The Darling Dahlias and the Confederate Rose Page 5

  Mrs. Brewster’s wasn’t the only other boardinghouse in town, of course. Mrs. Meeks rented rooms and cooked supper for single men who worked on the railroad and at Ozzie Sherman’s sawmill, and the Old Alabama Hotel offered quite nice rooms and excellent meals for travelers. But ladies were not allowed at Meeks’, where the men slept two and three to a room, and people of ordinary means couldn’t afford to stay at the hotel for more than a night or two. So Bessie had every reason to hope that refined widows and spinster ladies would realize that the Manor would make a lovely home.

  She was right, as it turned out. Within a couple of weeks, all four of her empty bedrooms were spoken for and stayed that way. It was such a nice place to live that most of the residents remained as long as they could. But there was a waiting list, and when a vacancy did occur, Bessie scarcely had time to clean the room and wash the bedding before somebody new was moving in.

  Unfortunately, Magnolia Manor was not what you’d call a money-making business, since most of Bessie’s boarders were not well fixed. (If they were, they’d likely be living at the hotel or in their own houses, with colored help to cook and clean.) Mrs. Sedalius was better off than the others, for her son was a prominent doctor in Mobile. He sent his mother a monthly check for her room and board and a small allowance so she could buy things she wanted. (His checks, Bessie suspected, were guilt payments: the man rarely darkened his mother’s door.) Leticia Wiggins had a widow’s pension from her husband’s service in the War Between the States—it wasn’t much but it was regular. Miss Rogers earned a few dollars a week as the town librarian. Maxine Bechdel looked to be well off—she owned two rent houses in neighboring Monroeville—but looks were deceiving. Last month, one of her renters had paid her with a bushel of cabbages. The other had paid with a promise. Bessie and Roseanne (the colored lady who cooked and cleaned in return for room and board and spending money) had turned the cabbages into sauerkraut. There wasn’t anything they could do with the promise.

  Bessie would have liked to raise the cost of board and room, but if she did, some of the ladies might have to leave—and where would they go? “You can’t get blood out of a turnip,” she often reminded herself with a sigh. “You just have to be satisfied with the turnip.” And cabbage, if that’s all you had. She had read in the Dispatch that Senator Huey P. Long of Louisiana—a.k.a. The Kingfish—was proposing that everybody over sixty should get a government pension, the way they did in England. Bessie thought this was the best idea she had heard in a long time and had written to Senator Bankhead, one of their Alabama senators, telling him so. But she wasn’t surprised when the senator didn’t write back. Lots of people were afraid of The Kingfish. They said he was a dangerous demagogue who would drive the country to the brink of ruin if he got his way, and maybe they were right, Bessie didn’t know. But he seemed to get a lot of things done for the little people of Louisiana. Bessie just wished he could get a few things done for the little people of Alabama, too.

  But while the Magnolia Ladies didn’t pay much rent, their money paid the property taxes and bought coal and electricity and food, which meant that Bessie didn’t need much money. And since they couldn’t pay much, the Magnolia Ladies were glad to share the work. Maxine and Leticia washed the dishes and neatened the kitchen and dining room after every meal. The sweeping and dusting was divided between Miss Rogers (downstairs) and Mrs. Sedalius (upstairs). All four helped to plant and weed and harvest the vegetable garden and tend the half-dozen Rhode Island Reds who lived in a coop beside the back fence and gave them each a fresh-laid egg for breakfast every morning. There was still a lot of cleaning and housework and maintenance left for Bessie and Roseanne. But what of it? she asked herself. These days, plenty of people were much worse off, and they had real jobs.

  And there was the added bonus of friendship, for this bunch of Magnolia Ladies was an exceptionally congenial one. In the evenings, Maxine and Leticia played canasta or Old Maid while Mrs. Sedalius knitted or crocheted and Miss Rogers read aloud to them. She stopped reading when it was time for their favorite programs on the radio, a fancy Crosley five-tube table model that Mrs. Sedalius’ son had sent her for Christmas three years before. (He didn’t bother to bring it himself, just ordered it from a catalog and had it delivered.) The ladies loved The A&P Gypsies, The Firestone Hour, and Lum and Abner, which starred two Arkansas hillbillies who were always being fleeced by Squire Skimp. They especially liked that one because the fictional folks who lived in Pine Ridge, Arkansas, weren’t all that different from the real folks who lived in Darling, Alabama. The ladies listened and laughed and reminded themselves that people had pretty much the same problems, wherever they lived.

  The Magnolia Ladies looked out for each other, too, because they were all fragile in one way or another. Leticia had fallen twice, breaking first the right wrist, then the left, and now walked with a cane. Maxine wouldn’t admit it, but she was having trouble remembering names and dates. Mrs. Sedalius’ eyes were going bad, which made needlework difficult, and Miss Rogers constantly fretted about her lack of money.

  But they took comfort in the fact that they had one another, and they understood each other’s frailties and sympathized. Sisters would not have been too strong a word to describe their relationship.

  Unfortunately, however, their nerves had worn a little thin over the past few weeks, and the ladies were feeling tetchy. It began when a large gray tabby cat showed up on the front porch, skinny, starved, and crawling with fleas. Mrs. Sedalius happened to be sitting in the porch swing that evening, crocheting a doily. Before you could say Bless Pat, the enterprising cat had jumped into her lap, presenting himself for adoption. Mrs. Sedalius fell for him like a ton of bricks, according to Maxine, who had been there when it happened.

  “Oh, poor, sweet kitty!” Mrs. Sedalius cried. She carried him to the kitchen, where she fed him a mashed boiled egg and bread crumbs in warm milk, then out to the woodshed, where he endured a bath. The next morning at breakfast, she announced his new name: Lucky Lindy, after her favorite flying hero.

  “Lucky is right,” Maxine muttered, stirring cream into her coffee. “That tomcat knew a good thing when he landed in it.” She scowled at Mrs. Sedalius. “I hate cats. I’ve always hated cats. Why couldn’t you get a canary?”

  “I wouldn’t have minded if he’d been a kitten,” Leticia groused. “But this one is on his ninth life. And he’s ugly.” She nudged Maxine. “Pass the butter, Maxine.”

  “You’ll have to keep the creature away from me,” Miss Rogers said darkly. She dipped her spoon into her soft-boiled egg. “I am allergic to cat fur.”

  Bessie knew she should have put her foot down right then and there and told Mrs. Sedalius that Lucky Lindy had to go. But she hesitated. Mrs. Sedalius’ son almost never came to visit, and the old lady had spent her days hoping for a telephone call or waiting for the mailman to bring her a letter from her “dear boy.” Now, she spent her days combing and stroking Lucky Lindy and cooing over him as if he were a cute little kitten.

  So Bessie waffled, thinking that the cat might be good company for the lonely old lady and help to get her mind off her neglectful son. But it wasn’t long before she was sorry that she hadn’t said no right off, before Mrs. Sedalius got so attached. Bessie herself wasn’t particularly fond of cats, and this one—once he got his footing—was a holy terror. He—

  “Oh, there you are, Miss Bloodworth,” Miss Rogers said, coming into the kitchen just as Bessie was reaching into the icebox for a cool drink. Her tone was heavy with reproof and her brows were knitted in a scowl. “I have been looking all over for you.”

  Miss Rogers was the only one of the Magnolia Ladies who addressed Bessie formally. Bessie had tried to coax her onto a first-name footing but had finally given up, feeling that Miss Rogers must have some sort of secret need to keep people at arms’ length.

  “Sorry,” Bessie replied. “I was working in the Dahlias’ vegetable gar
den.” She had intended to ask Miss Rogers (also a Dahlia) if she would like to lend a hand, but the lady had been taking a nap. “Would you like some tea?” she added, taking out the frosty pitcher.

  “Thank you, no.” Miss Rogers said stiffly. She was clearly upset about something. “We need to have a talk. Right now. It cannot be delayed.”

  It was a hot Saturday afternoon and Bessie was dressed in her gardening clothes. But Miss Rogers, who was so thin she was almost gaunt, wore a dark print rayon crepe dress (nearly to her ankles) with a belt and a prissy lace-trimmed collar that buttoned up to her throat. With her round steel-rimmed glasses and her stiffly waved gray hair, and armored by her self-assured sense of the proprieties, she looked—and spoke—exactly like the prim and proper librarian she was.

  And she was very prim and proper. The other Magnolia Ladies enjoyed sharing the tales of their lives and times and husbands, children, aunts, cousins, nieces, and nephews. Miss Rogers, on the other hand, kept her silence while the others chattered. Bessie knew only the dim outline of her story, but what little she knew was terribly sad. Miss Rogers had been an orphan who had never had a home of her own. She dreamed of having a small house and garden all to herself, and with this goal in mind, she had saved every penny she could lay her hands on. But then, like so many people around the country, she had yielded to the seductions of the rising stock market and had foolishly put all her savings into stocks. She had lost every cent when the market crashed on a black October Tuesday in 1929 and was left with only the pittance she earned as the town’s part-time librarian. And last month, the Darling town council had begun discussing whether it could afford to keep the library open. If it closed, she would be out of a job—and completely out of money.

  “A talk,” Miss Rogers repeated. “Now, please.”

  “What about?” Bessie asked apprehensively, wondering if Miss Rogers had gotten bad news from the council. But Ophelia’s husband Jed was the mayor. Surely, if the council was planning to close the library, Ophelia would have mentioned it when they were sitting around the Dahlias’ kitchen table a little while ago. On the other hand, Ophelia had seemed uncharacteristically depressed today. Did she know that the library was on the chopping block, and that poor Miss Rogers was to be let go?

  Miss Rogers clasped her hands together at her waist, frowned, and cleared her throat. “I wish to register a complaint, Miss Bloodworth. A very strong complaint.” She paused for emphasis. “It’s that cat, of course.”

  “Lucky Lindy?” Bessie put the pitcher of tea on the table, feeling a great relief. Better the cat than the closing of the library. “What’s he done now?” she asked, taking four glasses out of the cupboard.

  When Lucky Lindy had first arrived at Magnolia Manor, he had been crafty enough to mind his p’s and q’s. He had kept to Miss Sedalius’ room, sleeping on her bed and eating like a horse (he had graduated from boiled eggs to leftovers from the dining table). Then, having fully recovered his strength, Lindy showed his true colors. He perfected the trick of curling himself affectionately around a person’s ankles, then stretching a sneaky paw up his victim’s calf and opening his claws. In the space of a few days, Lucky Lindy had shredded the stockings and bloodied the legs of all of the Magnolia Ladies, including Bessie’s. (Roseanne was the only one who escaped unscathed, because she had given him a swift kick the first time he cozied up to her. “I knowed Mistah Cat gon’ try somethin’ mean,” she declared triumphantly. “But I done got the drop on him. He ain’t gonna bodder me no mo’.”)

  Having claimed the run of the house and yard, Lindy made it his own. He was a wildly adventuresome cat who raced up and down the stairs at all hours of the night, dragged half-dead mice and tree roaches into the house, and climbed the curtains all the way to the top. From this vantage point he would launch himself gaily into the air, alighting on all fours on the back of the sofa or a chair or even someone’s head. Whoever was nearest this daredevil aviator would shriek—except for Mrs. Sedalius, who just smiled and said that Lucky Lindy was living up to his name and wasn’t he cute?

  It was this last trick that had so upset Leticia, for Lindy had leapt off the top of the living room drapery valance and landed on the lampshade next to her chair, knocking the lamp into her lap, spilling her tea, and causing her to choke on a cookie. Leticia swore that if Lindy ever again came within an inch of her, she was going to brain him with the stove poker, at which Mrs. Sedalius went into hysterics and had to be comforted with a cup of hot chocolate. This was where matters stood when Miss Rogers voiced her complaint.

  “The wretched animal has torn the knitted cover off my dear little pillow,” Miss Rogers said thinly. She brushed a tear from the corner of her eye. “My grandmother’s pillow.”

  “Your . . . grandmother?” Bessie asked, surprised. She had been acquainted with Miss Rogers for some years but had never known that she had a grandmother—or more precisely, that Miss Rogers knew who her grandmother was. Bessie had understood that Miss Rogers’ parents died when she was quite young and that she’d had no contact with her family since.

  “My little pillow is the only thing I have left of my family,” Miss Rogers said tearfully. “I was carrying it with me when I entered the orphanage at the age of five, and I’ve been told that I wouldn’t let it out of my sight. It belonged to my grandmother Rose, of whom I have no memory at all. I have cherished it all these years.” She gulped down a helpless sob.

  Bessie stared at her. Miss Rogers was the model of stern self-control. She never allowed herself to appear irritated, never lost her temper, never cried. Verna often joked that decorum must be her middle name.

  “I’m sorry,” she began. “I had no idea that—” But she didn’t get to finish her sentence.

  “And now that terrible beast has destroyed it!” Miss Rogers cried raggedly. “He has torn it to shreds. This is the last straw, the very last. I’m telling you, Miss Bloodworth, you will have to make Mrs. Sedalius get rid of that cat.” She pulled herself up, glaring at Bessie. “Do you hear me? Either he goes or I do!”

  If this had been one of the other ladies, Bessie would have put an arm around her shoulders and soothed her. But this was Miss Rogers, who shrank away when anyone ventured to touch her, as if any show of intimacy repulsed her.

  “I’m very sorry this has happened,” Bessie said honestly. “The cat really is a terrible nuisance. But he means so much to Mrs. Sedalius that I’ve been reluctant to ask her to give him up. I’m sure we can repair whatever damage—”

  “No!” Miss Rogers cried, and stamped her foot. “My dear little pillow is totally beyond repair.” She gestured imperiously. “Come with me. I’ll show you.”

  Bessie knew there was no point in arguing. She followed Miss Rogers through the dining room, up the stairs, and down the second-floor hallway, past the open doors of the three other Magnolia Ladies’ rooms. While the upstairs bedrooms were the same size, Bessie always encouraged her boarders to furnish and decorate to suit themselves. All were happy to agree, so each reflected the personality of each resident.

  Mrs. Sedalius had brought an antique walnut dresser and filled the top with photographs of her late husband, “her boy,” and her grandchildren, along with the doilies she knitted and crocheted. Maxine had put blue wallpaper on the walls, made a ruffled blue spread for her bed, and painted her rocking chair blue. A dedicated reader and member of the Darling Literary Society, she filled several shelves with books, and books were stacked on the floor. Leticia, who didn’t like to read but loved oil painting and watercolors, filled her cluttered shelves with art supplies and souvenirs from her extensive travels. Displayed on her walls were many of her artistic endeavors, as well as maps with pins stuck in to mark the places she had traveled.

  Miss Rogers’ room, in contrast, might have belonged to a nun. Her narrow bed was covered with a plain white chenille spread. There was a white dresser scarf on the utilitarian chest of
drawers, and a plain white net curtain at the window. Three books were stacked on the shelf beside her bed: a Bible, a thick volume of Shakespeare’s plays, and the library book—The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe—that she was currently reading aloud to the ladies. There were no pictures on her walls, only one photograph on her bureau, and just one spot of color in the room: the bright red knitted pillow, about sixteen inches square, that was lying on the floor beside the bed.

  Or rather, it had once been a red pillow. Now, the knitted cover was a gnarled, knotted mass of tangled red yarn, with loose, frayed ends spilling across the floor like a puddle of red blood. Thankfully, Bessie saw that the pillow itself, which was made of a tan-colored fabric covered with embroidery, seemed to have survived without a great deal of damage. But she felt this was little comfort to Miss Rogers.

  “You see?” Miss Rogers pointed, her high, thin voice shaking. “Two days ago, that wretched cat shredded my very last pair of stockings. Today, he’s destroyed my pillow. My poor pillow.” She turned away, trying to conceal her tears, and Bessie’s heart went out to her.

  “I am really so sorry, Miss Rogers,” she said regretfully. “I’m to blame. I should have told Mrs. Sedalius she couldn’t have him, but—”

  She broke off, her eye caught by the faded sepia photograph in a wood frame on the dresser. In it, a frightened-looking little girl in a starched white dress, long banana curls draped over her shoulders, clutched something large against her chest, holding it with both arms. Bessie had seen the photograph once before, when she had come into Miss Rogers’ room to repair the window, and had thought then that the child was clutching a large handbag. Now, she realized that the girl must be Miss Rogers, and that it was the pillow she was hugging to her, as if it were a life preserver or something incredibly precious that she feared might be taken away.