Shiloh and Other Stories (11 page)

“I don’t know. Looks like she’s moved in. She went to trade day out here at the stockyard, and she come back with the aw-fulest conglomeration you ever saw.”

“What all did she get?”

“A rocking chair she’s going to refinish, and a milk glass lamp, and some kind of whatnot, and a big grabbag—a box of junk you buy for a dollar and then there might be one thing in it you want. I never saw such par’phenalin.”

“Was there anything in it she could use?” asks Rita Jean. Rita Jean, who has no children, is always intensely concerned about Cleo’s family.

“She found a wood spoon she said was antique.”

“People are antique-crazy.”

“You’re telling me.” Cleo has spent years trying to get rid of things she has collected. After her husband died, she moved to town, to a little brick house with a dishwasher and wall-to-wall carpet. Cleo’s two sons haven’t mentioned it, but Linda says it’s awful that Cleo has gotten rid of every reminder of Jake. There is nothing but the picture album left. All his suits were given away, and the rest of his things boxed up and sold. She gave away all his handkerchiefs, neatly washed and ironed. They were monogrammed with the initials RJW, for Robert Jacob Watkins. And now somebody with totally different initials is carrying them around and blowing his nose on them. Linda reminds her of this every so often but Cleo isn’t sorry. She doesn’t want to live in the past.

After talking to Rita Jean, Cleo cleans the house with unusual attention. The kids have scattered their things everywhere. Cleo hangs up Tammy’s clothes and puts Davey’s toys in the trunk Linda has brought. The trunk is yellow enamel with thin black swirls that make it look old. Linda has antiqued it.

Cleo pins patterns down on the length of material laid on the table. She is cutting out a set of cheerleader outfits that have to be done by next week. The cheerleader outfits are red and gray, made like bib overalls, with shorts. Everything is double seams, and the bibs have pockets with flaps.

“Get down from there, Prissy-Tail!” The cat has attacked the flimsy pattern and torn it. “You know you’re not supposed to be on Mama’s sewing.” Cleo waves the scissors at Prissy-Tail, who scampers onto Cleo’s shoulder. Cleo sets her down on a pillow, saying, “I can’t cut out with you dancing on my shoulder.” Prissy-Tail struts around on the divan, purring.

“I could tell you things that would sizzle your tailfeathers,” Cleo says.

—

Cleo backs in the front door, pulling the storm door shut with her foot. On TV there is a Wild West shoot-out, and the radio is blaring out an accompanying song with a heavy, driving beat. Tammy is talking on the telephone.

“What do you mean, what do I mean? Oh, you know what I mean. Anyway, we’re at my grandmother’s and my mother’s going out tonight—Davey, quit it!—that was my little brother. He’s a meanie. I just stuck my tongue out at him. Anyway, do you think he’ll ask you or what? Unh-huh. That’s what I thought.”

Cleo stands in the hallway, adjusting to the sounds. Tammy’s patter on the phone is meaningless to her. Linda had never done that. Linda had been such a quiet child. She hears Tammy speaking in a knowing tone.

“You know what April told Kevin? I nearly died! Kevin was going to ask her for her homework? And he said to her could she meet him at the Dairy Queen and she said she might and she might not, and he said to her could she carry him because his car was broke down? And she said he had legs, he could walk! I think he’s mad at her.”

“Watch out, Tammy, I’m coming through,” says Cleo. Davey has returned to the television, and Tammy is sprawled out in the kitchen doorway. Tammy is wearing ripped bluejeans and a velour pullover with stripes down the sleeves. Tammy bends her
knees so half the doorway is clear, and Cleo squeezes by, balancing the groceries on her hip.

Tammy hangs up and pokes into the grocery sack. “Chicken! Not again!”

“Chicken was ninety-nine cents a pound,” says Cleo. “You better be glad you’re where there’s food on the table, kid.”

“Ick! All that yellow fat.”

“The yellower a chicken is, the better it is. That’s how you tell when they’re good. If they’re blue they’re not any ’count. Or if they’ve got spots.”

“Oooh!” Tammy makes a twisted face. “Why can’t you just buy it already fried?”

“Hah! We’re lucky we don’t have to pull the feathers off. I used to kill chickens, you know. Whack their heads off, dip ’em in boiling water, pick off the feathers. I’d like to see you pick a chicken!”

Cleo reaches around Tammy and hugs her. Tammy squeals. “Hey, why don’t we just eat the cat?”

“Now you’re going to hurt somebody’s feelings,” says Cleo, as Tammy squirms away from her.

Tammy prances out of the room and the noises return. The television; the radio; the buzz of the electric clock; the whir of the furnace making its claim for attention. The kids never hear the noises. Kids never seem to care about anything anymore, Cleo thinks. Tammy had a complete toy kitchen, with a stove and refrigerator, when she was five, and she didn’t care anything about it. It cost a fortune. Linda’s children always make Cleo feel old.

“I’m old enough to be a grandmother,” Rita Jean said early in their acquaintance. Rita Jean had lost her husband too.

“I think of you as a spring chicken,” Cleo told her.

“You’re not that much older than me. Louise Brown is two years younger than me, and she’s a grandmother. Imagine, thirty-five and a grandmother.”

“That makes me feel old.”

“I feel old,” said Rita Jean. “To think that the war could be that long ago.”

Rita Jean’s husband was twenty-one when he left for Vietnam. It was early in the war and nobody thought it would turn out so bad. She has a portrait on her dresser of a young man she hardly knew, a child almost. Now Rita Jean is old enough to be the mother of a boy like that.

Cleo told Rita Jean she could still get married and have a baby. She could start all over again.

“If anybody would have me,” said Rita Jean.

“You don’t try.”

“Sometimes I think I’m just waiting to get into Senior Citizens.”

“Listen to yourself,” said Cleo. “That’s the most ridiculous thing I ever heard. Why,
I’m
not but fifty-two.”

“They say that’s the prime of life,” said Rita Jean.

—

“Where are you going, Mama? Tell me where you’re going.” Davey is pulling at Linda’s belt.

“Oh, Davey, look. You’re going to mess up Mama’s outfit. I told you seven times, Shirley and me’s going to Paducah to hear some music. It’s not anything you’re interested in, so don’t be saying you want to go too.”

Linda has washed her hair and put on a new pants suit, a tangerine color. Cleo knows Linda cannot afford it, but Linda always has to have the best.

Tammy, sitting with her legs propped up on the back of the divan, says, with mock surprise, “You mean you’re going to miss
Charlie’s Angels
? You ain’t
never
missed
Charlie’s Angels
!”

“Them younguns want you to stay home,” Cleo says as Linda combs her hair. It is wet and falls in skinny black ringlets.

“I can’t see what difference it makes.” Linda lights a cigarette.

“These children need a daddy around.”

“You’re full of prunes if you think I’m going back to Bob!” Linda says, turning on the blow dryer. She raises her voice. “I don’t feel like hanging around the same house with somebody that can go for three hours without saying a word. He might as well not be there.”

“Hush. The children might hear you.”

Linda works on her hair, holding out damp strands and brushing
them under with the dryer to style them. Cleo admires the way her daughter keeps up her appearance. She can’t imagine Bob would ever look at another woman when he has Linda. Cleo cannot believe Bob has mistreated Linda. It is just as though she has been told some wild tale about outer space, like something on a TV show.

Cleo says, “I bet he’s just held in and held in till he’s tight as a tick. People do that. I know you—impatient. Listen. A man takes care of a woman. But it works the other way round too. If he thinks you’re not giving him enough loving, he’ll draw up—just like a morning glory at evening. You think he’s not paying any attention to you, but maybe you’ve been too busy for him.”

Cleo knows Linda thinks she is silly. Daughters never believe their mothers. “You have to remember to give each other some loving,” she says, her confidence fading. “Don’t take each other for granted.”

“Bob’s no morning glory.” Linda puts on lip gloss and works her lips together.

“You’ll be wondering how to buy them kids fine things. You’ll be off on your own, girl.”

Linda says nothing. She examines her face in the mirror and picks at a speck on her cheek.

—

Davey gets his lessons on the floor in front of the television. He is learning a new kind of arithmetic Cleo has never heard of. Later, Cleo watches
Charlie’s Angels
with Tammy, and after Tammy goes to bed, she watches the
10 O’Clock Report
. She tells herself that she has to wait up to unlock the doors for Linda. She has put a chain on the door, because young people are going wild, breaking in on defenseless older women. Cleo is afraid Linda’s friend Shirley is a bad influence. Shirley had to get married and didn’t finish school. Now she is divorced. She even let her husband have her kids, while she went gallivanting around. Cleo cannot imagine a mother giving her kids away. Shirley’s husband moved to Alabama with the kids, and Shirley sees them only occasionally. On TV, Johnny Carson keeps breaking into the funny dance he does when a joke flops. Cleo usually gets a kick out of that, but it doesn’t seem funny this time, with him repeating
it so much. Johnny has been divorced twice, but now he is happily married. He is the stay-at-home type, she has read.

Cleo is well into the
Tomorrow
show, which is a disturbing discussion of teenage alcoholism, when Linda returns. Linda’s cheeks are glowing and she looks happy.

“I thought Duke Ellington was dead,” says Cleo, when Linda tells her about the concert.

“He is. But his brother leads the band. He directs the band like this.” Linda makes her hands dive in fishlike movements. “He danced around, with his back to the audience, swaying along in a trance. He had on this dark pink suit the exact same color of Miss Imogene’s panties that time in fifth grade—when she fell off the desk?”

Cleo groans. Everything seems to distress her, she notices. She is afraid Linda has been drinking.

“And the band had this great singer!” Linda goes on. “She wore a tight skullcap with sequins on it? And a brown tuxedo, and she sounded for all the world like Ella Fitzgerald. Boy, was she sexy. She had a real deep voice, but she could go real high at times.”

Linda unscrews the top of a quart of Coke and pours herself a glass. She drinks the Coke thirstily. “I wouldn’t be explaining all this to you if you had gone. I tried to get you to go with me.”

“And leave the kids here?” Cleo turns off the TV.

“Shirley had on the darlingest outfit. It had these pleats—what do you want, Davey?”

Davey is trailing a quilt into the living room. “I couldn’t sleep,” he whines. “The big girls was going to get me.”

“He means Charlie’s Angels,” says Cleo. “We were watching them and they kept him awake.”

“He’s had a bad dream. Here, hon.” Linda hugs Davey and takes him back to bed.

—

“I worked myself to death yesterday getting this house in shape and it looks like a cyclone hit it,” Cleo says to Rita Jean on the telephone the next morning. “First, tell me how’s Dexter.”

Cleo listens to Rita Jean’s account of Dexter’s trip to the vet. “He said there’s nothing to do now but wait. He’s not suffering
any, and the vet said it would be all right if I keep him at home. He’s asleep most of the time. He’s the pitifulest thing.”

Rita Jean’s cat is thirteen. After the news came from Vietnam, Rita Jean got a cat and then another cat when the first one got run over. The present cat she has kept in the house all its life.

“The one thing about cats,” says Cleo, trying to sound comforting, “is that there’s more where that one come from. You’ll grieve, but you’ll get over it and get you another cat.”

“I guess so.”

Cleo tells about Linda’s night out. “She was dolled up so pretty, she looked like she was going out on a date. It made me feel so funny. She had on a new pants suit. The kids didn’t want her to go, either. They know something’s wrong. They never miss a thing.”

“Kids don’t miss much,” Rita Jean agrees.

“And how in the world does she think they can afford to keep on like they’ve been doing? But I think they’ll get back together.”

“Surely they will.”

“Knock on wood.” Cleo has to stretch to reach the door facing. She is getting a headache. Absently, she watches the
Today
credits roll by as Rita Jean tells about her brother’s trip out West. He tried to get her to go along, but she couldn’t think of closing her house up and she wouldn’t leave Dexter. “They went to the Grand Canyon and Yosemite and a bunch of other places,” Rita Jean says. “You should see the load of pictures they took. They must of takened a bushel.”

“It must be something to be able to take off like that,” Cleo says. “I never had the chance when we lived on the farm, but now there are too many maniacs on the road.” Cleo sips her coffee, knowing it will aggravate her headache. “The way things are going around here, I think maybe I ought to go out West. I think I’ll just get me a wig and go running around!” Cleo laughs at herself, but a pain jabs at her temple. Rita Jean laughs, and Cleo goes on, “I thinks Linda’s going to have it out with Bob finally. They’re going to meet over at the lake one day next week. It wasn’t none of my business, but I tried to tell her she ought to simmer down and think it over.”

“I think they’ll patch it up, Cleo. I really do.”

“That Bob Isbell was always the best thing!” Cleo leans back in her chair, almost dreamily. “I tell you, girl, I couldn’t have survived if it hadn’t been for him when Jake passed away. He was here every hour; he seen to it that we all got to where we was going; he took care of the house here and then went back and took care of their house. He was even washing dishes. Davey was little-bitty then. Of course, none of us could think straight and we didn’t see right then all he was doing, but don’t you know we appreciated it. I never will forget how good he was.”