Last Rights

by Lynne Hugo

  “Don’t call me that.”

  “I’m sorry. Chris. You’re still a…good girl…aren’t you? I mean, you wouldn’t…” Even as she despised her own anxious wheedling, Cora could see by the way her daughter drew a curtain just behind her eyes that she probably wasn’t a good girl anymore, and wasn’t likely to discuss it with her mother even if she were.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Christine picked a leaf off the side of her print skirt and flicked it on the linoleum, but furtively. She didn’t know the grass clippings on her back had given her up.

  Cora hesitated. She was making meat loaf, mixing ground beef by hand with egg and white bread because it made for a better texture. The long, low sun of late afternoon was a downhill creek of light running into the window over the sink, which Cora had raised all the way for the softness of the air. She pulled her hands from the pink mixture in the glass bowl and washed them with soap and water. Used to be the feel of mixing meat loaf made her squeamish, but she’d adjusted over the years. There’d been a lot to adjust to, a lot to ignore, and Cora had refined the art. Some things, though, couldn’t go unremarked, no matter how hard. While she dried her hands on her apron, she tried to look at her daughter squarely. “I mean,” she said, “I have a feeling you may be seeing that boy against your father’s wishes. And…I’m finding myself wondering if you’re letting him…touch you?”

  Christine snickered. Something in the sneering, dismissive tone and the gesture that accompanied it snapped a bass string deep inside Cora. On blind swift impulse, her hand—still half-wet—flew like a part of her with a separate mind into a stinging slap on Christine’s cheek. Immediately, Christine covered the spot with her own hand. “I hate you,” she shouted, her eyes tearing from the burning place on her face and the humiliation.

  “You can hate me if you want, but you’ll answer me…or your father,” Cora said, furious even while she recoiled from what she’d done; she’d never struck either of the girls except small padded smacks on a diapered bottom when they were toddlers exploring the limits of danger. Marvin had, not all that often, but when they needed to be brought back into line, always with just his hand and always on the rear. It took a lot to push him to it, but it was that rather than a lot of words, which was Cora’s way. Even Rebecca was really too big for it, now.

  “I’m not telling you anything,” Christine said, turning her back and walking into the hall in a defiant, separate way.

  Cora sank into one of the kitchen chairs, hard and straight-backed wood with just a little cushioning on the seat. She ran her hands through her hair, wiped her eyes on the edge of her green print apron, and waited for Marvin to come home.

  The meat loaf, mixed, rested in the bowl. Peeled, knife-ready carrots lay bright on the counter, and potatoes to be mashed cooled in the pot for a good half hour while Cora fought her own mind about what was happening to her family. Here poor Jolene had to worry about Paul in a war zone. Shouldn’t a woman with just two daughters have nothing to worry about? Could Christine be doing it with that boy? There really wasn’t a shred of evidence, just that look on Christine’s face and the cold feeling that had settled like winter fog over Cora when she’d asked straight out. Marvin wouldn’t have it; Cora knew that much. He’d send her away.

  “WHAT DO YOU THINK?” Cora asked Jolene a few days later. “I can’t keep her locked up—that’s how Marvin would have it if he knew—but I can see her life circling the drain. And she’s thinkin’ that spinning in her head is love.” She drew out the last word mocking it in a way to make Jolene chuckle, but Cora’s face was serious. It was past time for Jolene to go so each could start cooking supper in her own kitchen, but they kept rocking on Cora’s porch, sipping the melted ice cubes from their iced teas as though there were something of substance in their glasses that kept them there.

  “Did she say that?” The breeze lifted Jolene’s hair as she spoke and Cora noticed more gray around her friend’s temples. Her own hair was already salt-and-pepper, but then her mother had grayed early. Having children: that’s what did it to you.

  “In a roundabout way. Said we couldn’t tell her who to love. And then, you know, when she came in she looked mussed up and smeared, like she’d been, well, what they call making out.”

  “You don’t think…”

  “I don’t know. I pray not. But this is tearing us up. She hardly speaks to Marvin or me. Rebecca, she just ignores Rebecca, but with us, it’s like she…it’s like we’re people to hate.”

  “Well, you know what they say about hate being so close to love. Maybe you’re taking it too serious.”

  Cora paused, considering, then shook her head in rhythm with her slow rocking. The sun was low enough now that she squinted when the chair took her forward into the rays, and Jolene saw the narrow folds around Cora’s eyes. Jolene herself had stopped rocking and held her chair on the back tip of the rockers to keep her face shaded by the porch overhang. She was like that, naturally practical, while Cora led with her heart and immediately played the hand she was dealt without thinking how to change the cards.

  “I don’t think so,” Cora said. “I know what you mean, but this has a different feel. It doesn’t feel like one of hers or Rebecca’s tantrums, when they say they hate you, but you know you just have to hold firm and let them come around on their own. It’s more like she’s planting herself in cement over this. Nothing’s going to move her.”

  “Then maybe you’ve got to think this out different. Maybe it’s backfiring to say she can’t see him.”

  “I tried to be careful about that, not drive her to him, you know? But it didn’t work. She went there anyway.”

  “Sure, but that’s not what I’m getting at,” Jolene said. “Maybe you’ve got to let her see him so she won’t be driven away from you. Let this thing run its course, but keep her close to you.”

  “Oh, but what if she…?”

  “Yeah, she may. No gettin’ around that one.”

  The two women sat a few more minutes in silence. Then Cora reached across the space between their chairs and squeezed Jolene’s hand. “I know you got to be thinking about Paul every minute,” she said. “This is silly compared to what’s on your mind. I hope you…”

  Jolene interrupted. “It’s a help,” she said. “Keeps my mind off it.”

  Cora smiled then. When her face relaxed, she looked younger and unmarked, like the sky between birds, and Jolene smiled back.

  CORA MIGHT HAVE BEEN impulsive with her own reactions but she planned her husband’s carefully. It was easier for her to see what would work when it wasn’t a mirror she was looking into. Without ever telling Marvin about the grass clippings that Christine had somehow gotten on her back while in the library, Cora began to work on Marvin. “Maybe we’re not being quite fair,” she’d say quietly. “You know, his father’s dead. Maybe he just hasn’t had a good man show him how to act.” Later, when they were talking about something else, she slipped in, “Well, she is eighteen. She’d best decide that for herself. Lots of young people on their own at eighteen. She’s got a summer job, it’s her money she’s spending.”

  “Time for her to be paying a little room and board then if she’s so damn independent,” Marvin muttered and went back to his newspaper. But eventually he came around. Cora had a mountain of chips saved up for when she needed to get her husband to change his mind. Neither she nor Marvin spoke of it when she pushed a pile in front of him; they were cashed silently and without rancor on either of their parts.

  That summer, Alex came around more and more, it seemed, and started to make himself quite at home. Too much at home for Cora’s comfort, though she bit back whatever wanted to come out of her mouth about it because Christine had warmed back up to her parents, as Jolene had predicted. The girl had a job bagging groceries at the Thriftway, but—though Alex claimed he was working in his uncle’s bait shop in Darrville—Cora noticed his work hours never seemed to conflict with Christine’s, no matter how many times she had to trade
shifts to accommodate a regular clerk.

  “Alex must have gotten his induction notice by now,” Cora said to Marvin. “We just have to hold out.”

  Marvin took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. It bothered Cora to see him sink his face into his hand and rest it there a minute. His eyebrows bushed out above his forefinger like caterpillars crossing a branch.

  “Absence makes the heart…” Marvin trailed out, his tone like a warning.

  “Think about it, honey. She’s going over to Richmont. She’ll meet some other boys. He doesn’t seem much like a letter-writing type, does he?”

  “I doubt he can spell that many words,” Marvin, whose own spelling left a good deal to phonetics and chance, said.

  Mom and Dad will think we’re getting married because of the war, Christine had written in her diary a week earlier. “They’ve forgotten all about love. It’s true Alex doesn’t want to hurt anyone but that includes me. He said so.”

  “IT HAS NOTHING TO do with the war,” Christine shouted. “You don’t know anything, you just assume.” She and Cora and Marvin were in the living room and the television was off, which meant the conduct of very serious business. Beyond the picture window, sullen clouds were teething on the treetops, making it darker than it should have been at seven-thirty. The three-way light, turned to the brightest wattage because Marvin had been reading the paper, threw bad-tempered shadows on the green tweed chair where Marvin sat facing his daughter, stiff on the matching couch. Cora sat in the rocking chair she’d had since she was pregnant with Christine. On the end table next to her rested Christine’s framed graduation picture and the two Hummel figurines Cora’s mother had given her to start a collection. Since Edna’s death, though, nobody had remembered to give her any more. In the picture, Christine’s hair was backlit; she wore the black drape all the senior girls did, and Cora’s faux pearls. The picture was always a punch to Cora’s solar plexus; Christine was stunning, her fine features composed and adult-looking, but studio lights adjusted to make her eyes wide, theatrically starred, dancing toward a future only she could see.

  Marvin’s face was fierce, the tenor of his voice deepening with anger while Christine’s got higher. He’d run his hand over the top of his head, somehow mussing it so some thin strands poked the air in a wild aura. Cora didn’t want to look at him, didn’t want to see the narrowed eyes and the angry furrows, but Christine faced him squarely. Cora reached over to try to calm her daughter, but Christine batted her mother’s hand off her thigh, which only fueled Marvin more. Since the day when her own frustration had flared into the slap, Cora had been a little frightened of all of them. Sometimes everything seemed normal enough, but when Christine and Alex were there the house had a tinderbox feel Cora hoped she was imagining.

  “There’s no way I’ll sign for this, period,” Marvin shouted. “And don’t let me ever see you treat your mother that way. Ever.”

  “Marvin, it’s okay…” Cora tried, but Christine interrupted.

  “See how much you know? Nothing. I don’t need your permission to get married in Tennessee. I’m eighteen. We’ll go there.”

  “You’ll not leave this house.”

  There was no way anything good was going to come of this. Cora would have been just as upset as Marvin, except one of them had to stay cool enough to think. Sometimes it seemed like a luxury to her, Marvin’s role, wide and roomy enough to explode in. Still, she’d stunned herself when she slapped Christine. It was much more like Marvin than herself, and it left her feeling uneasy rather than liberated.

  “Christine, Chris I mean, honey, we don’t want you running off to get married. It should be the happiest day of your life. We’re just worried because you’re so young. We’d like you to…”

  “Wait. You want me to wait and we don’t want to wait. I don’t see what there is to talk about,” Christine said, only slightly mollified by Cora’s tone.

  “Actually, I want Alex to get hit by a truck,” Marvin said. “A very big truck.”

  “He doesn’t mean that, honey.”

  “Oh, I certainly do,” Marvin said, but he heard Cora’s tone and pulled his own down a notch.

  “Wouldn’t it be a good idea to wait until Alex is out of the army? I mean you two can write and see each other when he’s on leave. Did he get his induction notice yet?” Cora asked.

  “No…yes, we just don’t want to wait.”

  “Is it no or yes? Seems simple enough,” Marvin said.

  “Rebecca, this is none of your business. Get out!” Christine yelled angrily. She’d seen or sensed the movement of her sister on the top step of the stairs, out of sight, to eavesdrop. Christine had done it herself a hundred times. Complete silence answered, and Christine knew Rebecca was edging back onto the top landing to tiptoe to her room as if she’d not been there. “I’m not stupid, you little twerp. I know where you are.”

  “That’s enough.” Marvin leaned forward as if to rise and strike his daughter.

  “I’m not afraid of you, Daddy. I don’t care if you hit me.” Christine’s eyes—as blue as Cora’s own, though Marvin’s brown should have dominated—were almost black in the low light.

  “Nobody’s doing any hitting here,” Cora said. “Let’s stay on the subject. What is Alex’s situation with the military?”

  “I’m not telling you anything,” Christine said, standing up.

  “He’s using you,” Marvin said. “He won’t get away with it.”

  “Oh, yes, he will,” Christine said in a deadly voice as she walked out of the room, thinking she was saying Alex would marry her.

  Cora sat a minute, dazed, recognizing the insane courage her daughter had borrowed from the notion of love. She saw, too, that she and Marvin were not going to win. Time was, she herself would have walked through fire to be with Marvin, though it wasn’t until long after they married she realized she did love him after all.

  “They think they know everything,” Christine wrote that night.

  eleven

  THE WEDDING, SET for August 31, had gotten completely out of hand as far as Marvin was concerned. He’d agreed to something simple, but every day it seemed there was one more “little thing” that Cora agreed with Christine would add a nice touch. Not carnations or daisies or chrysanthemums in the bridal bouquet, but roses. And trailing ivy, just a little extra. Not red gelatin salad on the buffet in the church fellowship hall, but fresh fruit cups. Not even workaday Indiana cantaloupes in the damn fruit cups, either, but blueberries (in season) and strawberries (definitely not), because Christine loved berries.

  “I’ll make them,” Cora said, shaming him. “That way they won’t cost that much more. And there’s really no reason I can’t bake the hams myself. Jolene offered to serve at the buffet, so that’ll save.” On and on and on. He was begrudging every bit of it, they both knew. “You don’t want her running off and eloping, and us not even be there, do you?” Cora kept pleading, but Marvin caught the glinting blade edging her voice. “We can’t drive her off. This is her wedding, after all.”

  “No, we’ll just pay her off,” he muttered, but when Cora asked what he meant by that he just shook his head. “I’m taking all the overtime they offer,” he said instead. “What else do you want?”

  There was tension between Christine and Marvin when he walked her down the aisle of the Darrville Methodist Church. He’d flat refused to wear a tuxedo, on grounds of unnecessary cost, he said, but really because he thought it would make him look as if he approved. (It had been Cora who signed the consent for a minor to marry, though Marvin knew full well it had to be done.) Even without the monkey suit, sweat beaded on his forehead, and he felt his shirt getting soggy under his gray suit coat while he and Christine watched Rebecca do the hesitation step to Here Comes the Bride three-quarters of the way down the aisle, until the pressure of Christine’s arm against his got his feet moving. In the front row, Cora’s chin was quivering above the lace collar of a new dusty-rose dress. He could actually see the tiny moveme
nts and the starting tears as he and Christine approached the front of the church, and Marvin fought down nausea born of nerves and frustration to look strong for his wife. In his peripheral vision, he saw Alex, but avoided eye contact. The little he saw didn’t help. Alex looked self-important as high noon, silently declaring himself the winner.

  “Who gives this woman to be married to this man?” The reverend, whose name Marvin never could remember, looked at him. He felt rather than saw Christine turn her white-veiled head to look at him to make sure he gave the right answer.

  “Her mother and I do,” he answered as he’d been coached at the rehearsal, the words catching on the hump of his Adam’s apple, buttoned flat in a shirt that was too small around the neck. Christine exhaled and a little smile made its way to the front.

  “This is my wedding day,” Christine had written in her diary at seven that morning. “I will never be the same again.”

  “SHE’S LIKE A STRANGER,” Cora said to Jolene, who’d been in the pew behind her and Marvin during the ceremony and had stayed at her elbow during the reception except when it was time to serve the buffet. “I feel like I don’t even know her. I knocked myself stupid with this wedding, she knows that, and you’d think it would count for something, but she just shuts me out. For him. I think he can’t stand for her to have anything to do with us. He told her we were trying to poison her mind against him.” Cora had been ruminating on it for weeks while she and Jolene made table decorations and altered Rebecca’s mauve maid of honor dress as well as Christine’s gown, which was too tight around the middle a quick three and a half weeks after it was bought.

  “She’ll be back,” Jolene said. “She’ll be back.”

  “I don’t know. From your lips to God’s ears. I feel like I’ve lost her. Everything’s a secret anymore. Except what ought to be…” Cora, with her head, gestured toward Christine, dancing to some kind of rock-music record with Alex. “Are people talking?”

  “Not that I’ve heard. You know, she looks beautiful. That neckline shows off her face just right.”