by Karen White
“Like my dad.”
“Yes, exactly.” Sugar turned the page quickly, realizing why Merilee might have originally not wanted her children to have access to her high school yearbooks.
They turned the pages slowly, commenting on the funny hairdos and clothing styles and the complete lack of selfies or any reference at all to Facebook. At least Sugar noticed it with an almost nostalgic glow.
“Look—there’s Mom!” Lily pointed enthusiastically at a group photo of the varsity cheerleading squad in an impressive pyramid, Merilee on the ground in front doing a perfect split. “She was the captain—see?” Lily’s chipped nail tapped on the photo’s caption: Merilee “Tallie” Talbot in her fourth year as team captain for the Eagles varsity squad. “She didn’t tell me she was captain,” Lily said, her voice filled with awe. “I can’t wait to tell Bailey.”
Sugar raised an eyebrow but didn’t say anything.
“Look how pretty she was,” Lily said.
And she was, Sugar had to agree. Shiny dark hair; long, lean limbs; and skin that glowed—the kind that didn’t need makeup or a dermatologist’s care. “She still is,” she said, because it was true. Merilee Dunlap was still a very attractive woman. But she was different, too, from this girl in the photo. Not just older, but changed in a way that was hard to quantify. Sugar thought it was in the eyes, the way the cheerleader had once looked out at the world as if she knew who she was and what her place in it was.
Sugar leaned forward, looking through the bottom of her bifocals to magnify the photo. She could now see the shadow of a furrow between Merilee’s eyebrows, lending her face an almost haunted look that prevented her from appearing completely carefree. Yet her smile defied anyone to think that she was anything but.
Sugar sat back. “Do you know when your uncle died? How old your mother might have been?”
Lily shrugged. “She doesn’t like to talk about it. But I think she said she was in high school.”
Sugar nodded slowly as they continued to turn the pages, pausing at the page devoted to the football team. A large heart had been drawn around a single player’s face, an arrow going through it, complete with feathers at the tail. Sugar leaned closer to read the name: John D. Cottswold, Varsity Football Captain. She quickly turned the page before Lily could focus on the picture of the square-jawed teenager or the name.
They continued to turn pages, looking at these strangers’ photos, noticing how many times Merilee appeared in them in various groups, clubs, and committees. And Sugar saw how many times John D. Cottswold appeared next to her.
“Look!” Lily exclaimed before Sugar’s eyes could focus on a new page. “It’s senior prom. And Mom is prom queen.”
It wasn’t surprising, really, to see Merilee standing next to John wearing coordinating evening wear in shades of blue and black. They were both wearing cardboard crowns and grinning at the camera in a series of photos, one picture showing Merilee’s lips pressed against John’s cheek. Marry me, Tallie! was written underneath the first photo in the same bold black handwriting they’d seen before.
Sugar was bracing herself for Lily’s comment when Lily slammed the book shut. “I think Mom’s home.”
“I thought you said your mother had given her permission.”
Instead of answering, Lily slid off the sofa and ran back to the bedroom, leaving Sugar in the dreaded position of either tattling on the girl and admitting her own complicity, or pretending that she believed they hadn’t done anything wrong. Lily had said that she’d received her mother’s approval, after all. And Sugar had chosen to believe her.
“Hello, I’m home,” Merilee called. “I’m so sorry the babysitter didn’t show—she called me and said she’d already spoken to you and that you were okay with staying a little longer. Still—I’m so sorry.”
“No harm done,” Sugar said as she managed to stand. “There’re cookies in the oven.”
As if on cue, the oven timer began to beep and Merilee rushed to the kitchen to take them out, Sugar eventually catching up. “You didn’t have to do this, Sugar, but I know the kids loved it.”
“Well, someone has to teach them kitchen skills, and I happened to be here.”
The sides of Merilee’s mouth twitched. “It’s a good thing you were.” She slid off the oven mitt she’d grabbed from the counter. “It’s a lovely evening outside—hardly any humidity. Why don’t you go sit out on the front porch and I’ll join you with some iced tea and cookies? Just give me a minute.”
Sugar pretended to give it some thought. Something about seeing the girl Merilee had once been had added a whole new dimension to this woman. Made Sugar realize that she wasn’t the only one with shadows in her past. “I suppose so. Law & Order: SVU is a repeat tonight anyway.”
Sugar began making her way to the front porch as Merilee called out to her daughter. “Lily, please go get your brother and tell him it’s bath time and then bedtime, but before he brushes his teeth he can have a cookie.”
Merilee soon joined her with the promised iced tea and cookies on one of Sugar’s serving plates. “Sorry,” Merilee said, following Sugar’s gaze. “I haven’t had a chance to bring it back to you yet. You can take it and the cookies when you leave.”
Sugar almost said something about how people nowadays had no idea about manners, but she remembered the cheerleader in the photo, the haunted look behind her eyes, and remained silent. Instead she took a sip of her tea. “Almost there but not quite. Needs more sugar.” She felt the younger woman watching her but didn’t turn to meet her gaze. “Your brother, David, the one who collected Lego people. How did he die?”
It was another one of the few things that made getting older worthwhile, the ability to speak without preamble. Being old was a good excuse for getting away with almost anything. And she wanted to know. Not because she was nosy—she wasn’t. But because she had a deep-seated belief that the shadows she saw behind Merilee’s eyes were similar to her own. She simply didn’t have enough years left to wait until she knew Merilee well enough to ask.
When Merilee turned to her in the dimming light, she didn’t feel guilty. Because instead of being upset or affronted, Merilee wore the expression of somebody who’d been holding her breath for a very long time and been finally told it was time to breathe.
“He drowned. My grandparents had a house on Tybee, and we went there for most of our vacations. I loved my grandparents—especially my grandfather. He’s the one who bought me my first old map.” She smiled at the memory, looking down at her glass as she sloshed the ice back and forth. “David was seven years younger than I was, so I was always the designated babysitter. Not that I minded—I adored him. We all did. I knew he was my mother’s favorite, but I didn’t mind because I understood. He was funny and smart and sweet—since the moment he was born. Everybody loved him.”
Merilee looked out toward the white fence, the rails gleaming in the yellow light of the moon. Sugar didn’t say anything, not wanting Merilee to stop. “We were kayaking in the ocean—but keeping really close to the shore because I’m afraid of sharks and things I can’t see.” Her smile faded as quickly as it had appeared. “He had on a life jacket—he’d put it on himself, saying that he knew how to do it and didn’t need my help.” Her voice caught. “He was seven years old, and I figured he did probably know how to do it. He was such a smart kid.”
Sugar sat back in her rocker, the wood creaking against the floorboards of the porch.
“I didn’t see the wave in time to turn us around to face it head-on, and it hit us broadside, knocking us out into the water. It couldn’t have been more than six feet where we were, and if his life jacket hadn’t slid off of him in the water, I could have pulled him up. I wasn’t even worried at first because he was such a great swimmer. But the boat hit him on the head when he was tossed out, and he must have lost consciousness.
“I searched and searched for him.
Even after the rescue people came, I refused to stop, though I was so tired I could barely hold my head above the water anymore. They pulled me out of the water, saying that I would drown, too, if I didn’t get out. I used to think that I would have been better off if they’d let me drown. My mother blamed me, you see. And my father always takes her side, so he blamed me, too. My grandparents died shortly after that, so all I was left with was the blame and the disappointment of my parents that I was the child who’d survived. I don’t have a good relationship with my parents still, because they will never forgive me.”
Sugar was surprised at the anger she felt toward people she’d never met. Maybe because she couldn’t help but picture her own daughter. And how she would have given anything to be able to watch her grow into adulthood. To be given the chance to cherish her.
“I suppose your mother had no business having a daughter.” Sugar stopped talking, except the words pressed against her throat, demanding to be let out. If there was anything she still believed in, it was fairness. “I had a little girl. I named her Mary, after Tom’s mother. She lived less than a day.” She paused, waiting for the familiar sting in her chest, which never faded no matter how many years had passed. “Sometimes I think I should be glad that she didn’t survive, because I might have treated her the same way your mother treated you because I didn’t know any better. I think some women are just born without that mothering instinct.”
Merilee reached over and squeezed Sugar’s hand. “No. That’s not true. I see how you are with my children, and with me, and I know that the person you show to the world isn’t the real Alice Prescott. You have a huge heart, and you would have been a wonderful mother.”
“A huge heart?”
Merilee nodded. “But I promise not to tell anybody.”
Sugar pressed her lips together, but only so Merilee couldn’t see her smile.
The sounds of a late-summer evening lent the night a melody, the song of the tree frogs and crickets filling the trees in the woods behind them, cocooning the two women in the illusion of friendship and a shared past.
“What about Jimmy, Sugar? What happened to Jimmy?”
Sugar stared out toward the woods, imagining the dark shadows that lingered among the tall Georgia pines, smelling again an autumn evening and the coppery tang of blood.
“In the end, I guess you could say it was his heart that finally gave out. At least that’s what the doctor said. But that’s not the real story. That’s not the real story at all.”
Nineteen
SUGAR
1943
Willa Faye hit the brakes too hard on her daddy’s 1939 Plymouth, then tried again to get it to stop slowly before grinding it to a halt in front of my house. We still wore our head scarves from our jobs at the Bell Bomber plant in Marietta, too exhausted at the end of our shift to take them off before staggering to the car.
It had been Willa Faye’s idea, that we should do our part for the war effort by making B-29s to drop bombs on the damned Germans. That’s what Willa Faye called them, anyway. I tried not to think of them at all just in case God was listening. I was pretty sure he didn’t approve of cussing even if it was directed at the Germans. But as I touched each piece of metal in the assembly line that would go into one of the Superfortresses, I said a prayer that it would bring the pilot and crew back home safely. I’d started out by just thinking of Tom until I realized that God might not take too kindly to my selfishness.
I wasn’t Catholic, but every time I thought of Tom, I did a sign of the cross like Willa Faye had shown me. I wasn’t sure what religion God was, but I hoped he’d at least recognize my devotion. When Willa Faye wasn’t looking, I also knocked on wood and refused to step on cracks in the sidewalks just to make sure I’d covered all my bases.
I’d always prided myself on being a stronger woman than my mother, on being a woman who stuck to her principles and wouldn’t allow her world to be guided by her heart. I saw what a mistake that could be by looking at my mother, who believed marrying someone for love was enough to guard you from all of life’s disappointments and losses. Because I knew it wasn’t. Love didn’t guide men’s actions. I’d witnessed it when Rufus had died and when Dixie had gotten hurt. I wanted to believe that I was too old for that kind of foolishness. That I was too strong. That was why I’d said no the first six times Tom had asked me to marry him. But that didn’t mean I couldn’t care about whether he was called up or that he didn’t come back home.
“What’s he doing here?” Willa Faye asked, nodding in the direction of the front porch. My stomach clenched like it always did when I saw Curtis Brown.
“He’s supposed to be at Fort Benning in Columbus doing infantry training. He just shows up here whenever he has leave, and I don’t know why since Harry and Will aren’t here—they’re training at Hunter Field in Savannah. And Bobby’s been in France for almost a year already.”
He was watching us now, and Willa Faye plastered a polite smile on her face. “Maybe your daddy needs his help. I hear they’re asking farmers to increase their output from what it was before the crash. Can’t see how that’s possible with all the fellows signing up and shipping out despite the draft deferment for farmworkers.”
I knew she hadn’t meant to sound callous, but with Tom’s departure imminent, I was overly sensitive. “He’s probably trying to get into my daddy’s good graces, seeing how there’s no competition now with my brothers temporarily gone. Probably wants to be given more land to farm when the war’s over.”
“Why? So he can ruin it like the farm he was supposed to be tending before the war?”
“Apparently.” I felt uneasy, seeing him there just watching us. Especially since I knew my daddy had gone to Augusta to see about using some of the German and Italian POWs at Camp Gordon to help with the fall harvest. It was only me, Mama, Jimmy, and Lamar. And now Curtis.
“I think he’s sweet on you.”
I felt like someone had hit me in the chest, knocking the air out of me. “What? That’s the craziest thing I ever heard. He’s just lonely. He’s got no family and no friends because of his meanness. And I’ve never encouraged him, if that’s what you’re saying.”
“I’m not sayin’ that at all. Do you want me to stay? I could call Daddy to come over, too.”
I smiled with more confidence than I felt. “That’s all right. I can handle Curtis Brown. I know how to punch and where to kick, and I’m a straight shooter. There are a few things that are good about being raised with brothers.”
She grinned as I opened the car door. “You know where to find us if you need us.”
I nodded, then exited the car, feeling somehow abandoned as she drove away, grinding the gears with every shift. It was a miracle her daddy let her drive at all.
Neither one of us said anything as I climbed the porch steps, and Curtis didn’t stand, either. If it was anybody else but Curtis, I could have forgiven his bad manners on account of his daddy being lower than a gully snake and his mama being dead. But there are some people you can’t forgive for taking up space.
I reached the porch and stood facing him. “I hope you’re not plannin’ on stayin’ for dinner.”
His hair was cut short, and his face and nails were clean—something I wasn’t used to seeing. And he was wearing a uniform, which made even the most average-looking man appear more interesting. If I hadn’t known him, I might even have said that he was handsome. Except when he smiled, I saw the badness in him. Then all I could see was the ugly.
“I’m sure you can rustle up somethin’ good for me. Or just give me Jimmy’s portion. That retard brother of yours don’t need it.”
I refused to let him get me in a state. I was already exhausted from working all day, and I still had supper and my mama to contend with. She didn’t speak at all anymore, just sat in bed, looking at the door every time it opened, hoping to see Bobby, I expect, before returning to s
tare at the wall when she realized it wasn’t him. I got her dressed and fed every morning, and helped her to the bathroom, then did the same thing every night. It never changed.
“I’ve asked you before, and I’ll ask you again. Please do not call my brother names. You only show your own ignorance when you say things like that.”
A slow, crooked grin spread across his face. “And whatcha gonna do if I don’t stop?”
I stared at him, refusing to argue. I wanted him off my porch and my property and I didn’t know if I had the energy even to argue.
“Good-bye, Curtis. Next time you pass by, don’t bother stopping.” I reached for the front screen, but he’d stood and grabbed my arm before I could move out of the way.
“What’s the hurry, sweetheart?” His foul breath blew across my face, but I stared him in the eye, not wanting him to see my fear.
“I’m not your sweetheart.”
A low chuckle rumbled in his chest, and I felt it up my arm. “That’s right. You got your own sweetheart now, don’tcha? Thinks he’s pretty special, I guess, bein’ a navy pilot and all. But is he a real man to you? Because I could show you what a real man is like.”
He pulled me closer and I felt vomit rise in my throat. I gathered all the liquid in my mouth that I could and spat in his eyes. He let go of me in a hurry, wiping his eyes and giving me a chance to go inside and latch the screen. Not that it was much protection, but he’d have to explain a hole in the screen door to my daddy if he wanted to get inside.
“You tell that retard brother of yours and his nigger friend to stay off my property. And any Indian arrowheads he finds are mine and he better be givin’ them to me or there’s gonna be trouble.”
I stared at him through the screen, incredulous. Curtis could only call his farm home because of my daddy’s good graces. And the old trading post that sat disintegrating on the edge of the property had once belonged to the Cherokees, who’d owned all the land long before my family got here. So any way he looked at it, neither the land nor the arrowheads belonged to him. Not that I wanted to stand there and argue. Stupid people rarely want to hear the truth.
