Chasing Lilacs

by Carla Stewart

  “And when were you going to tell me this?”

  “Today, as a matter of fact. Later on I’m gonna get my old army cot from the garage rafters.”

  “Army cot? She’s going to sleep on an army cot?”

  “No. We figured you would. We got a feather bed topper for it in town. Set it up so you’re sharing a room. Won’t have to hang your legs off the end of the couch anymore.”

  “I’m not sure this is a good idea.”

  “Look, I know you’ve had a rough time. Vadine’s right worried about you. Told me yesterday how upset you get at times, that you need female companionship. Heaven knows I’ve pert near worried myself into an early grave about that very thing. Mama’s treatments last summer and then her… well, her being gone now. It’s a good thing Vadine came along.”

  He made her sound like Saint Vadine, the angel of mercy.

  “Don’t you think about Mama though? About the day she died? Like, did she leave some kind of note?”

  “None that anyone found. I’d give my eyeteeth to figure it out myself, but…” He blew a puff of smoke and ran his hand through his hair. “Sis, if she ain’t coming back, it don’t do no good revisiting it.” He took a long drag off the Camel.

  “Maybe not for you, but I need to know. Like what she was wearing and did she think about what would happen to us?” That was the big question. Did she even care?

  “It’s not something I aim to dwell on. And neither should you. She made her decision, and we have to move on.”

  He picked up the saw and started cutting. I looked at the garage. Would I ever be able to go in there? All I saw from my spot on the steps was a gaping black hole. I hugged my legs to my chest and felt a cold wind skitter across the yard.

  That night someone screamed in my sleep. My eyelids felt glued together, and the more I struggled to open them, the tighter they clamped shut. I felt myself being sucked down into my sheets like I was drowning in quicksand, only it was feathers. Mountains and mountains of them. More screaming. Strangled groans filling my ears. I tried to raise my arms, but they felt like lead. I would get one hand free and try to push up, but the feathers pulled me down deeper. Finally I was able to squint into the light shining in my room. Hulking figures hovered over me and pushed against me, deeper and deeper. I closed my eyes and fought against them, thrashing my arms, as the groans became grunting, huffing noises.

  “Sammie! Wake up, Sis.” Daddy’s voice brought me into a sluggish half-awake, half-asleep kind of trance. My heart pounded, trying to escape my body. My head stayed filled with blackness, a hole that had no end and tried to suck me into its swirling nothingness. Daddy was outside the blackness, pulling me up, his hands rough and strong, one on each shoulder, freeing me from the drowning feeling. My breaths came faster, and I forced my eyes open. The groaning and screaming stopped, and Daddy pulled me to his chest.

  “Shhh. It’s all right. It was a nightmare, that’s all.” His hand felt like sandpaper on the back of my head.

  I looked over his shoulder and saw Aunt Vadine, her arms crossed against her flimsy nightgown, a hairnet hugging her head. She yawned and sat on the bed that used to be mine.

  The person screaming must have been me, but everything seemed off-kilter. Inside my body shook, shivery and cold.

  Daddy stayed beside me, one knee bent, the other on the floor. I fished around under my covers and found Mama’s robe and held it next to me, letting it warm me. When I closed my eyes, the black hole had gone. No more screaming. Just something foggy and soothing. Warm like a nice bath. I relaxed and let my head sink into the pillow. The last thing I remember was Daddy’s lips brushing my forehead.

  * * *

  Every day at school, people talked about the fall dance, who was asking who, and what new outfits they were wearing. I made up my mind I wasn’t going. It didn’t seem fair to Mama even though Tuwana kept after me all the time.

  “If I were you I’d let Cly know you’re interested. I’ve heard Linda Kay Howard wants him to ask her.”

  “Well, you’re not me, okay? I’m just not going this year. And if Cly wants to ask Linda Kay, he should.”

  It wasn’t that I didn’t like Cly. I did miss playing backgammon with him over at Slim’s, but Slim was the problem. What would I say to him? I wanted to ask him about Mama, that day he found her, but I couldn’t. Sometimes I thought I wanted to know; then I didn’t. Daddy said we had to move on, but I felt frozen in time. Like I might wake up tomorrow and Mama would be there and everything would be fine again. Going to a dance or playing backgammon didn’t seem right.

  I didn’t really want to stay home all the time with Aunt Vadine either, but she had been nicer since I’d had that nightmare. Of course, Daddy had been home most evenings too, and she always put on her drippy sweet disposition around him. Sometimes it gave me the heebie-jeebies, but if Daddy meant for her to stick around permanently, he would’ve gotten me a real bed and not just a featherbed on top of an army cot. Maybe when Aunt Vadine left, Daddy and I could get back to normal. Not that I knew what normal was. Still, I kept my fingers crossed.

  One good thing was seeing Mrs. Gray every day. She always had this breezy way of helping us come up with good ideas when we did our layouts for the Cougar Chronicle. And she loved my article about Mr. Howard.

  “Excellent! Who would’ve guessed our own principal once had a dream to shape and nurture trees and gave it up to shape young lives instead?” Mrs. Gray’s reading glasses hung on a chain around her neck. Shiny, black sticks bobbled in her topknot. Japanese princess popped into my head. She smelled good too. Like Ivory soap.

  The day after the paper came out, Linda Kay Howard scooted her lunch tray next to mine in the cafeteria.

  “Your article sent my mother into hysterics.” She crunched a carrot stick. “She’s been trying to get my dad to prune the roses for two years, and come to find out he had horticultural tendencies all along.” She laughed like a donkey braying.

  I went through each day numb, answering questions in class, turning in my homework, laughing with the kids in the lunchroom. Still, nothing felt right. In the back of my mind, the word depression whispered to me over and over. And I couldn’t get it out of my head.

  [ TWENTY-THREE ]

  ONE AFTERNOON I HAD Scarlett outside when Daddy came home from work whistling.

  “Sis, I thought we ought to pay Slim a visit this evening.” He threw a stick for Scarlett to fetch.

  My stomach knotted up. “I don’t know. Why do you want to visit Slim?”

  “Just bein’ neighborly. Maybe he could teach me that game you’re so fired up about.”

  Could this be Daddy’s way of moving on? After supper he took his everyday cowboy hat from the hook and told Aunt Vadine our plans.

  “What? No dessert? There’s still some of your favorite coconut cake.”

  I noticed she’d put on a nice dress and had started wearing rouge and lipstick.

  “Not tonight. Gotta watch my figure.”

  Aunt Vadine’s eyes squinted for a flash. Then the corners of her lips tilted up. “Don’t be too late.”

  I put my plate in the sink and grabbed my purse.

  The wind had picked up, a bit of a chill in the air, so Daddy said we’d better take the Chevy instead of walking. When we got to Slim’s, he was lugging a basket from the garden. “Green tomatoes.” He set the basket down. “Accordin’ to The Old Farmer’s Almanac, we could have a frost tonight. Another week or two and we could get a hard freeze. Don’t want these ’maters going to waste.”

  “Definite nip in the air. Sis and I wondered if we might keep you company this evening.”

  “You betcha. Come in, and I’ll fix you a skillet of these babies. Best things you ever had.” Slim battered thick slices of the tomatoes, rolled them in cornmeal, and fried them in bacon grease.

  “Delicious.” Daddy took a second helping. Watching his figure, huh?

  I helped Slim clean up. I’d forgotten how homey his house felt.

/>   “The reason we came over…” Daddy leaned on the door frame, working a toothpick around in his mouth. “Couple o’ reasons. I’ve been wanting to thank you for putting up with Sis here, letting her come around all summer and all.”

  “She’s good company. Been good for young MacLemore too, who, if I’m not mistaken, promised me he’d come by tonight for a rematch. That scoundrel beat me six for eight a couple nights ago.” Slim handed me the last plate to rinse and put in the drainer to dry.

  “That’s the other thing. Figured I’d see for myself what all the fuss is about this game. I thought maybe Sis and I could play this winter while her aunt knits her fingers to the bone.”

  “Crochet, Daddy. That’s what she does.”

  “Beats me. Some frilly fancy work’s all I know.”

  Just then Cly hollered at the screen, “Hey, Big Daddy, didn’t know you had company.”

  “Just a regular hive of activity. Seems we got another taker on backgammon. Unless, of course, you’d like to play dominoes. Old fogies against you cool cats.” Slim winked at Cly.

  Slim got out the dominoes and shuffled the “bones” as he called them on the enameled kitchen table.

  Click. Cly slapped a domino down and scored ten.

  A teakettle whistled on the stove. Slim put Sanka in two cups for him and Daddy. “You kids want some Ovaltine?” He filled our cups and brought them steaming to us.

  Cly and I won the first game.

  “Some sorry partner your pop makes.” Slim gave a husky chuckle and shuffled the bones.

  Daddy clicked a double five on the table. “Give me ten, Sis.”

  Cly groaned and played without scoring.

  The whole time I sipped my Ovaltine and listened to Daddy’s tapping one of his dominoes end over end, I kept trying to think of some way to ask Slim about Mama and the day she died. Every time I’d think of a question, Slim would score five or it would be my turn to shuffle the dominoes.

  Then, out of the blue, Slim brought up the subject. “Tough go on your own, without Rita.” He looked at me. “And your mother.”

  Daddy cleared his throat but didn’t say anything.

  “I ain’t over my Dottie yet. Young Cly here’ll tell you, I keep myself company talking to her.”

  “Bonkers, that’s what he is.” Cly slapped down a domino and scored ten.

  “You gotta remember the good times. Yessir, Dottie and me sitting on the porch swing, counting the lightning bugs and dreaming about our girls growing up.”

  “Your girls? I thought you only had one daughter.” I remembered he’d bought an extra paper last summer. For my daughter, he’d said.

  “Two, actually.” His fingers, knobby at the joints, gripped a domino. “Some dreams turn out different than you plan. Can’t be helped, I reckon.”

  Daddy leaned back in the kitchen chair and rubbed his chin.

  “The good times, huh? The trip to Red River’ll be worth remembering, huh, Sis?”

  I smiled and nodded. Except for Mama’s mixed-up memories, it had been a good vacation.

  “And dancing. My, how Rita loved to dance. Met her that way.”

  Slim must’ve put something in Daddy’s Sanka the way he started talking. “After the army, I came strutting home to Midland, and the first night back, some buddies took me out on the town. Whoo-ee. Met Rita that night, with her flaming red hair, twirling to Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys…” His eyes had a faraway look—not sad, but like remembering the sweetest thing that ever happened.

  “That’s how Tuwana’s mother met her dad,” I said. “I think it was in Pampa, some dance at the armory.”

  “Is that a fact?” Slim clicked his last domino on the table. “Twenty-five. And I’m out. What’s the score?”

  Groaning, I shoved the paper full of Xs across. “You win.”

  “Tied up.” Slim pushed back from the table. “Think I’ll go out and check the weather. See if that pesky almanac is right.”

  Daddy followed him, and I wanted to kick myself for not saying something about the day Mama died. Maybe Slim wouldn’t tell me, but he was the one who found her. And as near as I could tell, I was the last person on earth to talk to her. Maybe she was still breathing when he found her and said something, some last-minute thing she wanted me to know. I stared at my hands and fiddled with the dominoes.

  Cly waved his hand in front of my face. “Hey, anybody home in there?”

  “Yeah, just thinking.” I took the last sip of my Ovaltine, which had turned cold with a grit in the bottom of the cup.

  “Me too. I’ve been thinking about that big dance coming up. Doobie can’t go with me. He got himself a date with PJ.”

  “So I heard.”

  “Uh… I was wondering…” Cly lined up the dominoes in piles of three. “I guess to be cool at Mandeville you have to have a date.”

  “Tuwana says Linda Kay Howard wants you to ask her. She’s really pretty nice.”

  “Have you ever heard her laugh? She sounds like a hyena. Besides, I know who I’m going to ask to the dance.”

  The Ovaltine mixed with fried green tomatoes sloshed around in my stomach. “Who’s the lucky girl?”

  “You… if you’ll go with me.”

  My forehead broke out in a sweat, and the first thing that popped out of my mouth was, “A donkey. That’s what Linda Kay laughs like.”

  “You numskull. What kind of answer is that?”

  The lightbulb over Slim’s table made tiny pear-shaped lights in Cly’s dark eyes, and I started laughing.

  “Yes. My answer is yes. And don’t call me a numskull.”

  [ TWENTY-FOUR ]

  ON THE WAY HOME I told Daddy about Cly asking me to the dance. In the dark of the car, I couldn’t see his face, but when we pulled into the driveway, he put the car in park and said, “The MacLemore kid seems all right. Slim’s pretty high on him. Don’t rightly figure you’re old enough for a date—”

  “It’s not a real date—just a school dance. Tuwana can’t stop talking about it. Her parents are chaperones.” I half-wished he’d say I couldn’t go. Why I’d blurted out to Cly without thinking, I couldn’t even figure out. For one thing, I didn’t know anything about dancing, except the square dancing we did in fifth grade music class. Do-si-do and all that.

  In the faded moonlight, I could see a funny grin on Daddy’s face. “You’ll always be my little girl, but you’d be in good hands with the Johnsons. Maybe it’s time you had a little fun.”

  He said I could go? I thought I might faint. Or throw up. Why else would I feel light-headed and tingly?

  “Sis, you think you could open the garage?”

  I sat glued to my spot. Open the garage? Pull the door open where all that blackness waited? I gripped the armrest on the door. When Daddy cleared his throat, I yanked on the handle and ran into the house.

  That night I had the dream again. The black hole that tried to pull me in. Like the garage. Black and empty. I didn’t hear the screaming this time, but when I woke up, I had cold sweats and Daddy had his arms wrapped around me. He pulled Mama’s robe from the tangle in my covers and held it up to his face. He closed his eyes, and I thought he was trying to get a whiff of Mama. Tears ran down my cheeks as I buried my face in Daddy’s undershirt. It smelled of BO and Old Spice.

  Tuwana jumped up and down when I told her I had a date to the dance. “See, I told you if you acted interested, Cly would ask you.”

  “All I did was play dominoes over at Slim’s with him and Daddy.”

  “Which is repulsive in itself. How you can stand to be around that creepy old guy is beyond me.”

  “Slim’s not creepy. He had a wife once and two daughters.”

  “And why don’t you ever see his daughters coming around? Think about it. He murdered his wife. That’s what Mother says.”

  “I like him, and I think your mom got her information mixed up.”

  “Forget Slim. Let’s plan for the dance. Ask Cly if y’all can ride with us. Since Mother
and Daddy are sponsors, they said I could just meet Mike at the VFW. Oh, and Mother’s taking me shopping to buy a new dress….”

  Sometimes I just wanted to scream when Tuwana talked about her mother. Not that I didn’t like Mrs. Johnson, but it was always Mother this and Mother says, like Tuwana had her own private dibs on everything about mothers. So I didn’t have a mother to talk about. So what? It just wasn’t fair. Sometimes I tried to remember the look on Mama’s face when we picked out the ruby sweater and skirt from the catalog. She hadn’t known I’d be wearing it to my very first dance. Would she be happy? Would she look down at me from heaven and say, “That’s my daughter”?

  On my cot I held her robe next to me and rubbed it against my cheek, trying to remember how she smelled and the exact shade of red in her hair, and everything blurred in my mind. And every night I asked God to let me please, please, please get up the nerve to go in the garage and see and feel the last place on earth where Mama had been. But when morning came, I couldn’t even look at the garage.

  One night when Daddy had evening shift, Aunt Vadine had one of her moods where nothing I did suited her. After supper I told her I needed to take Scarlett for a walk. She hollered as I went out the door, “It’s nearly dark. Why your daddy lets you run wild…”

  I shut the door behind me before I had to hear any more about what a juvenile delinquent I had turned into. Wild? How could taking Scarlett for a walk be wild?

  A couple of blocks from home, Scarlett took off after a cottontail that jumped under the Bradys’ hedge. She yanked the leash out of my hand, and I ran after her. She streaked across three yards before I caught her. I picked her up and scolded her, then went back toward the street and saw Cly coming from the direction of Doobie’s house. I don’t think he saw me the way he bounced his basketball on the street, cut to the left, dribbled, and made another quick turn. Then he held the ball up like he was getting ready to shoot.

  “Hey, pass over here.” I set my purse down and looped Scarlett’s leash around my arm.