The Calamity Club by Kathryn Stockett - 15

“ C an somebody please answer that?” I was carrying an eight-foot ladder and brushes and a bucket of paint down the hall of the Orphan. I’d been bored out at the Tartts’ house ever since I’d finished the books, and decided my parting gift to the big girls would be to paint that ceiling upstairs with the leftover blue paint. I would not be asking permission. What could anybody do, assign me to unpaint it? I’d be home in a week anyway; at least that was my best estimate for when Frances would ask Rory for the money, sometime after her birthday celebration tonight. Somebody knocked on the door again, harder.

“Alright, alright, don’t anybody get up ,” I called, “I’ll answer it.” I leaned the ladder next to the front office, where I still half expected to see Meg. Though Mildred was here somewhere, most of the volunteers were still at home at seven in the morning, including Frances, who was spending the day in her room, primping for her birthday. Garnett was down in Jackson trying to win some big charity award. If it’d been for Coldest Woman of the Year, she’d be a shoo-in.

I opened the front door to a woman in a dirty yellow wool dress with a red wool beret pulled down low above her eyes. In the dead of August.

“Hello, may I help you?” I said.

Her eyes skittered past me into the little entryway. “I’m here to see a little girl. Her name’s Margot Louise.”

“I’m sorry, who?” Something was splattered on the front of her dress, rust colored but smeared like she’d tried to scrub it out.

“Margot Lefleur, she goes by Meg. She’s eleven years old, and I need to see her right now.”

My heart thumped hard and then felt like it stopped. “May I ask … who’s asking?”

Her dark eyes twitched behind me again to the vestibule and then to the hall. “I’m an old friend.”

I stared at her. “Meg’s only got one friend, ma’am. And I’m pretty sure you’re not it.”

She lifted her chin up just the way Meg did when she did not like something. “I need to see her, please—just go and get her.”

I stood there stupidly, not knowing what to do here. “I’m sorry, ma’am, but Meg’s been adopted.”

It took a second for this to register. “ No ,” she said and came at me, chest out, chin out. “Where is my daughter?”

I put my hands up. “I’m sorry, ma’am. I don’t know—”

“Then who does know?”

“The chairlady, Mrs. Pittman. You’ll have to talk to her.” I kept my hands up. “But she’s out of town. She’ll be back—tomorrow, I think.”

“But … somebody besides Mrs. Pittman must know—there must be some kind of paperwork on her.”

“There probably is, but—”

“Then go get it !” She was red-faced, hysterical.

“Ma’am, I’m sorry, but I don’t have that kind of authority. I’m not even supposed to answer the door here.” She was breathing hard through her nose, staring me down, so I said it as clear as I could: “The files are locked up, so you’ll have to come back when Mrs. Pittman is here. She has the key.” Which was true. As far as I knew, Garnett hadn’t given the file keys to Mildred before she left for Jackson. The woman, thank God, took a step back and shut her eyes like she was trying to get control of herself. Now that she wasn’t charging at me, I could think—why was she here, now? Almost two years after she’d left Meg behind?

“Mother Mary … how can this be happening? Please , I am begging you, I need to know where she is.”

I took a deep breath and spoke slowly. “Miss Lefleur,” I said, assuming that was her name. “As I understand it …” It was hard to say out loud; it was hard to even think it. “You abandoned her.”

Her eyes went rounder, darker. “You think I left Meg on purpose ?” she said. “Oh my God—did Dr. Pittman—did nobody tell her? Does Meg think I left her on purpose ?”

“Dr. Pittman? What was Dr. Pittman supposed to tell her?”

She winced at his name and her black pocketbook slipped from under her arm and fell on the porch. When she leaned down to get it, I saw blood seeping through the side of her tan shoe. Dusty, ankle-strap heels, nothing to be walking far in. “I—there was nothing I could do, but believe me, I would never, ever abandon Meg.”

I needed a minute. I needed to think what this meant. For Meg. The woman’s yellow dress had probably been nice some winters ago, but it was stained and ratty now. She didn’t look like she had much, if anything. “Look,” I said. “All I can tell you, and I hope it’s some consolation, is it sounds like Meg’s new family is pretty well-off. They have the means to take good care of her.” Lower, I couldn’t help but add, “Surely better than here.”

“What does that mean?” Her dark brows clenched together. “Was she not alright here?” And here she came barging at me again. I felt like a matador.

“She’s fine , or she was fine when she left. That was Monday.”

She stared at me, stunned. Her lips parted; they were chapped and peeling under the red lipstick. “You’re saying I only missed her by three days?” When I nodded, the dam broke, tears running hot stripes down her cheeks. She shuddered, sobbing, trying to catch her breath. She opened her pocketbook and ripped out a handkerchief and held it to her face.

Gasping behind the cloth, she said, “Isn’t there anything … you can tell me about who they are or … a name, a town? Do they live close to here? Did they take her to another state?”

It was truly awful to watch this woman’s heart breaking. “I don’t know, I’m sorry. But like I said, it sounds like they can take good care of her.”

“Better than her mother ?” She sobbed these words. “Don’t you think Meg deserves to be with her mother ?”

It felt too cruel to say it to her again, but even if I didn’t, I guess my face did. She’d abandoned her daughter. Said she was going to the store and never came back. What did she think would happen? Did she think she could just show up here and say she changed her mind?

It took her a while to collect herself. Crumpling the handkerchief in her hand, she sobbed hard, one more time and slid, what must’ve been the very warm red wool hat off her head. Her dark hair was matted in curls. She probably wasn’t even thirty yet, but she had circles under her eyes so deep they looked blue. “Alright,” she said. “The truth is they sent me away. To the colony in Ellisville to serve out my sentence.”

“Sentence?” I asked. “You mean, you were arrested?”

She gritted her teeth, like she wanted to grind up the answer. “Yes.” She turned around quickly to see a car driving past the orphanage.

“Arrested for what?” I asked. I’d never known anyone who’d gotten arrested.

“I was charged with—” More grinding. “Consorting with a Negro and hitting a police officer—because he was hitting me—and some other charges that don’t matter. I was sentenced to two years.”

Had she escaped? “But Meg was only here for a year and a half …”

“Early release. They let me out two weeks ago to cut costs. They said I’d been reformed .” When she pushed her hair off her forehead again, I saw a rough red scar that wrapped around her wrist.

“Why the heck didn’t you get here sooner?” It was a cruel thing to ask, but it didn’t bode well for her that she’d waited two weeks, on top of everything else.

“Believe me, I came straight here the day I got out and stood right over there—” And she pointed behind her, across the street. “But I’m not stupid. Garnett Pittman made it very clear—” She pressed her lips tight and tamped down her tone. “How well do you know Mrs. Pittman?”

It sounded like she was asking me whose side was I on here. Even if I didn’t trust this woman, there was no point in being polite. “Well enough to be glad we don’t know each other better.”

She nodded at this, and I thought she looked relieved. “I read in the paper that Mrs. Pittman would be down in Jackson today for some kind of ceremony. I was praying I’d get to talk to somebody reasonable here.” She spoke carefully, searching my face. “May I ask you your name, ma’am?”

Something told me that if I told her, it would keep this conversation going, and I wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or a bad.

“I’m Birdie Calhoun,” I said.

“Charlie Lefleur,” she said, and we shook hands. Gravely, she asked, “Would you please not mention to Garnett that I came by?”

My fisted disdain of this woman, who I’d thought had abandoned her child, had started to unfurl a little. I felt sorry for her. But really what it came down to was, it wouldn’t do Meg any good to tell Garnett this woman was here, and that was what mattered. “I won’t tell her.” I suspected there was a lot more to her story than she’d told me, and I could see where Meg got her smarts and her determination and that sharp little chin.

“I was very lucky I got to spend the time with Meg that I did,” I said.

At this, her eyes filled up with tears again. “You spent time with her?” she asked, and I nodded. “What is she like now? Does she still love school as much as she used to?”

I couldn’t break this woman’s heart any more than I already had so I just said, “Meg was the smartest girl here. She was truly a pleasure to be around.”

“What else can you tell me about her?” she asked. She seemed hungry to know.

I thought about it. “She likes to read the newspaper and she likes biscuits. I used to sneak them in to her. And she’s tidy. She says she got that from you.”

She looked like I’d just hugged her, tears streaming down her face. I could tell she had a thousand more questions, but another car passed on the road and spooked her.

“Miss Calhoun, I know you don’t know me, but—would you be willing to help me find my daughter?” She folded her lips inside her mouth like she expected me to say no and she’d take it like a punch in the face. But it didn’t matter because she would just keep right on asking. I knew people like her. Because I was people like her. But that didn’t change the facts.

Getting arrested doesn’t exactly make you mother of the year, I wasn’t completely sure I trusted this woman. And Meg was with a new family now who, according to Frances, could well afford to look after her. This woman didn’t look like she could afford a bowl of soup, much less support a child.

I buried my hands in my apron pocket. I just wanted what was best for Meg, whatever that was. I need to think about it. “Give me a couple days,” I said.

Charlie nodded and breathed deep like she was trying to accept that this was the best she’d get for now. Her eyes looked bee-stung, they were so red from crying. “I’m staying outside of town at Mr. Finch’s boardinghouse.” She sort of shivered when she said that. “He’s letting me sweep up for him, but I won’t have enough for another taxi until …” She thought about it. “Tuesday afternoon. There’s no telephone out there.”

If I was leaving on the next train, it wouldn’t be until the following day. “I guess that’s alright,” I said.

“Is there somewhere else we could meet? I can’t come back here.”

Frances would not be happy about this woman coming out to the house, but my heart had always bled harder than hers. “I’m staying out at Idlewilde at the end of North Lamar, about two miles from the square. You’ll see the carriage block out front, it says Tartt.”

I made a dent in painting the big girls’ ceiling before the others came in, but I’d have to slip in tomorrow to finish the rest. When I knew Frances was off getting beauty parlored at the Unique, I went home to bake her a birthday cake. Not just a cake, a coconut cake. I’d bought the bag of dried coconut at City Grocery with my own piddling money.

As I opened and closed kitchen cabinets, Picador stood at the sink, watching me with a flat mouth. “Whatchou need, Miss Birdie? Lemme get it,” she asked a second time.

“Here they are,” I said and set three round cake pans on the counter.

“I’m on make Miss Frances a caramel cake today. So you go on in there and I do it.”

“I’ll make it. I’m baking a coconut cake.” I went to the pantry and scooped a bowl of flour out of the barrel.

When I came back out, Picador said, “Did your sister ast you to make her a coconut cake stead a my caramel one?”

“No, no, Picador, I just know coconut is her favorite.”

“I see ,” she said and watched me pour the paper bag of dried coconut flakes onto a pan to toast. Way down low, almost under her breath, she muttered, “Well I prefer fresh .”

I looked at her. “Fresh … what?” She walked past me and down the cellar stairs and brought back up a wooden box lined with straw and took out a fresh green coconut. A red stamp on the side of the box said Baracoa, CUBA .

I’d never even seen a fresh coconut before. Imagine that. I picked it up, puzzling over how to get the thing open. Picador took it from me and hammered it with an iron stake, draining its milk into a jar, and then stuck the whole coconut, on a pan, in the oven. When she pulled it out, it cracked easily into pieces. She grudgingly let me take over after that but looked like she’d just had to teach me to boil water and there was still a pretty good chance I might mess it up.

By the time Frances got home many hours later, I’d finished the cake and hidden it in the cupboard, and the ordeal of my sister’s dressing ritual began. Frances had a magnificent talent for stretching a procedure as simple as cladding herself for supper into an entire afternoon and still managing to run late. I had nothing better to do, so I followed her around. The Unique had plucked her eyebrows, though “not too much,” so they were a bit thinner and arched a little higher. She very carefully tied a pink shower bonnet over her newly waved honey-brown hair and stepped into a bath. I sat on the stool while she ran a pumice stone up her legs and the Curvfit under her arms and chattered about her birthday. “I’m so excited, I asked for that bracelet from Lett’s … You think he got me the bracelet from Lett’s? … No, don’t tell me if it’s the bracelet from Lett’s.” Then she got out and slicked herself in oil, powdered it all down again, did fifty face exercises to build her already beautiful cheekbones higher, and rubbed her face with chamomile oil so she wouldn’t look like a tomato. (She glanced at me.) At five thirty she took a white silk dress out of her wardrobe, slim and hit her mid-calf. Had somebody who didn’t know better assumed she was almost ready, I’d have told them she most definitely was not. Eleven outfit changes later, here came the waterworks. Now we were getting somewhere. She was too fat, too short, her bosoms were too small, her hips too round. “Everybody has good clothes but me, Birdie .” By the time I’d brought her an ice pack for her face, she’d put the first white dress back on and was smiling in the mirror, delighted by her looks after all.

It felt like days later when Frances and Rory finally left for town. Rory was trying very hard not to look annoyed at his wife on his wife’s birthday. Tired from painting and cooking and reassuring, I told Mrs. Tartt I thought I’d just as soon skip supper tonight, that I’d come back down for the little birthday celebration when they got back.

On the sleeping porch, I shut my eyes—God, my body ached from painting only half that ceiling—but fifteen minutes later I woke up sore and stiff and wandered back downstairs. Picador’d set the dining room table for cake before she left, along with Frances’s unopened presents. A small white box with a pink bow was from Rory. Mrs. Tartt’s gift was the box with a blue bow, which she’d shown me was a gold brooch from her own collection, but “only costume,” since she didn’t want to “outshine what Rory gives her.” I knew what else Frances had planned for this evening. She’d hung the drippy pink bustier on a brass hook inside the door of her wardrobe. “A literal birthday suit,” I’d teased her.

I could hear the radio playing in the parlor at the end of the hall, Kathryn Crawford singing “Love for Sale.” I’d rather listen to that instead of the talking in my own head. When I peeked in, Mrs. Tartt was sitting on the pink settee.

“Mind if I sit in here with you?” I asked.

She looked up, startled, and smiled. “Of course, Birdie, please, come sit.” She gathered up four hands of cards fanned out on the pink cushions, and I sat down.

“ Well. Here we are.” She clasped her hands together. I’d been here three weeks, but she still took on the stiffness of a straight-backed chair around me. She was never rude—that would be rude—but I had no idea how she felt about the sister of the daughter-in-law she supposedly didn’t like.

“What were you playing?” I asked, patting the deck of cards.

“Oh, just laying out some bridge hands,” she said. She stacked the cards on their side. Worn and powdered, they pictured a flapper girl lounging bare-legged in a gold fingernail moon. “I used to play with Henry every night, honeymoon bridge mostly, contract if we had people over. Henry was a devil at cards.” I could hear the twist of loneliness at his name. She’d told me he’d died four years ago, two years before Daddy. She added, “I tried to teach Frances, but she couldn’t pick it up, so I just make do on my own.”

“I’ll play bridge with you.”

“You play?” She sounded kind of suspicious.

“Sure, most Tuesdays down at the …” I smoothed down the front of my dress. “Ladies’ club.” I’d picked up a thing or two from Frances.

Braced and polite and clearly doubtful, Mrs. Tartt shuffled the cards, arching them in a perfect bridge. She dealt out four hands; two were dummies since we didn’t have partners. She fanned her cards, holding them close to her blue quilted housecoat. We played the first set quietly. She won eight tricks, I won five. Then I bid three but took six and she sat up straighter and said, “You’re good .”

While I shuffled, she glanced over at her glass of something on the coffee table. “Would you care for a little nip of bourbon, Birdie?”

“Um.” I’d never tasted liquor before. I’d never really even seen liquor except when I didn’t see it on the train here. Once Meemaw drank too much cherry bounce and Granddaddy threatened to divorce her. Mama always said we’d get a “reputation” if we took liquor. “Sure, I’ll try it.”

She brought over a crystal tumbler from the brass cart and poured us both about an inch from the bottle of Old Taylor. We raised our glasses and I drank it and a blazing fire shot down my throat, searing my stomach lining. But then—it was a good burn. A smoky, rich burn. My stomach growled from not eating any supper, so I took another sip.

“Where’d you get this?” I asked, picking up the bottle. “I mean, if you don’t mind my asking.” A tag around the neck read BOTTLED IN BOND , which sounded legal to me. Mississippi’d been dry since before I was born and so had the whole nation for over a decade, though the radio said Prohibition could end next year. It’d be up to each state to decide. The Delta Dispatch claimed the river would freeze over before it ever ended in the state of Mississippi.

“You mean do I have a bootlegger?” Mrs. Tartt asked and smiled sly in a way I hadn’t seen before, dimples deepening. She dealt the cards. “ No , when Henry heard the Volstead was about to pass in ’19, he went straight to Kentucky and brought back a hundred cases of bonded bourbon. Filled up half a train car. We had enough liquor in that cellar for a tribe of Indians and the entire Irish Army too.” My glass was already empty and she poured me and herself another. I drank it like I would a glass of anything on a hot August evening; that is, quickly. This time a strangely cool warmth spread across my cheeks.

“How did y’all meet?” I asked as we played the round.

“Me and Henry? It’s been a while since somebody asked me that.” She sat up a little straighter. I drank while she told her story.

“When I was seventeen, I rode my mare, Easter Lily, up to the Old White to meet my sister for tea out on the front porch. I’m sure you know it, it’s the hotel in West Virginia? My family used to spend June and July there to get out of the Memphis heat and take the waters. Anyway, when we were ready to go back to our cottage, I stood up and whistled between my two fingers, and Easter Lily walked right up the front steps of the porch, over to my table. I’d been working on that whistle trick for months to beat my sister at something. She was beautiful and had all the men’s heads turning that summer. Well, Henry walked over to our table and said to me, not her, ‘You, young lady, are going to teach me how you did that.’ My mother had a fit.” Mrs. Tartt giggled and turned pinker in the cheeks. “She didn’t approve of how me and Henry’d go riding just the two of us without an escort. He was twenty-three and liked to play poker with the colored waiters because they played ‘hot,’ he called it, and I hadn’t even made my debut yet.”

She took a deep breath and smiled on the exhale; the story was out of her. For what seemed like the first time, her shoulders weren’t up to her ears around me. I could just see her horse clopping up on that porch, and Lord knows I of all people understood the thrill of beating the beautiful sister at something. I wondered if she’d picked that up about me and Frances. She poured us both more bourbon and excused herself to the powder room.

The Silvertone radio, tall and wooden in the shape of a tombstone, had turned to news—bad news: Cotton prices were down to eight cents from three times that a few years ago. While I sipped, I studied the backyard out the window. The sunset sprawled gold through the high grass, tall as my shins now. Rory had not “taken care of it,” as Frances had promised. Truth was, it was lush and green and a heart-shaped vine had snuck over the porch rail, but it was also a little disturbing, now that I thought about it. I took another sip. As a Delta girl, I understood there were people who cut their grass and people who didn’t cut their grass, and these Tartts were people who cut their dang grass. When I’d offered to do it, Frances had forbidden me to, lest it make “Rory feel bad for not doing it,” which was exactly the kind of logic that put me in fits and usually led me to writing the newspaper editor, asking, Why are you even running a newspaper?

“Your turn, dear,” Mrs. Tartt said.

“Sorry.” Something about this liquor really made you think .

After we played a few minutes, she asked, “How did working at the Orphan suit you? Frances said you finished doing their books?”

“It suited me,” I said. “It really did. There was a girl there that I liked very much who got adopted. Garnett didn’t want me to come to the adoption day, said it’d be too crowded.” I doubted that was Garnett’s real reason; I suspected it was because I’d had the gall to disagree with her about the work program, probably the first one to do so in years. That alone made me want to go back and do more of it. I felt a little dizzy from that last sip.

“I heard things are run differently nowadays,” Mrs. Tartt said. “My friend Mary Pepper, she was chairlady of the Orphan for four years straight, when out of the blue Garnett announces she’s running against her and she even campaigned for it, which was …” She frowned, so I knew this was not done. “Before that, Garnett’d only been volunteering a few days a week.”

“When was it again? That Garnett got elected?”

“Oh, about a year and a half ago, a month after Christmas before last.” Something about this caught my ear, and I realized that must have been just after Meg had gotten there. I took a sip larger than I’d meant to and coughed, set it down.

“After all those years of service, poor Mary Pepper lost. She so loved looking after those girls.” Mrs. Tartt dabbed a napkin at a drop of bourbon that’d run down my glass and onto the table. “Pardon me for saying so, Birdie, but I personally could do without Garnett Pittman.”

“No kidding.” I’d figured she liked her same as everybody.

“Now, I don’t gossip, but Garnett Pittman’s a Baptist hypocrite. You probably didn’t know that, did you?”

“Not the Baptist part,” I said.

She set her cards facedown. “She grew up a Baptist Dipper down in Carroll County, saying coloreds shouldn’t learn to read and women shouldn’t get the vote. I’m twenty years older than Garnett, and I remember when we got the vote. I didn’t make a spectacle of myself, but I make sure to vote every year. I was also first in my class of ’91 to show my ankles after six o’clock in the evening.”

I smiled at that. My glass wasn’t empty but Mrs. Tartt was already pouring me and herself another—my third? Fourth?

“What do you reckon Garnett’s … after?”

“I believe I read in the paper she’s vying to be president of the Anti-Vice League for the entire state. That’s a big deal, though I can’t really say what she’d do with it if she did get elected. Honestly, she’s always had a little too much religion for me.”

“So if she’s Baptist, how’d the Methodists get so lucky to have her?” I knew she went to the same church as the Tartts.

“Garnett only married into the Methodist church through Dr. Pittman. He’s older than she is by a few years …” She counted on her fingers. “Let’s see, if I’m sixty-one, Dr. Pittman’s about forty-five, so Garnett’s not but forty. She had her looks when she married him twenty years ago, but.” She ended the thought there. “Now Dr. Welty Pittman I like. He’s a good man. When he’s not at the hospital, he gives free inoculations out in the county and keeps office hours in back of their house and never will charge anybody looks the least bit poor. Lot of folks don’t know that, but of course Henry did. He knew everything about everybody on account of the bank.”

The sofa had started to rock a little like a boat. Mrs. Tartt didn’t seem to mind it, though. She picked her cards back up. “Don’t mention what I said about Garnett to Frances? I think Frances sort of follows her.”

I laughed at that. “Sort of? My sister’s been a royal ass-kisser since she was—” I stopped. This bourbon was like a truth serum. And had I just said ass to Mrs. Tartt?

“I’m sure Frances is just trying to find her way. The high society around town can get right tricky.” She played a card and then looked me over. “I declare, Birdie, you really aren’t a thing like your sister, are you?”

“No, I am not.” It came out sounding sort of blue when I said that. I blinked down at my bare feet and they looked huge to me. I suddenly had a very hearty case of the hiccups.

“Well, you know that sister of mine who was so pretty?” she asked, and I nodded. Mrs. Tartt raised her chin and smiled slightly. “She ended up marrying poor .”

I chuckled. So she did know there was a thing between me and Frances.

On the radio was a discussion of Roosevelt’s most recent fireside chat, which I’d missed. A man read the president’s words in a low, steady voice: “We are not going through another winter like the last. I doubt if ever any people so bravely and cheerfully endured a season half so bitter.” I knew Mama and Meemaw had probably listened closely when the president spoke, Mama kneading her apron with worry, Meemaw shaking her head. When I looked down again, Mrs. Tartt had trumped me hard .

“Maybe we’ll stop here,” she said. “Frances and Rory ought to be coming home pretty soon to open the presents.”

“Do we know—” I hiccupped again. “What he got her?”

“I’m sure it’s something nice. Rory didn’t tell me.”

I leaned in and there were two of her now. “Mrs. Tartt, are you and Rory doing alright?”

She glanced down at the cards, trying to decide, I guess, if she should answer that. “Not especially, no,” she finally said.

“I’m sorry. Did something happen?” I had a few suspicions. Such as, maybe she hadn’t wanted him to marry Frances and that’d driven a wedge between them.

“It’s …” She let out a breath. “Somewhat complicated.” I could tell she wanted to tell me, but I didn’t push her. “Seven or eight years ago, Henry wanted Rory to go down to New Orleans to … take care of something. This was before Rory went off to college. Rory didn’t want to go, but Henry, he was dead set on it, and when Henry made his mind up about something, that was it. I had to stand by Henry on it, he was my husband. Anyway, Rory’s still upset I took Henry’s side, even after all these years.”

“Upset about going to New Orleans?” Had I missed something?

“It doesn’t matter. It’s all over now.” She clasped her hands together and smiled, the proper lady again. “I’m just so happy he and Frances got married, though I wish Henry’d been here to see it. And one of these days, I hope to have myself some grandchildren running around this big house.”

I wasn’t sure if that story was actually confusing or if I was too drunk to understand simple plotlines because my head was starting to feel unattached to my neck. I was dizzy, yet Mrs. Tartt seemed fine. It made positively no sense at all. And when I looked around the lovely salmon-colored room—had that fern in the fireplace gotten greener?—something was occurring to me, something important, possibly scientifically worthyable. This house with help in the kitchen and a Chippensomething dining room set—

“Mrs. Tartt.” I pleaded it. “There’s something you need to know about us.”

“Oh my, what is it, dear?”

Her powdered face was so free of wrinkles, her sapphire earrings so big. We were paupers compared to these people, how could they ever love us? I was trying to form the words in my mouth to let her know that I had come here to ask for money, we were broke, we were nothing like Frances had made us sound. What I came up with was, “We don’t have any coconuts down in our cellar. Mrs. Tartt, we don’t even have a cellar.”

She turned her head funny at me. “Did you eat supper, Birdie?”

I thought about it a second. “I don’t believe I did.”

She patted my arm. Car lights shone briefly through a side window. “You might’ve had enough bourbon for one evening, dear.”

I looked her deep in the eyes. “But why haven’t you?”

“I built up a tolerance to it a long time ago. Henry made sure.” She gathered the lady-in-the-moon cards. “He always served whiskey at bridge club to give us the edge .”

My stomach had started to ache when, a few minutes later, we heard the back door open. Mrs. Tartt said, “See can you stall them a minute and I’ll go light the candles for the surprise.” I weaved out into the grand hall where Frances was taking off her gloves, red lipped and beautiful in her slim white dress. She was glowing, excited to open her presents. My sister loved presents. Behind her, Rory in his blue suit and red tie had an odd smile locked on tight. The hall spun around me.

“Hello, Franny.” I hugged her, leaning hard on her shoulder. “Happy. Thanksgiving.” My stomach roiled around like there was an animal trapped in there.

“Birdie, what’s—are you drunk?” Frances said, pushing me away, but I held on to her long neck.

“ No , I’m not drunk,” I said. What a rude word. “I am inebriated .” I unhooked myself from her neck and rushed up the hall into the gold bathroom under the stairs, slamming the door, locking it. It all came out, but at least I hit the pot. I laid my face on the cool tile floor and could hear Frances knocking and asking was I all right. And someone who sounded like me hollered back that I was “fine … Just open your presents … I’ll be sleeping in the water closet tonight.”

Much, much later, I opened my eyes to find myself curled against the white toilet stool. A ringing sound had woken me up. Was that the telephone? This late? Or had I dreamed that? I peeled my face off the tile floor and stood up, catching a hand on the sink. The grand hall was very dark except for a faint light left on in the dining room. I weaved my way in and saw that the coconut cake was under a glass cover but a fat white quarter of it was gone, only crumbs and forks left on the plates, so it must’ve turned out pretty good. Frances’s presents were sitting beside the cake. Two boxes, open, a tendril of blue ribbon hanging down. In one was the costume brooch Mrs. Tartt had chosen from her own collection. In the other box was a card. I lifted it out and squinted to read it. Rory’d given his wife a year’s subscription to Good Housekeeping magazine.

The next morning, I lifted my head off my cot on the sleeping porch and— Oh my God, what is that? Then I remembered. Or sort of. It felt like Mrs. Tartt had hit me over the head with her bottle of Old Taylor.

Everyone, including Frances, thank goodness, was still asleep. She was bound to be upset with me for last night. I put a dress on and slipped down the back staircase and out the door to the side yard. The wet morning grass soothed my burning headache. Fearing I might throw up again, this time in Mrs. Tartt’s Champney pink roses, I sank down on the milking stool and leaned my cheek against the hide of the cow. “I drank something,” I told her. “I drank a lot of it.” The cow said nothing. She understood me. The most I could remember was a horse on a porch, Rory and Mr. Tartt disagreeing about something, and the dismal fact that we had no fresh coconuts in our cellar.

Sure enough, when I went back upstairs, Mrs. Tartt was in the hall. She whispered, with an excited grin, “I do believe we’re in some trouble, Birdie,” glancing over at Frances’s door.

It was cracked open now and I peeked in to see Frances at her dressing table. She was thrashing a brush through her shiny light brown hair. She subscribed to the belief that if you beat it like okra, it would make it grow thicker. Let’s get this over with.

“How’d the birthday supper go?” I asked, shutting the door behind me.

“It was fine,” she said and sighed and set the brush down. “We had the fillet of beef with buttermilk sauce and they lit a banana dessert on fire. Then the waiters sang ‘Happy Birthday.’” She said all this flat, staring at herself in the mirror.

“That sounds nice,” I said, though a buttermilk sauce did not.

Frances picked up a handkerchief and pressed it to her eyes. “It was so humiliating, Birdie.”

“I’m sorry, Franny, I shouldn’t have drunk all that.”

“You should be sorry, and taking up with her of all people. But that’s not why …” She pressed the handkerchief harder. “After that lousy, cheap present he gave me, we came upstairs and I got all gussied up in that tawdry pink thing—but he …”

“What?”

“He couldn’t … his—you know …” Her voice was high and glassy. “I tried everything, but nothing helped—and he said it’s all the pressure he’s under at the bank, and I felt like such a fool in that ridiculous thing. When I pretended to fall asleep, he got up and slept in his room down the hall.”

Her curtains were still drawn shut, and in the damp pink light, I could feel what a lonely room this was for her. I went to her dressing table, a pretty, pale burled maple. When we were girls, I knew how to reassure her. It wasn’t a very hard script: Of course ______ likes you; of course _______ thinks you’re prettier than she is . But how to console somebody whose husband couldn’t perform his bedroom duties? The best I could come up with was “I’m sorry for the … letdown.”

“Birdie, do you think Rory’s seeing someone else?” She started to cry. “He keeps going down to Jackson for work, maybe he’s seeing the girl he dated before me, Esther? Esther Royal?”

I perched beside her on the little vanity bench and put an arm around her. “I don’t think Rory would do that to you, Franny. He’s probably just worried about work, like he said. These are awfully hard times we’re in. He loves you, Franny.” I watched her in the mirror. “And I know it doesn’t make it better, but we love you too. You’re doing something very kind for your family.”

“I know,” she said. “And don’t worry, I haven’t forgotten. I’ll ask him on Sunday, after church.”

I nodded my thanks. The train to Footely only ran on Wednesdays anyway. I gave my sister a hug and went and got properly dressed to finish painting at the Orphan.

The Lafayette County Orphan Asylum Where Some Children Are Welcome was chattering with women by the time I came downstairs from painting. My temples throbbed, I couldn’t seem to get my tongue wet. I prayed to baby Jesus to ease my bourbon headache. I’d finished painting the ceiling in the big girls’ room, but the real accomplishment was managing not to heave my guts up.

An underling of Garnett’s came out of the nursery, Patsy somebody and saw me skulking in the hall. “It’s too bad there’re no babies left to rock,” she said.

“I know, sometimes it’s like nobody even wants to abandon their babies anymore,” I said. Patsy frowned at me. “By the way,” I asked, keeping my voice down, “what’s the protocol here if a mama comes back to get a girl? Say, after she’s already been adopted?”

“I don’t reckon there is one. Far as I know, it’s never happened. Why do you ask?”

“Just curious,” I said. Through the back window, I could see Garnett out on the back porch talking to Mildred. Mildred had an especially hangdog look today, her shoulders slumping forward. Patsy said, “Don’t forget, we’re all meeting in the lounge in a minute to congratulate Garnett on her big plate award!”

I would not be attending that nauseating celebration. I slipped into the office and sort of crouched behind the filing cabinet, waiting for everybody to go into the lounge. “Yonder she comes! Congratulations, Garnett!” I heard Pripp call. Her ball peen voice could bang a hole in your head, especially after a bourbon supper. There was applause from all the ladies. When I knew they were tucked away in there, I tried that filing cabinet one more time. I was hoping Garnett’d unlocked it when she’d gotten back to town this morning. No luck. Meg’s mother was supposed to be showing up at the house in a few days, not that I planned to just hand over Meg’s address to her if I got it. She hadn’t gotten arrested and sent to an institution for nothing. But I couldn’t forget how Charlie’d begged me to help her find her daughter. That was Meg’s biggest regret, not hugging her mother goodbye, and I thought if I could just get Meg’s address, I could decide what was the right thing to do later on.

The ass-kissing contest had begun in the lounge, with Pripp winning and my sister a close second. Pripp had joined Garnett down in Jackson. “… and then he handed Garnett a check for two hundred dollars and this silver plate, and then a man took a flash photograph.” I heard my sister groan in ecstasy all the way down the hall.

I’d almost made it to the vestibule when I saw Mildred coming, carrying a stuffed flour sack with her pocketbook on her shoulder.

“Where you headed, Mildred?” I took the heavy sack from her, and she let me.

Her jaw was slack, her wrinkly eyes red and swollen. “Garnett let me go on account a so many girls got adopted at the view. She said she don’t need me no more—I live here, Birdie. I sleep with the toddlers in there.”

“Garnett fired you? But more girls’ll be showing up here—”

“Believe me, I know. I been here since it opened in ’27. This place’ll be full as a tick again soon.”

“Who’s supposed to stay with the girls at night?”

“She’s gone make a volunteer stay the night twice a month to cut costs.”

I set my hand on her damp, sloped shoulder. Mildred was what, sixty-five? Seventy? And this place could afford it. They didn’t have much, but Mildred only made a dollar forty a week.

“You know what I think it really was?” Mildred looked around the empty hall. “I think it’s ’cause I stepped up for Meg and helped her get adopted. Garnett tried to stop it, but that was Meg’s last chance. Garnett don’t care about those big girls, she don’t have to see their faces the night of View Day after they been rejected.”

What was there to say except “It’s truly a shame, Mildred. You stay here and I’ll run to the square and send you a taxi, alright?”

“Thank you, that’d be real nice. I’m just going to the depot. I got a daughter lives in Meridian. She don’t want me, but she’s what I got.” She looked up toward the vestibule, at the doorway to the lounge, and said lower, “You know what eats me up about all this, Birdie?”

I should’ve known what she was about to say.

“Why somebody who don’t even like children is running a orphanage.”

Sunday morning, Rory drove us all to church in the Studebaker. It was my first trip to church in Oxford.

Me and Frances rode in the back seat, while Mrs. Tartt sat beside Rory up front. I wouldn’t say Frances looked happy about the back seat, but she did look used to it.

Sitting next to Frances in her store-bought white dress with a black cartwheel hat tilted to the side, I probably looked like a poor country relation. Which, in itself, ought to’ve embarrassed me, but what embarrassed me more was how much it embarrassed Frances. She’d told Picador to iron my blue dress to such a crisp, it crinkled like I was wearing a copy of the Oxford Eagle newspaper.

“You’re gonna get Meemaw’s prod pole if you don’t quit looking at me like that,” I whispered in the back seat.

About half a mile down North Lamar, we passed the huge abandoned Percy mansion with overgrown grass and signs plastered on the pillars. Up front, Mrs. Tartt shook her head and said, “Henry always said the biggest fall the hardest.”

Just past it, Rory drove up behind a mule wagon, too close to be nice. The family in the wagon wore clean overalls and long dresses and sun hats, ready for church. Rory punched the pedal and sped around it, leaving them in a rude cloud of Lamar Boulevard. It reminded me of the day soon after I’d arrived when a driver had passed that fruit truck beside me, after Rory’d told Frances he was too busy at work to have lunch with her. I felt certain now that driver was Rory.

A little farther on, Mrs. Tartt said, “Alright, Birdie.” She drew in a breath, as if she was ready to tell me something important. “Down that road there is Oxford Methodist Church and over yonder is Episcopal and up thataway is South Street Presbyterian and around the corner is First Presbyterian like you are, then outside town is College Hill Presbyterian, it’s awfully pretty out there, and that’s Oxford Baptist, though there’s also Primitive Baptist, too, and most the coloreds go to Burns in Freedmen Town, or Second Baptist where Picador goes, though she doesn’t always agree with Pastor Williams, God help him, and then the Catholics go down to Water Valley for their own service.” She took a breath. “We, of course, belong to First Christ Methodist.”

There were a lotta churches in this town.

As we approached the square, long lines of black cars and buggies and mule wagons were turning or waiting to turn to drop folks off at church. A good many were walking, wearing everything from overalls to seersucker suits, from slightly threadbare to shiny store-bought, but all had been ironed. A hat topped every head over the age of thirteen.

“Do y’all ever try any of the other churches in town, Mrs. Tartt?” I asked.

“ Heavens no ,” Mrs. Tartt said. Frances elbowed me in the side. In Footely, we had the white Presbyterian and the colored Baptist, and I’d been to both.

Rory turned on a side street and stopped to let us out. Before he got out to open his mother’s door, he said, “Mother, are those shoes new?”

“Yes, I ordered these from Gimbels. Mr. Binny drove me to the PO to pick them up.”

“I told you don’t go buying new things right now, Mother. And I wish you’d stop wearing that terrible perfume.”

“Your father bought me this perfume in Paris. Shalimar was his favorite.”

“Well, he’s not here now, is he?” Rory said. Even Frances frowned and whispered “ Rory ” at the back of his hatted head, but Mrs. Tartt just looked out the side window and said nothing.

While Rory parked the car, we walked half a block. First Christ Methodist might not have been the biggest church in town, but it did look like one of the oldest. Built of dark stone blocks, it had jewel-colored stained-glass windows on the sides—a Lazarus, a Moses, a baby in the manger. The door was cut in a charming clover shape. Standing around out front, the members looked better dressed than many we’d passed. I saw zero overalls, though a few mended elbows, and plenty of white gloves, and nearly everyone wore that solemn pre-church look, out of either respect or dread of the famine-like hunger an hour of church seemed to bring on.

“Oh, there’s Mary Pepper,” Mrs. Tartt said and slipped off. Frances started talking to Pripp, who was there with her husband, so naturally I eased back to take it in. I liked church. The quiet, the simple reminder to be kind, don’t murder people. But also because I took church at my own pace, usually going inside only two Sundays a month, which Mama called “peculiar.” Our pastor didn’t mind a bit if I weeded the flower beds or sat outside and listened through the window on the other two Sundays. Meemaw called it efficient—two birds, one stone.

I spotted Garnett moving through the crowd of churchgoers. “Morning, good morning, glory be to the Lord,” she said with a condescending smile. My God, she looked constipated. People nodded back to her but they didn’t chat with her like they were chatting with one another. Because how could you chat with a person. Who stopped mid-sentence. So you’d think what she was saying. Was important. I wondered if this was how she spoke to her husband when they were in the bedroom: Your assigned assignment. Is to lie down. And put your … My sickest thoughts were always at church, don’t ask me why.

Church bells had started ringing all over town, and it was lovely, a little chaotic. I noticed Garnett had arrived with a man, who was standing several feet away from her, talking to another couple. He was a bit older than her, mid-forties, with wavy light brown hair. I realized it must be her doctor husband, Welty Pittman. From here, he looked handsome. Garnett smiled a real smile, an actual human being smile, and stood up a little taller when she thought he had finished his conversation and was turning toward her. But it ended up he was turning to talk to someone else. Garnett’s face flattened and she became Chairlady Garnett again. Garnett Pittman, the coldest woman on earth, wishes her husband would notice her. She must’ve been a different person when she met him. What in the world had happened to her?

Rory walked up, took Frances’s arm, and whispered something to her. She nodded and touched his hand. It looked like an apology. Which was good, I thought, since if she was going to ask him for the money this afternoon, it might help if he already felt guilty about something else. I followed them inside, slowly, up the aisle, and we filed into the third row on the left. I saw Rory whisper something to Mrs. Tartt too, and she nodded back.

I didn’t know the first hymn, but when we stood and sang “A Mighty Fortress,” it felt a little bit like home. The pastor gave a gentle sermon from Ephesians, asking folks to be considerate of one another. Even if I didn’t like every single person here, I had to admit, it was a nice church.

An hour later, we filed back down the aisle with the crowd. Rory took a side door to go get the car, and Mrs. Tartt moved into the pews to chat. Just as Frances and I stepped outside the front door on the stone landing, Frances turned around and positioned herself, solid as a tree, right in Garnett’s path, leaving people to navigate around us.

“Garnett, I just want to say again how happy I am you won that award.” Oh God, Frances —she’d said all this already—but on she went. “You deserve it and you just do so much for those little children.” Garnett nodded, trying to step aside, but hungry Frances actually reached out and held her arm. I glanced at Garnett’s husband, also trapped by my yapping sister. I was surprised by how attractive he was up close, thick hair, sky-blue eyes, handsome in a rumpled sort of way. We nodded hello, and he looked a little embarrassed that we were blocking the way, or maybe embarrassed was just his natural state. He’s the one who found Meg, he saved her life , I thought. Mildred had told me that. I said to him, “I knew Meg Lefleur, Dr. Pittman. She told me about you.” My point was to ask how he had found her, but his mouth dropped open and he looked so appalled it stopped me from getting the rest out. Then his wife’s bony hand pulled him away, and the crowd moved down the steps, and I had not an inkling of what had just passed.