Duet for Three Hands Read online

  “I love to play. The pay and the accolades are gratifying, but all that is not a good enough reason to work as hard as I do.”

  Whitmore remained quiet, thinking. “Why do you work as hard as you do?”

  “Ah, well, that’s simply pure love. I love to play music. It’s all I’ve wanted, until recently.”

  “I love to draw and paint. I could do it all day and not get tired. Is that how it is for you?”

  Nate looked over at him, his eyes serious now but not unkind. “Most of the time.”

  “Father says art’s ridiculous. No money in it.”

  “Not necessarily true, but yes, it can be difficult. Doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do it.”

  “Yeah, yeah, it doesn’t mean that.”

  They sat in silence for several minutes, holding their poles, the dappled October light between the scarlet and yellow leaves in the oaks that surrounded the lake. “I’d like to capture the way the light is this morning, someday, in my paintings.”

  “Keep painting. You will.” Nate’s line lurched. “Ha! Got one.”

  After Whit also caught one of the prehistoric-looking catfish, they agreed they were hungry and ready for breakfast. They gutted and cleaned the fish, carefully scooping the remains into a pail at the side of the lake, and headed toward the house, their feet crunching in the thick layer of fallen pine needles the color of brown bread. Nate stopped when they came to the rose garden. The last of the season’s blooms, reduced to rosehips and a few straggling petals, fluttered in the breeze. Below each bush, like injured soldiers scattered on a battlefield, fallen petals carpeted the ground.

  “Mother keeps the rosehips for the birds instead of cutting the dead blooms. But she won’t like how untidy the ground looks.” Whitmore knelt and picked up one of the stray petals. “She thinks the gardener, Fred Wilder, is lazy. She won’t get rid of him though. Says he has a family to feed.”

  “Your mother’s a kind woman.”

  “And gentle.”

  “Her generous spirit reminds me of my father.”

  He sighed, thinking of Father. What would it be like to have that kind of father? Whit would never know, of course.

  Nate put his arm around Whit, briefly, in an almost embrace. “I realize, of course, I’m not your father. But perhaps I could be someone you rely upon. A confidant. A champion of sorts.”

  Whit glanced over at him, but Nate didn’t meet his gaze. There was a red flush on the older man’s cheekbones. “Thanks. Yes. I’d like that.” Whit dropped the petal from his fingers. It cascaded to the ground, joining her fallen sisters.

  “We’re kindred spirits, you and I.”

  “Kindred spirits?” asked Whit.

  “We understand one another. Both of us artists, for example.”

  “Right. We’re both artists.” His throat ached with pride. Nate considered him a kindred spirit and a friend. How was it possible that this man had come and filled an empty portion of his heart in less than twenty-four hours? How Frances had gotten this man to agree to marry her he could not say. But it didn’t matter. Nate was here now. He would be theirs from now on. Family.

  “Come on, let’s eat,” said Nate. “I’m ravenous.”

  “Ravenous. That’s a Jeselle-type word.”

  “That right?”

  “Mother’s always teaching her new words, and Jeselle spends all day using them in a sentence.”

  They arrived at the house and stomped the mud from their boots before they walked into the kitchen. “You want me to fry these up for breakfast?” Nate asked.

  “Cassie won’t allow that.”

  Nathaniel grinned, looking suddenly like a boy. “We’ll clean up after ourselves. She’ll never know. I’m not afraid of Cassie.”

  “Well, I am. And you should be, too.”

  Just then Cassie came out of the butler’s pantry. “Y’all should be afraid.”

  “Ah, we’ve been caught,” said Nate.

  “This is my kitchen. No one, and I mean no one, messes with my kitchen.

  Cassie seemed different around Nate. What was it exactly? Indulgence, like he was a naughty but loveable puppy. Her words were stern, but her eyes sparkled as if amused. Had Nate charmed even Cassie?

  “Sit down.” She pointed at the table. “I’ll fry ’em up for you.”

  While Cassie melted lard in a frying pan and coated the fish with cornmeal, Nate sipped coffee, gazing out at the garden from the breakfast-nook window. Whit pulled out his sketchbook. Using his new charcoal, he sketched Nate’s profile using quick darts and then smearing the lines with his fingers. The room filled with the aroma of grease and frying fish.

  Capture the moment, Whit told himself, so that he might have it later to pull out and remember the peace he felt.

  Kindred spirits. Was there anything better than this? What had Jes said to him once? Love is all there is and all there ever will be. Surely she was correct.

  Part II

  From Jeselle Thorton’s journal.

  * * *

  March 2, 1929

  * * *

  Seeking truth, I listen behind closed doors. I peer between cracks.

  I capture memories with words.

  Six years old, dust rag in my hand, I stood behind the door to the study watching Mrs. Bellmont teach Whit to read.

  Sensing my presence, her face in the soft light from the lamp went still. “Jes, are you there?”

  I came out from behind the door, standing before her, my eyes turned downward.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Nothing. My chores.”

  “Look at me, Jes.”

  I lifted my head. She put down her pencil and peered at me, those gray eyes of hers kind, discerning. “You want to study here with us?”

  I nodded, unable to utter my greatest desire. To give a desire words makes it real and therefore subject to ridicule, rejection, heartbreak. I was careful then, before education rendered me bold. Before education gave me a voice.

  She rose from the desk, striding to the kitchen with a purposeful gait reserved for times when Frank Bellmont was not present. I hovered behind the door, peering through the crack.

  It was canning day. Steam and the sweet smell of cooked peaches. Mama peeled the fruit’s skin at the sink with her sleeves rolled up to her elbows. Sinewy strength.

  “Cassie, Jeselle wants to study with us. I could teach her right alongside Whit.”

  Mama took her hands out of the steaming bowl, bits of peach skin clinging to her fingers. Her eyebrows went up, causing two creases in the middle of her forehead as she wiped her hands on the front of her apron. I held my breath, sure she’d say no, that I should be learning how to help with the chores instead of schooling.

  “What about Mr. Bellmont? No harm can come to you because of this. I can’t have that.”

  “He won’t know,” said Mrs. Bellmont.

  “Fine, then.” She made a little nod with her head and then turned away, back to peeling the hot flesh of peaches. When Mrs. Bellmont turned to leave, a wide smile on her pretty face, she did not see Mama fall to her knees with her hands grasping the sink as she bowed her head, praying gratitude. But I did. I will never forget.

  Later, when I was eight, Mr. Bellmont discovered Mrs. Bellmont and me with our heads together over an open book. Mrs. Bellmont paid dearly for it with bumps and bruises, but she would not stop. Her eye still black from his fist, she said to me, voice so soft I had to lean close to hear her, “Here’s something you must know, Jeselle, given your particular situation on this earth. There will be many times in your life you’ll have to pretend to be something you’re not, just to keep peace. But make no mistake, there are still ways to do what you want, what you believe is right. You have to be brave, though. Some things must be done in secret. Behind closed doors.” And so we did, the teacher and the student in covert alliance for my education.

  And what has this clandestine education given me? We cannot measure it, capture it—even with words. I tried to
explain it to Mama once so that she might be convinced to let Mrs. Bellmont teach her to read. But she would have none of it, said she’s too old to learn to read and that if God had wanted her to, he would’ve arranged it when she was a child. She tells herself that kind of thing. It keeps her from going crazy with remorse and anger. If only she understood that reading leads to freedom. You can go anywhere or learn anything inside a book. You are liberated inside those words, free to live another’s life.

  Chapter 8

  Lydia

  * * *

  At dawn Lydia Tyler dressed in a ratty flannel shirt and a pair of William’s old pants, cinched at the waist with his leather belt she’d gotten in the habit of wearing after his death. She braided her hair as she slipped her feet into his work boots, pausing only long enough to start a fire in the kitchen’s woodstove before going out into the March morning.

  At the chicken coop, she tossed some feed to the squawking masses that reminded her of gossiping ladies flocking outside church after Sunday services. She both despised the chickens with their beady eyes that looked at her from either side of their lumpy heads and revered them at the same time, knowing how reliably they gave her eggs and how the fryers fed her and many of her neighbors.

  These protesting, pecking chickens were the only animals she raised on her place now, having long ago decided the pigs and milk cow they’d had when William was alive were too much trouble, given their yield and her needs. It was enough, the hundred chicks she bought every spring and raised into chickens: a dozen layers, the rest fryers. She sold the eggs every Friday; her customers knew to stop by before nine to pick up their allotment for the week. After her paying customers, she had just enough for her family and several neighbors who had come on hard times.

  Lydia gathered the eggs, placing them carefully into a tin bucket. After setting the eggs near the gate, she went back into the barn, looking for her old cat Piggy. He came out at night to catch mice and then usually fell asleep on a bale of hay. Sure enough, there he was, reliable as always, curled in a ball, his white paws tucked under his black coat. She called to him, but instead of stretching and yawning disdainfully to jump from his perch to rub against her ankles, he didn’t move. “Piggy,” she called again. “Breakfast time.”Again, nothing.

  She placed her hand on his back. Stiff. She stepped back as a sob came from her chest. “Piggy,” she whispered.

  She scooped Piggy into her arms, placed him in the wheelbarrow, and grabbed a shovel, wheeling out beyond the fence to where a wooden cross was forever above Lady’s grave. In life Lady had been an orange and white striped mouser and was actually a boy. But Birdie, only four when they found him wandering down the dirt road, refused to believe it, insisting they call him Lady.

  Lydia dug into the soft ground next to Lady’s grave until she had a hole big enough for Piggy. She placed him inside and quickly covered him with dirt, patting the mound with the back of the shovel. She gathered a dozen rocks in various sizes and placed them over the grave to keep predators away. If Birdie were here, she would give Piggy’s eulogy. But she wasn’t, Lydia thought, pitifully. The girls were out of town visiting Lydia’s father and his wife. They wouldn’t be back for another week. She would have to give the eulogy herself.

  It was still today, no breeze or rain. Just a thick cloud layer that felt close. “You were a good cat, Piggy,” she said out loud. “You never gave up, even when you were old and could’ve spent your days sleeping. Instead you just kept along, killing mice like a young cat, which is to be admired. I’ll miss you.”

  She went inside the house and sat at the piano. Most days she played three hours in the morning and another two in the afternoon, but now she could not focus, thinking instead about William. Every death, whether a cat or a neighbor down the road she hardly knew, brought grief to the surface.

  Around nine, there was a knock on the front door. Startled, Lydia dried her eyes and opened the door. It was Midwife Stone. “Mornin’, Mrs. Tyler. Just coming from the Warrens’. She had them twins this morning.”

  Midwife Stone was nearing sixty, scrawny, with gnarled hands and several missing teeth, known to smoke a corncob pipe on the porch of the general store. She’d helped almost every poor baby in Atmore come into the world. She looked Lydia up and down. “You having yourself a cry, Lydia Tyler? That ain’t like you.”

  Lydia smiled, feeling foolish. “My old cat Piggy died.”

  “That ole mangy cat? I thought evil lived forever.”

  Lydia laughed. The last time Midwife Stone was over for a visit he’d hissed and snarled at her before running like something possessed out the door and into the barn, appearing hours later with an accusatory stare in Lydia’s direction. “He just didn’t like you. He was a grand judge of character. Come on in now, and I’ll fix you something to eat.”

  “Don’t mind if I do.”

  In the kitchen, Lydia set some biscuits, butter, and honey on a plate in front of Midwife Stone. “I’ll fix you up a couple of eggs.”

  “That’d be mighty fine. I came by to see if you’d fry up a chicken for Mrs. Warren. She’s feeling poorly, and her kin is surely about to starve to death. These twins make six kids. Nary a crumb of food in that house as far as I can see.”

  The Warren family lived a ways down the road from Lydia in a two-room shack, trying to make a living growing cotton on a small, overused piece of land. “That’s a shame. I’ll send them up some eggs, too. And I’ve some canned beans and peaches I can spare. We don’t eat nearly what we did when William was alive.”

  “That what got you boohooin’ here in the broad daylight?”

  Lydia smiled as she tied on her apron. “I guess. Just feeling mighty sorry for myself. It’s embarrassing.” She scooped some lard into a frying pan. “My mother always told me if you’re feeling bad to do for others.”

  “Good way to live, surely.” Midwife Stone chewed the biscuit on the left side of her mouth, where she had more teeth. “All them Warren kids need shoes. Anything you could do for ’em?”

  “I can put it on our list at church.” Lydia cracked two eggs into the frying pan, hot lard spattering over her clean stove. “Sometimes we can scare up some money from a few of the wealthy folks.”

  “Those same ladies that pray for me?” asked Midwife Stone.

  Lydia laughed and flipped the eggs. “Well, you’re quite scandalous. Rumor has it you’re making voodoo dolls out of corncobs.”

  “Don’t seem to recall that when they’re sending for me to birth them babies.”

  “You’re giving them something to pray for,” laughed Lydia. “They don’t have a thing to do without praying over some misguided soul.”

  Midwife Stone buttered another biscuit and chewed noisily for a moment. “You should find yourself a new husband. Someone to keep you company.”

  “I’ll do it the minute you do.”

  Midwife Stone chuckled and sliced into the eggs Lydia set in front of her. “No need for a husband if you can take care of yourself.”

  “I can’t imagine living with another man. William was my one love. I was lucky that way. Most women don’t even get that.”

  “Ain’t that the truth.” Midwife Stone scooped up the rest of the egg yolk with her biscuit. “Look at me.”

  Lydia sat in the chair across from Midwife Stone. “Truth is, I’ve been wondering what to do next. I hate feeling so useless. I can’t just be Widow Tyler, the Methodist church piano player and Emma and Birdie’s mother for the rest of my life.”

  “People in town think other things about you, too.” Midwife Stone’s eyes twinkled.

  “I know people think I’m odd.”

  “In here all day playing your piano.” She slapped the table with her hand and grinned her half-toothless smile. “It gives ’em all fits.”

  They both laughed. Lydia poured them both a cup of coffee. “What do they expect? For me to just sit here waiting to die?”

  “Well, it’s true that someone’s always being born or dy
ing. I guess it’s in the years between we have to do something that either helps others or makes us happy. You got a few good years left in you. I feel sure of that. Just keep doing something. Play that piano. All good things come when you do something you love.”

  Chapter 9

  Nathaniel

  * * *

  Frances’s labor pains began in the early morning hours on the second day of March. Nathaniel remembered nothing of the journey, but somehow they arrived at the hospital just ten blocks from their apartment in New York City. Frances was whisked away, and his long wait began. He paced the floor for hours, more anxious than he’d ever been in his life. Finally, a nun beckoned to him, her face grim. “Follow me, please, Mr. Fye. The doctor wishes to speak with you.”

  They walked down a long hallway until they came to the doctor’s office. The doctor, whom Nathaniel had never met, sat behind the desk. He looked up when they came in and pointed to one of the chairs. “Please sit. I’ve some distressing news.”

  Nathaniel suddenly couldn’t feel his feet. The nun steered him into the chair. His heart beat wildly. His stomach churned. Behind the doctor’s head, the clock ticked off the seconds, one by one.

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Fye, but there’s been a complication.”

  “Are they all right?” Nathaniel said.

  “Frances is fine. She lost a lot of blood and needs to rest.”

  “And the baby?”

  “It’s a boy, but I’m sorry, Mr. Fye, he isn’t going to make it.”

  “Isn’t going to make it?”

  “He won’t live for more than a few hours. He weighs only a couple of pounds and, well, he was born with severe abnormalities.”

  “Abnormalities?”

  He spoke in one note, methodical, like reading from a textbook. “An oversized head, which usually indicates excess fluid, and clubfeet. We don’t know what his insides look like; we only know from the past that these kinds of babies don’t live longer than a couple of hours.”