The Darling Dahlias and the Confederate Rose (14 page)

Ophelia shuddered. She couldn’t bring herself to even think the word. It was just too horrible.

Angelina tapped her cigarette on the ashtray. “I would be glad to tell you who she is, Ophelia,” she said regretfully, “but I just don’t know. I’ve only seen him, not her. Creeping out of the room, I mean. Out of the room and down the back stairs.” There was, Ophelia thought, an odd glint in Angelina’s eyes. “I hid in the second-floor alcove and watched. Hoped I’d see her, but no such luck.” She snorted. “Only saw him, the
sneak
.”

“You . . . spied?” Ophelia asked weakly. In the most dreadful depths of her suspicions of Jed, she had never seriously considered spying on him. She wouldn’t have
dared.
It would have been horribly embarrassing if she had actually caught him.

“Of course I’ve spied,” Angelina said reasonably, smoke curling out of her nostrils. “How else am I going to catch them?” Without pausing for breath, she said, “But there’s more, Ophelia. The real reason I’m so upset right now is that Charlie Dickens tried to kiss me!”

“Kiss you?”

Ophelia’s mouth dropped open. If she had been surprised to learn about Artis’ marital transgressions, she was utterly astounded by this revelation. She knew Charlie Dickens. He covered most of the town’s political and social events for the
Dispatch
and was always lurking unobtrusively with his notebook and pencil. In all situations, Charlie was unfailingly a gentleman. He might be a little cynical and condescending sometimes—he was a worldly man who had traveled a lot and saw things from a big-city point of view—and he and Jed definitely didn’t see eye to eye on politics. But she couldn’t imagine him attempting to kiss Angelina Biggs. In fact, she had a hard time imagining that he would find her at all attractive, given her . . . well, her increasing size.

Angelina’s eyes narrowed. “You find that surprising?” Her voice was thin. “I suppose you didn’t know that we were sweethearts back in high school. Did you?”

“Well, yes,” Ophelia said. “Yes, of course.” Everyone knew that.

“Then why are you surprised? He was madly in love with me. I suppose he still is, poor man, even though I went and married Artis instead of him. But that’s no way to treat a lady. Kissing her. Attempting to
paw
her.”

She popped the last bite of sticky bun into her mouth while Ophelia tried to think of something else to say. But before she could, Angelina went on, speaking with her mouth full.

“I see that you haven’t eaten that second bun, Ophelia. They’re awfully good. Mind if I have yours? And I think I’ll just help myself to another cup of coffee. Pardon my fingers.”

Without waiting for Ophelia to say yea or nay, Angelina put down her cigarette and plopped the bun on her plate. Then she picked up her cup, leaned over, and reached for the coffeepot on the tray.

What happened next would live in Ophelia’s memory like a horrible nightmare. For years afterward, she would replay the whole awful scene in her mind, over and over, as if it were a loop of movie film endlessly repeating itself, every lurid detail seared into her mind like a hot brand, clear and unforgettable.

Angelina leaning forward, picking up the coffeepot with her right hand and pouring coffee into the cup she held with her left hand. Angelina splashing hot coffee onto her pale, plump wrist and her bright green rayon dress, her pretty mouth forming a perfectly round O of shock and surprise. Angelina
dropping
the full cup of coffee, right onto the taupe-colored seat cushion of Ophelia’s beautiful Jacquard velour davenport.

*  *  *

It was a half hour later. Angelina had gone, still bleating her apologies for the large, dark stain she had left on Ophelia’s beautiful new sofa. Ophelia had scurried to fetch towels to sop up the coffee, but she might as well have saved her efforts, for the thirsty velour soaked up the hot liquid like a sponge and the stain spread and spread and kept on spreading, until the entire taupe-colored cushion was the color of coffee. All she could do was stare at it in horror, fighting the hot, despairing tears. Sears wouldn’t take the furniture back, because it wasn’t in good condition. It was as plain as the nose on your face—even plainer—that the davenport was ruined. And the coffee table, too, for while they were trying to clean up the coffee, Angelina’s cigarette had fallen out of the ashtray and burned an ugly scar into the beautiful walnut top.

Ophelia spent the next little while alternately scrubbing the cushion and the burn stain (which certainly didn’t serve any good purpose and probably only made things worse) and sobbing (which didn’t help anything, either). But her tears did bring her to a couple of important conclusions. She was going to have to tell Jed the truth. And she was going to have to get a job. Of course, everybody said how hard it was to find work these days, but she could type sixty words a minute without any mistakes and spell
very
well, and while her high-school shorthand was pretty rusty, she was sure with a little practice she could take dictation. Surely there was someplace in town, the bank maybe, or one of the offices in the courthouse, that could use a good typist. Unfortunately, she’d never had a job because she and Jed got married right out of high school. Did you really
have
to have references? How did you go about finding a job if you’d never had one before?

She was still kneeling on the floor with a rag in her hand, puzzling over these questions, when the telephone on the hallway table rang—a long, imperative ring, just one, and then one again, because the Snows had a private telephone line. In her budgetary desperation, Ophelia had proposed that they go back to the party line (which would save a whole dollar every month), but Jed refused. As the mayor, he often talked about town business on the phone and didn’t want anybody listening in.

Swiping her nose with the back of her hand, Ophelia picked up the receiver. Liz Lacy was on the other end, and she had a very odd request.

“I’ve just talked to Lucy Murphy,” she said. “She’s agreed to put Verna up in her spare room for a few days. I wonder if you’d be willing to drive Verna and her dog out there. This morning, if you can manage it.”

“Verna?” Ophelia asked, frowning. “Why in the world would she want to stay out at Lucy’s?”

Lucy (who was also a Dahlia) lived four miles outside of town. She had finally prevailed on her husband Ralph (Jed’s cousin) to get electricity and the telephone installed in their house out there. She was still working on Ralph to put in an electric water pump and a toilet.

“And what about Verna’s job?” she went on. “How will she get to work every day? It’s pretty far to walk, and Lucy doesn’t have a car. Why—”

“I’m sorry, Ophelia,” Liz cut in firmly, “but I can’t answer your questions—at least, not now. All I can tell you is that it is really,
really
important for Verna to go out of town for a few days. Not too far out of town, though. Lucy’s place is just right, especially with Ralph gone this week.” Lucy’s husband worked on the railroad and was away a lot of the time. His absence was one of the things that had given rise to the gossip about Jed and Lucy. “It’s also important that nobody know about this,” Liz added, “so I have to ask you to keep it under your hat. Will you drive her out there?”

Ophelia was taken aback by the request, but both Liz and Verna were very good friends—and Dahlias, to boot. “Yes, of course I will,” she replied.

“Oh, thank you! Verna’s going home right now to pack a few things. If you can pick her and Clyde up at her house in fifteen minutes, that would be swell.” Liz’s voice became urgent. “And please, Ophelia. Don’t tell a soul about this, even Jed.” She paused, as if she were thinking. “Especially not Jed.”

“I won’t.” But as she hung up, Ophelia was frowning. Especially not Jed? What was going on? What was it all about?

She turned just then, catching sight of the coffee-colored cushion, and her stomach turned over. Whatever Verna’s trouble was, it paled in comparison to her own. Somehow or another, she was going to have to find a job so she could pay for the furniture. And she was going to have to do it right away. Today, if possible. Tomorrow at the latest.

But where? And
how
?

NINE

Beulah

As the bell over the door tinkled, Beulah Trivette looked up from the head of dark hair she was cutting. This head happened to belong to Alice Ann Walker, cashier at the Darling Savings and Trust, who took an early lunch hour once a month and came over for a quick trim. Beulah smiled at Myra May, who had just opened the back door and come into the Beauty Bower.

“Good mornin’, hon,” she chirped. “How’s every little thing at the diner? You doin’ okay?”

“It’s getting hot out there,” Myra May said, loosening the collar of her plaid blouse. “And it’s only April. Hello, Beulah, Alice Ann. I know I’m a little early, but I just finished grocery shopping and thought I’d come on.”

“Mornin’, Myra May,” Alice Ann said. “It’s not just hot, but humid, too. I can sure tell it in my hair. It’s so fine, when the weather’s soggy, all the spring come out of the curl. I go out to work in the garden and come back looking like something the cat dragged in.” Alice Ann was a Dahlia, like Beulah and Myra May. Mostly, she grew vegetables to feed the Walker family, but she also had quite a few roses, pass-along plants she had collected from the Dahlias’ plant swaps.

“It’s fine, all right.” Beulah, a buxom blonde with a pretty face and a sweet smile, regarded Alice Ann’s hair with a critical look. “I could try to sell you some of that expensive curling lotion I’ve got over there on the shelf, but—”

“Sorry, Beulah,” Alice Ann interrupted with a sigh. “I’m doin’ real good to afford to get my hair cut once a month. I couldn’t buy any of that expensive stuff, even if it made me look like Greta Garbo.”

“Gif me a vhisky,” Myra May said, in a husky imitation of Garbo’s voice. “Ginger ale on the side, and don’t be stingy, baby.”

It was the famous first line of Garbo’s most recent movie,
Anna Christie
, with Charles Bickford. Mr. Greer, who owned the Palace Theater, had made a special effort to get the movie, which was a talkie. The whole town had turned out for the grand occasion. Darling was still buzzing about it, and everybody was trying to find an excuse to use Garbo’s line.

“You sound just like Garbo, Myra May.” Beulah laughed, a generous, full-throated laugh that made people naturally smile when they heard it. “And you hold your horses, Alice Ann. What I was about to tell you was that you can make your own settin’ lotion that’s near ’bout as good and a durn sight cheaper than that expensive stuff in the fancy bottle. All you do is stir up a teaspoonful of honey in a half cup of warm water and add a tablespoon of lemon juice and maybe a drop or two of your favorite perfume. You can spray it on or just dab it on your pin curls when you set your hair at night. Works real fine.”

“Oh, that’s swell, Beulah,” Alice Ann said eagerly. “Honey is one thing I got plenty of these days. Arnold keeps two hives out behind the barn. We don’t hardly have to buy sugar. And we’re thinkin’ we might could have some honey to sell come fall.” Alice Ann’s husband had lost his leg in a railroad accident. The railroad said it was his fault (which it wasn’t) and wouldn’t pay him any money—wouldn’t even help with the doctor bills. He whittled wooden whirligigs and other garden art objects to bring in some extra cash.

“Honey and lemon juice,” Myra May said thoughtfully. “Sounds like something Violet would like to know about.” She looked around. “Bettina’s not here today?” Bettina was Beulah’s helper.

“She had to run to the Mercantile to pick up some material for the new smocks she’s sewin’ up for us,” Beulah said, turning back to Alice Ann’s hair. “She’ll be back in a jiffy to shampoo you. Or if she isn’t, I’ll do you myself when I’m done cuttin’ Alice Ann. Sit down and have a cup of coffee while you’re waitin’, sweetie. Oh, and Miz Adcock brought some cupcakes. She was Bettina’s nine thirty, so there’s still plenty left.”

Beulah liked it when her clients (she never thought of them as customers) brought something for their friends to nibble on while she and Bettina made them beautiful. She herself always provided a pot of coffee, and in the summer, there was iced tea in the icebox. It made the day seem more like a pleasant tea party with friends than a long day of standing on her feet behind the hair-cutting chair or bent over the shampoo sink.

Beulah’s Beauty Bower, on Dauphin Street, was one of the two places where every Darling woman went to get beautiful. The other was Conrad’s Curling Corner, on the north side of town. The Dahlias always preferred the Bower, of course, because it was owned and managed by one of their own, and because everybody agreed that Beulah beat Julia Conrad hands down when it came to style and creativity. Beulah was a serious artist of hair.

Beulah had been raised by her single mother on the wrong side of the railroad spur that connected Darling to the Louisville & Nashville Railroad, just outside of Monroeville. Her innate talent for hair made itself known as early as high school, where she was the first to bob hers, creating a fad for bobbed hair that swept like a spring tornado through the school and caused all the Darling mothers to pull theirs out in sheer agony at the sight of all those bobs.

On the day after graduation, fired with an artist’s ambition, Beulah filled a brown cardboard suitcase with all the clothes she had, climbed on the Greyhound bus, and rode to Montgomery to pursue her dream. She got a job as a waitress to make ends meet and signed up for the full course at the Montgomery College of Cosmetology, where she learned all she needed to know “to make the ordinary woman pretty and the pretty woman beautiful,” as the college proclaimed in its advertisements. Beulah wielded a mean marcel iron, made pin curls and finger waves with an astonishing flair, and finished first in a final exam that covered everything from the basics of beauty to the safe use of toxic chemicals.

Beulah graduated at the top of her class and earned the MCC’s first-class certificate of achievement. Flushed with success, she got back on the Greyhound and rode home to Darling, determined to introduce all the women in town to the fine art of beauty, whatever their ages and social station and whether they knew they needed it or not.

Beulah was petite, pretty, blond, and significantly endowed, and many Darling young men (especially the bunch that hung out at the Watering Hole on Saturday nights) were wild to sample her considerable charms. But Beulah possessed an admirable brain and a generous helping of self-discipline as well as beauty and ambition. Instead of letting herself go gaga over one of the town rakes and rascals, she married Hank Trivette, the son of the pastor of the Four Corners Methodist Church, a sedate young fellow who came from the
right
side of the spur tracks. Hank loved Beulah not only for her outstanding physical attributes, but for her unaffected compassion and her generous good humor. Beulah (who had a practical soul hidden beneath those other endowments) loved Hank for his good common sense, his respectability, and his handy way with tools. He was marrying beauty and sweet spirit. She was marrying up.

Beulah and Hank had two children, Hank Jr. and Spoonie. After Hank was born, they bought a nice frame house on the best end of Dauphin Street, big enough for their growing family and for Beulah’s business. Hank enclosed the screened porch across the back for the beauty shop, repaired the back steps so the ladies wouldn’t turn an ankle, wired the place for electricity, and installed shampoo sinks and hair-cutting chairs and big wall mirrors. Beulah (who was as talented with a paintbrush as she was with a pair of scissors and a comb) wallpapered the walls of the Bower with her favorite fat pink roses, painted the wainscoting pink, and hung her Montgomery College of Cosmetology certificate of achievement beside the door, where everybody could see it when they came in. Then she painted the words
Beulah’s Beauty Bower
on a white wooden sign and decorated it with painted flowers. Hank hung the sign out front, where anyone walking or driving down Dauphin Street would be sure to see it. She was open for business.

The Bower was so attractive and Beulah was such a skilled beautician that every single customer walked out the door feeling much more beautiful than when she walked in. So she naturally made a second appointment and then a third and told all her friends that the Bower was the very best beauty parlor in town. A few months later, business was so good that Beulah hired Bettina Higgens, not the prettiest flower in the garden (as Bettina herself put it) but a willing worker who quickly came to share Beulah’s commitment to beautifying Darling, one lovely lady at a time.

But of course, people didn’t come to the Bower just to get pretty. They came to talk about what was on their mind, to brag about a new grandchild or to complain about a new daughter-in-law, and to discuss what was going on with their neighbors. It was right up there with the party line as the best way to get an earful of the latest Darling news.

As Myra May poured herself a cup of coffee and sat down to wait for Bettina, Beulah said to Alice Ann, “Alice Ann, honey, you got something on your mind? You’re awfully quiet this morning. Everything all right out at your house? Arnold ain’t sick again, is he?”

It was a kind and caring question, not asked out of nosiness or prying. Beulah’s heart was as large and soft as her other endowments and she was truly concerned about her clients’ welfare—and her own, as well, but in a roundabout way. In her philosophy, beauty really was more than skin deep, and if something nasty and ugly was nagging at you, eating away at your insides like a mean old weevil munching the insides of a cotton boll, you could never be truly beautiful. Your beautician would fail. And Beulah hated to fail.

Alice Ann sighed. “No, Arnold isn’t sick, and, yes, everything’s all right at home, more or less.” She lifted her head and said, to both of them, “Is something going on with Verna Tidwell? I’m worried about her.”

“Verna?” Beulah asked, surprised. “I don’t believe I’ve heard a thing about her recently.” She
click-clack
ed her scissors. “In fact, I haven’t seen her outside of our Dahlia meetings in a while. Seems like she’s been working long hours over at the courthouse.” She leaned forward, lifted her comb and scissors, and snipped a lock over Alice Ann’s right ear. “Her job has just about doubled, you know. Mr. Scroggins is now the county treasurer, as well as probate clerk.”

“I know,” Alice Ann said seriously. “When Mr. DeYancy was treasurer, he put some of the county’s money in our bank. I’ve seen the accounts—several of them, actually. But not
all
the money,” she added. “One of the tellers told me that a lot of it’s over in Monroeville, in a couple of the banks over there. I’ve never figured that out. Seems to me it all ought to be in one place so people could keep better track of it.”

Myra May had been silent for a moment, listening to this. Now, she took a sip of coffee. “So how come you’re worried about Verna, Alice Ann?”

Her tone was casual, but Beulah picked up on something—some sort of tension or apprehension, something—beneath it. She glanced quickly over her shoulder at Myra May, who always knew what was going on in Darling. She worked the switchboard and waited tables and the counter at the diner, which gave her the chance to hear all kinds of things. What she missed, her friend Violet was bound to pick up.

Myra May returned Beulah’s inquisitive glance, her expression carefully blank. Not even her eyebrow twitched.

Now Beulah was sure of it. Something was going on. “Yes, Alice Ann,” she said, echoing Myra May’s question. “How come you’re worried about Verna?”

Alice Ann met Beulah’s eyes in the mirror. She hesitated, frowning, and Beulah knew that she was debating whether and how much she could tell without breaking one of the bank’s standard rules. “Well, because of something that happened on Friday. Of course, I’m not supposed to talk about what goes on at the bank, and I’m definitely not supposed to criticize. But . . .”

She took a breath and her voice became indignant. “But if I were Verna, I’d want to know what they did. And speaking personally, I don’t think it’s right for somebody at the bank, even if he is the president, to go poking around in people’s bank accounts. That’s private.”

Beulah knew that Alice Ann was talking out of her own bitter personal experience. Not long ago, she had been suspected—wrongly, of course—of taking money from the bank. She must be remembering what had happened and how it felt.

“If this has got something to do with our Verna, we should hear it,” Beulah said decidedly. “She’s a Dahlia.” She bent over and whispered into Alice Ann’s ear. “When we’re talkin’ about another Dahlia and wantin’ to help her, it ain’t gossip, and that’s the good Lord’s truth.” Beulah never encouraged talk that was mean and hurtful. But when one of her friends was in trouble, she definitely wanted to know.

Myra May obviously felt the same way. “Please, Alice Ann,” she said quietly. “If Verna has a problem, we might be able to help.”

“Well, maybe just this once,” Alice Ann said, pretending reluctance, and Beulah stepped back, suppressing a smile. Alice Ann had been primed to tell and hoping that somebody would give her a little nudge. “It’s got to do with some money that turned up in Verna’s savings account not long ago. I don’t feel right telling you how much, but it was a tidy little sum. I know because I’m the one that wrote in the numbers.” Her laugh was brittle. “And I don’t mind telling you that I’d be tickled pink if somebody put that amount of money into my bank account. I’d pay off all our bills and get Arnold fitted for an artificial leg at the hospital down in Mobile. Oh, and a roof on the house. And a new water well. I’d still have plenty left over, too.”