Cavedweller (50 page)

“Yes,” she said. “There will be lots to talk over, but there will be time later. I’m sure you have all kinds of things that need to be done.”

Mrs. Stone’s head bobbed fiercely. “Oh yes,” she said. “Oh my, yes.” And headed back to the kitchen.

The girls watched Mrs. Stone walk away. When the kitchen door swung shut behind her, they both sighed. “Big solid butt on her,” Dede said. “How old you think she is?”

“Old enough to know better.” Cissy’s drawl was bitter, but Dede nodded in agreement, her face pensive.

“Lord. Don’t ever let me get that desperate.” Dede ran her palm up her neck to her chin. “Saddest damn thing in the world.” She looked at Cissy. “What you think?”

Cissy shrugged. “You really came out here on your own?” she asked. She watched Dede’s eyes track around the room, cataloging junk, tools, and knickknacks. A line of ugly ceramic dolls sat on the mantel in order of size. Each had the same painted black face with exaggerated features, red lips, and red aprons.

“What you want to bet those are Mrs. Stone’s?” Dede waved at the dolls.

Cissy laughed. “No bet.”

“Yeah,” Dede said after a moment. “I came out here. When y’all came back. Before Delia came and got us.” She looked around the room. “Give the old lady something. This is a lot cleaner than it was. It was awful.”

Cissy tasted dust in her mouth, but the room was clean, more or less. The floor was swept, the rug was smoothed, the surfaces crowded but scrubbed. Still, the air in the room tasted old and bitter-woody, as if the grit of the pine walls had been sifting down a long time.

“You come out here alone?” Cissy watched Dede’s eyes. They kept moving, lighting on one thing and then another. Something was wrong. Something was bothering her. Dede looked like she had been drinking a lot of coffee or holding something in too long. The muscles in her neck were jumping.

“Alone, yeah. I came alone.” Dede turned around to face the mantel. “You don’t know. Grandma Windsor, she never would tell us nothing. Never said more than Delia’s name and a curse. Told me I was just like her, sinful and hard-hearted. Called me names like you wouldn’t believe that old lady would speak, but she would say anything to us. Anything.” She paused.

“And I heard enough. People love to tell horrible things. Heard this old man was out here. I hitchhiked out to see for myself who he was.”

“I can’t believe he told you anything. He was a damn hard man. You should have seen how he treated Delia.” Cissy grimaced, remembering the first morning she’d spent in Cayro, the overcooked egg sandwich at the diner, and that old man with his crooked hands and evil eyes. “Harrumph.”

Dede grinned at her. “I bet,” she said. “I can just bet.”

On the walls on either side of the mantel were black-and-white pictures in painted metal frames, most of them featuring cars and people standing around cars. There were different groupings in each photo, but the same figures recurred. Children, a woman, a man, and in many—startling for how little he had changed—the figure of Granddaddy Byrd. Dede pointed to one of the photos.

“That’s our uncle Luke, the one she was talking about. He raced stock cars for a while. He was the one I always wanted to meet, but I think he’s been in jail since I was born.”

Cissy stepped closer and looked at the face. “He kill somebody?” she asked.

“Something.” Dede’s shoulders went up and down. “The old man wouldn’t say.”

“What did he tell you?”

Dede turned to Cissy, her face squeezed into a peculiar expression resembling awe. “He talked about Delia. He talked about her like she was one of the Seven Wonders.”

“But he hated her.”

“Maybe.” Dede shrugged. “If he did, he was proud too. He was a strange old man.”

Cissy looked back at the photos. In the center of the display there was one with a smudge on the bottom of the frame. A scorch mark showed on the wallpaper beneath the frame as if a candle had been held too close to the image. It was a family photo with everyone leaning against one of those fat-looking old cars with rounded bumpers. A woman held an infant in her arms while two little boys leaned into her skirt. Next to her was a handsome man with a tiny girl up on his shoulders, her knees jutting out around his chin. Just to one side of them all was an almost smiling caricature of Granddaddy Byrd, looking just enough like himself for Cissy to recognize the face.

“He talked to you,” she whispered.

“A little. I had to be patient. You couldn’t ask him no questions or he’d get all mean and clam up. Didn’t bother me, though. I had grown up with Grandma Windsor.” She laughed harshly. “Granddaddy Byrd had nothing on her.”

Cissy shook her head. She tried to imagine Granddaddy Byrd sitting on his porch talking to his great-granddaughter like a real person. It was beyond her. She looked again at the photo—the old man had either just smiled or was about to smile when the picture was snapped. The shape of the mouth was proof.

Her eyes tracked across the other people in the photo. The woman was laughing. She had hair that looked to be the exact shade that Cissy’s hair turned in late summer, light, almost blond, but the face looked like Delia’s. Cissy looked sideways at Dede. No, the face looked like Dede.

“She looks like you,” Cissy said to Dede.

Dede stepped close to the picture. “Maybe.” She frowned. “More like Delia, I think.”

“No.” Cissy shook her head. “Like you.”

Dede pursed her lips and shrugged. “That’s them, you know. The lost family.” Her finger tapped each figure. “Delia’s mama, our grandmother. The daddy, Granddaddy Byrd’s prize son. And the boys. And Delia herself.” The finger stopped on the little girl. “All of them.”

Cissy stared at the woman and the boys. “They died?”

“All of them, yeah.”

“Damn.”

“You knew.” It was something between a question and an accusation.

Cissy frowned. What did she know? She looked again at the little girl, at Delia. The relaxed, easy face of a child who was happy to be where she was. The open mouth that was ready to smile, and it looked as if she smiled a lot. The small-framed body, thin face, big eyes, a girl no more than seven or eight. The boys had bruised knees, sharp elbows, and big smiles. The baby was cuddled up to the mama’s neck. All of them were leaning into each other, a happy family. Delia’s family.

Delia had been raised by Granddaddy Byrd, that was what Cissy knew. The family had died somehow. The story had been passed over, whispered or mumbled. She remembered Delia’s face stern with grief and pain. Not crying season, some earlier time, some terrible story had been told and buried. Or had it ever been told at all? How had they died? A car wreck? Cissy looked at all the cars in the pictures. Then she looked again at Granddaddy Byrd with that almost smile.

The bedroom door swung open. Delia stepped out, her face wrung dry. Cissy flinched, seeing the bones of that little girl in her mother’s narrow features.

“I’ll have to talk to Reverend Hillman,” she said. “Or maybe Michael. Maybe Amanda would prefer I asked Michael.” She ran one hand through her hair and looked back at the kitchen door. “And I need to talk to Mrs. Stone, settle with her.”

Delia’s shoulders slumped as she moved toward the kitchen. She’s getting old, Cissy thought. She looked back at the picture and the little girl. How long since it was taken? Thirty-five, forty years now? She thought about the old man on the bed, her great-grandfather, and the man in the photo. Little laugh lines around the mouth, crinkled eyes. Part of the happy family. Behind him the grinning dark-headed uncle leaned in over the bumper, one leg up, and he too was laughing. Part of the family she didn’t know. Cissy did not know any of them. She shuddered.

“They all died,” she whispered.

Dede was at Cissy’s elbow. “Happens,” she said. “Terrible things happen all the time.” She crossed her arms over her breasts and clamped a hand down on each shoulder. “Let’s go out. I need a smoke.”

Cissy looked toward the kitchen, but Delia had gone through the door. She turned and followed her sister, still thinking about the photos. They belonged to Delia now, along with the house and everything else. Cissy trailed one hand along the stain on the wallpaper in the entry. All this had belonged to Delia’s parents, to the family.

Dede squatted on the front steps and shook out a Camel. She lit it with one of the Day-Glo lighters she kept in a stand by the cash register at the store. The piercing blue color went opalescent as she turned it in her hand, then back to a shivery sapphire. Dede was always getting in new lighters, buying them for herself, and losing them everywhere she went. She tossed this one from one hand to the other and then laid it down on the steps.

Cissy dropped down beside her. The dimensions of the yard seemed to have altered. The sky had gone dark, and a wind was picking up. “It’s going to rain,” she said.

“Maybe.” Dede looked at Cissy and then back out across the yard. “Nolan wants me to marry him.”

Cissy turned to her. “What?”

“Marry him. Nolan wants me to marry him.” Dede’s face was pinched. She seemed angry.

“Well, don’t you want to marry him?”

“I don’t want to marry nobody.” Dede kicked her feet hard on the steps. “Not Nolan, not anyone.” She rocked her body forward and back fiercely while her fingers did a complicated spinning trick with the cigarette in one hand. She took a drag and then shot the smoke out in a long stream. “Goddamn.”

“Don’t you love Nolan?” Cissy said it carefully, but not carefully enough.

Dede jumped up. “Hell. Course I love him.” She strode back and forth, waving the cigarette like a pointer in the air. “But marriage. Marriage screws things up. Think about it. Who do we know married and happy?”

“Amanda?”

“Oh! Amanda! Amanda an’t happy.”

Cissy watched the bright blue lighter rocking on the step’s edge.

“Dede, you love Nolan.”

“Love has got nothing to do with it. Marriage is what’s wrong. I’d sooner tattoo Nolan’s name on my butt than marry him.” Dede paused in her furious march, her face breaking up into a grin that Cissy had never seen before, half glee and half outrage. “I would too. Damn sight better to wear a tattoo than a wedding ring.”

Cissy nodded. Dede would do anything, that was sure. Maybe it was the old man dying, but Cissy suddenly realized that Dede had been tightening up for weeks. She had thought the cause was Emmet, who had started hanging around Delia again. M.T. said Delia was having long lunches with him, something Dede had complained about the week before. The funny part was that Cissy knew Dede liked Emmet. It was just the idea of Delia liking the man too much that seemed to get Dede so upset. But Nolan? Dede loved Nolan, and Nolan surely loved Dede. Where was the problem with that?

“It’s going to go to hell,” Dede said.

Cissy looked at her sister. Dede was standing there with her head tilted back looking up at the storm clouds rolling high in the sky. Her eyes were red and visibly wet. She flicked her cigarette butt out into the grass.

“It’s just all going to go straight to hell.” Her tone was unequivocal and sadly defeated.

Oh God, Cissy thought. Don’t let her do something stupid. Please God. Please. Let Nolan tell her he doesn’t want to get married, that it was all a joke. She put her hands over her ears and pressed tight, listening to her teeth grind. Nolan had been so happy lately, so happy. He’d gone down to Atlanta and done his audition, and had just grinned wide when Cissy asked him about it.

“We’ll just have to wait and see,” he told Cissy. “Just wait and see. Dede and me, no telling what we might do.”

He doesn’t understand, Cissy thought, not sure she did either. The look on Dede’s face was pure misery. That Cissy could understand. Dede was hurting. Dede was scared and hurting bad.

 

 

G
randdaddy Byrd’s funeral was at Holiness Redeemer. Michael brought Amanda, who barely acknowledged what was happening, not even bothering to chase little Michael when he ran over to Dede and Nolan. Jean and Mim stood with Cissy. Mrs. Stone had brought them the old white Bible from the farmhouse, but Delia pretended not to see it. Michael tucked it under one arm and pulled his boys up on his lap for the prayers. When they all walked away from the graveside, Delia remained standing by the massed pile of flowers. She came back to the Terrill Road house an hour after everyone else and went out to sit under the pecan trees out back. When he saw her back there, Michael took the boys out to her. He didn’t speak, just nodded and took a seat on one of the chairs Delia had been planning to refinish. He kept Gabe on his knee while Michael ran back and forth from his father to the farthest tree. Gabe kept waving his arms and making “mmm mmm” sounds. After a bit Delia lifted one hand and waved it in Gabe’s direction. Happily he tried to catch her hand. On the third try, he managed it and was transferred from his daddy’s knee to his grandmother’s arms. She pressed her face into his hair and hugged him close. Michael stood up and walked over to the tree where his oldest son was piling up pecans. He didn’t return until well after he heard Gabe start to giggle and Delia finally laugh.

T
he best thing about helping out at Amanda’s place was that Cissy got to quit her job at the realty office. At the beginning of the year, she had taken the job doing data entry for the County Realty office three afternoons a week, but as the months passed she arrived late more and more often, slipping into the office long after everyone had left. There is nothing worse in the world, Cissy decided, than typing page after page of abbreviated notes, square-foot measurements and endless bland repetitions of the same few dozen sentences. Over and over she typed, “Secluded, 2 BR/2bth, fp, fixer-upper, grd vw, motivated seller, new roof, hdwd flrs, real sweetheart, new fixtures.” Prices changed, brokers passed on different parcels, new properties were listed, and always there were the irritating little notes from the various real estate agents. Cissy forgot to include outbuildings, or the den that doubled as a guest room, or the decorative shutters, or the special enticements like the so-called English garden, which Cissy decided must mean a wild tangle untamed by Southern propensities for lawns and flower beds. Always there was something—spelling errors, missed measurements, a “special” property not put in the “special” category listings. Things were tight in the county. Property was not selling. There had to be a reason, and the notes made it clear that the problem was the way Cissy put in the data.