by Brad Watson
He was confused, at first, felt himself blush that she would joke about their old affair in public, but then he realized from the look she was giving Birdie that she meant Birdie, as in Finus and Birdie. Levi still hadn’t spoken, still didn’t look like he could. Birdie turned paler than she had been. Finus stood in the center of the room like some stiff ridiculous totem. Levi took Merry’s elbow and tried to pull her toward the door, whispering something to her, but Merry yanked her arm free and turned back to Birdie. Birdie looked up at her, horrified.
-I don’t know how you can sit there and play the grieving widow, Merry said. -Sweet little Birdie, she mocked her. -Well you don’t fool me.
-Merry, please, Birdie said, don’t do this.
-Do what, honey, tell the truth? Everybody thinks she is so-o-o innocent, she said loudly then, sweeping her arm around the room, almost losing the ridiculous hat from her head. It seemed the entire house had fallen silent, everyone in the den and in the other rooms, too. -Well, she went on—but Finus had heard enough and if Levi couldn’t handle her he would. He stepped over, took her by the upper arm, and hustled her through the kitchen and out into the driveway.
Outside, she twisted from his grip and swung her purse at him.
-What the hell, Merry.
-She killed him, is what, Merry said, pushing her hair back out of her eyes and spitting onto the sidewalk. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, smearing bright red lipstick on her pale skin.
-Jesus Christ, Finus said, are you insane? You couldn’t be that drunk.
-I don’t know how, she said, but my brother Earl was healthy as a horse and did not just keel over from a heart attack. Wasn’t enough she lived like a little queen out here, having her every whim, new cars, new clothes, a goddamn nigger maid to do all her work, this pampered little goddamn thing, but everybody knew Earl was fucking every girl came through his store, and everybody knew he fell in love with Ann after she went to work there, and everybody knew he set Ann up in the Tallahassee store so he could go down and be with her, and Birdie knew he was going to leave her for Ann and if you don’t think that’s enough motive for a woman to kill her husband you’re a bigger idiot of a half-ass small-town newspaper man than I took you for.
She realized she’d locked herself out of her car, took off one of the expensive high-heel shoes Earl no doubt had given her gratis from his store, and smashed the heel into the driver’s window shattering it. She tossed the fur stole onto the seat over the glass, climbed in, cranked up, and peeled out of yard. Finus heard something behind him then, and Avis walked up in the shadows, though he could make out the ironic smile on her face. She nodded to Merry’s car hurtling away.
-Too bad you two didn’t work out. You deserve each other.
Finus ignored her and went back in to apologize to Birdie for his part in the scene, even though that’d been ending it. He heard Avis’s heels clicking down the driveway toward her car.
THE NEXT DAY, Finus went back to the funeral home to pay Parnell Grimes, county coroner and funeral director at the home, a semiofficial visit.
The old Victorian mansion Parnell used for a home and business stood on the west side of downtown near the library. Inside, Finus could smell nothing of the large bouquets and wheels of flowers standing in the foyer and parlors, but only (perhaps in his mind) the faint and pervasive odor of the chemicals of the trade, something like and not like formaldehyde, and sitting across from Parnell Grimes in his back office, looking at the soft little pudgy fellow he was, his pinkness, he couldn’t help but entertain the morbid fantasy that a strange ancient secret funerary chemical ran in Parnell’s veins in lieu of blood. He seemed distracted, shuffling papers on his desk, glancing up at Finus with a nervous smile, asked what he could do for him. With his smoothness, his balding slicked-down head, and his tight black suit, he looked a little penguinish standing there, to Finus.
-You’ll have to forgive me, Parnell said. -Busy day. As always!
-No problem, Finus said. -Take your time.
-Um hmm, um hmm, Parnell said, shuffling his papers, raising his eyebrows and nodding, checking a drawer for something, shutting it. Then stopped all his fidgety activity, placed his pudgy little hands on the desk in front of him, and looked at Finus, eyebrows in a question mark. His child-size hands were almost translucent, made Finus shiver a little at the thought of them handling the dead—or him, dead. And within that cartoonish gathering of flesh blinked those deep-set and absurdly pretty eyes, like a movie idol’s, so anomalous as to shock one upon first noticing.
-Well, I was just passing by, really, Finus said. He put his hands in his pockets, jingled his change, smiled at Parnell. -Any new customers today?
-I’m afraid so, Parnell said. -Mrs. Terhune, from Southside.
-The tamale lady?
Parnell nodded.
-I’ll miss them, Finus said. -Used to buy them by the sackful.
-Selena will, too, Parnell said, referring to his wife, who lived with him there in the home. -She loves tamales.
-Mmm hmm, Finus said. -Say, Parnell, when I called yesterday you said Earl Urquhart died of a heart attack.
Parnell stood somewhat at attention, his head cocked in question.
-Yes?
-Well, I was just rechecking that. Just wondering, no real reason, if there was anything odd there, anything that might have suggested any other cause.
Parnell kept his odd, penguinish pose.
-No real reason, Finus said, just that he seemed so healthy, you know, just talked to him the other day. He shook his head. -Just goes to show.
Parnell, after a beat, nodded as if the pose had been prelude to some odd penguin mating dance.
-Yes, yes it does. You never know. Well, no, Mr. Bates, no sign, no reason to think anything other than cardiac arrest, as far as I could tell. I suppose it could have been a stroke.
-Hmm, yeah, Finus said.
The men stood there awkwardly a moment more.
-So, Finus said. -Well, Mrs. Terhune?
-Heart, Parnell said, doing the nod again.
-Umm hmm, Finus said. -Guess she probably ate a lot of her own fare.
After a beat, both men laughed a little awkwardly, though quietly.
-Well, I won’t keep you, Finus said. -I know you’re busy.
Parnell’s eyebrows jumped again and he shrugged his narrow little shoulders in the too-small black suit. He nodded.
-Yes, three funerals today, as I’m sure you know, Parnell said. -Sorry to be so distracted, Mr. Bates. He gave a nervous little laugh. -I’m terminally disorganized.
-Terminally, Finus said, and gave a little laugh of his own.
-Yes, oh, ha ha! Parnell said, standing up and starting to offer his hand, then withdrawing it as instead he came around the desk to usher Finus on out. -Well good to see you, Mr. Bates, sorry I couldn’t be more help.
-No, Finus said. -Just obligatory, newspaper business you know.
-Yes, Parnell said, already somewhere else, showing Finus to the door, and seeming already away from there into another room as Finus stepped out the door and said goodbye.
-Yes, Parnell said, thank you now, give my best to Mrs. Bates.
Though everyone in Mercury who knew Finus and Avis knew they’d been separated for years, a terminal separation, as it were. Well he was an odd one, Parnell.
Finus made his way on down the sidewalk in the cold gray of the afternoon. It was February. Earl’s wake tonight, services tomorrow, time would roll on. God help him, but he was thinking mourning period. He’d be visiting Birdie every now and then in between. Come late spring, he figured, all this would have pretty much died down. By then, it might be proper enough to propose that his visits take on a different tone. In the meantime, he’d check in on her every now and then to make sure she was doing okay.
BUT WHEN HE called her the next week she was upset. Wouldn’t say why at first, then finally told him she’d received two letters, unsigned, with no return address. The text of th
e letters was made from cut-out magazine headline words, odd sizes, accusing her of poisoning Earl, and threatening to have his body exhumed for an autopsy.
-It’s Levi and Merry, who else? Birdie said. -Finus, they have hated me and tormented me from day one, always jealous of me, jealous of Earl. And you should’ve seen them in the executor’s office the other day. They stood up after Earl’s will was read and said Earl would never have left them out, that something was funny, they were going to sue me, and just up and walked out. Hubert Cawthon called me and said they’d tried to get an order to dig Earl up, so I know it’s them.
Finus called Cawthon, the district attorney, and Cawthon’s assistant DA. Spud Meriwether confirmed, off the record, that Merry and Levi had indeed sought the order.
-Hell, Spud said, if anybody poisoned Earl Urquhart I’d think it his sister. Woman’s crazy. Besides, Parnell Grimes said he sent a sample from Earl’s heart to the state lab and came back negative.
-Is that right, Finus said, wondering why Parnell hadn’t mentioned this to him. -No poison, then?
-I reckon that’s what negative means, Spud said.
Finus knew from the grapevine that Spud had been one of Merry’s victims, too, only unlike Finus (apparently an exception) Spud had been stuck for a life insurance policy before getting out of his affair.
He went to see Birdie that afternoon. Creasie met him at the door, nodded and hardly spoke, disappeared into the back somewhere. He and Birdie sat in the den. He asked her if she wanted him to help her with a lawyer or anything.
-This is harassment and slander, at best, he said.
-No, I’m just going to ignore them, she said. She sat in a stuffed rocking chair in the corner, fiddling with a silk handkerchief and looking out the window on the long front yard. -I don’t want any more trouble.
-They’re making it, not you.
-I’m not going to give them the satisfaction.
-Well, you let me know if you change your mind.
-All right.
She still looked out the window. Her hair was down, and beautiful. Her face was lined and puffy with the strain of everything. Her hands were slim and still pretty. The pale blue of her eyes in the afternoon light, absorbing the color of her pale blue dress. It was a still moment in the small room, steam heat ticking in the radiator against the wall. Through the door to the foyer he could see beyond to the big living room, cold marble fireplace with the big mirror over it, mute grand piano black in the corner like a museum piece. Here she was, a duchess set up in her little estate, the duke now dead at an early age, wondering what she was going to do with the rest of her life.
He wanted to ask her about Ann, Earl’s girlfriend down in Florida. Not sure why he wanted to ask about that, then.
-Birdie, he finally said though. -I know Earl hurt you. Ran around on you.
She said nothing.
-Do you want to talk about it? All that?
-You’re one to talk, she said. -You and Merry.
She was looking out the window. He shut up then, and they sat awhile in silence. Then Birdie opened a drawer in the little lamp table beside her and pulled out a letter in an envelope and handed it to him. It was addressed to Birdie, no return address. The postmark was back in September. There was another envelope inside, addressed to Earl at the shoe store, with a Tallahassee postmark from the same month. A letter inside it. He looked up at Birdie.
-Go ahead and read it, she said.
It was a letter written in what looked to Finus like a woman’s handwriting. The salutation wasn’t to Earl, was just a familiar Hey, followed by epistolary smalltalk, as well as some discussion of business. He looked up at Birdie again.
-It’s from Ann Christensen, who runs the Tallahassee store, she said. -Go on.
Finus hesitated. -Was she there, at the funeral, then?
-She had the decency to hang back, but she was there.
Page two became personal again. It was a love letter, finally. She missed him. She hated not seeing him more than once a week, twice at best, but often only once or twice a month. She cherished their time on the Mississippi coast. She ached for him whenever they would part, after those times. She didn’t even want to love someone as much as she loved him.
Do you think, she wrote finally, that Birdie would be all right if you did in fact leave? I want so much for us to be together, but I don’t want you to be miserable because of it. I don’t want us ruined by your guilt and fear and worry over her. Sometimes I get so jealous that you feel so protective of her, so fearful of her dependence on you. Wouldn’t she be all right, in that house, with Creasie there to help her out, and all her biddy friends? I feel terrible urging you to keep thinking about this, I don’t like to think of myself as a home-wrecker. But your children are grown and gone. They and your grandchildren could come to see us down here. We could run the businesses from here. Or hell, sell the Mercury store, let’s open another one in Mobile or Jacksonville. I’m sorry. I can’t help wishing for what I think is right, in spite of the fact that you are married. It’s me you love, we both know that. We should be together. I try not to think about it like this. I can’t help it. I love you.—Ann
Birdie was looking out the window at the day, a blustery wind blowing in a front, clouds sailing above the bare oak limbs in the front yard, bright blue between them. It had enlivened Finus, coming out. Now he felt they were in a muffled cocoon, buffeted by the wind and isolated from all that had made him feel good in it, before.
-Do you think he was going to leave you? he said. -Did you?
She shrugged, after thinking for a moment.
-I always said he’d never leave me for anyone he just slept with, she said, pulling at a loose thread on her skirt.
-But this wasn’t just that, Finus said.
She shook her head.
-I knew that, anyway.
They were quiet a while.
-It had to be Merry sent me that letter, Birdie said. -Stole it from Earl’s office and mailed it to me just for meanness. Meanness to him or to me, I don’t know. Both, I guess. I think he knew I had it, what had happened. He was nervous and irritable about it. But he wouldn’t ask.
-You didn’t say anything to him.
She shook her head.
-I didn’t want to make a fuss about it. She looked up. -Well what difference would it have made, anyway, Finus?
-Maybe make him face up to what he was doing—
-And maybe decide to leave me. I didn’t ever think he would, he knew I couldn’t get by on my own. I’ve never worked, just been a housewife and a mother. Never went past the eighth grade. What would I do for a living?
Finus said nothing.
-I’m going to ask Edsel and his family to move in with me out here, I think, she said. -Just to have somebody around, and my grandchildren. They don’t have a house yet, and this one’s so big. Maybe they’d be happy here for a while.
-That sounds like a good idea.
He could still see her, a young girl naked in the woods, turning like a wheel in the light slanting through riverside trees. Looked at her feet now in the new slight slippers from Earl’s store and remembered her short plump girl’s feet flung up and over, how they made a ka-thump sound upon landing on the ground, the little muff of hair diaphanous in light from the leafy boughs behind her. He flushed with physical pleasure and a lamentable sense of loss. He wanted to go over, kiss her on the cheek. Felt as if he could not keep himself from doing it, in any case. But then he heard a whistling sound from the kettle, and Creasie pushed through the swinging door from the dining room to the kitchen. In a minute she came into the room carrying teacups steaming on little fragile saucers, no tray, just one saucer tilted in each hand, Lipton labeled tea strings hanging over the cup rims, a look on her face as if she were in some distant thought, had arrived in the room almost by luck, the kerchief on her head a comical nod to some old type though she was still a young woman, this belied too by the lump of dip pooching out her lower lip.
-Thank you, Creasie, Birdie said, her voice a little wavery.
-Yes’m, Creasie said, and ambled out of the room on, Finus just then noticed, a pair of pink-bottom, slightly squashed-down splayed bare brown feet.
IT WAS ON one afternoon while they were fishing for bream on a bed stinking of roe that he felt silently overwhelmed with a sense of urgency, that whether or not he understood what he’d felt for this woman now and at various times in the past he had to make a move, had to leap into something in order to understand the very element in which he existed, to understand his own mind.
He looked at her. Just a little plump with her fifty-four years, hair still dark brown and long, in a braid this day, a few gray strands, a little fleshier in the cheeks, but still pretty. The same impertinent mouth, the gapped teeth. Easy laugh. She saw him looking.
-What? she said.
-Do you know, Birdie, he said, I’ve seen you naked.
-What?
-A long time ago, the day you fell into the river during the picnic at the Methodist retreat. I was in the bushes when you and Avis came down the path to change you.
She colored. -Well what am I supposed to say to that?
-I don’t know. Something happened to me that day, watching you. Avis saw me in there.
-Well what were you doing there? Just spying?
-Yes, but not on purpose. I’d gotten sick, went away from the camp, and y’all just happened along.