Chapter 14 #3
“You mean do I have a bootlegger?” Mrs. Tartt asked and smiled sly in a way I hadn’t seen before, dimples deepening.
She dealt the cards. “No, when Henry heard the Volstead was about to pass in ’19, he went straight to Kentucky and brought back a hundred cases of bonded bourbon.
Filled up half a train car. We had enough liquor in that cellar for a tribe of Indians and the entire Irish Army too.
” My glass was already empty and she poured me and herself another.
I drank it like I would a glass of anything on a hot August evening; that is, quickly.
This time a strangely cool warmth spread across my cheeks.
“How did y’all meet?” I asked as we played the round.
“Me and Henry? It’s been a while since somebody asked me that.” She sat up a little straighter. I drank while she told her story.
“When I was seventeen, I rode my mare, Easter Lily, up to the Old White to meet my sister for tea out on the front porch. I’m sure you know it, it’s the hotel in West Virginia?
My family used to spend June and July there to get out of the Memphis heat and take the waters.
Anyway, when we were ready to go back to our cottage, I stood up and whistled between my two fingers, and Easter Lily walked right up the front steps of the porch, over to my table.
I’d been working on that whistle trick for months to beat my sister at something.
She was beautiful and had all the men’s heads turning that summer.
Well, Henry walked over to our table and said to me, not her, ‘You, young lady, are going to teach me how you did that.’ My mother had a fit.
” Mrs. Tartt giggled and turned pinker in the cheeks.
“She didn’t approve of how me and Henry’d go riding just the two of us without an escort.
He was twenty-three and liked to play poker with the colored waiters because they played ‘hot,’ he called it, and I hadn’t even made my debut yet. ”
She took a deep breath and smiled on the exhale; the story was out of her.
For what seemed like the first time, her shoulders weren’t up to her ears around me.
I could just see her horse clopping up on that porch, and Lord knows I of all people understood the thrill of beating the beautiful sister at something.
I wondered if she’d picked that up about me and Frances.
She poured us both more bourbon and excused herself to the powder room.
The Silvertone radio, tall and wooden in the shape of a tombstone, had turned to news—bad news: Cotton prices were down to eight cents from three times that a few years ago.
While I sipped, I studied the backyard out the window.
The sunset sprawled gold through the high grass, tall as my shins now.
Rory had not “taken care of it,” as Frances had promised.
Truth was, it was lush and green and a heart-shaped vine had snuck over the porch rail, but it was also a little disturbing, now that I thought about it.
I took another sip. As a Delta girl, I understood there were people who cut their grass and people who didn’t cut their grass, and these Tartts were people who cut their dang grass.
When I’d offered to do it, Frances had forbidden me to, lest it make “Rory feel bad for not doing it,” which was exactly the kind of logic that put me in fits and usually led me to writing the newspaper editor, asking, Why are you even running a newspaper?
“Your turn, dear,” Mrs. Tartt said.
“Sorry.” Something about this liquor really made you think.
After we played a few minutes, she asked, “How did working at the Orphan suit you? Frances said you finished doing their books?”
“It suited me,” I said. “It really did. There was a girl there that I liked very much who got adopted. Garnett didn’t want me to come to the adoption day, said it’d be too crowded.
” I doubted that was Garnett’s real reason; I suspected it was because I’d had the gall to disagree with her about the work program, probably the first one to do so in years.
That alone made me want to go back and do more of it.
I felt a little dizzy from that last sip.
“I heard things are run differently nowadays,” Mrs. Tartt said.
“My friend Mary Pepper, she was chairlady of the Orphan for four years straight, when out of the blue Garnett announces she’s running against her and she even campaigned for it, which was …
” She frowned, so I knew this was not done.
“Before that, Garnett’d only been volunteering a few days a week. ”
“When was it again? That Garnett got elected?”
“Oh, about a year and a half ago, a month after Christmas before last.” Something about this caught my ear, and I realized that must have been just after Meg had gotten there. I took a sip larger than I’d meant to and coughed, set it down.
“After all those years of service, poor Mary Pepper lost. She so loved looking after those girls.” Mrs. Tartt dabbed a napkin at a drop of bourbon that’d run down my glass and onto the table. “Pardon me for saying so, Birdie, but I personally could do without Garnett Pittman.”
“No kidding.” I’d figured she liked her same as everybody.
“Now, I don’t gossip, but Garnett Pittman’s a Baptist hypocrite. You probably didn’t know that, did you?”
“Not the Baptist part,” I said.
She set her cards facedown. “She grew up a Baptist Dipper down in Carroll County, saying coloreds shouldn’t learn to read and women shouldn’t get the vote.
I’m twenty years older than Garnett, and I remember when we got the vote.
I didn’t make a spectacle of myself, but I make sure to vote every year.
I was also first in my class of ’91 to show my ankles after six o’clock in the evening. ”
I smiled at that. My glass wasn’t empty but Mrs. Tartt was already pouring me and herself another—my third? Fourth?
“What do you reckon Garnett’s … after?”
“I believe I read in the paper she’s vying to be president of the Anti-Vice League for the entire state. That’s a big deal, though I can’t really say what she’d do with it if she did get elected. Honestly, she’s always had a little too much religion for me.”
“So if she’s Baptist, how’d the Methodists get so lucky to have her?” I knew she went to the same church as the Tartts.
“Garnett only married into the Methodist church through Dr. Pittman. He’s older than she is by a few years …
” She counted on her fingers. “Let’s see, if I’m sixty-one, Dr. Pittman’s about forty-five, so Garnett’s not but forty.
She had her looks when she married him twenty years ago, but.
” She ended the thought there. “Now Dr. Welty Pittman I like. He’s a good man.
When he’s not at the hospital, he gives free inoculations out in the county and keeps office hours in back of their house and never will charge anybody looks the least bit poor.
Lot of folks don’t know that, but of course Henry did.
He knew everything about everybody on account of the bank. ”
The sofa had started to rock a little like a boat. Mrs. Tartt didn’t seem to mind it, though. She picked her cards back up. “Don’t mention what I said about Garnett to Frances? I think Frances sort of follows her.”
I laughed at that. “Sort of? My sister’s been a royal ass-kisser since she was—” I stopped. This bourbon was like a truth serum. And had I just said ass to Mrs. Tartt?
“I’m sure Frances is just trying to find her way. The high society around town can get right tricky.” She played a card and then looked me over. “I declare, Birdie, you really aren’t a thing like your sister, are you?”
“No, I am not.” It came out sounding sort of blue when I said that. I blinked down at my bare feet and they looked huge to me. I suddenly had a very hearty case of the hiccups.
“Well, you know that sister of mine who was so pretty?” she asked, and I nodded. Mrs. Tartt raised her chin and smiled slightly. “She ended up marrying poor.”
I chuckled. So she did know there was a thing between me and Frances.
On the radio was a discussion of Roosevelt’s most recent fireside chat, which I’d missed.
A man read the president’s words in a low, steady voice: “We are not going through another winter like the last. I doubt if ever any people so bravely and cheerfully endured a season half so bitter.” I knew Mama and Meemaw had probably listened closely when the president spoke, Mama kneading her apron with worry, Meemaw shaking her head.
When I looked down again, Mrs. Tartt had trumped me hard.
“Maybe we’ll stop here,” she said. “Frances and Rory ought to be coming home pretty soon to open the presents.”
“Do we know—” I hiccupped again. “What he got her?”
“I’m sure it’s something nice. Rory didn’t tell me.”
I leaned in and there were two of her now. “Mrs. Tartt, are you and Rory doing alright?”
She glanced down at the cards, trying to decide, I guess, if she should answer that. “Not especially, no,” she finally said.
“I’m sorry. Did something happen?” I had a few suspicions. Such as, maybe she hadn’t wanted him to marry Frances and that’d driven a wedge between them.
“It’s …” She let out a breath. “Somewhat complicated.” I could tell she wanted to tell me, but I didn’t push her.
“Seven or eight years ago, Henry wanted Rory to go down to New Orleans to … take care of something. This was before Rory went off to college. Rory didn’t want to go, but Henry, he was dead set on it, and when Henry made his mind up about something, that was it.
I had to stand by Henry on it, he was my husband.
Anyway, Rory’s still upset I took Henry’s side, even after all these years. ”
“Upset about going to New Orleans?” Had I missed something?