Virginia Commonwealth University VCU Scholars Compass Theses and Dissertations Graduate School 1991 Finessing for the Queen of Trumps Ann Burrus Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/etd Part of the Fiction Commons © The Author Downloaded from https://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/etd/4392 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at VCU Scholars Compass. It has been accepted for inclusion in Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of VCU Scholars Compass. For more information, please contact [email protected]. College of Humanities and Sciences Virginia Commonwealth University This is to certify that the thesis prepared by Ann Burrus entitled Finessing for the Queen of Trumps has been approved by her committee as satisfactory completion of the thesis requirement for the degree of Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing. Tom DeHaven, Associate Professor, Department of English Creative Writing MFA Program partment of English Elske v.P. Smith, Dean, College of Humanities and Sciences Date FINESSING FOR THE QUEEN OF TRUMPS A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing at Virginia Commonwealth University. By Ann Burrus Bachelor of Arts, English, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1952; Master of Education, Elementary Education, Virginia Commonwealth University, 1974. Director: Tom DeHaven Associate Professor Department of English Virginia Commonwealth University Richmond, Virginia May, 1991 ii Acknowledgments This collection is dedicated to my mother. I am more than grateful for the encouragement and suggestions of Tom DeHaven, Lee Smith, and Greg Donovan. iii Table of Contents Page Williams the Great .. 1 Milestone, Millstone, What's the Difference?. • 28 The Reverend's Child. 47 You've Never Done That. 78 Kiss Your Ass Goodbye 91 Colony. .122 Dirty Little Girl .155 Intimate Friends and Cherished Colleagues .163 Serpent's Tooth .193 Faulkner's Baby Boy .209 Finessing for the Queen of Trumps •.236 Vita. .. .250 WILLIAMS THE GREAT Jack and I are about halfway up the long, steep stair­ case to the lobby of the Jefferson Hotel when a tall blind man begins to feel his way down. He holds carefully onto a white cane with his left hand and with his right clutches the thick brass handrail that bisects the red plush-carpet­ ed steps. From the way he sticks his chin out ahead of him like a divining rod I recognize Al Weaver even though it's been nearly forty years since I last saw him. There's a bald place on his forehead now, but he has on the same kind of dark round granny glasses he wore back then. And his socks match. Watching him I feel my age. "Do you think I ought to give that guy a hand?" Jack says. "He looks a little unsteady." "No," I say. As we pass by him I toy with the idea of patting him on the arm without saying anything to make him wonder who might be touching him so familiarly. I decide at the last minute that this is a childish idea. Jack looks handsome in his tuxedo for a man nearing sixty. He has held up a lot better than I have. He still draws admiring glances from both old and young women. We 1 2 go into the ballroom for the symphony's fundraising dinner and stand around with drinks talking with friends. But I keep wondering what Al's doing in Richmond, so I excuse myself before the appetizer is served and wander around the lobby until I spot a sign about a convention of the visual­ ly handicapped. I slip downstairs and peep inside the hall where they are meeting. Al, not as shy as he was when I knew him, is giving a speech welcoming everyone, making his audience laugh. The room is filled with smiling blind people, only a few of them wearing dark glasses. I listen for a little while, then rejoin Jack and our friends, but I'm not listening to whatever they're saying. I sit there the whole evening thinking about Al and everything that happened my senior year in college back in 1951-52. I'd been sure my money worries were over when I got a full scholarship to transfer to Carolina my junior year, where the men were. Wrong. Everything besides tuition was up to me because nobody in my family was going to take up the slack. My mother was barely able to support herself, but she had always insisted that a college education was "the only way out" for a woman. Since my parents' divorce, I had had no idea where my father was, and the rest of the family all thought I was weird, highminded at best, for even wanting to go to college. My cousins made fun of me. They predicted it wouldn't be long before I got knocked up by some slick fraternity boy. 3 The first year I took on several jobs in different places. It drove me crazy running back and forth between Durham and Chapel Hill. What I needed was one job in one place that would cover all those extras my scholarship didn't include, necessities like food, toothpaste, clothes. Right before classes started my senior year I wandered into the student employment office and saw Al's sign adver­ tising for a reader. It was printed in large, crooked letters and had inky fingerprints all around the edges. I called him at his dorm, which was directly across the quad from mine, and arranged an interview. Apprehen­ sive he wouldn't like my husky voice, I sat out in the little grassy circle in front of the Playrnakers Theater and watched him feel his way across the grass. He was tall and thin, and his clothes hung on him. The khaki slacks he wore were too big in the waist, and his short-sleeved blue plaid shirt ballooned out over his belt. When he got closer I saw that he was wearing unmatching socks, one red and one white. He scratched at a patch of scaly dry skin on one arm. "Are you here yet?'' he said in a soft voice, smiling toward the sky. "Over here," I said. He walked directly toward me. From behind the edge of his dark glasses his eyes looked blistered. They oozed viscous tears that he wiped at con­ stantly with a white handkerchief. I found out later that 4 only two years before Drane had exploded in his face. He smiled again uncertainly and stuck his hand out in front of him. After we had talked a few minutes he said I would do fine as a reader, and I started that day. It wasn't long before Al recommended me for jobs read­ ing to some of the other blind students. One of them, Pickett, was a graduate student in education, gradually losing his eyesight but still, at that time, able to tell light from dark and, in bright sunlight at least, able to identify particularly vivid colors. Pickett was the one who told me about the conversations the blind boys had about colors. He and Al were the only ones who had actual­ ly ever seen colors or had any conception of the thousand different shades one hue could take. Pickett also told me how the sighted boys in their dormitory watched girls out of their bedroom windows and described their bodies to the blind boys. One of them was an older fellow named Barrett, a newly returned Korean War veteran who had spent the last two years in the submarine service. He teased the blind boys about me by describing my red hair and forest green coat. He said I had an hour­ glass figure, a waist he could circle with his two hands, and boy, were they missing the boat. This kind of talk made them frantic. I had wondered why they pestered me with peculiar questions about the difference between the red of an apple and the red of my hair, the green of the 5 grass or a pine tree and of the coat I wore every day now that the leaves were starting to turn. I tried to imagine what it must be like never to have seen colors. Since Al needed more reading than the others, being not as quick yet as he would later become at deciphering his Braille texts, he and I went everywhere together. He was half a foot taller than I and would place his hand lightly on one of my shoulders, the only place he ever touched me, and follow along as I made my way, warning him of pitfalls when I remembered to do it. Al boasted that in the two short years he'd been blind he had developed a special sixth sense about barriers, some kind of bat-like radar about dangers in his path that many people blind from birth never develop. I decided to test him on this, led him straight toward a high brick wall as we crossed the campus, j ust to see if it was true. I would never have let him be hurt, would have pulled him back before he hurt himself. But he stopped dead about three feet away from the wall, cocked his head that funny way he had when he was listening intently, and asked, "What are you trying to pull here, Williams? What's going on?" I was satisfied after that that he really did have some kind of weird sixth sense.