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"I saw you with Jack tonight," Tammy said, her voice slipping out from under her. "You were letting him. . . . "She stopped and closed her eyes. "I saw what you were doing."
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Norma June's half-brushed hair, full of electricity, stood out wildly on the side of her head. She was pale. Tammy pictured Jack kissing away all the makeup her mother had carefully applied. It was as though he had licked her clean, eaten off the outer layer of perfect skin.
"You're too young to understand," Norma June said.
"I'm telling Suzanne."
Norma June looked at Tammy with naked eyes.
"Can't you at least say you're sorry?" Tammy demanded.
"I'm not sorry."
Tammy shook her head to keep the words from settling. "I hate you."
"No you don't," Norma June whispered.
"At least I know right from wrong, which is more than you can say."
Norma June laughed, her voice was a saw slicing the night in two, half for Tammy, half for herself. Her jaggedness frightened Tammy, cutting her off, making her drop like a limb from a tall tree, she fell and fell at the sound of it. "Stop laughing," she ordered.
"Oh, God," Norma June said, throwing her head back, running her fingers through her hair, one side electric, the other side knotted. "Listen to me. Try to understand this." She paused and looked at Tammy as though she was searching for something with no hope of finding it. "Jack and I see this line between us, do-not-cross-or-else, okay? We see it. But the line comes to life, Tammy, and circles us, wraps its tail around us. And before you know it we're all tangled upand the crazy thing is . . ."
"You're crazy."
"When I was fourteen I had good and bad memorized too, but things change places, Tammy. That's what they don't tell you."
"Poor Daddy."
"Damn it, everything is not about your daddy."
"I'm telling him."
"You want to play God?" Norma June said. "Fine." She went to the bedside table, dug out the travel schedule, picked up the telephone, dialed the number and handed Tammy the receiver. "Play God," she ordered. ''Tell your daddy everything. Don't leave anything out."
Tammy put the receiver to her ear. It was ringing. "Jack doesn't love you. If you hadn't been there he would have . . ."
"What?" Norma June said. "Danced with you?"
Tammy pressed the receiver hard against her face with both hands. Tears filled her eyes as if someone had said on your mark, get set. She was going to cry like a stupid little girl.
Norma June stepped close and put her arms around Tammy, a melting, not an embrace. A moment of fear passed from Norma June into Tammy, then gave way to dizziness. Tammy was unsure which of them was the mother and which
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one the daughterfor a moment they were both the same woman standing in different points in time.
Tammy thought of Norma June in Jack's arms, legs entwined, arms wrapping, wrapping, wrapping, the way Jack was kissing her and kissing her. "I thought Jack liked me," she said.
Norma June rocked Tammy back and forth the way she must have donealthough Tammy couldn't remember itwhen Tammy was a little girl. "My sweet Sugar Cube," she whispered. "Of course he likes you."
Tammy swayed with Norma June, still holding the telephone receiver in her hand.
"Jack would be crazy not to like you. But, Sugar, he's old enough to be your daddy."
"Friendly Motor Lodge," the telephone voice said. "Hello?"
"And a girl doesn't need but one daddy." Norma June took Tammy's face in her hands, wiping the tears with her thumbs.
Tammy pictured Barton asleep in his underpants, his big, white body sprawled across the motel bed.
"Anybody there?" the voice kept saying. "Hello? Hello?"
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Stairsteps
by Celia Malone Kingsbury
Adrienne Wilson is 5'4", but she has always felt shorter. Her mother Maydean Crockmire is 5'6". When Adrienne was younger and posed for family portraits with her mother and grandmother, Bertie, both women topped Adrienne. Stairsteps. That is what Maydean calls them. Now age has drawn Bertie up like a wool sweater somebody put in the dryer by mistake. In the photographs, Bertie is 5'8". The three of them have not posed together since Adrienne's wedding twenty-two years ago.
In Maydean's birch-paneled den, Adrienne sits on a brown tweed Hide-a-Bed and looks at old photographs while her mother irons a dress for church. Adrienne does not go to church. Later she will meet Maydean for lunch, and then they will visit Bertie in the retirement home where she lives. Maydean has sold Bertie's house to the bank, and they plan to tear it down for a parking lot. All that remains of Bertie's possessions litters the den floor. When Adrienne lived in the old house with her mother and Bertie and Granddaddy Albert, she hated it. Now the house routinely visits her dreams. Yesterday they drove by to see if demolition had begun, but it hadn't. Early this morning, Adrienne dreamed about the house. As she looks at photographs, she tries to remember the dream and is frustrated that it won't come back.
In the mildewed teak box on her lap, Adrienne finds the snapshot from her grandparents' fiftieth wedding anniversary. She sees herself there and groans. "I look like I'm fifteen in this dress," she says, lifting the picture for Maydean to see. "Look at my knees."
Maydean holds the picture at arm's length and her eyes become wistful as she studies it. "How old were you?" she asks as if she thinks Adrienne was fifteen.
"Twenty-three," Adrienne says. "I'm standing next to Scott. We got married a year before this party." She is almost as tall as Scott, but the way she looks in the photo, Adrienne does not wonder that he failed to take her seriously. Her naturally wavy hair, flattened each morning on the ironing board, falls to her collarbone in a blonde sheet. Her dress, charcoal gray trimmed with orange at the belt and collar, descends barely to mid-thigh where pale orange tights complete the color scheme. Fresh with the optimism of the seventies, her face beams at the camera even though she hates posing. Her mother smiles too, a stiff ex-
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pression which wrinkles her oversized nose. The nose matches Adrienne's and Bertie's and marks the three women as relatives.
"You'd never know from looking at Daddy that he'd be dead in three months," Maydean says. She blinks to keep tears from falling on her dress and brings the photo closer. "I always thought you'd be taller. You didn't grow any more after you turned fifteen, did you?"
"Only my butt," Adrienne says.
"Reckon you were anemic?" Maydean stares out the high window toward the street. "You never did like vegetables."
"Dr. Murphy stuck my finger every time I went to see him," Adrienne says. "The ends of my fingers are scarred. I doubt that I have any fingerprints."
Maydean shrugs. "We were perfect stairsteps," she says. "Mama never wore heels because she was so tall. I wouldn't have worn them if Wait hadn't been nearly six feet." She hands the picture back to Adrienne.
"I do look fifteen," Adrienne repeats. "But I promise I didn't marry Scott until I was twenty-two."
"I know that," Maydean says. She slaps the iron into the turquoise dress she presses. "How long have you been divorced?"
"Five years."
"I wish you could find somebody," Maydean says. "I know living by yourself gets old."
Adrienne is silent. Part of her mission this weekend is to tell Maydean that she has found someone, an English teacher named Mark, but she does not want to do it now before Maydean goes to church.
"Are you sure you won't go to church with me?" Maydean asks. "I want you to hear my new minister." She pretends to check a spot on the dress, but she is sneaking a peek, Adrienne knows, to see if Adrienne will give in and go with her this morning. "He's a D.D.," she adds.
"Not today," Adrienne says. "I need to have my car loaded so I can leave from the Hewlett House." She points to a black linen dress which hangs from the top of the den's accordion door. "I have to press this dress, too."
"Did you cut
that dress off?" Maydean asks, putting down her iron and turning to stare at the garment, one she has seen Adrienne wear before.
"No," Adrienne says. "Why?"
"I didn't remember it being that short," Maydean says. "They're wearing them shorter this year." Frowning, Maydean pats her frosted hair and turns back to her iron. "I'm just glad I don't live in Saudi Arabia," she says. "You know, they have to wear veils over there."
Adrienne drops the anniversary photo back into the box and stands up. "I'll go pack 'til you get through," she says.
While Maydean irons, Adrienne goes to her room to make the bed and pack her suitcase. After they visit Bertie, Adrienne will drive back to Nashville where
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she runs a catering business. Today is Mother's Day and Adrienne has a straw purse wrapped up in rose paper for Maydean, who likes purses and pastel lingerie, things she can describe to her friends at the courthouse. Maydean serves her last year as tax collector of Richland County this year. She has told Adrienne she is tired of the courthouse and does not want a political fight with the Democratic party, which would like to see a younger person in office. When Maydean became tax collector sixteen ago, she spent an hour every day delivering cards to patients in the county hospital. Each card, engraved with "Compliments of Maydean Crockmire, Your Tax Collector," contained a dollar's worth of dimes tucked into little cardboard circles. Maydean delivered the dimes because, in her opinion, sitting with someone in the hospital demanded change. Adrienne's daddy had spent months in hospitals and Maydean never had a dime to make a phone call with or to buy a Coke or a candy bar. Discreet when she needed to be, Maydean handed the dimes of dying patients to one of the nurses. "I never give dimes to terminal strangers," Maydean had told Adrienne. "I let Miss Markle, the head nurse, do it. She's real sweet that way." The cards finally stopped when phone calls went from a dime to a quarter.
As Adrienne strips her sheets from the cherry Lillian Russell bed she sleeps on, she thinks of the anniversary portrait. When she accidentally stumbles on her copy of the picture, hidden in a drawer, Adrienne shivers slightly, even though it may be the middle of August. The smiling faces of Maydean and Bertie remind her too much of her adolescence. Maydean's worst horror then had been that Adrienne would become pregnant, and Maydean had done everything she could to prevent it. Only during the days of Adrienne's period did Maydean relax. A small bank calendar on her dressing table predicted the opening date of Adrienne's period and Maydean's too. A neat circle pointed out the date, and beside it, a "me" or an "A" determined whose period it was. This calendar rankled Adrienne to the point of speechlessness. She had prayed daily to grow up and assume possession of herself and her bodily functions.
Adrienne deposits a pile of pastel sheets outside the door and smoothes the bedspread over a bright yellow thermal blanket.
Maydean appears with a comb in her hand. "Would you come and see if there are any holes in the back of my hair?" she asks. "I usually sit in the second row. I don't want all those people behind me to think I need help."
Her things packed and loaded into her red Jetta, Adrienne arrives at the restaurant before Maydean gets there. The routine is for Adrienne to get the table so they can beat the church crowd. This morning, Adrienne sits on the enclosed porch of the restaurant, a remodeled Victorian home. The floral wallpaper behind Adrienne swirls in a burst of green and wine and reminds Adrienne of Bertie's house and her dream last night. She still cannot remember what the
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dream was about. Maydean has not lived in the old house since 1985 when Deek Stovall proposed marriage to her. For that occasion, Maydean bought a new house, but before the ceremony could take place, Deek died when his single engine Cessna ran out of gas over the rock quarry south of the runway. After the funeral, Maydean made no motions to sell and move back in with Bertie.
Next to Adrienne's table sit the Bartletts, a couple who were in Bertie's Sunday school class, and they ask Adrienne about her grandmother's health. Before Bertie lost her wits, she gossiped about the Bartletts because Vergie Bartlett never wore deodorant. In the seventies, when everybody got into gardening and natural foods, Vergie decided aluminum chlorohydrate was poison. After that, according to Bertie, you had to stay upwind of the woman. Today, Adrienne does not notice anything offensive as Vergie leans her pink flowered bodice over her iced tea and waits for Adrienne to answer.
"Not too good, Mrs. Bartlett," Adrienne says. "I haven't seen her since Thanksgiving, but Mama says she barely knows where she is, let alone who put her there."
"Lord, Lord," Vergie says. "I hope I never get like that."
"You and me both," Buck Bartlett adds. "I'm too old to sit through church now. I don't know what I'll do if it gets any worse."
"We just take it one day at a time," Vergie explains as she buries a spoon in a dish of banana pudding beside her plate.
Adrienne shakes an envelope of Sweet-n-Low into her tea, a thing she would never do in her shop, and stirs. In a way, Vergie reminds Adrienne of her grandmother; she has a wide-eyed innocence about her even though she must be eighty.
In her better days, Bertie had been formidable. Adrienne wonders about her as she waits for Maydean, who is now late. Often late for appointments, Maydean is never late for lunch. Has she received an emergency phone call and been pulled from her mahogany pew to attend Berrie? Or does she stand even now on the church steps talking tax business with the county attorney who is also Methodist? Adrienne brushes a crumb from the rose papered box next to her and sips her tea.
In the shower this morning, Adrienne planned the conversation for this lunch meeting. Maydean will be pleased and surprised to hear about Mark; she will also ask a million questions, which Adrienne dreads. Mark is several years younger than Adrienne, nothing new these days, unless you live in Lancaster. If Maydean has read People lately, she will be sympathetic. But then, Adrienne reminds herself, she is forty-four and doesn't need permission to move in with someone.
To Maydean's credit, she has kept her peace since the time she tried to make Adrienne come home from Peabody the beginning of her sophomore year. In those days, Peabody sent midterm grades home. Adrienne's report, which ar-
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rived in Lancaster on a Wednesday morning, listed a D in Anatomy and Physiology. By six o'clock that evening, Maydean and Bertie had reached the second floor of Peabody's United Daughters of the Confederacy dorm and knocked on Adrienne's door. Adrienne and her roommate Charmette had just opened a can of Swanson's chicken à la king and were about to eat.
"Knock, knock?" Maydean's head appeared beside Charmette's poster of Mick Jagger. "Can we come in?"
"Sure," Adrienne said. "What brings you to Nashville this late in the day?" Puzzled, she got up from her chair at the study table, then sat back down.
"We came to see you," Bertie piped in. "We thought you might be homesick and want to come back to Lancaster. We think little girls ought to get homesick." She hovered in the open doorway grinning. "Y'all don't have any boys hidden in the closet, do you?" she asked.
"Why would I be homesick? I've been gone for a year and a half," Adrienne said.
