Love and Lament (38 page)

In the morning at her office, she was nervous. She had decided to wear a plain brushed cotton skirt and white blouse—this is not a date, she told herself. We’re just going over to Hartsoe City to
inspect the new school they’re building. The door opened and she took a quick gulp of air. The first thing she saw was a bunch of yellow iris and lavender—her favorite combination; then Leon himself emerged around the door, his gray fedora in hand. “I didn’t know but what flowers weren’t the right gift to offer for helping me out today,” he said, “but I risked it because I thought you’d like them.”

“I like them just fine,” she said, her hand going to her hair.

“I don’t mean anything by it, it’s just that seeing as how Hartsoe’s your hometown and you might know what people over there need in the way of supplies and equipment and things like that, it would be a great honor for me to show you around and that way we—well, I don’t know if I explained all that—”

“If you’d stop talking for a minute,” she said, “I could tell you that people there don’t need anything special. But you probably know that.” She sat up straight, hands on her hips, and gave him an appraising look. “And since you didn’t mean anything by asking me, I don’t see the need for flowers.” And now he looked a little crestfallen and she was sorry she’d goaded him.

He twisted his fedora like he was angry at it. “Truth is, Mary Bet,” he said, “I’ve been wanting to ask you to walk out with me for some time. But it always seemed like you were busy with one thing or another.”

“And now that you’re the superintendent?”

He blushed. “I guess that makes it a little easier. I thought maybe you’d notice me more. I’m really just a country farm boy.”

“I’ve noticed you,” she said. She looked down at the flowers so as not to give away her smile.

“There’s also a church picnic down to Hackett’s Mill. The Baptists don’t mind picnicking, do they?”

He seemed sincere, though it was sometimes hard to tell—he had such a deadpan expression when he told a joke. “Yes, picnicking is fine. Why don’t we try the drive over to Hartsoe City first?
We’ll get better acquainted that way.” They talked for a moment about how it was a shame that Hackett’s had quit milling but that at least the new owner hadn’t torn the building down, not yet anyway. And then Mary Bet said she needed the next hour to finish up her work, and, no, she didn’t need any help—that was just so that she could be alone with her thoughts and not have him hovering around.

Last night she’d gone home as light as air and wondered if she might just float away. She couldn’t bear for Flora or anybody else to see her in this condition, and yet she wanted to shout to the sky that she was giddy with delight. Spring had never come in so full and beautiful, with so many vivid colors and sweet smells she thought she could faint in the street and be happy. “Get a grip on yourself,” she thought. A carriage ride to Hartsoe City and back was perhaps not a good idea. Spending all day alone with a man might not be the proper thing to do, even though the younger girls now were going about unchaperoned as though it were perfectly normal. After all, it was just a business trip, and, anyway, might not she and Leon grow weary of each other on the way there and back?

That idea put her in such a foul temper, she wondered if perhaps she should back out of the trip. He was very forward-thinking as an educator, but his manners were a little unrefined. He seemed gentlemanly enough, but the truth was she didn’t know him all that well. She could hear her mother’s voice saying, “Who are these Thomases? What do you know about them?” And she thought, taking a deep breath of warm spring air, I’m twenty-nine years old and I don’t care about what I know and what I don’t know. I don’t care how foolish I am.

It was in this fidgety state of mind that Mary Bet took from her trunk the old scrapbook she had made for her sisters. She sat in her bed, leaning against her feather pillow, the coal-oil lamp bright on her bedside table and the red leather volume in her lap. She ran
her fingers over the engraved gold letters, “Remember,” and then opened the book at random and began turning the pages. Here was a lock of hair, still a lustrous red-brown, tied off with purple thread, and a caption in Mary Bet’s careful running hand: “O’Nora’s hair when she was 13.” And there was a faded rosebud orchid, flattened between pieces of waxed paper: “orchid found in woods by Mount Jordan Springs (Myrt’s favorite, after gardenias).”

There were pressed leaves—a huge yellow tulip poplar and a fiery red maple—and a little wreath made from the hair of both sisters, braided tightly together (“made by Myrtle Emma–January 19, 1899”), the dark and light strands creating their own brindle color like nothing else in the world that ever had been or would be, Mary Bet had thought at the time, and still did. There were also letters from Mary Bet to Myrt and from Myrt to Mary Bet, pieces of schoolwork and notes tucked into the blank leaves.

Mary Bet flipped through the pages, one by one, and as she did so a piece of lined paper slipped out. She saw right away that it was in Siler’s hand, and she could not recall ever putting any such page in the book. She was happy that she had, but at the same time her heart was surging with the thought that there was a message from the beyond tucked away for her to find. There were little penciled drawings on one side, the kinds of sketches he used to make when he was dreaming up ideas in his workshop—a horseless carriage with a stick-figure driver, something that resembled a Ferris wheel with a crank-start engine at the base, a flying machine with birdlike wings that apparently flapped.

On the other side was a note in blue pen: “Dear Sis, please please please” then the crossed-out word “forget” and above it another crossed-out word that appeared to be “forgive,” and then some more crossed-out, illegible writing, followed by, “I have make a terrible mistake.” It was neither signed nor dated. A scene came to mind that she had shut away, but it came back now as startlingly clear as a
dream she had just woken from. Her father coming from the closet with the rifle, which he was loading. She had known somehow that he was doing it, just by the way he was talking and acting, and then his expression as he pointed the gun directly at her heart.

She remembered being unafraid, and how that realization had given her such a welling of strength that she could feel all of her soul pouring forth like a fountain from the top of her head and filling the room with the most buoyant light in the world. It was her father she was worried about and how he would feel if he pulled the trigger. The whole world was squeezed into the tiny word “if,” and it was surrounded by her blinding light. For a moment her father seemed to disappear, and then Cattie Jordan had touched her sleeve—it was silky black bombazine—and though Cattie Jordan said something, there was no sound, because her own wide, refulgent, prismatic light drowned out everything.

Now, sitting in her bed, her legs folded up in the same way her father’s had been under the apple tree, she thought: Siler must’ve known, must’ve seen something he never told anybody about. The thought pressing in her mind was,
He was afraid of turning out the same way … He
did
turn out the same way
.

Then this morning, walking to the office after a night of tossing and turning, she’d asked herself why she had agreed to go on a long trip with a strange man. Well, not exactly strange, but she didn’t want to lead him on—had she not made a vow never to get married? God would surely punish her for breaking that vow. God had kept her father from dying and had kept her from the flames of hell, and she could not now go back on her word to the highest power in the universe. If she did she would surely be punished for eternity. Was that a childish notion?

She was almost crying by the time she got to the courthouse. She thought she could be perfectly happy, and useful, as an old maid, just like Flora and Miss Mumpford. She might not be alive
now if she hadn’t made her bargain, or was it mere superstition on the part of a young girl? She wanted to ask someone, but the only person who came to mind was Leon.

And then he came in with flowers, and the worries of the previous night disappeared. They went on the trip to Hartsoe City, and Leon was as charming and natural as if they were strolling up the street. He was quieter than when he was around the courthouse, though, and so polite and courtly she almost hoped he would talk a little more about himself. But he only wanted to ask about her, and whether she was comfortable, or did she need a cushion or a blanket. And then he wanted to know about her family, and she told him a little about each member who had died and what she recalled about that person. “When Myrt died up in the mountains,” she said, “your father was mighty kind to us.” Leon nodded and said he remembered.

The trip went by in a blur, Mary Bet taking in not so much the sense of what Leon told her about the schools—though she did try to pay attention—as the tone of his voice and how patient and kind he sounded when he was talking to the principal and the teachers. They all admired him because he listened carefully to what they said, and made them smile and laugh at little jokes and witticisms. And he didn’t give them any big promises, just told them he was going to do everything he could to bring in more money and improve their school, and they seemed to respect him for this.

Not until they were on the way home did she ask him what she had been holding back. “Leon,” she said, “what about this army business. You’re not serious about it?”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said. His tone, which had been so gentle and solicitous, was suddenly firm.

“You don’t think it’s best to stay here where you’re needed?”

“I know where I’m needed. My mind’s made up.”

“What if I didn’t want you to go?” she said, trying not to sound coy.

“I’d say, Miss Mary Bet, I’m flattered, but I’ve already signed on. We’re assembling this summer at home stations. I’ll be up in Durham.”

“For how long?”

“As long as it takes. I don’t mean that in a smart way, I just mean I’m on for the duration. They say it’ll take eight or nine months to train us up right.”

“By then it’ll be all over.”

“I expect so.”

“And you’ll quit all that marching about like boys and come home?”

“Yes, I will.”

She sat there letting the carriage wheels fill the silence. She watched the withers of Leon’s bay shift right and left under the checkrein, a white mark there pulsing with the neck muscles. A motor chugged somewhere behind them, and then a black Model T duck-honked as it passed, kicking up a cloud of dust. Leon watched in admiration as it drove off. “I found a note from my brother last night,” Mary Bet said.

Leon was quiet.

“He died up in Morganton a long time ago.”

“Yes, I know,” Leon said. “I stopped by the Alliance that day and your father wasn’t there, and I thought that was strange. And Thad Utley told me your brother had been hit by a train.”

“That’s right, he was. This note hasn’t any date on it, but he was apologizing for something. He said he’d made a mistake, and he slipped it into my scrapbook so I’d find it, and here it’s been fifteen years and I discover that note. It gave me a chill, I tell you. It was like his ghost coming back.”

“Maybe he was telling you it was all right to move on.”

Mary Bet regarded Leon Thomas, how he was chewing the inside of his cheek, as he did when he was trying out a thought,
unsure what effect his words might have. Was he only trying to get her to give up her past, or did he really mean what he was saying? “I could never forget my brother,” she said.

“No, of course you couldn’t. You were close to him, weren’t you?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean you loved him like any good sister would. You and he were the last left, so it’s natural you would …” He couldn’t seem to arrive at the right word, so he let it go at that. From dark clouds in the west came an eructation of thunder, like a barrow full of stones, tilted and holding a moment before rumbling forth. It suddenly felt cooler. Leon clicked his tongue and flipped the reins, and the bay stepped lively.

Mary Bet nodded, thinking, so that’s what people think of the Hartsoes—survivors, clinging to each other in the storm. “You think I oughten worry about it?” she asked.

Leon hesitated, then looked at Mary Bet, his gray-green eyes searching her eyes and nose and lips, as though he would know everything about her. It jolted her so, she could feel her insides lurch. She was not sure she wanted to be known like that, by any man or woman. And she realized then that she had never been in love, and that it could be she was now falling in love for the first time in her life and that it might be the only time she would. Looking into Leon’s eyes was like looking into a mirror, for he was reflecting what he saw, and seeing only her. It was such a simple giving up of the self and its heaviness that she smiled and then laughed.

“What?” he said. “Do you think I’m funny-looking?”

“No, of course not, Leon,” she said. “I think you’re right good-looking.”

He smiled and nodded, then turned to the road to hide his embarrassment. “I think you’re right good-looking too,” he said.

The thunder echoed for a while, but then grew fainter, the storm passing toward the north, leaving them with just a shower that pattered on the canvas buggy top as Leon was raising it. They rode along quietly, the gentle rain cocooning them in the buggy, with the smell of watered earth rising all around. By the time they got home they were singing “Sweet Adeline,” and Mary Bet didn’t want the trip to be over.

CHAPTER 23