by Ann B. Ross
She grinned with complete assurance that she would indeed give him a good scare.
Lillian and I looked at each other, relieved that the children were on their way and the house was now quiet. It was still early but already darkening outside. The rain had turned into a misty fog, making halos of the street lamps and turning the evening into a shadowy scene of ghostly possibilities.
“Le’s have another piece of pie,” Lillian said. “That doorbell gonna start ringin’ any minute.”
I had already placed a large bowl of wrapped candy on the hall table and had turned the porch light on, as well. We were ready for any trick-or-treaters who wanted to brave the night.
After a second piece of apple pie—mine with a slice of cheese and Lillian’s with a scoop of ice cream—and some discussion of James’s predicament, Lillian said, “I guess they down on Main Street by now. If it wasn’t so nasty outside, I’d like to go see all them dressed-up chil’ren goin’ in an’ out of the stores. But, tell you the truth, I’m jus’ as glad to be settin’ here warm an’ dry.”
“Me, too,” I said, then, glancing at my watch, I went on, “I don’t think we’ll have many visitors, so what we’ll do with all that candy, I don’t know.”
“We better hide it from Latisha,” Lillian said, laughing, just as the doorbell rang.
We both went to the front door to see the costumes, most of which lacked any originality, having come out of a ready-made package from Wal-Mart or the like. Still, it was moderately entertaining to open the door to all the science-fiction and political masks and pretend to be frightened. There was a run of costumed children—with parents waiting in the shadows—for almost an hour, then it grew quiet. Lillian decided to sit with me in the living room, in case, she said, a real spook mixed in with the made-up ones. So we talked while I worked on my needlepoint and she read the paper, both of us yawning occasionally as we wondered when Lloyd and Latisha would tire of Main Street.
Looking at my watch, I wondered how long Sam would stay at Hazel Marie’s. Obviously, since he was still there, Mr. Pickens hadn’t come home, and that added another demerit to the Pickens account. I sighed at the thought, considered bringing up his failings to Lillian, but decided I didn’t want to talk about him. So I changed the subject.
“Lillian, have you noticed how Hazel Marie has really taken to Granny Wiggins? As leery as she was at first about having her around the babies, she now seems to trust her completely.”
“Yes’m, I seen that, too, an’ I’m glad she fin’ly found some help. Though I notice Miss Granny don’t do much cookin’. She do everything else, but she pretty much stay outta the kitchen.”
“Well,” I said, smiling, “we all have our likes and dislikes. So long as she’s safe with the twins, I don’t care. Besides, I’m hoping Hazel Marie will soon know how to cook and she should, what with all the demonstrations and my recipe book.”
We both jumped when the doorbell rang, then hurried to fill the bag of a late caller. But when Lillian opened the door, Lloyd, his face free of extra hair, walked in without a word and headed straight for the staircase, my raincoat dragging along behind him.
Hauling her full Halloween bag with her, Latisha came in behind him. “Lloyd don’t feel good,” she announced. “He throwed away his eyebrows an’ mustache, but he give me his candy. See,” she said, holding up the bag, “I got enough to last me awhile.”
Looking toward the stairs, I said, “I’ll go up and see about him. Don’t leave yet, Lillian, if you don’t mind.”
“No’m, I got to wash them wrinkles off Latisha’s face anyway. Let me know how he’s feelin’.”
I hurried up the stairs, went to Lloyd’s closed door, and tapped softly. “Lloyd? Are you all right?”
Hearing a murmured response, I opened the door and hesitated. One lamp on the desk was on, leaving most of the room in shadows. The boy was sitting stiffly, his hands clasped between his knees, in the room’s one easy chair.
“Honey, what’s wrong?” I walked over to him, pulled out his desk chair, and sat beside him. “You have a stomachache? Your head hurts? Tell me, so I can give you something for it.”
His shoulders slumped as he shook his head. “No’m, I’m all right. Just . . . just not feeling good.”
“Maybe you caught something from the babies.” I reached over and felt his forehead. “You don’t feel hot. In fact, you may be chilled. Don’t you want to get in bed and get warm?”
“No’m, not yet. I guess I’ll just sit here for a while.”
Not knowing what to do, I sat there for a while, too. Then I said, “Maybe a dose of Pepto-Bismol will help. I’ll run down and get it.”
As I moved toward the door, not only to get the medicine but to ask Lillian’s advice, I heard Lloyd whisper, “Miss Julia?”
Turning back, I answered, “Yes? What do you need?”
“Can I ask you something?”
“Of course.” Returning to the chair, I leaned toward him.
In a voice heavy with sadness and so low I could barely hear it, he asked, “Where would we live if Mama and J.D. got divorced?”
I opened my mouth to protest, then closed it to reconsider. Finally, I said, “Why, you’d live right here with Sam and me. But, Lloyd, that’s so unlikely to happen that I’ve never even thought about it.”
“I have. That’s all I’ve been thinking about. But we couldn’t live here. There’s not enough room for me and Mama and my sisters. I don’t know what we’d do.”
“Well,” I said decisively, “if it came to that, you could continue to live in Sam’s house or we’d just build a bigger house for us all. Now, Lloyd, honey,” I said, putting my hand on his arm, “that’s the last thing you should be worrying about. So why are you? What’s going on?”
I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear his answer, because the fact of the matter was, I’d been worrying about a marriage breakup myself. Why else had I been harboring such enmity toward Mr. Pickens?
Lloyd sniffed and brushed his face with the back of his hand, almost breaking my heart. “I saw J.D. tonight and he . . . he was driving a lady around.”
So, I thought, it’s come to this—the very thing I didn’t want it to come to. “Where did you see him?”
“He was crossing Main Street and we were waiting at the curb. He didn’t see us, I don’t think. He didn’t wave or anything. Just drove by with . . . that lady.”
“She could’ve been a client, Lloyd. Have you thought of that?”
“She didn’t look like one. She was laughing real big, like she was having a good time.”
I sat for a few minutes, running over in my mind what I could say to both relieve and reassure him. And me, as well.
“All right,” I finally managed, “here’s what we’ll do. There’s no need to worry yourself sick when there’s very likely a simple explanation. We’ll just ask him.”
His head came up sharply. “Oh, no, I couldn’t ask him. I don’t want to know.”
“Well, I do and I can.” Standing, I went on, “You go on to bed, Lloyd, and leave this matter with me. I’ll get to the bottom of it as soon as I can, and . . .” I stopped before I said too much. “And then we’ll know that you’ve been worrying for nothing.”
Lord, I hoped that was true, but after I picked up my Burberry and casually left the room, I rushed down the stairs, anger toward Mr. Pickens almost blinding me. How could he drive around town with such impunity? Didn’t he know he’d be seen? Well, he had been—by me, by Lillian, and now, worst of all, by Lloyd. And the child was sitting up there, mourning that cheating, unfaithful excuse of a husband who, I also realized, had the gall to set himself up as the boy’s father.
Chapter 43
Hearing the television in the library, I reached the bottom step of the stairs and headed that way. I stopped at the door and looked in. “Lillian?”
But it w
as Latisha, sitting in a wingchair, eyes glued to the screen and mouth so full of chocolate she could barely speak. “She in the kitchen.”
I hurried that way, calling again, “Lillian?”
“Yes’m, I’m over here,” she said, closing the pantry door. “How’s Lloyd feelin’? He need a doctor?”
“All he needs is for Mr. Pickens to start acting like a husband and a father. Oh, Lillian,” I moaned, leaning against the counter, “Lloyd saw him tonight with one of those women. I knew, I just knew it would come to this.”
She stopped short, her eyes wide. “Oh, Law, what was he doin’ when he saw him?”
“Driving around looking for a parking lot, I guess. I don’t know, Lillian. I just know my worst fears have come true, and Lloyd knows. He’s sick about it, sitting up there worrying where they’ll live after a divorce.”
“Divorce! They not gettin’ a divorce! Are they?”
“Not if I can help it, they’re not. Can you stay awhile, Lillian? You and Latisha? I don’t want to leave Lloyd by himself and there’s no telling when Sam will be home. I guess,” I added with a twist of my mouth, “he’ll be at Hazel Marie’s until Mr. Pickens decides to turn up.”
“What you gonna be doin’?”
“I don’t know, but this town’s not that big and his car can hardly be missed. I’ll check all the parking lots and just drive around until I find him.”
“Then what you gonna do?”
“I don’t know that, either, but he will most assuredly know when I get through doing it. I tell you, Lillian, it would be bad enough if Hazel Marie had seen him, but Lloyd? That child is just shattered, and I, for one, will not put up with it.”
Shrugging on my raincoat and snatching up my pocketbook, I strode toward the back door. “I’ll be back when I’m back.”
“What I’m s’posed to tell Mr. Sam when he come home an’ you not here?”
“He won’t leave Hazel Marie until Mr. Pickens gets home, and it’s fairly obvious that Mr. Pickens doesn’t have going home in mind. Just tell him I had to go out.” I opened the door and started out.
“Wait a minute,” Lillian said, frowning. “You jus’ be stirrin’ up trouble, you don’t watch out. I don’t think you oughta . . .”
“I know,” I said, pulling the door closed behind me, “but I’m doing it anyway.”
I backed the car out of the driveway, turned the wipers to intermittent, and mentally mapped the town by grids to cover all the church parking lots. Lillian had seen him in one, so it stood to reason that Mr. Pickens might be in another one. It shouldn’t take long, I told myself, looking first at the Presbyterian lot across the street from my house. He surely wouldn’t be so foolish as to park there, but then he’d already proven to have a fairly high level of foolishness. So I checked it.
Then I tooled through the First Baptist lot and, finding it empty, swept through the parking areas of the First United Methodist—Poppy’s church. My search was going quickly enough: There was little traffic and all I had to slow me down was concern about bands of trick-or-treaters dashing across the streets.
Circling the town, going up one block and down another, I sought a black, low-slung two-seater car with a long antenna in the lots of the Lutheran church, the Assembly of God church, another Baptist church, a Seventh-Day Adventist church, an AME Zion church, a Catholic church, another Baptist church, an Episcopal church, a synagogue, and a Holy Word tabernacle. By that time, I was on the outskirts of town, convinced that not only was Mr. Pickens not parked in any of them, but also that, based on the number of its religious establishments, Abbotsville should’ve been the kindest, most generous, and least crime-ridden town in the country. It wasn’t, but I had too much on my mind to wonder why.
The mall parking lot—where I’d first seen Mr. Pickens—was next on my mental list, so I headed there. Unfortunately, the lot was busy with trick-or-treaters going in and out, it not yet being the ten o’clock closing time. Nonetheless, I made a slow circuit, looking closely along the edges of the lot, where Mr. Pickens liked to park. Then I made another lap, thinking I might have missed him in my efforts to avoid hitting the stray bag-toting mummy or grinning Obama.
As I stopped for a family to cross in front of me, I glanced at the gas level, noting with a pang that I was almost on empty. I calmed myself by recalling that cars always have more gas than the needle indicates and, besides, I didn’t want to stop at a filling station and have people wonder what I was doing out so late.
So, what next? Grocery stores, I decided, thinking that only a few would be open. That did not prove to be the case. More than one announced that it was open twenty-four hours, making me wonder when hours had changed so drastically. I could remember when groceries closed at six o’clock, and only the daring stayed open until eight.
Wal-Mart! That had a parking lot to rival the one at the mall, so I headed to the huge store that combined grocery, garden, drug, clothing, electronic, and toy stores into one.
When I turned off the highway onto the frontage road, I was doubly amazed at how busy the gigantic store was. Why did people shop—with school-age children and babies in strollers—in the middle of the night? I couldn’t understand it but, with all the coming and going and stopping and waiting, it took me almost an hour to satisfy myself that Mr. Pickens was not there.
I sat for a few minutes, the car idling, waiting for traffic to clear enough for me to head back toward town. Having counted on Mr. Pickens’s recent proclivity for parking lots, I couldn’t think of any other obvious places for him to be. There were, of course, the fast-food drive-ins, but I doubted he’d stay long in one of those since they encouraged customers to drive up, through, and out. Then I thought of motel parking lots and wished I hadn’t.
Pulling out when there was a gap in the traffic, I started home, disappointed that I hadn’t been able to vent my outrage. Maybe it was for the best, though, that I be cool and collected when I faced Mr. Pickens with what he’d done to Lloyd, to say nothing of what he was doing—probably what he was in the process of doing at that very moment—to Hazel Marie.
At that thought, I determined to keep looking. He had to be somewhere. But first, I decided to check with Lillian. I’d be a laughingstock if I continued searching high and low, only to learn that Mr. Pickens was home and so was Sam. I turned in to the Burger King lot, parked, and started rummaging through my pocketbook for my cell phone. Then, with a groan, I recalled placing it in the charger on the kitchen counter and leaving it there.
Looking through the windows of the restaurant, I saw that it was crowded with tricked-out, costumed people eating hamburgers, and decided I couldn’t call from there. Besides, I would have to turn off the ignition and then restart the car, and I’d heard that used more gas than letting it idle for a few minutes. I backed out and got on the street again. There were a couple of strip malls on the north edge of town that would bear looking into, so I headed that way.
Neither proved worth the time or the gas, consisting mostly of closed shops and offices—an insurance agency, a dentist, a surveyor, a pet shop, a storefront fitness center, and a computer repair shop. In between the two strips was a seafood restaurant that was doing a thriving business. I turned into that lot, almost getting hit by two SUVs, and thanking the Lord when I was able to get back onto the street unscathed.
Mr. Pickens, you scoundrel, where are you? I hated to give up and go home, letting all my righteous anger go to waste. At the thought of Lloyd, sitting pale and forlorn in his room grieving over what he’d seen, I determined to go on looking awhile longer.
Then I had a bright idea.
I was on the right side of town and I could be at Brother Vern’s soup kitchen within five minutes. He was there—I assumed still there—handing out Halloween treats to hungry people expecting soup. I could use his phone to see if Sam had gotten home, which would, in turn, tell me if Mr. Pickens was home and not
out in some parking lot I’d overlooked.
So I quickly turned onto a side street, getting a couple of horns blown at me because of it, and started toward the mission that I’d had a hand in founding. The street it was on had not looked the most prosperous in the daylight; on a wet October night it looked bedraggled and sad, with broken windows in padlocked buildings, sagging fences, peeling paint, and broken sidewalks. Only a few street lamps were on and they were far apart, and as I drove toward the mission, I wondered what in the world I was doing there. Slowing considerably—no cars were behind me—I scanned the street ahead, debating whether it was wise to get out of the car in such a place of destitution. Creeping along, I could see several blocks ahead some signs of life—meaning lighted windows and one or two people out front—in only two places. One such place was Miguel’s Tacos, on the opposite side of the street more than a block ahead, and the other—the soup kitchen—was at the far end of that block on my side. A few cars, mostly old and listing to one side, were parked along the street, and shadows of slouching figures, hunched over against the rain, hurried toward the lighted windows. I noticed also a small cluster of men under a ragged awning directly across from Miguel’s, a few going back and forth across the street.
The area was quiet—mine was the only car moving on the street and it was barely doing that. The neon signs advertising tacos and other eats and drinks at Miguel’s place cast red and blue reflections on the cars parked in front and across the wet pavement.
Just as I eased into the next intersection, my car suddenly coughed, then lurched, and so did my heart. Out of gas? I couldn’t be. There should’ve been enough to get me home, but the steering wheel turned stubborn and the gas pedal didn’t respond and I was up a creek in the middle of the street. With both hands and a mighty effort, I turned the wheel toward the curb and pumped the gas pedal, and most reluctantly the car coasted off the street to a bus stop. And not only off the street but halfway up the curb, because the brakes didn’t work, either.
