The Truth According to Us

  “Really?” said Miss Betts. “Then you have the advantage of us, Miss Beck, and the truth shall prevail.” She tapped the papers straight and held them out.

  20

  Father had been gone for almost a week. Bird wrote him a letter telling him he’d better come home soon or she’d loose her flea-circus fleas in his bedroom, but we didn’t know where to send it. Miss Beck’s high heels tapped up and down the stairs, and her little fingers tapped out her book, with a ping at the end of each line. I took comfort from knowing that wherever Father was, he was just as far from Miss Beck as he was from us. The days slipped by, Mae and Minerva smoked and laughed and listened to the radio, and I found Jane Eyre, which was the best book in the world. I read it three times straight through.

  I was heat-addled by the end of the third time. When I’d picked up the book that morning, I’d been in the shade, but as I closed the cover, I realized that the sun had been burning down on me for a long time. I lifted my eyes, and all I could see was a blue rectangle the size of a page.

  I got up and went inside, thinking I should get into the cool. But the kitchen was hot. Not as hot as the outside, but hot. And quiet. I felt my way to the refrigerator and stuck my head inside, because Jottie wasn’t there to tell me not to. The motor rumbled in my ear, and when I came out, nice and chilly, I could see again. I saw there was money underneath the sugar bowl on the kitchen table. I didn’t count it—didn’t touch it, even—but I knew what it meant. Father was home. That’s where he always put it, there under the sugar bowl. “Father’s back,” I called to whoever might hear.

  No one answered.

  “Jottie?”

  Nothing. Where was she, anyway?

  I licked my finger and stuck it in the sugar bowl, making sure not to muss the money beneath it.

  “Father?”

  The whole world might have dropped away, that’s how quiet it was in the kitchen. I sucked on my finger for a minute, and then I snatched a dustrag out of the cupboard and sidled up the back stairs without making any sound. Miss Beck’s room was near the back of the house, next door to the one Bird and I shared. Jottie had the big room way up in the front. Father’s door was closed—he could be inside, sleeping. He usually slept for a long time when he came home from business. I walked silently to Miss Beck’s room and listened carefully at her door for a minute before I scratched on it. “Miss Beck,” I murmured. If she answered, I was going to say I was there to dust. I’d go ahead and do it, too, if I had to. You have to make sacrifices if you want to get anywhere in life.

  I swung the door open and relaxed. She wasn’t there. I stepped in and shut the door behind me. I had promised God I wouldn’t touch anything. I’d just look at what was lying around. If Jane Eyre had only looked around a little, she might have saved herself a lot of heartache.

  I looked. She’d made her bed, but she hadn’t tucked the sheet in. It hung below the bedspread, and my fingers itched to twitch it right. I turned away, so as not to succumb, and went to her dresser. She’d put out a silver brush set on the top, and there was a squirting perfume bottle in a silver holder beside it. I couldn’t get my nose high enough to smell what kind it was. She’d put three photographs up there, too. One showed her family, I supposed, because she was in it. A father with a big stomach, a mother wearing a frilly dress, a man who must have been a brother, scowling, and Miss Beck herself, holding on to her curls. There was another picture of the brother, too. He was still scowling. The third frame showed a beautiful young lady—she could have been in the movies; that’s how beautiful she was. She was wearing an evening dress and she looked surprised. Underneath her face was writing: “For darling Layla with love, Rose.”

  Miss Beck had left one of the drawers hanging open. Jottie always said that was the sign of a sloven, but, to be fair, that dresser had sticky drawers. I didn’t touch a thing, but I looked. I figured it was nightgowns I was looking at—I couldn’t really tell without holding them up—because there was lace and slippery pink stuff, all tumbled together. I caught sight of a piece of satin, too, with embroidery. Suddenly I thought that maybe this was what she wore underneath, and I blushed. It was just exactly what seductresses wore underneath—lacy, satiny things. The picture of Mae and Waldon flickered through my mind, even though I didn’t want it to. I turned away, but not before my stomach squeezed a little.

  Miss Beck’s table wasn’t slovenly atall. There was a typewriter standing in the middle of neat stacks of paper, some typed on, some clean. I almost forgot my promise to God and touched the stack of fresh white onionskin, I loved it so. Just at the last second, I pulled my finger back. I turned my head sideways to read the paper on top of the stack:

  Mr.and Mrs. Arwell Tapscott (know Jottie)

  Mr. and Mrs. John Sue

  Mr. and Mrs. John Lansbrough

  Mrs. Hartford Lacey (knows Jottie)

  Mr. Tare Russell (knows Jottie?)

  Dr. and Mrs. George Averill (hospital?)

  Mr. and Mrs. Tyler Bowers TUESDAY, 3:00

  Mr. and Mrs. Baker Spurling

  Mr. and Mrs. Ralph Shank (Amer. Everlasting) THURSDAY, 2:00

  Mr. and Mrs. Sloan Inskeep

  Mrs. Alexander Washington

  Mr. and Mrs. Eugene Silver

  Pretty boring, I thought. But then I looked again. Someone—Miss Beck, I figured—had drawn an arrow next to Mr. Shank’s name, an arrow pointing to a note: “Why no job fr Felix, Amer. E? When?” That was easy to figure out—she wondered why didn’t Father have a job at the mill. Mind your own business, I sneered. And then I thought about what I was doing and I had to bite my mouth to keep from laughing out loud.

  I turned to the other things on the table: ink, a red fountain pen, a few pencils, a dictionary, a notebook I was too honorable to open, and a stack of letters. She got a lot of letters. “Get thee behind me, Satan,” I whispered, and he did. I only bent down and blew a tiny bit, no more than a breeze might have done. The stack of envelopes shifted, and a thick creamy one slid off and fell to the floor. On the back of it, in dark-blue printing, it said “Senator and Mrs. Grayson Beck, Hillyer Place, Washington, the District of Columbia.”

  I straightened up and peered at the father in Miss Beck’s photograph. Could he be a senator? His stomach looked like a senator’s, but he didn’t seem old enough otherwise. I looked at Miss Beck’s table once more and my heart flopped. There, where the stack of envelopes had fallen sideways, I could see the edge of a piece of paper peeking out from beneath, and on that paper was my father’s writing. It was just three words I could see, but I could tell his straight up-and-down writing anywhere. The words were: “you’re alive. F.”

  Oh, then temptation did come up and nearly crush me. What “you’re alive. F”? I could think of a million things but only one that was important: “I’ll love you as long as you’re alive. F.” Never mind that it was impossible to imagine my father writing such a silly thing; in that moment, torn to pieces as I was, I could see him doing it. No, no, no, I told myself. It’s just something you made up, like thinking Miss Beck was royalty. I saw him walking away with Miss Beck on his arm. No, I said to myself, you made it up and it’s not real. There’s one way to find out. No there’s not, I said. God will strike you down if you do. God will understand.

  My hand crept out, all on its own.

  I heard the screen door slam. “Anyone home?” called Jottie.

  I was halfway down the stairs before I knew where I was. Jottie would save me.

  Felix appeared suddenly as they were eating dessert. One moment, the door was an empty square, and the next, he was leaning against the door frame, smiling at them all. Minerva, lifting a forkful of pie to her mouth, squeaked.

  Jottie raised an eyebrow. “He is risen.”

  “Daddy!” squealed Bird. She squeezed out of her chair without bothering to push it back and threw her arms around him.

  “Hey, Birdie,” he said, cupping his fingers along her cheek. He smiled at Willa. “Hey, sweetheart.”
br />   “Hey—” she began, but her soft voice was drowned in Minerva’s.

  “I don’t know why you have to creep up like that, Felix!”

  Hooking his arm under Bird’s, he pulled her along with him into the dining room. “Anything left for me?” he asked. “Or did Layla eat it all?”

  She looked up, smiling, to protest, and he dropped her a wink.

  “Want some pie?” Jottie asked.

  “Sounds all right,” he said, pulling out his accustomed chair. “Come on up here and sit in my lap,” he said to Bird. “You can be my napkin.”

  “Don’t spill pie on me,” warned Bird, hoisting herself up by his belt. “This is my fourth-best dress.”

  “Mm,” he said. “Good thing. I’d probably go blind if you were wearing your first-best.” He took the plate Mae handed him. “Thanks. Any coffee in that pot?”

  “How was your business trip?” asked Layla.

  “Fine, fine.” He glanced at Jottie. “These girls behave themselves?”

  She passed him a cup. “They weren’t as bad as they usually are.”

  “Any news?” His eyes circled the table.

  Mae sighed. “Nothing much. Hot as can be, but that’s not news.”

  There was a short silence.

  “Miss Betts and I had quite a discussion about history today,” offered Layla. She glanced at Jottie. “She recommends that I beware my sources.”

  “Oh, she does, does she?” said Jottie.

  Layla nodded, her mouth full of pie. “And”—she swallowed—“I heard about a certain incident in her father’s funeral parlor.” She gave Felix a conspiratorial smile. “Something involving coffins.”

  He did not return the smile but merely lifted one eyebrow and reached around Bird to stir his coffee.

  Flustered to find she had miscalibrated, Layla swerved to a new subject. “Yes, well, we were discussing your father, really. And American Everlasting. I’ve got an interview with Mr. Shank next Thursday, and I thought I should do some research.” She looked around the table hopefully. “Miss Betts said your father was very popular. Much beloved, she said.”

  “Much beloved,” said Felix. “Is that right?”

  “He was!” Minerva said. “He was much beloved, Felix.”

  Felix laughed. “Depends who you’re talking to, I guess.”

  Layla glanced at him in confusion. “Miss Betts remembered him fondly. He gave her a penny for candy once.”

  “Ah,” said Felix.

  “That’s just the kind of thing Daddy would do,” said Minerva. “He was always doing things like that.”

  “He sure was. Handing out pennies to the friendless night and day,” said Felix.

  “Miss Betts wasn’t friendless,” Layla said. “He just gave her a penny.”

  “Maybe she said she was friendless,” suggested Bird, “so he’d give her a penny.”

  Jottie laughed. “I bet you’re right,” she said to Bird. “She’s crafty like that, Miss Betts is. I can see her now, lurking on a street corner, waiting for Daddy to come by so she could say she was friendless and get herself a penny.”

  Felix glanced up from his coffee. “If she did a clog dance, he’d give her two pennies.”

  “Daddy couldn’t resist a clog dance,” Jottie said, shaking her head. “It was like strong drink to him.”

  “You don’t see much clog dancing anymore,” offered Minerva.

  “It’s a shame,” said Felix. “Miss Betts clogged with the best of them.”

  “Where’d she get the clogs?” asked Willa, looking between her aunt and her father with sparkling eyes.

  Felix looked pained. “I’m sorry to say it. She stole them.”

  Jottie grimaced. “Don’t tell me. Just don’t tell me anything about it.”

  “From a child.”

  “A little Dutch child?” asked Jottie. “A little lost Dutch child?”

  Felix nodded. “Took ’em right off her purple feet.”

  Mae choked, and Jottie reached out to thump her on the back. Mae nodded, her eyes watering, and Jottie glared around the table. “Now, don’t you-all go passing judgment on Miss Betts.”

  “Clog dancing exerts a powerful fascination,” Felix murmured.

  “None of us is beyond it,” Jottie said sternly.

  “If a lady like Miss Betts can fall, what hope is there for the rest of us?” asked Felix.

  “Prayer is my armor!” cried Jottie.

  Felix dropped his face into Bird’s curls and laughed.

  Jottie smiled. “I win.”

  He nodded, acknowledging her victory, and turned his eyes to Layla. “See, now, I wouldn’t trust that Miss Betts as far as I could throw her.”

  “How could I?” Layla giggled. “Now that I know her secret vice.”

  No, thought Jottie, watching Layla’s dazzled face, you win, Felix, as always. Tired of her brother’s invincibility, tired of her own lack of it, she scraped her chair roughly away from the table and stood. I wish Sol had seen me the other day, she thought. I wish he’d come into Statler’s and seen me. Then I’d know if he still cares. As the circle of eyes turned to her, she slid Willa’s plate beneath her own, placed the forks on top, and made a decision. “I’ll take you over to the mill on Thursday, Layla. If you like.”

  Felix’s eyebrow rose, questioning.

  Jottie looked away.

  Layla pushed back her chair and began to make a replica of Jottie’s neat stack. “That would be grand, Jottie. Thanks.”

  Felix watched the two of them for a moment and then pulled his cigarette case from his pocket and settled himself back in his chair.

  Willa, too, remained at the table, watching the women move competently from the table to the kitchen. She waited them out, ignoring their slim arms reaching and worn heels tapping back and forth; she waited until there was nothing left for Layla to carry and then she waited as Layla put one foot on the bottom stair and turned back to see if Felix was looking. She waited until Layla slowly climbed the stairs, and then she waited for Felix to draw a cigarette out of his case and glance at her. She waited for the swift scratch and the waft of sulfur and the smoke coiling upward, and then she pushed back her chair and stood. “Guess I’ll go out and play now,” she muttered.

  Felix laughed quietly. “I guess you will.”

  She stopped at his chair and bent swiftly to kiss his shoulder. Then she went out into the falling blue evening.

  21

  July 2, 1938

  Layla Beck

  47 Academy Street

  Macedonia, West Virginia

  Layla,

  I ran into Denton at Fiske’s last night—it was a seat-of-the-pants party in honor of Larry’s latest, Noose around the Moon (real stinker of a title, I think, but he insisted). In between diatribes about the Non-Intervention Committee and the decline of Amalgamated Meat Cutters, Denton let loose a headline about you. He claimed that you were an employee of the Works Progress Administration (italics mine, of course; Denton loves only meat-packers). He didn’t know anything else—or, if he did, he was too pickled to convey it—so I telephoned Lance from the party and asked him where the hell you were. He didn’t want to tell me, the old protective-brother routine, but he didn’t stand a chance against the Antonin bloodhounds and I got it out of him.

  My god, Layla, has the Earth stopped in its gyre? When you said your dad was tired of supporting you, I figured he’d land you a cozy little sinecure with one of his bureaucratic toadies—Secretary to the Delaware Perfume Board, something along those lines. But the WPA? Is it a plot hatched by Senator McNary to kill your father? Are you a mole for Father Coughlin? What are you doing down there? Lance told me you were on the Writers’ Project and said something about a history book. I said, That’s preposterous, Lance. Layla doesn’t know enough history to carve on the head of a peanut. He got sore and told me you were a fine writer. He might be right about that. You can write—it’s what you write that’s absurd.

  I’ve been practically li
ving in the office while Teutzer’s in court. They’ve brought out every damn argument in the book, including moral turpitude and providing aid and comfort to the enemies of the state, but he’s going to get off. It’s free speech, and even the fascists at the D.A. can’t find a way to get around that. The upshot is that I’m writing almost every issue of Unite! single-handed and spending most of my nights here, on the sofa. I can’t remember what my apartment looks like, but perhaps that’s just as well. At least the windows here open and—maybe you remember?—the sofa is accommodating.

  Nonetheless, I’m due for a few days off and I want to get out of the city. I’d travel a long way to see you on relief, my luscious Layla. What say I come down to take in the sights of West Virginia, including that one? I’d like to get a firsthand look at how FERA is organizing coal-worker relief, and the Arthurdale settlement could be good for a laugh. If I get two stories out of it, Marlon may even pay expenses. Unlikely, but worth a try. Are you staying someplace where my presence would go unnoticed, or do you have an old lady in a lace collar barricading your virtue?

  I’ve missed you. Remember those last two words I said to you? I want a retraction.

  Love,

  Charles

  July 5, 1938

  Charles Antonin

  c/o Unite!

  7 E. 14th St.

  New York, New York

  Charles,

  Surprised to hear from you is putting it mildly. Didn’t you issue an irreversible diktat of banishment at our last meeting? Or had the bourgeois fog that clouds my reason (a direct quote) got into my ears as well? Perhaps I am mistaken and you didn’t say that our relations were founded upon decadent individualism and that I was nothing more than a whore of the upper class.