Four of a Kind: A women's historical fiction (55 page)

Victor and Pearl’s return from the undertaker brought Mama out of her trance. Victor looked so much like Papa it was as if Papa’s spirit had simply moved down a generation to have another go at life. He looked stiff and uncomfortable surrounded only by his womenfolk. His big brown eyes – cow eyes I used to call him in our younger days – were red-rimmed and his square jaw was set to tolerate, as I’d seen Papa do so many times.

“The wake begins tomorrow night,” he said as we sat around the table munching leftover bread and fried chicken, our family tears sufficiently subsided enough to eat. “We’ll be up all night for the wake when his body gets here. Bess, plan to spend the night then. You can sleep with Pearl. Caroline and I will sleep in my old room on the third floor. The funeral is the next day. Preacher Paul will preside over the funeral. He’ll be here tomorrow for prayers. Don’t cook anything. I would imagine tons of food will be brought in from the church ladies once word gets out. Thomas can put this in the paper, Bess. Write something nice for the obituary, or better yet, I’ll talk to Thomas about it. He’ll know what to do.”

I had chosen to forget Victor’s domineering demeanor. It all came back to me in double irritation. But more so, I wondered where Thomas was at this late hour. He should have been here by now.

Victor leaned his chair back to look out the dining room window. “There he comes now. Beauty of a car. Has a darkie with him, though. With a house like that, I suspected slaves all along. Or could it be he has a mistress already?”

I ignored his feeble attempt at humor. At that moment, I wouldn’t have cared if Thomas brought a flapper girl. I needed him - and at last hugged him tightly to tell him so.

“We would have been here sooner, but that little missy didn’t tell us until after we ate supper,” Lizzie said, deep lines in her dark brown forehead telling me of her fury.

“She didn’t call you, Thomas?” I asked.

“Only to tell me to come home early for dinner.”

“She sat in your place at the dinner table, Miz Bess,” said Lizzie, “like she was Queen Victoria. Said she didn’t want to spoil our appetites until we’d had a good meal. That girl wants to rule the roost, I tell you. I left her there to clean the kitchen,” she added, looking quite pleased with her retaliation.

I had enough to worry about at the moment and did not wish to air out any more of our home laundry. “The funeral is day after tomorrow,” I said to Thomas and Lizzie. “What time is the funeral, Victor?”

“One in the afternoon. After the funeral, we have an appointment at the lawyer’s office to hear the reading of the will.”

He scowled at Mama’s stunned look. “He didn’t tell you he had a will?” He shook his head when she shook hers. “Pity. He should have told you.” As if giving her further clues, he added, “This is the same lawyer who drew up the papers for the Walk Wright shoe store transfer to me. We had an agreement. I thought you knew all about it.”

“Your father told me little about his business. I thought
you
knew that.” She sounded as if she felt like me; I wasn’t appreciating the suspense either.

“Do you know what’s in the will?” I asked.

“A little.” His attention remained on cutting fat from his beef. “But I’m not obliged to say. It’s legal jargon you wouldn’t understand. Best left to the lawyer to explain.” He placed his knife carefully on the left-hand corner of his plate.

A chip off the old block in every way.

The wake droned on and on and was putting me to sleep. I felt suffocated in the hugs of the crowds of people who came in and out of the parlor. Uncle Jesse and Aunt Edith squeezed me hard at the same time.

“Your papa and I didn’t have much to say to one another,” Uncle Jesse said, “but he was a good enough man, I believe.”

“Every wife’s fear, this is,” said Aunt Edith, sniffing and shaking her head.

Aunt Opal and Uncle Jacob quietly patted Papa’s hand – an unnatural manikin color, made worse by being manicured - old stain from shoe polish gone now – as if comforting him. I couldn’t touch him. The man displayed in the coffin was a skeletal version of the papa I remembered from youth, even different from his sickly pallor in his last few years. I no longer wanted to be reminded of the years gone by and how death sneaks up on a loved one.

He wasn’t going to wake; this old custom of staying with him in this cramped parlor suddenly seemed horribly morbid. The stroke of midnight coming from the mantle clock was the last strike and I sneaked out when Victor went to the privy. How I missed Thomas!

Shivering and exhausted from the long walk, I finally found my way through my front door. Without the aid of lighting I fumbled up the stairs to our bedroom. The door opened of its own accord and I stood face to face with Mary Sue, a candle in her hand illuminating wildly frightened eyes at seeing me there.

“What’s the matter, Mary Sue? You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” I whispered. It sounded more like a hiss. “Why are you coming out of my husband’s bedroom?”

“I-I thought I heard something. I-I was afraid.”

My borrowed nightgown covered her bare feet but she was shivering. I had a hunch she wasn’t afraid until she saw me.

I grabbed her arm and squeezed hard. She whimpered and tried to get away. “You tell me now why you are here!” No longer a whisper but I didn’t care.

“Let her go back to bed, Bess.” The bedside lamp came on, revealing Thomas propping himself up in bed, bare-chested. He rubbed his eyes.

“Not until she explains to me why she’s coming out of our bedroom!” I began to tremble, too, although more from seeing his nonchalance than from seeing her.

“I think she was sleep-walking. I woke up to find her standing here beside the bed, just watching me. The candle coming close to my face is what woke me up. Gave me quite a fright.”

“Why did you think I was Bess’s dead sister?” she asked.

“I didn’t,” Thomas said, smoothing back his own unkempt hair.

“You called me Cady.”

“Cady. Oh yes,” he glanced at me and then looked down and picked a thread off our wedding ring quilt. “I thought you were a ghost.”

I examined her tousled light brown hair and her red lips. “You kissed him, didn’t you?”

She backed up and shook her head, but her eyes belied her denial.

I shook her. “Tell me the truth!” Wax spilled from the candle onto my bare toe but I didn’t care.

“He kissed me back!”

I decided to deal with him later. I pointed my finger at her, dismayed by its trembling. “You have gone from bitch to whore. You have betrayed me for the last time. I will write your father tomorrow to come immediately and take you back where you belong.”

She sucked in her breath. “No, I don’t want to go back!” She turned to Thomas. “Please don’t make me go back. I’ll behave. I promise. I love you, Uncle Thomas. Don’t punish me for that!” She put her face in her free hand and sobbed.

I thought I had left the sobbing back at my parents’ home. I’d have no more of it.

“Stop crying now you foolish woman-child. Why do you love another woman’s husband? Are you stupid? Ignorant? Don’t you see anything wrong with that?”

“He wasn’t your husband when I fell for him. I know this is wrong and Daddy would wring my neck if he found out. Please don’t tell him, Miz Bess!” She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand and nodded to me willingly. “I think tonight has cured me once and for all.”

“I can’t let you live here.”

“Could I live with your mama? I start school in a few days. Just for a few more months. Please, Miz Bess, we got this far!”

Yes and how far would you have gotten if I hadn’t shown up tonight?
I thought but didn’t ask. Her pleading eyes, hair laying softly about her shoulders, the white gown glowing in the candlelight, all gave her an angelic look. An angel who had fallen with Lucifer, I reminded myself.

I shrugged. “That is up to her. As long as you’re out of here. You certainly don’t sound homesick to go ‘back home’ these days.” I mocked her hillbilly accent with this last line and felt at once ashamed for being so catty. Abruptly drained of emotion, I wanted no more of this scene. I felt nauseous. Mary Sue seemed to bring out weaknesses in all three of us.

I stepped out of her way and pointed down the hallway, imitating Victor’s tone. “Go to bed, Mary Sue. Go to school tomorrow. Don’t come to the funeral. Give Mama a few days and then ask her.”

She nodded and ran down the hall. I stood still until her door had closed behind her.

“Come to bed and I’ll explain,” Thomas said, patting beside him.

“I don’t want to talk about it anymore,” I said and prepared for bed.

He snuggled against me under the quilt but I could only lie on my back, stiff and unfeeling as Papa was, lying in his parlor. My husband’s face appeared above me, his body moved against, around and from within me. He moved rapidly, lurching his shoulders as if trying to get someone off his back. I wondered which one of them it was.

“I have to talk to you, Bess.”

“Of course, Mama, come in. Did you walk here?”

She nodded and wiped at her swollen eyes with a scrunched handkerchief. “Your papa never did buy a motor car – death contraptions he always said they were. Sorry to interrupt your supper, but I had to talk to somebody.”

“Come into the front parlor and sit down. You look exhausted after such a long walk. I apologize for having to leave right after the funeral today, but Thomas and I were scheduled to talk on a radio show at three and this kind of publicity must be taken when offered.”

We sat together on the sofa.

“You were on the radio,” she said as if trying to bring good news through her shroud of mourning. “Your papa would have loved to hear that. Maybe he did. Preacher Paul said his spirit is amongst us if we ever wish to talk to him. Mercy, what I would say to him now!”

I patted her hand. “You miss him, I’m sure.”

“I’m not sure what I feel. What I’d love to say to him right now is that he did a terrible thing!”

“Is this about the will, Mama? The lawyer read the will to you this afternoon?”

She nodded and looked for a dry spot on her handkerchief.

“Victor certainly was being evasive about it,” I said. “Obviously for a reason, now that you’re so up—”

“He willed the house to Victor, Bess!” Mama cried. “Can you believe it? He gave away the house I shared with him and cleaned for him, and birthed five children there. I painted that old place and gardened around it and it became my own, only to find – no, to be
reminded
that your papa considered it
his
house and then his first-born son’s house. It’s a man’s world, no matter how hard a woman works for it. Women have a right now to vote? Not me. Mercy! I didn’t have a say!”

“This is legal?” Another damn statute I thought.

“Oh yes, the lawyer assured me of that,” she said with a dry chortle. “But of course Victor was quick in pointing out that it remains my house, too, and I’m expected to live there, just move to a smaller bedroom is all, says Victor. He and Caroline and my grandchildren that she can’t control, they’re all moving in next week. If Jonathan
was alive, he would’ve put a stop to this. His heart was so like my brother Jesse’s, but Victor is more like … ” She paused.