Saving Grace

by Lee Smith

  Before I knew it, I had run out there and flung myself down sobbing on Travis Junior’s grave. The cold grass was prickly against my face. The marble felt slick and wet and cold.

  “Missy, Missy, what in the world are you doing, girl?” Suddenly Travis was there in his work jacket, helping me up. I was so surprised and glad to see him. He had been on his way home early and had stopped when he saw the Tabernacle door standing wide open the way I’d left it. He held me while he prayed aloud for Travis Junior, and for us, and for everybody in the graveyard, and in the church, and in the world.

  I wished he had stopped with us.

  Then he squeezed me tight and said, “Let’s go home,” and we did.

  * * *

  HELEN DIDN’T WANT her room painted, and Travis wouldn’t even think about getting our own room done. He liked for everything to stay exactly the way it was. But the girls picked Lavender Blue Dilly Dilly for theirs, and I called the paint store, and the painter showed up a week later.

  This moment is fixed in my mind forever.

  It was a morning like any other, March as I said. Travis had gone off to work and I had driven the girls to school and dropped by the store for milk and come back home to find Helen out on the porch waiting for me, clutching her coat around her. She had her pocketbook, so I knew she was fixing to go someplace.

  “It’s about time!” she said, grabbing the keys from me. “Where’ve you been, anyway?”

  I held up the grocery bag. “At the store,” I said. “We were just about out of milk.”

  “I know we were out of milk!” Helen said. She fished in her coat pocket and brought up a little list that had “milk” written at the top of it. “I was going to get some,” she said then in a nicer voice.

  “Well . . .” I stood there on the steps.

  “Never mind,” Helen said sharply. “We’re fixing to be late, that’s all. I’m taking Vonda Louise in to Valleydale to the doctor.” She cast this news back over her shoulder as she hurried down the walk. “She’s just about out of nerve pills.”

  I sat in the glider on the porch and watched Helen drive down the road to pick up Vonda Louise. It was cold, but somehow I could not stand to go inside, where there were beds to be made and dishes to wash and everything else that I had been doing every day for the past fifteen years.

  I have always loved to sit in a glider. I love the way you kind of hover on the air, like you’re not really sitting where you are, or not for long, like you might just stand up and walk out into the universe.

  I was still sitting in the glider when a truck drove up about ten minutes later. It was coming real slow, looking for the right place I reckon, though there was not much on our road except for us and Vonda Louise’s and Minnie’s houses and those three ranch-style houses around the bend, which it would have already passed by the time it got to us. The truck stopped right in front of our house and the driver got out and opened the gate and walked up the walk without hesitating, all of this in slow motion, as if it was meant to be. I sat in the glider and watched him come. He walked to the bottom of the porch steps and stopped, looking at me.

  This man was not like anybody I had ever seen.

  He had long shaggy blond hair which came down almost to his shoulders beneath his Sherwin-Williams paint cap, and mirror shades. Nobody wearing mirror shades had ever come to our house before. He walked up the steps still looking at me. He held a burning cigarette in one hand. He wore a gold chain around his neck with a small gold rabbit hanging from it. I stood up. I could see myself reflected in his glasses, all wavy and shiny and out of whack. He took one last drag on his cigarette and threw it out in the yard.

  “I’m Randy Newhouse,” he said. “The painter? From Sherwin-Williams?”

  “I’m Mrs. Travis Word,” I said with as much dignity as I could muster.

  “No shit.” He grinned at me.

  I laughed in spite of myself. I took him in the house and showed him the rooms to be redecorated.

  “I thought you were ready for me,” he said, looking around.

  “I am,” I said.

  “No, you’re not.” But he was not mad at all, and he helped me move the furniture away from the walls in the living area and cover it all up with drop cloths. He started bringing things in from his truck while I took down the curtains.

  “Here you go, honey,” he said, stepping up behind me as I struggled with the last venetian blind. My heart began beating real fast even though I could tell he was the kind of guy that calls everybody honey. Then he reached around me and got hold of the venetian blind. “Careful now,” he said, so close that his mustache tickled my neck and I could feel his hot breath in my ear. I had not felt this way since Lamar. I jumped aside like I’d been shot, and the venetian blind clattered to the floor. Randy Newhouse laughed. “Nervous little thing, ain’t you?”

  “No,” I said. He was still laughing when I ran upstairs, where I made the beds and straightened the girls’ room and then started ironing Travis’s shirts furiously, pushing down as hard as I could. Randy turned on a portable radio downstairs while he worked, and the sound of rock-and-roll music filled the house. It was the Allman Brothers, though I didn’t know their name yet. I couldn’t keep from grinning as I ironed.

  I knew Helen would have a fit when she got home.

  * * *

  SHE DID, OF course. She told Randy Newhouse he couldn’t play the radio in our house, or smoke cigarettes on our property. He said, “Yes ma’am,” and smiled at her until even she got nervous. Randy had a way of acting like he knew a secret joke, and the joke was on you.

  But everybody liked him. My girls would not quit talking to him when they got home from school. He told them all about his band, which was called the Sheet Rockers. Misty came in the kitchen and whispered that he was cute. “Cute!” Helen snorted as if this was ridiculous, but she gave him a big hunk of the carrot cake she’d made the day before, and Randy ate every crumb, swearing it was the very best carrot cake he’d ever put in his mouth.

  Travis never actually met him. During the six days Randy worked at our house, he was always gone by the time Travis got home. But Travis, who knew about such things, made an inspection each evening, and said that Randy was doing a real good job. First he painted and papered the living area, then painted the girls’ room, and then the kitchen. While he was doing the kitchen we had to go down to Minnie’s house to eat. Vonda Louise was the most excited about the redecoration. She kept coming over to see what was going on, wearing bright crazy spots of blush-on which made her look like a clown. Randy always talked real nice to her, but I could tell that she amused him.

  “Now, what have you been doing today, Miss Vonda Louise?” he asked on the second or third day, and she started in telling him everything she’d done, stuff so piddly I couldn’t believe she could even remember it. She always went into too much detail anyway.

  “Well, I went in the kitchen and had me a cup of coffee,” she said, “but then I had to let it cool off some before I could drink it. I don’t like my coffee too hot.”

  “You don’t, huh?” Randy asked, winking at me.

  “No sir!” Vonda Louise said. “Burns your mouth! One time I burned my mouth so bad I had to hold ice in it. That was back in 1968. It might of been 1969.”

  “That must have been real painful,” Randy said.

  “What?” Vonda Louise had what they call a short attention span.

  “Your mouth. When you burned it.”

  “Well, it was,” she said. “It sure was.”

  I’d laugh so hard at these conversations I’d almost wet my pants. But Vonda Louise was having the time of her life. Every day Randy came, she’d visit two or three times, always leaving in a flurry, all of a sudden.

  “Where you going so fast, Miss Vonda Louise?” Randy Newhouse called out after her once, and I followed her outside just to find out wh
at she would say.

  “Missy, honey, come here.” She motioned me over to her, and I went. The smell of her cheap perfume was almost more than I could take, as she whispered in my ear. “That painter feller is looking at me,” she said.

  “Well, maybe he is,” I said. “You are still real pretty, Vonda Louise.” This was a lie, but I knew it would please her. She sucked in her breath and took off, talking to herself. I stood outside in the cold wind, watching as she picked her way down the road to her own house with those mincy little steps, like she was walking on broken glass.

  I had to smile.

  For I knew he was looking at me.

  * * *

  WHILE RANDY WAS at the house, I got what Mama used to call the “all-overs,” when she’d get too nervous to sit down and had to pace from room to room. I couldn’t eat. I couldn’t sleep. First I’d feel like I was on fire, and then like I was freezing. Helen asked me if I was sick, and Vonda Louise offered me one of her nerve pills. I said no thank you. A nerve pill was not what I needed. Randy Newhouse was looking at me, but nothing had happened so far.

  I was the preacher’s wife, after all.

  And nothing ever would have happened if it hadn’t of been for me. I did it, pure and simple. It was all my own doing, and all my own fault.

  It happened on the last day he was there.

  Randy had finished everything except for replacing the doors and the fronts of the cabinets and things such as switches and light fixtures. I was upstairs in the girls’ room sitting on a straight-back chair I’d pulled over to the window, waiting for him to come. It was the only upstairs window with a good view of the front walk. My heart started pounding as the red truck with the ladders on top stopped at our house for the last time. He swung down from the cab and headed for the house with that cocky way he had of walking, I watched him come. Then right before he got to the steps, he looked up. I froze. But he saw me. He was looking up directly into my eyes, and a big grin spread all over his face. “Yahoo!” he yelled suddenly, scaring me to death. He took off his cap and slapped it against his thigh as I moved back from the window, my face hot as fire. But even in my embarrassment I had to go down and see him, I just had to.

  I could hear Helen fussing at him as I went downstairs. “You crazy thing,” she was saying. “What are you out there yelling about?” She treated him like she treated Misty and Annette, as if he was a child too. Well, he was a child, compared to Travis, who was nearing sixty by then. An old man.

  Randy was not an old man. He was thirty, three years younger than me. The minute Helen turned her back, he gave me a big wink, and the minute she walked out to feed her chickens, he threw down his tools and ran in the bathroom where I was cleaning the sink, and whirled me around to kiss him, all prickly mustache and hot tongue. I got so lightheaded I dropped my can of Ajax on the floor and had to lean back against the sink for support. Out the corner of my eye I could see us in the mirror, and we looked young and beautiful, both of us, like movie stars.

  The back door slammed.

  “I’ll call you,” Randy whispered into my hair.

  Then he was gone and I sank down onto the toilet-seat cover which I myself had crocheted, and wept. Finally I got up and washed my face in cold water, which did nothing to calm me down. I went upstairs, where I unfolded and refolded everything in the linen closet.

  In another hour he was really gone. I could hear him saying good-bye to Helen and Vonda Louise in the kitchen, but I just yelled, “Thank you so much, you did a great job,” down the stairs, and did not appear. I did not trust myself to face him in front of them. Later, when I had gotten ahold of myself, I went down and found Vonda Louise and Helen sitting in their parents’ matching armchairs, which looked so old-fashioned now in the newly papered living area.

  “You know what?” Helen said to me. She was knitting. “I believe Vonda has got a little crush on that hippie painter.”

  “I do not.” Vonda Louise started crying.

  I did not think he looked like a hippie, myself. I thought he looked like a cross between Jesus and Kris Kristofferson.

  Helen peered all around the living area with satisfaction. “Well, I think he done a real good job,” she said. “I think we got our money’s worth.”

  Travis thought so too, when he came home from work. “Are you happy now, Missy?” he asked me.

  “I’m real happy, honey,” I said.

  * * *

  I WAS ON pins and needles waiting for Randy’s call, which came three nights later, when I had almost given up. I was helping the girls with their homework. They always started it at the dinette table in the kitchen after supper while I cleaned up, and though Annette never really needed any help from anybody, one of us would usually have to help Misty, who was not studious. I believe we all have gifts, in the words of Travis, and being smart in school was never Misty’s gift. Still, I was real proud of both my girls, who had gone farther in school than me. That night, Misty was supposed to write a paper on the Bermuda Triangle.

  “Well, what in tarnation is it?” Helen asked, drying while I washed.

  I smiled. I knew what it was.

  “I’m going to read you from the book,” Misty said. “Okay. Now listen, this is just amazing!” One of the cutest things about Misty was how excited she got about everything—this is why she was such a good cheerleader. She started reading. “‘The Bermuda Triangle is an area located off the southeastern Atlantic coast of the United States which is noted for a high number of unexplained losses of ships, small boats, and aircraft. The apexes of the Triangle are generally accepted to be Bermuda, Miami, Florida, and San Juan, Puerto Rico.’”

  Annette had looked up from her math to listen.

  “‘Since 1945, more than a hundred planes and ships have literally vanished into thin air. More than a thousand lives have been lost in this area within the past twenty-six years, without a single body or even a piece of wreckage from the vanishing planes or ships having been found.’”

  “Shoot!” Helen finished drying and hung the dish towel on its hook. “Do you believe that?”

  “Well, sure, Aunt Helen, it’s right here in the book,” Misty said.

  “People that believe that would believe anything!” Helen stomped off into the living area, where I could hear her asking Travis if he believed in the Bermuda Triangle or not.

  Misty giggled. Annette smiled and shook her head, going back to her math. I was wiping off the kitchen counter when the phone rang, so I was right there to get it.

  “Hello?” I said.

  “Is this you?” said Randy Newhouse.

  “Yes, it is.” I used an airy voice, as if I was talking to a complete stranger.

  His deep chuckle came over the wire so close and real it sent an electric shock through my whole body. “Well, I want you to meet me at the Per-Flo Motel on the other side of Knoxville on Monday afternoon, can you do that? As soon after noon as you can get there. Just look for my truck.”

  “Yes,” I said in that same voice. “It’s just fine. Yes,” I said again for emphasis.

  Randy was still laughing when I hung up.

  Both girls were looking at me, Annette with her little squint. She was so smart. “Who was that?” she asked.

  “Oh it was just somebody from the electric company,” I said right off the top of my head. “They’re taking a poll.” It was the first flat-out lie I had ever told in that house. But it was easy, easy as pie.

  I went over and sat down beside Misty. “Now tell me some more about the Bermuda Triangle,” I said. “What causes it?”

  “They don’t know, Mama. That’s the point. Look here.” Misty showed me a chart of possible explanations including sudden tidal waves, fireballs, sea monsters such as giant squids or sea serpents, a time-space warp leading to another dimension, capture by UFOs, and blue holes.

  “What’s a blue hole?�
�� I asked. My heart was just pounding.

  “It’s this real deep hole in the ocean,” Misty said. “Sometimes divers come upon them and start going down and keep on going down in them because they can’t stop. They get confused. Fish even get confused in them sometimes, and swim upside down. Sometimes they find boats down there too, crammed up against the rock, like they got sucked down there by some enormous force. It’s kind of like a big cave down there. Like a cavern.” She showed me the picture. Then we looked at some more pictures, of whirlpools and waterspouts and some kind of Japanese wave. We read about the mysterious glowing streaks of white water in the Gulf Stream. We read about Atlantis and the Golden Age of Man.

  “It’s too much!” Misty threw down her pencil in despair. “It’s too complicated. I don’t know if I ought to make this report on the air part, or the water part. If it was just the air or the ocean, it would be a whole lot easier. This is too much. It’s too hard.” She stuck her bottom lip out the way she’s done ever since she was a baby.

  “Make a topic sentence,” I said.

  “It’s too hard,” she whined.

  “No, you can do it. Come on. Just make a topic sentence.” I remembered this much from school.

  Misty picked her pencil up and bit it. Then she said, “The Bermuda Triangle is a place of mystery,” and smiled, pleased with herself.

  “Write it down,” I told her.

  Annette never looked up while all this was going on. She could concentrate like you wouldn’t believe. She went on and did her math while I helped Misty write her report, which I was somehow able to do just like nothing had happened, just like he had never called, even though inside I felt like I was being whirled around and carried away by some mysterious current, sucked down down down into a deep blue hole of my own making.