“Then he say, ‘You jus’ gon’ leave yo’ chirrun? Just like that? You mean they ain’t nothin’ to you?’
“And she say, ‘The twins got each other. They always did. An’ they got you. They ain’t paid me no mind for a long time. Emily ain’t old enough to even remember me. You’ll find somebody to take care of her. Jenny, maybe. I bet my long-sufferin’ sister would just love to git in this house one way or another. And Buddy…I’m coming back for Buddy. I’m not leaving him alone in this awful dead place where nobody cares about nothing but dogs and shootin’ birds. He’s goin’ with me. He’s sensitive like me; he needs people and music and art and…and grace. There ain’t no grace in this house. You tell him I’ll be back for him before he knows it.’
“An’ she pick up that suitcase and walk out that do’, and that the last this house ever see of her. Yo’ daddy just stand there for a long time, and then he go down the hall to his study and shut himself in. An’ I go on home, and worries all night about how to fix things for you. But besides askin’ yo’ daddy where yo’ mama was the next mornin’, an’ he say she gone on a trip, you never talk about her again, that I knows of. It was like it never happened. For a long time I hoped to God you weren’t never gon’ remember it, but all the time I knows in my heart you would, an’ I hoped somebody got the sense to tell you about it before you did. Otherwise I knowed it gon’ chase you down jus’ like it did. But you knows now, and it ain’t gon’ chase you no more.”
Emily felt a great, dead coldness like an iceberg, so deep in her stomach that she knew it would never melt. But it did not flay and cut her like the dream had done. It simply sat immobile, slowly freezing the life out of her.
“It was because of me, wasn’t it?” she whispered. “I always sort of knew it was. Everybody would look at me when somebody mentioned her. I was the nothing, wasn’t I? If I’d been something, she wouldn’t have left.”
“No. It wasn’t you. It wasn’t ever you. She got nothin’ inside her to care about anybody else with, an’ so she think she gon’ find somethin’ wonderful if she go out lookin’ for it.”
“But I remember her…leaning over me, and kissing me, and sometimes she sang to me, and she always brought me stuff from parties…”
“It ain’t that she didn’t love you. Who could not love you? It just that she can’t love nobody enough to hold her anywhere long. Well, wherever she is, I hopes she find it. No. No, I hope she don’t. She don’t deserve it.”
Emily heard real anger in Cleta’s voice, where there had never been anger before.
“You…you don’t know where she is, then?”
“Don’t nobody know, I don’t reckon, ’cept maybe yo’ daddy, and he ain’t sayin’. It’s like she died that night. But at least we’d know if she was dead.”
“You don’t think she…she’s sick, or anything?”
“No. I don’t think that.”
“Buddy didn’t either. He said once he thought she could take care of herself real well.”
“You all talk about her, you an’ Buddy?”
“Just that once. He always changed the subject.”
“I reckon he did, after what she do to him.”
“What? I know she must never have come back for him, because there he was. Is that what you mean by what she did to him?”
“Yeah,” Cleta said slowly. “I think she must have tol’ him she was gon’ but she be back for him. He love his mama somethin’ mighty, and she make over him all the time, about how handsome he is, and how smart, and how proud he gon’ make her one day when she git him away from this place…”
“But she didn’t come back.”
“No. Right before she left, Buddy start stumblin’, an’ fallin’ down in public. I guess she think he slow her up or somethin’. He ain’t never said nothin’ to me about her, but it must of hurt him bad. He know somethin’ ugly and bad was wrong with him from the beginning. He a smart boy. He know why she ain’t come back.”
Oh, Buddy. The words felt as if they were etched in acid on the surface of the iceberg inside her. Oh, Buddy…
Emily felt tired tears well up, but she did not think her sore eyes could shed them. Too big, it was all too big. She knew that if she tried to process it, it would, after all, kill her. Murder her. She kept her mind white and blank.
“And nobody ever said anything about her again?” she said, faintly, as if beneath a bell of glass.
“Not that I hears,” Cleta said. “Yo’ daddy got them boys, and them dogs, and this ol’ place, that he think he gon’ turn into one of them fancy river plantations somehow or other. He gon’ show everybody, yessir. He show ’em he can do it without her, all by himself. He been killin’ himself tryin’ to do it ever since that night.”
“I could help him,” she whispered.
“He see that one day,” Cleta said.
She opened the door and Elvis came bounding in and dived under the covers, as close beside Emily as he could get. He did not sleep, only kept his golden eyes on her face.
Cleta stayed until Emily fell asleep. She did not think that she would ever sleep again, but she did, abruptly and so deeply that she did not stir until twilight, when her aunt Jenny came tiptoeing in and shook her gently. She had not, after all, had the assassin dream again, and after that day, she never did.
Aunt Jenny moved in that weekend. Emily was only vaguely aware of it until she woke, fully and finally, on Sunday night. She had slept like a dormant animal for three days, bobbling up from the depths of sleep occasionally to eat the soft foods Cleta brought for her, go to the bathroom and change the sanitary pads that her aunt had brought, and scrub her face and spiral down into sleep again. She was dimly aware that Elvis was beside her, licking her face gently whenever she woke. It was only later that Aunt Jenny told her that he had refused to leave her side for the entire three days, except to dash outside to relieve himself, and had burrowed almost under her, still as a statue. They brought his food and water into Emily’s bedroom, and he ate and drank there.
“You have a real friend here,” Emily remembered her aunt saying during one of her tenuous excursions into wakefulness.
“I know,” Emily mumbled. “He’s my best friend. He’s probably my only friend.”
“You have lots of friends, Emily,” her aunt answered. “You just haven’t met most of them yet.”
When she woke on Sunday night, she knew instinctively that she would not be permitted to hide in sleep anymore. For the moment, sleep was gone, and all her senses were almost preternaturally sharp. The pale green spring twilight glowed iridescently outside her window. The breeze that came in was like a blessing on her face. Emily heard dogs barking off in the kennels, the TV downstairs squalling, Elvis breathing contentedly beside her, hollow footsteps in the hall and on the stairs, pans rattling in the kitchen. Far away in the marshes she heard the plinking of the spring peepers. She smelled vegetable soup cooking, pluff mud, the sweet, funky odor of warm dog, her own unwashed body, and the light, green-smelling perfume her aunt always wore. She tasted cold artesian well water and the cottony inside of her own long-closed mouth.
She saw, as if limned in light, her shadowy bedroom and the face of her aunt leaning over her. She could even see Aunt Jenny’s pores, and the tiny sun wrinkles fanning out from her eyes.
“Hey,” she said, and cleared her throat around the unaccustomed effort of speaking. “How long have you been here?”
“A while,” her aunt said. “It’s been some fun, watching you and Elvis sleep.”
“How long have I slept?”
“Almost three days, off and on. It was good for you, I think. You look a lot better than when I got here. You’ve got some color in your cheeks, and your eyes are at least focused. How do you feel?”
“Okay, I guess,” Emily said, and then memory flooded in and she closed her eyes and waited. Her stomach gave a snakelike twist, but the deep, grinding pain didn’t awaken.
“Aunt Jenny, all this stuff…did Cleta tell
you? She said she was going to. It was—it was just awful. It was terrible. I don’t know what to do about it.”
“You don’t have to do anything about it,” her aunt said. “You’ve done exactly what you ought to do, and that’s sleep. Poor baby, you had a triple whammy, didn’t you?”
“Triple whammy…”
“Yes. The dream, the curse, and—the truth. I’d have slept for ten days, myself.”
“You know about the dream and the…what I remembered?”
“Cleta told me. I needed to know. We didn’t tell anybody else, though. That’s for you to do, if you ever want to, or not.”
“Did you know about…her leaving like that?”
“I knew she left suddenly. I never knew exactly how it happened until now. Your father never spoke of it to me, and none of the boys did either. I really thought you couldn’t remember.”
“I couldn’t, for a long time. Till now. Did anybody try to find her, to bring her back or anything?”
“I don’t know. Your mother and I weren’t very close by then. If your dad tried, I never knew about it.”
“And nobody knows where she is?”
“Not that I’ve heard, baby.”
Aunt Jenny pushed Emily’s tangled hair out of her eyes. People were always doing that.
“But…how could she live? I mean, did she take some money with her, or what? I don’t think she could get a job; she didn’t know how to do much…”
Jenny Raiford smiled. It was not a soft smile.
“She knew how to do what was necessary. Don’t you worry about that. I doubt she went without money for a single day.”
“But…”
“That’s enough for now. Maybe we’ll know more about it later. Right now it’s time for you to take a bath and get dressed and have some supper with me. Your dad and the boys ate early and went over to John’s Island to look at some fencing for the runs. It’ll be a while before they’re back.”
“I don’t want to see my father right now.”
“You don’t have to tonight, but I want you to have supper with us tomorrow night. You need to get back to normal.”
“Are you coming to supper tomorrow night?” Emily said.
“Emily, I’m going to be staying here for a while. Maybe for a year or two. Will you mind that?”
“No. Oh, gosh, no! But why?”
“Cleta and I had a real girl-to-girl the night all this happened, and then we went and talked to your father. There’s no doubt you need another woman in the house. You’re outnumbered three to one, and Cleta is getting old; she’s tired. The deal is that I’ll take over after I get home from school, and make dinner and all that, and be here all weekend. She’ll keep on coming mornings to do everything she used to do except cook at night. I’m not bad at that, even if I don’t fry chicken in lard.”
“What did you tell my father?” Emily was dumbstruck. Change, too much change.
“Just that you were growing up now, and you needed somebody to sort of help you on the way, and be with you.”
“What did he say?”
“He looked like somebody had lifted a cotton bale off his shoulders, and said he’d pay me anything I asked if I’d do it.”
“He’s going to pay you?”
“Of course not. I don’t want money to be with you; you’re a treat. And this was my home first, after all. I grew up here, lived here even longer than you all have been here. I don’t need to be paid for coming home.”
“Will you miss your apartment?”
“Not for a minute. Who could miss that? I’ve missed this place a lot, though.”
She left to get Emily’s supper, and Emily went into the underwater bathroom and stared at her face in the greenish mirror. She looked just the same. How could that be?
Presently she lay in deep, hot water, Elvis beside the tub on the bathmat, and let herself think a little about the last three days. She thought that it would be all right to begin to do so now, with her aunt in the house. What she thought was that she could never again see her father and her aunt as she had seen them before. From now on, whenever she looked at her father, she would see, as if in pentimento, the wounded young man who had watched his wife walk away. And when she looked at her collected, efficient aunt, she would see the girl child playing in the sunlight all over the plantation, perhaps in the very places she and Elvis went. She would see her watching the dolphins slide at Sweetwater Creek, reading in the deep shade of a live oak off on a hummock, dangling her feet in the glittering water of the river from the dock, the tide creaming in.
She would see her leaving this house and moving into an apartment when her sister brought her new husband home to the house that had become hers alone.
Emily felt a new emotion that she knew she must now work into the fabric of her knowing. It was pity. It seemed impossible to do. She hated it. She would not do it. Change…
She scrubbed herself nearly raw and put on clean clothes, and went down the stairs to have the first of many suppers with her aunt.
And after all, it had worked well. Before long her aunt Jenny was as natural a part of life at Sweetwater as her father, the boys, the dogs, and the river. By the time a month or so had passed Emily found it hard to remember when she had not been there.
On the first night she ate supper with the whole family, her father had welcomed her back solemnly and formally, and said he hoped she was over the flu bug—Emily shot a grateful glance at her aunt—and that the new arrangement was just what the doctor ordered. Cleta would get some well-earned rest, Jenny was gracious enough to say that she would enjoy being here, and she, Emily, would learn how to be a real young lady. He seemed very pleased, almost hearty, and ate two helpings of the pasta puttanesca Jenny had made.
“Very tasty,” he said, rising.
“Good macaroni, Aunt Jenny,” the twins said, and melted away toward the TV room.
Walter stood there, and then drew a piece of folded paper from his pocket.
“I’ve made a list of things Emily ought to learn to do,” he said. “Of course she can’t do them all at once; she can take them one at a time. I believe you know how to do most of them, Jenny, but I’m sure you can find someone to teach her the things you don’t know. I’ve arranged them in order of priority. You can look them over after supper, and we can talk about them tomorrow night.”
And he, too, faded away toward the TV room, drawn there by flickering light and male pheromones like a moth.
Emily and her aunt looked at each other, and then took the list upstairs to Emily’s bedroom to peruse it. Her aunt read it first and then handed it to Emily, the corners of her mouth twitching. She said nothing, though. Emily read through it:
Learn to dress like a young lady. Skirts for school and special occasions. No makeup or high heels yet, and no more short shorts. I will set a suitable budget for her clothes, and I won’t need to okay them. I trust your taste, Jenny.
Learn to do some simple company cooking. Soufflés, little sandwiches, crab cakes, chafing dishes, shrimp and rice, desserts. Your benné seed biscuits would be good, Jenny.
Learn to carry on intelligent conversation with guests. No more hiding upstairs with the dog. No more running off to the kennels.
Learn to play an instrument. I always enjoyed ladies playing the piano after dinner. I will set a budget for this, too.
Learn a lady’s sport, and some social games of some sort. Tennis would be good, or golf. On second thought, golf is awfully expensive. Let’s make it tennis. Needless to say, I’ve budgeted for this also. And bridge, certainly. I believe you play, don’t you, Jenny? And, of course, dancing. I know there is a class the young women in Charleston take when they’re about thirteen. Please find out about this.
Get some catalogs from the private schools around Charleston and study them. I think Charlotte Hall would be suitable. I would like Emily to familiarize herself with this school by the time she is thirteen.
And he signed it Walter L. Parmenter.
Emily and her aunt looked at each other for a long moment, and then collapsed in laughter. They laughed so hard that they rolled onto Emily’s bed. Elvis joined them, frisking and barking joyfully.
When they could speak, Emily said, “But we’re really not, are we? All that, I mean? Skirts at school, dancing classes…”
“Oh, of course not,” her aunt snorted, still laughing. “It sounds like a blueprint for a south of Broad debutante. Of course, if you’d like to do that…”
“I’d rather die.”
“Me too. We’ll learn some things together, and it will be fun, and we can tell him you’re making good progress. As long as you wear a dress to dinner occasionally, and say three words to whoever is visiting, he’ll probably forget about the rest. But some of these things are fun, you know. Dancing is. Tennis is. And some new clothes carefully chosen by you and me will not be amiss, either. Starting, my dear, with a good bra. And cooking is a dirt-road cinch. We can do that together. We’ve got all weekends.”
“He didn’t say I had to quit training the dogs.”
“No,” her aunt said. “I think he knows what side his bread is buttered on.”
“What do you mean?”
But her aunt would say no more, and the days turned into weeks and time spun on. The changes Jenny Raiford made were gradual and pleasant, and did not feel at all like changes after a while. They felt as if the Parmenter family had always done them. They ate dinner together, at a leisurely pace. Jenny insisted that everyone share a little of his or her day, and soon they did, even though the words were mumbled and eyes rolled. Still, it was dinnertime conversation, and Walter Parmenter beamed to hear it.
Sweetwater Creek Page 8
