No Defense

by Rangeley Wallace

  We all hugged and said hello.

  “You look great, Barbara,” I said. She’d always been attractive, but during high school when I’d last seen her she was still carrying a lot of baby fat on her large frame.

  “You too,” Barbara said.

  “How kind of you,” I said.

  In fact, I looked dumpy, flabby, and exhausted. I had on my nursing nightgown, with Will’s spit-up decorating one shoulder, wore no makeup, and hadn’t washed my stringy, dirty hair since we got home from the hospital.

  “Buck thinks Barbara’s a dead ringer for Cybill Shepherd,” Jane gushed.

  Barbara waved her hand dismissively, but something that flickered in her eyes told me how much she enjoyed the compliment.

  “Come on in,” I said. “Careful where you step.” I cleared a path through the boxes. “Y’all sit over there.” I gestured toward the couch and a chair.

  “Congratulations on the twins,” Barbara said, sitting in a faded armchair.

  I’d never noticed how ratty the chair and most of the other furniture in the apartment were until that moment.

  “Thanks,” I said. “They’re asleep right now, so we have to be a little quiet. Would either of you like coffee or something?”

  “No, no. Just relax,” Barbara said.

  I negotiated between a pile of books and another of records, removed a box of framed pictures from a comfortable chair, and sat down. I rested my feet on the embroidered footstool.

  “I get congratulations too,” Jane said coyly.

  I looked at her, puzzled.

  “I think I’m pregnant,” she squealed.

  “Oh Jane, that’s terrific!” I said softly. “How long?”

  “Just two weeks since I missed my period, so I shouldn’t have said anything. Don’t tell anyone,” she said. She held a finger to her lips. “Mum’s the word.”

  “You didn’t tell Buck?” I asked.

  “Oh, I couldn’t keep it a secret from him. I know what you’re thinking: If I have another miscarriage it’ll upset him. But I won’t have one. Besides, he’d figure it out. Every month we mourn my period, so he knows when I’m even a few days late. And guess what-I threw up this morning. Isn’t that great?” She giggled and patted her tummy.

  “It’s wonderful, Jane. What’s Buck up to today anyway?” I asked her.

  “He’s busy planning some big political thing for Daddy.”

  “It’s a very exciting time in Tallagumsa, don’t you think, LuAnn?” Barbara asked. She sat with her ankles crossed, her hands clasped in her lap. “If your father’s elected governor, it would be a big boost both to the town and the college.”

  “If he runs,” I said. “Last I heard, he hadn’t decided.”

  “He’s close--Buck said so last night,” Jane said.

  “I almost wish he wouldn’t run,” I said. “Eddie’s not that thrilled about our moving back, and if we have to do a lot of campaigning he’ll be even less happy.”

  “Well, maybe he’ll feel a little better about moving after he and Barbara have their meeting,” Jane said.

  “What on earth are you talking about?” I asked.

  “Is Eddie here?” Barbara asked. She pulled a leather note- book from her handbag.

  I didn’t answer, but I must have given her a funny look.

  “Don’t you know why I’m here?” Barbara asked.

  “We’re a few minutes early,” Jane said, looking at her watch. “Didn’t Eddie tell you we were coming?”

  “I haven’t seen him much since I got home from the hospital,” I said. “Whenever I’m asleep he’s awake, and vice versa.”

  Will began to cry. Upon hearing the sound, milk began leaking through my nursing bra, and two wet spots spread across my nightgown. “Excuse me.”

  I picked Will up from his bassinet in my bedroom and nursed him in my bed. Hank continued sleeping quietly in his tiny bed. After a few minutes Will quieted down, and I lay him down on the improvised changing table: my vanity with a piece of foam padding on top. When I took off his diaper, he peed all over my neck and chest before I had a chance to shield the general area with my hand. I laughed. I still had not gotten used to this basic difference in changing boys’ and girls’ diapers.

  I put Will in the middle of the bed while I took off the nightgown, wiped my neck with it, then pulled on a pair of sweatpants and one of Eddie’s T-shirts. I brushed my hair and put on some lip gloss, then looked in the mirror. Hopeless.

  “Where’s Jolene?” Jane asked when I returned to the living room with Will. Once again he started screaming his lungs out.

  “The grocery with Jessie,” I said. “So what’s going on?”

  I stood with Will resting on my shoulder, bouncing him gently in a futile attempt to relieve what I’d decided the night before at three A.M. must be colic.

  “Barbara’s a big fan of Eddie’s work,” Jane said. “And when she heard y’all were moving to Tallagumsa and that Eddie had taught journalism before, she called him. Was it yesterday?”

  Barbara nodded. “We talked twice yesterday. I told him that we have an immediate opening because, I’m embarrassed to say, my journalism professor ran off with one of his students. I also mentioned that I’m hoping he can teach a politics and the arts course this summer.”

  “What did Eddie say?” I asked.

  “That he’d think about it and talk to me today. Since I spoke with him I found out from your father that Eddie’s been trying to get his work into syndication, so I wondered if maybe we should do a show of his work at the college. I’m good friends with the head of the Tribune Press Syndicate, Willie Caldwell. I know he’d come.” She raised her palm, as if to stop herself “I should talk to Eddie before I go on about this. Maybe he wouldn’t like the idea.”

  “I think he’d love it!” I said.

  He did. That afternoon, while I bathed Hank in the plastic baby tub next to the kitchen sink, Barbara hired Eddie to teach two courses, one in journalism as soon as we moved, and one in politics and the arts that summer. A show of his best work would follow a few months later. Best of all, Eddie could continue to work for the City Paper.

  Perfect, I thought. Everything was turning out just perfect.

  On our last morning in Atlanta, Buck picked up Jolene early and drove her to our new house in Tallagumsa, where she could prepare things for our arrival. Before we left the apartment_, we had our landladies, the Crawfords, and our neighbor, Adrienne, in for coffee and pie. Eddie bought two Miss Reese’s pies for the event, one strawberry, one pear-apple. I’d attributed my initial favorable impression of the pie in the hospital to postlabor starvation, but in fact Miss Reese’s pies were the best I’d ever tasted.

  We all cried over our pie, especially Violet and Iris Ann, who weren’t too happy that we were taking the “lights of their lives” away. They gave Jessie a pair of white gloves and a string of beautiful pearls. The boys received ornately monogrammed sterling-silver mint julep cups like the one the Crawfords had given Jessie when she was born. Adrienne presented each child with a personal astrological chart.

  The twins were two weeks old the day we left Atlanta with a U-Haul full of everything worth taking with us attached to the car. Looking out the car window, I watched the chinaberry tree in the front yard recede from view.

  We passed the Glad Bag Man on his park bench as we drove out of town.

  I waved good-bye, relieved that we were leaving behind all the hassles and concerns of big city life.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Before the move, the Bledsoes and I had agreed on a leisurely turnover of the restaurant six weeks after my return to Tallagumsa. That would give me the time I needed to unpack, recover from too many sleepless nights, and get reacquainted with Steak House activities.

  At the end of the six-week transition period, I would be on my own. I might have panicked if my friends Estelle and Roland hadn’t been so knowledgeable about the restaurant, but both had run the place when the Bledsoes were out of town, an
d I figured I hadn’t forgotten everything I’d learned during my years working there.

  The Bledsoes, having spent their entire married lives running the Steak House, admitted they were ambivalent about retiring, and I suspected they would have resisted leaving at all if they hadn’t been booked on a six-month round-the-world cruise. Although they expressed confidence in my abilities, it was clear that neither Mimi nor Howard believed the restaurant could survive for more than five days without them: they had never been off the premises longer than that.

  Eddie didn’t take any time off after the move. I’d hoped we could spend some time together, alone, but once the U-Haul was unpacked, he was either in his studio-the large open space on the third floor of the four-bedroom Tudor house I’d grown up in-or at the college.

  All the years my parents, my sister, Jane, and I had lived in the house, what was now Eddie’s studio had been used for Daddy’s hunting equipment and his extensive gun collection. In place of the familiar gun racks, trophies, and cases, there was now a desk, where Eddie worked at his typewriter, a utility table, where he drafted cartoons, and floor-to-ceiling shelves across one long wall, where he put his work-related library and piles of papers.

  Eddie nailed a six-by-six-foot bulletin board to the other long wall and stuck a strip of red duct tape straight down the middle. On the left side he tacked his recent and upcoming City Paper cartoons. On the right was the work he was considering for his show, the proposed contents of which changed regularly. There were cartoons about David Frost’s interview of Richard Nixon, Billy Carter’s endorsement of Billy Beer, Daniel Schorr’s suspension from CBS, the federal antitrust suit against AT&T, and the many other events of the last ten years that had caught Eddie’s attention and lit his imagination.

  Eddie had always been happiest when he was busy and productive, and he seemed almost content in Tallagumsa, where for the first time in years he had the time, space, and opportunity to accomplish his goals. He turned out some wonderful political cartoons for the City Paper and took over the journalism course at the college without missing a beat. Barbara Cox told me that he had quickly become something of a hero with the kids at the college, in part because he spent so much of his time working individually with them, and in part because he had the kind of real-life experience often lacking in teachers. His show had been set for Wednesday, July 12, in the college social hall, and Barbara was working hard to include on the invitation list people who could help Eddie get syndicated.

  Despite his seeming contentment, however, Eddie was true to his word and never missed a Friday night with a Miss Reese’s pie, an unspoken but pointed reminder of the provisional nature of our stay in Tallagumsa.

  One Saturday a few weeks after we’d moved in, I was in the den, a bright, cheerful room painted yellow and decorated in floral fabrics. I was unpacking books, dusting each one as it came out of the box, and arranging them in the built-in bookshelves. It was quiet. Jessie was with her grandparents at the lake, where she spent many weekend days, and Eddie was walking Will and Hank in their double stroller.

  I had just dusted hardback copies of Ragtime, All the President’s Men, and Final Payments, sliding them into place on the shelf, when I heard Eddie return and put the boys in their cribs. He stayed in the nursery for fifteen minutes, then came into the den.

  “The boys asleep?” I asked.

  “Yep,” he said. “Even Will.” He lit a cigarette and watched me. His look was mildly contemptuous.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Isn’t it a little strange for you being the wife and mother in the house you grew up in? Sleeping in your parents’ bedroom? Cooking in your mother’s kitchen?”

  I shook my head.

  “Don’t you feel any of the ghosts here?” he asked.

  “You sound like Adrienne, Eddie,” I said.

  “I thought she just did astrology,” he said.

  “Same kind of thing. But no, I don’t. All I feel is incredibly lucky that we have this house, great jobs, wonderful, healthy children, and Jolene.”

  “They’re here, LuAnn,” he said.

  “Who?”

  “The ghosts,” he said. “You just won’t allow yourself to see them.”

  I laughed. “Don’t be silly, Eddie. You can’t have ghosts without dead people. Here, help me with these books and stop looking at me like that.”

  He shrugged and sat down next to me.

  I handed him a dust rag.

  Once the unpacking was finished, I had more free time than I’d had in years, and more than I’d have after I took over the Steak House. Jessie was in nursery school each morning, and Jolene watched the twins whenever I was out. Will and Hank could survive without me for increasingly longer periods of time as they began to get more of their daily nourishment from bottles. I took advantage of my freedom, taking long walks, riding my horse, and hanging out at the Steak House, reviewing with the Bledsoes the many details involved in running a restaurant.

  My horse, Glorious Gloria-or Glory, for short-had been a gift from my father not long after Glory was born to a champion show mare at a Tennessee horse farm. She was an early college graduation present, according to Daddy. A bribe to keep me in Tallagumsa, according to Eddie.

  I’d trained Glory weekends before Jessie was born. After that I’d tried to ride and jump her at least once a month. Between my visits, a trainer worked with her, and a local teenage boy who lived nearby exercised her almost every day.

  We kept Glory and my father’s horse, Balzac, outside of town close to Clark Lake in one of Edwina Frickey’s barns. Miss Edwina had lived outside Tallagumsa since the day she was born there, in 1885. Her grandchildren maintained her property and her horses. Because Daddy had done her some favor or other years before, her family took care of our horses for free. One of her two barns housed ten horses; in the other barn were her parakeets.

  A light drizzle began to fall during my first trip out to Miss Edwina’s after the move. There was just enough rain to warrant windshield wipers, but I didn’t turn back. I’d been looking forward to riding Glory for too long.

  I parked next to the horse barn. I could see the horses grazing in the east field at the top of a small rise a few hundred yards away. As I entered the barn to get a halter, I was overwhelmed by the smells of my childhood: an unforgettable mixture of hay, horse shit, and horse sweat. It was wonderful.

  I grabbed the worn green halter from the stall marked “Glory” and walked across the soft ground toward the field. The rain had stopped.

  Glory, a golden palomino with four white feet and a white mane and tail, stood out even from a distance. I fingered the sugar cubes in my jeans pocket and started to walk a little faster, anxious to touch her.

  “Glory,” I called when I was a few yards away from her. She and the two horses next to her turned and stared. One of them was Balzac, a black thoroughbred. He turned back to his eating, while Glory’s dark hazel eyes looked me over. Then Glory walked up and pushed her nose against my pocket. Her nostrils flared a little.

  “You’re the smartest horse I ever knew,” I said. I gave her the sugar and gently hooked the halter over her head. “Come on, Glory. Let’s go.”

  In the barn, I put her in crossties and retrieved a tack box. Equipped with a hoof pick, I faced her and gently ran my right hand down the front of her right leg; she shifted her weight to her other three legs and lifted her front right leg. I bent over and dug in.

  I was never one for mindless labor, unless it involved horses. Then, bring it on. As a girl I’d been happy to muck out stalls all day, as long as I got to ride when I was done. I figured it was only fair that I had to do a lot of dirty, boring work before I was able to do something as incredible as ride a horse. For me riding was the ultimate contradiction: It put you in your place and set you free at the same time.

  During the six-week break between leaving Atlanta and taking over the Steak House, I often dropped by the restaurant and sat with the Bledsoes in their corner booth, whe
re I could chat and learn, or I relaxed with my father and his friends, the members of the Coffee Club, along the wall booth.

  The Coffee Club, as it had come to be known over the years, numbered between five and fifteen men who met most weekday mornings and afternoons at the Steak House. They always sat at the same tables, along the wall booth, where they drank coffee, talked, laughed, and sometimes yelled as they tried to solve a multitude of problems ranging from the personal to the political.

  Other members of the Coffee Club, besides Daddy and Junior, included Bev Carter, the sheriff who’d been deputy when my father was sheriff fifteen years ago, Skip Palmer, the druggist; Buddy Sheppard, the luggage-plant owner; Dr. Roy Stuart, our family doctor; Larry Potter, the garment-factory manager; Claude Vines, a retired state representative; and Cooper Bowe, who owned Bowe’s Department Store; as well as several judges and deputy sheriffs. Most worked within walking distance of the Steak House. A few drove in for the company and the conversation.

  On several occasions I encouraged Eddie to drop by and join them between classes or on his way back and forth to the college, but he wasn’t interested.

  My last weekday off before I started working full time, I packed a picnic lunch, put on shorts and a shirt over my bathing suit which I could finally fit into again-and drove out to Clark Lake. Unfortunately, Eddie couldn’t join me because of a college faculty meeting he had to attend.

  I spent the morning on my parents’ dock, swimming and soaking up the sun. Daddy was at work, and Mother was off with Jane on some Junior League project, so I had the place to myself Except for a few houses in the distance, there was nothing but lake and pine trees, and a deep blue sky overhead.

  After swimming for an hour, I slept. Almost two months old, Hank had started sleeping through the night, but Will seemed determined to be ornery and hadn’t followed Hank’s lead. Anticipating the demands of my job, I’d weaned the boys completely to daytime bottles but still breastfed them in the evening and during the night. Over the last few weeks I’d had time to catch up on my sleep most days, but I was a little concerned about how I’d survive once I was at the Steak House full time.