Near Canaan

by Liese O'Halloran Schwarz

  “I don’t want to see anyone,” I said. “You can’t possibly understand.” Now here, I was being cruel, for Gaston had lost his mother not long before and was in mourning himself; but I was selfish, you understand, and didn’t care if my words hurt him.

  “All right,” he said. “If you don’t mind what people are saying about you.” And he plucked a sandwich from the tray, its edges curling up now, and bit into it.

  “What are they saying?” I asked.

  “Jes gossip,” he said. “I know how you hate gossip.”

  “Well,” I said.

  “Is there any more tea?” he asked, looking into the pot.

  “Of course,” I said impatiently, and lifted the bell. “More sandwiches?”

  “Well, now,” said Gaston. “Seems that something sweet would be just right, about now.”

  “Bring the rum cake,” I told the girl, who had entered the room while Gaston was talking. She nodded, her eyes wide, and retreated.

  “Ain’t seen sugar in a long time, neither,” said Gaston. “Whatever we get in the store gets bought up right away. Dad lets it go, doesn’t save out any for our own sugar bowl. Dad’s got him a soft heart, all right.” He smiled. “But I got me a sweet tooth.”

  “I remember,” I said. “You were always begging sweets.” I beckoned to the girl, who was peeking around the doorjamb, the silly creature. “Come in.” She laid the tray down, and I lifted the knife, and placed its edge against the springy surface of the cake. “You were talking about gossip,” I said.

  “Not me,” said Gaston, watching the knife. “Well, I can’t deny it,” he said, weakening. “I’ve heard some talk. But hearing’s not the same as telling.”

  “No indeed,” I said, placing the knife for the second cut. “Who’s talking about me?”

  “Now you know I can’t tell you that,” said Gaston, recoiling.

  “Well, all right then, no names,” I said, drawing the knife through and slipping the slice onto a plate. “Just tell me what they’re saying.”

  “You know how people will talk,” said Gaston, accepting the plate I held out to him. “It don’t mean anything.”

  “Of course not,” I said.

  “Now,” said Gaston. “Now that is cake.” I waited. “They’re saying you’re ugly now and afraid to show your face,” he said, finally.

  “That’s ridiculous,” I said. “I’m in mourning, that’s all.”

  “Lots of people in mourning these days,” said Gaston, around a mouthful. “They go out of their houses.”

  “I don’t care what other people do,” I said. “Or say,” I added.

  “Good,” he said. “Cause they’re saying that you’ve gotten fat.”

  “I have not,” I cried.

  “Hard to tell, in the dark,” he said, cocking an eyebrow at me.

  “You’re making fun of me,” I said. “You’re heartless, coming here carrying gossip.”

  “Not me,” said Gaston. “Not gossip, either. Information. I guess you won’t be surprised now, you hear some of it yourself.”

  “Well, now I know,” I said. “And I don’t care.”

  “Acourse, you ain’t heard the worst,” he said, thoughtfully. “That might give you a turn, now.”

  “The worst?” I said. “What—never mind. I don’t want to know.”

  “Uh-huh,” said Gaston, holding out his plate for another slice of cake.

  “I don’t care what they say about me,” I said, giving it to him.

  “It’s a good thing,” said Gaston. “Because they keep on saying it.”

  We ended that day at a stalemate, but the next day, at tea-time, he returned.

  “You said something yesterday,” I began, when he was into his second sandwich. “Something about the worst thing they’re saying about me.”

  “Oh, yes,” said Gaston. “I couldn’t forget that.”

  “What is it?” I asked, casually. “What are they saying?”

  “Uh uh,” said Gaston. “I don’t carry tales.”

  “Nonsense,” I said. “You told me some yesterday.”

  “Well, that’s true,” he said, consideringly.

  “And it’s helpful for me to know,” I wheedled. “As you explained yesterday.”

  “Maybe helpful about the fat and ugly,” said Gaston. “But you don’t want to know about this.”

  “What?” I asked, whispering in my urgency.

  “It’s terrible, what people will say when you ain’t there to prove them different,” he said, shaking his head. I said nothing, and he lifted his eyes to mine. “They say you’re bald, and your skin gone all dark, like you was colored.”

  “Bald,” I cried. “That’s ridiculous.” I gave a little shudder and looked down, along my arm. “Does that look colored to you?” I asked.

  He inspected the hand I held out.

  “No, ma’am,” said Gaston. “White as ever.”

  There was a pause.

  “How can they tell such lies?” I asked, finally, putting my hand down. “Bald, indeed. Whoever heard of such a thing.”

  “Ladies go bald sometimes,” said Gaston wisely, stirring sugar into his tea. “Dora Mae Jessup’s balder than an egg.”

  “Dora Mae—?” I breathed.

  “Like an egg,” he assured me. He sipped at his tea. “How’re they to know you ain’t the same way?”

  “I’m not,” I said.

  “I know it,” he said, as though to an idiot child. “But they don’t. Now if you was to go into town—”

  “I don’t believe they’re saying anything about me at all,” I said. “I believe you’re just trying to get me to go out of the house.”

  “Well, now,” said Gaston. “If you think that—” and on his face was the look I’d known since childhood.

  “No,” I said, quickly. “I’m sorry, Gaston.” His face went back to normal, and I relaxed. “It’s just that I don’t want to go downtown. I refuse to be gawked at.”

  “They could come here,” said Gaston.

  “Visitors?” I cried. “I’m in mourning.”

  “So’s everybody else,” he said. “These days. Everybody’s grieving, and sick of it. A little bit of society would be welcome to them.” He added, persuasively, “Jes the ladies, acourse. A ladies’ day.”

  “A ladies’ day,” I repeated. “An at-home. So they can see me for themselves.”

  “Maybe some tea,” said Gaston, helpfully. “And sandwiches.”

  Thus the Wednesday teas came about. As I have just told you, they were Gaston’s idea originally, and he helped me with them. We banished the cook for the day and made the sandwiches ourselves, watercress and salmon and other delicacies almost unheard-of during the wartime deprivation. This was just at the end of the war, the time I’m talking about now, and the town was starved for luxury. The first tea was a great success, and after that Gaston and I flung ourselves into the business headlong.

  We planned and planned, so that hearing us, you might think us mad. We debated the merits of China versus India, (Gaston even promoted flavored teas, until I pronounced them vulgar); we schemed elaborately about ingredients for pastry. The next Wednesday, we gave another tea, and they became a sort of tradition. They occupied our weeks: we haggled over the invitation list from Thursday to Sunday; Monday, I wrote out the invitations, and Tuesday Gaston delivered them by hand to the ladies. He did last-minute marketing then, too, and all Wednesday morning the downstairs girl and I prepared the parlor and arranged the tea things.

  I was in a delicate position then, feeling all of the guilty freedom of the not-so-fresh widow, after the first period of mourning has passed. My first wild sorrow had been for Harry; I hadn’t even seen his body, and I couldn’t believe he was dead. I used to think I’d caught a glimpse of him, just the back of his head, and then I’d hurry to catch up to him, and it would be someone else entirely. It was that sort of thing that drove me into seclusion. But after the initial madness, there came a kind of calm, and I began to
grieve for my husband, less urgently, but sadder and deeper, like a bell tolling. And finally there was just the ache, and the world fresher around it, as though it had been raining for months, and everything clean again. I began to come alive. I felt hollow and brittle and light, and terrifyingly free. There is nothing like taking care of a man for years to make you feel unfettered when it suddenly stops. It brings tremendous sadness, at first—you remember all of his favorite things, his little peculiar tastes, the unscented soap and the particular grind of coffee, and how he hated, simply loathed, raisins. And when he’s gone, you find yourself near tears over the grocery list, thinking: What do I buy? I hadn’t chosen for myself in so very long. Nearly forty, and I didn’t know I had any preferences. But I did, and I do, and it was, after a little interval, a pleasure to discover them, albeit a guilty one.

  Gaston made it easier for me to circumnavigate my guilt; he had a way of convincing me of things, without letting me admit to myself that I was being convinced until it was done. The teas were my return to society, from the place where I had gone to hide myself. And so, I was able to make the transition from the dark world of my grief back to the light, without too much self-punishment.

  You might not be talking to me now, if it weren’t for those teas. They were the height of sociability in Naples; we saw to that. Of course, I knew full well the principal reason for their initial popularity: people were curious to see me, to see how the Belle had disintegrated, alone in her old house. I didn’t care why they came; they all came; no one ever refused an invitation; all of the important people in Naples passed through this parlor during that time, nearly a dozen years. Of course, I am speaking only of the women.

  Your mother was among them; she came during the later years. Not every week, of course; the invitation lists varied; but she came here two or three times, certainly. She was just a young bride when she first came, and the last time must have been before all the trouble, so maybe she was twenty-five, and Amanda just a baby.

  You look surprised; did you think I hadn’t heard about it, what happened to your mother, her divorce, and Amanda? On the contrary; that was more than twenty years ago, and I was still getting about quite well then. I heard everything there was to hear, everything that people talked about, and there was plenty of talk about your mother. It was a good thing, perhaps, for her, that I stopped giving the teas before any of it happened; the ladies were quite conservative and didn’t approve of divorce. And then the rest of it—no, your mother would not have been invited back, could not have been, although I personally found her very charming and didn’t blame her for any of it.

  The last tea—Gaston and I had been fussing over it for days. It was summer, I recall, and terribly hot; and both of us were out of temper. We fought about the kinds of cakes to serve—I insisted upon napoleons, which was foolish, because of course they melted, and most of them had to be thrown away after the ladies left. We argued about which silver service to use; Gaston wanted to bring out my mother’s, as it didn’t need to be polished, but I wanted to use my wedding silver. We argued because the day was hot, and because a whole quart of mayonnaise had gone bad, and for a thousand other reasons. I won about the cakes, but Gaston won about the silver; we used my mother’s.

  If I close my eyes I can see it. Your mother wore a blue dress; she was so vivid beside the older, faded women. She was a lovely girl, but she looked a little pale that day, with dark rings under her eyes. I remember wondering if she was getting enough sleep. Enid Bascomb was there, in something hideous and yellow about which we all tried desperately to be polite. Even Sylvia Tolliver, who is not overblessed with tact. Enid never had any taste; whatever was newest would do for her, no matter what it looked like. She suffered a lot in Naples for her fashion-conscious ways. She’s dead now, of course, buried in the cemetery next to her husband. Julia Eldridge was here as well that day, and dead now, too. The four of us had our comings out in the same year; and now only Sylvia and I remain. Sylvia is very much alive; that kind don’t die, they just stop talking. She came to the teas fairly often, although I didn’t like her at all. Better to hear gossip than to be it, I always said.

  It was a dreadful afternoon; I was still cross from arguing with Gaston and irritated by a suspicion that he had been right about the napoleons. And it was very hot, and Julia Eldridge had insisted on bringing Tracey with her, although I had made it very clear that children were not welcome. No one to watch them, you see, and too many precious things about; if I looked away for a moment, Tracey would have put his face, all smeary with custard, right into the silk sofa cushions. It was really too much.

  Your mother seemed a little nervous; her hands were shaking, and she dropped a napoleon, I remember, onto Papa’s Persian rug. There, right there where that end table is now. It wasn’t her fault; the pastries were that limp in the heat that they’d fall apart in one’s hand. But Beth was very flustered, and during the fuss of cleaning it up, she got down on the rug, actually on her knees, and Sylvia, who had been in the middle of telling a story when the incident occurred, said irritably, “Leave it, for heaven’s sake, Gaston will take care of it.”

  I fixed her with a cold eye.

  “Gaston is not a servant,” I said. “He helps me with these teas out of kindness, that is all.”

  “Oh,” said Sylvia, taken aback by my ferocity, but recovering quickly. “Well, how nice,” she said. “Then you won’t be worrying about losing his service, when he marries.”

  “Gaston marry?” I said, foolishly letting her see that I was surprised.

  “Oh, Sylvia, that’s just gossip,” said Enid, quickly.

  “Not at all,” Sylvia told her, pleasantly. “He’s been walking out with Annie for months. The engagement was announced last week. My Jessie attends the same church.” Turning to me, she said, “I thought surely you knew.”

  This was patently untrue; from the expressions around the room, I could see that everyone else had known, but had taken pains not to mention it to me.

  “No,” I said. “He would have told me.”

  “I assure you—” said Sylvia, but I cut her off.

  “He would have told me,” I said.

  There was a little silence, and then someone spoke. It was your mother, and I remember how she looked—she had an expression of pain, almost, as though it were she who’d been done an injury. She looked that way, but her voice was quite gay. All the ladies seized on the new topic immediately, and the conversation went off on that tangent, and the subject of Gaston and his fiancée was dropped.

  After the ladies had left, I went into the kitchen, where Ellen was washing up the tea things. She was new, and had to be taught how to handle good china, and not to leave any spots of water to discolor the silver. I happened to notice then that a teaspoon was missing. Eleven instead of twelve; what would my mother have said? It had been her mother’s wedding silver. Because of Sylvia Tolliver, and the heat, and Tracey Eldridge, I was immediately, coldly furious.

  I brooded about it all that night, my anger swelling to unmanageable proportions, and when Gaston came to visit the next day, I spoke to him about it as though it were his fault. In a sense, I really believed that it was: the old silver wouldn’t have come out at all if he hadn’t insisted, and if it hadn’t come out, one of the spoons wouldn’t have been lost. Or stolen; I was not above mentioning that possibility, although I did not exactly accuse Gaston. But I think both of us had the same image when I said the word—how would she have managed it, one of those stiff, respectable ladies? Had she walked out of here with it stuffed into her purse or slipped into her sleeve or the pocket of her skirt? Ridiculous. And why would she have done it? Most of those ladies, their father’s old fortunes newly inflated by shrewd investment, could have bought and sold me twice over. It was impossible that any of them should have taken the spoon. Still, I didn’t suspect Gaston, not really; I suppose I just wanted him to apologize, as though he’d done something wrong, and then I could have forgiven him, and it would have
been over. But I was angry, and I wasn’t careful what I said, and we had words, and those words led to more, and—I was really in a vile humor that day—it ended with him stalking out of my house and down the path, while I called after him from the hall, terrible things, things he couldn’t even hear, being too far away.

  Harsh words, difficult to smooth over. Especially as the spoon turned up the next afternoon. Julia Eldridge brought it to my door, apologizing. She had found Tracey digging with it in the yard. Evidently, the child had taken it while no one was watching.

  I swallowed my pride, and went to Gaston, who was still living in his father’s house. He let me in without a word, and would not look at me while I explained.

  “It was a misunderstanding,” I told him. “Nobody’s fault, really.”

  He slid his eyes around to me.

  “Nobody’s fault,” he said.

  “That’s right,” I said.

  “That right,” he said.

  “All right,” I said, after the silence had grown too long to bear. “The unpleasantness was my fault. I am so dreadfully sorry, Gaston, I do apologize.”

  “Accepted,” said he, after a moment.

  “Then you’ll come back?” I asked, humble enough for anything now.

  “Well,” he said, slowly. “I’ll check my appointment schedule.” And he laughed, as if the very phrase, used in that insulting way, was not bad enough. I suppose, looking back, that I deserved it, but then I was shocked, and backed away from him. Maybe he just wanted to twit me, and after a moment all would have been forgiven, but I didn’t give him a chance: I fled that place, with him still laughing behind me.

  He married soon after that, and he and his bride eventually moved into the house he lives in now, one of those ramshackle sorts of houses which used to be fine; you can distinguish them easily from the ones that were built in the old style but recently, meant to mimic a house like my own, which started out however long ago as a truly fine house, and stayed that way. The newer ones have thicker columns holding up their porch roofs, while the old have thinner columns, and they’re generally set about with trees. Walnut trees, particularly: they are last to lose their leaves in autumn, and first to gain them back, so that they provide shade more dependably, and longer, than other trees. An important consideration, for those house builders who planned without benefit of air-conditioning.