by Dori Sanders
After all these years, had she once again allowed herself to be fooled by a man?
She needed to tell someone that the money was gone. Later, alone with Ellabelle, she had almost summoned up enough courage to do it. “Ellabelle,” she began timidly, “have you ever done anything so dumb and stupid that you couldn’t bring yourself to tell anyone about it?”
The very question seemed to open up the floodgates for Ellabelle. She poured out so many stories she had wanted to tell someone that by the time she finished, Mae Lee had lost her nerve.
She needed to find her money, and the only way she would be able to look for the missing money was to get everybody out of the house somehow.
She lay in silence, listening. Suddenly she had an idea; it might be that she had left the bag with the money in it up on the very top shelf of the pantry. That was one place she had not looked. She listened, and thought about it. The children were apparently all outside on the front porch. If only Ellabelle would go out and join them.
She closed her eyes, pretended to be asleep, occasionally opening one eyelid just a crack to see if Ellabelle were seated there by the bed. After a while she heard a noise, and peeked out to see Ellabelle tiptoeing out of the room. She heard her walk down the hall, and then the sound of the front porch door opening and shutting. Quickly she got up, hurried into the kitchen, set a chair next to the pantry shelf, and climbed up on it. She pushed aside jars of preserved peaches and plums lining the shelf, groped with her hand along the back wall. The bag was not there.
“Mama!” It was Dallace’s voice. “What are you doing on that chair? Taylor!” she shrieked. “Come here!”
Taylor and Nellie Grace came hurrying into the room. Taylor stepped over to Mae Lee and helped her down to the floor. “Mama, what’s going on?” he asked.
Mae Lee offered no explanation, and let herself be guided back into her room. As they helped her into bed, she tried to think of some way to tell her children about the money. Holding so much inside was painful for her. She started to speak, but the anxious lump in her chest tightened. She had difficulty breathing. She stared speechlessly at her children. She pulled her thoughts in even tighter. She felt as if she was having a terrible nightmare. She seemed unable to pinpoint a place for herself—a presence. It was almost as if her children were there, but she was somewhere else. She felt the tension and anxiety pound at her heart. In a futile attempt to fight back, she tightened the corners of her mouth, pulled her face into a mosaic of frowns, and closed her eyes.
She listened to Dallace phone Dr. Bell. She knew he would come even if it wasn’t convenient for him. Tears streamed down her cheeks. She looked at her daughters. Not only did they believe she was very ill, they thought she’d lost her mind. But then, how could they think otherwise? It tore so at her heart. How could she tell them that it wasn’t her mind that was lost, but five thousand two hundred and forty dollars and twenty-two cents?
: 21 :
It was Sunday afternoon. Mae Lee and her children had already eaten. Ellabelle had cooked, as was her custom, parts of Saturday and early Sunday morning. Anxious to get her work behind her, she’d urged the family to eat as soon as she finished baking her hot rolls. “It’s double work for a cook to have to wait, then turn around and heat up,” she complained.
Mae Lee didn’t get back into bed after dinner. She sat in the living room with her children and Ellabelle. For a while, the group kept up the chatter they’d started at dinner. Mae Lee looked on, knowing that her children were not cheerful and that they also knew it. She certainly wasn’t cheerful, and she made no effort to pretend. She had abandoned all plans to tell about the missing money. She knew that she would never get up enough courage to do that, much less tell about her fear that Fletcher Owens had gone off with it. She would take the secret with her to her grave, she decided. She had been tricked, fooled by a con man, who had obviously seen her hiding the money, waited for the right moment, then arranged for someone to telephone him, so that he could make a hurried departure. There’s no fool like an old fool, all right, she thought.
She was also worried because she couldn’t remember where it was that she had last placed the money, so that Fletcher Owens had seen her hiding it there. Perhaps she was losing her mind, or at least her memory. She worked to convince herself that she could still remember something. She went over the names of the volunteers down at the hospital, and even the names of the relatives of her deceased former husband, Jeff Barnes, counting them off on her fingers as she named them silently to herself.
A hushed quiet settled in. Mae Lee’s children wished they hadn’t told everyone who called, and had the pastor to announce at services, that Mae Lee had been ordered by the doctors to rest and not have visitors. A house full of company might have been nice on a quiet Sunday afternoon. At least it would have been more cheerful, perhaps. Maybe Mae Lee’s friends from the hospital would have visited and cheered her up.
Lost in thought, Mae Lee’s children looked to each other for answers to unspoken questions. How would they approach their mama about going to the hospital in Durham, North Carolina? Annie Ruth worried that her husband might complain that he would end up getting stuck with the bills if her mama ended up with them for a while. She refused to let her thinking go beyond that, however. She watched her older sister’s face. There was a slight twitch; Dallace was nervous. Annie Ruth wondered what she was thinking about.
Dallace was thinking about the hospital in Durham, too, but she entertained little hope that her mother would benefit from a stay there. After she and Taylor visited Warren, she’d concluded that, like him, her mama was probably in the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease.
Amberlee sidled up to her mama and pressed her cheek against her hair. “I took down that old man’s portrait in my apartment, Mama,” she said. “I don’t need a grandfather half as much as I need you, Mama.”
Mae Lee nodded, but her face didn’t register happiness. She was watching Nellie Grace pretend to read a magazine. She hadn’t turned a page since she opened it.
Nellie Grace’s thoughts were fastened on the note they’d found that Mae Lee had written to them, begging them not to put her into a nursing home. Perhaps her mama knew that she was saddled with something incurable. Maybe Dr. Bell knew too. They had all read and reread the note, and had mentally penciled in their own thoughts and meanings. Nellie Grace thought of her mama climbing up on the chair in the pantry for no reason whatever. Mama’s really sick, she thought, and it’s not all in her mind.
Everyone was trying not only to be cheerful, but also to say the right thing. Ellabelle, however, failed to notice that. Out of the still afternoon quiet, she abruptly announced that she’d heard in broad daylight the voice of the rarely heard evening whippoorwill. She pressed a finger against her lips and signaled quietness for the already quiet group. She was clearly disturbed. “I don’t like this one single bit,” she said, peering through the window at the sunlit sky. “That whippoorwill usually calls just as darkness is descending and shortly before dawn. Often, if the moon is out, you can hear its voice during the night but almost never in daylight. It’s a bad omen,” she said, and without thinking, turned to Mae Lee. “It’s a death warning when you hear the voice of a whippoorwill in broad daylight. Did you hear it, Mae Lee?” Mae Lee shook her head.
“You had to hear it,” Ellabelle insisted. “I know I’m not hearing things. The loud sound is unmistakable. It rings out the three sounds of its name over and over so fast it doesn’t catch its breath.” Her eyes searched faces. No one else had heard the whippoorwill, but what Ellabelle had said cast a pall over the room.
Ellabelle grew quiet. She clenched her fists and dropped her head. She sat thinking about what she’d said. How could she have even spoken about death to Mae Lee?
The stillness disturbed Taylor. It was only five o’clock; the afternoon had seemed to stretch out for hours. He stole furtive looks at his mama. The blank stare on her face was puzzling, almost frightening. It w
as as if she were a stranger. She seemed to have aged so quickly. Maybe she’d looked that way for some time and he hadn’t paid any attention. He could only mull over “if only”—if only they had done this, or that. He needed to call his wife to tell her that he and his sisters would be staying on for another night until they could get Mae Lee to agree to go to a bigger hospital.
The television had been turned on but no one really watched. Their efforts to appear cheerful were failing miserably. They tried to talk normally, yet they spoke in whispers, and almost tiptoed when they moved about. Conversations started but quickly ended.
A light knock at the front door went unnoticed, as though it were just another TV sound. The second time, the clang of the heavy virgin brass knocker on the front door was louder and clearer. Taylor opened the front door.
A tall, thin, gray-haired man stood outside the door, a suitcase in one hand and another one on the porch floor beside him.
: 22 :
“Mr. Owens!” It was Taylor who spoke first. Fletcher Owens was clearly taken aback by the circle of people seated in the room. He recognized Ellabelle, and nodded to her and then to Mae Lee. There was a moment of embarrassed silence, then Taylor picked up the other suitcase from the porch and brought it inside.
“I’m afraid you weren’t expecting me, Mrs. Barnes,” Fletcher Owens said to Mae Lee. “I wasn’t coming until later in the week, but I was able to get a ride from High Point, so I decided to come on today.”
Mae Lee stared at him. Taylor hurriedly introduced the other members of the family. There was a long pause. Then Mae Lee half rose from her chair.
“Mr. Fletcher, where’s my money?” she demanded.
“Your money?” Fletcher Owens seemed puzzled. “I don’t owe you any rent money, do I?”
“I’m talking about my five thousand two hundred and forty dollars and twenty-two cents!”
“Mama, what are you talking about?” several of the daughters chorused.
“This is between Mr. Fletcher and me,” Mae Lee said firmly.
“I don’t understand what you mean,” Fletcher Owens told her. “Do you mean you’ve lost some money?”
Nobody spoke.
“Mama, what’s going on?” Taylor finally said. “Is there some money missing?” He looked at her, then at Fletcher Owens, who appeared to be baffled.
Fletcher Owens frowned. “I think I understand now.” He looked across the room. “The last time I saw you move it, I believe you put it here. Not that it means anything. It seems like you moved it every day.” He walked over to the earthenware umbrella stand, paused, and lifted out several umbrellas. “No,” he said, speaking half to himself. He thought for a moment, then walked over to where Amberlee was sitting. “Would you mind getting up for a minute, Miss?” he asked.
Amberlee stood up and moved out of the way. He reached down into the torn upholstery of Mae Lee’s old overstuffed chair. “Here it is,” he said. He pulled out a cotton drawstring bag, and handed it to Mae Lee. “Is this what you have in mind?”
“What’s all this about, Mr. Owens?” Taylor asked. “What’s in the bag?”
“Your mother,” Fletcher Owens told him, “evidently thought that I went off with the money she keeps in that bag. Is that right, Mrs. Barnes?”
Mae Lee’s expression was an odd mixture of joy and pain. Then tears welled and overflowed her eyes.
“We thought she had a stroke,” Taylor explained to Fletcher Owens. “The day after you left, something happened to her. They couldn’t find anything wrong with her at the hospital, but it’s been like she’d lost her mind or something. She wouldn’t tell us what was wrong. And all the time, it was this money which she must have been keeping hidden here in the house, and we didn’t even know existed. She must have forgotten where she kept it, and she thought . . .”
“That I’d stolen it,” Fletcher Owens finished the explanation for him.
Now Ellabelle pulled herself up to all of her full, righteous glory. “What was she supposed to think?” she demanded. “You just up and left without hardly saying scat. Didn’t say where you were going, or why. Like a thief in the night. Then her money turns up missing, or she thinks it’s missing. Isn’t that right, Mae Lee?”
Mae Lee only covered her eyes with her hands and sobbed. Taylor knelt down next to her chair and put his arm around his mother. “It’s all right, Mama,” he said. “We understand.”
“Well,” Ellabelle puffed, “if this isn’t the damnedest thing I’ve ever seen. Here we are sitting around getting ready for a funeral, and talking about sending Mae Lee to the hospital up in Durham, and all the time Mae Lee and Mr. Fletcher have only had some crazy misunderstanding. Simply because neither one of them had the brains to tell anybody else what was going on!”
Fletcher Owens shook his head sadly. “It wasn’t very thoughtful of me,” he said. “I did leave my trunk behind, but I should have explained where I was going. My daughter in High Point was about to have a baby, and her husband was out of the country and there was nobody else to take care of her children.” He turned to Mae Lee. “I’m truly sorry for the mix-up, but I’m getting to be an old man, and I tend to forget that others can’t read my mind.”
“We are all getting old, I’m afraid,” Ellabelle said.
Now everybody began talking at once. “Won’t you sit down, Mr. Owens?” Dallace asked. “I’m sorry we’re in such confusion.”
“Thank you,” Fletcher Owens said, “but I’ve been traveling most of the day, and I’m very tired. If it’s all right, I’ll just go on to my room.”
“Your room?” Dallace was obviously embarrassed. “I’m afraid that we weren’t expecting you, and...”
“Mr. Owens,” Taylor quickly broke in, “the girls have been staying in your room, but if you don’t mind, you could sleep on the sun porch tonight, and they’ll be out of there tomorrow morning.”
“No, I can stay at a motel tonight,” Fletcher Owens said. “I don’t want to cause any more disruption than what I’ve already caused. If you’ll just let me use the phone, I’ll call a taxicab.”
“It’s no disruption,” Taylor assured him. “I’ve been sleeping out there, but I’m going straight back to my family, now that Mama’s all right again.” He picked up the two suitcases. “There’s plenty of room for you. You just come right along with me.”
After Fletcher Owens had excused himself and gone out to the sun porch, and Taylor had told his mother and sisters good-bye and departed for home, Mae Lee and her daughters and Ellabelle sat in the living room and talked. Mae Lee had stopped crying, and after a while she began to seem like her old self again, although obviously she was still feeling embarrassed about what had happened.
“If it hadn’t caused so much grief and pain,” Ellabelle declared, “this whole thing would be funny. Shame on you,” she said to Mae Lee, “getting yourself all worked up over a man at your age!” She laughed.
“Was it the man, or the money?” Annie Ruth asked.
“I’d say it was a little of both,” Amberlee said.
“What I don’t understand, Mama,” Dallace said, “is why you were keeping the money in the house in the first place, instead of putting it in the bank like Warren said he told you to do?”
“I should have listened to him,” Mae Lee agreed. She held up the bag with the money in it. “Tomorrow this is going in the bank, every cent of it. Even the twenty-two cents.” She rose to her feet. “It’s past my time for me to be going to bed, too. It’s been a long day for all.”
: 23 :
The sound of a buzzing chain saw drifted across the countryside. It was the sound of fall. Soon winter’s cold would swallow up the fall afternoons and pull them into early darkness.
Mae Lee and Ellabelle sat on the front porch. It was time for their yearly watch for the migrating Canada geese flying south. They looked forward to those rare glimpses of the beautiful creatures, the sudden chorus of honking overhead. For years it had been a time they shared. They never ma
de a conscious effort to make it a special occasion. There was no need to; the occasion created itself. They pulled warm wraps tightly about their bodies.
“A cup of hot cider or cocoa would be nice right now,” Mae Lee said.
“A piece of sweet potato custard pie would even be better,” Ellabelle put in. “But with Mr. Fletcher rooming here, I bet there’s not a sliver left in the house.”
Published by
Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill
Post Office Box 2225
Chapel Hill, North Carolina 27515-2225
a division of
Workman Publishing Company, Inc.
225 Varick Street
New York, New York 10014
© 1993 by Dori Sanders. All rights reserved.
Printed in the United States of America.
Design by Molly Renda.
This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used ficticiously. No reference to any real person is intended or should be inferred.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available for a previous edition of this work.
E-book ISBN 978-1-61620-252-1
ALSO BY DORI SANDERS
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