Cavedweller

by Dorothy Allison

  “Don’t you love Nolan?” Cissy said it carefully, but not carefully enough.

  Dede jumped up. “Hell. Course I love him.” She strode back and forth, waving the cigarette like a pointer in the air. “But marriage. Marriage screws things up. Think about it. Who do we know married and happy?”

  “Amanda?”

  “Oh! Amanda! Amanda an’t happy.”

  Cissy watched the bright blue lighter rocking on the step’s edge.

  “Dede, you love Nolan.”

  “Love has got nothing to do with it. Marriage is what’s wrong. I’d sooner tattoo Nolan’s name on my butt than marry him.” Dede paused in her furious march, her face breaking up into a grin that Cissy had never seen before, half glee and half outrage. “I would too. Damn sight better to wear a tattoo than a wedding ring.”

  Cissy nodded. Dede would do anything, that was sure. Maybe it was the old man dying, but Cissy suddenly realized that Dede had been tightening up for weeks. She had thought the cause was Emmet, who had started hanging around Delia again. M.T. said Delia was having long lunches with him, something Dede had complained about the week before. The funny part was that Cissy knew Dede liked Emmet. It was just the idea of Delia liking the man too much that seemed to get Dede so upset. But Nolan? Dede loved Nolan, and Nolan surely loved Dede. Where was the problem with that?

  “It’s going to go to hell,” Dede said.

  Cissy looked at her sister. Dede was standing there with her head tilted back looking up at the storm clouds rolling high in the sky. Her eyes were red and visibly wet. She flicked her cigarette butt out into the grass.

  “It’s just all going to go straight to hell.” Her tone was unequivocal and sadly defeated.

  Oh God, Cissy thought. Don’t let her do something stupid. Please God. Please. Let Nolan tell her he doesn’t want to get married, that it was all a joke. She put her hands over her ears and pressed tight, listening to her teeth grind. Nolan had been so happy lately, so happy. He’d gone down to Atlanta and done his audition, and had just grinned wide when Cissy asked him about it.

  “We’ll just have to wait and see,” he told Cissy. “Just wait and see. Dede and me, no telling what we might do.”

  He doesn’t understand, Cissy thought, not sure she did either. The look on Dede’s face was pure misery. That Cissy could understand. Dede was hurting. Dede was scared and hurting bad.

  Granddaddy Byrd’s funeral was at Holiness Redeemer. Michael brought Amanda, who barely acknowledged what was happening, not even bothering to chase little Michael when he ran over to Dede and Nolan. Jean and Mim stood with Cissy. Mrs. Stone had brought them the old white Bible from the farmhouse, but Delia pretended not to see it. Michael tucked it under one arm and pulled his boys up on his lap for the prayers. When they all walked away from the graveside, Delia remained standing by the massed pile of flowers. She came back to the Terrill Road house an hour after everyone else and went out to sit under the pecan trees out back. When he saw her back there, Michael took the boys out to her. He didn’t speak, just nodded and took a seat on one of the chairs Delia had been planning to refinish. He kept Gabe on his knee while Michael ran back and forth from his father to the farthest tree. Gabe kept waving his arms and making “mmm mmm” sounds. After a bit Delia lifted one hand and waved it in Gabe’s direction. Happily he tried to catch her hand. On the third try, he managed it and was transferred from his daddy’s knee to his grandmother’s arms. She pressed her face into his hair and hugged him close. Michael stood up and walked over to the tree where his oldest son was piling up pecans. He didn’t return until well after he heard Gabe start to giggle and Delia finally laugh.

  Chapter 20

  The best thing about helping out at Amanda’s place was that Cissy got to quit her job at the realty office. At the beginning of the year, she had taken the job doing data entry for the County Realty office three afternoons a week, but as the months passed she arrived late more and more often, slipping into the office long after everyone had left. There is nothing worse in the world, Cissy decided, than typing page after page of abbreviated notes, square-foot measurements and endless bland repetitions of the same few dozen sentences. Over and over she typed, “Secluded, 2 BR/2bth, fp, fixer-upper, grd vw, motivated seller, new roof, hdwd flrs, real sweetheart, new fixtures.” Prices changed, brokers passed on different parcels, new properties were listed, and always there were the irritating little notes from the various real estate agents. Cissy forgot to include outbuildings, or the den that doubled as a guest room, or the decorative shutters, or the special enticements like the so-called English garden, which Cissy decided must mean a wild tangle untamed by Southern propensities for lawns and flower beds. Always there was something—spelling errors, missed measurements, a “special” property not put in the “special” category listings. Things were tight in the county. Property was not selling. There had to be a reason, and the notes made it clear that the problem was the way Cissy put in the data.

  Cissy wondered if waitress work might not be easier. She hated creeping into the back of the realty office, trying to avoid the staff and sitting down to face the big jumble of marked-up forms and multicolored taped inserts. “You forgot.” “You did not.” “Please do not ...” It was supposed to be an easy job, a favor to Delia’s girl, who after all was living at home and just needed enough of an income to keep afloat at the community college, but there had turned out to be more buildings for sale than Cissy would ever have imagined, more lots and farms and abandoned shanties. All of them required Cissy to type and track and update their listings. Better, far better, to sit on Nolan’s porch after turning the boys over to Michael, to drink seltzer with orange slices and listen to Nolan play music and repeat stories his relatives had told him.

  Nolan had his prized clarinet on his lap, a Buffet R13 with a Selmer mouthpiece. He was rubbing the black surface of the instrument with a soft cloth, smiling with pleasure as the grenadilla wood polished up. “African black,” Mr. Clausen had called it when he gave it to him. “Grenadilla and sterling silver. You keep it clean and polished, and it will last forever.” The first time he played the new clarinet, Nadine had beamed at Nolan with such pleasure, the image had become imprinted on his brain. The weeks when he had to count quarters to meet the bills, Nolan would remember that smile when he looked over at the clarinet. He had sold his old one, the Vito Leblanc made of black plastic. (“Resonite, Nolan, Resonite.”) It had brought in a desperately needed $200 the year before. He learned that the secondhand Buffet had cost Mr. Clausen and the group around $1,000, and as tight as things were, Nolan had only once considered selling it. That he had not been forced to do so was among the few things for which he was infinitely grateful.

  “Is your mama all right?” he asked Cissy. “She looked so strange at the funeral.”

  “She’s fine. Delia doesn’t change. A mountain could fall on her, and she’d get up and go to work at the Bonnet.”

  Nolan nodded. “I got another audition coming up,” he said. “Next week. I’m going to drive over to Atlanta for the day and meet with the director at Emory.”

  Cissy looked at Nolan. His eyes were trained on the clarinet, his voice careful. Why was he mentioning this audition? Nolan did lots of auditions, and she rarely went with him anymore. “You asking me to come?” Cissy frowned. She and the girls were supposed to make another try at Little Mouth next week.

  “No, no.” Nolan shook his head. “Just telling you. Just saying I’m going.” He was quiet for a moment, buffing the wood of his instrument. “It’s different, this time,” he said suddenly. “If they offer me a job, I might consider taking it.”

  As often as she had encouraged him to do just that, Cissy was still dismayed at the idea of Nolan leaving her behind. “You’d leave Cayro?!”

  Nolan looked uncomfortable. “Maybe. I might.” He rolled the instrument between his fingers. “If I could figure things out, get a nice place down there, and get Mama set up. Of course it all depends on Dede, wh
ether she likes the idea. She’s been so restless lately. Been out practicing with that gun Craig gave her. She’s taken to keeping it under the front seat of her car.”

  Nolan paused. He began the lengthy process of disassembling and cleaning the clarinet before putting it away. While slipping the reed into its case, he said, “Dede’s unhappy, you know. Or maybe scared. We’re happy, but ...” He paused. “I think she’s getting tired of the store and the same stuff all the time. Sometimes she talks about doing something different. She wants to learn about car engines, she says. Wants to do some driving. All kinds of things she could be doing. I want her to have the chance, and I could make good money in Atlanta. Play my music and get us a good place.”

  “You have lost your tiny mind.” Cissy shook her head. “Dede an’t going to move to Atlanta. And you don’t know that you can get a job there.”

  “I can get a job,” Nolan said. “If not this one, then another one. I’m good and I’m going to be better, and I know how to work for what I want.” He looked thoughtful but determined. “I want to see Dede be happy the way she deserves.”

  Nolan sighed and closed his eyes. When he opened them, he looked directly at Cissy. “You’re my best friend in the world. I just wanted to tell you what I was thinking. Wanted you to know. It an’t like I’m leaving tomorrow. It an’t like nothing has happened at all just yet. I just wanted you to know what I was thinking.”

  Cissy looked down at the shadows on the steps and then up at Nolan’s wide-open, hopeful face. “Well,” she said, “like you say, it an’t happening tomorrow. And when it does happen, we’ll sort it out.” She stood up and pushed her hair back. “You’re my friend, Nolan Reitower. That an’t going to change ’cause you’re thinking of doing something different, but you talk real careful to Dede about this. She an’t the kind of person likes surprises. And she an’t that easy to predict. She might not want to go nowhere, you know. Then what would you do?”

  “Stay in Cayro,” Nolan said with a smile. “For Dede, I’d stay in Cayro and bake biscuits till the flesh falls off my bones.” He made it sound like a cheerful prospect. He made it sound like the happiest thing he could imagine doing with his life.

  Cissy spent every afternoon picking up after little Michael and Gabe and worrying about Amanda. She was still adjusting to the changes in Amanda since she’d come home from the hospital. Michael was pink and uncertain when he asked Cissy to stay a bit longer to help with the boys because “Amanda is not quite herself yet.”

  “You sure Amanda wants me to stay?” Cissy could not believe it.

  “Yes, yes,” Michael said. “She’s a little fuzzy-headed right now. I’m sure she’ll be fine once she catches up on a little sleep. If you could come over during the day for a while, it might help.” He looked deeply troubled. “The doctor thinks Amanda needs a little time to rest and recover.”

  “She needs more than sleep,” Cissy muttered, but the look on Michael’s face was too tentative for her to confront. “Of course, I’ll help,” she promised. “At least it will give me a reason to take a break from typing for the realty company.”

  The week before Amanda went into the hospital, she and Cissy had run into each other at Delia’s on a Saturday morning, and Amanda had made a caustic comment about Cissy’s caving trips with “those strange girls.”

  “It an’t debauchery we’re engaged in,” Cissy said. “It’s exploration. We’re mapping the system from Little Mouth to Paula’s Lost.”

  “Uh-huh.” Amanda put on her saintly expression. “And what’s the use of that?”

  “Well, then we’d know.”

  “And then?” Amanda asked. “What will you do then?”

  “Plant seeds between my toes and grow marigolds! Mind your own damned business,” Cissy shouted, and stomped out of Delia’s kitchen.

  As it turned out, that argument was the last conversation the two of them had before Amanda wound up in the hospital and Granddaddy Byrd died. Cissy worried that Amanda would return to their argument at the first chance. But the Amanda who came home from the hospital seemed to have no energy for arguing. She could barely be persuaded to get out of bed in the morning. Only when little Michael climbed up on Amanda’s lap and demanded a story did Amanda show any spark. She had perked up enough to start retelling the story of Daniel in the lions’ den, but when her son bounced excitedly beside her, she stopped and clenched him so tightly to her neck he had yelped. She had let him go with a heartfelt “Lord!”

  “You all right?” Cissy asked. Amanda’s color was odd; bright red circles stood out on her pale cheeks. She was staring at little Michael with enormous stricken eyes, and an expression that bordered on horror.

  Amanda shook her head. “Going for a drive,” she announced, and left before Cissy could ask her when she would be back.

  Caught between resentment at being left with the demanding boys and relief that Amanda seemed not to want to argue, Cissy spent the day cleaning the already pristine house and preparing what she would say when the subject of her future came up again. She canceled everything on the schedule on the fridge—the home visits and the baking—and concentrated on caring for the boys, but it was still too much. In the late afternoon she realized she had managed to miss little Michael’s judo lesson. He had been in the class only two months, taking it up after his Sunday school teacher suggested it would be a good way for him to work on his little problem with acting out.

  “Kick butt,” Dede laughed when she called to check in. “Amanda’s boy needs to kick a little butt to even himself out. Makes sense to me.”

  Amanda came home shortly before Michael Senior and went immediately back to bed, where she pulled the sheet over her head. “Is she all right?” Michael asked Cissy. “Far as I know,” Cissy told him. The next morning she came over a little late and found Amanda fully dressed, sitting at the kitchen table while the boys cried in the back room.

  “Going out,” Amanda said when Cissy opened the door. She was out the door before Cissy could catch her.

  “When will you be home?” Cissy called after her. Amanda did not even look back.

  “She leaves as soon as I get there,” Cissy told Delia, but Delia merely nodded.

  “Let her go,” she said. “Amanda’s never given herself a minute of her own, let her have a bit of time for herself.”

  “And what if she never settles back down?” Cissy demanded. “I can’t watch these boys forever.”

  “You can watch them for another week,” Delia said. “Give your sister that. What else did you have to do?”

  Cissy grumbled, but not very seriously. She had the time. Mim and Jean were pressing her about another trip down Little Mouth, but Cissy put them off. “Next week,” she promised Mim. “I told Delia I’d watch Amanda’s boys one more week.”

  What she was thinking about was not the next week but the next year. Tacey bragged about what she would do at Spelman, and Cissy admitted to herself how pointless her classes at the community college were. The future was as unknown to her as the connecting link from Little Mouth to Paula’s Lost. The guidance counselor had asked her what she wanted to do, and Cissy had stared at him blankly. She had no fixed goal in her life. The only thing that excited her was going caving, and no one took that seriously, not even her. She couldn’t make a life out of crawling around underground.

  “You could join the army,” Dede told Cissy one Thursday night at Goober’s. For months Dede and Nolan had been going over to Goober’s at least two nights a week, ordering a pitcher of beer and a big basket of fried vegetables, and sipping whiskey shots out of Dede’s bag when the waitress wasn’t looking. Dede swore she didn’t trust bar whiskey, though it was the price she truly resented, not the quality of the unlabeled bottles. It was like their fried vegetables. No one could guess exactly what those shapeless, crispy objects were before being deep-fried and covered with hot sauce.

  “Get real, Dede. I am not going to join the army.” Cissy was tired and irritable, more convinced than ev
er that she never wanted children.

  “I would,” Dede announced. “If I was you, just out of high school, with a clean record and all, I’d sign up in a minute.”

  “You wouldn’t!” Nolan was appalled. “There’s no telling where they’d send you.”

  “You wouldn’t follow me?” Dede sipped at her beer. “You saying you wouldn’t follow me wherever I’d go?”

  “Course I’d follow you.” Nolan poked at the pitcher between them. “I’d follow you to hell if need be, but I hate the idea of you going in the army. I’ve met some of those army boys, and they tell terrible stories about what happens to women in the army.”

  “What you expect is going to happen to me, huh?” Dede was red-faced and belligerent. Cissy wondered how many shots she had sneaked from the bottle in her purse. “You think I’m going to fall in love with some big old dyke drill instructor?”

  Nolan’s mouth fell open. “No, no,” he said. “I was thinking about how much you’d hate it.”

  “I might like it. You don’t know.” Dede stood up suddenly. She swayed on unsteady legs. “I might like it a hell of a lot more than hanging out in Cayro till the day I die.”

  When Nolan said nothing, Dede headed for the bathroom, barely missing Sheila, the new waitress, who was bringing another basket of crispy vegetables.

  “Oh, she’s had a little, I guess,” Sheila laughed, and set the basket in front of Nolan.

  “I guess,” Nolan said. He looked at Cissy with a mournful expression. “If you ask me, both your sisters are going through changes.”

  “Dede I understand,” Cissy told him. She speared a fried mushroom out of the basket and chewed it thoughtfully. “It’s Amanda I thought would never change.”