Family Linen

by Lee Smith

  “The worst part is,” I said to Millard, “and I’d stake my life on it, honey, the worst part is that the way it was, you could tell it had happened over and over, it’s probably been going on for years. You could tell she was used to him telling her like that, and resigned to it, and you could tell he was used to getting it whenever he said. It was that kind of a thing,” I said to Millard, who lit two cigarettes and handed me one. My whole hand was shaking.

  “Do you reckon she knows?” Millard asked, meaning Elizabeth.

  “No,” I said, “or if she does, she don’t know she does.” I thought this was more likely.

  “I’m going to talk to her,” I said.

  Millard said, “Honey, I don’t know if I’d do that or not, if I was you. Things’ll either get better, or they’ll get worse, and you can wait and do it then.” This is how Millard was, and one of the things that made him so easy to live with. And also he’d come right out and tell you what he thought, but he’d never try to tell you what to do. That’s the one thing I won’t stand for, never have. Everybody knows it.

  “Well, I am anyway,” I told him then. Elizabeth was my sister after all, and so was Fay.

  But Elizabeth wouldn’t listen.

  I came up to her on the sidewalk, two days later, outside the five and dime, she was all dressed up and looked real pretty.

  “Hello, Nettie,” she said in a way that said something about my old coat, and my hat, and the way Millard and me lived. She looked beyond my face.

  So things got off on the wrong foot right then, and me with the best of intentions.

  “Listen,” I said to her, speaking fast, and keeping my voice low. “Elizabeth, I don’t want to hurt your feelings, but there’s something I’ve got to say.” People were going by on the street, a lot of them nodding and speaking, and she kept smiling and nodding at them. A little icy drizzle fell all around.

  “It’s about Jewell,” I started, and her face iced over, but she kept on smiling. “I don’t know if you know what he’s been doing,” I said, “but it’s not right, and it’s time you sent him packing,” was what I said. Now I know I did this all wrong, there’s ways of beating around the bush to put a person at their ease, and ways to sugar-coat a bitter pill. But those ways are not my way. Once I decide to do a thing, or say it, I go on and get it over with, that’s the way I am.

  “It’s none of your business, whatever you’re talking about,” she said.

  “I mean about him and Fay.” I said it plain.

  Elizabeth stood staring at me for a minute with the misty rain falling between us. She opened and shut her red mouth. Then it was like she gathered herself up somehow, so she stood about three inches taller.

  “Well!” she said. “I never in all my life! I don’t have the faintest notion what in the world you might be talking about, Nettie. I can’t imagine what you’re referring to. I don’t have the faintest idea. I am a happily married woman, which ought to be evident even to you, and these insinuations will get you no place. Oh you’d like to see the end of Jewell, I’m sure, you think you might have access to some of my money then. But don’t you think for a minute I’ll fall for such a trick as that,” Elizabeth said.

  I was too surprised to say a thing. You’d have thought she really believed it, she spit out those words so strong. Maybe she did believe it right then, for a minute, or maybe it just came to her as a way not to listen to me.

  “Listen, Elizabeth—” I started again, but she opened up her red-and-black striped umbrella with such a whoosh, she damn near poked my face.

  “I’ll thank you to stay out of my business in the future, Nettie dear.” Her voice was cold, sugary sweet. “My marriage does not concern you. And if I ever do need any advice, I’ll seek it elsewhere, I can assure you. I certainly don’t need either criticism or consolation from a two-bit whore.” Then she was gone, off up the street, red-and-black umbrella, black suit and hat, all elegant. I stood there looking after her, I saw how it was. Even if she did know it, and I got the feeling she must of had an idea about it by then, she didn’t want to hear it. Well, can you blame her? What a thing to know! And her putting on all those airs. As for her calling me a whore, that didn’t set too well with Millard, but it never bothered me. I could see why she said it, I know how she thinks, but that is just one of those words that don’t mean a thing in the world to me. I can’t say I had not given plenty of thought to Millard’s wife living over across town, and to his three kids, and one of them retarded. But what’s done is done. I went on back in the shop and worked on the books for the rest of the day, and never did see her close up like that again for weeks.

  Not until he disappeared, I reckon, thinking back.

  I mean Jewell.

  It was in March, close onto six weeks later. We had been having crazy weather as I recall, hail and some of those early thunderstorms you can get sometimes in March. And it was still bitter cold. Millard had had him a big drunk—he was bad to drink from time to time, he couldn’t help it, it was a sickness with him. This happened every three or four months. Then he’d get real sick after it, and I’d have to run the shop, and get somebody to sit up there with him. Well, that’s how Millard was, and Millard’s daddy before him. But Millard was such a sweet man, I couldn’t complain.

  So Millard was getting over a big drunk when this all happened. I had been real busy. And the first I knew of it was when Fay came down to the shop all frazzled and wild-looking, a couple of days after the worst one of them early-spring thunderstorms. I was in there alone. “Let me make you a bow, honey,” I said to Fay. “Looky here.” I showed her some new satin ribbon.

  But Fay shook her head back and forth, and seemed all wrought up. She said something about a trip, pulling at my arm. I could tell she wanted me to come with her, so after a while, I closed up and went. Water was running down the gutters beside the new sidewalks, I remember. And several times we had to step over limbs of trees that had fallen across the sidewalk, or walk around. Some men were sawing up one whole tree that had fallen on the Harrison property, but we saw not a sign of Grace. The sunshine was sharp and cold. When we walked around to the side of Elizabeth’s house, to go up the driveway, I saw that Fay had left the back door wide open. Now this looked funny, and made a bad feeling start inside my stomach right then. “What’s going on up here?” I asked Fay, but she just looked at me sideways and ducked her head, giggling. I went in the cold-pantry, then the kitchen, which was a mess. Dirty dishes all over the sink, sugar spilled out on the kitchen table, the cookie jar broken in three pieces on the floor. Elizabeth would not have left a kitchen that way if her life depended on it.

  “Elizabeth!” I screamed.

  No answer.

  Then I felt this little tugging, tugging at my sleeve. It was Fay, so I let her take me into the parlor. There sat Elizabeth. Fay pointed at her, and giggled, and then started crying. Elizabeth sat on the loveseat, just sat there, hands down slack at her side. She sat staring out the window down toward town, waiting, I reckon, for his return. Her eyes were empty and flat, she looked like she had had a complete nervous breakdown, which I guess she had. I never did figure out exactly how long it was between the time Jewell disappeared and the time Fay came for me. I don’t know how long Elizabeth sat there. I do know it was a day or so. She had soiled herself, waiting. Fay and the children had eaten up what was there. The icebox was empty, they had left things like bread crusts and apple cores everywhere, broken china and cookies all over the kitchen. You never saw such a place. Sybill and little Arthur were rampaging through the whole house, pulling things down, the way children that age will do if they’re not attended. Arthur in particular was always hell on wheels, the cutest, most mischievous little boy, but he was shaky and crying that day, and Sybill would not let go of her dolly. Fay kept holding my sleeve. She seemed younger than ever, like one of the kids.

  I took a good look around and then I calle
d Millard and told him to come up there. Arthur quit crying and started to squeal. He loved Millard, who would give him a piggyback ride at the drop of a hat. Then I was fixing to dial up Elva Pope and get her to come up there and help me too, and maybe Mr. Camp, who was the Episcopal minister then, but Elizabeth came up behind me and put her hand over the phone. It spooked me, her coming up so silent, when I’d thought she was plumb off her head.

  “Nettie,” she said, and there was a tone in her voice which told me she might not be as crazy as I had thought, “don’t tell anybody else, please.”

  I put the phone back on the hook and turned around to face her. “All right,” I said.

  “Jewell has left me, as you see,” she told me then, “and Fay is pregnant.” Looking at Fay, I could see this was so, in fact Fay had almost got to that point where anybody would notice it. But she was a big girl, and wore Daddy’s sweaters around all the time.

  “Who all knows it?” I asked, and Elizabeth said, “Nobody.” We didn’t say whose it was. Elizabeth’s hair straggled all down her back, it looked like a rat’s nest, her face looked like death warmed over. Although I had hated her putting on airs, it hurt me to see her that way.

  “Come on over here, honey,” I said, and took her and washed her face in warm water at the kitchen sink, and after I did that, she broke down. “It’s been terrible—” she said this over and over. “He does horrible things, he wants horrible things.” But she never did say what these things were, and I didn’t ask her, either. Her eyes looked like big blue holes poked in her tight white skin. She had not eaten, or slept, I could tell, for some time. I washed her off and got her to put on some clean clothes. I put Fay to making some Wheatena and they all ate that. The kids ate like they were just starving, and Sybill feeding her doll. Millard had got there by then. We made Elizabeth go lie down on the loveseat in the parlor, since we couldn’t get her to go upstairs, and before her head touched the pillow, she was sound asleep. She woke up one time, about twenty minutes after she fell asleep, and sat straight up and said that Jewell had gone on a business trip, and that he would be back on Thursday. She said this in a calm, regular voice. Then she lay back down and went back to sleep, moaning and twisting and calling out, and crying. I hate to see a person cry in their sleep, but she would do this for months to come.

  Millard gave Arthur a piggy-back ride all over the house. Then Fay helped me bathe the children, who were as dirty as could be, and then I got them to bed and Fay went to sleep sitting up in the wing chair in the parlor, didn’t want to leave Elizabeth. Fay slept a heavy sleep like a little child, with her mouth open, head hanging off to the side, pulled forward by her heavy yellow hair.

  Now all this sobered Millard up pretty fast, believe me. And wasn’t no use him saying not to get involved, we was involved, and that was all there was to it. Well, we spent the night up there, of course, drinking coffee and talking about what to do, and ended up sleeping finally for a couple of hours in Jewell and Elizabeth’s bed. A person can do anything if they get tired enough. But before that, we cleaned up the house the best we could, and investigated, as Millard called it. It did look for certain like Jewell had planned to go on a trip, as she said. His toilet things were gone from the bathroom, and some of the dresser drawers were pulled out like somebody had packed in a rush. He had not took much that we could tell, just the toilet things as I said and maybe some socks and some underwear. Now since Jewell was gone so much anyway, what puzzled us was how Elizabeth had seemed so dead set, at first, on the fact that he’d left for good this time. We didn’t know what to make of it. We figured at the very least that they’d had it out, the two of them, and had a big argument, and then he’d left. Also it seemed funny to us how the Packard was still there, still out in the driveway full of gas, like Jewell had just left it, waiting. But then Millard said that was the real tip-off, probably, that he was taking off for sure, that meant that he had had somebody come for him, such as Mavis Lardner, or got somebody else to drive him over to Buncoe to catch the train. Jewell Rife got around, he knew a lot of people, he could of gotten anybody to come up here and drive him. So he had left the car for Elizabeth, Millard had figured, and then that started us wondering what else he might have left in the way of support.

  Precious little, as it so happened. After we left town, which I will tell about directly, Millard went to the bank and explained himself and looked into it, and Jewell had nearabout cleaned her out during all those years he’d been living so high on the hog. He had got him a hundred dollars the day of his trip, that was all, and there was some left in there of course, but nothing compared to what you would have thought, which would have took care of her and Fay for the rest of their lives. Millard said Geneva Vail, one of the tellers, remembered Jewell coming in that day, and getting the money. She said he got a hundred-dollar bill, that that was how he usually cashed a check. She said he was wearing a red-striped tie. Geneva Vail said that Jewell was in a real good humor, and said he was fixing to go on a little trip. Fay said this too, and it was all she’d ever say, when Millard and me asked her about it. Oh, we asked her a lot. She’d nod her head up and down, up and down, and say “Took a trip” or “Took a big trip,” over and over, like she was agreeing with herself, and thought she was real smart.

  Millard and I did this. We packed up a bag with things in it for the children and Fay and Elizabeth, and I went downtown and gathered up some things for myself, and Millard drove us all over to Buncoe and put us on the train going to Lynchburg, where Millard’s aunt lived, this was Mrs. Edna Everhart. Edna Everhart had raised Millard and his two brothers and his sister, her and her husband by then deceased, so he thought a lot of her, and said she would be glad to help out. He had not seen her in years, and remembered her like an angel.

  Well, this was not the case. In fact, she liked to not have took us in at all. I don’t know what we would of done then! Millard called her on the long-distance telephone from Buncoe, after he put us all on the train, and told her we were on the way, and he said she squawked like a pulley hen. It seems that Edna Everhart had been as sweet as a saint in her middle years and then turned sour with age, as people sometimes will. But Millard said he was sending money, and said he was sending more than he’d planned to, to mollify her, so finally she said, all right. But she was not friendly at the outset and just about all she ever gave us to eat at first was hominy grits. She wouldn’t let me cook, either, but later she got to like us and wanted me to fix her ham and red-eye gravy all the time. She’d dip snuff and listen to baseball on the radio. She was real interested in baseball, wouldn’t hardly let you listen to the war news. So it was all right once we got there, we stayed for close onto four months, until Fay had the baby and Elizabeth got over her nervous breakdown.

  Getting to Lynchburg, though, was something! I won’t forget that trip as long as I live. Sybill and Arthur were real fretful, and anything you said to Sybill, you had to tell her dolly too, or she wouldn’t do it. Fay was so excited about the train, she just loved it, and got up and walked back and forth, if you didn’t watch her. She was real big. Elizabeth wore all black. She was playing it to the hilt by then, hard at work grieving. She sat and stared out the window at Virginia passing by, and cried real softly into one of a number of linen handkerchiefs she’d brought along for the purpose. She said her reputation was destroyed, and she was “ruined.” She wouldn’t eat a thing. But Fay ate everything in sight, all the fried chicken we’d brought, and all the pies, and kept wanting me to buy her some more popcorn and Coca-Cola. Everybody on the whole train was looking at us. I’d walk out back on the platform from time to time, and smoke me a cigarette, and take a little nip of the bourbon Millard had poured into a bottle for me to bring. I thought we’d never get there.

  But we did, and even if Edna Everhart herself took some softening up, her place was just about perfect for what we needed, some miles from town, with no close neighbors. All she said, to those that came by, was that s
he had decided to take in some boarders for the spring and early summer, and introduced us. We tried to keep Fay out of the way so Edna Everhart wouldn’t have to introduce her too, and she didn’t have to. As her time got closer and closer, Fay got sweet, and quieter. She used to sit for hours on Edna Everhart’s back porch in the glider, with both hands on her stomach, feeling that baby move, and a smile spread out all over her face. This was a good time for me and Elizabeth too, we got on better than we ever had and Lord knows, than we did ever after. At first Elizabeth got all dressed up in black every day, and sat in a rocker in the front room and cried.

  Now this cut no ice with Edna Everhart. “Why don’t you get up and play hearts?” she said. Edna Everhart was wild for cards, and had not got to play any while her husband was alive, he was against it, so she wanted to play all the time.

  But at first, the only thing Elizabeth would do was cry. Next, all she’d do was talk.

  “Nettie,” she’d say, picking at my sleeve, “Nettie, listen here—” All the stories she told then were about how much Jewell Rife had loved her, and how fine a man he was, until by and by his leaving had turned into something fine and tragic that showed his “nobility,” which she called it, although she was real vague as to how all this worked. After we heard on the radio that the Nazis had invaded Denmark and Norway, and gone into France, it got even wilder, her saying that Jewell had gone off to Europe to get in the war, and then finally that he’d died in it, a hero.

  Millard, who came over there to see us three times, said as far as he could tell, it didn’t much matter what Elizabeth thought about where Jewell was. He had not showed back up at home, and nobody knew a thing, so Elizabeth’s guess was as good as anybody’s. Millard said everybody in town was buzzing with it, swearing that they weren’t surprised a bit, and that they’d known all along it was coming. People will always say that, like it’s important. Millard had put it out that Elizabeth had had to leave for a rest cure because she had had a nervous breakdown, and people said they had seen that coming, too. Millard said that the rest of us had just come along for the ride. Well, nobody questioned any of it, except to sympathize and ask, when were we coming back? Millard told them, when we were ready to. He said everybody felt real sorry for Elizabeth. She had a lot of friends in town there as I said, she was a well-known woman. Not a soul had heard from Jewell, or knew where he might be, and Mr. Bascom came by the flower shop one day to see Millard and cry like a baby, and say that he felt terrible, and it was all his fault. Well Millard set him straight on that, right away. But he was the best-hearted man, and he felt awful.