Uncertain Ground (8 page)

“Why should Emmett care about me going out with Luis?” A little tired, wanting a shower and fresh clothes, I edged away from her toward the stairs.

“He said … He said he didn’t like it because Luis is Mexican.”

I turned to face her. “Half Mexican. What difference does it make anyway?”

“None,” said Bertha. “That’s what Mowrey tried to tell him. We’ve always had a duke’s mixture here on the island … Jews, Mexicans, Irish, Scotch, Negroes, Italians, Germans.”

I waited wondering how many other nationalities she’d name.

She was sitting at the kitchen table where she’d evidently just finished looking at part of the newspaper folded in her lap. Now she picked it up and began fanning herself.

“It doesn’t matter to us, Celia, not to me, not to your Uncle Mowrey. But it does to Emmett.”

“It’s none of his business.” I was so angry I could hardly speak. “What if I tried…. What if I told Emmett he shouldn’t… he shouldn’t date certain girls?”

Bertha’s eyes widened. She slid her glasses over her nose and laid them carelessly, lens down, on the table.

“Earlene does that, doesn’t she?” She smiled as if the fight between Emmett and his mother wasn’t especially important. “I guess,” she added, “he thinks he should look after you.”

“Well he can think all he wants!” I turned my back on her knowing look. Lately I’d begun to notice there was, among the Chandler women, an unspoken custom; they told each other whatever their men thought, gave sharp attention to attitudes and ideas. And within the family, the men’s opinions were important. Were they more important than the women’s? I wasn’t sure. Often everyone knew they were absolutely contrary. Aunt Earlene didn’t care about horses—she’d seldom been on one—while Uncle Estes knew their bloodlines back sometimes for three generations. Mowrey and Bertha, though both Catholic, went to different masses and regularly canceled each other’s votes, or so Bertha said. There was no way of knowing about that. My father hunted and fished the year round while Mother, though she cooked whatever he shot or hooked, did not get near guns or tackle.

Leaving Bertha in the kitchen, I walked up the stairs sliding one hand along the banister’s dark wood as I went. One day, if Bertha had her way, there would be no stairway. She and
Mowrey were getting too old to climb it, so the stairs would come down, and they would come down with them to live on the first floor after the guest bath had been remodeled and a shower added. The top floor would become an apartment with its own exterior entrance where renters would live or a visiting family might stay. The staircase that Mowrey’s father had built, one put together with pegs, would go to Emmett for his own home—if he ever had one. Old people were always making plans like that. Grandmother Henderson wanted me have her silver goblets and her rings. A maiden aunt had already asked me if I’d take her bed. There was plenty of “This will be yours someday” kind of talk. It made me tired. I didn’t want anything of anybody’s no matter how badly they needed to leave their things to someone. I could just see myself sitting in my aunt’s spool bed with a bunch of silver goblets in my lap and all of Grandmother Henderson’s rings on my fingers. Why did one generation have to weigh the next one down so?

In the bedroom the ceiling fan was whining a lonesome song to itself. Shutters were still closed. The room was dark. One of Emmett’s sheets trailed across the floor. I picked it up and began making his bed, as I usually did, not for him, I told myself, for Aunt Bertha who already had enough to do. When the sheet was securely tucked in, I threw the shutters open. All up and down the street I could glimpse people sitting on front porches waiting for dusk and supper. I sat down on the side of my bed and began unbuttoning my shirt wondering why I’d come to Galveston. Bertha had accused me—without saying so exactly—of ignoring Emmett. And she was right. We were still kin, of course. Ever since we moved to Texas the Chandlers had claimed us. We went to see each other, spent holidays together, called each other “Cousin,” “Aunt,” “Uncle,” “Grandmother.” And here was Emmett who refused to act kin to me while to Bertha he was only acting like a protective cousin. No shame was involved as far as he thought about his reactions, which wasn’t far. And here I was within reaching distance every night, refusing to have anything to do with him even in the daytime.
I didn’t want Emmett. Nothing but shame was involved for me.

Supposedly I was protected by those open doors, by Aunt Bertha and Uncle Mowrey sleeping ten or twelve feet away. I didn’t feel protected. Now Bertha, in her strange innocence, had let me know Emmett was jealous of Luis. What a hopeless muddle! If I told her Emmett tried to kiss me when he was drunk, I’d probably be blamed for attracting him.

Late that night the screech of tires against the front curb woke me. Emmett was trying to park Bertha’s big Chrysler in front of the corner streetlight where no one was supposed to park. Kneeling at the window at the head of the bed, I tried to see him. He must have taken a long slide across the front seat to open the door. I watched him fall with one hand out-stretched to the sidewalk. Behind him the door swayed open leaving the inside light glowing. The back of his shirt was split. He looked like he’d been rolling in dirt. Holding onto the slender limb of the nearest oleander, he struggled to a sitting position. I waited expecting to hear him slam the door. He was within easy reach of it, but the door no longer existed for Emmett. His head fell forward on one arm.

I got out of bed, and without stopping to put on a robe, ran downstairs. Better to leave the porch light off, I thought, and kept going down the porch steps. Bits of oyster shell on the sidewalk scratched my feet. Afraid we’d be seen, I pushed the car door too, then gave it a final quiet shove. Bending down to Emmett, I smelled horses, whisky, and dust.

“Come inside.”

“Can’t.”

“You got this far. Come on.”

He lifted his face and I caught sight of a scratch on his cheek.

“You hurt?’

“No. … Yes.” He touched his cheek with one dirty finger as if he was making sure the scratch was still there.

“Where else?”

“All over.”

I knelt beside him. “Emmett, where have you been?”

“Riding the bucking broncos.” He tried to grin and touched his cheek again.

“Rodeoing?”

“Yeah. I got thrown.”

“Where was the rodeo?”

“Texas City … somewhere outside Texas City.”

“What are you going to do next?”

He raised his hand again as if to touch his cheek. Instead he traced the curve of my chin with the tips of his fingers. “I don’t know for sure.”

“Well, come on. We’ve got to get you in. I’ll help. Come on now before you wake up everybody.”

He seemed more tired than drunk, but I couldn’t be sure. I put one of his arms around my shoulders, slowly got him to his feet, and began directing him carefully toward the front walk. Before I could lead him there, he veered away to the little three-foot high front fence and tried to climb over it. His boot caught on the pointed arrow top of the iron railing leaving him wavering on one foot. I bet it wasn’t the first time somebody had tried to step over that little fence.

With some effort I managed to pull him loose. “Where are you going? Are you crazy? Come on, Emmett, this way.” I tugged at him, but he was too heavy.

His boot heels ground in the crushed shell as he pivoted around and stood in front of me. “Caught you.”

“No!”

He held me against him with both arms. His belt buckle scraped against my stomach. Laughing, he bent his head down.

“No!” I kicked his legs and was amazed at his sudden strength. “Let go of me. I don’t want you. I don’t want anything to do with you. You tear up everything you put your hands on, even yourself.” The crushed shell was cold and prickly underfoot, and I began to feel cold even while Emmett held onto me. He seemed to be studying me while trying to understand but at
the same time was unwilling to believe what I’d told him.

“Listen,” I tried again. “I don’t belong to you, and I don’t want to belong to you.”

He let go of me but kept one hand on my shoulder. “You don’t know what you want, Celia.” His mood shifted to drunken seriousness.

“Well who does? Leave me alone now.”

“All right.” He sat down on the porch steps.

I got inside, clicked the porch light on, then started upstairs so fast I almost collided with Aunt Bertha waddling quietly down.

“What is it this time?” She asked slowly as if she were talking in her sleep.

“Whisky … rodeos and whisky. Saddle broncs,” I added, determined to tell her everything this time. I paused for breath.

“My Lord!’ Aunt Bertha started to cross herself, dropped her hand, and settled in a heap three steps from the bottom directly behind Emmett on the porch steps outside. I climbed the stairs past her and glanced back at both of them sitting, Bertha in a faded blue cotton robe staring down at Emmett’s torn shirt and his head outlined by the bright yellow porch light where the moths had already begun flying in their futile circles.

The next morning the house was extra quiet. I didn’t know how Emmett got upstairs. Maybe Bertha helped him. More than likely he wasn’t really as helpless as he’d acted. When I went down for breakfast, he was apparently still in a sodden sleep, a pillow pulled over his head which he’d turned to the opposite wall.

Bertha made no comment about the night. Uncle Mowrey winked at me as if to say he knew something was going on and we should both keep quiet. I took the back section of the paper to read. When the mail came, there were two letters for me from Colorado. I opened Tony’s first. He spent most of a page complaining about a course, one called Civil Procedure, which he’d decided to take during the summer session since this would
bore him only six weeks rather than thirteen.

“It’s worse than trusts, which was made up of dusty volumes and ancient rules. Procedure is just more rules and how and when you do everything. It’s nothing but a set of obstacles. Right now we’re studying discovery—interrogations, depositions, stipulations, requests for admission. Sounds like a long, stupid curse, doesn’t it? For every rule there’s an exception, so all this time you’re locked in a maze with this guy droning on and wiping his glasses with his handkerchief all the time. You get so sleepy you wish he’d drop his glasses.”

Despite this I knew he’d make a good grade. Tony enjoyed griping. At the same time he knew he was competing with every other law student in his class. No matter how much he told me he hated law school he would still come out on top if he possibly could. Competition was what interested him. He didn’t say he was lonely. He barely mentioned missing me. The letter was signed “Love.” I doubted he meant it. I didn’t know why I thought so. It was only an intuition. Tony didn’t spend much time in any letter telling me how he felt about us. Maybe he didn’t know how.

The next letter from Alicia Dorman, my friend from Dallas who had stayed in Boulder for the second six weeks of summer school, was far more revealing. “Tony,” she wrote, “is seeing a lot of Judy again evidently. I’ve run into them at Tulagi’s and on campus.” Judy Wapping was an old girlfriend of Tony’s. I’d guessed that might happen. Why did my worst premonitions have to come true? I tore her letter in small pieces and put it in the garbage can behind the house, no way to treat a letter from a friend, but I couldn’t take a chance on anyone else finding out. Tony’s letter I folded and stuck in the pocket of my shorts to hide in my suitcase later. I’d write Alicia first and thank her for news I detested getting. No, I’d write Tony first, let him know I knew he and Judy. … I wrote Tony and tore up the letter. What if I didn’t like him seeing Judy! I wasn’t there.
What right had I to make such demands? None, of course.

I wrote Alicia a sensible note about the silliness of being jealous, put it in the mailbox two corners away, and turned back toward the house feeling reasonable until the image of Tony and Judy walking hand in hand across the Colorado campus outraged me again. That was all I allowed myself to imagine, and still I was so miserable and so angry I walked right past Aunt Bertha’s and Uncle Mowrey’s house dreaming of flights to Boulder.

That afternoon Aunt Bertha, who still had said nothing about Emmett’s behavior, invited Roby Chilvers over. He arrived with two girls, Jane and Leslie, and another boy, Marion.

“They all go to U T, Emmett. I’m sorry. I don’t know anyone with children at A&M.”

“That’s all right,” he said. “You might of waited a day or two though.” Bruises were showing on his face, and he was moving slowly.

I didn’t understand why he had to keep on fighting, throwing himself up against walls of every kind as if he were still about fifteen. What would I have done if I’d been Emment? I couldn’t imagine having Aunt Earlene for a mother or Uncle Estes for a father, pleasant as he was, nor did I believe Emmett’s problems were all their fault.

“I couldn’t know you’d go off and half kill yourself at the time I was arranging this for you. I guess you’ll just have to manage.” Aunt Bertha smiled at him.

He smiled back at her carefully; obviously he was trying not to move his swollen cheek.

I knew some sort of agreement had been reached. Probably Aunt Bertha wouldn’t talk to Uncle Estes and Aunt Earlene if Emmett did as she asked. He needed distraction; she’d provide it. For her silence, he would play at being agreeable.

That afternoon we went swimming with Bertha’s group. She’d wanted to send us to the country club. Roby talked her out of it. He had the amusing, easy manner of someone used to getting his way. “We can’t have you sending the whole pack of
us out there. What sort of hospitality is that! We ought to take Celia and Emmett to the old Galvez. They have a good pool.”

“And a good bar,” Jane added.

Slow talking, smiling, she seemed as easy going as Roby. Both of them had dark honey-colored blonde hair and were about the same height. They made a pair.

Bertha didn’t object much. Marion’s father, I later learned, was one of the owners of the hotel. He owned a great deal of Galveston real estate, though no one mentioned it. Marion was dark-eyed and pudgy, the reverse of Leslie who was slim and laughed a lot. They weren’t a pair in any way.