It was nine-fifteen Thursday morning, and I was later than usual. I slid into the booth and ordered a cup of coffee. I was wearing shorts, and the cracked vinyl scratched against my thighs. As I stirred my coffee I watched the regulars at the counter, two old men and a tired-looking middle-aged woman who acted like she wanted nothing to do with them.
I sipped the coffee and started a list on a napkin: flowers for Elaine tonight, two bags of clay from the supply company, take Blue to the vet. I wanted to find out about shots and make sure I was feeding him right. He seemed sturdy, but I wanted to be certain. I didn’t want to take a chance on losing him.
I looked at the list and added “stationery/pens.” I needed to touch base with Drew, but I was afraid to call him after what had happened with Adam. I didn’t trust myself not to tell him about Troy, and I wasn’t prepared to deal with his reaction, which was bound to be scathing. And though I hadn’t seen Troy since Saturday, I’d found that try as I might, I couldn’t stop thinking about him. I reasoned that writing Drew would be the safest bet. I’d begun a letter with a pencil stub on a scrap of paper, but I couldn’t find the right tone; it started chatty and ended banal. Maybe if I had the proper tools the writing would come easier.
I scanned the front page of the newspaper. An electrical fire, no one injured; a car accident, one person killed; rumblings of a strike at the textile mill. Siamese twins born to an Oklahoma mother of four on page two; a presidential press conference on the economy, page three. Turning to the weekly Weddings section, I studied the young, eager faces and read the information about each couple. I was fascinated by the way people met—through church groups a lot of the time, or in high school—and what they planned to do. Most of them were Sweetwater natives, but one or the other might be from Chattanooga or Knoxville, sometimes Atlanta. Some were in the military, stationed in Texas, Florida, Germany. The majority planned to settle and begin jobs somewhere else. There were quite a few accountants, some secretaries, and many recent high school graduates, about half employed in nearby factories and mills.
I had imagined that going into town might help me meet people my age, but I didn’t notice many around. The ones I did see were working service jobs—like my waitress at the Eagle, who played solitaire on the lunch counter to pass the time. Of course, during the week many of them would have been at work, but even on weekends the downtown was quiet. Judging by the paper, a lot of them married young and moved into trailer parks if they didn’t move away.
“Refill?” the waitress asked, standing over me with a pot of coffee.
“Sure.” I leaned back against the booth as she filled the cup and tossed two creamers on the Formica. “Slow morning,” I offered.
“It was full up at seven.”
“Who’s winning?”
“What?”
“The card game.” I smiled.
She seemed puzzled. “It’s solitaire.”
“I know. Sorry, it was a bad joke.”
She looked at me. “You want anything else?”
“No, this is fine, thanks.”
The waitress started to walk away, but she turned back. “You can’t lose,” she said. “I guess that’s what I like about it.”
I watched her walk leisurely back to the counter, then turned to look out at the square across the street, at the people from the mental home sitting on benches under the fluttering flag. The fountain in the center was dry. I finished my coffee, tucked the napkin with the list into my bag, and folded the newspaper, leaving it on the table with a dollar bill.
Out on the street, a small breeze battled the heat. I went into the drugstore on the corner for stationery, then walked another block to the tiny florist shop, lingering over cut flowers arranged in buckets on the floor of the narrow room.
“Anything I can help you with?” the clerk asked, looking up from a magazine spread open on the counter.
“Mind if I just pick and choose?”
She shrugged and went back to reading.
“Those irises are mighty pretty,” said a floury-soft voice behind me. I turned around. “May Ford,” the short, gray-haired woman said, holding out a hand. “I met you one time when you were down here with Alice.”
“Oh, yes.” I shook the plump white hand. It felt strangely boneless.
“It’s the state flower, you know.”
“What?”
“The iris,” she said. “If you care about such things. And those tulips over there are nice too. It’s cheating a little, but the tulip poplar is the state tree, so I’m always partial to irises and tulips both.” She went over to the bucket of tulips and bent down, peering into it. “These don’t look altogether healthy, though. Course, they’re imported from somewhere—who ever heard of tulips and irises in August?” She straightened. “Are you buying these for somebody? A boyfriend?”
“No,” I said a little hastily. “They’re for my aunt.”
“Which one?”
I hesitated. “Elaine.”
“Elaine, hmm.” She canvassed the shop, scratching her chin. “She prefers roses, I believe. Yellow ones, if I recall correctly. Yes, I think that’s right.” She threaded her way through the buckets. “And look here, they’re on special! Six for five dollars.” She clapped her hands. “Isn’t it a lucky coincidence we ran into each other!” She beamed and picked out six yellow roses, holding them up one by one for my inspection.
As the clerk wrapped the flowers I said, “I appreciate your help, Mrs. Ford.”
“No trouble at all. Now, do you have more errands to do?”
“I’m finished down here.”
“Where’s your car parked at?”
“Up that way.” I gestured to the left.
“Another coincidence! I’m heading that way myself.”
Main Street was virtually deserted. A sunburned farmer leaned against a truck, talking to a young woman with a baby in one arm and a toddler pulling at her dress. Several blocks down, three men were loading furniture into a van.
“Simon,” she mused as we walked along. “Isn’t that your last name, Cassandra?”
“I’m surprised you remember.”
“Oh, well, it’s a little hobby of mine to remember things like that. I have all kinds of tricks. Not many Simons around here—that’s a Jewish name, isn’t it?—so I just think of Simon Says. ‘Simon Says—jump three times.’” She paused in front of the bank and hopped lightly in place. “Whew!” she said, her hand on her chest. “Hold on a minute.”
“Actually we’re almost to my car, Mrs. Ford, so I guess I’ll say goodbye here.” I pointed across the street at the station wagon.
She grabbed my arm. “Please, just come sit with me a second while I catch my breath.”
I glanced at my watch.
“I won’t keep you long.”
Reluctantly, I followed her to the small park across from the Eagle, where we sat on a bench next to the idle fountain.
“That’s much better.” She looked around. “I remember when this park was first built, in 1967. Beautification project of the Ladies’ Guild, which we all belonged to in those days. Back then they’d never have thought of turning off the water.” She leaned closer and whispered, “Of course, it was meant for respectable folks, and look what it’s turned into.” We watched a grizzled old man on the other side of the fountain fingering a soiled brown bag. “Sad, sad, sad,” she said, shaking her head. After a moment she added, “Nineteen sixty-seven. That’s the year your mother died, isn’t it?”
I nodded slowly.
“How old were you, dear?”
“I was three.”
She put her hand on my knee. “It was a terrible tragedy, just terrible. We were all just sick about it. Ellen was so—lively, the liveliest one. It didn’t seem possible.” She shook her head again, clucking at the memory. “Two funerals in two weeks,” she said. “Terrible.”
“Two funerals?”
“Well, first Bryce and then Ellen.”
“Bryce?”
“No.”
She drew back. “Well, I certainly should not be the one to tell you. I guess I thought you knew.”
The old man across from us tossed his bag into the fountain, shattering the bottle inside, then got up and walked away.
“She was a friend of yours?” I asked levelly.
“I shouldn’t—” She fussed with her pocketbook. I could tell the temptation was getting to be too much for her. “Oh, well, what harm can it do?” She sighed. “We were both in the Guild. We had lunch together now and then. Doesn’t mean I knew her, really. When you get right down to it, who knows anybody? But sure, I guess you could say we were friends.”
“So what happened?”
She squirmed. “Lordy, it’s hot,” she said, fanning herself with her hand.
“What happened?” I persisted.
She stared intently at her lap, then shot me a quick glance. “Well, if I tell you that, I might as well tell you the whole story.” She exhaled loudly. “Bryce Davies was not the nicest lady in the world,” she said, choosing her words. “Oh, she was nice on the outside—friendly, generous to a fault. And beautiful. Lordy, she dressed up this town. But there was something about her, you could just tell she was NTBT.”
“She was what?”
“NTBT. That’s what we used to say—Not To Be Trusted. I knew it from the day she moved to town. But Clyde—well, Clyde wasn’t what you’d call real savvy. She trusted too much. She didn’t want to know. And your granddaddy called the shots. If he said jump, then even if she had three kids clinging to her and lead weights around her ankles, she’d jump just as high as she could. But I thought it was strange from the beginning. Everyone did. Here’s this shy little mousy type, best friends with the hottest ticket in town.”
“They were best friends?”
“I think Clyde thought they were. They raised their kids together. But you know, I bet deep down your grandmother suspected something. She had to have some idea of what was going on.”
“What do you mean?”
“Heavens, dear, you know.”
“With Amory?”
“I didn’t say it,” she said. “You figured it out for yourself. We all felt so sorry for her, but what could we do? Your granddaddy and Bryce were like two peas in a pod. They didn’t care a straw about anybody but themselves. Some people said they were truly in love. I don’t know about that. I do know they were mad for each other, though—you could see it on their faces.
“I heard it rumored Clyde got the goods on him once, a long time ago, when she and your granddaddy were first married. There was a big to-do about it, and then she thought it was over. So you just have to wonder what it was like to find out twenty years later that your husband and your best friend—your best friend!—were having an affair the entire time! I can’t imagine,” she said, pursing her lips. “But then, my husband never went out sniffing up trees on other folks’ property like some foolish dog.”
“Bryce was married too?”
“Oh, yes.”
“Did her husband know about Amory?”
She shrugged. “He must’ve had his suspicions. It’s not like Bryce was the most discreet person you ever met. But you know, we all see what we want to. He didn’t want to see it.”
My mind was racing. “How did Bryce die, Mrs. Ford?”
“It’s all in the papers.” She paused dramatically. “You should probably just go look it up yourself.” She watched my face, but I didn’t respond. “Well,” she said, “Bryce drowned at the swimming hole down behind the old house. The house you’re living in.”
“I didn’t know there was a swimming hole.”
“They’ve closed it off now, there’s a barbed-wire fence around it. Nobody swims there anymore. It’s dangerous—there’s a whirlpool in it. That’s what happened to Bryce, I guess—she got caught in that whirlpool. Or so they say. Your grandmother was the only witness.”
I took a deep breath.
“And then, less than two weeks later, your mother was dead too, bless her soul. As a matter of fact, they’re buried right next to each other, up on the ridge at Pine Crest Cemetery. It was all anybody could talk about at the time. But after a while it died down, as these things do, and everybody went on with their lives. Nothing ever happened about it. I mean, there was never an investigation or anything. There wasn’t any evidence of wrongdoing, of course”—she sounded like she’d been listening to a lot of detective shows on TV—“and nobody went looking for any. I think folks just wanted to forget it fast as they could. But your grandmother and granddaddy were never the same. And to be honest, none of us could look at them the same either. Each of them responsible for the death of a living, breathing human being, even if they were both accidents—and maybe they were.”
I stiffened against the bench and said nothing. My silence flustered her.
“Oh, dear, I didn’t want to bring this up, you made me tell you. And now you’re upset.”
“So the story is that Clyde drowned Bryce because she was having an affair with Amory,” I said stonily, “and then Amory got drunk and smashed up the car and my mother to get back at Clyde. Is that right?”
“I’m not saying that’s what I think.”
“But that’s the gossip you’ve been spreading around.”
She sat up indignantly. “Look, Cassandra, I just thought you might appreciate knowing what everybody’s been saying about your family all these years. I thought it might help you to understand some things.”
“Oh really.”
“Come on, now,” she said. “You can’t tell me you haven’t noticed there’s something wrong with that family. A blind person could see it. They’re all eaten up. If you’d stop hiding in that big old house and start paying attention to the people around you, dear, maybe you’d learn something. Ask Clyde about it.” She rose to leave. “Ask Clyde about Bryce Davies.”
I watched her make her way out of the park to the sidewalk, her head held high. Pulling my knees up to my chest, I pressed my back into the hard bench and looked up at the pale expanse of sky. I closed my eyes and saw orange shapes, felt the heat of the sun on my eyelids. For a moment I imagined I was on a beach, bathed in sunlight on a big towel, making a mold of myself in the golden sand. When I opened my eyes I had to shut them again; the world was too bright, it was overexposed.
When he died it was not so much sorrow I felt as relief. The door had closed between us long ago, so long that sometimes I forgot what I hated him for, though the hatred was as real and as strong as when it happened. Under my raging cold eye he first was broken and then hardened and finally a drunk again, as if that was the only identity he could hold on to.
The last time I saw him alive he was standing at the front door in a white Hanes T-shirt, his trousers bagging around his narrow hips and his suspenders hanging down around his knees like swinging bridges. Lazy and disheveled and a little anxious. Bald pink head. “Clyde, where’re you going?”
“Don’t you worry, I’ll be back in an hour,” I hollered from the driveway.
“What?”
“Got to get some curtains.”
“Why?”
“Who cares why?” I was irritated. He was like a big baby, for God’s sake. “It’s springtime and I need some curtains for the den. The ones we have are too heavy.” I opened the car door.
I watched him out the windshield, standing there in the doorway like he was lost. Then he turned around with a shrug and went back inside the house.
I didn’t have any premonitions as I nosed down the driveway and steered our green Oldsmobile through the development, past all the houses that outsiders say look exactly the same. I was thinking how much I liked it here, how it was so sensible and friendly and clean. How all the wallpaper matched perfectly at the corners. How all the closet doors shut flush with their frames. Paved driveways sloped up toward built-in garages with doors that o
pened like magic. The shower units were all of a piece. You knew you’d see your neighbor every day when you went to collect the mail, and you knew your neighbor was counting on seeing you too.
I didn’t think about him at all on the bypass. I opened all the windows with the button on my armrest, and the wind whipped through my thin white hair and cooled my neck. I thought of the curtains I would buy—blue or floral?—and wondered whether Kathy was bringing dessert when she and Horace came for dinner that evening; she had mentioned something about fresh peaches going bad on her kitchen counter, but I wasn’t sure what that meant.
They had changed around the floor plan in Sears, and I wandered the aisles noticing merchandise I’d never seen before. You become accustomed to things; you make routines for yourself, and after a while they’re habit. I bought some kitchen towels in Housewares and contemplated a crock pot, and then, moving through Furnishings, I calculated what it would cost to reupholster the couch in the living room. I bought throw pillows as a compromise. The store was almost empty and smelled like the inside of my refrigerator, and the salesladies were indifferent and hard to locate, but I didn’t much mind. I settled on blue curtains—they shade you better from the sun—and eventually made my way out the automatic doors to the parking lot, which was like a huge baking tray.
When I pulled into the drive the house was quiet. I was humming “Three Times a Lady”; it must have been playing in the mall. When I think back I don’t know why I didn’t suspect something: it was so still, so silent. But I went in the door humming and pushed it shut with my hip, juggling my packages.
“Amory!” I called. I wandered back to the bedroom, looked into the darkened living room—I keep the shades drawn so the couch won’t fade more than it already has—and then went into the kitchen.
Sweet Water Page 17