“Why, that’s the skatin’ rink,” Dolly said. “It’s been open for a whole year now. Got a dance floor in there too, and Ping-Pong tables down on the far end o’ the porch. The concession stand’s right by the front door. It costs a quarter to skate if you bring your own, fifty cents if you need to rent a pair o’ ours. Ping-Pong’s a dime a game, but we don’t charge folks anything to dance or sit on the front porch and visit. We figure they’ll end up feedin’ nickels into the jukebox or buyin’ a Co-Cola if they stay long enough, and we can’t see any point in bein’ greedy. Ever’body needs a little enjoyment right now, don’t you think?”
“Yes,” Anna said. “I think you’re absolutely right.”
“Now listen,” Dolly went on, “I know you’re a long way from home and prob’ly missin’ your mama already. But don’t you worry. You’ll make it back to Illinois. Alabama’s just a little stop on your journey. And there’s nice people here and good churches to go to. And if you need anybody to talk to, why, I’ve been told I’m a pretty good listener, so you just feel free.”
“Thank you, Dolly.” Anna was trying hard not to blink as her eyes began to sting. It’s strange, she thought. Sometimes, when you’re so sad that you’re barely holding yourself together, it’s the kindness of another person—a simple gesture from someone trying to bring comfort—that unleashes the tears. And she knew that Jesse, as usual, was far too preoccupied with his own frustration to notice that she too had reached a breaking point.
“If we could—if we could just get our room,” he said, standing up and holding out the tea goblet.
“Why, of course,” Dolly said politely as she took it from him. “I’ll do whatever I can to make you comfortable. You’re a guest in my home.”
“About time,” Jesse mumbled as she left the room. “Can’t she see that we just want to get this over with?”
Anna knew he was prepared to go on and on about Dolly wasting their time and meddling in their business—and she knew she couldn’t stand to listen to another word of it. But just then he turned to look at her, perched on that elegant settee, wearing the clothes she had slept in, and for once he was struck silent.
She could guess why. All these months, all this time, she had worked hard to make sure she never showed any sign of disappointment in him—not a hint of frustration, let alone anger. But what she felt now—and what she was sure he could see on her face—was an unsettling mix of fury and disgust.
For the first time since their downward spiral began, Jesse actually tried to explain himself. “Anna, all I meant was—”
“I don’t care what you meant,” she said without raising her voice. “What she meant, in case you missed it, is that she doesn’t have to put up with any nonsense. You saw all those caravans coming down here. Dolly’s probably got a waiting list a mile long. My father said all I have to do is make one collect phone call and he’ll send me a bus ticket home.”
Dolly came back into the parlor and could no doubt see that she had interrupted something. “Well then, let’s get y’all settled,” she said. “Come on upstairs, and I’ll show you where everything is.”
She led them up a sweeping staircase that opened into a spacious sitting area on the second floor. Bookcases big enough for a library lined the walls. The floors were covered with tapestry rugs that looked a little threadbare. There was a settee like the one in the parlor, along with a couple of armchairs and a rocker. Between two tall windows overlooking the lake-to-be was a door that opened onto the upstairs porch. Unlike the one below, it was screened. Anna thought how lovely it would be to sit here and read a good book or embroider on a rainy afternoon. Narrow hallways led from the sitting area to what she imagined were bedrooms.
“The porch there is a nice place to pull up a rockin’ chair and have your mornin’ coffee or a glass o’ tea on a hot summer day,” Dolly said. “And it’s here for ever’body, so just make yourself at home.”
As Dolly walked them through the upstairs, Anna watched her straighten lampshades and make quick swipes with her hand to clear any dust that she spotted. “Now, the two bedrooms on the opposite side there—one belongs to a Mr. and Mrs. Hastings. Actually, Dr. and Dr. Hastings. They were both college professors up in Chicago, but I guess times are hard there too. Both of ’em lost their jobs, which is a cryin’ shame, if you ask me. They’re the nicest people—and all that knowledge just goin’ to waste. He works at the plant, and she substitute teaches over at the high school from time to time. ’Course, it won’t be long till school lets out for the summer, so I imagine we’ll be seein’ a lot more o’ her.”
Dolly let out a tired sigh as she pointed to the room in the back corner of the house. “That room there belongs to the Clanahans from Reno, Nevada. They’re out for the afternoon. Both of ’em work the early shift at the plant, so you’ll only see ’em at suppertime, and that’ll be plenty. I’ll confess it right now—those two try my patience and test my religion.”
“Why?” Anna asked.
“They’re rude in that kinda way that makes you feel like the one who made the misstep—like you’re the one with no raisin’. They’re gone before Si gets up, and I’ve been carryin’ his supper to him over at the lake so he can work late. The Clanahans have been livin’ in this house for two weeks, and Si’s never laid eyes on ’em. He will tonight, though. We’ll see what he has to say then. In the meantime, just try not to get your feelin’s hurt by whatever meanness they might decide to spew.”
Dolly led Anna and Jesse to two rooms at the front of the house. “Mr. Joe Dolphus has that small room right there. He lost his wife a year ago and moved here as much to get away from that empty house as to find work, I expect. He’s just as kind and pleasant as he can be.”
She gave them a big smile as she pointed to the other door, adorned with a wreath made of corsages. Their flowers were long gone, but the ribbon and crinoline that Anna imagined had once adorned ball gowns for dances and cotillions offered a cheery welcome from the heavy old door.
“Now, this room right here—this room is yours.” Dolly opened the door to an immense bedroom. The ceiling must have been fourteen feet high. Anna loved the smell of old polished wood and the way her footsteps echoed when she walked across the floor. There was a walnut four-poster bed, a dressing table with a round mirror, a washstand, and an armoire with full-length mirrors on each of its wide double doors. A small rocking chair had been placed in front of the fireplace opposite the bed, and tall windows overlooked the lake. Best of all, the room had its own private door onto the porch. Anna wasn’t sure why, but something about this grand old bedroom both excited and comforted her. For the first time in forever, she felt hopeful.
“It’s beautiful, Dolly,” she said. “It’s just beautiful.”
Her host smiled. “When me and Si first decided to take in boarders, I had a feelin’ somebody was comin’ who would need this room—this one in particular—so I’ve been savin’ it. This room belonged to me and my sister when we were growin’ up. If these walls go to talkin’, you let me know because they’ve overheard a lotta our secrets. Wouldn’t want ’em to start tellin’ on me in front o’ my comp’ny.”
“I’ll let you know if I hear anything you’d want to put a stop to,” Anna assured her.
“You do that. Oh! I almost forgot. There’s a bathroom up here, but with seven people, it can get a little crowded. We’ve still got our old bathhouse and outhouse in back. And you’re welcome to use me and Si’s downstairs bathroom, as long as the Clanahans aren’t around. Far as they know, our bathroom’s off-limits. I shudder to think what that man could do to a sink.”
Jesse finally spoke. “Is there a key to our room? We’ll want to keep it locked when we aren’t here.”
“There’s no keys to the rooms, but there’s a latch on the inside for privacy,” Dolly said. “Also, you can flip down that doorstop on the bottom—won’t nobody come in on you with that heavy ol’ thing holdin’ ’em back. And if you’re worried about your valuables, that wardrobe locks,
and the only key to it’s right there in the keyhole.”
“But how can we make sure—”
“I’m sure it will be fine,” Anna said. “Thank you.”
“Well, that about covers everything,” Dolly said. “Breakfast is on the table at six every mornin’, and whoever’s here at lunchtime can fix a sandwich or somethin’ outta the kitchen. Supper’s at six every night. So just remember ‘six’ and you’ll never go hungry in my house.”
“We’ll remember,” Anna said.
“Well, I’ll leave you to it then,” Dolly said. “If you need any help bringin’ in your things, just come and get me. I’ll be in the kitchen.” She suddenly clapped her hands together and laughed. “I’ll bet you that’s what they put on my tombstone: ‘Here lies Dolly Chandler. She was in the kitchen.’”
Anna laughed with Dolly, following her down the stairs of a grand old home and out to a dusty pickup that held everything she owned.
CHAPTER
two
By suppertime, Anna and Jesse had silently unpacked their belongings and settled into their room after he carried her rocking chair—the only piece of furniture they brought with them—upstairs for her.
Now Anna stood on the porch just outside their room, the early evening breeze lifting tendrils of her long hair away from her face. She turned to see Jesse staring at her through a big glass pane in the door to the porch. Suddenly, the door came ajar and creaked open all by itself, startling both of them.
Stepping through the opening that Dolly’s house had offered, Jesse took his wife’s hand. “I’m . . . I mean, it’s just this place . . . and everything we’ve . . .”
Anna knew he was struggling to muster an apology, and ordinarily she would have come to his rescue. But right now she was far too tired, lonely, and homesick to throw out a lifeline. All she could do was stare at him.
“Guess we should go downstairs?” he said.
Anna followed him off the porch and down the grand stairway.
The two of them were the last of the boarders to reach Dolly’s dining room, which was in the center of the ground floor. Even with nine people at the long, rectangular table, there was room to spare. Both the table and the elegant dining chairs looked very old—worn but refined—and an ornate crystal chandelier hung down from the high ceiling, centering the table. So spacious was this room that it didn’t feel the least bit crowded, even with a china cabinet on either side of a buffet on one wall and two Victorian chaise lounges flanking a fireplace on the other. Dolly had just set the last dish on the table—a heaping platter of fried chicken—when Anna and Jesse came in.
“Ever’body, I’d like you to meet Mr. and Mrs. Williams,” Dolly said. “They’re from Illinois, and I know y’all will make ’em feel welcome.”
Three of the four men at the table stood when Anna came into the room. The fourth only glanced up briefly at the Williamses and kept talking to a woman with bleached blonde hair sitting next to him.
“That’s my husband, Si, at the head of the table,” Dolly was saying.
“Pleased to meet you both,” Si said, shaking Jesse’s hand. “Ma’am,” he said, giving Anna a polite half bow.
“How do you do,” Anna said. Si Chandler was only a little taller than Dolly but much darker, no doubt from working in the sun. He had short, salt-and-pepper hair combed straight back and a neatly trimmed mustache.
“The gentleman right across from you is Mr. Joe Dolphus from Leland, Mississippi,” Dolly said.
A tall, soft-spoken man with gray hair reached across the table to shake Jesse’s hand. He repeated Si’s polite bow to Anna and said, “Please call me Joe.”
“We’re Anna and Jesse,” she said with a smile.
Dolly gestured toward a well-dressed couple who appeared to be in their late forties. Anna thought they looked like city people. “Now, this is Dr. Hastings and his wife—also Dr. Hastings,” Dolly said. “They’re joinin’ us from Chicago.”
“I believe we’re well beyond ‘Doctor’ at this point,” the man said. “Please just call us Harry and Evelyn.” He shook Jesse’s hand and said to Anna, “Very pleased to meet you,” while his wife gave a little wave in the Williamses’ direction.
Finally, Dolly nodded toward the couple seated to her left. “This is Mr. and Mrs. Clanahan from Reno, Nevada.”
“You mind if I smoke?” the woman with the bleached blonde hair said. “If we’re gonna be chatting each other up all night, I might as well light one till you finally decide to serve the food.”
“You’re welcome to smoke, but not at my supper table,” Dolly said.
The woman rolled her eyes as everyone took their seats.
“Si, we’re mighty pleased you could join us tonight,” Dolly said. “Would you please offer thanks?”
Dolly’s husband asked the blessing, and then the two of them began passing plates and bowls around.
“So y’all just got here today?” Si asked.
“Yes,” Jesse answered. Anna desperately hoped he would help her make conversation at this table full of strangers. Even the old Jesse was never much for crowds, but he would at least come to her aid in a situation like this.
“We left home a couple of days ago and just got here this afternoon,” Anna added.
“Bet you slept in whatever you drove,” Mrs. Clanahan said. “Doesn’t look like you got two nickels to rub together.”
Anna felt her cheeks turn red-hot as Jesse stopped passing a plate of dinner rolls, suspending it in midair and clenching his other fist in his lap. She caught a glimpse of Si looking up from his place at the head of the table to give the blonde woman a cold stare.
At that moment, something very odd happened. The crystal chandelier shimmied, making a delicate tinkling noise above the table.
“Well, if Anna and Jesse were wealthy, they’d be mighty outta place at this table,” Dolly said. “None of us would be breakin’ bread together if times were better for us, now would we?”
“Well said, Dolly,” Harry agreed as Jesse passed the rolls on around the table.
“Tell us, Anna, where exactly are you from in Illinois?” Evelyn asked.
“Oh, it’s a tiny little town—you probably never heard of it in a big city like Chicago. It’s called Red Bud.”
“You don’t say!” Harry exclaimed. “How about that, Evelyn? We had to come all the way to Alabama for you to meet anybody from Red Bud!”
“Harry’s grandmother grew up there, and as long as she lived, all we ever heard about was that little town—how Christmas was prettier there and the grass was greener there and the people were nicer there,” Evelyn explained. “Having met you two, I see she was telling us the truth all those years.”
Anna looked at Jesse and smiled. She was worried he would leave the table if that horrible Clanahan woman said anything else.
“So how do you plan on filling up that hole you call a lake?” Mrs. Clanahan asked Si as she propped her elbows on the table, bit into a chicken leg, and began smacking.
Si narrowed his eyes at her ever so slightly. Anna noticed that Dolly had begun fidgeting with the silver dessert spoon above her plate.
“I mean to pump it full o’ water from the creek behind it,” Si said.
“Oh,” was all the blonde woman said as she licked her fingers, then reached across the table and grabbed another piece of chicken with her bare hand.
Again the chandelier shimmied.
“Here, let me just pass this around again,” Dolly said. She got up and passed her platter of chicken—no doubt, Anna thought, getting her food out of the Clanahans’ reach, lest the other guests refuse to touch it.
“I’ve been meaning to ask you, Joe,” Harry said, “your hometown of Leland—is that in the Mississippi Delta?”
“It is indeed,” Joe answered.
“Is it true that the soil is pitch-black there and the fields are flat as a tabletop?” Harry asked.
Joe nodded. “That is no exaggeration. One ol’ farmer back home—fe
lla by the name o’ Patton—used to joke that he could start plowin’ a row o’ cotton on Monday mornin’ and wouldn’t have to turn around till Wednesday afternoon.”
Everybody had a good laugh, except the Clanahans.
“Harry has always been fascinated with the Mississippi Delta,” Evelyn said. “I believe he fancies himself a displaced Southerner.”
Harry smiled at his wife. “I’m not that bad.”
“Oh no?” she countered. “Kindly explain your music collection.”
“I am a professor of music, Evelyn—or at least I used to be.”
“Yes, but you taught Bach and Beethoven, while you listen to Leadbelly.”
“Just broadening my horizons,” he said with a wink at his wife. “Si and Dolly have graciously offered me access to the Victrola in their music room,” Harry told Anna and Jesse. “I invite you to join me any weekend afternoon and share my record collection.”
“Thank you,” Anna said. “That’s very kind of you.”
“You mentioned a creek—to pump your lake water?” Jesse said to Si.
“That’s right,” Si answered. “It’s called the Tanyard, and the stretch of it that runs behind the lake is deep and cold, so pumpin’ should be fairly simple. It’s not very good for fishin’ there—you have to walk downstream a piece to catch anything worth fryin’. You enjoy dippin’ a line?”
“I do.” Jesse sent the rolls on around again.
“Well, I’ll tell you this much—if you love to fish, you have come to the right place. I’ll show you exactly where to go. There’s several great spots you can walk to from here. My personal favorite is a quiet little slough off the creek. It’s real tucked away and it’s on our land, so don’t nobody go back there but us. You and me can go walk it tomorrow afternoon.”
“Now, Si—” Dolly began.
He looked at his wife. “We’re just gonna walk it, not fish it, Dolly.” Turning back to Jesse, Si explained, “My wife’s a Southern Baptist—they’d sooner cuss their mama than fish on Sunday.”
Jesse couldn’t help smiling, which made Anna downright gleeful. He was in there somewhere. She just had to believe it.
Almost Home Page 2