Between, Georgia

by Joshilyn Jackson

We’d waved at each other across the square a few times, but we hadn’t had a single conversation. In a town as small as Between, that couldn’t be coincidence.

  I picked my way up the cracked driveway to the front door. I banged on the knocker, and after a few minutes, Ona Crabtree opened the door, her eyes widening when she saw my face.

  “Nonny!” She seemed frozen.

  “Can I come in?” I asked.

  “Sure you can. Sure,” said Ona. She backed out of the doorway. Henry was on the sofa, an open book in his hands. His feet were bare, and his jeans weren’t ironed. His hair was down, and he looked much too rumpled and casual for Henry until I considered how recently his iron, his tailored New York clothes, and even the leather hair tie I had once pulled off of him had been converted into great filthy drifts of soot and ash.

  Ona closed the door behind me. “Can I get you a cold drink?

  Sit down. Sit down.” Her voice was eager and a little too loud for the small room.

  She led me to the big chair facing the short end of the coffee table. I perched gingerly on its edge, and she said, “You want a Coke? We got Coke.”

  “That’d be great,” I said. She scuttled off into the kitchen.

  “How’s it going, Nonny Jane,” Henry said. He sounded noncommittal and hugely guarded, but that may have been my ears.

  He may have been sleepy. He rubbed at his eyes with the heels of his hands and then clasped his hands in front of him, forearms resting on his thighs.

  “Good,” I said. “It’s good.”

  We fell silent as Ona came back with a can of Coke. She popped the tab theatrically and set it down in front of me on the table.

  “You want some cobbler? It’s peach.”

  “Not really,” I said. I took a bracing sip of the Coke. It tasted too sweet, and I picked it up and looked at the label.

  “That’s that vanilla kind,” Ona said. “I like that vanilla taste in there.” I didn’t answer, and she stood awkwardly in front of me, twisting her hands. The hungry look she always had for me was back, and I stiffened uncomfortably under it.

  Henry was watching us, his eyes cool and appraising. As politely as I could, I said, “Ona? Would you mind if I had a minute alone with Henry?”

  “Naw, I don’t mind,” she said. She stood looking around as if uncertain where to go, then chose the hallway that led to the back bedrooms. She went through the doorway, but I couldn’t hear her footsteps very well on the carpet. I wasn’t sure if she had gone to her room or if she was crouched right at the corner, listening.

  I said, “Henry, tell me what happened last Friday. Tell me everything you know.”

  He nodded and then started talking, telling me what had happened at the Crabtree version of a family dinner and then at the square, filling in the parts I hadn’t heard from the police and Bernese. “And that’s when you showed up. And Jonno. So you know the rest,” he ended.

  “You shouldn’t have gone in there after those animal dolls,” I said. He started to wave me off, and I added, “But I’m glad you did. You’ll never know what that means to my mother.”

  Silence fell between us, and my throat felt as if it were stuffed with grit and pebbles. I sat up straighter. I kept imagining Ona lurking in the hallway, craning her neck to try and catch what we were saying. I said, “I need to talk to you about something else.

  Do you think we can go to your room?”

  “No,” said Henry. My surprise must have shown on my face because he added, “I mean that literally. We can’t. There’s no place in it to be. I had to set up a work space. I got a good PC and a printer and a fax and so on. I’ve got deadlines.”

  “Crap, did you lose all your work?”

  He shook his head. “I back up everything and store it in an on-line data bank. But that bedroom is stuffed. There’s a sliver of bed I can sleep on or sit on to reach my keyboards. You want to—what? Take a walk?”

  “No, this is fine,” I said. I got up and came to sit beside him on the sofa so I could lower my voice. He scooted back, making a little too much room for me.

  “Bernese is giving me custody of Fisher,” I said.

  He smiled then, a genuine expression, and he looked so much like my old friend Henry that I relaxed a notch. “I’m really glad for you, Nonny Jane.”

  “Well, she doesn’t know it yet. But she is.”

  Henry’s grin widened. “You’re taking on Bernese? I’m not sure if I should buy a ticket or leave the state.” I smiled back at him, and then we sat there looking at each other until both our smiles faded. He said, “Is that what you came to tell me?”

  “Kind of. We’re not going to stay here, obviously. There’s no work for me. The deaf community in Between numbers one, and I can’t see clear to charging my own mama. So Fisher will be moving with me. I already had the most complicated family in America, and now I’m a self-employed, divorced single mother. I guess I know I’m not the world’s best prospect for a date, but your bookstore is pretty much toast, and you can write code anywhere.

  It occurred to me, there isn’t a good reason you couldn’t write code where I am.” He swallowed, and I realized I was hedging, talking around what I wanted. I braced myself and said, “I want you to come after us.”

  He looked down at his hands, and I saw the ropy muscles of his forearms shift beneath his skin as he rubbed his palms together. When he looked back up at me, his deep-set eyes were shadowed and unreadable.

  “I don’t know if you noticed, but I have been coming after you.

  For almost a year now.”

  “I did notice,” I said, but he shook his head.

  “I’ve been in love with you for longer than that. I sat on it because you were married, and no matter what I thought about the guy, I had to respect that.” I tried to speak again, but he kept talking. “And I know my timing has sucked. I shouldn’t have kissed you. When I did, you told me loud and clear you were still married. I should have backed off after that. But I didn’t get it. I didn’t want to. But I get it now. I finally got it on Friday, when he showed up with you.”

  “I got divorced on Friday,” I said.

  “Yeah, I heard. It’s a very small town. But nothing changed, Nonny Jane. You were still with him. You are still with him. I can’t come after you anymore, because he’s always there first.”

  “I’m done with Jonno,” I said.

  His voice was very gentle. “You’ve said that to me before. Then you have to go tell him you’re done, and before you get through saying it, you aren’t again. And I’m tired. Everything I own is either gone or stinks like the bottom floor of hell. I’ve had a shit week, and for the record? I’ve also had a shit marriage with a woman who was in love with someone else. I’m not up for it again.”

  “Henry,” I said, “I know what I said before was—” But he was standing up.

  “My friend, I don’t want to have this conversation today. I am too damn tired. I don’t know where I am going, Nonny Jane, but I have family here. So do you. We’ll both be back. I’ll see you around sometime.” He turned away from me, disappearing through the doorway that led toward the bedrooms.

  I heard him say, “Excuse me, Ona,” in his driest voice as he stumbled over her in the hallway. Then I heard one of the bedroom doors shut. I sat there trying not to cry, and Ona Crabtree peered around the corner into the den.

  “He’s just stupid,” she said.

  “I don’t want to talk about it,” I said. I didn’t want to talk with her about anything.

  “Any man’d be lucky,” she said.

  I glared at her. “I said I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “I know I shouldn’t of listened in on y’all,” she said. I waved it away. I got up abruptly to go, and she sidled over to block my path to the front door. “Nonny? I did want to say, I’m real sorry about what all happened.”

  I felt the Crabtree temper trying to rise in me. That was such a load of crap. She had instigated it, she and Bernese both, with their one
-upping and retaliations and assumptions and shared inability to stop. I wanted to smack her in the head, but she looked too pitiful for that. Her yellow eyes were mapped in pink, and her skin sagged over her good high cheekbones.

  Cheekbones like mine.

  I stared at her, and I knew I wouldn’t ever love her. I couldn’t love her. She was buried in every scary memory from my childhood. She’d gone balls-to-the-wall in a war with Bernese that had done too much collateral damage to my family. What my mother had lost could never be replaced.

  But balanced against that, I thought of what Henry had told me, about that moment when she’d glanced at the open window and turned her back so he could go and help my family. If I put it on scales, it did not amount to much. It was a single drop of grace against a lifetime of selfishness. But the grace was there, and had been offered on my behalf.

  She had something else going for her: Henry Crabtree loved her. And dammit it all to hell, I loved Henry Crabtree. I’d blown it with him. I got that. But that didn’t change anything. I loved him. And he loved her.

  “Oh, screw it,” I said, and I went across the room and took her in my arms. It was like holding a loose sack of skin, and then the bones inside clicked to life and clamped so hard around me she was practically squeezing my guts out.

  “All right, then,” I said, patting her back. I couldn’t love her, but I didn’t understand why it had never occurred to me to simply offer kindness. “All right, then.”

  Eventually, I pulled away. She clutched tearfully at my arm and said, “I don’t know how it all got so far away from what I thought.”

  “It’s fine, Ona. Let’s stop thinking about it. There are all kinds of things we could use to hit each other with until doomsday, or apologize for until our lips turned blue and dropped off. But let’s not. Let’s forget about it.”

  “I won’t do nothing no more against Bernese, if that’s what you mean,” she said. “Long as she don’t start fresh up with me.”

  “I know you won’t, and I know she sure as hell won’t. But that’s not what I meant,” I said. “I meant us.” She stared at me, puzzled.

  “Let’s start this way. Why don’t you invite me to supper again.”

  “All right,” she said. She dropped her voice and tilted her head toward the back bedrooms in a theatrical manner, saying, “Better be soon. When State Farm cuts his check, he’s gone from Between.”

  “I know,” I said. “I didn’t mean him. I meant you. I’ll be out of town over the weekend. Fisher and I are going house-hunting.

  But maybe when I come back, we could go to the diner, or you could cook me something here.”

  “Just us?” she said.

  “Yeah, and your boys and Varner, if you want,” I said.

  “I reckon I could do that,” she said. “Really just us?” She was looking at me suspiciously from under her scraggly brows, and I noticed for the first time that they had faded to a pure gunmetal gray, not a scrap of red left.

  “Just us,” I said, and smiled at her. I stood beside her as she clutched my arm, and I patted her grasping hand until the wari-ness faded from her yellowing fox eyes.

  CHAPTER 21

  FISHER AND I planned to leave town on Friday after school. We’d spend the weekend checking out Atlanta neigh-borhoods with good schools, maybe hit the zoo and the Coca-Cola museum. I wasn’t in a hurry. I didn’t want to move Fisher until school let out for the summer. I couldn’t go, anyway, until I’d settled Fisher’s custody with Bernese. Bernese knew I was moving to Atlanta, but she didn’t yet realize I was plotting a coup.

  Early that Friday morning, as Fisher was finishing her normal, human breakfast, I saw my opportunity. Lou poked his head into Mama’s back door and asked if I wanted him to give Fisher a ride to kindergarten. He said, “Save her a bus ride. I’ve got a list this long from Bernese, so I’m heading early into town. I may still be in Loganville when it’s time to pick her up, too.”

  “Thanks, Uncle Lou,” I said. He came in and fixed himself a cup of coffee while I got Fisher’s lunch money and checked to make sure her shoes were tied tight.

  “Bye, Nonny,” she said, giving me a quick squeeze. I hugged her back, resisting the urge to clutch her hard to me and refuse to let her get in Lou’s car. I got that way sometimes when she came to hug me goodbye or give me my good-night kiss. Ever since the Night Nothing Bad Happened to Fisher, I’d been skittish about letting her out of my line of sight.

  She trotted down the steps on her sturdy legs, running alongside Lou with her green backpack flapping joyfully against her spine. As they drove away, I ran up to Genny’s room, where I had a clear view of Bernese’s front yard. Lou and Fisher had not been gone five minutes before Bernese came out of her front door and walked rapidly down Grace Street.

  I watched her go, and then I went and found Mama and Genny in Mama’s bedroom. Genny had just finished their faces and was capping her pink lipstick and closing her compact.

  I drew my heart on Mama’s shoulder, and she reached for me.

  I signed into her hand, I think it is happening.

  She knew at once what I meant and twitched her hand in a brief nod; then, for Genny’s benefit, she signed, Yes, today is the day Genny is going to make a body and a dress for Josephine. Lou brought over Bernese’s Singer. I gave Mama’s hand a squeeze, and she returned the pressure and then signed, And I will begin to work in the garage on my new sculpture. I told you about it? The Bones of Dogs. You see? I am getting to be my old self again.

  I leaned in to kiss Mama and then said to Genny, “I think Josephine will be your best doll ever.” I signed it for Mama and added, And I think this new sculpture will be your best ever, too.

  “I agree,” said Genny, and Mama nodded her hand solemnly.

  It will have to be, she signed, and I didn’t know if she meant the sculpture or this last china doll. But either way, she was right.

  For her it would be. My mama had learned a long time ago how to live, and live richly, within the boundaries of what was left to her.

  I left and headed down Grace Street, toward the square. By the time I got there, Bernese was nowhere to be seen. No one was out and about this early, and all the shops were locked up tight. I stopped to look at the crumbled walls of what was once the museum. The rest of it would be taken out next week. They had already finished clearing the lots of Henry’s and Bernese’s stores, and nothing remained except an expanse of blackened concrete next to the Sweete Shoppe.

  I crossed Philbert and went around to the back of Isaac Davids’s Victorian. He had a fake rock just like Bernese’s under his azalea bushes. I got out his spare key and let myself in, walking through his kitchen and up the back stairs. That was where I found them.

  They weren’t in his bedroom, and they weren’t doing anything particularly damning, but the way they stood together in the hallway confirmed everything Mama had told me. Bernese was leaning in to him, her arms tucked up and bent at the elbow so she could rest her palms on his long, narrow chest. Her face was resting on his chest as well, in between her hands. He was stooped at the shoulders so he could put his arms around her thick waist, his head bent down to press his lips into her hair.

  He saw me first, his eyes meeting mine over Bernese’s head. To his credit, he didn’t shove her away or leap back. He barely started at all, and then he straightened his back and turned her, keeping one arm firmly around her shoulders, so Bernese could see me, too.

  Her eyes widened and she stiffened. She stared at me and shook her head, and then she said, “Shit.” It was the first time I had ever heard her say a cussword that wasn’t in the Bible.

  I stopped where I was, three steps from the top, and said, “I’ll wait downstairs. Come talk to me when you’re ready.”

  I made coffee in Isaac’s modern kitchen. His coffeemaker was a large black contraption that could steam and foam milk and make espresso and probably cook a chicken if I’d only known how to program it. As it was, it took me fifteen minutes to get a
pot of regular coffee going.

  I had fixed myself a cup and taken a seat at the butcher-block table before Bernese came down the back stairs. She was alone.

  She poured herself a cup without speaking, stirring in four big spoonfuls of sugar, and then she came over and sat at the table across from me. She’d pulled herself together, and her face was unreadable.

  I broke the silence. “I suppose it makes more sense to me now.

  Of course you wouldn’t think adultery alone was a good enough reason to get a divorce.”

  Bernese laced her hands in front of her on the table and met my eyes, her mouth firm. “I deserved that, but that was your one shot. Hope you enjoyed it.” We sat there for another minute, and her gaze dropped first. She said, “I’m in love with him, you know.

  This isn’t some whim. I’ve always been in love with him.”

  I shook my head. “Why didn’t you marry him, then?” I asked.

  “Just because he’s Jewish?”

  She snorted. “I would have married him if he worshipped Baal.” She twisted in her seat, shifting as if she couldn’t get comfortable. “He wouldn’t marry me. And yes, it was because I wasn’t. I was so mad at him for that, I came straight home and married Lou. Lou’d wanted to marry me right out of high school, and he still did. We’d stayed friends, you know. I’d see Lou when I came home summers and spring break and all, and he never lost that way of looking at me. Once I moved home after nursing school, I didn’t figure I would ever see Isaac again.”

  I said, “You’ve had pretty good cover. Half the town thinks he’s gay.”

  She wasn’t listening to me. “I’ve been a good wife, mostly. And Isaac and I weren’t really doing anything. We haven’t done anything this time for over a year now. I hope you don’t plan to bust up Lou’s whole life this late in the game.” Her eyes widened into a pleading expression I had never seen on her face before.

  I heard Isaac’s measured tread coming down the hall, and then he joined us, tall and elegant and self-assured. He sat down at the kitchen table in his accustomed place by her side. Bernese shifted, her body language changing almost imperceptibly, angling toward him as if he were slightly magnetic.