by Ann B. Ross
“Hazel Marie . . . ?” I started, holding the door open.
“Can we come in, Miss Julia? I’ve left J. D.”
“Why, of course you can,” I said, stunned at this sudden turn of events. “But what happened?”
“Don’t ask.” She barrelled into the living room with a full head of steam. Then she turned on her heel and headed out the door again. “I forgot our suitcases.”
Little Lloyd followed her, giving me a shoulder shrug as he passed. I held the door for them as they came back, lugging suitcases and grocery bags of shoes, hair rollers, and various and sundry beauty aids.
“You sure this is all right, Miss Julia?” Hazel Marie asked as she passed me on her way in again. “We can always go to a motel.”
“You know it’s all right. Your room is just as you left it. Little Lloyd, I need to put fresh sheets on your bed, but you can go on up.” I tried to pull myself together as I closed the front door. I was of two minds about their return—pleased that I had the two of them under my roof again, and disturbed that Hazel Marie had no staying power. Although, to be fair, she had told me that living with Mr. Pickens would be a temporary arrangement, so he’d see the benefits and advantages of marriage. Have you ever heard of anything so foolish? I could’ve predicted what would happen, but far be it from me to bring that up in her present frame of mind.
I watched Little Lloyd trudge up the stairs, lugging a suitcase, with his backpack full of books on his shoulder, and my heart went out to him. No telling what he’d witnessed between his mother and Mr. Pickens if Hazel Marie’d gotten mad enough to leave. I had to shake my head at the pity of it all, as I looked at those skinny little legs of his in the short pants that came all the way to his knobby knees.
“I’ll be up in a minute,” I told him.
Then, heading toward Hazel Marie’s room, I heard her slam a dresser drawer shut, then clomp across the floor.
“Hazel Marie,” I said as I stood in her door. “What in the world is going on?”
“I don’t want to talk about it,” she said, slinging clothes out of the suitcase. “J. D. Pickens is without a doubt the most aggravating man who ever lived.”
“Well, I know that, but what happened? Did you have a disagreement?”
“I have just had it with him,” she fumed. “Believe me, Miss Julia, I’ve learned my lesson, and now I’m going to teach him one.” She slammed a hairbrush on the dresser.
Wondering how she intended to do that, I decided to let her cool down before finding out what else she didn’t want to talk about. “I’ll just go up and see about Little Lloyd.”
When I got upstairs, I found the boy looking out the front window of his room. The streetlight on the corner had already come on, early as it does on fall evenings.
“Little Lloyd,” I said, “why in the world is your mother so upset with Mr. Pickens? Did he do something to her?”
He turned from the window, but stayed beside it. “Yes, ma’am, I reckon he did. But he didn’t mean to.”
I knew better than to expect him to tattle on his mother, but I couldn’t resist trying to get a handle on the situation. “Well, what did he do?”
Little Lloyd was staring out of the window again. He shrugged his shoulders and said, “I don’t really know. Mama picked me up from school, and when we got home he was just sitting at the table talking with somebody, and Mama sent me outside. And the next thing I knew, she was throwing suitcases in the car.”
“Well, I say,” I said. “And she didn’t tell you why?”
“No’m,” he said, shaking his head and watching the street from the window. “She just said if she never saw Mr. Pickens again, it’d be too soon for her.”
“I don’t expect she meant that,” I said, wondering what he was looking at out on the street. Trying to distract himself, I surmised. “Let’s get this bed made up. You take that side and I’ll take this one. Then it’ll be ready when you are.” I removed the coverlet and began to unfold the bottom sheet that Lillian had left beside the bed. “You know, Little Lloyd, I know this is all pretty upsetting for you, but I’m glad to have you back. I’ve been needing some help with first one thing and another. That trailer park, for instance, and there’s a building on Main Street that’s coming on the market soon. We ought to look into that and see if it’s worth buying.” It’d been my habit to take the child into my business confidences here lately to prepare him for the day when I wouldn’t be around to help him with monetary decisions.
“Yes, ma’am,” he said, and tore himself away from the window long enough to help me make the bed.
“Now,” I said, straightening up after a final smoothing of his sheets. “Go ahead and unpack your suitcase. I’ll go see how your mother’s doing.”
I walked slowly down the stairs. Lord, I didn’t know what to think. Here I’d thought Hazel Marie was settled, lacking a marriage certificate, of course, but headed that way with a decent, if somewhat unmanageable, man.
Approaching her room through the back hall, I was relieved to hear none of the slamming and banging she’d been doing. When I tapped on her door, I saw her sitting on the bed with her head bowed and her hands twisting in her lap.
“Hazel Marie,” I said, “come on to the kitchen and let me fix you something to eat.”
“I don’t think I can eat anything.” She looked up at me with fierce eyes. “But,” she said, getting to her feet, “I’ll sit with you a while. I’m too upset to eat.”
When she was settled at the kitchen table in her usual place, I made a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and put it and a glass of milk in front of her. “Eat,” I said. “You’ll feel better.”
“I feel fine, now that I’ve done what I should’ve done in the first place, tell J. D. Pickens to get out of my life and stay out.” She frowned as her eyes darted around the room, and I prepared myself to endure another fit of temper.
“You weren’t feeling that way when I talked to you on the phone earlier today,” I reminded her.
“I didn’t know then what I know now, and that man has tried my patience for the last time.” She reached for the sandwich, but instead of picking it up, she put her palm on it and mashed it. Grape jelly oozed out the sides. “You won’t believe what he was doing when I came home today. I wanted to smack him to kingdom come, and I may still do it.” Her clenched fist slammed down on the table—some little distance from the sandwich, I’m happy to say. “But,” she said, “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“All right.”
“Oh, Miss Julia,” she went on, “you just don’t know what I’ve been through with him. He thinks he’s God’s gift to every woman he sees, and I’ve had my fill of it.”
Ah, I thought to myself, that’s what I was afraid of. Mr. Pickens was a world-class womanizer, and I’d warned Hazel Marie of those tendencies of his long before this. Of course, you can’t tell people what they don’t want to hear; they have to find out for themselves.
“Some men are just like that, Hazel Marie.”
“Like what?”
“Why, like Mr. Pickens. Running after everything in a skirt.”
Well, that certainly opened the floodgates. She covered her face with her hands and began to sob. “Oh, Miss Julia, I thought I could change him, he said he would change, but he hasn’t and I don’t think he can.” She gave a mighty sniff, grabbed a napkin and wiped her nose. “And it’s too late, anyway.”
Now, I hadn’t had much experience with men in general, but I knew enough to know that trying to change one was an uphill job, and Hazel Marie hadn’t stood a chance of changing the stripes of a man like Mr. Pickens. Women just melted when he turned those black eyes on them and smiled that wicked smile of his. Maybe he couldn’t help what he did to women. Some men can’t, you know.
“Hazel Marie,” I said, wanting to offer something to ease her heartache. “I don’t think he means a thing by it. I’ve never seen a man so taken with anybody as he is with you. I watch him, you know, and he can’t
keep his eyes off you.”
She gave me a teary smile. “You think so?”
“I know so. The man’s in love, Hazel Marie, and it looks like you’re just going to have to put up with the way he attracts other women.” I said this even though I couldn’t’ve done it myself.
Hazel Marie sniffed again, picked up the sandwich, then put it back down. “One thing I’ll give him, he knows how to treat a woman.”
Intrigued, I longed to ask just what that treatment consisted of, since I’d never had any of it, and probably wouldn’t recognize it if any ever came my way.
But I held my peace as tears began to spurt out of her eyes again. Ignoring them, she picked up the flattened sandwich and finally took a bite. Chewing and sniffing as she wiped her eyes with a napkin, she went on, “He can be so sweet and thoughtful and kind and considerate.” She swallowed hard. “And I could just knock him winding.”
“I don’t blame you. I’d want to do the same.” I thought of how I’d wanted to take the hide off Wesley Lloyd Springer when I found out that one woman hadn’t been enough for him.
“Oh, Miss Julia,” Hazel Marie suddenly wailed. She put her head down on her arms and began crying like her heart was breaking. I took the sandwich from her hand and put it on the plate. “It’s even worse than you think.”
“What is?” I said, leaning close. “What in the world could be worse?”
“He . . . ,” she sniffed, her voice muffled against the table. “He, he’s married.”
“Married! To who?”
“To two!”
I reared back in my chair and grasped the edge of the table with my hands. “He’s married to two women? And leading you on at the same time? Why, Hazel Marie, the man’s a bigamist! I can’t believe this. That sorry thing needs to be in jail, and I’ve a good mind to put him there.”
“Well,” she said, straightening up and wiping her face. “He’s divorced from both of them, so I don’t guess they’d put him in jail for that.”
After the stunning revelation of two Mrs. Pickenses, I had to heave a sigh of relief. Mr. Pickens was at least free of criminal intent, legally speaking. But divorce? And two of them? That didn’t say much for Mr. Pickens’s qualifications for another stab at marriage.
“You just found out about this?” I asked.
“Yes! And I wouldn’t have found out at all if one of them hadn’t come to see him today. Just showed up out of the blue, and he had the nerve to invite her in and be sitting at the table drinking a Coke with her when I walked in. Can you believe that? There they were just talking and laughing, and she had her hand on his arm.” She rubbed the napkin over her eyes, mopping up mascara-tinged tears, then plunged on. “And do you think he would tell me who she was? No, she did!” Then, mimicking somebody else’s voice, she said, “ ‘Hi, I’m Tammi with an i, and J. D. and I were married for a short while. Too short, don’t you think, J. D.? We didn’t give it long enough.’ Little red-headed witch, I could’ve snatched her bald-headed.”
“And so you left?”
“I certainly did, and I’m not . . .” She stopped as we both looked up at the ceiling at the sound of Little Lloyd’s footsteps running across the upstairs hall and galloping down the stairs to answer the front door.
“You stay here,” I said, rising from my chair. “I’ll see who it is.”
When I got to the living room, Little Lloyd had opened the door for Mr. Pickens. They stood together, with the child’s arms around his waist and Mr. Pickens holding him close.
“Told you I’d come, didn’t I?” Mr. Pickens said to him.
The boy looked up at him. “Did you bring Tammi, too?”
Mr. Pickens laughed and hugged him closer. “No, I didn’t bring Tammi. She’s long gone and good riddance. Don’t you worry about her. Now, where’s your mother?”
The child heaved a mighty sigh, and we all turned as the kitchen door swung open and Hazel Marie walked into the dining room, heading toward us. She looked a sight, with smeared makeup, tangled hair and red eyes. I don’t think Mr. Pickens minded in the least. He walked over to her, crooning, “Hazel Marie, sweetheart.”
She backed away from him. “Don’t come around trying to sweet-talk me. I’ve had enough of it!”
“I know I should’ve told you, but I was afraid I’d scare you off,” he said, holding out his arms. “Come on, sweetheart, let’s just talk about it.”
“I’m not about to talk about it,” she said, tears coursing down her face. “How can I when I’m not speaking to you ever again? You might as well leave, ’cause that’s all I have to say.” And she stomped off to the kitchen, letting the door close in his face.
His shoulders slumped as he stared at the closed door. Then he glanced at me in a sheepish way, and said, “Guess I blew it this time.” Then he took Little Lloyd’s hand, saying, “Sit out on the porch with me, son, and we’ll straighten this out between us.”
Mr. Pickens’s concern for the child’s feelings confirmed what I’d always thought. He was basically a good man whose flaws all had to do with women.
I went back into the kitchen to see about Hazel Marie. She was sitting with her elbows propped on the table and her face buried in her hands.
“You could’ve let him explain,” I said, trying not to sound as if I were accusing her of being hasty. “Maybe he got married when he was young and didn’t know any better. Or he could’ve been tricked into it. There could be a good explanation.” Actually, I didn’t know any really good ones, but I wanted to soothe her feelings.
“He could’ve told me, Miss Julia. Not just let me walk in and see the second Mrs. Pickens hanging all over him. It’s obvious what she wants. I heard her tell him while I was packing that she’d just broken up with her latest live-in. She wants J. D. back. And she can just have him!” She rubbed at the tears that were welling up again.
“From what I heard,” I said, “he doesn’t want her back. He wants you.”
“It doesn’t matter. It’s all ruined now. I’m not going to get into it again with a married man. Not ever, ever again.” She covered her face with her hands, unable to look at me, as her words conjured up her previous relationship with my husband.
“Hazel Marie,” I said as firmly as I could, “it’s not the same. Mr. Pickens is divorced, even if he did have to do it twice. So unless there’s another wife he hasn’t told you about, he is unattached at the present time.”
“But, but, remember Pastor Ledbetter’s sermon on divorce, when he said, once married, always married? He said,” she said, sniffing wetly again, “he said there’s no such thing as divorce in God’s eyes, so that means J. D.’s still married to his first wife. And, and, it means his second wife was just like me—a blamed fool for falling for him. No wonder they both threw him out.”
“Oh, for goodness sakes,” I said, just so put out at the damage Pastor Ledbetter seemed to wreak every time he opened his mouth. “Listen to me. I happen to know that the pastor himself has performed wedding ceremonies for people who’ve been divorced. So what does that say about his pronouncements from on high?” I thought for a minute, as what she’d just said came through to me. “They threw him out?”
“He said they did. And laughed about it. See, Miss Julia, he’s just impossible.”
“No, Hazel Marie, that makes him possible,” I said, satisfied that I’d found the pastor’s justification, as well as my own. I didn’t know how I felt about divorce, except that some married people needed it, and those who seemed to need it the most rarely got it.
While I was musing over my sudden insight into how the pastor managed to overcome his objections to performing the second marriage of an elder’s divorced daughter, I heard Little Lloyd close the front door and run up the stairs. So Mr. Pickens had had his talk and, if I knew him, he now had an accomplice on the inside.
“See, Hazel Marie,” I said, putting my hand on her arm. “Mr. Pickens was the injured party.” Though the Lord knows, I thought, it was hard to picture him in such
an innocent light. “He didn’t get the divorces, his wives did. So even Pastor Ledbetter couldn’t argue with that.”
“Well, but he should’ve told me before this.” She took another bite of the sandwich, her eyes still swimming with tears, and chewed it as if it had little taste. Then she looked at me. “You really think it’s all right that he’s been married before?”
“Of course it’s not all right,” I said. “But what’s done is done, and he’s not married now, at least in the eyes of the law. As to what he is in the eyes of the Lord, I don’t have a clue, and neither does Pastor Ledbetter.”
“I don’t know what I’d do if he was.” She began sobbing again between bites of the sandwich. “I just love him so, and I know he loves me. So, why, Miss Julia, why didn’t he tell me?”
“There’s no telling. I’ve given up trying to understand any of them.” The thought of Sam crossed my mind—Sam and his unexplainable behavior of late. “Now, Hazel Marie,” I said, glancing at my watch. “We’ll deal with Mr. Pickens when the time comes, but right now I’ve got to see about Lillian.”
“Oh,” she said, swallowing hard, as immediate concern for another suffering soul distracted her. “What’s wrong with Lillian?”
I gave her a long look, concluding that what she needed was something to take her mind off Mr. Pickens and his waywardness.
“I’ll tell you in the car,” I said. “Call Little Lloyd and tell him he’ll need a jacket and some long pants. It’s getting cool out there.”
“Where’re we going?” she asked, sopping up mascara-soaked tears as she started out of the chair.
“We’re going to a protest meeting at the Reverend Morris Abernathy’s AME Zion church.”
Chapter 6
As Little Lloyd scrunched up between the bucket seats so he could hear better, I told Hazel Marie about Lillian’s impending homeless state.
“That’s just not fair,” she said, righteously upset on Lillian’s behalf. She gave an angry sniff—or maybe she needed to blow her nose again. “It’s not right to put all those people out when they’ve lived there for so long.”