The Sisters of Glass Ferry

by Kim Michele Richardson

  Satisfied with Patsy’s appearance and her own handiwork, Mama once again lectured her daughters on modesty and manners, then left for her monthly canasta game with some of the townswomen.

  Patsy patted the pearls resting on her collar, taking in one more drinking glance of herself in the mirror. The soft glow of the gems warmed her body, dulling the harsh secrets she carried. She loved Danny, she was sure of it, and that would see her through.

  Turning sideways, Patsy ran a light hand down her neck and alongside the curves of her breasts, admiring. She looked rather like a princess, she mused. Yes, a princess. And her prince would have the prettiest date in Glass Ferry tonight—would walk a thousand miles for her, even farther than Honey Bee had walked for Mama.

  The pearls were her crown—they empowered her—and would give her the courage for bigger things. Tonight her life would change—change so she could reclaim the rightful passage that Danny’s brother had stolen.

  CHAPTER 3

  Flannery

  1972

  Flannery had always managed to slip in and out of town, dodging Hollis Henry most of the time. But there was no escaping the sheriff now with that announcement hitting the air waves.

  Mama moaned and dropped into the chair, pressed a clenched hand to her mouth. “My baby girl, my Patsy.”

  “Mama, shh, that Mercury could be anybody’s—maybe not even from around here, maybe not even from Kentucky.” Flannery picked up the cake knife and set it on the counter. “And if it is the Henrys’ car, it doesn’t mean Patsy was in there. Lately they’ve been pulling all sorts of stuff out of the river not even from around here, from places way far away,” Flannery said softly, hoping she was right. Still, the “maybes” felt dark, not lanterned near enough to be true.

  For many, the river had been a guardian of private matters. A slow, meandering 260-mile tributary of the Ohio River that coursed its way through craggy Kentucky mountains and thick forests, winding past forgotten family cemeteries, small and bigger bluegrass towns. Some of its depths unknown. Folks claimed spots of the Kentucky never had a bottom to begin with, that in certain parts a person could crawl across, and in other parts, drop and never surface again. Recent years of drought had changed that.

  Lost things spilled onto the Kentucky’s banks, into fishermen’s hands, more than a few, revealing age-old secrets. The usual trash: beer cans, bent fishing lures, refrigerators, and other such junk. And a few scarier things: a rubber glove with a person’s bloated hand inside, and the red sneaker stuffed with a human foot. The Glass Ferry Gazette ran a story, but no one came forward claiming to be missing their nubs.

  In the last few years, Mama’d told Flannery the local newspapers and radio stations had been providing exciting updates about surfaced treasures. One Glass Ferrian had found a Civil War sword and a tinderbox full of old Indian artifacts, and another, a large tin of coins from a century-old bank robbery.

  Someone else netted an emerald bracelet, mud-stuffed, inside an ancient bronze goblet. Folks said that chalice was really old and had traveled from Ireland, maybe even from as far away as Japan.

  A pretty maple violin in its tattered coffin case had been discovered last year. And two years ago they pulled out Web Sloan’s garden tractor that had gone missing in the ’20s. A partial human skull and one leather boot were wedged between one wheel’s rusted metal spokes. Mr. Sloan claimed his mama had reported his daddy and the tractor missing in 1921, but no one could find any records of such a report.

  Quickly, Flannery poured Mama a glass of water and knelt in front of her. “Mama.” She nudged the glass gently. “Here. Drink some water. Come on, have a sip; you’ll feel better.”

  Mama took a trembly breath and nodded.

  “Did you take your medicine this morning, Mama?”

  Mama took a gulp and shook her head.

  “You know Doc wants you to take it. Especially today. Let me go get it for you.” Flannery patted Mama’s knee and stood.

  “It’s in the cabinet,” Mama said, and bobbed her gray head toward the hall bathroom. “Get dressed. You need to drive me to Sheriff Henry.”

  Flannery hurried into the bathroom, opened the mirrored medicine cabinet, and searched the stacked glass shelves. Her daddy’s old razor fell out, and she knocked over a bottle of amphetamine salts the doctor had prescribed for Mama years ago. “No longer effective to boost her mood, or keep her mild depression at bay,” he’d said to Flannery back then. “Let’s try something new. For both of you.”

  Flannery scattered a few more half-empty pill bottles, iodine, old brown glass containers with rust-encrusted tops of dried-out paregoric and castor oil, and then snatched up the one that was new. It slipped from her grasp, and she bent over the soft-rose-tinted sink, trying to still her nerves bumping against the porcelain. That Patsy might be coming home, and like this, was something Flannery’d never dreamed, well hardly ever.

  Flannery picked up Mama’s medicine, read the instructions on the bottle, and pulled out two yellow pills. Her fingers buttered, and she dropped those too. Scooping the Valium out of the basin, she knocked Mama’s frosted-glass bottle of rose toilet water over, spilling the pink liquid everywhere.

  Pink. All this cupcake-pink. Mama and Patsy had insisted on smothering the room in it. The hue was everywhere, reeking from the tub to the sink, onto the commode and its matching roll of toilet paper, the blossomed wallpaper and rosy curtains. Flannery had begged Mama over the years to at least add some green, or a burst of red even, to break up the noxious crawl pink left under her skin.

  It reminded Flannery of what she’d read about Jayne Mansfield and her Pink Palace with its pink champagne-flowing fountain and heart-shaped tub.

  Mama and Patsy had fussed that the color was sophisticated, lovely like the silkiest nylons, or a pretty lacy slip worn under a dowdy duster. It fit Patsy and Mama fine, but for some reason, Flannery felt she hadn’t, nor would ever live up to the expectations of that strong, womanly pink.

  “Flannery?” Mama said faintly from the kitchen.

  “Just a small spill, Mama. I’ll clean it up,” Flannery called back, dropping a towel onto the mess. “Be right there.” She hovered over the sink, taking in tiny breaths of rose-filled air. She had to collect herself. Grabbing a washcloth, she pressed it to her nose.

  Flannery looked hard at the bottle of pills. She’d been leaning on them, same as Mama. Years of this new medicine, that old new, and yet, better new, all the doctors promised, but never new enough to fully nip the pain from Patsy’s leaving, from Flannery’s losses, or to calm the shakes from what had happened back in the city.

  She’d been a divorced woman for decades now, fancy-free in the fifties at that. Even though divorced meant the same as disgrace, a damnation in the eyes of small-town folks, being single suited Flannery just fine. Still, she couldn’t talk about the marriage, not to anyone, ever.

  Last year when she’d returned home to Louisville from “Patsy’s birthday week,” Flannery had stopped taking the pills. She’d cleaned herself up with the help of a nice psychiatrist, after having swallowed one too many and once again landed in Saint Anthony’s. That hospital had kept her for two weeks. Two whole weeks. Luckily, it hadn’t affected her teaching position at the elementary school because she had been on summer break, and the school was never the wiser. In some ways, bigger, more important ways, cities provided a shelter that no small town could.

  Flannery hung the pink, wet towel over the tub and opened the window to air out the sickeningly perfumed bathroom.

  Leaning over the sill, she looked out past the trees toward Ebenezer Road, inhaling the percolated winds from the nearby Kentucky River, forcing the calmness to root inside her. Mama and the news would have to wait until she pulled herself together. On a windy day like today, the river stole most of the angels’ share, the old distillery’s scent—lifted the sleeping bourbon’s vapors from its aging oak barrels and carried the breaths down the river. Her daddy and granddaddy and most of the men
in Glass Ferry had worked the bourbon all their lives. The Butler family had owned the finest stills in the land, and they had all breathed and worn that angels’ share on their flesh and in their bones.

  River breezes slapped against the house’s brick façade, softly fanning Flannery’s face. More than anything she wished to escape to the mud banks of the Kentucky—escape to the sweet times before her losses had started to pile up. Step onto her daddy’s old ferryboat like when he was alive, sip the glass-eyed silence of the winding, stretching river, let the sweetness of its perpetual summer lap at her dangling bare feet and calm the tangled thoughts. Hear the lazy putting of the boat’s engine as it scooted down the river. Going down there now for anything as horrible as that car, that Mercury dredged out of there—she couldn’t bear it.

  A cardinal landed on the willow tree in the yard, singing to its mate. Sunlight cast soft bands across the bird’s black-masked eyes and standing red crown. A wonder lit Flannery, and she found herself holding fast to each rippled note, each light, painfully aware of the earth’s workings. Its comings and leavings and pulling sighs. Patsy’s and hers and others. It was as if she had suddenly knocked her funny bone against the sharpest corner of the world.

  Flannery smarted at the realization that she, like the bird and those others who’d left the earth, maybe Patsy now too, were just blurs in a passing fury.

  She could see it now and could almost welcome it without fear, and thought this would have been something fine to share with Patsy—a meaningful conversation like they’d had after Honey Bee died, a pledge given to each other before they’d given up on sisterhood.

  “A dear sister,” Patsy had called her, “my best friend. Always,” on the eve of their daddy’s funeral.

  How she missed them both. Wished she could say those words back to Patsy, wished for so many lost years.

  Plucking up the pill bottle, Flannery tapped it onto the ledge, dulling the marvel of clarity. She lifted it higher and shook the pills. Looking at the new like that had her thinking about the old and that last day with Patsy, Danny, and Hollis, and their final moments on Ebenezer.

  She shuddered as she remembered standing in the dirt just outside this very window, right there by the long-legged willow in 1952.

  * * *

  That night, Patsy and Danny’s double dates for the big prom canceled. Carol Jean’s mama called at the last minute and told Patsy she had put her daughter to bed after her girl fell ill with a nasty rash.

  Hollis and Danny pulled up to their house to collect Patsy a few minutes after Mama pulled away. Flannery kept checking her watch, eager to leave.

  “Dad said I had to drive you two to the dance,” Hollis said. “Guess I’ll suffer playing chauffer tonight since you tots don’t have your operator licenses.” He grinned at Patsy. “But I expect a nice tip.”

  Patsy shot Hollis a hostile look, then just as quick sent Flannery an innocent shrug.

  Flannery stood in the driveway like an ugly dogtooth weed amongst the bright sunny merrybells. An awkwardness gathered in her nyloned legs and had the gravel biting under her squeaking, grease-stained oxfords, while the party’s dusty regrets slapped at Flannery’s face and pride.

  “We sure wish you could’ve come with us, Flannery,” Patsy said again, brushing ghost lint off the skirts of her endlessly layered lemon-colored prom dress and fiddling with her dipping neckline. She peeked over her ankle-length skirts down at the flirty, round-toed Mary Jane pumps, daintily angling one of her cream-colored leather shoes, with the rosette bow Mama had fashioned onto the straps, to one side and then another.

  The month before, Mama had driven the girls up to Lexington to buy a pair of dress shoes for Patsy’s prom. They ate toasted cheese sandwiches at the crowded Woolworth counter and stopped at the inexpensive store, the modest Wennekers Sample Shoes.

  But Patsy turned up her nose at the nice four-dollar heels Mama’d held up. Teary-eyed, begging, Patsy had wheedled Mama into trying the big store next door. Inside the fancy Purcell’s department store, Patsy found herself a “dreamy” pair—a pair that cost Mama a whole eight dollars, twice the amount she’d paid for the two sets of saddle shoes the girls wore nearly every day.

  That was the Patsy Flannery now knew. All dolled up like Suzy Parker on the slick pages of Mama’s Life magazine. Patsy with the long, penny-glint, feathery-kiss curls and red bow-tie lips, in a tad-too-tight-to-be-polite sweater, looking all glam and glorious, while Flannery hid her knobby knees and flat tires behind baggy, rolled-up boy jeans and Daddy’s old shirts. Her long drab tresses swept back and ponytailed.

  “A tadpole in a pond of goldfish,” Patsy had once said to another girl when she thought Flannery wasn’t around.

  Patsy got all the boys, too. It didn’t matter how often Flannery stood in front of the mirror, suctioning her palms, pumping ’em, chanting, “I’m a lil’ teapot, hear me shout; fill me up, and spill ’em out.”

  When Patsy turned twelve, she developed her curves. Mama had noticed and went straight out and bought a brassiere for the eldest. Patsy had her first kiss with a freshman, while Flannery was still trying for her first wolf whistle on the cobbled walks of Glass Ferry.

  It used to be the girls would go to school and back on their bikes, but in the last year, Patsy caught her rides in automobiles with others.

  Patsy complained to Mama that it was because Flannery’s bicycle was too loud. That the clothespins and trading cards her sister attached to the spokes supposedly hurt Patsy’s sensitive ears. “Real ladies don’t bicycle and wrinkle their skirts like that,” Patsy cried.

  But Flannery knew the truth, always knew Patsy was more than happy about the boys lining up by the school walk in the afternoon, begging for the favor of toting her home, picking her up in the mornings down the road and out of sight of Mama’s prying eyes.

  Most folks said they didn’t look like twins lately, and at that time it didn’t feel to Flannery like they were even sisters.

  When they were little, if the kids at school saw one of them alone, they would have to ask the twin to “grin and bare it.” A school and town-wide joke and the only way to tell the girls apart. Flannery had a big dimple on her left cheek that showed only if she smiled, while Patsy’s was tucked in the same spot, only hidden on the inside of her cheek. It was as if Patsy had been in such a rush to leave the womb to claim her firstborn status, her earliness, she couldn’t even wait around long enough to let God finish filling in the muscly hole.

  Lately though, everyone was stumped. Flannery had lost her dimple and couldn’t find any reason to get her smile back. And it no longer mattered.

  Patsy claimed she couldn’t help it—couldn’t help poking herself into all things ahead of Flannery. It was her birthright, after all, having made her royal entrance a full eight minutes prior. Her duty to be the queen and Flannery her servant.

  But Flannery had her fill of it lately, especially since she was coming into her own—her womanhood. She’d noticed the boys’ butterfly eyes lighting over Patsy, then skittering over her, before landing back on her twin. That in itself wasn’t bad; that in itself gave her hope. She was sure one day those fleeting looks would light upon her and linger longer.

  Flannery had been seeing it happen a little with Wendell Black.

  Still, Flannery missed her sister, the one she’d known before troubles took hold, back when they shared the same skin in matching smocks, homespun clothes, smack down to the identical socks Mama would knit for them. They’d pile into bed together even, talking sometimes until early morning or until one of them lock-jawed herself silly into a sleeping yawn.

  Patsy had stuck up for Flannery. She was protective of her younger sister, even against mean and scary teachers. Up until third grade, that is, when they were found out.

  * * *

  Flannery and Patsy’s deal had been struck sometime during the third grade. Patsy would take Mrs. (Fussy) Fulson’s vocabulary tests for Flannery, if her twin would take the arithmetic tests. />
  Patsy always whizzed through vocabulary tests, but failed miserably at all things arithmetic. She loved smart-sounding words, the bigger the better, which had gotten her into trouble more than a few times. Flannery had trouble with spelling bees, and didn’t give a hoot about twisty tricky words, but loved towering numbers.

  The two had it worked out. They’d ask to be excused to use the restroom halfway into any tests. Pestered into submission, Mrs. Fulson always let them go with the warning to hurry back. When they returned, Patsy and Flannery would switch desks and finish the other’s test.

  No one ever knew. But on one particular day when the students had wrapped up their tests, Mrs. Fulson went to “Patsy” and told her to collect the papers for her. Forgetting she was supposed to be Patsy, Flannery smiled a “yes, ma’am,” exposing the telltale dimple.

  Mrs. Fulson pulled her up by the ear. On the way to her desk, the teacher nabbed Patsy’s ear and dragged them both to the front of the class. They stood there silent in front of their softly snickering classmates.

  Mrs. Fulson took down the thick wooden paddle hanging on the wall behind her desk.

  Patsy told the teacher it was all her fault, begging her not to whip Flannery. “Please, Mrs. Fulson, I stole Flannery’s seat!” Patsy had insisted, stomping her little brown and white saddle shoes to make it true.

  “Cheaters,” Mrs. Fulson scolded. “I should take you to Mrs. Moore’s classroom and let her keep you.”

  Mrs. Moore was the second-grade teacher.

  “God made us the same. And being the same ain’t cheating, Mrs. Fulson. We’re one and the same,” Patsy argued.

  Mortified at getting caught, then whipped, Flannery rubbed her welling eyes.

  Patsy gently touched her sister’s quivering shoulder. “Don’t cry, Flannery. . . . Oh, you don’t have to cry.” Patsy patted and pulled Flannery to her. “I’ll cry for us today,” she said solemnly.

  Furious at being duped, calling Patsy a trickster first, and then a swindler, Mrs. Fulson jerked the bolder twin away, giving her the first whipping and some extra licks, then turned to Flannery for the same. When the teacher was through, she handed the girls pointy paper dunce caps and sent them both scurrying to opposite corners to face the wall for the rest of the day.