If Wishes Were Horses

by Matlock, Curtiss Ann

  Sucking in a deep breath, Latrice lifted her shoulders and straightened her spine, pushing up her black lace-covered bosom. Beneath her floral cotton apron, she already wore her favorite black crape funeral dress, which she counted on to give her the proper attitude. She thought the best thing to do was to get Etta into her funeral clothes.

  “Come on, honey. Let’s get a look at you in this pretty dress,” she said, pulling from the chiffarobe the black wool flannel dress Maisie Nation had whipped up in a day’s time, there not being a single black dress in town to fit a skinny pregnant woman.

  Latrice believed in funerals as much as she believed in regularly eating garlic paste. Funerals made people remember the good things such as fine china and high respect, and the value of being alive to enjoy both. And if asked, Latrice would openly admit to a certain enjoyment of funerals. There was the enjoyment of dressing and visiting and giving forth of emotion and most especially watching others give forth of emotion. She herself had been known to think: Oh, I could use me a good funeral. Although she was having to put up with a lot for Roy J. Rivers’s funeral and felt she was not getting a sufficient return.

  “It’s a funeral dress,” Etta said, looking dourly at the dress. She wasn’t happy with the idea of getting dressed at all, much less in black. She had always looked ghastly in black.

  Etta had always considered blue her best color. Blue had been Roy’s favorite color for her, too. “Blue brings out your eyes, Precious.” His pet name for her was Precious. Or it had been, she thought.

  “That doesn’t mean it isn’t pretty,” Latrice said. “Oh, law, you don’t have any stockin’s down here.”

  “Oh . . . no,” Etta said vaguely. “I guess they’re back in my dresser.” She noticed Latrice giving her a look. Not only was Latrice very tall and very dark but she could put forth a look that could move mountains and make sinners repent.

  Etta, however, had known Latrice all her life and simply reached over and took up the jelly bread.

  Latrice went from the room, saying, “You are goin’ to have to go back into that bedroom sooner or later, and it’d be a lot better sooner so that I wouldn’t have to keep goin’ back and forth.”

  Etta felt her insides shift around. With shaking hands, she tore a piece off the bread, putting it into her mouth while she listened to Latrice’s firm footsteps go down the hallway to the front bedroom.

  Since the morning Sheriff Atkins had come to tell her Roy was dead, Etta had refused to enter their bedroom. She panicked every time she thought about it.

  Considering Latrice’s statement as she finished off the cup of warm cola and wished it were coffee, she couldn’t see any reason that she would ever have to go into the bedroom. She could have the entire room emptied without ever having to enter it, or even look into it. She pictured the scene: men carrying the big bed with the pineapple-topped posts out the door and off into a moving van. She would give it to the poorest family in town—the poorest woman with the most children and a boldly philandering husband—she thought, suddenly warming to the plan. It made her happy to picture a poor, worn woman lying in her magnificent bed, and with all the fine cotton percale sheets and thick chenille coverlets and down-filled pillows, too.

  Then she imagined the door to the bedroom boarded right over so she never had to enter or look into the room again. At first she saw a man hammering a nail into the board, but then she herself was hammering the nails in, pounding with the hammer, again and again.

  “I hope none of these have runners,” Latrice said when she came back through the door.

  “Why?” Etta asked, licking her fingers.

  “Well, it’s a bit hard for a woman to look dignified with a runner in her stockin’.”

  Etta looked at her and blinked. She had not fully left behind Latrice’s earlier comment about having to return to the bedroom.

  “No . . . I mean why do I ever have to go back into that bedroom? I don’t see the truth in that statement.”

  Latrice put her hand to her hip. “Well, it is your bedroom. You spent all that time and money tearin’ out the wall to make it bigger and bought that fancy new mahogany bedroom set from Dallas. And all of your things are in there,” she added.

  “Pretty soon all of my things will be in this guest room,” Etta said, “and this bedroom set is perfectly acceptable. I’ll give away the mahogany bed to a poor lady.” She looked around. “We will have to make new draperies, though. It is too bright in here first thing in the mornin’.”

  Latrice murmured, “If you ask me, we may turn out to be the poor people.” Then she fixed Etta with one of those looks. “It is plain foolishness avoidin’ that room. It isn’t as if Mr. Roy died in there.”

  The next instant, realizing her error, she shut her mouth tight.

  “I know perfectly well where my husband died, thank you.”

  Etta felt a heat, like a flame, burn up from her chest and fill her brain. She blinked, thought she might cry, and flopped her hand over the nightstand, looking for the handkerchief Latrice had put there. Latrice had put handkerchiefs all around, to be ready for use, although thus far Etta had not been able to have more than blurred vision.

  “Oh, honey, you go ahead and cry.” Latrice sat and gathered Etta against her full bosom. “You need to cry it all out . . . let those tears wash away the hurt.”

  Etta inhaled the warm, sweet scent of Latrice, of talcum powder and rosewater so familiar since childhood. She held on to Latrice’s stout body and felt emotion seething and roaring, but it simply wouldn’t pour forth.

  “Well, I can’t!” She pushed away and jumped to her feet. “I can’t cry, damn it. Why can’t I cry?”

  Even in her distress she realized she had sworn, and Latrice had such a fit when she swore, and oh, Lord, what did it matter? Stalking across the room, she caught sight of her image in the mirror as she passed. The sight of herself, swollen belly and colorless face drawn tight, was startling. Who was that woman? Who had she become?

  She whipped around and tossed at Latrice, “Well, say it. You certainly said it enough before—it was a great mistake for me to marry Roy Rivers.”

  Latrice looked patiently calm. “A time for every season. This is a season of mournin’, and nothin’ else matters right now."

  Etta, shaking her head, reached out and gripped the turned footboard. “Nothing else matters? Well, I don’t know what I’m doin’—mournin’ or cussin’. How does that sound? It’s real hard to mourn a husband who went and died in another woman’s bed.”

  Latrice said, “Honey, you just have to get through it.”

  “Well, that is not much of a suggestion,” Etta said. She stared at Latrice, who looked pained and a little at a loss. Etta wasn’t accustomed to Latrice being at a loss. Usually Latrice had the perfect answer for everything—or at least she could appear to have the perfect answer.

  “Well, I cannot go through all this today,” Etta said. “No. Everyone will be lookin’ at me and whisperin’. Half of them will be sayin’ they knew it would never work out with me and Roy Rivers from the beginnin’. That Roy married down, and it all told out because I could not satisfy him.”

  “Now, that’s not true. Plenty of people, like sweet Miss Heloise, have been on your side all along . . . and those that aren’t, well honey, just like ornery dogs, if you face people and show no fear, they are gonna slump away and let you be.”

  “Oh, no, they won’t,” Etta said emphatically. Now that she was talking hard truth, she was no longer teary. “I’m not sayin’ people are all that bright, but most of them can think a little ahead of dogs. Oh, you better bet people are gonna chew on this for a long time"—she pressed a hand on her belly—"and someday somebody will tell the whole story to my child—in a nice way and for her own good, of course.”

  “I imagine that might happen,” Latrice conceded. She appeared momentarily flustered, which added to Etta’s own upset. “But I think there’s enough on our plate today without worryin’ over tomorrow.”<
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  “You make a good point,” Etta said. “There is enough on our plate today, so I don’t see the need to add to it by goin’ to the funeral. I simply don’t need to put myself through it.” Her gaze lit on the bed. “I’m goin’ back to bed, and you can just tell people I’m too sick to come out.”

  Throwing herself across the bed, she fell back on the thick feather pillows and dropped her arm over her forehead in a dramatic gesture that somehow soothed. She felt she had come upon the answer at last. She simply would not go. She would stay in this bed. They could all come and take everything around her, but she would stay in this bed. She would possibly stay in this bed for the rest of her life, an idea that seemed at once perfectly strange and perfectly logical.

  “You know you can’t do that.”

  Latrice’s voice cut into Etta’s spinning thoughts. She refused them and talking entirely. She was in bed. She was not conversing.

  Latrice said, “You cannot continue to claim bein’ sick and not go into the hospital. You got out of visitation yesterday evening with that, but it won’t wash windows today.”

  Etta pulled a pillow over her head and tight around her ears. She began humming and forced into her mind the picture of the red flying horse from the gasoline sign. She imagined herself flying away on him.

  Latrice grabbed the pillow and the two of them grappled with clawed fingers and heavy breaths. Latrice won because she was twice the size of Etta. Etta pressed her hands over her ears, squeezed her eyes closed, and hummed louder, feeling herself spinning and spinning in a desperate wind.

  Then Latrice was right in Etta’s face, the sheer force of her causing Etta’s eyes to pop open.

  “No, I am not goin’. I will not see Roy dead!” Etta yelled, coming up to her knees.

  “You will,” Latrice said, her eyes dark, hot pools. “You have to, honey. If you turn from this now, you will always be turnin’. That is the way your mother went. Is that what you want for yourself? For your child?”

  Etta, staring into Latrice’s eyes and hearing the cracking of emotion in her voice, went rigid.

  Latrice said with a soft, even tone, “Mr. Roy, bless his soul, has done enough to disgrace himself and you. The only way you can turn that around is to show honor. You have to do that for your child, and for yourself.”

  The words your child echoed in Etta’s mind and in her heart, and she thought of Roy, and of her mother, and of the dear baby in her womb. Pressing her hand to her belly, she got off the bed and got dressed because she knew the truth in all Latrice said. She had had her little hissy fit and felt a bit better because of it.

  Getting dressed turned out to be not so difficult a task, after all, with Latrice helping to shove Etta’s clothes on. “Turn around and let me fasten your bra. Yes, you have to wear panties, it’s cold out there. Here’s two matchin’ stockin's . . . oh, here, let me do it.”

  Etta’s feet were almost too swollen to fit into her black patent leather heels.

  “How can my legs be so skinny and my feet get fat?” Etta said, struggling to get the shoe on her foot.

  “It’s all that Co-Cola you’ve been drinkin’.”

  “Well, I can’t drink hardly anything else—and I don’t know how it can be the cola. I keep peein’ it all out.”

  “Salt,” Latrice said, jamming on the other shoe. She would not allow Etta to wear her black dressy sandals instead, as she pronounced them too flashy.

  Then Etta was standing before the mirror, and Latrice was saying of the dress, “It looks right nice.”

  “It looks like a tow sack died black.”

  Latrice made a scolding sound and brought out the string of pearls Roy had given Etta as a present on their wedding day. The pearls did help the dress.

  “I look a lot like Mama,” Etta said in a small voice.

  At that moment, she saw the stark resemblance to her mother’s exotic elegant looks. Roy had always said Etta drew him with her elegance. “You have the kind of class that’s born in, Precious,” he’d say so very proudly.

  Latrice said, “Here . . . let me comb your hair.”

  Etta sat on the vanity stool and closed her eyes, enjoying the sensuous tugs on her scalp, and felt a child again, took refuge in the feeling. Latrice hummed “May the Good Lord Bless and Keep You,” with a blues tone.

  Etta fingered the pearls, felt their cool smoothness, saw Roy’s eager joy when he had given them to her. She recalled his smile, his frown, him sleeping, him eating, all of the pictures coming over her in quick waves, making an ache in her chest that hurt so badly she felt she could very well die right there. A lump in her throat, she quickly twisted, looking up at Latrice and trying to hold on.

  “Oh, Lord, Latrice . . . I just keep wishin’ things had been different. I think if I had not lost the baby right at first, or if I could have gotten pregnant again right away, we would have made it. Roy really wanted a child. I know that would have made a difference.”

  She wished she hadn’t said some things that she had to him, either. Wished she had not let other things go unsaid. Wished for a second chance with all she had learned. Wished to turn back the clock, and herself.

  “Regrets and guilt are natural to grievin’,” Latrice said.

  Etta, still fingering the pearls, gazed again into the mirror. “Remember what Mama used to say? If wishes were horses, we’d all ride. Remember her sayin’ that? I’d say, ‘Mama, I wish I could have red cowgirl boots,’ or ‘I wish we could have an indoor toilet,’ or ‘I wish Santa Claus would bring me my own pinto pony,’ and she’d say, ‘Honey, if wishes were horses, we’d all ride.’”

  She recalled her mother’s faraway eyes and flat, hopeless tone of voice that cut through Etta’s heart and made her feel guilty for every want she’d ever had.

  “Miz Ria had some clear thoughts sometimes,” Latrice said quietly, and then added, “It was just that they didn’t much tend to run together.”

  Etta sighed, feeling the tense pain ebb. “No, they didn’t.” She gazed into the mirror, thought bleakly of her mother, and of how all of life seemed made up of wishes strung together.

  Latrice was bringing the black hat with the sweeping brim when the doorbell rang. “That’ll be Maveen, I expect,” she said with a heavy sigh. The mention of Miz Ria, whom Latrice had both loved and hated, had brought her down, and she wasn’t thrilled with the idea of Maveen coming to attend the house during the funeral, either. Maveen was a young second cousin who in the past had jumped at the chance to come to the Rivers home to help with heavy cleaning in order to get a look at the house and its fine contents. She was exceedingly clumsy and broke something every time she came.

  “Well, I’d best go get Maveen busy . . . try to keep her from breakin’ anything.” She laid the hat on the edge of the bed and glanced at her watch. “Mr. Alvin will be here with the limo in about twenty minutes. Don’t forget the hat,” she added firmly before she left.

  Listening to her heels strike the hallway, Etta thought that Latrice would be bossing her when both of them were rocking on the front porch of the old-folks home. It was a comforting thought. She knew quite starkly in that moment that she could go on living without Roy, but she did not think she could live without Latrice. Roy had known this, and it had hurt him.

  Lifting the lid on the crystal face powder container, she dusted her face and then dotted on a bit of rouge and carefully applied lipstick. Studying the results, she thought she looked like a peaked woman with red dots on her cheeks. Perhaps she should not expect anything better, being a recently widowed pregnant woman who kept vomiting.

  Rising, she slipped into the coat Latrice had laid on the bed. It was a black wool tent style that was popular at the moment. Heloise Gardner had sent it over from the Style Shop. Since marrying Roy and coming up in the world, Etta had gone to buying her clothes there. She settled the black hat with its sweeping brim and volumes of veiling over her head. It was also from Heloise’s shop. She adjusted the veiling down over her face, and then st
ared at her image in the mirror.

  The image was shadowy through the layers of tulle. She was a stranger, elegant, mysterious. Etta gave several poses to the mirror, experimenting, and thinking that Roy would be tickled.

  Latrice yelled from the foot of the stairs, “Time’s marchin’ on!”

  “I’m comin’.”

  Taking a deep breath, she picked up the small black patent leather purse Latrice had left for her on the bed and started down the hallway.

  Feeling compelled, she stopped at the open doorway of her and Roy’s room. Heart beating fast, she put her hand to the door frame and looked inside. The scent of Roy— of his expensive cologne and Camel cigarettes and lemon drop candies he loved—came to her.

  Then she saw him, over by the window, blond hair rumpled, wearing his brown sport coat, with his hands tucked easily into his trouser pockets.

  He whistled low. “Darlin’, you look like one of those women out of that Vogue magazine.” Roy had always been free with compliments.

  Etta stared. He appeared so real, as if she could touch him, grinning that sensuous, touching grin, the one that could make a woman take leave of her senses and be glad to do so. Oh, never let it be said that Roy Rivers had only been a taker. He had always given, as well.

  His voice came to her again, “Ah, Etta . . . I still love you . . . forgive me . . . I need you, Precious,” and his green eyes were as desperate and pleading as they ever had been.

  Seeing them so clearly, Etta’s breath stopped in her throat.

  It had all been so complicated between them, something she could never put into words and something most people could never begin to understand. Roy had loved her, and knowing this had held Etta to him. His attentions to other women had had nothing to do with his love of her. She had made a vow to be his wife, until death do them part, and she hadn’t been able to step over that vow. She had not been able to turn her back on him, because she had come to understand him so well, and to know his need of her went as deep and thorough as blood, and that he most assuredly would have gone crazy and died had she left him. She had held on and kept trying to save him, until she was on the brink of dying herself. And she had loved him.