New Mercies (11 page)

Not bragging did not seem to be in Odalie’s character, but that was not the point, and I did not challenge her.

The servant still stood rooted beside the doorway with the china bowl in his hands, and Pickett told him sternly, “York, be dishing up the pudding now.”

“Yes’m.” He turned to the sideboard and spooned berries into dishes. He covered the berries with custard from the bowl he’d been carrying, then topped each serving with whipped cream. Holding a silver grater above each dish, he ran a nutmeg across
it. Then he put the dishes onto plates and set them before us.

“Oh, your wonderful custard!” Parthena explained to me that Pickett made it herself from an old family recipe. “She won’t share it. Isn’t she the mean thing?” The others grunted their approval of the dessert and began eating, while Pickett insisted she couldn’t give out the recipe because she herself didn’t know how it was made, just a little of this and that. Even her cook, who had prepared the rest of the dinner, couldn’t make custard to Pickett’s satisfaction.

The conversation was a great deal of bother about a dish as ordinary as custard, but everyone seemed eager to talk about something besides Ezra—everyone but me, since I was curious to know why he disliked me. I told them that Ezra all but ran me off Avoca. Someone groaned at the mention of Ezra’s name again.

It surely was not Odalie, who gave me a surprised look and opened her mouth. Before she could speak, Merrill said, “Well, wouldn’t you if you’d been born on the place and had never spent a day away from it?”

“Not a single day?”

Merrill waved his hand at me. “Oh, you know what I mean. He’s never had another home. The poor old fellow’s probably scared to death that as a northerner, you’ll turn him out, and then where would he go?”

It seemed they expected me to reassure them that Ezra would be taken care of, but I had no idea what would become of Avoca. Instead of responding, I picked up my spoon and tasted the dessert, and although it was rich, I ate most of it. If I had trouble sleeping that night, it would be nice to blame the heavy dinner and not what really might have caused my sleeplessness.

“Why would Ezra have killed his mistress, Odalie?” As I asked the question, York, who had poured coffee from a set nearly as elaborate as the one in the East Room, set a full cup and saucer beside my plate. His hand shook a little, and a drop of coffee spilled over the side of the cup. York started to remove it, but as the others were looking at Odalie now and had not seen the spill, I touched the back of his hand with my little finger, and he left the cup alone.

Put on the spot, Odalie began to hem and haw. “Did I say he did? I just supposed about it. And, of course, you’d not hardly think a Negro could be smart enough to shoot them both, then lay the blame on Bayard?”

“We all know Bayard did it,” Mr. Satterfield insisted. The others nodded while Odalie played with her dessert spoon. “My guess is that Bayard sneaked up on her.” Mr. Satterfield smiled as he seemed to remember something, then turned to me. “Miss Amalia had a temper. There’s a statue of her in the Great Hall at Avoca, covered with a sheet now. It was made when she was sixteen. She was dressed in a riding outfit and had a crop in her hand and a dog beside her. She hated posing for that thing. One day, she just announced she was done with it. When her father objected, she took her crop and whacked off the tail of the dog in the statue, and that was the end of her posing.”

“I didn’t know that,” Stephen said. “It sure was one funnylooking dog. You know, I had a hunting dog that—”

“We all think Bayard did it,” said Merrill, interrupting him, so as to keep the conversation on the subject of the murder. “We’d all like to know why, but we have as much chance of finding out why as I have of roller-skating to heaven on a sunbeam.”

“Why didn’t she ever leave, move to another city?” I asked.

“Leave Natchez?” Parthena was incredulous.

It did not seem so far-fetched to me. Any number of Natchezians must have left over the years. I ventured that Amalia could have sold Avoca when it was in decent shape and moved elsewhere, taken a job.

“Doing what?” Stephen asked.

I shrugged, realizing how different these people were from my mother’s side of the family.

“Stephen’s right. Miss Amalia couldn’t have done a thing but sell goat’s milk,” Pickett said. “She never had an education. Women of her day weren’t brought up to get jobs. They expected to be taken care of. We still do.” She smiled at Buckland, although I thought Pickett could easily take care of herself. “Miss Amalia was not raised in the automobile age, when you can get into a car and drive all the way to Jackson. Besides, leaving Avoca would have been a heresy. These old families didn’t let go of their homes. The women stayed on and on as an act of loyalty. I believe Miss Amalia wanted to preserve the Bondurant heritage.”

“Why?” I asked. “She was the last Bondurant.”

The others were still. Finally Buckland spoke up.
“You
are the last Bondurant.”

Yes, and as the last Bondurant, I found the idea of my aunt staying on in that moldy old house for my sake demented. If Amalia had wanted to pass along anything to me, she should have contacted me while she was alive. “She surely would have been happier if she hadn’t had to live there,” I said.

“Happier?” Mr. Satterfield asked. “Why would you say that?”

I was foolish to talk about something I didn’t know about, so I only shrugged.

“There never was a person happier than Miss Amalia. Queer as she was, Miss Amalia was loved by everybody, except for Frederick and the Lotts, and to tell you the truth, I think Bayard did love her,” Mr. Satterfield said.

“You never met a person so sweet-natured,” Parthena said. “Oh yes, she was happy.”

“Right well content,” Mr. Satterfield muttered. The others nodded, while I tried not to show how shocked I was to think that this strange old woman who had lived in a decrepit house with goats might actually have been content with her life, might have preferred it to any other.

Mr. Satterfield, apparently done with the conversation, announced that he had promised to show me the gardens.

Pickett rose, saying she would take the ladies outside, while Buckland and the men retired to the library for cigars and brandy. Parthena and Odalie led the way into the hall. Pickett lagged behind with me. “Mr. Sam is right about Miss Amalia being happy. The time I told you about when she was dancing, she was smiling. I swear I could see she was. She might even have been laughing. Miss Amalia never spoke a cross word to anyone except for Bayard, and she didn’t speak to him at all. Of course, she liked her privacy, but when you did encounter her, she was all goodness. I should have taken better care of her”—she waved off my protest—“of course I should have, but Miss Amalia’s happiness was so golden. I think if I had taken her over, I would have tarnished it. Perhaps one day you will understand.”

“I think I do.”

“No, you do not. Not yet,” she said.

Odalie had opened the rear door, revealing an iron fountain framed by the doorway, water cascading over the edge into a small pool. There was no sign of the chute the slaves had used to activate the workings of the fountain, so I assumed the water must be forced through pipes by a motor these days. The terrace was paved with stones, and on either side of the steps beyond the fountain was a stone balustrade. Iron urns filled with tuberoses stood on the railings. Ferns and other shade plants, some the size and shape of elephant ears, were thick in the garden and gave a feeling of dampness, and there was the strong scent of overripe flowers. The air was yet hot, and the lighted torches scattered about made the evening sultry, which made me homesick for the cool, clear summer nights of the Colorado mountains. David and I had spent summer weekends in the little house in Georgetown that had belonged to Grandmother’s brother. We’d throw an old quilt on the ground in the backyard and lie under the stars, listening to the mountain noises—the wind in the pines, the stream near the house, the whistle of the train. The nights were so cool that even in midsummer we slept under blankets. And except for mosquitoes, I thought as I slapped something that bit my leg, there were few insects in Colorado.

Pickett led us down the steps along a walk that was bordered with foliage. She pointed out sweet olive trees, japonica, and cape jasmine. An enormous tree hovered above us, its outstretched branches, which were almost parallel to the ground,
covered with wispy moss, like a ragged lace shawl. “A live oak,” Pickett told me. “Sometimes the Spanish moss looks like ghosts swinging in the trees like monkeys. You should see the azaleas in the spring—pink and white and cerise. The yellow jasmine are like chains, and the wild dogwood blossoms look as if they’re suspended in air. You must come back then.”

“Come back?” Parthena asked. “She’s the mistress of Avoca now. Why would she leave?”

“That makes her one of us, doesn’t it?” said Odalie. In a single evening, I had gone from Yankee outsider to a member of Natchez society.

“Unless she already has a small fortune to fix it up, how could she live at Avoca?” Pickett asked.

“Do you?” Odalie asked, stopping on the walk in front of me. The Spanish moss behind her blew softly in the breeze, framing her with its torn gray and giving her a Madonna-like look that was out of character. She picked a flower and waved it in the air, spreading its perfume.

“Do I what?”

“Have a small fortune.”

“Odalie, you are a snoop,” Pickett told her. But like Odalie, she and Parthena waited for me to answer.

“You have all suggested that Miss Amalia was penniless,” I told them, having no intention of discussing my finances. “Perhaps the lumberyard could be revived.”

“Oh, that was sold years ago.” When Odalie was sure she had my attention, she added with a touch of spite, “To Pickett’s family. That’s where all this comes from.” She waved both hands to indicate the garden. “That and the Nu-Grape franchise. And
they’ve been selling leases on their plantations to oil companies.”

“Odalie! You really do talk too much,” Pickett said. She explained to me that the lumberyard sale had been quite legal. No one else had wanted the business, and Pickett’s father had paid Frederick more than it was worth. She continued down the walkway to a pair of stone benches under the tree and sat down.

The benches were damp-looking and green with moss. Nonetheless, the rest of us joined her and sat listening to the fountain and the movement of some creature in the bushes. Perhaps there were snakes and rats in the underbrush, but if odious things lurked nearby, the others would know it and not sit there so languidly. The greater danger was Odalie’s tongue, a serpent in its own right.

Odalie spread out her ringed hands in her lap, palms down, and studied a large diamond that sent off glints of light in the glare of the torches. Looking up, she told me, “It’s just a little ole antebellum diamond.” When I did not respond, she said, “I misspoke about Ezra.”

That did not sound like an apology, and I prepared myself for another tasteless observation. Pickett must have been wary, too, because she tried to turn the conversation to something else. “We’ve talked enough about poor old Ezra. Would you like to see the conservatory, Nora?”

“Pickett is crazy about orchids. She has all kinds,” Parthena added.

Pickett grasped my hand and pulled me up with her, but Odalie remained seated, moving her hands back and forth to let the diamond catch the light. “I misspoke when I said he killed
Miss Amalia. Why would a person wipe out the gravy train?”

“What do you mean?” Parthena asked against her will, it seemed.

“He was blackmailing Miss Amalia.”

Pickett and Parthena laughed, relieved that Odalie’s revelation was so ridiculous. “You mean he was dunning her for the goat’s milk money?” Pickett asked. “Oh, Odalie, you have gone too far this time.”

But Odalie cut her off. “Who’s to say Miss Amalia didn’t have a little something more stashed away?”

Since Mr. Satterfield had been scrupulous about not mentioning my aunt’s bank account in New Orleans, Odalie might have been smarter than she seemed. Perhaps her mind did indeed work in some uncanny way.

“Even if she did, what could he possibly blackmail her about?” Parthena glanced at me, caught between curiosity and politeness. I bet on curiosity.

“Really, Odalie!” Pickett admonished her.

“I’ve been studying on it.” Odalie paused dramatically, waiting for one of us to ask her to go on. When no one did, she continued anyway. “It’s like this. Miss Amalia and her mother went to New Orleans. Her mother died, and Miss Amalia came back with a baby.”

The other two women exchanged glances, as if they knew what Odalie was about to say, and Pickett, her hand in mine, took a step down the path. “You really must see the conservatory.” Then she muttered to me, “This is all because Odalie was not invited inside Avoca. Her wrath is like the Lord’s.”

But I withdrew my hand as I waited for Odalie to finish.

She ignored us for a minute, watching a firefly as it flitted near her. Slowly, she closed her hands around it, and when she opened them, the insect lay dead on her left palm. She flicked it into the bushes. “What if Ezra knew it was Miss Amalia and not her mother who’d had the baby?” Odalie gave me a smug look, and as if I had not understood exactly what she was saying, she added, “What if Ezra knew your father was the illegal child of Miss Amalia, and no mistake?”

A
LTHOUGH IT WAS ONLY A
little after seven o’clock when I left the hotel the following morning, the air already was too hot for comfort. Fall mornings in Natchez did not seem to be the beginning of a fresh new day, but only a slight letting up of the previous day’s heat. Perhaps southerners were not as torpid as they seemed; they were merely conserving energy. Of course, they might have been stupid from overeating. I had slept poorly.

Since my only sight of the Mississippi had come from the train window, I walked along Main Street to the edge of a high bluff and looked down two hundred feet or more to the water, surprised at the river’s immensity. The Mississippi was nearly a mile wide, and the quantity of water stunned me. It did not rush on its way to the ocean, but moved sluggishly along, as if it, too, were too hot to hurry.