Cakewalk

by Rita Mae Brown

  “And no one here kissed you?” Juts was incredulous.

  “Well, they tried. It wasn’t right. So if the day comes when someone appeals to you and he’s kind, especially if he’s kind and he’s honest and he works up the nerve to kiss you and you never felt anything like that before, that’s the right one. Juts, remember all this. In time you will have your turn, but I repeat, don’t spoil things for Louise. There’s no hurry to do anything, but”—she turned to look Louise full in the upturned face—“he’s a nice young man and a strong one.”

  Tears spilling now, Louise dabbed her eyes, saying nothing.

  Juts asked, “Do you think Ramelle felt that way when Curtis kissed her? Men chased her all the time. They chase you, too.”

  Louise could have killed Juts right then. The sisters never discussed Celeste and Ramelle’s relationship, and probably Juts really was too young to figure it out. Louise knew and the way it was settled for her was when her mother answered her questions by saying, “Love is love.”

  Celeste, nonplussed, nodded. “I think so, Juts. She wouldn’t have married him otherwise. In her own way, Ramelle is a sensible woman.”

  Cora peered into the library. “You’ve calmed the wild Indians.”

  “We were discussing men, love, the important things in life.”

  Cora noticed Louise’s glistening eyes and Juts’s unnatural silence. “Must have been good.”

  “I hope so. I’m sure you have things to say on the subject.”

  Cora, her coat on, folded her arms across her bosom. “What I’ve learned in life is that men fall in love with their eyes; women with their ears.”

  Apart from a rash of gilt, the chapel at Immaculata Academy felt calming. Its white interior filled the interior with light from tall, arched, clear windows.

  Celeste knelt next to her sister, who had given her a rosary. Although Episcopalian, Celeste did know her rosary, finding comfort in feeling the beads, repeating the words. Not a woman inclined to religious fervor, she responded to ritual. Like the family, but especially their mother and father, Celeste was shocked when Carlotta had converted to Catholicism to marry Herbert. He had had ample time to repent of this, as Carlotta became ever and ever more devout over the years.

  The whole point of the conversion was that Herbert’s late mother had pitched a full-scale hissy fit, an emotional conflagration on a par with the burning of Atlanta, when Herbert announced the intentions to wed the lovely and rich Carlotta. Vivien Van Dusen announced that no grandchild of hers would be anything but Catholic. T. Pritchard and Charlotte Spottiswood Chalfonte took issue with that. For one thing, the Catholic church, not beneath the salt in Maryland, nonetheless seemed too rigorous for Carlotta’s parents. One attended church, one listened, one obeyed the Ten Commandments, and one went about the business of life with little concern for excommunication, hellfire, or damnation.

  The coolness between the parents of the couple only heightened their determination to wed. Carlotta converted. T. Richard and Charlotte Spottiswood Chalfonte accepted it with good grace. Done is done. Their remaining unmarried brood, Celeste, Spottiswood, and Curtis, accepted it. By that time, Stirling was already married to Margaret, a good Episcopalian.

  The worry about grandchildren proved unfounded as Herbert and Carlotta produced one daughter, who, though raised Catholic, merely went through the motions. Now, at her first year of college, away from her mother, she didn’t even do that, her mother was unaware.

  Carlotta, perhaps inspired by raising a daughter, decided to dedicate her life to improving, educating young women, preparing them for whatever their future might hold. She put up part of her personal inheritance in her own name. Herbert put up the rest. Herbert was proving a good businessman.

  Stirling would not reduce the bulk of the Chalfonte fortune no matter how much closer such generosity would ensure him a good berth in heaven. But each of the Chalfontes had been bequeathed a handsome living wage while the bulk of the fortune stayed intact to be skillfully managed by Stirling. Carlotta built a quiet, tree-lined academy. Every walkway was lined with either a deciduous tree good for fall color or an evergreen as a contrast to the snow. All the Chalfontes had a good eye for symmetry, color, proportion. The academy’s buildings, Federal-style, surrounded two quads with a huge quad in the middle. The chapel sat smack in the middle of the central quad, all paths leading to it. The buildings, white-painted brick, were all of the same height. All had six-over-six sash windows with maroon shutters sporting gold pinstripes.

  Carlotta, like Celeste, believed in women’s suffrage, and the colors of the suffragettes were maroon and gold.

  After the service, the day cool but promising spring, Carlotta stood outside the chapel doors at the foot of the steps with her very beautiful sister. Carlotta wore her robes as headmistress, which made this good-looking woman even more imposing. She greeted every girl by name, asking a question about the young person’s favorite interests or probing about some studies.

  After a half hour, the two sisters took a leisurely walk through the campus. Both believed in walking as the perfect exercise, and riding helped too. Both were terrific athletes, but then Chalfontes always were.

  Celeste had occasionally visited her sister, but she had never worshipped with her, nor seen her with the girls as she just had. Four years separated them, but what really put distance between them was Celeste’s relationship with Ramelle.

  “You remember every girl’s name,” said Celeste.

  “I do.” Carlotta strode under a massive elm, buds threatening to open.

  Stride for stride they moved in concert before turning to walk along Oak Alley, framing the back quad.

  “I forget how much I loved school,” Celeste remembered.

  “Mother and Father gave us the best. Mother always swore the foundation of democracy is the education of women. Remember, she was there in 1878 when the amendment to give us the vote was first introduced into Congress. Mother endured a great deal for this and Father stood by her.”

  “Didn’t he get into a fistfight over it?”

  “Cassius Rife insulted Mother in 1887. Said women should never vote, they’re too irrational, and I guess that turned into a donnybrook. I was ten. You were in first grade. If the Nineteenth Amendment doesn’t pass, I actually believe there will be violence, and I don’t think it’s going to pass. We need one more state to reach that magic number of thirty-six states. That’s Tennessee, and as the entire South, including Maryland, has rejected this, I feel certain Tennessee will also.”

  Celeste nodded. “And yet the very amendment I thought would have cities erupting into flames became effective in January. Then again, you and I wouldn’t be in the company of Carrie Nation and her type, but plenty of others are.”

  “I think the reason there hasn’t been bloodshed is that Carrie Nation, quite brilliantly, cast this as a moral crusade, an uplifting of behavior, to protect women and children. It’s nothing of the kind. Moral uplift can only come from the church. And let us remember Jesus and the Apostles drank wine.”

  “I laid up as much as my cellar could handle.” Celeste laughed. “Not for me, for Fannie Jump.”

  Carlotta smiled. “She’s going to need a girdle with iron bands if she doesn’t slow down. Alcohol will put the pounds on.” She surveyed her younger sister. “Not you.”

  “I drink so little. And I ride so much.” Heading toward the two-story headmistress’s house, the Rectory, Celeste said, “You and I keep our distance from one another. At Ramelle’s wedding, you asked me to come to Mass. I expect you want money.”

  Carlotta stiffened, then relaxed. “Of course, I want money. I’m not a fool. You added to your personal finances. I depleted mine, but in a great cause.”

  “You’re right, Carlotta. I didn’t start a school. You have, betting on the future really.”

  This surprised Carlotta. “Well, thank you. So, why are you here? Let’s discuss this over tea. It’s not cold but it’s not warm either. I need a spot o
f tea.”

  Within fifteen minutes they faced one another, sitting in a small intimate room off the enormous library. A student served tea, then melted away.

  “Some of the girls must work to offset their expenses. Louise did. You know she was the most talented child musically I have ever taught and she hasn’t a bit of interest in it.”

  “Just because God gives you a gift doesn’t mean you have to use it.” Celeste picked up the cup and saucer.

  “How interesting to hear you discuss God.”

  While intelligent, Carlotta never could match her sister for dry wit, sharp wit, wit in general. She nestled back in her comfortable chair, drank her tea, looked out the window.

  The silence was broken by a student, Betty Ermdorf, standing in the doorway. “Anything else, Headmistress? More tea?”

  “No thank you. There’s plenty in the pot but if there are any shortbread cookies, do bring them.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Carlotta set down her cup on the small table between them. “Why are you here? Why are you here when we have led very different lives, when you call me La Sermonetta behind my back and I call you a Latter-Day Sappho behind yours?”

  “Ah, I hadn’t heard that. Has a ring to it.” Celeste started to quote one of Sappho’s poems, in the poet’s Greek dialect.

  Carlotta held up her hand. “Don’t. I hated Greek.”

  “You were the best at French. Italian, too.”

  Carlotta smiled. “We really did get a superior education. And that is why you are here.”

  Celeste held her breath, then lightly exhaled. “Yes.”

  “My dream is that every girl will be a full citizen, be able to participate in politics. We’ve worked, Mother worked, fifty-plus years of work, and we are about to be cast into darkness. These girls must continue the fight. The United States is not a democracy if women can’t vote. I need more money and I am turning to you because of Mother and Father’s beliefs and because of the future. And of course, if Ramelle is delivered of a girl she will attend here, thanks to your generosity, but other girls will attend here thanks to your help.”

  “Must they all become Catholics?”

  “It is a Catholic academy.”

  “Don’t weasel with me, Carlotta. Answer my question.”

  Betty, transfixed in the doorway, hesitated to enter. Celeste motioned with her hand for Carlotta to look in the youth’s direction.

  Carlotta beckoned to her. “Betty, this is my younger sister, Celeste Chalfonte. Being sisters, we often disagree. Don’t be alarmed, she’s not going to throw a cup of tea at me.”

  “Not until you leave the room, Betty.” Celeste laughed.

  Betty couldn’t help herself. She laughed, too. Celeste had a way of making people feel they were all on the same team. She curtseyed and left.

  “You’ve terrified the girl.”

  “Good. Then I’ve scared the devil out of her and you have less work to do.” Celeste shrugged.

  “I knew this wasn’t going to be easy.”

  “Oh, when has it been easy? You and I can fight over a postage stamp. You want money. I want to know if a student must convert. I agree with your assessment of future political participation for young women. I actually do, but I am not bankrolling the Catholic Church, the largest landowner in the world. Nor do I believe the pontiff is Christ’s vicar on earth. You know that.”

  “And I pray for you.”

  “And you still haven’t answered my question, dammit.” Celeste’s face flushed.

  “Calm down.”

  “Tell me the truth and I will.”

  “I will not press conversion but a student must attend chapel, and before you raise your voice again, do remember that almost every private institution for women or men demands chapel attendance. I give you my word, no conversion.”

  “No pressure?” Celeste’s eyebrows shot up.

  “No. I might indicate I think our faith is the one true faith, but no personal pressure.”

  The two stared at one another.

  “All right. Now that we are laying our cards on the table, as it were, you have ever been censorious of my relationship with Ramelle. I never shoved it in your face. We were discreet. You were ready to put me in one of the lower circles of Hell.”

  “I’d put you with Abelard and Heloise in Dante’s Inferno.”

  “How very thoughtful of you.”

  “Celeste, it is an unnatural vice.”

  “Here’s the thing, Sister, all vices are natural. That’s why there’s so many of them. That’s why the absurd Eighteenth Amendment passed. To control vice. Is drunkenness a scourge? Yes, it is. Will passing an amendment stop drinking? Certainly not. We’ve both stockpiled our cellars, and when the cellars run dry, we will all be buying from the Canadians, enriching them instead of our own.”

  “I think of the Canadians as our own.”

  “I don’t.” Celeste, blood up, barked. “They’re smarter. You don’t see them passing a Volstead Act.”

  “You’re right there.”

  “And what makes you think your relationship with Herbert is better than mine with Ramelle? Carlotta, you are bored to tears with your husband. At least I wasn’t bored.”

  This hit home; Carlotta’s face reddened. She fired back, “At least I wasn’t betrayed.”

  Celeste threw her teacup into the fireplace, where it smashed to bits.

  Betty ran in. Celeste, in an unnaturally calm voice, said, “I broke a teacup, Betty. Don’t worry about it. Be grateful I didn’t throw it in your headmistress’s face.”

  Carlotta, smiling broadly, said, “My sister has always been prone to temper tantrums.”

  “Your temper is worse than mine.” Celeste then looked at Betty, her eyes like saucers. “Excuse me. No one can make me angry as fast as my sister. Do you have a sister?”

  “I do,” came the wavering reply.

  “Is she older or younger?”

  “Younger, ma’am.”

  “Does she make you angry?”

  “Sometimes.”

  Carlotta interjected. “Do you forgive her?”

  “I must. If I don’t, my mother will fan me but good.”

  Celeste started to laugh, then Carlotta did, too, and finally Betty giggled.

  “Honey, please don’t tell your friends how hateful I’ve been to my big sister. She knows how to pluck my last nerve.” Celeste used Cora’s phrase.

  As Betty left, Carlotta handed over the plate of shortbread cookies. “Care for one?”

  “I ought to shove it up your nose.” Celeste did take a cookie.

  They laughed some more.

  “The cool, graceful, magically beautiful Celeste Chalfonte lost her temper, acted like a brat, and, well, her big sister lost her temper too. Do you ever think Mother and Father sent us to those good schools so we’d learn not to show emotion?”

  Cookie in hand, hand pausing in midair, Celeste blinked. “I never thought of it. I thought I was there to get a good education and then go to England and find a duke or let a duke find me.”

  “Think back on how deportment and manners were drilled into us. Am I glad? Up to a point. But we can seem cold.”

  “Yes, yes, I think that’s why I love Cora so much. She wears her heart on her sleeve.” Celeste put down the half-eaten cookie. “So here we are halfway through life. What do we do now?”

  Carlotta wistfully looked out the window to see the first robin of the spring in a birch tree branch. “Our best. For me, that’s the academy. Training the young.”

  “For me, I don’t know,” Celeste responded. “My good works are not as good as yours.”

  “We were brought up to serve. You do it in your way and I do it in mine. And who is to say with your spirit that you won’t be the first woman in South Runnymede to run for public office if we ever do get the vote?”

  “Carlotta, don’t wish that on me.” She paused. “I have a condition apart from no conversions if I am to give money.”

 
“What?”

  “That if two girls fall in love, let them be. Don’t expel them.”

  “You don’t expect me to condone it?” The older sister’s voice sharpened.

  “No. I know you don’t understand, but this is such a sweet and tender age. Girls fall in love with their friends. For God’s sake, Carlotta, they even fall in love with their horses.”

  Carlotta smiled. “They do. What exactly is it that you want me to do?”

  “Look the other way. If an attachment becomes too amorous or too public, speak to them but don’t judge them.”

  “I can’t speak to them.”

  “All right, then. I can. Will you let me know when and if such a relationship reaches that level?”

  A long, long silence followed, then Carlotta, with finality in her voice, agreed. “I will.”

  Then they spoke of the robin, just outside, chirping his heart out. A cat sauntered in and they talked about their childhood pets and their pets now.

  “Ah, I see Francis coming down the drive,” said Celeste.

  No sum had been discussed.

  “Betty will tell him to wait.”

  The two, greatly resembling one another in form if not in personality, waited a moment as though waiting to see the first bud on the birch open.

  “Carlotta, we rarely talk and then we rarely say anything.”

  “I know.”

  “Do you still love Herbert?”

  Carlotta waved her right hand. “Yes. But it’s not the same. He’s a good man, a steady man. I suppose he puts up with me and I put up with him.”

  “Do you ever long to feel what you felt in the beginning?”

  A silky sigh followed. “It was the time of my life when I felt most alive. I felt the future was a golden haze into which I would walk holding his hand. Oh, it all sounds so silly.”

  “No, it doesn’t. I know exactly what you mean.”

  They stood up and embraced.

  Carlotta walked Celeste to the front hall. “May I have your pledge?”

  “You may. I will transfer one hundred thousand dollars into your account tomorrow, plus a small sum to cover Betty’s expenses.”