Breath of Scandal Page 3

  Because of the ever-growing number of little Parkers, the joke around town was that Gary’s father, Otis, didn’t know when to quit. That was just one of the stigmas that Gary was determined to shrug off.

  He drew Jade against his chest and propped his chin on the top of her head. “We can’t gamble away our chance to make a better life.”

  “Making love now doesn’t necessarily mean that our futures are doomed to misery.”

  “It scares me to tempt fate, though. The only time I really feel good is when I’m with you, Jade. The rest of the time I feel so alone. That sounds crazy, doesn’t it? How could I feel alone with six younger brothers and sisters in the house? But it’s true.

  “Sometimes I think I must have been a foundling, that I don’t really belong to my parents. My daddy is resigned to fields that flood and crops that rot and selling his produce in a feudalistic town like Palmetto. He hates being poor and ignorant but doesn’t do anything to help himself. He takes whatever shit Ivan Patchett shovels him and is glad to get it.

  “Well, I’m poor, but I’m not ignorant. I’m sure as hell not cowed by the Patchetts. I’m not going to be like my daddy, accepting things as they are just because that’s the way they’ve always been. I’m going to make something of myself.

  “I know I can, Jade, if I’ve got you pulling for me.” He took her hand and pressed her palm to his lips, leaving it there while he spoke. “But in the meantime, I’m so afraid of letting you down.”

  “You could never let me down.”

  “One of these days, you might decide it’s not worth the struggle. You might decide that you want a guy who hasn’t got so far to go, who hasn’t got anything to prove. A guy like Neal.”

  She pulled her hand away from his and blinked her eyes angrily. “Don’t ever say anything like that to me again. It sounds like something my mother would say, and you know how angry it makes me when she starts planning my life for me.”

  “Maybe some of the things she says are right, Jade. A girl who looks like you deserves somebody with money and social status, somebody who could lay the world at your feet. That’s what I want to do. What if you lose patience with me before I’m able to?”

  “Listen to me, Gary Parker. I don’t give a flip about social status. I don’t pine after a life of luxury. I have ambitions of my own, which would be in place whether or not I loved you. Getting a scholarship is only the first step of many. Just like you, I’ve got my own family disgrace to live down. The only world I want at my feet is the one that I create for myself.” She softened her tone and looped her arms around his neck. “The one that we create together.”

  “You’re something, you know that?” He squeezed his eyes shut and whispered fervently, “God, I’m glad you chose me.”

  * * *

  The house Jade shared with her mother had been built shortly after World War II to accommodate the influx of military personnel based around the shipping channels. In the thirty years since, the neighborhood of white frame tract houses had declined. Their pastel trims no longer looked cheerful and chic but tacky and cheap.

  Unlike the others on the street, the Sperry house was kept neat. The house was small, having only two bedrooms and one bath. The living room was rectangular, with narrow windows that were heavily draped. It was the only room in the house that was carpeted. The furniture was inexpensive, but everything was kept spotlessly clean because Velta Sperry passionately hated any form of dirt. She wouldn’t even allow plants in her house because they grew in open pots of soil. The only amenity in the living room was a color television set, which Velta had bought on credit from Sears.

  She was sitting in an easy chair watching TV when Jade came in. Velta eyed her daughter critically, looking for telltale signs that she’d been misbehaving with that Parker boy. She couldn’t detect anything amiss, but then, Jade was clever enough to cover the evidence.

  By way of greeting, she said, “You barely made it by your curfew.”

  “But I did. It’s just now ten.”

  “Church has been out for hours.”

  “We went to the Dairy Barn. Everybody was there.”

  “He probably speeded here to get you home in time.” Velta disliked Jade’s steady boyfriend and never referred to him by name if she could avoid it.

  “He didn’t speed. Gary’s a very careful driver. You know that, Mama.”

  “Stop arguing with me,” Velta said, raising her voice.

  “Then stop criticizing Gary.”

  Velta resented Gary because, she claimed, Jade spent too much time with him—time that she and Jade could spend together. Actually, her dislike was based on Gary’s origins. He was a soybean farmer’s son. The Parkers had too many children already and continued, disgustingly, to turn out another baby every ten months or so.

  Otis Parker was always in hock to the company credit union. Velta knew this because she worked in the credit office as a typist and file clerk. Velta didn’t have much regard for anybody who didn’t have money.

  It would be just like that Parker boy to get Jade pregnant. She hoped Jade was too smart to let that happen, but, unfortunately, like her stunning good looks, the girl had inherited a romantic, passionate streak from her father.

  Velta’s eyes moved to the framed photograph on the end table. Ronald Sperry’s laughing blue eyes—so like Jade’s—stared back at her. The soldier’s cap sat at a jaunty angle atop his dark curls. His Congressional Medal of Honor was suspended around his neck. Other medals were pinned to the breast pocket of his military uniform, attesting to his valor and courage during the Korean conflict.

  Velta was sixteen when Palmetto’s dashing war hero had returned home. The low-country town had never had such a grand distinction. The entire population had turned out to welcome his train as it chugged into the depot. The red carpet had been rolled out for the town’s favorite son, who was coming straight from Washington, D.C., where he had been wined and dined. He’d even shaken hands with the president.

  Velta was introduced to him at a citywide dance held in his honor at the VFW hall. That very night, while they danced to tunes by Patti Page and Frank Sinatra, she made up her mind to marry Ronald Sperry.

  For the next two years she pursued him shamelessly, not giving up until he popped the question. Lest something jinx it, Velta saw to it that they were married within a week of his proposal.

  Unfortunately, there were no North Korean Communists in Palmetto. Years after his triumphant return home, Ronald was still at a loss as to what to do with the rest of his life. He had no grandiose ambitions. Though he was dashingly handsome, he had no desire to capitalize on the Medal of Honor the way Audie Murphy had. He didn’t aspire to movie stardom.

  Orphaned and penniless, he had joined the army only so he would have a place to sleep and food to eat. He had been an ideal soldier because there was always somebody telling him what to do and when to do it. His officers had ordered him to shoot straight and kill the gook commies and, because he was an excellent marksman, that’s what he had done. On the afternoon that he wiped out twenty-two Koreans, it never occurred to him that his actions would merit a medal.

  He was popular with people. He had a charisma and magnetism that folks just naturally gravitated to. Everybody liked Ron Sperry. However, hanging out with the guys and telling amusing stories in the pool hall didn’t produce revenue. He drifted from one meaningless, futureless job to another.

  With each one he began, Velta’s spirits rose. This would be the one that catapulted them to riches. The Medal of Honor gave them instant respectability, but never the riches and social acceptance Velta craved. Even a Medal of Honor didn’t establish you with Southern society if you had no distinguished grandfather and lots of family money to go with it.

  Velta had ranked fourth in a family of nine children. Her father had been a sharecropper until he dropped dead behind a plow mule, leaving destitute her mother and all the offspring who weren’t already married. The family had to rely on the charity of oth
ers for food and shelter.

  More than poverty and hunger, Velta feared scorn.

  When the laurel wreath around Ron’s head began to wilt, she surmised that people were laughing behind their backs. She berated him for squandering their one chance for fame and fortune. She threatened him and cajoled him, but he simply lacked the initiative to work for a living. She refused to let him reenlist in the army. That would be too demeaning, an admission of defeat, she had told him.

  At her wits’ end, she had already made up her mind to leave him when she got pregnant with Jade after six years of barrenness. Velta had then clung to the hope that a baby would prod her husband into doing something worthy of his previous success as a soldier. But after Jade’s arrival it was Velta who had gone to work in Ivan Patchett’s factory.

  The last ten years of Ron’s life had been studded with jobs acquired and jobs lost, big dreams that never came to fruition, promises that were diluted by ever-increasing amounts of liquor.

  One day when Jade was at school and Velta was at work, he died while cleaning his rifle. Mercifully, Sheriff Jolly had ruled his death accidental. The local VFW had donated the money for Velta and Jade to travel to Arlington National Cemetery to give Ronald Sperry a hero’s burial.

  Looking at his photograph now, Velta didn’t feel a whit of yearning for him. Ron had been handsome and sweet and ardent till the day he died, but what good had he done her?

  Jade, on the other hand, missed him to this day. Velta resented the girl’s fond attachment to his memory, just as she had been jealous of their mutual, blind admiration while he was alive.

  He had often pulled Jade into his lap and said to her, “You’ll do all right, little doll. You’ve got my looks and your mama’s backbone. Don’t ever be afraid and you’ll do all right.”

  Jade was going to do better than all right. If Velta had anything to do with it, Jade was going to make a better marriage than she had.

  “Neal Patchett called a while ago,” she said, smiling for the first time since Jade had come in. “He’s a charmer, that one.”

  “He’s slime.”

  Velta was taken aback by Jade’s vehemence. “That’s an ugly thing to say.”

  “Neal is ugly.”

  “Ugly? Why, half the girls in the high school would give their right arms to have him calling them.”

  “Then half the girls can have him.”

  “I’m sure it’s not too late for you to return his call.”

  Jade shook her head. “I’ve got to read a chapter in history before tomorrow.”

  “Jade,” Velta called peremptorily when Jade headed for her bedroom. “It’s rude not to return a telephone call, especially from someone like Neal.”

  “I don’t want to talk to Neal, Mama.”

  “You spend hours on the phone with that Parker boy.”

  Jade rolled her lips inward and held them for several seconds before saying, “I’ve got to study. Good night.”

  Velta switched off the TV and followed Jade into her bedroom, catching the door before it closed. “You spend too much time studying. It’s unnatural.”

  Jade removed her skirt and sweater and conscientiously hung them in her narrow closet. “I have to keep my grade point up if I want to get a scholarship.”

  “A scholarship,” Velta hissed. “That’s all you ever think about.”

  “Because that’s the only way I can afford to go to college.”

  “Which in my opinion is a big waste of time for a pretty girl like you.”

  Jade turned away from her closet and faced her mother. “Mama, I don’t want to have this argument again. I’m going to college, whether you approve of it or not.”

  “It’s not a matter of approval. I just don’t think it’s necessary.”

  “It is if I want a career.”

  “You’ll waste all that time and money and then wind up getting married anyway.”

  “Women nowadays can do both.”

  Velta crossed the room, pinched Jade’s chin between her fingers, and angled her head back, exposing the faint red mark on Jade’s neck and showing contempt for both the mark and her daughter. “What chance will you have of marrying somebody decent if you get pregnant by that Parker boy?”

  “Gary isn’t going to get me pregnant. And he’s the most decent person I know. It’s Gary I’m going to marry, Mama.”

  “Jade, boys talk girls into doing things they shouldn’t by telling them they love them. If you give it to this boy, nobody worth having will want you.”

  Jade sank down on the edge of her bed and, looking up at her mother, shook her head sadly. “I haven’t given ‘it’ to anybody, Mama. When I do, it’ll be to Gary, and it’ll be because we love each other.”

  Velta snorted. “You’re too young to know what love is.”

  Jade’s eyes turned a deeper blue, a sign of rising ire. “You wouldn’t say that if I were claiming to be in love with Neal Patchett. You’d be urging me to trap him any way I could… even if it meant having sex with him.”

  “At least you would be somebody in this town if you married him.”

  “I am somebody!”

  Velta clenched her fists at her sides. “You’re just like your father—head in the clouds, idealistic.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with having goals.”

  “Goals?” Velta scoffed. “A funny word to bring into a conversation about your father. He never met a single goal in his life. For all the years we were married, he never did one worthwhile thing.”

  “He loved me,” Jade retorted. “Or don’t you consider that worthwhile?”

  Velta turned and walked stiffly to the door. Before leaving, she said, “When I was your age, I married the hero of the town. Right now, that’s your Gary. He’s good-looking, a star athlete, class president, everything a girl could want.”

  Velta sneered. “Take it from me, heroes are temporary, Jade. They fade like cheap curtains. The only thing that really counts is money. No matter how many awards that Parker boy wins, all he’ll ever really be is old Otis Parker’s firstborn. I want better than that for you.”

  “No, Mama,” Jade argued softly. “You want better than that for you.”

  Velta slammed the door behind her.

  * * *

  Jade sat on a tall stool, nibbling a shortbread cookie. The heels of her shoes were hooked over the chrome rung that encircled the stool’s legs. Her chemistry textbook lay open on her lap.

  After school and half a day on Saturdays, Jade worked in Jones Brothers’ General Store. During the week, she clocked in at four and worked until Velta picked her up on her way home from the factory, usually around six.

  It wasn’t a long shift, but it gave Pete, the last surviving of three brothers, a chance to sit with his ailing wife, who was in a nursing home, and it provided Jade with a little spending money.

  The store was one of a diminishing breed. The planks of the hardwood floor were covered with a waxy-looking film from the lemon oil used on dustmops for countless decades. On the coldest of winter afternoons, old men gathered around the potbellied stove in the back room and discussed the state of the world between chaws of Redman and games of dominoes.

  Pitchforks hung, tines down, from hooks screwed into the ceiling. A customer could outfit his horse or his newborn. He could purchase a deck of cards, a pair of dice, or a Bible. The variety of merchandise and customers made the job interesting.

  Jade tried to concentrate on the material she was reading, but her mind wandered from chemistry to her personal problems, chiefly those with her mother, who refused to take seriously either Jade’s love for Gary or her burning desire to have more out of life than the ordinary—husband, home, and children.

  A family was important and Jade wanted one. But she wanted more. Most of the girls in her class had already resigned themselves to working for Ivan Patchett until they got married and started having babies, who would eventually work for Neal. Gary and she shared an ambition to break that dreary cycle.r />
  Whether intentionally or not, Ron Sperry had imbued his daughter with the courage he had lacked, instilling in her a desire to make a better life for herself than her parents had had. At least on that, she and her mother agreed. It was their ultimate goals that differed… and their means of attaining them. Jade feared that those differences would never be reconciled, especially where Gary was concerned.

  Gary was another source of worry that gloomy afternoon. Neither of them had heard from any of the scholarship boards to which they had applied. That, coupled with their escalating sexual frustration and the hell that Neal was giving them at school because of the incident at the Dairy Barn, had made them irritable and short-tempered with each other.

  They needed a distraction. Perhaps if the weather was warm this weekend, they could have a cookout on the beach, or go for a long drive, something that would relax them and put things back into perspective.

  She was still mulling it over when the bell over the entrance jangled. Jade looked up from her studies to see Donna Dee barreling through the door. Her cheeks were flushed and her chest was heaving as she gasped for air.

  Jade jumped to her feet, and her chemistry book fell to the floor with a loud thud. “What in the world is the matter?”

  Donna Dee fanned her hands in front of her face and drew several deep breaths. “I just came from school. Mr. Patterson asked if I’d stay and do some filing for him.”

  “And?”

  “You got it. Your scholarship.”

  Jade’s heart went straight to her throat. She didn’t dare trust her ears, so she repeated, “I got it? A scholarship?”

  Donna Dee bobbed her head quickly. “To South Carolina State.”

  “How do you know? Are you sure?”

  “I saw the letter lying on Mr. Patterson’s desk. It looked very official, you know, with gold seals and scrolls and stuff. I saw your name on it and kind of accidentally on purpose knocked it to the floor as I was reaching for a folder I was supposed to—”

  “Donna Dee!”

  “Okay. Anyway, I read the letter. The dean or someone was congratulating our principal on producing two such fine students at Palmetto High School.”