A Short History of a Small Place (37 page)

So then it was the former Miss Dupont and Mr. Alton’s daddy and Mr. Alton lingering by the parlor window with the tips of their fingers against the panes as Miss Sissy wheeled the Bentley out of the garage and on around the hedgerow. And this time it was Mr. Gallos who slipped in on the driver’s side since he was in between chickens, and the former Miss Dupont’s sedan rounded the hedgerow itself and proceeded to clip along at the speed of a first generation Greek gardener who recollected where to go. Mrs. Phillip J. King said Mr. Alton and Mr. Alton’s daddy sat in the back seat on either side of the former Miss Dupont each of them quiet and sullen and most thoroughly engaged in holding onto his kneecaps while the former Miss Dupont fanned her face with an old church bulletin and appeared noticeably flustered and agitated, Mrs. Phillip J. King said, like maybe she’d been chatting with the governor and a burst of wind had blown her dress up over her head. And Mrs. Phillip J. King said Mr. Gallos and the former Miss Dupont and Mr. Alton’s daddy and Mr. Alton paused in sight of Mr. Jack Dubois Byrd’s house and in sight of Mr. Alton’s daddy’s Bentley for a full half hour before the shift changed at the mill and Mr. Jack Byrd came home along the sidewalk and got indicated to Mr. Alton by Mr. Alton’s daddy, who pointed with his finger and said, “Him.” And according to Mrs. Phillip J. King it was another two hours before Mr. Alton was made to look at what the former Miss Dupont and Mr. Alton’s daddy had brought him to look at, and Mrs. Phillip J. King said when the time came Mr. Alton’s daddy raised his arm towards the doorway and said, “There.”

As Mrs. Phillip J. King figured it, that was probably when Mr. Alton’s cheekbones began to give way, though she did not call them cheekbones anymore and so would not allow them to merely give way. Instead Mrs. Phillip J. King told me and Momma that was probably when his features commenced their emotional erosion, though she insisted Mr. Alton remained unerodedly dashing to the naked eye for any number of months after he witnessed his wife, Miss Sissy Dundee, and Mr. Jack Dubois Byrd wrestling in Mr. Byrd’s doorway under the close scrutiny of a speckled tomcat. But anyway that was when Mr. Alton’s finely chiseled bone structure began to break down on a microscopic level, according to Mrs. Phillip J. King, who said the deterioration was further advanced by Miss Sissy herself who could not be made ashamed of what she had done no matter how much sinfulness and damnation anybody held over her head. Mrs. Phillip J. King said Miss Sissy had simply become far too tropical for redemption. Of course Mr. Alton blamed it all on himself at first, said if he’d never gotten her on the parachute drop at Coney Island none of this might have happened, but Mrs. Phillip J. King said presently Mr. Alton recollected that he wasn’t much more fond of Miss Sissy than she was of him, and so he became a little less tormented than he had been previously and left most of the agonizing up to his momma and daddy and up to the congressman and Mrs. Dundee, who had to share all the Dundee agony and shame between them since Miss Sissy would not be saddled with any of it.

Now according to Mrs. Phillip J. King rich, cultivated people generally go about their agony and their torment in a most civilized and proper fashion and so what had started in a roadhouse on the 54 highway and then carried on into the north Burlington mill village got fairly much finished off over four courses of supper at the Dundee estate. Mrs. Phillip J. King said the appetizer and the entree belonged to the congressman and Mrs. Dundee along with Mr. Alton’s momma and daddy all of whom insisted that their daughter and son-in-law respectively, who became the parties in question for the sake of discussion, work together towards a speedy and blissful reunion. But during the fruit plate and the dessert, the congressman and Mrs. Dundee along with Mr. Alton’s daddy and the former Miss Dupont all found out together that the parties in question near about despised each other. The fruit plate belonged to Miss Sissy who could not find a decent or sorrowful word to say to Mr. Alton even after her momma and Daddy and Mr. Alton’s daddy and the former Miss Dupont tried between the four of them to hoist up all of Miss Sissy’s mingling and hold it over her head which apparently had no effect whatsoever on Miss Sissy who went after her apple slices and her melon balls with what Mrs. Phillip J. King called shameless gusto. The dessert of course fell to Mr. Alton who picked at his meringue with his fork as he told his wife and his in-laws and his momma and daddy how he had been wounded most mortally in his pride and so did not think he could ever again bathe Miss Sissy in the glow of his affections. Mrs. Phillip J. King said that aside from his microscopically eroding features Mr. Alton was afflicted as well with a heart turned barren and cold where once had thrived the flowers of devotion nurtured by the warmth of desire, which Momma told Mrs. Phillip J. King was a very fine turn of phrase on her part, for which Mrs. Phillip J. King was highly gratified.

Mrs. Phillip J. King said what came of the four course supper at the Dundee estate was that the congressman and Mrs. Dundee and Mr. Alton’s daddy and the former Miss Dupont and Miss Sissy and Mr. Alton all decided and agreed that the parties in question should undergo a trial separation until what the congressman called the riff could be mended, and Mrs. Phillip J. King said everybody at the table was pleased and satisfied with the decision since when the congressman and Mrs. Dundee and Mr. Alton’s daddy and the former Miss Dupont said trial separation they meant trial separation and when Miss Sissy and Mr. Alton said trial separation they meant divorce. So when Mr. Alton moved back up to the big house and left Miss Sissy by herself in the bungalow all the Nances and Dundees together agreed it was surely for the best, and Mrs. Phillip J. King said almost immediately things went on pretty much as they had gone on before except for Miss Sissy who was relieved of the keys to the Bentley by Mr. Alton’s daddy until she had herself delivered to Mr. Jack Byrd’s house by one of Burlington’s two taxi cabs and retrieved from it by the other all of which put her in the Bentley once again and allowed things to go exactly as they had gone on before. Of course Mr. Alton and his daddy had polished off their imbroglio and so Mr. Alton’s daddy returned to his hewn log bench in the pine grove from where he watched anybody’s ducks drop over the treetops and into his lake without what Mrs. Phillip J. King called the accompanying fuselade to distract him. As for Mr. Alton, he took up politicking again and engaged himself in advising public figures, which Daddy had told me he did mostly with his wallet, while the former Miss Dupont continued to linger at the parlor window in the afternoons with her fingertips against the panes and watch Miss Sissy wheel the Bentley around the hedgerow and out of sight.

According to Mrs. Phillip J. King, Mr. Alton and Miss Sissy tried the separation for a full year and then tried the divorce after on account of a longstanding state law that decreed it was the natural order of things for conflicting spouses to despise each other from separate and individual dwellings for twelve months time before legally dissolving their vows and so becoming friends again. But Mrs. Phillip J. King said she did not believe Mr. Alton and Miss Sissy ever became friends because twelve months worth of steady mingling on the part of Miss Sissy and on the part of Mr. Jack Dubois Byrd finally succeeded in swelling Miss Sissy up with a minglette, news of which unloosed an emotional gulleywash on Mr. Alton’s features. So Miss Sissy and Mr. Alton went ahead and became divorced with about the same feeling they had for each other when they became separated and Miss Sissy moved on out of the bungalow and back to the Dundee estate while Mr. Alton moved out of the big house and into the bungalow once again. And according to Mrs. Phillip J. King, Mr. Alton was just holding his own at reasonably dashing when Miss Sissy’s daddy the Congressman Dundee, discovered that Mr. Jack Byrd was invaluable to him for his political advice and so hired him on as an aid which opened the way for Miss Sissy to take him on as a husband, and Mrs. Phillip J. King said the ceremony transpired on the twenty-third of July between the Dundee ligustrum hedges, so almost exactly where Miss Sissy Mercer Dundee had become Miss Sissy Mercer Dundee Nance she became Miss Sissy Mercer Dundee Nance Dubois-Byrd which Miss Sissy’s daddy got legally hyphenated as a wedding gift for the happy couple, mostly for the happy bride. As for Mr. Alton, he steadily continued to become less finely chiseled and by the time the baby little Jackson Mercer Dubois-Byrd got brought into the world, which was a ways short of nine months after the ceremony, Mr. Alton had long since left off being purely dashing, had even left off being purely reasonably dashing, while for her part Miss Sissy discovered that the last thing on earth she wanted was a baby now that she had one, and for his part Mr. Jack Dubois-Byrd entertained the congressman’s constituents by making the veins stand up on his forehead and got sent out for sandwiches whenever he was handy.

Mrs. Phillip J. King said Mr. Alton was a sizeable while putting Miss Sissy behind him and she said he could well have eroded clean down to homely if not for the luck and happenstance that sent him to what Mrs. Phillip J. King called a political feeta in the company of Judge Wade Shorty Glidewell where Mr. Alton got himself introduced to a gentleman who had recently come into considerable prominence on account of a chimpanzee and where he got himself introduced to that gentleman’s sister also. According to Mrs. Phillip J. King, it was not love at first sight exactly since Mr. Alton, eroded and gulleywashed as he was, did not set women all aflutter anymore, and since Miss Myra Angelique, reserved and dignified by nature, was not much given to wild flights of impetuosity, Mrs. Phillip J. King called them. But she said it was love eventually even if it was not love at first sight exactly, and according to Mrs. Phillip J. King it got so that no Republican or Democrat either could hardly throw a feeta of any scale or variety without attracting Miss Myra Angelique and her brother the mayor, and without attracting Mr. Alton and his ever-settling features. And as Mrs. Phillip J. King recollected it, feeta number one saw Miss Pettigrew and Mr. Alton share an hors d’oeuvre plate and pass between them many polite remarks while feeta number two brought Miss Myra Angelique and Mr. Alton together on the dance floor where they negotiated themselves through several waltzes with exceptional success until Mr. Alton led Miss Myra Angelique directly into the corner of the punch table and so put her out of commission for the remainder of the feeta. And Mrs. Phillip J. King said it was not until feeta number five at the legion hall in Greensboro when Miss Pettigrew passed her arm through Mr. Alton’s and allowed him to escort her out onto the slab patio where the two of them took the evening air together, and Mrs. Phillip J. King said there is something about standing on a cool cement slab under the stars that breeds romance like mosquitoes.

She told me and Momma she would never forget it. She told us it would never pass from her memory. “Of course I’s only a baby, don’t you know,” Mrs. Phillip J. King said, “I mean I wasn’t hardly out of my ringlets and my smock when P.J. and me said our I do’s and he brought me here to this place to settle, but it will never leave me, not ever, Inez, I mean the sight of him driving along the boulevard in his touring car with the sunlight playing against the fenders and sparkling off the tire spokes, and me hardly out of my ringlets and my smock and not ever having been much of anywhere and not ever having seen much of anything and then there’s his foreign automobile on the boulevard taking the sunlight like a diamond and him behind the wheel of it erect and dapper and very nearly finely chiseled. I mean to tell you Inez it was just, it was simply, it was absolutely ...”

“Dazzling?” Momma said.

And Mrs. Phillip J. King told us, “Lord yes.”

She said his cheekbones had made a partial recovery after the commencement of the romance with Miss Pettigrew and Mrs. Phillip J. King tried to get by with plain handsome but Momma insisted on tacking the passably to the front of it, so Mrs. Phillip J. King went round about the other way and told me and Momma how Mr. Alton had taken to sunning himself on the bungalow patio and so had become what Mrs. Phillip J. King called swarthy.

“Swarthy?” Momma said.

“Yes ma’m,” Mrs. Phillip J. King told her, and then she asked us did we know that Dupont was a French word for bronze, which we didn’t not either one of us. So Mrs. Phillip J. King went on to tell us how even a plain to reasonably good-looking gentleman could be improved upon considerably if not outright dramatically by a touch of swarthiness in his complexion, and of course, she said, if you start out with a man who is passably handsome already, who in fact tends much more towards the handsome than the passably, then a bit of the bronze, la Dupont she called it, could make him into a regular Dick Powell in the course of a cloudless afternoon.

But Momma would not allow for a regular Dick Powell and would not allow for purely handsome either because, as Momma saw it, swarthiness was at best a seasonal improvement that offered up the illusion of handsome by covering over the passably on a temporary basis. So Momma and Mrs. Phillip J. King negotiated once again with Mr. Alton’s attractions and together they agreed to let Mr. Alton hover up around the handsome end of passably handsome in the summertime and drop back down to the passably end of it for the rest of the year. So Mrs. Phillip J. King said Mr. Alton was hard up against the underside of handsome the first time he took his touring car down along the boulevard and towards municipal square. She said it was early September and Mr. Alton had built up an entire August’s worth of swarthiness, and as Mrs. Phillip J. King recalled it, not Mr. Alton nor his touring car either had ever looked so majestical on the streets of Burlington as they did once they hit the boulevard in Neely. She said Mr. Alton sat behind the wheel in swarthy splendor and guided his magnificent machine, she called it, along what Mrs. Phillip J. King said were the arbored streets and byways of the fair city. She said the sight was a study in pure dazzlement and again she told me and Momma it would never pass from her memory even if she wasn’t hardly out of her ringlets and her smock at the time.