Part 3 (1/2)
”Aw, jeez, Cate,” Patti piped in. ”All that's true enough but we've got to make a plan, sister. We've got to make a plan.”
Chapter Five.
Setting: Porgy House, upstairs, side porch. Old table with cloth, flowered china tea set, newspaper, two chairs.
Director's Note: Show photographs on scrim of side porch with table set for breakfast and the picture of Jenifer. When she talks about her story ”The Young Ghost,” show a cover of McCall's magazine. Voice of DuBose Heyward comes from off-stage.
Act I Scene 3 Dorothy: There are some events in your life that are indelibly imprinted in your mind-funerals, childbirth, your wedding, the day the curtain goes up on your first play that made it to Broadway and on and on. You just don't forget anything about these things. It absolutely was in late February of 1934 that the haunting, or whatever you want to call it, began. I am going to be very careful in how I recount this story because otherwise you might think I was exaggerating. Writers are notorious for their expansive imaginations, you know. But, on my word, here is what I remember with certainty.
DuBose and I were comfortably settled at the old weather-beaten table on our side porch, enjoying our morning coffee and reading the newspaper. Jenifer was in school, fully ensconced in a kindergarten on James Island just a few miles away. It was a gorgeous day, crisp and clear, and although it was chilly, the sun warmed us as it danced on the countless ripples of the Atlantic Ocean right across the street. The world was alive and open for business. I brought up the previous night to DuBose in what I hoped was a nonchalant manner.
”DuBose? Did you hear all that crying last night?”
”Crying? No. I didn't. You know, darling, I sleep like the proverbial stone. It was probably some feral thing-a bobcat or a stray.”
”Well, I don't think it was an animal. Golly, I was up half the night! Would you like an egg or some toast? Maybe food will wake me up.”
”No, no breakfast for me thanks. Don't trouble yourself. You've always suffered so terribly with insomnia. Maybe we should stop the madness and just ask the doctor to give you something?”
”Maybe. I'll think about that. But DuBose? This is serious. I'm sure I heard a woman crying all night long, weeping! It was absolutely pitiful. She sounded just like that woman in my short story, 'The Young Ghost.' Remember her?”
DuBose folded his section of the newspaper back neatly to scan the obituaries.
”My, my. Look at this, will you? Old August Busch, the beer magnate, is gone to Glory! Looks like it was a suicide, it says here. Now why would someone with all that money do himself in?”
”DuBose! Have you heard a word I've said?”
”Yes, yes, of course I have. 'The Young Ghost'! That's the one about the accidental death or the suicide-another suicide!-of that young woman, isn't it?”
”Yes! Remember? Suzo, the very young bride, dies in the bathtub and Bobbel, her husband . . .”
”What kind of quirky names are those, dear? Russian?”
”They had nicknames for each other like we do. Well, like you do.”
”Little Dorothy.”
”Precious.” I was not always so fond of being called little Dorothy. Dorothy wasn't really my name. ”But remember how her husband struggles so hard? He's tortured really, trying to understand how and why his wife died. Was it an accident or not?”
”Right! And then the cad of the story . . . what was his name?”
”Keene Everett.”
”Yes! Ah, Everett the Scoundrel, Connoisseur of the Wives of Others! As I recall, Everett let it slip that he and Suzo were an item and he implies that our little Suzo kills herself because her husband, Bobbel, the widower with the unfortunate name, said they had to stop riding around the town in his car with each other. Or some such nonsense.”
”Nonsense? That story ran in McCall's magazine!”
”There, there! I meant no offense. It's just that . . .”
Too late. I was indeed offended, reminded for the umpteenth time that DuBose considered my writing to run along popular veins and that he was a more literary writer, more serious. After all, he was a founding member of the Poetry Society of South Carolina. And a celebrated poet. Descended from la-dee-da aristocracy. And I? I was only the Belmont Prize winner of Professor Baker's playwriting cla.s.s from Harvard, thank you, which had been performed on Broadway, but I was from, alas, Ohio. In the world my husband grew up in, you were either a Charlestonian or you were not. You were literary or you were not. I pouted and waited for him to speak again but he was buried in that past Sunday's edition of the New York Times, which usually took us the whole week to finish.
”DuBose? I thought that story had a delicious air of mystery to it.”
Not anxious to take on the task of self-defense first thing in the morning, DuBose avoided my eyes, put the newspaper down, and poured himself another cup of coffee from the pink-and-green flowered breakfast set that I treasured so. It had been a birthday gift from his formidable mother, which is the nicest way to describe her personality.
”Mysteries are fine for those who can abide them, I suppose. More coffee?”
Again, DuBose had stepped on my pride.
”What? No. Thank you.” I took a deep breath and sighed hard, exasperated. ”You know, DuBose, sometimes you are an insufferable sn.o.b. Many highly educated people happen to adore mysteries, myself among them. I'm just asking you this. What do you think? Why did she haunt the tenant with all that weeping?” What I really wanted to know was why was a weeping woman haunting us? Well, me, actually. And who was she?
He knew I was growing touchy and quickly working myself into a foul humor. DuBose, who obviously could not recall the finer points of ”The Young Ghost,” decided to take a benign position and let me talk it out.
”I have no idea, sweetheart. My memory isn't as sharp as yours. You tell me.” There, that's better, I could see him thinking, compliment her a little without seeming disingenuous.
”Very well, I will! It was an accident. But here's the rub. People were blabbing all over town that she was having an affair with that simp Keene Everett when she most definitely was not. The rumors were terrible! So now that she was dead, how could she ever make her husband know that she loved only him?”
”Right, I remember now.”
”She was robbed of her reputation and of her very life by an accident. But the crying? She was very worried that she would become nothing more than a bad memory. So she haunted their tenant, hoping he would help her straighten things out with Bobbel. Don't you remember she says, 'I'd rather be forgotten than be something you try to forget and can't.' She didn't want her husband to spend the rest of his life thinking she was unfaithful. And I'm telling you that all last night I heard a woman crying her heart out just like Suzo. Not some silly cat down the street. That's all.”
At that point, DuBose had stopped and stared across the table at me. I could read his mind. Did I feel robbed? Had I ever thought of loving someone else? He dismissed the thought almost immediately with a shudder. No, if DuBose Heyward was certain of anything in his life it was my devoted love. Women were such complicated creatures, he thought loudly enough to be heard, but deliciously so.
”Perhaps I will have that egg,” he said. ”And maybe a slice of toast?”
”I'm ravenous this morning,” I had said, ”I am going to the kitchen. I'll be right back in two shakes.”
I came around to his side of the table, smiled wide, kissed my fingertips, and touched his cheek with them. Harmony was restored. I knew that man and every cell of his brain. For the life of him, he could not even begin to comprehend why asking for an egg and a slice of toast would shake me from my truculent mood, but it seemed as though it had. At least I let him think so. I had made my point, and if I gave him a thousand dollars and all the tea in China, he couldn't tell me what that point was. Men.
Still, I had company the night before and I knew it.
Fade to Darkness.
Chapter Six.
Packing.
The sun was slowly rising like a fireball, searing the entire horizon in bands of blistering scarlet. Without so much as reaching out and touching the windowpane, I knew it was still bitter cold outside. The world beyond my windows had that bleak look of frozen desolation. Low-hanging clouds were bulging with snow, and if it fell as it was threatening to, I'd probably have my beautiful chandeliers for another twenty-four hours. Electricians were a sensible breed, and foul weather would keep them home rather than have their small vans play slip-and-slide. Besides, you waited for them, they didn't wait for you. But after everything that happened yesterday, I knew they would arrive.
I was wide-awake, having spent most of the night crying off and on like a complete fool. But in the morning light I was coming to the conclusion that what was there to cry about really? Because there was nowhere to sit except on a mattress and box spring? Because my clothes were in cardboard boxes all around the bedroom, dropped unceremoniously in piles by the burly movers? Because all my family photographs were in a stack on the kitchen counter, their silver frames all confiscated? Because there was no flat-screen television with which to start my day with Matt Lauer and all my imaginary friends on the Today Show? Please. It was easier to specify what remained than what was gone. And there was nothing to be done about it anyway.
”Get out of bed and start your day,” I said out loud to myself. I rolled to one side and then pushed myself up into a sitting position. I had not slept on a mattress and box spring on the floor since my college days, and as I struggled to rise I realized those days were a very long time ago. My knees creaked, my balance was definitely off, and I stumbled to the bathroom like an old, arthritic lady. I looked dreadful but it was perfectly understandable. But I still had clean towels and I hoped that a hot shower would get me moving.
I stood there under the hot water for much longer than usual, continuing to count my blessings. Isn't that what people were supposed to do in trying times? Well, the list of my blessings was short but it was not an insignificant list. I had my health, I wasn't ugly, and I had a reasonable sense of humor and respectable brains. Good health was a wonderful a.s.set, not to be taken lightly, and good humor would see me through this impressive mora.s.s of utter and complete bulls.h.i.+t I was facing. On the material side of the ledger, I could add my diamond studs and diamond ring. And a nice watch. There was some other jewelry but it probably wouldn't amount to much if I tried to sell it. I imagined that our leased cars would surely be repossessed but that was all right with me. I had never been a car person anyway. In fact, I made a mental note to call Bergen Jaguar and Globe Motors to just come pick them up. And after yesterday, mark that as the intergalactic benchmark for a bad day, I was un-insultable, which I was pretty sure wasn't a word and I didn't care one whit. It didn't matter if I did care. The facts were what they were. At least I had the beginnings of some sort of a plan.