Aunt Marilee’s face was flushed, and she was smiling very big and laughing with delight each time she opened a gift. A few of the gifts were very lacy bras and panties. Corrine couldn’t wait to get a closer view of these; she was beginning to understand that those women in the Victoria’s Secret catalog weren’t shaped like they seemed at all, but made themselves that way with underwear. This seemed a lot of trouble and silliness to Corrine. She didn’t ever intend to do it but to wear jeans and T-shirts all her life.
“Little girl, could you get me some more mints?” Miss Mildred, the old lady who lived with Mr. Winston, held one of the crystal dishes toward Corrine.
“Yes, ma’am,” said Corrine, who eyed the dish with some amazement, then looked at the big purse the older woman clutched on her lap. Corrine did not think it her place to be rude and question.
She went through the dining room, passing Grama Norma, who was speaking to Charlotte. “I wish Anita was here for this. It has been forever since I had my girls together. Did Vella call her, do you know?”
“Vella tried to reach Anita all week, Norma,” said Charlotte. “She left messages, but Anita hasn’t returned them. Marilee told me she’d tried to call Anita, too.”
“Well, she might not be back from South America yet. Her boyfriend, Louis, has a lot of business down in South America, you know.”
Corrine moved on through to the kitchen, where Aunt Vella and Granny Franny were cutting the cake and putting the pieces on Aunt Vella’s fine china.
“It’s good for Willie Lee to be with the men,” Granny Franny was saying.
“Stuart really is a surprise with this, isn’t he?” Aunt Vella said.
And Granny replied, “People can rise to occasions when given the chance.”
Corrine filled the dish with mints, and, laying an eye on her as if seeing her for the first time, Granny Franny asked her to start handing out the cake.
“I’ll be back…. I’m takin’ these mints to Miss Mildred. She wanted some more.”
“Oh, no! We don’t do that!” said Aunt Vella, throwing up her hands. “Mildred is filling her purse…. She can’t have this much candy. Just take her this bitty piece of cake. Thank you, sugar.”
As Corrine passed back through the rooms, she heard that Reggie Pahdocony thought she might be going into early menopause, and Julia Jenkins-Tinsley had an overactive thyroid, and Imperia Brown whispered something about an overactive mouth.
Miss Mildred, upon sight of the cake, seemed not to remember she had asked for the mints. “Oh, thank you, little girl.”
Corrine stepped aside, casting furtive looks at the older woman, wondering if she would stuff the cake into her purse, but she sat and ate it with a smile.
Someone asked Aunt Marilee what something old she would be wearing for the wedding, and Aunt Marilee replied that she would wear earrings that she and Anita had bought down in Fort Worth a long time ago. Corrine saw a shadow pass across Aunt Marilee’s face. Probably no one else noticed it, but Corrine did.
“Honey, why don’t you wear my pearl necklace and earrings?” Grama Norma said. “They would be lovely.”
“I want to wear the earrings Anita and I bought,” Aunt Marilee said.
Grama Norma wasn’t going to let it go, though, and kept saying how she thought the pearls would be more refined than costume jewelry. Corrine saw how her aunt got the straight back and small but determined smile, and all of a sudden for some reason she was thinking of her mother with great longing.
She had tried and tried to hold the feelings off, but now, because everyone had mentioned her mother’s name, the feelings were coming over her in a flood. She could imagine her aunt Marilee and her mother buying the earrings. Her mother loved dangling earrings.
Corrine slipped unnoticed back into the kitchen and out the back door. She sat on the steps. Aunt Vella didn’t have a back porch.
Corrine could see down to the corrals behind Mr. Winston’s house. The horses stood at the wooden fence, swishing their tails.
A tiny fly lit on her arm; it was the first one that year to plague her. She noticed then how still and heavy the air had become. She gazed up at the sky that was covered by solid grey cloud. It was almost the same color as the stones in Aunt Vella’s new flagstone patio.
Then she was lost in her imagination as she saw the image of her mother sweeping along toward her, smiling in the beautiful manner she did whenever she was having a good day. Oh, Corrine loved those days when her mother was having a good day! In her imagination, she hopped up and ran to her mother, who hugged her, and then produced a gold box with a gold ribbon and said to Corrine, “Oh, honey, I didn’t forget you. I just had to find the exact right thing, and then the exact right box to put it in, and to bring it to you myself.”
Corrine, whose eyes had filled with tears, was brought out of the daydream by a blaring noise. Puzzled, she listened to the sound. A siren, she realized at the same moment of noticing a rising breeze.
The tornado siren!
Instantly on her feet and filled with panic, she tried to get in the back door, but couldn’t get the knob to turn. Behind her, the screen door banged against her back. Then, at last, she burst into the kitchen. It was empty.
“Corrine! Corrine!” That was Aunt Marilee.
“I’m here!” she called, even as she raced through the dining room, where women were on their feet and peering out the north windows and jabbering so that the siren could hardly be heard.
In the living room, Aunt Marilee took hold of her and headed for the front door.
Aunt Vella, standing at the door, stopped them and barked orders. “You can’t go down there now. Those men will take care of Willie Lee. You see to Corrine. You two get in the cellar.”
Corrine saw the hesitation on Aunt Marilee’s face.
“It’s comin’ out of the west, right at us,” said Reggie, who had turned on the television for the weather warning.
Then Aunt Marilee said to Corrine, “Come on. We’re gettin’ in the shelter.”
“There’s only room for six in the shelter,” Aunt Vella said, raising her voice to everyone. “Four of you follow Marilee and Corrine, and you others come over here and help me make room in the closet under the stairs. Mildred, sugar, you come over here with me.”
As Aunt Marilee jerked her along, Corrine caught sight of Miss Mildred crying and waddling toward Aunt Vella.
The wind was high out the back door. Granny Franny was there ahead of them and trying to get the cellar door open, but her tiny size was no match for the door in the wind that jerked it out of her hands. Corrine and Aunt Marilee took hold to help, and then Aunt Marilee was stuffing Corrine down into a cinderblock cubbyhole in the ground. Corrine looked back up for Aunt Marilee, but there was Reggie Pahdocony coming in.
“Aunt Marilee!” Corrine screamed.
“Shush…she’s comin’ honey,” Reggie told her, pulling her back to the rear of the cubbyhole, where Corrine waited with a thumping heart, until she could maneuver herself to sit beside Aunt Marilee, after her aunt had closed the cellar door.
She found herself surrounded by five other women, all of them squished together and panting hard and smelling like perfume and fear. Aunt Marilee, who had miraculously produced a flashlight, pointed the beam downward, and it sent an eerie glow on their faces.
Granny Franny had not come down, Corrine saw with distress.
“Good Lord, just listen to that wind,” said Imperia Brown.
They all listened. Corrine sure hoped Granny Franny wasn’t blowing away. She wasn’t very big. Corrine imagined Granny Franny flying through the sky, like the witch in the movie The Wizard of Oz, only Granny Franny was pretty and would be smiling.
“It might be just a good windstorm,” Grama Norma said. “Might not have been a tornado at all.”
“It’s a tornado,” Charlene said.
Aunt Marilee took hold of Corrine’s right hand, smoothed it out of a fist and held it in her own.
Just the
n something thunked against the cellar doors, causing them all to jump, and Belinda to let out a little scream.
Twenty-Seven
When the going gets tough…
Marilee, her heart pumping with both trepidation and curiosity, first peeked out, then led the way up out of the cellar.
Well, for heaven’s sake.
She stood there, blinking in the remarkable bright light shafting through thick dark clouds, and looking around at a quite normal world. The stone patio was wet from a heavy downpour, and water trickled from the eaves, but the rain fell softly now. The rain and the few limbs scattered about gave proof of a storm, and here a roof shingle, there quite a big limb, and over yonder what looked like a twisted piece of siding. But the house stood right there, seemingly undamaged.
The world was intact, the trees, Aunt Vella’s rose garden, the concrete benches on the new stone patio. Perhaps it had been nothing more than a strong wind-storm.
The other women came snaking around her, led by her mother making a beeline inside the back door. Marilee, being brought back to the present, took Corrine’s hand and followed, her thoughts now racing to Willie Lee and Tate and finding out what had happened.
In the living room, women were gathering their purses and streaming out the door, although Granny Franny was at the door and telling everyone to please stay for a bit, for safety’s sake. All wrought up, no one listened. They just went running out to their vehicles, while Aunt Vella, on the porch, yelled warnings about possible downed electric lines. Although scattered with small limbs, the street looked clear to Marilee. She pointed this out.
“Well, we don’t know what the other streets are like,” replied Aunt Vella.
“Do you think it was a tornado?” Marilee asked. She still had hold of Corrine, she realized, and she didn’t let go.
“It was a good windstorm,” Aunt Vella said, striding back into the house. “We don’t have any electricity, so something’s down somewhere.”
Mildred Covington had two plates of half-eaten pieces of cake balanced on her knees and was eating out of both.
Marilee’s mother was on the couch. She looked as white as a sheet and was breathing deeply.
“Mother, are you all right?”
“Well…I’m shaken up.”
Marilee hoped her mother was okay, because Marilee needed to leave her and get down to Tate and Willie Lee. Phone, perhaps she could phone, she thought, wishing that she had Tate’s cell phone, but then he wouldn’t have one. It might be quicker just to run down the street; it would only take a few minutes. While her mind was going a mile a minute in this distorted fashion, she turned to find that Belinda was at the telephone ahead of her.
“It’s dead,” Belinda said, dropping the receiver into the cradle.
“Aunt Vella, don’t you have a cell phone?” Marilee finally let go of Corrine. Corrine stayed close beside her.
“Well, yes,” said Aunt Vella in a manner as if just then thinking of it. She had to find her purse and dig into it. “Now let’s see. Oh, dear, the battery’s low, but it should still work.” She punched in the number for the drugstore. “It’s ringing,” she told Marilee, who stood watching her aunt impatiently.
“No answer,” Aunt Vella said after a long minute. Her eyes were round and worried as she passed the little phone to Marilee.
“Oh, Mama, Daddy’s probably still sittin’ there watchin’ a war picture on TBS,” said Belinda.
“There isn’t any electricity, Belinda.”
“Not here, but we don’t know about Main Street,” Belinda pointed out.
During this exchange, Marilee dialed Tate’s house and listened first to a long silence and finally to ringing…and ringing. “No answer,” she said.
“The phones could be out, but they’ll still ring,” Belinda said.
Marilee thought to try Tate’s cell phone, but for the life of her, she couldn’t remember the number. Her brain had gone into a spin, picturing the rest of the town, which they could not see, wiped off the face of the map.
Her gaze fell on her mother as she considered her options; she would have to leave her mother, who sat on Aunt Vella’s couch, fanning herself with a magazine.
“Mom, I have to go check on Tate and Willie Lee. You sit here and rest.” She grabbed Corrine’s hand, giving only passing thought to leaving the child in her mother’s care. She knew it would be Corrine taking care of her mother, not the other way around, and besides, the child was stuck to Marilee like glue.
“Be careful, dear,” her mother called after her.
She realized she had not driven, that Tate had brought her.
“I don’t think we should take the cars…we might get cars stuck all over,” said Franny, who came beside them as they started down the front porch steps.
“I sure hope Perry had sense enough to get in the closet,” said Aunt Vella, who followed.
Just then Dixie Love came out her door across the street. She hollered that she had no damage, and Aunt Vella hollered back, asking if she had electricity. Dixie said no.
The rain had stopped. Marilee, Corrine beside her, hopped over the water running thinly down the gutter, while the street was already showing dry patches.
“Nothing looks damaged around here,” Marilee said, finding the fact of all the houses intact extremely reassuring.
“Mr. Winston’s flags are tore up…so’s Mr. North-rupt’s,” Corrine said, pointing.
Just as they passed the Northrupt house, Mr. Northrupt came out his front door and hailed them. “We’re okay here!”
“Good!” Marilee called back.
She broke into a jog as they came around the curve going downhill. There was a big elm split right in two, and the part that lay out in the road blocked the view of Tate’s house. Corrine went surging ahead.
“Oh, Aunt Marilee!” she called back over her shoulder in a way that sent alarm racing through Marilee.
Then she got her first sight of Tate’s house.
Her stride faltered. The roof and half the top floor were gone. The bedroom that had been Franny’s was totally exposed; the bedspread flopped in the breeze. The wonderful old magnolia that had stood beside the house was broken off over the portico, under which the tail-end of the BMW could be seen.
“Oh my God,” Marilee said.
“Yes, Father, help us bear up,” Franny said.
Corrine was running ahead. “Come around the front!” she hollered back to them.
Marilee and Franny headed for the house, and Aunt Vella called that she was going on to the drugstore. Marilee hesitated, looking at her dear aunt, who was running faster than was wise for a woman of her age.
“Be careful, Aunt Vella!” Then Marilee followed Franny, and both of them started calling, “Tate! Willie Lee! Is everyone okay?”
Every dark thought that could be raced through Marilee’s mind, and she saw pictures of Willie Lee, Tate and Stuart being sucked up and swirling in a tornado, and the telephone and Munro, too.
Then, just as she reached the bottom of the front steps, she looked, and there was Tate coming out the front door, with Willie Lee beside him, and Stuart’s taller frame coming behind.
Oh, thank God.
Corrine reached them first and threw her arms around Willie Lee.
Marilee stood there staring, then sank down to the steps because her legs gave out.
Word of the general safety of the town and just what had happened came by way of Sheriff Oakes and Deputy Lyle Midgett, who drove past in their canvas of the town, and various neighbors living near the corner of Porter and Church Streets, who came to see the damage to the Editor’s house, commiserate and tell their own stories.
The tornado had been small and had come in from the west like a bouncing ball gone astray. It had bounced its way along what used to be an alleyway running behind the houses on Porter Street, a distance of some three long blocks, snapping power lines along the way. The passage of the tornado behind their house had been witnessed by Leon and St
ella Purvis, who saw it all from the window of their kitchen; the two had been working on Leon’s hot rod truck and had not heard the siren because of the roar of the engine.
“Stella said that the light looked funny, and I turned off the truck engine and heard the siren about the same time I caught the roar of the dad-blamed tornado,” said Leon, who had hotfooted it over to the big house to see if anyone had been injured.
Stella, who had come with him and who was puffing hard on a cigarette, said, “We saw it from our kitchen window. There wasn’t any time to take shelter anywhere else—Leon had the closet so full of stuff, it could have killed us. That thing snaked down to the alleyway right behind the yard. Looked like somethin’ out of the movies. Just like some animation, I swear. It danced back upward past Marilee’s yard and then just disappeared into the trees behind your house, Editor. Then stuff was flyin’ ever’ which’er way through the sky. I knew the house’d been hit.”
It was theorized that the big Holloway house had been what turned the tornado off course and sent it angling southeast. This was surely a blessing, or it might have gone right on down and demolished the school.
The way Marilee saw it, the school would not have been occupied, and Tate’s house was, so that had not been much of a blessing, although she did not think she should complain, since her dear family was safe, as, it appeared, were all those in the surrounding neighborhood. From all of the early reports, it seemed that the big Holloway house was the only house in Valentine that had been touched.
At the Corner of Love and Heartache Page 29
