Love and Lament Page 27

  “What, no, I don’t care one way or the other,” Mary Bet said.

  Hooper now turned his dark eyes on her in a way that melted her insides every time. He reached over and squeezed her hand, then shook his head and sighed. He let her hand go. “You don’t mind that people say we’re kissing cousins, do you?”

  “I’ve never heard it said,” she snapped. Then in a softer voice, she added, “I don’t care what people say.” She closed her eyes a second, wishing that her cousin would go ahead and pull her to him. But she knew he wouldn’t. He wanted to, she knew that, but she knew that something made him stop himself. She thought that were she a man, she wouldn’t stop herself. She’d tell her cousin that she loved him.

  “What do you think of Jeannette Rankin?” he asked.

  Mary Bet laughed and shook her head. “A congressman and women can’t even vote.”

  “A congress woman is what they’re calling her. So you don’t think women are responsible enough to vote?”

  “Most people aren’t responsible enough to vote, Sheriff. But I’d say that, on the whole, women match up right well with men on the important things.”

  “So do I,” he said. “I wonder what Leon Thomas thinks. He’s pretty old-fashioned.”

  “I don’t care what he thinks about it,” Mary Bet replied, “nor anything else.”

  She decided to make herself a new dress, and that very day she went to the mercantile and bought a pattern and three yards of robin’s-egg blue (for she was tired of navy) medium-weight taffeta—she didn’t want to spend much—and a half yard of crisp white organdy. And that night, with Flora working away on her own project, she began pinning and cutting. She had not made a dress in she didn’t know how long, and the work felt good even after spending the day at the typewriter. This was a different sort of handiwork altogether—she was creating something you could see and hold and use. The two machines’ rhythms of treadle and bobbin interwove in a conversational murmur of thropping and clicking, and Mary Bet found herself totally absorbed in the work of hand and foot, her eyes focused on the stitching as she fed the cloth into the insatiable mouth of the needle. Even the smell of the new fabric, pierced again and again, had its own distinct odor, a fresh fibrous pungency that, along with the murmur of the machine, reminded her of home.

  At ten o’clock Flora announced she was going to bed, and suddenly Mary Bet felt herself so sleepy that even though she was halfway up one side with a zigzag stitch, she released the thread and carefully folded her work atop the machine.

  “I expect that’ll get his attention,” Flora said. She bit through her thread and tied off a stitch.

  “Whose attention?”

  “Your cousin’s, or the new school superintendent’s.”

  Mary Bet clucked her tongue. “My cousin is a good friend, and that’s not going to change after ten years just because …”

  “Because there’s somebody who might really care about you? Don’t hurt that man’s feelings by trifling with your cousin—he has all the women he needs.”

  “So you don’t think it’s too late for me?”

  “It’s never too late to get married. It’s never too late to do anything.” Flora laughed. She thought Mary Bet one of the funniest people she knew, because she was “funny without trying.” But it was Flora who had the wry sense of humor, who would look out of her blue eyes and say the most strange and interesting things Mary Bet thought she had ever heard about any topic—certainly as amusing and clever as anything the men said down at the courthouse.

  “I wish I had your gumption and know-how, Flora. You know more about politics than I believe the politicians do.”

  “I know enough to know when to shut up,” Flora said. “And that’s anytime a man is speaking. Unless he’s wrong, and then I just can’t help myself.”

  Mary Bet laughed and shook her head, smiling at her friend and wondering why no man had found her attractive. It didn’t help that she made little effort with jewelry and makeup. She had a plain face, Mary Bet thought, studying it as critically as if she were a man, and a sharp nose with freckles sprayed across it and onto her cheeks. But her hair was fine and silky and a delicate brown, and if she grew it out it could be her finest feature. Flora was hard where Mary Bet was soft, abrasive and brook-no-nonsense where Mary Bet was likely to be forgiving and maybe a tad too permissive. Mary Bet admired her friend for the qualities she herself lacked.

  She recalled one evening when they were sitting in the little front parlor after a supper that Mary Bet had prepared—she had become the cook, while Flora had fallen into the role of cleaning girl. Flora had paused in her sewing and leaned into her straight-back chair, putting a hand to her face.

  “What is it, dear?” Mary Bet asked, looking up from her own work.

  “Just resting my eyes. They go all crossed on me if I work too long at a stretch.”

  Mary Bet put her needlework down and came over to her friend’s side. She took Flora’s hand away from her face and began to gently massage her temples and her eye sockets, then worked her way slowly over Flora’s head and neck and down to her shoulders. “You work so hard, dear,” she said. “You should rest your eyes at night.”

  “I don’t see you doing that,” Flora said, her voice strangely dreamy and far away.

  “That’s because I do a different kind of work during the day. Typing’s not the same as sewing, and I don’t do it all day.” She took in the soft warm smell of Flora’s cropped hair, enjoying the crisp feel of the edge line and how it just touched her neck. “Flora,” she said, “your hair’s so nice and silky. Look how rough mine is.”

  “Your hair’s as soft as a fawn’s.”

  “It’s not any such thing. It’s coarse, or else I’d wear it short like yours.” She pulled back to admire the shape of her friend’s head, always the same under her cowl of fine sandy hair, and her sharp nose, shorter than her own Hartsoe beak, but every bit as odd—everything about her friend’s features seemed suddenly so endearing and lovely Mary Bet wanted to give her a kiss.

  Now, looking at Flora, she remembered that time, and again wondered if she herself could really live all her life without marrying and having a family. If Flora could do it, then couldn’t she? The idea of sex and childbearing and child-raising sometimes seemed so difficult and unlikely that she may as well have contemplated becoming an African missionary. Flora said something about how stubborn muslin was and how she’d have to undo the stitches, and then she smiled curtly and disappeared up the stairs.

  All week Mary Bet thought about the dress and how eager she was to wear it as soon as the weather turned warm again. It would be nice enough to wear in church, with a jacket and the proper hat, though she pictured wearing it to the courthouse. Vanity, vanity, vanity. And yet the work itself, the business of finishing the dress, occupied a corner of her mind during the next several days.

  It was spring again and the birds were busy all day, and night as well. The chirruping of spring peepers started up in the darkness. Blossoms had returned to the crab apple trees and the crape myrtle and the lilac, and even the spindly hawthorn in Mrs. Gooch’s side yard put on its finery and its sweet smell once again, as though to say there could never be enough springs.

  Amanda, who had developed crow’s-foot wrinkles around her eyes and the corners of her mouth, was now living with Mr. Hennesey a block away from Mrs. Gooch. When Mary Bet saw her at the mercantile on Saturday, she told her that married life must suit her because she looked no more than twenty-one—and, in spite of the wrinkles, she meant it.

  “If I look twenty-one,” Amanda said, “you look fifteen.”

  Mary Bet laughed dismissively and said, “I’m going on thirty and feel every year of it.”

  “Well you oughten, Mary Bet, you really oughten.”

  “I’m afraid the next time I turn around I’ll be forty. And then what?”

  Amanda put on a serious look, and Mary Bet was sorry she’d said what she had, especially when Amanda was in such
a hopeful frame of mind. “And then you’ll look even more beautiful,” Amanda said.

  After breakfast she went up and changed into her new taffeta dress, deciding to give the dress one more try before she altered it. She’d worn it only once—to church—and decided that the waist was too low and that it felt too tight around the bustline; she’d received what she’d thought were perfunctory compliments, and a couple of people had just stared, as though they couldn’t make out what was wrong. She’d glanced to make sure the organdy ruffles at the wrists and hem hadn’t somehow come loose.

  When she got to the courthouse, she went directly to the lavatory. There was no plumbing in the house she and Flora rented, and she liked washing her hands and face in the lavatory with the warm water running and no one around. It seemed the greatest luxury in the world to spend ten minutes at her morning ablutions. Back in the office she was surprised to see Miss Mumpford already at her desk and busy. The old woman hunched over her typewriter so that her shoulders nearly met her pendulous ears; she glanced up and said, “They’re talking about forming up a unit.”

  Not a word about the dress, not that Mary Bet had been expecting it, and then something that made no sense. “What?” she said. “A unit?”

  “A reserve unit, but it won’t be reserve for long.” She pulled the page out in frustration, crumpled it into her trash can, and inserted another, backed by carbon paper, into the roller. Mary Bet waited for the taciturn Miss Mumpford, who enjoyed dramatic pauses when she was sharing any sort of gossip or news. “They’re gonna be drilling over behind the post office, and there’s a unit already drilling in Hartsoe City at the old Murchison place.”

  So war had returned to her grandfather’s house, where he had trained a militia and sent his son and son-in-law off to an uncertain fate. Mary Bet was suddenly filled with questions: Who was joining? Where would they go from here? And, most of all, when? “It’s just people twenty-one to thirty, isn’t it?” she asked. Hooper was far too old; Leon was thirty-one.

  “There’s men fifty that want to enlist. Looking for hot food and adventure.”

  “I expect they’ll get plenty of adventure,” Mary Bet said. “But who would want to do such a thing, go over where it’s dangerous like that? They’re liable to get hurt. I didn’t think anybody was for it.”

  “Now that we’re in it, you see, they’ve changed. I never liked that Wilson, with his highfalutin ways. When did he ever fight?”

  Mary Bet thought a minute. “I’ve got to go see somebody,” she said, and she started to hurry from the office. But at that moment Leon Thomas swept in and said, “Miss Mary Bet, that is the gayest shade of blue I’ve ever seen in my life. It looks so—” He stopped suddenly, his eyes traveling not just all over her dress but, Mary Bet was sure, her figure.

  He closed his mouth and she blushed, but then for some reason, as if she were someone else—perhaps the Ann Murchison of her imagination—she put a hand on her hip and said, “Was there something you needed, Mr. Thomas?”

  He shook his head. “No, Miss Mary Bet, Miss Mumpford. I just wanted to tell you good morning. Good morning, to both of you.” He was crushing his hat between his thick hands, and she had a notion to take it from him.

  “Good morning, Mr. Thomas,” she said. Miss Mumpford just shook her head and went back to work. Mary Bet said, “I expect you heard about this army thing?”

  “Yes I did,” he said. Then he smiled and put his hat back on, then took it off again and cleared his throat. “Matter of fact, I’m joining up myself. Well, good morning to you ladies,” he said, so loudly that Miss Mumpford looked up again, this time with a frown.

  “That was peculiar,” Mary Bet said after he’d left. And then she wondered if she had made an impression upon him, or if the only reason for his high spirits was his intention to join the army. “What a crazy thing,” she said. “A man his age joining up to fight a war in Europe.” She pictured him, his cigar clenched in his strong jaws like a gangster, and then in military fatigues, marching around with a gun over his shoulder. It didn’t seem possible. “Well, it’ll all be over by the time our boys are trained up.”

  Miss Mumpford glanced up, her rheumy eyes hard to fathom, said “humph,” and went back to her work.

  CHAPTER 22

  1917

  MARY BET HAD taken to wearing a little rouge and lip paint, and she’d put a partridge feather in her hatband, while Flora had stopped applying any makeup and had begun biting her nails to the quick.

  “You’ll never know what it’s like to be me,” Flora said.

  And all Mary Bet could reply was, “No, I won’t.” She smiled at her friend and thought of Amanda, who was crippled but now contentedly married, even if it was to Mr. Hennesey. Flora’s affliction was that she could never marry a man. “You’re good at making friends, you’ll always have somebody with you.” She came over and put her arms around Flora’s bony shoulders. “Besides, who ever said a word about me leaving. I’m just going out on a business trip with the new superintendent of schools. That’s all.”

  In the morning at her office, she was nervous. She had decided to wear a plain brushed cotton skirt and white blouse—this is not a date, she told herself. We’re just going over to Hartsoe City to inspect the new school they’re building. The door opened and she took a quick gulp of air. The first thing she saw was a bunch of yellow iris and lavender—her favorite combination; then Leon himself emerged around the door, his gray fedora in hand. “I didn’t know but what flowers weren’t the right gift to offer for helping me out today,” he said, “but I risked it because I thought you’d like them.”

  “I like them just fine,” she said, her hand going to her hair.

  “I don’t mean anything by it, it’s just that seeing as how Hartsoe’s your hometown and you might know what people over there need in the way of supplies and equipment and things like that, it would be a great honor for me to show you around and that way we—well, I don’t know if I explained all that—”

  “If you’d stop talking for a minute,” she said, “I could tell you that people there don’t need anything special. But you probably know that.” She sat up straight, hands on her hips, and gave him an appraising look. “And since you didn’t mean anything by asking me, I don’t see the need for flowers.” And now he looked a little crestfallen and she was sorry she’d goaded him.

  He twisted his fedora like he was angry at it. “Truth is, Mary Bet,” he said, “I’ve been wanting to ask you to walk out with me for some time. But it always seemed like you were busy with one thing or another.”

  “And now that you’re the superintendent?”

  He blushed. “I guess that makes it a little easier. I thought maybe you’d notice me more. I’m really just a country farm boy.”

  “I’ve noticed you,” she said. She looked down at the flowers so as not to give away her smile.

  “There’s also a church picnic down to Hackett’s Mill. The Baptists don’t mind picnicking, do they?”

  He seemed sincere, though it was sometimes hard to tell—he had such a deadpan expression when he told a joke. “Yes, picnicking is fine. Why don’t we try the drive over to Hartsoe City first? We’ll get better acquainted that way.” They talked for a moment about how it was a shame that Hackett’s had quit milling but that at least the new owner hadn’t torn the building down, not yet anyway. And then Mary Bet said she needed the next hour to finish up her work, and, no, she didn’t need any help—that was just so that she could be alone with her thoughts and not have him hovering around.

  Last night she’d gone home as light as air and wondered if she might just float away. She couldn’t bear for Flora or anybody else to see her in this condition, and yet she wanted to shout to the sky that she was giddy with delight. Spring had never come in so full and beautiful, with so many vivid colors and sweet smells she thought she could faint in the street and be happy. “Get a grip on yourself,” she thought. A carriage ride to Hartsoe City and back was perhaps not a goo
d idea. Spending all day alone with a man might not be the proper thing to do, even though the younger girls now were going about unchaperoned as though it were perfectly normal. After all, it was just a business trip, and, anyway, might not she and Leon grow weary of each other on the way there and back?

  That idea put her in such a foul temper, she wondered if perhaps she should back out of the trip. He was very forward-thinking as an educator, but his manners were a little unrefined. He seemed gentlemanly enough, but the truth was she didn’t know him all that well. She could hear her mother’s voice saying, “Who are these Thomases? What do you know about them?” And she thought, taking a deep breath of warm spring air, I’m twenty-nine years old and I don’t care about what I know and what I don’t know. I don’t care how foolish I am.

  It was in this fidgety state of mind that Mary Bet took from her trunk the old scrapbook she had made for her sisters. She sat in her bed, leaning against her feather pillow, the coal-oil lamp bright on her bedside table and the red leather volume in her lap. She ran her fingers over the engraved gold letters, “Remember,” and then opened the book at random and began turning the pages. Here was a lock of hair, still a lustrous red-brown, tied off with purple thread, and a caption in Mary Bet’s careful running hand: “O’Nora’s hair when she was 13.” And there was a faded rosebud orchid, flattened between pieces of waxed paper: “orchid found in woods by Mount Jordan Springs (Myrt’s favorite, after gardenias).”

  There were pressed leaves—a huge yellow tulip poplar and a fiery red maple—and a little wreath made from the hair of both sisters, braided tightly together (“made by Myrtle Emma–January 19, 1899”), the dark and light strands creating their own brindle color like nothing else in the world that ever had been or would be, Mary Bet had thought at the time, and still did. There were also letters from Mary Bet to Myrt and from Myrt to Mary Bet, pieces of schoolwork and notes tucked into the blank leaves.