She felt a bit better as she walked. For a few minutes, Ardell’s lack of enthusiasm for the broken piece from the cottage had made Blanche wonder if she’d wasted her time searching the place. But Ardell was too distracted by business to understand how important the piece and the sexy underwear could be. Ardell also didn’t know just how badly Palmer was trying to scare her off. No, there was no reason to be down. She’d even gotten a little bit of a description of Palmer’s lover. I’m on it! she declared to the street, which remained silent except for the chitter of birds and the gentle hiss of a light breeze. So much quiet in a poor working people’s neighborhood in the middle of a weekday was a good sign. It meant people had paid work. But after last night, she’d just as soon all her neighbors were outside to bear witness. She checked to make sure the small piece of paper she’d stuck between the jamb and the door was still in place and all the windows were fine.
She went inside and called Bunnie, her old high-school mate who Miz Minnie said worked at the Sons of Farleigh Club. The man who answered the phone said Bunnie was out of town for a week. She left her name and number, then debated taking a cup of tea out on the stoop and enjoying the day, but convinced herself she should wash out some underwear first. She was filling a small plastic washbasin at the sink when a kind of pulse beat at the base of her brain: someone she cared about was coming or about to call. Half a bit later she knew it was Leo tapping on her front door. A part of her—the part that liked to keep things neat and avoid pain and foolishness—urgently whispered to her not to answer, but she was already turning the doorknob.
“Hey, Blanche. I was…I was in the neighborhood, so I thought…How you doin?”
Blanche held the door open and stepped back. Leo took a giant step inside.
The Miz Alice wasn’t large enough for the flock of memories that marched in on Leo’s heels, so Blanche suggested they take a ride out into the country. It didn’t help: Leo’s car was even smaller. Blanche found herself breathing in the remembered smell of that night thirty years ago when they’d skinny-dipped in Mudflat Pond, then lay on a blanket in a field of new grass, the moon turning them both to black silver. Now, sitting beside Leo as he drove along the back road toward Hokeysville, both of them in their fifties, her lips still remembered the velvety softness of their first kiss, when she was twelve and he thirteen. She heard the murmur of years of their talk about everything from what life was really about to why plaid skirts made her legs look funny. Blanche rolled down the window as far as it would go and fanned herself with her hand. Leo didn’t glance at her, but she could still feel him examining her as though he could see her through his skin. Blanche looked straight ahead; all she saw was a blur of green with a ribbon of black slicing it in two.
She turned to look at him. “Damn you and your needy-assed self!” she shouted so loudly Leo jumped in his seat. He gave her a quick puzzled look, his bottom lip caught between his teeth.
“If you hadn’t up and married Luella, we…”
Leo reached over and grasped her hand. “I know,” he said. “I know it every minute of every day.”
Blanche felt her heart melting like so much chocolate left out in the sun. She snatched her hand away and faced forward. “I never would have done that to you, Leo. I…”
Leo laughed with no mirth. “No, you wouldn’t have gotten married on me, Blanche, but you wouldn’t marry me either.”
“I didn’t need to marry you, Leo!”
“That’s just what I’m talking about! Even if I wasn’t with Luella, you…”
“Leo, why you got to be with me in a married way? I just don’t understand it. You act like being married is more important than what goes on between two people.”
Leo slowed the car and glanced at her. “You talk like you don’t believe in marriage, but you act like mine is holy or something. My being married ain’t got nothing to do with you and me. We could still…”
“Maybe we could, if you’d been married when I met you, but not now. Leo, me and you…Well, let’s just say I know you, Leo, and I know you don’t no more love that weak, silly, mousy-voiced woman than a chicken wears shoes. And it deeply hurt my feelings that you would pass up what we had for…”
Leo pulled the car over and parked on the side of the road. He turned in his seat and looked at her. “We ain’t getting no younger, Blanche. I ain’t like you. I don’t want to be a old man on my own.”
Blanche’s mouth fell open. She’d thought Luella had just caught Leo at a weak moment and roped him into marriage, but it was worse than that. “Is that what this is all about? You trying to make sure you got somebody to push your wheelchair?” She couldn’t help laughing, even though she could see that Leo was not amused. “I’m sorry, Leo, but you’re old enough to know there ain’t no guarantees, no matter how many insurance policies you think you got. Luella could land in the nursing home before you, or die and leave you to do the best you can. Too bad you didn’t think to ask me if I was interested in the job, no wedding ring attached.”
Blanche turned her head away and wondered if Leo knew that there was more distance between them right now than there’d been when she was in Boston and he was down here: he didn’t trust her to hang in with him if the hard times hit without the government and some preacher amening the deal. She’d thought Leo knew she had his back down the line, as she’d assumed he had hers—before he married Luella. How could he not know that what they’d had was so strong she’d have no choice but to be by his side if he needed her? She couldn’t understand how she had known these things and he had not. Yes, she’d refused to marry him; yes, she had made sure he knew that she was and always intended to be her own woman. But she had also given him all that she knew of herself that was givable. How could she have known him and cared for him since she was a girl and never really understood how much of a blind fool he was? She’d long been aware of the difference between the man in her head and the one in her bed, but she’d thought her relationship with Leo too deep for her to have mistaken him for some make-believe lover. Maybe I’m wrong, she thought, maybe there really is no other kind.
She told Leo she had to get home. As he turned the car around, it occurred to her that all of this might have turned out differently if she’d said everything she’d felt straight out. And why hadn’t she? Leo was afraid of growing old alone. Was she afraid of growing old with someone? She laid her head back and closed her eyes, fully aware that it was not too late. But what would happen if she spoke now? Would Leo leave Luella for her? Did she want him to? Did she want him? Or did she just want him to want her? Or to pull her back from the scary, soul-naked place she was headed with Thelvin? Leo was safer. At least she knew him—or so she’d thought until today. They were both silent for the rest of the trip back to town.
“Blanche, look,” Leo said as they neared her house. “I know you’re down on me right now. I know, far’s you’re concerned, it’s all over between us. But it ain’t like that. It ain’t that easy and you know it.” He put his hand on her knee. The flash that always passed between them leapt through her body.
“We two peas, Blanche. Whether you like it or not. That ain’t changed since we was kids. Luella don’t change it. Your new friend Thorston don’t change it neither.”
Blanched opened her mouth to tell him he was wrong, then stopped. There was no sense trying to convince Leo that he’d been replaced by Thelvin. Leo wouldn’t believe it. Did she?
“Thelvin.”
“What?” Leo looked confused.
“Thelvin. His name’s Thelvin.”
Leo slowed to a stop in front of the Miz Alice. Blanche immediately opened the car door.
“You giving me a headache, Leo. I got to go.” She slammed the door behind her.
While Leo was driving away, Blanche made sure she had her pepper spray in her pocket, then left the house. She looked around for zooming cars and unaccounted-for strangers before setting
out to walk at a fast, arm-swinging clip. She needed to move around, to air herself out. These days her life seemed to bounce back and forth among men—Leo, Thelvin, David Palmer, Mumsfield, Archibald, even Bobby Larsen—like she was the ball in a game of Ping-Pong. She deliberately turned her attention to the trees, shrubs, and grass around her, taking in the different shades of green from just beyond yellow to nearly black. It only half worked. Neither Thelvin nor Leo would go away, and the shadow of David Palmer floated between her and the sun. She went home, checked to make sure the slip of paper was in place, and washed and changed for work.
She was looking forward to the distraction of the dinner for twelve they were serving that night—a nonbicentennial event for some couple having their third anniversary. Blanche wondered if Palmer would be there and visualized an “accident” in which boiling-hot soup was spilled in his lap.
“Mr. Henry say it was just like Bobby Larsen tole ’em,” Clarice began as soon as she stepped into the kitchen where they were working that evening.
“Girl, what are you talking about?” Ardell asked.
“That Bobby Larsen. He out.”
Blanche came to attention. “You mean they let him go?”
Clarice looked from Blanche to Ardell. “Is you two been hittin’ the bottle? That’s what I said, ain’t it? He out ’cause that rich fella from New York City say him and Bobby was huntin’ over by Milford when Maybelle was killed, just like Bobby say. Mr. Henry say Sheriff don’t know what to do now. He say they ain’t got no more suspect. Some of ’em thinkin’ the perp’trator done got clean away. That’s what Mr. Henry say.”
“Perp’trator”! It was bad enough for the cops and military to use cover-up names like ‘perpetrator’ for killer and ‘collateral damage’ for the bombing of innocent people. It was too much to hear that mess from Clarice, who couldn’t even pronounce the word.
“You mean the murderer, don’t you?”
Clarice put her hand on her hip and sighed with impatience. “That’s what I said.”
Blanche had to hold her breath to keep from arguing with Clarice. She didn’t know if she was just getting cranky and ill-tempered as she got older and more menopausal, or whether the way people used words without thinking what they meant was getting worse.
Blanche pictured Daisy dancing with delight at Bobby’s release.
“What about that, Ardell?” Clarice said. “You the one say he didn’t have no alibi.”
“Okay, I was wrong. Now, let’s get this…”
Blanche remembered what else Daisy had told her and interrupted Ardell.
“According to Daisy, Bobby’s got something on the man who really did it,” she said.
“Mr. Henry didn’t mention nothin’ ’bout that,” Clarice said.
“All right, y’all,” Ardell said. “We got work to do.”
Blanche had time to wonder who it was that Bobby had the goods on before she turned her mind to food.
Dessert was being served when Blanche stepped out the back door to catch a bit of the evening’s breeze. She strolled idly around the side of the house, admiring the way the blossoms in the flower beds glowed in the evening light as though lit from inside. She was turning back to the kitchen when she heard voices. A man and a woman? She couldn’t be sure. She stepped into the deeper shadow of the house and stood still, trying to figure out where the voices were coming from.
And there they were, at the other end of the garden, walking in her direction. Shit! She didn’t feel up to having to be pleasant to guests. She stepped back even farther and felt her shoes sink into the soft dirt of a flower bed. The couple turned and headed toward the other side of the house, then stopped, turned toward each other, and began talking. The woman folded her arms across her chest. The man put his hands on the woman’s shoulders; then, even though she didn’t resist, he yanked her toward him with force. The strength of his kiss pressed her head back. He let her go so abruptly the woman swayed for half a second. He said something to her, then turned sharply away. The woman reached out a hand as if to stop him but he continued toward the house. Blanche watched him leave and so did the woman. As he came into the glow from a window, Blanche recognized Seth Morris. I shoulda known! she thought. Bugging some other female, poor woman. Was she all right? Blanche turned toward her. The woman was still standing where Seth had left her. She turned her head in Blanche’s direction as though feeling herself watched. Blanche squinted her eyes. Mindless of the flowers beneath her feet, she stepped closer to the woman. Well, I’ll be! Blanche’s lips spread into a grin. She stepped boldly out onto the path, now wanting to be seen even more badly than she’d wanted to stay hidden just a few moments ago. Her step was springy with delight at the shock slowly registering on the woman’s face as Blanche walked toward her.
“Why, Karen, honey, I thought that was you.” She put her hand on her hip. “Tell me, does Mumsfield know you’re out here exchanging bodily fluids with Seth Morris?”
Karen opened and closed and opened her mouth before she turned and stumbled hurriedly toward the house.
“Have a good night, now, Karen,” Blanche called after her. “And give Mumsfield my best.” She laughed her way back to the kitchen. It seemed Archibald was pretty good at smelling a rat after all.
Blanche figured Karen must have left the party before they’d finished breaking down to be already sitting in her car outside Blanche’s door when she got home that night. Blanche saw her but didn’t speak. She put the key in the lock and had just opened the door when Karen spoke.
“Please. Please, just let me talk to you.” She got out of her car and joined Blanche on the stoop.
Blanche was definitely interested in what Karen had to say, but she didn’t intend to make it easy for her. All of Karen’s mousy softness was gone, her lipstick had worn off, and she looked at Blanche with eyes that were far from girlish. The first of those tiny little lines, like hairline cracks, that some older white women develop around their mouths were just beginning to show. She looked well used.
Blanche opened the door wide enough for Karen to come in, then changed her mind. She could feel the Miz Alice shiver at the idea of letting Karen’s vibe loose inside.
“We can talk out here,” she said, and closed the door.
Karen turned to face her. Blanche crossed her arms and waited.
“Do you want me to beg? Do you want money?” Karen opened her purse and took out a checkbook. “How much will it take?”
Blanche still didn’t speak.
Karen’s shoulders slumped. “You probably think I’m some kind of slut, or just after Mumsfield’s money. But it’s not like that. I swear.”
“Oh? Was that mouth-to-mouth resuscitation you were doing on Seth Morris?” Blanche remembered the train station where she’d first seen Seth deep-kissing a woman. She pointed at Karen. “It was you with Seth at the train station!”
Karen didn’t deny it. “Marrying Mumsfield means everything to me. Everything. I broke it off with Seth. I told him so. Tonight, when you saw us. I’ll make Mumsfield a good wife, a…respectable wife. I’ll…I do care for him. I do. Seth was just…” Karen lowered her head and rubbed her forehead.
“What do you want?” Blanche asked her.
Karen’s head snapped up. “Just…please, don’t tell Mumsfield. I’ll push back the wedding, if you like. Give you time to see that I…I’ll…”
Blanche put her hands on her hips. “If you ain’t after his money, what is it?”
Karen stared at her for a few moments. Blanche could feel her trying to decide what to say, what bit of mealy-mouthing would get her over.
“You don’t know what it’s like living in my father’s house,” she hissed in a low, frantic voice. “He…I just want my own home, to be my own…”
Blanche had expected something more in the line of wheedling and whining but didn’t show her surprise. “You coul
d get your own place instead of…”
Karen’s laugh was both wild and harsh. “My father doesn’t believe in that kind of independence. As he says, ‘We’re a family. We live together. Anyone who doesn’t live here is not a member of this family. Anyone who is not a part of this family will not inherit,’ ” Karen said in a deep voice, mimicking her father. “He’s everywhere!” She looked over her shoulder as if she expected to see him at the end of Blanche’s street, then turned back to Blanche with the faintest shimmer of tears reddening the rims of her eyes. “When we were kids, Daddy…”
Blanche both wanted Karen to say what it was her father had done and didn’t want to know. She folded her arms tightly across her chest, warding off the distress swirling around Karen like a dust devil. “There ain’t no law against you getting a job and taking care of yourself.”
Karen looked at Blanche as though she’d never seen her before, then lowered her head. When she raised it, her tears were gone and defeat was written like fresh wrinkles on her face. “I should have known when I first met you, the way you behaved…I tried everything I could think of to get rid of you, but you…”
Blanche took a step closer to Karen. “Everything you could think of? What do you mean? What did you try?”
For a bit of a second, Karen’s eyes shifted to Blanche’s front window, then quickly away. Blanche heard glass breaking, saw a paper-wrapped rock sailing into her life like fear made solid.
“It was you! You!” she pointed her finger at Karen. “You’re the one who…”
Karen held her hands out in front of her. “I…Please, I just wanted you to go away before you…”
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