Reynolds Price - Kate Vaiden

KATE VAIDEN

Reynolds Price

Portions of this novel appeared, in earlier forms, in TriQuarterly and Vanity Fair.

FOR

DANIEL VOLL

THE BEST THING about my life up to here is, nobody believes it. I stopped trying to make people hear it long ago, and Im nothing but a real middle-sized white woman that has kept on going with strong eyes and teeth for fifty-seven years. You can touch me; I answer. But it got to where I felt like the first woman landed from Plutopeople asking how I lasted through all I claimed and could still count to three, me telling the truth with an effort to smile and then watching them doubt it. So Ive kept quiet for years.

Now Ive changed my mind and will try again. Two big new reasons. Nobody in my family lives for long, and last week I found somebody Id lost or thrown away. All he knows about me is the little hes heard. He hasnt laid eyes on me since he was a baby and I vanished while he was down for a nap. I may very well be the last thing he wants at this late date. Im his natural mother; hes almost forty and has got on without me.

I was christened Kate Vaiden. The name had been ready before they conceived memy fathers mothers name, Kate not Katherine. Hed loved her so much, and she had died on him before he was grown. So what did that say I was meant to be? I still pause to wonder, though its way too late. He had known my mothermy father Dan Vaidensince he finished high school and met her at a grand celebration house-party up on the Roanoke River. She was Frances Bullock and was brought by another boy who soon passed out. They were well-chaperoned of course1925but according to Frances, they found time apart and in less than a whole day had bit down hard on a plan to marry. She had what she thought was the worlds best reasonan orphan living at the mercy of her sister in Macon, N.C., the real deep country. Dan lived with his father and a single servant fifteen miles away in Henderson, a townstreets lined with water oaks and good dark homes. Neither family had money but Dans had a Ford, and soon he was making that long trip to Frances on roads rough as gullies. It must have been worth it.

All I remember is Frances telling me about the one time he drove her to Raleigh on a Saturday night to hear Gypsy Love, the whole operetta. It was January and cold as igloos. Halfway home she was dying to pee; but of course in those days, you couldnt mention that. So when Dan stopped briefly to buy cigarettes, she raised up the floor board of his Model T and cut loose, much to her relief. But then as they drove on and the car warmed up, thick waves of the smell of pee rolled upshed peed on the gear box or some crucial part, and it was near boiling.

Dan never knew the reason till the day he died. They were married in October, against his fathers wishes. Hed been what his father had for so many years since the first Kate died. So he thought if he moved my mother to Henderson, the father would soon be cherishing her too; her eyes were famous in that part of the state.

It didnt go well. Dan would work with his father, dawn to duskthey sold hail insurance to tobacco farmersthen theyd both drive home to find my mother, bathed and nervous as a hamster from reading since breakfast under unbroken glares from the Negro man-cook. She would laugh too much and show her wet gums, the one thing about her my father didnt like till just before he killed her.

I wasnt there to see any of it of course, their first married days. What I know comes to me in spells of recalling fall afternoons when my young mother would be blue as indigo, stretched on the sofame combing her hair and her rolling those few sad memories out for me to approve and eventually use. Not once did she say one word against my father. Dan was nearly God to her, which even so is less than what she was to him.

It scared me long before I guessed where they were headed. I used to have to leave some rooms they were in, just to find air to breathe. They would simply be talking, Sunday breakfast maybe. I would be looking back and forth to follow their words, feeling sleepy and safe. Then it would hit me Im not in this, this is all for them. And their slow words about food or rain would switch into some secret language of love that left me a stranger, stranded dry by the road, wondering would they turn back and why theyd made me.

Frances swore theyd made me by plan, not chance. After nearly twelve months of misery in Henderson, Dan told her one cool night hed found a way out. Hed got a wire that day, offering him a job just far enough westGreensboro, ninety miles. Some insurance adjustor had commended Dans smartness to the home office there. Would Frances mind moving? Mind?she all but died of joy and that started me. Not the joy itself but the vow it triggered. Dan had told her hed give her the child she wanted once he saw his way clear. Now he thought he saw it and kept his bargain. Frances told me that much the summer she died.

Ive imagined the resthim rolling down on her in the dark, smelling good. They were children themselves at the time, both lovely and gentle as breezes. Or so they thought. I always knew better. They were children all right, which is why I mostly call them Frances and Dan, but nothing like as gentle as they let themselves think.

Dans father was understandably hurt by the news of them leaving. The new job didnt start till November 1st, and life in Henderson got grimmer fast. Dan made the quick choice to send Frances home to Macon with her family while he lived in one rented room in Greensboro, learning his job and hunting a house. They were parted eight weeks, and it may have ruined them both or started the process.

This year for the first time I read the letters they wrote every day in those weeks. Id kept them buried in a trunk all the while but spared myself the knowledge. Since finally I was hoping to understand though, I made myself read thema terrible effort. I couldnt bear more than one or two a night, and then Id need gaps. No harsh revelations, just two people holding themselves toward each other at absolute white heat, bound to fade or shatter. Frances may not have known she was pregnant when Dan left, but shes bound to have had proof by Thanksgiving week. Its not in the letters, not even in their little private hints and jokes. She must have kept it from him till he came at last to get herChristmas week; they meant to start their new life on Christmas.

These are the last two letters they wrote before reuniting. To the best of my knowledge, theyre the last happy words that survive from the rest of their lives. They lived more than eleven years longer, strong and talking; but they never agreed to part long enough to make letters useful.

December 18, 1926

Dearest Dan,

Its two in the morning. If it wasnt cold as scissors up here Id be out on the stoop now dark as it is listening for the train. You dont leave there though for 46 hours and we have a hard frost still holding on outdoors and in. Yesterday at breakfast I told my sister you and I would be leaving on the 24th. She said Suit yourself and I said Well I will but she seemed relieved. It was Swift that scared me. He waited ten seconds, then shot up like a banner and said You can leave people once too often, Fan. Sixteen years old and splotched on the face and hands with great red whelps like hed get as a baby when Id leave for school. I told him Swift, you been knowing right along Dan was coming for me. You can visit us at Easter. But he wouldnt look at me. He marched out not making one scrap of noise. Quit a whole days work and is still not home. Im sitting up thinking he will be drunk and need some protection from his daddy. You know he wouldnt hurt me and Uncle Holt is scared of me now with you coming. He thinks you are rich. I dont dare tell him we will live in bare rooms for a year or so still. Did you find a bed?