A Southern Exposure (26 page)

But isn’t it a little sophisticated for Abby? Cynthia cannot say that to her daughter.

“You sure you won’t mind?” asks Abby. “I’ll see you later?”

“Sure, darling. Have a good time.”

Cynthia decides that she will walk to Laurel Hill by herself. It’s always beautiful, and she needs the exercise. But she has walked this road so often that by now she hardly sees it; dimly her mind registers, as she looks up, the shining rich green of pine boughs against a blue sky. The white rush of the creek over shoals of pebbles. The small gray beach. The huge boulders across the water, and all the laurel there, the dark green leaves with no flowers, in this season before the fall. Growth suspended in the heat, the dead air that follows summer.

A man is sitting on a log that has fallen there on the beach, his back to Cynthia. He is facing the small, shallow rapids in the creek, as it widens. And although he cannot hear her, probably, above the rushing, gurgling water sounds, Cynthia stops. She thinks that she has recognized Russ Byrd.

Although that is impossible. These are not Russ’s woods; she only imagines seeing Russ because of the time that she saw him in the rain, in the woods behind his house. The day that SallyJane died. (Or, another day too, when he was with Norris Drake.) Russ would not be over here in Laurel Hill. It is only that she has thought of him all summer, and longed to see him. She has thought of him ever since they moved down to Pinehill.

The man stands up and turns toward her. It is Russ. He smiles, and she smiles too, and they both say at once, “Oh, hello!”

Hesitating for an instant, they then move toward each other, slowly at first, as on a single impulse, but then their bodies collide, and press together. Arms clutching, their mouths devouring. They kiss as though they had kissed before—had been interrupted in a kiss.

“That’s why we both walked to Laurel Hill, we knew we’d meet. I
must
have known. Those aren’t my woods.” Some hours later Russ says this to Cynthia.

“I know. And I came all the way to Pinehill to meet you.”

“Should I believe that?”

“Oh, you should. It’s
true.
”

They both laugh; they have to, to break the tension between them. Although what they are saying actually is true: they both feel that their lives have led them to this moment, to this lying naked together in Cynthia’s wide bed. Cynthia and Russ.

Abby fortuitously has called to say that she would like to have supper and spend the night at Betsy Lee’s, if that’s all right. “Of course it is, darling.”

The idea of what she is doing, the fact of it, is almost as exciting as the act itself. Or, acts: they have greedily made love several times. As he enters her, each time she thinks his name. Even, somewhere in her mind, poems of Russ’s flutter down to rest as an interior voice repeats: In bed with Russell Byrd, making love with Russ.

“I feel like I’m sixteen,” at some point he says to her. “Except at sixteen I sure wasn’t doing anything like this. What a wasted life.”

“You were an innocent boy?”

“Very innocent. For years.”

The small patch of hair on his chest is dark brown silk, and his lower hair is dark, and silk. She asks, “Do you wish we’d known each other then?”

“Lord, no, I’d have been terrified of you. I almost am now.”

“Oh no, you can’t be.” She pauses, then asks him, “Have you had a lot of, uh, affairs?”

From his instant of hesitation she understands that he will be scrupulous. “Only one that counts,” he tells her. “The other was nothing important, just something crazy.” (She knows that he must mean Norris Drake.) “Just those two,” he says.

And the important one must have been with Emily Yates, the mother of Graham and of Deirdre? Cynthia wonders if he will ever tell her. Or if she will ask.

“I wish you could stay all night,” she says to him, nestling close.

“No, I’m so reliable they’d all worry. Besides,” he says, “I don’t think I could make love to you again.”

But, having said that, he lets his mouth find hers, perhaps intending a tender parting kiss, and everything flares between them again. Tongues thrashing, limbs violently entwined. He inside her.

“Now I do have to go.”

“Yes—”

“But tomorrow—”

“Yes. Tomorrow.”

The next day they arrange to meet at Cynthia’s store; Russ can park in back, no one will notice him there. And since it is a Sunday, no one will come to the store.

In the back is a very small room, just a studio couch, a couple of beaten chairs, a cluttered desk. Cynthia, insofar as she had thought at all, had imagined that they would talk there, in that room. In an almost businesslike way they could sort things out between them. Make some kind of plans.

But even as she waits for the sound that will be his knock on the door, Cynthia feels the wings of a panicked excitement within her chest; she is too excited for speech, for conversation. Minutes pass. He is late. Five minutes. Ten. She believes that her heart will burst. And suppose it did, suppose she had a stroke and died right there, who would find her? Russ has no key. He would knock and knock and think she had gone away, changed her mind, gone back to Washington, to Harry. Odessa would find her, but not until tomorrow, when she comes with some bright new bolts of material.

When Russ at last knocks at the door, Cynthia jumps violently at the unexpected sound.

She opens the door, and he comes in, jaunty and grinning, so that in the instant before they kiss she thinks, I am making him young again—already. He is wearing a plaid cotton shirt that smells of smoke, and his mouth tastes of smoke, tobacco.

She tells him, “Oh, I’ve missed you,” and she laughs, they both laugh. It is too ridiculous, at their age. Too ridiculous that in another minute they are making love again, on the narrow battered studio couch.

Do they make love so much precisely to avoid any conversation? Cynthia wonders this, as, the next day, she waits for Odessa in that same small room. (She has sponged off the couch, but still she wonders if anyone could see or smell anything, any trace of her passage there with Russ.)
So much of what they might discuss, things that must be on both their minds, hers and Russ’s, are excluded. What could either of them say about SallyJane, or for that matter about Harry? This lack of talk tends to make their contact, in retrospect, somewhat unreal: did she really do all that, with Russ Byrd, in this very room? What actually happened between them could as well have been a dream, or one of her old Russ Byrd fantasies, thinks Cynthia.

Odessa, when she comes, has wrapped a band of purple cloth around her head; with her graying hair, her large, strong-featured, and richly brown face she looks wonderful.

But Odessa never seems to want to talk very much—or not to Cynthia. Certainly not to gossip.

That morning Cynthia tries again. “Did you ever happen to know that Miz Emily Yates, the one who died when she was having little Graham, that brother of Deirdre Yates?”

“Yes’m, I seen her a couple of times.” She adds, “They didn’t have no help, not usually.”

“She must have been very beautiful, a daughter like Deirdre, and that Graham’s a handsome boy.”

“Yes’m, I reckon.”

Do we all look alike to Odessa, Cynthia wonders? All us rich white ladies, who don’t really work?

It is crazy for her not to talk to Russ, she decides; if we don’t talk, it’s my fault, really. Women are better at personal conversations than men are.

She remembers then a play of Russ’s that she once read, about some people in an unspecified country, devastated by an unspecified war. But the people themselves are not identified either; there are two men, and another person specified as Woman. Is Russ in that way a little like Odessa?
Cynthia wonders. Does he see all women as Woman, so that it does not matter what particular women say? (Dear God, are all men just a little like that?) But surely he must have felt that SallyJane, the mother of all those children, was a separate, individual person. And surely Emily Yates, whom he must have loved (or did he?)—the mother of Graham, so clearly Russ’s son?

Will Russ ever want to marry
her
? Cynthia wonders. And if he did, and if she accepted, however would she tell Harry, how to explain? And would friends from Connecticut come all the way down for the wedding, or would they choose to boycott it in a group?

And then she thinks,
God
, I have lost my mind. And she laughs at herself. A little.

Harry, unlike Russ, has indeed a most particular sense of her, Cynthia then decides. She is not Woman to Harry. Maybe she should always stay with Harry, as she had intended? She has had all along an odd small wish to tell him all about this thing with Russ. He would find it interesting, as she does, and he would understand what is going on, in ways that she does not. If only it were all about some other people, she could tell Harry, they could talk about it.

“Is Emily Yates very beautiful too?”

“Who?”

This bit of dialogue, which is quite startling to them both, has taken place between Russ and Cynthia in Dolly Bigelow’s living room. No chance for making love there, Cynthia believes; perhaps at last they will talk. And so she began what she hopes is a serious conversation, starting with provocation. She in no way expected Russ’s genuinely blank note of surprise.

She answers him, “Emily Yates.” Not saying, “whom you loved.” She adds, “Graham’s mother.”

There is a long pause, during which he has obviously understood, but still he stares at her, until he says, “Deirdre is Graham’s mother. He is her son. By me.”

Reeling at first from this new information, Cynthia then thinks, But of course. How dumb of me not to work that out. Probably everyone else in town caught on right away. Of course, Russ and beautiful Deirdre. Parents of Graham.

Very gently Russ asks her, “You didn’t know that? I sort of thought everyone did. Just no one said.”

“Maybe. I don’t know.” I’ll never understand Southerners, is one of the things that Cynthia is thinking.

“We just worked out that story, when Deirdre’s mother died so soon after Deirdre had the boy. So she could come back here with Graham,” Russ is explaining. “I hardly knew Emily Yates, and of course she never knew it was me. The father of Graham. She thought some college boy.” He sighs. “Of course one risk was that the boy would look like me, and I guess he does. Pretty much.”

“Yes.”

“I had this unreal idea that if everyone was here, it would be all right. SallyJane and me and Deirdre and Graham, and all our kids. All of us in the town. Lord God, talk about unreal.”

“It didn’t work?”

“No.” He is silent, frowning for several moments. “Brett—SallyJane got so sick, and then that crazy doctor. Everything wrong.”

In that case, we had better get married. I’ll handle the real parts, Cynthia thinks. She thinks this but of course does not say it, only smiles sympathetically.

They could get married, though. She could simply stay on down here. Abigail could go to this school, as she wants to anyway. Over Christmas, or sometime, she, Cynthia, could fly out to Reno for one of those quick divorces, as
several friends from Connecticut have done. And then come back and marry Russ and move into his house. And change it all around, paint everything white and reupholster all the furniture in Odessa’s wonderful colors.

She directs strong silent messages to Russ: Please ask me to marry you. Soon. That way I will know that you love me more than anyone. More than Deirdre Yates. As she smiles and she says, “Graham’s a lovely boy.”

Somewhat wryly (having caught none of her message), Russ agrees, “Yes, I guess he is.”

Could she and Harry stay friends? When she thinks of this, when she asks herself this question, Cynthia is forced to answer no; she very much doubts that they would be friends. And as she tries to imagine her life with Harry nowhere present, she feels a terrifying emptiness. She thinks, I can’t lose Harry, he’s my best friend in the world. And so, only distantly aware of illogic, she concentrates on Russ. Even on Russ’s asking her to marry him. She tries not to think of Harry, even though they talk so often on the phone.

“What do you do with yourself all day? You’re so often out.”

“Oh, not much. I take walks. That’s probably where I am when you phone.”

“At night?”

“I might be. We’re having warm weather. I love these long warm evenings, and Abby keeps spending the night with friends. Harry, you won’t believe what Irene said this afternoon, she said—”

They talk with all their old pleasure in each other’s conversation,
and Harry is not suspicious, really; he is too busy to worry in that way.

Cynthia asks Russ, “You never see Deirdre now?” She has managed to ask it lightly, but the question cost her a lot; she has spent a fair amount of time in jealous fantasies, speculations.

He tells her, “Not since SallyJane died. It wouldn’t seem right. I don’t know.” He adds, in his honest, boyish voice, “Sometimes I phone her. To see how the boy is. All that. If she needs anything.”

“SallyJane never knew?”

“Christ, I hope not.”

They never talk about Harry, but one afternoon Russ asks her, “You sort of knew Harry all your life?”

“No, but we come from the same place. In Connecticut.”

“I thought that. You seem like from the same place.”

“Different parts of the same town, though. My family at first had a lot of money, and Harry’s didn’t. I think that makes more difference in Connecticut than down here. Crude cash.”

“I guess so. It’s all family here.”

“Is that why your parents gave you such a fancy name?”

“Sure is. I don’t come from much, is the truth. But my mother had this book of poems, and she liked the name. This classy mouthful I’m stuck with.”

They both laugh, and then Cynthia explains a little more. “I’d planned to go to Vassar, where my mother went. I was all accepted and everything, but then I met Harry.”

“Don’t you ever think about going back?”

Musingly she strokes his bare upper arm, its soft flesh. “You mean, back to that time? Be young and do it all over again, differently?”