Rain (18 page)

"Zaddie's gone to a great deal of trouble for us tonight."

"No trouble..." murmured Zaddie perfunctorily, but her denial was made with pride.

"Look at us, Zaddie," said Elinor.

"Ma'am?"

"Look at us, Zaddie, because it's the last time you'll ever see us all together like this. Lilah is right: we all die. And there is somebody standing out there in the graveyard tonight, leaning on Mary-Love's tombstone, and he's flipping a coin to see which one of us is next."

The dinner was substantial, and it seemed that there was no end to the dishes that Zaddie, Luvadia, and Melva brought out of the kitchen. Malcolm had not anticipated more than three bottles of wine being drunk, but as things turned out he had to open a fourth bottle, and then a fifth. Afterward, when the dishes had been cleared and two pots of coffee put out—one for Miriam, and one for everyone else— Malcolm and Billy lighted cigars. In the last stage of this evening, the conversation was mostly between Miriam and Lilah, and it turned again to the Gas-keys' peculiar habit of stealing away one another's children.

Miriam didn't go into that subject directly, but her tack was nevertheless controversial. She said bluntly, "I hope you're gone be happy with that man, Lilah."

"I intend to be," said Lilah, equally as bluntly.

"The fact is," said Miriam, and this was her point, "we were all hoping a little that you and Tommy Lee would get married."

Lilah and Tommy Lee exchanged glances.

"Lilah wasn't in love with me," said Tommy Lee. "Too bad."

"That's a matter of opinion," remarked Grace, not entirely beneath her breath.

"I suppose it would have been more convenient for everybody if I had married Tommy Lee," said Lilah. "Convenient for everybody but me, I mean."

"You and Tommy Lee could have taken over around here when I am old and gray," said Miriam.

"We could have taken over when you were dead, Miriam," retorted Lilah. "I don't see you giving up too much of your power until then."

"Maybe not," agreed Miriam. The other Caskeys sat back farther in their chairs, leaving room for the two bejeweled women. "Maybe not," Miriam repeated, "but I've been good to Tommy Lee, haven't I? I've given him things to do."

"You've been real good to me," said Tommy Lee to Miriam. "She's taught me a lot," he said to the assemblage in general. "She's given me a lot of responsibility."

"There was another reason I would have liked for Lilah to marry Tommy Lee," Miriam went on, rushing in over the end of Tommy's grateful speech.

"What else?" asked Lucille curiously.

"Malcolm and I have been lonely next door all by ourselves. I was hoping that Lilah and Tommy Lee would have a baby. That's all." Miriam poured another cup of coffee. "Zaddie," she said to the black woman who was passing through the room just then, "would you bring me a bigger cup, please? I'm gone be pouring out of this pot all night long if you don't."

"You'd want me to have a baby so you could steal it," said Lilah. "Just like you stole me."

"Yes," Miriam admitted calmly. "Except I would have gotten this one real young. I was really hoping for it, Lilah. Malcolm and I really have been pretty lonesome since you went off."

Billy said: "Now you know how Elinor and I felt when you took Lilah away from us." It was not an accusatory remark, it was only an observation.

Miriam didn't reply to this, but to Lilah she said: "You think you and this boy might think about having a baby?"

"He wants one," said Lilah. "I don't."

"Why not?" asked Lucille.

"Because I see no point in going through months of discomfort and pain so that Miriam can get on a plane and come up to New York and take it away from me."

"I don't think it's that much pain," said Miriam. "Besides, I'd sent Melva or somebody up there to take care of you, if that's what you're worried about. I don't even care if it's a boy or a girl, and neither does Malcolm. And you can pick out any name you want. You can call it Shadrach-Meshach-and-Abednego if you want to."

"No," said Lilah bluntly. "I won't do it."

"Miriam," said Grace in indignant astonishment, "you are just like Mary-Love. You can't pour a cup of coffee without its being a plot."

Zaddie had brought the larger cup, and Miriam filled it with coffee.

"I'm not plotting," she said. "I just thought it would be nice to have a baby. Malcolm and I got married too late. And everybody in this room has had the pleasure of raising a child except for Malcolm and me."

"Then go out and find one," suggested Lilah sharply. "Visit an orphanage. Put an ad in the paper."

"I want a Caskey baby," said Miriam. "It has to be a Caskey baby."

Lilah said nothing.

Quite calmly, Miriam continued: "After all I've done for you, after all that I've given you, you wouldn't say 'thank you' if you were tied to the stake and I was holding a lighted match."

"Thank you, Miriam," Lilah said, "for everything you've done for me. But I still won't give you a little baby."

"
I'm sorry," said Billy, when everyone had gone home and he and Elinor were ascending to their bedrooms, "that Miriam and Lilah had to have words like that."

"Miriam was just being Miriam," said Elinor, shaking her head with a smile, "and Lilah was being Lilah. I don't imagine there was any harm done. They walked home together, didn't they? And next week Miriam will fly up to New York and meet that man Lilah married."

"What do you think?" said Billy, pausing on the staircase landing. He had with him the last half bottle of champagne and a glass.

"About what?" asked Elinor, leaning for a moment against the frame of the great staircase window. They could hear Zaddie and Mejva down in the dining room, clattering silverware and crystal as they cleared the room.

"About that baby business? Do you think that if Lilah had a baby, Miriam would try to steal it?"

"Yes," said Elinor. "I think she probably would."

"Do you think that's right?" Billy poured himself a glass of the champagne. "Should I have brought up another glass?" he asked parenthetically.

Elinor shook her head. "I don't know if it's right or not," she said. "Besides, what right do I have to say anything about it? I'm the one who started the whole business by giving up Miriam. The question should be: was that right?"

"Was it?"

Elinor started up the short flight of stairs from landing to the second floor. "Why are you drinking that champagne?" she asked. "Didn't you have enough wine with dinner?"

"I hate to see it go to waste," said Billy, "and thinking of Frances made me sad." He followed Elinor up; she stood in the door of her sitting room.

"Frances?" she repeated.

"When you were toasting everyone who was dead," Billy said, "why did you leave out Frances?"

"Billy," said Elinor, "drink your champagne and go to bed. It's been a long evening."

Billy turned away and went into his own room. He crossed over to the window that looked out at Miriam's house. He could see Miriam and Lilah putting away the jewels they had worn. He stood there sipping his champagne, until all the lights were extinguished in Miriam's house and his bottle was empty. Then he took off his clothes and got into bed. Without thought or reflection of any sort, he fell asleep.

He awoke sometime later; how much later he had no way of knowing. But it seemed late. His head ached, and he lay very still, pressing his fingers against his brow, hoping to suppress some of the throbbing. That did nothing. He went into the bathroom, swallowed two aspirin, and wiped his face with a damp cloth. That helped. He returned to his bedroom, and then, with the throbbing not so strong in his brain, he heard the voices. As usual, they came from Elinor's room. The champagne had made him forget about them when he lay down upon the bed, and the champagne now made him abandon his studied timidity in the matter of Elinor's visitors. Without any reflection on the consequences of his action, he went to the door to the hallway and opened it softly. The voices were louder now, but because Elinor's sitting room door was closed, he still could not make out what was being said.

He recognized, as before, the voice that was his wife's—except that Frances was dead, drowned in the black water of the Perdido.

Billy stepped out into the hallway. The carpet was damp beneath his feet. He could smell the water, and knew that it was from the river. It felt gritty on the soles of his feet, and he knew that to be Perdido mud. He walked across to the door of Elinor's sitting room. He quietly turned the knob and inched the door open.

He wasn't so startled by the sudden clarity of Elinor's voice as he was by the light from her bedroom that fell suddenly aslant the leg of his pajamas. He stood still and listened.

".. .too late," Elinor said.

"No, it's not," came the other voice, Frances's, except that Frances was drowned. "No, it's not, Mama. But it's going to be if you stay here. You're old, you're so old. And it hurts me when I see you getting older every day. I come to see you whenever I can, whenever I can make the change—but that's not all the time. And Nerita never makes it—I don't think she can. What happens if I can't do it anymore? You should come stay with us, Mama. If you came back with us, you wouldn't get old, you might even get young again. Mama, Nerita and I would take good care of you!"

"I don't want to leave, darling."

"Why not? What's keeping you here? Daddy's dead. James is dead. Queenie is dead."

"Billy—" said Elinor.

"Billy stays here because of you. He doesn't want to leave you alone, that's all. If you went away, Billy would go off somewhere and have him a good time, I know he would, and it'd be good for him, too. Poor old Billy! You know, the other night I opened the door of my old room, and there was Billy—"

"You shouldn't have! What if you had waked him up?"

"Mama," laughed the someone who couldn't have been Frances, though she had Frances's voice and called Elinor Mama, "don't you think Billy knows something's going on?"

"He's never said anything."

"Neither has Zaddie. Don't you think Zaddie knows?"

"Zaddie certainly knows," agreed Elinor.

"And Billy does, too. Anyway, he didn't wake up. And I wanted to show Nerita what her daddy looked like."

"What did Nerita think?" Elinor asked curiously.

"She thought he looked old. And he does. Poor old Billy."

Billy pushed open the sitting room door all the way and then stepped into the light. Elinor sat in one of the plush new armchairs she had bought after Oscar's death, and on the edge of the bed sat Frances, his wife. Yet it wasn't Frances. It couldn't have been, for Frances had been born in 1922, and would have been nearly fifty now, had she not drowned in the Perdido. This Frances was no more than thirty-two or thirty-three, and she looked like the Frances that Billy last remembered.

"Frances?" said Billy.

Frances laughed, drawing her cotton robe across her breast. "Hey, Billy," she said shyly. "Why haven't you gotten married in all these years?"

"Billy," said Elinor, not sternly but sadly, "go back to bed."

Billy stepped further into the room. He stood behind Elinor's chair, and looked at his wife.

"Are you alive?" he asked.

"No," said Elinor.

Frances shook her head. "No," she said. "I'm not."

"Who is Nerita?" Billy asked.

"Nerita is your other little girl," said Frances. "Nerita didn't come tonight."

"But some nights she does come," said Billy. "And she sings?"

"You've heard her?" asked Elinor, looking up at Billy over her shoulder.

"Yes," said Billy, "I've heard her. And when you opened my door the other night, I was awake, but I didn't open my eyes."

"Go back to bed," said Elinor.

"You're not sad about me, are you?" Frances asked curiously.

Billy shook his head. "I never was," he admitted.

"Good," said Frances. "Then go back to bed, Billy, and whenever you hear Nerita and me coming upstairs to visit Mama, don't come out, understand?"

"You're dead," he said quietly. "You don't look dead. You live at the bottom of the junction, don't you? I remember, on the day we decided to get married, you took me on top of the levee and we went down and looked at the junction, and you told me that you had been down there. And that's where you are now, isn't it—at the bottom of the junction."

"Billy—" Elinor began.

"Are you going back with Frances?" Billy asked his mother-in-law.

"Yes, she is," answered Frances quickly.

"No, I'm not," said Elinor. "I'm going to stay here with you, Billy."

"Mama—"

"Shhh!" said Elinor. "I made my choice a long time ago, Frances. I made my choice on Easter Sunday of 1919, when I sat on the edge of that bed in the corner room of the Osceola. I'm not going back on that choice now."

"You could come back, Mama!"

Elinor shook her head. She seemed to have forgotten that Billy was there, or perhaps she wanted him to hear.

"I can't go back," she said. "You make the choice once, and that's all. You were born here, in this room, darling, and you made the choice to go back to the river. I was born—well, I wasn't born in any feather bed—and one day when this whole town was under water, I saw a white man and a colored man rowing along in a little green boat and I made my decision. So I'll finish out my time here."

"Mama, it's such a waste!" cried Frances.

"It's not a waste. I haven't regretted it for one single minute. Not even when Oscar died and I knew that it was Mary-Love and John Robert DeBorde-nave who killed him—that he died because of me and what I had done to them. I didn't even regret that, darling."

Frances slipped down off the edge of the bed onto the floor at her mother's feet.

"Mama, what will Nerita and I do without you? How am I supposed to let you grow old and die? You're already so old now!"

"There's nothing you can do, darling. Not a thing. I have Billy here"—she hadn't forgotten him, and reached up and grasped his hand—"and Billy will take care of me. Billy, that's why I've kept you on."