One More River (7 page)

Lot Needleman knew his little girl well. After half an hour of evasive chitchat, he made a phone call. Although he used a phone out of range of her hearing, she caught his tone and knew he’d called Mama. When he hung up, he pushed back his chair. It screeched against the linoleum. The sound sent a chill down her spine. He approached, put a hand on her arm, turned her around to face him, and looked her up and down, slowly, head to toe. It was like being seared in a skillet.

Lot Needleman, né Laurence, was so nicknamed by his employees not on his own account but for his wife’s strange habit of glancing over her shoulder regularly while in ordinary conversation as if she were pursued by an army of avenging angels. It stuck because his proportions were this side of biblical. He was tall and red as a cedar post, a stocky man with a thick head of salt-and-pepper hair, a man who exuded an air of physical power much in contrast to the fragile figure of his wife, Rose, a hothouse flower, who struggled to support his every decision in return for the security he provided her. He wore a large gold-and-diamond ring on his right pinkie, the kind of ring that looked as if it could rip a nostril off the face it took aim at. Everything about him indicated he was a man with fire in the blood.

Accustomed to only the gentlest of looks from the man, Laura Anne liked to shake in her shoes. He said, That boy last night treat you right, baby?

O Lord, she prayed, give me strength. And her prayer was surely granted, for she lifted her head, batted her eyelashes as if entirely surprised by his question, and bubbled up an answer as fresh and sparkling as a mountain spring.

Why, of course, he did, Daddy. He was a perfect gentleman. In fact, I can’t wait to see him again. He has such promise.

Daddy frowned. Promise for what, sugar? I thought he sold insurance for his uncle. Now, I’m not sayin’ he isn’t a good old boy, for all I know he’s one of the best the Lord ever thought to make, but employment in a family concern doesn’t exactly demonstrate initiative, does it?

It didn’t occur to either one of them that by belittling Mickey Moe, Lot Needleman was also belittling his daughter. Laura Anne still took offense on her lover’s behalf. My stars! she thought. I have a lover!

He’s a very good salesman, Daddy. He was a football hero, did I tell you that? He could have gone up to Raleigh-Durham on scholarship, but he decided his widowed mama and sisters needed him, and so he let Duke go. Don’t you find that admirable? And he doesn’t intend to stay an insurance salesman forever. He’s got his eye on some property near Guilford. He intends to buy it, lease most of it out, and then farm the rest for his pleasure. A gentleman farmer, he’s going to be, like great-granddaddy Chaim.

Throughout her life, Laura Anne’s ancestors had been held up to her as icons of virtue. She could not know that the redneck great-granddaddy in question had been coarse and miserly, tormenting Lot’s own father with his mean purse and a constant barrage of criticism meant to mold his character. When he was growing up, Lot was told over and over how lucky he was to have a kinder rearing himself. He did not see it quite that way, since his daddy had a festering canker at the seat of his soul due to Chaim Needleman’s hard hand. Lot was often the object of his father’s compensatory wrath. From the instant of Laura Anne’s birth, he vowed to spoil his little girl as a way of making his own childhood misery up to himself. Since he wanted her to be proud of her blood, he whitewashed the family history, praising both her intemperate granddaddy and skinflint great-granddaddy to the skies, creating for her an ancestry as imaginative as the provenance of his showroom’s Queen Anne desk. Though the stratagem gave him a daughter who held her head high in any crowd of genealogical swells, it left him neatly hoist on his own petard in the current instance.

In the face of her enthusiasm, he had no other choice than to go silent. He gnashed his teeth. He scowled. He sputtered. When his frustration dragged on to a point that Laura Anne’s expression turned to one of filial concern, he covered it with a coughing fit. Holding his right hand up, he signaled she should get him a drink of water even though the office bubbler was three feet behind him and all he had to do was turn around. Laura Anne sidled behind him swiftly, got him water in a paper cup, and watched him guzzle it down. Luckily for both, the phone rang. When Lot answered and made a show of involvement in an inconsequential conversation, Laura Anne took the opportunity to turn her back to him and return to her duties, raising her eyes to the heavens in thankfulness as she did.

That night after supper, she retired to her room early, leaving her parents to watch the latest escapades on the Ponderosa alone. As she knew he would, Mickey Moe called. She hopped on her princess phone at the first ring before her parents had a chance to hear it. The lovers talked and sighed together and made plans for the next weekend and the weekend after that. They shared a sensible discussion of how they must behave with decorum in front of Lot and Rose Needleman until enough time had passed for them to make their intentions known, intentions that had become crystal clear from their first kiss. They were meant to be together forever. They would marry as soon as possible, have children, live on a farm, die old and happy in each other’s arms. But young lovers can talk all they like about being discreet. The eyes of those who care to notice always will. Laura Anne’s parents took measures. The first of these was the subterfuge of hospitality.

On the weekend of their third date, Rose Needleman invited Mickey Moe to Sunday dinner. The boy was encouraged by this and did all he could to make an impression. Despite the heat of that August day, he dressed in his good seersucker suit. Minutes before he left Guilford, Roland cut a bunch of blue daisies and yellow mums from Mama’s garden as a bouquet for him to take with. Sara Kate tied a damp piece of cheesecloth around the stems to keep them fresh during the ride. Mama instructed him before he left. Now you present these to the mistress of the house, she said. You were not invited by Miss Laura Anne but by her mama.

Two and a half hours later, Mickey Moe arrived at the outskirts of Greenville. Along the way, the LTD’s air conditioner had broken down. By the time he reached Laura Anne’s house, it was close to three hours since he’d left his own, and the blooms, no matter how carefully prepared, had wilted. The formerly perky petals of his mama’s exotic daisies curled in. The centers of the mums had gone brown. He studied them sitting there in the passenger seat where Laura Anne ought to be. Was it an insult to give Mrs. Needleman flowers in disrepair? Was it a worse insult to arrive empty-handed?

Mickey Moe checked himself out in the rear view and wiped the perspiration from his face with his handkerchief. Dang the flowers, he thought. They either like me or they don’t, and a lot of dang flowers ain’t goin’ to tip the scales one way or t’other. He picked up the bouquet and tossed it in the back. Then just before leaving the car and heading up Laura Anne’s front walk, he had an idea. He turned around and plucked the freshest-looking daisy from the pile and stuck it in the buttonhole of his seersucker lapel. Ok, he thought, smoothing his collar, ok. That looks right smart. He went up the walk and stairs to the front porch with a bounce in his step. He rang the bell, waited there rocking back and forth on his feet, his straw fedora in hand, a goofy smile on his face, feeling confident and free and full of good will.

Lot Needleman answered the door all smiles of sweet welcome. At the sight of that beaming red face, Mickey Moe caught his breath. The salesman in him was trained to read the hidden intentions of others. Right off the bat, he saw the man’s desire to crush him in his two hands and brush the pieces off into the four winds. Mickey Moe knew men like Lot. Knew them well. Every sugared look had a vein of arsenic in it. Those smiles were a call to arms. He straightened up, narrowed his gaze, and offered his hand. He was ready to fight for his woman. Let the games begin, he wanted to say.

Thank you, sir, for invitin’ me this fine afternoon.

Lot Needleman widened his grin to show more of his teeth. He leaned in to take the boy’s hand and squeeze the life out of it. It hurt like hell, but Mickey Moe would sooner perish than wince. He returned as much pressure as he thought respectful.

It was the ladies’ idea, son. Thank them.

There were footsteps, light, sprightly as a dancing cat. Laura Anne popped around her daddy’s bulk to stand at his side with her right arm around Lot’s waist and her left hand on his bicep. There was comfort, love, pride in the gesture as if she were presenting Mickey Moe with a giant doll or a seriously overgrown child.

Lord, he thought, how she loves him! But then if a girl doesn’t love her daddy, she can hardly love a mug like me so hard so fast. His heart twisted in his chest thinking how important it was to her that he and her daddy got along, how difficult it was going to be to make that happen. Maybe, he thought, it’d be easier to go at the old man through his wife. Women talked. At least he might be able to find out if there was more to the animus oozing from Lot Needleman than every man’s desire to preserve and protect his little girl. A conversation with his wife would let him know if it was personal.

I’d love surely to thank the lady of the house, sir.

Well, come on in, then.

He thought his introduction to Rose Needleman went a lot better. He took her soft, damp hand in both of his and pressed it, bowing his head slightly like a European courtier. According to his mama, this was a profound sign of respect for a lady. She claimed it was the way the queen of England would wish to be greeted if she were permitted the indulgence of common intimacies. Rose Needleman blushed like a bride and stifled a giggle.

Mickey Moe cast a slant-eyed look at her husband. Touché to you, big guy, touché. The latter coughed and said, I’m as hungry as a squash bug in July. Let’s go to table.

The foyer of the house was airy, impressive with its vaulted ceiling, checkerboard tile, and massive clay pots from which grew ferns, five and six feet tall, perfuming the place with an earthy, humid scent. Led by Rose and followed by Lot and Laura Anne, who walked arm-in-arm, Mickey Moe laid his hat on a table of marble and wrought iron, crossed through a receiving room, a hallway hung with family portraits, and into the dining room where a fancy table had been set with the Needlemans’ best silver, crystal, chinaware, and linens. Thanks to the family trade, the table was luxe indeed. If Beadie Sassaport Levy had not acquired the same quality of items purchased during the glory days of Bernard’s wealth and retained most of them throughout her troubles, Mickey Moe might have been intimidated by the display, which was, after all, its purpose.

This is a lovely table, Mrs. Needleman, he said. Are these family pieces?

Ah, he wooed Rose as easily as he’d wooed Laura Anne. Her scrawny chest inflated like a sparrow’s when that little bird is about to burst forth at dawn with a night’s store of song. She glanced over her shoulder as if there might be spies lurking about then leaned forward and spoke in the most cordial, confidential manner.

How nice of you to notice, Mr. Levy. Some of them are heirlooms, of course. Now, the silver tureen there on the sideboard belonged to my mama’s great-aunt Esther. She carried it here all the way from Louisville when she married. They say her grandmama brought it with her from Jamestown and her mama brought it from England. Did you know our people were Virginian originally? At least on my side of the family, that is. Mr. Needleman’s people are Mississippian, through and through.

Mickey Moe raised his eyebrows and tilted his head in an expression of interest though it was a ruse, a prime example of maternal instruction in politesse. He hated himself a little for his insincerity until he remembered a warrior uses whatever weaponry the campaign demands, even if he has to scavenge in a dung heap to find it. Why no, I did not know that, he said. Your daughter’s been very modest not to tell me. . . .

Conversation continued in this manner. It may be difficult to imagine that from the soup right through the fish, there was not time enough to dispense with the bloodlines of Mickey Moe’s sweetheart, but it appeared Rose Needleman could chatter endlessly about great-great-uncle so and so, who kept a famous journal during the War of Northern Aggression, and cousin this-and-that, who planted rice in Savannah long before anyone even considered whether cotton might grow there.

It was not until they were finishing up the brisket and heading into the salad that Lot Needleman asked the question all this was leading up to. Your mama’s people, I hear, are Sassaports. That’s a very old name and quite lustrous. But which Levys are yours, son? The Alabama? I hope not the Piedmont! Lot Needleman laughed at the thought.

Worse than that, sir, Mickey Moe began. Cursing this fetish everyone he knew had about ancestry, he related his usual story about Daddy and the mystery of his origins. He even incorporated a version of the speech he’d made to Laura Anne on the day they met, the speech that charmed her for reasons he was only just beginning to suspect, those having to do with the seed of rebellion in her, rebellion against the restrictions placed upon good girls of spirit, a rebellion he was happy to indulge daily for the rest of her life if she let him. I am a child of mystery, he said, as he had that fateful afternoon. I am a child of mystery but I am as easy to decipher as a semaphore waved from the deck of a riverboat on a sparklin’ day in spring. Which means I might take a little study, but there is no deception in me. I have made my life a devotion in plain talk and honest proposal to atone for whatever drops of my daddy’s lying blood flow through my veins.

Rose Needleman’s face went grim, her color heightened. She knew all this, having both quizzed her daughter on the young man’s background and done a bit of research with her Jackson acquaintances. With an introductory little cough, she commented in the manner she’d rehearsed and refined under her husband’s direction long into the night before.

Ah-hem. Why that is a remarkable story, Mr. Levy. A remarkable story. A sad one, too. How difficult it will be to find a bride of good family in these parts with a history like that. How very difficult.