It troubled me—it made me fearful—to think of Mama and Mrs. Mank conversing, but I could not have said why.
The guests had scattered their cups and saucers and teaspoons and napkins wherever they might, around the parlor and the other rooms of the ground floor. In great haste I collected them all and returned them to the kitchen, where I had already drawn the dishwater. Miz Verlow had instructed me to count all the cutlery and dishes, so I knew that everything that I had taken out was recovered. But Mama and Mrs. Mank did not know what I knew.
I slipped out as noiselessly as I could and idled along the verandah, my face fixed to convey the concentration of a small girl hunting forgotten cups or spoons.
The verandah went almost entirely around the house, from the kitchen at the back to the seaward front and on around the nether side. Disappointingly, Mama and Mrs. Mank had taken chairs next to each other and sat there silently gazing out at the guests who were wandering to the beach to see where they had come, or just to shake out the stiffness of their various journeys.
“There is no china or silver on the verandah,” Mrs. Mank said, without looking at me. “Take your very large ears, Calley Dakin, and find Merry Verlow, who undoubtedly has means to occupy your small hands, if not your nose.”
Mama snickered. It sounded just like one of Ford’s noises.
Angry at being caught out, I blurted, “It’s not fair that everybody can tell me what to do.”
Mrs. Mank laughed rudely. “Next you’ll want the vote.”
The heat rose in my face. My transparent skin unfailingly betrays me.
“My daddy told me that people that step on other people,” I said slowly, “are liable to get their ankles bit.”
Mama sat up straight. “He never! You are a wicked little liar, Calley Dakin!”
I curtsied mockingly and sailed away. Behind me, Mama could not apologize sufficiently for my outrageous behavior. Fine by me.
In the kitchen I climbed my step stool and washed the dishes. I was very thorough and dried everything carefully, and set it all out again in the pantry to do double-duty after supper. As tired as I was already, the supper dishes, in their settings on the dining table, were yet to be dirtied.
I went upstairs to the linen closet. There I made myself a nest, within reach of my half dozen books. No one would know where I was; no one could command my services, such as they were. Why I was so convinced that a windowless cupboard deep in a big house must be safe from ghostly voices and apparitions, I could not have explained. It just seemed logical. As if I were tuning a radio, I tuned my ears to the sounds of the Gulf. The sloshing susurrations, so like a heartbeat, let me down gently into sleep.
Thirty-two
NO more than a couple of hours after the Edsel spat gravel at her, Mamadee drove her Cadillac the three and a half blocks to downtown Tallassee. She parked in front of Mrs. Weaver’s dress shop. There, she went inside and announced that she was going to buy every umbrella on the premises. When Mrs. Weaver reacted with understandable surprise, Mamadee only replied imperiously that she had her reasons for the purchase. Mrs. Weaver then apologized that she had only five umbrellas for sale, but added that she would be happy to relinquish her own umbrella at an appropriate discount.
“Why in the hell would I want your old umbrella?” Mamadee replied.
Mrs. Weaver sniffed discreetly, sure that Deirdre Carroll had been drinking and before the noon hour, but she was disappointed. Only momentarily however, for in a quarter of an hour, she had convinced herself that she had indeed smelled bourbon on Deirdre Carroll’s breath.
Mamadee deposited the five umbrellas in the trunk of her Cadillac and then went to Chapman’s Department Store, where she bought every umbrella for sale in the ladies’ department, every umbrella for sale in the men’s department, and the one undersized frilled parasol that was for sale in the children’s department. She gave her car keys to a salesman and told him to just put all her purchases—the umbrellas—in the trunk of her Cadillac, and that she would be back in a while to retrieve the keys. While the salesman was stowing the umbrellas in the trunk of the Cadillac, Mrs. Weaver came to the door of her shop and shared her belief with him that Deirdre Carroll had been drinking before noon. The salesman observed that he wouldn’t be the least surprised.
Half an hour later, Mamadee returned to the department store with a little colored boy in tow. The child was burdened with five brown paper parcels, each with one or more umbrella handles sticking out of it. Mamadee had gone to every store and every shop and demanded to purchase every umbrella in current inventory. At the Ben Franklin Five and Dime, she had procured seven, two at the Harvester’s Seed and Feed, three at Bartlett’s Hardware, two at Durlie’s Dollar Store, and one at the Piggly Wiggly—the tail end of a Morton Salt promotion. She had found none for sale at Dooling’s Barber Shop, the Tastee Freez, the Alabama Power Company, Ranston Insurance, Smart’s Jewelry, or at Quantrill’s Lighting, Plumbing and Gas Fixture Supply Company, but she certainly had inquired.
Retrieving her car keys, Mamadee led the little colored boy with the fifteen umbrellas to the Cadillac. When he had shut the trunk, Mamadee carefully counted out not the promised twenty-five cents, but thirty-three dollars and thirty-two cents. Handing it over, she told the boy to come round to the house later so that she could make up the penny shortfall.
When the little colored boy had wandered off in the stupor of his unanticipated wealth, Mamadee entered Boyer’s Drugstore, the only retail establishment in downtown Tallassee she had not yet visited. Here, however, she did not ask for umbrellas but rather marched directly to the pharmacy counter, and impatiently placed herself behind an elderly farmer whose deafness was severely slowing his purchase of a proprietary senna preparation for his even more elderly mother.
The pharmacist, Mr. Boyer, was surprised to see Mamadee at his counter. She always sent a maid if she needed a prescription filled or wanted an illegal refill of her blue paregoric bottle. She almost never came herself.
Having dealt with the deaf old farmer, Mr. Boyer steeled himself, smiled obsequiously and asked, “Miz Carroll, what can I do for you?”
Mamadee lifted her chin high into the air, to show its soft underside.
“Look at this place,” she demanded. Place was the word used to refer to a small bruise, blemish, or wound of indeterminate origin.
“I caint see anything from here,” puzzled Mr. Boyer. “Maybe I better come around.”
The pharmacist came round and closely peered beneath Mamadee’s chin. “I still don’t see anything, Miz Carroll.”
“Well, it’s there! I can feel it!”
By this time everybody at the fountain counter in front of the drugstore had turned to watch and listen.
Mr. Boyer started to press his index finger against the underside of Mamadee’s chin, but she jerked back in alarm.
“Don’t touch it! Just give me something to make it go away.”
Mr. Boyer was at a loss. His wife left her station behind the counter and came to the back of the store.
“Is it a blister, Miz Carroll?” Mrs. Boyer asked.
“It is not a blister,” Mamadee retorted. “It is a boil. I know it is a boil.”