The Kindest Lie

by Nancy Johnson

  His voice rang triumphant. Why was he even going there when she hadn’t mentioned her abandonment issues? Had Mama told him how resentful she’d been about Joanna’s disappearing act? Pastor Bumpus leaned back again as if to get a better view of her, admiring God’s handiwork.

  On Sunday mornings when she was a girl, he would invite her and other star students to the pulpit for special recognition, reading to the congregation from their report cards, listing all their good grades and reciting teachers’ praise. The first time, it had embarrassed her, but then it became a motivator to earn nothing less than A’s in every subject.

  Then the acceptance letter from Yale arrived, offering her a full scholarship. The church hosted a celebratory luncheon after service to honor her as well as a boy cellist in the congregation who got to play a concert with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. How would Pastor Bumpus look at her now if he knew her secret?

  She couldn’t tell him her story, but she also couldn’t stand the way he’d elevated her undeservedly. “You don’t know my whole story. I’ve made mistakes. Big mistakes. There are things I can’t undo. I needed my mother.”

  Her voice cracked around the edges. She thought of her Catholic friends at Yale who sat in little booths behind a curtain, confessing their sins to a priest, liberated by the anonymity of it all. But she couldn’t tell Pastor Bumpus everything. She wanted to say that if she’d been raised by her mother, maybe she wouldn’t have turned to Ronald for love. Maybe she wouldn’t have gotten pregnant.

  Pastor Bumpus closed his eyes and lifted his hands above his head, reaching heavenward. “Listen to me carefully now. You thought you needed a mother. But the Bible says in Philippians, ‘My God shall supply all your needs according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus.’ The word of God is as real today as it was yesterday.”

  The cadence of his voice rose and fell in a rhythm, and Ruth felt a sermon coming on. And as much as she had revered him since childhood, she remembered he had limitations, too, just like everybody else.

  That time she came home from college for a brief visit, the church was in an uproar over his alleged mishandling of congregants’ tithes and offerings. Word in the pews had it that Pastor Bumpus had taken tens of thousands of dollars in donations earmarked for the church mortgage and used it as seed money to fund a children’s recreation center. Apparently, he hadn’t come clean with the members and some questioned his financial stewardship. We have to keep our children busy and off these streets, he’d said in his own defense. It was a worthy cause, and many in the church refused to condemn the pastor’s good work, while others blasted his dishonesty and dubious methods. She didn’t know which side to come down on and chose to stay neutral.

  When he opened his eyes at the end of his prayer, Ruth was standing above him with his coat over her arm.

  “It was wonderful seeing you again, Pastor. I’ll tell Mama you stopped by.”

  She meant no disrespect, but she couldn’t pray away this problem. Not now. Not yet.

  “I’m always here for you and your family. Remember that,” he said, rising and taking his coat. She walked him to the door.

  With Pastor gone, Ruth sat alone with thoughts of Joanna. As a little girl, she would close her eyes as tight as she could and try to remember her mother—her eyes watching, her hands holding, her mouth kissing her. Now, as an adult, she grasped for bits of information and images floating past in the dust storm of memory. But that picture in her mind remained out of reach. Her mother had disappeared just after Ruth’s third birthday. She had missed so much. Ruth making honor roll every year. The science fair trophies in fifth and sixth grades. Perfect report cards all through junior high. Her induction into the National Honor Society. The birth of Joanna’s first grandchild.

  Sometimes when Ruth tried to picture the woman raising her son, she pictured someone like Joanna: unrefined, irresponsible, and even uncouth. Thinking of her child’s mother as a villain made it easier to dislike this woman she’d never met, to dismiss her the way she had her biological mother. At the same time, this logic made her feel guilty for delighting in the idea of someone bad raising her son.

  So much in Ruth’s life had been defined by Joanna—her presence and her absence. Ruth had made a vow to never become the girl the world expected her to be, the one who slept around and got pregnant by a guy who walked away. Yet that’s exactly who she had become. Her mother’s daughter. Her greatest motivation to excel in school and become successful had been the driving desire to reverse that fate.

  Seventeen

  Midnight

  Midnight buttoned his white dress shirt and smoothed the creases of his black funeral pants, the ones Granny kept on a wooden roller hanger. She didn’t allow shoes in the house and the socks he’d worn all day stunk like his boots. In the clothes dryer, all he found were mismatched socks, those that survived the sucking vacuum of the air vents. So, he took off the ones he’d been wearing, cranked the window open, and draped his socks over the sill to air out. When he sniffed them a few minutes later and deemed them acceptable, he tucked the ends of the socks under his toes to cover the holes.

  The Tuttles were coming over for spaghetti dinner that night. They hardly ever had company, and surely nobody as special as Miss Ruth. A smile snuck up on him and he didn’t know where it came from. Only that he wanted dinnertime to hurry up.

  Midnight stood beside Granny, who leaned over a steaming pot of marinara sauce, stirring, licking the spoon, and stirring again. When she finally noticed him in his dress clothes setting the table, her mouth opened and then she shut it, saying nothing. Every night since he’d found out he might be shipped off to Louisiana, he set the table for dinner. Forks on the left, knives and spoons on the right. If he arranged the place settings properly and filled the glasses with ice, maybe Granny would notice how useful he was, helpful even, and change her mind about sending him away.

  The first thing Auntie Glo did when she came in the kitchen was laugh at Midnight and say, “Who died? You look ridiculous.” Even her insults couldn’t dampen his mood, and he smiled back at her, for once not having to fake it.

  “Leave him alone,” Granny said.

  As soon as Midnight heard a car pull into the driveway, he flung open the front door. Mrs. Tuttle came in first, her large body bent forward, her heavy breasts swinging when she walked, like the trunk of an elephant, and he worried she might topple over. She held on to her son Mr. Eli’s arm for support. Miss Ruth came in last, and Midnight actually smelled her perfume before he saw her. He banged his good arm on the kitchen counter trying to move away from the door, pretending he hadn’t been staring.

  At the dinner table, he sat next to Miss Ruth, and when they said grace, her long fingers squeezed his, the way Mom’s used to when he got his shots at the doctor’s office before school started. Not since Mom died had he felt such comfort, reassurance that he’d be okay. After the blessing, he felt Mr. Eli’s eyes on him, something unspoken passing between them whenever they saw each other.

  “What did you ask Santa to give you for Christmas?” Ruth said, spooning green peas onto her plate.

  He hadn’t believed in Santa Claus for years and neither had his friends. He figured Miss Ruth didn’t have kids of her own and didn’t know too many. But he couldn’t disappoint her. “I asked Santa not to send me to Louisiana.”

  “Patrick!” Granny’s face got tight and she pressed her lips together.

  It was Mrs. Tuttle who spoke next. “Now, what do you know about Louisiana, young man? I bet you’ve never been,” she said.

  “Mama, leave him alone. Maybe he read about it in school,” Miss Ruth said, sipping her lemonade.

  Mrs. Tuttle waved her fork, spaghetti dangling from it. “Stop defending this child. That’s what’s wrong with kids these days. They don’t take the time to learn. They don’t know how to appreciate the South. Now, take Mississippi. That’s my home.” She leaned in, the table squishing her big breasts. “It’s beautiful. Have you ever sat unde
r a magnolia tree and sipped lemonade on a hot day? Or ran your fingers through black soil that grows the food you eat, that grows the cotton they used to make that nice shirt you’re wearing right now? Huh? You tell me.”

  He wasn’t sure if he was supposed to respond or whether this was one of those questions grown-ups asked where the answer was understood, but not spoken. By the way she looked at him, though, he figured she expected an answer. “No, ma’am,” he said, his eyes on his plate, thinking the peas reminded him of little eyeballs.

  “What are they teaching you in your history books, young man? What do you know about Louisiana?”

  “The people from there talk kind of funny, I guess,” Midnight mumbled, his eyes still on his plate.

  Mrs. Tuttle laughed without smiling and it sounded more like a cough, and he could hear the phlegm in the back of her throat. “How do you think you talk? You sound funny, too.”

  Her face turned serious again. “Louisiana gave us jazz and all that good Cajun and Creole cooking. That’s culture, child.” As she ate, sauce dripped onto her chest, but she didn’t notice.

  Granny said, “All right now. Food’s getting cold on your plates while you’re doing all this talking.”

  With his mouth full, Mr. Eli said, “Everything’s good, Mrs. Dureson. Tastes like more.”

  Granny liked it when people ate her food and asked for seconds. Soon as he said those words, she brought out a fresh bowl of spaghetti, spilling sauce when she plopped it on the table. She grabbed for her napkin and frowned. “Now, Midnight, you know better than to put paper towels out here instead of our cloth napkins,” she said, frantically dabbing red stains.

  A slow, sneaky smile crossed Auntie Glo’s face as she bounced little Nicky on her lap and fed him applesauce. “He never learns. No home training. So lame.”

  Midnight stuck his tongue out at her. He had put out what they always used for dinner, the Brawny towels Granny had the coupon for: two rolls for the price of one. Jamming his toe against one of the table legs, he said, “Sorry.”

  Miss Ruth patted his arm, and while he could barely feel her touch through his shirt, his heart slammed against the walls of his chest. She said, “Don’t worry about it, Lena. I use paper towels all the time. They’re preferable over napkins. They don’t disintegrate in water and they absorb a whole lot better.” Then she looked at Midnight. “Do you know why that is?”

  “I don’t know,” he said, disappointed that she sounded like one of his teachers and frustrated with himself for not knowing the answer, especially since it was a question about science, his favorite subject.

  “The paper is woven together loosely. That allows liquid to move easily among the fibers,” Ruth said, unfolding the paper towel next to her plate and placing the square on her lap.

  Then he remembered. “One time my friend Corey and I did this experiment with kitchen sponges. We had a whole bunch of different kinds like natural and artificial and we had to see which ones could hold the most water.”

  Interrupting his story, Granny asked if anybody wanted refills on lemonade. Before anybody could respond, the front door opened, and he heard Daddy’s voice. “Smells like I’m right on time.”

  In a low voice, Mr. Eli said, “I think I just lost my appetite.”

  Granny pulled an extra chair from her bedroom and pushed it up to the table. “Have a seat, Butch. You’re late, but there’s plenty.”

  “You didn’t tell me he was coming.” Mr. Eli folded his arms across his chest and glared at his mother.

  Daddy sucked the air from the room. “My family, my house. If you don’t like it, leave.”

  Granny chewed her bottom lip and dumped more food on everybody’s plates, as if that would make them act nice. She left the table momentarily and returned with a bottle of Scotch and placed it on the table in front of Daddy. Maybe to keep him calm. He tipped the bottle and chugged as if it were a jug of milk.

  It got so quiet that all Midnight heard was forks tapping against teeth. This time when Granny got up, she grabbed the remote and turned on a news channel. The anchor said something about car companies getting bailed out, but Midnight had heard of that happening only when somebody went to jail. Like the time Drew got arrested for reckless driving and Daddy bailed him out.

  Miss Ruth cleared her throat and said, “Well, this is good for the automakers. I think Obama’s got a plan to fix things, and who knows, maybe Fernwood will be back in business.”

  No one agreed or disagreed with her, and Midnight didn’t know enough to have an opinion. He’d heard a bit about the election in social studies class. Miss Hightower called it historic but told the kids they weren’t allowed to say who their parents had voted for.

  “No way,” Daddy said. “I’ll believe it when I see it. These big auto manufacturers make all this money on the backs of the little guy then can’t pay their bills. Hey, I can’t pay mine, either. Is Obama gonna bail me out?”

  Mr. Eli shook his head. “You dumbass. The big guy creates jobs for the little guy. They win, you win.”

  Every time Daddy and Mr. Eli raised their voices in disagreement, Miss Ruth changed the subject to something less toxic, like how toned Michelle Obama’s arms looked in sleeveless dresses. She’d also read that Barbara and Jenna Bush had given Malia and Sasha Obama a fun tour of the White House, where they all jumped on the beds and took turns sliding down a solarium banister. That story made Midnight miss the baby sister he never got to meet.

  Moving away from talk of politics, Granny said, “Well, Christmas will be here in a couple days. I hope business will pick up. Too many people buying gifts on eBay. How are small businesses supposed to make it?”

  Daddy bit into a crunchy slice of garlic bread. “Ask Eli over here about eBay. He’s been stealing tire sensors and gear sticks from the plant and putting them up on eBay for years.”

  Midnight’s mouth went dry. Nobody spoke at first until Mrs. Tuttle put her hand on Mr. Eli’s arm. She said, “Let it go. Just eat.”

  Ignoring her, he slammed his hands on the table. “You want to talk about stealing? You stole from Fernwood every damn day when you came in to work an hour late and then took six smoke breaks. If they hadn’t laid you off first, they would’ve fired you. Your hands are dirty up in here. Trying to point fingers at me.”

  Daddy jabbed his index finger in Eli’s face. “I’ll point at you anytime I want. What’s dirty is what runs in your veins. I remember hearing about your grandpappy using the old rubber band trick to get a machine to work. I bet people died on the road ’cause of him cutting all kinds of corners to meet specs.”

  Something Midnight couldn’t name charged the air and he waited for the next explosion. Miss Ruth reminded him of a block of stone, her body stiff, rigid with rage. He could see it in her eyes. He worried she might slap Daddy. Maybe she should. Why did he have to always ruin things? When she finally spoke, her voice was scary low. “You keep Papa’s name out of your mouth.”

  A kitchen chair scraped the linoleum. Mrs. Tuttle gripped the sides of the table to brace herself as she stood. “This has gone on long enough. Lena, thank you for dinner. I know you were trying to do a good thing, getting our families together again, the way it used to be when our husbands were still alive. But things have changed. I won’t have my husband, God rest his soul, disrespected like this.” She shot a glance at Daddy, who looked away.

  The color drained from Granny’s face. She pleaded, “Come on now. Ernestine, please sit down. My son-in-law can be a bit of an ass, I know. But I consider you one of my oldest and dearest friends. Besides, I cooked all this food. Can we just eat? Please.”

  The anguish made Granny’s face draw up like a dried-out grape. He worried about her bad heart. Did hearts wear out like old factory machines? He couldn’t lose her, too. Silently, he begged Mrs. Tuttle to do what Granny asked and stay. Slowly, she lowered herself back into her seat.

  Then little Nicky screamed and pounded the table. Everyone turned to see his square mouth open
ed wide, revealing pink gums. Midnight reached across the table to gently press a pacifier to his mouth and the child grabbed it, holding it between his lips.

  Miss Ruth said, “What happened to your arm?”

  Midnight’s shirtsleeve had lifted just enough to expose the scars he tried to keep covered. Granny’s eyes flashed from Daddy to Mr. Eli and then to Midnight.

  He shrugged. “It happened a long time ago. It’s no big deal.”

  Lightly touching the shiny pink skin on his forearm, she said, “It is a big deal. It looks painful. Does it still hurt?”

  He shook his head and she let it go. They all began twirling their spaghetti on forks while he thought back to that day three years ago.

  The boys jumped him the day after the fight at the new gravel pit. He had been sitting on the curb of his street trying to build a fort with sticks. The smell of grilled meat wafted from somebody’s cookout nearby.

  Midnight never saw the boys coming.

  They descended upon him, knocking his glasses from his face, and everything became a blur. They ripped his T-shirt as he lay on his side, his cheek scraping asphalt. Cool liquid splashed his arm. Only later, at the hospital, would he learn it was lighter fluid.

  “This is for being such a punk-ass traitor,” one of the boys yelled before lighting the match and tossing it at him.

  The fire’s heat was so intense, he thought his skin had peeled away. Still, in the fog of losing consciousness, he heard Corey’s voice. “Stop. Stop.”

  At the hospital, the doctors said he’d suffered third-degree burns and was lucky only his arm had been burned. He was also lucky Corey had shown up when he did and screamed for help.

  Granny cried at his bedside while Daddy looked for someone to blame. “How do we know that Corey kid didn’t set Patrick on fire? Huh? Tell me that. Maybe he got scared, his conscience got to him. He called for help when he thought he might get in trouble for what he’d done.”