Part 32 (1/2)

”Oh no, she's been . . . very nice. Everything's fine.” I glance down the hall, where I can hear their voices.

He sighs, stares off. ”We've had a real hard year with Stuart. I guess he told you what happened.”

I nod, feeling my skin p.r.i.c.kle.

”Oh, it was bad,” he says. ”So bad.” Then suddenly he smiles. ”Look a here! Look who's coming to say h.e.l.lo to you.” He scoops up a tiny white dog, drapes it across his arm like a tennis towel. ”Say h.e.l.lo, Dixie,” he croons, ”say h.e.l.lo to Miss Eugenia.” The dog struggles, strains its head away from the reeking smell of the s.h.i.+rt.

The Senator looks back at me with a blank stare. I think he's forgotten what I'm doing here.

”I was just headed to the back porch,” I say.

”Come on, come in here.” He tugs me by the elbow, steers me through a paneled door. I enter a small room with a heavy desk, a yellow light s.h.i.+ning sickishly on the dark green walls. He pushes the door shut behind me and I immediately feel the air change, grow close and claustrophobic.

”Now, look, everybody says I talk too much when I've had a few but . . .” the Senator narrows his eyes at me, like we are old conspirators, ”I want to tell you something.”

The dog's given up all struggle, sedated by the smell of the s.h.i.+rt. I am suddenly desperate to go talk to Stuart, like every second I'm away I'm losing him. I back away.

”I think--I should go find--” I reach for the door handle, sure I'm being terribly rude, but not able to stand the air in here, the smell of liquor and cigars.

The Senator sighs, nods as I grip the handle. ”Oh. You too, huh.” He leans back against the desk, looking defeated.

I start to open the door but it's the same lost look on the Senator's face as the one Stuart had when he showed up on my parents' porch. I feel like I have no choice but to ask, ”Me too what . . . sir?”

The Senator looks over at the picture of Missus Whitworth, huge and cold, mounted on his office wall like a warning. ”I see it, is all. In your eyes.” He chuckles bitterly. ”And here I was hoping you might be the one who halfway liked the old man. I mean, if you ever joined this old family.”

I look at him now, tingling from his words . . . joined this old family. joined this old family.

”I don't . . . dislike you, sir,” I say, s.h.i.+fting in my flats.

”I don't mean to bury you in our troubles, but things have been pretty hard here, Eugenia. We were worried sick after all that mess last year. With the other one.” He shakes his head, looks down at the gla.s.s in his hand. ”Stuart, he just up and left his apartment in Jackson, moved everything out to the camp house in Vicksburg.”

”I know he was very . . . upset,” I say, when truthfully, I know almost nothing at all.

”Dead's more like it. h.e.l.l, I'd drive out to see him and he'd just be sitting there in front of the window, cracking pecans. Wasn't even eating em, just pulling off the sh.e.l.l, tossing em in the trash. Wouldn't talk to me or his mama for . . . for months. months.”

He crumples in on himself, this gigantic bull of a man, and I want to escape and rea.s.sure him at the same time, he looks so pathetic, but then he looks up at me with his bloodshot eyes, says, ”Seems like ten minutes ago I was showing him how to load his first rifle, wring his first dove-bird. But ever since the thing with that girl, he's . . . different. He won't tell me anything. I just want to know, is my son alright?”

”I . . . I think he is. But honestly, I don't . . . really know.” I look away. Inside, I'm starting to realize that I don't know Stuart. If this damaged him so much, and he can't even speak to me about it, then what am I to him? Just a diversion? Something sitting beside him to keep him from thinking about what's really tearing him up inside?

I look at the Senator, try to think of something comforting, something my mother would say. But it's just a dead silence.

”Francine would have my hide if she knew I was asking you this.”

”It's alright, sir,” I say. ”I don't mind that you did.”

He looks exhausted by it all, tries to smile. ”Thank you, darlin'. Go on and see my son. I'll see y'all out there in a while.”

I ESCAPE TO THE back PORCH and stand next to Stuart. Lightning bursts in the sky, giving us a flash of the eerily brilliant gardens, then the darkness sucks it all back in. The gazebo, skeleton-like, looms at the end of the garden path. I feel nauseous from the gla.s.s of sherry I drank after supper.

The Senator comes out, looking curiously more sober, in a fresh s.h.i.+rt, plaid and pressed, exactly the same as the last one. Mother and Missus Whitworth stroll a few steps, pointing at some rare rose winding its neck up onto the porch. Stuart puts his hand on my shoulder. He is somehow better, but I am growing worse.

”Can we . . . ?” I point inside and Stuart follows me inside. I stop in the hallway with the secret staircase.

”There's a lot I don't know about you, Stuart,” I say.

He points to the wall of pictures behind me, the empty s.p.a.ce included. ”Well, here it all is.”

”Stuart, your daddy, he told me . . .” I try to find a way to put it.

He narrows his eyes at me. ”Told you what?”

”How bad it was. How hard it was on you,” I say. ”With Patricia.”

”He doesn't know anything anything. He doesn't know who it was or what it was about or . . .”

He leans back against the wall and crosses his arms and I see that old anger again, deep and red. He is wrapped in it.

”Stuart. You don't have to tell me now. But sometime, we're going to have to talk about this.” I'm surprised by how confident I sound, when I certainly don't feel it.

He looks me deep in the eyes, shrugs. ”She slept with someone else. There.”

”Someone . . . you know?”

”No one knew him. He was one of those leeches, hanging around the school, cornering the teachers to do something about the integration laws. Well, she did something alright.”

”You mean . . . he was an activist? With the civil rights . . . ?”

”That's it. Now you know.”

”Was he . . . colored?” I gulp at the thought of the consequences, because even to me, that would be horrific, disastrous.

”No, he wasn't colored. He was sc.u.m. Some Yankee from New York, the kind you see on the T.V. with the long hair and the peace signs.”

I am searching my head for the right question to ask but I can't think of anything.

”You know the really crazy part, Skeeter? I could've gotten over it. I could've forgiven her. She asked me to, told me how sorry she was. But I knew, if it ever got out who he was, that Senator Whitworth's daughter-in-law got in bed with a Yankee G.o.dd.a.m.n activist, it would ruin him. Kill his career like that.” He snaps his fingers with a crack.

”But your father, at the table. He said he thought Ross Barnett was wrong.”

”You know that's not the way it works. It doesn't matter what he believes. It's what Mississippi believes. He's running for the U.S. Senate this fall and I'm unfortunate enough to know that.”

”So you broke up with her because of your father?”

”No, I broke up with her because she cheated.” He looks down at his hands and I can see the shame eating away at him. ”But I didn't take her back because of . . . my father.”

”Stuart, are you . . . still in love with her?” I ask, and I try to smile as if it's nothing, just a question, even though I feel all my blood rus.h.i.+ng to my feet. I feel like I will faint asking this.