Twisting Topeka (10 page)

His voice didn’t match Reginald’s or
Dr. Fritzl’s. It sounded English. Melanie studied the group. A
young man holding a camera lingered about ten feet away, and
another man with glasses similar to Dr. Fritzl’s stood near,
holding a clipboard. Melanie pointed, “Are those the glasses you
wore last night?”

“
Yes. That’s why I left the
table before you came in for dinner. Mr. Cukor was outside the
front door waiting to hand them to me.”

“
But not because you need
them to see.”

He shook his head. “Because I needed
to look like a doctor. I needed to play a part.”

“
Because…” she felt dizzy.
“Because you’re an actor.”

“
Yes Miss Rains, I’m an
actor.”

“
And you’ve played a doctor
before. In that movie…the one with the leopard and the dog…that’s
who you really are. You’re…you’re…”

“
I’m Cary
Grant.”

“
Ahh…” she shrieked. “I
fell in love with
Cary
Grant
?” She swung the picnic basket at him
then dropped it and ran. Beau barked behind and she continued
through the awakening spring grass until a hand grabbed her
arm.

“
Listen to me,” he
said.

“
You tricked me. Twice,”
she snapped. “What did I ever do to you?”

“
You showed me compassion.
And kindness. And shared your inner beauty. And melted my
heart.”

“
What are you talking
about?”

He clapped his hands on his handsome
face and rubbed hard. “You can’t tell anyone what I’m about to tell
you. Ever.”

“
Okay,” she
snapped.

“
Kate Hepburn is here. She
had a nervous breakdown right before we started filming our next
movie.”

“
Kate…” She closed her
eyes. “Katherine Hepburn.
The
Katherine Hepburn is here? I need to sit down.”
She went straight down into the grass, and Mr. Grant sat next to
her. “Miss Hepburn was in the leopard movie, too.”

“
Yes. But she’s had
difficulties since that movie, and the pressure for this next film
was too much for her. Mr. Cukor, our director and friend, and I
came here to support her. Then he remembered a screenplay that had
been floating around MGM for a few years about a woman who went
crazy and her fiancé who sold the farm to get her well. We were
doing test shots yesterday for that potential film. This hospital
would make an excellent backdrop for it.”

Melanie held her head in her hands.
“When I found you in the park yesterday—.”

“
I was still in character.
Reginald is the film character.”

“
And last
night?”

“
Your father agreed to let
me stay with him since he was supposed to be alone all week. But
when his maid discovered your note that you were home, she called
him. He called me at the house later and insisted I disguise
myself. Dr. Fritzl was the first thing I thought of.”

She grabbed Beau and stood quickly.
“And yesterday in the park, when you were playing the role of
Reginald...all that emotion was just acting. I felt so sorry for
you.”

He stood. “None of it was acting. When
I was a child I was told my mother was dead. But she was really put
in a mental institution. I had no idea until my father died a few
years ago. She’s alive but very sick, Miss Rains. Those tears in
the park—they were real.”

She shook her head. “But those
kisses—last night—I was falling for you. I was imagining the most
glorious water fountain. One themed with love and beauty. Instead
of Aphrodite I should have imagined Hades, murky, dirty river water
shooting from his eyes, all over me and Beau and our flowers in the
garden.”

Tears streamed down Mr. Grant’s face,
which Melanie never wanted to see again. She ran back to her car,
and continued running for five months. She spent the summer in New
York with her grandmother, and didn’t come home to Topeka until she
was settled back at Kansas University in the fall.

One mild September weekend
she came home, picked up Beau, and headed to the park. The
daffodils were long since faded, and the chrysanthemums were yet to
arrive. But what had emerged overwhelmed her. She sat on the bench,
gazing at the spectacle for hours. In the clearing stood a sculpted
tree—an olive tree—with a white marble dove gripping to a branch.
Crystal clear water poured down over the top of the branches and
fell gently into a pool. Just before sunset, when the sunrays crept
through the branches and put sparkle in the streams, Melanie took
Beau over to the base of the fountain. A bronze plaque simply
read:
To Elsie and Melanie, with all my
affection, C.G.

She momentarily mirrored the fountain,
tears streaming down her warm cheeks. She assumed ‘Elsie’ to be the
sick mother who brought about real emotion in this park last
spring. Melanie was confident she was the second woman mentioned,
whose pain for the last several months over being tricked was now
being washed away, leaving only sincere, healthy
devotion.

As Mercy Would Have
It

Annette Hope
Billings

Cora Lee Jackson giggled as she played
with her younger siblings in her grandmother’s front yard. She
claimed the right of game choice as the oldest at seven. The game
that morning was Simon Says. Her brother, Merdel, was five and
partially understood the rules. The youngest, Dettie, was a happy
lost cause at age four. They’d spent the night with their
grandmother, Meemaw, so their mother could leave early for work.
The children were always happy to stay with their grandmother; time
with her was bliss. Tension was high in the Jackson household—three
rapidly-growing children, very little income and their mother,
Carlotta, had gone two months without a period. The children
experienced the stress at home as a coarseness in the air. Their
chests would tighten when their parents argued. The air was soft at
Meemaw’s and easy to breathe.

Meemaw was cooking a grand Saturday
breakfast as the children played—honey biscuits, fried potatoes
with onions, scrambled eggs and bacon. She took care to fry some of
the bacon just how Cora liked it – so crisp it almost broke when
she picked it up. Meemaw adored her grandchildren equally; the
made-to-order bacon was her nod to Cora being the first
grandchild.

The children knew Meemaw as
a sweet soul, but they’d also seen her be stern as stone. She
always welcomed them into her house with, “Come on in here and give
Meemaw some suga’.” The greeting would be uttered in her caramel,
Tennessee drawl, though Topeka, Kansas, had been home for thirty
years. Poor behavior would result in her spitting out, “Go out
there and get me a switch!” Those switchings were very rare and
were reserved for wrongdoings Meemaw felt “would make Sweet Jesus
weep.” Cora and her siblings were well-behaved and vastly more
familiar with their grandmother’s face-covering kisses than welts
on their legs. Their mother disagreed with how far Meemaw allowed
the children to go before she corrected them. But Meemaw always
stood her ground. She’d explain that sparing-the-rod scriptures
applied to parents,
not
grandparents. Carlotta would roll her eyes.
Meemaw would invariably go on to say her discipline decisions were
based on “the Gospel according to Meemaw.”

Out in the yard, the children remained
swept up in play. Cora was impatient with the number of times she
had to re-explain the rules. Then, Merdel would do something that
would make all of them erupt in laughter. Cora’s back was to the
road as she shouted Simon and non-Simon commands.

“
Simon says hop on one
leg!”

She didn’t notice the car slowly
coming up the road. Merdel and Dettie saw it. The orange Plymouth
sedan slowed to a stop at their yard. The two younger children
watched a man exit the driver door and walk quickly around the
front of the vehicle. His eyes narrowed on Cora and he sprinted
toward her. They froze.

Not understanding why her siblings
stood unmoving, Cora started to repeat, “Simon says ho”— she heard
commotion behind her. As she turned toward the sound, the man was
already at her. He snatched her up, mid-turn, with one arm. She
screamed. Her siblings screamed. Their three-part chorus of terror
escalated as the man opened the front passenger door and threw Cora
inside.

“
Sit still, girl!,” he
hissed as she tried to keep him from shutting the door. Cora
stopped screaming, tears rolling and looked at her siblings through
the car window. Seconds later, the man was in the driver’s seat and
speeding away.

Simon says don’t
cry.

Cora’s sibling’s last sight of her was
her wet face pressed against the car window.

Meemaw heard the screams through a
closed kitchen window. The sound was different than the familiar
squeals in the peak of children’s play. She felt a bolt of
dread.

“
Sweet Jesus,” she murmured
as she hobbled across the kitchen to the window.

Her biggest fear was one of the
children, likely Dettie, had wandered into the road and been struck
by a car. A quick prayer took shape as she reached the window above
the sink. She moved the curtains aside and reserved hope that what
she’d heard was from some overzealous game. She’d tell them to
quiet down, maybe threaten a switching, then she’d finish
cooking.

She could see her entire front
yard.Two of her grandchildren clung to each other crying. No Cora.
Merdel and Dettie saw her at the window. The look on their faces...
Meemaw’s head swam. She steadied herself on the counter and pressed
a hand to her heart. Terror coursed through her. She knew whatever
had happened could not be undone with a switch.

She hurried to the front door. Merdel
and Dettie, hysterical, met her there and flew into her arms. She
pulled them from her enough to look into their faces.

“
What’s wrong? Where’s Cora
Lee?” she asked them. “Where is Sissy?”

She looked frantically up and down the
road as she tried to make out their sob-riddled answers. She
expected to see Cora lying in the road. She saw nothing except a
cloud of dust. Her heartbeat doubled. She wondered if a car had hit
Cora and kept going.

She looked back down at the children
and pressed them again. “Please, Meemaw needs you to hush cryin’
and tell me where Cora is. It’ll be okay.”

Many minutes passed before she settled
them enough to understand what they were saying. When she made out
Dettie was saying “car,” she thought her worst fear had been
realized.

She searched the road again and asked,
“A car hit Cora?”

Merdel shook his head, “No Ma’am, a
white man stealed Cora in a car!” He began to sob hard again.
Meemaw was stunned.

“
No, Merdel, no!” She
grabbed his shoulders. “Are you
sure
?” Then, desperately, “Is this a
game? Is Cora hiding and you children are trying to trick Meemaw?
Tell me the truth and I won’t be mad at none of you.” Even as she
spoke the words, she knew the story was too awful for him to
create. She groaned, “Please, Jesus, please” as she turned and led
the children into the house. She made a frantic call to the
sheriff. Next, she phoned the home where her daughter was
working.

The lady of the house answered and
replied curtly to Meemaw’s request to speak with
Carlotta.

“
I do not allow my help to
receive calls.”

Meemaw swallowed hard. Rarely-used
profanity rose in the back of her  throat like
bile.

“
Please Ma’am, this is a
terrible emergency with one of her children.” Silence.
“Please.”

The woman did not respond. Meemaw
heard the phone being laid down hard.

Minutes later, “Mama,” it was
Carlotta, “what’s wrong?”

“
Carlotta, something has
happened to Cora,” she began.

Meemaw couldn’t recall later how she
explained the unthinkable to her daughter. But she would never
forget her daughter’s sustained howl of, “N-o-o-o-o-o-o-o, Mama,
n-o-o-o-o-o-o!”

The phone at the Jackson home had been
turned off. She called a neighbor to go tell the children’s father
to come. The next call was to her pastor. His reply, “We’re on our
way, MotherSister.”

Meemaw had been standing as she made
the calls, the children clinging to her clothes on either side. She
collapsed into a recliner once she knew the pastor was on his way.
She drew the children onto her lap and rocked them. She cried quiet
prayers while the bacon burned to black.

A contingent of folks from True
Holiness Baptist Church arrived soon. Each had a Bible in hand.
They arrived before the sheriff. The pastor had gone by and picked
up Carlotta. She called Merdel and Dettie to her as she ran through
the door. She clutched them so tightly they’d be bruised the next
day. Once Meemaw saw the children were in their mother’s care, the
room began to spin around her. Church ladies eased her down onto a
sofa and fanned her. She declined their insistence that she take
sips of water.

Through a torrent of tears, she
managed to speak. “I knew something awful had happened because I
heard Sweet Jesus weeping when I looked out and saw Cora
gone.”