Painted Dresses

by Patricia Hickman

  “That’s a logical direction.”

  “She’ll go into an institution, Braden. The system here is out of whack.” It was all sad to think about. She was a woman beyond help or repair, but in that instant it came to me that I could love her and resign myself to the realization that if that was all that existed between us, I’d accept it. She had no gauge for loving back. My mother had believed that by withdrawing affection, she could force Delia to reach for sound reason. But Delia could not be forced to grow normal roots. She was a frail cactus incapable of roots, dependent on the desert elements for succor. “Delia will die in a place like that.”

  “Truth is I didn’t come here at three in the morning to talk about your sister.” He had always wanted to iron things out in the middle of the night.

  “How about you take the sofa, get some z’s, we’ll figure it out in the morning,” I said.

  “I want to know about your brother, Truman.”

  “So did I, Braden. Don’t set yourself up for disappointment.”

  “Give me one detail about him. One thing you haven’t told me.”

  “What good is it?” I asked.

  “Maybe some good. Maybe not.”

  “The nightmares. They were about him.”

  He did not say much. He filled a cup for me and then one for him. “How do you know for sure what happened?”

  “I put it all together, Braden.”

  “How have things changed then, since you did all that?”

  “Why are you here?”

  “I think you lost your feelings for me, but I think they’re still there.”

  “What’s that got to do with Truman?”

  “Maybe he’s the cause of you losing your way.”

  “What’s your excuse then?” I asked.

  “I was mad at you.”

  “Mad. Is that what you call it?”

  “Back to the first question. How have things changed since you chased down your ghosts?”

  I knew only one thing for certain. “I don’t have the nightmares anymore.”

  “You ever think about me?”

  “Yes.”

  “In a good way?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “I miss you, Gaylen.”

  “Were a mess together.”

  “Would you be willing to let me date you again, no hope of anything else?”

  “You’re asking me on a date?”

  He pulled a book of poetry out of his shirt. He handed it to me. It was a small collection of traditional rhyming verse. But on the cover, a daisy. He touched my tattoo. “I realized you must like them.”

  The sky lightened, and it was morning. Braden left once I agreed to a Friday night dinner. Sea gulls flew over the balcony. I was longing for the day to pass until Delia’s hearing. I walked out onto the balcony and sat down to read the book of poetry.

  “Gaylen!” It was a good sound, the sound of my own name.

  “Deputy Bob?” I said.

  He was grinning from below as if he had won first prize at a bass tournament. The next person I saw was my husband. He was pale and looked as if he had come straight from his bed. His shirt was nicely rumpled, and the circles under his eyes gave him a desperate look that was a more comely look than I had ever seen on him. “There’s a new development in your sister’s case,” he said.

  “Sophie Deals’s home was raided on a drug bust. Found a closet full of cocaine,” said Deputy Bob.

  “She must have come home and bolted when she saw the heat outside her place,” said Braden.

  “She’s got to report as a witness for the prosecution in Delia’s case,” said Deputy Bob.

  “That’s good news then,” I said. “Today’s the day.”

  “Let’s go for a drive before the hearing,” said Braden. “Clear your head and all.”

  Stretching up and down the landscape on either side of the road lay a salt marsh full of an entirely hidden world of birds and marsh creatures. The long road that led out to a rarely traveled highway, except by the locals who lived along that Outer Banks inlet, gave Braden more time to talk.

  “I thought today was my day to lose a sister,” I said.

  Braden kept telling me, “Hush. Don’t talk like that.”

  “You care about Delia then?”

  “If you do, then I do.”

  22

  DELIA KEPT TURNING around in her chair to look at me from the defendant’s table in the New Hanover County courtroom. I had been in consultation all afternoon with her lawyer. He addressed the judge, a black woman whose features reminded me of Luce Dawson. “Your honor, the defendant, Delia Patience Cheatham, would like to enter the plea of no contest.’”

  “What are the grounds, Mr. Fishman?” asked the judge.

  “The victim, Mrs. Sophie Evans Deals, has disappeared. The county sheriff’s office has sought her for questioning regarding the twenty kilos of cocaine found in her house yesterday morning.”

  “These are unusual circumstances. Has local law enforcement considered the victims case and how long this defendant might be held pending her discovery?”

  “Mrs. Deals’s husband, Freddy Deals, has been arrested for possession of illegal substances.”

  Delia said, “Humph!”

  The attorney continued. “Freddy Deals has been interrogated and seems distressed that his wife has disappeared without telling him her whereabouts. We move that the state of North Carolina drop this case due to extenuating circumstances that would most assuredly prevent the speedy trial of the defendant, Delia Cheatham.”

  The judge questioned the prosecutor, who had no argument on behalf of a missing victim. The judge asked Delia to rise. Delia got up and, for once, said nothing.

  “Ms. Cheatham, it seems that the victim for this hearing, who herself is being sought for criminal involvement, is nowhere to be found. It’s the decision of this court that you be released on probation. As a condition of your probation, you will be released into the custody of a local county probation officer. Do you understand that it is not permissible for you to cross the North Carolina state line for the term of one year?”

  “I’m home to stay,” said Delia.

  “The defendant agrees with your verdict,” said the attorney.

  The gavel came down releasing her. My sister turned and said to me, “Hah!”

  I called Effie, my mother’s friend. She had heard about the hearing two months earlier and was surprised I would call her at all. I told her that I would like to bring her the last painted dress. It was March, so local arteries were clogged with school traffic. Judging from the mothers backing up for the car line, Effie must live a couple of blocks from an elementary school.

  I drove into town alone. She sat out on her porch waiting. I climbed the porch steps, the sun on my shoulders, my sleepy eyes hidden behind the Marilyn Monroe sunglasses I bought with Delia on our way out of Dallas.

  She had prepared a plate of sandwiches: pimento and olives. I ate a finger sandwich and she talked about my mother. “I loved your mother. Fiona was the best friend I ever had. But she had this way of punishing me if I said something she disagreed with. Once, I told her that the president was going to run the country into bankruptcy. She didn’t like that, so she didn’t talk to me for a month. Then after that, she came around again, bringing me a cutting from a rosebush and a sack of tomatoes, and, without saying anything at all, that would square things, she thought.”

  “That sounds right,” I said.

  Effie set the painted dress up next to her porch swing. It was then I realized that Amity had painted it exactly. “I didn’t know you had moved into this house back then,” I said. “That’s a painting of this swing, isn’t it?”

  “Oh yes, I moved here after my husband passed. He died of a stroke. Amity and your mother helped me move into this place. W
e fixed the porch swing, painted it, and then we sat sipping beers and laughing, enjoying the swing.”

  “Why did you part ways then?” I asked.

  “Honey, that’s water under the bridge.” She got up and took my plate and offered me a drink that I declined.

  “Everyone I’ve taken a painting to has told me a story about my family. My mother kept secrets, but that’s not news to you, I guess.”

  “It was your brother that caused it, us parting ways, that is.”

  “Truman.”

  “I met Amity that day in Boiling Waters, agreeing to pick Fiona up for a girls’ outing. We were supposed to go out greenhouse hopping, we called it. It’s when we would drive the highways, stopping along roadside stands and greenhouses looking for new flowers to plant.

  “But we drove up to her place and found her in a fight with Truman. I had seen them fight before. No one could stop her once she went after him. It was like trying to stop a bobcat. She kicked your brother out of the house. I hated that I was afraid of her when she was like that. I hid out. That was when I saw her come running out of her house, holding a child’s dress. She hurled that little dress right into the barrel she used for yard waste. Her burning barrel she called it. But her phone started ringing. Before she could come back and burn it, I ran and fetched it.”

  “Was it mine?”

  “It was your little dress, the one you had on that day. When I told Amity what I had done, she told me she would take it. She drove back to Cashiers, taking the dress with her.”

  “Why did my mother send Truman away, Effie? I want to know.”

  “I felt so awful. I drove around the block and into town when finally I saw your daddy putting Truman on a bus. I pulled aside and watched. I saw them argue. Your daddy pulled out some bills, gave him money. Then he watched him go. The only thing that boy had was a grocery sack filled with a few belongings. I was heartbroken. I never saw so much pain in a family as I saw that day. I couldn’t bear to stand by and watch and do nothing. I got out of the car and approached your daddy. He was perfectly ashen. I asked what happened.” She could not speak for a few minutes.

  I waited, watching the school traffic passing in front of her house.

  “Your daddy told me that Fiona had heard a noise in the house that day. She said it sounded like a little bird. She walked in and found you on the floor in the bathroom with his hand over your mouth. Truman was on top of you.”

  “Don’t feel bad for telling me.” I kept staring at the women in the car line, their passive expressions and the way they made phone calls to pass the time and fill up the minutes like I impassively filled the time not looking at Effie.

  “I asked your daddy whatever caused that boy to go so wrong. He said that it was his brother, your uncle Rudy. He was nothing like his brother Malcolm or your daddy. He victimized that kid and then learned him to his ways. I could tell your daddy felt to blame. I did not know how long your daddy knew. People think that if they turn their backs, that bad stuff will go away. But boys like Truman keep getting worse until they’re made to stop.”

  “Was Truman always so brutal?” I asked.

  “Amity said Truman’s grandmother invited her to church one weekend when she was in town. Truman sat in the back alone. Then in the middle of the sermon, that boy let out a wail so pitiful it broke her heart to hear him. I think we all thought of him as a hardened kid.”

  “Did she ask him why he was crying?” I asked.

  “No one checked on him or asked him anything.”

  “Did you ever talk to my mother again?” I asked, both hands making fists in my lap.

  “That was the last time.”

  “Did Amity know?”

  “People don’t talk about things like that.”

  I had given up on helping those who don’t seek enlightenment so I didn’t say anything.

  “No matter what, though, I knew Amity would redeem that little dress.”

  “She did. I have it.”

  “What are you going to do with it?”

  “It told me things that no one else would tell. But it’s time to let it go, Effie.”

  “It makes sense now.”

  That was the last time I saw Effie. I took my painted dress down to the beach. The day was almost over. The families had gone home. I found a strip of isolated beach, away from the patches of oat grass, away from eyes. I poured kerosene across the canvas. The fuel trickled down across the folds of the dress. A piece of fabric showed through, pretty yellow dotted swiss. Truman was right about the color. Along the hem, a daisy border.

  I made a pyre of sticks encircled by a ring of stones. I set fire to one corner of the canvas and then sat drawing in the sand until Amity’s work of art was no more than ashes. The last thing to do was to wait for the tide. I moved back the stones. The circle was broken so the water stole in and covered the embers. Before the sun was gone, the tide was in good form, lapping hungrily until the ashes were swallowed whole into the ocean’s belly.

  I called Braden from my apartment. We had been dating every weekend since getting the trial behind us. “Meet me at this address.” I rattled it off.

  “What’s up?” he asked.

  “Just meet me at two o’clock today,” I said.

  I drove following the driving directions I got off the Internet. We had looked at several houses together, so I figured he would not be surprised at my call. I drove for miles past a lake and miles of fields dotted with buttercups. Then I turned down a long drive lined with overgrown shrubs. Then the house came next, a brick and frame farm house, a green porch out front in need of paint.

  A calf loped across the acreage in a neighboring pasture.

  I got out of my car, a used but newer model I had picked up at auction. From the trunk, I pulled out a bundle. The front door was left unlocked, just as I had asked the realtor to do for me. I pushed it open.

  The house was empty. There was a brick fireplace in the living room, old wooden floors. I walked across the creaking planks. There was a kitchen to the side, the cabinets painted over so many times the sharp corners had disappeared. Those would be the first to go.

  I walked down the hallway coming to the last bedroom on the right. I pushed open the door. On the floor I rolled out a mat and then covered it over with a white linen sheet.

  From outside was the clank of Braden closing his truck door. His mirror arced off the window glass.

  I lit some candles the color of beeswax and set them around the room on the floor.

  “What’s this about?” he stuck his head in the room.

  “I think I found our house,” I said.

  “But what’s this?” he asked. “On the floor?”

  “Thought we’d test drive the room first,” I said. I pulled down the window shades. “Hurry. Lock the door.” I pulled the blue shirt over my head and tossed it behind me. I unzipped my jeans and slid them down. Braden kicked off his shoes. He took off his shirt and met me in the center of the mat.

  I woke up that first morning after I had seen Effie and sent the ashes of that last dress into the ocean. My senses had come awake to the fact that I was no longer dead. I had forgiven my mother. I laid to rest the idea that Truman might ever confess. Whether he did or didn’t was not going to change me a bit. That was when I first realized that I was no longer practicing at loving my husband as Tim had said. I lay there in my bed listening to my roommate headed off for parts unknown realizing that I could finally belong somewhere just by my act of will.

  I pressed my skin against Braden’s chest. His skin was sticky and warm as summer. I closed my eyes, and he kissed me like the time we kissed the night of The Rocky Horror Picture Show. I softly wet his lips with my tongue and then drew back. “You feel that?” I asked.

  “Like nobody ever felt anything,” he said.

  Feelings can hurt. But when they are t
he most alive is when they are allowed out into the open, come what may, whether nurtured or used for target practice.

  “I feel,” I said.

  “I know, baby.” Braden pulled me down on that white mat and we made that house our own.

  Friday Braden flew Delia and me into Charlotte for a date. Jackson had shipped Delia’s Miata on a semitruck to a car lot where we picked it up. Delia drove us into the city. She had never owned a car outright that could not be repossessed. It satisfied me to see her in a car and a house that she owned without payments. My father had done a good thing providing for her in that manner. He just had not imagined her in anything but his old Ford.

  We parked and ate in an upscale seafood restaurant in the South Park neighborhood. Before Delia went overboard in placing her order, I reminded her of her limited budget. Then she went overboard anyway.

  After dinner, Braden and I walked down the street to a coffee shop. Delia stopped, posing under a tree lit by white lights. She raised her arms like a mermaid swimming upward and then she twirled. A young man coming out of a restaurant bar saw her and he asked if she would like to dance. There was a street band playing a Creedence Clearwater Revival tune. Delia kicked up her leg, her hair swinging around her head. The college boy laughed like a man smitten.

  “I feel like I’m fifty,” said Braden. “I never thought I would care about your sister. But the pain in your eyes as you were watching her at the hearing … I felt it. What will you do about her now?”

  “I can’t do much beyond setting her up in Daddy’s house. I’ll put a little money in her account, enough to supplement her income from Hamby’s furniture.” Delia was already asking me for money.

  “When Bob and Johnny told me that Freddy Deals had been caught on a security camera trying to sell our wedding bands, I thought I would be sick. He had only called me once with a threat to kill you if I didn’t hand over ten-K. Before I could negotiate something, anything, I thought, he slammed the phone down. I called the police and that was when I felt so desperately alone.”