“All right then, I’ll face it.”
“You’re going to have it your way, aren’t you? Okay, Leonie, you go home tomorrow. Go right on back to your chastity, poverty, and obedience, and be their good little girl. And while you’re being their good little girl, you just remember this.” He pinned her back against the seat and kissed her. Then he wrapped his arms around her and held her till she stopped fighting.
6
“Honey,” said her mother, “you could have stayed the rest of the week. We were getting along just fine.”
“Well, I had my visit out. I was ready to come home. There’s a lot to do before school starts. I’ve got to get my clothes ready and everything.”
“I thought you were going to buy some new clothes while you’s up there. Didn’t you and Carol get down to the city?”
Leonie turned her back. “We went in a time or two. But I didn’t see anything I liked.”
“Seems like there would have been something you liked, in all them stores.”
“It was kind of picked over.”
There was a little pause and her mother said, “You girls had a pretty good time, you say?”
“We had a fine time.”
“What all did you do?”
“Oh, nothing important—just fooled around mostly.”
“Didn’t you have any beaus or anything?”
“Huh-uh.”
“You didn’t!” said Callie. “I’d a-thought Carol might have invited some nice boys to meet you. Didn’t you meet any of her friends?”
“A few.”
“Didn’t nobody take you to a picture show or anything?”
“Well—once when we were in the city I called up Ed. He took us to a movie.”
“Oh?” said Callie. “I didn’t know you saw him. You hadn’t said anything about it.”
“I guess I—just didn’t think of it.”
“Well, I declare!”
There was a moment of silence, during which Leonie tried frantically to think of something else to say. All she could think of was him.
“How was he?” said her mother.
“Hm? Oh—he was fine.”
“When’s he coming down again?”
“I don’t know.”
She knew. He was coming tomorrow night. He said so. He said, “I’ll come down every weekend. I won’t lay a hand on you or say a word. But I’ll be there, just to remind you.” The thought of him turned her to putty and made her distrust the sound of her own voice. To her relief, her mother let the subject drop.
She believed now that he loved her. He had made her believe it, and believe too that he wanted her for her own sake, not merely as a mother for Peter. But even believing him made her angry. He had no right to want her, or to make her want him! A man had obligations to a woman. He owed her a home and security and a future. Ed had none of these that you could count on. All he could offer her was a lame body and a child she was caring for already. Just the same, she wanted him, and she was furious, both with him and with herself.
He came, as he had said, every weekend, and he said nothing and did nothing to give her away. But he stalked her with his eyes—she could feel them following her—and it made her drop the silver, knock things over, and sit tongue-tied in his presence, too self-conscious to speak. The more she saw him, the more she loved him, and the more she knew she must not.
She worked doggedly, trying to forget him. All day she ran and, at night, lay abed too tired to sleep. There were no more airs and graces. The time of candlelight and musicales had passed. Yet sometimes in her despair she took refuge in the parlor and played her accordion. “When you’re smiling, When you’re smiling, The whole world smiles with you…” Sick at heart, she gave the instrument a mighty squeeze, crushing out the song that had so betrayed her. Then, penitent, she played a hymn of faith. But even that mocked her, for though she could play the notes, the music never came out right. Never once under her diligent hands did an instrument give back the sounds she carried in her head, the sweet escaping tones that went on and on, like the voices that drive people mad. All her life she had heard them. What must she do to possess them? For there must be music, since all else she wanted was denied her—the love of her mother and father by their love for Mathy; Ed, by her love for them.
His name swung in her head like a clapper and her whole body rang. Edward, Edward…over and over. Yet no one must hear it, and her disappointment was enormous. She had always thought that when she loved it would be so proudly. Her love would fly like a flag in the open, for all who saw it to salute. But this—whatever it was—bore no resemblance to anything she had ever imagined. This was a sickness which she could admit to no one, not even to herself without humiliation. Edward her love was everything she had ever scorned. And he was her sister’s husband. This was the cruelest mark against him, yet this was the one that seemed least real. (Even Peter looked different now—no longer Mathy’s child, but Ed’s.) Was it true that he was a different man now? Matured in sorrow and remorse, had he changed—enough? Pray God that it was so! For if he had changed, if he had steadied and wanted truly to do better—Oh, she could help him! She had the strength and the will. She could bring out the best, as Mathy never could have, for she was different from Mathy and he loved her for different reasons. Her thoughts went through arabesques of imagining. She saw that handsome head in a law bonnet, saw him in judge’s robes, a tall figure with a touching limp…. He would have a book-lined study smelling of leather and genteel tobacco. They would read together in the evenings, and they would entertain, there would be distinguished guests, conversation, music—
It was no good! He was still Ed, and he had killed her sister, and her father and mother would never quite get over that. Let them love Mathy more than her, let them think what they would. She could not marry without their blessing. And how could they ever in the world give that? Help me, her eyes said. Mama—Papa—help me!
The look was not lost on them. They saw her running through the days, silent and harried, a small eleven deepening between her eyes; they saw her grow thin and melancholy, protesting steadily that nothing, nothing was the matter. And they felt somehow to blame. They began to be thoughtful of her, enormously gentle, to make up for something they had done to her. And in their vague fear that they did not love her as they should, they loved her more perhaps than one whom it takes no effort to love—as one is often more polite to strangers than to an old friend.
Callie would say to her, “Sit down and read awhile, honey. I’ll can these few peaches.”
Or: “I’ll put the children to bed. You go on and get some rest.”
One evening she clapped her hands and said, “I tell you what—let’s have the candles on the table tonight! We’ve been forgettin’ about ’em. You fix us one of your pretty centerpieces.”
“I’m too tired,” said Leonie.
“I know it, honey, you look tired. Sit down—let me mash them potatoes.”
“I’ll do them.” She turned away from her mother’s searching, gentle gaze.
They began to notice her awkwardness in Ed’s presence, and her brusque replies. One night Ed suggested that they drive into the village, and she turned him down with a curt “No, thanks!”
“You weren’t very nice about that,” Callie said as they washed the dishes.
“Well, he ought to know I’m too tired to go anywhere after a day like this.”
“I think he’s right—you need to get out more. Why don’t you go on?”
“I don’t want to.”
“I thought you liked picture shows.”
“Not the kind they have in Renfro!”
“Well, I know. But them old pictures are kind of funny sometimes. Why don’t you go ahead?”
“I don’t want to go, Mama.”
“Well, why not?”
Her mother was looking straight at her and Leonie turned deep red. “I’m—too tired,” she stammered. “I don’t feel like it tonight—I’ve got a kind of a
headache.”
“You’ve got a kind of a heartache, I reckon,” said Callie quietly.
“That’s not so!” Leonie turned on her, irate. “You must think I’m pretty bad if I’d do a thing like that!”
“Like what?”
“Whatever you were thinking.” She looked away in embarrassment. “Just because Ed asked me to go someplace— Well, I’m not that bad or that dumb!”
“Why, honey, I never said anything like that. Don’t cry! Mama didn’t mean to upset you.”
“I just don’t want you to get any such idea.”
Callie put her arms around her. “What’s the matter, darling?”
“Nothing!” Leonie shook herself free. “I’m all right.”
Callie went on putting the dishes away and hanging up the skillets. After a moment Leonie blew her nose. “Mama,” she said, “do you think I wanted Mathy to die?”
“Why, no, honey. Whatever made you think a thing like that?”
“I used to be mean to her sometimes—she always got away with everything, and things came so easy for her. I thought maybe it was a kind of punishment to me.”
“No, darling. If it was anybody’s punishment, it was mine.”
“How could it be yours?”
“Oh…I used to favor her a little. She was the youngest for so long. And that wasn’t fair to you and Jessica.”
“Oh, Jessica never minded!”
“Well, Jessica understood her better than the rest of us. Mathy wasn’t like the rest of us. But don’t worry. I don’t think God gives and takes like that, just to punish us. I can’t find it in my heart to believe it.”
“I can,” said Leonie.
“Well…go to bed now, get some rest.”
They watched her through the long yellow days, running like a hound gone daft, feverish and silent. And they watched Ed watching her. August wore on, and the locusts cried shrill and lonely, and the accordion wheezed in the parlor, till the sound became the sound of her anguish. They listened in silence, aching for this hurt stubborn child of theirs, and endured it as long as they could.
“What’ll we do?” said Callie. “She’s killing herself.”
“I know it,” said Matthew.
He was working at the bottom of the pasture, making a trench to channel the water of the branch into the slew when the August rain would come. Callie had come down to talk.
“It’s Ed,” she said. “I’m sure of that now. She wants him, and I think he wants her.” There was a long pause. “How would you feel about it?”
He said, “I guess it doesn’t matter too much what I’d feel.”
“Yes, it does, Papa! It matters this time. Leonie won’t go against your will.”
He worked on without answering.
After a while Callie said, “I guess Mathy might want it this way, if she knew. She tried to make a match of them herself, before her and Ed…” Her voice trailed off. She sat on a flat rock in the shade, fanning herself with her sunbonnet. The smell of the branch was cool and sandy. The branch was low now; a good rain would help everything. “I can’t help thinkin’,” she said, “if they was to marry, where would Ed be buried—next to Mathy or next to Leonie? It would look kind of funny to put him down between ’em, one on each side.”
“Well, I don’t suppose we have to worry about that.”
“No, I guess not. It just crossed my mind.”
Matthew laid up a spadeful of earth and tamped it into place. “He says he’s going to law school this fall.”
“Yes, he sounds like he means it. He ought to make a right good lawyer, he’s such a great one to argue.”
“It takes more than that.”
“But it’s a start.”
“It costs money to go to school,” said Matthew. “How does he think he could go to school and support a family, in times like these?”
“I don’t imagine they’d get married right away, not for a year or so, maybe.”
“They certainly ought to wait.”
“Yes, I think they ought to. But if they just knew we didn’t oppose it…She’ll be goin’ back to school in another week. I can’t hardly stand for her to go off like this, wantin’ and wantin’, and thinkin’ we don’t want her to have him. It ain’t just what we want, I know. But I don’t know how to explain it to her without her takin’ it wrong, like we won’t let her have something we let Mathy have.”
“Mathy was going to have him whether we liked it or not.”
“Yes, but Leonie won’t. That’s the difference—she won’t do it unless we say she can. And if this is what she wants—”
“It won’t work,” said Matthew.
“I’m afraid it won’t, either. But how do we know? It ain’t our lives—it’s theirs.”
“That’s right. We can’t always tell.”
“Like Jessica and Creighton,” Callie said, musing. “I said that marriage wouldn’t work, either—or would have, if I’da been asked. But looks like it’s workin’.”
“Looks like it.”
“Hard to see just why she’d marry a man like him, ’specially when she had a poor one before. Creighton’s an awful nice fellow, seems like, but all them big children! And that old farm of his, leanin’ up against the side of the hill! Don’t see how he makes a livin’ at all. But land, she had a chance to do different. I guess this was what she wanted—a whole houseful of noisy kids astompin’ and singin’ and the fiddle playin’ and dogs and cats underfoot! Makes me laugh, every time I think of that time we went down there to see ’em.” She wiped her eyes. “Well, I guess Jessica’s happy. Maybe Leonie and Ed would be, too. Like I say, it’s their lives, not ours.”
She sat for a moment. “But Papa,” she said then, getting up, “I’ve always been the one that held up for Ed, and maybe I was wrong to do it. I’m not going to do it any more. It’s whatever you say, this time. It has to come from you. Whatever you tell her, I’ll go by that.” She turned and walked back up the path.
Matthew went on digging. His shirt was damp and the sweat-bees plagued him. After a while he climbed up the bank and sat down in the shade and took off his hat. Maybe it wasn’t as serious as they thought. Maybe Leonie would forget about him when she got back to school. Maybe this was only a case of puppy love. But looking back (half embarrassed, as if he were spying), he could not remember Leonie in the throes of love, puppy or otherwise. He thought of her in high school, hurrying home in the afternoons to help her mother, at night bent over her books at the parlor table or practicing her music…and later, coming home from college or her teaching job, weekend after weekend and faithfully every summer. Not in all that time had there been one boy whose face he could remember, nor any sign from Leonie that life was not all business. Was it possible that she had never been in love before? This was worse than he thought! First love at her age—what was she now, twenty-five, twenty-six?—was a serious affair. Youngsters might come through unscathed, but older persons—why, it could ruin them, like the mumps! If Leonie had waited all this time—Oh, and she had a hard head. “Hard as a rock,” he said, kicking a chunk of sandstone out of the ground. If she had set her head for this one, she would never give him up, whether she married him or not.
And what of Ed? He had grown fond of Ed now, trying earnestly to make up for the years of rejection. But he hadn’t thought that he would have to make it up like this. He picked up the rock and brushed it off. Suppose he said no? It might be best. For even though they loved each other truly, they were bound to have trouble. They differed too much from each other. He could see Ed’s way now; he could, by a little understanding, accept it. But he doubted that Leonie could. Ed was not likely to give her the things she set such store by, the fine house and travel, the cultural life, all the medals of success. Leonie needed prizes, as he did. Ed and Mathy never needed them at all.
He sighed, bouncing the rock in his hand. How could he ever tell her that? No one can tell anyone anything, not even how much you love them. That was the hardest of all.
And he loved this stubborn bewildered child whose nature was so much his. Perhaps the only way he could say it now was to give her what she wanted.
He wondered suddenly if he had ever given her anything she wanted before. Oh, he gave her a good home and an education (though she paid for part of that herself). The girls had always had presents. But Callie had seen to that, not he. Coming home from a trip, had he ever brought one of them a toy, a souvenir? He could not think of one. And time, that great gift that he had given so charily! He dropped his head in shame. The sins of omission. Perhaps his girls had needed more from him than food and moral instruction. Dolls and chocolate drops and frivolous doodads—perhaps if he had given these sooner…Well, he would give her what she wanted now, even though she suffered from it, as a child from too much candy. What a pity if she had none at all! And maybe she would find her own cure. Maybe she was the only one who could make Ed amount to something. Lord knows, she was determined.
He stared absently at the rock in his hand. Sandstone…probably argillaceous. He licked his finger, touched it to the rock, and sniffed. It had that smell. Clayey. He turned it this way and that, noting the infinitesimal particles that glittered in the coarse brown surface. Bits of mica mixed with sand, which was itself particles of quartz, all of it granite once, and in the beginning, magma. Everything began in fire. He dug into the small crater in one side and blew out the clinging soil. The walls inside were striated, fossil-like. Though probably erosion caused the grooves, some chemical action on the stone. Shale and limestone were better for fossils, limestone being itself solid creature. He thought of Cambrian and Silurian seas sweeping over his land and receding, each one leaving a stria of sea creatures crushed, pressed, made into stone. And after the seas, the tropical jungles decaying slowly into the ooze and hardening there through millions of years, until he dug them out of his own hill and took them home to burn. Paleozoic forests going up in smoke from his own chimney. As it began, so it ended, in fire. Yet not ended, either. The mineral ash lay on his garden, blending with earth again, renewing itself in another form, and going on. There was always a going on.
The Moonflower Vine Page 33