New Mercies (22 page)

David stood up and looked out at the park, where a fresh snowfall outlined forgotten graves, for the park had once been a cemetery. With his back to me, he said, “No, it wouldn’t work. If we had our own kiddie, well, we would do our best. But I’m really not cut out to be a father.”

“You’d be a wonderful father.”

“No,” David said, and we did not discuss it again.

I wondered even then about David’s preoccupation with Betsey, since she never read a newspaper or a book, never had an original thought. It was no surprise that Arthur spent so much time outdoors, mountain climbing, skiing, and motorcycling with David and the other men in our set. So it should have been no surprise when Arthur suggested that he and David take flying lessons. For some perverse reason, Arthur seemed to enjoy frightening Betsey. David once observed, “Arthur treats her like china under his hooves.”

Much as I wanted to be a better sport, I agreed with Betsey that flying was out of the question. “You simply mustn’t go up in an aeroplane,” I told David. “I would fret so.”

“How can you be such a ninny?” We were eating breakfast, and David put down his fork so hard that it fell off the edge of the plate and hit the table. “I spend my days holding hands with doddering old ladies. Aren’t I entitled to a little excitement?”

Remembering that conversation now, I poured more whiskey into the glass, adding neither ice nor water. He was so seldom cross with me back then that his virulence had shocked me.

“It’s just that you read about so many crashes. What would I do if something happened to you?” I picked up David’s dirty fork, which had left a spot of yellow from his boiled egg on the tablecloth, and put it onto my own plate.

“You’re as tiresome as Betsey.”

“I thought you admired her.”

David did not reply, just gave me a withering look. He stood and picked up his coffee cup by the bowl and drank, then set down the cup on the edge of the saucer, and it tipped over, spilling coffee across the tablecloth and onto my dressing gown. David did not apologize, just folded the newspaper under his arm and, without a word, left for work. We did not mention the squabble, and the following Saturday morning, he took his first flying lesson.

Looking back at it now, I realized it should have been obvious that David was unhappy, but that did not occur to me then. I thought only that we were having disagreements, like other married people who’d been together for a decade. We still had wonderful times together. In fact, those last months—that was
the Christmas I gave David the silver tea set—were among our happiest. I had not known such contentment could exist.

The glass of whiskey was still in my hand, and I carried it to the window and looked out. The Mississippi was not visible, but I felt its presence, the way I felt the presence of the mountains at home, and suddenly I had a great longing to see the river, so I set down my glass and left the hotel.

I walked the few blocks to the Mississippi and stared into the silent blackness, then turned back to the hotel, walking past the dark bank building where Odalie had hailed me that morning. Just then, a very old man came out of the shadows, a rummy, from the smell of him. He put one hand on a stone column to support himself and said unsteadily, “Nobody’s going to bother you when you’re with me.” He nodded solemnly to reinforce his statement and then asked, “You got any spare change?”

Ignoring him, I started off.

He took a step after me, stumbled, and put both arms around the pillar to keep from falling. “Hey, snooty lady,” he called after me. “Jesus loves you.”

I laughed, and not for the first time thought this would be a good story to tell David, then remembered I could never tell him anything again. But I could tell Caroline, and maybe Pickett. That made me feel better, and I returned to the hotel.

As I prepared for bed, I saw the miniature trunk of envelopes. Too curious to let them sit in the carpetbag all night, I spread them across the desk. To my disappointment, they did not contain real letters, only scraps of paper. Scattered among them were rose petals as faded and brittle as parchment. The notes, some thirty or forty of them, were written in pencil, and many
were illegible where the lead had smeared or been rubbed faint. Most were only a sentence or two, sometimes just a word: “Tonight.” One read, “Thank you, dear thing,” and another said, “. . . when darkness covers daylight.” They were written in the same hand. On a scrap of foolscap was “I glory in your love.” One note said simply, “I love you.” The signature was always an elaborate
B
.

B
for Bayard. But when had they been written? There were no dates, no reference to current events. They could have been written half a century ago, for all I knew. The notes did not answer any of my questions, only added to them. Returning the scraps of paper to their envelopes, I picked up the quilt diary again and examined it more thoroughly. It was a record of the quilts Amalia had made. She’d sketched patterns and scribbled notations about materials she’d used. She’d even attached scraps of fabric with straight pins, which were now rusty. Paging through the book, I stopped to examine a swatch of white cotton with black horseshoes printed on it. In places, the horseshoe shapes had been eaten away by the harsh chemicals in the black dye. Next to the swatch was the notation “B’s shirt.” On the next page was a drawing of two entwined initials, AB, the monogram embroidered on the quilt on Amalia’s bed. The
B
was the same stylized letter Bayard had used to sign his notes. The initials didn’t stand for Amalia Bondurant at all, I thought. They were for Amalia and Bayard.

Mr. Sam was breakfasting with his table of pals, whose ages appeared to range from thirty to ninety, when I entered the dining room the next morning. Before they could rise, I slid into a chair
next to Mr. Sam, startling the men, and it occurred to me that I had joined a table reserved for males. I returned the surprised looks with a smile, knowing these gentlemen were too polite to ask me to leave. Besides, they knew Amalia, so they shouldn’t be surprised that I did as I pleased.

“Good morning, Miss Nora. You’re looking like fine china today,” Mr. Satterfield said.

The waiter came, glancing around the table to see if any of the men objected to my being there, then took my order for coffee and a boiled egg. “Oh, and may I have a basket of beaten biscuits, too, please?” I smiled at Mr. Satterfield.

“It appears you have taken to our ways.”

“Only in matters culinary, Mr. Satter—Mr. Sam. I haven’t acquired your good manners, or I would not have gone to Avoca by myself yesterday. But you see, I didn’t know it myself until I did it.”

Mr. Sam was much too polite to chastise me. Nor did he remark about Natchez women. “I forgive you for that,” he said. “You must have wanted to get a feel for the place without an old man telling you what was what.”

When I protested, Mr. Sam put up his hand. “You’re safe enough out there with old Ezra.”

“You find any haunts out there, did you?” asked a man dressed in a limp seersucker suit. He had a napkin tucked into his shirtfront; in fact, I was the only one at the table who didn’t. The man sliced his ham into neat pieces and cut the pieces in half. “There was a story down to the drugstore this morning that somebody’d been out to Avoca and told Son Boy, the fountain man, that there was a plenty of ghosts there.”

“That Son Boy, Wash!” Mr. Sam said. “It’s just his foolishments.”

“Not likely,” Wash told him. “Son Boy says it was a woman, and she wasn’t a ghost; she was real. Yes sir, he spoke the truth. No ghost ever left him a two-bit tip.”

“No human being ever left that much to Son Boy, either,” Mr. Sam said, and they all chuckled.

I ventured that rumors of ghosts at Avoca might keep the curious away from it.

“No, ma’am, not so’s you’d notice,” the young man told me. “Besides, there’s not a one of these old places that isn’t haunted by ghosts—or memories. You take your choice.”

“And one or two by goats,” I said.

They laughed, and Wash said, “Boys, she’ll do!”

“Didn’t I tell you she was a card?” said Mr. Sam. “Didn’t I?”

“I didn’t personally encounter any ghosts at Avoca, unless you count Magdalene Lott, but my impression is that she is still very much alive. Of course, I could be mistaken.”

“Oh no, ma’am, no mistake there. She is with the living, God bless her,” Mr. Sam said, rolling his eyes.

“Magdalene Lott,” Wash said, looking pensive. “I recall her back when I first remember about things. She was a finely-looking woman with a morning-glory air, a real lady.”

“No such a thing. That’s what they call her, a lady, but she isn’t. Never was. I’d call her everything but a lady,” scoffed a very old man who had been eating scrambled eggs with a spoon. His head was as smooth as a darning egg, but his gray beard, which had gone to seed, was long as his arm. He was tiny, probably not much more than five feet tall, although since he was seated, I really
could not tell. He sat up straight, making every inch count, and lifted his chin. “Back in them good old times gone by, she was pretty, but she was always a spitfire. We all thought it was passing strange that Bayard married her. He pro’bly reared and pitched and did it only ’cause Miss Amalia wouldn’t have him.” The man shook his head, which was crisscrossed with veins.

“Now sir,” Wash protested.

“You are too young a man to have known her in her day.” He turned to me. “I myself am eighty-eight.” He pronounced his age “ada-ate.”

The waiter interrupted, setting down my coffee and filling the other cups. The men busied themselves by pouring cream and sugar into their coffee, stirring and tasting, until the waiter finished and was out of earshot.

“Now, Uncle Doctor, Miss Magdalene was a badly used woman. You know that,” said a man about my age, who sported a gold tooth. He turned to me. “Dr. Aldrich is a physician to nervous ladies, and as you might imagine, such are as common in Natchez as old clothes.”

“What’s that?” The doctor said in a loud voice to me, “Never nobody tells me a thing because I don’t hear so good. If I get something wrong, it’s no fault of mine. My left ear don’t hardly track at all.”

The nephew repeated himself.

“My knowledge don’t come from treatment of Miss Maggie, for I never took her in charge in a professional way, never would. She is the most unpleasing woman I know.” Looking at me, he added, “Begging your pardon for speaking so of any female woman.”

We all waited for the old doctor to continue.

“It is generally known that Bayard married Miss Maggie to spite Miss Amalia, but he only spited hisself. And it served him right, the worthless pup!” The man laughed—a scratchy, choking sound. “Bayard was thought to fall on his sword, as was the saying then, when Miss Amalia cast him aside. He’d already bought the silver service and ordered up new draperies for Shadowland—and those Lotts couldn’t hardly afford the expense. They been high-and-mighty at one time, with corn land so rich, it growed roasted ears, but no more.”

“It’s not the heights you come from that count; it’s the depths you reach,” Wash said.

The doctor frowned, whether from Wash’s comment or from the interruption wasn’t clear. He continued: “Their money was gone with the wind, as we say, and Bayard was too proud to work. But it was Miss Amalia herself that Bayard wanted. Seemingly, she was thought so precious that Bayard would have lived in the quarters on poke salad just to be with her.”

“He didn’t live much better with Miss Magdalene,” Mr. Sam observed.

“No sir, he did not.” Dr. Aldrich stirred the remaining eggs on his plate. “He purely and simply did not.”

The waiter set down my boiled egg and the biscuits. With their fork pricks in the center, they looked like the giant oystershell buttons. The basket made the rounds of the table. “That’s in the past and is all over and done with,” I said as the biscuits came back to me. Reluctantly, I took one and buttered it, setting it on my plate without biting into it.

Mr. Sam watched me, an amused look on his face. He had
known all along that I did not care for the biscuits “Oh no, Miss Nora, it is not over and done with. In Natchez, the past is the present,” he said.

“And anybody who don’t like it, get out of here,” added the nephew. Instead of laughing, the men all nodded.

Thinking of the scraps of paper I’d found hidden in Amalia’s desk, I asked, “Did Miss Amalia and Mr. Lott ever make up?”

“If he done that, Miss Maggie would have killed him for sure,” the doctor said, then gave a kind of impish grin. “Now, why did I say that?”

“Miss Maggie’d not have it in her to do so,” the nephew remarked, glancing at the doctor, but the old man had returned to his eggs. “If Miss Maggie was to have got mad at Bayard, she’d have been a constant misery to him. They fairly hated each other.”

Wash laughed. “It must have got to Bayard, him being smothered down by Miss Maggie, and Miss Amalia living next door, free as frogs.”

“He was killing mad all right,” Mr. Sam said. “Bayard suffered from the sin of pridefulness.”

“Is there anything good to say about Bayard Lott?” I asked.

Mr. Sam reached for the biscuits and said, “Have you another” as he passed them again, and the others busied themselves with the butter and jam.

“He was good to his old people,” Wash said

“And he was right smart-looking. Age never seemed to come on him, and he always dressed rich as cream. Course, Miss Maggie dressed like a field hand,” said the nephew.

“Gentlemen, I ask you not to talk again of Maggie Lott. I have my digestion to think about,” the doctor said.

The big man I had seen in the lobby the day before sat down on the other side of Mr. Sam. He picked up his napkin and placed it on his lap instead of in his shirtfront, then said to Mr. Sam, “Good morning, young man. I see we have a new member at our table.”

“Thank you for that ‘young man’ thing,” Mr. Sam said. “Miss Nora, may I present to you Holland Thomas Brown. He semioccasionally works at the law, and if you are not particular, you may engage his services if you find mine to be unsatisfactory to you.”

“Or too expensive,” Holland put in.