by Robert Inman
Mrs. June Deloach, seated on the other side of the doorway, leaned toward her. “We’re not accustomed to having young ladies at our gatherings,” she said breathlessly.
Bright placed her hands together in her lap and tucked her feet up under the ottoman. She pretended for a moment that she was Miss Eugenia Putnam, ancient and plainspoken and a bit hard of hearing. “I might not come again,” she said loudly. “I wanted to hear Mama talk about how they boil virgins in blood.”
Conversation positively stopped. Mrs. June Deloach drew in a sharp breath, Mrs. Artesia Gibbons whipped out her silk handkerchief, and Miss Eugenia Putnam cupped her hand behind her ear. “Eh? What? Virgins?”
Fostoria Hardwicke leapt to her feet. “Well,” she exploded into the silence, “it’s time for a little refreshment before we have our program.” They all started talking at once and Fostoria bustled out of the room, clattering down the hallway toward the back of the house. Bright looked up at her mother. Elise’s eyes seemed glazed, uncomprehending. Her mouth moved silently, reciting Borneo. Bright hoped she wouldn’t forget the part about the virgins.
Mrs. Hardwicke came back in a moment, carrying a large silver tray piled high with tiny sandwiches. Behind her was the black girl who had delivered the book on Borneo to the Bascombes’ back door, gingerly balancing another tray, laden with small plates, cups and saucers, and a stack of cloth napkins, folded neatly in triangles. They made the rounds of the room, each lady taking a plate, cup and saucer, napkin, and two of the little sandwiches. Bright felt her empty stomach grumble and she took three, arranging them tidily on the plate in her lap. Instead of a cup and saucer, Mrs. Hardwicke had a small glass of milk for her. Bright held the glass of milk in her left hand and took a nibble of a sandwich with the other, and then she discovered a very unfortunate thing. Pimento cheese. She didn’t like pimento cheese. In fact, she positively disliked pimento cheese. The thought of those little red bits of pimento lurking down there inside the yellow cheese made her feel queer. She wished she had taken only two of the sandwiches, or perhaps none at all. She sat staring at the small white rectangles on her plate while Mrs. Hardwicke and the black girl made the rounds of the room again, Mrs. Hardwicke pouring coffee from a silver pot while the black girl held a tray of sugar and cream. The ladies of the Study Club nibbled and sipped daintily, chattering around their morsels, utterly unaware of her dilemma. Bright stared at the sandwich for a moment. I just won’t think about it. I’ll just think about delicious candied yams. I’ll take a big bite and a big swallow of milk and …
PIMENTO CHEESE, her stomach said.
She looked around the room. The ladies were all eating their pimento cheese sandwiches and drinking their coffee, even her mother, who also detested pimento cheese. Elise was eating the pimento cheese sandwiches as if there were nothing wrong, as if she couldn’t even taste them. All of these soft, elegant ladies, eating pimento cheese. Every crumb of it. Not a single one of them leaving a trace of sandwich on her plate. Bright wanted desperately not to embarrass her mother, who was sitting there numb and afraid, a small fragile petunia amid all the lush foliage of the Study Club. She took a deep breath and told herself I cannot taste anything! and began stuffing the pimento cheese sandwiches into her mouth very quickly, taking big gulps of milk, washing everything down, every last bite and drop until it was all gone. She sat there for a moment, not breathing, and then she thought, It’s down there! She looked up and saw Fostoria Hardwicke staring at her, wide-eyed, mouth formed in a shocked O. Then Mrs. Hardwicke snapped her mouth shut and gave a tiny, disgusted shake of her head. Oh dear, Bright thought, and her stomach gave a lurch of protest.
In a moment, Mrs. Hardwicke got up with a rush of crinoline and she and the black girl collected the empty dishes while Bright sat miserably on the ottoman, feet tucked underneath. The room felt hot and close now, the air so sickly sweet with the mingling of perfumes that she could hardly breathe. Overhead, the fan went around and around and around. Bright forced herself to look at a spot on the Oriental rug where a yellow deer pranced on a red background, and desperately wished herself out somewhere in the woods or at the lumberyard with her father or back home safe in the kitchen with Hosanna.
Fostoria stood in the arched doorway, hands clasped in front of her. “Now, ladies,” she said, and the murmur of conversation trailed off. “Ladies, it’s so good of you to come today. I believe we have every single one of our members here today, and one”—she nodded toward Elise—“prospective member. Shall we call now for the reading of the minutes of the last meeting?” Mrs. June Deloach got up then and opened a small notebook and read about the meeting the month before at Mrs. Artesia Gibbons’s house, where they had had cucumber and cream cheese sandwiches and iced tea and Fostoria Hardwicke herself had presented a study of Australia. Bright wished she had been at that meeting, because she liked cucumber and cream cheese sandwiches, and Australia sounded like it might be interesting. She wondered if they had virgins in Australia—whatever virgins were. Mrs. June Deloach sat down and Fostoria said, “Any corrections to the minutes?” Silence. “Then the minutes stand as read. Now”—she gave a small clap of her hands—“we have a special treat in store today as we continue our study of the far-flung”—she flung her arm—“nations of the world. Elise Bascombe has consented to give us a view of the island nation of Borneo. Let’s welcome Elise.”
There was a little round of gloved applause as Fostoria sat down and Elise got unsteadily to her feet. She stood next to the chair, one hand gripping the back of it tightly, towering over Bright’s ottoman. Bright thought she looked very tired and pale—and doomed, like a chicken about to have its neck wrung. She had a sudden urge to stand up next to her mother and hold her hand, but she thought that would not do at all, and besides, any movement might bring the precarious pimento cheese into action. There was a long silence and the ladies of the Study Club sat expectantly, faces upturned. Bright thought they looked kindly, helpful. But she could feel the fear, thick and poisonous, radiating from her mother.
Elise stood there for a very long time, staring at a spot where the ceiling and wall came together at the far end of the room, and then she took a deep breath. “Bah …,” she said, and the sound choked in her throat and died. She swallowed hard. “Bah …”
Miss Eugenia Putnam leaned forward in her chair and cupped her hand behind her ear. “Eh? What she say?”
Elise opened her mouth again and Bright saw the horror twist her mother’s face. One hand went to her cheek and the other clutched the back of the chair so fiercely that her knuckles turned white. She croaked again, “Bah … bah…”
Down at the other end of the room, Mrs. Artesia Gibbons pulled her silk handkerchief out of her glove, dabbed at the corners of her mouth, and said softly, “Poor dear.”
Elise stared at her, and then suddenly the fear left her and her face went slack and she got a dreamy look in her eyes. “To hell with it,” she said softly, and there was a stunned silence and then a whoosh of air being sucked into scented bosoms. She’s going away from us now, Bright thought. It took a moment longer. Elise swayed a bit and then she looked slowly around the room, searching each face, and gave them a tiny soft smile. And finally she took a little breath and her eyes rolled back in her head and she fluttered like a leaf to the floor at Bright’s feet. She lay there, small and crumpled in the lace dress, her face ghostly white, while everyone else in the room sat frozen, staring at her. Bright looked at her mother for a moment and felt immensely relieved. Then she thought, I’d best do something. So she screamed as loud as she could and all the ladies of the Study Club jumped up at once and rushed to where Elise lay, crowding in around her, all talking excitedly at the same time, their words a tittering babble in Bright’s ears. Bright was caught in the middle, hemmed in by a rustling, chattering nightmare of cloth and perfume and clutching hands. Get away! she tried to cry out, but her own voice froze. She felt a hand on her arm, pulling her roughly away from her mother. Her head swam dizzily. A
nd then the pimento cheese in her stomach said, I’m coming up! And it did.
>
She was sitting on the front steps of the Hardwicke house, wearing one of Xuripha’s dresses, when Dorsey Bascombe steered the buggy to the curb, leapt out, and hurried up the front walk, taking long strides in his tall leather boots. There was a dark sweat stain on the front of his khaki shirt. He had been out in the woods when they sent for him an hour ago. It was almost noontime now. The whistle at the lumberyard would blow any minute, Bright expected, and then they could go home.
He stopped, bent over Bright, put his hand gently on her head. “Honey, are you all right?”
“Yes, Papa. And Mama’s all right too. She’s lying down. All the ladies have left. Except Miz Hardwicke. I threw up.”
“That’s all right.” He stood again. “I’ll go get Mama, all right? You just wait here. I won’t be a minute. Then we’ll go home.”
“All right, Papa.”
Dorsey went inside and Bright sat quietly, waiting for them, feeling empty and drained. She was thirsty and hungry and her eyes felt scratchy out here in the bright sunshine, but she hadn’t wanted to complain. Mrs. Hardwicke had been a little hysterical for a while, and she had just now calmed down. Bright wanted to go home and have something small and light for dinner and perhaps take a little nap and then sit quietly in Hosanna’s kitchen while things got sorted out. Hosanna could help sort things out, she was sure of that. Bright could see her now, splashing at the sink, muttering “That young’un …”
Bright heard the screen door open behind her and she stood, smoothing the front of Xuripha’s dress, as they emerged from the house, Dorsey’s arm firmly around Elise’s waist, followed by Fostoria. Elise looked pale and she wobbled a bit, but she didn’t have the wild, frightened look in her eyes anymore. Dorsey was tall and broad-shouldered beside her, and she looked tiny in the protective crook of his arm.
“I’m so sorry,” Fostoria was saying. “We’re all so sorry. Perhaps after Elise has had a little more time …”
“No,” Dorsey said firmly. Bright could see how the muscles along his jaw bulged under the skin, how the tiny crow’s-feet around his eyes seemed deeper.
“Oh, I’m sure …,” Fostoria started to say.
He stopped, turned a little toward her. “Fostoria, I appreciate everything. You’ve been more than kind. But no more.”
“Well,” she said, giving a little shrug. “Well, then …”
“I’ll get the dress back to you this afternoon.”
“Yes. Well, there’s no hurry.”
They left Fostoria standing on the porch and Bright followed her parents to the buggy. Dorsey helped Elise up, then took Bright around to the other side and lifted her to the seat and climbed in himself.
As they pulled away, Bright leaned out and gave Fostoria a little wave. Fostoria must not have seen it, she thought. She stood there at the edge of the porch with her arms crossed, staring at them, and then she turned and disappeared inside the house.
Bright sat back in the seat between her parents and looked up at them, first one and then the other, their heads framed by the bright noonday outside the canopied shade of the buggy. And it was then that she realized how angry her father was—angry and disappointed. It was as clear on his face as if it had been painted there in big black words. And just as quickly, she realized why he was angry and disappointed, because that was etched just as clearly in the look of resigned failure on her mother’s face. She sensed the very great gulf between the two of them, here where Bright sat on the buggy seat, a big and lonely space that smelled of leather and her father’s sweat and her mother’s perfume.
Bright sat there, feeling wretched and frightened, as the horse clip-clopped along the clay of the street toward their house and the noon whistle from the lumberyard screeched high above the town, splitting the day into halves and calling a brief respite from labor. Finally, she could stand it no more. She reached over and touched her father’s hand, the one that held the reins. “Can I sit in your lap, Papa?” she asked.
He looked down at her and she thought for an instant that she saw something very close to tears in his eyes. “Yes,” he said softly, then put his arm around her and helped her into his lap. She put her hands on the reins and he put his big hands around hers and the horse took them home. Bright did not look over at her mother again. She was afraid of what she might see.
7
The spring of 1919 came with a rush that left her a bit breathless. It had been a hard, bone-aching winter with ice rimming the puddles on the sidewalks and the stark limbs of trees seeming almost to cry out with loneliness against bare gray sky. Then suddenly Bright stepped into a warm morning’s sunshine, stretching and blinking in the brightness, seeing that the world outside had changed in small ways that had escaped her notice—a bush beside the front steps grown slightly taller, a corner of the stable roof in the backyard sagging a bit from decay because Dorsey now had a motorcar and no use for a horse at home, a new nest of pigeons in a high eave on the side of the house next to the chimney. It made Bright wonder if more than a single winter had come and gone, and if so, where she had been. And, she wondered if the changes had been more within herself than in the world outside her door that seemed to blossom so forcefully to life.
But if Bright Bascombe took notice of spring, it seemed that her parents did not. They were still in the thrall of winter—a lingering sense of things dormant, of expectations unfulfilled, of marking time and waiting for something to reveal itself. She had begun to take note of them, as children of eight will do, as people unto themselves, not just as parents whose sphere was circumscribed by their relationship to her own small world. As her vision expanded, people and things shifted and took on broader meaning. As for Dorsey and Elise, they became husband and wife in Bright’s mind, not just mother and father. And as her sense of their otherness grew, she realized the distance between them and their ineffectual attempts to reach across it and the pervading sense of disappointment on both their parts for having failed. They were good parents. They loved her, took care of her, lavished her with attention—especially Dorsey. But she was struck by the strange notion that their very acts of parenting were somehow an attempt to reconcile what they were not able to touch in each other, that she was in some ways a conduit through which they tried to connect.
The household had been busier than ever. Dorsey’s business grew and prospered in the years of the Great War. He was away from the house for days at a time to places like Memphis and New Orleans, Atlanta and Louisville, where there was a great appetite for the pine and hardwood timbers that his crews harvested from the woods and shipped by the boxcarload from the lumberyard beside the river.
And Elise Bascombe had quite surprised everyone. Far from letting the disaster of the Study Club three years before make her a recluse, she had sallied forth with a fairly determined set to her jaw. She was a regular attendee at Methodist services, shopped frequently in the small business district, and even took in a few piano students in the room off the parlor. She traveled several times to visit her parents in New Orleans and once accompanied Mayor Dorsey Bascombe on an overnight journey to the state capital, where they attended a meeting of the League of Municipalities.
But Bright sensed that all of their activity masked the deeper thing that was amiss. She suspected that whatever grew from her parents’ joint cultivation was shallow-rooted, like a mushroom, easily plucked from the earth and a bit withered in appearance. It was not something she could ask Hosanna about, because it was not something she could put into words.
There was, however, plenty she could ask about, a great deal to think about. And at least in some respects, as children of eight will do, she began to leave her parents and the mystery of their lives behind and embark upon her own.
Bright started to school and found to her surprise that there was, indeed, a great deal to learn about things, each new bit of information spawning its own questions. She brought them to Elise
, to Dorsey, to Hosanna, who answered them as best they could with a combination of fact, supposition, and folk wisdom.
Frequently, Hosanna was the first convenient object of Bright’s curiosity as she dashed in breathless and ravenous from school for a midafternoon snack in the warm, rich-smelling kitchen. “Lord, young’un, yo’ brain like bread risin’,” Hosanna would say. “What they feed you down yonder at the schoolhouse? Yeast?” If pressed beyond the limits of her knowledge and common sense, she would simply roll her eyes and retreat to her favorite nostrum: “Life’s a mystery.” A bit earlier, it might have been enough. Now it was not. There was nothing, Bright decided, so mysterious that it was unfathomable if you asked enough questions and thought long and hard enough about it.
And then there was music. There were echoes of it everywhere in the house. There were still occasional evening concerts in the music room with Bright, no longer small enough to sit on her father’s lap, squeezing into the big chair beside him while Elise played, always from her familiar repertoire. She seemed uninterested in learning anything new. At the end, she would invite Dorsey to play with her and he would take the golden trombone from its case and tune it and stand beside her, making a mellow counterpoint to her piano. But their playing, like everything they did together, was tentative. They are too gentle, Bright thought. They tiptoe. Still, the music lingered long after the trombone was put away and the cover closed over the piano keyboard. She heard it in the deep recesses of her mind—the familiar songs her parents played and things new and unknown. Sometimes the music awakened her at night, so real and immediate she would think that Dorsey and Elise were playing, and she would slip quietly downstairs to find the music room dark and quiet. It made her a bit uneasy at first, all this music announcing itself suddenly inside her brain, full-blown melodies that might begin with a phrase from one of her mother’s pieces and then take strange and unexpected turns. The music drifted through her mind like smoke, curling and twisting as the currents caught it. She learned to be still and listen, fascinated with its possibilities.