All Bedlam Courses Past (part ninety-three)

All Bedlam Courses Past

Chapter Three

An Object in Motion

(part ninety-three)

A morning, four years past that time, bloomed in its sly way—the indigo river growing muddy, the sky chalky. Woodsmoke from a basement stovepipe curled to the porch; and Élucide, having light to see by and the hall mirror, twisted her hair into place, smoothed her skirt.

Ysonde was on a kitchen chair, cup in hand. “Now you caught me, being down this hour. Let me get standing.”

“Oh, I just came to take that coffee pot from you.”

“Not that one. Not my old smoky kettle. Ring the bell for Sarah, you can do that. Look at this old woman, can’t get on her own feet. No, you go ring that bell.”

She sat under the shadow boxes, sipping. The shadow boxes… Those, at Mother’s college, had been a project, a homemaking lesson. “We must seek to fill our homes with stimulating objects that are pleasant and attractive to look upon. This pursuit need involve no great expense.”

So the book said…

She heard a crack, crack on the steps. Her father jogged in. “Luce, I got the Vanguard for you.” He poured, crouching, topped her cup and made use of it, easing onto the settee opposite. He made a gesture, flip the page.

“What was Grandmother Gremot’s Christian name?”

“Lisette.”

“Elizabeth?”

“She was passed away when I was five years old.”

“But…what was her maiden name?”

“That I couldn’t tell you.”

“You only knew your mother as Lisette? She could have been Elizabeth…Everard…or…”

“I don’t think my father would run across Everards, back in whatever town he came from.”

“But, Huy, wasn’t it? And Honoré did run across…”

“Could be.” Papa didn’t care. Once more, the gesture.

An article: “Gleanings from the Stobby Fields”, published under the soubriquet, “A Roving Correspondent”.

Every now and again, it becomes necessary for the respectable Northern gent to venture netherwards, to that land hallowed in ancient times under the name of Seccesia. Though strictly speaking, my journeys took me not so very deep, only so far as our immediate Southern neighbor—a belle of circumspection, who had held herself, in those bellicose years of Brother Against Brother (if not Son Against Father), aloof from base company. And rightly so.

On a recent occasion, I ventured to the capital of Tennessee. I am not asked by my good editor to relate my adventures there; I offer this evidence merely to bolster my roving credentials, lest the dyspeptic reader quibble that it takes this and that alike to form what the logician calls “a basis for comparison”.

98

Bedlam

All Bedlam Courses Past (part ninety-four)

(2024, Stephanie Foster)