A Southern Exposure (28 page)

“Oh, but it’s not my store at all. Dolly—”

“Dolly always says how you were the start of it.”

“Well, I did have this idea, and Odessa—”

“That Odessa! and that Nelly! Turned out just like her momma. You hear about that? Up and quit on Dolly too, gone off to the defense plant.”

“I think I—”

“I wonder if Clarence Yates will remember me. We didn’t exactly know each other, just hello on the street.”

“Cynthia, that is the most beautiful dress.”

“Oh, thank you, so lucky, I found this—”

“I’m just going to say hello to him anyhow.”

“Darling, no one will let you talk, have you noticed?”

“Lucky thing I don’t have much to say. No point in telling about going back to school.”

“You seem very much on edge.”

“I do?”

“Yes, really. Very edgy indeed.”

“Maybe I am, weddings—”

“Irene is looking perfectly lovely, don’t you think?”

“Would you say that being a widow agrees with her?”

“It sure doesn’t sound right but I guess you might say that.”

“Poor Clifton.”

“And poor little Betsy, that child really took it hard.”

“And Dolly—”

“Don’t you say that! Nobody’s supposed to—”

“But there they were.”

“Oh, I know, everybody knows that.”

“Dolly, you’re looking pretty as a picture today. Bet you’re happy to have your friend back here in town.”

“I was just telling Willard, if Cynthia’d stay on here permanently, I’d be just perfectly happy. But their house here is a start.”

“I wouldn’t be too sure. Stranger things—”

“Were you surprised?—at the marriage, I mean?”

“Well no, not really. It seemed like a natural thing.”

“On the face of it such an outlandish idea, Russ Byrd and Deirdre Yates, but it doesn’t seem to have surprised one single person. Not at all.”

“Cynthia told me she was surprised.”

“Were you surprised when Cynthia bought her house? Deirdre’s house?”

“Who would have thought that Deirdre could have got even more beautiful?”

“She’s a legend in her own time, that girl is.”

“Do you reckon that she and Russ might, uh, increase their tribe?”

“Lordy, what an idea! With Graham there’s six already. Heavens above!”

“But they just might, don’t you think? Matter of fact, Deirdre does have just the faintest look—”

“Well, a girl can gain a couple of pounds for a whole lot of reasons.”

“Jimmy says that Rommel could get completely lost in the desert.”

“Rommel, is he on our side or theirs?”

“Theirs, for Lord’s sake. He’s a German. Rommel.”

“Doesn’t sound all that German to me. Even when you
roll that ‘R’ like that. Could be just a Yankee name, or English.”

“Why is Esther still so sad-appearing, do you think?”

“Jimmy said she’d had some bad news about what’s going on in Germany.”

“But we’re fighting Hitler, like she always wanted.”

“That doesn’t stop what they’re doing to those Jews back there.”

“Poor Esther.”

“Poor Jewish folk. The Lord have mercy.”

“I don’t think Jimmy’s being so successful has cheered her up a lot.”

“They were already rich, that’s the trouble with being rich. Or one of them.”

“Well, I for one would sure like to have a chance to find out.”

“Funny, Jimmy being so much more famous than Russ is now. Jimmy going out to Hollywood instead of Russ.”

“Makes sense, if you think about it. Russ was never cut out for that stuff.”

“Yeah, he’s just a simple country boy at heart.”

“If Russ Byrd is simple, I’m a monkey’s uncle.”

“Well, come to think of it—”

“Oh look, there’s Abby Baird now.”

“She’s a real big girl now, isn’t she.”

“How old would she be—thirteen, fourteen?”

“Well, let’s see, they first came here in ’38, or was it ’39?”

“And she was eleven, or was it twelve?”

“Is that Archer Bigelow she’s talking to? What a big boy he turned out to be.”

“Lucky thing he took after Willard and not that little old Dolly.”

“Does Russ look sort of sad today, or is that just my imagination?”

“The wedding must put him in mind of SallyJane. You know.”

“Well, yes, of course it would.”

“That Abby Baird’s a looker all right. Or give her a couple of years to get to be one.”

“Not a patch on her momma, though. She never will be.”

“Come on, now. Just a different type, entirely.”

“She’s different, all right. You hear about that paper she wrote on integration for her civics class up there?”

“Sure did. So proud of it she sent a carbon right down here to her friend Betsy Lee.”

“I guess the whole town’s heard about that paper by now.”

“Yes, since Irene got ahold of it.”

“Hard on Irene, when you come to think of it. Having her husband die and then this upstart Yankee sends this paper to her own little girl—”

“Even favored intermarriage, way I heard it.”

“Lord God.”

“Got a big fat A on it too. Some teachers they got up there.”

“Well, Washington. What’d you expect? Mostly Yankees.”

“Well, to play the advocate of the devil, just suppose the paper she wrote was real well done? I mean the grammar, the structure of sentences and spelling and all?”

“So what? It’s what she says that matters—anyone at all can learn how to spell.”

“You hear about the Nigras in the swimming pool over to the college? Just one of them, I reckon, this colored kid’s a freshman from over to Hillsboro.”

“I did hear about that. Clean cleared the pool out, is
that right? All the other boys got up and got themselves right out of there.”

“Well now, I don’t think that’s right. He had a right to go swimming, same as any other student. He’s paid his tuition too.”

“Yes, but those other boys didn’t pay their money to have to swim with Negroes.”

“Now, now, this here’s a party, remember? A wedding. Let’s not get into any arguments today. Leastways not on that subject. God a’mighty.”

“Since you mention it, I do think Deirdre’s put on a couple of pounds.”

“Yes, and all in the front.”

“Archer Hightower, I don’t care what you say. I am not going off for any walk in the woods with you.”

“But you said in your letter—”

“I didn’t mean today. Look, my parents are here.”

“But you—”

“Well, maybe later.”

“Did you notice Russ hasn’t left her side for one solitary minute?”

“There’s a bridegroom for you.”

“You heard about the swimming pool they’re putting in? The Bairds?”

“Sure did! Five colored men digging that hole.”

“I heard ten.”

“Even not looking perfectly happy, there he is.”

“Well, who wouldn’t stick close to a bride that looks like that?”

“It’s nice we don’t see those Drake people up here anymore, don’t you think?”

“Oh, very nice. You say hello to Clarence Yates yet?”

“You hear she ran off?”

“I did hear. Left him flat, the way I heard it.”

“Left her children too. That’s a whole lot harder to understand, I think.”

“Sure is. Most anyone wants to leave a husband, one time or another.”

“Or a wife.”

“Or a wife. Sure thing. You think Clarence Yates is married to that woman?”

“Some crazy woman, that Norris Drake.”

“You might know a psychiatrist, so-called, would marry just the craziest person he could find.”

“A looker, though, you’ve got to admit.”

“I do not! That woman was terrible-looking, looked like a monkey—”

“More like a cat, to my way of thinking—”

“Well, he was certainly no prize. Handsome, though.”

“Poor SallyJane, you might say she got the worst of it.”

“Indeed you might.”

“She could be alive today.”

“In that case, I wonder whatever would have happened to Deirdre Yates?”

“Reckon we’ll ever get to calling her Deirdre Byrd?”

“And Graham. Whatever’s his name going to be?”

“Well, you just can’t tell, lest you take to writing novels, like Jimmy over there.”

“Or Russ. Don’t you forget it, our Russ’s the town’s real writer.”

“Oh, I know that, and Jimmy knows it too, for sure.”

“Oh look, they’re whispering together, Russ and Deirdre.”

“I ask you, is that sweet?”

“And Russ is not drinking one drop.”

“But whatever could they be saying to each other?”

•  •  •

“There’s going to be an awful lot of food left over, you know that, hon?”

“Not once the kids get into it, you wait and see.”

“I feel bad that Ursula had so much to do.”

“She likes work, it makes her happy.”

“Today makes me happy, I feel—”

“Honey, I’m glad.”

“But I’m worried. This dress, it doesn’t seem—”

“Honey, don’t you worry. You’re the prettiest girl in this town, or this state, doesn’t matter what you wear.”

“But, Russ, I
show
.”

The news of Russ and Deirdre’s impending marriage had come to Cynthia not from Russ (they were not in touch) but in a letter from Dolly. With whom Cynthia kept up an active and lively correspondence; Cynthia found that she very much liked and looked forward to the spice of Dolly’s letters, and to all the news of Pinehill—with which they overflowed. Dolly always included small reports on weather and flowers, so that Cynthia could see and almost smell the town.

“
Well
,” wrote Dolly (she being one of those whose letters are very much in her own voice), “the really big news is that Russ Byrd is marrying Deirdre Yates this very June. Seems to have been decided in one fairly great big hurry,
and you can bet how all the local tongues are wagging over that. No one ever saw them together anywhere, and now suddenly they’re always together everyplace and
getting married.
They’ll live at Russ’s, of course, and Deirdre’s already put her funny old house up for sale. You remember that falling-down brick place close to where all the colored used to live? She never did anything to it, except for curtains and things on the inside—didn’t have the money, is my guess. But somebody surely could. Somebody could just make a showplace out of that old wreck, and I just know they’re going to sell it real cheap. Hint hint. Are you interested, one little bit? Wouldn’t you and your Harry like to have this sort of what they call in New York a
pied-à-terre
? Down here? There’s this great big old vacant lot out in back, you-all could have the most scrumptious garden. You could even put in a swimming pool, like folks out in California! Are you tempted, the least little bit?

“No one seems to be so very, very surprised at this wedding. I guess every single person around here had certain hidden thoughts about those two, that not one person gave voice to, I can vouch for that. Because if they had I surely would have been a one to hear it, you can bet on that. But there was always the boy, looking enough like Russ to be his brother.

“This April has been just the most lovely you ever did see. The roses—the wisteria—and out in the woods, dog-tooth violets and anemones you would not believe.”

Cynthia, after the first small jolt, and even the suggestion of a private tear, was not deeply surprised by the Russ-Deirdre news. It was much too reasonable to surprise her. With a small ironic smile, she thought that if she were Russ that would be exactly what she would do. It made perfect sense for Russ to marry a beautiful young woman who loved him, who had borne him one handsome child
and would probably be quite happy to do so again. She had recognized a large grain of country sense in Russ, a practicality not wholly unlike her own. (Very likely these were among the very qualities that made them finally separate from each other, several years ago.)

And as for his wanting to marry her, his saying that he did, Cynthia wondered if he did not always know that she could be counted on to turn him down. It was only his way of saying that he seriously loved her—but also of saying that it was time they called a halt.

And call a halt was certainly what they did, although as they slowly walked back from Laurel Hill, their last walk, in the drying September heat—even then, even after she had said no so clearly, Cynthia thought that they could still see each other sometimes (meaning, they could still make love sometimes). But after they had parted, and Abby called that very night to say that she was staying at Betsy Lee’s (okay?), Cynthia realized that she would not call Russ, as she earlier would have done, and say to him, “Please come over.” She could not. It was truly all finished between them.

Back in Washington, and plunged into domestic and social busyness there, instead of missing Russ, Cynthia found that she really missed the town. Missed Pinehill. With an acute and painful longing she recalled the enormous rolling seafloor shape of the hills around the town, and then its particular shades of green foliage, all those ancient towering trees. Especially the very tall pines—with their scent, and the shining dark rich green of the needles—against the sky.

It must be admitted that sometimes she did have maudlin, sentimental thoughts about Russ himself, but that was usually when she had had more than one martini at a party
(or, God forbid, more than one Zombie at the Shoreham). At those moments, though, Cynthia could simply press closer to whomever she was dancing with—it was apt to be Harry, who was still the best dancer she knew. And she might think, wisely, that it was not so much Russ she had loved as the idea of Russ, her poet-lover, whom in so many crucial ways she barely knew.

Partly for that reason, Russ’s final unfamiliarity, Cynthia had managed not to feel too guilty toward Harry about Russ. Or not very guilty, and not often. Just as with Russ she had managed not to think of Harry, so now when she was with Harry, Russ was rarely on her mind.

Harry was extremely busy, often leaving home at eight in the morning, sometimes earlier, and not back until eight or so at night—unless, as was frequently the case, the popular Bairds had a dinner date or a party somewhere. They suddenly seemed to know a lot of Washington people; old friends had new jobs there, like themselves. People from Connecticut, from New York. Everywhere.