Chapter 13

"No, Georgia is my half sister, mine and Bunny's. My father made Georgia's mother pregnant. It was after my mother learned of this that she drowned herself."

When Mama told me this, I couldn't have been more shocked. I had a lot of questions, but I didn't really know how to ask any of them. Mama had told me she was fourteen years old when her mother died. Mrs. Connor was only a year or two younger than Mama and Uncle Bunny. Mama said she felt guilty about her mother's death, and Uncle Bunny had told me she blamed herself for her mother dying. Mama had also said that no one knew if the drowning had been accidental, or a suicide. From what she had told me before, none of what she was now saying made any sense to me.

I needed to learn more, so I said, "Mama, how do you know it was a suicide? That isn't what you said before."

Mama hesitated, searching for the right words, before saying, "I know what I said before, Kenny. You asked me for a reason why I wanted the two of you together, and that's what I just gave you. They were in the library, Georgia and her father, talking to Mother. I was coming down the stairs from my room, when I heard both of the adults screaming at each other. When I got to the bottom of the stairs, I saw Georgia come running out of the room. She was very upset, not even watching where she was going. I remember that Georgia's mother had died, perhaps a month before this time. I assumed this was what had her so upset. She kept going, running outside, and leaving the front door wide open. It was only another minute before Mr. Kendall, Georgia's father came storming out. He saw me, but he just rushed by me, heading out the front door. He left the same way Georgia had done earlier, neither of them bothering to close the door behind them. I continued on, into the library, and saw my mother sitting in Daddy's chair, softly crying into a handkerchief. She kept repeating the same words. 'That horrible man, I'll never forgive him.' I was sure then that she meant Mr. Kendall, and I wondered what he'd said or done to her to make her so upset."

I said, "Maybe that's what she did mean. If you didn't ask her, how can you know?"

Mama looked like she was trying to decide something. She said, "I thought it was Mr. Kendall for a long time. I was sure it was over something that Bunny and Georgia had done while playing, something that Mr. Kendall had brought Georgia along to confess to my mother. Even then, Bunny and Georgia were playing kissing games. It was early the next day that my mother had her 'accident', and, in all the chaos and confusion caused by her death, I didn't tell anyone about Georgia and Mr. Kendall's visit. It was several years before I even remembered it again. My father and I were having dinner, and he started talking about my mother. When he was done speaking, I told him about seeing my mother crying in the library, the day before she drowned. I told Daddy everything I remembered, and, when I was done with telling everything to him, he got very quiet. Daddy was a very intense man, his quiet anger could be every bit as frightening as another man's wildest tantrums."

Nothing she'd said had convinced me that Mrs. Connor was her half sister. I said, "I still don't see how you're so sure about Mrs. Connor being your sister."

"Daddy always used to get so angry with Bunny, just because he kept company with Georgia. He couldn't understand Bunny wanting to be near her, even after she dropped him for Walt. After that day at the dinner table, Daddy never spoke to Mr. Kendall again. Years later, when he had a chance to do so, he went to considerable lengths to make sure that Mr. Kendall lost everything, when he got himself overextended in some of his business dealings. Later, right before Thomas and I were married, he demanded Bunny have a vasectomy performed at the same time Thomas got his. He was always against Bunny and Georgia being together. He never said why, because I heard Bunny ask him many times."

I said, "He probably felt like that more for Uncle Bunny's sake than for Mrs. Connor's. If he didn't like her, he wouldn't want Uncle Bunny making her pregnant."

"I believed that as well. Daddy was never comfortable around Georgia. In fact, that was the reason I believed for his actions, until Georgia herself told me what had been said in that library so many years before. This was only a few months ago that she told me, Kenny, and she was so drunk, she would have been incapable of making up such a story. I simply had to believe her. We had been discussing Brenda's future, and Georgia was attempting to get me to intercede with you, on Brenda's behalf. We were dining at the club, although Georgia was drinking far more than she was eating. It was only after I refused to press you to give Brenda another chance, that she disclosed the truth to me. Mr. Kendall had come over to accuse my father of fathering Georgia. When Daddy wasn't there, he told my mother instead. Georgia had known about this, for all those years, and she had never told anyone, not even Bunny."

I told her what I thought was obvious, saying, "She might just be lying. I wouldn't put it past her."

Mama sat up straighter, bristling a little at hearing me say that. She said, "She might have been, except for one important thing. It's something I located myself, while searching for any evidence of a likeness between Georgia, Bunny and me. Stay here, Kenny, I need to get something to show you." Mama got up and left the kitchen. While she was gone, I finished my sandwich and the glass of milk Gerta had gotten for me. Gerta put a big slice of chocolate cake in front of me, taking my empty milk glass so she could refill it. I was almost done with the cake when Mama came back with one of the big picture albums she kept in the library. I could see that it was one of the older ones. "Kenny, this is a picture of Daddy, when he was around ten years old."

I looked at the picture. It was a faded black and white picture that showed a blond boy standing on a dock, next to a large white boat. To me, he looked like any other young boy, nothing remarkable that I could see to set him apart. I could see a slight resemblance to Uncle Bunny, but nothing else. He didn't look much like Mama or Mrs. Connor. I didn't see any close resemblance between Mama and Uncle Bunny, or with either of them, and Mrs. Connor. Mama, turned the page of the album, and there was a long lock of hair, stored in a semi clear, Glassine envelope. It was copper colored, almost the exact same shade as Brenda's. Beneath the hair, in a neat cursive script, was writing. 'Ronald Chalmers, age ten.' I didn't know who Ronald Chalmers was. Mama's father's name was Senior Chalmers. I looked over at her for further explanation of what she was showing me.

"That's Daddy's hair, when he was ten years old. Do you see how close it is to Brenda's hair color? I had forgotten that, partly because Daddy always kept his hair cut so short, and because he lost his hair at a fairly young age. When I was young, it was more of a fringe than a real head of hair."

"It still doesn't prove what Mrs. Connor claims." I had no real reason for doubting any of this, but, there was something about all of it that just seemed too self serving to me. I wasn't a big believer in coincidental happenings. Circumstantially, it seemed like a lot of the available facts fit Mrs. Connor's claim, especially the things Mama had just told me about her seeing her mother and Mr. Kendall yelling at each other in the library. Mrs. Connor had been right there though, and she knew she was the only one left alive who had heard what really was said. She knew the same sequence of events that Mama did, about what had occurred after that meeting in the library. Most importantly, she knew that Mama didn't know what happened in there.