Chapter 9
“What a … warm-looking room.”
That was what I’d said last night when Frances showed me where I’d be sleeping.
It looked like a veritable torture chamber to me.
The bed had a canopy roof over it and was surrounded by heavy velvet curtains on all sides and everything was yellow: the walls, the carpet, the bedding, the drapes—it would be like trying to sleep inside the sun.
Sure enough, I woke up at dawn just as I’d feared: hot and buttered in the sheets.
Beside the bed, a gold-braided rope hung down the wall, which, Frances had said, “rang for the maid in the kitchen,” in response to which I’d jokingly asked if rich folks were really that lazy, whereupon she’d explained that there was a difference between rich and lazy.
Something about the “obligation to let others do for you as they’d been hired to do.
” She’d said it like a Bible verse. She looked a little deflated when she’d said the Tartts didn’t really use the ropes anymore.
In the bedroom-sized bathroom, I washed my face and put the blue dress from last night back on, mostly unwrinkled.
When I came out, I noticed there was a breeze coming in from under a door next to the bathroom and it wasn’t Frances’s or Mrs. Tartt’s bedroom.
I opened it and glory hallelujah. It was a sleeping porch on the corner of the house.
It had two walls of floor-to-ceiling screens with a pair of iron cots and that promising breeze.
It was dusty, it looked like it hadn’t been used in years.
I whispered, “I will be seeing you tonight, lover.” And I closed it back.
As I walked past their still-shut bedroom doors, I noticed a door at the end of the hall near the grand staircase, with a large brass lock drilled into it. It locked from the inside. Going down the stairs, I wondered, Who would you lock out of your room in your own house?
The maids weren’t in yet, so I found a can of Community Coffee in the kitchen cabinet and a silver percolator on top of the stove.
The stove was a huge black beast made by an outfit called Duparquet, Huot maybe the yardman Rory’d fired was supposed to be milking her.
There was a stool and bucket so I sat down to do it.
It took a minute for her milk to drop, so I laid my cheek on her flank and rubbed her belly until she sighed and let it down.
If they’d let her graze, she could probably knock that tall backyard grass out in a day.
I was whisking eggs and cream together in a bowl when I heard the screen door whine. “She don’t even say please—”
“Morning,” I said. Picador and Polly both stopped their conversation and nodded. “Mawning.” They were in plain white uniforms, no hats today.
“I made coffee,” I said. “Help yourself. And I milked the cow. I set it in the cupboard to cool.”
Polly looked over at the stove like this made her a little nervous. “Go on and siddown in the dining room, ma’am, we bring you breakfast in there.”
The thought of sitting at that long table alone. “I’ll fix it, I don’t mind.”
Little Picador smiled at me, sort of. It had a dab of frost on it, hovering around thirty-two degrees.
While they set their bags down and washed their hands, I struck a match on the back of the stove and melted butter in a pan. Before it browned, I poured in the eggs I’d very lightly whisked and raked the pan with a fork. Close behind me, I heard Picador whisper something.
“Picador, give her some room,” Polly said.
When the egg was slightly firm, I banged the pan twice on the stovetop, sprinkled in the chopped cheese I’d found in wax paper and some chives and a tomato I’d picked from the garden; then I closed the omelet in thirds like folding a shirt and turned it onto a plate.
I leaned against the counter and took a bite. “Should’ve used more cream,” I said.
Picador eyed me and my egg pan from a distance. “If you don’t mine my asking, who teach you to cook, ma’am? Your mama or your maid?” The question was a slow, carefully measured recipe.
“My daddy taught me egg making, he learned it in the war. Me and Frances didn’t have help growing up.”
Picador looked over at Polly, one eyebrow up like she’d won a bet.
Polly covered her smile with the back of her hand.
I heard Frances’s voice in the dining room and I set my plate in the sink and grabbed my coffee but before I made it to the swinging door, Polly handed me a china cup and smiled and took the tin one away.
“You using the help’s cup,” she whispered.
“Watch out or your sister gone get on you.”
Frances and Rory were sitting at the dining room table, set for breakfast last night. Rory sat at the head with Frances sort of hanging over him, on his left, like a houseplant.
“Then how about we spend a few nights in Jackson?” Frances was saying. “We could stay at the Robert E. Lee, where you usually stay—”
“Morning, Birdie,” Rory said. He looked very happy to see me. Or maybe he was very happy Frances had to stop talking a second.
“Morning, Bird,” Frances said. Her hair was in perfect beige finger waves, she had ruby lipstick on, but she was still in a long pink bathrobe with a ruffle at the neck.
I sat down beside her. “We’re talking about my birthday.
Can you believe I’ll be twenty-two in three weeks?
Practically an old lady,” she said. Then she patted my arm. “Sorry.”
Rory had on a tight blue tie today that made his face look very round. Circles ringed his eyes like he’d hardly slept, and even with his boyish face, I could see he was a few years older than Frances.
Picador came through the swinging door. “You didn’t eat no supper last night,” she said, pouring Rory coffee. They were almost eye level, she was so small.
“I promise to eat my breakfast, Pic,” Rory said.
“Picador,” Frances said loudly. “I’d like some cream.” When Picador went in the kitchen, Frances said, “Every day I have to ask for it.” She turned back to Rory. “Anyway, Garnett said there’s this restaurant in Jackson called Rotisserie and they serve filet mignon—”
“I have to go to Jackson so much already, dear,” Rory said. “Can’t we just go to dinner somewhere in town?”
But Frances was locked and loaded: “Then what about Memphis? The train only takes a couple hours. We could stay at the Peabody, I saw it in a magazine—they have these ducks that swim around in a fountain in the lobby.”
Rory smiled at me, the company, and lower, he said, “I told you, Frances, I don’t want us taking expensive trips right now, it looks bad. We ought to be careful ourselves, these are unpredictable times.”
“But. I want us to go somewhere.” Frances dropped her hands in her lap. “Just the two of us.”
Easing back from her, I saw that same look Rory’d had last night: I want to get out of here.
But he said, “What if—what if we went down to the Delta for your birthday? I could see the plantation you grew up on and where all your ancestors are from.” He looked at me.
“What do you think, Birdie? Don’t you think your mother and grandmother would like that? ”