“Everything Felix stole from me, I want back,” she said, pulling his arms tighter around her. “Everything.” An entire life was owed to her. She pressed herself more closely against him.
“Jesus,” he murmured after a moment. “Let’s get married. Now.” He drew back and grinned at her. “You’re going to marry me!”
“That’s what I’m going to do,” she said, remembering her agony for Felix the night before. “That’s exactly what I’m going to do.”
“Good,” he said. His eyes circled the room. “Let’s live here. It’s bigger.” He leaned in to kiss her.
“But,” continued Jottie, not kissing him, “if you ever lie to me, I will end it. I will toss you out so fast your head will spin. And I will never let you back.” She raised her eyes to his. “You hear me?”
“Yes, ma’am,” said Sol. He butted her forehead gently with his. “I wouldn’t lie to you. I wouldn’t dare.”
She nodded imperiously, acknowledging the promise.
Emmett’s footsteps sounded on the porch. “I found ’em,” he announced, coming into the front room. “They’ll be along soon. Minnie’s going to stop at her house first.”
“Thanks, honey. How’s Bird?”
“Cantankerous. You want some ice-tea?”
“Oh God, yes.” She was so thirsty. Sol nodded, agreeing with her thirst. His agreement rankled. Agreement was the vanguard of pacification, and she would not—ever—be pacified again. She dropped into her pink chair, closed her eyes on him, and didn’t open them until she heard Emmett return.
“Stick-tea,” Emmett commented, setting down the pitcher and glasses.
She smiled, reaching for a glass. “I thought Felix was the bootlegger in this family.”
Emmett lifted one eyebrow. “I got untapped depths.”
For the first time in what felt like days, she laughed. “Thank God someone does. Emmett, honey, can you spend the night tonight? I think it would make Willa feel better, and I know it’ll make me feel better.”
“Be glad to.”
“You want me to stay, too?” Sol asked hopefully.
She turned to appraise him and his hope. It was, she saw, a desire to be helpful, to come to her aid in her time of need, to perform the duties of a fiancé worthily. So, she said to herself, this is what safety looks like when it’s in my front room. Ornamental. She smiled. “It’s real nice of you, Sol, but I have enough to explain to Minerva and Bird without trying to explain you, too.” She patted his hand. “And there’s Willa,” she added. “I’ll need to be keeping an eye on her.”
He nodded solemnly. “Okay. But we’ve got a lot to talk over, the three of us.”
“No, we don’t,” she said.
“No, we don’t,” said Emmett at the same moment.
“Now, just hold on,” Sol said, spreading his hands. “I know how you feel. Of course, he’s your brother, and I don’t say it’s a case of bringing charges. But I’d like to find out what Tare Russell was up to—”
“Leave Tare alone,” said Jottie, picturing his sad, freckled face. She hoped Felix had been honorable enough to repay him—in kindness, at least—for his lie.
“And then there’s the money,” Sol went on, as though she hadn’t spoken. “You reckon he’s been spending it all this time? She said there was a lot.” He nodded thoughtfully. “I guess we got to get into that basement.”
“No,” said Emmett and Jottie together.
He looked up, startled. “But that’s how we’ll know!” His eyes moved between them. “You want him to get off scot-free?” he asked indignantly. “Think about Vause!”
Think about Vause? He was telling her to think about Vause? She stared in amazement at Sol’s face, reading the story she found there. It wasn’t a story about Vause; it was about Sol. It was about how he had been right all along. All these years, he had been fighting to win this particular piece of property from Felix. For eighteen years, Felix’s version of the tale, unpopular though it was, had been the official one, the agreed-upon reality, and Sol’s version had been wrong. It had been the hole in Sol’s life, and it was now filled: He was now the rightful owner of the truth about Vause’s death. And that’s what he cares about, she thought, seeing his comfortable posture, his relaxed hands. Not about Vause himself. My poor darling, she mourned, my poor boy, they let you go. Their truth is nothing compared to yours, and I would let either story be true if it would make you live again. She turned to Sol, but there were no words to explain how terrible it seemed to her, that he and Felix should have lived so long on Vause’s death. “You need to drop this, Sol. If you want to marry me, you’ve got to drop it. I won’t put Willa through it, nor Tare. I won’t have it. You’ll need to let it go.”
Sol’s forehead furrowed as he tried to comprehend her. “But that’s—” He caught sight of her face. “Well, okay—if you’re sure. I mean, do you think Tare knows the case is there? Don’t you want to go see if—”
Emmett laughed softly. “If you think that case is still down in Tare’s basement, you’re crazy. He’s had”—a watch-checking pause—“over two hours. It’s long gone.”
“Ah, shit,” said Sol.
When Sol finally, reluctantly, took his leave, Emmett saw him out. Returning to the front room, he found his sister standing still in a shaft of golden sunlight, brilliant golden motes spiraling about her. He watched her, seeing something years-ago gone restored to her face. Was it freedom? Authority? Love? No, he decided, it was her self.
She glanced up, suddenly aware of him. “Emmett,” she said, stretching out her hand.
“There you are.” He took her hand in his, and, reunited, they smiled at each other.
—
It was lucky there were so many bedrooms, she thought. That was a good thing. One for Emmett. Henry—who, Jottie admitted, had been genuinely worried about Willa—and Minerva in the room she usually shared with Mae. Mae off in Willa’s bed. Layla in her room, of course. No one in Felix’s. Bird had taken one look at Willa and refused to leave her side, and now the two of them were in Jottie’s bed, packed tight together despite the heat. Jottie could just see Bird’s silvery curls glistening beyond the dark breadth of Willa.
She was longing for a cigarette. Longing. But she wouldn’t move. No, she wouldn’t. Willa had purposefully wrapped her fingers in a handcuff around Jottie’s wrist, and though her grip had loosened in sleep, Jottie would not free herself from it. When Willa awoke, she would find Jottie exactly where she’d left her. But between that moment and this, Jottie had time. Hours. She stared into the darkness and, diver on the precipice, looked down at the glittering blue. Now. Now she could. Carefully, schooled in starvation, she allowed herself to conjure Vause. First, the whole of him, from a distance, then, closer, his shining eyes, his golden hair, and now his beautiful hands against her face. She dove, and the water closed cool around her. Oh, the luxury of it, the greedy joy of assembling him rather than banishing him, oh—and she was lost in it: He smiled with one side of his mouth first and he tucked his head like so when he ran and his legs were too long for his bicycle and there was that accordion he carried around for weeks and he was scared of babies and he wore that purple tie and he bit into oranges to peel them and one day in February he buttoned me into his coat—
“See how handy it is, me almost dying of the flu?” he was saying. “You wouldn’t have fit before.”
She burrowed, shivering, against him, breathing deeply of him.
“What’re you doing in there?” he asked, his arms coming around the woolen lump that was her.
“I’m smelling you,” she replied, muffled.
There was a pause. “Is it bad?” he asked.
“No. No, it’s nice.” She dug her chin into his chest.
“Hey.” His arms tightened. “Stop that. Aren’t your feet cold?”
“No. Yes. But I don’t care. I like it in here.” She stepped onto his shoes.
“Ow.”
“I’m going to stay in here forever.
” Twin-tight against him, she listened to his heart, his stomach, his bones. Boldly, she untucked his shirt and slipped her freezing hands up along his skin.
“Jesus.” He stiffened and then slowly relaxed as her hands warmed. She stroked his back, her fingers roving his ribs, smoothing his shoulders, traveling the rippled ribbon of his spine. “Mmm,” he sighed. “I think your daddy would shoot me if he knew what you were doing right now.”
“I’m not doing anything wrong,” she whispered. She didn’t tell that what she was doing was pretending she was him.
Jottie marveled at this lost treasure, this wonder now restored to her. Hers again. Hers forever, never to be taken from her. Faster and faster, she pulled him to her, all of him hers again.
It was a while before she noticed she was hearing something, and even when she did, she thought it was a cat. She returned to Vause. But there it was again. Must be a big cat. Then she changed her mind. A possum? Two? Fighting? Dying? Maybe it was a dog. She had once heard a dog without a voice box try to bark, and this sounded the same, only louder. A dying dog? How long did it take a dog to die? This went on and on. Could it be a horse? Maybe someone had shot a horse and it had run away to her yard to die. That’ll be a diversion, she thought. A dead horse in the front yard.
On and on it went. The girls slept like they’d been enchanted. Finally Jottie couldn’t stand it any longer. Quietly, she rose from the bed and opened her door, then quickly pulled it to when she realized that the noise was louder in the hall. Emmett stood motionless beside his door.
“Is it a horse?” she whispered.
Minerva appeared, a white shape. “What in God’s name is that?” she whispered.
Henry peered around her. “Everyone all right?” he murmured.
“It’s Layla,” said Emmett quietly.
They all turned to look at Layla’s door, tight shut and dark. Henry ran his hand over his face.
“That poor child,” breathed Minerva. She looked at Jottie.
Jottie watched the dark door for a moment. Then she shook her head. “I can’t. Not tonight.” She glanced back at her own room, where Willa lay.
Minerva nodded and withdrew, Henry beside her.
Jottie looked at Emmett. “Tomorrow, I’ll start again. I’ll take care of her, I promise.”
He nodded, and she opened her door and slipped inside. She knew he was still standing in the hall.
49
August 15, 1938
Dear Mother,
I can’t come to your party for Lance. The deadline for my book is less than two weeks away, and I need to work every moment between now and then.
Kiss them both for me.
Love,
Layla
August 17
Layla,
Your mother’s on the warpath, but I’m proud of you. Keep at it. There will be other parties.
Father
P.S. Check enclosed.
In 1898, Charles Canson Huddleston, plant manager of Columbia Woolens of Dunellen, New Jersey, sought a location for a new hosiery mill. Traveling west by train, he considered the relative merits of Hagerstown, Moorefield, and Cumberland before settling on Macedonia, which, as he wrote to the president of the company, impressed him by its “modesty, sobriety, and freedom from the taint of the union.” Huddleston’s enthusiasm for Macedonia was soon
Layla looked up.
“Tested,” said Jottie.
“Tested,” wrote Layla, and looked up again.
“Oh, honey, give it here.” Jottie took the pen from Layla’s hand and began to write. For a time, the only sound was pen on paper.
Layla looked out the window.
Frowning, Jottie read what she’d written. “What’s another word for garter?”
“I don’t know,” said Layla. She glanced at her father’s letter. “The only time in his life he’s ever been proud of me, and it’s a lie.”
“It’s not a lie,” said Jottie. “You’re working.”
“No. You’re working.”
Jottie put her hand on Layla’s. “You already wrote most of it. I’m just filling in here and there.”
Layla nodded. “Still. I’m lying. I’m pretending to be a writer.”
“Oh, honey. I bet every writer thinks he’s pretending, even Ernest Q. Hemingway.”
“Ben and Father were right. I’m an idiot.”
Jottie put down her pen. “You’re not an idiot. It wasn’t your fault. Felix was after you from the minute he saw you, and if there’s ever been a woman who could resist that, I haven’t met her. You have plenty of company, if it makes you feel any better.”
There was a silence. Then Layla burst out, “Was he trying to make a fool of me?”
“No. No, honey. He just has no—no pity, I guess it is. He never has. I tried to warn you, but, well.” Jottie folded her mouth tight. “I wish I could have stopped him.”
“He didn’t care about me, not for a second,” said Layla bitterly. “He doesn’t care about anyone.”
Jottie sighed. “He does, though. He cares about the girls. He cared about Vause. He even cared about me. Just not as much as he cared about himself.”
“Oh, Jottie, I’m sorry!” Layla squeezed Jottie’s hand. “I don’t mean to be so self-centered. It’s only—I feel like I don’t know anything about anyone.”
Jottie nodded. “Felix has a real talent for making people feel that way.”
Layla put her head in her hands. “I should be locked up for my own safety.”
“That’d be a shame,” said Jottie. “A real waste.” She looked at the paper in front of her. “You think it’s all right if I mention Daddy?”
Layla sighed. “He was the president of the company. You have to mention him.”
“It feels like showing off, but I guess you’re right.” Jottie rubbed her nose and bent over the paper once more. “Twenty-eight years, he was there,” she murmured. Layla stared out the window.
When Emmett came in, half an hour later, Jottie looked up with an absorbed frown. “Do you remember when they started making women’s hose?”
“What?” His eyes darted to Layla and back again.
“American Everlasting. When did they start making women’s hosiery?”
“1917.”
“You’re making that up.”
He smiled.
“1917,” she repeated, writing it down.
“Where’re the girls?” he asked. “I brought a book for Willa.”
She raised her eyebrows. “Don’t expect her to thank you.”
“I don’t. I just brought it.”
“She’ll talk when she’s ready.”
“I know,” Emmett said mildly. “All right if I take Bird to Statler’s?”
Jottie nodded.
“Should I ask Willa if she wants to come?”
“You can try. Don’t get upset if she doesn’t answer.”
“I won’t, I told you.”
Layla’s eyes followed him as he left the room in search of his nieces. “What about him?” she asked suspiciously.
Jottie looked up. “Who?”
“Emmett. Is he like Felix?”
Jottie smiled. “No.”
They thought I stopped talking because of Father. Even Jottie thought that. But it wasn’t true. I stopped talking because I was exhausted. Every day, I got a little bit farther behind everyone else, until I felt like I could just barely see them in the distance, their backs turned toward me, small figures I thought I’d known before. It was clear that I’d never catch up to them. I was too tired.
Jottie thought that what Father had done had struck me dumb: how Father had stolen money from the mill and set it on fire and then lied about it, lied even to Jottie, and broken her heart. And that was terrible, his stealing and lying. I knew that. I knew it. But inside my secret self, where I would never talk about it, even if I could, I understood why he’d lied. I understood what it felt like when he saw the flames and realized that Vause Hamilton was going to die beca
use of him, how he must have put his hand over his mouth to keep from crying out and how he didn’t know what to do, so he ran. I could understand how his heart had hammered, how sick he had felt, like he was dying himself, because in one moment he had lost everything. And he had lied, I knew, because he couldn’t bear for Jottie to hate him, he couldn’t bear to lose the one last thing he had. I knew because I had done it, too. I had lost everything, and I had ruined Father’s life. I knew that if I had had just a minute more, I would have lied, I would have thought of a way, some way, to make Jottie know how much Vause Hamilton loved her without telling Father’s secret. But instead I’d broken it all, and Father hated me, and every time I remembered his face when I told about the envelopes, I had to curl up into a ball, tighter and tighter, to make myself so small I’d disappear.
I tried to console myself by saying that at least I’d saved Jottie, that Jottie was better off because of what I’d done, but I wasn’t sure about that. She told me that she was going to marry Mr. McKubin and he was going to come live in our house and everything was going to be grand. She kept saying that, over and over. How we’d have a wonderful new life, wonderful. How Bird and I would have everything nice. Well, that was fine, I supposed, but I didn’t care much about it, so I didn’t say anything back, and after a week or so, Jottie stopped talking about our wonderful new life. She went on flying around like she always did, but sometimes I’d catch her standing stock-still, watching at nothing. Maybe she was thinking about her wonderful new life. Or maybe she was missing Vause Hamilton. I didn’t know. I didn’t ask.
Another thing I’d tell myself was at least Miss Beck didn’t have Father any more than we did. But that was a poor scrap. He was gone, and I’d lost him.
I hated Miss Beck then. Oh, how I hated her. I knew it was my own fault he was gone, but I had to share out some hate. I already had too much for myself. I suppose I could have blamed Jottie, for she’d sent Father away. But I could never hate Jottie, I could only love her. So I settled on Miss Beck and hated her. I hated her so much I thought I might burst into flames, which sometimes happens, I’ve read about it. I sat at the dinner table with my eyes on my plate so I wouldn’t look at her and die of my hatred. It was too much to expect that I would eat, too, but Jottie didn’t know that, and she got more and more worried about me, piling my plate with spinach and beets and other awful things.