The Truth According to Us

  Layla lifted her face to Emmett, smiling. “I had no idea. Nobody tells me a thing.”

  Unexpectedly, Willa spoke up. “Nobody tells anybody anything. You’ve got to find it all out for yourself.”

  Emmett gave Willa a dark look before he turned to Layla, saying, a bit stiffly, “Yes, I teach at the high school. Not much local history, though. United States history.”

  “Don’t they have to learn the history of West Virginia anymore?” asked Jottie. “We had to hear about Governor Spotswood and the salt trust and the Cumberland Road until we were blue in the face. I remember it still.”

  “Governor Spotswood,” giggled Bird.

  “I’ve just begun researching the religious institutions of Macedonia,” said Layla, looking alertly at Emmett. “It seems as though there was an enormous increase in the number of churches in the 1820s and ’30s.”

  “Oh. Well, I don’t know much about that,” he said, dropping his eyes to his plate.

  “I do,” said Jottie, exasperated. “You just ask me, Miss Beck, and I’ll tell you all about it. Quite a story.”

  Emmett snickered, looking more like himself. “I give you Miss Josephine Romeyn, noted scholar of the religious history of Macedonia.”

  “Pooh,” said Jottie, cheering up. “You teachers don’t know much if you don’t know about Reverend Goodacre and his sister.”

  “Who?” asked Layla.

  “Reverend Goodacre—oh, he was a rascally thing,” she began. Emmett lifted his dark eyes and rested them thoughtfully on her. “I’ll tell you all about him tomorrow, Miss Beck, though it isn’t a fit tale for a Sunday.”

  “Oh, that would be wonderful, Miss Romeyn—” Layla broke off, startled, as a thunderous stampede of feet shook the front stairs and stormed across the porch to the door. There was a pause, filled with heavy breathing, and then the unmistakable thud of someone getting hit in the head. “WillanBird?” squealed a child.

  “It’s the Lloyds,” observed Willa.

  “And Lottie and Myra and Mary-Shore,” said the little voice helpfully. “Come on out when you’re done, okay?”

  “What’re you playing?” called Bird.

  “Capture the flag.”

  Bird pushed back her chair, muttering, “M’I please be excused?” and galloped down the hall without waiting for an answer. Willa rolled her eyes and followed more sedately. The three grown-ups laughed softly.

  “I guess some things don’t change,” Emmett said.

  “They don’t seem to break as many bones as we used to,” Jottie said.

  “That’s because Felix and Vause aren’t in charge,” said Emmett, smiling.

  Jottie shook her head. “Jun Lloyd is just as bad as Felix and Vause ever were. He was trying to get Bird to jump out a second-story window last week. And of course she was perfectly happy to do it.”

  “Who’s Vause?” Layla asked.

  They turned toward her. Emmett said, “Vause Hamilton. He was my brother’s best friend.” He stood. “That was a fine supper, Jottie.”

  —

  In the kitchen, Emmett picked up a plate and scraped a few carrots into the can.

  Jottie stared at him. “When did you start that?”

  He scraped another plate. “How do you think my dishes get done?”

  “I guess I thought you left them for—what’s that girl’s name—Ota?”

  “No. Ota comes to clean house. I cook and wash up for myself.”

  Jottie whistled softly. “A pearl of great price, that’s what you are.”

  “Thanks.” He stacked the dishes by the sink.

  She watched his back. “You should get married.”

  “I could say the same to you.”

  That wasn’t fair.

  “And who’d I marry, anyhow?” he went on.

  “Plenty of girls would jump at the chance,” said Jottie. “Stella.”

  Emmett spun around, outraged. Jottie laughed. “All right, all right. A lot of men think she’s real pretty.”

  “I’d rather talk to a bread box.”

  “Don’t you go with anyone?” she asked, daring.

  He frowned. “Remember? I’m the one that doesn’t answer all your questions like you were God Incarnate.”

  “I don’t think I’m God Incarnate,” sputtered Jottie.

  Emmett smiled at the plate in his hand. “Sol sent you his best, by the way.”

  “Oh,” she said, disappointed. “That’s all he said?”

  “That’s exactly what you said!” Emmett exclaimed. “If you’d said something more, he would have done the same.”

  “What should I have said, if you’re so smart?” Jottie asked.

  “How about Sorry I don’t talk to you,” he suggested.

  “I do talk to him!” she protested. “I said hello to—”

  “Or,” Emmett continued over her, “Sorry Felix won’t let me talk to you.”

  “That’s not true!” Jottie said. She turned to scan the kitchen for her cigarettes. “And besides, I do—”

  “Or, Sorry I do every single damn thing Felix says and Sorry I can’t go anywhere and Sorry I can’t see anyone and Sorry I’m stuck in this house forever because I’m too much of a coward to leave it.”

  “Stop that!” She snatched her cigarettes from the table. “That is just not true! I go places—”

  He snorted contemptuously. “Oh, that’s right! You go to scenic downtown Macedonia. To the New Grocery and Krohn’s Department Store. Yes, it’s quite a life,” he said. “You’ll die young from that kind of excitement.” He set a bowl on the drainboard with a crack. “I can’t believe Sol still cares,” he said bitterly. “How many years has he been trying to get your attention? Twenty? Jesus. I hope he gives up. I hope he finds himself someone nice and gets married. Hell, Sol can marry Stella, and they can have themselves a pile of babies. Better than him spending the rest of his life waiting for you to get out from under Felix’s thumb.” Jottie tried to steady herself. He was mad about Felix and Miss Beck, that’s all. He was jealous. “Emmett,” she began, “honey. I know you’re upset”—he glared at her—“but you’re not being fair. You’re not seeing Felix’s side. What Sol did, it wasn’t something Felix could forgive.” She looked up, into his eyes. “Imagine what it was like for Felix after Vause died. It was like the end of the world. And then to have Sol say it was Felix who’d done it, that it was his fault—”

  “That’s not what Sol said.” Emmett shook his head. “He only said it seemed like something Felix would do.”

  She tried to explain. “But that’s just it. Don’t you see? It was just an idea, and then people started to believe it because they wanted to. Everyone had been waiting for years to see Felix fall off his high horse, and nobody wanted to think anything bad about Vause. Everybody loved Vause.” She sighed. “I don’t hold it against Sol, I really don’t. I think he was beside himself with grief. But Felix? Felix almost went out of his mind. He can’t forget it.” She looked up at him. “Don’t you see? After finding out that Vause had betrayed him—”

  “Vause betrayed him?” said Emmett. “What about you?”

  And there it was: Betrayed. Lied to. Abandoned. Not loved. Never loved. All of it, a lie. A joke. Shame squirmed inside her, an awful worm. “Don’t,” she said. “Just don’t.” She brought a cigarette to her mouth with trembling fingers. “It was terrible, and Felix stood by me. He didn’t leave me and he didn’t lie to me and that’s all. That’s all there is.”

  For a moment, Emmett stood, watching her fruitlessly strike match after match. Finally he sighed and took a match from the box. “I’m sorry, Jottie,” he said. “I’m sorry, honey.” He held out the lighted match and she bent over it. When she straightened, he said, “You paid.” He gestured to the tired kitchen. “You gave up college, you stayed home with Mama and Daddy, you’re raising the girls. You paid like it was your fault, and I don’t understand why.”

  She tried to smile. “I paid for being stupid, I guess. For being so in lo
ve with Vause that I couldn’t see what he was like.”

  He frowned. “Nobody saw it. Not Felix, not you, not anybody.”

  “I should have known,” she murmured.

  “What? How could you?”

  “If I’d known, I could have stopped it from happening. If I had seen it, I could have saved”—she hesitated—“all of us.”

  “Hold up. Are you saying you think it was your fault the mill burnt down?”

  Her eyes darted toward him and away. “Maybe a little,” she admitted. There was a silence. “One time, it was right after Vause got back from the war, when he was still so worn down with the flu, we went to the river, the two of us. He fell asleep, there in the shade, with his head in my lap”—she flushed—“and I watched him. For hours, I looked at him. I didn’t stir. I didn’t want to wake him. I just looked at his face, and all I thought was how beautiful he was, like something in a picture of heaven. Golden.” She lifted her eyes to Emmett’s. “Remember that about him? Like there was gold under his skin?” He shrugged and she dropped her eyes. “But that was my weakness, you see? If I had looked better, I would have known what he was inside, and I could have stopped him. I could have told him to leave, and”—she smiled at herself—“oh, it’s silly, I know, but I always think that then he’d still be alive, and Felix would be the president of the mill, and everything would be fine.”

  “Fine,” he repeated, and then cocked his head quizzically. “And what would you be doing?”

  She took a long breath of smoke. “That’s a good question. I don’t know. I don’t ever get that far, I guess. Maybe I’d have finished college.” She laughed. “Maybe I’d be like Caroline Betts. A pillar of rectitude.”

  “Maybe you’d be married to Sol.”

  “Puh. Sol would be married to some nice lady.” She glanced down at herself. “Someone stylish. Someone who plays canasta.”

  “Canasta?” He paused. When she said nothing, he went on. “You’re nuts. The whole thing’s nuts. You couldn’t have known what Vause was going to do. Nobody knew.”

  “I guess.” She nodded, unconvinced. “Will you go call the girls?”

  He went out in the twilight to find them while she set the last of the cups in the dish drain. Listlessly, she wiped the table, the counter, the stove, and moved to the pantry for the broom. When he came back, the weak wood of the back porch cracking under his shoes, he was carrying Bird under one arm, like a library book. “She dared to resist,” he said to Jottie.

  “Carry me upstairs!” Bird ordered.

  “Carry yourself upstairs,” Emmett said, setting her gently on her feet.

  “Get in the bath, honey. Church tomorrow,” Jottie said.

  The door wheezed again as Willa came in. She stopped still, looking at her aunt with narrow eyes. “What?” she said. “What happened?”

  Jottie lifted her head and blew smoke in Willa’s direction. “Nothing happened. Did it, Emmett?”

  It was pretty late by the time we got into bed, almost ten o’clock. “You-all go to sleep,” Jottie said. She flicked the light out and made to close the door, but she sort of faltered as she brought it to, like she knew she wouldn’t get away with it or maybe didn’t even want to. We knew we had her then, and Bird pounced. “Tell us a story.”

  She tried to sound stern. “One story.”

  One, we agreed piously, and Jottie came in and settled herself against Bird’s pillows and waggled her empty arm for me to snuggle into. Jottie asked what kind of story did we want.

  “I want one about me,” said Bird. Like she always did.

  “No. Father,” I said. “I want one about Father when he was little.”

  “Something bad he did,” commanded Bird.

  “Well,” Jottie said, “that makes it easy. You want the one about Slonaker’s barn? Or the polo ponies?”

  “One we haven’t heard.”

  She was quiet for so long that I thought she’d gone to sleep. I was preparing to jostle her when she sighed and began to speak. “Now. Listen.” I loved her voice when she told a story, so low and round. “We had an uncle—he wasn’t even our real uncle, just someone Daddy liked for some reason—Uncle Dade. He was just a horrible man. He gave the boys presents all the time—never a thing for us girls, but he’d bring the boys all sorts of grisly things, like knives and cap guns. One day, he showed up with a bow-and-arrow set for Felix—not a toy, a real one, with genuine deadly arrows, all knife-sharp points on one end and feathers on the other. Felix was about twelve at the time, and Mama was itching to take those arrows away, I could see she was, but she couldn’t do it in front of Uncle Dade, so Felix said thank you and whisked off before she could stop him. I followed him, like I generally did, and together we fixed up a wonderful plan. Felix was going to shoot an apple right off my head, like William Tell. We figured that once we’d practiced it a couple of times, we could sell tickets. Who wouldn’t pay a penny to see Felix shoot an apple off my head?”

  “I would,” said Bird.

  “But that’s terrible!” I said. “What if he hit you by mistake? Weren’t you scared?”

  Jottie laughed softly. “No. I was excited. I thought it was thrilling. And, besides, after he shot the apple off my head, I was going to shoot an apple off his. Sounded fine to me.”

  “Huh. And you’re always telling us we don’t have any sense.”

  “Well, I did begin to feel a little flimsy once I was backed up against the barn with an apple resting in my hair. Felix kept squinting and pulling the bowstring and flexing his arm. He said he had to get in the right mood or his hand would shake, which didn’t make me any easier in my mind. But right about then, a couple of his friends came climbing over the fence. They saw what he was doing, and one of them told Felix to stop.”

  “Who?” I asked.

  “Sol. His name was Sol, short for Solomon.”

  My eyebrows practically hit my hair, but no one saw in the dark.

  “Sol. Sounds fat,” observed Bird.

  Jottie laughed. “He wasn’t fat. He was small, then, and pale, because his mother made him stay inside and play the violin.”

  “Eww,” Bird said.

  “I know,” she agreed. “Anyway, he started yelling, but Felix paid him no mind, just kept squinting and aiming, so Sol ran over and yanked me away from the barn. I acted real indignant, but inside I was relieved—and then Felix said Sol had to take my place or he’d shoot at me anyway, and he’d aim for my head, he said. Poor Sol didn’t know what to do. He looked from Felix to me to Vause—”

  “Vause Hamilton?” I asked quickly.

  “Yes. Vause was there, too. After a moment, Sol stood up against the barn.”

  “Golly,” I said. “Just like Sydney Carton in Tale of Two Cities.”

  Jottie gave me a funny look. “Maybe. Once Sol was standing there with the apple on his head, Vause started to laugh. ‘Stop fooling,’ he called to Felix. ‘You ain’t really going to do it and you know it. You never were.’ Oh Lord, I knew just exactly what would happen next, and it did. That arrow flew through the air and went straight through the apple into the side of the barn, about a quarter of an inch above Sol’s head. Any closer and it would have killed him.”

  “What did Sol do?” asked Bird.

  Jottie’s voice slowed. “He stepped away from the barn and looked at the arrow. Then Felix said—oh, he could be so awful sometimes—he said, ‘Missed.’ ”

  We were quiet. It was an awful thing to say. “Then what?” I asked.

  I could see Jottie’s eyes glittering in the dark. “Then Sol picked up a rock and threw it at Felix as hard as he could.”

  “Did it hit him?” Bird asked.

  “ ’Course not. You know how fast your daddy can move. But Vause, he was quick, too, and he lit out after Felix. He was mad. Only time I ever saw him mad at Felix.”

  “Is he the one that burnt up?” asked Bird.

  “He didn’t burn up, he smothered,” I said quick, so Jottie wouldn’t have to say i
t. I glanced at her, to see if she looked sad. But she didn’t. She looked regular. “What happened then?” I asked.

  Jottie stroked my hair. “Oh. Nothing much. Felix came home a few hours later with a bloody nose.”