Keeping Secrets (47 page)

“Did you?”

The old man, whose name was Oscar, just grinned.

“Kids?”

“Two. But they’ve been long gone. One in Houston, one in San Francisco. I never see them. Your folks are lucky that you’re such a good daughter, that you come back home.”

* * *

Emma paid her check and stood. Time to hit the road.

Around Baton Rouge she picked up a radio station that was playing jazz and rhythm and blues. Elvis crooned “One Night with You.” Lordy, lordy, didn’t he sound good? He didn’t look it, though, not in the pictures she’d seen of him lately. All that lean hungriness turned to puffy fat. J.D. had, too, right after he married Maylene. Southern men did that, got married and then took pride in growing bellies, patting them like blue-ribbon watermelons. Why, she’d hardly recognized J.D. in that last photograph with his obituary in the paper. And what about Ricardo Martinez, she wondered then, that sexy Mexican Elvis look-alike, that devil who pretended to be preaching for the Lord, who’d seduced her so at twelve that she’d thrown over her determination to be a Jew (whatever that was) to be baptized in his arms? Were those beautiful brown eyes now buried in fat?

Good God! It struck her as she thought about that: If Jake wasn’t
really
her daddy, not blood kin anyway, and that other nameless fast-talking, skeedaddling—go on, Emma, say it—worthless son-of-a-bitch was, the one who had left Helen in the lurch, then what if, what if—hell, maybe she was half a Jew again! But no, no, that wasn’t right. If her mother was, she was. Oh, hell, Emma, give it up. Just go ahead and be a Southern Baptist-Jew for the rest of your life. It has a certain ring anyway, doesn’t it? Then she thought of Will and laughed. He’d say that she’d go out of her way to make something like that up. That she’d do it just to be different, just like…

Just like marrying Jesse. Oh, Jesse.

She was pulling into Natchez now, the best route from New Orleans, cutting through the southwest corner of Mississippi. Soon she’d cross over the Big Muddy and be back on the Louisiana side.

In a way she’d always wanted Jesse to see all this, the Old South, Natchez, this pretty riverbank town with its antebellum houses that were so gorgeous in the azaleaed springtime when they were filled with visitors taking the tour called the Pilgrimage. He would love the fine woodwork, the elaborate mantelpieces, the hand-carved furniture.

“Sure,” he’d say, though, “good work done by slaves’ hands.” And it was, of course, though some of the furniture was English or French; every brick was laid, every nail hammered by blacks before the Emancipation. And she could imagine what his reaction would be when the tour guide, a Daughter of the Confederacy whose accent would be so thick that even Emma could hardly understand her, pointed out the trapdoor in the master’s bedroom floor beneath which lived a slave who was always on call. Or the elaborate fans of peacock feathers she’d seen in many of these homes, suspended over the dining tables. The plantation owners wanted cool breezes when they dined, courtesy of the arm of the little black boy in livery who stood in a corner pulling a rope. He’d look very much like the statues that so many suburban Southern houses still planted on either side of the driveway, little colored boys in livery, sometimes holding a lamp.

She’d told Jesse about those statues.

“Let’s get us a couple for Skytop,” he’d said, “and I’ll paint their faces white.”

Nope, she’d never been able to convince Jesse that there was anything in the South that should have been saved from Sherman’s March. She could never explain to him that, even though she didn’t want to live there anymore, there was a great deal about the South that she loved.

“Unreconstructed,” he’d mumble, teasing her. Though every once in a while she didn’t think he was teasing.

Ah, Jesse. You never should have married a Southern girl.

Now,
there
was a novel idea. Wait a minute, Will, she wanted to turn around and holler, as if he could hear her across three-and-a-half states. I didn’t do this alone. If, in my marrying Jesse, his being black was the frosting on the cake, why the hell did he marry me? Huh? Answer that, Mr. Know-It-All, Mr. Five-Cent Psychiatrist. Why’d he hitch up with Miss Scarlett?

I don’t have time to work this out, she thought then. Just passed Winnsboro. Before much longer, I’ll be in West Cypress.

Why did people marry, anyway? If it weren’t race that was standing between them, there were always a million other things, though granted, race was a big one. But what about religion, politics, preference for bedroom temperature, windows open or closed, peanut butter crunchy or smooth, left or right side, faster, slower, or not at all? Sometimes she thought it was a miracle that two people stayed in the same room for more than five minutes without shooting each other, much less signing on for life.

Well, she had, hadn’t she? But she hadn’t meant it. Will was right.
Probably
right.

She flipped an imaginary coin in the air then, as she often did, to see not which way it landed, but how she felt about it.

Heads, she’d go back to Jesse. Well, sure, they could work it out. They could both try really hard. They could make more compromises.

Tails. She flipped again. Tails. The third time, too. Whereupon, she exhaled a sigh of relief. It was a little scary. But, oh Lord, how good it would feel to be free.

Well, she was going to be free anyway, wasn’t she, in Europe for at least six months? And Jesse had been pissing in the wind when he said he was coming over after Christmas. He wasn’t going anywhere. He was going to rot up there in Skytop.

How quick you are to feel angry at him again, Emma. Can’t you remember any of the good times? Can’t you give the man a break?

As she drove the last few miles into West Cypress, she did. She looked out at the scenery she’d passed a million times as a girl and recalled loving times with Jesse, her husband, the man whom nobody, nobody in this, her hometown, knew about.

Soon she’d be driving past her Aunt Janey’s house, where Aunt Janey still lived with her son Cooter. Emma remembered how she and Jesse used to lie in bed, her telling stories about Cooter and his made-up religion, their almost dying laughing.

She remembered the time she and Jesse had taken a picnic to the amphitheater at Stanford to lie on the grass and listen to the Preservation Hall Band.

She remembered that flight from the Silver Dollar Saloon to Yosemite, their honeymoon suite at the Awahnee.

She remembered the first time they ever made love.

She remembered her eyes in that painting on Skytop’s wall.

She remembered Jesse smacking her in the head with the door of that restaurant in Los Gatos and carrying her up the stairs.

Ah, Miss Scarlett, she thought then. What if after you decide that you don’t want him, you double back and change your mind? And what if he doesn’t give a damn?

But in her heart of hearts she knew it was over. All over but the shouting. Will was right. It was time to move on, to drop the Tree from her procession of names and get back to being Emma Fine, Emma Whatsit.

* * *

Rosalie was standing out in the yard when Emma drove up.

“Goodness gracious, sakes alive, you almost scared me to death,” she said. “What on earth are you doing here?”

“I thought I’d come visit for a few days. Is that okay?”

“Okay? Why, it’s wonderful!” Rosalie’s heart was palpitating. “Did you just drive here all the way from California?”

“Well, I sort of moseyed my way here. I took my time.”

But didn’t I just talk with you three or four days ago? Rosalie thought, and then she bit her tongue. Whatever, Emma was here, it didn’t matter. “Here, let me help you carry your things in.”

“No, that’s all right. Let’s leave them where they are for a while.” Emma glanced around the front yard. “It always looks so pretty. I wish I had your green thumb.”

“It just takes patience,” Rosalie said, smiling, pleased with the compliment, breathing a little easier. Oh, how she always wanted to see Emma, lived for it, always had, but somehow things never seemed to go right.
That
, of all the sadnesses she’d known, was the biggest one in her life. “Putting things in the dirt and letting them grow is all I do. Of course, if I don’t like what they’re doing, I pull them up, try another spot.”

“Did you plant that tree?” Emma pointed to the middle of the yard, to a big pin oak.

“I did. I planted it the week we moved in here. That was over ten years ago. It’s doing well, isn’t it?”

“I don’t remember it being that tall.”

“Well, it wasn’t.” Rosalie laughed. “I mean it’s grown. Come on around back. I’ll show you my winter garden.”

But just then Jake came bustling out the side door.

“I thought you were napping,” Rosalie cried, “or I would have called you.”

“Daddy!” Emma threw her arms around him.

“Emma!”

She whispered into his ear, “I tried to call, but…”

He just nodded. He’d worried. He’d cried himself to sleep after Rosalie was snoring, torturing himself with his transgressions. Then, finally, Rosalie said Emma had called, and he’d breathed easier. And now she was here. She’d come home. He stepped back and looked into her face. She winked at him, and he dissolved into tears. He thought his heart would burst.

“Why, Jake,” Rosalie said, laughing a little, for when had she ever seen such emotion? “You’re getting to be just like me, a foolish old woman.”

“Yes,” he cried then, laughing at the same time, “I guess I am.” They went on a tour of the garden, Jake trailing a little behind, Rosalie pointing out her compost heap, the winter squash, the cabbages, the turnips, the remains of her grapevines.

“I made 22 pints of jam,” she said. “I thought about making some wine.”

“Why, goodness!” Emma said, teasing, pretending to be shocked. “Wine!”

Rosalie laughed. “You can never tell what mischief a woman is going to get into in her old age. I was reading in one of those
Sunset
gardening books you sent me from California, and it didn’t seem like it would be so hard.” And then she waited, she waited for Emma to tell her that she didn’t know what she was doing, but Emma didn’t.

Instead, as if she’d been rehearsing for it earlier, just a little while ago as she’d approached West Cypress trying to remember the good times with Jesse, Emma remembered an even earlier good time.

“Do you recall when you used to teach in that three-room country school?”

“In Mayhew.”

“Yes, and when I was little, before I started school, you used to take me with you sometimes?”

Rosalie nodded. Of course she remembered. She remembered every second of those golden days, Emma’s early childhood.

“And out behind the school there were those plum trees. At lunch I’d go out with the big kids and we’d pick plums and eat until we were sick? And you kept saying we ought to save some for jelly, but we never left a one?”

“The school pageant that once?” Rosalie was warming to her own memories of that time. “When we did Tom Thumb? And you were his wife?”

Jake spoke up, “Ro stayed up all one night making your costume. I remember that. It was pink.”

“Maybe that’s why it’s always been my favorite color,” Emma laughed. “And when it was really cold, the minute we got there you’d make a fire in the woodstove in the middle of the room? Do you remember that?”

“I’d take cans of chicken soup and put them in a pot on top of that stove and we’d have it for dinner.” And then she corrected herself, as Emma had corrected her so many times, “I mean lunch.” Lunch was what Emma called dinner, and dinner for supper, and there was no supper in her vocabulary at all.

“Speaking of lunch, or dinner, could I have some?”

“Why, of course,” Rosalie said, “let’s go on in the house. I’ve got some okra and some butter beans left over. We ate a while ago. But I’ll warm some up.”

“And some cornbread?”

“No…” Rosalie hesitated.

“That’s okay. Later I’ll make some.”

And on it went like that. It wasn’t so hard, Emma thought. Not hard at all, as long as she kept it light. As long as they just made small talk. Later that evening, after dinner, supper, she started to tell them about her trip to Italy and France.

“Well, I don’t know, Emma,” Rosalie started. “It seems like an awfully big gamble to be taking.”

Emma felt her back start up. “Why?”

“To throw over what you already have for something you don’t know about.”

“But I do know about cooking. I’ve been doing it for years now. The catering, working with Tony—”

“Who?”

And suddenly Emma realized, no, of course, they didn’t know. She hadn’t ever talked about any of that. She’d written, occasionally, a line or two, but how could they know what it was all about?

So she explained. She told them how it had all started the first time she’d gone to France, how she almost felt like she’d lived there in a former life, how familiar everything had tasted. She looked at Jake. He was grinning. And Rosalie listened, nodded, asked a question from time to time.

“Well,” she said finally, “I guess you don’t have anything to lose. I mean, you can always go back to teaching, can’t you, if it doesn’t work out.”