“Yup. First time up is pretty magical.”
“It’s just so awful that we’re still fighting Japan, what with Germany surrendering and the troops in Europe coming home. Everybody says it’s just a matter of time, but that almost makes it worse. To still be losing lives over there, that is.”
“We’re giving them what-for, though, and Ned was part of that.”
“I suppose.”
“So, what did you want to talk to me about?”
Mae hesitated. The timing was terrible, but she did not want to wait and have to track Jax down later. She had put off her divorce long enough, and now Hollister was coming home. “Jax, we never see each other anymore. Gosh, it’s been, how long?”
He rubbed his pants leg. “Oh, I don’t know. It seems like yesterday to me.”
“Don’t you think it’s time we thought about moving on?”
He pointed to the gold band on Mae’s left hand. “Is that Hollister’s?”
“He’ll be home by Christmas. How long have you known?”
“Oh, I’ve always known. I knew on the Fourth of July.”
“Would you like your rings back?” Mae asked.
“No, no. They’re yours. Just maybe don’t sell ‘em.”
“Oh Jax, I wouldn’t ever do that.”
He smiled.
“I’d like to keep the house,” Mae said.
“Oh, sure. Of course. Stay here forever.”
“I mean transfer it to my name. I work for an attorney who handles that sort of thing.”
“Oh . . . well . . .” Jax tugged at his collar and took a sip of tea.
“Is there a problem with that?”
“It’s just that, when I got the house—I don’t know if you remember—I got the house about the same time I bought that Cessna. You remember the Cessna, don’t you?”
“Yes. Of course.”
“Well, I had to get rid of her, oh gosh, ten, twelve years ago. She was a great airplane. Could carry anything you put in her. I made a lot of money with that airplane. Furnished this whole house.” Jax looked around the room. “It really does look great, Mae. You have such a good eye for decorating.”
“Jax, what does the Cessna have to do with the house?”
“See, I had to choose back then, and I really needed the airplane to make enough money for, well, for everything we wanted to do.”
“But I’m here. I’ve been here for fourteen years.” Mae’s words summoned a sudden realization, and her hand flew to her mouth. “My God, Jax.”
He managed a sheepish smile.
“Tell me you have not rented this place all these years!“
“Well . . .”
“How could you? Fourteen years!”
“I’m sorry, Mae.”
“Who owns the house? Who do you send the check to every month?”
“Well, it was Old Man Purifoy for years and years. But he died a year or two ago, so now I send it to his son.”
“Did you ever even try to buy it? When you had all that money?”
“Well, by then, we—”
“Never mind. Just never mind. I’m sorry about Ned, Jax. I really am. But you need to go.”
“Well . . . okay.” He stood. “Do you want me to take this to the kitchen?”
Mae reached for the glass. “Give it to me. And please, just go away.”
Mae looked up Leonard Purifoy and pestered him to sell her the house. “I’m attached to the place for its sentimentality,” Purifoy said when Mae showed up on his front doorstep. “What with it bein’ Mama ‘n Daddy’s first place and all.”
“There must be a price you can live with, especially knowing the house is going to someone who will care for it just as lovingly as your folks did.”
Leonard Purifoy rubbed the gray stubble on his chin. He stood behind the screen door, not coming out on the porch or inviting Mae inside. He was shirtless, and his faded, paint-stained khaki britches threatened to slide right off his hips. “Cain’t say as I could name a price right now. Reckon all them fellers comin’ home from the war is gonna be gettin’ hitched ‘n lookin’ to settle down somewheres. No tellin’ what the place’ll be worth then.”
“So, you would sell it for the right price.”
“Cain’t rightly say,” he drawled. “But you’s welcome to stay ‘til I make up my mind. Long as the rent’s paid ever’ month, that is.”
Mae consulted Mr. Carter, who had continued his lawyering as if he intended to do so until the last trumpet sounded. “No legal instrument exits, Mrs. Addington,” he said when he learned Jax had never signed a contract on the house. “I’m afraid you must appeal to Mr. Purifoy’s sense of decency. If he has one.”
Hollister finagled his way onto a cargo plane that was headed stateside and arrived home weeks before his repatriation was scheduled. He showed up on Mae’s doorstep without warning, just as he had years before. Hollister, who had always been world-weary, did not seem much affected by the war, but on his first night home, Mae had found a jagged foot-long scar on his side. When she asked him what happened, he said a German had tried to gut him like a fish.
During the war, months sometimes passed with no word from Hollister. Then Mae would get ten or fifteen letters in the same delivery. His letters were vague about where they were and what they were doing. He wrote about the things the guys said and did. Often his letters were humorous and they had filled Mae with hope. At least until she read a newspaper or saw a newsreel at the movie theater.
Even though Hollister was alive and in her arms, his old wound disturbed Mae. She imagined him lying on the ground, bleeding, and his buddies lifting him and carrying him on a stretcher. She imagined him lying in a crowded makeshift hospital, trying to get well while bombs went off around him day and night. “Where did it happen?” she asked. “When did it happen?”
“Belgium. Forty-four. It was crazy, Mae. I had the strangest feeling the night I happened on this German, and we looked each other in the eye. We both knew only one of us was gonna walk away. I swear it felt like the whole war came down to the two of us.” Hollister sat up and adjusted the pillows against his back. “It was kinda like football over there, you know? Bunch of guys thrown together. Trying to get something going. It wasn’t a game, but it felt like one sometimes. There’s always a key guy. The one guy the whole play hinges on. Take him out and the field just opens up.” Hollister pointed to the scar. “The German was that guy.”
“What did you do?”
“I blew his brains out, and we overran them.”
Mae waited three days after Hollister came home before she told him she might not be able to keep the house.
“What did you offer the guy?”
“Everything I’ve saved, which is more than it’s worth.”
“Mind if I give it a go? The trust will buy the house, and you can keep your savings.”
“Of course I don’t mind, but I’m afraid Leonard Purifoy wants to keep the cow and sell the milk as long as he can.”
“I’ll talk to the bank tomorrow. We’ll make him an offer he can’t refuse.
“I don’t know, honey. He seems like a pretty tough nut.”
“I’ll wear my uniform.” Then Hollister smiled his million-dollar smile, and Mae knew she had her house.
Chapter Fifty-Nine
1949
Cargie and Thomas were forty-five and fifty-three, respectively. Becca and Rudy were married with a baby girl of their own. Adele was away at Cornell University studying architecture. Only Cassie was still at home, and she spent most of her time holed up in her bedroom. She emerged only when driven out by hunger or to commandeer the bathroom. Or to run out the front door to school or the houses of her friends.
The young ladies who visited Cassie were ushered from the front door into her bedroom immediately. When they ventured out to the kitchen for chips and Coca-Colas, always in tandem with their hostess, they passed through Cargie’s and Thomas’s presence in silence, with eyes cast down demurely. But they
yelped and howled like hyenas behind Cassie’s bedroom door.
Cargie and Thomas had begun to talk about the things they might do when Cassie left for college, things they had put off doing for years. They wanted to travel, not just in the United States, but abroad too, and they talked about which cities and countries they most wanted to see. Most of all, Cargie and Thomas looked forward to lazy Saturday mornings, reading the newspaper in bed with the whole house to themselves, as they had done when they began their married life. Then one day, Cargie came in from work and sat Thomas down on the couch.
“Uh-oh,” Thomas said. “Bad news?”
“I’m pregnant,” Cargie said. “Surely for the last time, unless we’re to be like Sarah and Abraham.”
Thomas took in a breath. “I thought . . .”
“I know,” Cargie said. “So did I.”
“Becca and Rudy’s little one is gonna have an auntie who’s younger than she is.”
“Or uncle,” Cargie said. “Seems to me you’re due a son.”
“Hmm,” said Thomas. An ancient panic caught in his throat. He swallowed it, as he always had, and said, “As long as the baby’s healthy, that’s all that matters.”
“All our plans out the window,” Cargie said.
Thomas took his wife’s hands in his. “Just on hold, honey. We’ll get to ‘em eventually.”
Thomas and his mother-in-law’s friendship had cooled as Cassie grew older and made fewer demands. Pretty Mama spent more time with her closest friend, Mavis, and with her other church friends. Not to mention Pastor Henry Euell, with whom Pretty Mama had supper at least one night a week. Thomas stayed busy cooking, helping the neighbors, and puttering around the house and yard. But when Thomas and Pretty Mama were thrown together to prepare for another baby, they remembered how much they enjoyed each other’s company, and their friendship blossomed again.
One night, when Cargie was working late, Pretty Mama made the trip from her house across the backyard to keep Thomas company. She came through the back door into the kitchen without knocking. Thomas was reading in the living room and when he heard her, he got up and went into the kitchen. It was January and cold, and the old dog, Lazarus, was curled on a blanket beside the stove.
“Don’t reckon I’ll ever get used to a dog in the house,” Pretty Mama said by way of a greeting.
“Good evening to you too,” Thomas said. “The old boy’s arthritic in his hind end, and the warmth does him good.”
“All the same,” she said and sat down at the kitchen table.
“Cargie’s working late. She telephoned and said Mr. Cole will drive her home.”
Pretty Mama shook her head but refrained from commenting.
“Would you like some coffee?” Thomas asked.
“It’s mighty late, but I reckon so.”
“I’ll put on a pot.” Thomas sat the percolator on the countertop and plugged it in. He took a sponge from the sink and rinsed it in hot water. He wiped a grease splatter from the tiled backsplash behind the stove.
“Cargie’s hopin’ for a boy,” Pretty Mama said.
“Yes’m. She thinks I ought to have a son.”
“And what do you say about that, sir?”
“I’ll be happy as long as the baby’s healthy,” he said.
When the coffee was ready, Thomas poured two scalding cups and set one in front of Pretty Mama. He got the cream from the refrigerator, and they both added generous amounts of sugar and cream to their coffee, the way Thomas used to drink it all the time when he was young but never did now.
“Why don’t you want a boy?” Pretty Mama asked.
“I never said I don’t want a boy.”
Pretty Mama set her cup down and eyed him.
“I didn’t ever say that,” he repeated.
“I watched you ever’ time I put a daughter in your arms,” Pretty Mama said. “And ever’ time you was relieved to know the baby was a girl. I seen it on your face.”
“Go on now,” Thomas said.
“I know what I seen.”
Thomas shrugged. “Raising girls is easier than raising boys,” he said.
“By whose estimation?”
“By mine, I reckon.”
“What do you know about raising boys?”
“I was a boy,” he said.
“And here I thought you hatched out of a egg. Full growed,” said Pretty Mama.
Thomas laughed.
“I’s serious. Why don’t you tell me about when you was a boy, seeing as I still don’t know the first thing about you, even after you been married to my daughter more’n twenty years. Even after we done raised three girls together.”
“I was a boy,” Thomas said. “And then I was a man.”
And without thinking about it any more than a man thinks when he dips an oar into the water or swings an axe to chop kindling, Thomas told his mother-in-law a very old story—a secret story that no two ears had ever heard—about a boy who became a man in one day. When he finished, he asked her what she thought about the tale.
“It answers lots of questions,” she said.
At that moment Cargie came in from work, and Pretty Mama said her goodbyes and went out the back door and across the yard to her house. They never spoke of it again.
Chapter Sixty
1950
Jax sat in the backseat of his mother’s car and watched her go up the sidewalk and knock at Mae’s front door. He had not seen Mae since she told him to get out of her rented house five years before, and he was glad she had managed to hang onto it. Mae opened the door and Jax’s mother went inside. Mae did not look toward the car before she closed the door, and Jax watched hopefully for her to open it again.
The morphine from the night before had worn off, and Jax’s rotted gut made itself known. He’d refused his morning injection because he wanted to be clear-headed, to remember everything and reimagine it in the days to come. The front door opened, and Mae walked out, still buttoning her coat. She came down the sidewalk, opened the car door, and got in the backseat with Jax. “Thanks for coming out,” he said.
Mae reached into her coat pocket and pulled out the silk Hermes scarf Jax had given her on the Fourth of July. It was yellowed with age and deeply creased from being folded for so long. “Remember this?” she asked.
“Boy, do I.”
She lifted her hair and wound the scarf into a turban as deftly as she had on the Fourth of July twenty years before. Then she placed her hands in her lap. Jax smiled with all the old charm he could muster. “Lady Sheik,” he said. He had nothing to lose now. “I have always loved you, Mae.”
“I know.”
Jax looked down at his bloodless hands and rolled them in the woolen blanket that lay across his lap. He was an invalid now, never without a blanket. “In my mind, we never separated. We went on together and had many adventures, all over the world.”
Mae hesitated. “I hope we were happy,” she said, finally.
“We were. Very. And rich too.”
She laughed, and her laughter warmed him like summer sunshine. She leaned forward and hugged him more tightly than she ever had before, as tightly as his mother always hugged him. When she pulled back, Jax saw tears in her eyes. “You take care of yourself now, hear?” she said.
“Sure. Always.”
Mae pulled the scarf from her head and shook out her hair. “And you keep this too. You never know when you might need it again.” She winked and opened the door.
“Wait a minute. Here, before you go.” Jax reached into his shirt pocket and took out a copy of the photograph of Mae and him sitting at the white-clothed table on the Youree’s roof. Mae looked at the picture for a long time, and Jax thought she might be reliving all the fun they’d had that summer, as he had relived it so many times.
“Thank you, Jax.”
“See you later, Mae.”
She got out and hurried up the sidewalk. She was running by the time she reached the door.
Bill Cole came out of the d
ry cleaners and walked to the car. He opened the door and squatted on the sidewalk to bring himself to Jax’s level. Jax thought the old guy was pretty limber to pull that off. Mr. Cole pulled his sweater closed at the neck and said, “It’s cold as all get-out this morning.”
The open door chilled Jax, despite the heavy blanket. His mother would’ve told Bill Cole to get in the car and close the door, but she was inside the dry cleaners, giving them time alone. “How’s everything, Mr. Cole?”
“Very well, Jackson. We’re still rocking along around here.”
“Is Cargie still working for you?”
“Yes sir. Going on twenty-three years.”
“Long time.”
“Yes sir.”
Both men looked down. Mr. Cole shifted his weight, then he put one knee on the sidewalk and leaned forward with his forearms resting on the other knee. After a moment he said, “Did you know I was with the expedition forces in the Great War?”
“I knew it,” Jax said. “Don’t guess we ever talked about it, though. Did you see a lot of action?”
“Yes sir. Quite a bit.”
Jax felt like a madman was sweeping his gut with a flamethrower. He just had to hang on a little while longer. When his mother got back in the car, she would hand him a hypodermic needle. Jax had no problem pulling down his pants and sticking the needle into what was left of his buttock. No problem squeezing the plunger until sweet Vitamin M flowed through him like Possum Kingdom moonshine. He twisted the blanket in his hands.
“It troubled me for years,” Mr. Cole was saying, “that I made it back home and so many fellas didn’t. Most of them were better men than me. I just could not reconcile that.”
“Makes me think about Ned Turner,” said Jax. “Best friend a guy ever had.”
“Yes sir, Ned had a lot going for him. No telling what he could’ve done with a long life.”
“I really felt it. In here.” Jax untangled one hand from the blanket and pointed to his chest. “They never found him, you know. Sometimes I imagine Ned’s still over there, living in a paper house with a geisha girl.”
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