Family Linen (29 page)

“I'll drive you back to town,” I told the doctor.

By the time I came back, Elizabeth was sitting there holding the baby, and Sybill was holding her dolly. Elizabeth looked up at me, her face all firm and glowing. “I've decided to name her Candace,” she said.

So I gave up.

I went on in the house and called Millard.

Now some of what she had said was true. I did think I'd have my own baby by and by, for a fact. It was years before I'd give up on that. And it was also true that Millard and me was struggling to make ends meet.

So this is how it all fell out, exactly the way Elizabeth wanted.

Except for Fay. You couldn't reckon with her, of course, or plan on what she'd do. She was up and around in a day or so—it seemed like having a baby came natural to her, like having a cold, and didn't hurt her the way it does most. But it had made a powerful impression. She was quieter than ever, and crazier—more confused. And she seemed real sad, and did not want to be around Elizabeth, nor did she like to be around the baby. Whenever the baby cried, Fay cried, but after her breast milk had dried up, it was easier dealing with her.

Millard came and got us in Elizabeth's car, and took us back. When we left, old Edna Everhart was real sad. So Millard and me came back for her two weeks later, and brought her to live with us, where she wouldn't be so lonely, and she stayed with us for the next four years, until she died. She used to love to make wrist corsages. She taught Fay to play cards. Oh yes—Fay came to live with us too. She showed up the day after we all got back, with her clothes in a paper bag. She's been with me ever since.

Elizabeth never discussed Fay's coming. Nor would she let me help her out much, when I tried to, with Candy. She had turned on me then because I had helped her, and because she had told me the truth out loud. It's not a good idea to let people show you too much, or tell you too much, or they'll hate you for it. I know this now, but I learned it too late, when everything had already happened.

And as for what people thought, people in town I mean, they just knocked themselves out trying to do for Elizabeth. Nobody could do enough. He got her pregnant and left her, that's what they thought. And there she was up there all alone, with those sweet little children—you can see how it went. Poor, poor Elizabeth! I have to admit I wondered, later, whether Elizabeth was that calculating, to have figured on the impression she wanted to make, returning. I don't think so. Elizabeth was a proud woman with a will like a piece of iron pipe, and the ability to see and hear exactly what she chose to, but she was not conniving. A conniving woman would have seen through Jewell in the first place, remember, or would have figured out how to keep him, and keep him in line.

Anyway it wasn't long before Verner Hess, who owned the dimestore, had gone up there and married her. He was a sweet, slight man with red hair, maybe six inches shorter than Elizabeth. Millard knew him from the Moose Lodge. Verner had always had a yen for Elizabeth. He used to tell Millard she was a “fine figure of a woman,” Millard said. He used to try to court her, way back in the days when she had a broken heart from Ransom McClain, but she wouldn't give him the time of day, then. Now she said yes in a month. It may have been that what-all had happened had knocked her off her high-horse just a little. It may have been that she looked at Verner and saw, for once in her life, the light of day. For Verner was a good, steady man who would take care of her, and take good care of those kids. It was the smartest thing Elizabeth ever did, to marry Verner Hess, who was crazy about her. They had the wedding up there in the parlor, with nobody much present except for Verner himself and his real old parents and Elva Pope.

Millard and me were not invited.

Nor did we care, or even know about it until later.

It was a snowy day in December 1942 and Millard closed the shop up early, I recall, and came on upstairs, and Edna and Fay and the two of us sat around the card table all that afternoon, looking out the window at the snow, and drinking some wine, and playing hearts.

“Nettie,” Lacy says again, pulling at her.
“
Nettie, what do you think
?”
Lacy's pretty face looks a lot like Elizabeth's used to, Elizabeth after she cut her hair and married Verner and turned on Nettie because she had depended on her too much, all those years ago. Elizabeth had that same pretty fairness, those wide-spaced blue eyes. And why not? This is Elizabeth's daughter, after all. This is not Nettie's daughter, Nettie has no daughter now, but she has a lot of people to look after and a service station to run with a row of tomatoes behind it that need to have the suckers on them pinched off directly, so they'll bear good. Nettie's got things to do, and Fay to find, with Lacy pulling at her sleeve. It's always something.

If it's not one thing it's another, Nettie thinks, and then of all things here comes Roy Looney driving up in his VW bug with Clinus sitting right there big as life in the front seat beside him white as a sheet, you can tell he's scared to death. Lord knows what in the world has possessed them to come over here in the middle of the day like this, and leave nobody minding the store. Roy's driving real fast. He swings off the paved driveway and lurches across the graded red dirt toward where they stand, all of them watching him now, Myrtle and Candy holding on to Sean, who's bleeding. “Watch it now, watch it!” shouts Dr. Don. Dr. Don begins jumping and waving his hands. Roy Looney grits his teeth and drives on, he's still coming. Clinus, the gray curls sticking out under his Yankees cap, looks terrified. His eyes are big and round, like doll's eyes. “What in the world!” says Candy. “I don't think I can stand one more thing,” Myrtle says faintly, and Sybill says, “Myrtle, that's just like you!” Roy Looney slams on the brakes and his VW stops abruptly, rocking. “It's just a flesh wound,” Dr. Don assures Myrtle, looking at Sean's hand. Roy Looney jumps out, slams the door behind him, plants both feet wide in the fresh red dirt, clasps his hands before him, and clears his throat. He wears his Texaco shirt with his name, Roy, on the pocket. He looks like a boy in a play, ready to speak his piece.

“I'm real sorry to have to tell you,” Roy says, “that Miss Fay has gone and shut herself up in Clinus's old Chevrolet out there, that he was working on, and died. It was the heat that killed her, it looks like. Bert barking was what put us onto it. I'm real sorry,” Roy Looney says. “I'm real sorry I have to tell you this.” Roy looks at them all carefully, one by one, and then his gaze returns to rest on Theresa, blond lissome ironic Theresa, who stares right back at him. Sparks fly.

“Well, son, come on in the house,” Dr. Don says. “I'm sure you did all you could. It's not your fault. There wasn't a thing you could of done if you didn't know she was out there. Get Clinus out of the car and come on in for a minute.”

“Yessir,” says Roy Looney.

“Come on, honey,” Candy says to Clinus.

A play, a play, this is all like a play, or a movie, Lacy thinks, feeling herself move outside herself and hover someplace right above them all, so that she can see the wide green field, the bright blue sky, the pile of red dirt and the hole with Jewell Rife in it and big Coy Eubanks still standing there beside it, scratching his head and looking disgusted, and Lacy can even see the butterflies on all the blue flowers by the fence, and she can see all of them, herself included, this odd gaggle of disparate family teetering here on the brink of the past while all around them, it's just another pretty day. Full June. Suddenly, for no reason at all, Lacy feels like writing her dissertation.

“I think we could all use some iced tea,” Candy says, leading Clinus back to the house, but Nettie sinks like a stone to the ground right there where she is, a little black stone, and cries, and tries to push Lacy away.

“Come on now, it's time to come,” Lacy says from her sudden great distance.

But Nettie grabs Lacy's arm then, hard, Nettie's fingers biting into her arm like claws, and says, loud enough for them all to hear: “She must of done it, then, Fay. Why sure. She done it all along, and to think I never knew it, all these years.” So the mystery is solved, but it's more of a mystery than ever. Because Nettie won't say any more, or explain it, not even when they sit her down at the kitchen table with iced tea. Nettie says, “
She
didn't know it either. I mean Elizabeth.” And that's all. That's all they'll ever know. Sybill says, “I think it's time to call the police,” but Dr. Don says, “Let's not be too hasty here now, Sybill, this is a family matter after all,” and calls Gurney Fletcher first, instead. He's a reasonable man. Candy says she doesn't think that even she can do much with Fay. Coy Eubanks drinks three Cokes in a row and goes back out and starts up his bulldozer again, working down the hill, grading the new driveway. “Isn't he
cute
?” Theresa whispers to Kate, meaning Roy Looney, who's loading Arthur into the back seat of the VW now, Arthur's having kind of a crying drunk. He loved Fay. And he remembers finding Mavis Lardner finally, in Lexington, Kentucky, a married woman with grandchildren, so old you couldn't even tell her hair had once been red. “Listen, honey,” she told Arthur then, “your daddy might not of been much count, but he was sweet, and could carry a tune.” Roy Looney walks back to ask Theresa, before he leaves, if she'd like to go see
Trading Places
on Saturday, and she says yes. Don is planning everything. There'll be two quiet, tasteful burials, that's
it
. It can be done. You have to think positively, and act decisively. Whatever comes up, Don can handle it. The sky's the limit, he's on a kind of a roll. He told them he'd get to the bottom of this, and he has. Well, why not? That's the question to ask, instead of Why?
Why not
? You have to think positively. There's even a cure for acne now—Accutane, of course it does have some side effects. There will always be side effects. Dr. Don writes out several prescriptions for Valium and hands them around. He sends Sean down to the clinic with Myrtle, to get his hand bandaged. Candy leaves too, heading out to the One Stop, taking Nettie and Clinus, who refuses to speak to Sybill on the subject of Depression glass or willoware or anything else. Clinus acts real upset, rolling his big round eyes. Clinus's eyes are wild and strange: their enormous flat blueness broken sometimes suddenly by a darting flash of pain, like lightning, a sudden crack of horror. With a retarded person, you can't tell how much they know, or what they feel, or see. Candy holds Clinus's arm as she guides him out to her car. Sybill gets her things together. She's ready to go back to the Holiday Inn; she wants to call Betty, who just won't believe it! Then she wants some peace and quiet, and a glass of Mateus in the motel's Jolly Roger bar. On her way out the door, Sybill notices Myrtle and Don's oldest daughter Karen, who looks like she's pregnant, getting out of a car with her smart computer boyfriend, and passes Jack—crazy Jack—on the front porch, poised to ring the doorbell, bringing Lacy some flowers.

“How bad is she showing?” Judith Wilkes asked, on the afternoon of the wedding, about Karen. Not that it was any of Judith Wilkes's business, but she went to high school with Karen, so she thought she ought to know. Candy started to say something sharp to her, which she never does to her ladies, but she had a clippie in her mouth right then and by the time she got it out, she had thought better of it, and said, “Right much.” Why not? Everybody knew it anyway. Myrtle and Don had decided on a small poolside wedding, mostly family, under the circumstances, but everybody in town knew the circumstances by then, just like they knew about Jewell Rife's bones found down in the well and Fay dying out at the One Stop in Clinus's Chevrolet. Not only did they know it, but they had just about forgotten it by then, especially since that young nurse was raped not a foot from her own apartment a week ago Tuesday, and the guy that did it was still at large. This was at the London Bridge apartments off the bypass, next to the new public library. The apartments with the fancy bridge across the creek and the red double-decker bus that runs back and forth to town. It's mostly singles that live out there. If it was family-oriented, as Martha Rockbridge said, somebody would have been home, would have been around, and seen it. But those apartments discourage families, and pets. Anyway, now everybody was talking about the rape, and even Karen Dotson pregnant was old hat. She'd been home, and she'd been showing, for over a month. Myrtle and Don might as well have had it at the country club and invited everybody. There's no such thing as a little bit pregnant anyway. Those that didn't know it, would. And then they'd forget about that, too, in time, and get onto something else. That's the way folks are.

The only one interested was Judith Wilkes, because she went to high school with Karen, and because she's never done much of anything since. Judith Wilkes lives with her mother who has arthritis, and teaches home ec at the high school, and that's it. That's the story of Judith Wilkes. She was jealous. Candy felt sorry for her, so she gave in and told her some more about it, while she put in Judith's body wave. Candy said that Karen was close to five months pregnant, and that after the wedding she was going right back to Winston-Salem where she had been living with her boyfriend, who is a computer genius, for three years, and finish up her degree in folklore from UNC-G, and then stay home with the baby for a while before she started to look for a teaching job. Candy said Karen's fiancé made plenty of money, so she didn't
have
to work. “I'll bet he does!” Judith said. Her eyes popped out a little, she looks like a Pekingese.

Candy was wrapping the rollers in end wraps. All she ever uses for permanents is Zotoz Warm and Gentle, that's the best.

“Are they going to live in the
same place
they lived in when they were living together?” Judith wanted to know then, and Candy said yes.

“I just wouldn't want to do that,” Judith said. She sucked in her breath, a habit she has. Candy put the plastic bag over her head and pinned it tight in the back, and took her over and gave her some heat. She set the timer for ten minutes. You have to be careful if it's an old lady or somebody with high blood pressure, you can't set the heat up so high. But Candy was trying to rush Judith a little without her noticing it, so she could close up and get to the wedding herself. And so Judith could get on back to her mother, poor thing—Candy doesn't like to do her too much, anyway, because she's the kind that won't let herself look good, scared to try anything new. With those pop eyes, she needs some hair down on her forehead, and around her face, and not that tight curly look she's had for so long. Well, some people want to look good, and some don't. It hurts Candy, though, to give somebody a permanent or a cut and have it not look good, and send them out on the street not looking any better than they did when they came in. It's not right. She has dreams about it.

An oval face is the perfect face, but Candy can count on the fingers of one hand the ladies she does that have got one. Most times, nature needs help. Like if they've got a round face, you want to give them some height on top of the head, and flat around the ears. A square face, and you lift it up off the forehead, bring it forward at the sides and jaw. A prominent chin—go for bangs.

Take Sybill. Candy had done Sybill at ten o'clock that morning, and done her friend Betty, too, who had come down to the wedding with her, and Sybill went out looking like a million bucks. Sybill never looked better in her life. The reason was, she came in acting real friendly—Candy was surprised when she called in the first place—and said, “Okay, Candy, here's your chance. I'm just
tired
of it,” which is exactly what you always want to hear, and almost never happens. First Candy got Lydia to shampoo her good, and put on a Spun Sand rinse, Roux Fancifull, it's old but nothing ever has come along yet to equal it for color. That was to blend in the gray and soften her. Then Candy feathered it all around her face, and blew it dry instead of using rollers, and showed her how to do it herself, and sold her a round brush so she could. Sybill was smiling at herself in the mirror. Candy turned her around and showed her the back. “Well, what do you
think
?” Sybill asked her friend Betty, and Betty said, “Girl, you've never looked better in your life.” It was true. Sybill looked ten years younger. Then Candy gave Sybill's friend Betty a deep side part, to offset that long thin nose, and she looked good, too. Then both of them went on up to Myrtle's to help with the flowers and other decorations.

Myrtle and Don say Sybill's been a real big help with the wedding. She always did know how things ought to be, exactly like Miss Elizabeth. Sybill knows for instance whether or not bridesmaids can wear big hats at a seven-o'clock wedding. They can. So Sybill got these beautiful picture hats made at Thalhimer's, in Roanoke, for the bridesmaids, and brought them down in her car. Everybody in the beauty shop went out and looked at the hats, in the parking lot behind the drugstore, before Betty and Sybill took them up to Myrtle's.

Candy had done over Myrtle the week before. Myrtle had wanted some more Ash Blonde mixed in with the Golden Blonde, so the gray would start showing through. A new look, since she's going to be a grandmother. But the one Candy really wanted to get her hands on, and didn't, was Karen, the bride. Karen hasn't cut her hair in about three years, it's stringing all down her back and looks awful. It's too thin for her to wear it that long. Candy would take off about a foot of it if she got a chance to, and give her a blunt cut. Also those split ends are going to get worse and worse as her time comes on—all the protein in your body goes straight to the baby. Still, Karen is pretty, she's always had a glow about her, like Myrtle.

Candy did two more shampoo and sets that afternoon, waiting for Judith to take, but she takes slow, and then Miss Elva Pope sailed in like the Niña, the Pinta, and the Santa María all rolled into one, to get her hair combed. Miss Elva comes in once a day for Candy to do this, she says it hurts her arm to lift a brush. And every three weeks, Candy shampoos her. She won't get it done any more often than that because she thinks it'll give her bronchitis. When she comes in to get her hair combed, it might be any hour of the day, and she expects Candy to drop everything, and fit her in. But she is a sweet old lady, who was Miss Elizabeth's friend. So Candy got Judith Wilkes out from under the dryer and had her sit there until she finished up Florence Hatfield who has been getting the same French twist for twenty years, she's another one that you just hate to see walk out the door and own up to doing her, and Florence Hatfield's ten-year-old granddaughter Beth that she is raising since her mother—that's Florence's daughter—has fallen into a depression.

“You wait right here,” Candy said to Judith and Florence, “while I finish up on little Beth here and comb Miss Elva.”

“That
hurts
,” Beth said, which was not true, as Candy flipped her bangs. When Candy was done with Beth, she looked as cute as she could, and Florence gave her two quarters to go up to the Rexall for a Coke. Candy has her own Coke machine right here, but she figured Florence wanted to get rid of Beth for fifteen minutes. Florence is real
sweet
, but there's a limit to everything. You like to feel like you can say what you want, in the beauty parlor. Then Lydia took out Florence's rollers while Candy did Miss Elva.

Miss Elva held her chin up high and looked hard at herself in the mirror. She's a kind of a fierce old lady, like Miss Elizabeth was. Nobody knows how old she is, or what she does with herself outside of church and the ladies' poetry society and coming over here once a day to get her hair combed. She has wispy blue curls all over.

“For the wedding,” Miss Elva announced, “I shall wear pink.”

“That's a good color for you,” Candy said, fluffing her up in the back to cover her bald spot.

Florence said that in her opinion, Karen Dotson was going to have a girl. She said she could always tell, and hadn't been wrong once. She said that the way she does it is, if you can tell somebody's pregnant from
behind
, it's a girl. You carry a boy up high in the front, and he doesn't wrap all around you like a girl will.

“That's
ridiculous
, ” said Miss Elva, snorting through her long nose. “It's all in the hands of God.”

“Well, you can also tell by amniocentesis,” Judith said. “That's when they take a needle and—”

“I
know
what it is!” snapped Miss Elva. “A crime against nature, a sin against God. That looks real pretty,” she said to Candy in the mirror, and gave her a quarter, which is what she does every day. But Candy wouldn't care if she was paid or not. Then Miss Elva went zooming out. Lydia was giggling, she'd been giggling all day long. Candy was pushing it by then, she had to go home and change, she'd be lucky to get to the wedding at all, never mind cleaning up the shop. She got Florence up in the chair and started to comb her out.

“What are you giggling about?” she said to Lydia. Lydia is so thin and gawky, she looks like somebody drew her with a pencil.

“Well . . . ” Lydia said. Lydia always says “Well . . . ” through her nose, and stretches it out real long. It'll kill you to talk to her. “Well, I forgot to tell you that Kate came in here while you were gone up to Myrtle's at lunch, and got me to take a piece right here, in the top of her crown, and dye it pink.”

“Dye it pink!” Candy said. She dropped her brush on the floor.

“Unh-huh,” Lydia said. She was sweeping up hair, and cutting her eyes over at Candy, and giggling and looking guilty.

“Well, did you do it?” Candy asked.

“Unh-huh,” Lydia said.

“I bet it looks awful,” said Florence.

“It's the ‘in' thing,” Lydia told her. “Everybody's doing it, look at
Vogue
.”

“Myrtle is going to just die.” Candy was getting tickled herself.

“Now, who did this?” Florence wanted to know, and Candy said it was Lacy's daughter, her niece, and Judith said was that the weird one, that wore the hat.

“Hats are ‘in,' too,” Lydia said.

“Well, I never!” said Florence. She kept twisting this way and that, looking at Lydia. Candy thought she'd never get her done. She decided she'd just go on and close up the shop after she finished with Judith, and then come back in here after the wedding to straighten up. She knew she wouldn't get any more work out of Lydia
that
day, she was too flighty. “You go on, hon,” Candy told her, and then she finished Florence, who was outlining another theory of hers that if you exercise too much during pregnancy your baby won't have pretty features, but Candy wasn't listening, thinking back on her own wedding which took place in a JP's kitchen in Cheraw, South Carolina, under a bare hanging lightbulb on a string. Candy was pregnant, too. And it was winter. She wore a red wool skirt and a cardigan sweater set. Lonnie was just a kid. They were both kids, Lonnie was a kid when he died. At least she has Tammy Lee, who has his eyes. And then there was Gray Justice who said he'd marry her, and didn't, and is now a lawyer someplace in east Tennessee. Candy was thinking,
It could of been worse. At least when I was at my wits' end Darnell Blossom, who had the Beauty Barn then, said, “Well, Candy, why don't you come in with me, you have always been good with hair.” I have, too. I am. But I believe one wedding was enough for me
. And speaking of weddings, Candy remembered all of a sudden that Tony should have been here by now—he was coming in for Karen's wedding, driving up from Florida with a new girlfriend for them to meet. A law student, just like Tony—well, girls do everything these days. Candy's all for it. She doesn't even object to men doing hair, fags or not, fags have got to make a living the same as anybody else. A lot of beauticians resent it, but Candy doesn't. She thinks a person ought to do what they're good at. Finally Lydia left, and Florence settled down, and Candy covered up her eyes and sprayed her. She went out the door hollering for Beth.