All that Katherine knew about The Divorce, she had learned from the servants, when they stayed at Grandfather’s house in those intervals in which Mother was broke.
Philanderer… Miss Kate had her pride, she wouldn’t stand for it… threw him out… never gave him a second chance, never spoke of him again…
And once a neighbor’s little girl had asked Katherine if it was true her mamma and daddy had had a Divorce, and she’d run home crying to ask Mother, who was taking tea with Grandmother. Mother’s face had seemed to turn to stone; she stood and towered over Katherine, and she had looked like the statue of the Goddess Athena on the library steps. She’d swept out of the room without a word. Grandmother had set down her teacup and held out her arms, but all she’d told Katherine in the end was:
Some things are best not spoken of, child.
In the present, Katherine endured. Most of her clothing was inappropriate for daily life on a farm. Under Mrs. Loveland’s blank stare she was stupidly inept, burnt clothes while ironing them, broke dishes while washing them.
The warm weather ended and it rained, and in the leaking barn her books got soaked. She carried them into the house frantically, armloads spread and opened before the stove to dry, weeping as she peeled back wet pages from the color plates:
A Child’s Garden of Verses
with its Maxfield Parrish illustrations, Kay Nielsen’s
East of the Sun and West of the Moon
,
Myths and Enchantment Tales
, the
Volland Mother Goose
,
Lamb’s Tales from Shakespeare
. When Mrs. Loveland saw them her jaw dropped. “You still look
at picture books
?” she said.
The winter was mild, so she and Bert continued to sleep on the enclosed porch.
One night she dreamed that she was back at college, that Mother had left her at the entrance to the dormitory and she’d gone in to find that the building was dark, deserted. Everyone had gone home for Christmas. She turned in panic and hurried outside again, and to her horror saw Mother driving away.
She ran after the car, after its red winking taillights. She chased it for miles. There was brilliant moonlight, blue-white, so bright it hurt her eyes. She lost the car at last and stood there alone, sobbing, and then a strange little girl came to her and told her everything would be all right.
Then she woke, and found herself alone on a country road in her thin nightgown, in the terrifying silence of the night. Had she been sleepwalking? She was more than half a mile from the house. Teeth chattering, she hobbled back, and Bert did not wake when she crawled back into bed.
She was unable to get warm again, and lay awake for hours. She hadn’t walked in her sleep since the winter she’d been twelve, in New York, when the letter came informing Mother that Daddy had died of pneumonia. He’d been living in a hotel only the other side of Central Park, all that time; she might have stolen away and visited him, if she’d only known.
And in her dreams, for months afterward, she kept trying to cross the skating pond to reach him. She could see Daddy so clearly, standing under a lamp on the other side, but she knew he didn’t know she was there, and she knew if she didn’t run to him he’d never know. She never managed to cross the ice, somehow; and once she started awake on the sidewalk, with Fifth Avenue roaring before her like a river and a horrified doorman clutching her arm to stop her plunging into the traffic.
By April she knew without doubt that the baby was on the way. Bert took the news stolidly, no least sign of happiness at the prospect of a little child of their own.
Mrs. Loveland shook her head. “You’re going to be sorry you didn’t wait,” she said. Katherine very nearly retorted,
Tell that to Bert,
but turned away and went to go feed the black chicken.
She gave up any attempt to be a good farm wife, and nobody seemed to care. She luxuriated in her freedom; took long walks alone, now that spring had come and the dogwoods were flowering. Where the red clay road cut across the hills she imagined she’d walked into a Thomas Hart Benton painting. This was the only part of the South that was the way she’d dreamed it would be.
One afternoon she was passing a house set close to the road, and heard music: Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto no. 1, to her astonishment, sounding scratched and tinny as though it were coming out of the horn of an old Victrola but still flowing magnificently on. She leaned against the split rail fence, listening, rapt. Someone was moving inside the house, through the window she saw someone dancing. Wild, free-form, arms flung out. A second later the woman pirouetted close to the window and saw her. She stopped dancing immediately.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” said Katherine, blushing. “I just—the music was so beautiful. I love Tchaikovsky, but there aren’t any classical radio stations here—”
“I know,” said the woman, pushing up the window the rest of the way and leaning out. Her face was pale and sharp, her gaze fixed. “It is an absolute purgatory for anyone of any culture. Or decent breeding. Tell me, are you a devotee of Beethoven?”
“Well, yes—”
“Please, come in. Will you come in?” said the woman. She ducked inside and slammed the window. By the time Katherine had come reluctantly up the path, the woman was standing at the open door.
“I am Amelia DuPlessis Hickey,” she said, inclining in a queenly sort of way. “I would introduce my dear husband, but he is currently traveling abroad on necessary business. Please, do come in! And you would be?”
“Katherine MacQuarrie,” she replied, and then added, “Loveland.”
“I see,” said the woman, as the music behind her wound down to hissing silence. “Would that be of the Greenville MacQuarries? With the DeLafayette MacQuarrie who perished at Gettysburg?”
“I don’t think so,” said Katherine, stepping across the threshold. “I’m afraid I don’t know a lot about my father’s people—”
“Ah! Well, things happen,” said Mrs. Hickey graciously. “Won’t you stay for tea?”
“Why, thank you,” said Katherine, and recoiled as something sprang up out of a packing box beside her and screamed.
“Now, Peaseblossom, that won’t do!” said Mrs. Hickey. “I really must apologize, Mrs. Loveland. Pray allow me to introduce my beautiful little geniuses: Peaseblossom, Cobweb, Moth and the baby, Mustardseed!”
She was referring to the pale and sullen children who crouched together in the corner. The two boys wore only overalls, rolled up thickly at the ankles; the girl wore a flour-sack dress. They had retreated behind what appeared to be a wooden model of the Brooklyn Bridge. From the pieces scattered on the bare floor, it seemed that they themselves had been constructing it. They were fox-faced, emaciated, staring with enormous dark eyes. A whimper from the floor drew her attention to an ashen baby waving its skinny arms from an apple box.
After a moment of appalled silence Katherine said:
“How clever. You named them after the fairies in
Midsummer Night’s Dream
, I guess?”
“I adore Shakespeare. Another passion of mine. My grandfather, Zadoc DuPlessis (for we are of the Chaney County DuPlessises, you see) had the good fortune to see the immortal Junius Booth in Charleston where, I believe, he was portraying Hamlet,” said Mrs. Hickey, stoking up the stove. She put a saucepan of water on the burner. Katherine looked around. The room was as filthy as a bare room can be. There were ancient books stacked everywhere, piled against the walls, and three crates of phonograph records. In the corner by the window was, yes, a Victrola with its morning-glory trumpet.
“Gosh, how lucky,” said Katherine. There were no chairs, so she wandered over to the children. “How are you all today?”
They shrank back. The little girl bared her teeth.
“I do beg your pardon,” said Mrs. Hickey, coming swiftly to her side. “They are terribly shy with strangers. We have, alas, nearly no social life. Now, you come out here and be ladies and gentlemen for our caller! Perhaps then we’ll go out for a Co-colee.”
The children blinked and scrambled out, lining up awkwardly against the wall.
“They do love Coca-Cola,” said Mrs. Hickey.
It was two hours before Katherine could get away. Mrs. Hickey told her life story: her family had once owned most of three counties, but of course The War had altered their circumstances, though not so grievously she hadn’t been raised with the best of everything and taught to appreciate all that was exquisite in the arts.
And she’d given it all up for love; so now she rusticated here, teaching her brilliant offspring herself. The boys were clearly destined to be engineers. Why, they’d made that bridge themselves from nothing more than slatwood, all you had to do was show them a picture and they’d build anything! And little Peaseblossom had inherited a love of great literature, she just devoured books. The children listened to all this silent and expressionless.
Later, back at the Lovelands’, Katherine went out to feed the chickens. She picked up the little black hen and buried her face in its feathers, feeling her hot tears spilling, and prayed that she wouldn’t turn out like Mrs. DuPlessis-Hickey.
Summer came and went, and autumn arrived with cornshocks and pumpkins. In the early hours of October 30, Katherine went into labor. Bert joked about the baby being a little Halloween goblin as he drove her to the hospital in town. She wasn’t laughing by the time they got to the hospital. The pains were terrible.
The nurses got her into a room and Bert told her he had to get back, that he’d come see her that evening. She begged him to tell the nurses to give her something for the pain. The head nurse came in and told her they were having difficulty locating Dr. Jackson; as soon as they heard from him they’d give her something.
All the interminable morning and afternoon, they were unable to find him, had no idea where he might be, and at last they gave Katherine drugs anyway. The relief was blissful, unbelievable, and she received with floaty equanimity the news that the baby was turned wrong. “Well, just turn it around,” she told them, smiling.
The bright window darkened and it was night. She floated in and out of a dream about Halloween, big yellow pumpkins on gateposts, little children scurrying in the dark with papier-mache faces. But that wouldn’t be until tomorrow night, would it? They gave her more drugs. Trick or treat!
Suddenly there was a nurse screaming and crying, praying to Jesus. Her sister had called from New Jersey. She’d been listening to Charlie McCarthy and when Nelson Eddy came on she’d switched away. (Katherine felt mildly outraged. How could anyone switch off Nelson Eddy?) The man on the radio had said Earth was being invaded by Martians! They’d come in a big cylinder and were burning people up! State troopers too! It was the end of the world!
The baby was turned around now but the head was too big. The head was stuck. There was a colored lady talking to her soothingly, wiping her face with a cold cloth.
You have to work, honey,
she kept saying. Nobody could find news of the invasion on the little radio in the cafeteria, but a man ran in and said he’d heard strange lights had begun to appear in the sky, were swooping and circling the town, had they landed yet? There was one. It was right outside the hospital. It looked like a soup plate on fire. The colored lady was crying now too but she stayed right there.
Sometime in the night the doctor came at last. Not Dr. Jackson. It was a strange doctor.
It was afternoon before Katherine woke up. Nobody said anything about Martians, and she assumed it had all been a crazy nightmare. Her little girl was fine, just fine, they assured her; but she had to ask and ask before anybody would bring the baby for her to hold.
When they did bring her in, Katherine’s first thought was:
Why, she looks like Mickey Mouse.
Both her eyes were blacked and all the dome of her head was one black-purple bruise.
“Oh, that’s normal, sugar,” a nurse told her, too quickly. “She just had a big head, that was all. The bruises’ll go away.” The baby lay quiet and waxen in her arms, barely moving, but they told her that was normal too.
It wasn’t normal. Bette Jean was an exquisite baby, with delicate white skin, with perfect little features, with enormous solemn eyes the color of aquamarines. Her hair was black and wavy. She looked like a doll, but by her first birthday she was still unable to sit up.
When it became impossible to deny that something was wrong, Katherine wrote to Mother. Mother sent money—Anne had the lead in a Broadway show now, she could afford to—and told her to take the baby to a specialist.
There was a doctor in Chapel Hill who saw “slow” children. It was most of a day’s drive in the old truck but Bert took them, tight-lipped and miserable. Bette Jean stared at the trees, the sky, the mountains, and exclaimed in her funny little unformed voice, a liquid sound like a child playing with panpipes.
In the waiting room were retarded children, spastic children, children blank and focused inward on private and inexplicable games, gaunt listless children sprawling across their parents’ laps. Overalled fathers silent, shirtwaisted mothers staring like wounded tigers. Bert took one look and murmured that he had to see the man about the mortgage, and he left. “It’s all right,” Katherine whispered to Bette Jean, who wobbled her head and looked astonished.
Through the transom she heard a man’s voice raised. “She’s still not thriving. You can’t be following my orders! I told you she needs lots of green and yellow vegetables. What on earth have you been feeding her?”
“Corn bread,” replied the raw cracker voice, defensively. “Corn’s yellow, ain’t it?”
Katherine shuddered.
The doctor was tired, and perhaps not as kind as he might have been. He listened to Katherine’s story, interrupting frequently as he examined Bette Jean. When he had finished he leaned back against a cabinet and took off his glasses to rub his eyes.
“Well, Mrs. Loveland—your baby has spastic paralysis. I’d conclude she was brain-damaged at birth, either by the forceps or the fact that birth was delayed so long. There is no cure for her condition, unfortunately. Given that the family is of limited means—I’d recommend you put her in a home.”