Mrs. Kimble

by Jennifer Haigh

  Birdie’s hand went to her throat. She sprang out of bed and picked up the dress from the floor. A button was missing from the bodice; stains decorated the skirt. The fabric gave off a smell, cigarette smoke and something else, dirty and sour. Her eyes dusted the room: nightstand, floor, top of the bureau. She reached for her pocketbook dangling from the doorknob; inside was lipstick, a wallet, nothing else. In the bureau drawer the leatherette case was empty.

  She went into the living room holding her head. The house was quiet as a crime scene. The children were still asleep; Dinah must have let them stay up late. Birdie glanced around the room. The girl had straightened up: the crocheted afghan was folded over the back of the sofa, the dolls and blocks and miniature cars packed neatly into the toy chest. Birdie recognized her white pumps at the doorway, the toes pointed toward the door as if they were on their way out.

  She crept into the kitchen. She’d come home hungry; she remembered, vaguely, making herself a sandwich. Now crumbs littered the table, a loaf of bread getting stale; she hadn’t bothered to close the bag. An open jar of mayonnaise sat on the counter, a fly perching on the rim. Nausea twisted her stomach.

  She had lost her mother’s pearls.

  Where have you been?” said Miss Semple. “We’ve been waiting for you all morning.”

  She stood in the doorway looking over Charlie’s shoulder, into the house. Don’t let her in, his mother had told him.

  “Mama’s sick,” Charlie said. “She’s not going to work today.”

  “Where is she?” Miss Semple asked. He could see she wanted to come in; how he was supposed to stop her, he had no idea.

  “Sleeping,” said Charlie. She’d been sleeping for two days.

  “I see,” said Miss Semple. “Is she well enough to make you something to eat?”

  “Yes’m,” said Charlie. For two days they had eaten apples, bread and jelly.

  Miss Semple frowned. “All right then. You keep an eye on your sister. Make sure she stays quiet so your mother can rest.”

  “Yes’m.”

  “And get to bed early tonight. The school bus comes at seven-thirty. You don’t want to be late your first day of school.”

  “Yes’m,” said Charlie.

  He closed the door. The living room was dark; his mother had drawn the blinds and wanted them kept that way. He thought of turning on the television but decided no. It was the last day of summer, his last day to add rocks to the dam. Yet he wasn’t sad; he didn’t mind going back to school. The puppies were gone; they no longer needed him. And the school cafeteria made delicious lunches, barbecue sandwiches and sloppy joes.

  “Charlie,” his mother called.

  He ran to the door of her bedroom. “I didn’t let her in,” he said.

  “Good boy.” His mother sat up in bed. Her face looked large and puffy. Beside the bed was an empty bottle.

  “You mind your sister,” she said. “I’m going downtown.”

  SHE GOT OFF at her usual stop but took the long way around the block. She’d called and told Fay she was sick; it wouldn’t do to go traipsing past the luncheonette window in the middle of the afternoon. The day was cool and sunny, the air flavored with fall. A whole season had passed, as if she’d been in bed for months instead of a couple of days.

  She crossed the street to the garage and went into the office. The air was thick with cigarette smoke, the same acrid smell she’d washed out of her yellow dress. Her head began to pulse; she felt loose and jangly from the wine.

  A man appeared through the swinging door. “Ma’am?” he said. “Can I help you?” A smudge of black grazed his cheek. It was a moment before she recognized him. He was the one who’d wanted three hundred dollars to fix her car.

  “Yes,” she said firmly. “I would like to speak to Buck Perry.”

  “Right now?” He eyed her strangely. She hadn’t taken the time to change, just pulled a sweater over her housedress. Still, he had no business staring. She, at least, was clean.

  “Please,” she said.

  He turned toward the swinging door. “Hey, Buck,” he yelled. “There’s a lady here to see you.”

  Perry came through the door in dirty coveralls. His eyebrows lifted when he saw her. “Well, hello,” he said. “This is a nice surprise.” He wiped his hands across his chest; they were black with grease.

  Birdie’s head throbbed. She thought: I let him touch me with those hands.

  “I stopped by the luncheonette to see you,” he said. “Fay said you were home sick.”

  Birdie blinked. He was a thief; she’d expected him to be nervous.

  “I believe you have something of mine,” she said.

  “I do?”

  “Yes.” Birdie watched him closely.

  “What’s that?”

  “The last time I saw you”—her voice faltered, then recovered—“I was wearing a valuable piece of jewelry.”

  “You were?”

  “A pearl necklace.” She felt tears behind her eyes but willed them back. Her voice came out in a whisper. “It belonged to my mother.”

  Perry frowned. “Did you lose it?”

  Birdie nodded.

  Perry ran a hand through his hair. “Did you call over at the Vets? Maybe somebody found it.”

  “I didn’t lose it at the Vets.” It was true; she was nearly sure. “It must have been later. In your car.” Her face heated. She could not look at him.

  “I didn’t find any pearls,” he said.

  Something broke inside her.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Of course I’m sure.” Perry frowned at her. “What are you getting at? Are you saying I took them?”

  Birdie turned to go.

  “Wait!” said Perry, but she didn’t listen. She ran out the door, into the street, and kept running. Tears trailed down her cheeks: for her mother’s pearls, for everything she had lost.

  Drinking, she remembered Curtis Mabry.

  When they were both eight, Curtis had come down with chicken pox; his mother kept him home from school—the colored school—for a week. They’d hidden together under Birdie’s porch; she made him rub his arms and legs against hers so she’d get chicken pox too. Somehow they’d both escaped with a single scar, a faint circle at the corner of one eye—Curtis’s left, Birdie’s right. Something they’d have for the rest of their lives, marking them forever alike.

  Once, the summer they turned seventeen, they went swimming at night. Birdie could still conjure up the feeling of it, a heaviness in her arms and legs, a slow dilation of her senses not unlike being drunk. There was a warmth about him, a heat underneath his skin that bled into her if they were close enough. They had always played together, run wild in the woods while Curtis’s mother cleaned or cooked. The play had simply changed.

  That night the pond shone flat as a mirror under the moon. They had the thought at the same time; their minds had always worked alike. “Let’s go,” said Curtis. It was always Curtis who pressed, who took liberties, Birdie who said no and no and no until he covered her mouth with his and did as they both wanted.

  “I can’t,” she said.

  He didn’t try to coax her. He kicked off his shoes and fumbled with his trousers. Birdie heard a buzzing in her ears. In the moonlight his skin looked as white as hers. She covered her eyes and was immediately sorry, but it was too late. He was in the water too fast.

  And then she did something she could not have predicted. She unbuttoned her blouse. The water was warmer than the air, the same temperature as her blood. The loamy mudsmell seeped into her hair.

  When they touched it was like touching her own body. From childhood they had been the same height; their arms and legs and hands were still perfectly congruent. Only the centers of them were different, aching, fascinated, every part of them heated to the same temperature by the sunwarmed pond.

  Charlie got off the school bus and climbed the hill to his house. With him was Greg McGough, a new boy who’d moved from Kentucky. The first day of sch
ool Greg had shoved Charlie into a wall and made his nose bleed; the second day Charlie was waiting for him in the lunchroom. Their teacher stopped the fight and kept them both after school; that afternoon Greg’s mother picked them up and drove them home. After that Charlie and Greg were best friends.

  Greg’s dad was a truck driver. He drove all over the country, to Texas and back, once to California. Each time he brought back a souvenir for Greg: a water gun, an Indian arrowhead, a dead mouse pickled in a jar. Charlie pictured Greg’s dad like Artemus Gordon, his favorite character from his favorite TV show, The Wild Wild West.

  “He’s coming home tonight,” Greg told Charlie as they walked. It was a Friday. “Tomorrow me and him are going to Luray Caverns.”

  Charlie had never been to Luray Caverns, but he’d heard about it at school. He was impressed.

  “I bet your dad’s been there,” said Greg. “I bet the bus goes all the time.” Charlie had told Greg his dad was a bus driver, that he drove a Greyhound all over the country and only came home at Christmas.

  “Sometimes,” said Charlie. They arrived at his front step.

  “You can come with us if you want,” said Greg.

  “Really?” said Charlie.

  “I’ll call you on the phone.” They had exchanged phone numbers; the whole second-grade class had been required to memorize their own numbers and addresses.

  “See you tomorrow,” said Greg.

  “Yeah,” said Charlie. “See you.” He reached under the doormat and unlocked the front door, then replaced the key under the mat. It was a new rule: Charlie was to go in and out through the front door only; he was to lock it behind him. “You never know,” his mother had told him. “Someone could come and take your sister while she’s sleeping.” Charlie couldn’t imagine anyone wanting his sister, but he usually remembered to lock the door.

  Inside, he put down his book bag and took off his shoes, then went to the door of his mother’s room and peered through the crack. She was still in her nightgown, a pillow over her face. His sister lay curled next to her, but she was not asleep. Her eyes brightened when she saw Charlie.

  He held a finger to his lips. “Come on,” he whispered.

  Carefully Jody crawled out of the bed. She could be quiet when she wanted to, quieter than Charlie. She knew better than to wake their mother, who would be in a bad mood.

  They went into the kitchen. Charlie found bread and grape jelly in the refrigerator and made a sandwich of the last two slices of bread. He cut the sandwich crosswise and gave half to Jody.

  “Don’t make a mess,” he said, though it was already too late: after one bite her mouth was slick with purple.

  In the living room the telephone rang. Charlie stood and listened. Luray Caverns, he thought. From the bedroom his mother groaned.

  “Don’t answer that,” she called to Charlie. “It isn’t anybody.”

  “Yes’m,” said Charlie. He knew she was right; Greg couldn’t be home yet. He finished his sandwich and went to the bedroom door. She was sitting up in bed, a dazed expression on her face.

  “We’re out of bread and milk,” he said.

  She rubbed her eyes. “Where’s my pocketbook?”

  Charlie took the pocketbook from the doorknob and approached the bed. His mother took out her wallet and handed him a five-dollar bill. She had begun sending him to the store.

  “Bring me back a bottle of wine,” she said.

  THE SCREEN DOOR slammed. Birdie closed her eyes and waited for sleep to come. The phone rang again; a chill climbed her back. For two days she’d called in sick at the luncheonette. The second day it was Mr. Loomis, not Fay, who’d answered. “What exactly is wrong, Vivian?” he’d asked irritably.

  “The flu,” said Birdie. “A bad case of flu.”

  “You been to the doctor’s?”

  “I’m going today. I have an appointment.”

  “How about you bring us a note from that doctor.”

  After that she didn’t call the luncheonette at all. Let Loomis think what he wanted. She had a young child in public school; every other day, it seemed, he came home with a sniffle. It was exhausting, raising children with no help from anyone; naturally her resistance was down. She was so angry with Loomis that she forgot she didn’t have the flu at all, that she’d made the whole thing up.

  Finally the ringing stopped. Birdie sat up and fumbled beneath the bed for her slippers, then gave up and walked barefoot across the carpet, noticing a splotch of purple where she’d spilled some wine that morning. She found a sweater on the floor and buttoned it over her nightgown. Then she heard a deeper ringing, the two tenor notes of the doorbell.

  She froze. It was probably nothing. The day before she’d hidden in the bedroom closet; when she emerged, she saw two little girls descend her front steps and ring the Gleasons’ bell next door. She recognized their green hats and knee socks: Girl Scouts selling cookies.

  She tiptoed into the children’s room and peered out from behind the curtain. The county woman stood on the doorstep talking to a man in a suit. Birdie sank to the floor, hand over her mouth. She could barely hear their voices over the pounding of her heart.

  “It’s three o’clock,” said the woman. “Where could she be?”

  “The boy was in school today,” said the man. “I called and checked. Maybe she went to meet him at the school bus.”

  The floorboards creaked.

  “Something is very wrong,” said the woman. “I’ve been trying to call her all week. I’m scared to death for those children.”

  Birdie looked at the clock. The children would be back any minute. She pictured them climbing the hill, Charlie with a bottle of wine in his hand. Please, she thought. No.

  The seconds ticked off. Charlie’s alarm clock was shaped like a football. Each morning a voice inside it shouted “Hike!” getting him up for school.

  Finally the man spoke. “We can’t wait around all day. We’ll have to come back.”

  There was a creaking of floorboards, a shuffling of shoes. The county woman’s high heels descended the porch stairs. A car started at the curb, then pulled away.

  A moment later Birdie heard footsteps on the back porch. The screen door opened.

  “Mummy!” Jody cried.

  Birdie rushed into the kitchen, her legs shaky with relief. She scooped Jody into her arms.

  “You aren’t mad, are you?” said Charlie.

  Birdie leaned against the refrigerator, grateful for its support. “Why, button?” she said. “Why would I be mad?”

  “You said to come in the front.” His brow wrinkled, a mannerism of his father’s.

  “It’s all right,” said Birdie. “Just this once.” She reached into the paper sack Charlie had set on the counter.

  “I didn’t get milk,” he said. “I ran out of money.”

  “That’s fine,” said Birdie. She took the wine bottle out of the sack. “Mama’s going to take a bath.”

  A CORK POPPED; water rushed into the tub. Through the thin floors Charlie heard the water pump in the basement, ticking like a bomb. He sat in the living room looking at the phone. Brian Norton, who’d gone that summer, said Luray Caverns were as old as the dinosaurs. The caverns tunneled deep into a mountain; you could get lost in them and never find your way out. Inside the caverns were fossils, pools of water, ancient bones. Brian Norton hadn’t seen any bats hanging upside down, but Charlie thought there must be, if you knew where to look.

  The water stopped. Charlie went to the bathroom door. It was open a crack. His sister sat on the floor with crayons and a coloring book; his mother lay in the water with her eyes closed, the bottle of wine balanced on the edge of the tub. He went back to the living room. When the phone rang he held his breath, waiting for his mother’s voice; but it did not come.

  Heart racing, he picked up the phone. “Hello?” he said. He had not answered the phone in a long time; it made him nervous. Please, he thought. Luray Caverns.

  “Hello?” said a lady’s
voice. “Charlie, is that you? This is Grandma Helen.”

  “Oh,” said Charlie. “Hi, Grandma.”

  “Hi, honey.” Her voice shook. “Let me talk to your mother.”

  “She’s sleeping.”

  “You go and wake her up then. It’s very important.”

  “Yes’m.” He went to the bathroom and knocked at the door. In the tub his mother stirred. He opened the door a little. “Mama?”

  She groaned and rolled over on her side; she was like a big slow fish kept in a tank.

  “Mama,” he said, louder this time.

  She sat up in the tub. “Charlie Kimble,” she said, crossing her arms over her chest. “What’s the matter with you? Close your eyes this minute.”

  Charlie did. “Grandma Helen is on the phone.”

  “Damnation. What did I tell you about the phone?” She stood, her back to Charlie, and wrapped herself in a towel. For a moment she lost her footing, then caught herself against the wall. She stepped out of the tub and went into the living room, leaving a trail of wet footprints.

  “Hello, Helen,” she said into the phone.

  Charlie followed. His sister stuck her head out the bathroom door. “Whata matter?” she said.

  Their mother let out a cry then; in the next moment she dropped the towel. It was a thing Charlie would remember forever: his mother standing naked in the middle of the living room, dripping wet from the bath as if her whole body were weeping.

  HER FATHER was named John Wilkes Bell, for the man who shot Lincoln. He was a big red-haired man who’d been to war and married late. He met Birdie’s mother at a wedding in Charleston. He was at that time forty-six years old.

  He wanted a son but settled for a daughter. He taught Birdie to ride and shoot; he took her fishing and hunting, sometimes inviting Curtis Mabry, the housekeeper’s son, to come along. Then she turned fourteen and began to change; her father became polite and careful, as though she might break. There was no more fishing after that, no more hunting; her father’s rifle was locked away in the hall cabinet, silent behind the glass.