Four of a Kind: A women's historical fiction (40 page)

“At least you have a mommy,” Mary Sue pierced into my thoughts. “And I heard what you said to Daddy that morning you left us. About him loving your mommy. That’s a lie. He only loved my mommy.”

How had she heard that? I felt a surge of guilt.

“Yes, I’m certain he loved your mother. He’s a caring man. But don’t be homesick. Here you’ll have less physical labor and more mental exercise. You may not want to go back.”

She jerked her shoulder. I got the hint and moved my arm away. “I’m going back alright. Maybe not now, but as soon as I’m smart. I’m not a quitter and I’m not a deserter either.”

I realized then that she would be my penance for leaving her father.

Thomas took her under his wing, as if needing to nurture. I had no idea where his paternal instincts came from. He gave me money as a father would to a mother saying, “Those pitiful dresses have to go or she’ll be the brunt of jokes at school. Buy her what she needs; take her to your seamstress or dress shop or wherever you girls go these days.” His attendance at our dinner table improved and his attention to Mary Sue’s learning never ceased. As a result, I developed a report sheet to show him her subjects and progression. School textbooks had questions at the end of each chapter and these I graded and entered into the report. Thomas reviewed these carefully, commenting on good and bad, but only in an encouraging way. This was a reprieve for her and me, for I had the tendency to lose my patience. I had three school years to cram into a sometimes
slow-moving, slow-speaking stubborn sally who was accustomed to her own daily schedule ‘back home’. She resisted my efforts more than once.

On one such day we sat in the front parlor, Mary Sue at the big oak desk and I on the sofa. I handed the marked arithmetic quiz back to Mary Sue and wiped my brow with my handkerchief. Opening a window, I said, “Study your times tables again, Mary Sue. Work on your flash cards after dinner tonight and then re-do this. Most of these answers are wrong. Take out your lined paper now and practice your penmanship.” I turned back toward the sofa to work on an advertisement for Lux laundry suds, sensing her eyes boring a hole through the back of my head. I turned back to face her. “Yes, Mary Sue?”

“I’m tired of these numbers. Mr. Todd, my school teacher back home, said girls shouldn’t worry about numbers. He said many girls had lost their souls to such study. Besides, I can’t think when we’re sweating here like pigs. Back home, we always had cool breezes coming through. Why do towns have to stink and sweat?”

One more story about ‘back home’ and I was surely going to scream.

“I suppose you’ll learn why towns sweat in geography,” I threw back. “Luckily for both of us, that’s one subject we don’t have to worry about this year. As far as arithmetic hurting girl’s spirits, this is a common misconception brought about by narrow-minded men.” From my stack of books on the table, I brought out a poem written by Alice Duer Miller in 1915 called
The Maiden’s View.
I read a verse out loud:

‘Though permutations and combinations

My woman’s heart allure,

I’ll never study algebra,

But keep my spirit pure.’

“She used satire to bring out the ridiculousness of anti-suffrage sentiment. Now doesn’t it sound ridiculous to say that girls’ spirits will be damned by learning numbers?”

Mary Sue shrugged. “You swore just now. That’s not right either.”

I sighed in resignation. “Well, let’s just move on with this then.”

“That’s what Mr. Pickering always says, but he never says it like you do. He says it nice but you’re just too bossy!” She folded her arms across her chest, her expression daring me to move her. She had none of the dark Indian characteristics of her father and I could only guess her dark brooding manner, fair skin and light blue eyes had come from her mother’s side.

I returned her stare, neither one of us willing to give in to look away. I was becoming angrier by the moment. I narrowed my eyes at her. “I do not sweat like a pig and you are one lucky hillbilly to have a town that is willing to take you in and teach you what ‘back home’ should have taught you years ago!”

“Maybe so,” Mary Sue drawled. “But at least back home we don’t just have a lot of hot air blowing. If we do, it comes from the weather, not from people.”

I sat down hard on the sofa, my eyes not leaving her face. She at least had the courtesy to blush from this last insinuation and our flushed faces raised the temperature in the parlor by ten degrees, I’m certain of it. “Stop acting like an ignorant—”

A bell tinkled outside. Charlie’s bell. A look through the window verified his presence on his bike, pulling his ice cream wagon. Good ol’ Charlie with his white hair, white suit, and vanilla ice cream. He and his cooling balm would soothe the inflammation of our minds. I hesitated in rewarding her bad behavior with such a treat, but I couldn’t, with any conscience, eat ice cream in front of her, so I swallowed my stinging - or, according to Mary Sue,
stinking
- vanity.

I motioned with my head for her to follow me. “We’ll both feel better after an ice cream.”

She stood up unhurriedly. “What is ice cream?”

I tried to calm my urge to run out doors after Charlie, before he got away. “You’ve never had ice cream?” I could understand her never riding a train before our trip, but ice cream?

“Stop talking to me like I’m ignorant. I ain’t.”

“Fine Mary Sue, you’re not ignorant. Let’s hurry.”

I literally ran down the boardwalk after him, so happy I was for a cool treat and a break from Mary Sue’s heated glare.

Charlie had mounded two cones and accepted payment before Mary Sue sauntered to the wagon. I made the introductions and Charlie and I both watched her expectantly.

She licked gingerly at it, like a cat might for water. “It’s not as good as a snow cone.”

“What is a snow cone?” I asked and then bit my tongue.

Her eyes lit at her opportunity. “You’ve never had a snow cone before?” She imitated the same unbelieving tone I had used.

Charlie patted her head. “With that accent, you come from the hills, don’t you girl? Yesiree you do, and snow cones taste fine indeed. You bring in new-fallen snow, mound it in a bowl, and pour fresh cream over it.” He winked at me. “It’s almost as good as my wares but not quite. The only difference is I don’t have to wait for winter’s cold to make it. Modern technology gave me ice in warm weather when folks most want to eat frozen things.”

Yes, try to top that ‘back home’, I thought. I smiled at Charlie’s deeply wrinkled mug, and at our own small victory. I was snatching them however I could.

I was beginning to believe that Thomas and I would never wed. Our discussions became superficial, only surrounding our external events, never our internal emotions. I repeatedly played over in my mind his proposal to me and how much more romantic this could have been, if not for that one technicality. I had poured a bucket of water on his passion for me and I seemed to be having difficulties in waiting for that water to dry enough to start another spark. I hoped his flame hadn’t died out altogether. A goodnight kiss on the cheek each night after dinner hardly gave indication he desired me.

He had not yet mentioned any calls from Mr. McCorriston and my pride in appearing too eager would not allow me to ask him. So I spent my time with him listening to everything I didn’t want to hear and saying what I didn’t care to talk about. I wanted to be grounded
with meaningful issues, such as love and fulfilling my longings, but for some reason he was not allowing us to touch the ground. We were floating in newspaper facts and figures, campaign numbers and votes, school reports and grades. Perhaps he looked at me differently now, as a married woman already given to another man. Perhaps he no longer saw me as “an innocent dispassionate suffragist trying to right the homes of women but with little understanding, for the poor girl has no home of her own”, as he’d once introduced me, wearing that mischievous grin. Perhaps he relished the idea of saving me, only to find out someone else had found me first. But I hadn’t been saved then, and I didn’t need to be saved now. Only loved. Perhaps his image of me was no longer of a virgin, pure and white, but of a divorcee, tarnished with Tennessee coal.

I could no longer pretend that all was fine with the world and none of it mattered to me. Thomas mattered and he mattered a great deal, more than I wished he had. I began to wish I didn’t have such a strong attachment to someone so tangible, so real as to be physically painful. It was much simpler to love the floating image of Billy, who I could move to the front or the back of my mind at will. It was much easier to work the theories of suffrage, than to work the real life issues of caring for others. Love might fulfill me, but it could also bog me down and I certainly didn’t want to drag and shuffle my feet when grounded, only walk lightly with my feet under my control.

These were my thoughts as I sat at dinner one such evening, only slightly aware of Lizzie and Mary Sue’s chatter to Thomas over their plates. While Mary Sue sat erect and tense, watching every move Thomas made, he seemed as distracted as I, his eyes darting to my distant stare to see if I was still there.

“Bess, you’re being quiet this evening,” Thomas finally said.

“She’s probably tired from pushing me around all day,” Mary Sue said to Thomas, those woeful eyes looking for sympathy. “Thomas, help me with my arithmetic tonight. I’m having trouble with long division. You’re the smartest person I know.” She gave him her only smile of the day.

Lizzie’s furrowed brow deepened. “Child, you say,
Mr. Pickering
, would you
please
help me. Make it a question and use your manners. Don’t go telling Mr. Pickering what to do. You know your place.”

I didn’t know if Lizzie noticed, but Mary Sue seemed to always look straight through Lizzie like she was a large hole in the wall. Mary Sue’s pleading eyes remained fixed on his face.

“Would you, Thomas? Maybe you could help me every night and I’d get to school a lot faster.” Thomas hesitated and Lizzie appeared to read his thoughts.

“Child, Mr. Pickering is tired too. Miss Bess, I hope you’re not too tired,” Lizzie said to me, “I’ll need help changing and washing that bed linen upstairs. Mr. Pickering, sir, that family of darkies you sent up here from Georgia – you know, the ones where her husband was lynched? Well that Mrs. Cosman had a time with her five children last night. That little Isaac, Miss Bess? Well, he wet the bed and that sent his brothers to sleep in the other two bedrooms too. She can’t control her own children. She thinks because she comes up here, she’s in high cotton now. I’m right glad, Mr. Pickering, that you found her a job and a place of her own. I can’t sleep when there’s so much foot-stomping above me. Who’s this no-good man with them that Isaac calls ‘uncle’? I found him sniffin’ in the kitchen like a blind dog in the smokehouse. They’re no-good niggers in my opinion.”

“Lizzie!” I said. “Aren’t you feeding them?” There’s a sign by the front door for the coloreds to go around the back and enter into Lizzie’s kitchen where they eat their meals.

She dipped her hand to me. “Don’t go up on your soapbox, Miss Bess.” She scooted her chair from the table. “I’m just tired like the rest of you. My day is gone. We’ll change those sheets tomorrow. Goodnight.”

With a worried brow, Thomas watched her hunched backside shuffle to the kitchen, her cane thumping a loud support. “She’s not well,” he mumbled. “She’s getting too old to keep up with the Lighthouse.” He drummed his fingers on the table for a moment. “Bess, meet me in the library. I wish to discuss a private matter with you.”

As I followed Thomas, I felt relief in hearing the clatter of dishes. Mary Sue was going to wash the dishes on her own. Good; one less evening to prod.

Along side one table lamp, sat the only one winged-back chair in the small library, surrounded by bookshelves. This he sat in, while I folded my hands in front of me, at a loss as to what to do. He showed me by patting his knees. I raised my eyebrows in surprise, but he insistently patted his legs again. “Close the door and come here.” I did just that. “Now sit here on my lap like a good little girl.”