by Janis Owens
“Dadadada—” it ran, on and on, till it realized its mother was gone, and began to break into a shockingly loud cry that my sister shushed playfully.
“Hush, you old spoiled egg, she’s right there—”
And she was, Lori behind her, their arms full of dresses on hangers, Myra’s face a little ashamed as she navigated the porch steps and dumped them into one of Mama’s rockers.
‘And these are just the hanging clothes,” she told Candace sheepishly, then went back to the car for more. And more and more, at least half a dozen trips, Mama joining them on the porch, more amazed with every load, Lori jumping up and down, holding up a jean skirt or pair of shorts to her waist, her voice full of laughter, “I just love this. I remember when you bought it. Oh, Myra, you are so good—”
Finally, they were done, Lori’s excitement infecting them all, Mama saying, “Curtis’ll like this—”
And Candace: “Mama, quit with this Curtis business. She’s thirteen years old, for crying out loud.”
“She’ll be fourteen in a month, and I was fifteen when I married your daddy—”
“Yeah, and you were a hick. Don’t go putting ideas in her head. Ed’s fit to be tied already.”
Cornered by the clutter, Candace had moved over a few feet till she stood directly in front of me, the little boy on her hip so close I could have touched his fat cheek, if not for the screen. Mama had mentioned his beauty, so I was prepared for that, but his hair was different than I’d expected, bald except for a tiny edging of pale curls along the nape of his neck. He had seen me there behind the screen and was giving me an intense look out of his ink-colored eyes, and after a moment, reached out a small wet hand that stopped at the screen, his face perplexed, his fingertips running up and down the mesh a few times, then returning safely to his mouth, his interest averted, his voice a tiny baby-rattle beneath the conversation of the women: dadadadada.
It was too much; no one could have stood it. I leaned against the curtains and rubbed my face, trying to sidetrack the grief. For he was perfect, absolutely perfect, with his little white shoes and his two little teeth, and I already knew he was out of my reach, seeing with my own eyes that his mother, who stood across the porch not six feet away, was not the thin, smiling Myra of The Sunny South, but the other one: the solid size twelve, who threw her head back when she laughed, who shared Kleenexes with me the afternoon of Simon’s birth and told her husband stories in bed at night. Gone was the fragile WASP princess of a summer ago, miraculously replaced by this laughing country woman who had the voice of a Cracker, but the look of an Irish peasant in her wild hair and sweet face and pale, sun-starved skin.
She was burrowing through the boxes, searching for a dress for my sister, assuring her it would fit, letting out a yelp of triumph when she found it, holding it to her shoulders and squashing any hint of patronization with a well-told anecdote:
“There are three of these dresses here. Three. Same size, same color. I bought them at Gayford’s at the same time. When I was going through this stuff last night, I told Michael that saleslady must have thought I was crazy, buying three identical dresses, and he just looked at me and said, ‘Baby, you were crazy when you bought them dresses.”‘
She reached her hip over and butted Candace when she said it, for these were daughters of the black-belt, who couldn’t converse without touching, butting hips or leaning together in casual embrace, and I closed my eyes, knowing I’d been beaten before I’d ever fired my first round.
Michael had won. Mama was right: there was nothing he’d ever set his hand to that he hadn’t made come out all right, and he’d set his hand to Myra, and there she was: the lights were on and everyone was home. And they were country fundamentalist lights that would never look me in the eye again. Even if she loved me more than life itself, she would never leave Michael, for it would mean worse things than child-custody hearings and lawyer fees: it would mean hell, where her father waited with his patient, fox-colored eyes. And meanwhile, my son still watched me through the screen, sucking his fist, his round eyes placid and sweet.
I couldn’t cry; it was past the crying point and on to the razor-blade stage, as the women’s voices rose and fell on the late afternoon chill, Mama coming inside, Candace taking the dress, saying, “I better try it on, I haven’t got into a six since Lori—”
“It’s a big six, more like a eight. God knows I’ll never get into it again,” Myra answered, taking the baby. Then: “Listen, I gotta run, Simon’s at the skating rink.” Candace went inside and she stuck her head in the door and called after her, “Cissie? I have to pick up Sim. Tell Uncle Pete I’m sorry if I don’t make it. We sent flowers, white roses—”
Mama’s voice answered from the kitchen, “Thank you, sister, don’t you worry about it.” Then: “Come back when you get Sim. Gabe’s here; come all the way from Washington; taking a nap; wants to see the baby—”
For a moment, Mama’s words seemed to elude her, then, just as she was backing to the first step, they hit, making her all but stumble, her eyes cutting across to the window where the midday sun on the thick old glass must have reflected back nothing but her own image, for the look on her face was one of blank, unfocused horror, the likes of which I’d never seen in my life. Without a word, she clutched the baby to her chest and fled, taking the remaining steps in one clumsy leap, and running across the yard, not stopping, even when Candace came back out on the porch in the black dress, calling, “Myra? It’s a little tight in the waist, but it fits.”
But she made no reply, slamming into the car and tearing off with such violence that she hit the curb, throwing up a spray of dirt and gravel on Mama’s boxwoods, leaving Candace standing there on the top step, hands on hips, in a position of perplexity.
After a moment, she came back inside, her voice filling the house. “Myra left—must be running late. But this six fits.”
Suddenly, the door from the living room opened, and a small blonde woman who bore a striking resemblance to my childhood memories of Mama was standing there, her eyes stunned at first, then, seeing my expression, filling with tears.
“Well, Gabe?” she whispered, darting a glance at the window, and I thought dully, she knows, she knows. Myra must have told her. Being a child of Mama’s womb, she was a hugger and a consoler, and with no introduction, no words of explanation at all, she came around the bed and embraced me, crying on my shoulder, and once she’d gotten started, there was no question I was going to be able to stand there and take it like a man. Mama must have heard us, for her voice was suddenly at the door.
“Why, Lord, I forgot to tell you. He come for the funeral. Well, bless your heart, sister,” she murmured, then spoke to someone beyond the door. ‘Ain’t seen each other in seven years, bless their hearts.” Then: “Well I just wished Michael was here.”
Then she joined in, and we cried like disappointed children, and it was fortunate the evening’s activities were solemn, for Candace and I could not look at each other without beginning to blink. Before long, we even had Lori going strong, and our pew at the funeral was so noisy with sniffles and sobs that the preacher made many pointed comments in our direction about what a long life Aunt Mag had enjoyed and how she had most certainly made heaven.
But we refused to be comforted, Candace and I, and I thought about cornering her after the service and getting the details of the past year from her, for she had apparently been given a pretty sympathetic version of my side of the story, but by the time we’d made it back to town, a sullen winter twilight had descended, and I was too tired to ask. After all, what could she say? I’d seen the absolutes of the situation on the porch and knew it was a no-win deal. If she told me Myra loved me, loved me but would not leave Michael, it would kill me, and if she said she loved Michael and our summer had been nothing but a comedy of errors she bitterly regretted, it would kill me more.
So I was dead in the water any way you looked at it, and the other possibility, the one I’d seen reflected in Myra’
s blank, terrified eyes, I simply refused to consider, affecting a cold so I could wheedle Mama out of some of her medicinal bourbon, and staying holed up on Magnolia Hill for the better part of three days, never going farther than the front porch, while the broken windows of the Sims’ house seemed to grin at my torment.
The nights in particular were torturously long, the old house full of winding, chilling drafts that flowed room to room unchecked, like souls of the unquiet dead, and my last night, as I lay there and prayed for sleep, I thought about the years Michael and I had shared this room, this very bed. Years I trusted him, years I thought I knew him so well, when we’d slept on these same old sun-smelling sheets, each careful to stay on his own side of the bed, for we’d drawn an invisible line down the middle, and the penalty for fudging was a rat-bite to the arm.
The notch in the old headboard marking the dividing line was still there. I reached up and felt it, smiling when I remembered how a punch to the arm had once been the penalty for fudging before I’d smartened up and insisted on rat-bites, since I was a poor puncher but an expert pincher. So we’d have pinch months and punch months, and according to the calendar, one of us would suffer from multiple bruises of the upper arms, for we showed no mercy when it came to territorial rights and both were unashamed bed hogs.
Bed hogs as children, bed hogs as adults, I thought, and my smile faded when I remembered that this was Michael and Myra’s bed too, the first they’d ever shared, the one Myra had sat on with wide, excited eyes and told him stories and gossip and news of Manderley. If I closed my eyes, I could picture her so clearly, her face flushed, her hair wild and uncombed above her simple batiste gown, building to the climax in her low country voice: “—and then she goes upstairs, and she finds this bedroom, it looks out on the sea—wake up, baby—and all the clothes are still in the closet, just like Rebecca was alive—Michael, honey, listen—”
Keeping him alive with her words. Taking him off Magnolia Hill. Showing him there were other worlds, other possiblities beyond the tight inertia of generational poverty: living dreams on a bed built for sleep.
But damn, I thought, sitting up and rubbing my eyes, it wasn’t fair. There were Magnolia Hills in my life, inertias of my own I needed rescuing from, and nothing, not books nor degrees nor anything else had ever satisfied me the way she could. Why had Michael won? Because he was smarter? Because he’d turned down the Reds and stayed home so Daddy wouldn’t lose the house? Was Myra God’s reward for a job well done?
And Myra, why had she run like that? Was she terrified of me? Were our afternoons together, our two short nights, a degradation to her? Another nauseating shame at the hands of a man? Were we lined up together, three blind mice: the yardboy, the preacher, the brother?
And suddenly, I had to know, at whatever cost; I had to make it right. To beg her, to somehow convince her that it was never my intention to hurt her. That everything I’d done, I’d done in love. I wasn’t a rapist, for God’s sake. I was her lover, she had to realize that. I had to make her realize that, and as I dressed in the darkness, I thought feverishly that I’d tell her if anything ever happened to the baby—if he ever needed blood or bone-marrow or a kidney, she must call me. Call me, for God’s sake. I’d do whatever they wanted.
Then I remembered the shotgun, and for some reason, the thought was oddly comforting—hilarious, in fact. And as I buttoned my coat, I laughed aloud, thinking waspishly that maybe one clean shot to the heart was like the lithium: just what the doctor ordered.
Chapter
11
I fished Mama’s keys from her purse, and with bewildering speed, was heading east on Thomasville Road, my breath clouding the windshield, my heart beating so loud in my chest that it seemed to vibrate through the empty car. I was so nervous I even went to the trouble of formulating a plan. First, I’d drive around back and knock on the French doors, and when Myra answered, I’d tell her quickly, quickly, not to be afraid. Then I’d see if Michael was there, and damn—it wasn’t panning out. I wanted to see her alone. Just for a moment. Just to speak to her as we’d spoken that summer, easy, nondemanding. I didn’t want to have to stand there in front of Michael and pretend not to care, or laugh or cry or beg it off as a mistake. Maybe he wouldn’t be home, I thought as I turned in the drive. Maybe he was still putting in the long hours at the plant, what with the big shake-up Mama continually spoke of.
The front of the house was dark, and as I pulled into the back driveway, I could make out the faint blue light of a television screen glowing somewhere beyond the sunroom curtains. Closing the car door softly, I followed the light across the deck to the French doors and with a gut drop of disappointment, saw Michael through the glass, lying on the couch, still dressed in his buttoned-down work clothes, but shoeless, his bare feet crossed on top of each other while he watched television.
He had something in his hands, a thin book that after a little maneuvering I made out as a Sunday School Quarterly. Of course, it was Saturday night. I was forgetting the old routines: supper and early baths and reading the Sunday School lesson while Daddy made a peep-box for Mama’s primary class—Noah’s ark or David and Goliath or Naaman dipping in the Jordan seven times and coming out clean.
Every once in a while, he’d lift his face to the television and watch a moment with intense concentration, then drop back to the Quarterly, shaking his head or smiling or once, throwing it at the screen, snapping “shit” which I must admit I found just a tiny bit shocking. I mean, here was your typical Baptist communicant, I thought, studying his lesson and cursing, and though years later my sniveling superiority would strike me as ironic in the extreme, at the moment I saw nothing at all wrong with not only spying on Michael and plotting to sneak in and see his wife, but also getting just a little judgmental over a bit of profanity I hourly compounded with every word in the English language. It even gave me the small edge of raw courage it took to reach up and tap on the door. The instant my knuckles touched the glass, his face was up. Then he was off the couch in one fluid movement, snatching something from the mantle, facing me nose-to-nose across the glass, a compact, very nasty looking little sawed-off shotgun in his hands.
“Who’s there?” he demanded in a low, un-Michael-sounding voice, and I could only stand there and blink, thinking, well, I can’t say he never warned me.
“Me, Michael. It’s me.”
“Me?” he said, then stepped back, and when the light hit me, his face went slack. “Gabe?” he whispered, then used the Ugly Word again and held the shotgun aside to open the door. “You idiot. Don’t ever do that again.”
“Do what?” I managed, my chest still a little tight, even though his face was not stiff at all, but slack and relieved and possibly even glad to see me.
“Sneak up on me like that,” he said, closing the door behind me. “I could a killed you.”
There was a tiny question in my mind over why he wasn’t killing me now, for I was blatantly asking for the one clean shot to the heart by showing my face in his living room. But if he was going to be civilized about it, I sure wasn’t about to argue and tried to be as nonchalant as he, watching him slide the shotgun back on the mantle, asking, “You always keep that thing loaded?”
It seemed like a pretty lethal weapon to keep lying around in a houseful of children. He turned down the television (where a college bowl game was in progress, which probably explained his sinful expletive) before he answered.
“Just at night,” he said, then lay back on the couch, his bare feet back on top of each other, his arms folded on his chest. He seemed to be waiting for me to make the first move, but I could only look around, absently strolling to the edge of the kitchen, finding everything oddly unchanged. I had thought of this place so much in the past eighteen months that now that I was here, everything from the pool to the shining floors to the very smell of the place (Pinesol over coffee) held a strange, surreal numbness, like that of a dream.
Michael only sat there and watched me, occasionally glanci
ng back at a play on the television, and I was across the room, almost at the foot of the stairs, when I spoke.
“Myra tell you she saw me?” I asked casually, and his eyes were on the game when he answered.
“No. No, she didn’t.”
I accepted this with a lift of the face and made my way back to the French doors, looking out on the pool that was murky and black in the night. “Well, she didn’t actually see me. I saw her, though. Saw her run like a rabbit.” I paused. “Is she afraid of me, Michael?”
“Of course she is,” he answered easily. “She’s scared to death.”
It was so bitter, so bitter I couldn’t speak for a moment, but only watch the pool where we’d once sat in the sun and clapped for Simon, knowing why he didn’t have to bother with shotguns anymore—that he’d won. He was Michael. There was nothing he’d ever set his hand to—
“She thinks you’re after Clayton,” he finished.
I turned. “What?”
“Clayton. The baby. She thinks you’re seeking custody Terrified you’re seeking custody. Ira lost custody of his boy in August, and she thinks it’d be a cinch for you to go before a judge, present her mental instability, have Clay on the next flight out.”
I only stared at him, for in all my wild imaginings, the possibility had simply never occurred to me. Myra and her children were a unit, dividing them, unthinkable.
‘And you ain’t up to something like that, are you? ‘Cause Peter Goodin’s my lawyer, and we won’t—”
“No. No,” I said, waving him aside. “Damn, Michael, I can’t take that baby away from Myra. Are you crazy?”
He smiled then, for the first time that night, and shook his head. “Gabriel, Gabriel,” he murmured. “He looked like an angel when he was born and she named him for an angel.” Then, easier, unfolding his arms and sitting up straighter on the couch: “That’s what I been telling her, but she’s been nervous as a cat, jumping evertime the phone rings. Listen, I got a registered letter yesterday—some screw-up, it was supposed to go to the plant—and she just fell apart. So did Lou and Sim and Missy. They called me at work, and I come racing home, expecting to find a body in the pool, and there they were, sitting around the table sobbing, this sealed envelope there in the middle. Turned out to be an order for microwave stands.”