Phantom of Riverside Park (19 page)

“Well, you know how Miss Anna Lisa loves to
entertain. She’d spent three weeks getting ready to put on the dog
for Daddy’s birthday. It was the tail end of spring, and by all the
laws of nature the beetles that had invaded the house during the
winter should have been gone.”

“What beetles?”

“Lord, Lizzie. Don’t you know about the
Japanese beetles?” She shook her head. “Our own government brought
them over here because of the pecan trees, some disease or other. I
forget. Anyhow, these yellow-backed Japanese beetles were supposed
to take care of the problem without chemicals, and that way
everybody would be happy, the pecan growers as well as the
environmentalists.”

“Don’t tell me it’s another kudzu story.”
Kudzu,
a Japanese vine that had been imported years ago to
stop erosion and had now taken over the South. Everywhere you
looked kudzu was growing rampant, covering shrubs and trees and
whole houses before you could say Jack Robinson.

“Yep,” Taylor said. “Same thing. You see,
what the government didn’t know and didn’t take the time to find
out was that these Japanese beetles winter under rocks, and there’s
just not enough rocks in the South to take care of all those
multiplying critters, so they moved on to the next best thing.
Folks’ houses. One day Savannah Rose counted a hundred and
sixty-five beetles clinging to the front porch ceiling.”

“Who’s Savannah Rose? An aunt?”

Taylor gave her this funny look, like she was
supposed to know Savannah Rose when the plain fact was, she knew
hardly anything about his family.

“She’s the maid.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”

Taylor gave her another look, then flipped
open his chemistry book as if he’d completely lost interest in
telling his story. Elizabeth wished she hadn’t asked about Savannah
Rose. She wished she’d kept her mouth shut and listened to the one
and only family story Taylor Belliveau had ever told and was ever
likely to tell, considering the way things were going.

“Aren’t you going to tell me about the
beetles?”

“What’s the use?”

“Please.”

“Well, all right.” He leaned over and kissed
her. “You’re so pretty when you smile, Lizzie, you could make a man
do anything.”

“Thank you, Taylor. Now, about the
beetles...”

“The party was in full swing, all set up in
the dining room with Miss Anna Lisa’s finest china and the cut
crystal Daddy bought in Austria and everybody all gussied up in
their finest feathers. They were eating turtle soup when all of a
sudden Myra Jane Crocket crunches down on a beetle and says, ‘Anna
Lisa, I do declare. What did you put in this soup to make it so
crunchy? Peanuts?’ Mother was just getting ready to deny the
peanuts, when beetles started dropping off the ceiling like dead
flies.”

“Well, you know Miss Anna Lisa,” he said,
which of course, Elizabeth didn’t. The only thing of a personal
nature she knew about Miss Anna Lisa Belliveau was that she was a
regular Friday morning customer at Wanda’s Kut ‘N Kurl and that she
always left a ten dollar tip, no matter what Wanda did or didn’t do
to her hair, which was naturally gray and thin as tissue paper.

And Elizabeth only knew those small details
because Wanda’s daughter Betty June had told her. But she wasn’t
about to say to Taylor, “No, I don’t know,” not after the Savannah
Rose incident.

So she kept her mouth shut and Taylor
continued his story.

“Well Miss Anna Lisa just picks up this
little silver bell, cool as a cucumber, and Savannah Rose comes out
of the kitchen. ‘Savannah Rose,’ she says, ‘I do believe we have a
few uninvited guests.’ She rolls her eyes at the beetles, still
dropping off the ceiling, right and left. Savannah Rose just
sashays out as big as you please and comes back with a Dust Buster.
‘Would y’all mind scootin’ your chairs back,’ she says, and then
she proceeds to dust busting the linen table cloth till every last
beetle has been sucked up.”

“Miss Anna Lisa never blinks an eye through
the whole thing, and then after all the beetles are cleared away,
she says, ‘Bring Myra Jane another bowl of soup, then mail that
Dust Buster to the President of the United States who should have
been paying attention before letting a foreign bug into this
country.”

Elizabeth had had to wrap her arms around
herself to contain her own mirth.

And now she was doing the same thing, only
this time it’s not mirth she’s trying to contain: it’s grief.

She supposed she shouldn’t have been
surprised at how much she’s grieving over Taylor. After all, he was
the father of her child, and a woman never forgets that
connection.

All the things she’d loved about Taylor
pulled at her like a riptide. Papa got up quietly and went into the
kitchen where he proceeded to turn on the water and clank the
teapot down on the stove. Hot tea and hugs had always been Mae
Mae’s remedy for sadness, and Elizabeth knew that pretty soon Papa
would come out of the kitchen and dispense both.

Nicky started calling to her from the
bathroom.

“Mommy, you said you’d scrubby dub dub,” he
called.

She couldn’t possibly go down the hall in the
shape she was in. How could she explain to Nicky that his daddy was
dead when she’d never told him a thing about Taylor? Someday he
would ask the hard questions. Who and where and when? But most of
all, why?

Elizabeth had always harbored a secret dream
that before that day came, Taylor Belliveau would change his mind
about his son and decide that he wanted to be a part of Nicky’s
life, after all. A
real
part. A man who would stop by to
take his son to ball games and teach him to ride a bicycle and set
up a fund for his college education. But more importantly, she’d
pictured him telling his son the family history, weaving it around
the quirky, humorous sort of stories he’d told to Elizabeth that
long ago day when autumn leaves rained on them in golden confetti
and all things seemed possible.

“Mommy?”

“I’m coming.”

Papa handed her a cup of steaming hot tea,
then braced her shoulders as if his big hands were the only thing
keeping her on her feet. And many times, they had been.

“Everything’s going to be all right,
Elizabeth.”

And she knew it was true because Thomas
Jennings never lied. He was the one true thing in her life that she
could always count on.

“I know I will,” she said, then she carried
her tea down the hall to the bathroom where Nicky was waiting.

Celine didn’t like it when Elizabeth asked
for a day off to attend Taylor’s funeral.

“Is he kin?” she’d said.

“No.”

“I don’t usually allow absences unless the
deceased is kin.”

It was hard to think of Taylor as
the
deceased,
even now, sitting in the back of the First Baptist
Church at Tunica and watching his family follow the casket down the
center aisle, Miss Anna Lisa sobbing so hard she had to be
supported on both sides.

She passed right by Elizabeth without even
turning her head. Sitting there with her hands clutching the
Baptist hymnal and wearing the pink dress she’d imagined herself
wearing to her wedding with Taylor, Elizabeth felt rejection as
fresh as if she were sitting on a quilt under the moonlight
listening to Taylor say he couldn’t marry poor white trash.

There she was, the mother of Anna Lisa’s only
grandchild, and she might as well have been a pillar of salt.
Elizabeth’s thoughts confused her. Only a few weeks ago she’d been
terrified that the Belliveaus wanted to take Nicky away, and now
she’s saddened that they don’t even acknowledge her presence.

It’s not herself she sorrows for, but Nicky,
whose idea of family has been shrunken by events beyond his
control. There are many things that define a person’s life, but his
name is one of the most important. The past is wrapped up in a
name, and sometimes the future.

Just think how different her own life would
have been if her name had been Belliveau instead of Jennings. Not
that she’s ashamed of her own name, not by a long shot. But it
seems unfair that Nicky’s got stolen from him by a father who is
now dead and soon to be buried and will never again have a chance
to rectify his mistake.

The preacher had been droning on for nearly
thirty minutes, which was one of the things Elizabeth absolutely
hated about Baptist funerals. The dead have to suffer a long-winded
sermon before they can be put in their final resting place.

Maybe that’s a good thing, though. Maybe it
gives them a chance to find out about eternity.

The preacher finally finished and the choir
got up to sing “Amazing Grace.” Up front Miss Anna Lisa swooned and
when a woman big as a hydrangea bush got up from the opposite aisle
and started fanning her with one of those paper fans on a stick
that bore a big printed advertisement for the Crazy Horse Casino,
Taylor’s daddy snatched it out of her hand and threw it so hard it
landed in the baptismal fount.

“Let her grieve in peace,” he said, and
Elizabeth understood what he meant. Sitting in the back with no one
even knowing her connection, she at last made her peace with
Taylor.

In life Taylor had been self-centered and
spoiled, but in death he could be anything she chose. And someday
when her son asked about his father, she would tell only the good
things she remembered. She wouldn’t make him a saint but she could
make him more appealing, for she knew this to be true: every child
needs to think of his father as a hero.

While the choir crooned, “I once was lost but
now am found, was blind but now I see,” Elizabeth slipped out the
side door unnoticed. And as she headed north toward Memphis what
she saw was not the past, tarnished and worn, but a long shining
highway that led to the future.

“So we beat on, boats against the current,
borne

back ceaselessly into the past.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald

from
The Great Gatsby

Thomas was sitting on the park bench talking
to Fred about Paris, when this perfect stranger walked up to him
and started asking nosey questions. If there was anything in this
world Thomas despised more than a nosey question, he didn’t know
what it was.

“Is that little boy your great-grandson?”

That’s the first thing the man said without
so much as a
howdy do
. The last time Thomas had any
dealings with a stranger in the park, it had led to all kinds of
problems, even if it did all turn out right in the end.

“It’s none of your business,” Thomas told
him, right off the bat.

His answer like to tickled Fred to death. He
was sitting down there on his end of the bench guffawing, not
caring the least bit who heard.

“You are Thomas Jennings, aren’t you?”

“What are you, the IRS?”

“There’s no need to get upset, Mr.
Jennings.”

“I’m not upset. Do you see me gettin’ upset,
Fred?”

“He ain’t upset,” Fred said. “If he was, you
wouldn’t be standing there flapping your mouth. You’d be nothing
but a greasy spot on the grass.” Fred waved his hand impatiently at
the man. “Move over. You’re blocking my sun.”

“The boy is your son?”

“No, you crazy fool,” Fred told him. “I said
sun. Get out of the sun and go pester somebody else.”

“Look, there’s no need to get hostile.”

“You ain’t seen hostile till you get me riled
up. Me and Thomas here
ate
men like you in the war.”

The man was getting more upset by the minute,
which made Thomas proud to call Fred his friend. He was getting too
old to deal with these situations all by himself. It helped to know
that he had somebody on his side.

“Who are
you
?” the man asked
Fred.

“Who’s asking?”

The man told his name so fast it sounded like
he was speaking in tongues. Thomas studied him so he could remember
every detail when he told Elizabeth. If he told Elizabeth. Maybe he
wouldn’t. She had enough on her mind, what with Nicky’s daddy being
dead and gone for two weeks now and that meeting about the loan
from David Lassiter hanging over her head.

With his dark skin and slanted eyes, the man
looked foreign, but for the life of him Thomas couldn’t make out
his nationality. His age was hard to determine, too.

The only thing Thomas could tell for sure was
that the man had on a navy blue suit with a bright red necktie
which meant he was probably a bachelor. Lola Mae would have died
before she’d have ever let Thomas out of the house wearing a red
necktie. He’d tried once, but she said it made him look like a
horny old rooster in a yard full of setting hens, and that was the
end of Thomas’s adventures in the world of high fashion.

He was just getting ready to tell the man to
leave, when Fred beat him to the punch.

“Well, Mr. Kitsnjammer...”

“Kirkinhammer...”

“Whatever your name is, go on and leave us
alone. Me and Thomas’s got important things to discuss and don’t
want you horning in on our time. Now get out of here. Scram.”

The man high tailed it out of there so fast
you’d have thought Fred was after him with a shotgun. Thomas and
Fred laughed till tears ran down their face.

“What country do you reckon he’s from?”
Thomas said.

“India?”

“I was thinkin’ maybe South America.”

“Naw. He’d a been wearin’ a mustache.”

“I don’t see how you figure that, Fred.”

“Ain’t you ever seen them coffee
commercials?”

“What in tarnation do coffee commericals have
to do with Mr. Krackenweiner?”

“Kitsnjammer.”

“That’s what you said the last time, Fred,
and he said Krackenweiner.”

“Naw, he didn’t.”

“Yes, he did.”