The Truth According to Us (52 page)

August 29, 1938

Dear Layla,

My God, you've pulled it off! When Gray told me that you were refusing to attend your mother's party
in order to finish your manuscript
, I thought perhaps the Second Coming was at hand—and in Macedonia, West Virginia, of all places! (You didn't miss much, by the way. Both Lance and Alene looked as though they'd prefer the
rack. Your mother was in her element.) Then I figured you'd come down with boils or lice or some other rural affliction and didn't dare show your face. I'm sure you'll understand when I tell you my first thoughts were for my own safety; you know your father well enough to know that he'd happily shoot me before he'd allow one hair on your head to be mussed.

But you were actually
working
, by God! Ursula sent me the copy, not to edit, but to crow over. She's delighted, and I can see why. It's informative, interesting, and well written, an excellent example of what we've been trying to pull out of these small sponsored projects. Ursula may not effuse—against her policy,

I believe—but in her letter to me, she said, “The manuscript is much better than I would have believed possible from an untried young woman. She is obviously someone we can, and should, use for other projects.” In other words, watch out. Ursula's told me of some problems she's been having with the Field Assistant in Martinsburg—Iliff or Liffle or something. It seems he's incapable of producing copy, and she's had to compose his material for the State Guide herself, which is not only against project rules but quite an annoyance to her. However, now she's seen what you can do, she's had the bright idea of hiring you to take over, not on the State Guide, which is nearly done, but for a couple of other projects she has in the hopper. Ursula's a go-getter, and I'd advise you to consider the offer. You've made a real success of this business, Layla, and I extend you my heartiest congratulations, along with a few apologies for ever having doubted you.

Fondly,

Ben

P.S. I wish you could have seen Gray at the party, torn between the desire to brag about your industry and the shame of admitting that you're on relief. He solved the dilemma in his usual way—a couple of bottles of Champagne and he couldn't say anything.

“Just let me try it.” Mae ran her fingers through Emmett's hair.

“Leave me alone,” he grumbled, peering at the frayed electric cord on the lamp beside him.

“But you'd look so handsome. Wouldn't he?” She appealed to Minerva.

“You'd look like Tyrone Power,” Minerva said. “Don't you want to look like Tyrone Power?”

“No.” He picked up the lamp and looked at the bottom.

Layla drifted through the hallway. “Don't
you
think Emmett would look handsome with his hair combed straight back?” called Mae.

Layla returned to the doorway and stood there, looking slightly dazed.

“You don't have to answer that question,” said Emmett, embarrassed.

Layla hesitated. “My mother used to straighten my hair when I was a child,” she said softly. “I thought it was a violation of the Fourth Amendment.” Her eyes sought Emmett's. “Unreasonable seizure.”

Emmett's face lit up. “That's right! You're exactly right!” He turned to his sister. “Hear that, Mae? Touch me with that comb and I'll call the attorney general.”

Layla gave him a small smile and disappeared.

Mae's eyes followed her. “I could just kill that Felix,” she said after a moment.

Minerva nodded. “Me too.”

“What's so wonderful about him, anyway?” demanded Mae. “Nothing.”

“Nothing,” agreed Minerva. “Nice teeth is all, and that's not much to write home about. Plenty of people have nice teeth.”

Simultaneously, they turned to glare at Emmett. “To hell with all of them,” said Minerva.

Emmett's eyes widened and fled to his lamp.

It was hot everywhere and it was hottest upstairs, but I didn't care. I liked to visit Father's room. Every day, I checked on it, not to see if he was there—I knew better than that—but to make sure no one had touched anything or messed it up. I closed the door behind me and looked around. It looked nice, nice and tidy. There was a stretch of wall between his dresser and his desk, and I liked to sit there. I didn't disturb anything; I just sat on the floor with my back to the wall and thought about nothing. It was my own place. Probably not even Father had ever sat right there. When he left, there'd been a penny on the floor, under his dresser. It had made me feel good, seeing it there—just something he'd dropped and would pick up someday. But one week when Jottie cleaned, she found it and put it on his desk. I don't know what upset me more, that it wasn't where he'd left it or that his desk was changed.

One afternoon, just the most stifling afternoon you can imagine, I came to his room to sit for a while. I attended to the door, closing it without making a noise, and then I turned. Something was different. I couldn't quite tell what it was, because most things were the same, but after a moment I got it. The window was open more than it had been. One of his pictures had been moved. The penny was gone.

Father had been there. I quick went to his closet, to his dresser, to
his table drawers, and searched for things missing—had he come for clothes, money, what? There was a pair of shoes gone—his other black ones—but besides that, everything was there. I stopped in the middle of the rug, breathing hard, and then I got a wild hope that he was somewhere in the house. I raced out of his room and down the hall, opening doors. I checked our room first and then I went into Miss Beck's room without knocking, but she wasn't there anyway, and neither was he. I banged into Jottie's room—I didn't need to be sly about that—and saw at once why he'd come. On Jottie's faded pink bedspread, there was a package wrapped in white cloth gone yellow with age. It just sat there, where he'd set it. He had given it to her.

I hadn't smiled in so long, my face nearly cracked into pieces when I did. I clattered down the stairs as fast as I could without falling and slammed into Jottie in the kitchen. “Come upstairs,” I croaked. I hadn't said anything at all in a couple days, and Jottie was so excited to hear me speak that she didn't understand what I'd said for a few minutes. But when she did, she came right along.

In her room, I gestured to the yellowed cloth. “It's from Father.”

She frowned at me. “What? Felix is here?”

I shook my head. “No. He was. Open it.”

She gave me a worried look and lifted the package up to pull away the cloth. Vause Hamilton's coat came sliding out into her hands. She did just what I'd done, down in Tare Russell's basement: She held it up casually, wondering what it was. And then she realized—or, really, recognized—what she was holding. I saw it come over her face, how she knew that it was his, how she'd seen him wearing it, how it was what he'd been wearing the last time she'd ever seen him. She brought the cloth to her face and breathed it in, and then her eyes closed and she smiled, so happy and beautiful. I sat down on the bed and watched her. I hadn't seen her that happy in a while.

After some time passed, she smoothed the coat flat on the bed, brushing it a little with her hand, not because it needed brushing but because she wanted to take care of it. She glanced at me and then reached to the inside pocket. There was the little square photograph of
her. She gazed at it for a moment, then shook her head like she couldn't believe it and put the photograph away and went back to brushing the coat with her hand. Then she looked at me again and reached into a side pocket. She found the buffalo nickel and then went to the next pocket and pulled out the scrap of paper with Father's writing on it. She read it and her lips folded into a line. “Too late, Felix.”

She caught me watching her and sighed. “Now he's willing to let me see it. Now. But it's too late. You can't just wipe away eighteen years. You understand that, don't you, Willa?” She looked at me and nodded to make me agree.

I shook my head. I'd hoped that the sight of the coat would melt her heart, and I was pretty sure Father had hoped the same thing. I even opened my mouth to say so, but the thought of trying to gather all those words made me so tired I closed it again.

She waited until she was sure I wasn't going to reply. Then she said, real gentle, “Honey, he'll never change. He'll never—tell you the truth about anything or act like other men, and he'll never, ever change.”

I frowned at her, trying to understand what she meant. Finally, I cleared my throat and whispered, “I don't want him to change.”

She pressed her lips together and shook her head. Like she didn't even know she was doing it, her hand reached out to stroke the coat, and she was gone, imagining poor dead Vause, how he had been inside it and how, probably, she hadn't paid a moment's mind to the coat he wore and yet now that was all there was of him left to her. Gentle and slow, as if she wanted to make it last a long time, she folded the coat along its creases, smoothing it and touching it as she went. When she was done, she tilted her head, looking at it. “Was it like this? In Tare's basement?” she asked me. “Folded so neat?”

I nodded.

“And wrapped in this cloth?”

I nodded again.

“Oh Lord,” she sighed. She rubbed one finger down the cloth. “It would've been easier just to go to the penitentiary.”

I didn't know what she was talking about. I watched her slip the coat
back into its white package. She cleared out the whole bottom drawer of her dresser and put the cloth bundle inside. She gave it a last stroke, and then she closed the drawer and rose. She paused, then went to the window, and my spirits rose because she was looking for Father. But then she made a little noise, a little disgusted noise, and she marched real quick out the door. I heard her heels thumping on the stairs.

That night Jottie seemed almost lighthearted. She and the others played pinochle, the way she liked to play it, with the curtains drawn tight so that the police chief couldn't see that they were gambling if he walked by. I didn't play, of course. I sat on the sofa, not reading my book and wondering where Father was. Two times that night, Jottie went upstairs. She pretended she needed a hankie and then she pretended she couldn't find her pen, but I knew better. She was looking at Vause Hamilton's coat.