One Hundred Years of Marriage Page 6

  Alice smiled back at her host. Did he like her? She was sure none of the others did. Cecil was again staring at his plate. He’d pointed out the store with pride, but admitted the boarded-up hotel was also his father’s. She glanced around the dining room. There was a fine Seth Thomas clock on the mantle, but not much else. A dusty rectangle on the paint over the mantle suggested a missing painting or mirror. There was no silver service on a tea cart as she’d expected, no carpets. Had there been more nice possessions? Things they’d sold or pawned? But if they themselves were on hard times, why were they being so snippy to her?

  “Business all over the country just gets worse and worse,” Mr. Brady said.

  “If you’d make your tenants pay their rent,” Mrs. Brady said, “things would be a whole lot better.” She rose and carried the chicken platter to the kitchen.

  “Used to, Estelle and I each had blooded mares to ride when we were home,” Elinor said.

  “Blooded mares! How grand.” Alice looked at the clock. 1:10. Dessert, a few pleasantries, and they could leave.

  Mrs. Brady returned with a chess pie and served everyone a piece. “My, this is heavenly, Mrs. Brady,” Alice said. Mrs. Brady shrugged.

  “Your mother’s a painter, isn’t she?” Estelle asked. “It must be wonderful to live in a house full of paintings.”

  “Oh, we can’t afford to keep them.” Silence. Estelle and Elinor exchanged looks.

  “Let’s walk to the creek,” Mr. Brady said to Alice.

  “I was gonna drive her around,” Cecil said, “show her Grand Avenue, all those homes.”

  “Naw, you don’t want to do that,” Mr. Brady said. “It’s a beautiful day.” Cecil glared at his father.

  “You change your clothes,” Mrs. Brady said to her husband. It was late in the season for a white suit, Alice realized. Mother always made Daddy put away his straw hat on Labor Day.

  “A little walk beneath the trees would be lovely,” Alice said. “Why, when my daddy’s family first pioneered from Nebraska in the 1880’s, there were so few trees, they first had to live in a dugout.” The members of the family rose from the table without response. Perhaps relatives living in the ground like prairie dogs was not the best heritage to be claiming at this table.

  *

  Mr. Brady came downstairs in a tweed jacket and twill pants. He carried a rifle, and as he, Cecil and Alice rounded the house, he picked up a heavy looking gunny sack. “Do you shoot?” he asked her.

  “Never have, no sir.”

  They walked through a backyard bordered by beds of day lilies. In the center of the yard was a statue of a little boy holding a big fish with a tube emerging from its mouth, but the small moat around the statue was dry. Cecil had told her they’d had parties here once, but today no guests had been invited to meet her.

  The ground rose sharply once they were out of the yard, and Cecil took her hand as they climbed past a large outcropping of rock toward a grove of white-trunked trees. “Cottonwoods,” Cecil said, “and those are hickories.”

  “Lovely,” she said, looking up, then down, watching where she put each step to protect her shoes. A walk was actually not a great idea for her, traipsing through grass in pale suede pumps. Mother had traded a huge, lidded soup tureen, trimmed in gold to Mr. Welcher for these shoes. Mr. Brady took huge strides, a man easy in his body.

  At the top of the rise, she saw that the land plunged down toward a ribbon of dark water overhung by willows—lovely, like a scene Mother might paint on a platter. Cecil pulled her into a run toward the water leaving Mr. Brady to saunter down to the bank with the rifle and the gunny.

  “You want a cigarette?” Cecil whispered when they reached the bank.

  Yes, yes, that would really help, but she whispered, “Cecil, I wouldn’t smoke a cigarette in front of your father.”

  He dropped her hand and fished his Lucky Strikes out of his pocket. He was the only one who knew she liked the taste of cigarettes, and she felt uneasy, not accepting his offer. To be alone with him, beside this rushing water, leaning her head back on a tree, exhaling a little plume of smoke from red lips—

  Mr. Brady rested the rifle and the gunny sack against a tree, then sat down in the shade and took off his jacket. “Go on and swim, Cecil,” he said, “I’ll take care of Alice.”

  “It’s October, Daddy. I’m not gonna swim.” He sucked hard on his cigarette and flipped it toward the creek.

  “Alice, come here and sit in the shade.” Mr. Brady spread open his coat on the ground beside him, and she sat on it and pulled her feet under her skirt where she could slip her heels out of the shoes which had started to rub. A bird chirped, and she felt her shoulders relax. Cecil came and sat on the grass beside her. Mr. Brady took up his rifle, aimed toward a floating tree branch in the creek and fired. She clutched her waist, head down, ears ringing. Cecil put his arm around her.

  “I’m sorry, Alice,” Mr. Brady said, “I shoulda warned ya. I really am sorry.”

  “That’s all right,” she said. “I’ve just never been up close to a gun when it was fired, except at the pictures, of course.” She smiled at Cecil.

  “Now, Alice,” Mr. Brady said, “the report won’t shock so when you do it yourself. You’ll see. Stand up.” He handed her the rifle and stood to help her hold it properly. The gun was huge and awkward, and the smell of gunpowder was sharp in her nose. She willed her hands to stop shaking and bent her eye to line up the sights as she was instructed. If Cecil didn’t want her to do this, he should speak up. But he didn’t say anything, just stood up to get out of the way as his father moved around behind to adjust her elbows. “Now think of the trigger like it’s a lemon you’re squeezin’,” Mr. Brady said close to her face. “Forget about pullin’. Use your whole hand. Just relax. Now line up the sights. See that big branch out there in the middle. Hit that.”

  She didn’t wait to take a breath, but fired twice on command.

  Mr. Brady grinned and pointed and spoke to Cecil who made a faint smile. She wanted to go now. She could not hear any birds or even the sound of the water rushing along. She extended the gun to Mr. Brady and watched his lips moving. Her ears popped and her hearing returned. “… back to me. No, ma’am. You’ve got lots of shooting left to do.” The gun was heavy, and holding it, she didn’t feel like herself.

  “Maybe Alice doesn’t care for shooting,” Cecil said.

  She didn’t, but it seemed to be Mr. Brady’s planned entertainment for her. “Oh, I don’t know,” she said. “Maybe I’d better try to learn while I have the chance.”

  Mr. Brady fished two long bullets out of his pocket. Then his sun-splotched hands took the rifle from her and broke it open and knocked the shells on the ground. She took off her suit coat, folded it on Mr. Brady’s opened jacket, and unbuttoned the cuffs of her silk blouse. He reached into the gunnysack, pulled out a dried corncob, and threw it way up the creek. It bobbed to the surface and floated along in the current toward them, a little boat alone. “Now take aim, careful, careful and fire.”

  She couldn’t catch Cecil’s eye.

  “Go on, Alice, take aim,” Mr. Brady said. By the time she spotted the corncob again, it had passed them in its ride. She lined up the two sights, pointed at the receding cob and fired. The cob shot up onto the far bank. She swallowed to clear her ears. “Awww right! Fine and dandy, Alice. You are an absolute natural sharp shooter. Did you see that, Cecil? Did you see that?”

  But Cecil didn’t answer, just stooped to pick up a stone and sailed it hard toward the broadest part of the water. She handed back the rifle. “I think Cecil’s ready to go,” she said.

  “Naw,” Cecil said, “Y’all go on. I think I’ll just lie down right here after all that dinner.” He lay back on the ground and rested his head on his folded arms. Didn’t he care now if she went deaf pleasing his father?

  “Come on now, Alice,” Mr. Brady said. “This is too easy for you. Break open the rifle like I did.” He handed her four more bullets. She dropped two into he
r skirt pocket, inserted the others into the holes in the rifle, and snapped it closed as she’d seen him do. He dug into the gunny, grabbing two cobs with each hand. “Now I’m going to throw them in one after another. You don’t have to hit them in order, but pick your shots carefully.”

  She spread her legs to the limit of the slim skirt. The breeze stroked her hair back and pressed the skirt between her legs. Cecil watched. Perhaps she was good at this. Did Elinor and Estelle shoot? Was it part of the landowning life? She could play this role, a redhead in a chamois skirt, her hair held at the nape in a black ribbon, a rifle at her side.

  “Hold it,” Mr. Brady said. He dropped the cobs and put his arms around hers. She didn’t have it right. Whatever had been natural at first was lost now. “The way your doing, you’re gonna throw out your shoulder.” She could smell his sweat and heavy after-shave. His heat surrounded her, his leg firm against her hip. Her heart pounded. “Ease it down this way. That’s a girl.”

  Suddenly, beside her on the ground Cecil cried, “Hit that,” and pointed to the sky, then to a flutter of leaves on a tree behind her. She turned, aimed and fired. Something fell like a stone to the earth.

  “You little bastard,” Mr. Brady hissed.

  He took the rifle, and she dashed to the base of the tree. She stooped down and saw the red cap on the bird’s head. The first real woodpecker she’d ever seen. Why had she fired without knowing what it was? She blinked back tears and stood up. She wanted to go home. She hated this family. Why had Cecil done this to her?

  Mr. Brady gathered up both their jackets, and with the rifle at his side, walked up the bank toward her. “Come on, Alice. It’s starting to get chilly.” He held her suit jacket by the nape, and she slid her arms in.

  Cecil was nowhere to be seen. With shaking knees she slipped and slid in the high heels as she and Mr. Brady made their way up the rise. Mr. Brady tried to keep a hand under her elbow, but she was still sniffling and turned her head away so he couldn’t see her face. Where was Cecil? She didn’t know whether they were headed for the house or away. She was in no condition to face the women.

  “Now just stop right there,” Mr. Brady said softly. They were standing in a little clearing. Alice’s heart thumped. “Someone wants to take your picture,” he said.

  What on earth? Alice looked about and finally, in the trees, saw the top of a dark head bending over a box camera, hair as long and dark as an Indian. Mr. Brady stepped away. Alice sniffed and wiped her cheeks. She patted her hair, but without a mirror, it was hopeless, so she just lifted her chin to the side and composed a model’s smile.

  “Did you get her?” Mr. Brady said and headed for the person with the camera. Alice shielded her eyes and looked into the deep shade. It was a small white woman with her hair down. The loose hair made her look like a girl, but Alice saw now that the woman’s tan face showed the white squint marks of someone who’d worked in the sun for years.

  She wore a dark dress and lace-up lady’s shoes and held Mr. Brady’s coat while he wound the film in the camera. “Come here, Alice,” he said and waved her closer. The small woman turned to leave, but Mr. Brady said to her, “You might as well say hello.” He lifted a branch aside and Alice stepped into the cool shade where the festering smell of the forest floor surrounded the three of them.

  “Miss Sarah meet Miss Alice.”

  “Pleased to meet ya, Miss Alice,” the woman said, nodding her head with meticulous country manners.

  “How do you do,” Alice said and smiled.

  “Fine, thank you,” Sarah said, clearly nervous. Mr. Brady put the little roll of film in his pants pocket, and Miss Sarah held up his jacket for him. Alice watched as he slid in his long arms and this woman smoothed her hands along his broad shoulders. He took Alice’s elbow and walked her out again into the sun. She was going to have to think about all this later.

  When they came in, Mrs. Brady was in the front hall. “You bring me anything?” she asked her husband.

  “Couldn’t hit the side of a barn,” he said, and without a glance at Alice, headed upstairs.

  “Cecil’s in the kitchen talking to Estelle,” Mrs. Brady said to Alice. “ You can wait in the living room.” Had Cecil told his mother about the woodpecker?

  Alice sat down on the edge of a stuffed chair and looked at her ruined shoes—all Mother’s work on the tureen gone in an afternoon. Her blouse was damp with perspiration. She ran her fingers over her hair, tucked up stray strands and tried to pat the sides into a decent shape. If she had had the money for a bus ticket, she would never get in a car with Cecil Brady again.

  She clasped her hands now and waited for this horrible day to end. These people were Philistines, interested only in money and social position. Cecil loved to hang around the Drama building and help with the sets and the lighting. He was always telling people his girl was an actress or bragging about her reading poetry on the radio. She thought he valued all this as much as she did. But he didn’t care about theater or poetry. And his sisters seemed to think she’d be a social embarrassment. This was the last family in the world in which she would ever feel comfortable.

  “Are you two going back now or staying?” Mrs. Brady asked from the doorway. Alice sat there dumbfounded. How would her own mother have put that question? “I hope you’re not rushing way.” Or “Supper’s almost ready. It would be such a treat if you’d stay a little longer.”

  Behind his mother, Cecil dashed through the front hall with his hat on and a paper bag in his hand. Alice heard the front door slam.

  “It seems we’re leaving.” Alice stood up. Elinor came down the stairs and Estelle came out of the kitchen.

  “Looks like you ruined your shoes,” Elinor said. “Too bad the hired girl isn’t here today to clean them up.”

  “Oh, no, Daddy will do it.” She blushed. Was there no opportunity she’d pass up to embarrass herself? She measured the distance to the front steps and felt Cecil’s family closing in behind her as she walked into the late afternoon shadows. Cecil had started the car. She paused on the porch to make a proper farewell. “It was kind of you to have me, Mrs. Brady. The dinner was delicious.”

  “Glad you could come,” Mrs. Brady said, her arms hanging at her sides.

  Estelle, delicate and lovely, had come only as far as the threshold and stood framed by the brown doorway. “You’re going to be driving in the dark.”

  For over thirty miles neither of them said anything. Alice’s back ached from sitting up so straight. What was there to say? He’d misled her. At least, he’d certainly left out a lot and given her no warning at all about how cold his mother and sisters could be. No one mentioned her gift of the preserves with their watercolored labels. His family acted like she’d come empty handed. Kindness counted for nothing. Courtesy or generosity—all signs of weakness. Mother would be so disappointed.

  “The Gamma Phi Betas won’t rush you,” Cecil said finally. “Elinor told me. It’s completely out.”

  Her head snapped around. “Cecil! How did this come up? You said you didn’t care if I wasn’t in a sorority. I could never afford one anyway, and it’s humiliating that you even discussed it with your sister.”

  “Elinor says, for a future in society, a person should have this valuable connection. She said you have the clothes and manners, but she says you don’t know how to make the best of yourself.”

  “In what way is it that I do not make the best of myself?”

  “Everything. You never mentioned that you’re on the radio every week. Or that your grandmother went to college. You talked poor from the moment you walked in.”

  And you’ve talked big ever since I met you—all your father’s holdings. Saying that would have stopped him, but she didn’t say it aloud. Nor did she say, how can you, who talk with your mouth full at the table, say I do not present myself well? She stared through the dusk at the rolling tree-covered hills. In another hour they’d be back in the flat land.

  “Look, Alice!” He sounded truly irr
itated. “I didn’t want to take you out there. But you insisted. Now you’re giving me the silent treatment.”

  The silent treatment was surely a whole lot better than the ugly bickering she’d heard at his folks’ table. She’d be embarrassed to have her family see them. They had made her feel lonely, and she felt lonely now. The sun was going down, and she had so far to go with this angry man.

  “God damn it!” Cecil yelled. “You didn’t want this to go well. Every word out of your mouth—”

  She raised her hand to hush him. She could not allow them to sink to this—yelling and cussing. Her parents never raised their voices in anger.

  “You!” The word spurted out of his mouth. “You pass yourself off as too good for us. An artist who wouldn’t think of socializing with sorority girls.”

  “Cecil, I never said that. I’d love to be in a sorority.”

  “Estelle says you’re a phony.”

  “Estelle?” Alice wanted to get out of the car and walk the last hundred miles home. “How could anyone say that about me. We may not have a lot of land and a big house, but we—?”

  “Wouldn’t you like a big house, Alice?” He glanced over at her. “How about a real pearl necklace like Elinor’s. I saw you staring at it. Huh? Be honest. You’re crushed my family has fallen on hard times. You thought you were getting a rich boy. My daddy’s thirty thousand dollars in debt. He’s lost everything but the land and nobody will buy it from him. He’s filed for bankruptcy on the mercantile. I drove out from Chisom last month to bail him out of jail for fighting.”

  Her breath. She couldn’t get her breath. Finally she said softly, “You didn’t tell me any of this.”

  “Well you know now.” He said this last with such a bitter stab she knew it was all ended, her romance with Cecil Brady was over. He was withdrawing the strong arms he’d offered. The car began to slow down. Was he about to dump her beside the road?

  “God damn it!” Cecil said. The car bucked up onto the weedy shoulder beside a field of dried corn stalks. Cecil jumped out.