Delia Sherman Read online

  Rolling down the window, Sophie breathed damp, clean air and watched the cane flash by, pale green and graceful. Soon she’d be greeting Grandmama and Aunt Enid, curtsying like a perfect little lady and not speaking until she was spoken to. She wasn’t looking forward to it.

  A thick grove of oak and swamp maple appeared on the left. Mama turned onto a narrow dirt road, canopied with arcing branches. Sophie gasped as the heavy heat pressed down on her chest like a hand. The roaring of a million cicadas soared above the Ford’s chugging. Great swags of Spanish moss hung everywhere like cobwebs in a haunted mansion.

  “There’s the old slave quarters,” Mama exclaimed suddenly.

  Beyond the dark, dark trees, Sophie caught a glimpse of a group of little silver-brown houses floating hazily in the sunlight, looking, if possible, even spookier than the oak grove. Despite the heat, Sophie shivered and turned her gaze back to the road, which opened into a weedy field scattered with trees. Down next to the bayou, she saw a shabby, deserted-looking house shaded by big old live oaks. Mama bumped the Ford across the field, pulled up in front of the house, put on the parking brake, and turned off the ignition.

  “We’re home,” she said.

  Chapter 2

  Sophie got out of the car.

  Oak Cottage didn’t remind her of an ogre anymore. The angry eyes were just dormer windows, the toothy mouth just an old-fashioned gallery. The long tongue was just a stair, its red paint as chipped and faded as the green wooden siding. It was smaller than she remembered.

  The screen door screeched. A sturdy woman in a cotton housedress appeared on the gallery, waved, and came down the steps. Sophie recognized her, more from her picture on the piano than memory—Mama’s sister, Aunt Enid, as plain as a loaf of brown bread, with graying hair scraped back in a bun and a bony face. It was hard to believe she was Mama’s sister, except for their noses: the Fairchild nose, Mama called it—straight and long, with delicate nostrils. Sophie had it, too.

  The sisters touched cheeks. “You’re looking well, Enid,” Mama said. “I’m that glad to get here, I can’t tell you! It was an awful trip. Why you don’t have that oak drive graded and paved, I’ll never understand. How’s Mama?”

  “Middling.” Aunt Enid turned to Sophie and held out her hand. “Hello, Sophie. You’ve certainly changed since I saw you last.”

  Sophie shook the hand and curtsied politely.

  “I know I shouldn’t be surprised,” Aunt Enid said. “Children do grow, after all. How old are you now?”

  Before Sophie could answer, Mama said, “Thirteen. Fourteen in July, though you wouldn’t think it to look at her.”

  “I expect she’s a late bloomer,” Aunt Enid said cheerfully. “Now, you just leave your cases in the car for Ofelia to deal with and come on back to the kitchen. I’ve got a pitcher of ice tea waiting for you, and biscuits, fresh this morning.”

  “I don’t want you going to any trouble,” Mama said.

  “Oh, no trouble,” Aunt Enid said. “Ofelia made them.”

  The biscuits were good, but not as good as Lily’s. Sophie chewed and chewed, eyes on her plate, thinking of Lily’s biscuits, warm and flaky, spread with butter and mayhaw jelly, thinking of Lily, shadow-dark in her white uniform, smelling of laundry and baking and hair oil, sitting at the kitchen table and listening to Sophie tell her about her math teacher and the book she was reading and what Diana said in class.

  She missed Diana, but she missed Lily more.

  The tea had mint in it, fresh from a little pot on the windowsill, and was delicious. Aunt Enid poured it into cut-crystal glasses from a pitcher she took from the icebox, a rusty metal cabinet with the motor perched on top like a big drum. It looked almost as old as the stove and the long porcelain sink under the window.

  Sophie edged off her pumps and doused her biscuit with Karo syrup. Aunt Enid sat back in her chair and picked up her glass. “Well,” she said, “now you’ve taken the edge off, I want to know how you’re doing, Sister.”

  Mama’s mouth tightened. “As well as can be expected, under the circumstances.”

  Sophie winced at the chill in her voice, but Aunt Enid just laughed. “Lord, Sister, you know that tone doesn’t work on me. Now, tell me about this job you’ve gone and taken. A secretary, of all things! Didn’t that fancy lawyer of yours get enough from Randall to keep you and Sophie comfortable?”

  Clearly, Aunt Enid had her own way of dealing with Mama. Mama sighed. “I can’t complain. Randall’s taking care of the mortgage and Sophie’s tuition. But between paying Lily and Sam and Sophie needing piano lessons and uniforms and new glasses every whipstitch, some months I hardly know how to make ends meet. A secretary’s salary just doesn’t cover it all. So I’ve decided to sell the house, rent a little place in town, and take an accounting course at Soule College so I can be a CPA and make some real money.”

  Sophie noticed that Mama didn’t mention that her bridge friends had stopped inviting her over or that she spent nearly all her evenings in the city. She hadn’t mentioned those reasons for moving into town to Sophie, either.

  Aunt Enid took a sip of tea. “I see. And what about Sophie’s schooling?”

  “That’s a worry,” Mama admitted. “Randall’s been complaining about how expensive private school is, but I just can’t see my way clear to sending her to public school. No daughter of mine is going to sit in the same classroom with little Negro children, no matter what the Supreme Court says. It’s not natural.”

  “Of course not,” Aunt Enid said. “The very idea.”

  Mama buttered a biscuit. “I’m going to send her to St. Mary’s.”

  “St. Mary’s!” Aunt Enid set her glass down with a snap. “That’s a Catholic school!”

  Mama shrugged. “What if it is? There’s no danger of enforced desegregation, and the fees are very reasonable. And I’ve heard that the education’s excellent.”

  Aunt Enid raised her eyebrows. “Have you? Oh, I’m not going to say a word—she’s your child, and I’m not one to stick my nose into other folks’ business. Just don’t you let Mama get wind of it. You know how she feels about Catholics.”

  There was an uncomfortable silence, during which Sophie saw that Mama and Aunt Enid looked more alike than she’d thought.

  The icebox kicked on with a rattle and began to hum loudly. Aunt Enid cleared her throat. “Well. It’s a long drive from New Orleans, Sister. Why don’t you go lie down on your bed for a spell while Miss Sophie and I get reacquainted?”

  Mama nodded crisply. “I believe I will. Sophie, sit up straight. And comb your hair before supper. You look like something the cat dragged in.”

  When she was gone, Aunt Enid poured the last of the tea into Sophie’s glass. “Now, what shall we talk about, Sophie Fairchild Martineau?”

  Making conversation, Mama always said, was the art of asking questions. But the only question Sophie could think of was “What’s wrong with Catholics?” which would probably start things off on the wrong foot.

  Aunt Enid smiled at her kindly. “I expect you’re shy. I was shy at your age. Do you like to read?”

  Sophie didn’t like being told she was shy, even though it was true. “Yes,” she said firmly. “As a matter of fact, I like to read very much.”

  “Good. I have plenty of books here, although I doubt your Mama would consider most of them suitable for a young lady. Have you ever read Dickens?”

  “We read Great Expectations in school.”

  “Did you like it?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Do you play chess, by any chance?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “Pity. I like a nice game of chess. Maybe I’ll teach you. Now. Do you want to see the garden first, or your room?”

  She sounded very hopeful about the garden, but Sophie’s head was beginning to spin with all the changes of subject. “My room, please, ma’am. If it’s not too much trouble.”

  First she had to get her shoes back on. Since her heels were r
ubbed raw, this wasn’t easy. Aunt Enid got her a couple of Band-Aids, thankfully without comment, then led Sophie outside and up the stairs to the back gallery.

  “Oak Cottage was built by Creoles,” she said, “back in 17-something—your grandmother will know. French plantation houses don’t have inside stairs. Your room’s down there”—pointing down the gallery—“overlooking the garden. It was my room when I was a girl. I’m on the other side now, next to your grandmama.”

  A faint, silvery tinkle sounded inside the house. Aunt Enid looked flustered.

  “That’s Mama now. Where’s Ofelia got to? I told her to get the cases, but she should have been in to make Mama’s coffee by now.” She hesitated. “Sophie, you go in and tell your grandmama it’ll be up directly. Go on. She doesn’t bite.”

  Sophie wasn’t at all sure of that. Mama always said that Grandmama was a Great Lady, which Papa said meant Grandmama liked telling folks where to sit and spit. Sophie remembered when Grandmama had made her girl (not Ofelia. A funny name. Asia—that was it.) scrub Sophie’s feet with a bristle brush after she’d been running around outside in her bare feet. She remembered the story Grandmama had told her, too, about a little girl who’d gotten ringworm in her big toe and had to have her foot cut off. It was a stupid story, but the way Grandmama had told it gave Sophie nightmares. She could still hear that gentle, sweet voice saying, “And you know what they had to do? They had to cut it off with a saw. And the little girl never danced again.”

  The last thing on earth Sophie wanted was to see Grandmama alone, but she knew an order when she heard one.

  All the bedrooms in Oak Cottage opened off the double parlor that took up the better part of the second floor. During the day, the gallery doors were shut to keep the heat out. Sophie opened a long French door and a pair of wooden shutters, then pushed through two sets of curtains. In the gloom, the sofas and chairs looked like the ghosts of furniture waiting for ghostly guests. The air smelled of roses.

  Her eye caught a pale, slender shape in a shadowy corner.

  She gasped and reminded herself that there was no such thing as ghosts. The tinkling sounded again, shrill and impatient, from the very corner where the pale shape hovered.

  Sophie took a step forward. The shape came into focus, and she let out her breath: it was only a bunch of white roses in a silver vase.

  Feeling foolish, Sophie marched straight to her grandmother’s room and opened the door onto pitch darkness.

  “Grandmama? It’s Sophie. Aunt Enid said Ofelia would be along with your coffee directly.”

  “Sophia Fairchild Martineau.” Grandmama’s voice was low-pitched and gentle, just as Sophie remembered. “My only grandchild. I’d get up and greet you, dear, but I haven’t put my foot to the floor for almost a year now. My great regret is that I can’t get to church to hear the Lord’s Word. But the Reverend D’Aubert drops by most Sunday afternoons, and that’s a great comfort.”

  Sophie was trying to think of something to say when a colored woman pushed by her with a tray. Ignoring Sophie, she set the tray on the washstand, pulled back the heavy curtains, and jerked the shutters open with a brisk rattle, letting in the late sunlight and a drift of damp air.

  Sophie stared. Grandmama’s room looked more like those fancy antique shops on Royal Street Mama liked to poke around in than a person’s bedroom. In addition to a massive armoire and a lady’s dresser, a marble-topped washstand and a full-length pier mirror, the room was cluttered with incidental tables, side chairs, and embroidered footstools. Photographs in silver frames and assorted knickknacks crowded every flat surface, and paintings in gold frames covered every inch of wall space. Between the shuttered windows, a huge tester bed rose above the clutter like a royal barge with Grandmama sitting against a mound of pillows, clutching a silver handbell like she was fixing to throw it.

  “I’ve been ringing for a good twenty minutes, Ofelia,” she said, gently reproachful.

  “Yes, ma’am.” Ofelia poured coffee into a gold-rimmed cup, added hot milk from a pitcher, and put the cup into Grandmama’s hand. “Here’s your coffee, Miz Fairchild. You just visit with your little granddaughter here, and I’ll be back with your supper in two licks.”

  She stumped out of the room, leaving Sophie alone with her grandmother.

  “What are you doing all the way over there?” Grandmama beckoned irritably. “Come closer, so I can see you. Where’s your dear mama?”

  Sophie negotiated a careful path over a footstool and around two straight-backed chairs and a spindly table covered with bright little boxes. “The snuff boxes!”

  “I asked you a question, Sophia.”

  Sophie touched a blue-enameled lid, smooth and cool under her finger. “Mama’s resting. It was a long drive from New Orleans.”

  “When I was a girl, it took two full days,” Grandmama said. “Come here and let me look at you.” Reluctantly, Sophie obeyed, standing uncomfortably while her grandmother’s watery blue eyes moved over her face and hair like weightless fingers.

  “I’m glad to see you favor the Fairchilds,” Grandmama said at last. “Not the eyes or the chin, of course. But you have your dear grandfather’s hair, and the Fairchild nose.” She sighed. “I must say, they looked better on him. It’s a pity about the spectacles, but I suppose they can’t be helped.” She took a sip of coffee. “Do you do fancywork, dear?”

  Sophie shook her head. Mama had tried to teach her embroidery once. It had not gone well. “No, ma’am.”

  “In my day, young ladies had accomplishments. I will teach you to tat, just as I did your dear mama, so you can start laying up some linens for your hope chest.” She turned her head toward the window. “I do believe I have had enough company for today. You may go away now, Sophia.”

  Sophie curtsied and went.

  Tatting. What was tatting, anyway? Sophie imagined herself sitting among the cups and spindly tables day after long, hot day, tatting under the direction of that gentle, impatient voice. She’d go crazy, she just knew it. She’d start throwing knickknacks, and Grandmama would send her back to New Orleans. Where she would get in the way of Mama’s house-hunting and schoolwork and be a burden.

  As she crossed the parlor, she heard Mama calling her from her bedroom.

  “Yes, Mama?”

  “Come in here. I want to have a little talk with you.”

  Mama had folded back the shutters and was sitting by the open window in a rocker. Her shoes were off, her stockinged feet were propped on a needlepoint footstool, and her eyes were closed. “Come here, darling, and sit by me.”

  The closest seat was the cushioned bench of a mirrored vanity. Sophie sat down, trying to keep her back straight.

  “Your Aunt Enid has a green thumb,” Mama said. “She has her church work to keep her busy, and Mama, of course, but that garden is her pride and joy. She always did like making mud pies.”

  “What about worms?” Sophie hated worms.

  “She loves them.” Mama hated worms, too. She gave a comic shudder, turned to share the joke, and then the inevitable happened. “Oh, Sophie,” she said. “What have you done?”

  From long experience, Sophie knew that answering “I took off my stockings because I was hot” would lead to a speech about disobedience and ingratitude, followed by a freezing silence until Mama got over her disappointment. But then, so would any other answer.

  “Sophia!” Mama’s voice sharpened. “Do you hear me?”

  Sudden, furious tears blurred the sunlight into an unbearable glare. “I hear you.” Sophie knew she should stop right there, but she couldn’t. “I know you work like a slave to buy me stockings and things, and then I don’t appreciate them. I slouch and I mumble and my hair is a disgrace and I don’t have any manners and you’re very, very disappointed in me.”

  Mama’s dark amber eyes opened wide with shock. “I’m surprised at you, Sophia Martineau, speaking to me in that tone of voice. How many times must I tell you that irony is not attractive in a young lady?”r />
  “I guess I’m not a young lady,” Sophie said thickly and stumbled out of the room with her mother’s voice following her, calling her to come back, right this minute, before she was sorry.

  There were three doors at the end of the back gallery. The first one she tried led into a bathroom, the second was locked. Sophie jerked open the third door, slammed it behind her, sat down on the floor, and cried.

  It didn’t last long. Sophie never cried long—there wasn’t any use in it. “Go on, honey, and have a nice cry now,” Lily always said when Sophie brought home a disappointing report card. “It’ll do you the world of good.” But the report card never changed, no matter how many tears she shed over it, and neither would Mama.

  Sophie wiped her face and glasses on her skirt. She couldn’t see in the gloom, and the air smelled damp and slightly sour, like musty paper. Sophie pulled off the torturous pumps, padded over to a window, folded back the shutters, raised the sash, and turned to see where she’d be sleeping all summer.

  It could have been worse. Next to Grandmama’s room, the furniture was downright sparse—just a rocker and an armoire and a writing-desk and a bookcase stuffed with old books. The walls were papered with faded cabbage roses, and the bed was white iron, with a mint green chenille spread. Beside it, a rickety nightstand held a painted tin lamp, a book, and an electric alarm clock. One of the windows had a seat built into it, just exactly the right size and shape for reading in.

  It was like a room from a book, and very much the kind of room Sophie had always dreamed of having. It was the crowning misery of a miserable day that she was too unhappy to appreciate it. Leaving the seersucker suit in a wrinkled pile on the floor, she put on an old skirt and blouse, opened the suitcase with the books, picked up Edward Eager’s The Time Garden, carried it to the window seat, and pulled back the curtain, revealing a scene like a watercolor illustration in an old book.

  Sophie knelt on the faded chintz cushion and looked out. The watercolor effect came from the glass, she realized, which was old and wavy. She looked down into a neat garden shaded by a big live oak. Under the oak, a flowering vine draped a cabin with scarlet trumpets. In the field beyond, she saw a big, dark bushy blob, too low to be a grove and too big to be a hedge.