Nini laughed at me. “Your Aunt Eveline was young once—just like you—and your mama—and she had a laugh like this.” Nini tapped a crystal glass with a spoon. “Until—but if you want to stand there gabbin’, hand me that polish and here’s your cloth, and we’ll get this silver shining before Holly comes.”
The very thought of her granddaughter put Nini back in a good humor, but I was tired of hearing about Holly since I had never even seen her. I gobbled my peanut butter, mayonnaise, and banana sandwich, rubbed one spoon, and went upstairs to draw.
I started off drawing clothes for Jane Whitmore. I remembered a snapshot Aunt Kate has of my mother that she keeps in her tin box of souvenirs. In the snapshot, my mother is waving from the deck of the ship that took her across the ocean. She is wearing a fur coat, and a hat so low on her forehead that her face is in shadow. I drew a cloche hat for Jane Whitmore.
It bothers me that I have to look at pictures to know what my mother looked like and ask other people to tell me about her. I wish I could remember her for myself, but I can’t remember anything before my sixth birthday—nothing about my mother, my father, or the hurricane. It doesn’t bother me as much about my father. I guess I miss him. I know I would if I could remember him, but it’s as though my memory was born the day I sat down at the heavy oak table at Three Twenty Audubon Street and saw a pile of neatly wrapped birthday presents surrounded by a garland of butterfly lilies and four-o’clocks. I remember exactly that one of my presents was a lace-trimmed handkerchief with A embroidered in the corner and a paper sticker that said PURE IRISH LINEN. Everything that happened before that is lost, as though the tidal wave had swept it away with our house. A terrible dream about the wave comes again and again, so real I can’t tell if it’s a nightmare or a memory.
Suddenly, I realized I had stopped drawing clothes for Jane Whitmore and was drawing male profiles, and, yes! there he was, Edmond Hilary de St. Denis, cleft chin, blue, steady eyes (or eye, I should say, since it was his profile), sensitive mouth, and short straight nose. He was absolutely beautiful, the best thing I had ever done. I pulled out a Photoplay magazine from the stack I have, ripped the inside out, and pasted the tops and bottoms of the cover to form an envelope. I hid Edmond inside and slid the cover in between two other Photoplays.
I heard Aunt Eveline coming out of her room, so I quickly slid Jane Whitmore and her new clothes into the envelope with Edmond and picked up a book.
When Aunt Eveline came in I asked, “Aunt Eveline, did my mother learn a lot in Florence?”
“Oh, yes! She loved Florence, and her professor considered her most talented. Most talented!”
“I wish I had one of her paintings.”
“Unfortunately, dear, she did her mature work in Honduras and her watercolors were all lost in the hurricane when your house was washed away. Naturally, your father only had time to try to save you and your mother. We have only her early watercolors! Exercises, really.”
I had seen the exercises in a box in the attic.
“All of the good ones were lost?” I asked. “Every single one?”
“I’m so sorry, dear! But—well—as a matter of fact, I do have one! Yes, one. In my armoire. I’ll get it.”
Just like that! I followed Aunt Eveline into her room. It was a place I seldom entered. There was not a trace of cloves. Only fresh air and the expensive scent of Roget and Gallet soap, Aunt Eveline’s one concession to luxury.
Aunt Eveline opened the heavy armoire door, and I saw a pile of watercolor papers neatly stacked on a shelf. Aunt Eveline picked up the top one and then, noticing for the first time that I was standing right behind her, she quickly closed the door.
“Here, dear. Your mother did this.”
I held a landscape of the lagoon in Audubon Park. The colors were pastel and overlapped in some places, blending together into deeper shades that gave me the feeling I could walk right into the painting. It was a fresh and happy watercolor, a moment caught forever by an artist who knew how to paint.
“Oh,” was all I said.
“You don’t like it?” Aunt Eveline asked anxiously.
“I love it,” I said unhappily. “It’s just that—I’ll never be that good.”
“Of course you will, my dear! You have her talent and you will get training—the very best. Don’t forget, this is your mother’s mature work, at the peak of her power. She didn’t do anything as finished as this at your age.”
“Could I have it?”
Aunt Eveline hesitated only a minute before saying, “Of course, my dear. We’ll have it framed.”
The day after Aunt Eveline gave me my mother’s watercolor, we had dancing school.
“No, no, no!” Miss Rush clapped her hands to stop Miss Morrison at the piano. “Sandra Lee! Listen! And one and two and one and two—and one . . . Now, begin! And one . . . Sandra Lee, no!” Miss Rush looks at arms and hands, feet and legs. No amount of lash-batting and nose-twitching diverted her attention from Sandra Lee’s jerky hands and stubby feet moving in opposition to the rhythm of the music.
I loved the dumb look on Sandra Lee’s face.
Miss Rush turned away from Sandra Lee. “All right, Miss Morrison, begin again. And one and two and—good, Addie!”
Sandra Lee continued to fight the music and the tears forming in her eyes. It would be different Friday night when we have ballroom dancing with boys. The boys love Sandra Lee. They don’t notice her hands and feet; they fall for all her fakiness. Harold always asks her a week in advance for the contest. She doesn’t know what it’s like to have to duck in the back before the contest starts, or talk with another girl, laughing and pretending you don’t want a partner.
Prominent among the wallflowers is Denise, who, when bent like the letter C, remains four inches taller than the tallest boy; Elizabeth, who wears glasses as thick as Coke bottles; and me, shaped like a pencil. Our personalities, no matter how jolly we make them, do not make up for the physical realities—nor for Aunt Eveline.
“Aunt Eveline, no one will wear a dress like this!” I was standing on a box while Aunt Eveline pinned the hem up.
“That’s just it! This dress is an original Lily Dior. Your mother wore only lovely things, and, in its day, this dress was all the rage. You don’t want to look like everyone else at dancing school, do you?”
“Yes.”
“Now, Adelaide, what makes you interesting is being different from others. Being yourself.”
“Sandra Lee isn’t different. She’s more like everyone else than anyone I know and she’s popular.”
“I’m sure you’re popular, too, dear.”
“I’m not! Tom is the only one who dances with me, and he just does it because the teachers make him. Half the time I don’t get a partner for the contest, and I have to pretend I love talking to Denise and Elizabeth. We laugh and act like we’re having so much fun, and the teachers come over and ask how our parents are. Aunt Eveline, what can I say to make the boys like me?”
“Just be yourself, dear. Boys will like you. After all, you don’t want every Tom, Dick, and Harry crazy about you.”
“Yes, I do!”
“Addie, that’s common. Now, hold still while I pin this hem.”
“Aunt Eveline, did my mother have a lot of boyfriends?”
“Certainly not!” Aunt Eveline exclaimed, shocked. “She had many male acquaintances, but her only ‘boyfriend,’ as you