Beneath the Attic Read online

  “My first time waltzing,” I said.

  “Really? Well, some of us have a natural grace.” She looked at my father. “I believe your daughter does.”

  “Thank you, Lucy,” my father said. “I think so, too.”

  My mother looked ready to burst a blood vessel at her temple.

  “Your gentleman was quite graceful, too. First time you met Mr. Foxworth?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said, not sure how I should react to the words Your gentleman.

  “Perhaps not the last time,” she replied.

  I saw the sly look and smile. Maybe she had hoped to corral the dashing young Mr. Foxworth, or maybe, worse, she already had and was disappointed he had drifted toward someone else so quickly.

  “Really, your first time waltzing?” Mr. Wexler asked with a suspicious smile. “I saw you, too. Young women do have their little secrets now and then these days.”

  “Oh no, sir. I do have secrets, but that’s not one. It was my first time,” I said. “With the waltz,” I pointedly added.

  He laughed. “My wife is right. One would never have thought so,” he replied, and nodded at my father in a way that I thought sent a subtle warning.

  My mother, of course, needed none.

  “How is it that I didn’t see you dancing with that man?” my mother asked as soon as we stepped out of the Wexler mansion and started down to the carriage.

  “It wasn’t very long, Mother. He was simply showing me the basic steps, and there were far better dancers perhaps commanding your attention. We were a bit off to the side, too.”

  My mother swallowed back her short grunt, and we boarded the carriage.

  “A proper gentleman would have asked our permission first, at least your father’s.”

  “Well, that was a pretty penny spent on a gala,” my father remarked as we headed away, ignoring her. “Did you enjoy yourself, Corrine?”

  “I did. Thank you, Daddy.”

  “From the reception you received, I believe you’ve been properly presented to our local society,” he added, and looked at my mother. “Rosemary? Remind you of your first gala?”

  “Hardly,” she said. “I certainly didn’t dance with a stranger.”

  “Oh, he’s not all that much a stranger. As I told you, he’s now involved with our bank and in a big way, too.”

  “He’s a stranger to our family, Harrington.”

  “Maybe not for long,” my father said, casting a look of amusement at her.

  I sat back, smiling and thinking, Yes, maybe not for long.

  “I’d like to visit Great-aunt Nettie soon,” I announced a few minutes later.

  “Why?” my mother instantly demanded, spinning around to look at me.

  I shrugged. “She’s always invited me, and I think I need to strengthen my ties to family, seeing how important it is to most everyone, especially you, Mother.”

  My father smiled conspiratorially. “You do think that, Rosemary, and she is your mother’s sister.”

  “I don’t know how well she is these days,” my mother said. “Visitors might be too trying. That woman has suffered far beyond what’s reasonable in one life.”

  “More reason for Corrine to visit her and provide some amusement and joy, Rosemary. We should leave it up to her,” my father said. He looked back. “No harm in writing to her to see how she would receive you.”

  “Of course, Daddy.”

  “I’m not interested in such a visit,” my mother said sharply.

  “I’m just going to see my great-aunt, Mother. You don’t have to accompany me everywhere I go.”

  My mother was silent.

  In fact, no one said another word until we were home. I made sure to hide Garland Foxworth’s card in my desk drawer. Then, as soon as I was undressed and ready for bed, I dug out my personal stationery and began a letter to Great-aunt Nettie.

  Dear Great-aunt Nettie,

  I know I haven’t written in a long time, but I’ve been thinking about our family and how far apart we all are. I’m sixteen now, and I went to my first real gala at the Wexler mansion. Mr. Wexler is the chairman of my father’s bank. It was his ten-year anniversary. My father and mother bought me a beautiful new dress. I wish you had seen me in it.

  I was sitting here wishing all that when I suddenly thought it would be wonderful to visit you. Perhaps I’ll bring along my new dress to show you. Years ago, when you were here, you told my mother she should let me come visit you. I have time to do so now, especially in the next two weeks. Would you like that?

  Please let me know as soon as you can so I can make plans.

  Your loving great-niece,

  Corrine

  I checked the letter three times to be sure there were no grammatical or spelling mistakes. Great-aunt Nettie had been a schoolteacher before she had met her husband, Clyde Lloyd, when she was in her mid-twenties. He was in shipbuilding and eventually became a part owner of the company. Unfortunately, he died at fifty-eight, and with their sons dead, Great-aunt Nettie was left alone with her lifelong housekeeper, an African woman named Hazel Waters, whom Nettie’s husband had brought back with him from England not long after they married. Hazel was still with her, but other than that, I knew little more, and she probably knew next to nothing about me now.

  Nevertheless, she’d surely be surprised and happy to hear from me, I thought, and I gave my father the letter in the morning to post. I did it when my mother wasn’t around so we wouldn’t have to go through her multiple questions and negative comments. He looked at it, tapped it on his palm, and smiled.

  “Now, this sudden interest in family doesn’t have anything to do with a certain Mr. Foxworth who happens to live in Charlottesville, does it?”

  “Why, Daddy,” I said, batting my eyelashes. He laughed. I paused to think. “How old is he anyway?”

  “He’s twenty-three. He inherited a great deal, but he’s made smart use of his money. But my advice is don’t take a bite of the first apple that falls off the tree into your lap, Corrine. You have many good years before you get yourself tied down in a marriage. I know you. You want to enjoy those years,” he added, and pinched my cheek.

  “I certainly do, Daddy,” I said.

  He laughed and left to go to work.

  Despite his warning, I was barely able to do anything but think of Garland Foxworth. In fact, I ran back upstairs after my father had left and began constructing a letter to Garland. I took out his card, handling it as if it were a precious stone.

  I can’t sound like a lovesick young girl, I thought, and began writing, tearing up one opening sentence after another until I decided the best way to do the letter was to sound quite formal. I even referred to the business-letter form my father used. When I looked at the letter after that, however, I thought it was too cold and impersonal. What if it discouraged him enough for him not to answer or care? What, indeed, would I do at boring Great-aunt Nettie Lloyd’s home then? I decided to permit myself some words that would certainly build his ego and confirm I was not looking for a mere acquaintance.

  Dear Mr. Foxworth [in a formal letter, I just couldn’t call him Garland],

  I am anticipating visiting my aunt, indeed, sometime within the next few weeks. As I promised, I am informing you of such a possibility. I am not that familiar with Charlottesville, so I do not know if my aunt’s home is indeed close enough for you to consider a visit or not.

  I would like to thank you for spending your time with me at the Wexler gala and especially for having the patience to teach me the waltz. I so too enjoyed our little getaway to the gardens.

  If I hear back from you before I confirm my visit to Charlottesville, I will give you the date.

  Sincerely yours,

  Corrine Dixon

  I had read about women putting a scent on their stationery but was afraid to do it on a first letter. I kept it out and read and reread it at least a dozen times before finally getting it into an envelope. I was tempted to seal it with a kiss for good luck but
quickly considered that something most of the childish girls my age would do. This had to be lifted out of the realm of a young girl’s crush.

  If Garland received it a day or so after my great-aunt received her letter, I would hope he would respond immediately.

  All my life, at least my years since I considered myself no longer a little girl, I dreamed of having just such a romance as this. That it had come so quickly and with a man this handsome and accomplished almost made me swoon with excitement. The trick now was to keep all that away from my mother’s inquisitive and critical gaze. If she knew what I really intended to accomplish by visiting my great-aunt Nettie, my mother would surely forbid me to take a single step toward the journey.

  It wasn’t until the letter to Garland was mailed that I paused one night before I went to sleep, looked up at the constellations I and Garland had viewed together, and asked myself, as if I was another person, Really, what do you hope to accomplish with all this, Corrine Dixon?

  “I don’t know,” I whispered. “Maybe I just wanted to keep looking at the stars the way I did that night. Is that so terrible?”

  Oh, you want more than that, Corrine Dixon. You want far more than that.

  Late in the morning of the following day, Daisy appeared on our doorstep. I had just risen, sleeping later in the morning than usual even though my mother had come up to wake me earlier. I had groaned and fallen back asleep. Now, dressed in my robe, my hair a mess, I answered the door and faced my grinning best friend, who had cycled over. From the way she was smiling and how perspiring and flushed she was, I knew gossip had run uphill to her this morning, uphill because it came from Emma and Elsie.

  “You’d better tell me everything,” she said, her eyes blooming with expectations.

  “There isn’t that much to tell, but come in. I’m just having breakfast.”

  “Just?” she said, entering.

  “Keeping up appearances wears you out,” I told her, deliberately sounding like a sophisticated socialite. She widened her eyes, and I laughed. “Come on, but don’t say a word about anything to my mother.”

  My mother stepped out of the pantry just as we entered the kitchen.

  “Oh,” my mother said, running her hands over her hair. “I didn’t hear anyone at the door.”

  She wasn’t dressed in anything much more than her robe and was still in her slippers.

  “It’s only Daisy,” I said. I started to fix myself some eggs.

  “Well, I expect you had your breakfast at a decent hour,” she said to Daisy.

  “Yes, Mrs. Dixon.”

  My mother nodded at me as if she had driven home a terribly important point and then left us, probably to get better dressed before Daisy left.

  “So what did they tell you?” I asked as I broke the eggs and began to scramble them. “And how did they get to you so fast?”

  “They cycled over about an hour or so ago. Their faces were so bloated with excitement that I thought they would explode, especially Emma.”

  “Not so unlike yours right now.”

  “Forget me. So? Who was he?”

  “Who was who?” I teased, putting the eggs in the skillet.

  “C’mon, Corrine. You know who I mean. The man at the gala, the man you ate with and wandered off with?”

  “Oh, him.” I shrugged. “Just one of my father’s business associates,” I said. “Do you want some coffee?”

  “Coffee? No. Well, was he someone you had met before the gala? I mean, how did you get so close with him so quickly?”

  “Is that what they told you?”

  “Yes,” she said, getting frustrated.

  I returned to my eggs, slipped them onto a plate, buttered some bread, and poured my coffee. She sat across from me.

  “I didn’t think it was that quick. My parents took forever introducing me to everyone, and when they wandered off, he approached me.”

  “And?”

  I ate and thought.

  “I don’t usually meet my father’s business people. I usually avoid them. Generally, they are as exciting as dripping molasses at the corners of their mouths, talking about profits and losses, margins and capital expenditures . . . honestly Greek to me. I smile and slip away before they give me a headache.”

  “But not him?”

  I paused to look like I was giving it great thought again. “No, not him.” I continued to eat.

  “Stop it!” she squealed. “You’re teasing and tormenting me. You know exactly what I want to hear.”

  I smiled and sat back, my excitement now boiling over like overheated milk.

  “He’s quite good-looking and apparently, from what my father tells me and what he told me himself, very wealthy.”

  “How old is he?”

  “My father said he is twenty-three.”

  “Twenty-three! And he doesn’t know you’re only sixteen? I mean, couldn’t he tell?”

  “Do I behave like a typical sixteen-year-old?”

  “Oh, no, of course not. They said you ate with only him.”

  “There were a few hundred people around us, so it wasn’t exactly dining alone.”

  “You know what I mean, Corrine. They said you danced with him, too?”

  “If you can call it that. He showed me the waltz. It lasted only a few minutes.”

  “And?”

  “And I need practice.” I continued to eat.

  She stared at me, her eyes filling with anger and frustration.

  “What?”

  “I thought I was your best friend. I thought we were going to travel when we were eighteen and have lots of romantic adventures. I thought you trusted me with all your deepest secrets. I trusted you with mine, and now this, this making me pull teeth,” she said, throwing up her hands and pouting.

  “Did I teach you how to be this dramatic? I think so. You were quite the shy thing when we first started planning and plotting together.” I put my fork down, sipped some coffee, and smiled again. “You are my best friend, Daisy. That hasn’t changed. All right,” I said. “I’ll tell you the rest of it. He asked me to go for a walk, and we went out to the Wexler gardens.”

  “Alone?”

  “My parents didn’t see me go, but apparently, our little spies did. Yes, alone. He was . . . quite charming, describing his mansion, his property, and then we both admired the stars . . .”

  “The stars? And?”

  “And he wanted to kiss me, of course.”

  “And?”

  “I didn’t let him. You don’t want ever to appear too eager, remember? I think that was womanly talk three. The more he longs for you, the more control you have. Once you surrender, even a little, they seize the reins. As I suspected, he wasn’t upset about it but not turned away from me because of it. He is wise enough to know that I’m a woman of character who is full of self-respect.”

  “They said you said you kissed him a lot.”

  “I told them what they wanted to hear. Besides,” I added, sipping the last of my coffee, “he disappeared after that, and I didn’t see him for the remainder of the gala.”

  “Oh. Then maybe he was too disappointed.”

  “I wouldn’t come to that conclusion, no,” I quickly replied. It was my own stabbing fear. “Actually, I might see him again, and soon, matter of fact.”

  “How? Where?”

  “I’m going to visit my great-aunt Nettie, who lives in Charlottesville, and he lives just outside of the city in his family mansion. I mentioned that I would write to let him know, and he was quite happy to hear that. He gave me his card so I would do so.”

  She looked thoughtful and then unhappy.

  “What’s bothering you?”

  “I just knew one day you’d find an older man and leave me behind.”

  “Maybe he has a friend. I could arrange a blind date. You could sneak off and join us.”

  Her eyes widened. “I couldn’t do that. I mean . . . do you think I could?”

  “You never know until you do,” I said. �
�Come on upstairs. We’ll talk as I put on my cycling outfit. I think I need to ride a little and clear my head. When you get this close to a real romance, you have to be extra careful, and that means constantly alert, reconsidering, reviewing, and questioning your own feelings.”

  She nodded as if she had the experience.

  I rose and put the dishes in the sink. When my mother saw them and chastised me for leaving them there, I would tell her I had planned to do it later, as I always told her. She would accuse me of knowing that she wouldn’t wait, she wouldn’t leave a dirty dish for someone to see. Of course, she was right about me, but it was her own fault that she was so obsessive about it. Besides, washing dishes and clothes damaged and aged your hands.

  As I changed, I described Garland a little more, stressing how attentive he was and how polite. She sat on my bed, clinging to my every syllable.

  “It’s nice to experience a mature gentleman. I doubt I’ll ever give boys our age a second glance again,” I said. “Being with someone older forces you to act older, too. But I think I told you most of this one time or another.”

  “Probably,” she said. “But I like hearing it all again.” She was hanging on my every word.

  I continued to describe the gala and Garland, even after we were on our cycles and pedaling through the streets, making sure to go by Emma’s house. When we parted at the corner that veered off right to her house, I promised to keep her up to date on anything that occurred between me and Garland Foxworth. She rode off thinking she had been admitted to the most secret romance of the age.

  My father arrived shortly after I had returned. He received all our mail at the bank and brought home anything personal. I wasn’t anticipating anything yet, but to my happy surprise, Garland’s reply to my letter came faster in the mail than Great-aunt Nettie’s response. Anticipating my mother’s horrified reaction to my starting a relationship with a man in his mid-twenties, a man I had met only at a gala and a man who had not been formally introduced to her, my father smiled and winked like a fellow conspirator when he handed Garland’s letter to me. I hurried away to read it privately.