“They’re supposed to shine.”
“Huh.”
I closed my eyes. Then I closed my mouth and held my breath, eagerly but patiently waiting for Tommy’s lips to find mine. I smelled his skin, a faded hint of Ivory Snow, as he leaned toward my face. His lips felt soft and tender today, gentler than I had remembered. I smiled, a thank-you of sorts, and then straightened my skirt once more and walked back to my desk, my lips tasting like the sweetest clover honey.
For three more days, Tommy and I loved each other as well as any two eleven-year-olds could. We stood next to each other in the lunch line but never said more than hello. And we faithfully met behind the coatrack but never spoke a word about what we did there.
Every afternoon I begged Nathaniel to take me by Cornelia’s, if only for a moment. And every afternoon Nathaniel would say the same thing: “If your mama finds out, dear, sweet Jesus, she’ll wallop us both.” But we both knew my mother was more interested in her bridge parties than in my comings and goings, and so he’d smile and turn the car right onto Davidson Road.
But by the end of the week, the late September air had grown thick and heavy. Nathaniel leaned his head out the open car window. And even though there wasn’t a cloud in sight, he said a thunderstorm was surely heading our way. Nathaniel read the sky like my mother read the society page, and he could say with great accuracy when we were heading into violent weather. But today I felt it too.
“That’s right, Miss Bezellia. A storm is surely heading our way. Be here by nightfall. Mark my words,” he declared, and he gingerly pulled the car into the driveway and continued toward the front of the house. My mother was perched near the top of the porch, her arms folded across her chest. She had never welcomed me home from school, and it did not appear that was her intention today. She stood unusually tall in her high heels, almost like a giant. Her eyes remained fixed on the car.
Nathaniel lifted his foot off the accelerator, being particularly careful not to stir up any dust as he approached the house. He came to a stop and placed the car in park. He eased out of the Cadillac and tipped his hat. Mother just ignored him. He walked to the other side of the car and opened the rear door. Without a word, Nathaniel reached for my arm and tenderly pulled me out of the backseat. He squeezed my hand before letting go, as if trying to secretly inject some hidden strength or courage into my small body.
Mother remained motionless as I climbed the few steps toward her. Standing in her shadow, I shielded my eyes with my forearm. The sun was shining so brightly behind her I couldn’t see that she had already raised her right hand. Without saying a word, she slapped me across the cheek. For a moment, I desperately tried to balance myself on the edge of the hard marble step. She could have reached for me. She could have grabbed me. Instead she looked beyond me, as if I wasn’t even there, her hands resting behind her back as I fell helplessly against the steps.
“Listen to me, Sister. You are not going around this town acting like some whorish tramp,” Mother said with an ugly and bitter tongue. “You hear me? No makeup on your face and no more Tommy Blanton. He is as worthless as his worthless, two-bit parents. Do you understand me?”
She didn’t care what I thought, and I knew it was best to say nothing. In my silence, my mother once again folded her arms across her chest and then turned to walk back inside the house. Truthfully, my head was full of so much hurt, I hadn’t heard much of anything Mother said except that Tommy Blanton was worthless. And as soon as she stepped through the front door, Nathaniel rushed to my side. I buried my face in his strong, steady arms and began to sob. He picked me up and carried me to the back of the house and through the kitchen door.
“Now, now, Miss Bezellia, you’re gonna be all right. You’re gonna be all right,” he kept chanting quietly in my ear.
Maizelle looked up from her chair and dropped the basket of green beans she was stringing for the night’s dinner.
“Sweet Jesus, Nathaniel, what’s done gone and happened to Miss Bezellia? Bring her here to me.”
Nathaniel placed me on Maizelle’s lap, and then he gently held my chin in the palm of his rough, thick hand so both he and Maizelle could better examine my face. He saw the blood trickling from the corner of my lips, where my mother’s diamond ring must have ripped my skin. My mouth tasted as if I had been sucking on a piece of metal pipe. Nathaniel handed me a glass of ice water and told me to drink it all.
“What happened?” Maizelle persisted, looking at Nathaniel with bold, determined eyes, afraid that she already knew the answer to her question.
“Miss Bezellia fell down the front steps, lost her footing.”
Maizelle understood what Nathaniel was not saying, and she pulled me tighter against her chest. “Get me a cold rag and the baby aspirin there in that drawer.” She held the cool, wet rag to my cheek while Nathaniel fumbled with the bottle of aspirin. The only other sound was the kitchen clock that hung over the back door, gently humming as one second poured into the next.
We’d all heard my mother say some pretty ugly things to me, and she had certainly swatted my hand more times than I could count. But she had never hit me. Not like that. Not on the face. For the first time in my life I really, truly believed I hated her. But I didn’t hate her because she had hit me or because she’d just stood there and watched me fall. I hated her because she had said such mean things about Tommy.
“He’s not worthless,” I finally muttered and burst into tears.
“Oh, Lord, child, that boy, that’s what this is about?” Maizelle looked at Nathaniel for confirmation.
“You listen to me, honey. It’s natural for that heart of yours to feel things. You ain’t done nothing wrong. Ya’ hear me, Miss Bezellia? Not nothing wrong.”
Nothing wrong? I couldn’t kiss Tommy anymore. I couldn’t stand next to him behind the coatrack anymore. Everything about this felt wrong, very wrong.
Mother didn’t come to the dinner table that night. She told Maizelle she wasn’t hungry. I sat there and wondered if she might starve to death, even pictured her in my head crawling to the kitchen, begging for food. But Nathaniel carried a small plate of scrambled eggs and a gin and tonic to her bedroom before leaving for the evening. Mrs. Grove had what she needed, he said, and then winked good night at me and Adelaide and walked out the back door. I wanted to go with him so bad I almost cried, even if his house did have dirt floors like Mother said it did. I would rather have been anywhere than here.
But Adelaide and I just sat frozen at the table, staring at each other, eating our dinner alone. Father had phoned, as he usually did, a few minutes before Maizelle was ready to serve our plates to let us know that he needed to care for another dying patient. Fine with me. In fact, I was almost grateful that some poor sick soul had captured my father’s attention once again. I was in no mood to endure another meal under my mother’s watchful eye or my father’s mournful stare. Adelaide sat still and quiet, a chicken leg in one hand and Baby Stella dangling in the other.
By the time I went to bed, the corner of my mouth was swollen and a rich shade of blue. I would tell my friends that Adelaide and I had been playing freeze tag in the house and I ran into the edge of a door. And I would tell Tommy Blanton that I could not meet him behind the coatrack, that I could never again feel his lips against mine. I would try to explain that ours was a forbidden love, like Romeo and Juliet’s, at least that’s what Cornelia called it. Tears rolled down my face, stinging my mouth where my skin was raw, washing his kisses away forever.
As I slipped into that space between sleep and wakefulness, I heard someone walk into my room. Without even opening my eyes, I knew it was my father. I had felt him by my side so many nights before, leaning over my bed, studying me as if he was memorizing some beautiful painting. He stroked my head and then turned and walked out of the room. I wondered if my father knew what had happened on the steps of his childhood home. I wondered if he hated my mother as much as I did.
After school the next day, I asked Nathaniel to drive me to my
cousin’s house. He looked at me through the rearview mirror. His eyes were open so wide with surprise and concern they looked like two small saucers placed side by side. I quickly shook my head and told him not to worry. I just needed to return something. I’d only be a minute.
Uncle Thad greeted me at the front door and said that Cornelia wasn’t home but that I was welcome to wait in her room and listen to records till she got back. Then he lightly stroked his forefinger against my cheek.
“What happened, Bezellia?”
I mumbled something that not even I fully understood and then ran up the stairs. I should have known my uncle would never have been satisfied with such a cryptic answer, and by the time I got to the top step, he was already walking to the car, motioning to Nathaniel.
Cornelia’s bedroom door was wide open, and I could see the pink plastic mirror resting on the top of her vanity. I slowly walked across the room and picked it up, carefully turning it over as if it was a piece of my mother’s fine crystal. The impression of my lips was still on the glass, smudged but still there. I dropped the lipstick on Cornelia’s bed and then ran back to the car, knowing that Tommy’s kisses would soon be nothing more than a precious, well-kept memory.
chapter two
The day the Women’s Volunteer League appointed my mother cochair of the symphony’s first formal gala was the same day she told her parents to be expecting their granddaughters for the entire summer. She said the Iris Ball, named at my mother’s suggestion for the Tennessee state flower, was destined to be the city’s premier social event. And since she was creating a legacy for herself and the Grove family, she could not be bothered by anyone or anything until the end of September—unless of course it was her cochair, Mrs. George Madison Longfellow Hunt V, known to my mother simply as Evelyn.
Mother reminded me almost every day that working with Mrs. Hunt was a great privilege and that she was certainly the envy of every woman in town. The Hunts had, after all, lived in Nashville as long as the Groves, but they had invested their money in steel throughout the South, not horses, and now their name was on everything and ours was not—the Hunt Museum of Fine Arts, the Hunt Historical Collection, and the Hunt Botanical Gardens, not to mention Hunt Boulevard, Hunt Valley Road, and Hunt Ridge Lane.
Adelaide always burst into tears when Mother told her she would be spending any time at the lake. She would fall on the floor and cry till she turned a light shade of blue. I, on the other hand, relished the thought of being far from my mother and all the rules involved with being a Grove. There weren’t really any rules to speak of at my grandparents’ house. Nana didn’t care if our shorts and shirts matched or if we brushed our hair in the mornings. She barely brushed her own thin gray hair, let alone noticed if we had taken care of ours.
I spent most of my days fishing for crappie, chasing lightning bugs, and watching a little television while I painted my chigger bites with clear nail polish and drank Coca-Colas right out of the bottle. Adelaide usually calmed down after a day or two. Maybe it was the water that soothed her as Mother said it would, or the special vitamins Nana insisted she take, or the fresh country air that calmed her. I really don’t know for sure, but I think it had more to do with Adelaide taking Baby Stella in the lake for a daily swim and making mud pies from dawn to dusk, no one caring whether the mud got caked in her hair or in her ears.
Right before dinner, my grandmother would undress my little sister in the front yard and then soap her down for anyone to see. She’d even wash Baby Stella, scrub her head like she was cleaning a real live human baby. Every now and then, Nana reminded me of Mother, saying something mean and unexpected. But fortunately it wasn’t often. And fortunately it was never meant for me.
Mother genuinely tried to convince my sister that she would have a wonderful summer out by the lake, but Adelaide couldn’t hear anything comforting amid all of her whining and fussing. Mother finally smacked her hands together and warned her little girl that she did not have the patience or the energy for this ill-timed, overly zealous display of emotion and that Adelaide’s dramatics were causing her head to hurt. My sister just lay on the floor kicking and screaming, and Mother went and fixed herself another gin and tonic.
I was never sure if it was chairing the gala or talking to Mrs. Hunt on the telephone every day that delighted my mother most. Mrs. Hunt was a beautiful woman, as all Mother’s friends were. Her hair was light blond and stylishly short, curled and teased into a very attractive bob. She never went anywhere without wearing high-heeled shoes and two-piece suits, and always pinned to her jacket’s lapel was a large, diamond-encrusted H. My mother admired that pin very much. And before long, she was consulting Mrs. Hunt about everything—invitations, caterers, menus, even her children.
Adelaide and I quickly found ourselves wearing matching taffeta dresses and waltzing every Tuesday afternoon with a bunch of other kids who looked as perfect and as miserable as we did. My sister, however, learned almost on the spot that if she’d stomp and snort loud enough, Mother would leave her at home. Oh, Mother would threaten Adelaide with a spanking that she would never forget, and my sister would retaliate by screaming even louder and clutching Baby Stella tightly against her chest. Then Mother would, inevitably, leave them both behind, but only as she reminded me that I was very privileged to be dancing with Mrs. Hunt’s children.
One afternoon I simply refused to go. I told my mother that there was nothing particularly privileged about holding some boy’s sweaty hand while he stood on my left foot. She immediately lowered her body so her face was directly in front of mine. And with her finger pointed sharply in front of my nose, she said that when she was a little girl she would have given her left foot to dance with a Hunt. And I obviously did not appreciate what had been handed to me on one very old, albeit slightly tarnished, silver spoon. Then she grabbed me by the arm and dragged me to the car.
Besides, she said, I was now old enough to understand that worthwhile relationships were not rooted in the foolish affairs of the heart. She had learned the hard way that there were only three things of value to look for in a man. One, he wears cashmere. Two, he drives a convertible. And three, he glides across the dance floor. Anything more than that, Mother said, should not be of any importance to me, now or ever. I asked her if that was all she had looked for in my father. She simply tilted her head back and laughed. But from where I was sitting, it seemed that being a good wife had much more to do with impressing other wives than it did dancing with your own husband.
Mrs. Hunt flew to New York to buy a triple strand of pearls with a diamond clasp. She came to Grove Hill straight from the airport so she could flaunt her bejeweled neck in front of her dear, envious friend. My mother took one look at that necklace and then demanded that my father send her to Tiffany too. It wasn’t right, she shouted later that night behind their closed bedroom door, that her neck was always bare. It was simply embarrassing that the only pearls she owned were fake—cheap, cultured impostors. And it was very, very rotten, she screamed, that the one strand of pearls my father had ever seen fit to give to anyone had been presented to his baby daughter. Mother must not have liked what he had to say, because I heard a loud thud and the sound of shattering glass. A week later, a turquoise blue box arrived at Grove Hill.
Mother was determined that her daughters possess the skills she believed necessary for our own social survival—writing that seemingly sincere thank-you note, needlepointing one’s monogram in the same turquoise blue thread that Mother confirmed was in fact Tiffany’s signature color, and of course, maintaining that perfect smile whenever you’re dining at the club or having cocktails with friends. It was as simple as that.
So it was really no surprise to me when I came home from school one day and found a strange man with dark black hair and a silver mustache standing on the front porch. He greeted me as if we were old friends, enthusiastic and warm, even if I didn’t understand a single word he said.
“Bonjour. Je m’appelle Monsieur Gadoue. Je suis v
otre le nouveau professeur. Votre mère veut que vous parlez français. Elle est au club de loisirs en discutant le menu pour la boule avec Madame Hunt.”
I understood nothing but “Madame Hunt,” which was all the explanation I needed. Mrs. Hunt believed that any modern, educated child should speak French fluently. I had heard her say it myself. After all, it was the language of international diplomacy and of sophisticated, glamorous women like Jackie Kennedy. And Monsieur Gadoue was now here to make certain that someday I could politely converse with the former First Lady in both English and French.
I’m sure my mother’s motives were more mundane than the thought of sending her daughter to the White House or abroad with a needlepointed peace treaty to engage in foreign affairs. But I rather liked Monsieur Gadoue, and the thought of engaging in any type of diplomacy, even buying a café au lait on the banks of the Seine someday, sounded exciting and wildly exotic to me. Besides, Mother never seemed as happy as she did now. And dancing and sewing and speaking French all seemed like a very small price to pay for her happiness, fleeting or not.
By the first of June, however, I was growing very tired of doing whatever Mrs. Hunt judged important, and I found myself counting the days until I would leave Grove Hill. Even my father seemed to think I had needlepointed enough pincushions to last me a lifetime and maybe my fingers needed a rest. I had hoped that poor little Adelaide would be ready to go too, but when Nathaniel carried her trunk into her bedroom, she started crying and kicking her feet. She cried when Maizelle packed all of her neatly folded matching short sets. She cried when Maizelle told her to collect her books and babies. And she cried when Maizelle closed the lid of her trunk and fastened the lock. Finally, even Maizelle put her hands on her hips and told my sister to hush. Not until Adelaide was much older did I realize that it wasn’t that she loved Grove Hill so much. She was just afraid to be anyplace else.
My father came into my room late that night to tell me goodbye. He stood awkwardly by my bed and said he was going to miss me. He said he didn’t know what he was going to do all summer in this big, empty house without his darling daughters there to liven things up a bit. He said he would be at the hospital when we woke and then kissed me on the forehead. He lingered for a minute, seeming unsure of what to do or where to go next. I stroked the top of his hand and told him not to worry, that I’d be home soon. Then I went to sleep as I had so many times before, wondering if my father was happy, wondering if he had ever been happy.
Susan Gregg Gilmore Page 3