by Lee Smith
Then Mavis Lardner came to town, and came to see Millard too, which surprised him, since he really thought, as he said, in his heart of hearts, that Jewell had gone off with her. But it wasn’t so. Jewell had told her a pack of lies, she said, all flattery and nonsense. He had let on like he wanted to go off with her sometime, and said his marriage was nothing but a social convenience, and said he’d take her to Florida. Florida! He told her to keep on working, where she worked there in Bristol, and save her money. But then it had been ever so long since he had come over there to see her, so she had called a friend of Jewell’s up on the telephone, and found out that he had left town. Who was this friend? Millard asked, because several men that Millard didn’t know had called up and asked for Jewell since he’d left, and wouldn’t leave a message. Mavis wouldn’t say.
Millard said she sat in the back of the flower shop smoking cigarettes, as mad as a wet hen, and thinking of what to do next. Finally she went in her purse and got out a little green chamois sack which turned out to have a big diamond ring in it, and tried to give the ring to Millard, for Elizabeth. “No, you keep it, honey,” Millard told her. Then Mavis got mad at him, and threw it across the flower shop and ran out the door crying. Everybody in there dived for the corner then, and set to searching, and directly the little Prince boy came up with it, and Millard gave him a quarter for it.
“And here it is,” Millard said, telling me all this on the back porch at Edna Everhart’s house where Elizabeth and Edna were playing double solitaire.
“Let me see it,” said Elizabeth, throwing down her hand.
Millard stood up and gave it to her. Elizabeth took it and put it on her finger, and held up her hand. Elizabeth had real white hands with long skinny fingers, she used to call them artistic. Anyway, she put this ring on the ring finger of her right hand, and held it up, and turned it this way and that way in the sun. It was a dinner ring with one big round diamond set in the middle and little ones all around it. Fay came to stand behind her. “Pretty,” Fay said. The baby had dropped by then.
“Oh!” Elizabeth drew in all her breath in one great rattling sob, and took that ring off and put it in the green bag and just left it right there on the table, and ran upstairs and went to bed, and cried for the rest of the afternoon. Millard put the ring in his pocket, and later he put it in the bank in Elizabeth’s safety deposit, and whatever has happened to it now, I couldn’t tell you. Elizabeth, who turned against me later, never said. Anyway, she cried all that afternoon. Me and Millard took the kids and Edna Everhart for a ride in the car, and got everybody some ice cream in town, and Millard gave Edna the snuff he’d brought her, and the two rosebushes, which we planted for her in the side yard, and when the kids took their nap, we went out in the pine forest beyond the field and lay together on the soft pine needles, they smelled so nice. I cried hard that day when Millard left.
Because I liked it out at Edna Everhart’s farm, for a fact I did, and when I think of those months now they seem slow, and blue somehow—you could see more of the sky, I reckon, the mountains being further off, and blue themselves. Elizabeth and me were close. At first she talked, as I said, and then she quit talking and cried—cried buckets. Now you’d think a woman wouldn’t mourn a man the likes of Jewell Rife, but this is not true. She had loved him, and she mourned him, the way you’ll mourn whatever it is you’ve gotten so attached to, no matter how bad it might be. Sometimes the worse it is, the more you’ll mourn it. Be that as it may, this time passed too, and in late June, Fay had the baby.
Her water broke first thing in the morning, in the kitchen, and she stood there looking down at the floor not knowing what it was. I don’t know if she would of come to tell us, or not. We were in there scrambling eggs. Elizabeth took her back to the bedroom and I lit out for town in Edna’s old Ford, for the doctor. This was old Dr. Brown, Horace Brown, who was expecting me to come for him any day. We’d had him out there to see to Fay already. Edna knew him, and said he could keep his mouth shut. He was looking at somebody’s throat, but when he finished that, he came on with me.
Now we had a hard time with Fay. She was scared, and couldn’t understand, and kept trying to get up off the bed. She yelled so loud that Elizabeth had to take Sybill and Arthur and leave, it was scaring them. But it didn’t take long, Fay was a strong, big girl, and here came the baby. Old Dr. Brown cut the cord and cleaned her off and looked her over good. She was fine. He had seen it all in his day, you couldn’t surprise him none. He was real old. “Well,” he said, “this is one fine little baby, and I reckon you girls have figured out what you’re going to do next.”
But the truth was, we hadn’t. We had kind of been avoiding it. What I had thought was that me and Millard would take it to raise. But Elizabeth, in that way she had of thinking things so definite in her mind that it was like that’s how they already were, had decided that baby would be hers, and she would raise it. She had it all set in her mind. Nothing I could say would sway her. I kept trying to talk to her about it until Dr. Brown ran us out of the bedroom, and then I kept trying to talk to her about it on the porch. I do pretty much as I please, and always have, but every time I have come up against Elizabeth, forget it. That’s the long and short of it. Once she got something in her head, she couldn’t hear a word you said. She wouldn’t even argue with you. She just looked at you. Her eyes would go flat, and her mouth draw out tight in a thin little line.
She only said two things, which made me mad as fire because they made a crazy kind of sense. I had been saying how I had lost Lou, and wanted a baby. “Now Nettie,” she said, and her voice was pure reason, “I’m sure you and Millard will have your own children. Even if you don’t, Millard has got three of his own already, which you took him away from, and that’s enough. Furthermore, nobody in town has got any idea whether I might have been pregnant or not, when we left home, but nobody would believe that you were. You saw people all the time. And Millard would have told people by now, if you were.” Of course this was true, Millard being a talker.
“But this baby is Fay’s,” I said. “Why can’t we just say that, and I’m raising her?”
Elizabeth shook her head slightly, like she couldn’t believe how stupid I was. “Nettie,” she said, very gently, “Nettie, what would people think?” I just stared at her, this being the very last thing in my mind.
“People are going to think whatever they’re going to,” I said finally.
Edna Everhart was out there on the porch stringing beans and trying to listen to the ballgame. She kept turning the radio up. But Elizabeth had set her mouth in a line, she stood staring off at the mountains. I really let her have it, then. I asked her what she expected to live on, anyway, with no job and no husband and two children already, and most of her money gone, and said that she couldn’t expect me and Millard to wait on her hand and foot for the rest of her life like we had been doing for the last four months. I asked her just who did she think she was.
“It’s always money with you, isn’t it, Nettie?” Elizabeth said. “I’m aware that my funds are somewhat depleted, of course. But I’ll certainly be happy to pay you what I can for your services, if that’s all you’re interested in. I must say I’m surprised at you, however, although I suppose I shouldn’t be.”
“What?” I hollered. Oh, I was mad!
“Girls, girls,” said old Dr. Brown, coming out.
“I wish all of you would just hush,” Edna Everhart said. “It’s the bottom of the eighth, and DiMaggio hasn’t got a thing off this Auker. He won’t even get up again unless . . . ” She turned the radio up real loud.
Elizabeth said something I couldn’t hear.
“What?” I said. I went closer.
“This will be my baby,” Elizabeth said. She looked at me steady then. “Because it is my right. You know who her father is.”
Now this was the one thing I never thought Elizabeth would say—and she never said it again, afterwar
d—and it was the one thing I couldn’t argue. She meant that this baby was part hers, because it was Jewell’s, and since keeping it was the closest she could get to keeping him, she intended to do so. Some people are bound to hold on to what hurts them. The radio announcer said, “Rolfe moves off second . . . the first pitch to Joe . . . he lines it to left . . . Yes! Extra bases! Rolfe scores . . . the Yankee Clipper has stretched his hitting streak to thirty-eight consecutive games!” Edna Everhart banged on the arm of her chair. “Damn!” she said. Elizabeth sat down in the rocker and started to rock and fan.
“I’ll drive you back to town,” I told the doctor.
By the time I came back, Elizabeth was sitting there holding the baby, and Sybill was holding her dolly. Elizabeth looked up at me, her face all firm and glowing. “I’ve decided to name her Candace,” she said.
So I gave up.
I went on in the house and called Millard.
Now some of what she had said was true. I did think I’d have my own baby by and by, for a fact. It was years before I’d give up on that. And it was also true that Millard and me was struggling to make ends meet.
So this is how it all fell out, exactly the way Elizabeth wanted.
Except for Fay. You couldn’t reckon with her, of course, or plan on what she’d do. She was up and around in a day or so—it seemed like having a baby came natural to her, like having a cold, and didn’t hurt her the way it does most. But it had made a powerful impression. She was quieter than ever, and crazier—more confused. And she seemed real sad, and did not want to be around Elizabeth, nor did she like to be around the baby. Whenever the baby cried, Fay cried, but after her breast milk had dried up, it was easier dealing with her.
Millard came and got us in Elizabeth’s car, and took us back. When we left, old Edna Everhart was real sad. So Millard and me came back for her two weeks later, and brought her to live with us, where she wouldn’t be so lonely, and she stayed with us for the next four years, until she died. She used to love to make wrist corsages. She taught Fay to play cards. Oh yes—Fay came to live with us too. She showed up the day after we all got back, with her clothes in a paper bag. She’s been with me ever since.
Elizabeth never discussed Fay’s coming. Nor would she let me help her out much, when I tried to, with Candy. She had turned on me then because I had helped her, and because she had told me the truth out loud. It’s not a good idea to let people show you too much, or tell you too much, or they’ll hate you for it. I know this now, but I learned it too late, when everything had already happened.
And as for what people thought, people in town I mean, they just knocked themselves out trying to do for Elizabeth. Nobody could do enough. He got her pregnant and left her, that’s what they thought. And there she was up there all alone, with those sweet little children—you can see how it went. Poor, poor Elizabeth! I have to admit I wondered, later, whether Elizabeth was that calculating, to have figured on the impression she wanted to make, returning. I don’t think so. Elizabeth was a proud woman with a will like a piece of iron pipe, and the ability to see and hear exactly what she chose to, but she was not conniving. A conniving woman would have seen through Jewell in the first place, remember, or would have figured out how to keep him, and keep him in line.
Anyway it wasn’t long before Verner Hess, who owned the dimestore, had gone up there and married her. He was a sweet, slight man with red hair, maybe six inches shorter than Elizabeth. Millard knew him from the Moose Lodge. Verner had always had a yen for Elizabeth. He used to tell Millard she was a “fine figure of a woman,” Millard said. He used to try to court her, way back in the days when she had a broken heart from Ransom McClain, but she wouldn’t give him the time of day, then. Now she said yes in a month. It may have been that what-all had happened had knocked her off her high-horse just a little. It may have been that she looked at Verner and saw, for once in her life, the light of day. For Verner was a good, steady man who would take care of her, and take good care of those kids. It was the smartest thing Elizabeth ever did, to marry Verner Hess, who was crazy about her. They had the wedding up there in the parlor, with nobody much present except for Verner himself and his real old parents and Elva Pope.
Millard and me were not invited.
Nor did we care, or even know about it until later.
It was a snowy day in December 1942 and Millard closed the shop up early, I recall, and came on upstairs, and Edna and Fay and the two of us sat around the card table all that afternoon, looking out the window at the snow, and drinking some wine, and playing hearts.
“Nettie,” Lacy says again, pulling at her. “Nettie, what do you think?” Lacy’s pretty face looks a lot like Elizabeth’s used to, Elizabeth after she cut her hair and married Verner and turned on Nettie because she had depended on her too much, all those years ago. Elizabeth had that same pretty fairness, those wide-spaced blue eyes. And why not? This is Elizabeth’s daughter, after all. This is not Nettie’s daughter, Nettie has no daughter now, but she has a lot of people to look after and a service station to run with a row of tomatoes behind it that need to have the suckers on them pinched off directly, so they’ll bear good. Nettie’s got things to do, and Fay to find, with Lacy pulling at her sleeve. It’s always something.
If it’s not one thing it’s another, Nettie thinks, and then of all things here comes Roy Looney driving up in his VW bug with Clinus sitting right there big as life in the front seat beside him white as a sheet, you can tell he’s scared to death. Lord knows what in the world has possessed them to come over here in the middle of the day like this, and leave nobody minding the store. Roy’s driving real fast. He swings off the paved driveway and lurches across the graded red dirt toward where they stand, all of them watching him now, Myrtle and Candy holding on to Sean, who’s bleeding. “Watch it now, watch it!” shouts Dr. Don. Dr. Don begins jumping and waving his hands. Roy Looney grits his teeth and drives on, he’s still coming. Clinus, the gray curls sticking out under his Yankees cap, looks terrified. His eyes are big and round, like doll’s eyes. “What in the world!” says Candy. “I don’t think I can stand one more thing,” Myrtle says faintly, and Sybill says, “Myrtle, that’s just like you!” Roy Looney slams on the brakes and his VW stops abruptly, rocking. “It’s just a flesh wound,” Dr. Don assures Myrtle, looking at Sean’s hand. Roy Looney jumps out, slams the door behind him, plants both feet wide in the fresh red dirt, clasps his hands before him, and clears his throat. He wears his Texaco shirt with his name, Roy, on the pocket. He looks like a boy in a play, ready to speak his piece.
“I’m real sorry to have to tell you,” Roy says, “that Miss Fay has gone and shut herself up in Clinus’s old Chevrolet out there, that he was working on, and died. It was the heat that killed her, it looks like. Bert barking was what put us onto it. I’m real sorry,” Roy Looney says. “I’m real sorry I have to tell you this.” Roy looks at them all carefully, one by one, and then his gaze returns to rest on Theresa, blond lissome ironic Theresa, who stares right back at him. Sparks fly.
“Well, son, come on in the house,” Dr. Don says. “I’m sure you did all you could. It’s not your fault. There wasn’t a thing you could of done if you didn’t know she was out there. Get Clinus out of the car and come on in for a minute.”
“Yessir,” says Roy Looney.
“Come on, honey,” Candy says to Clinus.
A play, a play, this is all like a play, or a movie, Lacy thinks, feeling herself move outside herself and hover someplace right above them all, so that she can see the wide green field, the bright blue sky, the pile of red dirt and the hole with Jewell Rife in it and big Coy Eubanks still standing there beside it, scratching his head and looking disgusted, and Lacy can even see the butterflies on all the blue flowers by the fence, and she can see all of them, herself included, this odd gaggle of disparate family teetering here on the brink of the past while all around them, it’s just another pretty day. Full Jun
e. Suddenly, for no reason at all, Lacy feels like writing her dissertation.
“I think we could all use some iced tea,” Candy says, leading Clinus back to the house, but Nettie sinks like a stone to the ground right there where she is, a little black stone, and cries, and tries to push Lacy away.
“Come on now, it’s time to come,” Lacy says from her sudden great distance.
But Nettie grabs Lacy’s arm then, hard, Nettie’s fingers biting into her arm like claws, and says, loud enough for them all to hear: “She must of done it, then, Fay. Why sure. She done it all along, and to think I never knew it, all these years.” So the mystery is solved, but it’s more of a mystery than ever. Because Nettie won’t say any more, or explain it, not even when they sit her down at the kitchen table with iced tea. Nettie says, “She didn’t know it either. I mean Elizabeth.” And that’s all. That’s all they’ll ever know. Sybill says, “I think it’s time to call the police,” but Dr. Don says, “Let’s not be too hasty here now, Sybill, this is a family matter after all,” and calls Gurney Fletcher first, instead. He’s a reasonable man. Candy says she doesn’t think that even she can do much with Fay. Coy Eubanks drinks three Cokes in a row and goes back out and starts up his bulldozer again, working down the hill, grading the new driveway. “Isn’t he cute?” Theresa whispers to Kate, meaning Roy Looney, who’s loading Arthur into the back seat of the VW now, Arthur’s having kind of a crying drunk. He loved Fay. And he remembers finding Mavis Lardner finally, in Lexington, Kentucky, a married woman with grandchildren, so old you couldn’t even tell her hair had once been red. “Listen, honey,” she told Arthur then, “your daddy might not of been much count, but he was sweet, and could carry a tune.” Roy Looney walks back to ask Theresa, before he leaves, if she’d like to go see Trading Places on Saturday, and she says yes. Don is planning everything. There’ll be two quiet, tasteful burials, that’s it. It can be done. You have to think positively, and act decisively. Whatever comes up, Don can handle it. The sky’s the limit, he’s on a kind of a roll. He told them he’d get to the bottom of this, and he has. Well, why not? That’s the question to ask, instead of Why? Why not? You have to think positively. There’s even a cure for acne now—Accutane, of course it does have some side effects. There will always be side effects. Dr. Don writes out several prescriptions for Valium and hands them around. He sends Sean down to the clinic with Myrtle, to get his hand bandaged. Candy leaves too, heading out to the One Stop, taking Nettie and Clinus, who refuses to speak to Sybill on the subject of Depression glass or willoware or anything else. Clinus acts real upset, rolling his big round eyes. Clinus’s eyes are wild and strange: their enormous flat blueness broken sometimes suddenly by a darting flash of pain, like lightning, a sudden crack of horror. With a retarded person, you can’t tell how much they know, or what they feel, or see. Candy holds Clinus’s arm as she guides him out to her car. Sybill gets her things together. She’s ready to go back to the Holiday Inn; she wants to call Betty, who just won’t believe it! Then she wants some peace and quiet, and a glass of Mateus in the motel’s Jolly Roger bar. On her way out the door, Sybill notices Myrtle and Don’s oldest daughter Karen, who looks like she’s pregnant, getting out of a car with her smart computer boyfriend, and passes Jack—crazy Jack—on the front porch, poised to ring the doorbell, bringing Lacy some flowers.
