Miss Julia Rocks the Cradle

by Ann B. Ross

  And that reminded me of what I’d heard about Lois Iverson when her husband told her he wanted a divorce so he could marry his secretary. Everybody was talking about it—the word was that Lois cried and pleaded and begged him not to do it, finally falling to her knees and throwing her arms around his hairy legs—he’d been in tennis shorts when he made his announcement—and threatening suicide if he left.

  Well, he went ahead and left, and she’s still alive, but it was the consensus of both the book club and the garden club that none of us would degrade ourselves in such a shameful fashion, and that if she wanted to threaten anything, it should’ve been murder, not suicide, neither of which would’ve been carried out, but the threat of the former might’ve made him stop and think.

  Mildred had leaned over to me and said, “There’s not a man alive I’d kill myself over.” Then she’d gotten up and given the report on our last flower show, while I thought admiringly of what Mildred had done when Horace had strayed—she’d given the biggest party the town had ever seen.

  And still I sat, feeling the cold seeping in along with the desolation. I was about to freeze but was unable to move as I sat there like a statue in an unheated car. There was a hole in the center of my chest, and what had once been there seemed to be lodged now in my throat. I might never be able to speak again.

  I saw Lillian look out the kitchen window, then in a few minutes she opened the door and came to the car, pulling a sweater on as she came. Frowning, she looked in the car window at me, then all around the yard. Finally, she opened the door and slid under the wheel in Sam’s seat.

  “What’s the matter with you?” she demanded. “What you settin’ out here freezin’ to death for? Where’s Mr. Sam?”

  “Gone,” I croaked, loosening whatever it was that had clogged up my throat. “Oh, Lillian, he’s left me.”

  “Uh-uh, not Mr. Sam. Where’d he go, anyway?”

  “His house. So he could think. For several days, he said. Oh, Lillian, he’s so mad at me, and I don’t know why. Not exactly, anyway. He may not ever be back.”

  Lillian didn’t say a word, just sat there watching me sob and thinking over the situation.

  Then out it came. “This is James’s fault,” she said, “and nobody else’s.”

  “James? What’s he got to do with it?”

  “He always sayin’ Mr. Sam b’long in his own house, always sayin’ he miss cookin’ for him, always tellin’ him the house fallin’ apart with nobody in it. An’ all that sorry thing want is to keep his job, so he won’t have to go lookin’ for another one and have to do some work for a change.”

  “Why, Lillian, Sam has no plans to let him go. How in the world would what James thinks make Sam leave me?”

  “’Cause he there! You think any man leave a good home if he don’t have no place to go? No, ma’am, they always have somewhere to go ’fore they up and leave. An’ that’s what James been doin’, always sayin’ how he miss havin’ life in the house. I bet he down there dancin’ a jig right now ’cause Mr. Sam back where he b’long.”

  “Well, they Lord,” I said, leaning my head back against the headrest. “You’d think Richard and Thurlow would be enough. Don’t tell me I have to put up with James too.”

  Chapter 24

  Lillian walked me into the house, where we were met with a silence so unusual that I wondered if everybody else had left me too. I eased into a chair at the table. “It’s so quiet.”

  “Yes’m, Mr. Pickens, he gone; the chil’ren still in school; an’ the rest of ’em’s in there sleepin’. An’ ’bout time too—them babies been cryin’ an’ cryin’. I tell Miss Etta Mae they got the colic an’ we oughta give ’em a sugar tit, but she say the doctor don’t want’em to have such as that. But a little sugar an’ a drop of bourbon never hurt nobody.”

  I was too done in to worry about giving whiskey to a baby. In fact, if I’d been a drinking woman, I might’ve had a drop or two myself. As it was, I warmed my hands around a cup of hot chocolate that Lillian had set before me and tried to think what I could do to put things right.

  “What am I going to tell Hazel Marie and Lloyd?” I whimpered as Lillian sat at the table, her arms propped in front of her. “To say nothing of everybody else. How does a woman explain being left high and dry?”

  “You don’t tell ’em nothin’. Mr. Sam, he always over at his house anyway, doin’ whatever he do, an’ everybody here so busy takin’ care of babies, they won’t even notice he gone. An’ by the time they do, he be back home, an’ James can moan an’ groan all he want to.”

  “It’s more than James, Lillian, although I understand what you’re saying. Sam might’ve thought twice if he’d had only a motel room to go to.” I rubbed my forehead and told her all the ins and outs of my dealings with Richard Stroud, his theft of both money and checks, my sworn statement to Lieutenant Peavey, which he believed but Sam didn’t, and having Thurlow Jones thrown in my face as a final straw.

  In fact, as I recounted the highlights of the day to her, I got so steamed up that the emptiness in my soul suddenly filled with outrage at the unfairness of it all. “He didn’t even let me explain. I mean I did explain, because he was sitting right there listening to it, but it didn’t mean a thing to him. He wouldn’t even talk to me, Lillian. Just got out of the car and left.” By that time I was so hot that I took off my coat and began to pace the kitchen floor. “Let me tell you something. Wesley Lloyd Springer thought he could treat me like a doormat and, well, actually he did. But I’ve turned the tables on him if he but knew it. When I look back, Lillian, I can hardly believe what I put up with with that man. I don’t know another woman who would’ve tolerated being treated as if she weren’t worth noticing, much less listened to or talked to or even looked at. And when I found out what he’d been doing all those years, I promised myself I’d never let a man treat me like that again.”

  I stopped and waited for her to respond, expecting to be told I should calm down and wait docilely until Sam worked out his problem and came home.

  “Well,” she finally said, heaving herself up from the table, “maybe it just as well Mr. Sam not here so he don’t have to listen to all that. But I think it good you get it all out with jus’ me to hear. Mr. Sam, he a fair man, so he’ll think it over for a while, an’ by that time you be missin’ him an’ he be missin’ you, an’ won’t nobody be mad at nobody.”

  So I was right. She was telling me to just take it. Just wait and take it. Well, I could do that, but Sam had better not make me wait too long, because I was through being the last one in line.

  I spent the rest of the afternoon stewing in our temporary bedroom upstairs while I cleaned out every drawer and shelf I could find. I had to stay busy in order to keep my anger level up, because if I ever sat down and thought about it, that awful desolate feeling would unwoman me again.

  When Etta Mae asked at the supper table that evening where Sam was, I couldn’t get out a word. But Lillian was quick with an answer. “That sorry James cook up some chicken an’ dumplings’cause he don’t want to work outside in the cold, then he make Mr. Sam feel guilty if he don’t stay an’ eat it.”

  “Well, shoo,” Hazel Marie said as she balanced a baby on her shoulder with one hand while eating with the other. “Looks like he could’ve invited us too and given Lillian a break.”

  “I’m glad he didn’t,” Lloyd said. “I’d rather have my chicken fried, and Lillian fries chicken better than anybody. And if somebody would pass it, I’d have another piece.”

  I’d thought we’d have little to say to one another without Sam there, but the babies and their needs took everybody’s attention so that the empty place at the head of the table went almost unnoticed. Except by me, of course, but I was keeping myself at a slow simmer in order to get through the day.

  When one baby started screaming—the one who was supposed to be sleeping—Etta Mae dropped a chicken leg on her plate and ran to pick her up. She came back with a red-faced, squalling infant whom Lil
lian immediately took from her.

  “Finish yo’ supper, Miss Etta Mae,” she said. “This here’s Lily Mae an’ she need some lovin’.” She wrapped the baby tightly, held it close to her ample bosom, and began walking around and through the house until blessed peace descended again.

  “She’s right, you know,” Etta Mae said to Hazel Marie. “It’s Lily Mae who’s the loudest.” She laughed. “You knew what you were doing when you named her after me and Lillian.”

  Later when I was in bed, the anger at the way Sam had treated me began to seep away, and I was left in the loneliest state I’d ever been in. I couldn’t get fixed. I couldn’t find a comfortable place. I turned first one way, then the other, but the bed was too empty.

  In my mental turmoil, I recalled a poem that Tonya Allen had shown me once when the book club met at Mildred’s house. I’d thought at the time that it wasn’t much of a poem, but Tonya told me that it was written by a Japanese lady a long time ago and wasn’t supposed to be long and involved. I wished I could remember all of it, but the part I did kept running through my mind:

  I sleep. . . . I wake. . . .

  How wide

  The bed with none beside.

  It’s a fact that some people can say a mouthful in only a few words, while others can talk all day and never say a thing. I knew many of the latter, but only a few of the former, Sam being the prime example. And did he ever pack a lot of pain and anguish and recrimination in the few words he spoke as he turned and walked off.

  How in the world would I ever get through the next several days? Or would it be longer than that? Maybe Sam had come to the end of his rope and the few days would become forever. I couldn’t bear the thought, and rolled and tumbled some more.

  By the time the sun began to come up and I could rise along with it, I’d set myself a course of action. There was nothing for it but to find out all I could about Richard’s postprison visit to town—a place you’d think he’d want to avoid, seeing that he’d flimflammed so many people here. Yet here he’d come, only to end up dead in the most unlikely place—in between Laverne Petty’s house and Thurlow Jones’s. Must be a reason he’d been there, and the more I thought about it, the more I realized that the toolshed was at the very back edge of Miss Petty’s yard, which put it right next to the back boundary of Thurlow’s yard.

  We’d all assumed he’d been visiting Miss Petty, but maybe we’d all been wrong. Maybe it was Thurlow he’d been interested in. But why? As far as I knew, and I pretty well knew the facts, Thurlow hadn’t been a part of the scheme cooked up by Richard and the New Jersey developer that had sent both of them to jail. Thurlow was about half crazy in some ways, but he was a wily character when it came to finances. That’s why he had so much: he didn’t fall for get-rich-quick schemes.

  Still, the only thing I could think of to explain Richard’s presence on a cold winter night in a toolshed that overlooked Thurlow’s house was that he either had something on Thurlow or he wanted something from him.

  But why was he in the toolshed? Why hadn’t he been in Thurlow’s house? Or in the front yard, even? Why in the toolshed as if he had been lurking and watching and waiting for something? Or somebody?

  As I smoothed out the coverlet on the bed, I determined that the first thing I needed to do was check out that toolshed. Which house could be watched from it: Miss Petty’s or Thurlow’s? If, that is, either of them had been the focus of Richard’s interest. I couldn’t let myself overlook the possibility that the toolshed had simply been a place a sick man had chosen to wait out a sudden spasm that, unfortunately, led to a permanent wait.

  But that didn’t make sense. Why was he even in that part of town? Logically, Helen was the only one he had reason to want to see and she lived nowhere near his final resting place. And if he’d been walking on a cold night and suddenly become ill, why not knock on a door and get help?

  Actually, none of it made sense, but that was because I didn’t have all the facts. And now that the sheriff had determined Richard had died from natural causes, the case would be closed and I’d be free to look around for myself.

  And that’s exactly what I decided to do. If Sam was so concerned about Richard and me or Thurlow and me, it behooved me to straighten him out with the facts. And the first fact I had to make sure he grasped was that my being entangled with either one of those unsavory types—one about crazy and the other a felon—was laughable. Except Sam wasn’t laughing, and neither was I.

  I knew, of course, that it was currently trendy for older women to take up with younger men. I knew because Hazel Marie had pointed out several examples in the movie magazines she was constantly reading. But I’ll tell you the truth: Richard Stroud had been too old to attract the interest of a mature woman looking for a young thing. Certainly not this mature woman, even if I’d had a yen for something fresh and green, which I most assuredly had not, and how Sam could’ve even considered such a thing was beyond me.

  I went to the front windows to open the curtains, longing for a cup of coffee but knowing it was too early to disturb the rest of the house. Looking out the window onto Polk Street, I could see that fog from melting snow had almost hidden the church from view. The steeple, though, the one where pigeons roosted and littered the roof, rose up out of the fog, and I took it as a sign that I was on the right track.

  Looking down at the street again, a pair of headlights pierced the fog as a white car eased to a stop in front of the house at the stop sign. An early riser, I thought, on the way to work—maybe to open a shop on Main Street—but as the car pulled silently past the stop sign, I almost lost my breath. If that wasn’t Helen Stroud’s car, I’d eat my hat.

  Chapter 25

  My hat was safe. I could rarely distinguish one make from another when it came to cars, but Helen drove a Volvo, the rarest of cars in a town of American-made sedans and pickups, with more than a few Japanese models thrown in. The car suited Helen: neither was flashy and both were sedate and dependable.

  So what was Helen doing riding around at daybreak, almost invisible in the fog? Where had she been and where was she going at such an unlikely hour? She had been headed toward town but was coming from the direction in which her husband, or ex-husband, had perished. But as I reminded myself, that didn’t have to mean anything. Half the town’s citizens resided in that direction. She could’ve been doing something entirely innocent, such as driving around because she couldn’t sleep and just happened by my house at the same time I was up for the same reason.

  There also could’ve been a dozen other reasons for Helen’s early morning excursion, but the most likely ones were the few I wanted to look into. Number one, that toolshed: check out what might’ve drawn Richard to it. Number two, subtly and kindly interrogate Laverne Petty as to her connection, if any, to Richard. Number three, do the same with Thurlow, although not as subtly or as kindly.

  I was going to need some help—two visitors with a casserole would be more welcome and less likely to inspire suspicion than one visitor with no legitimate reason for knocking on a door. Etta Mae came to mind—she’d have been perfect—but she had her hands full of babies, and Hazel Marie needed her. Lillian? Yes, maybe so, except I wasn’t sure she’d do it. She, too, was too wrapped up tending babies to give me her full attention. Lloyd? I’d have to think about that. Miss Petty, after all, was his teacher and I didn’t want to undermine his respect for her by prying into her personal life. In his presence, that is.

  It struck me, then, that Helen might already be doing exactly what I was planning to do. If I’d been in her shoes, I’d want to know more than “natural causes in an unnatural place,” especially because Lieutenant Peavey had left a lot of questions unanswered. But after thinking about it, I decided I didn’t have the nerve to suggest that she join forces with me to find out what Richard had been up to. For all I knew, Helen could be grieving over her loss in spite of having divorced him, shocking most of us by her immediate cutting of the tie that binds. We’d all thought that s
he would stand by her man, at least until his prison sentence was up, for no other reason than to at least demonstrate her own fidelity. But she’d surprised us. The cell door had hardly slammed behind Richard before Helen instituted proceedings to cut him off entirely.

  But who knows what goes on in the heart of a woman? Especially a woman like Helen, who, as far as I knew, had never hung out her dirty linen for all to see. The only one I could account for was myself, and the only reason to pry into other people’s business was to prove to Sam beyond a shadow of a doubt that my life was an open book. Except for when I invested with Richard, which I would regret and atone for till my dying day.

  As soon as I heard Lillian plod downstairs, I went around waking Lloyd and Latisha for school. By the time I got to the kitchen, one baby had tuned up from the back bedroom and the other quickly joined in.

  “Morning, Lillian,” I said, as I walked to the coffeepot to watch it finish perking. “I didn’t sleep too well last night, but I didn’t hear the babies. Did they sleep through?”

  “Yes’m, pretty much. I hear Miss Etta Mae down here in the kitchen ’bout four o’clock, an’ I start to get up to help her. But she poke them bottles in they mouths an’ I didn’t hear another peep.”

  “I didn’t hear any of that,” I said, wondering at how deeply I’d slept after such restlessness earlier. That, I assured myself, came from having made a decision and figured out a plan of action. I had determined sometime in the night that I would not sit around twiddling my thumbs while Sam pondered the state of our marriage. Who knew what conclusion he’d come to if he was left to ponder alone?

  As soon as the pot stopped perking, I poured a cup of coffee for myself and one for Lillian before sitting at the table. She laid strips of bacon in a black iron skillet, then set it aside and joined me.