Molly reached out and put a finger on the V in his name. She closed her eyes and traced the sharp edges of the carved letter slowly; it was like a small arrow pointing down at the earth where he was buried. “Rose and Parnell say hello,” she said.
“Tell them hello back,” said Jo Beth, thinking Molly was talking to her.
“I will.” Molly stood up. “Jo Beth?”
“Hmm?”
“He was a man who loved and suffered a great deal, your grandfather. He loved me with no reservations and he taught me how to enjoy life. Not a perfect man by a long shot, but I miss him every day.”
“I wish I’d known him.”
“Me too, baby. Me too.”
THERE WAS AN OLD WOMAN WHO LIVED NEAR A CREEK.
SHE HAD SO MANY MEMORIES IT MADE HER KNEES WEAK.
SHE FLOATED THE SKY ON A BOTTLE OF WINE.
SHE FORGOT ALL HER TROUBLES AND FELT, OH, SO FINE.
—SARAH JANE HURLEY
Sarah Jane Hurley is sitting in the quiet parlor of the boardinghouse on San Gabriel, paging through magazines. She likes staying here because the shabby oak furniture is big—her size—and comfortable, and because there are stacks of old National Geographic and Life and Redbook magazines.
A young woman sticks her head in and looks around. Sarah Jane hopes she isn’t going to come in and turn on the television. Having to listen to all that racket pisses her off.
“Ma? Is that you?”
Startled, Sarah Jane looks up. “Ellie!” she says, pressing her hands to her chest. Her heart is bounding right through her ribs.
Sarah Jane stands up and the magazines that were in her lap scatter to the floor. “Ellie. How are you?”
“I’m good, real good. How about you, Ma?”
“Well, I’m just fine.” Sarah Jane feels suddenly compelled to speak the truth: there are days when she feels like she’s going to smother under all the details, the reality and the remembering. “I mean, I’m fine today, right this minute. You know, one day at a time.”
Ellie walks over, wraps her arms around Sarah Jane, and gives her a long hug. When Sarah Jane recovers from the shock of it, she hugs her back, desperately, savoring the wonderful solid feel of her daughter, her broad back and billowy bosom, just like her own. It’s a dream, of course. Sarah Jane has never been good at separating fantasy from reality, and during the past few years she’s been hopeless at it.
They let go of each other, finally. Sarah Jane stands back and looks at her daughter. Ellie has cut her hair. It is short now and curly all over her head. She’s stopped trying to straighten it. She looks … dreamy.
“You look just beautiful, Ellie. I like your hair that way.”
Ellie runs a hand through her curls. “Oh. It’s been like this for more than two years, Ma.”
“Two years? Really?” Sarah Jane is overwhelmed by how much they’ve missed of one another’s lives, too much to ever catch up on. Anyway, she’s not sure catching up is a good idea: there’s so much about the life she’s led the past three years that she doesn’t want Ellie to know, ever. She is embarrassed to tell this, even at her meetings, but she really feels that she was brought kicking and screaming back to life, and has become a new woman. She doesn’t want Ellie to know about that other person, Cow Lady, although there are moments when Sarah Jane misses her—her freedom and her numbness.
“I kept that hundred you gave me, Ellie,” Sarah Jane says. “I was planning to give it back to you—the exact same hundred-dollar bill. Remember you were so mad and you said I’d go right out and spend it on booze, but I didn’t. I kept it pinned inside my shirt—sort of a good luck charm—till last month. I used it for an emergency, to get a ride to the Capitol.”
“I read about it in the paper. They say you saved all those people.”
“I came awfully close to not doing it, Ellie.” Her voice shakes as she says this because only she knows how really close she came to not doing it.
“But you did, and I’m real proud of you.”
“Well, thanks. How did you know where to find me?”
“The lady who called told me.”
“What lady’s that?”
“Oh, the one from some magazine. I forget her name. Said she thought you’d like to see me.”
“Well, I do, yes, but I thought you were still mad.”
“I was before, but I’m not now. You know?”
“Sure. Sure I do. I’m not easy to put up with, the drinking and all.” Sarah Jane chokes back tears; crying is too cheap a way out. She has cried plenty the last month, though, and she has let herself remember it all—the neglect, the violent rages, the drunken fights with Harold, the lost jobs, the forgotten birthdays, the fire—and she has even stood up in front of other people at her meetings and told about it. “I’m awful sorry, Ellie, but it’s past now.”
“Oh, Ma.”
To give herself a minute to collect herself, Sarah Jane bends over and picks up the magazines she spilled on the floor.
Then Ellie says, “I was thinking maybe we could go out for lunch.”
“Oh, I’d love that, Ellie, but I can’t.”
“Oh.”
“See, I’ve got my meeting at noon. You know, my … AA meeting. And after that I have this little, oh, it’s not really a job—I don’t get paid—but it’s something I do on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at two.”
“What’s that?”
“I read to kids at the library, at the little branch right next door to where my meeting is. I was just hanging out there and they said why not make myself useful.” She shrugs.
“That sounds so good, Ma. Remember when you used to read to me and Tom? You were so patient reading those same rhymes, over and over. I still know them all by heart.”
Sarah Jane smiles. “So do I.”
“Well, Ma, you’re busy and I don’t want to interfere. But maybe we could have dinner instead. I took the whole day off, so”—she give a little laugh—“I might as well stay and live it up.”
“Yes. Sure. That would be so good, Ellie.”
There is an awkward silence when the two women look at one another and Sarah Jane thinks that Ellie must be thinking what an old wreck her mother has become, with her skin so wrinkled and weathered and her hair gone so gray and out of control.
“I talked with Tom yesterday,” Ellie says.
Sarah Jane feels herself clench up, preparing for the pain that is sure to come. “How is your brother?”
“He’s pretty good, living back in Houston again. He read about you in the paper. Says to tell you you did good.”
Sarah Jane is stunned by this, overwhelmed. Tom has refused to see her or talk with her since he was seventeen. She has not seen him for twelve years. This is the first message he has sent her. “He said that? To tell me I did good?”
“Listen, Ma,” Ellie says, “I’ve got my car outside. I could drop you at your meeting. Is there anywhere you’d like to go before?”
Sarah Jane looks at her daughter’s hair. “You know, I’d like to get my hair cut, Ellie. Maybe we could find a place that would take me without an appointment.” Since this is just a dream, she figures, all things are possible.
Ellie looks at her mother’s hair and smiles. “We can try,” she says.
Epilogue
On Molly Cates’s computer screen:
My birthday has come and gone.
I am now the same age as my father. We are contemporaries, he and I.
I know more about him than I did when I began writing this essay. Much more. I know he experienced his share of failure and mediocrity. So have I. I know he made some mistakes that caused great suffering to himself and the people he loved. So have I. I know he committed adultery. So have I. I know he kept dark and dangerous secrets all his life. So have I. I know now that he died by his own hand. In my darker hours, I have considered that path too.
So here I am in my forty-sixth year with this as part of my paternal heritage. But in a few months I will be older
than he ever was. I will enter brand-new territory that he never trod. Maybe I will feel like a racehorse then, pushing my nose out in front of the pack, breaking away, moving on, setting my own pace. Maybe I have outlived and outgrown whatever pattern my father set for me. Maybe I can show my daughter—and myself-—that when we make mistakes, even terrible ones, it is possible to acknowledge them and move on. Maybe it is also possible to forgive ourselves and one another.
When I was eleven and foolhardy, I broke Daddy’s strictest rule and rode my horse into the pasture where Jocko the bull lived. Jocko attacked, goring my leg and tossing me across the pasture. Then he badly gored Scout, my old quarter horse.
I lost gallons of blood and nearly died, they tell me. Weeks later, when Daddy was driving me home from the hospital, he told me he was very sorry, but that while I’d been ill, Scout’s wounds had gotten infected and they’d had to put him down.
I was devastated.
“It was all my fault,” I said, sobbing. “I killed him.”
Daddy patted me on the knee and kept on driving.
“This is the worst thing that could ever happen,” I wailed. “I broke the rules and I killed Scout.”
“This is a hard one,” he agreed.
“You must hate me,”I sobbed.
Daddy pulled the truck over to the side of the road. “Sweetheart,” he said, wrapping his arms around me, “there is nothing you could do that would make me hate you—absolutely nothing in this world.”
I continued to weep into his shoulder, gasping for breath.
“We’re family, you and I,” he whispered into my ear, “we can understand and forgive everything.”
That is the voice that has remained with me, the voice I hear reverberating when fear and self-doubt threaten to overwhelm me.
My father was grievously flawed. He is closer and dearer to me now than when I chose to believe him perfect.
About the Author
MARY WILLIS WALKER is the author of Zero at the Bone, which won both the Agatha and Macavity awards and was nominated for an Edgar; The Red Scream, winner of the Edgar Award; and Under the Beetle’s Cellar, recipient of the Hammett Prize, the Anthony Award, and the Macavity Award. She lives in Austin, Texas, where she is now at work on her fifth novel.
This edition contains the complete text of the original hardcover edition.
NOT ONE WORD HAS BEEN OMITTED.
ALL THE DEAD LIE DOWN
A Bantam Book
PUBLISHING HISTORY
Doubleday edition published May 1998
Bantam mass market edition / March 2002
All rights reserved.
Copyright © 1998 by Mary Willis Walker.
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 97-24131
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. For information address: Doubleday, a division of Random House, Inc.
eISBN: 978-0-307-57437-4
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