The Last Ballad(69)
“There are quite a few nice stores here in Gastonia, as well,” Richard said.
“Of course,” Katherine said. She leaned back in her seat and settled her eyes on her pheasant.
“Of course,” she’d heard Mrs. Lytle say.
Katherine now sat alone in the Essex where Richard had left it parked in the roundabout after retrieving it. He’d gone back inside the club to speak with Ingle about his daughter Grace and to tip him and the waitstaff. After the dinner was over and the cakes had been served, the burned tops cut away and discreetly covered with icing, she and Richard had watched the Lytles climb into the limousine, the dent in its hood catching the light like a black crater on a dark moon. Once Richard stepped inside the club, Claire had asked Katherine if it would be okay if she went to a party with friends. Paul would see her home afterward. Claire had promised that she would not be home too late. Although it was already past 11 p.m., Katherine knew how exciting it must be for Claire to have her friends and her fiancé all in town, and she saw no reason that Claire shouldn’t go off and do as she pleased. In a few months she would be a wife. She would have to make much greater decisions than these without Katherine’s blessing. Besides, she thought, I wouldn’t come home either. Not until Richard was asleep and this night and the things of this night were behind them all.
Katherine found herself envying her daughter, not for her youth or her upcoming wedding or for all the life that awaited her, but for her freedom to return or not to return home as she so desired. The old house atop the hill that overlooked the McAdam Mill village would always be there if Claire were ever to want it or need it. And, unless one of them died, Katherine and Richard would always be there too. Unlike them, Claire didn’t have to return at all.
Katherine had left her car door open. She sat with her foot on the running board and looked out onto the damp night, where frogs called to one another from the darkness. The air smelled of wet pine needles. She listened as a few distant automobiles rumbled down Franklin Avenue toward town. She and Richard had now been married for almost twenty-four years, and in those almost twenty-four years she had seen changes she’d never imagined. Even the land around her now had morphed into something brand-new in just the past decade. When Richard first brought her to Gaston County, the very piece of land on which she sat had been part of the Woltz family’s dairy farm. A nine-hole golf course now covered the area that had once been a cow field. She thought of all the new things she’d seen in her lifetime: the record player and the radio she and Richard kept in their sitting room at home, the automobile she waited in now, the airplanes they’d seen fly over the city and touch down at the little municipal landing strip south of town. It made her tired to think of what was to come, to think of what Claire and Claire’s children—her grandchildren, for God’s sake—would see in the years ahead, the years she might not spend on this earth.
The car creaked on its axles and she heard Richard open the door and climb in, then close the door behind him. She kept her eyes on the darkness outside.
“Are you okay to drive?” she asked.
“Of course,” he said. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
She pulled her foot inside the car and closed the door.
“You’re not too tight?” she asked. The engine roared to life when she spoke, and she knew that Richard could act as if he hadn’t heard her.
Richard drove the Essex through the roundabout and took the dark lane out to the boulevard. The guests had all left. The parking areas were empty. The wet asphalt shined beneath the Essex’s headlights. He turned east and headed toward McAdamville.
They rode in silence for a few moments. Through her window, Katherine watched the shuttered businesses as they passed them, their lights off and the windows drawn against the night.
“I just spoke to Ingle about Grace,” Richard said. “He’s upset of course, embarrassed really. Especially after the members took up the collection last year. He wants to pay everyone back since he says she won’t be returning to school.”
“That’s unnecessary,” Katherine said.
“That’s just what I told him,” Richard said. Katherine heard a lilt in his voice, as if a smile had come into it somehow, as if this small agreement boded well for the rest of the evening, perhaps for the rest of their lives together. “That’s just what I told him. I told him it was unnecessary.”
He slowed and made the left onto Wesleyan Road. They snaked along toward McAdamville. The sky misted rain fine enough to look like snow, and Katherine could see it only in the streetlamps and the headlights of the few automobiles they met on the road. When they followed the hill down into the mill village, she had the sensation of descending into a glass snow globe. She wondered, if she were to look up, would she be able to spy the clear, impervious dome that had come down over her life?
“And I told Ingle we’d be happy to make another contribution,” Richard said. He hesitated. Waited. Katherine knew he expected her to ask if he’d promised a certain amount. They had the wedding to think of, after all. Business had slowed in the years since the war. Things were changing. The country was changing. It seemed it would continue to do so. But she wanted to help the Ingles, and she was simply too tired to play cautious with Richard. “On Monday I’m going to reach out to a few of the board members to see if we can get something together, some kind of donation, a second collection, if you want to call it that.”