by Webb, Peggy
There was a whippoorwill somewhere deep in the woods behind the school. His cry pierced the darkness, four mournful notes repeated at intervals, “no rain tonight, no rain tonight.” A mosquito had sneaked inside the car when Taylor opened the door, and he dive-bombed Elizabeth’s head. She didn’t even swat him away.
“How much, Elizabeth? How much will it take to keep you quiet?”
“Do you think that’s what this about? Blackmail? After all these years do you think I’d come crawling to you for money?”
“Who knows the way of the female mind? I stopped trying to figure it out when I was five. Miss Anna Lisa taught me it was a losing battle.”
He spoke his mother’s name with an underlying tone of awe, and not without kindness. Elizabeth felt a certain empathy with Anna Lisa Belliveau, felt almost as if she had become Taylor’s mother.
“You’ll never grow up, will you?”
“I reckon I’m about to, Lizzie. Miss Anna Lisa laid down the law and even picked out the girl. I’m tying the knot in December.”
“I suppose she has a pedigree as long as my leg.”
“One of the Beauforts from St. Charles, Louisiana. Our mothers were sorority sisters.”
How easy it was to be sucked up in Taylor’s life, as if her own had no meaning. Elizabeth rolled down the car window to let in some air.
“I’ll bet she doesn’t even sweat.”
Taylor’s big boom of laughter filled the car, but he sobered quickly and placed one hand on the back of her neck. Her lack of emotion caught her by surprise. When she was eighteen she thought she’d thrill to his touch forever.
“I never meant to hurt you, Elizabeth.”
“I know that, Taylor.”
His hand on her neck had no meaning, and she let it rest there, a small connection to the man who had fathered her child.
“I didn’t come to ask you for money nor even to ask that you acknowledge Nicky as your son.”
“You know I can’t do that.”
“I know you won’t. I came to terms with that a long time ago, Taylor.”
It was time to go home. Taylor obviously knew nothing about the million dollars. But if he wasn’t behind the money, who was?
“Do your parents know about Nicky?”
“No! And neither does Jennifer. You’re not going to stir up that hornet’s nest, are you?”
“That’s not my intent.”
“Then why are you here?”
“I guess I’m just tying up loose ends. A journey down memory lane. That sort of thing.”
“In the middle of the night?” Taylor lit a cigarette then found another country western station more to his liking. “I don’t buy it, Elizabeth.”
She swatted the mosquito on her neck and drew blood. The bond between her and the man sitting on the front seat of her car might as well be made of steel. No amount of time nor distance could alter the fact that Taylor Belliveau was Nicky’s daddy. For that reason alone, she owed him the truth.
“I’ll be honest with you, Taylor. An anonymous philanthropist sent me a check, and I thought it might be you, trying to buy your way back into our lives. I thought you or your parents might even be trying to take Nicky.”
“He’s yours, Lizzie. Nobody by the name of Belliveau even knows he exists. And they’ll never hear it from me.”
“I guess that’s it, then.”
“I guess it is, kiddo.”
On the radio Waylon Jennings, no kin to Elizabeth, not even first cousin twice removed, wailed of love lost.
Elizabeth wouldn’t have to worry about that now. It was a pure relief not to love Taylor Belliveau anymore, and an even greater relief to know he had no claims on Nicky.
“Are you and the boy happy, Lizzie?”
She hadn’t thought about happiness in a long time. Eons ago when she was eighteen, she’d thought happiness was waking in Taylor’s arms, then padding down to the kitchen in her bare feet, standing in the sunshine watching a cardinal in the magnolia tree outside his off-campus apartment while she made his morning coffee. She’d thought happiness was moments of pleasure strung together in bright beads she could wear around her neck. Now she knows better: happiness is a state of mind, fed by random moments of wild joy that come when you least expect them.
Long ago, sitting on a kitchen stool with her bare feet curled around the foot rest, she would have shared her thoughts with Taylor. Now she’s learned to guard her thoughts. Maybe she should thank him.
“Yes, Taylor, we are. What about you?”
“I’m Taylor Belliveau, Lizzie. What more do I need?”
He flicked his cigarette out the window, laughing in that way that always caught her hard up under the breastbone. He was softened in the moonlight, a man-child living in a world of his own creation. It had been his endearing Peter Pan quality that made Elizabeth fall in love with him so many years ago, the quality that made her reach out now and smooth a stray lock of hair from his forehead.
“Take care of yourself, Taylor.”
“You, too, kiddo.”
He didn’t mention their son and neither did she. But home tugged at her, and her heart and spirit soared north toward a little boy asleep in his trundle bed on Vine Street.
She started the engine.
“I hope you can explain to your fiancée why it took you so long to get cigarettes.”
“No problem.”
Taylor cupped her face then stared at her as if she were already a half-forgotten memory.
“She’s not as smart as you, Lizzie.”
She could already see how Nicky had Taylor’s charm. His only salvation would be if he inherited her grit.
Taylor put his hand on the door, and suddenly she didn’t want to see him go. There was so much she wanted to say to him, so much she needed to ask: Will you ever acknowledge your son? Will you ever want to see him? How can you bear not to?
With his hand on the door, he felt the tug of her unspoken questions.
“Lizzie?”
He was puzzled, a little boy who’s had a disturbing dream. She held her breath, waiting, and the moment stretched between them as graceful as the wings of a
butterfly. A strange kind of joy was born in her - not hope, not peace, but a combination of the two, something that was as calming to the soul as a walk beside a brook on the hottest day of summer.
Taylor ducked quickly in her direction for a hasty kiss that landed on her cheek, then he was out of the car, striding across the parking lot, hands tucked into his pockets, head down.
Elizabeth wouldn’t let herself think about his strange goodbye until she was on the outskirts of Tunica. As the casino lights faded into the distance she gathered her good moments with Taylor and pressed them like rose petals between the pages of her memory.
When she reached South Haven she stopped at the 7-Eleven and got herself a cherry ice cream float. There was a certain comfort in ritual.
Chapter Five
Thomas was making sugar cookies in the shapes of stars, and every time he pressed the cookie cutter into the dough he thought of Lola Mae.
Back when they were first married, she had done all the cooking. He didn’t know pie crust from pizza dough. If she sent him to the store for self-rising flour he was just as likely to come home with corn meal instead.
Now he’s as expert in the kitchen as Julia Child. He can tell you more about seasonings than Paul Prudhomme, and he’s determined to perfect cookies to the point that he’ll be elected room mother, hands down, when Nicky starts to school.
He cut the last of the dough into star shapes, then shoved the cookies into the oven. They would be ready by the time he and Nicky left for the park.
“Wait till they all get a gander at these, Lola Mae.”
The curtains stirred...the whisper of a breeze, the laughter of angels, and Thomas joined in, picturing how it would be, thinking of the delight of Nicky’s classmates, not to mention his teacher. He imagined how she’d look, somebody settled and comforta
ble, wearing sensible shoes and a dress that hid her knees. She would be so appreciative of his cookies she’d nominate him for room mother herself.
“Don’t get your hopes up, Papa.”
Elizabeth walked into the kitchen, already dressed in her uniform for the bakery.
“What are you all of a sudden? A mind reader?”
“I don’t think they select men to be room mothers.”
“If a woman can be a soldier, why can’t a man be a room mother?”
“You’ve got me there, Papa.”
Elizabeth ran her finger around the rim of the bowl and licked off the dough. He was glad to see her acting more like herself. Since she went off to the Delta, she’d been a different person - pensive and jittery. Before that check entered their lives she was the sunniest person he’d ever seen, rolling on the rug laughing with Nicky as if she was no more than four herself, whistling while she dressed for work, always planning for the future they’d have after she earned her degree.
“We’ll move to a place in the country, Papa, and you can have animals again,” she’d told him just last Tuesday.
Or was it Wednesday? Sometimes he loses track of the days.
“What do I need with a bunch of animals? Just something to feed and clean up after.”
He’d die before he’d let her know how he missed the farm. After five years you’d think he’d get over it, but sometimes when he wakes up in the morning he still hears the rooster crowing and smells the pine coming through his window on the morning breeze. Anxious to set about his plowing he hurries to the closet to find his overalls and gets confused when all he finds are his khakis.
He’d never told his granddaughter all this. She has enough to worry about without having to worry about him getting senile. He’s not about to get in the same state his daddy got in before they buried him: for the last six years of his life Hank Jennings didn’t know his shirt from his shoes. He couldn’t tell you whether it was June or December, and the last two years he didn’t even know his own name, let alone the names of his children and grandchildren.
To prevent such a catastrophe from overtaking them, Thomas keeps a little notebook under his mattress. Every night before he goes to bed he records the day’s events, and when he gets up in the morning, instead of going to the closet and looking for stuff that’s not there, he slips the notebook out from under his mattress and familiarizes
himself with his own life.
Lately he’d added a new twist to his routine: when he comes into the kitchen to make coffee, he sneaks the check out of the cookie jar and stares down at a million dollars. Sometimes he gets giddy imagining all the possibilities, but other times he gets as scared as if he’s looking at a rattlesnake.
That check had changed all of them except the boy. Thomas glanced over at the jar. Elizabeth had grabbed a cup of coffee then gone to Nicky’s room to help him get dressed. What was to keep him from sneaking another peek?
He lifted the jar lid and counted the zeroes on the check. “If you were here, Lola Mae, I’d take you to Paris,” he said. “The real one.”
Something like the sound of stars singing whispered in his ear, and he remembered how he and Lola Mae used to sneak out of the farmhouse in the middle of the night with a bag of cookies and a handful of daisies, and when the first fingers of morning would chase them inside they’d streak back like naughty children, dew-wet and sated.
He’d been nothing till he found her, and afterward he’d owned the world. If only she’d lived ...
“Papa ... the cookies.”
Elizabeth raced into the kitchen and jerked open the oven door. Smoke billowed as she took the cookie sheet out.
“Open the door, Papa, and let the smoke out.”
His feet attached themselves to the floor, and all he could think about was how he went woolgathering and let his beautiful stars turns to globs of charred dough.
It was Nicky who opened the door, Nicky who helped his mother fan out the smoke with a dish towel. When it was all over, Thomas couldn’t seem to quit shaking.
“It’s all right, Papa.”
Elizabeth slid her arms around his bony shoulder.
“No, it’s not. I could have burned the house down.”
“But you didn’t.”
“What you ought to do is cash that check and then you can hire somebody to take care of you and Nicky, somebody with enough gumption to watch the stove.”
“Why would I want to hire somebody else when I’ve already got the best?”
The way she said it, he believed her. That was the thing about Elizabeth: she made you feel like you were the most important person in the world. She made you believe in yourself.
He picked up the cookie sheet and held himself tall as he walked to the sink and turned on the water.
“Are you still lookin’ for that fellow?”
He didn’t have to explain, didn’t even have to glance at the cookie jar with its secret contents.
“I’m still searching ... old newspapers at the library, magazines, anything that might mention a philanthropist in this area.”
“He said not to tell.”
“Who did?”
“The man at the park. The one who gave me the check.”
Thomas could tell by the look on her face that he forgot to tell Elizabeth, but that she was fixing to pretend she was the one who forgot.
“It must have slipped my mind. Refresh me, Papa.”
“He said it was very important not to tell a soul. Especially not reporters. No newspaper interviews, no magazines, no TV.”
“That makes discovering the donor’s identity difficult if not impossible. Whoever sent this might as well be a phantom.”
Nicky came into the room, a red fire truck clutched in his hand.
“It’s time to go, Mommy.”
Elizabeth squatted beside Nicky. The sight of them together made Thomas want to cry. God had given him five good years with them, and every night when he got down on his knees he tried to strike a bargain for more.
I’ll do one good deed a day, if You’ll just let me live to see him through fifth grade ... I’ll quit hating Manny and Judith for turning their own daughter out if You’ll let me live to see Elizabeth earn her degree and settled into a good job... On and on the promises would go, but Thomas knew that when his time came no amount of pleading was going to change things.
“How did you know it was time to go?” Elizabeth asked Nicky.
“‘Cause the clock has hands.”
Pure joy can transform a beautiful woman into something even the angels envy.
“Did you teach him to tell time, Papa?”
“Don’t look at me. He’s smart as a whip, that’s all.”
They set off walking the nine blocks that would take them to the park, and Thomas was proud of his spryness, proud that not once in all the years they’d been making this same route had he ever been the cause for delay.
As they approached the gates he said what had been on his mind ever since the cookies went up in smoke.
“I’m goin’ to find that man myself. I’m the one who took the check.”
“You do that, Papa.”
Elizabeth kissed them both goodbye and he headed to his usual bench in the middle of the park. He’d been coming to the park so long that the bench might as well have a sign posted that said “Reserved for Thomas Jennings.” Today he was surprised to see somebody else sitting there. In all those years it had only happened twice.
“You’re in my seat,” he said.
“I got here first. I guess it’s my seat now.”
Thomas couldn’t believe that crusty old fool defied him. If he’d taken a good gander at the face the first time around, he might have guessed what would happen. The man’s jowls hung down like a bulldog, and he’d apparently got a temper to match. But Thomas was not without a stubborn streak himself, and he wasn’t fixing to let some upstart take over his bench in the Riverside Park.
“I’ve been comin
’ here nearly five years with the boy. Everybody knows that’s my seat.”
“You’re gonna argue, ain’t you?”
“Looks like it.”
Thomas looked for Nicky, already under his favorite tree, the fire truck parked on a big exposed root, pointed stick in his hands, digging to China.
“You be careful with that stick,” Thomas yelled, not that he was worried. He just wanted to show somebody his authority.
“He yours?” The bench snatcher nodded toward the tree.
“I don’t tell strangers my business.”
“Looks like I’m not going to be a stranger long seeing as how I’m sitting in this seat and don’t plan on moving.”
“Neither do I.”
They glared at each other, two old men with nothing better to do than see who could outlast the other in a staring contest. Thomas had walked a long way, at least for a man his age, and his legs were beginning to ache. But he wasn’t about to let the old goofus on his bench know that.
“I should have known anybody who wears a wool cap in the summer wouldn’t have the manners of a mule,” Thomas said.
“Who are you calling a mule, you skinny old toot? When I was in the war I ate men worse than you for breakfast.”
“Are you a veteran?”
“That’s what I said, didn’t I?”
All the fight went out of Thomas. Anybody who served in combat couldn’t be all bad. To prove it, the man scooted down to the far end of the bench.
“Take a load off,” he said. “I guess there’s room enough for two.”
“I guess.” Thomas sat on the opposite end of the bench. “My great grandson,” he said, nodding toward the tree.
“I thought so. He looks like you.”
The old fool went up a notch in Thomas’s book. “You think so?”
“I said it, didn’t I?”
They sat like that for fifteen minutes, neither of them speaking, neither of them moving. Thomas was getting a cramp in his legs, and the truth to tell he’d been lonesome of late for the company of somebody his own age. In Tunica he’d had Jim Gardner and Clarence Hopkins, but even if he was still there he’d outlived them by three years.
“Thomas Jennings,” he said, not even turning his head. “l6th Infantry, lst Division.”
