The Improper Life of Bezillia Grove (20 page)

“Ha. Very funny, Bee. That’s because Daddy’s always leaving the windows down and two of his favorite hens love to sleep in the backseat. Even laid a couple of eggs back there the other day. But what about you? Are you sure you’re okay?”

“Yeah. I think I am. I had really hoped that the God my mother keeps praying to was paying better attention this time and had worked some kind of miracle and turned her into someone good, someone normal, hell, a magic fairy for all I care. But it was just an illusion, just a temporary illusion.

“You know, ever since I can remember, Cornelia, I’ve either hated her or felt sorry for her—nothing in between. And right this minute, I hate her
and
feel sorry for her. The only difference is that now I’m beginning to think I’m no better than she is—just another illusion of a nice girl when underneath it all I’m as much a mess as she is.”

“Lord, don’t tell me you’ve started drinking too,” Cornelia teased, but she sounded a little more concerned than she had a moment ago.

“That’s exactly what I’ve been doing. I’ve been doing nothing but drinking wine and listening to Led Zeppelin with an overachieving, oversexed English professor while Samuel’s getting shot at and my little sister’s knitting baby booties and my mother is sneaking gin into her lemonade.”

“Wow. Back up. Start over. What oversexed English teacher are you talking about? What the hell have you been doing at that school, anyway?”

So sitting there in the driveway in my cousin’s little yellow car, I shared the secrets of the past two years of my life. I started with Ruddy Semple and how I wanted to pull his pants off right there on Mount Juliet’s white, sandy beach. I admitted that I wasn’t really sure if it was genuine affection or outright lust that had left me tugging on his belt or just the need to feel a boy wrap his arms around me.

Then I told her about meeting Samuel Stephenson under the cherrybark oaks and offering up my heart and my virginity not more than a few hours after my own father died, not more than a few hours after saying good-bye to Ruddy. But I loved Samuel. I knew that. I also knew that my mother would die if she caught her daughter with a black man, and I couldn’t help but wonder if loving him like that in my own backyard was as much to punish her as to satisfy me.

I told her everything about Sarah Stanton Miller and Gloria Steinem and their fight for equality, and Mitchell Franklin and his passion for afternoon sex. I told her about Samuel going to Vietnam and even showed her Adelaide’s beautifully knitted sack and the letters she had found underneath my mother’s bathroom sink. Cornelia took it all in, never interrupting to add an opinion or offer advice. She let me talk until there was really nothing more to say, and then she looked at me and smiled.

“Man, Bee. You just got home a couple of days ago.”

We both started laughing again, and Cornelia knocked the gearshift with her right knee. The car started rolling forward, and we both laughed even harder.

“You know, Bumble Bee,” Cornelia finally said as she turned back to face the front of the car. “It’s easy to get lost in that big name of yours. But I got news for you. There’s a lot of people out there who don’t care whether you’re Bezellia Grove or Ophelia Rose. You know what I mean?”

But I just stared blankly, offering no sign of understanding.

“Okay, judging by that look on your face, I assume you don’t. Let me spell it out for you in plain English. You do not have to do whatever you think it is a Grove is supposed to do. Take a lesson from Adelaide. Everybody thinks she’s a little odd. Hell, I think she’s the sanest one in that big old house of yours. Live your own life—not your mother’s—no matter what anybody thinks. I don’t want to be my mother probably any more than you want to be yours. I’ve seen my own mommy dearest all of about two times since I’ve been in Boston. She’s too absorbed in her stupid paintings to pay me the least bit of attention.

“But, more importantly,” she went on, and she put both hands on the steering wheel, “what you need to understand is that you really can ‘forget all your troubles and forget all your cares, and go downtown. Things’ll be great when you’re downtown.’”

“What?” I stopped sniffling and started laughing again.

“That’s right, Baby Bee. Petula Clark said it best. And that’s where we’re headed right now—downtown.” My cousin shifted into first gear and stepped on the accelerator. The car lurched forward, the tires screeching as we headed down the drive. I glanced back at the house and saw Adelaide’s face in her bedroom window, her nose pressed against the glass. She waved good-bye. I blew her a kiss, and she pretended to catch it in her hand.

Cornelia turned a sharp left out of our driveway and headed toward town. She rolled down her window, and I rolled down mine. Our hair was blowing in the wind, lashing across our faces. Cornelia turned the radio up even louder. We sang along with Elvis Presley and Carole King, making up words when we didn’t know the lyrics, her little yellow Beetle vibrating to the beat of the music.

We sped past the country club and then past the Hunts’ house. Cars were parked along both sides of the street. Mrs. Hunt was having another party. Apparently her husband had forgiven her or never really cared that much in the first place that she had spent countless evenings curled up in my father’s arms. We passed churches and restaurants and Centennial Park.

Nashville had dubbed itself the Athens of the South long before I was born and built its very own Parthenon in the middle of this park just to prove it. It looked exactly like the one in Greece except this one was perfect, not standing in ruins. Mother had taken me there when I was five for a painting class. But I thought the giant marble statues were scary and stood whimpering behind my mother’s back instead of brushing paint on my canvas like the other kids did. Mother marched me out to the car and spanked my bottom, said she hadn’t brought me down here to act like a baby in front of her friends. I hated this park.

Cornelia turned the radio up a little louder and drove a little faster, and I started feeling a little better. Dimly lit office buildings and car dealerships blended into bars and tattoo parlors. Cruising downtown with the windows open and the radio blaring, I felt as bright and electric as all the lights and neon signs distinguishing one honky-tonk from another. I leaned my head out the window and let out a scream.

We passed Tootsies Orchid Lounge and The Stage. People were crowded on the sidewalks, trying to press into one bar or another, the music of different bands drifting into the street. We stopped by Rotiers on the way home to eat a cheeseburger and fried dill pickles. A couple of boys from Vanderbilt lingered near our table and asked if we wanted some company. Cornelia scooted to the right, making just enough room for the boy with the dark brown hair to sit next to her. She cocked her head to the left and indicated that I should do the same. But I didn’t budge. I wasn’t looking for a college boy with a drawer full of cashmere to try to make me feel better.

“Sorry, boys,” Cornelia said with such sugary affection that they both lingered a little longer hoping her friend would change her mind. But thankfully my cousin tossed her hair behind her back and grabbed her purse, indicating that we would be heading on our way, alone.

We got back in the car and just sat there for a few minutes, listening to the static on the radio, neither one of us bothering to find a better station. And somewhere beneath that constant, steady sound, I could still hear my mother crying, pleading with me not to send her away, and Samuel begging me to write him back. I rolled my window down and turned the radio up even louder. I told them both to hush, but they just kept making noise in my head.

I turned the knob to the left and then to the right, flipping the radio from one station to the next until an anonymous, velvet-toned DJ interrupted the static. A surprise was coming up next, he promised, a brand-new song from a boy who grew up just down the road a ways. “Here it is, folks, ‘Big City Girl.’”

Cornelia swatted my hand, pushing it away from the radio. “This ought to be good,” she said with a full, bold laugh.

The sound coming from the dashboard was slow and mournful. But with the first stroke of the guitar, the tempo and mood changed, and I knew that the voice that filled that little yellow Beetle had filled my head before.

“She wore pearls around her neck and went to fancy schools
She had pretty long legs that made the boys drool
She wasn’t looking for a country boy with holes in his jeans
But then she wasn’t looking for love when she done found me.”

“Hey, this is pretty good … for country music,” Cornelia shouted over the radio, slapping her thigh to the beat.

“Shut up,” I popped and waved my left hand in her face, letting her know that I really meant it this time. But the voice inside the radio wouldn’t hush. He just kept on singing.

“She’d whisper French right in my ear, but it was all Greek to me
And I just wanted to meet her underneath the old oak tree
.
And when we met one dark and starry night
That girl named Bezellia made me feel so right.”

Cornelia started hooting and hollering and now slapping me on the arm. “Oh, my God. Oh, my God” were the only words that came streaming out of her mouth. She screamed again and pounded the steering wheel with both hands. “Way to go, girl!” She swerved into the next lane, and I smacked her hard on the arm and told her to shut up before she got us both killed.

“I can’t believe he did that,” I shrieked. “I can’t believe he used my name. Under a tree. Making him feel so right. Lord, when my mother hears this. Shit! She’s going to kill me. Or at the very least send me to some Baptist reform school up in Kentucky. Damn it, if I could get my hands on him, I’d tie him up to that damn oak tree.”

I could barely complete one thought before another crowded its way inside my head. I couldn’t help but wonder if Ruddy was standing on a stage somewhere right now, maybe right here in downtown Nashville, with that big old smile painted across his face, strumming his guitar, singing about our secret night down on the beach. I felt completely exposed, naked as a little jaybird, as Maizelle used to say when she plucked me from the bathtub. Except now, the whole world was looking.

“What’s your problem, Bee? This is so cool. You’re gonna be famous—the girl who inspired Ruddy Semple’s first big hit. You’re his muse. Like June Carter.”

“Lord, Cornelia, have you forgotten who my mother is? She’s not going to want me to be anybody’s muse, especially not some guitar-picking country boy’s.”

“Shit, Bee. Quit worrying. You and I both know that your mother doesn’t care one iota about country music. And I seriously doubt where she’s going tomorrow they’re going to be sitting around listening to the radio. Besides, I thought you liked Ruddy.”

“This isn’t about liking him or not. He had no right to tell the whole world that we were fooling around underneath a tree. Shit, everybody’s gonna think we did
it.”
By now my voice was sounding so loud and shrill that my own head was starting to hurt.

“See, I think you’re looking at this all wrong. You’ve gone and gotten yourself a big singing star. That’s a good thing. And so what if people think you did
it?
It’s not like you’re a virgin.”

“What if Samuel hears this? What if he hears this stupid song while he’s fighting in some jungle somewhere? Oh, God. Shit, Ruddy.”

“Now see, there you go again, just thinking about this all wrong. Look on the bright side. One day Ruddy will be so rich and famous that the two of you can live in a big house and you can hire Samuel to be your Nathaniel. Then you can have him around you all the time.”

“Shut up, Cornelia! Shit, for crying out loud, I cannot believe you of all people said that. Just shut up.”

“Hell’s bells, I’m just messing with you, Bee.”

But I sat still and quiet, refusing to even look at my cousin.

“Oh shit,” she said, breaking the silence, “you’re still in love with him. Samuel, that is. You are. I mean really in love with him.” Cornelia stared at my face, searching for something to convince her that she had misunderstood.

“Nothing new. I’ve told you that,” I quipped.

“Yeah, but I just thought you
liked-him-loved-him
not
LOVED
him. Look, Bee, you know I don’t think there’s anything wrong with the two of you having a thing for each other. There’s nothing wrong with you two
liking-loving
each other or whatever you want to call it.

“But let’s face facts, a real relationship ain’t never going to work. Not here. Not now. Hell, twenty miles outside of town there are still little private clubs where all the members like to dress in white robes and wear funny cone-shaped hats on their heads, if you know what I mean.”

“Do you even know how to shut up?” I cried. “And just for the record, you’re the one who told me a long time ago that ours was a Shakespearean love, one to last for all time.”

“Fine, I’ll shut up. But just remember how Romeo and Juliet ended. It wasn’t very pretty, as I recall.”

We drove the rest of the way home in silence, neither one of us saying another word. I leaned my head out the window, still trying to muffle the sounds of Ruddy’s voice rising above his guitar, my mother screaming at the kitchen table, and Samuel crying out in the dark—asking where I was, why I didn’t write, why I didn’t love him anymore, and why I had done
it
with another boy underneath an oak tree.

chapter fourteen

M
other left without putting up much of a fuss. She still didn’t understand why she needed to go. Doctors at a place like that, she whimpered with tears pooling in her eyes, would never understand a woman like her. But Uncle Thad told her that at the end of the day there wasn’t much difference between one drunk and another, and then he swiftly led her to the car, not giving her another chance to argue or resist.

Nathaniel sat behind the steering wheel, and Uncle Thad took his place in the backseat, his arm snug around my mother’s shoulder, her head resting on his chest. I waved good-bye until the car disappeared onto Davidson Road, and then I stood there a little longer, wondering what more I could have said to comfort my mother. Uncle Thad had thought it best that I stay at Grove Hill with Adelaide and Maizelle. They would surely need me at a time like this, he said. I had nodded as though I understood, but now I felt completely helpless. And I couldn’t help but wonder if I had done the right thing. Maybe Mother really didn’t belong in a place like that. Maybe she needed to be here, surrounded by the only people left who really cared about her. Maizelle appeared beside me and wrapped her thick, dark arm around my waist. She had tears in her eyes too.

Adelaide fled to the den and flipped on the television set, turning the volume up so loud that it almost hurt my ears. I stood right next to her so she had no choice but to hear me, and I told her that we could walk down to the creek a little bit later and make some more mud pies if she wanted. With the light rain we’d had during the night, the soil would be just perfect for cooking up a fresh batch. She scrunched her shoulders and nodded her head but then picked up her knitting so she was certain to have another excuse to avoid looking at me. I walked over to Mother’s desk and pulled out a fresh pad of white paper and a ballpoint pen. I told Adelaide I’d be in the kitchen if she needed anything, but she just turned her back to me and stared at the TV.

The smell of freshly brewed coffee met me at the kitchen door. And even though I still didn’t care for the bold, bitter taste, I held the metal percolator in my hand and poured some of it into one of Mother’s heavy white mugs. I sat at the table with the mug in one hand and Mother’s pen in the other and struggled to find the words I needed to explain that I would not be returning to Hollins in September. Family matters demanded my attention at home, I began, but someday soon I hoped to return to the school that I loved so dearly.

And when I was done, I sat there and stared at the next sheet of blank paper, knowing that there was more to say but not certain where to start. The coffee had grown cold, yet I still considered pouring myself another cup. Maizelle walked into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator. She filled a glass with orange juice and set it down in front of me, thought it would be more to my liking, she said. Then she picked up the mug and drained what was left down the kitchen sink. There was laundry to do, she added with a bit of a sigh, and I could find her in the basement. She slowly crept down the back staircase, balancing a basket full of dirty clothes in her hands and leaving me to stare at the same piece of paper.

I picked up the pen and began a letter to Ruddy. I’m not really sure why, except I wanted him to know that I had enjoyed spending time with him, especially our afternoons floating about in my grandfather’s rowboat, checking fising lines for fresh catch and talking about music and roosters and everything in between. Those were perfect moments as the sun fell behind the water, and it felt as though we were the only ones on the lake to see it.

I told him I knew now that he really was going to be a big country music star just like Johnny Cash. I’d even heard him singing right there in Cornelia’s car. I really appreciated him being such a gentleman that night on Mount Juliet’s sandy beach, not doing, as he said himself, everything God intended a man and woman to do. I only wished he hadn’t let the rest of the world, including my mother, think that we had.

Then I wrote to Mitchell Franklin and admitted that even though I enjoyed the sex I still thought he was an ass. I wished him the very best with his research and dissertation, but thanks to him, I was no longer considering a major in English. I told him I was still writing and had recently finished a short story about a young, ambitious professor who hid behind a long list of honors and degrees while he secretly seduced his female students. He eventually fathered nearly three hundred children, who all shared their father’s brownish red hair and an unusual affection for Led Zeppelin.

I even wrote to Tommy Blanton. I wanted him to know that standing behind the coatrack in Mrs. Dempsey’s sixth-grade classroom with his lips pressed against mine was the first time, in all of my life, that I had felt truly special. My quest for real love had begun at that moment, even if I had been too young to fully understand that then. And although I doubted he had ever thought about it too much, I wanted him to understand that those simple kisses had changed me forever. I would never be able to settle for anything less than a true and lasting love.

And finally, I wrote to Samuel. I told him that his letters had just arrived and that after all this time I understood if he no longer loved me. But I thought of him constantly and could still hear him saying my name for the very first time that day we talked in the barn. My name had never been spoken with such warmth and tenderness, nor had it ever sounded as beautiful as it did then.

I told him about my first year at college and walking to the top of Tinker Mountain and crying his name out loud. I wondered if somehow he had heard me. I liked to believe that he had. And when I was finished writing all that I had to say, I sprayed each page with some of my mother’s perfume, hoping that even the faintest scent of May Rose would carry Samuel back to the creek, to that grassy bank underneath the cherrybark oaks.

As I sealed the last envelope, I could hear Maizelle slowly walking up the basement steps. I could tell she was tired and her aging body was aching by her grunting and moaning as she set her foot down on each step. I knew I should run to greet her and shift the load of clean clothes into my hands. I should urge her to stop and rest for a while. But I hurriedly gathered all of the letters on the table, keeping Samuel’s clutched next to my chest, and ran to the mailbox at the end of the drive. And there, in that old metal box, I left my most secret thoughts to be carried away. Then I walked back to the house and turned my attention to Grove Hill.

While Mother was gone, Maizelle kept close to the stove, cooking chicken casseroles and pots of vegetable stew, even taking the time to can tomatoes and sweet cucumber pickles. I told her that the freezer was overflowing with plastic containers and Pyrex dishes and that Adelaide and I could never eat all the food waiting to be defrosted if we both lived to be a hundred. She ignored me and chatted nervously about a possible tornado or a nuclear war or some other unforeseen emergency that she needed to prepare for. She’d been reading the newspaper. It was only a matter of time, she said. But honestly, I think poor Maizelle was simply afraid that someday she’d be gone, too, and the poor little Grove girls would have nothing to eat.

Nathaniel waxed and buffed all the wood floors in the house and even repainted the outside of the barn. In the late afternoons, he spent his time sweeping the front porch, shaking the dust from the cushions, and watering the large concrete pots filled with more of Mother’s impatiens. When he was satisfied with his work, he went inside and polished the silver tea service as if Mother was standing over him telling him to be more careful with the family’s treasures. He said he wanted everything to look its best when Mrs. Grove finally came home. This time, he said, he had a feeling in his gut that things would be different.

He talked more and more about Samuel, mentioning him almost every day now. I loved that Nathaniel talked to me about his son, that he trusted me with this special information. Maybe he just felt, with Samuel so far away, not much harm could come from it. But his brows would lift and his eyes would brighten at just the mention of Samuel’s name. He kept telling me that he would be home soon, and after a while, I think Nathaniel actually started to believe it. He said he had finally quit reading the newspaper, that it was a little bit easier getting through the days not knowing what was going on in the world.

My sister knitted for a while longer. It made her sad to think of our mother at that hospital alone, and keeping her fingers busy seemed to help. Besides, she said, there would always be a new baby needing something warm for its feet. Sometimes when she got tired of making tiny pink and blue booties, she would pull out a bright colored yarn and knit Maizelle a scarf. Poor Maizelle wore each one tied neatly about her neck, even if it was ninety degrees outside and sweat was dripping down her back. Then one day Adelaide came to me and handed me her needles. She said she was finally tired of knitting and was ready to give her hands a rest.

“I don’t need to do this anymore, Bezellia,” she said and walked out of the room and called her friend Lucy. Funny, I thought, how Mother’s special vacation by the water seemed to have finally cured Adelaide too.

My sister went back to school in September, and this year she seemed to look forward to it. She spent more time primping in the mornings, sometimes asking me to braid her soft, curly hair, which now fell well beyond her shoulders, making her look more like a young movie star than a high school sophomore. Sometimes she would borrow a skirt or a pair of earrings from me, always wanting to make sure that she looked her best.

I drove her to school most days. Nathaniel himself had taught me to drive Mother’s Cadillac just a month or so before leaving for college. He said driving a car was an important part of any young woman’s education. But I’d never felt much of a need to do it until now, explaining to Nathaniel that sisters needed a little privacy to talk about boys and music and makeup. But more than anything else, we talked about Mother and Adelaide’s new friend, Lucy. Sometimes Lucy would come home with us after school. The two of them would run upstairs whispering and giggling, then slam the door and lock themselves in my sister’s room. Maizelle never stopped worrying, though, and always found an excuse to knock on Adelaide’s door, whether it was to bring the girls a fresh piece of pound cake or to ask if Lucy wanted to stay for supper.

Uncle Thad came by Grove Hill most every afternoon. He spent hours at Mother’s desk, tending to what was left of her money and talking to the bank on the telephone. With a few wise investments, he managed to repair my mother’s checkbook so she would be comfortable, he said, in the years to come.

He called the hospital at the end of the day and checked on Mother’s progress. The doctors remained hopeful that she would return to Grove Hill prepared to lead a healthy, sober life. And even though they believed she no longer blamed herself for her husband’s fatal fall, they suspected she was still holding on to a painful, deeply buried secret. Her drinking, they feared, would always be a problem until she was willing to confront her past.

They wanted to explore some more aggressive treatments, treatments that left Uncle Thad feeling cautious and unsettled. He wouldn’t discuss them with me, only said that Mother had been a deeply depressed woman for a very long time and maybe it would take extraordinary measures to cure her once and for all. When I overheard him talking to the doctors about electricity and convulsions, I grew afraid that I had sent my mother away for good.

Uncle Thad also thought it was very important for Mother’s well-being that I continue my education; my sitting around Grove Hill was not doing anyone any good. He said he had called a few old friends at Vanderbilt—people who had always been more than willing to relieve his brother of another sizable donation—and inquired about the possibility of my continuing my education there. Not long after that, I was awarded the Bezellia Grove Scholarship for study in American history. Uncle Thad couldn’t help but laugh when he told me. Turned out, he said, that my father had finally found, thanks to cosmic fate or some sort of divine intervention, that young, bright academic who would surely see his family’s history from his own generous perspective.

I made a few new friends, a nice girl from Atlanta and one from Charleston. Neither had ever heard of Dorothy Pitman or Betty Friedan, but both were willing to sign my petitions as long as they didn’t have to dispose of any of their undergarments. In fact, Emily Louise Britain admitted that she desperately wanted to go to medical school. She had always dreamed of being a doctor like her father, but her mother was convinced that nursing would be a more suitable career for a young woman like herself. Patricia Davenport smiled and said that all sounded real exciting, but she preferred to marry a doctor and live in a big house on the Cooper River back home in Charleston.

Every once in a while, a wide-eyed fraternity boy would ask me if I had ever heard the song “Big City Girl,” obviously hoping that I would be willing to meet him under some big old tree on campus and make him feel all right. I’d look kind of confused and vague and walk away, leaving him wondering what kind of pleasure he had missed. Most days, I kept to myself, and that was okay too. I guess, like Adelaide, I wasn’t afraid of being on my own anymore, and before I knew it, life began to feel wonderfully predictable and normal, something I had always wanted.

Late one morning in early November, my grandmother telephoned the house. She said she had spent the past three days cleaning out my mother’s room, and now she had all of her old knickknacks packed and ready to go. She asked me to send Nathaniel after them right away. She had looked at them for most of her life and didn’t want them in her house one more day.

She said Elizabeth had called earlier in the week, demanding some kind of
god-damned
apology. She said her daughter was crazy if she thought she was going to apologize—for what? She hadn’t done anything wrong. She was tired of her daughter’s whining, and there was nothing more to talk about. She had her little girl’s memories, the last bit of evidence that my mother was in fact a Morgan, stuffed in a box and waiting by the bedroom door. I told her I’d give Nathaniel the message. But by the time I hung up the telephone, I was feeling a desperate need, maybe more of a calling really, to find my way to the water.