The Moonflower Vine

by Jetta Carleton

  It came about one day at breakfast. They sat at the kitchen table laughing their heads off. Everything was funny that morning. Papa was cute and funny as a clown. The fire in the cook-stove gave the room a pleasant warmth, and the table was bejeweled with fresh jams and jellies. Buttering a hot biscuit, Matthew paused and beamed a misty smile around the table. “Isn’t this just fine!” he said, turning to Jessica. “We’re so glad to have you home.”

  “Thank you, Papa.”

  “We missed you, honey,” said her mother.

  “I’ll say we did!” said Mathy. “Everybody was always crying.”

  “All right,” said Callie, frowning at her.

  “I’ve just been thinking,” Matthew said. “Of course, we’d like mighty well to keep you right here with us this winter, but I know you wanted to go over to Clarkstown last year for some college work. And I’ve been thinking, if you’d like to go this term, I believe I can manage to send you.” He leaned back with a smile. “Now how would you like that!”

  “Why, I—My goodness, Papa, I’d like it just fine! But—”

  “I thought you and I would drive up there this Saturday and get you enrolled.”

  “That sure is nice of you, Papa.”

  “We’ll find you a nice room at one of the boarding houses—”

  “And you can come home every weekend!” Callie gave it the crowning touch and sat back in triumph.

  “My goodness!” said Jessica. “That would be just awful nice. I always wanted to go over to Clarkstown. But I thought this winter, now that—”

  “Oh, you don’t have to go to school,” Callie said hopefully. “Not if you’d rather stay home.”

  “Well, it’s not that, Mama. I’d like to go to school, or stay home, either one. But I can’t.”

  “Can’t what?”

  “Do either one.”

  Matthew’s hand paused with a lifted coffee cup. “Why can’t you?”

  “I’m going to teach school again.”

  “Oh? Where?”

  “Down there.”

  He set the cup carefully back in the saucer. “I see.”

  “Down there with his folks?” said her mother. “I thought you gave up that school.”

  “I did,” said Jessica. “But while we were down there for the funeral, they came and told me I could have it back. All I had to do was say the word.”

  “And you accepted the offer,” said Matthew.

  “Not right then. I thought it over first. I didn’t let them know till last week.”

  “I see,” he said again.

  There was a chilly silence. Mathy and Leonie stopped eating.

  “I thought you’d want me to teach school,” Jessica said timidly.

  “Not without a little further preparation. That’s why I proposed sending you to Clarkstown.”

  “But I’ve already given them my word. I could hardly go back on my word.”

  “Circumstances would seem to warrant it in this case.”

  “Honey,” said her mother, breaking in with a cozy smile, “you don’t want to go back down there and live, do you? When he ain’t there?”

  “I’ve got lots of friends down there.”

  “You’ve got nice friends up here.”

  “I know, Mama. But I kind of feel like that’s my home now. Oh, I know,” she added quickly, seeing the look on their faces, “this is my real home. But since I lived down there when I was married, and that’s Tom’s home, I thought—”

  “You ain’t plannin’ to live with his folks?”

  “They want me to.”

  “Well, so do your own folks!” Callie burst out. “Why do you have to go running back to his!”

  “I’m not, really—”

  “Rough ignorant folks that don’t know nothin’, can’t hardly make a living—”

  “But they’re nice—they’ve been awful nice to me.”

  “I thought we’d been pretty nice, too!”

  “You have been, Mama,” she said, her voice trembling. “You and Papa have been so nice!”

  “Then why do you have to go runnin’ back to them!”

  Jessica began to cry. “I don’t know,” she said, knowing only that she had to.

  Through all the storms of tears, accusations, and common-sense appeals, she held her ground. She had gone away before, risking everything, and she had not lost. Though Tom was lost, his love was not. Death is not the greatest disappointment in the world. And having succeeded once, she might again. But it took more courage this time, far more than running away with Tom. For she knew, though they had forgiven her that leaving, they would never forgive her this.

  Seeing that her head was set, they accepted martyrdom with a grudging grace. No more was said. She was treated with elaborate politeness, like a stranger. Fun and laughter fled the house, leaving an air of gloom. Her mother sighed regularly; her father sulked. Even Mathy failed her. Mathy, who had cheered her into womanhood, failed to see now that she must stay there. She couldn’t come back and be a little girl. Though she waded in the branch and they slid in the hay and had long talks, it wasn’t the fun it used to be. She pretended it was, for Mathy’s sake, but she could hardly wait to be gone.

  As the time approached, however, she dreaded it more and more. When the day finally came, she woke up with real nausea. She choked down some breakfast and promptly lost it. Her head hurt like a conscience. Everyone went about in a muted frenzy. They dressed in their solemn best as if they were going to a funeral and drove solemnly to town. Jessica chattered all the way, hearing herself and loathing the sound. It was only, she said, for a little while; she would be home for Christmas. Next thing you knew, school would be over and she’d be home for the summer.

  “Yes, that’s right,” her mother said sadly. “It won’t hardly seem like no time.”

  “I’ll write to you every week.”

  “That’ll be nice.”

  “Maybe you can come down sometime and visit.”

  “Well, we’ll see.”

  At the station they stood in a huddle, waiting for the train. Conversation sputtered and died. Jessica’s head throbbed and she began to shake. Away off down the track a whistle blew, driving a spike clear through her. “Well, here it comes,” she said with a crazy laugh.

  Mathy screamed. “Don’t go, Jessica, don’t go!”

  Leonie looked at her in tearful reproach.

  The train chuffed into the station and the conductor swung down with the little step stool. “You’re the one that’s goin’, young lady?”

  “I’m the one.”

  “Well, hop right on,” he said, taking the suitcase as Matthew handed it up. He stepped down the platform a little way. “ ’Board!” he shouted.

  Jessica swallowed hard and turned around. The family was lined up like a firing squad. “Well—” she said.

  “My baby!” Callie fell against her in agony, her body jerking like an epileptic. Her sobs hissed in and out her nose and made a storm in Jessica’s ear. Mathy and Leonie clung together, wailing. And there stood Papa with his face all twisted and tears pouring down his cheeks.

  Jessica’s face knotted like a fist, and a lump the size of a locomotive formed in her throat. She tore herself loose and threw herself on her father. “I love you!” she cried, her voice a hideous squeak, and bolted up the steps—sick with the knowledge that this was how it would be all the rest of her life. She couldn’t stay, but she couldn’t stay away, and she would come back time after time, doomed forever to come and go and endure these ghastly partings. This was the price of her freedom. This was how it was going to be.

  Matthew

  1

  It was the Friday before Easter. Butting a cold north wind up the slope to the schoolhouse, Matthew wondered by what stretch of whose imagination the day was known as Good.

  His youngest daughter skipped beside him, prattling of miracles. “I’ll bet he put something in it,” said Mathy. “He didn’t turn that water into wine—he dropped something in
the pitcher while he was pouring.”

  She referred to a staged miracle that had taken place the night before in the Baptist church, during the annual revival meeting. Matthew and his family were Methodist, but in Shawano, denominational lines, though strict, were often crossed. For the past week, Methodists, Baptists, and Campbellites (everyone but the Hard-Shell Baptists and the Dunkards) had gathered together to hear a visiting evangelist harangue lost souls to Christ. He had done so with a number of tricks, not all of which Matthew thought necessary.

  “He said the Lord gave him the power to do it,” said Mathy. “Do you believe that, Papa?”

  “Well—” He could hardly come right out and say the man was a charlatan. Doubts in the mind of a child…

  “Everybody else did.”

  Unhappily, she was right. The gentleman was no St. Paul and not a very skilled magician. But he worked up enough hysteria in the congregation so that they swallowed his miracles like the sacramental wine. Matthew privately deplored his method and wished he made the Easter story sound less like a lynching. Even if that’s what it was. It seemed a pity to paint the agonies on the Cross more vividly than the joy of the Resurrection. That was downright Catholic! But then, he reflected, the Roman love of the dramatic is with us still, in spite of Calvin and Wesley. And no amount of life everlasting makes such good drama as death.

  “I didn’t believe it,” said Mathy and skipped on ahead.

  The wind blew straight off the polar icecap. Easter came early this year. Matthew’s bones ached with the cold. He was sick and tired of the winter grind and not yet caught up in the excitement of spring. Track meets and county contests, class plays, exam papers, and all the hullabaloo of Commencement.

  Mathy sang aloud to the tune of “Here We Go ’Round the Mulberry Bush”:

  “When all aloud the wind doth blow,

  And coughing drowns the parson’s saw,

  And birds sit brooding in the snow,

  And Marion’s nose looks red and raw.”

  “Where did you get that?” said Matthew.

  “It’s Shakespeare.”

  “I know. Is that part of your assigned reading?”

  “Huh-uh. I just read it for myself.”

  “You’d better be spending your time on your assignments. Have you finished your W.C.T.U. essay?”

  “Oh, Papa! Do I have to write that thing?”

  “Just why do you think you should be excused?”

  “Because I hate it, that’s why.”

  “That’s hardly an excuse. You have to learn that we can’t always do just what pleases us.”

  “Boy howdy, I’ll say we can’t!” She hopped up on a stump and flung out her arms. “The winnnnd!” she shouted. “I love the wind! I’m going to fly-y-y!” She leaped off, arms waving, coat flapping open, and fell flat on her face by the Dunkard church.

  “For the land of living, child, get up!” Matthew seized her arm and his hat blew off. Mathy gave chase and retrieved it. As she stooped over, her skirts blew over her head, revealing the black sateen bloomers and a strip of long underwear. Matthew winced.

  “I got it, Papa, I got your hat!”

  “Thank you. Pull up your stockings, for pity’s sake.”

  Some girls of twelve were already young ladies. But not this spidery tomboy of his. She liked pole vaulting. Boy howdy, indeed! They went on up the slope in silence.

  The Shawano public school stood at the far edge of town. Across the road lay a pasture; behind it, another pasture; beyond it, open country. The building was a tall brick box, as graceless a structure as ever rose in the name of education. Red and gawky as a farm boy, it stood on its ten-acre tract and endured the elements. No tree or hedge or kindly lay of the land protected it from the weather. Sun and sleet battered it, and the wind blew down the little trees which Matthew planted each Arbor Day with ceremony and hope.

  Inside, a flight of noisy wooden stairs led down to the basement floor. Another flight led up to the second floor and the grade-school rooms. The third floor, a large open area with a platform at one end, was the high school.

  Matthew ruled this kingdom from the superintendent’s office on the second floor, a small room at the end of a long central hall. With the door open, he could see all coming and going. The office window faced west, overlooking the back schoolyard. Outside, within easy reach, the big bell hung from a tall wooden rack, a sort of bell tower, which children were always climbing. In fact, the climbing of a stout rope tied to the rack was part of their athletic program. At any recess, Matthew might be confronted by a red puffing face and triumphant cries at the window.

  A table sat in the center of the room, a rolltop desk in one corner. Three or four folding chairs, a swivel chair, a filing cabinet and a bookshelf completed the furnishings. A telephone hung on the wall. Matthew’s ninety-hour diploma, framed in gilt, set the seal of authority on the room, and George Washington according to Stuart looked down on all with disdain. In this area Matthew coped with the budget and the school board, counseled teachers, gave first aid, administered discipline, graded papers, and caught his breath.

  This morning, after hanging up his coat, he stood for a moment gazing out at the landscape, which gave no hint of spring. The schoolyard sloped off toward a fence marking the edge of Seabert’s pasture. Beyond the pasture, perhaps a mile away, a little woods began. A stand of maple, oak, and sumac grew up the side of a long hill crowned by the town graveyard. Tombstones showed bone-white above the trees. Matthew often looked out on this view. From his tiny office, secure in the matrix of familiar sounds, he could contemplate with comfort the pleasures of easeful death. They were sensuous pleasures, having nothing to do with extinction. They were “old, unhappy, far-off things,” and they filled his soul with delicious melancholy. He indulged himself for a moment. Then his gaze, retreating homeward from the hill, snagged on the two weatherbeaten toilets which stood in the schoolyard. Romanticism dissolved on the reminder that he must somehow get money out of the school board for some kind of decent plumbing. He turned with a sigh and began the day’s work.

  Teachers ran in and out with their problems. Two boys were brought in for discipline; one had hit the other with a hard-boiled Easter egg, and they fought on the playground. In the calm that followed the nine-o’clock bell, Matthew shut himself in and managed to do a little desk work. He had risen to go upstairs and teach his second-hour class when Mrs. Delmore Jewel arrived. He opened the door into the bosom of that portly lady, who had her hand up reaching to knock and almost struck him in the face.

  “Professor Soames,” she said, putting a period after the name. “Could I have a little talk with you. It’s about Delmora.”

  It always was. This time, Delmora’s part in the junior-class play was far too minor to suit her mother. “You know, we take her over to Clarkstown every Saturday for elocution lessons. I should think that someone as trained as she is…” And so on.

  Matthew was late to his class. He was used to the likes of Mrs. Jewel; he despised her and could not with much principle give in to her constant demands. Still, she was the public, and he didn’t like to displease her. It made him nervous.

  He came down from the class to find another visitor waiting in the office, one Garney Robles, a local carpenter and paper-hanger. He was also, by no qualification Matthew could discover, a member of the school board. Garney slouched in a chair and didn’t bother to stand up.

  “How’re y’, Prof. I was just passin’ this way and thought I’d come in for a minute. Thought we could have a little talk if you’re not busy.”

  “We’re always busy around here,” Matthew said with a prim smile.

  “Wanted to talk to you some more about that Latin teacher.”

  “Oh yes.” Matthew’s brows went up ever so slightly. Garney had harped on that subject since last spring, when Matthew fought for a Latin course in the curriculum and insisted they hire another teacher. (“Prof and his new teacher, sayin’ sweet things to each other in a forn t
ongue!” Vulgar comments of that sort.) “Well, I think that had best be discussed at a meeting—”

  “You’re not actually rank for keepin’ Latin in the crickulum, are you, Prof?” said Garney. “I understand there ain’t but half a dozen kids takin’ it.”

  “There are twelve,” said Matthew.

  “Half a dozen—a dozen—what’s the difference, out of seventy kids? It costs us a lot of money for a teacher, just for that handful.”

  “She also teaches English,” said Matthew.

  “Yeah, but somebody else could do that. Wouldn’t we be better off with a real keen basketball coach next year?”

  “It seems to me that the study of the classics is of far greater value than—”

  “Hell, Prof—pardon my English—we need something that’ll raise our standing in the county!”

  “For a school our size, we stand first in the county scholastically.”

  “Well, I don’t understand all that scholastic stuff. But I know we sure don’t have no standing in basketball. We haven’t won a tournament in three or four years. We got some good boys on our team, boys like Ed Inwood—can that kid jump!—but they just don’t know how to win.”

  “It’s the sport that counts,” said Matthew, “playing a good clean game. It isn’t necessary to win every time.”

  “Where’s your school spirit, Professor? The community wants a winnin’ team. Now I know you do the best you can, coachin’ the boys. But hell, you got plenty to do without gettin’ out there on the court. If you don’t mind my sayin’ so, Prof, we need a younger man. I don’t mean no insult, but you know there ain’t any of us gettin’ any younger. We need some fella with a little fire in his ass, that can get in there and fight!”

  Matthew was grateful for a knock on the door at that moment. The janitor looked in. “Professor, I’ve got a touch of the flu. I wonder if it’d be all right for me to go home.”