Painted Dresses

by Patricia Hickman

  “What is it about the Sylers and our secrets?” I asked.

  “It’s just our way,” said Renni. “We look out for one another.”

  Since Renni’s sympathy appeared to be on the rise, I asked, “Can I ask you about my brother?”

  “Shoot, honey! Whatever you want,” said Renni.

  “Did you know him? Were you around when he lived with my parents?” I asked.

  “I knew him in California and back here in North Carolina when James and Fiona moved back. We all moved out to California for a year to work,” said Renni. “James made a big wad of cash. He was always a saver. He bought that little piece of land next to Daddy’s place and expanded. When my daddy died, he didn’t want the land divided up, so he gave his part to James. That’s how they came by so much good hunting land.” She was smiling about my father’s conquest, but as my mother suspected, Renni had that strange glint of jealousy when she talked about Daddy’s good fortune.

  “Were you around when my mother made Truman leave?” I asked.

  She was less buoyant. “The whole family was in an uproar,” she said.

  “Mother told me that he was a runaway,” I said.

  She cut her eyes at Fanny.

  “I’ll get more coffee.” Fanny got up and collected our empty cups.

  Renni sat forward, resting her wrists on her knees. Knowing more than I knew empowered her. “Your mother threw that poor boy out.”

  “Why would she do that?” I said evenly, staring at the floor.

  “She was not a good mother back then, Gaylen.”

  “In what way was she bad?”

  “Fiona gave herself to any man that came her way. I know that’s hard for a daughter to hear,” said Renni.

  Mother’s words came back to me. She had told me once that Renni and Tootie talked about her, that I could not believe anything they said.

  Renni said, “When her first husband, Truman Senior she called him, left her to get away from her violent spells, she wanted a new man and fast. She married and then divorced him. I never knew the second husband’s name.

  “I think it was Polette, but it doesn’t matter now,” I said.

  “So when your mother came flirting round James’s place, Tootie told James to send her packing.” She was holding back, and it showed in the erect way she sat, carefully choosing her words, not implicating herself.

  “My mother once told me they kept their marriage a secret from the family,” I said.

  “Gaylen, are you sure you want to hear this? Let’s talk about Thanksgiving dinner, how about?” Renni asked, but the eager glint in her eyes gave away the fact she did not really mean it.

  “You must have seen her and my brother, Truman, together,” I said.

  Renni sighed. “She knew none of the Sylers wanted James tangled up with her. She neglected Truman, and we didn’t want James having kids by her,” said Renni. Her mind had obviously traveled far enough back to make her forget that I happened to be one of Fiona’s ill-fated kids. “It was Tootie that once lived next to her apartment. That was before she met James. When James visited Tootie, Fiona would come out on the apartment landing to meet him.”

  I had never heard my mother talk about living next to Tootie. I could see why she resented Renni and Tootie. “Did you ask Mother why Truman ran off?”

  “Run off? That boy didn’t run off. He was run off by your mother. We all called Fiona that day as word spread. Me, Tootie, and your Aunt Lilly. But Fiona, she said he was trouble and she wasn’t putting up with his stuff anymore,” said Renni.

  “Did she mention me or Delia that day?”

  Renni thought for a few minutes. She looked up at me as if she was trying hard to remember back that far. Fanny now stood over us with two cups of coffee. Then she stared out the window into the backyard. She stared a hole through me. “You must remember since you’re asking.”

  “I’m trying to remember. I can’t.” I accepted Fanny’s bitterly strong coffee.

  “Where did he go?” I asked.

  “I figure he went off to his daddy’s in Texas.”

  “Mother, you never told me any of this,” said Fanny.

  “If you don’t remember, then maybe it’s best left alone,” said Renni. Fanny and I left her like that, sitting alone and walking back through her maze of memory.

  The night fell on Siphon. Fanny coaxed Delia and me into staying the night. Fanny put the kids to bed in the guest room. We cousins bedded down in the living room, talking about Tim and Meredith and how silly a baby would make him.

  Delia went to sleep on the couch. Fanny and I made beds sitting up in two chairs near a window. I turned off the lamps, and we sat talking in the glow of a radio dial.

  “I don’t know what you’re digging for, but have you thought about that thing you did as a little girl that worried the family?” asked Fanny.

  I stared at Fanny, not knowing how to answer.

  “You pulled your hair out by the handfuls,” she whispered.

  I felt my face flush. Of course I remembered, but I didn’t appreciate her trotting out my past like we were swapping boys’ phone numbers.

  “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that,” said Fanny.

  The shameful feelings came back, as if Mother had walked in right that instant and caught my fingers tangled up in a freshly pulled strand of hair. “Why say it then? I wish I didn’t remember.”

  “I’m saying it for a reason, Gaylen. Your mother took you to the doctor, worried sick over you. She tied your hands to the bed to keep you from pulling your hair in your sleep.” Fanny’s words were nearly a staccato. She continued tiptoeing over my life without consent.

  “I’m surprised you remember,” I said. If Fanny had found me naked, I’d not have felt any less humiliated.

  “It scared me and Tim. We thought your mother was loony for tying you up like that.”

  Until the last few days, it was another of those covered-over memories that I had gratefully chosen to leave in hiding. “Mother obsessed over it,” I said. “I fought her over it. It seemed unnatural.” It came to me I had not so much as told Braden, but not because I did not know how he would take it. Forming the words to tell that old story made me feel small again and sick. I was turning back into a Syler.

  “Don’t you want to know why you did it?” she asked.

  I turned the radio dial until I found an oldies station. Renni was sitting in the kitchen, and I wanted only Fanny to hear me. “You knew my parents. It’s not hard to understand. I figure that I have a few short decades, and then you will have to strap me to a bed in an institution for good.”

  “Don’t you say that, Gaylen! You are not like them,” she said.

  “Then why else would I pull out my own hair?” I asked.

  “I’d want to know,” she said.

  “I asked Mother about it before she died. I asked when it started, the hair pulling. Because once I was old enough to be aware, I just stopped.”

  “When did she say you started?”

  “Age six months.”

  “Gaylen, are you kidding me? A six-month-old pulling her hair? What did she think, that you needed a shrink?” Fanny reached out and took my hand.

  “I was four when I finally stopped,” I said.

  Fanny sat forward, her eyes wide as if the sun was coming through them. “Next talk about the nightmares.”

  “It’s always a man. He’s crawling into my bed. He is the color of shadows.”

  “You talked about that when you were young,” said Fanny.

  “Renni didn’t like me asking about my mother and brother, did she?”

  “You have a right to ask about your own life without feeling as if you’re prying.” Fanny spoke with her usual self-confidence.

  “I would give anything to have what you have, Fanny.” I meant her ass
urance. But also the whole package that was Fanny. She was comfortable with love. She loved crazy, instigating Renni and even her father who had lost part of himself in Vietnam. I accepted a tissue from her. “I’m realizing how hard it is to look for a missing piece of yourself while connecting with a family that has let go of you.” I cried, not sobbing, but reacting to the sense of being pulled in two.

  “We didn’t let go of you, Gaylen.”

  “Why do I feel so cut loose, then? You know how long I’ve felt adrift?” Even marrying Braden didn’t take up the gap in my soul. “I don’t have a map for finding my way back from age four, Fanny. You all have your own lives now. Here I sit demanding answers from the grave. I want to return to a single day in my life that will tell me everything. But when I try, nothing.”

  We pulled the armchairs together, making pillows out of our blankets. We lay our heads down on the same pillow. Fanny said, “You know what you have to do now.”

  “What?”

  “Only one thing works for the blues.”

  “No, not that,” I said.

  “You have to. You swore.”

  “But I was ten and desperate to borrow your U2 T-shirt.”

  “You have to sing it or else die listening to Britney Spears, your ears bleeding, and your tongue hanging out.”

  “It’s too humiliating.”

  “Sing the song!” she said.

  Only because forced by Fanny’s irresistible persuasion did I sing with her:

  Sisters, we are one underneath a starry blanket

  On the banks of our river, we will join in reverie

  I’m your mother, you’re my daughter, we are sisters in a prayer

  That no guy will come between us; no guy will come between us

  We are sisters

  We are we.

  Tim was mad at us for writing a girls-only song. He called us feminists. We didn’t know about that, but we liked having our own song. Delia wrote the last line. But of course, she did not sing and only watched Fanny and me arm in arm, nearly yodeling the lyrics.

  Renni kept a strange vigil in the kitchen by the window. She pulled out Tommy’s rifle and sat in a chair cleaning the stock. The last thing I remember before falling asleep was the way she watched out the window, my uncle’s gun resting at her side.

  11

  DELIA AND I stayed with Renni and Fanny through Thanksgiving. I presented Renni with her painted dress, the blue and green one that hung over Amity’s sofa. She was taken aback since she had always thought of Amity as being closer to my mother. “She made that for me?” It took a morning’s worth of examination and speculation before she remembered the day that Amity must have gotten the dress. “Your mother and Amity were having a yard sale. I brought over some of my things to have Fiona sell them for me. I told Amity that funeral dress was what I wore when my mother died. It made me sad to see it hanging in my closet.” Renni sounded bewildered. “I was sorry I did that later. Now it’s come back to me.”

  Friday, before heading back for a roofing job, Dill checked out the whirring sound under the hood of my car, worked it over with some tools, replaced a belt, and gave my car the thumbs-up for at least another hundred or so miles. He told us to take some of our money and buy a car.

  Renni walked us out to the Neon. “I think the two of you ought to stay.” She handed Delia a recipe card. On one side was the family’s sausage dressing recipe; on the other was Renni’s telephone number and address. “Don’t lose this, Delia. If you get in trouble, you come right back here,” she said.

  Delia hopped into the Neon. She tossed Renni’s card into a shopping bag.

  “The last thing I want to give you girls, Gaylen, before I forget, like I forget everything else, is your mail,” said Renni. She held out a stack of mail that took both of her large hands to hold.

  “How’d you get their mail, Mother?” Fanny asked, not hiding her irritation.

  “I went by James’s house to check on these two. That’s when I found that box on the doorstep that I gave to Braden that day and then your mail.”

  It was mostly old mail sent to my father, some junk flyers, but one letter addressed to Delia. But I was surprised by Renni’s comment. “Did you say you saw Braden? I thought you brought Truman’s belongings to my house in Wilmington?”

  “That would’ve been a drive for me. But Braden came looking for you right about the time I was mopping,” said Renni.

  “Mother, please don’t tell me you were cleaning their house without asking,” said Fanny.

  “James give me a key to check in on him when he got so sick. What’s wrong with that?” asked Renni. “Someone run off and left the wash in the washer. Smelled putrid. I rewashed the load and dried it. It’s folded and on the ironing board, by the way.”

  “We did leave in a hurry,” I said.

  Fanny held out her hand. “Cough up the key, Mother.”

  Renni kept keys dangling on a stretch band on her arm. Reluctantly, she handed me the house key. “Got those floors cleaned up better than when, well, God rest her, never mind.” She closed her eyes out of respect for the woman she freely judged but never knew.

  I was less surprised that Renni cleaned the house in our absence but more surprised that Braden had come looking for me.

  “That husband of yours sure looked forlorn, Gaylen,” said Renni.

  “Did he say anything?” I asked.

  “He was put out, you know. You weren’t answering the phone. But he laughed when I asked him if there was any hope that we could keep him around. I think he likes the Sylers.” She continued to say thing? that made Fanny sigh. “You get him over to my place, Gaylen. We’ll feed him and get some beers in him. He’ll forget the whole divorce issue.”

  Delia’s window came fully down. I knew she probably felt a need to interject her philosophical position on Braden and me, so I said, “It’s time to go,” and “Delia, get your window up before you catch cold.”

  Fanny hugged me. She smelled like pablum and her mother’s sausage dressing. The last thing she said to me was, “Come home, Gaylen. We need you back home.”

  But of course even Fanny had moved away from Boiling Waters to Durham.

  Delia took the mail that Renni had given me. She sorted through it to throw away the store circulars but also to find the letter I told her had come to her.

  “Why would a letter come to Daddy’s house for you?” She must have still been using his house for an address.

  Delia pulled out the envelope. I glanced and saw the rigid, mostly all-caps handwriting. She tore off one end and blew into it like Daddy used to do. “It’s from Angola Prison,” she said.

  I imagined all sorts of things. Maybe something had happened and my parents were being notified of something, like Truman had died.

  Delia finally said, “It’s a letter from Truman.”

  “To your?”

  “Both of us.” She read in silence for the next five miles. “He wants us to send him money. Do you think he knows what Daddy left us?” she asked.

  “Daddy said in his will that Truman was not to be left a single penny. Mother had told Daddy not a cent for him,” I said. But I felt guilty about it. Mother never relented though.

  Delia read:

  Hi Baby Sisters. I got Delia’s letter. Just thought I would contact you and find out what is going on with you. Mostly I kind of hope we can make peace between us. But, Gaylen, you have not written or visited. I guess you don’t like me.

  Delia stammered out each of Truman’s crisply written words.

  “I’ll pull into Bojangles,” I told her. “Well get coffee, and I’ll read if you’d rather me do it.”

  We stopped in at the chicken and biscuits restaurant. Delia skipped to a booth near the coffee island. I picked up a plate of cinnamon biscuits and two paper cups and met her at the table. She handed me the le
tter. I read out loud.

  Has Judge Cuvier made contack with you? I don’t have any hope of proving I was set up by Cuvier without my family helping me. My life is over and I am old and sick of prison. This time I’m not getting out until I’m dead. What can I do to explain what I can’t put in a letter or tell you on the phone? It’s just too personal, a thing that the prison might record on a phone or read behind my back. You will have to come here where I can tell you face to face.

  I said to Delia, “He wants us to come to Angola.”

  “Keep reading,” she said.

  I am badly in need of eyeglasses. Also I need shoes real bad. Maybe you can help. I’m wrighting this a few lines at a time because my eyes are in such bad shape. So are my feet. If you call the Louisiana State Capitol they can give you the address of the Louisiana State Capitols’ inmate fund where you can send money to help. I don’t know who to ask but you. It’s hard enough to do time without going crippled and blind, no help at all. Cuvier is the judge in East Baton Rouge Parish Louisiana who robbed and murdered my Dad, Truman Savage, in Houston, Texas, or at least had it done to steal my west Texas oil property. He can do just about anything he wants. He is part of Louisiana’s corruption. He is a junky and a pimp and a murderer. He set me up on this beef to get me out of the way. If you don’t believe me have a lawyer you trust check his tax records for the past twenty years, and then my Dad’s tax records, and you will understand why he needed me out of the way. Just telling you could cost me my life. I don’t want your money or help getting out. Maybe it won’t matter pretty soon. I’m getting in touch with my family chain to deal with Louisiana and Houston. I’m calling for a Blood feud, and it falls to me to make the crooks pay in blood for killing my dad and robbing me of all he kept for me. Whatever you do, stay away from Metarie, Louisiana.

  “His handwriting is just like Mothers,” I noticed. Mother read voraciously, but it did not improve her handwriting. Truman’s penmanship had two styles. For several lines, the letters stood straight up. Then, as if something had tightened a screw inside of him, the letters leaned forward, the words spilling out of him.