Follow Me

by Joanna Scott

  “The what?”

  “The pedal there, to stop.” He tried to kick his foot into the space, but Sally beat him to it.

  “I know what a brake is.” Sally pressed lightly, expertly slowing the car, bringing it to a halt with its nose pointing toward the fence. “How was that?”

  “I told you,” he said. “You’re a natural.” He reached for the gear handle, shoving it into park.

  They sat in silence for a moment, staring at the metal links glinting in the headlights. “I guess…,” Mole said vaguely, giving a timid smile. She braced her shoulders as she turned toward him, offering him her lips. He hesitated, so she wrapped her arms around his neck to pull him closer, and they kissed another gulping kiss.

  A newscaster was droning on about yesterday’s swirling dogfight over Korea, though Sally and Mole weren’t listening. Nor did they notice the dark form of a moth fluttering in the headlight beams or the white-tailed doe that bounded across the edge of the playground behind the fence. They kept kissing for so long, with such absorbing passion, that by the end of it, Sally was certain that she knew Mole thoroughly and knew that she could count on him to be a good and honest sport no matter what. So desperate was she to put the tumult of the last three years behind her forever that by the time they’d stopped kissing, she’d concluded that they should marry and spend the rest of their lives together.

  “It’s a good thing that pistol didn’t fire when you pulled the trigger,” she whispered, fingering his collarbone, pressing tenderly to explore the line of his neck.

  She expected him to say something charming in return. But he surprised her by admitting in a murmur that he had something to tell her — a something in a tone that promised to be an unwelcome confession. Her fingers curled in tense anticipation. He was going to tell her that he didn’t want to be involved with her or couldn’t be involved because of what she’d done, he’d heard about her, he knew about what she’d left behind in Tauntonville and what she’d taken from Fishkill Notch. He was going to call her a slut. He was going to say he wouldn’t have anything more to do with her. He was going to say —

  “It’s about Phoebe. Well…”

  “What?” Her confusion was smothering. All she would let herself understand was that he was telling her something he thought she didn’t want to hear.

  “The car, it’s Phil’s. Phil’s my brother, see —”

  “What?”

  “I should have come right out and told you earlier. You see, Phil lets me use his car when he doesn’t need it, except he needs it to drive to Fenton. He’s a manager on the graveyard shift at the diner there, and he needs the car to get to work. If I’m not back by ten —”

  “That’s all you’re telling me, about the car?”

  “I mean, I hope you’re not mad.”

  “You darling,” Sally said with relief. His ignorance of her guilt was almost as good as forgiveness. “Of course I’m not mad.”

  They met the next time Phil lent Mole the Pontiac, three nights later. They met again on the following Sunday and stayed out well past midnight, since it was Phil’s night off. They met again on Tuesday night, and then the next Thursday, dividing their time between driving instruction and kissing, incrementally driving less, since Sally was quick to master the necessary skills, and kissing more, expanding their kissing to caresses, their caresses to more excited groping. They took to parking along the gravel drive leading to the mill. They’d move to the ample rear seat, and Mole would open Sally’s blouse button by button with a slow, intoxicating persistence. Sometimes he’d have to struggle with the hooks of her bra, bunching the clasp, pulling with two hands before he discovered that a simple pinch with a slight rubbing would do it. His fingers were always cold, even on a steamy summer’s night, but they’d warm up from the heat of Sally’s skin. And she’d make sure to move her body into positions that gave him room to explore, shifting her hips to stretch her torso into a long curve, lifting her chin, raising a knee, until finally, after several weeks of caresses gentler than anything she could have dreamed of, she separated her thighs for him.

  She’d been afraid that with this new intimacy he’d ask about her history. But though he must have understood that she wasn’t a virgin, he was too absorbed in his pleasure to care. And she felt her need to confess to him evaporate. He’d fallen for her in her incarnation as Sally Angel; there wasn’t any need for him to find out about Sally Werner.

  She did ask him one night about his own past romances. He insisted that she was his first real love, though he’d had what he called “a dress rehearsal” with a girl named Annette, the older sister of Belle, the girl who’d fired the gun in the mill. But Annette had gone away to a junior college, where she’d met someone else, a sergeant in the military, who at the time was on leave from Korea. When she came back to Helena the next summer, she was already engaged.

  “But I don’t want to talk about all that,” Mole said.

  Mostly, they talked about the future. He’d dropped out of school the previous year, but he was planning to enroll in an electrician’s course at the Career Training Center in Fenton. Once he was certified, he hoped to get a job with a county contractor for a while, and then he’d make a go of it on his own, work full-time out of his own truck, after he bought a truck. He had his eye on one of those shiny, red, almost new Dodge pickups that were lined up in the lot at the Gleason dealership.

  Sally said she had already begun to look for a job. She didn’t want to live at Gladdy Toffit’s for much longer, but first she needed to find something that paid enough to cover her expenses. She’d probably go to a city, she said, maybe to New York or Chicago. There were plenty of jobs in the big cities, especially secretary jobs, more jobs than there were girls to fill them. She could type fifty words a minute, and she’d get faster with practice.

  Mole said he’d consider a town but never a city. He couldn’t live in a city, with all that filth and noise and the rivers thick with stinking sludge from the sewers. Sally, hearing this, was quick to modify her ambition. She’d like to live near a city, not right in one, or in a town big enough to have offices in need of secretaries. Also, she wouldn’t mind living within a bus ride of a dancing hall. Now, that would be fun, the two of them dancing all night and walking home arm in arm as the sun was coming up.

  Imagine, Mole. The two of us…

  She didn’t bother to say this aloud. The more time they spent together, the less they needed to speak, since most of their communication was exchanged in silence, through touches and glances. Away from him, during the day, she’d savor the nugget of heat he’d left inside her. Lost in thoughts that combined memories and anticipated pleasures, she’d feel far away as she wandered through Gladdy’s house. She’d stumble, stub her toe, hit her elbow against a counter, knock over the cereal box, but she’d always recover and clean up the mess before Gladdy noticed.

  Gladdy failed to notice many things. She didn’t emerge until early afternoon, her throat full of sand and her black curls unraveled. Some mornings Sally would catch a glimpse of one of Gladdy’s male friends from the Barge as he snuck from the bedroom out the back door, but Gladdy herself never made mention of them. She’d eat a late breakfast of scrambled eggs and toast, and then she’d spend an hour or two talking on the phone to friends she called “dearie” and “honey” but who never appeared in Helena. Sometimes she’d drive to Fishkill Notch. Other days she’d dress in one of the three rayon skirt-suits she owned, gather bills from the rolltop desk in the living room, and get in the car and drive to the bank in Amity to confer with the person she called her financial adviser. Late in the afternoon she’d come back home to pour her bourbon, urging Sally to join her because, as she claimed, she didn’t like to drink alone. But soon enough she’d drift off into one of those dull reveries, and that’s when Sally would slip away to meet Mole. When she returned later in the evening, Gladdy would be off having the time of her life at the Barge.

  Sally didn’t much like staying there, dep
endent upon Gladdy. She kept scanning the classifieds in the county paper for rooms. But she couldn’t complain because, after all, Gladdy had assumed she was penniless and never mentioned money, never asked her to contribute to the cost of food, never asked her to pay something for board. True, Sally overheard her whispering in her phone conversations, evidently reporting on different ways that “the girl” was taking advantage of her kindness. But Gladdy must have liked the idea of having a freeloader in residence, or else she would have come right out and told her to leave.

  That Sally had thousands of dollars stuffed in a brown paper bag in the closet of the guest room would never have occurred to Gladdy Toffit. And Sally felt justified in keeping it a secret. She thought of the money as something to protect in its original form, to keep contained in the vault of its paper bag. She would check on it nightly, counting as she separated the bills into equal stacks. But to use the money, she was convinced, would invite damnation; she would let herself starve before she spent a single dollar on herself. She clung to the conviction that Mason Jackson’s money had come with an obligation: he wouldn’t have let her run off with half his life savings if he hadn’t expected her to use it wisely. And the wisest use she could imagine involved making reparation for her negligence. While she hadn’t yet formulated a plan, she believed that the money in the closet was meant to help her son. He deserved better than what her parents would ever offer.

  For several months, she was able to live off Gladdy’s grudging charity. As the time passed, she believed that she was moving closer to a secure future, when she and Mole would marry, buy a house and a shiny Dodge pickup, and from the earnings of their good jobs accumulate enough to put away in a Savings Club for the children they’d go on to have together, for Mole wanted at least three children, while Sally, hiding her reluctance, insisted that two, a boy and a girl, would be nice.

  A hot, humid summer cooled to brisk, wet September days. Mole began his electrician’s course. Gladdy whiled away her sober hours waiting to get drunk. Sally watched the minute hand on the kitchen clock, waiting for the time when she was to meet Mole at the corner; and he was always there, puffing on a cigarette and leaning against the Pontiac, ready to grab her and kiss her and bury his face in her hair, inhaling the smell of her shampoo. She couldn’t believe how much he cared for her. And while they both spoke of the future as though they were practically engaged, Sally was relieved that he never invited her home to introduce her to his parents and brothers or even brought her to parties with his local chums. She liked the feeling that they were living in a world of their own making, where they were spared from the judgment of others.

  She had a few days of worry when she didn’t start bleeding on schedule; in the dark hours of the night, when she was alone in Gladdy’s guest room, she told herself that she was destined for ruin and would bring only misery to all who associated with her. But before the week was over, her period arrived with a bloody burst, seeping through her bedsheet and staining the mattress. She spent the next day alternately crying secretly, for no reason she could fathom, and grinning stupidly, grateful to be spared.

  In October of 1951, Sally found part-time work typing the correspondence of Mrs. J. T. Mellow, the widow of a banker, a stooped, elderly woman, frail but purposeful. Mrs. Mellow didn’t say much ordinarily; she’d leave a pile of letters on the desk, handwritten in an awkward, childish print, and after greeting Sally at the door, she’d close herself up in the parlor for most of the morning, emerging just before noon, collecting the typed letters, wrapping herself in a shawl, and heading to the post office, leaving Sally to let herself out.

  At first Sally was disappointed that Mrs. Mellow never commented on how well the letters were typed, but she grew used to the old woman’s solemn manner and the quiet rooms. She had the feeling that the hours marked by the chimes of the mantel clock passed more slowly here than elsewhere, each minute stretched longer than its usual span, and that someday soon, time inside this house would stop passing altogether — at which point, Sally thought, Mrs. Mellow would have nothing left to put in her letters.

  For now, though, the old woman wrote occasionally to her husband’s former clients, inquiring about business he’d been overseeing before his death. But most of her letters were to a niece in Albany and a nephew in Boston, and they were full of marvelous information about disparate things — a new species of bird discovered in India, the position of the twin stars, Castor and Pollux, in the autumn sky, or sneak thieves who stole $395 in cash from a Fenton motel room while the occupants slept. How did she know so much? Sally wondered. She knew the date of Claudette Colbert’s birthday. She knew where to find a mahogany Ironrite cabinet on sale. She knew that fir green would be next spring’s stylish color.

  But Mrs. Mellow’s house wasn’t at all stylish. Sally guessed from the stale fragrance in the air that long ago she had hidden potpourris around the house and then forgotten them. The ancient stenciled-paper shades over the front windows were blotched with stains; the leather seats of the dining room chairs were marred by hairline cracks; old crazy quilts were slung across the banister and the sofa; on a tarnished silver-plated card receiver in the front hall was a stack of yellowed calling cards that must have been decades old; there was a dish full of dusty seashells on the mantel; mismatched ceramics were stacked in a glass cabinet; sentimental prints had been hung on all the walls, including a lithograph above the desk of a bearded man reading Scripture to his wife.

  It would all have been too stuffy and boring to endure if it weren’t for the lively letters that Mrs. Mellow wrote. From these letters Sally learned a little about a lot. She learned about Champillon and the Rosetta stone; she learned about Florence Nightingale’s common sense; she learned how to make scalloped eggs and deviled chicken; she even learned that brainpower would be enhanced for those who left the cake alone and ate the pickles.

  And then Sally gleaned that the niece was due to have a baby early in the new year.

  Dear Marguerite, wrote Mrs. Mellow, do not be afraid to ask for pain relief when you are in labor. There is no reason in our modern era for a woman to suffer.

  Another letter began, Dear Marguerite, It occurs to me to remind you to be sure that the milk you drink is pasteurized.

  Or Dear Marguerite, I want you to know that the trust fund will be administered through the Romulus Savings Bank. Your task will be to design the education for your child in such a way that our family’s privileges will be put to good use.

  Privileges was a word Sally kept mistyping — as privleges and pivileges and ptivileges. The paper wore thin beneath the wheel of her eraser. Twice she had to start over and retype the letter. And as she kept typing, the word echoed in her thoughts: privileges, privileges, privileges.

  There were children born with privileges and children born without them. There were children who would want for nothing, and children who would grow up knowing only want. There were children, like the child to be born to Marguerite of Albany, whose education would be carefully supervised. And there were children, like Sally’s son, who were born only to be abandoned.

  Sally had gone without privileges all through her life, and so would her child. He was a monster, according to the woman at Georgie’s wedding. What kind of monster? Was he monstrous because he was stupid or wicked or just plain ugly? Or was he monstrous because he was poor?

  Privileges, privileges.

  … in need, Sally typed, and then she continued impulsively, like it or leave it, and added, Sally and was here and passing by.

  Of course she crumpled the paper and threw the letter away. Then she typed it straight through without a single mistake, singing a song under her breath, singing over and over the only two lines she could remember:

  Passing by, mmm-hmmm,

  On a slow train to Paradise.

  But singing, she reminded herself when she was done typing, was to be resisted. She’d forsworn it, hadn’t she? Sally Werner liked to sing, not Sally Angel. Singing was not what sh
e would do while she was rocking her son to sleep, if she ever had the chance to rock him to sleep. Why, first of all, she would have to introduce herself to him. And then, then, then, imagine — that little honey child, probably freckles all over his face like her brothers, snub nose, maybe even a redhead, tattered shirt, bare feet, too young to recognize that other children had what he lacked and too old for his mother to return and pretend that she’d never gone away.

  Did he like to wade in the flooded meadow after the spring rains, like Sally used to do? Did he ever wake from a bad dream? Did he suck his thumb, and did Dietrich Werner beat him for it? Maybe. Probably. Of course he’d beat the child. He’d smack him to wake him up to the reality of his life. He’d smack him to remind him that he was the bastard son of the devil’s whore. He’d smack him to prove that he was too stupid to amount to anything, and he’d keep smacking him until someone made him stop.

  “Are you finished, Miss Angel?”

  If gravity hadn’t held her in place, she would have been so startled by the voice coming from the doorway of the study that she would have flown out of her chair and hit her head on the ceiling.

  “Yes. No. I mean, here’s what I’ve done so far.”

  “That’s fine for today. You can go.”

  Sally was too baffled to move. Mrs. Mellow usually left the house before her; now, as she walked across the room, planting her cane ahead of her halting steps, she was smiling a tight smile, as if to assure her that everything would be all right, despite what Sally had been thinking. What had she been thinking? She was confused less by the old woman’s authority than by her implicit knack for reading minds.

  Sally noticed for the first time the dull blue shine of cataracts in her eyes. And that musty, rose-petal fragrance — it was easy to imagine that it had its source in her, that she was stuffed with dried flowers, her thin skin like wrinkled cloth, her hair the fringe of the cushion. She was so very old, older than anyone Sally had ever known, old enough to see beyond appearances and understand what needed to be said, which, in this case, involved the simplest of directions. She didn’t tell her to stay or wait or even take her time. She told her that she could go, offering what Sally heard as permission to return to the place where she’d stop her father from hitting her son.