Chapter 20 #2
And of all the books, what else do I see on their shelf? The last book I burned at the cotton-field house, that Ulysses. I say, Well I don’t prefer that one. Part I read, that man picks his nose.
Tom raises his eyebrows like he wonders how I know that. But now that I have brought it up, it makes me tired to think about it.
I follow him into the backyard and across a warm brick floor set right into the ground. Tom settles himself on a long green wicker thing and he calls this weather spectacular.
I bet there’s not a person in Mississippi talking about anything else, I say. Me, I lay myself right in the grass. Run my arms back and forth like I am making a snow angel.
He asks didn’t we have grass at the home.
We had dirt. Pretty soon I am up on a lounging chair like him, though. Those red bugs will eat you up in summer.
It is a big quiet yard with tall trees around it for shade. But behind the yard is a line of dark woods I do not much like the looks of. With us sitting so near to the ground, the house looks even taller. All its different roof shapes, things flat and curved.
What do you call a house like that, Tom? I ask.
A Victorian, he says.
What about that thing on the top? With the fence around it?
That’s a widow’s walk, he says. They say widows used them to watch for their sailor husbands lost at sea. But we keep bags of sand up there in case the chimney catches fire.
The first thing he said makes me think of a black widow spider, the other the house burning down. If you did not know better, you might think the house looked a little scary.
When we hear Lucille’s motorcar drive off, we both begin reading.
Huck Finn is starting his robber gang in the cave and oh they are up to all sorts of shenanigans.
Tom hardly looks up for a long time, but me, I need breaks when I read.
So I walk around the big tidy yard. Admire how all the leaves and straw have already been swept aside.
These folks don’t even have pawpaws for me to pick up here.
There are some pretty rocks and pebbles around a little birdbath area.
I look close at some ants and wonder what it would feel like to look up and think, what is that big white-haired thing looking down at me?
When I come sit back down, Tom hears my stomach growling. You stay hungry, don’t you?
I tell him, Yes. I do, Tom.
Let’s see what’s for lunch. We go inside and when he opens the icebox, he does not even look surprised to find a plate of sandwiches already made up in there, bacon and tomato with a green leaf and some mayonnaise.
I got to smile when I see it. There even is a toothpick stuck in there like you see in the ladies’ magazines.
We carry them outside and do the same thing all over again but with food!
It is just spectacular. That is a word I have never used in my life until right now. A word that sounds just like it means.
Except for when I feel my heart beat too fast, afraid I will wake up again drooling in that office, I lay my head back and enjoy the moment.
I close my eyes and wonder what the other girls are doing right now.
Starving to death is my guess because Dorella stole all the cornbread.
I bet the Big Phony is pacing the hall, looking into the empty office, wondering what kind of good life I am living now …
You were a mistake
Dirty filthy
I shoot up in the lounging chair and look around.
Meg? Did you have a bad dream?
I settle back down. It is nothing. Just something that happens, Tom.
When I get situated with how happy I feel, I come up with some questions to ask. I decide to start with some basic facts.
Do you do a pay job of some kind, Tom? I read once in the Good Housekeeping that men enjoy being asked about their jobs and that the woman should listen when they talk and not interrupt.
By the way his shoulders droop, I wonder have I asked the wrong question.
Not exactly. I’m trying to write a novel, he says.
I nod and say, Tell me more, Tom. I am listening.
He smiles, then frowns. Starts but stops. I get the feeling he has not been asked this question much. He looks at the book he is reading and says, It’s about a fellow suffering from disillusionment and heartbreak in a postwar America.
I remind him I am eleven and could he explain it simpler. But don’t worry, I say. I am in the Exceptional Learner Group.
He sits up and, after adjusting his glasses, tries again.
It’s about a man who, after he fought in the Great War, went to all the big parties and drank champagne with women and the gluttons he thought were his lifelong friends.
That is, until they burned through all his money and he was left with nothing.
Did they? Burn it like firewood? I ask. Because I know something about that.
What that means is, they were wasteful with it, greedy and too privileged and more concerned with shaking their behinds in New York City than what was happening to the rest of the world. Lucille doesn’t like when I talk about it, so I don’t bring it up much.
Does Lucille not like books?
Oh she likes books, it’s writers she has trouble with. She’d rather I was in banking or real estate, like our friends up in New York City.
YOU HAVE BEEN THERE?
He nods. That’s where Lucille and I met. She moved to New York even before I did.
Did you meet at one of those parties where you shake your behind? I imagine all the behinds shaking so furious around the Statue of the Liberty.
He chuckles. Well, no. He looks off like he can see it right in the yard.
Lord, I wish I could see it in the yard.
We met when she was a secretary for an old buddy of mine, at Charles Scribner’s.
They’re a big book-publishing company up there.
I went to see him one day and Lucille was wearing this green dress with a big green bow tied up to her chin.
He spreads his fingers wide, going either side of his neck.
I told her she looked like my third-grade schoolteacher.
He laughs again. She didn’t like that. But it got her attention.
I personally would love it if somebody said I looked like a third-grade schoolteacher. But Lucille could not look like Miss Pettybone if she tried. Even with a bow stuck on her.
We got married at city hall six months later. It’ll be two years this October.
Why did you move back to Mississippi? Did your friends burn up all the money? Doesn’t look it to me, with a crate of oranges in the kitchen and a set of encyclopedias with no letters missing. If that’s not rich, I don’t know what is.
My family … He sighs. They thought it’d be best if we came home awhile. I miss the city, though. All the good writers live there at some time or another. Once, I even saw him. He holds up the book he has chose.
This Side of Paradise, I read aloud. Fitzgerald. That is the name on the spine. Is he your most favorite writer of books?
He’s a lot of people’s most favorite, he says.
He tells me the story of how he went to a hotel in New York called the St. Moritz.
And there he was. Sitting at the bar, listening to a jazz band.
He didn’t look like he had a worry in the world, but if you read his books, you’d know that’s not true.
By the way Tom tells it, I know this is his extra very special story.
I hate it here, he says.
To be clear, I say, I love it here.
He says, I find this place grossly over-appointed.
Try being a orphan. It is grossly under-appointed.
His eyes crinkle behind his glasses. When Tom laughs, it is the kind that is all on the inside. His body shakes and he keeps his lips shut, but he is still laughing. I wonder did somebody tell him he should not do that out loud.
When he is done, he looks serious again.
He tells me how all this land his family lives on was from what he calls repression and subjugation.
I listen very close and though I don’t understand all of it, I think what it all comes down to is this: Tom does not want colored Negroes cleaning up his kitchen or picking his fields or toting his groceries inside the house.
He wants them to work right alongside white folks, in the same sort of jobs they do, or else the world is no better off than it was before the Civil War.
His family down the road does not share his opinions.
Are there any girls about my age in the family?
Oh yes, there’ll be plenty of cousins for you to meet. It’s a big family.
Each time he says that word, family, I grab holt of it. Hold it there in my head quiet, waiting on him to say it again. He says that a lot of them have gone off to Europe for the summer to buy more junk, but that they’ll be coming home in due time.
After that, he goes back to reading, so I lean back and look up at the blue sky.
It is easy to count your blessings here, young lady, but I get to some of those I might’ve missed.
Such as that electric plug-in icebox in there with a sandwich just waiting on you, that very interesting naked man statue over there, and enough fried chicken nights to where you get tired of it.
Also books and books to read and a family down the road that will be home in due time.
I think I’ll go inside and do a little writing, Tom says. Think you can entertain yourself for a while?
I tell him, I sure can, Tom. Lord knows I am pretty good at that.
While Tom is in his office, I bring a pad of paper and a pencil from the kitchen out to the yard and organize all these questions I got in my head.
When I get most of them down, I divide them into two basic groups.
They are the Need to Know Nows and the Need to Know Laters, since I figure there is no sense harassing somebody now for what you can just as well harass them for later.