The Shade of My Own Tree

by Sheila Williams

  “What is it, Ted?”

  “Don’t hang up on me again, bitch. I know where you live now. You can’t hide from me. I’ll find you wherever you are. Think you can take my money—”

  It was ten o’clock in the morning. I could hear the liquor dripping from his words like molasses over a biscuit. For just a second, I felt the cold heavy weight of fear settling into my stomach. I’d learned from the grapevine that his new girlfriend had left him. And, of course, that was my fault. I was taking all of his money. I was taking his manhood. He had to settle the score with me. I tried to shake off the fear and remember that, as I had told Beni, I could not go back. I would not go back.

  I looked at the telephone receiver.

  “Do you hear what I’m saying? You’d better come to your senses—”

  “Go straight to hell, Ted,” I replied, and hung up the phone.

  To my surprise, Ted did not call again.

  But his words left me nervous.

  “I know where you live now.” Retaliation was inevitable. To my chagrin, a tiny seed of fear had settled into my stomach, leaving it cold and jumpy, like when you accidentally swallow a sliver of ice. The new Opal was still around. But she was wary and suspicious. And every evening on the porch when I watched the lightning bugs, I searched the street for a car with its lights off and a man who was watching and waiting.

  Gloria often sat on the porch, too, if she was home from work. Troy had made friends with a couple of kids down the street and was often away visiting. She took advantage of the free time to loaf and stare off into space. One evening, after Ted’s telephone call, we sat there together in silence, listening to the birds chatter as they flew home for the night. From the settee in the corner I smelled the cigarette smoke and heard her gravelly voice come out of the darkness.

  “It must be in the water,” she commented after I told her about Ted’s call. I had expected a wittier one-liner from Gloria about Ted. Instead she said, “Butch is out of the hospital. He wants me to come back with him.” She was talking about her husband.

  I almost dropped the glass of iced tea that I was holding.

  “Gloria, he almost burned up you and Troy.”

  She took a long drag off her cigarette. “Don’t I know that? But he’s going to AA meetings. I can’t credit that! Butch at an AA meeting! And … well, he’s started going to church, too. Pool of Bethesda Congregation on Route 10 in Marysville. Says he’s been born again.” There was sarcasm in her voice.

  I bit my tongue to keep from saying, “Bullshit.”

  Instead, I told her what we both had told Beni Douglas not too long ago.

  “You can’t go back to him.”

  The sandpaper voice came out of the darkness again; this time it sounded weary.

  “I know. But it’s Troy that I’m thinking of. Troy needs a dad around.”

  This time I didn’t bite my tongue.

  “But not if he’s passed out all the time or smacking you around. Don’t fall for this, Gloria.”

  “I know.”

  In the silence, we listened to the sounds of creatures scurrying around in the night. Ice Tray and CW were nowhere to be seen, but once in a while we heard an imperious meow issuing a warning to an interloping four-legged creature. The lightning bugs flickered back and forth. I caught one in the palm of my hand and let it go remembering a time, thousands of years ago, when I was small and my brother and I caught lightning bugs and put them into empty Miracle Whip jars. I wanted to say more, but I realized that there wasn’t anything more to say. Gloria knew as well as I did how treacherous this high-wire act was. Balancing the needs of a child with safety, sanity, and security. It was a few minutes before her voice broke through the smoke-filled darkness again.

  This time she didn’t sound weary but harsh and angry.

  “I had some nerve telling that girl what to do when I don’t know what to do myself. Who am I to tell her not to go back with that artist boyfriend of hers? Here I am thinking about going back with Butch. Actually thinking about it. And he almost burned me up in a house fire. I must be crazy.”

  “No, you’re not crazy,” I said, feeling a tiredness creep over me that had nothing to do with the ten-hour day that I had put in at the office.

  “It’s just that,” we both spoke at once. I stopped.

  “Go ahead,” Gloria offered.

  She lit another cigarette. When the match struck, I could see that she was smiling.

  “Despite everything, even though it was horrible, I just hate to think that I gave up. That I didn’t try everything I could to make it work. I guess I keep thinking that a miracle will happen and Ted will turn into Prince Charming and everything will be all right.”

  Gloria’s voice came out of the smoke-filled darkness to finish my thought.

  “But it won’t.”

  “No,” I said. “It won’t.”

  Bear growled and stood up, his tail stiff. Wells stood up, too, and went to the edge of the porch. He stood quietly, his square body stiff, his smushed-in ears perked. Gloria and I looked out into the darkness. The old-fashioned-looking street lamps flickered in the waning light. Nothing looked out of the ordinary. But Bear wouldn’t budge and Wells let out a few yips of warning.

  Gloria’s hands were shaking as she lit another cigarette.

  The last two weeks of July weren’t a total depression drama, however. Gloria went after her dream job.

  “I have an interview,” she blurted out one day. “The project manager position with the landscaping company I told you about? They want me to come in for an interview.”

  “Is that right?” was all that I could think of to say at first. Then I added, “Gloria, that’s wonderful.”

  She nodded and then, to my surprise, she asked for my help.

  “I’ve thought about this for a long time,” she said as we sat on the porch one evening waiting for our favorite activity to begin: Dana Drew watching. “This job pays good money. More’n Butch and I earned together when he was working,” she added, referring to her still-recuperating husband. “If I get it, I can get a nice place for me and Troy and a car. I might have enough to put away for Troy to go to school.”

  She pondered that statement for a minute. No one in her family had ever been to college. And Troy was a bright little boy. Bad, but bright. He was the kind of kid who was always putting formulas and ideas together in his head. He had a mind that could engineer things like neutron bombs or heat-seeking missiles.

  Gloria looked at me through a cloud of cigarette smoke.

  “I want that job,” she said firmly. “And maybe you’re right about the packaging thing. I need to look like they look so that they’ll listen when I tell them what I can do.”

  I couldn’t have said it better.

  “Marketing is only part of the game,” I told her, reaching for the phone. “The package needs to look good, but there has to be substance behind it. And you’ve got the substance. You can make anything grow.”

  “Who are you calling?”

  “Bette Smith. There’s nothing she likes better than a good makeover.”

  Bette did the hair and makeup. I was responsible for wardrobe, interviewing strategy, and deportment. If I didn’t do anything else, I was determined to purge the phrase “I seen” from Gloria’s vocabulary.

  At 8:20 on Thursday morning, Ms. Gloria Estepp stepped out onto the porch of the yellow house on Burning Church Road with a folder in her hand containing her résumé and a portfolio of the landscaping projects that she had planned and implemented, specifically the garden at my house.

  She wore a navy suit (one of Bette’s; I’m way too tall to loan clothes to anyone but the Green Giant’s sister) with a pale pink sweater underneath and navy pumps. There were gold earrings clipped to her ears and a cameo pinned to her lapel that looked suspiciously like the one that my dad brought back from Italy after the war. I made a mental n
ote to check my jewelry box and have a little chat with Troy once the festivities were over.

  Bette has a knack for wielding a mascara wand and lipstick tube. What she did for Gloria was nothing short of miraculous. “Hon, I can cover spots on a leopard!” Bette said gaily as she laid the makeup on Gloria’s face with a spatula like she was spackling a ceiling. The ratty perm had been cut out of Gloria’s hair, leaving her with a soft boyish hairdo that feathered around her face and softened the hard edge of her jaw and pointed nose. When she looked into the mirror, she didn’t recognize herself.

  “Mom, you’re beautiful,” Troy said sincerely.

  Gloria was too choked up to say anything. Bette stuck a tissue under her nose.

  “Don’t you dare cry!” she ordered. “We Kaintucky gals are made of tough stuff. Time to boo-hoo aftah you get the job, darlin’. Keep a stiff upper one till that happens. Then we’ll celebrate with champagne regardless of the Baptist’s rules!” she added, giving me a reproachful look.

  “I guess I could make an exception,” I said.

  And I did. Gloria got the job.

  I went in search of Troy that evening. Gloria told me that Troy “found” the cameo at a flea market they had visited. The basement door was open. I caught him coming up the stairs. Yet another place he was not supposed to be. He froze at the sight of me.

  “I know, I know, I’m not s’posed to be down there,” he drawled, bounding by me as he prepared to escape.

  “Not so fast, boy,” I said sternly, catching him by the shoulder. “You sit down; we have something to talk about.” I pointed him toward a kitchen chair.

  Troy shrugged his shoulders.

  “What did I do now?”

  “Where’d your momma get that pin that she wore to her interview?”

  Troy looked down at his feet, which were swinging back and forth bumping the legs of the chair.

  “Stop that!” I told him.

  He stopped, but he didn’t say anything.

  “Troy, I asked you a question.”

  “I found it,” he answered with a defiant lift of his chin.

  I had to chuckle at his nerve.

  “You found it all right. You found it in my jewelry box upstairs on the third floor where you are not supposed to be.”

  He shrugged his shoulders again.

  “You don’t know that.”

  I took a deep breath. Children require a certain type of patience that I don’t have much of anymore.

  “I know that my father brought that cameo back with him from Italy when he came home from the war. He gave it to my mother, who gave it to me when Imani was born. I know that I keep it in a velvet-lined box that sits in the top drawer of my jewelry box. You know, the one that sits on top of my dresser upstairs?”

  The little monster didn’t even blink. “How’m I s’posed to know where your jewelry box is? I’m not s’posed to go to the third floor. Remember?”

  I had to count to 300 to keep my language civil.

  “I’m going to make you a deal. We’ll say that you borrowed the pin for your mom’s interview,” I said, leaning over until I was looking the Beast straight in the eye. “But make sure that cameo sees the inside of that velvet box before I see daylight tomorrow morning. Otherwise, your momma is going to hear about it. And I can guarantee that you won’t get to go to camp next week.”

  I have to admit that I told a lie there. Troy was set to go to a sleepover camp and he would be gone for seven days. He had talked about nothing else for a week and was already packed. Considering the peace and quiet that would reign in the house while he was gone, there was no way that boy wasn’t going if I had to drive him the four hours to Camp Rankin myself!

  But Troy didn’t know that.

  “What am I gonna tell Mom?” he asked, falling into my trap.

  “I don’t care what you tell her,” I said, turning to go. “Just as long as that pin is back in that box by morning.”

  He jumped off the chair to make his escape.

  “Not so fast,” I said, remembering something. “What were you doing in the basement?” I reached out to grab him. I missed. Darn!

  “Nothing!” was his reply. I made a mental note to check the next time I did laundry down there. Just to make sure that the foundation of the house was still intact.

  I also left the door to the third floor unlocked for the rest of the evening.

  And the cameo mysteriously made its way into the little velvet-lined box by the time I closed my eyelids that night.

  The bus stopped on Sunday morning to pick up Troy and take him to summer camp. I was beside myself. I could barely keep from grinning like a fool and dancing around in a circle. Instead, I said a little prayer: “Thank you, Lord, for making sure this child is going to camp. Don’t let him come back early. Amen.”

  I yawned and picked up my coffee cup. It was 9:30 already and I was still wearing shorts and a paint-spotted T-shirt. I hadn’t even combed my hair. If I hurried, I wouldn’t have to dodge the dirty looks that Reverend Jenkins passed out when you were late for church.

  “Did Troy return the pin?”

  I was just pulling the screen door open when she spoke. I hated to turn around and look at her.

  “Yes, he did.”

  “Good,” Gloria said in her usual what-it-is voice. “I knew that he hadn’t got it at the flea market when I saw it, but he kept saying over and over that he had.” She sighed. “I hoped it was yours. Not that I want him stealin’ from you, but …” Her voice trailed off. “It won’t happen again, Opal, I promise. I won’t have no thief in my family. Troy and I had a long talk about that. We had a long talk about lying, too.”

  “It’s OK,” I reassured her. “Raising a child by yourself is not easy. And things happen. The important thing is that you are working with Troy and have your hands on him, so to speak. He’ll be all right.” I opened the screen door, which responded with a loud creak. “Look, I’ve got to go or I’ll be late for church.”

  But Gloria’s mind was far away. I thought I heard her say, “He needs his father,” but maybe I was mistaken. After all, Troy’s father had almost burned him up in a fire.

  With the new job, Gloria started looking for an apartment for her and Troy. She was happier than I had ever seen her.

  Bette’s family network of spies came up with nothing on Dana Drew. Jack’s policeman friend came up empty, too. Why was I not surprised?

  Ice Tray had kittens. I thought she was a he.

  Imani would be home on August 26.

  Oh, and I moved my studio. Again. The back parlor wasn’t working. Too dark. I set up shop, temporarily, in the dining room.

  Then, there was the hot, sticky evening when Dana came to the house in a black floor-length latex dress asking if we had any rope. That changed Gloria’s opinion of Dana being a pro. Now she thought she was a serial killer. I didn’t disagree.

  The middle of July slinked toward August like a cat in the shadows without much incident, disaster, noise, or drama. It was too good to last.

  Chapter Ten

  The peace and quiet of the next few weeks were only camouflage for a sense of uneasiness that had settled over us. P-Bo’s nocturnal screechfest, my encounter with Ted, and Gloria’s conversation with Butch had an unsettling effect on all of us at the yellow house. They shattered the aura of serenity and safety that emanated from the old walls that I had painted cream, gold, and mauve. Even the roses that I picked from the garden seemed to droop once they were brought inside. And the bright colors in my paintings, which hung nearly everywhere in the house, did little to lift the gloom. It was beginning to feel like the House of Usher.

  For a moment, just a moment, I thought that lighting the three gas fireplaces might lift the chill that had settled over everything. But the sticky haze of late summer had settled over Prestonn. In other words, it was hot as hell outside. I had the blues, all right, but I w
asn’t crazy.

  Bear and Wells took to pacing the front hall, and they both stood guard on the porch steps now whenever we were outside. Their vigilance was unnerving.

  Marsha, the genteel and elegantly dressed woman who had been a “guest” when P-Bo paid us a visit, left to stay a few weeks with her son in Wisconsin. She planned to move into a place of her own when she returned.

  “Do you have a gun, Opal?” she asked as she was leaving.

  I told her that I didn’t, that guns made me nervous. She shook her beautifully coiffed head as she picked up her overnight bag.

  “You might want to think about getting one,” she said, her blue eyes stern as they bored into mine. “There are a lot of sick sons-of-bitches out there.”

  With that, she gracefully descended the front steps and walked in her shiny patent-leather Ferragamos toward the waiting cab.

  Gloria and I watched as the cab pulled away.

  “I don’t believe she said that,” Gloria commented, grinning.

  “Neither do I,” I countered.

  But our smiles were only temporary. And for the first time since I came up with the idea of using the yellow house as a sanctuary, actually, for the first time in my whole life, I thought about getting a gun. I kept my thoughts to myself.

  I wasn’t allowed much time to brood, though. Troy had returned from summer camp, full of energy, mischief, and bright ideas. And it wasn’t long before he distracted us with some of his schemes. Thank God. There is always room for a little silliness in life.

  He had heard mystery stories at camp and decided to cook up one of his own. I had, unwittingly, obliged him. The yellow house was perfect for mysteries.

  It started when Gloria found the wooden stakes in the toolshed.

  I was being my usual ambitious self after dinner. I had retired to the porch to think about thinking about balancing my checkbook and paying my due-by-the-fifteenth bills. I take a lot more time thinking about this process than actually doing it. But tonight I was distracted. Imani was coming home in two weeks. Wonderful. A little scary. What would she think of this place, her home, now filled with strangers? One of my guests’ in-laws were pressuring her to return to her husband. Drama. Beni had called to say that she needed a place to stay tonight. More drama. Troy had taken to hiding around the house again, popping out of the oddest places at the oddest times. (He had frightened his mother “shitless,” as she put it, when she was in the bathroom.) Mystery. And I was going to dinner with Jack Neal. Romance? I’ll come back to that one. Mixed in with this hodgepodge came Gloria’s voice over the fence post at the side of the house.