Oscar spoke volubly and without restraint with his wife as they lay in bed together, usually with Oscar on his back and Elinor turned toward him on her side, one arm thrown lightly across his chest. When Oscar grew tired at last, he merely interrupted either his wife or himself with a curt “Good-night, Elinor,” and fell immediately asleep.
Only once did Elinor refuse this dismissal, and that was on Christmas night of 1967, after they had all spent the day out at Gavin Pond Farm. “Don’t go to sleep yet, Oscar. I want to talk to you.”
“I’m tired, Elinor. What’s it about?” he asked impatiently.
“Your eyes, Oscar. Your eyes were bothering you today. I could see it.”
“Everybody could see it, Elinor,” said Oscar after a minute. “They’d have to be as blind as I am not to have seen it.”
“It’s gotten worse, hasn’t it?”
“Yes. These things do get worse. They don’t get better.”
“Oscar, there’s no point in snapping at me.”
“Then let’s not talk about it, Elinor!”
“We have to,” said Elinor, squeezing his arm. “Soon you’re not going to be able to see at all.”
Oscar was silent for several moments, then he said in a low voice. “You remember when Sammy and I drove out to Texas about five years ago, ‘cause I said there was all those golf courses out there I hadn’t been on yet and I wanted to see them before I died?”
“Yes.”
“Well, I didn’t go out to there to play golf. They’ve got terrible courses out in Texas, and everybody in the world knows it. So I didn’t go out there for that. I went out there to see a doctor, a man at Texas A&M Hospital. And I saw him, and he said I could have the operation, but that there was a pretty good chance that I’d come out of it totally blind. So I hopped in the car, and I said, ‘Sammy, let’s go home. I’m tired of Texas.’ I wasn’t deceiving you, Elinor. I just didn’t have the heart to tell you.”
“Oscar, I knew all this.”
“How’d you know?” Oscar asked in surprise.
“Sammy told Zaddie that he had driven you to a hospital while you were in Texas, and I made him remember which hospital it was. So I called them up, and I talked to your doctor and he told me.”
“Good,” said Oscar. “I didn’t like deceiving you.”
Elinor hugged him close. “Oscar, I’d like to see the day that you put one over on me.”
“Me too, Elinor, me too. Can I go to sleep now?”
“No,” said Elinor, drawing back. “I talked to that doctor again last week.”
“Why’d you do that?” Oscar as’ked, now alarmed.
“I told him you were getting worse. He said you should go out and see him again. Things may have changed.”
“Things have changed. I’m worse. I’m a lot worse than I was five years ago. Elinor, do you have any idea how much I dreaded going to see that man, how much it took out of me? I don’t think I could go back out there by myself.”
“You’re not,” she assured him. “I’m going with you.”
“Would you?”
“Of course, I would. You and Sammy can sit in the front seat, and I’ll sit in the back seat with your feather mattresses. Oscar,” laughed Elinor, “what on earth do they think at the Hilton when you walk in with one suit bag and a colored man carrying five feather mattresses?”
“They say, ‘This way to your suite, Mr. Caskey.’ I always get a suite, ‘cause then they don’t care what you do. They’re used to crazy old rich people, I guess. Poor old Mama,” he sighed.
“Poor old Mama what?”
“What would she think of me now? A crazy old rich man, being carted around the South by Luvadia Sapp’s boy in a car filled with mattresses and pillows. Mama wasn’t sick a day in her life—not till she died, anyway. What would she think of me, so blind that I’m even afraid to get up out of a chair if somebody else is in the room? Afraid I’ll bump into something, and they’ll find out I cain’t see anything at all.”
“That’s why you and I are going to Texas,” whispered Elinor.
“Don’t talk to me about it,” pleaded Oscar. “Just set it all up. But don’t tell me when it’s gone be. Don’t tell me you’ve made an appointment and reserved a suite at the hotel. When it’s time to go, just say, ‘Oscar, put on your pants, we’re going for a ride.’ And all the way out to Texas, I’ll just pretend we’re on our way to Pensacola for supper.” He laughed at his own weakness.
“That’s just how we’ll do it,” agreed Elinor. “All right, Oscar, you can go to sleep now. All that unwrapping you did today must have tired you out.”
“I made Zaddie sit by me,” said Oscar, “so she could tell me what everything was. The only time she didn’t have to tell me was when I opened Tommy Lee’s present—those damned pajamas he gets me every year. Always the wrong kind. That boy doesn’t have the first—” He broke off suddenly.
“What’s wrong?” asked Elinor.
“Elinor, you got to promise me something.”
“What?”
“Don’t ask what. Say you’ll promise me.”
“I’ll promise you. Whatever you want, Oscar. What do you want me to promise?”
“Promise me that you’ll let me die before you do,” he said. “Promise me that you won’t make me live on in this big old house alone. Let me die first. Promise me that.”
Elinor pressed her face against his shoulder.
“I promise,” she said unhesitatingly, and in such a voice that gave him confidence. “I’ll be here to take care of you for as long as you live.”
“I couldn’t do without you,” said Oscar quite mat-ter-of-factly as they lay together there in the dark. “I wouldn’t even want to try.” Elinor said nothing, but she snuggled closer to her husband. “Why did you come?” he asked.
“Come? Come where?”
“Come here to Perdido,” said Oscar thoughtfully. “Mama was always asking that question: ‘Why did Elinor come to Perdido?’ I always said, ‘Mama, I don’t care. I’m just glad she did.’”
“Mary-Love wasn’t glad,” said Elinor dryly.
“No, she wasn’t,” Oscar admitted readily. “She thought you came on purpose, just to snag me.”
“How do you know I didn’t?”
“Did you?” he asked with calm curiosity. “Did you hide yourself up in the Osceola for three days—”
“Four days.”
“—four days, waiting for Bray and me to come along in that old green boat? Remember that old boat?”
“I do,” said Elinor.
“Well, did you? Were you lying in wait for me there, like Mama said you were?”
“Oscar, I never wanted anything in this world besides you,” Elinor replied evasively.
“And you wanted to be rich, and you wanted to have a big family so you could be head of it. And you wanted to make everybody dress up for dinner, and you wanted—”
Elinor laughed. “Of course I wanted all those things. What woman in her right mind wouldn’t want them? But those things wouldn’t have meant anything to me if you hadn’t been here.”
“And when I die?” Oscar asked lightly. “And when you’re left alone—’cause remember, you just promised I’d die first—and when those things are all you’ve got left, are you saying they won’t mean anything without me?”
“No,” said Elinor. “I’m not saying that. And, Oscar, I certainly don’t intend to dress you up in your coffin, see you put down next to Mary-Love, and then drop dead across your grave, either. But when you’re dead, those other things will start to fade. I know they will. And when they’ve faded to nothing, then I’ll die, too.”
“Fade away…” breathed Oscar softly. “Oh, Lord, Elinor, we’re so old!”
“That’s what happens here,” said Elinor.
“Here?”
“Up on dry land, Oscar…”
“That’s right,” said Oscar. “Up here on dry land. You still didn’t answer my question, though.”
&
nbsp; “What question?”
“Mama’s question. When Bray and I were riding through the flooded streets of this town and we rowed by the Osceola, you were sitting in your room on the edge of the bed. I saw you. You know, Elinor, I cried the day they tore that hotel down. I cried because I remember that Easter Sunday morning when I rescued you out of that corner room. But that’s the question: did I rescue you? Or were you just waiting there for me to come along? All this—this house, and the mill, and Gavin Pond Farm, and all these rich, rich relatives we’ve got, oil wells, and stocks and bonds, and Miriam’s forty thousand safety-deposit boxes filled with jewelry, and hot-and-cold-running servants, and you and me lying here in this bed in the dark, Elinor—is this my doing because I rescued you, or is this your doing because you were lying in wait for me like Mama always said you were?”
“Your mama,” said Elinor, turning over on her other side, away from Oscar, “always did think that she was right, and that everybody else was wrong. Well, Oscar, sometimes Mary-Love was right about things.”
CHAPTER 80
Oscar’s Pajamas
So, without telling Oscar, Elinor made the appointment with the doctor at Texas A&M Hospital, and one day in February she said to her husband, “Oscar, pull on your pants, we’re going for a ride.” While Oscar was dressing, Elinor and Zaddie stripped the bed. Sammy Sapp and Malcolm took Oscar’s five feather mattresses and his four favorite pillows and somehow fitted them into the trunk and the back seat of the Lincoln Continental, leaving enough room for Elinor to squeeze in the back.
“We’re just going to Pensacola for supper,” Oscar called out to Miriam and Malcolm, who, as Sammy whispered to him, were standing on the front porch of their house. “But y’all don’t wait up.”
Every ten miles Oscar turned and asked, “Elinor, are we in Pensacola yet?”
“Not long, Oscar. Sammy, what does that sign say just ahead?”
“‘Pensacola. Ten miles.’”
“Be patient, Oscar, we’ll be there before you know it.”
This obvious game tickled Oscar, and he kept it up at wearisome length all the way to Texas. Elinor had booked the largest suite in the biggest hotel in Houston, and Sammy and three bellboys carried up the mattresses and put them in the place of the regular ones. Elinor made up the bed herself, and informed the maids that she would continue to do so.
Oscar saw the doctor the next day, and the doctor pronounced him worse. An operation was more dangerous now than it would have been years before, the chances of total blindness greater. On the other hand, Oscar was nearly blind now, and the operation could not therefore be regarded as much of a gamble.
“He’ll do it,” said Elinor, and Oscar nodded reluctant agreement.
The operation was performed a week later. Oscar and Elinor and Sammy meantime remained in the hotel, none of them happy to be away from Perdido for so long. The operation was performed, and Oscar emerged from it totally blind.
The mattresses were put back into the car, and Oscar and Elinor, with Sammy behind the wheel, headed back to Perdido. “That supper in Pensacola disagreed with me, Elinor,” was all that Oscar said.
As Elinor led Oscar up the sidewalk to the house, she said to him, “We’re not going to keep this a secret, Oscar. You know that.”
Oscar nodded. “When people see me fall headlong down the town hall steps, they’re just gone know.”
But things were better for Oscar after that, as it turned out. No vision at all was only a little less than what he had got along with before, and at least now there was no disheartening deterioration. He no longer had to make any pretense about his need for help about the house. He had an excuse not to talk to visitors. All his subterfuges and fictions were laid aside with his thick-lensed eyeglasses; he had need of none now. He didn’t come down to dinner at all anymore, but remained in his sitting room with Zaddie for company.
Elinor did not seek to halt Oscar’s withdrawal into his own world. A week might pass without his leaving the bedroom or his sitting room. The rest of the house grew unfamiliar to him, and to go through other rooms was as trying an adventure for him as attempting to walk down to the Ben Franklin store without a guide. That suite of rooms at the back of the second floor began to smell of Oscar as Sister’s bedroom had smelled of her. On fine days, Zaddie would walk him out to the car, and Sammy would drive him around town and then out to the Lake Pinchona Country Club. Sammy would park the Continental next to the golf course and Oscar would sit very still, smelling the newly mown greens and listening with pleasure to the thwacking of the balls and the intermittent cursing of the players. They’d call out to him as they’d pass by, “Hey, Mr. Caskey, don’t you want to get out of that hot car and come join us?”
“Who is that calling to me?” Oscar would cry in return.
“It’s Fred Jernigan and Roscoe.”
“Fred, Roscoe, sure, I’ll come out there, if you boys will promise to play with your eyes shut tight.”
“We promise,” Fred and Roscoe would always laugh, and then move on to the next hole.
Billy Bronze was of some comfort to Oscar in the evenings, for Billy would listen to the ball games with him. But for the other members of the family, Oscar had little patience. Miriam sometimes came to visit for a few minutes—with Malcolm in tow— and would spill out a little news of the mill. Oscar, however, had lost all interest in the Caskey businesses, and only wanted to know what they heard from Lilah, whether she was married yet, if she was seeing people, or if she was interested in any one particular boy. Grace and Lucille and Tommy Lee came much more rarely to Perdido now that Queenie was dead. When they did come, they all paid a visit of respect to Oscar, but had little to say to him. On one such visit, Oscar turned to Tommy Lee and asked, “Tommy Lee, you got any little girlfriends yet?”
“Don’t you speak to him of girlfriends, Oscar,” Grace snapped. “We don’t want him starting to bring home girls we don’t approve of, girls we don’t know anything about. When Tommy Lee wants to get married, he’ll come and tell his farm mamas that he’s ready, and Lucille and I will comb the countryside till we find the right one. Isn’t that right, Tommy Lee?”
“That’s right, Grace,” Tommy Lee agreed passively.
“Tommy Lee can marry when Grace and I are dead,” said Lucille complacently. “There’s no need for him to think about it before then. Tommy Lee is rich,” she added, though it wasn’t exactly to the point of argument, “and he can have anybody he wants.”
“I don’t want anybody,” said Tommy Lee. “Except Lilah, maybe.”
“Well,” said Grace, “if Miriam could marry Malcolm, then Lilah could certainly marry you.”
“That’s what I thought,” said Tommy Lee, who had a fairly accurate image of himself and his capabilities. “And that’s what I told her.”
“And what “did Lilah say?” asked Oscar.
“She said, ‘Not in a million years.’”
“Grace, speak to Miriam about this,” Oscar suggested. “Maybe Miriam could talk some sense into that girl. Tommy Lee, if you and Lilah got married this year, you could start having children before I die.”
“I sure would like to oblige you, Oscar,” said Tommy Lee.
“I’d rather you gave me a little baby for Christmas than those damned old pajamas.”
Zaddie, who had been sitting silently by throughout this little audience, indicated by a motion of her hand that Oscar was weary. Grace, Lucille, and Tommy Lee stood up at that moment, and with only perfunctory ceremony, took their leave.
The winter of 1968 was particularly cold and wet in south Alabama. Everyone suffered through days of freezing rain, high winds, and cloudy chill evenings, imagining that the next day would dawn clear and warm. It rarely did. Out at Gavin Pond Farm, Lucille was worried about some new, small, and very rare camellias she had just set out in the fall. She looked at them carefully every day, and every day grew glummer and glummer, for the expensive plants looked as though they were dying. She went out i
n the rain every day, shoveled new soil around their roots, carefully covered them with plastic, and constructed small protective fences about them. Toward the end of February, when warmer weather was sure to come at last, Lucille’s efforts proved a auccess, and the rare camellias gave every indication of survival. Lucille, however, was now laid up in bed with what seemed to be a severe cold. This, after hanging on for a week, was diagnosed as pneumonia, and she was placed in Sacred Heart Hospital in Pensacola. Grace, Tommy Lee, and Elinor worked out a schedule to spend alternate days with her so that she would never lack for company.
Oscar complained to Elinor about being left alone. “Let Grace or Tommy Lee go. I need you here, Elinor.”
“Grace has a lot to do at the farm, Oscar. And Tommy Lee has plenty to keep him busy. I’m glad to go, and I have to do it. Lucille would fret if there wasn’t somebody by her bedside. And I don’t know what you mean by being all alone anyway. Isn’t Zad-die in here every minute of the day when I’m not? Besides, they shoo us out of that hospital at eleven, so I can be home at midnight.”
Visiting hours were over much earlier in much of the hospital, but Lucille had a private room, and in any case the Caskeys were a well-known family in the area. There was no trouble made about these quiet visits beyond the stated times.
On these evenings when Elinor was away at Lucille’s bedside, Oscar was at a loss. Football season was over, and he was no aficionado of basketball, and so the radio was of no use to him. He pouted at being alone. He’d tell Miriam and Malcolm and Billy to go out somewhere and eat. If Elinor wasn’t going to be around, he didn’t want any of them. Zaddie brought up his dinner, and then sat with him through the evening news, but directly afterward Oscar sent her down with the tray. “Come back up and turn down my bed, Zaddie. I’ve got weary bones today.”