The Right Thing

by Amy Conner

  “You did what?” my mother demanded.

  “Asked Starr to come to Thanksgiving dinner?” My voice was small. “I had to—her father’s in the bed and he won’t get up.” I hung my head. It hadn’t occurred to me that feeding the hungry was a Christian duty only so long as it wasn’t at our table.

  “Well, you’ll just have to uninvite her.” My mother leaned across the snowy Irish linen tablecloth set with the Haviland dinner plates and good silver, straightening a candle that was just out of true in a way only she could discern. “Thanksgiving is a family holiday, Annie. Besides, you never ask someone to dinner without getting permission first.”

  “But what about Bishop Thwaite?” I asked defensively. “He came last year, and he’s not family.”

  “That’s different,” my mother said, sounding as though she was keeping her temper on a short leash.

  “But why?” I insisted. “Why can’t Starr come?”

  Before my mother could answer, Methyl Ivory poked her head in the dining room.

  “Miz Collie?” she said. “That child from ’cross the way’s at the back door. She say Annie ask her to Thanksgiving dinner.” Methyl Ivory’s broad, dark face was expressionless, bland as unsalted rice.

  “Well, I’ll just have to explain to Starr that Annie was wrong, inviting her without asking first.” Her cheeks flushed, my mother was untying her apron as she stalked around the dining table to go to the sunporch through the kitchen.

  “But we’ve got tons of food!” I stomped my foot in its uncomfortable Sunday shoe. How could she be so mean?

  “Absolutely not.”

  “Aunt Too-Tai won’t care,” I argued, following her through the swinging door into the kitchen.

  Just inside the doors to the sunporch, Starr was standing with her hands clasped together at her waist. She’d changed into a dress that I knew was her favorite—pink candy stripes on pale-blue cotton—and her cracked-leather pair of school shoes. But the wrinkled dress looked tired to death, the sash hanging unevenly where she’d had to tie it herself. She’d forgotten to brush her hair, too, the yellow curls drooping around her downcast face. Now, I can look with memory’s eye and see Starr as my mother must have seen her: an undernourished, untended child standing on the doorstep of poverty, wearing a worn-out dress and cheap shoes.

  But that Thanksgiving morning on the sunporch, I didn’t notice how my mother had fallen silent, too caught up in arguing my case.

  “Starr’s daddy didn’t even get a turkey!” I howled in righteous indignation. “It’s Thanksgiving and he forgot the turkey. Starr’s going to be hungry!” I’d played my trump card.

  My mother turned her head and frowned down at me. “That’s enough from you, Mercy Anne Banks,” she said coldly. I shut up, looking at the red-tiled floor with tears in my eyes, biting my lip. When my mother used my whole given name, all hope was lost.

  In her blue wool challis dress with the white silk cuffs and collar, her pearl necklace and black suede pumps, my mother slowly crossed the sunporch. She sat on her heels in front of Starr, put her fingertip under Starr’s chin, and lifted it so that she looked at her face.

  “Come with me,” she said. Taking Starr’s hand in hers, she led her through the kitchen, then out to the front hall’s staircase. I followed behind them. “You wait down here, Annie Banks.” They vanished up to the second floor, Starr with one perplexed look at me over her shoulder. After a minute of looking up the empty staircase in complete mystification, I went back to the kitchen.

  “What’s my mother doing?” I asked Methyl Ivory. “Why’d she take Starr upstairs?”

  “That you mama’s business, I ’spect.” She stirred the saucepan of bubbling giblet gravy. “Here.” Methyl Ivory handed me my mother’s discarded apron. “Make you self useful,” she said, pointing at the sink full of pots and pans. With a long-suffering sigh, I dragged the step stool to the sink and began washing.

  It seemed to be taking forever for my mother and Starr to return. Not knowing what was going on up on the second floor strung out the time like a dangling fly on a spider’s silken strand. I finished washing the pots and pans and dried them, even. Methyl Ivory took the turkey out of the oven. The kitchen clock’s hands ticked the long minutes off until it was one, and then the doorbell rang.

  “I’ll get it,” my daddy called from the living room.

  “Quick, child,” Methyl Ivory said. “Take off that apron and go kiss you grammaw.”

  “Do I have to?”

  “Git!”

  In the entryway by the front door, Daddy was helping Grandmother Banks out of her coat and mink scarf, the one with the stuffed minks’ tiny jaws biting each other’s hindquarters in a gruesome chain of fur. The coat-removal operation was fairly complicated. Wash stood behind Grandmother Banks’s wheelchair, looking as though he were waiting for a bus that was a long time in coming.

  My grandmother’s sharp, faded blue eyes caught mine the instant I walked around the corner into the long center hall. “Come here, Annie Banks,” she said sharply, “and give me a kiss.” With dragging feet, I walked toward her wheelchair, dreading the tribute I knew had to be paid on arrival. Like always, she smelled of attar of roses and Vick’s VapoRub. I felt like wiping my mouth as soon as I delivered the ritual kiss on her powdered, withered cheek, but knowing better, instead I backed away and hid behind my daddy.

  “Wash,” Grandmother Banks ordered, “go wait in the car.” She folded her liver-spotted hands, knuckles ringed in old diamonds, over the pocketbook in her lap.

  “Yes’m,” said Wash. He opened the door, whistling as he walked down the sidewalk to the Packard, tossing the keys in the air and catching them. Daddy shut the door and rubbed his hands together.

  “Can I get you a little glass of sherry, Mother?” he asked. He took the handles of her wheelchair and began to push it down the hall to the living room, where the fire crackled on the hearth.

  “Oh, I don’t know, Wade.” My grandmother bridled like a spoiled flirt. “You wouldn’t be trying to get me tipsy, would you?” I was surprised to hear my daddy laugh in what sounded like embarrassment, and then at that moment my mother and Starr came down the stairs. My mouth fell wide open.

  Starr had changed clothes. She was wearing one of my Sunday dresses—the red plaid taffeta with its white bell of crinoline and black velvet sash—clean socks and my second-best pair of patent leather Mary Janes. Her curls were caught back with a black velvet hair ribbon, and her scrubbed cheeks were as pink as if she’d just come in from out of doors.

  “Mother Banks,” my mother said smoothly, reaching the bottom of the stairs. “Happy Thanksgiving to you.” She took Starr’s hand. “This is Starr Dukes, one of Annie’s friends. She’ll be having dinner with us today because her father’s feeling poorly. Starr, meet Annie’s grandmother Mrs. Banks.”

  Starr’s smile was shy. “Pleased to meet you, ma’am,” she said politely.

  Grandmother Banks lifted one imperious, sparse eyebrow. “Dukes?” she said, sounding as though someone were trying to sell her an inferior brand of mayonnaise. “I don’t believe I know that family.” Grandmother Banks turned in her chair and lifted her chin to look up at my father. “Surely she must have someone else at home, Wade. We’ll have Wash drive her back to her house.”

  Before my father could say anything to this, however, my mother said, “Starr’s our guest today, Mother Banks. Just as you are.” And with that, she took the handles of the wheelchair from my father and pushed her now stone-silent dragon of a mother-in-law into the living room to the place of honor beside the fire.

  “Wade,” my mother said, and her voice was like music, “why don’t you pour us a glass of sherry? I know I could certainly use one.”

  Thanksgiving that year was anything but tedious, especially after Aunt Too-Tai arrived twenty minutes later and Daddy broke out the bourbon. My grandmother was more than rude, speaking only to my father, except for once when she asked Aunt Too-Tai about someone who turne
d out to be dead.

  And then, after we’d sat down to dinner, Daddy had carved the turkey, and we’d all said grace, Starr dropped her fork. The heavy silver striking the floor rang like the bells at St. Andrew’s. Everyone at the table looked up from their plates. Conversation stopped. Starr’s face was as red as her borrowed dress.

  “ ’Scuse me,” she mumbled, looking as though she wanted to vanish under the Irish linen tablecloth.

  My grandmother gave a loud sniff of disdain and cleared her throat, obviously about to render a fatal judgment from on high, but before she opened her mouth, Aunt Too-Tai had picked up her knife and dropped it on the floor next to her chair. That knife really clattered because she’d put a good spin on it.

  “Whoops,” she said, her voice bright. She gave my thigh a poke under the table. “Now, Annie,” Aunt Too-Tai muttered. “Drop something.”

  With a startled glance at her, I dropped my fork on the floor, too. Clang.

  “Really, Wade,” my horrible grandmother began, sounding vastly annoyed.

  With a grin, my daddy dropped his knife, and my mother laughed and dropped her spoon, too. Looking at my mother from down the table, Starr’s eyes shone with what could have been worship. When everyone had collected their silverware from off the floor, Thanksgiving dinner resumed. My grandmother didn’t even talk to Daddy after that.

  That year was a better-than-usual Thanksgiving, and better yet, at the conclusion of dinner, instead of joining everybody by the fire, Grandmother Banks made Daddy go out and wake Wash up from his doze in the front seat of the Packard to take her back to State Street. It was as though the dragon sulking in its wheelchair had decided to roll on to a location farther south, taking the oppressive atmosphere with it. My parents and Aunt Too-Tai raised their after-dinner glasses of bourbon in a silent toast while Starr and I stretched out on the rug and played Old Maid in the firelight.

  At last, Thanksgiving Day ended, Aunt Too-Tai left to make the drive back to Chunky, and it was time for Starr to go home.

  “Wade,” my mother said. “Let’s drive her. It’s dark.”

  Gathering the cards, I got up from beside the fire to go, too.

  “No, Annie,” my mother said. “You’d better go on upstairs and have a bath. Methyl Ivory will stay with you until we come back. Say good-bye to Starr, now.”

  They were gone what seemed a long time, much longer than it should have taken just to drive around the block. I was in my flannel pajamas and robe, sitting at the kitchen table with Methyl Ivory and having a last slice of pumpkin pie and a glass of milk, when my parents came in the front door.

  “. . . disgraceful,” my father was saying. “Tighter than Dick’s hatband, no better than a drunk.”

  “Shhh, Wade.” It was my mother’s lowered voice. “Let’s not talk about it now.” You know, I can still remember the way they looked as I ran to meet them in the hall—tall and handsome, somehow bright around the edges—like princes of the earth.

  I have never loved them more.

  Later that same night, I was reading The Secret Garden, snug under the covers. My mother came in my room to kiss me good night. She sank down on the bed beside me.

  “Annie, she said, “I need you to listen to me.” I sat up, and she took my hands in her own. “Starr’s father isn’t a well man.” My mother pinched her red lips together, as though remembering something nasty. “Your daddy and I had a word with him this evening when we took Starr home. We told him he has to take better care of himself, but I don’t know how much good that’ll do. Now if you hear that he’s . . . sick . . . again, I want you to tell me right away. Starr can come stay with us for a while, just until he’s better.”

  “He’s not really sick, is he?” I remembered what my daddy had said. Drunk. My only experience with drunks was watching Red Skelton’s Willy Lump-Lump staggering around the light pole on the television, but I knew what drunk meant. “But how come he’s tighter than Dick’s hatband? Did somebody tie him up?”

  “Never mind that.” She didn’t say anything for a moment; then my mother burst out, “No child should have to endure what that little girl is going through!” Her eyes were fierce, her hands tightening on mine. “And if I have anything to say about it, she won’t have to, not anymore. We can at least go through your closet tomorrow and find some nice things for her to wear. Good night, Annie.”

  “ ’Night.”

  She kissed my forehead, turned out the light, and I fell almost instantly fast asleep, full of pie and Thanksgiving.

  CHAPTER 9

  Even though I began this frantic race to New Orleans with a mostly full tank, we have to stop for gasoline at the Fernwood Travel Plaza, just outside of McComb. The Beemer is a great car for a road trip, but a V-8 eats up the fuel exactly like it devours the road.

  It’s just as well. Starr, being in her second trimester, has needed to find a restroom since we passed the Jackson city limits eighty miles ago. I give her a hundred-dollar bill from the wad in my parka’s pocket and ask her to pay the cashier while I pump the gas. In the back seat, Troy Smoot is whining and pawing at the window. I’m guessing he probably needs a quick whiz himself, so, finished pumping, I hang up the hose and open the door to let him out of the car before I remember he isn’t wearing a leash.

  I don’t have a lot of experience with dogs, obviously.

  At our house, we never had pets at all, not even a goldfish, much less a dog. I think it was a mutual decision for my parents—Daddy having grown up with a series of ill-tempered dachshunds and my mother unwilling to have a four-legged nuisance underfoot in addition to her two-legged one. If I wanted to play with an animal, she’d say, I could go next door and visit with King, Dr. Thigpen’s German shepherd. Like Dr. Thigpen, King was retired and only wanted to laze underneath the live oak tree in the peace and quiet of his own front yard. Once, when I was really little, I tied myself to the oak with a clothesline and tried to convince King to bite the rope in two like Rin Tin Tin did when rescuing Rusty from the Comanches. The mailman gave me an odd look, shaking his head as he passed on his rounds. Dr. Thigpen came outside and asked me what in tarnation I was up to now. I wasn’t yet discouraged, but after a long half hour of commanding a snoring King to spring into action, I finally untied myself.

  Troy Smoot the terrier may look like a ten-pound version of King, but as soon as he bounds out of the car and hits the oil-spotted pavement, he’s off—sprinting into the darkness like he’s got a hot date with a small, crunchy mammal. I’m ready to panic until I realize he’s made straight for the parched grass at the dark edge of the parking lot, just beside a row of big semis idling with their low beams on. I keep an anxious eye on him as he lifts his leg on a mud flap, then noses around the gravel perimeter while I’m waiting on Starr to come back from her trip to the ladies’ room.

  Which she does at last, carrying two big Styrofoam cups of steaming coffee. “Whew,” she says, lowering herself into the front seat. “That surely was a relief. Here’s your change.”

  Stuffing the fistful of bills into my parka’s pocket, I whistle an uncertain summons to Troy. To my utter relief, right away he comes belting across the lot under the sodium vapor lights, wearing a doggy grin and a high-held tail. He springs into the back seat and curls up with a contented wriggle, clearly pleased with his new, elevator-free circumstances.

  Then, as I get in the driver’s side, a whistle shrills from somewhere in the darkness by the rank of idling semis. I squint in the whistle’s direction, feeling confused. Is someone else calling the dog?

  “Hey, babe!” somebody hoots. It’s a greasy-haired guy in a gimme cap, hanging out the window of his tractor-trailer’s cab and waving at me. I shut the door, quick, and hit the lock button.

  “Somebody thinks that scrawny ass of yours is mighty fine,” Starr says as she hands me my coffee. I snort.

  “Oh, right.” I back out of the truck stop’s circle of lights and head the car toward the black on-ramp, onto the I-55. “Ronald Reagan still
had most of his mind the last time anyone looked at my ass, let alone made a comment about it.” I glance at her in the glow from the instrument panel. “Except for you, that is. How come you keep calling me scrawny?”

  “ ’Cause you’re the size of a Bic ballpoint.” Starr gives a snort of her own, holding her thumb and forefinger about half an inch apart. “You don’t know anything about what men really like, but they surely appreciate a woman with a little meat on her bones. You,” she says with authority, “probably have no idea how men look at you—like they want to buy you a ham sandwich, then take you home.”

  I can’t imagine why she’d think that. Except for the Judge and his obscene proposition two years ago, no one’s expressed that kind of interest in me since I was in college, really not since Du started dating me. Maybe it’s because I’m so dismally inept at flirting I usually end up embarrassing myself and don’t even bother with it anymore. Maybe Du scares them off. Anyway, feeling a little uncomfortable at Starr’s observation, I take a sip of my coffee and practically spit it out. It’s loaded with artificial creamer and sugar.

  “Hey,” I sputter. “This shit is—”

  “Fattening? Oh, please.” Starr sounds bored. “Go on, honey. A little Cremora and a couple of packs of sugar never killed anybody yet.”

  I take another begrudging sip. Okay, it’s not bad, and I can certainly use the caffeine. The highway stretches before us, dark and deserted on this night before Thanksgiving. Out here in the country night, all I can find on the radio is that terminally nasal brand of down-and-out hillbilly music and some backwoods preacher hollering into his lonely microphone about huma-seck-shu-als among us. I turn it off. During the twenty miles since the truck stop, conversation’s been in short supply so I venture a question.

  “Hey,” I say. “Tell me about this person who’s got your money.”

  “There’s not a lot to tell,” Starr replies, her nose buried in her coffee cup. “She’s . . . an old friend, from my racetrack days, mostly. She did me a favor a couple of months ago, before me and Bobby hit the wall. ’Round about Labor Day, Bobby gave me a thousand bucks mad money from his poker winnings, she put that thousand bucks down on a sure thing for me, and don’t you know that bangtail came in at twenty-toone! Since Bobby was paying for everything at the time, I asked her to hold on to the money till I could come and get it.”