by Laura McHugh
Birdie was a bit perturbed, seeing Lila in Althea Dane’s bed while Althea herself was stuck in a nursing home. Even when Althea’s health started to decline, she was a good neighbor. She was cordial, kept her distance, and brought pies at all the right times. Birdie and her husband, Sy, used to make music with Althea and Earl back in the days when their kids were small. Sy played dulcimer and taught Birdie, though she never got to be as good as him.
A couple weeks after Lila recovered, she came knocking at Birdie’s door just like an ill-mannered traveling salesman. Birdie opened the door but stood in the crack so Lila couldn’t see inside.
“I brought something for you,” Lila said. “Carl said you like squirrel.”
Birdie looked at the foil-covered plate the girl carried, Althea’s china pattern peeking out. Lila didn’t look like somebody who could cook good squirrel, though Birdie had no choice but to let her in, since she’d brought something.
“They’re dumplings,” Lila said, carefully setting them down on the kitchen table. “My grandmother’s recipe. Except for the squirrel.” She smiled hesitantly.
“Much obliged,” Birdie said, walking back toward the front door.
“I can’t thank you enough,” Lila said, “for helping me. I truly appreciate it.” Her eyes were all watery, and Birdie hoped she wouldn’t bring up the unspoken confidences between patient and healer. Birdie hadn’t said anything to anyone about the bite and had no desire to talk about it with Lila, either. Just then the girl’s eyes caught on something behind Birdie, and her face lit up.
“I’ve never seen an instrument quite like that,” she said.
Birdie moved out of the way so Lila could get a better look. “It’s a dulcimer,” she said. “My husband’s.”
“I play piano,” Lila said. “Played. Not in a long time. I was sort of terrible.”
Birdie didn’t offer to let her hold the dulcimer. “It’s nothing like a piano,” she said. “You set it in your lap and pluck it. He had a hammered one, too, you play with the little mallets, but I passed that one on to my oldest boy.”
“Maybe you could show me how it works sometime. I’d love to hear it.”
“I’m no good,” Birdie said, showing her out the door. She felt a little guilty after the girl left. She’d brought an offering of thanks, after all, and Birdie had been less than neighborly. Alone in the kitchen, she peeled back the foil and examined the dumplings. She thought about scraping them into the dog dish outside the back door, but she lifted the plate and sniffed first, and they smelled decent. She licked one, tasted butter, and took a bite. It was better than any regular dumpling. Better than her dumplings. Over the next few days, she ate them all, wondering how that strange girl had performed such a miracle with squirrel.
Chapter 26
Carl
There was a moment, as Lila told him about the baby, when everything went haywire.
It felt like his heart had stopped pumping blood and let it all drain down to his feet. He was warm and woozy, on the verge of passing out. His eye twitched. His ears rang. Lila seemed to wilt as she waited for him to speak, and he gathered her in his arms and held her. It was all he could do. I love you, she said. He told her he loved her, too, which the good Lord knew wasn’t enough to describe his feelings, but he couldn’t say the other things he was thinking, the greedy, giddy, kid-on-Christmas-morning thoughts that were flashing through his brain. I got her. She’s mine. She’ll stay.
There were practicalities to tend to: fix up a nursery; get Lila to a doctor for some of those horse-pill vitamins; visit Mama at Riverview and share the news. Before any of that, he was going to marry her. He left her there on the landing and sped over to Crete’s house to ask him for Grandma Dane’s wedding ring, which he knew good and well his brother had no use for. It took a bit of haggling, but Crete finally gave in.
Later that night, as Carl was checking his closet to see if he still owned a tie, Joe Bill, who mostly drifted in a dark current of his consciousness, floated to the surface. He didn’t know what had happened between Joe Bill and Lila, what he had done to her, but the possibility was there. He didn’t want to bring it all up again, drag her through painful memories, but he had to know.
He went to her room and curled up next to her on the bed. She was awake, and she took his hand and kissed the calloused knuckles, then gently pressed her warm mouth against his palm. They hadn’t made love since the attack. It was hard to believe there’d been only the one time, at the homestead, and he wanted, needed, that feeling again, to be enveloped by her, her scent, her taste, her heat. First he had to know. It doesn’t matter, he said. It doesn’t change anything, not my feelings for you or the baby. She let go of his hand, waited. Joe Bill, when he … did he … did he force himself on you … ? She looked him in the eye. No, she whispered, her mouth moving toward his, kissing him in a way that drove all thoughts of Joe Bill below the surface. And then she was slipping out of her nightgown, helping Carl out of his clothes, and he pressed against her for the first time in so long and felt that everything was right, everything was as it should be. It was true what he’d said, that his feelings for her wouldn’t change. But though he never would have admitted it to her, he’d lied about the baby. He wanted a child with her, but he wanted it to be his, theirs. When she told him Joe Bill hadn’t raped her, it was like being yanked back from the edge of a crumbling cliff. Rescued. Because he didn’t know how he could have lived every day looking at a child with another man’s face, knowing what that man had done to his wife and what he himself had done in revenge.
They got to work on the house right away. Once he gave Lila free rein, she wasn’t shy about freshening up the place. She was careful with family mementos, not moving a single thing in the china cabinet except to dust it, leaving Mama’s room just the way it was. Everything else, she tackled with a vengeance. Gabby came over and helped her scrub the place down. They left no crevice untouched, wiping out every cabinet, drawer, and closet, oiling creaky hinges, polishing woodwork, dusting ceilings. Furniture was rearranged, slipcovers sewn, rugs aired out, curtains washed and mended. They spent one whole weekend taking all the pictures and knickknacks off the walls, rolling on fresh paint, and then hanging everything back up. When they finished, each room was a different color: yellow kitchen, green bedroom, pink bath. The halls were bright robin’s-egg blue, the baby’s room delicate lilac, because Lila felt certain she was having a girl. Carl wasn’t a fan of the rosy bathroom, but he would have let his wife paint polka dots on the roof if it made her happy. All the windows stayed open while the paint dried, and the house felt fresh and new; it would always be his old family home, but now it was Lila’s home, too.
Carl came home one evening after a day of baling hay—he was taking any job he could that would keep him close by—and found Gabby and Lila in the kitchen with the music blasting, dancing around like a couple of crazies. Lila both aroused and intimidated him with suggestive moves unlike anything he’d seen at local dances, but when he asked where she’d learned how to dance like that, she just laughed and grabbed his hand, and they tried out a line dance Gabby had taught her. It was something, to see her so at ease, laughing and having fun. He could have watched her like that all night. He was glad she had Gabby to keep her company. As flaky as Gabs could be, she was a good, loyal friend.
Carl visited Mama several times after the wedding, trying to smooth things over, but he imagined it was hard for any mother to accept that her son had gotten a girl pregnant and married her at the courthouse. It wasn’t the proper way to do things, no question. The situation was made worse by Mama’s condition, which had deteriorated to the point that the mother he remembered rarely made an appearance. Mama had become the angry, paranoid woman he’d seen in brief flashes throughout his childhood, though Dad and Crete had hidden her episodes as best they could.
From the very beginning, Lila had a hard time with the idea of his mother being separated
from the family. He came to realize she hadn’t left the bedroom untouched purely out of respect but because she expected Mama to move back in. She begged him to bring Althea home, promising to take care of her. He argued that it would be difficult to take care of a parent and a baby at the same time, but he knew it didn’t make any difference to Lila. She’d lived with her grandma from the time she was little and couldn’t imagine childhood without her. Your mother is still alive, she said, and he could see how much it hurt her that her own parents were dead, that they’d never know their grandkids. He didn’t have high hopes that it would work out, but he couldn’t argue with Lila. He couldn’t not give her what she needed from him, if he had the power to give it.
Lila wanted Althea’s room to be perfect for her homecoming. She scrubbed the wood floor and made the bed with fresh linens, fluffing the pillows against the headboard and folding the chenille duvet across the bed just so. She cut zinnias and asters from the garden and arranged them in Mama’s milk-glass vase on the dresser. Carl kissed her goodbye, and she smiled in the way that made him want to keep kissing her instead of leaving her behind to make the drive to Riverview. She had plans to bake bread and fix vegetable soup from Althea’s own recipe so dinner would be ready as soon as they returned. She’d even picked mint from the herb bed outside the kitchen, so she could try to make tea like Ransome’s.
Mama sang to herself the whole way back to the house and seemed in good spirits. Maybe it was the right thing to do, Carl thought, bringing her home. Lila was four months pregnant, and there would be plenty of time to work things out before the baby came. Maybe they could somehow be the family his wife wanted. Lila opened the door for them as they stepped onto the porch, and he saw her smile waver as she laid eyes on Althea for the first time. His mother barely resembled the curvy, laughing blonde in the old family photos he’d shown Lila; her hair was thin and gray, cropped short like a man’s, and her flesh kept close to her bones. Her mouth puckered into a frown.
“So there’s the witch,” Mama said, stopping to glare at Lila. “I ain’t scared of you.”
Lila pressed her lips together, shot Carl a determined look, and held the door open wider.
Chapter 27
Birdie
She’d heard Althea was back but didn’t see her until the umpteenth time she walked down to the Danes’ to return Althea’s plate. Birdie couldn’t ever think of those dishes as Lila’s, though Lila was the one bringing them over, piled high with dumplings. The first time Birdie returned the plate, she felt almost ashamed. One, that she had been so unneighborly in the first place, and two, that she’d eaten the dumplings so fast. She told herself she was being ridiculous. There was no need for Lila to know she’d eaten them all. For all the girl knew, Birdie was just in a hurry to return the plate. It took Lila a while, that first time, to notice her hollering from the road. She had a queer look, running toward Birdie like something was wrong. One hand cradled her belly, which finally had rounded out enough to compete with her chest. It took a minute for Lila to figure out what was going on, that Birdie wasn’t having a heart attack or losing her marbles, she was simply calling hello before setting foot on the property. It was polite, Birdie explained, to warn a person of your arrival, instead of showing up on the doorstep unannounced, like young folks now tended to do. She looked pointedly at Lila when she said that, but the girl didn’t seem aware of her own bad manners; she just looked relieved that everything was okay. Birdie hadn’t planned on saying how much she enjoyed the dumplings, but when Lila asked, she saw no reason to lie. After that, Lila brought dumplings around every week.
She didn’t know how many times they’d been through the routine, Lila bringing the food, Birdie returning the plate. They always did it that way, never thinking to put the dumplings in one of Birdie’s Tupperware bowls and send the plate back home with Lila. To be honest, she was starting to enjoy the girl’s company. Usually, when Lila came by, she’d be full of questions, and Birdie felt good about having all the answers. Lila would ask her things like What do you do with those berries?, the ones growing yonder in the yard, and Birdie would say, That’s pokeweed, it’s poison, but you can eat the young shoots in spring if you boil them three times and change the water in between. Lila scribbled it down in a notebook and drew a little picture of the plant to remember. One day Lila led Birdie over to the tree line to show her some nightshade, and Birdie explained the medicinal uses and the deadly ones, then got to rambling about other names for nightshade—belladonna and devil’s cherry and henbane and so on. She left out how belladonna was said to take the form of a beautiful, deadly woman, because certain folks in town had drawn that comparison to Lila.
This particular day she’d brought some morning glory seeds along with the plate, because Lila was always admiring hers, and now was a good time to scatter seeds for next year. She’d be sure and tell Lila those seeds were poisonous, too, and she started thinking how funny it was that so many beautiful things were poison, and then she wondered if maybe she ought to keep her mouth shut about all the poison plants. What was to stop Lila from cooking up a batch of tainted dumplings and doing away with her? She almost laughed at herself, at such a thought. She’d been listening too much to witch talk from folks who didn’t know Lila.
She stood out at the road calling hello, but Lila didn’t come out. Birdie figured she was home, because the girl hardly went anywhere unless Carl or Gabby took her into town. And Lila should have been expecting her. Birdie actually felt a little hurt that Lila didn’t come to the door when she called. She knew she shouldn’t do it, but she talked herself into walking through the yard to see if the girl might be digging in the dirt somewhere and hadn’t heard her. When she got up close to the kitchen garden, she saw some lettuce and peas growing, which meant Lila had taken her advice on fall planting. The weeds were getting out of hand, though, and Birdie couldn’t help herself, she set the plate and the bag of seeds in the grass and squatted down and started pulling. That was when she heard the shouting, and she recognized the voice and knew Althea was home.
Something smashed inside the house, and Birdie pressed her face up against the kitchen door. “Hullo!” she called. “It’s Birdie. Returning your plate.” More smashing and a scream. She banged on the door a few times and then thought to hell with manners, she was already at the door hollering and might as well go on in. Somebody might need help. And she had a tiny fleeting thought that maybe what people said about Lila was true and she was in there putting some sort of spell on Althea. Birdie hurried toward the racket and found Lila in the front room, shielding herself behind the wingback chair while Althea ripped picture frames from the wall and hurled them to the floor. There was blood on the rug where Althea had walked barefoot through the broken glass.
“Althea,” she hollered. Althea turned around, and Birdie could tell that her old neighbor recognized her. A faint smile crossed Althea’s lips. The wildness didn’t leave her eyes, though, and it hurt to see her that way.
“Hello, Birdie. Was I expecting you?”
“Oh, yes,” Birdie said. “I thought we’d do some singing today. I’ve been meaning to get out the dulcimer.” Lila stared at the two of them, her eyes wide.
Althea clasped her hands. “Of course. That sounds lovely. I just need to get this witch out of my house—”
Birdie gently grabbed hold of her arms. “Let’s go to my place,” she said. “I made tea and cookies just for your visit.”
“Hmm.” She looked confused. “Well, yes, how good of you to fetch me. I lost track of time.”
Birdie led her out to the front porch and sat her on the swing, telling her to wait. Back inside, she gathered bandages and antiseptic and a pair of slippers for Althea to wear. Lila was waiting at the bottom of the stairs when Birdie came down.
“She won’t take her medicine,” Lila said, wringing her hands. “This is just one of her bad days; it’s not always like this. She’ll calm down. She’s fine wh
en Carl’s home.”
“She can’t stay here,” Birdie said. “I’ll take her to my place to wait for Carl.”
“No! Please don’t tell him. I’ll try harder, I’ll find a way to get through to her.”
Birdie shook her head. “Oh, child. She ain’t getting better. How do you expect to deal with this when there’s a baby in the house?”
Lila grabbed her sleeve. “I want my little girl to have her grandma.”
Birdie didn’t know what Lila expected from a grandmother, but she wouldn’t get it from Althea. “It’ll be all right,” she said, patting Lila’s hand. She left the girl alone to clean up the blood and glass.
Althea was fine once Birdie got her away from Lila. The two neighbors sang hymns most of the afternoon, as they had often done on Sundays when their husbands were alive. Birdie set the dulcimer on her lap and plucked the strings, and Althea had no trouble remembering the words to their favorite songs. Afterward, they drank tea, and Althea told her how the witch had roosted in her home and cursed it. Lila had trapped her son and she carried an evil seed, her belly bloated with sin. It all sounded crazy, but she said it with conviction.
Birdie had been among those folks who thought Lila was something dark, something other. But she had seen the lost look in the girl’s eyes when she took Althea away. Lila was just a scared kid finding her way in a strange place, and Birdie felt ashamed for not helping her more. Carl came to get his mother that night after work, and once Birdie told him all she’d seen and heard, he decided to drive her straight back to Riverview.