He shipped the furniture to Mobile and sold the house to a Granger niece (not Celia) and her husband. The hardware store his father had owned was eagerly bought out by a partner. Everything was over so quickly, he felt disoriented as he got on the train leaving Salem. The snow his students loved to hear about was covering the two new graves in the cemetery. Somehow, he knew he would never be back.
Driving up the shell road to his house on Mobile Bay, he considered how his life had veered from the path he always thought lay before him. He also thought how lucky he was. He had a job, money saved back from his parents’ estate that he had not told Sarah about. His conscience hurt him slightly about this, but not too much. Sarah had never seemed to grasp what the Depression was all about even though her own brothers and sisters had lost houses and businesses and been forced into bankruptcy. Thomas was just protecting his own family. A family which was about to be increased. Sarah was expecting another baby in a month’s time. The twins were almost five. But Sarah had had such a hard time after they were born that neither she nor Thomas had been anxious to have another child soon. Actually, they had been very surprised when Sarah got pregnant. “Hey,” Sarah had told Thomas before they were married. “The Church stops at our bedroom door. Okay?”
And so it had. The twins had been planned. But this baby had defied the odds. And so far, Sarah was okay. Tired, big, but not unhappy like she had been when the twins were born.
Thomas pulled into the yard and saw Bo Peep, Willie Mae’s daughter, swinging Artie and Donnie. Thomas had built an extra-wide swing with a back on it and had hung it from a pecan limb. That way both children could swing at once.
“Papa! Papa!” Artie jumped from the swing and lost her balance. Bo Peep grabbed the swing to keep it from hitting Artie in the head. In the process, she fell and Donnie was slung from the swing. All three children started crying.
Thomas had piled soft sand beneath the swing. He knew they were just startled.
“Anybody bleeding?” he asked.
The children examined their knees and elbows carefully. Artie discovered an old mosquito bite with a tiny scab on it. She picked it off. “I am,” she said proudly when a red drop appeared.
“She just did that, Dr. Sullivan,” Bo Peep said indignantly. “Nothing’s wrong with her. It’s all her fault anyway. I was swinging them good.”
Thomas picked Artie up under one arm and Donnie under the other. “I know you were, Bo Peep. Come on. Let’s go see if your mama has some lemonade for us.”
“I’m bleeding!” Artie wailed. “I’m bleeding, Papa!”
“If it doesn’t stop in an hour, we’ll go get you a transfusion.”
“What’s a transfusion, Papa?” Donnie asked.
“It’s where they take somebody else’s blood and put it in you.”
“It’s about to quit,” Artie said.
Thomas put them down inside the kitchen.
“Hey, Dr. Sullivan,” Willie Mae said. “You early?”
“Got to thinking about lemonade.”
“Good thought. How about I fix us some?”
“Great.” Thomas put the children down. Artie limped to a chair.
“What’s the matter, baby?” Willie Mae asked.
“Bo Peep made me fall out of the swing.”
“Oooooh, Mama! No! I never did!”
Artie sighed. “Then it was Donnie.”
“Someone’s papa saw someone jump out of the swing and almost cause everybody to get hurt,” Thomas said. “Someone is telling fibs.”
“Donnie,” Artie said.
Donnie screamed and lunged for her. Thomas caught him. “Welcome home, Papa,” Thomas said. “We’re so glad to see you.”
“Welcome home, Papa. Would you like some cookies with your lemonade?” Artie frowned at the wriggling, red-faced Donnie. “Donnie, if you’re good, Willie Mae might give you some too.”
Thomas held Donnie high in the air. “We’ll all have cookies. Lots of cookies.” The little boy squirmed in delight.
“A tea party on the porch. Come on, Bo Peep. Donnie. We’ll use palmetto leaves for plates.” Artie led the other two out. Thomas and Willie Mae smiled at each other.
“That one’s a pistol ball,” Willie Mae declared.
“How’s her mama today?”
“Fair to middlin’. Might still be napping.”
“Well, fix the tea party. I’ll go see about her.”
“I’m fat,” Sarah exclaimed as Thomas walked into the bedroom. “I’m hot. I’m ugly.” She was lying on the bed crying. Thomas sat down and gathered her to him. She sobbed against his shirt. Welcome home, Thomas, he thought, smoothing her hair and looking out at the water that glittered in the afternoon sun.
THIRTY-EIGHT
Artie on Her Thirty-second Birthday
I NEVER INTENDED TO MARRY CARL. I DID, THOUGH. JUST LIKE everybody expected me to. White dress, veil, the works. Sweet Carl. I still see him standing at the altar waiting for me. He has on a tux too large for his skinny neck and his long forehead is shining in the light from the stained glass window.
“I’m marrying Fred Astaire,” I whispered to Donnie. But he didn’t hear me which was just as well. We both would have started giggling.
For years I would close my eyes and see Carl waiting for me. It was as if my mind snapped a picture of him, knowing I would need it later. I even remembered how he smelled when he leaned to kiss me. Mainly like Old Spice but also like Ivory soap and Juicy Fruit gum. And little boy sweat.
Carl. I loved him.
“I want us to have a baby,” he said. But I wasn’t sure. I wasn’t sure of anything at the time. I was eighteen when I married Carl.
“Soon as you get back from Korea.” Why did I feel safe saying this? As if I had given him a talisman. You have to come home so we can make a child.
Carl. Sometimes he still comes back and we dance on the bluff at Harlow. Carl Jenkins smelling of Ivory soap and Juicy Fruit gum.
“Don’t leave me,” I say.
Right after he died, he was everywhere. He sat at supper with Hektor and me. He followed me to bed. He held my hand while I tried to paint. So one day, I took down a suitcase and said, “Carl, I have to go away. Please don’t follow me.” He turned and walked down the stairs. I watched him go over the bluff and to the beach.
I had never been farther north than Lynchburg to visit some of my mother’s family. But I drove right through Virginia, all the way to Salem. I saw where Papa had grown up. I saw where my grandparents were buried. I saw Carl standing by a gravestone.
“Go back to Harlow, Carl,” I said. And he turned and walked away. No one else was in the cemetery. I wondered where the Salem witches were buried. I didn’t ask, though. Whatever it was I was looking for wasn’t there. I left the same day.
I drove to New York and sold my car. People kept asking me, “What? What?” when I talked to them. You would have thought I was from a foreign country. I found a place to live and a job filing in an insurance office. Mama would have died. There were roaches at both places.
I felt better than I had in a long time, though. I bought some canvases and started to paint again, signed up for a class at the Y.
“Come with me to Europe,” Jerry Whitley, the instructor said. “You won’t believe the light in Greece.”
“I don’t have any money.”
“I do.”
So I packed my suitcases again. We rented a little house overlooking the Aegean and Jerry was right about the light. It was so clear, you could see the colors that it was made of. Some days there would be more yellow, or blue. You could see it.
Jerry was principally an abstract artist. He seemed to be playing with color, throwing it against the canvas. But the most beautiful pictures evolved. It was amazing, intimidating. I worked on the porch, trying to capture the way the sun reflected from the water. In other words, doing what I’d always done, beach scenes.
“What is that?” Jerry asked one day, pointing to one of my canvases.
“A barge.”
“No. The green at the edge.”
“A live oak tree.”
He laughed. “Get real, Artie.”
I am real, I thought. I looked out at the Aegean and then back at my painting. Mobile Bay.
I stayed with Jerry three years. They were learning years, but we also cared for each other. We knew when the time came to say goodbye. Jerry wanted to go back to New York; I was still looking for something.
The night before he left, I made a pot of Mobile gumbo. “We need jubilees here,” I said.
“What’s a jubilee?” Jerry wanted to know. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t told him about them, how exciting it was to have the fish and crabs come swimming up on the beach.
“You’re homesick,” he said when I got through telling him, showing him how you had to carry the heavy buckets, describing the fun, the parties.
“I’ll go back,” I said. And I knew it was true. But not yet.
“Hey, Artie!” I was walking down the street in Rome and couldn’t believe I had just heard an Alabama voice. “Artie!”
I looked around and saw a large, redheaded man coming toward me, grinning.
“I can’t believe I actually ran into you,” he said, enveloping me in a hug.
I pulled away and looked up at him. He looked familiar, but I wasn’t sure who he was.
“Hey, you don’t recognize me, do you? It’s me. Bo. Your cousin, dummy.”
“Little Bo?”
He laughed. “They had to drop the ‘little’ part.”
“Bo?” I hugged him and jumped up and down at the same time. Here was Bo, my Aunt Mary’s Bo, right here in Rome.
“What are you doing here? And what about Aunt Mary and Uncle Bo and lone? Are they okay? And have you heard anything from Harlow? Donnie? You know he got married. And Hektor? You seen any of them?”
“Hey, wait up.” He looked around and spotted an empty table at a sidewalk cafe. “Let’s go get some coffee. I’ll tell you everything I know.” We got to the table just as another couple did. “Excuse me,” Bo said politely, sliding the chair around for me as the other woman dived for it.
“That was a neat trick,” I laughed. And he grinned.
“The last time I saw you, you had braces,” I said. “Is it really you?”
He chomped his straight, even teeth together. “One and the same. Now it’s your turn to say, ‘My, how you have grown, Bo.’”
“My, how you have grown, Bo.”
“You too, Artie. Do you know the last time I saw you was at Grandmama’s funeral? How old were you? Sixteen?”
“I guess so.” The waiter came and we ordered coffee. “What are you doing here, Bo?”
“Putting space between me and Huntsville mainly. Mama’s decided it’s time for me to settle down. Picked out the girl and everything. Nice girl. But God!” He stretched and looked around. “I like it here.”
“But are you working or anything?”
“I work for Daddy. They gave me a trip to Europe when I graduated and I didn’t take it then. Said to give me a rain check. Well, when Merry Calhoun started showing up for supper every night, I decided it was time to cash the check. Swore I would call on every potential customer for Hardemond Mills. So far, I’ve seen two.” Bo smiled at me. “I was sort of hoping I might find you, too. I had your last address.”
“I moved.”
“I know.”
“I’ll show you around.”
“Great.” He reached over and took my hand. “I knew I would find you.”
“Tell me about Ione,” I said. But I didn’t move my hand. It was warm and comfortable enveloped in Bo’s.
What is this, I thought. What is this? I drank the strong coffee; I smelled the diesel fumes from the cars that darted by just inches from us. I listened to Bo and knew I had been waiting for this. Waiting for my cousin Bo, for the reddish blonde hairs curling on the back of his hand. For the sound of his voice.
The first time we made love was as if we had always been together. “Artie?” Bo was staying with me. Visiting cousin.
“Artie?” He had just come in and I was in the bathtub.
“Lord!” he said, standing in the doorway. And then he was out of his clothes and in the tub with me, one of those deep tubs you have in Europe that you have to climb out of. My head hit the faucet. Clunk.
“Are we sinning?” I asked.
“Probably.” And we were rolling in the tub, splashing water, laughing. The next day we each had bruises. But we stayed in that tub a long time, adding hot water when we got cold. When we finally got out, there wasn’t much we didn’t know about each other.
“I didn’t expect that,” Bo said, toweling me dry. “I hope to hell you aren’t pregnant.”
“Not to worry,” I said, “I have my diaphragm in.”
“Witch! Seducer!” He popped me on the behind with the towel. I ran for the bed.
“Harlot! Scarlet woman!” He dived on top of me.
“Lover,” I said, my face pushed into the pillow.
He rolled me over. “What did you say?” He loomed over me like something I had dreamed.
“Lover.”
He sighed and stretched out beside me. I pulled up the quilt and we slept. We got up and ate supper, made love again, and went back to sleep. Sometime during the night, I felt him restless against me. I turned and held him. “Donnie,” I whispered, startling myself by saying my twin’s name.
If Bo heard what I had said, he never mentioned it. But I stayed awake the rest of the night remembering that it was my birthday, mine and Donnie’s. We were thirty-two years old.
THIRTY-NINE
The Devil’s Grave
AS PROMISED, THE LADIES OF THE CHURCH BRING LUNCH AFTER the funeral. Food fills the dining room table, and other dishes are in the kitchen waiting to be brought out when space opens up. Mrs. Randolph is kept busy handing out freezer tape. “Put your name on your dishes. Be sure and put your name on your dishes.” Jerry, the cat, is traumatized by all the commotion. He is hiding under Artie’s bed. When May comes looking for him, he slides behind some empty Christmas boxes that have a layer of dust on them.
Dolly, who has gone to the funeral, brings Naomi a plate of food to the porch. Naomi is sitting in one of the wicker rockers fanning herself with an envelope.
“Why don’t you come inside, Nomie, where it’s cool?” Dolly asks.
“Too hard to get up.” Naomi takes the plate. “Thanks, sweetheart. What have we got here?”
“A little bit of everything.” Dolly hands her grandmother a napkin and a fork and then kneels beside her.
“Have you had anything to eat?” Naomi asks.
“Some congealed salad.”
“Good.”
“I think the antibiotic’s kicking in.” Dolly looks out at the bay where a large freighter is heading toward the Mobile docks. Her parents come out and sit on the steps with plates of food.
“You okay?” Mariel asks as they go by Dolly. “Mama, you got everything you need?”
Dolly and Naomi both nod yes.
“Nomie,” Dolly says, “I’ve got a lot of decisions to make.”
“I know you do, honey.” Naomi takes a bite of squash casserole. It must be Mrs. Daniel’s. She’s the only person in Harlow who puts sage in squash. The woman’s never learned that cornbread dressing’s the only place for sage and precious little there. It reminds Naomi: “Whatever happened to that cookbook you were writing, Dolly?”
“I’m still working on it.”
“Don’t put sage in the squash.”
“No ma’am. I won’t.” Dolly settles into a more comfortable position. “I need to ask you something, Nomie.”
Naomi puts her fork down and looks at Dolly. “What is this? You want some advice from me? Some words of wisdom from the elderly?”
“I guess I do.”
“Okay, Nomie’s words of wisdom for grandchildren: Don’t ever take yourself too seriously.”
Dolly grins. “I’ll try not to.”
“And forgive yourself a lot. You’re not carrying the world on your shoulders.” Naomi looks over at Mariel who is handing a piece of chicken to Donnie. “I don’t think I impressed that on your mother enough.”
“I’ve got a specific question, Nomie. If you could do it over again, would you marry Grandpa Will?”
“You thinking about your Bobby?”
“I guess so. He called again this morning. He’s been out of rehab for a couple of months and he’s clean.”
“Dump him.” Naomi spears a bite of ham.
Dolly is startled. “But Nomie, you didn’t dump Grandpa Will.”
“No. I ended up carrying him which was a terrible thing to do to him. To all of us.”
“But you had your children, Nomie.”
“Yes. I did.” Naomi puts the ham into her mouth and chews. “Good ham. I’ll bet it’s one of those honey-baked ones that’s already cut.”
Dolly looks at her grandmother. Naomi looks up and smiles. And in that smile, Dolly sees the truth. She rubs her shoulders which suddenly feel lighter.
“You feeling okay, Dolly?” Dave Horton, who has been talked into staying for lunch, stands over the two women with a full plate of food in his hand.
“Much better,” Dolly says.
“Then come keep me company. That swing looks mighty comfortable. Can you spare her, Mrs. Cates?”
“Sure. There’ll be another grandchild along in a minute. The place is crawling with them.” Naomi takes another bite of squash casserole. Now why in the world did Jessie Daniel put that sage in there?
“Have you had any lunch?” Dave asks as they settle in the swing. He’s pulled off the jacket he wore to the funeral, and has loosened his tie. Dolly sees how golden the hair on his arms is, the tiny freckles.
“Some salad.”
“You need to eat something taking that antibiotic.” Dave hands Dolly a roll.
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