Since the day of Mrs. Beadle’s declaration that I was an ugly child, I had lived with the knowledge that I had no power to attract in a physical sense. Short and homely, with no compensating grace of movement or admirable talent, I became stout as the years drew on. Throughout my school years, however, I was not without friends. I had three dates in high school, all arranged by my sisters. If not as pretty, at least I was as smart as my sisters, though mine was a quieter kind of intelligence, one that seldom gained notice. I used to have a sense of humor and a quick eye for detail. In school I could sit in the back of a classroom and provide diversion for those around me by means of clever comments, whispered or written on slips of paper. The teacher would move other students to the front of the class in an effort to quell the undercurrent of mischief in the back, never suspecting I was the cause.
After high school I attended a teachers’ college in Mississippi. It was serious business for me, my father having announced that I would take over my mother’s work at the boardinghouse if I did not succeed in college. He led me to believe that college was a much more challenging proposition than high school had been.
Daddy had plans to use my mother in his printing business. Regina had already escaped from home by marriage, and Virginia had launched a plan whereby she acted deliberately clumsy and incompetent in our father’s presence, having no intention, she told me, of “being a drudge for a bunch of transigent boarders the rest of my life.” I knew she meant transient instead of transigent. Though smart, Virginia often misused words. She endured countless scoldings for spilled food, botched cleaning tasks, and broken dishes, as she systematically shaped our father’s opinion of her as “useless around the house.”
Mother may have suspected Virginia’s ruse, but she never let on. I believe she preferred staying in her familiar world, at the helm of the boardinghouse, rather than serving under Daddy at the printing shop. When he was at home, Daddy operated according to the “king of the castle” philosophy popular in that day. No doubt Mother looked forward to the mornings, when the king left his castle for nine or ten hours and gave her some peace.
I succeeded in college, as my father no doubt knew I would, secured a teaching position immediately upon graduation, and thereby escaped the boardinghouse. I took my teaching as seriously as I had taken my college studies and was good with children of all ages. As the years wore on and no prince presented himself, I frequently reminded myself of the benefits of a woman’s running her own castle, citing the many disappointments I had witnessed among the marriages of others. Still, a woman hopes. When I moved from Mississippi to Kentucky in 1965, I took a job that summer in one of the offices on the campus of South Wesleyan. I had started a fund for a special trip I was planning in honor of my fortieth birthday the following July. If I was to be a single woman, I meant to be as happy a single woman as possible.
At some point during the summer of 1965, I saw an advertisement on a bulletin board in the Academic Records Building requesting the services of a typist for “several scholarly papers of considerable length.” The card was handwritten, neatly printed in all capital letters, with the name Dr. Eliot Hess and a phone number at the bottom. This is how I met Eliot. The “several scholarly papers” were reworkings of both his master’s thesis and his doctoral dissertation, as well as three new articles for academic journals.
I believe I am correct in stating that Eliot’s brand of perfectionism was unusual even in academia. He never considered a paper truly finished. Even after multiple revisions, even after publication, even after a degree was conferred on the basis of a paper, even after presentation at a conference, he continued to tinker with every moving part within it, striving for a flawless machine, a product he never achieved, judging from the repeated modifications. I doubt that anyone other than Eliot has ever continued to revise his doctoral dissertation for years after successfully defending it, simply to make it better.
This was my husband. After Eliot married me, I allowed myself for thirteen years to believe that he saw in me a kind of beauty that surpassed shallow commercial standards. As a gentleman and scholar of the highest caliber, he was one of the few men, I thought, who could recognize true beauty when he saw it, the kind of beauty that doesn’t fade with time. How he must pity men with pretty-faced wives, I told myself, for when they lost their prettiness, what was left?
He used to smile at my gentle parodies of our colleagues in the English Department. On the way home from receptions or dinners, I would repeat to him various remarks I had overheard during the course of the evening, complete with mannerisms and inflections, and have him identify the speaker. It was easy work for both of us, for I possessed the gift of mimicry. These were private performances, however. I would never have agreed to repeat them in public if, say, Eliot had pressed me to do so for entertainment at some department function. In the English Department at South Wesleyan, I was the intellectual runt of the litter, and I knew it. I sat, observed, and listened but seldom participated in a discussion, fearful lest someone should say, “What does she know? She used to teach elementary school!”
I fashioned a romance for my life with Eliot: I imagined that he looked at me and saw a rare woodland flower, one that bloomed in deep shade and could be discovered only by someone with patience and keen vision. I imagined that he looked into my soul and saw a shining jewel, that whenever he withdrew from me, it was the steady glow of my jewel-like soul that always brought him back.
At the age of fifty-five this romance was shattered. I knew the truth now. Eliot had looked at me and seen someone who would make his life easier. He had tolerated my presence because of the work I did for him. I was not a rare woodland flower. I was a common weed, rooted up and thrown aside. I was merely ground cover that filled up space and provided a little greenery in his life. I was field vegetation—cowbane, milkweed, henbit, burdock, thistle, ragweed. I was not a shining jewel. I was a piece of gravel, a clod of dirt, a crooked stick.
He had not loved me. He had looked at impurity for too long. He had locked himself in a room of white noise, had turned up the volume so loud that he could no longer hear music. He had so feasted on abominations that he could not taste wholesome food. A man cannot keep company with twelve folders such as the ones in his drawer and love the good and simple things of life.
Until now I had thought myself to be an adequate judge of character. I had not known that a man could construct such secret and impenetrable compartments within his soul. There are certain birds that conceal themselves in thickets to gorge on grubs. One night many years ago I learned in an instant that there are such men, also.
And here is what the knowledge did to me. Do not speak to me of one’s choosing his own responses, of taking the moral high road regardless of provocation, of one’s character only being revealed by hardship, not shaped by it. Here is what happened to me in five minutes that night in Eliot’s study. I had laughed easily before that time, had sometimes cried, though not often. From that time on I saw little to laugh or cry about. When one suffers a violent blow, he is often stunned past feeling. In the face of unbearable pain, one may go into shock and lose consciousness. These things can happen to the mind as well as to the body.
And yet I did feel one emotion: anger. I felt it intensely and aggressively. I had been deceived, and the culprit had gotten away. It wasn’t hard to track him down, but he was beyond the judgment bar. I could pronounce him guilty but had no power to sentence him, to see him pay for his crime. Yet while there was time, I would do what I could.
I went to the hospital that very night. The nurses knew me, disregarded the posted visiting hours, and allowed me to come and go as I pleased. They must have known that Eliot would never leave his room alive. They would permit a grieving widow-to-be unlimited access to her beloved.
When I bent to Eliot’s face that night, I spoke as softly “as the gentle rain from heaven,” but unlike the unstrained mercy spoken of in The Merchant of Venice, my words were curses rather than blessing
s. This rain was hot acid rising from the pit of hell. As mercy is “twice blest” to both giver and receiver, I suppose it is also true that hatred is twice cursed. As I cursed Eliot with my soft words that night, I was cursing myself. A day earlier I could not have believed myself capable of the things I said that night.
I longed to see some sign to show me that he heard my words—the flicker of an eyelid or the twitch of a muscle—but he lay in his bed as still as a wax dummy. I went to the hospital every day during the next four weeks, and every day I repeated my curses in his ear, revising them each time, expanding on the theme, striving for higher excellence. He died at two o’clock one morning, and I was both sorrowful and glad when I received the phone call. Sorrowful because all hope of revenge had ended and glad because the waiting was over and he had died alone in the darkest part of night.
Chapter 9
Against the Stormy Gusts of Winter’s Day
A “shy and hidden bird,” the hermit thrush sings “the carol of death” in Walt Whitman’s poem When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d. In a nest close to the ground, the thrush incubates its eggs for thirteen days, and thirteen days after hatching the young birds fly away.
Supper tonight is from a place called Steak in a Shake. This is the name stamped on the paper napkin folded beside my plate. Rachel comes to my apartment at six-fifteen, apologizing as she carries the tray in. “I’m sorry we’re running a little late tonight. Hope you’re not starving.” I say nothing. I am by no means starving.
It is not a typical fast-food meal. There are small bits of steak, which Rachel identifies as sirloin tips, a baked potato, a plump roll, a tossed salad, and a glass of tea. I have not eaten steak in months. As soon as Rachel empties the tray and leaves, I walk to the round table and sit down. I hear Patrick in the kitchen on the other side of the door. He is talking loudly, as always, this time about someone named Potts at work. I spear a cube of steak and put it into my mouth. I chew it slowly, savoring the taste.
I piece together the information Patrick relates to Rachel. Potts is evidently a new employee at the Main Office Supply. Today was Potts’ “orientation day,” which consisted of his filling out paperwork, viewing two safety videos, and listening to the standard new employees’ lecture, delivered by Patrick. I pity Potts for having to sit through this. His first regular day of work will be Monday. In my opinion, any new employee who reports for work after orientation day with Patrick has already earned his first week’s salary.
I can hear in his voice that Patrick is proud of himself for hiring Potts, who is a black man in his thirties “with a record.” He pauses to allow Rachel to ask about the record, but when she doesn’t, he proceeds to tell her about it. Potts has served time in jail twice, once on burglary and drug charges when he was nineteen and five years later for kidnapping. It was his own little boy he had kidnapped, Patrick tells Rachel, and he did it because he heard the boy’s mother was going off and leaving him unattended all night while she went out. Still, he had broken the law, for he had been ordered by the court not to come near the house where they lived and to stay away from the child. He took the boy from school on a Friday afternoon and kept him for a week until the boy was spotted buying milk at a convenience store in Jackson. An off-duty policeman recognized him from the picture that was circulating all over the Southeast by then. This happened seven years ago.
I wonder how such a story affects Rachel. I wonder if she is standing in the kitchen with her eyes shut tight, remembering her two babies who were kidnapped but were never spotted by a policeman or anyone else until they were dead.
I hear Patrick’s voice move toward the kitchen table. I hear sounds of the chairs against the floor, then a hearty prayer recited by Patrick, followed by clinks and scrapes of silverware against plates. Patrick resumes his report on Potts, each word resonating with virtuous pride over his being such a fair-minded white man—to hire someone on parole, to hire a black man on parole. Potts will work in the stock room, he tells Rachel. He will unload and unpack shipments, and when a customer wants a large item such as a file cabinet or desk, he will get it from the back and roll it to the customer’s car on a dolly.
Patrick goes on to declare his belief that Potts is smart, telling Rachel that he speaks remarkably well, that he used the words prerogative, apportion, and equitable during their conversation three days ago. Potts used his most recent jail time to improve himself by reading, Patrick says. “And guess what he said when I asked him what his favorite book was!” Rachel doesn’t guess, but Patrick tells her anyway. “The Bible! He said he reads it cover to cover once a year!
“Hey, this steak is good,” he breaks off to say. “Chip says the chicken is good, too, but he said try the steak first. I think the place is going to make a go of it. You should have seen the line waiting to pick up orders, and the phone was ringing off the hook the whole time. Of course, it’s not cheap.” Silence for a few seconds, then, “You like it?”
Rachel says something, brief and indistinguishable, then something else. I hear the name Veronica.
“Oh yeah?” Patrick says. “Did Teri say why?”
Evidently Teri hadn’t said why because Rachel says nothing else. Patrick takes up the reins of the conversation again and gallops off in a different direction, this time relating the details of an evening course he is hoping to take at Mississippi Delta Community College starting in January. It is a course called Elements of Literature. He describes it as an introductory course. I wonder if such a course will open up the cramped quarters of his mind or if it will only make him more insufferable. I feel no pleasure at the thought of hearing him expound upon works of literature at the supper table.
Though my knowledge of literature is spotty compared to that of my former colleagues at South Wesleyan State College, and vastly inferior to Eliot’s, I am quite certain that I will not be enlightened by any literary interpretations and applications trotted forth by my nephew. I can imagine arguing with him through the door: “Listen to what the piece is saying! Stop imposing your silly religion and conservative politics on everything you read!”
I understand by what he says now that this course is the beginning of a journey he has set for himself. He will take a few literature courses “to get a foundation,” he tells Rachel, and then he will take a writing course. Or possibly he will try taking a writing course concurrent with the first literature course. This is the word he uses—concurrent. It is Patrick’s delight to use big words whenever possible. He will see how the first writing course goes, he says. He may take another one if he feels that the professor of the first has “something to offer.” No mention of his own capability, only that of the professor.
And then—though he doesn’t say this, his intention is clear—he will appear on the horizon as a messiah in the heathen world of publishing. I can see his hopes like a banner unfurling in a stiff wind: BEST-SELLING AUTHOR! He no doubt dreams of large posters in the windows of major bookstores: PATRICK MARTIN FELBER’S NEWEST BOOK! Perhaps he imagines jaunty little airplanes skywriting their way across the continent: READ FELBER!
Patrick’s ambitions will fail, surely. He will work no miracle to feed the masses. His writing will amount to only a few broken loaves, if that. Ten years from now he will still be working as manager of the Main Office Supply. He will have spent untold hours laboring over his writing to no avail, with no book to show for his effort, unless he finally, in desperation, spends his own money to publish his work. I feel no sympathy for Patrick, only for Rachel, having to put up with him. But then, perhaps she needs no sympathy. Perhaps she hears Patrick’s words as the ceaseless tides beating against the shores of her life, coming in and going out into the forgotten sea of all his past words. Perhaps after each surge she knows that this, too, will pass.
I look at my plate and see that half of the sirloin tips are gone. One does not expect such succulence from food that comes in a sack. I cut open the baked potato. Packets of salt and pepper, salad dressing, sour cream, and b
utter are sitting beside my plate. Steak in a Shake has thought of everything—even a dinner mint. I butter the roll and potato, then open the salad dressing.
On the other side of the door Patrick has evidently circled back to the subject of his new employee, Potts. “He hasn’t laid eyes on his kid in over five years. The mother picked up and moved to Little Rock while he was in jail. The boy is thirteen now.”
Suddenly I find myself out of the waiting room and in the corridor again. One night Eliot brought home a piece of steak and grilled it over charcoal for our supper. In the months since we were married, I had typed new copies of all his lecture notes in addition to three lengthy papers, two of them revised from former manuscripts. One paper concerned the subject of money in Shakespeare’s day, another the disqualification of Romeo and Juliet as a true tragedy in the classic sense, and the third the concept of fatherhood in Shakespeare’s sonnets.
From typing the first paper, I learned the names of coins: the angel, noble, groat, and half-groat. I have forgotten the comparative values of these coins. The mark, I learned, was a sum referred to in business dealings but not an actual coin. For some reason I remember this bit of useless information: The mark equaled thirteen shillings.
From the second paper I learned that Juliet was thirteen years old. Having read very little Shakespeare before I married Eliot, I had always assumed Romeo and Juliet to be star-crossed lovers in their teens or early twenties. I had made the common man’s mistake of seeing all things in light of what he has experienced in his little bubble of time and space. I broke off typing the paper, I recall, to ask Eliot if the phrase “a girl of thirteen” was in error. He must have thought me foolish, though he merely smiled, opened a book at hand, and showed me the opening lines of the third scene of act 1, in which it is affirmed four times that Juliet has not yet turned fourteen.
Winter Birds Page 9