Clio Rising

by Paula Martinac

  “How is that even possible?” I asked.

  “Young women did not drive in my day, Miss Bliss,” Clio reminded me. “And no one needed to have a car here or in Paris.”

  Bea kept a Volvo station wagon so she could visit her house in the Catskills on the weekends. The wagon was at least twenty years old and rode that way. She’d taken me and Ramona on a clickety-clacking ride to Leonia, New Jersey, one evening for a client’s book party. Ramona teased her about the car, calling it her “granny-mobile,” and wondered why someone as important as Bea Winston didn’t buy a newer model. “Because this one still runs,” Bea said.

  When I mentioned my predicament in booking the trip, Bea stared at me with a bored look while she finished chewing something— probably a Hershey’s Kiss from the bowl she kept on her desk.

  “Clio cannot use my car,” she said, like a parent accustomed to her teenager’s requests.

  “Oh, I just wondered if you had any other—”

  “You’d probably break down before you hit Maryland anyway,” Bea said. “It’s got almost two hundred thousand miles on it. I told you before, you’re flying.”

  “But I don’t think you told Clio,” I said, so low it was almost under my breath. Bea sighed and punched some buttons into her phone.

  “Hello, dear, it’s Beatrice,” she said. She listened for a few seconds. “Yes, well, we can talk about that later, but first I’m calling to say you’ve got to give up this idea of trains and cars to North Carolina as it’s simply too unwieldy. You must fly and stop worrying Livvie about it.” Bea stared at me as she continued to listen. “I understand. There are pills for that, dear. We’ll have your doctor call in a prescription to Bigelow’s. Yes. Yes, yes, all right. I can do that for you. Yes. You too, dear.”

  Bea replaced the receiver and drew an American Express gold card from her top desk drawer. “Book the flight,” she said, handing it across the desk slowly, as if entrusting me with a family heirloom.

  • • •

  Clio’s doctor prescribed a calming dose of Valium, and she willingly accepted the offer of a wheelchair to get her onto the plane ahead of the other passengers. When we were in our seats, her fingers wrapped themselves around my right wrist in a death grip.

  She barely spoke throughout the flight, and without use of both of my hands it was difficult to do anything but sit quietly and drink my complimentary Coke with my left hand. Once, Clio wailed “My ears!” and I fished awkwardly in my pocket for a Chiclet for her to chew on. Another time, she cast a furtive glance out the window and muttered something about the wispy clouds that sounded poetic, but forced. Finally, when we hit the tarmac a bit too forcefully, she let out a cry of “Oh, my! Oh, my!” When it was time to disembark, she was still gripping my wrist.

  “We’re here, safe and sound,” I said in as reassuring a voice as I could, slowly prying her fingers away. “My sister is meeting us at the gate, so it’s ground transportation from here on out.”

  Clio smiled. “I had no idea you were such a seasoned flyer,” she said. “What do they call it— a jet-setter?”

  “I am hardly that, Miss Hartt,” I said, my face flushing. “But I’m flattered that you think so.” I’d hidden my inexperience from her, but in truth my traveling had been limited to that bus trip to Charlotte, a few weekends in Emerald Isle with a college friend whose family had a cottage there, and an overnighter to Boone with Hallie to visit a fellow professor at App State. Those were the only stamps in my nonexistent passport— until the one-way flight that had transported me from Asheville to New York.

  I spotted Sue waving both arms over her head. She had no children in tow, though I had expected at least one; there was always at least one. What I also didn’t expect was her rounded belly, a sign that a fourth was on the way.

  “You left something out of our conversations,” I said, hugging her. “When did this happen?”

  “You keeping track of when Jimmy and me screw?” she asked with a smirk. Her voice was loud enough to elicit stares from strangers.

  “You know what I mean, Sue,” I whispered.

  “I’m due in April,” she said, the grin disappearing. It wasn’t clear if congratulations were in order or if she was just making the most of an unwanted situation.

  “Well, here comes Miss Hartt, so please keep it clean. I’m working.”

  Slumped in her wheelchair, Clio looked the worse for wear. The buttons on her coat were fastened hastily and incorrectly, and her cloche hat, a remnant from the thirties, was askew. Maybe the tilt would have been rakish on a younger woman, but on Clio it just looked like she’d fallen asleep in it. To straighten it for her would have been presumptuous, so I gave her a signal with both my hands and she quickly righted it herself.

  “Miss Hartt, this is my sister, Sue Welch. Sue, this is Miss Clio Hartt.”

  “You are so kind to rescue us, Mrs. Welch,” Clio said. “Have you ever flown? My Lord, I’m not a drinking woman anymore, but I wouldn’t mind a brandy right about now.”

  Clio’s charm brought a spark to Sue’s eyes. “Let’s see what we can do about that. There’s a lounge—”

  “Miss Hartt doesn’t want to go to a bar, Sue. And this nice attendant needs to get his wheelchair back, don’t you?”

  Sue was only five months gone, but already had to squeeze behind the steering wheel. She had never been a dainty girl to begin with. As tall and slim as I was, she was short and plump, almost as if we’d come from different parents. Our daddy liked to quip, “Side by side, y’all look like the number 10!”

  “You sure you can still drive with that belly?” I asked, as I helped Clio into the passenger seat of the Fiesta. The car, which Jimmy had bought when their oldest, Pokey, was born, had become a stretch for three kids, and the fourth would have no place to go but the roof.

  “Just get in,” Sue said.

  We drove without speaking for a few miles, which was odd for the Blisses, especially Sue, and I wondered if she was feeling intimidated by having a “famous author” in her car, sitting right beside her, no less. My family could get touchy about things like that. When I was in college and spouting something about Virginia Woolf’s “A Room of One’s Own” at the supper table, my father and mother had exchanged a knowing look. “You keep doing all that reading and pretty soon there won’t be nothing to talk to you about,” my daddy had said.

  Sue finally broke the silence, announcing she had booked Clio “deluxe accommodations” at the Dry Ridge Cottages, a cluster of cabins that had been on Weaverville Road since the 1940s. The place had seen better days, and I was surprised by the choice.

  “You checked out the cabin?” I asked from the back seat. “I mean, to make sure the place is clean.”

  “Daddy has known Mr. Bell for forty years,” Sue snapped— which I knew meant she hadn’t bothered to inspect it in advance. “And Mrs. Bell does all the cleaning herself.” That was precisely what I was worried about. Mrs. Bell was somewhere between my parents and Clio in age, and the last time I’d seen her she had had a hump starting on her upper back.

  “Well, if it there’s any problem, we’ll just—”

  “What is it with you?” Sue interrupted, glaring at me in the rearview mirror. “Is this some New York thing? Because I don’t remember you being such a little bitch—” She clapped a hand to her mouth. “Oh, I am so sorry, Miss Hartt, I’ve got no manners at all.”

  “Don’t apologize on my account,” Clio said, a smile forming at the corner of her lips. “I had a dear friend with a mouth like a sailor.” After a pause, Clio added, out of nowhere, “You must be the oldest sibling, Mrs. Welch.”

  “How’d you know?”

  “Miss Bliss told me her big sister would be picking us up, and that term is usually reserved for the oldest. I was the oldest on my sibling ladder, too, and I took to my baby brother but to none of the others. Would you say that’s true for you, too?”

  I met Sue’s eyes in the mirror again.

  “I would say it pr
obably is,” Sue admitted. I stuck my tongue out at her and she laughed.

  It was true for us, no matter how much we might fuss at each other and despite the gap of seven years. Brenda was closest to Sue in age, but they barely saw each other, even though they lived within a five-minute drive; and Gaynelle was only sixteen months my senior but we hadn’t spoken since the last family holiday. In my juvenile way, I still resented Nelle pulling rank on me to dictate the decorations in our shared bedroom, plastering the walls with posters of teen heartthrobs. Every night, David Cassidy had smiled creepily at me from the wall facing my bed.

  At Dry Ridge, the Bells had put holiday touches on all the cabins: a pine cone wreath on each door, a string of red and green lights along the porch railings. Cabin no. 7, the “deluxe” cottage, was not the embarrassment I expected. Tucked into a stand of bare willow oaks, it sported a fresh coat of yellow paint and a front porch with two white rocking chairs. One of the porch floorboards was wobbly, but it was December and hardly the weather for sitting outdoors. Inside, the bedroom, kitchenette, and bathroom were respectably clean and tidy. In fact, the place was larger than Clio’s apartment, and she clapped her hands together when she saw it. “Oh, this will do very nicely,” she said. “I will be comfortable here, I’m sure. Thank you, Mrs. Welch.”

  Clio’s face was lined with fatigue, and she muttered something about wanting to test the bed, so I left her with my parents’ phone number and the assurance that I would be back for her in a couple of hours so we could get some supper. But she declined the offer, and even though it was only late afternoon, said she was ready to turn in for the night. “Now you pick me up bright and early,” she instructed. We’d been back less than an hour, and I could already hear the echo of a twang in her voice. “I will need to see my brother first thing.”

  • • •

  “Tell me again,” my mother said as she passed the collards, “why you can’t stay longer.” Although I would be under her roof for four days, Mama focused on the fact that it wasn’t two weeks or more.

  I gave the answer that popped into my head first, even though it wasn’t exactly true. “Work, Mama,” I said, helping myself to the greens and wondering if I could learn to make them— if, in fact, you could even buy collards in Manhattan. And what about ham hocks?

  “It’s Christmas, Livvie,” my father said, as if the artificial white tree with flashing red lights in the living room didn’t give it away. “How much work you got at Christmas?”

  “Seems like work’s all you ever talk about,” my mother added. “Aren’t you having any fun?”

  “I have lots of fun,” I said but I left it at that. She didn’t really want to know what I was doing for entertainment.

  “You ride the subway much?” Daddy asked through a mouthful of chicken.

  I laughed at the non sequitur, until his face told me it was a serious question. I wondered if he was poking around to assess the danger in my life, or if he didn’t know what else to ask a daughter whose life had become so foreign to him.

  “Not so much, Daddy. I walk most places. There’s so much to see. Walking in New York is definitely fun.” I told him about some of the sights, like the Thanksgiving Day balloons being blown up and the lights on the Christmas tree in Rockefeller Center. “New York is beautiful this time of year. I wish y’all could come and see it.”

  My parents exchanged glances that suggested a trip to New York was one they would never make. Mama shifted to talking about Sue’s pregnancy, Nelle’s advancement to assistant manager of housewares at Belk’s, and Brenda’s husband, who was on unemployment again.

  “That boy can’t hold a job,” she said.

  “Well, they ain’t living with us this time,” Daddy said.

  When they ran out of daughters and sons-in-law to talk about, Mama expounded on casual acquaintances, like a neighbor I’d barely spoken to since high school (“She was the most beautiful bride!”) and the new assistant choirmaster at our church who had acted tipsy at rehearsal last week. As I often did at home, I fell into a silent funk, the meaningless small talk like being with strangers instead of family.

  While I was helping her with the dishes, my mother poked at a sore spot for me. “I saw that teacher of yours in town,” she said. “But now her name’s gone right out my head.”

  Something caught in my throat and I coughed. “Which teacher is that?”

  “Oh, you know. The chubby one who was always inviting you over. With the handsome husband that runs the sports store, looks like Tom Cruise?”

  My ears flamed. “You mean Hallie Shepherd.”

  “That’s it.”

  “I’d hardly call her ‘chubby.’”

  “Well, she’s not skinny, that’s for sure. Or maybe she’s pregnant.”

  “That ship has sailed,” I said, trying to hide my discomfort. “She’s over forty now. Besides, she never wanted kids.”

  “Well, what a thing to tell her student! And what kind of woman doesn’t want kids?”

  “And her husband’s name may be Tom, but he’s no Cruise.” My tone might have been too clipped because Mama gave me a curious look before proceeding with her story.

  “Anyway,” she continued, “we went to the library to get Pokey some new books— that girl sure loves to read—”

  Sue’s daughter was a kid after my own heart; she had started to call herself Pete and to ask her family members to address her that way.

  “—and your teacher, that Mrs. Shepherd, came right up to me at the counter. I’m not sure I would’ve known her but she said she remembered me from your graduation, isn’t that something? I told her you went to New York, and she told me to tell you hey.”

  “Oh,” I said, because I couldn’t think of anything else.

  “Isn’t that something?”

  “Small world,” I said, wiping the last supper dish. My ribs pinched, like my heart was pushing at them too hard. “Mama, you mind if I make a long-distance call?”

  “You just got here. Who d’you need to call so soon?”

  “My roommate,” I lied. “I forgot to tell her something important she needs to know before she leaves for Christmas.”

  There was that curious look again, the one that said she didn’t buy what I was selling. “Well, don’t be on too long,” she instructed. “I haven’t paid the bill yet for that last time you called here collect.”

  My parents had two phones, one in the kitchen and another in their bedroom. I opted for the latter, even though it wasn’t optimal, because Daddy had turned on Family Feud and I figured they would be engrossed for a half-hour. I just needed to make a connection.

  Thea wasn’t home, and I wondered if she had decided to leave early for the holiday. In case she was still around, I left a guarded message on her machine: “Hey, just needed to hear a friendly voice. It’s really kind of special being home, but maybe you’re already finding that out. Hope you have a good Christmas.”

  I stopped myself from adding, “Love you,” knowing Thea wouldn’t know what to do with the words.

  Chapter 19

  My mother had a pineapple upside-down cake recipe that she baked almost every weekend when I was growing up and brought to the elderly, especially those in hospitals and nursing homes. Sometimes we were related to the people, and sometimes they were strangers to me, church members she felt obliged as a Christian lady to visit. When Gaynelle and I were about nine and ten, Mama started dragging us along in the car, ostensibly to mind the cake but more likely to teach us that this was what folks did for their elders.

  Because of this training, the facility where Clio’s brother was living out his final days was one I’d been to at least a dozen times. Back then, it was called Mountain Something Nursing Home, but now it was Margaret House. A plaque near the front door indicated the name honored a pioneering nurse in the field of hospice care.

  Despite the name change, the low-slung brick building looked the same from the outside, and the interior seemed to have escaped refurbish
ing, too. Although the carpeting bore none of the stains that had fascinated me and Nelle back in the day (dropped food? bodily fluids?), the tables and chairs were still motel blond, and the paintings that had captivated me were right where I remembered them. Every wall bore an almost identical woodland scene, complete with soft-eyed deer and wily red foxes posing in front of a stream or waterfall. What made the paintings so special to me as a kid was that each had a lamp at the top of the frame that threw light onto the water and made it appear to ripple— an optical illusion, but a memorable one. Now the bulbs were either turned off or burnt out.

  Clio gave the surroundings a once-over as we proceeded slowly through the lobby to the visitors’ desk. “I thought Rufe was doing better than this,” she said under her breath. “He owned a printing company at one time.” But she admitted she couldn’t remember if he still owned it.

  The attendant on duty pointed us to a wing extending from the right side of the lobby, where I located the nameplate “R. Threatt.” I stood aside for Clio to enter, which she did only after squeezing her eyes shut and then opening them again.

  Rufe looked better than I expected. For one, he wasn’t lying down or in a flimsy hospital gown but was sitting up in a rocking chair, completely dressed, his thinning white hair neatly combed. The only embarrassing thing was a smear of something yellow on his brown sweater, maybe a breakfast egg.

  Clio walked right up to him and patted his head in a way that seemed like habit, even though she had not seen him in decades. “Rufie,” she said in a small voice, summoning up a girl from long ago. It wasn’t clear to me if Rufe recognized her at first, but then his blue eyes, which matched hers perfectly, welled up.

  “Sister,” he said, his voice as small as hers. Witnessing the tenderness of the moment reminded me of all the times I had crawled up beside Sue on the couch just to feel her next to me.

  I brought Clio a chair and offered to wait in the lobby. I’d come prepared: I had a copy of Audre Lorde’s Zami, which I’d borrowed from Thea, tucked into my bag for killing time. But Clio told me I should go away, busy myself, and come back for her at two o’clock.