The Darling Dahlias and the Naked Ladies

FIFTEEN

Lizzy and Bessie got Mrs. Adcock-who had worked herself into a satisfying case of hysterics-back to her house and put her to bed. Leaving Bessie to cope, Lizzy used the crank telephone on the kitchen wall to call Verna at the Exchange.

“Do you think the man has really left town?” Verna asked worriedly. Lizzy had told the story in very general terms, leaving out all of the exciting details. She had counted the clicks and knew that there were at least three people listening on Mrs. Adcock’s line. One of them had a cuckoo clock.

“Buddy Norris said he was going to put him on the train,” Lizzy replied guardedly. “I have to stop at the Savings and Trust for a few minutes, Verna. How much longer are you going to be on the switchboard?”

“Olive just phoned and says she’s stopped coughing but she’ll be late,” Verna replied. “I’ll be here another hour, anyway. Come over to the diner when you’re finished at the bank and we can talk about what we’re going to do next.”

“I will,” Lizzy said, and went back to the bedroom to tell Bessie good-bye.

“You’re coming to the Dahlias’ card party tonight, I hope,” Bessie said. “Ophelia said she’d be there, and Verna, too. You?”

“Wouldn’t miss it,” Lizzy said. “See you at seven thirty.”

She walked back up Rosemont in the direction of the Darling Savings and Trust, on the west side of the courthouse square. She was still mulling over the many misunderstandings and the surprising twists and turns that the encounter with Frankie Diamond had taken. She was glad that Buddy Norris had appeared and was willing to escort the fellow off to the train depot. But she had ridden that spur line between Darling and Monroeville herself, when she went to Monroeville to go shopping. The train moved so slowly that it was easy for people to jump off and on-and plenty did, to avoid paying the twenty-cent fare that the station masters collected at either end. Frankie Diamond was no patsy, like several of the revenue agents that Mr. Mann had mistaken him for, easily bribed or intimidated and all too eager to leave town before somebody built a fire under a tar barrel and the chicken feathers started flying. Diamond had most likely been in tougher spots than this, Lizzy thought nervously. He had a job to do and he was here to do it. He wouldn’t be easily deterred.

But there was nothing she could do about Diamond at the moment, so there was no point in worrying about him. She squared her shoulders, straightened her yellow straw hat, and looked straight ahead. She had a task ahead of her, an altogether unpleasant one, and she wasn’t sure exactly what she was going to say or do. All she knew was that she was about to face a lion in his den. A formidable lion. And she was going to do it before the afternoon got a single hour older.

The Darling Savings and Trust was an imposing red brick building. It was fronted with twin white pillars and two marble slabs that stepped up to a pair of polished oak front doors with large panes of sparkling plate glass and big brass handles. Inside, the floor was polished marble tiles; the ceiling was embossed tin, painted ivory; and gilt-framed oil portraits of several generations of Johnsons hung on the walls. In the center of the floor stood a mahogany table that always featured a vase of Mrs. George E. Pickett Johnson’s flowers, usually white ones or the palest pink, provided daily from her garden. To the left was a paneled wall behind which the tellers worked, the brass bars of the teller windows gleaming. Alice Ann Walker, a fellow Dahlia, was waiting on a customer at her window. She looked up and caught sight of Liz and waved and smiled, and Lizzy waved back. After a ruckus a few months before, when Alice Ann had been falsely accused of embezzling from customers’ accounts, she had been promoted to head cashier, much to the satisfaction of Lizzy and her fellow Dahlias.

Lizzy continued past the teller windows, past the bookkeeping office and the door that led to the stairs down to the big bank vault in the basement. She was heading for an office with curliqued, ornate gold lettering on the glass door: Mr. George E. Pickett Johnson, President. Lizzy opened the door and went in. Mr. Johnson’s secretary, Martha Tate, a tiny woman with mouse brown hair and a prissy, thin-lipped mouth, looked up from a ledger and recognized Lizzy, who had frequent dealings with the bank on behalf of Mr. Moseley.

“Good afternoon, Miss Lacy,” she said, in her precise voice. “How may I be of service to you?”

“I’d like to see Mr. Johnson,” Lizzy announced, in a tone that sounded braver than she felt.

Mrs. Tate made a show of looking at the appointment calendar. “I’m so sorry,” she said, not sounding sorry at all. “He’s extremely busy this afternoon. Would you like to make an appointment for-”

“Tell him I’m here about my mother’s house,” Lizzy said, trying to keep her voice from quivering.

“Oh.” Mrs. Tate got up with alacrity. “I’ll see if he’s free.” A moment later, she was holding open the door to Mr. Johnson’s wood-paneled office with its rich Oriental rug and book-lined walls, and Lizzy was ushered in. Mrs. Tate closed the door firmly behind her. If this was the lion’s den, Lizzy was trapped in it.

Back in the old days, when the soil was still rich, the plantations still flourished along the river, and cotton was still king, the Johnsons had gloried in their position as one of Darling’s premier aristocratic families. The only son of his father, who was the only son of his father, young George E. Pickett Johnson-named for a Confederate general who fought under General Lee at Gettysburg-had been expected to do great things. And so he had, or at least he had gotten off to a strong start. He had graduated from Tulane University in New Orleans, returned to take up his father’s scepter as the president of the Darling Savings and Trust, and married (as expected) his childhood sweetheart, Miss Voleen Pearl Butler of the aristocratic Butler clan and a graduate of Sophie Newcomb College, the premier Southern college for young ladies, also in New Orleans.

But down the decades, the glory of the old days had been dulled by a series of debilitating disasters: the War Between the States, the Depression of the 1890s, the Panic of 1907, the advent of the boll weevil. If there had been any glory left for the local aristocracy, it was tarnished by the long, bitter drought of the late 1920s and the catastrophic Crash of ’29.

While many of the old Darling families had fallen apart under the weight of these difficulties, the Johnsons, however, had flourished. They and their bank had become the most admired and respected members of the community. Oh, there had been that fracas of a few months before, when it looked as if the bank might be in serious straits and people had waited in line outside the front door to withdraw their money so they could hurry home and hide it under their mattresses. But that little problem had been smoothed over and Darling was assured that the bank and their deposits were safe. In fact, Mr. Johnson had taken out a full-page ad in the Darling Dispatch to let everyone know that whatever minor concerns there might have been, all was well. The Darling Savings and Trust was as solid as a rock.

But things had changed. People could look around and see that Mr. Johnson’s bank now owned many of the houses and businesses in town and almost all of the plantations that had once belonged to the other aristocrats. The bank was the community’s most profitable business, and George E. Pickett Johnson, almost the last aristocrat left standing, was the richest man in Darling. These extraordinary financial successes had had a certain inevitable result, however, for the more properties that were acquired by Mr. Johnson, the less respected and admired he and his bank became. The Darling Savings and Trust was regarded as an adversary, rather than an ally, and Mr. Johnson was even more hated than he was feared-although of course there was quite a bit of envy mixed in, too.

But that was neither here nor there today, for Lizzy was on a mission. She had to save her mother’s house-from the lions, as she saw it. From Mr. Johnson and his bank.

“Ah, Miss Lacy,” Mr. Johnson said, and looked up from a tidy stack of papers-foreclosure documents, no doubt-on the desk in front of him. “You wanted to speak to me about your mother’s house, I believe you said? Please. Sit down.”

Lizzy was trying hard not to be afraid, but it was difficult. Mr. Johnson was a thick-bodied, broad-shouldered man with a jutting jaw and pointed chin; a thin dark mustache over thin, colorless lips; and black, oiled hair that was parted precisely down the middle of his scalp. Behind gold-rimmed glasses, his eyes were hard and glittery, like chunks of black coal, and his black eyebrows rose to a peak. He had a satanic look about him, folks in Darling said. And he had a satanic manner of dealing, too. He was not, people said, a man to be crossed.

“Thank you,” Lizzy said, seating herself. She folded her hands in her lap and tried to keep her fingers from trembling. “Mother has told me that you are about to foreclose on her house.”

Mr. Johnson scowled, rocked back in his leather-upholstered swivel chair, and twirled his pencil between his fingers like a drum major. “Let us be clear,” he said, in a voice that was like a fingernail scraped across a blackboard. It sent shivers up Lizzy’s spine. “I am not about to foreclose on her house. The bank is. The papers are being prepared as we speak.”

Lizzy swallowed. “I’ve come to ask you for a little more time, Mr. Johnson,” she said. “The holidays will soon be here and-”

Mr. Johnson cast his glance heavenward. “Time?” he asked rhetorically. “Your mother has known of her difficulties for almost a full year, Miss Lacy, ever since the Crash. The foreclosure has been pending since April. And since she herself has told me that she is quite willing to turn her house over to the bank-”

“Quite willing?” Lizzy asked blankly.

“Why, yes, of course. She has explained that she plans to live with you until you and Mr. Alexander are married, at which point you will of course go to live in the house he recently purchased.” Mr. Johnson’s smile did not quite reach his eyes. “Please accept my congratulations, by the way. I am acquainted with Mr. Alexander and find him to be an engaging-”

“But I am not being married!” Lizzy exclaimed fiercely. “I am not leaving my house. And I have no intention of allowing my mother to move in with me.” This last, she knew, was an awful heresy, for every decent daughter ought to be glad to provide her impoverished mother a home.

Mr. Johnson’s black eyebrows went up. “Well, then,” he said after a moment. “Mrs. Lacy will have to find another place to live, I suppose. I am sorry.” It was not clear whether he meant that he was sorry Lizzy was not going to marry, or sorry that she refused to take in her mother.

Lizzy leaned forward. She had been taught that a lady could always catch more flies with sugar than with vinegar, but at this moment, she was in no mood to be sweet, or to be a lady, either. She was angry. She spoke with as much reasonableness as she could summon.

“Mr. Johnson, my mother did a very foolish thing, and she is paying a high price. I cannot excuse what she has done. But there is nothing to be gained by evicting her from that house. If it is occupied and maintained, the property will someday be of value to the bank. It can be sold when the real estate market turns up again, for a much better price than it could command now. If it’s empty, it will be the target of vagrants and vandals. I think you ought to allow my mother to live there and maintain your house-the bank’s house-and pay a rent. A modest rent, I’m afraid, because that’s all she can afford.” Actually, she couldn’t afford any rent, but Lizzy hadn’t thought quite that far.

Impatiently, Mr. Johnson tapped his pencil on his desk. “And why should I do this?” he asked in an arch tone.

“Because it’s the right thing to do!” Lizzy exclaimed heatedly. “And it’s the smart thing. You-the bank, that is- should be doing it with every single house you’ve foreclosed on. Empty, they are a disgrace. You should let people stay in their houses and take care of them, at least until they can be sold.”

“Come, come, Miss Lacy.” Mr. Johnson pulled down the corners of his mouth. “That’s not the way the system works. People need to learn that credit isn’t cheap. They must be obliged to take responsibility for their foolish choices. They must learn that their actions have very real consequences. That is how the system works.”

“But not everyone who has lost a house was foolish,” Lizzy burst out. “Some people have had accidents or gotten sick and some have lost jobs through no fault of their own. Don’t you see? That mean, cold-hearted, calculating attitude is exactly what makes people despise the bank and hate-” She stopped. It was true, but she couldn’t bring herself to say it.

Mr. Johnson said it for her. “Hate me?” He leaned forward on his elbows, his brows pulled together in a deep scowl. Lizzy quailed, thinking that he looked exactly like Satan. “Miss Lacy, I am quite aware of the… esteem, shall we say, in which I am held in this town. Given the situation, that is unavoidable. People need a villain. They need someone to blame for their sad plight, and I-and the bank-will do as well as any. Better, in fact, than most. I cannot blame them, either, for they are not privileged to see the many, many instances in which the bank-and I-have given extensions and made accommodations. That is only as it should be, of course, since we must respect our clients’ privacy.”

Lucy was about to speak when Mr. Johnson held up his hand and continued.

“In your mother’s case, she was offered the opportunity to remain in the house and pay a rent-a modest rent. She declined.”

Lizzy felt as if she had been punched in the stomach. “She… declined?”

“Yes. She said that she preferred to live in a house where she didn’t have to pay any rent at all.” Mr. Johnson was looking at her with what seemed to be a genuine sympathy. “She also said that your house has recently been modernized and she likes it better.” He sighed. “There was something about an electric refrigerator, if I remember correctly. She prefers it to her icebox. Her musty icebox.”

Lizzy was staring at him, struck speechless. By now, there was no mistaking the compassion in his voice.

“I am deeply sorry to have to tell you this, Miss Lacy. The bank is not in the least anxious to find itself in possession of all these empty houses. We have tried to work out arrangements with the defaulting owners, and in some cases, we’ve been successful. Not, I’m afraid, in your mother’s case. The mortgage payments, principal and interest, were twenty-five dollars and ninety-seven cents a month, on a balance of-” He shuffled through his papers and came up with one. “A balance of nineteen hundred dollars, at four percent interest, on a note to be repaid in seven years. She has been delinquent since the beginning of this year. In January.”

Lizzy pressed her lips together. The bank had tried to make an arrangement? But her mother had said- She took a deep breath.

“Is… Is it too late?”

Mr. Johnson put down the paper, frowning. “If you mean to ask whether the bank is still willing to come to an agreement with your mother, the answer is yes, of course. However, she maintained that she had no source of income and that the payment of any sum at all-not even the fifteen dollars a month I proposed to her-was an impossibility. I pointed out that I was aware that she does indeed have a source of income, an annuity that is deposited every month in her account here at the bank. That, at least, was not compromised by her stock market losses.”

The annuity? Her mother had given her the distinct impression that the annuity was gone, and claimed that the bank had refused to negotiate. She had lied on both scores!

Lizzy pulled her attention back to Mr. Johnson. “It is also in my power,” he was saying, “to debit your mother’s annuity for the amount of her mortgage payments. I have declined to do this, since it appears to be her only source of income.” He sighed. “Therefore, since the payments are in serious arrears, foreclosure is the only-”

“Don’t foreclose,” Lizzy heard herself saying. “Sell the house to me. I’ll assume the existing loan.”

The words came out of her mouth without her even thinking of them, and she almost bit them back. Buy her mother’s house? Twenty-six dollars a month? Could she pay that much?

Well, she supposed she could. She earned eighteen dollars a week at Moseley and Moseley and was managing to save five dollars a week for the car she hoped to buy. That was twenty dollars a month, right there. She lived frugally, her own house was paid for, and her mother’s house was certainly worth more than the nineteen hundred dollars she had borrowed against it, or would be, when property values picked up again.

Yes, she could manage it. But should she? What would her mother say when she found out that Lizzy had bought her house?

“Are you sure you are able to do this?” Mr. Johnson asked gently. “I know that you have had steady employment with Mr. Moseley, but I don’t want you to take on a financial burden that you can’t manage.”

“I’m sure,” Lizzy said. She took a deep breath and made herself unclench her fists.

“Very well, then.” Mr. Johnson put his pencil down and spoke with alacrity. “Under the circumstances, I think the bank will be willing to extend the mortgage period to ten years and reduce the payment to-say, twenty dollars a month, principle and interest. We can also waive the delinquent payments and closing costs, as a gesture of goodwill. Will that be satisfactory?”

Twenty dollars. Lizzy let her breath out. “Yes. Very satisfactory. Thank you.”

“Excellent. I’ll have Mrs. Tate draw up the papers for you. If you would like to have Mr. Moseley look them over before you sign, that would certainly be agreeable.” Mr. Johnson paused, regarding her thoughtfully. “I don’t mind telling you, Miss Lacy, that in my estimation, this is an elegant solution to your mother’s dilemma. She is allowed to remain in her home, while you are making an investment that will appreciate in value.”

He didn’t add, “And the bank will get at least some money out of this mess,” although he might well have. Lizzy had just saved him quite a bit of trouble, not to mention money-and the dead weight of another empty house.

Lizzy nodded numbly. It wasn’t elegance she was after. It was her privacy. Her sanity. If she had to live with her mother again-She didn’t finish the thought. She couldn’t.

Papers in hand, Mr. Johnson stood. “Perhaps it’s not my place to say so,” he added diffidently. “But I did think that, with a little encouragement, your mother might be able to market her skills and earn enough to help with the monthly payment. I am not making a recommendation, mind you. Just an observation.”

Lizzy looked at him, not quite understanding. “Her… skills?”

“Why, yes.” He smiled. “That is an extremely attractive yellow hat you’re wearing. It’s one of your mother’s creations, isn’t it? And I happen to know that Mrs. Johnson-who has an eye for the latest fashions in hats-regularly admires the hats your mother wears to church. She has often said that she wished she could ask Mrs. Lacy to make one for her. I would have mentioned this to your mother, but I was afraid that it would seem-” He cleared his throat gruffly. “A little patronizing. Or worse. She might think I was telling her that she should go out and get a job in order make her mortgage payments.”

Lizzy regarded him, thinking how different he was from what she had expected, and from what the townspeople said about him. “Thank you,” she said, and meant it. “I’m glad to have the suggestion.”

As she left the bank a little later, Lizzy was turning Mr. Johnson’s observation around in her mind. She had planned to go straight to the diner to talk with Verna. Instead, she turned right on Rosemont and walked up the steps to the neighboring frame building, which had a decorated sign over the door: CHAMPAIGN’S DARLING CHAPEAUX. Lizzy had two reasons for making this call. One of them was to invite Fannie Champaign to become a member of the Darling Dahlias, something she had promised Verna and Ophelia she would do.

The other had to do with her mother.

Ten minutes later, Lizzy came out again with a new spring in her step and a new hope in her heart. Fannie Champaign, the only milliner in Darling, had taken a careful look-inside and out and from all angles-at the yellow straw hat she was wearing and said that she would be glad to accept Mrs. Lacy’s millinery creations on consignment.

“To be frank, Miss Lacy,” Miss Champaign said, “I don’t sell many hats here in Darling-the ladies don’t have much money and several of them enjoy making their own hats. But my sister has a shop in Miami, and my cousin has another in Atlanta. I often place my work there. I’m sure they would be glad to consider your mother’s work, as well.”

“I’m grateful,” Lizzy said simply. Between the annuity and the millinery work, her mother might make enough to support herself-if she would.

It was a big if. Lizzy didn’t think her mother had ever earned a penny in her life.