Birdie laughed at Francine’s antics and waved off her praise with a motion as if swatting at flies. “Oh, honey,” she said, “my playing is nothing compared to somebody who’s really good. I sure do like music, but I didn’t take lessons very long.” I had not known this. Although she had once told me that she wished she could take her students “further along,” it was my assumption that Birdie had studied piano at some length in her past.
“Huh!” said Algeria. “Sounds like to me you plenty good.” She raised her own broad hands and studied them with a scowl. “Couldn’t never get my old fingers to learn somethin’ like that.”
Pointing to the wall above the piano, Francine asked suddenly, “Do you cross-stitch, Birdie?” She indicated the cross-stitched poem titled “Gifts from the Wildwood,” which I mentioned in an earlier chapter.
“Well, you’re not going to believe it,” Birdie said, “but Mickey did that one. He’s got a real eye for art, Mickey does.” She had told us this before. “A couple of years ago,” she continued, “a friend of mine at church—he’s our choir director, actually—gave me a book of poems by a Carolina poet. That’s his name there at the bottom of the poem—Archibald Rutledge. Doesn’t that sound like a real gentleman? Anyway, I didn’t know much about poetry, and I still don’t, but I just fell in love with this little poem and showed it to Mickey, and we talked about it and read it out loud and what have you, and then the next thing I know he’s gone and started working it up and adding the trees and flowers and all that without a pattern or anything! I guess it’s not a real masculine thing to do, but it doesn’t bother Mickey. He’s got a real artistic streak in him. People kid him about it, but he just lets it roll right off.”
She motioned to the recliners and added, “Sometimes the two of us sit here in the evenings and do needlepoint or cross-stitch together.” Frankly, although Francine and Algeria seemed to lap up every detail about the multitudinous quirks of Birdie’s husband, I had long since begun to weary of them. The little man seemed far too jaunty and unconventional, and Birdie’s undisguised fondness for him grated upon my nerves. We all studied the cross-stitched picture quietly before Algeria released what I took to be a disbelieving grunt. “Mmm, mmm! Can’t feature no man doin’ that,” she said.
As it was almost three o’clock, I moved toward the door, and Algeria followed me. Francine said, “Fiddlesticks, I guess this means the party’s done!” and followed Algeria out the door, jabbering as if inebriated. “A tea party! I can’t believe it! This was something else! I can’t remember the last time I was at a tea party—probably when I was about eight years old! My cousin Rhonda Jo used to have a little set of dishes, and we’d spend all day dressin’ up in our mamas’ high heels and earbobs and playin’ like we were grown-ups! And now me and Rhonda Jo are real grown-ups, and she even had a hysterectomy last year—a complete one.” And so forth.
Birdie trailed along at the rear of our line, following us down the sidewalk to our cars, offering snippets of conversation when Francine’s flood tide of words at last subsided. I heard her tell Francine that Mickey helped to take care of the cemetery, trimming around the headstones with his weed-eater and discarding wilted flowers. She had never told me this. I heard her tell Algeria that she’d be praying for her brother Sahara. By this I surmised that Sahara was once again in jail. His intermittent incarceration was, I believe, a chief source of Algeria’s grievances against government and society in general, for she had charged upon more than one occasion that Sahara had never been “given a chance” in life.
As I opened the door of my car, I glanced across to where Birdie stood at the edge of the sidewalk, nodded my head, and said stiffly, “Thank you for the refreshments.”
She waved at me most enthusiastically across the gravel driveway, as if my thanks had given rise within her to a great swell of emotion, and her mouth gaped with a sudden smile of immodest proportions. “Oh, I meant to tell you, Margaret, I’m going to bring you a book tomorrow!” she called. “I plan to finish it tonight, and I want to see how you like it. Thank you for coming! I sure do value your friendship.”
Suddenly resentful and perhaps fearful of her friendly, grasping manner, I got into my car and, with a violent twist of my key in the ignition, started the engine. After backing into the turn space, I depressed the accelerator and shot off down the driveway as though eager to remove myself to a far country. I decreased my speed almost immediately, however, when gravel began spewing from beneath the tires of my car. I could well imagine Francine in a fit of giggles behind me saying, “Man alive, look at Margaret put the pedal to the metal, would you?”
16
An Expected End
It was only two days after Birdie’s tea party that Thomas offered a startling proposition. At half past four on Friday afternoon, November 18, I heard Thomas enter the kitchen door. He was whistling “Careless Love,” a mountain folk song of which he is fond. At the time I was kneeling beside the bathtub, scrubbing a panel of Venetian blinds. Though I dust my Venetian blinds each week, I feel it is important to wash them thoroughly at least twice a year. A solution of vinegar and ammonia works well. I was almost finished with the panel, lacking only two more slats.
I heard him stop at the bathroom door and heard his customary intake of air before broaching a matter of import. “Rosie,” he said, “we’re going to eat supper over at the Field Pea tonight.”
I replied without turning my head. “I have made vegetable soup for our supper. It is simmering in the Crockpot.”
“I know it,” he said. “I saw it in the kitchen. Smells good, too. But it’ll keep. We can have it tomorrow.”
I raised the intensity of my voice slightly. “There is no reason to waste money when our supper is already prepared for us here at home,” I said. I readjusted the towels that I had laid beneath the blinds in the bathtub so as not to scratch the porcelain.
“Joan called me at the hardware store a little bit ago,” Thomas said, “and she wants us to meet her at the Field Pea at six. Says she’s bringin’ a friend. I told her we’d do it.”
I set my sponge down, turned off the trickle of water, and stood up to face Thomas. “You accepted an invitation for us to eat at a restaurant without taking into consideration my wishes?” I asked. I cradled one upturned palm in the other, holding them close to my apron so that the water from my rubber gloves would not drip onto the bathroom floor.
“Aw, now, considerin’ you is just exactly what I was doin’, Rosie—thinkin’ of all the cookin’ you do day after day and decidin’ you was due a treat,” Thomas said, averting his eyes from mine and craning his neck to see into the bathtub. “What’s that you’re cleanin’ now? The inside of the furnace? Next thing I know, you’ll be takin’ my truck apart and totin’ the pieces in here to scrub.”
This was typical of Thomas. When calculating himself to be at a disadvantage in a confrontation, he will try to divert his opponent’s attention and leaven the mood with humor. His humor is of a lowly form, however, most often relying upon exaggeration for its effect. He is also fond of the pun.
“You know that I detest eating in public restaurants,” I said.
He laughed inanely and smote his thigh. “Well, then, just make believe it’s a private restaurant, and you’ll be okay!”
“I will not allow you to evade my objections with your juvenile retorts,” I said.
There was a lengthy pause while his face took on an expression of mock wonder. “Well, I’ll be John Brown,” he said at last. “Is that what I was doin’? I just thought I was cuttin’ up. I had no idea I was invadin’ your objects with…whatever it was you said.” Clad in a pair of faded denim jeans and a blue flannel shirt, the hem of which was untucked on one side, his eyes wide with feigned incredulity, Thomas looked like a grown Tom Sawyer hearing of some new superstition.
When especially infuriated by Thomas’s circumlocution in the rare instances that we have what is termed a face-off, I have been driven to draw unflattering compariso
ns, and I did so now. “Someday you must come to Emma Weldy and engage in a conversation with Francine Perkins,” I said. “The two of you could amuse each other for hours.”
Though he knew Francine’s identity, having observed her and even spoken casually to her when he had come by the school cafeteria on some small errand, he pretended to have a lapse of memory. “Let’s see…Francine—ain’t she that real smart gal that’s real nice and real funny that everybody likes so much? And I remind you of her, huh? Well, I’m real flattered, Rosie.”
My neck muscles were so taut I could almost feel them quivering. I turned around and once again knelt beside the bathtub. “I am not going to the Field Pea for supper tonight or any night,” I said, picking up the sponge and attacking with fresh vigor a slat of the blinds, a slat I had already cleaned thoroughly.
Thomas’s answer came promptly. He had dropped his jocular tone. “Well, then, you’ll have to call Joan and tell her yourself ’cause I told her we’d be there at six, and she’s expectin’ us and has it all set with her friend. I don’t aim to be the one to spoil it for her, so you do the callin’. Tell her you ain’t comin’.” I heard him turn to exit, then pause to add, “She might be wantin’ to know why you’re backin’ out, so maybe you better think up what excuse to tell her.” I heard him walk through the kitchen and close the back door behind him, then the thud of his work boots as he descended the steps to the yard.
I took his remarks to mean that he intended to be present at the Field Pea at six o’clock regardless of my decision. I believe it is accurate to say that in that moment I became unreasoning in my anger. For the next thirty or forty minutes, I crashed about, first hanging the blinds with a great clatter to drip-dry over the bathtub, then dragging the vacuum cleaner out of the hall closet and yanking it along behind me as I furiously guided the power nozzle over the carpet in violent thrusts, stopping periodically to pull pieces of furniture away from the walls.
Part of my turmoil, I could not deny, was due to the fact that Joan had telephoned Thomas instead of me, an act that I knew not quite how to interpret. I suspected, however, that she had anticipated my dissent and had wanted to relieve herself of the business of countering my protests. The thought of being considered predictably prickly rankled me somewhat, I suppose.
In addition, what I viewed as Thomas’s burgeoning assertiveness vexed me further. As I have said, ever since my frightened dash to the hospital emergency room in October, a subtle change had crept into our interaction with each other. Perhaps he had detected a shift of attitude on my part, though I toiled diligently, and I believe successfully, to conceal any trace of the self-consciousness arising from the awareness of my feelings on that day. Nevertheless, since that time he had gradually begun in his dealings with me to put himself and his ideas forward with more confidence. Whereas once he had been reliably timid in the face of my displeasure, he now varied in his responses from teasing parries to earnest expostulations to near reproofs. I felt as though I were being driven into corners on a fairly regular basis. This, of course, called for new reactions on my part. I was not accustomed to backing down.
The ritual of vacuuming at last worked its steadying influence upon my composure so that by the time I was ready to begin on the kitchen floor, I was reconsidering my course of action concerning the appointment with Joan at the Field Pea.
As I was disengaging the power nozzle to attach the brush for hard surfaces, Thomas reentered the kitchen through the back door. By now it was twenty minutes past five o’clock. I suppose that during his absence he had been puttering in the storage shed in the backyard, for his truck had never left the driveway. Without speaking, he stepped over the vacuum cleaner in the doorway and proceeded into his bedroom, most likely to change his clothes. I noted that his blue flannel shirt was now completely untucked.
I had not telephoned Joan, nor did I mean to, for I would not be coerced into declining an invitation that I had not accepted. If I stayed home, Thomas would have to inform Joan of the fact upon his arrival at the restaurant. Two ideas had already begun to stir within me, however, that would eventually lead to my relenting in the matter of accompanying Thomas to the Field Pea. First was the thought of Joan’s disappointment, for I believed that she truly desired my presence, and I further knew that I cared enough for her to weigh solemnly the matter of disrupting her plans, and second was a swelling curiosity concerning the friend who was to be her escort for the evening. Was this the other man, besides her father, to whom she had referred earlier?
In the end, of course, I went. I vacuumed the kitchen speedily and returned the machine to the hall closet. Though I usually mop the kitchen floor immediately after vacuuming it, I decided to postpone the task until the following day. As I closed the door of the hall closet, Thomas emerged from his bedroom, wearing only his loose undershorts and a clean undershirt, and made for the bathroom. After he had closed the bathroom door, I stood outside it and spoke firmly. “Though I do not wish to do so, I have decided to go with you.”
I heard Thomas suck in his breath, but he did not speak at once. As I turned toward my own bedroom, however, I heard the sound of water filling the bathroom sink and Thomas’s voice above it. “I’ll be done in just a minute so you can get in here.” His tone was neutral, neither overly eager nor smug.
At ten minutes before six o’clock we were en route. Thomas was driving my Ford since I will not ride in his pickup truck, which is always liberally cluttered with the appurtenances of his vacuum repair business. We spoke very little as we drove toward the Field Pea, located along Highway 11 between Filbert and Derby—barely a mile, in fact, past Shepherd’s Valley Cemetery and Birdie’s house.
My aversion to eating in restaurants is long-standing. On each of the few occasions of public dining in which I have personally engaged, I have seen overwhelming evidence of a careless disregard for decent standards, both in the handling and preparing of the food itself and in the general upkeep of the establishment. As I told Thomas the last time we patronized a restaurant, which I believe occurred some seven or eight years ago, no one should have to pay to be disgusted, as that experience generally comes free of charge. On that occasion, I recall that I ate only a minuscule portion of my dinner and even then suffered from indigestion. The fiasco had been set into motion when I noticed a fly—a common, filthy housefly rubbing its legs together—atop the broccoli florets at the salad bar.
As we passed the cemetery, I glanced toward Birdie’s house. There appeared to be no one at home, for there was no car in the driveway and only the porch light was burning. Birdie and Mickey were most likely attending yet another church activity, I thought, such as those that I frequently overheard Birdie describing to Francine and Algeria in the school kitchen.
Only days earlier Birdie had given a detailed account of an upcoming event that she had called “the annual Soupfest” to be held on the Sunday evening following Thanksgiving. “Everybody’s going to bring a big pot of soup,” she had said, “and after church we’ll have us a soup supper back in Fellowship Hall. Lots of people bring muffin tins to eat out of so they can fill up all the little cups with samples of the different soups.”
She had gone on to invite Francine and Algeria to visit her church that night, with their families, of course. Algeria had mutely declined with a shake of her head, but Francine said she would “think it over,” expressing doubt, however, that she could “drag Champ away from the TV set on a Sunday night, ’specially not to go to church!” Then she had laughed with a high-pitched whinny and said, “I betcha everybody makes turkey soup from their leftover Thanksgiving dinner, don’t they?” Birdie had replied that she was not roasting a turkey this year, for she and Mickey had been invited to their neighbors’ home for dinner, and that she was planning instead to make chili for the Soupfest.
Birdie had turned only seconds later to see me standing in the doorway of my office, my clipboard in hand. I was notating the location of two fluorescent lighting panels, which, due to their d
imness, I was certain were in need of replacement tubes. Having asked Ed Silvester, the janitor, to check one of them a week earlier and having seen no evidence of his attending to the matter, I was now in the process of composing a rather pointed written reminder. Seeing me, Birdie had called, “Oh, Margaret, you’re welcome to come, too! I was just telling them about a soup supper at our—”
I interrupted her with a curt “I will save you the effort of repeating it, for I will not be able to attend.”
I recalled the brief, stricken look upon her face and her brave recovery as she called out, “Oh, I understand perfectly! Maybe some other time.”
About a half mile past Birdie’s house, Thomas pointed to a collection of deserted wooden tables arranged in three long rows beside the highway. “Keep aimin’ to come out here one of these Saturdays and see if that feller from Derby’s got his pecans and hickories ready yet. I could sure use a pie.” One of Thomas’s favorite desserts is hickory nut pie, which he likes even more than my pecan pie. He is faithful to keep my supply of both of these nuts replenished. “Maybe I’ll drive out tomorrow and check,” he added.
We passed a series of hand-lettered neon green signs that were displayed year round: Peach’s! Firework’s! Boiled P’nut’s! Canalope’s! Sno-Cone’s! Only a dilapidated roadside produce stand, empty on this November Friday, appeared at the end of this bannered trail—“a real letdown after all that rah-rah,” as Thomas described it.
Farther on, we passed a Texaco station and a small clapboard house, which was painted the blue of a robin’s egg. A sign reading Dottie’s Be-Beautiful Style Shoppe stood beside the mailbox.
Some Wildflower In My Heart Page 21
