Follow Me

by Joanna Scott

  Georgie had met a foreman at the cement factory in the spring of 1948 and within a year was engaged to be married, but she still invited Sally to go to the movies every Saturday afternoon. She made it a point to introduce Sally to other eligible young men from the factory and even succeeded in setting up some blind dates with friends of her fiancé. But nothing came of it. Sally didn’t mind, though. She wasn’t in any hurry to give up her freedom.

  She found she was always welcome at Erna’s Beauty Parlor. Sometimes she even helped with customers, setting up the hair dryers and answering the phone when the parlor got busy. She met Erna’s sister, an older woman named Gladdy Toffit, who drove in once a week, nearly an hour each way, from Helena, a hamlet north of Amity. Gladdy was in her forties and, to Sally’s fascination, had been divorced twice. She had one child, a grown daughter who had broken Gladdy’s heart by eloping to California with a man she met at the tavern where she’d been working. Gladdy didn’t work at all. She lived off what she called a handsome trust set up for her by the mother of her first ex-husband.

  Gladdy Toffit told Sally just what a woman needed to know: First of all, said Gladdy, she needed to be prepared to be abandoned. Men liked two kinds of romance — the romance of first love, and the romance of new love, which meant that most every woman would have a chance to be discardable old love at some point in her life. Second, a woman needed to know how to hold her liquor. She couldn’t turn silly from a few swallows of whiskey. Third, a woman needed to know how to shoot a rifle. Fourth, a woman needed to know how to choose a perfume that suited her.

  Sally pondered all of these notions, especially the last. “How do I know what’s the right perfume?” she wondered aloud.

  Gladdy had no sure formula for finding an appropriate fragrance. But she could say with some certainty that women who smoked shouldn’t wear lavender. Why not?

  There was no single reason. It was just a fact. Also, a woman should never splash herself with rose water if she knew she’d be frying eggs later in the day.

  Erna called her sister Gladdy a Fount of Knowledge. Gladdy would sit under the hair dryer, lifting up the helmet every few seconds when she thought of other important information to pass along. She was fond of Sally, she said, because she reminded her of her daughter. Sally could fill in as her daughter until the real daughter came home.

  Sally learned something of the world during her visits to Erna’s salon. More precisely, she was getting a sense of proportion, understanding the scope of her provincial ignorance. And as she became more aware of how narrow her life was, she felt increasingly dissatisfied with the confinements of Uncle Mason’s house, the stark quiet of the rooms, and the repetition of the routine. Sweeping, cooking, dusting, washing, and singing for no one on Sundays. La, la, la. Mason Jackson was as nice a man as you’d ever meet — that’s what she told Gladdy and Erna. But she didn’t tell them how each day was like a song she’d grown tired of singing but sang anyway, returning to the same chorus over and over and always ending on the same note.

  “ ’Night, g-g-g-girlie. See you in the morning.”

  She wanted something unexpected to happen. But all the potential for surprise was closed up in that box on the high shelf in the kitchen, bundles held with rubber bands and hidden from view.

  After she’d opened that box for the first time, Sally was determined never to open it again. Yet her determination weakened as the details of the memory were made more vivid by her imagination, the green of the bills greener, the stacks thicker. One day while she was sweeping around Uncle Mason, sweeping up those wood curls, she even pictured the box with its lid wide open. She wasn’t sure whether she was imagining it just then or remembering an image from the previous night’s bad dream.

  She wasn’t sure about much of anything. She’d watch Uncle Mason when he was whittling, hoping that with some gesture he’d give her a clue about himself. She’d forget that she was staring at him and would keep on staring, until he shook his head, shaking away her gaze like he’d shake away a fly. Then she’d stop staring and wait for another time, when she thought he was too deeply involved in his work to notice her. She’d wait tensely, half expecting him to leap from his chair and demand, What is it you want from me?

  I want to know about the money in that box up there.

  Months went by. Uncle Mason whittled, Sally cleaned and cooked, and on Sundays, when the whole Jackson family got together, she sang, Nothing left of rainy-day love…

  She waited for Uncle Mason to tell her something remarkable. But he stayed away from subjects that would interest her. He liked to talk about the weather and the measurements in the rain gauge in the garden. When his brother stopped by, they sat in the kitchen murmuring, their voices barely audible. And when Sally entered the room and Swill fell silent, Mason would say something like, How ’b-b-bout that trolley line proposed for Amity?

  Sally didn’t want to hear about a trolley line!

  Well, then. D-did she want a second serving of the p-p-pound cake Swill’s wife made?

  No thank you!

  Sometimes, maybe just three or four times during the two and a half years she lived at Mason Jackson’s house, he’d lift his eyes while she was staring at him and return her stare with a force that wasn’t in any way cruel but involved a kind of penetrating vision, so she felt that he was reflecting the look she’d aimed at him. He’d give her a gentle nod, as though to reassure her that she’d done nothing wrong. But after he left the room she’d feel dirty from her own sorry struggle to see beyond what words could tell her. She’d feel like she’d been found out. And worse. She’d feel pitied by the look in his eyes when he’d returned her stare.

  I’m not a thief.

  Of course you’re not.

  She hadn’t stolen any money. She’d never taken anything that Uncle Mason hadn’t given her. But what was he planning to do with all that money? she wanted to ask him.

  What money? he probably would have said, playing stupid.

  The money up there.

  Where?

  In the box.

  What box?

  On a bright June morning, three months after she’d first opened the wooden box, she climbed up on a chair to check the shelf and make sure the box was still there. Finding it, she couldn’t resist opening it. And after she opened it, she couldn’t resist running her fingers across the soft paper of the bills. She was reminded of the stacks of bills she’d seen in the drawer of the cash register at Liggett’s. She’d always wondered what all those bills in the cash register added up to. Five plus ten, ten plus twenty, twenty plus —

  Quick, he’s coming.

  No, Uncle Mason wasn’t coming right then. He’d gone off pheasant-hunting with his brother for the day. Funny about those hunting trips. Anything Uncle Mason ever brought back for Sally to dress and cook had been shot by his brother. If an animal was dead, Swill was the one who’d killed it. But he never shot a doe, no, not even if he happened to be standing in the yard, aligning the target in the kitchen in the back sight of his gun, aiming the barrel —

  She cried out, startled by the shadow of a branch moving in the breeze outside the window. But no one was there. Of course no one was there. She quickly closed the box and returned it to the shelf. She was sorry afterward that she hadn’t finished counting the money. But what did she care about how much money Mason Jackson kept in the box?

  They were at Lawson’s counter one day after they’d gone to see an Abbott and Costello monster movie at the Amity theater, waiting for their order, when Sally cleared her throat too loudly and said, “Georgie, I’ve been wondering.”

  Georgie was lost in a daydream, probably thinking about that Mr. Harvey Fitzgerald, the cement factory foreman who in eleven months was going to be her husband.

  But Sally wanted to know if…

  “I’m going to suck your blood!” Stevie bunched his shoulders into a high collar and made fangs with his fingers. Sally gave him a quick laugh and turned the seat of his stool to spin h
im.

  “What were you saying?” Georgie asked.

  “I was wondering what happened to Mason’s wife.”

  The waitress set the coffees and root beer float on the counter and promised to bring the pie straightaway. The boy occupied himself poking his straw at the bobbing mound of ice cream in his glass. Sally tried to take a sip from her cup, but the rim was too hot. With her eyes fixed on the clock above the kitchen door, she asked if Mason Jackson had ever been married.

  Yes, he’d been married, Georgie said. He was married to a woman named Shirley. For how long? For all Georgie knew, they were still married, least on paper.

  “No children?”

  Georgie explained that Mason and Shirley had had a child, a little girl, who drowned in the Tuskee when she was two. Fell through the ice. No one in the Jackson family liked to talk about it, though. The only one who ever told stories was Swill’s wife, and only then when Swill wasn’t around. Anyway, Shirley left Mason after the girl drowned. She just up and left town. Didn’t even say good-bye.

  “Where’d she go?”

  “Disappeared. She was last seen at the station in Amity boarding a bus heading west.”

  “And Mason still wears his ring?”

  “Remember, Stevie, when you asked him about that ring? Uncle Mason said the ring was stuck. He’d have to cut off his finger, he said, if he wanted to take off the ring.”

  What a fine thought! “Chop, chop,” the boy said, slicing the air with a butter knife.

  “You, stop that. Anyway, it was the only time I ever heard Uncle Mason mention that ring. If I were you I wouldn’t ask him about the past. He doesn’t like to talk about it.”

  “No, I guess not.”

  The waitress swooped in, setting the pieces of pie in front of them. “Hey, handsome,” she said, leaning on her elbows toward Stevie. “Do I make a mean float or what?”

  He looked uncertain about how to reply, and then he growled, “I’m going to suck your blood!”

  “Oh, you’ll be a heartbreaker,” said the waitress.

  And that was the end of the conversation with Georgie about Uncle Mason. Stevie wanted to leave as soon as he’d finished his float. Georgie wanted to go look in the window of the bridal shop to see what they had on the mannequin this week. She was planning to sew her own dress and two for Harvey Fitzgerald’s little sisters, who would be the bridesmaids.

  Sally thought a lot about what Georgie had told her, how trouble had once struck in Uncle Mason’s quiet life. He’d lost a daughter to the river, and his marriage had gone sour. He had no interest in spending the money he’d earned over the course of his life. All he could think to do with it was put it in a box, stacks of bills tucked safely away for him to ignore.

  The day after talking with Georgie, and then the next day and the next, Sally stared at Uncle Mason, wondering if while he whittled and puffed on his pipe he was remembering his troubles. And when her wonder was too expansive and abstract a feeling to tolerate, she’d wait for him to leave the house, and then she’d get the box and open it.

  Opening the box, she’d think about what she would have done with all that cash, if it had been hers. Stacks and stacks of bills. She’d stare at the money until she’d think she heard the sound of someone coming. No one was ever coming, but she was scared of being caught. And after she put the box away she’d regret that she didn’t take the time to count the money. How much money he’d accumulated, she couldn’t begin to estimate. She’d count it someday, just to see what Mason Jackson of Fishkill Notch was worth.

  On a brisk, clear November Sunday in 1949, she discovered that Mason Jackson was worth four thousand three hundred and forty dollars. Who would have expected it? He never bought anything extra, just what he considered necessary or, for Sally, what he felt she deserved. But a fortune of four thousand three hundred and forty dollars — that was bigger than any nest egg Sally had ever seen. In truth, she’d never seen the money of any other nest egg, only heard stories about what her mother or her aunt or uncle kept under mattresses or in coffee cans in the back of a closet. This nest egg, all four thousand three hundred and forty dollars, seemed a whole lot of money to a nineteen-year-old girl from Tauntonville.

  The truth was, humble Mason Jackson was a rich man. All those tens and twenties were worth… how much? It occurred to her that in the rush of secrecy, maybe she’d counted wrong.

  On a Tuesday in December, she took down the box and counted the money again. This time she counted four thousand three hundred and seventy dollars. She recounted the bills, just to make sure, and came up with the same sum she’d counted the first time — thirty dollars less than what she’d just counted. Did she count correctly the first time, or this time?

  She pondered the mystery for so long that she still had the box open on the table when she heard the truck coming up the drive.

  She hurriedly returned the box to the shelf and was in her room by the time Uncle Mason and his brother came into the house. Through the closed door she tried to hear what they were saying, but they kept their voices low. Later, after Swill had gone, she emerged from her room and headed to the kitchen, passing Uncle Mason in the hall, meeting his gaze for a moment, returning his nod and wondering about the expression in his eyes, as black as lake water and too deep to see to the bottom.

  A few weeks later, when she was alone in the house, she opened the box and counted the money. Twenty dollars had been added since the last time she’d looked. But the following week, she counted the money and came up with a different sum, thirty dollars less. From one week to the next, over the course of several months, she never came up with the same amount twice. She didn’t believe that the amount was changing. Rather, she was aware of a strange influence in the air that made her mix up her numbers when she was trying to count.

  How had her life gotten so complicated? In the early days working as Mason Jackson’s housekeeper in Fishkill Notch, she’d been given the opportunity to start afresh, free of judgment, if not exactly blameless. She had worn clothes as unadorned as the furniture in Uncle Mason’s house. She’d cooked and cleaned. She’d swept wood curls from the floor. On Sundays she’d pumped the pedals of the player piano and taught herself to sing.She’d learned to type. And she had even started imagining that she would make things right: one day she would return home and get her baby boy and show him that she wasn’t as bad as she’d been made out to be.

  Then she’d found Mason Jackson’s box. And it wasn’t long after that she started to think up new ways to count money.

  Brooms and kitchen pots, music, friends, beehive hairdos and picture shows. It would all have been manageable without that box on the shelf. If only she hadn’t found that box. The effect of it was like a strong wind that had blown through the window and turned the pages of the book she was reading, if she’d ever bothered to read a book. She’d lost her place and didn’t know what was going on or who was who — Georgie, little Stevie, Swill, Gladdy Toffit, Erna, and the mysterious Mason Jackson. And what about all the earlier chapters? Why didn’t they matter anymore?

  She tried to look in the mirror on the medicine cabinet to see herself, to make sure she was still there — the same Sally Werner she remembered — but the glass was all steamed up from her bath. She used her hand to wipe away the steam, and just when she thought she’d see what she expected to see, the door to the cabinet popped open, and her reflection set out walking away.

  Did that make sense?

  No.

  Where was she?

  Floors to sweep, songs to sing, and there she was making twenty-five dollars a week for doing hardly nothing. Anything! How could she make a slip like that?

  It was easy to slip in Fishkill Notch. The very ground was tilted beneath the tilted floors. She’d slipped all the way down Thistle Mountain — slipped and spread and flowed on her way elsewhere, until the current hit the dam that was Uncle Mason’s house.

  It all should have been so simple. She was a housekeeper for a nice old m
an with good manners. He’d never reprimanded her, not once. And he’d never been inappropriate. He was a good man with a sad story that he didn’t like to tell.

  And she was nineteen-year-old Sally Werner from Tauntonville. She’d made mistakes, sure. She didn’t pretend to be completely innocent. But she wasn’t a thief.

  “No,” she said aloud, to no one. “I am not a thief.”

  May 20, 1950, the day of Georgie’s wedding to Harvey Fitzgerald, started out rainy, with thunder rumbling to the south. But by ten o’clock the rain had stopped, and a wind picked up, whipping the clouds away. By noon, the sky was a fresh blue, and the lawn behind the Cadmus Party House was almost dry.

  Sally woke early to the sound of a cardinal singing its tawitt witt witt in the rain. She wrapped herself in a robe, plugged in the percolator, and cooked a pot of oatmeal. After she put on the temporary outfit of a cotton skirt and a high-necked sleeveless shirt, she waited for time to pass. Uncle Mason came out of his room later than usual, at about eight thirty, looking so pale and worn that Sally asked him if he was feeling ill. He assured her that he was fine and gave his chest a few pats to show that his lungs were clear. But he ended up coughing anyway, bringing up mucus from the back of his throat. All he needed to set things right, he said, was a glass of fresh water.

  “Here you are, Uncle.”

  “Ah. Hhh-cha-mm — that’s b-b-better.”

  But still he looked weaker than usual, deflated, like a balloon that had lost air overnight.

  “You sure nothing’s wrong, Uncle? You’re happy for Georgie, aren’t you?”

  Sure, he was happy for her. Who wouldn’t be happy for her? But look at the time! They’d be late to the wedding if they didn’t hurry!

  The wedding wouldn’t start until noon. Forty of Georgie’s and Harvey’s relatives and friends had been invited. Georgie expected about eighty people to show up. That’s just the way it is here, she said, which Sally took to mean that everybody was welcome.