Cakewalk

by Rita Mae Brown

  Ramelle stepped back, running her palm over his cheek. “Oh, just a bit of unmowed lawn.”

  He kissed her, then promised, “I will be slick as an eel for dinner.”

  Cora pushed through the door to the kitchen, arms open wide.

  Curtis rushed to her, giving her a mighty hug. “Oh, Cora, now I know all is right with the world.”

  And so it was, for now.

  Walking home from school along the south side of the square, Juts and Ev Most chattered about the day’s events at South Runnymede High. A brilliant male cardinal swooped to perch onto the Confederate war statue, then, wings spread, glided down onto the snow.

  Juts admired the sight. “Red on the snow.”

  “Mom puts out seed. Not enough to eat in the winter.” Ev did try to listen to her mother, imitate her, as her mother was well liked.

  “Yeah, mine does too.” Juts stared at the bird lifting his topknot. “Ever think about what a battle in snow looks like? All that blood on the snow.”

  “No, but sometimes I think about the peach blossoms fallen on the dead at Gettysburg. They all changed from peach to red.” Ev shivered. “I’m glad we don’t have to take another trip to Gettysburg. I don’t want to go to battlefields.”

  Juts slipped her arm through Ev’s. “History class is so boring. All the dates of wars, then all the dates of the peace treaties. Why bother? There’s just another war.”

  “Two more years of school.” Ev sighed. “Then we’re free.”

  “I’m going to quit after June.”

  Ev turned to look directly at her best friend. “Your mother will pitch a fit and Louise will be one step ahead of a running fit.”

  Juts shrugged. “It’s a waste of time. Except for algebra and art class, I sit there and think of all the things I want to do, like get a job, make some money, help Momma.”

  “Don’t tell her that,” Ev wisely counseled.

  “I won’t, but Momma works so hard. If we need something big, Celeste helps out, but Momma doesn’t want to take anything. I always tell her Celeste has more money than God.” Juts kept her lips together but smiled. “She said God doesn’t care about money. He cares about our hearts. Good. I care about money and I want to make some.”

  “Doing what?”

  “I don’t know yet. If people didn’t know me, I could do like that countess who talks to the dead. The one they write about in the paper.”

  “You don’t believe that, do you?”

  “I’m not a ninny,” Juts replied. “There’s money to be made.”

  “Not that way.”

  “I know, Ev, I know. Sometimes I feel like the dead are crushing us. We see statues of them. We hear what they did, the kings, the queens, the generals and admirals. Then we hear about our great-grandfathers and grandmothers. Okay, they did a lot, some of them, but all I have is now. I’m not a queen and I want to be happy. And I’m not happy at South Runnymede High. At least if I go, I won’t have to look at Dimps Jr. anymore.”

  “Oh, yes, you will.” Ev picked up the pace, as she was feeling the cold.

  “Suppose so. Do you ever feel like we’re stuck here?”

  “Nah. I belong here. You, too.”

  “I guess,” Juts said unconvincingly.

  They reached Cadwalder’s, pushed open the door, to find many of their classmates already at the drugstore.

  “Hey, hey, Juts and Ev, come on over here,” Richard Bartholomew called. “Did you see this?” He pointed to an open newspaper on the table.

  “Yeah, Celeste read it to us when Momma came in to work today.”

  Betty Wilcox, a classmate, declared, “Wouldn’t you love to visit the countess? To think that she calls down spirits. She said that Teddy Roosevelt walks Rittenhouse Square.”

  “Betty…” Juts thought better of pointing out to her the absurdity of this, so she stopped talking.

  “What?”

  “I like your sweater.”

  “Bought it from Wheezie at the Bon Ton.”

  At the mention of Wheezie’s name, Dimps Jr., at the next table, sang out, “Your sister’s cracked. First, she clobbers Paul Trumbull with her purse and now she’s going out with him.”

  Juts leapt to Louise’s defense. “My sister is not cracked and it was a mix-up.”

  “Oh, la.” Dimps Jr. waved her hand dismissively. “Everyone in Runnymede knows that. He was dating my sister. She was getting ready to dump him, he’s such a bore, so Louise made it easy.”

  Although she didn’t know Paul Trumbull well, Juts felt compelled to speak up for him. “Maybe he was bored too, Dimps. Lottie is as dumb as a sack of hammers.”

  A moment of silence filled the tables then Richard Bartholomew closed the paper and joked, “Yesterday’s news.”

  The others, relieved at his mollifying attempt, soon realized Dimps Jr. was not to be put off.

  “Momma says he won’t amount to anything. All those men came back from the war and now they don’t know what to do.” Dimps Jr. lifted her chin. “And Momma says they all paid French women to—you know.”

  “Dimps, shut up.” Betty Wilcox glowered. Her elder brother, Edgar, had survived the war minus his left arm.

  It dawned on Dimps Jr., slowly, that a few of her classmates did have brothers who returned with varying degrees of damage and some had damage you couldn’t see. They shook uncontrollably sometimes. Spiteful and proud, however, it did not occur to her to apologize.

  Quiet until now, Dick Yost spoke, “Betty, maybe our class should do something for the vets. You’re such a good organizer.”

  Dimps Jr. tried to squelch this. “They don’t want anything to do with us.”

  “Why not?” Ev smiled at Dick. “They all graduated from South or North Runnymede High.”

  “Well, there’s a lot of men from the Spanish-American War,” Richard chimed in. “They’re a lot older but they’re here, and there’s some, pretty old now, from the Big War.” South Runnymede people did not say “Civil War.”

  Wiping down the counter, Flavius called to the kids, “That’s a great idea. We’ve never done anything like that and if you do it, I promise to bring the drinks. You’ll have to work on Reuben Brown for hot dogs and hamburgers if you have a picnic but I think he’ll come around. Magna Carta Day would be good. Everyone comes out for that and the veterans march around the square.”

  Enthusiasm built and Dick said, “I know I can get Dad to put this all in the newspaper. Come on, let’s do something.”

  Ev nodded. She wasn’t the leader type but she had good ideas and her classmates liked her.

  Juts threw her arm around her best friend. “We will have so much fun.”

  Dimps Jr., knowing she’d lost favor, finally had the sense to shut up.

  A bit later, walking with Juts down Emmitsburg Pike, Ev’s house was on the block before Celeste’s, Ev and Juts happily chattered.

  The iron fence gate outside her house creaked as Ev lifted the latch to open it. “Want to come in?”

  “Thanks, but no. There’s so much to do to get ready for the wedding. I need to get to Celeste’s to help.”

  “You know the church will be full. People will show up whether they’re invited or not.” Ev laughed.

  “Celeste knows it’s been a hard winter and a lot of people don’t have work. There will be tons of food at the dinner the night before, and then at the party. And Momma says since it’s private, the liquor can be out in the open. Momma says there’s always hard times after a war, then things pick up. She says people need a celebration.”

  “What is it you have to do?”

  “Make guest cards,” said Juts. “Since we don’t know who will be there the night before at the church hall, I sit at the table with invitation cards. It’s kind of backward but everyone will feel special, so Momma says.”

  “So you’ll make them out as they walk through the door?”

  “No. I have to make one for just about everybody now. But if anyone shows up that night that we forgot or d
on’t know, I’ll make them one then.”

  “So it’s a keepsake.”

  “I guess. Weddings are a lot of work. I don’t want one. If I ever get married, I’m going to go to the justice of the peace.”

  “You say that now.” Ev hung over the gate, beginning to feel the iron’s coldness through her coat.

  “You just wait. You, of course, will have a big wedding. Your mother would kill you if you didn’t.”

  “I think about getting married and then I don’t,” Ev honestly replied.

  Saucily, Juts said, “I don’t think about it.”

  “Oh, Momma wanted to know why Ramelle and Curtis are getting married on Sunday, Washington’s birthday, instead of Saturday.”

  “Because the Battle of Verdun started on February 21, 1916. They don’t want to be reminded of the war at the wedding.”

  Ev pondered this. “I’ll tell Momma.”

  When she did, her mother nodded to show she thought that this was a wise decision.

  Neither Ev nor Juts truly understood how the war to end all wars pervaded the lives of those even slightly older. They just knew that it did.

  When Ev told her mother about the reunion idea, maybe on Magna Carta Day, a day special to Runnymede, her mother smiled. “We must never forget our veterans.”

  —

  Later that night, Ramelle in her own room and Curtis in his on another floor, Celeste stopped reading in bed and thought about what Juts had told her concerning some kind of reunion for the veterans. She put her book down and mused, “Out of the mouths of babes.”

  Some things are right under your nose. You don’t see them and when someone does, you wonder how you missed it.

  She’d picked up a book by a new historian, Max Weber, finding it provocative. She also found provocative the situation with which she was now encumbered. Ramelle’s pregnancy was one thing, the wedding was another. Stirling counseled her against “improvident expenditure,” his words, and so typical. Marriage did not come cheap. Nor did raising children. She had not broached this subject with Curtis. Should he pay all the bills or should they split them? He paid those when Ramelle was in California for half the year, she paid the bills in Maryland. As to the best private schools and then college, Smith, it had damn well better be her alma matter if it was a girl, Yale if a boy, she supposed they would split that. Should they discuss this before or after the child was born? There was no guarantee the little thing would live or be healthy. One always prayed for a safe birth and a healthy child, and no one—not Celeste, Cora, Curtis, or the girls—breathed anything but good thoughts. Why worry Ramelle? She probably had those thoughts but kept them to herself. Celeste couldn’t imagine that any woman who would give birth wasn’t aware of the dangers.

  The wind picked up outside, rattling the windows. The baby was due in May. One associates new life with spring.

  She pulled the covers up higher. Ramelle slept with her until Curtis showed up. The warmth of another body is comforting but it did make sense that she would return to her room now, he to his. Can’t be sleeping with the bride too close to the wedding. She laughed to herself: how odd the rules were and yet they did make sense. Actually, no one was ever to sleep with a bride before the wedding, but like so many ideals, that one proved difficult to achieve.

  The planning exhausted her. If she didn’t have Fannie Jump Creighton, Fairy Thatcher, and Cora, she didn’t think she could get through it. Reliving their own weddings, Fannie and Fairy were godsends. What amazed Celeste was that each childhood friend remembered every detail, most especially their mothers’ unwelcome intrusions.

  Picking up Weber, she read his thoughts that the very definition of a state is a monopoly on legitimate violence. “Hobbes was onto it first,” she whispered, then put the book down, turned out the light, and fell asleep.

  The extra minute of daylight each day after the winter solstice just added more time to be cold. February always seemed especially dark and cold.

  Weary after another long day of preparation for the upcoming wedding and the barrage of questions about what to her were unimportant matters, Celeste gladly retired to her room by nine o’clock that evening. Curtis slept on the third floor, his room next to Spotts’s. Ramelle’s room on the second floor rested between Celeste’s and what had been the parents’ big bedroom. For whatever reason, once they passed, Celeste evidenced no desire to take over that large room. Her room was big enough and kept her warm with its massive fireplace; the surround was a rich mahogany, fashionable when the house was built, shortly after the Revolutionary War. Mahogany stayed fashionable, too.

  Sometimes her bath kept her up but not tonight. She slipped between the sheets, pulling up the covers. Picking up her book, she put it down again to watch the shadows from the fire flicker in the room.

  As a child she argued that Carlotta’s room was bigger, which it was. Her mother informed her that Carlotta was older but that she, Celeste, enjoyed a much better view of the long back lawn, the stables, and the rose garden. Carlotta’s room looked out onto Emmitsburg Pike. Weighing these facts at eight, Celeste determined she really did have the better room. On a night like tonight, when the wind rattled the panes on the north side of the house, the Emmitsburg Pike side, she still thought she’d gotten the better room.

  A light knock at her door, the door opened a crack. “Are you asleep?”

  “No. Tired, though. Come in.”

  Ramelle slipped through the door. Her silk robe, a swirl of blue, could have been warmer.

  She sat on the edge of the bed. “If this is a small wedding, I would never survive a big one.”

  Celeste sat upright. “Pull the woolen throw around you.”

  Ramelle took the tightly woven Scottish cloth from the foot of the bed, wrapping it around her shoulders. “Why are some winters so cold and snowy? Well, most are, but every now and then we get a respite. This one is a beast.”

  “You’ll soon be out of it. Orange groves, Pacific breezes. It will be lovely.”

  “Maybe so, but I don’t know if it will ever feel like home.”

  “Time will tell.” Celeste smiled. “And Curtis will do whatever you wish. Remember, he grew up here, too, so he made the leap of faith. I think of moving to California as a leap of faith.”

  “It is, but you always liked it when you visited your brother.”

  “I did. I missed getting on a train, stepping off in Philadelphia, New York, or Boston to visit a museum or a great library. For that matter, Baltimore has a beautiful library. Out there, well, perhaps it’s all too new and they’re all too wrapped up in making money. It was probably like that here in the seventeenth century.” She smiled. “Then again, there are those who would say we still live in it.”

  Ramelle’s light laugh filled the room. “Minta Mae Dexter. When I read the guest list I saw you invited all the Sisters of Gettysburg as well as the Daughters of the Confederacy. No one can say mine won’t be a balanced wedding.”

  “As long as they check their swords at the door. Did I tell you that Caesura Frothingham threatens to once again redecorate her house?”

  “No.” Ramelle’s eyes widened. “When did she tell you that?”

  “The other day in the hunt field. God, it was brutally cold, but it’s mating season so the foxes gave us a run. I told you. Well, no matter. Too much to think about.”

  “I will miss you.” Ramelle paused, then asked about Caesura Frothingham, the new president of the Daughters of the Confederacy. “Did she say how she was going to redecorate?”

  “Better. She showed me drawings. Early Reign of Terror.”

  Ramelle clapped her hands. “Ha. Oh, Celeste, I truly will miss you. There’s no one I can talk to or listen to like you.”

  “All will be well. Surely there will be some women or men out West who delight in folly.”

  “I hope so. Curtis occasionally lets slip a remark. He’s such a good man.”

  “He is. Father left his imprint on his sons: Duty, Charity, Profit. He
believed in vertical hierarchies yet he took people as he found them. Neither Mother nor Father was a snob, but they understood the social order. Mother would tell us, ‘Know where you belong.’ I was never quite sure about that.” Celeste smiled. “I felt I belonged with you.”

  Ramelle reached for Celeste’s hand, lifting it from under the covers. “We will always belong to each other.”

  “I think so. Perhaps the surface changes but the depth remains.”

  “You’re not angry, are you? You’ve not said much at all. Not even when I told you I was pregnant.”

  “What’s to say? Part of me hopes love is a hallucinatory abandon and part of me hopes not.”

  “You’ve taught me so much. I didn’t plan this. When Curtis visited in September, a whirlwind of seeing his old friends, your old friends in New York, you came back early and…I don’t know. I looked at him while we were in the Metropolitan Museum and something just happened.”

  “Hallucinatory abandon. Good. He deserves that kind of love, as do you. I can be distant. I am distant,” she corrected herself.

  “Celeste, you’re generous. When you and I first embarked on our relationship, you were so cautious.”

  “The world does not smile on two women in love.”

  “They ignore it as long as you play your part. Don’t bring it up. At social occasions, always be escorted by a gentleman. We were. There will always be men around you. We did have a wonderful time, didn’t we?”

  “We did.”

  “I love you. I truly do.”

  “I know. We’ll be together in spring and summer. Curtis will come out for part of the seasons. All will be well. It will be different but it will be well. You’ll be the mother you always wanted to be.”

  “Do you love me, really?”

  “After thirteen years, Ramelle, you surely should know the answer to that. I accept what is.”

  The fire popped, sparks flew.

  Ramelle squeezed Celeste’s hand. “My own mother and father refuse to attend. You’d think they’d be glad. I love you and I love Curtis for making this wedding happen and—to be blunt—paying for everything.”