Mama’s mouth tightened, the lipstick crinkling into lines at the edges of her upper lip. She wasn’t anywhere near an old woman yet but she spent too much time tanning, convinced that it made her flaccid flesh look tighter. She was hardly alone, of course; it was several years before the doctors started warning people about too much sun. Of course any half-wit could look at the skin of people who worked in the sun and see the damage, but no one has ever gone broke underestimating the capacity for self-delusion in the species.
“How dare you call me a thief!”
“You’ve done it whenever I had a nickel!” I shot back. “How dare you go through my drawers!”
“I have not!” Mama cried, with great crocodile tears standing in her eyes. She rushed away toward her room.
I shut the door and dropped my books on my bed.
Did I want the future that Merry Verlow and Mrs. Mank between them were conspiring to give me? Wellesley? Harvard? They were names in news magazines. Would they allow me to follow my own interests or had they already determined what I would be become? Those distant places beckoned me, to be sure, and my only other option was one of the state university campuses, or no further education at all. I had no answers about my own future, only a slew of questions.
Where was the moon tonight? In its last quarter? I checked the little lunar calendar in my nightstand drawer where I kept it in a notebook.
The middle drawer of my dresser still stood open. There was nothing in it but a couple of pairs of cotton pajamas from Sears. Most everything in my wardrobe had a Sears label on it. Sometimes I bought clothes at a thrift shop, and those nearly always had a Sears label. Or one from Montgomery Ward—Monkey Ward, Grady called it. Mrs. Llewelyn still sent me an occasional hand-knit sweater, but was far more likely to put cash into a Christmas or birthday card now. She was apologetic, but said that there was no way to know my taste now I was a teenager, and styles had changed so radically. Dr. Llewelyn still sent toothbrushes and toothpaste and floss, though.
My daddy had been murdered. I didn’t even have a picture of him. And I was going to go to Wellesley and Harvard and live with Mrs. Mank and Mama was going to marry Colonel Beddoes and my brother might have something to say about it.
I should talk to him, I thought. I wanted to hear what he might have to say, not just about Mama getting married again, but about everything. He was practically grown up now and so was I. Maybe the hole in my life wasn’t Daddy’s absence so much as it was Ford’s. And I didn’t even know how to get in touch.
Fifty-four
GRADY found me crouched on the beach, trading pieces of a peanut butter sandwich with my current Rocky Raccoon, for oysters. Grady had two cold Straight Eights by their necks. It was just twilight, so I didn’t need my hat.
“Hey,” he said.
“Hey back.”
I had my oyster knife in my shorts and swiftly shucked the oysters from their shells. I gave some to Grady and swallowed some myself.
We chased the oysters with long draughts from the Straight Eights. I told Grady about catching Mama going through my drawer and how I wanted to get in touch with my brother. I had not told anyone what Miz Verlow had said about me going away, and didn’t know how or when I was going to be able to tell Grady.
I asked him, “You see Betelgeuse?”
He was hopeless. He never could see what I saw in the sky.
“Nope. Ain’t your mama got an address or a phone number nor nothin’?”
I shook my head.
“So you don’t even know where he is?”
“No, sir.”
“You sirring me?” Grady mock-cuffed me.
He wanted to go canoodle on the beach. We had our place. It seemed like a reasonable thing to do so I took his hand and we went down the beach and found it again. Grady wasn’t so skinny as he used to be; he was starting to fill out to be a man. It felt good to be close to him and have his arms around me.
“You got any ideas?” he asked me. “Ma’am.”
I mock-cuffed him back. “Watch it, you!” I leaned back into his arms. “No I ain’t got any ideas.”
The silence between us lengthened pleasantly and after a while I realized that Grady had dozed off. I poked him in the ribs.
He smacked his lips together. “Damn.”
“I need some money,” I said.
“Me too. Wanna hold up a bank?”
“You can try it, you want. I’m gone have to bust the Nickel Account, enough for a bus ticket to and from Tallassee. I can find out where Ford is if I go there, I know I can. I’ll go right to Dr. Evarts and demand to see my brother.”
Grady scratched his head. “I like to go but I got to work.”
“Not right now,” I said. “But soon, when I get the time off.”
I hadn’t ever asked for time off and hadn’t even considered if I should tell Miz Verlow what I wanted to do with the time or not.
“You won’t need a bus ticket,” Grady said. “We caint use my wheels, it taint reliable enough, but maybe we could borrow the station wagon, or even Roger’s daddy’s Edsel that used to be your mama’s.”
“You’re a genius,” I told Grady. “Sir.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said. “Put your pants on, less go get some more beer.”
While Grady collected the rest of the beer in his Dodge, I went into the house and found Miz Verlow in the kitchen making a cup of tea, and begged the use of the station wagon for an errand.
“Beer run?”
“Yes’m.”
She tipped her chin at the hook where the keys to the wagon hung. “That boy’s vehicle is a deathtrap. You drive. You hold your beer better than he does.”
I had an urge to kiss her but when I started to rise up on my bare toes, she gave me an appalled look.
“Put some shoes on, Calley,” she said. “You oughtn’t drive with bare feet.”
I never have figured out what’s so bad about driving with bare feet.
“Miz Verlow,” I said, as I began to bag some leftovers for snacks, “do you remember Mama’s mama talking to us from the dead when I was a little girl?”
She gave me a long steady look. “So you remember.”
“Yes’m.”
“Do you remember me asking you just afterward if you could hear the dead?”
I nodded.
“You told me that you did. You didn’t understand them.”
“No’m. I did not. Most of ’em. I mean, I understood what Mamadee said.” Another memory surfaced. “Cosima,” I said, “Mama’s grandmama, she spoke to me twice. On a Christmas Eve. And then.” I felt myself jumping off a cliff. “Then Tallulah Jordan came to the door.”
Miz Verlow blinked at the name Tallulah Jordan.
“Who the hell is Tallulah Jordan?” she asked, with an edge of mockery in her voice.
“A ghost, like Mamadee was, and like my great-grandmama Cosima.”
Miz Verlow blinked again.
“I want to talk to you, in my room,” she said. “Tell Grady to go wherever he calls home.”
“No, ma’am,” I said. “I’m gone with Grady right now.”
Miz Verlow’s lips tightened with anger. Her eyes livened with an almighty piss-off at me. I noted it with a smug adolescent satisfaction. It didn’t occur to me that it was another moment like the one in which Mrs. Mank offered to tell me a secret and I declined. Then I declined out of fear. This time I was exercising my independence.