by Bev Marshall
Mama laughed like a loon. “Oh, Layla Jay, you’re such a romantic. You gotta quit watching all those Sandra Dee movies.The only man I’ll ever love is Kenneth, and Wallace could never be one tenth of the man he was.” She looked like she might cry now. “You have no idea how much I miss your daddy. I’ll never find another man like him. He was my everything. I remember how he . . .” She shook her head as if to clear away the memories, then lifted her chin and raised her voice. “Wallace had one purpose; he was my ticket out of Mama’s house. I rode that golden chariot with him to get away from her, and for a while it was a fun ride. But that’s all it was. Flight and fun. And now it’s over and I feel like my old self again.” She stubbed out her cigarette on the scarred wood of my dresser and walked to the door. “Night, honey. Don’t worry about a thing. I’m calling the plays for the game now.You can date any boy you choose as often as you get asked.”
ANOTHER CONSEQUENCE OF WALLACE’S ABSENCE was that I began missing my real daddy more than ever. I hadn’t thought of him all that often when Wallace was living with us, but now, every night I would lift the photograph of Daddy from my night table and kiss his smiling lips. I thought of Mama saying he was the only man she’d loved. Maybe he was the only father I could ever love, too. “Daddy, I wish you weren’t in heaven. I wish I could feel your arms around me. Hear you laugh. If you weren’t dead, what would our lives together be like?” I imagined sitting on the back of his motorcycle, my cheek against his back, my arms encircling his waist, and I could smell his special scent like that of the sweet hay in Papaw’s field.
When I asked her to tell me more about him, Mama refused to conjure up those memories. I knew she was lying when she said she could barely remember him herself. She confessed again that it made her sad to think of what might have been, but then she added that life was for the living, not remembering the dead. I understood that she didn’t want to relive her pain, but it made me mad, too. Her memories were all I had, and she wasn’t willing to share any of them.
Two days after Grandma’s visit, Mama called up Cybil Richards and asked her to meet her at Skinnys.That night she wore the blue dress that showed nearly all of her breasts, and she pinned her hair up into a fancy French twist with tendrils of curls around her rouged cheeks. “Don’t wait up,” she called to where I stood on the porch as her high heels tapped across the drive.
After that night, she never had to ask Cybil to meet her again. Mama had plenty of escorts to take her wherever she wanted to go. Most nights I stayed in my room, not wanting to meet any of the new men. I knew the old ones who stood in our den waiting for Mama.Their names had been in Mama’s History of Lost Men book. It seemed years had passed since I had waited by the window in Mama’s bedroom back at Grandma’s house eager to hear about her dates. Now I barely listened when Mama described her latest conquest. “He’s got money, Layla Jay. He’s been to France.” And another one had a junior college degree, one drove a Mustang convertible, one Friday night date wore elephant hide cowboy boots. I hadn’t known there were so many bachelors in Lexie County, and I couldn’t figure out why I didn’t give a damn about any of them.
I told myself I should be happy. Mama didn’t care how late I stayed up on school nights. She never nagged me about what I ate or asked what I made on an algebra test. She let me borrow her makeup, laughed when I told her I had worn her new blouse to school, and said I’d never have to attend Centenary Methodist Church again. But I was miserable. Lonely. And I missed Grandma. I longed to call her, ask if I could visit her, but I was afraid she was mad at me now. I had thought she would call me, ask me to come over, but every time the phone rang, it was never her voice I heard on the other end of the line. I knew her heart was broken, and I was the cause, and there didn’t seem to be anything I could do about it.
One cold Sunday morning while Grandma was at church, Papaw stopped by for a surprise visit. After shoving Mama’s magazines off a dinette chair and sitting beside the table, his eyes swept around the kitchen where our dirty dishes were piled in the sink, Mama’s bra hung on the refrigerator handle, and a pile of ironing covered the board set up by the window. “We weren’t expecting company,” I said. Papaw just laughed. He told me he didn’t care if we were living like heathens. He said Wallace wasn’t going to last out at New Hope, that he’d come crawling back, and he hoped to hell Mama would have better sense than to take him back.
Mama, still in her red nylon shortie nightgown, came in just then. She stretched out her arms and rolled her neck on her shoulders.“What time is it? You’re out and about early, Pop,” she said, brushing his cheek with her lips.
“You’re looking fit, Frieda. Looks like the single life is agreeing with you.”
Mama shoved my schoolbooks off a chair and sat down. “Layla Jay, we got any coffee? Pour your Papaw a cup.”
Papaw held up his palm.“Already had my fill.” Drawing a cigar from his shirt pocket, he stuck it between his lips, but didn’t light it. “Your mama is pretty upset with you, Frieda.”
“Oh, Mama, she’s always mad at me.”
Papaw’s cigar rolled to the side of his mouth.“She’s getting old, ain’t been feeling up to snuff here lately. I’m worried about her. I think there’s something bad wrong with her, but she won’t go see a doctor. I wish you’d go out and see her.”
Mama reached across the table for the nail file she’d left beside three bottles of polish and began filing her left thumbnail. “Well, she could call and invite me if she wants to see me. I’m not going out there without an invitation.”
“You know how she is. Too prideful to let you know how much she’s suffering. It’s up to you to offer the olive branch.” He took his cigar out of his mouth and pointed it at me. “She misses Layla Jay.You don’t want to keep her only grandchild away.”
Mama tossed the nail file across the table. “If you’re trying to make me feel guilty, you’re not succeeding. Mama is the one who came storming in here judging me. Judge not lest ye be judged. Isn’t that what that Bible of hers says?”
Papaw stuck his cigar back in his mouth and pushed back his chair. His face was as stern and hard as I had ever seen it. I worried he was giving up and I didn’t want him to leave. I wanted to go with him if he did. “Please God, do something,” I prayed. “Make Mama change her mind.”
Mama saw the look on his face. She tapped her nails on the table and looked over at him once more. Suddenly, she grabbed her hair and pulled it out from her head. “Oh, poot! I don’t care. I don’t care. I don’t care. Layla Jay, if you want to go out for a little visit, you can. But I’ve got a date to go to the show this afternoon, so you’ll have to get Pop to bring you home.”
Papaw’s lips curled into a smile around his cigar. “I can sure enough do that.” He pinched my arm. “Let’s get going. Grandma cooked a chicken pie for you.”
She met us in the driveway and we both cried a little, but we pretended it was the brisk wind that whipped up our tears.The pie was delicious, and Grandma had made a chocolate cake, too. After I helped with the dishes, she said she was too tired to go visiting the infirm, and later when I went back into the kitchen for a second piece of cake, I found her lying on the tile floor with her arms stretched out like Jesus on the cross.
Chapter 8
WE BURIED GRANDMA ON VALENTINE’S DAY. I ORDERED A red-and-white-carnation heart that Mr. Davis, the funeral director, pinned onto the satin lining of the casket lid. Mama pitched in for the blanket of roses Papaw ordered, and Wallace showed up with a green plant that turned brown and died in less than two weeks. Mama and I didn’t speak to Wallace even though he cried real tears when he went up to view the corpse. I believed he was truly sad, but Mama said I’d forgotten what a good actor he was.
I went through that day in a trancelike state. During the funeral and burial in the Whittington Cemetery, I couldn’t get my mind to focus on the fact of Grandma’s death. I kept thinking about dessert
s: red velvet cake, pecan pie, chocolate pudding, banana cream pie, sweet potato cake, Coca-Cola cake with thick creamy icing dotted with walnuts.
When we went back to the house for the post-funeral feast, there was Grandma’s dining table laden with several of the very desserts I had imagined, but I couldn’t eat a bite of anything. While our cousins and neighbors and fellow Methodists wandered around the living room whispering their condolences to Papaw and Mama, I went outside and knelt beneath the oak tree to pray, but I didn’t know what to ask for now. God had taken Grandma before He’d sent the Holy Spirit to me and now she was up in heaven where all things are revealed to us. I wondered if she had met up with Daddy or if her spirit was still hovering over her grave.Wherever she was, she now knew me for the lying sinner that I was. She probably also knew that Mama had worn a low-cut red dress to her funeral, which the Pisgah members would be talking about for a long long time. I hoped Grandma knew though that Mama had said she believed in looking her best when she was feeling her worst. That made sense to me, but I couldn’t summon the energy to care about my appearance and wore an unironed blouse and a black skirt to the funeral.
After all our guests had left, Papaw called Mama and me into the living room for a family conference. He wanted Mama and me to move back in with him. “Frieda, you can’t afford the rent on that house in town, and I’ll just rattle around in this big ole house without Zadie. It’d be good for both of us if you and Layla Jay moved back.” He knotted his fingers together (two with Band-Aids on them) like he was plaiting rope. “What do you say?”
Mama kicked off her high-heeled pumps and flopped back on the couch. “Pop, I like living in town. I don’t want to feed chickens and slop hogs.Why don’t you sell this place and move in with us?”
I knew Papaw better than his daughter did. He wasn’t about to give up riding Jim across the pasture. Papaw loved his land, the shaded pond he’d stocked with bream and catfish, the fields ripe with tall stalks of green and golden corn, the animals he fed and petted daily. He would never be happy in our little blue house on Fourth Street. I didn’t want him to be lonely, but I didn’t want him to give up the place where his heart belonged.
He dropped his hands into his lap. “No, I can’t leave this place. I’m too old to start a new life in town. I wouldn’t want to if I could.”
Mama slid her right foot out, wriggling into her shoe. “Well, I’m not moving back here. If you want to stay, that’s your choice.” She forced her high heels onto her swollen feet and grimaced when she stood up. “You’re right though. I can’t afford the rent much longer; my savings are just about gone. I’ve got to find a better job or get another husband as soon as my divorce comes through.”
Papaw must have seen the panic that fluttered as fast as humming-bird wings flitting inside me. I thought of all of the men Mama had recently been dating: the repeaters, Will Satterley, Errol Newman, Jake Lott; the new ones whose names I couldn’t remember; I didn’t want any of them for a stepfather. Papaw said, “No, you don’t need to worry about money, Frieda. I don’t need near all I have. I’ll send you a check; your mama would want you to have a little inheritance from her.”
Mama smiled and I blew out a stream of relief. “Thanks, Pop. Layla Jay and I could sure use a helping hand.”
Mama and Papaw exchanged a look just then that told me they both knew what the outcome of this conversation was going to be way before it got started. I was the only one in the room who thought our futures were in doubt.
I believed that Mama regretted that her mother had died before they made up from their last fight, but she hid it well.While Papaw and I appreciated the notes and phone calls from people expressing their sympathy, Mama’s face turned to stone. She had been through this before when Daddy died, and I don’t know how she felt back then, but now she said it was none of anyone’s damned business how she was feeling.
As soon as we got Papaw’s check, she threw a party for her thirtyfifth birthday. Mama’s birthday was March 15, the Ides of March, and Grandma used to say that a baby born on that day was sure to have pain in his or her life, but Mama wasn’t feeling any of it that night, and neither was I.
Cybil Richards came with Ned Pottle, who was getting a divorce after his wife caught him at the Slumbercrest Motel with Cybil, and nearly all of Mama’s beaus, old and new, came. A couple of women who worked with Mama at Salloum’s department store came, too, but the men outnumbered the women five to one. Mama was gorgeous in a green velvet sheath trimmed in gold braid that snaked around her body as she danced the cha-cha, the twist, and a wild watusi. I sat eating salted peanuts from the glass bowl on the coffee table for the first hour or so of the party, wishing Jehu had come. I had invited him, but he said he was going to be out of town with his folks, and June, whom I had invited, too, said her mother wouldn’t allow her to come because she knew for a fact that Frieda Andrews Ebert would serve liquor to minors. She was right about that. After Mama popped the champagne cork, she said a glass or two wouldn’t hurt me. In fact, after my third glass I felt a whole lot better than I had in a very long time. All of my burdens and worries floated like feathers high above the heads of the couples who danced across our hardwood floors. I batted my eyes at Mervin Stevens when he passed by. He was one of the few men in the room Mama hadn’t dated, although, from the way he looked at her as she flitted across the room, I was sure he was dying to ask her out. Mama had turned him down because he lived in the country and made little stone people, benches, fountains, and such out of concrete. “He’s got white powder in his ears and talks about those figures like they’re real people,” she had told me when I said I thought he was nice.
When he walked by where I stood, I smiled at him. “Hey, Mervin,” I said.
He wheeled around and grinned back at me. His thumb was stuck in the neck of a bottle of Papst Blue Ribbon that dangled from his hand, so I assumed he was on his way to the kitchen for another beer. “You want me to get you one?” I asked nodding down at his thumb.
“Sure, honey.” He popped the empty off his hand, but then set it on the floor against the wall. “But you can get it after a dance. What about it? You like Chubby Checkers?”
I giggled. “I love him,” I said, shimmying my shoulders just like Mama.
After we danced to two songs, Mervin and I had a couple of beers together in the kitchen, and that’s when I got so numb I couldn’t work my legs. But my stomach was moving plenty, and I wound up the evening curled up on the bath mat beside the toilet, which I vomited into about every fifteen minutes or so. Mama came in a couple of times to check on me, and the last thing I remember as she helped me to bed was her saying, “Beer on champagne, mighty risky. You should have known that, Layla Jay.”
The next day, when I told June about the party, I enjoyed laughing with her over my first ever hangover. Later in the week I wished I hadn’t confided in her. I told myself the reason she spread the news all over Zebulon Junior High that I got soused was that she was jealous. But I knew, too, that she had betrayed a confidence, and I’d never tell her another secret again. At Friday’s basketball game against Brookhaven (we lost 30–86), all seven of the cheerleaders flashed me horrified looks when I walked down the bleachers to get a Coke. I didn’t tell Mama about the kids at school whispering and gossiping about me, but she knew something was wrong. “Honey, would you like to spend the weekend with Pop? He’s probably lonely with your grandma gone. Would that be fun?”
“Sure,” I said, but I didn’t think two days on the farm was going to eradicate my gloominess or Papaw’s loneliness.
When Mama dropped me off, Papaw came out of the house wearing a bandage on his nose.“Crazy hen flew up in my face and bit the shit outta me,” he said to Mama and me. “And I wasn’t anywhere near the eggs she was sitting on.”
Mama just laughed and advised him to wear protective clothing to gather the eggs, then drove off in a cloud of dust to get ready for a date. She wa
s going out today with Thad Barnes, who had just moved to Zebulon from Meridian. Mama said he told her there weren’t any women in Meridian as beautiful as she.We both believed him.
But I couldn’t believe my ears when Papaw told me we were invited to dinner at Miss Louise Dunaway’s house. I didn’t know Papaw knew Miss Louise, and I had never met her, but I had heard a lot of stories about her. She was talked about around Zebulon nearly as much as Mama. She was a nurse, had moved to Zebulon when her husband was killed in a train accident that occurred the same year as my daddy’s motorcycle accident, and although older than Mama, she was a lot younger than Papaw.
I didn’t expect to like her. I sat silently beside Papaw on the drive over to her house in his battered truck that was beginning to look like a compact car with its missing bumpers and fenders. “You’ll like Louise,” Papaw said. “She’s a good cook, too.”
“Not as good as Grandma, I’ll bet,” I said, looking out the window as the sun bobbed its good-bye to me. I took off my sunglasses.“Nobody cooks as good as Grandma did.”
I was wrong. Miss Louise made the best lasagna I’d ever tasted, and after eating junk food with Mama for so many nights, my stomach practically smiled when the lasagna hit it. As we ate, from across the table I watched Miss Louise laughing at Papaw’s jokes. She was pretty, not beautiful like Mama, but she had sandy-colored hair that fell in curls around her shoulders, a spray of freckles across her nose, and when she smiled, a dimple appeared on her right cheek.
After the meal (she wouldn’t dream of my doing the dishes), she got out a deck of cards and shuffled them like a professional gambler.That’s when I noticed her hands. They didn’t fit the rest of her; they were red and rough with unpolished short nails filed straight across her fingertips. I guessed that all nurses’ hands looked like that considering what all they had to do with them. “Five-card stud,” she announced nodding me into the dinette chair across the table from her.