“our guests here don’t want to get into al your politicking during—”
“Francine, let me speak my mind. God knows I can’t do it from nine to five, so let me speak my mind in my own home.”
Missus Whitworth’s smile does not waver, but the slightest bit of pink rises in her cheeks. She studies the white Floradora roses in the
center of the table. Stuart stares at his plate with the same cold anger as before. He hasn’t looked at me since the chicken course. Everyone is
quiet and then someone changes the subject to the weather.
WHEN SUPPER IS FINALLY OVER, we’re asked to retire out on the back porch for after-dinner drinks and coffee. Stuart and I linger in the hal way. I touch his arm, but he pul s away.
“I knew he’d get drunk and start in on everything.”
“Stuart, it’s fine,” I say because I think he’s talking about his father’s politics. “We’re al having a good time.”
But Stuart is sweating and feverish-looking. “It’s Patricia this and Patricia that, al night long,” he says. “How many times can he bring her
up?”
“Just forget about it, Stuart. Everything’s okay.”
He runs a hand through his hair and looks everywhere but at me. I start to get the feeling that I’m not even here to him. And then I realize what
I’ve known al night. He is looking at me but he is thinking about… her. She is everywhere. In the anger in Stuart’s eyes, on Senator and Missus Whitworth’s tongues, on the wal where her picture must’ve hung.
I tel him I need to go to the bathroom.
He steers me down the hal . “Meet us out back,” he says, but does not smile. In the bathroom, I stare at my reflection, tel myself that it’s just
tonight. Everything wil be fine once we’re out of this house.
After the bathroom, I walk by the living room, where the Senator is pouring himself another drink. He chuckles at himself, dabs at his shirt,
then looks around to see if anyone’s seen him spil . I try to tiptoe past the doorway before he spots me.
“There you are!” I hear him hol er as I slip by. I back up slowly into the doorway and his face lights up. “Wassa matter, you lost?” He walks out
into the hal way.
“No, sir, I was just…going to meet everybody.”
“Come here, gal.” He puts his arm around me and the smel of bourbon burns my eyes. I see the front of his shirt is saturated with it. “You
having a good time?”
“Yessir. Thank you.”
“Now, Stuart’s mama, don’t you let her scare you off. She’s just protective, is al .”
“Oh no, she’s been…very nice. Everything’s fine.” I glance down the hal , where I can hear their voices.
He sighs, stares off. “We’ve had a real hard year with Stuart. I guess he told you what happened.”
I nod, feeling my skin prickle.
“Oh, it was bad,” he says. “So bad.” Then suddenly he smiles. “Look a here! Look who’s coming to say hel o to you.” He scoops up a tiny
white dog, drapes it across his arm like a tennis towel. “Say hel o, Dixie,” he croons, “say hel o to Miss Eugenia.” The dog struggles, strains its head away from the reeking smel of the shirt.
The Senator looks back at me with a blank stare. I think he’s forgotten what I’m doing here.
“I was just headed to the back porch,” I say.
“Come on, come in here.” He tugs me by the elbow, steers me through a paneled door. I enter a smal room with a heavy desk, a yel ow light
shining sickishly on the dark green wal s. He pushes the door shut behind me and I immediately feel the air change, grow close and claustrophobic.
“Now, look, everybody says I talk too much when I’ve had a few but…” the Senator narrows his eyes at me, like we are old conspirators, “I
want to tel you something.”
The dog’s given up al struggle, sedated by the smel of the shirt. I am suddenly desperate to go talk to Stuart, like every second I’m away I’m
losing him. I back away.
“I think—I should go find—” I reach for the door handle, sure I’m being terribly rude, but not able to stand the air in here, the smel of liquor
and cigars.
The Senator sighs, nods as I grip the handle. “Oh. You too, huh.” He leans back against the desk, looking defeated.
I start to open the door but it’s the same lost look on the Senator’s face as the one Stuart had when he showed up on my parents’ porch. I
feel like I have no choice but to ask, “Me too what…sir?”
The Senator looks over at the picture of Missus Whitworth, huge and cold, mounted on his office wal like a warning. “I see it, is al . In your
eyes.” He chuckles bitterly. “And here I was hoping you might be the one who halfway liked the old man. I mean, if you ever joined this old family.”
I look at him now, tingling from his words… joined this old family.
“I don’t…dislike you, sir,” I say, shifting in my flats.
“I don’t mean to bury you in our troubles, but things have been pretty hard here, Eugenia. We were worried sick after al that mess last year.
With the other one.” He shakes his head, looks down at the glass in his hand. “Stuart, he just up and left his apartment in Jackson, moved everything out to the camp house in Vicksburg.”
“I know he was very…upset,” I say, when truthful y, I know almost nothing at al .
“Dead’s more like it. Hel , I’d drive out to see him and he’d just be sitting there in front of the window, cracking pecans. Wasn’t even eating
em, just pul ing off the shel , tossing em in the trash. Wouldn’t talk to me or his mama for…for months. ”
He crumples in on himself, this gigantic bul of a man, and I want to escape and reassure him at the same time, he looks so pathetic, but
then he looks up at me with his bloodshot eyes, says, “Seems like ten minutes ago I was showing him how to load his first rifle, wring his first dove-
bird. But ever since the thing with that girl, he’s…different. He won’t tel me anything. I just want to know, is my son alright?”
“I…I think he is. But honestly, I don’t…real y know.” I look away. Inside, I’m starting to realize that I don’t know Stuart. If this damaged him so
much, and he can’t even speak to me about it, then what am I to him? Just a diversion? Something sitting beside him to keep him from thinking
about what’s real y tearing him up inside?
I look at the Senator, try to think of something comforting, something my mother would say. But it’s just a dead silence.
“Francine would have my hide if she knew I was asking you this.”
“It’s alright, sir,” I say. “I don’t mind that you did.”
He looks exhausted by it al , tries to smile. “Thank you, darlin’. Go on and see my son. I’l see y’al out there in a while.”
I ESCAPE TO THE BACK PORCH and stand next to Stuart. Lightning bursts in the sky, giving us a flash of the eerily bril iant gardens, then the darkness sucks it al back in. The gazebo, skeleton-like, looms at the end of the garden path. I feel nauseous from the glass of sherry I drank after supper.
The Senator comes out, looking curiously more sober, in a fresh shirt, plaid and pressed, exactly the same as the last one. Mother and
Missus Whitworth strol a few steps, pointing at some rare rose winding its neck up onto the porch. Stuart puts his hand on my shoulder. He is
somehow better, but I am growing worse.
“Can we…?” I point inside and Stuart fol ows me inside. I stop in the hal way with the secret staircase.
“There’s a lot I don’t know about you, Stuart,” I say.
He points to the wal of pictures behind me, the empty space included. “Wel , here it al is.”
“Stuart, your daddy, he told me…” I try to find a way to put it.
He narrows his eyes at me. “Told you what?”
“How bad it was. How hard it was on you,” I say. “With Patricia.”
“He doesn’t know anything. He doesn’t know who it was or what it was about or…”
He leans back against the wal and crosses his arms and I see that old anger again, deep and red. He is wrapped in it.
“Stuart. You don’t have to tel me now. But sometime, we’re going to have to talk about this.” I’m surprised by how confident I sound, when I
certainly don’t feel it.
He looks me deep in the eyes, shrugs. “She slept with someone else. There.”
“Someone…you know?”
“No one knew him. He was one of those leeches, hanging around the school, cornering the teachers to do something about the integration
laws. Wel , she did something alright.”
“You mean…he was an activist? With the civil rights…?”
“That’s it. Now you know.”
“Was he…colored?” I gulp at the thought of the consequences, because even to me, that would be horrific, disastrous.
“No, he wasn’t colored. He was scum. Some Yankee from New York, the kind you see on the T.V. with the long hair and the peace signs.”
I am searching my head for the right question to ask but I can’t think of anything.
“You know the real y crazy part, Skeeter? I could’ve gotten over it. I could’ve forgiven her. She asked me to, told me how sorry she was. But I
knew, if it ever got out who he was, that Senator Whitworth’s daughter-in law got in bed with a Yankee goddamn activist, it would ruin him. Kil his
career like that.” He snaps his fingers with a crack.
“But your father, at the table. He said he thought Ross Barnett was wrong.”
“You know that’s not the way it works. It doesn’t matter what he believes. It’s what Mississippi believes. He’s running for the U.S. Senate this
fal and I’m unfortunate enough to know that.”
“So you broke up with her because of your father?”
“No, I broke up with her because she cheated.” He looks down at his hands and I can see the shame eating away at him. “But I didn’t take
her back because of…my father.”
“Stuart, are you…stil in love with her?” I ask, and I try to smile as if it’s nothing, just a question, even though I feel al my blood rushing to my
feet. I feel like I wil faint asking this.
His body slumps some, against the gold-patterned wal paper. His voice softens.
“You’d never do that. Lie that way. Not to me, not to anybody.”
He has no idea how many people I’m lying to. But it’s not the point. “Answer me, Stuart. Are you?”
He rubs his temples, stretching his hand across his eyes. Hiding his eyes is what I’m thinking.
“I think we ought to quit for a while,” he whispers.
I reach over to him out of reflex, but he backs away. “I need some time, Skeeter. Space, I guess. I need to go to work and dril oil and…get
my head straight awhile.”
I feel my mouth slide open. Out on the porch, I hear the soft cal s of our parents. It is time to leave.
I walk behind Stuart to the front of the house. The Whitworths stop in the spiraling foyer while we three Phelans head out the door. In a
cottony coma I listen as everyone pledges to do it again, out at the Phelans next time. I tel them al goodbye, thank you, my own voice sounding
strange to me. Stuart waves from the steps and smiles at me so our parents can’t tel that anything has changed.
CHAPTER 21
WE STAND in the relaxing room, Mother and Daddy and I, staring at the silver box in the window. It is the size of a truck engine, nosed in knobs, shiny with chrome, gleaming with modern-day hope. Fedders, it reads.
“Who are these Fedders anyway?” Mother asks. “Where are their people from?”
“Go on and turn the crank, Charlotte.”
“Oh I can’t. It’s too tacky.”
“Jesus, Mama, Doctor Neal said you need it. Now stand back.” My parents glare at me. They do not know Stuart broke up with me after the
Whitworth supper. Or the relief I long for from this machine. That every minute I feel so hot, so goddamn singed and hurt, I think I might catch on fire.
I flip the knob to “1.” Overhead, the chandelier bulbs dim. The whir climbs slowly like it’s working its way up a hil . I watch a few tendrils of
Mother’s hair lift gently into the air.
“Oh… my,” Mother says and closes her eyes. She’s been so tired lately and her ulcers are getting worse. Doctor Neal said keeping the
house cool would at least make her more comfortable.
“It’s not even on ful blast,” I say and I turn it up a notch, to “2.” The air blows a little harder, grows colder, and we al three smile, our sweat
evaporating from our foreheads.
“Wel , heck, let’s just go al the way,” Daddy says, and turns it up to “3,” which is the highest, coldest, most wonderful setting of al , and
Mother giggles. We stand with our mouths open like we could eat it. The lights brighten again, the whir grows louder, our smiles lift higher, and then
it al stops dead. Dark.
“What…happened?” Mama says.
Daddy looks up at the ceiling. He walks out into the hal .
“Damn thing blew the current.”
Mother fans her handkerchief on her neck. “Wel , good heavens, Carlton, go fix it.”
For an hour, I hear Daddy and Jameso throwing switches and clanking tools, boots knocking on the porch. After they’ve fixed it and I sit
through a lecture from Daddy to never turn it to “3” again or it wil blow the house to pieces, Mother and I watch as an icy mist grows on the windows.
Mother dozes in her blue Queen Anne chair, her green blanket pul ed to her chest. I wait until she is asleep, listening for the soft snore, the pucker of her forehead. On tiptoe, I turn out al the lamps, the television, every electricity sucker downstairs save the refrigerator. I stand in front of the window and unbutton my blouse. Careful y, I turn the dial to “3”. Because I long to feel nothing. I want to be frozen inside. I want the icy cold to blow directly on my heart.
The power blows out in about three seconds.
FOR THE NEXT TWO WEEKS, I submerge myself in the interviews. I keep my typewriter on the back porch and work most of the day long and into the night.
The screens give the green yard and fields a hazy look. Sometimes I catch myself staring off at the fields, but I am not here. I am in the old Jackson
kitchens with the maids, hot and sticky in their white uniforms. I feel the gentle bodies of white babies breathing against me. I feel what Constantine felt when Mother brought me home from the hospital and handed me over to her. I let their colored memories draw me out of my own miserable life.
“Skeeter, we haven’t heard from Stuart in weeks,” Mother says for the eighth time. “He’s not cross with you, now, is he?”
At the moment, I am writing the Miss Myrna column. Once ahead by three months, somehow I’ve managed to almost miss my deadline.
“He’s fine, Mother. He doesn’t have to cal every minute of the day.” But then I soften my voice. Every day she seems thinner. The sharpness of her
col arbone is enough to tamp down my irritation at her comment. “He’s just traveling is al , Mama.”
This seems to placate her for the moment and I tel the same story to Elizabeth, with a few more details to Hil y, pinching my arm to bear her
insipid smile. But I do not know what to tel myself. Stuart needs “space” and “time,” as if this were physics and not a human relationship.
So instead of feeling sorry for myself every minute of the day, I work. I type. I sweat. Who knew heartbreak would be so goddamn hot. When
Mother’s lying down on her bed, I pul my chair up to the air conditioner and stare into it. In July, it becomes a silver shrine. I find Pascagoula
pretending to dust with one hand, while holding up her hairbraids at the thing with the other. It’s not as if it’s a new invention, air-conditioning, but every store in town that has it puts a sign in the window, prints it on its ads because it is so vital. I make a cardboard sign for the Phelan house,
place it on the front doorknob, NOW AIR-CONDITIONED. Mother smiles, but pretends she’s not amused.
On a rare evening home, I sit with Mother and Daddy at the dinner table. Mother nibbles on her supper. She spent the afternoon trying to
keep me from finding out she’d been vomiting. She presses her fingers along the top of her nose to hold back her headache and says, “I was
thinking about the twenty-fifth, do you think that’s too soon to have them over?” and I stil cannot bring myself to tel her that Stuart and I have broken up.
But I can see it on her face, that Mother feels worse than bad tonight. She is pale and trying to sit up longer than I know she wants to. I take
her hand and say, “Let me check, Mama. I’m sure the twenty-fifth wil be fine.” She smiles for the first time al day.
AIBILEEN SMILES AT THE STACK of pages on her kitchen table. It’s an inch thick, double-spaced, and starting to look like something that can sit on a shelf.
Aibileen is as exhausted as I am, surely more since she works al day and then comes home to the interviews at night.
“Look a that,” she says. “That thing’s almost a book. ”
I nod, try to smile, but there is so much work left to do. It’s nearly August and even though it’s not due until January, we stil have five more
interviews to sort through. With Aibileen’s help, I’ve molded and cut and arranged five of the women’s chapters including Minny’s, but they stil need
work. Thankful y, Aibileen’s section is done. It is twenty-one pages, beautiful y written, simple.
There are several dozen made-up names, both white and colored, and at times, it is hard to keep them al straight. Al along, Aibileen has
been Sarah Ross. Minny chose Gertrude Black, for what reason I don’t know. I have chosen Anonymous, although Elaine Stein doesn’t know this yet. Nicevil e, Mississippi, is the name of our town because it doesn’t exist, but we decided a real state name would draw interest. And since
Mississippi happens to be the worst, we figured we’d better use it.
A breeze blows through the window and the top pages flutter. We both slam our palms down to catch them.
“You think…she gone want a print it?” asks Aibileen. “When it’s done?”
I try to smile at Aibileen, show some false confidence. “I hope so,” I say as brightly as I can manage. “She seemed interested in the idea and
she…wel , the march is coming up and…”