A Southern Exposure (23 page)

Harry has pointed out that in Georgetown at least they
would not be running two households, not to mention commuting to see each other. And the long-distance calls. All of which was very logical. Still.

In the meantime Cynthia endures the heady spring, staying mostly indoors.

“How you can stay inside on a day like this just does beat all” is Dolly’s opening sally. She has arrived one especially hot May morning for a sandwich and some iced tea. Dolly, in white piqué and perfectly whitened sandals, and stockings; even on the hottest days, Southern women of Dolly’s ilk would always wear stockings.

“It is beautiful out,” Cynthia murmurs softly. She notes that she is becoming almost as quiet, as compulsively polite as a Southern woman.

Dolly is looking especially pleased with herself. She has an air of someone with barely contained good news. It is impossible, though, to ask directly; as Cynthia has learned, that is simply not done. And so first Dolly admires Cynthia’s dress (“That bare-arm look is so young! You could be some Hollywood starlet”) and the cut flowers in her house (“Whoever would have thought of putting sweet peas and nasturtiums together in that same little vase?”), and Cynthia in her turn exclaims and admires, and it is quite a while before Dolly gets to it, and says to Cynthia, “Well, I finally saw Missus Odessa Jones. I took myself right over to the laundry.”

“Oh, really?” I thought I was the one to see Odessa, Cynthia does not say. “Uh, how is she?”

“Oh, uppity as ever, if not more so.” Dolly sniffs. “But I threw out some bait. I said like as how we were going to have this little store and all, and when I said that I could see those old black eyes light up. She really took to that idea, I could tell.”

Cynthia’s agile mind has begun to race. She can so easily picture the scene between Dolly and Odessa, out on the
sidewalk next to the laundry; Dolly would have had to make it look like a casual encounter. “Well, Odessa, for heaven’s sake, how’re you doing these days? How’s your family?” Tall strong awkward Odessa, bending down a little, and small graceful Dolly, looking up and chirping, like a sparrow.

As though to confirm that fantasy, Dolly at that moment says, “…  and you know her daughter Nelly? The one she likes so much? Well, Nelly’s going to come and work for me!”

In ways at first indefinable to herself, this bulk of news is very saddening to Cynthia. Even as she is saying to Dolly, “Oh, how wonderful” (as though she were as Southern as Dolly), and is listening to plans for the store (of course Cynthia will be a partner, they’ll work out all the details on that, and the main thing is “We’ll just have the best old time!”) and to Dolly’s joy and triumph at the acquisition of Nelly (“…  she’s young but I can train her to do things just my way, she won’t be as stubborn as her mother always was. Not that I’m not deeply fond of Odessa. You know that, honey”).

At first, introspective and sometimes dark-minded, Cynthia accuses herself of a simple sort of schoolgirl jealousy; plans were made behind her back, reuniting Dolly and Odessa, and Cynthia felt left out. If so, she can accept this possible reaction as being silly, but not exactly reprehensible. In any case, she is aware of other, stronger, and more complex feelings. Which, finally, that afternoon after Dolly has gone, she is more or less able to sort out.

And she sees, at last, how deeply pleased she was on first hearing about Odessa’s defiance of Dolly. Not because of anti-Dolly feelings of her own, but really because of the originality, the sheer
unusualness
of Odessa’s act, her quitting her job with Dolly. In a curious way, only half-conscious at the time, she has been cheering for Odessa,
and now, to have Nelly, Odessa’s youngest and most loved child, thrust back into the mold—it is that that is deeply distressing to Cynthia. And even as she comes to this awareness, she is aware too of a sudden lurking evil thought: she thinks, Maybe it just won’t work out. Maybe Nelly won’t want to do everything as Dolly says to, and maybe she can get herself a better job somewhere else. Maybe at the defense plant.

“And maybe a Negro woman will be elected our next President,” says Harry, later, as Cynthia tells him about the visit from Dolly. The news and her own hopeful speculations.

“Oh, Harry, I know. But still.”

“Please be a little more realistic, baby. Most people would say that Nelly’s lucky to get the job with Dolly. For one thing, she pays a lot better than most people in that town. Curiously enough.”

“Most people down here are Southern too. Oh, it’s so odd the way they do things. I mean, all the fuss that Dolly made. It was ludicrous, really. About our store selling things made by both colored and white women. And now, with no conversation about it at all, that’s all taken care of. I could have argued until I was blue in the face.”

“You’re right there, absolutely. They don’t believe in discussion. ‘Don’t hold with it,’ as they would say.”

“It’s so interesting, the difference between Southern and New England reticence,” muses Cynthia. “Southern is so much more intricate, elaborate, don’t you think?”

“You might even say hidden.”

“Certainly submerged. But I am glad we’re going ahead with the store. Or I guess I am.”

“You’ll need some extra money, won’t you, Cyn?”

“Well, I guess—”

“I just happen to have quite a lot. Consider it my investment.”

•  •  •

A day or so after Dolly’s visit, and her subsequent conversation with Harry, Cynthia decides that she will, after all, venture out for a walk in the woods.

But the very air is too much for her. All the smells hang as rich as honey in the clear blue oxygen, thickening her breath, congealing in her lungs. No wonder everyone down here speaks and walks (it sometimes seems) so slowly, thinks Cynthia. The air is noisy too, as well as over-laden with scent. Everywhere birds sing, leaves rustle against each other, and higher up, in the blue, a light wind sings in the pines.

Somewhere she hears a faint sound of water. And somewhere—people talking? A girl’s light laugh?

Not wanting to be seen, nor to see anyone at all, especially anyone she knows, Cynthia slowly and quietly turns and retraces her steps. She has not come far.

But too late.

There on a side path, half hidden by a giant bush of some indeterminate lush white flowers, are Russ Byrd and Norris Drake. The instant before seeing Cynthia, hearing her steps, they have been laughing into each other’s faces as he holds a branch for her to pass, thus protecting her smooth white vulnerable bare legs. Norris is wearing very short pale blue shorts, at the bottoms of which can be seen the smallest line of white lace, a hint of luxurious lingerie.

They are all embarrassed. The suddenness of it: there the three of them are, confronted with each other, Cynthia having inadvertently interrupted the walk of the other two. Interrupted whatever they were saying, doing together. And so there is nothing for it but that they all must laugh, as though this encounter were funny, and not an embarrassment.

“We were just—” begins Russ.

“I
would
wear shorts, through all these brambles,” Norris manages to say. “Clyde’s right, I have no
sense.
” Mock despair and hysterical self-approval choke her voice.

“I always forget we live so close together,” says Cynthia. And then, “Actually I was just heading home.”

“Too hot for you?” Russ asks, with equal emptiness.

“Oh yes, much too hot. You know how we Yankees are.”

They all laugh again, and they manage, at that, to separate, Russ and Norris continuing to wherever. And Cynthia back to her house, which of course is not her house but Jimmy and Esther’s.

Abby is never at home these days, in the afternoons after school, and Cynthia, who has returned to the house for a glass of iced tea in the kitchen, finds herself wishing that her daughter was indeed at home. The encounter with Russ and Norris has left her uneasy. She needs the corrective of a conversation with Abby about her school. What various other children are doing for the summer; Abby is going up to a camp near Asheville, with Betsy Lee and the High-tower girls, some others.

But Abby is not there, and Cynthia sits alone with her tea. With her puzzled, puzzling thoughts, and with no one to tell them to. Even had she known just what she would say.

Strangely, since SallyJane is a Southern woman, grew up in the South, and thus should be used to its seasons, she reacts to this particular spring very much as Cynthia does, though more intensely. She feels that it is all too much for her, and she stays indoors. She spends a great deal of time in bed. There seems to be a sort of unspoken family understanding that this is what she does. Ursula copes with the marketing (she very much enjoys the Cadillac) and the meals, and mostly she copes with the children, who from time to time pay small and somewhat perfunctory visits to their mother, in her room.

Melanctha, especially, comes to visit. She complains of her breasts. “Why do I have to get them? They’re sore, and the boys all tease me. Abby Baird doesn’t have any at all,
and Betsy’s you can’t even see. Why do I? We’re all the same age.”

Because you’re my daughter, you’ve inherited breasts from me. SallyJane does not say this, but only murmurs comfort. But having always disliked her own breasts, she can hardly bear to imagine Melanctha’s life, in a body very much like hers. Though Melanctha now is thin and dark, like Russ—with small but quite visible breasts. She is also brilliant and cross like Russ, thinks SallyJane.

“Boys tease you because they like you and they don’t know how else to express it,” she tells her daughter. “Men are like that too. It’s harder for them to talk. I don’t know why.”

“Archer Bigelow has a crush on Abby Baird and she can’t stand him,” Melanctha reports. “Would you like to see a poem I wrote? I got an A.”

“Oh yes, I’d love to.”

“I’ll go get it.”

And you’ll never be old and terribly fat, and every day more sad and more fat, thinks SallyJane, like a prayer.

On weekends, often the Drakes still come up to visit, and sometimes SallyJane comes down to dinner with them all, sometimes not.

Often, on those weekend afternoons, Russ and Norris go out for a walk somewhere. Probably off kissing in the woods. Maybe more. Thinking of this, and pretty well knowing what they are up to, SallyJane thinks, Well, fine. But she hopes the children don’t find out about it. Or Deirdre Yates—she does not want her children to know about Deirdre.

Clyde Drake comes up and into her room to talk, looking sad. SallyJane believes that he is not sad about Norris and Russ; it’s all right with him too, she thinks. They both
know it will end very soon, and not well. The old phrase “no love lost” between those two applies; without saying it she and Clyde both know this. Norris and Russ do not truly love, nor even like each other.

Clyde talks mostly about himself. “Maybe it’s being around Russ so much, and getting to know him,” he tells her. “But I do think a lot these days about the book I could write. Or maybe it should be a play. You ever write any poems, SallyJane, or anything?”

She lies. “No, I—” Actually she used to write dozens of poems, all carefully hidden from Russ. From everyone.

Clyde continues. “I have these ideas, a lot of them, you couldn’t ever believe.” His voice becomes low, confiding. “What I really think about Dr. Freud, for example. An old fake, is what I believe. Drew all his conclusions from these rich Jewish ladies. Viennese, who are crazy. I can tell you that from experience of my own. I’ve had a couple come down as patients—friends of mine from med school sent them along. You know, the refugees? Crazy women. My impression was half the time they were telling lies. And so hard to understand, with that
accent.
You know what I truly think? All this talking therapy, so-called, this so-called psychoanalytic approach is just not any good at all. What proof does anyone have? I just don’t see how a person’s childhood has any bearing at all on what that person turns into as an adult. Why, my very own parents did certain things to me, of a personal nature, that no one would ever believe, and that I would never reveal to a living soul, I’ve got no call to. I certainly don’t encourage my patients to talk along those lines, as you very well know, my darling little Sal. To me there’s a lot less difference than anyone seems to think between a mental and a physical illness. Your depression, now, has a lot of the very same symptoms as a very bad case of the flu, now wouldn’t you say?”

“I don’t know. I suppose—” But people do not get fat
with the flu. Or do they? I will have to ask Ursula, thinks SallyJane. She’s very good on medical things, and she likes to talk about them.

To SallyJane depression is heaviness, and so it makes a certain sense to her that she should be so fat. So fat and getting constantly fatter. She is too heavy to think; various thoughts, like the thought of Russ, move slowly toward her mind, as ponderous and clumsy as elephants, but they never quite arrive, those thoughts. She thinks, Russ and Norris, but she does not really think of them; the whole thought never quite makes it into her mind. It is not like the stabbing, excited thoughts that she once had about Russ and Deirdre Yates. She is no longer that thin, excited, and exhausted person, so vulnerable to Russ; she is much too fat to be vulnerable these days. And her head feels much heavier than any other part of her, as though it too had gained weight, enormously. She cannot think about Russ, or Russ and Norris. Or Russ and Deirdre. Nor can she think about her children. All their needs.

In the meantime Clyde Drake goes on talking. “That’s why this shock treatment we’re using now works so well,” he says to SallyJane, somewhat out of context. “Fight fire with fire, so to speak. Treat a physical fact with a thoroughly physical fact. A jolt. Jolt it right out of the ring.”

He has said more or less this same thing several times. SallyJane understands that he is telling her that he wants her to have shock treatment, but in some way he is afraid to tell her so. Is he afraid of what the shock will do to her, but does not know that he is afraid?

She asks him, “Did it ever kill anyone, this treatment?”