The Reading Lessons (9 page)

After Mama found out about Lucinda, she said, “You can’t be messing with a girl like Miss Lucinda. You got the hopes and prayers of the Crump bloodlines resting on your shoulders.”

The last thing Hadley wanted was the Crump bloodlines resting on his shoulders. Nevertheless, there it was, like a salesman with a stack of Bibles he couldn’t unload. 

Mama did a lot of snorting when he tried to explain how things were between him and Lucinda. Even her words came out in snorts. “Houseboys do not marry girls like Miss Lucinda.” She snorted, shaking her head as if Hadley were dumb as a turd. “I’ve seen things in my time, honey. There’s some rich folks that get it in their head that they want to try a nigger. That ain’t love. That’s another thing entirely.”

“You don’t know nothing about it,” Hadley insisted. “I
mean
something to her. She cares about me, Mama.”

The problem was, Mama didn’t understand that the garden shears injury was not really a garden shears injury at all, but rather something much more passionate. Also, Mama had never seen the panicky way in which Lucinda kissed him, as if she might just blow apart into a pile of arms and legs and monkey-flower eyes if she didn’t put her lips on him. If Mama saw that, she would know how much Lucinda cared. She would know that Hadley’s woodpile had nothing to do with anything. She would know that Hadley was something different than all the other servants. 

###

Over the next few days, Hadley prayed that Mama would notice how often Lucinda stopped in to check on him. Oddly, once she’d promised to quit “craving” his blood, Lucinda never once stopped in to check on him. 

As time wore on, Mama gave him looks that got more and more pathetic. Hadley wished he could read her one of the notes as proof of Lucinda’s feelings, but that would be a little like having your mother in the same room on the night of your honeymoon. 

“She bought me a new book,” he bragged desperately, holding up the Edgar Allen Poe story.

Mama crossed her arms. “I don’t doubt her interest in you, Hadley. Miss Lucinda has always paid you too much mind. I see that now.”

“So quit feeling sorry for me,” he said. “You don’t know what’s between us. Nobody does.”

“I know this much: whatever Miss Lucinda does with you in private is going to stay private. If you think you’ll ever have more than that, you’re sadly mistaken.”

Hadley shook his head and shook his head and shook his head. Mama used to say he was throwing a
head tantrum
when he was little, warning that he would rattle his brain to pieces if he didn’t get control of his head-shaking. Sometimes, when he was bending over the vines, he could feel little pea-sized chips rolling around inside his skull. “You’re wrong, Mama. Lucinda likes me. She told me so herself.”

Mama ran her fingers through his curls, combing them like she had a mind to comb them uncurly. “Hadley, there’s something I need to tell you.”

Whenever Mama had bad news, her skin (which was a shade or two more cocoa-colored than Hadley’s) turned green as a Spanish olive. Now she looked at him and smiled sadly and turned green as a Spanish olive. “Miss Lucinda got herself engaged last Sunday to Mr. Worther-Holmes Jr. They intend to marry when he graduates from MC in June.”

Hadley closed his eyes. He knew, of course, that Lucinda couldn’t run off with the cook’s son and expect everyone’s blessings. Hadley was content with what Lucinda gave him. After all, it wasn’t Dickie’s blue blood she craved in the dark hammy corners of the smoke house. And when Lucinda read something dirty in a book, she didn’t mold Dickie’s hand with her thumbs. She molded Hadley. 

“Hadley,” Mama said, molding his hand with her thumbs until he yanked it away. “I’ve been in service all my life. This is just the way these things go.”

Hadley didn’t believe that she was capable of understanding about Lucinda. He shook his head and felt the crumbs of his brain spin in circles around the inside his head. He sincerely doubted anyone had ever gone as far as he had for a kiss.

###

Two weeks passed as slowly as molasses before Lucinda finally found the time to pay him a visit. By then, Hadley’s color was much improved, but not his disposition. Lucinda didn’t seem to notice. She tore open the curtains, filling his sickroom with the harsh light of day. 

In the sun, her hair was more buttercup-colored than ever. Hadley’s fingers on the blankets splayed like a rake, desperate to rip into those bright buttery strands. 

“What do you want?” he asked.

“If you’re feeling fit, I think it’s time we for us to resume our lessons.” She fluttered her fingers in front of his face, blinding him with her diamond. “Have you heard the good news, darling?”

Hadley would have struck her right then, if only he’d been born more like his daddy instead of like his mama. Being like Mama, he just turned green. 

Lucinda put the diamond behind her back. “Why are you looking at me like that? It’s just a little old wedding is all. It’s not like I intend to bite him or anything.”

“Didn’t it mean anything to you, Lucinda?” he asked, proud of himself for not screaming. Or bawling. “I about died for you, in case you didn’t notice.”

At Maple Lawn it was a written rule that Hadley must put on Sargeant’s big floppy gloves before handling the silverware. At Browning House, Lucinda took his blood into her
mouth
.

She ran her finger over the still-tender wound, and the pain he felt was not limited to his skin. “How can you marry
him
, Lucinda?”

“Did you think I’d marry you? Come on, dear, let’s read the new book. It’s just your sort of story—full of all sorts of breathtaking torture.”

“Get out,” he snapped.

“Oh Hadley,” she said, touching his face. “Are those tears in your eyes?” 

Hadley slapped her hand away. 

She couldn’t have looked more surprised if she tried. “Nothing has changed, honey. I promise.”

“That’s true,” he said. “You’re as heartless as ever.”

She stepped back as though he’d really used his fist instead of only thinking about it. “How can you say that? After all we’ve shared?”

Her heart thumped against the fabric of her dress, and for the first time in a month, Hadley sat up without a lick of trouble. He shoved the book at her and crossed his arms so she couldn’t give it back. “It’s over, Lucinda. The lessons. The secrets. The tricks. I can’t do it anymore.”

Lucinda’s lip actually trembled. Hadley missed those lips so much that he dug his fingers into the flesh above his elbows, shoveling graves in his skin with his nails. The last time her lips trembled like that, she’d pulled him into a broom closet by the collar of his shirt. 

There was barely room for two brooms in that closet, much less two people, which only meant that they had to stand as close as brooms. Over the years, Hadley had felt Lucinda’s shoulder against his shoulder, her elbow on his knee, her hair on his nose, and her nose on his neck, but he’d never felt everything altogether at once. That day in the closet, Lucinda pressed him to the wall with every inch of herself and clamped down on his throat so hard, he had to bite on a broom handle in order to keep quiet. Afterward, he’d swept the Rose Bud Parlor with that broom, his palm cupped over the teeth-marks, and his blood trickling in a fiery thread down the inside of his shirt. 

During their time in the closet, Hadley had memorized the feel of her, especially her lips. Why should Dickie Worther-Holmes have any right to those lips?

He was still thinking about the broom closet when he caught her by the forearms and jerked her down on the camp cot. 

Mostly, Lucinda was a closed-mouth kisser and kissed like she was hiding something behind her teeth that was too good for the likes of Hadley. Hadley had tried a number of times to get in there, but as a rule, Lucinda would promptly switch to sucking on his neck the second his tongue got busy. This time Hadley didn’t give her a choice. He got in a few angry thrusts before she stabbed him with her diamond. Hadley pulled away. “Ouch!”

Lucinda smiled.

“Get out,” he said, and, by gosh, he meant it. He wished he’d never have to see Lucinda Browning again. 

###

When Mama came with soup later, Hadley could tell that
she
could tell that he’d been weeping like a fool. “It’ll be okay,” she said.

Hadley slurped his sweet corn soup, determined to move forward. “Would you please find Ethel and tell her I’d like to see her today?”

“Ethel?” Mama said. “You mean that cute little upstairs-girl with the Chesterfield haircut?”

Hadley nodded. Lucinda Browning wasn’t the only fish in the sea.

“I’m sorry, dear, but I wouldn’t know how to find her. Poor thing got let go two weeks ago.”

Hadley inhaled a glob of corn. “They fired her?” 

“Kissed the wrong person, I heard,” Mama said, closing the curtains with a snap. “You see, Hadley, you’re not the only servant in this household to have romantic troubles.”

###

As soon as Hadley was back on his feet, he started looking for new work. “Time I move on,” he told his mama. 

The sight of Lucinda trying on wedding veils or laboring over sofa swatches with Dickie’s mama was enough to make him sick. The situation was getting dire. If Hadley didn’t find a new post soon, he would be serving pizzelles to the entire Worther-Holmes clan at the
Night of Incantesimo
engagement party that Dickie’s sister, Fancy, was cooking up for the last weekend in May. Fancy was married to a Sicilian and thought everything should be Sicilian.

To make matters worse, Hadley couldn’t grab a broom without running into a discomfiting memory. The creak of a door might summon one. The turn of a page. A struck match. In the vineyard, he was plagued by thoughts of the afternoon she crept up behind him, squashing fallen grapes with her bare feet. He didn’t know she was there until she drew a wet toe across his toes. “Read to me, Hadley.” 

In the Log Cabin room, he was reminded of the time he’d taken the tiger tooth away from her and pressed it to the old knife scar on the pad of his finger until a black-red bead appeared. While Mama whipped potatoes on the other side of the door, Hadley rubbed blood across his lips and Lucinda ate it off. 

Flowers were particularly dangerous. Flowers made him think of the day she’d taken off his bandage by the Butterfly bush. Ten minutes later, they’d both walked away with a headful of lavender petals that were only slightly less purple than the bite on his skin. 

Hadley wondered if his memories were the same as those of other people. His memories were made of grape juice and toes, teeth marks and blood, carved words and carved skin. And she was still leaving him notes. 

When are you going to forgive me?

One day, when they were setting up in the dining room for Lucinda’s spring meeting of the
Association for Moral and Social Hygiene
club, Lucinda touched his “garden-shears” bump, pressing the place with her nail. For several blood-pounding moments, Hadley surrendered to the gentle pain, unable to squeeze out a single breath. In fact, had Lucinda kept at it much longer, he would have keeled over on the radish roses.

“Don’t leave me,” she said.

His stomach churned with pain. Now the dining room was ruined too. It was time for him to leave Browning House.

“Why don’t you try Muggin’s place?” Loomis suggested when they were pitching hay together one morning. “That old coot’s got more folks working on his lawn than Mister Wilson has tending to the White House.”

Hadley had an interest in doing lawn work and thought this to be a fine idea. That Sunday, he headed to Mr. Arthur P. Muggins’ place on
Morning Dew Circle
to talk to the man about a gardening job. 

###

Hadley had often told Lucinda that he should be growing flowers instead of shelling peas. “A house ought to have a garden that suits its personality. I think I would be good at growing gardens with personality.”

Lucinda had laughed the first time he said this. “Does Browning House have a personality?” she asked.

“It sure does. It’s the coliseum, remember? If I were in charge of the coliseum, I’d plant blood-red hortensia under the windows and grow roses that smell like myrrh.”

“Where do you get such fanciful ideas, Hadley?”

“Hell, Lucinda, I was born with ideas.”

###

The house on Morning Dew Circle was the whitest, most painted house Hadley had ever seen. With a personality that was every bit as fussy as the mother-of-pearl jewelry box Mr. Browning bought for Lucinda’s bracelet collection, its gardens looked all the more showy against its blinding white walls. Three tiers of Bourbon roses tumbled under the front windows like rubies spilling from a drawer. A gazing ball cast sapphire reflections under a flowering Empress tree. And bright blooms fanned the porch in elaborate patterns edged with paths of pink sand. Every flower in the old man’s garden seemed planned down to the last petal. Suddenly Hadley’s big ideas felt awfully small.
What am I doing here?
he asked himself.
I don’t know how to make a bed of forget-me-knots grow in the shape of a doily.
His only hope was that Mr. Muggins’ might need his peas shelled. Before he could make up his mind whether to knock or leave, a Negro boy opened the door and made his mind up for him. 

Inside, the place reeked of varnish and calcimine and the walls jumped with the steady crack of hammers hammering wood. A fine plastery powder filmed Hadley’s skin. He greeted Muggins with a sneeze. 

The old fella was sitting in a wheel chair on the screened porch drinking a mint julep. A book lay open on his knee, the title of which Hadley read upside down;
The Brawn of Bernarr McFadden: An Arresting Pictorial.

He ain’t gonna have need of me,
Hadley thought as a parade of strong fellows filed by the porch with bricks stacked on their shoulders. 

Mr. Muggins watched his army of workers from behind a pair of big sunglasses. Hadley watched, too. Being new to interviewing, he couldn’t think how to begin. Should he make small talk so as to appear friendly:
How’s that pictorial going, Mr. Muggins? I hear it’s very arresting.
Or was it best to jump straight to the point?
I need to get away from Lucinda Browning, and I’m willing to trim your rose canes with my teeth, if that would work for you?