The House on Persimmon Road (4 page)

A face materialized in his mind’s eye. It was an intelligent face, composed of uneven planes and angles, anchored with extraordinary green eyes.

Justine Hale,
he thought,
you had the whole world to choose from. Why’d you have to move into mine?

—  •  —

Justin sat on the steps and watched the moving van depart. It had Virginia plates, a reminder of her past life. It had been a good life, too…once.

The van picked up speed. A trail of red dust obscured the tags, obscured her final link with the kind of life she’d never know again.

She would be in shock yet, she supposed, if reality had not slapped her in the face.

She had learned all too quickly that a single-income household could not live as if there were still two. In spite of her share of the profit from the sale of the house, her bank balance threatened to shrivel like a grape in the sun.

Only moments ago she had debated how much to tip the movers. Six months ago she would’ve been far too generous. Financial reality was that she could no longer afford generosity. It was a humbling experience.

Even more humbling had been her efforts to borrow money against her share of the house until it sold. That had scared her.

The credit application had been the first she had filled out since the divorce.
Single. Separated. Married. Widowed. Divorced.
It had taken all the strength she could muster to mark the box,
Divorced.

She had become a statistic, labeled as abandoned and unloved. She had two children to raise and no credit of her own. The loan had been turned down.

Sadly, her circle of friends had shriveled, too.

If divorce could happen to Justine, they said, it could happen to anybody. They didn’t like being reminded. Invitations dwindled into nothing.

So now they didn’t have to be reminded. She was eight hundred miles away.

She reached for her purse and extracted a cigarette. Except for the occasional puff, she had stopped smoking years before, when she’d become pregnant with Pip. She’d only taken the habit up again when Philip had started talking about becoming a monk. It was a terrible habit, but she had convinced herself that cigarettes were cheaper than doctors and buckets of Valium. Once her life was back on track, she’d quit again. Right now she needed something to hold her ragged nerves together. Nicotine was it.

The smell of tobacco wafting into the great room through the opened windows lured Lottie onto the porch.
I used to smoke a bit, myself,
she said conversationally.
I do miss having a pipe of an evening. We used to grow the finest golden tobacco hereabouts. Elmer had a special way of curing the leaves. Mild, our tobacco was. A man came up every year from New Orleans to buy it. Said it made a cigar to rival that from the islands. Got a good price, too.

’Course, once the war started, nobody came. The last crop just cured until it rotted. A terrible waste, that was.

The heavy scent of smoke hung about Lottie like an invisible fog. She inhaled and noted precisely where in the purse Justine placed her cigarettes.

Oh, for the day she’d be flesh and bone again, Lottie thought. She longed for so much. Not riches, just the simple, everyday pleasures of life.

Before the new tenants had arrived, the balance of eternity stretched before her like a vacuous gauntlet, its torture being the promise of hours linked by boredom. Now that was all changed.

Lottie wished there was a way to let Justine know how welcome she was in her home. The expression on Justine’s face was sad. There was a line of perspiration on her brow.
You’re too young to appear so downhearted,
Lottie advised.
Why, when I got word that Elmer had been killed, I went straight out to the fields and worked past sundown. Slept good that night too. So get up. Get busy. That always worked for me.

“Justine!”

“I’m on the porch, Mother Hale.”

Agnes emerged, her mouth turned down in annoyance. “There aren’t any clothes closets. Not one!”

“Well, the house is older than I thought if it predates closets. We’ll just have to use chests of drawers and chifforobes. I’m sure there are pantries with shelves.”

The elder woman wasn’t to be appeased. “I don’t think I’m going to like it here, Justine.”

“Oh, Mother Hale, not you, too? Look out there. Don’t you think that’s a setting straight out of
Gone with the Wind?
It’s going to be good here for the children—for all of us—I know it is.”

“But we aren’t going to live in the yard, are we? We’re so isolated. Suppose one of us gets hurt?”

Justine almost mentioned Tucker Highsmith, but he was a man; who could depend on one of them? “Try to think positive.”

“The only thing I’m positive about is that our lives have turned topsy-turvy. You never laugh anymore, Justine. You used to laugh all the time.” Agnes averted her eyes and lowered her voice. “You don’t miss Philip at all, do you?”

Justine winced. “Yes, I miss him. But he’s on the other side of the world. So missing him doesn’t do much good.” It went unsaid that Philip apparently did not miss any of them. His only communication since Easter had been but a single card posted from some forsaken little island whose name she couldn’t even pronounce. He hadn’t said, “Wish you were here.”

Agnes looked off into the woods across the narrow dirt lane. “You blame me for his going, don’t you?”

“Actually, I don’t. Philip did what he thought was best for him. Now I’m doing what I think is best for us. I’m sorry you don’t agree.”

Agnes’s thin lips trembled. “Well, I’m scared. I’m old, I ache, and I’m infirm…”

Old!
exclaimed Lottie.
Old! Why, you don’t know what old is. How’d you like to be a hundred and fifty-nine! As for being infirm, trade places with me. Hah! Try out my condition and see where it gets you.

“Justine, are you whispering?”

Lottie froze. Had she almost gotten through? She forgot to flutter and dropped down to the steps and sat there, pondering possibilities.

Justine smiled. “Maybe you’re reading my mind. I’m scared too, Mother Hale. You don’t have a corner on fear.”

The words spoken, Justine thought,
I may be less than sure of myself, but I’m far from willing to surrender.
She decided then and there the image she was going to present was one of strength, not weakness.

She slipped her arm through Agnes’s. “C’mon, let’s go back in the house. We have more important things to do than engage in self-pity.”

“Justine!”

“Oh, Mother! What now?”

“This room,” Pauline said, flailing her arms to indicate the great room when Justine stood on the threshold. “I’ll do it up. The wallpaper has gone past fading into death, but ignoring that…”

“Let’s do ignore it for the moment. Later on we can budget some paint.”

“Budget?”

Until recently that was a word that had not been in Pauline’s vocabulary. Justine watched her mother struggle with its implication and give up the struggle.

“My peach sofa can go over there, the pickled-wood pedestal table behind it. And, I think the dhurrie rugs. We can frame the fireplace with your father’s collection of Japanese Buddhist sculpture.”

“No Buddhas, Mother. They’re too monkish.”

For an instant Pauline looked blank. “Oh, of course, how tactless of me. The furniture in here will have to go, especially that chair and stool. It looks carved by a one-armed woodsmith.”

Lottie swept into the room and plopped down in the chair.

This chair stays,
she said, glaring at Pauline.
This is my chair.
She had painstakingly created the needlepoint for the footstool. She’d spent two lifetimes in that chair. It was her anchor to the past and the present. It was made of cypress and the first thing Elmer had built for her after they were married. Lottie quivered. She’d give in on the wallpaper, but the chair stayed.
That’s my final word!
she huffed, watching to see if anyone heard.

Justine was trying to see the room completed through her mother’s eyes. All she saw was dirt and dust and cobwebs. “Keep in mind Pip, Judy Ann, and jelly. The television has to go in here.”

“They can learn to keep their feet off the furniture. You did. We can eat our meals in the dining room, like civilized people. Being suddenly poor doesn’t mean we lack manners.”

“I’ve decided on the dining room for my office.”

Pauline’s elegant jaw dropped. “That means we’ll have to take all of our meals in the kitchen!”

“You’ll get used to it, Mother. Anyway, where we eat is the least of my worries.”

“We’ll have to find a place for my writing desk,” put in Agnes. “Someplace that gets good light, so I can read the fine print on entry blanks.”

“You and your contests,” Pauline said waspishly. “What have you ever won other than that plastic camera that didn’t work? The money you spend on postage…”

“You never know. I might win a million dollars. That’d stick in your craw, wouldn’t it? And anyway, it’s my money I spend on postage—out of my social security check. For a widow in the throes of bankruptcy, Pauline, you’re awfully snooty about money.”

“How impertinent of you, Agnes. It’s ill-mannered to speak of another’s ill fortune.”

Agnes tossed her head; purple curls bounced. “I like being impertinent. It’s good for my constitution. Like it or not, I’m putting my desk in here.”

“Justine, are you going to allow her to speak to me like that?”

“Mother, you have a perfectly good tongue, which you’ve been using to great advantage. What I won’t allow is the two of you to continue to drag me into your quarrels. Settle it yourselves. It’s all I can do to referee battles between Pip and Judy Ann. But if you’d like my opinion of what would go nicely in here, may I suggest dueling pistols, loaded? Now, if you will both excuse me, I’m going to change into some jeans, then see about lunch.”

“I’ll be along to help in a minute,” said Agnes, falsely contrite.

“So will I,” said Pauline, not to be outshone.

If it was me,
said Lottie as she accompanied Justine to the kitchen,
I’d serve those two up a saucer of cream and be done with it, that catty they are.

“Mom, why don’t we just go find a McDonald’s?”

Judy Ann seconded Pip’s suggestion with enthusiasm. “Listen, you two, we can’t drive miles and miles for pizza or hamburgers for every meal. Besides the expense, we’re in the country now. Keep looking, try those boxes over there in the corner.”

“You should’ve told Daddy he couldn’t divorce us and leave us poor,” accused Judy Ann.

“Dear heart, we’re not truly poor. We’re on a budget. It’s just that the money we have has to last.”

Pip frowned. “For how long? Into the next century?”

Justine turned her green-eyed gaze on her son. “You know what I think… the art of sarcasm must be genetic. You sounded just like your father.” Or either of your grandmothers, she amended ruefully.

“If Dad ever sends for me, I’m going.”

“If he ever sends for you
and
buys your ticket, I’ll help you pack.”

Justine was instantly contrite. Pip’s threat was an empty one. They both knew it.

“I’m sorry for that remark.”

“Why did Dad leave, Mom?”

“I don’t know exactly. I wasn’t to blame, nor were either of you. It was something eating inside him.”

Judy Ann climbed on a box and dangled her legs. “He went ’cause he didn’t like us anymore. Daddies who love their kids don’t shave their heads and wear yellow nightgowns. Melissa’s mother said so. She said Daddy was crazy.”

“Your father is not crazy. He…”

Justine threw up her hands in a defeated gesture. Damn Philip for slinking off without giving the children an explanation. It was the least he could’ve done. The onerous task was left to her. Even under the most ordinary of situations, it was hard to explain adult actions to youngsters.
Do as I say, not as I do.
Kids were smarter than that now. They wanted truths. She wasn’t a psychologist, so how was she to explain Philip’s actions when even he couldn’t put them into words beyond shouting and screaming that he had to leave. Had to! Recalling their last verbal battle, after which he had slammed out of the house, filled her with a desperate sadness. It took her a few seconds to shake loose from the lingering aftereffects of recall.

“Mom,” Judy Ann said, voice raised slightly, “you look like you’re about to cry.”

Justine’s eyes lost their glazed look and she blinked back tears. “I’m not about to cry. I was lost in thought there for a minute. Listen, why don’t we talk about your dad another time?”

She turned to Pip. “You’re the man in the family now. I don’t need you puttering around here half-cocked, so other than our whole world crashing down upon us, why’re you so irritable? We talked about this move. It was going to be an adventure. We decided we’d take the bad parts with the good. You were all for it.”

A large part of the reason Pip had been anxious to leave Virginia, Justine knew, was the embarrassment he had suffered among his peers. Being abandoned by one’s father, who went to the other side of the world to play at becoming a monk, was outside the realm of adolescent understanding. It was beyond adult understanding! Here it was months later, and she could still visualize with clarity her own friends’ gaping astonishment.

The boy shifted his gaze to a point beyond her shoulder and said with unaccustomed dignity, “You never notice anything anymore, Mom. I’m going through puberty.”

Justine was speechless for a full half minute.

“You’re not. You’re only eleven.”

“I am.” It was almost a plea. “I have hair under my arms. That’s how it starts. My gym teacher told me.”

A thousand pictures ran through Justine’s mind. Pip as a chubby baby. Pip riding his tricycle, his bike. Pip performing handstands on his skateboard.

His gym teacher told him…. It came upon her full force that now she had to be father as well as mother to her offspring. But Pip couldn’t be growing up. Not yet. It was too soon.