The Right Thing

by Amy Conner

  He comes out of the bathroom, a billow of steam preceding him. Toweling off his hair, he says, “Sugar, anything a-tall I can do for you ’fore I go?”

  “Well,” I say with a wan smile, “I think I’ll go sleep in the guest bedroom tonight. That way I won’t keep you awake, honey, and we can both get some rest.”

  “Shoot, darlin’,” Du says. He’s in the closet now, getting dressed. “I’ll go down the hall. You rest up, get to feeling better. I’ll just kiss you good night now and not bother you when I come in.” He emerges backlit by the light in the closet, his suit coat on his arm, tie loose around his neck. “You seen my shoes?”

  “They’re on the floor by the chair.” It’s almost as if Du’s in on this conspiracy with me: I can’t hope for more. “That would be great—you letting me sleep. I’ll be much better for Thanksgiving tomorrow.” And I can sneak into the house around 1:45 Thanksgiving morning and no one will ever know. I hate lying to him, mostly because it’s so easy, but sometimes it’s the only way.

  “Your mom still coming?” he asks, knotting his tie.

  “Mmm-hmm,” I murmur. “And Aunt Too-Tai’s still planning to come up from Chunky. Myrtistine’s done everything but put the turkey in the oven. I’ll do that around eight tomorrow morning, and we’ll have Thanksgiving dinner by one.”

  Du leans over the bed and kisses me on the forehead. He smells of sandalwood soap, bourbon, and aftershave. “Well, you get some shut-eye and I’ll let everyone know you’re under the weather.” Am I hearing the faintest note of relief in his voice? “See you in the ay-em, sugar.” Du shuts the door gently on his way out.

  It’s all I can do to stay in the bed until the sound of his car leaving the driveway fades, but after what seems like an hour, he’s finally gone. I throw back the duvet and rush into the bathroom to brush my teeth. In my closet, there’s no time to get picky about what to wear: it’s the green cashmere and the mink parka one more time. Dressed again and ready to go, I turn off the lights in the closet. Then I turn them back on because I need cash.

  You should know that I have my own money, sort of. Days after my debut, Grandmother Banks finally achieved her expiration date (done in by her own meanness, in my opinion, although the coroner pronounced it complications from shingles) inside the elevator of her house on State Street. It took the Jackson Fire Department, two policemen, and the Jaws of Life nearly a whole day to remove her body and the wheelchair from that gilt birdcage: they built elevators to last back in the twenties.

  When her will was read downtown at the attorney’s dark, old-fashioned office, in a quavering rumble of faintly disguised disapproval, elderly Mr. Billy Spotswood Sr. informed me that, after endowing an annuity for Pumpernickel and leaving the bulk of her estate to my father, my grandmother had also engineered an inheritance for me, her only grandchild, to be administered by Daddy. The trust fund came to a respectable amount of cash and bank stocks, plus her collection of unfashionable, exceedingly filthy diamonds. My grandmother’s housekeeper, Easter Mae, received a half-dozen sterling-silver pickle forks and Wash, her manservant, got the ancient Packard, which was at death’s door itself. Conspicuous in its absence was any bequest to my mother. Nonetheless, both my parents enjoyed the boost to their standard of living after Grandmother Banks’s demise, and they never said a word about it. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever heard my mother say anything even remotely disparaging about her vicious mother-in-law, not even after Daddy passed five years ago and nobody was left to give a damn.

  Now we come to the “sort of” part of my own money. After Daddy’s death, my mother became the trustee of my inheritance by default. It was a convoluted trust instrument that Mr. Spotswood Sr. had crafted, one that illustrated what Grandmother Banks must have thought of my ability ever to manage my own money. I can have as much as I want or need from the estate—so long as I run it past my mother first and she agrees to it. Grandmother would surely disapprove of this development, but that’s too bad: if she wanted to rule her empire forever, she shouldn’t have died.

  In any case, my mother’s cooperation has insured that Du and I can live like we do. If we had to get by on his salary (which is by no means a small one), we’d be up to our ears in debt, but having the old trust fund to fall back on has made all the difference. So tonight, in light of the “sort of” provision, it’s a good thing I’ve kept nearly five thousand dollars in cash inside the dreaded walk-in closet, behind our ski boots, tucked underneath my extra shoulder pads in a cedar-lined box. I call it my “running money,” and no one knows a thing about it but me. Since Du can never learn about tonight’s adventure, I can’t use my credit cards, and Starr and I may have need of cash, so I stuff a handful of hundred-dollar bills in the pocket of my parka. Then I arrange the heap of eyelet pillows under the duvet to stand in for stomach-virus-afflicted, sleeping Annie—just in case.

  Then I run.

  The wind has stopped and the air is crystal cold, but the night sky overhead is full of stars as I pull the car into the parking garage at the Burnside Tower. I punch the “up” button for the elevator and wait, praying there won’t be someone riding it up to their condo from the lobby downstairs at the same time. The seconds crawl by. I’m beginning to think about taking the stairs, and then the doors slide open at last.

  As it happens, I’m not going to be alone on my trip up to Starr’s penthouse.

  There’s a hairy little dog in the elevator, a black-and-tan creature resembling a miniature, flop-eared version of a German shepherd. It can’t weigh more than ten pounds. With a shrug, I step inside. The doors close, and the smell in the elevator assaults my nose like a slap, ripe with a warm, familiar stink. The source is a pile in the corner, surprisingly large for such a small dog. He looks up at me with an air of depression, seemingly embarrassed about the mess, and so to be polite, I avoid looking at the small mountain of shit. The dog sighs as the elevator travels in a smooth, uninterrupted climb up the seven stories to the penthouse floor.

  When the door opens, the dog—it’s some obscure breed of terrier, I think—gets out with me. He follows me to Starr’s door and sits by my feet when I knock, just as if he’s at home there.

  The door opens and Starr steps out into the foyer. She’s changed into a pair of baggy acid-washed jeans and what looks like a man’s Arran-knit sweater, the heavy, cabled sleeves hanging past her fingertips, the hem falling halfway to her knees. In spite of wearing what must be the last of Bobby’s clothes, Starr looks beautiful: her color is high, and her pale eyes are bright as, well, stars.

  “I’m ready,” she says. She reaches down to pat the dog. “Hey, Troy Smoot.” He looks up at her with recognition, tail wagging, his grin full of sharp white teeth. “You meet Troy in the elevator?” she asks.

  “I met him and his shit,” I say. “What the hell’s that about? Is he yours?”

  She ruffles the wild hair sprouting behind the terrier’s ears. “Jesus wept, no. Troy here lives next door with ol’ Jerome and Lollie Treeby. Remember Lisa’s parents? Lollie can’t even recall her own name anymore, and he can’t be bothered to walk a dog, so three times a day ol’ Jerome just sticks Troy in the elevator and lets him ride up and down until he’s done his business. Then he phones down and tells Mr. Jarbo, the maintenance man, to clean it up and spray some Glade around. Bobby said Mr. Treeby’s been doing it for years.”

  I can’t believe what I’m hearing. “You mean to tell me he keeps a dog up here and doesn’t even walk it?” It explains the howling earlier and the atomic cloud of air freshener on my previous trip up in the elevator this afternoon. “That’s cruel. Not to mention disgusting.”

  “Honey,” Starr says patiently, “people think this place is the last word on gracious living, but let me tell you what, the Burnside is full of mean old folks who’re used to getting their own way. When they say ‘shit,’ they mean for somebody to drop their drawers. If Mr. Jarbo wants to keep his job in this crappy building, he’ll keep on cleaning up after all of them, no
t just the Treebys. You ready to go?” Starr slings her purse over her shoulder and locks the door behind her.

  “Someone should report this to the Humane Society.” I’ve known that after Lisa grew up to become a geneticist and went to work bioengineering soybeans for ConAgra in Dubuque, Mr. and Mrs. Treeby sold their old place and moved to the Burnside. I had no idea that they’d gotten themselves a dog, but with Lisa and her allergies gone, there wasn’t any reason not to, I guess, and Mr. Treeby must have missed having someone to boss around. In her old age, Mrs. Treeby has become increasingly dim, so I’m betting he takes it out on the dog instead of her these days. And knowing Jerome Treeby, he must have been as appalled by Starr’s presence next door for the last six months as I am about him making his dog shit in the elevator.

  The doors to the elevator slide open again, and the little terrier trots inside. “Does he just ride up and down until they let him out?” I ask as we walk in after him.

  “That’s right,” Starr says. The elevator descends. “That’s how come Troy and me got to know each other. I call him Troy Smoot after a boy I knew what got ten years at Parchman prison for a crime he didn’t even do. Poor thing. It isn’t his fault.” Troy looks stoically away from the mound in the corner.

  The door opens onto the parking garage and the clean, cold November night smells like freedom. Starr and I get out of the elevator. The dog stays behind, intelligent brown eyes mournful, head cocked in wistful farewell as the doors begin to close.

  “Wait!” I shove my arm between the closing doors to hold them open. “C’mon, Troy.”

  Troy trots out of the elevator, his stub tail wagging. “What’re you doing?” Starr asks. Her voice echoes in the cavernous garage. “We’re going to New Orleans, right?”

  “That’s the plan,” I say. “And Troy’s coming with us.” Not content with being a liar and a coward, I’m a dog thief now. I open the door to the BMW, and he jumps into the front seat.

  “What’re we going to do with a dog?” Starr sounds confused. “Annie, I thought we were going to travel light.” She gets in the passenger’s side and pats Troy’s head. The dog leans into her hand and exhales a gusty sigh. “Don’t get me wrong—me and Troy are good to go, if that’s what you want.”

  It’s like this morning’s black silk dress, still hanging in the back seat of the car; it’s like this furtive trip to New Orleans in the dark. Taking this poor bastard away from his miserable life with the Treebys is something I’m going to do because I just know it’s the right thing to do, even if I can’t explain why.

  “Get in the back, Troy,” I say, pointing behind me. The dog hops across the console and sits up on the back seat, ears pricked and ready for a ride in the car.

  “Time to get this show on the road, then,” Starr says. “And no smoking ’round the baby.”

  My grandmother would just die if she weren’t already dead.

  CHAPTER 8

  My grandmother was only one reason why I’d never liked Thanksgiving.

  At my house, the morning always began with a frantic dash to get to church for the early service. My Sunday clothes were uncomfortable in the extreme. Starched petticoats, stiff patent leather shoes, my Sunday coat’s blue wool collar scratching the back of my neck, and a tight black velvet, wide-brimmed hat—by the time Daddy pulled the Buick up to the Gothic palace that was St. Andrew’s Episcopal Cathedral, I was already surly and wanted to get the hell out of there before we even walked in the doors. “Thankful” was the last thing on my mind, believe me.

  This Thanksgiving, after an hour of sermonizing and hymn singing, scribbling pictures on all the tithe cards and in the back of the prayer book with the pew’s little pencil, wriggling and sighing in discomfort until my mother had given me a swat on my leg, I’d come to a gloomy reappraisal of the benefits of going to heaven. If church was any indication of what I could expect for eternity as a reward for good behavior, I was ready to be my usual bad self and take my chances with the place Starr called you-know-where.

  Needless to say, when we arrived at home on Fairmont Street, I bolted out of the back seat of the Buick.

  “Annie Banks!” my mother called. “Keep your good clothes clean.”

  And Thanksgiving dinner, the whole point of this obnoxious day, was still a good three hours away. Upstairs, I threw the blue wool coat with its scratchy collar onto my bed and sailed the hat after it. The petticoats and shoes I could do nothing about, so I resigned myself to a long day of irritation, boredom, and interrogation. Grandmother Banks was coming for dinner around one, and her arrival would put an effective end to any hopes I had of enjoying the day. For a pallid little bright spot, Aunt Too-Tai was coming, too.

  Younger sister to my awful grandmother, Aunt Too-Tai was old—at least sixty—a chalk cliff of a woman in bib overalls. She lived in a poky, run-down house in the Mississippi countryside, out from Chunky, off the highway to Meridian, which had an attic fan and no television. When she came to Thanksgiving dinner at our house, her rump-sprung tweed suit always smelled like motor oil and a whopping dose of mothballs. By the time the turkey was on the table, my aunt would smell even more powerfully of bourbon, for even though Hinds County was ostensibly dry in 1963, my daddy could buy package liquor at the bootlegger’s drive-through down the road in Pearl. He and Aunt Too-Tai could put away nearly a whole fifth between them whenever they got together on Thanksgiving Day, talking politics and Ole Miss football. Watching the grown-ups get plastered made for a break in the long tedium of the holiday, a small measure of cheer in an otherwise cheerless day.

  Downstairs in the kitchen, Methyl Ivory was busy basting the turkey, the big, golden bird glistening under the oven’s bright light. Pumpkin and mince pies were cooling on the kitchen table. Nobody would notice if I broke off a little piece of crust, I thought, so I sidled up to the table to sneak a bite of something to eat.

  “Git,” Methyl Ivory ordered, not even turning around.

  “Fine!” I flounced through the door into the hall. In the living room, my daddy was watching a bowl game by the fire, while my mother was in the dining room, making sure that the table was set perfectly so that her mother-in-law would have one less thing to criticize. And me, I was set adrift on the day with nothing to do, held hostage to my clothes.

  It seemed that my parents wouldn’t care if I took myself outside for a walk around the backyard as long as I stayed clean, so naturally I went down by the fence even though I hadn’t any expectation that I’d see Starr. After all, her father was a preacher and today would be a big day in the little Pentecostal church over on the other side of Fortification Street. I comforted myself with the thought that likely Starr would be bored to death and wearing uncomfortable clothes, too.

  The day was crisp as good stationery, a seamless cold with a deckle edge, and full of starlings. Overhead the massive cloud of birds swirled in an impossible earthbound arc, at the last instant breaking free of gravity, rushing upward with an explosion of wings. I hung my fingers in the wire mesh and looked across the Allens’ backyard at the rental house with longing. To my delighted surprise, Starr was sitting on the back steps with her head in her hands.

  “Hey!” I pitched my voice over the starlings’ mad whirr. “Hey, Starr!”

  Starr’s margarine-yellow head lifted, and she raised her hand in a listless wave. It seemed to take forever for her to walk down through the Allens’ backyard to the fence.

  Starr wasn’t dressed up for Thanksgiving. She was wearing the boy’s corduroy pants and her old sweatshirt. Her feet were bare.

  “Hey, Annie,” she said. Up close, her eyes were red-rimmed.

  “What’s the matter?” I asked.

  Starr looked at the ground. “Nothing.”

  “Oh.”

  She looked up and swallowed hard. “See, it’s just my poppa won’t get up out of the bed this morning to go to the church. I tried and tried, really I did, and the phone just kept on a-ringing. I know it was folks from the church, wanting to find o
ut where he was at.”

  I had no idea how to respond to this. “D’you think he’s sick?” I finally asked.

  Starr laughed without humor, sounding shockingly adult. “No, Annie. He’s not sick. My momma used to get him up when he goes like this, make him drink a pot of coffee and see he made it to the church, but I couldn’t do it.” She wrapped her thin arms around herself and shivered. “No turkey either. He forgot, I guess.”

  “But it’s Thanksgiving,” I said, round-eyed. Much as I disliked this holiday, it seemed to me that there were rules about this sort of thing, and here was Starr’s poppa, breaking a lot of them. “What are you going to eat?”

  Starr shrugged. “There’s a can of hash and some eggs. I can make that, hash and eggs. We’re out of whatever else.”

  This was just plain wrong. “C’mon,” I said. “You can come to my house for dinner, if you want.” Of course she could. Hadn’t Bishop Thwaite said just this morning that we needed to feed the hungry on this special day?

  “I better not, Annie,” Starr said. “Look at me—I bet your family gets all dressed up.”

  “Well,” I said, “go home, change into your Sunday clothes, and come back!”

  Starr’s face brightened ever so slightly. “Really?”

  “Sure,” I said. “Hurry up. I’ll go tell my mother.”