Painted Dresses

by Patricia Hickman

  When I told Braden what had happened between me and the professor, I had taken him off to a motel, crying all the way just to say, “I’ve cheated.” I had imagined correctly every flutter of his eyes, the limp way his head would hang, my falling back onto the bed like the last brittle leaf of fall, my hands covering my face in shame.

  But as I imagined sitting across from Truman, I could not predict the words that would pass between us. He walked in line out into the prison yard in that white invisible garb they all wore. When he saw me, he broke from the line of prisoners and met me at the same picnic table under the tree.

  “Baby sister, you came back. I knew you would.” He grinned and spoke in a tone so soft that it was very nearly like my mother’s voice the time I had flu. “You smell like cheeseburger.” He closed his eyes. “Dill pickle, mustard, fries, ketchup.”

  “Exactly.” His time inside Angola had heightened his senses. “I never eat fast food, but since running around with Delia, I seem to be breaking all my own rules.” I pitied him, as he seemed to drink in the smell I brought in from the outside world.

  “Where’s Delia?” he asked.

  “She couldn’t come. She’s gone home, back to Boiling Waters.”

  “That’s odd,” he said. “Alone?”

  “I’ll join her soon. Today, I’d like to talk about our mother,” I said. But the wooden way the words spilled out made him fall quiet. I said, “I’m trying to understand her. The woman she was back then and the woman I grew up knowing were not the same.”

  “Sometimes I can remember her face. Not today, though.”

  I slid my hand over the top of my blouse where it made a V. But the guard nearby watched Truman more closely than some of the other inmates, so I did not pull out the photograph. I stalled, hoping our mundane talk would bore the guard and send him nosing around another table. “When my mother and your father divorced, how old were you?”

  “I answered that yesterday. Are you all right?” The conversation made him somewhat edgy, but I only knew because of the way he kept reaching to scratch the back of his neck. He sat to the right of me and stared to the left at the ground.

  “What were they like?”

  “Arguing, never agreeing on anything. My father wanted her to settle down, take care of the house, take care of me. But she wasn’t sure of herself, what she wanted. She could never be happy with just taking care of a kid and cooking meals.”

  “Did she blame you for her unhappiness?”

  “You sound like my shrink.”

  “Did she?”

  “She blamed me for breathing, for taking up space, for standing too close, for not standing close enough. I was a fly she swatted. She swatted me, slapped, poked, beat, until I was unsure of how to even walk into the next minute.” His soft voice turned to gravel.

  “She had a sister and three brothers who all seemed normal. What happened to her?” I asked.

  “Her mother’s husband was not her father for one thing. She felt like an outcast. Then when Grandmother got religion, Fiona Chapel did not fit within the correct social circles of those church women. She was untamable. By the time my grandmother got her own life right and realized that her oldest girl was spiraling out of control, she was too far gone to fix.”

  “I know a story about you,” I said.

  He came upright. “Says who?”

  “An aunt. My father’s sister.”

  “The one who hated my mother?”

  “Tootie,” I said.

  “Yes, we talked about this. Last night, lying on my cot, I remembered her.”

  “Aunt Tootie who lived next to my mother in an apartment. That was before Mom met and married my father.”

  “I don’t remember,” said Truman.

  “Tootie says you were about four years old. You came knocking at her door. She said that you were filthy, naked, covered in your own feces. You were begging her for food.”

  “I don’t know why you’re telling me this.”

  “Mother was too young to have a child. She was herself a child.”

  “What do you expect me to do, Gaylen? Cry?” he asked quietly.

  I reached into my shirt and fished out the photo.

  “A smuggler. I like the way you operate. Next time slip me one of those cheeseburgers,” he said.

  I showed him the photo. “This is her. She is holding me. Do you remember me at this age and her back then?”

  He took the picture, looking at it, the faint Mona Lisa smile not leaving his face. “You were the prettiest baby ever born.”

  “I was older, though, the day you left. You showed me how to dissect a frog. I was fascinated. Delia too. We admired you. You were our big brother.”

  “Pretty baby sisters,” he said.

  “I trusted you,” I said.

  “Always. Why wouldn’t you? I looked our for you. Not like her.”

  “I’ll take what you did to the grave, my mother said about you. What did you do, Truman? Tell me what happened the day Mother threw you out of the house.”

  He was slowly kicking one heel into the soil. “Judge Cuvier sent you, didn’t he? He’s trying to pin another indictment on me. Well, I’m not going to bite this time,” he said.

  “Tell me what happened, Truman, so I can be at peace. I’ve had nightmares my whole life.”

  “Baby sister, haven’t you heard? Nightmares are our friends.”

  “I’m not going to rest until you tell me,” I persisted.

  He smiled one last time and then threw his hands up, covering the top of his head as if in pain. “Stop, Gaylen! Don’t torment me! I’m not your whipping boy!” He yelled until he got the attention of the guard who had wandered away from us.

  “Stop, Truman!” I said. “You’re avoiding telling me, and you know it.”

  He wept so loudly, complained so forlornly, that the other families gathered out in the prison yard turned and stared piteously at him and deprecatingly at me. There were tears streaming down his face. He wiped his nose with the back of his hand.

  “She’s brought in contraband! Look, see the photograph!” he yelled, waving it under the guard’s nose. “It’s my dead mother! She snuck it through security to torment me!” He turned and yelled at me. “You stopped me from going to her funeral, Gaylen. You could have let me come, but no!”

  I was escorted out of the yard between two guards. The photograph of my mother and me was taken and thrown into a trash receptacle. “Ma’am, this is a warning to you. You’ve breached the rules of Louisiana State Penitentiary, and in this state that is considered a serious threat. We allowed you here on a visit to this prison on your own recognizance. It will be a long time before you are allowed back inside, and then, only if Inmate Savage so deems your time here necessary.”

  I was put back on the bus and sent back to my car. I had sacrificed the only photograph of my mother and me on an empty hunch.

  Braden asked me to meet him at a Baton Rouge eatery called Avoyelles and gave me the directions. I parked and found him in the downstairs cafe sipping gumbo. I hit the women’s lavatory first, and it was inside the stall that I collapsed, crying. A waitress saw my rump on the floor and asked timidly if she could help.

  “I could use a wet paper towel,” I said, trying to sound as if I could handle it after that.

  She handed me the towel under the stall. I pressed it against my face.

  She backed away. “Do you want me to get your boyfriend?” she asked. “I think he’d like to know you’re upset.”

  The humiliation of being ousted from Angola following Delia’s arrest was the final taxing element on my constitution, but I did not want to explain my life to a Creole waitress. I walked out of the bathroom.

  Since Grady had stolen our wedding bands, she had assumed us to be dating. In my weakened state, I no longer cared what anyone thought. �
��Just bring me a basket of crusty French bread, please,” I told her. I joined Braden.

  “Gaylen, you look white as a fish,” he said.

  “I haven’t rested,” I said.

  He wanted to know about Truman, but I was still so angry I could not even say his name.

  “I’ll order you a crawfish po’ boy,” he said.

  “Nothing more than potato soup for now,” I said.

  “I think it’s time you went home, Gaylen. Forget Texas.”

  “I promised Jackson.”

  “You never liked to disappoint people.”

  “The last thing I need is for you to comment on my past behavior, Braden.”

  “One crawfish po’ boy, one bowl of potato soup, and a green salad,” he told the waitress.

  “I’d never go home now, not with that drug dealer still on the loose, that what’s his name with the gun and the rope. Did I tell you that he was going to kill me and Delia? The things she drags me into just leave me flummoxed. Now she’s going to go to jail or maybe the asylum. Would that be worse or better?” I asked.

  “I hear the asylum’s better than prison. More board games … Bingo, Monopoly.”

  “The funny thing about Delia is that now I’m heartbroken over her arrest. I used to tell my girlfriends in high school that one day Delia would end up in jail. But it was cruel of me to say that. Am I being punished?”

  We talked back and forth like that for three hours, ordering extra baskets of bread and sweet tea refills. I worried over Delia. Would they let her smoke? Would they be cruel to her? Finally Braden said, “You haven’t said what happened today in Angola.”

  I could hardly form the words and then finally said, “They threw me out.”

  Braden threw back his head and laughed.

  “It wasn’t funny like that at all, Braden.”

  He kept laughing until I laughed. “One bread pudding, two spoons, two coffees,” he finally told the waitress. “Daisy tattoo, almost arrested, thrown out of Angola prison.”

  “I’ve done worse than all those things, Braden. You know that better than anyone.”

  “Everybody takes a wrong turn,” he said.

  “Not ten or twenty. Not the good daughter.”

  “Gaylen, if it seems crazy, I’m nuts. But I like you like this.”

  “What on earth do you mean by that?”

  “Baby, don’t get mad again.”

  “Being a Syler is like being spawned from fish in the sewer, Braden. Not everyone is born like you, with parents who love you and give you money to start your own private plane business.”

  “Truth be told, that business is going down the sewer.”

  I was stunned. Not once had he admitted defeat; he always gave me only the sanitized news. That was part of what had been wrong with us.

  “I didn’t want to worry you.”

  “Do you blame my crash?”

  “The business was sinking before the crash. But we were already fighting. It seemed easier to just let you fall asleep each night.”

  “But I’d rather know.”

  He handed me a spoon. “Between here and Texas, let’s talk until there’s nothing left to talk about.”

  I called Jackson and told him I would arrive that night, except with Braden instead of Delia. Delia, I’d tell him about in person.

  We were in the air before sunset, Braden’s best time to fly because he liked flying into the end of the day. He said to me, “Take the helm. There’s no reason not to try.” His fingers straightened out, and he let go of the controls.

  “I can’t,” I said.

  “There’s a certain truth to getting back on the horse.”

  “There’s a new list. A Gaylen list. Pilot is not on the list.”

  He acquiesced and took back the controls. “What made you try in the first place?”

  “I thought it would bring us closer,” I said.

  His shoulders lowered. He was looking at me, and if I assessed him like I should have been doing all along, he was seeing something in me that was not a criticism of him. “Because you loved me.”

  It was true enough that I didn’t have to answer.

  “That was a hard load to carry, you trying to be something for me, something for your daddy, and then Delia.”

  I couldn’t add anything, especially since he had spoken it only seconds behind my own full, personal epiphany.

  “That last night when you took off for Charlotte, you were nervous. But you wouldn’t back down. I shouldn’t have let you go alone.”

  “I know. I was stubborn. Sick in the head.” Guilt works a strange magic on the mind. “The thing of it was that when the plane started losing altitude, I couldn’t think about anything but you and what we lost,” I said. That was why I confessed my affair to him so soon after I got out of the hospital. “But I did something worse. I told you because I was tired of living with the guilt. I unloaded on you.” Braden left me in the motel room alone that night. “I was hoping you would make it right between us.”

  He could not say anything to that.

  “I grew up with two people who wanted all of the family messes hidden behind a nice story. Something that made them look respectable and good. I had no point of reference for walking around without camouflage.”

  “My folks, they’re no better’n yours.”

  “Are there flying lessons for people like us?”

  “You mean, like spiritual guides? I think they’re all selling something on cable now.”

  “Oh yes,” I said quietly. “Mail in $19.99, and I will send you my especially anointed prayer cloth, guaranteed to cure migraines, hemorrhoids, and brain tumors.”

  Braden communicated with a Baton Rouge air traffic controller. Then he said, “My father, he never took a lot of time with my brother and me. He was the most together man I ever knew when it came to his business. But he fights depression. Drinks too much. My mother goes shopping to feel better, gets face-lifts, and takes cruises, alone. That’s not what you mean by flying lessons.”

  “Going shopping isn’t a bad way to feel better.”

  “She keeps buying things, like she thinks it’s going to bring her happiness. She has more clothes than Princess Diana did, outfits she’s never worn.” Braden grew more confessional than usual. “I’m thinking, what if she boxed them all up and sent all her things off to some African villagers. Maybe she could find herself again if she gave her life away.”

  “Have you suggested it to her?”

  “How hypocritical would that be?”

  “Quite.”

  Braden and I had not been a hobnobbing couple when we dated. But after we married, we began to socialize more and more with a certain moneyed set. Although I hadn’t been a great athlete growing up, in Wilmington I’d taken up tennis. Braden rubbed shoulders with Wilmington’s elite, so much so that people believed he was successful, even though his business bled red. Although we never invited any of that set into our tiny apartment, we fit in well with them. The more tennis matches I could set up from our office at the airstrip, the further I ebbed away from Boiling Waters. We both felt it was only a matter of time until we bought a home down in Honeysuckle Cove or one of those elite little waterside communities. It occurred to me, though, that not once had any of those women bothered to call and see about me over the course of my trip on the road with Delia.

  “What exactly have you told our clients about us?” I asked Braden.

  “It’s no one’s business.”

  “So you haven’t told them we’re divorcing.”

  “I had to hire an attorney. Word spreads. What’s it matter?”

  “Delia has eaten up every minute of my life since we left North Carolina. But you would think one of my friends would have called to see about me.”

  “They’re not those kinds of friends, G
aylen. What did you expect, that they would gather and pray for you like your grandmother’s quilting group?”

  There was a side of me that wanted to say yes, even though I knew that wasn’t how it was done on the golf course or at the elegant cocktail parties our acquaintances in Wilmington loved to throw.

  “I don’t have any friends, Braden.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous.”

  “It’s not bad, you know.”

  “There are worse things to realize. Is that what you mean?”

  “Like losing everything you have,” I said.

  “You’re being morbid.”

  “Braden, I’m going to give you something that will surprise you.”

  He did not say anything. Maybe it was because he knew and he was reserving comment so that he might sound wise and above my petty ideas.

  “I’m going to give you your divorce. When we land, I’ll sign the divorce papers,” I said. It was like having an out-of-body experience.

  “What if I’ve changed my mind, Gaylen? Your timing is off as usual.”

  “How will I ever know what you want?”

  “What do you want, Gaylen?”

  “Do overs.”

  The silence between us was not as awkward as in the past. I waited, but it took him several minutes to finally say, “I can’t go into Garland with you. Tell Jackson that I had to go home to Florida.”

  “Retreating isn’t going to help, Braden.”

  “There’s something I’ve got to tell my father. But it’s got to be in person,” he said.