When they arrive at the Lines’ house, tall and narrow with black shutters, it’s nearly time to eat dinner. The Reverend Line opens the door for her, then returns to the car to get her suitcase. Eloise is helping Mrs. Line, who seems to be resisting coming home. She stands in the yard, shaking her head, sharp jerks that loosen a spray of fine hairs fanning around her head. She turns back to the car, and Lettie notices her wide, flat backside, the dress clinging to it in bunches.
Lettie walks into the house alone. She thinks of the orphanage, cold and empty, the nuns in their stiff skirts, their stone faces, the shushing like a hiss pushed up and spit out through the narrow gaps of their teeth. The mattress there had been flat and hard, and she’d never slept by herself before then. There’d always been her brothers’ restless bodies on either side. So she felt loose in the orphanage bed and was afraid she was going to fall out onto the hard floor. But she rarely slept. She listened to the other girls, their deep rattling coughs, their murmuring sleep talk. When she did drift off, her dreams were so horrible she would wake up screaming. Once an older girl stormed over and put a pillow over her face. Lettie kicked and kicked, clawing at bare arms, but the girl was thick and strong. She held her there so long that Lettie stopped being able to breathe. She came up gasping as if she’d been drowned. There was one time she followed a mouse out of the chambers into a small chapel, but she isn’t sure if it was real or a dream. She remembers it clearly, the statue of Mary, her angelic, lamentable face, and being carried by a stiff-chested nun. But her dreams are so vivid, she can’t tell them from memory. This is only the second time she’s ever been away from home. She has already made plans not to stay.
The entranceway opens into a parlor. It smells of wood polish, liniment, wet newspaper print. Small, dark, tidy, the antimacassars glow white draped over the backs of two stiff armchairs. It’s quiet, and seems empty, but for a deep restlessness, a shuffling. And then she notices that she isn’t alone. Her eyes adjust and she sees the bird cages, one in every corner. Yellow and blue canaries. The birds’ little feet clutch swings. Some perch cockeyed from the cage bars. They are intently interested in Lettie. Their little feathered heads fluff at her intrusion.
Mrs. Line dashes past Lettie to the kitchen, where she starts rattling pans. The Reverend Line puts the suitcase down. He looks disheveled by the windy car, exhausted. He sinks into a wooden chair next to a small table with a Bible on it and on the wall, a picture of an old man with a white beard praying over a loaf of bread.
Eloise says, “Father will study here.” She points to her father, and then motions for Lettie to follow her. She walks Lettie past the kitchen. “Mother will prepare dinner.” She walks her up a narrow staircase, steep as a ladder. At the top of the stairs there are three doors. “My parents’ bedroom. The lavatory. And our room. I shared it with Delphine before she departed.”
Lettie wonders if this is the way she usually says it, as if Delphine died tragically. The room is tight. Two narrow beds with matching dark mahogany headboards take up most of the room. Against one wall, there is a small desk of papers and books. Lettie hefts the suitcase onto the bed.
“Not that one,” Eloise instructs. And so Lettie hefts it again to the farthest bed. She walks to the window that faces out to the road. She’s relieved that she has a clear view. She’ll be able to see Smitty in the car from her window when he comes for her.
“Why don’t you unpack? I’ll be grading at my desk. I’m teaching summer classes to some of my most intelligent students.”
Lettie doesn’t inquire about Miss Eloise’s smart students, although it’s obviously been offered as a subject for discussion. Lettie isn’t interested. Her mother would take her to school each year, but then she would start to cry and then to flail and cling. The teacher would tell her mother to leave. Once the teacher said, “I’ll hang her on a coat hook until she calms herself.” For years, they would trudge home together, Lettie’s fingers clamped around her mother’s hand. Finally, by age nine or so, before her father left, she wanted to go, but by then she was far behind. She lost hope quickly, couldn’t ever see the point, and when she returned after her mother started her business up, the other girls snubbed her. They hushed as she approached and snickered at her. The last teacher she remembers was softer than Miss Eloise, but young. She lavished Lettie with pity, often coupled her up for classroom projects with a crippled girl, and she would gaze at the two of them, her head tilted, so proud of her own bigheartedness. It made Lettie sick. “I prefer just to rest my eyes,” she says. If she unpacks, she’ll just have to fill the suitcase again once everyone falls asleep.
Eloise nods as if she were asked permission. It’s obvious that she’s a schoolmarm, used to being asked for allowances. Lettie doesn’t like it. Eloise goes to her desk and begins to mark papers. Lettie closes her eyes. She can feel Smitty on top of her, the biting glass. She presses her knees together, to force away the image, and there’s a tenderness between them. She’s still puffed and sore.
Eloise never looks at Lettie. She never looks up from her papers. She just begins to talk. “Mother has nerves because her brother died when she was little. It was a fire. And she’s been nervous ever since. My father married her because he thought he could calm her, that, through the Lord’s power, he could help her. But he never could. And Delphine was difficult for her. And she’d have to lock her up, the girl was so wild, so full of, you know, the fire.” She pauses, twists in her chair to face Lettie, who is thinking about fire, house fires and the ones that are in a wild girl like Delphine, like herself, too, she figures. Eloise says, “What about Delphine? Is she okay?”
“I suppose she’s okay.” But really Lettie isn’t so sure. She knows about the opium. Its deep scent has bored its way into Delphine’s clothes, her hair, the drapes, the wood, the mattress of her bed. It clings to her. And she’s seen her drunk on it. Roxy has tried to hide it, but Lettie knows about her willowy arms, her red eyes, the too-tranquil smile. She’s seen her wobble to the bathroom. And, of course, there’s the fact that Delphine and Roxy are lovers. She doesn’t think that Eloise would approve of that. She wonders if she doesn’t marry Smitty, what might become of her. She’s scared that she’s got the fire like Delphine and that if Smitty forgets her tonight, she could become a fiend, a whore. Or, maybe, she would fall in love with a woman.
“What about you?” Eloise says.
Lettie props herself on her elbows. “I’m getting married,” she says, although she thinks she could have just as easily told her she was poisoned, that she let Smitty inside her and she might die, milk-sick, rotting, even though it isn’t clearheaded.
“Are you?”
“Yes. We’re going to buy a house on Greenmont Avenue. Do you know where that is?” Her mother would like her to stay here forever, would be happiest if she had a daughter like Eloise who could grade papers while she counted her money.
“Yes, they’re new houses, small and pretty.”
“I’d prefer to live in a house that’s never been lived in before. I like the idea of it being fresh. I won’t be staying here long.”
“I will always stay,” Eloise says. “Delphine left, and so I have to stay. It’s a kind of agreement. It has broken their hearts to lose Delphine. I will never leave them. I’m a small consolation, really. I do what I can, and yet she has the power to kill them. She does so every day. Slowly. They will die with her name on their tongues. Not Jesus’. That’s the truth.”
It’s quiet for a while, and then a little bell rings from downstairs. Eloise straightens her papers and stands, pushing in her chair. “Dinner is ready.”
Lettie follows her down the stairs through the kitchen, a pale yellow, so pale it looks drained, faded, like Mrs. Line’s blouse and her face, too, for that matter. She has a sagged expression, her eyelids heavy, the pouches beneath them drooped. Mrs. Line looks at her wearily, her face moist from a pot at the stove, her goiter like an enormous cockeyed lump in her throat. She stares at her with this awful l
ove, a sickening sadness.
The table is already set, the plates identically allotted with exact portions: four small carrots, a heap of peas, a crust of bread, and some kind of dark brown fatty soup. In the other room, Lettie can hear the birds rustling, chirping. Reverend Line sits at the head of the table, his wife at the opposite. He motions with his head where Lettie should sit. The chair is hard. The plain, thin wooden cross on the wall reminds Lettie of the orphanage, except their Jesus was always on it, bleeding, permanently dying, and they were told that he was dying for them, their sins, their hearts darkened with evil thoughts and deeds. She wonders if Jesus is dying now more than ever on the orphanage crosses, knowing what she let Smitty do to her. But it seems that no matter what they did, they were killing him, and he took it. Lettie wants him to step down off the crosses, to give up on her. The nuns seemed to think the orphans were lost causes anyway, their soiled souls. Why go on? Why persist? She wonders if Jesus doesn’t find some pleasure in dying. Why else would he do it so gorgeously with the thorned crowns and the ladder of ribs? She prefers the empty cross, simple, austere, but honest. He died and then rose. It’s more hopeful. She can become clean and white again. No one says that a wife is impure. A wife is a wife.
The reverend bows his head, and everyone else follows. He says, “Thank you, Lord, for this gracious plenty. Thank you for all of your gifts of life. Thank you for bringing Lettie to our table.”
Lettie lifts her eyes. Eloise’s head is bowed deeply. But Mrs. Line is gazing at Lettie again, her body leaning forward toward her. She wonders if Mrs. Line is waiting for Delphine to emerge, if Mrs. Line thinks that if she looks at Lettie with enough pitiful love, she’ll turn into her lost daughter.
“And watch over our wayward sheep,” the reverend concludes.
Mrs. Line puts her hands to her lips now and prays fervently, her mouth moving quickly. Everyone says amen, except Mrs. Line, who is lost in her own set of prayers, her chin to her chest, her eyes screwed tightly. They wait for her to finish, and finally she reappears, like someone who’s been underwater, like someone who prefers it to all of this light and air.
Eloise says, “You’ll get used to things here, Lettie, so that you’ll like it, I’ll wager.”
Lettie imagines her own house. Her mother would be giving over the downstairs by now, the parlor filling with men, Lettie retreating to their bedroom. “It’s very different from what I’m used to,” Lettie says.
Eloise asks, “And how is that?”
Reverend Line, too. “Yes, dear, how are things different?”
But Lettie doesn’t have a chance to answer. Mrs. Line is irritated. “How can you ask that, knowing where she comes from? Knowing what she was raised with? Filth. All that terrible filth.” She turns to Lettie. Their eyes lock now, but Mrs. Line has lost her gaze of deep adoration. “Don’t look at me like that,” she says bitterly. “I didn’t make her that way, you know. I was a good mother.” She turns to the reverend. “Did you see that? The way she looked at me like I did something wrong?”
Lettie has no idea what Mrs. Line is referring to, but she quickly looks down at her plate of carrots, peas, bread. She sips at a spoonful of the soup. It’s beef stock without any signs of beef. Reverend Line and Eloise don’t say anything. They continue eating. Mrs. Line is glaring around the table, awaiting a challenge. But no one offers her one. Lettie glances at her. She sees a thin line of blood drip from her nose. Mrs. Line picks up her napkin and wipes it away, but the napkin is red now and the nose is dripping quickly. Four red splotches plop to her dress front. She gasps lightly. The reverend and Eloise look at her. They are not startled. She stands up. “Excuse me.” And rushes to the kitchen with her head tilted back and the napkin pressed to her nose.
Reverend Line says, “Don’t mind her, darling. She’s got a bad case of nerves.”
Eloise agrees. “Yes, she does. It’s an awful shame. She’s always had nerves like this as long as I can remember.”
The reverend says, “Thank goodness the good doctor has managed to help her.”
“Yes, yes,” Eloise chimes, “thank the good doctor.”
“And the Lord,” the reverend reminds her.
“Yes, and the Lord.”
Lettie looks up from her plate, glances into the kitchen to see Mrs. Line sipping from a bottle of medicine. The napkin is bright red. Clutched in her hand, it looks like a corsage. Her hands are so shaky that it’s difficult for her to put the cap back on. Lettie wonders what kind of life this is. She dislikes the quiet, thick with nervousness. The clicking, the cap against the bottle’s glass, birds chirping, the scrape of the Reverend Lines spoon against his bowl. She and Smitty won’t be like this. For his faults, and she can admit that she’s afraid of Smitty—the way he becomes unreachable with anger or passion—he will not be this quiet, this passive. He will not see her bleeding, sobbing, screaming in a stranger’s yard, and not do anything about it. And she will not behave like Mrs. Line. She will not be hysterical and then skittish. She’ll have beef in her soups. She’ll sigh at the end of prayers like her heart has just been aired.
The headlights tour the yard. Lettie watches them streak the walls, a bright momentary flare. She sits at Eloise’s small vanity. She quickly lights a match from a box she stole from Pearly’s dresser top. She blows it out and rubs the char on her pinky tip, then presses a fine line of its ash on her eyelid, close to her lashes, to outline her eyes, a trick she learned from watching the girls in her mother’s house primp in front of mirrors. She listened all night, pretending to sleep, while keeping up with the whereabouts of each of the Lines. Mrs. Line clattered up the stairs first, all grunts and sighs. She scrubbed in the bathroom and then fell heavily into bed. Eloise was more dainty and quiet, only making ruffling noises until she fell asleep, at which point she gave out a puff-and-hiss snore. Lettie waited for the Reverend Line. Once he walked upstairs to use the toilet, but then he headed back downstairs and never returned to bed. Now Smitty is here in the yard, his car door ajar. He’s standing waiting for her.
Her suitcase is heavy. She tiptoes while hefting it with both hands, one on top of the other, grasping the handle. As she makes her way down the stairs, she can sense someone in the living room. A breathing presence. She tells herself that its just the birds, their accumulated breaths, but she knows that it is the Reverend Line. She braces herself for a word from him, but the room is quiet. She stares into the room, her eyes running over the dark lumps of furniture. Her heart races. Smitty is in the yard, shifting, pacing, but she feels frozen, panicked. Her eyes rest on the floor, a dim square of light from the clouded moon. There are two dark objects—the reverends shoes? Her eyes move up the chair. Is he seated there? The white blur, is it his hands folded in his lap? She doesn’t know why she has stopped here. She doesn’t understand why she wants him to say something, but she does. She wants him to blurt out her name, to wrestle her, tearfully, to the sofa and beg her to stay, to be his little girl. When she was little, she could walk on her hands, a fleeting thought, disconnected. It made her father proud.
Perhaps the reverend will come to help her with her suitcase, if nothing else, offer a final blessing. She says, “Reverend Line?” And there is a commotion of wings. The birds dart suddenly through the room, uncaged. The air becomes a brisk stir of their small, skittish bodies. The white spot on the chair, his hands part, each one spread on a knee as if he might rise, but then the birds settle. The reverend doesn’t stand. She can feel the manacle of her mother’s hope, and remotely, Irving’s hopes for her, Roxy’s and Delphine’s, even the Lines’—Eloise and her crazed mother and the reverend, silent—but she doesn’t know how to fulfill them.
She opens the door, her suitcase bruising her leg, out into the night. Smitty smiles, waves, his hand a flurry over his head, suddenly boyish. He is her husband-to-be, and her future is as clean as a fresh white bed linen.
It is midday but dark. The air is thick with ash, as if the sky has capped the rising smoke and trapped it.
Alma opens the front door, holding the squeaky handle of a bucket of potatoes curled in three fingers, and a knife, its sharp tip pointing out, pinched by the same hand’s pointer and thumb. And there suddenly, poised to knock, is the reverend. His eyes widen at the glinting knife, and she comes to a quick stop so as not to stab him in the stomach. He flattens his tie with his palm. She points with the knife up into the sky, pulls a handkerchief from a pocket, and covers her nose and mouth. “What’s this weather? The air is soupy with char, isn’t it?”
“It’s a change,” he says. “It happens. The farmers say the temperature shifts and it forms a lockup in the clouds. It’ll break.”
“How do you know?”
“I’m in the business of discussing the weather.”
“I thought you were in the business of discussing God.”
“When people are dying, they prefer to talk about the weather.”
“Has anyone died?”
“No, no.”
“Then what?”
“Alma,” he says, tilting his head, his eyes downcast. It’s dim, his features nearly lost in the gray air. He pauses, looks back behind himself, to the empty car, the field where the cow usually stands but today is not. She doesn’t see it, doesn’t hear its hollow tocking bell. Perhaps it’s dying in its stall. When his eyes return to look at her, they are teary. She already knows what he’s come to say. The car is empty. He’s nervous. He hasn’t made the hazardous switchback across the mountain to retrieve a bracelet, a hair comb. She looks at his mouth, the softness of his lips. She wants to kiss him. The notion announces itself in her mind. She hasn’t wanted to kiss anyone for years, not since Henry, and here is the frail reverend, nearly trembling. He seems afraid of her.
Alma says, “She’s gone.” It comes as no surprise to her. She is almost proud of Lettie. She has been a tractable child, too often eager to please. And what about me, Alma wonders. Isn’t she tractable, too? She is a madam of a whorehouse, and yet she’s a pristine woman who peels potatoes on her front porch, metal bucket, peeling knife, her old pinching shoes, a thin sweater, a simple life, in her own way, one that’s grown worn and comfortable as a stuffed chair. “I’m not shocked,” she says.