Delta Ridge

by Frances Downing Hunter

  I’LL GIVE IT to Michael. He kept his mouth shut. When he opened it, he made a funny quip—yes, I know men use humor to keep women at a distance and vice versa—but drinking and dialing each other, we were both so good at—at least in the beginning. Dancing, too. We had fun. Never once were his comments dishwater dull, nor did he mire me up in the minutia of his job as a federal prosecutor, or explain a UT football play until the cows came home, or bore me past death with everything Texas has that Arkansas is missing including the number of horns on a steer. Texans can reverse a position on you and brag about it, like how they cleaned house on death row last year. Just electrocuted them all, including Carla Fay Tucker; Betty Broderick, they locked up forever. Those boys like women killers a whole lot more than man killers. But Michael never spouted that dimwitted right wing, pseudo-Republican politics I usually associate with everyone in Texas outside of Austin. Yes, I know I’m opinionated. It’s the glue that holds little Miss Humpty Dumpty together. And if she ever cracks, there’ll be egg on every face from here to Texas. Like my grandfather, I take names.

  I can see now that being with Michael in Little Rock for eighteen months or so was like being intimate with a piece of hot fried chicken: warm to the touch and sweet going down. And what’s left is the bones to rattle and conjure with—looking for a sign, always looking for a sign. Southerners can never get enough of fried chicken or of looking for a sign. But truth is, I know more about strangers I’ve met on a plane than I ever knew about Michael. Outside the bedroom he led the conversations to books and music he liked and wanted to share with me. How intimate that I kept reading into it all the writing that should have been on the wall.

  “Dancing in the Dark” was our song, and I was. Until a girl has known a man with a deep soft voice who can talk about weather as if it were forever, you can’t know what I mean. “Look, Holly. It’s raining. Watch it dripping off that cypress tree.” Looking back now, I may have been dating Forrest Gump without knowing it.

  Inside the bedroom we didn’t talk much. “Have you seen my socks?” is intimate when a man stands looking at himself in the bathroom mirror all glisteningly wet before he ruffs the white towel against his sun-darkened skin. I watched Michael in stereo mirrored in the glass. Why is it that men are so proud of their bodies while most women use a towel like a warrior’s shield? If he had imperfections, he was oblivious to them. And so was I.

  Après sex and shower, he would switch on the television set with a deft question like, “Did you see the news report on Martian invasion last night on Channel Three?” Michael was a master of distraction, sharing and engaging and creating new personas, and even though I never found that my costume fit that well, he was always pressing onto me the qualities that he wanted me to have. If I told that to Aunt Elizabeth, she would say that he objectified me.

  Michael wanted me to change myself and adopt the characteristics he wanted me to have. He pressed them on me like decals on a racing car driver’s jacket. Qualities like joy, laughter, sweetness, contentment, flattery (of him). Though he stuck them on, they kept falling off. The personas he created went something like this: we are two mature intellectuals and citizens of the world who engage in factual discussions but never the specifics of our lives.

  Watching Cardinals’ baseball was as close as we ever came to home plate. And just when I was about to begin throwing plates, Michael would come up with some crap like “I’m way too old for you, Holly,” but the gifts he bought me for special occasions would have looked better on my mother who is tall, slim, and old. My outer qualities, I always felt, he wanted to change as much as the inner ones. Yet I hung on and held my breath, thinking we were headed toward some personal intimacy or disclosure. But we never were.

  What disgusts me now is my own restraint in holding back what I wanted to say aloud, like, “Damn it. I’m sick of one-hundred one night stands. What’s up with us?” Instead, I continued practicing the good-girls-don’t-nag-routine I’d read about in some silly self-help book for aging spinsters with Bugs Bunny’s teeth, while I kept hanging onto the relationship by my own bruised teeth and broken fingernails.

  But, if Ham had found out about my soured relationship and how I had been hurt, he never acted as though he knew. He probably would want to flatten my escaped lover like an armadillo on an Arkansas highway laid out like a reptile rug. The only thing that would be worse than the pain Michael caused me would be to find him splayed at my feet now, a duck dead and dragged in by my golden retriever Grandfather. How humiliating!

  How old was Michael anyway? Forty-six? Or did he lie? Whatever age he was, he never hesitated having sex with a younger woman. Oh, grow up, Holly. Quit acting as if you’re sixteen and a raped virgin. Get over it.

  The damn sun is flooding through my bedroom’s small casement windows and shading everything in purple and kaleidoscope blue including my face. My internal monologue is quickly escalating toward “I hate you, loathsome bastard,” my good morning angst, which has flooded over me every day since Michael and I ended our relationship, despite how appalled my grandparents would be by my language.

  Actually, I can’t help cursing sometimes. Law so pens up the left brain that the naughty, right brain girl in me sneaks out of my head when I least expect it and runs wild everywhere.

  My grandfather has strong feelings about how a lady should behave and what should come out of the female mouth: “A lady never gets drunk in public. If she must smoke, she never carries her cigarette, not to the john or anywhere else. She sits and smokes. She always leaves a gathering early. A lady never blackguards or allows it in her presence. A man who uses scatological language belongs in the barnyard swilling the pigs. Only the back doors of good houses admit him, and only if both he and the pig he’s delivering are properly dressed.”

  That’s enough morning-after rehash. I need to get out of bed and into the shower. For half an hour I wash my body, my hair. The London grit remaining co-mingles with the soapy foam before swirling in circles down the bathtub’s drain. The hot water pounds against me as I stretch stiff muscles I thought had atrophied, unlocking them rigidly, craning my neck from left to right, thinking, oh yes, I will walk again. After dressing quickly, I make it downstairs to the smell of freshly brewed coffee.

  “SO I HEARD Jimbo did it,” was Felicia’s bright good morning as I entered the breakfast room—her smile a mirror of the bright yellow kitchen. I studied her open, innocent face. People can hardly tell we’re related, mostly because we both carry strong genes from fathers who were not. My dark red hair, olive skin, green eyes, and petite build contrast sharply with Felicia’s tall, fair, blondness. Actually, I am short and a little dumpy, not quite built like a block of stove wood, (though I may be getting there), but my neck is slim. I believe in self-congratulation and gratitude expressed every morning as a kind of mantra: Thank you, Universe, for this good day and for my lovely and graceful neck, so swanlike in its beauty. I know in my heart that full metamorphosis will occur as soon as it gets past the damned ugly duckling standing in its way. Yes, I can be hard on myself because I’m a feeler more than a thinker. Rationally, I know that guilt is a useless, self-indulgent emotion. But I’m female, and when I’m not bitching about my lousy mother, I’m big into self-blame.

  “Good morning, Holly. I hope you rested well.” Aunt Elizabeth smiled up from her coffee cup and newspaper at the kitchen table. Her dark hair asunder, her full face was captured in a high-collared French robe of peach-colored silk, which flattered the porcelain skin above it that looked as though it had never seen the sun.

  “I said I heard Jimbo did it,” Felicia repeated.

  Rising to pour me a cup of coffee, Aunt Elizabeth turned to study her daughter—the mischievous girl I remembered. “Who’s Jimbo, Felicia? And what did he do?” I responded.

  Finally gaining our full attention, Felicia hesitated, holding the moment, and then began again, high drama in her voice. “Well, last night at the country club, Marshall and Donna Brooks asked me if I had
heard anything about the murders. And I said ‘Well no, not really.’ Then they asked if I remembered Jimbo, Mrs. Tice’s grandson. He was in school with their daughter Marilyn, who was two years ahead of me. I said I wasn’t sure.”

  “Good Lord, Bella Donna Brooks. Get to it, Felicia,” Aunt Elizabeth said, her voice strung with exasperation as Felicia relished the moment and our complete attention.

  “Well, anyway, Dr. Brooks said the word going around the hospital was that Jimbo was back in Delta Ridge, that he had a key to old Doc Tice’s house, and that he wasn’t working and needed money to buy drugs.”

  “Does he take drugs?” Aunt Elizabeth stared at her daughter.

  “Well, I’d imagine. Anyway, the theory is that Jimbo was robbing the safe when the two came home.”

  “Felicia, I don’t think Mrs. Tice went out except to have her hair done. She was practically an invalid, and before that, she was a recluse,” Aunt Elizabeth injected.

  “Well, that’s what I heard. I’ll bet it’s true. They guessed there will be a warrant issued for Jimbo’s arrest today if he hasn’t already skipped town with the money.” She hesitated again for effect.

  “What money?”

  “The money in the safe, you know. I heard there was about fifty-thousand dollars cash, plus a Rolex, a diamond bracelet and some rings.”

  “That’s ridiculous. Why would anybody keep that much cash and jewelry at home? Surely they have a lock box at the bank.” Aunt Elizabeth was providing my retort.

  “Everybody was talking about it,” Felicia looked smug. I’d say Jimbo Tice is up the creek without a canoe.”

  “That’s worse than no paddle. Let’s hope he can swim,” Aunt Elizabeth laughed at her daughter’s contorted cliché.

  Aunt Elizabeth’s amusement was not contagious. My stomach turned over, first at the memory of the blood-stained crime scene, then of the dead, dull faces of the pathetic murder victims. I was equally uncomfortable with how quickly the residents of Delta Ridge uncovered remarkable details of everyone else’s lives. And if they didn’t, they made them up from whole cloth, refabricated as the gossip and their imaginations dictated.

  I fell into their curious conversation, partly to take my mind off my empty stomach. I had not yet spotted a morsel of real food on the table. Even the table centerpiece of yellow apples looked fake. Neither woman looked as if she’d missed a meal. Why were they hiding the good stuff from me? Was I that fat? Anyway, I decided to fuel Felicia’s rumor mill.

  “Who is Bella Donna Brooks?”

  “Oh, you remember Marshall and Donna, Holly. She’s the biggest busybody in town. A Southern belle wannabe from Helena. ‘Course she’s lived here for twenty-five years, since she married Marshall. He was in school with your mother,” Aunt Elizabeth explained.

  “Was she shaped like a maypop on toothpicks?”

  “That’s her. You remember.”

  “Would you like some bran flakes, Holly?” Aunt Elizabeth seemed to remember that some humans need food for fuel.

  “No, thanks. Since it’s Saturday, if you two don’t mind, I think I’ll go back to bed.” Play the hunger artist, avoid the colon cleanse, avoid the murder victims, avoid it all.

  Except that I couldn’t sleep. I was too keyed up for that. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw Mrs. Tice’s face, her pancaked, chalky face, her eyes open and staring at me as if to say: “Holly, my dear, think how Dr. Tice and I always loved you so. Now dear, you must help us. Remember those peanut butter chocolate chip cookies, your favorite. I timed your entrance at the back door to their exit from my oven. Remember the sweet hot smell; the crunchy sound they made as I freed them from the pan and spatula’d them to the flat waxed paper on the kitchen table. You counted out how many you could eat, how many more I would let you eat than your mother would have allowed. And don’t forget, Holly, I served you whole milk ice cold, not the tepid blue John in your mother’s refrigerator. How old were you then, six or eight? We so wanted children. I cared about you.”

  Guilty again, and this time by a ghost baking cookies. On the other hand, Hamlet’s father’s ghost wanted Hamlet to avenge his death by bringing his murderer to justice. It’s sort of the same thing. At least Mrs. Tice didn’t ask me to kill my uncle or anyone else. I guess I got off pretty light. But oh, how I wish I had one of Mrs. Tice’s peanut butter chocolate chip cookies.

  4 Holly Meets The Firm

  AT 9:30 MONDAY morning the group I had anticipated assembled in the dark paneled library on the newly created third floor of the historic building that housed the Carter Law Firm. The smell of tanned leather emanated from deeply padded arm chairs surrounding a thick conference table of antique walnut carved in my great grandfather’s saw mill. I sank into the nearest chair and studied the renovated former attic with its high vaulted ceiling and heavy timbered cross beams. In the years since I left, the firm expanded up here. Growth and progress had come even to Delta Ridge.

  Hearing Ham clear his throat, I came to attention and acknowledged his mandarin presence by resting my elbows on the table and turning toward him. Glancing down at my right hand, I quickly made a fist to conceal nails nibbled ragged.

  “While we’re waiting for our late arrival, I want to welcome our newest member to the firm, my granddaughter, Holly Scott, who is joining us after a year’s sabbatical in Europe. I think you’ve all met Holly, but I want to tell you about her background. A member of the Arkansas Bar since 1988, Holly is an honors graduate from the University of Virginia with an English major and a Latin minor. She holds a law degree from the University of Arkansas in Little Rock, where she interned with the State of Arkansas. Holly plans to follow family tradition and become a litigator in our firm. When Garland returns, she will work primarily with Wylie and Sara Lee in our civil practice. Holly, we’re happy to have you with us.”

  Applause followed. I couldn’t be sure if it was polite or enthusiastic since Ham’s and Uncle Wylie’s clapping obscured everyone else’s. I was embarrassed by the mention of my extended European holiday. Most likely, Ham’s purpose was not to condemn my self-indulgence but to subtly remind me that I was now his. I noticed also that he had neglected to mention my seven years with legal service—first as an aide, and then after I completed my degree, as an attorney. As a Vanderbilt Law graduate, Ham probably had difficulty saying that I’d attended law school in Little Rock. I could not expect him to acknowledge that I was the first night school graduate in the firm’s long and distinguished history.

  Ham proceeded to detail each partner’s responsibilities as “our late arrival” entered the room. “Ah, yes, Michael, would you like to update us on the murder investigation?” Ham said proudly.

  MICHAEL MARTIN GRIMACED slightly, his expression indicating that his head ached, that he was not an investigator, and that Ham probably knew more than he did about the murders. Michael glanced at me and then looked away without acknowledgement. “I just talked to the Chief. There is a suspect, but no arrest has been made at the time. We’re waiting for the post-mortem report.”

  The new deputy prosecutor? I froze. Never could I have imagined who possessed that title in the days that I had heard it mentioned. What now? What am I to do? Michael’s here in Delta Ridge.

  While he addressed Ham, I studied Michael. His white double starched pinpoint cotton shirt. The navy pin striped uniform. The red and blue old school tie. He needed to find the local gym. His waist, beneath the crisp shirt, didn’t look quite as trim or firm as I remembered. I had to remind myself that I was not here to mentally undress him, and that he was an alien to me now, but I was glad to see that my excess poundage was shared. I wanted to hope that maybe the breakup had disturbed him as well. But the hair, the skin, darkly exotic for Delta Ridge—I had to concede that he would pass muster anywhere. Even the circles under his black eyes gave him a slightly dissipated, exotic presence. He was still gorgeous, and his presence made me as uncomfortable as I feared it would when I even thought of seeing him again. My memories of other times
had absolutely nothing to do with the law.

  My attention snapped back to Ham as I heard my name called. “Michael, this is my granddaughter Holly Scott, who has joined our firm. I don’t know if you two have met.” Michael glanced my way and nodded slightly. No hint of recognition. I said nothing in return. “Give Holly some of Garland’s files that need attention and a few of yours that are coming to trial. Some easy ones she can learn on now.” Michael’s pained face concurred.

  A daddy’s girl and pleaser, I’d been temporarily blind to flaws in men I was attracted to and then inclined to leave them when my sight returned. My pattern of behavior was simple, routine, familiar. In my seven years in Little Rock, I’d accumulated four semi-serious relationships. Ham said I was Southern enough to make each new man think that our relationship was his idea, but that I always chose. I suppose it’s true. Usually my divinely selected were lawyers or, earlier, law students. But in each relationship I thought I detected particular qualities that set this one apart from the rest: brilliance, good looks, charm, self-assurance, and quick irreverent humor. Beyond the good looks, I wasn’t sure if Michael possessed any of the other qualities. In this world he seemed a plodder, a bit unsure of himself. Had I turned an average Joe into a playboy to feed my own masochistic tendencies? Had I needed Michael to abuse me so I could do a self-flogging routine? Oh, please. Surely not, but a year was a long time to perform self-laceration over a man. My God, what if Michael is just ordinary and I turned him into a demon? Did he bait and switch or did I?

  Aunt Elizabeth says that you marry either your mother or your father every time you wed. Hands down I pick my dad, a classical hero without a tragic flaw. Daddy didn’t intend to, but he left me with scads of abandonment issues. Mother’s uncorked rages are what stand out in my childhood memories. She walked over the backsides of everyone she couldn’t charm, except my dad. Even Ham was subject to her moods and whims. Only when mother was happy did the rest of us have permission to be happy.