The Painted Table(45)
About my classes: Psychology 101—The professor is boring, but the subject is fascinating. Mother, years ago did you read about Skinner boxes in Mr. Clement’s psychology books? What terrible things. He actually put babies in boxes!
French—Pretty hard, but I like it. Let me tell you about the huge linebacker (second string) who I sometimes sit next to in class. Last week we started talking—in English, of course. Later, I ran into him (not literally, or I’d be dead) in Dinky Town (the quaint shopping village across University Ave.). We went to Bridgeman’s and had a cherry Coke. He paid, so I’m calling it my first date!
She doesn’t write that when she is called on in class, her face reddens and a shy dumbness comes over her. Twice in French she answered questions with Spanish vocabulary learned in high school. And her “date” with the linebacker? She was hardly able to say an intelligent word and was so nervous she spilled her Coke on his books, and ever since she makes a point to sit at least three rows behind him in class.
Well, that’s all for now. Gotta work on a four-page paper for history.
Why mention that her first and only venture to do research for that paper, in the vast, mysterious library, so intimidated her that she did not dare inquire how to locate information?
Hope you understand I don’t have time to write often.
Love,
Saffee
She posts the letter, not imagining the kind of ruckus it will cause when it arrives.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
SAPPHIRA
Saffee answers the phone in the hallway booth. “Hello?”
“Saffee.”
“Oh!”
“This is your mother.”
“Yes. I know. Did you get my letter?”
“Yes, it came today, and we want you to come home Friday night on the Greyhound.”
“What? Home? I just got here!”
“We expect to see you Friday.”
“But there’s a dorm party Friday night. I’ve been thinking about going.”
“Your dad will pick you up at the station when the bus gets in. Ten o’clock.”
“Mother!”
“This is long distance. We’ll talk when you get here. Good-bye.”
The next day there is a letter from April. In it is no indication that she knows Saffee has been summoned home.
October 21, 1959
Dear Saffee,
I read your letter. College sounds so great! Can’t wait to get there myself. What’s a Skinner box?
Things around here aren’t very good. Mom’s been mean to me lately. She calls me bad names and then gives me the silent treatment. It really hurts the way she’s changed toward me. And her arguments with Daddy are getting worse. Mom’s mostly on her high horse about religious stuff now. Daddy tells her to stop talking foolishness, and that makes her madder. She’s bent over her Bible all the time, writing in it. It’s like when she wrote a lot in a library book and they made her pay for it. She told them she was translating the words into what they really meant and they should thank her!
With you not here at night I can’t sleep very well. I lie in bed thinking about climbing out the window and leaving. I suppose that’s ridiculous. When are you coming home?
Love and XXX,
April
Saffee has been away for six weeks. Now she stands in the middle of the living room, hugging her arms to her chest. Why is she uneasy in her own home? Because . . . it is not her home anymore. But until she feels less like an interloper on campus, she has no home. She glances around, reabsorbing familiarity: the Audubon Society magazine on the marble-topped coffee table, put there five years ago because its cover coordinates with Joann’s décor; the pink fluted candy dish three inches to the left of the crystal lamp, still empty; the yellow ceramic dancing girl, still maniacally lunging on the bookshelf, and no closer to the edge.
Looking out the picture windows to the south, she sees frost-nipped hydrangeas, bent over and dead brown. The apple trees in the orchard have all but shed their leaves. During the summer, a couple named Peterson built a house, then hidden from view, on the lot beyond the orchard. Now, through the bare branches, Saffee can see it clearly. A black Labrador romps in the new neighbors’ yard.
Instinctively, she knows that the proximity of the new house and its color are a significant offense to Joann. She can almost hear the protest: “Blue! Have they no sense of propriety?”
Saffee remembers once standing at this window watching April and two young town boys scoop up fallen apples. Their faces glowed with mirth as they shrieked and whooped, lobbing them over the bank into the valley below.
She visually sweeps the living room again, feeling uneasy. It is unusual that the double doors to the dining room are almost closed; it looks dark beyond. She smelled the sickening odor of wet paint when she arrived last night, the smell synonymous with her mother’s periodic anguish over the Norway table. She doesn’t want to see what new graffiti is there. A familiar, paint-spattered canvas drop cloth extends a few inches out the doorway. She gives it a kick so she can close the doors and sees that the room is dark because newspapers are taped to the windows. She quickly pulls the doors shut. New, worn, track-like marks on the carpet catch her eye.