by Janis Owens
“Because the nut cooked the kid’s rabbit?” she asked.
“Because everybody cheered when they shot her at the end.”
Missy raised her eyebrows at that.
“Some fun,” she commented after a moment, then shook her head. “Well, poor Sim. He might have busted your nose, but you sure cooked his goose. Grannie and Aunt Candace are on the warpath, insisting that Mama must be told.”
“Told what?” I asked, and Missy gave me one of her exasperated looks.
“About the chick—Sondra, Kendra—whatever her name is. Grannie thinks they need to tie the knot since they’re already in the sack. What does she look like?”
“Kendra?” I asked, and Missy gave me a weary glance.
“No, Clay, Grannie.” Then, with another roll of her eyes, “Of course, Kendra. Try to keep up with me here, ’kay?”
I was too happy to be back in the family gossip circle to take offense at her razor tongue, told her what little I knew about Kendra: the big house, the pruned oaks, the incredible blond hair that I thought her finest feature, though Missy just gave a little impatient snort. “Well, of course she’s blond,” she said. “I think it’s a state law in Georgia, for concubines.”
“For what?” I asked, and Missy grinned her fast Daddy-grin.
“That’s what Grannie calls her. Sim’s concubine.” She laughed aloud, and though I hated to have to do it, I had to ask what a concubine was.
“A mistress,” she said. “You know—a kept woman. Poor Sim. Grannie’s not gonna sleep till he puts a ring on her finger, and if Mama finds out that she’s been footing the bill for a south Georgia love nest, well, old Simbo might be working on the floor up there a few years sooner than planned. You know Mama. She can be a little hasty.”
It was the first time she’d mentioned Mama in a long time, and something in the way she said it, offhanded and casual, made me think she was opening the door a crack to see how I’d react; whether I’d answer or slam it back in her face. For a moment, I just sat there, fiddling with my straw, then heard myself ask: “How is she?”
Missy just shrugged. “Okay, I guess. Working on a project with Gabe, staying up in the apartment a lot, typing, I think.” She paused a moment for my reply, and when I didn’t offer one, added: “Got her hair all cut off, shorn for Lent, she says. Looks weirder than heck.”
I didn’t offer any reply or comment, for I actually hadn’t seen much of the Mercedes around town lately, at Wal-Mart or Winn-Dixie or even down at the graveyard, which kind of pissed me off. I mean, before Gabe blew into town, she went down every morning, left flowers and tended the roses, kept them watered and trimmed. From the overgrown look of the bushes, I was the only one who ever visited anymore, hiked up there from Aunt Candace’s a couple of times a week, a lonely little trip without Mama there to point out the landmarks, tell me some little story about the neighboring graves.
I used to think I’d run into her up there, had long ago decided that if I did, I wouldn’t run away or anything. I’d just sit down on one of the little marble benches and be civilized and talk, not about Gabe or me moving out, but ordinary things: about how her roses were doing, or if Missy was really going to school next year in France (as she was threatening). I could picture it so well in my mind, how it would all play out, Mama polite and kind and relieved to see me, hugging me when we parted, telling me she loved me, and I’d do the same, and that would be that.
We’d be friends again, my mother and I, allies in an alien world, though my little fantasy reunion has never come about, simply because Mama hasn’t shown up to play her part, I don’t know what has been keeping her. I mean, every week, I waited, I paced the grave. A couple of weeks ago, I actually stood up on Granddaddy Catts’s tombstone when I heard the hum of a diesel engine below, my heart pounding in my chest. I thought it would surely be Mama, but it was just a car stopping at the stop sign, not a sleek, dusty Mercedes with a catlike purr, but a ratty little Audi that didn’t even turn in, just labored into first gear and went on its way.
But I couldn’t tell Missy that, of course. She’d run straight home to Mama, tell her to meet me at the grave tomorrow, and she would, too, right on cue, and Gabe might come with her, and it’d all be ruined then, it wouldn’t be magic at all.
So I just sat there munching the last of my fries, and after a long pause, Missy made one last stab at connection. “She misses you a lot, Clay,” she told me in a mild little voice. “I mean, I know it’s strange, how she never went after you when you left—but it doesn’t mean she doesn’t love you, just that she’s too—whatever—to force you to move back home. She talks to Aunt Candace every week, follows every little detail of your life. She just can’t come out and chase you down—she’s too, I don’t know: guilty and silent and passive for that. But you know she loves you, always overindulged you, like a thousand times more than me or Sim—remember the little red wagon?”
I nodded, for I remembered that little wagon very well, an ancient old Red Rider wagon that used to be Daddy’s when he was a kid, that Mama borrowed from Grannie’s shed when I started school because I was a fat little kid, and hated having to walk down our long, twisting drive every morning to the bus stop at the highway. Daddy wouldn’t let Mama drive me because she’d never driven Sim or Missy, so she’d get up every morning and pull me along in the little red wagon, would meet me there in the afternoon, too, hide behind a tree so the other kids wouldn’t see her and make fun of me, tease me about being a mama’s boy.
I myself saw nothing indulgent in the arrangement and would probably be riding to school in a little red wagon till this day if Daddy hadn’t have come home early from work one afternoon when I was in first grade and come upon Mama pulling me down the drive, Missy and Sim strolling along merrily at our side.
He stopped his truck and got out, picked me up and stood me on my feet, then squatted down till we were on eye level, told me in his kind old country voice: “Claybird, sometimes in life you git to ride, and sometimes you got to walk. Today, you start walking. ’Kay?”
I hadn’t even argued, just nodded, and after that would trudge along on my fat little legs to the bus stop every morning like everyone else, though Mama still hid in the trees waiting for me in the afternoon, always on the lookout for rabid dogs and kidnappers and bullies, poor Mama. I guess when you grow up in a dangerous house, you never get over it. You spend the rest of your life looking over your shoulder, obsessively creating safe havens: polished mansions and rose gardens; landscaped marble pools and magnificent, tulle-draped beds.
“Does she know about the fight?” I asked, and Missy shook her head.
“Nope. There’s a big battle brewing over it, though. Grannie and Aunt Candace are wanting to spill it all, though Uncle Case and Gabe are taking to the trenches, trying to protect Sim. So far it’s a dead draw, but sooner or later, she’ll figure it out. You know Mama. She’s a lot of things, but stupid ain’t one of them.”
I smiled at that, a thin, sad smile, commented after a moment in a small voice: “I used to think she was a vampire, when I was a kid.”
I don’t even know why I confessed such a thing, and braced myself for Missy’s roll of the eyes, her snort of derision, though she just looked at me with a face of great amazement. “That is so weird,” she murmured after a moment in this astonished little voice. “I was thinking the same thing, just last night.”
“That Mama was a vampire?”
She shook her head thoughtfully. “No—actually, I was thinking about Sim and what makes him tick. He called the house last night, had this long, chatty little conversation with Mama about the renovations at the Georgia plant and how wonderful it was going, how nice the new interior decorator was. Then, right before he hung up, he just casually mentioned that he’s bringing a girl to the reunion in July, everything all innocent and sweet. Well, Mama took it, hook, line, and sinker, dropped by my bedroom before she went to bed, told me all about it, and I just thought: poor Sim. I mean, it’s gonna be
like one of those episodes of The Munsters. You know, how they live in this big old haunted house, but they have this one normal child, the blond chick who’s always bringing home boyfriends, who’re all thrilled with her till they have to drive up that spooky old drive and meet the Frankenstein father—”
“Herman?” I offered, and Missy grinned.
“That’s him. Well, I was thinking that Sim was the blond chick of our family—the one normal kid—and Mama and Gabe and Grannie are the vampire mother and Herman and Uncle Fester—”
“That’s The Addams Family,” I corrected, glad to be in the superior position for once, though Missy just shrugged.
“Whatever. Anyway, I was thinking that’s why old Sim always works so hard to be so cool and perfect and ultranormal, because at the back of his mind, he knows that no matter how rich we are, or how big a car Mama drives—well, sooner or later, he’s gonna have to bring people home and they’ll figure out pretty quick that we’re just a bunch of loony old Crackers. Weird. Violent. Incestuous.”
I didn’t pay much attention to that, just asked: “Well, who am I?” meaning: Who was I in this strange family portrait she was painting?
Missy didn’t dismiss the question, but just tilted her head a little to the side (a mannerism she’d inherited from Grannie), told me with all her old Missy-sureness: “You’re the little werewolf boy.”
“Eddie?” I asked, and she nodded thoughtfully.
“Yeah. The kind of normal-looking one, except for that weird widow’s peak and the howling at the moon and all. I mean, sometimes you can get by with a reasonable normalcy, if you wear your cap backwards and shave your chest. But face it, Clay: your father is Frankenstein and your mother is a vampire, and there ain’t much you can do about thet, let me tell you.”
She was laughing before it was over, she and I both were, breakthrough laughter, you might call it, high and relieved, the first time since our family ghosts had began to emerge that we’d had the distance to joke about them, give them a playful poke like we did everything else. We’d finished eating by then and stood and gathered all our wrappers and empty cups, were piling them in the trash can when I asked her about Sim bringing Kendra to the family reunion, which was news to me, I hadn’t heard a word about it.
“Oh, Sim’s keeping a low profile,” she assured me. “I doubt Grannie or Aunt Candace even know. He just casually mentioned to Mama that he’s seeing a girl in Waycross named Kendra, hasn’t quite got around to explaining how much of her he’s seeing, if you know what I mean.”
While I ditched my garbage I told her: “Well, if he calls tonight, tell him I said that I was sorry about the fight and all. I’ve left, like, fifty messages on his answering machine, but he won’t talk to me.”
Oddly enough, Missy didn’t argue, just sent me a look of unusual understanding. “Sure, I’ll tell him,” she said, “but you know what a hardhead Sim is. It probably won’t do any good, though I, myself, have never understood that kind of spite. I mean, you love somebody, you bend over backwards to protect and cherish them every minute of your life, then you do one stupid thing, and bam—you’re like the pariah of the world, no longer welcome in their life, ever again.”
I didn’t know what a pariah was, but figured it was something bad, was amazed and relieved that my sister was taking my side for once in my natural-born life. “You really think he’s cutting me off for good?” I asked as we stepped into the warm, grease-smelling asphalt of the parking lot, making Missy turn and look at me blankly.
“Who? Sim?”
I nodded quickly, and she said, “Oh,” in this smooth, fake little voice, “I thought we were still talking about you and Mama. I don’t know about Sim.” She added with this smug little smirk, “Maybe.”
Well, I walked right into that one, and just came to a halt there on the sidewalk and stared at her a moment. “Witch,” I finally murmured in a small, heatless voice, not angry or accusing, just tired and honest and so eternally whipped that she didn’t even bother to take offense, just grinned her Daddy-grin: smug and happy and audacious as hell.
“Have I ever denied it?” she asked cheerfully, then unlocked the car and drove me to Aunt Candace’s, dropped me off about a half an hour ago, just enough time to grab my recorder and get it down fresh, just the way I remember it, before anyone gets home.
CHAPTER TWENTY
SUNDAY BEFORE FINALS; BACK ON THE PORCH
Well, another big fight has broken out in Grannie’s dining room (or actually, the kitchen) just yesterday afternoon, and I’m glad to say that I wasn’t part of this one, but tucked away in the laundry room, out of sight and out of mind, so no one can point a finger at me.
It’s the first time I’ve so much as laid eyes on Gabe since that little glimpse of him at the gas station in December, such a weird and unexpected confrontation that I’m having a little brain freeze here, can’t remember where I left off last week. Maybe with baseball, which is still grinding on, humiliation in cleats, though my practice sessions with Missy have finally begun to pay off, and miracle of miracles, last Friday I actually got a hit.
It was an especially satisfying experience, because Mama has started showing up at my games, haunting them, you might say, in her usual Mama way, not sitting in the bleachers with the rest of the fans, but alone in her car, a voiceless, hovering presence. There was no warning she was coming, either. I was just standing out in left field a couple of weeks ago, sweating like a hog and praying to God that no one hit a fly my way, when I glanced aside, and there, just beyond the sagging old chain-link fence, was the shining chrome bumpers of her dusty old Mercedes, an FSU tag on the front bumper.
I looked away immediately, pretended to be fascinated by the action at the plate, though as the inning stretched out, sweating and endless, I couldn’t help but chance these sly little glances in Mama’s direction, pretty sure she was alone in there, though it was hard to tell through the tint of the windshield. When Aunt Candace came by the dugout to check on me, it was the first thing I asked.
“Is that Mama?” I said with a dip of my head to the general direction of her car.
Like the sly old girl she has become, Aunt Candace didn’t answer right away, just turned and lifted her sunglasses, pretended to peer across the field.
“Why, yes,” she murmured, “I believe it is.” Then, to me: “Is that all right?”
I just shrugged, pretended it wasn’t such a big deal, though my mother’s voiceless presence there, not thirty feet beside me, had infused the game with new meaning, made me as restless and competitive as the rest of those animals. Not about winning as much as playing well, running hard, looking like I know what I’m doing, proving to the world that beneath my dimple and cowlick and spiked blond hair, there beats the heart of an athlete, a son of Michael Catts.
It’s the kind of thing that’s easier said than done, though like I say, on Friday night the miraculous actually occurred at the end of the fifth inning when I actually got a hit. It wasn’t like the play of the game or anything, the score not close (three to six, I think), though the Sanger team has lost so many games this year that the pressure was on to win and win big—not that anyone was counting on me.
In fact, Missy says the only reason I got on base is that the shortstop bent down and started retying his shoe when he saw I was the next batter on deck, though I saw none of that, my heart beating like a sledgehammer as I stepped up to the plate, two guys on base and two outs, in a position to either make a king-sized fool of myself or (finally) be a hero. I am usually not a fan of that kind of pressure, but handled it all right, oddly comforted by the shining chrome bumpers of the Mercedes that had appeared shortly before the first pitch, and was quietly parked at the corner of the fence, nose in, silent.
Though the tint of the windows pretty much camouflaged Mama’s expression, I could feel her in there, sending out vibes of support and encouragement the same way she used to when I was a kid, agonizing over those cursed flash cards. I kept my breath even,
my eyes on the pitcher, while behind me, Missy came up to the bull pen to stand with her face pressed to the wire, her voice calling out a fast rattle of instruction to my back. (“Drop those elbows, Clay. Keep your eyes on the ball. You can get a hit off this guy, he sucks—”) I didn’t turn or acknowledge her, just bent my knees a little and kept my eyes on the pitcher, a relief guy whose face reddened at Missy’s (accurate) assessment of his skills, one thought breezing through my mind as he let go the first pitch: Please God, just this once.
It was a lousy pitch, a ball on the outside if I’d have let it go. But I didn’t, of course, I swung like I always did, except this time instead of swinging through air, I connected with a hollow thunk that vibrated down to my hands and arms with a little shock of surprise.
For a fraction of a second, I watched the ball sail away in a modest little infield fly, dimly aware that the entire Sanger dugout had risen to its feet to a man, the base coaches and wives and other players all pointing at first base, shouting: “There! There! Run, Claybird, run!”
And that’s exactly what I did: high-stepped it down to first, bat in hand, at least till I caught a glimpse of Missy, who was jumping up and down at the fence, crimson-faced and lunatic, positively shrieking: “Drop the bat! Drop the bat! DROP THE BAT!”
I probably would have been called out on a technicality if she hadn’t, for I’d taken it along as a souvenir, I guess. I pitched it aside in an instant, tagged the base a quarter second before the ball hit the first baseman’s mitt to an immediate roar of approval from the crowd that I couldn’t hear very well, my head strangely hot, the blood pounding in my ears as if I was about to have a stroke. Later, I realized it was the metal batting cap that was to blame, but I’d forgotten all about that, just thought I was having some kind of out-of-body experience, weirdly separated from the noise and the heat of the game.