Four of a Kind: A women's historical fiction (9 page)

“This may sound as a paradox, Mr. Phillips, but on the contrary, this small cabin is too much for me. This cabin and all it entails is simply overwhelming. I must have been mad when I said ‘yes’, but I wish – well I wish to take it back. It’s a mistake, a huge mistake. I wouldn’t make you happy – I don’t know how. I don’t know how to be a mommy either. I’ve been a suffragist, since the age of twelve. That is all I know. Now that we’ve won the vote, perhaps I believed I needed a new life, a new beginning. But not ready-made!”

The hurt on his face was undeniable. I bared my heart, not my body as was expected. I could not pretend otherwise. I had been taught to speak my mind but my battles had always been with the government, or with other women, always beyond arm’s reach. Now here was someone reaching for me and he – and all that he entailed – attempted to enter into my personal world, my breathing realm. I gasped for breath and backed up to the wall, hugging myself instead, tears flowing. I hated myself – and him - for it.

“Alright, Bess. I hear you, loud and clear. I just wish you’d said ‘no’ sooner … like at the courthouse before we made vows to God!” His voice became increasingly louder as he spoke. He bit his bottom lip and sighed. “Look, you sleep in my bed and I’ll sleep on the couch and we’ll talk some more tomorrow.”

I felt hugely relieved and my shoulders relaxed. Smiling gratefully, I stepped away from the wall and reached out a hand but he only turned and walked out of the room, closing the door behind him.

Now saddled with guilt, I sank heavily onto the bed. My intentions were not to wound but as always I had said too much too quickly. I certainly thought I could care for him but something inside had blocked the way. Conceivably, too much time had been spent trying to break down women’s wall to equality, and I suppose I used those
leftover bricks to build a defense against men. Maybe the wall was too high for any man. Where was the love? Not here, where my heart felt as diminutive as this cabin, and that thought cut me to the core. Why did I allow this to happen? I thought myself smarter than this. Tears returned but I brushed them away angrily.

I was spared this night but now what? Making my toilette would give me some time to think. But there was no running tap, no sink, only a basin of water on a roughly made cabinet with a small door. Inside I found frayed but clean rags and a hand towel. My blouse off, the scarring on my wrist and arm looked grim and brown in this light, the skin puckered and wrinkled in spots like it needed a good ironing. Another reason not to expose my body; another reason not to live here. I was terrified of the type of old stove they used here. When I was eleven, the sleeve of my dress caught fire trying to cook from one at home, causing this scar. During that one summer, Mama had been petitioning and marching for suffrage, leaving home duties to me. I had since stayed away from wood burning stoves as much as possible. No one knew about these scars, save perhaps Mama and her guilt, and long sleeves were always there to cover.

My nightgown on, I felt more at ease and could notice my surroundings. Mr. Phillips’ wife had died a year or so ago, but her woman’s touch remained in the room. A hand-stitched quilt stretched over the pine-posted bed, crocheted doilies on the bureau. Lined along the back of the bureau, the mirror reflecting their backsides, were several hand-carved wooden birds: a cardinal, a robin, and a dove. I inspected the cardinal, then the robin and put them back, but the dove I kept in my hand, not able to let go. Something about its red-colored eyes, gems like ruby that looked oddly familiar. I carried it over to the oil lamp next to the bed for a closer inspection and held it under the light. Yes, I had seen one very much like this, but where was it?

Then I remembered that at about age fifteen I had discovered one hidden in the back of Mama’s wardrobe. With the help of her coveted key I had snooped amongst her personals hoping to borrow one of the beautiful dresses Aunt Opal had fashioned and
given to Mama. Same size dove, same smooth head and neck, with intricate etchings in the tail and wing feathers. Did he sell these and how would Mama – but then I remembered him saying that he had driven Mrs. Catt to my hometown of Annan about ten years ago during a women’s convention, around 1910. I thought back to that year and recalled how Mama had allowed me to go to the convention with her. I had a vague recollection of the speakers but at my height I could only get a glimpse here and there and then Papa made me leave. Yet now I remembered an Indian there. A younger version with longer hair, pulled back in a ponytail – I dropped the dove. Him. Deep laugh lines were etched here now; gray streaks in shorter hair that tucked behind his ears, but this had to be the same man.

And another memory linked: Right after my stove accident, I remembered calling for Mama from my bedroom and when she didn’t answer I came down the stairs looking for her. As I stepped into the parlor, the window revealed a strange sight to me. Mama stood on the boardwalk several houses down, talking with a man next to his horse. I thought he might be the same man who spoke at the convention. As I watched, he gave her something brown, yes, about this size, which she enclosed in her hand and clutched to her chest as she walked back to our home. Intuitively I understood I wasn’t supposed to see this - something about their movements appeared too private – and so I slipped back up the stairs before she returned. Of course I wouldn’t dare ask her about it, and eventually the scene faded in my mind, but obviously not entirely, because for the first time since, the scene had refocused. Mr. Phillips knew Mama and had given her a dove. Why?
You look very familiar to me
, he had said in our introductions. Indeed – I looked very much like Mama!

I could not sleep that night for thinking. I finally gave up in the early morning light and dressed. Slipping out the back door, I walked around the cabin and along the fence, breathing in the delicious scent of the lavender. They reminded me of home and of Mama’s lavender sachets and lavender oils, and her scent always of lavender. It made me wish she was here – and then I froze.

“You’re not running off already, are you?” I felt his breath on my neck when he said that, and I was startled beyond reason.

“Really, Mr. Phillips, is it necessary to sneak up on me like that?”

“Sorry. I’m half Cherokee. I sleep light, I walk light.”

I stepped away from his closeness and waited for my heart to return to its rightful place. Reaching for the lavender blooms, I pinched one off and turning to him, held this up to his nose. “Who does that remind you of? Anyone we know?”

He closed his eyes for a moment, inhaling deeply. The rooster’s crow broke the silence somewhere near. He opened his eyes to that, and to my condemning posture. “I think I’m searching for someone else through you. Are you related to her?”

I nodded. “I’m Ruby Wright’s daughter.”

“Oh dear Lord. I honestly wasn’t sure and I was afraid to ask. If you don’t like the answer, don’t ask the question, my Daddy used to say.” One hand reached out tentatively and touched my hair falling around my shoulders, not yet combed back and pinned. “This morning you look so much like how I remember her from ten years ago, only your hair’s a little lighter I think and hers fell down to her waist.” He spoke softly, the light from the rising sun behind me accenting his native features of square jaw line, wide mouth, prominent nose and cheekbones, giving his face a red-man glow. I was shocked in wondering when and how he saw Mama’s hair down; I had only seen it so at her bedtime.

“She had such beautiful long hair.”

“You bastard,” I said, slapping his hand away. “I’m leaving.”

He raised that same hand in peace. “When I saw you here in Tennessee, how was I to know who you were? I just thought God was giving me a second chance to be with the one I love. And you have not only her looks but also her spirit. I couldn’t pull myself away from you.”

“You married me because you want to be with my
mother
? Do you have any idea how that makes me feel?” I trembled from this
revelation of being a second-hand rose. Wings of anger that I hoped had settled around my shoulders as a suffragist, were now flapping hard enough for me to lift ground.

Another thought jolted me like a bolt of electricity (which is perhaps not a good simile because there was no such thing as electricity ‘in these here parts’). “Ruby! You named your youngest daughter after Mama?”

“Well, it doesn’t matter now, does it? You were leaving anyway.”

I refused to allow him to get off that easily. “If I wanted to stay, didn’t you think I would have figured it out? After all, you would eventually meet my parents!” My composure gone now, my trembling had raised my vocal chords up a notch or two. “Or was that the whole purpose? A reason to be around Mama again?” I threw the lavender down and walked further away. This was just too much.

He silently followed me up to the grassy knoll I had stood on the day before, surveying my future home. Seemed like a month before. This time I stood there with my back to the cabin, facing the trees, ready to run, only more questions kept me in place. I folded my arms across my chest and faced him, ready to attack again. “And Mama! Was she in love with you too? Was she?”

Pain was plainly there on his face and I was inflicting it and happy to do so. I behaved as a jealous woman.

“It’s not right that I speak for Ruby.”

“Did she tell you she loved you?”

“That’s for your mama to say, not me.”

“Did you seduce her?”

He raised his eyebrows in surprise and then frowned. “Good Lord, woman! Remember who you’re talking about. Ruby was a good woman! You should know that better than me.”

“Fine, Mr. Phillips. I’m a woman; she’s a
good
woman. As you said to me last night, I hear you loud and clear. It’s ironic, isn’t it? I lived my life to please her, to do what she couldn’t do and stand up for women’s rights. Now I find someone else who couldn’t shake her. And she calls herself powerless! Well, you should be happy to know that Papa is very ill.” I waited for that last bit to sink in but
Mr. Phillips was better than I at keeping his emotions in check. He simply watched as if waiting for further instructions.

So I decided to give him another stab. “And as for you, for
us
, this marriage is over. It was never consummated and it never will be.” I wanted to say more but I stopped. Drained of emotion, or numbed by too much emotion, but at least my mind stopped questioning and I prepared to move on. I smiled bitterly at that one. I did what I was trained to do. Trained to stand and fight, trained to state my position, and then move on. I was not a lavender flower like Mama, growing roots, but much more like tumbleweed, moving with the wind.

Mr. Phillips insisted we have breakfast with ‘the younguns’, before heading back to Nashville. He said he would also need some time to try to repair whatever went wrong with his truck. I relinquished; what else could I do? I was dependent upon this traitor or march the twenty miles back to the Nashville train station.

My armchair, or my ‘throne fit for a queen’ as his boys called it, still sat in the kitchen and I obediently sat in it to face biscuits and gravy. Giggling and whispering continued around the table from the night before, as if no time had passed in between. While chewing my biscuit, I suddenly realized that they were deliberating how their father and I had done something naughty ‘in Daddy’s bed’ and my face flushed crimson.

The baby, little Ruby, I nonetheless found enduring, perhaps even endearing, for when I smiled at her, she hid her eyes behind her hands shyly. When I removed her hands and said, “Peek-a-boo!” she gave a glorious, straight-from-the-stomach cackle. It was this child who took her mother’s life in birth. I empathized; she would no doubt have this taunted at her by her older siblings as she grew up, giving her personal blame.

I looked around the table and wondered how they would fare without a mother here for sometime longer, perhaps forever, since
their father, with his drawn face and shadowed eyes, would likely not attempt this again, especially since his heart was evidently not in it.

I gave credit to Mary Sue, a great deal of credit as I watched her stir and serve and scold. She was their mommy now, and although she made it known this was a burden, she carried the burden well; her shoulders squared for whatever life threw at her. All the more reason to admire her and I did. What better hero than one who didn’t want to do it, but accepted the responsibility bravely? And she would rather do it all, then to pass it on to a stranger, someone who didn’t belong here. She became my heroine for that short time at breakfast. Could I somehow reciprocate and bring light into her tired disappointed eyes? Naively, I resolved to help her but in my own way, through my own strengths. Goodness knows, I showed only my weaknesses ‘in these here parts’.