by Webb, Peggy
“Well, Mama…share,” Jean tells her. “We’ll get you some more.”
“I gave her one piece. That ought to be enough. But she’s a hog.”
“Mama,” I say, and she gives me a sly, wicked grin.
This is just her way of showing us her spirit’s intact, that nothing can steal it, not even a strange place filled with the aged and the dying.
Of course, we’re all dying. Every day of our lives. But we’re living, too. And it’s how we do it that counts.
“Jean, I’m driving over to your house tomorrow to stay with you till I get a room here,” Aunt Mary Quana says.
“That’s wonderful,” Jean replies, “moving here to be next to Mama.”
“Shoot, I’m not moving here for Victoria. I’m leaving Atlanta because that Jezebel hussy down the hall stole my boyfriend. I’m no fixing to hang around and watch her carry on with Mr. Whitaker.”
“What about Uncle Larry?” I ask.
Aunt Mary Quana and her husband were inseparable, both brilliant photojournalists who traveled the world together chasing stories. She still visits his grave once a week, and although she has no children to bind her to Atlanta, I never thought she’d leave Uncle Larry behind.
“I’m not leaving him. I’m fixing to have him exhumed and cremated so I can bring his ashes with me.”
“That’s morbid,” Mama says.
“You won’t think so when I put him on my bedside table as inspiration.”
“Flitter, I don’t need inspiration from Carter. Nor permission, either. I’m getting me a man who’s alive.”
Let me learn from them, I’m thinking. Let me always plow full speed ahead, no matter what, embracing life with arms wide open.
After we go to Wal-Mart and buy Mama enough chocolates to feed a small, independent nation, Jean and I head home in the midst of a sunset that could have been designed by Walt Disney Studios.
“Maggie, when we grow old, do you think we’ll be like them?”
“I hope so, Jean. I really do.”
*
It’s a good day for traveling, the green of trees and pastureland looking newly minted from last night’s shower, the sun warming my driving arm through the window and turning herds of grazing cattle along the roadside into a painting by somebody famous. I’m alone. Nothing but the sound of a moody blues harmonica on the radio and my own blood flowing through my veins to keep me company.
That’s the way I want it. I’m passing Belle Gardens now, but I won’t stop until the return trip. Mama’s probably hiding yesterday’s haul of Wal-Mart chocolates, and although Jean and I put some in a separate bag for her roommate, I figure Mama handed her one box and gave the rest to Mert and Sarah. Or kept them for herself. With Mama, you never know.
Well, you do, actually. You can always count on her sass and courage, no matter what her circumstances.
And Jean… I’m sure she talked to Walter yesterday, but I don’t want to know. I need to be rowing my own boat, and it’s a good sign that she didn’t call to say, Maggie, what am I going to do?
What I’m doing is heading south on Highway 45 to Starkville where I will finally do what Mama has said all along. If you don’t toot your own horn, who will?
At the very least, MSU will offer me a job…teaching creative writing, which is what I should have asked for in the first place. Professional writers aren’t lurking behind every camellia bush and magnolia tree in Mississippi, and they’d be darned lucky to have me. I hope I can tell them that with a certain amount of modesty and a whole lot of moxie.
I have plenty of time to get my moxie up because this drive is seventy miles, an hour and fifteen minutes from Mama’s front door to the university’s entrance, all of it on good four-lane highway after I get out of Mooreville and through the south end of Tupelo. I could get nervous if I think about my bold move – lobbying to be a professor two weeks before the start of fall semester.
Instead I think about traveling on a good road. Is this a metaphor for my life? As Mama would say, It’s high time something good happened.
I’m taking some of my books with me, Calico Death, my first, and Siamese Silence, my favorite – both of them in French, German, Italian and Spanish as well as English.
I had to go to my rented storage unit last night and dig around before I found them. They were piled under boxes labeled Kitchen Stuff and Skinny Clothes I Might Wear Again.
I waded through stacked kitchen chairs, my blue velvet footstool (which I absolutely love and wish I’d taken to Mama’s, but where would I put it?), my six-foot desk and swivel office chair, and sixteen boxes of shoes before I could get to the books.
There was something lonely and sad-looking about my stored possessions, as if I had died and left them behind. And perhaps I have.
No, that’s not exactly right. I’m trying to keep the best parts of me. Maybe I’m a signet molting its ugly dark feathers so it can become a swan, or a butterfly emerging from its cocoon. Both of them can fly. Yes, I like that, the idea of me lifting my wings to the wind, rising above the mundane and soaring toward the stars.
A trucker in a Peterbilt rig whizzes by, rocking the Jeep, ruffling my wings. Nothing can make me fold them, though. I give him a jaunty wave, but he doesn’t wave back, let alone salute me with that big air horn. I can’t remember the last time that happened.
How lovely not to care.
West Point is coming up, little brick tabernacle of hope on the right, Secret Garden Nursery on the left. I love that name. Maybe I’ll stop there on the way home, buy a red rose, celebrate, never mind that it’s August and experts suggest you don’t plant in this heat.
Watch me, I’ll tell them. I’m just getting started.
I ease my foot off the speedometer and creep along because the cops in this small town frown on audacious, lead-footed women, and I don’t want to start this day with a ticket I can’t pay. Yet.
Twenty minutes past West Point I arrive at the gates to the sacred halls of higher learning. I find a parking place in the shade, grab my bag of books and priss my ample self to the fifth floor of Allen, right up to the President’s office.
I present my credentials and make my pitch to teach writing at the university, then try not to sit on the edge of my chair and twist my hands in my lap while he thumbs through the novels I’ve brought.
Finally he tells me, “This is impressive. Mrs. Dufrane, I think you will be an excellent addition to our faculty.”
*
Afterward, I walk across the campus to the Chapel of Memories. It’s noon and somebody is in the tower playing the carillon, a glorious bell-music version of “Oh, What a Beautiful Morning” that makes me want to sing along.
Well, why not?
The great thing is that although I sing flat and can’t remember all the words and make up new ones as I go, nobody gives me funny looks. When I get to the chapel I sit in the attached courtyard by the fountain, lift my face to the sun and say yes. Just that. And then thank you.
*
Mama’s napping when I get back to Belle Gardens, curled on her bed with her back to her roommate, glasses off, her lips moving as she dreams of hiding her candy. Or maybe she’s dreaming of dancing in red shoes. I hope so.
Rather than wake her, I sit in her recliner and watch while she sleeps. I have all the time in the world. Shoot, I own the world.
“Maggie?” She’s peering at me with one eye. Suspicious. “What’s wrong?”
“I have something for you, Mama.”
I go into the bathroom and bring out the dozen red roses I purchased at the Secret Garden. She claps her hands and says, “Ohhh.”
This is not the senility of age, a gradual reversion back to childhood. This is Mama, who has never been afraid to do what children do, just let her emotions rip.
“There’s more in the car. A red rose bush. Let’s put your glad rags on. We’re going to Mooreville to celebrate.”
“What are we celebrating?”
“You’re looking at ‘Professor�
� Maggie Dufrane, gainfully employed and raring to spend.”
“Well, it’s high time.”
She wants to wear sequins to supervise the ceremonial planting of the rose, and I pick out the flashiest outfit she has, yellow with purple, green, and pink sequined flowers all over. Who cares if she looks like Mardi Gras? Who gives a flitter if it’s the middle of the afternoon and nobody wears that kind of thing till after dark?
“Why don’t I pack a little bag and check you out for the night so we can get Jean and have a party?”
“Okay. We’ll stop at Palmer’s and pick up ice cream.”
“Cherry vanilla.”
“No. I want to pick it out. I’m the one who told you to do this.”
The side trip to the grocery store, which would take only fifteen minutes if I ran inside to get the ice cream, turns into an hour-long excursion, with Mama clomping up and down the frozen food section on her walker inspecting every box of ice cream in the store and then stopping to tell everybody she meets about my new position, whether she knows them or not.
Here’s what she says, “This is my daughter, Maggie. She’s a professor.”
I feel as if I should be passing out cigars.
Some of the people she stops listen politely and then hurry on, but some of them, perfect strangers, say, Isn’t that nice and You must be so proud. A few of them even whip out pictures of their own children and tell about their jobs in Boise and Seattle and Albuquerque.
This, too, is a celebration for me. Watching her. Seeing the pleasure she gets in sharing small triumphs. Being thankful that she’s still with me.
Exhausted from her performance in Palmer’s, she leans her head against the window and sleeps the rest of the way home. The late afternoon sun shines through the window, reflects on her sequins and puts something that looks like a halo around her.
Later, sitting in the middle of the bed with Jean and Mama and Aunt Mary Quana, the four of us eating strawberry shortcake ice cream, Jefferson sitting on the floor beside us, ears alert and tongue drooling on the rug, I tell them about the halo.
Mama laughs till tears roll down her cheeks, and then she says, “Do you reckon they really give those things out when you die?”
“Don’t talk like that,” Jean says, but I see something in Mama that wants an answer.
“I don’t know,” I tell her. “Nobody does, really, but I can’t imagine anything more useless.”
“Neither can I. If Saint Peter gives me one, I’m swapping it for a sun hat with a red feather.”
In the midst of the conversation, Rainman calls.
“I can’t talk right now, Joe. We’re having a girls-only party.”
“Have fun,” he says. After I hang up, Aunt Mary Quana studies me.
“Why didn’t you invite him over?”
“Because I want him all to myself.” Suddenly I know this is exactly what I want. An amazing encounter that wipes everything from my mind except a pair of legs tangled in the sheets, and the feeling that I’m in a world apart and nothing can happen, ever again, that I can’t handle.
______________
Chapter Seventeen
______________
“Instead of talking about the weather today, I’m going to give you some advice. The sun is shining: get outside and enjoy it.”
Rainman
Jean and I are in the north pasture behind Mama’s house, Jean taking my place behind the wheel, driving, and me taking her place in the passenger’s side, happy to be striking a huge blow for freedom for myself but praying, too.
Between silent supplications for mercy and deliverance, I’m trying not to yell, You’re going to get us all killed.
Holding her tongue between her teeth and the wheel in a white-knuckled grip, Jean’s beheading black-eyed Susans and mowing down Queen Anne’s lace at forty miles an hour.
“Just take it easy,” I tell her. “Slow down.”
“How?”
Lord have mercy. Her driving is enough to turn me Catholic on the spot. I imagine myself clinging to a rosary, freeing my mind of the oak tree that has suddenly sprouted in our path and seems bent on doing us in.
“You remember, Jean. Just ease up on the accelerator.”
“Okay.” She tightens her grip, squeezes her face in concentration and presses down instead of letting off. The Jeep roars forward while Jean squeals, “Oh lord,” and lets go of the steering wheel.
I lurch sideways and grab the wheel, jerking hard to the right just before the trunk of the oak replaces me in the passenger’s seat. Even my quick wits and lightning reflexes don’t stop the low-hanging branches from scraping the top of the Jeep.
“Stop,” I yell at Jean. “Stop!”
We come to a bone-jarring, teeth-rattling halt, and Jean turns to me with sweat-slicked face and big eyes.
“It could happen to anybody,” she says.
“I know.”
“At least I didn’t hit it.”
“No, you didn’t.”
“I’m not sure I’m cut out for driving.”
“Yes, you are. If fifteen-year-olds can learn to drive, so can you.”
“Well…all right.” She squeezes her eyes shut, takes a deep breath and gives a little nod, more to herself than to me. It’s the kind of gesture that says this was merely a setback.
“Other than that,” she says, “how am I doing?”
Terrible. Horrible. Hopeless. These are only three adjectives that come to mind, not to mention the very real possibility that she will wreck my car and I won’t have any means of transportation to my new job. Still, I’m willing to take the risk to cut my trips to Wal-Mart in half.
“Great,” I reply instead. “It’ll just take you a little while to catch on.”
“That’s what I think.” She nods and wipes her face with the bottom of her pink seersucker maternity top. “I’m going to show that Walter.”
I’m scared to ask what. The last telephone conversation didn’t go well. Between Jean’s ultimatums and his stubborn refusal to be dictated to, they’ve come to an impasse.
Or so Jean said. But then, this is my doom-saying sister talking. I can’t imagine that Walter is not as eager to be a hands-on father as Jean is to deliver a healthy baby with two stay-at-home parents.
“Why don’t we take a lunch break, Jean?”
“No. When you’re gone I’ve got to be able to drive myself around.”
“Okay,” I tell her. “Let’s just go over a few basics again, starting with the accelerator.”
“The what?”
“The gas pedal. That little doohickey under your right foot.”
“Shoot, I knew that. I’m just nervous, that’s all. Let’s go another round in the pasture.”
“I’m not sure my nerves can take it.”
“Since when have you had nerves?” Jean puts my Jeep in gear and wrecks a perfect stand of goldenrod. “See. I’m doing fine here. All you have to do is sit over there, keep your seat belt buckled, and give me a few driving tips every now and then.”
“How about… if you keep going in this direction we’re going to end up in Mama’s lake?”
“Whoops.” Jean veers hard to the left, overcorrecting and almost smashing into a barbed wire fence. Once she gets underway again she shoots me an accusatory look. “Don’t say a word. You scared me, that’s all.”
“Slow down, keep out of the lake, off the trees and away from the fence posts, and I won’t say a thing. How’s that?”
“You’re surly, Maggie. What you need is to take care of your poor, neglected libido.”
Don’t think I haven’t thought of it. “That’s a sexist remark, Jean.”
“Don’t give me that feminist garbage. It’s the truth. Intimacy is the world’s best release for tension.”
Women in my situation – meaning a certain age, alone and taking care of everybody but themselves – don’t get that many opportunities.
What I tell Jean is, “Just tend to your driving and I’ll tend t
o my libido.”
Jean slams on the brakes, and I can’t tell whether this is deliberate or whether this is what she plans to do every time she stops.
“Look,” she says. “I need lunch. Let’s go inside and have chicken salad and chocolate cake. I’m hungry.”
“I thought I heard something calling my name. I might have known it was chocolate.”
Jean parks beside the fence that separates her yard from Mama’s pasture, and we go through the gate Walter installed and into her kitchen, which always smells like butter and sugar and whatever flavor she’s decided to use in her cake that day.
*
The chocolate restores my equanimity, but I’ve never been called foolhardy, and so before we head back to the carnage Jean left behind in the pasture – beheaded wild flowers, flattened bushes and scraped up trees – I arrange an assortment of pots and pans and serving spoons in her den as stand-ins for parts of the car.
She masters the stew pot and the omelet pan (brake and accelerator), the soup spoon and the cake knife (turn signal and gear shift) from the safety of her pink velvet wingback chair without once coming close to wrecking the TV and sideswiping Walter’s favorite recliner.
“Are you ready now?” I finally ask. “Because if you’re not we still have thirteen days to get you a driver’s license before I start teaching.”
“I don’t need thirteen days, Maggie. I just need half your confidence and somebody to believe in me. That’s all.”
That explains why I’m always the one she turns to, always the one she asks, What are we going to do?
“I believe in you, Jean. I know you can learn to drive.”
“It’s not just driving, Maggie. Mama always believed in you. You were the one she counted on to make the best grades and win the awards and make something of yourself.”
“She believed in you, too. She still does.”
“Yeah, but in a different way. I think she views me as more decorative than substantial. So does Walter.” She spreads her hands across her beginning-to-bulge womb. “The only thing I’ve ever done that’s significant is get pregnant.”
“Why, Jean, that’s not true.”
