“She always seems to know when somebody else is in the house,” Mrs. Goins whispered as she swung open the door of Evelyn Slidell’s bedroom.
A tiny figure sat in the middle of a four-poster, her gray skin blending with the faded bed clothing, her nearly colorless eyes alert to the intruder. Loretta’s stories of the woman’s cruelty and arrogance flashed through Wanda’s head.
“Look who’s here! Somebody has come to see you, just in time for tea!” Martha Goins seemed too cheery, a little too singsong. From everything Wanda had heard, Evelyn Slidell was not the kind of woman who handled condescension well.
“Hello,” Wanda croaked, and cleared her throat and hollered, “I don’t know if you remember me! I am Wanda Slidell! I am your granddaughter!” She suddenly felt every single one of her seventy inches, a giant freckle-faced tree towering over this dainty bedridden lump of humanity.
The old lady didn’t respond; she had eyes only for the tea tray being rested across her lap. She brushed her nurse away as if the two-hundred-pound woman were a bothersome fly. Martha placed the second cup and a plate of biscuits and jam on a Chippendale table that appeared all set to skitter away on its spindly legs. She indicated a brocade chair next to it where Wanda should sit.
Martha Goins mouthed a silent “Good luck,” and Wanda was suddenly alone with Evelyn Slidell, who immediately assaulted the tea tray like a ravenous vulture.
“You probably find it odd, me showing up here this way—” Wanda began.
“Stop yelling,” she snapped. “He sent you, didn’t he?”
“He—who?” Wanda tugged at the sleeves of her sweater where her naked wrists kept jutting out.
“Old Man Time,” Mrs. Slidell mumbled around a mouthful of biscuit, “The King of Terrors. Hell’s Grim Tyrant. The Reaper. Whatever they call him these days.”
Wanda rubbed tight circles around her temples and tried to breathe deeply. She looked at the desiccated human being in the middle of the bed, remembering a superstition that cautioned against speaking the name of Death out loud. This was a mistake, pure folly. The woman was batty.
The crone shoveled jam through her thin slit of a mouth and plunked four or five cubes of sugar into her teacup, gave it a perfunctory stir, and swallowed the whole thing at once. “I’ve been thinking about it,” she said.
Wanda watched a couple of the sugar cubes travel the length of the old woman’s craw as she crunched her tea. She cleared her throat to keep her voice from quavering. “I’m sorry—‘it’?”
“It. You. You’re all that’s left, Wanda, sad as that is to admit. You’re not much to look at. I was stunning when I was your age. Your parents were handsome people, too. What happened?” She stopped and seemed to be pondering the mystery of Wanda’s plainness. “There probably isn’t a lot of time left, and some things are best cleaned up for whatever’s to come. Now, I understand you’re something of a shut-in—”
“I get out. I’m here now, aren’t I? I just came from the grocery and the library and—”
“You’re a shut-in, Wanda.” Evelyn Slidell lifted the cracked teapot. “There’s not a lot left, but it’s enough to make a difference to someone in your position. The house, of course. Some stocks—a few unfortunately in that worthless junk heap, Slidell Cement. The distillery went public a long time ago—some fellow in Japan probably owns controlling interest now, for all the difference it makes to me. There’s some cash. Saint Brigid College is taken care of, of course—although for the life of me, I never did understand why they saw fit to name it after the patroness of milkmaids and bastard children. Prescient, I guess, hmmm?” She stopped and squinted at Wanda. “I suppose I could leave more to charity, but it’s been so long since I participated in any of the local causes, much less cared. You can’t tell who’s crooked these days. I might as well leave it all to you.”
“I don’t know what to say.”
“You don’t have to say anything. And besides, it doesn’t come without a catch.”
“Of course.” Wanda forked open a biscuit and slathered it with butter and jam.
“You were an innocent baby, and your poor mother was unfortunate enough to lose her head over my son, bless his drunken soul. I probably shouldn’t have taken my grief and disappointment out on the two of you.” She waved a limp hand. “Bygones. We’re all entitled to a few bygones, wouldn’t you agree? And that was a long time ago.”
“Excuse me—disappointment?”
“Your mother was a Ferguson. Johnny Ferguson wasn’t ever going to amount to anything. Old crooner. The man sang in lounges.”
“My grandfather was the finest tenor in the county. And he couldn’t just sing, he was a fine man, too. He and Mem saved up and bought that farm. With their own sweat. They weren’t handed things.” Wanda felt the perspiration beginning to prick around the ginger fuzz of her hairline and tried to catch her breath. “He gave the Ferguson name any polish it now has.”
“Exactly,” said Evelyn Slidell. “You can’t polish a turd. But you’re missing the point here, girl. You are to be my heir.”
“Is this supposed to be some kind of warped apology, Mrs. Slidell? Because my life has been good. Please don’t get the idea that your severing all ties with my mother and me has affected my happiness—” A thin trickle of sweat rolled in front of Wanda’s ear.
“I make no apologies. This is an amends. Big difference. Didn’t they teach you anything at that pathetic excuse for a college? Is that tuition money another total loss?”
“I beg your pardon, ma’am, but I attended college on a full scholarship.”
The older woman looked at her with the fake patience people display while waiting for something to sink into the head of a dunce. Wanda shifted on the stiff cushion where she perched like an overgrown bird.
“And you are Anonymous Donor, aren’t you.” Wanda felt thick as a stack of bricks.
“Wanda, I have money, and there’s no question it belongs to you. Now you can make this easy or you can make it difficult. When the time comes, you’re to go and see my attorney, Alden Wilder.” Evelyn Slidell busied herself with what remained of her afternoon snack and seemed to forget Wanda was in the room. A smoky draft wafted from the fireplace. Could the blood in ancient veins really slow to such a pace that a person needed a wood-burning fire in the middle of summer? A mantel clock ticked away at lost time, it too apparently unable to keep up with its immediate surroundings. Wanda looked at her wristwatch and was about to make an excuse to leave when her grandmother became aware again of her visitor.
“Or—” the old woman squinted at Wanda for an uncomfortably long spell. “You can rot out there on Johnny Ferguson’s sheep farm and keep that stick up your you-know-what.”
“What is it you want from me exactly?”
“Get the hell out of this place, Wanda. Surely there are places you’ve always wanted to see. I married your grandfather when I was eighteen, and your father came squalling out from between my legs nine months later. I’ve been withering in this mausoleum ever since.”
“So I’m supposed to live the life you didn’t.”
“But not for me, of course. You’re not a hopeless case.”
“Well, thanks. I think.” Wanda chewed on the inside of her right jaw, screwing her mouth to the left. It was a habit that drove her mother crazy. “What about Mother? She can’t get along without me.”
“You’ll be able to afford a nurse. Martha’s schedule will open up before long.” Evelyn Slidell laid her head against a tatted pillowcase in practiced exhaustion. “Think of Paris, London, the moors of—where was it the Brontë girls were shut up at—you were a goddamn English major, weren’t you?”
“Haworth.” Wanda took some needles out of her handbag. “Yorkshire.” She cast on twenty-seven stitches in a pink elasticized cotton, soft, not itchy.
“What’s that?” The old lady feigned disinterest in the activity in Wanda’s lap.
“Creaky house—probably gets drafty,” Wanda said. “I can whip
out a pair of fingerless gloves for you in no time. Keep your hands warm and still let you hold your tea.”
“So. You’ll take me up on my offer?”
“This sort of decision requires thought. Knitting helps me think.” She was aware of her grandmother studying her. Wanda wondered if the old woman was searching her profile for some trace of her beloved and worthless Stanley.
They let the silence settle around them for a while.
“Hunh. You didn’t get that from my son. Only kind of thinking he did was with the Little Head.” If she was waiting for a reaction from her granddaughter, she got none. “You’re not saying you would actually walk away from a fortune that’s rightly yours.” The old woman appeared to be growing smaller in her bed.
“I’m not saying anything particularly. You haven’t paid me any attention for almost thirty years, so it won’t kill you to give me a while to chew this over.” Wanda finished off the cuff ribbing for the first glove.
“It might,” Evelyn Slidell said, and laughed hard enough to make herself cough.
WANDA VISITED THE SLIDELL MANSION several times a week after that. Their chats grew less combative with every meeting. She put off making an answer to her grandmother’s offer for as long as possible. The idea of any quantity of money—much less the blurry nightmare images of Wanda herself wandering the dark and winding streets of some medieval city across the ocean—engendered in her chest a sort of breathless excitement and caused a patch of eczema that crept from Wanda’s bony ankle to her knee.
But each time she drove down the hill into town, Wanda met with less anxiety. She thought about the mocking dream of the blackcaped scarecrow, a specter she almost wished would come back. She wanted him to see her walk right into the grocery store on a whim now and then to pick up a surprise dessert—one of multiple odd little things she found herself doing to placate Loretta, who had grown even more laconic, if that was possible, as Wanda’s visits to the Slidell mansion became more frequent. She tried to ignore her mother’s pouting, not wanting to be drawn into an impossible quarrel in which she rambled on defensively while Loretta got by with a few precious syllables.
One morning, this was probably after she’d been to visit Evelyn Slidell six or seven times, her mother stopped her as Wanda was heading out the door.
“Leaving?” Loretta said disinterestedly.
“I have some errands in town. Do you need anything?”
“Taking the Fury again?”
“It’s the only car we have, Mother.”
“I might need it today.” Loretta shuffled over to the stove and lit a burner.
“You haven’t driven in over three years. Is this about Grandmother Slidell?”
“You’re calling her grandmother now?”
“Sometimes. Most of the time I don’t call her anything.” Wanda waited, one hand on the doorknob, the other on her hip. Her mother didn’t respond, and when Wanda raised her eyebrows in question, Loretta waved her out the door. Wanda went out and turned the key in the Fury’s ignition. The engine grumbled, then hummed.
Wanda turned the car off. She couldn’t drive away knowing Loretta was more than a tad hurt by what must have felt like disloyalty, what with the two of them skinning by on practically nothing all these years while the old dragon sat there in town on a pile of God only knew how much cash—money she intended to leave to them someday anyway. Wanda crossed the side yard and poked her head in the kitchen door.
“Do you want to come with me?” she said as Loretta broke two eggs into a skillet.
Wanda jumped when her mother spun around. “Fetch my sweater,” Loretta said.
MARTHA GOINS WAS THRILLED AT the sight of Loretta crabbing up the front steps of the mansion. “Loretta Ferguson! If you aren’t looking beautiful as always!” Martha took Loretta’s hand and pulled them both toward the huge kitchen that spanned the back of the house. “I have been meaning to get up there to see you all, but it’s one thing and then another—oh! But you haven’t heard, have you—”
Martha paused and fussed nervously with the pans on the stove, clearly ready to burst. She grabbed a tea towel and hid her face with both hands, weeping quietly into the cloth. “Mrs. Slidell took a bad turn yesterday evening . . . oh, I should have called . . . but I was here until late with Doctor Carruthers, and just dead on my feet when I got home . . .”
“Martha.” Loretta put a hand on the woman’s arm. “Martha, we don’t have a phone.”
“I ought to know by now, this happens to old people—I mean, what are you going to do?” Martha shook out and folded the tea towel. Women like Martha were raised to believe there was always something you could do. You got out of bed in the morning and put the best face on the day.
She patted her hair and straightened her skirt, her voice still tremulous when she said, “We lose people . . .”
Loretta rubbed her shoulder. Martha covered her mouth and looked away.
“A bad turn, as in . . .?” Wanda set on the kitchen counter the jar of apple butter Charlene had given her to take to Evelyn. Everyone in Cementville seemed to know about the town granddame’s sweet tooth.
“Doctor Carruthers thinks it may have been a stroke. Mrs. Slidell has given us strict orders—” Martha paused again, her face pinched and red, “—no hospitals. The only other trip she intends to make out of this house is feet first, straight to the Duvall Funeral Home. You all won’t mind carrying lunch up to her, will you? She has to be encouraged to eat. Tell her I’ve got chores . . .”
She let Wanda take the lunch tray. Upstairs, the old lady’s reaction to Loretta was more restrained than Martha’s had been. Seeing her daughter-in-law’s face after so many years seemed to cause Evelyn Slidell to lose her bearings. She allowed Wanda to feed her a few bites, then glared at her to stop, and in minutes nodded off without a word of acknowledgment to Loretta. When she woke, her eyes wandered between Wanda and Loretta.
“You’re Stanley’s Loretta, aren’t you?” she asked Wanda. Her speech was halting, soft and faraway, as if she were trapped inside a box.
“No, Grandmother, I’m Wanda.”
Evelyn stared at Loretta vacantly. She looked at Wanda again. “You’re Stanley’s Loretta, aren’t you?” she repeated.
“This here is Loretta, Stanley’s wife.” Wanda nodded to Loretta, and her mother stepped forward. “You remember her. She’s my mother.” Wanda had noticed Evelyn repeating herself more lately but had not seen this kind of helpless disorientation.
“Maybe I shouldn’t have come,” Loretta said.
“No, I think she just needs to sort things out.” Wanda took her usual seat on the skittish Queen Anne chair and motioned her mother to its mate on the other side of the bed. The two sat for a long while that afternoon. It was a mostly silent visit, but not unpleasant.
EVELYN SLIDELL LINGERED, MUTE AND still, through July and August. Her eyes roved the room, lighting on her few visitors, flashing a startled recognition and just as quickly blinking out. Doc Carruthers said her body had probably been peppered with tiny strokes and grape-like tumors that orchestrated a gradual cutting off of thought and air and blood. Loretta came often with Wanda on her now daily visits to the mansion. Her mother sat on the side of the bed, rubbing lotion into the liver spots on the wrinkled hands, her ancient nemesis rarely conscious in that last week. Several times Wanda came into the room, having gone downstairs to make sandwiches, and found Loretta deep in a one-sided conversation.
The night before her grandmother’s death, Wanda dreamed she was standing in the cupola atop the Slidell mansion watching Evelyn’s last stroll with her gaunt companion. The two were fading down the street when Death looked over his shoulder at Wanda, his lips contorted in the expression she understood as friendly, perhaps even kind. His long fingers gave a toodle-loo wave. More a gesture of familiarity than a real goodbye.
When Evelyn passed away, Loretta Ferguson Slidell buried choking sobs in the tatted pillowcase next to the old lady’s head. Wanda could only imagine
that her mother’s grief was for unsaid things—not the things Loretta had never spoken to her stone-cruel mother-in-law, but the other way around—that she had come here longing for a few words from Evelyn that would wash away the years of bitterness. In the gulf between the two women hung the memory of a dashing young man with brilliantined hair. Wanda stared out the window while her mother wept for him.
Most of the town turned out for the funeral, not for a surfeit of affection—and certainly not to enjoy the weather, as the August heat had settled into the valley, the long, rain-drenched spring having morphed into a muggy summer—but to pay respects to the end of a line, the last of the small-time robber barons, as close as Cementville was likely to come to having a tycoon of its very own. Led by O’Donahue’s patrol car, the cortege snaked its brief way from the Duvall Funeral Home to Holy Ghost Church for the Mass. Malcolm Duvall and his wife and son moved silently about the sanctuary, beckoning in turn to various speakers who rose to the podium to besaint the town’s First Lady. Then with a few deft hand motions, Mac herded the crowd to the walled cemetery beyond the church doors.
The cemetery lawn, carefully tended for a century or more by the Knights of Columbus, had been trampled to within an inch of its life by this summer’s melancholy parade of traffic. There’d been the seven Guardsmen. Danny Ferguson was buried in the southwest section that nobody called the Potter’s Field, though that’s what it amounted to, where the poor and the non-Catholic and the unplaceable were given their rest. Jimmy Smith’s wife, whose attacker had not yet been found, had been allowed burial in the main cemetery only after Vera Smith, Giang’s outraged mother-in-law, threatened to write the Courier Journal to expose the town’s treatment of her. Even last night, at Evelyn’s wake, Wanda heard the whispering, that everybody knew the Vietnamese woman was a Buddhist.
Cementville Page 14
