maddening at times in their antediluvian beliefs, but as true as a plumb line and as steadfast as the levee down at Banker’s Creek.
And with Grace, she’d also gained a new appreciation of her own mother’s trials, trying to tame a daughter whose every action and opinion seemed to fly in the face of good sense.
Yet, at times like these, she wondered if living here all these years had taken some of the edge off her spirit, the way a piano goes out of tune when it’s not being played enough. Despite her position on the boards of Latham University and Hilldale Hospital, she’d grown somewhat ... complacent. She needed the bracing confidence of people like Gabe, who believed she was still capable of more than warming a chair in some boardroom.
“You’ll get your library, Cordelia.” He said it as if it were a simple truth of nature he was observing—the fact that lilies grow from tubers, or that the section of branch from which a peach has been picked won’t bear again.
Hearing him, his calm assured tone, and feeling a touch as light as rain against her arm, she felt her battered sense of purpose begin to revive.
A memory came to her, of the time she’d been summoned to school for a conference with Sissy’s sophomore English teacher, Mr. Ross. She recalled how apprehensive she’d felt, meeting for the first time the man Sissy and her friends were constantly making fun of, nearly choking with laughter over the fact that he’d had tears, actual tears in his eyes when he read a Dylan Thomas poem aloud to them in class. Cordelia had anticipated a fussy man of uncertain masculinity, with weak eyes and asthma—like Mr. Denniston, who ran the only haberdashery in town and was rumored to be a homosexual.
And hadn’t she been stunned to encounter the actual Mr. Ross? Ruddy-faced and outdoorsy-looking, with his crinkly brown hair and equally rumpled seersucker jacket that made her think of a young boy lying in the grass, flushed from turning cartwheels. And that slightly flattened nose, which looked odd next to cheekbones as sharply defined as a Comanche’s.
“I’m honored to make your acquaintance, Mrs. Truscott,” he’d introduced himself. His almost quaint formality, and the way he’d wasted no time in ushering her to the chair beside his desk, had impressed her at once. “I was a great admirer of your husband’s, you know. A truly courageous man. I heard him speak once ... on the steps of the Supreme Court, after the decision was handed down on Sullivan versus New York Times. It was an experience I’ll never forget. Your daughter, she’s very much like him—that same fire, that sense of commitment.”
“Sis ... you mean, Caroline?” Cordelia couldn’t contain her surprise. Even she, who loved Sissy no end, could not imagine those qualities in her soft, placid daughter.
He blinked, then smiled. “Actually, it was Grace I was thinking of. I taught her, too. Let me see, it must be four, five years.”
“But you hardly seem ...” Cordelia caught herself on the brink of rudeness.
“Old enough?” he finished for her, smiling. “I’m thirty-two, Mrs. Truscott. I believe it was my first year at this school—before that I taught in Atlanta. If it hadn’t been for Grace, and a handful of students like her, it might well have been my last. Now, Caroline ...” He paused, and she saw him scratch behind his ear, a habit she would come to know in later years as a signal of mild distress.
Cordelia felt herself growing tense. “She’s doing her homework, isn’t she? She’s not failing, I mean?” Truth to tell, Cordelia rarely saw Sissy read anything unless it was one of those magazines that told you how, if you fixed your hair a certain way, or showed a flair for accessorizing, boys would be falling all over themselves to date you. Most of her time she seemed to spend giggling over the phone with that pimple-faced Beech Beecham.
“No, no, not failing,” he was quick to reassure her.
And with Grace, she’d also gained a new appreciation of her own mother’s trials, trying to tame a daughter whose every action and opinion seemed to fly in the face of good sense.
Yet, at times like these, she wondered if living here all these years had taken some of the edge off her spirit, the way a piano goes out of tune when it’s not being played enough. Despite her position on the boards of Latham University and Hilldale Hospital, she’d grown somewhat ... complacent. She needed the bracing confidence of people like Gabe, who believed she was still capable of more than warming a chair in some boardroom.
“You’ll get your library, Cordelia.” He said it as if it were a simple truth of nature he was observing—the fact that lilies grow from tubers, or that the section of branch from which a peach has been picked won’t bear again.
Hearing him, his calm assured tone, and feeling a touch as light as rain against her arm, she felt her battered sense of purpose begin to revive.
A memory came to her, of the time she’d been summoned to school for a conference with Sissy’s sophomore English teacher, Mr. Ross. She recalled how apprehensive she’d felt, meeting for the first time the man Sissy and her friends were constantly making fun of, nearly choking with laughter over the fact that he’d had tears, actual tears in his eyes when he read a Dylan Thomas poem aloud to them in class. Cordelia had anticipated a fussy man of uncertain masculinity, with weak eyes and asthma—like Mr. Denniston, who ran the only haberdashery in town and was rumored to be a homosexual.
And hadn’t she been stunned to encounter the actual Mr. Ross? Ruddy-faced and outdoorsy-looking, with his crinkly brown hair and equally rumpled seersucker jacket that made her think of a young boy lying in the grass, flushed from turning cartwheels. And that slightly flattened nose, which looked odd next to cheekbones as sharply defined as a Comanche’s.
“I’m honored to make your acquaintance, Mrs. Truscott,” he’d introduced himself. His almost quaint formality, and the way he’d wasted no time in ushering her to the chair beside his desk, had impressed her at once. “I was a great admirer of your husband’s, you know. A truly courageous man. I heard him speak once ... on the steps of the Supreme Court, after the decision was handed down on Sullivan versus New York Times. It was an experience I’ll never forget. Your daughter, she’s very much like him—that same fire, that sense of commitment.”
“Sis ... you mean, Caroline?” Cordelia couldn’t contain her surprise. Even she, who loved Sissy no end, could not imagine those qualities in her soft, placid daughter.
He blinked, then smiled. “Actually, it was Grace I was thinking of. I taught her, too. Let me see, it must be four, five years.”
“But you hardly seem ...” Cordelia caught herself on the brink of rudeness.
“Old enough?” he finished for her, smiling. “I’m thirty-two, Mrs. Truscott. I believe it was my first year at this school—before that I taught in Atlanta. If it hadn’t been for Grace, and a handful of students like her, it might well have been my last. Now, Caroline ...” He paused, and she saw him scratch behind his ear, a habit she would come to know in later years as a signal of mild distress.
Cordelia felt herself growing tense. “She’s doing her homework, isn’t she? She’s not failing, I mean?” Truth to tell, Cordelia rarely saw Sissy read anything unless it was one of those magazines that told you how, if you fixed your hair a certain way, or showed a flair for accessorizing, boys would be falling all over themselves to date you. Most of her time she seemed to spend giggling over the phone with that pimple-faced Beech Beecham.
“No, no, not failing,” he was quick to reassure her.
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