Diann Ducharme (4 page)

But of course there was my new dress to consider, and I wanted to return to Edenton at the end of the summer with at least some of my new clothing still in my possession.

Daddy told us, with a sad countenance, “The hotel that used to operate out here was burned by our boys during the war so the Yanks couldn’t use it. Good thing, too, since the Fed’rals swarmed all over the Banks once it fell. Then the bastards took down the Episcopal church here, used the wood for runaway-slave houses over on Roanoke Island. As if people like that need their own houses.”

Wood was still hard to come by, these days. But taking down a church for its building materials was a new low. I wondered where the church steeple had ended up. I pictured the cross sitting on top of some shack, like a weather vane.

“I can’t for the life of me imagine some slave and his freeloading family squatting on my land while I was off fighting the war,” Daddy huffed. “That island used to be a nice, quiet place, before the blue-bellied Yanks had their way over there.”

I wasn’t at all sure what he was talking about. The only thing I knew about Roanoke Island was that it was the site of the first, and doomed, English colony on American soil. But no one ever interrupted one of Daddy’s tirades.

I licked my chapped lips nervously. Listening to Daddy rant about the blacks always caused my heart to shrink up inside me, like the tiny green pea under all those mattresses of puffed-up feelings—sadness, confusion, regret. I swear, I didn’t know what to feel these days.

But Daddy had emotion enough for the rest of us. Almost every night at supper he barked over the sheer lunacy of black men being allowed to vote, and sit on juries, and even own farmland. And too
frequently I heard Daddy and his many visitors, squirreled away in his study, discussing the sorry state of North Carolina politics, and how the white men—at least the white men who counted—were suffering at the Negro’s expense. Negroes even served in Congress now. No one would have ever believed it, just three short years ago.

“So the hotel … Is it really that new?” I asked, with extra interest.

“Built just this year. Folks say it’s just as fine as the one that burned. But no church yet, if you can believe it, so we have to have our Sunday worship at the hotel!”

I laughed along with Daddy, but Mama said with a scowl, “That doesn’t seem right at all. First thing to get built is a business enterprise, and no thought given to a house of God. What kind of a place is this?”

“That’s the way of the world. Money always comes first,” Daddy preached. “And the folks out here have pirate’s blood, anyhow. They can’t help their greed. It’s a perfect place for the carpetbaggers, come to think of it. Just look at all this untapped wealth.”

He gestured around to the ocean and then over to the sound, like he was conducting an orchestra.

The L-shaped hotel was an impressive structure for such a small island, with three rambling stories, a ten-pin alley, and a grand ballroom for nightly dancing. In the early-evening sun the white clapboard glowed like a mirage in the desert, with the brass band’s tunes pumping out the open windows.

An amazing number of vacationers packed the ballroom. Big skirts and top hats bobbed and swept through the room. Even the children were smartly attired, though they were all to dine in a special
part of the room designated for youngsters and overseen by servants in white aprons.

The air was perfumed with fresh paint and the floors gleamed slick with inexperience. The politician Buxton Adams and his wife, Iris, were waiting for us at a large table set with a lovely centerpiece of wild beach roses.

“Isn’t this a merry gang!” exclaimed Mr. Adams, shaking hands heartily with Daddy and kissing with relish our gloved hands. “How’s the ocean treating you folks? I still can’t get over that cottage of yours.”

His perfectly round head topped a thick body, and his mustached face glowed cherry-tomato red in the crowded warmth. Although you might not guess it at first from his large presence, Mr. Adams was dwarfed physically by Mama and Daddy both. Daddy counted this respected Conservative politician as one of his strongest allies in the fight for keeping the eastern North Carolina land, and the money and power that went with it, in the old planters’ hands.

Word had it that Mr. Adams was biding his time, waiting for the radical Reconstruction pendulum to swing in the Conservatives’ favor. With the recent Republican victory, however, things weren’t looking so good for the Conservatives in North Carolina. But you’d never know it by Mr. Adams’s jolly demeanor.

“Abigail, you are looking quite the young lady tonight. I’m not sure I would have known you from that rosy cherub of the tobacco fields! And my, my, just look at that dress—how becoming on you! You and Madeleine will have to compare notes on your dressmakers,” he said, indicating his daughter, Maddie Adams, a petite sixteen-year-old girl with the serenely beautiful face of a Rembrandt subject, seated next to her mother at the table.

Maddie was no angel, though. She was known throughout the
state of North Carolina, and probably elsewhere, for her extravagant tastes and newly minted bosom, usually accentuated with inappropriately low-cut gowns. I had known her since we were small girls, although during the war we lost touch with her family and I didn’t see her as often as I used to.

“Abigail, I do
so
adore your gown,” purred Maddie, who wore her blond hair fashionably styled in droopy ringlets around her face. “It must be hard to find colors to go with your red hair. Lord-a-mercy, that dark green would look positively sickening on me!”

In her pink gown, with its voluminous petticoats peeking out from slits up the sides, Maddie resembled a sinfully sweet strawberry shortcake with dollops of whipped cream, carefully placed in the center of a china plate. I smiled to myself, imagining all of her drooling suitors taking tiny bites from her.

She sipped her mint tea and fanned herself with a wiggly wrist. “How is it out at that little ocean house of yours? It
is
a tiny thing—I can see it from our veranda. I can’t imagine how you all stand it! I simply got
lost
in your plantation home when I was a little girl!”

“It is small, but it’s refreshing to wake up to the sound of the ocean right outside my window. And we don’t have to hitch a horse to a cart to get to the ocean,” I tried to explain.

Maddie’s big blue eyes had wandered while I was talking, and she was now waving hello to some of her friends across the room. Maddie, always more interested in having tea parties with her dollies than in exploring our land with me, wouldn’t understand how the rawness of ocean living appealed to me, much more so than the Adamses’ location in one of many houses clustered on the sand hills and near the homes of politicians, attorneys, doctors, and businessmen, with their constant social obligations.

Edenton, North Carolina, was its own cluster, with the neatly
lined colonial streets branching out from the courthouse green. There, the Adamses’ home was a pre-Revolutionary beauty on Water Street, with a view of Edenton Bay, but it was surrounded on three sides by houses owned by Mr. Adams’s contemporaries. I doubted he could even venture outside without encountering a fellow judge or attorney wanting to discuss politics with him. I always thanked my lucky stars that we lived a decent carriage ride from town.

“Our cottage is like a charming Swiss chalet. It sits right on the sand hills, with the cute curly trees all around for shade, and we’re up so high we have just a perfect view of the ocean
and
the sound. You should come on over after supper, to see what living in Nags Head is
really
like.” She giggled.

I frowned at her, clearly recalling why we’d always ended up on opposite sides of the nursery.

Maddie giggled again. “Bless your heart, Abby, don’t have a hissy fit. I’m sure your cottage is just dandy, in its own little way. I already invited Alice Monroe and George Wakefield and Red Taylor over to set on the veranda with me. You’re acquainted with them, aren’t you?” she said sweetly, then winked at me.

I barely smiled. Her friends were the privileged sons and daughters of Edenton society, the same people Mama and Daddy wanted me to socialize with this summer. I would have to accept the invitation.

While we dined on freshly made crab cakes, fried oysters, and corn bread, the men discussed in hushed voices the most upsetting business of the year—the election of Republican governor William Holden. The women, not to be outdone, chatted about fabrics for draperies and the newest Edenton millinery.

I had trouble following along with the men’s agitated whispers, so I was somewhat forced to discuss the elegance of hats that are
bedecked with a single egret feather. Apparently they were very expensive, but quite fashionable, and I imagined the women of Edenton wandering the streets looking like a flock of egrets.

I wasn’t the only one at the table with a glazed expression, however. Mama, whose face had taken on a sickly yellow tinge, looked acutely miserable trying to keep up her end of the conversation with Mrs. Adams and Maddie. She hadn’t the skills for lighthearted conversation, and I noticed that her food remained largely untouched. And she kept beckoning for the harried Negro servant to refill her lemonade glass, to which she subsequently added several large spoonfuls of sugar.

At one point during dessert Mrs. Adams declared, “Ingrid, I’ve never seen you look so poorly.”

Mama said with a little shudder, “It’s that ocean air. I slept with the windows open last night … I declare, I’ve never smelled such nastiness. It’s made me quite sick.”

Mrs. Adams laughed heartily. “That
air
is the reason everyone is here in Nags Head! Oh, you do amuse me.”

Mama just reached for her glass of lemonade and took several frantic gulps.

The children’s table broke up first, of course. Martha and Charlie ran out the door of the dining room with the other children, who were all itching to explore the nearby sand hills in the waning daylight.

Soon young couples rose from the tables to dance to the band, whose horns and cornets were starting to squeak after a break. Red Taylor, the handsome son of a prominent attorney in Edenton, ventured over to ask Maddie to dance with him. I could tell that he was trying hard not to stare at the bubbles of skin squeezing from the top of her gown.

Maddie took her sweet time in accepting his invitation, batting
her eyelashes and looking around the room before rising from the table like a slow-to-bake yeast roll. Then Mr. and Mrs. Adams got up to make a hand-shaking tour of the room, leaving us to ourselves.

So I lingered with my parents, almost a grown woman, aware of myself in my new dress and hat, aglow in the warm light of the newly lit oil lamps.

Daddy sat back in his chair with his pipe and port. “Abigail, your mother and I have decided that you should tutor Mr. Whimble in reading and writing this summer,” he said.

“Pardon me?” Surely the yelps of the children outside had somehow interfered with his communication.

He smiled at me, a smile with a warning concealed within it. “He indicated this afternoon that he would like to learn how to read and write, just rudimentary skills at best. He was crying over the fact that he had no one to teach him, and with no schools out here it’s impossible for him to learn anything. So it occurred to me then that
you
are a good teacher, having taught Martha and Charlie the last few years. I told him so, and one thing led to another.” He shifted his large weight, causing the new chair to cry out for mercy. “You should have seen his face. I’ve never seen such a display of teeth in my life. He was so grateful that he’s suspending all the fees charged to me for his guide service.” Then, an afterthought, he said, “It’s good business, Abigail.”

I stared at his sunburned nose. I couldn’t even imagine a scenario in which I played tutor and dirty Mr. Whimble played student.

“Good business! I hardly think that tutoring a strange man is a wise idea. Teaching my own brother and sister is one thing, but a grimy fisherman! You don’t even know this Mr. Whimble,” I said desperately. “He could be dangerous! He’s as filthy as an urchin! Lord knows what he does when he’s not fishing and hunting and
roaming around in the muck, adding clumps of dirt to his collection. I don’t want to do it. I
won’t
do it.”

Some diners, lingering over their dessert and coffee, turned their heads toward our table.

Mama shushed me, but Daddy merely looked at me as he would a curious specimen of duck. He said, “Ben is about as dangerous as a dandelion.” He shot back the last of his port. “He’s smart, in his way. And patient, a hard worker. And he’s a local hero, so they say,” he assured me. “I like him, I really do.”

“Mama, how could
you
of all people agree to this? It’s not proper! What will people say?” I blurted. “He’s a fisherman, for mercy’s sake!”

Mama disliked fishermen as a general rule. Her daddy had been a stevedore, laboring his entire immigrant life on the fast-paced Edenton ports after he arrived from Sweden, and she had learned to dislike with a passion anything that reminded her of her previous life as a daughter of the docks. Now Mama just shrugged, not up to the fight.