Authors: Dahlia Dewinters,Leanore Elliott
CHAPTER THREE
The telltale thump of the old lady’s cane on the hardwood floors announced her impending arrival.
Richard ducked into the parlor, hoping she would pass him by on her way to her bedroom. Old people slept in the afternoon, right?
The parlor was much more cluttered than the other rooms, and the furniture was unmatched. Against one wall was a brand new ivory silk chaise, a marked contrast to an old, faded brocade couch and a rust-colored overstuffed chair. Wandering in farther, he pushed open one panel of a dusty curtain to illuminate a huge marble fireplace dominating the end of the room. On the mantel, there were necklaces of glass beads, silver rings and oddly enough, a tomahawk. Richard rolled his eyes.
Probably an offering to ancient gods or some voodoo nonsense
.
Above the mantel was a large painting. It looked like acrylic paint on velvet. He wrinkled his nose.
Flea market crap masquerading as history.
When he got his hands on this house, he would turn it into a masterpiece. He would get rid of all the garage sale trinkets and highlight the good stuff. With all the antiques here, the home would be a showplace. He grinned. Rent it out, give house tours. He would make a mint. The only obstacle was the old woman. Once she was gone, Annie would go along with anything he said.
“You like the painting, boy?”
Lise’s rusty voice startled him. Steeling himself for her ever-present sneer, he turned to face her. “It’s nice,” he offered, unwilling to spark her ire by telling her what he thought.
“Nice, my foot. You think it’s cheap. Don’t lie to me. I can read you like a book.” She shuffled into the room to ease herself down in the overstuffed armchair. “So, what’s the real reason you brought my Annie up here?” She squinted at him. “What do you want?”
“Can’t I bring my wife to visit her grandmother?” He stretched his lips in a false smile and moved closer to the painting, feigning interest. “It’s beautiful here in the summer. Where is Annie, by the way?”
“Upstairs, resting.” Grandmother cleared her throat. “You been working her over?”
“What?” Richard turned around too fast, and the room swam for a moment.
Had Annie told?
“I said, you been working her too hard?”
“Oh, no, no.” He gave a fake laugh, itching to get away from the woman’s scrutiny. There was something knowing in those faded brown eyes, something he wanted to get away from, fast. Richard turned back to the painting. Better to look at it than the old prune-faced bitch. “What’s this supposed to be?”
Lise sucked her teeth, a derisive sound not lost on him. The old woman’s hate was as thick as the humid summer air. “Seminole Wars, boy. Something they don’t teach in the school.” She harrumphed. “Don’t want to tell the real truth about how the white man did the dark man wrong.”
Richard took a closer look at the painting. White males and females knelt or lay on the ground, hands raised in defensive or pleading postures while the darker skinned Seminoles and Blacks either beat them with fists or with tomahawks. Blood puddled on the dirt. In the background, the house and barn burned.
Despite the heat, he shivered. He hadn’t known Grandmother was so bloodthirsty. It wasn’t exactly a painting you would expect to see in an old woman’s home. “That is interesting,” he managed.
Grandmother nodded. “Sure is. Maybe you’ll learn something during your stay here.”
He laughed again, but this time it was against his fear. “I heard you can’t teach an old dog new tricks.”
Lise lit a cigar. “Don’t be too sure about that.”
~* * * *~
Her hair was a mess. She dried her hands on the thick white towel and did her best to arrange the long, brown tresses into something that resembled order. The humidity had already begun to take its toll on her beauty salon hairdo, and she fretted about how she was going to keep it fresh. Perhaps there was a beauty salon in the neighboring town.
The acoustics in the house were funny. She could hear Richard and Grandmother talking somewhere in the house. Glad they seemed to be getting along, Annie walked back into the bedroom to explore a little. With the rain beating down, the day was dark and gray. She switched on the lamp on the corner of the hulking mahogany dresser and opened the top drawer.
The scent of lemongrass, borne by a damp breeze from the window, drifted to her nose, reminding her of long ago summers. Folded in neat squares were bed linens in heavy, smooth cotton. Some were trimmed with delicate pink embroidery, others with fine lace. In the second drawer, there were white linen tablecloths with matching napkins. Tucked in the corner of the drawer was a lacy sachet filled with dried herbs and flowers.
Curious, she picked up a napkin and a necklace fell out from between the folds. Annie caught the trinket before it fell to the floor. The jewelry was crafted with beads a little larger than seed beads in shades of red, yellow and orange. Fascinated by their smoothness and uniformity, she passed it from one hand to the other, fingering the fine strands.
“Annie!” Richard’s voice called up the stairs.
She knew he would soon follow. For some reason, she didn’t want him to see the necklace, so she hurriedly tucked it back into the drawer where she’d found it. “On my way,” she said, giving her hair one last look before she left the room.
~* * * *~
The temperature had dropped about ten degrees, and it was still raining when she and Grandmother Lise decided to sit out on the huge, wraparound porch.
Richard begged off, saying he had to check for any emergencies at the office.
Grandmother smoked her evening cigar, and Annie sipped on lemonade fortified with vodka. The crickets chirped, and the cicadas buzzed in the grass. The lightning bugs flashed their tail-lights in their mating dance. If she listened hard enough, Annie could hear the splash of the ocean against the shore. She sighed and sipped more of her beverage. For that brief moment, all thoughts of Richard were forgotten, and she experienced a freedom of mind that she hadn’t had since she’d married.
How could she have made such a terrible choice in a life partner? How could he have fooled her so? To divorce him now would be to admit her mistake, to live up to the “can’t do anything right” that had plagued her since childhood. Her parents had never been satisfied with her grades or her looks, or her equestrian skills.
Painfully shy, she hated to participate in the rich kid activities they’d lined up for her. No sleepovers, no makeup parties, nothing like that for her. She chose to spend the time alone with a good book. For her upwardly mobile parents, being social was the best way to network and to have such a truculent daughter hurt their efforts to properly integrate.
Annie had disappointed them at every turn, except when she married Richard. They had been so pleased she’d married into a good family, one of the oldest in the Northeast. It also didn’t hurt that for a huge infusion of cash into Richard’s failing company, her family received a majority share and Richard retained his position as CEO. If she hadn’t loved him so much in the beginning, Annie would have thought she was being sold to the highest bidder.
A small part of her was glad her parents died on her wedding night, so they couldn’t see how much she had failed them once again. She was stupid to have been fooled so easily, and now, she deserved what she got. Taking an extra-large swallow of the lemonade, she welcomed the soothing warmth of the vodka.
“Don’t sit there brooding, missy.” The creak of Grandmother’s chair rocking back and forth hit the crickets’ rhythm. “What are you going to do about that husband of yours?”
Swirling the pale yellow liquid in the glass, she answered, “I don’t know.” What could she do? He was relentless in his possession of her. No matter what she tried, he would never let her go.
“He’s no good, Annie.” Grandmother said. “You know that.”
The fragrance of her Grandmother’s cigar blended with the smell of the rain and the fainter smell of the ocean.
“It’s my mistake. I have to live with it.” Annie rocked her chair, wishing Grandmother would drop the whole thing.
“Behind those pretty blue eyes and that blond hair lies the soul of the devil’s son.” Lise made the sign of the evil eye. “I know he beats on you. Whips you.” She drew on her cigar and the end glowed in the near dusk. “I don’t need to see the marks to know.”
Embarrassed by her Grandmother’s spot-on knowledge of her most intimate secrets, Annie shivered. Richard liked to use his belt even more than his hands, but both were equally humiliating. “He hasn’t done that in a while.” She spoke in a soft voice. Shame sent blood to her face and she ducked her head.
“Shouldn’t be doing it at all.” Grandmother stubbed out her cigar in a fancy china cup sitting on the wicker table next to her. “He’s nobody’s master and you ain’t a slave.” Her tone softened. “AnnaLise, don’t you want to be happy?”
Annie took a large swallow of her lemonade and didn’t answer. Her grandmother was wrong. She was a slave to her mistakes. There must be a way she could get it right, remake herself into the wife he wanted. Then, he would stop hitting her, and she would have succeeded. “I can make it right, Grandmother. I have to try.”
“My dearest Annie, you can’t fix nature. A snake will always bite.”
The expression on her Grandmother’s face nearly made her cry.
Richard appeared at the screen door. “Sorry to break up this hen party, but I’m getting ready to turn in.” The false smile, the one he seemed to be wearing every time he interacted with Grandmother, was firmly in place.
In her mind, she ran over the conversation wondering how much he had heard. She hadn’t said anything against him, in fact, she had defended him to her Grandmother. Forcing a smile to match his, she stood, a little wobbly from the vodka. “I’m going in, Grandmother.” She stooped and kissed the weathered brown cheek. “See you in the morning.”
“God willing, I’m still here. Good night, child.” Lise fingered Annie’s silky curls. “Best wash these out quick, girl.” She patted her neat twists, intertwined with surprisingly little silver and oiled to perfection. “This kind of weather don’t take too kindly to that relaxed coif.”
The faint, tropical scent of coconut tickled Annie’s nose. “It’ll be fine, Grandmother.”
Richard held the door open for her.
She walked inside. The screen door creaked shut, and she followed her husband up the stairs.
~* * * *~
Annie looked at his reflection, and her toothbrush paused in mid-stroke. “What?”
“I said what were you talking to your Grandmother about?” There was no false smile here. His eyes were flat with anger and distrust. “Have you been telling secrets, Annie?”
Cold fingers of fear crept through her body. She leaned over and spit, stalling for time. “Of course not,” she said after rinsing her mouth. “We were just talking about the old days when I was a kid.”
He grabbed her arm and turned her around. “Look at me.” Richard scrutinized her face.
She was careful to keep her features pleasant and neutral. It wouldn’t take much for him to drive her back upstate in the morning, and she wanted to stay. Badly
. Please, let me have this.
“I heard she wants you to change your hair. I like it the way it is.” He dropped her arm and marched out of the bathroom to the bed. Without giving her a second glance, he slid under the white sheets. “You find a way to keep it how I like it. I didn’t marry a pick-a-ninny.”
“Yes, Richard,” she said. Her verbal acquiescence to his wishes was a reaction without thought.
A second storm raged outside, giving quite a show with the thunder and lightning. Annie went through her evening toilette in slow motion, using the potions and lotions she brought to keep her skin smooth, to keep her hair from frizzing, to keep the worry wrinkles from around her eyes. The extended ritual served a second purpose: to keep her in the bathroom as long as possible. Finally, having nothing else to tone, smooth or tighten, she slid into bed beside her husband, hoping against hope he had fallen asleep.