During the year following Maryanne’s death, Julia learned to leave supper in the oven while she waited for Bill to come home at night. Those were the months he was drinking and everyone knew it. Too often, his food would grow cold and he wouldn’t bother to eat. She learned it was always best he eat a little something, if only a few bites.
“Sorry,” Bill says, stumbling through the front door.
It’s as if the last two years, the better years, never existed.
“Sorry I’m late.”
Julia pushes back her chair and rushes to catch him before he falls. He throws his arms around her shoulders. She braces herself to carry his weight and pushes against his chest to steady him. It all comes back to her as if no time has passed.
“Come eat,” she says, wrapping an arm around his waist after he has regained his balance. “Supper’s hot. Fresh out of the oven. Made those biscuits you love. Any word of Elizabeth?”
When Julia first met Bill, she was two inches taller than he, but that didn’t last long. Her family had only just moved from Kentucky. She had a slow, thick drawl that she worked to be rid of every day. She knew Bill before his beard came in, when his shoulders were narrow and frail, when acne glowed red on his cheeks and forehead. He was a boy when they fell in love.
“Shouldn’t be staying out so late,” he says, then drops into a seat at the table and picks up the closest glass.
“Let me fill that.” The more water she can get down him, the better. “Is there news? I heard they arrested someone.”
Talking is good. She learned this in the early months after Maryanne died too. The more she talks, the longer he’ll stay awake, the better chance he’ll eat a decent meal.
“Kansas City is too damn far.” Not seeming to hear Julia, Bill sips from the glass and sets it down, sloshing water on the white tablecloth. “Too damn far.”
Julia soaks up the water spot with a linen napkin and holds the glass out to Bill. “Don’t you worry about that. Take another drink.”
“Too damn far,” Bill says, crossing his arms on the table and laying his head on them.
Julia shakes his shoulder so he won’t fall asleep. “Sit tight. I’ll fix you a plate.” She stands to fetch supper from the kitchen. “I boiled fresh corn,” she says. “Your favorite, and the girls and I made a banana pudding.” She stops when Bill says something. Because his face is buried in his arms, she can’t understand him.
“What’s that?” she says.
“Remember how much she cried?”
“Who?”
“The baby. You remember?”
“Colic. The doctor called it colic.”
“Goddamn, she cried. All the damn time.”
“Babies cry.”
Julia stares down on Bill, his head lying on the table so she can see only one side of his face. A dark shadow covers his jaw and upper lip.
It started when Maryanne was two weeks old. At first she cried for only thirty minutes or so after her bottle. Julia would swaddle her and pace the upstairs hallway, gently bouncing her. When that didn’t work, and the crying stretched to more than an hour, she tried removing the blanket and sitting motionless in the rocking chair with Maryanne cradled in her arms. By the time the baby was four weeks old, she cried every night for two hours, a hard cry that made her cough and sometimes choke. “Colic,” the doctor had said. “Burp her good. She’ll outgrow it in a month or so.”
So Julia burped her baby and walked with her, rocked her, sang to her, left her alone in her room, drove with her in the car. By six weeks, Maryanne cried every waking minute, her body growing stiff, like a block of wood or cement, not even living, not like a baby at all. She screamed. Her face glistened and red splotches covered her cheeks and neck. Bill and Julia never slept. Bill’s eyes swelled. His hair grew too long. He lost weight. The joints in Julia’s fingers and arms burned. Pain pounded constantly behind both eyes. Tufts of her hair fell out in the bristles of her brush.
“Why are you saying this?” Julia asks.
Bill doesn’t answer.
She shakes his shoulder. “Tell me.”
“Christ but she cried. Didn’t you get tired of all the crying?”
“Stop saying that.”
“I did,” he mumbles into the crook of his arm. “Got damned tired of it.”
Julia begins to back toward the stairs that will lead her away from Bill. “These are horrible things to say.”
“Had my fill,” Bill says, his head lying on one arm while the other hangs limp at his side. “Damn sure had my fill.”
At the base of the staircase, Julia stops. “Is this why you don’t want another baby?”
No answer. Bill might be asleep. Julia stares at him, thinking she doesn’t know him at all.
“Is that all you remember of her?” she asks again. “The crying?”
He mumbles something.
“You’re never going to want another baby, are you?”
His eyes are open now, but his head hasn’t moved. He stares across the dining room into a blank wall. Julia starts up the stairs, slowly, one at a time.
“Julia.”
She stops.
“I sure am sorry,” he says.
Now she turns, looks down on him slumped over the table.
“Sorry about what? What do you mean by that?”
“Sure am sorry,” he says. “Sure am.”
Clinging to the banister, Julia walks down two stairs. “What did you do, Bill?”
His eyes are closed again. He doesn’t answer.
She walks down two more stairs. “Bill. What is it? Tell me.”
For days, there has been talk of Jerry Lawson’s troubles. Many of the ladies have wondered aloud if Jerry Lawson was fired because he killed that colored woman down on Willingham. Studying her own husband now, Julia wonders if the rumors will next begin to swirl about him.
“What did you do, Bill?”
She waits for an answer. The house is still. The girls are sleeping. The neighbors have settled in for the night. Somewhere nearby, a radio rolls over static and stops on an announcer calling a baseball game. Traffic on Woodward hums even at this late hour. Bill’s breathing becomes rhythmic and shallow. He’s fallen asleep. Julia walks slowly up the stairs.
“I damn sure had my fill,” she hears when she reaches the landing and can no longer see Bill.
The night Maryanne died was the only night of her short life she didn’t cry.
Day 6
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Izzy squints into the morning sunlight that bounces off the bathroom mirror and after counting out one hundred strokes of her hair, she sets aside the brush. Her cheeks and chin are red from her having scrubbed her face with a soapy washcloth, and her hair falls smoothly over her shoulders. Next she brushes her teeth, tucks in the white cotton blouse that had the least wrinkles when she pulled it from her drawer, and slips on a blue headband to keep the hair out of her face. No wonder Arie spends so much time in the bathroom every morning.
From out in the hallway, Arie bangs on the door for the third time because if Izzy doesn’t hurry up, Arie won’t be ready to leave for the church on time. Aunt Julia insisted both girls take a bath even though they took one last night because they spent all morning scraping paint off Uncle Bill’s garage. After Izzy complained at the breakfast table that the television was nothing but gray fuzz and the house was hot and they knew every single record by heart and why couldn’t someone take them to Jefferson Beach, Aunt Julia had handed Arie a three-inch putty knife and Izzy a wire brush and said if they were so bored, she would be happy to give them something to fill their time. Taking one last glimpse in the mirror, Izzy throws open the bathroom door, lowers her head, and rushes down the hall before Arie has a chance to notice Izzy has made herself up to look just like her twin sister.
Downstairs in the entryway, the front door stands open. A car trunk slams and Aunt Julia marches up the sidewalk and onto the porch. Though Izzy knows it isn’t possible, Aunt Julia’s chest looks bigger today than it was yesterday. Every day, Aunt Julia’s curves appear to grow, making Izzy certain hers never will. Ducking her chin to her chest, Izzy digs at the linoleum floor with the tip of one toe because that’s what Arie would do if she got caught staring at the gap in Aunt Julia’s blouse.