The Help (39 page)

Mother’s eyes are big, set on Daddy. I am shocked to hear this opinion. Even more shocked that he’d voice it at this table to a politician. At home, newspapers are folded so the pictures face down, television channels are turned when the subject of race comes up. I’m suddenly so proud of my daddy, for many reasons. For a second, I swear, I see it in Mother’s eyes too, beneath her worry that Father has obliterated my future. I look at Stuart and his face registers concern, but in which way, I do not know.

The Senator has his eyes narrowed on Daddy.

“I’ll tell you something, Carlton,” the Senator says. He jiggles the ice around in his glass. “Bessie, bring me another drink, would you please.” He hands his glass to the maid. She quickly returns with a full one.

“Those were not wise words to say about our governor,” the Senator says.

“I agree one hundred percent,” Daddy says.

“But the question I’ve been asking myself lately is, are they true?”

“Stooley,”
Missus Whitworth hisses. But then just as quickly she smiles, straightens. “Now, Stooley,” she says like she’s talking to a child, “our guests here don’t want to get into all your politicking during—”

“Francine, let me speak my mind. God knows I can’t do it from nine to five, so let me speak my mind in my own home.”

Missus Whitworth’s smile does not waver, but the slightest bit of pink rises in her cheeks. She studies the white Floradora roses in the center of the table. Stuart stares at his plate with the same cold anger as before. He hasn’t looked at me since the chicken course. Everyone is quiet and then someone changes the subject to the weather.

 

 

 

WHEN SUPPER is FINALLY OVER, we’re asked to retire out on the back porch for after-dinner drinks and coffee. Stuart and I linger in the hallway. I touch his arm, but he pulls away.

“I knew he’d get drunk and start in on everything.”

“Stuart, it’s fine,” I say because I think he’s talking about his father’s politics. “We’re all having a good time.”

But Stuart is sweating and feverish-looking. “It’s Patricia this and Patricia that, all night long,” he says. “How many times can he bring her up?”

“Just forget about it, Stuart. Everything’s okay.”

He runs a hand through his hair and looks everywhere but at me. I start to get the feeling that I’m not even here to him. And then I realize what I’ve known all night. He is looking at me but he is thinking about . . .
her.
She is everywhere. In the anger in Stuart’s eyes, on Senator and Missus Whitworth’s tongues, on the wall where her picture must’ve hung.

I tell him I need to go to the bathroom.

He steers me down the hall. “Meet us out back,” he says, but does not smile. In the bathroom, I stare at my reflection, tell myself that it’s just tonight. Everything will be fine once we’re out of this house.

After the bathroom, I walk by the living room, where the Senator is pouring himself another drink. He chuckles at himself, dabs at his shirt, then looks around to see if anyone’s seen him spill. I try to tiptoe past the doorway before he spots me.

“There you are!” I hear him holler as I slip by. I back up slowly into the doorway and his face lights up. “Wassa matter, you lost?” He walks out into the hallway.

“No sir, I was just . . . going to meet everybody.”

“Come here, gal.” He puts his arm around me and the smell of bourbon burns my eyes. I see the front of his shirt is saturated with it. “You having a good time?”

“Yessir. Thank you.”

“Now, Stuart’s mama, don’t you let her scare you off. She’s just protective, is all.”

“Oh no, she’s been . . . very nice. Everything’s fine.” I glance down the hall, where I can hear their voices.

He sighs, stares off. “We’ve had a real hard year with Stuart. I guess he told you what happened.”

I nod, feeling my skin prickle.

“Oh, it was bad,” he says. “So bad.” Then suddenly he smiles. “Look a here! Look who’s coming to say hello to you.” He scoops up a tiny white dog, drapes it across his arm like a tennis towel. “Say hello, Dixie,” he croons, “say hello to Miss Eugenia.” The dog struggles, strains its head away from the reeking smell of the shirt.

The Senator looks back at me with a blank stare. I think he’s forgotten what I’m doing here.

“I was just headed to the back porch,” I say.

“Come on, come in here.” He tugs me by the elbow, steers me through a paneled door. I enter a small room with a heavy desk, a yellow light shining sickishly on the dark green walls. He pushes the door shut behind me and I immediately feel the air change, grow close and claustrophobic.

“Now, look, everybody says I talk too much when I’ve had a few but . . .” the Senator narrows his eyes at me, like we are old conspirators, “I want to tell you something.”

The dog’s given up all struggle, sedated by the smell of the shirt. I am suddenly desperate to go talk to Stuart, like every second I’m away I’m losing him. I back away.

“I think—I should go find—” I reach for the door handle, sure I’m being terribly rude, but not able to stand the air in here, the smell of liquor and cigars.

The Senator sighs, nods as I grip the handle. “Oh. You too, huh.” He leans back against the desk, looking defeated.

I start to open the door but it’s the same lost look on the Senator’s face as the one Stuart had when he showed up on my parents’ porch. I feel like I have no choice but to ask, “Me too what . . . sir?”

The Senator looks over at the picture of Missus Whitworth, huge and cold, mounted on his office wall like a warning. “I see it, is all. In your eyes.” He chuckles bitterly. “And here I was hoping you might be the one who halfway liked the old man. I mean, if you ever joined this old family.”

I look at him now, tingling from his words . . .
joined this old family.

“I don’t . . . dislike you, sir,” I say, shifting in my flats.

“I don’t mean to bury you in our troubles, but things have been pretty hard here, Eugenia. We were worried sick after all that mess last year. With the other one.” He shakes his head, looks down at the glass in his hand. “Stuart, he just up and left his apartment in Jackson, moved everything out to the camp house in Vicksburg.”

“I know he was very . . . upset,” I say, when truthfully, I know almost nothing at all.

“Dead’s more like it. Hell, I’d drive out to see him and he’d just be sitting there in front of the window, cracking pecans. Wasn’t even eating em, just pulling off the shell, tossing em in the trash. Wouldn’t talk to me or his mama for . . . for
months.
”

He crumples in on himself, this gigantic bull of a man, and I want to escape and reassure him at the same time, he looks so pathetic, but then he looks up at me with his bloodshot eyes, says, “Seems like ten minutes ago I was showing him how to load his first rifle, wring his first dove-bird. But ever since the thing with that girl, he’s . . . different. He won’t tell me anything. I just want to know, is my son alright?”

“I . . . I think he is. But honestly, I don’t . . . really know.” I look away. Inside, I’m starting to realize that I don’t know Stuart. If this damaged him so much, and he can’t even speak to me about it, then what am I to him? Just a diversion? Something sitting beside him to keep him from thinking about what’s really tearing him up inside?

I look at the Senator, try to think of something comforting, something my mother would say. But it’s just a dead silence.

“Francine would have my hide if she knew I was asking you this.”

“It’s alright, sir,” I say. “I don’t mind that you did.”

He looks exhausted by it all, tries to smile. “Thank you, darlin’. Go on and see my son. I’ll see y’all out there in a while.”

 

 

 

I ESCAPE TO THE back PORCH and stand next to Stuart. Lightning bursts in the sky, giving us a flash of the eerily brilliant gardens, then the darkness sucks it all back in. The gazebo, skeleton-like, looms at the end of the garden path. I feel nauseous from the glass of sherry I drank after supper.

The Senator comes out, looking curiously more sober, in a fresh shirt, plaid and pressed, exactly the same as the last one. Mother and Missus Whitworth stroll a few steps, pointing at some rare rose winding its neck up onto the porch. Stuart puts his hand on my shoulder. He is somehow better, but I am growing worse.

“Can we . . . ?” I point inside and Stuart follows me inside. I stop in the hallway with the secret staircase.

“There’s a lot I don’t know about you, Stuart,” I say.

He points to the wall of pictures behind me, the empty space included. “Well, here it all is.”

“Stuart, your daddy, he told me . . .” I try to find a way to put it.

He narrows his eyes at me. “Told you what?”

“How bad it was. How hard it was on you,” I say. “With Patricia.”

“He doesn’t know
anything
. He doesn’t know who it was or what it was about or . . .”

He leans back against the wall and crosses his arms and I see that old anger again, deep and red. He is wrapped in it.

“Stuart. You don’t have to tell me now. But sometime, we’re going to have to talk about this.” I’m surprised by how confident I sound, when I certainly don’t feel it.

He looks me deep in the eyes, shrugs. “She slept with someone else. There.”

“Someone . . . you know?”

“No one knew him. He was one of those leeches, hanging around the school, cornering the teachers to do something about the integration laws. Well, she did something alright.”

“You mean . . . he was an activist? With the civil rights . . . ?”

“That’s it. Now you know.”

“Was he . . . colored?” I gulp at the thought of the consequences, because even to me, that would be horrific, disastrous.

“
No
, he wasn’t colored. He was scum. Some Yankee from New York, the kind you see on the T.V. with the long hair and the peace signs.”

I am searching my head for the right question to ask but I can’t think of anything.

“You know the really crazy part, Skeeter? I could’ve gotten over it. I could’ve forgiven her. She asked me to, told me how sorry she was. But I knew, if it ever got out who he was, that Senator Whitworth’s daughter-in-law got in bed with a Yankee goddamn activist, it would ruin him. Kill his career like that.” He snaps his fingers with a crack.

“But your father, at the table. He said he thought Ross Barnett was wrong.”

“You know that’s not the way it works. It doesn’t matter what he believes. It’s what Mississippi believes. He’s running for the U.S. Senate this fall and I’m unfortunate enough to know that.”

“So you broke up with her because of your father?”

“No, I broke up with her because she cheated.” He looks down at his hands and I can see the shame eating away at him. “But I didn’t take her back because of . . . my father.”

“Stuart, are you . . . still in love with her?” I ask, and I try to smile as if it’s nothing, just a question, even though I feel all my blood rushing to my feet. I feel like I will faint asking this.

His body slumps some, against the gold-patterned wallpaper. His voice softens.

“You’d never do that. Lie that way. Not to me, not to anybody.”

He has no idea how many people I’m lying to. But it’s not the point. “Answer me, Stuart. Are you?”

He rubs his temples, stretching his hand across his eyes. Hiding his eyes is what I’m thinking.

“I think we ought to quit for a while,” he whispers.

I reach over to him out of reflex, but he backs away. “I need some time, Skeeter. Space, I guess. I need to go to work and drill oil and . . . get my head straight awhile.”

I feel my mouth slide open. Out on the porch, I hear the soft calls of our parents. It is time to leave.

I walk behind Stuart to the front of the house. The Whitworths stop in the spiraling foyer while we three Phelans head out the door. In a cottony coma I listen as everyone pledges to do it again, out at the Phelans next time. I tell them all goodbye, thank you, my own voice sounding strange to me. Stuart waves from the steps and smiles at me so our parents can’t tell that anything has changed.

chapter 21

W
E STAND in the relaxing room, Mother and Daddy and I, staring at the silver box in the window. It is the size of a truck engine, nosed in knobs, shiny with chrome, gleaming with modern-day hope.
Fedders
, it reads.

“Who are these Fedders anyway?” Mother asks. “Where are their people from?”

“Go on and turn the crank, Charlotte.”

“Oh I can’t. It’s too tacky.”

“Jesus, Mama, Doctor Neal said you need it. Now stand back.” My parents glare at me. They do not know Stuart broke up with me after the Whitworth supper. Or the relief I long for from this machine. That every minute I feel so hot, so goddamn singed and hurt, I think I might catch on fire.

I flip the knob to “1.” Overhead, the chandelier bulbs dim. The whir climbs slowly like it’s working its way up a hill. I watch a few tendrils of Mother’s hair lift gently into the air.

“Oh . . .
my
,” Mother says and closes her eyes. She’s been so tired lately and her ulcers are getting worse. Doctor Neal said keeping the house cool would at least make her more comfortable.

“It’s not even on full blast,” I say and I turn it up a notch, to “2.” The air blows a little harder, grows colder, and we all three smile, our sweat evaporating from our foreheads.

“Well, heck, let’s just go all the way,” Daddy says, and turns it up to “3,” which is the highest, coldest, most wonderful setting of all, and Mother giggles. We stand with our mouths open like we could eat it. The lights brighten again, the whir grows louder, our smiles lift higher, and then it all stops dead. Dark.

“What . . . happened?” Mama says.