She paused for a second and added, and for me.
She sat back and reread what she had just written. She wasn't sure it would get the message across, but it was the best she could do.
Chapter Sixty-one
LAUREL
2004
IT WAS THE MIDDLE of the night, but Laurel couldn't sleep. She got up, amid protests from the dogs, and went into the living room. The Charles Valley Gazette was on the couch where she'd left it after she read it. She picked it up and took it into the kitchen, but she didn't open it. There was no need to read it again. She'd memorized Gloria's editorial.
“The vehement Ms. McCready,” Gloria had called her, and then made her sound like a mealy-mouthed phony. No, it was worse than that. Gloria had made her sound like every rich bitch who took the money and ran. All her life, Laurel had thumbed her nose at the gardens and the resort. Anyone who had ever heard one of her beer-fueled rants at the Sportsman's Grill knew how she felt about Charles Valley's leading family. In a few short sentences, Gloria had made her into the enemy—an ignorant white-trash Garrison. Accent on the ignorant.
Ironically, the vehement Ms. McCready is now the owner of the resort, and she has the deciding vote on the board of trustees that makes policy for the gardens. And, according to yesterday's announcement, the gardens and the resort are now planning to raise the cost of health insurance premiums for those workers for whom Ms. McCready expressed such concern. When asked to comment, Ms. McCready replied, “I don't know anything about business. There are people who know what they're doing, and they say this is the way it has to be. My opinion doesn't matter.”
Laurel cringed at the memory of her own words, immortalized in print. No one in town would say anything to her—but they'd all be thinking plenty. Going to the post office would be a nightmare. Everyone in Charles Valley read the Gazette: Sheralynn and her vast tribe, Maggie and Li'l Bit—and Perry. Laurel threw the paper on the floor.
The Lawrence family certainly knew how to deliver a gut punch. Stuart softened you up, and the ladies finished you off. If Myrtis Garrison had had the brains God gave a canary, none of the damn clan would have ever set foot in Charles Valley.
That, Laurel realized, was part of what was driving her crazy. Somewhere in all the conflicting stories she'd been hearing about Miss Myrtis, she'd started feeling a weird connection to the woman whose home, money, and life she now owned. She almost felt sorry for Miss Myrtis and, in a way she couldn't begin to explain, she'd come to think of her own battle with Stuart and his gang as a victory for the young woman who had been so nice to Li'l Bit and Maggie and then had had to back down on all her plans and dreams. Laurel Selene McCready, from the wrong side of just about everything in Charles Valley, felt like she needed to win one for the great Miss Myrtis. But she hadn't won. And she wasn't going to. Laurel threw the newspaper on the floor. The only thing she had in common with the great lady of Charles Valley was being as big a hypocrite as Miss Myrtis had been.
Chapter Sixty-two
MRS. RAIN
2004
SOMETHING STRANGE was going on. She was sitting in . . . a thing . . . a piece of furniture. It had a name . . . a name she knew, but she couldn't bring it to her lips. Where was she? Backstage in the greenroom? But this wasn't a greenroom, it was a . . . some other kind of room. And there was something in her lap that had a name she couldn't remember. How had this happened? Sometimes when she first woke up, she didn't remember where she was or how she got there, but she hadn't been asleep. This was like the last time there had been an incident . . . a cardiovascular incident. . . .
“Myrtis?” she called out, panicked.
She came running into the room. Only it wasn't Myrtis, it was . . . someone else. Whose identity was lost in the same black hole that seemed to have swallowed her brain.
“Yes, Mrs. Rain,” said the young girl, who wasn't a stranger but was, for the moment, nameless.
I know who you are, just help me a little with your name. Give me a hint.
“Mrs. Rain, why are you awake? It's three in the morning.”
If I knew that I wouldn't have called you, whoever you are.
“You're still writing that letter, aren't you?”
She looked down at the pile of yellow papers on a tray in her lap. That was what it was, a letter! She was writing to Laurel McCready. Everything started clicking into place. Words were coming back. She was sitting in a chair in her sunroom, and she had a pen in her hand. The girl, whose name was not Myrtis but Cherry, was right. She had been writing through the night.
“Shall I get Essie? Or the doctor?” Cherry asked.
“No, dear, I'm fine.” But the moment of confusion had inflicted a little sting of fear. Like a bite from an insect or a rash from poison ivy.
“Have you been in that chair all night?”
“I couldn't sleep.”
“The doctor is gonna be mad.”
“Then don't tell him.”
“Let me help you get into bed.”
“As soon as I finish.”
“Mrs. Rain, I'm responsible for you.”
She wanted to shout that she was a grown woman, and if she chose to stay up all night, writing letters or dancing on tabletops, that was her decision. But the child looked so stricken. And there had been that scary little moment in no-man's-land.
“Please, Mrs. Rain.”
So she let the girl put her to bed. And after young Cherry left she really did try to sleep. But the letter, which Cherry had put on the dresser, was calling to her. She waited for what seemed like hours; then she turned on the light and retrieved her yellow pages, the tray, and the pen. She got back into her bed with the tray on her knees, to finish the last sad chapter of her story.
Chapter Sixty-three
IVA CLAIRE
1936
IVA CLAIRE HADN'T COUNTED on the loneliness. She was used to sharing everything, first with Mama and then with Mama and Tassie. It had been the three of them against the world, onstage and off. Now she was alone and she felt lost. She needed friends, but she'd found out fast that the old-time vaudevillians were right when they said civilians were a different breed. In Atlanta, thanks to the Benedict name and money, she'd been accepted into a circle that was young, rich, and well bred. The belles in this crowd could never have imagined rolling around on a stage in a silly costume or waiting in a dirty hotel room with a dying mother for a check that never came. The pain of Mama's last days, her horrid little funeral, and all the other memories that haunted Iva Claire would have sounded like a bad dream to them. But they were real for her.
That was the second thing she hadn't counted on. She could mimic Myrtis Benedict's speech, wear flat shoes to make herself look shorter, and play Myrtis to perfection, but she could never lose her memories of life as Iva Claire. The memories could trip her up. Theater slang she had used all her life could slip into her conversation if she relaxed her guard; so could references to Hell's Kitchen and Brooklyn.
So she was afraid to let anyone come too close for a variety of reasons—which made the loneliness worse.
It might have been easier if she'd had something to do. She'd worked since she was five, and she was accustomed to being useful. But now she was expected to spend her time going to parties and picnics. She read books, volunteered for socially acceptable charity work, and secretly gave large amounts of money to radical causes, but sometimes she thought her boring new life was worse than the old grind of doing split weeks on the Small Time.
The wealthy privileged people who had taken the wealthy privileged Miss Benedict into their homes and clubs whispered to one another that there was something a little off about her. They put it down to her foreign schooling, but that didn't stop them from wondering. All of this made friendship a gamble and romance a danger. Besides, she was finding she didn't like her new acquaintances very much.
The casual bigotry she encountered in the parlors of the spoiled never ceased to amaze her. She wasn't naïve. She'd played theate
rs where Negro customers had to sit in Coon Heaven, and she knew that in parts of the South they had their own circuit. Certainly, ethnic and racial stereotypes formed the basis of many successful comedy acts. But backstage, performers of every background were thrown together in the melting pot that was vaudeville, and prejudice simply couldn't last when you were trooping around the country on a five-a-day tour. But the sheltered girls and boys of Atlanta had been raised to look down on anyone who didn't look or sound exactly like they did. Being with them often meant biting her tongue until it was in danger of bleeding. And she was discovering something else about them and their parents; they were amazingly ignorant about the world around them. And they were mean.
Georgia had been hit hard by the Great Depression, and Atlanta was a hotbed of New Deal activity. People would have starved without federal relief and the jobs handed out by government agencies. As far as Iva Claire was concerned, Roosevelt was a great man.
But she was going to dinner parties where the president was more likely to be called a communist than a savior. And because she was afraid of attracting the wrong kind of attention, she was afraid to argue. In private, she read the Women's Democratic News and Mrs. Roosevelt's column, “My Day,” in the Woman's Home Companion, but she couldn't talk about any of it in public.
The worst part was, she couldn't even tell Tassie how isolated she felt, because Tassie seemed to be having problems of her own. She still never mentioned acting jobs, and she sounded discouraged. Iva Claire sent more money and tried not to think about it.
But sometimes all of it—the loneliness and the boredom and the worry—got the better of her. Then she would start remembering the night in the house in Beneville when her life changed. Those were the bad times.
She was in one of those moods when Bonnie Taylor Talbot invited her to spend a weekend in a small town a few hours outside Atlanta.
“One of Daddy's oldest and dearest friends has this garden,” Bonnie burbled. “Well, it's not just a few rosebushes. This is acres and acres of trees and plants, it's all very scientific and horticultural, and for years he had this hunting lodge there for just his friends, but now he's made it into a resort. Mama says Uncle Grady—I call him that because I've known him since I was tiny—would make money in the outer rings of H E double toothpicks. But I don't think that's vulgar necessarily, not unless you wear too much jewelry. This weekend we're going to Charles Valley for the party Uncle Grady is going to open Garrison Gardens and Garrison resort to the public. You'll love it there, it's so rustic, with loads of tranquillity.”
Normally, Iva Claire would have run from the idea of a weekend with Bonnie, her thimble-size brain, her overbearing daddy, and her hypochondriac mama. But she wanted to get out of Atlanta, and at least Uncle Grady's hunting lodge would be a change. So the next day she sat in the backseat of Daddy Talbot's Cadillac, heading for Charles Valley.
Chapter Sixty-four
THE GARRISON RESORT was rustic, as Bonnie had said, but in the most luxurious way possible. The lodge's façade featured weathered wood and rough stonework. Inside, the bedrooms were palatial, each with its own private bath, thick rugs, and hand-stitched linens. There was a reception area with heart-pine floors and a massive fireplace. Behind it were two small dining rooms to be used by guests for private entertaining. Next to the smaller rooms was a large dining room that seated one hundred and opened onto an outdoor terrace. This was where the party launching the resort would be held. But before the big shindig, the host had commandeered the smaller rooms for drinks and dinner for a few select friends. The exclusive little gathering included Iva Claire, the Taylor Talbots, the Garrisons and their son—there were two older sisters who were married and lived away from home, she learned—and three prominent families from Charles Valley.
One family in particular fascinated Iva Claire. The wife had been a beauty when she was younger and still would have been attractive if she hadn't tried to fight time with too much makeup and a dinner gown designed for a girl twenty years her junior. The husband, a lawyer, was the only man in the room not wearing a dinner jacket. He had a weary, slightly twisted smile that didn't show up very often. Their daughter didn't smile much either. She was a large gawky girl, and under the best of circumstances she would not have been considered pretty. Her nose was too large, her chin was practically nonexistent, and her pale blue eyes were hidden behind thick glasses. In the beginning of the evening her hair had been styled in tight waves, but it had rapidly become a bush of frizz in the heat. She should have dressed simply, in clean lines and neutral colors, but she was wearing a yellow dotted-Swiss frock with puffed sleeves, frills at the neck, and endless rows of ruffles that went the length of the dress from the shoulder to the hem. It would have been hard to find a garment that looked worse on her substantial frame, and the poor thing knew it. Iva Claire looked at her overdressed mother and thought she knew who was responsible for the choice. The girl's father was introduced as Harrison Banning; his wife was Beth.
“And this big old giantess is my daughter, Margaret Elizabeth,” said Beth, with a smile totally lacking in warmth or affection. The daughter flushed bright red, which didn't help her looks, but she reached out calmly to shake hands.
“Call me Li'l Bit, Miss Benedict, everyone does.” Her voice was high and fluty.
At her side, her mother tittered angrily. “Good gracious, Miss Myrtis is going to think you're a fool, asking her to call you that.” She gave her daughter a quick look up and down to drive her point home. “Anyone who didn't know that's your daddy's silly pet name for you would think you're peculiar.”
The girl flushed an even deeper red. Ignoring the mother, Iva Claire said warmly, “I think Li'l Bit is a charming nickname. And you must call me Myrtis.” Mercifully, before Beth Banning could say anything more, they were called in to dinner.
Iva Claire had been placed at the end of the table. The scion of the Garrisons, whose name was Dalton, was seated at her right. At his right was Beth Banning, and across from her was Li'l Bit. Iva Claire immediately dismissed Dalton as another good-looking boy who had played football in college rather than study and now spent his time doing a token job for his family and showing up at appropriate times in a dinner jacket. Li'l Bit was far more interesting. But the girl seemed to have retreated into herself. Iva Claire was searching for something to say when Beth leaned over.
“Miss Myrtis, tell me about Atlanta. It's where I was raised, and I miss it so. And now I hear it's being destroyed by that man.”
When people like Mrs. Banning said that man, they meant the president. Iva Claire repressed a sigh. This was exactly the kind of dinner talk she'd been trying to escape.
Be careful, warned the voice in her head.
“I'm not sure I'd say Atlanta has been destroyed—” she began, but Beth leaped in.
“Oh, please, I beg you, don't say you're a supporter of the Roosevelts! My friends say I'd just cry my heart out at the way they've destroyed my old hometown.”
“Things in Atlanta are different. . . .” Iva Claire paused and was helped out by an unexpected source.
“President Roosevelt had the runways at Candler Field graded, Mama,” Li'l Bit said, as she carefully buttered a roll. “And I believe there's a new orchestra now. You know how you're always saying you're devoted to culture.” Was she making fun of her mother? It was said innocently enough.
“I was addressing my remarks to Miss Myrtis,” said Beth.
“The president also fixed the Cyclorama. Remember how you said it just broke your heart into little pieces to see it go to rack and ruin?” There was no mistaking it, she was practically imitating her mother. People around the table were looking uncomfortable. Obviously they were used to these clashes.
A mean little smile played across Beth's mouth as she eyed her daughter across the table. “What is that funny little poem about the Roosevelts?” she asked. “Oh, yes, I remember.” She began to recite: “‘You kiss the niggers, and I'll kiss the Jews, and we'll stay in the
White House as long as we choose.'”
The table became silent. Several faces were scarlet, Iva Claire noticed. But there were also a couple of grins. Beth giggled like a naughty schoolgirl. “Isn't that just awful?” she said.
From across the table, Li'l Bit said clearly, “Yes, Mama, it truly is.” She stared at her mother for a moment, then deliberately turned away. Suddenly Beth seemed to become aware of the hush in the room and the spectacle she was making of herself.
“My daughter is devoted to FDR,” she said shrilly into the silence. “And she is even more enamored of Mrs. Roosevelt. Personally, I can't understand why anyone would be, but perhaps it's comforting for some to see such a homely woman in the White House. Most plain girls aren't that lucky.”
There was a sudden intense fascination with the cutlery on the part of everyone sitting around the table. Li'l Bit looked like she was going to cry.
“I agree with you, Li'l Bit,” Iva Claire said, throwing away three years of discretion. “I think Mrs. Roosevelt is splendid. Did you hear her last speech on the radio?”
She was rewarded with a grateful smile and a nod from Li'l Bit.
“And I admire her work at Arthurdale so much, don't you?” That opened the floodgates. Li'l Bit Banning worshiped the president and his wife the way only a lonely, sad, smart youngster could. She shook off her mother's barbs and launched into a political discussion that soon left her listener far behind. Iva Clare's understanding of the New Deal was general, and she believed in broad issues like unionization, public health care, and the new Social Security program, but Li'l Bit knew in minute detail the history and purpose of every federal agency. She raced eagerly through an alphabet of abbreviations—NRA, TVA, NYA, WPA, CCC, FEPC, and NLRB—and documented the finer points of the anti-lynching bill and the argument for national participation in the World Court. Her face was still flushed, but with an attractive glow now, and her eyes were sparkling. Although she was plain, as her mother had said, surely the right man would see the passion in her someday.
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