Next to Love (26 page)

“Providing your mother says it’s okay.”

She looks up again. “Can’t we just tell her?”

“You know your mother better than that.” Forget heresy. This is treachery.

Amy crosses her hands over the book and rests her face on them. “But I really want to stay with you.”

Babe looks out over the child-churned water, debating. “Look, kiddo,” she says finally, “I don’t want to pry, but are you angry at your mother about something?”

She shakes her head no.

“Because you can tell me if you are.” Heresy, treachery, and child larceny.

She mumbles something into the book.

“What?”

She turns her face away from Babe so she can speak but not be seen. “I can’t tell you. I’m not supposed to tell anyone. I promised.”

Babe’s senses prick up as surely as if beneath all the noise of the women and children she hears a snake slithering through the grass. She knows this instinctively. She knows this from experience. Not her father. That was one vice he did not succumb to. But she and her sisters and female cousins learned early never to let Uncle Jerome get them alone. Just as the boys knew to steer clear of Father Sebastian. But Morris is such a sweet man—the gentle giant in children’s stories is the way Grace describes him—and a doctor. And Father Sebastian was a priest. And this does not happen only below Sixth Street, though that is what people above Sixth Street would have you believe.

“Who made you promise?”

“My mother.”

“Not your dad?” The last word doesn’t taste right. She used to think it was the newness, but now she wonders if she hasn’t sensed something all along.

“My mother,” Amy repeats.

Babe is still uneasy. She cannot imagine Grace sacrificing her daughter to protect Morris, but neither can she shake the feeling that she has put her finger on something.

She reaches over and puts her hand on Amy’s head. Her hair is hot as metal. “Okay, kiddo, then don’t tell me. But if you change your mind, remember, your secret will be safe with me.”

WHEN BABE AND AMY
pull into the driveway of Grace’s house the next morning, Naomi’s older son, Frankie, is pushing the heavy lawn mower across the backyard. The sun-baked air undulates in waves around him. Sweat covers his face and makes dark half-moons under his arms. When he turns to push the mower back the other way, she sees that the back of his shirt is soaked through. He’s a kid, only a couple of years older than Amy. He ought to be at the pond.

Amy reaches in back for her canvas satchel, and they get out of the car. As they start toward the house, they wave to Frankie. He takes one hand off the mower to wave back and keeps going.

Grace is standing at the sink, peeling peaches. A Pyrex pie plate lined with a flour-dusted circle of dough sits on the counter. The scene is picture perfect, a spread in one of the women’s magazines she and Millie subscribe to. Except it can’t be, because in the world of those glossy pictures, mothers do not ask their daughters to keep secrets.

“Thanks for the overnight,” Amy says as she starts up the stairs.

“The pleasure is entirely mine,” Babe answers. “I’m going to the pond tomorrow, if the weather’s good. Let me know if you want to come along.”

“Karen telephoned,” Grace calls after her daughter. “She said something about the pond tomorrow.”

“Sorry,” Babe says.

“Nothing to be sorry for.” Grace smiles, sweeter than the pie she’s making, which she likes tart. “Iced coffee or tea? We can take it out on the porch.”

Babe says either, and Grace pours two glasses of iced coffee, puts in two long hollow silver spoons that double as straws, and they carry them out to the screened-in porch Morris has added to the house. He bought the house from King and, as far as Babe can tell, is doing his best to erase all traces of the older man. The effort is mutual. King stopped coming by as soon as Morris began turning up. And King had one more trick up his sleeve. The day before Grace married Morris in a small ceremony in the living room, King had a heart attack. Mild, the doctor said, but enough to cast a pall.

They settle at opposite ends of the wicker sofa. The lawn mower is still growling through the hot morning, and they have to raise their voices to talk over it.

“Amy asked if she could stay over,” Babe says. “It wasn’t my idea.”

Grace stares into her iced coffee and says nothing.

“I was a little surprised, to tell you the truth.”

Still nothing.

“Is she all right?”

Grace’s head snaps up. “Why shouldn’t she be?”

“I don’t know. She seemed kind of moody yesterday. I asked her if anything was bothering her, and she said she promised not to tell.”

The lawn mower comes to a stop, and the sound of silver spoon hitting crystal glass as Grace stirs her coffee pings into the sudden silence. To Babe it is the sound of polite society, and skeletons in closets, and crimes and misdemeanors swept under the rug.

“This has to do with Morris, doesn’t it? He’s bothering her.”

Grace sits staring at her but does not answer.

“Well, is he?”

Grace goes on staring at her. Suddenly her mouth opens, and the laughter comes rolling out. There is no joy in the sound. It turns Grace’s face, with its pale skin stretched over the beautiful thin bones, haggard and mean. The laughter stops as abruptly as the sound of the lawn mower did.

“Bothering? Since when did you become so polite? You mean sex. You mean is Morris making advances, touching, sleeping with—oh, damn, that’s a euphemism too. I wish I could use four-letter words when I’m not standing in the yard in my nightgown. No, that is not the problem, thank heavens. Amy and Morris are just fine.”

“Are you sure?” Now that Babe has latched on to the idea, she cannot let it go.

“Amy and Morris are the best thing about this marriage.”

“Then what?”

“Nothing. Everything is fine. We’re the perfect family. The family Morris says he’s always dreamed of. And he didn’t have to do a thing. Instant family. Like instant coffee. Just add hot water and stir.” She starts to cry.

Babe watches the tears run down Grace’s cheeks and thinks, exults, I am not the only one. Her relief is shameful, but so was her envy of what she thought was Grace’s normality at being married to a man who does not thrash in the night, or take swings at himself in the bathroom mirror, or make love as if he is wreaking vengeance. She slides down the wicker sofa and puts her hand on Grace’s shoulder. She can be magnanimous now.

“I never should have married again,” Grace says. “I should have left well enough alone. I had Amy. I had my memories of Charlie. Why did I go and spoil it?”

“You didn’t spoil it. But you have to give Morris a chance. It’s not his fault he isn’t Charlie. No one is ever going to be Charlie. But he’s a good man. He’s crazy about you and Amy.”

Grace sits staring at her, then shakes her head. “Oh, Babe, I know you’re the smart one. The one who reads all the books. But about some things you really are a babe in the woods.”

BABE CLATTERS DOWN
the porch steps. No one likes to be called naïve, especially by someone she considers more naïve. The charge brings out her seditious side. Maybe that’s why she makes the offer to Frankie, though later she will swear to Claude she did it out of kindness, or maybe only thoughtlessness.

He is walking down the driveway as she backs out, and she asks if she can give him a lift.

He stands staring at her for a moment. He is a good-looking boy, tall and reedy like his mother, with sharp cheekbones and tight close-cropped hair. He is wearing sunglasses, so she cannot see his eyes.

“If it’s no trouble, Mrs. Huggins,” he says. Naomi has raised him carefully.

“None at all.” She reaches over to push open the door on the passenger side. He climbs in but keeps his distance, hugging the door.

She asks how his mother is, and he says fine, and they make halting small talk. The idea comes to her at the intersection. She can turn south toward her old neighborhood, though the Negro corner of it is even more disreputable, or north toward the pond, which is only a short detour on the way to Riverview and her own house. He looks as if he could use a cooling off.

“If you like, I can drop you at the pond. It isn’t much out of the way.”

His head swivels to her. She still cannot see his eyes, but she does not have to. The alarm is written all over his face. It comes to her suddenly. She has never seen a Negro at the pond. She is horrified at her blunder. Then she is disgusted that she never noticed the absence.

SEPTEMBER 1952

The news is all over town before the grills are fired up for the Labor Day barbecues. Babe only wishes she was there to see it, but she has been in the kitchen all morning, dicing potatoes for the potato salad and shredding cabbage for the coleslaw. The barbecue is at Millie’s. Now that Millie and Al have bought a house in Riverview, they have a real yard for it. But all three women pitch in to do the cooking.

Babe hears the news from Grace, who hears it from Morris, who has come back from a house call. Some doctors are beginning to refuse to make house calls, but Morris picks up his black doctor’s bag at the ring of a telephone. That’s another reason his patients adore him.

“Naomi’s son Frankie and two other boys.” Grace’s voice on the other end of the telephone line pulses with excitement.

“I assume all three were Negro,” Babe says.

“Of course. That’s the point. They were trying to make trouble.”

“Not trouble, a stand.”

“I feel sorry for Naomi.”

“Why would you feel sorry for her? She ought to be proud.”

“A lot of people don’t like what he did.”

“Then let them get out of the pond.”

“They did.”

Babe does not know why she is surprised. She remembers a wife she knew in one of the southern camp towns during the war. She was from New Jersey and explained smugly that the town she hailed from was nothing like this bigoted backwater where they’d washed up. The pool in her hometown was integrated. Negroes were permitted to swim there one day a week, then it was drained, cleaned, and refilled for whites.

“Look, Babe,” Grace goes on, “I feel sorry for colored people—Negroes—too. All that stuff that goes on in the South.”

“Apparently not only in the South.”

“But when you have children, it’s different.”

“Exactly. You have to set an example. If I were Frankie’s mother, I’d be proud.”

“If you were anybody’s mother, you’d be terrified. I’m sorry, that may sound unkind, but it’s true. There isn’t a mother in this town who isn’t scared to death of polio.”

“What does polio have to do with it?”

“You know.”

“No, I don’t know,” though she is beginning to think she does.

“Letting Negroes swim in the pond.”

“What are you saying? That Negroes spread polio?”

Grace does not answer.

“You’re a doctor’s wife. You know better than that.”

“All I know is you can’t be too careful. If you were a mother,” she repeats, “you’d understand. I’m sorry if that hurts your feelings, but it’s true.”

“It doesn’t hurt my feelings,” she says, “but it does make me wonder where you draw the line. I hear there’s a rumor that people born below Sixth Street spread polio. And what about letting Al swim in the pond? Someone told me Jews spread polio.”

“You always do that.”

“Do what?”

“Make me sound like a fool for saying what other people are thinking. You’re not the only one with a conscience. But sometimes when you have children you can’t afford one.”

“DO YOU THINK ANYTHING
will happen to Frankie and the other two boys?” Babe asks Claude in the car on the way to Millie’s. Though Millie and Al live only two blocks away, they drive. There are no sidewalks in Riverview. There is no river view either.

“There are always ways to retaliate. Especially against Frankie. They’ll see him as the ringleader. The star of the track team. On the honor roll. The coach won’t kick him off the team. He’s too good. But they’ll find something. He used to be a credit to his race. Now he’s uppity.”

“I never should have said anything.”

“To Grace about people born below Sixth Street? Forget it. If she doesn’t know you by now, she never will.”

“To Frankie about the pond.”

He takes his eyes from the road and glances at her. “Where do you come into it?”

She tells him about offering Frankie a lift. “I wasn’t thinking.”

He looks over at her again, and this time he is grinning. “I bet you’re the one who persuaded Truman to integrate the armed forces too.” He puts his hand on her thigh, right below where her shorts stop. “I hate to burst your bubble, sweetheart, but I think the fact that his father and several hundred thousand other Negroes went off to war and came back from it mad as hell at how they were treated during and after has more to do with it than your offering Frankie a ride.”

He is still grinning. And he has his hand on her thigh. They are talking about the war, and he has not gone sullen or silent or angry. She will not tempt fate. She will not stop holding her breath. But perhaps he is beginning to mend.

THREE DAYS LATER
, on the first day of track practice, Frankie falls and sprains his ankle. The rumor spreads through school, and beyond, that one of his teammates tripped him. Frankie isn’t saying.

Two days after that, a cold front comes through, and the temperature drops to an unseasonable forty-eight degrees. The chill weather lasts for the better part of a week, and by the time it begins to turn warm again, fall is in the air, football practice has started, and no one feels like swimming.

That’s the end of that, people tell one another.

I hope not, Babe says, and swears she will not let the issue die, though she hasn’t an inkling what she can do about it.

NOVEMBER 1952

Babe sits at one of the two bridge tables set up in Grace’s glass-enclosed sunporch, watching Millie deal the cards. Her Kiss-Me-Pink nails spark in the dull autumn light. The conversation has moved from recipes to clothes. As the cigarettes pile up in the ashtrays, the feeling of closeness—just-us-eight-girls-together—will grow thick as the smoke-filled air, and they will move on to children and, finally, husbands. There will be no unexpected revelations, but no good can come of an afternoon spent this way, Babe thinks.