Grace: A Novel

Chapter Six

89 Chapter Six • 1 Watching for Dixie between classes, Bobby sees nothing else. When she appears, he walks with her down the hall. “Kiss me once and kiss me twice and kiss me once again,” he whistles softly, although he’s never kissed her. Not on her lips. Not one time. Although she lets him kiss her neck, and she lets him touch her breasts, when he tries to kiss her lips, abandon is not in her vocabulary . But if it’s dancing, well, Dixie dances with more abandon than any girl he’s ever known! The dance is two weeks away, and every night he hurries through supper so they can practice. Mrs. Balderidge is always at home, but she never comes into the room when he is there. The first time they practiced after Dixie’s father left, Bobby said, “Could I say hello to your mother?” “Not tonight,” Dixie said. “I promised your father I’d help if I could.” “But not tonight. She’s upset. Somebody left some flowers on the porch. It upset her.” “The flowers?” “No. Well, maybe. They were in a green vase. She’s always trying to remember something about a green bottle. She cries when she tries to remember.” 90 Jane Roberts Wood Dixie had leaned forward and put her head on his shoulder. “Oh, Bobby,” she sighed. Pulling her to him, feeling thin, sad shoulders, he is filled with longing. Oh, Dixie! Of the Coke bottle glasses! Of the boogie-woogie and tapping saddle shoes. The brave swing of skirts. If I could only make you happy! Tonight the meal will take forever. The Little Brontës have come for dinner. The table glistens with his Grandmother Charlotte’s cut glass and heavy silver. Sprays of japonica and wild plum blossoms in cut-glass vases on each end of the sideboard fill the room with balmy scents of spring. Entering the dining room, Aunt Anne says, “Barbara, it is such a comfort to see our dear sister’s things on Robert’s table.” Her eyes fill. By the time Robert seats her, she has recovered. “Thank you, dear,” she says, smiling moistly up at him. Aunt Anne’s eyes are always moist—with happiness, with sadness , seemingly embracing both immediately, bouncing instantly from one to the other. She spends her money, her energy, her emotions carelessly, ceaselessly. She has never married, although she had her chances. Several chances. Aunt Emily, twice widowed and financially sound, is careful with love, careful with life. After the precipitous, literally precipitous , deaths of both husbands (one by falling from a horse, the other by falling down the stairs of a hotel in Paris), she has become exceedingly careful of her money and her name, her family name. The Moore name. The only luxury she allows herself, she tells her banker, is her chauffeur. She and her sister must have a driver. Robert is far too busy to drive them about. Emily quietly and steadily loves her sister, her nephew and his children. Because her nephew’s marriage has lasted almost twenty years, she recently has begun to love Barbara. A little. Now, picking up her sister’s mantra, she smiles at Barbara, touches a glass and runs her finger around its rim. “Not a chip. So treasured.” Tonight the aunts are wearing navy dresses, identical at first glance, and single strands of pearls around their necks (Emily’s, of 91 Grace course, much larger), and pearl earrings. Their hair, dyed brown, is cut and curled tightly against their heads. Emily wears a pink flower at the neck of her dress, and Anne wears a small wisteria blossom on her shoulder. Both flowers are artificial. Oh, but who would guess they were sisters? Anne is short and sturdy, round cheeks polished with color, lips bright, eyes innocent as a child’s. Emily is tall and thin, her face long, weary, her eyes guarded. They have almost always lived together. AsRoberttakeshisseatattheheadofthetable,heliftshisglass to his wife. While they were dressing, Barbara had flirted shamelessly with him, inviting him in to dress while she was in the tub, dropping her dressing gown down around her waist, asking him to fasten her brassiere. With her hair up and in that black dress, his wife is especially beautiful tonight. Already he looks forward to the time—the dinner’s end, his aunts safely delivered, his children asleep—when they can make love. At times Barbara is rather wild. Noisy. “The...