Pamela Morsi (13 page)

Yes, that was what he deserved, Pansy reiterated in her mind as she slipped her arms into the sleeves of her bright green walking suit. She considered the love and devotion of a good woman. Rome deserved that. And she wondered if Gussie Mudd could be the woman to give it to him. It was possible, it was keenly possible, if the right things occurred at the right time. Pansy thought that perhaps she could help. No one could ever make things happen for someone else. But one could do much to aid in the timing of things that had the destiny to be.

She swept her hair up in a loose topknot and covered it with her wide-brimmed leghorn decorated with sweeping green and blue peacock feathers. The hat also sported a lip-length veil of dark green net. A veil should have spelled modesty for the wearer, but this particular one drew attention directly to her pretty pink mouth. People thought her to be the wicked widow. She did them a service by playing the part.

Attaching her beaded chatelaine bag to her belt, she headed downstairs, stopping briefly in front of the hall-tree mirror for one last check of her appearance. What she saw in the glass was a woman, still young, attractive and eminently presentable. If the good, churchgoing folks of Cottonwood found the sight of her abhorrent to their sensibilities, then let them look away. It was a beautiful Sunday afternoon and she intended to enjoy it.

The short walk up Brazos Avenue to Third Street
and then straight toward the town square invigorated her. Spring was indeed in the air, along with the scent of the dark purple laurel and yellow jasmine. The sun shone down upon her, warming her like a dear friend.

She needed to get out more, to see more. Of course, it was always a problem when she did. Women on their own would cross the street to keep from coming eye to eye with her. The men, on the other hand, were all eyes all over her. And if she chanced upon a couple, the wife would grab her husband by the sleeve as if she feared Pansy would try stealing the man away on a public street. As if she would want their paunchy, balding husbands!

Pansy could already hear the music as she approached the park. The town band made a valiant effort to belt out the strains that resembled “Beautiful Isle of Somewhere.” They were amateurs, much in need of practice, but full of enthusiasm.

She avoided the park generally. And especially so when it was crowded with people as it was today. For all her own bluster and brashness, she preferred not to put herself in the way of her detractors. Confrontations were extremely rare, but they had happened. She would not seek them out.

But her evasion of the park was rooted in more than steering clear of her fellow Cottonwood citizens. One of the lesser-traveled byways led across to the north side of the park through a heavily treed area toward the rose garden. Pansy never went there. And she never would. It was the Richardson Rose Garden in honor of her late husband, whose family had founded the town. He had donated the land for the park and money for all the amenities and improvements around her.

Grover had loved this place. His childhood home was near the river. This shaded floodplain, no good for
fanning, had been his playground. It had become his grown-up legacy. He was buried under a huge slab of slick black granite in his rose garden.

Pansy pulled her thoughts away immediately. It was too pretty a day to be sad and angry and regretful. Grover was gone, gone forever. He would have wanted her to be smiling on a pretty Sunday afternoon. So she did, deliberately. And if the people who saw her stared at her, wondered about her pleasant expression, let them.

The crowd around the gazebo was growing steadily. Pansy definitely wanted to avoid the crush. And the way skirts were pulled aside on the pathways, the crush was equally as interested in avoiding her. She turned in the direction of the more deserted south section of the park. Here lantanas and trumpet vines grew in profusion. Huge stands of blooming sage and crepe myrtle gave a serene sense of privacy to the place.

The path curved around a big magnolia tree, its thick, leathery green leaves pointing in every direction. As she rounded it, her breath caught in her throat at the sight of one giant white flower in bloom, undoubtedly the first of the season. The sound that came from her lips was almost a sigh. Pansy loved the big, gaudy, almost indestructible blossoms, too big to be worn on a lady’s hat or to adorn her bosom. She far preferred them to the tiny, brightly colored blooms of her namesake, so easily crushed underfoot.

She slipped off her glove and ran her hand along the smooth softness of the petals. An old story told to children was that the magnolia was the first flower God ever created. He was so impressed with the beauty and majesty of it that the other plants were envious. So He made flowers for all of them, in every shape and color.
But the magnolia was His first and always remained His favorite.

Closing her eyes, she gently caressed the blossom with the tips of her fingers. Feeling the anther, she drew the heady scent of it into her nostrils. She was alive. She was so very much alive.

A sound to her left startled her eyes open.

A man had rounded the path and was standing there, looking at her. Her mind registered neither a face nor a name, only the realization that she had been caught. She had been caught with her mask removed. Caught with her self exposed.

“Excuse me,” she said hastily and turned to hurry down the path in the opposite direction.

Her cheeks were bright and hot with embarrassment. She had been seen with her heart in her eyes and somehow felt far more naked than being spotted on her porch in a wrapper.

“Mrs. Richardson!”

He was following her.

“Mrs. Richardson, wait,” he called out.

She was tempted to break into a run and allow her feet to find their freedom back to the safety of her house.

Pansy would not give them, him, the satisfaction of seeing her scurrying like a scared rabbit. Abruptly she stopped and turned to face her pursuer. Her mask firmly back in place, she raised her chin and presented herself as the wicked widow. Beautiful, desirable, dangerous to any who tried to get too close.

The man who followed her was Amos Dewey. Pansy almost sighed in relief. If a man was to catch her naked, it was far preferable that he be a near eunuch.

Deliberately she let her eyes roam with prurient interest from his face down the length of his body, lingering
long upon the front of his trousers. It was easy to see what Gussie Mudd might find attractive about the man. He was tall, but had none of the rangy slimness that made men awkward. Thick black hair showed neither any hint of gray nor any sign of receding. His dark eyes were very handsome behind his spectacles and there was something about his voice, a low, soothing quality, that was somehow more alluring than the words he spoke.

“Good afternoon, Mrs. Richardson.”

Pansy held her shoulders back and kept her chin raised as if readying herself for battle.

“Ah, Mr. Dewey,” she replied in a low, throaty voice. “You … ah … want me?”

It was not a question. It was spoken more like a threat. A dangerous double entendre that she delivered with a lusty smile and a risqué glance at the front of the man’s trousers.

Dewey was at least alive enough to blush brightly from the roots of his hair to where the flesh disappeared beneath his collar.

“You … you dropped your glove, ma’am,” he said and held it out to her.

Pansy had the almost uncontrollable impulse to giggle nervously, but managed to stifle it.

“My glove?” she answered, her words honeyed. “And you have returned it to me, Mr. Dewey. How charming. Most men would have kept it under their pillow to warm them on these cool spring nights.”

The implication was obvious. Amos Dewey’s already red face went almost florid. He might not be a man anymore, but he apparently could still remember when he had been.

“You’d best give it to me, sir, and hurry back to the crowd,” she told him, her voice low and enticing
enough to drip honey. “It will do your reputation no good to be caught alone with me, secluded in the hedges.”

Her words had brought out an unexpected reaction in him. He actually laughed out loud.

“I believe, Mrs. Richardson, that my reputation is sufficiently stalwart to survive it.”

Her defense, her armor, her protection against the world was the powerful facade of seduction that she drew around her. It was a less-than-perfect shield against him.

“My dear man,” she said in a voice just above a whisper, “the most noble and virtuous have been known to miss the mark when encountering the right temptation on a deserted park path.”

She took the glove he offered and with slow, studied movements eased it onto her hand as if she were carefully covering nakedness that was too intimate to see.

His eyes were wide now. She saw him swallow nervously. Amos Dewey did want her. The truth of that was abundantly clear.

She smiled at him. It was the knowing smile of an experienced woman putting a man considerably less so in his place.

To her surprise he didn’t cower. He didn’t run. Behind the round spectacle lenses he was surveying her curiously.

“My Bess told me once that you and Grover were the most devoted couple in Cottonwood,” he said.

Pansy blanched at his words. She couldn’t talk about Grover now. She couldn’t let her defenses down.

“Your wife must have been mistaken,” she replied, her chin cocked in defiance. “Everyone in town knows I married Grover for his money.”

Amos shook his head. “No, I agree with my wife.
I’m convinced you loved him. At least you loved him then.”

The wrench in her heart was genuinely painful.

“It doesn’t matter,” she told him, her anger rising. “Grover’s dead. Your wife is dead. I’d be better off dead. And you practically are.”

Not waiting for a reply, she jerked the glove completely in place and turned to hurry away. Inexplicably she felt the sting of tears in her eyes.

Amos Dewey. Amos Dewey. Amos Dewey was not going to live happily ever after with Gussie Mudd. She deserved better and so did Rome. Pansy would see those two together if it was the last thing she ever did.

Gussie liked music. She always had. Music was like business. It varied widely in form and structure, but it made sense. Even when it was unpredictable and slightly discordant, as the Cottonwood Community Marching Band could be, there was a surety to it that was familiar and somehow comforting.

Listening to Sunday’s selections, “Ta-Ra-Ra Boom-De-Ay!” “The Band Played On” and the ever-so-appropriate “Fountain in the Park,” Gussie began to recover more fully from her unanticipated and not so very genteel swoon. Rome had moved them to a bench very near to the gazebo. While this certainly put them in the public view, it was a little too close to Clive Benson. Benson played a very enthusiastic tuba, and sitting near it on the right side, Gussie felt it overwhelmed all the other instruments. She enjoyed the music nonetheless. The shined-up gentlemen in their spiffy band uniforms with the bright gold braid and fringed epaulets were visually stirring, if not audibly perfection.

She turned to smile at Rome beside her. At first he’d seemed a little ill at ease and she blamed it upon the fainting spell. But he’d recovered himself enough to entertain her through most of the concert. Gussie often saw humor in things that other folks might politely pass over. Casey McCade had grown a girth that was unfamiliar to his band uniform. Every time he blew his trumpet, the button just above his belt strained, making a small gap that revealed his undershirt. Gussie caught herself keeping time to the music by way of the shirt gap. She nearly exploded in giggles when Rome leaned over and mentioned this unconventional metronome. Apparently he had been doing the very same thing.

Little Missy Holiday, her lacy pink pinafore stained and her reddish pigtails festooned with grass, ran up to the steps of the gazebo to perform a dance for the audience. Thinking herself a prima ballerina, the chubby five-year-old, looking much like her boisterous father, the reverend, lifted her skirt to reveal two grimy knees and a torn stocking. The girl ignored a dozen beckoning hisses from her mother and the low rumble of her father’s disapproval before one of her older sisters came forward to bodily remove her, with plenty of noise and complaint, from her makeshift stage.

“I’m sure the reverend was exactly the same way,” Rome whispered in Gussie’s ear.

The two shared a very pleasant but ungallant laugh at the pastor’s expense.

Being with Rome was fun and easy. He was perfectly polite and, though perhaps not possessed with polished manners, he was easily respectful and treated her with a gentleness a gentleman might envy.

He had said nothing to her about her swoon. For that she was grateful. She certainly didn’t wish to talk about
it. The whole incident was pretty hazy to her. One minute she was standing with Rome and Amos, feeling somewhat breathless. The next she was in Rome’s arms, surprisingly strong and safe, and he was laying her upon the bench.

She remembered his face over hers and then it was Madge, bending there talking to her. Thank goodness the woman had been able to loosen her corset a bit so that she could catch a lungful of air and recover herself. It had been foolish in the extreme to bind herself so tight. She almost deserved to faint for her foolishness. But what must Rome think?

He, of course, could not know how tightly laced she had been and undoubtedly attributed her light-headedness to the close proximity of Amos Dewey. She really ought to assure him about that, she thought. She was not a dizzy, vaporous schoolgirl overcome by passions. Her love for Amos was thoughtful and practical. In the three years they had kept company, he had only rarely kissed her. And then only upon the cheek.

Of course, she would expect a full married life with him. She was certainly ready to do her duty as a wife. But only as a wife, of course. Passion should not, and could not, be catered to outside the bonds of matrimony. Once she and Amos were legally wed, they would have a lifetime to explore the physicality of their love. Gussie had no urgency to do so prior to that time. It was her perception, from the little unmarried women were allowed to hear, that the act necessary for the procreation of children was basically messy and uncomfortable for women, although men apparently enjoyed it well enough.