Would Artie have painted like this if Carl had lived? He tries to imagine Carl and Artie growing old together, having children. Would her talent have gone into creating a family? Probably, he thinks, considering the time she spent with Dolly and how close they were. If she had had children, painting might have been just a pleasant diversion. But she would have been happy. He knows that. His twin would have been happy with big sweet Carl Jenkins.
“You know Carl, Donnie. You know everything’s going to be fine. Just look over toward Harlow any night and you’ll see us sitting on the screened porch having a couple of beers and listening to the music from the hotel. Maybe we’ll even get in a couple of slow dances. Then we’ll go upstairs and make babies.”
That was Artie in her wedding dress reassuring him. And he, Donnie, was jealous. It wasn’t the fact of Carl, and, God knows, he was happy that Artie was happy. It was the assimilation. Artie was changed, and that was hurtful. Twins, he thinks. Twins. It’s so damn complicated.
And then Carl was gone and Artie was another person. This one Donnie understood better, though. And wherever she was, whatever she was doing, he knew she needed him. He was never again on the outside.
He wonders if Hektor remembers the first time Carl had shown up at the house. It was Valentine’s Day and he and Artie were thirteen. It was Hektor who had answered the knock on the back door.
“Is Artie home?” Donnie heard Carl say. And then Hektor’s amazed “Is that for Artie?” That had been a heart-shaped box of candy. He had been almost as impressed as Hektor. His own idea of a Valentine at the time had been an envelope with a rubber band twisted around a popsicle stick so when the envelope was opened, it would rattle viciously. “Rattlesnake!” he would yell, managing to get some violent reactions.
But Artie had accepted the candy graciously, and she and Carl had walked down to the beach. He and Hektor were picking out all the chocolate-covered nut pieces when their mother caught them and made them put the box up. After that, it seemed Carl was always there. He and Artie had married the week they graduated from high school. He, Donnie, had walked down the aisle with her, had been the nervous one. Then he had gone off to the university while Hektor had continued to live with Artie and Carl. And then the Korean War had come along.
Donnie touches the woman in the painting. Who are you? Four women, he thinks. Artie, Mama, Mariel, and Dolly are at the center of my life and I don’t understand a damn thing about any of them. Hektor is just plain old Hektor, and Papa was certainly easier to know than Mama. Suddenly, as if someone had flipped a slide, he sees his father sitting at his desk. His head is in his hands, and the desk lamp is casting an elongated shadow that spills from the desktop to the floor. Donnie sighs. Maybe we never really understand anybody, not even ourselves. Or our motivations.
Mama. We killed for you.
It’s four-thirty. He should be getting ready to go to Harlow for the rosary. Maybe Mariel is going to pull this thing off after all. What he can’t figure out is why it’s so important to her. What really puzzles him is that he senses somehow that it’s because of him.
“Screw it all,” he says out loud and goes to take a shower.
Clothes are thrown across the unmade bed and the chair. This is so unusual, it worries him. He pushes a dress aside and calls Artie’s number. Reese answers.
“Reese? Is Mariel around?”
“Somewhere.”
“May I speak to her, please?”
“I’ll see can I find her. Dolly’s sick.”
Donnie feels the parent’s instant rush of fright.
“What’s wrong with her?”
“The doctor says a sinus infection. Mariel took her to the doctor.”
“Well, will you see if you can find Mariel for me?”
“Sure.” Reese pauses. “You back from Birmingham?”
“Yes.”
“Okay. I’ll get Mariel.”
Donnie waits for what seems to him a long time before Mariel answers the phone.
“Donnie? Reese says you’re back.” It’s a formal voice, slow and polite.
“It only took a couple of hours. Reese says Dolly’s sick. What did the doctor say?”
“She has a sinus infection. He gave her a couple of shots and she’s asleep. I don’t know if she’ll feel like going tonight or not.”
“Is Hektor there?”
“He brought some guy with him.”
“Well, I’ll be there around six.”
“Fine.”
“Mariel, are you all right? You sound funny.”
“I’m fine, Donnie. I’ll see you at six.”
The phone goes dead. Donnie puts it in the cradle. Well, hell. What has he done now? He grabs clean underwear from the drawer and hurries to the shower.
Women. He doesn’t understand a one of them.
TWENTY-FOUR
Sarah Sullivan Explains to the Devil, 1940
WHEN I WAS A CHILD, MY MOTHER KEPT A SILVER-FRAMED PHOTOGRAPH of her and her two sisters on her dresser. The picture fascinated me. I would sneak in her room and take it, hiding it in the pocket of the pinafore she made me wear. Then I would take it to the attic or, if it were summer, down to the creek where I’d take it out and examine it.
It wasn’t an unusual picture. Just three young ladies posing in a photographer’s studio. One sister was seated; the other two were standing, each with a hand on the back of the chair. On the gray mat it said S. Lindbergh, Lynchburg.
They look alike, my mother and her sisters. They each have on suits with fitted jackets and long skirts that appear to be gathered more toward the back. My Aunt Daisy is seated, my mother stands to the left, my Aunt Annie to the right. Not one of them is smiling. Their heads are held high, unnaturally high, as if the ruffles on their blouses are starched and scratching their chins. They all seem to be in their late teens, though my mother was twenty-two when the picture was made, and engaged to marry my father. The other two were older.
I never knew what it was about that picture that fascinated me so. I only knew I could take it out and look at it, and it would be May, 1890, and I would be there with them, literally.
“Be still, now,” the photographer says, and the three sisters try to quit giggling. “I mean it!” His voice is stifled under a mantle of black canvas. For a second, they look toward him seriously. He snaps the picture with a small explosion. Each girl shrieks. The smell of sulfur is loud in the room. “Let’s try one more,” he says.
Later they walk down the street. It’s early afternoon on a perfect day in Virginia. They stop at Carter’s Jewelry to admire Jenny’s china and silver patterns again. Daisy and Annie, too, have selected theirs, though that July, Daisy will prick her finger cutting roses for a party and die two weeks later from blood poisoning.
But they don’t know that, any more than they know I’m walking with them. They go into the tea shop and order a lemonade. They know they are pretty; they see the admiring glances of the other women. They fold their fingers daintily around the icy glasses and lift the lemonade to their mouths.
This is true. I could hear the swish of their petticoats as they walked down the street.
“Jenny O’Farrell Harvey. Sounds wonderful, doesn’t it?” my mother says to Daisy and Annie as they lean over the rail of the bridge they have to cross on their way home.
“Wonderful,” they both agree.
I climb on the rail. “I’m here. Look at me.”
But they keep looking into the creek, watching the way the water divides around small stones.
One day when Mama switched me hard for fighting with my brother Johnny and then sassing her, I went in her room, got the picture, and took it to the creek like I usually did. But that day it didn’t say anything to me. The three faces just stared at me, frozen in that second in 1890. So I waded out into the creek, scooped out a place under some rocks, and put the picture into the hole. Mama screamed and yelled, wanting to know where her picture was. Her picture of her dear dead Daisy. No one knew. It
had disappeared from the face of the earth. A week later, I got to missing it and went to dig it up. It was gone. Even the silver frame.
The Devil smiles and kisses her.
TWENTY-FIVE
Doors
“IS SOMETHING WRONG WITH YOUR SISTER-IN-LAW?” DELMORE Ricketts asks Hektor who is at the sink washing the glasses.
“She may have had a little too much bourbon. I think she’ll be all right for the rosary, though. I’ve never seen her do this before.”
“Grief. We all handle it in our own way. Facing mortality’s closed doors.”
“I guess so.” Hektor dries the glasses and puts them on the counter. “I’d recommend a walk on the beach, but a jubilee really messes it up for several days. There’s no telling what condition it’s in.”
“I think I’ll go down and see,” Father Audubon says. “All sorts of birds should be down there feasting. You don’t want to come?”
“No, thanks. My brother should be here soon. May might like to go, though. I think she’s out front.”
“I’ll see. Do you know not long ago I saw two bald eagles at Hurricane Lake? We see them every now and then. The odd thing was that these two were actually diving into the water fishing. And I didn’t have my camera with me.” He pulls one from his pocket. “I learned my lesson.”
“Good luck,” Hektor says. My God, he thinks, Mariel was right. He does look like a priest.
Reese comes in carrying a plate as Father Audubon leaves.
“More ham,” he says. “What’s that priest doing here?”
“He’s a friend of Artie’s from San Francisco. He lives in Mississippi now and came over for the funeral.”
“Knew he was a priest.” Reese places the ham on the counter. “What you want me to do with all those daylilies?”
“Just stick them anywhere. Take some home. I told Mariel she could have all she wants.”
“I wet them down. There’s no hurry.”
“Thanks.”
Reese pulls out a chair and sits down at the kitchen table. Hektor does likewise.
“Well,” Reese says.
“Well,” Hektor says.
“What you reckon Dolly’s going to do?”
“I have no idea. If she wants, I’ll buy the house. May and I could come over here on weekends and during the summer.”
“She ought to live here,” Reese says.
“There’s not much for young people in Harlow, Reese.”
“Everything there is.”
“That’s what my father used to say. And the important things, sure. But Dolly likes that children’s theater group in Atlanta. I doubt she’ll want to give that up. And she needs to be where she can meet some young men, too.”
Reese nods. “I keep seeing Artie, Hektor. I saw her out by the pecan tree while ago. I waved and she waved back. She looked good. And happy.”
“That’s the way it was when Mama and Papa died. I kept seeing them. Especially Mama. Sitting at the top of the beach steps. I never told anybody that before.”
“Who knows,” Reese says.
“Who knows,” Hektor says.
The two men sit quietly for a few minutes, each thinking. They hear Father Audubon calling for May and May’s answer. “He’s going to the beach to look for birds,” Hektor says.
“The beach stinks.”
“He’ll find that out.”
“You know what, Hektor? I know when Artie decided to be cremated.”
“When was that?”
“Last jubilee. Back in June. She managed to make it down to the beach and watched me burning all the stuff that had washed up. She took some of the ashes and wrote her name on the sand with it. Wore her out, but there was her name, plain as day.”
“Could be,” Hektor says. “I wouldn’t want it for me, but I can sort of understand Artie wanting it. Back to the elements, one with nature.” He pauses. “I guess.”
“Donnie’s gonna sprinkle the ashes in the bay?”
“I think so. She said for him to do it on a day that was perfect. That’s a strange thing to say, isn’t it?”
“I don’t know. There’s lots of perfect days around here. You take October. Seventy-five degrees and a breeze from the north and the sun shining like it never thought of doing anything else. That’s pretty perfect.”
“Or April.”
“May when the gardenias are blooming.”
“We sound like a damn Chamber of Commerce brochure,” Hektor says.
“Just don’t mention hurricanes. Hurricane Frederick nearly scared me to death. You know Artie and I stayed here. Lord, Lord! Last time I’ll do that.”
“You would if Artie did.”
Reese smiles. “Most probably. She was scared as I was, though. She said, ‘Reese, I told you to leave. You die, it’s not my fault.’ I told her I wouldn’t hold it against her. She said Irene would. She said I ought to be up in Atmore safe with my wife. I told her we both ought to be. Lord, what a time that was!” Reese shakes his head, remembering. “And now, look.”
“But just think. You saw her a while ago sitting under the pecan tree.”
“God’s truth.”
The phone rings but neither man moves. Someone will pick it up. It will not be anything of importance. And even if it is, the sun will dip into the bay in a couple of hours and the moon will rise and the earth will continue its journey somewhere.
“I was in an earthquake once,” Hektor says. “Talk about being scared!”
But he knows that was not when he was most scared.
TWENTY-SIX
Unexpected Things
DELMORE RICKETTS, IN SPITE OF LIVING SO CLOSE TO MOBILE Bay, has never seen it. He is amazed at the gnarled live oak trees, the magnolias, and the pines that soar a hundred feet into the air. The beach is not wide, and the sand is pinkish, unlike any he has ever seen. Birds are everywhere, still enjoying the bounty from the jubilee. They move aside impatiently as he and May approach, and then they come right back to their meal. Some gulls actually refuse to move. Delmore Ricketts could reach over and pick them up. Probably he would be pecked for his impertinence. He does, however, touch one lightly on the back to see if it will fly away. It doesn’t, merely squawks a warning.
“Tell me what kind of birds they all are,” May says. “I know the gulls and the sandpipers. And those two big ones over there are great blue herons. They were Aunt Artie’s pets.”
“Over there in that tidal pool?”
May nods. “They look gray to me.”
“If they fly off, you’ll see they look blue. At least the bigger one will. He’s the male.”
“They’re here at the same time every day,” May says. “If they were late, Aunt Artie would worry about them.”
“They’re beautiful.” Father Audubon hands May a small pair of binoculars. “Look at them through these.”
“Wow! They must have a million feathers.”
“Probably,” Father Audubon agrees. “That’s what gets them into trouble during oil spills. They try to clean their feathers and they swallow a lot of oil.”
“We don’t have any oil around here to spill.”
“Hmmm,” says Father Audubon, looking out across the bay.
“Let me show you where the creek comes in,” May says, taking his hand. “There’s lots of birds there. I’m not supposed to go up the creek, though. Snakes, I reckon. Maybe alligators.”
Father Audubon wipes his sweating forehead with the back of his hand. “How far is it?”
“Right up there where the beach ends. It just looks like it’s ending. It’s really a creek. Kind of like a swamp that comes right down on the beach. It’s nice and cool.”
“Well, I’m all for that,” Father Audubon says. “You know, May, this is strange terrain. Cliffs and swamps right together.”
“There’s probably some of them in the creek, too.”
“What?”
“Terrains. They like to get up on the logs when the sun’s shining.”
“Most probably.” Father Audubon nods. “Let’s be as quiet as we can so if any birds are fishing in the creek we won’t scare them away.”
“Okay.” May tiptoes over the sand.
The mouth of the creek, Father Audubon decides as they get closer, is probably a rather permanent tidal pool. The large live oaks and palmettos, however, suggest bayou.
“Look,” May whispers, pointing upward. A large flock of birds in a loose V are soaring over the bay.
“Brown pelicans,” Father Audubon says. “They were almost gone for a while.”
“Gone where?”
“Extinct. Killed off mainly by pesticides. They’re coming back, though.”
“That’s good.”
“There’s hope.” Father Audubon counts eighteen pelicans in the v. He does this automatically.
Their feet are miring down as if in quicksand. “Ouch,” May exclaims, stepping on something sharp.
A loud cry and a burst of wings. A huge white bird flies right toward them, so close they have to duck. “Kewrooh!” it screams, “Kewrooh!” It sails over them and out over the water.
“Lord God!” May says, holding her hands against her racing heart.
“My God! My God!” Father Audubon grabs his binoculars and gets the bird in the sight. “Look at that. Oh, my sweet Jesus, would you look at that!” He runs down the beach. “Come back! Come back, you angel, you gift of God!”
May can still hear the huge bird’s strange scream. The bird itself, however, is becoming just a pinpoint against the blue sky. She checks to see if her foot is bleeding, and limps down the beach toward Father Audubon who is now jumping up and down in a sort of rhythmical dance. “May, May,” he says, grabbing both her hands, dancing in a circle.
“My God,” he says suddenly, letting go of the child’s hands and sitting on the beach. He leans his head over between his knees. “May,” he says, “we have just seen a whooping crane.”
This One and Magic Life Page 13