BLACKWATER:The Mysterious Saga of the Caskey Family (93 page)

Late in May 1956, Oscar was in Raleigh, North Carolina, visiting friends and the three excellent courses in the area. Miriam and Billy and Malcolm were in New Orleans. Queenie had accompanied Grace and Lucille to a cattle auction in Georgia. Sister took her meals alone. Elinor, Frances, and Lilah ate dinner in splendor in the dining room, waited on by Zaddie in a starched black uniform.

Nine-year-old Lilah chatted with her grandmother, telling her about the end of the school year and the party that was planned for the country club and what she wanted to do during the summer. Frances sat by, quietly eating, not exactly ignoring her daughter, but apparently oblivious to her. After dessert, Elinor said to Lilah, "Darling, why don't you go upstairs for a little while? Your mama and I need to do a little talking."

Lilah, on the condition that Elinor allow her to sit at her vanity and try on her jewelry, assented.

"Mama?" the child asked, turning to Frances.

Frances looked up suddenly. "What, dear?"

"Mama," said Lilah slowly, with the air of imparting a lesson to a backward child, "may I be excused?"

"Yes, of course," said Frances absently.

After Lilah had left the room, Elinor called in Zaddie. "Bring us some more coffee, Zaddie, and then close the doors, please." Zaddie did so.

Elinor sat silent and erect at the head of the table, fingering the black pearls gleaming dimly in the candlelight. Frances also sat quietly, her head slightly averted, gazing through the gauze curtains at the deep blackness of the pine forest beyond the edge of the property. A wind had sprung up in the last hour, and it was laden with moisture, portending heavy rain. The curtains blew about and the candles guttered.

"Mama?" said Frances, without concern. "What did you want to talk about?"

"You're unhappy," said Elinor simply. "It hurts me to see you unhappy. It hurts me very much."

Frances toyed with her coffee spoon, moving it slowly around the rim of her cup with its cooling, untasted coffee. "Yes," said Frances at last, "I am unhappy, I guess."

"Why?"

"Because I don't know who I am," said Frances quickly, and then glanced at her mother with surprise.

"What do you mean—who you are?"

"I feel like I'm losing touch," said Frances.

"With Billy?"

"With everything," returned Frances solemnly. "With Billy, with Lilah, with Daddy—with this house, with Perdido and money and clothes. With just about everything."

"With me?" asked Elinor.

Frances smiled, reached out and squeezed her mother's hand on the cut-work linen tablecloth.

"No," whispered Frances, "not with you. Everything is—I don't know how to put this, Mama— vague, like I'm going blind or something. Fuzzy. Pale. And I hear the same way, too—fuzzy. That's why everything has to be said to me twice before I say anything back. At first I thought maybe I should go see the doctor..."

Elinor waved this away.

"I know," said Frances. "Besides, it's not everything that's so vague to me. See, you're not. I see you, and I hear you talk—except when you're talking to Billy or Daddy or Lilah or somebody—and you're just the way you always were."

"What do you think it is?" asked Elinor.

"I know what it is," returned Frances. "And you do, too."

Elinor nodded.

"You didn't tell me about this part," said Frances.

"I didn't know about it," said Elinor. "I didn't know it would happen."

Frances smiled wanly. "But it has. All this"—she waved her hand about the dining room, as if she meant it to encompass all of her life—"is fading, Mama. And you know what's become real?"

"Nerita?"

Frances nodded. "That's my real life, the time I spend with her." Frances looked up at the ceiling. "Lilah—she's not my little girl. She belongs to you much more than she does to me. Poor thing, I feel so sorry for her, because her real mama doesn't love her the way she should. Lilah's not my real little girl. My real little girl is out there in the Perdido. K worry about her. I think about her. You know why I never go off with Billy? You know why I never go off with Daddy? Because I couldn't stand to be away from my little girl for a single day. Mama, I live for that hour in the water every afternoon."

"I know you do."

"And you know what I've found out?"

"What?" asked Elinor apprehensively.

"That even that one hour a day is too much. It's harder and harder for me to change back. Sometimes I have to sit out on the edge of the river covering myself up with a blanket. One time Zaddie came out there looking for me, but I couldn't stand up because she would have seen. And soon, Mama, what's gone happen is that I won't be able to go out in the water for even five minutes without that change keeping on for longer and longer."

"And that's why you're unhappy."

Frances nodded. "What if I had to stop seeing Ne-rita? It would kill me. Oh, Mama, do you know how happy we are down there?"

Elinor nodded with a smile, and pushed away her coffee cup. "I've seen you. You are as happy with Nerita as I was with you. Darling, I love you! I love you so much! It kills me to see you like this."

"Then tell me'what to do, Mama."

"I don't know what you can do."

"Then just tell me what's going to happen."

There was a sudden clap of thunder. A moment later, rain began to fall. Its scent invaded the room and the candles cowered beneath the dampness.

The rain fell so hard that Elinor had to raise her voice to be heard over it."I don't know what's going to happen."

The rain continued throughout that evening. Frances and Elinor eventually went upstairs. They looked in on Lilah, who sat contented at the vanity, clipping diamond earrings to her ears.

"You should have been Miriam's little girl," laughed Frances, "not mine. Someday you should get Miriam to open one of her safety-deposit boxes for you."

"I've already asked her," said Lilah, expertly clasping a gold necklace at the back of her neck. "Are y'all still talking?"

"Yes, ma'am," said Elinor. "Do you mind?"

"Do I have to get out?"

"No," said Elinor. "We'll go across the hall."

Frances sat at her vanity, and Elinor took down her daughter's hair and began to brush it. The rain blew through the open window, soaking the curtains and dripping onto the carpet.

"Do you want me to close that?" Elinor asked.

Frances shrugged and was silent. She seemed lost in her own thoughts as her head was tugged this way and that by Elinor's stern movements with the brush.

At last, Frances looked up at her mother's reflection in the mirror. "Mama," said Frances softly, "what if I went back?"

"Back?" Elinor echoed. The arm holding the brush trembled and dropped to her side.

"Went back forever," Frances went on.

"It wouldn't be going back, exactly," said Elinor cautiously. "Because you never really lived there."

"Yes, but I could live there, couldn't I?"

Elinor didn't answer this directly. "What about Billy?"

Frances smiled. "Would you throw him out?"

"Of course not. We all love Billy."

"Then Billy will be fine. Billy didn't want to marry me, he just wanted to marry this family. If you let him stay on, he'd be happy. Maybe Miriam would marry him," Frances mused.

"What about Oscar? What about Lilah?" demanded Elinor, going to the window and slamming it down in its sash.

"Daddy will miss me," Frances conceded. "But Lilah won't. I'll leave her my jewels." Frances flipped open the top of her jewelry case and plunged her fingers in. She withdrew her hand slowly. A bracelet and a single earring slipped to the carpet, but Frances apparently didn't notice.

"What about me?" Elinor asked at last.

"Mama," laughed Frances, "you can visit."

Elinor looked around the room. "Wouldn't you miss everybody? Wouldn't you miss everything you've always had? What if you got down there and didn't like it, didn't like the Perdido for twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week?"

"Mama," said Frances, following her mother's gaze about the room, "this has been my room for thirty-five years, but it just doesn't feel like home. That river does."

Elinor sat down on the edge of her daughter's bed. "When would you go?" she asked.

Frances glanced out the window. Lightning struck nearby and illuminated the top1 s of the water oaks in the sandy yards.

"Tonight," said Frances. "Why not tonight?" She rose from the vanity. "Unhook me, Mama," she said, with obvious excitement. "Help me undress."

"You can't—"

"Tonight is perfect," said Frances. "I'll just wait till Lilah is in bed."

"What will I tell Billy, what will—"

"Tell everybody I drowned." Frances shrugged. "Everybody in Perdido has been expecting it for years." She walked to the window and raised it. She thrust her head out into the stormy night. Lightning exploded and thunder shook the house. Frances withdrew her head. Her hair was soaked, and rain streamed down her face.

"That hit the levee!" she laughed. "I saw it strike!"

She pulled off her earrings and dropped them on the vanity.

"All this stuff goes to Lilah. She'll like it. I never did. Grace is about my size. Let her go through my closet. Everything else goes to the church in Baptist Bottom."

Frances smiled as she said all this; her eyes sparkled.

Lilah pushed open the door of the room. "It's really coming down," she said. "I closed all the windows up here."

She glanced with disapproval at the open window and the puddle of water forming on the edge of the carpet.

"Mama," she said reproachfully, "didn't you even notice?"

Frances only laughed. She threw herself down on the bench before the vanity and called Lilah over to her. Lilah edged closer.

Frances reached out and grabbed Lilah. She hugged her and laughed.

"Mama!" protested the little girl, who had rarely been embraced by her mother.

Elinor sat glumly on the edge of the bed and stared at her daughter. Her glance was not lost on Lilah.

"Mama, are you all right?" the girl asked cautiously, drawing back from her mother.

Frances grinned, swept up the earrings she had taken off, and clipped them to Lilah's ears.

"Ouch!" cried Lilah.

"They're yours!"

Lilah drew in her breath sharply, and held it. Swiveling around, she looked at her grandmother with an expression that said, Can I keep them?

Elinor nodded yes.

Frances laughed again, picked up the entire jewelry box and thrust it into her daughter's hands.

"You want these, too?"

Lilah backed away.

Frances shrugged, laughed, and stood up. She waved her arms before her. "Go to bed, go to bed! It's late!"

In mute wonder, with her hands over the emerald bobs on her ears, Lilah backed out of her mother's bedroom. She ran across the hall to her bedroom and slammed the door shut.

The storm abated for a bit, then returned with greater force. Perdido closed its windows, pulled its curtains drawn, and turned up the volume on its television sets. An oak sapling on the Baptist Bottom levee was struck with lightning and burst into flames, burning a few seconds before the torrential rain snuffed it out like an ignited match plunged into a cistern full of water.

At eleven o'clock, Perdido went to its windows, looked out, and wondered that the storm didn't stop. Small trenches appeared in the earth around foundations, dug by the cascade of water falling from roofs. Gutters were overwhelmed. Perdido felt the first twinges of uneasiness over the fact that, in three decades, no municipal funds had been spent on the maintenance of the levees. The rivers would no doubt rise.

Children trembled in their beds, bracing for the next burst of thunder. With flashlights their parents searched out leaks, wearily placing buckets and pans beneath them.

Elinor's house was quiet. Lilah was asleep. Zaddie lay in bed reading old copies of Coronet and listening as the rain beat against the low sloping roof of the lattice.

At the very peak of the storm, with lightning crackling across the sky for long seconds, sharp blasts of thunder lasting for what seemed like minutes, and rain falling in heavy sheets, two figures appeared on the front porch of the Caskey mansion at the edge of the town. No one saw them.

Frances was clad in a loose dark robe. Her mother wore a long dark raincoat. Both women were barefoot.

Frances looked at her mother for a moment. Then she leaned forward and threw her arms about Elinor. She squeezed tightly and Elinor squeezed back.

Frances stepped through the veil of black water that poured thunderously from the roof of the house.

She paused at the foot of the steps and looked back up.

Elinor stepped boldly through the curtain of water, descended the steps, and grasped her daughter's hand.

Together, they made their way around the house and into the shadow and protection of the water oaks. Neither glanced at the lighted window of Sister's room next door, as they walked slowly toward the levee. In such darkness and heavy rain as this, they were confident they'd never be seen. They mounted the steps behind Queenie's house, stood for a few moments on the top of the clay embankment, and gazed down into the swiftly flowing black waters of the Perdido, its surface a wide dark ribbon of turbulence.

Frances again embraced her mother. When she drew away, Elinor plucked the robe from her daughter's shoulders and allowed it to fall in the red mud atop the levee. Frances stood naked.

Frances glanced once more at her mother, saying nothing. She did not touch her, but stepped to the side of the levee that sloped down to the river, then went sliding down past blackberry brambles, past saplings, past broken bottles and clumps of kudzu roots till she reached the bottom.

Elinor peered down. An enormous bolt of lightning illuminated the entire sky, and Elinor saw her daughter descend into the water. Before she went completely under, Frances raised one hand in brief farewell.

Elinor remained at the top of the levee for half an hour. The lightning and thunder had moved northward, but the rain was still heavy. The night was darker. Finally she walked slowly down the concrete steps and across the yard. After bathing each foot in the curtain of water falling from the roof of the house, she went inside and roused Zaddie to tell her of Frances's drowning in the night water of the Perdido.