I woke at dawn and went into the kitchen and sat at the table and began to write. “Alabama is not a place you’re from,” I wrote,
Not a shadow you roll up in a drawer
It will follow you to Boston on the train
You are my brother whether you want to be or not
Gandhi said. Sometimes I think I am underneath
A song, looking up.
Derry appeared at the door. “What are you writing?” she asked.
“An answer to the book you gave me.”
“Let me see.” I handed her my poem.
“Oh, Rhoda, that’s lovely. Very lovely.”
“It’s because of the book. It’s only an answer, that’s all it is.”
“Where did you learn about Gandhi?”
“At Vanderbilt. I was going to write a paper on him when I went back. Well, that was a long time ago.”
“Let’s have breakfast. I haven’t had young people in the house in so long. Oh, this makes me happy.” She began to pull bacon and eggs and bread and butter from the refrigerator and the pantry. She went into what I would always think of as Derry-gear, very very fast and hot and busy. I sat back and watched her cook.
That afternoon Charles William and Irise and I went antique shopping all over Montgomery. He was looking for new things to make into sconces for the grotto. At five-thirty we got back to Derry’s house and she said Jim had called and said not to wait dinner on him. “He said to tell you he was sorry,” she said. “He said he’d be here as soon as he could.”
At seven we ate dinner without him. At seven-fifty he called and said he’d be there as soon as he could. At ten-fifteen he showed up at the door with a Justice Department lawyer in tow and bad news about the trial.
“Did he do it, Jim?” Derry asked.
“He says he didn’t.”
“What do you think?”
“It’s going to be hard to get it reversed if they convict.”
“This one’s too hard,” the Justice Department lawyer said. “This isn’t the one we want to take all the way.”
“He lied to me,” Jim said. “Ten convictions I didn’t know about. We were blindsided all day.”
I waited while they talked. Several times Jim looked at me as if to say, I’m sorry, so sorry the evening turned out this way. Finally we got away from the others and walked out on the porch. It was colder than it had been the night before. I stood shivering beside him and he took off his coat and put it on my shoulders. “I’m so sorry,” he said. “You won’t trust me after this.”
“Why would I need to trust you? I’m married. I shouldn’t even have kissed you. I shouldn’t be out here.”
“Oh, Rhoda.”
“You should have been here for dinner. We had baked red snapper. Fresh fish from down on the coast. We went to a fish market to get it.” He took my arms and pulled me into his body. “It won’t always be like tonight,” he said. “My life isn’t always this way.”
“I don’t let people stand me up. My mother was the most popular girl in the Mississippi Delta. My aunt was Maid of Cotton. I don’t get stood up, even by Yankee lawyers who went to Harvard.” I was half serious, half joking, completely scared to death. I was pulling away from him, away from his strange gentle power, but he wouldn’t let me go. He kept on holding on to me.
“I need you, Rhoda. Stay with me tonight. Talk to me. Stand by me.”
“I’m married to someone, Jim. I have a husband and two children.” I pulled away from him then and went back into the house and told everyone goodnight. Then I went into Derry’s bedroom and tried to call Malcolm, but his line didn’t answer. It was Saturday night. He’s out with someone, I decided. He’s screwing someone somewhere. This goddamn Yankee lawyer stands me up and Malcolm’s got another girlfriend, or two or three or four. He’s representing a black man who raped a white girl. My daddy will kill me if he finds out I’m with these people. They’ll put me in a jail. I went into my bedroom and put on my nightgown and took a sleeping pill. Doctor Freer had given me a bottle of tranquilizers and a bottle of sleeping pills to counteract the sleeplessness caused by the diet pills he was again supplying me with. I climbed into the bed and waited for the drug to reach my brain.
Irise and Charles William came to the door of the bedroom twice to try to talk to me but I wouldn’t talk to them. I was tired of this adventure now. I wanted to go home.
On Sunday after a late lunch we started back to Dunleith. It was late afternoon when we got there and the town was frosted with a snow. I walked up onto the porch and the front door opened and Momma was standing there with my little boys by her side. They were dressed in the red velvet suits we had bought for them to wear for Christmas. There were bells laced into their carefully polished white leather hightop shoes. They ran out of the door fighting and screaming to get into my arms. I swept them up and carried them into the room Daddy had built for me. It was finished now, decorated in beige and gold. Everything in it was fine and new and expensive and beautiful. Still, I had been lonesomer in that room than anywhere I had ever been in my life. Lonesomer and more confused. Part of the confusion was caused by alcohol and all the pills Doctor Freer gave me. Part of it was caused by the children and their incessant demands. All of it was made worse by the fact that I never for a second doubted that everything was my fault. If I stopped thinking I was to blame, Daddy was always there to remind me.
Still, on this snowy night, Charles William and Irise followed me into my lovely spacious new room and Mother brought in a tray of tea and cookies and the children ran around and let us talk about how beautiful they were and the world seemed possible and full of warmth and friends.
“Malcolm’s the golden child and Jimmy is an apricot,” Charles William was saying. “They’re angels, Dee. They should be painted in those suits. We’ll get Mimi to paint them. Do you want me to ask her?”
“She only paints people she wants to paint,” Irise said, “but anyone would want to paint them.”
“Sister.” Daddy had come into the room. “James Myers delivered these divorce papers to me today. You better come on and sign them so we can get this settled.” He was standing in the door, looking so kind and charming, holding two sets of legal papers. He lay the papers down on my desk. “Your friends will excuse you a second. Hello, Irise, hello, Charles William. How you doing? How was your trip?” He stood by the desk waiting. I went over and sat down in the desk chair and he opened the papers to a page and held out a pen.
“You want me to read them?” I asked.
“There’s no need for that. One is about the divorce and the other is about custody for your mother and me. You can read it if you want to.”
“I don’t. Where do I sign?” I took the pen and wrote my name in two places on each brief, then dated the signatures and handed them to Daddy.
“You aren’t reading it?” Charles William asked.
“Of course not. Who wants to read legal papers. They’re so boring. I never read contracts. That’s what lawyers are for, isn’t it, Daddy?” I looked up at him. He was smiling at me. He loved me. He had given me this beautiful new room and let me buy new carpets and drapes and all the new furniture I wanted. He loved me and he had his important lawyers get me a divorce and I didn’t even have to go to court. I moved near him and put my arm around his waist. “We’re mighty proud of you, Sweet Sister,” he said. “You’re settling down to be a fine little mother.”
“Momma and Daddy are going to be the adoptive parents if anything happens to me,” I explained to Charles William and Irise.
“It’s to make sure the boys are safe,” Daddy added.
“They’ll be his heirs if anything happens to him,” I laughed. “Just think how mad it would make Dudley to have to share the money with my children and with me.”
“Charles William, you and Irise want to witness this?” Daddy said. “Then James Myers can go on and get it filed in the morning.” He held out the pen. Charles William and Irise stood up.
“I don’t know if we should,” Charles William said. “Malcolm was my roommate, Dudley. It might not be a good idea for us to sign it.”
“I want you to,” I said. I held on to my father. “I want you to sign it. It doesn’t matter anyway. I promise you I’m not going to die.”
“I don’t know if I should.”
“For God’s sake you’re only witnessing my signature. You don’t have to like what it says.”
“I’ll sign it.” Irise took the pen and began to sign her name below mine on all the pages. Charles William stood with his head bowed looking at his feet. When Irise was finished signing the papers he took the pen from her and signed them too. Then I showed them to the door. “I hope you know what you’re doing, Dee,” he began, but I would not listen to it.
“My daddy knows what he’s doing,” I said. “He’s the one who takes care of us, Charles William. He’s the best friend I have. Besides, I don’t want Mrs. Martin to get hold of my children. She might ruin them.” I stood in the doorway looking out at the snow. Whatever person I had been six hours ago in Montgomery, Alabama, had disappeared. I was back in my father’s house. I was my daddy’s indulged and happy little girl. All I had to do from now to the end of time was eat from the bowl he held.