in town. I told them they were dead wrong. But they were . . . right.”
When I tell him about the colored maids filing past me after the prayer meeting, I feel a swell of pride over what we’ve done. He looks down into his empty bourbon glass.
Then I tell him that the manuscript has been sent to New York. That if they decide to publish it, it would come out in, my guess is, eight months, maybe sooner. Right around the time, I think to myself, an engagement would turn into a wedding.
“It’s been written anonymously,” I say, “but with Hilly around, there’s still a good chance people will know it was me.”
But he’s not nodding his head or pushing my hair behind my ear and his grandmother’s ring is sitting on Mother’s velvet sofa like some ridiculous metaphor. We are both silent. His eyes don’t even meet mine. They stay a steady two inches to the right of my face.
After a minute, he says, “I just . . . I don’t understand why you would do this. Why do you even . . . care about this, Skeeter?”
I bristle, look down at the ring, so sharp and shiny.
“I didn’t . . . mean it like that,” he starts again. “What I mean is, things are fine around here. Why would you want to go stirring up trouble?”
I can tell, in his voice, he sincerely wants an answer from me. But how to explain it? He is a good man, Stuart. As much as I know that what I’ve done is right, I can still understand his confusion and doubt.
“I’m not making trouble, Stuart. The trouble is already here.”
But clearly, this isn’t the answer he is looking for. “I don’t know you.”
I look down, remembering that I’d thought this same thing only moments ago. “I guess we’ll have the rest of our lives to fix that,” I say, trying to smile.
“I don’t . . . think I can marry somebody I don’t know.”
I suck in a breath. My mouth opens but I can’t say anything for a little while.
“I had to tell you,” I say, more to myself than him. “You needed to know.”
He studies me for a few moments. “You have my word. I won’t tell anyone,” he says, and I believe him. He may be many things, Stuart, but he’s not a liar.
He stands up. He gives me one last, lost look. And then he picks up the ring and walks out.
THAT NIGHT, after Stuart has left, I wander from room to room, dry-mouthed, cold. Cold is what I’d prayed for when Stuart left me the first time. Cold is what I got.
At midnight, I hear Mother’s voice calling from her bedroom.
“Eugenia? Is that you?”
I walk down the hall. The door is half open and Mother is sitting up in her starchy white nightgown. Her hair is down around her shoulders. I am struck by how beautiful she looks. The back porch light is on, casting a white halo around her entire body. She smiles and her new dentures are still in, the ones Dr. Simon cast for her when her teeth starting eroding from the stomach acid. Her smile is whiter, even, than in her teen pageant pictures.
“Mama, what can I get you? Is it bad?”
“Come here, Eugenia. I want to tell you something.”
I go to her quietly. Daddy is a long sleeping lump, his back to her. And I think, I could tell her a better version of tonight. We all know there’s very little time. I could make her happy in her last days, pretend that the wedding is going to happen.
“I have something to tell you, too,” I say.
“Oh? You go first.”
“Stuart proposed,” I say, faking a smile. Then I panic, knowing she’ll ask to see the ring.
“I know,” she says.
“You do?”
She nods. “Of course. He came by here two weeks ago and asked Carlton and me for your hand.”
Two weeks ago? I almost laugh. Of course Mother was the first to know something so important. I’m happy she’s had so long to enjoy the news.
“And I have something to tell you,” she says. The glow around Mother is unearthly, phosphorescent. It’s from the porch light, but I wonder why I’ve never seen it before. She clasps my hand in the air with the healthy grip of a mother holding her newly engaged daughter. Daddy stirs, then sits straight up.