attention to the club’s exclusive membership policies—Gaston was loudly in the forefront of these discussions, no, no, never! Perhaps there was some fleeting prestige in having Jack Nicklaus and Tom Watson traipse through on the Senior Tour, but there was truly more refinement in being able to resist such calls to the public spotlight. Besides, Gaston thought, anything that made the Nineteenth Hole any more overrun was a bad thing.
“Afternoon, Mr. Jarvis.”
Gaston’s eyes adjusted to the Hole’s comparative dimness. It was Dexter. All the bartenders were black, similar in age and appearance (fifties, close-cropped graying hair, a neatly pressed uniform in the club colors) and Gaston took a moment to identify his bartender in the gloom, a nearly windowless cavern of dark wood, stacked bottles on shelves, muted table lamps on round wooden tables, alcoves and booths and places for quiet conversation.
He was determined not to make this agreeable perch one more location he had besmirched with bad behavior. Gaston had almost blown it a few times. Sharing gossip with a small group, where inevitably his calumny got back to its victim. He had to dedicate his sixth installment ( The Cannon’s Silence ) to Belle Bennette to get out of the doghouse a few years back. So he had learned his lesson on intra-club gossip or supremely clever remarks concerning ladies’ hats, horrendous fashion choices, hair of unnatural hues or heights. But it was on just one such Dictation Day (every second Tuesday), a day like today, that he had lost his temper with Norma in a public scene, still whispered about.
A crowd would gather because they liked to hear Norma banter with Gaston. Gaston liked it when Norma was his foil, urging charity and patience, as he savaged and laid waste—it often was quite a public performance. Of course, Norma had her hobbyhorses, the topics she could not fail to warm to, every few Tuesdays.
“I come from a long line of spinsters,” she would say with that soft proud smile.
And Gaston would parry. “And how, pray tell, do these virgin maidens spawn successive generations of virgin maidens?”
“Oh somebody or other breaks down and accepts a troth, and produces mostly useless daughters, good for nothing but schoolteachers, such as myself, and librarians. Of course, you gentlemen realize the whole of Southern culture and society would crumble without its underpinning of spinsters. There’s not a church I have ever heard of that does not entirely depend upon the service, the cooking, the efforts of the unmarried or widowed older women. I daresay some of you gentlemen have been taught by spinsters.”
Many hands were raised, many gray heads nodded. Harker Ballimer reminded the group that in Mississippi, when he was young, only spinsters could be teachers and when they married they resigned their place in the school.
“Oh yes,” Norma said, “down east here in North Carolina, also, until after World War Two, at least. It was a vocation, it was nothing less than taking the veil, to be a teacher. I was taught by women who were known simply as Miss Campbell or Miss Gwinnett, if she were the eldest sister, though usually oldest sisters felt a duty to marry to jump-start the marriageability of the sisters waiting in line behind her. You see how intractable my spinsterhood is, that I managed even as eldest and first in line not to be entrapped! But more often, it was Miss Mary Lee or Miss Evelyn or Miss Elizabeth.”
“Seems a bit familiar,” a transplanted Northerner pointed out.
“They were not eldest daughters and therefore the use of ‘Miss’ and the first name was entirely proper. And you underestimate the power of ‘Miss’ in those days, the awe and respect that honorific could wield. These women were fearsome tyrants of their subject and their curriculum. The principals were mere functionaries who shuffled papers and came and went; it was the Miss Mary Lees and Miss Elizabeths who ran the schools
“Afternoon, Mr. Jarvis.”
Gaston’s eyes adjusted to the Hole’s comparative dimness. It was Dexter. All the bartenders were black, similar in age and appearance (fifties, close-cropped graying hair, a neatly pressed uniform in the club colors) and Gaston took a moment to identify his bartender in the gloom, a nearly windowless cavern of dark wood, stacked bottles on shelves, muted table lamps on round wooden tables, alcoves and booths and places for quiet conversation.
He was determined not to make this agreeable perch one more location he had besmirched with bad behavior. Gaston had almost blown it a few times. Sharing gossip with a small group, where inevitably his calumny got back to its victim. He had to dedicate his sixth installment ( The Cannon’s Silence ) to Belle Bennette to get out of the doghouse a few years back. So he had learned his lesson on intra-club gossip or supremely clever remarks concerning ladies’ hats, horrendous fashion choices, hair of unnatural hues or heights. But it was on just one such Dictation Day (every second Tuesday), a day like today, that he had lost his temper with Norma in a public scene, still whispered about.
A crowd would gather because they liked to hear Norma banter with Gaston. Gaston liked it when Norma was his foil, urging charity and patience, as he savaged and laid waste—it often was quite a public performance. Of course, Norma had her hobbyhorses, the topics she could not fail to warm to, every few Tuesdays.
“I come from a long line of spinsters,” she would say with that soft proud smile.
And Gaston would parry. “And how, pray tell, do these virgin maidens spawn successive generations of virgin maidens?”
“Oh somebody or other breaks down and accepts a troth, and produces mostly useless daughters, good for nothing but schoolteachers, such as myself, and librarians. Of course, you gentlemen realize the whole of Southern culture and society would crumble without its underpinning of spinsters. There’s not a church I have ever heard of that does not entirely depend upon the service, the cooking, the efforts of the unmarried or widowed older women. I daresay some of you gentlemen have been taught by spinsters.”
Many hands were raised, many gray heads nodded. Harker Ballimer reminded the group that in Mississippi, when he was young, only spinsters could be teachers and when they married they resigned their place in the school.
“Oh yes,” Norma said, “down east here in North Carolina, also, until after World War Two, at least. It was a vocation, it was nothing less than taking the veil, to be a teacher. I was taught by women who were known simply as Miss Campbell or Miss Gwinnett, if she were the eldest sister, though usually oldest sisters felt a duty to marry to jump-start the marriageability of the sisters waiting in line behind her. You see how intractable my spinsterhood is, that I managed even as eldest and first in line not to be entrapped! But more often, it was Miss Mary Lee or Miss Evelyn or Miss Elizabeth.”
“Seems a bit familiar,” a transplanted Northerner pointed out.
“They were not eldest daughters and therefore the use of ‘Miss’ and the first name was entirely proper. And you underestimate the power of ‘Miss’ in those days, the awe and respect that honorific could wield. These women were fearsome tyrants of their subject and their curriculum. The principals were mere functionaries who shuffled papers and came and went; it was the Miss Mary Lees and Miss Elizabeths who ran the schools
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