by Lisa Howorth
Mann said firmly, “Look, I don’t think that can be what happened. We talked about this before. Child molesters who go after boys are not interested in teenage girls. They don’t make substitutions. That is a fact. They want what they want, like animals. Or like everybody else! You know that, M’ Byrd. I can’t believe a detective or whatever would tell a teenage girl something like that.”
“A lot of things were going on with me and my family, and what fifteen-year-old wouldn’t believe a cop?” Her exhaled breath whistled in the receiver.
“What was the name of the guy—the guy down the street?”
“Ned Tuttle.”
“Look, this is not about you! Maybe it’s true that Ned Tuttle had a crush on you, but that doesn’t mean he killed your stepbrother, right? And maybe he did kill your stepbrother, but that doesn’t mean it had anything to do with you. Did you not ever watch Car 54 or Andy Griffith? Those cops in Virginia were probably just hicks. Do you think they knew anything about criminal psychology? They’re just guys who can make mistakes. Probably they’d never even had a crime in Richmond like that. Not back then.”
“They took my diary,” Mary Byrd said. It was hard to keep the tremble out of her voice. Why did people mostly only cry if they had an audience. “I don’t know what’s in that thing. I didn’t even remember then. They still have it. Mann, I’m scared of Ned Tuttle.”
There was silence on the line. Then Mann said softly, “Jeez, M’Byrd. I don’t know what to tell you, except that I can’t believe anybody would pay much attention to anything in a teenager’s diary, and I don’t think it makes sense for you to be scared of the guy. You just feel upset and paranoid. I’m really sorry. Please don’t blubber.”
“I’m not,” she said, snorting back hard to abort her sniveling. “You know I don’t cry. But—maybe I did say or do something to … piss Tuttle off or something. Anyway, it doesn’t matter if it was true or not, or made any sense, I just know my stepfather probably believed it. He was always giving me crap about being boy-crazy, guys sniffing around. It didn’t take much for him to blame my sluttiness for—whatever. We really didn’t get along anyway and we pretty much stopped talking after Stevie died.”
“Man,” said Mann. “I hate it for you. I’ll go up there with you if you want,” he lied.
“Yeah, right.” Mary Byrd paused. “Thank god my stepfather is dead. Okay. I’ve gotta get my ass in gear and get the kids and tell Charles what’s going on. I’ll call you later. Thanks, Mann.”
“You okay?”
“Course. Always am.”
“Tough girl,” he said.
“Ha.”
“You know what that guy—what’s his name? Don Walsh?—says on every America’s Most Wanted show? ‘And remember: YOU can make a difference.’ Just do it.”
“John is that guy’s name,” she said. “I don’t know if you watch too much TV, or not enough.”
They hung up. Mary Byrd didn’t feel any better. It wasn’t about feeling better, there wasn’t any feeling better about Stevie. It was a matter of feeling less as time went on, but not better. She guessed it felt safer for somebody to know what a little hell she was in. She couldn’t even stand to mention the note that Ned Tuttle had written her, which seemed to definitely point to her … involvement. How was it that the reporter seemed to know something about all that?
Mary Byrd stepped out of the booze closet and wandered back into the study, heading for a box of old family photos. She dug through the piles for a small manila envelope that held the few family snapshots with Stevie. She hadn’t looked at them in forever. All but one was black and white and she supposed had been taken with her old Brownie. Here was the only shot of the whole family together at the bay, standing in the sand in front of the family cottage. Pop, smoking a cigar, handsome and fat, her teeny mom with cool shades and a Jackie Kennedy scarf over her hair, holding Baby Pete. Nick stood sideways, flexing his biceps, practically black with a tan, holding a dead crab; that was his MO, picking up dead crap on the beach and pretending he’d caught it. James and Stevie knelt in the sand, James imitating Stevie who was imitating Nick, all flexing their pathetic muscles, squinting into the sun like they were badasses. Everyone was in a bathing suit but Mary Byrd, who wore a sweatshirt and cutoffs; she’d rather have died than be in her two-piece in a family photo. She stood off to the side, looking enormous—as big as Pop! It must have been the summer before Stevie died. Who’d taken that picture?
Here was another shot of her, Nick, Stevie, and James stacked up in order on the sliding board in the backyard. She wore a madras kerchief and one of her mom’s old bathing suits, a black tank she could barely squeeze into. She’d loved it because it had great falsies. The big boys were shirtless in shorts, and James wore only a droopy, probably damp, cloth diaper. Boys never wore clothes or shoes in summer back then. William and his friends never went shirtless or barefoot, or even wanted to. Funny.
The other two pictures were just of Stevie. In one, the color photo, he sat at the kitchen table, leaning on his crossed arms, smiling a tight-lipped, satisfied smile. Lined up before him was a row of his little metal trucks. He was obsessed with them, especially his yellow and green dump truck, whose doors opened and the dumper thing actually dumped. He had a thing he’d say to himself over and over, down on the floor or in the yard, playing intently, “Pickin’ up dirt, brrrrooom, dump truck,” as he made the dumper dump. It looked like he’d loaded it with—what? Peanuts? Or maybe pumpkin seeds; her mother toasted the seeds in salt and butter at Halloween. Stevie loved them. Mary Byrd noticed that the truck was worn nearly silver with use. The last shot was Stevie in a gigantic cartoonish bonnet she’d made for Baby Pete. He was making a goofy monster face and raising his fist at the camera. His big, blocky head looked ridiculous on top of his scrawny little neck and shoulders. Oh god, she thought, his pitiful, pitiful little birdy shoulders, where his killer had cut the letter N. Mary Byrd put the photos back in the envelope, wondering how long it would be before she’d look at them again.
She startled, hearing the school buses grinding their gears on the steep hill at the intersection of their street and Jefferson. She’d be late to get William and Eliza. What else was new. She could think this trip crap through later.
Where was Evagreen, she wondered. She didn’t hear the vacuum, so she was probably still upstairs doing the bathrooms. Feeling too sapped to climb the stairs, and not wanting to catch Evagreen possibly smoking out the window, Mary Byrd cupped her hands around her mouth and yelled up at the air vent, “Evagreen! Going to get the children!” Pausing a second for a response that she knew wouldn’t come, she put on her coat and pulled on her gloves and left the house by the back door. Some slugs had left a big map of shiny rainbow mucus on the steps, she noticed. What were slugs doing around in the winter? Why did slugs even exist at all? So gross, she said to herself. Were slugs just escargot without shells? And why did so many disgusting things feature rainbows? Slug tracks, spoiled ham, fly wings, greasy starlings, oil on a fish pond? Aloud, she said, “Assholes,” knowing how the slugs spent luxurious nights devouring her hostas. William would be happy to salt them, or make them a little beer hot tub. Poor slugs, just trying to get by like everybody else, and, like everybody else, they couldn’t help it if they did some asshole things.
From the window on the landing upstairs, Evagreen watched the driveway until she saw the Ford Explorer backing out through the bare crape myrtle trunks. Pushing the window up, she muttered, “Hmph. Never gone put this screen back in. Wonder so many bugs always be around in here, matter how I clean.” From the pack of Salems in the pocket of her warm-up jacket she took a cigarette and lit up, exhaling the first delicious, minty draw into the cold air. She sat down on the windowsill with her feet on the roof.
“Hollerin’ up through the vents!” She was indignant. “Like trash.” From blocks away, she could hear the squeals and shouts of children being let out at the elementary school. Three squirrels ran up and down, chasing eac
h other high up in a leafless chinaberry tree she could barely see off in the woods. Look like they on wheels, or a rollercoaster, they move so smooth and quick, up and down. Chinaberries in winter, with their round gold seed pods, always reminded her of a crayon drawing one of her twins had made for her a long time ago, with clusters of polka-dot fruit grouped in the branches. She still had that drawing, probably Tommy Smith’s; John Carlos never too big on coloring, even though the boys identical. She had all the twins’ and Ken’s and Angie’s old school things in the deep bottom drawer of her bedroom chest. Beyond the woods the school bus engines rumbled and groaned as they climbed the hill, and somewhere in the neighborhood college boys were carrying on. “Not studyin’, that for sure,” she tsked. She wished her own boys had stayed close, gone to Delta State, even Valley, instead of going to college in Atlanta. Had to go where the most money was, though, and at least they got to go together; keep each other out of trouble and focused on playing ball. They’d been a little wild, not solid like Angie or Ken, but they seemed to be straightened out now, and she thanked the Lord for that. Evagreen suddenly felt as chilly and gray as the day outside, and shivered, but instead of closing the window, she pinched out the cigarette butt between two leathery fingers and lit another. The butts would be stashed in the pocket of her warm-up pants, and later when she cleaned one of the bathrooms she’d flush them. Air things out, then close the window.
In the master bedroom—Mary Byrd just referred to it as “her” room, or “our” room, but Evagreen insisted on calling it the “master” bedroom to Mary Byrd’s aggravation—she picked up a bottle of lavender body oil and some Q-tips from the dresser top and headed to Eliza’s room.
The room, a messy pink lair, gave off the bright message that a girl child who considered herself to have outgrown the room’s furnishings and décor lived here. Somewhere between a dorm and a nursery, faded pink eyelet curtains hung at the windows and a gauzy mosquito net floated above a bed piled with gaily printed Home Barn pillows. Three big bulletin boards covered the walls, and each was thickly shingled with snapshots. Every photo was the same as the others: tight gaggles of pubescent girls grinning ferociously with glittery, braced teeth, arms around each other, mostly blonde heads pressed tightly together, the girls on the ends with one leg, toe pointed, raised coyly behind. Mardi Gras beads, beer huggies with fishing jokes, invitations, ticket stubs, and words and phrases clipped from magazines festooned it all—masterpieces of new-hormone collage. Alicia Silverstone vamped from a Clueless poster on the closet door. In a corner, a number of dingy, matted stuffed animals were mounded carelessly next to a battered dollhouse that vaguely resembled the Thorntons’ Victorian home.
“Breaking a perfectly good plate,” Evagreen muttered, stiffly lowering herself to her knees in front of the dollhouse. “Not even on accident.” From beneath the diminutive claw-footed bathtub she pulled a paintbrush and began gently dusting the dollhouse surfaces. When this was complete to her satisfaction, she took a Q-tip, dipped it in the lavender oil, and carefully swabbed the tiny rosewood and cherry furniture and the walnut wainscoting and chair rails, turning the Q-tip to the dry end to buff it all down to a rich, miniature luster. Sometimes Evagreen would arrange the rubbery play people and beds, tables, and chairs, narrating to herself: “They’s a new baby. Everyone got to move around.” Or, “They mama died. Good riddance. They grandmama got to move in an’ take over.” She longed to redecorate the old dollhouse, to cheer the place up and paint over the faded old miniscule forget-me-not wallpaper in a warm, bright color, peach or aqua or sunflower; crochet some cozy acrylic granny squares for rugs—you could wash those—and throw away the stiff, stained little “Aubussons” with their ugly moth holes.
The dollhouse furniture was quality, Evagreen knew that, and although she herself preferred furniture styles that were more substantial and more comfortable, she appreciated the beautiful woods and craftsmanship of the pieces. All the little drawers worked, tiny gateleg tables opened, the cast-iron oven door folded down; it was something for things so small to work so well. “Hmph. Not like around here in this house. They’s some nice furniture, family things, but knobs gone, veneer peeling, drawers warp and don’t close, even if I do run over ’em with bar soap. Don’t nobody care. Umn.” Although Evagreen was happy to fail to notice cobwebs and dust bunnies and fingerprints around the real house, and tarnish could darken the Thorntons’ silver and brass, for Evagreen, the dollhouse and its family was a model of good housekeeping and family behavior, and she planned to keep it that way.
Eliza took little notice of Evagreen’s efforts except to remark to her mother, “Mom, my dollhouse smells like you when you get out of the shower.”
“Does it?” Mary Byrd had answered. She’d vaguely noticed the scent in her daughter’s room, too. “I thought you were just poaching my lavender.”
“Right, Mom. Like I would really want to smell like you.”
“What was I thinking?” her mother had lightly replied. It never paid to take a daughter’s insults seriously.
Evagreen finished straightening in Eliza’s and William’s rooms and very casually cleaned their bathroom. The children’s environment was a mixture of filth and persnickety hygiene. Socks could be worn for days, hair and toothpaste slobber could coat the tub and sink, boogers could be wiped on the corner of the bed sheets, William even had what he thought was a secret booger crop on his wall, but yet each child had to have a clean towel every day, and in Eliza’s case two: one just for a hair turban. Despite what she perceived to be a spoiled upbringing, Evagreen felt a strong, if not deep, affection for the two Thornton children and blamed their shortcomings and flaws on Mary Byrd. “Don’t go to church, that’s why. Animals live in the house, eat and sleep on the table, the chair, everwhere. Things be pile up all over.” There was a long, long litany of cause-and-effect about the Thorntons—at least this generation—that Evagreen recited to herself every Thursday. Basically it came down to how far white people had fallen, and how foolishly they brought so many of their problems all on themselves.
With her own family, her own four children, Evagreen had been strict to the point of military: church, school, after-school jobs, college. She and L. Q. were there for them in the mornings, after school, and at night, even though it meant L. Q. had to take the graveyard shift at Chambers Stove. Maybe “The Dream” hadn’t quite been theirs, but it sure was going to be those kids’. No doubt.
Evagreen had been cleaning house for Mary Byrd and Charles since they married, and she was something of a legacy. Her Auntee Rosie had taken care of Charles’s old great-aunt Rosalie for most of Rosalie’s spinsterhood, the two becoming like an old married couple as their years together totted up. Totally in tune with one another’s personalities and foibles and tricks, and united against outside interference, they became a formidable two-headed beast, not to be taken lightly or for granted. The two roses: a thorny totem of the Old South. Occasionally there would be a falling-out. When Rosalie’s health began to flag, they almost broke up over Rosie’s desperate attempt to trick Rosalie into eating. After exhausting every nourishing excitement she could think up or cook, Rosie had offered Rosalie ants on a log—celery sticks slathered with peanut butter and studded with raisins, the heinous “salad” of elementary school lunches—and this had been such a grievous affront to Rosalie’s sophisticated palate that she had rallied and regained strength out of sheer indignation, a response that Rosie had probably anticipated. The two didn’t speak for weeks. When Rosie’s family asked why she tolerated Miss Rosalie’s uncalled-for wrath, Rosie only replied with a wink, “That all right. Ever mornin’ I spits in her coffee.” They were much more like Gertrude and Alice than Morgan Freeman and Jessica Tandy. In fact, they were both more like Alice B. Toklas: small, sinewy, dark, and prickly as mock orange.
Evagreen had a lot of her Auntee Rosie in her. Mary Byrd, someone from away who had just married in, with no breeding, no idea of how things worked in an old family in a small Mississipp
i town, did not know her place, was never going to measure up to the examples set by the women in the Thornton family, most notably Charles’s sainted mother, Lydia—everyone called her Liddie—and her sister, Evelyn. Evagreen knew that Mary Byrd knew the truth of the matter, too. Didn’t count that she was from Virginia; as far as Evagreen was concerned, anything north of Louisiana, Mississippi, or Alabama was north. Even Georgia. “Atlanta full of gangster trash, pervert baby-killers. Might as well be Chicago,” she’d say. And even Alabama didn’t hardly count: “Not enough black folks to make it a decent place to live. Just rednecks and cracker trash, mud and clay,” was her feeling about it.
Evagreen gathered up a bag of bathroom and bedroom garbage—empty Gatorade and shampoo bottles, Mountain Dew and Coke cans, a few empty bubble packs and Styrofoam chunks that some of the children’s mysterious electronic gadgetry had come in. She stomped on the garbage bag to mash the cans and plastic down so that Mary Byrd wouldn’t notice that things weren’t being recycled. “Recycle—more crazy white people’s notions. What the matter with the dump and burning, way it always been done?” She gave a last satisfied look at the dollhouse.
Downstairs Evagreen surveyed the kitchen, taking a moment to stick one pointed fingernail into her small, perfect helmet of a hairdo for a thoughtful scratch. She began to rinse and wash the coffee machine, taking the cleaned drip basket and placing it far back in a little-used cupboard. It could be seen but would have to be looked for. She considered that this might be pushing it a little, since just the previous week she had hidden one of Mary Byrd’s favorite earrings in the same way, and not long before that she had allowed—had encouraged—one of the dogs to chew up a high heel, a prized Jimmy Choo, by rubbing the tiniest dab of bacon fat around the inside. “Only a ho gone wear a shoe like that, anyway. Four hundred dollar shoe. Umn,” Evagreen rationalized. “It be Jimmy Chooed now, all right,” she’d laughed. Even though Mary Byrd had the sense to put two and two together about these mutinies she was still not in a position to do without her, Evagreen knew. Charles wouldn’t have it. She began loading the dishwasher, noticing with grudging approval that this morning anyway the family had apparently had bacon and eggs for breakfast instead of sugary cereal for the children or that birdseed mess Charles and Mary Byrd ate. No meat, nothing hot, that part of the problem, she thought. Don’t have strength to get through the day. And bring in pizza, Taco Bell, that nasty fish for supper—terrible square little bites—not even cooked. Japanese—umn. The world done had enough Japanese. Pitiful, just pitiful. Evagreen moved on to the drier and began removing warm, fragrant bed sheets. She said out loud, “And don’t know how to fold a bottom sheet, hang a towel. Nasty things round the house and on the walls. Art, she say. Umn. I say pestilence. Just pestilence.”
