Painted Dresses

by Patricia Hickman

  “Can you tell me?”

  “I’ll let you know how it turns out. How about that?”

  We were entering Texas airspace, and everything ahead widened into an eternal unfolding of possibilities.

  19

  NOLEEN MET ME at the airport in dire need, she said, of one more trip into town. “Join me, Gaylen, and catch me up on your exploits in Louisiana.”

  The hope of Christmas in Garland sparked pleasant shopper conversations within the quaint shopping strip down on the town square called Firewheel Town Center. It was located, she said, on the turnpike, or more accurately, President George Bush Turnpike. Mother’s and little league friends lined up with children for last minute snapshots with Santa. The usual husband waiting too late to buy something for the wife skulked down perfume aisles with the same hangdog posture of a disappointed trout fisherman buying fish on the way home. Desperate males eyed various holes where women’s gift items might be snatched up, then swinging out a credit card, they snagged the easily spotted boxed sets, especially if wrapped in a little extra ribbon or tinsel that might make them look good to the missus.

  Noleen pulled out a list she had made to purchase extra stocking gifts for her two granddaughters and a grandson. She headed into the juniors section of Dillard’s department store. In the misses section, I wandered through a display of cashmere sweaters. I was selecting a pink one for Delia when I decided I liked it so well I should buy two. I witnessed Noleen greedily gathering little packets of earrings and socks the color of taffy. She never knew that I saw the gleam in her eye, the pleasure of lavishing on grandchildren what she may not have heaped on their father at that age.

  Since both of my parents were in the grave, they would never know the overwhelming lust of buying excessively for grandchildren at Christmas. My father had come from a large family, but since my grandmother had birthed so many daughters and only three boys, it was left to Daddy and his brothers, Malcolm and Rudy, to carry on the family name. It was such an odd, sinking feeling to realize that the Sylers had nearly come to their end.

  Mother, I imagined, might have enjoyed a grandchild. My father, however, might not have noticed, as he seemed not to notice his daughters unless one of us had gotten into trouble. I picked hair barrettes and ponytail holders off a turnstile. I carried them to Noleen and said, “These are the rage now. You have to get these.”

  She was thankful.

  I followed her out of the shopping center into the Town Center. We watched a Christmas fireworks display, something the merchants put on every night leading up to Christmas. The temperature was dropping, and since neither of us had brought a coat, we loaded our bags into the backseat of her massive red pickup truck and climbed into the front of the cab to get warm.

  “Somethings happened to your sister. Tell me, Gaylen. You know you can trust me.”

  “She’s been arrested,” I said. I watched several families pass in front of the truck, laughing and drinking in the holiday like it was a stimulant.

  “What on earth?”

  “She shot a woman.”

  “In New Orleans? Whatever for?”

  “Before that. It was back home in Boiling Waters. I helped her run, Noleen. I didn’t know what else to do.” I wished that I had been more artful in making up a story, especially after she fell so quiet. “I’m sorry I kept it from you, but you were just getting to know us. I’d hoped for a better introduction. I should be in jail with Delia. But they made me say I’d testify as a witness.”

  She was too stunned to drive, so we sat with the engine idling and the cab finally warming.

  “The woman’s brother is a drug dealer,” I said, as if it somehow justified my sister’s crime. “I wasn’t helping her run from the police. It was the dealer. He wanted to kill her.”

  “You certainly carry around a load of weight, girl.” She pulled on her driving gloves and geared the pickup into reverse. We circled up and then lumbered off the parking lot onto the turnpike. “What else could you do? The police wouldn’t have protected her. But now they have her in jail, you say? What do they think they’ll accomplish by throwing Delia in jail? That’s like locking up the Easter bunny or the tooth fairy.” She was a benevolent soul, much like Amity. “Where is she tonight?”

  “In Raleigh, I think.” The detective’s card was in my wallet. But I had not thought far enough ahead to wonder where I would go to see her. “I have to go home to help her find an attorney. Her Miata … I guess I should sell it.”

  “It’s such a pretty little car. Why don’t you park it in the garage, and we’ll look after it. You come back for it when things settle down.”

  I agreed, too numb to assemble a better plan. “This isn’t the life I wanted, Noleen. I can’t seem to get away from my family’s volatile way of life. I see someone like you, making simple plans, ordering your life around a family meal and a Christmas tree. You make it look so effortless. How do I get from here to normalcy?”

  “Every family has a broken link. But, girl, what makes you think that you’re responsible for keeping your sister’s life smoothed over?”

  “It’s what my father did. He passed it on to me.”

  “You can choose not to do that, to live your own life.”

  “Just like that? Delia will disintegrate.” I imagined her, like Truman, spending the rest of her life in prison.

  “People fail one another. I’ve failed my kids lots of times. They fail me double that. We can’t keep one another from choosing to drop to the bottom of life.”

  “Delia’s not well.”

  “Like your daddy and your mother.”

  “You knew?”

  “Honey, everyone who knew them knew.”

  “What if Delia ends up on the streets? She could die. I’d feel responsible.”

  “There are people who have fewer faculties than Delia who take on simple jobs and look out for themselves. Let her try. Your daddy never let her take on enough responsibility to learn how to look after herself. You’re going to have to let her go. Don’t let your father rule you beyond the grave. It’s time to let him go to his rest. He had his chance at life. Now you have yours.”

  “I have to see Delia through this trial. I can’t leave her to flounder. She wouldn’t know what to do,” I said.

  “Maybe looking out after Delia gives you purpose.”

  “You make it sound as if I thrive on Delia’s dysfunction.”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “I do get weary of her. My mother used to say Delia would be the death of her.” I knew that Mother was being dramatic. But Delia, up until my mother’s last breath, was hovering over her, begging for more attention than she could give. My mother turned onto her side, turning her back to Delia, and passed away.

  “What do you want, Gaylen?” Noleen echoed Braden.

  A naked moment of clarity caused me to mutter, “Peace.”

  “Peace is an inwardly wrought work.” She waited as if I might ask more. But I pondered her words as if she had just given me a box holding mysterious contents. An inwardly wrought work could mean a multitude of things. She could be handing me a platitude. I wanted what she said to be true because if it was, then it would mean that peace was something to be grasped. If a platitude, then I had had my fill of them. I hoped for it to be attainable.

  Jackson held vigil over a large barbecue grill while we shopped, basting a long brisket into fork-tender oblivion. The grill was a chrome double-decker model, the kind seen set up around the parking lot of Panthers’ stadium during pregame tailgate parties.

  Noleen pulled a dish of fried squash out of the oven. She had prepared it earlier that day along with a sweet potato casserole. Car lights flooded the front living room. Noleen ran through the kitchen, dropping the dishes onto warming trays. “They’re here! They’re here!” she screamed, excited.

  Jackson came to his fee
t. He retied his chef’s apron, putting it on just for the sake of the grandchildren.

  Their son and daughter and their respective families met at the airport and, renting a van, drove into Garland from Dallas. They piled out onto the driveway, shrieking and tumbling out with bags of Christmas gifts. Noleen helped her daughter, Constance, by taking her toddler boy out of her arms. Constance’s daughters, Mimi and Sacha, were of the perfect age for the hair tie-ups and pink and purple socks Noleen purchased at Firewheel Town Center. Constance looked curiously at me. It was the first moment that I felt awkward about intruding on their family gathering.

  “Everyone, this is Gaylen Boatwright. Her father, James Syler, was my cousin,” said Jackson.

  “I remember James Syler,” said Constance’s brother, Taylor. “We called him Uncle James and he had two girls.” Taylor was older than me, but not by much, perhaps a little older than Tim. I could not picture him at all at any of the family gatherings, but it was shortly after I started school that the Sylers stopped gathering, at least as far as my parents’ invitations were concerned. He and his wife each carried a toddler son.

  “You must be one of the two sisters. I remember you. You caught crayfish down in a stream.” Taylor was friendly, and that put me at ease. But then it was easier for men to share their parents than it was for daughters.

  Jackson fielded any further questions by saying, “Gaylen’s father recently passed, so let’s make her feel welcome … and where’s my grandson?” He looked through the inside of the van and then turned around and found the boy in Noleen’s arms. She handed the child to him since it was of no use to argue with him.

  The girls, growing up in Idaho, wanted nothing to do with Texas barbecue, but Noleen pulled out a pan of macaroni that soothed their skittishness. I worked beside Constance seeing that everyone was served. It seemed that after I paid special heed to her daughters, she warmed to me. It was the first time, though, that I felt as if I were missing a limb since Delia’s arrest.

  Jackson started the dishes brigade, so I joined him, and we soon had the brunt of the kitchen cleanup under way. Constance wanted her mother’s undivided attention. She drew her into the living room to take pictures near the tree. Taylors wife, Sandra, called the children from the table to join Aunt Constance and Grammy.

  I said to Jackson, “Go on and join them. I’ll finish.”

  “Not on your life.”

  “Don’t be a girl. You go join them. I mean it.”

  He took slight offense. “It takes a manly sort to work in the kitchen.”

  The little boy whose name I could not remember dallied in the doorway between the kitchen and living room.

  “They want you in there.”

  “When I’m ready. I have a question for you, and now that they’ve cleared the room, it’s my only chance,” said Jackson.

  “Go on.”

  “What makes a smart young woman like you chase all over the country like a gypsy?”

  “Having an angry drug lord on your tail isn’t motivation enough?”

  “I heard that side of it.”

  “Why else would I? I had a good job.”

  “Everyone is looking for a place to call home.”

  “You don’t have to worry. I’m not moving in,” I said.

  “Braden ever talk to you about buying a home?”

  “We knew we would eventually.” I still didn’t get what he was saying.

  “You’re a pilgrim on a journey.”

  It came to me more than once that I was an orphan. Pilgrim had a more generous connotation. Pilgrims had prospects.

  “Delia, she’s got reason to run. The poor girl, she’s got such a swarm going on in her head, she’ll never know up from down. But not you. You’re not the rootless soul I’d expect to find wandering place to place. I used to travel with Estate Economics before I retired my securities license and bought a bait store. There were some days I’d feel as if I would never find my way back home. The guys cut out for high finance, they lived for the road. I lived to see Noleen and the kids.”

  I never knew a man like Jackson existed. “I do have a sense of wanderlust. It’s not like I’ve been miserable trailing all over.”

  “But if you had a home, you’d return to it. A place to hang your hat.”

  “I have to move out of my apartment. They don’t let you keep them if you quit.”

  “I mean a house. A homestead. You know … a place with a yard and a couple of kids or three.”

  I knew what he meant, but the old homestead concept had gone by the wayside. None of our friends ever stayed long in a house. They would upsize and then, often in a panic, downsize. Or get transferred. “I don’t want a house until I have the dream down right.”

  “What’s your idea of a dream?”

  “Not a big place, but some shade trees. An old house, maybe, that takes two people to fix it up. Neighbors that will join you in the backyard for coffee spur-of-the-moment. A sidewalk to take walks along. If something bad happens, the neighbors will gather and be there for you.”

  “I hope you have a time machine. You’ll have to go back to the ′50s for that.” He took a stack of dishes from me and set them aside to rinse. “Do you want to tell me what happened at Angola?”

  “It wasn’t what I expected.”

  “It never is when you face a sociopath.”

  “He just tells one lie after another.”

  “I’m sorry you didn’t find what you were looking for.”

  “I thought he would be like this caged man, cornered by me, that he would tell me what happened. I hoped he would be confessional.”

  “Men like Truman want two things. Money and access to more victims. Every human is just another avenue of access.”

  “After that, I got a hold of his court transcripts. I told you about them.”

  “Throw them away.”

  “He duct taped his victims’ mouths shut to muffle their cries.” I couldn’t stop crying after that.

  Noleen peeked into the kitchen, followed by Constance and all three grandchildren. When she found me crying, she walked me to the bedroom and sat me down. Jackson kept passing me tissues. He was bigger than life at that moment, like Lincoln sitting on his giant marble chair on the National Mall. Jackson is forever a father.

  Constance and her sister-in-law herded the children out into the backyard. They did not need to know what I knew. I apologized and told Jackson and Noleen that I had overstayed my welcome.

  Noleen said, “You stay here as long as you want. We have plenty of room.”

  Then my phone rang. Meredith was crying. She was talking so fast about Tim that it was hard to make out at first what had happened. I could not get her to stop crying. It was that kind of night.

  Noleen insisted I stay all the way through Christmas. Braden called before I fell asleep and said he would pick me up the day after Christmas. He had called an attorney friend who met with Delia. She called right after Braden. The women locked up with her were cruel to her.

  Meredith stayed by Tim’s bedside until the morning she woke up spotting. Tim had been downgraded to serious condition. He made her fly home.

  Christmas Day passed slowly, the feasting slowing and settling over Jackson and Noleen’s household like a sedative.

  I had witnessed one meteor shower my entire life. It was the night that Braden proposed outside the movie theater in downtown Wilmington. But Jackson assured me that I had never seen real Texas shooting stars and that his backyard would be like the big black backdrop for the show. Because of the wooded neighborhood, Noleen said, we would see it better.

  I helped little Mimi on with her coat. Constance’s kids were set for cold nights, coming from Idaho. I dragged two lawn chairs behind me, following Noleen who led us to the darkest woodsy corner of the yard. The sky overhead was crowned with treetops, like God m
ade a circle with his fingers for us to look through.

  Constance set her chair next to mine. She had made coffee and passed me a cup. Noleen kept saying, “Is that one?” to which Jackson would reply, “Not yet. We’ve got five minutes before the show.” He held a flashlight over his wristwatch and seemed to believe that the meteor shower would be an exactly timed appearance. Mimi sat in his lap, while Noleen held on to Sacha. The baby had fallen asleep upstairs, and Constance was happy to find adult conversation.

  Constance and I talked until the first star jetted across the sky. Mimi and Noleen giggled.

  Constance said to me rather gingerly, “I heard that your cousin was caught in friendly fire in Kuwait. Im sorry.”

  “That’s not exactly right, but thank you. Tim is with the National Guard. They had gone into Iraq to rescue a maintenance unit that had gotten sidetracked crossing over from Kuwait. Meredith, his wife, was so frantic, she said, that she had not gotten her facts straight.” I could barely breathe worrying over him. “He’s recovering.” All Meredith knew at first was that Tim had been airlifted to a hospital unit in some undisclosed location. She kept crying about the undisclosed location and was mad because of the secrecy she was cautioned to exercise over the phone. The cell phones were not secure, she was told, and that made her angry. Everyone up to the president of the United States made Meredith angry. I was mostly mad at Tim. He had a shattered knee that required surgery. His right arm was in a cast.

  Another star trailed and then another until the sky was bulleted with them, like raindrops hitting dust.

  “I don’t remember Tim,” Constance said. “But Taylor’s older so he remembers more than me. I don’t remember ever traveling to North Carolina. I wish I did.”

  So the night passed, and we stayed up until Mimi was falling asleep, no longer interested in the sky rockets skimming the Texas sky waters.

  I was well into my REM cycle when Delia phoned. It was her one call, and she was wildly irate. “They served this awful mess of turnip greens that was runny like soup, Gaylen! Cold turkey for Christmas. Get me out of here!”