Miss Jane

On Love

Every now and then Dr. Thompson came by to get her on Sunday and took her for a drive in his car. They drove out to the airfield and watched the occasional airplane take off or land. He bought them a box lunch and they would have a picnic at Highland Park and stroll around and toss the ducks pieces of stale bread Jane would bring from Grace’s house.

Once, he convinced her to take a ride on the park’s carousel. It was a rather tame experience, as he was getting on in years and she did not want to straddle a wooden horse or lion or some other odd animal, so they rode in the sleigh seats. Even so, the whirling of the carousel as it gained speed was a thrill, with the world of the carousel house and the world outside its paned windows in slanting light becoming streaked as if in some kind of drugged dream. And when it slowed and came to a stop she had to clasp his forearm and beg a moment to regain her equilibrium, and then of course hurry to the public pool’s bathhouse with her bag in order to change herself, as the ride had made her forget herself entirely for those long moments and when she came out of it she realized that she had that business to take care of before they moved along.

After they had made their way back to his car and got in, he sat for a moment behind the wheel without speaking.

“What are you thinking about?” she said.

“Oh. Just my mind wandering. Got all whirled up on that carousel.”

They sat a moment.

“I want to ask you a question,” she said.

“Go ahead.”

“How come you never got married again?”

He frowned in thought. Then said, “I didn’t feel the need. Some people feel like they just have to be married, have a companion. I figured out, after Lett died, that I wasn’t one of them. I guess being married to her had helped me see that.”

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I wasn’t thinking. I didn’t mean to pry where I shouldn’t.”

“It’s all right. I don’t mind. Sometimes people get married because it just seems like a good idea at the time. That such-and-such a person would be a good mate, a good person to share a life with. Have children with. People will get married simply because they judge themselves to be compatible. Just because they figure they will get along.”

“Was it that way with you and Mrs. Thompson?” Jane said.

“We got along all right.”

She’d been rude again and wanted to kick herself. But she was curious. And still upset about Grace’s matchmaking, she supposed, taking it out in a way on Dr. Thompson. Her only real friend.

“I apologize for asking that,” she said. “I’d better keep my mouth shut.”

“I really don’t mind. We did kind of grow apart, there toward the end. I loved her. I think she loved me, too. But she began to have a hard time showing it. I think that toward the end I just wasn’t entirely the right man for her. I think she’d have preferred a life in town.”

“But your house is almost in town, barely outside it.”

He smiled, but just with one side of his mouth.

“I guess I mean she would’ve preferred a town life. Society.” He looked at her. “She was lonely for the kind of life she grew up with. Whereas I never really cared much for it.”

“How did you meet?” He’d never told her the story of that.

“Well, now, there you go. I was a biology student at the University of Alabama, intending to apply to Vanderbilt for medical school — although I wasn’t decided on that yet.

“In any case, one weekend I went home with my friend Nate McLemore, who was from here in Mercury, and there was a social on the lawn at someone’s home, I think it was a family named Meyer, and it was a very hot day. Several of the young ladies had parasols against the sun and heat. But as I was walking past this one girl, who did not have a parasol, she fainted dead away and landed right in my arms. I had her just like you’d bend someone down in a tango dance or something, and I had to hold her close for a moment or drop her, and before I could even lay her down on the grass she woke up, and looked straight into my eyes, obviously startled and shaken, and disoriented, of course. And for some reason, one of those odd things you do on impulse, I said, ‘Don’t worry, I’m studying to be a doctor.’ And do you know what she did then?”

“Tell me.”

“She laughed, of course. She must have realized, even in her state, that I was as discombobulated as she was. So that was the start of it.”

“She got the chance to look at you close up and intimate. It was by accident but it worked.”

He cocked his head at her and let a vague smile come into his expression.

“Maybe.”

He heaved a sigh and seemed to laugh at himself. “I don’t know, I’m rambling.” He turned to her again. “I have been thinking about love. And I realize that I don’t have the slightest idea what it is. But you felt it for that Key boy, didn’t you? You believed you did.”

In spite of her blushing, she said, “Yes.”

He was quiet for a little while, seeming to study his fingernails.

“Jane. I have to say that I’ve never been certain that I was right to intervene the way I did, with you and that boy.”

“Do you think that’s what it was? That you intervened? You said you only told him I couldn’t have children.”

“That’s true. It’s all I told him. But I have to ask myself, why? Was I trying to prepare him in some way for — I don’t know, for what he would either learn from you being together, or what you might have to tell him yourself someday? I felt like it was my obligation somehow, to say something. But maybe it wasn’t. Maybe I should have just let things unfold however they might.”

Now she was quiet for a while. Then she said, “I thought about that. Of course. I was angry at first. I thought you should have let me tell him. But you ought to know. I decided that I wasn’t at all sure I could even do that. I think maybe I was grateful to you, for at least giving him something.”

And then she told him about the afternoon when Elijah came to see her and she turned him away.

“Are you saying now I should have stayed?” Jane said. “That I should have just told Elijah everything, and risk it?” Just the thought, just saying the words, made her heart race as if in fear.

“I don’t know anything for sure, Janie.”

“But if he had been unable to get beyond the facts of what I told him, like you said back then, wouldn’t my heartbreak have been even worse? And maybe even his, too?”

“I don’t know,” he said again. “I did think so at the time.” He looked at her. “And you thought so, too, didn’t you?”

She didn’t reply for a moment, felt her heartbeat begin to slow to normal again.

“Yes,” she said then. “I did.”

“But the truth is, we can never really know.”

“Yes,” she said. “I suppose that is true.”

WHEN THE DRY-CLEANING business finally did fail the next year, in ’38, Jane thought she’d go home to the farm, but Grace told her, somewhat mysteriously, to give her a few days, she might not have to leave.

“I don’t know, Grace,” she said. “I kind of think that’s where I ought to be. Anyway, what can you do now? We, I mean?”

“I think I know what I can do. And as for you, we can think about that later, if what I think I can do works out.”

“Well, I hope it’s legal,” Jane joked.

Grace stopped. She was wearing what Jane considered to be a dress just shy of scandalous, was perfumed, in heels, and wore a lot of makeup, and sported a hat made of black cotton with a brim that practically covered one eye, hair down in bangs that practically covered the other.

“As a matter of fact, it’s not. You might just say it’s conditionally approved.”

And then she left. Got into her car, made a U-turn, and headed down the hill into downtown.

When she returned an hour later, she had a bottle of bootleg whiskey with her and told Jane to come sit with her in the kitchen while she had a drink. She poured herself a straight shot of it into a short glass, took a sip, cleared her throat, and removed the hat. Jane was mildly shocked to realize that Grace, with her bright red lipstick, milky pale skin, and yellow-blond hair, was actually a beautiful woman. Sexy, she’d have to say. She’d never realized that ever before. Whenever she’d looked at Grace, she’d only really seen what seemed to be the ugly side of her personality. It had effectively obscured her physical beauty, for Jane.

“What are you staring at?” Grace said.

“Oh. Nothing.”

Grace gave her a look, took another shot of the whiskey.

“All right, here’s my big secret. I’ll be starting tomorrow. Working for Miss Minnie. You know who I’m talking about?”

Jane shook her head.

“You ever heard of a brothel, sister?”

Jane shook her head again. Then nodded. “Well,” she said, “kind of.”

“It’s where men pay women to have sex with them. At Miss Minnie’s it pays well.”

Jane was just nodding slightly, knowing her eyes were big and no doubt plaintive and stupid-looking. As if to confirm it, Grace laughed, quietly and almost to herself.

“Okay, so I don’t want to sling hash or hamburgers, or clean rich people’s houses, or work in some filthy factory. Miss Minnie has always liked me. She’s been a customer for a long time, didn’t you know that?”

“Oh, that Miss Minnie. The tall one with the beautiful white hair.”

“Right. And the expensive clothes. And the Yankee accent. She’s from Michigan. And she is a lady, even if she does manage a house full of ladies of ill repute. And she is in good standing with the police and many well-heeled businessmen in this town.”

“And she runs a — what do you call it — a brothel? Grace. If Papa and Mama were to find out—”

“Papa and Mama have never really had any control over me, and you know it.”

“Yes,” Jane said.

“And there’s something else.”

“What?”

“She also agreed to do me another favor, and that is to hire you.”

“Me! What are you talking about?”

“Not to service the men, for God’s sake. Miss Minnie’s is a high-class operation. They don’t go in for, let’s say, the odd experience.”

They stared at one another a long moment.

“Anyway, I was teasing you. I’m not going to be a whore there.”

“Whore.”

“Right. The ones that do it with the men. Miss Minnie has admired my business acumen, my smarts. And she knows I mean business when I do business. I’m going to be what I guess you’d call her manager. Let her take it a bit easier from now on.”

“Oh.” Jane had been imagining Grace lying in a four-poster bed all day, naked or half naked, fanning herself with a Japanese fan, drinking gin, smoking cigarettes in between rutting with any stranger who walked through the door with his thing in his hand. But now she thought about it, Grace didn’t like people, women or men, well enough to have a job like that, with constant intimacy, be it phony and vulgar or not.

“Oh,” she said again. “Well, what is it you’d have me doing, then?”

“You might imagine there’s a whole lot of sheet-washing going on in a place like that,” Grace said. “Sex can be a messy business. They change the bedsheets on every bed several times a day. Now, you know how to run a big washing machine. The pay will not be near as good as what I’ll make but it will do its part toward keeping this roof over our heads and food in the pantry. I’ll be as skinny as you if all we keep eating is what vegetables you grow in the garden and one hunk of meat every week.”

“No. Grace. I don’t think I want to do it. I don’t think I could.”

“No? So, you just expect me to support you? Or Mama and Papa to just support you?”

“I can work a field. Cook and clean. I can earn my keep up there. I can tend cattle, need be. Papa needs help more than ever, nowadays.”

“Well,” Grace said. She poured herself another shot of the whiskey and lit a cigarette. Apparently going outside to smoke was too much trouble now. “Well, if you want to live on a farm, work a plow, weed a field, pick cotton, stick your arm up the ass of a cow, then I guess that’s your business.”

“How do you think I would like being in a house where behind every door a caravan of strange men were sticking their stinkhorns into the same women all day long? I wonder how long you will like it.”

Grace French-inhaled from her cigarette, squinting against the smoke, and blew it out the corner of her red lips.

“I guess I’ll find out,” she said. “But it’ll be them, not me. The only ‘stinkhorns,’ as you say, that I’ll see will be the ones I pluck for myself.”