Family Linen

by Lee Smith

  “Sybill, who is Molly?”

  “My doll, the one I got for Christmas. Christmas came before, and Molly was there, too.”

  “And what did you do, Sybill, when you woke up?”

  “I got out of bed and put my slippers on, the fuzzy ones, and I put my robe on too, and I tied the tie and me and Molly went out into the hall where it was dark and then I heard Mama downstairs, I heard voices, so I went down. I am not allowed to slide down the banister,” Sybill says.

  “And then?”

  “They were on the back porch,” Sybill says.

  She went down the steps one by one, sliding her hand along the cool smooth wood of the banister, until her hand hit the hand-carved newel post and she knew she was on the rose-flowered rug in the hall at the foot of the stairs. She knew this even in the dark, and knew that the parlor was there to the left, and the dining room. Thunder crashed outside and then lightning came right after, lighting up her mother’s big cabinet full of cut glass which sent out sparks of light in every direction. More light, real light, came from the crack under the kitchen door, and Sybill pushed it open, cautiously. “Mama?” she said. But the kitchen was empty even though you could tell they had just been there. The bulb in its wavy yellow shade hung low over the round wood table, swaying ever so slightly. The refrigerator hummed. Mister Cat, the cookie jar, sat on top of it, with his orange-and-white striped tummy full of oatmeal cookies. Fay made those cookies yesterday. The faucet dripped into the sink, Mama had been trying for days to get the plumber to come, and outside it was raining cats and dogs, beyond the blue-and-white figured curtains with the pattern of little houses on them, little red-roofed and yellow-roofed houses hundreds of them with smoke coming out the chimneys. The houses had blue front doors. Smoke hung in blue waves above the polished tabletop, her daddy must be home. But where were they?

  “Mama?” Sybill said. The blue china clock on the wall chimed out but Sybill had not yet learned to tell time. About the clock, she would mainly remember the smiling face of the sun at the center of time and she would not remember at all what happened next. She heard a sound like a pig grunting, and a voice crying out which abruptly ceased. These noises came from outside, from the porch, beyond the cold-pantry. Sybill walked carefully across the yellow linoleum, sniffing the smoke from Daddy’s pipe. It had a sweet smell to it, a kind of richness. She could smell the other smell, too, the way his breath was. Liquor! Mama said. “Mama?” Sybill said, and again she heard the sound like a grunt, like an “oof’ noise in the funny-papers. Oof! Ugh! Glunk! Like little animals in the funny-paper, talking out loud. “Mama?” Sybill was not afraid. She opened the back door, slowly turning the cool white porcelain knob. She walked across the cold-pantry and opened the outside door. Air came blowing in cold, all around her. Freezing rain whipped across the wood planks of the porch. Winter thunderstorm brings bad luck, Nettie says. The cold March wind pushed and pushed, shutting the door behind her. Sybill put her hand to her eyes, and tried to look out in the yard. It was a night like nothing she had ever seen, a solid blackness swept by blasts of cold, by stinging freezing rain, drumming loudly on the tin roof, making it hard to hear or think: she couldn’t see. Boom! Oof! Thunk! The thunder came then, rolling long and slow like a horrible horrible train, and then the lightning.

  Then Sybill saw the figure out in the yard, with the long-handled ax upraised, and saw her bring it down again and again into the man who lay on the hillside in the streaming rain, the washing mud. Sybill saw everything: his face and hair all red with blood, the blood running down into the steep muddy yard, his black hat where it lay in the pouring rain, all that blood. Thunk! Splat! Sybill was so cold. She stood and saw when the lightning flashed but the storm was going away by then, the flashes fewer, shorter, the thunder a disgruntled kind of grumbling in the big black sky. Then they were together like some kind of enormous animal moving across the yard, moving across the rainswept hillside, toward the well. Sybill saw the red-shingled roof of the well in the flash of light, the rusty dipper dangling from the rope, the huge dark creature creeping through the rain. Then Sybill reached back and opened the cold-pantry door. She walked through it and into the kitchen, shutting the kitchen door behind her, and across the yellow kitchen floor and into the hall. She walked through the dark hall past the dining room and the parlor and across the flowered rug and then up the stairs, sliding her hand along the banister. Sybill was very, very cold. She walked into her room and took off her robe and her fuzzy slippers and put them back into the closet, shutting the door. Then Sybill got back into bed, pulling Molly to her, and closed her eyes and immediately slept, her face tight against Molly’s smooth china cheek.

  Sybill blinks, so slowly she can feel her eyelids open and shut like heavy garage doors. Sybill feels old, old: it’s the Change of Life, for sure. She feels old, and sad, and sick. She doesn’t feel like crying, though: a person has a duty in this world. So it was right, all along, that voice inside her that said, “Sybill honey, don’t do it! Don’t spill the beans!” Lord. Whoever thought it would be anything like this, though, anything like her own mother killing her own father, and all those years ago? Let’s see, it must have been about 1940, because Mother married Verner Hess in 1942, although she never really loved him. Mother really loved Jewell Rife, who disappeared, but Verner Hess loved Mother. And so does Sybill, of course, or maybe she really hates her. Who knows what else is down there, after all? Sybill wishes she’d never let Bob step one foot down in her subconscious. She wishes she’d never come here. Sybill shakes her head to clear it, which she can’t. It seems to be full of smoke, or fog, but at least there are no lights to tell the beginnings of headache. Sybill realizes to her surprise that Bob, the hypnotist, is holding her hand between his two pudgy white ones. Bob presses her hand.

  “My dear Sybill,” he says. But Sybill hates him! He looks like a crazy Kung Fu in that tacky black rumpled shirt, blinking his eyes behind the thick pink glasses. Probably his wife is just a sight.

  “Betty’ll have a fit,” Sybill says. “It serves her right.”

  “I think you should proceed very slowly in terms of what you envision doing next,” Bob says. “It’s a far-from-foolproof process we have here, you know. The reason I directed you to recapture the experience through dream is so that you would repeat it aloud upon awakening, as you did, so that I would not be the only one of us who heard the explanation.”

  “I wish I’d never heard it,” Sybill says.

  “Well, I’m certain that’s true, but there’s a wide margin of error here, we must remember, in any of these interpretations. It’s possible, you see, that you have simply repeated for me your worst fear, an early traumatizing fantasy.” Bob releases Sybill’s hand and sits back in his chair. Outside, Sybill sees that the drizzle has stopped and a pale wash of sunlight lies over everything. Beyond the roses, down the street, Bob’s mailman moves like a robot from house to house.

  Sybill thinks of her mother, leading the Elizabeth Nolting Parsons Study Group, writing poetry, planning the guest list for Myrtle’s wedding, dusting the figurines, embroidering an altar cloth for the Episcopal church, rolling out tiny balls of dough for cloverleaf rolls. “I remember the whole thing,” Sybill says. She knows it’s always the one you least suspect. I love my mother, she thinks.

  Bob clears his throat. “Sybill,” he says, “I really feel . . . ”

  But Sybill has stood right up and now she’s brushing off her skirt with that characteristic gesture she makes whenever she stands, a getting-down-to-business movement of the hands. “Listen, Bob,” she says, “thanks a lot. I hope my headaches go away but whether they do or not, I’ll have to get to the bottom of this.” Then Sybill remembers something else, something perfectly dreadful: soon after that night, she took the long black flashlight from the high hook in the toolshed and shone it down the well. She remembers seeing her father’s face there just for a minute, beneath the shiny black water. She s
aw his high pale forehead, his open eye. And not so long after that, the well was boarded up, and then cemented, as it has been ever since. Grass grows now where it used to be, on the mountainside behind her mother’s house. “I guess I’ll go home,” she says. By “home,” Sybill means Booker Creek instead of The Oaks.

  “I would urge you to . . . ” Bob begins, but Sybill brushes past him, toward the sliding glass door and the real outside. She’s had enough of her subconscious, to say the least! Sybill is furious at Bob now, at her mother, at Betty, at everybody. She has a vision of Edward Bing, upended among these roses. Sybill slides the door shut behind her. Striding briskly down the hypnotist’s sidewalk through the sweet moist air so heavy with roses and rain, Sybill sighs heavily, jingling her car keys.

  Myrtle is tired of going to parties where people ask, “What do you do?” She has noticed that this happens more and more lately, especially with the crowd from the new Racquet Club which they have just recently joined. As if you’re bound to “do” something, like it’s not all right anymore to be a homemaker. Nobody used to ask that. Myrtle says, “Oh, Don and the kids keep me so busy,” and just lets it go at that. Sometimes she says she’s thinking about getting a real-estate license. She doesn’t believe in making a big deal of anything in public. She refuses to make a spectacle of herself. But Myrtle typed her fingers to the bone putting Don through medical school, and she’s not about to do that again! The only degree she ever wanted was her “MRS,” and she’s got it, and that’s good enough for her. As she told Lacy, their three children are her “PHD.” Childhood sweethearts, Myrtle and Don married when they were still in college, sophomore year, and she dropped out then, and it’s been hard work and happiness ever since. Myrtle has often thought that love is not easy. Children are not easy either. But she has never regretted a thing. Myrtle considers that she and Don have a marriage made in heaven, but that is also because they work at it. She doesn’t mean simply the Couples Communication Course they took at the community college last year, either. She means constantly.

  And Myrtle feels that it’s impossible to maintain the quality of a marriage, over the long haul, with both people out there “fulfilling themselves” all the time. As soon as the woman goes out and gets a job, the quality of life goes down. She’s seen it happen again and again. Of course there may be more money, but that soon goes for clothes and fast foods and day care, and you lose out on those moments you cherish—anyway, the money isn’t the point. And she doesn’t mean women who have to work, either, more power to them, she means women who simply choose to. You just can’t do everything, is all Myrtle has to say, although she has many friends who work and of course she’d never dream of saying it to their face. It’s up to the individual. Myrtle can only speak for herself. She knows she’s lucky that Don is so smart and has done so well. On the other hand, she wouldn’t have married anybody who didn’t have those qualities, the potential for success. As Don says, that’s what it’s all about. There’s nothing wrong with money. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to be successful in your job or in your marriage, either one. But if you want a successful marriage, you’ve got to work for it.

  You can’t afford to get fat, for instance, or let yourself go. You have to throw out your old lingerie and have sex in the afternoon. In general you’ve got to work to keep that spark alive between the two of you. Because the pressures of life are immense, and they’ll put it right out, if you’re not careful. Of course Myrtle doesn’t serve dinner topless or meet Don at the door wrapped in Saran Wrap, as suggested by the woman who wrote that book. But she does try to have a really nice dinner ready for him every night when he comes home from the office, for instance, and she makes sure she’s looking her best. Don has a right to expect that. And sometimes she’ll have a little surprise for him, like the night Sean went on the ski trip with the church and she had a little picnic all fixed up for them to eat in the living room, on the rug in front of the fire. Those times are precious. “Occasions” are important.

  And speaking of “occasions,” it was the day before Myrtle’s birthday when everything started to happen. But that’s not quite right, either. That’s when her mother had the first major stroke. Things had started to happen about a year before that, in spite of everything she knows and thinks and feels—because somehow Myrtle is able to hold two opposite things in her mind at the same time. She loves her husband, Dr. Don Dotson, the dermatologist, with all her heart, and they have three lovely children nearly grown, and one of the few truly successful marriages of the eighties. Don is not only her husband, he’s her best friend. They share everything—their hopes, fears, plans, a laugh or two. But it’s also true that Myrtle has days when she feels like her whole life is a function of other people’s, and it’s also true that her children have turned into problem children. Karen, the oldest, is a long-haired countercultural type who is majoring in folklore and living with her boyfriend, a computer whiz. Myrtle just can’t see it—Karen, who used to be so cute. When Karen does come home, which is seldom, she’s hard to talk to. It’s like a wall has grown up between her and Myrtle. Karen really doesn’t listen to anything her mother has to say, she stares out the window, and nibbles her lip. She doesn’t want to go shopping. Theresa, the middle one, is even worse. She’s come home from college this summer saying she won’t go back, that she has no intention of it, that college “sucks.” Theresa has announced that she plans to be a writer, for which she needs not classes but real life. Everything is ironic, Theresa says. And Sean, at fourteen, is the most incomprehensible of all—he’s so angry, but no one knows why.

  And it’s also true that Myrtle has a lover.

  She can’t explain this at all.

  Her lover’s name is Gary Vance. He lives in a rented three-room cinderblock house south of town, toward the county line. Gary is an exterminator.

  Myrtle was driving out there to break up with him when she saw the sign. It said LORDY LORDY MYRTLE IS 40! This was the day (June 1) before her birthday (June 2). This sign was up on the billboard which Clinus had put out in front of the One Stop, which is owned by Myrtle’s aunt Nettie and which she has to drive past twice every time she goes out there to visit Gary Vance. Clinus is her aunt Nettie’s second husband’s retarded son. Although retarded, he’s done just fine—he has an antique and junk business on the side—literally on the side of the One Stop, in a sort of lean-to he’s rigged up. Myrtle heard he got his billboard in a liquidation sale. She’s not even so sure he’s retarded. At any rate, it’s the kind of billboard where you can change the letters on it, like a theater sign. Sometimes Clinus does real well with it and other times his messages don’t make sense, such as A STICK IN TIME, for instance. Mostly it’s HAVE A GOOD DAY or SMILE. Myrtle sees them all, driving back and forth from Gary’s house. Clinus gets her tickled, always has. Mother wouldn’t let them have a thing to do with him, of course, growing up, or with Nettie or Fay either, for that matter. But Myrtle thinks they’re all harmless. Don has always said that Myrtle’s mother is anal retentive and lives in a fantasy world, which is neither here nor there. Don and Myrtle both think Clinus’s messages are funny.

  Or at least she did, until LORDY LORDY MYRTLE IS 40! showed up. How did Clinus know, anyway? Retarded people always know more than you think. She did not want Gary to see that sign whether she was breaking up with him or not. She did not want anybody to see it. Because it’s true that if you don’t look your age, which Myrtle doesn’t, you don’t want it broadcast around. And she has worked hard on herself. People simply cannot believe that she has a daughter twenty-two years old, or Theresa who is eighteen, or Sean, fourteen. They can’t believe she’s had three children at all. She’s weighed one twenty-two for twenty years. So she was furious when she saw that message on Clinus’s billboard. On the other hand, she didn’t have time to stop.

  Myrtle had been thinking, herself, about turning forty, and she had come to some conclusions. The main one was that she would break up with
Gary as soon as she got to his house. They had broken up before, several times. Myrtle doesn’t understand how she ever got into it, anyway. Of course she was practically a baby when she and Don got married, but that’s no excuse. Childhood didn’t last until twenty-five like it does now. And she knew exactly what she was doing. Still, they were very young. Myrtle had children herself when she was her own children’s age. She was just a baby—Gary’s just a baby now. Myrtle and Don grew up together, as Don says. “We’re still growing—” Don says this, too, to everybody. Don believes in lifelong growth, in constant flux and change. Myrtle knows she’s lucky. She knows that’s right.

  But about a year ago, Myrtle began to feel that she had stopped growing along with him. Something happened—she couldn’t pay attention anymore. She found herself just sitting in the family room, for instance, for hours. Or she’d come out of the Piggly Wiggly with her groceries and not have the foggiest notion in the world where she’d parked the car. She kept watching Dan Rather every night with Don, but she couldn’t understand the news. Lebanon for instance did not make sense. She really started noticing the cellulite on her thighs, she got tired of cooking everything she knew how to cook. She locked herself out of the house five times in two months, which she had never done before in her whole life. Nothing was wrong, exactly, but she began to feel like she was missing out—on what, she couldn’t have told you.

  Of course Myrtle had missed the sixties entirely, while she was having babies. She used to hear the Beatles on the radio, that was about it. When she wasn’t having babies, she was typing. She typed her way through the late sixties and early seventies. She never took part in a demonstration, or went to a big rock concert. She never knew anything that happened until she read about it in Time. She watched Vietnam and Watergate on TV, of course. But she never bought a pair of blue jeans before she was thirty. So she missed the whole thing. Then throughout the seventies, she cooked dinner, folded clothes, handed out pencils in her kids’ classrooms for standardized tests, chaperoned busloads of fourth-graders on field trips to Natural Bridge, drove Karen and Theresa to ballet. Those things are important. And Myrtle and Don were growing up together. When they were first married, for instance, Myrtle used the Better Homes and Gardens cookbook, then she used the Fanny Farmer cookbook, and then she used Julia Child. Myrtle started off with lemon chess pie and moved to quiche. Plus she was happy—she had what she wanted, and she’d never wanted the moon.