Four of a Kind: A women's historical fiction (58 page)

Listless as I felt as his Duesenberg pulled away, there were still some areas of my life I wanted to take control. Areas that drove Thomas away, and if fixed, might bring him back. I closed the front door and headed to my roll-top desk, its opening like a large mouth willing to tell all. I began writing:

Dear Jere,

Here’s hoping this letter finds you and your children well. Your oldest daughter is doing well academically and her health seems fine. But her emotions are in turmoil and this has caused strife amongst those who care for
her. To be more specific, I recently remarried and Mary Sue has developed strong immoral attachments for my husband. She is relentless in displaying her affections for him and in coming between us. This has made our living conditions difficult to say the least. I could attempt to ignore past indiscretions but recently publicized mis-communications have taken this too far. I can no longer allow these living arrangements and ask that you come to Annan to take her back home. In the long run, she will be happier there, as she never really outgrew her homesickness for her hills of Tennessee. I can only hope that schooling is available there for her so that she can graduate from high school and teach, as she had planned to do. I do apologize that I cannot help more than I have, but my marriage must come first.

I ask that you make the trip here to escort Mary Sue back to your home at your earliest convenience, preferably by springtime.

Warm regards,

Bess (Wright) Pickering

“Howdy Miz Bess.”

I flinched so that I gave a curly-cue to my last name, making it look like Thomas’ signature.

“I see you’ve come out of hiding.”

“I wasn’t hiding.” She came over and stood beside me, looking at my paper. “Are you writing another speech for Thomas?”

I placed my hand over the letter. “No, there will be no more speeches. You must have heard that Thomas lost the election? Doesn’t your friend have a radio or read the newspapers?”

“Yes, I know he lost. But you’re always writing speeches for one reason or another. Maybe a Goodbye-I-Lost speech.”

I narrowed my eyes at her. “You do realize you’re part of the reason he lost?”

“You blame me for everything!” she said, putting her hands to her hips. “Now I get the blame for the way this stupid town votes, too?”

“You made Thomas sound like he was chasing you, rather than the other way around.”

“That’s not what I told Mr. Groves. He got it all wrong. On purpose, I bet.”

“Safe bet, Mary Sue. But what did you tell him?”

“Where’s Uncle Thomas? Is he mad at me? I can explain everything but I want him here because he’ll believe me.”

“Thanks to you, he’s gone away for a few weeks. You’re stuck with telling only me.”

“Uncle Thomas is not here?” Her smug expression fell. A touch of fear watered her eyes. “I told him that Uncle Thomas kissed me when Mr. Groves asked me if he had made a pass at me while I lived here. That’s all I said, but it seemed to satisfy that dirty old man. He just nodded and smiled and said, ‘Just as I suspected!’ People were talking about you and Uncle Thomas anyway. So don’t blame it on me.”

Forgetting about the letter, I folded my arms across my chest. “Really?” I challenged.

She saw the unshielded letter then and snatched it from the desk. She backed away from my attempted grasp, reading it. “Oh. Oh! You
sow
! You
harlot
!” she screamed. “I’ll get you back for this! I will!” She ran from the back parlor, the letter clutched in her fingers.

“I’ll simply write another one,” I called out to her, proud with the satisfaction of sounding calm. I pulled out another piece of paper from the cubbyhole, my hand trembling to spite me.

Thank goodness Mama and Lizzie were out of earshot in the backyard, standing in patches of snow trying to resuscitate the old wooden washing machine with the annoying squeak in the crank. But this reminded me that I must concentrate more on the domestic necessities around here. I had no access to my husband’s funds and he had given Lizzie her monthly allotment for household goods as if nothing had changed, including my status here. I hoped to have enough money put away to buy a new washing machine with a stainless steel tub, one that ran on electricity. The Eden Washing Machine with the Sediment Zone.
You can buy as you like and pay as you save
, I remembered the advertisement read. I wished I had written that. A new machine would make Lizzie’s job easier – and eventually these duties would pass to me as Lizzie was becoming more feeble and bent, as if always ducking some imaginary doorway too low for her
height. Mama helped where she could but hadn’t officially moved in although she slept here most nights. She was bringing in a couple of items at a time, like a squirrel taking a nut or two to its hideaway.

Biting on my pen tip, I looked down at the blank sheet of paper, wondering if I should be so blunt this time. Perhaps being vague would suffice, but still insist on Jere coming to the rescue. I once thought of him as a sort of knight in shining armor. He could be so again, only this time to rescue me from his daughter - and vice versa. No, flattery wouldn’t be appropriate coming from a married woman, and Jere would see through it. I began writing and the words flowed same as the first, showing my desire to say what I wanted to say for so long. I took in a deep breath as I signed my name again, glancing toward the door and her likely reappearance.

I smelled smoke. I sniffed the air. I was sure of it. Had Lizzie resorted to building a fire to boil our clothing? Surely not. That was backbreaking work and I would feel terribly guilty for not dealing with that machine sooner. I walked to the parlor doorway and sniffed again. It smelled like more than just wood burning. Hurrying to the back door proved only that Lizzie and Mama hadn’t given up on their wooden friend, bent over it with an oilcan to its wringer rollers like feeding a child.

“I smell smoke,” I called out through the screen door.

Mama straightened and looked around. Her gaze rose above me to the second story windows and her eyes enlarged in a frightening way. She touched her throat. “Lizzie, grab that watering can. There’s a fire up there!” She grabbed a bucket and dipped this into the washing machine’s filled belly of water. She and Lizzie took off running through the back door, down the hall, into the entranceway, and up the stairs, water splashing about their skirts and floor.

I followed suit, my fear of fire since being burned as a child coming back to me in spades. Mama threw open my bedroom door and we all gasped at the flames eating away at the bed’s feather mattress and climbing rapidly, licking at the lace canopy. The extra oxygen brought in by the open door lent itself to the fire’s hunger and the bed and its four posters were quickly engulfed.

We swiftly threw what was left of the water in our buckets onto the fire. I rushed to the bathroom and turned on the faucet in the bathing tub and here we replenished over and over. Mama, Lizzie, and I would fill, run, and throw, fill, run, and throw, all the while coughing through the smoke and bumping into each other in our haste. Oddly, no one shouted, or even spoke, expressions intense and tight-lipped to the dangerous task. They were braver than I, working much closer to the flame. At one point, Lizzie wet a towel and beat down fire that was rapidly covering the large fluffy pillows, her walking cane thrown aside somewhere. Sparks flew into her hair and caught hold of her dress and for one terrifying moment, I feared for her life. She became our center of attention until she was safe again. We labored hard until at last, after an eternity in hell, there was only smoking ash.

Blackened bedsprings, exposed now, looked like the innards of a large overcooked animal. All fabrics including my beloved wedding ring quilt had been grotesquely shrunken into small black scrap pieces. The wooden headboard and footboard, and the night tables were deeply scarred. On the floor by the bed was a partly charred piece of paper. On closer inspection I recognized my penmanship. It was what was left of my letter to Jere.

We tucked strands of singed hair behind our ears and began the long arduous task of cleaning and mopping. I knew better by now than to threaten Mary Sue, force her to clean this up, pay for the damage. She would only be intimidated, stay low like a smoldering ember, and then flare again. Evening fell before we collapsed, reaching a point where there was no more to do – in the bedroom that is. I had one more mission to complete before I would retire for the night in the spare bedroom. I returned to my desk and wrote a telegram. To hell with letters and waiting for spring. Tomorrow I would take Mary Sue back myself.

“What do you have to say for yourself, little missy?” Jere asked Mary Sue. I had asked him to meet me in town at the same boarding house
of last summer and we sat on the same front porch where he had proposed to me. I suddenly felt that for all that had happened since, I hadn’t gone very far.

“Nothing,” she answered, her eyes remaining down as she and her father pushed the swing with their feet.

“Nothing,” he mimicked. “Is living in a beautiful house with clothes you would never have seen otherwise, with schooling we could only wish for,
nothing
?”

“It don’t mean nothing to me. I kept telling Miz Bess I wanted to go home but she wouldn’t let me go. I was some pet, being trained to do tricks.”

I opened my mouth to dispute, but only knew too well that Mary Sue was baiting me. Her daddy was here now; let him handle her.

“Little gal, I can tell you’re getting too big for your britches. What
does
mean something to you.”

“You, first of all. You weren’t happy and Miz Bess made it worse. I hate her for what she did to you and not wanting anything to do with us kids. I wanted to get even with her for leaving us like she did. I watched you and you treated her good and was so patient. But she came to our place all high and mighty and looks down her nose at us like we’re pigs in a pen with uncurled tails, and then she takes off after one night, like she was afraid of getting dirty or something. She hurt you real bad, Daddy.”

“It’s not like you think, Mary Sue.”

“I know what I saw, Daddy. When you came back from driving her to Nashville, you moped around, yelling at us kids for the smallest things, sitting by yourself outside, rocking in the rocking chair like you was some old woman or taking off in the woods overnight. You even said it was our fault she left because there was too many of us. Or that we was mean to her. But we didn’t treat her mean at all.”

Jeremiah shook his head. “I shouldn’t have done that. I was blaming everybody but me. I blamed your mommy for leaving me alone to raise you younguns. I was blaming you for looking and acting like your mommy: you forget nothing, you forgive nothing. I was mad at Bess, I was mad at all you kids, I was mad at the world. I’ve
been simmering inside for years. But when I put it all in the pot and boiled it down, the only thing left was my toughened heart. It was my fault and nobody else’s.” He leaned forward in the swing, its needlepoint backing making him look out of place with his leather vest and weathered boots. He seemed in deep thought, rubbing his chin as if contemplating something.

He smiled apologetically at me. “Well, I hate airing out my dirty laundry here but since you’ve had to wear some of it, I reckon I owe you a glimpse behind the clothesline.” Elbows on his knees, he looked toward the street like it was a road into the past.

“I know what my daughter has done here is terribly wrong but she came from two parents that should never have been and we made her what she is today. Let me go back a ways.

“As you know, I escorted Mrs. Catt to women’s conferences and meetings throughout the northeast, from Tennessee to New York City. From about 1909 to 1911, I did this quite regularly. I had a few speeches up my own sleeve and being part of a minority, I could talk the talk because I’d walked the walk. I knew what it was like to have the white man view you as inferior. But what kept me doing it was my true love.”

Mary Sue snapped to attention, that familiar scowl between her eyes telling me she considered this news another force to reckon with.

“I couldn’t shake that sweet, dimpled smile and how her eyes shone when she recited her poem at the Women’s Rights Convention. She spoke with such conviction when she started her poem and when she wasn’t allowed to finish, I, well, I decided to speak for her. Every time I spoke for women, I’d think to myself, ‘Ruby, sweetheart, this is for you.’ Sad thing was, I became so lonely after that, like something was missing all the time. At every convention I kept doing double-takes at someone resembling Ruby, thinking she might have shown up.”

He scratched his sideburn and I noticed then how much silver had been penciled into his black hair since last I saw him. Yet and still, his face showed little aging. “Around about 1911 I spoke at one such conference right here in town. A girl I’d been sweet on in my
younger years came up to me afterwards, telling me she thought I spoke to her heart. She said she had no rights as a woman and I could tell her daddy was still a no-count moonshiner because of her pitiful sack dress and holey shoes. Rosemary had a pretty face though and I wanted her smile to fill up that empty space I had. If you want to know what she looked like, my little girl here is the spittin’ image. Those big blue eyes the color of the sky on a hazy day.