One Hundred Years of Marriage (6 page)

Mrs. Runyon crowded past him and took up her place on the couch. “Sit down, Mohammed,” she said, “Miss Brady wants to ask you about Tom Delaney.” Her voice was raised, to make herself clear to the foreigner. I waited. Mohammed did not sit down. He took a couple of steps closer to me, and I thought he had something private to say. Vigilant in her chaperoning, Mrs. Runyon pulled a little forward on the couch. For the first time I saw Mohammed held an index card in his fine, caramel fingers.

“Tom thought you would come for this sooner,” he said. “It may not be correct any longer.” He looked so grave. I was sure he would have told me how much Tom loved me if Mrs. Runyon hadn’t been sitting there.

* * *

It was the first Friday in September, and I was waiting for Mama outside the clinic in Oklahoma City. When she came out of the heavy door, I knew she had an announcement. A week ago she’d reported that Dr. Mendler had told her she had to start driving herself, so I thought she was about to tell me this was the last time I had to come to the clinic.

She repaired the wind damage to her hair and smoothed her skirt as I guided the Buick down the hill. “I need to find a job,” she said, “because I’m going to seek a divorce from Cecil Brady.”

We were whipping along pretty fast, the wind through the open windows making enough noise for me to doubt I’d heard her right.

“Go on,” I said in the neutral tone she’d told me Dr. Mendler used.

“Don’t you think I should?” She sounded like I’d objected.

“I’ll help you, Mama. We’ll get you a job and a divorce.”

* * *

When I got home from registering for my sophomore classes, I found Mama sitting at the kitchen table writing on a white school tablet. She looked up like she’d been apprehended in a crime, then she squared her shoulders and said, “I’d appreciate it if you’d look this over, Patricia. I’m just trying to get my thoughts straight.”

I picked up the stack, titled, “Why I Need a Divorce” with subtitles, Dignity, Fairness, Honesty, Trust.

“This is good, Mama, to get your thoughts straight, but a lawyer will need other arguments.”

She didn’t say anything, but the next day she cleaned out her closet and made repairs to everything that could be considered office wear. She read the want ads and made phone calls. She wasn’t quite herself anymore. This new person had appointments to keep, forms to fill out, a ballpoint pen and a calendar in her purse.

“You’re right to get a job lined up before you discuss anything with Daddy.”

“I don’t see how I can do this, Patricia, go off and leave you children. What about poor Ernest?”

“I’ll look after Ernest. Don’t think about leaving right now. Just think about getting a job.”

“Daddy never wanted me to work after we got married.”

“Mama!” I yelled. “Just get a job!”

The next day Mother was offered two jobs, one at the Chamber of Commerce, the other at the water company. She had come home shaking. “Congratulations,” I whispered as I put on an apron to help her in the kitchen. She was making a roast beef and a chocolate cake.

“I’ve got to tell Daddy tonight,” she said.

“Just about the job, right?”

“About everything. I feel so guilty plotting all the time. It isn’t fair to him.”

“Mother!” I said in a loud whisper. “You need to talk to a lawyer
before
you mention divorce to him. He will rattle you.”

“I don’t want a lawyer. I don’t want a fight.” She was stirring the gravy, hard, more like beating egg whites.

“Is there someone you could talk to, someone who’s gotten a divorce? Maybe Clarice Windom’s mother.”

“I could never talk to
her
!” Mother’s eyes looked frantic and she continued whipping the gravy. “Maybe you could ask Tom what we should do.”

“Tom hasn’t written me back yet. He went out to Washington State to a job interview.”

“Why so far away when lots of law firms right here in town would be happy to have him?”

“You know, Mama, that’s a very good question!” This came out from between my clenched teeth. “I let Tom go.”

“Why?” she gasped. “Tom was wonderful. I thought he might be the one.”

“Oh, no, Mama,” I blurted. “I couldn’t let myself go after a man that was good and whole. No. None of that for the women in this family! We ruin our own happiness!” I was hurting her, just as she was getting stronger, I was attacking, but I couldn’t stop. “Why is that? Mama? Why is that?”

The meal should have been festive, but since three people at the table had no idea why we were eating like Christmas, conversation was stymied. Everyone said how good everything tasted, and Mama said three times how the meat had been on sale. Then we just ate. The General kept drawing himself up at the head of the table, his chest swelling beneath his tie, his eyes circling from me to Mama to Olivia to Ernest to the roast on his plate, looking for a clue.

After supper Olivia left for a friend’s house, and I asked Ernest to help me with the dishes. He seemed relieved to have someone speak to him. It was only 7:00 o'clock, still light but over 90 degrees outside, so I told Ernest to get the attic fan going. I figured its roar and my steady stream of questions regarding his thoughts about going into the seventh grade would cover any surprise announcements that might be made elsewhere in the house.

Just as I was snapping closed the dishwasher there was a crash from the front bedroom and a shout from Mama. Ernest and I ran in to see The General on the floor and Mother bending over him. One of the china dresser lamps was smashed on the floor. She’d taken a shortcut to freedom, I figured, and killed him.

“Call an ambulance,” she said. Ernest had already picked up the receiver.

* * *

“He’s going to be okay,” I said and patted Mother’s hand. She’d sat down in the hallway for the first time since we’d arrived at the hospital, her in the ambulance with Daddy, and me and Ernest in the Buick. It was now nearly 3:00 a.m. Her pink shirtwaist was limp, its starched collar smudged from The General’s resting head. “And you’re going to be okay, too.” I looked her straight in the eye.

“Oh, I couldn’t go now. If ever God sent a sign, this was it.”

“No!” I wailed. “You’re wrong. A heart attack is not a sign from God. Why’d you tell him?”

“I had to tell him I wanted to leave. He had asked me why on earth I wanted to get a job. I’ve been impatient. God will show me how to be a better wife.”

“Mama, please don’t talk like that.”

“Patty, darlin’.” She looked across the hall to the name plate on my father’s room, CECIL BRADY. “This is my job.”

* * *

Three days later I brought the Buick to the hospital’s discharge entrance and went up to my father’s room. Olivia, her eyes focused on the ceiling, stood in the hallway holding a large gardenia plant. The General sat in a chair beside the bed, his hands in his lap, palms up. Mother moved about him like an old retainer, tying his shoes, buttoning his collar, intent on her job. Finished, she lifted her voice. “Patty, you and Ernest bring everything from the night stand.” She sounded upbeat, in charge. “This wonderful nurse here will push Daddy’s chair.”

The General sagged between the supporting arms of mother and the nurse as they helped him toward the wheelchair. Tests had shown he hadn’t had a heart attack, after all, but was suffering from high blood pressure. He sank heavily into the chair, chest bowed toward his belly, as if not daring to show any sign of health. I gritted my teeth and turned away toward the potted plants on the nightstand.

* * *

Back home Olivia and Mother, each with an arm around his waist, helped The General into the house. Ernest offered to unload the plants from the car, but I said I’d do it. I placed the three delicate philodendron in the sun, pinched the buds off the gardenia, and gave the cactus a long drink from the hose. Ernest watched, a frown on his face.

“I don’t get it,” he said.

I looked up. “What don’t you get, Ernest?”

He stared at the house where our parents’ voices had faded as they’d made their way to the bedroom. “Them,” he said. “I don’t get them.”

“Come on,” I said and slung my arm across his shoulders. “Let’s sit out in the orchard, so we can talk.”

THE END

THE WOODPECKER

1934

So Patricia took her younger brother, Ernest, into the orchard, and with the intention of explaining why their mother agreed to marry their father, she found herself recounting fragments of a late night scene on a country road, details her mother had intentionally told Patricia before she was old enough to understand, details Patricia only began to comprehend as she remembered her mother’s story.

Ever since Alice told her mother she loved Cecil Brady, the poor woman had been a little breathy in his presence. These tentative flutterings confused Cecil who also didn’t know how to take her father’s gentle abuse. “Now Cecil,” Daddy had said on Sunday, “if you make your shoes any shinier, the ladies will have to carry parasols just to protect themselves from the glare.”

Cecil told her privately he couldn’t understand anyone who would make light of a guy’s trying to put his best foot forward especially seeing as the country was in an economic depression—men standing in bread lines, Communists inciting strikes. On the other hand, Dan Hale, her father, could not resist teasing someone who regarded efficiency and ingenuity as cardinal virtues. She thought Cecil half-liked it that Daddy wasn’t a good provider. Last night he’d asked, “Would it help if I paid the grocery bill after we married? Maybe you and I could take over the upstairs in exchange.”

The idea had taken her breath away. It would solve everything. When he wasn’t studying, Cecil could make all the household repairs Mother was always needing. And Daddy could stop selling off an acre here and there, willy-nilly to pay the taxes.

* * *

In her lap Alice adjusted the small box of jams and relishes she was bringing to Cecil’s mother, the labels decorated with flourishes from her own mother’s watercolor brush. If they continued to average thirty miles an hour in this ancient Ford, they’d be at his parents’ house near McAlister in time for dinner at twelve. It would have been fun if she and Cecil had this Sunday to themselves and could drive down a country road and smooch. He was a catch—a fraternity boy with dark curly hair and a square jaw. He wasn’t big, but he was aggressive—hadn’t stood in the stag line with his hands in his pockets at that first
the´ dansant—
had cut in and maneuvered her to a corner where other men couldn’t see her. But there was no time to cuddle today. The sun was coming up, and there was work to be done.

Meeting his parents and two sisters for the first time was a task calling for all a lady’s good manners. She ran her fingers over her hair, checking for any strays from the large knot at her nape, assessing the softness she’d arranged around her face. Her fingers were cold, and she slipped on her kid gloves. Cecil loved all this finery and that she read poetry on the campus radio station. His mother and sisters were undoubtedly very particular people.

But this morning Cecil hadn’t said a word since they’d left her parents waving on the porch, and she could see his jaw working, that little throb that meant he was clenching his teeth. But he needn’t pout, the two of them could handle this dinner if she could just shoo away his foul mood.

“I’m fully prepared for your sisters’ resentment,” she said gaily.

“Why would they resent you?”

“Because you are the youngest and their only brother, and they must adore you more than any breathing creature, which is only natural for older sisters who think no woman in the world is good enough for their smart, handsome, darling little brother.”

Cecil snorted as though he’d never heard the like. “You’re the one who wouldn’t wear my pin until you’d met them.”

“Well that was only proper. I certainly hope this is all right.”

“It’s all set up now.” He said flatly. “It was your idea. Not mine.”

* * *

The house was not the mansion she’d pictured from Cecil’s description. A large, plain clapboard painted a dark yellow with windows trimmed in brown, it had a long porch across the front and four wide steps leading up. But surrounding the house were all the trees he’d promised, bending over the roof in a nice protective way, waving up the hillsides behind the house—evergreens and broad leafs, tall and lush, their leaves turning red and yellow, so different from the stunted scrub oaks she’d grown up with.

The air was sweet and moist. And she could hear birds, perhaps the cardinals and blue birds and woodpeckers she’d seen only in books, solitary birds who sang alone, not flocking with a crowd. She stopped on the path to the door and listened, wishing she knew their separate voices or could hear a woodpecker tapping on a tree. “Come on,” Cecil said, “and remember, you’re my girl, and I love you, and you look like a million bucks.” He took her hand and kissed her knuckles, then paused a moment to look at the house himself before leading her up the steps.

The wide front hall was impressive with yellow oak paneled walls and built-in benches on either side where she imagined men had waited to do business with the original owner, a cotton factor. These benches and the paneling would be something she could tell Mother about, but the house looked bare, and their footsteps echoed. Her heart thumped as Cecil’s mother, Esther Brady, straight and trim, came down the stairs.

“Mother, this is Alice.”

Mrs. Brady stuck out her hand and her eyes zipped up and down Alice’s outfit. “How do you do.” Alice handed her the box of preserves. “Thank you, Alice.” Mrs. Brady turned to her son. “Did ya have any car trouble?”

This? Only this for the girl to whom her son had offered his fraternity pin? No welcoming hug? Where were his father and the two sisters?

“Y’all can sit in the living room.” Mrs. Brady turned toward the back of the house. She must have hired help to speak to in the kitchen. Alice’s fingers checked her hair.

* * *

At dinner Alice carefully cut her fried chicken off the bone with her knife and fork and kept smiling. Elinor, the older of his sisters, sat across the table beside Cecil and dominated the conversation with talk of her own friends. She wore a lovely green silk with a shawl collar and a pearl necklace. She was a senior at O.U., very self-assured, handsome not beautiful, Alice thought, but intimidating. The middle child, Estelle, a junior, sat in silence beside Alice. This was the beauty, dark bobbed curls falling toward her round gray eyes. Perfect figure, perfect hands. She wore a high-necked lace blouse of the sort her mother might have worn as a girl. Engaged to a graduate student, a promising mathematician, her future was assured. Alice had seen her once on campus laughing with her sorority sisters.