Penumbra (5 page)

F
or a long time the hospital room had been quiet. Dawn had crept through the blinds on a window that gave a view of a patch of brown grass and two old water oaks, leaves hanging listlessly in the heat. Jade had watched the sunrise, finally turning to stare at the woman so still in the hospital bed. Marlena’s profile seemed to drink the morning light, glowing softly in the semidarkness of the room. The drip had given out after midnight, and a nurse had come to replace the bottle, the tiny bubbles chasing up like silver beads at a rate of thirty-seven a minute. Jade had counted the bubbles, periodically making sure that the pace was steady. She imagined that each tiny drop sent more strength into Marlena, more will to fight. Her imagination, though, wasn’t quite strong enough to banish the comparison of the drip to the gravity bottles that pushed embalming fluid into the dead, preserving them against decay.

When the nurse came into the room, Jade had asked what was in the drip, but the nurse hadn’t answered her. She’d lifted her nose only half an inch, but enough to tell Jade she was beneath an answer. She might look white, but she was just a pale nigger.

After the nurse left, Frank visited. Jade had pretended not to see him as she wiped Marlena’s face, but she’d seen him. She’d caught his outline in the doorway and knew exactly who it was just by the way he stood. He’d assessed the scene and then left. He had questions and Jade had no answers. Marlena hadn’t told her anything. She’d slept all night, moaning on occasion, but never uttering a single comprehensible word.

Jade turned to adjust the blinds, and in the window’s reflection she saw Marlena shift. A frown moved across Marlena’s face. She said something so softly that Jade leaned forward, her head cocked so that her ear was only inches from Marlena’s lips.

“Help me,” Marlena said.

Jade felt a sweep of relief. She’d watched Marlena throughout the night and wondered if she’d be able to talk, or even if she’d live. She’d imagined that Marlena’s blond beauty had begun to cool and decay, so that in a few days she would be at Rideout Funeral Home and Jade would put the last lipstick on her rubbery lips.

“I’m here,” Jade said. She watched the eyelids flutter and then open. Marlena looked at her without recognition. “It’s me, Jade,” she whispered.

“Suzanna.” Marlena said the word as if she wasn’t certain what it meant. “Suzanna.” She said it again, this time with more emphasis.

“It’s okay,” Jade said, pulling the call bell from beneath the pillow and pressing it hard. Marlena had the look of someone waking from a nightmare yet still caught in fear.

Marlena looked around the room, now lit by the morning sun. She started to sit up but cried out in pain and sank back against the pillows. “Su-zan-na!” She shouted the word, each syllable with equal emphasis.

Jade put her hands on Marlena’s arms. “It’s okay,” she said again, pressing hard to hold Marlena still. “You have to be careful. You’ve been hurt.”

Marlena stared at her without recognition. “Susanna,” she said, and Jade began to fear that she didn’t really know that Suzanna was her daughter, that the name had simply become the only word Marlena could utter.

“Suzanna,” Jade said back to her.

“Taken,” Marlena sighed, and then she began to cry.

The black Cadillac was hidden behind a thick wall of huckleberry bushes. Frank found it without difficulty. He’d followed signs of a struggle on the riverbank until he came upon a pair of brand-new Keds. They were sized for a child, not an adult. He studied the ground, the knocked-over can of worms, the fishing pole cast into the bushes by the side of the river, the pine straw and scrub oak leaves scuffled in places. The marks in the ground told a distinct story. Suzanna had been fishing when someone came up behind her and grabbed her.

About fifty feet from the scene of the abduction he found a place where something had crushed the delicate wild ferns that grew in sandy soil. The area was about the size of a child. He could assume that Suzanna had been subdued in some manner and left on that spot, perhaps while the attacker went after Marlena, or went to join his cohort, if there were two. But what was Marlena doing that a man, or two men, could sneak up on her? The last anyone heard from Marlena, she’d told Lucas she was going to the church to help sort clothes for the poor. She’d never put in an appearance. There was something wrong with the story.

He began to walk a circle around the area. He moved slowly, taking his time, thinking once again how glad he was that he was alone. Huey would bring tracking dogs in another hour and destroy any chance of finding clues. Huey was a man of action. He wasn’t smart, but he was smart enough to know that to the voters, action looked like he was doing something. Long ago, Frank had learned that small actions often counted most.

Briars gripped the laces of his shoes, and he stepped carefully out of their clinging embrace. He moved around the Cadillac until he came to the picnic cloth. He surveyed the scene from a distance of fifteen feet. Ants had taken over the food, but he could see the ruin of chicken salad sandwiches, a jug of tea, dark at the bottom and clear at the top with lemon slices floating. A swarm of yellow jackets made a bowl of potato salad look alive. Beside the sandwiches was a wicker basket. Moving carefully, he walked to it and nudged it open with his toe. Three plates and forks were inside. The number was troubling.

The picnic cloth was crumpled, and when he knelt down to look more closely he saw the blood. It sprayed in tiny drops across the lower corner of the cloth. There were other stains, too. Sex and blood. The story he read from the picnic scene didn’t jive with anything he’d been able to put together.

He broadened his circle, looking for anything. About twenty feet from the picnic cloth he found six bags of Big Sun potato chips. He picked up a stick and moved three of the bags, thinking of the Chevy abandoned on the road. Forrest County had reported back. John Hubbard, the registered owner of the Chevy, was a traveling salesman for Big Sun, a company that stocked small rural stores in Mississippi with chips and candy bars, beef jerky and pork rinds. Frank pulled a paper sack from his back pocket and scooped up the chips, setting them aside on the picnic cloth. He began his search again, this time faster because he was looking for something larger. A body.

The house was set back off the road a little piece, enough to keep the chickens that persisted in getting out of the pen safe from the occasional car. Once the house had belonged to Emma Grey, but she’d passed on, and Miss Lucille had bought it after her daughter married into the Bramlett money. Not that it was the most expensive house in town, but it did sit on a hill and caught the infrequent summer breezes. No, it wasn’t a real expensive house, but there was just something about it. Jonah Dupree knew that if he could have his pick of all the houses in the world, it would be this one.

He waded through a dozen Rhode Island reds as he went to the porch. He’d worn his best suit, the pants pressed so many times the crease was shiny like a blade. Miss Lucille had sent word that he was to drive her to the hospital today.

He’d heard the talk about what happened to Miss Marlena, and his heart was sorely troubled. Marlena had never hurt a living soul, as far as he knew, excepting maybe herself. On the day of her wedding to Lucas Bramlett, Marlena had stepped off the edge of a cliff. Pouring drinks for all the teetotalers in town, Jonah had watched the couple say their vows in the outdoor garden of the house Lucas had already bought and decorated. His bride was the finishing touch to the décor, her blond looks the perfect complement to the life Lucas had so carefully designed. Jonah had stood in his starched shirt and black bow tie and watched Lucas slip a gold ring on Marlena’s trembling hand, and Jonah had felt that an inevitable tragedy had been set in motion. Marlena looked more dazed than happy, and he understood why. Lucas Bramlett had been an ambition, like a college degree or a certain job. Marlena had got him. Now she would have to be his wife, and she wasn’t prepared for what that meant. That had been sixteen years ago. Marlena had been married to Lucas for almost half as long as she’d been alive.

Jonah blinked the past out of his eyes and was frowning when he went around the porch that circled three sides of the house and knocked at the side door by the kitchen. Miss Lucille would be there, having her coffee and toast. He saw his wife, Ruth, at the stove, the dripolator in her hand. She poured a steady stream into the cup in front of Lucille, but her gaze was on Jonah.

“Press my teal dress,” Lucille said to Ruth, her voice sloppy at the end of the sentence.

Jonah stood at the screen door, waiting until the currents of the room were established. If Miss Lucille had been drinking, things would be a lot different than he’d imagined as he came up the road from Drexel.

“Yes, ma’am,” Ruth said in her Sunday voice.

Jonah didn’t know what to make of that. Ruth hated Miss Lucille with a pure flame. For thirty-seven years, though, she’d never missed a day of work. She came and she cooked, cleaned, and tended the woman’s needs. She listened to her talk and her bragging. Not once, in all that time, had Ruth ever let on how she really felt. Jonah considered that and realized there were things about his wife that frightened him.

He’d worked for Lucille Sellers Longier for nearly forty years. Had, in fact, met his wife at Miss Bedelia Sellerses’ Christmas party in 1915, back when her pale gold daughter’s dream of catching a rich man had not yet been tainted by her actions. As it was, in 1918, Lucille had married Jacques Longier, a man forty-two years her senior. A foreigner, Longier hadn’t cared that Lucille had a scandalous past. He’d married Lucille, taken over control of the Sellerses’ money, and bought the town’s silence with total ruthlessness.

Old Lizzie Tolbert had found out the price of a loose tongue. She’d made it a point to call Lucille a slut and a nigger-lover. Two days later, the Tolbert house burned to the ground. Lizzie’s son had died in the flame. The Tolberts left Drexel. Jacques bought the Tolbert homestead and donated the property to the Mt. Pleasant Baptist Church, a black congregation.

That lesson had never had to be repeated. Folks began to focus on who Lucille was now, not what she’d been in the past.

In a strange way, Jacques had been Jonah’s benefactor. The Frenchman had come on the scene shortly after Lucille had gotten herself in trouble. Had Lucille wanted to raise the baby girl who was the product of her penchant for drink and a black jazz man, she would have lost Jacques. So Jade—a gift worth any amount of suffering—had been given to him and Ruth, and Lucille’s honor had been restored.

Jonah felt his wife’s hot glare on him, and he watched as she left the kitchen, going to iron, as Miss Lucille had directed her. Jonah tapped on the screen door. “Miss Lucille, I’m here to drive you whenever you’re ready.”

“Come in, Jonah,” she said, her back still to the door.

He stepped into the coolness of the house, amazed anew at how this one house seemed to keep out the August heat. He stopped halfway across the kitchen, not knowing exactly where he should go.

“Sit down,” Lucille said, waving at the chair across from her. She had her makeup on and her hair fixed, but she was still in her turquoise dressing gown. She’d always favored bright colors. Her lipstick was bright, too, a contrast to her pale skin, which sagged around her jawline.

Jonah felt apprehension seep into his bones. Lucille was not a woman who asked her hired help to sit at the table with her. “Pour yourself a cup of coffee,” she said.

He made no move to get a cup. “What time you want to go to the hospital?” he asked. “I could work on the scuppernong arbor until you’re ready to go.”

“Sit down,” she said.

He eased into the chair, his hands on his thighs. He looked into her eyes, the blue of a morning sky. His heart was beating too fast, and he tried to find something of the past in her intense gaze. It was gone, though, just as the fresh beauty that had once held him spellbound was gone. Miss Marlena had captured that beauty, and he wondered for the first time if Lucille hated her own daughter.

“How long have you been working for me, Jonah?” she asked.

“Close on to forty years,” he said, knowing that there was something behind the question. Miss Lucille had become an expert at making layers of things.

“And Ruth, how long for her?”

“Thirty-seven years.” Jonah decided to say what he knew. Not even Miss Lucille could change a fact. “How is Jade?”

The abrupt change in the subject alarmed Jonah. In all the years that Jade had lived with them, Miss Lucille had never asked about Jade’s well-being. Other than to say do this or do that, he didn’t think Jade’s name had ever passed Lucille’s lips.

“She’s doing just fine.” That was enough. Just an answer, no details.

“Lucas called me this morning. He wants Jade to stay with Marlena. On a permanent basis.”

There it was. The daughter Miss Lucille had kept needed care. “Jade’s got a business to run.” It wasn’t really an answer, just a statement of fact.

He saw the subtle shift in Lucille’s expression, more a tightening of the flesh around the eyes. “It would put Jade in a good light to help Lucas out.”

Jonah saw the way she was going to play it. Not an outright order, but a subtle application of pressure. She’d learned that from her first husband. Old Jacques had been an expert at such tactics. Jonah shrugged. “That’s up to Jade. She’s plenty grown.”

Ruth came back into the room with the freshly ironed dress hanging from a wire hanger. She stopped so abruptly the dress swung on the hanger like a gust of wind had entered the room. “What’s up to Jade?”

Jonah kept his eyes fixed on Lucille. “They want Jade to sit with Miss Marlena while she heals.”

“Jade has a business to run.” Ruth’s tone said that was the end of it.

“Folks tend to do better in business when they have Lucas Bramlett behind them.” Lucille’s hands had pulled into fists so tight the big ruby ring she wore seemed to glow against her white skin. “She should be happy to tend to Marlena.”