Mrs. Kimble

by Jennifer Haigh

  He ran until his side hurt, through the Arnetts’ yard, into the woods, along the path. He crossed the stream, his feet missing half the rocks. He ran downstream to the marshy ground, his sneakers oozing cold water. The old house rose up in the distance, hiding badly behind the trees.

  Charlie stopped, breathing loud. Blood in his mouth: he had bitten his tongue. “Here, boys,” he called softly. The black puppy came from under the porch and ran to him, ears flapping.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. His nose ran. He hadn’t cried in a long time, not since he was little.

  The puppy licked his empty hands.

  THE KITCHEN was dim in the morning, shaded by a small magnolia tree out back, the only thing anyone had bothered to plant on the barren little lot. Birdie poured her tea and went out to the yard for the newspaper. She hadn’t read it in weeks. Each day she stacked it in the aluminum can they kept under the carport.

  She winced as she sat at the table. A bruise bloomed on her right kneecap where she’d landed on the cement floor. She’d been embarrassed before. If she let herself, she could still burn over the awkwardness of adolescence, her first menstruation, the mortifications of childbirth. She could conjure up the bright hospital room, the breathstopping pain, strangers looking between her legs with clinical disinterest, the fat nurse who’d shaved her and given her an enema. In twenty-six years she’d accumulated a whole basketful of shame, a repository of palpitating memories she could dip into at any moment, each with the power to turn her hot and cold and sick with self-loathing.

  Her eyes drifted over the front page. Her husband used to read the paper from front to back: national, local, obituaries, sports. He seemed to find pleasure in all the things happening in the world that had nothing to do with them, events so remote they seemed imaginary: wars in China, spaceships flying to the moon. Birdie pretended to be interested. In truth she found them—and at such times, him—dull and perplexing. She remembered the four bottles of wine in her handcart, still where she’d left it on the back porch. No, she thought. Not today.

  She brought the basket down from on top of the refrigerator. She’d been tossing the mail there all summer. In it were at least a dozen bills: phone, gas, electric; one from the pediatrician who’d looked at Charlie’s ears last winter. Birdie ripped open the envelopes with a rising sense of panic. She had a hundred dollars in the bank, another sixty in the house. He’d promised to send more, but hadn’t yet. She sat staring at the pile of bills. Then she heard a knock at the door.

  Him, she thought. But he had a set of keys; why would he knock?

  She slipped into the living room and looked around. The floor covered with toys, a sofa cushion losing its stuffing. Sober for the first time in days, she noticed the defaced photographs hanging on the wall. Good Lord, she thought. Lord almighty.

  She tiptoed into the children’s room. Jody was asleep in her crib, her breathing soft and regular. Birdie peered through the Donald Duck curtains she’d ordered, long ago, from the Sears catalog. A strange woman stood at the door. She knocked again.

  Jody sat up in her crib, her eyes wide and startled. “Whodat?”

  “Ssshhh!” Birdie whispered, holding her finger to her lips.

  Jody giggled with delight. “Ssshhh!” she repeated.

  Birdie closed her eyes. Damnation, she thought. The woman had surely heard.

  “Hello?” the woman called. “Anybody home?”

  Birdie tucked the baby under her blanket. “You go back to sleep,” she whispered. She shut the bedroom door behind her, smoothed her hair, and opened the front door.

  The woman looked older than Birdie, with a double chin and a broad bosom. “Mrs. Kimble,” she said. “I’m from the county department of family services.”

  Birdie’s heart slowed, fluttered, sped up again. “The county,” she said faintly.

  “May I come in?” The woman wore a pants suit and a bright scarf at her neck. Through her white blouse Birdie could see the thick straps of her brassiere. She felt her own disadvantage: breasts hanging soft under her stained housedress, her breath stale, her armpits slightly oniony. She stepped aside and let the woman in.

  THE COUNTY WOMAN took milk in her tea, a bad sign of things to come.

  “I’m afraid I’m fresh out,” said Birdie.

  The woman peered over Birdie’s shoulder into the empty refrigerator.

  “It’s my market day,” said Birdie. “I’m out of everything.” The four bottles of wine were on the back porch, safe in her handcart. The one thing she’d done right, thank you Lord. She closed the refrigerator door and carried the tea to the table.

  “I’m sorry to come by unannounced,” said the woman. “I tried to call, but the phone company said you were disconnected.” She eyed the stack of bills on the table.

  Birdie flushed. It was the redhead’s curse, the transparent skin that hid nothing, not pleasure, inebriation, or shame. “That’s nonsense,” she said. “I called my sister this morning and it worked fine.” In fact she had no sister, hadn’t picked up the phone in weeks, couldn’t remember the last time it had rung.

  The woman frowned. “That’s odd.” She had a large nose, a faint mustache as fine as dust.

  Birdie smiled. “People make mistakes.”

  “I suppose so, yes.” The county woman stirred delicately at her tea. “Mrs. Kimble, I have to be honest with you. We’ve gotten calls from some of your neighbors. Folks are concerned about your children.”

  Birdie put down her cup. A splash of tea landed in her lap.

  “That’s ridiculous,” she said. “The children are fine.”

  The woman smiled. “I’m sure they are. They almost always are. But two different people have called, so of course we have to check.”

  “Of course.” Birdie wondered who would dare. Miss Semple, the nosy old maid across the street. Or Beckwith’s fat wife—he might have told her what had happened at the store.

  The county woman leaned forward in her chair. “Your husband works at one of the colleges, is that right?”

  “Yes,” said Birdie. “He’s the assistant chaplain at Pennington.”

  “May I speak to him?”

  “He isn’t at home.”

  “He isn’t?” The woman raised her eyebrows. “I figured he would be. The summer and all.”

  Birdie went to the sink. She wet a tea towel and rubbed the spot on her dress. She breathed deeply at the open window. The woman’s perfume was making her queasy, sweet and fruity like summer garbage.

  “He isn’t at home,” said Birdie. “He’s in Missouri visiting his parents. His father is very ill.” She flapped the hem of her dress to dry it. “He won’t be back for another week.”

  “That’s too bad,” said the woman. “Too bad you couldn’t have gone with him.”

  Birdie listened to the dripping faucet, the clock ticking loudly on the wall. The county woman pushed her cup and saucer away. “If you don’t mind,” she said, “I’d like to see the children.”

  Birdie imagined twisting the woman’s bulbous nose until it came off in her hand. “Charlie is outside playing.”

  The woman looked at the clock. “It’s lunchtime.”

  “We already ate. Josephine is taking her nap.”

  “I’ll be very quiet.” The woman stood and smoothed her jacket where it creased across her lap. Her belly was large and low. A mother’s apron, Birdie thought, a phrase she remembered from long ago. She rose from her chair. Her bruised knee pulsed like a second heart. She led the way through the living room, stepping carefully around the train set, the wooden blocks. Jody was asleep in her crib. Her long eyelashes lay like butterflies on her cheeks; her small hand jammed in her mouth.

  “There’s my angel,” Birdie murmured.

  “How old is she?”

  “Three and change. Four in November.”

  The woman’s eyes darted around the room, resting on the diaper pail beside the crib. “She always wear a diaper? Or just when she sleeps?”

  B
irdie flushed. She’d started toilet training long ago, before her husband left. Now it seemed easier just to keep the baby in diapers.

  “Oh no,” she said. “Just when she sleeps.”

  She led the woman to the front door. Her face felt hot. There would be no more tea, no more discussion of lunches and diapers. The county woman trailed behind her. Birdie imagined her gawking at the photos on the wall. Well, let her, she thought. Let her look.

  “I’m sorry you missed Charlie,” said Birdie.

  “I can wait.”

  “He usually plays in the woods all day. You know boys.” She opened the front door.

  “All right then.” The woman hesitated in the doorway. “You might want to call the phone company. Get that business straightened out.”

  “I will,” said Birdie.

  Firmly she closed the door.

  CHARLIE TOOK the long way home, avoiding the Hogans’ yard. He crossed the street and followed the sidewalk up the hill to his house. The lady was standing on his front step when he came up the street. She shaded her eyes and smiled down at him.

  “Are you Charlie?” she asked.

  He said nothing. His feet felt raw. A blister had opened on his big toe.

  “It’s all right. I was just visiting with your mother.” She sat down on the step and smoothed her white pants over her knees. “Are you coming home for lunch?”

  His stomach hurt at the word. “Yes’m.”

  “What do you usually have for lunch?”

  He couldn’t think. All day long he dreamed of food, but now he couldn’t think of a single thing. He looked at the lady’s shoes.

  “Pancakes,” he said at last. “My daddy is making us pancakes.”

  The lady smiled. She wasn’t pretty like his mother but he liked how she was: large and soft, like a comfortable chair.

  “You wait right here.” She crossed the street to a big green car and came back with a paper sack. “Here,” she said.

  Charlie looked inside. There was a meat sandwich, a slice of cake wrapped in plastic. He saw that the lady was giving him her lunch.

  “You be a good boy,” she said. “You mind your mother.”

  Drinking, Birdie remembered. Late summer at Hambley Bible College, her third-floor dormitory room stifling hot, rules for when you could eat or sleep or shower, the length of your skirt, what you could listen to on the radio. The dormitory a world of women: their voices, their laughter, damp stockings and underthings drying in the communal bathroom. After eight P.M., quiet hours: no speaking above a whisper, only studying. Exception on Wednesday, choir practice, the only time a Hambley girl was allowed to raise her voice.

  Reverend Kimble directed the choir with watery strokes, eyes closed, a heaviness in his fingertips, as if they’d been dipped in something sweet and elastic. He was young, just past thirty; except for the elderly dean, he was the only man the girls had seen in months. After practice they crowded around him, giggling, asking questions. He had a remarkable voice, deep and resonant; he gave his full attention to each girl as she spoke, as if she were the only one in the room. He did not appear to play favorites, though there were rumors. A girl had been seen coming out of his office, a snooty blond from Charleston, tall and exquisite. For all her beauty she had a voice like a toad; she did not sing in the choir. Why, then, would she visit the reverend in his office? Publicly and privately, the girls could only imagine.

  At practice they followed his hands with their eyes. The hands told them when to breathe, to release, to fall silent. Birdie had studied art history; watching him, she thought of the Pietà: Mary weeping over her son’s crucified body, his naked arms smooth as milk, his chest delicately ribbed like the underside of a flower. She imagined Reverend Kimble’s shoulders bare beneath his shirt, his body the long white body of Christ.

  One evening he approached her after practice. “Vivian,” he said. “Are you having problems with the descant?”

  No one had ever called her anything but Birdie, a childhood nickname that had stuck because of her lovely voice. Vivian fit her badly, as stiff and chafing as a new pair of shoes. His eyes were a startling blue; they watched her closely, as though he could see through her skin. Blood rushed to her face.

  “No,” she said. “I can sing it.”

  “I know you can.” He laid his hand over hers. “That’s why I gave it to you.”

  In the spring he touched her again. Rehearsal with the windows open, filling the chapel with the muddy smell of life. Birdie’s sinuses were swollen with allergies, her voice thick and nasal. She inhaled and felt a horrible squeeze in her chest. As a child she’d nearly drowned in the pond behind her house. She’d never forgotten the sensation, her lungs clutching for air and pulling in water instead. She grabbed a music stand for support and sent the pages flying, a sheaf of paper drifting to the floor.

  The reverend sat her on the piano bench. Even in her terror she was aware of his arm across her shoulders. He dismissed the class with a wave of his hand and spoke to her in a soft voice. “Asthma,” he said. “My brother had it as a child.” He rubbed her shoulder through her blouse.

  “You have a brother?” she said. She didn’t care if he had ten of them. She would have said anything to make it last, the unexpected gift of his hand on her shoulder.

  “Used to,” he said. “He died as a child.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Birdie. And quickly, before she could be afraid, she laid her hand on his thigh. “My mother died last year.” Tears slipped down her cheeks. She wanted to lift her skirt and show him her knees, decorated with childhood scars; to tell him about the woman her father had just married, now using her mother’s things. She wanted to take off her clothes and show him everything.

  He kissed her on the mouth.

  They were married on a Saturday morning in June, the day before her nineteenth birthday. She was three months’ pregnant, not yet showing. They drove to a country church in North Carolina, where the pastor preached in shirtsleeves and owned a strawberry farm across the way. After the ceremony he sold Ken an old pickup truck for two hundred dollars. A week later they drove it to Pullman, Missouri, to live with Ken’s parents. He’d been fired from Hambley; they had nowhere else to go.

  Charlie hated baths, but for a long time his mother had let him alone. Then one morning he heard the water running, landing loudly in the tub.

  “Charlie Kimble,” his mother called. “You get in here this instant.” His sister splashed in the water, dressed in soap suds. “Go on now,” said his mother. “We haven’t got all day.”

  Charlie shucked his shirt and pants and stepped into the tub. He knew there was no fighting it. Yet it was strange: he had never in his memory taken a bath in the morning. It didn’t make sense. The whole point, he thought, was to go to bed clean.

  His mother kneeled down beside the tub and rubbed the soap with a washcloth. Her hair was rolled in plastic curlers; pins crisscrossed at her hairline.

  “Lord,” she said. “You’re filthy. You look like a little Indian.” She took his arm and rubbed it with the cloth. “This is just a lick and a promise. We have to get you to the Semples’.”

  No, he thought. It was a clear, sunny morning; he’d started adding rocks to the dam in the creek. He knew a hundred better things to do than sitting on the sunporch with Miss Semple and her ancient mother.

  “I don’t want to,” he said.

  “I’m afraid you don’t have any say in the matter. Rinse.”

  Charlie obeyed, sliding under the water up to his chin. “Why can’t we have Dinah?” he asked. Any time his mother and father had gone out at night, Dinah Whitacre had come to sit for them. She was fourteen and danced to songs on the radio. She cooked frozen pizzas and let Charlie stay up as late as he wanted.

  “Dinah’s busy.” His mother lifted Jody out of the water and wrapped her in a towel. “You sit in there and soak awhile. It’ll save me some scrubbing.”

  TOGETHER THEY CROSSED the street. Charlie wore long pants that mad
e his legs itch. His mother held Jody on one hip; a diaper bag hung from the opposite shoulder. She wore lipstick and a hat, a sign they were going somewhere unpleasant. Her heels clicked across the pavement and up the stairs to the Semples’ front porch.

  “You behave yourself,” she whispered to Charlie, knocking at the screen door. “Be a little gentleman.”

  The door opened. A dusty smell floated onto the porch. “Good morning, all,” said Miss Semple, holding the screen door open with a long arm. She was tall and thin, the sort of woman who’d been old for a long time. She wore a plain gray dress that nearly touched her ankles, black shoes as big as a man’s. Eyeglasses dangled on a chain around her neck.

  “I should be back by three o’clock,” said his mother. “Four at the latest.” She took the diaper bag from her shoulder and handed it to Miss Semple.

  “Take your time,” said Miss Semple. “We’re always happy to have Charlie and Jody.”

  Charlie tried to catch his mother’s eye. He hoped she would not take her time. But you never knew with her.

  “We just finished eating,” said Miss Semple. “Can I get them some lunch?”

  Lunch, Charlie thought.

  “Goodness, no,” said his mother. “I don’t want you going to any trouble.”

  Miss Semple smiled. Deep cracks appeared around her eyes, as if her skin wasn’t used to such treatment. “Later on we’ll have some tea.”

  Charlie’s mother bent and kissed him. On his cheek he felt the waxy imprint of her mouth. “I’ll be back soon,” she said.

  Miss Semple took Jody by the hand. “Come say hello to Mother. She’s looking forward to seeing you.”

  They went into the house. Charlie glanced back at his mother standing at the corner, fumbling in her purse. A car whizzed past. Look both ways, he thought as she scurried across the street.

  He followed Miss Semple past the dark parlor, toward the light of the kitchen. In all the times he’d been to the house, they’d never sat in the parlor, though once he’d sneaked inside the small, cluttered room and examined the photos hanging on the wall, women in bonnets, old men with long Semple faces. The windows were hidden by deep blue curtains. Everything else—the sofa, the fringed lampshades—was covered in plastic.