Galveston (16 page)

“Have you and Teddy made any plans for this week?”

“We're going to a young people's dance at the Garten Friday night. He wants me to meet some of his friends that are home for the summer.”

“Marvelous! But you'll need another party dress, won't you?”

“Janet's offered to make me one out of some light green crepe de chine she never got round to using.”

“But I'm sure Madame would—”

“Nothing doing, Claire. You've spent far too much money on me already. Besides, this is short notice and I know Madame wouldn't be able to get it done on time. Now, don't look disappointed … if I let you indulge me all summer, I'll be too spoiled to go back home to Grady and dust merchandise again.”

“But are you sure Janet can do a professional job?”

“We're choosing a simple design—not elaborate like the yellow organdie—this isn't to be that formal a party.”

“Very well, then. You know, I saw a gorgeous mint green fan at the Emporium not long ago—hand-painted ivory with lavender flowers … we could put lavender flowers in your hair this time—I can see it now. I must get Janet to show me the dress design. Maybe I can help.”

“Oh, Cousin Claire, really, I wish you wouldn't make over everything so much. I can't ever repay you for what you've already done.”

“Forgive me, dear, but I never had anyone to make over or dress up, and I never realized until you came just how much I'd missed.”

She put a hand out and touched my knee. “I'm sorry, Cousin Claire, really I am. I didn't realize you felt that way … but then don't be silly. You're not possibly old enough to even give a thought to being my mother.” She sat back down and began stroking her hair again.

“But your mother is not that much older than I, dear.”

“I know that, but she
looks
so much older.”

“That's because she's worked so much harder. She's had a harder lot.”

“That's true, all right. You know, there was a time when I worried awfully about her. But I finally decided she thrives on that store. I mean it. She's down there from seven sharp every morning, till after nine o'clock at night. She knows everyone in town, and will go to any length to fill special orders for people. Everybody loves her.”

“Oh, how I long to see her! We've simply got to make plans to go back before long.”

“I know. I tried to get her to come with me this summer, but no one could wedge her away from that store.”

“Maybe this fall, or after Christmas perhaps, we could go. Of course I may not be able to go anywhere. There's a strong possibility I may have to have an operation if things continue to go as they have.”

“Oh no! Doesn't the medicine help? Or can't they do something else for you?”

“The medicine kills the pain and makes me sleep, and that's all. I think the bottle I've just opened must be stronger than the last. It certainly seems to have more of an effect.”

“Do you go through this every month? Oh, if I had to I would simply die!”

“No. That's the curious thing. It will go on for four or five months straight, then suddenly go back to normal. A year or so later, it will start all over again.”

“Oh, I do hope you're not confined to bed any more for a long time—forever, of course, if possible. But I miss you when you have to stay cooped up and you don't get to go places with us.”

“Don't worry about me. I'm so thankful for having Charles to fill in for me. And I guess, Janet too …”

“You don't mind my spending time with her, do you? We seem to have so much in common. And I don't think I've ever met anyone who seems so alone. A preacher's wife! You'd think she would spend all her time planning bazaars and going to meetings … yet she does none of these things. She seems a person apart from everything around her, somehow, as though she doesn't really belong. Does that make any sense?”

“It does indeed. I've felt it many times myself.”

“Sometimes the look she gets in her eyes … a kind of faraway, receding look … gives me the shivers.”

“Yes,” I said, amazed at Ruth's ability to put into words what I had so often felt but could not describe.

Chapter 15

Much of Ruth's summer lies hazy within my memory, like a dream once poignant yet now faded, so that it dances several feet distant when one tries to catch it up, and laughs at one's inability to reach it.

I do know I spent much time in bed from June to September, the first bleeding siege denying me the party at the Garten, then another two or three weeks later, lasting four or five days, then still another and another, and on and on. It seems to me now that I was always uncomfortably hot; always had limp hair dangling around my shoulders; always had the smell of medicine on my breath and the taste in my mouth.

Charles got his Remington, and Ruth spent the rest of the summer working two—sometimes three—days a week with him, both of them returning tired at the end of the day, yet still devoting much of the dinner conversation to cases Charles was working on, Ruth obviously as interested in their outcomes as he.

The longer her work with him continued, the more it pleased me, for the experience, I realized, might prove invaluable to her someday, and Betsey, being practical, would appreciate this aspect of her visit perhaps more than any other.

And of course she had less free time for piano playing and art lessons with Janet, especially since she soon began seeing more of Teddy Marlowe. It was a bit strange to witness at first, for she had seemed almost passive about him in the beginning. But then, within a couple of weeks after their first evening together, she appeared almost to embark on a concentrated effort to go with him whenever and wherever he wished, rarely turning down an invitation from him. Finally, unable to contain my satisfaction any longer, I wrote to Betsey:

“Ruth has become quite the belle of the ball around Galveston. She and Teddy Marlowe, son of a prominent attorney here and a good friend of ours, are keeping more and more in each other's company, attending gala parties at least once a week and outings with friends at the beach and lake when time permits. Believe me, if summer's end saw a commitment between them, you would laugh at your worries over her being jilted by the Frenchman in Grady. Teddy Marlowe is the top choice among the eligible bachelors here, and will no doubt one day be as prominent in the legal profession as his father … and of course will inherit his father's wealth.…”

I knew as I sealed the envelope I'd exaggerated a little about Teddy's future as an attorney, when he was still reported to be considering a military career. Still, I saw no harm in looking at the bright side of it, and mailed the letter without changing a word. Shortly after though, I was to learn it wouldn't have mattered what I had said in the letter, and I wished I'd never put it in the post office box.

One night toward the end of summer I passed by Ruth's bedroom door and heard her crying. I knocked, yet she didn't answer. Finally I tried the door, and found it unlocked. “Ruth, dear, forgive me for barging in, but what's the matter?” She lay diagonally across the bed, her face hidden.

“Nothing. It's all right.”

“It isn't all right, if you're upset,” I told her, and sat on the edge of the bed. She looked so pretty then, with her long hair hanging down the back of her dark green robe. I wanted to help her, was afraid I'd done something to upset her.

“It's just that everything is in such a mess,” she said, still refusing to look at me. “I should never have come.”

“It's Teddy Marlowe, isn't it? You've been seeing him for our benefit, and now he's done something to upset you.”

She pulled up and turned over to look at me, her face pinched and wet. “He wants to marry me,” she said. “Wants me to wait for him till he finishes school.”

“Do you want to?”

“Want to? No, I couldn't possibly, now …”

“What do you mean? What happened?”

“I mean … now that I know I don't love him, of course.” She rose from the bed and walked to the bureau; picked up her hairbrush and drew it through her hair. “I've overstayed my visit,” she said. “I know Mother needs me back home—I've been gone three months, you know. I think it's time for me to go.”

“What about Teddy? Did you make any commitment to him?”

“No. I told him I would think about it. I didn't know what to tell him really.”

“Well, I can tell you something, if you're worried that your failing to marry him will put our friendship with Pete in jeopardy, don't give it a thought. Pete's crazy about you and would love to see you married to Teddy, I'm sure, but he's also a smart and practical man. Only unhappiness can come from anything less than a love match. Besides, a summer is too short a time for deciding one's fate.”

She looked at me for a long time then, and an expression of relief came over her face. “That's so true,” she said finally, and gently touched a hand to my face as though it were me needing comfort. “Claire, I'm sorry. Please forgive me, please.”

“Don't be foolish,” I said, and knew I must have somehow betrayed my own hopes about Teddy Marlowe to her. “What is there to forgive? People your age tend to make too large a matter of such things. Believe me, I know. I was your age once, don't forget.

“And as far as overstaying your visit is concerned, you're welcome to stay here as long as you like. Of course I know you worry about your mother. Maybe you could go back now, and come again next spring—next Christmas even. You might even bring Betsey along if you can pry her away from the store.”

“No, I doubt I shall ever be back.…”

She was gone from us less than a week after that conversation, carrying with her several times over the sparse belongings she'd brought along at the beginning of the summer, and wearing an air of reserve becoming to a mature young woman that defied any of us to believe she was the same person who'd been but a schoolgirl, full of wonder and endless questions but a few months before.

Although I was the only one to weep openly as she waved good-by from the flashing train window, she was missed by all of us. Janet disappeared behind shuttered windows for two days; Rubin retreated to his work at the church office; Charles spent several evenings alone on the porch, smoking his pipe and not asking for company.

I tidied the room which from that summer on I would think of as hers. She'd left little out of order—only a thin film of French Bouquet dusting powder settled on the dresser; an empty cream jar and some tissues in the wastepaper basket; and an aura of emptiness about the room that wasn't there before she came.

The rest of the year sped by. Charles began traveling quite a bit around November, making a zigzag between Austin and San Antonio because of some legal case or another which he wouldn't discuss.

Then on New Year's Day at the Marlowe party, a formal announcement was made: Charles Becker would be joining the law firm of Marlowe, Turner, and Parks. I did not know, nor would he ever say, what prompted his decision to go with Pete. Nor did I press him to explain. I have always felt he did it for me.

PART II

Chapter 1

The sunbaked beaches are, some say, a fortunate drawing card for Galveston. In the past few years, some businessmen have undertaken to capitalize on the long and deep expanse of mocha sand by constructing halls for staging events that would draw to the seashore not only the bathers, but even those people who do not like the water.

Thus did the Galveston Pavilion—site of vaudeville shows, three-act plays, skating derbies, circus performances, and musical concerts—bring Charles and me, Janet and Rubin, and Serena down to the seaside with regularity during the years between 1881 and 1883, and none of us attached any particular significance to the fact we were going to watch Monsieur La Faira play a piano concert on the stage in the big building one Sunday afternoon in August 1883.

It was so hot in the Pavilion that day, by the time Monsieur La Faira sat down to play his first selection I was wiping perspiration from my forehead and wishing Janet had not been so insistent we should all spend our afternoon in this way.

Of course, there was the added irritation of Janet and Rubin's adopted child, who'd grown cranky soon after we took our seats on the third row from the stage. Serena—whose name was something Janet thought up as a combination of Rubin's mother's name, Sara, and her own mother's name, Irene—had come to them from God alone knows where, through some Church agency, shortly after she came into the world in May of 1880. Nothing was known about the parentage of Serena beyond the fact her real mother had been in what we call, “embarrassing circumstances.” All other pertinent information was held in strictest confidence by the agency.

Her coming had taken Charles and me by surprise, for neither of us knew the Garrets were considering such a move. I had no reason to hold anything against the little girl, yet I could not help remembering my own predicament years before, and wondered what would have happened to me if Charles Becker had not been around to marry. One thing was certain, however: I would not have given up Damon Becker's child for anything or anyone, no matter how embarrassing the circumstances, and could not imagine any mother carrying a child for nine long months then just giving it over to someone else she didn't even know.

As to the Garrets' decision to take the child, that was their business, although it seemed to me they were taking an awful chance—what if the little girl grew up into a person of low morals, with inherent traits that all the love and caring she received from Janet and Rubin could not squelch? I couldn't resist pointing this out to Charles, and for some reason, he seemed irritated by the remark.

“That's rubbish, Claire. What counts is the love and training the child gets growing up. And anyway, what makes you think Serena's parents were necessarily ‘no good' individuals? Sometimes people—good people—make mistakes, you know. Sometimes they let their hearts overrule their minds.”