“It’s coming out of this mug. It’s from your toddy. It’s scalding. I’ve burned half my mouth off.”
“Which half, Holly? It doesn’t seem to have affected your tongue. You know, Melville said that silence is our only true communion with God,” Dr. Sullivan continued. “Have you noticed the spirituality in his eyes?”
“God’s or Melville’s? Oh, you mean Jigger’s? I don’t see it tonight. He’s casting Mephisto eyes at me. Next, it will be fiery rings. I feel like Dr. Faustus.
“Don’t be jealous, Holly. I think it’s a look of sensitivity that comes from suffering and gratitude. Are you feeling guilty? Did you sell your soul to Ham? I thought he owned enough of those.”
“Yes, I did, as a matter of fact. Jigger, on the other hand, is adopted. I’ve only had him a short time” I didn’t know about Hell, but I was unable to pull myself out of the defensiveness pit I had fallen into; and I wished to disclaim involvement in dog abuse. “He came from the humane shelter.”
“Yes. That explains his gratitude for kindnesses extended. I suspect he’s been abused.” Dr. Sullivan rubbed the dog’s head. Jigger looked soulfully into his eyes and continued to ignore my presence.
This dog’s got the memory of a cat, I thought, and I’m being punished for my absence. I thought he loved me exclusively, but he is obviously anybody’s dog that will hunt, and he probably wants to shoot me down and drag me off in his jaws. Just like all the other men in my life. “I’ve hardly been home since I got here,” I said by way of explanation.
“I thought so,” Dr. Sullivan continued. “He seemed especially distraught tonight. Probably some deep-seated feelings of abandonment.”
Either the dog whisperer or the rum was soothing me even though I was secretly glad this conversation was not being overheard. “He’s a dog with a past,” I added, thinking, contagious madness evidently extends beyond my own household. I manage to take it with me wherever I went.
“Pardon my lack of manners, Holly. I don’t have visitors every day. Let me get you a refill.” He arose and exited through the screened door before I could open my mouth to protest.
“Don’t make this one as strong as the last, or you may have to push me home in a wheelbarrow,” I uttered to the dog who continued to ignore me. What a disgusting sight he was, black rug resting on his belly with all four feet extended beside Dr. Sullivan’s chair. I was glad I had chosen the rocking chair on the darkest side of the porch—the one furthest from the street light—deliberately distancing myself from this creature, who had rendered me invisible from the time he exited the warm house, in fact, both houses, including mine this morning. Oh well, as usual, I surrender, I thought, and felt guilty about my twelve years of neglect of
Dr. Sullivan.
“I feel guilty leaving my out-on-approval dog.” I said aloud to no one present, or so I thought. Everything has changed but me, I reflected. People should be given one hall pass good whenever they wish to use it, a get-out-of-jail-free card, a don’t-blame-me bus ticket to guilt-oblivion.
“I never understood your guilt, nor sympathized with it either,” Dr. Sullivan said before I’d even noticed he had returned with another steaming mug. “I see guilt as an emotion of pure self-indulgence. It does nobody any good, not the perpetrator nor the victim. Action, atonement, reparation, that’s all that ever matters. After you finish your drink, I’m going to drive you and your dog home, so you can make peace with each other.” Playfully rubbing Jigger, who had rolled onto his back, Dr. Sullivan added sweetly, “Jigger, you’ve had a busy day. It’s time you went to bed.”
6 Getting Over Michael
TWO WEEKS AFTER Ham visited me last year, I quit my job in Little Rock, put my pitiful, discount store furniture into storage, and bought a ticket to Paris and a Euro rail pass. I moved from city-to-city while abroad without encumbrance. Spending time alone through the winter, touring every museum, and discouraging conversations in restaurants and cafes where I ate alone, I indulged my anguish and paid homage to my broken heart. Living the romantic notion of a solitary student of European culture, I was up at 7:00 each morning with guide book in hand. I must have visited every art gallery in Paris, every chateau in the Dordogne, and in the small cafes in the evening, I played Greta Garbo to the hilt—cloche hats and all.
While in France, I improved my feeble college French. The French people gave me no choice. They were too stubborn to speak English and I loved good food too much to starve. Rooms were sixteen dollars a night and food and drink equally cheap, but it was work to order a meal. Every conversation, even with tour guides, was a struggle. At best, I thought in English and translated dialogue into pigeon French. Nobody spoke Latin. What was I thinking?
In the spring I traveled to Prague and saw Americans on almost every street corner. It wasn’t until then that I realized how much I missed communion in my own language. I fell in with a group of young journalists, conscious ex-patriots, who had started an English newspaper. Finally able to relax and release the chains from the self-imposed prison of my isolation, I spent three months based there arguing politics and haunting the local bars with others who questioned decadent Western values and the motives of those who had financed their own trips.
By the end of the year I was convinced that I had grown. No longer lamenting the lost love of what’s his name, I was ready to move forward. I had put on a few pounds of Berliner beer but I was a grownup. I would return home, not as a lovesick, mindless adolescent girl, but as an educated, responsible, adult professional woman. I would do my job, rid myself of the painful romantic memories, focus on being the best, and be it. Days would not be spent in Delta Ridge as they had been in Little Rock—obsessing over the chance of seeing the now faceless man’s face. In Delta Ridge, I would be free, not just of him, but of my own feelings of shame and worthlessness.
HERE I AM now on Tuesday in my office, at my family’s firm, in my birthplace, surrounded by his grainy presence there every day but as blurred to me as an old photograph. That’s life. It’s a joke. It’s all a joke. My hunger—both for his presence and for food—is gone, instilling in its place a resolve to give up food and men forever. Manic energy propels me to work until noon, avoiding questions, memories, thoughts. But as lunch time grows nearer, my determination and discipline fade again. I find myself tired, staring at my watch, and ready for a knocking at the door.
“Hey, Holly. Is this a bad time?”
It was Sara Lee, the daughter of Queen Esther, who had cooked for my family as long as I could remember, and the woman who mothered me and Sara Lee together like two kittens from different litters who came together as babies and decided to stay. Ham’s assistance and a scholarship had taken Sara Lee first to Hendrix College and then to Vanderbilt Law School, Ham’s own alma mater.
It was good to hear her voice. She stuck her head in the door, unknowingly putting my grown-out strawberry blonde highlights and clunky thighs to shame. She stood there, tall, ebony skin, slim and profiled like Queen Nefertiti. She is not the rookie I am, despite joining the firm just six months before I had.
“Can you go to lunch with Elizabeth and me? I want to hear all about Friday—the murders. I can’t believe you went there by yourself. It must have been horrible for you.”
“I’m not ready for the life you people lead every day. But damn. What am I to do? When Chief Collins called, I thought that somebody had to go and quick.”
“Are you kidding? I’ve never been involved in a murder investigation. I’ve never even seen a dead person who wasn’t lying in a satin box. I joined this firm to do civil practice.”
“So did I. At least for now. I had envisioned working on women’s issues. Do some pro bono. Of course, I know I can’t pay my way with that. Tough choices around here seem to be either billing hours representing insurance companies or checking out crime scenes. Anyway, it was awful, but don’t tell Ham I said so.” Dr. Tice was my first doctor, I thought. He used to give me pink sugar pills when Ham told Mother, regardless of
the illness, ‘What that little girl needs is a good dose of castor oil.’ I lived on Paregoric until they took it off the market as a narcotic. I was in a coma until they were forced to sober me up so I could go to kindergarten.
“Holly, I swear it’s been five years since I’ve seen you, but, you know, you haven’t changed much. You still don’t tell the truth. Ready for lunch? Elizabeth and I usually walk downtown.”
All morning I hadn’t been able to get Mrs. Tice’s gray face and bulging eyes out of my mind. It was all too much. Despite the brisk February air, and my breath smoking before me, I felt my body perspiring beneath my brown wool coat. I knew I wasn’t ready to dish details of murder over burgers and fries. So, on the way to the restaurant, I told Sara Lee and Aunt Elizabeth everything I could repeat without cutting it from whole cloth or commencing to dry heave. I had to play macho girl to my audience. And it’s nice to be an expert in something even if it is just an eyewitness account.
As I talked and walked, I could feel my aching feet pulsating in my pumps. So when I spotted a bright green awning whipping in the wind over the front of Flower’s Fashion Footwear, I quickly decided to buy a more suitable pair of shoes. “Look, I really need some better shoes. My feet are killing me,” I told my companions. “I don’t feel like food. I’ll meet you back at the office.”
I ducked under the awning and into the store before either had a chance to respond. Aunt Elizabeth didn’t care. She’s into that psychological boundaries stuff anyway.
“COULD YOU HELP me?” I asked the tall, good-looking clerk, smiling as he acknowledged my entry. “I’d like to see the Bally stacked-heel pump in the window, please.”
“Just a moment.” He hesitated, then walked to the back of the store where he consulted with a second clerk before returning momentarily. “What size, please?”
“Seven triple A with a five A heel, please. In brown,” I quickly added.
Trying to hide my exasperation, I sat down in a chair, crossed my legs where Southern ladies don’t, and tried to control the involuntary swinging of my left leg. After what seemed an hour, the first clerk reappeared. I waited patiently for him to remove my shoe, but he just stood there holding the shoe box in his hand and wearing a smirk like a dog presenting a duck to his master. I took the box from his hand, slipped on the left shoe, flexed my foot, then put on the right shoe and stood up.
“You have lovely ankles,” he said. I felt my face flush.
“How do they fit?” the second clerk appeared from the back of the store.
“Just fine. I’ll take them.”
“They are $375 plus tax,” the second clerk said to the George Clooney figure in front of me who proceeded to grab four one-hundred-dollar bills from his wallet. “Will this cover the tax?”
“Good grief,” I said, as the strange man, who was obviously not a shoe salesman, continued to grin.
“Please. I need to use these traveler’s checks,” I said quickly, shoving the rumpled American Express folder into the real clerk’s hand. Taking the change without counting it, I dumped the old shoes into the new box, and said, “I’m so sorry. I thought you were a clerk.” I dashed out of the store ignoring his, “If not shoes, maybe I could buy you a cup of coffee?”
Embarrassed and irritated, I hobbled, blisters still tender in my new down-at-the-heels shoes, over the hard, paving-stone sidewalk, taking a right turn when I should have turned left, and circling a city block in the wrong direction before I got back to the office. All my life, Ham has told me, “Holly, when you come out on the street, and you think you should turn right, turn left, and you’ll be right every time.” So cute. So clever. I need to remember Ham’s advice now, because I feel too stupid to live. Mine was an honest mistake, I thought consoling myself, but I would not be flattered by the man’s blatant high-dollar attempt at a pick-up right here in Delta Ridge. Can you believe it? I mean, did I look like a country hooker? Me, the seasoned sophisticate returned from a year in Europe. I was accustomed to Dutch treat with new acquaintances. No males I’ve dated ever had any extra money.
In Delta Ridge who would believe it? You have to be careful of your associates, whoever they are, learn their past histories as drug dealers, wife beaters, petty thieves, bootleggers. It’s like no other place I’ve been. In Delta Ridge pedigree and family history aren’t just important, they’re everything. People who grow up in Jericho, the flatland slum on the western side of the ridge, are labeled “poor white” or “poor black.” Through achievement “poor black” can be overcome but “poor white”—never. The label was usually assumed to actually mean “poor white trash,” and that was it. That label has remained imprinted in the town’s collective memory like a bright strawberry birthmark stenciled on the face. Everybody knows everyone else’s family lineage: If Grandma was a bootlegger, then her grandson probably wouldn’t be able to walk down the street without somebody asking him the going price for a gallon of Old Crow. History like that can’t be washed away in four generations.
I ushered myself back into my office, back into my puffy, leather chair, back into files and forms. The day drifted away with my mind and by six o’clock, I’d made little progress on anything. The day was muddled in more ways than I cared to count and home seemed to be my only solace.
Once there and wanting no company, I pled headache, took a hot bath and a Midol and went to bed fighting the notion that my pact with Ham was Mephistophelean and remembering instead Grandmother’s words that have stuck with me since childhood. “If things don’t happen for a reason, you’d better come up with one—even if it’s not the one you had in mind.” I slept hungry and vaguely consoled but without any notion what my reason might be.
WEDNESDAY MORNING, I awoke with new resolve. I wasn’t going to be pathetic. Arriving at the office at 7:30, I organized my calendar and my files, skimming all of them to determine priority. At lunchtime I asked Marie to send an order for a light salad and a ham on rye from the local sub shop and spent the rest of the day reading prosecution files. The determination and control from work and law school returned. I was proud, for a moment, of what I was able to accomplish. I still had discipline, drive, focus. Michael hadn’t taken everything. The old familiar feeling of joy at hard work completed returned.
For the rest of the week I was able to avoid Michael. Or maybe he was avoiding me. I couldn’t be sure. I worked until 7:30 P.M., when I left to join Aunt Elizabeth and Felicia for dinner. Like clockwork I went to bed at 10:00 and awoke at 6:00, then congratulated myself on something I had accomplished the day before. In fact, I was obsessed with my own cheerfulness. Obsessiveness, too, is a family trait. I was determined to show Michael that his preconceived notions of young, flippant, clingy Holly were wrong. My newly-found periods of absolute control were proof that I was over him and that his power over me had dissipated like morning fog. Delusion is another family trait.
7 Good Hair Day
AT NOON THURSDAY, Aunt Elizabeth tapped on my office door. “Want to break for lunch? It will do you some good to get some fresh air.”
“Thanks, but I need to finish some of this work. Michael’s had to spend so much time on the Tices’ murder case, and with Garland away, we’re really shorthanded. I came home to help Uncle Wylie and Sara Lee, but I’m plowed under with Uncle Garland’s prosecution files. Go figure.”
“Ham told me that Michael’s gone over to the police station to help interrogate a suspect.”
“The grandson?”
“Yes. From what I understand, he did have a house key, and over $100,000 in cash and jewelry is missing. No alibi. Says he was home in bed all night, but no witnesses.”
“Who has witnesses to that?”
“Exactly, but with no forced entry, it narrows the field.”
“I’m glad I’m no prosecutor. All I can see is the suspect’s side.” I caught my reflection in the black computer screen. “By the way, I need a haircut badly. Vanity shouldn’t intrude on work, but I can’t see my desk for the hair in my eyes. Cou
ld you recommend someone who will give me my money’s worth? Just a trim and a little work on these bangs.”
Aunt Elizabeth had the answer before I was finished. “Let me use your phone. I’ll call Simon. If I don’t, it will take three months to get an appointment. Besides, he won’t take a new customer at all unless they come with references.”
“He must be good.”
“Well, let’s say, it will save you a trip to Memphis, at the least. But, we do have beauticians in Delta Ridge who still do marcels and pin curls.”
“You’re not serious.”
“Close,” Aunt Elizabeth said, holding her hand over the receiver. “Good afternoon, this is Elizabeth Carter. May I speak to Simon, please? Simon? Yes, I know my appointment is not until next week, but I am calling for my niece. She recently returned from Europe and doesn’t want to have to go back to get a decent haircut. I told her that with you in town, it wasn’t necessary. Yes, I think she could. Let me see.”
Aunt Elizabeth whispered away from the receiver, “He’s had a permanent cancellation. Mrs. Tice had a standing appointment at 1:30. Do you want it?”
I winced.
“Yes, Simon. Thanks so much. She’ll be there.” Elizabeth placed her hand on my shoulder and lodged the phone back on the desk. ‘Don’t look so gloomy. I’m sure she’d want you to have it. There are women in this town that would kill for an appointment with Simon, but looks like that’s been done for you. Let’s go to lunch.” A wry half smile on her face, Elizabeth patted my arm as she secured her coat.
Thoughts of Mildred Tice, permanently coiffured and shellacked by Simon, diminished as I entered the restaurant. The charming black-and-white tile floor, the classy white linen tablecloths, and the fresh purple pansies on the tables were a pleasant escape from the law books open on my desk and from the grim memory of Mrs. Tice, in death mask, and whose face in life I couldn’t exactly recall.
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