“You have? I wasn’t sure you would notice.”
“You think I wouldn’t notice that my daughter was missing?”
Emilia Mae couldn’t remember when or if her mother had ever used the word daughter in her presence, and it stunned her to think that her mother might actually miss her.
“Well, it’s nothing personal, but I think I’ve found another church, where I feel more comfortable.”
“Oh…I didn’t know you felt uncomfortable in this one,” said Geraldine defensively. “Is there another Roman Catholic church in town?”
“Um, it’s not Roman Catholic. It’s Baptist. The First Baptist Church.”
Geraldine wiped her hands on her apron and pulled a cigarette from her pocket. “You’re a Catholic, or have you forgotten that?” The concern went out of her voice.
“Their doors are open to everyone.”
“You know I’m as tolerant as the next person,” said Geraldine. (Did she notice the look of surprise on Emilia Mae’s face?) “But joining a Baptist church? Really, that’s stepping one foot over the line. You’re a smart girl. You must know that it’s a mortal sin for a Catholic to neglect Mass.”
Emilia Mae nodded. “It’s a little late for mortal sins. Besides, church is church. God’s as likely to hear me there as he is at your place.”
Her mother picked loose a piece of tobacco from between her teeth. “Let me ask you something, Emilia Mae. You come here looking like someone’s dirty laundry and tell me that you are defying everything your father and I believe in. Are you deliberately trying to hurt us, or do you come by it naturally?”
“Really, Mother, it’s got nothing to do with you. The cook at the inn invited me to go to church with her. We’ve become friends, so I went, and met the reverend and liked him. I feel comfortable there. I’ve never felt comfortable at St. Bernadette’s.”
Geraldine stared at her daughter long enough for Emilia Mae to see pain in her eyes. It had never occurred to her that she had the power to hurt her mother. She suddenly felt sorry for her and tried to think of something to say that would soften the moment. But the moment didn’t last long.
“I’m sorry it’s come to this.” Her mother’s words came out hard. “But I think it’s best if we don’t see each other for a while.”
And just like that, everything was the way it had always been.
Chapter 6
If Lily Doucet could have seen what a beautiful boy Dillard Fox became, she might not have taken off so fast. He had his father’s ocean blue eyes, a perfectly square chin, and a mouth swollen with sensuality. His blond hair against his pale skin gave off the effect of a summer sun. People were always telling Beau that Dillard should pose for magazine advertisements, but Beau was determined to give his motherless child as normal a life as possible, and for a long time that’s what he had. When Beau traveled, his sister, Denise, would come and stay with Dillard, sometimes for weeks at a time.
Dillard missed having a mother, more than he missed his actual mother. He barely remembered her. The song “Lavender Blue” played in his head when he thought about her, and the smell of peppermint Chiclets sent him back to vague memories of soft hands running through his hair. Mother love was buried deep within him, and what remained was tenderness and the ability to draw love from other people. He was popular with grown-ups and kids. It was as if whatever he had shone upon them, and in his aura, they were beautiful, too. When he was sixteen, he was elected president of his class, and at seventeen he was chosen to play the lead role in his class play. Girls and their mothers flirted with him. He flirted back, but it was always an uneasy transaction. Women were unreliable.
He had a talent for music, and at his high school graduation, his music teacher presented him with a flute. “You’ll always have the music in you,” he wrote in a cursive hand. “Now you can have it with you as well.”
That’s how it was for a while: Dillard won prizes; people gave him gifts. At Black Mountain College in Asheville, he excelled at the flute. There was talk of an audition with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, but it never materialized. Instead, Dillard stuck around for four years after graduation as a teaching assistant in the woodwinds department. He returned home at twenty-six not sure how or where he’d make money as a musician. For a while, he took odd jobs working in a restaurant, playing the flute at charity events and public concerts, but he knew if he ever was to amount to anything, he’d have to leave Skyville.
His aunt Denise argued with her brother. “The boy has no future. He should study something practical, like electronics or plumbing. He’s never met a toilet he can’t fix.”
“The boy has music,” said Beau.
“The music is pretty, I grant you that,” she said. “But music is just air blown into different shapes. There is no money in that.”
“There is if you’re willing to be creative,” said Beau.
Dillard had run out of ways of being creative. In an effort to jumpstart his life, he went to his local draft board. The Korean War had been over for a few years and he was hoping to get shipped off to Europe, or maybe a more exotic location in the Far East.
The doctor who examined Dillard took his time palpating this and probing that. He checked his ears and throat and held the ophthalmoscope to his eyes. He had him stand on his tiptoes to see if a visible arch formed. When none did, he stamped his application with a 4-F and clapped his hands together. “Nope, you’re not army material. We’ll keep you right here in Skyville, where you belong.” Without the army as his next move, Dillard was at a loss.
Because his father traveled so much of the time, Dillard thought of Beau more as a friend than a father. Beau confided to Dillard about his business and love worries, and Dillard had no problem telling his father how eager he was to get out of town.
Beau said he’d heard about these places in the Catskill Mountains of New York that hired young musicians to entertain their guests. “Handsome young men are catnip for these places. I’ll bet you could get a job in a heartbeat.” Beau gave Dillard fifty dollars, which would cover his three-day bus trip to Liberty, New York, and then some.
By then, Beau was well into his seventies and in ill health. He’d stopped peddling his antique instruments and laid them aside in their leather cases. Days before Dillard was to catch the Greyhound to New York, Beau sat him down for a man-to-man. “I want you to know this. You’re a good son. I wasn’t around nearly enough for your growing up, yet despite my absence you turned out okay. I also want you to know that your mother’s leaving had nothing to do with you. You may have been the only person she ever loved. She was a woman who acted solely on whims. In my heart, I knew she’d never stick around long enough to see you grow up. But she, like you, had the gift of music. You have her spark and some of your old man’s charm, if that’s what they call it. You have real talent. Don’t give up on it. Make something of yourself. I don’t have much to leave you except my instruments and a few dollars in the bank. You stay in touch and make your old man proud.”
On the night before he was to leave, Dillard fished around for his duffel bag in his father’s bedroom closet. In the back of the closet, he came upon a moth-eaten primrose shawl and an old handbag. Both smelled of peppermint Chiclets and brought him back to his earliest memory: His mother packing her suitcase, his father shouting things as he paced back and forth, and his four-year-old self getting out of bed, wrapping his arms around his mother’s legs, and singing with all his might: “Lavender blue, dilly dilly…Mommy, don’t go.” His mother telling his father, “I never did love you.”