Tall, stately, darkly caramel, wearing a navy blue evening dress with her hair up and feet in high heels, Victoria Woodbury took the back stairway from the ballroom to the second floor and walked down the long, darkened, carpeted hallway, humming to the music from the other end of the mansion where the band in the ballroom was now playing Love Is A Hurtin’ Thing.
At the front of the house the banister overlooked the entrance hall, and when she looked down to the diagonal floor tiles glistening white and black under the amber gloaming of the dimmed foyer chandelier, she saw that the tall and slim tuxedoed man standing there was none other than her husband Clarion. Even with his back to her she could tell–his squared head, the way his left leg was set at a slight angle from the right. In a flash of realization she knew the only way he could have gotten there that fast was if he’d left the ballroom as soon as she’d left his sight, after which he must have hurried through the mansion’s first floor corridors decorated with oil paintings the size of picture windows.
It looked as if Clarion was waiting for someone. He was facing the open doorway where she could see the sea green, marble landing which was illuminated by two outside lights bracketing the entrance.
Clarion glanced at his wristwatch, a gold and diamond timepiece his mother had given him for his last birthday, the contraption costing more money than Victoria’s mother had earned in a year’s time in the days of Victoria’s girlhood when her mom had kept a modest South Side roof over their two heads through maid work for a White family on the city’s North Side. That family, although rich, were nowhere near as flush as Victoria’s in-laws, and these days Victoria’s mom enjoyed telling friends how the house of her son-in-law’s family put the house of her former employers, “Too shame. Vickie’s in-laws may be snooty, but those Black folks know how to live.” (Victoria’s mom was right now in the ballroom sipping champagne from a flute glass and undulating her wide hips to the music, no doubt to the dismay of Clarion’s short and even wider-hipped mother, who everyone in the family called “Ma mere” like they were living in Paris or something.)
Victoria wanted desperately to stay and find out who Clarion was waiting for, but her bladder was straining–she’d had a few flutes herself. She tiptoed to a nearby guest room and didn’t turn on the light, feeling her way to the en suite bathroom.
In the lighted place it took Victoria a bit to finish her business, what with the taut confines of the dress and panty hose. When done she anxiously returned to her perch and looked over the curved staircase. Clarion was still down there but now two others were with him: Winifred Laudermilk and her date. Winifred Laudermilk, an old Woodbury family friend, petite as could be with her hair up, too, and wearing a dress that was red taffeta-like around the lower half. She and the date were saying their good-byes. The date, not as tall as Clarion but with the same wet sand complexion (Winifred’s color too), shook Clarion’s hand and Victoria felt a flutter of relief. But then the date headed out the open doorway, no doubt to get the car, and Winifred stayed.
When he was out of sight, Victoria heard Clarion ask about him and Winifred said he was a work buddy. Then she leaned upwards, gave Clarion a benign peck on the cheek and walked away. Clarion followed after her slowly. He didn’t say anything, just followed until he was just outside the threshold where he watched, Victoria assumed, Winifred riding off with her date.
Clarion turned around and his pained expression made her shudder. There were no tears, but the anguish was unmistakable. She’d seen that look on her mother’s face when her daddy had left them for good, she’d seen it in mirrors on her own face more than once. And as she watched her husband over the balustrade Victoria knew as surely as she’d been certain of the opposite just moments before, that it hadn’t been Clarion who years ago had broken with the popular Winifred Laudermilk; as Clarion had claimed. It was she who’d broken with him. It had all been the other way around. It’d been the other way around all along.
Eric May graduated with a BA in Writing/English from Columbia in 1975 and the following year joined what was then Columbia’s Writing/English Department as a part-time instructor. He moved to Washington D.C. in 1985 to attend graduate school at American University and began working at the Washington Post as a newsroom clerk. In 1987, he joined the Post staff where he was a reporter on the Metro section. He returned to Columbia College in 1993. His fiction and nonfiction have been published in such literary anthologies as Criminal Class Review, Briefly Knocked Unconscious By a Low-flying Duck, Fish Stories: Collective I, Sport Literate, Angels in My Oven, and f5 Magazine. May is a Certified Story Workshop Director, and former Associate Faculty member at the Stonecoast Writers’ Conference in Maine and Solstice Writers’ Conference in Massachusetts, and a past Board of Judges member for the Columbia University Scholastic Press Association (CSPA). His debut novel, Bedrock Faith, will be published by Akashic Books March 4.
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