The Night the Lights Went Out

by Karen White

  Another touchy subject that won’t be found in our local paper is that of a young third-grade math teacher who, rumor has it, is three months pregnant. This is wonderful news, of course, because there’s nothing that we Sweet Appletonians love more than babies, but this teacher of our impressionable youngsters is a single lady. To make this news more than a little juicy, the presumed father of the baby was apparently not completely divorced when the pregnancy started. Yes, a divorce was in the works, but, for all intents and purposes, the man—father of two, I might mention—was still married to another woman.

  I’m not trying to be mean-spirited toward any of the parties involved—especially to the recently divorced wife, who is the innocent victim in all of this. But hiding the truth is like putting perfume on a pig. That pig’s still going to smell. And the sooner this is out in the open, the sooner everyone can move beyond this.

  Before I sign off, I thought I’d bring up the topic of assimilation. No, this north Atlanta suburb is not technically “the South,” but there are still quite a few natives among us, and although we appreciate the new transplants trying to assimilate into our culture, it’s important to do it correctly. While having lunch at my club yesterday, I heard a woman from Michigan say, “Bless his heart,” when the poor waiter spilled her tea (regular—not sweet—like I didn’t need to hear that to know she wasn’t from around here). It was incorrect usage of the term, and not the first time I’ve heard it used incorrectly. Correct usage would have been the waiter, after the woman asked for (shudder) unsweet tea, saying, “You’re not from around here, are you? Bless your heart.”

  So I thought I’d be neighborly, and for each blog I’ll end with a Southern saying and what it means. I hope y’all will enjoy this as much as I will.

  “The new broom might sweep clean, but the old broom knows the corners.” This can refer to a lot of things, including hiring someone older but with more experience, but as my example I’d like to use a newly divorced husband, with an ex-wife, two children, and a pregnant girlfriend. Seems to me he thought he was trading up for a younger model, the “new broom.” Instead I think he’s just getting more of the same—except it will take a few years before she gets tired of doing his laundry. And that’s all I’m going to say about that.

  • • •

  Lily looked at her mother with wide eyes, the line between her brows a deep crevasse. “Do you think this means Miss Garvey is going to have a baby?”

  It took Merilee a few moments before she realized to whom Lily was referring, having called Tammy Garvey all sorts of names in her head besides her actual one in the months since Michael moved out. “I don’t know, Lily. There could be other pregnant single third-grade teachers . . .” She stopped at the look Lily gave her, a look that no ten-year-old should be familiar with.

  Merilee put her arm around Lily’s shoulders. “Still, let’s not assume anything until I’ve had a chance to speak with your father, all right?”

  Lily nodded and closed the laptop, the slump in her shoulders making Merilee hold off on talking about a punishment for disobeying. Finding out on a blog that her father’s girlfriend was pregnant was punishment enough.

  She took a breath, trying to ascertain how she felt herself. That nodule of pain that seemed lodged in her throat every time she thought of Michael was still there, but learning that Tammy was having his baby hadn’t made it bigger. Maybe that was something. Maybe that was progress. And maybe the blogger was right about knowing sooner rather than later so she could move on. It was a good assumption that everybody at the lake party would know about it, so now she wouldn’t be blindsided. She wondered if the blogger would be there and if she could guess who it was. And if the anonymous woman—she assumed it was a woman—had done her a favor.

  “There’re paw prints all over the grass outside! I think the white dog has been here! Can I go look for him?” Colin rushed into the kitchen, his eyes bright with excitement, his pajama shirt misbuttoned and his pants hitting him above the ankles.

  Merilee stood and pulled out a chair at the table for him. “After your breakfast, and after you get dressed—and you can only go as far as the tire swing, remember?”

  “But—”

  “It could be a coyote. Or a raccoon.” She didn’t mention the word “bear,” not wanting to scare either one of them. “There’re all sorts of animals around here, and you don’t need to be going too far from the house to find whatever it was.”

  “But I put an old dog bowl I found under the sink on the front porch and put cookies in it, so it must be a dog, right?”

  “Colin!” Merilee stood suddenly, the chair scraping the floor.

  “It’s empty—I already checked. That’s how I knew there were paw prints in the grass. And on the front porch, too.”

  Merilee tried to check her breathing as she knelt in front of her son, placing her hands on his shoulders. “Sweetheart, we cannot have a dog. And leaving food out on the porch to attract any wild animal is a bad idea. Do you understand me?”

  He nodded solemnly, but the hope refused to leave his eyes. “Yes, ma’am. But what if it’s a dog that needs a home? Then could we keep him?”

  She sighed as she stood. “Why don’t we cross that bridge if and when we get there? But no more food on the front porch; do you understand?”

  He waited nearly a full moment, weighing his options, before he responded. “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Or the back porch,” Merilee added. She went to the cabinet and pulled out two cereal bowls and placed them on the table.

  “Why’s Mr. Kimball here?” Lily called from the front room.

  “What?” Merilee looked down at the oversized T-shirt she’d slept in; it barely concealed her braless breasts, which weren’t as perky as they’d been before children. She put her fingers to her face, remembering that she hadn’t washed it yet and that she’d put a blob of green toothpaste on a small pimple that had decided to appear on her chin the night before. She’d read this tip in a magazine somewhere and wasn’t sure if it even worked but figured without anybody around to see her it couldn’t hurt.

  She was standing in the middle of the kitchen, trying to figure out if she’d be able to slip to her room without his seeing her from the front door, when she heard the knock on the screen door and then Wade Kimball’s voice calling through it. “Good morning, Merilee. It’s Wade. I’m here to build those shelves.”

  “Damn it,” she said under her breath. He’d said he’d stop by on the weekend, but she’d assumed—incorrectly, it appeared—that he would call first to set up a convenient time.

  She spotted Sugar’s bib apron hanging from a peg on the wall and slid it over her head. “Hang on,” she said as she tied it behind her, Colin already racing ahead to open the door.

  “Hey there, sport,” Wade said in greeting to her son. When he looked past Colin and saw Merilee, his eyes didn’t register shock or revulsion. He was either very polite or needed glasses.

  Crossing her arms over her chest, she said, “I wasn’t expecting you so early.”

  He looked surprised. “I said I’d be coming this weekend. It’s the weekend, right?”

  “It’s eight o’clock Saturday morning.”

  “Exactly,” he said, moving through the doorway. “Carpentry is my hobby, which sadly gets postponed to the weekends so I can work my day job the rest of the week. If you’ll just show me what you want done, I promise to stay out of your way.”

  Resigned, Merilee led him into the front room, which they used as their family room. It had wide-plank pine floors covered by soft cotton rugs and comfortable sofas. Everything was well-worn but loved, the bookshelves overflowing with older books, including an entire shelf dedicated to bird-watching. These were the oldest, the covers tattered and torn, the pages well read, with turned-down corners for easy reference.

  “Here,” she said, pointing to the space between the re
ar wall and the back of the couch. “We had built-ins in our last house, so I couldn’t take them with me. But I need a place to keep my collection.”

  “Your collection?”

  She nodded, always a little embarrassed when explaining it to other people. “Yes. I collect antique maps. Nothing really expensive or rare, but ones I find interesting for whatever reason. They’re mostly smaller ones—I’ve never had room for the really big ones. I have a few I’ve framed, but the rest I keep rolled up and in archival-quality storage boxes. I need the shelves for those.”

  He studied her for a moment, and she found herself squirming under his scrutiny. “That’s a lot cooler than my baseball cap collection; that’s for sure.” He smiled and she relaxed slightly. “What makes a map collectible?”

  She shrugged. “Geography, mostly. Like if it’s a place I’m familiar with. I like to see how things have changed. And I’m partial to the hand-drawn ones with pictures and sketches on them. It’s almost like looking at old letters or diaries from another time.”

  “So you like old things? Or you like change?”

  His last question was a little too close for comfort. Turning her back on him, she led him toward a stack of boxes she’d piled in a corner of the room. “Here are all the boxes, to give you an idea of dimension. I’m thinking something wide but short, so that it fits behind the couch. And I’d like to have a little extra space so I have room to grow.”

  He took a measuring tape from his tool belt. Pulling out the tape, he held one end toward her. “Hold that right by the leg of the couch.”

  He took several measurements, jotting them down on a small pad he kept in his belt. “You know, Sugar has some old maps. They belonged to her grandfather, I believe, and show all the land that used to belong to the Prescott family since the Civil War. Pretty impressive. Just about everything you see in a twenty-mile radius once belonged to them—including the land where the country club and golf course are now.” Wade sat back on his heels. “My grandmother, Willa Faye, is Sugar’s best friend, which is how I know all this, but every time one of Sugar’s brothers would sell some parcel of land, Sugar would put a big black ‘X’ on one of her maps and go into mourning.”

  “That’s pretty sad. But what about her nieces and nephews? Didn’t they want to hold on to any of it?”

  “You’d think with five children there might be grandchildren, but there weren’t. Not sure what happened to the youngest brother, but I know one of them died in the war. The two oldest fought in Europe, and when they came back went a little wild. Took to all sorts of bad habits. Mostly horses. Never got married—too busy hanging around with the wrong sorts of women, according to my grandmother. The kind of women you spend money on but don’t necessarily marry is how she put it. And nice women from good families were kept a good distance from them.”

  “So you don’t know what happened to the youngest one—Jimmy?” It mattered to her, Merilee was surprised to find. She had such a clear picture of him, it seemed as if she knew him, and she wanted him to have a happy ending, even though from what Wade had just told her, it didn’t seem likely.

  Wade shook his head. “You can ask Sugar, but she might not answer. She’s pretty closemouthed about her childhood—wasn’t easy with her being the only girl and her mother pretty much out of the picture. Sugar had to grow up real fast during hard times. It’s amazing she turned out as nice as she is.”

  Merilee made a face, making Wade laugh. “I know she seems crusty at first—that’s just her nature, probably from having to deal with four brothers her whole life. But once you get to know her, you get to see how big and loyal a heart she really has. My grandmother once told me that Sugar would do absolutely anything for someone she loved. Anything. I’ve never had to test that theory, but I believe it.”

  “Yes, well, I guess I’ll have to take your word on that. Why don’t you finish up your measuring and figure out what you’ll need in materials to write up a quote, and I’ll go and throw on some clothes.” She turned to leave.

  “Oh, sorry. I thought you were already dressed. You should have told me.”

  She faced him, indicating the oversized T-shirt and apron. “Really?”

  He shrugged. “I’m a guy. Besides, I was probably too focused on that green dot of dried toothpaste on your chin. You might want to wash that off if you decide to leave the house.”

  Trying to think of something to say and coming up empty, she turned again and headed back toward her bedroom.

  When Merilee emerged from her room fifteen minutes later, she heard adult voices coming from the front room. She found Sugar running what looked like a dust rag over the coffee table, while Wade sat on the window seat with his pad of paper and a calculator. Sugar didn’t even bother to look embarrassed at being caught dusting in her tenant’s house and kept on with her work, interrupting herself only to say “Good morning” before resuming her task.

  Merilee paused for a moment, listening for the children. “Have you seen Lily and Colin?” she asked.

  “I told them to go get dressed and that they could watch television when they were finished,” Sugar said without looking up. “You have that party at noon, and Lake Lanier is at least an hour away, depending on traffic.” Preempting Merilee’s next question, she said, “I forgot to bring over a tray for the cookies we made, and I know there aren’t any in this kitchen, so I brought one over this morning. I took the liberty of putting the cookies on it, and I do believe they make a nice presentation.”

  Merilee wasn’t sure if she should be annoyed or grateful. She had wondered how she’d bring the cookies to the party, thinking she’d probably stop off at a Walgreens on the way and get a disposable foil tray.

  As if reading her mind, Sugar said, “It’s sterling. From Mama’s wedding silver. I trust you’ll remember to bring it back.”

  “Thank you,” Merilee said, feeling insulted and relieved in equal measure, a contradiction she was getting used to in her dealings with Sugar Prescott.

  Wade stood and tore off the top page of the notepad. “This includes all materials, but I’ll throw in the labor for free. Like I said, this is my hobby and I appreciate the opportunity to play a little bit. Beats cutting my lawn.” He grinned.

  Before she could argue, the children ran into the room and Merilee almost did a double take. Instead of the T-shirts and cotton shorts they’d normally wear on a Saturday, Colin wore a collared golf shirt and his nice pleated shorts, and Lily wore a sundress that had been at the back of the closet.

  “Miss Sugar said it was a party so we should dress up a bit,” Lily explained.

  “Yes, but—”

  “We’re bringing our backpacks with our other clothes and bathing suits so we can change if everybody else is casual.”

  Merilee found herself speechless again. It wasn’t that anything Lily said wasn’t correct or that Merilee wished she’d thought of it herself. But she was angry. Not angry that Sugar had usurped her parental authority and Lily and Colin had actually listened and obeyed, but angry because she was just so darned grateful that somebody else had helped her out.

  As if oblivious to any undercurrents in the room, Wade turned to Sugar. “When I come back tomorrow to get started on this project for Merilee, I’ll bring more hay for the barn. I’ll pad it extra high and show these kids how to jump from the hayloft. Maybe you can show them how it’s done.”

  “Really, Wade,” said Sugar, her expression stern. “Children aren’t allowed to do those things anymore. At least not without some sort of padding and a helmet.”

  “What barn?” asked Colin. Lily just looked worried.

  “Didn’t Sugar show you her barn? It’s on the other side of the woods from here, but it’s just a quick hike. My sisters and I grew up jumping from the hayloft as soon as we could walk. Sort of a rite of passage around here.” His face got serious as he eyed Lily. “Does this mean Sugar hasn�
�t shown you her sheep? She puts red bows on their necks every Christmas.”

  “You put bows on the sheep. I just allow it because the police know who you are and won’t arrest you for trespassing because you’re practically my grandson.” Sugar’s lips pressed together in disapproval.

  “There will be no jumping from haylofts,” Merilee said firmly, remembering Rufus and the kitchen table and the boy Curtis. She met Sugar’s gaze and knew she must be thinking the same thing. Eager to change the subject, she sent the children into the kitchen to eat their cereal. Feeling Sugar’s disapproving stare, she told them to eat a piece of fruit, too.

  Wade left to pick up the materials and get started in his workshop, promising he’d text her pictures to make sure it was what she wanted. Sugar declined his offer of a ride and headed toward the door.

  Merilee called her name and the woman stopped, keeping the door open with one arm as if prepared to bolt.

  “All those books in here on the shelves—the bird books. Were those Jimmy’s?”

  It took Sugar a moment to answer, as if she might be thinking of an answer that might not be the truth. “Yes,” she said finally. “Those were his. He was a crack shot with his slingshot and would trade squirrels and rabbits for books because Daddy wouldn’t have spent his money on anything as frivolous as a book. Jimmy was quite the entrepreneur.”

  “Has he been gone a long time?”

  Sugar’s lips pressed together and Merilee knew she’d gone too far. But she’d had to ask the question. Had to know what had happened to Jimmy.

  “That’s a story for another time.” She let the door close softly behind her, then made her slow way down the porch steps toward the drive.

  Merilee followed after her. “Would it be okay if we used the books? I think Colin would love to study the birds—there are so many around here, and he loves that kind of thing, and has the patience for bird-watching. I could buy our own set of binoculars—”

  “I’ll think about it,” Sugar said, cutting her off. And without another word, she continued toward her house, her back rigid but her head bowed as if struggling under the weight of memories.