by Lisa Sandlin
“Got that. You have somewhere you sleep?”
“Well, I sleep me some odd hours. I got a little Social Security—don’t you go thinkin I’m no-count.” Miss Doris regarded her fiercely, lower lip pushed out.
“Oh, now.” Delpha smiled. “Never thought that. Thank you for what you told me. Got to get my purse and go to work now. That bracelet is precious.”
She passed by the television-watchers. Oscar was standing, slipping his paycheck envelope into his brown jacket’s inside pocket. His cursory glance at Delpha lingered a tick longer than usual. It said he was clued into her legal history in a general way, but not curious enough to press for an explanation that would cut into the evening spreading out starrily ahead of him.
“Look at you, young man,” Mr. Nystrom sneered, from his spot on the couch. “Aren’t you just clean and neat and smelling sweet.”
Oscar floated above the old man’s nasty tone. “Accurately observed,” he agreed. “I shall hit the street. Good night, one and all.”
“Night, Oscar.” Mr. Finn smiled him out.
Delpha ran up and retrieved her purse. She was running late. Mrs. Speir might be marinating even now, poor old body. No sign of Oscar when she got out to the bus stop. Shayla either.
It ruffled her, what Miss Doris had said, but then Miss Doris also saw haints. In particular, a striped-shirt gent from the pool hall who’d sometimes light-foot it down the alley. He didn’t open the back door to get out there.
XXIV
PHELAN HAD ALREADY been told to get lost.
Nevertheless, holding a manila envelope containing a road map of Louisiana, he rang the bell of Lloyd Elliott’s red brick, two-storied, porticoed and white-columned former home. The curved drive was bordered by azalea bushes. Must have been snazzy back in April, blossoms lit on the bushes like a thousand dark-pink butterflies. No cars in sight.
A young woman with flawless, melty-brown skin, a modest Afro and green wrap-around dress answered the door. Phelan told her he had a package to deliver to Mrs. Elliott. The woman held out her hand.
“Not to…the housekeeper. Which would be you, right? I have to deliver it personally.”
“I’m filling in for my mother today.” She pulled in her chin. “You’re not a messenger from the firm.”
“No.”
“Not from the drug store.”
Phelan shook his head.
She crossed her arms. “We don’t let in salesmen.”
Phelan explained that he was just a businessman who needed to deliver an order. He was the one who had just called, remember? Five minutes, that was all. “Three,” he said when she didn’t budge. He wagged the envelope. “She wants this today.”
The young woman frowned, but turned. With stern back, she led Phelan past a palatial living room through a stadium-sized kitchen to a closed door. She knocked, called, “Mrs. Elliott? A man here says he’s got an important order for you,” retreated in the direction of the kitchen, where she fixed her suspicious self with her back to a kitchen island, spotless copper pots hung over her head.
He grimaced on entering the huge sunroom, bank of windows on one side, blue curtains framing a wall of pulsing summer light, masterful AC to defeat any trace of natural warmth. Phelan had seen photos of people on skis. This is how he imagined the air on a mountain: bone-gnawing but dazzling.
Built-in white filing cabinets and bookcases formed the opposite wall. Flowing out from them, a maybe 18′ by 24′ patterned rug, jewel-green with minty leaves and little pink and cream shapes like flower petals scattered on a spring lawn. Nothing he wanted to put a shoe on. The furniture in the room was white, an icy glass-top desk piled with newspapers and three phones on it, a white princess phone in reach of the daybed the woman was propped up in. The rich rug contrasted with the disarrayed newspapers, the twist of dark hair pinned to her head, the wide, pallid face—and the plain brown of her eyes.
Regular brown eyes, a little on the small side. Not reddened, not weeping. And they didn’t know Phelan from the man in the moon.
Mrs. Lloyd Elliott set a tinkling glass next to the lamp. “You can’t be the one who just called me. Because I hung up on him and that meant he was not welcome to occupy my telephone line, much less my residence.” The voice was an imperious child’s, the accent pure Texas.
Well, yes, ma’am you did hang up, but let’s see what you say next. Phelan retracted his head and raised his shoulders in a way that might have conveyed either yes or no but certainly conveyed humble.
“Merrill Lynch or one of those cut-rate huts sent you, didn’t they? Incorrigible. I’ve been managing my own portfolio since…you really don’t have an inklin’ who I am, do you?”
Well, actually, now I do.
“How dare you intrude on me. I have no intention of transferring my account out of my own hands. Surely not to one of you little Fuller Brush brokers. Leave. One more word and I’ll call the police.”
All right, not one more word and none about some pictures that must have been a riveting topic in your house. Phelan’d been prepared to feign a mistake over the delivery, wrong Elliott, wrong address, whatever, but this was his easy day. He arranged chagrin and puppy-dog-tails on his face and exited the brilliant room.
The young woman escorted him toward the door, her lion-colored eyes half-mast. “You’re running some kind of hustle, huh? You’d never have got past my mom.”
He believed her. “Bet you’re a college girl. Go out at Lamar?”
She shot him a superior glance. “Business major.”
“Just barely got past you,” Phelan said. “But your bouncing days are numbered. Once you graduate, I see you, wait a minute, hmm”—he touched his middle fingers dead center of his forehead, squinted. They were almost at the door. “I’m seeing brick and carpet, leather chairs…”
“Law school.” Superiority fell off her smooth face. Suspicion returned.
Phelan was pleased. His hand dropped to his side. “Well, damn. I’m not always that good.”
She shut the door on him. He’d got a flicker of a smile out of her, but he’d lost his own.
XXV
BUS RIDERS PERKY this evening. Conversations flew over people’s heads to land on people farther away. There was greeting, a story here and there, little acting-out to go with the story, chin-thrown-back laughing. Delpha nodded to familiar faces, even broke out a smile.
She washed up, heated Chicken Noodle, and carried the tray upstairs. Mrs. Speir’s head hardly moved, but the blanched face on the pillow fastened onto her. The vertical wrinkles stretched to accommodate her open mouth. She was panting.
Delpha abandoned the tray on the vanity table, shoving the atomizer back into the mirror’s base. She sat on the edge of the mattress, sinking it down, felt Mrs. Speir’s forehead, took her hand. Cool. Her eyes were not fixed. They seemed to be seeing, though who could say for sure. Delpha had to call Calinda. She stood, and the hand closed on hers.
“Mrs. Speir, I’ll call your niece, then I’ll be back. Not leaving you, understand? Understand?” She squeezed her hand.
She had seen a woman, not an old one, keep up that panting for five hours, her eyes wild and black with knowledge then still and slitted, but panting. Heard of others slipped away with a gasp. Delpha ran to the stairs, then whirled and ran down the hall. “Miss Pittman, you here? Miss Pittman? Ida! Ida Rae! You here?”
The brass bed was unmade, empty. White boots, pantyhose, a black brassiere on the floor.
Delpha bypassed Mrs. Speir’s bedroom with its black phone on the table by the leather armchair, hurried down the stairs to the telephone in the kitchen. Got Calinda in the Rosemont’s kitchen on the fourth ring.
“Miss Blanchard, Mrs. Speir is going and most probably tonight. You want to see her, best come on over. Less you want me to call a ambulance.”
“No! Don’t do that. They’d plug her in and keep her going. Hundred years is plenty. I’ll be there soon. Wait! Wait a minute. Is Ida Rae there?”
; “Called for her, no answer. She’s not in her room either.”
“Good.” The phone hung up.
Delpha returned to Mrs. Speir. She straightened the twisted sheet and covered it with a light, clean blanket, plumped the pillow, tamped the salt-white corners of her lips with a moist rag. She dragged a chair next to the bed. On second thought, she pushed up the window for fresh air. Then she sat down. The beebee eyes rolled toward hers, flared darkly. Stale breath came rhythmic, regular out of her open mouth, and her flat chest heaved. Her fingers plucked.
Delpha captured her hand. “Calinda’s coming, Mrs. Speir.” The old woman did not blink.
The rough panting went on. Labor, surely was. The way might be short, but it was rocky to traverse and only the single path. No matter what Isaac said, only the one path here.
Delpha spoke Mrs. Speir’s name softly. “Jessie.” Mrs. Speir’s head turned then, her gaze latched onto Delpha’s, and she was seeing.
“Gonna be all right, Jessie.” She said it with what she could remember of tenderness, holding the loose-skinned hand. Despite the AC’s efforts, despite the chill hand she grasped, Delpha had sweat on her face and on her palm. Her mouth was dry.
It was at least eight o’clock before she heard the door downstairs. Calinda Blanchard walked into the bedroom in a pantsuit Delpha had never seen, dark blue with pockets, double-breasted, navy-looking, her short gray hair brushed. Rouge on her thin lips and pearl ear screws on her ears. A canvas tote bag she set down on the horsehair sofa while her gaze stayed on her aunt.
“Know I’m late,” she said softly. “But I wasn’t kissing Aunt Jessie goodbye smelling like hog and hog gravy.”
Delpha surrendered the bedside chair. Looked back to see Miss Blanchard mash back the topknot of white hair and kiss her aunt’s forehead.
Delpha went downstairs and gulped water straight from the faucet. She took out an ice tray and pulled its lever, popped out cubes to fix a big glass of ice water and delivered it to the bedside table, received Calinda’s nod. Delpha removed herself to the wide leather armchair in the corner and waited in case anything was needed. What Calinda said, she said private. Nobody had turned on a light.
Wasn’t quite dark out. Delpha closed her eyes. Relieved of duty, she stretched in the spacious armchair, that sturdy, well-made chair, resident in herself, ready to do what was called for. Yes, she was serving, but there was not the futility, the mockery, the cheerless halt there had been in prison where you did what you did because you had to. There, you were not working for yourself, there was no fruit of your labor. You were not working for others, not in the right sense of the word, the sense that meant your work left people better off, stronger or cleaner or more soothed. You were working to keep the prison walls standing, keep the guards clocking in and out, the warden’s office vacuumed, and yourself and all the other women separate and punished.
She looked up when the whispering developed a rhythm. Miss Blanchard had her gray head bowed toward her aunt’s, touching forehead to forehead. She was barely rocking, and she sang in a whisper-voice: “Amazing Grace,” all those verses. “You Are My Sunshine,” the heartbreak anthem. She’d sip on the water and repeat a song, sip and begin another. An hour passed, more. The panting slowed.
From this valley they say you are leaving
I will miss your bright eyes and sweet smile
They say you are taking the sunshine
That has brightened our pathways a while.
On the third or maybe fifth time through “Red River Valley,” a skip of silence prodded Delpha to look up. Mrs. Speir breathed, then she held it. After a long while, another breath, then the wait. A minute, two. Three. Breathe, don’t, like she was flat-foot at the top of the path, picking through stones to find the place to ground her staff or to take hold of rope or rail while gathering strength to hoist. Her eyelids lagged half-way down. She was not seeing now.
Delpha took herself out to the stairs and down to the bottom step to leave the two old women alone. Miss Blanchard washed and singing, Mrs. Speir laboring to leave the valley.
The order reversed once Calinda pressed shut Jessie’s eyes. She had laid her gray head a while on the bone chest. Then she sat up and wiped her eyes. To Delpha’s quiet question, Calinda replied No, she sure should not call Thibodeaux the mortician right now. The lights switched on, and a last-ditch hunt commenced. This room, had to be, unless Ida had already got it.
“Maybe Mrs. Speir left word with her lawyer that made the will.”
Calinda snorted, glanced at her watch and rose. “My cousin fixed that. She winds old Dinwiddie’s clock ever once in a while. Huh. I’d bet you a year’s property tax she doesn’t remember she told me that.”
“Mrs. Speir didn’t say one thing ’bout where it was?”
“Maybe she did, but have you heard her talk? She was looking straight at me, and I picked up ‘Tiffany’ and ‘in here.’ Ruffled Ida, I can tell you that. She thought she’d already got everything, and I thought she had too. Moselle though said, ‘Calinda, hear that? Miss Jessie’s wanting to give you something,’ and Ida had to shut her trap.”
Miss Blanchard rifled through the vanity’s drawers, not bothering to shut a one of them. She dumped the four empty jewelry boxes onto the floor with an exasperated hiss at Ida. Delpha, silently glad she’d stolen the Three Blossoms powder, went downstairs, fetched a wide china bowl with warm water and the squeeze bottle of Dawn dishwashing liquid. Slid the last diaper from between Jessie’s withered legs, bone and hanging flesh, wiped and washed her bottom region clean.
She pulled off the blanket and top sheet, loosened the fitted sheet from its corners. Lifted up Mrs. Speir’s shoulders and tugged on the sheet. Did the same from the bottom, and wrenched it out from under her. She bundled the dirty sheets and the blanket together and set the pile by the door. Coming back to the bed, no eye contact with Miss Blanchard who was now pushing hangers in the closet, she said tersely, “Maybe you know the Tiffany company made a lot of stuff.”
Delpha maneuvered off Mrs. Speir’s nightgown. Poor naked thing lying on a plastic sheet.
Calinda clapped the dresses, parted the clothes hangers and craned into the back of the closet, squatted down and pawed through shoes that hadn’t pressed pavement in years. Then walked over to the bed where Delpha was washing Mrs. Speir’s feet.
“A lot of stuff. Like all kinds of jewelry, you mean.”
“Yeah, but not just that.”
Mrs. Speir’s toenails were yellow pearlized horn. Delpha reached over, pulled out the night table drawer and felt around, knocking over pill bottles. She came out with heavy-duty clippers, positioned the pinchers on the overgrown big-toenail.
“Tiffany made dishes and pretty silver things and colored-glass lamps. Little glass statues and vases, perfume even.”
The navy blue pantsuit was smeared with dust. “You went digging around. I told you not to.”
“You want a confession, Miss Blanchard, I used to spray my neck with your aunt’s perfume. But the Tiffany Company, I went and looked it up in the public library. It’s a old company.”
When Delpha finished with the toenails, she dumped the rinds in the wastebasket by the night table. Resumed her sponging. The feet, the withered legs—take this stale smell away, replace it with the fragrance of soap-flowers. There you go, Jessie Speir.
“I didn’t fall off the turnip truck yesterday.” Miss Blanchard sat down on the horsehair sofa and counted on her fingers. “Jessie used to have a Tiffany fixture hung over the dining room table. Prettiest blue you ever seen. Dishes downstairs are Wedgewood bone china. They’re here, but the silver’s gone. And a couple of landscape paintings from the living room by an artist last name Durand. Tall trees and little bitty people. They had a big old rug from the Orient. Chandelier in the entry. Those’re gone. But there was something in here that wasn’t gone, or she wouldn’t’ve promised it to me. She was real intent that day, and until those strokes, Jessie was feeble-bodied but sharp in the
head. She still had something Ida hadn’t scavenged.”
She turned away, then back. “That’s the only reason I’m bothering now. And I’m here, and Ida’s not, and you know that rule.”
“The one that says possession’s nine tenths of the law?”
“I was thinking Finders, Keepers.”
The hunt proceeded.
Delpha washed upward of the slack belly, over the empty bags tipped with surprisingly rosy thimble-nipples and the rutted bone-chest. Under the sweatless arms. She wiped the folds of Mrs. Speir’s neck, the cheeks, the forehead, wrung out her cloth, wet down the sparse eyebrows. Strange, she felt cleaner herself. Stroked her wet hands through Mrs. Speir’s matted white hair.
Calinda had banged around the entire room. Then held her head and abruptly gone downstairs, stayed down there. When she finally trudged back up the stairs, Delpha had long finished her washing. She was nodding off on the leather chair, and Jessie, laid out straight-limbed in a pale blue gown, was growing cold.
Miss Blanchard lowered herself onto the horsehair sofa with a groan, set her elbows on wide-spaced legs. Her face was creased in defeat. “I guess she was talking gibberish when she said she had that Tiffany for me. I shouldn’t of taken her so serious,” she said with a mix of resignation and hurt that was painful to hear in the voice of an old person.
“Uncle Hardin he was fond of me and me of him. I never doubted that. Which is kinda funny, cause he didn’t care for how I was. Tried to marry me off to the son of a friend of his. Didn’t we have ourselves a knockdown drag-out. I expected Aunt Jessie to take up for me. But she stayed on the sidelines.” Miss Blanchard removed her glasses and flicked the corner of an eye, slid them back on. “OK, fifteen minutes, then call the mortuary.”
Delpha climbed from the leather chair and peered at the mantel clock. “Miss Blanchard, it’s not but four fifteen in the morning.”
“Undertaker’s not an eight-to-five man, girl. Thibodeaux’s got some fifty-cent-a-hour boys sleeping in a back room’ll take a call. Besides, we have to tidy some.” She gestured toward the bureau drawers, standing open, then said, “And lean over there and get all the pills out of that night table drawer, will you, so Ida doesn’t get hold of ’em. What I brought that sack for.”