The idea that two of the people I loved and imagined I knew best in the world had such a profound secret shocked me more than the telephone call from Buck had. I wanted to ask her how long she’d loved him, and if he loved her as well. But I already knew the answer. My father was always solicitous of her, always made sure she was comfortable and had what she needed. Whenever she came into the room, he smiled. Why had I not seen it? How difficult it must have been for the two of them to live in the same house for so long, with me, and not show affection. Or had it happened later, after I left? The child inside me felt a little wounded and unsettled, but I knew it was right.
It was 1957, and the world had changed a lot since I was a child, but I suspected it hadn’t changed enough to sanction a public relationship between my father and Nonie, no matter how light her blackness was. To me, they were just two people who had been alone for a very long time.
“He’ll need help,” I said. “Someone to do for him.”
“For a while,” Nonie said.
“Yes, for a while.”
She stood, and I could feel her embarrassment as a palpable thing between us. Not shame. Just her natural reserve reasserting itself, a reluctance to acknowledge that it was she who was experiencing a surge of emotion. She had always taken care of me, and it had never been the other way around.
“Nonie. . . .”
She stopped me. “We won’t speak of this, Charlotte. I’ll go and start packing Michael’s things.”
I took a deep breath, hardly believing what I was about to say. It didn’t feel right to intrude on my father’s and Nonie’s privacy. And I didn’t really want to leave Bliss House with Olivia and Eva so close. Not with J.C. about to descend.
“Michael’s not going, and I’m not going.”
As soon as I said the words, I felt the house relax. Almost sigh. I touched the wall beside the morning-room door and felt its velvety warmth. Yes, I was jealous and worried about my marriage, but it was more that I could see my absence as creating an emptiness. Who or what might take my place? I belonged there.
“It makes much more sense for you to go to Clareston without me. Michael is liable to trip Daddy or bother him when he’s resting. Terrance can take you to the train station after lunch. I’ll call Buck and ask him to pick you up.” While it would have been faster for Terrance just to drive her the two and a half hours to Clareston, I knew she wouldn’t have been comfortable alone with him in a car for that long. I didn’t blame her. Terrance rarely said a dozen words on a talkative day.
She touched my cheek. The fleeting tenderness in her eyes was quickly replaced by her usual sensible determination even before she started for her bedroom.
My heart pounded as though I were taking some great risk. I don’t know why. It was probably the most mature decision I’d ever made up to that point in my life.
I watched her walk away with urgency in her step, carrying herself even straighter than usual, if such a thing were possible. She was already like a different person to me. Not a stranger, but a woman with a different role. Still Nonie, but Nonie in love. What was she to my father? She had come to us Naomi Meriwether Jackson, a capable young woman with strong, safe hands and a firm but gentle manner. How unlike my fragile poet of a mother, a woman so fragile that she hanged herself in our garage for me to find. It was Nonie who had come in and set us both to rights, put me on a schedule and brought order to my life. Now she would mend my father.
I told myself that she would come back, even though I wasn’t sure I believed it. And she eventually did, with my father. But it was under circumstances I couldn’t even have imagined that morning.
Chapter 18
Violation
Knowing that leaving Michael alone a few minutes longer wouldn’t cause him any harm (perhaps I was delaying, not wanting to face the fact that once Nonie was gone, I would be his only caretaker), I went into the morning room. Someone, probably Terrance, had neatened it. The slide boxes were stacked in alphabetical order and there was a short crystal vase filled with fresh yellow roses—the kind Olivia preferred to have in her rooms—on the desk. The blanket was folded on the chaise longue, and on top of it sat a large pillow with a striped silk cover and long red tassels. It hadn’t been there before, but I remembered seeing it on the sofa in Olivia’s room. Had Terrance left it for me, knowing I’d fallen asleep there? It looked inviting, but the idea that Terrance, inscrutable and blank to me, was not only following but anticipating my actions was disturbing. In fact, I felt I could lie down and sleep more. Perhaps for days. How easily I might have pulled the curtains and slipped back into Olivia’s world, with her sensual (a trait passed on to Press, I believed, though he was much more aggressive), attractive husband, and the aura of deep apprehension I felt around the Olivia of my . . . what? Dreams? Hallucinations?
Above me, I could hear the faint movements of the men working on the theater. Muffled voices and boots on the uncarpeted floor. But there was something coming from Olivia’s room as well. Not exactly a sound, but an overwhelming wave of such deep dread that it was like a warning to run away from that place as quickly as I could move. Perhaps I was becoming inured to uncertainty, and even pain, because instead of running away, I went to the closed door.