A Peach of a Pair (3 page)

S
ue has cried enough for both of us; still, through my tears, my roommate looked like a kaleidoscope. A very lovely clown dressed in an orange poodle skirt, a blinding red blouse with a Peter Pan collar, a chameleon green sweater draped over her shoulders.

“Don’t go.” Her voice tailed off into a whine again.

“We’ve been through this, sweet girl. You know I can’t stay.” I stroked her hair, taking in the scent of the Chanel No. 5 her boyfriend splurged on for Valentine’s Day. She puts a dab behind her ears every day, but only on her wrists on Sundays. “I’ll be fine.”

“Come home with me, Nettie. You can share my room until the wedding. Mama and Daddy want you to come. Please do.”

Sue was the oldest of five girls and one lone boy they all doted on. Their home was as tumultuous as the tiny plot sandwiched
between two orchards back home. Four houses squeezed together. Mine, Nana Gilbert’s, Aunt Opal’s, and Uncle Doak’s.

“You’re going to graduate and go home and marry Jimmy. And I—” Daddy had always called me the queen bee, said I came into the world so sure of myself. But for the first time in my life, I didn’t have any idea what came next or what to do. Nothing was certain. Everything was broken, but I’d be damned before I’d let Brooks or Sissy or Mother break me. “You’d better get going, Sue. You have class.”

She nodded and ran her hand over the top of my suitcase. “But a bed at the Y, Nettie?”

Dean Kerrigan had been kind enough to see to it that I had a place to go. I knew she had lived at the Y when she first moved to Columbia, a lot of the single teachers at the college still did. “You make it sound like it’s some sort of flophouse. It’s not.” She nodded, giving my arm a gentle squeeze. “Now go to class. I’ll be here when you get back. Promise.”

Going through the motions of packing felt good. Better than wallowing in heartbreak. The rest of my belongings fit easily into the yellow Samsonite wardrobe Daddy gave me for high school graduation. I’d already taken most of my things home at Christmastime.

I stiffened at the memory of Brooks touching me in the orchard that night. The way his breath felt on my neck as he told me how much he loved me. Wanted me. Was that how he seduced my sister? Or had my sister’s childhood crush grown into something feral and devious, something that was bigger than her? I shook my head, trying to get the image of Sissy’s face out of my mind, that prissy sly smile when she’d interrupted Brooks and me that now
obviously
had nothing to do with Parcheesi.

“Damn you, Sissy.” I’d never sworn out loud in my life, and yet the words tripped off my tongue. “Damn you and Brooks.” And the baby? Brooks’s baby?

A wave of nausea dropped me to my knees. Gritting my teeth, I would not damn that child, but I wouldn’t shed another tear over the fact that it had taken a place in my family. My place.

Checking under the bed, I pushed the rumpled twin away from the wall. Doris Shelley’s pink sweater fell to the floor. I had no recollection of taking it off the day my world came to an end, no recollection of much of anything after reading my mother’s plea for me to return home to Satsuma.
For Sissy
. But there it was, shoved between the bed and wall, as soft as cotton candy, pink, with little white pearl buttons.

I folded it neatly and got to my feet to get back to the business of moving on. To where or to what I had no idea, but moving forward was imperative. The only way not to feel the gaping wound Sissy and Brooks had made inside me when they made that baby.

Since Mother’s letter, the rumor mill at the college had been gushing with all kinds of scenarios, which Sue felt duty bound to squelch. But her efforts only served to make things worse, and made nice girls like Doris feel sorry for me. I hurried down the hallway, the sweater clutched to my chest. Returning it seemed almost silly; I knew she’d never ask for it back.

For most of the school year, everyone had heard her tearful conversations with her boyfriend on the hall phone. He was handsome, a frat boy at the University of South Carolina with a sporty black convertible. A lot of girls thought Doris let him do her wrong because his family came from money and hers didn’t. She knew he
was catting around, but she always took him back. I’d always wondered how she could forgive him, just like that.

Could I offer a polite acceptance if Brooks apologized, begged me to take him back? After all, I was still Dorothy Gilbert’s daughter, bound by blood and good manners. Would I take him back? I placed the sweater on Doris’s pillow along with a heartfelt thank-you note and hurried out of the room, grateful she wasn’t there. I couldn’t have taken another mournful look from her piercing blue eyes that said she knew exactly what it felt like to be me.

Pages on the hallway bulletin board ruffled as I pulled Doris’s door to, advertisements with neatly cut fringes with phone numbers written in perfect script. Requests for transportation, ads for students who wanted to get a jump on finding a summer job. Hurrying home to Brooks the moment summer vacation began, I’d never had any cause to peruse the board. But with only a few dollars and a bus ticket to my name, I’d definitely need a job.

The telephone rang at the opposite end of the hall. A girl dashed out of her room to answer it. I could feel her eyeing me as I studied the board. Summer work babysitting an infant? Definitely not. Three offerings for camp counselors? Nothing that lasted for more than a couple of weeks. Lifeguard? I was a horrible dog paddler and couldn’t save anyone without drowning myself. Besides, I’d heard the girls go on about the cute boys from USC who lifeguarded at Sesquicentennial State Park and the city swimming pools, and wanted no part of that.

Caregiver? I’d helped nurse Nana Gilbert through a horrible bout of the croup once; I could do that. But the position was in Camden, not Columbia. I took the advertisement off of the board, stuffed it in my
pocket, and hurried back to my room. Justine, the cattiest of the mean girls, was on the phone, looking at me, twirling the phone cord around her finger. Her smile devious. “For you,” she said, dangling the phone toward me.

After Dean Kerrigan filed the paperwork, one of Justine’s catty minions who worked part-time in the registrar’s office broadcasted that I was withdrawing from school. The only pleasure I had in this horrible mess was that it was killing every last one of them to know why.

Justine was a well-sculpted beauty who was never without a date and there was a good reason for that. While the rest of us dressed like young girls in poodle skirts and tasteful sweater sets, Justine, the ringleader of the mean girls, wore cotton peekaboo blouses with tight skirts and high heels. All of us had covered for her on more than one occasion.

Just a few weeks ago, when she didn’t come back to the dorm after a fraternity party at USC, our housemother, Miss Beaumont, was on a mission to find her and wasn’t about to give up until I stepped in and assured her Justine was at the library. On a Saturday morning. Studying. Something Miss Beaumont knew probably was not true, but she liked me, trusted me, and my word was good enough for her.

“I’m not here,” I whispered to Justine, eyes pleading for her to follow the unspoken code we all shared.

She slid her delicate hand over the receiver and couldn’t look any more like the cat who ate the cream. “You haven’t had a phone call in over a month, Nettie, and it finally rings for you and you aren’t lunging for it? Must have something to do with your leaving school.”

“Please, Justine, I’m not here.”

“Oh, but you are, though not for long I’m told,” she gloated. “Tell me why you’re leaving, and I’ll tell them you’re at supper.”

“Justine,” I said, begging her to lie for me the way I had for her a thousand times.

“Oh, this is too rich. The perfect ’Bama belle in a tizzy, leaving school so suddenly. Who got you knocked up, Nettie? Because your precious Brooks sure isn’t the daddy.” She might as well have punched me in the stomach. “Who is it? One of the boys from Fort Jackson? From USC?”

My heart pounded out of my chest. “Justine. Please.”

She licked her bright red lips and took her hand off of the receiver. Her smile put the Devil to shame. “Here she is, Mrs. Gilbert,” she said, slapping the phone in my hand.

“Hello? Nettie, honey? Hello?
Hello?
” I could picture my mother by the telephone table next to the blue platform rocker in the living room. Sitting on the edge of the seat, reading glasses dangling on the end of her nose. “Nettie Jean Gilbert! You speak to me this instant,” she ground out in a motherly tone that had always made me snap to.

But how could she love me and command me to attend Sissy’s wedding? How could she welcome Brooks into our family after what he did to me? And how could she choose Sissy over me? Because of a baby?

“Mother.” The word sucked the air right out of my lungs; my stomach roiled.

“Oh, how the mighty ’Bama belle has fallen,” Justine laughed. “And I’m enjoying every minute of it.”

I gave her a hard look, opened the door next to the phone, and stepped inside; the cord reached just enough for it to close.
Thankfully neither Patrice nor Halley, nice girls, the only two Catholics at this Methodist school, were not in their room. The girls shared a bulletin board beside the door, decked out with pictures of their sizable families. Not a single one of them looked traitorous, but then Sissy had never looked that way. Mother certainly didn’t either.

“
Nettie. You listen to me, young lady, you—
”

Nobody really stops to notice that solitary moment when the apron strings snap. The bile that had crept up my throat was replaced by fury that had simmered under heartbreak for days.

“No, Mother,
you
listen to
me
.” She gasped at my tone. “When you phoned me after the tornado, I waited thirty-two days believing something horrible had happened, that Brooks was dead. I heard nothing from anyone, not even you, until I got your primly worded letter and an invite to Sissy’s wedding, demanding my presence. My blessing.”

“I don’t expect you to bless this union, Nettie. After the tornado, everyone around here was out of sorts, especially with it coming on the heels of the hurricane. I’m not making excuses for Brooks or Sissy, but the milk has been spilt, Nettie.”

“
Enough with the spilt milk.
My sister
stole
my fiancé. There is no spilt milk. There’s betrayal. And a baby I want nothing to do with. I don’t ever want to see Brooks or Sissy again. And how could you possibly think I’d stand up at their wedding? Condone what they did, what they did to me?”

“Nettie. Lower your voice.”

“Why, Mother? Because you don’t want people to know Sissy didn’t follow proper etiquette? Did she miss a step in the chapter on how to felicitously betray her own sister? Or did she just skip straight to the point of no return when she got pregnant with my fiancé’s baby?”

“Rail if it makes you feel better, but Sissy isn’t entirely to blame.”

“You’re right. I don’t just blame Sissy. I don’t know what happened between her and Brooks; all I know is that Sissy has wanted him to notice her since she was old enough to tag after me. And she finally got him.”

“You can pile all the blame on your sister, Nettie, but it takes two people to make a baby. What about Brooks?”

“Brooks is none of your business.”

“None of my business? Young lady, I am still your mother.”

“No, you’re not my mother. You chose. Between your daughters. You chose.”

“Maybe if you had a daughter with a baby on the way you’d understand that I didn’t choose.”

“Is the baby in danger?” I snapped.

“Why, no. Nettie, honey, I’m just trying to do right by that baby, and if it means having you here for Sissy, so be it.”

“No, Mother. It’s up to Brooks to do right by the baby; it’s up to Sissy. But you?
Expecting
me to attend their wedding, all but ordering me? You might as well have sent me an engraved invitation to watch them do the deed.”

“
Nettie Jean Gilbert
.”

“I’m done with Brooks and Sissy and, when and if you take a moment to consider my feelings, I hope you’ll understand that I’m done with you, Mother. Good-bye.”

I threw open the door to hang up the phone. Four mean girls tumbled into the room; seven others surrounded Justine.

And now they knew. Even Justine who prided herself on taking everyone around her down a notch so that they admired her as much as they feared her, looked rattled by the truth. In that moment,
she blinked at me, no predatory smile, just a look that closely resembled pity.

“Oh, Nettie,” one who was slightly less slack-jawed whispered.

I didn’t want or need their pity. I slammed down the phone and Debbie Sizemore, who was forever on the phone with her mother, reached for it. “I have another call to make,” I ground out. Debbie jumped back like I’d taken a bite out of her meaty hand. “In private.”

Pulling the ad out of my pocket, I dialed the number and retook my place in Patrice’s room with the door closed. The operator put the collect call through. Finally, a woman’s voice on the other end answered; she sounded testy, although not as furious as me. “I don’t know any Nettie Gilbert; I won’t accept the charges.”

“Please. Don’t hang up,” I said.

“Sorry, ma’am,” the operator said. “She’s declined the call. Nothing I can do.”

“I’m Nettie Gilbert. I’m calling from Columbia College about the caregiver position.”

The woman on the other end heard my plea and accepted the call. “Thank you,” I breathed.

“Least I can do for a fellow C-Square girl, but make it snappy. I placed the ad for my brother, and he’s a real stickler about the phone bill. I’m Katie Wilkes, by the way; I run Remmy’s office and his life. God knows he’d deny it until his dying day, but he needs it.”

“Pleased to meet you, Katie, but I thought there was a caregiver position available.”

“Remmy’s a doctor; he’s looking for live-in help for the Eldridge sisters. To be honest, he says Miss Lurleen could go any day. So she, as well as the job, might be gone by the time school’s out.”