Part 11 (1/2)
”No, darling, just you and me.”
”Not Miriam?”
Elinor shook her head. ”Remember when I said that you were my real little girl? That's what I meant.”
Frances sat very still and stared at her visage in the mirror. She raised her arm and turned it in the light, inspecting it.
”You won't see anything, darling,” said Elinor.
”What about Billy?”
”What about him?” asked Elinor. She put aside the brush and opened a little gilt box with bobby pins inside. She pulled back a thick wave of Frances's hair and reached for a pin. Frances held the wave in place until her mother had secured it.
”Can I still marry him?”
”Of course! I married your father, didn't I?”
Frances shrugged. ”What do I tell him?”
”Don't tell him anything!” cried Elinor. ”What do you imagine you would say to him?”
”I don't know!” exclaimed Frances helplessly. She spun around on the wicker seat and looked at her mother directly. ”Mama, I don't understand any of 144.
this, and you've got to help me! You've got to tell me what to do!”
Elinor took Frances's shoulders, squeezed them, and said, ”You're doing everything just right. If you have any problems, you come to me. That's all. Now turn around and let me finish doing your hair. They're waiting for us!”
”Why fix it at all?”
”Because when we go out on the porch, and you see Billy again, I don't want him to remember anything of what you looked like out at the lake. I just want him to see my pretty, pretty little girl.”
”Mama, does Daddy know?”
”Know about what?”
”About me?”
”No.”
”About you?”
Elinor paused. ”Oscar knows more than he's willing to say. Your daddy is a good man, darling, and he's very smart. Your daddy knows when to be quiet. Billy is just like him, don't you think?”
Frances didn't answer. Another question already occupied her mind.
”What about children?”
”What about them?” asked Elinor, looking this way and that at Frances's reflection, checking her hair.
”Will they be like us?”
Elinor smiled. ”You're all done,” she said, ”and you've asked enough questions for one evening. Let's go out on the porch and get this business over with.”
CHAPTER 54.
Lucille and Grace
Lucille stayed in bed a week after her rape, nursed by all the Caskey women. Townfolk were told that at Lake Pinchona, in the dark, Lucille had tripped over the root of a cedar tree, fallen, and cut herself on a nail sticking out of a post.
The owner of the recreation facilities at Lake Pinchona and his wife had their suspicions, of course, but they had no interest in spreading news of a rape. If it had become known that a local girl had been attacked by an Air Corps man-it was bound to have been a soldier, since for the past year it was mostly soldiers who had come to the lake-there would have been h.e.l.l to pay. The lake might have been put off limits by the commander at Eglin, and where would the couple's comfortable profits have gone?
Another waitress was hired, a girl from Bay Mi-nette who wasn't nearly so pretty as Lucille and had never learned to dance. After she had recovered from 147.
her ”fall,” Lucille wasn't at all interested in returning to her former position.
No trace of Travis Gann ever turned up in the lake or on its sh.o.r.es. Perdido a.s.sumed that Travis, in the due course of justice, had been released from Atmore prison and had simply disappeared. Perdido was glad that he had taken up residence someplace far away.
A couple of months later, Queenie found that the full force of her old bad luck had come upon her again. Lucille was pregnant. On Elinor's advice, Lucille had been examined not by Dr. Benquith next door but rather by a man in Pensacola. The Caskeys hadn't wanted their friend Leo to know what had occurred out at Lake Pinchona. ”I know pregnancy when I see it,” said Queenie. ”In another couple of months she'll start to show.”
One evening at James's there was a conference of the Caskey women, with only Frances and Miriam excused. Lucille was brought over to the house, but relegated to Grace's bedroom with the door closed. The question ”What do we do?” was what the women had gathered to decide.
Grace looked around with pleasure. This was her first major family conference; she was proud to have been admitted to it. Here she might give her maiden speech, and she wanted the family to remember- it. ”Let me take her away,” said Grace.
”Take her where?” said Sister.
”It doesn't matter. Miami, maybe, or Tennessee. It doesn't really matter where. Tell people she's visiting relatives, or she's keeping me company on a tour of the national parks, something like that.”
”You can't travel around much,” Elinor pointed out, ”remember there's a war going on.”
”Then we'll sit in one place,” said Grace. ”A place where n.o.body knows us.”
148.
”For nine months?” said Queenie. ”You'd stay with Lucille for nine months?”
”It wouldn't be nine, it'd be more like seven.”
”What would you do with the baby when it's born?” asked Sister.
Grace shrugged. ”I don't know. She cain't keep it, I guess. Then there'd be no reason to go away and keep it a secret. Put it up for adoption, I suppose.”
”I wish we could keep it...” sighed Queenie. ”Maybe we could give it to James.”
”James is too old,” said Elinor, not unkindly, ”to care for a baby. And if we were to keep it, everybody would know where it came from. We'll have to give it away.”
Grace soon understood that they had accepted the wisdom of her proposal and that she would take Lucille away for the duration of the pregnancy. She said then, ”We can decide about the baby later. First we have to decide how Lucille and I are gone get out of town without anybody suspecting anything. See, first she's gone have to quit that job at the Ben Franklin...”