"Ruin and Redemption"

The Mistress of the House

Scarlett looked down from the ladder she was on while dusting the ceiling fan. She wasn’t thrilled to be working at domestic chores in her brother’s house, but she enjoyed the society of the family, especially her brother and her niece. Her brother’s wife was tolerable, but Scarlett found her a fairly boring companion.

Right now, her niece was holding a book, and asking Scarlett if she wanted to write another letter to Lizzie and Derrick. Her niece was enamored with the idea of Scarlett being a mistress. The notion reminded her of the heroines in some of her romance books. As a result, her niece not only respected her as part of the family as her father had insisted, she treated Scarlett with a certain deference. She, Joanna, had a mistress as her aunt.

Joanna was not eager for her Aunt Scarlett to go back to her plantation. Nevertheless, she could hardly wait to read a love letter coming back from Scarlett’s lover, Derrick. She could not imagine anything more romantic than receiving a love letter. Her very own Aunt receiving a love letter---while she was staying with them!

Scarlett was ready enough to get off the ladder. Heights made her nervous. She was almost finished, but why not? She had wiped most of the dust off, and that would have to do. She agreed with her niece that the first letter carrier must have been warned off his route by the Yankees, or fallen prey to some illness or mishap. And since Derrick had not written of his own accord, it was high time she penned another letter.

To tell the truth, aside from not having her own home, Scarlett enjoyed being around the family that accepted her. She hardly even felt like a slave here, although she did have a number of chores. Derrick’s wife often joined her, and occasionally her niece, when she could pull her nose out of a book long enough.

But she was beginning to miss her lover. And it irked her that Derrick had not taken the initiative to write her, whether or not he had received her letter. Wasn’t he even curious what had happened to her?

Lizzie went to the porch to take the letter directly from the mail carrier this time. As she had expected when she saw the mail carrier, there was another letter from Scarlett. She would have to figure out now what to do. And then there was another letter. A pink envelope with flowing brown script and smelling of fine French perfume, yet splattered with bits of mud, or was it dried blood. Lizzie felt uncomfortable handling it almost. And even more so when she realized the letter had made its way from Charleston. It was unusual to be holding two letters, from two different women that had both arrived the same day. Lizzie clutched at the letters, her fingers long and bony. They had served her well at the piano, but now Lizzie hated her skeletal hands. That was all she had become, it seemed, a skeleton of a woman, growing older, and losing more of her looks every day. There seemed no hope for her, but her husband was being sought out by women still. Lizzie took the letters to her father’s desk, and sat down in his old chair. Once seated, she brought the monocle to her eye. Her eyesight was fading now, and she kept the monocle for reading. She squinted through it, and turned the letters over, peering at the hand writing. She was almost certain the first letter was from Scarlett. The handwriting looked very similar to the last letter. She took it from the drawer, where she had hidden it beneath a stack of other papers and reread it. Then she debated opening this letter too. If Scarlett mentioned the previous letter, did that incriminate her somehow? Could she destroy it and manage to lie to Derrick that she had never received it? Or perhaps she should destroy the letter she had just received and give Derrick the old one. Lizzie began to open it. Then, she changed her mind, put it down and began studying the pink letter this time. The Monsieur before her husband’s name had been abbreviated. And this was evidence to Lizzie, along with the perfume, that the letter was from one of Derrick’s French whores, Esme perhaps. Lizzie liked the thought of Derrick receiving a letter from Esme even less than she liked the thought of Scarlett writing Derrick. At least Scarlett belonged to the plantation somehow and Lizzie had gotten used to her, and expected her back. Lizzie’s hand trembled as she turned the pink envelope over to look at the seal. Stamped in wax was a fancy French fleur de lis. Lizzie pictured Esme as she had seen her last, the bright contrasting colors on her dress and hat, the parasol. Her kissing Derrick around the corner from their hotel room in Charleston. The look on her face as her husband made love to Esme in their hotel room in front of Lizzie. Lizzie felt the humiliation, the revulsion, and the frustration all over again. She decided she wasn’t interested in Derrick’s love letter from Esme. She wanted nothing to do with the woman or her love affair with Derrick. Her husband could fuck whoever he wanted from now on. She was beyond caring. Hopefully, he would wake up soon, though. She wasn’t keen on eating all her meals without him. Probably he was awake, Lizzie decided. Probably he had made it through half a bottle of bourbon by now. She had tried at first to get him off the day time drinking binges he had taken to lately, but had grown tired of nagging him. Now, she simply tried to judge whether or not he was capable of making it down the stairs at his current level of drunkenness. If she judged he was, she let him make his slow progress clutching the rail in one hand and the cane in the other. If not, she made him wait, while she rushed up the stairs to help him down.