Between Heaven and Texas

by Marie Bostwick

  When she called her sister in tears and told her about the letter, Lydia Dale came right over. Taffy asked if she could come along too, but Lydia Dale didn’t think that would be a good idea. Mary Dell had barely spoken to her mother since coming home from the hospital.

  However, Taffy felt this crisis presented the perfect opportunity for her to return to her daughter’s good graces. After what Donny had done, surely Mary Dell would realize that her regrettable but innocent utterance of one teeny-weeny offensive word was not so terrible, or at least not spoken with malice. After all, Howard was her grandson and Mary Dell was her daughter and she loved them both, no matter what. And Taffy really did need to talk to Mary Dell about some things.

  Dutch was doing his best to keep up with the ranch work, but considering his age and health, it was too much for him to manage alone, especially since lambing season was just around the corner. Too, there was the question of finances. It wasn’t like Donny’s departure only affected Mary Dell. This was a blow to the entire family, and Taffy felt this was the ideal time to discuss it. Besides, it was the duty of a mother to come to the aid of her daughter at her moment of anguish and despair. Mary Dell needed her.

  It took some doing, but Lydia Dale eventually convinced Taffy that this was not the proper moment for a mother-daughter reconciliation or to bring up financial issues, however pressing, and that if she really wanted to help, the best way to do so was to take care of Jeb, Cady, and Rob Lee while Lydia Dale went to help Mary Dell.

  In spite of her sister’s ministrations, Mary Dell didn’t get better. She didn’t eat, didn’t sleep, and didn’t seem interested or capable of caring for Howard. She nursed him, but only when Lydia Dale brought the baby to her and put him to the breast. Other than that, Mary Dell just sat in the rocking chair, alternating between long jags of crying and long stretches of silence spent staring into space. Lydia Dale was afraid to leave her alone. By the third day, she was exhausted and worried because Mary Dell showed no signs of improvement.

  On the fourth day, Grandma Silky showed up with a picnic basket over her arm and a face like the business end of an ax.

  “I stopped off at the big house before I came down here. Lydia Dale, you need to go home and tend to your children. Cady has been crying herself to sleep at night because she misses you. And Jeb got sent to the principal’s office today for passing out Luckies to every boy in the fourth grade and letting them take a peek at a pair of black lace underpants he’d hid in his lunch box.”

  “What!”

  Silky nodded deeply, confirming that Lydia Dale’s horror was entirely justified. “He was charging them a nickel each for a peep at Carla Jean’s unmentionables. The cigarettes he was giving away for free.

  “You need to take that boy in hand, Lydia Dale. He needs a good talking-to. A hairbrush on his behind wouldn’t hurt either. Back in my day the principal would have done it for you,” she grumbled to herself.

  “And when you’re done with that, you need to call up your no-account ex-husband and tell him that he needs to keep a better eye on his children. Or at least lock his bedroom door when they come to visit! Get going now,” she commanded, pushing Lydia Dale, who had already buckled Rob Lee into his car seat, toward the door. “I’ll take care of your sister.”

  Mary Dell was sitting in the rocking chair next to the window, staring into space with a vacant expression. Her normally buoyant bouffant was flat, and the bags under her eyes were dark from lack of sleep and smudged with a slurry of old mascara and tears. She was dressed in the same clothes she’d been wearing for days, the turquoise spandex pants she’d worn home from the hospital, now too big for her and baggy at the knees, a wrinkled pink paisley blouse, a purple ultrasuede vest with faux-fur trim, and no shoes.

  Grandma Silky stood in front of the rocker and clapped her hand over her breast, distressed at the sight of her granddaughter looking so sorry.

  “Bless your little cotton socks! Baby girl, you look just awful. But Granny’s here now. Everything is going to be all right. Why don’t you go get yourself cleaned up while I set the table and put out the supper?”

  Silky, used to having her instructions obeyed, turned and went into the kitchen without giving Mary Dell a backward glance. She put on an apron, made a pitcher of sweet tea, and unpacked the contents of her picnic basket: homemade biscuits; green beans boiled to a pale green, then sautéed with plenty of bacon fat; carrots glazed with a half cup of butter and a whole cup of brown sugar; potatoes mashed with more butter, salt, pepper, and pure cream; peppery gravy to go with it; and a whole chicken, skin-on, cut into quarters, dipped in buttermilk, dredged in a secret mixture of flour, salt, and spices, then fried in a cast-iron skillet with Crisco to a crispy and delicious golden brown. It was the recipe that drove her late husband Hooty’s fiancée straight out of his head and would, she hoped, do the same for her granddaughter, helping Mary Dell forget Donny and the hurt he’d done her.

  And in case it didn’t, just to be sure, Silky had also brought a bowl of homemade banana pudding topped with vanilla wafers and whipped cream, a red velvet cake, and an entire pecan pie, the filling loaded with chopped nuts and a good tot of bourbon, just to give it some punch. Silky had great faith in the restorative power of desserts. Her feeling was that if the Friar had thought to feed Romeo a nice piece of pie when he discovered the seemingly deceased Juliet in the family tomb instead of running off in the night, Romeo would have decided that life was worth living after all and Mr. Shakespeare would have had to find himself some other tragedy to write about.

  When she finished heating up the food and setting the table, Silky went back into the living room. She was shocked to see Mary Dell still sitting in the rocker exactly where she’d left her, looking as disheveled as before.

  “Mary Dell, didn’t you hear me? I told you to go on and get yourself cleaned up. Go on, now. Dinner’s ready.”

  But Mary Dell didn’t go on. Instead, she turned her head to the side and closed her eyes. Tears seeped out from beneath her closed eyelids, ran down her cheeks to the tip of her chin, and splashed onto the front of the purple vest, leaving a dark, wet blotch on the ultrasuede.

  Silky approached the rocker, leaned down to Mary Dell’s eye level and, adopting a firmer tone of voice, issued a more specific set of instructions.

  “Mary Dell, get up out of that chair, go into the bathroom, take a shower, brush your teeth, put some rollers in your hair, and fix your makeup. Then go put on clean clothes and some shoes and come sit down at the table and eat the nice supper I made you. Mary Dell?”

  Mary Dell twisted her neck even farther away, as if she couldn’t bear the sound of Silky’s voice. “I’m not hungry.”

  Silky straightened herself up and put her hands on her hips. “Your sister told me you haven’t had a bite in three days. Of course you’re hungry. And even if that were true, you’re nursing a baby. A cow can’t make milk on an empty stomach and neither can you. You ought to know that, living on a ranch all your life. What kind of farmer’s daughter are you anyway?”

  Silky, who had no way of knowing that she had just repeated the very words that Donny had uttered in love before carrying Mary Dell to the hayloft to conceive their long-desired child, was shocked when Mary Dell buried her tearstained face in her hands and began to wail, keening with an intensity generally known only to certain nomadic tribes in the Arab world, all of whom, Silky was sure, were godless infidels. What was going on?

  On some level, Silky understood what Mary Dell was going through. She’d lost a husband too. She too was acquainted with grief. But this? This was a grief she could not relate to. It was beyond the bounds of reason and good taste. It was disproportionate! And if there was one thing Silky hated, it was disproportion.

  To make the chaos complete, Howard, who had been woken from his nap by the sounds of Mary Dell’s howling sobs, added his cries to hers, the two joining together to create what can best be described as a Hallelujah Chorus of misery.

  For
a moment, Silky was at a complete loss, without the slightest idea of what she should do or say. It was a situation she had very little experience with, and so it confused and frightened her. Silky hated feeling frightened, and so of course this made her angry, and that anger helped her find her tongue.

  “Mary Dell Tudmore Templeton Bebee, that will be just about enough of that! Get a hold of yourself right this minute!”

  “I can’t,” Mary Dell wailed. “I just can’t! I can’t go on without Donny. I want to die, Granny. I just want to lie down and die!”

  Silky grabbed her granddaughter by the shoulders and pushed her backward so Mary Dell was forced to look her in the eye.

  “Stop that! I am not standing still for any of that talk. Until a few weeks ago, if you had decided to turn into a great big selfish coward, to quit eating and drinking and sleeping, to worry your family half to death and be the guest of honor at your own pity party, then you could have gone right ahead and done it. But you gave up that right on the day Howard was born. You’re a momma now, Mary Dell. Mommas don’t lie down and die! You’ve got a child to care for, a job to do. So get your butt up out of that chair and start doing it. Because I am too old and ornery to do it for you. And I won’t. Neither will your sister. That’s your job, baby girl, yours alone. And if you don’t do it, it won’t get done.

  “I know your heart’s been broke and your dreams have too, and I’m sorry for it. But when your dreams turn to dust, well . . . maybe it’s time to vacuum.”

  Having spoken her mind as plainly as she knew how, Silky marched into the dining room, sat down at the table, and began filling her plate. Howard’s cries were growing louder and more insistent by the second. As she ladled gravy into the well of her mashed potatoes, Silky took a moment to be impressed that such a tiny creature could make so much noise.

  By the time Silky finished serving herself and saying a silent grace, thanking the Good Lord for making babies so loud and mommas so tender, Howard’s cries were beginning to subside a little bit. Her hearing wasn’t what it used to be, but beneath the noise of baby tears and muffled sobs, she thought she heard the sound of humming and sung snatches of a lullaby.

  A few minutes later, Mary Dell, eyes still rimmed red but cleared clean of black rings by a splash of cold water, entered the dining room with Howard in her arms. She pulled up a chair and took a seat at the table.

  “That smells good,” she said.

  “It is,” Silky replied. “Here, baby girl, let me fix you a plate. When you’re finished with that, you can have a nice big slice of pie.”

  CHAPTER 25

  The second piece of pie definitely lifted Mary Dell’s spirits, but no dessert in the world could mask the fact that she had some very real problems to face.

  “I just don’t know how I’m going to manage without Donny,” she said as she picked up the crimped, golden-brown edge of the piecrust between her fingers and nibbled at it.

  “You’ll figure it out,” Silky assured her. “You’re smarter and tougher than you give yourself credit for, honey.”

  “But I don’t know the first thing about running a ranch. Well,” she said, reconsidering, “maybe I know the first thing, the basics, but not enough. Not like Donny. I never figured on being a rancher.”

  “Maybe you don’t have to be,” Silky reasoned. “Maybe you can find somebody to run it for you and then you can concentrate on what you’re really good at and interested in. You hear anything from that lady at the magazine yet?”

  Mary Dell popped the last crumb of piecrust into her mouth and moved her head from side to side. “No, and I’m starting to think I never will.”

  “Don’t say that! Take it back, right now. Nobody ever accomplished anything by doubting themselves. Half of success is just showing up, honey, so you just keep on doing what you’ve been doing. Make your quilts, send in those patterns. You’ve got a gift, Mary Dell. A very special gift. Sooner or later, somebody is bound to realize how talented you are. Mark my words.” Silky pointed the tines of her fork at her granddaughter to underscore her point. “In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if, before it’s all said and done, you become a great big fat famous quilting legend.”

  Mary Dell laughed, the first time she had done so in days, and started gathering up the empty plates.

  “Oh, Granny. You’re sweet, but I don’t think there is such a thing as a quilting legend.”

  Silky raised her eyebrows. “No? Well, if there isn’t, there ought to be. And since it’s bound to happen eventually, I can’t see any reason why you shouldn’t be the one it happens to.”

  After they cleared the table and washed the dishes, Mary Dell offered to make up the sofa bed for her, but Silky declined. “If I don’t sleep in my own bed, I don’t sleep at all. Besides, it’s probably best to leave you be. You’ve got some thinking to do.”

  Mary Dell stood at the door and waved good-bye to her grandmother, taking Howard’s little arm and moving it up and down so he could wave too.

  “Say bye-bye to Granny, Howard. Say we hope she comes back soon.”

  Mary Dell took Howard inside and laid him down on the floor on top of his fruit salad quilt. As soon as she did, he started to cry, so she put him on her lap and read picture books to him, flipping the pages, elaborating on the illustrations, telling him that dinosaurs were extinct, mice gave birth to live babies, and that in lion families, it was the lioness who did all the important work and the daddy lion mostly lay around looking handsome, mating, and roaring real loud.

  “Seems to be a lot of that kind of thing going around,” Mary Dell said to Howard, whose eyes were beginning to droop.

  “Uh-oh. That wasn’t nice of me, was it? I’m sorry. I won’t say mean things about your daddy again. Being mad never helped anybody anyway, did it? No, sir. Being mad just gives you wrinkles and indigestion. We don’t want that, do we? No, we don’t. We’re going to be fine all on our own, aren’t we, Howard? We don’t need anybody else; we’ve got each other.”

  After bathing and feeding the baby and tucking him into bed, Mary Dell went around the trailer to make sure all the doors and windows were locked. She had never locked the doors before, but she’d never been alone in the house at night before either. It was true that in the weeks since Howard’s birth, Donny had rarely been home when she’d gone to bed or when she rose in the morning, but she knew he always would be, and that made all the difference. The trailer wasn’t large, but suddenly it felt much too big. She opened the doors of the closets to make sure they were empty and drew the living room drapes closed, something else she didn’t normally do.

  Other than the bank robbery pulled off by Bonnie and Clyde back during the Depression and occasional bouts of gunplay by jealous wives or drunken cowboys, serious crime was all but unknown in Too Much. A part of Mary Dell felt silly, tiptoeing around locking doors, peeking into closets, and listening for noises. Donny was gone, but other than that, nothing had changed. This was still her house, her town. Why should she be frightened?

  Grandma Silky was right; Mary Dell had some thinking to do. In these last four days, she’d hardly moved or spoken. All her attention was turned inward; she’d been feeling but not thinking. Now she had to. She had to figure out a way to survive in a world that no longer included a husband.

  She was not helpless without Donny; she’d never been helpless. Nor was she afraid of hard work. But she had relied on Donny for certain things, most of which fell into the broad theme of protection. She’d never worried about noises in the night before, or the possibility of anyone breaking in, because she knew that Donny slept lightly and was a good shot. With Donny around, she’d never worried about money either. Oh, sure, she was the one who kept track of their spending, wrote the checks, filled out the tax forms, and clipped coupons out of the grocery circular every Sunday. And she was the more frugal of the two, more averse to spending than her husband, acquisitions to her fabric stash being the only exception. But Donny was the provider and always had been.

/>   They’d had lean years and fat years. Still, she’d always known that Donny would make sure there was food on the table and gas in the truck. Donny took care of her, of everybody—Granny, Daddy and Momma, Lydia Dale and her family—everybody. And he’d never complained about it. Well, almost never.

  She wished she’d told him more often how much she appreciated that. If she had, maybe he wouldn’t have left? No. Donny hadn’t gone away because he felt unappreciated or because he minded taking care of everybody. He’d gone because he didn’t think he could do enough to take care of everybody, of Howard and of her. He’d gone because he’d finally run up against a problem he couldn’t fix. And that was the difference between them.

  Mary Dell didn’t see Howard as a problem. Yes, he had some problems—what child didn’t? But that wasn’t the same as being a problem. Howard didn’t need to be fixed. Howard needed to be loved, guided, taught, provided for, and protected, as any child did. And now it was up to Mary Dell to figure out how to do it, all of it.

  She poured herself a cup of cold coffee and put it in the microwave. While it was heating, she dug through the drawer where they kept the checkbooks, ledgers, receipts, and unpaid bills and pulled out anything that looked important. When the timer on the microwave rang, she carried the papers, the coffee, a pen, and a pocket calculator to the kitchen table, pushing aside a stack of books on child care to make room for everything.

  For the next hour and a half, she pored over the books and bills, trying to get a handle on what they had, what they owed, and what they could expect to owe in the coming weeks and months. It was very educational—not in a good way.

  Even though Mary Dell had always been the one who wrote the checks and balanced the books, she’d never really stood back to take in the big picture, to understand how (and how much) cash flowed in and out of the business in any given year. It was a lot more complicated, expensive, and precarious than she’d ever realized.