Laelia Read online

  “It’s hard to lie there and hear him suffer.”

  “I know it is, honey child.”

  “But I’m just so tired at the end of the day.”

  “Of course you are. You need your sleep. You can’t do a thing for him rest-broken, and he most likely doesn’t know if you’re there or not, he’s so far gone.”

  Gracelyn nodded weakly.

  “Timothy is going to get to town and find some liquor whether we lock his door or not,” Rebecca continued. “That skinny man is spry, and I don’t put it past him to go out the window and climb down the trellis. Other than that, it’s no use having him bang on the door in the middle of the night causing a commotion. We have to get our rest for our own sake, as well as for the menfolks’. We can’t do everything round the clock, day in and day out. And what we can’t do, the Lord will.” As always, Rebecca’s dictum was followed by her sisters.

  The Cates women maintained a pristine order in the house, enabling the sick and the well to coexist. When Lucy returned on Saturday morning to relieve the sisters, she never found anything amiss in the men’s cleanliness, nor were their pharmaceuticals ever in short supply. She commented often to her neighbors how circumspect the Cates women were as caretakers, and mused along with them how difficult it must be to care for chronically ill menfolk.

  With Lucy in charge of their men, Sunday after church for the Cates sisters was long and pleasurable. Once home, they enacted their weekly ritual of cooking a massive dinner and talking up a storm while eating it. Immediately following the second course of their meal, they collected baskets of threads, yarns, and fabric scraps and removed themselves to the sprawling front porch of the mansion, where sunlight filtered like quicksilver through the railings. Seated in wicker fan chairs painted a spring green, they worked studiously on crochet, needlepoint, and piecework and continued the conversation begun at the dining table.

  Today, Rebecca, eyes steeled and staring straight ahead, paused from probing and twirling a wooden crochet hook into the deep burgundy rug yarn of her project. Earlier in the day, when she and her sisters had strolled home from church service, her mind had begun to churn with thoughts about their husbands. Rebecca moved a sweat-soaked lock from her brow, smoothing it back in place so it would not moisten her clear gray eyes.

  “We’ve all borne a heavy burden. For myself, the Lord has shown me a way to turn it over to Him.”

  “Turn it over, that’s what He wants us to do,” said Claudia, her eyes riveted on her embroidery. She would not lead the discussion but would second Rebecca’s opinion.

  Gracelyn did not speak at first, but she caught Rebecca’s drift and nodded her head to show support of whatever Rebecca deemed appropriate when it came to turning troubles over to the Lord. As she waited for Rebecca to clarify the issue at hand and identify the “heavy burden” they had each borne, she sensed the discussion would flow less from spiritual insight than from expediency. That was fine with Gracelyn. A grasp of purely ethical considerations was never enough to sway her from consensus with her older sisters.

  “Well, that is the Lord’s way,” was her amendment.

  A low-register moan cut through Rebecca’s thoughts. The sound came from the second story of the house where two of the front windows had been raised and the shutters flung open to receive the light spring air.

  “That one doing poorly today,” was Rebecca’s succinct comment.

  As if to accompany the moan, in the next few moments the women heard a series of thuds against the hardwood floors inside. Claudia Cates’s head shot up from the tiny lavender stitches she was making on her linen square, her concentration broken.

  “Damn!”

  Gracelyn Cates dropped her fabric scraps and sucked the bubble of blood from her pricked finger.

  “I’ll go inside, make sure Lucy is all right.”

  “Lucy’s fine. You just sit still so we can talk.”

  At Rebecca’s instruction, Gracelyn lowered her half-raised body and sat back down in her chair.

  And so the talk began. Rebecca characteristically led things off.

  “You know the Lord’s been good to Jake, keeping him alive after his head accident; and I just believe the Lord wants to take him over altogether. That Sacred Lamb Rest Home up in Springfield is a nice clean place, and they would have him in church service every afternoon. He’s been a good husband to me, and I want the best for him right now. It stays on my mind that he could hurt himself when my back was turned, wandering around confused like he does.”

  Claudia and Gracelyn listened carefully. Here was the standard supplied by the indisputable leader of their now matriarchal clan. But they needed Rebecca to say more. With the blueprint laid, they would both be able to follow suit. To their knowledge, Jake’s offenses throughout his marriage to Rebecca were in no way comparable to their own husbands’. In fact, he was mild mannered and seemed to have a great fondness for his authoritative wife, even while tolerating her unmasked adoration of her father.

  Rebecca’s marriage to Jake had been perfunctory and unrelated to her ideas of womanly fulfillment. Her father was the man in her life, brilliant, dynamic, demanding. Rebecca was very much like him, strong and spirited, optimistic, sharing a physical resemblance and a passion for family. Mattie indulged the bond between her firstborn and her husband, actually relieved that her husband had another sounding board, since his bold energies had consumed her own fragile ones for years. Rebecca, however, more than matched his stamina, could keep up with his grandiose outlook and, by the time she reached puberty, had begun to echo it.

  Reuben was interested in dynasty. When Jake, then a young man in his twenties, came calling on Rebecca, a year out of high school and home from college for spring break, Reuben assessed him quickly. He had finished Illinois Normal in accounting and begun working as a clerk for a white-owned banking establishment. He seemed bright and ambitious, albeit not too interesting. When her father mentioned to Rebecca that this young man would fit well into the family, Rebecca was happy. Jake’s slight physique and pleasantly intense dark eyes excited her. She was not suited to a man who would dominate her, nor did she want someone she could intimidate. Jake seemed the right balance. They could talk for hours about people, politics, and the places they both wanted to travel. After their marriage, they made love often.

  Jake was steady. He intended to make the most of his good fortune in landing Reuben Cates’s eldest daughter. When he began working with the Cates family business following Reuben’s stroke, he came to work early and left late. Growing up poor, Jake hungered for the acceptance that marrying into Peoria’s elite would afford him, and even had illusions about ultimately owning the prosperous business.

  When first wed, Rebecca and Jake took a road trip together every summer, venturing as far as Los Angeles one year. Entranced by the sparkle of sunlight sweeping wide clean streets, Rebecca spearheaded their visits to tourist sites, commandeering her husband early in the morning.

  “We’ll head over to the university today. I hear it’s a big place, and I want plenty of time to find the greenhouse. Then, why don’t we visit the Hollywood lots and see about going to one of Papa’s game shows.”

  Jake acquiesced in his usual way with a brief nod of his head. He liked the welcome they received entering and exiting their hotel, where they had obtained a lush suite, including a kitchen, as Rebecca was not a restaurant enthusiast. He knew their car, a Mercedes sedan, meant something in this milieu when they drove up the first time and the valet came to park the car. Pleased as he was, it was not difficult for him to agree to Rebecca’s wishes.

  The evening before they left, Jake mentioned to Rebecca that his mother’s distant cousin Betty lived in one of the suburbs and he would call her so they could visit the woman, a retired school-teacher. Rebecca, already in her nightgown and curled up in the oversize bed, after yawning sleepily, told her husband, “Well, let’s make sure we know exactly where we’re going. Better get directions from the desk.”


  The next morning, Rebecca informed Jake that he needed to go see the relative alone, since she had developed a headache from swollen sinuses. Jake said sympathetically, “Must be the air pollution out here.” He left shortly after.

  During their drive home when it was Jake’s time at the wheel, Rebecca hoisted the snapshots she had taken with her camera, examining each and ordering them for their scrapbook. “How was Betty? Did you have trouble finding that address?” she asked.

  Jake replied offhandedly to his wife’s query, “No, honey, everything was just fine. I’m sorry you didn’t get to meet her. She was quite a gal.”

  In late August, Rebecca noticed a burning discharge coming from her vagina. She douched for a week with white oak bark, thinking that the heat and humidity had irritated her. After the second week, when the secretion continued unabated, she left the house with Jake early Saturday morning, dropping him at the store and telling him that she was going to look at antiques in Springfield.

  She arrived at the Springfield clinic, an anonymous woman. The diagnosis of syphilis left her dazed. On her way back to Peoria, she stopped at a pharmacy for her penicillin prescription, and, standing at the counter, felt, for one of the few times in her adult life, truly embarrassed.

  The rage hit during the rest of her drive home. The cold and intense feeling alarmed her. This was the first time she had felt such out-of-control fury. She pulled off the road to the shoulder and tried for several minutes to breathe deeply. Then her mind began constructing a balance sheet, first randomly, then methodically. A guttural sob escaped her.

  Rebecca arrived in Peoria just as Jake was closing the office. She pulled up to the curb alongside the bank building and waited for him to come out. He had known she planned to be back with the car by the end of his workday, and was waiting inside the lobby. He waved excitedly upon seeing her, and came out immediately to open the passenger side of the car for her so that he could drive them home. Rebecca walked heavily around the elongated front of the elegant car and slid past Jake into the seat. Jake threw his attaché in the back and proceeded down the town’s broad avenue.

  “Do we need anything before we get to the house?” Jake asked his wife, thinking how he hated to settle in at home, only to remember they were out of toothpaste. “Did you find any antiques today, honey?”

  Rebecca spoke quietly. “Is your syphilis taken care of?”

  Jake gasped, the car swerved, and he abruptly put on the brakes. He steered the Mercedes to the side of the road and cut off the engine. He turned to look at Rebecca, his expression alternating between astonishment and belief. He continued to stare at her resolute profile but said nothing.

  Rebecca continued to speak softly. “I have it, so you must have it. Get it taken care of, please.”

  The prostitute Jake encountered coming back from cousin Betty’s a scant three blocks from their posh hotel had been a small woman, not any taller than five feet one. She was wearing a purple satin dress and had a purple netting shawl thrown over her delicate shoulders, and even with the three-inch purple satin–covered heels she wore, she was like a doll, a delicate princess needing protection. As soon as he saw her, he was drunk with desire, and after making love to her, he paid her double the price she quoted.

  Jake, in the now-suffocating air of the Mercedes, remained tongue-tied for several minutes. There was no way he could deny to Rebecca that he had contracted the disease. He thought illogically that Rebecca was too noble to contract anything so vile. During their marriage his infidelities had been sparse, taking place two or three times a year, and always with someone from out of town. In his mind, it was no big deal. He sought variety and didn’t feel that he was betraying his marriage vows, because the women were so unlike Rebecca.

  “I’m so sorry, Rebecca; I am so sorry. I’m just a man.”

  Rebecca did not respond.

  “You know, it’s hard on a man to be faithful to one woman. But I don’t know what I would do without you.”

  Rebecca had already made up her mind to stay with Jake. Though ill and weak, Reuben was still intent on his daughters’ bearing offspring. Rebecca accepted this as a duty, and after Jake’s presenting her with written clinical evidence of having been treated, she continued making love to her husband, separating the honest affection she had felt previously from her considerable carnal needs.

  Rebecca’s periods stopped coming four months after she was diagnosed. When she went to be examined again at the Springfield clinic, the physician told her she was sterile because she’d had the disease without symptoms for so long. Rebecca felt immense loss and disbelief that something so important to her could be snatched away. For several weeks she was unable to rally her energies. When she did, she threw herself into her prize-winning orchids, showing them at the country fairs around the Midwest, and even had an invitation to travel to France. She told no one about her infertility. She reasoned, it would just worry Reuben and Mattie and perhaps lead to questions she would not want to answer. Though she knew Jake wanted offspring, whenever he brought up the subject, Rebecca revealed nothing about her condition. As far as he was concerned, Rebecca felt he didn’t deserve to know one way or the other.

  Reuben Cates’s daughters had maintained separate residences with their respective mates and adapted to the state of wifehood as best they could. But eventually, after decades of marriage, they all returned to live in the massive homestead built by their father, Reuben. It was as though they had been on loan temporarily for breeding, but actual bonding with their mates was not envisioned.

  Rebecca and Jake moved back into the homestead when Reuben had his first stroke and Jake took over management of the store. Jake was efficient and turned a good profit, so that when a hundred-pound carton of Indian Mist perfume spray collapsed a neglected shelf and cracked his skull, causing brain damage, Rebecca was able to sell the store and amply support Jake, herself, and her elderly parents.

  Some years later Claudia Cates returned home to help Rebecca care for their mother, Mattie, whose good health had not lasted much beyond her husband’s final stroke. Claudia reasoned that Rebecca had done her share by tending to their father and her husband after he became a half-wit, so that she would come and assist now that their mother was ill. It was an easier decision for her to move home than it would have been to surmount the confusion she felt at her husband, Timothy’s, drunkenness and repeated unfaithfulness. When Timothy became regularly dissolute and unreliable, she decided to abandon her lifestyle and move back home. Some part of her thought that a relatively stress-free life living in the Cates mansion would give her and Timothy a second chance at meaning. It would certainly provide her love within the bosom of her family. As she culled her thoughts, there was no doubt left in Claudia’s mind that now her place was with Rebecca and her ailing mother. Rebecca’s strength was the bulwark she required to subdue the chaos in her life.

  Unlike Rebecca and Gracelyn, who were wed in church, Claudia had embarked on married life with an outdoor wedding and reception at a posh Bloomington country club. Reuben’s money secured the all-white establishment with little protest from the membership. Mattie took her elegant daughter to Chicago to shop for a trousseau for the August wedding. Claudia was outfitted with a slim-fitting ivory dress with a beaded bodice and circular train. Mattie had decided a display of the family’s wealth would be appropriate, since Timothy’s mother was from a prominent Chicago family, and his father was a successful lawyer. Reuben indulged his wife’s dreams of a grand occasion, knowing such a wedding would compensate for the humble ceremony the couple had themselves undergone years before.

  On the day the date and locale were finalized, Mattie talked excitedly to her husband at bedtime about the preparations.

  “Reuben, you know they’re all pretty girls, but Claudia is our swan.”

  “Well, yes, that’s fair to say,” Reuben responded. “I never did see Rebecca in all that frilly nonsense, and Gracelyn is going to follow just what Rebecca did. It’ll be good for
Claudia’s shyness, get her out in public.”

  For Claudia, the preparations were exhausting but exciting. With her mother’s help, she attended to the most minute detail, anxious for Timothy’s family to see her in the best light. They appeared to her extremely well bred, and she did not want them to think of the girl marrying their handsome son as a country bumpkin. Claudia’s new in-laws were duly impressed by the ceremony. As she and Timothy pulled off in their decorated limousine, Claudia noted out the back window that her new mother-in-law pressed Mattie’s hand while talking animatedly.

  Claudia’s dread of her husband’s touching her began that day. She turned abruptly from looking at the tableau of family and guests they were leaving behind when Timothy shoved his hand down her dress and grabbed her breasts.

  “Timothy! The driver!”

  “He’s getting paid to drive, not look at us. I’m sure he’s seen worse.”

  Timothy went on for a few seconds, fondling her roughly until she could dislodge his hand from inside her fitted bodice. Then, leaning into her, he licked the arch of her neck and began sucking noisily. Claudia recovered from the shock and summoned enough strength to push him hard against the door on his side.

  “Stop it! Timothy, please.”

  Timothy, surprised at her strength, leaned against the upholstered side panel and assessed his new bride.

  “Her first time,” he informed the driver and grinned rakishly at the mute, expressionless man. When Claudia began to gasp, hysterically clenching her throat, he watched her silently. As soon as she regained her composure, he spoke to her.

  “You’re my wife now, and I can have you whenever I get ready. Tonight, you’ll see what a good man you married, and you’ll be grateful.”