by Sharon Short
“Look,” I said, suddenly compelled to find the coins.
“No—” Mama said, but she stared into the box as if she were compelled, too.
“I think they’re at the bottom,” I said. I scooted a little away from Mama to make space, and started pulling out items—little swatches of hair, tied up in pink ribbons, from my various haircuts, with tags labeled with my age at each haircut. I put those out along with a rubberbanded bunch of report cards and some handmade Christmas cards and a few pictures and my school pictures. My volleyball medals and my high school tassel.
All of it, saved by Aunt Clara, from third grade forward. The only thing from before then was the small leather bag, lumpy with coins.
I picked it up. “See!” I said. “This is the bag of coins Daddy left.”
I looked at Mama, eagerly. She was pale, her eyes glistening. “Oh,” I said. I reckon a lot of folks would say I had every right to be angry with her, but I felt suddenly sorry for her. She’d missed watching me grow up and I could see in her face that at least part of her regretted that.
Mama smiled sadly. “I guess I don’t have any right to suddenly feel jealous of all your Uncle Horace and Aunt Clara got to experience with you.”
“You could have had that with me. Why did you choose to go away?”
My voice was steady, clear, almost nonemotional. I was simply . . . curious.
Mama shook her head. “That was just it. I couldn’t have experienced it. I’d have never done all of—” she waved her hands over the spread of mementos—“of this. See, I loved your daddy. I’ve always loved him. It’s a crazy love. Every time I think how he and I would be better off apart, I know we can’t be apart. Not for long. I thought, for those years after he left, that I was over him.
“I tried to be a good mama to you. But I wasn’t good at it. As much as I mourned the loss of the first baby, I knew even then that I wasn’t really cut out to be a mother. That made me feel guilty, so I tried to make it up with you—but I still wasn’t cut out to be a parent.
Some folks just aren’t, Josie. Henry and I are among them.”
I took in what she had just said. Mama realized she and Daddy just weren’t cut out to be parents. Well, I couldn’t argue with that.
But while she was in the mood to talk like a reasonable human being, I had another question. “How did you connect up with Daddy again?”
“Very simple,” Mama said, with a rueful laugh. “I got a call one day. From Effie Burkette. Just after the trailer burned. Did you know that that was because I fell asleep with a cigarette?”
I shook my head. “I don’t remember you smoking.”
“Well, I did. I’ve long quit, but I did. Usually I smoked outside, both to keep the smell out, and out of concern for you. But it was my fault the trailer burned. It’s amazing we got out alive, and managed to save anything at all. Anyway, what was I saying?”
“Effie Burkette.” Amazing, I thought, how much more connected to that family we’d been than I realized.
“Oh, yeah. Well. Effie and I stayed in touch through all the years. She kept it secret from Rich and Lenny, because she knew Lenny still felt something for me, and she didn’t want him nagging her about me. And she kept it secret from Rich because he was always telling her who she needed to associate with to make him look good—and believe me, I didn’t make that list.
“But Effie had been kind of like a mother figure to me when Lenny and I went together, so we stayed in touch off and on. Anyway, Effie and Rich had been on vacation at some fancy hotel in North Carolina, and what do you know—they saw Henry working as a bus-boy in the hotel restaurant.”
“Coincidence,” I said.
“Fate,” Mama said firmly. “Some folks say there’s no difference. Anyway. We were staying with Chief Hilbrink and his wife. I knew they’d dote on you if I left. So I took off, thinking I’d find Henry and give him a piece of my mind and demand some money from him. But instead . . .”
She shifted her gaze back to the collection on my bed. “Instead . . . what?”
She looked up at me. “I saw him and I couldn’t be angry. I wanted to believe his pretty stories about how he was finally going to hit it big with this or that scheme. Then we’d come back and show Fenwick. One thing led to another, time passed, and . . .”
“And you just decided not to come back.”
Mama sighed. “I heard from Lottie Arrowood, too, now and again—she promised not to tell where I was. When she told me you were at the orphanage, we started making plans to come back up here, but then Clara and Horace took you in. And then I heard how well you were doing with them, and I realized, well, that you’d be better off with them than with us.
“That’s not meant to sound selfless, Josie. Like I said, some folks aren’t cut out to be parents, and that includes me and your daddy. We loved you, but I guess we’re just too selfish.”
She picked up the picture of Guy again, stared at it. “I never could do what Clara and Horace did. What you’re doing.” She looked up at me. “I can’t envy you, but I don’t know if I should pity you.”
I took Guy’s picture from her, held it to my chest. “Don’t you dare pity me,” I said. “I love Guy like a brother and I wouldn’t trade my love—or responsibility—for him for anything.”
Mama stared at me, clearly not understanding.
I sighed. She was right. It was sad to say, but she and Daddy had done me a favor by leaving me with Uncle Horace and Aunt Clara. I just wished they’d come back, explained it to me years ago. But then, if they had thought of doing that, would they be the sort to have been unfaithful to each other, to have dropped their responsibilities in the first place?
I put Guy’s picture back, picked up the bag of coins, opened it, and shook out the contents into my hand. I fingered a few of the coins.
“They’re so . . . odd,” I said. “Old-looking.” I looked up at her. “Are these antiques?”
Mama shrugged. “I guess so.”
I frowned. “You’re planning to open FleaMart, and you don’t know if these are antiques?”
She shrugged again. “Your daddy is the one who knows something about antiques. Not me. I take care of the business end of our ventures—financing, bookkeeping, marketing.”
“So . . . what kind of ventures have you two had all these years, besides FleaMart?”
Mama looked away. “Oh . . . this and that.”
Uh huh, I thought. They’d tried various get-rich-quick schemes, half-baked business ideas like FleaMart, and hadn’t succeeded at a single one. Otherwise, they’d have been back by now so Daddy could brag to Fenwick. But they’d made a hit with one FleaMart, down in Arkansas, much to their surprise.
I looked at the coins. “I remember you grabbing me from my room in the trailer. And I wiggled free so I could grab this bag of coins. You kept it in the kitchen drawer with the spatulas and such.”
Mama nodded. “That’s right. And I was angry, because you could have gotten hurt, straggling in the trailer.” She smiled. “I may not have been much of a mama, but I didn’t want you to get hurt.” She patted my cheek. “I still don’t.”
I was still staring at the coins, though. “I thought these meant so much to you. That’s why you wanted me to make a wish with them.”
“Oh, Josie. Every time I got angry at Henry running off, I sent you to toss one of his precious coins down the wishing well. It felt like a little bit of revenge.” I looked up at her. “Besides,” she added, smiling ruefully. “They wouldn’t work in the Masonville laundromat machines.”
18
Coins spun around my head, annoyingly, like gnats. Even worse, clothespins were chasing the coins, snapping at them. The dizzying race they made around my head looked like some mutant variation of the vintage Pac-Man arcade game Sally kept in the back room of the Bar-None.
Of course, I knew I was dreaming, and that the clothespins weren’t really going to snap my nose, or the coins dash into my eyes. Still, as I stood in the middle o
f my dream fog, I swatted at the coins and clothespins, all the while hollering, “Mrs. Oglevee, enough! Make it stop! I don’t know what your point is, and this is getting tiresome. Mrs. Oglevee!”
Finally my former junior high teacher appeared. She was dressed in a cowgirl get-up and holding a length of clothesline. And she was grinning, amused at my discomfort.
I crossed my arms and resolutely ignored the cicada-like clothespins and coins, which had just started buzzing. Just a dream, I reminded myself. Although in the past, my Mrs. Oglevee dreams had helped me sort out problems. Just my subconscious, I told myself, perversely taking the form of my most feared teacher. At least, that’s what I preferred to believe.
“Just what do you think you’re going to do with that?” I said. “Have some laundry to hang out to dry?”
Mrs. Oglevee shook her head and clucked. “Josie, Josie. Didn’t I always try to tell you to use your imagination, to see things from more than one angle?”
Actually, once I tried to explain on a multiple choice test why two of the four options could be the right choice, and even though one of them was the right choice according to the teacher’s guide book, Mrs. Oglevee had not only counted the answer wrong, but gave me an F because I hadn’t followed the directions to simply circle a., b., c., or d. But I didn’t think this was the time to bring up this fine memory.
Suddenly, Mrs. Oglevee turned the clothesline into a lasso, and snapped it toward my head.
I admit it. I ducked, squeezing my eyes shut. When I opened them again, Mrs. Oglevee was once more smiling. She was circling the lasso in front of her, and somehow the coins and clothespins floated in the middle.
“See? The clothesline can be used as a clothesline, or as a lasso.” She snapped the lasso suddenly, and it went flying into the air. She caught the ends and the coins and clothespins fell at her feet, no longer possessed.
Mrs. Oglevee started jump-roping with the clothesline. She’d never been that spry in life.
“Cut that out!” I snapped. “You’re not making sense. Lassos and jump-roping have nothing to do with Uncle Fenwick’s murder! Or the rest of this mess!”
“You still don’t get it, do you,” Mrs. Oglevee said, chortling, and not losing a bit of breath while she kept jump-roping. If she suddenly doubled and did double-Dutch with herself, I was going to close my eyes and poke my fingers in my ears until I woke up.
“When is a clothesline not a clothesline?” Mrs. Oglevee asked.
“Don’t you dare turn that thing into a snake,” I hollered, eyes narrowing, fingers ready.
But Mrs. Oglevee laughed, while still jump-roping. “Ah! Now you’re getting it! One thing can have many uses. But sometimes, a clothesline is not a clothesline because—”
She stopped suddenly, and held half of the clothesline in each hand.
“How did you break that in half in midair?” I know, I know. It was just a dream, and anything is possible in dreams, but it was still a remarkable image.
But Mrs. Oglevee ignored my question and finished, “—because it’s two clotheslines.”
I stared at the clotheslines in each of her hands. “Two . . . two clotheslines?”
“And sometimes,” Mrs. Oglevee went on, “a clothesline is not a clothesline, but a noose.”
The clothesline in her right hand suddenly flew from her hand, snapped itself into a noose, hovered over her head for a brief moment, like a perverse halo, and then dropped down over her head and tightened itself around her neck. Her face turned purple immediately, her tongue stuck out, and suddenly she was dangling and kicking and gagging.
I squeezed my eyes shut and stuck my fingers in my ears. “Stop it!” I cried. I knew she was already dead, of course, and couldn’t really hurt herself, but the image still bothered me. “I know someone tried to hang poor Uncle Fenwick before stabbing him—”
“Answer A and answer B, Josie,” Mrs. Oglevee said, her voice quite normal—though a little distant-sounding, since my ears were plugged.
The comment frustrated me enough that I unplugged my ears and opened my eyes. “You gave me an F for that,” I hollered. Then I stared at Mrs. Oglevee. She was back to normal—well, as normal as she could be for an apparition of my subconscious . . . or of wherever (I’d never quite decided where I thought Mrs. Oglevee ended up in the afterlife), except that she had the clothesline(s) back into a lasso, which she was spinning with the coins and clothespins.
“Wait,” I said. “Answer A and answer B . . . you mean Uncle Fenwick tried to kill himself . . . and someone killed him? Finished him off instead of trying to stop him?” I shuddered. The idea was horrendous. But still. Answer A and answer B, both right . . .
Mrs. Oglevee just shrugged. Suddenly, the clothesline lasso, coins, and clothespins all disappeared. I thought maybe that meant she was going to disappear, too, but instead, she suddenly made another coin appear out of her cowgirl blouse sleeve, just like the clichéd magic trick.
“Is this something only Josie can figure out . . . or does she need the help of others?” Mrs. Oglevee said, staring at the coin. “Heads, only Josie; tails, help of others.” She flipped the coin, and I watched as it spun impossibly high up into the whiteness of my dream. Then she caught it perfectly in her right hand, and slapped it on her left forearm.
She moved her hand away, and stared at the coin on her forearm. “Hmmm,” she said.
“Well, which is it?” I asked anxiously. “Heads or tails?”
But Mrs. Oglevee just smiled, and did her usual Chesire-cat-like disappearing act, all the while saying, “Answer A and answer B, Josie. Heads and tails. A and B . . .”
“. . . heads and tails, A and B, heads and tails . . .” I woke up mumbling—and then sat bolt upright in my bed. I jerked open the drawer in my nightstand, grabbed my dream journal, and quickly began jotting notes. I’d started the dream journal after Halloween, when I realized that Mrs. Oglevee probably wasn’t going to go away and that even without her, I often had vivid dreams.
So, in this dream, what had Mrs. Oglevee been trying to tell me?
Uncle Fenwick had committed suicide . . . and been murdered.
Only I could figure this mystery out . . . and I had to solve this with other people.
I tapped the pencil against my teeth—a habit that had annoyed Mrs. Oglevee in school, but she wasn’t here to stop me—and tried to think.
It was possible that Uncle Fenwick had started to commit suicide, and then had his deadly work finished for him.
But how could only I solve this mystery, yet solve it with other people?
Apparently there was something only I could know, or find out, but I’d also need others’ help. I’d already, in fact, enlisted others’ help. All I’d really learned was the whole sad saga of my parents’ past. Everyone else seemed to know them far better than I did. What could I know about that no one else did?
And there was something else, too, in the dream . . . two clotheslines, just like two answers to a question . . .
I shifted in bed. Something plunked out and onto the floor. I peered over the edge of my bed.
The bag of coins.
I was distracted from thinking about two clotheslines. There was something only I knew about the bag of coins? Or maybe something only I could find out about the coins. Something only I could ask my parents . . .
I listened for my mama stirring, but didn’t hear anything. I looked at my nightstand clock, which said it was just after six in the morning. I frowned. I realized I’d been writing in my dream journal—but I hadn’t turned on a light. There was enough light seeping through my bedroom curtains for me to write by, which meant it had to be fairly late in the morning.
I threw back the covers on my bed, horrified that I’d overslept, and then felt the chill. I looked at the clock again. Its digital second hand wasn’t ticking along as usual.
And suddenly I was shivering.
Damn. I hopped out of bed.
The electricity in my building was off.
&
nbsp; Electricity and heat out in the middle of a cold spell is no fun for anyone, but it can be downright disastrous for someone whose business is water based. I’d already dealt with water damage at the end of October from burst pipes in the street outside my laundromat. I sure didn’t need to deal with pipes bursting inside my laundromat because the heat was off. I’d have to turn off the water to the whole building.
I pulled on socks, stuffed my feet into boots, pulled on my coat, dashed through the living room, hollering, “Mama, don’t start a shower or coffee! I’m going to turn off the water!”
Then I hurried down the exterior stairs, as best I could considering the steps were still icy, let myself into the back of my laundromat, went to the water shut-off, and turned off the water to the whole building. Then I heaved a huge sigh of relief. I’d woken up in time to turn off the water and keep the pipes from freezing and bursting.
I went to my desk, and wrote CLOSED DUE TO POWER OUTAGE with laundry marker on a spare manila file folder, and then trotted into the main part of my laundromat. I taped up the sign, right under the smiling toad, which I’d painted on the plate glass front window along with my slogan, ALWAYS A LEAP AHEAD OF DIRT!
Then I started back up to my apartment. It would soon be too cold to stay in the apartment. Maybe, I thought, Mama and I could go to Mamaw Toadfern’s house. Or better yet, Mrs. Beavy’s. Or Sally’s, or Cherry’s.
I smiled, pleased that I could come up with a list of places to go on such short notice. I’d have included Winnie on the list if she was in town. I started to think of Owen, and then told myself to stop.
“Mama, get up,” I said to the lump on the couch. Mama was, I figured, nestled deeply under the comforter on the couch. She didn’t respond. “Get up,” I said again, and poked where I thought her shoulder would be.
Mama wasn’t there. I whipped back the jumbled-up comforter. No Mama.
I looked around my living room. Her suitcase was still next to the couch, but her fur and purse were gone. I opened her suitcase. Her clothes, Daddy’s clothes.
