Sweet Water

by Christina Baker Kline

  “Cassie’s a sculptor. She’s moving down here from New York.”

  “You don’t say. Where will you be living, dear?”

  “Out in the family house off Briarcliff,” Alice answered.

  “Clyde’s house?”

  “Clyde’s on Red Pond Road now, Mrs. Ford. Has been for years.”

  “I know that, but … well, never mind. I thought they were going to sell that house, is all.”

  Alice smiled, all teeth. “I can’t imagine where you heard that,” she said. “I’m afraid you’ll have to excuse us. We’re running late.”

  “Heavens, don’t let me keep you! But tell me, how’s Clyde feeling these days? She hasn’t been to services lately, and I’ve been a bit concerned.”

  “Well, you should give her a call and find out,” Alice said tartly. “As far as I know, she’s just fine.”

  “I’ll do that. I’ll give her a call.” She turned to me. “Nice to meet you—tell me your name again?”

  “Cassie. Cassie Simon.”

  She raised her eyebrows. “Oh, yes,” she said. “Ellen’s girl.”

  Alice suggested that we get a cup of coffee across the street at the Eagle, the shabby diner she’d pointed out to me earlier, but the place looked closed. We walked over anyway, and as we got closer I could see a woman in a pink uniform playing solitaire on the lunch counter inside. We sat at a booth in front, facing the street, and the waitress brought menus.

  “That May Ford is the biggest gossip in town,” Alice said as soon as the waitress left.

  “She seems harmless enough.”

  Alice shook her head. “That’s just an act. She’s lethal. From what I’ve heard, after your mother died, May Ford and all the other ‘harmless’ ladies in town turned their backs on Clyde. It hurt her a whole lot.”

  “Why would they do that?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I really don’t know.”

  “There’s so much about Clyde I can’t figure out. She’s so weird about Amory, and about … a lot of things, really. She seems almost angry.”

  “She is angry,” Alice said, nodding her head. “She’s been like that for years. I remember one time when I was little I was over at their house—the house you’re moving into—playing in the yard. I had to go to the bathroom or something, so I went inside and found her and Granddaddy in the kitchen, fighting. It wasn’t like I’d never seen an argument before—Mother and Daddy used to fight all the time—but there was something about the way she was grabbing hold of him, digging her fingernails into his arms, that just freaked me out. It was awful. Her face was all twisted and red, and she was spitting at him, and there was blood running down his arms from where her nails had broken the skin. He didn’t even move, he just stood there with this strange, glazed expression I’ll never forget, like he hated her and felt sorry for her at the same time, like … like … I don’t know—now that I think about it, he’d probably been drinking.

  “They didn’t see me standing there, so I just crept away, went out and peed behind the barn. After a while Clyde came out on the porch and called me in for lunch, and it was like everything was fine again, except Granddaddy wasn’t there. But the whole time we were at the table she was singing some tune under her breath. I asked her what it was, and she told me it was the song he was playing the night they met.”

  “What song?”

  She shivered. “I didn’t ask. I’ve never told anybody about that. I don’t like to think about it.”

  The waitress came by to take our orders. “So,” Alice said abruptly, “what do you think of your newfound relations? Starting with Chester.”

  “Really sweet. There seems to be something kind of sad about him, though,” I said cautiously.

  “Well, he’s got worse luck in the love department than I do. See, he’s in love with his mama, the perfect little homemaker, and nobody else can measure up. But I don’t feel too sorry for him. In a few years, when he inherits Horace’s business, there’ll be gold diggers lining up around the block.”

  The waitress brought two coffees. I added cream to mine and stirred it. “I didn’t really talk to Kathy. What makes her so perfect?”

  “Well, she’s as sweet as can be, and she just dotes on her ‘boys,’ Horace and Chester and Ralph.” Alice shook her head. “The whole situation with Ralph has been hard on her, though. Horace isn’t exactly thrilled at the idea of his son being gay, but I think he’ll come around one of these days.

  “They’re all nice people,” she continued. “We’ve been lumped together for so many Thanksgivings and Christmases that we have a lot to talk about, and having a lot to talk about makes us feel like we’ve got something in common. Even if we don’t.” She ripped open two packets of Sweet’n Low and a packet of creamer and added them to her coffee.

  “Do Ralph and your brother ever come home?”

  “Ralph doesn’t much anymore. I mean, would you, if you were him? Troy used to, but Mother’s always clawing at him to stay, and he can’t stand that.” She was staring out the plate-glass window. I followed her gaze to the flag in the park, wilting against the pole in the still heat of afternoon. “Soon as I can get up the money I’m going to Atlanta to join them,” she said. “I really, really am. I’m tired of this one-horse town.”

  When we got back to Clyde’s, Alice stopped at the curb with the motor running. “About what I told you. About Clyde.” She leaned forward as if she thought we might be overheard. “I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t repeat that story to anyone.”

  “I won’t.”

  “Well, I know. I’m just making sure. Things have a way of slipping out sometimes, at least they do with me.” She shifted in her seat.“Clyde is just about the proudest person I know. She’d really be upset if she thought we were talking about her.”

  “I’ll be careful,” I said. “I’d hate to see her really upset.”

  Alice grinned. “Boy, watch out!” We started to giggle. “Hey,” she said, “sometime soon maybe we can go swimming or something. Mother and Daddy belong to a club.” She grimaced. “I guess that means I have to get back on her good side.”

  “That won’t be too hard, will it?”

  “Not if I kiss her manicured toenails and beg forgiveness.”

  “One minute of groveling for a whole afternoon in the pool. That sounds reasonable.”

  “Sure, why not?”

  As I walked toward the house I saw Clyde in the kitchen window, staring out at us. She looked small and frail, with her thin white hair and thick glasses. She’s just a little old lady, I was thinking, just a sad, lonely little person. I smiled and caught her eye, and she ducked out of sight.

  After dinner I called my dad from an extension in the bedroom. He wanted to know why I hadn’t seen the house yet.

  “Clyde’s holding me hostage,” I whispered.

  “What’s the ransom? Do I have to pay?”

  “No. I think the ransom is the house.”

  He laughed. “I never say I told you so, so I’m not going to start now.”

  “Oh, go ahead. It’ll make you feel better.”

  “Told you so. So how do you like your relatives?”

  “I like them,” I said. “Alice is great.”

  “She’s Elaine’s daughter, right?”

  “Yeah, don’t hold it against her.”

  “This is purely academic information for me, Cassie. I’m not planning on coming down there anytime soon. I’ll let you conduct the field study.”

  I twirled the phone cord between my fingers. “You know, Dad, I’m kidding, but I’m serious. There’s something strange about all of this. I get the feeling Clyde really doesn’t want me to move in.”

  “Well, that’s understandable,” he said. “She did live in that house for almost forty years. Giving it up to you will be like giving up a big part of her life. I’m sure she’s incredibly ambivalent.”

  “I can understand that,” I said, chewing my lip, “but for some reason I get the feeling
there’s more to it. It just constantly seems like I’m overstepping some invisible line.”

  He sighed. “Don’t make it more than it is, Cassie. She’s a difficult woman, always has been, and she’s not getting any younger.”

  “Okay. You’re probably right.” I remembered my first encounter with her. “Clyde says they all think I want something from them.”

  “Well, that doesn’t surprise me. They’re not the most generous-minded bunch you’ll ever meet. And to be fair, you can hardly blame them for being suspicious. Look, you’re a complete stranger. They don’t know you, so how can they possibly know why you went down there? I’m still not sure myself. Give them time, Cassie.”

  “Maybe this was all a big mistake.”

  “Maybe, but consider it grist for your artistic mill. Someday they’ll call it your blue period.”

  “Oh, Dad.”

  “I’m always here if you need me, honey,” he said. “If you want to come home, you know you always can.”

  I thought about Susan and the baby in the small apartment above the restaurant. The place had been crowded when Dad and I lived there alone. “Thanks,” I said, “but I think I’ll tough it out here for a while. Anyway, Horace is coming by tomorrow to take me out to the house.”

  “The great escape, huh?”

  “I plan to be armed and dangerous.”

  Drew picked up the phone, breathless, on the second ring. “Cassie, I’m running out the door, can I call you back?”

  “Where are you going?”

  “To a party at Mara’s.”

  “Oh?”

  “It’s her boyfriend’s birthday.” “Her boyfriend?”

  “You know, the chain-smoking Israeli,” he said, impatient. “Look, I really have to go. How is everything?”

  “Oh, Drew, I’m not even going to talk to you now. Call me later.” “You’re mad.”

  “No, I just don’t understand what the big rush is.” “Oh, for God’s sake, Cassie, it’s New York, that’s what the big rush is. Joel’s waiting for me downstairs in a taxi.” “Joel, huh?” “Yes, Joel.”

  “So you’re seeing Joel now.”

  “Don’t start with me, I’m warning you.”

  “Will you tell me everything later?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Drew …”

  “What? What?”

  “You’ve forgotten me already,” I said petulantly. “And now Joel is moving in on my territory.”

  “Honey, if I’m lucky Joel’s going to be on territory you’ve never even imagined.”

  “I don’t want to know.” He laughed. “I’ll call you later in the week.” “No, I’ll call you. You don’t have my number.” “Oh, yeah.”

  “And Drew? I know deep down that you’re sad I left. You’re drowning your sorrows in parties and men, and I understand.”

  “Is that what I’m doing? How long does this mourning period last? A while longer, I hope.” “Have fun tonight.”

  “I will. Give my best to the Absent Other. Goodbye!”

  When Ellen went north and stayed I felt like everything I had lived for was meaningless. Amory didn’t approve of what she was doing, taking up with a troublemaker who didn’t have any money, harboring draft dodgers and inciting the blacks to riot. He said society had certain rules and you had to live by them. But in my secret heart of hearts I was a little proud of her, standing up for what she believed in that way. Amory never stood up for anything in his life except to give a lady his seat. He said that the country had its big problems and we had our small ones and neither should meddle in the other’s affairs. But Ellen said it wasn’t like that at all: we had a responsibility to meddle. If we murdered and raped and pillaged we were accountable for it in the courts of the land, and if our country killed innocent people, sanctioned and encouraged discrimination, it should be held accountable too. Amory would shake his head and say, “Whose side are you on?”

  “I’m on your side, Dad,” she’d say. “The side of the people.”

  “The people are idiots,” he’d answer.

  She cut her beautiful hair short like a boy’s, and her husband grew his long. From the back it looked like she was the husband and he was the wife. The last time she and Ed visited together, she was wearing a skimpy dress in a sickly green color and he had on a shirt with big bright flowers all over it. It was kind of embarrassing. They drove a white Volkswagen bus with giant cheerful butterfly stickers on the doors, little Cassandra in a car seat in the back.

  Ellen was the first of the neighborhood children to get political, and it made a big splash. Horace and Elaine were mortified. Larry was trying to get started on his preaching career, and Elaine didn’t want anything to sully his reputation. “You know how people talk, Mama,” she said. “Why can’t Ellen just behave herself and act normal?” Taking Edgar aside one evening, Horace told him that he suspected him of brainwashing Ellen and was considering turning him over to the police, and furthermore, it was about time Edgar stopped acting like a freak and started taking responsibility for himself. It was time to act like the husband and father he was and make some money.

  But I knew it wasn’t Edgar’s fault. Ellen had always been different. Horace was captain of the high school football team, Elaine was crowned Sweetwater Sweetheart, but Ellen hung around with another crowd. I found cigarettes in her pockets when I did the laundry. She’d buy New York magazines and try to imitate the fashions she saw. Elaine told me that people were laughing behind her back, but Ellen didn’t seem to care. In fact, she was almost proud of it. She scrawled poetry on napkins, left paperbacks all over the house: Kerouac, Ferlinghetti, Ginsberg, names I saw for the first time and then read some of myself, trying to understand the person she wanted so desperately to become. Funny, but she was more like the Amory I had fallen in love with than either of the others were. She was high-strung, nervous as a racehorse. She wanted to live the kind of life Jack Kerouac talked about, to burn like a fabulous Roman candle.

  Ellen wasn’t the only one to leave, but she was the only one to stay away. She got a big scholarship, which she’d applied for without even telling us. One day I returned from doing errands to find her standing in the kitchen by the sink, clutching a letter in one hand and sobbing. I threw down my packages and rushed over to her, thinking maybe she was pregnant or expelled from school. I grabbed the letter out of her hand and read: “The Admissions Committee of Wellesley College is pleased to offer you a place in its Freshman Class of 1962.” I looked at her in astonishment. “I’m finally getting the hell out of here,” she said, tears streaming down her face.

  Horace had left for UT Knoxville two years before, but it never really felt like he was gone. On Saturdays Jeb Gregory and I would take the girls to see him play football (Amory wasn’t really interested), and on Sundays Horace came home for church and dinner. Sunday afternoons he’d sit at the dining room table concentrating on his books as long as he could—fifteen minutes or so at a stretch—until one of the Clifford boys from over the hill came by to toss a few. Horace flunked his second semester, but he met Kathy at a Memorial Day barbecue at his fraternity and she convinced him to take summer classes, so he stuck it out. They were married a year later. We saw them every weekend.

  The summer before Ellen left she spent a lot of time in her room with the door shut. I’d go up and stand in the hall, straining to hear. I was worried about her. She was smoking openly now, quarreling with Amory all the time. She wanted to learn how to drive and he said she was too young. “You taught Horace at my age,” she’d yell, and Amory would say, “Horace didn’t smoke cigarettes. Horace respected my rules.” This made her even madder, and she started going out at night with reckless boys in fast cars. They’d drive up to the house, wheels screeching, and honk the horn for her to come out. The screen door banging shut behind her echoed in the stillness like a dirty word.

  The day she left for college was a scorcher. There was no wind at all; the air smelled of rhododendron, so thick and humid that it
was like walking though a hot loaf of bread. Amory took off from work to drive her to the bus in Atlanta, and they almost didn’t make it. She was up in her bedroom getting ready while he stood at the bottom of the stairs, fuming with impatience, hollering, “What in the name of God are you doing up there?” She hollered back, “Nothing in the name of God, Daddy,” and came out half an hour later with hair the color of copper and bright red nails, wearing black skintight pants and a black sleeveless cardigan. Amory almost refused to take her.

  As she left she took my shoulders and brushed my cheek with her own, imitating a kiss she must have seen in a movie. “Don’t let them get to you, Mama,” she whispered. “Leaving isn’t so hard.” I held her hand and tried to smile, but my mouth was trembling. She had a distracted look in her eyes, as if she were already gone. Each time she came home after that—Christmases, summer vacations—that look became more and more familiar. After a while it wasn’t like she was coming home anymore; it was like she was just passing through.

  Horace came to Clyde’s around eight o’clock on Tuesday morning to pick me up. He wore a gray suit that was a little tight through the waist, a pink tie, Reebok sneakers, and a red baseball cap. His neck was burnt. He kept playing with his cap, taking it off and putting it on again, stepping back in a restless dance when he removed it, as if he were about to bow with a flourish. When he arrived Clyde and I were at the kitchen table reading the paper.

  “Get yourself some grits and a biscuit, son, they’re on the stove,” she said.

  “Thank you, Mother, I think I will.” He banged around for a minutes, then came over and sat down. “Fred Conroy’s leaving town,” he said. “I’m putting his house on the market today.”

  “Well, I’ll be.” Clyde was scanning the color ads. “Where’re they going?”

  He spread his napkin on his lap. “Kansas. Wife’s got folks out there.” He started to eat, reaching for the salt. “Sad story, really. That restaurant never had a chance. Tried to tell him, but he wouldn’t listen.”

  Clyde got up. She went over to the counter, took out a pair of scissors, and settled back into her chair to clip coupons. “It couldn’t decide what it was,” she said. “Too expensive for a burger place but not somewhere you’d want to go special. It scared people off.”