Cementville

  “Why couldn’t she have just come out and said to my mother, ‘Here, let me help you’?” Wanda wondered out loud. Alden Wilder had no ready answer, but Wanda imagined they had similar thoughts about it. Evelyn Slidell couldn’t feature such a public connection with Ferguson blood.

  When the last pesky pieces of paperwork had been stuffed into their manila envelopes, Mr. Wilder reached into a desk drawer and brought forth a pocket-sized silver flask. He pulled two cone-shaped paper cups from the dispenser above the restroom sink and he filled one with bourbon and handed it to Wanda. He filled his own and tapped it to hers with a muffled chink. Wanda had never tossed back even a thimbleful of pure liquor before, but she mimicked Mr. Wilder’s fluid motion that ended with a decisive flick of the head. The gag reflex she expected never came. The bourbon trickled down, its fiery honey warming her tonsils and esophagus and her entire chest. Wanda smiled.

  SHE PULLED THE PLYMOUTH FURY up to the farmhouse and sat there for a while in the idling car, trying to figure how to tell her mother about the unfailing kindnesses Evelyn Slidell had secretly thrust into their lives. She cut the engine and went inside.

  None of Wanda’s mental preparations included a provision for Loretta breaking down altogether. Her mother kept her spine straight at the kitchen table while her face came apart like a crushed box. When Loretta’s silent weeping was done, Wanda helped her to bed. She fetched tea and a paperback her mother had tried to read the day before. Loretta, propped on pillows, feigned reading from the middle of Pride and Prejudice then let her head fall to the side. Wanda closed the door behind her and went downstairs to take care of the lunch dishes. Then she took a bowl and a knife and went to the garden to cut kale.

  Loretta stayed in her room all that day. An hour before suppertime Wanda tapped on her door and stuck her head in. “I’m going to fry those catfish Carl Juell brought over here this morning. How does that sound?” There was nothing her mother preferred over fresh fish. Loretta began struggling wordlessly to extricate herself from the bedclothes.

  “Pete’s sake, Mother, it wouldn’t kill you to ask for help now and then,” Wanda said.

  Loretta rolled her eyes. They had always related most comfortably in this chiding way. Everything was right between them again; they were past whatever riffs Evelyn’s interference in their lives had caused. The money wasn’t going to change anything.

  “That young man is still sweet on you,” Loretta said. “Look at how he pitches woo. Catfish.”

  “Mother, Carl and I are thirty years old.”

  “You’re not saying you’re too old to be romanced.”

  “Stop it now.” Wanda felt herself blushing.

  Supper was simple: Carl’s catfish dredged in cornmeal and green onion-flecked hushpuppies. Sliced tomatoes, the kale braised with a little bacon. Wanda offered her mother some ice cream. She had picked it up after leaving Mr. Wilder’s office, popping a Certs in her mouth before heading into the A&P. The last thing she needed was to add drunkenness to the buzz about her that had Cementville in a subtle quiver. But Loretta said no, she’d skip dessert tonight.

  “Have to watch my girlish figure, you know.”

  Wanda, surprised and delighted at this rare foray into humor, let loose a horsey laugh. A breeze ruffled the edge of the curtain. They played Crazy Eights a while. Her mother was in bed again before the sun went down.

  Wanda went out walking for a bit before turning in. It was already cool. A gibbous moon warped itself into a lopsided ball of yarn, lighting up the fringes of three clouds snagged on Juell Ridge. On the limestone slab that marked the beginning of their driveway she sat down and folded her long legs under her. She leaned into the mailbox post. She considered how all the things that had happened over the past few months were bearing down and threatening to topple her into an impossible future. Wanda tried to see herself traipsing through London or the Louvre, sketching in the details of the mad fancy that Evelyn Slidell had indulged on her behalf. She thought of the poets who lay under stone slabs in Westminster Abbey. She could walk the places where they had walked, the landscapes of dream-country, as Hardy called it.

  She remembered walking their road with Poose at night, frightened by the haunting shapes of fence posts and trees. The memory of Death’s little visit floated in the space around her, wavering, vaporous, his friendly grimace transmogrifying like an out-of-focus snapshot. When I was a child, I thought like a child, she recalled from Paul, Corinthians. She would claim to have long ago put away childish things, but then again, it was only a few months earlier that she’d actually entertained the notion of Death’s little visit being more than what it surely was, the product of a dream fog. Was that what Eliot meant, when he called life a dreamcrossed twilight between birth and dying? And what did it say about her, that the liveliest character of her dreams had been a needling Father Time, a polyglot Chronos with an agenda?

  “Come on back here, you old troublemaker,” she said to the fencepost across the road. Wanda shook herself and whispered, “Talking to shadows—what’s next?”

  She jumped when a voice answered.

  “I’m not intending trouble.” In the dark, in the middle of Crooked Creek Road, a thin form wavered.

  “Are you drunk, Angus Ferguson?” She wasn’t sure how or when it happened, but somewhere along the way Wanda had let go of being afraid of her great uncle, of his natural gift for hurting women. Angus had to be—what, seventy, eighty?—after all. A shuck of his former dangerous self, any damage he might inflict already done.

  “Reckon I’ve been soberer.” He toed the gravel built up in the center of the road. “Though I can’t remember when.” He har-harred lamely, and in lieu of the old sense of peril Wanda felt nothing so much as pitying irritation.

  “Truth is, Wanda Viola, I’m missing Johnny something fierce tonight.” Old Angus sat down in the road and blubbered, out of which Wanda made a word here and there. “Little Daniel . . . blowed all to hell . . . nothing in that pine box in the ground but maybe a foot, little piece of ear . . . poor little Augrey . . . all chewed up by Levon’s good-for-nothing hounds.” Blubber blubber.

  Angus and Poose hadn’t spoken since the night before Mem’s funeral, when Poose held the rifle to Angus’s head. After his brother’s death, Uncle Angus tried to ingratiate himself with Loretta and Wanda, the branch of Fergusons that had “done good” by marrying into Slidells. He showed up whenever he felt like it, never invited. Angus Ferguson represented the disreputable blood Loretta wished did not flow in her own veins. And now he had doubtless gotten wind of the inheritance. Wanda couldn’t imagine there was a single person in Cementville who didn’t have all the details of her recent fortune.

  She stalked wordlessly into the house and came back carrying a plate of leftovers to where the old sot waited between two poplars out by the road. Loretta had forbidden him on the property after he tried in a blind-drunk stupor to climb into bed with her one night after Poose died. Although they hated to, they took to locking the doors at bedtime after that.

  While he wolfed down the last of Carl’s catfish filets, Wanda took the opportunity to say, “I am truly sorry about Daniel and Augrey both, Uncle Angus. They were too young. No family should have to suffer two such tragedies so close together.” Not even yours, she did not say.

  He polished the plate of fish with the side of his hand and licked his greasy paw clean. He handed the dish to Wanda. The moon cast his eyes in shadow under the wiry brows, white now with no trace of the famous Ferguson red. She hoped she detected a speck of gratitude there. But he wasn’t a man to stand on ceremony. With the barest nod, he wobbled down the road in the direction of town.

  “Git, Angus,” Wanda whispered after him.

  She thought of checking on her mother once before she went to bed but didn’t want to risk waking her. In her own room, she threw a summer quilt over her legs and opened Slaughterhouse-Five to see what all the fuss was about. Wanda read late into the night, pulled to Billy Pilgrim’s plight, to
his time-traveling solution to the dilemma of free will, to his ridiculous optimism and acceptance in the face of war’s outrages. She had to read the words of the dying hobo on the train several times.

  You think this is bad? the hobo said. This ain’t bad.

  When she put out the light, the black sky behind the Juell house across the valley was touched at the horizon with pink, the last star fading.

  SHE MIGHT HAVE ONLY SLEPT an hour by the time the sun warmed her cheek. Wanda woke to the odd sense that she was not in her own house. The forms of the curtains, the chifforobe, the desk and chair, things she had seen when she opened her eyes every morning of her life, might as well have been the furnishings of a strange hotel room. It caused a startle in her and, just as quickly, she knew: Her mother was dead.

  She stood outside Loretta’s bedroom for a long time before pushing open the door, and still she gasped on seeing the white profile, nearly the color of the sheets. Loretta’s hand was still warm.

  “I’ll be alright, Mother.” Wanda whispered her protest, even though her mother was giving no quarrel. “It’s okay. You go on now.”

  IN THE WEEKS AFTER HER mother passed, Wanda found herself taking on Loretta’s slow, deliberate habits as if some scrap of her mother’s soul had been snagged on the briars of her own, a frail shred of cloth left behind, a fragment of a lost child’s garment. Drawing a glass of water became an occasion to gaze out the same window where Loretta had hovered mornings, alternately sipping water from a chipped goblet and feeding the tiny tablets of prednisone and chloroquine between her dry lips. Wanda kept Loretta’s wool sweater on a nail by the kitchen door and took to slipping it over her own shoulders each morning.

  Outdoors, she put one tentative foot on the garden path in front of her, careful to measure the security of its purchase before the next step, the actions of a cautious invalid or an infant learning to walk. Sometimes as she tweezed the persistent lamb’s quarters from between Loretta’s clumps of borage and wild comfrey, Wanda was sure she could hear her mother’s weary sigh behind her, that if she looked over her shoulder she would see the once generous figure standing, spine-arched, her hand pressed to the small of her back.

  But no, Wanda was alone now on the old place Poose had christened Hanging Valley, in the house he called Maiden’s Rest, the four walls she and Loretta had both grown up in. This occupation by her mother’s ghost did not alarm her. That is, Wanda did feel unquestionably older, dragging herself around the house and what was left of Poose’s dilapidated farm; but wielding the memory of her mother was less a drain on her than the weight of her grandmother’s estate. Wanda had depended on Loretta to keep the crushing yoke of being suddenly wealthy from grinding her straight into the ground.

  She heard voices, one high, the other soft, deep. Carl and his niece. Their heads appeared first as they pushed their bikes up the hill. Wanda rose to her feet, her hand rising instinctively to her throat. The pulse there was steady and slow.

  FIFTEEN

  Katherine and Maureen were drying and putting away the supper dishes when the call came. Maureen answered the phone and was barely able to get out hello before the high-pitched squawk emanating from the ear piece made her hold the thing a good four inches from her face. Willis could hear Lila’s screech from across the kitchen where he sat at the table sipping a cup of Postum. He claimed it was one of the few healthy habits he’d picked up in Korea—he couldn’t handle caffeine at night anymore, and the grain-based drink seemed to help his digestion. They’d had a new phone installed, a wall unit with a long springy cord, and Maureen wrapped herself in it like a mummy.

  “Mrs. O’Brien,” Maureen mouthed to Katherine, her eyes wide in an exaggerated startle. She held out the phone and uncoiled herself from the cord. Her mother gave her a playful swat on the bottom with her tea towel.

  “Lila, how are you?” Katherine said. “Hold on—slow down, Lila.” She listened, nodding and glancing occasionally at Maureen and Willis as they waited transfixed to see what new excitement—or calamity—had arrived now. “I’ll be right there.”

  Katherine hung up the phone and stood there a minute with her face to the wall. She breathed in, trying to put herself in Lila O’Brien’s shoes. She pressed in place a strand of hair that had come loose, and she may have even prayed. When she turned to her husband and daughter, she must not have managed to smooth the apprehension from her face, because Maureen put a hand to her mouth and her eyes filled with tears.

  “They’ve arrested Harlan O’Brien,” Katherine said.

  “Oh, thank God!” Maureen yelped.

  “Maureen!” Katherine was about to slap her when she noticed that Willis, his face drained of color and his cup still suspended in the air before him, had deflated. He set the cup down carefully and put his face in his hands.

  Maureen burst into tears.

  “What—” Katherine looked in bewilderment from her daughter to her husband.

  “We thought it was Billy,” Willis said. “We figured Lem found him in a ditch somewhere.”

  “Oh. No. No, it’s Harley Sheriff O’Donahue has taken him in for questioning. I need to go over there. Lila is beside herself. Do you think we have any of those sedatives they sent Billy home with?”

  “Seriously? Katherine, he probably ate that bottle in the first few days he was back.” Willis shook his head as he smoothed and folded his Courier Journal.

  Katherine glared at him. What had become of the sweet, compassionate man she married twenty . . . good God, they would celebrate their twentieth this winter. Where was her Willis, the gentle father who couldn’t stand to see her spank the kids, even for the gravest of childhood offenses, who tirelessly read them bedtime stories after putting in a grueling day at the shop, so that she could put her feet up and just be, with no demands from anyone?

  “I will remind you one more time: It was you who signed that form the recruiter sent home saying it was okay for a seventeen-year-old to run off to this idiotic and murderous vanity they are calling a war.” She knew her voice had what Maureen called the “demon-possession” tone, and she knew the once private arguments between her and Willis had begun to spill beyond the bedroom.

  “He can’t use the war as an excuse to behave like a worthless drunk forever,” Willis said.

  Katherine shuddered, actually had to rub her arms to get the goose bumps to go down, from the chill in his voice. It was Willis who taught her what unconditional love—when truly lived—felt like. And now he seemed to suffer a physical revulsion at the very thought of his own son.

  “He’s been home four months, Will. Four. That is hardly forever.” She had tried to get him to read articles about the new studies being done on war fatigue and stress and trauma. His response was always the same: It’s not as though men have never gone to war before. But she couldn’t deal with Willis now. She had to get over to the O’Briens’ house. Lem was waiting till she got there before he drove to the jail, not wanting to leave Lila alone. Outside, the sun was already gone and there was a nip in the air.

  “Maureen, would you get my sweater, the navy one with the pearl buttons?”

  She watched Maureen run upstairs, knowing it would take her a few minutes to dig the sweater out of her closet.

  “Will.”

  He looked up from the paper.

  “Do you want to go over there with me? Lemuel would probably appreciate you riding to the jail with him. Maureen will be all right alone for a while. Carl will be home from Wanda’s soon.” Katherine tried for a smile; she needed to lighten the air in the room.

  Will took the bait. “Sure.” He stood from the table and at the same time they reached for each other. “I’m sorry,” he said into her hair.

  “I know,” she said. “Me too.” She was glad when Maureen came downstairs and caught them in an embrace. They hadn’t done this enough lately, shown the kids how important family was, in good times and bad. Katherine nearly wept with the flood of relief, and her husband held her tighter.


  * * *

  THE LAST OF THE SUN washed a ribbon of gold over the ridge across the valley. Willis could just make out the roof of Johnny Ferguson’s old place, where Carl was probably wiping the crumbs of his dinner from his chin. He was glad for Carl that the meek flame he’d once carried for Wanda Slidell seemed to have been relit. In the least case, she would make a nice friend; a bit peculiar for his own taste, but probably perfect for Carl.

  “Nice night for a walk,” Willis said, his heart suddenly full with the realization of his unlikely luck, walking across the spine of land his family had called theirs for seven generations, including Maureen, and yes, Billy. They were bathed in this pink twilight, they were good people, a good family that was meant to be here, not the type who moved here or there whenever the slightest breeze blew them around. They would survive this—this thing, whatever it was—that had befallen their community; all of them, even Carl, would survive. Willis’s wife strode along so upright and pretty by his side, her kind, strong face not minding the chill of the evening wind.

  “There’s a little bite in that breeze,” he said. Katherine murmured agreement and held his hand and Willis wondered whether it was already time to light the furnace. He hated to, what with the cost of heating oil now.

  They knocked on Lemuel’s and Lila’s door, even though they didn’t really need to, being back-door neighbors all these years. Lem took them to where his wife lay on the couch in the front room. Lila started to struggle up, saying, “Let me get you all something, coffee, iced tea . . .” but Katherine was able to calm her down, and Lila fell against the arm of the sofa and daubed the wad of tissue at her eyes, trying for half a minute to be dainty, but then pulling several fresh Kleenex out of the box at her elbow and weeping freely into them.