Darkest Hour (Cutler 5)

aughed, hard and mirthless. I looked at Papa, but he simply continued to chew his food and stare ahead.

"Mamma's so sad," I repeated, shaking my head. I felt the tears burning beneath my eyelids.

"The reason Mamma's so depressed is you!" Emily accused. "You walk around here with a gray face, with eyes filled with tears. You remind her day in and day out that Eugenia's dead. You don't give her a moment's peace," she charged. Her long arm and bony finger jabbed across the table at me.

"I do not!"

"Enough," Papa said. He knitted his dark, thick eyebrows together and glared at me. "Your mother will come to terms with the tragedy on her own and I will not have it made the subject of a discussion at dinner. I don't want to see long faces in your mother's presence either," he warned. "Hear?"

"Yes, Papa," I said.

He snapped his newspaper and began complaining about the price of tobacco.

"They're strangling the little farmer to death. It's just another way to kill the Old South," he growled.

Why was that more important to him than what was happening to Mamma? Why was everyone but me blind to the terrible time she was having and how it had changed her and dimmed the light in her eyes? I asked Louella and after she was sure neither Emily nor Papa were in earshot, she said, "There are none so blind as those who will not see."

"But if they love her, Louella, as surely they must, why do they choose to ignore it?"

Louella just gave me one of her knowing looks, the kind that said everything without saying anything. Papa must love Mamma, I thought, love her in his special way. He married her; he wanted and had children with her; he chose her to be the mistress of his plantation and bear his name. I knew how much all that meant to him.

And Emily—despite her hateful and mean-spirited ways, her fanatic religious devotion and her hardness —was still Mamma's daughter. This was her mother who was dying in little ways. She had to feel sorry, feel compassion and want to help.

But alas, Emily's solution was to suggest more prayer sessions, longer Bible readings and more hymns. Whenever she read or prayed in front of Mamma, Mamma stood or sat motionless, her lovely face darkly shadowed, her eyes glassy and still like the eyes of someone hypnotized. When Emily's religious moments were over, Mamma would throw me a quick glance of deepest despair and retire to her room.

Yet, although she hadn't been eating well since Eugenia's death, I noticed that her face grew plumper and her waist wider. When I mentioned it to Louella, she said, "No wonder."

"What do you mean, Louella? Why, no wonder?"

"It's all those mint juleps spiked with Mr. Booth's brandy and those bonbons. She's been eating pounds of them," Louella said, shaking her head, "and she don't listen to me. No ma'am. What I say goes in one ear and out the other so fast, I hear myself echo in that room."

"Brandy! Does Papa know?"

"I suspect so," Louella said. "But all he did was order Henry to bring up another case of it." She wagged her head in disgust. "It ain't coming to no good," she said. "It ain't coming to no good."

What Louella told me put a panic in me. Life at The Meadows was sad without Eugenia, but life at The Meadows without Mamma would be unbearable, for I would have only Papa and Emily as family. I hurried off to see Mamma and found her sitting at her vanity table. She was dressed in one of her silk nightgowns and matching robes, the burgundy ones, and she was brushing her hair, but moving so slowly that each stroke took as long as five or six normally would. For a moment I stood in the doorway, gazing in at her, watching her sit so still, her eyes fixed on her reflection, but clearly not seeing herself.

"Mamma," I cried, hurrying to sit beside her as I had done so many times before. "Do you want me to do that for you?"

At first, I thought she hadn't heard me, but then she sighed deeply and turned to me. When she did so, I smelled the brandy on her breath and my heart sank.

"Hello, Violet," she said, then smiled. "You look so pretty tonight, but then again, you always look pretty."

"Violet? I'm not Violet, Mamma. I'm Lillian." She looked at me, but I was sure she didn't hear me.

And then she turned and gazed at herself in the mirror again.

"You want me to tell you what to do about Aaron, don't you? You want me to tell you if you should do more than hold his hand. Mother tells you nothing. Well," she said, turning back to me, her smile wide, her eyes bright, but with a strange sort of light in them, "I know you've already done more than hold hands, haven't you? I can tell, Violet, so there's no sense in denying it.

"Don't protest," she said, putting her fingers on my lips. "I won't give away your secrets. What are sisters for if not to keep each other's secrets locked securely in each other's hearts? The truth is," Mamma said, gazing at herself in the mirror again, "I'm jealous. You have someone who loves you, truly loves you; you have someone who doesn't want to marry you only for your name and your place in society. You have someone who doesn't see marriage as just another business dealing. You have someone who sets your heart singing.

"Oh Violet, I would change places with you in an instant, if I could."

She spun around to me again.

"Don't look at me like that. I'm not telling you anything you don't already know. I hate my marriage; I've hated it from the very beginning. Those wails you heard coming from my room the night before my wedding were wails of agony. Mother was so upset because Father was furious. She was afraid I would embarrass them. Did you know it was more important for me to please them by marrying Jed Booth than it was to please myself? I feel . . . I feel like someone who was sacrificed for Southern honor. Yes I do," she said firmly.

"Don't look so shocked, Violet. You should pity me. Pity me because I will never taste the lips of a man who loves me as much as Aaron loves you. Pity me because my body will never sing in my husband's embrace the way your body will sing in your husband's. I will live half a life until I die, for that is what marriage to a man you don't love and who doesn't love you means . . . being half alive," she said, and turned back to the mirror.