Fair and Tender Ladies

Part 5 picks up two years after Part 5 ends, as Ivy stops writing for a time following LuIda’s death. This part covers the years from 1942 until sometime after 1974—the longest time span covered in any of the book’s sections. Ivy writes fairly regularly for a few years and then seldom for the remaining stretch of time, a change that suggests she tires of writing or has little left to say. Her letters in this section are mostly to her children, though she still writes to Silvaney as a form of diary.

When Ivy picks up writing again, electricity has arrived in Sugar Fork, and Ivy’s family uses the radio to listen to baseball and news about World War II. Ivy feels trapped and sad following LuIda’s death, but she also feels that “I deserve it all!” (280). Geneva tells Ivy not to worry so much. Oakley keeps an eye on Ivy, who occasionally joins him in church to make him happy.

Ivy hears from Garnie for the first time in decades. Ethel’s husband dies. Ivy advises Joli not to marry her sweetheart. Garnie comes to Sugar Fork, and Ivy writes that, “if he is going to heaven then I will rot in hell and be happy about it” (292). Garnie claims that his old mentor Sam Russell Sage died in a fire because God was punishing him for being jealous of Garnie. Garnie eats voraciously while declaring hellfire on anyone and everyone he deems appropriate, claiming that his God is vengeful and all sinners will be punished. Garnie’s wife is a mere decoration whose sole purpose is to “minister to his needs” (295).

Garnie visits Ivy when she is home alone. At first she feels that perhaps it is time she were “saved.” However, Garnie treats Ivy like a stranger, calling her “a whore and an abomination” (299). Garnie accuses Ivy of putting on airs her entire life and preaches aggressively at her about her “whore” behavior. Ivy trips and falls as Garnie takes off his belt in preparation for beating her. At that moment, Oakley arrives and beats Garnie with his fists until Garnie runs away. Garnie leaves town, and Ivy finds out afterwards from Geneva that Garnie is impotent and beats his wife.  

Martha, having gained more independence when Ivy disappeared, gets married at the house. Joli works for a newspaper and is dating a rich man. Violet returns for Martha’s wedding and leaves again immediately after. Ivy’s youngest, Maudy, goes to live with Martha and keep her company once she’s married. The next year, Joli marries her rich boyfriend. Ivy and Oakley cannot attend the wedding because it is too far away and Oakley is unwell.

Oakley explains to Ivy that if Joli had wanted them at her wedding, she could have had the wedding in Sugar Fork, but that Joli is of a different world now. Ivy feels that since her affair, her relationship with Oakley has improved because Oakley “has been new for me ever since, some way, and me for him” (311). When Oakley is asleep, Ivy worries about Joli, feeling she has lost her baby. She does not like Joli’s husband because he reminds her of Franklin.  

A couple of years after Joli gets married, Oakley dies. Ivy wanders around Sugar Fork feeling lost. Though she is devastated, Ivy also finds some freedom in Oakley’s death, as she can now read or do anything else that she wants to without having to worry about anyone else. Around five years later, Joli has gotten divorced and sends her child to live with Ivy. Ivy comforts Joli, telling her there is no shame in getting divorced and that her husband was no good anyway.

Ivy continues advising Joli over several years, telling her, “[I]f you act like a rug, everybody is going to walk on you” (323). She advises Joli not to take any money from her ex-husband’s mother, to avoid becoming beholden. Since her store is being run out of business by a bigger, more commercial store, Ethel sells it and moves herself and Victor to Florida. She invites Ivy to come, but Ivy refuses, saying that Sugar Fork is where she belongs.

Ivy finds out that Beulah has been dead for over a year when Curtis pays her a visit. Curtis tells her that no matter how much money and material things they had, Beulah was never happy, and as a result, she drank herself to death. Ivy asks Curtis for news of his children, then asks what became of Franklin. Curtis reveals that Franklin lost a foot in the war, came home a hero, and then died when he crashed his private plane into a cliff during an airshow in what is believed to have been a suicide. Curtis tells Ivy that he wants her and always has; he asks her to go to West Virginia with him. Though tempted, Ivy says no because “Curtis Bostick and me are as different as day and night” (334).

In her old age, Ivy goes back to reading. Joli becomes a writer in New York and writes about Sugar Fork. Ethel puts Victor in a VA hospital in Florida while she gets remarried. Sugar Fork continues to change as civilization encroaches, bringing with it actual roads, poorly built houses, and more cheap stores. Periodically over the years, Ivy writes to her children to let them know what’s going on back home, including who has gone where and who has died. Molly comes back to Majestic to start a school, which Ivy helps with for a time.

Ivy fights with the Peabody Coal Company—the company that bought mineral rights from her mother years prior—over its auguring of land near her home. She refuses to leave her house to live with any of her children, saying, “I will never again be beholden” (356). Ivy ends up winning her fight and driving off the company men, mostly because they feel her land doesn’t have enough coal to be worth fighting over.

Ivy grows ill and rarely leaves her house. She writes a few letters to her children and grandchildren, but beyond that she doesn’t do much. She insists on staying in her own home rather than in a care facility, despite her family’s wishes. Ivy’s family finds out about her letters to her dead sister Silvaney, and in response, Ivy burns them to demonstrate that they don’t actually mean anything. Ivy writes one final, stream-of-consciousness letter to Silvaney as she is dying, reverting to old habits of rural grammar and including passing mentions of bits of poetry and stories from her childhood before ultimately trailing off unfinished.