"There's a lot more to marriage than that."
"What? Paying bills and working your ass off. Then I come home and listen to the girls scream and holler. And Louise trying to turn them into nuns."
"Don't you and Louise go to the movies or anything?"
"We don't do nothing without the children and we don't have much time. Well I don't have much time."
"You married Louise. She comes first. Children come second. Seems like people forget that."
"That's easy for you to say. You don't have any."
"We win."
"Good luck." Pearlie was feeling bad.
"Buck up, Pearl. Try talking to Louise. Maybe she feels you're taking her for granted."
"What about taking me for granted? I got feelings, too!"
"Then show them."
"Huh?"
"You aren't made of wood."
"Gets confusing."
'•Being a man?"
"Shit, yes. If I show my feelings I'm a sissy. If I don't I'm a brute. If I tell my wife what to do, I'm ugly. If I don't, I'm henpecked. What the hell."
"Do what you want. Who cares what anybody else thinks? It's your life."
"My life." Pearlie considered this.
"No one's gonna live it for you but you."
"Ain't that selfish?"
"No. If you aren't happy, how can you make Louise happy? Or Mary and Maizie? Unhappiness rubs off like coal dust."
"Chessy, do you think Ramelle is demen—I can't remember that word. Do you think Ramelle is bad?"
"No. Why'd you think of that?"
"'Cause Louise brought it up in the spat."
"I admire her and Celeste. They go about their business and trouble no one. Them and Fannie's happy people, I think. Cora, too. Except for that news about Fairy Thatcher."
"Ain't that something?"
"No nothing. No clue."
“Funny her running off like that, wasn't it?"
"I don't think she ran off. I think she ran to something. Maybe you ought to think about what you really want, Pearlie."
"You happy?"
"Yes. I got no complaints, although I could stand more money. Being a carpenter don't bring in the dough."
"Hmm."
"Hey, let's walk a little. I'm getting stiff out here in this dampness."
"O.K." Pearlie stood up. He wasn't so looped anymore.
"Looks like lights up at the factory there over the hill. Can you see it?"
"Yeah. Let's go see."
A ten-minute walk brought them outside Rife Munitions. The guard was asleep. Chessy and Pearlie snuck in and peered through the tall factory windows. Inside stood Julius Caesar Rife and his younger brother, Napoleon Bonaparte Rife.
Their grandfather, Cassius, had been heavy-handed. Brutus, their father, had been only slightly more subtle. But in Julius and his brother Napoleon, the breed reached perfection. Julius, in particular, cemented ties with other industrialists, most particularly the rubber industry and Detroit. In the late 1920s they tried to run trolleys out of Runnymede and put in a bus line. The town resisted. Buses took you to the town line and stopped. There the trolley picked up. People learned you can give ground but not give way. The murder of Brutus stiffened the community. They weren't as afraid of the Rifes anymore. And the Rifes had amassed such an enormous fortune from World War I they didn't need to be crass.
"It's the middle of the night and they're working," Pearlie whispered.
"What's over there, Pearl? You were in the war."
"Looks like some kind of antiaircraft gun."
"Why work at night?"
"Guess there's a market. Always a war in some corner of the globe or other."
"I don't know. Something doesn't sit right."
"Hmm." Pearlie scanned the interior. Some things he could identify, others he couldn't.
"They must be working round the clock up here."
"Has to be pretty recent or we'da heard about it"
"I wonder." Chessy paused. "Come on, let's scram. I can't feature explaining you went on a drunk to the guard if he wakes up."
Pearlie smiled and followed Chessy as they tiptoed past the snoring man.
Walking back to the car, Chessy said, "I don't like it."
"I dunno." Pearlie shrugged. "Let me off at Green's, willya?"
"I'm supposed to deliver you to Louise."
'I’ll deliver myself. I'm O.K. now, really. I want to paint the cow."
"You did that."
'You know, I want to fix it up. Old man Green’ll have a heart attack if he sees what I done."
Pearlie was still there when Celeste breezed by on her sunrise ride. He had got inspired and put a coat of fresh paint on the cow, spots and all. Old man Green woke up with the roosters and was delighted to find Pearlie hard at work. Surprised but delighted. Celeste trotted up about an hour later, discovering Pearlie fast asleep. She woke him, put him in the saddle, although he protested, climbed up after him and rode him back to Louise. Pearlie fell asleep on the horse.
May 2, 1937
Celeste and Ramelle walked arm in arm through their formal garden. Dennis, as usual, had things blooming, pruned, arranged.
"Do you know what day this is?" Celeste asked.
"The day before we send Spotty off to California for this damned movie business."
"Heartless."
"It's not our anniversary. That's months away, and it's not your birthday—that's not until the end of November."
"Thirty-two years ago on this very day I met you for the first time." Celeste smiled.
"At Roosevelt's party in Washington, yes."
"No, we met in New York City. Remember I told you I'd swim in the Plaza fountain for you?"
"Celeste, I'm sure it was Washington and you made some aside about Washington throwing a dollar across the Potomac."
"A dollar went a lot farther in those days. I recall the sentence but I'm certain we met in New York."
"It doesn't matter. We stayed mad for each other." Ramelle squeezed Celeste's arm.
"How about just mad?"
"Now who's heartless?"
"Darling, do you think of me as old?"
"You? Impossible."
"I'll be sixty this year."
"Celeste, you don't look a second over forty-five."
"Flattery will get you everywhere." Celeste plucked a colorful flower and presented it to Ramelle. She didn't look older than forty-five, but in her mind she felt the full sixty years of her life on earth. Not that she felt old, but the years weed out camouflages of character, leaving a truer self.
"What about me? Do I look old to you?" Ramelle questioned her. "I'm fifty-three in case you forgot."
"Time cannot pass through the door. When I look at you, it's as it was all those years ago. Your voice still runs up and down my spine, a delicious sensation."
"Now who flatters?"
"Nonetheless, it's true." Celeste patted Ramelle's arm.
"What I do remember is being overwhelmed. I never met anyone like you in my life. It also took me quite a while to realize your desires were not entirely intellectual."
"I was perfectly honest in my approach."
"Yes, but mothers fail to teach daughters of such approaches."
"Mothers make countless mistakes." Celeste sighed in mock sadness.
"The first time I visited here I nearly suffocated from your elegance."
Celeste's eyebrow shot upward, her telltale sign of a cognizance deeper than her words. "I doubt civilization has known elegance since the outbreak of the industrial revolution."
"And it was just such statements as that that used to freeze me. I thought I was so dumb and you were so smart."
"And you've changed your mind?" Celeste's lips twitched.
"Yes. I think you are still quite smart but so am I." This reply pleased Celeste enormously. "And something else, Miss Chalfonte. Inanimate objects can exert an influence just as people can. Your house was overwhelming. Now I'm accustomed to it, of c
ourse."
"Darling, it's your house, too," Celeste said.
"Not really. You were clear-cut when I met you and so was the house. I haven't minded that, actually."
"What I remember most is wondering how long it would be before you allowed me, both of us, actually, nocturnal rhapsodies."
"Tart." Ramelle laughed.
"You took your time. Sigourny Romaine wrote her first novel in the time you took. I found it an interminable semicolon." Celeste breathed in. "And Grace Pettibone finished her first series of paintings which resemble the bottom of Lake Erie."
"Oh, Celeste, you haven't changed in all these years." Ramelle sighed.
"You wouldn't want me if I had."
"Dearest, I love you now and forever, but you can get arch."
"Arch?" She pondered this. "I suppose you're right. However, let's not get off the track. We were talking about how long you wavered."
"You were talking about my tardiness; I wasn't. I had a great deal to think about before flinging myself in your arms. Of course, your beauty speeded up the process."
"Speed? Gradually, as in 'Gradually the ice age ended,' you came to your senses!"
"Ha! Let's just say you offered me a new deal long before FDR."
"Damn jockeying between corporate power and demagoguery." Her black eyes darted about the garden. "I suppose it must have seemed as though I was offering you original sin."
"Original sin was original so many years ago I think we can drop the adjective." Ramelle laughed. "See, you have rubbed off on me. But I often wonder have I rubbed off on you? You are complete. You've always been complete. I wasn't, you know. I was young and unformed."
"I was young, too, and you, sweetheart, were beautifully formed. Still are."
"Masher."
"Forgive me my lurid energies. I keep forgetting women aren't to have them."
"Yes, well, you cured me of that, too. But I was behind you. Somewhere along the line you grew to be independent, self-sufficient, a bit cocky."
"Ramelle, my father and mother didn't believe in anything but independence. They fought a war over it. As for being self-sufficient, my God, I was given everything in this world: wealth, education, travel. I would have had to be utterly incompetent not to be somewhat interesting."
"My family wasn't exactly heading for debtors' prison. I've tried to pinpoint it over these many years. Why you went your own way and why it took me so long to find mine. I think underneath it I didn't really want the responsibility for my life. Can you understand that?"
"No."
"No matter; I do. I never have thanked you for helping me grow up. Thank you, dearest." Ramelle kissed Celeste's smooth cheek.
"You did rub off on me. I show it less."
"How?"
"You softened me. I was raised with the expression: There are a thousand reasons for failure but not one excuse.' All Chalfontes are raised on that. If someone failed I was contemptuous. I learned, through you, that success isn't external. There is an inner life, a life deeper than intellect. Finding that chord might mean failing in the outer world. I can't say I still don't value success . . . but I am listening to a cosmic heartbeat. I owe that to you and, yes, to Cora."
"Do you know when I first moved here to make my life with you I was terribly jealous of Cora? When I think of it now I could die."
"Dear Cora." Celeste's voice lowered. "If I could choose a sister I would choose Cora. Our tragedy was to be born at opposite ends of the social spectrum. This is the only way we can be part of one another's lives short of revolution."
"Strange. Life."
"Strange, unjust, cruel, beautiful, inspiring, exciting —all at the same time." Celeste laughed.
"Too bad they don't teach complexity in school. It's right or wrong, black or white, good or bad. I can recall only a few occasions where something was that clear. Brutus Rife was one. You know, dear, I always suspected you killed him."
Celeste continued walking, not breaking her pace. "What a silly idea."
"Oh, Celeste, you are filled with secrets. I never shall know them. That's one, but in my heart I know you killed him."
"All these years with a murderer?" The light mocking tone crept into her voice.
"Liberator."
"Ramelle, I'm not Robin Hood. And I'll never answer such a bizarre question."
"You do have secrets."
"Everyone does."
"Tell me one."
"If I tell you, then it will no longer be mine."
"After thirty-two years you can divulge one. You've had so long to collect them. One secret can't bankrupt you."
"All right. Whenever I begin reading a book I must read as many pages as my years in one sitting. As my years have advanced, you can imagine this becomes more and more difficult. There!"
"That's wonderful!"
"Your turn."
"Celeste, I have no secrets from you," Ramelle kidded her.
"Fair's fair."
"I add up numbers all the time. I don't know why. For instance, the street number of this house is 34. That adds up to 7, a respectable number if ever there was one. But I tell you I hate the number 5. If your house number had been 14 I might never have consented to live with you."
"I rather like that one. Do you have any more?"
"Of course, but I'm not telling." Ramelle skipped along, dragging Celeste with her.
"You know, it took you an extraordinarily long time to go to bed with me."
"Celeste."
"Yes, it did. As I recall, I said something to you paraphrasing Jefferson about the pursuit of happiness. For some reason that did the trick."
"You can't pursue happiness. It isn't a grouse."
"You didn't say that."
"I said yes, that's what I said. I think what touched me most was when you wrote me, 'Let's push each other along the road to eternity.' "
"Did I write that?"
"In 1905."
"We're a great deal closer to eternity now." Celeste shaded her eyes and looked up at the sun. "Darling, memory is a form of prophecy."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"Since we met thirty-two years ago today, we ought to celebrate."
"What did you have in mind?" Ramelle knew anyway.
"Let's take a bottle of champagne, some strawberry shortcake and go to bed."
"If you wanted to go to bed with me all this time, why didn't you come right out with it?" Ramelle put her hands on her hips.
"This way is ever so much more fun."
August 29, 1938
"Julia, did you hear the news?" Louise caught her as she walked through Runnymede Square on her way home from work.
"What news?"
"Minta Mae Dexter's husband died."
"He was pushing eighty, wasn't he?"
"Yes." Louise took a breath, eager to tell of her social graces. "I conversed with Minta as she came into the Bon-Ton today. She always comes by my department, you know. So I said, 'You're lucky your husband is dead. At least you know where he is.' I thought that would cheer her."
"Did it?"
"It seemed to. Elmo Dexter was a notorious run-around, don't you know. He might of crossed over the far side of eighty, but he visited the bawdyhouses sure as clockwork."
"Louise, how do you know about bawdyhouses?"
"I am a woman of the world." Louise tilted her nose in the air.
"How far out into the world did you get?" Julia sneered just slightly.
"Don't be vulgar, Julia."
"You been waiting here on the square for me?"
"Yes. I thought you might want to catch the latest."
"Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers—is the movie here yet? I love white-telephone movies!"
"No, the latest gossip."
"Oh." Juts stopped to press her nose against a store window. "Say, Wheezie, those are dandy shoes."
"You spend too much money on clothes."
"I do not. I make most of what I wear. Anyway, it's none of your goddamned
business what I spend my money on."
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