The Perfect Place

by Teresa E. Harris

  “Sheriff Baxter?” she barks. “It’s Grace Washington. I reckon I’m ready for you to search my house.”

  Great-Aunt Grace gave Sheriff Baxter strict instructions. He is to come within the hour and by himself. He follows these orders to a T, making it to Great-Aunt Grace’s house a half hour after she hung up the phone. Great-Aunt Grace is on the porch waiting for him. She makes Tiffany and me stay in the living room.

  Sheriff Baxter’s footsteps are heavy on the porch stairs. “So happy you saw your way to letting me in,” he says as he walks through the front door and into the living room. “My Eunetta—well, you know, she doesn’t give up easy. Neither does Dot—she’s called me every day since we came round here the other day. I’ll just take a look around.”

  The sheriff is big any way you look at him. He’s tall and wide with broad shoulders and a big stomach hanging over his belt buckle like a terrace. His gun is holstered on his hip. He lumbers around Great-Aunt Grace’s living room, dwarfing everything with his size. Great-Aunt Grace watches him in silence, her arms crossed over her chest. When he’s done “searching” the living room, he and Great-Aunt Grace move on to the kitchen. Tiffany and I get up. Great-Aunt Grace tells us to stay right where we are, so we sit back down and listen to muffled voices and creaking floors until Great-Aunt Grace and Sheriff Baxter return to the living room.

  “My deputy and I did check other houses, you know,” Sheriff Baxter is saying. “But folks were a bit more concerned about yours, what with your record and all. I’m sure you understand.”

  “Yeah, I understand,” Great-Aunt Grace replies flatly.

  Sheriff Baxter nods to her and to us, ready to hit the road.

  “Oh, and one more thing, Sheriff,” Great-Aunt Grace calls.

  He stops and turns to her.

  “Would you mind givin’ me and my grandnieces a ride over to H&H Auto Service?”

  Sheriff Baxter’s eyebrows furrow. “What you going there for? You don’t even have a car.”

  “I ain’t goin’ about a car. I’m goin’ to visit a friend. Besides, it’s the least you could do, since I been so . . . cooperative.”

  “Well, I guess I can take you,” Sheriff Baxter grumbles.

  Great-Aunt Grace disappears into the kitchen and returns with her keys and a handful of papers. The fliers? We pile into Sheriff Baxter’s car, Great-Aunt Grace riding shotgun and Tiffany and me in the back behind a thick pane of bulletproof glass. We look like a pair of criminals. I slide all the way down in my seat and wonder what’s going on.

  We pull up to H&H Auto Service a few minutes later. It’s not much more than a patch of cement dotted with banged-up cars. There are a few gas pumps and a squat building with three chairs lined up out front. Sasha is sitting in one of those chairs, legs crossed, flipping through a magazine and swinging her foot.

  We climb out of Sheriff Baxter’s car. He guns the engine, ready to pull off.

  “Hang on, Sheriff. There’s someone I want you to meet.”

  “What are you doing? It’s Keyana who likes elephants,” I hiss.

  Great-Aunt Grace ignores me and calls to Sasha. She looks up, shielding her eyes from the sun, squinting at Great-Aunt Grace.

  “Oh!” Sasha says at last, hopping up. She bounds over in a skin-tight tank dress, bracelets jingling and everything bouncing. Sheriff Baxter’s eyebrows almost shoot off his face.

  “Sheriff, this is Sasha, Byron Lockett’s girl. Where’s he at, anyway?” Great-Aunt Grace asks, looking around.

  “He’s in the back, working on his motorcycle. The boss isn’t here. Why? Something wrong with your car?” Sasha asks the sheriff.

  “No, we here to pick up mine,” Great-Aunt Grace says, pointing in the general direction of a blue car wrecked beyond repair.

  Sasha frowns. “I don’t think it’s ready yet.”

  “I can see that. I’ll talk to Byron about it,” Great-Aunt Grace replies. “I see you got yourself a whole jewelry store there, girl.”

  “Oh!” Sasha’s eyes light up as she jangles her armful of bracelets. “Glad you like them! I just purely love them!” She leans into us conspiratorially. “I’m not wearing the prettiest one. It’s gold and about this thick.” She holds her index finger and thumb an inch apart. “And it has all these different color stones in it, you know? Byron gave it to me. He doesn’t like me to wear it too much, but you can’t really see it unless you see it, you know?”

  “Nah, girl, you doin’ just fine describin’ it,” Great-Aunt Grace says, unfolding her stack of papers. She shuffles through them and holds up the reward flier with a picture of Lucinda’s stolen bracelet. “Does it look like this?”

  “Yes! Just like that.” Sasha beams. But as she reads over the flier, her lips moving, her smile fades. “Wait. What’s going on?”

  “Lord only knows. Sheriff, what’s goin’ on?” Great-Aunt Grace says.

  Sheriff Baxter climbs slowly from his cruiser. He points at the flier Great-Aunt Grace is holding up. “You’re saying Byron gave you a bracelet that looks just like that?”

  Sasha nods. She looks frightened.

  “Do you have it right now?”

  “It’s at home.”

  “What’s at home?”

  We all turn at the sound of Byron’s voice as he strolls over to us, his movie-star smile already in place.

  “My bracelet is at home, the one you gave me. They’re saying you stole it.”

  Byron’s smile falters, but only for a moment. “Come on, Sheriff, Ms. Washington. You know me. I didn’t steal anything,” he says smoothly.

  “Did he give you pearls, too, or an elephant statue?” Sheriff Baxter asks Sasha.

  “No, I reckon he gave that statue to Keyana,” Great-Aunt Grace says.

  “No, I didn’t,” Byron says quickly, his eyes darting to Sasha.

  “And who is Keyana?” Sasha demands to know.

  “Girl who lives over in Thatcher,” Great-Aunt Grace puts in. “Family used to own a little spot here in Black Lake called Olive’s. Cobbler wasn’t much to speak of, but the corn’ beef was all right.”

  “Keyana goes to Howard,” I add.

  “And she loves elephants,” Tiffany chimes in.

  “You told me you don’t have no other girls!” Sasha lunges at Byron.

  “Sasha, be easy!” Byron shouts, trying to duck her blows. “Keyana doesn’t mean anything to me.”

  “But you gave her that statue, right?” Sasha says, landing a blow on Byron’s shoulder.

  “Yeah, but it didn’t mean anything, baby. It’s you I love!”

  “You lowdown, dirty thief!” Sheriff Baxter shouts. “What did you do with my wife’s pearls?”

  Sasha stops hitting Byron and waits for his answer. He has run out of steam. “I gave ’em to a girl over in Chesterfield,” he mutters.

  “And Mrs. Russell’s gold necklace and ring?”

  “That was gonna be for you, Sasha, baby,” Byron says.

  Sasha isn’t having it. She lets loose with every swear word in the world and some that haven’t even been invented yet. Then she goes for his face with her nails.

  “Sweet Jesus,” Sheriff Baxter mutters. “You need help, boy.”

  He steps between them and pushes Byron toward the cruiser. Sasha follows, still trying to get in as many hits as she can. Sheriff Baxter says she’s going to the station too, seeing as she’s in possession of stolen merchandise and all. Sasha climbs in beside Byron. We can still hear her shouting even after Sheriff Baxter closes the car door behind her.

  “I guess that’s that,” he says, shaking his head. “Looks like I’ve got this one all wrapped up.”

  Great-Aunt Grace isn’t going to let him get away with that. “Since y’all were so busy suspectin’ me, I had to dig a little deeper than you, Dot, and the other fools,” she says loudly. “I had some help, too.” She gestures to Tiffany and me.

  “Well, good work, I guess,” Sheriff Baxter replies, suddenly in a hurry. “I reckon I better get these t
wo down to the station before she kills him.”

  He doesn’t make it a foot away before Great-Aunt Grace calls him back. “Oh, and one more thing, Sheriff.”

  Sheriff Baxter turns and regards Great-Aunt Grace warily. “I reckon you’re looking for an apology?”

  “Not at all.”

  Great-Aunt Grace plucks Eunetta’s reward flier from her stack and holds it up. “Three hundred dollars rewarded to anyone with any information about the pearls’ whereabouts. Right there in black and white. I’ll take large bills, if you don’t mind.”

  Sheriff Baxter is the very definition of flabbergasted. He reaches slowly into his back pocket, takes out his wallet, and pulls out a wad of cash. He drops it into Great-Aunt Grace’s outstretched hand. “That’s all I’ve got on me. A hundred and eighty.”

  Great-Aunt Grace counts the money and places it in her shirt pocket. “That’s all right. I’ll be by your house later for the rest.”

  Sheriff Baxter drives off, Sasha still pummeling Byron in the back seat. Great-Aunt Grace shakes her head.

  “How’d you know Sasha would be here?” I ask.

  “Because Byron Lockett can’t breathe unless there’s some simple female up underneath him, worshippin’ him. Like I said, that fool’s got more women than sense.”

  We start walking away from H&H Auto Service in the heavy Black Lake heat. Tiffany nudges me in the ribs with her elbow. “See? I told you she’d take us on an adventure,” she whispers.

  Twenty-Six

  EVEN though we caught the Black Lake thief today, Great-Aunt Grace is not about to let us miss a few hours of work. We spend the rest of the morning and part of the afternoon at Grace’s Goodies. Then around four she closes up, saying, “I reckon news has spread to where it needs to be. It’s time to collect.”

  For the next hour, Great-Aunt Grace makes her way around Black Lake with Tiffany and me in tow, collecting her reward money. She hits up Eunetta first. Eunetta’s husband must’ve told her we were coming, so it takes her forever to answer the door. And when she does, she only opens it wide enough to thrust one hand out, clutching a wad of twenties.

  “Pleasure doin’ business with you,” Great-Aunt Grace tells her.

  Eunetta slams the door.

  We head to the houses of two other people that Byron robbed. Sheriff Baxter has promised to retrieve all stolen goods and return them to their rightful owners. Still, no one wants to hand over reward money to Grace Washington for the part she played, least of all Dot, whom we visit last, but Great-Aunt Grace simply points to the bottom of Dot’s flier, which reads, A $100 reward to anyone with any information about my statue.

  By the time we leave Dot standing at her door, steam practically coming out her ears, Great-Aunt Grace has pulled in $550.

  “We could go to Disney World with that,” Tiffany says over a dinner of franks and beans.

  “Couldn’t even pay for a flight,” says Great-Aunt Grace.

  “I guess,” Tiffany concedes. “But when we’re living down in Florida, we’ll just drive to Disney. Right, Jeanie?”

  “Living in Florida?” Great-Aunt Grace asks.

  “That’s where the perfect place is,” Tiffany says around a mouthful of beans. “The place where we’re going to go and live when Mommy finds Daddy. Wanna see it?”

  Tiffany takes off before Great-Aunt Grace can say no, her bare feet pounding down the hallway and then up the stairs.

  “A perfect place, huh?” Great-Aunt Grace asks. I nod, waiting for her to roll her eyes or call us fools for believing there’s such a place, but she doesn’t. She takes a sip of her water instead.

  “So, um, I just wanted to say that, um . . .” I stare down at my plate, as though I might find the words I’m looking for there. “I just wanted to say that I couldn’t help but overhear how you stood up to Moon about his smoking. You know, for me.”

  “Well, don’t go gettin’ a swelled head about it. That dome of yours is big enough as it is, Lord knows.”

  A surge of anger pulses through me. “I’m just saying it was cool. That’s all. So thanks, okay?”

  Silence stretches like an ocean between us. “You’re welcome, girl,” Great-Aunt Grace says at last. “He’ll come around. He acts about your sister’s age when he gets mad. Now finish your food before it gets cold.”

  Tiffany dashes back into the kitchen, brandishing her drawing of the perfect place. She stands beside Great-Aunt Grace and describes each detail to her. The sunlit rooms, her purple bedroom, the smell of cooking food. She’s cut off by the sound of the phone ringing.

  Great-Aunt Grace goes into the living room to answer it. Tiffany holds up her drawing to the light. “I forgot to color the sky. See?” She shows me the blank, paper-white space hovering above our sky-colored house. From the living room, I hear Great-Aunt Grace say, “Calm down, Lisa. What you mean, you never gonna find him? Listen to me. . . .”

  Outside, the evening is quiet and still, but I can feel the earth shift beneath my feet. “I’ll be right back,” I tell Tiffany.

  “Are you on a solo spy mission again?” she asks, still focused on her drawing.

  “No. I just need to talk to Great-Aunt Grace for a minute. Stay here.”

  I walk into the living room just as Great-Aunt Grace hangs up the phone. She’s looking down at the floor, her eyebrows scrunched up.

  “She’s giving up on finding Dad, isn’t she?” I ask quietly, standing stock-still, as though disturbing even the air in this room might make the news worse.

  Great-Aunt Grace shakes her head. I know she is deciding whether to tell me the truth.

  “She’s giving up hope?”

  Great-Aunt Grace nods. “She told me she don’t know where else to look. She followed that credit-card trail, but she thinks he’s gone for good this time.”

  Gone for good this time. I sit heavily on the couch.

  “She said she was gettin’ close to finding him. So close. That’s what she told me.”

  Great-Aunt Grace and I look up at the same time. I didn’t even hear Tiffany come into the room. Tears are in her eyes. She heard every word.

  Tiffany won’t talk. She won’t even cry. Great-Aunt Grace paces nervously back and forth across the living room floor. For once, she seems to be at a loss for words.

  At last she says, “Guess you two better go on to bed. We’ll talk about this in the mornin’.”

  She tries to hustle us off the couch, but I don’t move. Not yet.

  “I’ll be up in a minute,” I say. Great-Aunt Grace takes Tiffany by the wrist and leads her out of the living room.

  I head straight for the phone and dial Mr. Brown’s number. I know he’s not in his office this late. I leave a voicemail anyway, even though he said he’d call me. I tell him that I really, really need him to check our mailbox and if he finds something to call me back ASAP. I hang up the phone and trudge upstairs. Great-Aunt Grace is tucking Tiffany in—the first time she’s ever done that. I put on my pajamas and sit down on the edge of my bed. Great-Aunt Grace pats me awkwardly on the shoulder as she leaves, stopping when she gets to the door.

  “You want the light on or off?” she asks.

  “On.” I’m not even close to ready to go to sleep yet.

  Great-Aunt Grace nods. Then she’s gone. I look over at Tiffany. She is stone.

  Why won’t she cry? You hear all this stuff on TV about kids who have been through a lot shoving all their feelings into a box deep inside them, locking it, and throwing away the key.

  Tiffany catches me looking at her. “Tell me a story,” she demands.

  “I’ve got a plan in the works to find Dad. Better than Mom’s. You want to hear it?”

  “Tell me a story,” Tiffany says again.

  I make up a story on the spot about two princesses named Tiffany and Jeanie, who live in a purple palace. Tiffany is the more beautiful princess who has the power to turn weeds into cartoon characters.

  “And her sister, Princess Jeanie, can travel back and forth
through time,” I say. “The princesses live happily until one day—”

  “Tell it how Daddy would. In the Mickey voice.”

  I try to do the Mickey Mouse voice, but no one can do it quite like Dad. Tiffany punches the bed, once, twice. Soon she picks up a steady rhythm—punch, punch, punch—and a small sound escapes her. Now she starts to cry. Relief floods through me and seeps from my pores. But Tiffany’s not stopping. I find Mr. Teddy Daniels curled up in her sheets and run through his skit. I promise her that Mom will find Dad any day now. Nothing works, so I pull her up and out of bed.

  Great-Aunt Grace’s doorknob is plastic, made to look like crystal. I know better than to turn that sucker without knocking. I tap softly at first, and then harder when she doesn’t answer right away. When she finally pulls the door open, it squeals like a newborn.

  She doesn’t seem surprised to see us, but then, her facial expression doesn’t ever change much. “What is it?” she says. A lit cigarette bobs between her lips.

  I open my mouth, close it, open it again. I shrug and take a step back. She does the same, letting us in.

  Great-Aunt Grace’s room doesn’t reek of old cigarettes like I expected it to. Her room is cluttered, though, filled with little tables, a sea of canvas bags, and yarn—rolls and rolls of it. Great-Aunt Grace tosses her half-finished cigarette out the window and puts on a fan over in the corner. Then she turns to us. She looks nervous, probably because she’s never had two kids sitting on her bed before, one crying, the other staring.

  She takes something out of one of her many bags. The sea-green baby clothes she’d been working on when Moon came over about the cigarettes. She hands them to Tiffany.

  “These are for you. Well, for that teddy bear of yours anyway,” she says gruffly. “I’m workin’ on a few other outfits.”

  Tiffany caresses the overalls and jacket Great-Aunt Grace has made, and sniffles.

  Great-Aunt Grace studies us like we’re something under a microscope. “Well, I suppose you two are sad about your daddy,” Great-Aunt Grace says. “But your mama is just tired of lookin’. It don’t mean she’s givin’ all the way up and it don’t mean he won’t come on back on his own.”