“Of course, I like Aunt Sally. If I died, she would sew me into the most beautiful dress for burying. She would cry on every stitch.”
“But that’s not enough,” said Ethan.
“No, not enough.”
He smiled encouragement, as to a learner in his classes, trying new ground. “You mean, basically, all these relatives of yours are alike? Good and bad, they come to the same thing in the end. Live as we live, think as we think—the same as not thinking at all. And no questions allowed.”
“One question. Where is Jeff ? He calls me, but he won’t say where he is.” She was sitting on her feet to hide them. She had taken goofballs to block the pain and keep on dancing, just as everybody did, during the last days. She had walked to get there, on gravel roadsides, wearing sandals, under the far-off dance of distant stars.
“But if he hasn’t told you—”
“Doesn’t want me to know. He came for the closing program. Mother got her feelings hurt over one of the numbers, all about motherhood. She had Fred with her.”
“Who?”
“Latest boyfriend. Philadelphia. Rich.” She laughed.
“Enough said.” Ethan set the tips of his fingers together. He pondered.
“Maybe it’s dangerous to talk.”
“Jeff may think that.”
Sitting there, she remembered all the times she was with Jeff, the only place they were both understood, so it was happy for them. She wanted to share things about Art Manning with Ethan. The quiet dynamism, the voice: “Push the idea, push it forward, nudge it to the breaking point, then break right into it. When you’re there, you know it, you know. You have known, you will know … and know forever because you know now….” It was right.
But she thought she might have a fractured toe, and her one shirt was ripped. She sat thinking of his wonderful big hands, like a dog with big paws, pushing her forward, his own step leading them all. “There are no stars here.” He had said that, not to her, but to another girl, who still wore lipstick and did up her hair. “Submerge your gift,” he had said. “Let it speak for you. Work honestly … clean.”
So she sat telling Ethan, who listened. “The good things in you. They’re growing,” he said.
“Why didn’t you marry Aunt Jane?”
“Why?” He took her question, which he couldn’t have expected, as a natural one, though he almost (Mary thought) did not succeed in doing so. Something around his eyes had flinched and narrowed. “My impression was that she refused me.”
“I wonder why.”
His smile was weak for the first time. “I wasn’t what she wanted me to be.”
“I’m hungry,” Mary said.
He took her back to his kitchen, a single man’s supplies, refrigerator almost empty except for frozen dinners. A few cans on the shelves. “What do you like? Bacon and eggs? Soup?”
She consented to Campbell’s tomato.
“Jeff is upset about the Gifford case. The immolation. You must have read about it.”
“He set himself on fire, on the street corner?” You could even make a dance of that, she thought, tragic, with clouds of smoke.
The gas flame leaped up too high under the saucepan of soup. Ethan turned it down. “They were friends. I’m not sure how close recently. Perhaps he’s mentioned him. They shared some strong ideals, Jeff being Catholic, too.”
“Not a very good one.”
“Just the same.” He stirred and watched the boil form. When he turned, she had her head on the kitchen table where he habitually ate when alone. Her hair fell across her folded arms. When she raised her head again it was with effort.
She was barely able to keep her lips moving. “He writes to me. I do know about the speaking circuit, how they’re financing it through the Movement. He called last night. I heard about the father’s coming here. You’d told him. Here we go, maybe, he and I, me on a dancing circuit, he like a preacher making the rounds. Souls to be saved.…” Her head fell forward, but she jerked it up. “Poppy always said I’d go with the circus … the circus circuit.…” She started a laugh and faded out.
But she must have still been half awake, too, because she knew he had made a call. She heard his voice float murmurously back to her. “Is this Jane?... A voice from the past, can you believe it? Oh, you did recognize me? Yes, it’s Ethan here. Jane, it’s hard to believe, but I’ve a favor to ask. Call it for old times’ sake, whatever you like…. I mean to say, whatever you like would please me, too. Your niece, Mary Kerr, is here. Her mother’s away. She needs food, sleep, a good bath—”
“The soup!” Mary jerked awake. She thought it was boiling over, but instead it was sitting before her, steaming.
She felt herself—as if in a memory, like his voice speaking, though like his voice, it was an actual occurrence—guided to his car, his arm around her, and some minutes later a long walkway between two halves of a green lawn, dividing like the sea, and sheets of green sloping up like waves. Inside, a gentle odor of something good, rose scent, and rose shading from light falling through pale draperies and flax-colored blinds. A woman’s face smiling. Aunt Jane. “She looks like Poppy. I never noticed.”
“Yes, of course she does. Look after her, Jane. No questions, please. The truth is, I don’t have any answers myself. Times are difficult.”
The arm of a woman she had never especially liked until now closed over Mary’s shoulder, and she leaned, clinging.
“I’ve fixed a little bouillon. Then, I think, you could use a long bath and a good sleep and some real food.”
“You would have the perfect thing,” was Ethan’s tribute.
Mary Kerr took the mug handed to her and felt the salty fluid go down, admired the thick mug’s surface with its bright flowers painted on it, how it curved into her palm, while Jane and Ethan’s hands touched each other.
Then the bath, drawn and heavenly warm, with scented crystals liberally scattered in, her feet smarting from the water, the blisters stinging, the cracked skin splitting open wider with the warmth and cleansing, hurting again, all over, as she dried them with a towel, even bleeding a little. Then, staggering with sleepiness, never to sleep enough, she was sinking into the bed, dragging up a coverlet, hearing the muted click of the light switch, thinking, I’m safe again …home. If only Jeff
Ethan told her at last. She was walking again, or rather limping, on healing feet.
“We’ve managed by hook and by crook to raise the money for the journal. He will be going out, my roving reporter, to all these trouble spots. He will write about them. Not what gets in the national press, but what actually happens. The Radar Screen. Jeff’s column will be ‘From the Front Lines.’ This is our crusade, not just talk anymore. Action.” He beamed at her.
“You’ll print it here?” She had some idea of a press set up in Ethan’s old garage out back.
“No, not even in the South. But wherever we find to locate, it has to be a secret. There may be attacks on it. We’re a country within a country, Mary!”
He handed her an envelope, Jeff’s writing, a scrawled note inside just for her.
The notes kept coming. Ethan said, “He’s not intending to lose you. Surely that’s obvious.”
“He isn’t here,” she said, and felt empty in spite of all.
Calls and letters were also coming from Kate. “Don’t think I’ve left you. You must just love being at Jane’s. I sent you a check. Now, don’t worry … I’m always thinking of my darling girl.”
“Yes, Mother. Aunt Jane is really nice. I smell like lilac bath salts. Say hello to Fred.”