When Venus Fell (21 page)

“How so? By taking more baths?”

“You’re in show business. You know about men. If I could just get some swank goin’—you know, kinda convince the girls at school that I’m a man—”

“Letting the big dog hunt doesn’t make you a man. Any male animal can find a hen for his rooster. The tricky part is being smart enough to keep the other end in charge. That’s what makes you a man.”

“Oh, geez, ma’am, you sound like Uncle Gib.”

“Good.” I pointed to his head. “Use your brain. Be responsible. Think deep thoughts.”

“I’m not sure I want to, ma’am. The things I’ve been thinking the past year nearly make me crazy.”

“I see. About your father?”

“Yes, ma’am. I was going to go help him and Uncle Gib and Mama at the sawmill, but then I didn’t because Daddy was sort of in a bad mood, and it wasn’t like him, so I made up an excuse and didn’t go.” He paused and took a deep breath. “If I’d gone I would’ve saved him. And Uncle Gib’s hand, too.”

Sweet Mary
. “Halt,” I said. We stopped. “Sit.” I pointed to a fallen tree. He sat down. I paced, my hands clenched behind my back. “When my father died I thought I could have done something different that would have saved his life. But you know what? We
always
think of what we might have done if circumstances had been different. That’s life.”

“No disrespect, ma’am, but I would have … I would have made a difference at the sawmill. I just know I would have. I would’ve jumped right in ahead of Mama and hit the button to turn off the sawblade. I’m fast. I run track. I move a lot faster than my mama can move. But I was ill-tempered and didn’t go to the sawmill that day. I wasn’t responsible enough. I wasn’t a man.”

“So you think having sex with me would make you a man?”

He leaped up. “Ma’am, I’m not even going to look at you again, much less dare have sex with you!”

“Well, calm down, because I wasn’t offering. I’m saying you can’t blame yourself for what happened to your father. And you don’t become a man by marching around like a military clone, or by proving you can maneuver your sex organ toward the nearest female.”

His face was bright red and getting redder every second. “I won’t be caught off-guard again, ma’am. I run track, I lift
weights, I practice the martial arts. I won’t be weak again, ma’am.”

“Look, my grandmother was descended from a samurai family. I’ve read a lot about the samurai, because of that. And you know what? The toughest sonuvadog samurai warrior was also the gentlest artist, the best poet, the most sensitive musician. Because it was said that a man had to appreciate beauty in order to know what he was fighting to protect.”

“That’s sort of what our sign says by the front doors of the Hall, ma’am!”

“Well, families of good philosophical taste like the same mottoes. Or something.” I rubbed my forehead. “March on, Marine.”

His expression fell. He plodded forward. When we reached the front lawn of the Hall we halted. Jasper looked as if he’d drop through a hole in the earth if he could.

“You’re pardoned, Marine,” I announced. “Apology accepted.”

He stared at me with his thick brown brows arched like caterpillars. “Ma’am?”

“At ease. Behave yourself, and your trespassing today is our secret. Okay?”

“Venus, ma’am, thank you. My aunt Ruth says you look like the kind of woman who hangs out in alleys and rolls college students. But she’s wrong.”

“Scram, mister. You’re losing points.”

“Thank you, ma’am,” he said again with elaborate dignity. Then he bounded into the house through a side door.

“Mozart never had these problems,” I muttered under my breath.

A dinner party in our honor was planned for that night. I dreaded it. Being feted by Camerons felt suspiciously like being served up as the main dish at a barbecue.

By the time Ella walked into our bedroom that evening I
was pulling on a pair of white silk trousers. “I hope Carter isn’t right behind you,” I said. “Undressed women seem to be the primary entertainment around here.” I had the trousers half up my thighs, and had not yet donned the matching blouse. My breasts bulged over the top of a white bra. When Ella said nothing I went on. “Of course, I expect he’s seen more than a few women in their undies. And out of their undies. I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s taken a peek at your undies already.”

She busied herself at a suitcase, and jerked a brush from her cosmetic bag. She stroked her hair so hard, wisps of it fanned upward in static-electrified blond filaments. “He taught me how to drive his buffalo today.”

“I just bet he did. How’d your hair get so tangled?”

“Let’s change the subject.” She began pulling her jeans and blouse off and throwing them ferociously into a corner. I stopped pulling my trousers up, my fingers still wound in the waistband.

“What’s
that
supposed to mean? Throwing clothes. What?”

She sighed. “Nothing, Sis. I don’t want to talk about Carter right now. I need to change for the party. Did you talk to Min about tonight? Do you think she expects us to perform? She’s really forgetful—you can see it in her eyes, she’s in some other world half the time. Carter and I watched her endlessly rearrange some flowers in a vase—he says she’s spent most of the past year in bed or just sitting around her bedroom—”

“Listen to me. I’ve had a helluva bad day. But even so, I’ve never let strangers take advantage of us. Don’t you trust me anymore?”

“What in the world?” She gaped at me. “What provoked you to say something silly like
that?”

“Nothing. Never mind.”

“You think you always know what’s best for me,” she said testily.

“We’re getting out of here at the end of two weeks and we’re not coming back again. I’ve been on the phone. I’ve got serious leads on studio work in Nashville.” Before we left Chicago I’d sent out a dozen copies of our standard studio-audition tape, but I didn’t mention that. “I’ve been concentrating on our business. You haven’t. I only agreed to come here to collect our money and try out the Nashville job market.”

“You hate studio work. You always say it’s boring.”

“We could stand a little boredom and security! We’re not going to live off our inheritance. I’m going to invest it for the future.”

“Because you don’t trust me to handle our money, you mean. Because I’m not dependable. You’ve never relaxed since my, my
illness
in Detroit—”

“Please don’t start that. Don’t change the subject. I’m telling you not to fall in love with this place or this family or Carter, because it’s all just temporary. It’s a fantasy. We’ll collect our money and we’ll leave.”

“What’s wrong with you? Why are you raising your voice at me? I haven’t done anything.”

“Well, good, keep it that way.
Don’t
do anything.”

“Fine.” Her mouth set, she threw a pale gray shift with a faux-pearl collar over one arm. “I thought I’d wear this dress tonight.”

“It’s too sexy for a dinner party. Tone it down.”

She looked me straight in the eye. “It is
not
too sexy. It is
perfectly
appropriate and you know it. You just don’t want me to attract attention. I think you’d like for me to become a nun. But I like being treated well, I like being sexy, I like Carter, and
I like being here.”
She strode into the bathroom and slammed the door.

I paced, thinking furiously. Forget the Nashville job market. In the morning I would make some phone calls to booking agents I knew out west.

I had to get Ella far away from these people.

“Them’s the Nellies,” Ebb whispered to her lookalike younger sister that night.

Flo whispered back loudly, “I see ’em. I got eyes.”

“Hello,” Ella said, smiling. “Carter told me this place wouldn’t be the same without you two and your mother.”

Flo gaped at her. “I heard right,” Flo said. “You’re a real lady.” She and Ebb set silver hors d’oeuvre trays on a massive buffet beside the bar of the music room then headed out the doors as hurriedly as they had come, darting glances at us. “Don’t that hair hurt your head?” Flo called to me. “All them braids wound up in a knot like that?”

“I have a tough scalp,” I replied.

Flo guffawed. “I heard you got a hard head.”

Twenty-five guests had been invited to the party in our honor that night. Olivia arrived as if at the head of her own royal procession, trailed by Kelly and Jasper, and balanced on Bea’s arm. She proceeded, barefoot, toward the piano. She was dressed in an apple-red skirt and pink blouse with a huge antique cameo brooch at the throat. Her hair dangled around her in gray curlicues. Bea, who was dressed to the nines in a yellow satin dress with an overjacket outlined in yellow beaded
flowers, helped her sit in the armchair beside the piano. Bea sat in a straight chair next to hers.

Hoss and Sophia Cameron arrived, greeted us exuberantly, and stood near us with their drinks—a martini for him, a rum and Coke for her. The room filled with people over the next half hour. Ella and I were formally introduced to a dizzying array, not close to a full house by Cameron Hall standards, but pound for pound an expensively coiffed and well-heeled crew of family and old friends.

Carter wasn’t anywhere to be seen, thank God. I sat at the piano, improvising jazz riffs from segments of old tunes. I felt safely barricaded. Ella shifted uneasily on a delicate wooden chair beside the piano bench. I noticed her glancing at the doors every time someone new arrived, then the spark in her eyes fading when it wasn’t Carter. She knew better than to ask about his whereabouts while I was listening.

A man who’d been talking to Gib suddenly headed our way. He had the clean-cut, no-frills decorum of a solid suburban businessman in gray pinstripes, his gut a little thick but his attitude muscular, his chin just beginning to go soft. A carefully clipped mane of pepper-gray hair framed dark blue eyes and weathered skin.

I’d already noticed him because he watched Min somberly and with a certain wistfulness when she didn’t realize he was looking. “Ms. Arinelli,” the man said to me in an educated magnolia-and-bourbon accent, “what I know about music wouldn’t fill a termite’s pocketbook, but when I listened to the record of you playing some classical piece—I can’t even remember its name—but when I heard you on the record you made—well, I could understand a little twelve-year-old girl learning that kind of technical skill but not that kind of emotional passion. You played your heart out.”

Who in the world was this man who knew I’d been a soloist on an obscure album of young musicians? The album had been produced by a small company that specialized in classical music, and only five or ten thousand copies were
made. Pop proudly bought a thousand of them to give away to friends and customers at the nightclub.

“What’s your point?” I asked sharply.

“Vee, this gentleman is offering you a compliment,” Ella said anxiously, twisting her earrings as if dialing for satellite signals to pinpoint danger. “How … how do you know such an obscure detail about us, sir?”

His eyes widened. “Min, introduce me before these young ladies decide I’m sinister,” he said quickly as Min came to the piano.

“Oh, he’s as harmless as can be,” she said to us, and I watched him deflate a little. Her one comment turned a daring senior wolf into a toothless, aging poodle. “Venus, Ella, this is an old family friend from Knoxville. Bo Burton.”

“Reginald Aster Burton,” he corrected, recovering enough charm to grin and bow gallantly. “But going by
Reginald
got my behind kicked in reform school, and when I was serving in Korea my sergeant said
Aster
reminded him of a daisy. He didn’t put it quite that way but I got his point. So I’m Bo. Old Bo to the whippersnappers”—he said that with a jaunty tone and amused eyes—“at the field offices. B-e-a-u Bo to the ladies who are intent on romancing me.” He flashed the quickest hopeful glance at Min, who never noticed. I realized she’d made a point of standing a full yard away from him. “But enough about me. It’s a joy to meet you both. I’ve got a pair of daughters not many years younger than you two. They call me Bo Daddy.”

“He’s a talker,” Min said dryly.

“I’m in charge of the state forestry commission. Of course I’m a talker. I have to talk about trees all the time. That takes a gift for gab.” He laughed. “Minnie, you think I’m more fun than a pine beetle and twice as nice as a wood borer. I know you do, deep down.”

“You make my leaves itch,” she teased gently. Then she stiffened as if humor were a betrayal, and she filtered into the people around us. He tracked her departure with a slight
frown until someone called him away. He nodded to us, smiled, and left.

“Widower,” Sophia whispered in our ears. “He and his wife visited here for many years. Their daughters, too. Now he’s all alone and so is Minnie. He is a handsome man, a good man, and only fifty! So many years of strong
hmmm hmmm hmmm
left in him yet! But does she see him that way? No! Some other woman will take him before she notices! A shame!”

“How does he know so much about me?” I asked.

Bea jumped into the conversation. “Dear Gib is a thorough boy, and he found a copy of the recording you made as a wee girl, and we’ve been listening to it for months. Aye, and here.” She handed me a note. I glanced at Olivia, whose shrewd eyes flashed as she inclined her head in acknowledgment. I read:
Don’t worry so much. Play
.

I looked at her, and at Ella, but I was still gauging the danger involved, and she was, too. I began a song but halted as we heard the loud tapping of silver on crystal. Isabel was drumming a spoon against a wineglass. When silence reigned she gestured to Gib. He moved to the center of the room. “Aunt Olivia asked me to welcome all of you to the Hall.” Gib, resplendent in a light shirt and leather suspenders, moved aside with a slight gesture of his hand toward Olivia, who nodded regally. Then Gib motioned to Min. Her back straight, her head up, she looked at the guests with tears slipping down her cheeks.

In her hands she held a small brass bell. “It’s so good to see all of you again,” she said. “I … don’t remember a lot of our conversations from last year, but I know most of you were here to share our grief over my husband and to offer all the help you could to us, and to Gib, while he was in the hospital. I’m proud you came back to share tonight with us.”