In Search of Satisfaction (16 page)

As she hurried away, Minna spoke to herself out loud but softly, “I don’t know why you wanna know,” she mimicked, “if he took his medicine anyway. You know ain’t nothin in it when you gets through with it! You all white folks is crazy! Chile!” Minna was the daughter of the midwife, Ma Mae. As the granddaughter of Ma Lal, she knew almost everything about the goings-on in Yoville, and she was a direct line to Ma Mae and Ma Lal of all that went on in the Befoe house. Ma Lal loved gossip, it was almost all she had to spice up her life in her old age.

m
rs. Befoe usually read the financial sheets of the papers, but this morning she lay them aside, turning back to the window. She looked out
at the sun-filled morning, the trees and land still wet with dew, that dew sparkling on the grass, nature glittering in the sun. She sighed, leaning her arms on the desk. All the pictures from her family and friends throughout her years were before her. She looked at the loveliest picture of herself, then sighed again. She looked down at her own body and shivered with distaste.

Her body felt suddenly cold. Empty. Of all good things. Withered and aged from lack of everything but greed and need for the symbols of plenty. The unadmitted loneliness she had felt for many years. Her mind, her life, was empty of everything but herself. Oh, yes, it was full of money … and hate.

There was no one to come to her or for her to go to in friendship. No one spoke soft, gentle words to her nor put their arms around her with true concern. No evidence of affection. She thought, “There are those who come to me because of my power. If I do not give them something they want, they do not come back.” She forgot these things were evidence of affection she had almost never given to anyone except her father. And yes, her uncle Richard, her father-in-law. But not to her daughter, Richlene. Even the lovers later, much later, when she knew her true love was never coming to her again. These later lovers through the years had been more useful for her self-adoration than they were for feelings of lovers. Their lovemaking was proof that she was desired; she lied to herself if she thought it was proof that she was loved. It was necessary in the sophisticated world she had moved in for others to know she was desired. She spent enough on clothes and jewels, furs, perfumes and potions to have someone desire her. She had pretended and they had pretended. Perhaps not all of them, but most. In truth, only her husband had ever really loved her. And she hated her husband Richard because she believed he stood between her and who was rightfully hers. She chose to deceive herself.

She turned her head to the side, looking at herself in the mirror for a long moment. Then she looked again at the pictures in front of her, thinking, “What is it? When does it all happen … the change in life? It comes so slowly … yet so surely. One day you are young, full of life, surrounded by love”—she had never been, but lies were so easy—“and there is a future! A brilliant future. There is surely love somewhere in your future. A love you can … keep. It belongs to you. Everyone tells you that.” She leaned back in her satin-covered, soft chair, ran her
fingers through her hair which was almost all gray now. Her eyes moved to a picture of her father. “Papa Befoe. Great Papa Befoe. My father. My love.” She closed her eyes and saw her father as he had been in the past.

Carl Eustace Befoe had come south looking for fortune during the Civil War. He came to find ways to exploit the war and make money, from either side. And he made a lot of money because there were things both the South and the North needed and wanted from each other. It was supposed to be illegal for them to do business with the enemy. However, they were willing to pay for what they wanted “under the table.” Both sides. Help your enemy?! But it was done, as it is always done by those who love money. Carl Befoe was good at it. He made himself and several other “gentlemen” rich.

He was tall, slender, dark-haired, with dark eyes that twinkled always with some private joke of his that he was playing on life. Or so he thought. He loved women and didn’t know of any he would marry because he did not want any woman that any other man had slept with. Not because of religion or any high moral standard. He just knew what he had done to most of the women in his life and didn’t want any used property.

Naturally, he attended many social events while in the South for the necessary connections for his private work. He was welcomed everywhere because he was single, handsome and rich. Few people look beyond these things. At one of these events, he met Victoria Elizabeth. She was a lovely, quiet, tender, young girl. A virgin. Everyone knew it. He turned his twinkling eyes on her and her innocent heart flew gently to him. Of course, it helped that most all the eligible men were off fighting the war. Carl and Victoria married shortly thereafter, mostly because Victoria’s father knew Carl Befoe had a great deal of money and was well established in the South and North. He would not have to worry about his daughter any longer.

Carl had his virgin. Victoria had been raised to be a lady, a genteel lady. She had a soft, gentle gaiety. She had been taught sex was a duty, which, for her mother, it might have been. Carl was a healthy, lusty man. He loved healthy, lusty women. He took his quiet little wife to Paris and to Rome to make her gay and glamourous. Stood at her side and bought magnificent clothes, rich perfumes, makeup, all things that women usually
love. Victoria wore the clothes, they were lovely, but in her growing unhappiness the clothes lost their glamour, some of their beauty. They just hung on her and her quiet personality. She wore the perfumes, she loved the perfumes, until she saw that they encouraged Carl to want to make love. She stopped wearing them. She never touched the makeup. She could hear her mother say “powder and paints are for whores.” She never knew her mother used makeup, however lightly.

Carl was gentle, even patient, in the beginning, but in a few short months he became disgusted with Victoria, uncaring and, consequently, rougher. These were small but important things to both of them. Soon Victoria began to hate her life. She still felt some love for Carl, but she tried to avoid him. To do that she pretended to become sickly. It did not stop him. When she had her first child, a daughter who Carl named Carlene, she was just beginning to hate her husband. She requested separate bedrooms. Carl indulged her. He felt she was delicate and the birth was difficult. Besides, he was already often at the isolated house of gaiety the local gentry had built and kept for such purposes.

When she gave birth to her second, unwanted daughter, she named the child Sally. But now her hatred for Carl completely filled her frail, tired, little body. She seldom left her home.

The housecleaning and kitchen help, even her own maid, gave her no sympathy because they all thought Mr. Carl Befoe was such a handsome, wonderful man. “How can that woman be so dumb she don’t know when she got the best thing!” they laughed. She was alone. Except for little Sally, whom she loved. But, now, Victoria even began to hate her daughter Carlene, because Carlene adored her father and tried to be like him always. Her robust temperament was at odds with her mother’s. Victoria exasperated Carlene who laughed at her “vapors.”

About a year later, Victoria had used up all the little staying power she had left. She lay in bed looking at all the bottles of. medicine prescribed for her by the town physician. She did not know this medicine was practically useless. She took it all. She begged God, “Let me die, NOW, let me die. I don’t want to stay here in this life. Let me PLEASE die NOW!”

She did not die. When she woke up the next morning she still felt ill, but her heart held the first rage she had ever known in her life. At last, she went down the grand stairs as they were meant to be descended. She
went into the kitchen, stared fiercely at the cook and the kitchen help. “Where is the laudanum you give yourselves when you are sick? I want it now!” She went up the stairs with the laudanum the same way she had come down, but now she felt triumphant. She sat in her bed, drinking the laudanum from a sherry glass, laughing to herself. “It’s the coward’s way,” something said in her mind. She laughed more weakly now. “I’m no coward. I’m tired. I don’t belong here in this world with this man and his child. I’ve never liked the world since I’ve been grown. It is filled with lies and false friends.” She lay back in the bed, the glass tilting, spilling bits of the liquid. She thought of Sally. “I … love … Sally. What am I doing to Sally? Leaving her here alone?! Poor Sally!”

They found her dead with glass in hand, one foot on the floor. She had tried to get up to go to Sally, but the confused, sad and sickened heart had stopped.

Little Sally was too young to know much about the life going on around her, but she felt the loss of her mother keenly. Carlene was very cruel to Sally, called her slow, stupid, careless and other things to make her father see that she, Carlene, was his true daughter in his image and would grow up to be the son he wanted. Carlene told others, “My mother killed herself because she hated Sally. Because she was not my father’s baby. My mother was shamed.” Yes, even as young as she was, the coldness, the evil grew all by itself. Satan looked forward to knowing her better.

Carl loved Sally, but the time came when he didn’t like to show it when Carlene was around, so Sally suffered the loss. She was a lonely, little girl. She took after her mother—quiet and reserved, undemanding. She even resembled her. She tried always to be invisible so as not to bring herself to Carlene’s attention and bring on that terrible laughter and derision that tore her heart to pieces.

Sally was prettier than Carlene. Her father liked to put his arms around her because he liked beauty and was pleased to see it in his own child. But Carlene’s sharp tongue dripped venom as well as honey and she would ridicule them both until he sent Sally away. Once, Carlene took a pair of scissors and cut to pieces his new riding suit just sent from the East. She never did admit it. She blamed it on Sally. But Carl knew. He knew she was like him. And like his brother.

Alone so much as she grew up, Sally applied herself to her studies.
She was intelligent and did very well in all her work. When grown, she cried, begged, pleaded to be sent away to some college or finishing school. This was the one time Carlene helped her. Finally Carl let her go. For peace. It was not long, perhaps three years or more, when Sally wrote she had fallen in love and gotten married. She was of age and it was legal. In fact, Sally had made a good marriage. Her husband, Gentle, came from a small but prosperous, old esteemed family. She was well provided for. Sally was able to make her husband happy for many years and gave him two children, a son Reginald and a daughter Lenore. She saw her father when he came east on business. Carl did not always tell Carlene about these visits, but he always enjoyed seeing Sally. He enjoyed, somewhat, Reginald and Lenore, except they were snobbish, selfish children who seldom smiled unless amused at someone’s discomfort. They were nothing like their mother. They had reached back past her to her in-laws. There were times Sally did not even like her own children. She did not go back to Yoville for many years.

Times were changing then. Most people never change, only the things they wear and use change. People did not need many of the old things. All kinds of things were being invented. New things were in demand. Technology had begun. The world was becoming more industrial. After a financial crisis, Sally’s husband and his family were nearly bankrupt. It was so important to maintain a standing. Her husband had a heart attack and died, and Sally had nowhere to go except back to Yoville. Her son Reginald was just finishing college and thinking of starting a family of his own. He planned to marry rich; he would be safe. Lenore was still in finishing school. Sally’s in-laws said they could continue helping their son’s daughter, but there was no place for a daughter-in-law with them at that time. Reginald said, “If it had been at any other time, Mother, I could help, but, you see, I have just started getting in this new family myself. I can’t have you coming in, also. It’s a bad time.” Besides, her children knew Sally had no money to leave as an inheritance.

They did not want her, so Sally struggled several years on her own as a governess or by keeping household accounts. But she was getting older and tired. Her spirit was breaking from the difficulties a lone, shy, inexperienced woman can have. She did not ask her father for help. He had told her to go back to Yoville, but at that time he no longer lived there
himself. He had left Carlene there with her family. All their lives had drifted further apart.

Satan watched Sally, thoughtfully. He could not do much with one who gave him so little to work with. Satan wanted to see her return to Yoville … where Carlene ruled. He might at least make hate grow there. Satan is not able to pervert, he can only tempt.

i
n the meantime, after Sally left for school and married, Carlene had her daddy and Yoville all to herself. But through the years, Carl drank more than his usual social drinking and stayed away longer and longer on his business trips. When Carlene complained about his absences, he growled, “I’ve got to get away from this gawdforsaken place!” He wanted to be where there was more pleasure, more women, any place where every time he turned around Carlene would not be there. Sometimes she forced him to take her on a trip with him, saying, “It’s the only way for me to meet people and learn more about our businesses.” Most times he left her behind in Yoville or sent her somewhere else far away from him to visit one of her friends.

Carlene knew how to make herself attractive. She was young, healthy, energetic and gay when she was the center of attention. She had a few suitors who knew her father’s financial situation was excellent. After all, he was in steel, cotton, banking and, that big money-maker now, munitions. But no suitors were pleasing to Carlene. She wanted them to match her dollar for dollar. The men who could do that had their own choice of marriage partners or brides who were chosen by their families. In any event, they did not need to marry someone who
was not totally pleasing to them as possible. Carlene’s mean, little ways did show, you know. In addition, Carlene wanted her husband, whoever he may be, to change HIS name to hers and become a Befoe. The men she might have accepted for social honor were more than satisfied with their own old, established names. Satan never worried about Carlene. He knew she would find some way to do something unkind or wrong.