She shook back her curls and spoke so easy and sure I almost gasped. “Felix, she was utterly fascinating!” Hadn’t she listened to a word I said? She stepped up beside Father. “Look at this.” She opened her notebook, and he bent close to read over her shoulder. “Her mother was the surgeon. Can that possibly be true?” She lifted her big brown eyes to his, and he nodded. “The woman deserved a medal. Mrs. Lacey said she tried to manufacture her own anesthetics, from a recipe she got from some old Indian, but Mrs. Lacey said it didn’t work too well, no better than whiskey, so she made that, too.” She chattered on and on, not caring a bit if my mother was beautiful and my father was still in love with her. I hadn’t turned her at all. Father didn’t help, either. He didn’t look like he was pining for anyone; he looked interested, maybe even fascinated. For a moment I was angry at him for not being tragic and heartbroken, the way he was in my lie. But that was silly. Father was fine. It was Miss Beck who was terrible and heartless.
Sol was waiting outside Sprague’s Palladium as Jottie approached. “It is Andy Hardy,” he called when she was a few steps away, and he pulled a silver flask halfway out of his coat pocket.
She laughed. “George should set up a stand out here.”
Smiling, he reached to take her arm, but she veered away. Didn’t he have any sense? Her eyes circled the sidewalk. No one was watching. Stop that, she told herself. Stop cringing. Just a pair of old friends going to the show, that’s all it looks like. That’s all it is. She tried to attend. Sol was speaking: “I almost called—you know, to see if you wanted to change, but then I thought Felix might—”
“Felix is out.”
“Oh.” He raised his eyes to scan the street.
“Out of town,” she amended.
He smiled. “Ah. Well. Do you want to see something else? We could go to the Marquee.”
Warmed by his solicitude, she shook her head. “It’s all right. Let’s go see what old Andy Hardy is up to.”
They passed through the cheap, palatial glamour of the lobby, inhaling its butter-and-dust scent. “I got us seats on the balcony,” said Sol, guiding her up the stairs, laden with popcorn and jujubes.
“The high life,” murmured Jottie.
“Nothing but the best for you,” he said.
She blinked, unsure whether he was joking. The balcony was nearly empty, just a few old couples down in the front row and a pretty, nervous-looking girl sitting alone in the center.
They settled into their comfortable seats, Jottie carefully removing her gloves to cover her silence. She wished they were down below, in the regular rows; she could hear the boys and girls talking and squealing and the low, repressive murmur of grown-ups telling them to behave. A single dapper usher stood at the lonely door to the balcony, while the scrape and shuffle of a half dozen of his fellows welled up from below. But then again, Jottie remembered, Felix would never in a thousand years turn up in the balcony. It occurred to her that Sol had made that calculation already. This is what it is to be taken care of, she thought, and glanced at him with quick wonderment.
He caught her eye. “What?”
She shook her head. “Nothing. I’m glad we’re here.”
“Even though it’s Andy Hardy?” he whispered, as the lights dimmed.
“Just you get that flask ready,” she replied.
He smiled and patted his pocket. They sat sedately through the travelogue—“This is Pat Fitzpatrick and Fitz Fitzpatrick bidding a fond farewell to the sunny Seychelles”—and the cartoon—mice slamming cats on the head with giant hammers—and the newsreel—“Four quiet burgs make the ultimate sacrifice for modernity as the construction of the Quabbin Reservoir begins”—and the trailers for next week’s picture—“Bette Davis is Dixie’s Daring Enchantress, Half Angel, Half Siren, All Woman.” Finally, with most of the jujubes consumed, the feature began.
“Will you, Polly?” gasped Mickey Rooney.
Ann Rutherford lowered her eyelashes demurely. “Why, of course, Andy.”
“GOSH!” he yelped, leaping to his feet.
Jottie tapped Sol’s arm. “Hand it over.”
He gave her the flask and she took a long pull. Silently, their eyes on the screen, they passed the flask back and forth.
Andy crouched disconsolately before Judge Hardy. “Dad, I don’t understand these modern girls. Polly won’t let you kiss her at all, but this Cynthia, she’ll let you kiss her whenever you want, all the time. She won’t go swimming, she won’t play tennis, she won’t go for a walk, she just wants to kiss you all the time.” In the center of the theater, the pretty girl and a young man who had joined her at some point began to neck passionately.
Jottie leaned over to whisper in Sol’s ear, “A little tennis would fix those two right up.” He gulped and then began to shake with laughter, and after a moment she joined in. Together they choked and sniffled and wiped tears from their eyes, each succeeding scene sending them into a new fit of strangled gasps. Finally, as the lights rose, they dropped their heads back against the prickly velour, exhausted. The pretty girl and her date reeled from their seats, rumpled and dazed, and the old couples staggered with their canes to the door, and still Jottie and Sol kept their seats, tears drying in streaks on their faces.
“My God, I haven’t laughed that hard in twenty years,” Sol said at last.
“Eighteen. Only eighteen years,” she said. “I think I’m drunk.”
He lifted her hand to his mouth and kissed it.
“Gosh!” Jottie said indistinctly.
He laughed and rose. “Come on. I’ll take you home.”
—
Deep within the chasm of a dream, Jottie felt a nudge. “Hey. Hey, Jottie.” Felix was standing beside her bed, fully dressed. “Wake up.”
“No. Go away.” She hadn’t slept nearly enough for it to be morning. Had she? “What time is it?”
“Don’t know. I got a cut and I can’t find the iodine.”
“Oh for God’s sake, Felix.” She sat up, blinking, and saw two glints of moonlight where his eyes were. “Let me see.” She flailed weakly until her hand collided with her lamp, and she switched it on. “Oh,” she said, taking his hand in hers. Two of his knuckles were split and bleeding. “What happened?”
“Cat scratched me. Where’s the iodine?”
“You never could hit with your left,” she said. “You should know better.”
“Shut up. Iodine.”
Her mattress creaked as she rose. “Come on, I’ll wrap it up.”
In the bathroom, they squinted against the blare of light, and Felix sat on the edge of the bathtub, watching her as she rummaged in the medicine cabinet. “There’s the iodine, right where it always is,” she muttered, settling herself beside him. “Did you wash it?”
He shook his head.
“Wash it.”
Smiling slightly, he got up and washed it.
“There.” Jottie watched in loopy fascination as the yellow medicine invaded his wound. “See how it follows all the little lines?” she whispered.
“You smell like a still,” he said. “You been drinking?”
“Yes.” She wasn’t used to having something to hide.
He looked at her with mild surprise. “Lush. Where’d you get it?”
For a second, she imagined saying, Sol gave it to me. It was almost exhilarating to think of the crater. No, it wasn’t. “George Houdyshell.” She’d have to get better at covering her tracks.
Felix laughed. “Patronizing the competition, huh?”
“I forgot about you.”
His eyes crinkled with amusement. “No loyalty. No family feeling.”
In silence, she circled gauze around his hand and tied a neat knot over his knuckles. This was why he’d wakened her, she knew. He wanted her to tend to him. “Who’d you hit?”
“A punk. A rube. Tried to skim.” He made a face. “Stupid.”
“You’re getting kind of old to be fighting.”
“You’re telling me.” He ru
bbed his forehead. “I got mad.”
“I wish you wouldn’t.”
“What? Get mad? Me too.”
“No. I wish you would do something different.”
He gave her a dark glance. “Stop it.”
She nodded.
Still watching her, he said, “I heard there’s a strike brewing at Everlasting.”
Her head jerked up. “Soon?”
He shook his head: He didn’t know.
“Daddy would have been heartbroken,” she said, picturing her father before a crowd of workers, his grin ebullient, his hands spread wide.
“Daddy’s heart broke pretty easy,” Felix said indifferently. He stood and stretched. Jottie could hear his bones crackling. There was a silence, and then, to her surprise, she felt a single finger resting on her head. “Don’t drink alone, Jottie. If you want to get drunk, tell me, and we’ll drink together.” He left the bathroom.
Alone on the edge of the tub, she thought, That’s the most he’ll ever say. That’s the most he’ll ever take care of me. But she was touched, too. Sometimes Felix seemed like an empty house, but he wasn’t really. It was just that he kept all his possessions in a locked room. And when, once every few years, the door cracked open for a moment, she felt strangely moved to see herself within.
She tilted the little brown bottle of iodine and peered into its murky depths. She would need to get more. Why would it kill you, Felix, to be known? “Safety for ALL…with Johnson & Johnson,” she read, yawning, and thought of Sol.
26
July 15, 1938
Mr. Tare Russell
58 Fayette Street
Macedonia, West Virginia
Dear Mr. Russell,
I hope you won’t think me presumptuous in introducing myself to you. I am Layla Beck, and I have been retained by the town council of Macedonia to write a short history of the town. My landlady, Miss Romeyn, assures me that no history of Macedonia would be complete without the ornament of your considerable knowledge of the events that occurred here during the War Between the States. If, without inconvenience to you, I might come to your home and interview you on the subject, I am certain that The History of Macedonia would be the better for it.
Sincerely,
Layla Beck
July 16
Dearest Layla,
Did you get those hose I sent up last week? I have the most awful feeling that you’re wearing darned hose, which a lady simply can’t, even if she’s off in the middle of nowhere with just farmers and things around.
It’s been boiling here, just awful, but we’re going up to the shore next week, Papa’s promised, though you know the House will probably send up a bill at the last minute, I think they do it to be mean. I hope it’s cooler where you are, dear.
To come to the point, I’m writing to you because your brother insists on marrying that insignificant scrawny little Alene, despite arguments that any rational man would consider, like how’s he going to feel when people think his children have tapeworms. Your papa said it was my duty to treat her like my own daughter, so I won’t say another word, but honestly, I don’t know how he can sit in the same room with her after he was almost engaged to Belinda. I practically cry every time I think about it.
Nonetheless, I’m going to turn the other cheek and throw the biggest engagement party anyone ever saw, after we get back from the shore. Raymond is almost certain that we can have the club on August 20th, and I hope we can, because otherwise it’s the house in Dover. I’ll write you the very second that I know, but you have to be there whether you’re done with that pamphlet or not. At first I thought I’d have a tea, but then I thought it would be more fun to have a dinner dance. And you know Alene—she folds her hands and says she’ll be content with whatever I plan, which she’d better be. I just know she’s going to wear some dreary dress. Don’t tell anyone about the dinner-dance plan. Papa is being the most awful stick-in-the-mud about it—he keeps talking about sleeping under railroad bridges—but you know Papa, once he’s at a dance, he’s the happiest man for miles around.
Darling, Mattie found your white bathing suit when she was going through the trunks, and I’m sending it up. There must be a club somewhere around there.
Love,
Mother
July 18, 1938
Dear Mother,
Yes, I received the hose, thank you very much, though your dark presentiments have no foundation, because I couldn’t darn a pair of hose if I tried. I hope I won’t harrow up your feelings too much if I tell you that there are days when I wear no hose at all, for fear of dissolving into a puddle of sweat and hair before noon. I spend most of my time shut up in my room, writing, with my naked legs decently hidden, and I simply don’t have the moral fiber to put on a pair of hose for my own edification.
Now, about Lance and Alene, Mother, you really must cultivate a more Christian spirit. He loves her. I confess that she doesn’t strike me much one way or the other, but she’s a perfectly nice girl and she worships the ground he walks on (as if he didn’t think well enough of himself already). I thought she was just a handy all purpose girl—his usual better-than-no-one date—the first time I met her, until I overheard Lance actually ask her about the events of her day. With genuine interest! And give his opinion about her concerns! I almost fainted dead away. Anyway, it was obvious to me from that moment that he loved her, and if he loves her, so should we. That means you, too.
Of course I’ll come to your dinner dance, though I detect you taking a certain pleasure in planning the most agonizing possible occasion for shy Alene. You know she’d much prefer a tea. However, if you are determined to torture her, I will come and lend her and Lance my sympathetic support. I suppose I can bring a man for myself? You and Father will like him.
I must close, as I have several years of the Civil War to commit to paper before sundown. Today I had tea with a lady who swore that Stonewall Jackson lived in her mother’s root cellar for two months in the spring of 1862. She showed me the exact spot, currently housing potatoes.
Love,
Layla
P.S. Please do have Mattie send the suit. I can wear it while I type.
July 18, 1938
Miss Layla Beck
47 Academy Street
Macedonia, West Virginia
Dear Miss Beck,
I trust The History of Macedonia is proceeding with all due speed. We have been so pressed here, with submitting final copy of the tours to the Local Advisory Committees, that I have been content to attribute your silence to diligent toil. Please inform me at once if my contentment is misplaced, most particularly if your silence indicates a deadline in danger of being missed.
In a separate matter, I have with some difficulty persuaded the Farm Security Administration to loan us one of their photographers for the illustrations in The History of Macedonia. The photographer in question, Miss Colleen Echols, has agreed to stop in Macedonia on her way to Washington next Monday, July 25, and take the pictures you require. As Miss Echols is, I am warned, excessively busy, I suggest that you select the subjects in advance. I anticipated your agreement to the extent that I engaged you to meet Miss Echols at noon in the town square (Macedonia doesn’t possess more than one, I believe).
Yours sincerely,
Ursula Rookwood Chambers
July 18, 1938
My Dear Miss Beck,
I have been twiddling my thumbs for weeks waiting for you to come and pay me a call. I thought to myself, Why would that girl give a hound like Parker Davies a hearing and not me? My heart was just about to crack in two when I got your note. If you come over on Friday afternoon, we can have a nice visit. Tell Jottie to come along, too. I haven’t seen her in a coon’s age.
Your obt. servant,
Tare Russell
One afternoon around four, Jottie swept into the front room. “Let me see your knees.”
I rolled over on my back so she could look at them. She had a hat on. “Where’re you going?” I asked.
“We’re going to Shepherdstown, more’s the pity,” she said. “Brush your hair, will you?”
I hopped off the couch. “How come?”
“Because it’s sticking up on one side,” she said, clomping down the hall.
“No!” I called. “Shepherdstown!”
She didn’t answer. She was hollering for Bird from the front porch. I went to brush my hair. It was sticking up something awful.
When I got back downstairs, Jottie had Bird by the collar and was giving her what we called a spit bath. “Oh Lord, have mercy on me, a miserable sinner,” Bird squalled, twisting this way and that.
When we were finally clean enough to suit her, Jottie made up a plate for Miss Beck, covered it with a napkin, and then hustled us into the car. We sped off down Academy Street, pretty near killing Grandpa Pucks’s rooster in the process.
“How come we’re going to Shepherdstown?” I asked again.
“Because,” said Jottie, “your daddy, for inscrutable reasons of his own, left his car in Martinsburg and went off to Shepherdstown without it. And now he needs a ride from the one to the other.”
There was a pause while we thought about that. “But how did he get to Shepherdstown without his car?” Bird asked.
“I don’t know,” said Jottie, sounding disgusted.
She didn’t stay disgusted. Once she’d pulled up in front of the Court House Hotel and my father had appeared out of nowhere and slid into the front seat, we started to have fun.
He turned around to smile at Bird and me. “My, you girls are looking pretty.” He looked at Jottie. “You, too.”
“You’d better say that.” She shook her fist at him, but she was smiling now. “Making me come all this way.” She started the car.
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