More Than Words Volume 4

by Linda Lael Miller

  “Hon, you had best stop before the battery runs down. Monte, why don’t you have a look at it?”

  Monte went to the front and opened the hood. The young woman and I joined him, and little Roline came up beside me on her tiptoes, and we all gazed into the engine.

  Monte said, “Yep, that’s an engine,” being funny, which I found a little annoying, but the young woman grinned weakly.

  “That’s an engine,” the little girl repeated after him, and he reached down and rubbed her head.

  As Monte began taking off the breather and handing me the nuts and bolts, I asked him what he thought the trouble could be, and he said it sounded like the engine wasn’t getting fuel, maybe a sticky carburetor or clogged fuel line. Having come from a family of three brothers, all vehicle-inclined, I knew what he was talking about.

  About that time Roline began hollering that Cody had to go to pee. “He has to go now, Mama!”

  The young woman disappeared around the car, and I heard her say, “It’s okay, Cody…here…right here by the car.”

  I leaned over to see him jerk away from her. My heart went out to him. It had to all be upsetting to him, and so hot in the sun. I said, “Y’all come on up to my house.”

  “I guess it’s too late,” the young woman said, straightening and pushing the hair out of her eyes. She seemed to be shrinking.

  MONTE OFFERED TO TOW her car a mile up the road to Jordan’s garage and save her the towing bill. While Monte went about the business of getting his pickup truck hooked to the front of the LTD, I finally thought to introduce us all. The young woman’s name was Laura Jean Luckett. I thought the name suited her. She struck me as the type of woman about which a folk tune might be written.

  “Thank you for all your help,” Laura Jean said to me through the open window as Monte prepared to start off.

  “Bye…bye!” Roline hung out the passenger window. She was a child who begged attention so much that already she was waving at me as if I was her grandmother. Cody watched through the rear window, but not looking at my face.

  They should be buckled in, I thought, waving back, even saying, “’Bye, sweethearts.”

  I watched the LTD go away down the highway, then turned and went back to shut up the produce stand for the morning. I got the money box—had not made much that morning—and cleaned out the overripe fruits and vegetables, rolled shut the doors and padlocked them, got on my garden tractor and drove up the hill to the house.

  The air-conditioned kitchen was cool after the heat. I set the money box on the counter and stood there a moment fluffing my hair, picturing Laura Jean Luckett (her name begged to be said all together) and her children stranded at the garage, waiting for Red to figure out the problem with the car, a process that could take a while. Not to fault Red, who is actually a second cousin, but he is not exactly a ball of fire. He moves and talks so slow that sometimes I want to slap the words out of him.

  I just had to go get them; I was at least going to make certain they got something good to eat and drink.

  When I drove up in front of the garage, I saw the LTD was in the work bay of the garage, with Red underneath it and Monte looking on. Laura Jean and the kids were in the air-conditioned office, drinking Dr Peppers and eating peanut butter crackers and talking to Jimmy, who pumped gas and did tire work. I should say that Laura Jean and Roline were talking to him. The little boy, Cody, was sitting in a chair to the side, playing intently with his Magna Doodle, and he had on, of all things, a helmet.

  Laura Jean’s expression welcomed me, thankfully. Roline danced right up to me.

  “We don’t know yet,” Laura Jean reported in answer to my question about the LTD. Her face seemed permanently anxious.

  Jimmy jumped in to say he would find out, but I told him I would do it, and poked my head into the work bay to ask, “Do we know anything yet?”

  It was Monte who responded with “We know a lot of things,” and grinned at me around the open hood.

  Red, still under the vehicle, drawled, “We-e-ell…I’m not quite sure…but we’re a’gonna find out here…in just a few minutes.”

  So I said, “I’m takin’ Laura Jean and the kids on up to the house to have some lunch and maybe rest. You can call us there.” Seeing Monte’s face, I said politely, “Would you like to join us for lunch, Monte?”

  “Yeah, I believe I would,” he said, all nonchalant, as if he was not just dying to come.

  On the drive home, I looked for an opening to ask about the little boy wearing a helmet, but Roline pretty well occupied the time by speaking loudly from the back seat and telling me about herself. I learned in quite a number of different ways that she was about to turn nine years old, would be going into the third grade, and liked peaches, and Flower Fairies, and horses, which she said when she saw old Bob run over to the fence and along it as we came up the drive. Roline lowered the window and leaned out and waved and hollered at him.

  In the rearview mirror, I saw Cody in the curious act of knocking his head against the seat.

  When we stopped beside the house, I glanced over to see Laura Jean gazing at the house in such a way that caused me to look with fresh eyes, seeing the cool quietness of the screen porch and the thick honeysuckle growing up one end.

  For whatever reason, I said, “I’ve lived here for twenty-five years. My husband died several years ago. There’s just me now.”

  “Oh, Monte isn’t…”

  “No.” I shook my head. “He’s an old friend.”

  We got the children and tote bags out of the car, and Monte was there, holding the screen door and saying, “Welcome, ladies and lad,” in a good-natured, gallant manner as we trooped inside. He was putting on the charm. I was glad for it and his extra pair of hands, both of which helped to smooth the way.

  I DECIDED ON THE TABLE on the sunporch, shaded then by the two trees. I would not let Laura Jean help with anything, but insisted she get the kids and herself freshened up and just relax. There really was no relaxing for her, as getting the kids freshened up took quite a bit. I put Monte to work slicing the vegetables and setting the table. I confess to getting carried away and having him get the fifties-vintage cherry-print tablecloth and cherry dishes from the sideboard. It had been a long time since I had received company. Ever since Henry’s funeral, actually. Even in death, Henry had been the one to instigate a social gathering. He had been a gregarious, outgoing man, enjoying many friendships. He liked nothing better than to play host at dinners and barbecues. I left all that to him and kept myself busy behind the scenes with the food and whatever else was needed.

  For our lunch, I served up chicken salad sandwiches made from chicken breasts I had cooked the previous week and frozen. Along with this, I had cucumbers cut up in vinegar and water and cold sliced tomatoes and cantaloupe. I was pleased with how inviting everything looked. It has always been my belief that pleasant surroundings are necessary for surviving trying circumstances.

  Laura Jean came out from the bathroom with the children after what seemed like quite some time, all of them freshly washed and shined. Roline had her hair pulled back in a ponytail, and Cody’s helmet was gone so that he was once again a little cherub with curls.

  “You sure have a lovely home, Miz Perabo,” Laura Jean said, then snatched Roline from reaching out for something on the sideboard.

  “Thank you…but Miz Perabo would be my motherin-law. Please call me Ellie—all of you.” I included the children.

  There was something I noticed in that moment, and it was that Cody did not look at me, appeared not to hear. The possibility of deafness crossed my mind, and then I realized that I could not seem to bring myself to look fully at him, either. I was, however, too busy to analyze what was going on at that moment. The understanding would come later, as understandings often do. Gradually over the next several hours, I would see that there was just something about the child, as if he had up a shield. And there was an understanding within me, for all of my own ways and means.

&nb
sp; Monte, who had many nieces and nephews, fashioned a booster seat for Cody from phone books. Before anyone knew it, Monte had picked the boy up and sat him on the books. I saw the boy’s eyes widen, and thought: Uh-oh. There was surprise on his mother’s face, too, and her instant attention was on her son, as if to catch him. But the boy focused on the plate in front of him and put a finger on the red cherry, tracing around it.

  “It is a red cherry, Cody.” Laura Jean bent near him.

  He rubbed his finger around and around the painted cherry, even while his mother edged some chicken salad onto his plate.

  Cody appeared totally uninterested in the chicken salad. It was Roline who told me that he would rather have grilled cheese. She stood beside me at the stove and instructed me in detail as to how he liked it best, lightly toasted and cut in quarters.

  “I like grapes,” Roline said, seeing them when I opened the refrigerator. “I like grapes a lot.”

  Laura Jean cautioned the girl about asking, but I said how is a person to get anything, if they don’t ask? “And how am I goin’ to know, if you don’t tell me?” I added, handing the child a plate with a heaping stem of cold grapes that I told her to share with Cody.

  “He will not eat grapes,” she said in all seriousness. “But he will play with them. He likes round things. He spins them.”

  This proved to be the case. The boy spun them around, again and again, until his mother took them away and moved him from the table. And as children often do, Roline did not eat many of the grapes, either. She said, “I want you to know that I would like the television on,” which I thought was very clever. The television occupied her while Cody lay on the floor, put his thumb in his mouth and stared at the revolving ceiling fan. I wondered if he had actually fallen asleep. This curiosity became so sharp that I was about to ask Laura Jean if the boy slept with his eyes open, as I had a cousin who sometimes did that, but just then the phone rang.

  It was Red. Resisting the temptation to question him and relay the information, I passed the cordless phone to Laura Jean, who put it to her ear and ducked her head as she said, “Hello.”

  I went into the kitchen and returned with the pitcher of cold tea, refilling glasses, while my ear was tuned to Laura Jean saying a lot of uh-huhs and yes, sir, and ending politely with “I’ll have to call you back. Thank you.”

  Laura Jean carefully set the phone on the table, then told us that the LTD needed a new fuel pump. She said that it had taken Red some time to locate a replacement part, since the LTD was so old. He had found a rebuilt one, which he recommended. He estimated that it would take a day or two to get the part and at least a day to install.

  “It’s goin’ to cost six hundred dollars,” she said, her voice falling to near a whisper as she passed a hand over her forehead, brushing back her bangs as she looked at what was left of the cantaloupe slices.

  I was ready for all of this, however. I did not wait for her to say that she did not have the money, or waste time asking if she might not have some family to help her. Clearly if either had been the case, she would have said so directly. Whoever she had spoken to on the phone earlier that morning knew the situation and obviously could not be counted on for support.

  I said, “That is not such a big problem. I’ll pay for it.”

  I looked at Laura Jean, and she looked at me. Her expression of dismay and hope rattled me, so I averted my gaze and took up the phone to call Red back and tell him to get to work. While I spoke, I avoided looking at anyone, especially at Monte for some odd reason.

  When I clicked off with Red, Laura Jean said the only sensible thing she could, which was, “I don’t know how to thank you. I will pay you back…I will…” She was near tears, of course.

  “Well, I’m older and can do things like this and not worry about it.” I gave a dismissing wave and rose to my feet to begin clearing the table. It was all horribly uncomfortable.

  Instantly Laura Jean popped to her feet and loaded her arms up and down with dishes, carrying them like a juggler into the kitchen—that girl had waited tables, I could tell—and instantly began running water in the sink as she told me firmly that she would repay me.

  “I can do it in installments. When I get to my sister’s—that’s where we’re goin’—over to my sister’s and mom’s. We’re gonna live with them, and my mother can help with the kids while I work. I’m a nail technician, and I make good money when I’m workin’.”

  “Well…good enough.” Not that I really expected the money to be returned, and frankly did not even want to talk off in that vein. I did not want to put Laura Jean into a position of promising things that she could not deliver. “Honey…we have a dishwasher. You don’t have to do those by hand.”

  THERE SIMPLY SEEMED NO question but that Laura Jean and the children would stay with me for the next days while the car was repaired, so there I was pretty much taking over their lives and ordering matters around. I vaguely realized that I had more of a head of steam than I had possessed in some time.

  What Monte thought of all this, I did not know, nor did I want to know, at least right at first. Later my curiosity did rise, and that was probably what propelled me to walk outside with him when he left. But I certainly never expected him to do what he did, which was to pull five one hundred dollar bills from his wallet and hand them to me. “For the kids. They’ll need some extra. You’re not the only one who can play Santa Claus, you know.”

  By kids, I knew he was including Laura Jean.

  I gazed at him a long moment. “Thanks. And I’ll tell her.”

  He winced. “Aw, don’t go and do that.”

  “Wait a minute.” I ran back inside and returned with a fruit cake all wrapped. He had been eyeing it since he had come in the door. “Here…this certainly won’t hurt you with all you have done today.”

  “Thanks.” He grinned like a boy, and do you know, I think for a second there he was going to kiss me, at least on the cheek. I instantly turned and strode up the porch steps.

  He called over to me. “You can cook, but I still would like to see you in a dress.”

  “And I still don’t care what you would like,” I said, but with warmth and a kick of my foot, as I let the screen door bang and went back into the house.

  PART

  TWO

  We went to get Laura Jean’s belongings. She flung her things out of the LTD, parked dead beside Red’s garage, and I caught them and threw them into my Cadillac. Laura Jean appeared to have only one speed, fast, and I was caught up with her, both of us moving at the speed of burglars.

  There was a single large suitcase and a nylon gym bag, pink, with Roline’s name on it. Everything else was stuffed into blue Wal-Mart sacks and large black trash bags. I have to say that the bags squished nicely to fit into odd spaces, but they seemed, well, trashy.

  After we had finished, Laura Jean had to pry Cody out of the back seat of the LTD, where he had crawled despite the heat. I thought: it is his home.

  Back at my house, I emptied linens out of the guest dresser and winter clothes from the closet.

  “Oh, you don’t need to go to any trouble,” Laura Jean protested.

  “It is no trouble, hon. Just takes a minute, and the three of you will be a lot more comfortable. Now, you go ahead and use these two drawers…and you have all this space in the closet.”

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Cody had crawled into the very middle of the bed and was focused intently on his Magna Doodle. He drew various circles in a definite pattern that I found intriguing in a child so young.

  My gaze moved off to all the plastic sacks of belongings. They just upset me. I thought about the number of suitcases I had in the attic. Maybe I would offer her at least two of the medium ones.

  I heard Henry in the back of my mind: Why don’t you just give them the house?

  My word, you are dead as you’ll ever be.

  For a moment I was surprised by the thought, but then I said to Laura Jean, “You are welcome to use my was
her and dryer all you want.”

  “Thank you,” she said, averting her eyes in the manner with which I was becoming familiar. It was an expression that spoke of trying her best not to take up space in the world.

  I said, “Well…I appreciate your thanks, but now you’ve said it enough. You know, it suits me to do this.”

  Her head came around, and she gave what was the closest I had seen to a smile. Lordy, she was just a child. It is my own observation that most all of us are pretty much children until the age of thirty, take it for what you will.

  I went off and got the roll-away from the hall closet, so all three of them could sleep in the same room. Roline was following behind me, and when I pulled out the bed, she asked what it was. I told her, “This is a roll-away…for Roline.”

  She was definitely taken with the idea. Using her skinny little body, she helped me to push the bed along the hall, repeating in a singsong voice, “A roll-a-way for Ro-line.”

  Just as we guided the bed through the door of the guest room, Laura Jean came out with, “Oh, no! Cody!”

  The tone of her voice caused me to come close to rolling the roll-away over Roline in my haste to move it and jump into the bedroom. Expecting to see blood spouting or something of that sort, I was almost relieved to find what it was.

  Cody had messed in his pants, gotten out of his little-boy pull-ups, then, apparently fascinated with what he had produced, had smeared it on the bedspread like finger paint.

  Laura Jean took him by the arm and shook him. “No, Cody! No! How many times have I told you no? No…no!”

  His reaction to this was quite naturally to scream, hit at her and pull away. She lost her grip and he fell to the floor, where he then threw himself around. He banged himself like a ball in a pinball machine, against the bed, the wall, the nightstand, back to the bed and the floor, where he beat his head on the carpet. Fortunately, the carpet was expensive and thick.

  Of course, for a number of seconds all we could do was stand there and stare. Then Roline cried out, “Cody, no!” and threw herself crying across a corner of the bed.