Bone Valley

by Claire Matturro

  “Of course. Let me clean up, and we can go. Call ’em for me, and tell Lenora we’re on our way.”

  Naturally, I cleaned not only the kitchen, but myself. I fluffed, buffed, flossed, changed clothes, and flounced back into the living room, where Jimmie and Dolly were sitting. I hadn’t realized Dolly was part of the evening’s outing.

  “We’s waiting on you,” Jimmie said, just in case I’d missed the impatience written big across his face.

  “We are waiting on you,” Dolly corrected.

  “Dog-bite-it, woman. Why you gots to repeat ever thing I say’s beyond me,” Jimmie said.

  Dolly puffed up a bit, but before she could retort, Jimmie turned to me. “All set?” Jimmie was wearing one of Philip’s white-on-white, hand-pressed, tailor-made shirts. I guess Jimmie took an expansive view of using my guest room. Philip’s shirt, of course, was several sizes too big on Jimmie, and the long sleeves dangled down Jimmie’s skinny arms, the cuffs completely hiding his hands. He did not cut a dashing figure, but he was probably too set in his ways for tips from Lilly’s Grooming School, so I applied my grandmom’s can’t-teach-a-pig-to-sing philosophy.

  Dolly apparently didn’t suffer from that same outlook, and said, “At least roll the sleeves up, especially if you plan to actually use your hands.”

  “No’m, you see how he done had these shirts pressed and starched and all? I ain’t gonna mess that up by rolling up these sleeves.”

  Oh, please, I thought, like Philip’s going to wear that shirt again without having it washed and pressed and starched all over. He kept clean, spare shirts at his office and changed after lunch. There’s a whole village in Guatemala that could live off what Philip spends on his shirts alone, and don’t even get me started on his suits. Tailor-made. Every single damn one of them—I’d gone through his closet once, when he was in the shower, and checked. I opened my mouth to give voice to this pet peeve I had against Philip—I mean, yes, I like to dress nice, but Philip was just way out there, but before I could get even the first peep of my rant out, the doorbell rang.

  Since I was already standing up, I walked to the door and opened it, and there—speaking of the devil—was Philip. He was holding a package in his hand, elegantly wrapped in gold paper and a white satin ribbon.

  “Hello, Lilly. This is for you,” he said, and handed the present to me.

  “It’s not my birthday,” I said.

  “It’s Edna St. Vincent Millay,” Philip said. “A first edition. I didn’t realize you were so enamored of poetry.”

  “Oh, she jes’ loves the stuff, especially the gal ones.”

  I don’t “jes’ love” poetry. I mean, I don’t have anything against it, except that I had to memorize a bunch of it in high school for some reason that has yet to become apparent. But it seemed the quickest way to get this outing over with, which was my new goal, was to get it started, and that called for getting us all out the door. “Thank you,” I said, and put the book on the coffee table. “We’re just on our way out to visit my brother Delvon and his friend Lenora.” I left it up to Philip to decide if that was an invitation or a dismissal.

  “I’d be glad to drive,” Philip said.

  “That’s real nice of you,” Jimmie said. “We all’ll fit in Philip’s nice, big car, and, ’sides, this time a night, they won’t be no traffic much on the Trail.”

  “There won’t be any traffic,” Dolly said, and I felt the muscles at the back of my neck bunch into a tight, painful knot.

  By the time we arrived at Lenora’s, I was more than about halfway to full-blown batty, trapped as I was between Miss Grammar 1944 and Jimmie Don’t Got None. Philip was mostly silent, though I’d noticed him noticing Jimmie in his own good shirt.

  Lenora’s house was small, a somewhat run-down Florida bungalow that backed up to Bowlees Creek, which is roughly the natural barrier between Manatee and Sarasota Counties.

  While I was doing an instant property appraisal on Lenora’s house, Delvon answered the door. He wore a hand-painted T-shirt that said “No More Bushit” over a pair of cutoffs. He was barefoot, and grinning fit to choke the Cheshire cat.

  “Y’all come on in, come on in.”

  We paraded in, and the distinct, pungent odor of marijuana hit me in the face. Not like Delvon was passing a bong, but like the stuff was baking. I sniffed, and turned and looked at Delvon.

  “Just some skunk sativa I’m drying out in Lenora’s convection oven. Won’t be long. It got damp, what with the defrosting on my trip down and then sitting in your carport a couple of days like it did.”

  Dolly and Philip turned and stared at me as if I were dealing drugs out of my carport.

  But when I shrugged, Philip turned back to my brother. “I don’t believe we have formally met,” Philip said. “I’m Philip Cohen, Lilly’s fiancé.” He offered his hand to Delvon.

  Before Delvon processed the slight negative shake of my head, he pounced on Philip. “My brother-in-law, praise Jesus.” And he proceeded to hug the stuffing out of Philip.

  When Delvon stopped squeezing him, Philip breathlessly introduced Delvon to Dolly. She refused Delvon’s hand, narrowed her eyes, and stepped back.

  “Oh, they done met,” Jimmie said.

  I guessed one could call it that, remembering how I’d found them shadowboxing with each other after Dolly had called the police on Delvon. “Where’s Lenora?” I asked.

  “She’s in the kitchen, go on in. Y’all got here just in time. We got two Episcopal nuns coming over to lay on hands and pray for her,” Delvon said.

  “Perhaps we are intruding and should leave,” Philip said. I thought I caught a hopeful tone in his voice.

  “Oh, no, the more prayer, the better,” Delvon said.

  Doubtlessly true, but I drifted away from the crowd anyway and ambled into the kitchen, where Lenora was sitting, listlessly holding a glass of ginger ale. Her face was a yellow-gray, with purple slashes under her eyes.

  “How are you doing?” I asked, rather pointlessly given her appearance.

  “Fine. I’ll be fine.” She put down her soda, rose from her chair, and gave me a weak hug. “Thank you for sharing your brother with me. He has so much…energy. Maybe this weekend, you can come out to the preserve and see what all he’s managed to do.” Her strength seemed to give way, and she sat back down.

  Lenora rested for a moment, while I took in the kitchen. Classic Florida-in-the-Forties look to it, very charming, with a turquoise stove and pink tile.

  “There’ll be a memorial service for Angus John on Monday. Will you come?” Lenora asked me.

  “Yes. Of course. Where?” I made myself stop staring at the pink tile and looked at Lenora.

  “At the Manatee Garden Center, next to Lewis Park, down near the Manatee River. I’ll get you the address later. Angus thought it was a pretty place.”

  “If you need any help, setting it up, or anything, let me know. I’ll help.”

  “Thank you.”

  I couldn’t help but ask, “Will Miguel be there, at the memorial? Do you know how to get in touch with him?”

  “I think not, and no,” she said. “Angus and I, we got married there, at the Manatee Garden Center. A long time ago.”

  “Really?” I said. I had wondered about them, and Olivia hadn’t been any help on that score, and what with the press of other issues with Miguel, I’d never asked him about Angus and Lenora.

  “Angus was my first love,” Lenora said. Her voice was soft and wistful and I knew Lenora was not really here with me, but somewhere in the past with Angus.

  “We grew up together, over near Mulberry and Bartow. But we screwed it up, got married too early. Right out of high school. My granddaddy gave me away there at that garden club. But Angus and me…we were just too young, and it didn’t work. After we got divorced, I stayed here in Manatee County, and lived right here with my granddad. When he died, he left me this house, and that place by the river. He’d gotten ’em both dirt cheap back in the forties. So I had
a house, free and clear, but I’ve had to mortgage it to pay my medical bills.”

  Like an involuntary muscle spasm, I went into lawyer mode. “You know, the house is judgment proof if you’ve homesteaded it, which I’m sure you have. Creditors like medical-care providers can’t take your homesteaded house to pay bills. But the mortgage company can. If you were worried about paying the hospital bill, you should…er, could have…just owed them and not mortgaged your house.”

  Lenora took a deep breath. “I didn’t have a choice. A pharmacy won’t sell you chemo drugs without money. And the stuff costs thousands, thousands.”

  Damn. I’d momentarily forgotten we lived in the one so-called civilized country in the world that routinely lets the uninsured or the un-moneyed die for lack of standard medical treatment.

  “And the preserve,” Lenora said. “The animal preserve by the river is not homesteaded, so the hospital can get that if I don’t pay off the rest of my surgery bill. I had to sell some of the land when I first got sick and couldn’t do any fund-raising or work my little jobs. I didn’t know, but I ended up selling it to Antheus and M. David Moody.” She gave a bitter half laugh, half snort. “Usually I’m not stupid,” she said.

  “No, I wouldn’t think you are.” But then seriously sick and uninsured means desperate. And desperate rarely improves the clarity of the choices one is forced to make.

  “But M. David used this buyer for cover, sent out this real down-home guy, in cowboy boots and one of those little western string ties…what do you call those little string ties?”

  “Um, I don’t know. Little string ties?” I said, western attire being outside the range of my expertise.

  “Yeah, well this guy came out and talked about how he wanted a quiet weekend getaway, and how he didn’t believe in hunting. Snookered me right in. I needed money, and he seemed so…so nice. When I found out he was just a point man for Antheus, I was going to court to try and get out of the sale, claim fraud or something, but I didn’t have the money for lawyers, or the energy by then.”

  Somebody needed to say something positive, so I gave it a whirl. “Well, just because M. David bought part of your place for his mining company doesn’t mean he can get the rest. I mean, a private corporation doesn’t have power of eminent domain. So, at least he can’t get any more of your land.”

  “Well, he can’t now, I don’t guess, being dead and all. But Antheus Mines is still after me to sell out. I’m the only one of the original property owners in that swath of land out there who hasn’t been tricked or forced to sell everything. Now the value of my land’s plummeted because everybody just figures it will all be surrounded by this big ugly moonscape of strip mining inside a couple of years.”

  Ah, the catch-22. Even if she held on to her animal preserve, she’d be surrounded by a phosphate mine, and her land would be unmarketable and worthless—except to the phosphate company. With the threat of the mine, no one would buy her land now, except Antheus. And, knowing her land was essentially valueless, Antheus wouldn’t even have to pay much for it. Hell, Antheus Mines could probably pick up her land dimes on the dollar after the hospital grabbed it for debt collection.

  So to add to his list of sins, M. David had boxed in a seriously sick woman between a dragon and a whirlpool, and probably laughed all the way to the courthouse to record the deed to the part he and Antheus had managed to buy.

  “How did M. David get away with so much for so long?” I asked.

  “All I could figure was he was giving blow jobs to the devil.”

  A too-hearty laugh exploded out of my lips before I could stop it. Yes, that would explain the strange impunity with which M. David had plundered his way through southwest Florida.

  Until, that is, somebody stopped him facedown in a gyp pond.

  “Guess the devil got a new boyfriend,” I said, thinking maybe M. David got what he deserved in the end after all.

  It also occurred to me that if Antheus Mines was permanently denied any right to mine, then Lenora’s property value would once more soar. Both her land, and the un-mined Antheus land, would be ripe picking for still another housing development now that 90 percent of the retiring baby boomers from New Jersey, Ohio, and Michigan were moving to Manatee County.

  I wondered how much of Angus’s determination to stop M. David and Antheus had to do with Lenora’s plight.

  I wondered if it would have driven Angus to murder M. David.

  For Lenora.

  “Yeah, well, I was telling you about Angus,” Lenora said, interrupting thoughts I didn’t want to have.

  “Yes, you were.”

  “After our divorce, we were mad at each other for a while. But Angus grew up and came looking for me. We were just getting back to where we could maybe make it work, talking about getting married again. I wouldn’t let him live with me, though, and then I got sick, and now he’s dead.”

  This story seemed to drain Lenora of whatever energy she’d had, and she slumped back in her chair. I was still standing, uneasily and uselessly, in the kitchen, near her chair. “I’m sorry,” I said, and I was, though saying so didn’t make anything any better.

  “Everyone suffers in life,” she said. “Mine is not special. I don’t take it personally.”

  “Still,” I said, “I’m sorry.” The kitchen was hot, and I was sweating, the convection oven hummed and the smell of sativa was overwhelming. I deal with human tragedies for a living; that is, after all, what the tort litigation system was built upon. But with Lenora, there was no one to sue, or to defend, and no court of law that could make it better. I was at a loss.

  “If you’ve got Episcopal nuns coming over, maybe I should turn off the oven and open the windows,” I said, looking for some action to dispel the mood.

  “Oh, I don’t think they’ll mind. If they work with many chemo patients, I rather imagine they’re used to it. But the pot should be dry by now, so you could shut the oven off.”

  By the time I had done just that, everybody who had been in the living room was suddenly in Lenora’s kitchen and a wave of claustrophobia hit me in the gut. I was giving serious thought to sneaking out the back door and calling a cab and going home to wrestle with my descending depression, but then the doorbell rang. Oh, good, more people to shove into a small room in a small house.

  As I left the kitchen, everyone except Lenora pranced to the front door as if the pope was coming, and not just two nice church ladies. Delvon greeted them with a loud and hearty, “Praise Jesus,” and then everyone apparently talked at once, with Delvon talking the loudest.

  “Perhaps you would like to meet Lenora?” I asked, hoping to get this show on the road. Like I was shepherding wayward puppies, I redeployed the nuns to the kitchen. Philip, Delvon, Dolly, and Jimmie trudged along behind like the faithful. Introductions were made, and after much bumping into each other and stepping on everybody’s toes, the faithful adjourned with Lenora and the nuns to her guest bedroom, where they would all pray over Lenora.

  Not that I didn’t believe in the healing power of prayer, but I needed to be in a room where there weren’t already fifty other people breathing my air. And since I was here, I might as well check out Lenora’s bathroom and see if she, by chance, used sandalwood soap. It would seem natural for her to hide Miguel, given their mutual bond through Angus.

  Curious as to what I might learn while nobody was watching me, I eased down the hallway toward what I figured was another bedroom, and I went in, spotting the door to the bathroom, and checked it out. No sandalwood—not even close.

  Quietly, I peeked in the medicine cabinet. No sandalwood there, either. I drifted back into her bedroom. Her double bed was crumpled, unmade, but the sheets were a delicate eggshell color and clean. Near the bed was a chaise lounge with a flannel sheet wadded up at the base of it and a pillow smushed at the head of it. No doubt Delvon had been sleeping on the lounge, keeping his watch over Lenora.

  “Lilly,” Philip said from the doorway. “Are you all right?”


  “Fine, just hiding out. How ’bout you?”

  “Wrong faith,” he said, and inched toward me. “Are you really all right?”

  His voice was so tender, so soft. He took my hand. He was solid. He was strong. He was sane. I sighed. I wondered why I liked Philip best when I was sad.

  “Yes. I’m really all right.” Inside my hand, his own felt warm.

  “She’ll be fine, you know. Lenora is very strong. Please don’t worry so about her. And you gave her Delvon, and he is helping her get well. You’ll see.”

  In the other room, I heard the sounds of “Amazing Grace,” and I leaned against him.

  We stood that way for a long time, long enough that I realized the hymn was over, and the house was silent. “Come on, let’s go wait in the kitchen,” I said, thinking maybe we shouldn’t be hanging out in Lenora’s bedroom.

  Delvon burst in, praising the Lord for the healing power of His love, and then he encircled Philip and me into one big, captive hug, spinning us until we struggled free and regained our footing.

  “How is Lenora? Now?” I asked.

  “Oh, fine. The nuns did a real nice job. Lenora’s resting for a moment. Then I think we’re all going out.”

  “I done invited them all out for ice cream, my treat,” Jimmie said, joining us in the bedroom, which apparently had become the new staging arena.

  Wide-eyed Dolly joined us, but she was no longer clutching her purse. “I think I’ll have those two pray over me for my arthritis,” she said. “And it wouldn’t hurt, Jimmie, for you to have a session too.”

  Oh, what, they could do a healing prayer for bad grammar? I thought, then started edging out of Lenora’s bedroom, followed as I was by the faithful.

  Eventually we did actually go out for ice cream, even the two nuns. The kid behind the counter took us all in without blinking more than once or twice, but a manager type sitting at a table and pushing paper around stood up and watched us, with alternating looks of puzzlement and concern on his face. We took our ice cream to a concrete table outside. Lenora had orange sherbet and we all held our breath to see if she could eat it.