“Or give me death!” my mother screamed. She laughed for a solid five minutes, Mrs. Poole smoking like a dragon and shaking her head the whole while. When Mama finally pulled herself together, she apologized to Mrs. Poole. “I just don’t know what crept over me,” she said, eyes still glistening, her large hand on my arm.
“You need to make yourself an appointment, Cleva.” Mrs. Poole nodded knowingly.
“That wasn’t true, was it? About Angela’s father?” I whispered later, as my mother was writing old gradebooks and exams on another shoebox, placing it on top of one that read, Fred’s ideas. She stopped her writing, black Magic Marker held and bleeding onto the cardboard.
“No,” she said, and shook her head. “You know all there is to know about Angela.” She lifted her hand as if in a pledge. “At least you know what / know about Angela.” She finished her writing and then put the cap on the marker. “Her mother got pregnant and never told who the father was.”
“But there had to have been some guess.” I found that I could not look her in the eye while discussing anything remotely related to sex and birth control, unlike Misty who would ask the dumbest questions just so we could hear Sally Jean’s very un medical explanations.
“I think your father had two suspects, and I think he would have pursued it if his sister had lived.” She pulled out another big box of papers and began sorting little scraps of paper. It seemed she was sorting by size, since she wasn’t reading anything, wasn’t wasting her time with unnecessary information. “But he always said that when she died, he and his mother decided they wanted Angela, and they didn’t want anyone else staking any claims.”
“Oh.”
“Your father maintained that the poor girl was completely innocent.” She shook her head, a little drawing of a turkey in a Pilgrim hat in her hand. “To hear him tell it, she was a virgin, and Angela a miracle of the flesh.” Again I had to look away. “Now, why do you guess he drew all these turkeys?”
• • •
Angela arrived the following week on Thursday night, and as she and my mother prepared to go to the lawyer’s office the next morning, I sat in the porch swing and watched Misty leaving for majorette practice. I had never been back to my typing class, though my mother had tried to convince me that the best thing you could do was have a busy, busy mind. Even at night when she finally sat down, she rifled through self-help type books as if on a quest. Oliver was stretched out on the far end of the porch, where already there was a hot patch of sunlight, his fur sparse and gray with age. He hardly moved anymore, just lay in the sun, tail barely moving.
Merle was moving the next day, and he had promised that he’d leave the warehouse as soon as he picked up his check; he was going to tell the Landells good-bye and to help Mr. Landell rearrange Mrs. Poole’s living room as she had been requesting for weeks, but I could go with him. When we finished at Mrs. Poole’s we were going to stop by Misty’s and then walk to the duck pond; we might take the Checker and drive to the movies, maybe drive out in the country as the sun set over the wide flat fields. We were trying too hard to pretend that it was not his last day. “It’s not like we’re never going to see each other,” we said daily, and though Misty kept telling me that I needed to know if we were going to date other people, I couldn’t bring up the topic. “You can’t go steady long distance, can you?” Misty had asked. “Or maybe you can now that you’ve got a car.” We both stared over at my driveway, where it sat in all of its giant green glory.
When the porch was covered in bright hot sunlight, I moved inside where it was cool. I opened the door to my father’s study, where the shades were drawn, and I turned on the small black and white TV he had on his desk. “I Love Lucy” was on, with Lucy now living in Connecticut, certain that her wedding ring is hidden somewhere in the mortar and brick of the new barbecue as she and Ethel sit up all night long dismantling it. “Aye yi yi,” Ricky says when he finds the ruins. “Luuuuceeeee?” My mother called to say that she and Angela were still waiting and that I should plan something for my own lunch, if I went anywhere I should leave her a note. “It’s probably going to take awhile,” she said, lots of talk and noise in the background, while the music from “I Love Lucy” ran into “The Big Valley,” Barbara Stanwyck reminding me of Stella Dallas, reminding me of Mo and Angela and my father and all the things that can possibly go wrong in your life in a flash of a split second. His clocks ticked all around me, one on the mantel, one on the desk, one on his radio, none with the same time. Being in the room was too much, too close, and I turned off the set and went back outside to the heat and the brightness. Merle would be there soon.
I stood and waited, the sidewalk hot as I slipped off my sandals. Sally Jean was watering her beautiful green grass, a big straw hat protecting her face and shoulders from the sun. Mrs. Poole’s sprinklers were on, arcing and spraying mist in my direction, swishing. The absence of my father was more than I could stand, and somehow getting outside in the sunshine made it easier. It seemed that in every creak and settling of our house I heard his footsteps; the scent of cigar and pipe smoke in his study had been overwhelming, as if everything in there had permanently absorbed the smell. And maybe that’s why my mother had kept the door closed. I heard Al Jolson and Judy Garland back to back without breaks, sometimes the two overlapping in the same way my father drew his intersecting circles and boxes, shaded his doodled designs. I saw Merle as soon as he rounded the corner way down the street and I concentrated on him, every step, right left right left, until he was close enough to see me, to lift his hand in a wave.
When Merle was only a block away, I began walking to meet him. Sally Jean paused to look up and wave to me as I passed. “Hey,” he said, and caught my hand in his as I turned and walked back with him. Already I had begun practicing, writing letters to him in my head. “Come on in,” he said when we had walked around to Mrs. Poole’s back door and then into her quiet clean kitchen, where flowers and bowls were out as if a tea were in preparation. I had not been there since the C of C meeting when I had sat right at that very table with Merle. I followed him out into the hallway, the green carpet cushioning our steps, the whole house smelling of cloves and cinnamon and apples. I was looking at the portrait of Mr. Poole when Merle grabbed me suddenly and pulled me onto the wine velvet chaise, a piece of furniture my mother adored but said did not go with any other thing that Theresa Poole owned. My mother had tried to buy it a couple of times, and as a result, it had become Mrs. Poole’s very favorite piece, the one she described to strangers in front of my mother as often as she could.
I pulled away from Merle, twisting to glimpse the door to the kitchen, but he held me tighter, his mouth on my cheek and neck. The house was completely silent, the ticks of the different clocks striking a new rhythm, the mantel and grandfather clocks not quite in sync. “Don’t,” I whispered. “They’ll hear us.”
“Who?” he called out loudly, and grinned. He smelled like the warehouse where he worked; it was just like the smell of my father’s study. That sweet sharp scent of the warehouse was permanent; I loved the way in late summer our whole town was bathed in the heavy odor. I waited, expecting Mrs. Poole to come bursting into the room, but nothing. “Nobody is here,” he said. “They called me at the warehouse to say that they had to drive to the Clemmonsville Mall and for me just to come in and wait.” He spread his arms wide, as if to claim ownership to the house. “They said it would be after noon,” he whispered, and then in a second was up and pulling me along with him.
“Mrs. Poole said it was okay?” I asked in disbelief, a little nervous to find myself completely alone with him, it had been so long.
“I guess.” He shrugged. “She goes along with what the Landells tell her usually. Remember that day we snuck in old Samuel T. Saxon?” he asked, and my heart raced as I followed him up the carpeted stairs, past Audubon prints in gold dustless frames placed every third step. The grandfather clock chimed once on the half hour, and I jumped with the sudden break of silence
. I had never been upstairs at Mrs. Poole’s, and now here I was. I knew that was her room off to the left, where I could see a crocheted canopy and a bay window. There was a frilly little vanity with a silver-framed picture of Mr. Bo Poole. It was so incongruous, the dainty table and the thought of Mrs. Poole sitting there, spreading her thin lips to apply that horrible shade of lipstick; there were so many pictures of Mr. Poole in the house it was like a shrine—saint with a rotten liver.
“C’mon.” He pulled me along, his face and muscular arms already very tan. I followed, focusing on the back of his white T-shirt hanging out over his jeans, the film of yellow dust covering him. The whole upstairs smelled like roses, some kind of sachets or potpourri; it made me think of a doll I’d had once, a doll with bright red hair who was scented to smell like a rose and I had secretly named her Angela and hidden her for safety in the heating vent, not realizing that she was going to fall far below where I’d never be able to find her.
“This was Mr. Poole’s room,” he whispered, and then laughed, used his regular voice. “Mrs. Landell calls it the man’s man room. She says that this is where he came to get away from her.” There was a large desk, and leather-bound law books on a bookshelf. It was a real man’s man sort of room, the head of a deer mounted on the wall, a marlin blue and shiny as it arched over the doorway. The drapes were also very masculine, a heavy brown linen that let in very little light. I peeked out and there in the bright light was Sally Jean going up and down the sidewalk with an edger. There in our driveway was Angela’s old rusty Impala and my taxicab, but I could not see Whispering Pines; the front of our house, the corner with my room, blocked it from sight.
“I figure if he came here to get away from her”—Merle was saying—“he must have used it a lot.” I laughed, once again thinking of my father in his room. I could feel Merle right behind me, hear his breath as he also peered out the thin opening of the drapes. “Your mother’s not home?” he asked, and I shook my head, jumped when I felt his hand on my waist. “Will she be home soon?” His face was pressed against mine, warm from the sun as we continued to stare straight ahead, Sally Jean coming and going within the narrow point of vision. I shook my head, took a deep breath. Merle was moving; in a few hours he would be helping his father empty their sparse belongings from trailer to truck, and then tomorrow they would be gone. There were no guarantees that I’d see him again, no guarantees that my mother and Angela would make it home from the lawyer’s office, no guarantees that I’d wake up tomorrow or that I’d ever turn seventeen or that there was any kind of life waiting for me. I felt Merle’s hand warm against my stomach as he slowly lifted my shirt. Mr. Poole came here for escape in the same way my father sank back in his ink-stained chair, Mrs. Poole into her teas and social chatter, my mother into her needlepoint and greenhouse and family trees. I was in my escape, there that very moment, and wasting the time thinking about it all. I turned to him then, urgent and panicked, more sure than ever before that there were no guarantees.
Awkwardly we fumbled and then within minutes we were on the cot just as we had been behind the stage. I could feel his heart beating as he pressed against me, as I stared up at the deer, the glass eyes so lifelike; the eyes were large and brown and passive, so unlike they really were at that last moment when paralyzed in fear, when Mr. Bo Poole raised his gun and fired, a shattering sound as the body collapsed in the silence of the trees. I gripped Merle’s back, pressed in with my hands, his body lean and muscular. “I don’t want to leave,” he whispered, kissed me before I could even respond, and I closed my eyes against the deer and its moment of fear, the marlin as it leapt from the sea and twisted in the air, salt water glistening, and for that brief time I was able to forget about my father, his body closed in darkness, slowly disintegrating. I was able at that moment to push all thoughts outside the room, to close and lock the door, to concentrate instead on Merle and the words he whispered into my neck, his words in rhythm with his breath as we held onto each other, and then later, my head in the crook of his arm, hand on his chest, eyes begging to give in and close, to give in to the comfort of sleep. It was a moment of absolute peace, so peaceful that we did not bother to jump up and find our clothes, to close and lock the door, did not hear the next half hour chime, did not hear my mother’s car in the driveway, her voice calling my name from the porch, Sally Jean offering my whereabouts; we did not hear the knock, the back door opening, did not hear until she called out, “Anyone home? Theresa?,” and then it was too late, steps on the stairs and my mother appeared there in the doorway, my shirt in the center of Mr. Bo Poole’s brown leather chair. I was fully awakened by her shock, coursing through me like an electrical current, and I sat with sheet pulled up to my chest to see her there, face drawn and white, hand to chest, mouth opened wide. Merle was asleep; his lips parted softly as he took that final sleepy breath before my mother’s scream brought him bolting upright, helplessness washing over him as he leaned forward and put his face in his hands.
“I want you to get out. Right now, to get out.” Her voice was high and shaky. “I can’t take this. I can’t.” She was moving back and forth in that doorway as if being pulled from side to side. “I said, get out of that bed!”
“I will,” I said. “I will as soon as you leave.”
“Leave?” She stepped into the room, picked up my shirt with two fingers as if it were dirty and tossed it onto the end of the cot. “Leave? Why? So you can finish what you were doing?”
“Please.” Merle had somehow gotten his jeans under the sheet and was pulling them on, then buttoning his shirt. “Mrs. Burns.”
“I don’t want to hear anything from you. Nothing.” She rolled her head from side to side against the doorframe, tears seeping as she squeezed her eyes shut.
“Mother.”
“Oh God,” she said, and then took a slow step towards us. She grabbed me by the arm and pulled; my hand that had been clinging to Merle’s there beneath the spread, was pried away as I crawled from the covers, tried to hide myself as I raced to my clothes. “Look at you,” she said, and pointed to the mirror over by the window, and I glimpsed myself, lean and white; my body was so ugly there, a harsh contrast of my whiteness against the paneled walls, my hair loose from the barrettes, coarse and tangled, my cheek and neck splotched red like neon, raw like a burn. “Just look,” she said, her voice breaking, and I hated her right then; all of the hatred that I had ever felt came rushing back in. I hated her for messing up one moment of peace I’d found.
“I don’t want to ever see you again,” she said to Merle before pushing me ahead of her. I turned and he was following slowly, hand held out as if he could grab and keep me there. I was trying to give him a sign, a look that would return the words he had whispered to me earlier but she wouldn’t let me. Her hand was tight on my arm as we went down the carpeted stairs. The sunlight was so bright it blinded me, and I had to squint as we walked down the sidewalk, side by side but not a word spoken. Sally Jean was frozen there with her edger, somehow knowing not to call out to us, knowing that something awful was happening.
“I want you to go inside and take a shower,” she said, shaking her head stiffly, her jaw clenched.
Angela stepped out onto the porch. My mother pushed me towards the front door. The sprinkler still arced and sprayed, the birds still sang, ivy swayed off the gates of Whispering Pines, Merle still stood in that window, the heavy drapes swung back, his hands clumsy against his sides, making him look so helpless, so much younger than he’d looked just minutes before. I reached my hand out but she pushed me into the dark foyer, and I was hit suddenly with the smell of my father’s cigarette smoke. He was not there to settle this mess.
“Why, Cleva,” I heard Angela say, her heels clicking through the foyer. “You look so upset, and, Kitty, what’s wrong? What has happened?” I ran upstairs and into the bathroom; I locked the door and ran water into the bathtub. The steam rose, then disappeared in the breeze from the window. The bathroom window looked over the dr
iveway, the cemetery, shaded by the huge oaks there. I avoided looking in the mirror but got right into the tub and just lay back and closed my eyes, hoping to erase all that had happened. A shudder still came to me each time I pictured my mother’s face. If only I had heard her car in the driveway. How easily I could have gotten up to go home, pulled Merle close to say good-bye, and he would have peeked from the curtains to watch me walking through the sunshine. I would have turned and waved, a sign that we would meet again real soon. And I would have gone into our house and, with a few deep breaths, entered the kitchen to find my mother and Angela waiting. For years Misty’s wish had been: If only my mother hadn’t left on that day, at that exact time.
Twenty-seven
I was sitting in my room, staring out at Whispering Pines, when I heard a light rap at the door. I had seen Misty pull into her driveway an hour earlier and still had not called her though I expected to hear from her soon since she was waiting for me to stop by. I watched the trees swaying as the wind picked up with the sudden clouds; I braced myself, prepared for my mother’s lecture, but instead I heard Angela. “Kitty?” she called. “Honey, I’m so sorry. Cleva told me what happened.” She sat on my bed, her foot near the leg of my chair as I propped my elbows on the windowsill. “Believe you me, I know exactly how you feel. But you’ll both get over it.” She nudged me with her toe, the tone in her voice like I was a child who had just spilled a glass of milk.
“She toldyou?” I asked, suddenly feeling even more exposed, the thought of my mother putting the scene into words.
“Look.” Angela reached and put a hand on my shoulder. “She’s not the most understanding person, you know? And she certainly isn’t with the times.” She laughed a quick laugh, shook me, and then realizing she had failed to make me feel better, got serious again. “It wasn’t the smartest thing you could have done, you know?” She shook her head. “It was more like something / would do.” She put her arm around my shoulder and pulled me up close, her cheek pressed against mine. “You’ll survive, Kitty.”
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