge.”

  “So Josephine was fond of Hadley?”

  “I suppose so.”

  “That figures. Southern girl and all that.”

  Fraser grinned and made a dismissive motion with his hand. “Now don’t be jealous. I’ll bet Will hasn’t thought of her in years.”

  “I’m not jealous,” Ava said.

  “You’re as different from Hadley as two girls can be. You’re just plain folks.”

  “Careful.”

  Fraser giggled. “You know what I mean. You’re comfortable. And I mean that in a good way. And Hadley, well, she was just a big ol’ Barbie doll.”

  “Oh, thank you very much.”

  “A cruel-hearted dominatrix in stiletto heels.”

  “It’s time for another Donnie Miller,” Ava said.

  “Who’s a cruel-hearted dominatrix?” Darlene had sneaked up behind them while they were talking.

  “Speak of the devil,” Fraser said.

  She ignored him and turned to Ava, “Hey, are y’all talking about Hadley Marsh? Will’s old fiancée?”

  Ava said, “We are, but I don’t know why.”

  “I’ll tell you anything you want to know,” Darlene said.

  Fraser snorted. “Well, aren’t you sweet?”

  She pointed at his face. “Your mascara’s running.”

  “At least I know not to wear blue shadow with melon lipstick.”

  “It’s not melon, you peckerhead,” Darlene said. “It’s coral.”

  “Who’re you calling a peckerhead?”

  “Hey, if the shoe fits.”

  “Speaking of shoes,” Fraser said, staring at Darlene’s feet. “What size are those boats you’re wearing?”

  Darlene said, “You fucker.”

  Fraser laughed merrily.

  Ava said, “Time to make a liquor run.” The room revolved around her, reflecting the glittering light of the chandelier. She closed her eyes briefly, trying to get her bearings. Jake’s face came suddenly, vividly, into view.

  She put both palms on the table and pushed herself up, and while Fraser and Darlene continued with their argument she stumbled off through the crowd, d
etermined not to think of him again.

  Two Donnie Millers later, Ava spotted Will across the crowded room. He’d been cornered by Darlene. They had their heads close together. Will was looking at the floor and Darlene had her hand cupped around her mouth and was saying something into his ear. He raised his head, staring into Darlene’s face. She shrugged. Then they both turned and looked at Ava.

  She was too drunk to do anything but lift her glass in a kind of hearty salute. Darlene smiled and melted into the crowd. Will stood staring at her with an expression she couldn’t quite decipher and then, as she began to make her way toward him, he, too, turned and walked off.

  They both had too much to drink and after their guests left he fell on her with a ferocity she hadn’t expected. It was so unusual for Will that at first she didn’t know how to respond. She pushed him away. The room was spinning, and she thought she might get sick.

  “Forgive me,” he said. There was a hint of malice in his expression that left Ava disturbed and vaguely repulsed.

  She passed out on one of the downstairs sofas while he went upstairs to sleep.

  But in the morning he seemed composed and aloof. He asked her with exaggerated courtesy how she had slept, and after breakfast, as her car wouldn’t start, drove her back to Woodburn Hall.

  The morning was bright and lovely but he barely said two words to her and she, after a halfhearted attempt at conversation, fell silent, too. They were both embarrassed by their conduct the night before but he was angry with her for some reason, too. That much was clear. It would never be direct confrontation and accusation with Will, she realized now, but always polite and numbing glacial coldness.

  He pulled up in the drive to drop her off but kept the engine running. “Aren’t you coming in?” she said.

  “No.”

  That’s when she realized that Darlene had told him about her lunch with Jake Woodburn.

  Josephine was in the kitchen when she came in. She seemed surprised to see Ava. “You’re home,” she said. “Where’s Will?”

  They both heard his truck in the street, roaring off like some raging mechanical beast.

  “He couldn’t come in,” Ava said. She was suddenly very tired. She had a headache and her stomach hurt. “I’m not feeling well,” she said. “I think I’ll lie down.” She turned and headed for the dining room.

  Behind her Josephine said, “There was a letter for you.”

  It was postmarked from Michigan. Ava’s hand trembled as she took it from Josephine and slid it into her purse. She had taken Jake’s advice and written to Frank Dabrowski two weeks ago, a curt, questioning letter.

  Josephine said, “Can I get you anything?” If she noticed Ava’s agitation over the letter, she gave no sign of it.

  “No. Thank you. I just need to sleep.”

  “Of course,” Josephine said.

  Ava went into her room and shut the door. She took the letter out of her purse and stared at the handwriting. She sank down on the bed and opened the letter. It read:

  I didn’t send birthday cards or Christmas presents because your mother said not to. I didn’t think that was right and I told her so. But your mother thought it was best for me to stay out of your life. I’m sorry she told you I was dead. I should have done more. Maybe if you’d been my true flesh and blood I would have fought harder. I don’t mean that like it sounds.

  Sorry. Frank.

  P.S. It’s ok if you write me back.

  Beneath it he had scribbled a phone number, as if an afterthought.

  1927

  Vanderbilt

  Nashville, Tennessee

  She had only seen him twice before, the first time when he came up to the house to thank Papa for paying his tuition to Vanderbilt, and the second time when he brought her flowers on her sixteenth birthday. It was the summer before she went up to Vanderbilt and she thought, “What cheek, I don’t even know him.” His hair was dark, and glittered with pomade, and his fingers were thick and blunt, not the hands of a gambler, but those of a red-dirt farmer. When he left, Papa said, “Sister, I’m ashamed of you, treating a guest in our home that way.”

  She had heard about him, of course. He was the talk of the whole town, riding around in his Ford jalopy, making all the girls swoon over his resemblance to Rudolph Valentino. Josephine didn’t see it. He was good-looking, of course, there was no denying that, but he knew it. Charm seemed to ooze out of every pore but it was a false charm, and she was surprised Papa had fallen for it. He was usually such a good judge of character. She supposed it had something to do with Charlie Woodburn’s striking resemblance to Old Randal Woodburn, the Patriarch. He had been downtown at his broker’s when Charlie walked by the window, and the shock of seeing that face had caused Papa’s heart to flutter. He went out into the street and called to the boy, and discovered that he was Lyman Woodburn’s son, one of Old Randal’s Black Woodburn progeny. He had been taken to New Orleans by his mother as a boy and raised there, and had only just recently returned to his “Pater’s stomping grounds,” as he put it. All this Papa told them one evening at supper while Josephine sat curling her top lip and Celia played with her food and Fanny secretly fed Tom Penny tidbits from her plate. It was the fourth or fifth Tom Penny they’d raised; Fanny seemed to lack imagination when it came to naming cats.

  “I hear he’s a gambler and a drunkard,” Josephine said. She flushed under her father’s steady gaze.

  “There’s some that have not had your privileges, Sister.”

  There was something personal in his defense of Charlie Woodburn, Josephine realized later. Papa was, after all, the last of the legitimate male Woodburns; all the male cousins had different surnames now, and although that might not have mattered to some, it obviously mattered to Papa. It was a year of great floods and cataclysmic events, so Josephine should have been prepared for a world turned suddenly upside down. Still, she was surprised to learn later that he had taken Charlie under his wing, had seen to it that the boy was introduced around town, made sure he had decent and respectable lodgings. And he had taken a fatherly interest in the boy’s education, too, writing a letter to Chancellor Kirkland at Vanderbilt offering to pay Charlie’s tuition.

  When Charlie came to the house to thank Papa, his manners were oily and obsequious, and Josephine was surprised Papa didn’t see this. Charlie had the hungry, ambitious look of a man who aims to climb high, and when he glanced at Josephine, she let her eyes rest on him a little longer, as if to say, “I see you for who you are even if they don’t,” and she was rewarded by a faint creep of color along his brow.

  When he brought her flowers on her sixteenth birthday, she took them with an abrupt “Thank you,” and spent the entire evening not giving him so much as a glance, yawning and excusing herself halfway through the story of his childhood in New Orleans.

  Later, she heard the heavy tread of Papa’s footsteps on the stairs, and when he left after scolding her, she lay in the big mahogany bed watching the moon climb the June sky, determined that should she run into Charlie Woodburn at Vanderbilt, she would cut him dead.

  Josephine was attractive, although overly tall, and as a good many of the freshman class at Vanderbilt had been her classmates at Mr. Webb’s school, she was never at a loss for partners at dances and cotillions. She was known to have a rather dry, sarcastic wit, and was the antithesis of the wild “flapper” but nevertheless was considered a “jolly girl” and a “good sport.” She bobbed her hair and smoked Coronas and, as it was still Prohibition, carried around the requisite “Teddy Bear” with its hollow metal stomach filled with gin.

  Vanderbilt, in those days, boasted a social calendar nearly as strenuous as its academic calendar. Josephine was a good student and she took her studies seriously but she also enjoyed the club sporting events and the dances and the house parties. Booze was illegal, but they had no trouble getting it, frequenting a Smoky Row bootlegger who went by the incongruous name of Tiny Hammer.

  In March of her freshman year, she was on
e of a select group invited to take the annual pilgrimage to Mammoth Cave, Kentucky. They would take the train from Nashville to Glasgow, Kentucky, and then the Mammoth Cave Special to the Cave Inn, where they had rented several suites. The following day they’d spend touring the cave with its many resplendent rooms and its memorial to Vanderbilt before spending the evening dancing at the Mammoth Cave Ball in the hotel’s mezzanine ballroom. Josephine had been hearing about the annual pilgrimage ever since she first beg an at the Webb School, and she had looked forward to this event almost as much as she’d looked forward to Vanderbilt itself.

  She’d only run into Charlie Woodburn a few times; he’d obviously been keeping a low profile, which was a good thing, as no one liked a threadbare social climber, even one with the illustrious name of Woodburn. On the bright morning she left for Mammoth Cave, she had just climbed aboard the train and settled herself in her seat when she heard the opening blasts of a jazz tune and, turning, she saw Charlie Woodburn a few rows back with a clarinet to his lips. He was sitting in the back surrounded by Ben Clement, Miles Crockett, and Jeff Bemis, who were all clapping and thumping him on the shoulders and it occurred to Josephine that Charlie was more intelligent than she’d given him credit for being. He hadn’t been lying low at all; he’d been slowly, gradually insinuating himself into her social set. He played “Birmingham Bertha” and “Blues My Naughty Sweetie Gives to Me” and “Let’s Sow a Wild Oat” until the conductor came back and told him to stop.

  Later, on his way to the dining car, he winked at Josephine and said, “Hi, Toots,” and this time it was Josephine who felt her face flush.

  Lenora Donelson leaned over and said breathlessly, “Isn’t that your cousin?”

  Josephine opened her compact and began to powder her nose. “Not really,” she said.