Providence Noir

by Ann Hood

  “You know with Willadeene everything has to be just so. She wants to keep the house nice and fresh for Reverend Porter. I imagine we’ll be allowed back inside once he arrives,” she said to a gaggle of women standing between the hollyhock and New England Aster.

  Nearby, Min stood with both hands fastened on the strap of the 35mm range finder suspended from her neck. Gussie walked over.

  “Willadeene called the Journal and insisted someone come out. Made such a fuss over Reverend Porter funding the new day care at the church,” Min explained. In dungarees and a crisp white oxford shirt, she was the only woman there not dressed to impress.

  “At least you’re getting paid to be here.”

  Twenty minutes later Gussie tried to unpuzzle why it felt she had known Min all of her life. “I taught Willadeene’s son, R.C. I didn’t want to disappoint her by not showing up,” she said. Min looked dubious so she drew in closer and twisted her mouth to the side and whispered, “I don’t have air-conditioning. And I hate to cook.”

  “The truth shall set you free,” Min replied, offering a sly smile and, after they’d eaten plenty, a ride home.

  The scent of violas had wafted into Min’s light-green Polara as they coasted along Memorial Boulevard, Gussie tapping her feet against the car floor to Tommy Dorsey’s band, Sinatra crooning “Polka Dots and Moonbeams.”

  “What a storybook evening,” Gussie began, leaning her head out the window. “I betcha the temperature hasn’t dropped on account of all these stars. I mean it’s nothing out here but stars; the sky’s just full of them!”

  All except the two in your eyes, Min wanted to say, but then she thought, Too much, too soon.

  Min pulled along the curb trying to figure out how to start a friendship. “I don’t know if you’re planning to take a vacation this summer, but I’m heading west—through the Black Hills, on down to Colorado, winding up in the Sierra Nevada,” she said, pleased at how free and easy the plans for her dream vacation had come together on the spot. She patted the dash of the Dodge. “She’s brand new, and I’ve always wanted to shoot Yosemite”—a truth she had never said aloud before.

  “When you plan on leaving?”

  “July. I figure August’ll be too crowded. What do you think?”

  “July’ll be just as crowded,” Gussie said, turning to face her new friend. “Why don’t you give me your number so we can plan this trip the right way.”

  * * *

  Min topped off Gussie’s mug at the table filled with rye toast stacked high, gooseberry jam, turkey bacon fried perfectly flat and crisp, scrambled eggs, and sliced cantaloupe. “We are officially off of real eggs. May I introduce you to Egg Beaters,” she quipped.

  Gussie waved a hand, as if shooing a fly. “Problem with the stand-your-ground shit is the children don’t have any ground to stand ’cause they’re children! They should lower the voting age and the gun permit age. Level the ground! Adults running ’round with guns, picking off these black boys with impunity. Trayvon Benjamin Martin. Need I say more?”

  Min flashed on a terse exchange she’d had with a reporter at the newspaper. Be sure you include his middle name, she’d said to the guy who was writing about a black boy killed by cop a little south of Providence, in Bristol. A middle name reminds people of all the thought a parent put into naming a child.

  “And now Jordan Russell Davis—for playing his music too loud. The day after Thanksgiving. Jesus.”

  “Burns my ass,” Min said.

  “They ought to level that ground down in Florida. Let the boys vote and carry a gun, die like a citizen, not some dog in the street. It’s like Daddy used to say, we didn’t invent the world or its trouble, but we gotta keep on living or die trying.”

  “My daddy didn’t put it quite that way. Whenever there was talk around Fox Point about somebody being wronged on account of their color or accent, he’d say to me, ‘Minha flor, you just remember you are as high above them as cake is over shit.’”

  A hard knock on the kitchen door made Gussie jump.

  “You expecting somebody?” Min asked, standing up from the table.

  Gussie shook her head no.

  Min looked out the window over the sink, wondering why on earth Willadeene Rutherford’s son was standing on her back porch wearing nothing but a cardigan on such a cold day. “It’s R.C.—with miles of smiles.”

  Gussie choked a little, clenching the front of her housecoat.

  The man just didn’t look right. Still, that was no reason to mistreat a soul or forget your manners. “Morning, R.C.,” Min said, trying to fix his shifting eyes with her own steady gaze.

  The young man grunted something. Whether it was a Good morning or whatever hip greeting the young folks used these days, she didn’t know. But she heard his question clear as a bell: “Can I shovel your walk for twenty dollars?”

  “No thank you. We planned on doing it today ourselves. We need the exercise. Besides, you’re not dressed properly, R.C. You’ll catch pneumonia like that.”

  “Don’t worry about me, Miss Min. I’m what they call hot-blooded. Hotheaded too. Least that’s what they said at the last group home I was at. Won’t take me long. You and Miss Gussie don’t have no business out here in this mess. It’s real icy. Hate for Miss Gussie or you to break your hip. Mama broke hers two winters ago and she still ain’t right.”

  “Well, okay then. You shovel the drive and the sidewalk out front.”

  “You don’t listen, Minrose,” Gussie began no sooner than the door closed. “I told you I’d do the shoveling.”

  “That was before I looked out there. You don’t have sense enough in that hen head of yours not to go outta here on a day the devil himself wouldn’t walk around. You courting a hospital stay? R.C.’s right about that hip business.”

  “What about my dream?”

  “Gussie, it was a dream, darling. Just a dream.”

  “And you think it’s fine to give him beer money, or money for that stuff?”

  “Even a fool makes sense some of the time. He had a point about the ice.” Min looked out the window. She could see the open door of the toolshed. Where was R.C.? She left the kitchen for the living room. None of the windows gave sight of him, so she stepped out on the front porch. No R.C.

  * * *

  A few days later, when the snow nearly reached their knees and neither the snowblower nor the shovel could be found, Willadeene Rutherford paid Gussie and Min a visit.

  “I envy you and Minrose. At least it’s two of you. That sure do make things a lot easier. I have to struggle to make ends meet all by myself.” She fumbled with the clasp on her black patent-leather pocketbook. “I sure wish I could do more. It’s awfully hard without a husband—being on a fixed income and all.”

  Gussie tugged at the envelope clenched between Willadeene’s fat fingers, thinking the foolish woman’s ends would meet just fine if her son stopped robbing the neighborhood. She could feel Min leaning against her back, fighting to quell her laughter. They had stood in the exact same pose a year ago at the side of Herbert Rutherford’s gilded casket lined with scarlet crushed velvet.

  After the passing of Willadeene’s husband, Gussie and Min had paid her a visit only to find the woman did not have time. She cut them off at the door when the Bell Funeral Home van pulled into her driveway. Motioning for Gussie and Min to step aside, she’d instructed the three young men charged with the delivery of the casket to put it on the picnic table in the backyard.

  “Herbert was too good a man to go down in the earth in just anything,” Willadeene had explained to her neighbors. “Now, you all have to excuse me. I must go and pick up a special order of gold paint.”

  Over the next several days, between writing and rewriting the eulogy, ordering the flowers, selecting the perfect hymn, and placing the announcement of Herbert Rutherford’s “Homegoing Celebration” in the Providence Journal, Willadeene Rutherford primed, painted, and appliquéd plastic gems on the once plain coffin. Gussie and Min would s
tand tippy-toe on their back porch, craning their necks to see over the silvery Andorra shrubs as the busy widow transformed her backyard into Designer Coffins “R” Us.

  Now Willadeene dabbed at her brow. “Fifty dollars is all I can spare.”

  “Thank you,” Min replied over Gussie’s shoulder.

  As soon as Willadeene had departed, Gussie remarked, “Guess you’re satisfied. You gave a wino permission to go into our toolshed and pawn the snowblower.”

  * * *

  On an errands spree the week before Christmas, Min and Gussie huddled close with Maudetha Blake as she recounted a scene in the parking lot of Whole Foods.

  “Last summer I was having a good time at WaterFire—just standing there watching the street performers, getting excited by the craft and food vendors, and who did I happen to see riding by on my grandson’s ten speed? I tell you, R.C.’s nothing but the devil. Nothing but.”

  Min reminded Maudetha of her high blood pressure, but Gussie commiserated: “Let him keep on stealing from folks. It’s bound to come back on him. You mark my words. Can’t do wrong but for so long before the sin finds you out.”

  Maudetha admired Min’s fur coat, told her she just looked “delicious” in it. Gussie rolled her eyes because she hated what was coming. Min didn’t know how to give a simple thanks for a compliment. On the way to the car, Gussie said, “Maudetha didn’t ask you how old you are. Anybody who stands still long enough and you have to blurt out, I’ll be seventy-four in such-and-such days. You ought not to carry on so, as if getting old is something to be proud of. Any fool can do it.”

  “I wouldn’t be so sure . . . with these police going off half-cocked,” Min said.

  * * *

  The late-December moon waxed full at half past eleven several nights later and Gussie couldn’t sleep. She blamed the insomnia on Min’s cooking—the evening’s fish cakes and tasty jag called to her.

  She was carrying the cod cakes into the den when Min entered the kitchen and picked up the large bowl of grapes she’d left uncovered on the counter, a vain attempt to encourage her partner to snack healthfully. When Gussie brought her first forkful to her mouth, Min reached over her and snatched away the Tupperware dish.

  “Shiiiit! You like an old sneaky cat, woman,” Gussie hissed, accepting the bowl of grapes Min handed to her.

  “Scoot over. I can’t sleep. And I’d appreciate it if you’d find a decent picture for us to watch. None of that Jimmy Fallon or other foolishness.”

  They were settling into the worn sofa and All About Eve when a knock thundered on the wooden frame of the door, startling Gussie. Min looked at her and wondered if this was the woman she would know for the rest of their lives—so nervous, so jumpy all the time.

  “Who makes a social call at this time of night?” Min said.

  Under the porch light stood R.C. Rutherford. Min didn’t know what to say.

  “I know it’s late. I been away. Just come back to town. My own mama don’t know I’m back yet. I feel mighty bad about what I did to you and Miss Gussie.”

  “Min?” Gussie called out in a frail voice.

  “Yes?”

  “Who is it?”

  “R.C.” Min stared into his eyes in search of truth, and thought she saw some.

  “Now, I know what you thinking, Miss Min. You wondering why you should listen to a thief.”

  Gussie entered the kitchen and listened from behind the door.

  “You don’t have to tell me, I know I’ve split my britches with everybody on Larch Street—wait a minute. Here, I brought you something.” He dug into the pocket of his jacket and pulled out a crumpled envelope. “Please take it. I want you to buy a new snowblower.” The hand clutching the envelope trembled a little; with his other hand, he reached out and grabbed the handle of a shovel propped against the house. “Wish I could get you one of those snowblowers you ride around on.”

  “Thank you, R.C. This’ll go with the money Willadeene gave us too. Now you take that shovel and put it back where you got it from. Now let me close this door before we both catch pneumonia.”

  A look of disappointment flashed on R.C.’s face. Min knew he wanted her to invite him in, but he launched into the story anyway, right there on the porch in the dead of winter. He was twenty-seven and for the first time in his life he had a good plan. The waitress at the IHOP on Pleasant Valley Parkway, where he’d stopped for country fried steak, told him it was a good plan so he knew it had to be. He didn’t need his mama’s home or a halfway house. He would go to clown school and entertain children. But first he had to get the money together.

  Min told him, “Good luck,” edging the door closed.

  “It’s gonna be harder than I thought, huh, Miss Min?”

  “You know bad news, R.C.—ain’t no speed it won’t drive. Travels fast. And good news barely moves at all. Get yourself together and know it’s going to take a little time before folks trust you again.”

  “I’m real sorry about what I done. Please tell Miss Gussie I said so. I’m gonna find a way to make it up to you.”

  “Well don’t think too hard on it tonight, R.C. Go on home.”

  When they finally climbed into bed at two in the morning, Gussie turned on public radio and got excited by the voice that came out. “There he is. My, it’s been a long time since we heard him.”

  “Bobby Blue Bland,” Min said. “That album Dreamer . . . what was the song you used to wear out? Named after some woman, I think. Yvette?”

  “Yolanda! Driving around Charleston in a bright red cadillac. She took his money and left him crying.”

  Min started to sing, “Oh Yolanda, why you forsake me? Why you just lay, lay, lay my body down? Oh Yolanda, why did you leave me? In this wilderness with no money down.”

  “You remember that summer we drove to the Shenandoah Valley and just happened to catch Mr. Bland at that dive in Staunton?”

  “You said that was the best barbecue you ever tasted in your life.”

  “It was.”

  “You drank too much beer.”

  “I did.”

  “Sat with you in the car with your head in my lap for a couple of hours before you could drive us back to the hotel.”

  “Yeah, so, what does this story prove except you love me? Tell me something I don’t know.”

  * * *

  Gussie slept fitfully. When the shot went off and R.C. fell to the floor, she shook awake and opened her eyes to Min’s steady breathing. The room was still dark but she sensed sunrise was not far off. She pulled the quilt up higher when she heard a loud thud. On her way to the kitchen, Gussie stopped at the basement door. She could hear someone singing “Silent Night.”

  The door swung open and Gussie stumbled and braced herself, stunned to see R.C. standing there in her hallway, smelling like a saloon, snot eddying in the gulch just below his nose, just as it had been every day she taught him the first quarter of fourth grade.

  “I was just coming to get you and Miss Min up. I’ve searched everywhere that I would think to hide something valuable and can’t find anything worth a damn. So I figured I just better get you two up and ask you.”

  Gussie thought about the storm doors outside that led down to their basement and how she and Min never locked them. This probably wasn’t the first time he had been inside their home.

  “R.C., what in the world is going on here?”

  “We not in your class anymore, Miss Gussie. You go sit in the kitchen. I’m gonna get Miss Min up. We gonna talk about this the way I wanted to when I came a few hours ago.”

  Gussie was unmoved until R.C. pulled from his pocket the little six-shooter that had belonged to Min’s father.

  “I found this in one of the boxes. I don’t plan to use it but it comes in handy for scaring folks. Now you go on in the kitchen and sit down.”

  “What has your life come to, R.C.?” Min said, appearing out of the shadows.

  R.C. scratched his head and tugged at his left earlobe, gestures Gussie reme
mbered from when he was unable to answer questions in class. He pushed both women into the kitchen, flipped on the light, and ordered them to sit down at the table. Under his baleful gaze Gussie felt her heart jackknife in her chest as her bladder released.

  “What do you want, R.C.?” Min’s voice was flat and disgusted.

  Gussie groaned as two urine rivulets became one at the cleft between her pressed-together knees.

  R.C. looked at Gussie’s hands shaking on the table and Min’s still as a frozen pond. “You all used to have rings—I remember that—just like you was man and wife. Where they at?” He smirked and wiped his runny nose with the back of his hand.

  Min saw the rings in her mind’s eye, white gold with baguette-cut sapphire inlay, in a little black velvet bag in the third drawer of the jewelry box, where they’d kept them when both of their knuckles had swollen too large to wear them.

  With a captive audience, R.C. launched into his plan to become Rhode Island’s top clown, and his need for money. He asked about the rings a second time—calm, almost friendly—but neither woman said anything until he waved the pistol in the air.

  Gussie began to cry.

  “You won’t give me no money so I need those rings—for clown school, I’ve already told you. You think the Boy Scouts of Providence would ever hire me? You know, to entertain the troops? I never did earn any badges for my mama. Planned to but didn’t. Never did bring home no As either. Matter of fact, after your class, Miss Gussie, my report cards didn’t have no letters on them at all. Checks. Just checks. No letters. That’s why I always said you was my favorite. Between me, y’all, and the gatepost, I don’t think you have to be too sharp to put checks on a piece of paper. I still got the report card Miss Gussie gave me, framed, hanging on the wall. Four Ds . . . an F in math . . . and a C in physical education. I think they let me into the Scouts on account of that C in gym. I think I took a shine to you, Miss Gussie, right then. Sky-blue eyes, big, wide smile, tall as a sycamore tree. Made it awfully hard when I got up in age and people started saying funny things about you and Miss Min. Even though I wasn’t yet tall, I wasn’t ashamed to stand up for you. I told them just ’cause you was kinda built like a fella didn’t mean you made believe like you was one in the bed with Miss Min. Problem was, the boy I mouthed off to was a whole bunch bigger than me. He asked me if I was calling him a liar. I told him if the shoes fit he didn’t have to buy them but he had to walk around the store in them. After I got my behind beat for you—all shades of blue—I asked my mama if what folks said about you and Miss Min was true. I imagine it is, she said. How my own mama imagined something like that was beyond me. Men got pricks and ladies got cooters and that’s just the way it goes. Who ever heard of two cooters—didn’t make no sense. Still don’t. One or both of you is gonna have to get right with God. Anyway, the way I see it, Miss Gussie chased my luck from bad to good with that report card, which is probably how I ended up in the Scouts. No other club took me before then or since. And all I’m saying now is that I need for her to do that for me again—be my luck, Miss Gussie.”