The Calamity Club by Kathryn Stockett - 24

“ Y ou got a minute, Franny?” I said from the doorway of the parlor. It was Saturday morning, and Frances was playing a Fanny Brice record, circa 1922, on the old Victor phonograph we’d lugged down from the attic. We’d sold the good, newer phonograph to Mr. Fauster, but this old one still worked, though the handle was broken off so you had to wind it up with a screwdriver.

“What is it now?” Frances asked with real fear in her eyes. At this point, I couldn’t blame her.

“Can you curl my hair again like you did last time?” I asked.

“I can try,” she said. “What for? You going somewhere?”

I pulled over a chair with a saggy cane seat and mumbled an answer I didn’t really want her to hear.

“You mean Jack from the bank Jack?” she said. I nodded. “He asked you out?” I nodded. “ Wull. What time’s he showing up here?”

“At one.” It was only ten o’clock, but I knew this hair procedure took a while.

Yesterday morning Mrs. Tartt and I telephoned Mr. Allison at the bank. She told him, in all her humble optimism, how she’d raised most of what she owed on the mortgage but was only two hundred dollars short. Well Mr. Allison was surprised but he’d stammered that there was still nothing he could do unless the mortgage was paid in full. So leaning into the receiver, I said, “Put Jack Walsh on the phone!” which the coward did. He sounded thrilled to be passing the problem to somebody else. Jack listened, made a growling sound at Mr. Allison’s response, and said he could make no promises but that he’d place some calls. When he called back, it came down to this: If Mrs. Tartt could pay twenty-five hundred dollars, 90 percent of the mortgage, the bank could grant her one measly extra month to pay the rest. Jack had sounded angry and bitter, saying, “I guess that’s the kind of world we live in now.”

“Mrs. Tartt, please think this through,” I’d said. “What if you give them all the furniture money and then you can’t raise the last two hundred dollars? They’ll take the house and you’ll have nothing left to live on.” Well what’s the alternative, dear? she’d said. Her point was, even if she did manage to sell her house in just three weeks, she still wouldn’t have her house. She said she’d rather pay the 90 percent and hope that something came through in the extra month. I suspected, like Frances, she thought there was still a durn chance Rory’d come back to save them. Her heels were dug in firm.

Before I forked over the money, I took thirty dollars out for Mrs. Tartt to live on, the twenty-two dollars she owed Picador and Polly, plus what we needed to get the current and the gasometer turned back on. This time, cash in hand, there wasn’t a “truck delay,” though the fellow at the light company looked awfully smug about it. After that, Mrs. Tartt now owed two hundred eighty-four dollars on the mortgage and had sixty dollars to live on.

Finally, I mailed a letter to Mama that simply said that Frances needed me to stay longer, I’d explain later but to please let Mr. Parkins know.

Frances parted the top of my hair with her fingernail. “Alright, I’m gonna try and wave it, but it might not take. You know, you’ve really let yourself go lately.” Frances had told me this a few times since I’d been here. Like I’d left the gate open and let my looks wander out. She poured dribbles of Jo-cur wave set on my head and cut the comb through a section of my hair, pinched it, crimped it with a clip. “Have you gone on a date since …?” She stopped combing to think about it.

“No,” was the safe answer. Frances knew I’d spent my last year of high school in bed with encephalitis, which sort of put a damper on my social life. When I was well, it seemed like everybody’d already gotten engaged or even married. She also knew about my “date,” if you could call it that, six months ago when somebody’s city cousin had come into the Foote, bought a pack of Juicy Fruit, and asked me for a drive in his Willys-Knight roadster. When his tire blew out on the way home, I’d changed it for him since he didn’t seem to know what he was doing. I never heard from him again.

“Now look, no kissing on a first date,” Frances said. “And don’t think for a minute I forgot you kissed that man with an open mouth when you were sixteen.”

I turned back to look at her, Jo-cur dripping down my temple. “Have you never kissed Rory with tongue, Frances?”

“Of course not, that’s disgusting. That’s how the Spanish flu got around. It’s how people get sick.”

I thought about the small, dull world Frances believed I lived in, but I knew something she did not. It tasted like Red Hots. And after you try them, you will crave them the rest of your life.

Still, all morning, sordid little questions had been winding their heads around corners at me: Why even bother going on this date? You’re going back to Footely. Don’t you know it’s gonna turn out to be a big fat nothing? But when Jack had covered my hands with his at lunch, it had felt like he’d swallowed some of me, and I kept craving it—had for years—a darker, meatier grasp, not just as a cure for loneliness. I was sucking on other people’s cigarettes, for God’s sake, eating a tomato like an apple to feel the juice running down my chin, to get at that dire craving.

“Maybe I should just stay home,” I said.

Clip between her teeth, Frances said, “You most certainly will not. This might be your last chance, Birdie.”

“Thanks, Frances,” I said. “I still wish he wasn’t a banker, of all things.”

“Well, too bad, the slims are picking,” Frances said, and I smiled. Slims are picking was what Meemaw liked to say.

She combed, pinched, clamped, and asked, “So which one you wearing? The blue dress or the other blue dress?”

“Frances is funny, isn’t she?” I said. “Actually, I’m wearing one of Mrs. Tartt’s old dresses. Charlie altered it for me.” It was the deep wine–colored one with matching buttons down the front. She’d cut it so slim though, I had to cross my legs to sit comfortably.

I felt Frances’s fingers tighten on the clip. “How much longer is she staying here?”

“Hopefully as long as I do.” We’d gone over this plenty, the fact that Charlie was helping and for free , real important words around these parts.

“There’s still something I don’t trust about her,” Frances said. She’d worked her way around to the front of my hair. “One day we’re gonna come home to find she’s taken every—” She stopped.

I looked up at her. “How’d that taste?”

She stuck another clip in my hair, then said, “Not good.”

Daily, I’d watched Charlie work off her frustration, scrubbing the kitchen sink down to a gleaming white bone, waiting for me to get Meg’s address. I’d hinted around to Frances, but I hadn’t figured out yet how to get it. Charlie washed and folded our clothes, organized piles from a hundred years of Tartts, hung up dresses and blouses and skirts on picture nails, swept floors, dusted what furniture was left, moved furniture to make a few of the rooms a little more sittable. Here in the parlor, along with the faded red sofa, she’d found an old standing lamp with a busted shade and a steamer trunk stuffed with Rory’s winter clothes, remarking that we might enjoy propping our feet on his things. For the newly redecorated “dining room,” she’d pushed together a pair of Mrs. Tartt’s lucky card tables, green felt tops peeling and stained, along with some old cane chairs with sagging seats like the one I was sitting on. In the front sitting room that faced the road, she’d moved in a blue sofa with one leg missing that reminded me of a three-legged dog I’d nursed as a girl. It certainly smelled like it. “Good heavens, my house looks like a Hooverville,” Mrs. Tartt had said, though not rudely. She laughed because what else was there to do?

Frances made an S curve in my hair with her finger. “Why does she always act so interested in those boring stories about the big parties in the backyard? I swear, every time Viktoria brings out those pictures, I can practically smell the old people.”

“Why would you complain about that when it makes Mrs. Tartt happy?” I asked. Charlie’d been helping Mrs. Tartt organize old letters and photographs that had no drawers to hide in anymore. I didn’t always have time to play a hand of bridge with her or come look see at a picture she’d found, but Charlie’d stop whatever she was doing and go to her.

“I’m just tired of how she’s always kissing Viktoria’s feet. She’s not even family.”

“Says Garnett Pittman’s number one footlicker,” I said. Of course Frances ignored this. She liked to ignore big truths. “Speaking of, when do you go back to the Orphan?”

“Monday. It’s my turn to work in the office. I’m gonna have to go in and act like nothing’s happened.”

I thought it was a miracle that in a town as gossipy as Oxford, the Tartts’ situation hadn’t already gotten out.

“I’m supposed to write letters to all the new parents who adopted girls a few weeks ago, to make sure they’re doing alright.” Then she whispered, “Maybe Ella Jane’s been so bad they want to return her.”

It was so selfish it was funny, but then I heard what she’d just said. “You do that?” I didn’t know they did this. “Does that mean you’ll be writing Meg’s family too?”

She shrugged. “Probably. They got adopted on the same day.”

I nodded. I knew pouncing wouldn’t work. “I sure wish I could write Meg a letter,” I said. Nothing. Frances narrowed her eyes on a crimp. “Could … you get me Meg’s address, do you think?”

“You know that’s not allowed. You don’t even work there anymore. And I’m not getting in trouble for you again.”

I looked over at her, but she turned my chin to face ahead. Swallow that pride, Bird, you can always cough it back up later. I tightened my rear on the chair frame and said in a pathetic voice that made me ill: “I can’t have children of my own, Franny.” She frowned, a raised ripple between the eyes, and set her hand on her heart.

“Oh, I know, Birdie, isn’t it awful?” I thought, Eh. But I nodded. She put a hand on my shoulder. “It must be so hard to have to live with that your whole life.”

“Meg is—she’s probably the closest I’ll ever get to having a child of my own,” I said. God, I could be a terrible person when I tried. “But if I could just write to her—a few times—I think it’d be easier to, I don’t know, live.”

Frances was nodding and swallowing and, oh my God, were those tears? For her poor old-maid sister who’d never marry or bear children because she was dry as a bone inside? “I don’t know how you do it, Bird,” she said. “You’re so brave. I can’t promise anything, but I’ll see what I can do.”

At twelve thirty, I buttoned up my new old dress. It was a tall, narrow glass of burgundy wine with short sleeves and it hit just below my knees. “That color’s too dark for the middle of the day, especially in August,” Frances said, but this was the dress I wanted to wear, so I was wearing it. My nerves, rising to a high pitch, were making me too warm already. In front of the full-length mirror on the back of her door, Frances slipped the crimping combs out.

I cringed. It was too curly now. “I look like the Tates’ poodle, the mean one Meemaw ran over.”

“Just wait,” she said and brushed the curls out with her fingers. This was probably the most my sister’d touched me since junior high when she’d made me up as a green witch while she was a fairy. Soon, silky waves fell against my face, and I pushed a lock behind my ears. “ Don’t ,” she said and untucked it again. She rummaged around in a shoebox for a lipstick. I could feel her own hope rising now, waiting on my banker date. “Now look, don’t gobble up all the candy he buys you at the picture show. In fact, tell him you don’t want any, and don’t do the funny thing. Men don’t find it attractive.”

“What am I supposed to do if I don’t do the funny?”

“Let him do the talking. Men prefer that. And don’t ask him inside when he gets here or brings you home, I don’t want him to see the house.” She put tissue between my lips. “Alright, blot and smack.” With her finger, she rubbed some of the color onto my cheeks and my eyelids. “And whatever you do, if he gets a flat, don’t change his tire. Now look at yourself.”

She turned me around. The view was definitely better. The bump in my nose, my chinless chin all looked a little less so with the brown waves around my face. Even my cheekbones sat a little higher with the greasy dark red hue on them. “I look a little bit like you,” I said. She smiled, she liked that. But then she shook her head.

“You do look pretty, but not like I am.” I turned to get out of there before she snuffed out the tiny bit of confidence I had. But she stopped me, studying my hair, my lips. “What I mean is, you’ve got something else—or you do when you keep your mouth shut. It’s like …” She tilted her head, narrowed her eyes. “You’re smoldering inside.”

Could she really see that? The slow, hot tinder I’d felt inside me most of my life?

“The magazines say it’s called sex-y .” She raised her eyebrows at the scandalous word. “That’s what you’ve got.”

At three minutes after one, Jack tapped the knocker on the front door. I opened it and shut it so quick behind me I knocked myself in the rear, nearly bumping into him. I had on my good short-brimmed straw hat, white gloves, and a pair of Frances’s T-strap heels I’d squeezed into. He had on a pressed white shirt, no tie, no hat on his downy blond head. He looked like he could breathe.

“You look so nice ,” he said, looking over my narrow dark dress, and I knew I’d tried too hard.

His dusty black Model A was nothing fancy, but it had gorgeous brown channeled leather seats that warmed the backs of my thighs—I prayed I wouldn’t start sweating. Tall as Jack was, he had to shimmy down a little in his seat so his head didn’t hit the roof of the car. Mounted on the dashboard was a polished chrome grille with two knobs and a line of numbers that ran across it. A radio set. I’d never seen one in a car before. But I was trying to follow Frances’s advice, so I kept my mouth shut. I made it as far as the big oak tree that split the road in two. So about seven seconds.

“Does that thing really work?”

“The radio? Sometimes.” He turned a silver knob, and a shushing wind came out. He turned it off. “I’ll try when we get a little closer to town.”

I’d broken the seal already, so I asked, “You said you’ve been in Oxford about two months, is that right?”

He nodded. “I reckon I’ll be here another six or seven weeks. Then I go back to Jackson.”

“Do you have family there?” I asked. What I really wondered was if he had a girlfriend there.

“I do, I have some family—what about you, what’s happening down in the Delta these days? You said the town you’re from’s called …”

“Footely. And there’s absolutely nothing happening there.” The Delta was a vast stretch of four and a half million acres of ridiculously fertile farmland. Since he was from the north Delta, about fifty miles from Oxford, and I was from the south, it did not surprise me that he didn’t know my town. “When did you leave Panola County?”

“When I was seventeen. I jumped on a boxcar headed to Jackson and got my first bank job sweeping the floor.” So he hadn’t grown up like Rory or, I presumed, Mr. Allison. As he drove us slowly towards town, he said he missed the Delta, the flat quiet land, the sunsets. The small talk should’ve cut the taut thread of my nerves, but it didn’t. He didn’t seem nervous at all; he drove with one hand on the top of the leather steering wheel, the other on the seat. Watching the golden hairs on the back of his hand, I kept my real questions to myself: Who are you, why did you ask me on a date, and why aren’t you married? And why hadn’t he asked me that question? Men could easily ask it in a flirty way when really what they wanted to know was, what in the world is wrong with you?

“When do you think you’ll go back home?” he asked.

“I ask myself that every Wednesday at twelve seventeen.” I thought he got my joke. “I can’t leave my sister until things get sorted out.”

“I gathered that about you. You don’t seem like the kind to abandon somebody who needs help.” Then he gave a low laugh. “And I forgot you were funny.”

“Don’t worry, I’ll remind you.” Since I couldn’t keep my mouth shut long enough to be sexy, the funny was all I had.

We talked a little more about how disappointed he was about the term of Mrs. Tartt’s loan. I was so tired of worrying. It felt like I’d been doing a balancing act, terrified that if I dropped one plate of problems, I’d drop them all. Jack reached up and turned the radio back on. “Moon Song” was playing behind the soft scratch of static. Half a minute later, the road turned to gravel, and we rolled our windows down partway so a breeze could blow in, and I thought, Somebody definitely thought this moment through. That two people could listen to Wayne King on a hot day with the car windows down.

Immediately, though, I feared I might be liking it all too much, so at the Percy mansion, with the foreclosure signs on the front, I forced myself to remember, That’s what this man does for a living. And when this date turned out to be nothing, I’d keep reminding myself that he worked for a bank. Already I was building levees to beat the flood of disappointment.

Just off the square, he parked under the shade of some oak trees. Saturday was farmers market day, and I could see the square was busy. The courthouse lawn was lined with mule wagons selling vegetables and melons. Jack turned the car off and asked, “By the way, what’s Birdie short for?”

“Birdina,” I said. It was an odd name from the dead grandmother, but I was an odd girl. He set his hand on top of mine, and again I felt that jolt of current running up my arm.

“Well, Birdina, today my job is to distract you from everything you’ve been worried about, or at least for the next couple of hours.”

I thanked him and hoped there wasn’t lipstick on my teeth.

This was my first talkie—I’d only been to the silent picture show before in Port Gibson, a half hour of reading words on a screen while a man played a piano. The wide marquee over the Lyric Theater read FAY WRAY IN THE VAM IRE BAT .

“Short on p ’s today,” I said, and he smiled. Birdie, the funny friend to all. He slid two dimes through the window, and we went inside, where there was a candy counter stacked with boxes of Sailor Boys, Bob Whites, a row of Co-Colas in paper cups. “Would you—”

“No thank you,” I said, like my instructor’d taught me to do. A man in a red jacket opened the door to the theater. The light was a soft, tangible yellow, and it smelled mushroomy and sweet in here, candy crushed into damp carpet. The theater was over half full already. The usher, looking at Jack’s size, showed us to seats near the back, Jack on the aisle, me second seat in. I gave the dress a tug so it wouldn’t ride up over my knee when I sat down. I could feel the heat of the car ride coming off Jack, his broad shoulder pushing against mine.

A man walked up the aisle, staring at me, with a sign on a stick that said Please Remove Hats! I set mine in my lap, smoothed my hair, and looked around. There were a lot of other couples here, young, old, very old, and plenty of noisy children. In front of us, a band of little boys were shooting spitballs at the hair of two little girls in front of them. I looked behind us, where upstairs, colored people filled the balcony, paper fans fanning. It looked hot up there. And in the very back row, on the aisle, I recognized the sad man from the bank with the red ribbon on his lapel, sitting with his sad wife. The ones Jack had seen to the front door.

“Quiet please,” a voice up high called. “Quiet in the house.” As I turned to face the drawn gold curtain, bam , the lights went out. It turned to total inky blackness. Jack’s shoulder shifted against mine, and I felt a low thrumming thrill, sitting in the dark together. Then a flicker, a flicker, and a giant face filled the entire screen and the sound of drums beating filled my chest. “Roosevelt repeals Prohibition, but will your state vote wet or dry?” the face demanded of us. A few people in the theater hollered, “Vote wet!” but more yelled, “Keep Mi’ssippi dry!” Then it was on to a cartoon of a black cat dancing in a tuxedo. The crowd cheered when it got flattened by a steamroller, its little cat soul drifting down to hell. Finally, the music quieted, and the words The Vampire Bat shone on the screen. And for the next hour and five minutes, I couldn’t worry about mortgages or taxes or Meg or lipstick on my teeth; all I could worry about was would she or wouldn’t she get her blood sucked up by a bat. Many did. I moved my hand to the armrest, but Jack’s was already there. I held mine on his an extra second, for the warm thrill up my spine. Then I pulled it away and crossed my legs tighter, trying to keep my mind on the rest of the picture.

When the lights came up, Jack turned to me and asked, “What’d you think?”

“You were right. That was very distracting,” I said. He smiled but didn’t turn away and I thought of that word again, sexy . Good Lord, he is so handsome.

I followed Jack up the aisle, my hat in my hand. The man with the red ribbon on his lapel was still sitting in the back row, his wrinkled face a tale of sadnesses, illnesses, possibly lost children. He wasn’t going anywhere, staying for the next show, but when he looked up and saw Jack, his shoulders slumped down even more. Jack saw him, too, I could tell, but he kept walking straight ahead, not even giving the old man the courtesy of a hello.

Outside in the bright sun, I put my hat on, so bothered by what I’d just seen that I had a metallic taste in my mouth.

“You want to walk up to the drugstore counter and get out of the heat?” he asked.

“Mm.” I looked across the street, where the car was parked. The group of spitball boys shot past us, yelping at the hot sidewalk under their bare feet.

“You alright, Birdie?”

I squinted at him from under the brim of my hat. What’s ever stopped me before from speaking my mind? “It just seems like if you’re gonna ruin somebody’s life for a living, you could at least try and be polite.”

He frowned. He had no idea what I meant, which was sort of worse. But then his brow smoothed. He glanced behind him at the glass door. “You mean Mr. Sudderson in the back row?”

“Times are tough. I guess he’s not your problem anymore.”

Jack pressed his lips together like he was trying to hold something back. But then—“You really know how to get to somebody, you know that?”

“I have heard that, yes.”

“I—” He growled to himself. “I didn’t speak to Mr. Sudderson because he’s at the picture show at two in the afternoon on a Saturday. It’s farmers market day, and it would’ve humiliated him for me to see him there instead of working.” He winced and added, in a weary voice, “It’s not actually my job to tell people they’ve lost everything—it’s to decide if the bank here is good for a loan—but if anybody’s got to deliver that awful news, I’d rather it be me instead of some of those other cold-hearted cads who work there.”

God, my mother was right. My mouth was too wide, my opinions too opinionated, and there they went again. I wished Frances hadn’t put more red on my cheeks. “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize that.”

He squinted at me in the sun, reached down and squeezed my hand. It wasn’t so much a jolt now as a transfer of light. “One of the reasons I like you is that you’d even notice something like that.”

He was being generous, and I wanted to cover my face like a child. We walked up the block to the west side of the square. I was still too appalled at myself to say much, but he seemed to’ve cast it aside. He pointed to the Colonial Barber Shop, and said he lived upstairs, behind one of those blue doors, temporarily, fortunately, because a man and his large drum set resided next door. I wondered if I’d ever see inside that blue door and hear those drums.

Inside the drugstore, the cool air spread across my skin, making it tighten and tingle. We sat on stools at the end of the soda counter, down from a pair of girls who looked younger than me, maybe nineteen or twenty. They both wore summery flower-print dresses that made my burgundy dress feel fit for February. I noticed one girl was pretty, the other was plain, with a round, shiny face, but the pretty one was in tears laughing at something the plain-faced one had just said .

“Two fountain Co-Colas, please,” Jack said. The soda jerk dripped syrup into two tall glasses and held them under a whoosh of soda water. I recrossed my legs so I could breathe better in the slim dress.

“So your life’s dream was to sweep floors in a bank,” I said as the young man set our glasses down. “How’d you get demoted to actual banker from that?” I smiled so he’d know I was joking.

“I cleaned those floors, and I mean cleaned , for the better part of a year,” he said, shaking his head. “Then one morning I found a five-dollar bill under a desk and handed it over to the bank president. Caught his attention.”

“That was lucky.” I took a sip of my Co-Cola, sweet and so cold it made my throat ache.

Jack shook his head. “I saved every cent I made to put that five-dollar bill there.”

I laughed, but he didn’t. “You ever heard ‘Panola County poor’ before?” When I nodded, he said, “Well, we were poorer than that, growing up.”

He had a dimple, deep in the middle of his chin, and I wanted to press my finger against it. He was thirty-five years old, the youngest of five brothers he loved with his life, but he’d learned early to wrap an arm around his plate of food so they couldn’t steal it. I thought of him devouring his grilled cheese at the diner in four bites. Not bad manners, it was a tactic for survival.

He bit his lip in a very charming way and said, “So you know, I haven’t done something like this in a long time.”

How long? I wanted to ask, and, Who was she, was she beautiful or was she sexy like me or, dear God, both, just tell me now that I’m out of my league here , but I was afraid he’d ask how long it’d been for me. So I just said, “Me neither.”

Behind us, the bell hanging on the doorknob jangled as a dozen or so young men streamed in. Their laughter bounced off the black-and-white tile in the drugstore. They were sweaty faced with red numbers sewn on their shirts and U of M on their ball caps. An Ole Miss ball team practicing, I guess, before class started in a few weeks. They consumed the stools around the pair of girls or stood behind them, rubbernecking over their flowery shoulders. One stuck his face between the girls and brayed a laugh, and I saw the pretty one look at her friend. Neither looked surprised, like this happened to them wherever they went.

“Maybe we’ll give them some room,” Jack said, motioning to the new arrivals, and pulled a dollar out of a leather billfold, same as my daddy had carried. While he waited on the soda jerk, he swiveled his stool to face me. “Before we get run out of here, really, how long do you think you’ll be in town?”

I held my breath; there was so much possibility in the question. “I’m taking it day by day, but I’ll probably be here another few weeks.”

“Good. I know you already checked the Tartts’ telephone bill, but Rory could have made calls from the bank before he was fired.”

Oh. That.

“When you make a long-distance call, you have to sign a log or Eleanor’ll get cross. I could check the log for you next week. Who knows, maybe it’ll tell you something?”

“That’s very nice of you to offer.” I had no idea if it would help, but at least it meant I’d have a reason to talk to him again.

The radio worked fine most of the ride home, playing Ethel Waters singing “Stormy Weather” and an older song, “Am I Blue?,” until her voice disappeared behind the static. We kept the windows down even on the dusty part of the road, and Jack walked me to the front door.

“Thank you for today,” I said. “It helped.”

“Good,” he said and leaned down and kissed my left cheek, a quarter inch from my lips. It felt succulent, being that close to his mouth. He walked back to his car, and I wondered if I’d blown my chance with him before I really even had one. I leaned against the front door and watched him drive away, craving the taste of Red Hots.

Frances sat at the foot of one of the old iron beds Mr. Fauster hadn’t bought, out on the sleeping porch, while I cracked open pistachio nuts with my thumbnail. The bag had Merry Christmas written on it, but they were still good. She wanted to know every word spoken on the date. I cracked, we ate, or she ate most of them. Maybe everywhere, prettier little sisters always got the most pistachios. I didn’t care. I felt like a sun was glowing inside me. I didn’t want her to know how much I liked Jack, I reckoned out of pride in case it went nowhere.

The next morning, Sunday, Mrs. Tartt didn’t have the energy to go to church in this heat, so we all stayed home again. I think, like Frances, she wasn’t sure what folks knew or didn’t. I picked up early pecans in the yard, wondering just how pathetic it was for a twenty-four-year-old to be this scintillated by a kiss a quarter inch from her mouth. When Charlie handed me the nutcracker, it gave us both such an electric shock, it made us yelp. Static generators, me and Charlie. I also learned the side effect of a date with a man you liked was that you were subject to a pulmonary incident every time the dang telephone rang. By Monday it started jangling off the hook. News was finally getting around that the Tartts were strapped, and folks wanted their share of what was left.

Holley’s Garage, City Grocery, the Golden Rule, Miss Ella McGuire, the regal saleslady from Neilson’s. Mrs. Tartt had to lie down and have a headache after that one. The next time it rang, it was Silva.

“I thought I’d let y’all know, if you have any calls to make”—she dropped her voice—“better do it now . I’m awful sorry. The Tartts were one of our first customers at the Bell.”

I went and told Mrs. Tartt and asked if she wanted to telephone anybody. She looked away, sighed deeply, and said no. I figured, Might as well. I asked Silva to connect me to Footely Farm & Mercantile in Footely, Mississippi. Half an hour later, she rang me back and said the line was out of order. I reckoned Mr. Parkins had set the big jar of pickled eggs on the telephone cord again. Ruth’s Dress Shop called after that, then Gathright-Reed, and if I hadn’t been pining for Jack’s call, I would’ve thanked the man who showed up a little later and took the dang telephone away.

The telephone being gone was yet another wedge between Mrs. Tartt’s old life and her new poor one so I made a batch of pralines with pecans since I knew she loved them.

When they’d cooled, I took a plate of them to Mrs. Tartt and Charlie in the parlor. Mrs. Tartt was walking her fingers through old music records stacked up beside the broken-handled phonograph. “I declare, I haven’t listened to this one in years,” she said, and set it on the phonograph wheel, dropping the needle very precisely on the edge. Charlie stuck the screwdriver into the side, gave it some turns, and violins, watery and wavy, droned into “Let Me Call You Sweetheart.” Charlie gave it a few more cranks and it picked up speed. Mrs. Tartt nodded to Charlie, and Charlie nodded back, and they each set a hand on the other’s waist, their other arm outstretched. Charlie made wide, sweeping steps back while Mrs. Tartt stepped toward her, curving slightly each time. Charlie’s long white apron brushed at her ankles like a skirt, and though all Mrs. Tartt had on was a plain flowered housedress and bare feet, they were sort of gorgeous together. Charlie can dance. Mrs. Tartt closed her eyes like she could be dancing with Henry Tartt at one of her backyard parties, not tough little Charlie, guiding her in the lead. I leaned against the doorframe watching, not wanting to wake her up from the dream. The song drifted to the end, and then it was just static. Charlie bowed, and Mrs. Tartt curtsied back to her.

“Tomorrow I’m going to teach you how to jitterbug,” Charlie said.

“Oh, stop it, I’m too old for that.” But Mrs. Tartt smiled.

Around five that afternoon, Frances came home from the Orphan. Today’d been her first day back since Rory rolled the family. I was fluffing a pot of rice on the stove while Charlie set the kitchen table, still pink faced from dancing.

“Well, the word’s getting out,” Frances said. “First Garnett asked me were we doing alright, and then Pripp asked could she bring us a casserole by.” She drank a jelly jar of water and clacked it down in the sink, clenching her teeth.

“They cut the telephone off today,” I said.

Frances whimpered, looking truly hurt to lose a thing she hadn’t even been allowed to use. “Did Jack call? Before they cut it off?”

I was touched she’d even thought of me and shook my head. She bit her lip and looked away.

“What?” I asked. “What’s that look?”

“Jack’s married, Birdie. He’s got a wife and child in Jackson.”

I turned around to face her, wooden spoon still in my hand. “Are you—how do you know?”

She leaned against the counter next to the stove. “I’m sorry, Bird, I couldn’t believe it either, but Pripp said Eleanor said, and she’d know since she works at the bank with him.”

I laughed—stunned, unable to think. “ Why … would he take me out on a date for everybody to see?”

“I don’t know. Maybe … you misunderstood what it really was?”

I turned back around to the pot of rice. I couldn’t let Frances see how red my face had turned. “Well, I—I’m leaving one of these days. Not like it was going anywhere anyway.”

“I’m sorry, Bird,” she said again. “Ask me, he shouldn’t’ve called it a date.”

On the other side of the counter I heard Charlie hiss, “They’re all snakes. ”

My skin burned. I was embarrassed I’d let myself dream for a few days. Who knew hope could be so … degrading .

“I got you something,” Frances said. “Maybe it’ll make you feel a little better?” She reached into her pocket and handed me a View Day card. “Don’t you dare tell a soul.”

I took the card and turned it over. On the back Frances had scribbled down an address. “Is this where Meg is living?” I asked.

Frances nodded. “I didn’t write to her though. For some reason, Garnett said she didn’t see the point.”

Over by the breakfast table, Charlie’s head had whirled around. Finally, some good news in this house. “ Thank you , Franny,” I said.

There was still plenty of light out when I tapped on Charlie’s bedroom door. Supper’d been picked at, dishes done. Once again, Charlie hadn’t joined us. Frances and Mrs. Tartt had moved to the back porch, an electric fan aimed to blow through the parlor window. I knew Charlie’d been waiting on me, probably holding her breath, going on two hours now.

“Come in,” Charlie called, and I opened her door. The floor as well as the mattress sitting on it were covered in dress patterns and dismembered parts of Mrs. Tartt’s old frocks. Some were even pinned up on the walls since I guess when you ran out of horizontal, you went vertical.

“Where is she?” Charlie asked. She had on a white slip and her hair was covered in a red kerchief, and she was holding a pair of large silver scissors.

“I want to talk to you first,” I said.

Charlie sat on a short old wooden stool. I stepped around dress parts to the decrepit rocking chair in the corner. It looked a hundred years old. It felt like I was sitting on Meemaw.

“Charlie, before I show this to you, I want to make it clear. You can’t just go up there to try and take Meg from these people—”

“I won’t , and by the way, I’m not an idiot.”

No, she was not. Like me, Charlie was pragmatic but tougher and I suspected even more stubborn. She was also sort of prim, with her ankles tucked politely to the side. She could fold a napkin like a flower, but I’d bet money she also had a solid right hook. Charlie was complicated.

I handed her the View Day card and said, “Meg’s family lives in a town called Byhalia, about two hours north of here. She was adopted by a Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Heidelberg III.”

She studied the card, wrinkling between the eyes like Meg did when she concentrated. “I know Byhalia, it’s on the way to Memphis. Who are these people?”

“I don’t know but I think I’ve seen their last name in the newspaper.” Whatever I saw, it gave the impression that they had plenty of money. “And Frances said they looked pretty well-off.” Through the open window I could hear Frances talking on the back porch, so I kept my voice low. “Look, even if we did have a telephone to call them on, I think it makes more sense to write them first and say it’s from me.”

“And say what?”

“I could say I’m writing the welfare letter, to make sure Meg’s settling in and she’s happy there. We’ll take it slow, find out who these people are. I’m sure Meg’s fine—”

Her mouth exploded. “How can you be so naive, Birdie? Don’t you know Garnett wants Meg to suffer? She’s never going to leave Meg alone.”

I’d been careful not to let Charlie know how bad Garnett’d treated Meg, but she already seemed to know. “But why?” I asked her. “I just don’t understand what it is about Meg that bothers Garnett so much.”

“Because she’s a witch , that’s why.” She spat it more than said it, still gripping the silver scissors in her hand. “She hates her because of me.”

“I still—I don’t understand.”

“When those men at Ellisville decided what was best for me ,” she said and rolled her eyes up to the ceiling in supreme frustration, “they sat me down in their clean white coats and explained real slow …” She made a sickening smile. “How the state had passed important legislation that allowed them to do what they were about to do. Course they still hadn’t told me what in the hell that was, talking to me like I was some idiot for sale, so I asked were they planning to cut my damn head off or what? Oh, they got a laugh out of that. They said”—she squinted—“well, not exactly . What they would be doing was so that women like myself”—she clenched her jaw—“couldn’t give birth to more imbecile babies. They claimed they were doing me a favor .”

It sounded like a nightmare, those men in white coats leading her to the operating table.

“You do know, I would’ve spent, what, three, four days in jail at most if Garnett hadn’t gotten me committed. You should’ve seen her smiling, calling the judge by his first name. ‘Don’t forget, Johnny Joe, we ladies have the vote now.’” Charlie let the scissors clatter to the floor. “So I was talking to a colored man closer than appropriate —maybe I am a little crazy, but do I seem feebleminded to you?”

“No. You do not.”

“Well, they said that’s what I am, and that’s all that matters. Even if I was feebleminded how can they have the right to do that—and they claim it’s hereditary, this feebleminded bullshit . So if I’ve got it, then Meg must have it too.” She rubbed the scar that wrapped around her right wrist. Red and snaky, they circled both wrists, but the right one was thicker. The more she worried, the more she rubbed them. So, often.

“The minute they talked to Meg, they’d see how smart she is,” I said.

“That doesn’t matter ! Garnett will still concoct a reason to jerk Meg away from that family to ruin her life—”

“ Shh , they’re right there,” I said, nodding to the open window. “Charlie, do you think you might be getting a little … carried away?”

Her face turned redder, jaw muscles pumping, she looked like she couldn’t believe I’d said that.

“I’m not saying Garnett’s not capable of taking Meg away from these people,” I said, “but Meg was legally adopted. Why would Garnett go and do something like that?”

Charlie ran her palms down and up her thighs, over the thin white fabric of her slip. She shook her head, clearly she didn’t want to say whatever this was.

“Because I—” She swallowed, grimaced. “I … slept with Garnett Pittman’s husband. Welty Pittman is Meg’s father.”

I stared at her. And I kept staring.

Charlie placed her hand around her neck, like she was trying to keep more from coming out.

“When did this …” But I knew when. Meg was eleven years old.

“When I was young. Very young.” She flinched, as if young was a crime. “And by that I mean I was not very smart. Welty was … older. And handsome. I was seventeen, but I looked like I was in my twenties, and make no mistake, it was me who seduced him.”

“Was Welty already married when y’all …?” I asked. Charlie nodded. Good God, this was probably Garnett’s worst nightmare. That the child her husband had from an affair not only existed but … “How did it happen?”

Charlie looked down at the floor. One of Frances’s Photoplay s was laying there with Hedy Lamarr on the cover. “Like I said, I was young. And stupid, and I thought—hoped—Welty would leave his wife to be with me when I got pregnant. I was alone, my mother had just died three months before, I didn’t have any family.”

“How did you meet him?” I asked.

“I was working in one of those dime-a-dance clubs in Memphis, just trying to get by. Welty had to come up there now and then from Oxford, he was in the service. But he didn’t want to be at the club, another army officer had made him come along. Anyway, we danced. And danced again, and …” She shrugged. “I guess we were both lonely.” She folded her hands as primly as Frances did when we discussed sex. “He said his wife wouldn’t sleep with him anymore after she’d lost the baby. He said it’d been years .”

“So you—was he happy about Meg?”

“I thought he might be, but when I told him …” She shook her head. She looked so girlish sitting on the little stool, her hair tied back in the red kerchief. “He gave me thirty dollars and the name of a doctor who’d take care of it. And said we couldn’t see each other anymore.” She bit her lip. “I thought he’d reconsider if I had the baby. So I didn’t go through with it and didn’t tell him until after she was born.” She looked up at me. “You have to understand, it wasn’t just some … dalliance we had. When I was with Welty, it felt …” She searched for the word. “It felt … abundant.”

“What happened? When he found out?”

“Nothing. I guess he didn’t want her.” She shrugged and her eyes watered. Maybe not for herself but for her girl. “I never heard from him.” She took a deep breath in and let it out, recentering herself on the stool. “I wrote him letters, but after a while they started coming back, returned to sender after they’d been opened. Somebody’d read them. I don’t know if it was him or her, but sometimes I could feel it was her …” She was twisting a lock of dark hair tight around her forefinger, releasing, twisting again. When she talked about Welty, she looked angry and sad. When she talked about Garnett, she looked angry and scared.

“Does Meg know he’s her father?” I asked.

She shook her head. “All she knows is that her father left. And I never told anybody else because I didn’t want Meg to be treated like a bastard child.” She gazed off at some spot behind me. “But you know what I always imagined happened? I imagined Welty and Garnett sitting down together, maybe at breakfast over coffee or something, and making the decision together to pretend Meg and I didn’t exist.”

Pretend it’s not there, pretend you don’t see it. Just like the ladies at the Orphan.

“That’s what I imagined she told Welty to do, until she couldn’t pretend anymore.”

“So Welty never helped out or sent you money or anything?”

“ No. ” She sucked on her teeth. “And let me tell you, those were some lean times, but then I landed a job as a governess. That was pretty good.” She smiled, like she was living it again. “When I answered the agency’s ad, I was dressed like that.” She pointed to what was left of Mrs. Tartt’s white Victorian gown with the high lace neck. “I looked like Florence Nightingale. All those manners and etiquette my mother’d taught me finally came in handy. We were so happy living in that little cotton house.” I could see Meg in her smile. “We bought this rattletrap car to take us to town. I had Meg’s portrait made and I sent it to him.” She nodded. “I wanted him to see how beautiful Meg was.”

I groaned, thinking how Garnett probably tore that photograph to pieces.

“I bragged in the letter about my job working for the Cooper family and how we were doing just fine without him.” She smiled, but like she wanted to kill somebody. “Two weeks later, somebody wrote Mrs. Cooper a letter saying I was a dance-hall whore with a bastard child and a moral threat to her two little girls.” Charlie laughed, low and dark. “So there I was, 1931, out of work again. It was a lot different from 1926, I mean I looked everywhere for a job. We were so broke, I had to start selling taxi rides in my car.” She frowned and folded her legs to the other side of the stool.

“When did you get arrested?”

She licked her lips, negotiating her words. “Two days before Christmas, I approached a colored businessman at the depot, well-dressed, handsome—just a man from Illinois trying to get to Alabama to see his family for the holidays, but he’d missed his connecting train. Before I knew it, the stationmaster and the sheriff showed up and decided what it was. They beat him with a billy club until he—” Her face crumpled. “He cried for his mother.”

She looked sickened by her life. I leaned back and the old bones of the chair creaked.

“They told a colored porter to tend to him. I don’t know what happened to that poor man.” She shook her head, squinting at the memory, shuddering. “I said some pretty crude things to that stationmaster about the size of his manhood, and they hauled me off to jail. They said I was a loose white woman soliciting a colored man—that’s what she used to get me declared feebleminded. Before they transferred me to Ellisville, the stationmaster—he came to my cell with his billy club.”

“He beat you?”

“No. But he used it.” There was something dead in her voice. It took me a moment to imagine what she meant. Sweet Jesus.

After that we both went quiet. I stared at the shiny silver scissors on the floor. It was a lot to take in, everything that had brought Charlie to this raw, harrowing place in her life, and most of all who had made sure she’d gotten here. It made me remember, cringing, Meg asking me once if I thought she was “dirty.” I didn’t understand why she’d ask that, but then I realized—Garnett must’ve called her that. Of course you’re not dirty , I’d told her, you are clever and funny and perfect, Meg. I’d hugged her—but what kind of person says that to a little girl, blames her for what the husband had done? I hated to think what else Garnett had in store for Meg if she got her hands on her again. And I had no idea how to stop that.

“Charlie,” I said. “I think I might’ve underestimated Garnett Pittman.”

Charlie gave me the purest look of affirmation I’d seen on her, chin tipped up, eyebrows raised; you’d think she was about to laugh at something. Her look said it all: Now you understand what in the hell I’m up against here.