Painted Dresses

by Patricia Hickman

  I was counting down the addresses. I had not rehearsed what I would say to Boo as had been my custom when meeting new people.

  Delia continued in her upward emotional spiral. “First I’m going to get silk wraps for my nails and then a toe ring. You ever own one of those?”

  “Never thought to do that,” I said. “How about we drop all talk of spending for the night?”

  “You sound like Daddy.”

  “Until you met Bonnie or whatever her name is, Delia, you’d never heard of silk wraps. You’re too easily sold.”

  “You know why you cheated on your husband?” she asked. “‘Cause you never allow yourself any fun.”

  I spotted the address but hit the brakes too hard. Delia came out of her seat, her forehead narrowly missing the dashboard. “Cripes!” she yelled at me.

  “Why did you say that, Delia?” I asked. “That I cheated on Braden?” My insides felt unsettled.

  “How do you think? One little, two little, three little Long Island teas.” She was enjoying her power over me.

  I parked the car at the foot of the driveway. “You don’t remember right because you were too drunk. You’re making it up.”

  She sat back against her seat. Whether she was second-guessing her own drunken state that night was beyond surety. Finally, she lowered her voice. “He was a college professor, you said, name of Max something or other.” She closed her eyes and inhaled, reaching out to touch the place on the dash that had almost been her undoing. “Does Braden know?”

  I was rubbing my temples. “He knows, Delia. That’s why we’re separated.”

  “I’m glad Daddy didn’t know. He died thinking you were perfect.” A strange smile came over her face. “For some reason, though, it makes me like you better.”

  “For the rest of the night, I want you to keep your mouth shut,” I told her. “The last thing we need is you spilling your guts to Boo and Thomas. They already think our family is nuts.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “It’s complicated. I somehow remember her that way.” Explaining it was too tiresome.

  An outside light came on near the front door.

  “Can I have silk wraps?” she asked.

  “All right,” I acquiesced.

  She clapped gleefully. I got out of the car and shut the door, although it did not muffle the sound of her glee.

  My finger had scarcely touched the old doorbell when the front door opened. A man, probably in his early thirties, pushed a pair of eyeglasses up his nose. He had an intelligent look about him in that his eyes were reflective, like a man who reads a lot. But he was far too young to be Thomas. I steadied myself by touching the doorpost. Delia’s confession left me feeling weak in the knees.

  The man looked at me curiously for a moment before asking me my business.

  “My name is Gaylen Boatwright. My aunt, Amity Syler, knew a couple by the name of Boo and Thomas Brolin.”

  He opened the door the rest of the way. “Name’s Joel Brolin. Haven’t heard my mother called Boo, though, in years.” He laughed, putting me at ease.

  “Are they home?” I asked.

  Joel was reluctant to answer. “My mother passed on two years ago. My father’s home, but its not a good day.”

  Delia bounded up onto the porch behind me. “I’m Delia,” she said, not quite as flamboyant as she had been in the cafe. It only took one glance at Joel for her to evaluate the man standing in front of us. Joel was in a higher caste, according to Delia’s system of calculating human worth. It made her more reticent, and that was a relief to me.

  Joel stuck out his hand to Delia. She shook it bashfully.

  I was let down to find Boo no longer alive. I hardly knew what to do about the painted dress in my backseat. “My father, Amity’s brother-in-law, recently died. My sister, Delia, and I are driving around meeting family members,” I said, not knowing how else to explain our sudden appearance.

  “A road trip. I took one myself when my mother passed on.” He stepped back, opening the door all the way. “Please come in.”

  He led us into a room with bookcases built into nearly every wall, save the ones with windows.

  “I’d offer you coffee, but I’m looking after Dad this weekend, and I’m lousy at keeping the pantry stocked.”

  “Is he sick or something?” asked Delia.

  “Alzheimer’s,” said Joel.

  Over the course of the next five minutes, I said, “I’m sorry,” a half dozen times while Joel recounted Mr. Brolin’s slow regression into Alzheimer’s. Joel’s sister Beverly had been the chief caregiver for Thomas. She had taken off for the weekend, leaving Joel to fill in.

  “But don’t think Bev is a saint for doing it,” he said. “She hates it, but what do you do? I’m a starving photojournalist and gone most of the time. She’s really stuck looking after Dad,” he said.

  “I understand that,” I said. Except Delia could never have stayed over to look after Daddy for a single night without forgetting herself and running off into the night. “I had to hire hospice care for our father,” I said.

  “What does a photojournalist do?” asked Delia.

  “Aim a camera and shoot at opportune moments.” He sat on the edge of an upholstered chair as if any minute he might have to get up and leave. He smiled at Delia.

  She was wearing her eyeglasses that darkened in bright sunlight. Either the front porch light or the bright lamp she was sitting under had shaded the lenses. She looked like a small owl perched in the chair, wide-eyed and lapping up Joel’s attention.

  “You have to like what I do. Not a lot of money in it anymore. The camera industry’s made it easy for every Tom and Dick to point a camera and produce brilliant photos,” he said.

  “We don’t know about being poor anymore, do we, Gaylen?” Delia interjected.

  I sighed, hoping that would be enough to silence her.

  “We inherited a lot of money,” she told Joel.

  “Is your father in bed?” I asked.

  Joel glanced down the hall and then told me quietly, “If I wheel him out here, I can’t promise he’ll behave. Alzheimer’s makes him do wild things. He peed on the TV last night because he didn’t like what Katie Couric was saying. But, if you can handle it, visitors help him focus.”

  I wanted to see Thomas’s face to see if I could remember anything about him. “I’d like to meet him,” I told him.

  Delia was looking at the TV.

  Joel got up, and I told him, “My Aunt Amity was an artist. She left your mother a painting. I’m sure you and your sister would like to have it.”

  Joel was surprised. “Now I know who you’re talking about.”

  “I’ll go and get it while you bring out Thomas,” I said.

  I took my time about putting on my coat, waiting for Joel to leave the room. Then I ran for the car. If I timed it right, Delia would have no time alone with him to say more than she ought to say.

  The painting was cumbersome to pull out one-handedly. Under the interior car light, a fleck of blue paint fluttered off the canvas onto the floorboard. I slid the canvas out and then held it upright. It was Amity’s biggest painting, tall as me and three feet wide. She had painted a clothesline behind the painting. The dress was attached to look like a piece of laundry, inanimate, yet animated in the moment by a brisk wind. Boo’s dress was suspended for all time as arty laundry.

  I set it against the door and looked inside. Delia was laughing and talking to a much older Thomas than I had remembered, a stooped-back, silvery gray fellow seated in a wheelchair. His hair hung to his shoulders, the flesh of his face sagging from high cheekbones, typical of southerners from Indian ancestry. I turned the canvas sideways and shoved it through the doorway. “Here she is!” I yelled, hoping to draw Joel’s attention away from Delia’s alacritous zeal.

  “Gay
len, Thomas remembers you!” said Delia.

  Joel was standing behind his father still holding onto the wheelchair handlebars. He cast his eyes dubiously at me.

  Thomas turned to look at me. A smile came over his face, and he said, “What a relief. You don’t look like your old man at all, Gaylen. I was worried.”

  I propped the painting against the sofa. “Amity Syler made this from one of your wife’s dresses.” I explained how Amity saved Boos dress and fashioned the painting.

  Thomas looked at the painting, thoughtfully. After studying it, he said, “I know why she gave up that one.”

  “How could you remember?” asked Joel. “It’s covered in paint.”

  “I remember everything. What I don’t remember, doesn’t matter,” said Thomas. He stared out through the window for an entire minute. The backyard was mostly black, the only light a dim yellow glow shining over a neighbor’s fence.

  Delia laughed, nervous in the silence.

  Joel tried to read the pencil-scrawled note in the corner.

  I knelt to get a better look at Amity’s writing. “It says that Boo saved the dress from her wedding.”

  “I took her to St. Augustine,” said Thomas. He continued to stare out into the dark backyard.

  Joel looked surprised. “When did Mom give Amity the dress?” he asked.

  “She was mad at me,” said Thomas. “Threatened to leave me. I guess that was her way of saying it was over, you know. She wanted to scare bats out of me like women do. It was the dress she wore when she married me.”

  Joel could not take his eyes off the painted dress.

  “Seems like we’d only lived in Boiling Waters a year as newly-weds when we had our first big one. Your mother liked visiting the Sylers, especially their pond. I found her sitting on the bank, mad as bees at me. Only time I ever heard her swear. She said she learned to cuss from me, but it was her daddy she learned it from.”

  “I remember you faintly,” I told him. “But mostly I remember Boo.”

  “You suffered the most in those days,” said Thomas. “I’ll say that.”

  Joel stood behind Thomas, continuing to dismiss his father’s recollections. He kept rolling his eyes, waving away his words dismissively.

  Thomas’s voice grew quiet and so nearly inaudible it caused all three of us to lean toward him.

  I mouthed to Joel not to worry. He had warned us his dad was unpredictable.

  “The day your mother sent that boy of hers away was the day I stopped worrying for you.”

  Delia sat back in her chair, for once not saying anything at all.

  “He makes up a lot of stories,” said Joel. “Dad, I’m going to take you back and help you into bed.”

  “I’m not making up anything,” said Thomas. “Stop talking for me, like I’m some ignorant puppet!”

  I knew that Joel probably wanted Delia and me to excuse ourselves. But Thomas was wound up and unstoppable. “Is it me you’re talking about?” I asked him.

  “What was the name of that brother?” he asked.

  “Truman,” said Delia.

  “Your mama took a lot of flak for sending him away. Even your Aunt Amity was ashamed of her for putting her boy out.”

  “Dad, that’s enough,” said Joel.

  “I don’t mind,” I told him, but it was a polite cover. I wanted Thomas to spill out what the Sylers had covered up.

  Thomas got quiet. A peaceful look softened the old man’s face. Joel apologized for him and explained that he had told a lot of stories, none of them true, about him and Beverly. He fell asleep. Joel wheeled him out of the room.

  On the way out of Thomas’s house, I was trying to remember what Mother had told me about Truman. Nothing was coming, but while she complained about Truman, she never told me he had hit me or even laid a finger on me. That was not the Truman I remembered, the passive boy taking a flogging from her. I was squeezing my brain to jolt loose a fogged-over memory.

  “Truman was a bad kid,” said Delia, running to keep up with me.

  I stopped and looked at Delia over the top of the car. “Where are we going next, Delia? I can’t remember.”

  9

  EVERY FALL MY MOTHER and father took Delia and me to the Cumberland County Fair. You don’t hear much about them in cities, but fairs are still to this day a town gathering place. In southern counties that harbor a small town at the epicenter, people gather in blithe celebration of small things like new calves and home-canned piccalilli relish. The summer I turned nine, my mother schemed to win a county fair ribbon for a long-stemmed rose entry. She worked to perfect a single rose stem, blooming petals as pink as a baby’s mouth. She cut away leaves and any branch that might suck nutrients and prevent that one long stem from growing straight into the sky.

  We piled into the family Chevy, being told to guard our small denim purses and the cash saved over the summer. Carnies were known to be experts at picking your pocket, according to Mother, but worse, they took little girls about our age to be their wives. Delia was excited at the thought of being kidnapped and whisked into gypsy love. Mother digressed back into worry over the grand-prize ribbon. She steeled herself and all of us for the coming disappointment. She believed that only the closest friends of the Fayetteville socialites who judged the competition could win the grand-prize ribbon. I don’t know if the socialites were imagined or if they really congregated with nothing else to do but knock my mother out of a long-stemmed rose competition.

  While Delia headed straight for the midway and the Tilt-A-Whirl ride, I poked around, curious about what might go on behind the scenes. I wanted to know where the carnies lived and what they ate away from the saccharine stench of cotton candy. One large brown tent erected behind the livestock pavilion advertised nothing in particular, and it was curiosity that sent me wandering into its dark bowels.

  Four men seated in folding chairs and wearing dress pants waved at me, urging me to come inside. I hung back, not because of potential kidnapping, but because I was surprised by their appearance. Not any one of them looked oily, as I expected a carny to look. One guy asked me my name.

  “Gaylen,” I said and then apologized for interrupting their meeting.

  “Not at all,” he said. He had cheeks small and tight as cherries, and shiny as if freshly licked. “We tell stories.” He held up a ribbon and asked if I’d like to hear the ribbon story.

  I knew that I should back out, but it was his kind eyes that lured me all the way into the tent.

  He tucked the ribbon into both hands, made fists, and pulled his fists apart exposing a two-inch black strip of the ribbon. He called it sin. I was so glad he wasn’t a kidnapper that I relaxed. It was my first time to hear a synopsis of the human condition according to church people. I could never recall exactly all of the metaphors he explained to me on his ribbon ladder to heaven of black, yellow, and green, but what I remembered best was the way he made me feel. He asked if I’d pray with him, and it being so natural, I did. When he asked, “Will you follow God from this point on?” I answered that I would, of course, although following God was a clump of mystery to me. My mother had always called me her good child. So I figured I’d not backslide. If there was one thing I had gained under the Sylers’s roof, it was the ability to move through life without a ripple or a transgression.

  Driving Delia away from the Brolin’s house, I debated about what had happened to me along the way that changed me. I had slipped back across that ribbon, tumbling into the black more easefully than even Delia, who was the best backslider I had ever known.

  “There’s a bed-and-breakfast,” I said to Delia. A light inside the Victorian inn made the window shades look like nodding eyes. “We can park in the back, you know, to hide the car.”

  Delia did not move for a moment. She stared past the inn. She wrapped her arms around her chest, cradling herself, I thought, because she was
cold. Finally she said, “I done something bad, Gaylen.” She kept staring out through the car window, not looking at me. “What gets into me?” After asking that, she turned and finally looked at me with the most confessional eyes she’d ever allowed.

  Answering Delia was a tricky proposition. If she really wanted to know, she would be mad at me for not answering. If it was her way of trying to shed herself of the guilt of shooting Sophie Deals, then somehow I was supposed to figure out that she was speaking out loud to work through the guilt. “What do you want me to say?” I asked.

  “Tell me if I’m crazy,” she said.

  “Delia, you’ve got some money now. You know you could see a doctor.”

  “I guess that answers my question.”

  I was tired. I felt angry with my mother at that moment, even though it made no sense to be thinking of her when Delia was having a crisis of the conscience.

  “Does everyone think that of me? Like, when I’m not around, do people talk about me? Do they say, ‘Delia’s crazy’?” She paused only long enough to answer her own question. “People think that I don’t know, but I do. What do they think, that I’m stupid too? Crazy and stupid ain’t the same thing.”

  If I laughed, she’d get mad at me for that. But she contorted her face as she might have done when she was six years old. Her bottom lip was thrust out and she looked like she could club a person. But she never could hit hard, even when in a rage, because of her frail frame. Tall and lanky do not equate to taking someone down. Maybe that was why I finally laughed, because I knew that she couldn’t stop me.

  “You always have to make fun of me,” she said. She opened the car door and pulled the blanket around her shoulders.

  “Tomorrow, you have to buy yourself a coat,” I said, still laughing.

  “I would, but then I got to ask you,” she said. “And I don’t want to ask you for nothing.” She slammed the car door shut and hiked across the backyard, her boutique sneakers slipping on the cold night dew.