Summer in the South (9 page)

He seemed relieved. “I knew you’d like them,” he said.

“Josephine is a bit cool. I’m not sure she likes me.”

He shook his head. “You mustn’t read too much into her manner. She’s that way with everyone. Very reserved and private.”

She turned to face him, smoothing her skirt with her hands. “What’s her story, anyway? She never married?”

“No. There was someone. A long time ago. I don’t know who, I’ve just always heard that she was unlucky in love.”

“That’s a nice way of putting it.”

“Yes,” he said. “I thought you’d like that.”

L
ater, standing in the library with a glass of red wine in her hand, Ava was amazed at Fraser Barron’s resemblance to Poe. He had come in with Alice, and was dressed in a long black frock coat and carried a gold-headed walking stick. He was a small man, no taller than five feet three or four, and he wore his hair in damp curls around his face.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Ava said to Will in a low voice.

“I told you.”

Fraser advanced across the room toward them with a strange, high-stepping gait, his hand extended, and Ava fought a sudden desire to giggle. Will leaned against her, as if to check the impulse.

“William,” Fraser said in a slightly effeminate voice, firmly shaking Will’s hand.

“Fraser.” Will turned to Ava. “This is my friend, Ava.”

“Yes, yes, I’m so excited to meet you,” he said, taking Ava’s hand in his small, soft one. “My mother’s said so many wonderful things about you.”

“I like your walking stick,” Ava said.

“Thank you.” Pleased, he held it up for her review. “I order them specially from the UK. They’re so hard to find in the States.”

“Fraser, we were just talking about the time Edgar Allan Poe spent up at UVA. Ava was questioning why he’d left without graduating.” Fraser immediately launched into a lengthy discourse on the poet, and Will excused himself, giving Ava a slow grin, and went to refill his drink. Most of what Fraser said was interesting. Ava had read Poe’s literary criticism in college, and was a fan of the gothic genre, preferring Poe’s fiction to his poetry, but after a while her attention began to drift.

Across the room, Maitland and Will were discussing baseball, while over by the sideboard Fanny and Alice stood talking to a couple of neighbors. Alice turned her head, noting Ava with Fraser. She smiled and went back to her conversation. She was an attractive woman but somewhat domineering. Her husband had died young, leaving her to bring Fraser up on her own, which she had done admirably, the aunts agreed. No one mentioned Fraser’s eccentric dress and preoccupation with a dead poet; he was family (in addition to being Fanny’s sister-in-law, Alice was also a distant cousin) so that excused any censure they might have heaped upon an outsider.

As far as Ava could tell,
eccentricity
in the Woodburn family was not necessarily frowned upon. What was frowned upon, however, were members who didn’t appreciate the family’s history and standing, “sellouts” who promoted progress that threatened the “old ways.”

Disloyalty in any form was never tolerated.

She could see Josephine sitting on a long sofa, deep in conversation with Clara. One fair, one dark, they were a striking contrast; yet there was something similar in their profiles, something kindred in their height and bearing and grace. Ava had been curious about Clara from that first night at Woodburn Hall, pelting Will with questions. But in that teasing manner he had with her, slightly amused, mildly offended, he’d told her just enough to make her more curious. Clara lived on the block behind the aunts. Her parents had worked for the family when Josephine and Fanny were girls. She had grown up with the Woodburn girls as a sister might. “As part of the family,” Will had told her.

“Only she didn’t go to Vanderbilt,” Ava had remarked innocently.

“No,” Will said, his smile fading. “She didn’t go to Vanderbilt.”

Sunlight fell in large bands across the library’s faded Oriental carpet. The sofas, seen in the bright slanting light, seemed somewhat threadbare and worn, although the room was scrupulously clean, the woodwork newly painted and gleaming.

Beside her Fraser droned on about Poe in his soft little singsong voice. Will, noting that Ava’s attention had wandered, lifted his glass and motioned for Fraser to join him and Maitland.

“Excuse me, I’m being summoned,” Fraser said breathlessly. He put one small hand lightly on Ava’s arm. “I’m so looking forward to Mother’s barbecue. It’ll be such fun to introduce you around because I can assure you” (and here he leaned toward her, glancing around the room) “we’re not all this stodgy!” He giggled and walked off in that odd, straight-backed manner he had, like a tiny soldier on parade.

“Ava, come sit with us,” Clara called, patting the sofa between her and Josephine. Ava sat down, smiling at Clara, who squeezed her hand gently, then let it go. There was something warm about Clara, something so welcoming that you couldn’t help but feel comfortable in her presence. Fanny, too, made her feel instantly at home, and Maitland was like a charming, overindulgent grandfather. Josephine, on the other hand, seemed cordial but distant. There was something of Miss Havisham in Josephine. You had the feeling that beneath her polished exterior beat the heart of a woman capable of anything.

Alice was loudly telling a joke. “How many Episcopalians does it take to change a lightbulb? Ten. One to change the bulb and nine to say how much they liked the old one.”

The room exploded in laughter but they were all Episcopalians and you could see that they were proud of it.

“You know what they say,” Maitland said, lifting his glass. “For every four Episcopalians you’ll find a fifth.”

Fraser whooped with laughter, then stopped and checked his appearance in the heavy gilt-framed mirror above the sideboard. Beside him, Will stood smiling at Ava, his back to the glass.

Josephine said, “He’s a handsome young man, isn’t he?”

“Yes,” Ava said. She finished her wine.

“I see something of my father in him, although he’s dark like all the Frasers.” Josephine was quiet for a moment, her eyes fixed fondly on Will. As if guessing that they were talking about him, he excused himself to Fraser and Maitland and came across the room to join them. “My father was stern, but he was very loving,” Josephine continued. “Unusual in a man of those times.”

“He was a good man,” Clara said. Will stopped in front of them, smiling.

“He loved my mother, and when she died, soon after Celia’s birth, he never remarried. And he could have, if he’d wanted to! He was the most eligible widower in town, young, handsome, a man of property.” She stopped abruptly, looking down at her glass. “Well, he had everything, and many were the women who set their caps for him and tried to catch him.”

“But he was too wary for that,” Will said. He had obviously heard this story many times before.

“People who’ve been wounded in love are often wary,” Josephine said, lifting her chin. She and Will exchanged a long look, and Ava saw something pass between them. He leaned over and reached for Ava’s glass.

“Let me get you another drink,” he said.

1919

Woodburn, Tennessee

Papa and John were in the stable killing rats. Papa had told Sissy and Fanny to stay away, so Fanny was sitting on the kitchen steps like he had said but Sissy was squatting behind a camellia bush spying on them. She had a big white bow in her hair that fluttered among the greenery like a bird. Tom Penny sat on Fanny’s lap. He was purring as she stroked him, his claws coming in and out against her leg. Cicadas droned in the heat. They were feeding castor beans to the rats, mixed up in bowls of suet pudding. Fanny knew not to go near the bowls. She knew not to go near the castor bean plants even though their flowers were like little India rubber balls covered in spikes, and their beans were speckled like tiny bird’s eggs. “Don’t ever touch them,” Papa had told them sternly. “They will kill you quicker than a cobra.”

Across the wide lawn she could hear the thin wailing of her baby sister, Celia. Mother had gone to be with the angels not long after Celia came. The angels had brought Celia and taken Mother, and now Celia stayed in the house across the backyard where John and Martha lived with their dear little baby Clara. Martha took care of Celia and Clara. When she came to the house to cook for Papa and Sissy and Fanny, she brought both babies with her, laying them on a clean quilt on the floor.

Sissy stood up and motioned for Fanny to join her but Fanny shook her head no. She always did what Sissy said, but Papa had said stay away with his face all sad and stern like it was these days since Mother went away, and Fanny could not bring herself to disobey him.

She wondered if the angels would come for the rats like they had come for Mother.

Fanny cried all the time for Mother but Sissy said, “Don’t be a baby.” Sissy never cried, but at night, in her sleep, she made little mewling noises like a kitten. This was in the nursery where they slept at the top of the stairs. They had always slept together, in two little spindle beds on either side of the long windows, and at night the big house creaked and moaned around them and the moonlight fell across their beds like fairies. Sometimes the fairies would lose themselves in Tom Penny’s fur, blinking wildly until Fanny giggled.

“Don’t be daft,” Sissy said. “There’s no such thing as fairies.” Sissy was a Big Girl now. She was too big for fairies and grief.

Sissy was eight years old, and she was turning into a boy. Any day now she would grow an appendage between her legs like a third arm. This is what she told Fanny. Any day now she wouldn’t have to sit down to pee.

Sissy was too big for fairies and grief, but she wasn’t too big for magic.

Down in the big kitchen Sissy liked to pour pepper into her palm and hold the hand out to Fanny. “Sniff it,” she’d say.

“No, Sissy, I don’t want to.”

“Sniff it.”

She always did. Later, when she was snuffling and blowing her nose into a clean starched handkerchief, Martha would shake her head and cluck her tongue.

Once, when they were alone together in the kitchen, Sissy pointed to the big cookstove and said, “I’ll bet you can’t do a cartwheel from the stove to the table.” It was a big thick farmhouse table with a marble slab top. Fanny almost made it, catching her forehead on a corner of the marble slab and opening a long gash that bled terribly while Sissy applied a makeshift tourniquet made out of a flour sack towel. Another time they decided to make a swimming pool out of an old iron washtub they found in one corner of the garden. They filled it with water and then made a diving board out of a cinder block and a pine board perched against the edge of the tub.

“You first,” Sissy said, pushing Fanny out along the board.

It teetered and dropped into the water, throwing Fanny forward so that she caught her knee on the edge of the iron tub, splitting the skin down to the bone.

They built a fort under Papa’s bed, rolling around on the dusty floor, careful not to disturb the four legs standing in their little lids of kerosene, set out to discourage the bedbugs. It was dark under the massive bed, and Sissy lit a series of matches so they could see. Papa’s dusty bottles of moonshine gleamed in the darkness against the far wall. His “snakebite medicine,” he used to tell Mother teasingly. When Fanny was bitten by a chicken snake out by the stable, Sissy carried one of the bottles down to the garden and dosed Fanny so liberally she couldn’t stand.

And when Papa sold the horses and carriage and came driving up in a gleaming new ReVere Touring Car, they “fed” Papa’s new “pet” with sand and rocks stuffed into the gas tank. Not long after that, their cousin Humphrey came visiting from Nashville, pulling up the drive in a Fleetwood Phaeton with a convertible top. He and Papa went into the library to talk, and Sissy decided the convertible top looked an awful lot like the trampoline they had seen used by the trapeze lady at the circus. So while Humphrey and Papa were inside talking business, Fanny and Sissy were jumping up and down on the landau top until their feet went through and they were stuck and pinned like flies on cheesecloth.

Later that night, when she was putting them to bed without supper, Martha said to Fanny, “Lord, child, why do you always have to do what your sister tells you to do? Why do you let her torment you so?”

But Fanny just smiled and sucked her thumb sleepily because she knew something that Martha didn’t know, something that only she and Papa knew.

Pain was part of love.

After that the family had a meeting to decide what to do about Fanny and Josephine. They drove to the house in a caravan to meet with Papa, following him into his library with solemn faces, while Fanny and Josephine crouched on the verandah outside the window, listening.

Papa needed a new wife, they told him. Those girls needed a stepmother or a governess. They were growing up wild and untamed as spring colts. They needed a firm female presence in their lives. If they continued on the same path they were on, they were sure to bring shame and disgrace to the family. Papa listened and thanked them quietly, then sent them on their way. He never said a word to Fanny and Josephine but several weeks later a new governess arrived.

She was a French woman from New Orleans; her name was Madame Arcenaux. She called Josephine and Fanny “cherie” or “ma petite,” when Papa was around, and when he wasn’t, she called them “Hey, you, girl.” If she heard Papa’s voice in the house, she would hurry them through their lessons and go downstairs to smile and lay her hand coquettishly upon Papa’s arm.

Fanny liked her well enough, but Josephine had no intention of allowing a stepmother into their lives, much less a French one. She set about figuring out a way to get rid of Madame Arcenaux.

The woman had a fear of dark enclosed spaces. Josephine overheard her telling Martha about this, complaining that the room she occupied at the top of the stairs was “dark and airless as a wardrobe,” insisting that she be moved to the back bedroom downstairs (closer to Papa’s room). A few days later, in the middle of a history reading, Josephine let it drop that Papa had had all of Mother’s things moved to the attic, where they were stored in large trunks, boxes and boxes of hats, shoes, and lovely dresses.

Fanny watched in horrified amazement as Sissy spun her lies.

“Don’t be ridiculous!” Madame Arcenaux cried. “Why would your papa put all of your mother’s things in the attic?”

“He thought the jewels would be safer there,” Josephine said.

“Jewels?” Madame Arcenaux said.

The next morning was market day. They stood at the window watching as Martha, dressed in a hat and a long coat, pushed Clara and Celia in the big pram on her way to town. Papa had left earlier to meet his lawyer.

“What are you doing?” Madame Arcenaux said querulously behind them. “Come away from that window at once and get back to your lessons.”

She waited a few minutes and then went to the window, peering down at the sidewalk where Martha had disappeared just a short time before. “Stay in your seats,” she said, hurrying out of the nursery. “I’ll be back shortly to check on your progress.”

They heard her steps along the wide hallway and they stood and followed her, Josephine leading the way and Fanny trailing behind. They peeked around the doorway, watching Madame Arcenaux as she stood in front of the attic door. She put her hand out and touched the knob hesitantly, turning it so that the door opened with a slow creak. She leaned forward and pulled the light cord, standing illuminated against the dim glow of the bulb. Still, she hesitated. They could hear her breathing. With a sharp intake of breath, she squared her shoulders and started up, clutching the railing with both hands. They heard her footsteps, loud and clumsy on the wooden steps, and then the sharp sound of her heels striking the floor overhead.

Josephine darted forward. She stood on tiptoe and pulled the cord, and the attic was plunged suddenly into darkness. She swung the door shut and locked it.

There was a sudden howling like the sound of a dog that’s been run over in the street, and then a wild clumping as Madame Arcenaux made her frantic descent. She was crying, pleading with them to open the door. Fanny began to cry.

Josephine said, “Hush. Wait.”

At the sound of her voice, Madame Arcenaux began to scream, “Open this door, you horrible child!” followed by “I’ll tell your father!” then, “I’ll strangle you with my own two hands!” and finally a string of profanity so blue and explicit as to be unintelligible to the girls.

It was at this point that Papa arrived, unlocking the attic door and swinging it open to the raging, disheveled Madame Arcenaux, and without a word, he went to his library and wrote her a final check, then called to John to bring the car to drive her to the train station.