Keeping Secrets (23 page)

One evening he surprised me by asking if he could use the Overland. “Of course,” I told him. “Emory's never minded your driving his car.” He nodded and went off. He returned sometime after eleven o'clock, and I heard him pass through the foyer and into his rooms. All evening I had wondered where he was. He'd always had such a fetish about avoiding the wheel of Emory's car unless compelled to drive. Maybe he has found himself a girl friend, I thought.

The following night he requested the car again, and repeated the strange procedure. Then for five more consecutive nights he checked to see if I wished to be taken somewhere, and when I told him I did not, he walked to the garage without further adieu. By then I was convinced he was having a fling, and was too shy to tell me. That's wonderful, I thought, especially as he won't be breathing down my neck anymore. On Saturday I slept later than usual. When I awoke the car was gone. Nathan returned with it sometime in the afternoon, and instead of coming in to wish me good day, he stayed outside and washed, waxed, and buffed it until it gleamed from one end to the other. For the rest of the time Emory was in Mexico, he never drove it again.

I became more and more nervous, not only due to my own predicament but for Emory and what he faced. Mexico was in for a new bloody revolution known of by only a few at this point. Within three weeks the Apostol de Reforma would be a title inextricably connected with Fernando Barrista. His followers, so long and carefully indoctrinated, would be forced to take up arms once again, convinced this would be the last of the revolutions, the quickest and best organized, the one that would bring Mexico into the twentieth century on the coattails of her neighbor above. And the catalyst was my husband. Who would have guessed our hopes and dreams so many years ago in Childers would have brought us together in this?

I had to talk to someone, about anything, or go insane with worry.

Lyla was now two weeks away from expected child delivery. Victim of a difficult pregnancy, she was confined to bed. I rose early one morning and baked a cinnamon-pecan coffee cake—this was a long and tedious chore, made especially so because my oven wasn't working properly and I had to regulate the temperature myself by putting pans of cold water in alongside the cake. Finally, dripping with perspiration from the oven heat, I bathed, changed clothes, and went to call.

I'd made a point of stopping by occasionally over the past few weeks, but seldom stayed very long. Today I made up my mind to listen to her chatter for as long as I could endure it, as a means of shortening my day.

I found Lyla in anything but her usually flighty mood. She was quiet and introspective, lying motionless among the pillows. She had not exaggerated when she told me she grew very large during pregnancy.

To break the unexpected silence, I went to the window and looked out. “It's begun to rain. Good day for being a shut-in, isn't it.”

“I suppose. I've been a shut-in all my life.”

“Oh Lyla, you're just down in the dumps today. When the baby comes a couple of weeks from now, you won't remember how long it seemed.”

“I dread it, you know.”

I sat down near her. “Lyla, what difference does one more child make? The worst is almost over. Back to your beautiful frocks this summer. The nursemaid will look after the child most of the time. You can go back and poke your feet in the pond, and forget the past.”

“It's the future that worries me.”

“Oh … you mean Arnold?”

“I wasn't kidding about what I said. I don't want any more children, and there's only one sure way to avoid them as far as I know.”

I looked down. “I wish there was something I could say.”

“Forget it. You couldn't guess what it's like to be in my place. I'll tell you one thing. If I had my life to live over again, knowing what I know now, I would play my cards just like you have.”

I looked up again, startled. What did she know, I wondered?

“You don't let things control you the way I do. I envy you for that, more than you could imagine.”

“Oh well, perhaps—” I stammered. “Perhaps you shouldn't compare—”

She interrupted me with a shrug, and looked out the window. “Arnold says we're going to get into that bloody war.”

“I hope he's wrong.”

“We can't keep out of it much longer. He thinks that is why Wilson pulled most of our troops out of Mexico. We've been tied up down there, like being stuck to a wad of chewing gum. To hell with Mexico. It's like a Sunday-afternoon cock fight compared to what we're going to get into.”

“I guess that depends which side of the border you view it from.”

“Those greasers will be fighting from now till the end of time. It's the way they are. Emory must be hauling in the money by the trainload from down there, or he surely wouldn't consider the risk worth it. Arnold pointed that out.”

“Look … perhaps I ought to go. You don't seem to be in a very good mood today.”

She pulled forward. “Don't go, Electra. No one comes around to visit me except you. Let's get the maid to bring some coffee, and we'll cut the cake.”

Later as we ate the cake she said, “You will have to forgive my rudeness. I feel the whole world's crumbling around me lately.”

“That's understandable.”

“The odd part is, I think the world really is coming to pieces. Everything's beginning to change. This morning I was thinking, six years ago when I was carrying little Arnie, I was in bed for the last eight weeks. Mostly what I saw from this window were children going around on wheels and splashing around in the river. Occasionally you'd hear a team of horses shuffle down the street, or the tinkle of a bell—someone signaling it was time for coffee in the afternoon.…

“There used to be a street vendor—an old man—who came around in his wagon early in the morning. He'd call out, ‘Cucumbers, Cu-cumbers, five cents for roasting ears.' I don't think he comes around anymore. I never hear him.

“All I hear now is the sound of automobile motors; that plus the noise coming from the arsenal, now they've begun using it again, obliterates all the old sounds.”

I was surprised at her perception. In a moment she continued, “You know, we had a lot of fun growing up. On holidays all my mother's sisters and their kids would come to town and stay with us. Every year on the Fourth of July we'd go out to San Pedro Park for a big picnic. We took so much food, we had to carry it in big wicker baskets. I had a beautiful white lawn bonnet that I wore … sheer as a hummingbird's wing. We laughed and played all day, and were tired when we all got home, just from having fun.…

“Christmas was the same. We began baking cookies weeks ahead of time—at least a dozen kinds—and on Christmas Eve we'd unveil the tree and sing ‘Silent Night' altogether. Everyone had a little pile of gifts of their own, and everyone a plate of cookies and candy. We all sat down to dinner together, and Papa would rise at the end of the table and say the longest blessing in German you ever heard, while the kids made faces at each other and slapped hands under the table.

“I guess I'm not putting this very well … but the point is that we do the same things now, but it's no fun anymore. Somehow nothing turned out exactly the way I thought it would. Have you ever felt that?”

“From time to time,” I said.

“I've always liked you, Electra. It used to get on my nerves that you wouldn't spend a little more time picking fashionable clothes but I've learned to accept that in you.”

“How generous.”

“I'll tell you a secret. I buy a lot of clothes because I like being admired by men. That's what most women like, isn't it? If I know someone is staring from off the side, thinking what a terrific dish I am, it makes facing Arnold a little easier. I realize that sounds strange … still, it's true.

“Most of the time you keep your greatest feminine assets well concealed. I've often wondered whether that's because you've got a husband who makes you so happy, you don't want to be looked at by other men, or else he doesn't like having you looked at.”

I sat silently. Lyla had the most weird sort of logic I'd ever heard, and she could come within a hair's breadth of being downright vulgar, for someone of her upbringing.

When I started home—some three hours after I'd arrived at Lyla's door—I thought over many of the things she had said. Mainly, her thoughts about the prospect of our entering the war echoed my own all too well. Though the Centrals had offered a peace settlement through Wilson as mediator, Britain, France, and Russia acted as though they were more insulted than anything else. The German peace proposal had seemed a lot more reasonable to me, with its territorial exchanges and indemnity payments, than did that of the Allies, who wanted to democratize the German Government altogether and divide her navy among the entente nations.

The fact, however, was that Germany was in a good bargaining position now, with her U-boat warfare having proven so effective. On the other hand, while the Allies were losing, they didn't want to settle on the down side. The only real way to keep the war from dragging on endlessly was a tip of the scales in one direction or another, and everybody knew there was not one nation capable of doing that. You could not live in San Antonio without getting a feel for the immense effort being put forth toward national defense all over the nation. It was hard to believe this much money and time were being spent on preparation without something specific in mind.

Evening was falling as I approached our front walk. All the windows in our house were dark, and the shades were drawn. The whole view presented a lonely, forlorn prospect. The rain had ceased, and I was warm enough in my coat and hat. I decided to keep going and have a long walk.

Lyla was right, too, about the way things had changed. Even in the time we had lived at Beauregard and Washington, many families had moved from the neighborhood, to be replaced by new ones. Children who were just tykes when we came now played unchaperoned around the streets. Everyone had an automobile now, and few people retained their horse and buggy anymore. The carriage houses—many of which were large enough to be comfortable homes—had been converted into garages.

Downtown, which I approached rather quickly it seemed, was trying to keep the growing number of jitneys from getting tersections busier—so busy, in fact, that now the city council was trying to keep the growing number of jitneys from getting in the way of the streetcars. But they would fail and they knew it. The time for streetcars was rapidly passing.…

All the streets in this section were now lit by electric bulbs instead of gas flames, and it was underneath the bright glow of these lights that I walked around, looking in shop windows and thinking of what Lyla had said of my clothes. She had been on me from the beginning about my big hats, then later about my skirt hems, while I ignored her because I was so certain my clothes were well chosen. Once (apparently in desperation), she said, “If only I could just get you to try. You can go to any of the finer stores in town and take something out on approval. If you decide you don't like it, return it. Yet—how can you be certain unless you've worn it, and gotten people's reaction, eh? So, you just be careful about wearing strong perfume—keep it off the frock—and after you've worn it once, then return it. I do it all the time, for heaven's sake, and the stores never know … if they guess, they wouldn't dare say anything for all the bills we run up. Arnold was never a day late on paying one.”

I'd looked at her, aghast.

However, there may have been something valid in what Lyla harped on. I'd never forgotten the night Emory referred to me so readily as “matronly.” He'd be home now in about a week, and there was a dinner-dance invitation for the seventeenth of February from the Tetzels, which we would no doubt attend during Emory's brief stay in town. This time, I decided, I would send him back to Mexico remembering me in a special way. If he was to be involved in battle plans and secret conferences in hideaways with men he could only hope to be able to trust, let him think of me fleetingly as an added impetus for coming through it safe and sound, not only because I loved him but because other men might find me more alluring than before.…

I smiled to myself as I looked at a store display, thinking, no, I'm above all that. Then I noticed a mannequin wearing a black dress with a plunging neckline, the skirt slit up one side, and a headband with a black feather aigrette on either side. On her feet were black satin pumps with ribbons wrapped crisscross all the way up her calves. I hesitated … a few minutes from now the store would be closing. I started to walk off, then considered again and decided—the hell I am.

Feverish with excitement, I rushed inside to order a fitting of the ensemble, so sure of the great sensation I would create when I appeared in it at the Tetzel party.

27

Emory returned on Saturday, February 17, 1917, a date which I will never forget. After arriving in the afternoon he went straight to the office, then called. He seemed preoccupied, and spoke to me as if we'd seen each other fifteen minutes earlier, rather than six long weeks ago.

“What time is that party tonight?” he wanted to know. I told him we could miss it if he was too tired, but he replied, “No, I've got to see Tetzel anyway. Are my clothes ready? Do I have to wear one of those silly hats?”

In fact I still had to pick up his suit after alterations. His weight had dwindled gradually by twenty pounds in the past three years. I also had to pick up my miniature portrait. I was disappointed there would be no time for having it framed, but then I wanted him to carry it to Mexico if he wished, so a frame would only have complicated matters. I was very pleased with Miss Onderdonk's work. She had insisted my hair be left loose and flowing for the portrait, and the result—perhaps the intent—was a kind of ethereal quality. I was eager to hear Emory's reaction, though, knowing him, I expected a cursory glance and a good-natured but vulgar appraisal.