Doing It at the Dixie Dew Read Free

give me an excuse to knock on her door. I watched Father Joe Roderick walk away. I thought, What’s a good-looking guy doing at such a going-nowhere little church?
    When Miss Lavinia checked in yesterday I thought she looked exactly like her handwriting. That precise cursive. Of the old school, Mama Alice would have said, when cursive was as important as needlework and tatting, who you married, where you went and who you were seen with. Miss Lavinia wore a gray suit of some soft leather that almost glowed, a lace blouse, gloves, stockings and the most beautiful, gleaming gray shoes.
    â€œI’m Lavinia,” she said, and extended her hand. “You must be Alice’s granddaughter Beth. I do hope my room is ready.” She signed the guest book, still wearing the largest, darkest sunglasses I’d ever seen. Bigger than those Jackie O. used to sport.
    I took the pen and led Miss Lavinia upstairs. She climbed the stairs slowly, delicately, her hand barely resting on the rail as she went. She’s like an aged movie star, I thought, someone very well kept, marvelously preserved, but fragile as the thinnest crystal.
    At the top of the stairs Miss Lavinia nodded like I was about to be dismissed and said, “I’ve had a difficult day.” She drew in the corners of her pale mouth. “Not unpleasant. Just difficult.”
    â€œLet me know if I can do anything to make you more comfortable,” I said.
    She turned then and said she sometimes had trouble sleeping and often got up during the night to read or write letters. “Don’t be alarmed,” she said, “if you see my light at some unusual hour or hear me moving about.” She seemed almost amused to be explaining herself.
    â€œOkay,” I said now to Ida Plum as I geared up to go knock on Miss Lavania’s door. “And I bet you anything her suit was made of eel skin. But it would take too many eels, wouldn’t it?”
    â€œYou’re asking me?” Ida Plum said. “I wouldn’t know an eel if it bit me on the nose. All I know is if it cost a lot, and she’s wearing it, that’s probably what it is. She always had everything she wanted. Those Lovingoods lived like royalty even when they lived in Littleboro.”
    â€œThat mansion,” I said, remembering the wedding cake of a house that presided on the block behind the courthouse. For years it sat empty, never sold or rented. Miss Lavinia must have kept the taxes paid from wherever she was. Every year it fell down more and there were always the stories of how haunted it was and kids daring each other to go in, spend the night, et cetera. It finally got so covered with kudzu the garden clubs petitioned to have it torn down. That was about the time the county ran out of office space in the courthouse, bought the lot and built the annex, a redbrick building with skylights and a fountain in the courtyard that taxpayers still grumbled about being a waste.
    â€œDo you know if she ever came back over the years?”
    â€œShe may have kept in touch with certain ones. I wasn’t in that crowd. She’s your grandmother’s generation.”
    â€œHere I go,” I said. “It’s almost noon. Surely she won’t be upset if I wake her now.”
    The upstairs hall was so quiet I even found myself tiptoeing though nobody was in the other three bedrooms.
    I tapped lightly on the door and called, “Miss Lavinia!”
    There wasn’t a sound. Not even a soft snore or a little cough. Everything was too quiet.
    Ida Plum came up the stairs, arms full of sheets for the linen closet. “Maybe she’s hard of hearing. Did you knock hard enough?”
    I knocked again, hard and loud. The old door thumped and rattled. My fist actually ached, I’d knocked so hard.
    Still no answer. No sound of movement inside. Nothing.
    I knocked, called, knocked again.
    Ida Plum nudged me aside and inserted the master key from its nail in