Olivia, Mourning (39 page)

The next morning Olivia lay in bed, staring at a rusty watermark in the shape of Lake Erie that stained the wallpaper above the window. She put off facing the day for a while by trying to place Buffalo, Erie, Cleveland, Toledo, and Detroit on it. The room was half-dark. The yellowing blind on the tall narrow window was down, but sunlight leaked around its edges and through the hole in the middle of it. Olivia finally rose and peeked through that hole, assuring herself that the window looked out over the empty fields before yanking on the pull string. The blind flew up with a loud snap and Olivia froze, listening, but the house remained silent.

She tiptoed to the door and pulled it open a crack, hearing only the ticking of a clock. She had used the chamber pot during the night and pulled it out again, knowing she dare not visit the outhouse in daylight. Then she poured water from the pitcher into the basin and washed, wishing she had some tooth powder. There was nothing else for her to do but gaze out the window, her mind blank. A few clouds drifted across the sky, but the sun was bright. If only she could walk down to the river and Mourning would miraculously come sloshing up the bank.

Restless, she put on her dress and opened the door. Mrs. Place had set a pair of fluffy pink house slippers in the hallway and Olivia slipped into them. The ticking was coming from a shelf in the hallway and Olivia started. The clock on that shelf used to sit on the desk in her father’s study. She stared at it for a moment, wondering if she minded, but felt nothing. It was just a thing, a timepiece. It was only a few minutes after nine o’clock, so she knew she had time to herself. Mrs. Place would be in her bakery all morning, until she closed for an hour at noon.

Olivia tiptoed down the stairs, which creaked loudly in the empty house. Mrs. Place had left the curtains in the parlor tightly shut and Olivia peeked around the edge of one of them. A pair of women in identical brown poke bonnets came to the bakery and quickly left, but neither of them glanced at the house. She watched for a while longer, hoping to catch a glimpse of Tobey coming for an apple pie, then pulled back from the window and studied the parlor furnishings.

She half-expected to see more things that had once belonged to her father, but nothing else looked familiar. Two flowery wingback chairs with matching footstools were arranged with a small round end table next to each. On the wall opposite, to the left of the arched doorway that led to the kitchen, a china cabinet displayed silver goblets, fussy pink and white plates, and china figurines of women of various nationalities in exotic dress. Next to the cabinet, two ladder-back chairs and a rocker with a bright red cushion and matching footrest completed a ring around the circular rug that covered the center of the floor. Olivia didn’t share Mrs. Place’s taste in furnishings, but that rug was the only thing in the house that Olivia considered hideous. It was blotted with enormous red and pink flowers, with leaves in two shades of sickly green. The background was somewhere between yellow and dirty white.

Olivia sank into the rocker and stared at the wing back chairs, trying to imagine Mrs. Place and her father passing an evening together. Mrs. Place was easy. She’d be knitting or embroidering, passing on the gossip she’d overheard in her shop that week, getting up to serve him coffee and a slice of her peach pie. That had always been his favorite. And the taciturn Seborn Killion? Did he talk about his children? About his wife’s sickness and death? Complain about the customers in the store? Olivia tried to imagine him playing with a kitten, but couldn’t. Neither could she imagine him sustaining a conversation.

A tiny pair of scissors and some spools of thread lay on the table next to the chair Mrs. Place had occupied last night. Olivia guessed she must spend most every evening in that chair, doing some kind of needlework. There was no evidence of it in the house, however. Olivia hadn’t seen any samplers or embroidered cushions. It made her sad to think of Mrs. Place sitting in that chair all alone, night after night, decade after decade, nothing to look forward to but Old Seborn’s visits. That being the highlight of anyone’s week was a truly dismal thought.

Olivia’s mind returned to the present. What was she going to do? There was still no sign of her monthly visitor. What had Mrs. Place meant when she said, “If you decide to stay here?” Had that really been an invitation for Olivia to hide-out in Mrs. Place’s house until she knew for sure, one way or the other? It was a comforting idea. If she wasn’t with child, she could simply go home the day after her bleeding started. And if she was? Well, perhaps Mrs. Place would let her stay for a few weeks, put off going to one of those homes for a while. Then, when it was all over, she could come back to Five Rocks and pretend to have been out in Michigan the whole time. No one would ever know the difference.

Delicious aromas began to emanate from the kitchen and drew Olivia through the arched doorway. Embers glowed in the stove and Olivia lifted the lid of the cast iron pot on top of it. A meal of chicken and potatoes coated with honey was slowly cooking. On the table were a pot of coffee waiting to be heated, a still-warm loaf of bread, and a jar of thick strawberry jam. Olivia helped herself to breakfast and then washed her plate and cup and wiped up the crumbs.

With Mrs. Place safely out in the shop, Olivia felt free to nose round, starting with the kitchen. There was something depressing about how clean and orderly everything was. The walls were painted a bright yellow and decorated with pictures cut out of a ladies’ journal: the head of a bored-looking woman with an elaborate hairstyle, a couple in evening dress holding glasses of wine at what seemed to be the rail of a steamer, and three orange kittens playing with a ball of blue yarn. Yellow and white checked curtains covered the window over the washing up basin. Olivia went to the basin and worked the arm of the rusty iron pump for a glass of water.

The strong smell and taste of minerals in the well water – so different from the cold, clear Michigan stream – brought her back home. Her father hadn’t gotten a kitchen pump until she was ten or eleven. Before that, they’d had to go out to the yard to pump water. Olivia remembered the joy of having a lark with Tobey in the hot summer sun, the strong smell of iron in the air as they splashed one another.

She opened the back door and peeked out. A gravel path, sheltered by a makeshift wooden structure, led from the back porch of the house to the hinged door that had been cut into the narrow sidewall of the barn. Olivia knew that Mrs. Place did all the baking in the roomy back of the barn. The small front area had been walled off and converted into her shop, with a small porch and roofed entrance that jutted out toward the road. The shop even had glass windows and a fitted door.

Olivia went back upstairs where she found only a room filled with what looked like discarded furniture, a linen closet, the room in which she had slept, and Mrs. Place’s spacious bedroom. Olivia entered it shamelessly, listening for the sound of the back door. A lumpy-looking double bed with a brass bedstead stood against the far wall. The pink cover thrown over it matched the throw rug on the floor. Olivia reached under the cover and felt the sheets. Plain white muslin, like the ones on her bed. She had expected perfumed silk. She wondered if anyone had shared that bed with Mrs. Place since Seborn died. Perhaps every older man in town had seen himself as a likely candidate to replace him and droves of them had come calling. Mrs. Place wasn’t what you’d call pretty, but her body was still slim, unlike most of the women her age. Olivia thought there must also be something appealing about her wide-open eyes and quick smile.

The door to Mrs. Place’s wardrobe boasted an inlaid mirror, surrounded by fat little cherubs carved into the wood. Most of the clothing looked vaguely familiar, except for a long boa of white feathers and a shiny red dress with puffy sleeves and a plunging neckline. Olivia took the red dress out and held it against her body, closing the door of the wardrobe so she could admire herself in the mirror. She tried to guess when a younger version of Mrs. Place might have last worn such a dress. Had she lived some other mysterious life, before being trapped in the dull routine of the bakery in Five Rocks? It would have to have been a long time ago. For as long as Olivia could remember herself, Mrs. Place had been behind the counter in her shop, every day except Sunday. And there had never been any sign of a Mr. Place, dead or alive.

As Olivia continued to snoop through the room and reflect on the life lived by its occupant, she began to understand why Mrs. Place had so readily offered her hospitality. How lonely she must be. Olivia returned the dress to the wardrobe and closed it with a sigh. The only other furniture in the room was a large dressing table. Cosmetics and the tools for applying them were scattered on its glass top. Her arsenal, Olivia thought. Weapons to fight off more than encroaching age. She must have known how the church ladies talked about “all that paint” she wore, but she sat there every morning and defiantly applied her mask. Poor Mrs. Place.

Looked at another way, however, Mrs. Place’s life was anything but pitiable. She had her own business. She didn’t depend on anyone. Olivia wondered how much of the feminine disapproval heaped on her was rooted in plain old envy.

She gave up ruminating over Mrs. Place’s life and returned to her bed to worry about her own. Whether she returned home now or first had to go away and birth a baby, then what? Stay in Five Rocks and wait for some young man to come calling? Smelly Billy Adams perhaps? Marry him and join Avis and Mabel for Sunday dinner every week? She realized what had made Jeremy so attractive. A life shared with him might offer love and friendship, as well as some material amenities, without the usual constraints of respectability. Jeremy wouldn’t have objected to her wearing trousers, riding bareback, or having her own money.

That’s why people go west
, she thought.
To get away from all the silly rules. They’re willing to trade comfort and safety for freedom
. She remembered Jeremy asking, “Why do they bother making all those rules? Good people don’t need them, and the bad ones aren’t going to follow them anyway.”

At a few minutes past noon, when the back door predictably opened and slammed, Olivia was downstairs sitting in the rocker. The pump handle creaked a few times and then Mrs. Place came into the parlor holding a glass of water.

“Sleep well?” she asked.

“Yes. Thank you,” Olivia replied.

Mrs. Place settled herself in her wing chair. Olivia nodded at the other one and asked if it would all right if she sat there.

“Well, of course. What a question. You make yourself to home wherever you want. I hope you got some breakfast.”

“Yes. Thank you.”

Mrs. Place leaned back and stretched.

“Is this where my father used to sit?” Olivia asked, after moving to the softer chair.

“Yes. Yes, it is. He bought the pair of them. Brought ’em back from one of his buying trips, a very long time ago.” She reached down to the basket on the floor and picked up some knitting. “We’ll have our dinner right quick,” she said. “That chicken’s been done for a while, but I like to sit on something soft for a few minutes, after a morning behind that counter.”

“Did he ever make you laugh?” Olivia asked.

“Beg your pardon?”

“My father – did he ever make you laugh?”

“Well, I don’t recall him telling jokes, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“No, that’s not what I mean. I mean . . . I’ve never been in love, but when I try to imagine what it must be like, there’s always a lot of laughing. I picture a man and woman lying together in a field of daisies, talking forever and finding the same things about the world funny. That kind of laughing.”

Mrs. Place dropped the knitting into her lap and looked over at Olivia with a wistful smile.

“And my father … Well, I just can’t imagine him . . . Of course, none of us knew him very well. He didn’t exactly wear our ears off. Never said much at all, except for telling us to do our chores and homework, and keep our marks in school up, and not give the teacher any guff. Sometimes at Sunday dinner he’d read things out of the newspaper, but he never really talked to us. I’ve always wondered if he talked to our mother. I can’t begin to think how they ended up married. Or how he got to be your … friend.”

Mrs. Place wore an uncertain smile. “You asking?”

Olivia nodded.

“Sure you want to know?”

Olivia nodded.

“You’re in the middle of all these terrible problems of your own and that’s what you got on your mind?”

Olivia nodded again, thinking her terrible problems weren’t going anywhere, but she might never get another chance to ask the “fancy lady” about her father.

“You sure you aren’t going to pull out a little pearl-handled pistol and shoot me?”

Olivia smiled, shook her head, and raised her right hand to draw an X over her heart.

“Well, all right then, I can understand you wanting to know. But let’s go in the kitchen.” Mrs. Place leaned forward to struggle out of the chair. “We can talk while we eat. I saved a peach pie for our desert.”

Mrs. Place sliced a plate of tomatoes and cucumbers and, after they each had a chicken leg on their plates, began talking.

“Well, tell you the truth, it was me what got your father coming over here,” Mrs. Place began. “I guess you could say I set my bonnet for him, but I don’t mean that I planned for it to happen. Not in the beginning, anyway. He was in Carlton, on one of them buying trips of his, and I was there having myself a vacation.” She stopped to chew, swallow, and take a drink of water. “I used to do that when I was younger. Had to get out of here once in a while. I was in one of the hotels, having myself a drink, and there he was. I was already seated in the dining room when he came down for his supper. I guess my face looked familiar, but I’m pretty sure he hadn’t worked out exactly who I was. If he had, he wouldn’t never have offered me his company.” She paused again to eat.

Olivia delved into her own childhood recollections. Carlton. She vaguely remembered her father and Avis talking about a place called Carlton where he used to go for merchandise, but didn’t any more because it was far enough away that he’d had to stay overnight. Olivia only remembered him going to Hillsong or Erie. He’d be up before sunrise and come back late the same night. Once, a few years ago, he’d taken Avis with him to Philadelphia and stayed over two nights. But Carlton . . .

“He’d already sat down before he noticed the glass of whiskey in front of me,” Mrs. Place continued. “Once he did, he got this puzzled look on his face, trying to figure out who this strange, liquor-guzzling woman was. He never came into the bakery, you know. It was always you children came for the bread and pies.” She swallowed another bite of her meal and wiped her mouth with her napkin. “Course, he’d seen me in his own store often enough, especially after he started selling my pies. I could see it slowly dawning on him. I was that woman none of the ladies invited into their parlors. He started fidgeting and looking over his shoulder, but he was too much of a gentleman to get up and leave. We got to talking and after a while he relaxed and ordered a whiskey for himself. We had our supper together and then another whiskey. I don’t remember what we found to talk about and I couldn’t say how much laughing went on, but he made himself pleasant and I was more than glad for the company. He wasn’t a handsome man, your father …” Her eyes glazed over. “But he had a certain stuffy charm about him. And he always tried to do what he thought was the right thing. That’s something to admire in a man.” She looked into Olivia’s face.

“I don’t remember him ever going to Carlton,” Olivia said, careful to keep her voice neutral. “So you meeting up with him there – that must have been a long time ago. When my mother was still alive.” She didn’t know what she felt. Numb. She had grown up knowing about Mrs. Place, but had never considered the possibility that it had begun before her mother’s death. A poor widower finding some consolation with an unmarried woman was one thing, but a married man sneaking off and lying to his wife?

Mrs. Place looked up and studied Olivia. “Honey, Seborn adored your mamma, like no man ever loved a woman. Never did care for me anything like that. Not the least little bit. But when a man’s married to a woman who’s not right in . . . I mean has problems like your mamma –”

“My mother was not crazy!” Olivia pushed her chair back and grasped the edge of the table.

“I didn’t say crazy,” Mrs. Place said softly. She tried to put her hand over Olivia’s, but was batted away. “I never said crazy. But she was . . .” She paused. “Olivia, I know you were just a little thing, but surely you remember something of how she was. All those days she refused to come out of her bedroom, kept the curtains drawn.”

“So what if she felt poorly sometimes? She was just fine in the head. She played the piano, and painted pictures, and wore the most beautiful dresses. She was way prettier than you. Just because she was delicate and took cold easily, that’s no excuse for you –”

“No, you’re right, I’m sorry.” Mrs. Place stared at her plate. “I owe you an apology, Olivia. I don’t know what I was thinking, saying something like that to you.”

“My mother was not crazy.” Olivia glared at Mrs. Place.
Who does she think she is? A slut like her, daring to say things like that about my mother, pretending to be my friend. No wonder no one in town speaks to her. Why did I come here? Why did I tell her anything?

“No, she warn’t crazy,” Mrs. Place said. “She was a lovely lady. Very special. Very talented. But delicate, like you said.” She hurriedly finished her meal and rose to put her dishes in the basin while Olivia sat in silence, her untouched plate in front of her. “I have to get back to the bakery. I can see I’ve upset you. I suppose you feel like stomping out of here and I can’t blame you if that’s what you want to do. You shouldn’t though. What with me prattling on like the old fool that I am, we haven’t discussed your situation at all. Don’t make it worse than it has to be, just cause you’re riled with me. We’ll talk it over after I close up this afternoon. Don’t do something you might regret. And you got to eat. Whatever’s coming, you need your strength to face it.”

After the door closed behind Mrs. Place, Olivia sat at the table for a long while. Then she shoveled the cold food into her mouth, rose to do the washing up, and could think of nothing else to do. She returned to the rocking chair in the parlor, her expression blank. Mrs. Place must know about her mother hanging herself. Of course, he would have told her. That’s why she thought Nola June was crazy. Olivia did remember tiptoeing past her mother’s closed door. Mrs. Hardaway leaving trays out in the hall that remained untouched. The housekeeper and her father whispering in the kitchen. Now that she thought of it, she could hardly remember a Sunday dinner with both her parents at the table.

Although she had no appetite, she went back to the kitchen and cut herself a generous slab of the peach pie. She stood holding her plate over the basin while she put one forkful after another into her mouth. Before she had swallowed the last bite, she cut a second piece and took it to the parlor with her. She quickly ate it and returned for a third. She felt sick to her stomach, but finished it all, even the crust. Two hours later, when the back door opened, Olivia was once again in the parlor, rocking in the chair.

“Good,” Mrs. Place said when she came into the room. “I’m awful glad you’re still here.”

Olivia waited for Mrs. Place to settle into her chair before asking, “Is it true about my mother, that she hung herself?”

“Why on earth would you be asking –”

“I’ll forgive you anything, except lying to me about that,” Olivia said, her voice low and steady. Then she leaned forward. “Tell me. Please.”

A long silence stretched out before Mrs. Place answered. “Yes. Your poor mother took her own life.”

“In the pantry of our kitchen?”

“Yes.”

Olivia had not doubted what Mourning told her. She just had to hear it again. She asked, “Where was I?”

“There was no school that day. The teacher was sick or some such and it was Mrs. Hardaway’s afternoon off. You three children had gone out to play in the snow, thank the Lord. Your father found her when he came home for his dinner. It was him took her down. All by himself. He sat next to her crying for a long while. Then he carried her up to her bed before he went to get Doc Gaylin. Locked the house up, so you children wouldn’t be able to get in before he was back.”

“So our mother didn’t care a whit about us,” Olivia said, feeling as if she might vomit all the gluey pie she had eaten. “That one of us could have come in and found her. And what about her husband? Why didn’t she think about how awful it would be for him? She didn’t care about any of us.”

“Honey, when your mamma got in one of her states she didn’t think at all – not about anything. Something just warn’t right with her. Never was. I know you don’t want to hear it, but that’s the truth. One day she’d be strolling down to the river with her easel and watercolors, happy as a lark, prettiest smile on her face you ever saw. The next she’d crawl into bed and refuse to get up for days. Sometimes weeks. Wouldn’t eat a thing. Doc Gaylin said she warn’t sick. Not in her body. Some folks are like that, poor souls, and ain’t a thing can be done for them. You just try to remember the way she was on her good days. She was so charming then. So full of energy. Wasn’t a sweeter woman in the whole world. Seemed to love everyone.”

“Do my brothers know?”

“I don’t know. Your father asked Doc Gaylin to keep it quiet, say it was the influenza what took her. Warshed the body himself and had a closed casket, but there was always talk.”

“I never knew. Not until Mourning Free told me, while we were out in Michigan. My father didn’t go home alone that day. Mourning was with him, carrying something from the store for him. Mourning watched him take her down and helped him carry her upstairs.”

“Seborn never told me that,” Mrs. Place said softly. “I guess he had his reasons. Might have just forgot. You know how it is with Mourning Free – he’s around all the time, but the way he keeps his peace, it’s easy to forget he’s there.”

Neither of the women spoke for a long while.

Then Olivia asked, “How could you do that? With a married man? A man with a wife who wasn’t well?”

Mrs. Place studied her hands and then looked Olivia straight in the face. “I know you won’t want to believe it, but there ain’t no doubt in my mind – Nola June knew and was just as glad. You remember, don’t you, that your parents had separate bedrooms? She’d lost her interest in that part of marriage. Ever since that little brother of yours, the one who died, what was it they called him? Jason Lee, I believe. Well, after he was taken from her, she never welcomed Seborn between her sheets again. It was so hard on your father. Losing his son and then as good as losing his wife. You were still a tiny thing when he made that trip to Carlton. After that he started going out for his card-playing nights. Before he left he’d go in and sit on the edge of Nola June’s bed, ask her if she didn’t want him to stay home. She’d say, ‘Why no Seborn, you go. I want you to go. You mustn’t be trapped here with me all the time.’”

Olivia and Mrs. Place sat in the quiet room, listening to the rocking chair creak.

“But that don’t mean I’m wrong about him always trying to do the right thing,” Mrs. Place said. “He never thought of keeping company with me as a sin. If he had, he wouldn’t a done it. He wouldn’t a done anything to hurt your mother. He made sure his sweet Nola June had everything she wanted and needed and didn’t think the few hours a week he spent with me had anything to do with the rest of his life. And they didn’t, Olivia. They really didn’t. You can’t rob a person of something they don’t want.” Mrs. Place stopped for a moment, her eyes on Olivia.

“I’ll tell you one thing, your mamma never crossed the street when she saw me coming, the way them other women do. She always gave me a smile and said hullo, sort of shy and embarrassed. I’ll tell you what I thought. I thought she knew her husband had a difficult life and, having a kind heart like she did, she was grateful he managed to find a little comfort with me. Helped her feel like less of a burden. Not that I thought she spelt it out like that … them are the kinds of things a person don’t put into words. Not even in their own head. We just feel them deep inside. Now, I don’t expect you to believe that . . .”

Olivia blinked. “Actually, I think I do. I’m not angry with you, if that’s what you think.” Her gaze returned to the floor and her voice trailed off. The faintest thread of memory had begun weaving itself into her thoughts. She heard a woman’s voice. Was it her mother’s? Who else could it belong to? The voice was saying to Avis, “No need to go telling anyone about your father’s Saturday night poker games. That’s not anyone’s business but ours.”

“He did his best.” Mrs. Place sighed and leaned forward. “Look, I’m sorry I opened my big mouth and now you got all this on your mind, when what you oughta be thinking about is your own situation.”

Olivia looked away and shrugged.

“The last thing you want is my opinion, but I’m giving it to you anyway. You’d best stay here with me till you get the curse. Then that very day you can prance home with a peaceful mind. And if you don’t get it, well, your family never has to know about that. I can take you to one of those places, say you’re my niece.”

She paused and waited for a response, but Olivia went on staring at her toes.

“Or, if you wanted,” Mrs. Place continued, “you could just stay on here. Time come, I’ll take you to some town where they got a good doctor or midwife. We can stay in a hotel while we wait for the baby to come. Have us a little vacation. I know being here all that long time would be hard on you, what with having to stay inside all that time, but I could keep you busy. Put you to work. I’d get you up before the roosters, so you could come out to the barn, help me with the baking till folks start stirring. You’d be earning your keep and I’d be more than glad of the extra pair of hands. And the company. Sundays I could get a buggy and we could have ourselves a nice ride, long as you keep that monk costume over your head till we’re out of town.”

Olivia blinked, feeling as if she might cry. “That’s awfully kind of you.”

“Ain’t nothing kind about it. Told you, I’d be more than glad of the help and having a body around to talk to. I wouldn’t turn away a stranger in the fix you’re in, and what with you being Seborn’s daughter and all . . . You know, it’s me what never thanked you properly for the kindness you showed me that day. Guess it’s true. Everything does come back at you, you wait long enough.”

Mrs. Place leaned back in her chair and reached for her knitting needles and then spoke softly. “I can’t imagine how beside himself your father would be, if he knew all what’s happened to his little girl. But I think he’d be glad that you felt like you could come to me. That you warn’t all alone.”