by Julie Kibler
“Oh, come on. It’ll be an adventure,” Miss Isabelle said. Now, if it was even possible, she looked excited about the Pitt, while I, in turn, squirmed. But I shrugged, pleased she was back to herself—and knowing the argument was futile anyway.
“Whatever you say, Miss Isabelle.” I exited and pulled across the bridge and into the dinky parking lot. Logging trucks idled on the gravel in an open space between the restaurant and a cheap motel. “Looks like Paul Bunyan eats here, too,” I observed. Miss Isabelle rolled her eyes and hobbled her way into the greasy spoon—the only way to describe our first view of the place. I followed patiently, holding my breath and praying she wouldn’t stumble on anything. I knew she’d slap me if I offered my arm. A waitress in a pink polyester zip-up uniform dress stuffed an order pad in her pocket and a pen behind her ear and hurried toward us. She grabbed a menu from a stack at the counter and greeted Miss Isabelle.
“One, hon? Nonsmoking?”
Miss Isabelle’s jaw fell slack inside her mouth, causing her chin to droop unattractively low against her neck. She glared at the waitress. The woman’s assumption that we weren’t together—even though we were standing close enough to kiss!—came as no surprise to me.
In the meantime, the waitress hardly glanced my way, but about that time, I recognized her. By golly, if it wasn’t Susan Willis, queen of the homecoming court the year Steve and I graduated. Steve had been king and escorted her across the field, to the dismay of her redneck daddy and nearly the whole town. I could tell she didn’t recognize me back, though. I almost felt embarrassed for her, so I hoped maybe her amnesia would hold. I couldn’t imagine being the most popular girl in school, only to end up waitressing at the Pitt Grill nearly two decades later. I’d always thought she had pretty hair in high school, but good heavens, if she didn’t need to take the eighties bangs down a notch or three now to bring her into the new century and get a few lowlights to tone down that piss yellow.
Miss Isabelle tsked with her tongue and said, “Table for two. If that’s a problem, we’ll sit at the counter.”
“Two?” Susan’s head shook just enough for me to detect it, but she pulled herself together. “Oh, yes, ma’am, we have a table. Of course we do. Right this way.”
As we followed, I wondered, What would she think of my life? Sure, I owned my own business, but I lived month to month, constantly worrying about whether I’d be able to pay the bills and feed and clothe my kids. How was that any better than slaving away for tips at the Pitt, probably trying to support a couple of kids because your no-good husband had run off? Maybe we had more in common than I’d ever dreamed we would in high school.
Or maybe not. Maybe her husband owned the Pitt Grill.
Susan kept glancing curiously—and not especially covertly—at us the whole time we ate. I couldn’t decide if it was because she was nosy, trying to figure out the relationship between Miss Isabelle and me, or if she was trying to place me. I actually preferred the first. But I knew my luck had run out and Susan had recovered her memory when I heard, right as Miss Isabelle and I were about to exit the Pitt, “Why, Dorrie Mae Curtis, is that you?”
I cringed and made a quarter turn, still hoping for mercy. But Susan had stopped halfway through sliding the five-dollar tip Miss Isabelle had left at our table into her zip-up polyester pocket. The look on her face confirmed our reunion was unavoidable.
“Hi, Susan. You’re right. It’s me, Dorrie. How’re you doing?” I crossed my fingers, hoping she’d give an easy answer, something standard, like “You’re looking great! Can you believe it’s been almost twenty years?” and let me go on.
But my luck was all out of whack by then.
“Oh, Dorrie, you wouldn’t believe me if I told you the half of it. Me and Big Jim bought this place back in ’98”—so my backup prediction was correct: Hubby owned the Pitt!—“and then Big Jim got too fat for his britches, as if that’s a surprise. A gen-u-wine redneck real estate tycoon. He left me for some young thing he met over to the new roller rink we built. He got custody of the rink and I got the Pitt, and it’s all I can do to keep it running and chase after our boys. All four—who are following right in their daddy’s footsteps, far as I can tell when I can hog-tie them for a minute.”
So, prediction number one was correct, too. I wasn’t sure how to feel about that. “Uh-huh, well, I’m sorry to hear—gosh, good to see you landed feetfirst.” I shrugged. No response could do that story justice.
“What about you, Dorrie Mae? What’s been happening with you all these years? I bet you and Steve have a whole football team by now. Y’all moved away, right?”
Like she could have missed us if we were still in that little town. And I wished she’d stop calling me Dorrie Mae. I’d had to move nearly two hundred miles to lose the name I’d hated all through school. I glanced over at Miss Isabelle, who clutched her handbag tight against her waist, her lips twitching. If she called me Dorrie Mae when we got to the car, I’d screech.
“Sounds like you got the football team. I only have two—a boy and a girl. We’re down the road in Arlington, in DFW. Steve and I, we’re divorced, too.”
“Aw, that’s too bad,” Susan said, screwing her face into something resembling sympathy—as if she hadn’t just told me her equally, if not more, pitiful tale! “You and Steve. Me and Big Jim.” She sighed loudly. “Remember when me and Steve were homecoming queen and king? Just goes to show all those yearbook predictions don’t mean a thing, huh? I always thought the four of us would be the ones with fairy-tale endings.”
“You and me both, Susan. Well, listen, my friend and I need to get back on the road. We’ve got a long trip ahead.”
“Oh, well, where ya headed? Who’s this nice lady?”
Susan was obviously desperate for conversation with anyone over the age of eighteen who didn’t wear a trucker’s cap and have syrup stains on his elbows. I felt bad for her, I did, but not enough to keep this surreal reunion going much longer. I glanced at Miss Isabelle.
“Dorrie and I are traveling to the Cincinnati area for a family funeral,” she said. Her politely icy tone dared Susan to say more. She obviously hadn’t completely forgiven Susan for assuming we were separate parties.
“Oh, I’m so sorry to hear.” Susan’s gaze toggled—me, Miss Isabelle, me, Miss Isabelle. She looked more bewildered than ever about how the two of us fit together. “Well,” she said. “I won’t keep you, Dorrie Mae. Now you be sure and stop in again next time you come through. If I’d recognized you earlier, your tab would have been on the house. Both of yours, of course. Can I at least send you ladies with drinks to go? Coffee? Cokes?”
“No, we’re good. Thanks anyway. You take care, Susan.”
I turned and headed deliberately toward the door. This time, I let Miss Isabelle follow.
* * *
“HOW EXACTLY DOES one go from homecoming king to someone who mooches off his ex-wife?”
Ouch. Miss Isabelle never minced words, but that stung. I’d figured she’d have all kinds of nosy questions for me after Susan let that particular cat out of the bag, but we hadn’t even been back on the interstate for two miles, heading for the state line. “Oh, Miss Isabelle, it’s such a long story. You don’t want to hear about it. Hey, what’s twenty-three across?”
Miss Isabelle sniffed and tugged her crossword book out of the console, folded back on itself to a half-completed puzzle. “Twenty-three across: ‘a rodent with a case of stage fright.’”
“That’s a cinch. Possum.”
“Seven letters. O-possum.” She marked the letters while I did my best to miss bumps in the road. It wasn’t too hard. We weren’t to Arkansas yet. After we crossed Stateline Avenue in Texarkana, I couldn’t be responsible for letters crawling over into wrong boxes. “Mmm hmm,” she said. “Opossum.”
The word lingered in the air like a challenge. I felt the urge to roll over and play dead.
“You know, Miss Isabelle,” I said, “my momma and I, we’re nothing alike.”
> “Were we talking about your mother?” She contemplated me across the car.
“Well, if we’re talking about Steve and why I let him take advantage of me, I guess we’ll have to talk about my momma first.”
“Go on.” She said it calmly, as if she were some kind of shrink, me reclining on her couch. Tell me how you really feel about your mother.…
“Momma has always needed someone to rescue her. First, a man, and now me. I swore up and down I’d never do that. Early on, I made up my mind to be self-sufficient. I’d make damn sure I had the resources to take good care of my kids—with or without a man by my side.
“Of course, I hoped Steve and I would marry and start a family, but I took cosmetology courses my senior year of high school as a backup plan. I was lucky I did, because I came up pregnant two weeks before graduation, and Steve dropped out of college after one semester. He said he needed to be home when his baby arrived so he could take care of things.” I snorted. “His idea of taking care of things was literally being home, watching Stevie Junior all day while I worked my butt off—pardon my French—at the Stop ’n Chop, then going out with his loser friends and drinking beer all night.”
Miss Isabelle clucked her tongue.
“I mean, the complimentary child care was something, but come on, really? I also worried that Stevie Junior had stayed strapped in the baby seat all day, because that’s where he usually was when I got home. Steve always claimed he’d only put him there for a minute to keep him safe while he showered or started dinner—that is, took the hamburger out of the freezer and set it on the counter for me to thaw and cook.
“And you’re right. I let him get away with it, I guess. But I kept my promise to myself. My kids are healthy and happy … more or less. Most of the time.” I reached to turn up the radio and fiddled with the stations. There wasn’t anything but country music, and I doubted that would change between now and Memphis. I twisted the volume knob back down and decided to risk another nosy question I hoped would eventually bring us back to the subject of Robert. “Tell me more about your mother, Miss Isabelle.”
Miss Isabelle turned her face to the window. “After all these years, why do you still call me that? You could just call me Isabelle. But I guess it doesn’t matter as long as you don’t call me any of those other silly names you come up with.”
“Hey, now, silly names—that’s my trademark. But you know, ‘Miss Isabelle’ just flows. It’s cute. Plus, one thing my momma did teach me was to respect my elders.” I waited. She didn’t let me down. She twisted around and whacked my elbow with the crossword puzzle book. I pretended to duck—not easy while driving. “I call all my little old ladies Miss Whatever. Don’t you think for a minute I’m singling you out for special treatment.” Miss Isabelle rolled her eyes. “But you changed the subject.”
“It’s such a long story,” she said, echoing my own words.
“Well, it’s, what, nearly a thousand miles from home to Cincinnati? And we’re less than two hundred in. I’d like to hear more.”
“I think…” Miss Isabelle paused and gazed out the window again. A cover of clouds had sneaked up on us as we left my hometown and headed for the Arkansas border, and now a slow drizzle began to fall, creating a teal-and-chocolate blur of the tall pines we barreled past at the side of the road, like some kind of painting—like, you know, that guy Monet. Thunder rumbled in the distance. “I think my mother was terrified.”
5
Isabelle, 1939
AFTER WE STOLE past the sign leading into Shalerville that night, we ducked into the shadows the few times we saw anyone. Robert walked me as far as the end of my street, then watched from that distance until I reached my house. I turned in time to see him slip away from the shelter of a huge old oak he’d hidden behind until I reached my front steps.
I sent up a prayer for his safety, too. I hoped it reached a God who protected both the whites and the Negroes. I suspected our town worshiped one who wouldn’t honor such a request. In the purple dusk beside the porch, I waited until an automobile roared nearby, then clattered through the front door. I called out I was home, breathing easier when Mother didn’t come to tell me good night or quiz me about Earline’s party. As I drifted to sleep, I realized I’d been wrong about so much—not the least, my ability to handle myself in an adult world. But something else, too: I’d been wrong about Robert. That his existence had no bearing on mine.
This intrigued me. Beyond simple gratitude for his being in the right place at the right time, for his intervention in what might have been disastrous, I began to entertain thoughts it had been more than coincidence. It seemed almost mad, but I couldn’t banish the notion that something bigger than both of us had steered the situation, bringing us both to a place where we couldn’t avoid each other.
I saw my prayers had reached the appropriate God when Robert returned to our house the next week safe and sound, his jaw nicely healed from the imprint of Louie’s fist. I was in the kitchen, sent by my mother to inquire whether Cora was ready to serve lunch, when a rap at the back door startled me. I turned. The window framed Robert’s face and close-cropped head. Heat rushed to my face. I ducked my chin against my chest as Cora hurried to the door.
“Excuse me, Miss Isabelle, while I let my son in. Tell your momma luncheon will be served right on the nose at noon—like I told her this morning.” She smirked. We had an unspoken arrangement: We both agreed Mother was fussy, and Cora trusted me to keep her facetiousness to myself. When she waved Robert in, I knew he hadn’t seen me through the window. His neck seemed to flush to a deeper shade of brown, and his prominent cheekbones turned even darker. I remained motionless, like a waiting chess piece on our kitchen’s checkered tiles. Cora studied each of us with puzzled eyes, and I knew then Robert had kept my misadventure and his subsequent rescue a secret. Her voice, full of quiet authority, jolted me into motion. “You run along now, Miss Isabelle. Your momma will worry herself if you don’t tell her what I said.”
“Thank you, Cora. I’ll tell Mother,” I said, then turned to Robert. “Hello, Robert,” I said, but I stumbled over the easy syllables. He bobbed his head, looking everywhere but at me. I turned and fled, suddenly conscious of how I walked—my awkward gait surely exposed my jangled nerves.
“What was that about?” I heard Cora mutter as I slunk down the hall toward the parlor.
I slowed to a tiptoe and heard only a low mumble, but my best guess was that Robert said, “Nothing, Momma.” Cora harrumphed, and flatware clattered against china and the oven door creaked. I pictured her bewilderment as she transferred hot dishes to a serving tray.
Later, while she was doing the clearing up, I excused myself from the table and ducked into the kitchen again, knowing I had only a moment before she’d return with the tray. My heart raced when I found Robert still at the table, engrossed in a schoolbook splayed next to the plate Cora would have filled between trips to the dining room. He looked up, his expression changing as he discovered me in the doorway instead of his mother. His puzzled eyes questioned me, but he didn’t speak.
“You made it home without any problems?” There he sat, in obvious good health, but I didn’t know what else to say, and we couldn’t just gaze at each other indefinitely.
“It was fine. Nobody even noticed me being late—” he began.
“I was lucky. Mother never even came to check on me—”
Our words intersected, and we laughed nervously.
“I said thank you before, but Robert, I can’t tell you … I’ve replayed the possibilities time and again.…” I took a deep breath and plunged on. “You being there that night, seeing me leave town, following me—I believe it was kismet.”
After I said the word, I felt my face flush. It was a word I’d discovered in Sunday’s crossword puzzle, after I’d lain awake so long the night before. It seemed a sign my thoughts weren’t ridiculous. But I’d never heard the word uttered in everyday conversation, and now I just knew Robert would find me silly and
dramatic—if he even knew what it meant. Especially if he knew what it meant.
The amusement in his eyes confirmed two things: He knew the word’s meaning, or could discern it from the context, and I was dramatic. Yet, he didn’t deny my statement, and his amusement verged on another emotion I couldn’t name, although I wanted to.
* * *
THAT SPRING, I tracked Robert’s comings and goings from our house, at first subconsciously, then on purpose. Before long, I realized my interest had altered into something more, and I didn’t completely comprehend it. I caught myself primping in the mirror when I thought he might be around, then scolded myself for caring. What reason could I have to make myself attractive for a colored boy?
I was embarrassed on the one hand.
I was terrified on the other.
I knew if my mother ever learned about the night Robert had seen me home or if she discovered me patting my hair or biting my lips to make them brighter just as he climbed the steep driveway to our back door, she’d come unglued.
One day, I overheard her argument with a neighbor about the sundown signs. I was sitting on the stairs, sorting decks of playing cards that had been jumbled together, when their voices floated from the sitting room at the front of the house.
“What could it hurt to take down those signs, Marg?” the neighbor said. “Colored people have worked for nearly every one of us over the years. How much easier would it be if they didn’t have to hurry away before sundown? Or if we didn’t have to transport them across the city limit like we were running the Underground Railroad because we worked them late?”
My mother harrumphed. “Imagine this town if coloreds were allowed here after dark, Harriet, or—heaven forbid—permitted to live here again. Goodness, they’d probably want to go to our school. Next thing you know, their children would be mingling with ours, their boys trying to sully our girls.” I detected the shudder in her voice. She’d started out as not entirely certain but had picked up steam as she neared the end of her speech.