When Did We Lose Harriet?

by Patricia Sprinkle

  Truth to tell, Raye thought uncharitably, Eunice had lived alone so long, she couldn’t stand having anybody around. Close Eunice was—with her money and her life. They’d been next-door neighbors for nearly twenty years, but Raye never could tell what Eunice would say or do. Take today, for instance. Eunice hadn’t gone to work, but she’d left at nine-thirty and been gone well past noon. Raye had come over right after she came back, even missed one of her favorite TV stories, but Eunice hadn’t said one word about where she’d been.

  One thing Raye was sure of: Eunice never went anywhere or did anything except what suited Eunice Crawley.

  What suited Richard Watson Dodd—known to his friends, creditors, and probation officer as Ricky—was to do absolutely nothing. Otherwise, he considered himself an easy young man to please. He didn’t mind living in south Montgomery in a mobile home so little you could spit from one end to the other and so close to the airport that planes practically landed on the roof. He’d live happily in that mobile home so long as his girlfriend paid the rent and power bill. Ricky Dodd couldn’t do without air conditioning.

  Sprawled on the squalid plush couch—which had been a pleasant-enough red before dirt and body oils turned it a revolting blood rust—Ricky flicked the remote control to change channels and lifted his thin bare chest until the air conditioner blew a sensuous stream of icy air across his nipples. “Beverly, bring me a beer.”

  Beverly, a girl not quite out of her teens, with stringy blonde hair and a slump of despair to her shoulders, plodded obediently to the refrigerator and took a cold Bud-weiser from the shelf. “Where’d you get these?”

  He snickered. “Oh, baby! You don’t wanna know.” He answered her sharp, frightened look by raising his can. “You gonna make me a sandwich to go with this?”

  “I got to get ready for work. Besides, we’re out of bologna, and I don’t get paid until Friday.” She hesitated, then timidly suggested, “Honey, if you could get some work a day or two a week, just to help out a little…I heard Buddy’s filling station down from us is looking for a mechanic.” Beverly clerked in a convenience store. She went to work each day terrified she’d be held up, but more terrified of what Ricky would do if she lost her job. Her terror excited him. To his buddies he referred to it as “Keeping the old woman in line.”

  He got tired, though, of her constant harping. “Job, job, job. Baby, is that all you ever think about? You know my back won’t take the lifting. But I’m getting some money in a little while. Just you wait.”

  “Ricky!” Her plain face puckered with concern. “You aren’t—? If you get caught again—”

  He stopped her with a look. “I ain’t gonna get caught, and it ain’t what you think. I had a little talk with Harriet. She’s gonna give me some money real soon. Wait and see.”

  He’d known that would catch her attention. “Where would Harriet get any money? And why would she give it to you?”

  He smirked. “Wouldn’t you like to know?” He reached again for the remote control. “Go next door and borrow some bologna. Say we’ll pay ‘em back Friday, for sure.”

  In east Montgomery, the famous Alabama Shakespeare Festival is a jewel set in spacious grounds. Since the elegant theater was built in the mid 1980s, it has drawn wealth and prestige like a diamond draws women.

  In a beauty salon not far from the Shakespeare Festival grounds, Dee Sykes (nee Dixie Lawson) contemplated her nails. “That looks more purply than it did on the chart. Are you sure it matches?” Diamonds sparkled on her wedding band.

  Teri, the manicurist, reached for a magenta belt lying on her table and held it up for Dee to compare. “It’s a little darker than the belt, but if it was exact, nobody would notice the polish. I like the contrast.”

  Dee gave her fingertips one more dubious look. “I guess so.” She looked at the clock over the counter. “Goodness, is it nearly two? I must have been at the mall for hours! It took me forever to find a dress, but I wanted something new for the play tonight.”

  “Well, now you’re all fixed up.” Teri gave the polish one last check to be sure it was really dry.

  “You were so sweet to fit me in when I called.” Dee reached into her purse for her wallet. “When I found the dress, it was just perfect, but the polish I had on would have been dreadful with it. I called you before I even wrote my check. If you couldn’t fit me in, I was going to get a plain black dress instead.”

  Teri pocketed a generous tip that almost made up for having to miss lunch. She couldn’t help thinking of her own unpaid bills, the cold her three-year-old had caught at day care, and the very real threat that his daddy would come by after work and beat the tar out of her because the kid got sick. “Must be nice to have money,” she muttered as Dee headed toward a creamy Mercedes in the parking lot. Sure, Dee complained a lot about her wild niece, her meddling mother-in-law, and how her husband William never wanted to do a thing after work except putter in his yard, but life couldn’t be too bad when your mama-in-law was the widow of a rich lawyer politician and your husband sold the priciest furniture in town.

  Starting to tidy the table, she saw Dee had forgotten her belt. Dashing out of the shop, Teri caught the Mercedes just before it pulled off the lot. Dee took the belt with an apologetic smile. “Aren’t you sweet! I’d lose my head if it wasn’t glued on. Thanks.” She drove away with a perky little wave.

  Dee held the smile until she was half a block down the street, then sagged at the wheel. “Whew!” She expelled the exhausted breath of an actress who’s completed a difficult performance. Nobody knew how much energy it took to look happy when you were worried to death. Dee wanted to get home, stretch out on her big, cool bed and sleep until time to fix dinner. At least Nora was at the lake, so she wouldn’t be calling with a few more colleges Julie might go to. William’s mama could be such a pain!

  While Dee’s hands were on the wheel, her mind was planning dinner. Lemon garlic chicken and rice. William liked that. Might as well set a place for Harriet. Keep up appearances a while longer. That was all they did anymore, it seemed—keep up appearances.

  Nora Sykes stood on her tree-shaded deck and looked across Lake Jordan with contentment. She’d had a very satisfactory day. Her fox-red hair, brushed straight back off her high forehead to curl slightly under at the ends, was lifted by a breeze fragrant with the Russian tea olive she’d planted near the deck. Checking the heavy gold watch on one freckled arm, she saw it wasn’t quite two. She needn’t go in for a while yet.

  William was fond of boasting that “My mama is as pretty today as when Daddy died fifteen years ago.” That made people smile, for Nora looked very like her son. However, while they shared bright red hair and emerald eyes, Nora’s flawless skin had skipped a generation and shown up in her granddaughter. Poor William was ruddy, freckled, and scarred from a heartbreaking case of teenage acne.

  He also suffered from a poor memory. Nora Sykes actually looked better than she had fifteen years before. William Trevor Sykes Junior, called Trevor, had preferred for his wife to stand in his shadow. When he died, Nora got a new hairstyle, trimmed down her figure, and found a personal trainer. These days, nobody would take her for sixty-five. Her honeyed voice—deep and vigorous, like the one Tallulah Bankhead took from Alabama and made famous around the world—rang out in committees and social events all over town. Last year she’d bought a lovely home in Wynlakes, a prestigious community on Montgomery’s eastern edge. Her latest enthusiasm was to get her only granddaughter, Julie, into what she referred to as “a quality college.” The fact that Dee and William wanted to send their daughter to their own alma mater, the University of Alabama, was merely tiresome.

  In an elegant and gracious home just down the street from the big white governor’s mansion, Lou Ella Sykes lifted a white linen napkin, dabbed her lips, and surveyed her grandson approvingly. “That’s settled, then, William? You talk it over with Dee, and I’ll try to think of how to bring your mother around. Thank you for waiting to eat until after my—�
� she touched the large pearls at her throat, “—meeting.” She hoped her grandson hadn’t noticed the slight pause, and would never know what she’d been doing before this luncheon. If only she could keep from shaking!

  William Sykes nodded absently. He certainly hadn’t noticed the pause. William was too busy hoping Leila wouldn’t find out how he’d spent his own morning. He couldn’t have eaten much before two anyway. He’d had to wind up something very important.

  He squirmed in his chair. He couldn’t believe he’d done it—but it had to be done. That’s all there was to it. It had to be done.

  While pretending to listen intently to his grandmother, William was actually wondering why Leila looked so terrible. Sure, she was eighty-four. Her bones no longer carried her frame erect, she used a cane, her once olive skin had faded to a sallow hue, and the veins in the backs of her hands were as thick as the wisteria vine that shaded her dining room window from the western sun. But her voice was still strong, with that faint trace of New Orleans she’d brought to Montgomery as a bride. Usually she was as trim and as elegant as her home. Today, while her gray linen dress was cool and crisp like always, and her iron-gray hair was softly confined in its usual regal twist, she had dark half-moons under her eyes and looked like somebody had taken the helium out of her balloon. Why?

  He realized his grandmother was expecting him to say something. At least the gist of her last remarks had gotten through. He sighed. “Leila, why can’t you and Mama bury the hatchet and stop pulling me, Dee, and Julie to pieces between you?”

  Her smile was frosty. “Your mother and I have had differences since before you were born, William. But this time we won’t pull your family to pieces, as you so inelegantly put it, if you’ll haul up your socks and stand up to her.” She raised her voice slightly. “Irmalene, we’re finished in here. You can bring in dessert.” She lifted a Waterford pitcher of iced tea to refill their glasses, but her hand shook too hard to hold it. She placed the pitcher carefully on the table and said, to distract her grandson, “Where your daughter goes to college is your business—yours, Dee’s, and Julie’s. Just because Nora went to Agnes Scott is no reason for her to have a say in the matter.”

  William had noticed her tremors, but he misinterpreted them. Could Leila be dreadfully ill? He felt terror rise like ice water in his veins. He couldn’t bear to think of a world without Leila and her big old house, where he’d taken his first steps and eaten almost every Sunday dinner in his life. Leila’s was the only place in all the world where he could truly sit back and relax. In his own house he felt like an interloper. Dee even told visitors as she showed the back room, “This is William’s little den”—as if he merely rated a hole in a riverbank somewhere. She and Julie had so completely filled the rest of the house with ruffles, flowers, and lace that it looked like a fancy bassinet. Dee hadn’t even given him the den, really. She’d chosen pictures he didn’t like, a chair he could never get comfortable in, and curtains in a shade of green that reminded him of one time when he’d eaten too many unripe pears as a boy and vomited up undigested peeling.

  Mama’s new house—full of thick Chinese carpets, heavy mahogany antiques, enormous mirrors, and gleaming silver—left little room for a man to stretch out and breathe, either. Someday, he thought, I’d like a house with bare wood floors, wooden blinds, no curtains, and very little furniture. He squirmed in Leila’s mahogany chair. What kind of thoughts were those for a man who sold furniture for a living?

  As Irmalene trudged almost silently around the table removing luncheon plates and setting down bowls of ice cream smothered by Chilton County peaches, the air conditioner clicked on and whirred softly. William remembered squirming on the very same mahogany chair one summer day when he was ten years old, and the only relief from the thick warm air was a lazy fan above the table. That afternoon, his father had taken him over to Granddaddy’s to tell him “how women are.”

  “You can’t ever please ‘em, boy,” he had concluded, “no matter how hard you try. But don’t act like you’re gonna run counter to ‘em, either, or they’ll have a hissy and make your life miserable. The best course is to nod and smile, then go your own way.”

  Daddy had taken a big puff of his cigar and blown a cloud that made William’s stomach queasy in the hot, close room. Then he’d added, almost to himself, “Of course, a day of reckoning will come. They’re smarter’n we give ‘em credit for.”

  William’s day of reckoning had come. No amount of nodding and smiling was going to settle this new struggle between Leila, Mama, and Dee. Probably, he thought miserably, the only thing that will settle it is death.

  July

  Three

  Do not boast about tomorrow,

  for you do not know what a day

  may bring forth. Proverbs 27:1

  My name is MacLaren Yarbrough, and while it’s hard to believe now, when I flew from Albuquerque to Montgomery on Monday, July fifteenth, I’d never heard of Harriet Lawson. Furthermore, if anyone had quoted “God works in mysterious ways, his wonders to perform” to me as my plane droned above the inky Alabama countryside, I’d have told them smartly that as far as that particular trip was concerned, God had very little to do with it.

  What God had done, so far as I could see, was finally get me sent from Hopemore, Georgia—a pleasant little town midway between Augusta, Macon, and nowhere, where I am variously known as the wife of Joe Riddley, mother of Ridd and Walker, and co-owner of Yarbrough’s Feed, Seed & Nursery—to our church’s national meeting in Albuquerque—where I could say a few things I’ve been storing up for years. It was my brother Jake who messed things up by having a heart attack smack in the middle of a most interesting discussion on human sexuality.

  Jake’s timing has been lousy for fifty-five years. He even got born two weeks early, which canceled my tenth birthday sleepover.

  I was intrigued, incidentally, by how long some folks can spend discussing human sexuality. I’ve been married nearly forty-five years, have some good memories and anticipate a good many more, but I never realized how much some people like to talk about sex—particularly people who look as if they aren’t getting enough of it.

  When I’d told Joe Riddley that on the phone the night before, he’d chuckled. “MacLaren, honey, we both know sex is a lot like eating—sometimes a feast and sometimes just a quick bite on the road to somewhere else—but doing it sure beats talking about it.”

  By the end of that next week in Montgomery, I’d be delighted that Joe Riddley was still in Georgia where he belonged. As I pressed my forehead to the cold window, though—straining for my first glimpse of Montgomery’s lights in the country darkness—I missed him something terrible. I couldn’t help thinking that if the plane kept going for another hour or so, we’d be over middle Georgia and could land in my son Ridd’s back cotton field. I could sleep in my own bed with Joe Riddley heavy and sweet beside me. Why the dickens hadn’t Jake’s guardian angel protected him for one more week?

  I was grumbling to keep from bawling, and I knew it. There I was with years of practice praying for sick people, and now that it was Jake I found myself reduced to “Please, God, please, God, please, God!”

  To make me even grumpier, I looked a wreck. I like to look nice, and while I’m no longer the slip of a thing in my wedding pictures, I still have the same big brown eyes and (with the connivance of my beauty operator) keep my hair almost the same honey brown. Joe Riddley even assures me I’ve grown voluptuous, not plump. He’s a very nice man when he wants to be. That night, however, I was about as attractive as a wilty cabbage leaf. If I stopped looking through the airplane window and merely looked in it, I saw a woman with bags under her eyes, crow’s feet radiating to her hairline, and all her lipstick chewed off.

  It wasn’t just worry over Jake that had me looking that way. Nobody warned me that national church meetings go on day and night. Leaders seem to think that just because God neither slumbers nor sleeps, neither should anybody else. Between lying awake ever
y night for a week ahead planning what to take and what I wanted to say, and trying to stay awake in late meetings, I hadn’t gotten any decent sleep for days. When you are on the shady side of sixty, you need your rest. I’d been feeling grumpy even before Jake’s wife, Glenna, called to say he was in intensive care. Of course I had to go, right away.

  When the plane landed, I could hardly wait for the pilot to turn off the engines and the flight attendants to open the door. I pushed my way almost rudely into the passenger inch-walk down the cabin, and nearly ran toward the terminal. Glenna was waiting just inside. The sight of her fairly broke my heart. How could a woman age so much in one day?

  Glenna has never been a beauty. She’s tall and bony, seldom bothers with creams and powders, has been gray since she was forty, and doesn’t fuss much with her hair—just cuts it to fall straight and cup her cheeks on each side. Her big gray eyes are so kind, though, that I’ve seen grieving children fling themselves into her arms. She also has something my mother’s generation referred to as “breeding”—an easy way of carrying herself and wearing clothes that lets anybody with two eyes know she grew up in a family with enough money and education not to need to parade either one. That night, though, her skin looked like it had been left on a counter overnight when it should have been refrigerated, and her eyes had the same stricken look I had seen in a dog begging to be put down. She was smiling as I went toward her, but when I held out my arms, her face crumpled.

  We hugged awkwardly, both because Glenna is five-nine and I five-three and because we aren’t accustomed to touching. Our closeness has always been one of spirit, not bodies.