by Annie Jones
Momma tipped her head forward just enough to urge him to go on and finish what he had begun to say.
“I...I don’t know, Mom. It’s complicated.”
“Because you don’t return the feelings she has for you?”
“That and—” He shifted his boots. How did he explain Carol’s one and only strategy for arguing why he should be allowed to adopt Wendy without cutting Momma to the quick? How could he lay it out to her without making it seem as though she would have to choose between her loyalty to him and Wendy and her ever faithful love for his sister?
He couldn’t. “The thing is, I should never have let someone that I know is...that has feelings for me...represent me in personal or business affairs, Mom. It’s not a good mix.”
“And this new one, that will be a good mix?”
“New one?”
“Lawyer. The one that called you up on the phone. You know, I had no idea lawyers did that kind of thing, calling folks up out of the blue in hopes they might have a law case they need tending to.”
“Momma, he didn’t exactly call me out of the—”
“‘Course as much as everybody goes to suing everybody else over every little thing these days, it don’t surprise me none that some smart legal eagle didn’t turn to the telemarketing approach.”
“Who said anything about telemarket—”
“You know what I think maybe you ought to do instead, though?” She raised one finger both to keep him from interrupting and to wag at him as she spoke. “Maybe you ought to call up one of those 1-800-lawsuit lawyers that’s always advertising on the TV! Can’t be any worse picking a lawyer from a blind phone call, now can it?”
“This was not a blind anything, Mom.”
“Least with the TV fellows you can get a gander at what they look like, pick one out that looks successful but not flashy. Maybe the one with slick-backed hair and that gold and rhinestone tie tack.” She patted his hand a little too hard. “I’ll bet nary a one of them would let their personal feelings for you get in the way of things, no matter how much you turned on that ol’ sawmill charm of yours.”
“Now you’re just being ornery.” He pushed his rolled-up sleeves past his elbows.
“That don’t change the fact that the devil you know is usually better than the devil you don’t.”
Riley didn’t want to ask but clearly Momma wanted him to ask. “By devil you mean...?”
“Lawyers.”
Riley pulled away and stood straight beside the bed. “I’ll keep that in mind when I go over to Fulton’s Dominion tomorrow morning.”
“Fulton’s Dominion? I thought that fell through. I thought we’d heard the last of you getting mixed up with that... that...that Fulton family!”
“What? You got some good gossip on them, too?” Riley laughed. “What do you use to gather your information, Momma? Computers? Satellites? Secret frequency radio waves?”
“You are not too old to be taken to the woodshed for sass- talking me, son.”
“Dinnertime, Mrs. Walker.” A young woman in a brightly colored scrub suit and a hairnet came into the small room. She slid the large tray bearing a covered meal on the bed table while making small talk about the menu and the desert and how the patients might complain about the food but they seemed to eat it all every night then ask for more.
When she left, Momma leaned forward, peering at the steaming plate of portions in various shades of beige and brown. She wrinkled up her nose, then shook her head and stuck her hand out to him. “Well, it ain’t the way I make meat-loaf and gravy but it’s what I’ve got. Best say my thanks for it.”
Riley gladly took his mother’s hand and bowed his head.
“Thank you for this food, oh, Lord. And for my health, such as it is right now. Thank you for giving me two wonderful children and a beautiful grandchild, even if we can’t all be together right now. I trust we’ll all be a family again in time, even if it’s not ‘til we’re in heaven.”
Riley started to murmur amen, but Momma wasn’t quite done.
“And please guide my Riley as he considers this new business dealing. Don’t let him get drawn into a big, fat mess with those...with your good and faithful...and, um, interesting servants, the Fulton family.” She gave his hand a squeeze. “Amen.”
“Amen.” But before he would turn lose of his mother’s hand he caught her with a hard gaze. “I think maybe you’d better tell me just what it is you’ve heard about these folks, Momma, before I go getting myself involved in anything pertaining to them and their business.”
“I’ve never heard a bad word spoken against their business.” She unfurled her napkin and tucked it into the round collar of her hospital gown. “In fact, we owned a sofa made by that company for years and years. You remember that blue and gold one with the tiny floral pattern woven into—”
“What about the family?”
She picked up her fork and plunged it into the glob of mashed potatoes. “I always liked that sofa.”
“Mom.” He crossed his arms and dipped his head. “What aren’t you telling me?”
“Son, the truth is, I don’t know for sure what it is about that family.” She put her fork down. “They’re just peculiar, that’s all. Wealthy, though, and active in the community. Whether the community likes it or not.”
“I see. So it’s a rich, eccentric old Southern family that exerts its influence in the town its forebears founded. And you think that’s in some way unusual?”
“You’re right. You’re right. There’s probably nothing extraordinary about them at all. They are probably just your everyday, average, millionaire lunatics.” She took up her fork and scooped some meatloaf up with the potatoes and took a bite.
“Don’t worry, Mom.” He grabbed up the plastic pitcher on her tray and filled her water glass, handing it to her just as she made a face to show her dislike of the food. “I think I can handle myself with them. Besides, Mr. Greenhow gave me the impression I wouldn’t be dealing with the family anyway. He seems to have the whole thing pretty much under control.”
Momma gulped down one swallow, then another. Then she set the glass down with a decisive thunk and met his gaze with a shrewd, skeptical look.
“That’s good, then, because if ever there truly was one, from what I hear that Fulton family is surely a first-class example of a complete and utter troublement.”
* * *
“‘There is a patina on everything in the South. An oily grittiness that settles itself like skin over the kitchen canisters and car hoods and antique milk glass lampshades. You cannot rub it off nor wash it off, and the longer you stay here, the more it becomes a part of you.’“ Dixie pressed flat the brand-new, red velveteen journal until the binding cracked. “How’s that for a start, then?”
“That’s lovely, dear. Quite nice. Quite.” Miss Letticia Gautier patted her gnarled, mocha-colored hand in the air, as though keeping beat to some unheard song. She nodded her head to that same silent rhythm, swaying gently in her high-backed rocker. “What is it, lamb?”
“What is it?” Dixie let her shoulders slump just enough to get truly comfortable and toed her white-socked feet inward. “Don’t you recognize what I just read?”
The delicate wisp of an old woman sitting beside Dixie blinked her crepe-lidded, owl-like brown eyes in incomprehension.
Dixie watched her, torn between a smile and exasperation. “Remember how I told you we were going to record your words for posterity? How I wanted to collect your thoughts and experiences as a sort of commemoration for your upcoming one hundredth birthday? Remember?” Dixie held open the cream-colored page filled with the swirls of blue ink, knowing full well that dear old Miss Lettie could not see well enough anymore to make out the words. “Well, that’s what I’ve done. I’ve taken what you told me and written it down here.”
“Go on with you.” Lettie’s dismissive wave was no less than regal.
“It’s true.”
“Me? That came from me?” She threw ba
ck her head, as much as she could, and gave out a crackling laugh like an old hen having its scrawny neck wrung. Then she coughed, and as her rough tongue rasped against the almost invisible line of her lips, she jabbed a finger toward the journal. “Read that again.”
Dixie spoke the words again with the dramatic conviction one might use to intone the constitution or the prose of Miss Margaret Mitchell.
Lettie tipped her rocking chair back, paused, then let the runners fall forward with a definitive creak. “You got all that from what I said?”
“W-well, yes. I admit I did embellish just a tad but it’s still the essence of your words.” Dixie closed the book, pulling it close to her chest. “You said—”
“I said…” Miss Lettie landed a look on Dixie that left no room for doubt that the elderly woman was still as sharp, as strong, and as unwilling to tolerate nonsense as ever… “What I said, Miss Dixie Belle Fulton-Leigh, was that since I came to Fulton’s Dominion, Mississippi, over seventy years ago, that I can’t recall a day when I didn’t sweat!”
“Well, I...”
For several seconds the stillness of the old house her family had occupied since the town’s founding wrapped itself around the two of them.
Lettie’s milky-eyed gaze remained trained on the younger woman the whole time until she finally broke the silence. “You did hear me all right, didn’t you, Dixie Belle?”
Dixie squirmed like a six-year-old. Very few people could humble her like that, and only one got away with calling her by the nickname Dixie Belle. This scrappy imp of a woman who had raised one generation after another of her family, including Dixie herself, had always been able to put Dixie in her place with no more than a look or a word.
The rocking chair groaned out a long, nerve-twisting reminder that Lettie was still waiting to hear Dixie’s concession.
She stiffened. The mantle clock in the main room where they sat tick-tick-ticked, commanding time itself to slow to its dull, plodding cadence. The house, in its seeming state of perpetual midday, always in the golden light of sun through yellowed window shades, offered little in the way of something to change the subject.
No. Change was not the way of this house or its owners. In fact, Dixie noted as she glanced around, nothing much in this house had changed in the last forty years. Not easily anyhow—with the exception of the peeling of wallpaper and the loss of loved ones.
Daddy. The reminder of her loss made her breath snag high in the back of her throat. Her heart felt like it had clamped up into a cold little lump. She knotted her arms around herself as if that could keep the worries of the world from closing in on her. Daddy’s death had changed things here...changed them drastically, dreadfully, and perhaps irreversibly, though no one but Dixie seemed even remotely aware of that fact.
“Are you two done with your foray into the profundity of literary phantasm?” Aunt Sis flounced into the room. The woman was the widow of Dixie’s only uncle. Her legal name was June Cunningham though absolutely no one had called her anything but Sis or Aunt Sis or even Miss Sis in years.
She popped through the swinging door that led from the kitchen, bounded through the large dining area, and flounced into the formal receiving room where Dixie and Lettie sat. Aunt Sis pretty much flounced everywhere she went, except on the rare occasion when she skulked about or swooped in on unsuspecting people making what she liked to call her “entrance.”
“We’re just getting to our first writing session, Aunt Sis. I was held up late at work because we have some major—”
“Oh, I know all about getting held up with crucial matters, sugar.” She whipped a lace hankie from inside her oversized straw purse and began fanning her neck and face.
The action sent a veritable cloud of perfume wafting over Dixie and Lettie.
“You would not believe the ballyhoo that went on today at the Every-Other-Thursday-Afternoon Arts and Culture Society. Accusations. Fault finding. Name calling! A bigger pack of whining, miserable, mean-spirited, back-stabbing busybodies I never saw. If they weren’t all my very best friends in the world, I would resign as the club’s patron on the spot.”
Dixie bit her lip to keep from snickering.
Lettie did not even try to hide her amusement at Sis’s nonexistent dilemma. She snorted out a laugh.
Aunt Sis tipped her nose up at them both then put her hand to her painted coral lips. “Peachie Too! Where’s my little princess puppy-toes? Peachie Too?”
“Grandpa has taken her for a walk.” Dixie tried to return her attention to the journal in her lap.
“A walk? Oh, dear!” Sis clutched at her throat and looked toward the nearest window. “Did he put her sweater on? The lamb’s wool one with the faux fur collar?”
Dixie shut her eyes, trying to sound light and pleasant as she sighed and answered. “He put something on her, yes. We all know better than to let that...to let Peachie Too outdoors unless she is properly dressed.”
Sis let her purse slide down to the floor with such a thud that Dixie had to look up to make sure her aunt hadn’t suddenly fainted from the stress of knowing her dog might be wearing the wrong outfit. “Peachie Too will be fine, I’m sure.”
Sis heaved a sigh and moved to the window. “I know you think I’m a foolish old woman.”
“I don’t think you’re all that old.” Lettie gave Dixie a grin that showed all four of the one-hundred-year-old stinker’s missing teeth.
Dixie laughed.
Sis sniffed. “Tease if you will, but I just know the Judge did not put the right thing on my darling doggie.” Sis laid a hand along her cheek. “In this weather she really has to have the lamb’s wool. Knowing that Smilin’ Bob Cunningham, he has dressed her in something totally inappropriate.”
“It’s a shame she doesn’t use the same care dressing herself as she does that rat she calls a toy poodle,” Lettie grumbled under her breath. She let the rocker bring her closer as she kept her voice low enough that only Dixie could hear her. “What has she got herself up in today?”
Dixie made a quick survey of the layers of sheer fabric over some kind of polyester knit dress. “It’s her own design. She thinks it makes her look like a fairy.”
“You mean a boat?”
“No, not a ferry.” Dixie glanced at the way the awful creation made her aunt look broad as a barge in some places. “Well, maybe that is what she meant.”
Sis’s sigh was full of deep dramatic effect. “I just know your grandfather has my punkin in that black leather jacket and her red beret. Red! It isn’t even her color.”
“That’s because she’s pink She’s a pink dog is what she is.” Lettie went back to rocking.
“The color of her coat is apricot.” Sis peered out the window and twisted her hankie in her hands. “And I find it a most appealing hue.”
“You would, dear.” Lettie kept on rocking while she used one crooked, dark-skinned finger to point to her head, then at Sis.
Dixie followed the gesture with interest. A sharp gasp escaped her lips, which she quickly covered with her hand pretending to have something caught in her throat.
She kept her hand over her mouth and shared a silent giggle with Lettie as she realized for the first time that Aunt Sis’s latest hair shade was an exact match for her precious apricot toy poodle.
Sis seemed oblivious. “A black jacket and a red beret. Think of it.” Sis lifted her head and paused for a moment as if she were doing that very thing. “You know, the Judge favors that outfit because he says it looks jaunty. He doesn’t care one bit that the whole style is passe or that it totally conflicts with Peachy Too’s personality”
“You want to dress that thing for its personality, Miss Sis? Get her something in alligator skin,” Lettie called out, traces of her old New Orleans accent coming out on a word here and there.
Sis ignored the fashion advice and kept right on fluttering her hankie. “Well, now I am going to be distressed until they return.”
“Could you please be distressed on the fr
ont porch or at least in Grandpa’s office?” Dixie pointed her pen toward the big French doors off the foyer leading to the converted sitting room where her grandfather kept regular “office hours.”
“We just got started on Miss Lettie’s life story, and I’d like to go on with it.”
With a wounded sniff, Aunt Sis displayed her agitation at being thrown out in her hour of woe, but she did as she was asked. Dixie was head of the household now, and she was well aware that in this family that carried a great deal of weight. Which only served to bear down on her shoulders at this very moment.
“Now, where were we?” Dixie opened the journal again and lifted her pen.
“We were trying to tell my life’s story. We just hadn’t quite decided on whose version we were going to set down on paper.” Lettie rocked back and forth.
“Oh, Miss Lettie, I wasn’t...” Dixie squared her shoulders. Recanting was the refuge of the under-confident and the unimaginative. Might as well out with the truth and be done with it. “I was just trying to dress it up a bit, you understand, Miss Lettie, so it would read more—”
“Dressing up is what that fool Sis does to that pink ball of jaggedly fangs and eye-pudding she calls Peachie Too.” Lettie snorted. “And it don’t change the truth of what that critter is, either.”
“Peachie Too isn’t pink, she’s apricot.” It galled Dixie to speak a single word in even the hint of defense of that awful dog, but she had to assert her ground where she could. “And she happens to be a registered—”
“Don’t you be like them, Dixie Belle! Don’t you be like those others in this place.”
With one hard look and a few clear, unrelenting words, Lettie had cut through every pretense Dixie might have thrown in her path. She’d found the one thing Dixie feared most of all—that she would become like the remaining members of her family, all talk and flutter, with no substance, no purpose in life.