When Ratboy Lived Next Door

by Chris Woodworth

  “Daddy acted like he hated it, but I think it gave his life purpose, ranting and raving at me about my poor choice of a husband and all. It sounds silly, but he never seemed happy unless he had someone to yell at, and my mamma had passed on, so there was just me at home.” She kind of giggled. “I guess you could say I made him a very happy man, in a roundabout way.”

  She and Nanna laughed.

  “I always wanted to be a beautician.” She said it almost shyly.

  “You do have a knack for hair. I always notice how beautiful your hair looks,” Nanna told her.

  Mrs. Merrill turned her face away, but I could see she was pleased.

  “Well, it doesn’t really matter now. Do you know it costs two hundred and fifty dollars at the Beauty Academy in Louisville, Kentucky, to get your beautician’s license?”

  “Do tell!”

  “Yes, ma’am. Two hundred and fifty dollars. I was trying to save the money. We lived in a small town in Kentucky where everybody knew everybody’s business. I thought Beth and I could start over in a big city like Louisville where no one knew us. But it might as well have been two thousand dollars.”

  She tilted her head out the car window to let the air cool her face.

  “I’d just come to the conclusion there was no way I could save that much money when along came Boyd Merrill. He wanted to get married. He wanted a mother for his boys. My father said if I married Boyd there was no coming back this time. Beth and I had to sneak out through my bedroom window with just the clothes on our backs! But I did it mainly because I’d always felt bad about Beth not having a daddy, so … here we are.”

  That explained Mrs. Merrill’s one dress. I wondered if she’d have been so quick to climb out that window if she’d known Willis was part of the bargain.

  Beth was drifting off to sleep. I moved the box to the floor and gently leaned her toward me. Her eyes fluttered, then she put her head down on my leg. I turned my attention back to Nanna and Mrs. Merrill, but Nanna was looking at me in her rearview mirror. She squared her shoulder and asked, “Have you driven over to Aylesville yet?”

  Shoot! She probably changed the subject so I wouldn’t hear the good stuff.

  “No, Boyd’s job keeps him away so much.”

  “Really? What does he do?”

  “Boyd’s friend used to work at the McMillan factory. When he quit, Boyd applied for his job and we moved here,” Mrs. Merrill said. “Boyd says it’s hot as Hades in that factory. He works lots of hours and it tires him out. When he’s home, he doesn’t like to go anywhere.”

  “Well, that’s Boyd’s excuse. What about you? Have you driven over?”

  “Oh, mercy, no! I can’t drive!”

  “We’ll have to remedy that. A woman never knows when she might need to drive. Your husband could get sick or something and where would you be?”

  “Elliot is almost fifteen. He’ll be driving soon enough. I don’t need to learn how,” Mrs. Merrill said with her nervous laugh.

  Nanna wasn’t laughing at all. “Nonsense. We’ll have you driving today.”

  * * *

  Beth sat in the shade of the Pearsons’ old porch playing with Betsy McCall. Nanna had Mrs. Merrill behind the wheel of the car. They were using the lane to the barn as a road so Nanna could teach her to drive. And me, I stood in the scorching sun picking enough strawberries for two families. Somehow I think that was Nanna’s plan all along.

  Mrs. Merrill was adamant that Beth not see her driving. “She’s too young to keep quiet about this and I can’t let Boyd know. He doesn’t approve of women driving.”

  For once Nanna listened. Besides telling me to pick berries, she said to keep Beth around the front of the house.

  I could hear the gears grinding. When I was sure Beth was busy playing, I sneaked around the corner and watched for a bit. I could see the car hop once and die. Then grind-hop-die, all over again. Nanna had been jerked so much in the car that her hair was falling down from its pins, and Mrs. Merrill seemed to be past the point of crying.

  Mrs. Merrill stopped the car, got out, and slammed the door. Nanna got out, too. Mrs. Merrill stomped around for a minute, then kicked the car’s tire. “Maybe some people just can’t drive! Maybe I’m one of them! It’s not like I asked you for driving lessons, Nanna!”

  Nanna went around to the back of the car. Her crown of braids had come completely loose and she sure was a sight.

  “Carolyn, you listen to me. I may have forced you into these driving lessons, but if you give up today, you’ll regret it for the rest of your life. If there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s missed opportunities.”

  She pulled a basket out of the trunk of the car, reached inside, and took out a mason jar of ice tea. She handed it to Mrs. Merrill. While Mrs. Merrill drank, Nanna took a stick and drew in the dust.

  “This is the layout of the gears, Carolyn. If you don’t start out in first gear, it’s going to die on you.”

  I wanted to hear more but went back to check on Beth. I picked up the full berry baskets, set them on the porch, and said, “I’ll be right back, okay, Beth? I need to see if we brought more baskets.”

  Beth was busy with her doll and just murmured, “Mm-hmm.”

  When I went back, I heard Nanna say, “Then ease off the clutch at the same time you push the accelerator. When it’s done right, it feels just as smooth as a bird gliding across the open sky.”

  Mrs. Merrill screwed the lid back on her jar and said, “And when it’s done wrong, it feels like there’s a fool behind the wheel who bit off more than she can chew.”

  Nanna seemed to consider that for a minute. “Maybe you’re right, Carolyn. Maybe you just don’t have what it takes.”

  Nanna saw me and carried two jars of tea over. “Here, Lydia, one for you and one for Beth. And you stay around front with that child, young lady.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  I walked toward the front of the house, but when I glanced back, Mrs. Merrill was in the driver’s seat with a look on her face that said she was going to do this or die trying. Maybe Nanna’s stubbornness was rubbing off on her.

  I sat on the porch beside Beth and opened her jar of tea. I gulped mine down. Wiping my mouth with the back of my hand, I said, “You’ve been awful patient, Beth. Have you and Betsy had a good time?”

  Beth said, “Shhh. Betsy just got all her babies to sleep.”

  I looked down and saw six little concoctions made out of hollyhocks. I reached for one and Beth slapped my hand away like a stern little mother.

  “I told you. The babies are asleep!”

  “Oh! These are the babies. I see.”

  I tried again: “It looks to me like this one is stirring. Mind if I rock her?”

  Beth scrunched up her little forehead like a person thinking real hard, then said, “Okay. But just the one.”

  I picked it up and turned it over in my hand. Someone had taken a full hollyhock blossom and run a toothpick through the center of it, then turned it upside down so the petals looked like a skirt. There was a Hollyhock bud stuck on top of the toothpick, which was supposed to be the baby’s head, and a second toothpick stuck crossways through the petals to look like arms.

  “Did you make these, Beth?”

  “No,” she said, fussing with her “babies.”

  “Did your mama make them? Or Elliot?” I could picture Elliot doing something like this.

  “Willis made them.” Beth covered them up with leaves for blankets and said, “He feels bad about Elizabeth. He makes me new babies every day.”

  Willis?

  * * *

  When we got back to the house, Nanna stopped in front to let Mrs. Merrill and Beth out. She said, “You’d best get out now, too, Lydia. You know what a tight fit the car is in the garage.”

  “Okay. Do you mind if I take a ride on my bike?”

  “Run along and enjoy the rest of the afternoon, honey. You’ve worked hard today.”

  I rode straight to the filling station. Daddy
had his arm stretched across a windshield, giving it a good wash, when he saw me. “Ladybug! It’s been so long since you’ve visited me, I thought the grass was gonna dry up and blow away.”

  I felt bad because I hadn’t been there since I met Elliot.

  “Hi, Daddy.”

  He finished with the car and said, “We’d best go check out that pop cooler.”

  I let the coolness of the Choc-ola wash over my throat, savoring the taste. Then I wiped my mouth and followed Daddy into the front bay, where he had a car on the hoist.

  “Daddy, I have a favor to ask.”

  “A favor? Well, I’ll have to check. I might be fresh out of favors.”

  “I’m serious, Daddy. I want to know if you can loosen my bike chain.”

  He stopped tinkering with the car and looked at me. “Why?”

  “Well, I’d rather not say.”

  “It’s a secret, huh?” He chuckled. “You know if I add a link to your chain, you’re going to be right back here wanting me to take the extra link out, don’t ya?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Then you’ll need another favor, and I already told you I’m running low on them.”

  I laughed. I figured it was the least I could do.

  After he loosened my chain, I pushed my bike all the way home. I was a little out of breath, but I didn’t mind—since I planned to talk to Elliot, I thought that might help to cover up my nervousness.

  The weather was clear, so he was back in his garden. When I pushed my bike up to him, he kept working the hoe as if he didn’t know I was on the planet.

  “We had a deal.”

  He acted as if he didn’t hear me.

  “We had a deal that I would sell popcorn for you and you’d fix my bike chain. Well, I sold popcorn for you.”

  After what seemed like forever, he said, “I’ll have to borrow your tools.”

  “That’s fine.”

  He walked over to our shed and rummaged around until he found what he needed. He bent down and started to work on the chain. I was afraid it wouldn’t take him long to get that link off, and I had to make good use of the time.

  “I was wrong, Elliot.”

  He hesitated a split second, then kept on working.

  “I made friends with you because I like you. I like Beth, too. But Willis isn’t the same as you.”

  He shook his head to show he was disgusted with me.

  “But it’s true! He’s nothing but nasty. His raccoon tackled me, which scared me to death. He pushed me down and made my knees bleed. He attacked me over a dumb nickel that I didn’t even owe him! And that was all the first day I met him! Plus, he’s lied to me and about me. I can’t like him. I’m not sorry about that. But I was wrong to pretend to you that I thought he was an okay person. That’s what I’m sorry for. I should have been truthful, but I was afraid you wouldn’t be my friend.”

  My heart pounded like a sledgehammer against my ribs while Elliot worked on my bike. When he finished, he handed me the extra bike link, put the tools and hoe back into the shed, then closed it.

  I hadn’t moved. He came back to where I was standing. He finally looked at me and said, “So you can’t see anything about Willis that’s good. Is that right?”

  A little hollyhock doll worked its way through my thoughts. But for all I knew, Beth could be allergic to hollyhocks and Willis had made them to be mean. Or maybe it hadn’t been Willis who’d made them. She could have been confused about that. She was only four, after all. So I pushed the thought back down. “No,” I said. “I can’t see anything good about him.”

  Elliot ran his hand through his hair and looked off for a minute. Then he said, “Willis can’t always help the way he acts. He’s not all bad. He just needs special handling. I try to give him that. He could use more people in his life who try to give him that.”

  Then he went back over the fence that divided our yards. It might as well have been an ocean.

  9

  I spent most of my time indoors the next few days—which was a purely stupid thing to do, because when I was inside the house Nanna always put me to work. Still, what choice did I have? I’d apologized to Elliot and it hadn’t done any good. Since I didn’t know what to say to him now, I tried to avoid him. I also wanted to avoid Willis, just because he was Willis.

  I couldn’t avoid Beth, though. Nanna was fixing to visit her sister, Louise, in Michigan. Even though she’d be gone only one week, she didn’t want Mrs. Merrill to forget how to drive a car. Every day the two of them went on a drive early in the morning, leaving me to babysit Beth. It wasn’t really much work, though.

  Nanna had me run all her errands in the afternoons. She always wrote her grocery list on the outside of an envelope and put money and coupons inside. I never even bothered looking at it before I left because her lists were so exact. If she wanted dishwashing detergent she’d write under the heading of Hanson’s, “Thrill, large bottle, third aisle at rear.” Sure enough, if you went down that third aisle at Hanson’s A&P to the back of the store, you’d find Thrill.

  I was just finishing up Wednesday’s shopping when I looked at the last item. She’d made a new heading, Evan’s, which meant Evan’s Drugs. Then she’d written, “Toni Home Permanent. Ask what shelf it’s on. Read box. See if rods included. If not, buy one bag permanent rods, medium size.”

  Mother and I both had a natural wave in our hair that never came out. Nanna’s hair had been the same since I’d known her, coiled braids pinned on top of her head. I couldn’t imagine what she wanted the Toni for.

  When I got home, Nanna was sitting in a kitchen chair in the Merrills’ yard. Her long white hair was wet and hanging straight down her back. Mrs. Merrill was combing it.

  I carried the groceries to the back door, eyeing the two of them. They were talking low and laughing until Nanna saw me.

  “Oh, Lydia! Did you get the Toni?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Good, bring it out as soon as you put the groceries away, hear? I want to read the directions to Carolyn.”

  I couldn’t walk away without saying something. “Nanna, what’s going on? You can’t mean to curl your hair with a permanent! They don’t make rods big enough to wind your long hair on.”

  She seemed to be thinking it over. “You know, Lydia, you’re absolutely right. My long hair won’t go on those little bitty rods. So, Carolyn … I guess you’ll just have to cut it off!”

  She and Mrs. Merrill laughed as if it was the funniest thing they’d ever heard.

  I put the groceries away, then handed Nanna the permanent and rods. She thanked me and went on chatting with Mrs. Merrill, who held Nanna’s hair and ran her fingers through it. She chewed her bottom lip like someone having second thoughts.

  Good, I thought. It’s about time somebody came to her senses. But, no, she picked up the scissors and cut Nanna’s hair straight across at the base of her neck. I felt as though she were cutting my skin when she did it. I looked at Nanna’s face as the hair fell at her feet, but she was holding her glasses to her nose and reading the Toni instructions out loud.

  Then Mrs. Merrill began cutting Nanna’s hair shorter on top. Short as a man’s! I couldn’t stand to watch anymore. I got on my bike and left.

  That night I came home to a new Nanna. I thought she looked as if she had white puffs of cotton stuck all over her head. But she giggled like a schoolgirl when Daddy asked if she was Mother’s younger sister. Even Mother joined in and said she was getting jealous of Daddy flirting with Nanna.

  Nanna kept saying, “Oh, you two! Won’t Louise be surprised when she sees me?”

  “She’ll think you’re a movie star,” Daddy said.

  Nanna laughed at that. “I told Carolyn she has a real knack for hair. I told her I’d never have let just anybody cut my hair. Why, I had twenty years of growth hanging down my back to prove that! But it was plain as day that she could do hair. Don’t you love hers? I keep telling her, she’s the spitting image of Jackie Kennedy.” />
  When I went upstairs to bed, I stopped at Nanna’s room to say goodnight. From the doorway I saw her reach up as if to touch her hair, then stop halfway and drop her hand. It landed palm up on her dresser, overturning a bowl of bobby pins, which spilled out onto the vanity.

  I watched her face in the mirror. She didn’t even blink at the noise the bowl made. Despite the way she acted about her new hairdo, she had the same sad look on her face that she got when she heard some elderly person from our church had died.

  * * *

  The change in Nanna was nothing compared to the one I saw in Mrs. Merrill. She had stopped wearing that worn-out green suit. Instead she wore what looked like boy’s clothes. I figured she took Willis’s and Elliot’s-too-small shirts and pants for herself.

  It might sound funny, but she looked better in them than she ever did in her fancy old suit. They were threadbare but clean. She rolled the pants up and they looked like pedal pushers. She wasn’t afraid to borrow our clothesline now, and one day I saw her with a pan of water scrubbing the windows of her house with a newspaper. It was as if she woke up and realized she had things to take care of.

  And Beth! She seemed to be getting the most out of the change in Mrs. Merrill. Her face was always scrubbed now, and her stringy hair was in either a ponytail or pigtails tied with old pieces of ribbon. She looked right pretty.

  I made it a point to whistle when I first saw Beth in her new hairdo. “Woo, Beth! You look mighty fine today!”

  “Mamma fixed my hair! She says when I’m older, she’ll give me a Toni Home Permanent!”

  Oh Lord.

  * * *

  Friday night, Nanna was the first one ready for the Free Show. She took Daddy’s arm and walked with her head held high.

  Nanna settled herself on the benches Daddy and Sam had finally put in. Mrs. Beulah Duvall spotted Nanna as soon as we got there. Her mouth dropped open and she said, “Good heavens, Lydia Baldwin! What did you go and do to yourself?”

  “I believe I improved myself, Beulah. I found the most wonderful beautician, right here in Maywood. She gave me a modern hairdo. Why, no one wears coiled braids anymore.”