Part 32 (1/2)
”I think we should stay until they take that thing off of her face, don't you?” I said.
”Patti? How does my future sister-in-law take her decaf coffee?”
”Any way my future brother-in-law thinks I would like it,” she said and actually smiled.
So did I.
”I'll be right back,” he said and disappeared down the hall.
”What a graceful, elegant man, Cate. I think you've found the real love of your life.”
”Me too.”
”And you know what's funny?”
”What?”
”Well, if I understood everything you were telling me about Dorothy and DuBose, you know, how she gave him all the credit for her work and was always promoting him and never herself? And she was the woman behind the man?”
”Yeah?”
”He's going to do that for you, Cate. He's going to help you become a playwright. You're going to have a whole new career. And even though he pointed you to where all the clues are about the Heywards' private life and even though he will probably help you through the whole, entire process, I'll bet you anything that he won't take one ounce of credit. He loves you, Cate. It makes me so happy to see you with someone like him.”
”Thanks, Patti. I am really in love. It's a little scary.”
”Honey, it can't be any scarier than Addison, okay?”
”Yeah, he was pretty much the benchmark for scary husband.”
”But I have to ask you something.”
”What's that?”
”What race is John?”
”His grandmother was an Inuit. Canadian. So he's part Inuit, I guess. But he sure is beautiful, isn't he?”
”Yes, he's gorgeous. Whatever he is, his DNA is the perfect genetic c.o.c.ktail.”
”You have no idea, sister, you have no idea.” Patti shot me a look of oh ho! And what secrets have you not told your only sister? and I added, ”That's all I have to say!”
The night flew by. We drank coffee and the medical staff came and went. Aunt Daisy slept, they removed the mask, and when we were comfortable that she was out of danger, we left the hospital to drive home.
It was pouring rain in torrents and the wind was gusting, swinging the traffic lights and bending the palmettos. I was glad that John was driving. I couldn't see the road five feet ahead of us. But it was late and there wasn't much traffic so we just drove a little slower. When we got home I told him not to get out, that we'd be fine and he didn't need to get soaked to the skin. I was exhausted, and despite the fact that I was not looking forward to telling Ella what we had witnessed, I felt so lucky and so very blessed. I could say that my life was coming back together with at least some shred of confidence. Patti reminded him about dinner the next night, thanked him, and we said good night. We'd talk in the morning.
Patti and I held our jackets over our heads and hurried to the door.
”Hey, Cate?” she said, shaking out her jacket over the kitchen sink.
”Yeah?”
”I gotta tell you, this guy John is a prince.”
”I'm going to spend the rest of my life with him, Patti. I mean, it's almost like the hand of G.o.d is in on this one, you know?”
Patti shook her head at me and laughed.
”I think we'd better start going to church.”
Chapter Twenty-seven.
Setting: St. Philips Cemetery.
Director's Note: Photos of New York's theater district, cover of Mamba's Daughters, Folly Beach, Christmas in Florida, Janie, and St. Philips Cemetery in the backstage scrim.
Act III.
Scene 4.
Dorothy: DuBose and I knocked around the New York theater scene for a while after Mamba's Daughters had its run, and we suffered with the ridiculous relations.h.i.+p we had with our director Guthrie McClintic and his wife. We were in rehearsals and I really thought we should cut a scene. It was just too melodramatic. But Guthrie's wife was there, weeping at its perfection, and I just stood my ground. Don't you know he accused me of calling his silly wife a nitwit, which of course I thought she was one but I would never have said it. Anyway, he threw a chair at me, careful to miss me but I thought, that's it. I can go home to Charleston now and all you crazy people can have New York City. The only thing that saved Mamba's Daughters was Ethel Waters who sang the lead. Lord, that woman could sing!
And DuBose was feeling the same way that I was, so we decided it was time to go home. It was 1937 and he was offered and accepted a seat on the Carolina Art a.s.sociation, which managed this very theater. A little later on, with money from a Rockefeller grant, the Dock Street was able to hire DuBose as the resident dramatist. Well, we worked together really. Our mission was to develop local talent, so twice a week, we'd gather up ten local aspiring playwrights and read what they had, critique it, and they'd go home and rewrite it. I loved the work and for DuBose it felt like the old days. We were supremely happy.
Of course there was nothing to prepare us for his mother's death. On June 10, 1939, Janie died from a heart attack. DuBose was devastated and the depth of his shock was a little frightening to me. He didn't want to work, he said he was too tired and didn't feel creative anymore. He started writing to his old friend Hervey Allen, who had moved to Florida, and during the Christmas holidays of 1939, DuBose, Jenifer, and I decided to visit them. Well, we had a wonderful time! Robert Frost was in town and we had the chance to catch up with him and everyone was so happy then. I thought, well maybe DuBose is going to come around. But when we returned to Charleston, DuBose became depressed again. He was worried about money. Janie had not left him very much, but she didn't have very much to leave anyway. We decided to sell Dawn Hill and we did. To be free of that burden should have cheered him but it seemed there was nothing that could. He was sluggish and blue and I was at my wits' end.
We were up in North Carolina, staying with our friends, the Matthews. I thought he should see a doctor before we went to MacDowell for the season but he refused. Finally, he agreed to see a doctor who was a cousin of his, Allen Jervey. Allen suspected a heart ailment but didn't think there was an imminent danger. But on the way home from the doctor's, DuBose had terrible chest pain. Margaret Matthew, my dear friend, drove him back to Allen at the hospital in Tryon and DuBose died there. Just like that. It was Sunday, June 16, one year and one week after his mother died. I was a widow and my daughter was fatherless, the same way I was when I was her age. Jenifer never spoke her father's name again.
We laid him to rest beneath the venerable oaks in St. Philips cemetery. You know, DuBose was not a regular churchgoer. So it didn't seem appropriate to have a big funeral in the church with music and hymns. But there was a poem he had written that I thought perhaps he might have written with himself in mind. It's called ”Epitaph for a Poet.”
Here lies a spendthrift who believed That only those who spend may keep; Who scattered seeds, yet never grieved Because a stranger came to reap; A failure who might well have risen; Yet, ragged sang exultantly, That all success is but a prison, And only those who fail are free.
Fade to Darkness.
Chapter Twenty-eight.
In Control.
The weather was not as violent in the morning as it had been the night before but the skies were still pouring plenty of rain. There was no sign of it clearing anywhere on the horizon no matter in which direction I looked. I got up with the birds, because since before the first ray of morning light crossed my floor at dawn, I had been worried sick that Aunt Daisy was down at MUSC all alone having another attack. Of course she had not, or the hospital would have called me. But as I lay there having all manner of paranoid fantasies, I couldn't get my mind to slow down long enough to go back to sleep. So I got up, dressed, put on a pot of coffee, and started rereading some of the notes I had on Dorothy Heyward.
Patti must've smelled the coffee in her sleep, because when the pot finished dripping here she came, barefooted, crossing the floor in her flannel pajama bottoms and a T-s.h.i.+rt, scratching her stomach and yawning like a teenager.
”Hey!” she said and gave me a hug. ”You're up early.”
”Yeah, I was thinking about Aunt Daisy. Respiratory arrest. Screw that! It scared me to death. Coffee's ready.”