Love and Lament (13 page)

CHAPTER 8

1900

C
ICERO DEVELOPED A
case of measles, then pneumonia, and he had Mary Bet wire her aunt Cattie Jordan in Williamsboro to come help out for a week or so. He didn’t want to bother Myrt way off in the mountains at a new job. Mary Bet knew her aunt to be more than a little bossy, but she could not convince her father that she needed no extra help. Arguing with him only seemed to agitate him the more. She imagined that if he were just a little sicker she would take charge completely. Cattie Jordan was not Mary Bet’s favorite, but the other two aunts had moved out of the state and there was no one else to call on, except Cincinnatus’s wife—and she had a large brood to take care of. Anyway, she thought, with another person in the house she would not feel so alone.

She wondered if this turn of her father’s meant the end of his life. Or if it could trigger the mind sickness inherited from Grandpa Samuel. The sickness went back at least as far as Samuel’s
father, though Cicero never talked about his grandfather. Mary Bet remembered her grandma Margaret telling her stories about John Hartsoe, the same who had built the house that Margaret and Captain Billie had owned. Not long after selling the house, he had moved in with a daughter who lived on a farm up near Silkton. There he had given way to dementia, and as there was no hospital then for the insane, they had resorted to tethering him to a China tree during the day and to his bed at night to prevent his running off—as he’d done on several occasions—or trying to hurt himself. One time he attempted to put his hand in a meat grinder while turning the handle, and once he sat on the stove until a servant smelled the peculiar mixed odor of singed wool and flesh. He developed the notion that he was responsible for keeping the China tree standing, and he got to where he refused to come in. He ate the tree’s poisonous yellow berries, claiming they gave him the strength of Samson. They built a lean-to for him to shelter in, but in the winter they had to drag him inside, where he developed a case of pneumonia and died.

Except for the time he talked to himself in the mirror, Cicero had never shown any sign of mental instability other than an occasional burst of temper when something didn’t suit him just right, and an equally occasional outpouring of what his wife used to call “the joys” when he was happy. The former caused him to rush outside and start splitting wood (a therapy his mother had suggested); the latter made him practically vibrate with excitement—his eyes would light up, and with gritted teeth he would grab the nearest person and dance around the room. It was an almost terrifying, mad overjoy that took possession of his entire body, sometimes for no apparent reason other than that he was happy. And then it would as suddenly disappear and he would return to his usual quiet, self-effacing demeanor, and it could be months before such an outburst would recur.

Now that her father was sick with something in his body that the doctor could label and give medicine for, Mary Bet thought that she would have to do as he wished, as long as he had the strength to speak. Two days later, Cattie Jordan arrived in a canopied carriage pulled by two fine black horses and driven by a young Negro wearing a sable suit and silk top hat. Her husband ran his hotel so profitably that he’d added seven rooms to the original ten, and they had started going to Wrightsville Beach for a week every August.

Cattie Jordan was short and stout and though many people had observed how much Mary Bet favored this aunt, Mary Bet would look in the mirror and be relieved when she saw no resemblance. Cattie Jordan was even quicker to deny the likeness, saying, “I don’t see it atall,” and adding, with what seemed to Mary Bet a disingenuous tone, “Mary Elizabeth is much the prettier.” Cattie Jordan’s hair was lighter, her eyes brown instead of black, her facial expressions of a more limited palette, ranging from placid to mild. But there was that same square Murchison chin that Mary Bet wished for the world she didn’t have, and her mother’s narrow upper lip that only accentuated the nose—though on Cattie Jordan, the effect was exotic, even pretty. Cattie Jordan had the flared nose of the Murchisons, instead of the Hartsoe beak.

Cattie alighted with her driver’s help, and was pulling off her gloves so that she could take her niece’s hands and offer a cheek to be kissed. She looked around as though for a greater welcoming party. “It’s just me and Essie,” Mary Bet explained. “We don’t need a houseboy but three days now.”

“Essie and I,” Cattie Jordan said, then, “you might have arranged for this to be one of the three days. But I know you’ve been terribly upset with your father’s illness.” She motioned for the driver to get her luggage, then she gathered the hem of her skirts and climbed the steps to the porch, her wide felt hat blocking the sun. Mary Bet stared at the imposing figure of her aunt. Cattie Jordan kept up
with the latest styles, which in her case meant that she might add a mauve ribbon round her hat and wear jackets—always brown or navy—with a bit of rise in the shoulders. The sleeves were tight, the skirt long, with flounces showing at the bottom. She kept her hair in the old style, wound up on the back of her head, and her collars revealed only a sliver of neck.

After she had settled herself in Ila’s old room and taken a nap, she called for Mary Bet and told her that they should sit down in the parlor to discuss her father’s situation. “A pot of tea goes well with talks like these, don’t you agree?” she said, her rouged face lifting into as much of a smile as it ever dared. Mary Bet agreed, though she could not understand what tea had to do with her father’s illness.

They sat in the two formal wing chairs, Mary Bet unsure of herself in her own home. “I see mother’s china has been kept in good repair,” her aunt said. “You don’t use it for everyday, do you?”

“No, ma’am,” Mary Bet replied, wondering whose mother Cattie Jordan had meant, because the china had, now she thought about it, come down through the Murchisons. Her aunt was looking around the parlor in an appraising way—at the little ormolu clock, the brass andirons, her father’s encyclopedias and leather-bound volumes of ancient history and philosophy, the love seat, the straight-back chairs, the square piano that only Myrt ever seemed able to coax music out of, the fold-up secretary in the corner with its vase of dried flowers, the red oriental rug at their feet—worn thin over the years and not likely now to ever be replaced.

Mary Bet got up and added another log to the fire—there was still an early spring chill to the parlor that wouldn’t go away for at least a month. And somehow it felt even colder than when she was sitting alone with her needlework.

“As I see it,” Cattie Jordan said, her eyes tarrying over the piano, “your father is going to need all the help he can get for the next
fortnight, at least.” She paused to sip her tea, then glanced at Mary Bet, not for an answer so much as to register her presence. Mary Bet had never heard anyone use the word “fortnight” before, and it sounded ominous, for it meant her aunt would be here for some time.

“He’s a gravely ill man,” Cattie Jordan went on, “and the house must be kept quiet and clean.” Now she looked at her niece and gave her a conspiratorial wink that felt to Mary Bet like a little stab in the heart.

But Mary Bet nodded and said, “I like it clean too—Essie and Elma and I manage with that, and it’s quiet except for when I have friends come over. And when Joe Dorsett brings preserves or something, I talk to him on the porch.”

Cattie Jordan listened to all this with her head resting on the tips of her fingers as though she had a headache, her eyebrows rising higher at every word from Mary Bet’s mouth. “Joe Dorsett?” A slight shake of her head.

“The boy across the street. They moved in last fall. They’re from Salisbury. His father is assistant manager at the bending and chair factory.”

Again, Cattie Jordan slightly shook her head, as if shooing away a fly. “Your father is going to need absolute quiet. The friends will have to take a hiatus, I’m sure you understand, honey.”

Mary Bet nodded, trying to be agreeable, “We can meet over at Clara’s for a while. She likes to play our piano. She just has a spinet, but it works fine.”

“Mary Elizabeth, I’m afraid I’m going to need all the help I can get. If you go traipsing all over town to parties and jamborees, where does that leave me? Now is not the time to think of our own needs and comforts. It’s time you learned that life is not just about having fun. Your mother was the baby of the family, just like you, and it’s a hard lesson for the youngest to learn. Now, as for
entertaining boys over here by yourself—it’s strictly forbidden. I don’t know what your father allowed when he was well, and frankly I don’t care. I can’t be up and down the stairs, worrying about your sick father and you down here with some neighbor boy.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Mary Bet saw the fortnight now stretching out like the longest train at the crossing, boxcar after boxcar after boxcar.

“Don’t look so blue,” Cattie Jordan said. “We’ll have us some fun. I brought my dominoes. I just love dominoes, don’t you? And there’s not a word in the Bible against them—not that I’ve found.” She made another wink, as if she had just sold a wagonload of bootleg whiskey to a preacher, and said, “And we can tell stories.”

“Stories?” Mary Bet asked.

“I could tell you things to make your hair stand right on end.” She seemed to enjoy the thrill this produced, the nervous excitement in Mary Bet’s eyes now that she had her full attention, and Mary Bet was not at all sure she wanted to have her hair stand on end.

The doctor came by in the morning. It had been a long night, Mary Bet spending most of it by her father’s bed and not saying a word about it in the morning when Cattie Jordan awoke with the sun and found her niece asleep. “Am I to wake you, Mary Elizabeth?”

“No, ma’am,” Mary Bet said, getting up in a hurry.

With Dr. Slocum there and attending the patient, Cattie Jordan looked more relaxed. “It’s the Lord’s will, honey,” she said, “and if your father were taken today, we should be happy that he’s in a better place. Isn’t that right, doctor?” She smiled so that the rouge fissured along the wrinkles in her face.

“Yes, well,” Dr. Slocum said, looking from the aunt to the niece, uncertain whom to address, “this is a very serious business, coming right after the flu and the measles. He’ll need constant vigilance for the next few days. An elderly man doesn’t have but so much fight in him.”

Cattie nodded and smiled, as if certain that the vigilance was only for the sake of his not dying alone. “We’ll read to him, and pray to him,” she said. The doctor said that would be fine, and he gave her a list of medications and instructions and said that he would stop by in the evening.

When he was gone, Mary Bet went right back up to her father’s room, where he lay asleep, his mouth half open, his face so gray and closed upon itself he seemed gone already. She sat on the chest trying to figure the right prayer to say. While she was sitting there with her head bowed, Cattie Jordan tiptoed in.

“We should let him rest,” Cattie said. Mary Bet nodded, then yawned. “Cover your mouth when you yawn, honey,” Cattie told her. “It’s unladylike.”

At dinner Cattie, sitting in Cicero’s place, helped herself to the fried chicken breast, then passed the platter over to her niece. Mary Bet didn’t care for wings or drumsticks—with their rubbery bits and tiny bones, it was like eating fried rabbit. She selected a second joint and was on the point of reaching for the bowl of succotash, when Cattie picked it up and scooped the top layer, where the butter had just melted. Mary Bet started to eat her chicken.

“Wait for the hostess,” Cattie said, a faint, condescending smile on her lips. When her plate was finally piled with cucumbers and tomatoes, mashed potatoes, and biscuits, she carefully placed her napkin in her lap and then began eating. “I’m surprised you haven’t learned some etiquette in school.”

“It’s a public school,” Mary Bet said.

“That explains it. Well,” she said with a gay laugh, as if they were having a merry time, “we have quite some work to do. And just in the nick, with you going on fourteen. Just in the nick.” Then she continued eating, licking her lips between bites, and her features relaxed into more natural contours and she became again the cheerful, if somewhat greedy, aunt that Mary Bet knew from family reunions.
She studied the contents of her plate with the happy concentration of a shopkeeper counting his money after a good day; she chewed thoughtfully, serenely, her eyes closing each time she swallowed.