Brad Watson - Miss Jane

At least once a month, when the weather was good, she badgered Grace into driving them up to their parents’ place for Sunday dinner. When Grace tired enough of that, she taught Jane to drive her automobile in a flat field on the south side of town and after that Jane would visit her mother and father by herself when she could. Sometimes she went up early enough to stop for coffee with Dr. Thompson before going on to the home place. She always drove back to town before dark. Her father seemed to be in decline. She would come upon him standing at the edge of the pasture, looking at his cows as if he hardly knew what they were. Or he would sit on the front porch by himself, smoking. He drank before breakfast, and then periodically throughout the day.

“Papa?” she’d say.

“Yes.”

And sometimes they would say no more than that, as if that were enough, or all there was, a generic reply to her all-but-unspoken query into his condition. She sat and looked at his lean, hard profile, now bearing the wire-rimmed spectacles, and wondered what he was seeing as he stared straight ahead into the yard beyond the porch, seeming deep in thought but saying nothing.

Sometimes when one of Grace’s gentleman friends came over Jane crept out and walked the mostly empty evening sidewalks downtown. She liked the evening air, the slow and scarce traffic that rolled or clopped through town at that hour. The smells of the bakery baking on the night shift. The coal smoke from the trains. But she was lonelier than ever, and many a night such as this she longed just to be back on the farm, alone in that way. It seemed to her to be the place she belonged.

Occasionally one of the “friends” came over for supper, and sometimes he stayed later, when Jane had already gone up to her room, and she could hear him and Grace partly from the stairwell, their murmuring talk, and partly from the outside, where their voices drifted from the windows and into the air and back into Jane’s windows above them. On some of those nights, though they kept the radio on to cover their sounds, she heard the faint whine of the bad hinge on Grace’s bedroom door, the light metallic click of the door closing. And she might drift over to that side of the house, to the little sitting room she had arranged across from her bedroom, and sit beside the open window looking out over downtown below and listen to the sounds of their lovemaking, so carefully quietened they were, like the whispers of a lover in Jane’s own ears, burning with the shame of her eavesdropping.

One of Grace’s suitors was a man named Louis Fontleroy. He was a shoe salesman for one of the two ladies’ shoe stores downtown. He dressed as if he were more than that, and was handsome, although somewhat in the way of a handsome housecat, and younger than Grace. He wore engraved tie clasps on his silk ties, and ankle boots that to Jane seemed oddly effeminate, and smoked cigarettes he kept in a silver case. He was infinitely polite to Jane, even bending to kiss the top of her hand sometimes when she entered the room. Jane felt he was patronizing, yet she was polite in return. When they dined, he would make pleasant small talk, making sure to address questions to Jane as well as Grace. Once, when Grace had left the room for a moment, Jane was fairly certain that after remarking what a good cook she was, how excellent was the pot roast, he had winked at her. She blushed but when she looked back at Mr. Fontleroy he seemed to be examining his manicured fingernails as if to search for some flaw he might attend to when he returned home. She thought him a dandy.

One evening when Grace had said Mr. Fontleroy was coming for dinner and asked Jane to join them, Jane came downstairs and entered the parlor to find not just Grace and Mr. Fontleroy, but another man as well. She froze in the doorway to the parlor, her heart thumping and anger flashing into her mind, at the same time that both gentlemen stood, setting their coffee cups into their saucers on the coffee table with a little clatter.

“Won’t you join us, Miss Jane?” Fontleroy said.

“Come have a seat, Jane,” Grace said in a wry voice. “This is Mr. Fontleroy’s friend Gabe Satchel.”

“Miss Chisolm,” Satchel said, nodding, and then he took a step toward her on his long legs and extended his hand. She reached out and shook it, her palm damp, and then sat in the chair next to her sister, her cheeks burning, and rested the damp palm on her skirt to dry it. She hoped she wouldn’t have to rush off, embarrassing herself and Grace alike.

This Mr. Satchel was older, looked almost middle-aged, though what looked older in his features was mostly facial, and she sensed that some burden had made them lined in that way. There was also a kind of serenity in the way he listened when someone spoke, looked at them and seemed to absorb what they were saying as if it had kindled his deepest, most intimate interest. It warmed her and made her flush a bit, and she couldn’t help but feel drawn to him for this, if not for his looks. But what were looks? How long could anyone stay beautiful, if it came to that?

But then what would he see in her, no doubt still just a country girl, even if she had lived in town with Grace now for a good five years? And why should she even think about such a thing, given the realities of her situation? She’d come a long way toward coming to terms with that.

And yet she sensed in this Gabe Satchel some kind of sadness borne along by a natural kindness. It made her heart leap a bit, and made her feel, at the same time, as miserable as she felt the day she’d said good-bye to Elijah Key.

So now she knew why Grace had insisted that she cook an entire pot roast and more potatoes and carrots than usual, and why Grace herself had put together a salad of lettuce, tomatoes, and onions. And now she had little appetite, and her emotions were building inside her so as to make it impossible even to swallow without difficulty.

As they ate, Jane said little but was courteous. Mr. Satchel was tall, several inches taller than Jane, and slim but not nearly as bone-thin as her father, and as she was becoming. In the brighter light of the dining room (which she hated, preferring a lower light at meals), she realized that for all its almost enchanting kindness, his face was a little bit cockeyed, his ears a bit crooked. Even so, he had good table manners and was not overly loud in conversation. In fact, he was on the quiet side.

“Mr. Satchel was in the Great War,” Grace said at one point, to which Mr. Satchel said nothing but smiled faintly at his dinner plate as he cut himself another bite of the roast.

“Did you serve in France, Mr. Satchel?” Jane asked.

“That he did,” Mr. Fontleroy said. “He was in battle.”

“Well, I’m happy that you came home.”

“Mostly, ma’am,” Mr. Satchel said then in an odd way. “I was wounded, but thankful I’m alive and in good health. I was never gassed like a lot of fellows I knew.”

“Mr. Satchel’s family is from up around Tupelo,” Grace said, going around and filling everyone’s glass with more tea.

“What brought you down here?” Jane said.

“Work,” Satchel said. “I’ve been with the railroad since the war, and they transferred me to here a couple of years ago. I’m hoping what seniority I have holds me through these times.”

“Anybody’s lucky to be working or running a business in these times,” Fontleroy said. “I’m afraid the only way I’m holding on in the shoe business is by wearing the hell out of my own,” he said, laughing at his own joke.

“And you are doing well in your business, Miss Grace?” Satchel said.

“Well, if it wasn’t for Jane getting so good at repairing worn-out clothing and making it look new, and making new things for such a good price, I’m afraid we’d be in trouble ourselves,” Grace said.