Catfish Alley (17 page)

They both like to think of themselves as benevolent
plantation owners. It always feels to me like they're trying to play parts out
of
Gone
With the Wind.
I feel that old green-tinged
twinge of jealousy when I think of Louisa Humboldt's parties, which, I have to
admit, are some of the best I've seen during my years in Clarksville. She even
had the dress she wore at Christmas made from actual bolts of green satin she
found in Charleston. The fabric was stored in locked trunks that had gotten
lost in a warehouse on the docks.

On the night of the party, women were surrounding
Louisa like flies on sugar. "Yes, isn't it amazing?" she said.
"These bolts of fabric were going to be smuggled across the blockade so
that the Southern ladies could still have nice dresses, but the ship never made
it out of Charleston. My antiques broker heard about the trunks and called me.
I bought them sight unseen. People always say that I have the best luck when it
comes to an antique find!"

Louisa and Ellery have enough money to employ a large
staff of service people, and I've noticed that they tend to drop the Southern
drawl when giving directions to them. Given my work lately with Grace Clark,
I'm experiencing a surreal sense of time as I stand in the entrance hall. I
wonder how many slaves the original family at Riverview owned, and then I
fast-forward to the early twentieth century — Grace's day.
Who were the hired help that worked
here then? Did Grace and her family know any of them?

I shake myself slightly. I have to get a grip! I'm
about to be in the middle of a very serious conversation about the style of
dresses that the young girls who will be guiding tours for Riverview will be
wearing. I can't afford to risk my position of authority by getting sidetracked
wondering how long it look a slave woman to iron that same dress with a heavy
iron heated in a fire in a one-hundred-plus-degree summer kitchen!

But I do wonder. And I wonder where that woman slept
and how many children she had and how many of those children were the progeny
of the master. I wonder if there are any half-white ancestors of Riverview
slaves still living in Clarksville. I search my memory about the family that
originally built Riverview. I can't think of them right now, probably because
my mind is just too crowded with all of this other stuff.

I peek into the parlor, where soft music is playing and
six women twitter like colorful birds as they stand around the exquisite
mahogany and satin furniture. Louisa spies me and smiles. She's still a good
inch shorter than I am, even in those three-inch heels, not to mention the
height of her swept-up bleached blond hair. She detaches herself from the rest
of the group and approaches me in a cloud of L'Air du Temps and bourbon. She
isn't a pretty woman, but she's wealthy, so everything about her is designed to
give the illusion of beauty. I wish I could pull that off. She takes my hand
and presses it between hers.

"Roxanne Reeves, we're so glad you're here,"
she gushes. "Johnny" — she waves to the young man who answered the
door — "take Mrs. Reeves's things." It occurs to me that this same
young man might have been the butler for the last party of hers that I
attended. I didn't even notice him then, but now I find myself wondering what
he thinks of all of these over-accessorized white women trying to hold on to
our little eddies in the small pond of Clarksville. Are we as invisible to him
as he is to us? Johnny obediently takes my sweater and purse with a courteous
nod, and Louisa ushers me into the room as if I'm royalty. "Ladies, look
who's here! It's our very own pilgrimage director."

I smile as everyone stops talking and looks up. This is
awkward. I've been in meetings of various sorts with these women for years.
It's embarrassing to be treated like some sort of special guest. They all know
as well as I do that Louisa Humboldt is just trying to get her house into the
spring tour. Making me even more uncomfortable than the introduction is knowing
that all of these women are just waiting like hopeful buzzards to see what my
decision will be.

Everyone on the committee knows that I'm a stickler for
authenticity. I carefully review each and every home on the tour to be sure
that the owners can explain any modern changes and that, as much as possible,
details from the antebellum period are preserved. I can see from looking around
this room that the Humboldts are well on their way to furnishing this house
with period-appropriate furniture. Ellen Davenport's cheap reproduction pieces
that still lingered in December have been removed and replaced. From the
fainting sofa in the corner to the harpsichord under the window, the antique
furniture is dead-on. But then, Louisa is quite the collector. Between the
discomfort of being on display and the fear that Louisa might be a threat to my
job, I'm breaking into a cold sweat.

I decline the milk punch that yet another young black
person, a girl this time, offers me, ask for coffee instead. Milk punch is
deadly for me this time of day. It's a delicious concoction made from Maker's
Mark, sugar syrup, vanilla, and heavy cream. The whole mixture is frozen
overnight and then thawed just enough for pouring. I know if I have milk punch
my judgment will be clouded, and I need to stay clear.

I'm anxious to get my hands on that diary Louisa found,
but I'll have to wait until she and I are alone. Hopefully, she hasn't
broadcast it to the whole group. As I maneuver into the room I overhear a group
of ladies in a heated discussion. The woman currently holding forth is Elsie
Spencer, my longtime nemesis and the wife of Arvis Spencer, the president of
the First National Bank of Clarksville. Elsie has made an art form out of
snobbery. I find myself simultaneously drawn to her like a beetle to a bug
light and yet repulsed by the swift, bloodless executions I have seen her
perform on her unknowing victims' social lives. For years, I've spent
tremendous amounts of energy being sure that I stay under her murderous radar.

Elsie fancies herself quite the genealogist. If she
ever finds out that my only claim to class or money is my husband's — possibly
soon to be ex-husband's — family, not my own, I might as well move to Biloxi
and go to work in a casino. Somehow I've always managed to skirt the question
of
Who are your people?
by giving her vague responses that are really more about the Stanleys than my
own parents. And they
are
both dead. That much is true. It's just
that Mama died of cancer gone untreated for years and Daddy smoked and drank
himself to death. They're both buried in a small Catholic cemetery in the
bayou. Daddy is not tucked neatly under a white headstone in a particularly
beautiful corner of Arlington Cemetery, like I
might
have implied.

"So, it's not enough that her husband has gotten a
high-profile position at the bank, but now she wants to volunteer to help with
the Pilgrimage Tour," Elsie is saying to Dottie Lollar, one of the two
women listening to her in rapt attention.

"A black woman in the Pilgrimage Tour?" asks
Dottie. "How can that be? What would she wear?" Dottie nibbles
nervously on a cheese straw, looking like an anorexic squirrel.

Elsie nods. "That's what I thought. Now, I'm not
prejudiced, but how can a black woman wear a Southern day dress with
hoopskirts? That just wouldn't look right.

And we can't very well ask her to wear what slave women
would have worn." Elsie shakes her head and sips her punch. "I tell
you, it's a dilemma." She looks up, sees me, and moves toward me. The
other women tag along.
Oh, Lord! I don't want to be in this conversation!

"Here's our director now. I'm sure she will have a
solution for this problem."

I try to look interested as Elsie describes the bank
function she was attending. "Rita Baldwin is the wife of that black man,
Jack Baldwin, who Arvis swears is going to make him a heap of money. Apparently
he was a widower and Rita is his second wife. I think he met her in Atlanta.
She was in some community service job — I forget what. Anyway, so Rita
approached me and asked if she could help with the spring tour, maybe even be a
guide." The other women are looking distracted since they've already heard
this story at least twice. "Well, I made up something about an application
process and being on a waiting list, but I'm telling you, Roxanne, I just
didn't know what to say! We've never had this happen before." Elsie shakes
her perfectly coiffed head and pats the corners of her mouth with her cocktail
napkin. "So I told her she should contact you about how to proceed."

Of course, this is typical. Take the credit if it's
something positive, and pass the problem on to me if it's not. I'm already in a
difficult situation with this African-American tour. Elsie is a powerful woman
in this community, and if I can't keep her support, then I might not get
reelected for this position next year. Elsie was also one of the three people
on the committee who voted against the African-American tour. I'm remembering
what she said in that meeting: "It is not necessary to have an
African-American tour. It will introduce the wrong element to Clarksville. It
just doesn't fit."

By the wrong element she meant more black people. I can
see her obvious glee in putting yet another such situation in my hands. Elsie's
plotting my demise. It's as clear as the crystal cup she's sipping her milk
punch from.

I make up some inane comment to put Elsie off as —
thank the Lord
— the butler announces that lunch is served. Everyone moves across the hall
into the dining room. I notice that the original patterned carpet is still in
here, and the huge gilt rococo mirror that I've admired over the years still
hangs over the fireplace. We all find our place cards and take seats around the
perfectly laid-out mahogany dining table.

"I've seated you next to me so that I can bend
your ear about that diary," Louisa whispers as I sit to her left and she
waits for the butler to pull out her chair at the head of the table.

"Good, I can't wait to hear about it," I say,
thinking that's truthfully the most interesting thing I'll hear today.

The lunch is excellent as usual. I stuff myself on
Belle's crawfish étouffée and am eyeing the bread pudding on the sideboard when
Louisa clinks on her glass.

"Ladies, we should come to order now. Our director
is ready to start the meeting."

I take one last longing look at the bread pudding being
served to the others and pull the agenda from under my plate. I take a deep
breath, mostly because I'm nervous today, which I'm usually not, and also
because I ate too much. I launch into today's topics.

"The attire for the Holiday Tour, the treasurer's
report on the ticket prices for spring, and finally ..." I look down,
adjust my glasses, and clear my throat. "My report on the African-American
tour." I hear a short rumbling of hushed conversation after this last item
and decide to push on.

"Dottie, we'll start with your report on the
Holiday Tour," I announce.

Dottie Lollar pulls her reading glasses and a small
notepad from the expensive designer bag hanging on the back of her chair and
sets the glasses on her minuscule turned-up nose. She tucks a strand of hair
behind her ear and launches into her usual perky soliloquy on the local home
owners who have volunteered their homes for the annual Christmas tour. I remind
myself to think "Holiday Tour." Two years ago we had a Jewish family
buy one of the homes traditionally on the tour and we had to start calling it a
Holiday Tour, but none of us have gotten used to that yet. I find my mind
wandering as Dottie goes on.

"So I've looked into caterers for the cookies.
There's the black woman over on Martin Luther King Drive that makes the best
date nut balls I've ever put in my mouth. But then there's also Sanders Cafe,
where we've gone for the past five years. Anyway, the decision was so hard that
our little subcommittee decided to hold a contest in October to choose the best
cookie. Won't that be fun? I'm just so excited about it...."

The meeting rambles on at its usual sluggish pace. Each
woman reporting seems to I feel compelled to include some story about the
difficulty she's having with a dressmaker, or a caterer, or a cleaning service.
I find my mind wandering to what Grace would think of this meeting if she were
here. Would she be impressed with how detail-oriented we are and how high our
standards are? Or, rather, would she shake her head at our sense of
entitlement?

Finally, we get to my report on the African-American
tour. Louisa's looking at me expectantly and I can't help but notice that Elsie
Spencer is talking behind her land to her minion, Dottie Lollar. I make my
voice sound matter-of-fact and, I hope, positive.

"So far, we have three very interesting historical
sites for our African-American tour." The ladies stop talking among
themselves and look at me as if they're surprised.