Read Online The Violet Hour: A Novel by Katherine Hill - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Katherine Hill
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preferred his girls. And Elizabeth, who was everything a young girl ought to be—pretty, low-voiced, and clever—was far and away the best. When she first declared as premed, long after he’d given up on keeping the funeral home in the family, he liked to joke with her about going into business together. “Just keep me in mind when you’re making referrals,” he’d say, and she would laugh, not at all alarmed or offended, the way he knew some people would be.
“How come you never write?” he teased her now. “I don’t mean e-mail. What ever happened to good old-fashioned letters?”
“She’s too busy to write,” Eunice said.
Shush, Mother, shush, Cassandra told herself, as she mopped the counter with a cloth. With her therapist, she’d come up with an arsenal of strategies that would keep her from speaking her mind in potentially ugly situations. Admonishing Eunice now would only embolden her more. Better to clean the counter and pretend she was cleaning her mother’s attitude. Shush, Mother, shush. Her silent mantra for the week.
“Can’t trust the mail these days.” Here was Elizabeth to the rescue. “What if it got lost?”
“You’d be taking a risk all right,” Howard agreed.
It was something he knew all about. He’d spent his youth somersaulting from one risk to another, first as an unpromising high-school graduate, stocking hardware shelves in St. Paul by day, getting smashed out of his mind by night. Then in the army, with the war and all its muck, both human and topographical. Surviving that, against such enormous odds, he joined his cousins in a trucking venture, ferrying bales of foodstuffs and equipment from Minnesota to California, from California to Arkansas. When he was driving, he’d test the limits of the truck, pushing her to eighty, ninety, even over a hundred in the blistering Nevada sands; when he rode shotgun, he liked to hang out the window for a thrill, feeling the dirt in his teeth, his tongue dry as one of the reptiles that were always skittering away from their wheels.
Marrying Eunice had been another kind of risk. By then, he’d been making more East Coast deliveries and had taken a liking to the studious bluster of Washington. It turned out to be packed with guys like him, guys from the middle with military service but no other background to speak of. Finding themselves alive at the end of a war, they’d come to realize they’d been pretty successful serving their country and might as well try to keep on. In Washington he felt like a member of their great big American club. He wore a gray felt fedora and went to restaurants and saw himself as a man with countless possibilities.
What he needed next was a woman. After losing his mind and a good portion of his lousy savings to a walking pinup named Rose, he decided he’d be better off with a no-fuss wife who would do her part. Have a few sensible ideas, maybe bust his chops a bit, force him to make something of himself. And no sooner did he come to this conclusion than he found himself at a church dance, walking across the floor to talk to Eunice, a plain but queenly woman who stood up straight and looked at him as though she were the best-looking personin the room. She had ideas all right, the loudest of which was that a business needed a product that was always in demand. And maybe she was good-looking. Certainly he found her attractive. Adhesive, even. She was the kind of woman who would stick to him until she fixed him, and it made him feel manly to matter so much in her life. Of course, this arrangement had its own hazards, but it was better than being alone.
And so, in 1951, he put his G.I. Bill benefits toward a mortician’s course and a stately house in Bethesda. The embalming equipment cost him more than he’d estimated, so he also had to pawn their wedding silver and his wife’s two heirloom brooches until he could make up the difference. When he finally moved Eunice and their baby, Cassandra, into the
“How come you never write?” he teased her now. “I don’t mean e-mail. What ever happened to good old-fashioned letters?”
“She’s too busy to write,” Eunice said.
Shush, Mother, shush, Cassandra told herself, as she mopped the counter with a cloth. With her therapist, she’d come up with an arsenal of strategies that would keep her from speaking her mind in potentially ugly situations. Admonishing Eunice now would only embolden her more. Better to clean the counter and pretend she was cleaning her mother’s attitude. Shush, Mother, shush. Her silent mantra for the week.
“Can’t trust the mail these days.” Here was Elizabeth to the rescue. “What if it got lost?”
“You’d be taking a risk all right,” Howard agreed.
It was something he knew all about. He’d spent his youth somersaulting from one risk to another, first as an unpromising high-school graduate, stocking hardware shelves in St. Paul by day, getting smashed out of his mind by night. Then in the army, with the war and all its muck, both human and topographical. Surviving that, against such enormous odds, he joined his cousins in a trucking venture, ferrying bales of foodstuffs and equipment from Minnesota to California, from California to Arkansas. When he was driving, he’d test the limits of the truck, pushing her to eighty, ninety, even over a hundred in the blistering Nevada sands; when he rode shotgun, he liked to hang out the window for a thrill, feeling the dirt in his teeth, his tongue dry as one of the reptiles that were always skittering away from their wheels.
Marrying Eunice had been another kind of risk. By then, he’d been making more East Coast deliveries and had taken a liking to the studious bluster of Washington. It turned out to be packed with guys like him, guys from the middle with military service but no other background to speak of. Finding themselves alive at the end of a war, they’d come to realize they’d been pretty successful serving their country and might as well try to keep on. In Washington he felt like a member of their great big American club. He wore a gray felt fedora and went to restaurants and saw himself as a man with countless possibilities.
What he needed next was a woman. After losing his mind and a good portion of his lousy savings to a walking pinup named Rose, he decided he’d be better off with a no-fuss wife who would do her part. Have a few sensible ideas, maybe bust his chops a bit, force him to make something of himself. And no sooner did he come to this conclusion than he found himself at a church dance, walking across the floor to talk to Eunice, a plain but queenly woman who stood up straight and looked at him as though she were the best-looking personin the room. She had ideas all right, the loudest of which was that a business needed a product that was always in demand. And maybe she was good-looking. Certainly he found her attractive. Adhesive, even. She was the kind of woman who would stick to him until she fixed him, and it made him feel manly to matter so much in her life. Of course, this arrangement had its own hazards, but it was better than being alone.
And so, in 1951, he put his G.I. Bill benefits toward a mortician’s course and a stately house in Bethesda. The embalming equipment cost him more than he’d estimated, so he also had to pawn their wedding silver and his wife’s two heirloom brooches until he could make up the difference. When he finally moved Eunice and their baby, Cassandra, into the
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