This One and Magic Life (19 page)

THOMAS SULLIVAN ALWAYS THOUGHT OF MOBILE AND THE
Mobile Bay area as a woman. No wonder. She was plump, ripe, juicy; she wore too much makeup, too much perfume. And she was fertile. Seeds planted in her rich soil sprouted recklessly. The fish in the bay swam to the beaches. All Thomas had to do was reach down and gather them in.

He had heard about jubilees while he and Sarah were living in the apartment in Mobile. The first one he witnessed was right after they moved into the house at Harlow.

Sarah had been having trouble sleeping, but since they had moved, she had slept like a child. Even the twins crying for a bottle wouldn't wake her up. Thomas gladly got up and heated bottles, a baby on each hip. He was happy to see Sarah lying there peacefully.

The night of his first jubilee, he was dreaming his mother was calling him. “What?” he said. “What?” Sarah stirred beside him and he realized he had spoken out loud. He also realized there were calls from the
beach. He got up and looked out the window to a sight he would never forget. A full moon cut a path across the water and lights danced all over the beach.

Then, “Jubiliee!” he heard. “Jubilee!”

He shook Sarah. “It's a jubilee, honey. You want to see it?”

“No, thank you,” she said formally. He knew she was not really awake. He looked at the clock. It would be an hour or two before the twins woke up for their bottles. He pulled on some old pants and slipped his feet into some tennis shoes.

The scene at the foot of the dune was amazing. People were running along the edge of the water with crab nets and buckets scooping up fish, crabs, shrimp. And Thomas, stopping at the edge, saw that what looked like a dark wave moving toward the beach was alive—twisting, jumping. He moved back as a large fish slapped against his leg. The beach was silvering with the bodies.

“That you, Thomas?” his neighbor, Buck Stuart, asked, holding up his lantern. “Where's your buckets, man?”

“I'll have to go back and get them.”

“This is something. Right?”

“I've never seen anything like it.”

“Don't happen anywhere else. Well, get busy. Hey, look at that crab!” Buck scooped up a huge crab and dropped it into an already heavy bucket. “Better than a circus!” he declared, continuing down the beach. “Jubilee!” Thomas heard him shout.

“Jubilee! Jubilee!” The shout rose and fell like a wave.

Thomas picked his way through the squirming bodies on the beach, climbed the dune, and got a bucket and lantern. For the next hour, he picked up what he
considered the choicest fish and crabs. They would make a huge gumbo, he thought. Fry the fish.

“Hey, Thomas. How you doing?” People he had just met greeted him from the circle of their lanterns. It was a giant party. “Jubilee!” someone shouted. “Jubilee!” Thomas echoed as the wave came down the beach.

By the time he got his heavy bucket up the dune and into the sink, the twins had already awakened, cried, decided no one was coming to feed them tonight, and had gone back to sleep.

Thomas went into the backyard, stripped, and turned the hose on himself. Then, naked, he went and crawled in beside his sleeping wife. The next thing he heard was Sarah screaming, “Thomas! Come look in this sink! Where on God's earth did all this come from?”

“It was a jubilee,” he called. “I picked it up.”

“Well, you just come here and get it out of the way. I can't even fix the coffee.”

Thomas smiled. He heard Artie and Donnie begin to whimper. Let Sarah get them. He turned over and went back to sleep.

 

His job at the university had not turned out like it was supposed to. A dropping enrollment had meant that Thomas was required to teach two history classes as well as the Greek, Latin, and ancient literature he had been hired to teach. This suited Thomas fine, though. The day the head of the department had called him in, he was sure his contract was not being renewed. So when he was informed of the added history classes, he was relieved. And the truth was, he enjoyed them. Even more than the languages.

Many of the students who signed up for the classical languages, particularly Greek, were planning on en
tering the ministry. Premed students were required to take Latin. They hated it. Their hatred was so intense and so universal, Thomas began to wonder how it was he had been captured by these ancient languages, how it was he considered them beautiful. Was it something his teacher had done that he, Thomas, was totally neglecting to do? Or was it the fact that outside Mobile Bay shimmered, cool, inviting, and the oscillating fan mounted above the blackboard did nothing but stir the warm air and hum hypnotically? Sometimes he would turn from the blackboard and be startled by the sight of the bay, its sailboats and barges. In February, azaleas were already banked in full bloom around the live oak trees. Spanish moss hung from the trees.

“Would you look at that!” he might exclaim. And the students would look dutifully at the scenery they had known all their lives. “I've seen snow banked against the windows in Massachusetts this time of year.”

It would have surprised him to know how many of these South Alabama students yearned to see snow. Just a few flakes. Snow up to the window was beyond their imagination.

“Well,” he would say. “Back to Odysseus.” And heads would bend back over textbooks. Such nice young people, Thomas thought, not realizing that many of them were still watching snow drift down.

Mobile, Sarah, the children, and the classes were a long way from Salem and the priesthood Thomas had considered.

“Consistency,” Dean Huffstutler said one day in an address to the faculty, “is the key to good teaching. Imagine if you never knew when you turned your steering wheel if your automobile were going to the
right or left. It would drive you crazy, wouldn't it? Well, that's how students feel when we aren't consistent.”

And Thomas thought how he had been headed for the church and New England and celibacy and here he was, far from all. He even knew when his steering wheel turned toward the left when he, with the help of his parents, was turning it right.

It was the Summer of Celia. He loved the alliteration and had always thought of it as that, though he had never spoken to anyone about it, not even a priest. It had started when Celia, the Grangers' niece, had come to spend the summer in Salem. The Granger house was next door to the Sullivans' and like the Sullivans' was a two-storied Victorian, too large for the lot it was built on. This meant the Sullivans and Grangers could easily converse through their open windows. It also meant if the shades weren't drawn, each could see right into the other's house. Which never bothered anyone until the Summer of Celia.

She appeared in June, blonde, peachy, at nineteen a year older than Thomas. The Sullivans went over after supper to meet her.

“Pretty girl,” Mr. Sullivan said.

“Lovely,” his wife agreed.

Their son didn't say a word. Words had failed him. He went to bed thinking of her pink-golden skin, the way her dress curved. And while he lay there in the dark, a light came on in the Granger bedroom opposite his. He sat up and saw Celia unbuttoning her dress. She was no more than ten feet away. He should say something. At least lie down. Instead, he knelt by his window in the shadows and watched. She stepped out of her dress, her petticoat. Wearing only a flesh-colored silk teddy, she began to dance around the room, holding her arms out as to a partner. Finally, she opened a dresser
drawer and took out a nightgown. Turning toward the window, she lowered the straps of the teddy and stretched. Thomas felt he could reach out and cup his hands around her breasts. He was having trouble breathing; he was afraid Celia could hear him wheezing.

The teddy shimmered to the floor and she stood before the window naked. Thomas could see the dark V of her pubic hair, the way her upper legs bowed slightly. That was all it took. Thomas sinned mightily on the worn Persian rug that had always been on his bedroom floor. When he opened his eyes, Celia was pulling the nightgown over her head. In a few minutes, she turned out the light.

Thomas crawled into his bed, spent, happy, confused. Even ashamed. Tomorrow he must figure out a way to tell her how close their rooms were.

But he never did. The same thing happened the next night. And the next. The only difference was that Thomas kept a towel under his bed. And felt more guilty, if possible. It wasn't until several years later that he realized that Celia had known exactly where he was and exactly what he was doing. By that time, Celia was married and a mother, and Thomas's thoughts of becoming a priest were in the distant past, as blurred as the memory of Celia's firm young body was still clear.

 

He had no ties left with Salem. His father had dropped dead while he and Thomas were bringing a trunk down from the attic to pack Thomas's mother's clothes in for the church's charity work.

“Wait,” he said, quietly, the trunk between them on the stairs. He sat down. Thomas stood at the top of the steps holding the trunk by its strap for a full minute before he realized something was wrong. He had had
to pull the trunk back to the attic before he could get to his father who had slumped against the banisters.

There were three days between Thomas's parents' deaths. “A blessing,” the priest said. And Thomas knew it was so. They had been married twenty years before Thomas put in his appearance, startling everyone. And they had been good parents, loving, thoughtful. But, as Thomas admitted to Sarah once, he had always felt like a guest in their house. A beloved guest, but a guest, nevertheless. It was best that they had gone together.

He shipped the furniture to Mobile and sold the house to a Granger niece (not Celia) and her husband. The hardware store his father had owned was eagerly bought out by a partner. Everything was over so quickly, he felt disoriented as he got on the train leaving Salem. The snow his students loved to hear about was covering the two new graves in the cemetery. Somehow, he knew he would never be back.

 

Driving up the shell road to his house on Mobile Bay, he considered how his life had veered from the path he always thought lay before him. He also thought how lucky he was. He had a job, money saved back from his parents' estate that he had not told Sarah about. His conscience hurt him slightly about this, but not too much. Sarah had never seemed to grasp what the Depression was all about even though her own brothers and sisters had lost houses and businesses and been forced into bankruptcy. Thomas was just protecting his own family. A family which was about to be increased. Sarah was expecting another baby in a month's time. The twins were almost five. But Sarah had had such a hard time after they were born that neither she nor Thomas had been anxious to have another child soon. Actually, they had been very sur
prised when Sarah got pregnant. “Hey,” Sarah had told Thomas before they were married. “The Church stops at our bedroom door. Okay?”

And so it had. The twins had been planned. But this baby had defied the odds. And so far, Sarah was okay. Tired, big, but not unhappy like she had been when the twins were born.

Thomas pulled into the yard and saw Bo Peep, Willie Mae's daughter, swinging Artie and Donnie. Thomas had built an extra-wide swing with a back on it and had hung it from a pecan limb. That way both children could swing at once.

“Papa! Papa!” Artie jumped from the swing and lost her balance. Bo Peep grabbed the swing to keep it from hitting Artie in the head. In the process, she fell and Donnie was slung from the swing. All three children started crying.

Thomas had piled soft sand beneath the swing. He knew they were just startled.

“Anybody bleeding?” he asked.

The children examined their knees and elbows carefully. Artie discovered an old mosquito bite with a tiny scab on it. She picked it off. “I am,” she said proudly when a red drop appeared.

“She just did that, Dr. Sullivan,” Bo Peep said indignantly. “Nothing's wrong with her. It's all her fault anyway. I was swinging them good.”

Thomas picked Artie up under one arm and Donnie under the other. “I know you were, Bo Peep. Come on. Let's go see if your mama has some lemonade for us.”

“I'm bleeding!” Artie wailed. “I'm bleeding, Papa!”

“If it doesn't stop in an hour, we'll go get you a transfusion.”

“What's a transfusion, Papa?” Donnie asked.

“It's where they take somebody else's blood and put it in you.”

“It's about to quit,” Artie said.

Thomas put them down inside the kitchen.

“Hey, Dr. Sullivan,” Willie Mae said. “You early?”

“Got to thinking about lemonade.”

“Good thought. How about I fix us some?”

“Great.” Thomas put the children down. Artie limped to a chair.

“What's the matter, baby?” Willie Mae asked.

“Bo Peep made me fall out of the swing.”

“Oooooh, Mama! No! I never did!”

Artie sighed. “Then it was Donnie.”

“Someone's papa saw someone jump out of the swing and almost cause everybody to get hurt,” Thomas said. “Someone is telling fibs.”

“Donnie,” Artie said.

Donnie screamed and lunged for her. Thomas caught him. “Welcome home, Papa,” Thomas said. “We're so glad to see you.”

“Welcome home, Papa. Would you like some cookies with your lemonade?” Artie frowned at the wriggling, red-faced Donnie. “Donnie, if you're good, Willie Mae might give you some too.”

Thomas held Donnie high in the air. “We'll all have cookies. Lots of cookies.” The little boy squirmed in delight.

“A tea party on the porch. Come on, Bo Peep. Donnie. We'll use palmetto leaves for plates.” Artie led the other two out. Thomas and Willie Mae smiled at each other.

“That one's a pistol ball,” Willie Mae declared.

“How's her mama today?”

“Fair to middlin'. Might still be napping.”