Tied to the Tracks Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  TWENTY

  TWENTY-ONE

  · EPILOGUE ·

  Acknowledgements

  “Lippi’s zany, likable characters—including a frumpy Yankee film-maker and a strong-willed elderly writer—are imaginative and well-delineated.” —The Washington Post

  “With her newest novel . . . [Lippi] turns her buoyant creative talents to the romantic comedy genre with an effervescent tale of a trio of offbeat Yankee filmmakers plunked down deep in the heart of Dixie.” —Booklist

  Acclaim for Rosina Lippi’s Homestead Winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award

  “Exceptionally vivid . . . a book of marvels.”—Charles Baxter

  “Outstanding.” —Booklist

  “Very fine and moving. Lippi has a clear eye and a sharp tongue.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  “By the time you finish the first of these linked stories, you can hardly bear to have it end.” —The New Yorker

  “A novel of great depth, compassion, and tenderness.”

  —The New York Times Book Review

  “Moves us to tears and makes us grateful for it.”—Dorothy Allison

  “The weight and tender history of old silver and the tang of stainless steel.”—Amy Bloom

  “The women in this haunting book are deeply and uniquely of their place, yet they speak (often wordlessly) of women’s longings and satisfactions everywhere.”—Rosellen Brown

  “Keenly observed . . . absorbing.” —Publishers Weekly

  THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

  Published by the Penguin Group

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  Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  Copyright © 2006 by Rosina Lippi.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without

  permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the

  author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  BERKLEY and the B design are trademarks belonging to Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  eISBN : 978-0-425-21532-6

  Lippi, Rosina, 1956-. Tied to the tracks / Rosina Lippi. p. cm.

  1. African American women authors—Fiction. 2. Documentary films—Production and direction—Fiction. 3. Women motion picture producers and directors—Fiction. 4. Georgia—Fiction. I. Title. PS3562.I5795T’.54—dc22

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  For Bill, who makes all the difference

  Happiness is the china shop; love is the bull.

  ONE

  Ogilvie College, Ogilvie, Georgia. Est. 1825. Private (Episcopal). Students: 1,800; Faculty-Student ratio: 1:8; expensive, selective. Don’t even think about this place unless you’re seriously into work, because they boot slack asses out of here faster than you can say grits. Class size so small there’s no chance of catching a nap in the last row. Professors accessible, discussion encouraged. Ogilvie students take academics, school traditions, politics, theater, and football seriously. Hey, it’s the South. Beautiful campus, great dorms, lousy food. The town is pretty but boring, but never mind: Savannah is an hour away on the train.

  “The Way We See It,” www.undergroundundergrad.org

  Summer in Georgia, sweet and ripe and heavy with heat at a quarter to nine in the morning. In the window of a redbrick building awash in early-morning light, the figure of a man. Tall, broad of shoulder, rumpled short, dark hair, blue eyes. Framed by oak and ivy he looked like an advertisement from a glossy magazine. Elegant, self-assured, unapproachable.

  It’s only John Grant, Lydia told herself. Lucy Ogilvie’s oldest boy. You’ve known him all your life. And still he seemed as alien and remote as a face on a television screen. John Grant had connections, money, looks, education, position, authority; he had a beautiful fiancée who was his social equal, and on top of all that, he was the new chair of the English department at Ogilvie College.

  It had been a stupid idea to make an appointment to see him. She was thinking of turning around when he caught sight of her.

  “Lydia?”

  A smile broke out on his face. A real smile, one that made the skin around his blue eyes crinkle, but more than that: it made him look real. His voice was deep and a little hoarse and his tone—the word came to mind and she couldn’t dismiss it out of hand—sincere.

  “Come on up, coffee’s on and time’s a-wasting.”

  The office was a mess. Stacks of boxes everywhere, books in wobbling towers in front of empty bookshelves, a cascade of binders. He held the door for her and she stepped over a small mountain of manuscripts bound with rubber bands to get to the couch. The whole time he talked, asking questions and sometimes answering them himself, but his manner was easy and his tone friendly. He might have spent half his life in the North with his father’s people, but John Grant sounded like Georgia to her, and more than that, he had things to say and he wasn’t afraid to share them. He was in the middle of a story of lost boxes and wayward moving vans when he interrupted himself to hold out a cup in her direction.

  “Milk? Sugar?”

  Lydia, against all inclination and training, told him the truth: she liked both, in quantity. This didn’t seem to faze him at all, he just loaded up the cup and then brought it over to hand to her. And then John Grant pulled out a white bakery bag, transparent with butter and smelling of browned sugar. “Have a cinnamon roll,” he said. “They’re still warm.”

  Lydia studied his face closely, but found no trace of mockery. She had this idea—and very strange it was, too—that she could sit here and devour a couple thousand calories and he wouldn’t take any real note of it.

  “So,” he said when she had told him she’d already had breakfast, “what made you decide on Ogilvie College?”

  She said the first thing that came into her head. �
�Probably the same things that brought you back here after so many years.”

  That made him laugh out loud. He stood up and went to the window. “This is the best place on earth,” he said. “It gets under your skin.”

  Lydia said, “So why did you leave?”

  He turned back to her. “Because I had to earn the right to come back to stay. That’s how it works in academics. Now what about you? Why Ogilvie?”

  “Because of the reputation of the creative-writing program. I want to work with Miss Zula.”

  He was leaning against the wall, his arms crossed. “Okay, that’s what you write down on an application. What’s the real reason?”

  Lydia considered lying, and then told the truth. “Because I’m afraid to leave home.”

  He thought about that for a minute. “My advice is, take advantage of this place while you’re here, you’ll forget about being scared. Now, you wanted to talk about your schedule, do I have that right?”

  Lydia said, “Maybe I should make an appointment to talk to an adviser about this, you’re busy.” One last opportunity for him to get rid of her, send her to somebody, anybody else. One last chance for him to be dismissive, to be dismissed.

  John Grant said, “Nah, you’re here, and I might as well jump right in. You got a copy of that schedule with you?”

  On his first full day in his new job as chair of the Ogilvie College English department, John Grant kept going to the window to remind himself that he was really here, settling into an office that might well be his for the rest of his working life. A thought that would disturb some men, but one he found greatly satisfying, even comforting.

  Lydia Montgomery was just leaving the building, headed toward town. She stopped to talk to two kids sitting on a bench, gesturing over her shoulder toward this very window. Students would start trickling in, now that word was out. John wondered if these two would come see him. Metal glinted from lips and eyebrows and nostrils, as though they were armored knights ready to do battle. They looked vaguely familiar, but he couldn’t place either of them. Her T-shirt read Rehab Is for Quitters, and his, Metallica. They would be good kids to have in a literature class, willing to ask hard questions and look beyond the words on the page.

  Then an elderly woman came around a corner, erect of posture in spite of the cane she used, her face shadowed by the broad brim of a straw hat. A small dog trotted beside her, perky and watchful.

  Lydia and the kids on the bench went very still as the old woman turned toward the library. Then they all relaxed visibly and John Grant, just as relieved to have escaped Miss Zula Bragg’s notice, retreated back into his new office. He had no business staring out of windows anyway, not with so much work to do. Standing in the middle of a canyon of moving boxes, he contemplated where he had landed, and realized two things.

  First, a single summer was hardly enough to get settled into this job before the fall semester began; and second, he had help. This office would be orderly and organized within two days and he could get down to work, because as the chair of the largest department on campus he had an executive assistant and a secretarial staff. Of course he also had 19 full- and part-time faculty members, 120 undergraduate majors and 20 graduate students—all of whom he wanted to meet with—six un-staffed courses, and a disaster of a schedule to fix. He went out into the reception area.

  “Rob?”

  The woman behind the desk had teeth of an unnatural pure white, very small and very sharp.

  “I’m covering the desk for him, Dr. Grant.”

  She fawned; there was no other word for it. It was distracting, and might even fool a man who hadn’t grown up around southern women like her: a cross between Lucrezia Borgia and the Avon Lady. Bone and blood, with sugar on top.

  John meant to smile. He wanted to smile, but the urge to retreat was so strong that the best he could produce was a quiver at the corner of his mouth.

  He said, “Call me John.” It was easier than explaining, yet again, why he didn’t like being called “doctor.”

  “Oh, I couldn’t.” She raised her hands to ward off the suggestion and then leaned forward to whisper. “Not in the office.”

  A battle for another day, then. John said, “Where is Rob?”

  “He’s out on an errand. But don’t worry, I’m under strict orders to make sure you get to your meeting in time. I saw Lydia Montgomery leaving just a minute ago. In’t it a pity?”

  He could walk away, just extricate himself from the conversation, but this was a test of sorts. He said, “I don’t see any cause for pity. She’s here on a full merit scholarship, her writing samples are stellar, she’s got excellent plans for her education. She’s on her way to England to attend an invitation-only seminar for the summer. I’d say she’s got a bright future ahead of her.”

  John looked Patty-Cake directly in the eye, daring her to drag out a coded phrase: and her with such a sweet disposition; or, her mama is a big woman, too; or, in’t it lucky she’s got other gifts.

  After an uneasy moment while Patty-Cake sat with a frozen half smile on her face, John said, “I better get myself organized. No calls, please.” He stepped backward. “Thank you, Miss Walker.”

  She said, “Dr. Grant, you know everybody around here calls me Patty-Cake. Except Caroline, of course, she calls me Aunt Patty-Cake. You could call me Aunt Patty-Cake if you like, seeing as how we’re going to be related and all? Why—”

  “Excuse me.”

  She stopped in midsentence and blinked at him.

  “I’ve got some things to go over before the meeting.”

  All those white teeth. He showed her his own, and then retreated, contemplating the mysteries of genetics and the one thing that might keep him from actually marrying Caroline Rose. Tall, elegant, quiet Caroline Rose, a medievalist of international standing, was related to Patty-Cake Walker by blood.

  John closed the door firmly behind himself.

  “You look like Saint George after his first run at the dragon.”

  John let out an undignified yelp. His brother was sitting behind the desk, leaning back with his hands behind his head.

  He said, “Shit, you scared me. I locked that door, I know I did.”

  “Shhhhh. Patty-Cake will hear you.” Rob held up the key to the private entrance between two fingers. “A good executive assistant knows where all the keys are hidden.”

  “A good executive assistant doesn’t hide from the office staff,” John said.

  Rob began to sort through a pile of mail. “And yet, here I sit, shaking in my boots.”

  John flopped down on the ratty green velvet couch. It was his favorite piece of furniture in the office: as big as a boat and lumpy in all the right places. He sorted through the pillows, rejected one painted with the likeness of Robert E. Lee and another with Elvis embroidered in beads. He finally found what he was looking for, a pillow that made no aesthetic or political or historical statements, and pulled it over his face.

  Rob said, “She’s been grilling me about you, has our Patty-Cake. And so has everybody else I’ve come across, from the janitor to the gardeners.”

  “You knew that would happen. I’m an outsider.”

  Rob snorted at that. “You’re Lucy Ogilvie’s firstborn son, that’s what makes you so interesting.”

  John couldn’t argue that point. Their mother had been born an Ogilvie, a great-great-great-granddaughter of one of the two brothers who had founded the town and the university itself. Lucy Ogilvie might have married a Yankee with the unfortunate last name of Grant, but she had brought her boys home to spend every summer right here. Then Rob had done the right thing and settled in Ogilvie, although he had found a way to do it that confounded every reasonable expectation. Now that John had followed that good example and turned his back on the North, there was real hope for the Grant boys.

  “What Patty-Cake wanted to know,” Rob went on, “is if y’all have decided on whether or not to settle down at Old Roses once you get married, because then you’ll
need a decorator, and Patty-Cake—”

  “Christ,” John said, burrowing deeper into the couch. “The woman is relentless.”

  Rob came over to drop a pile of folders on his chest.

  “I told her you were the big, strong silent type who left all those little details to the bride and her four capable sisters.”

  “Good strategy.” When he had made a bundle of the files he said, “What is all this, anyway?”

  “For your meeting with the regents. You go from seeing the dean of student life directly to your lunch meeting. Your briefcase is by the door.”

  John pulled himself up out of the depths of the couch. “I love it when you talk executive. Faculty club?”