A Southern Exposure (19 page)

And—Graham, Abby knows, in the way that most children wordlessly know everything, that Graham is not Deirdre’s little brother; Deirdre does not treat him like a
brother. Though how could brotherless Abby know this so clearly? She just does, as she herself might say. Abby almost knows that Graham is Deirdre’s son; she is within a hair of this knowledge, although it may not emerge to her consciousness for quite some time.

She also knows that Deirdre is extremely lonely, and sad. And Mr. Byrd is too, though the causes of his isolation and sorrow are more obscure to Abby.

One afternoon, though, for a variety of reasons, among them the facts that she has nothing better to do that day and all the other children are doing something else, like the dentist or piano lessons—on that afternoon Abby goes by Deirdre’s house, and finds Deirdre at home (Deirdre is almost always at home), and she asks if Deirdre and Graham want to walk out to Laurel Hill. They do, although Deirdre says they can’t be out for too long; she has to be back by five.

The three of them set off toward the long white winding concrete highway that leads down to the creek.

Just before the bridge, they cut off on a small rutted and muddy road, continuing past a couple of small farms, down a red clay gulch of a stream that they have to jump across. Graham, as always, gets his shoes wet. Deirdre (as always) scolds him, gently. “Oh, Graham—” but she sounds a little distracted, and looks apologetically at Abby, as though saying, I know I should be a better mother, I’m just trying.

The road then enters the woods, where it widens, and instead of mud and ruts there is smooth white dirt. On their left, as they walk along, are the thick deep woods, mostly evergreen, pine and cedar, and on the right are bushes and vines, blackberry, honeysuckle, just hiding the creek. Which they can hear, as it rushes and gurgles over rocks and fallen trees. The blue air is full of the tease of spring, rich and promising.

“My dad was down for a week,” Abby tells Deirdre. “I brought him out here—he thought it was great.”

“My dad really hated it here in Pinehill,” contributes Deirdre. “I think he’s pretty happy in California, though. But it’s tough without my mom.”

“I don’t think my dad likes Washington much without my mom. I think he wants her to move up there with him.”

“But she’s crazy about Pinehill, I thought. And now in that house—”

“I don’t know.” Abby finds that she doesn’t really want to talk about her parents; any aspect of them makes her uncomfortable—if and where they are happy, where they might go.

“I think my dad has some lady,” says Deirdre, in a discouraged way.

“Does he try to get you to come to California?”

“No, not really. He and Graham—I don’t know.”

But if he were Graham’s father, as he is supposed to be, he would want Graham to be there too, wouldn’t he? Abby feels unhappy suspicions confirmed—or, rather, spelled out for her. And she wonders, What did Deirdre and I ever use to talk about? She can’t remember. Maybe nothing at all.

They have come to the place where the road ends: a small sandy beach at a wide bend in the creek, where the water is shallow and fast over smooth small rocks. On the other side of the creek huge gray boulders rise, a granite wall, with crevices and caves from which dark feathered ferns peer out in their complex luxuriance. Trees top this wall, pines and cedars, and among them, glossy and dark green, are great bushes of laurel, grown huge and strong. The laurel of Laurel Hill, just now in full bursting bud. About to bloom.

“I know a way to walk so that you end up over there, on the other side,” says Deirdre. “We’ll have to do that sometime.”

“Oh yes, I’d love to.” But Abby knows, somehow, that they won’t, and she wonders, disloyally, if Betsy or Melanctha knows about this other walk, to the other side of Laurel Hill. The laurel side. Maybe Billy and Archer?

Cynthia is as restless as a high-school girl, her daughter observes. And she is acting all girlish, changing her hairstyles, buying new lipstick. Ordering new clothes from New York and then sending them back. Abby has read about women acting funny in the so-called “change of life.” But isn’t her mother a little young for that—thirty-five, whatever she is?

When Harry’s away, up in Washington, Cynthia has sort of dates with other men. Jimmy Hightower comes over, and Clifton Lee (he just came once; Cynthia seemed not to like him). A couple of other men. But all they do is talk, they never kiss or anything like that: Abby can see the front hall if she leans over from her bedroom door, and she sees them all shake hands, rather formally, as they go.

Cynthia doesn’t get particularly dressed up or anything when these men come over. The most dressed up she has been so far was when she and Abby’s father, Harry, went down the road to a party at the Byrds’. Cynthia wore a new red dress with a funny fringe across her bosoms; she looked pretty silly, Abby thought. And they can’t have had such a wonderful time at the party; they came home early and talked a long time in the kitchen, drinking tea. Abby listened on the back stairs for quite a while.

•  •  •

“…  she does look better, don’t you think?”

“Truthfully, not a lot, my darling Harry. She looks glazed.”

“I thought she looked pretty good.”

“You’re too kind. I think you just mean not drunk. Poor thing, ginger ale all night.”

“What’s with that Drake guy? You were talking to him a lot.”

“Harry, you’re not jealous? Surely. Anyway, he’s attractive, obviously, but not very interesting. Sort of a blank. And the most conventional, most Southern attitudes. On everything.”

“Seems funny, he’s around the house over there pretty much all the time.”

“Yes, and never with his wife. I wonder what she’s like. It is funny.”

“Makes you wonder who his patient is, SallyJane or Russ.”

“It’s very odd. They’re not supposed to be such great friends with their patients. I’m sure of that. Remember, in Connecticut, when Muffy was seeing that doctor–that psychiatrist who was so fat? People had to be very careful not to invite them together.”

“Russ seems to find him fascinating.”

“And so does SallyJane. It must be a little confusing for the children.”

“Those poor little kids. Honestly. More tea?”

“Thank you, dear Harry. Well, I do wonder what on earth Russ sees in that Clyde Drake. Or, for that matter, in Jimmy Hightower’s novel.”

“Maybe it’s good?”

“I hope so. Oh, I don’t know. Anything’s possible, I guess. How did you feel about Dolly’s new black dress?”

“A little tacky, as they say down here.”

Cynthia laughs. “Maybe a little. You didn’t feel the strong sex appeal?”

“She’s not my type, you know that.”

“She sure seems to be Clifton Lee’s type. Honestly—those two.”

“He was drunk. Don’t make up stories.”

“Well, I just wondered. You know she’s still mad at me over the business about Odessa.”

“She’ll get over it. You know that.”

“I hope so. I really like Dolly. In a way.”

“As for you, Mrs. Baird, you have lots and lots of sex appeal in that red dress. You really are my type—”

Abby creeps back up to her room.

Now that SallyJane is well, Dr. Drake—“Clyde”—comes up to see her all the time. He calls her “Sal,” another new name. She is not at all sure how she feels about being Sal.

What he says is, he has all these meetings over in Hilton, and there they are, the Byrds, right in—or, rather,
on
his way. Sometimes SallyJane thinks he just wants a free hotel, a guaranteed good dinner (she really fusses over dinner when he comes, uses lots of rationing coupons) and lots of bourbon and a private room. But what an ugly thought! How could she think that of Clyde, who has made her well? Her doctor. At other times she thinks he just comes up to see Russ; he seems terrifically interested in Russ, as though he were a naturalist with a microscope and Russ were some new species of bug that he had never encountered
before. Well, that could be true, in a way (just as her ugly idea about the bourbon and the room could be true). It is quite possible that Clyde has never met a poet before, much less one who is also a successful playwright who writes scripts for Hollywood, for a lot of money. Who is now working on a long play about pigs in Kansas. Russ is certainly an unusual man.

But Russ has just begun to lose interest in Clyde, SallyJane has observed, taking note. At first Russ seemed really to take to him, to Clyde, in a way that surprised SallyJane. They were boyish together. They listened to silly stuff on the radio while they drank, and they borrowed .22 rifles from the boys and went out hunting squirrels and rabbits. But now Russ is quite bored with all that, SallyJane can tell; she hears him making excuses for not doing those things, especially the shooting, which she could have told Clyde would not last long. Russ would like to see less of Clyde Drake, but he does not know how to say so. How can he say, I’d like to see a lot less of you, and still think of himself as a perfect “Southern gentleman”? A considerable problem, for Russ.

There is a secret sad truth about Russ, which possibly only SallyJane knows: he tires of people after not very long, no matter how much he started off liking them. He gets bored silly, and then he does everything so that they will not know how he feels—so that in his own mind, at least, he can be forever gentlemanly. Exemplary. High-class Southern. He tired of SallyJane a long time ago, she thinks, but by then they were married and it was too late to get rid of her, and then they had all those children, none of them terribly interesting to Russ for long, although he is always extremely polite to all of them. Maybe too polite? Would a man who really loved his family be so courteous, always? Maybe he would; SallyJane is not quite sure.

Russ is bored now too with Jimmy Hightower, who at
some point quite suddenly became his friend—as though Russ had just noticed him for the first time. And surely he is bored with this novel that Jimmy is writing, supposedly. How will he work that one out? You cannot just ditch a person whose novel is halfway done, or can you? SallyJane does not know, but she feels for Jimmy, whom she likes and perceives as kind, a gentle person. She likes Esther too, but Russ has never been at all interested in Esther. Esther somehow scares him, SallyJane thinks.

Will he ever be bored with Deirdre?

Will he ever develop an interest in Cynthia Baird, who seems in some subtle way to be waiting for him?

These are questions unanswerable for Brett. Sal. SallyJane.

There are also times when she believes that Clyde Drake comes to Pinehill just to see her. And not just as a patient, but as a woman about his age whom he truly cares about. Whom he would like to kiss.

Certainly one of the reasons he comes is to drink a lot, with Russ. His wife does not hold with drinking, SallyJane overheard him saying this to Russ. “Norris doesn’t hold with drinking. Irritating for a man my age to have to do his drinking on the sly.”

Norris? SallyJane has never heard of a woman named Norris.

And it’s ironic: if she, SallyJane, did any drinking “on the sly,” she can just imagine, if anyone found out, the shock, the anger all around.

After dinner, when Clyde has come up for the evening, after SallyJane has cleaned up and put all the kids to bed,
sometimes she wonders just what she’s supposed to do then, especially as she increasingly understands that Russ is bored. He’s been bored with her forever—that’s nothing new—but he’s getting more and more bored with Clyde Drake now; he does not want to sit around at night just drinking and answering questions about himself. She wonders: What would be worse for him, to be alone with Clyde Drake or alone with Clyde Drake
and
me?

Unable to decide, SallyJane settles herself inconspicuously into a chair that is more or less out of their range (she hopes) with her knitting, so that she can at the same time be present, if they need her, and absent, if they just don’t want her around, for whatever strong male reasons.

How she loves them both, though—both these men, almost interchangeably. She loves them painfully. If only there were the slightest sign from either of them, then she would be all right. She would be a healthy person if either of them loved her. But of course they do not love her, neither one of them does, at all. Of course not.

Russ stands up. It seems sudden, as though he had been wanting to stand up in just that defiant way for quite a while, but had only then pulled himself together sufficiently to do so. He says, “I think I’ll go out for a while.” It is absolutely clear that he means alone.

What will happen now?

Clyde Drake leans back heavily in his chair. SallyJane has noticed how large men always pick the smallest Victorian carved chair; she hopes that this will not be the time when it finally falls over and breaks. Clyde closes his eyes as though thinking deeply, but SallyJane, who has been watching him drink all night, is afraid he might fall asleep. (In fact she is afraid of almost everything, it occurs to her just then. Afraid of anything that could happen, at any time.)

Clyde opens his eyes and he comes forward with a bang, quite suddenly. He leans toward SallyJane and he says, “You know, I really love that guy.”

Who? She looks her question.

“That Russ. Your man. I really love him too. He’s the most exciting, interesting person. It must be thrilling to live with a man like that.”

“Well—”

“Love him! I really do. Oh, I don’t mean any of that fairy pansy stuff, you know I’m not like that. In fact those guys make me want to throw up, they really do. God help me if I ever have a patient with that problem. But I love Russ like you’re supposed to love your brother. With all your heart.”

He is very drunk. He does not know what he is saying. Still, it seems extremely strange, and scary, to SallyJane.

He goes on. “And I love you too, little Sal. I love all my patients, they’re my true wonderful family. They almost make up for you-know-who, the nympho devil. Pardon my French. But especially I love you and Russ.”

And Miss Effington? SallyJane does not ask this, nor does she ask if he really said what she thinks she heard him say about his wife—Norris, who doesn’t hold with drinking. A “nympho devil”? Can he have said that?