Lovesick

by James Driggers

  “You don’t know. Your recipe book. Well, then, let me tell you that you would have not done very well in the interview portion of our competition, Mr. Butcher. The ladies of Atlanta want to know what you treasure, need to know what it says about you. Miss Jocelyn Hind Crowley wants them to know. It’s her job to tell them. Inez Honeycutt said it was her Bible. Martha Humphrey said it was the medal from her dead son, which she keeps framed by his picture.”

  “What did you say?” George asked.

  “I told them it was my mirror. You should have seen the looks I got from those sows.” Then she began to act out the scene for him.

  “ ‘A mirror, Mrs. Yeager?’ asked Miss Jocelyn Hind Crowley. ‘What function does that serve?’ ”

  “ ‘I may spend the afternoon in the kitchen, Miss Crowley,’ I said. ‘But when it is time to serve the meal, the only powder I want on my nose is face powder, not baking powder. A cook should be every bit as attractive as her food.’ I thought of that right on the spot. Wasn’t that witty of me? I thought about that night in the kitchen when I wanted a mirror. It just came to me.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said. “That was sure a smart answer. Not one I would have thought of.”

  “You may have the ideas about the food, George, but I am bringing something to the equation as well.”

  “Yes, ma’am, you do. That’s for sure.” He hesitated, not wanting to leave, but knowing he had only a short time. “I brought Miss Mona a bit of cake. It wasn’t on the order, but I put it on.”

  “That was very sweet of you, George. But you don’t want to do things that might call attention to yourself. What if you had gotten caught?”

  “I was real careful, Miss Virginia. And I was wondering if Miss Mona might want to take a walk after you all have your supper. I will be off by nine, and I could walk her around to show her a little of the town. I’m sure she must be tired of being cooped up in here all day and night.”

  Before Mona could speak, Virginia answered. “As I said, it is probably not a good idea for you to do anything that might call attention to yourself or to associate you with . . . us. Mona is fine to stay here with me.”

  Butcher tried to read Mona’s expression. Was she angry? Embarrassed? Either way, he could tell that Virginia was not concerned with the girl.

  “Besides, I will need her help to get ready for bed. She always helps to see me to bed, don’t you, Mona? Now, George, it may be best for you to get back to the kitchen.”

  “I was wondering if there was anything I could do . . . you know. To help.”

  “Do you want to grease the pan for me, George? Do you want to stand over my shoulder and make sure I have the measurements right? Sorry, but you are just going to have to keep out of sight for now. If there is anything I need from you, I will let you know. Do you understand that?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Stop being such a nervous Nellie. You make me nervous, too. I practiced the recipes every day after you left. Didn’t I, Mona?”

  “Yes, she did. Biscuits and more biscuits.”

  “Things could not be going better. I know I have impressed the judges. I would say that Colonel Claiborne is even a bit smitten with me. Can you imagine? He is perfectly dreadful. He has no hair to speak of, but he still has dandruff. How is that possible? George, you have to trust me now. You have to step away from it.”

  George nodded to them both and left. Outside the door, he felt the past rush over him like the breeze from a ceiling fan. It was the same shut out feeling he had back in Brest when he had visited Maude on a night when he was not scheduled to visit. He had started drinking in the afternoon and began to miss her. He stumbled his way along the familiar streets. However, when he arrived he discovered she was already occupied entertaining a local dairy farmer. Everyone in the house was in the dining room and parlor, drinking and toasting. Maude had become engaged to the dairy farmer that very afternoon. Butcher knew she had other men, but this was different—the fact that she loved someone else, wanted to marry him was not a consideration. He tried to fight the dairy farmer, whose name he did not know, until several of the men along with Laurent pinned his arms and threw him out the door onto the street.

  Laurent tried to explain that it was for the best, that Butcher would be leaving soon anyway. Butcher knew this was true, but it did not console him. Laurent told Butcher the farmer was the one who supplied all the dairy for the house, all milk and cream, the butter, the eggs. “He has bartered them with us for a long time,” he said. “He has had his eye on Maude for a while. Besides, I am the one you should feel sorry for,” he laughed, trying to lighten the mood. “Now I will have to pay cash for everything.”

  Butcher didn’t think the joke was funny. “I am in love with her.”

  “I wish you could be happy for her. This is a good match. If you really do love her, you will understand this. You will step away.”

  Butcher could feel that he was ready to cry, so he clambered up from the street and declared that he would never return. Butcher told Laurent that he and Helaine and Maude and her dairyman could all go to hell. Fuck ’em all.

  Laurent told Butcher that perhaps it would be best if he did not return to the brothel. And if he tried, he would throw him out. Butcher knew he did not need to threaten. He would never return, never see Maude again, but he never forgot the feeling of being cast away. It was the same thing he felt now outside the door to Virginia’s room. But hadn’t he known it would come to this—that he had to trust her? What else was there?

  When he returned to the kitchen, he got a reprimand from Roland for taking too long with the order. “I bet you snuck off to take a smoke break, didn’t you? We got orders here that need to go out. So learn to move your sorry black ass faster, or you will find you won’t have a job here.” Butcher pushed his anger, his hurt deeper. He delivered half a dozen more trays before the end of his shift without complaint.

  When he had changed out of the hotel uniform into his own clothes, as he came out from the dressing room, he saw Mona standing by the back stairs, near the service elevator. She wore a pale yellow sweater that glowed golden in the light from the milk-glass shade on the stairs. She was waiting on him. She had come for their walk.

  “Did she change her mind?” he asked.

  “Who knows what her mind is? She’s gone to sleep. I just picked up the key and walked out the door.”

  “Snuck out the door, I betcha.”

  “I wanted to thank you for the cake.”

  “Would you like to go take a walk with me?” he asked. He wanted to walk with her, maybe put his arm around her, tried to imagine if she would let him kiss her.

  “I can’t go far. Maybe we can walk to the corner and back,” she suggested.

  Outside, the air was thick with warmth.

  “Humid night,” he said.

  “I hate it down here,” she said.

  “It’s no worse than Fayetteville. I bet it’s hot there now, too.”

  “I hate it there, too.”

  “Where is it, then, you want to be that’s not one of them places?” he asked.

  “Away from her,” she said.

  “You can just leave her. You’re old enough. I bet a great many women would be happy to have someone like you in their employ. Does she treat you bad?”

  “Good enough for a servant girl—fetch this, make me this, clean up my mess. She don’t hit me as much as she used to. But she don’t like me much. That I know.”

  “Sad to say, it’s going to be that way anywhere you work for a white woman. It just is.”

  They walked the rest of the way to the corner in silence, looked at the empty intersection, and turned to walk back. “But it shouldn’t be,” she said. Butcher looked down into her eyes and he knew what she was going to tell him was something he already knew, something he had known all along. “I think she’s my mother.”

  They didn’t go back to the hotel. Instead, they walked in silence until they came to a coffee shop he knew th
at served late in the evening, catching trade from the hotels and restaurants when workers finished a shift. They found a booth near the back. They ordered only coffee.

  As she raised her eyes toward him, he was reminded of the afternoon he first met her. He could not help himself, but reached across the table and took her hands in his. He thought of his own mam, how she would stroke his shoulder as he stood on a box at the table in the kitchen, watching her cook, sometimes helping her with small tasks—stirring a bowl of batter, whipping eggs. He thought, too, of Maude, how she told him her family had left her with Helaine and Laurent, traded her for food, supplies. Mona did not pull away, but left her hands in his, quivering like a rabbit or small bird trapped and too frightened to fight.

  “I have never been courted, Mr. Butcher,” she said. “I don’t really know what to do.”

  “But you know I care for you.”

  “Yes,” she said. “I know.”

  “I would watch out for you,” he said. “I would never force you.”

  She pulled her hands away and placed them in her lap.

  “Then we will give it time. To be honest, I haven’t courted much myself. Let’s just give it some time. About the other. You said you think Miss Virginia is your mam. What makes you believe that?” he asked.

  “She hates me, calls me her albatross, her millstone. But even so, she would never turn me out—and there were some hard times before we got to Fayetteville. Some hard times. But she always kept me close, even when there was no need for her to have a child with her. At least not until the major.”

  “She told the major the truth about you?”

  “No,” she said. “The afternoon he was supposed to come to supper I asked her what was going to happen to me if he proposed. She said I was free to come along with them as long as it was convenient for everyone involved.

  “When I asked her what that meant, she said I could come or I could go—she had done her duty by me, that she had made sacrifices aplenty for me, and she had been on her own younger than me. That’s when I told her that I knew. What I think.”

  “What did she say?”

  “She told me that I was crazy. Told me that she had helped her friend by taking me in. But when I ask her about Dorothea, she doesn’t ever have anything to say. Where she came from. Who her people were. Why is that? If I was this woman’s child, don’t you think she would want me to know that?”

  “Maybe there isn’t anything to tell.”

  “I know it, Mr. Butcher. I know it. Anyway, we had a terrible row. I told her I would tell the major if she didn’t.”

  “And did you?”

  Mona smiled, but only slightly. “Didn’t have to. As we were fighting, the major came by. I’m not sure why. But he heard it all. And he left. Plain and simple. I hid from her. She started drinking and was so angry that I knew she would hit me if she could find me. I heard her calling and calling. But then you stepped in. Brought her the pie. She said it was like the sky opened up and she saw a rainbow that night when you came to the house. A rainbow with a pot of gold.”

  Butcher could tell from her face that there was more.

  “She’s a liar, Mr. Butcher. She don’t care for no one but herself.”

  “But why are you telling me this?” Butcher asked.

  “When she drinks, she talks. Doesn’t remember what she tells me, what she says. She laughs about how you think she is just going to hand over half that prize money. That once she gets it, she is free and clear all the way to California.”

  Butcher wondered why the walls of the café didn’t fall away from him, why the buildings around them didn’t suddenly crumble from their foundations. He had taught this woman, trusted her.

  “Don’t say that, Miss Mona. I worked with her. Partnered with her. She knows she couldn’t have done any of this without me.”

  “But now she can. And if she wins, I swear you won’t see nothing of her but hind parts and elbows.”

  Butcher wanted to throw the ceramic mug against the wall, watch it smash. “She owes me,” he said.

  “She owes us both,” said Mona.

  8

  aspic . . .

  When Virginia woke, Mona had already set out a breakfast tray for her—just coffee and a roll. Her two day dresses hung on the back of the closet door: One was a simple yellow shirtwaist; the other was a lilac summer dress, pleated in the front and with capelet sleeves. On the dresser lay a faceted blue glass brooch and earrings she planned to wear with the summer dress, a multicolored flowered rhinestone pin to wear against the buttercream shirtwaist. Which to wear? She quickly decided on the yellow. It was straightforward enough for a day of cooking, but still would set her apart from the mob. She had also purchased an embroidered pleated bib apron to show her practical mindedness. Though everything depended on her performance today, she was not nervous. She was ready. Mona sat in the chair by the window, drinking coffee, staring mindlessly out the window.

  “What time is it? How long do I have before I need to be downstairs?”

  Mona stopped staring, checked her watch. “It’s just past seven. What time do you want to leave?”

  “I would like to be in the kitchen by eight-fifteen at the latest. I would like a chance to get everything ready so I can use all the time allotted. The popover batter must rest for as long as possible before I bake them. I assume they will want us to start as close to eight-thirty as we can.”

  “I have your clothes ready for you. I would think you would want the yellow today.”

  It irritated Virginia that the girl knew her so well. “Yes, the yellow for today. I will save the lilac for tomorrow. It fits me nicer across the bosom and will show up better in photographs.”

  When Mona didn’t say anything, Virginia continued, “I am sure they will want to photograph the winner.” She pointed to the coffee on the tray. “Bring me my coffee here. I will have it here in bed.”

  Mona set the tray next to the bed and poured the coffee in silence.

  “You don’t think I can win this, do you? You probably don’t want me to win it.”

  Mona walked back to the window and flung herself into the chair.

  “Out with it,” said Virginia. “I know you have something on your mind. An opinion on the matter. Get it out. I don’t need any distractions today.”

  “I think you could win. Mr. Butcher taught you well. I know if you win, then you gonna toss me on the road like a sack of trash.”

  “I would never just turn you out, Mona. I would help you get established somewhere. But you are nearly grown. And I have my own life.”

  Neither spoke for a moment. Virginia sipped her coffee. “This is awfully bitter.”

  “That’s because there isn’t any hooch in it.”

  Virginia put the saucer on the night table delicately. “I should come over there and slap the blue Jesus out of you. You have no right to speak to me like that. No right. But I have other fish to fry today. I told you I would set you up. I do not need permission from you to have my own life. I looked out for you—I didn’t have to do that.”

  “Didn’t you?”

  “No. No, I didn’t. And you don’t have one ounce of gratitude for the sacrifices I have made for you.”

  Virginia struggled not to cry. She refused to lose her composure. To lose this battle. But the girl was just like her in that regard—resolute in her stubborn steadfastness. Finally, Mona spoke. “You will have two and half thousand dollars,” she said. “How much you planning to give me?”

  “I hadn’t thought of an amount. Perhaps five hundred dollars. That would seem a generous sum.”

  Mona looked at her as if pondering the amount.

  “Maybe I would have it all,” said Mona.

  “You must be crazy,” Virginia said, throwing off the bedcovers, jumping to the floor. “All of it? Why would I go through all this? Learn all this? And then hand the winnings over to you.”

  “How fast did the major leave when he thought I was your daughter? How long
they gonna let you wear the white hat when they hear about me?”

  “You would do that? You would take it all from me.”

  “No. No, I wouldn’t,” said Mona. “I would leave you five hundred dollars. As you said, it would be a generous sum.”

  Virginia was still shaking slightly as she stepped into the kitchen, a jar of apricot preserves cradled in her apron, which was folded on top of the popover pan. She balanced the pan in front of her awkwardly—this would have been one thing that Mona could have done for her, help her carry this gear down to the kitchen. Several of the women including Wadena had colored maids, so it would not have been inappropriate. The poorer women were assisted by daughters, nieces, sisters, friends. Virginia felt as if the air whispered about her as she made her way to her designated station. In addition to the cooking supplies, she also carried a small clutch purse, containing only some powder and lipstick and her flask. She found one of the women from the local DOC, a hostess, to help her tie her apron in back. Who knows, thought Virginia. It might even work to her advantage—she knew the story would be repeated: “I tell you, she had no one at all to help her.”

  It was just past 8:30 when Roland came in, shooed the maids and relatives from the kitchen, and gave them their starting instructions: “We had a walk-through yesterday, but if you forget something, please ask me, or ask one of the pastry cooks from the hotel here to help you find what you need. Do not just go off rummaging. Not all of you are using an oven, so you shouldn’t have to share. So let’s begin. I judge that it is nearly a quarter till nine, and since there is not a clock in here, I will also serve as the timekeeper. You are all probably a bit nervous, and not used to cooking in such a big space, so we can round up to nine o’clock. That means your presentations won’t be until eleven. I will give you a countdown at each hour, then half hour, fifteen, ten, five minutes.”

  “Would any of you like to pray before we begin?” asked Inez. “I thought it might be a good idea for us to come together as sisters and have a brief prayer. I would be happy to lead.” The women joined hands in a circle in the center of the room—Virginia flanked by Neelie Bryson and Martha Humphrey. From the way she prayed, Virginia judged Inez to be Holiness. She asked Jesus to give fire in the ovens, not only for their biscuits, but also for their souls. She asked Jesus to help them stir their batters with a joyous heart. Virginia prayed that Inez be eliminated after the first round.