I look at him now, tingling from his words . . .Joined this old family.

“I don’t . . . dislike you, sir,” I say, shifting in my flats.

“I don’t mean to bury you in our troubles, but things have been pretty hard here, Eugenia. We were worried sick after all that mess last year. With the other one.” He shakes his head, looks down at the glass in his hand. “Stuart, he just up and left his apartment in Jackson, moved everything out to the camp house in Vicksburg.”

“I know he was very . . . upset,” I say, when truthfully, I know almost nothing at all.

“Dead’s more like it. Hell, I’d drive out to see him and he’d just be sitting there in front of the window, cracking pecans. Wasn’t even eating em, just pulling off the shell, tossing em in the trash. Wouldn’t talk to me or his mama for . . . formonths.”

He crumples in on himself, this gigantic bull of a man, and I want to escape and reassure him at the same time, he looks so pathetic, but then he looks up at me with his bloodshot eyes, says,“Seems like ten minutes ago I was showing him how to load his first rifle, wring his first dove-bird. But ever since the thing with that girl, he’s . . . different. He won’t tell me anything. I just want to know, is my son alright?”

“I . . . I think he is. But honestly, I don’t . . . really know.” I look away. Inside, I’m starting to realize that I don’t know Stuart. If this damaged him so much, and he can’t even speak to me about it, then what am I to him? Just a diversion? Something sitting beside him to keephim from thinking about what’s really tearing him up inside?

I look at the Senator, try to think of something comforting, something my mother would say. But it’s just a dead silence.

“Francine would have my hide if she knew I was asking you this.”

“It’s alright, sir,” I say. “I don’t mind that you did.”

He looks exhausted by it all, tries to smile.“Thank you, darlin’. Go on and see my son. I’ll see y’all out there in a while.”

I ESCAPE TO THE BACK PORCH and stand next to Stuart. Lightning bursts in the sky, giving us a flash of the eerily brilliant gardens, then the darkness sucks it all back in. The gazebo, skeleton-like, looms at the end of the garden path. I feel nauseous from the glass of sherry I drank after supper.

The Senator comes out, looking curiously more sober, in a fresh shirt, plaid and pressed, exactly the same as the last one. Mother and Missus Whitworth stroll a few steps, pointing at some rare rose winding its neck up onto the porch. Stuart puts his hand on my shoulder. He is somehow better, but I am growing worse.

“Can we . . . ?” I point inside and Stuart follows me inside. I stop in the hallway with the secret staircase.

“There’s a lot I don’t know about you, Stuart,” I say.

He points to the wall of pictures behind me, the empty space included.“Well, here it all is.”

“Stuart, your daddy, he told me . . .” I try to find a way to put it.

He narrows his eyes at me.“Told you what?”

“How bad it was. How hard it was on you,” I say. “With Patricia.”

“He doesn’t knowanything. He doesn’t know who it was or what it was about or . . .”

He leans back against the wall and crosses his arms and I see that old anger again, deep and red. He is wrapped in it.

“Stuart. You don’t have to tell me now. But sometime, we’re going to have to talk about this.” I’m surprised by how confident I sound, when I certainly don’t feel it.

He looks me deep in the eyes, shrugs.“She slept with someone else. There.”

“Someone . . . you know?”

“No one knew him. He was one of those leeches, hanging around the school, cornering the teachers to do something about the integration laws. Well, she did something alright.”

“You mean . . . he was an activist? With the civil rights . . . ?”

“That’s it. Now you know.”

“Was he . . . colored?” I gulp at the thought of the consequences, because even to me, that would be horrific, disastrous.

“No, he wasn’t colored. He was scum. Some Yankee from New York, the kind you see on the T.V. with the long hair and the peace signs.”