Chapter 24
I wrote the letter to the Heidelbergs the next morning, keeping it short and simple with only a few white lies.
I just wanted to get the door open and start a conversation.
I said I was a volunteer at the Lafayette County Orphan Asylum here in Oxford and that I was writing to do a “welfare inquiry” about Margot Lefleur, Meg as we called her.
Since Garnett wasn’t writing one, more testament to her disregard for Meg’s welfare, the lie slid off Rory’s ink pen easily.
I asked if Meg was eating and sleeping well and enjoying her new home, and could we please correspond until we knew she’d adjusted?
Since our telephone had been cut off, I couldn’t ask them to call us, and most families (though probably not them) wouldn’t be eager to spend that money anyway, so I just wrote, Please write back as soon as permits to me personally, to ensure your letter does not get mixed up in general correspondence for the orphanage: Birdie Calhoun, Oxford, MS. At the bottom, I added, Please let Meg know that I’m thinking of her fondly.
After I’d sealed it up, I felt surer than ever that Meg at least needed to know her mother hadn’t abandoned her.
Charlie took the envelope from me and pressed it to her chest, beseeching Mother Mary to get the letter to them, though by the end, it sounded more like a threat than a prayer.
I couldn’t blame her. The most depraved details from Charlie’s story kept sneaking in my ear, the colored man crying for his mother, no more imbecile babies, the stationmaster’s billy club.
He used it.
Walking to town that morning, it felt a full twenty degrees cooler than the day before, even though we were still a few days shy of September.
It felt like we’d woken up in a different country, maybe in a different year.
I could make a proper meringue in this weather, if we could afford any vanilla.
Frances was walking with me, saying she needed to get out of the house.
“I’ll see you back home later,” I told her.
She’d gotten all dressed up in pink poplin and a pink hat, for the important chore of buying us ten cents of sugar at City—knowing Frances too well, I didn’t suggest she go to Freedmen Town—while I went to the post office to mail the letter.
The square was a little busier than usual due to the cooler weather, no doubt.
I cut across it to city hall and the post office in the back.
A line of people stretched all the way past the post office boxes, which Mrs. Tartt didn’t use.
She liked her mail handed to her so she could say thank you.
After I’d waited for twenty minutes in line—Mrs. Nutt was working alone today and she was a talker—a tall, broad-backed man passed by me, headed out.
I pulled down the brim of my hat and pretended to be real interested in my letter to the Heidelbergs.
“Birdie?”
“Hey, Jack.” His blue shirtsleeves were rolled up his forearms and his jacket hung over his arm. He smiled and took his hat off. He looked very delighted with himself.
“I tried to call you, but—”
“They cut the telephone off,” I said.
“That’s not good news,” he said.
“We’ll be fine,” I said. “Good to see you.” I nodded and faced the back of the head in front of me. The line moved up and Jack moved with me. He was close enough that I could smell him—pine aftershave, leather car seats warming in the sun.
“Are you free after this? I wanted to …” He glanced at the couple behind me. “Talk to you about something. I have to catch the train to Jackson at 3:15.”
I couldn’t hold back. “Going home to see your wife?” I’d said it in a smart-mouthed way, but it came out sad. I looked him square in the eyes as I moved up in line again.
He didn’t look away, but his shoulders dropped a bit. “I’m sorry—I should’ve told you that.”
“You think so?”
He looked down at a thick envelope he was holding. The line was moving faster now. “I’m going to Jackson to meet with the divorce lawyers. Again. It’s taking a while to settle.”
“Birdie, you’re next,” Mrs. Nutt called from behind the counter.
I stared at him a second, then stepped forward.
“Sorry, Mrs. Nutt, I need to send this first-class and check the Tartts’ mail.
” I turned back to Jack. I’d only ever read about divorces in the newspaper.
I’d never known anybody that’d gotten one before.
Where I was from, a husband died or went out to buy chewing tobacco and never came home.
Those were the choices. But a divorce, it sounded so adult, sort of grimy.
“How long have you …” I didn’t even know what to call it.
Jack glanced at the couple in line behind me again, clearly listening to us. “I filed about nine months ago. But it’s been tricky for—a few reasons.”
I studied him, wondering if something was horribly, perhaps deliciously wrong with him.
Mrs. Nutt came back with a few envelopes. “’At’ll be three cents for the first-class.”
I slid the pennies over the counter. “Are you leaving her, or is she leaving you?” I asked him. I wasn’t sure which was better. They were both bad.
He glanced at Mrs. Nutt. “We are … leaving each other.”
“Why?” I asked. Hand on the coins, Mrs. Nutt looked up at Jack. Behind me, the man said, “Poor fella,” and his wife beside him hissed, “He’s a married man, Stu.”
“Could we talk about this somewhere else?” Jack asked. “Walk to the bank with me when you’re done? I want to show you something.”
A part of me wanted to tell him my daddy’d made sure I’d be just fine without a married man, thank you. In the other part, a tiny hope was blooming again.
“I’ll meet you down there in a few minutes,” I said.
He nodded, he’d take that. The lady behind me tsked.
At the writing counter against the far wall, I opened a letter from Mama and skimmed the dozens of worrisome Doris questions: What kind of men are you meeting?
Is Frances upset we asked for money? Should you be carrying that kind of cash on the train?
Is Frances upset with us? I felt sick to my stomach when she said we were down to fourteen dollars.
Frances had given me concise instructions: Do not tell Mama anything about what happened. I started writing a letter back on Frances’s fancy cream-colored stationery: Please don’t worry, Mama, Frances is fine. It’s going to be fine. I’ll be home soon, I hope. Watered-down nothings to soothe her.
I stopped writing, tapping my pencil point on the paper.
My chest felt like it was about to spill over with foolish hope and too many problems—how much more could I fit inside myself?
I took out a new sheet of paper and started a new letter: We are not alright, Mama.
Rory lost the family fortune and took all the valuables.
I won’t be bringing any money home. Frances is heartbroken and Mrs. Tartt had to let her help go because she couldn’t pay them …
It was a relief to let it all out. I did manage to leave out that I’d gone on a date with a married man—I wasn’t ready to share that.
Or that Frances’s husband had caught the Homo Sexuality.
Might as well save something for the next letter.
But in the end, I sent the first letter. The second one, I tore into a hundred pieces and threw away. I just didn’t know if Mama could handle hearing it.
As I walked down to the bank, Jack came out wearing his straining gray suit coat, like he’d been watching for me. “I hope we can talk more about—everything,” he said. “But first I wanted to show you this. Those are the numbers Rory called the week he was fired.”
Dear Lord, I’d forgotten about this. On a sheet of paper was a list of seven or eight telephone exchanges with numbers and cities written in Jack’s cursive, sloppy enough to be a third grader’s.
“Ignore the ones with checks, they were business calls for his last trades. But that one,” he said, pointing to Whitworth-502, “that’s the Robert E. Lee Hotel in Jackson.”
“I called them last week and they hadn’t seen him,” I said. “He has an overdue bill though.”
“Eleanor said he also got quite a few calls from New Orleans that week. They were incoming, so they won’t be on here, but she remembered because he snapped at her for not shutting his door all the way.”
So he talked to people in two big cities, Jackson and New Orleans, where we couldn’t afford to look for him, but maybe it was still worth something. I pointed to the last scribbled number, with x 6 beside it. “What’s that?”
Jack shrugged. “Florsheim. It’s just a shoe store in Jackson. But he called them six times his last few days.”
I pressed my lips together. God, what if.
“You want to give them a call from my office, just to see?” Jack asked. “One more long-distance call’s not gonna break this bank.”
“Yes. Thank you.” I followed Jack inside, past Henry Tartt, past Eleanor, whose eyes followed me all the way back to Jack’s office.
He shut his door, and I shook my head to the chair he offered.
He told Silva it was an urgent long-distance call and to please ring him back right away.
Then he leaned against his desk, facing me, and took my hand.
Every time you touch me, I feel electricity going through me. “How long have you been married?” I asked.
“Seventeen years this October,” he said. A long time. “If it’s worth anything, I really was going to tell you when I called the other day.”
I could feel my face redden. “Did you think I wouldn’t find out? Or did you think I wouldn’t care?”
“I wasn’t thinking. That’s pretty clear to me now.
” He let go of my hand and I felt the loss, a body part removed.
“I shouldn’t expect you to see a married man, especially in a town like this, but”—he grimaced like he was about to give me bad news—“you’re just …
you’re not like anybody I’ve ever met before. ”
The telephone jangled on the desk. Jack picked it up, nodded, and handed it to me.