by Julie Smith
She didn’t want to see anyone except Tony, to tell him how sorry she was that she’d sucked him into this, and to touch him, to reassure herself that he really was all right. But he was in his father’s room, and that meant braving Audrey and Angie and the gray, shrunken, pathetic Eddie, for whom she really wasn’t ready at this point. But she had to see him.
Tony caught her in a bear hug that said it all. To her surprise, Audrey and Angie hugged her too, apparently hadn’t caught on that it was she who’d nearly gotten him killed.
She stayed a few minutes to hear Tony’s story, and she was glad, because Eddie mumbled something, and that had to be a good sign.
And then the cops took her away. They were there the whole time, hovering, awaiting their chance. She had had to insist, to threaten a scene, even to get the few minutes with Tony, because she knew it was going to be a long haul.
When they finally let her go, Darryl was there for her. She hadn’t called him, but she knew he’d be there. She should have been happy about it. She was miserable. She didn’t want to be with anybody for a while. But home meant Miz Clara and a hundred reporters. She gratefully accepted his offer to stay at his house.
She was surprised that she couldn’t talk to him. He wanted her to tell him everything, to fill him in, but she couldn’t. All she could do was lie on the bed and stare at the ceiling. He was dying to watch the footage of the scene, but she couldn’t bear it. She couldn’t even let him hold her.
When he went to work the next morning, she found some bourbon and drank enough of that to put her out again, and she slept until he came home from school. He let her sleep until early evening, when he made her some spaghetti with red gravy— a known comfort food— and forced her to eat it.
They talked small talk until he said, “Listen, you’ve really been through some shit.”
It didn’t seem worth the effort to answer.
“You want to talk about it?”
“I can’t think about it.”
It was a mistake to say that. He gave her a lot of guff about what was healthy and what wasn’t and how victims have to tell their stories, and that kind of crap.
“No, you don’t get it. I can’t think about it.”
“Listen, I think I should call Cindy Lou.”
Cindy Lou. The damn police psychologist. The one who was with him the night they met. She was going to have to kill him.
“Talba, you’re hurting yourself, just lying around like this. Your mother’s worried about you, your brother’s worried about you…”
“You’ve been talking to them!”
“Hey, don’t be mad. Be grateful. I’ve kept them away so far. You know that wasn’t easy.”
“I’ve got to work this through on my own terms.”
“All right. Okay.” He didn’t sounded surprised. “You’ve got to do what you’ve got to do. Look, would you like to be alone tonight? I could go stay with a friend.”
“Let me think about it.” But even then she knew she was going to break through it. It was probably the simple act of his backing away that did it. She wasn’t ready yet to say, No, stay with me! but she was pretty sure she was about to be.
She thought about it for half an hour or so, and then she asked him to stay and she told him why she couldn’t even think about the shootout at Algiers Point. “It’s because every time I try, something weird in my mind takes over, and I’m back in that room again, with my father.”
He started making “it’s-only-natural” noises, but she had to stop him. “No. The gun brought it all back— shooting Toes.” She choked over the words. “Darryl, I didn’t see someone shoot my father, I shot him.”
“Oh, my God.” He spoke in a matter-of-fact tone, as if he’d suspected all along, but his handsome face was tragic. “Oh, my God.” He was barely whispering. “That’s what they were trying to protect you from.”
She nodded. “Yeah. It all makes a crazy kind of sense when you know. If I saw it, then they just seem like a crazy, overprotective family, but if I did it, they’ve got a reason not to tell me. I almost agree with them.”
“You do?”
That was when the first tears came. “Darryl, I do. You don’t know how awful this is— to realize something like this!” She cried a long time, and then she told him all that she remembered and all that she didn’t. When they had hashed it over a thousand times, they went to bed, and when she awakened he was gone.
Again, she got drunk and went back to bed. Sometime that afternoon, one or two o’clock, maybe, she was awakened by the smell of coffee brewing, and bacon cooking. It had to be Darryl, but how had he gotten off from school? She didn’t try to figure it out, just closed her eyes and went back to sleep. The person who shook her awake was Miz Clara.
“Who you think you is? Queen of the May?”
“Go away, Mama.”
“Come on, girl. You got to eat.”
“I’m not hungry.”
“And brush your teeth. You smell like a brewery.”
Talba closed her eyes. Miz Clara pulled the sheet off. And Talba got up and brushed her teeth.
She went into the kitchen and drank coffee and ate eggs, bacon, and toast while her mother bustled around the kitchen swiping at surfaces, removing ancient fingerprints, doing what she did all day at white ladies’ houses and then again at home. Miz Clara talked too, all about Talba’s star turn on the news and about how good she looked and how proud she was of her.
Very atypical talk for Miz Clara.
Talba didn’t trust it, but her mother was in an unusual mood— she might answer a straight question if Talba asked it. “Did they show me… pulling the trigger?”
“No, girl, they ain’ show that. They show him aimin’ at the camera.”
“At his brother. He’d have killed his own brother.” And then she realized what she’d just said, how close to home it was, and her throat closed.
Miz Clara sat down at the table. “Now listen up, girl. You didn’t kill your daddy.”
She had said the “D” word. Even now, now that Talba knew, her mother’d do anything to keep her from knowing. How goddam misguided, she thought, overwhelmed by the wrongheadedness of it. But at the same time, she was touched by it. She laid her hand on her mother’s. “Mama, you don’t have to lie anymore. I remember it.”
“You don’t remember nothin,’ Sandra. Not nothin.’ You didn’t kill your daddy.”
Talba didn’t even answer, just closed her eyes and bowed her head in frustration.
“You kill his woman.”
Her head jerked up. “What?”
Her mother spoke as softly as she ever had in Talba’s memory. “We didn’t want you to know, baby.”
“Mama, tell me. Tell me now!”
Her mother stroked Talba’s arm. “You just shush and listen. That’s what I’m here for.” She had on a bandanna, and Talba realized she’d taken off from work to come; she was losing half a day’s pay.
Miz Clara took a breath. “He was a bad, bad man, your daddy. Denman La Rose Wallis. Umm ummm ummm. Rue the day I take that man’s name. Bad? Girl! He done it all— alcohol, drugs, women. The other thing, too.”
Talba would have thought “the other thing” meant sex. But Miz Clara had just mentioned sex. “What other thing?” she said.
Miz Clara bowed her head, something she only did in church so far as Talba knew. She raised it abruptly. “He hit us.”
“Both of us?”
Her mother nodded. “Corey too. But one thing— the man only good quality— he love his chirren. He did love his chirren. I wouldn’t try to stop him from seein’ y’all, no matter how much I want to.”
I love this, Talba thought. She sent us over there to be beaten. But that was unfair, and she knew it. Her mother had done what she thought best. That was all that could be said about it.
“Women? Wooo, he had women. But one in particular. One he live with.” She looked down again. “One he have a baby with.”
“A baby? You
mean I’ve got a sister?”
“’Nother brother, maybe. I don’t remember.”
“A baby?”
Miz Clara moved right away from that one. “We had some real hard times with yo’ daddy gone.” She looked so sad Talba patted her.
“I know, Mama.”
“And maybe I say some things I shouldn’t.” Her eyes filled up. “Baby, you was always such a good little girl.”
“What? What, Mama?”
“Nothin’, honey. Nothin’ at all. You was a good little girl. Yo’ daddy was a bad man. Tha’s the whole story in a nutshell. He hang out with the criminal element and he carry a gun sometime. I know. I find it once or twice. Baby, precious…” Tears were spilling out of her eyes. “…you find it too.”
“I found it?”
“You weren’t but five, darlin’. You weren’t but five. What kinda man leave a gun lyin’ aroun’ where a five-year-old could find it? You answer me that? What kind of man do that?”
Until now, Talba hadn’t entirely trusted the story, had thought Miz Clara was still trying to soften the blow. But the movie was playing again. The man who picked her up, the one who tried to comfort her, was the man in the photo she’d found. Was unquestionably her father.
Unless my memory’s playing tricks again.
“Was my father there when it happened?”
“Ohhhhh, yes. Yes, ma’am, he certainly was. He’d left the gun on the coffee table. On the coffee table! Can you feature a thing like that?” Her voice was shrill with outrage. “He left his gun on the coffee table!”
“Well, what happened?”
“You was playin’ with the gun and it went off. Tha’s what happened. The woman died, your life ruined. Or could have been. Could have been ruined.
“Honey, we tried so hard to protect you. All in the world we was doing was tryin’ to keep you from knowin’ somethin’ ugly like that.”
She was crying in earnest now, and Talba felt her own tears ball up in a big clot at the back of her throat— they weren’t going to melt out of her for a while. She knew how it worked— she was going to have to feel lower than a worm until the crying worked its way to the surface, and there was nothing she could do to hasten the process. Nothing but lie down and stare at the ceiling.
“I know, Mama,” she said. “I know.”
She wondered if she should try to embrace her mother, but she thought not. This was a private grief.
“But why would I shoot the woman?” she said.
Her mother looked at her squarely. “I ain’t know, precious. The good Lord the only one know the answer to that. The good Lord the only one.”
Later, during the three subsequent days she stared at the ceiling, another movie took shape in her head: Corey spilling milk on the kitchen floor, Miz Clara screaming in frustration and despair. “Look what you done now! We ain’ got no money to buy more! Ain’t got enough for a quart of milk. And your daddy don’t even care, livin’ with that woman, neglectin’ his own two chirren— oh, Lord, I wish that woman was dead!”
Talba asked her mama if she’d ever had a kind of paisley overblouse, a sort of blue-and-gold print, that she wore over jeans, and Miz Clara said, “Girl, how come you remember a thing like that?”
Talba said, “I remember Corey spilling some milk and you were wearing it.”
Miz Clara’s face closed down as if Saran-wrapped. “I don’t remember no such thing.”
There was another memory she tried to tease out. So far she hadn’t succeeded, and there was comfort in that. In her worst moments, she had the sick, scary feeling that she’d said something like: “I thought you wanted me to, Mama. I thought you wanted her to die.” But if she had, it was staying buried, at least for now, and she could only pray it would forever.
She hoped to God Miz Clara hadn’t had to live with that.
Chapter 27
Once during her lying-in period, someone other than Darryl and family had tried to come see her— but she wouldn’t get up even for the Reverend Clarence Scruggs, which deeply embarrassed her and scandalized her mother. But she couldn’t do it. Truly couldn’t.
The thing that finally got her up was the discovery of Aziza Scott’s body in the woods at Algiers Point, buried in a shallow grave. Or more properly, Miz Clara was the thing that got her up. She brought in the Times-Picayune and thumped it. “Bless that poor little child’s heart, her mama dead! Bad enough, ya won’t even get up and go see ya own boss in the hospital. Ya can’t be bothered visitin’ a little girl whose mama died a horrible and violent death, the good Lord forgive ya.”
Miz Clara was right about this one. Even if she had to take Prozac, she had to visit Cassandra.
She made it without benefit of chemicals, and she was touched by the girl’s reception. As soon as she walked into the crowded living room, Cassandra ran to her, threw her arms around her neck, and held on. Cassandra’s dad thanked her for saving his daughter. Shaneel was there, too, with her mama, a nice woman who seemed to consider her an old friend.
And so was Pamela. “Girl!” Talba blurted. “You don’t know how worried I was about you.”
The little redhead looked bewildered.
Remembering they’d never actually met, Talba introduced herself.
The girl’s face glowed. “Oh! The woman who saved Cassandra. Let me shake your hand.” While Talba complied, Pammie kept talking, nervously. “I’m a little embarrassed that I disappeared, but you have to understand how freaked out I was. See, Toes called and threatened to kill me if I ratted him out. I didn’t even think— all I wanted was out.” She laughed a sad little laugh. “I wish I was more proud of myself. I found out later I wasn’t the only one— he called Shaneel and Cassandra too.”
“You did the right thing, little pumpkin head.”
“I don’t know— I was scared, that’s all. I didn’t even tell my parents— -just took the bus to Millie’s. She’s like my aunt, kind of.” The girl said the last part shyly, as if confessing a secret crush. “You know— Millie the Milliner? She felt bad about freezing you out— she thought she had to do it to protect me.”
“Well, that clears that up. I thought she had a sudden attack of racism.”
Pamela was clearly mortified. “Oh, no! She’d die if she thought—”
“I was just kidding. But one thing puzzles me— your parents said they sent you out of town.”
The girl looked at the carpet. “I guess they were embarrassed they didn’t know where I was. I did call to say I was okay.”
Cassandra had stood by during the conversation, listening mutely, wearing a slightly dazed expression but conveying as well an aura of urgency, as if she had something on her mind. Talba bided her time till she could get the girl aside. When it was finally accomplished, Cassandra said, “I thought about you a lot— about what you did, how you saved me and Tony.”
Talba was embarrassed, but Cassandra was even more so. She kept talking, fast. “I wanted to… well, I wanted to…I can’t say it. I thought you were really great, and so I did something really weird. I wrote a poem.”
Talba was so bowled over by this revelation that she could only repeat the words: “You wrote a poem?”
The girl nodded. “Uh-huh. About my mom. About what she meant to me. Maybe when… when this is all over or something, you could take a look at it.”
Talba said, “Sure. I’d be glad to. I think that’s wonderful, baby.”
The girl had something else to say. “Is Eddie okay? How’s he doin’?”
“He’s better.” That was the rumor, anyway.
“Listen, I…” She was squirming with embarrassment. “Could you tell him it’s okay? I know he did all he could. Could you tell him I know he tried?”
“Well… sure. But I don’t understand, exactly.”
The girl closed her eyes and water squeezed out the bottom of each. She could only whisper. “He told me he’d find my mama for me. I know he feels real bad.”
Talba felt as if someone had sprayed
her face with rosewater. She couldn’t believe what the kid had done— how she was handling this thing. The girl seemed to have grown up overnight.
Talba thought, She’s doing better than I am, and felt ashamed. She went home and wrote a poem about the kid who wrote a poem about her mother.
After that, she didn’t go back to bed except during normal sleeping hours. Somehow or other, she and Eileen Fisher had to keep the agency going. Also, she had a bit of unfinished business. She had to figure out how her father happened to get a fatal gunshot wound.
Eddie had broken his nose, left scapula, two ribs, and his right tibia. Once he came out of the coma, his most serious injury was the leg break. That took a while to heal, and it made him cross.
But he was coming in to the office after about a month, tearing apart everything Talba and Eileen had put together. They’d gladly have sent him back, but Angie and Audrey were being very Catholic about the thing. Or maybe just Italian. Talba wasn’t sure where it came from, but it went like this: they felt guilty about Eddie’s injuries, largely because, as Talba understood it, he’d missed his own sixty-fifth birthday party, which it was their duty to throw for him. Thus, the only way to expunge their guilt was to throw it anyway. Only the hotel ballroom they’d booked for the occasion was now booked until July with conventions, graduations, and weddings.
So the second week of JazzFest, they took advantage of the gorgeous weather to throw a crawfish party at their own gorgeous house out by the lake. Eddie agreed to it for one reason and one reason only— it was also a party to announce the engagement of his son Tony Tino, the well-known blues musician, and Tony’s very pregnant bride-to-be. This scandalized Audrey— which was probably what Eddie liked about it— and amused Angie to no end.
