Chapter 14 #4
“It doesn’t matter. It’s all over now.” She clasped her hands together and smiled, the proper lady again. “I’m just so happy he and Frances got married, though I wish Henry’d been here to see it. And one of these days, I hope to have myself some grandchildren running around this big house.”
I wasn’t sure if that story was actually confusing or if I was too drunk to understand simple plotlines because my head was starting to feel unattached to my neck.
I was dizzy, yet Mrs. Tartt seemed fine.
It made positively no sense at all. And when I looked around the lovely salmon-colored room—had that fern in the fireplace gotten greener?
—something was occurring to me, something important, possibly scientifically worthyable.
This house with help in the kitchen and a Chippensomething dining room set—
“Mrs. Tartt.” I pleaded it. “There’s something you need to know about us.”
“Oh my, what is it, dear?”
Her powdered face was so free of wrinkles, her sapphire earrings so big.
We were paupers compared to these people, how could they ever love us?
I was trying to form the words in my mouth to let her know that I had come here to ask for money, we were broke, we were nothing like Frances had made us sound.
What I came up with was, “We don’t have any coconuts down in our cellar.
Mrs. Tartt, we don’t even have a cellar. ”
She turned her head funny at me. “Did you eat supper, Birdie?”
I thought about it a second. “I don’t believe I did.”
She patted my arm. Car lights shone briefly through a side window. “You might’ve had enough bourbon for one evening, dear.”
I looked her deep in the eyes. “But why haven’t you?”
“I built up a tolerance to it a long time ago. Henry made sure.” She gathered the lady-in-the-moon cards. “He always served whiskey at bridge club to give us the edge.”
My stomach had started to ache when, a few minutes later, we heard the back door open.
Mrs. Tartt said, “See can you stall them a minute and I’ll go light the candles for the surprise.
” I weaved out into the grand hall where Frances was taking off her gloves, red lipped and beautiful in her slim white dress.
She was glowing, excited to open her presents.
My sister loved presents. Behind her, Rory in his blue suit and red tie had an odd smile locked on tight. The hall spun around me.
“Hello, Franny.” I hugged her, leaning hard on her shoulder. “Happy. Thanksgiving.” My stomach roiled around like there was an animal trapped in there.
“Birdie, what’s—are you drunk?” Frances said, pushing me away, but I held on to her long neck.
“No, I’m not drunk,” I said. What a rude word.
“I am inebriated.” I unhooked myself from her neck and rushed up the hall into the gold bathroom under the stairs, slamming the door, locking it.
It all came out, but at least I hit the pot.
I laid my face on the cool tile floor and could hear Frances knocking and asking was I all right.
And someone who sounded like me hollered back that I was “fine … Just open your presents … I’ll be sleeping in the water closet tonight. ”
Much, much later, I opened my eyes to find myself curled against the white toilet stool.
A ringing sound had woken me up. Was that the telephone?
This late? Or had I dreamed that? I peeled my face off the tile floor and stood up, catching a hand on the sink.
The grand hall was very dark except for a faint light left on in the dining room.
I weaved my way in and saw that the coconut cake was under a glass cover but a fat white quarter of it was gone, only crumbs and forks left on the plates, so it must’ve turned out pretty good.
Frances’s presents were sitting beside the cake.
Two boxes, open, a tendril of blue ribbon hanging down.
In one was the costume brooch Mrs. Tartt had chosen from her own collection.
In the other box was a card. I lifted it out and squinted to read it.
Rory’d given his wife a year’s subscription to Good Housekeeping magazine.
The next morning, I lifted my head off my cot on the sleeping porch and—Oh my God, what is that? Then I remembered. Or sort of. It felt like Mrs. Tartt had hit me over the head with her bottle of Old Taylor.
Everyone, including Frances, thank goodness, was still asleep.
She was bound to be upset with me for last night.
I put a dress on and slipped down the back staircase and out the door to the side yard.
The wet morning grass soothed my burning headache.
Fearing I might throw up again, this time in Mrs. Tartt’s Champney pink roses, I sank down on the milking stool and leaned my cheek against the hide of the cow.
“I drank something,” I told her. “I drank a lot of it.” The cow said nothing.
She understood me. The most I could remember was a horse on a porch, Rory and Mr. Tartt disagreeing about something, and the dismal fact that we had no fresh coconuts in our cellar.
Sure enough, when I went back upstairs, Mrs. Tartt was in the hall. She whispered, with an excited grin, “I do believe we’re in some trouble, Birdie,” glancing over at Frances’s door.
It was cracked open now and I peeked in to see Frances at her dressing table. She was thrashing a brush through her shiny light brown hair. She subscribed to the belief that if you beat it like okra, it would make it grow thicker. Let’s get this over with.
“How’d the birthday supper go?” I asked, shutting the door behind me.
“It was fine,” she said and sighed and set the brush down. “We had the fillet of beef with buttermilk sauce and they lit a banana dessert on fire. Then the waiters sang ‘Happy Birthday.’” She said all this flat, staring at herself in the mirror.
“That sounds nice,” I said, though a buttermilk sauce did not.
Frances picked up a handkerchief and pressed it to her eyes. “It was so humiliating, Birdie.”
“I’m sorry, Franny, I shouldn’t have drunk all that.”
“You should be sorry, and taking up with her of all people. But that’s not why …” She pressed the handkerchief harder. “After that lousy, cheap present he gave me, we came upstairs and I got all gussied up in that tawdry pink thing—but he …”
“What?”
“He couldn’t … his—you know …” Her voice was high and glassy. “I tried everything, but nothing helped—and he said it’s all the pressure he’s under at the bank, and I felt like such a fool in that ridiculous thing. When I pretended to fall asleep, he got up and slept in his room down the hall.”
Her curtains were still drawn shut, and in the damp pink light, I could feel what a lonely room this was for her.
I went to her dressing table, a pretty, pale burled maple.
When we were girls, I knew how to reassure her.
It wasn’t a very hard script: Of course ______ likes you; of course _______ thinks you’re prettier than she is.
But how to console somebody whose husband couldn’t perform his bedroom duties?
The best I could come up with was “I’m sorry for the … letdown.”
“Birdie, do you think Rory’s seeing someone else?” She started to cry. “He keeps going down to Jackson for work, maybe he’s seeing the girl he dated before me, Esther? Esther Royal?”
I perched beside her on the little vanity bench and put an arm around her.
“I don’t think Rory would do that to you, Franny.
He’s probably just worried about work, like he said.
These are awfully hard times we’re in. He loves you, Franny.
” I watched her in the mirror. “And I know it doesn’t make it better, but we love you too.
You’re doing something very kind for your family. ”
“I know,” she said. “And don’t worry, I haven’t forgotten. I’ll ask him on Sunday, after church.”
I nodded my thanks. The train to Footely only ran on Wednesdays anyway. I gave my sister a hug and went and got properly dressed to finish painting at the Orphan.
The Lafayette County Orphan Asylum Where Some Children Are Welcome was chattering with women by the time I came downstairs from painting.
My temples throbbed, I couldn’t seem to get my tongue wet.
I prayed to baby Jesus to ease my bourbon headache.
I’d finished painting the ceiling in the big girls’ room, but the real accomplishment was managing not to heave my guts up.
An underling of Garnett’s came out of the nursery, Patsy somebody and saw me skulking in the hall. “It’s too bad there’re no babies left to rock,” she said.
“I know, sometimes it’s like nobody even wants to abandon their babies anymore,” I said. Patsy frowned at me. “By the way,” I asked, keeping my voice down, “what’s the protocol here if a mama comes back to get a girl? Say, after she’s already been adopted?”
“I don’t reckon there is one. Far as I know, it’s never happened. Why do you ask?”
“Just curious,” I said. Through the back window, I could see Garnett out on the back porch talking to Mildred.
Mildred had an especially hangdog look today, her shoulders slumping forward.
Patsy said, “Don’t forget, we’re all meeting in the lounge in a minute to congratulate Garnett on her big plate award! ”