Four of a Kind: A women's historical fiction (59 page)

“When I look at them I think of what my mommy used to say: if you have brown eyes, you’re as shallow as a mud puddle. But blue eyes show you’re as deep as a spring-fed lake. Of course I knew that wasn’t true because Mommy had those Cherokee brown eyes that could see right through Daddy and me, blue eyes and all. As it turned out, Mommy and Daddy knew Rosemary’s family, the Lorry’s. Over the ridge and in the next holler is where they lived. Always mad at the world, feuding with somebody about all the time, the Lorry’s were. Didn’t believe in worldly things, they said. Didn’t allow a deck of cards, liquor, or a bad word in the house. You were either a devil or an angel and the world – which only went to the head of their holler where their church was posted to keep out evil spirits – was short on angels. They wanted to make sure Rosemary turned into an angel. So they wouldn’t hardly let her go out of their sight. She hated them for it and the best way to get even was to marry the half-injun her daddy chased away a few years before. We didn’t have much time for courting and besides, as Bess can account for, I court fast and marry fast. Rosemary was eager to elope and that’s that, daddy’s good girl went bad.

“We were scratched out of her Lorry family Bible. Their daughter had turned wicked for spite and had gone to live with the devil in a tee-pee. The more children Rosemary had, the madder she got because her mommy and daddy wouldn’t look at them. She dwelled on this and festered. I didn’t help matters none. She’d yell at me or bawl about the kids, or fume about her daddy, and I’d do what I saw my daddy always do: take off for the woods. Hunt or fish until I’d think she’d cooled off. Of course she always just seemed madder when I got back.”

Jere looked over at Mary Sue and studied her expression as if determining if she should hear the rest. She indeed looked more grown-up in behaving and listening.

“One day, when Rosemary was expecting our youngest, she up and dressed the younguns like they were going to church and waltzed the three hours to her daddy’s house. Sure enough, her daddy run her off, her little savages with her. This was right before harvest time in the heat of summer, so Rosemary stopped a ways from the house where she couldn’t be seen, and struck a match to her daddy’s cornfield. Mary Sue saw the whole thing. Then Rosemary sent him a note: ‘If you want the fire out, say you’re sorry and I’ll do a rain dance for you.’”

Jere sat back in the swing and his hands became more animated.

“He lost his crop and Rosemary went into labor from the long walk back, and bled to death. The worst of it is I could have stopped it if I had been there but my oldest boy and I was on a three-day fishing trip. I should have seen it coming. For days she had been on the warpath about her family having a reunion and she wasn’t invited. I didn’t want to hear anymore about how I was not a red man but colored yellow because I was afraid to go down there and scalp every last one of them. So I took off. I come back a day too late with a mess of fish, only to find a dead wife, seven motherless children, and a whole houseful of angry family blaming each other. Rosemary’s mommy was blaming Rosemary’s daddy, Rosemary’s daddy was blaming me, and I was blaming Rosemary.”

He beseeched me with his lake-blue eyes. “Mary Sue came from a long line of ‘vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lorry’s’. But I say, forgive her, for she knows not what she does. Like I said, it’s my fault.”

“I don’t need forgivin’,” Mary Sue said, pulling on a thread on her smudged school jumper. “And you don’t either.” The same dress she had worn the day she set the fire. I had gone to her friend’s house and practically dragged her to the train station direct from there. We’d been traveling all night.

“It’s Bess’ fault,” Mary Sue said to Jere. “If she had been our mommy, this wouldn’t have happened.”

Jere and I both sighed audibly, but mine came from relief.

I returned home to the truth about Lizzie. Mama explained that Lizzie had developed serious infections from the burns to her calves. Mama had been applying salve but Lizzie had told her too late and now red streaks were moving up her thighs. Lizzie began running a high fever and talking out of her head and only then could Mama call a doctor. Otherwise Lizzie flat refused to see one. She had no trust in doctors; had seen enough leach-sucking quacks, she said. She would only allow Phyllis to call on her, but a midwife was limited in healing burns. The doctor was on his way and would I please talk with him?

I went to see Lizzie first: stretched out on top of her sheets, eyes closed, swollen legs loosely bandaged, barely visible in her red cotton nightgown.

“She doesn’t want a lamp on,” Mama said from behind me. “Only all of these candles.”

Her wheezing was a sound I recognized as possible pneumonia from my ambulance driving days during the war. Men who had lain too long from serious wounds and had breathed in too shallow. Now Lizzie. I could hardly believe my eyes as I held her feverish hand.

Lizzie’s eyes fluttered open and she licked her large lips. “So your mama told you. She wasn’t supposed to unless it was life or death. You being here tells me something.” She spoke in her deliberate way, only lower and full of air, like she had just run in from the clothesline with an armful of laundry. How many times had I seen her do that? I now longed to see her do that again, healthy and humming her gospel tunes.

“It tells me you’re being stubborn as a mule,” I said. “Why did you wait so long?”

“Because I’s weary. Because there’s nothin’ no one can do. Because I’s nigh on eighty years and I’s not asking the Lord for any more. I’s done took more than I had a right to. So let it be. The doctor, if’n he’s worth his weight in salt, will tell you the same thing.” She closed her eyes.

“Would you like a drink of water?” I asked, now really worried because she wasn’t concentrating on her words anymore.

“See, you won’t let it be.”

“You’re not being reasonable—”

“Sing to me. Sing me
Swing Low, Sweet Chariot
, like Mr. Pickering talked about in his speech. I’s been thinkin’ about that song ever since. I saw dem. The Jubilee Singers. All been slaves befo’, black as coal. When I saw dem, I’d gone into town with my misses and dere dey was, standing on boxes in the square, a-singing proud, dressed up in fancy white folks’ garments. That’s when I knows I could be free too. I’d stayed on at the plantation after the war that freed us ‘cause I had nowheres else to go but den the Jubilees’ songs told me better. Not long after, Mr. Pickering, he found me along side the road with whip marks ‘cause I’d run away before.” Her voice dropped down lower and lower as she spoke and I eagerly leaned forward to hear her rare monologue. She attempted to lick her lips again, her tongue resembling a strawberry in the midst of chocolate. “Mister can’t save me now. But I knows one thing. You’s not his first love, but you’s his last. He jes don’t know what to do with it and you’s got to show him.”

She paused and licked her lips again. “Miz Ruby?”

Mama leaned forward into Lizzie’s vision. “Yes, Lizzie?”

“The first time I met you was in this house,” Lizzie said. “You sez den you’s tired of spectating. Now you’s come back and don’t have to do that no mo’.”

She linked her large-knuckled hands on her stomach. “Sing to me.”

We did as best we could, each remembering words the other had forgotten until the doctor arrived.

She was right about the doctor. He had little hope for her. “She’s old,” he said. “Just give her what she wants.”

We sang every gospel song we knew, Mama knowing more than I did. For two days we sat by her side giving her what she wanted. Except one thing; her last words to me were “forgive the chile”.

I sent my second telegram of the month. I had a post office box address to Thomas’s childhood plantation, now owned by his
brother. He had said he was headed there. I could only hope he got the message and had begun his trip back to New York.

On the third day, I heard the front door opening and I took off running from my bedroom down the stairs, my heart heavy at the knowledge that Thomas had come home too late. And yet my heart beat strong in my chest at the thought of seeing him again.

His looked somber in his black suit and the deep lines around his mouth made him look years older than he had when he left, less than a week ago. Most of that time would have had to have been on the road.

“Thomas, you’re home!” I said hoarsely, holding on to him tightly. His coat was cold and damp from the late evening air.

The staff from the morgue had carried Lizzie away that early morning. Mama and I were in shock and had hardly spoken or known what to do, any discussion sounding loud in this death shroud. Thomas would look after everything.

He patted my back. “I came as soon as I got the telegram, but with the roads … where there were roads … ” He faded off and I nodded in understanding. “How is Lizzie?”

“She’s gone,” I said into his coat.

Grabbing my arms, he pulled me away and peered down into my face. “What do you mean, she’s gone?”

“She died early this morning, Thomas. She said to tell you she loved you like a brother.”

He saw my tears then and brought me back to his chest. “Oh my God,” he whispered. “How could this happen. How?”

Another death; the same girl to blame.

Thomas stood in the middle of his large bedchamber. The bed was gutted now; only the scorched headboard and footboard remained, connected by iron railings with blistered paint. Black marks etched the floor boards, one particularly bad spot looked as if it had rained
oil, reminding me of where Lizzie stood, the hem of her dress burning, sparks flying, as Mama and I flapped and fought the fire.

“Everything about this house I loved, is gone now,” he said. I wished his tears would match mine as I stood in the doorway, but instead his eyes were dazed, and his mouth and shoulders sagged. His poor posture pouched his stomach like he’d overeaten. The weight of his sadness hung heavily in my chest. I longed to relieve us both.

“We could sell the house,” I said.

He shook his head at me, unbelieving. “You love this house.”

“I love you more.”

He raised his eyebrows in surprise. “You’d move from here? You seemed so entrenched I thought I’d have to dig you out of here to bury you.”

“You’re what I’m attached to. I can live wherever you are.”

“You don’t know what you’re saying, my dear. I should never have married again; I can’t settle here. And now that Lizzie’s gone …” He shook his head and shrugged his shoulders.

Fear clutched at me as I grasped my hands together to keep myself from running and clinging to him. “Thomas, have you forgotten I’ve traveled for years?” I felt better then, my own calm voice reassuring me. “I only rooted here because you asked me to. Old memories have bogged you down, not I, so please don’t blame me. This old place is too much to maintain on my own. I’d be just as happy in your old apartment. You are what makes me happy. I thought you knew that.”

I prepared myself with a deep breath to ask what was really weighing on my mind. “Don’t I make you happy, Thomas?”

He folded his arms to match mine and nodded his head, eyes on the floor. “Sometimes so much, it scares me.”

“No need to be scared of me, Thomas. I’m not a ghost but I am your wife and I fully expect to live with you. Wherever that may be.”

His mouth protruded in thought, reminding me of Lizzie’s. “Well, then, let’s just see if you do,” he said to the floor.

I accepted the challenge. “Tonight is a good night to start. Our bedroom is down the hall; third door on the left. I’ll be the warm body lying on the right side of the bed.”

He gave me a small reminder of the glorious smile I’d missed so much. “Let’s move on with it, then.” His heart seemed missing from the words but I didn’t care.

Ah, to have his full attention on me, on the tiny pearl buttons on my nightgown, unbuttoning each one slowly with bright eyes as if anticipating a wonderful Christmas gift hidden inside. I gave him all I had, nude that I was. Worry and waiting had been replaced with want and need and I took control. If I didn’t learn to lead, I’d fall behind and lose him.

I at last fell exhausted onto his chest and listened to his heart beat at a reporter’s pace and then slow to a writer’s steadied measured state. I held on as I slid to his side and heard him sigh. And I held on even tighter as later in the night his head cradled between my breasts and he cried like a baby. I knew then that he had come home to me for good, no matter where we were.