Blanche Among the Talented Tenth (Blanche White series Book 2)

by Barbara Neely

  “I heard love was supposed to have something to do with it.” Blanche teased.

  But Mattie responded seriously: “Yes, there is every once in a great, great while, love that is real and lasting but that is so rare as to be very nearly holy.”

  I wonder who he was, Blanche thought.

  “But don’t confuse love with hormones, or a nesting instinct.” Mattie went on. “Be clear-eyed. That’s the important thing. Be in charge of yourself. Know what you’re doing and why. Don’t be fooled. And don’t expect love with a capital L. It is, as I said, too rare.”

  Carol laughed. “I think you’ve generalized your particulars, darling.”

  Mattie waved her hand dismissively. “Blanche White, this is Carol Garrett, our resident city slicker.” She turned to Carol. “Blanche is mother to the children staying with the Crowleys.”

  Carol leaned across the table and held out her hand. Her dark, almond-shaped eyes scanned Blanche’s face with interest. “Pleased to meet you, Blanche.”

  Blanche responded in kind and tried to remember how she’d imagined the woman she’d heard talking on the beach would look from the front. She’d pictured someone with sharper features and a cooler gaze, a tighter mouth, not this soft, round, almost plump face with its large, sad eyes. Carol looked like the kind of woman older men called, “Baby-doll.” Not for any childishness on the woman’s part, but for her cuddly looks. And there was no childishness about this woman. There was a weariness around her eyes, a set to her mouth that was somehow opposite to her prettiness.

  “Where is that man of yours?” Mattie directed her question at Carol, then winked at Blanche. “You’ve been in here almost five minutes and there’s no sign of him.”

  Blanche wondered what accounted for the sharp intake of breath and two beats of silence before Carol spoke.

  “We’re not exactly joined at the hip, you know.” Carol tapped Mattie on the arm. “And who are you to talk? You’d have your dear godson in your face every minute of the day, if you could. Unfortunately for you, he’s taking a nap.”

  Mattie nearly preened when Carol mentioned that Hank was her godson, then went serious. “A nap? He’s not still brooding is he? I told him it’s normal to be unhappy sometimes, even though we have no reason to be. You young people think life is supposed to be a perpetual lark. It’s not as though he’s ill. All that depression nonsense is behind him. He mustn’t indulge himself.”

  Carol’s shoulders rose slightly, and she tightened her lips in a way that said she didn’t agree with Mattie but she didn’t say so.

  “Do you have a doting spouse, Blanche?” Mattie’s curiosity gave her eyes a hungry look.

  “Nope. What about you?”

  “Oh, I’m too old for that! I should have been too young for it, as well. But that’s done. Still, I’ve been lucky. I’ve been on my own now since I was fifty-seven. Twenty-two sweet, single years.” She tapped her walking stick on the floor in time to each of her last four words.

  Carol laughed. “Mattie! Blanche will think you were married to some battering bore. Your life with Carlton Syms was full of travel and meeting interesting people, and…”

  Mattie interrupted her. “And raising two sons who are now much prouder of their Caucasian heritage than they are of anything else. And being the wife of the great professor.” Mattie’s voice grew heavy as she went on. “And enjoying the protection of a wealthy white husband in a world where most women who looked like me might as well had bull’s-eyes on their foreheads they were so endangered.” She looked directly at Blanche: “Although, not as endangered as some. I was only in danger from myself. For thirty-five years, that’s what I was, first and foremost, a danger to myself.”

  The bitterness in Mattie’s voice struck both her listeners dumb.

  Carol rattled the ice in her glass before she spoke. “Well, you’ve certainly made up for lost time.”

  Blanche knew from the way Carol stressed the word “you” that she was thinking more about her own life than Mattie’s. There was admiration and some envy in Carol’s tone. The term “School of Hard Knocks” leapt to Blanche’s mind.

  Glenda approached them. She had a book in her hand. “Ms. Harris, I know it’s an imposition, but I wonder if you would…that is, I don’t want to be a nuisance…” Glenda spoke all in a rush as if she were afraid she’d lose courage.

  Mattie held out her hand. Glenda laid the book on Mattie’s outstretched palm. A plain-white cover with a crossed spear and shield stamped on it, overlaid with sharp black letters: Woman as Warrior by Mattie Harris. Blanche remembered where she’d seen Mattie’s name before. It was in either Ms. or Sojourner, or some other women’s newspaper or magazine that she always leafed through when she worked for Kathellen McInnis. There’d been an article about Mattie. Dr. Mattie, as Blanche recalled. It had said that both her early and current artworks and her writings on education and women from the twenties through the forties were being rediscovered by art lovers and feminists, especially black ones. The article described Mattie as one of the foremost visionary feminist writers. Even before Blanche had remembered the article, she was already impressed by Mattie—a black woman of her age with her Diva-ness was bound to be interesting to a woman moving rapidly toward her own senior years. Now Blanche looked at Mattie with even more interest. She was eager to learn more about this woman. From the frank way that Mattie spoke about her life, Blanche was confident that she’d learn a lot more in the ten days she'd be here. Her stay at Amber Cove was definitely looking up.

  When Mattie went off to the bathroom, Blanche turned to Carol.

  “You and Mattie seem very close.”

  “Do we? I suppose we are in a way. Like bricks held together by the same mortar.”

  “You mean Hank?”

  “Ummhumm.” Believe me, without him, I’d be nothing as far as Mattie is concerned. Sometimes I think she likes me better because I can’t have kids so she doesn’t have to share Hank with any serious rivals.”

  Blanche covered her surprise with a sip from her glass. These folks didn’t play around when it came to plain-speaking about each other, alive or dead.

  “Of course, getting Hank away from Mattie would be no mean feat,” Carol added, as if to cushion her previous comment. “And it’s not just Mattie, most of the people here wouldn’t acknowledge my existence if I wasn’t connected to Hank. No poor unknown daughter of South Carolina sharecroppers could achieve real insider status at dear old Amber Cove.”

  “I don’t see sharecropper written on you nowhere.” Blanche told her.

  The pleasure in Carol’s eye was balanced by the wry twist of her mouth. “Oh, I can play Miss Got-it-all as well as the next one. I’ve worked…I’ve known a lot of insider types, powerful types. You learn the moves.”

  Blanche nodded her agreement. She and Carol were similar in this. She had learned the manners, dress, and forks of the rich from serving their dinners and cleaning their silver. Mattie was back before Blanche could ask Carol where a sharecroppers’ daughter who wasn’t in service acquired such skills. Blanche felt sure Carol wouldn’t want to be asked in front of Mattie.

  Other people had wandered into the bar while Mattie was away: A woman thin enough to slip under a closed door entered followed by the dark, brown-skinned man Blanche had seen reading the newspaper on the lawn. A young man stood at the bar with a beer in his hand. Next to him, a slim man stood facing a tawny, shapely woman with shoulder-length hair. She wore a tight creamy sheath. Her eyes were elaborately made up and gold bracelets clinked with her every move. She sat wide-legged, the man’s hand was on her thigh. The jogging couple strolled in. They ordered orange juice and took it out on the terrace. A middle-aged couple in tennis whites so sparkling and keenly pressed they could not have been on the courts came in after the jogging couple went out. As more people gathered, there was a tension in the air that Blanche associated with her earl
ier sense that something unusual had happened here. She watched people mill, speak, split off, and regroup. Their faces wore expressions on the somber side. There was a good bit of head shaking. Another couple entered the bar. They looked ready for a night at the clubs—he in a gray sharkskin suit, she in a purple silk minidress. They were hardly in the door before the woman spoke.

  “Well, I for one am not going to shed a tear for the evil bitch. It’s just too bad somebody didn’t get the satisfaction of killing her.”

  “Baby, please. Keep your voice down.” Her companion tried to lead her toward a table, but the woman was still having her say. “Bunch of hypocrites!” She looked around the room. “I heard ya’ll talking about her!” The woman’s companion actually pulled her toward a table and pushed her onto a chair from which she glowered around the room.

  “What’s that all about?” Blanche asked Mattie, who fiddled with the head of her walking stick before she answered.

  “Faith Brown. She and Al J.’s cottage is the last one beyond that wing of the Inn.” Mattie gestured in the direction of the wing where Blanche was staying.

  “So what's got Faith's nose out of joint?” Blanche wanted to know.

  “No, she’s not Faith. Faith is the person she’s talking about. She managed to electrocute herself in her bathtub last night.”

  “Last night? Here? How?” Blanche couldn’t help but flick a look at Carol who was so still she might have been holding her breath.

  “Dropped her radio in the tub while taking a bath. Rather odd way to die in this day and age, don’t you think?” Mattie picked up her glass and sipped. “On the other hand, a nasty shock seems an especially appropriate death for Faith.”

  Mattie didn’t elaborate. Carol’s face was as closed as a triple-locked door. Mattie went on talking:

  “I remember Faith when she was child. Her family is one of the founding members of this place, you know. I don’t think she was ever a nice person, even though her parents were perfectly decent, as I recall. Could she have been born a bitch, do you think?”

  Blanche’s face must have registered her surprise. Mattie gave her an amused look. She leaned over and patted Blanche’s arm.

  “I am old, my dear, but I am not nice. The closer I get to death, the more convinced I become that there’s no more sense in respecting the undeserving dead than there is in honoring the undeserving living. Still, there are the deserving living to consider. Poor Al J.” she added after a few moments.

  “Any children?” Blanche asked.

  “That was a part of the problem. She wanted children, or rather sons, desperately. She had at least three miscarriages. Considering the kind of influence she was likely to have on a child, it’s just as well she couldn’t manage it.” Mattie finished her drink.

  “Did they both summer here as children?”

  Mattie laughed. “If only, my dear! There wouldn’t have been such a flap if Al J. had been one of this set. No. Faith’s mother almost had apoplexy when Faith bought her new beau up for the weekend. I remember it like yesterday, one of the advantages of advanced age.

  “‘Black, poor, and uneducated,’ is how Faith’s mother described him. Al J. was a widowed postal worker with two kids and still going to night school trying to get an undergraduate degree at nearly forty. At the same time, I’m sure both Faith’s parents were delighted to have someone take her off their hands. As I said, she was always mean-spirited. It’s hard to understand what Al J. saw in her. Of course, there’s love, I suppose.”

  The two waitresses setting tables in the dining room were like a signal for the guests to begin drifting away to prepare for the evening. Mattie announced that she wanted a hot soak before dinner, and the three women rose and left by the sliding door to the terrace. Blanche felt a change in the air around Mattie and Carol that she thought was due to the man walking across the terrace toward them.

  He was tall and slim in a rounded kind of way. His skin was milk with a dollop of coffee, instead of the other way around. He was muscular without being gross with long, elegant hands and blue-green eyes. His medium brown hair had just a hint of a wave. There was a dusting of gray, like the first snowflakes, at his temples. Damn! Blanche thought, he probably gets damp panties in the mail. She realized he was watching her watching him. She didn’t look away.

  “Hello Mattie, Carol.” He spoke to them but continued to look at Blanche. Both women jumped as though they’d been goosed and almost in unison said, “Stu! How are you?” in overly friendly voices.

  “Hello,” he said to Blanche and held out his hand. “Robert Stuart,” he said, not waiting for Mattie or Carol to introduce her. “Call me, Stu.” He had a voice like honey and a smile that wrapped itself around her like silk.

  Blanche took his hand and told him her name. The difference between what she was called and how she looked didn’t seem to faze him. Blanche smiled up at him. While his pretty boy face wasn’t all that interesting to her, he did have other physical attributes she liked—big hands with long, graceful fingers and the kind of lean hips that promised one of those pert, kissable behinds.

  “This your first time at Amber Cove?” He looked as if whatever she said would be important to him.

  Both Mattie and Carol expressed the need to hurry off and left Blanche wondering if there was something about this man that made them want to run.

  Blanche began walking toward the terrace stairs. “First time in Maine,” she told him.

  Stu walked down the stairs beside her. “Are you enjoying it?”

  Blanche wasn’t sure she was, but she nodded in the affirmative. She was thrown off by the look he gave her. She hadn’t expected to be cruised.

  “And your husband? Is he enjoying it, too?”

  Not subtle, but to the point. She liked that. “I don’t have a husband.”

  His smile left no question as to how he felt about her answer. “I don’t either,” he said. “Have a wife, I mean.”

  Blanche stopped at the foot of the terrace stairs. “I thought you were headed inside.”

  “Was I? I guess I was. Just to see old Arthur. He’ll keep.” He continued to give her that soft-eyed smile. “Well,” he held out his hand once more. “I hope to see you again very soon, Blanche.” He trapped her hand between his large, warm palms. “Like at the dance tonight? I hope you’re planning to come.”

  Blanche reclaimed her hand. “What dance?”

  “You mean no one’s told you about the famous Amber Cove Saturday night dance beneath the stars? The highlight of the month. Everyone comes. Live music, too. And right here on this very terrace.”

  Was he doing something with his eyes or did he look at everyone as though their face was something special to see?

  “I hope you’ll come, Blanche. I hope you’ll save me a dance, or two, or three.”

  “Well, I may just do that. But how many dances you can claim will depend.”

  “On what.”

  “How well you dance.” She shot him a quick smile before she turned and walked toward her end of the Inn. She could feel him watching her and waved to him without turning around. He laughed. She smiled over her shoulder. He had the same golden glow white folks risk skin cancer to get. A dance.

  She’d never forgotten those dances in her teens. The girls went in groups, assuming there’d be boys available for them to dance with. Being the blackest had usually meant being the last on the dance floor, rarely for a slow dance, and never with anyone who looked like Stu. In the sixties, women who looked like her were status symbols draped on revolutionary black arms like a piece of kente cloth. But over the years, she'd mostly seen black couples of the same color or darker men with lighter women. But tonight there'd be at least one person eager to dance with her. She was surprised at how happy that made her.

  Instead of going to her door, she walked around the end of the wing and looked across the grass to
the three cottages nestled among the trees. The cottages were spread out and angled for maximum privacy. They looked alike, except for the different colored doors: one blue, one green, one yellow. They had identical deep, covered porches, each with a pair of Adirondack chairs the same color as the the front door. The windows were open in the cottage with the yellow door. Was that something by Miles she heard coming from it? The windows in the green-doored cottage were shuttered. The cottage with the blue door was dark, its windows closed. There was a man approaching it. He wasn’t one of the guests she’d seen before, but she was sure he was a guest. He looked quickly round, but didn’t see Blanche. He tried the door. It didn’t open. He went to one of the windows that opened onto the porch, but didn’t touch it. It could be his cottage, she thought, but she doubted it. He acted like a man visiting somebody else’s wife. Maybe he was. She watched until he went around toward the back of the cottage. She didn’t wait to see if he came back.

  While she showered and changed, her mind slipped among the questions that flowed from her afternoon:

  Wasn’t there something funny about the Inn holding a dance the night after the death of somebody whose family had owned a piece of the place forever? Maybe it was a way of pretending death away; maybe it was a way of acknowledging that life goes on. Or maybe it was like Miz Cooper who’d lived across the street from Ardell. Miz Cooper was a sweet, quiet, God-fearing, obedient little wife. Mr. Cooper was a real tyrant. He tried to stop the neighborhood children from walking on his pavement. He’d let the air out of people’s tires if they parked too long in front of his door. When Mr. Cooper died, Miz Cooper came to the funeral in a red dress and a big straw hat to match. Some people claimed they’d heard her whisper, “I’m glad you’re dead, you devil, you,” as she leaned over her husband’s corpse. Blanche thought she’d said it all with that dress. Maybe the dance was a similar message to Faith.