What To Keep

Magnolia Hall

Greensville, NC

June 2000

Clay climbs in his white utility truck, starts the almost soundless engine and rolls up the window. Then he leans over and fiddles with the air-conditioning. He looks back, doesn’t smile. Why couldn’t he have just signed off on the inspection? My life would be a lot easier.

I walk back into the house. Late-afternoon sunlight races down the hallway before I close the door, turning the scratched oak floor, for a moment, into a gleaming lake.

Two summers ago, four weeks after we met, Bill and I spent a July week on Lake Mead, right outside Las Vegas. We rented a houseboat at the marina, packed the boat’s kitchen with sliced ham, soft wheat bread, Swiss cheese, medium-priced merlot, three six-packs of Coors, bottled water and my new CD player.

I have to admit we were in a sexual frenzy, and this trip only increased it. Lake Mead, a man-made lake, is a breathtaking lie, and in the summer the air is hot, dry—like another planet that’s closer to the sun.

That week Bill drank all the beer and most of the wine. The idea I’d found the perfect person made me drunk with happiness—who needed booze? What I didn’t know then was I should have drunk myself into a stupor, jumped overboard and swum to shore. But of course I fooled myself into believing the relationship was just right. I was blind to the truth. Bill shoved signs in my face that he was a shit-heel right from the beginning. In the houseboat-rental office, he claimed he’d forgotten his credit card and I let myself overlook that tired old excuse! I paid for the entire trip, as if I were some rich broad with a gigolo. I knew he was a con artist. I really did, but I lied to myself.

I walk into Magnolia Hall’s living room and drag my toe across one of the carpet dents where a piece of furniture used to rest. I pull the white sheer curtain back, yank on the roll-up window shade and expect a cloud of dust.

There isn’t any. The fading sunlight showers the room in pink hues, accenting the emptiness. I turn the old window locks out, lift the window. Moist, cooler air floats in, bellows the curtains around my legs.

Two brocade chairs sit in the middle of the room and look like old ladies who have forgotten to leave. I must have been in this room when I was little, but I don’t remember.

After Ron left, before the inspection from hell took place, I walked around the house, and I’m still astounded that there is hardly any furniture in the house. Magnolia Hall is shaped like a two-story box with a hallway running down the middle. Downstairs there are two front rooms, this one and the one across the hall. That room only contains a sagging green couch.

Behind it is a library or office with floor-to-ceiling bookcases where five tired books stand on one shelf. There’s a rocking chair in the corner by one of the windows. Across the hall a dining-room table and three chairs stand polished, ready, lonely except for a small hutch.

Upstairs there are three bedrooms, two of them completely bare. The huge bathroom has a claw-foot bathtub, no shower. A blue towel and three bars of Ivory soap, still in their wrappers, are stacked neatly on the back of the toilet.

And there’s no trace of Grey Alexander.

I looked in the medicine chest and the old white chest by the door. Nothing. What happened to the man’s razor, comb, shampoo? And his clothes? It’s as if he never lived here. I expected piles of things, or at least some pictures, something to prove he was alive.

The living room curtain fans against my legs again. I walk back to the kitchen, touch the dead rotary phone that sits on a tiny table. There’s something very ironic in the fact that I’m still going to have to haul my ass down to the local convenience store because I don’t have a working phone.

I walk to the room with the bookcases and notice the fireplace is immaculate. At one of the bookcases, I draw my finger on a shelf. There’s no dust. I trace the spines of all five books. I pull out the Mark Twain Anthology, look at the bookmark. It’s a picture of a man with light hair, straight nose and thin lips. He’s wearing a tuxedo, a white pleated shirt and bow tie. On the back is written in pencil “Grey Alexander.” In this picture, he looks like I remember my father looked the last time I saw him thirty-four years ago. My heart hurts a little.

Grey’s hair is cut just so, his tie so straight. I wonder how he could ignore the upstairs mildewed wall, and why isn’t there more of him in this house? His silent black-and-white eyes stare back at me.

Magnolia Hall

March 1861

It has been two weeks since I was married and my husband brought me to his new home. I try not to think about how far I have come in these few short weeks. I miss so much—my mother and father, my room, the house I lived in since the day I was born. I also miss the mornings in Greensville, the soft footsteps of servants around Hemsley. I am so sick with feelings of loss I do not know what to do.

I did my best to hide my feelings the day Mr. Alexander and I left Greensville after the wedding, but Mama detected my sadness as I was dressing. She petted my hair and told me my life would be fine someday. I looked up at her, asked how she knew, how she could be so very sure.

With my question she straightened as if something had come over her and announced I was acting foolish, I was a married woman, with a good husband and I should be happy, and if I were not, I was to find some way to make myself happy—I was to endure. Then she sat down beside me as if she could not make up her mind, either, took my hand in hers, and said she would always love me, but for her sake I had to endure until I found a way to be happy.

I asked why Father wanted me to go away, why was it so important that I wed.

Mama shook her head, studied my fingers for a moment too long.

“That is just the way our lives are. Father wants you married, and you do not seem capable of choosing a husband or even finding and keeping a suitor. You are too shy, Charlotte. Reservedness is becoming—however, you are very queer in your actions.”

I have always lived away from people. I do not know why. I feel a distance at times. I am not one for change or exciting events. I have always liked to stay home, be in the same place. I love a room when I have been in it a thousand times. I adored the everyday view from my window.

My husband and I are different in that way. Mr. Alexander seems joyful with the house he built. He talks about the newness of the entry hall and the sitting room, the fine dining room and library. How, over time, he will bring new and beautiful things to our new home.

The house is beautiful. Late in the afternoon, when the front door is open, sunlight turns the floor to glistening silk. I saw happiness burst forth on my husband’s face yesterday afternoon when he walked through the front door and the house was ablaze with sunset.

Two nights ago after dinner, my husband asked me into the parlor. I went in thinking he wanted to discuss the management of the house or the night’s menu—that the greens were bitter or the bread was too tough.

He sat next to me on the divan, took my hand in his. In the firelight his eyes looked bluer than I have ever seen them. I asked him if he were displeased about my management of the house, the kitchen?

“No, I am not.” Then he said very quickly, “I worry you are not happy.”

I blinked, looked down at my lap, embarrassed that my feelings are so transparent.

“Charlotte, you must always be truthful. I am your husband and you must be honest with me.”

I could only nod.

“I do not want you to be sad and I sense that you are, Charlotte.” And then he squeezed my hand. I dipped my chin more. I did not wish to dampen his spirits.

“Tell me, Charlotte.”

And suddenly words began to pour out of me.

“My sorrow for what I used to know is great, silly as that is. I am afraid this makes me a very selfish person.”

His arm went around my shoulders and we sat silently.

A moment later he stood, announced that he would retire to the library, he had much work to do. He kissed my forehead and I was alone and could think more clearly.

I watched the flames of the fire, forced myself to remember how long ago I attended the Greensville sewing circles with Mama. There I heard women professing their adoration for their husbands, and I began hoping to experience the same kind of union. I am still praying some wifely devotion will find me—make me tremble on the veranda when my husband appears from the foggy mist.

Last night Mr. Alexander and I were sitting out on the veranda, and he told me in a delicate way how much he has loved me from the moment his eyes fell upon me at the evening party my parents hosted. With the night breeze fanning my warm face, I smiled.

“Thank you, for the very dear compliment, Mr. Alexander.”

“Why don’t you refer to me as James, it being a more familiar, loving term?”

When I did not answer, he stood and stared down at me.

Why didn’t I tell him the truth—that I am blind to what a wife should feel or do for her husband. The sadness in his eyes told me he knew, yet he did not press me. Late that night when he held me close and whispered promises to me, I felt dizzy and wondered what it will be like to spend the rest of my life in his arms.

But I did not say a word.

Magnolia Hall