Property (Vintage Contemporaries) (13 page)

“I have no wish to keep her,” I told my aunt when we were seated in her drawing room. “Would you want her for yourself?”

“No,” she said. “My Ines is an excellent cook. And the unhappy truth is that Peek is not an accomplished chef.”

“Delphine says she can spoil milk just by looking at it,” I said.

My aunt smiled. “Your poor mother used to borrow Ines for her dinner parties two or three times a month, whenever your uncle and I were dining out.”

“That was generous of you,” I said.

“It was an exchange,” she explained. “Peek spent the evening in my big kitchen making her medicines for all of us. No one can stand to be in the house when she’s at that.”

“Mother swore by her remedies,” I agreed.

“I continually derive benefit from her chest infusion.”

“She does nothing but cry,” I said. “She thinks I’m going to take her home with me and make her cook for the field hands.”

“That might occasion an insurrection,” my aunt chuckled.

“Do you know how old she is?”

“She wasn’t a girl when she came to your mother, and that was twenty years ago. She is fifty or fifty-five, I would guess.”

“She wouldn’t bring one hundred dollars at sale.”

“No,” my aunt agreed. “She has little value.”

We sipped our coffee. I felt at ease, lighthearted, as I seldom do, but as I once did. The furnishings, the paintings, the carpet in my aunt’s drawing room all reminded me of happier times. Even the leafy pattern on the saucer in my lap seemed designed especially to please me. “She should be with someone like Mother,” I concluded. “A widowed lady, living alone.”

“And one not particular about food,” my aunt added. “I can’t think of anyone in the family.”

“We’ll have to find someone to give her to, I suppose,” I said.

“That seems much the best course.”

“Is there someone in the neighborhood?”

After a few moments’ thought, my aunt replied, “I don’t know of anyone. But you might ask Peek. She may have some idea about what to do herself.”

AND TO MY surprise, my aunt was right. When I called Peek into the parlor, I was prepared for a scene of tears and lamentation, but as soon as I had related the stipulations of Mother’s will, she dried her eyes and showed a keen interest in her fate. “Miss Favrot will take me to nurse her mother,” she said. “Her house three blocks from here.”

“How can you be sure?”

“My cousin work in her house. He already spoke for me and his mistress say she take me, but she won’t pay no high price.”

“Are you acquainted with this lady?”

“I brought her a remedy for her son one time. He suffer from the croup. He got better when the doctors couldn’t do nothin’ for him.”

“Very well, Peek,” I said. “I shall write to this lady today, and you will deliver the letter.” She nodded her head a few times and went out, folding her handkerchief and smoothing her skirt, without so much as a word of thanks.

IN THE EVENING it was so cool I had a fire in the parlor. I sat at Mother’s desk with the intention of examining Father’s diary. For the first time I felt myself in possession of the house, an agreeable sensation, unlike any I have ever known. I took out the leather book and opened it to the page on which Father had written the date and his name, printed in large square letters, G. PERCY GRAY. A shiver of pleasure ran along my spine, as if Father were there in the room, though he has been gone these fifteen years.

I turned to the first entry and read an account of the weather, work done in the fields, bills paid; and a brief mention of a visit from a neighbor. This entry covered half the page. The next was similar in style and content. I looked ahead and saw that the entries were all much the same length and addressed the same topics—the weather, the crops, hunting or fishing, infirmities of animals and slaves, money spent, provisions bought—day after day. I was disappointed by the dullness of this record. Father was so full of energy it seemed impossible that he would make no more distinguished account of his life than this list of business and domestic preoccupations. And why had Mother preserved the book, if there was nothing of interest in it? I flipped through the pages, reading at random. News of a fire at a neighbor’s gin.
Hands picking poorly, cotton trashy. Three days hard
rain, spoiling the bolls
. A visit from the doctor, another from the factor. No mention of Mother or me, as if we didn’t exist. A coal sputtered and shot a spark onto the tile. I looked up at the fire, letting the pages fall where they might, and when I looked back again I read this sentence:
Have apologized
to my dear wife for my failing, but she says she cannot forgive me now
nor ever will.

For my failing
. I read the entry carefully:
May 23. weather
fine, unusually chilly in the morning. Scraping cotton this side little
creek. Replanting corn. Lice have ruined part of crop, all corn above
much eaten. Stopped growing. Dr. White here to see my sick ones, seven
in number. Old Burns will not recover I fear. Have apologized to my
dear wife for my failing, but she says she cannot forgive me now nor
ever will.

The next entry and the next were all concerned with the crops, the weather, a fishing expedition, a trip to the town for jury duty. Another mentioned a dog I scarcely remembered:
my old dog Rattler so crippled, forced to put him down. Where
is the God who will put us out of our misery
. I looked ahead, skimming the pages, but found no further mention of this failing. Toward the end there was an entry that concluded,
my dear
wife, much vexed, will not forgive me
. This was six months later. The diary filled only half the book. The last entry, made a few days before his death, read:
Cold, damp, sowing oats, numberwild geese, burning logs, three with pleurisy, misery in the cabins
and the house, rain at dark.

I closed the book. When Father died, Mother had not forgiven him for something, for some failing, and now I would never know what it was.

After his death, Mother was inconsolable. It was a month before she would speak to anyone but her sister or me. She insisted that the fire was no accident, that Father had been murdered. I slept in her room and heard her every night, calling his name in her sleep. Once I woke to find her standing over my bed, struggling to loosen the high neck of her gown and whispering harshly, “Percy, Percy,” as if she thought he was strangling her.

I returned the book to the drawer and moved to a chair nearer the fire. There was Father’s portrait on the table next to me, a handsome young American, his thick golden hair curling over his smooth brow, a tentative smile on his lips. He had just married a beautiful Creole, much against the wishes of her family, and removed with her to the small farm he had purchased in West Feliciana Parish. He had little money, but he had ambition; he was fearless, godless, principled, and kind. He made a success of his enterprise, not a fortune, but a solid concern, free of debt. What precious little failing was he guilty of that my mother could not find it in her heart to forgive? Did he fail to consult her wishes in every matter that concerned her comfort? Did he fail to tolerate her dependence on a religion that struck him as cruel superstition? Did he fail, perhaps, to bring her some present when he went to the town? How often had I seen him get up from the table to cut her a slice of bread or bring her a cup of coffee, dismissing the servant because, he said, it gave him pleasure to serve her? Did any day go by when he did not compliment her, defer to her, inquire as to her preference or opinion? How was it possible that she should have let him live one hour with the certainty that she held some grievance against him?

Next to Father’s portrait lay the latest letter from my husband, a thinly veiled command to return at once to his house and bring my father’s money with me. I recalled Mother’s last words to me, her complaint that I had failed as a wife because I neglected my duties to my husband. How could she chide me, when she had found fault with a husband who never gave her a moment’s anxiety, who was faithful, steadfast, industrious, loving, everything my husband was not? No. I acknowledged no duty to the man who has forced me to live these ten years in the madhouse of his cupidity, perversion, and lust. The fire in the grate burned low, but I took no notice. Another smoldered in my heart. I sat late in the cold room tending it, feeding it, until sparks ignited the dry tinder of my resentment, and it was as if I were sitting in a furnace.

THERE IS NO escape, yet how can I resign myself, when the world that is denied me tantalizes me at every turn. In the afternoon, as I stood with my sleeves rolled up, supervising the housecleaning, I received a note from my aunt inviting me to supper.
Joel Borden called this afternoon,
she wrote on the back of the card.
He will join us after supper to offer you his condolences
.

“Go to my aunt’s at once,” I bade Peek. “Tell her I will come at seven. And ask her for the loan of her black cashmere shawl.” Then I had Sarah leave off beating the carpets and spend the rest of the day washing and drying my hair.

Stupidly I enjoyed an inappropriate euphoria, as if I were going to attend some festive occasion, but as soon as I was seated next to my uncle in my aunt’s dining room, I came to my senses. He had just returned from visiting a planter for whom he is factor and was still much burdened by the shock of Mother’s sudden death. He took my hand in one of his, dabbing his handkerchief to his eyes with the other, and avowed the well-known scientific fact that Creoles are rarely taken by the yellow fever. This was the reason my mother had given for declining his invitation to their house on the lake. My aunt, teary-eyed, pointed out that she had lost a cousin in the epidemic of 1822. How fortunate, my uncle observed, that I had arrived in time to bid my mother farewell.

Every mention of Mother causes me to relive the last minutes of her life, which leaves me speechless, gripped by panic, but it would not do for me to beg for a new subject. Joel would doubtless speak of nothing but the pain of my loss, of his sincere attachment to and affection for my mother. What would he think if I said I’d rather hear the gossip from the latest fête he had attended? I was quiet through supper, eating little, which my aunt and uncle did not remark upon, attributing low spirits and lack of appetite to my bereavement. At last we took our coffee into the drawing room, the bell rang, and a servant showed Joel into the room.

What a strange effect the sight of him had upon me. He looked strong, masculine, with that combination of languor and gaiety that is so appealing, yet his features were composed in an expression of sympathy that was unmistakably sincere. As his eyes met mine I found no trace of his habitual irony; only sadness and a tender care for my feelings. He came to me at once, holding out his hands. As I rose to meet him, I was weakened by an unexpected surge of grief, so that I clutched his hands for support. A thousand regrets crowded my brain, a hard sob broke from my throat, and tears streamed from my eyes. The impossibility of collapsing in Joel’s embrace drove me back into my chair. There, bent over my knees and still clinging to his hands, I gave myself over to a storm of weeping. Joel released one hand to stroke my cheek, my hair, murmuring softly, “My poor Manon, my poor, dear girl.” Through my sobs I heard my aunt say, “She has been marvelously brave,” and then my uncle, after blowing his nose into his handkerchief, reminded Joel that it was unusual for a Creole to contract the yellow fever, and very odd of my mother to have succumbed to it. I regained control of myself and sat up, concentrating on extracting my handkerchief from my sleeve. “Please forgive me,” I said.