My stepmother is four years my junior. I paid a call on her at Hendry House (where they are kind Walter’s guests). She has a glazed look, a dull morbid manner. How changed is poor young Widow Watson from the girl Papa brought south only four years ago! Miss Kate Edna Bethea, as I still think of her, lacked our mama’s elegance and education. Papa truly admired those qualities in Mama, but I suspect that Kate Edna’s girlish spirit, her high bust and full haunches, her prattle about farmyard doings back in Fort White, suited his coarser tastes and needs better than Mama’s indoor virtues ever had.
Oh, she was his young mare, all right! I don’t care to think about it! Papa walked and spoke like a young man again, he fairly strutted, and this only four years ago. He had stopped drinking-well, not quite, but he had regained control-and he was full to bursting with great plans for the Islands, full of life!
At the hotel, Kate Edna tried her best to be polite but she can scarcely bring herself to talk. Isn’t it peculiar? The matronly daughter wept and sniffled while the young widow never shed a tear, just sat there stunned and scared, breaking her biscuit without eating it, scarcely sipping her tea. Edna won’t go to her people in Fort White but to her sister in west Florida where no one knows her. She wants to get clean away, says she, so she can think. What her simple brain wishes to think about I cannot imagine.
Edna’s clothes are nice (Papa saw to that) but she was wearing them all wrong, as usual, and of course they looked like she had slept in them, which no doubt she had. I urged my darling girls to play with their little “aunt” Ruth Ellen, but Papa’s second batch of kids are muted desperate creatures and no fun at all. The boy Addison pulls and nags at Edna-When is Daddy coming? Where is Daddy?-and Amy’s big eyes stare out in alarm even when she’s nursing. Five months into human life, poor little thing, and scared already.
But Edna scarcely notices, she cannot hear them, just soothes her brood gently as if tending them in dream. In normal times she must be a doting mother, since she is so easy with them even now when she is homeless, with no idea of what awaits them and no money to tide them over. Papa had only a quit-claim on Chatham Bend because his legal claim had not yet been approved: technically, he never owned his own fine house, Walter has learned. It’s so unfair!
Edna has given Walter power of attorney to sell the last shipment of cane syrup-she would have given it to anyone who asked. Walter tried to explain to her that Papa’s huge legal expenses of two years ago had put him deep in debt but she scarcely listened, didn’t seem to care. Nor did she find words to thank him when he advanced her money for her journey, promising to send after her whatever might be salvaged from “the estate”-Papa’s boats and livestock, farm equipment, odds and ends.
When I told her we would rescue Papa from that lonesome sand spit on the Gulf and give him a decent burial here in Fort Myers, she said simply, “Next to Mrs. Watson?” She meant dear Mama! And she didn’t say that with the least resentment but only to be polite, in the tone in which she might have said, “How nice!” After six years of marriage, three young children, and her shocking widowhood, she has never really seen herself as his honest-to-God wife.
Like Walter and Eddie, my stepmother believes that the less we speak of the whole tragedy the better. The important thing is to protect the children from malicious tongues, which will of course be much much easier for her than it is for us. We cannot flee as she can to north Florida, leaving everything behind. She won’t even stay long enough to see her husband buried, having convinced herself that her little family is in danger. For that I will never quite forgive Edna Bethea.
Well, that’s not true, I hope you know that, Mama. I forgive her with all my heart. To think what the poor soul has been through! Her voice is numb and her gaze faraway, and her stunned manner shows how terrified she was, how frantic she is to put all that behind her. Even my girls noticed the way she steals glances back over her shoulder as if that lynch mob, as Lucius calls it, might still catch her!
We took them to the train in the new Ford-their first auto ride. (Little Addison, at least, cheered up a bit.) Edna hurried them aboard to avoid any more awkward talk or prolonged good-byes, preferring to sit huddled in that stuffy car, clutching her infants and her few poor scraps until the train could blow its whistle and bear them far away to somewhere safe.
Through the window, I said I dearly hoped we would meet again one day. She looked past me, then blurted, “No, I don’t think so.” She meant no harm by it and yet she hurt my feelings. Am I being silly, Mama? Have I always been so silly?
The train whistle startled us. The train jolted. I trailed along the platform a little way, my fingertips on the lowered window, seeking her touch. I wanted so to hug her-hug anyone who might share this awful pain. Edna seemed aware of my yearning hand, but not until the final moment did she lay cool fingers shyly upon mine. “Please say our farewells,” she whispered, in tears for the first time, as if those tears had been yanked out of her by that hard jerk of the train.
“Farewell?” I sniffled, walking faster now, too upset to realize she referred to the reburial.
“To Mr. Watson,” Edna said in a hushed voice, still in tears. Yet that lorn face at the window never once looked back nor did she wave. A moment later she passed out of our lives.