The Day's Heat Page 15

  Serve him right if I splattered, Lee thought; burst like a watermelon on the ground. Though strange, it was not an unpleasant idea: the green splitting open to show the red flesh and the black seeds inside—exactly how she’d felt for so long: broken open, red raw, flecked with black anger.

  David Palmer let go of her legs; he had to, she was thrashing so, and they slid to the ground. But he kept his arm tightly around her arms, pinching the flesh with his fingers, keeping her close, saying between clenched teeth, instantly seemingly full of his own inexplicable fury, “Woman, I’ll take you home if you want, if you won’t go to the hospital. But if you fall all the time, that’s where you belong.” He spoke so low that the group behind them couldn’t hear, but there was no mistaking the built-up anger in his voice, harsh and bitter.

  And then without waiting for an answer, he released her and turned back to Algebra, who stood holding Cassie’s and Lill’s hands. He gave instructions: the housekeeper should follow and he would drive Lee home in her car.

  He turned back. “Give me your keys, Mrs. Bettlemain,” he said loudly, stretching out his large palm. And Lee’s anger, which just moments before had felt so open at last and so wonderfully filling, seemed unexpectedly small in comparison to the priest’s cold, controlled demand, his fury.

  In the car, she bent and placed her head on her arms. She knew from other times that this position would stop the faint singing in her ears, would clear her head. She looked at the car’s floorboard, at the mess of old school papers and candy wrappers. She hadn’t cleaned it since she took the priest to the dentist.

  “Are you all right?” David Palmer asked, starting the motor, his voice without inflection, a question he could have asked anyone.

  Lee turned to look up. The ringing in her head was entirely gone now, but she couldn’t bring herself to sit upright and act as though nothing had happened. She kept her cheek on her arm. “I’m just a little light-headed.”

  Actually with this pregnancy she’d only had a few times of dizziness, exactly as it said in Dr. Yuller’s manual, that with each succeeding pregnancy the symptoms were fewer.

  “The last time I was swimmy headed was ….” She stopped, realizing that to say, “When I was in the dentist’s office when you lost your tooth,” was to fix her pregnancy before they’d been together. She amended, “the other morning, about the same way—because I didn’t have much breakfast.”

  “I can still take you to the hospital.”

  “And do what?” Lee asked. “Sit in the Emergency Room for three hours? It’s Sunday.”

  She had made that mistake a couple of times when Lill had had croup: wasted $25 and hours until an indifferent doctor came to hold a cold stethoscope against Lill’s thin white chest, and say it was only croup.

  Algebra, with Cassie and Lill, followed behind in her red Volkswagen, the red of the car as red as the housekeeper’s dress. And David Palmer drove to Sterling Street without a word of direction from Lee, drove in the shortest most direct way, as if he had driven to her house many times over.

  In the driveway, he stopped the car, and Lee slowly started to get out. “Stay where you are,” she heard him say. But she stepped out, holding onto the door for balance, seeing her house as the priest must be seeing it. Was it for the first time? How did he know the way so easily?

  By then, he was beside her, lifting her up again, as clumsily as he’d picked her up at St. Jerome’s. She was too dismayed to protest. Outrageous! She was almost six months pregnant, twenty pounds over her usual hundred and ten, and the baby was kicking away inside, and he was carrying her!—carrying her past the Formosa azaleas blooming their fierce pink, carrying her up to her own front jalousie door!

  He didn’t knock but opened the door with the hand that was under her legs and carried her into the pale-blue living room that now, in spite of the mirror to make it seem larger, seemed crowded and small. Charles was lying in the recliner, looking up, barely awake, and Father Palmer was there, just inside the doorway, and Algebra was there, coming up the walk with Cassie and Lill. And Lee was there, there in Father Palmer’s arms.

  Now, is when I need to pass out, she thought, wishing she were actress enough to fake it. Sigh and collapse unconscious and let the priest and Algebra do the explaining to Charles. She knew the act wouldn’t work: her eyeballs would move under her eyelids and everyone would know. Her mother’s eyes moved whenever she had tried to pretend oblivion. Lee felt a resentful kinship to Darcy’s sins of wrecking the car, hocking the silver. I wish I could get drunk and pull the covers over my head and hide, Mother dear, the way you used to. The ridiculous solution suddenly seemed a lovely way to escape.

  Instead, Lee struggled. “Really, I can walk,” she said, and Father Palmer took a few steps forward to place her on the couch.

  “What’s the matter?” Charles was asking, rising out of the recliner.

  But it was Algebra, now, just inside the door, touching Cassie’s and Lill’s shoulders to hold them back, who answered, “Missrus Bettlemain fell out at the church, Mister Charles. She needs to be put to bed.”

  There was a drawing out of the words in Algebra’s explanation, the voice totally different from the two ways the tall colored woman had talked before. And Lee guessed that if Algebra had to, she would have introduced herself to Charles as Father Palmer’s maid, not his housekeeper.

  Suddenly, without planning, Lee leaned, almost flopped sideways, bent and uncomfortable, onto the couch. She had to do something—something because Father Palmer was standing in her living room beside her husband. The two men viewed that way, side by side, had caused a tight band to close across Lee’s chest, caused her to feel really faint, caused her eyes to shut but then open again to prove that she was just weak and nothing more. For some reason, she wished Charles’s few strands of hair were combed and that he wasn’t wearing an old threadbare undershirt. Although what miracle could have dressed him otherwise on a Sunday, while watching television? Her husband looked short, thick, and unwashed next to Father Palmer’s neat black-suited tallness, and it would have been easy to dislike the priest in all his clerical perfection if he had not seemed so unsure of himself, so pale and pinched around the mouth.

  “I’m fine,” Lee heard herself saying, as her daughters came and sat beside her. “It was just a little accident with a fence.”

  She wanted them to leave, get out of her living room—all of them—to leave her alone.

  Algebra and Father Palmer stood, shifted. The priest gave a rushed explanation, something about making sure that Mrs. Bettlemain arrived home safely, shaking Charles’s hand in a stiff-armed way. And then he and Algebra were out the door; Algebra closing it behind her too slowly, too carefully.

  “I’m pregnant, you know,” Lee said for the first time, sitting up, wiping her face with both hands, wanting to hide behind them until Charles gave up asking, “Are you all right?” exactly as David Palmer had. If she refused to answer, maybe he’d leave and have Sunday dinner with his parents and Brother by himself for a change. They’d probably all like that, not having her critical, questioning dark face around for once. Maybe they’d talk about something besides integration and how terrible it was. She could make the girls and herself peanut butter sandwiches and milk. They could all take naps. That’s what she needed—a nap.

  “What was Algebra doing with you, all dressed up?” Charles stood in the middle of the floor and pointed at the closed front door. “And who’s that priest? Where’s Father Kennedy?”

  “I’m pregnant again,” Lee said, placing both hands atop her belly to calm the frantic thumps that had been going on ever since she’d seen David Palmer looking at her across the churchyard, realizing that to keep saying she was pregnant was one way of not having to explain a dressed-up Algebra, one way of not explaining Father Palmer.

  “I’m pregnant again, and I fell out at church.”

  “I know that,” Charles said, and pushed the footrest of the recliner down so he could sit.

>   “Go change your clothes, girls,” Lee ordered, and in the strangeness of their mother’s falling, they obeyed without complaining and left for their room.

  Lee lay back on the couch and crooked her elbow up over her face. She felt Charles’s eyes on her great pink polished-cotton stomach that she knew seemed all the larger for her lying flat. Don’t think, she commanded herself, just lie here.

  After a few seconds, Charles asked again, “Are you all right?”

  “No,” Lee answered.

  “What do you want me to do?”

  “Nothing,” she said, and to herself added, exactly what you’ve done all along—nothing. And then realizing how unjust an answer that was to his concern, she put her arm down and took on a practical tone, one she knew would convince him, since he apparently wasn’t going to talk about the new baby.

  “Why don’t you take the girls over to your folks’, eat lunch, and give me a chance to rest? I’ll take a nap, and when you get back, I’ll be better, recovered.”

  Charles took a deep breath. Lee could see the thoughts pass through his mind: It was Sunday, go to his mother’s, eat, keep things the way they were supposed to be.

  “Sure. Sure. Give you a chance to rest.” He copied her tone, repeating her words as though they were his own idea. “Mom’s got dinner on the table. You know she’s waiting.”

  The television set was turned off, Charles and the girls left, and in their place came a singing silence, and the whole of the heavy Sunday afternoon settled around Lee. Even the baby inside had stopped kicking. Lee stroked the rise of her stomach.

  “Poor little bitty, to have a mommy like me,” she said to break the stillness, almost wishing that the baby would wake up and begin kicking again. But it didn’t.

  She lay on the couch and turned her life over in her mind as one does a crystal, trying to catch the different refractions. She was finally alone, had time to explain herself, maybe to understand. But there was no explaining: A young girl who had married romantically and unknowingly, a woman who had two children and was about to have a third, a woman who had woven an attraction into a snare. And who had been caught? Most of all, she could not reconcile the afternoon in the rectory with the rest of her days. At times it was a half-remembered dream; at others, the only reality.

  Why, she asked herself, why were mustached kisses and sure, knowing, stroking hands so necessary? Well, she’d had them, she answered herself, for at least one afternoon. And what else had she wanted from David Palmer? A response? Well, she’d had that, too. He’d picked her up—literally—brought her home, seemed concerned, seemed infuriated. But the desire for something else from him had not lessened. It stayed, an oblique longing; a longing almost without an object.

  Could one just live and not try to understand, just lie on a couch for hours and do nothing, not even think? The clock in the hall ticked loudly. Furlough, their black Lab, as if knowing she were inside alone, whined and scratched at the side door.

  And then another sound—a Buick pulling into the driveway—Lee knew, hoping all the while that it wasn’t the old priest, but it was.

  Father Kennedy knocked. “It’s me, Lee.”

  Opening the door and peeking around the edge, he asked, “May I come in?” There was a tentativeness in him. Before, he would have knocked once and walked in, calling, “It’s me, your old Irish leprechaun.” Now, he said, “Algebra said you took a fall this morning.”

  Lee sat up. “When did you talk to her?” she asked.

  “She rang about 1:30, said she and Father Palmer had just brought you home, said you’d taken a fall at St. Jerome’s.”

  Algebra and Father Kennedy? Sharply, Lee asked, “How long has Algebra been David Palmer’s housekeeper?” She didn’t care if the old priest noticed that she didn’t say Father Palmer.

  Father Kennedy frowned, “Oh, I’m a-thinking Algebra’s been with His Eminence since he first moved into the new rectory. Had to have someone to take care of that grand house, you know.”

  “Oh, give it up!” Lee said, irritated beyond control. “He has to have a housekeeper. You don’t want anyone to clean that attic you live in, might move some of your books.”

  The old priest looked down as if he’d misplaced something and then mumbled, “I suppose you’re right. I do keep a great passel of stuff in my lodgings.”

  Lee wanted to slap herself. “I’m sorry, Father,” she said. “I was just dizzy and slipped at St. Jerome’s, and I’m still not well. Please forgive me. Please sit down.” She started to rise. “I’ll make us some coffee.”

  “No, love, you stay put. I can make us both a cup, and you’re right. Why am I begrudging Father Palmer his fine house and his fine housekeeper, Miss Algebra? It’s him that’s a-wanting them, not me.”

  He can’t stop, Lee thought, and lay back down.

  “Why didn’t you ever say that Algebra Williams was Father Palmer’s housekeeper?” she called toward the kitchen. She could hear the old priest rummaging in the cupboards and drawers, putting the kettle of water on to heat.

  “I didn’t know you knew her, love,” he called back.

  “She does my mother-in-law’s laundry.”

  “Are you sure?” Father Kennedy came around the corner with a dish towel in his hands. “She seems much too clever for that sort of work?”

  “Well, you don’t expect her to live off half-day wages from the parish, do you?” Lee could feel irritation rising again. “And what else is an educated woman supposed to do in Strickland, Georgia? I take in sewing, you know.”

  “The parish pays her fifty dollars a week, and that’s no mean wages for a colored. Priests only make a hundred a month.” He went back into the kitchen. “But I haven’t thought it through.” He came back, carrying the coffee cup as her daughters did, with both hands, afraid of spilling. “Here, drink this, love. It’ll settle your spirit.”

  “That’s all it’ll settle,” Lee grumbled, sitting up, giving in to peevishness.

  The old priest’s coffee was tepid, thick and muddy; he’d used too much instant powder. But the cup’s heat warmed Lee’s hands, and the care in the deep-set blue eyes under those impossibly thick eyebrows moved across her like a blessing.

  “Well, what have you been doing lately?” Lee asked, trying to sound normal—anything to erase the worried look from the old wrinkled face in front of her.

  “Oh, this and that. The parish is all sixes and sevens, getting ready to close the doors on St. Jerome’s, and on the school Queen of Peace in Lake Park, too.”

  Lee had forgotten the colored school in Lake Park, a school south of Strickland where two nuns taught four grades apiece.

  “Father Palmer and Sister Ellen are a-whizzing and a-changing everything what’s possible to whizz and change. The old girl is forming committees, you wouldn’t believe. A committee to carpool the colored children up to St. Anthony’s in the fall. Get the poor little beggars up at five in the morning. Who cares? And another committee to bring some of that rabble down from Atlanta to explain integration to us poor ignoramuses here. The only committee the old biddy hasn’t formed is one for the able-bodied, for free-thinkers not so willing to go her way.”

  “Oh, Patrick, you don’t want to understand what they’re trying to do! It’s for everybody’s good.” Lee felt tears of weakness and exasperation start in her eyes. It was dreadful the way Father Kennedy couldn’t see how hard Sister Ellen and Father Palmer were working.

  “There’s nothing what’s good for everybody’s good, love, and pushing it down our throats is not the way to make people change. The coloreds need to keep something of their own for a bit.” He was bringing up his side of the argument with Sister Ellen, but seeing Lee’s sad face, he stopped. “And it’s not good you a-falling in the churchyard either.”

  “Yeah, I might sue the diocese for some of those Vatican millions,” Lee began, and then began crying for real into the coffee cup, rocking back and forth, crying for the little cocoon inside that had started thumping ag
ain, crying for the strength of Father Palmer’s arms that had been around and under her, crying for Charles in his faded undershirt, crying because she saw how crude her joke about suing the church was in the light that shone in Father Kennedy’s faded blue eyes.

  At some point the old priest put a pillow under her head and covered her with a blanket, and at some point she went to sleep. Later, she heard him explaining softly to Charles that “the dear girl” should not be left alone, that perhaps this new baby was too much, that everyone had a hard time keeping the flags a-flying.

  Oh, dear, Lee thought, and what flags were those? And who would have thought that Father Kennedy would be so against the coloreds, so against progress?

  Lee pulled the blanket up over her ears. It was good not to have to give the girls their baths, not to have to sew until her eyes started to close, not to have to do anything but turn lazily on the couch and fall back to sleep. Perhaps Father Kennedy wasn’t against the coloreds; perhaps he was just against Sister Ellen and Father Palmer, who were, like Lee, still young enough to want to change. Father Kennedy was just plain old: so old that he wanted everything to stay the same. In the forgiveness of falling asleep, she saw that as an answer.

  Monday morning came, 5:00 a.m., and Charles went off to work at Brother’s insistent honking. Lee went back to sleep after he left, ignored the bus’s honking, and was late getting the girls up and Cassie to school. She drove, she and Lill still in their gowns and bathrobes. Who cared? She would dress when she returned, and there was no possibility of seeing anyone who mattered at St. Anthony’s. No one was raking. The pecan trees were full of lime-green leaves.

  Back home, she stepped out of the robe and gown and stood naked in front of the bedroom mirror. She was a full seven months pregnant and her abdomen had taken on the unreal quality of a huge flesh balloon. She ran her hands down and under the round, blue-veined protrusion, lifting its weight. Someone should invent a harness, she thought, a construction that hung from the neck and went under the belly, something that could carry part of the weight.