I shrugged. “Not sure yet,” I said. “Out in the country somewhere.” I smoothed a wayward lock of her salt-and-pepper hair behind her ear. I’d keep Grace County to myself for a while. Mom hadn’t really been herself since the accident. I so rarely saw her smile anymore. I didn’t want to bring up anything that might upset her.
She stroked my arm with her free hand. “Daddy would be so proud of you, honey,” she said. “I hope Robert is, too. I hope he knows what a treasure he has in you.”
“Mother.” I laughed at the emotion in her voice. I would have been embarrassed if anyone had overheard her, but as it was I just felt loved. I kissed her cheek. “I’ve got to go shopping for some work clothes. See you at home tonight?”
“So many changes,” she said, as if she hadn’t heard me. “You’re leaving home. Getting married. Working.” She shook her head. “I’ll miss you so much.”
“I’ll only be a couple of miles away,” I reassured her. The sadness in her voice worried me.
“My baby’s all grown up,” she said with a sigh, and maybe it was only my imagination, but I thought she was thinking of her other baby. The one who would never have the chance to grow up. I would grow up well enough for both of us.
4
Ivy
From our bed, I could see the numbers on the windup clock on the dresser, thanks to the moon. I kept my eyes on it. Eleven o’clock. Eleven-fifteen. Eleven-thirty. I was waiting for eleven forty-five and was afraid I might drift off before it came, I was so tired. I’d had to fight with Nonnie to test her pee tonight. She was getting stubborner and stubborner about it and she wouldn’t boil the test tube after every time she used it because she said rinsing it out was good enough. She was no good at peeing in them tubes, anyway. The first one she dropped down the hole of the johnny. The next one she broke on the kitchen floor. Then Nurse Ann brung us two so we’d have a spare and I told Nonnie to pee in a cup and then pour it in the test tube.
It made me crazy, watching her eat that banana pudding. I reckoned her pee would turn green in the test tube in the morning. I was starting to wonder who was the grown-up in this house and who was the child. Then she left them blue testing pills right out on the kitchen table where Baby William could of got them. Nurse Ann told us them pills would burn his insides out and I had to watch Nonnie like a hawk to be sure she put them on the high shelf by the sink after she done the testing.
Eleven thirty-five. Baby William made a giggling sound in his sleep like he was dreaming about something happy and I hoped he was. On the other side of him, Mary Ella breathed so softly I couldn’t hear her. If I didn’t know she was there, I’d never guess there was three human beings in this bed.
Mary Ella wore me out tonight, too, saying she didn’t feel good and maybe was going to die. She hugged Baby William real close and rocked him in the living room most of the evening while I folded the laundry. Nonnie always said Mary Ella’s just like our mama, and though she never did explain exactly what she meant by that, I knew it wasn’t a good thing. When Mary Ella said she didn’t feel good, I worried she’d done it again—gone and got herself another baby. I didn’t know how I’d handle one more person depending on me.
Eleven forty-five. Finally. I got out of bed real quiet and put my pillow sideways under the covers like I did every night I snuck out—not to pretend like I was there, but to keep Baby William from rolling off the bed in his sleep. He wasn’t a peaceful sleeper. Mary Ella was the same way and sometimes she woke up when I got out of bed even though I made no more noise than a butterfly. Didn’t matter if she woke up. She knew where I was going. Only Nonnie didn’t know. All these years—practically my whole life—I snuck out, glad Nonnie slept like the dead. The house could be burning around her and she wouldn’t wake up, which was good because I had to get past her where she slept on the lumpy old sofa in the living room. Tonight, I couldn’t see her for the dark, but her snoring was so loud I felt it in the soles of my bare feet on the splintery wood floor.
I had my nightgown on and not another stitch. In cooler weather, I got dressed before I snuck out or else I just wore my clothes to bed, but tonight was so hot I couldn’t stand the idea of putting on shorts and a shirt that would only stick to my body with sweat. Now, sneaking out of the house with my lantern and starting down the path to the crick, I loved the feel of the thin cloth against my body. The breeze rose under the hem and up my legs and I felt naked and couldn’t wait to get to Henry Allen.
I didn’t really need the lantern. The moon gave me plenty of light on the path I knew by heart. All around me smelled like honeysuckle, and I pulled off some of the vines to carry with me, like I always did when they was blooming. I’d been walking that path at night since me and Henry Allen was kids. Back then, we’d haint these woods and make up monsters and scare each other with ghost stories. Nowadays, what got us excited was something altogether different.
Henry Allen was already there on the mossy bank of the crick and I could hear his radio was playing Elvis Presley singing “It’s Now or Never.” He had the scratchy wool blanket stretched out and I dropped down next to him. Henry Allen looked like a young version of his daddy, with that same tall, slim build and the same dark hair. Mr. Gardiner had brown eyes, though, and wore glasses. Henry Allen’s eyes was blue and perfect. His hair always flopped into his eyes, like it was doing right now. I liked pushing it off his forehead. I liked any excuse to touch him. I was so in love with that boy.
“I brung you some of Desiree’s cherry pie.” He shined his flashlight on the pie plate, covered with wax paper.
“Won’t she miss it?”
“She’ll just think I got to it. Thinks I’m a pig. I got enough for you and Mary Ella and Nonnie. Maybe Baby William, too, if you slice it skinny.”
“You’re the sweetest boy,” I said. “Nonnie can’t have none of it, though. I got to hide it. She already ate the banana pudding your daddy sent over.”
“Oh yeah. I forgot about her sugar.”
I noticed his hand was on some kind of big flat box-looking thing on the blanket. “What you got there?” I asked, holding the lantern closer.
“I brung a new California book,” he said, and I saw it wasn’t a box at all, but a giant book.
“You got to the bookmobile?” He visited the bookmobile every time it passed through, but it was hard to get away during the harvest.
“Sure did.” He shined his flashlight on the cover.
“It’s the biggest book I ever seen.” I ran my fingers over the glossy cover. The picture was of some cliffs and the sea, all of it covered in fog. It was real mysterious and beautiful and made me want to be there so bad my chest hurt. Grace County was pretty with all the trees and the fields that turned different colors depending on the time of year, but it couldn’t hold a candle to California.
“Come here,” he said, flopping down on his belly. “Let me show you.”
I laid on my belly next to him and he opened the book, shining his flashlight on the pictures. They was the most glorious pictures I ever seen. Henry Allen visited California when he was eight and he said he never forgot it and had to live there someday, as far from Grace County as he could get. He was suffocating here, he always said, and I knew how he felt. Sometimes when I got out of bed, it felt like there was no air in my lungs at all. Our dream was to get married someday and raise up our family in California. I wasn’t sure exactly when we started the dream. Seemed like one minute we was making bows and arrows in the woods and the next we was talking about getting married. It was my favorite thing to think about, living with Henry Allen and being his wife in beautiful California, where we could take our kids to Disneyland every single year. That dream got me through some mighty grim days. Nurse Ann said I should never have no babies because of the fits I used to get, though I didn’t think I had them no more. I stopped taking the fit medicine long ago and I was just fine, so I wasn’t worried.
“This here’s the Golden Gate Bridge.” Henry Allen shined the light on a gi
gantic orangey-colored bridge sitting in a cloud of fog.
“California’s got a lot of fog.” I handed him one of the honeysuckle flowers.
“Well, in this here place, San Francisco, yes they do.” He pulled out the middle of the flower and sucked the honey from it. “Makes it pretty, don’t ya think?”
“You been on that bridge?”
“No, but I will someday. You, too.” He gave me a nudge with his shoulder and I smiled.
That “Itsy Bitsy Teeny Weeny Yellow Polka Dot Bikini” song came on the radio and we both started laughing. That song always made us laugh. “In California, you can wear one of them bikinis on the beach,” he said.
“How are we ever gonna get there without a car?” I asked. Henry Allen drove one of Mr. Gardiner’s trucks sometimes, but we couldn’t take that.
“If we can dream up living in California, we can dream up having a car,” Henry Allen said. He turned the page and it was some kind of fair, with a Ferris wheel and people walking around and eating hot dogs. Way in the distance, I could see the ocean.
“This here picture reminds me of that time your daddy took me and you and Mary Ella to the state fair. Remember that?”
“How could I forget?” I said. “I got sick on that swing ride.”
“It was a good time till then,” he said. “Your daddy was full of good times. Remember when he took us and the Jordans on that hay ride?”
“Mm,” I said. Thinking about my daddy could make me sad.
“He did that just for fun. No other reason. I want to be a father like him. Not like my own father. Mine ain’t no fun at all. Everything’s about work with him.”
I liked Mr. Gardiner and didn’t want Henry Allen to be so mean about him. “Maybe my daddy seemed so fun because we was little when he was around, so he didn’t make us do any work.”
“Maybe,” Henry Allen agreed. “But I swear, I got more memories of him from when I was little than my own daddy.”
That was real sweet, I thought. I leaned my cheek against his shoulder. “He would of liked us ending up together,” I said. I’d noticed he didn’t mention my mother. No one wanted a mama like mine. I tapped the book.
“What’s on the next page?” I asked.
We went through all the pages. There was trees as big around as the tobacco barns and foggy cliffs called Big Sur and rocks in the ocean covered with seals and big black birds. There was actual palm trees. How could one place have so many different beautiful parts to it? I felt that ache in my chest again as he turned the pages. I wanted to step inside the book and live that beautiful life. Henry Allen said everybody in California was rich and had swimming pools in their own yards. I wished California was right next door to Grace County and I could walk over there tomorrow.
“Which place you want to live?” Henry Allen asked.
“Any of ’em.”
“No, get serious. Let’s pick our top place from these here pictures.”
“Someplace by the water.”
He turned the pages and I stopped him. “There,” I said, pointing to a pretty little tree standing all alone, way out on a cliff above the ocean. “This place.”
“Monterey,” he said. “Okay, then. That’s our destination. Monterey, California.”
“What about you, though? Which place do you want to live at?”
“Wherever you are,” he said.
My throat got tight. “What if I’m here, Henry Allen? What if I can’t never leave?” Me and Henry Allen used to say we’d run off after we finished school, which meant three more years for me and two for him, but I couldn’t see how I’d ever be able to leave Mary Ella or Nonnie or Baby William. Everything would fall to pieces without me. I felt sad all of a sudden. All me and Henry Allen had was the dream. So we didn’t talk about the when no more. Just the where.
“We’re still goin’.” He put his arm around me and squeezed me to him. “We’ll work it out one of these days.”
“They got tobacco farms in California?” I asked, letting myself back into the dream. “We have to get jobs.”
“No more farming,” he said. “We’ll get better jobs.”
“Doing what?”
“I don’t know, but ones where you don’t gotta ruin your hands and I don’t gotta break my back.”
“I still want to be a teacher,” I said.
“Have to go to college for that,” he said.
I groaned. Three more years of high school was bad enough, but I wasn’t going to worry about that right yet.
Henry Allen rolled onto his back and pulled me on top of him, then suddenly froze up. “You ain’t got nothin’ on, girl!” he said.
“Do, too.” I laughed. “I got my nightgown on.”
“What’s under it?”
“Just me.”
“How am I supposed to control myself with you all naked like this?”
I laughed again. “Seems to me you stopped controlling yourself with me a long time ago,” I said.
He slid his warm palms under my nightgown and up the outside of my legs and I bent over to kiss him, long and soft the way he liked it. The first time me and Henry Allen done it, I was scared in a hundred different ways. Scared of changing our friendship in a way we couldn’t fix. And I was scared of ending up like Mary Ella. But doing it only made us closer and he promised me I’d never end up like Mary Ella. He always pulled out of me in the nick of time, even though it was real hard for him. He took care of me.
All day long, I worried about other people. Was Nonnie going to have to start getting shots for her sugar? Was Baby William ever going to say more words than “mama” or would he be one of them dumb boys other kids picked on? Would Mary Ella get herself in trouble again? Worry worry worry. But when I was with Henry Allen like I was right now, him slipping my nightgown over my head and pressing his body into mine, so gentle and sweet, I could forget about everything except him and me and our dreams about the future.
5
Jane
“We’re waiting for one other couple,” the young blond captain of our catamaran told us as he adjusted the sails. We’d been in Hawaii five days by then and I’d never been so tan or so happy. Or so in love. I sat on the catamaran’s long bench seat with Robert, holding his hand as we waited. We hadn’t stopped touching each other since our wedding. We’d already had a full day of swimming, snorkeling, and learning—or trying to learn—how to surf on those long heavy surfboards, and now we were looking forward to a romantic sunset cruise. At the moment, though, the catamaran rested half in the water, half on the pristine beach.
I pressed my lips to Robert’s warm shoulder, breathing in the scent of suntan lotion and sweat. I couldn’t get enough of him this week, and if it had been up to me, I would have skipped the boat ride altogether for a few extra hours alone in our room. We had our own little bungalow close to the beach, and it was so romantic to make love to the sound of the waves lapping the shore, the ceiling fan cooling the air above us.
Last night, he said I almost seemed to enjoy lovemaking too much. “I’m not complaining,” he’d added quickly with a smile. “It’s just unusual.”
“How do you know what’s usual for most girls?” I’d asked him. “You and your friends don’t talk about it, do you?”
“No,” he said. “Lord, no. You surprised me, that’s all.”
It also seemed to surprise him that I didn’t bleed after we made love. I didn’t understand that, either. Didn’t every girl bleed the first time? I worried he’d think he wasn’t my first. He most definitely was.
“This must be them,” Robert said, as another couple trotted across the beach toward the catamaran.
“Hello, hello!” the man said as he and the woman scurried aboard. Even in those two words, I could hear the Yankee accent.
“Hope we didn’t hold you up!” the woman said.
“Not at all.” Robert rose to his feet and shook the man’s hand. “Come have a seat.” He motioned to the long bench seat, just big enough for the f
our of us. They sat down, the woman next to me. Our captain hopped off the boat onto the beach, slid us easily into the water, then hopped on again and soon we were cutting across the water into a fiery orange sunset.
The man and woman—Bruce and Carol—were from New York City and they were in Honolulu to celebrate their tenth wedding anniversary. They were garrulous and energetic and within the first three minutes of the cruise, we learned that Bruce was a stockbroker and Carol was president of the PTA. They were big fans of John Kennedy, and we talked about our hopes that he might beat Nixon in the November election. Well, I talked about my hope. Robert stayed out of that conversation, and I could tell he’d had enough of it when he abruptly said, “What have y’all done so far on the island?” The question was so out-of-the-blue that Bruce and Carol looked momentarily lost.
I picked up Robert’s cue. “We learned to surf this morning,” I said. I knew he didn’t like conversations about politics.
“Oh, isn’t that fun?” Carol said. “We did that yesterday. I was terrible at it, but Bruce was a natural.”
“Wish we had those boards at Jones Beach,” Bruce said. The hard edges of his accent grated on me.
“Tell them what we did this morning.” Carol nudged him with her elbow.
“Skin diving!” Bruce said. “I think it was the most thrilling thing I’ve ever done.”
“We snorkeled,” I said. I’d loved how one minute you were in the regular old world, but as soon as you lowered your head, you were transported to an extraordinary new universe.
“Well, this is like that, only a hundred times better,” Carol said. “You feel like you’re a fish yourself.”
“Isn’t it a bit claustrophobic?” Robert asked.
“You get over that pretty quickly,” Bruce said. “We took a lesson in a pool first. You want the name of the fella who taught us?”
“Yes,” I said. “I’d love to try it.”
Next to me, I sensed that Robert was less than enthusiastic, but Bruce pulled a notebook from his shirt pocket and wrote down the name of the instructor. He handed the sheet of paper to Robert. “You didn’t mention what kind of business you’re in,” he said.
Necessary Lies Page 4