Tomorrow River (31 page)

My grandmother replies in her best belle voice, “Thank you for your concern, Louise. But as you can see, we’re just as fine as fine can be,” and puts her arm around me. She smells like Ben-Gay and the strong incense from church. “Aren’t we, Shenny?”

“We sure are, Gramma,” I lie. “Fine as a fly in July.”

Lou shrugs and gives me the most helpless look. She backs out onto the porch so she can keep her eye on Blackie and Grampa.

“Damn, that’s one fine-lookin’ gal,” Grampa says to Blackie. “Ya sure you wanna move on from that?”

Blackie says something disgusting about Lou’s chest and Grampa’s eyes get more desirous looking. “Nipples the size of silver dollars?” He pushes back his chair and says, “I’ll arm wrestle ya for her.”

“C’mon, sweetheart,” Gramma says. “Let’s go up to your room and leave these men to their celebrating.”

She is trying to save me from Grampa’s and Blackie’s grunts and laughter. Their bragging strongman talk.

I wish I could do the same for my father. He looks defeated and helpless. I say what I used to when I was little and he’d tuck me into bed, “See you in my dreams,” but Papa can’t hear me. His head has fallen back onto the oak table. A string of spit is hanging from his lips.

C
hapter Thirty

W
e’re kneeling at the side of Woody’s and my bed. My grandmother has turned off all the lights and set the Jesus Christ she keeps in her pocketbook in the center of the other statues around a white purity candle on our dressing table. She was the one who gave the Saint Jude statue to our mother, who then gave it to Woody. Gramma has plenty enough to share. Saint Christopher and Saint Teresa the Little Flower, etc. These statues are what she calls her dolls. She can spend a whole afternoon telling Woody and me the stories behind each saint’s suffering and performing reenactments. The Saint Francis of Assisi play has little animal figures and Gramma uses grapes to pretend that Saint Lucy’s eyes have gotten plucked out of her head the way they were. The Saint Joan of Arc story involves a burning at the stake.

Gramma has her favorite wooden rosary entwined between her fingers. She brought a matching one for me along with The Good Old Days photo album, which is lying on top of my pillow. When we’re done praying, she’ll want to spend some time with the performing saints and then she’ll make me look at the pictures with her. She’ll go on and on. “Your grandfather. There he is. This shot was taken at one of our high school homecoming games,” she’ll tell me. “See all those girls swimmin’ around him? How lucky I am to have landed him.” I’ve always thought it was the complete opposite. How butt-scratching Grampa ended up with a woman of such refined tastes beats me. When she’s done caressing the pictures of her husband of forty years, she’ll show me some shots of Papa and Blackie being such darling boys and get teary. Gramma cut Mama out of all the snapshots after she disappeared, saying as she snipped, “Such a nasty business. Out of sight, out of mind,” so our mother’s not in the album.

“Isn’t it nice to have some lady time together?” she asks. She’s about the same size as I am now. She used to be a taller brunette. Usually very pulled together in a fancy dress with petticoats and pearls, her gray hair snug in a bun, she looks fairy-tale witchy tonight with it going every which way. Her skin so frighteningly white. When we got up here, she dusted herself with Mama’s Chantilly powder and took from her purse the red lipstick and smeared it across her palms. This is bad. Very bad. This is the telltale sign that she is about to have a big fit. Grampa upset her downstairs.

I tell her, “I’m not feeling so good.” The whiskey’s got me woozy and warm. My hurt arm is throbbing. And the overpowering stench of Ben-Gay is making my stomach shrink into a hard ball. But I can’t give in to any of that. I need to get over to the Tittles’ to make sure Woody made it over there. On the other hand, what kind of girl would abandon her grandmother in her time of need? No telling what she’ll do if I leave her alone in this state. Once I’m safely downstairs, I could yell at Grampa as I leave through the front door, “Your wife is pitchin’ a conniption,” and then run away as fast as I can. That’s a good plan. “I’ll be right back, Gramma.” I struggle to get up. “I need a breath of fresh air.”

“Not just yet,” she says, grabbing my shirt and pulling me back down to my knees. She is so much stronger than you’d think she’d be. She’ll tell you it’s the power of the Holy Spirit working inside her.

“Please . . . I—”

“You can have all the air you want when we’re done here, honey. You just go ahead and suffer a bit,” she says. “Jesus likes that. Remember? ‘Suffer ye children’?”

“Yes, ma’am,” I say. I’ve calmed my grandmother down before when she got like this, I can do it again. I just have to go along with her for a while until I can find an opening.

“Would you lead us in the rosary?” she says, handing me mine and gathering hers to her chest.

I bow my head. “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned—”

“That’s the wrong prayer. That’s the confession prayer,” she says. “What’s the matter with you tonight, Shenny?”

I know the prayer is not the right one. “I’m sorry. It’s just that . . .” I was trying to relax her. Lull her. Confessing is one of her most favorite things to do in life. She’ll stand in line at Saint Pat’s Cat all afternoon, waiting to get into her favorite confessional. “Do you mind if we do this later?”

“Later?” She titters. “Where are your manners, child? We can’t keep Jesus waitin’.”

I lower my chin again, but I’m eyeing my window of opportunity. The gauzy white curtains are blowing inward with the faintest of breezes, the scent of pink roses lingering from the heat of the day. The trellis. That’s an even better idea. Once I get her calm, I will make my way over there and climb down the way Woody always does, instead of creeping through the front foyer where they could get their hands on me.

“I can’t hear you,” Gramma says. “Speak up.”

“I . . . I believe in God—”

“Louder,” she demands. “Kiss the crucifix.”

When I bring the rosary’s silver cross to my mouth, His suffering body feels cool against my still-bloody lip. “I believe in God the Father almighty, Creator of heaven and earth. And in Jesus Christ, His only Son . . .”

She jerks her head up. “Why’d you stop?”

“I . . . I . . . my gosh, something really wonderful is happening. It’s a miracle . . . I think the Lord is answerin’ my prayers,” I tell her, putting on my most awestruck voice. “He’s . . . yes, I can hear Him loud and clear.”

“What’s He saying?” she asks, suddenly thrilled, but then suspicious. “This could be a trick, Shenny. Are you sure it’s the Lord communicating with you? It could be Lucifer. Is it a real high-pitched voice or is it deep like your grampa’s?”

I pretend to listen again. “Oh, it’s the Lord all right. He sounds exactly like Grampa. He’s tellin’ me that He loves you. He adores you. He wants you to know that you are loved for all eternity.”

An enraptured blush comes to her crepe cheeks. I usually tell her at this point that Jesus wants her to take her special medicine and go lie down, but I need to take my time. I can’t rush. If I do, she’ll only get more wound up. Maybe if I mention her pies. That always gives her a warm glow. I remember what Grampa said downstairs about the “special” ones she made Clive and how he never saw that coming. Gramma must’ve come up with a new recipe to surprise our neighbor on Thursday afternoons. She’s always experimenting with different fruit combinations. Yes, that should do the trick. “About your pies—”

“Is Jesus telling you that he’s hungry?” she asks like a concerned hostess.

“No, he’s full right now, but . . . He wants me to tell you that he is so proud of you for taking those pies over to Mr. Minnow the way you always did.”

“Oh, for goodness’ sakes! Jesus is playing a joke on you, Shenny. He’s the one who told me to take them over there in the first place.” She giggles too loud, too long. “Bless his heart, Mr. Clive is dead now, you know,” she says, turning morose on a dime.

She’ll miss those afternoons with him. They had developed a pleasant friendship over the years. Gramma was patient with Clive. Delivered a pie and stood over him until he ate the whole thing. They played whist sometimes, too.

“What was so special about the pies you took to Mr. Minnow?” I ask.

She grins impishly. “They had a secret ingredient.”

“And what was that?”

“You promise not to tell?” She looks around like somebody might be listening in. She lowers her voice. “It’s a family secret.”

“I promise.” It’s probably nutmeg. She likes to throw in a pinch now and again.

“Well,” she says, clapping her lipsticked hands together, “I tried mixin’ in a few things from under the sink, but that didn’t seem to work, so like always, I prayed on it. Sure enough, the Lord answered. He told me to put rat poison in the dough and knead it up good. That worked like a charm.”

Poor thing. She’s worse than I thought. She’s suffering again from her made-up-in-her-mind stories. What the Colony doctors called delusions.

I can hear the men downstairs. They’re bickering and somebody’s knocked over a chair.

Trying another tactic, I say, “Well, we better finish up praying now and get back to the kitchen. You hear that? Isn’t that Grampa callin’ your name?”

She would usually blanch white when I mention his name, but she doesn’t even hear me. She has slipped into a world of her own. Her eyes glossy, her lips wet.

I pat the bed and say, “Or maybe you’d like to lie down and rest a bit. Wouldn’t that feel nice?”

“Your neighbor shouldn’t oughta stuck his nose and his camera into a family matter. Then he had the nerve to tell my Gus that if he didn’t pay him lots of money for the pictures he took of us that night, he’d call up the sheriff. Even after Gus paid him, Clive demanded more,” she says. “Greed’s a sin, you know.”

“Pictures?” What is she going on about? “What pictures?”

“Jesus doesn’t care for that sort of thing, Shenny,” she says, prissy. “It is written in Deuteronomy: ‘You must purge the evil among you.’”

“What . . . what do you mean?” I’m completely confused. Her normal delusions aren’t usually this complicated. They’re mostly about the Lord demanding something or one of the saints instructing her to do this and that. Perform the Stations of the Cross over and over. Chop up the grand piano with an ax.

“You have no idea what hard work that was. I had to search and search, but I found the pictures in a sea chest way down on the bottom. Gus didn’t think I could, but he was proud of me when I did. I could tell.” Perspiration is beading on her top lip. She smiles, but it’s not a nice one. “I ripped Clive’s place up good.”

The day I was over at the Minnow place fetching Ivory, I had to step over a slew of photos that’d been scattered over Clive’s parlor floor. The cushions ripped apart. The mantel swept clean. And the bathroom—that awful smell. Could she have . . .

“Would you like to see the pictures?” She reaches behind her and lifts The Good Old Days photo album off my pillow.

I remember the afternoon when I expressed my concern to Clive that he was spending too much money. How he told me, “Don’t you worry about me, little girl, I got myself a permanent source of income.” And he bought that new metal-detecting device and that nineteen-inch color television and that fancy camera with the long lens and new trays for his developing room. He’d been bellyaching to me about stomach pains. I thought it was just more of his usual Clive hypochondriac talk. Or the flu. But there were dead mice on his kitchen floor and I don’t think they get the flu. Could Clive have been getting money from my grandfather the way Gramma just told me? Lots of money to keep quiet about some pictures he took? Did he start recently asking for more?

“Oh . . . Jesus,” I utter.

“That’s right, honey. Praise be to Him.”

“What . . . what did Clive see you doing? What did he take a picture of that he wasn’t supposed to?”

“Your mother and me.” She’s paging nonchalantly through the album. “I don’t know what went wrong with that gal,” she says, like she’s talking about a recipe that didn’t turn out quite the way she expected it to. “No matter how much I lectured her about her wifely duties, Evie wouldn’t listen to me. You know how she could be, Shenny. You complained enough about her. So independent. So Northern. Not bending to Walter’s will the way she was supposed to. Here we go.” She taps her fingernail on a picture of Mama lying on the ground. Her head is resting on the grass in the clearing. The full moonlight is shining down on her white blouse with the red trim. A puddle of blood is turning her honey hair black. Gramma is standing over her. Triumphant.

The candle on the dressing table is spurting and the room is spinning and the look on my grandmother’s face—I . . . I feel like I have risen and am looking down at her from above. “What did . . . what did you do?”

Bursting with pride and piousness, she says, “What was demanded of me in the Good Book. In Timothy it is written: ‘I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man. For Adam was first formed, then Eve.’
Eve
, ya see? That was your mother’s name. And if . . . if you add the
l
on the end . . . it’s Evel. You can see what Jesus wanted me to do, can’t you?” When I don’t respond, she raises her voice. “Answer me!”

“I . . .”

“Did you know that your mother was planning on runnin’ away from my Walter? She gave me a note. I was supposed to give it to you and Janie, but I’d never pass that garbage on.”

Mama loved Gramma. Trusted her. Would have wanted to say good-bye to her.

That night.

Woody woke me, babbling, “Mama . . . mama . . . gone.” I tried ignoring her, and when she wouldn’t let me, I groused, “What’re ya doin’ up? Did ya eat too many Red Hots? You’re having a bad dream. Lie back down and go to sleep.” I rolled away from her, but she came after me. “Papa . . . Papa,” she moaned, and that’s when I heard him, too. Thrashing about in the woods, bellowing, “No . . . no. Mother . . . how could you?” At the time, I thought he meant
our
mother. That in his drunken state he was referring to her in an outraged way. Somebody else was back there with him, but I couldn’t make out who and by the time I found my binoculars, I heard our father’s grunting, cursing effort to get his feet situated on the fort steps and Woody could, too, and she grabbed on to my neck when he hollered up the trunk, “She’s . . . she’s . . . gone. Get down here.”