Blackwater: The Complete Saga by McDowell Michael

Author:McDowell, Michael [McDowell, Michael ]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Valancourt Books
Published: 2017-10-02T00:00:00+00:00

And so she was, laying her plans carefully and in secret.

The hot, high summer came on, and still no one knew what was to become of Miriam in the fall. This was a question of no small moment to Sister, for if Miriam went away to school, Sister would have no ostensible reason to remain in Perdido. She would have to think up another excuse for not returning to her husband. And it was nearly inconceivable that Miriam would not go to college—a girl who was smart enough to have been valedictorian of her class, with as much social position and as assured a financial future as Miriam was blessed with, was bound for higher education. Sister grew so demoralized by the task of figuring out some way of not having to go back to Early Haskew that she self-indulgently talked herself into believing that Miriam would never go away at all.

So everyone waited impatiently for fall, to see what Miriam would do. But Miriam had an intermediate surprise. One day toward the end of June Miriam attended a party at the casino on Santa Rosa Island, across the bay from Pensacola. From that day forth, she was obsessed with the beach. Every day she departed at five-thirty in the morning in the little roadster she had been given by Mary-Love. She returned in time for the afternoon meal. Her skin grew darker and darker.

“Is she meeting a boy, you think?” Queenie asked James.

“I wonder,” said James, and that night asked Sister the same question.

“Are you seeing a boy down at Pensacola Beach?” Sister asked Miriam the following noon when Miriam walked in the house with a towel over her shoulder.

Miriam seemed offended by the question. “Sister, I drive down there and I lie on the beach and soak up the sun.”

“I was just wondering,” said Sister.

That afternoon, wearing a white sundress that showed off her deep tan to startling effect, Miriam marched across the sandy yard and knocked on the door of her mother’s house. Elinor came to the door.

“Elinor, is Frances around?” Miriam asked stiffly. She had hoped that Frances herself or perhaps Zaddie would answer the door. It irked Miriam to speak to her mother.

“No, she’s not. She went downtown, but she ought to be back soon. You want to come in and wait?”

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