Duet for Three Hands

by Tess Thompson

  “Hi, Cassie. Sure did.”

  “Your mother will be right glad to see you,” said Mama.

  “It’s good to be here. I’ve missed y’all something fierce.”

  “Your mama’s in the sitting room with Mr. Nate. They’re waiting for you.”

  “All right, then.” He picked up his bag. “I’ll see you both later.” He left through the kitchen door.

  “You best get a move on that cornbread,” said Mama. “We’ve got a big meal to serve up here.”

  “Yes, Mama.” Jeselle opened the oven door; the heat blasted her face. She set the pan on the hot surface as the heat of the stove seemed to reach every part of her body. Burning.

  Chapter 22

  Nathaniel

  * * *

  On Christmas day Nathaniel sat with Frank in the lake house study, reclining in twin leather chairs next to the fire, drinking bootleg whiskey straight up. Fog settled over the lake while Frank chattered on about the effects of Prohibition. “The repeal a couple weeks ago is the only goddamned good idea Roosevelt has had to date. Let me tell you, Nate, my friends in the spirit business in St. Louis have been ruined by all the damned teetotalers forcing their opinion on the government. Even Rockefeller agrees, sent a letter out last year saying as how Prohibition hampered the economy and that folks are drinking more than ever. I coulda told you that.”

  Nathaniel wasn’t fully listening, as Frank had given the same speech the night before. He nodded his head, though, as if he were interested. “You don’t say?” He finished his drink and felt himself detaching from his body as if he were slipping into the fog, like a ghost haunting a once familiar world.

  “The goddamn Communists trying to infiltrate my workers’ minds. Trying to unionize ’em right in front of me. Used to be the Negroes were happy for a job.” He scratched at the end of his bulbous nose. “Speaking of which, Whitmore’s got a job waiting for him once he’s done at Princeton.”

  “That what Whit wants?”

  Frank glowered at him. “Sure it is.” He emptied his whiskey glass and poured himself another.

  “His painting’s remarkable, Mr. Bellmont. I could introduce him to some people in the art community in New York.”

  Frank guffawed. “No one ever made any money off art.”

  The alcohol made Nathaniel feel bolder than usual, more willing to participate in a fight. He was about to retort that he’d made a small fortune from his own art, but the conversation was interrupted when Frances and Clare entered the study. Nathaniel stood, steadying himself by keeping his right hand on the chair’s arm. They were dressed for dinner in evening gowns, with their hair pulled back and jewels around their necks. Frances wore a sleeveless dress with a fitted bodice and low back that displayed her slender frame and matched her eyes. She grew lovelier by the year, he thought, the beauty she had been at twenty now fully blooming at twenty-six, as maturity had hollowed her cheeks and given her eyes a brighter spark. Clare was dressed in lavender silk with a butterfly bodice attached to a long flowing skirt. She’d changed little in the years he’d been married to Frances, her blonde hair scarcely filtered with white, just the slightest of lines around her eyes. Nathaniel moved to take Frances’s arm, but she pulled away, flopping into the leather armchair next to her father. Clare sat on the couch. “Where’s Whitmore?” she asked no one in particular. “Dinner’s in a few minutes.”

  Nathaniel indicated upward with a nod of his head. “Finishing up a painting.”

  Frank went to the doorway of the study and hollered into the hallway, “Jeselle, tell Whitmore to get down here for a drink.” Back in his chair, he stretched his legs out in front of him. “I’ll be goddamned if he’s going to stay up there all night painting a sunset.”

  Clare murmured, “Frank, it’s Christmas.”

  Nathaniel wondered if she meant the cursing or that Whitmore should be allowed to finish a painting on Christmas day.

  Jeselle appeared in the doorway of the study. “He’ll be right down, Mr. Bellmont.”

  “Thank you, Jeselle,” said Clare.

  After she left, Clare turned to Nathaniel, speaking softly, “I’m delighted to have Jeselle back with us. Oh, I miss the kids. Cassie and I just bump around this big house, like two old chickens with no eggs to sit on.”

  Frances opened a magazine, studying whatever was on the first page. “You mean Whitmore and Jeselle, right, Mother?” She didn’t look up.

  “I miss you, Frances, but you’ve been a grown married woman for five years now.”

  “Speakin’ of which, ’bout time you gave us a grandchild.” Frank stood, perching near the window, one hand over his protruding belly. “Give your mother something to do besides fussing over the help.”

  Nathaniel stole a glance at Frances, but her eyes were cast downward, still in the magazine. We had a child, he thought. We had a son.

  Clare turned back to Nathaniel. “I just had to insist that Jeselle come home, work for us.” She sipped her wine and gazed out the window into the fog. “Oh, that woman was horrid. I begged Cassie not to send her there in the first place, but she had her mind set on it.”

  Frances stood and rifled through a pile of magazines sitting on the bookshelf. “Mother, why you get involved with the help is beyond me. It’s not natural.”

  Clare’s neck flushed red. “We treat all our help as if they’re part of the family.”

  “But must we, Mother? People talk. It’s embarrassing.”

  “You might try it, dear, and perhaps you’ll keep a maid longer than a month. And I certainly don’t care what people say about me or the way I run my own household.”

  Grabbing three issues of Vogue, Frances raised a saucy eyebrow as she sat back in the armchair. “I’ll keep that in mind, Mother.”

  Frank poured a glass of wine and took it over to Clare. He leaned down, speaking into her ear, softly, but Nathaniel’s keen hearing heard every word. “Shut up about the damn help or I’ll make sure you can never open your stupid jaw again.”

  Clare’s eyes glittered with unshed tears as she stared at the fireplace, but her voice remained steady. “Is this from the wine block?”

  “Sure is. Nate, these bricks come to us from California. To make grape juice, mind you. But on the label there’s this note, ‘After dissolving the brick in a gallon of water, do not place the liquid in a jug in a cupboard for twenty days, because then it would turn into wine.’” He laughed, slapping his knee. “I put it away for sixty. Won’t be long now until California starts making wine like France. I have half a mind to grow some grapes myself.” Frank handed Frances a glass of wine.

  “Thank you, Daddy.” Frances held up one of the magazines. “Do you see this?” she asked Clare. “They’ve got a color photograph on the December issue of the American Vogue. The modern world is simply too much to fathom.” A beautiful, dark-haired woman in a white fur stole and a tiara looked forlornly, or perhaps seductively, Nathaniel couldn’t be sure, over her shoulder. “This issue has all kinds of ideas for Christmas gifts.” She tapped the photo of the fur stole, with a pout in her voice. “Pity you didn’t read this before you chose the scarf you gave me.”

  “I don’t have money for a fur stole, Frances.” He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a cigarette, lighting it with the silver lighter Clare had given him as a Christmas gift.

  “We both know that isn’t exactly true,” said Frances.

  He took a long drag of his cigarette and then exhaled. “My fortunes have changed, as you well know.”

  “So you say.” She rolled her eyes, looking at her father. “Nathaniel hoards money like a Jew.”

  “Frances, don’t be crass,” said Clare sharply. “Anyway, in this time it’s awfully smart to be frugal.”

  “Especially on a professor’s salary,” said Nathaniel.

  Frances shrugged, opening a second magazine. “It’s not like we spend money on anything fun. Living in Montevallo, there’s nothing to do, anyway.” She held up another one of the
magazines. On this cover was a painting of a mansion against a background of stars and a group of people filing through the front door. At the bottom of the page it said, “PARTIES NUMBER” in block letters. Nathaniel wondered idly what that meant but didn’t have the energy to ask, as Frances continued her diatribe. “You don’t see Montevallo featured in Vogue. Mother, did you see this article in the English Vogue? It’s all about where the parties are in Europe for the holidays. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to be in Paris for the holidays?”

  Nathaniel put out his cigarette and downed the remaining drops of his whiskey. He glanced over at Clare. “Have you ever been to Paris, Clare?”

  “Oh, no. I’d love to go someday, of course. So much history. And art. Wouldn’t it be lovely to go, Frank?”

  Frank poured himself another whiskey. “Woman, do you ever shut your mouth?”

  Cassie, from the doorway, cleared her throat. “Miz Bellmont, dinner is served.”

  As they walked down the hallway to dinner, Nathaniel made sure to fall into step with Clare. He spoke under his breath, “You would let me know if things were intolerable, wouldn’t you?”

  She took his arm. “Don’t worry, darlin’, he’s almost never home. Stays most nights with his mistress.”

  At dinner, like a man succumbing to blindness, Nathaniel’s sight was dull, while his musician’s ears seemed more attuned than usual. As Jeselle’s strong hands poured a new bottle of burgundy into the wine glasses around the table, it made a sloshing sound. The French red wine was from the cellar, stored before Prohibition, and tasted of minerals and tobacco. “The wine is lovely, Clare,” said Nathaniel.

  “Thank you, Nate. We open our best for Christmas dinner.” She smiled widely and looked around the table. “It’s wonderful to have everyone home at the same time.”

  Frances, next to him, smacked her lips each time she took a sip of wine. Nathaniel imagined he could hear Clare’s hands fluttering in her lap under the table, but, indeed, it was really only the wavering of the tablecloth that gave her nervousness away. Whitmore, across the table from Nathaniel, was also a silent instrument, staring mutely at his plate, an expression of control on his face, as if he were thinking, “God, just get me through one more family dinner.” Frank, on one end of the long cherrywood table, periodically leaned back in his chair so that its front legs were off the floor—each time a creaking sound and then a thump when it touched the wall. Cassie moved in and out of the room, arranging dishes on the buffet table, her shoes squeaking on the wood floor.

  The table was set with fine bone china with a pattern of pink flowers and the formal Reed & Barton silver. Between the faint light and the delicacy of the china, Nathaniel felt like an oversized doll in a dollhouse. His left-hand fingers felt stiff and awkward, like a young child’s clumsy grasp. He kept it on his lap, reminding himself to be as still as possible so as not to send one of the dishes shattering onto the wood floors.

  After pouring wine all round, Cassie and Jeselle served a savory pumpkin soup with a hint of bacon and nutmeg from a large white bowl. The whiskeys had loosened the tightness Nathaniel had carried in his shoulder blades since the ascent up the muddy driveway yesterday afternoon. But the tension seemed to have transferred directly from him to Whitmore. Not only did Whitmore’s shoulders appear too close to his ears, his youthful cheeks flushed as if some unnatural heat coursed through his body. He rarely looked up from his plate and, strangely, each time Jeselle passed by with food, his cheeks seemed to grow a deeper shade of pink.

  Roast beef and Yorkshire pudding were served for the main course. Nathaniel wondered every time he ate Yorkshire pudding why the traditions of England always involved animal fat—it was simply batter poured into the fat drippings at the bottom of the roasting pan, disgusting if one thought about it too carefully. But the rosemary crusted baby potatoes dripping with butter melted in his mouth.

  Frances had an expression somewhere between boredom and disdain, taking small bites of her food as she moved it around her plate.

  Clare dabbed the sides of her mouth with her napkin, a faraway look in her eyes. “Whit, tell us about your Renaissance art class this past semester. I hate to sound like a wistful old woman, but I would’ve loved to learn more about art.”

  Frank slammed his whiskey tumbler on the table, causing Clare to jump. “Clare!”

  Clare’s voice quavered, and her neck splotched with pink marks. “Well, right, silly notion, of course.”

  “What did I take you out of?” Frank boomed, and the rest of the table went deadly still, holding their collective breath. “And I brought you here.” He swept the air with his hand. “Art class? Is this what you’re whining about?”

  “I didn’t mean that, Frank.” Clare brought the white cloth napkin to her trembling mouth. “I just meant that art is something I’m interested in.”

  “Don’t understand how looking at pictures is considered a study,” Frank said, his voice thick from whiskey. “Whitmore, enjoy painting the pansies while you can ’cause once you’re back home all you’ll be looking at are numbers in a ledger book.”

  Whitmore cut his meat, the twitch under his eye beating in quarter-time.

  Frank slammed his drink on the table again. “Did you hear me, son?”

  “Yes,” he said, barely audible.

  Nathaniel, unable to think of anything to say, felt himself fall further into an alcohol-infused haze. This disgusted him about himself, for he wanted nothing more than to support Whitmore and Clare against Frank’s onslaught of criticisms and bullying, but instead he slipped deeper into his chair, his bulk leaning over his plate as if his life depended on the examination of every parcel of food.

  Frank cut a large piece of beef and stuffed it in his mouth, pushing it to one cheek like a cow with her cud. “Most important thing about sending you to Princeton is the connections with other wealthy sons of America’s businessmen.” He swallowed. “Don’t you agree, Nate?”

  “I suppose.” He noticed Whitmore glance at Jeselle. The girl kept her head down and went through the door to the kitchen.

  Clare’s face was neutral, but her fingers clutched the hem of the tablecloth. “Have you boys read any good books lately?”

  “Why, Mother,” Frances said, smirking, “how come you don’t ask me that question?”

  Clare smiled, but her eyes remained dull. “I know you don’t have time to read novels, Frances.”

  “I read a beautiful story in the New Yorker by F. Scott Fitzgerald. He went to Princeton,” Whitmore said, trailing off.

  Frank gave his son a blank look and nodded to Jeselle as she came into the room. “Bring me another whiskey.”

  “Nate met him once, didn’t you, darlin’?” said Frances. She looked at Whitmore, a bit triumphantly, Nathaniel thought. “Did you know that, Whit?” Frances’s eyes slithered back to Nathaniel. “Tell them how he was there with his wife, Zelda.” She paused for a quick breath. “She’s simply one of the most fashionable women in the world.”

  Nathaniel cut a piece of his beef. “I believe he’s a drunk. As I recall they were both more than a little tight the night I met them.”

  A look of anger passed over Frances’s face before she covered it up with a polite, stiff smile. “Not that part, darlin’. Tell how they fell all over themselves to come backstage and meet you. Wasn’t that the first night you played Carnegie Hall?”

  A silence came over the table, like the fog that crept in over the lake. One didn’t see it coming, but suddenly it was there, hovering, encasing everything with a cold, murky chill. Nathaniel felt the familiar constriction in his chest. Whitmore gazed at his hands resting in his lap, the flush on his face gone, replaced with a disheartening paleness. The tablecloth covering Clare’s hands swayed. The only sound was Frank chewing what must have been a particularly tough piece of meat.

  Finally, Clare broke the silence, her voice careful, light, “Regardless of Fitzgerald’s personal problems, the man is a beautiful writer. I’m sorry to hear of his
troubles.”

  Frances tossed her hair. “I saw his photograph in the society section of the Times the other day. It was right next to a picture of Ginger Rogers.” She smiled at Frank. “One of the girls at the beauty shop says I look just like her. Do you think so?”

  “Who’s that now?” asked Frank.

  “Oh, Daddy, you’re awfully funny.” Frances giggled.

  Nathaniel put down his fork, glancing at his wife. “To answer your question, Frances, it wasn’t my first time at Carnegie. But it was the pinnacle of my career.”

  He spoke flatly, as if simply reporting facts. “I played the Brahms B-flat that night. It takes almost fifty minutes to perform, took me six months to learn. The first movement is nearly twenty minutes, nineteen to be exact, and then a difficult scherzo, played appassionato.”

  Frances brushed aside a lock of hair that had fallen into her eyes. “Yes, but what did they say to you?”

  “Who?” he asked.

  “F. Scott and Zelda. What did y’all talk about?” asked Frances.

  He hesitated, deciding if he should answer or not. “He’s a writer, of course, and thus interested in the story of the Brahms piece. He asked me about it, and I told him that Brahms wrote it out of anger, you see, because his previous concerto was performed terribly by a woman pianist. The story goes that Brahms vowed he would write a concerto no woman could ever play. It’s believed that a woman’s hands are too small for the span and rapidity of the notes.” He paused, his voice husky with emotion. Whitmore watched him closely from across the table. “Whether the story’s true or not, it’s a piece that only the finest pianists in the world can master. Fewer than you could count on one hand.”

  “But you mastered it, isn’t that right, Nate?” asked Whitmore. “No one can ever take that away from you.”

  “I don’t much care for critics,” said Nathaniel. “Used to make a practice of never reading reviews. Hated to have them in my head. But Walt, my manager, insisted he read me the reviews from the early edition papers. One of them called it ‘flawless’ and ‘unusual for a pianist only thirty years old.’ I’ve kept those words close over the years, as a consolation.”