Savannah Blues

by Mary Kay Andrews

  “You hit my child?”

  “Weezie’s lying,” Tal said. He was breathing hard, but he was standing upright. “She got drunk with that boyfriend of hers and fell. Either that or he hit her. That’s why I ran over here. I heard her screaming for help.”

  Mama stood very still for just a moment. Then, before I could stop her, she raised the tuna noodle casserole up and slammed it down flat on the top of Tal’s head.

  He went down like a sack of meal.

  “Shame on you, Talmadge Evans,” Mama said sternly, shaking a finger at his motionless body, which was now covered in canned tuna, egg noodles, and potato-chip topping. “You better not ever let me catch you hitting my daughter ever again. And don’t you go round calling her a liar either. Or I’ll tie a knot in your tail you won’t soon forget, little mister.”

  I turned toward Mama and gave her the biggest hug in the world. “Mama,” I said, breathing in the smell of her, of Aqua Net and Shalimar and Secret deodorant. “You saved me. But you ruined your nice casserole.”

  She let me hug her for exactly ten more seconds, then she pushed me gently away. “Don’t you worry about that,” she said briskly. “I’ve got two more in the freezer at home. All this sobriety has got me cooking like there’s no tomorrow.”

  Chapter 62

  Mama cocked her head and gave me a coy look. “What’s this about a boyfriend?”

  “Never mind that,” I said, kneeling down beside Tal, who was groaning but keeping fairly still. “I think we better call 911. I think maybe he has a concussion.”

  “Nonsense,” Mama said, wiping her hands on a dish towel. “That little bitty old casserole couldn’t have hurt him that bad. He’s just lucky I didn’t have my cast-iron skillet in my hands when I saw how he’d hurt you.”

  She was standing at the sink now, running water over a wad of paper towels. “We’ve got to move him right away though, because I don’t want that tuna stuff soaking into your floor. Grease stains are the very worst on hardwood.”

  This was my old mama, worrying more about tuna stains than the possibility that she’d nearly killed her former son-in-law.

  Between the two of us, we managed to get Tal to his feet, and haltingly dragged him out to the living-room sofa.

  “He’s gonna have a headache to remember me by,” Mama said grimly, looking down at Tal, sprawled out on the sheet she’d hastily thrown over the sofa. “The sorry blankety-blank.”

  This was harsh language for her. I gave her a quick look of surprise.

  “I’ll never forgive him for the way he did you,” Mama said, ducking her head. She reached out and took my hand. “And I’ll never forgive myself for the way I did you, acting like the divorce was your fault.”

  I gave her a quick peck on the cheek, which was the Foley family’s version of sloppy sentimentality. The night was turning out to be a regular old lovefest.

  “That’s why I came over here tonight,” Mama said. “In rehab, we call it making amends. Your daddy and I have had some nice long talks.” She sighed. “What that poor man has put up with.”

  “He loves you,” I said. “And I love you too. And I’m so glad you are getting help now. That’s all that counts. That you’re getting help.”

  I looked back down at Tal. He had a large red egg rising up on his forehead. “I read somewhere that head injuries can be life threatening.”

  “If he can say his name, he’s all right,” Mama declared. She jabbed Tal’s arm with a long pink lacquered nail.

  “Hey!” she said loudly. “What’s your name, fella?”

  Tal opened his eyes, reached up, and gingerly probed his forehead with his fingertips. “Christ, Marian, you’ve cracked my skull.”

  “Better yet,” Mama said triumphantly. “He knows my name. He’s all right.”

  But I wasn’t looking at Tal anymore, I was looking at Mama’s hands. Her nails, to be exact. I’d never seen her wearing polish before, and certainly not long acrylic nails.

  “What’s this?” I asked, catching one hand in mine.

  “Aren’t they pretty?” she asked, fluttering her fingertips. “Naomi did them. She says I could be a hand model. I have very nice nail beds, did you know?”

  “Who’s Naomi?” I asked.

  “She’s in my Wednesday-night Christian women’s recovery group,” Mama said. “She used to be a manicurist at the Elizabeth Arden salon in Atlanta, until she started smoking crack so bad they let her go.”

  “You’re friends with a crack head?”

  “Former crack addict,” Mama said firmly. “Naomi is a lovely person. And she’s my very first African-American friend. She didn’t charge me a penny for this manicure. And you know in Atlanta, they get forty dollars for something like this.”

  “How nice,” I said. Up until very recently my mother always referred to black people as “coloreds.” This rehab program she was enrolled in was certainly broadening her horizons in a hurry.

  “Christ,” Tal moaned again. “Would you two be quiet? My head is splitting in two. Get me some aspirin for God’s sake. And some Scotch too.”

  “No Scotch,” Mama said, wrinkling her nose. “You reek of it already. For goodness sake, Talmadge Evans. You are knee-walking drunk. You need to pull yourself together.”

  “Look who’s talking,” Tal muttered, closing his eyes again. “Weezie, for God’s sake, get me something for my head.”

  “Don’t you talk to her that way,” Mama snapped. “She’s not your wife anymore, you know.”

  “Never mind,” I said. “I’ll get it.”

  She followed me out to the kitchen. I shook some aspirin out of the bottle I keep in the cabinet by the back door, and picked up the cell phone, which was cracked but still functioning.

  “I’m worried about him,” I said. “He’s a son of a bitch, for sure, but I don’t want us to be responsible for him having some kind of life-altering injury.”

  “All right,” Mama said, taking the phone away from me. “If it’ll make you feel better, I’ll call Dr. Dick. He just lives over on Jones Street. He’ll come over and take a look, and if he says so, then we’ll cart Tal over to Memorial.”

  “Who’s Dr. Dick?”

  “He’s my rehab sponsor,” Mama said. “Everybody in rehab has a sponsor who has successfully completed treatment. In treatment, they call folks like him an impaired physician. Dr. Dick just says he had a really bitchin’ Percodan habit.”

  “Oh,” I said. “You don’t think he’ll mind taking a peek at Tal?”

  “Absolutely not,” Mama said. “He says I can call him day or night. For anything I need. And that includes house calls.”

  While Mama called Dr. Dick, I took Tal a glass of water and three aspirin.

  “Here,” I said, thrusting the glass at him. “Take your damn aspirin.”

  He swallowed the pills and handed me the glass. “Thanks a lot,” he said.

  “Fuck you,” I said softly.

  He opened one eye, then the other. I guess the sight of the bruise on my cheek and the blood around my nose took him aback.

  “I’m sorry,” he said softly.

  “Fuck you,” I repeated.

  “Honest to God, Weezie, I never, ever meant to hurt you. I never hit a woman in my life. You know that. I don’t know what came over me.”

  “I do,” I said. “Probably a quart of Johnnie Walker black.”

  “I wasn’t drunk,” he said.

  “No. Just a mean, sick son of a bitch,” I said. And I knelt down on the floor beside him.

  He turned toward me, grimacing from the effort.

  “Listen to me,” I said softly. “I could call the police. Have you charged with aggravated assault. But I won’t. I could also call that detective who’s investigating Caroline’s murder, and tell him you knew Diane Mayhew killed your fiancée. That you were there that night. That’s at least concealing evidence.”

  “I wasn’t there,” he protested. “There was nothing I could do to stop her.”

&
nbsp; “Save it,” I said. “I’m tired of dealing with cops. I’d prefer to deal with you.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It means I want you out of the townhouse.”

  “What?” He lifted himself up by one elbow. “You’re out of your mind.”

  “No,” I said. I put my face right up against his. “I don’t feel safe here anymore with you right next door. You’ve harassed me enough. I want you out.”

  “Tough luck,” he said, rolling backward on the sofa. “It’s my house.”

  “Think about it,” I said. “Mama saw what you did to me tonight.”

  “She wasn’t there,” he said.

  “She’ll lie,” I said. “She’ll swear she saw you hit me. And that’s why she beaned you with that casserole. To keep you from doing it again. And the cops will believe her. I’ll have you charged with aggravated assault. And breaking and entering. And I’ll make sure it gets in the Morning News.”

  “You wouldn’t,” Tal said.

  “Believe it,” I said. “Uncle James’s secretary’s nephew is the police reporter. She’ll call him as soon as I call her. It’ll be all over the news by tomorrow. The Evans name dragged through the mud. I can’t wait. Mother Evans’s baby boy, a common criminal. A wife beater.”

  “That’s blackmail,” he said.

  “Call it whatever you want,” I said. “But if I don’t see you loading your stuff and moving out by tomorrow morning, I’m calling the cops. And aggravated assault will be the least of your worries.”

  “Where would I go?”

  “Go to hell,” I said lightly. “Just get out of that house. By nine tomorrow. I’m going in the kitchen now. Mama wants to take some photographs of my bruises.”

  Mama was just clicking off the cell phone when I got back to the kitchen. I put the kettle on the stove for a pot of tea. What I really wanted now was a very stiff drink, but I didn’t dare with Mama there.

  “I’ll make us some toast,” she said. “Where do you keep the bread?”

  She got two slices of bread and popped them into my toaster, a funky chrome fifties model I’d picked up for a quarter at a thrift shop on Waters Avenue.

  “Look at this cord,” Mama said, pointing to it. “It’s all frayed. You could get electrocuted.”

  “It works fine,” I said. “Just a little sparking once in a while.”

  She frowned but went on making the toast and tea.

  “Now tell me about this boyfriend,” she said when we sat down at the counter to drink our tea and wait on the doctor.

  “Former boyfriend,” I said glumly. “We broke up tonight.”

  “Do I know him?”

  “As a matter of fact, you did know him. Do you remember that boy I dated the summer before my senior year of high school? Danny Stipanek?”

  She took a sip of tea and squinched up her eyes. “Stipanek. Was that the boy with the loud muffler?”

  “That was Danny all right. He went into the Marines at the end of that summer, and he only moved back to town this past year. He’s a chef at BeBe’s restaurant.”

  “Do we know his people?” Mama asked, frowning.

  “No,” I said, dreading the conversation that was sure to come.

  “Stipanek,” she said, mulling it over. “What church did they go to?”

  “I wouldn’t know.” I busied myself with rinsing out the teacups.

  “Was his mama a little bitty brunette? Blue eyed? Wore pointy-toed high heels and always had a matching handbag?”

  “Don’t know,” I said, scrubbing at a nonexistent spot on the countertop. “He didn’t talk about his family a lot. Anyway, it’s over between us. So it really doesn’t matter who his people are, does it?”

  “Matter?” Mama looked shocked. “It certainly does matter.”

  The doorbell rang just then, and I jumped up as an excuse to escape her questioning.

  The man at the front door was tall and slightly balding. He had hip-looking wire-rimmed glasses and a pointy goatee.

  “Are you Eloise?” he asked.

  “Dr. Dick?”

  He smiled. “That Marian. I’m Dick Sorensen. I understand you’ve had a little accident? Somebody with a head injury?”

  “Dick!” Mama’s voice trilled. I stood aside and she gave him a huge hug. “You are such an old sweetie for coming over like this. Come on in here and take a look at Talmadge, would you?”

  She led him over to the sofa. “This is Talmadge,” Mama said. “He hit his head going up the staircase there, didn’t you, Tal?”

  “Whatever,” Tal said.

  Dick Sorenson produced a small penlight from the breast pocket of his shirt and crouched down beside the sofa.

  “Do you feel able to sit up?” he asked Tal.

  “My head feels like it’s going to split in two,” Tal whined.

  “Sit up and act like an adult,” Mama said sharply.

  Tal did as he was told. I think Mama finally had him scared.

  The doctor shone the light in both of Tal’s eyes, waved his hands around, asked Tal questions about whether or not he was seeing any spots, asked him to count from one to ten, backward and foreward, and gently prodded the impressive knot on Tal’s head.

  “You can lie back down now,” he said after a couple minutes.

  Dr. Sorensen motioned for us to follow him toward the front door.

  “I think he’ll be all right,” he said softly. “Maybe a mild concussion. Here’s what I want you to do. Stay with him tonight. Let him doze if he wants, but wake him every couple of hours and ask him the same questions I did, have him count, tell you his name, that kind of thing. If he seems disoriented, or is in any more pain, then I would go ahead and contact his own physician for treatment.”

  “Stay with him?” I said, shocked. “Can’t he go home?”

  “Not really,” Dr. Sorensen said. “He has to be supervised. And he shouldn’t be moved tonight. Is that a problem?”

  “No,” Mama said quickly. “We’ll take care of everything.” She edged him toward the door. “See you at the meeting tomorrow,” she said, closing the door almost in his face.

  “Now what?” I demanded, when the coast was clear. “I don’t want Tal here. I won’t sleep with him under the same roof. We should have gone on and taken Tal to the emergency room.”

  “Don’t you worry about that,” Mama said soothingly. “I’ll call your daddy. He can come over and spend the night and keep an eye on Tal.”

  “All night?” I protested. “I don’t want to do that. Daddy never even liked Tal.”

  “He won’t mind a bit,” Mama said. “He doesn’t sleep that well anyway. You just go upstairs and get him a quilt and a pillow and I’ll take care of the rest.”

  Chapter 63

  When I came downstairs in the morning, Tal was gone. Daddy was sitting at the kitchen table, surrounded by various tools and brushes, plus my chrome toaster, the vacuum cleaner, the VCR, and an old nonfunctioning kitchen clock I’d hung on the wall for looks.

  He had the back off the clock and was frowning down at it over the tops of his bifocals.

  I noticed that his shirt had been freshly pressed. His slacks had a razor crease and his hair had been trimmed recently. He was even wearing new glasses—new by his standards, anyway, which meant the 1980s. Mama was better.

  “Hey, shug,” he said absentmindedly. “Coffee’s made.” He nodded in the direction of the stove, where my meemaw’s old West bend percolater was bubbling away.

  “What’s going on here?” I asked, gesturing toward all the appliances. “And where’s Tal?”

  “Gone,” Daddy said. “Said he had some packing to do.”

  I peeked out the kitchen window. The back door to the townhouse was open, and I saw Tal walk slowly out with a suitcase in each hand.

  “Did he seem all right?” I asked. “Did you wake him up to check?”

  “He knew his name and he could count,” Daddy said grimly. “And he seemed to understand what
I’d do to him if I ever caught him so much as laying a finger on my daughter again.”

  “Good,” I said, kissing the top of Daddy’s head and picking up a Baby Ben chrome alarm clock happily ticking away. “I finally slept last night, knowing you were downstairs keeping watch. Is this what you did all night?”

  “Some,” Daddy said, putting down a screwdriver. “Your TV reception wasn’t too good, so I diddled with that a little bit. Then when the John Wayne movie went off, I remembered your mama wanted me to look at your toaster cord. I took a little catnap, then I just piddled around here and there.”

  “Mama’s right,” I said, pouring two mugs of coffee. “You are a saint.”

  He blushed a little and coughed to hide his pleasure. “That vacuum cleaner ought to pick up a little better now. I oiled it and cleaned it out real good.”

  I took a sip of coffee. “Why can’t I find a man like good old Dad?”

  “Hush up,” he said. He nodded in the direction of the window. “You tell Tal he had to move out?”

  “I suggested he might want to,” I said.

  “Or?”

  “You don’t want to know,” I said.

  “Try me.”

  “I told him Mama would swear to the cops that she saw him hit me. And that I’d have him arrested for aggravated assault.”

  “Should have done that anyway,” Daddy said.

  “Even if I got him arrested, they’d let him out on bail. And next time he got liquored up he’d be right back over at my door again,” I said. “I want him gone for good. I won’t sleep right until I know he’s not looking in at my windows.”

  “How you gonna make him stay away?” Daddy asked. “It’s his house. Weezie? Shouldn’t you maybe think about moving? You could come home for a while. Mama and I wouldn’t bother you. And Tal sure as hell wouldn’t either.”

  I shuddered, both at the thought of moving home and at the thought of Tal.

  “No,” I said finally. “I’m not running away. But thank you anyway. You were sweet to spend the night and keep me safe. And to fix everything in my house.”