Morning Glory (42 page)
"Will, what's wrong?"
He swallowed, his face flattened into the bedding, which smelled of them and of baby powder.
"You picked up the mail, didn't you?"
His thumb wagged across her skull. Tears stung his eyes but he pinched them inside. No man cried, not these days. They marched off to war triumphant.
"I was thinkin'," she continued chokily, "maybe I'll make a quince pie for supper. I know how you like your quince pie."
He thought of prison mess halls and soldiers' rations and Elly's quince pie with a lattice crust, and worked hard to keep his breath steady.
How long? How long?
The baby stopped suckling and heaved a delicate, broken sigh. Will pictured her milky mouth falling gently from Elly's skin and turned his temple to the mattress. Opening his eyes, he saw Elly's nipple at close range, almost violet in hue, still puckered while Lizzy's moist lips occasionally sucked from an inch away.
"I promised the boys I'd take 'em to a movie one day. I got to be sure to do that."
"They'd like that."
Silence settled, growing oppressive. "Can I come along?" she asked.
"Movie wouldn't be no fun without you."
They both smiled sadly. When the smiles faded they listened to each other breathe, absorbing the nearness and dearness of each other, storing memories against loin days.
"I have to teach you to drive the car," he said at length.
"And I got to give you that birthday party I promised."
They lay in silence a long time before Elly uttered a desolate throaty sound, reached up and gripped the back of Will's jacket. Burying her face in the bedding, she held him so and grieved.
* * *
Later he showed her the letter and while she read it told her, "I'm volunteering for the Marines, Elly."
"The Marines! But why?"
"Because I can be a good one. Because I already had the training my whole life long. Because bastards like Overmire are cuttin' off their trigger fingers and I want to make sure his kind can never make degrading remarks about me or you again."
"But I don't care what Harley Overmire says about us."
"I do."
Her expression soured as the hurt set in: he'd made such a decision without consulting her, to jeopardize the life she now valued more than her own. "And I don't have anything to say about it, whether you go to the Army or the Marines?"
His face closed over, much as it had beneath his cowboy hat during his first days here. "No, ma'am."
He had nine days, nine bittersweet days during which they never spoke the word war. Nine days during which Elly remained cool, hurt. He took the family to the movie, as promised—Bud Abbott and Lou Costello. The boys laughed while Will took Eleanor's unresponsive hand and held it as both of them tried to forget the newsreel which showed scenes of the
Pearl Harbor
attack and other actions in the Pacific that had occurred since
America
had entered the war.
He taught Elly to drive the car but couldn't get her to promise she'd use it to go into town in case of an emergency. Even while practicing, she refused to leave their own land. In other days, under other circumstances, the lessons might have been a source of amusement, but with both of them counting down the hours, laughter was at a premium.
He put up more cordwood, wondering how many months she'd be alone, how long the supply would last, what she'd do when it was gone.
She gave him a birthday party on January 29, three days before he was due to leave. Miss Beasley came, and they used the new china tea set, but the occasion held an undertone of gloom, this arbitrary day of celebration for a man who'd never celebrated his birth before, celebrating it now because it might be his last chance.
Then came his last night at the library. Miss Beasley was waiting when he arrived for work and gave Will his last paycheck with as much warmth as General MacArthur issuing an order. "Your job will be waiting when you get back, Mr. Parker." No matter what her feelings for Will, she'd never used his familiar name. It wouldn't have seemed right to either of them.
He stared at the check while his throat tightened. "Thank you, Miss Beasley."
"I thought, if it's all right with you, I'd come down to the train station to see you off tomorrow."
He forced a smile, meeting her eyes. "That'd be nice, ma'am. I'm not sure Elly will make it."
"She still refuses to come to town?"
"Yes, ma'am," he replied quietly.
"Oh, that child!" Miss Beasley grasped her hands and began pacing in agitation. "At times I'd like to sit her down for a stern lecture."
"It wouldn't do any good, ma'am."
"Does she think she can hide in that woods forever?"
"Looks that way." Will studied the floor. "Ma'am, there's somethin' I got to ask you. Somethin' I been wonderin' for a long time." He scratched the end of his nose and looked anywhere but at her. "That day when that woman Lula was in here, I know you heard what she said to me about Elly, about how her family locked her in that house on the edge of town and that's why everybody calls her crazy. Is it true?"
"You mean she's never told you?"
Lifting his gaze, Will slowly wagged his head.
Miss Beasley considered at length, then ordered, "Sit down, Mr. Parker."
They sat on opposite sides of a study table amid the smell of wax and oil and books. Outside, plodding hooves sounded on the street, merchants closed their shops and went home for supper, an auto rumbled past and faded while Miss Beasley considered Will's question.
"Why hasn't she told you?"
"I don't rightly know, ma'am. It must bother her to talk about it. She's got touchy feelin's."
"It should be her place to tell you."
"I know that, ma'am, but if she hasn't yet I doubt she will tonight, and I'd sure like to know before I leave."
Miss Beasley debated silently, staring Will full in the face. Her lips pursed, relaxed, then pursed again. "Very well, I'll tell you." She twined her fingers and rested them on the tabletop with the air of a judge resting a gavel.
"Her mother was a local girl who became pregnant out of wedlock and was sent away by her parents to have the child. Eleanor was the result of that pregnancy. When she was born, Chloe See—that was her mother—brought her back here to Whitney. On the train, the story goes. They were picked up at the depot by Eleanor's grandparents and whisked off in a carriage with the black shades securely drawn, and taken to their house—the same one that still stands on the outskirts of town. Lottie See, Eleanor's grandmother, pulled down the shades and never pulled them up again.
"Albert See and his wife were queer people, to say the least. He was a circuit preacher, so it was understandably difficult for them to accept Chloe's illegitimate child. But they went beyond the bounds of reason by keeping their daughter a virtual prisoner in that house until the day she died. People say she went crazy in there and Eleanor watched it happen. Naturally, they thought the same thing of poor Eleanor, living all those years with the rest of that eccentric bunch.
"They might have kept Eleanor locked up forever, but the law forced them to let her out to go to school. That's of course when I first met her, when she came here to the library with her classes.
"The children were merciless to Eleanor, you yourself know how cruel after what that—that painted hussy
Miss Beasley tucked her chin back severely, creating bifolds beneath it. "With little more provocation I would have slapped that woman's face that day. She's a-a—" Miss Beasley puffed up and turned red, then forcibly squelched her choler. "If I were to express my true feeling for
"Oh, yes—Eleanor. She wasn't gregarious like the rest of the children. She didn't know how to blend, having come out of the home life she did. She was dreamy and stared a lot. So the children called her crazy. How she endured those days I don't know. But she was—underneath her dreaminess—intelligent and resilient, apparently. She made out all right.
"This is all heresay, mind you, but the story goes that Albert See had a mistress somewhere. A black mistress in whose bed he died. The shame of it finally tipped his wife over the edge, and she became as tetched as her own daughter, hiding in that house, speaking to no one, mumbling prayers. All of Eleanor's family died within three years, but it was their deaths that finally freed her.
"How she knew Glendon Dinsmore, I can only guess. He delivered ice, you know, so I suppose he was one of the few people ever allowed into that house. Albert See died in 1933, his wife in '34 and his daughter in '35. The women died right in that house that had become their prison. It wasn't a week after Chloe's death that Eleanor married Glendon and moved to the place where you live now. Her grandparents' house has sat vacant all these years. Unfortunately, it keeps people's memories alive. I sometimes think it would be better for Eleanor if it had been torn down."
So now he knew. He sat digesting it, damning people he'd never known, wondering at cruelties too bizarre to comprehend.
"Thank you for telling me, Miss Beasley."
"Understand, I would not have if it weren't for this ... this damned war."
In all the time he'd known her she'd never spoken an unladylike word. Her doing so now created an intimacy of sorts, an unspoken understanding that his leaving would break not one but two hearts. He reached across the table and took her hands, squeezing hard.
"You've been good to us. I'll never forget that."
She allowed her hands to be held for several wrenching seconds, then withdrew them and rose staunchly, affecting a stem voice to cover her emotionalism.
"Now get out of here. Go home to your wife. A library's no place to be spending your last night at home."
"But, my check ... I mean, you paid me for today and I didn't do my work."
"Haven't you learned after all this time that I don't like to be crossed, Mr. Parker? When I say get, I mean get."
He let a grin climb his cheek, tugged at the brim of his hat and replied, "Yes, ma'am."
* * *
He reached home in time to help Elly put the boys to bed. Last times. Last times.
I'm comin' home, boys, I'm by God comin' back home 'cause you need me and I need you and I love doin' this too much to give it up forever.
Without discussing it, Will and Elly closed the boys' bedroom door for the first time ever. They stood in the front room much as they had on their wedding night, tense and uncertain because she had been remote and cool toward him throughout their last precious days together and now their final night had come and they'd never made love.
Sand seemed to be falling through an hourglass.
He hooked his thumbs in his back pockets and stared at the back of Elly's head, at the nape of her neck bisected by one thick braid, fuzzy at the edges. He wanted so badly to do this right, the way this woman deserved.
"I like your hair in a braid," he began uncertainly, lifting it, feeling inept at this business of courting a wife. Had she been some harlot he'd have known the procedure, but he supposed it must be different when you cared this much.
Abruptly she spun and threw her arms around his neck. "Oh, Will, I'm sorry I've been so mean to you."
"You haven't been mean."
"Yes, I have, but I've been so scared."
"I know. So have I." He rocked her, arms doubled around her back, and dropped his nose to her neck. She smelled of homey things—supper and starched cotton and milk and babies. Ah, how he loved the smell of this woman. He straightened and held her cheeks, the drawn hair at her temples. "What do you say we take a bath together? I always wanted to do that."
"I have too."