No Dark Valley

by Jamie Langston Turner

  She remembered her grandmother’s return to the table that night, how she had sat down wearily and bowed her head for the longest time. Celia had heard her breathing heavily, had seen her lips moving, had known she was praying for the souls of those two boys just as she prayed for Celia’s soul day after day.

  Oh, Grandmother’s solution for everything was so simple. Just arise and go to Jesus. Let him embrace you in his arms and lead you back to the safety of the flock. And somehow Grandmother believed, she really and truly believed, that in the dry, dusty fold of religion, with its high fences and securely latched gate, there were ten thousand charms, if not more.

  14

  Just Beyond the Shining River

  “You better give it to someone else,” Celia said. “I’m afraid I won’t be able to fit it in this week.” It was the first day of May, a Sunday afternoon, and Celia was sitting cross-legged in the middle of her bed, talking on the phone with Mike Owen, who liked to introduce himself as “the editor-in-chief of the Derby Daily News,” which was true but nothing to brag about in Celia’s opinion.

  The book she had been reading was lying facedown on the bedspread. Ollie had lent the book to her, and she had found it fascinating so far: Making the Mummies Dance by Thomas Hoving, a former director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It told all sorts of inside scoop about the Met—the incredibly high prices of certain acquisitions, quarrels among the board members, dealings with major donors, auctions, scouting trips abroad, scandals in the art world, and such. She was eager to get back to reading, especially now that she knew what this phone conversation was about.

  She couldn’t remember the last time she had flatly turned down a newspaper assignment from Mike. Not that she hadn’t tried before, but somehow he always managed to talk her into it. This time he wouldn’t, though. He might as well save his breath.

  “Debra can’t do it,” Mike said. “She’s swamped with the library renovation feature, plus all the Greek Festival stuff. And I wouldn’t give something like this to Lorenzo. It’s not a guy thing.” He paused. “I really need you, kid. You’re the best. You know that.”

  She knew he’d try flattery eventually, but usually it wasn’t so soon. “Sorry, Mike. Can’t do it. How about Joan? She’s good—and twice as fast as the rest of us.”

  “She can’t. She’s already doing two concert reviews and the Clinton bluegrass thing for me this week, plus her usual poetry fillers,” he said. “And she’s got a full-time job, you know.” Whenever things got tight, Mike liked to drop little reminders that Celia’s afternoon hours at the art gallery gave her more free time than his other stringers, as if he thought she sat at home every morning lounging around in her pajamas.

  Ever since Wanda had left the paper in March, Mike had become a real nuisance, phoning every week about assignments he didn’t have a writer for. “Well, if you’d quit spinning your wheels and hire another full-time reporter,” she told him now, “you wouldn’t keep running into this problem. You can’t expect me to keep dropping everything to bail you out of a jam.”

  “Hey, I don’t own the paper, Celia. You know that. It’s not my decision. I’ve told Mr. Fields the situation, and he’s still—”

  “Well, I can’t do it. This is a bad week for me. Tennis playoffs start tomorrow, and we have a new show opening at the gallery on Thursday night. I’ve still got a lot to do for that.” There, not just one reasonable-sounding excuse, but two. Actually, only one of the excuses was valid, though.

  She heard Mike sigh. Though he had tried hard to hide it, he hadn’t been at all happy when she had told him back in February that she’d joined a tennis team that had matches and occasional practices in the mornings. Usually it was only one morning a week, but this week was different, and she couldn’t do anything about the schedule even if she wanted to do the article for Mike, which she definitely didn’t. The three playoff matches were scheduled for Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday mornings, and the team needed her at every match. Whichever team won this week would go to the state championship in Charleston in early June.

  The second part of her excuse might be stretching the truth, however, since things were pretty well under control for the new art show. She and Ollie were hanging the pieces tomorrow, three whole days early, and she had the refreshment table and decorations all set for Thursday. She was using a lot of scarves, old hats, and costume jewelry for the table, and the refreshments were going to be cheese straws, pastel mints, meringue cookies, and cinnamon peach tea, all of which Connie was bringing in on Thursday.

  Celia was looking forward to this new show—oils and acrylics in vibrant colors, mostly interior scenes with a wry twist. The artist, Lenny Bullard, was a native of Yemassee, South Carolina, but you’d never guess his rural background from this new show. And you probably wouldn’t guess his gender, either.

  Celia’s favorite piece in the whole show, the one she had chosen to depict on the postcard mailing, was a large painting of a women’s upscale lingerie shop. The mannequins, the customers, the merchandise, the shop owner, the decor—it all said “snobbery,” but with such good-natured satire that you had to smile. She also liked the painting of a lady’s bureau, showing an open jewelry box with necklaces draped over the side, an arrangement of peacock feathers in an Oriental vase, a small crystal clock, a poppy red scarf, and several scattered earrings and hatpins. Obviously that woman had been in a hurry.

  Angela Wortheimer’s watercolor show had gone well, but Celia was glad it was down now. All those placid scenes in pastel colors had grown tiresome after a few days. Nothing to stir the imagination in all that tranquillity. Even the one Celia had liked best—the wet sidewalk scene—hadn’t kept her interest. During the six weeks of looking at the paintings every day, she had grown to believe that Angela had a good eye but not a whole lot of fire in her soul. Quite a few pieces had sold, though, so a lot of people evidently didn’t care whether an artist had fire in her soul.

  Regarding Lenny Bullard’s work, however, some people might turn it around and say he had plenty of fire in his soul but not a very good eye. Another of his paintings flashed into Celia’s mind: a small beauty shop with five swivel chairs, slightly tilted in different directions, in a rainbow of sherbet colors. The name of the shop could be read backward through the plate glass window in the background—Lovelier Than Thou. The letters were leaning crookedly, hardly a sign maker’s dream.

  She realized Mike was talking again and wondered if she had missed much. Probably not. He seemed to have shifted into a lecturing mode.

  “ . . . and you know those are invariably the things I learn the most from,” he was saying. “So, really, we both know a person can always make time for important things, right? And believe me, kid, this is important. And fun—hey, it’ll be a whole lot more fun than most of the stuff I give you.” He paused to chuckle. “You know, like murders and such. Oh, and by the way, people are still writing in and calling about that one. I probably already told you that, though. Everybody and his brother thinks he has a clue that’s gonna solve that case. And who knows? One of them actually might. But anyway, the point is, that was some good writing you did. As usual. You really know how to snag the reader.”

  More flattery. He really must be desperate. “And then the Teacher Appreciation feature,” he added, “and the big thing about book clubs in the area, and that hot-air-balloon event a couple weeks ago—well, you’ve really helped us out, Celia, and I was really, really counting on you for this one.” He paused as if hoping her sense of obligation would kick in. After all, you did leave us in a lurch ten years ago, she could feel him thinking over the phone. You did promise to keep freelancing for us as needed when you up and quit the newspaper to work at an art gallery, of all places.

  She could hear him tapping on something in the background. She tried to say something but suddenly found that she couldn’t put a sentence together. Maybe it was Mike’s mention of her recent articles, but for some reason at this very minute it struck her all at o
nce, with swift and sure conviction, that she was tired of writing for the newspaper. Tired in a very permanent way. Absolutely fed up. She wouldn’t care if she never had another call from Mike, if she never again saw her by-line in the Derby Daily News.

  And the freelance editing jobs she kept doing for people—she suddenly knew without a doubt that she couldn’t face another one. She thought of poor misguided, eternally optimistic Frank Bledsoe, who had called again a few days ago to ask about her progress on editing his latest manuscript, a collection of inspirational short cameos titled Folks Who Failed—well, there was no way in the world Celia could in good conscience keep accepting the man’s money.

  Some weeks ago she had finally given back to Frank the opening chapters of his dreadful autobiographical novel From Ashes to Fame and had broken it to him gently that this one would require more effort than she was able to give in order to make it publishable, at which time he had briskly pulled out another manuscript, the Folks Who Failed one, and asked her to “take a look at this when you have a minute.” Such resilience that man had!

  She couldn’t believe now that she had actually let him put yet another manuscript into her hands, that she hadn’t looked him square in the eye and said, “It’s over, Frank. Kaput, adios, the end. Sorry, I can’t help you anymore. Your writing is hopeless. Go home and take up herb gardening. Raise carrier pigeons. Start a coin collection. Restore vintage cars.” She wondered how she had managed all these years to keep trying to fix up other people’s writing when she hated doing it so much.

  And writing articles for Mike—why, that was like doing homework. None of it was anything she wanted to write. She was tired of being told what to write and then seeing it printed on the kind of paper people threw away, shredded up for packing material, or wrapped fish bones in.

  So at the exact same moment Celia was experiencing a revelation—that she had totally lost interest in what she had two degrees in from Blackrock College and had for the past ten years considered to be her second job—she was also wondering if there was any way she could swing it financially with only her job at the gallery. All this while trying to maintain some semblance of paying attention to Mike on the other end of the phone.

  “I mean, we’ve got to have something for Mother’s Day,” he was saying now, his voice having taken on a wheedling note. “We’d never hear the end of it from our readers if we didn’t. You’d be so perfect for this, Celia. And think of how much you’d learn. Think of how many pitfalls you could avoid after listening to all these other women talk. And as far as the time factor goes, why, you could probably do all the interviews in the normal course of your day. Just talk to women wherever you go. Right there at the art gallery, in the grocery store, in your neighborhood—why, you could—”

  “I said I can’t do it,” Celia said. “And I mean it, Mike. It doesn’t matter how little time you think it’ll take. Anything is too much. I can’t do it. Not this week.” Her mind was still whirling over her revelation, but she didn’t think this was the right time to break the news to him. She needed to think about it some more, to look at her budget and figure some things out first. You didn’t cut off a supply of income on the spur of the moment.

  “And you could think of it as a gift for your own mother.” Mike was good at the pretend-you-didn’t-hear game, another ploy he sometimes used to get his way. “Wouldn’t she be proud to read something you wrote specially for Mother’s Day? Can’t you see her carrying it around and showing it to—”

  “My mother died twenty years ago,” Celia said. She felt sure she had told Mike about her parents at some point during all the time she had known him, but if she had, he had obviously forgotten. “Anyway,” she added as he cleared his throat and made apologetic noises on the other end, “I don’t think an article about the mistakes mothers make would have thrilled her all that much.”

  That was the concept of the article, as Mike had explained it to her at the beginning of their phone talk—to ask a dozen or so older mothers what they’d do differently if they had their child-rearing years to do all over again. “Another Shot at Motherhood” was the title Mike had suggested. The whole thing struck Celia as being a little depressing, not to mention insulting. Asking mothers to criticize themselves, then compiling it all into an article so that thousands of other people could read about their private blunders in dealing with their kids. Who wanted to open up the paper on Mother’s Day and see a chronicle of mistakes committed by the segment of the population that was supposed to be setting the moral tone for the next generation? It didn’t seem like much of a way to honor mothers. Granted, it might make a pretty interesting article for some other day, but not for Mother’s Day.

  Mike seemed to catch what she was implying, for he said, “Hey, wait a minute. You know what? You’ve got a point there. Guess I hadn’t thought about it like that.” But instead of dropping the whole idea, he suddenly hatched an even worse one. “So let’s see . . . say, how about this? How about doing something personal, some memory of your own mother before she died? That would work. Some nice little vignette. Warm and fuzzy.”

  She should have cut him off, but she wasn’t quick enough. She was distracted by a thought that flitted across her mind: Why didn’t people take her seriously when she said no? Maybe it was her size, maybe her voice, maybe the simple fact that she was a woman. “You could sort of reminisce about your childhood,” Mike continued. “Maybe you’ve got some nugget about your mom—you know, one of those meaningful moments from childhood you could build the piece around. This could be great, Celia! We’re on the right track now!” He was doing his best imitation of The Editor As Motivator-Cheerleader-Nurturer.

  She couldn’t believe she had let him get this far. Motherhood was not a subject she was going to write an article about—not now, not ever. Not from any perspective. She didn’t even want to think about the subject, much less write about it. Anyway, she had just decided that her writing days were over. Maybe she should go ahead and tell him now. Or maybe she should try an appeal to his sympathy first. Maybe that would get him off her back for now.

  “Mother’s Day brings back a lot of painful memories I’d rather not dredge up,” she said quietly. That much was certainly true.

  “Well, I can appreciate that,” Mike said quickly, “but, you know, Celia, maybe this could be therapeutic in a way. I mean, maybe you could—”

  “No, I can’t do it.” She let out a little gasp, which was part acting. “I really am busy this week, Mike, but even if I had the time, I couldn’t do a Mother’s Day piece. I just couldn’t. End of discussion.”

  Though Mike rarely swore, he did so now, but softly, not in anger. “Okay, kid,” he said after a long pause. “I give up. I’m gonna hang up now so I can start beating the bushes to find somebody else to do it. Got any other suggestions for me? That’s the least you could do.”

  Celia thought a moment. “How about that English teacher over in Filbert who covered the dog show a while back?”

  Mike let out a snort of laughter. “You mean the one who had the love affair with adjectives? The one who called the winner of the show a . . . what was it? ‘A sprightly, self-assertive schnauzer with a stately stance and a squared-off schnoz’—something like that?”

  “I think it was a soldierly stance.”

  “Whatever. Can you imagine what somebody like that would do with an article about mothers?” Mike groaned. “Give me a buzz, kid, if you have any more bright ideas, okay?” Celia felt a flood of relief when she heard him hang up.

  * * *

  Motherhood—it would always be there, nibbling at her conscience. As long as she lived, there would be daily reminders that she wasn’t a mother herself and because of what she had done she didn’t deserve to ever be one. On Mother’s Day she was always smitten with the thought that she didn’t have a mother of her own and, furthermore, that her mother would have been heartbroken to know what she had done.

  She closed her eyes for a minute before settling back
against her pillows and picking up her book again. She had been right in the middle of an interesting story about the Met’s acquisition of a huge, remarkably beautiful vase unearthed on the island of Crete and all the political difficulties associated with purchasing it and getting it out of its country of origin. She tried getting back into it but found her concentration gone.

  As she closed the book and laid it on the table beside her bed, she let her eyes rest a moment on the sculpture of the nude couple embracing. It was a funny thing how she so often took only quick glances at this piece of art that she had paid more for than any other in her apartment. She had wondered before if it was another hangover from her upbringing, the whole Bible-belt phobia about nudity. Or maybe it wasn’t that complicated. Maybe it just hit a nerve, seeing two people in love. She reached over and picked up the sculpture. It was heavy, though only seven or eight inches high. She made herself look directly at it.

  The stylized figures were dull bronze and very smooth. The woman was sitting, her knees drawn up, and the man was kneeling beside her, facing her, his head resting on hers. Looking at it up close, Celia felt both happy and sad. Happy because it was so beautiful, but sad because it reminded her that she had no one to kneel beside her and embrace her and that, except for short-term flings, she probably never would. No one to help her ride out the storms through the long nights.

  Celia clearly remembered stooping in front of the piece many times a day during the sculptor’s exhibit at the Trio nine or ten years earlier. It had caught her eye the first time she had studied the artist’s slides, and when he brought all the pieces down from Raleigh, North Carolina, in the back of his van for the opening of his show some months later and set this one on the floor in a corner with several others, she had felt something scrunch up in the pit of her stomach. Those were the days before she had given up hope, when she still considered it entirely within the realm of possibility that she would eventually meet someone she couldn’t live without.