Bad To The Bone (12 page)

"I'm Tawny's sister," she whispered as she
walked toward me. Her voice was one of those whiny country drawls
that lets the whole world know that you were lucky to have squeaked
your way through high school. "I heard what you said to my daddy
and I want to talk to you."

"Okay," I said. "I'm listening."

"Can we go somewhere first?" she asked.
"Anywhere but here?"

I appreciated her sentiment. "Sure," I
agreed. "Let's go get a beer. I'll drive." A battered Dodge Dart
was parked in the front yard, but the back bumper was held on by
clothes hangers and the rear windows had been replaced with packing
tape. I didn't want to risk my life in it.

She refused my offer to wait while she got
her coat—god knows what color it would have been—and climbed into
my car with surprising grace for someone as big as she was. I got a
better look at her under the glow of the interior car lights. Only
the slightest resemblance to Tawny Bledsoe's perfect face lingered
on the time-ravaged woman sitting beside me. Deep wrinkles ran from
her eyes and mouth, the nose had broadened under the extra weight
she carried and her mouth was a bloodless thin line. Her cheeks
were chapped and her callused hands had red knuckles as scaly as
lizardskin. Her broad shoulders told me she did heavy manual labor
for a living, probably on her knees scrubbing out other people's
toilets. My hatred for Tawny Bledsoe flared.

"We going or not?" she asked, and I pulled
out of the depressing front yard.

"Head down there," she said. "There's a nice
place where the guards from the prison hang out."

Great. Just the ambiance I was seeking.

During the five-minute drive to the bar, all
my companion revealed was that her name was Cathy and that she was
Tawny's little sister by three years, an admission that made me
wince. She also explained that the shrunken face in the window
belonged to her mother.

"She's got that dementia thing," she said.
"She roams the house all night, knocking things over, turning on
the oven. Me and Dad take turns following her around to make sure
she don't burn the place down."

"You're talking about Alzheimer's?'

"That's it," she said. "We tried to find a
nursing home, but nobody wants no Medicaid patients, so they tell
you it's gonna be a couple years of waiting to get in when they
hear you're not private pay."

Jesus, I thought. What a way to live. Where
was Tawny Bledsoe to help out?

"Your sister Tawny ever give you a break?" I
asked.

Surprisingly, Cathy Worth's laughter was
genuine, rather than ironic. "No way. And her name's not Tawny.
It's Tammy. She changed it when she was nineteen. But she don't
fool us none. My daddy refuses to call her Tawny. He still calls
her Tammy. Maybe that's why she don't come home none."

I thought back to the house collapsing under
the weight of poverty and sickness. "Maybe," I said.

We pulled into the gravel driveway of a gas
station that had been converted into a bar. Shania Twain blared
from the bar's jukebox and a handful of beefy men in blue jeans sat
at metal tables, staring mindlessly at a televised basketball game.
The bartender was a fiftyish woman with a drop-dead figure poured
into tight blue jeans and a snug white sweater. Her white hair had
been piled on top of her head like a mound of soft vanilla ice
cream.

"Hiya, Cathy," she said between cracks of
gum. She shot me a quick glance, but made no comment. "How's the
family? Your mother doing okay?"

"Okay," Cathy said, accepting the Bud Lite
that the bartender dredged up from the cooler. "Her teeth finished
falling out and we can't find no dentist to take her on account of
she's so much trouble. Good thing she likes to eat grits."

As the two women laughed together, I pointed
to Cathy's beer. "I'll have the same," I said, pretty sure I'd get
nowhere if I asked for anything else.

We took our beers to a table as far away
from the crowd as we could get. As we moved past the other patrons,
Cathy exchanged a nod with each one of them. Seeing this, I was hit
with a sudden stab of remembering, a keen recognition of what it
felt like to come from a world so contained that your days were
filled with familiar faces and the reassurance of knowing you would
encounter nothing more taxing than the routine—even if the routine
was sixteen hours of hard work and a few precious moments of
rest.

Cathy sat down with a deep sigh and raised
the cold beer to her lips, draining a third of it before she spoke
again. She shut her eyes to savor the coolness and, probably, the
freedom of being out of that house. When she'd stretched the moment
out as far as it could go, her beer bottle hit the table with a
clunk. I jumped and almost knocked my own over.

"Sorry," I said. "No offense, but your
mother spooked me. I didn't expect to see her at the window like
that."

"Mom can do that to you." She laughed
again—a booming, generous sound. I couldn't believe she could keep
her sense of humor in the face of a life like hers.

But the laughter was only a fleeting break
from reality. Her face grew serious as she studied me. I knew she
was ready to approach the subject of her sister.

'Tawny don't help out none," she finally
said. "Says it hurts her to see my momma that way. It's as good an
excuse as any. Makes her sound sensitive, I suppose." She took
another sip of beer. "I know I ought to get a life. Even Daddy says
I should maybe move to California, try to get me a job there and
start over. But I can't just leave my momma like that. She spent
her whole life doing without, so I could have. I'm not going to
leave her now. Know what I mean? You probably feel the same way
about your parents."

She glanced at me and I looked away. I was
embarrassed, as always, at having to offer up a personal fact that
I knew would elicit pity from others. "My parents are dead," I
explained. "They died when I was seven."

"Oh," she said, not asking how—like a lot of
other people would have done. "You grew up poor?" she said
instead.

"It shows?"

"No. But most people would still be talking
about what a hellhole my house is and asking me how I can live in
it. You act like you've seen it before."

"Up close and personal," I admitted.

I try not to judge other people, but it's
not always possible to convince other people of that fact. Cathy
Worth now had proof that I didn't think I was better than her. And
that made her ready to talk.

"Why are you asking questions about my
sister?" she said. "She had something to do with that man being
dead, right? She finally went too far." She took a furtive gulp of
her beer and stared down at her chapped hands. She was betraying
family and, no matter how well-deserved, that was against the grain
of the farm community in which she had grown up.

"What makes you think she's involved?" I
asked gently.

Her eyes filled with tears. "Because I know
Robert Price would never do a thing like that and I know that my
sister could."

"You know Robert Price?" I was surprised.
Surely Tawny had not brought him home to that house for dinner?

She nodded, her breath coming more rapidly.
"Of all the people Tawny has been with, he's the only one who—" She
tried to continue, but had to stop and compose herself first. I
waited, sipping my beer, until she was ready to go on. "He's the
only one who ever bothered to help us," she finished in a whisper.
“Tawny didn't even know about it."

"When was that?"

"About two years ago. Daddy fell and hurt
his back. He couldn't look after Momma and I couldn't take off work
without losing my job. I have to put in two shifts to pay the bills
on account of Dad's too old to work anymore. When he was laid low
and stuck in bed, I didn't know what to do. I'd already missed two
days when this lady showed up at the front door. She was a nurse's
aide. She said someone else was paying the bill. That I should go
to work and not worry about things. She came for three whole months
until Dad got back on his feet. She fixed up the house. She cooked
us meals. She made me lie down and rest when I got home from work.
She was a real nice woman. I really miss her." She faltered again
and I waited it out.

"How did you know Robert Price was the one
who paid the bills?"

"I went to the nursing service. I know one
of the ladies there on account of I work at the hospital. In
maintenance, you know, cleaning the rooms and stuff." I had been
right about her rough skin and broad shoulders. "I didn't think
Tawny was paying the bills, that wouldn't have been like her at
all, she never spent money on anyone but herself. But she was the
only one I could think of who knew we were in trouble."

She looked ashamed for a moment. "I had
called her, see? Asked her for help. I swore I wouldn't never do
it, because I knew she'd make me feel small about it. But I had to
call her that time. And, of course, she said she couldn't help us.
Said they was having money troubles and she couldn't leave her job
to pitch in herself. But then, three days later, that health aide
lady showed up. So I thought, you never know, I'd been praying
about it, maybe Tawny had sent her. Maybe God had changed my
sister. That was pretty stupid of me. She's not going to change,
ever. But I thought maybe she had."

"Who did the nursing service say was paying
the bills?"

"The lady told me that a man named Robert
Price was and that he'd said it didn't matter how long we needed
help, he'd pay for it."

"What did you do then?"

"I went to thank him," she explained. "I put
on my blue dress, it's the one I use for church and such, and I
went down to his office in Raleigh near the courthouse. He had a
secretary and everything."

"Did you know he was African-American?" I
was curious to see how this deep country woman had handled that bit
of news.

She shook her head. "I don't have time to
follow politics," she said, sounding ashamed. "So I was surprised.
But it didn't matter to me what color he was, and he didn't seem to
care what color I was. Or that I maybe didn't fit into his world so
good. He could have been real short with me, you know what I'm
saying? Him being a public figure and all, and me being nobody. But
he saw me right away. He didn't make me wait. And he even told his
secretary to hold his calls. He sat me down in this really nice
chair and offered me coffee. He asked if I was taking the day off
work and if I was going to lose my pay because of it."

"So you liked him?"

The tears began to roll down her cheeks. She
turned her face to the wall, so no one who knew her would see her
cry. "I liked him and I felt so sorry for him," she whispered.
"Married to my sister like that. I knew Tawny would find a way to
hurt him bad when he couldn't give her what she wanted. My sister
always wants more than what people can give her and if they give
her more, she just wants more. And I could see in his eyes that,
even back then, he knew it, too."

Her voice rose. "He showed me pictures of
their little girl, Tiffany. She's so beautiful. Like a china doll.
I don't know where she got it. Well, listen to me, what am I
saying? She got it from Tawny, of course." She touched her own
face, as if painfully aware that she had lost out in the great
genetic lottery. "I'll never have a child like that." She gave a
quick laugh. "Never have one at all, probably. I got to take care
of Momma and Daddy."

"Did Robert Price find out about your
trouble through Tawny?" I asked.

She nodded. "In a way. He heard her talking
on the phone to me and asked about us. I could tell from the way he
answered my questions that she told him we were nothing but
blood-sucking hillbillies who were always after her money." Her
hand gripped the beer bottle so hard, I thought it might break.

"I'd never asked her for money before,
ever," she said in a low voice. "That was the first time. We were
desperate and I knew she had gotten married again. She always liked
to let me know when she married up for more money. I thought even
she might want to help out, since it was Momma and all."

"Did Tawny know that her husband was helping
you?"

"No." She shook her head emphatically. "He
asked me not to say anything to her. He said she would be angry.
That was another reason why I knew he was starting to see her for
what she really is."

"And what is she, really?" I asked
softly.

The answer was a long time coming.

It took two more beers apiece to hear the
entire story about the girl named Tammy Worth who had grown up to
be Tawny Bledsoe. There was no one who could have told the story
better than the plain sister Tawny had left behind—the one who had
watched every move her luckier sister made, watched with a sense of
shame so mingled with longing that I'm not even sure Cathy herself
knew what she really thought of Tawny's deeds.

Tawny may have been born Tammy, but the name
didn't matter. It was the face that defined what her life would
become—a perfect, symmetrical, Barbie doll face surrounded by loose
blond waves. A face born into a family that didn't quite know what
to do with all that beauty. Her parents were so startled by it that
they remained in awe, treating Tawny as if she were a visitor and
doing their best to shield her from the want that the rest of the
family endured.

The lesson was not lost on Tawny. She'd
started using that face when she wasn't more than seven or eight,
bringing home candy bestowed by store owners and strangers,
hoarding the sweets as an antidote to the ugliness around her,
forbidding her sister to touch the treasured stash because it
belonged to her and her alone. Before long, Tawny was bringing home
other presents, first bunches of crushed wildflowers, then cheap
jewelry, followed by clothing and, finally, by the time she entered
high school, real gold and diamonds—the timeless currency of
beauty. The gifts were secret payments, Cathy was sure, from men
whose identities were hidden. Tawny never talked about who she was
seeing because she understood, even back then, that she was engaged
in the commerce of silence and that these secrets were her
bargaining chips.