But as the food dwindled on her plate, her eyes took on a worried, harrowed look. Mary Bet was on the point of helping herself to a mean-looking wing, but Aunt Cattie lifted the platter and called for Essie. “We mustn’t indulge ourselves,” she said.
“I’ll take it out,” Mary Bet told her. “Essie’s eating her own dinner.”
Cattie’s jaw dropped, the platter lowering to the table. “You, waiting on the servants? Mary Elizabeth, what would your mother say?” She shook her head, denying what she’d just heard.
“Mother taught us to clear the table ourselves.”
“When a servant was in the very next room? I can’t believe it.” Essie came, wiping her mouth with the hem of her apron. Cattie simply gestured to the dishes and Essie, with a half-amused glance at Mary Bet and a little shake of her head, began clearing. Mary Bet stared darkly back at the servant, upset at both these women—at her aunt for turning things upside down and at Essie for being unable to do anything about it.
For the next few days, Mary Bet did her best to avoid her aunt. Mealtimes were the only occasions Cattie Jordan required, or seemed to want, her niece’s presence, and then only for decorum’s sake. Mary Bet imagined that her aunt would have been perfectly content to sit in solitude as she chewed contentedly and fixed her gaze in the middle of the table. Mary Bet recited the events of her day, careful to make them sound as uneventful as possible. She’d learned that her aunt at mealtimes wanted to hear nothing that would upset her or call for her attention in any way. This nonnews, though, could include gossip about other children—to this, Cattie was happy to listen and add tidbits from her own storehouse of gossip going all the way back to her own schooldays. Mary Bet almost
came to enjoy these little gab sessions, though she thought it wrong to tell so many stories about people she hardly knew.
Sometimes her aunt’s stories were about people who had ruined themselves with drink, or suffered a financial setback, which was always traceable to some character flaw or personal failing. “Everything happens for a reason.” She would say this with a faraway gleam in her eye, as though she had been blessed with a privileged vision into the Lord’s plan. Cattie Jordan’s inside track to God seemed to put her out of patience with grieving, so that Mary Bet was afraid to show any fear.
Cicero spent the next seven days slipping in and out of consciousness. He slept nearly twenty hours a day and he lost so much weight that his nightshirt hung on him like a sheet over a broom. Every day, Mary Bet came home from school at dinnertime and ran, then—because of Cattie’s scolding—walked, up to her father’s room.
At dinner, Cattie was always dressed as if for church, a silver or pearl brooch pinned to the front of a dark brown or blue dress that had puffed sleeves and a tight, boned bodice that still attempted to show a waist, with a scarf around her neck—the one bit of color she indulged. “You never know when your time is coming,” she said. “You want to look your best.” She didn’t insist that Mary Bet follow suit, for which Mary Bet was grateful, until she realized that her aunt simply did not trust her not to dirty her nice things. Every day Mary Bet would ask if they shouldn’t wire Siler and Myrtle Emma, and Cattie Jordan would always assure her there was no need for them to come.
One afternoon, as Cattie was lingering over the last two bites of chess pie on her plate, eyeing them as she would friends embarking on a long journey, she said, “Mary Bet, you know we’d be happy to take you on should the worst happen.” Mary Bet nodded, her lower lip tucking under, waiting for what her aunt wanted to say. “Do you know what your father had, has, in mind for you?”
“Ma’am?”
“For you to take with you. He must’ve said something about so-and-so is intended for Myrtle Emma, such-and-such for your brother, and the like for yourself.” She glanced over at the sturdy sideboard and the corner cupboard, its panes revealing Murchison china that had gone to the youngest daughter, Mary Bet’s mother. As a middle daughter, Cattie Jordan had received very little from her parents, though Mary Bet did not know this. Mary Bet thought of everything they owned—the two horses, one nearly blind (though Cicero didn’t have the heart to sell it to the boneyard), the goat, the pig she had to slop every morning, the clutch of scrawny chickens, the house and land and furniture, the clock on the mantelpiece—what was it all worth? How would it be divided? What about Essie? Where would she go?
“I don’t know,” she said.
Her aunt smiled at her, a smile that reached out and patted her head. “Well, I’m sure there’s a will.” She sighed, an effort to be sturdy and patient in the face of trying times. Mary Bet did know that Cattie’s husband, Uncle John, owned a good bit of land, and that their three children were grown. “I expect Myrtle Emma will want your mother’s good things. Though you
have
been the one who stayed with your father,” she said, winking at her niece. “If there’s anything you especially like, you might ask him sometime when he’s awake. And you needn’t feel at all ashamed. I know he would want you to have some nice things.”
Mary Bet did not know how to respond to this suggestion, so she nodded and quickly finished eating. She asked to be excused.
“Yes, you may be excused,” Cattie Jordan said, seeming relieved. She smiled in a way that Mary Bet took to be genuine, even heartfelt. Then she sighed. “Mary Bet,” she said, “you should start looking to your appearance a little more. You have a nice figure coming along, a fair complexion. You have the Hartsoe nose, and there’s
nothing to be done about it. But young men won’t mind, as long as you carry yourself with pride and have a strong bosom, and I think you will. Go look in your room. I brought you some clothes. You don’t have to wear your sisters’ things.”
“I’m never getting married,” Mary Bet said. She regretted it immediately. Cattie looked as if she’d been slapped. She’d clearly been expecting her niece to be speechless with thanks, maybe even throw her arms around her, and here Mary Bet had said the first words that came into her head. “I mean I don’t think any boy would ever ask me,” she said, trying to reverse the pink flush in her aunt’s face. Cattie’s expression relented a little, softening back to her neutral, controlled smile. How simple it was, Mary Bet thought, to fool a grown-up who was not very smart—she didn’t like doing it, but she didn’t like Cattie trying to marry her off. “Thank you, Aunt Cattie,” she said, with a little curtsy. “I’ll go try them on directly.”
“You’re welcome,” Cattie said. “I’ll be up to help if you need it.”
Mary Bet almost said she needed no help, but she held her tongue; anyway, Cattie had already returned her attention to her pie. Mary Bet hurried upstairs to her room and saw spread across her bed several things, including a grown-up corset, the kind that hooked in back and laced in front and had button garters hanging from the bottom. She knew from watching her sisters how it was worn. She picked it up and slid one of the stays from its sleeve, a translucent sliver of whalebone you could cut someone with if you had a mind to. She pictured Joe Dorsett trying to kiss her—why, she’d reach into her corset and pull out a stay and hold it to his chin. She laughed, her skin tingling, and wondered why in the world she would have such thoughts.
She decided to try on the corset so she could tell her aunt she had. It was like an ivory-colored shell, going all the way from the top of her bust to below her hips. She had to cinch it almost all the way for a snug fit. She stood away from the oval mirror above
the dresser so that she could see the whole thing. Standing so, she could not see her own face, but she could not help smiling at what she saw—a young lady, her black hair draping over the top of the corset. She put a hand on her hip and cocked it in a saucy way, then leaned down so she could see her expression. The smile disappeared.
Lord, why did you give me this nose?
Everything was fine, maybe even pretty (lots of people said so)—but the nose …
So you won’t be vain
, she heard herself saying.
The voice that had started sounding in her head, as if she were becoming twins, was a nuisance and a disturbing thing that she wished she could talk to Myrt about. You couldn’t explain in a letter that you were always arguing with yourself, or talking to God, or hearing yourself tell yourself how foolish you were—no one would understand. She remembered her father yelling at himself in the mirror and wondered if she was doomed to live with a double self that would grow ever more unpredictable and troublesome. She flopped back on the bed and lay there until she heard footsteps on the stairs. She jumped up and stood in front of the mirror, brushing her hair and singing “Jesus Calls Us.”
Her aunt came and stood behind her for a moment, until Mary Bet remembered that Cattie didn’t like singing unless it was in church. “It fits nicely,” she said, turning around.
Cattie stood there a moment, studying her niece as if she were sizing up a pig for slaughter. She frowned, then came over and re-laced the corset until Mary Bet couldn’t breathe. She realized too late she should’ve taken a breath like the horses tried to do before you cinched their girths. She felt her ribs would crack if she took more than just a sip of air, and she wondered if she might faint.
“There,” Cattie said, standing back to admire. “That’s perfect. Lots of boys will be interested in you, young lady. Just wait.” She winked, a hint of chastisement in her eyes, and Mary Bet smiled back, but she wished more than anything that her aunt would leave
so that she could take the contraption off. It would not hurt Cattie’s feelings, because Cattie was too vain to let herself be hurt. There was a way in which she admired Aunt Cattie, even while wishing she would leave and never come back.
Cicero in the meantime grew incrementally worse, until there came an evening when he was balanced like a beam scale between life and death. The smallest thing could tip him over, a breath of wind on a candle flame. Dr. Slocum called in, with the intention of spending the night, if necessary, and checked his pulse hourly, changed the poultices, and forced some tonic-laced broth, Cicero all the while so far out on the borderland of existence that his few incoherent mumblings were as faint as a distant train. Mary Bet brought in two rattan chairs so that she and her aunt could take turns sitting up with the doctor. She wanted to stay there the whole time, but Cattie told her she should get some rest.
She went back into her room and lay on the bedspread in her clothes, staring at the dark ceiling. She wished Myrt were there, but the doctor said there was no point now in sending a telegram—the next twenty-four hours would decide everything. At a little before eleven, she heard her father saying something that sounded like actual words. She jumped up and rushed into his room.
“It’s all right, Daddy,” Mary Bet said, tears glazing her vision. She took one of his hands.
“They shall not awake,” Cicero murmured, “nor be raised out of their sleep.” Mary Bet sat on the edge of the bed, holding her father’s hand to her lips. “Daddy,” she whispered, “you must get well. God, don’t take him. Please make him well. Please, God.”
Cattie came over and stood just behind Mary Bet so that she could not see Cicero’s face. “Lord,” she said, “let us be obedient to thy will. In thy holy name we pray. Amen.” She placed her hand on Mary Bet’s shoulder, and for a moment the only sound was Cicero’s breathing and the doctor’s pocket watch, dangling by its gold chain
from his hand as he stood, head bowed, waiting for the prayers to end. He glanced up, then went ahead and took Cicero’s pulse, his stethoscope on the patient’s wrist.
The doctor was portly and florid-faced, his hair mostly gone to gray, but he had a way in times like these of making a desperate situation seem bearable—there was a pride and competence about him that could verge on arrogance and testiness, then soften into compassion when he had done all that he could, and the contrast made him seem almost more than human. “Weaker,” he said, “but still steady. He has a strong heart, your father. A strong will to live.”
Mary Bet nodded, and now Cattie patted her shoulder and said, “Or a healthy fear of dying. We should let him rest, shouldn’t we, doctor?”
Dr. Slocum hesitated, his nose and mustache bunching as he inhaled, and considered. “I don’t know as it makes any—”
“We’ll just go out awhile and let you do what you have to.”
Mary Bet shook her head and said, “I’m not going out, Aunt Cattie. You go lie down if you want to.” She regarded her father’s face in the flickering shadows of candlelight and firelight. She felt a chill around her ankles, while the rest of her was burning hot from the high-banked fire the doctor had ordered. The smell of camphor poultice and stale breath was strong in the stuffy air. After several minutes the odor of ammonia cut through, and Dr. Slocum said he was going to need some help changing the sheets.
“I’ll send out for Essie,” Cattie said. “Mary, you’ll have to get the Dorsett boy to fetch her.”
“No,” Mary Bet said, “I can help do it.”
“But whatever for? You needn’t do such a thing. Should she, doctor?” Her whole face showed dismay and repulsion at the very idea of changing a man’s soiled sheets.
“I just need a person who’s strong and willing,” Dr. Slocum said. “Doesn’t matter much who ’tis.” He motioned for Mary Bet to go
around to the other side of the bed, and as she did so she saw her shadow, cast by fireplace-glow, ride up the wall like her own ghost moving to keep her father’s from leaving the house. She peeled back the sheets on her side and helped the doctor pull her father over to the edge. Then she held her body against his so he wouldn’t tumble to the floor while the doctor slid the sheets out, Cattie now helping.
Cattie took the wet sheets downstairs, and Mary Bet went over and dipped a washrag into the ceramic basin on the dresser. She began wiping her father clean, while Dr. Slocum spread fresh sheets on the empty side of the bed. She finished toweling and powdering her father and helping dress him in a fresh nightshirt. He was comatose, his broad nose pointing up, taking in perhaps his last breaths, and she wondered if the family was coming to an end. All the generations in the family Bible—leading up to and ending with her. Unless Siler and Myrt came back to live here, she would be the last. What she would do if her father died she could not imagine.
I’ll never go live with Aunt Cattie
, she told herself,
never ever
.