New Mercies (6 page)

“Amalia was purely hating Mr. Lott for sixty years,” Lott’s wife was quoted as saying. Although they knew each other their entire lives, the dead pair never spoke, she claimed. Instead, they conveyed their complaints through her or other intermediaries. The sheriff revealed that Lott had filed complaints about Amalia’s goats, which regularly trespassed on his property, and that could have set him off, although the sheriff couldn’t say for sure. “She loved those goats like I love divinity candy,” the sheriff told the reporter. But no dead goat had been found. The reporter hinted, too, that Lott’s wife was not entirely in the clear, since it was apparent to him that she was jealous of Amalia. But the sheriff said the gun that killed the two was found in Bayard’s hand. It was a derringer manufactured before the Civil War, and the bullets were handmade. The servant who lived on Avoca, the Bondurant estate, claimed Bayard had threatened Amalia. But the servant was a Negro, whose word in court was only half as good as a white person’s, the sheriff said.

The article went on to state that Amalia had been a noted belle in her day, and had been presented at the Court of St. James’s, but
she had never married. Her fortune had once included several plantations, but they were all gone now. In later years, she’d supported herself by raising goats and selling their milk. Bayard, too, had come from an old Natchez family, but as a gentleman, he did not work. “He lived in reduced circumstances. I got no idea where his money come from, but that ain’t unusual in Natchez,” the sheriff said. Then he asked, “How ’bout where you come from?” The reporter must have been tickled by the question, because he included it in the story. Then the sheriff said that things were so dull in Natchez that people supported themselves by taking in one another’s washing.

I felt a certain connection with poor dead Amalia. Although Bondurant was not a common name, it was not unknown, either. I searched for further references to the goat lady in the following days’ papers. Once, the
Post
printed a grainy snapshot of the woman, taken with her goats, but it was so out of focus that I couldn’t make out her features. After three or four days, there was no more mention in the
Post
of Amalia Bondurant. The story of the murder-suicide in Mississippi had been replaced by that of a forty-three-year-old farm woman in Kansas who had run off with a hired hand half her age. She had cleaned out the family savings of thirty-five dollars, taken the hams hanging in the smokehouse, and gone off in her husband’s Model T. The husband was left with a nickel and a dime and two Jersey cows that his wife left behind because they didn’t fit into the auto. According to the article, the farmer told the reporter, “I don’t care so much about the wife, but I sure would like my flivver back.”

Amalia Bondurant had slipped from my mind by the time the telegram arrived a week after her death, and I thought the wire
probably was a request for me to attend a fund-raiser for the Junior League House or the Preventorium at the National Jewish Sanatorium, both charities that I had supported in the past. Since it was sent to me at the Marion Street address, where Mother and Henry lived, I thought it had come from someone who believed I had moved back home after the divorce. “I’ll take it with me on my walk around the park, about teatime,” Mother said when she called to tell me about the wire. Mother, knowing the early evenings were especially difficult for me, frequently stopped by at that time of day.

While waiting for her, I fixed tea, cut up a lemon, and took a coconut cake out of the icebox. Cakes had delighted David, so I’d loved baking them. Whether it was red velvet, Lady Baltimore, or a devil’s food cake, David always said, “Muggs, you dearest thing, you know it’s my favorite.” For some reason, I found it comforting now to bake cakes. No matter that they went stale and had to be thrown into the garbage pail before they were eaten. The cake was fresh that morning, made with a real grated coconut and ground almonds mixed into the batter. The three layers were put together with a coconut marshmallow frosting, which was swirled on top of the cake like drifts of snow.

I transferred the cake to a cut-glass stand, warmed the silver teapot, and set out translucent white china plates, cups, and saucers on a pure white bridge cloth. The tablecloth with the Scottie dogs embroidered on it was put away. It reminded me too much of David, how he’d loved to see the table set with our best things, and I could not stand that.

After the two of us separated, I had set about making the apartment mine, getting rid of the dramatic touches that David
had liked. The brown walls were painted white now, and the gold velvet drapes that had darkened the living room were gone. The sunroom’s sheer curtains, which I’d had to starch and shape on curtain stretchers every six months, went to the Community Chest drive, and the windows were now bare. David had taken most of the art objects that we had collected over the years—after all, he was the one who had purchased them—so that my rooms were simple and stark and orderly, everything black or white, with touches of chrome and silver and glass. The only color in the entire apartment was the green Chinese rug in the living room, which had silver-gray half circles and diagonal lines on it, and the pillows I’d made from antique velvet and scraps of lace. My rooms were too austere for most people, harsh even. “They’re dramatic, but not very inviting,” Mother had said, “but I believe they suit you.” She was right, for I, too, had locked up the soft things in my life. My life was lived in black and white and shades of gray.

Mother arrived, dressed in tweeds and stout shoes, smelling of lily of the valley cologne, and presented me with a bouquet of purple asters from her yard. They looked smart, arranged in the black vase, set on the glass table in the sunroom. Then we sat down, and mother poured tea while I cut the cake, thinking how pure the white layers looked on the white plates, beside the silver dish of lemon slices. “Antiseptic,” I said, nodding my head at the table.

“Oh, but very pretty. You simply can’t have white things with a man around. Every married woman must envy you.”

We were on the second cup of tea when Mother remembered the telegram and put down her cigarette in a heavy crystal
ashtray. She smoked only a little and only at my apartment, believing that Henry would not approve of the habit. In fact, Henry knew that she smoked, but gentleman that he was, he let her have her little secret. She fished in her pocket for the envelope and handed it to me.

“Probably a party invitation,” I said. “People think you’ll pay more attention if they send it by wire instead of mailing it.”

“I hope that’s what it is.” Mother was cheerful. “It will do you good to circulate a little more. You have been too solitary since David . . .” She let the end of the sentence hang in the air. I was glad she did not mention that it might also be an opportunity for me to meet men, although she must have been thinking that, too. Perhaps if she’d known the details of my divorce, she would have understood that I did not care to marry again, would not risk another betrayal, did not want to hold another man’s life in my hands. But I had not told the particulars to anyone, not even to the lawyer. Mother and Henry suspected something—everyone did—but they did not suspect the truth.

“This isn’t from anybody I know, or it would have been sent to the apartment, so it can’t be important. Still, a telegram is not a thing to be ignored.” I slit the envelope with the tip of the cake knife, took out the folded page, and read the purple lines of type pasted onto the yellow foolscap:
AMALIA BONDURANT DEAD YOU ONLY RELATIVE HEIR TO AVOCA COME NATCHEZ IMMEDIATELY
. It was signed
SAMUEL SATTERFIELD, ESQUIRE
.

I read the telegram again, trying to make sense of the revelation that I was related to that absurd goat woman in the newspaper. Mother took the telegram from me, read it, and frowned. “Amalia Bondurant?”

“She was written up in the
Post
, some crazy woman in Natchez who was murdered. They called her ‘the goat lady.’ Do you have any idea who she is?”

Mother shook her head. “Some relative of your father’s. She’d have to be. I didn’t know there was money in the family.”

“Judging from the articles, there can’t be much of it—just an old house, probably encumbered, and a herd of goats. Did Father ever mention her?”

“It was so long ago.” Mother tasted the cake, then mashed a little of it with her fork to make it look as if she’d eaten more. She set down the fork. I’d forgotten that she didn’t like coconut.

“Could she be my grandmother?”

Mother bit her lip. “Your grandmother died when your Father was born. I remember that much. Maybe Amalia was your father’s sister. After he died, I looked through his things to see if there was anyone I should notify, and I came across a name. It was a woman’s, and I remember thinking the name was pretty. But Amalia?”

She got up and stood looking out over the park. “Your father wasn’t close to his family. He didn’t talk to me about them. He never wrote to them, and he didn’t get any letters. Whoever I sent the notice to telling of his death didn’t reply. Wink said once he might as well have been an orphan, for all the affection he got as a child. It seemed to me there was some kind of secret in that family, something he wouldn’t talk about. I didn’t pry, thinking that one day he would tell me.” She shrugged. “He did think they blamed him for his mother’s death. After you were born, Wink said he wanted to make sure you never felt abandoned. I thought
that was so sad. He adored you. You don’t remember that, do you?”

“No.” I wished then that I did remember Father.

“I put Wink’s things into a box when Henry and I were married, thinking you might want them one day. I’d forgotten all about them. The box must be in the basement.” Mother picked up a slice of lemon and squeezed it into her cup, although she had drunk the tea. For an instant, the citrus scent hung in the air like a ray of sunshine. Mother ate a bite of cake and placed her fork, tines down, on her plate; then, picking up her silver teaspoon, she removed a lemon seed from her cup and set it on the saucer. “It’s sad, isn’t it? All that’s left of a man’s life is in one small cardboard box.” She put her hand on mine.

“There’s me. He left me.” Because she looked downcast, I added, “Me and the goat lady.”

I sent a Western Union to Mr. Satterfield, asking him to clarify my relationship with Amalia Bondurant and saying it would be impossible for me to leave for several days. That would give me time to go through Father’s things and find out about the family. But as it turned out, the box contained little. Father’s college diploma from the University of Denver was there; his middle name was Tobias, not Thomas, as Mother had believed. Father’s death certificate was in the box, along with a copy of his will and an article from a society page about his marriage to Mother. There were several books—one of poems, a grammar-school text, and two novels, James Fenimore Cooper’s
Leatherstocking
Tales
and
The Gem of the Season (1850)
. Leafing through the poetry book, I found a flower pressed between the pages of a Thomas Moore poem, “The Vale of Avoca.” One of the
Post
articles had reported that Amalia Bondurant’s house was called Avoca, and from the telegram, it appeared that the mansion had been left to me. I did not know people who named their houses—except for mountain cabins, and then they chose silly names, such as “Wit’s End” and “Bide-a-wee”—and was curious about where Amalia’s family had gotten the estate’s name. Two lines of the poem were underlined:

Sweet vale of Avoca! How calm could I rest
In thy bosom of shade, with the friends I love best

Had Father highlighted the lines? Perhaps his father or grandfather, whoever had built the house, had done so. Maybe Amalia Bondurant had picked the name and the book had been hers.

A small leather box with AB on the lid contained father’s jewelry—a stickpin with a diamond in it, collar studs, a red amber cross on a gold chain—which Mother did not remember—a gold pocket watch, engraved EWB. When Mother wound it, the watch began to tick, and a slender second hand made its way around the face. There was the head of a walking stick, a carved silver knob engraved with initials, a large
B
in the center, but the smaller letters on either side were worn off. The Bondurants seemed partial to monograms.

“The name of the woman I notified when your father died isn’t here,” Mother said, a little put out with herself. Nor was
there anything else in the box that identified the members of the Bondurant family—no letters, no family tree. “You’d think he’d at least have had a Bible with his family’s names written in it,” she said as we spread the contents across the table. “He must have felt so alone.” Her voice cracked, and I put my hand on her arm, but she shook it off. Mother was of a generation that believed you cried only in the bathroom, with the tap open.

The last thing in the carton was a glove box filled with photographs held together with a black ribbon. Mother must have tied them into their little bundle, because on top was a picture of her with Father. It had been taken in the mountains. Mother wore a shirtwaist and long skirt and leaned against a boulder, while Father, in high-laced boots, stood beside her, towering over her. “He was tall,” I said.

“Oh yes.” Mother’s face was very white in the picture, and the curls that peeked out from under her hat looked whiteblond. My coloring came from Father, whose olive skin in the photograph was even darker than usual, Mother said, because he worked outdoors. He had been a mining engineer, employed by a company that owned mines at Leadville, Colorado. Father had his hand on Mother’s arm, and they were smiling at each other. It was such an intimate photograph that I felt like an intruder viewing it.

Mother took the photograph from me and studied it for a long time. Then she got up from her dining room table, where we had placed the box, and went into the kitchen. There was the sound of water running in the sink. Perhaps Mother had turned on the faucet because she was crying, or maybe she was just getting a drink of water. Mother and Henry had always seemed so
romantic to me. I was the only one in my set who had lost a parent, and consequently, I was the only one whose mother had been courted. Henry had brought her bouquets of tulips, which were Mother’s and Grandmother’s favorite flower—and mine, too—and boxes of bonbons from Mrs. Stover’s Bungalow.