“The other day, in the car, when you told me about maybe being able to buy the dry goods store . . . you were all lit up,” Lydia Dale said, her own face brightening as she remembered. “I hadn’t seen you that happy in a long time, and I decided that I wanted to help you stay that way. A couple of days ago, I realized that I could.”
Lydia Dale took the diaper bag off her shoulder and set it down in the dirt. Taffy, tears still in her eyes, turned and watched along with the others as Lydia Dale opened her purse and took out a white envelope with a blue rubber band around the middle, so fat that the flap wouldn’t close over the contents.
“Yesterday, I talked to Mr. Waterson. He wouldn’t budge on the price, but I got him to agree that if we could put five thousand dollars down now and another five before you open, and then seven hundred a month until the loan is paid off, the store is yours. He’s going to carry the loan for you. We’ll have to get some papers drawn up so it’ll be legal and all, but he’s agreed to everything and he’s not even going to charge you any interest.”
“What?” Mary Dell blinked in disbelief. “Why would he do that?”
“Because he’s not stupid,” Lydia Dale said. “You’re the only real prospective buyer he has, or likely will have. He’s not doing you any favors letting you buy it, trust me. I took a look at his books; his sales have been down every year for the last five. Mr. Waterson doesn’t have the energy or vision to reverse that trend, but you do,” Lydia Dale said, holding the envelope out to her sister. “There’s six thousand two hundred and fifty-two dollars in here. Go ahead. Take it.”
Mary Dell pressed her hand over her mouth. After a moment she pulled it away and said, “I can’t take it, sis. It’s too much.”
“No, it’s not,” Lydia Dale protested. “Mary Dell, do you remember when we were thirteen and that revival came to town? The one with the big, tall preacher who had a voice like a foghorn?”
Mary Dell nodded. “They set the tent up in that vacant lot where the kids like to play football. I remember.”
“Remember how we only went to the revival because a bunch of the boys from school bragged how they were going to let a snake loose in the tent?” Lydia Dale went on, knowing that her sister recalled it all perfectly well. “We thought it would be funny to see all the ladies scream and we wanted to show off to the boys.
“But then that preacher started preaching, starting out low and slow, then going a little faster and a little louder, then a little faster and a little louder still, steady and sure, like a freight train pulling a load uphill, until he got to the top and hurtled down the other side, bellowing that there were people sitting in that tent who were going to hell for having impure thoughts . . .”
Mary Dell smiled. “He came to stand in front of us, looking right at us, and you thought he knew what we were up to and that wanting to see the women scream at the sight of a snake was what he meant by ‘impure thoughts.’ ”
“Uh-huh,” Lydia Dale confirmed. “I started to cry. And all the people around us started moaning and praying, thinking that I was laboring under a burden of sin, which I suppose I was, just not the way they thought.
“When they started the music for the altar call, I wanted to go up front. You hissed at me and grabbed my sleeve, told me that we’d already gotten ourselves saved at Vacation Bible School three years before, and that once you’d been saved you couldn’t get more saved, and to sit down and quit trying to make a fool of myself.”
Mary Dell was grinning now, and her shoulders shook with laughter as she remembered that day.
“But you wouldn’t listen,” she said, picking up the story where Lydia Dale left off. “You were terrified of going to hell. I was so mad at you because most every boy in our class was there, and I knew if you went down the aisle, they’d be making fun of you from then until doomsday.”
“That’s right,” Lydia Dale said, “and they did too. Not quite until doomsday, but nearly. But I did it anyway.
“And at the last minute, you grabbed my hand and came with me, right up to that big old preacher, who laid his hands on our heads and prayed while the band played ‘Don’t You Hear Jerusalem Moan.’ Do you remember what you said to me, right before we went up?”
Mary Dell shook her head.
“You said that I was your sister and that wherever I was going, heaven or hell or on a fool’s errand, I wasn’t going without you. I’ve never forgotten that.”
Lydia Dale swiped at her eyes with the back of her hand, leaving a blackish smear. “I don’t know if this idea of opening a quilt shop will turn out to be a little piece of heaven, or hell, or a fool’s errand. But whatever it is, I’m going to be with you every step of the way. So you’re going to take this money, and you’re not going to feel guilty about it. Not for one minute. Why should you? Those gowns are as much yours as mine anyway. You sewed most of them.”
“From fabric I bought!” Taffy shouted.
Having recovered from her momentary shock, Taffy launched into the sort of tirade Lydia Dale had been expecting. Eyes blazing, she pushed Dutch aside and marched down the porch steps to do battle with her daughter.
“Do you know how hard I worked so you could go to those pageants and win those tiaras? How many miles I drove, how much money I spent, how many hours I spent helping you rehearse? Do you have any idea of all I went through for that? Do you?”
Taffy threw up her hands in disgust. “And now, without so much as a by-your-leave and after all I’ve done for you,” she snapped, clearly slighted that Lydia Dale had mentioned only Mary Dell’s sacrifice, “you run off and sell off our best memories to a junk man. A junk man!”
Taffy stood in front of her daughter with her chin jutting forward and her hands on her hips, demanding an answer.
“Momma, do you ever stop and listen to yourself? I wish you would. Whose ‘best memories’ are you talking about? Look around,” she said, spreading her hands, “and you’ll see my best memories. This place, this house, our family—those are the prizes I carry with me. I don’t need a display case filled with rhinestone tiaras and titles to imaginary kingdoms to hold on to because they’re all right here,” she said, pressing her hand to her heart.
“But if I can sell off a few dusty old relics that you say belong to me so that someone I love, someone that you love too, can have a chance to make new memories, then I say call up the junk man. And tell him to bring cash.”
Lydia Dale reached down, picked up the diaper bag, and looped it over her shoulder once again.
“I’m going to bed now. I’ve got to get up early and help with the sheep.”
She kissed her mother and father good night, hugged her sister and pressed the money-filled envelope in her hand, then straightened her shoulders and, with head held high, walked through the door looking more like a queen than she ever had.
When she glided past the darkened corner of the kitchen where Graydon, who had been hesitant to walk onto the porch in the middle of such a personal family exchange, was hidden, it was everything he could do to keep himself from reaching out from the shadows to pull her into his arms.
CHAPTER 43
Mary Dell and Moises were on call that night and would make their first round of the night in another hour, but Graydon took a stroll to the sheep pens before turning in just the same. The four ewes currently in labor appeared to be doing fine on their own, so he headed to the tack room, lit the kerosene lantern, and pulled off his boots.
He hadn’t had more than four hours of sleep at a stretch in the last three weeks. And yet he knew that if he lay down, he wouldn’t be able to sleep. His mind was too filled with thoughts of Lydia Dale to grant him rest.
She was as beautiful to him as she’d ever been, in some ways more beautiful than she’d been at eighteen, when he first laid eyes on her. Motherhood and maturity had made her body more womanly and even more desirable, at least to him. How was it that every man in town was not in hot pursuit of her? How could they fail to see what he saw in Lydia Da
le—a lovely, kindhearted, strong-willed woman who had more strength and courage than he’d given her credit for? Perhaps this too was something that had come as a by-product of motherhood and maturity, a filling out and filling in that endowed her with a depth and complexity that made him realize he’d only just begun to appreciate all there was to her. He figured a man could spend a lifetime trying to really understand everything she was, and that he’d like to do exactly that.
How was it possible that Jack Benny had pushed her away and abandoned those three beautiful children? Graydon couldn’t understand it, but one thing he knew for sure: Jack Benny didn’t deserve a woman as fine as Lydia Dale. Then again, neither did he.
Graydon unbuttoned his shirt and sat down to eat the cold chicken Taffy had wrapped for him. It was good, but Graydon wasn’t enjoying it the way he usually did.
He felt anxious and unsettled, not exactly angry, but filled with the kind of nervous energy and generalized discontent that sometimes sends normally peaceful men into barrooms in search of a fistfight.
He pushed the plate aside and paced back and forth across the room in his stocking feet for a few minutes, finally stopping in front of the steamer trunk in the corner, craving relief. He pulled the horse blankets off the trunk, opened the lid, and bent down to reach for one of the black-labeled bottles. But his fingers froze only inches from the object of his desire, the liquid comfort that had numbed his emotions, dulled his painful memories, and clouded his judgment for so many years—for too many years.
Graydon closed his empty fingers into a fist, dropped his head down, and closed his eyes, thinking. He tapped his fist against the inside wall of the trunk in a steady drumbeat for more than a minute until, having made up his mind, he opened his eyes and lowered his torso into the trunk. Moving quickly, he filled his arms with liquor bottles, then toted his burden out to the old shed where the trash barrels and garden tools were stored.
One by one, he opened the bottles and poured the contents onto the ground, leaving a dark, wet circle on the thirsty soil, then tossed the empties into one of the barrels before pulling a couple of cast-off newspapers out of another barrel and laying them on top.
When the job was done, he went back to the tack room, sat on the edge of the bed, and pulled off his socks. The soles were stained brownish red with dirt picked up on his journey to the tool shed, so he tossed them aside, took off his jeans, turned out the lamp, got into bed, and immediately fell asleep.
CHAPTER 44
May 1984
“Hey, Mr. Waterson!” Mary Dell tootled cheerily, waving as she walked in the door of the Dry Goods Emporium.
The old man looked up from the stack of mail he was sorting.
“Hey, yourself,” he grunted. “You’re looking happy this morning.”
“I am. A decent night’s sleep will do that for a person. The lambs are all delivered.”
She didn’t mention that she’d been in a good mood ever since she’d put the first payment down on the store. She hadn’t been this excited about life in general since she was a teenager sitting on the floor of her bedroom, surrounded by fabric swatches and sketches of the beautiful dresses she planned to make and sell in the someday boutique she would own in downtown Too Much. And now, after all these years, her dream was about to come true.
Oh, yes, she was happy. She was happier than words could express, so she didn’t try to, not to Mr. Waterson. He seemed a little glum today, preoccupied. Perhaps he was having regrets about selling. Or perhaps he was offended about the way she’d gone on and on about her big plans for improvements once she and Lydia Dale took over the shop, taking it as a criticism of the way he’d run the place.
Of course, she didn’t think he’d done anything like what he could have with the store, but she would never have come right out and said it. That wouldn’t have been polite, and anyway, she didn’t want to hurt his feelings. She liked Mr. Waterson.
“That must be a relief to have it over and done with,” he said. “Had a good season, did you?”
Mary Dell nodded and strolled over to a rack that held a mishmash of fabric, gingham, seersucker, polyester, flannel, corduroy, sateen, and more, in all sorts of colors and textures, all sitting on the same shelf in a big disorganized jumble.
“Yes, sir,” she confirmed as she rubbed the corner of a blue-and-white plaid between her fingers before rejecting it as a little too thick for her purposes. “Almost as good as when Donny was running things. And Graydon says he’ll stay on for a while, so that’s good news too. I thought I’d celebrate by buying some fabric for a new quilt. I need to make up a sample for the first class I’m going to offer when we open the shop.”
Mr. Waterson stepped out from behind the counter. “Alone? Isn’t your sister supposed to be helping you pick out all the fabric from here on out?”
“She is, but she’s home keeping an eye on the babies. Howard has a cold. And the colors for this quilt will be simple—red, white, and blue—so she figured she could trust me with that. But she did tell me to tell you that if I start to stray, you’re supposed to throw a lasso over me and rein me in.”
Mary Dell winked, and the old man snorted out half a laugh. Mary Dell smiled, pleased that she’d cheered him up a little.
“Well, you can’t go far wrong with red, white, and blue,” Mr. Waterson said as he started hunting through piles of dusty fabric bolts and pulling out likely candidates. “The colors of the great state of Texas.”
“Not to mention the rest of the country.”
“Them too, I guess,” he said with a begrudging shrug. “Anyway, red, white, and blue is a crowd pleaser. What pattern are you going to use?”
“One of my own,” Mary Dell said, grunting as she struggled to yank out a bolt of red-and-white ticking stripe that was wedged tightly between one of black denim and another of purplish-puce polyester. “A medallion quilt. I’m using a Lone Star for the center.”
“A Lone Star? That’s pretty complicated, isn’t it?”
“Not if you use the all-new, can’t-fail Mary Dell Method to make it,” she said, batting her eyelashes playfully and sweeping her hands into a graceful position on her left, like a spokesmodel displaying a fabulous new appliance on sale today for just four low payments of nine ninety-nine. She giggled and dropped her pose.
“If you don’t make the star too big, it’s not as hard as it looks. And I have worked out some new piecing techniques that make things much easier.”
“Well,” Mr. Waterson replied philosophically, “it’s a good choice if you can pull it off. Texans love a Lone Star.”
“That’s what I thought too. Just seems like the right way to start.”
Mr. Waterson picked up two bolts of six he’d selected and carried them to the counter. Mary Dell followed behind, carrying the fabric he’d left along with several more selections of her own, piling them in a stack that reached to the top of her head. After looking over the options, Mary Dell decided she might as well take a half yard of each plus two full yards of a dark blue studded with white stars for the background.
Mr. Waterson began cutting the fabric, but instead of squinting like he usually did, straining to find the correct marks on the cutting table, he frowned, pressing his lips into a line as he sliced through a length of red-and-blue-striped cotton. Mary Dell asked him if he was feeling all right.
“I’m fine,” he said, waving her off. “Actually, I’m relieved. I was kind of worried that something would go wrong at the ranch and you’d change your mind about buying the store.”
“Oh, I’m still going to buy it. I need a little time to pull everything together, but I’ll have the second payment for you at the end of June, just like we agreed.”
“Good,” he said with a tired little smile and unrolled the bolt of stars on blue. “I know you’ve got plans for big changes, Mary Dell, but I’m glad people will still be able to buy fabric here. My family has been selling dry goods in Too Much since 1919. Isn’t that something?”
; He stopped in mid-cut and cast his eyes around the shop as if he’d never seen it before, or might never see it again.
“You know, I’m going to miss this old place. I didn’t think I would somehow. Must be getting sentimental in my old age.” He sighed. “But it’s time to go, and the sooner the better. Mabel’s been feeling poorly lately, no energy. I think the heat is too much for her. The sooner I get her out of here and down to Houston, the better.”
“Well, it’s not going to be any cooler in Houston,” she said. “It’s still Texas.”
“I know that,” he said as he rang up her purchase on the register, sounding a little irritated. “But I’m going to rent us one of those condominiums, the kind with swimming pools and central air. No more fans or window units for us. That ought to perk Mabel right up, don’t you think? She’s not as young as she used to be.”
“None of us are,” Mary Dell said, handing over her money. “And a swimming pool sounds good to me. You know, I’ve never gone swimming in a pool, just Puny Pond. Think they’ll have less frogs in a pool than a pond?” she asked in a deliberately innocent tone.
Mr. Waterson smiled, picking up on the joke. “Dunno. They sure couldn’t have more. Here you go,” he said, handing the bag with her fabric inside over the counter.
“Thanks, Mr. Waterson,” she replied and turned to leave.
He waved good-bye and returned to the task of sorting the mail. Just as she reached the door, Mr. Waterson called out, “Hold on a minute! There’s something here for you.”
“For me?”
“Well, technically it’s for me, at least until the end of June. But I don’t have any need for it and you do. Here you go,” he said, holding out a thick manila envelope. “A catalog from a fabric wholesaler.”
CHAPTER 45
“Oh, look at this,” Mary Dell said, picking up a swatch of fabric with big purple cabbage roses and pink ribbons on a background of seafoam green. “We have got to order a bolt of this.”
Between Heaven and Texas Page 24
