The Improper Life of Bezillia Grove (4 page)

Uncle Thad greeted me at the front door and said that Cornelia wasn’t home but that I was welcome to wait in her room and listen to records till she got back. Then he lightly stroked his forefinger against my cheek.

“What happened, Bezellia?”

I mumbled something that not even I fully understood and then ran up the stairs. I should have known my uncle would never have been satisfied with such a cryptic answer, and by the time I got to the top step, he was already walking to the car, motioning to Nathaniel.

Cornelia’s bedroom door was wide open, and I could see the pink plastic mirror resting on the top of her vanity. I slowly walked across the room and picked it up, carefully turning it over as if it was a piece of my mother’s fine crystal. The impression of my lips was still on the glass, smudged but still there. I dropped the lipstick on Cornelia’s bed and then ran back to the car, knowing that Tommy’s kisses would soon be nothing more than a precious, well-kept memory.

chapter two

T
he day the Women’s Volunteer League appointed my mother cochair of the symphony’s first formal gala was the same day she told her parents to be expecting their granddaughters for the entire summer. She said the Iris Ball, named at my mother’s suggestion for the Tennessee state flower, was destined to be the city’s premier social event. And since she was creating a legacy for herself and the Grove family, she could not be bothered by anyone or anything until the end of September—unless of course it was her cochair, Mrs. George Madison Longfellow Hunt V, known to my mother simply as Evelyn.

Mother reminded me almost every day that working with Mrs. Hunt was a great privilege and that she was certainly the envy of every woman in town. The Hunts had, after all, lived in Nashville as long as the Groves, but they had invested their money in steel throughout the South, not horses, and now their name was on everything and ours was not—the Hunt Museum of Fine Arts, the Hunt Historical Collection, and the Hunt Botanical Gardens, not to mention Hunt Boulevard, Hunt Valley Road, and Hunt Ridge Lane.

Adelaide always burst into tears when Mother told her she would be spending any time at the lake. She would fall on the floor and cry till she turned a light shade of blue. I, on the other hand, relished the thought of being far from my mother and all the rules involved with being a Grove. There weren’t really any rules to speak of at my grandparents’ house. Nana didn’t care if our shorts and shirts matched or if we brushed our hair in the mornings. She barely brushed her own thin gray hair, let alone noticed if we had taken care of ours.

I spent most of my days fishing for crappie, chasing lightning bugs, and watching a little television while I painted my chigger bites with clear nail polish and drank Coca-Colas right out of the bottle. Adelaide usually calmed down after a day or two. Maybe it was the water that soothed her as Mother said it would, or the special vitamins Nana insisted she take, or the fresh country air that calmed her. I really don’t know for sure, but I think it had more to do with Adelaide taking Baby Stella in the lake for a daily swim and making mud pies from dawn to dusk, no one caring whether the mud got caked in her hair or in her ears.

Right before dinner, my grandmother would undress my little sister in the front yard and then soap her down for anyone to see. She’d even wash Baby Stella, scrub her head like she was cleaning a real live human baby. Every now and then, Nana reminded me of Mother, saying something mean and unexpected. But fortunately it wasn’t often. And fortunately it was never meant for me.

Mother genuinely tried to convince my sister that she would have a wonderful summer out by the lake, but Adelaide couldn’t hear anything comforting amid all of her whining and fussing. Mother finally smacked her hands together and warned her little girl that she did not have the patience or the energy for this ill-timed, overly zealous display of emotion and that Adelaide’s dramatics were causing her head to hurt. My sister just lay on the floor kicking and screaming, and Mother went and fixed herself another gin and tonic.

I was never sure if it was chairing the gala or talking to Mrs. Hunt on the telephone every day that delighted my mother most. Mrs. Hunt was a beautiful woman, as all Mother’s friends were. Her hair was light blond and stylishly short, curled and teased into a very attractive bob. She never went anywhere without wearing high-heeled shoes and two-piece suits, and always pinned to her jacket’s lapel was a large, diamond-encrusted H. My mother admired that pin very much. And before long, she was consulting Mrs. Hunt about everything—invitations, caterers, menus, even her children.

Adelaide and I quickly found ourselves wearing matching taffeta dresses and waltzing every Tuesday afternoon with a bunch of other kids who looked as perfect and as miserable as we did. My sister, however, learned almost on the spot that if she’d stomp and snort loud enough, Mother would leave her at home. Oh, Mother would threaten Adelaide with a spanking that she would never forget, and my sister would retaliate by screaming even louder and clutching Baby Stella tightly against her chest. Then Mother would, inevitably, leave them both behind, but only as she reminded me that I was very privileged to be dancing with Mrs. Hunt’s children.

One afternoon I simply refused to go. I told my mother that there was nothing particularly privileged about holding some boy’s sweaty hand while he stood on my left foot. She immediately lowered her body so her face was directly in front of mine. And with her finger pointed sharply in front of my nose, she said that when she was a little girl she would have
given
her left foot to dance with a Hunt. And I obviously did not appreciate what had been handed to me on one very old, albeit slightly tarnished, silver spoon. Then she grabbed me by the arm and dragged me to the car.

Besides, she said, I was now old enough to understand that worthwhile relationships were not rooted in the foolish affairs of the heart. She had learned the hard way that there were only three things of value to look for in a man. One, he wears cashmere. Two, he drives a convertible. And three, he glides across the dance floor. Anything more than that, Mother said, should not be of any importance to me, now or ever. I asked her if that was all she had looked for in my father. She simply tilted her head back and laughed. But from where I was sitting, it seemed that being a good wife had much more to do with impressing other wives than it did dancing with your own husband.

Mrs. Hunt flew to New York to buy a triple strand of pearls with a diamond clasp. She came to Grove Hill straight from the airport so she could flaunt her bejeweled neck in front of her dear, envious friend. My mother took one look at that necklace and then demanded that my father send her to Tiffany too. It wasn’t right, she shouted later that night behind their closed bedroom door, that her neck was always bare. It was simply embarrassing that the only pearls she owned were fake—cheap, cultured impostors. And it was very, very rotten, she screamed, that the one strand of pearls my father had ever seen fit to give to anyone had been presented to his baby daughter. Mother must not have liked what he had to say, because I heard a loud
thud
and the sound of shattering glass. A week later, a turquoise blue box arrived at Grove Hill.

Mother was determined that her daughters possess the skills she believed necessary for our own social survival—writing that seemingly sincere thank-you note, needlepointing one’s monogram in the same turquoise blue thread that Mother confirmed was in fact Tiffany’s signature color, and of course, maintaining that perfect smile whenever you’re dining at the club or having cocktails with friends. It was as simple as that.

So it was really no surprise to me when I came home from school one day and found a strange man with dark black hair and a silver mustache standing on the front porch. He greeted me as if we were old friends, enthusiastic and warm, even if I didn’t understand a single word he said.

“Bonjour. Je m’appelle Monsieur Gadoue. Je suis votre le nouveau professeur. Votre mère veut que vous parlez français. Elle est au club de loisirs en discutant le menu pour la boule avec Madame Hunt.”

I understood nothing but “Madame Hunt,” which was all the explanation I needed. Mrs. Hunt believed that any modern, educated child should speak French fluently. I had heard her say it myself. After all, it was the language of international diplomacy and of sophisticated, glamorous women like Jackie Kennedy. And Monsieur Gadoue was now here to make certain that someday I could politely converse with the former First Lady in both English and French.

I’m sure my mother’s motives were more mundane than the thought of sending her daughter to the White House or abroad with a needlepointed peace treaty to engage in foreign affairs. But I rather liked Monsieur Gadoue, and the thought of engaging in any type of diplomacy, even buying a café au lait on the banks of the Seine someday, sounded exciting and wildly exotic to me. Besides, Mother never seemed as happy as she did now. And dancing and sewing and speaking French all seemed like a very small price to pay for her happiness, fleeting or not.

By the first of June, however, I was growing very tired of doing whatever Mrs. Hunt judged important, and I found myself counting the days until I would leave Grove Hill. Even my father seemed to think I had needlepointed enough pincushions to last me a lifetime and maybe my fingers needed a rest. I had hoped that poor little Adelaide would be ready to go too, but when Nathaniel carried her trunk into her bedroom, she started crying and kicking her feet. She cried when Maizelle packed all of her neatly folded matching short sets. She cried when Maizelle told her to collect her books and babies. And she cried when Maizelle closed the lid of her trunk and fastened the lock. Finally, even Maizelle put her hands on her hips and told my sister to hush. Not until Adelaide was much older did I realize that it wasn’t that she loved Grove Hill so much. She was just afraid to be anyplace else.

My father came into my room late that night to tell me goodbye. He stood awkwardly by my bed and said he was going to miss me. He said he didn’t know what he was going to do all summer in this big, empty house without his darling daughters there to liven things up a bit. He said he would be at the hospital when we woke and then kissed me on the forehead. He lingered for a minute, seeming unsure of what to do or where to go next. I stroked the top of his hand and told him not to worry, that I’d be home soon. Then I went to sleep as I had so many times before, wondering if my father was happy, wondering if he had ever been happy.

Just as the sun began to light my room, I heard the telephone ring. The house was so quiet and still that the abrupt sound of the phone rolled through my body like thunder, and I could hear my mother speaking as plainly as if she was standing next to me.

“What? When?” There was a long pause. “The doctor said what? Damn it. Well, what am I supposed to say, Mama?” And suddenly I knew my plans for the summer had changed. There was another pause, and I could hear my mother tapping her foot on her bedroom floor as though she was sending out some angry message in Morse code.

“Of course I care about Daddy. It’s just that this gala is very important. Well, I’ll try. I cannot promise a thing. I said I’d try. Don’t bring that up again, Mama; that was a long time ago and doesn’t have one damn thing to do with Daddy’s heart.”

Mother slammed the phone down on her nightstand and then began slamming doors. She was mad, and every door in the house was her victim. I pretended to be asleep, tightly closing my eyes and sliding farther under my covers. And even though I was desperate to know what had happened to my grandfather on the other end of the telephone, it was ten o’clock before I braved leaving my room and wandered downstairs.

I found Mother sitting at the breakfast table with a cup of coffee in one hand and the telephone receiver in the other. A lit cigarette was resting on the edge of a round, silver ashtray, a gift from Mrs. Hunt. She’d bought it at Tiffany. Mother had never held a cigarette before she met Mrs. Hunt, but now she could balance one perfectly between her long, thin fingers no matter what she was doing, even while she was combing her hair. When the surgeon general announced that smoking caused cancer, Mother only laughed, saying that a government-paid doctor is hardly one to be trusted with your life.

“Evelyn, it’s absolutely unbelievable,” she moaned, sniffling a bit for added effect. Mother always sounded like another person when she was talking to her friends, particularly to Mrs. Hunt. She sounded like somebody I wished I knew.

“I’m still in shock. She just called this morning before I’d had a chance to have even one cup of coffee. I mean the girls’ trunks are packed and everything. They’re ready to go.”

Mother tapped her cigarette on the edge of the ashtray.

“The poor man, yes, I’m sure he was working too hard. I’ve tried to get him to sell that farm, but he won’t hear of it.”

Mother put the cigarette to her mouth and drew the smoke into her lungs. “Camp? In North Carolina? No, I really hadn’t thought of that. Oh, but you’re right. It probably is too late to send the girls this summer.” She sighed, blowing smoke in my face as if I wasn’t even standing there. “But yes, do remember us for next year. The mountain air would be so good for Sister’s complexion. Yes, yes, I know. Thanks, Evelyn, so very much. You’re such a dear friend.”

I stood cautiously by my mother’s side, afraid that even the slightest movement might annoy her. She finally waved her left hand, motioning for me to sit down while keeping the receiver tightly clutched in her right. I wondered for a moment if my grandfather was dead, maybe lying motionless in a field surrounded by stalks of young corn he was nurturing into adulthood. But Mother sharply slapped her hand on the table in front of me, and my thoughts and attention quickly fell back to her.

“Well, you know Charles has Nathaniel tied up all summer building that damn barn, and for what, a couple of old horses that should be in a bottle of glue.

“Maizelle? Lord, no. I can’t trust that woman to get anything right but a hot buttered biscuit. I swear I think her mama dropped her on her head when she was a baby. Did you know, Evelyn, that I found her in Adelaide’s bathtub the other day taking a hot soak?”

I hated it when Mother talked about Nathaniel and Maizelle that way. Nathaniel was only building that
damn
barn because Mother wanted every inch of Grove Hill looking its best come September since she would be hosting several luncheons at the house in the weeks before the ball. She even wanted the horses looking their best and had told Nathaniel to start giving them better feed and to brush their coats every day. And poor Maizelle, she had only taken that bath because her back was hurting from kneeling on the kitchen floor, scrubbing the baseboards with something not much bigger than a toothbrush. I was the one who suggested the hot soak. I even gave her some of my bubble bath.

“Oh, yes, I was going to fire her, excuse my French, colored ass right then and there, but Charles wouldn’t let me. She’s been with us since the day Sister was born, and Charles said it wouldn’t be right to fire her after all these years.” Mother sat there nodding her head, agreeing with whatever was being said on the other end of the line. “I know it. She and Nathaniel both have to be reminded of their place from time to time. I think they’ve been listening to that damn Martin Luther King again. Anyway, dear, remember we have a meeting at the club at eleven. The chef hopes to have the menu prepared for a final tasting. I’ll see you then. Bye bye.”