Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All (15 page)

Anyhow, he acted mighty dashing and nice to me and I liked him for it. On night walks, he told me stories, ones he’d kept aside even from other grownups. Me and girls my age had always snickered when we saw Captain around town. He forever scared us with his old-fashioned auctioneer’s tendency to appraise us. A soberness like the smell of smoke, it hinted that military good looks and big money still hadn’t made his life no picnic. But the man sure kept a eye out for the most fetching of my classmates. When one of my girlfriends got old enough for him to tip his hat to—she felt his gray eyes on her like a mustard plaster mashed hot across her lower back, then lower, a sealed bid. Out of Captain’s sight, we teased each other. “He looked at you the most, Shirley.” “No,
you
, he stared right at your … middy knot.” Then we collapsed into great sherbet scoops of giggles.

The older women who’d asked for Captain’s hand in marriage? seeing me with him, they did just snub me dead on Falls’ wooden sidewalks. Being fifteen, I liked that part a lot. Poppa soon called me Lady Engaged. He imitated me coming down the aisle and tripping on the carpet while gnawing on my braids’ tips—he mimed a Lucy not able to say “I do” for all the hair stuffing her mouth. “‘Tain’t funny,” goes I. Momma cringed behind her April Preludio. She said there’d be no wedding if my grammar didn’t take a hundred-and-eighty-degree turn toward something I’d not yet noticed, something known—in towns far more advanced than muddy Falls—as civilization. Ever hear of it?

Soon as company come visiting, Poppa started in on engagement jokes—
he took both parts. Odd thing was (and this should of tipped me off, but young as I was I missed it) my own father, flesh and blood, was way better at copying Captain Marsden than he was at doing me. He got Cap by going all stiff-backed, dropping chin against chest, holding elbows far away from ribs, and lowering his voice to sound formal, charbroiled. Me, Poppa would ape by skipping up and down our best parlor, by tripping over nothing, by twirling either braid. So far so good—but, still, Pop missed something basic. Hard to ex
plain. All mimes know that the
real
imitation is what you do with your whole trunk—ain’t just the fussy flibbertigibbet fingertip stuff.

Whilst engaged, I felt disappointed by the Me that he showed company—all the yeast and heat of True Lucille was missing. Underneath my freckles, I felt wild and turquoise as a rebel Indian princess, gorgeous, inky. In front of guests, disappointed, I’d rush over and punch Poppa really hard in his upper arm. Soon we got to tussling on the porch floor like two scrappy boys. Mother would then rise, set down her music, she’d lean back against a wall, one hand held to her throat and hiding her profile cameo like the brooch alone had disappointed her. “No, please, not again, you two, oh no. To our distinguished visitors, I can only say once more, I don’t know them, either of them. Really. What did a woman do to earn this? It’s far beyond seeming droll anymore. What possesses you two to …? Lucille will be a Mrs. in two weeks’ time, and with a good-sized scab on one knee. Look at her. A tragedy. I can’t live like this. Sometimes your pranks suffocate me. Look. I’m suffocating, I tell you.”

Family life!

Poppa paid a secret visit on the County Registrar of Deeds (the listing of who owned what). Red-haired Poppa bobbed home with his best cat-on-the-canary-farm grin. “Exceptional man, this finance of your, gal. Sterling character.”

A typical joke of Poppa’s—saying “finance” for “fiancé.”

And I thought
I’d
chosen Captain William More Marsden!

I STILL
believed I could rescue the boy in him. Bring him out, literal. Little Miss Search Party. I figured I was mightier than any old war. After all, war was over. And me? Why, I’d just begun. Fifteen, that’s the age when the only world event that counts is whatever mood you’re in that day. I was in love. I was confused. I thought
he
was fifteen and I was fifty. Oh Lord. We married.

—
WHICH
came first, child, the rooster or the egg?

YOU KNOW
what comes on at one? Why,
My Children, Right or Wrong
. It’s one full hour of sin and eating out in restaurants. I hear it’s about the most famous of all soap shows. In here it sure is.

When I got sentenced to this Home, it’ll be fourteen years ago, I wouldn’t go near Multi-Purpose, not while no soap program was busying the TV set.
Owing to excess pride, I kept to my bed during every installment. Others could be heard in there, laughing and oohing and aahing. Just burned me up: “Fools, nobody on it is
real!”
I remember back in the twenties and thirties, neighbor women forever listened at
Mary Worth
on the wireless. While I hung up children’s clothes in our back yard, neighbors tried to trap me into gossiping about some people made up to sell Oxydol! I just smirked. I explained that I had nine children and one man in that real house yonder, they kept
me
guessing. “Just you wait,” my lonely next-door neighbor smiled, poor Ruth, brimming with some secret knowledge.

Pride can keep a person off to herself. Folks in here couldn’t eat breakfast without referring to Lance this and Alexandra that. First I thought these two must be a orderly and nurse that livened up all rooms but mine. Just actors on a screen. Well, I grew more determined not to be no softhead, never to break down and join the wheelchair traffic jam at 12:45 p.m. Sheep.

And due to such false pride, I missed the show where Debbie got born! There’s no going back. We pay for our mistakes. Soon enough, one orderly friend, no, one friend who is a orderly, he offered me a dare. Jerome claimed I was afraid of popular entertainment—like my momma with her airs and sheet music, trying and be grand and all. “Ha!” goes I. Somebody else offered me ten cents if I’d come see their show just onct. Woman claimed she wanted to discuss a particular character with me afterwards, needed my expert opinion on that scamp Dr. Marcus. See,
his
fault is—if it’s got a skirt on it, he has to at least
try
. Some women in here say he’s downright attractive (they think any doctor is). These old women claim that, slick and heartless as Marcus is, they’d
know
not to expect any permanent relationship off him. They say that, if he asked, well,
they
wouldn’t mind. Just once. For experience’s sake. Talk’s cheap.

Anyhow, I made fun of folks that forgot their own living children and could speak of nothing else but Pleasantville this and that. So not two days after I accepted Jerome’s dare and then the dime, just two days into the show (20¢) I’m gumming through my midweek chicken à la king when I hear myself go, “All Lance needs is the love of a good woman, and you know I hate to say it but I worry over that day-care center owner and the way he keeps young Debbie mashed so much
on
his lap. True, he teaches her the alphabet real patient but his mustache is sneaky and it’s just something fishy about that one.” You could hear others’ gloating laugh as they chanted, “We got Lucy, we got Lucy.” Like kids! Well, I hung my head. Seemed I was already a
My Children, Right or Wrong
goner. For me, child, since then, there’s been no looking back. If you got a habit you can manage for free and from your wheelchair, why not?

EVERY
rest home in this area enjoys its own pet show. Others hooked on
Children, Right
send notes here, seeking pen pals. Everybody has a favorite adult character they want to discuss in detail but Debbie stays the child that holds all Pleasantville together. The main show here at Lanes’ End Rest
used to be
The Edge of Night
. Then
My Children
came on. First day, our Magnavox in its overhead rack lit up with Lance minus his shirt and Dr. Marcus minus his (during some young bride’s ob/gyn examination yet!). Well, that turned the tide. Later, our men—to show they had noticed but with reasons cleaner than us ladies’—they said, “Young Lance there must swim.” Minnie fires back, “For exercise? with Stacey, Alexandria, Sara, and Chichi the Spanish-speaking maid around? For exercise, Lance doesn’t
have
to swim.”

That got a laugh in Multi-Purpose till others shushed Minnie. She always breaks in with the loudest comments. I blame her 70 percent deafness. One woman couldn’t help correcting Min anyway: “It’s not Alexandria. It’s Alexandra. Everybody knows that. We’ve told and told you. Four actresses have played in her for the past six years but her
name
has stayed Alexandra. Alexandria is a city in Virginia.”

“Egypt,” Professor Taw puts in.

Everybody’s got to be right! Especially at this age.

The Edge of Night
was our hallway’s bread and butter for nineteen years till the vote went against it. Majority rules. With ours being a poorhouse home, we only have the one set. Well,
Night
diehards sure took it personal. You know what one woman did? You won’t believe me but would I invent it? would I bother to? She couldn’t afford her own TV set and she loved the people on
Edge
better than any living soul. So the first day
Children
came on to a full house waiting for more Lance “skin,” this stubborn woman wheeled herself to the nurse’s rolling medication cart (abandoned because staff was watching
My Children
too). She snatched many pills, swallowed everything, including one paper nut cup.

They had to pump her stomach. Unconscious, she begged for
Edge of Night—
I believe I’m mostly telling this to give me time to collect my present self for what comes next in the life of a young girl.

Q
UITE
the ceremony, quite a write-up. Pictures, everything. Even Raleigh sent reporters. Nobody knew how my mother’d swung that. Must of partly been the Captain’s community standing. Part was probably a little trick of Momma’s called cash bribery. (I suspect she sent the Raleigh society reporter a voucher for her prepaid carriage round trip, plus some tidbit of inherited personal jewelry.)

Leaving church, I found a short hallway made of ex-Confederate swords crossed over our heads. I couldn’t really see the fun in that. My three unwed aunts (the local pinnacle of pianistic education) had made my traveling outfit by hand. It was silk-lined, a plaid organdy, the envy of all. I didn’t feel worthy of it, really. Adulthood felt like Halloween. My three kind homely aunts praised me as smart. What did
they
know? Everybody made me think I’d picked him. I guess I someway did. I was near the age he’d been when war ended. I soon caught on fast enough—like young Marsden had to. I came to after our first battle. That’s what I called the honeymoon. That was the storming of Fort Sumter all right and guess who played the fort?

Wedding trip clear to Georgia. By train then buggy. Talk about dust. And me in the excellent new dress (it wearing me), dove-gray piping, ankle-length hem, the short bolero-ish jacket, cute. Cap acted real polite. Every ten miles he asked did I want watering, like I was some thirsty filly or had a bladder condition. He kept touching the brim of his big black hat each time he looked my way. I mostly wanted to get alone with his eyes, wanted to leave the rude suet remainder of him (them pink extra hundred and ninety-odd pounds) in the hotel hallway on some gilt chair where nobody ever sat. I would only save the parts of him I trusted. Oh, I thought I was getting a pup for Christmas: I didn’t know what a war
was
.

Holding reins, Captain told me secret plans for turning his livestock slaughter pen into the Chicago of the South. Sounded good to me. I listened and was pleased with him. We looked nice together. Folks noticed. Then night came on. How old are you?

—Will you check out this spotted hand beginning to wobble? Things I’m telling happened miles of decades back. A world ago. Feels about as recent as a sneeze. Oh dear, what time does your watch say? We only got a short while till the lunch chime sounds. My, how time flies when I’m doing all the talking. You booked for afterwards? Because, see, I believe I’m only getting started here.

This recording machine looks too small to be American. So it
is
Japanese. See, living on a little island means they make the tiny things better, saves precious space. Oh, I read. They’re steadier workers than Americans are now. The winning-side Yankees are finally learning what it’s like to be beat by choicer equipment and finer factories. Be good for Northerners’ character, a bit of competition. Now it’s
their
turn for a little Appomattox ash-eating. Things shift. Woman down the hall blames these recent weather changes on the astronauts going back and forth in it. I said that, I remember. Slipping. You get tired. Lunch soon. Lunch helps.

Still, I always figured I would tell my story to equipment homemade as me. How much film, tape, or whatever you got stowed in this contraption? Enough to string a whole long gabby life along? Because—listen, I’m deciding here—if you got the stuff to maybe try and glue them to, I sure got some things that want saving. Maybe I do only have the four good teeth left but, darling, I own around one million examples.

There’s a old woman down the hall—not the astronaut one, another—I mean a real old woman (you think
I’m
bad) and she’s sealed in what we used to call a iron lung. Now it’s named “a life-support system.” That’s what stories are for me now—a goodly air bubble safe-deposited inside most every one. I now have stories like I onct had me children—a crowded table waiting, each with allergies and appetites. Oh, I could flat burn this little Japanese’s ears.

But, first, draw a little closer. You think I’ve forgot the honeymoon part, don’t you? No, just stalling. I ain’t all that feebleminded quite yet. Just cowardly at times. You know how honeymoons are, honeymoons then, anyways. Nowdays there’s no shocks left. That, I figure, is better than the surprise element. Jerome will soon come fetch me for lunch and then
My Children, Right or Wrong
. You ever watch? Be honest.