Susan Gregg Gilmore

by The Improper Life of Bezellia Grove (v5)

  I carefully reached for the glass under her hand and lifted it to my nose. I wondered if Nathaniel had fixed her a drink with crushed ice and fresh mint from the garden, then left for the evening, tipping his hat as he walked through the back door. I wondered if Maizelle had covered her with a blanket before heading upstairs and if Adelaide had kissed her good night and, seeing the glass filled with ice and gin, simply whispered that tomorrow she would be a good girl and knit another sweater.

  No one was more to blame than I was, hiding at school and ignoring her letters, not really wanting to know how she was doing. When Mother woke in the morning, she wouldn’t remember much of this day. And maybe it was just as well.

  MINISTER LEAVES METHODIST CHURCH IN DEAD OF NIGHT

  REV. EDWIN C. FOSTER ALLEGEDLY STEALS FROM CHURCH

  Church Members Report Suspicious Activities to Police

  Reverend Edwin C. Foster, senior pastor of Broadway United Methodist Church, is currently under police investigation, according to local authorities. Foster, who has led one of the city’s oldest churches for the past seven years, left his Grove Park home late last night and has yet to be located.

  Local Methodist church officials confirmed that several thousand dollars from the church’s checking account are missing, and police are concerned that Foster may have been stealing from church funds for several months now. A review of the church’s financial records is ongoing at this time.

  Foster had recently encouraged his congregation to donate large sums of money for needed improvements to the existing church structure as well as to fund architectural plans for a new fellowship hall. The close relative of one prominent donor, who prefers to remain anonymous, said he became suspicious when none of the improvements discussed were implemented.

  He said he confronted the senior pastor in a private meeting earlier in the week and then approached the board of deacons with his concerns yesterday afternoon. The police were contacted when the church secretary could not locate Foster for Wednesday night services.

  The Nashville Register

  final edition

  AUGUST 5, 1970

  chapter thirteen

  Uncle Thad made a few phone calls to Minnesota and then to the bank. Mother urgently needed another special vacation, but unfortunately this time there was no money to pay for it. She had withdrawn thousands of dollars from her savings account during the last six months, each transaction paid directly to Reverend Foster. I imagine with each payment she had hoped for some peace, some comfort that surely would come to such a faithful and generous servant. Now she was nearly broke and drunk, and Reverend Foster was on the lam, probably hiding out in some plush hotel on the South Florida coast.

  Uncle Thad said we had a tough decision to make, probably one Mother was not going to like. He’d found a hospital right outside Chattanooga, situated on the banks of the Tennessee River. Nothing fancy, he warned, owned by the state. But the doctors there thought they might be able to help. He said it was something we could afford. He hoped that we could convince Mother to go on her own. But one way or another, he said, she would be going. He wasn’t going to leave us girls alone with her when she was drowning in a bottle of gin.

  “Bezellia, honey, I called your grandparents last night,” Uncle Thad confessed as we sat at the kitchen table together. “At first I thought maybe your mother could stay with them for a while. They said no. Practically hung up on me, to tell you the truth. I just don’t see that we have many other options. You can think about it for a day or two if you want. But the hospital needs to know by Friday.”

  Uncle Thad wrapped his hands around mine and scooted his chair a little closer. “Cornelia’s home for a few weeks before heading back to Boston, Bee. Why don’t you give her a call, probably be good for the two of you to talk. I know she’s real eager to see you.”

  I smiled and felt a tear roll down my cheek. Just knowing my cousin was in town was a comfort.

  Mother hid in her room, pretending to know nothing of our discussions, while Maizelle cooked one chicken noodle casserole after another, somehow hoping, I guess, that a full stomach would make everybody feel better. Nathaniel washed and waxed the car in case Mother needed to leave at a moment’s notice. And Adelaide worked feverishly knitting a lightweight cotton sweater. She thought Mother might need it if she was going to be by the water.

  “Bezellia,” she asked one afternoon while we were sitting on the front porch together, “do you think Mother is going to get better this time? I mean stay that way?”

  “I don’t know. I sure hope so.”

  We sat there for a long time, neither one of us saying another word. I think we both were trying to accept the fact that our mother was not well, again, and maybe imagining what it would be like to know a mother who was. Then Adelaide shifted her rocking chair closer to mine and pulled something out from underneath her shirt. She was holding a small knitted sack made of soft pink yarn. Bright pink flowers were delicately embroidered along the bottom edge, each flower connected to the next by a green, leafy vine. A deep pink ribbon was laced through the top of the sack and tied in a neat little bow.

  “I made this for you—well, at least part of it. I wanted to give it to you the day you came home, but it just never felt like quite the right time, especially after everything that happened in the garden and all. I don’t want you to be mad, at Mother I mean. I don’t think she means to do such awful things.”

  The real gift, she said, as she placed the knitted sack in my hands, was inside. With her eyes guiding my fingers toward the ribbon, I gently pulled one end and then the other, opening it just wide enough to glimpse an odd bundle of papers. Adelaide shook her head in excitement and silently clapped her hands together. They’re letters, she gushed, letters from Samuel.

  My mouth fell open, but nothing came out, not even a gasp or a moan. I held the letters next to my chest and looked at Adelaide for an explanation. She pulled her legs underneath her and sat a little taller. She was eager to tell me all she knew but wasn’t sure where to start. She finally admitted that she had found them in Mother’s room just a day or two before I came home. They were stuffed in a faded old pillowcase and tucked under her bathroom sink.

  “I was looking for her dusting powder. You know the one that smells like gardenias? I just wanted to try a little. Cornelia gave me a subscription to Seventeen magazine for my birthday. And in the very first issue that came to the house, it said boys actually prefer the more subtle scent of a powder. Lucy said she bought some of that Jean Naté powder at the drugstore right before Easter and hasn’t used a drop of perfume ever since.”

  I held the papers out in front of my sister, begging her to tell me more about the letters. Adelaide shook her head and again concentrated on the little bundle in my hands. She said she grabbed the pillowcase and ran to her room. She emptied every envelope and then filled each one with a blank piece of paper so Mother wouldn’t notice anything was missing. Then she put the envelopes back in the pillowcase and the pillowcase back under the sink. She hid the real letters with Baby Stella, who was still tucked in a cardboard box in the far corner of the attic. She knew good and well that nobody would dare look for them there.

  She promised she hadn’t read them, well, maybe only part of one. But just between her and me, it sure seemed like Samuel still wanted to be my boyfriend, even if his skin was a whole lot darker than mine. She said she’d leave me alone now, figuring I’d want some time to read without a little sister leaning over my shoulder. She sure hoped this made me feel better.

  My fingers were clumsy and stiff, and the small stack of papers suddenly felt very heavy in my hands. The first letter had been mailed months ago, not long after Mother had written to tell me Samuel had left for Vietnam. The paper was tattered and worn, and I wondered how far these words had traveled to find me. My entire body started shaking, and my stomach felt sick. But Samuel told me not to worry. He said he wasn’t afraid. He said he’d now seen evil in the eyes of an Alabama sher
iff and a North Vietnamese soldier. And from where he was standing, it looked pretty much the same.

  He missed me and even drew a little heart next to my name. He confessed that he thought of us down by the creek every single night. It was what got him through the hell he’d found there on the other side of the world. Sometimes, in his dreams, he swore he could even smell my hair and the soapy scent of my skin. I started to cry and for a few moments allowed myself to fall back into Samuel’s arms and feel the weight of his body on top of mine. I could feel his breath on my neck and his thigh pushing its way between my legs before I unwillingly drifted back to the porch. Another tear fell on the paper, and I quickly dried it with my blouse for fear I might wash away even one word that belonged to Samuel Stephenson.

  He asked if I’d look after his dad. He knew he must be worried sick about his only son. He promised to write again as soon as he could and begged me to write him too. Any word from home sure meant a lot, but a word from me would mean everything. There were four more letters, but I couldn’t bear to read them. Samuel had been gone almost a year, and he had never heard from me. He didn’t know that I thought about him every day. He didn’t know that I dreamed about him every night. He didn’t know that I missed him so much it hurt. He didn’t know that I had climbed to the top of Tinker Mountain and sobbed and screamed for Samuel Stephenson. He didn’t know any of that. All he knew, or thought he knew, was that I didn’t care, that I didn’t love him anymore. Surely I loved someone else, someone different, someone better.

  I found myself huddled in my bed, not really remembering how I got there. I hid under my pillow for the rest of the afternoon, crying for Samuel and hating my mother. I wished spitting in her coffee would make me feel better. But I knew there wasn’t enough coffee or enough spit to make this right. Even with her Bible in her hand, she had found a way to be deceitful and cruel, prejudiced and judgmental. She might as well have slapped me across the face. This time I could see myself falling down the hard marble steps in front of our house, Samuel’s letters swirling about my head. I reached for them. I tried to grab them. But they all blew away.

  The sun was almost below the horizon by the time Adelaide knocked on my bedroom door. She looked like a cold, scared kitten, worried she had only made matters worse by sharing something that had always belonged to me. I could see the desperation in every limb of her body, the exhaustion from living with a mother who, in one way or another, had always been drunk. And even though Adelaide was beginning to look more and more like a woman, she still felt like a child to me, a little girl who needed to be loved right, as Maizelle would say. I held her hand and told her everything would be fine. I wasn’t exactly sure how I knew that. I hadn’t seen a sign of any kind or heard a voice from the great beyond. Just somehow, for the first time in my life, I knew it to be true. I stroked my sister’s back, and after a while, she fell asleep.

  I left Adelaide in my bed and snuck downstairs and called Uncle Thad. I didn’t even wait for him to say hello. I told him to come to Grove Hill. It was time to talk to Mother. I knew what I had to say, but I desperately needed my uncle with me. And while I waited for him on the front steps of my ancestral home, I looked across the lawn already covered in a light evening fog and saw the first Bezellia, hunched over her husband’s dying body, the musket heavy in her hands and the smoke from the last shot burning her eyes. She looked about my age, no more than that. And there she was, holding her dying husband in her arms. In that moment, she was brave and fearless, maybe not by choice but certainly by circumstance. Father had said her blood was running through my veins, and now more than ever I hoped he was right.

  Mother argued and fussed and cried when I told her she needed to go. She begged to stay at Grove Hill, sounding much like Adelaide when she was a little girl and was told she would be spending the summer with her grandparents. I told her that she was not well, but surely she already knew that. I told her she deserved this time away to care for herself after dealing with Father’s death and Adelaide’s peculiarities and everything else she deemed tragic that had been left for her to manage alone. Some time by the water would surely do her some good.

  Uncle Thad, who had sat between us, silently offering us both some much needed strength and courage, took Mother’s hands in his and told her that she really had no other choice. If she refused to go, then he could not allow Adelaide and me to stay at Grove Hill. He needed to know that we were safe in our own home. Mother burst into tears, and even though she pulled her hands away from Uncle Thad’s, she just sat motionless in her chair, seemingly unsure of what to do next. I looked at her with a fixed expression, afraid that, if I even blinked, my resolve would also melt into tears. In the morning, Uncle Thad said, she should be packed and ready to go.

  Then he helped her back to her room and stayed by her side till he was certain she was asleep. By the time Uncle Thad left, the rest of the house had grown unbearably quiet. Adelaide had drifted back to the den and was now knitting and watching television, neither activity fully capturing her attention. Maizelle was in bed reading her Bible. She left her door open slightly so she could listen for my little sister during the night. I told Maizelle that wasn’t necessary anymore, but she said she would be listening for her babies till the day she died. I poked my head in her room and told her that I was headed out for a while. She furrowed her brow and looked up from her Bible and asked if I knew what I was doing. I told her I didn’t know much of anything right now, I just needed a little fresh air, and then I headed downstairs and called Cornelia.

  My cousin and I had both been so busy tending to our own lives that we hadn’t talked in a very long time, at least not about anything of any importance. Now I was missing her, missing her terribly, and was so grateful she was home.

  “Damn it, girl, I was wondering when were you going to get in touch with me.” Cornelia was laughing on the other end of the telephone. “I was getting kind of tired of talking to dear Aunt Liz,” she said, barely pausing to take a breath, admitting that she had called my house three or four times during the past week, apparently never trusting her aunt to tell the truth about my arrival.

  I told her, given the circumstances, that was probably smart and that I’d be waiting for her on the front porch. A few minutes later, Cornelia sped up the driveway in the yellow Volkswagen Beetle that Uncle Thad had bought her when she came home from college after her freshman year. Mother always said that it was the worst looking car in town and that it reeked of those damn chickens. My cousin squealed when I jumped in the front seat. She leaned across the steering wheel and hugged my neck, accidentally hitting the horn with her left elbow. I told her she better hit the gas before my mother came looking for me, and then I dropped my head in my hands and started to cry.

  “What’s going on, Bee? What’s Aunt Liz done now? Daddy said she’s going to need another one of her special vacations. Except this time he said she’s going to have to stay at the Motel Six and not the Ritz-Carlton, or something like that.”

  With my head still buried in my hands, I nodded and then muttered something about Adelaide’s little knitted sack and Samuel’s letters. Then words like Ruddy and Reverend Foster and Johnny Cash and Jesus Christ all started blending together, forming some kind of verbal cyclone that ripped a path right through my cousin’s little car, none of it making any sense at all.

  And when I finally ran out of strength, Cornelia told me to take a deep breath and start over again. “This time so I can understand you.”

  I tried to take a deep breath, but I started laughing instead.

  “Girl, what has gotten into you? One minute you’re crying and the next minute you’re cracking up. You sure you’re okay?”

  “Your car really does smell like chickens,” I said, ignoring Cornelia’s concern.

  “Ha. Very funny, Bee. That’s because Daddy’s always leaving the windows down and two of his favorite hens love to sleep in the backseat. Even laid a couple of eggs back there the other day. But what about you?
Are you sure you’re okay?”

  “Yeah. I think I am. I had really hoped that the God my mother keeps praying to was paying better attention this time and had worked some kind of miracle and turned her into someone good, someone normal, hell, a magic fairy for all I care. But it was just an illusion, just a temporary illusion.

  “You know, ever since I can remember, Cornelia, I’ve either hated her or felt sorry for her—nothing in between. And right this minute, I hate her and feel sorry for her. The only difference is that now I’m beginning to think I’m no better than she is—just another illusion of a nice girl when underneath it all I’m as much a mess as she is.”

  “Lord, don’t tell me you’ve started drinking too,” Cornelia teased, but she sounded a little more concerned than she had a moment ago.

  “That’s exactly what I’ve been doing. I’ve been doing nothing but drinking wine and listening to Led Zeppelin with an overachieving, oversexed English professor while Samuel’s getting shot at and my little sister’s knitting baby booties and my mother is sneaking gin into her lemonade.”

  “Wow. Back up. Start over. What oversexed English teacher are you talking about? What the hell have you been doing at that school, anyway?”

  So sitting there in the driveway in my cousin’s little yellow car, I shared the secrets of the past two years of my life. I started with Ruddy Semple and how I wanted to pull his pants off right there on Mount Juliet’s white, sandy beach. I admitted that I wasn’t really sure if it was genuine affection or outright lust that had left me tugging on his belt or just the need to feel a boy wrap his arms around me.