Cementville

by Paulette Livers

  “Do you think you’d ever just, you know, leave?”

  Her mother stood and rubbed her hands down her skirt and as she was about to answer, there was Carl, looming out of nowhere the way only Carl could.

  “Could I have some flowers?”

  “Sure,” Katherine said, handing him the clippers.

  He gathered an assortment—lavender globes of Stars of Persia, white and yellow snapdragons, deep purple angelonia, and long stems of fragrant lilies, all gently swaddled in his big arms. Maureen and Katherine silently watched.

  “What do you plan to do with them, Carl?”

  He looked around him for a bit, as if Katherine might be talking to someone else. “I thought I’d take them to Miss Wanda,” he whispered to the ground.

  “Oh. Oh, right. She and Arlene are cousins or something, aren’t they? That’s a wonderful idea, Carl,” Katherine said.

  He held the clippers out to her, and after the tiniest flinch, Katherine took them. Carl disappeared into the house.

  “Mom,” Maureen said.

  Katherine busied herself arranging the flowers in the basket by size, longest on the bottom.

  “Mother.”

  Katherine looked up.

  “You’re afraid of him, aren’t you?”

  “Of course not.” Her mother pursed her lips in a laugh. “You really are too dramatic for words sometimes, honey.”

  In the house Maureen found Carl at the kitchen sink filling several canning jars with water. “You’ve got more than you can carry,” she said. “Mind if I come along?” Without waiting for an answer, she helped him distribute the flowers into four jars.

  Katherine met them coming out the back door. “Where are you going?” She looked at Maureen, not Carl.

  “Carl can’t carry all this by himself.”

  “Let me drive you.”

  “No.” In memory, she had never said that word to her mother, not in that way, not with that tone. To her surprise, Katherine stepped aside. Maureen followed her uncle across the yard, each of them hugging two Mason jars stuffed with flowers.

  When they reached the head of the driveway, Katherine called out. Maureen backtracked to where her mother still stood at the kitchen door.

  “Are you sure you ought to be going up there? Wanda’s mother has been sick for a long time.” The basket of flowers they had cut for the Altar Society hung at Katherine’s side. She tried to give Maureen her listen-here look. She lowered her voice to a whisper. “I’m not sure Mrs. Slidell’s health will support an outburst from Carl. Plus there’s Wanda herself, with that condition of hers. Carl is likely to send her into one of her attacks.” She was about to launch into the standard lecture about how to behave, but Maureen cut her off.

  “Carl has not had an outburst since the first night he came home from the hospital,” she reminded Katherine. “That was in June. And it wasn’t even an outburst. He was just nervous from not being used to us and from missing all his crazy friends who he had only lived with for his entire adult life.” Maureen was surprised and angry and confused all at once and didn’t know why she couldn’t stop herself. “And, Mother, I am not some kind of feral cat that has never been inside somebody else’s house before.”

  “Okay,” Katherine said. “Okay.” She gave Maureen a quick hug and carried her flowers into the house. Maureen walked the whole length of the driveway without once looking back to make sure her mother hadn’t changed her mind.

  THEY WALKED THROUGH TOWN WITH Carl’s flowers. Maureen glanced at her uncle, her big hulking shadow. Katherine used to call Maureen “Daddy’s little shadow.” She didn’t follow her father around much anymore, and she didn’t really know when she had stopped. Willis seemed to have caved in on himself somehow, as if something inside him had been scooped out, something that wasn’t required for you to keep on breathing, but the absence of which left you no longer the person you’d always been. Not that he’d ever been a big talker. But he had always been present, Maureen always knew where he was. She knew the smell of him by heart. He was sad about something, that much was clear, and it wasn’t just an old car. But could he ever be sad enough to—

  No, she couldn’t let herself think that. Willis Juell would never, ever . . .

  Maureen looked at Carl again, at his thick arms and big plodding feet. He’d been a little boy once, a motherless boy with a very sad father. He probably adored Willis, probably followed him around everywhere. Maureen could imagine how hard it was for Carl when his big brother went away to the Korean War. Had he gone to look for his father that day? Maybe there were chores he’d been meaning to finish, and that was what sent him into the barn where his father . . .

  She had gotten used to Carl, to having him follow her up and down hills and around town, huffing along, trying to keep up. Today it was Maureen who trailed behind, weighed down by the bleak mood that had set in last evening when they heard about Augrey. After Giang Smith’s body was found, her mother would only let Maureen venture off the farm if Carl went with her. Now with the news about Augrey, Katherine appeared not to trust even Carl.

  So much had changed in the span of one summer. The world was becoming a place where she might never feel at home again.

  They clopped over the last bridge in town and began the slow climb up Crooked Creek Road. Maureen felt the slightest shiver as they passed Nimrod Grebe’s house, dark and deserted since his cousins moved him to a nursing home in the next burg. Nimrod may have been the last person to see Augrey alive, other than the killer. Bett Ferguson’s yard, normally crawling with raucous children, was empty and quiet.

  Johnny Ferguson’s farm was perched almost straight across the valley from the Juell farm, on the opposite side of the river. The house on Buckskin Ridge was one of the last places left in the county without a telephone. Carl and Maureen were going on the assumption that Miss Wanda would be home. What did Wanda Ferguson do, living up there on that windy knob with her grandparents’ ghosts and her ailing mother for company? Maureen had not been to the Ferguson farm since she was little. The house was smallish, nicely kept up, peony bushes all across the front, the vegetable garden immaculate.

  Carl knocked. Maureen didn’t know she was nervous until her knees went watery. From inside came the sounds of somebody making their slow way to the door. She and Carl seemed to agree to an unspoken pact right then not to look at each other. The door opened and Loretta Ferguson Slidell stood before them, leaning on a cane.

  Maureen would not have considered herself shy, so when no words came out of her open mouth she had to chalk it up to the flat-out beauty of the woman. Not beautiful like a movie star. She was more of a see-through, floaty vision, like the ghost of beauty. Where Maureen had pictured a decrepit and shrunken invalid, Loretta Slidell stood straight as a statue. Her pale skin held a few phantom freckles, as if some trace of the young girl she had once been was trapped inside and was being gradually erased. Her Dreamsicle hair floated in a loose twist, orange sherbet blended with vanilla ice cream. Maureen wanted to reach out and dip in a finger and taste it.

  They followed her into the kitchen. Loretta directed Carl and Maureen to sit at the table. She took a dipper off the wall and ladled out two glasses of water from a metal bucket sitting on the drain board of a long plank cabinet. A smell came off the bucket, cool rocks and watercress, and Maureen remembered hearing that there wasn’t running water in Johnny Ferguson’s house. Willis had said Rafe Goins had offered his Ditch Witch to lay the trenches and pipes to pump county water into the house after Johnny died. Loretta Ferguson Slidell had quietly thanked them and told them spring water straight from the earth was what she had grown up drinking, and the last day of her life she wanted nothing but to drink a tall cold glass of its pure freshness. From the looks of things, Mrs. Slidell must have dipped her drinking water out of the very same beat-up tin bucket sitting on that same old drain board her entire life.

  Without a word, Loretta vanished behind a flowered chintz curtain. Maureen and Carl heard a low
exchange and some more shuffling, and when Miss Wanda parted the curtains, Carl stood up. Wanda and Carl appeared to be scanning each other’s insides top to bottom. Maureen was embarrassed on behalf of them both for their lack of manners. She set her flowers on the drain board near the old tin bucket. Carl stood mutely holding his bouquets. Maureen lifted them from his hands and gave them to Wanda, which seemed to break the spell. They all looked at the flowers.

  Wanda seemed unable to find her voice for a bit and when she finally did the words were barely above a whisper. “They’re so pretty. Thank you.”

  Wanda Slidell was slender as her mother, but where Loretta was statuesque, Wanda was a gangly heap of bones, nearly as tall as Uncle Carl. The two women shared the trademark Ferguson red hair, but it was as if Wanda’s had sucked all the color from her mother’s and in the process the top of Wanda’s head spontaneously combusted into a raging flame. She tried to keep it under control—Maureen had seen her fuss with her hair at the library when Miss Wanda thought nobody was looking, tugging and pulling it into a tight bun that sprung open like a fiery touch-me-not when she let go.

  Maureen tried to make eye contact with her. Wanda began striking matches on the old black stove. She finally got one to light and held it under a teakettle so the burner hopped to life. With her back to them she said, “Well, Carl, I haven’t seen you since I don’t know when.”

  The kettle started with a low hum that quickly rose to an awful screaming whistle. Wanda took a box of Lipton off the shelf. She whipped around with two steaming cups in her hands and set them before Maureen and Carl.

  “1954,” Carl said and searched the bottom of his cup for more words. He took a careful sip, apparently oblivious to the absence of a teabag. Or maybe he was being polite; it was impossible to tell. “You and me were about to turn sixteen.”

  1954, Maureen thought, when the hobo got his head caved in.

  “That sounds about right.” Wanda took a butcher knife to a big loaf of black bread and put a few slices on a plate in front of him. She stared at the surface of the table as though a cryptic message at any second might arise from the wood. She kept her long slender fingers folded in front of her, laced so tight her knuckles were white.

  “You’re looking well, Miss Wanda.” Maureen tried on the opening lines she’d heard her mother use dozens of times. Wanda turned her surprised attention upon the girl sitting at her kitchen table as though just realizing Maureen was there.

  “Why do you kids all call me ‘Miss’?”

  “Beg pardon?”

  “You never hear of anyone else my age being called ‘Miss’ anything anymore. So I wonder, why me? It’s so old-fashioned, isn’t it?”

  Maureen wished she could say, Old-fashioned? Look around you! Abraham Lincoln could walk into this kitchen and be right at home! But Maureen saw her point. Miss Wanda was not all that old. She just acted old.

  Maureen sipped at her steaming cup of water and made appreciative mmm noises. Wanda continued to look at her as if waiting for an answer. “I’m really sorry about your loss, Mi—Wanda.”

  “My loss?”

  “Augrey. Augrey Ferguson.” Maureen glanced purposely toward the flowers waiting on the drain board. It dawned on her that Wanda had taken them not as a condolence offering but as some sort of romantic gesture on Carl’s part. Maureen tried on the look she had seen adults use when speaking to the bereaved. “I hope they find whoever did it.”

  “Oh. Yes. Horrifying. I didn’t know her.”

  “Isn’t she your cous—”

  “But having grandfathers who were brothers doesn’t mean I knew her. In fact, I seriously doubt we ever exchanged more than ten or fifteen passing words.” Wanda sliced more black bread and pushed it toward Carl, even though he was still on his first piece. Whatever the condition was that made this woman so withdrawn and panicky about talking to people at the grocery store or the library, it seemed to be somewhat less of a problem here in the antiquated comfort of her own home.

  “Do you think whoever did it was angry about her being, you know, friends with Nimrod Grebe?” As soon as it was out of her mouth, Maureen saw it—the line that wasn’t to be crossed—and she was standing wide of it, on the other side. Wanda bored a hole in the table’s invisible Ouija board with her eyes.

  “Will you attend the funeral tomorrow?” Maureen said.

  Wanda narrowed her eyes at her.

  Carl fidgeted. “I sure am glad it’s summer,” he whispered. Wanda looked at him, and her shoulders sagged a good two inches when she sighed. “I prefer summertime. Give me hot weather any day.” Maybe Carl was trying to court Wanda Slidell.

  “I bet you know all kinds of interesting things about Cementville’s founding fathers, Wanda,” Maureen said, “since they were your very ancestors.”

  “My ancestors are dead, Maureen, except for my mother, who I believe you’ve met.” Wanda looked into the clear contents of Carl’s cup and her face reddened. She grabbed the Lipton box from the stove and plunked teabags into both Carl’s and Maureen’s cups. She shoved the sugar bowl closer to Maureen and scooted the plate of bread toward Carl. “I just baked that today. I can get jam, if you want it?”

  Carl took a large bite. “Not necessary.”

  Wanda jumped up and took the jam from a shelf and slammed it on the table. She sat again and placed one hand on her chest and swung her long leg in nervous arcs. She reached behind her and grabbed a spoon from the drain board and clanged it onto Carl’s plate of bread, then stared at the table some more.

  “Have you ever been inside the Slidell mansion?” Maureen tried, but Wanda didn’t bite. Maureen already knew the answer. Everybody in town knew the answer. Wanda Slidell’s grandmother had made her a very rich woman.

  “Are you getting used to Cementville again, Carl?” Wanda uncrossed her legs and crossed them again so they were pointing in Carl’s direction. “Things have changed a lot since you lived here.”

  Maureen decided to go for broke. “How does it feel to be the last Slidell, now that Evelyn Slidell has passed on?” Katherine would have died a thousand deaths if she heard her daughter ask such a thing.

  Wanda and Carl were unflummoxed.

  “Long as they don’t change the street names on me, I’ll do all right,” Carl said.

  Wanda laughed and poured more hot water into their cups. The afternoon wore on, the two of them making awkward small talk and staring into their watery tea as if they were reading a future there that didn’t look half bad. Miss Wanda ignored Maureen and her questions in a rude way.

  Maureen found herself feeling sorry rather than mad, walking down the steep gravel road from Buckskin Ridge, although she couldn’t say sorry for what.

  SHE WASN’T LYING WHEN SHE told her mother the next morning that she wanted to go to the library. Maureen fully intended to go to the library, to start with. She sat at breakfast behind the cereal boxes.

  “The library, huh?” Katherine said.

  Maureen shoveled Cheerios.

  “Are we meeting someone special at the library?”

  “Mother.” But Maureen had to admit, she was looking pretty good. She had pinned her baby-fied bangs over to the side with a tiny lady bug hair clasp and borrowed some of Katherine’s mascara, which made her look at least fifteen. The lipstick was being smeared off with each bite of Cheerios. She sighed. “Eddie Miller and me might go get Cokes at Happy’s.” She tried to keep her eyes on Katherine’s forehead. “I mean, Eddie Miller and I.”

  “I’ll drive you.”

  “Fine.” Maureen drained her glass of orange juice then stared at the clock so she would have somewhere to look besides her mother’s face. Twenty after nine. She needed to get Katherine into the car. Her mother hadn’t let her ride her bike into town since they found Augrey, and she seemed to have lost her enthusiasm for Carl as bodyguard. “I promise to call you when we’re done.”

  Katherine stared at her daughter for a few yearlong minutes with that X-ray vision mothers have that s
lices around inside a person, then she said, “Your hair looks pretty styled that way. Maybe it’s time we let those bangs grow out. You’re getting a little old for a pixie.”

  “Thank you,” Maureen said. “I hope you’ll remember that the next time you go waving your scissors around.”

  “You and Eddie walk together from the library to Happy’s. And stay on Council Street. I mean it, Maureen. I don’t want you going anywhere alone. And call me when you’re ready to come home.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” All these years, she had no idea lying was so easy.

  KATHERINE DROPPED HER OFF IN front of the library. Maureen felt her mother watching as she climbed the steps. She waved Katherine off and went inside and without thinking pulled The Outsiders off the shelf and took it to the checkout desk.

  “Haven’t you read this twice?” Mrs. Cahill said.

  Minutes later Maureen was walking across the Slidell Bridge carrying The Pigman and Mr. and Mrs. Bo Jo Jones, along with strict instructions from Charlene Cahill that Maureen make it clear to her mother that the books came without her recommendation.

  Maureen ducked into the alley behind the Duvall Funeral Home and snuck around front. Roddy Duvall had hoisted the flag at half-mast in the middle of May when the dead soldiers came home. Now, three months later, it still hung there, limp and faded, the red washed to a pale pink. A few men stood in a circle near the flagpole, smoking and doing that low-talking thing men do in groups, hands in their pockets, eyes on the ground or pinned on a thing in the distance that nobody else sees. She hid behind the wrought-iron railing where the broad veranda jutted from the corner of the building and scanned the group, hoping Levon wasn’t there. The men all carried that family resemblance, same hair on fire, same big eyebrows. They could all be Augrey’s brothers, as far as Maureen could tell, standing around in sport coats that seemed to have been grabbed at random out of a bag, and nobody had ended up with one that fit. They huddled, round-shouldered, as if protecting their hearts from a cold wind. But it was a hot August day and at ten o’clock in the morning the air was thick and still. A few cupped their cigarettes in a half fist and brought them to their mouths so they looked like they were about to tell a secret no one was meant to repeat. She didn’t see Levon, but the other brother, the one Billy said was a draft dodger, burst out onto the veranda and sat heavily in a rocking chair only a few feet from the railing where Maureen was hiding. The men were blocking the entryway to the funeral home. Maureen sucked in a breath and drifted nearer. She sat on the low stone wall, hoping they would break up their little party soon.