A Southern Exposure Read online

  “Of course I’ll have to talk to Harry, but it sounds the most divine plan.”

  “Harry, it does sound the most divine plan.”

  “It’s generous, all right. I hope Esther gets along with those Rothschilds of yours.”

  “Oh, she will. Pipsy Rothschild couldn’t be more adorable. And Esther will get such a sense of doing good, it’s just what she needs. And Pipsy will find them a place to live and a school for the girls, she’s terrific at all that stuff.”

  He laughs at her. “And we’ll give a lot of parties and assume our natural social role in Pinehill, and very subtly redecorate the Hightowers’ house.”

  To the considerable surprise of her parents, Abby likes this new idea. “I’m tired of the Inn,” she tells them, which is not a surprise. “And it’s embarrassing telling people you live in a hotel. It makes us sound so rich. But the Hightowers’ house will be good. I can go to school on the truck, and I know a sort of secret road between out there and into town.”

  “How on earth—?”

  “Deirdre told me, and showed me where it is.”

  13

  “Dolly, it’s Cynthia Baird. Well, we’ve been wanting to see you too. I don’t know where this fall has gone.”

  She is beginning to sound like them, Cynthia thinks. She is as bad as Harry, imitating accents. Is it a sort of infection, Southern speech? Southern attitudes?

  “Well, yes, a lot certainly has happened. We’ve been really busy. Especially this move. Yes, we love this house, just crazy about it. Esther and Jimmy really did themselves proud. But you know, this sounds a little crazy, I suppose, but we really miss our little old suite at the Inn. Yes, we really do. And it’s most of all your colors that we miss. What you did there was just so beautiful.… No, no, no, you’re much too modest. Harry and I used to say to each other almost every day, ‘That Dolly Bigelow is a genius, she purely is.’ We still do say that, honestly we do. Anyway, we miss it, and that’s what I wanted to talk to you about. We were just wondering if you could, just possibly, do a little something like that over here at the Hightower place. Maybe just some pillows, and some kind of a slipcover for the velvet sofa. You know, after all that color we’re used to, this place just seems real dark. Maybe if you could just come over some morning and we’d have some coffee and maybe you’d just get some ideas.… Well, next Tuesday would be just wonderful, absolutely wonderful.… Well, no, I haven’t got anyone in yet to help, but there’s no need for you to bring Odessa, just for coffee.… Oh, I see. Oh yes. Well, if she actually can help you, of course, yes. Bring her along.”

  “I honestly don’t get it,” says Cynthia to Harry, later on; she notes that at least when she speaks to Harry it is not in a Southern voice. “She insists on bringing her maid, for coffee. I never heard of such a thing. So nineteenth century, ladies going about with maids. But whatever will I do with her while Dolly’s here? Honestly, Southerners and what they call their help—it’s too much for me.”

  It is late at night, and they are lying in their extra-wide, custom-made bed. The Hightower bed.

  “Sweetheart, why don’t you just leave that to Dolly? Bringing Odessa was her idea, let her cope. They’ve got all this stuff worked out, they have for years.” He adds, “The only trouble with this bed is that I can’t find you. Oh, here, here’s something that feels familiar.”

  Odessa is very tall, she must be six feet or over, a powerfully built woman with broad hips, broad shoulders, and long swinging arms. But her eyes are frightened. Coming into the Hightower house (will anyone ever think of it as the Baird house?) walking behind and to one side of Dolly Bigelow, Odessa looks everywhere except at Cynthia, darting glances into corners, up at the ceiling. (“It was so hard to tell if she was just scared and shy—of me!—or just measuring things,” Cynthia later tells Harry. “Maybe both” is his rather sensible answer. “In any case,” Cynthia tells him, “she has the most ravishing skin.”)

  Odessa’s skin is dark brown—to most people, Southern people, just that, a dark brown Negro skin. A darkie. Cynthia, though, less accustomed to such skin, is instantly aware of the shades and the rich subtleties within that brown, the complexity of its spectrum, and the velvet smooth look of the skin itself.

  “I just wanted Odessa to have a look at you-all’s living room,” explains Dolly, as though Odessa needed explaining. “She just has the best ideas, and you know she’s the one did most of my weaving for me. She and her sister have got this loom they set up. Odessa honey, you just look around everywhere you want to. Me and Miz Baird’ll just be setting in here and talking, so you just take all the time you want to, and then you go on in the kitchen and heat yourself up some coffee.”

  As Dolly and Cynthia settle in the living room, Odessa, as she was bidden, looks carefully about, moving with a curious combination of directness and unease, moving jerkily. Dolly seems completely to ignore her, but Cynthia is unable to. After all, she is another person in the room. Hearing them talk. Presumably, reacting.

  “… the most wonderful house for parties ever in this town,” Dolly is saying. “And, speaking of social occasions, what is there so much worse about a woman getting drunk than a man who does the exact same thing, will you tell me that? It doesn’t make sense, if you look at it just in a logical way, and maybe there’s no logic to it, but I just have to say I can’t stand the sight of a lady who’s had a touch too much. Willard says the same. Of course you know who I’m talking about.”

  Actually, Cynthia does not know, she does not remember any conspicuously drunken lady at any recent party. On the other hand, there must be local parties to which she and Harry are not invited—yet. (Although they have done extremely well in that direction, as they frequently say to each other, laughing as they refer to their “Southern social climb.”) But Cynthia makes a face, a sound to indicate, Of course I know who you mean. As she watches Odessa’s broad shoulders move into the dining room. Does Odessa know who Dolly is talking about? Does she care, or are all white ladies just the same to her, mean and silly and incomprehensible?

  “Of course I can’t blame her for sometimes drinking more than a little too much,” continues Dolly, in what is now an almost saccharine voice. “I was married to Russ Byrd, I think I’d have a few nips now and then myself.”

  Brett Byrd? Drunk? Cynthia finds this hard if not impossible to imagine. Shy, rather placid Brett, with her perfectly knotted golden hair, her calm blue eyes, and her soft dull voice, getting drunk? Behaving “conspicuously”? This was surely not a scene at which she, Cynthia, has been present.

  Dolly seems also, then, to recall the absence of Cynthia at whatever party she was so vividly remembering. “Oh, I am just so forgetful! This was over to the Lees’, and you-all don’t even hardly know them. I’m so tacky, just a tacky forgetful old gossip I’m turning into. Just like my momma.”

  Cynthia laughs at her, as she is sure that she is supposed to do; Dolly enjoys this version of herself as a comic character. “In that case, you might as well tell me all about it,” says Cynthia.

  “Well.” And Dolly settles in. “Some of us were over to the Lees’ a few nights ago, you know, Clifton and Irene? She’s the pretty one. I think Jimmy Hightower used to be a little sweet on her.”

  Of course Cynthia does remember the Lees, from that first Hightower party. She remembers an extremely pretty smallish woman, who drank a lot. With a big fleshy husband with whom, as Cynthia remembered the scene, Dolly was furiously flirting. Hardly thinking, she says, “I do remember Irene Lee. Very pretty, isn’t she? It seems to me she was drinking quite a bit herself.”

  Dolly giggles in an agreeing way. “Well, she does have that tendency sometimes. I declare, poor old Clifton, I think it’s downright embarrassing for him.”

  Out of some odd mixture of motives then, only half understood by herself, Cynthia chooses that moment to lash out (though mildly) at Dolly. “I just don’t agree with you about women drinking,” she declaims. “I think any messy drunk is unattractive, and
God knows I’ve seen more messy men than women. Falling-down slobs. Actually I think I feel more sorry when women get drunk. I always think, Poor things, they must be really tired, or having their period, or some bad trouble with some man. I guess that isn’t quite fair either, making allowances for women when I don’t for men, but that’s how I feel.”

  Somewhat surprisingly, Dolly agrees. “Oh, I’m glad to hear you say that! Really deep down I’ve always thought that too, but it’s just like something you’re not supposed to say, or even think. But you know whole lots of times at parties when some lady’s had a little too much and everyone’s muttering just exactly what I just now said, I’m secretly thinking the opposite, which is what you said. I’m thinking, Poor thing, I’ll bet you’ve got the curse, or your husband is mean, or just plain cooling off, his mind gone to somewhere else. Or you’re tired from your kids and all. And like you say, it’s the slobby men are the worst drunks, no doubt about that.”

  There is a pause during which Cynthia considers this about-face—so interesting, as though Dolly had been waiting for some permission to have or to voice those subversive views. Nevertheless she asks her, “But what on earth do you think is wrong with Brett Byrd?”

  “Just about everything, I’d imagine.” Dolly stops to think, her plump legs pressed against the edge of the sofa, one foot lightly tapping. “Beginning and ending with James Russell Lowell Byrd himself.”

  Wanting badly to ask some very direct questions, Cynthia still does not. She has been down here long enough to realize that people just do not do that. She cannot ask Dolly, Did Brett Byrd know about Emily Yates? Is she upset, seeing that child around town?

  Instead she only very mildly says, “He mustn’t be too easy to be married to. Not that anyone is, I mean—” She laughs. “But a famous handsome poet, that would be really hard, I’d think.”

  “Brett lot of times just closes her eyes to things,” says Dolly somewhat portentously. “And maybe sometimes it all gets too much and she has to take a couple of drinks to get those eyes back closed.”

  At that moment Odessa appears in a doorway, as though poised to swim back into the room—or, rather, to dive: head lowered, she seems to contemplate depths.

  Turning, Dolly asks—actually, she states—“I’ll just bet you’ve got every single color in your mind somewhere.”

  “Don’t know about that, Miz Dolly,” Odessa grins. “How ’bout some curtains in here too? Make a world of difference.”

  “Oh, draperies?” Dolly looks at Cynthia, eyebrows raised.

  “Well, sure. Why not? The room is kind of stark.” Cynthia turns and asks Odessa, “What color were you thinking of, Odessa?”

  “Well, ma’am, maybe this real pale spring green? You know, like the first little shoots that come up, in April?”

  “It was really the most bizarre conversation,” Cynthia reports to Harry that night, as the three of them sit at dinner, in the grand (very grand for only three people) Hightower dining room. “The connection between Dolly and Odessa is really something, something from another world. They seem to have their own somewhat subterranean language. But I really think it’s Odessa who does the work with the fabrics and all, and she’s really the one with the ideas too.”

  “Smart of Dolly to give her her head, or whatever. To recognize the talent.”

  “Dolly’s extremely smart. Though she tries to hide it. God, Southern women!”

  “No one down here knows any Negro people at all,” Abby puts in. “It’s all so crazy. Deirdre told me it has a lot to do with sex.”

  Automatically, Harry and Cynthia glance at each other, quickly fearful: how much does Abby know, and what does she know? So far they have told her almost nothing, beyond the most basic biology—about which they are a little vague themselves.

  Seeing their puzzlement, Abby tries to enlighten them. “You know, they’re afraid that getting to know each other will lead to sex and babies. Sounds like a good idea to me,” says Abby. And then she says, “Can I go to the pep rally tonight? It’s Friday and Deirdre says there’s a torchlight parade that’s really neat. She wants to take Graham.”

  • • •

  “For all our plans to sweep the town off its feet, it looks like that’s more what’s been done to us.”

  It is Cynthia who says this, but Harry agrees, quite as though he had thought of it too. “Yes, our daughter’s been taken over by a very strange and beautiful young woman, and our housing all taken care of, one way or another.”

  Harry sighs. “If I take this job in Washington—I don’t know. All our new best friends would miss me.”

  “Not nearly as much as I would, my darling.”

  “But wouldn’t you come with me?”

  “No, I don’t think so. I like it here, remember? You’d have to commute.”

  “To Washington? You’re nuts. But you’re probably right, we should stay here. I don’t need to work for the Navy. And think of the money we’re not spending, living here. I think of it every day. Besides, living down here makes you think there’s not even going to be a war.”

  14

  The pep rally begins with the torchlight parade; in the heavy November dark, a straggly crowd marches along, some singing, many carrying flaming torches that to Abby look dangerous; in fact, she finds the whole scene frightening, uncontrolled. The dark, and the wavering bright torches, the strong hoarse songs, and the shouts: “Beat Duke! Beat Duke! Who are we going to beat tomorrow? DUKE!”

  Dragging along in the crowded dark, holding one of Graham’s small hands while Deirdre holds the other, Abby thinks that they are in the wrong order; she and Graham, the two children, should be one on each side of Deirdre, the grownup. She’s afraid. The shouting sounds like news-reels, wars, and the torches could set everything on fire, people’s hair and their clothes, like burning cities in the Sunday papers, all over the world.

  And it’s dark, so dark, a dark black dark. She can’t see anyone, can barely see Graham, just huge black shapes of people, and everything so loud. “BEAT DUKE—WHO?—BEAT DUKE, BEAT DUKE, BEAT BEAT BEAT BEAT DUKE!”

  Then a large shape, black like all the others, is coming toward them from the opposite direction, and, like a policeman, or a Nazi, he has stopped Deirdre, standing in front of her, close, so that they all stop and now Abby can see his face from the torchlight. Brown curly hair, deep blue eyes, about the age of her father. But he looks like Graham, a huge blowup Graham, like a Disney cartoon, and at first Abby thinks he must be Deirdre and Graham’s father, Mr. Yates, but then Deirdre is saying names: “… Russell Byrd, Abby Baird, you’ve met her parents, probably.”

  The man looks at Abby, but blindly, she could as well not be there; she hears him mutter, “… pleased …”

  To Deirdre he is saying, “… somehow I’d find you here, what a chance—must see you.”

  Whatever Deirdre has said, if she has said anything, makes the man, Mr. Byrd, turn to go; he is gone, and Deirdre is changing their hands, keeping Graham’s and taking one of Abby’s, as Abby wanted it to be in the first place, and close to her ear Deirdre whispers, “This is awful, what say we go?”

  Abby’s frightened heart surges. She had not been able to imagine the relief of not being there; these present circumstances, the dark and torches and the shouting, had come to seem a permanent condition, she was caught in a newsreel that would go on forever.

  “Besides, Graham’s really tired,” Deirdre continues unnecessarily. “We went for a very big walk this afternoon.”

  “No bigger than we always do,” corrects Graham.

  Deirdre does not say or explain what is clear to Abby, that she has to go and meet Mr. Byrd now—nor does she tell Abby not to mention Mr. Byrd to her parents, which Abby for whatever reasons of her own plans not to do.

  In any case, having decided to leave, Deirdre seems nervous, very hurried. “We’re not far from where I left my car, actually. I can drop you off at your house and then swing up that little road to mine.” By now she is tal
king mostly to herself. Is she afraid of Mr. Russell Byrd? Afraid to be late to meet him?

  BEAT DUKE, BEAT DUKE, BEAT DUKE.

  The rhythm seems slower and stronger, the shouts come louder, even as they are moving away from the crowd, not stumbling or unsure but very definite as they make their escape. Abby is thinking of her bed and of a really good book. Jane Eyre, she has just started it. She thinks too about Deirdre and Mr. Byrd, and whatever it is they plan to do, so urgently. She has a vague, excited, and on the whole unpleasant sense of this, this urgency. It is something she knows that she should not know.

  “I guess he’s asleep,” she whispers, letting him in the front door.

  “I had to see you—”

  “That really scared him. And I think Abby too.”

  “—so I knew you’d be there. You had to be—”

  She laughs, very softly. “You sure do trust in your luck.”

  “We’ve had good luck all along, haven’t we? In a way?”

  “Graham?” She laughs again, softly. A little sadly.

  “Yes, Graham too. Of course Graham too. He’s—he’s exquisite. Perfect. Our Pearl.”

  “Pearl?”

  “I just meant he’s perfect.”

  “He looks more and more like you. Someone’s going to notice. If they already haven’t.”

  “I suppose.” Not thinking about it, not then, he tangles his hand in her hair, all that strong dark silk. He asks her, “You don’t want to go back to California?”

  “Well, sometimes I do. I feel scared here, I don’t know—”

  Since she must stay, she must—at that moment Russ feels that his life would be unbearable without her, his mind races toward a possible fictional explanation; it is true both that Graham looks much like him, and that this will be noticed. He wonders: Some distant blood relationship? But even as he thinks this, imagines saying it, Russ recoils: himself, a Byrd, related to a Yates? And then the irony of such an incredibly snobbish recoil strikes him; he is in fact in love with a Yates, his most beautiful son is a Yates. And as for families, his branch of the Byrds wasn’t exactly such hot stuff either.