by Ninie Hammon
“I’m sorry, sweetheart. I didn’t mean to be so gruff. Long day. Forgive me?”
“Sure, Daddy,” she said, but she didn’t look at him. And she didn’t tell him who she’d been talking to.
“Honey, is there something wrong with you?”
Now that was tactful!
Mac’s father often told him, “You have two ears and one mouth for a reason.” His daughter needed him to listen to her, not interrogate her. It was clear something wasn’t right, and he had to find a way to get her to open up and tell him what it was.
And no, he wasn’t struggling to communicate with Joy simply because some deeply disturbed death row inmate had advised him to. He had to start building bridges back to her, come to grips with the new order of things and their relationship in that order.
“I’m fine,” she said, still without looking at him. She got up and started for the kitchen.
“No you’re not,” he said, his voice kind and tender. “I don’t believe you’re fine at all. I want to help, if you’ll let me?”
“I’m not the only one who’s not fine; you aren’t doing so hot yourself!” she fired back at him, her voice thick with unshed tears. “And if you really want to help, just leave me alone right now.”
She turned, raced upstairs to her room, and slammed the door shut behind her. A few moments later he heard her record player, harmonized voices wailing, “ … let’s go surfin’ now, everybody’s learnin’ how, come on a safari with …”
Mac shook his head. Why were all the kids so taken with songs about surfing? This was Oklahoma, for Pete’s sake; there wasn’t a body of water with a wave you could stand on for over a thousand miles in any direction. When he was growing up here, he and his friends hadn’t obsessed over songs about mountain climbing or scuba diving.
He sighed, chucked the mail he’d just gotten out of the mailbox by the door onto the coffee table, and went into the kitchen. It had become customary, here in the new normal of their lives, for the first one of them who got home to put a casserole into the oven for supper. There was never a shortage of casseroles. The good ladies of the church had seen to that, mobilized their troops with sign-up sheets in the fellowship hall. A couple of times a week, somebody’d show up with a box full of casseroles. They’d pick up the empty dishes from the week before and deposit the new ones in the big, white Amana refrigerator Mac had gotten Melanie a year ago for Christmas.
He’d figured the ladies would stop a long time ago. It had been six months now. How long did those women intend to keep cooking his dinner? A year? Two? Until Joy graduated from high school?
And what was he going to do when the dinners stopped? And they most definitely would stop after Sunday. When he had his say on Sunday, there wouldn’t be a sweet little old lady left in that church who had any desire to cook for him.
He went to the refrigerator, opened the door, and peered in. There were three “covered dishes.” That’s what the ladies called them. He lifted the aluminum foil on each one in turn. Chicken and rice. Unidentifiable, but there was big tube pasta in it and he loved that kind of pasta. What was it called? Cannelloni? Rigatoni? Something that ended in “i.” And the one left over from last night—tuna, with crumbled-up potato chips on the top.
He slid the Corningware dish containing the mystery pasta off the shelf and deposited it in the oven. Then he turned the dial to 350 degrees. He cooked them all at 350; didn’t know if that was the right temperature or not, but at least he was consistent.
What was he going to do when the casserole manna no longer showed up fresh on the ground every morning? What would they eat? Sandwiches would get old real quick. So would canned soup. Would he have to learn to cook? And what about Joy? Could she cook? He’d seen her in the kitchen helping her mother so surely—
The image was so clear it was momentarily real. Two apron-clad females, chattering a blue streak as they chopped and stirred and tasted, the aroma of their delicacies wafting out of the kitchen to settle with a comforting warmth all around him. Then poof, the vision was gone, and he was standing in the vacant kitchen in the too-quiet house.
He groaned out loud. Nobody to hear him, why not? Then just stood there, feeling … what? Empty. Profoundly empty.
What was it that woman had said today, that Princess? Said he could go out and buy a new shirt or climb a tree or swim in the lake, do anything he wanted to do next week—but she’d be dead. She didn’t get it. He already was dead.
Forty-five minutes later, he and Joy sat down to dinner. That’s how long he cooked all the casseroles—forty-five minutes. Joy had come downstairs, mumbled that she was sorry—tough day, too—then set the table. They ate in the kitchen, in the “breakfast nook” instead of in the dining room. With just the two of them, the dining room felt like a football stadium.
They’d always used the little table set in the bay window in the kitchen for quickie meals. Lunch on a busy Saturday. Breakfast on a rushed morning. Just a place to park and eat, not a place for a proper meal. He and Joy ate there every night. And that said something. He wasn’t sure what, but whatever it was, it wasn’t good.
“You want iced tea, don’t you?” he asked.
She nodded, he poured a glass for both of them, then picked up his fork and—
“Daddy … ?”
“What?” He stopped before he speared one of the fat pastas.
“You didn’t … we didn’t say the blessing yet.”
He felt his stomach yank into a knot.
“I’m sorry, I forgot.”
“You don’t ever forget to say the blessing.”
He heard something like fear in her voice, and instantly understood that the blessing was important. It was nothing more than empty words to him. But Joy needed order in the midst of all the chaos churning around her, and the blessing represented one of the pillars that stood firm, that kept the roof from tumbling down on top of them.
He bowed his head. “Thank you, Father, for this food, and for the kind hands that prepared it for us. In Jesus’ name, amen.”
He looked up and smiled. “Sorry, my mind was a million miles away. So, tell me about school. How was it today?”
“It was—”
“And don’t tell me fine. We are no longer going to allow the use of the word fine in this house. Fine is no longer fine. In fact, you will be fined for the use of the word fine.”
“Fine by me,” she said, and grinned.
“How was it really?”
“It was … okay.”
Mac started to protest, but she held up her hand. “Look, you can’t ban all the bland words. There’s got to be some acceptable way to say ‘it was so blah, if I had to paint it, the only suitable color would be something between tan and cream.’”
Like the room where he’d met with Princess today.
“Sounds like my day was a bit more interesting than yours. I went out to the Iron House and talked with a woman on death row.” He took a bite of the pasta tube. Chewy. Maybe he cooked it too long. Or not long enough. “Only there they don’t call it death row. They call it the Long Dark.”
“The Long Dark. Cool! What was she like?”
Mac realized he had absolutely no idea how to answer that question.
“Well … now, don’t take this wrong; she mentioned you.”
“Me? How on earth does—what’s her name?”
“Princess.”
“Princess?”
“Emily Prentiss. Princess.”
He waited for recognition to dawn on her face, but she merely looked blank. Didn’t teenagers read the paper or watch the news on TV?
“Prentiss … Princess. Some kid’s mispronunciation of the word, probably.” Her little sister’s, maybe?
“So how does this Princess know me?”
“Obviously, she doesn’t. Just heard about my family and … I think she’s nuts. Been in solitary too long.”
“What’d she do? To be on death row she must have killed somebody. Who’d she kill
?”
“Her little sister.” He considered before he continued. “Who was two years old at the time.”
“That’s awful, Daddy. And she talked about me? What’d she say?”
He chewed up the piece of pasta and swallowed before he spoke. “She said I ought to talk to you because there’s something bothering you, said you’re … hurting inside.”
Joy’s face froze. He watched shock bleach out all the color in her cheeks. Her eyes filled with tears and she sat transfixed for a moment. Then she scooted her chair back from the table, got up, and tossed her napkin into the chair.
“Joy, what’s the matter?”
“I’m not hungry anymore.” She whirled around to rush out, but Mac stood and grabbed her arm.
“Honey, I’m sorry. What is it?”
“What is it? What do you think it is? Of course I’m hurting inside. We both are. And I—” She pulled her arm free. “I don’t want any dinner.” She didn’t run up the stairs this time. She walked slowly. And closed her door quietly behind her. He waited for loud music to follow but there was only silence.
Mac sat back down and looked at the chewy, under/over cooked pasta on his plate. He didn’t want it either. But he had to eat something, so he stabbed another piece and put it into his mouth. It was tasteless but innocuous and as he chewed it, he remembered. Actually, Princess hadn’t said Joy was hurting. She said something was hurting Joy. A subtle difference, but different nonetheless. Said something was wrong with her. That she needed help.
The pale teenager who’d sat across from him three minutes ago certainly looked like she needed help.
Tuesday
May 7, 1963
Chapter 9
Jonas was up early Tuesday morning. No sense lying there all buggy-eyed, staring at the ceiling. He hadn’t slept well. His arm hurt something fierce, but he had to admit the timing on the injury was fortunate. He already had a doctor’s appointment scheduled for today.
Yeah, the doctor’s appointment. The thought of it caused gooseflesh to pop out on his arms, set the scratches to aching all over again. He’d already set and then cancelled two appointments, but he’d be keeping this one. It was time.
He had bandaged the wounds the best he could the night before with Band-Aids and some gauze out of the medicine cabinet. Now he dressed carefully in a long-sleeved shirt. The nurse in Dr. Bradford’s office could put on proper bandages for him. The wound on the top of his head had stopped bleeding on its own.
When he changed and cleaned Maggie, she might as well have been a Raggedy Ann doll, limp and totally unresponsive. He shaved and just had the coffee brewing when he heard her stirring.
“Tommy? Tommy, where are you?” she called from the bedroom.
Oh, no.
“Mary Anne, where’s your little brother? You didn’t let him get in the chicken yard again, did you? Out there chasing chickens? Those hens won’t lay for a week! Mary Anne, answer me, now you answer your mother!”
Her voice had down-shifted from annoyed through concerned to mildly frantic. Jonas didn’t need this. Not today!
He set down the cup he was about to fill with coffee and went to the room that used to be the downstairs parlor. It had been converted into a bedroom after Maggie got where she couldn’t climb stairs.
“Mornin’ Maggie,” he said cheerily and crossed to the windows on the far wall. “I’m gonna raise these shades and let some sunlight in, bright May morning like this, you need to enjoy the sunshine.”
“Jonas, where’s Tommy and Mary Anne?”
Well, she knew who he was today. One out of three.
“What would you like for breakfast this morning? I’ve got some fresh-squeezed—”
“Why are you ignoring me?”
She was sitting up in bed, had both her pillow and his stuffed behind her, with what he called a “deceptively alert” look on her face. Alert because she was talking in complete sentences that seemed to make sense and responding appropriately to reality. And deceptive because hers was an alternate reality.
Her long white hair hung around her shoulders and it occurred to him to wonder why she never looked disheveled, never had bed-head. Maybe because most nights she didn’t move, just closed her eyes when he kissed her goodnight and then opened them the next morning lying in exactly the same position. That, too, was new. Why, when they first got married, she used to flop around like—
“I’ve searched and searched for Tommy and Mary Anne. They’re both gone!” She glanced around. “Where are they?” He could hear the beginning sharp edge of hysteria in her voice. She could go off any second.
Jonas knew where Tommy and Mary Anne were. They’d been side-by-side for years. In cemetery plots close to Melanie’s fresh grave.
Tom, their only son, had made it clear even as a child that he wasn’t about to live his life on some farm in Oklahoma. He had run off to join the navy when he was barely eighteen. Jonas smiled at how proud the boy had been of his first ship assignment. He’d written them all about it. He was in Hawaii—Hawaii, can you beat that! In Pearl Harbor. On the USS Arizona.
Tom’s was one of the few bodies they were able to recover after the ship was sunk. His death liked to have killed Maggie, too. After Mary Anne was born, Maggie’d miscarried three times before she had Thomas. Two years after Tommy died, the war took Mary Anne, too. An army nurse, she’d been killed by a land mine in North Africa. Their only surviving child had been Melanie.
Jonas fiddled with the cord on the shade until he was sure he could speak without his voice breaking.
“Know what I think? I think we ought to go sit on the porch swing together and have us a cup of coffee? What do you say?”
“Jonas Nathaniel Cunningham, why won’t you listen to me? I just told you two of our children are missing. And if you won’t go find them, I will!”
Okay, time to lie.
“Simmer down, Maggie. They ain’t missin’. They’re just outside a’gatherin’ eggs. They’ll be in the house directly.”
“Tommy’s too little to gather eggs! Jonas, what were you thinking? Why that boy—”
The doorbell mercifully interrupted the conversation. That would be Mac, here to watch after Maggie while Jonas went to the doctor. Guadalupe Hernandez, the Mexican woman who took care of her a couple of days a week couldn’t come today, so Jonas had asked his son-in-law to help out.
Mac looked tired, like maybe he hadn’t been sleeping. Jonas supposed he probably looked tired himself. Hard to see tired, though, on a face as old and worn out as his. But the younger man looked to be a weary that was beyond losing a few nights’ sleep.
“’Lo Mac.” He reached out long arms and folded Mac into a brief man hug. “You doin’ all right?”
“Can’t complain, Jonas, ’n you?”
“’Bout the same, I guess.”
Men were such liars.
“Listen, Maggie kinda had a hard evening yesterday.” He gestured toward the living room and Mac stepped to the doorway. He’d cleaned up the mess real good but he could see Mac suck in a breath when he surveyed the room.
“What happened to the—?”
“She broke a bunch of stuff.” He didn’t tell Mac she had attacked him, though, tried to protect Maggie’s dignity, best as he could. “And this morning’ she’s seein’ little pink bunnies, only they ain’t bunnies. I could call the doctor’s office and reschedule. It ain’t nothing that can’t wait. Just a checkup is all. ”
“You go on ahead, Jonas. It’s always good to see Maggie, no matter what frame of mind she’s in.”
Jonas reached over and plucked his Allis Chalmers cap off a peg and fit it snug on his head.
“Right now, her frame of mind is … oh, I’d say something like 1926, maybe ’28. She’s upset ’cause she can’t find Mary Anne and Tommy.”
“Oh.”
“Of course, by the time you get in there, she may have leapfrogged to a whole new decade.” He turned toward the door, then turned back. “You okay, Mac?
”
He saw Mac’s jaw tighten at the question and he understood. He got tired of people pokin’ and proddin’ too. He reached out wordlessly and patted Mac on the shoulder, then turned and headed out the door.
When Mac stepped into Maggie’s bedroom, her face bloomed in a beautiful smile and he was struck by just how much her daughter had favored her. Mac was good at spotting that kind of thing, family resemblance, could pick out the shape of a chin, or the taper of an eyebrow—subtle things other people missed.
But there was nothing subtle about Melanie’s resemblance to her mother. They both had a haunting beauty, finely chiseled features, a high forehead and big, brown eyes with long eyelashes.
If you want to know how well your wife will age, take a look at her mother.
Maggie Cunningham was still a beautiful woman. Melanie would have looked stunning with white hair.
“Why Mac, how wonderful to see you,” she said. That was a good start. She knew who he was. He’d seen her many times when she didn’t have a clue—once, in fact, she’d spent an entire evening calling him Bart. No one could figure out who Bart might once have been in her life.
“Come on over here and have a seat.” She patted the bed beside her. He sat down in the chair next to the bed instead and took both her hands in his.
“You look lovely today, Maggie.”
“Well, of course I do, silly. The mother of a beautiful bride is more or less obligated to look presentable, and my Melanie is a strikingly beautiful bride.”
Mac swallowed hard. Maggie didn’t know Melanie had died. What was the point in telling her?
“Now, don’t you be trying to get a peek at Melanie before the ceremony.” She shook her finger at him. “You know it’s bad luck for the groom to see the bride in her wedding dress before—” She stopped in mid-sentence, looked confused for a moment, then gripped his hands tight in hers.
“Mac, where’s Melanie?”
He had an answer all prepared, used the same one, with minor variations, whenever Maggie asked about Melanie. “She’s at home, Mom. Joy’s got strep throat, remember?”
“No, she’s not. She’s not home with Joy.” Mac didn’t like the look in her eye. She looked too … there. Too much like the old Maggie, full of piss and vinegar. Folks used to say that when Maggie Cunningham’s feet hit the floor in the morning, the devil groaned and said, “Oh, crap! She’s up.” She’d whipped two generations of high school freshmen into shape in her English classes, doted on her husband, adored her daughter and—