He wiped his eyes and faced her. “Well, that’s not for me. You were right about me, Mary. I need a woman who will love me and our children above all and everyone else. I cannot share her with any endeavor that will wear her to the bone and leave nothing for me and our family at the end of the day. I know that now, and I won’t settle for anything less. If you can’t give me that…”
He looked at her with desperate hope, his face full of appeal, and Mary knew this was a now-or-never moment. If she let him go, he was gone forever.
“I thought you loved me….”
“I do. That’s what’s so damn tragic. Well, what’s it to be—me or Somerset?”
She wrung her hands. “Percy, don’t make me choose….”
“You have to. What’s it to be?”
She stared at him in a long, resigned silence.
“I see…,” he said.
The slam of motorcar doors and voices drifted up the walk. Sassie swung out of the kitchen at the end of the hall, a stiffly starched white apron over a black dress she wore to funerals. “They all comin’,” she announced. “Mister Percy—why you still in your overcoat?”
“I was just leaving,” he said. “Give my best to your mother, Mary, and… happy birthday.”
With a puzzled frown, Sassie watched him spin on his heels and stride to the door, closing it behind him without a backward glance. “Mister Percy is leavin’? He ain’t comin’ back?”
“No,” Mary answered in a voice as empty as a rain barrel in drought. “Mister Percy is not coming back.”
Chapter Twenty-one
Mary was still standing numbly in the hall when the guests streamed into the house. They all arrived at once, everyone looking elegant, prosperous, and delighted at the prospect of seeing Darla again, the house opened up, and the Tolivers back on course. Abel’s expression showed the barest trace of horror when he saw Mary in the red taffeta—it had, after all, come from his store—but Charles Waithe, who had recently joined his father’s law firm, beamed in admiration. He bent over her hand with great gallantry and said, “What a stunning dress, Mary. The color becomes you. Happy birthday.”
Mary greeted them with a smile stiffened by the overwhelming awareness of her loss. No one but Ollie seemed to notice. He hung behind when Sassie ushered the others into the parlor, where refreshments were laid out.
“What’s wrong with Percy? Why isn’t he staying?”
“We’ve had… a falling-out.”
“Another one? What happened?”
“Fair Acres.”
“Ah,” he said as if no further explanation were necessary. “I feared as much. Percy was very, very angry when he heard you’d taken on another plantation, Mary Lamb. Unappeasable. He read it as your making a choice between him and Somerset.”
“It was a decision, not a choice.”
“Then we must get him to understand that.”
Mary looked into his kind face, moved, as always, by his love for them. She laid a hand on his shoulder. “Ollie, you’ve sacrificed enough for Percy and me. Don’t spend another minute on two people so bent on mishandling it.”
Ollie took her hand and fondled it against the velvet lapel of his dinner jacket. “I’ve no idea what you mean, but no sacrifice is too great for two people who mean the world to me.”
A movement came from the top of the stairs. Mary and Ollie glanced up at her mother, her hand on the balustrade, striking an imperious pose like the Darla of old. In the parlor, Beatrice caught sight of their arrested, uplifted faces and beckoned to the others. “Darla is coming down,” she announced excitedly, and within seconds they had gathered to watch Darla descend the grand staircase.
The dress had been an excellent choice. Its amber color and straight, curveless silhouette softened her wasted figure. The textured velvet added weight to her frame, and the long chiffon sleeves disguised arms grown flabby from years of lying in bed. Her lip and cheek rouge and the extra attention to her pompadour did little to boost her gaunt face, but her smile and poise, the tilt of her head, were the same as in years past when Mary had stood rooted in this same spot to watch her mother glide down the stairs to her guests.
“Hello, everyone,” she greeted them in her lilting voice. “How good of you to come.”
Eyes misted as applause filled the hall and everyone expressed their delight at seeing her again. “You chose the perfect gown,” Abel whispered in Mary’s ear.
“Well done,” Ollie said.
Darla made her laughing way around the circle of old friends, stroking Mary’s cheek to remind everyone of the reason for the party before it was forgotten in the celebration of having her among them again. Mary was relieved. The attention on her mother diverted it from her and her obviously distracted air. Ollie took charge of the conversation when they were settled in the parlor, and she was able to fade further into the background. There were plenty of national happenings for spirited discussion—Prohibition, the presidential campaign, the Nineteenth Amendment.
“I hope never to see the day,” declared Jeremy Warwick, “when women will get the right to vote.”
His wife gave his arm a smack. “Not only will you live to see that day, my dear, but you will live to see your wife cancel out your ballot. I’m voting for Warren G. in the November election, if the amendment passes.”
“Which proves my point that women have no place in the ballot box,” her husband rejoined to the general laughter of all.
A hush fell when time came for Mary to open Darla’s gift. It was packaged in the same gilded box in which her dress had been delivered and sat on a table among the flowers the guests had sent to circumvent the invitation’s request that no gifts be brought. Everyone watched attentively as Mary removed the lid, and a chorus of oohs and ahs greeted the cream-colored, beribboned confection that Mary drew out of the box.
“Why, it’s… the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen!” Beatrice declared.
“Darla, my dear!” Abel gawped at the huge afghan Mary held up. “I would be most happy to buy as many of these as you can make. I assure you they’ll sell as fast as ice cream in July.”
A wan smile, as if the very thought of his offer tired her, parted Darla’s lips. “Thank you, Abel, but I knitted this specially for my daughter as a memento of her twentieth birthday. I’ll not knit another.”
She remained silent while everyone fingered and complimented the meticulous detail, workmanship, and pattern of the voluminous bedcovering. The lengths of knitted cream strips had been joined with pink satin ribbons tied in perky bows that formed a pattern of exquisite design.
“Mama, I… am without words,” Mary said in awe and pleasure, reverently tracing the intricate handiwork. “You did this for me?” She still could not quite believe the generosity of her mother’s labor; it seemed so beyond the bounds of her demonstrations of affection in the past.
“Only for you, darling,” her mother said, her eyes glowing tenderly. “It is the only gift I could contrive that would express what you mean to me now.”
Remembering her promise, Mary left the guests to their cake and coffee and hurried to the kitchen to show her gift to Sassie and Toby. The housekeeper was not impressed. “Now, why you suppose she go and choose pink ribbons when your room done in blue and green? It won’t go with nothin’ in there. I tell you, they is no understandin’ that woman.”
“You know she’s always tried to push pastels on me, Sassie. Her choice is a subtle way to let me know she’s back at it, and that’s another healthy sign. When the harvest comes in, I’ll have my room redecorated in pink and cream.”
“Pink’n cream! Them ain’t your colors. They too weak and puny. They your mama’s colors!”
When she returned to the parlor with the afghan, her mother said, “Here, let me have that. I’ll refold it and take it up with me when I go.”
The guests traded amused looks. Beatrice remarked, “Your mother’s worked so long and hard on your gift, Mary, who can blame her for not wanting to l
et it go?”
Strain marked the rest of the evening. The life had drained from Darla. She sat in her rocker tired and distant, her pallor more pronounced. Mary, too, could no longer hold the smile she’d forced all evening. Despair was overtaking her. The certainty that Percy was lost to her for good was worse than her worst imaginings during the war.
Without preamble, Darla rose from the rocker, clutching the gilded box to her bosom. “I’m afraid I must call it a day, dear friends and daughter,” she said. “But please don’t leave because of me. Stay and enjoy the party as long as you can. I do insist.” Immediately, everyone gathered around, offering endearments, hugs, pecks on her cheek. Mary stood aside until the flurry was over, then carefully embraced her mother’s fragile frame.
“Thank you, Mama,” she said, gratitude overwhelming her voice.
Her mother pressed her cheek to hers. “It pleases me that I’ve provided my dear girl a birthday she’ll always remember.”
“I could never forget, Mama. Your gift will guarantee it.”
“That was my purpose.” Darla disengaged herself. “Stay down and help Sassie clean up when everyone’s gone. She’s getting old, and I don’t want her up half the night tidying the kitchen.” Clasping the box, she turned with a smile to the group and twiddled her fingers in farewell. “Good-bye, everyone.”
It was Ollie who ended the evening. “I’m sorry, folks,” he said, “but I feel like a bottle of champagne with its cork popped and the fizz gone. Dad and I ought to be pushing home.” In the hall, as everyone donned overcoats and hats and gloves, he asked in an undertone of concern, “Want me to stay?”
Mary was tempted to say yes. He knew she had not enjoyed her party and understood why. She’d have appreciated his company while she cleaned up, but Abel would have had to return for him in the Packard, and it was already late. “Thank you, Ollie, but I’ll be fine. Please don’t concern yourself with Percy and me. We were… never meant to be.”
He brought her hand to his lips. “You were made for each other, Mary Lamb. You’re like oil and vinegar—you’re a perfect blend when shaken. Perhaps that’s what you both need—a good shaking.”
She had always been amused by his way with words and smiled despite her sadness. “Seems to me we’re constantly being shaken, but we resist blending.”
After everyone had left, Mary sent Sassie and Toby off to bed and carried the party dishes to the kitchen herself. She welcomed the task of cleaning up to avoid lying awake thinking of her future without Percy. Though she’d told herself a hundred times they hadn’t a chance together, in her heart of hearts she hadn’t believed it—and she’d counted on Percy not believing it. Somehow, some way, things would work out. Percy loved her. He could never let her go. Time would take care of everything—if he were willing to wait.
Apparently, he wasn’t.
She thought fleetingly of checking on her mother as she stacked the dishes, but the stairs seemed insurmountable to her leaden feet, and she had no wish to explain her red-rimmed eyes. Besides, her mother’s bedroom door creaked loudly and she might awaken her if she was already asleep. She’d wait until morning to peep in on her.
It was long past midnight when she finally climbed into bed. The gilded box was on her dresser. She would wait until tomorrow to take out its treasure and spread it on her bed. Though exhausted, she expected to lie wide awake in her misery, rolling from shoulder to shoulder; but sleep came immediately. She was dreaming of snow falling on cotton when she was awakened roughly the next morning by Sassie shaking her shoulder. “Wha-what is it?”
“Oh, Miss Mary!” Sassie wailed, the wild roll of her eyes stark in the early morning sunlight. “It’s your mama—”
“What?” Mary tossed off the bedcovers, blurrily aware that Sassie had gone to the water bowl to retch. She stumbled down the hall to her mother’s room and lurched to a dead stop at the open door. A scream tore from her throat. “Mama!”
Still in the amber velvet dress, her mother hung from the ceiling by a noose of knitted cream-colored wool around her neck. On the floor beneath her suspended feet lay a mound of pink satin ribbons. Slowly, understanding at last, Mary knelt before the pile and gathered the ribbons in her hands. “Oh, Mama…,” she sobbed, the ribbons falling through her fingers like the stripped petals of pink roses.
Chapter Twenty-two
She was still sobbing uncontrollably and clutching the ribbons to the bodice of her nightgown when Percy appeared beside her and scooped her up in his arms. “Sassie, close the door behind me and go call Doc Tanner,” he ordered. “Keep Toby out of this room, and don’t say a word to him about what happened here.”
“No, sir, Mister Percy.”
“And bring up some hot milk. We’ve got to get Miss Mary warm before she goes into shock.”
“Mama… Mama…”
“Shush,” Percy said gently, laying her in her bed and pulling the covers tight under her chin.
“She… hated me, Percy. She… hated me….”
He stroked her forehead. “She was a sick woman, Mary.”
“The… pink ribbons… You know what they mean….”
“Yes,” he said. “That was very cruel of her.”
“Oh, God, Percy… Oh, God….”
He stoked the dying fire and found other blankets and piled them high. When Sassie arrived with the milk, he helped Mary lift her head from the pillow and put the warm cup to her lips. “Try to get this down. Come on now, Mary.”
“Doc Tanner’ll be here in a few minutes, Mister Percy. What you want me to do when he get here?”
“Send him up, Sassie. I’ll meet him in the hall.”
Mary grabbed his hand, staring at him out of eyes wide with horror. “What are you going to do? What will happen now?”
He wiped away the milk trickling down her chin. “Don’t worry. I’ll see to everything. This will stay between us and Sassie and Doc Tanner. No one else—not even Toby—has to know. I’ll send a cable to Miles.”
“What… will you tell him?”
“Your mother died of natural causes. That’s what Doc Tanner will state on the death certificate. She went to sleep and did not wake up.”
Mary fell back against the pillows and turned her head away. His distaste for dissembling was plain to see. He would lie to Miles and call in an IOU from Doc Tanner that the Warwicks never expected or wished to be repaid for their many generous contributions to his medical causes through the years. “Thank you, Percy,” she said to the wall, her teeth chattering.
Buried beneath the blankets, she listened to the hushed voices and footsteps of Percy and Doc Tanner and Sassie going in and out of her mother’s room. When the housekeeper reappeared, she reported that her mother’s body had been cut down and sewn in a sheet. “The undertaker goin’ to come pick her up like that,” she said, adjusting Mary’s blankets. “Mister Percy, he goin’ to go with her to the funeral parlor and make sure the coffin be nailed shut. He goin’ to tell everybody that Miss Darla’s long years of bad health left her ravaged—that Mister Percy’s word—and her daughter want her to be remembered as she was.”
Percy stayed at her side during the strain of making funeral arrangements and receiving visitors. He voiced no judgment, made no accusations, but the significance of the pink ribbons writhed between them like a poisonous snake they’d tacitly agreed to ignore but of which each was keenly aware. His grim silence expressed to Mary what she herself believed: She was responsible for her mother’s suicide. It was another consequence of her pigheaded obsession with Somerset.
“What you want me to do with them strips and ribbons, Miss Mary?” Sassie asked when she was out of bed and moving about blankly like a shell-shocked war victim. “Mister Percy say to burn ’em.”
“No!” Her cry felt scraped from her throat. “They are from my mother’s hands…. Bring them to me.” In possession of them again, she compressed the pink ribbons into a ball and wrapped them in a casing of the cream-colored strips, then packaged the
bundle in tissue paper and hid it far back in her wardrobe.
At the funeral, she felt the same silent condemnation from the townspeople that she sensed from Percy. Even though none were aware of the cause of her mother’s death, her demise was enough. Darla had died of a broken heart by her husband’s hand, unrectified by his daughter. Mary even saw Emmitt Waithe shake his head as though he, too, believed this tragedy the result of Vernon Toliver’s will.
A few days after the funeral, she said to Sassie, “I’m moving into the Ledbetter house temporarily. It will be easier for me to manage things from there. Why don’t you take this opportunity to visit your daughter? Toby can look after things here, and the house has a telephone. Here’s the number.”
“Miss Mary, how you goin’ to look after yourself alone out there?”
“I’ll manage.”
“Mister Percy and Mister Ollie ain’t goin’ to like this one little bit.”
“I know, Sassie, but I’ll enjoy the respite from their well-meaning concern.” And Percy’s silent judgment, she thought.
By April, the fields were planted. Mary shielded her eyes from the spring sun and gazed at the infinite stretch of neatly mounded rows awaiting germination of their seeds. Behind her stood Hoagy Carter, the white overseer she’d inherited with her purchase of Fair Acres, and Sam Johnson, one of Somerset’s tenants whose father had once tilled the same soil as a slave. At ginning time, Sam and the others would receive one-third of the profits from the crop they surveyed today. Both men waited with hats in hand for Mary’s pronouncement.