Leaving Cold Sassy (9780547527291) (16 page)

Aunt Loma had dark circles under her eyes, and her clothes looked like she'd slept in them all night, which she had. The only thing looked good about her was the fur coat she was wearing, and that diamond flashing in the sunlight. Within a day or so I learned that what was troubling Loma was something clean clothes and a good night's sleep couldn't put right. Loma was depressed. Whenever Mama saw her coming, she'd go lie down on the black leather daybed. “I can just take Loma better if I'm layin' down,” she told me.

To Mama and Papa and the rest of the town she had nothing much to say. But Loma needed to talk, and by her second day home she'd realized I was probably the closest friend she had. “Will, I guess you think I was crazy in the first place, but I didn't marry him just for his money. I mean, I married him a lot for his money, but I was really very fond of him.” Loma got herself a glass of tap water and sat down at the kitchen table with a dramatic sigh.

“He claimed he was a Russian count. He had a wife and four children, and when he was still young they all died in a typhoid epidemic. He came to America in eighteen eighty-nine with twelve dollars in gold coins in his pocket and got a job in a New York factory.

“If you remember,” she said bitterly, “Pa never knew I existed from the time you were born. You had two daddies, your grandpa and your pa. I never had any. Vitch didn't treat me like a daughter. It was more like I was a princess. He even called me Princess, and I found myself acting like one. When he'd have a party and I was his hostess, I'd pretend I was really a princess, kind of like stage acting, and it gave me a feeling of pride in myself. I liked that.”

Mama was taking a nap upstairs and Daddy was out visiting with Campbell Junior, showing off all the changes in town. It occurred to me that if I just kept quiet, Loma would tell me everything. I set some of Mama's leftover Thanksgiving pie out on the table, got out two forks and plates, and settled down to listen.

“He never came to see me without bringing a gift, per-fume or earrings,” Loma said dreamily. “Once he brought me a little lap dog. I made him take that back. I just couldn't look after a little dog like that in an apartment when I was gone so much.

“He came to every performance I was in. I guess you heard about him being at my performance when I was modeling corsets. That's when we met.” She laughed. “He was so gallant and his foreign accent made him seem glamorous. He had all this money he'd made in America. And he talked all the time about the castle he grew up in, and the toys he'd had, and the servants, and the literary parties his parents put on. I just was too...he...it was just a world I used to read about and couldn't believe existed. I'm not sure it ever did, even for Vitch.

“He'd kiss my hand when we met and he acted so proud of me. When he talked about us marrying, he said he'd build a mansion for me away from the noise and grime of New York City.”

I tried to picture Loma living in a mansion, bossing servants around.

“I respected him and I felt he respected me. It wasn't like with Camp. I knew I couldn't step all over Vitch the way I did Camp. Oh, Will, I was so disgusted by Camp, and then after he died I was so ashamed of the way I'd treated him.” Loma blushed, and I knew she was wondering if she should go on. But she was in too deep to stop now. I nodded to her, and then pretended to study my pie.

“But, Will, from the first night after I married Vitch, I knew...I couldn't stand...I mean, he was like a coal miner or somebody. Good Lord, Will, you've got a degree in agriculture. You must know all about animal husbandry. I don't know why it's so hard for me to tell you. Well, let's say that my rich, gallant Mr. Vitch's idea of husbandry was very animal.”

Loma said after the second night she was so repulsed and so mad, she told Vitch never to set foot in her room again. He got mean. “He said he'd take my name out of his will. He finally admitted that the main reason he wanted to marry me instead of just courting the rest of his life was because he wanted heirs. The next night I locked my bedroom door and he got a key and unlocked it. I didn't have to fight him off then. He was so cold and calm. He said, ‘You will not leave this room until you grant me my rights.' And he took my key and left and locked the door behind him.”

For a week he sent the maid in with Loma's meals. Even though the maid was afraid she'd lose her job if she didn't lock the door behind her, at last she felt so sorry for Loma, she did leave the door open. Loma packed a bag and was sneaking down the steps when Vitch saw her and forced her back to her room. The next day there were gardeners working outside near her window. She called to them that she was being kept prisoner and asked them to bring her a ladder. She threw a diamond pin down to them, then put the rest of her jewelry in a drawstring bag that she tied around her waist, stuffed a few clothes in a small satchel, climbed down the ladder, and got away in a taxi.

She sent a telegram to the headmaster at Campbell Junior's school, saying she had to take him out early for the holidays because of illness in the family. She met his train in New York after hocking her gold pins in a pawnshop so she could buy their train tickets to Cold Sassy.

I never doubted Loma would find a way to get back at Mr. Vitch. She was so vindictive that Grandpa once said if he wanted to make a raid on Hell, he would make Loma his first lieutenant.

 

Editor's note:
Although Olive Ann worked on several scenes that were to appear later in the novel, the chronological narrative ends here. We know from her notes for the rest of this chapter that the following Sunday was going to be a beautiful day and that Will was going to borrow his papa's car to pick up Sanna in Mitchellville and drive her back to Cold Sassy.

 

From Olive Ann Burns's Chapter Notes:

On the way home Sanna is going to tell Will more about the situation in Mitchellville—in fact, this may be when she tells him some of the stuff that I have her telling him the night before. May somehow get around to her telling him about the day Papa got hooked by the bull. Want as fast as possible for him to learn more about her and her family, but there are things she won't tell him until she knows they are going to marry and she knows she has got to tell him about her family.

Feed in some of the information about Loma and her husband in letters home—the braggy things she can write home about so that her returning home is totally unexpected. That way she won't have so much to tell Will, and it will keep Loma alive in the minds of the reader if there are little dribbles of it from the time she comes home to get Campbell Junior to go back North with her. Now Loma is left high and dry in New York, as far as the reader is concerned, except for the letter saying that she has just gotten married.

Note: Actually I think what I'm going to do is have Loma say nothing about why she's home. Just say she's homesick and wanted to come home and Campbell Junior wanted to come back there to school and she's obviously very upset, though she tells everybody else in town....Want her to have time after arriving to get the word out around town that she's just homesick, and then the Sunday paper (maybe of Thanksgiving weekend or the following), the headlines in the Atlanta newspaper, pick up a story in great detail from New York telling all the gory details about this rich man, and his wife having to escape from him by climbing down a ladder and being helped by two gardeners and how she claims she was locked in her room. Saw this story in a paper about 1895—have notes on this with more details—look up and concentrate on getting details—in 1917 same kind of yellow journalism, though in a local weekly they would not—they would protect the people—let this be a shock to Cold Sassy, not only the details but her name given and her home town, where according to the paper her husband suspects she may have gone.

Note: When Loma left to go to New York City, she knew she would have to finance herself because she couldn't be sure of getting enough work in the entertainment field. Loma has her house rented. Will asks if she's going to live there. “You could pretend you're a widow. I heard about a widow who painted her house black the week after her husband died.” She sold her interest in the store to Hoyt. Miss Love and Sampson own half the store and Hoyt owns the other half and runs the store, which he would love to do anyway, so when she's back she has these jewels but she's not going to be there long, so she rents rooms at Miss Hyta Mae's boarding house for herself and Camp—maybe at this point Camp's room and the room she had used before she went to New York—maybe Mama has rented it to a teacher or someone. In those days people were always renting rooms, so it may not be available for her to come back to and she doesn't want to either, because she doesn't think she'll be there long—and this will get Miss Hyta Mae back into the reader's mind. I want her to be a running character through the book, because she's interesting. I don't know what wonderful or awful things will be happening to her, but I think when Will is through with the Army and comes back to farm, it will be the Depression, and I think Miss Hyta Mae and Miss Love and Will's mother will all be calling on him to do the kinds of things that need doing around the house that a woman can't do or thinks she can't do, and that's going to be a bone of contention with Sanna because maybe he needs to fix fences on the farm and instead he goes over to do little things for all these women who depend on him.

S
ANNA—A
perfectionist and a worrier. Obsessed with idea of finding happiness, and for her, happiness means being first with somebody, having her own home, being loved by a perfect man and perfect, loving children. She will never have to have second place there, will be secure, life will be happily ever after, no more misery or problems. She never feels secure with new people or in new situations—doesn't want change—and revels in the way Will is easy with people and never fazed by the unexpected. In fact, the harder things are, the more he is excited and challenged. She thought all troubles would be over if she found the right man. Marries Will—hard time of war months—pregnant, etc.

The theme of Sanna is disillusionment—her life is the pursuit of happiness and perfection, but she finds happiness and perfection impossible to obtain—her idea of happiness is constant joy, no changes.

Will's idea of life is to be challenged. Loves trying anything new, loves change, is impatient with Sanna. Living is a matter of making things work if you can, seeing if you can make things work.

At end of book he is leaving home, happy and excited to have a job, to be able to hope to support his family. Hates leaving Sanna and children, but he's not just off to Dawson, he's off on a new adventure.

Soon after arriving in Cold Sassy and causing trouble with Sanna, Loma has a car accident and breaks her back. [Editor's note:
Although there are no written notes on this, Olive Ann said that she wanted Loma to undergo a personality change through her suffering, to be able to walk again and pay all her medical bills, and then to settle down in Cold Sassy and teach elocution.]

Perhaps Miss Love's father, sick and dying, age 70 to 75, comes to P.C. for her to look after, and she does it. He has to be waited on, bedridden. Sanna helps her.

Sampson falls in love with Precious, child of Lightfoot and Hosie Roach. Used to getting his way, marries her at end of book despite family feelings.

***

Loma tells Sanna, “It's just common, like po' white trash, the way you get pregnant every year. Just
common.
I can't imagine anybody smart as you think you are not knowing how to keep from getting that way. You've embarrassed the whole family.”

SANNA
: Well, I've got three things to say to
you.
Number one, you're crude and mean and your side of my family has just as much to do with it as I do.
Will,
I mean. Number two, it's
our
business, not any of yours. I never wanted a baby every year—I'm
tired.
But it's none of your business. And if you want to talk about embarrassing the family, look in the mirror. You think everybody is proud of your smoking and drinking cocktails and getting a
divorce?

LOMA
: I'll smoke and drink and get a divorce any time I want to.

SANNA
: And Will and I will have babies if we want to. One thing I know, I'll never have to get a divorce.

LOMA
: Don't you know the talk in town? How often Will goes by to see Carrie Summers?

***

The book will be the story of Sanna and Will, and Sanna and Loma, and Sanna and Miss Love and the boy Sampson, Sanna and the Depression, Sanna and her perfectionism and anxiety and obsessiveness and possessiveness.

It will show Loma doggedly determined not only to walk again, but to repay all medical bills.

It will show Sanna caught in yet another situation where she feels second—except with the children. She centers her life on them. So does Will, so this is their togetherness. Their separateness comes from his being pulled between his family and Sanna, and conflicts over money.

Miss Love is a sort of catalyst. She says things like “I put a dimmer light at my mirror. I don't like wrinkles.”

She tells Sanna: “Be kind to Will.”

Sanna tells her: “I read some psychology books in college. Everything that's supposed to warp a child happened to me.”

Miss Love: “Everything that could warp a child happened to me, too. But understanding that doesn't help. It's interesting, but it doesn't help. I figure that what you do with your life now is all that counts. I try not to look back.”

***

About Papa's affair:

Mama and Papa had been praying for another baby for years, and hadn't had any, but when I was twenty and Mary Toy fourteen and Mama was forty-two...She was so happy. After it came out about Papa and that young woman, it was like she hated her own baby. She didn't make any clothes for it, and even before she started showing, she quit going anywhere, not even to church or missionary circle, and she never smiled or hardly ate. She didn't talk about Papa, of course. But she was too shamed to face anybody, and angry to the core.