Blanche on the Lam: A Blanche White Mystery

by Barbara Neely

  Mumsfield's “Hello” was spoken so softly, Blanche might have missed it if she hadn't seen his lips move. He closed the door behind him and immediately began pacing the kitchen floor, huffing and mumbling to himself until the air in the room was as stiff as well-beaten egg whites. His pants were once again held up by a belt. Blanche wanted to ask him what had happened to his yellow suspenders, and the orange ones that had preceded them, but he was clearly too upset to discuss fashion.

  “Mumsfield, honey, you gonna have to find a better way to express yourself than by bad-vibing this kitchen when I'm in here trying to cook!”

  “Yes, Blanche,” he mumbled. He stopped pacing but began twisting from side to side, like an agitator in a washing machine.

  “Mumsfield, honey, please! Relax!” Blanche wiped her hands on her apron and beckoned to him to take a seat. She rubbed and gently kneaded his shoulders and the back of his neck, the way she did for her kids when they had nightmares. She willed the tension to leave his body and could feel his knotted muscles relaxing beneath her fingers. Once again, she was surprised by the familiarity with which she treated him, but it felt all right.

  “Mumsfield is very upset.” His words stumbled over each other.

  “What about, Mumsfield, honey?”

  “Why couldn't Mumsfield talk to her, Blanche?”

  “Who, honey?”

  “Why is she not the same as before, Blanche? Why is Aunt Em not the same?” He twisted around to look up into her face. “When is she going to be the same again, Blanche?” Tears glistened in his eyes.

  Blanche didn't know what to say. He reminded her of Uncle Benny. Uncle Benny had a real bad stutter. Because people either ignored him or grew impatient before he could say his piece, Uncle Benny used as few words as possible. But something about the way he tilted his head or moved his hands or twisted his mouth pumped Uncle Benny's few words full of meanings and explanations that never came out directly.

  “Aunt Grace says Aunt Emmeline doesn't want to see Mumsfield...me until she's all better. When will she be better, Blanche? I didn't mean to make her sick.” He turned his head and gave Blanche another pained look.

  “You didn't make her sick, honey. What ails her ain't hardly your fault! I'm sure she'll be all right in a couple days, and then you can have a nice long visit.” Blanche figured Grace and Everett were just keeping Mumsfield away from the old lady until her binge was over. Which was why Grace had fed him that stupid germ business. Why didn't they just tell him the truth? Anyone could see how sensitive the boy was.

  “But when she fell and broke her leg, she wasn't different. She let Mumsfield carry her to the car before the ramp was ready, and bring her flowers, and talk to her about when she was a girl and there were horses and buggies and no cars, and about Uncle Elmo. He said it would be all right soon, but when, Blanche? When?”

  “Who said?” Blanche wanted to know.

  Mumsfield put his hand over his mouth and shook his head vehemently from side to side. Before Blanche could press him, someone knocked on the back door.

  “Hey, Mist' Mumsfield. Excuse me, ma'am.” This time the grocery delivery boy lowered his eyes as he spoke to her and hesitated in the doorway until she motioned him inside. She was impressed with how quickly he'd learned. She'd have to remember to use her curse number more often.

  “It's Mr. Mumsfield here I need to see.” He turned toward Mumsfield. “The truck conked out on me down the road there. Could you maybe take a look at it?”

  “Sure, Jimmy.” Mumsfield wiped his eyes on the backs of his hands and bounced out of his chair as though he'd already forgotten what they'd been talking about. “I'll be right back!” He ran up the back stairs. When he returned, he had removed his jacket and was carrying a tool kit. He'd also added a pair of bright red suspenders to his attire. “I'll be back, Blanche. I trust you, Blanche,” he told her.

  Blanche shook her head. She wasn't interested in being trusted just now. Somehow it made her responsible, like when her kids began a question with “Now tell me the truth, Mama Blanche.” She knew right off that she was about to be asked something she'd rather not answer at all but was now duty bound to answer as honestly as she could. And she always felt she ought to stick by the people who trusted her. She didn't need anybody to feel loyal to right now, especially someone like Mumsfield.

  Blanche had never suffered from what she called Darkies' Disease. There was a woman among the regular riders on the bus she often rode home from work who had a serious dose of the disease. Blanche actually cringed when the woman began talking in her bus-inclusive voice about old Mr. Stanley, who said she was more like a daughter to him than his own child, and how little Edna often slipped and called her Mama. That woman and everyone else on the bus knew what would happen to all that close family feeling if she told Mr. Stanley, or little Edna's mama, that instead of scrubbing the kitchen floor she was going to sit down with a cup of coffee and make some phone calls.

  Loving the people for whom you worked might make it easier to wipe old Mr. Stanley's shitty behind and take young Edna's smart-ass, rich-kid remarks. And, of course, it was hard not to love children, or to overlook the failings of the old and infirm. They were not yet responsible in the first case and beyond it in the other. What she didn't understand was how you convinced yourself that you were actually loved by people who paid you the lowest possible wages; who never offered you the use of one of their cars, their cottage by the lake, or even their swimming pool; who gave you handkerchiefs and sachets for holiday gifts and gave their children stocks and bonds. It seemed to her that this was the real danger in looking at customers through love-tinted glasses. You had to pretend that obvious facts—facts that were like fences around your relationship—were not true. Mumsfield was a grown white man in whose home she was presently hiding from the police. Still, he seemed far more capable of causing an attack of dreaded Darkies' Disease than any other person for whom she'd worked. She wondered if her heightened awareness of him might have something to do with his child self being so close to the surface. He seemed to approach the world, and her, with a trusting innocence that was both endearing and disarming. He was gentle as baby's breath, and smart enough about some things, including recognizing her as an intelligent, knowledgeable person, something the majority of her employers seemed to miss.

  She pressed her hand to her chest as though it were possible to collapse that hollow feeling inside, the one that let her know when something was going on in a household. Sometimes it was a pending divorce, or a terminal illness. Sometimes it was madness or cruelty. In this case, maybe it was just Emmeline's drinking. But the hollowness in her chest was more serious than that. She could feel it in the house, too, a kind of dour restlessness. Like it's waiting for the worst to happen, she thought. Just like Grace. She reached up and turned on the radio on the windowsill over the sink. She found some soft rock to temporarily sweeten the place.

  An hour before dinner she went up the back stairs to get Emmeline's tray. She steeled herself for another encounter with the woman, only to find the tray sitting on the hall table at the top of the main stairs. The meal was more picked over than eaten. Blanche leaned against the table and slipped off her left shoe. She bent down and gently rubbed the corn on her little toe. A car door slammed out in front of the house. A few moments later the front door opened and she heard someone talking in the hall below. She moved closer to the top of the stairs and closed her eyes so she could hear better. It was Everett.

  “I assure you, old man, she'll be quite herself before long.... resting just now. Needs as much rest as she can get. The cough, you know, she's been keep...” Everett's voice grew fainter as he moved into the sitting room.

  Rumble, mumble “...not contagious, I hope,” someone replied in a deep, slow voice.

  So they're trying to cover up the old drunk's binge by pretending she's sick to their guest, too. She leaned down to massage her toe again. Why did they invite this guy while Emmeline's in her cups? Maybe the conv
ersation she'd just heard was really a piece of politeness in which everyone was pretending not to know the obvious. After all, alcoholism wasn't all that easy to hide. She thought about her own Aunt Daisy.

  When Aunt Daisy took up the bottle as a serious vocation, she'd put out the story that she was drinking a fifth of port a day on her doctor's advice. “To build up my blood,” she'd tell anyone brazen enough to ask. One day, she'd fallen down the front porch stairs and was too drunk to get up, just as Reverend Brown was passing by. That evening, Uncle Dan had locked Aunt Daisy in the attic until she'd dried out, thin blood or no thin blood. He'd told all the neighbors Aunt Daisy was just too weak with anemia to come out or to have any visitors. Blanche marveled at the many ways families insisted on acting the same, regardless of color or other differences.

  Usually, Blanche hated waiting on table and being treated like just another utensil. But this evening she was disappointed when Grace told her she needn't stand duty in the dining room. She was curious about this guest. She couldn't recall exactly what Everett had said about him at lunch, but it had revolved around the lie that Emmeline had the flu and something taking only ten minutes. She'd looked him over as closely as she'd dared when Grace rang for more rolls. At least she'd learned his name, Archibald. He looked like a Hollywood version of a Southern gentleman: snow-white hair, glowing pink skin, and the kind of face people she'd worked for called Roman. Blanche understood this to mean a high forehead, a big nose, and no lips to speak of. While she was in the room, conversation either stopped or was nicey-nice talk.

  After dinner, she carried the coffee tray into the sitting room, a small, bright room, across the hall from the living room, done in yellow and lime green wallpaper with chair cushions to match. An open liquor cabinet stood against the far wall. The furniture was white, with curved and carved arms and legs. Everett and his guest stood by the window. They were deep in conversation that only they could hear. Grace wasn't there and neither was Mumsfield. Blanche began pouring their coffee, but Everett dismissed her with a flip of his wrist.

  She took her time doing the dishes. She searched for some news on the radio, but all she could find was a hillbilly whining and picking his banjo, and some rock and roll. When she turned the radio off, the songs of frogs and crickets and other night creatures seeped between the clink of the knives and forks as she washed and rinsed. It was her favorite time of summer evening. Light slipped over the horizon a few minutes before the dark took hold and created a small space between night and day where every object, every feeling, seemed starkly clear. She saw herself standing halfway between where she'd been and where she was headed. Part of her longed for Farleigh, a snatch of Taifa and Malik's bedtime bickering, the smell of their just-washed skin and milky breath. Part of her was already gone on the bus to New York, preparing for life in the city. Grace's entrance distracted Blanche from her thoughts.

  “When Nate, who looks after the garden and grounds, arrives,” Grace told her, “we'll be going up to Aunt Emmeline's room. We'll need you both.” Grace's face was slightly flushed. “There's something I, that is, my husband and I...It will only take a mo...”

  A soft sound came from the back door, something between a knock and scratching. Blanche opened it to a short, wiry old man whose skin reminded her of some deep red-black wood polished to a high sheen. He was clutching a grungy baseball cap and bobbing and weaving like a punchdrunk fighter. His denim overalls were faded to a watery blue. He gave Blanche a brief nod and slipped by her into the kitchen. She recognized him as the person she'd seen in the garden. Now she watched him bow and scrape and “Miz Grace” all around the kitchen until the object of his ass-kissing led them up the back stairs. If it's a put-on, he ought to be in the movies, Blanche thought. If it's for real, it's pitiful.

  On the way upstairs, Grace kept up a constant trickle of questions and comments about the garden and the weather and the ducks on the pond. She and Nate laughed together over little remarks that meant nothing to Blanche. She did notice that Grace was wringing her hands as though she were hoping to get gold out of them. The hollow laughter of a TV laugh track seeped from beneath a bedroom door that Blanche bet was Mumsfield's.

  The smell of cheap liquor and cigarettes had been replaced in Emmeline's room by the pungent fragrance of eucalyptus. A humidifier sent a jet of mist into the overheated room. Emmeline was hiked up on a mass of creamy white pillows edged with pink embroidered roses. Her blue satin bed jacket was trimmed with white lace. A matching cap covered her Little Orphan Annie Afro. Her eyes were red-rimmed but keen. She observed her visitors from over a linen handkerchief she held to her nose and mouth.

  “Why, Miz Em, it sure is good to see you!” Nate performed a kind of jerky bow as he moved beyond the foot of the bed until he was near Emmeline's side. Blanche hung back, watching from just inside the door.

  “I sure am sorry to see you feeling sss...sss...so...” Nate stuttered and stumbled through telling Emmeline how sorry he was that she was ill. Emmeline clutched her handkerchief closer to her face and seemed to shrink into her pillows. She flashed her eyes at Grace. Grace opened her mouth and reached out her hand to Nate, but whatever she intended was forestalled by a knock on the door. Everett ushered Archibald into the room.

  “Cousin Archibald.” Emmeline spoke in a high, sweet whisper that was very different from the bitchy whiskey rasp Blanche had heard earlier.

  Archibald crossed the room to the far side of the bed and set his briefcase on the table by the window. He took the hand Emmeline held out to him.

  “Cousin.” He bowed low over Emmeline's hand. His silver hair gleamed in the light from the window. “You can't know how much it means to me that you asked to see me, personally, after so long. I...”

  Emmeline lowered her handkerchief and coughed a quick succession of loud barks in Archibald's direction. He flinched and took a quick step back from the bed. “Don't try to talk, my dear.”

  Emmeline coughed again. Archibald snatched his own handkerchief from his breast pocket and brought it quickly to his mouth and nose. After a few moments, his eyes widened and crimson crept up to his forehead. He looked quickly down at Emmeline, who was once again hidden behind her handkerchief. By the time he shifted his gaze to see if Grace and Everett had noticed, he had already stuffed the offending handkerchief back in its proper place. Blanche saw laughter in Emmeline's eyes.

  Archibald opened his briefcase. The minute she saw that sheath of heavy, thick, clothlike paper, Blanche knew they were there about money. Archibald fussed with his papers while Everett fetched the rolling tray from the other side of the room. He pushed it to the bed so that it extended across Emmeline's lap.

  “I really do hate to bother you, Cousin, but you did insist that I come today.” Archibald laid the papers on the tray in front of Emmeline. “If you'll just sign here.” He used his pen as a pointer.

  Emmeline lowered her handkerchief and produced a series of loud, dry coughs. This time, Emmeline wasn't the only cougher. Blanche had to manufacture a cough of her own to cover the grin that sprang unbidden to her face when Archibald practically threw the pen on the tray and jumped away from the bed as though his life depended upon putting distance between himself and his cousin.

  Blanche was now positive Emmeline was making mischief. She tried to catch Nate's eye, to see if he'd noticed it, too, but he had eyes only for the baseball cap he was squeezing to death between both hands.

  Emmeline was reading through the four or five sheets of paper Archibald had given her. She ran her eyes down each page in a leisurely fashion, then picked it up and turned it face down on the tray with slow, deliberate movements before going on to the next page. Every once in a while she coughed into the handkerchief she still held to her mouth. Warning shots, Blanche thought. The air in the room was as charged as a thunderstorm.

  “It's a wise change, if I may say so.” Archibald cleared his throat. “All the other items, of course, remain the same.” Archibald moved a tad closer to his cousin. H
is eyes seemed to implore her not to infect him any more than she'd already done. “The bequests to the servants, the generous gift to the Daughters of the Confederacy...”

  He petered out as the old lady continued to read, or at least pretended to read.

  Grace was breathing through her mouth in short, quick bursts. Her hands were white-knuckled fists at her side. Everett lay his hand on the small of Grace's back for just a moment. She gave him a poor excuse for a smile, but Everett never took his eyes off Emmeline.

  There was a light coating of sweat on Everett's forehead. And Blanche could almost feel Nate concentrating on the baseball cap in his hands. Did Emmeline's teasing Archibald account for all the tension bunched in the room? Blanche doubted it.

  “Of course, I agree with you,” Archibald said, as though responding to something Emmeline had said. “Mumsfield's a fine lad, a clever boy...all things considered. But managing an estate as large as yours is a complicated business. Better to have older, more...er...ah...capable members of the family in charge of his affairs.” He smiled over at Everett and Grace.

  “The firm is at your service,” he told them. “And, of course, I personally will be glad to—”

  He was cut off by a hacking cough from Emmeline. He stepped back until his butt bumped against his briefcase on the table behind him. Emmeline snatched up the pen and signed the last page, coughing as she wrote. Blanche felt rather than heard a collective sigh from Grace and Everett. Archibald looked a little shocked. Was it the old lady's quickness with the pen that surprised him?