I wonder what he's doing out there, if he's out there. I don't hear a thing. Maybe he did himself in. Poor man. I didn't mean to be that harsh on him. I didn't hear a shot. Rat poison. That's it. He went out to the pump, filled a pitcher and took rat poison. They say that's an awful way to go. Do we have any rat poison? He coulda slit his wrists. All over the porch. Gruesome. Blood never washes out. Oh, God, Mother will walk up the hill and find him crumpled in his seat like red paper. Selfish. He didn't think of Mother or me finding him. Maybe he drove off and ran into a tree. Didn't hear the car start. I don't hear anything. It was rat poison. I know it. Even if we don't have any, maybe he walked down to Ida's and borrowed some. I'm not going to help him. I won't open this door to look. No, I won't.
In the midst of her grim reverie a shadow flitted under the door. Julia heard a rustle of paper. A white folded note slid halfway to the bed. She raced for it and read it on her hands and knees.
Chessy's expansive handwriting set down the following:
I know you mad at me. Should I do
1. Drop dead
2. Let you alone
3.
4. Kiss and make up
5.
Frantic, Julia searched the room for a pencil. She found a little piece of flat blue chalk Cora used for marking hemlines. She wrote on the back of the note:
You don't love me. I have my period, almost. I’m bloated and have a pimple on my face.
Your loving wife, Julia Ellen
The shadow remained at the door. Julia dropped to her hands and knees again to push the note under. She stayed down there to look at Chessy's shoes. He got down on his hands and knees to pick up the note. He peered under the door and saw her squinting at him.
"I'm not talking to you, but you can read my note," Julia announced.
Chessy carefully unfolded the note to read out loud, which was the only way he could read. He put his nose under the door and tried to see Julia. There she was in the same position.
"Honey, I love you."
"No, you don't." Julia fought back tears. Louise might cry but I'll not stoop to that, she told herself proudly.
"I do." Chester was helpless before this challenge. All he could say was that he loved her.
"Do you?" Julia's voice rose slightly.
"You know I do," Chessy pleaded.
Julia, cagey, remained silent.
"I love you. I love you, I love you, I love you!"
"Say it again," Juts began to giggle.
"I love you."
The two of them burst out laughing, heads on the floor, asses in the air, the door between them. In the midst of all this Cora came upstairs.
"Do you do this often?"
"I..." Chessy stood up.
Julia was still giggling behind the door. Cora, ever one for fun, slowly lowered herself down and peeked under the door.
"I see you." Cora's voice sang out like in a children's game.
"Mother!" Now Julia really suffered a spasm.
Chessy tried to open the door but she still had it locked. "Honey, open the door."
"I can't. I'm laughing too hard."
Still down there, Cora chanted one of Julia's favorite childhood ditties:
"Life is a carnival, Believe it or not. Life is a carnival, Two bets a shot."
Julia joined her on "Two bets a shot." She clambered up and opened the door. Chessy gave her a big hug. Cora shook her head and laughed.
"Anybody home?" Louise called out even as she opened the front door, quickly followed by Pearlie and the two kids.
"We're upstairs playing hide and go seek," Cora called back.
"Yeah, Louise, you're it. Count to twenty and we'll all run and hide."
Mary and Maizie, thinking she meant it, squealed and tore off for the root cellar.
"Come down here. All hell is breaking loose," Louise ordered.
Still giggling, mother, daughter and son-in-law descended the sky-blue stairway.
"What are you talking about?" Cora asked Louise. "Hi, Pearlie. Come on. Let's go fix ourselves some coffee. Turning coolish now that the sun's down."
As they crowded into the kitchen, Louise continued, "The stock market crashed."
"We know." Airily Julia tossed off this calamity.
"Julia, you're such a child about these things. Our economic situation is garrulous."
"You mean 'perilous,' don't you?" Pearlie asked her respectfully.
Louise stated in her know-everything voice, "Yes. That's what I said."
"We still got Lindbergh. Can't be all that bad." Julia returned to her nonchalant manner.
"Really." Louise dismissed her and said to the rest of the adults, "I tell you the whole world is falling apart."
"It never was together," Cora answered her, hot pad in hand.
"Chicken one day, feathers the next." Chessy smiled.
"You two deserve each other," Louise pounced. Fortunately, Chessy was not a man to take offense at much. By this time he was accustomed to Louise.
"Reading the papers scares me."
Cora poured everyone coffee and turned her head to see two grandchildren emerge from the root cellar, bringing a can of spice cookies as a trophy. Cora looked Louise in the face and said in her nimbly voice, "If it's as bad as you say, you won't be able to afford a paper, so that'll rest your mind."
The others laughed.
"Mother." Louise pouted.
"You'll live through it," Cora told her with authority.
October 30, 1929
"Celeste, Celeste—wake up!"
Jolted from sleep, Celeste examined the clock on her nightstand: 2 a.m.
Ramelle, one eye open, the other shut, murmured, "What's the matter?"
"Celeste—wake up, goddammit!"
“That's Fannie. I'd better get the door." Celeste tossed on her robe and shouted, "Coming."
She opened the door to behold Fannie Jump Creighton, naked, her red fox coat wrapped around her shoulders and a glass of champagne held high in her right hand. Under her left arm was a large metal box. "Thank you, I believe I will." Fannie sailed into the house.
"Are you pixilated?"
"No, unfortunately."
"Then what in God's name are you doing here at two in the morning masquerading as Lady Godiva? Christ, it's chilly out there."
"Telling me." Fannie cautiously placed the metal box on Celeste's gorgeous hand-painted Chinese trunk, which she used as a coffee table.
"Would you like something else to wear or are you having one of your Nordic moments?"
"Bag it, Gladys." Fannie's square jaw clamped down.
"Is everything all right?" Ramelle called down the stairway.
"Yes, dear. Go back to sleep."
"Everything is most definitely not all right." Fannie gulped the last of her champagne with dash. She reached in her coat pocket and pulled out a note. "Read this. Creighton suffered a seizure of honor."
"He's leaving you everything and good-bye." Celeste's eyebrows drew together as she read. "How much is everything?"
"The house and a few hundred dollars."
"What?"
"Here, look for yourself. Along with the note came this key to unlock the box."
Celeste reviewed the contents of the strongbox. "Fannie, you're up Shit's Creek."
"Well put."
"Did you just find this?"
"Of course," Fannie affirmed. "You don't think I'd discover all this at eight-thirty and then decide to wake you up in the middle of the night."
"Another pretty thing?"
"Yes. He had lovely thighs."
"Maybe you could get a teaching post at Vassar: Seduction, Form I."
"Celeste, you are such a comfort to me in my moment of trial and tribulation."
Celeste patted her on the back. "That's what friends are for."
Fannie and Celeste were women who kept a tight rein on their emotions, particularly those associated with weakness. Losing face when the chips are down is the worst offense possible. Fan
nie knew she was broke, unskilled and confused. She also knew she would not compromise her honor. Money couldn't touch that. At this moment in her life she fully understood the importance of a code of behavior. Sometimes the form alone can save you until you can figure a way out.
"I think he ran off to manage a bawdyhouse," Fannie joked.
"That's really living on margin."
"I've considered my possibilities." Fannie spoke calmly. "I can sell the house, but who will buy it? I could always give it away and be thought a charitable old nut. You know, hand it over to some orphanage and live in the attic. Then they'd kill themselves trying to run that white elephant—homicide philanthropy."
"Saint Fannie. Yes, it has a ring to it."
"La Sermonetta needs a little competition. She's enjoyed the field to herself all these years." Fannie blithely let her fox coat fall open. She had nothing to hide from Celeste.
"You know I wasn't hard hit. Thank God. I won't let you starve."
"I know. Let's hope it doesn't come to that. I can't feature myself walking through life with my hand out."
"Perhaps we could find you a job in some office."
"I could always become an inventor. They can't be fired. Yes, I'll live off my patents. How about electric tomatoes, or better, an umbrella with a light bulb on the end so you can find your way home on dark and rainy nights."
Celeste laughed. "You could scandalize the horticultural world by growing roses thought to be homosexual. The notoriety might bring you funds."
"Roses have thorns."
"Fannie, we'll think of something." Celeste's voice was reassuring.
Leaning back, Fannie said in a whimsical voice, "I'm considering this a challenge. However, I'd rather this challenge had come when I was short of the half-century mark."
"Wasn't it you who said the twenty-five years between thirty and forty are the most interesting in life?"
"Ha! Now I'll have to prove myself wrong. Let's make it the twenty-five years between fifty and sixty."
"Hurrah for you."
"What surprises me is that Creighton left me a sou. I knew exactly where I was with him: he always let me down. Such a drastic change of behavior shocks my sense of order."
"Sneaking off in the night's a low thing to do."
"Celeste, you've solved my dilemma. He took one step forward and one step back. I needn't worry about him changing his ways."
"Virtue isn't habit-forming anyway."
"Did you hear about Hennings Gibson?"
"Yes. Can you imagine? Hanging himself on the huge Bon-Ton clock at quitting time!"
"I didn't see it, but I heard he dangled up there off the seventh story, eyes bulging like plums. He must have waited for the minute hand to go by his office window, tied the rope to it and then jumped out."
"The crash?"
"For him, yes," Fannie wryly noted.
"Hennings always tried to elevate himself."
"Celeste, you are wicked!"
"I fell in with the wrong crowd at a tender age."
"Did you think you'd live to see this? I never did!"
"There must be something we can do. Can you type?"
"No. About all I'm good for is talking and things modesty forbids I mention."
"Fannie?"
"No! I know what you're going to say."
"Now listen a minute. This paper here says you own that house free and clear."
"Fine. Now I need to pay the bills to live there."
"Why don't you convert the bottom into a high-class speakeasy? Your personality would make it succeed."
"You're not serious. At least you didn't suggest I open a home of ill repute."
"I mean it. People drive to York or Baltimore. A tasteful, lively place where conversation flows as readily as liquor would be a smash."
"I do know how to drink."
"And we both have the connections to fill the place up until word gets out."
"Spirits are a problem."
"Juts and Chessy sell goods."
"All they sell is needle beer and bathtub gin. Since the big operators took over, they can't get to the rum runners. I'd have to play ball with the juice barons."
"It could be worse."
"I'll reserve judgment on that. Do you think we could pull this off? What about Minta Mae Dexter? She's practically turned her Sisters of Gettysburg into a battalion for Carrie Nation. What a chance for her to get revenge on me and the Daughters of the Confederacy."
"More people want to drink than want to listen to Minta Mae."
"True."
"Besides, South and North Runnymede officials are never averse to contributions to their campaigns and other endorsements of their ambitions."
"Clever girl, our Celeste."
"I try to think of it as oil for the machinery of politics to run efficiently."
"Fairy'd lambast it as greed—the greed that fuels plutocracy hiding behind a democratic mask."
"Fairy isn't broke—yet. Morality is terribly comforting when food's on the table."
"I miss her."
"I do, too. And I'm afraid for her. Food won't be on the table long." Celeste paused. "What do yon think?"
"Well, why not? I'll try anything once." Fannie felt a sense of relief. "I can get used to living inside a question mark."
"That's what the twentieth century is all about." Celeste folded her hands.
"I don't know about that, but right now I wouldn't mind returning to the nineteenth. At least I was younger then."
Riding her train of thought, Celeste said, "That and the machine in the garden."
"What?"
"Think about it."
September 23, 1930
"Louise, Chessy's got a bug. Why don't you come with me while I make the rounds?" Julia asked.
"Deliver contraband? Certainly not."
"Come on, Wheezie, it's just a little gin and needle beer. I don't want to hit some of those dives alone."
"It's wrong."
"Please."
"Well..."
"I'll bring you some ribbon from the factory."
Louise softened. "I want you to understand that I'm only doing this to protect you. After all, I am your older sister."
"Thanks, Wheezie. You're a pal!"
As they walked toward the little black car, Julia headed for the driver's seat.
"I hope you don't think I'm accompanying you if you're driving."
"I can drive."
"Not with me in the car, you can't," Louise firmly told her.
Julia sighed. "O.K. You drive."
Louise sat behind the wheel, squirmed her fanny to get the proper seat and adjusted the rear-view mirror. On seeing herself, she exclaimed, "Julia, I can't go. I've got pin curls in my hair."
"We aren't going to tide Waldorf. Nobody's gonna see you but a couple of boozehounds."
"You know I don't believe a woman should be seen in public unless her hair's in place, her shoes, bag and gloves match."
"You can't drive a car with gloves on."
"Oh, yes I can!"
"Louise, pulease!"
"All right, Julia Ellen, but don't ever say I didn't do anything for you."
The car puttered down the road, filled with Mason jars sporting pickle labels. For a special customer Julia strapped on her thighs two tins filled with uncut Scotch.
Fannie's house, dubbed Sans Souci, was thriving. At the end of a run Julia and Chessy would stop in for a short drink. Julia thought there'd be no getting Louise in there tonight. Strictly business.
Two hours later Louise stopped the car by a seedy crossroads. On one side was a gas station. The other corner carried a Baptist church. The third corner was the home of the Blue Moon Cafe. A blue neon crescent testified to this. The bar was painted flamingo pink, with dark-blue shutters and doors. On the last corner, under a shepherd's crook streetlight, numerous beat-up cars were parked or ditched.
Six of One Page 21