“Heard what?”
“Gladys, calm down. It’s just that . . . Well, I think something is going on between Cecily and Sam Delany.”
Val nearly snorted but caught himself in time.
“Oh, you must be joking!” Gladys laughed. “How could there be? They’ve never even been alone together. Lordy, Mae, why in the world would you think that?”
“Well, maybe your mailman’s been drinking.”
Mae calmly walked away from Gladys and sat at the table again.
“What makes you say that?” She moved toward Mae, her hands on her ample hips.
“Because someone has been delivering letters into the piano bench in your parlor. I happened to notice them the other day when Cecily offered to play something for me and she opened it to get her music. I didn’t know what to think, but who else could they be from but Sam?”
Val watched, impressed. Mae suppressed a smile and the blood drained from her cousin’s face. Gladys Vaughn exploded.
“I will whip the living daylights out of that gal!”
She bolted for the door, but Mae rose in time to restrain her. Val covered his mouth to stifle his laughter.
“Stop it, Gladys, you’ll do no such thing.” Mae gripped her cousin’s fleshy arm. “I knew you’d blow up like this. Look, hear me out. You can’t tell her I told you. One of us has to stay in her good graces so we can know the truth of what’s going on, no matter what. Wouldn’t you agree?”
Gladys looked a little unsure but said, “Yes.”
“I’m glad you think so too. Now, I have an idea.” She pulled Gladys back to the sofa and got her to sit. Mae did the same. “It might help to cool things off a little. Why don’t you just take her out of temptation’s way? Didn’t you say Rose Jarreau invited you up to her house in Westchester?”
What the . . .? Val, behind Gladys’s back, began waving a frantic hand at Mae. He mouthed the words, “No! No!” She ignored him.
“Yes, she did.”
Mae touched Gladys’s knee.
“Then accept her invitation. Take Cecily out of the city for a couple of weeks. When she comes back we’ll be deep into the fall season, there will be so many parties, so much to do that she’ll forget all about Sam Delany.”
Gladys took a heavy breath and nodded. “All right. I’ll do it, Mae. You’re right, honey, as usual. I’ll do it. Lord help me if I didn’t have you.” She took Mae’s hands and squeezed them. Then she hugged her. Mae winced over her shoulder. “I better go now so we can get ready.”
“Remember, don’t be too hard on her. And don’t let her know you found out from me.”
Val watched Gladys’s chin bob against Mae’s shoulder when she nodded.
“Yes, yes. I’ll let you know as soon as we get back,” said Gladys.
“Thank you, dear.”
When she had gone Val threw himself onto the sofa. Mae came in smiling at him again.
“Why the hell did you do that?”
“Look, you were totally out of the game. I just put you back in! And what better way to counteract Gladys’s meddling than you contradicting her in person?”
He crossed his arms and frowned up at the ceiling. He hated that she was right, but he couldn’t be mad. After all, she’d just made it possible for him to win—and have her.
“You’re something else, you know that?”
“I do know.” Mae sat down, arranging herself next to him and allowing him to put an arm around her. He felt some pleasure in doing it. He took the chance to examine her profile. Her lips rested together in the line of a satisfied smile.
He asked, “How’d you get to be so . . .”
“So what?” She raised her dark eyes to his face and for the moment they looked soft and harmless.
“So . . . you.”
“Oh, Val, you don’t even know.” She plucked a bit of lint from his pant leg. “Men get away with so much. They mess around with us and just burn our little lives to the ground. It was only a matter of time before a phoenix rose from the ashes.”
She looked at him and smiled. “Let’s just say I’m here to get back our own.”
He nodded. That part of the story he already knew. He’d watched it play out for eight years. “Yeah, I get that. But I want to know how.”
She leaned her head back against his arm and sighed. “This world wasn’t made for women. Certainly not black women. My best friend got pregnant when she was eighteen. Her parents forced her to marry some idiot with money so they could keep up appearances. After that I could tell she was a prisoner. I saw the shackles holding her. She was frozen—smiled at me like she was a piece of glass. I promised myself I would never live like that, like I had to be grateful for whatever scraps of respectability got thrown my way.”
“So what did you do?”
Mae shrugged. “I watched. I learned. That’s the best thing about being undervalued—plenty of time to see and learn. I listened. I learned exactly what buttons to push to get a man. I learned what I had to say to protect myself. I studied the white women in New York and Paris to learn how to look respectable. I went down South for a while to taste the blues, music that taught me how to seduce.” She laughed. “Then I went to church to learn how to lie about it all.” She patted him on the thigh. “I’m good, Val. You know that. And I never lose. Some idiots, like that Paul Kingsley, had to learn the hard way.”
Val raised his eyebrows. “Paul Kingsley? Isn’t he that army sergeant who tried to break into your house?”
“Break in? We’d already been to bed! And it had been wonderful. I was looking forward to having him as a distraction for a few months.”
“What happened?”
Mae waved her hand in the air like she was swatting away a fly. “He was getting dressed and he started talking like the simpleton he was. Saying he was going to tell his friends how he’d had the great Mae Malveaux and all that bullshit. Stupid, just stupid. He obviously didn’t know whom he was dealing with.” Mae laughed. “I just smiled at him then stuck my head out the window and started screaming. Of course he wasted time trying to reason with me. He probably could have been gone before the police arrived but then, as I said, he was stupid.”
“And everyone thought he was breaking in to assault you?”
“Yes, of course.”
Mae studied the ruby red polish on her fingernails. Val stared at her in wonder.
“But Paul Kingsley didn’t just get arrested. He was court-martialed too.”
Mae shrugged.
“He deserved whatever happened to him. My point, Val, is it’s all about appearances. They believe me because I appear right. Like at church. They think I donate all that money because it looks like I do. How simple can it be? People prefer pretty pictures.”
Val nodded. “You’re the designated hitter.”
“I score every time.” Mae sighed. “No one talks; no one escapes.”
Val raised a hand and touched her face. His fingers followed the curve of her jawline.
“Did I? Was that what happened with us?”
Mae raised herself up on an elbow and looked straight into his eyes.
“You . . . oh you . . .” She smiled and caressed his hand. “I knew you the minute I saw you that night at the World’s Fair. I recognized my true equal. I said to myself, ‘Mae, there is a man not fooled or held captive by the conventions of our time.’ I saw us standing together on the mountaintop. I saw how we would bring down the world.”
She fell silent but her brilliant brown eyes stayed locked on Val. He realized he had recognized the same when he first saw Mae—his equal. He always knew that to conquer her he would have to conquer himself. The scent of gardenia from her hair cast a veil over Val’s mind. He dipped his head toward her. His mouth grazed the plump pink softness of her lips. Then Mae’s hand, hard and cold like an armored door, slammed onto his chest.
“Now, you have to go,” she said.
“Back to Westchester?”
“Back to Westchester.”
She pushed his arm away from her. “Remember, we both want our revenge and that is where you have to go to get it. And finish that other little project—for us.”
“Well, yes, but your star player could use a little warm-up session.” He smiled and tugged at the sleeve of her dress.
She smacked his hand. “Then go home and take a hot shower. Whatever it takes. Goodbye, Val.”
She lifted herself lightly from the sofa, swept out of the room, and was gone. The skin where she’d struck him stung.
CHAPTER 27
Cecily
Westchester, July 1947
The Buick sped north just as fast and smooth as the train that had carried Cecily south to Anselm all those months ago. This time, though, she didn’t have the comfort of being alone to think clearly about what was happening. Mama sat next to her, resolute as a boulder.
Cecily tucked herself as far as she could into the corner of the backseat. She wanted to put as much space as she could between herself and her mama, but since Mama didn’t notice what she was doing it was a feeble form of protest. Cecily’s cheeks still burned with embarrassment. Why was she always going away, and in the direction opposite from where her life seemed to be headed? Mama had yanked Cecily out of the house like a carrot from the ground.
She pondered again what she might have done to expose herself and Sam to her mama’s anger. Cecily had been getting ready for her lesson, but she hadn’t been writing Sam a letter or drawing tiny hearts on the music sheets or any other silly notion she indulged in while waiting for Sam. She had, in fact, been practicing, her head bent over her hands, her fingers curved and trying to mimic the loose and easy way Sam’s hands floated above the keys.
That day she had heard the front door slam and turned to see Mama rushing at her, same as she had rushed at Cecily and Royce before putting her on the train to Anselm. Only nothing slowed or stopped Mama this time. She ducked her head, leaned a heavy shoulder into Cecily, and shoved the girl off the piano bench. Cecily hit the floor on her left hip and elbow, the pain sparking tears in her eyes. She felt bad enough, like a baby sitting there rubbing her sore arm and mewling. But then her mother opened the bench and seized Sam’s letters. She started reading them! The look Mama gave her— Cecily didn’t know why she didn’t turn to ashes right then and there, her mother glared so hard.
“Ooooh! No, Mama, no! Please, God, no!” Cecily cried. She managed to get to her feet and reach out to her mother like she wanted to explain but didn’t know how. Really she wanted to run out of the room, but Cecily surprised herself by holding her ground, messy tears and all. She thought it was because she knew Sam would be there soon and whatever happened next, it would be best for them to stand together.
But she wasn’t prepared for how badly her mother would treat Sam. She unleashed a torrent of un-Christian language and made Sam out to be some sort of lowlife who had crept into their house instead of having been invited.
“You must be out of your mind,” she said, “if you think I’m gonna let my daughter get involved with some no-account club singer.”
Sam, his face ashen, had stammered, “Mrs. Vaughn, I didn’t plan on all this happening.”
“All what happening?” She advanced on him, her hands on her hips. “Just what have you done?”
“Nothing! We haven’t done anything!”
“Uh-huh, and that’s how it’s gonna stay.” She shook a finger at Sam. Her whole body seemed to shake with it. “You get out of this house now. You don’t speak to my daughter—you don’t even look at her ever again.”
As Sam left, Cecily thought the room seemed to darken, like a cloud had passed over the sun. In her mind she pleaded with him, Don’t go Sam, don’t go. Stand up for me; don’t leave me here.
For about an hour Cecily was able to console herself by thinking at least she would be able to see Sam at church. Her mother couldn’t ruin that chance; she couldn’t make them fire the organ player. Only Mae could do something like that.
The thought of her cousin made Cecily suck in her breath. Mama was sure to tell Mae about Sam. What if Mae thought Cecily hadn’t obeyed her instructions? She’d think Cecily had let her down and the thought was unbearable. She knew she had to write to her as soon as possible. Maybe, and this was a small hope that made Cecily feel just a tiny bit better, Mae could still help them. But then her mother barged into her room and told her to pack her suitcase. They were leaving to go to Rose Jarreau’s.
In the backseat, Cecily sank deeper into a heap of devastation. She curled up against the car door and flipped the ashtray cover open and closed.
“Sit up, girl! Stop acting like you don’t have any sense.” Mama slapped Cecily’s leg. Cecily did, but turned away to stare at the Hudson River flowing next to them on the road north. The water reminded her of Mr. Travis, but she couldn’t think of him too clearly, not with Mama sitting so close to her. Cecily still didn’t understand how Mama had found out about the letters. Who was to say Cecily hadn’t given them away herself with a look on her face or a thought so vivid Mama could read it in Cecily’s head as easily as if she were reading it in her eyes? Now she was being taken away again. Was this why Mr. Travis went out to the woods and into the water, because in his regular life he couldn’t be in his body the way he wanted to be? Cecily had no way of knowing if this were true, but if it was, it seemed to her another way that the mysterious white man made sense to her—spoke sense, even, without uttering a single word.
When the car pulled through the gates of the Jarreau estate, both Cecily and her mother were shocked by the unusual sight on the vast lawn of a woman swinging a bat. She threw a baseball into the air, too high, and swung the bat at it like she was about to beat a carpet. Her body didn’t seem to know how to move with the long piece of wood in her hands and she looked, well, silly. “Mama,” said Cecily, rolling down her window, “isn’t that Mrs. Townsend?”
CHAPTER 28
Elizabeth
Mercylands, July 1947
She had found the ball and bat while wandering the too-quiet house that day. Rose was in the library returning telephone calls so Elizabeth sat for a while in her room and read. But after only a page or two she wanted to move about. She paced around a little then opened the door and strolled the length of the hallway. She paused at the stairs and considered going back to her room but decided to continue down to the first floor and go outside. She discovered a foyer where the servants allowed certain equipment to accumulate: boots, raincoats, umbrellas. She was just about to step through the door when she noticed a baseball and a bat. Elizabeth quickly looked around, but knew she was being silly—Val wasn’t there.
Often, though, it felt like he was there—quite present in fact. His letters didn’t stop. Sometimes there were just a few lines on the same thick paper. “Thinking of you. Val.” Other times they took on a playful tone. One of the letters, postmarked from Chicago, had gone on for pages describing nearly every single play of the All-Star baseball game he had attended at Wrigley Field. He complained about Jackie Robinson not being on the roster. On the bottom of the last page, in large block lettering, he had drawn “42” with arrows pointing to it. “Jackie Robinson’s number!” he’d written. That did make her laugh. It looked like something out of a schoolboy’s notebook. She liked how he was engaging in an activity he obviously enjoyed. But why was he so in love with the game? As far as she could see it was about knocking around some big pincushion of a ball with a hunk of wood. She supposed boys with sticks always wanted to be hitting something. That must be the natural attraction. When she thought of the boyish aspects of Val she almost regretted the harsh tone of her last letter. She must have sounded like a teacher scolding him.
She had hoped once he went back to the city Val would lose interest in her and start chasing some other woman. Wasn’t that what he usually did anyway? She only had to wait him out.
She picked up the ball and bat and took them out to the lawn. She threw the ball up and tried to grasp the bat in the way Val
had shown her, but she missed. She tried again, and again the ball fell to her feet as she swiped at the air. The third time she managed to make contact and, shocked by how the handle vibrated and stung her hands, she nearly dropped the bat. The ball scooted across the grass and she laughed softly. She realized she would have to retrieve it. She walked over, picked up the ball, and continued her way down the lawn. She kept trying to hit the ball, sometimes swinging badly, but she began to enjoy having something to do. She hummed to herself in the sunshine. I want a Sunday kind of love.
“Elizabeth!”
Sweat rushed into her fingertips. She knew she wasn’t doing anything wrong, but in that moment she didn’t feel right either. She put her hands behind her back and stuffed down the song humming in her throat. She turned and there was Gladys rolling toward her on thick and swollen ankles. A gentle warmth settled over Elizabeth like a cloak. She was glad to see her friend.
When Elizabeth and Kyle had started attending Mount Nebo, Gladys’s had been the first kind face Elizabeth encountered in the sea of strangers. She had invited the Townsends to sit with her during the coffee hour and she chatted incessantly about the church. She had been delighted to learn they were also connected to Rose Jarreau and downright giddy when Elizabeth said she wanted to help out with the mission and outreach committee Gladys chaired.
“Lord, girl, you’d be such a blessing!” Gladys had crowed and thrown her hands in the air.
Gladys turned out to be a helpful guide to their new community. She knew everyone of importance and loved to talk so her information flowed freely. She was a widow with an empty home and time on her hands. Elizabeth soon learned having female company was the blessing Gladys really desired. She had sent her daughter, Cecily, to live with relatives in the South but, she confided, hadn’t anticipated how much she would miss the girl.
“The house just seems so darn dark without her,” Gladys had said.
Now here was the daughter, tall and long-legged, striding across the grass in her mother’s wake but following slow and stoop-shouldered as though bowed by a heaviness.
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