by James Villas
“What do you mean?” she hedged, pushing the fish around her plate.
“Your old flame, Mr. Green. I didn’t see Jonathan at the reception.”
Ella had feared that mention might be made of this, and she was ready. “Oh, you know Jonathan and how antisocial he can be—especially since the war. But he was at the ceremony, you know.”
“Yeah, I saw him standing with Ruth Ann.” He piled a portion of potatoes au gratin on his fork and wolfed it down. “Strange guy, I gotta say, and, to be frank, I and a few others have never understood your fascination with him.”
Ella didn’t know whether to interpret that comment as a sign of anger or jealousy or suspicion, but, in any case, she felt a chill run down her back as she debated once again whether to confess right up front her one serious fling with Jonathan and relate what had happened that shocking night in the Stoudemires’ garden.
“Honey,” she said instead, “can we now just drop the subject of Jonathan and everybody else and maybe talk about fixing up the house?”
He reached over and began rubbing her arm. “I say we stop talking, period, and interrupt this delicious supper with a little cheek-to-cheek dancing.” At which he got up, turned the dial on the mahogany radio till he heard Frank Sinatra crooning a romantic ballad, and, extending both his hands to her, said, “May I have the honor, Mrs. Dubose?”
All of a sudden, the warm, salty breeze drifting through the windows turned slightly chilly, and before they could clasp each other in the middle of the thick carpet, torrents of rain and gusty wind outside forced Earl to rush over and close all the windows before also switching off the electric ceiling fan overhead.
“So much for a walk later on the beach,” Ella said, reaching again for her glass.
“Who needs to walk when we can dance?” he declared suggestively, pulling her close again so that, at intervals, her knee lodged between his strong legs as they steadily moved to the romantic music.
“Lord, you feel so good,” he said at one point. “You always have.”
“So do you,” Ella purred in his ear, stroking the back of his neck and feeling a surge of warm exhilaration race through her vulnerable body as he slowly ground his stiff shaft against her.
Jo Stafford was singing “It Could Happen to You” on the radio when, aroused beyond control and forgetting all about the small green hummingbird cake on the table, the two finally shuffled over to the double bed and, Earl still in his checkered bow tie and Ella in her baby blue cotton dress, began making more fervid love. Then, when she commented playfully that her dress would be destroyed, Earl yanked back the bedspread, cut off the one burning floor lamp, and stripped to his underwear at the same time she slipped out of her dress and folded it neatly over the back of a chair. From then on, it was only a matter of nature taking its course as the callow young couple explored and caressed and groped each other in a frenzy, and if, while Ella felt Earl deep inside her, she had to fight inexorable thoughts of Jonathan that flashed involuntarily through her disoriented brain, not even this troubling psychological distraction could altogether alter the powerful gratification that she craved and that Earl was capable of delivering in full measure.
Afterward, as they lay on their backs in each other’s arms covered by the bleach-scented sheet, Ella could hear Earl still breathing heavily through his nostrils as she smoked a cigarette and reflected on how happy their marriage would be. Outside, the rain continued to pour, and one candle on the dinner table still flickered its warm glow.
“You know what?” she asked, nestling her head on his chest and tapping an ash into the ashtray.
“Hummm?” he sort of gurgled, nudging her softly with his hand.
“You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”
She waited for him to comment, but when he said nothing, she noticed he’d fallen sound asleep.
Chapter 12
THE QUEEN CITY
Since Earl had a new business to supervise, the honeymoon had lasted only four days, but they were four wonderful days filled with lots of surf fishing, scouting the area’s historic landmarks, sharing memorable meals in the inn’s elegant dining room or at a couple of seafood houses, and, of course, making love. Back in Charleston, they settled into Earl’s charming small house that boasted the original cypress floors and even had an ornate wrought-iron piazza overlooking the street, and Ella set about to redecorate the rather shabby parlor when not still cataloging at the museum three days a week, activities that at least partly kept her mind off Jonathan and the bitter emotional problems that lingered so privately and tenaciously in her soul. The phone never rang that she didn’t flinch. She never ventured out to shop that she didn’t fear running smack into him. And not a day passed that she couldn’t help but wonder what was happening with him.
Tragically, the truth was revealed to all just a few weeks after the honeymoon when Ella and Earl arrived one Friday evening for a dinner party at Wade and Trudy Yarborough’s lovely home just a couple of blocks away on Broad Street and noticed everybody gossiping somberly.
“Sally Burnside says it was his maid who found him, and called the police, and then told her maid,” Mary Beth Williams was informing Mark and Zizi Campbell at the punch table.
“Well, it’s awful, perfectly awful,” Gladys Buchanan whimpered, arranging a few cheese straws on her small cocktail plate.
“What’s awful?” Earl asked out loud as he dipped the ladle into the punch bowl and filled a glass for Ella.
“Just goes to show,” Ransom Meade remarked dubiously, raising his eyebrows to Patsy Costner while pressing the dimple in the knot of his necktie. “Just goes to show.”
“Dammit, what’s happened?” Earl repeated impatiently as Ella stood silent. “What in hell y’all talking about?”
“Jonathan Green,” Zizi whispered, dabbing her scarlet lips with a cocktail napkin. “We’re talking about poor Jonathan Green, precious.”
She then went on to relate that, evidently, Jonathan Green had been discovered dead in his apartment earlier in the afternoon, a pistol in his hand. The police had no doubt that it was a suicide, and the details would be in the next day’s paper. Of course, everybody knew that Jonathan had never been the same since returning from the war, and that he usually seemed down and depressed, and that he had never really been able to readapt after all he had witnessed and experienced overseas. Since it was certainly no secret that Ella and Jonathan had been particularly close friends and that she’d always gone out of her way to make him feel welcome in Charleston, special sympathy went out to her from everyone in the room.
“I’m so sorry, angel,” Mary Beth tried to console, even though Ella had shown little emotion and was too numb to cry. How she got through that dinner was a miracle that would baffle her for years to come, but what she would never forget was how much it meant having Earl by her side. Later that evening in the bathroom at home, when it truly dawned on her that Jonathan was gone forever, she finally released all the grief and longing pent up inside and cried uncontrollably.
After a brief funeral held at Beth Elohim that Ella and Earl and a number of other former classmates attended, Jonathan was buried in the synagogue’s cemetery on Coming Street in a plot under a yellow pine tree that his father apparently had to negotiate at the last minute. Earl didn’t think it was appropriate to join the few family mourners at the graveside, but when Ella made it clear that she wanted to pay last respects to her friend, there was no further objection. Ella maintained her composure at the cemetery, but it was while she and Earl were standing in the background that a wave of nausea came over her the likes of which she’d never experienced before.
Normally, she would have attributed the seizure to her shattered nerves over recent events, but it happened again a few days later while she and Earl were having breakfast, and then she knew…she knew without question that she had to be pregnant. For a few moments, the sudden awareness filled Ella with the same immediate sense of joy that any woman feels whe
n she first realizes she’s going to create a new life and give birth, but then, forced to confront the truth of who the father of this child most likely was, she was gripped by a thrust of fear and dread that threatened not only any happiness over the momentous fulfillment but even the future of her marriage. Throughout the entire morning she wrestled with the terrifying crisis, crying herself almost sick, but gradually summoning up untapped inner strength and courage that even she never knew she had. Then, acknowledging the dearth of viable options, she finally made the sensible decision to simply accept all consequences, go see Dr. Crawford for confirmation of her condition, and surprise Earl with the good news.
Arriving home from work the night after her consultation, Earl noticed she had an especially radiant smile on her face as she kissed him, then proceeded to mix two bourbon and waters.
“So why the big grin?” he asked repeatedly as she stood stirring her drink slowly with a finger.
“I have some terrible news,” she finally said dispassionately.
“Good Lord, what?”
“Well, I saw Dr. Crawford today, and he said we’d better start looking for a larger home.” She patted her stomach.
Earl froze for a few moments, then rushed across the parlor to hug her tightly, sloshing part of his drink on the carpet. “Oh my Lord, sweetheart! I can’t believe it! Is it true? Is he sure? Oh my Lord. And are you okay?”
Ella laughed. “Honey, I don’t think doctors are ever wrong about these things. And don’t be silly. Of course I’m okay.”
By the time, in spring, Ella gave birth almost three weeks early to a healthy, beautiful boy with dark hair and certain facial features that resembled those of Jonathan, she had virtually reconciled herself to the probability of the infant’s real father and to the dreadful secret she knew she’d have to harbor for many years to come. Earl, to whom all babies of course looked alike, wanted his son to be a junior in fine Southern tradition, but when Ella said that she’d really had her mind set on naming their first boy after her parents, he agreed to call the child Tyler Pinckney Dubose. Ella adored her baby, as did Earl and the doting grandparents, and there wasn’t a relative or friend in town who didn’t consider Ella to be an exemplary wife and mother whose family came before all else.
It was also at this time that Ella hired her first black maid to do housekeeping twice a week, the same competent, kind Venus who’d been cleaning for her mother the past couple of years. And it was about this time that she developed a keen passion for cooking, which quickly made her one of the most popular young hostesses in Charleston. Although Earl worked late many weekday evenings, they did enjoy entertaining on weekends throughout the winter, and while the dinners were hardly the unbridled, wee-hour affairs they used to so relish, nobody invited to the Dubose home wanted for plenty of good Southern food, premium booze, and lively conversation.
Just when Ella was adjusting to marriage and motherhood, and the secret she harbored was becoming less painful, Earl came home one night and, while she was in the kitchen mixing the dough for a batch of buttermilk biscuits, mentioned that his father knew a man up in Charlotte who’d been a salesman at a small printing operation for some years and was now looking for a partner to help finance and create what he envisioned to be the city’s largest and most prestigious printing and engraving company.
“Jay Rutherford’s his name,” Earl explained further, watching her measure the baking powder as he twirled the ice in his whiskey, “and can you believe Charlotte still has no quality printers like those in Atlanta, Columbia, or even Raleigh?”
“What are you trying to say, honey?” Ella asked worriedly, now adding baking soda to the flour in her large bowl.
“What I’m saying, Peaches, is that in this business there’s so little growth potential in Charleston, and, well, Charlotte just might be the big opportunity I’ve been looking for.”
“Hand me that can of shortening, please,” she directed, taking a sip of bourbon from her glass on the counter.
“Anyway,” he continued, “I like this Jay fellow so far, and he’s got some big ideas about this company he wants to start up there, and I thought we might drive up and meet him face-to-face.”
Ella began cutting the shortening into the flour with a steel pastry cutter, then stopped and asked him to keep cutting while she stuck her head in the living room to check on Tyler. “Are you talking about us maybe leaving Charleston, and our families and friends, and this wonderful house?” she called from the other room.
“Now, now, sweetheart, don’t jump the gun,” he said as she returned. “It’s just a possibility I’d like to look into, and, besides, we might enjoy taking a ride up to Charlotte.”
Ella slowly poured buttermilk into the dry ingredients and began mixing the sticky dough with her other hand. “That could be a pretty big risk, wouldn’t you say? Leaving everything and everybody we’ve ever known and moving to a strange town.”
Earl grasped her around the waist and kissed her on the back of her neck as she now mixed with both hands, signaling to him to pour in a little more buttermilk. “Honey, you know I’m no fool and would never jeopardize you and me and Tyler—not on your life. But I’ve got big plans for us, and who knows, this might be just the right opportunity. Don’t you think it’s worth at least investigating?”
Flouring her hands, she began patting out the dough, then, handing him the biscuit cutter before reaching for her Lucky Strikes on the windowsill, instructed, “Here, buster, start cutting ’em out—straight down—and put them on the baking sheet.” She took a long puff, pecked him on the cheek, and said, “If it means that much to you, I say let’s drive up to Charlotte and meet this guy.”
And, sure enough, Earl and Ella couldn’t have been more impressed by Jay Rutherford and his ideas, and after Jay and his charming wife had given them a thorough tour of Charlotte, Ella and Earl not only took an immediate liking to the couple but fell in love with the Queen City—its lively downtown area, its majestic churches and many schools, its imposing homes on wide streets with towering dogwoods and maples, and its overall genteel Southern atmosphere. Jay even showed them the large, vacant, red-brick building out on Providence Road he had his eye on for the company. Back home, the two weighed the pros and cons of the matter for almost a month. Earl discussed a buyout with his willing partner at PrintCraft and a loan with his father, and although Ella still had a number of reservations about the move, she admired her husband’s ambition and knew he was determined to take on the challenge if she agreed. They were still young, and it could be an exciting venture, she reasoned, and, after all, if things didn’t work out as anticipated, they could always return to Charleston.
The Rutherfords couldn’t have been more cooperative helping the Duboses find a modest but attractive home in Charlotte’s Dilworth area, and by the time Ella learned she was again pregnant, they had already made a number of good friends and become active members of St. Martin’s Episcopal Church. Jay and Earl named their company Creative Graphics, both worked long and hard to produce the finest products possible and attract the city’s most upscale corporate and private customers, and by the end of the first year, they had purchased two more high-performance presses and almost doubled profits. Nonetheless, Earl and Ella led anything but an extravagant existence, and if sacrifice meant not shopping for new clothes, limiting entertaining to a few friends invited in for cocktails and gumbo from time to time, no cleaning maid, and riding the bus to church to conserve gasoline in their old Ford, the Duboses made plenty of concessions while Earl was struggling to build the business.
Ella gave birth to another boy who was indeed named Earl Preston Dubose II, then, the following year, to an adorable girl they decided to call Olivia Louise after the two grandmothers. As the children grew and developed, Ella and Earl became more and more aware of distinct personality differences between Tyler and his younger siblings, the most obvious being his stubborn independence and exceptional intelligence. Tyler was a much more sensitive, delicat
e child than the other two, and although Earl wondered at times if he was completely normal, Ella indulged his every idiosyncrasy and flooded him with enough love and attention to make any boy feel special, all the time safeguarding the shameful secret that might well have helped to explain the boy’s peculiarities but that she knew could never be revealed without the risk of dire consequences.
After a few more years of phenomenal business success, during which time he and Ella fully adopted Charlotte as their home town and the children fared well in school, Earl was finally in the financial position to take a mortgage on a large, beautiful, Colonial home on Colville Road in what many considered to be Charlotte’s most prestigious residential area. Long before, he had promised Ella that one day he’d make her very proud and comfortable, and while, by this time, her genuine love and respect for Earl hardly had to be enhanced by the acquisition of an expensive house and a new white Cadillac De Ville, there could be no doubt that she came to relish in Charlotte the same gracious lifestyle she’d known while growing up in Charleston. Eventually, they joined the Myers Park Country Club and transferred their membership to the newly built and more convenient Christ Episcopal Church, and it was at this time that Earl developed his passion for golf. Ella hired a maid to clean twice a week, and once, when the children got a little older and school was over for summer, they even indulged in the luxury of taking a steamship to Europe from New York and spending a couple of weeks in London and Paris to expose themselves and the kids to all the cultural attractions these glamorous cities had to offer.
Otherwise, their choice vacation venue became the same Priscilla Inn at Myrtle Beach where they’d spent their honeymoon. Popular with many well-to-do Charlotteans, the Priscilla now had true sentimental value for Ella, and she loved everything about the place. She loved sitting peacefully in a rocking chair on the porch or in a beach cabana doing needlepoint and watching Earl and the children battle the waves. She loved surf fishing with Earl for spots and whiting on cloudy days, or driving up to Little River to see the fishing boats and eat fried flounder at Captain Jule’s Seafood House. But most of all she loved dressing for dinner at the inn, then, while Tyler, Little Earl, and Olivia played bingo or canasta with other young folks in the supervised Card Room, going up to the Ocean Forest Hotel for an hour or so to dance with Earl under the stars just as she once imagined doing with Jonathan when they were so young and in love.