Shiloh and Other Stories

by Bobbie Ann Mason

  “Watch out, Tammy, I’m coming through,” says Cleo. Davey has returned to the television, and Tammy is sprawled out in the kitchen doorway. Tammy is wearing ripped bluejeans and a velour pullover with stripes down the sleeves. Tammy bends her knees so half the doorway is clear, and Cleo squeezes by, balancing the groceries on her hip.

  Tammy hangs up and pokes into the grocery sack. “Chicken! Not again!”

  “Chicken was ninety-nine cents a pound,” says Cleo. “You better be glad you’re where there’s food on the table, kid.”

  “Ick! All that yellow fat.”

  “The yellower a chicken is, the better it is. That’s how you tell when they’re good. If they’re blue they’re not any ’count. Or if they’ve got spots.”

  “Oooh!” Tammy makes a twisted face. “Why can’t you just buy it already fried?”

  “Hah! We’re lucky we don’t have to pull the feathers off. I used to kill chickens, you know. Whack their heads off, dip ’em in boiling water, pick off the feathers. I’d like to see you pick a chicken!”

  Cleo reaches around Tammy and hugs her. Tammy squeals. “Hey, why don’t we just eat the cat?”

  “Now you’re going to hurt somebody’s feelings,” says Cleo, as Tammy squirms away from her.

  Tammy prances out of the room and the noises return. The television; the radio; the buzz of the electric clock; the whir of the furnace making its claim for attention. The kids never hear the noises. Kids never seem to care about anything anymore, Cleo thinks. Tammy had a complete toy kitchen, with a stove and refrigerator, when she was five, and she didn’t care anything about it. It cost a fortune. Linda’s children always make Cleo feel old.

  “I’m old enough to be a grandmother,” Rita Jean said early in their acquaintance. Rita Jean had lost her husband too.

  “I think of you as a spring chicken,” Cleo told her.

  “You’re not that much older than me. Louise Brown is two years younger than me, and she’s a grandmother. Imagine, thirty-five and a grandmother.”

  “That makes me feel old.”

  “I feel old,” said Rita Jean. “To think that the war could be that long ago.”

  Rita Jean’s husband was twenty-one when he left for Vietnam. It was early in the war and nobody thought it would turn out so bad. She has a portrait on her dresser of a young man she hardly knew, a child almost. Now Rita Jean is old enough to be the mother of a boy like that.

  Cleo told Rita Jean she could still get married and have a baby. She could start all over again.

  “If anybody would have me,” said Rita Jean.

  “You don’t try.”

  “Sometimes I think I’m just waiting to get into Senior Citizens.”

  “Listen to yourself,” said Cleo. “That’s the most ridiculous thing I ever heard. Why, I’m not but fifty-two.”

  “They say that’s the prime of life,” said Rita Jean.

  —

  “Where are you going, Mama? Tell me where you’re going.” Davey is pulling at Linda’s belt.

  “Oh, Davey, look. You’re going to mess up Mama’s outfit. I told you seven times, Shirley and me’s going to Paducah to hear some music. It’s not anything you’re interested in, so don’t be saying you want to go too.”

  Linda has washed her hair and put on a new pants suit, a tangerine color. Cleo knows Linda cannot afford it, but Linda always has to have the best.

  Tammy, sitting with her legs propped up on the back of the divan, says, with mock surprise, “You mean you’re going to miss Charlie’s Angels? You ain’t never missed Charlie’s Angels!”

  “Them younguns want you to stay home,” Cleo says as Linda combs her hair. It is wet and falls in skinny black ringlets.

  “I can’t see what difference it makes.” Linda lights a cigarette.

  “These children need a daddy around.”

  “You’re full of prunes if you think I’m going back to Bob!” Linda says, turning on the blow dryer. She raises her voice. “I don’t feel like hanging around the same house with somebody that can go for three hours without saying a word. He might as well not be there.”

  “Hush. The children might hear you.”

  Linda works on her hair, holding out damp strands and brushing them under with the dryer to style them. Cleo admires the way her daughter keeps up her appearance. She can’t imagine Bob would ever look at another woman when he has Linda. Cleo cannot believe Bob has mistreated Linda. It is just as though she has been told some wild tale about outer space, like something on a TV show.

  Cleo says, “I bet he’s just held in and held in till he’s tight as a tick. People do that. I know you—impatient. Listen. A man takes care of a woman. But it works the other way round too. If he thinks you’re not giving him enough loving, he’ll draw up—just like a morning glory at evening. You think he’s not paying any attention to you, but maybe you’ve been too busy for him.”

  Cleo knows Linda thinks she is silly. Daughters never believe their mothers. “You have to remember to give each other some loving,” she says, her confidence fading. “Don’t take each other for granted.”

  “Bob’s no morning glory.” Linda puts on lip gloss and works her lips together.

  “You’ll be wondering how to buy them kids fine things. You’ll be off on your own, girl.”

  Linda says nothing. She examines her face in the mirror and picks at a speck on her cheek.

  —

  Davey gets his lessons on the floor in front of the television. He is learning a new kind of arithmetic Cleo has never heard of. Later, Cleo watches Charlie’s Angels with Tammy, and after Tammy goes to bed, she watches the 10 O’Clock Report. She tells herself that she has to wait up to unlock the doors for Linda. She has put a chain on the door, because young people are going wild, breaking in on defenseless older women. Cleo is afraid Linda’s friend Shirley is a bad influence. Shirley had to get married and didn’t finish school. Now she is divorced. She even let her husband have her kids, while she went gallivanting around. Cleo cannot imagine a mother giving her kids away. Shirley’s husband moved to Alabama with the kids, and Shirley sees them only occasionally. On TV, Johnny Carson keeps breaking into the funny dance he does when a joke flops. Cleo usually gets a kick out of that, but it doesn’t seem funny this time, with him repeating it so much. Johnny has been divorced twice, but now he is happily married. He is the stay-at-home type, she has read.

  Cleo is well into the Tomorrow show, which is a disturbing discussion of teenage alcoholism, when Linda returns. Linda’s cheeks are glowing and she looks happy.

  “I thought Duke Ellington was dead,” says Cleo, when Linda tells her about the concert.

  “He is. But his brother leads the band. He directs the band like this.” Linda makes her hands dive in fishlike movements. “He danced around, with his back to the audience, swaying along in a trance. He had on this dark pink suit the exact same color of Miss Imogene’s panties that time in fifth grade—when she fell off the desk?”

  Cleo groans. Everything seems to distress her, she notices. She is afraid Linda has been drinking.

  “And the band had this great singer!” Linda goes on. “She wore a tight skullcap with sequins on it? And a brown tuxedo, and she sounded for all the world like Ella Fitzgerald. Boy, was she sexy. She had a real deep voice, but she could go real high at times.”

  Linda unscrews the top of a quart of Coke and pours herself a glass. She drinks the Coke thirstily. “I wouldn’t be explaining all this to you if you had gone. I tried to get you to go with me.”

  “And leave the kids here?” Cleo turns off the TV.

  “Shirley had on the darlingest outfit. It had these pleats—what do you want, Davey?”

  Davey is trailing a quilt into the living room. “I couldn’t sleep,” he whines. “The big girls was going to get me.”

  “He means Charlie’s Angels,” says Cleo. “We were watching them and they kept him awake.”

  “He’s had a bad dream. Here, hon.” Linda hugs D
avey and takes him back to bed.

  —

  “I worked myself to death yesterday getting this house in shape and it looks like a cyclone hit it,” Cleo says to Rita Jean on the telephone the next morning. “First, tell me how’s Dexter.”

  Cleo listens to Rita Jean’s account of Dexter’s trip to the vet. “He said there’s nothing to do now but wait. He’s not suffering any, and the vet said it would be all right if I keep him at home. He’s asleep most of the time. He’s the pitifulest thing.”

  Rita Jean’s cat is thirteen. After the news came from Vietnam, Rita Jean got a cat and then another cat when the first one got run over. The present cat she has kept in the house all its life.

  “The one thing about cats,” says Cleo, trying to sound comforting, “is that there’s more where that one come from. You’ll grieve, but you’ll get over it and get you another cat.”

  “I guess so.”

  Cleo tells about Linda’s night out. “She was dolled up so pretty, she looked like she was going out on a date. It made me feel so funny. She had on a new pants suit. The kids didn’t want her to go, either. They know something’s wrong. They never miss a thing.”

  “Kids don’t miss much,” Rita Jean agrees.

  “And how in the world does she think they can afford to keep on like they’ve been doing? But I think they’ll get back together.”

  “Surely they will.”

  “Knock on wood.” Cleo has to stretch to reach the door facing. She is getting a headache. Absently, she watches the Today credits roll by as Rita Jean tells about her brother’s trip out West. He tried to get her to go along, but she couldn’t think of closing her house up and she wouldn’t leave Dexter. “They went to the Grand Canyon and Yosemite and a bunch of other places,” Rita Jean says. “You should see the load of pictures they took. They must of takened a bushel.”

  “It must be something to be able to take off like that,” Cleo says. “I never had the chance when we lived on the farm, but now there are too many maniacs on the road.” Cleo sips her coffee, knowing it will aggravate her headache. “The way things are going around here, I think maybe I ought to go out West. I think I’ll just get me a wig and go running around!” Cleo laughs at herself, but a pain jabs at her temple. Rita Jean laughs, and Cleo goes on, “I thinks Linda’s going to have it out with Bob finally. They’re going to meet over at the lake one day next week. It wasn’t none of my business, but I tried to tell her she ought to simmer down and think it over.”

  “I think they’ll patch it up, Cleo. I really do.”

  “That Bob Isbell was always the best thing!” Cleo leans back in her chair, almost dreamily. “I tell you, girl, I couldn’t have survived if it hadn’t been for him when Jake passed away. He was here every hour; he seen to it that we all got to where we was going; he took care of the house here and then went back and took care of their house. He was even washing dishes. Davey was little-bitty then. Of course, none of us could think straight and we didn’t see right then all he was doing, but don’t you know we appreciated it. I never will forget how good he was.”

  “He always was good to the kids.”

  “They had to pinch them pennies, but those kids never did without. He makes good at the lumberyard, and with what Linda brings in from the K Mart, they’re pretty well off. That house is just as fine as can be—and Linda walks off and leaves it! You just can’t tell me he done her that way, the way she said. And she don’t seem to care!”

  “She’s keeping it in.”

  “I keep halfway expecting Bob to pull in the driveway, but he hasn’t called or said boo to the kids or anything. I don’t want to run them out, but I’ll be glad when they get this thing worked out! They’re tearing up jack! There’s always something a-going. A washing machine or the dishwasher. The television, of course. I never saw so many dishes as these younguns can mess up. I never aimed to be feeding Coxey’s Army! And they just strow like you’ve never seen. Right through the middle of the living room. Here comes one dropping this and that, and then right behind here comes the other one. Prissy-Tail’s got her tail tied up in knots with all the combustion here!”

  Cleo stands up. She has to get an aspirin. “Well, I’ll let you get back to your doodling!”

  When Cleo starts toward the refrigerator to get ice water, Prissy-Tail bounds straight out of the living room and beats her to the refrigerator.

  “You’re going to throw me down,” she cries.

  She gives Prissy-Tail some milk and takes two aspirins. Phil Donahue is talking to former dope addicts. Cleo turns off the TV and finishes her coffee. She looks around at all the extra objects that have accumulated. A tennis racket. Orange-and-blue-striped shoes. Bluejeans in heaps like rag dolls. Tammy’s snapshots scattered around on the divan and end tables. A collapsible plaid suitcase. Tote bags with dirty clothes streaming out the tops. Davey’s Star Wars toys and his red computer toy that resembles a Princess phone. Tammy’s Minute Maker camera. Cleo has forgotten how to move effortlessly through the clutter children make. She pours more coffee and looks at the mail. She looks at a mail-order catalog which specializes in household gadgets. She is impressed with the number of things you can buy to help you organize things, items such as plastic pockets for grocery coupons and accessory chests for closets. She spends a long time then studying the luxurious compartments of a Winnebago in a magazine ad. She imagines traveling out West in it, doing her cooking in the tiny kitchen, but she can’t think why she would be going out West by herself.

  The cheerleaders’ outfits are taking a week. Everything has to be done over. Cleo puts zippers in upside down, allows too much on seams, has to cut plackets out twice. The cheerleaders come over for a fitting and everything is the wrong size. Cleo tells the cheerleaders, “I’m just like a wiggleworm in hot ashes.” In comparison to the overalls, the blouses are easy, but she has trouble with the interfacing.

  “You don’t charge enough,” Linda tells her. “You should charge twenty-five dollars apiece for those things.”

  “People here won’t pay that much,” Cleo says.

  Linda is in and out. The kids visit Bob at home during the weekend. It is more peaceful, but it makes Cleo worry. She is almost glad when they return Sunday evening, carrying tote bags of clothes and playthings. Bob has taken them out for pizza every meal, and they turn up their noses at what she has on the table—fried channel cat and hush puppies. Linda doesn’t eat either. She is going out with Shirley. Cleo gives Prissy-Tail more fish than she can eat.

  —

  “Smile, Grandma.”

  “Well, hurry up,” Cleo says, her body poised as if about to take off and fly. “I can’t hold like this all day.”

  “Just a minute.” Tammy moves the camera around. It looks like the mask on a space suit. “Say cheese!”

  Cleo holds her smile, which is growing halfhearted and strained. The camera clicks, and the flashbulb flares. Together, they watch the picture take shape. Like the dawn, it grows in intensity until finally Cleo’s features appear. The Cleo in the picture stands there vacantly, like a scared cat.

  “I look terrible,” says Cleo.

  “You look old, Grandma.”

  —

  On the cheerleader outfits, Cleo is down to finger work. As she whips the facings, she imagines Bob alone in the big ranch house. What would a man do in a house like that by himself? Linda had left him late one night and brought Tammy and Davey over, right in the middle of The Tonight Show (John Davidson was the guest host). The children were half asleep. Cleo imagines them groggy and senseless, one day hooked on dope.

  —

  The cheerleader outfits are finished. There are some flaws, Cleo knows, where she has had to take out and put in again so many times, but she tells herself that only somebody who sews will notice them. She pulls out bright blue basting thread.

  She does some wash, finishes this week’s Family Circle and cuts out a hamburger casserole recipe she thinks the kids might like. She throws away the Fa
mily Circle and the old TV Guide. She carries out trash. Then she straightens up her sewing corner and sorts her threads. She collects Tammy’s scattered pictures and puts them in a pile. As she tries to find a box they will fit in, she accidentally steps on the cat’s tail. “Oh, I’m sorry!” she cries, shocked. Prissy-Tail hides under the couch. Cleo can’t find a box the right size.

  When the cheerleaders try on their new outfits, Cleo spots bits of blue basting thread she has missed. Embarrassed, she pulls out the threads. She knows the cheerleaders will go to the ball game and someone will see blue basting thread sticking out.

  Later, thinking she will go to the show if there is a decent one on, Cleo drives to the shopping center. There isn’t. An invasion from outer space and Jane Fonda. Cleo parks and goes to the K Mart. She waves at Linda, who is busy with a long line of people at her register. Cleo walks around the store and finds a picture album with plastic pockets for Tammy. She will pay for it with some of the money she collected from the cheerleaders. Davey will want something too, but she doesn’t know what to buy that he will like. After rejecting all the toys she sees, she buys a striped turtleneck sweater on sale. The album and sweater are roughly the same price. She doesn’t see Linda when she goes through the checkout line.

  Cleo sits in the parking lot of the shopping center for a long time and then she goes home and makes the hamburger recipe.

  —

  “You all go on about your cats like they was babies,” says Linda. Linda is sanding a rocking chair, which is upside down on newspapers in the hall.

  “They’re a heap sight less trouble,” says Cleo, who is dusting. Rita Jean has called to say Dexter is home from the hospital, but there isn’t much hope.

  “Stop fanning doors, Tammy,” Linda says. “Grandma’s got a present for you.”

  Cleo brings out the picture album and the sweater.