The Calamity Club by Kathryn Stockett - 47

I managed to get Mrs. Tartt and Frances up to the attic before we opened. Frances was in fits up there, trying to cut and set her hair before she went to the Orphan tomorrow. She was insisting on going, since it was just about all she had left of her old life. She’d also valiantly proclaimed she’d be doing her own hair from now on to save every cent for Rory. I wondered how long that would last. Mrs. Tartt was in bed, listening to her new radio set. Puffy-eyed, she looked all cried out. Along with supper, I’d brought her one of the last undiluted bottles of bourbon.

Men drifted in and out of the dusky light. Tonight was the homecoming hop on campus, so we probably wouldn’t have too many college boys showing up. A few men came just to gawk, curious about this place, and stood by, watching Esmeralda and a set of identical blond twins dance to “Dream a Little Dream of Me,” a song I loved. By now, the black paint had been danced off the floor in places and faint spots of wood showed through. Dry leaves scattered between the dancers’ feet. It’s almost over , I thought. Thank God. I was smoking one of the cigarettes for sale when I saw the lone figure standing across the road, watching us. I went very still.

The moon tonight was bright and nearly full, and somebody’d turned on the carriage lights out front, casting light on the road. The car had a boxy frame with a high square top and wood paneling on the sides. I couldn’t say for sure if it was the same car that’d been coming late at night, but I felt a real distinct prickle walking up my neck. I stood up—the person was approaching the house. He disappeared a few seconds in the shadows before moving back into the light.

“ Charlie! ” I called over the music, and she came this way but stopped several feet behind me. Dr. Welty Pittman was coming toward us, a faint limp in his step. My mind was racing—why was he here? Had he found a card? Had he put it together when he’d seen the letter at the post office with Charlie’s name on it? Charlie took a step forward and stood beside me.

Standing just inside the arch, Dr. Pittman wore no hat tonight. His clear blue eyes turned down at the corners, like Meg’s, and they didn’t just soften, his whole face kind of liquefied when he saw Charlie. It was so obvious. I’d been watching people for years from behind that lonely store counter and I knew what longing looked like—heartbreak, first love, a magnetic thread between two neighbors who’d kissed twenty years before and never forgot it. He still aches for you, Charlie.

Charlie had her hand against her chest like her heart might fail her. I could see why she’d fallen for him. He was handsome, though he had the battered look of a man whose wife was a witch. Mr. Binny was singing, “Hold me tight and tell me you’ll miss me …”

Charlie spoke first. “Are you alone? Are you here to make trouble?”

“No,” Dr. Pittman said. “I’m here to see you.” His eyes drifted behind us to the dancers. “What is this place, Charlie?”

Charlie didn’t answer. She was breathing through her nose, sort of like a bull.

“It’s a dance club,” I said. “For the college boys. But they’re all at the homecoming hop tonight, so—they’re not here.” Meg had said her mother was a very fine liar. I did not sound like a very fine liar.

And then Charlie moved in on him. “You spineless coward,” she said in a low, terrifying voice. Her fists were clenched.

Welty looked her square in the face. “I didn’t know what else to do, Charlie. The girl was starving to death.”

Charlie’s eyes flew open wider. “So you dumped her at your wife’s filthy charity? Your own daughter?” There was barely a foot between them now. “That witch made me lose my job—she is why I lost my child . Your wife had me sent to state! You had to know that!” She was right up on him, cheeks red, hissing fury into his face. “Do you know what they do to people there, Dr. Pittman ?”

Welty didn’t answer. He stood there in his rumpled overcoat and took it.

“What did you do with all the letters, Welty? Did you even look at the pictures of your daughter? Did you and your wife read my letters over breakfast and have yourselves a good laugh?” Charlie was smiling; it was ominous, frightening. Tears glistened in her eyes. “Did you know how Chairlady Garnett treated your daughter in that hellhole of hers? Like she was bad—a dirty mistake, an imbecile—” A sob broke her voice. Welty winced. “She pulled Meg out of school, the thing Meg loved most, and to punish her, she kept her in a dirty little room, alone .”

“I didn’t know,” he said, quietly. “I didn’t know about the letters until it was too late. I thought Garnett would look after the girl—”

“ STOP CALLING HER ‘THE GIRL’! SHE’S YOUR DAUGHTER AND HER NAME IS MEG! ” Everything stopped in that moment. The music, the dancing. I wondered if Frances and Mrs. Tartt had heard it in the attic. There was just the sound of Charlie breathing now. The rest of us were all holding our breath.

“If I’d known Garnett was treating her that way, I would’ve stepped in long ago.”

Charlie covered her face with her hands. She was quivering all over, but still not crying tears. Hell no, she was not about to cry in front of this man. I cleared my throat, about to urge them to take this somewhere for privacy, who knew who was here tonight, but Charlie fixed me with a look that said Don’t.

“What did you expect from me, coming out here?” Charlie asked him between her gritted teeth. “What do you want from me now?”

“I came to tell you …” Welty had to stop to collect himself. “Isabelle Heidelberg, whose son adopted Meg, called me. She told me that Tom, her son, is dead. He drowned in their lake last week. His wife is in no state to look after a child, and neither is Isabelle—she’s sick with grief. She asked me to drive up to Byhalia and get the child— Meg —and bring her back to the orphanage.”

Charlie stared up at him, rapt now. Carefully, gently, he set his hands on her shoulders. Good Lord, he was brave to do that. But Charlie didn’t move away.

“I told her somebody from the orphanage who Meg knows well, Birdie Calhoun, would come up there and get her.”

He looked at me, and I looked at Charlie, trying to make sense of what was happening. Her life hinged on his words.

“I informed Mrs. Heidelberg that I had the legal authority to entrust Meg into Birdie Calhoun’s custody.”

“Did you tell her—”

“No, I did not. She just wants someone to take care of Meg. I told her to expect Miss Calhoun tomorrow.”

The two stared at each other. Welty kept his hands on Charlie’s shoulders. He looked like he wanted to take her in his arms, and Charlie looked like she’d run out of fight. Welty removed his hands, reached into his coat pocket, and set an envelope on the table.

“It’s not enough,” he said.

“No, it certainly is not,” Charlie said.

Out of words, Welty took a step back. He nodded to Charlie, turned and walked away.

It wasn’t until he drove off, the car’s headlights shining up the road, that Charlie dropped to her knees and wept.

At one thirty a.m., I fell into my cot and let the cold wind blow across me, thanking God that grown men didn’t stay up as late as college boys. The minute I closed my eyes, the door to the sleeping porch opened.

“Can I sleep out here with you?” Frances asked. She had a pillow under her arm.

I was so damn tired. “Sure.” She crawled into the cot next to mine. But of course I had to ask, because I always asked, “You alright, Franny?”

“No,” she said. She sounded miserable. “I keep thinking about Rory. Thinking he’ll come home and realize he’s in love with me. Isn’t that stupid?”

“Mm. Maybe, in your case.” Too cruel. “Frances, I realize this sounds a little hypocritical, considering what I’ve done. But I think you have a problem with honesty. With yourself and others.”

It took her a while to respond to that. I prayed she’d fallen asleep. “Alright, you want honest? Here’s honest. I hate telling myself the truth, and deep down I know Rory’s never going to be in love with me.”

“Attagirl,” I said and closed my eyes again.

“Wait, before you go to sleep, I need to ask you something.”

“What?” I said. She sat up in her cot, and I could see her in the bright moonlight now. Oh Lord, her hair . She’d cut it way too short up on her forehead. She looked worse than I did after one of Meemaw’s haircuts.

“How much money have you made so far? Your part, I mean?” she asked.

“A thousand dollars. And by the way, tonight was it. We’re not opening tomorrow. We’ve decided it’s enough. We’re done. But if you’re interested in keeping the place open, you won’t have to change the password. It’s Frances.”

She cringed. “Do you think …” She pulled her knees up inside her nightgown and set her chin on them. “Maybe I could get some of the money you owe me now?”

I knew it wouldn’t last. “No, because you had one job, and you did not do it.” But I asked, “What’s it for? Please say your hair.”

“I need to get my shoes shined before I go to the Orphan tomorrow morning. Both pairs are all scuffed up from all that walking, looking for Rory.”

Good Lord. She was asking me for twenty-five cents? I reached under the cot and pulled out an envelope hidden in the springs.

She watched me count out bills. “I can’t believe you made all that. What are you going to tell Mama and Meemaw when they ask where you got all that money?”

“That Frances made it running a brothel.” I handed her the fifty dollars for the job she didn’t do. “When you get a real job after this, I hope you’re a better employee than you were for me.”

“Thank you,” she said.

“Now that I’m flush, does that mean we’re on speaking terms again?”

“Unfortunately.”

“Good, because next fall, Jack’s son will be at Ole Miss and Jack’ll be running the bank.”

“You’re kidding ,” she said. “Daddy’d have your head.”

“Like you’re one to talk, you hypocrite.”

“I guess that means you’ll be coming up here. A lot.”

“I reckon so,” I said. “And I’m bringing Mama and Meemaw to visit. I can’t wait to introduce Meemaw to Mrs. Tartt.”

She flopped back on the cot. “Oh my gosh, I can’t believe you got the bank president instead of me. It’s like you got the ultimate revenge.”

“Oh Franny, you know there’s so much more coming.” Lying there, I thought, despite the fact this place was unsavory and morally depraved, it was still, hands down, the most interesting thing I’d ever done. I couldn’t make myself regret it for nothing.

Frances slipped beneath the covers, arranging her badly cut hair so it didn’t mess up, like we were in high school again, crossing her hands on her chest so nothing got wrinkled.

I woke up again an hour later to the sound of the Victrola. Frances lay corpse-like in her cot. “Dreamy Melody” was playing somewhere. An old-fashioned, swaying tune from ten years ago that Frances and I used to listen to in the hammock at home. It drifted up from the backyard. I got out of bed and peered through the screens. The dance floor was glowing in the watery moonlight. Mrs. Tartt was dancing in her long pale blue nightgown with Charlie, who was still in her stoic black dress. Back straight, head held high, Mrs. Tartt looked like she could be waltzing with Henry at the country club, while Charlie was dancing with her mother in their old kitchen, or with Welty in Memphis, or Meg in the cotton house, the old blue rug rolled up to the side. I watched until the song ended, and it was just the old phonograph record crackling. Charlie bowed deeply to Mrs. Tartt, and Mrs. Tartt curtsied to her, and then Charlie went inside the house.

Mrs. Tartt stood alone for a while. Then she went to the porch and started the record over and danced to the song again, in the black shining pool, this time holding someone who was not there.

Red virgin lamb’s wool mittens … for a little girl … do you have them here?

Let me look. Miss Ella McGuire’s white wrinkled hands pulled out blue boxes. They’re probably here somewhere …

“WAKE!”

Are these the ones? Tethered together so one can’t get lost from the other?

“UP!”

Yes, those are the ones … those are the gloves she wanted …

“WAKE UP! WAKE UP!”

I opened my eyes. Frances was standing over me, fully dressed in tweed. Am I dreaming? Am I at Neilson’s?

“Garnett is going to get Meg—in Byhalia. She’s leaving soon to bring her back to the orphanage. She doesn’t know I left, she said something about somebody dying—I told the taxi to wait outside—”

“Alright, I’m up, I’m up!”

Buttoning my dress, praying, Dear God, please stop her , I ran down the hall, past Ruby’s bedroom, door open, mattress stripped; Flossy’s was empty, also stripped, and Esmeralda’s too. I didn’t look in Rory’s room but I could feel that the twins were gone too.

Minutes later, I was in the back of the taxi, telling the driver to go faster. It would be a two-hour drive to Byhalia. On the map the road hadn’t looked too bad, at least for the first half. I asked myself, What is the worst thing that could happen to Garnett Pittman?

When we pulled up to the Orphan, Welty’s boxy Ford was parked out front. So she hasn’t left yet. He sat behind the wheel, waiting on Garnett, I assumed, and when he spotted me, he sat up straighter. I hurried after Frances onto the front porch under the lying sign, All God’s children are welcome .

Frances fiddled with the key and dropped it, clink , onto the front porch. “ Frances ,” I said, though I should have been thanking her. I snatched up the key, stuck it in the lock, and turned it. When I pushed the door open, there was the familiar smell of fresh coffee from the Ladies’ Lounge and that other stupid sign. Frances opened the next door to the hall, and I was hit with another smell—boiled potatoes, school paste, a faint whiff of diaper, and mold, maybe worse than I’d remembered it. Frances stopped and nodded towards Garnett, who was trying to open the warped door to the office. She was twisting the knob and pushing the door with the heel of her hand.

“Frances will you—Birdie, what are you doing here?” No niceties, no phony greeting. Perhaps our last exchange at the post office had cleared up the need for any of that.

I didn’t want to get my sister in trouble but I didn’t know how else to do this. “Garnett, please, don’t bring Meg back here. Please. I have—I have a proposal.”

Garnett gave Frances a cool look that said, NOT your assigned assignment, telling your sister our business.

“Let me adopt Meg, instead of bringing her here. I can look after her. I’ll go get her and bring her home to Footely with me. I’ll raise her, with my family—”

Her smile was smug. “You can’t possibly raise a child, Birdie. You’re not married .”

She gave the knob one more twist and shoved the door with her shoulder and it cracked open. The little office was still a blue egg of a room, but with the door shut, the mold had grown back, over the new paint. It furred the ceiling and the tops of the blue walls, and spots ran all the way down. The window’d been boarded up again, and the smell . It was such a thick mildewy smell, even Garnett drew back. It was as if she’d prepared the room, fermented it, for Meg’s return.

Garnett covered her mouth with her hand and went in, jangling the big ring of keys. I stood in the doorway, trying to think of some way to stop her—or at least slow her down.

“Do the Heidelbergs even want to return her or did you just decide this yourself?” Garnett acted as if she hadn’t heard me and stuck a key into the lock of the file cabinet. She had to pull hard on the drawer to get it open, then she ticked through the files. “Does Meg know you’re coming for her?” I asked. She wouldn’t even turn around.

In the hall, I heard heavy footsteps. Frances and I turned and saw Dr. Pittman in his tweed coat and hat. “Why are you here ?” he said to me.

This got Garnett’s attention. She looked up from the file drawer at her husband. It was as if she smelled something off, worse than the mildew and mold. “Why would you ask her that, Welty?”

Do I speak the unspeakable now? What more could Garnett do to Charlie at this point? Shock was all I had left.

“Dr. Pittman came out to Idlewilde last night to see an old friend,” I said, loud. “Meg’s mother, Charlie Lefleur.”

Garnett’s mouth turned down at Charlie’s name. “She—he would not.” Her eyes skipped from me to Welty to Frances, who’d taken a real big step back at the mention of Charlie.

“Charlie’s staying at the Tartts’ with us. She’s our guest,” I said.

Garnett’s eyes drilled into Frances. “Is that true?”

Frances stood frozen, but then, I couldn’t believe it, she nodded.

You Judas. You could see it right on Garnett’s face. She glared at Frances and said, “I would’ve thought you had enough on your plate already, Frances. Out searching for that perverted faggot husband of yours.” Oof , even I felt that. Garnett had let her phony Christian mask slip.

Frances’s neck stretched up, her incisors were showing. Oh, I’d seen those before. “Least my husband doesn’t have an illegitimate child he won’t even take care of.”

I stared at Frances, astonished. I wanted to hug her. I’d like to throw her a damn parade after this.

Garnett’s face had gone whiter. Her eyes flicked to the hall to see who might have heard that, but no one was out there. “That filthy tramp … Welty would not go anywhere near that succubus.”

“Oh, he did,” I said. “And seemed pretty happy to see her too.”

Garnett wiped her face, absently, and mold streaked down her cheek. “Welty?”

Welty was leaning in slightly, looking at the office, at the boards nailed across the window, the mold on the walls. I’d just bet Garnett had forbidden him to ever come inside the Orphan— imagine that. The local doctor not allowed to tend to sick children because Garnett was afraid he might care for his own child.

“Welty, tell me, is this true? Did you go see that woman?”

“It’s true,” he said.

Two chattering ladies, one of them Pripp, were coming this way from the Ladies’ Lounge. When Garnett saw them, she turned back to the file cabinet, jerked out a folder, and slapped it down on the desk.

As Pripp passed by, I announced very clearly, “Just so you know, Dr. Pittman has asked me to go collect Meg from the Heidelbergs.” And louder, “I think Dr. Pittman has the legal authority to decide that, don’t you agree, Garnett?”

Garnett narrowed her eyes on him. It would be a fair guess to say I’d probably made an enemy of Dr. Pittman by now, but he didn’t look all that offended. He seemed more disturbed by this room. She kept her in a dirty little room, alone, Charlie’d screamed.

Garnett came at us, but I stood firm in the doorway. She put herself in my face. “No, Dr. Pittman does not have the legal authority to decide that because that child belongs to m—” She stopped before she said it. Behind me, Frances coughed. Even I was stunned. Pripp had stopped to eavesdrop.

“Were you about to say … that Meg belongs to you?” I asked. I had to assume Pripp had heard that.

“I was—Meg belongs to the state. That’s what I said—she belongs to the state. Now remove yourself out of my way!”

Behind me, I heard Dr. Pittman sigh. It sounded like the last decent breath of a dying man. I turned and saw how weary he looked—by Garnett, by the truth of this room where his daughter had spent so much time. Please, I prayed, please, this is the last chance you’ll ever get to stand up for your child.

“Do I need to go to the court and tell them who I am, Garnett?” he said.

Garnett reached for his hand. “ No. You wouldn’t do that to me.” She said it so tenderly.

He drew back from her. “I would and I will if I need to.” And to prove it, he moved past her and picked the file up off the desk. Then he touched the wall and grimaced, looking at what came away on his fingers. He handed the file to me.

“Go get Meg and make sure she’s happy, please,” he said.

“Thank you, I will, Dr. Pittman.” I watched him walk back up the hall and out the front door. I turned to Garnett. “If you try to stop this, you know I will gladly write the Anti-Vice League and tell them what they don’t know about their president and her husband.” I glanced back at Pripp, who was gawking, wide-eyed.

Garnett grabbed the edge of Meg’s desk with a white knuckle. She looked like she might be sick.

I smiled. “Meg is really going to love the sixth grade,” I said and walked out of there, Frances following behind me.