Hung Out to Die (23 page)

“No, they're not,” I said. “Come on, let me help you.”

Who knew. I'd bonded enough with Aunt Nora over the cranberry stain that she'd told me about Uncle Fenwick coming back for the clothesline from his mama's front yard.

Maybe I'd bond enough with Mama over the hot chocolate stain that she'd tell me whatever she'd just realized.

I loaned Mama a pajama top—this one in blue that proclaimed,
TELL ME WHEN THE COFFEE'S READY
. It didn't really go with her pajama bottoms and mules, but she didn't care after I assured her the hot chocolate would come out of her pajama top.

“Hot chocolate is a combination stain,” I told Mama. “A protein stain—from the milk—and an oily stain—from the chocolate. You want to treat the protein element first, soaking in cold water. Not hot—that will set the protein in the fibers. Then, for the oily part, we'll soak in a bucket of a quart of warm water, with about a teaspoon each of cloudy ammonia and dishwashing soap for about fifteen minutes. Then we'll wash as usual. If there's still some stain left, we'll soak in an enzyme product and wash again.”

“Wow,” Mama said. “You really have developed an expertise.”

I couldn't help but feel a twinge of pleasure at the admiration in her voice, and it stayed with me through the soakings and then hand-washing and rinsing the top—I feared it was too delicate for a machine wash, and I didn't really want to brave the cold night again to go down to my laundromat.

I left the now clean pajama top on a padded hanger on the shower rod so it could dry overnight and went back into my bedroom. Mama was sitting on my bed, looking at a framed photo I keep of Guy on my nightstand. I sat down next to her, looked at the photo of Guy she held in her hand. I'd taken it a few autumns earlier, at the Stillwater harvest festival. In the photo, Guy was holding a big pumpkin and smiling broadly.

Mama set the photo back on the nightstand. Her hand trembled a bit.

“He looks so much like Horace did, the last time I saw him,” she said.

“It must have been hard,” I said gently, “being so disconnected from your family.”

Mama looked at me sharply. “Who told you that?”

I smiled. “It's a small town.”

“And everyone knows everyone, and everyone's business. Or they think they do,” she said bitterly.

“There are good parts to living in a small town,” I said.

“Good and bad to everything, I guess. I didn't see it that way when I was young. I just wanted to get out of here. Away from all the gossip. Most of what was said about me wasn't true, you know.”

Which meant part of it was. Which part, I wondered? I'd probably never really know.

“That was the plan all along, you know,” Mama went on. “Henry and I were going to graduate and leave town. But . . .”

She stopped.

“The first baby,” I said gently.

“Yes,” Mama said. She wiped a tear from her eyes. “I was so torn up after that. Henry, too. We couldn't seem to get our act together to leave. We acted . . . badly. And then we had you. We decided we'd try to make a life with you here. But Henry never liked it here. He always felt like a failure compared to Fenwick, and he always compared himself to Fenwick, no matter how often I told him not to.

“And then one day, when I thought things were starting to go well, Henry just didn't come home. He left me nothing but a note that said, ‘I've found our treasure,' and a small pile of weird coins.”

“The coins you used to have me take to the wishing well,” I said. “I remembered I still have them in a hat box.” I hopped up.

“Don't—” Mama started.

But I'd already hopped up. Eagerly, I trotted to my closet and stood on tiptoe and shoved aside some summer T-shirts and shorts and pulled down a box from the corner. I went back over to the bed and sat down again. I opened the box and pulled off the lid.

“Look,” I said, suddenly compelled to find the coins.

“No—” Mama said, but she stared into the box as if she were compelled, too.

“I think they're at the bottom,” I said. I scooted a little away from Mama to make space, and started pulling out items—little swatches of hair, tied up in pink ribbons, from my various haircuts, with tags labeled with my age at each haircut. I put those out along with a rubberbanded bunch of report cards and some handmade Christmas cards and a few pictures and my school pictures. My volleyball medals and my high school tassel.

All of it, saved by Aunt Clara, from third grade forward. The only thing from before then was the small leather bag, lumpy with coins.

I picked it up. “See!” I said. “This is the bag of coins Daddy left.”

I looked at Mama, eagerly. She was pale, her eyes glistening. “Oh,” I said. I reckon a lot of folks would say I had every right to be angry with her, but I felt suddenly sorry for her. She'd missed watching me grow up and I could see in her face that at least part of her regretted that.

Mama smiled sadly. “I guess I don't have any right to suddenly feel jealous of all your Uncle Horace and Aunt Clara got to experience with you.”

“You could have had that with me. Why did you choose to go away?”

My voice was steady, clear, almost nonemotional. I was simply . . . curious.

Mama shook her head. “That was just it. I couldn't have experienced it. I'd have never done all of—” she waved her hands over the spread of mementos—“of this. See, I loved your daddy. I've always loved him. It's a crazy love. Every time I think how he and I would be better off apart, I know we can't be apart. Not for long. I thought, for those years after he left, that I was over him.

“I tried to be a good mama to you. But I wasn't good at it. As much as I mourned the loss of the first baby, I knew even then that I wasn't really cut out to be a mother. That made me feel guilty, so I tried to make it up with you—but I still wasn't cut out to be a parent.

Some folks just aren't, Josie. Henry and I are among them.”

I took in what she had just said. Mama realized she and Daddy just weren't cut out to be parents. Well, I couldn't argue with that.

But while she was in the mood to talk like a reasonable human being, I had another question. “How did you connect up with Daddy again?”

“Very simple,” Mama said, with a rueful laugh. “I got a call one day. From Effie Burkette. Just after the trailer burned. Did you know that that was because I fell asleep with a cigarette?”

I shook my head. “I don't remember you smoking.”

“Well, I did. I've long quit, but I did. Usually I smoked outside, both to keep the smell out, and out of concern for you. But it was my fault the trailer burned. It's amazing we got out alive, and managed to save anything at all. Anyway, what was I saying?”

“Effie Burkette.” Amazing, I thought, how much more connected to that family we'd been than I realized.

“Oh, yeah. Well. Effie and I stayed in touch through all the years. She kept it secret from Rich and Lenny, because she knew Lenny still felt something for me, and she didn't want him nagging her about me. And she kept it secret from Rich because he was always telling her who she needed to associate with to make him look good—and believe me, I didn't make that list.

“But Effie had been kind of like a mother figure to me when Lenny and I went together, so we stayed in touch off and on. Anyway, Effie and Rich had been on vacation at some fancy hotel in North Carolina, and what do you know—they saw Henry working as a bus-boy in the hotel restaurant.”

“Coincidence,” I said.

“Fate,” Mama said firmly. “Some folks say there's no difference. Anyway. We were staying with Chief Hilbrink and his wife. I knew they'd dote on you if I left. So I took off, thinking I'd find Henry and give him a piece of my mind and demand some money from him. But instead . . .”

She shifted her gaze back to the collection on my bed. “Instead . . . what?”

She looked up at me. “I saw him and I couldn't be angry. I wanted to believe his pretty stories about how he was finally going to hit it big with this or that scheme. Then we'd come back and show Fenwick. One thing led to another, time passed, and . . .”

“And you just decided not to come back.”

Mama sighed. “I heard from Lottie Arrowood, too, now and again—she promised not to tell where I was. When she told me you were at the orphanage, we started making plans to come back up here, but then Clara and Horace took you in. And then I heard how well you were doing with them, and I realized, well, that you'd be better off with them than with us.

“That's not meant to sound selfless, Josie. Like I said, some folks aren't cut out to be parents, and that includes me and your daddy. We loved you, but I guess we're just too selfish.”

She picked up the picture of Guy again, stared at it. “I never could do what Clara and Horace did. What you're doing.” She looked up at me. “I can't envy you, but I don't know if I should pity you.”

I took Guy's picture from her, held it to my chest. “Don't you dare pity me,” I said. “I love Guy like a brother and I wouldn't trade my love—or responsibility—for him for anything.”

Mama stared at me, clearly not understanding.

I sighed. She was right. It was sad to say, but she and Daddy had done me a favor by leaving me with Uncle Horace and Aunt Clara. I just wished they'd come back, explained it to me years ago. But then, if they had thought of doing that, would they be the sort to have been unfaithful to each other, to have dropped their responsibilities in the first place?

I put Guy's picture back, picked up the bag of coins, opened it, and shook out the contents into my hand. I fingered a few of the coins.

“They're so . . . odd,” I said. “Old-looking.” I looked up at her. “Are these antiques?”

Mama shrugged. “I guess so.”

I frowned. “You're planning to open FleaMart, and you don't know if these are antiques?”

She shrugged again. “Your daddy is the one who knows something about antiques. Not me. I take care of the business end of our ventures—financing, bookkeeping, marketing.”

“So . . . what kind of ventures have you two had all these years, besides FleaMart?”

Mama looked away. “Oh . . . this and that.”

Uh huh, I thought. They'd tried various get-rich-quick schemes, half-baked business ideas like FleaMart, and hadn't succeeded at a single one. Otherwise, they'd have been back by now so Daddy could brag to Fenwick. But they'd made a hit with one FleaMart, down in Arkansas, much to their surprise.

I looked at the coins. “I remember you grabbing me from my room in the trailer. And I wiggled free so I could grab this bag of coins. You kept it in the kitchen drawer with the spatulas and such.”

Mama nodded. “That's right. And I was angry, because you could have gotten hurt, straggling in the trailer.” She smiled. “I may not have been much of a mama, but I didn't want you to get hurt.” She patted my cheek. “I still don't.”

I was still staring at the coins, though. “I thought these meant so much to you. That's why you wanted me to make a wish with them.”

“Oh, Josie. Every time I got angry at Henry running off, I sent you to toss one of his precious coins down the wishing well. It felt like a little bit of revenge.” I looked up at her. “Besides,” she added, smiling ruefully. “They wouldn't work in the Masonville laundromat machines.”

18

Coins spun around my head, annoyingly, like gnats. Even worse, clothespins were chasing the coins, snapping at them. The dizzying race they made around my head looked like some mutant variation of the vintage Pac-Man arcade game Sally kept in the back room of the Bar-None.

Of course, I knew I was dreaming, and that the clothespins weren't really going to snap my nose, or the coins dash into my eyes. Still, as I stood in the middle of my dream fog, I swatted at the coins and clothespins, all the while hollering, “Mrs. Oglevee, enough! Make it stop! I don't know what your point is, and this is getting tiresome. Mrs. Oglevee!”

Finally my former junior high teacher appeared. She was dressed in a cowgirl get-up and holding a length of clothesline. And she was grinning, amused at my discomfort.

I crossed my arms and resolutely ignored the cicada-like clothespins and coins, which had just started buzzing. Just a dream, I reminded myself. Although in the past, my Mrs. Oglevee dreams had helped me sort out problems. Just my subconscious, I told myself, perversely taking the form of my most feared teacher. At least, that's what I preferred to believe.

“Just what do you think you're going to do with that?” I said. “Have some laundry to hang out to dry?”

Mrs. Oglevee shook her head and clucked. “Josie, Josie. Didn't I always try to tell you to use your imagination, to see things from more than one angle?”

Actually, once I tried to explain on a multiple choice test why two of the four options could be the right choice, and even though one of them was the right choice according to the teacher's guide book, Mrs. Oglevee had not only counted the answer wrong, but gave me an F because I hadn't followed the directions to simply circle a., b., c., or d. But I didn't think this was the time to bring up this fine memory.

Suddenly, Mrs. Oglevee turned the clothesline into a lasso, and snapped it toward my head.

I admit it. I ducked, squeezing my eyes shut. When I opened them again, Mrs. Oglevee was once more smiling. She was circling the lasso in front of her, and somehow the coins and clothespins floated in the middle.

“See? The clothesline can be used as a clothesline, or as a lasso.” She snapped the lasso suddenly, and it went flying into the air. She caught the ends and the coins and clothespins fell at her feet, no longer possessed.

Mrs. Oglevee started jump-roping with the clothesline. She'd never been that spry in life.