Galveston (52 page)

“Hello my baby, hello my honey, hello my ragtime gal.…”

Chapter 2

Within the month Sidney Younger was dead. I saw only brief glimpses of Rodney at the funeral and did not go to the graveside services. Miss Daniel was off with the flu, and I was helping Dad answer the telephones and run the office. I left work only long enough to ride a cab down to Annunciation for the Mass. I had no idea what was going on, but apparently many in the church did, for there were beaded rosaries and dog-eared missals held up lovingly along the pews, as the priest uttered Latin phrases and bells jingled now and then. Thankfully, the coffin was closed, saving me from having to figure out how to avoid being ushered up to the front of the church to view Sidney Younger in death. For a reason I could not name, I knew I would not be able to face that.

When I returned to work, Dad said, “Come in my office a minute, will you?”

Figuring on a project about to be assigned, I grabbed a pencil and Miss Daniel's notebook. “No, I just wanted to ask you about Rodney,” he said. “He all right?”

“Yes, I think so, though I didn't talk to him today.”

“I sent a big bouquet.”

“That was kind of you.”

He turned away from me in his chair, and looked out the window behind his desk. “It's a universal sorrow, losing a father. I wanted him to know we were thinking of the family. The flowers were the only way I knew. I think your mother was going to write a note, but I don't know whether she did.”

“Yes, that's nice too.”

“Tell me, are you serious about this boy?”

“I don't know yet. It's too early to tell.”

“Yeah, I guess so. You've been seeing a lot of him, though. He strikes me as being good stock. I don't hold much with Catholics, but then everyone to his own taste.”

“Yes, or even no taste at all.”

“Yeah, well, nothing more … just wanted you to know I was concerned. I hope they didn't forget to enclose a card on those flowers.”

“I'll mention them to him, if you want. He'll appreciate it.”

“I did it not only for him, but for you, too.”

This seemed an unusual remark, yet, anxious to put the interview at an end and get back to work, I didn't bother to question it. “Oh well … would you see if you can find the Talyacker field file for me?” he said after a pause, turning around to face me again. “I looked for it but never have been able to understand Miss D's mysterious filing methods. I think she figures if I can't find anything while she's gone, she won't ever be in danger of getting fired.”

“She may have a point there, at that.”

I left then and found the file. Miss Daniel's filing methods are actually as predictable as she, but my father hates paperwork so much that he won't take the trouble to learn where anything is. There must have been a time when he had to put up with mountains of it, years ago, when he was first beginning in the oil business. He came from Ohio with nothing, and built everything for himself. He is what people call “self-made.”

What he'd said about Rodney was kind enough, and his way of voicing approval if I wished to get serious about him. Later that evening Mother did likewise, in her own fashion.

“Rodney certainly seems a fine boy,” she said. “In fact, I'm almost surprised he—”

“Stays around a bitch like me?”

“Willa, watch your language! I meant nothing of the kind. But you'll have to admit, your romances don't break any records for longevity.”

“Maybe I just hadn't found anybody worth keeping around, before Rodney.”

“That fellow who worked for the creamery, he was nice. Whatever happened to him?”

“Cliff and I had a disagreement.”

“I see.”

“Listen, Mother, if that's all, I really need to wash my hair.”

“Of course, but one more thing … do you think you'll be here on Christmas Day? The Crosthwaites will be out of town, and I thought maybe just the three of us could spend the day together. It's been so long. Your father promised to take the whole day off.”

“I don't see why not. I haven't anything else to do unless Rodney calls.”

“Maybe, if he does, you could invite him here? It would mean a lot to me, having you home on Christmas. We have a special surprise for you this year.”

“I imagine Rodney will want to spend Christmas with his mother, especially this year, but if it means so much, yes, I'll be here.”

I wondered idly whether they'd bought me a car, but I didn't expect so. After I wrecked Dad's Pierce-Arrow, long ago as it was, I was told not to expect a car of my own any time in the future. The surprise this year was more likely a new piece of jewelry or something to wear.

Visiting relatives, tiresome arrangements, things to keep Rodney from calling. Did his mother lean on him more now, I wondered? Would she become grasping, possessive, like some mothers who lose their husbands and are left their sons? Her attitude before her husband's death seemed to indicate she had no intention of letting go of her son very easily. Then she was probably looking to this day of loneliness, and planning her strategy accordingly. Was she plotting her ground the night she questioned me about my faith, hoping early on to weed me out as a prospective daughter-in-law?

Yet why was I wondering? Rodney had never mentioned marriage to me, and even if he had, I wasn't sure I would accept his proposal or anyone else's.

I might grow bored with Rodney Younger and his mother: a comforting thought to keep me from feeling trapped … yet I cared when he didn't call for five days, between the funeral and Christmas, although I told myself it was just as well, that if he never called again it would be fine with me.

Yet each time the phone rang, it gave me a start. Once when Maybelle Crosthwaite phoned to ask me to a vaudeville at the Prince, I told her abruptly I was busy, and I think it hurt her feelings. Maybelle really has no one. She is profoundly homely—a big-boned girl with plain features and stringy hair, living all the time in the shadow of her domineering mother—and because her mother is my mother's best friend, I've been thrown into the position of having to be her friend.

When, finally, Rodney did call, at six o'clock in the evening on Christmas, I was busy helping Mother and Julia in the kitchen and didn't even hear the phone ring.

Dad called from the hall, “It's for you. It's Rodney.”

I rushed past Mother and Julia, who looked at me in puzzlement, then tried to sound perfectly calm when I reached for the receiver.

“Hullo.”

“Willa … Merry Christmas!” he said, sending a tingle all through me.

“Oh, Rodney, I thought maybe you'd left town or something,” I answered, still trying to sound cool.

“Don't be coy. Can I come over? I have a present for you. It isn't much, but I wanted you to have it. I'm sorry it's been so long, but I'll explain when I see you.”

“I'm spending the evening with Mother and Father. Maybe tomorrow. Oh, that's right, back to work. All right, but make it late. About nine.”

“Okay. Mother wishes you season's greetings and all that. We've just gotten home from church, and she's sitting here next to me.”

“Oh.”

“I'll see you at nine.”

I hung up the receiver and glanced at the new jeweled watch on my wrist—my parents' offering for the season, which probably cost almost as much as a car. Three hours. Why had I told him nine o'clock? How inane. How could I live another three hours cooped up in this house?

I went back to the kitchen and picked up a stalk of celery. “Rodney coming by for dinner?” Mother asked.

“No. He'll be here at nine.”

“He could have come to dinner if you'd wanted.”

“No, we'll go on as planned—just the three of us.”

“How nice. Get your father from the parlor. Julia, bring out the bird. I'll light the candles on the table.” Julia mumbled in agreement and leaned her hulking body toward the oven. Julia is Swedish, with blond braids wound around her head like sausages, and big lips. She is the only live-in servant Mother has, and has been with us fifteen years. She and I have always gotten along just fine because she minds her own business.

“Hurry up, now,” Mother directed. “I do hope the turkey's moist. I simply deplore dry turkey.” Dry turkey, wet turkey, what difference? Rodney was coming, and this was the first time within memory I'd been excited about such a prospect.

Dad had left the day following Sidney Younger's funeral for Wichita Falls, because there was a big oil fire near the city, in one of the fields where he owns an interest. He didn't really have to go, could have depended on the fieldman Buckley Reynolds to look after things, but he could not resist the temptation to be in the middle of the excitement. He'd promised Mother to come home by Christmas Eve, and, for once, kept his promise.

“I'm going out later,” I told him in an effort to pry him away from his newspaper. “So we'll have dinner together, you and Mother and I.”

“Oh? And where are you off to? Need the car?”

“No. Rodney's coming.”

“Oh, yes. Poor Rodney. I know what it's like losing a father. It gets tougher by the day, believe me. Hard to explain the feeling.”

As we walked together into the dining room, I wondered if it was anything similar to the way a person felt if she had no idea who her father was.

Rodney arrived a few minutes early that night, and sat talking with Mother and Dad until I was ready. Curiously, as soon as I heard the door open downstairs, and my father jovially extend him season's greetings, I became nervous. What would I say to him? Would he be upset? Why in heaven did people have to be put through these things? Why couldn't death be just like everything else, easy as catching a bus or train? Why all these awkward moments of not knowing what to say to the bereaved? There ought to be a place for people to stay after they lose a loved one until they're completely over their grief. When they returned, no one would be called upon to say anything. There would be no false words of comfort, no pretending to care when you tried but could not.

Rodney looked better than I expected, sending a wave of relief over me as we walked out into the cold night. I even thought, mistakenly, we might not have to launch a discussion on his father.

“I didn't get you anything,” I said. “When you didn't call, I—”

“No bother,” he said, and opened the door. There was a small berib-boned package on my side, and, seeing it, I thought, oh no, this is a ring. What do I do now? I can't marry this boy.

Yet it was a pendant, heart-shaped gold filigree around a small pearl, nothing special but in good taste, just as one would expect from Rodney Younger.

“It's lovely, and really thoughtful after all that's happened—here, will you get this clasp for me?”

His chilly fingers felt like pinpricks on my neck, and I shivered slightly at his touch. When he'd gotten the chain hooked, he turned away and pulled on his leather gloves. “Where to?”

“Where? I hadn't even thought. Have you eaten? Of course you have. What about a movie? Something good at the Liberty, I think—”

“No, I want to talk.”

“Oh.” It was coming again, the fear. I closed my hand tightly around my bag.

“Let's just drive around till we find a spot.”

“We're near Hermann Park. I guess we could stop somewhere over there for just a few minutes.”

“Yeah, why didn't I think of that?”

He pulled into one of the drives and stopped near the Ladies' and Gentlemen's rest rooms. I can never remember being so cold as we were that night, and how queer it was, to be sitting out in the frozen park instead of before the fireplace at home. How incredibly “unsensible.”

When he'd stopped the car he reached into the back and pulled over a heavy cover of rancid-smelling thick fur, and draped it across both of us. Only then did I realize what I'd gotten myself into. When people drive to places like this at night, things happen between them.

I must get him talking about his father. Even that would be better than the situation bound to develop when the talking stopped, for it was warm next to Rodney under the coverlet, yet something more than that …

I'd felt it only twice before: once for Dick Rayburn, with whom there had been nothing else except constant quarreling which finally brought the three-month courtship to a halt, and once with Cliff Wagner, who'd sensed it like a hunting dog and tried to take advantage. It was a feeling my mother would have referred to as, “not nice,” and regardless of her opinion, one which frightened me far worse than the thought of being trapped in an undercroft.

“Well, it's bound to get easier from now on—the grief,” I said quickly.

“I wonder if it'll ever get much better. Have you ever lost anybody close?”

“How could I? I've never even found anybody close.”

“Even if you had, it wouldn't be quite like losing your father … or maybe for a girl, it's losing her mother. Anyway, it's like having someone cut off a limb, and you know you're no longer whole, that something irreplaceable is missing.

“It's like having your defenses taken away suddenly, and there's nothing and no one out there between you and the world anymore … Oh, Willa, when I saw my dad before they closed the coffin I had this overpowering urge to grab him by the shoulders and pull him out of there, to say, ‘You're not dead, you can't be! Get up, Dad, and come out of there. You were just alive, how can you change all that and be dead?'”

He didn't notice his remark had set me ashiver, and turned away and put his head on the steering wheel. I thought he would cry then, or beat his fists against the dash. But he just lay there like a helpless fish, washed up on the shore. I wanted so much to hurt for him, but could not feel anything except an urgent need to get him away from the subject. “Will you go on, take over the real estate business?” I asked.