The Sweetest Thing (4 page)

“Do you ever doubt?” I asked him.

“Doubt what?”

“Everything. The faith you were raised to believe, the purpose of being alive and human—just everything.”

He sat down on the pew in front of mine and turned to face me. “Only about every other day.”

His answer took me off guard. “Really? You, a Bible college student. You have doubts?”

“Sure. Sometimes.”

Hank Wilson struck me as a solid young man, not flirtatious, not overly ambitious, not obnoxious. Level-headed. We sat there in the back of the church without saying another word. I don't know what was going through his mind, but I was thinking about Jackie and how she had died at the age of eighteen and how horribly much it still hurt, even a year and a half later.

Finally I whispered, “Someone I cared about died, died quickly, young, and it wasn't fair at all.”

“I'm sorry to hear it.” He didn't say anything else, just let me sit in the silence. He stayed with me for probably a half hour, never saying a word. Still his presence calmed me.

The next day, Hank showed up at the church. He had one hand in the pocket of his pants and held out a small book in the other. “This is for you.”

“What is it?”

“Just a book I think you might like. It was my grandmother's.”

As he gave me the book, our hands brushed together, and I felt a flush come to my face. I hesitated. “I can't take this.”

“My grandmother told me to pass it along to someone else who needed encouragement, who was hurting down deep.”

“Oh.” I blushed again and turned my face down so he wouldn't see the tears that had suddenly glazed my eyes. I had told him about Jackie, and he was trying to help. “Thank you” was all I could choke out.

“She said God used that little book to help her, as part of her pathway through grief.” Hank gave me a half smile. “You don't have to keep it if it doesn't help you. My grandmother gave it to me after my father died. I was having a real hard time accepting his death and was mad at everyone living and dead. Especially God.”

I glanced up at him, took the book, and again said, “Thanks.”

That had been months ago. Now I was absolutely sure I needed to pass the book along to Perri Singleton. It happened the same way every time. I just
knew
. Father called it the “nudging of the Holy Ghost” and Mother laughed at him and said, “It's good ol' woman's intuition.”

It didn't matter. I knew.

I sank to my knees beside that bed and said the Lord's Prayer out loud and then prayed for my family and Hank and the Chandlers and the Jeffries. I finished by saying, “And please watch over the Singleton family and be very near to them in their grief.”

I was about to get off my knees when I thought of something else. “Oh, and Father, thank you for Perri Singleton. I think we're going to be good friends. Amen.”

Just another one of those things I knew.

CHAPTER

3

Perri

At first, I blamed Mr. Hoover for Daddy's death. I needed someone to blame, someone besides my father, to help me keep the rage and grief from strangling me. I blamed Herbert Hoover, and then I got busy with the thousands of details surrounding a funeral. Weddings are planned a year in advance. Funerals, at least Daddy's, rushed up from behind and knocked us over. And as we struggled to get back on our feet, the urgent matters kept me focused, kept me swallowing that hard ball of hate that had lodged itself in my throat.

Late in the evening on the day of Daddy's death, Ben, our servant boy, brought Barbara and Irvin home. Mamma was in the rocking chair on the screened-in porch, and my siblings and I were sitting on the wicker sofa, across from her. Barbara was swinging her skinny legs back and forth. My thirteen-year-old sister, with shining blue eyes and auburn hair all primped and curled, looked up at Mamma with disdain. “Why did I have to come home? I thought I was going to spend the night at Lulu's.” Her eyes flashed impertinence.

“I know,” Mamma whispered. “I know that, Barbara, but something bad has happened.”

Irvin, ten and small for his age, had a big frown on his freckled face, and his arms were crossed tightly across his chest, his toes pointing down so that the tips of his baseball cleats touched the porch floor. “Yeah, I figured that,” he said, “when Ben came to get us and wouldn't say a word. Just stared right ahead the whole drive home. That's not like Ben.”

“What happened?” Now Barbara sounded worried.

Mamma closed her eyes briefly, and I thought she was going to break down. She lifted her hand to her eyes and dabbed them with a handkerchief. “Daddy is . . . is gone.”

They stared at her, not understanding.

Mamma must have realized she had chosen the wrong words. “Your father . . . your father had an accident.”

I chewed on my lip and felt the tears spring in my eyes.

“Where is he?” Barbara squealed. “What do you mean? Is he okay?”

Mamma shook her head and tears spilled down her cheeks.

Barbara stared at me, horror-stricken. “What happened? What happened to Daddy?”

I got off the sofa, knelt between Barbara and Irvin, and grabbed them both toward me as Mamma said, “I think that Daddy felt so very sad in his heart and his mind about all the pressure he was under and he didn't know what to do, and so . . .” Silence. “He took his life.”

I don't remember what else was said. I remember Barbara squealing again and Irvin wiggling out of my embrace, his face such a deep shade of red I thought he had a fever, and Mamma trying to console us.

And I remember the rage inside of me.
How could you, Daddy? Why didn't you tell me?

I think I stayed there with Mamma and Barbara and Irvin, but I wasn't really there. I was taking a walk with my father, discussing his business and stocks and money. My mind worked like my father's, and he often confided in me.

But he hadn't this time.

I pushed the thought away, but it came back, bombarding me with intensity.
It's up to me to provide for the family now.

———

The next day blurred before me. Dellareen spent hours cooking and also organizing all the food that people brought by the house. I held on to Barbara and Irvin while they cried and then helped pack their bags. Lulu's parents asked if they could keep Barbara for two days, and Irvin stayed with his buddy Pete. That left me with Mamma and Dellareen and a mountain of decisions that Mamma was in no shape to make.

We had heard the stories of the big finance men jumping out of windows on Wall Street after the crash of '29. I'd heard from Lisa Young, whose father owned an insurance company in Atlanta, that over twenty thousand people had committed suicide in 1931—way exceeding the figures during the stock market crash.

But my father? I guessed Mamma, for all her seeming naiveté, had known of our financial troubles, perhaps even more than I had. She had tried, in her sunny, optimistic way to talk Daddy out of his morose moods, had probably begged him to talk to his doctor friends. I think she would have offered him opium if she thought it would have helped—no matter that all kinds of people were addicted to it.

But Daddy chose another way.

I stood there in our church—St. Luke's Episcopal—on Tuesday, March 7, dressed in black, tears refusing to run out of my eyes. The church was jam-packed, and for all her courage, Mamma looked completely destroyed. She kept her lips pressed together, her forehead an accordion of wrinkles, and nodded, shook hands, and thanked people. Interminably.

Everyone from Washington Seminary was there—the students, the teachers, the principal.

Girls from my class paraded up to me, not knowing what to say. After all, “I am so sorry that your father killed himself” lacked a bit of sympathy. Peggy Pender squeezed my hand with her white glove and whispered from under her black-veiled hat, “It's horrible.” That was all she could get out before biting her lips and turning away. Peggy's own father had suffered a stroke two years earlier, and the doctors equated it to the stress of the financial world.

Mae Pearl McFadden grabbed me in a tight hug. “Oh, Perri! Whatever is going on in this world?” Emily Bratton—the Brat—didn't say a word, just held my hand in hers for a long time. Macon Ferguson did what she always did—she talked with her hands, turning them over and over and then up and down. I followed them as in a silent movie. I didn't hear a word she said.

At Oakland Cemetery, where we buried Daddy, people stood around in little clusters, and I heard them whispering among themselves about the bank holiday imposed by Mr. Roosevelt and the Congress. That silly title made it sound like a vacation.

We're on a bank holiday too,
I thought. Never again would Daddy walk through the doors of the Georgia Trust Bank. Never again would I go meet him there after school, cross Peachtree Street at Five Points, and walk with him to Jacobs' Drugstore, where he'd buy me a Coke.

At the graveside, Mrs. Chandler came up to Mamma and hugged her tight. I was surprised to see Dobbs there beside her, dressed in black, with her black hair and eyes, her head covered in a black scarf. She came over to me and grabbed me by the shoulders. I thought she might shake me. Instead, she whispered, “I am so very sorry for your loss.” Her eyes were filled with tears, and it occurred to me that this girl was somehow familiar with deep pain. She pressed a small book into my hands and whispered again, “I will be praying for you.” Then she was gone.

Patches from the Sky
was written across the front of the book. For some reason, I looked up and saw exactly that—patches of blue sky peeking through the big white billowy clouds. A sun ray pierced the scene, descending in a see-through stream of light. I clutched the book more tightly and whispered, “Thanks.”

Somewhere deep inside, I felt a momentary flicker of hope. Then it faded. But I held tightly to the memory of how that fleeting glimmer of hope had felt.

———

The day after the funeral, Mr. Robinson, Daddy's good friend and our accountant, came by the house. He knocked on the door, and when Mamma opened it, he stood there, timidly holding his hat in his hand, his head bent down. He was a small man, slim with graying hair and thick wire-rimmed glasses. I had always thought of him as stiff and boring, but on this day, he looked bent over with grief, completely stricken.

As soon as I saw him, I felt fury.
You knew Daddy. You knew all about his finances. Why didn't you do something to help him? Surely you could tell. It's your fault!

And to Mamma I wanted to scream,
Why did you always try to make it seem okay? It wasn't okay! It's your fault!

“Bill,” Mamma said, obvious relief in her voice.

I knew right away this wasn't a call for condolences. Mr. Robinson had come to the house with his wife several times over the weekend and attended the funeral. He had come on business. I stuck right beside Mamma, because if we were going to talk money, I needed to be there.

Mamma didn't know a thing about the finances. Figures confused her, but I loved math. Daddy always helped me study for my tests, and when I was twelve or thirteen, he started showing me the financial books. A pain seared me with that thought. Did my dear Daddy, the one who was my confidant, did he know all along he was planning to leave us? Is that why he had patiently trained me over the years? I clutched my stomach.

“Anne Perrin—are you all right?”

“It's nothing, Mamma. I'm just having a hard time.”

“You don't have to stay with us.” But her eyes told me differently.

Mr. Robinson painstakingly went through the books, explaining each holding, each stock, each piece of property. And after each one, he'd remove his glasses, look up at us, and say the same phrase—“I'm afraid this isn't worth anything now.”

Mamma nodded every time, but I could see she didn't understand.

I did. I understood exactly what he was trying to say in the most delicate way possible. We'd lost everything. Everything.

At one point, Mr. Robinson laid his ledger down and looked at Mamma, pushing his glasses up on his nose. “Dot, I assure you that we are going to do everything in our power to keep the house from being repossessed.”

I felt my stomach lurch again.
Repossessed!

The doorbell rang, and Dellareen went to answer it. A moment later, she came in the room. “Miz Singleton,” she said softly, and Mamma got up, as in a trance, and went to the foyer.

“We're ruined, aren't we?” I asked Mr. Robinson.

He frowned, wrinkled his brow, and said, “Perri, your family's holdings have been greatly compromised.”

“What are we going to do? Mamma can't work—she doesn't have a skill.”

“Your father was well loved and well respected. We, his friends, will not let you down.”

I didn't believe him.

Mamma came back in the room, clearing her throat. “Perri dear, Mary Dobbs Dillard is here to see you.”

“Me?”

Mamma nodded.

I got up and met Dobbs in the entrance hall.

“Hey,” she offered.

“Hello.”

She was wearing a crisp white blouse and riding jodhpurs that hung on her skinny frame—clothes Mrs. Chandler must have lent her—and her hair was pulled back in a ponytail. She glanced down at her tall leather black boots, reached out and took my hand, and as if pleading with me, said, “I was wondering if you would go riding with me.”

“Riding? Horseback riding? Now?”

“Yes. Yes, Aunt Josie said we could ride her horses—that they need exercise—and I've heard you're a splendid equestrian.”

“But . . .”

Mamma came beside me, placed her hands on my shoulders, and said, “Go on, Perri. It might do you good to get out of the house.”

I wouldn't have gone except for one thing.
Patches from the Sky.
The first thing I'd seen when I'd opened that book the night before was a handwritten message in faded blue ink on the inside cover:
“An artist's eye can take the spiritual and bring it down to earth. Remember that the eye is the window to the soul.”
I had closed the book and let my tears fall. Somewhere deep down I felt that maybe Dobbs Dillard was a prophet.

When we got to the Chandlers' barn, the stableboy had already saddled and bridled the horses. I hopped up on Red, a pretty chestnut that I'd ridden before, and watched as Dobbs struggled to pull herself onto the bay mare, Dynamite. When she finally made it on, the stableboy looked at me in his worried way—he couldn't talk—trying to tell me something with his eyes. I frowned, not understanding.

Dobbs gathered up the reins and gave the horse a kick, and Dynamite trotted off with Dobbs giggling and tottering this way and that on the mare's back.

The stableboy turned to me again, shaking his head, his big hands motioning, and then I got it. “She doesn't know how to ride, does she?” He nodded.

Worried, I clucked at Red and cantered after her. Dobbs was already out of sight on a path in the woods. “Dobbs!” I called out. I found her around the bend, jerking the poor horse's mouth as she bounced around in the saddle. Then she suddenly leaned forward and grabbed onto Dynamite's neck.

“Dobbs! What are you doing?”

She shot me a look. “What does it look like I'm doing? I'm hanging on for dear life.”

“Why didn't you tell me you didn't know how to ride?”

“I didn't want you to worry.” And with that, she kicked Dynamite hard in the barrel, and off the mare went at a canter that turned into a gallop.

“Dobbs!” I hated her in that moment. Impetuous, unwise, overconfident! “You're gonna kill yourself!”

She ignored my yelling as I galloped after her for five minutes, zigzagging along the trail and dodging low-hanging limbs.

I came around a turn and found Dobbs, feet out of the stirrups, lying with her head on Dynamite's rump. The mare was breathing heavily and munching on grass in an open field that looked like it belonged in a child's storybook: wildflowers everywhere on a little hill, a lake off in the distance behind a pretty little white cottage, trees surrounding the field offering shade.

Dobbs glanced over at me, shaded her eyes with a hand, and smiled. “Nice, isn't it?”

Annoyed at her, I said nothing.

She sat back up, nudged Dynamite, and began walking the mare out.

I followed her. Finally I managed, “I've been here before—it's the Chandlers' summerhouse. But how'd you find the trails?”

“Parthenia showed me.”

“Who's Parthenia?”

“You know . . . Parthenia. Cornelius's little sister.”

“Who's Cornelius?”

Dobbs stared at me, perplexed. “You don't know who Cornelius is? He's the Chandlers' stableboy. He just saddled up the horses for us.”