Summer in the South (23 page)

“Why bother with the fuse box?” Alice said. “The lights are out all along the street.”

“It’s probably a good idea,” Josephine said, overruling her. “Let me get the flashlight.”

She opened the cellar door, a narrow door off the pantry, and she and Will went down together. Clara shivered and joined them at the table. “I hate going down there,” she said. “Mama used to keep apples and potatoes in the cellar, and she’d make me go down and get them.”

“What were you afraid of?” Ava asked.

“I don’t know.” She shook her head ruefully and poured herself a cup of coffee. “Something.”

Alice said, “I hope Fraser remembered to unplug the TV. Last time we had a lightning strike it blew out the TV and we had to get a new one.” As if to prove her point, a sudden bright flash lit the room, followed by a boom of thunder.

“How many times has your house been struck?”

“Just the once that I know of.”

Clara propped her elbows on the table and sipped her coffee. “They say the Empire State Building gets hit at least twenty times every year.”

“Is that right?” Alice looked at her in mild astonishment.

Ava could hear Will and Josephine moving around down in the cellar. She thought of the words
Help me.
So pitiful and plaintive. She remembered her fingers touching the words, and she shuddered suddenly.

“Someone walk over your grave?” Clara said.

Ava looked into her dark, curious eyes. “Sorry?”

Clara chuckled and shook her head. The storm seemed to be moving off; lightning still flickered in the sky but the rumble of thunder was more distant, and the rain fell steadily but with diminishing force.

Ava splayed her fingers out on the table on either side of her glass. “You say there’s no photo of Charlie Woodburn?”

Clara stopped smiling and glanced at Alice. “No,” she said, setting her cup down. “Not that I know of.”

“I suppose he was handsome,” Ava said.

“As the devil,” Clara said, blowing her nose into a napkin.

Alice sniffed and ran her finger along the steamy window glass. “They used to practically swoon in the streets as he drove by. And at Vanderbilt, it was the same. He had that effect on women.”

“So he liked women?”

Alice frowned and glanced at Clara. “I wouldn’t say he
liked
women. He certainly used them.”

“He associated with loose women,” Clara said, getting up to throw the napkin in the trash. “Saloon girls and flappers and jazz singers.”

“He had a child out of wedlock with a woman by the name of Sweeney. Myrtle, I think her name was, or maybe Mabel. Before he ran off with Fanny. That’s the kind of man he was, although the family didn’t know it, of course. All that came out later. There was something wrong with the child, a son. He was crippled somehow, and when he saw the boy they say Charlie cried like a baby.” Alice shook her head slowly, as if trying to imagine this. “You wouldn’t expect a man like Charlie Woodburn to be tenderhearted over something like that but he was.”

Clara clucked her tongue and said in a less sympathetic tone, “Him and that boy of his, that crippled child he named King. King Woodburn. Can you imagine that? Always riding around in that big car like they owned the world. Like they expected everyone to bow and scrape. Well, pride cometh before a fall, as they both soon learned,” she added darkly.

Ava could hear footsteps on the cellar stairs. Josephine and Will were coming up. “What happened to the boy?” she asked quickly.

“Boy?”

“King Woodburn. Charlie’s son.”

Clara glanced at the cellar door and back at Ava. “Died of cirrhosis of the liver at the age of forty. But not before he’d fathered his own son, that Jake, who’s caused Will so much heartache and trouble. That’s all Black Woodburns were ever good for. Causing trouble and heartache for decent folk.”

T
hat evening Ava wrote long into the night. The novel had taken on a life of its own; the characters were beginning to reveal themselves in ways she’d never imagined. Charlie’s love for his crippled son, King, she had already anticipated. And yet despite his simple love for the child there is something hard in Charlie, something she had first glimpsed the day he went with his mother to the grand house on St. Charles Avenue, something she had seen in his face that day at the cemetery when he stood staring at his mother’s vault. He is a mysterious character, a man who loves his mother and yet not other women. Even Fanny, he loves fiercely and passionately but not as a woman: as a possession, a symbol. Sweet, vain Fanny who cares only for pretty dresses and parties.

But it is Josephine who is turning out to be the most astonishing character of all. Josephine carries a secret, and Ava glimpses it in her face one night as she sits watching a room of gaily plumed dancers twirl around the front parlor of Finn Hall. Bessie Smith is on the phonograph singing “Gulf Coast Blues.” The long windows have been thrown open to the night, and Josephine sits in front of one of them, trying to catch a breeze. She is looking at the crowd with a dazed, inattentive expression. She lifts her gloved hand to mop her brow, and in this vague, unguarded movement she gives something away. Something blooms in Josephine’s heart, seeping into her face, her eyes, and Ava, astonished, sees it.

Josephine is in love.

But with whom?

T
hat night Ava had another attack. She awakened to a room so cold her breath left a faint plume in the air. She was lying on her back, stiff and lifeless as a moth pinned to a board. The shutters had been left open but it was a moonless night, and the only light was the faint glow of a distant streetlamp. She could hear deep breathing in the room. The sound came from the chair near the window. She could not turn her head to look but she could hear him, because she knew now that it was a masculine presence, she could hear it in his heavy uneven breathing, she could feel it in the cold, clammy pounding of her heart. There was a faint odor of smoke and whiskey in the room. The paralysis lasted just a few minutes, and when she could finally move, she drew a long, shuddering breath like a woman drowning, and turned her head.

In the dim light from the window, she could make out the dark shape of a man. She gasped and leaned to turn on the lamp.

The chair, illuminated by the faint glow of lamplight, was empty.

House of Hair

O
n the second Thursday of every month, Darlene Haney took her mother and brother to the Woodburn Medical Center to see their doctors. She did this out of the goodness of her heart and because she was a dutiful daughter and sister, even though it meant that she must take unpaid time off from work and make other arrangements for day care for the boys. Which was not easy to arrange these days, as the boys had been slandered at school, no doubt by other mothers who were jealous of the Haney boys’ physical prowess, and most of the paid babysitters in town now refused to sit for them. They were not, of course,
bad
boys; they were just high-spirited. They were just in need of a daddy with a firm hand, and Will Fraser fit that description to a tee as far as Darlene was concerned.

Not that it would be easy, of course. First she must get rid of the Yankee girl. She anticipated no problems in that direction. So far everything was working like clockwork. (Ava was not as dumb as a stump but she
was
as clueless as one.) Once Darlene and Will were married, they would send the boys to that fancy boarding school he and Jake Woodburn had attended. Darlene imagined herself on Parents Day, floating through the school grounds in a flowered Versace, a large Kentucky Derby hat perched rakishly on top of her expensively styled hair. No more House of Hair dye jobs for her. Once she married Will Fraser, only the most expensive Nashville hair salons would do. And clothes! As Mrs. Will Fraser, she would wear only the best designers. And wouldn’t the girls down at the Debs and Brides Shoppe be green with envy when she waltzed in wearing Dolce & Gabbana or Marc Jacobs! (Serve them right, too, the stuck-up old cows.)

Darlene’s pleasant imaginings were interrupted by the sight of her mother and brother waiting on the porch of the small, dilapidated house. She tooted the horn impatiently, looking on in annoyance as they rose and began their slow, plodding progress. Snowda was wearing a prosthesis she hadn’t even
tried
to disguise with panty hose. She pushed a wheeled walker in front of her, like a geriatric lion tamer, only without the whip. Beside her, Richard waddled along dressed in a pair of tightly fitting black slacks that ended just above his ankles, a white shirt, a pair of white socks, and black orthopedic shoes clamped on his feet. Darlene sighed, wondering how in the world she could be related to these people.

It would be different, of course, once she was married to Will Fraser. Then she could afford to send her mother and brother away to some private and expensive nursing home. Some place a couple of counties over. It was not hard to imagine herself as Mrs. Will Fraser. Darlene had been a dreamer all her life, and she had been dreaming about Will ever since high school. He’d gone to private schools, of course, so she hadn’t run into him until the summer after ninth grade, when he’d come home from boarding school with his cousin Jake. The two of them had been inseparable in those days; they’d spent the summer driving around town picking up girls in a 1967 Chevrolet Corvette they’d bought at an auction. Jake was the worst. You didn’t dare get into the back with him unless you wanted to come out with bruises and whisker burns all over your face and other places too embarrassing to mention. Darlene had made that mistake just once. Jake was the older of the two, taller and more filled out, and he was a lot more confident with girls, so you noticed him first. But later, Darlene had noticed Will. He was kind of quiet, not really shy but more reserved than Jake and better mannered, too. When you told him “no” he seemed to respect that. He didn’t push it like Jake did.

But damn, they were fine, the two of them. Like rock stars, driving around town in that flashy green car and flirting with all the girls at the Sonic Drive-In. Of course, Will was dating Hadley Marsh by then. She wasn’t from Woodburn—they’d met at boarding school—but she came to visit that summer, and Darlene met her for the first time outside the movie theater. Well, she hadn’t actually met her because Will didn’t introduce the two of them. He didn’t seem to notice Darlene or her friends at all. He was standing there with Jake and Hadley, and they had their heads together, laughing at something private. Like they knew they were too good to be here with all these small-town rednecks and had just come out to give the locals a show. As if Jake Woodburn, who was nothing more than trailer trash, had a right to be stuck-up. Hadley was dressed in a pair of jeans, a white cotton blouse, and a pair of jeweled sandals, and she looked like Michelle Pfeiffer standing there under the lights of the marquee. Watching the way the lights caught in her dazzling hair, Darlene had known she’d never be able to take Will away from Hadley no matter how hard she tried.

Darlene stared irritably at her mother and brother and then gave the horn another light toot. At the speed they were moving they would never get to the appointment in time. She slammed the car in park and climbed out, going to move them along. Snowda was halfway down the front ramp when she remembered that she’d left the television on.

“Oh, for crying out loud, get in the car,” Darlene snapped. “I’ll turn it off.”

She opened the door and stepped into the sweltering front room, lit only by the flickering television screen. The room smelled of socks and old cheese. Darlene held her breath and went quickly to turn off the set. Through the dining room window she could see the neighbor, old Mrs. Caslin, hanging clothes on her clothesline.

She had spent her entire freshman year of high school dreaming about how to catch Will Fraser but it was no use; he was head over heels for Hadley Marsh, and when Darlene found out years later that they were engaged, she had not been surprised. Still, she often reminded herself, you never know how things might turn out. She herself had married a hometown boy who might have played professional football had it not been for one bad knee. And look how tragically Will Fraser and Hadley Marsh had ended.

Over in the corner, Fred the parrot eyed her despondently and began to screech, “You want a piece of me? You want a piece of me?” hopping from foot to foot and jutting his tattered feathers like a deranged hunchback.

Fate was unpredictable. Anything could happen, which made Darlene all the more hopeful that she’d be able to separate Will from his Yankee girlfriend—a woman who rarely wore makeup, never fixed her hair, and went around in cut-off shorts, T-shirts, and flip-flops. A woman who didn’t know enough to recognize an enemy when she saw one.

Darlene smiled a sly little smile, squared her shoulders, and walked confidently across the crowded room. She paused at the front door, leaving it open a crack. With any luck, a gust of wind would blow it open and the wretched parrot would make his final and irrevocable escape.

R
eturning later from the medical center, Darlene let Snowda and Richard off at the curb. She’d run an hour over the time she’d said she’d be back at work, and SuSu Dilworth, the owner of the Debs and Brides Shoppe, was sure to make her pay by working inventory. Snowda and Richard clung to the curb like a couple of giant fungi, watching as Darlene’s car pulled away, tires squealing, and disappeared in the distance.

The day, which had dawned sunny and hot, had begun to cloud, and a sudden burst of wind caused the front door to bang on its hinges and then swing open all the way. Mother and son swiveled their heads and looked at the house.

“I know I done closed that door,” Snowda said.

“Well, I sure as hell didn’t leave it open,” Richard said.

He pulled his cell phone out of his pocket and punched 911 to report a robbery in progress. The dispatcher told them to stay in the yard until an officer came on the scene.

He arrived five minutes later in a flurry of sirens and flashing lights.

“Stand back,” he shouted at Snowda and Richard, pulling his pistol and advancing slowly on the house. Officer Posey was young. He’d graduated from the academy less than three weeks before, and with any luck he’d collar the perpetrator before either of his two older colleagues on the force answered the call. He’d grown up watching
Cops
and
Robocop
, which is why he’d decided to go into the exciting field of law enforcement, but so far the only excitement he’d had was breaking up a party of surly, underage drinkers and capturing Old Mrs. Vandergriff, who’d wandered away from her daughter’s house wearing nothing but a pair of faded pink slippers. The vision of the naked, shriveled old woman in the back of his squad car had haunted his dreams for weeks.

“Any firearms in the house, sir?” he said over his shoulder to Richard. Officer Posey held his pistol in front of him and noted with dismay that his hands were shaking.

“Well, now, no, not to speak of,” Richard said. He scratched his head and appeared to be giving this question serious thought. “There’s my daddy’s old huntin’ rifle. And of course the double-barrel twelve gauge. And then there’s Uncle Rafe’s German Luger, the one he took off a dead Hun in a ditch at Roncheres Wood. It’s up in a shoe box in the hall closet but it ain’t loaded, and even if it was, there’s something wrong with the firing mechanism, it has a tendency to misfire, which might explain the dead Hun in the ditch at Roncheres Wood.”

Officer Posey tiptoed across the sparse lawn, leaping onto the porch and flattening his back against the house, his pistol held against his chest just under his nose. He stuck one foot out gingerly and cocked it under the edge of the swinging door, giving it a sudden furious kick. At the same time he swung around into a ready stance in front of the opened doorway shouting, “Freeze!”

“Well, I’ll be damned,” Richard said. “Look at that boy go.”

There was a slithering sound inside the house, like something crawling around on all fours, and then quiet.

“I said freeze!” Officer Posey shouted again, his voice edging toward hysteria. He shook like a Parkinson’s patient trying to hold the gun steady.

“I hope the durn fool don’t shoot hisself on my property,” Snowda said. “What’s the rules on something like that?”

Officer Posey took small mincing steps in front of the opened doorway, then stepped across the threshold and disappeared inside. There was a sudden flurry of movement inside the house and a wild cry of “You want a piece of me?” followed by an oath and the sharp retort of a pistol.

Snowda slowly swiveled her head and looked at her son.

“We might oughta told him about the parrot,” Richard said.

N
ews of the apprehension of Fred spread through the town like a brushfire.

“Did he shoot the poor bird?”

“No. It appears that Officer Posey couldn’t hit the side of a barn with a scattergun, much less a parrot in full flight. The bird was so scared it hasn’t said a thing since then, just sits with its head under its wing. The animal rescue says it’s suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.”

This was at a meeting of the Ladies of the Evening Investment Club, an assorted group of Southern matrons who met once a month to drink blush wine, gossip, and pick stocks. Josephine, Fanny, Alice, and Clara were all members.

“Birds can suffer from post-traumatic stress?” Fanny said, looking around in wide-eyed astonishment at the other members, who had suspended their usual business to gossip about the Smolletts. “I did not know that.”

“Hell, honey, birds are as smart as little kids,” Maitland said, serving glasses of wine on a silver tray. “I had a friend once with a cockatiel that used to cuddle up and watch TV with him. It could whistle the entire theme song from
The Love Boat.
”

“You’re just here to serve the drinks,” Fanny reminded him primly. A big yellow cat had wandered in and sat perched on her lap. “You’re not supposed to join in the conversation.”

“Sorry, dear,” Maitland said, rolling his eyes comically. “Sorry, ladies.”

They all laughed quietly. There were about twelve members present, including the aunts, Clara, and Alice. They were assembled in the front parlor and Ava wandered in to say hello, then followed Maitland across the hall into the library. She stood watching him work his magic at the bar.

“What do you say I mix us up a little something special?” he said in a low voice, giving her a wink. Across the hall the conversation had drifted from the Smolletts to the advisability of buying shares in the maker of the Medtronic pacemaker. (Sally Kirkman’s husband had just had one installed.)

Maitland opened the top of a silver shaker engraved with his initials. “Where’s Will tonight?”

“He’s coming by for a drink before he heads off to Poker Night.”

“Ah, a gentlemen’s evening.” He filled the shaker with ice cubes, then poured in gin, followed by lemon juice, sugar syrup, and a pinch of powdered sugar. He shook it vigorously for a couple of minutes, strained the liquid into two icy highball glasses, topped it with club soda, then floated a splash of cherry brandy on top by pouring it over the back of a bar spoon.

“Mud in your eye,” he said, lifting his glass.

“Na zdorovie,”
Ava said.

He sipped and closed his eyes. “Now, that’s good stuff,” he said, grinning at his own boastfulness. “We used to drink these at fraternity parties back in the twenties.”

“What do you call it?”

“Singapore Sling.”

Ava sipped quietly. The drink was sweet enough to disguise the sharp taste of the gin. She didn’t normally like gin, but this cocktail was good. Quite good. “What was it like back then?” she asked Maitland. “I’ve seen the gangster movies, Jimmy Cagney and Edward G. Robinson and all that, but was it really that wild?”

“It was pretty wild. Looking back now it seems rather uncivilized. Bathtub gin, which by the way is vile, that’s why we created cocktails, to mask the taste, and speakeasies and flapper girls. I remember how shocked my mother was when Alice bobbed her hair. She was up at Vanderbilt when she did it; she would never have dared do it at home. She’d been such a good sober girl up until that time, no trouble at all except for that summer when she went with Fanny down to Mobile and fell in with Zelda Sayre and Tallulah Bankhead. There was some trouble there, just girlish high jinks, and Judge Sayre got it all hushed up so that Mother never heard about it.” He sipped his drink and looked fondly across the hallway at Alice, as if remembering his sister as a girl. “Still,” he said, looking down at his glass. “No worse than some of the things others were doing.”