“I don’t know.”
“But it’s possible,” Misty said. “It really is possible.”
Eight
Mo Rhodes left home on the fourth of July, taking Buddy, who was just over six months old, with her. I had seen them, the whole town had, just earlier that evening when we all went to the old air field to watch the fireworks. Most of the women brought big pieces of oilcloth and beach towels to spread, and then here came Mo with two quilts and nice plump bed pillows for them to lounge on. Misty and Dean carried the big laundry basket that Mo had filled to the brim with wonderful food. She was famous around town for her cooking and what surprised other women the most was that she was glad to give you a recipe. “I have no secrets,” she once told Mama, who repeated this to Mrs. Poole, and then the two sat there staring at one another and shaking their heads in disbelief. Her recipes would say things like “Beat the hell out of it” or “Mash those lumps” or “Boil that rascal till the bones fall out.” Even Mrs. Poole had to smile over some of those recipes.
By and large Mo had won over most of the women; they still said that her house with her little mock Japanese yard was tasteless and garish, and that she really should wear her skirts longer and her hair shorter, and that she should use more discipline on Dean and Misty, both of whom were known for their outspoken sarcasm, and yet all of these things were said in amusement as if some part of them truly envied her differences. She wasn’t one of them, by any means, and I think that was probably what the other women simultaneously admired and despised the most. “You’d think she’d be honored that we asked her to join a club,” Mrs. Poole had sat in our kitchen and said countless times.
Mo Rhodes looked like a movie star, and that’s what I was thinking from our piece of yellow check oilcloth as I watched her there, her hair swept up into a huge tortoise clip, wisps falling around her neck and forehead in a Gibson Girl look. It seemed Mr. Rhodes could not take his eyes off her as she sat there cuddling Buddy, who was all dressed up in a little red, white, and blue sleeper. I was about to ask Mama if I could go over there and sit, when Misty came walking over. The high school band, a sea of little white caps with orange and black tassles, was playing an off-key version of “Que Sera Sera.” It was Misty’s greatest goal now to be a high school majorette and so she carefully studied the Fulton Marching Band, so that later she could hum their off-key songs as she practiced marching in front of her mother’s full-length mirror, while I lay on the purple simulated-fur bedspread and told her what did and did not look good.
“Well, hello, Misty Rhodes,” my father said, the earplug of his transistor firmly wedged in his right ear. “Or is it Misty Highways? Misty Avenues?” She didn’t laugh as she usually did, just smirked and flopped down. He readjusted the volume of his radio, a baseball commentary coming through loud and clear, and went back to scribbling in his little notebook.
“Have you eaten already?” I asked, and she shook her head. It was dusk by then, people moving like shadows, their voices murmuring hums from blanket to blanket, matches flaring to light cigarettes and oil lamps, children waving flashlights like beacons. Soon the fireworks would begin. My father stretched out, hands behind his head and closed his eyes. “Bottom of the fifth,” he said to my mother, and she nodded absentmindedly and patted his leg as you would an obedient dog. “No runs. Raining in St. Louis. Picking up some static.”
“Fine, honey,” Mama said, and patted him again; she was talking with Mrs. Poole, who always brought a chair from home. It was not even a webbed aluminum like most people brought but a folding adirondack with matching footstool. If she said adirondack once she said it a thousand times, while poor old Mr. Landell worked up a sweat just to lift it from the trunk of the Lincoln and get it all set up for her. Mr. Landell had left her with us and gone over to the other side of the field where some black families were gathered. “Lucky Mr. Landell,” Daddy whispered when Mr. Landell walked off, with Mrs. Poole still calling out for him to be sure and come load her up just before it all ended so they could miss the crowd.
“Now, I do recall a time when Gracie Oliver made a Key lime pie for a party, or so she said it was a Key lime pie,” Mrs. Poole was saying. “I don’t think she had used limes at all, to be honest.”
“Let’s go over to your family,” I whispered to Misty. She was staring in the direction of where they were all set up, two glowing tiki torches marking the spot.
“No way.” Misty reached into our basket and got a drumstick and then just sat there holding it. Now people were like silhouettes against the darkening sky. Mr. Rhodes was no longer on their blanket, just Mo and Buddy. She was leaning back on her elbows, ankles crossed as she stared up at the empty sky. Buddy was lying beside her, asleep with his arms and legs spread-eagle.
“Where’s Dean?” I asked, still watching Mo.
“He went to watch a fight.” Misty glanced at my mother, Mrs. Poole, and Mrs. Edith Turner, whose hair seemed to have taken on a pinkish hue since the last time we’d seen her, and then flapped her hand, fingers to thumb, to indicate ceaseless chatter. “Dexter Hucks is going to fight a boy from the beach. Dean says there’s a whole gang of them looking for a fight.”
“Now, are you the little Rhodes girl?” Mrs. Turner asked, emphasizing “little,” which I knew would make Misty furious. When Misty gave a slight nod, Edith Turner, who was wearing a long yellow tunic vest, went right back to her whispering. “I remember that Key lime pie,” she said.
“Something’s not right,” Misty said to me then, the drumstick still in her hand. My father’s radio was buzzing, the voices going up and down like a hive of bees, so I knew he had it turned up as loud as it could go to tune out some people from across the way who were singing “Tennessee Waltz” with the slow rambling bleats of the Fulton High School Band.
There were yells and screams from the far edge of the field, rewed-up motorcycle engines, a row of blue-jeaned adolescents, black and white arms raised and waving, cheering the fight. There was a single sky rocket to indicate the show was about to begin, and I watched it soar well above the statue in front of City Hall, a little stone soldier erected to honor the dead. There was a breeze high in the limbs of those summer green trees, the smell of clover and onion grass, chicken and watermelon, and when I looked back over at Mo Rhodes, she and Buddy were gone, the tiki torches casting a yellow glow on the empty quilt. I turned to Misty, ready to ask her why her parents had left, but she was sitting there hugging her knees with her head dropped back as she stared up at the sky. A clover chain she had made earlier by threading flowers through fine slits in the stems hung around her neck as she leaned her head to one side, clover against her cheek. There was something in her silence that made me hold my question, and instead I inched over closer to her, hugged my knees, and stared up just as she was doing. My knee was right next to hers, and when the first boom and spray of lights hit the sky, I felt her knee press against mine, harder and harder. The fight was being broken up by some adults, and the yelling voices grew fainter as the cheering boys and packs of motorcycles were sent in different directions. “Bottom of the sixth,” my father said, and my mother patted his foot and then held onto it in an affectionate way. I pressed back against Misty’s knee just as a Roman candle burst into brilliant red flames, and as I turned to watch the falling sparks, I saw her jaw clenched and quivering as if she were about to cry. “I got my adirondack from the only place you can get an adirondack, and that’s there in the mountains of New York State. The Adirondacks,” Mrs. Poole was saying, and then there was a burst of light, bathing Misty’s face for an instant in the glow and then giving way to darkness.
Mr. Landell came and packed up Mrs. Poole’s adirondack chair and footstool just before the grand finale, which consisted of three sky rockets bursting simultaneously while the high school majorettes twirled fire batons to “Yankee Doodle.” Misty did not even react to the fire twirling as she normally would have. Instead, she kept looking over at that empty quilt square, those tiki torches w
ith their little native faces carved there near the top. “Won’t you be scared to twirl fire?” I whispered to her, and I knew from her blank stare that somehow that bit of optimism, the assumption that she would one day be a majorette, had failed. I was not good at pretending and assuming that everything was all right, stating that everything was perfect; that was Misty’s role, and there she sat, drained of all of her promises of how anything is possible.
My father had fallen asleep, and my mother had to sit there and shake his leg until he woke, sat up, and looked all around in a puzzled way that made us laugh. We gathered our things and began walking with the crowd over to where our station wagon was parked on the street. “Misty, are you going to ride with us?” Mama asked just before we got to the Rhodeses’ things, and could see the muddy footprints on the light fabrics of the quilt where people had tramped. “Your mama forgot her things.”
“Maybe I should just wait here” Misty said, and stacked those plump bed pillows, put the plastic red plates and tumblers back in the laundry hamper they had brought. “I mean they wouldn’t have just left me.” She emphasized left, her voice straining to laugh in that all-is-well way. I heard Dean before I saw him, his thin wavery voice rising above those of the boys he walked with. “See ya,” he called, and then he was there in the light of the tiki torches, where my parents stood with their arms full of our leftovers and oilcloth. “Where are Mom and Dad?” he asked, and stopped right in front of Misty. She was on her knees, hair falling over her eyes as she began folding the quilt the way you might a flag, one long piece that she then began folding over in triangles.
“I don’t know.” She sat back in the grass and sighed. “You all can go on now, Dean’s here.”
“Well, where are your parents?” Mama stepped closer and I knew she was studying the face on that tiki torch; I could imagine her telling Mrs. Poole what it looked like up close. She reached and lightly ran her finger over the savage face. “You know, I bet they went to the store or something. The fireworks usually go on so much later, and they’ll be here any second.” Mama was smiling now, nodding, looping her arm through my father’s. “So we’ll just take you and Dean and your things home, and your parents will know that’s what happened. They know we wouldn’t just leave you here.”
“But they would,” Misty said and looked at Dean, her chin quivering. “They’ve left us.”
“Bull—” Dean caught himself and stopped, kicked his toe into the grass. “Let’s go.” He picked up the laundry basket and we all piled into the car. It was so quiet while we rode the several blocks that I could hear Dean breathing, the air going in and out of his flared nostrils in short little puffs. “Wichita Lineman” came on the radio and my father turned it up. It was not until we parked at my house that I realized I had sat rigid all the way, afraid that my leg or arm might brush against Dean and he would get the wrong idea. It seemed like it was so easy to give somebody the wrong idea and so hard to give the right idea. I was thinking about all of that when I noticed that Misty was not even moving to get out of our car, but was turned with head on arm to look out the back window and down the tunnel of large oaks marking our drive, across the street to her own dark house. The only lights were those of the little iron lanterns on either side of Mo’s Japanese footbridge that led to the front steps, and then the dull yellow of the carport bulb.
“I know,” Mama was saying. “I’ll fix us some popcorn.” The way she kept coming up with ideas and the way she kept trying to touch Misty, to smooth her hair or pat her arm, made me uneasy. I knew my mother also felt that something was not right; I knew she was not one to overreact and so if she was reacting at all, then chances were there was definite reason.
“I’m not hungry,” Misty said, and then suddenly jumped out of the car and ran to where Dean stood in the center of our driveway, his back to the gates of Whispering Pines.
It was close to midnight when we saw Mr. Rhodes’s car turn onto our street. Misty and I were out on the porch in the swing, Dean across the street in their carport, where he had taken apart an old lawnmower and was starting to put it back together. My parents had gone inside, but I knew my mother was still awake. Misty held onto my arm when the car stopped, her breath held as we waited to see if she was with him. Dean didn’t move from his spot on the concrete, even when Mr. Rhodes stopped, looked down, his hand on Dean’s shoulder, and then went through the back door, a slow trail of lights marking the way from kitchen to bedroom. Misty swallowed hard and then went limp against the back of the swing, the chains creaking with the sudden change in weight. “She left us,” she whispered, and then as if in slow motion, she was up and moving down the steps, through the yard, and across the street, where Dean was waiting at the end of the drive. I sat, watching until the two disappeared in the house. It was warm and there was practically no breeze, the tendrils of ivy on the cemetery gate barely moving; I could hear the cars passing on the interstate, the whoosh of their passing, rising and falling like ocean waves. Where was Mo? How could she do this? I thought of her there on the quilt, and I thought of Angela; I tried to imagine them both, where they were, what they would be doing at this very moment. As I watched Misty’s house go dark, I felt a chill all the way through. Suddenly I was afraid to be there on the porch without the protection of the walls of my room or the screens and height of the sleeping porch. I felt vulnerable, exposed, as if someone was out there hidden in the darkness, hidden and waiting.
Nine
Mo Rhodes was gone almost twenty hours before she called home. Misty and I were playing Chinese checkers and Dean was working on a model of a ’59 Thunderbird when the phone rang. The TV was on, “I Love Lucy,” the episode where Lucy has gotten a loving cup stuck on her head and has to get it off so it can be presented down at the Tropicana. “No!” Mr. Rhodes yelled when Misty ran toward the phone. “I’ll get it.” He had been sitting on the couch, staring at the same page of the newspaper for over an hour. It seemed the phone rang forever, Dean sitting there with the tube of cement glue and little spare tire lifted and frozen, Misty standing in the wildly patched-up cutoffs and green poor-boy shirt with the wide-toothed zipper that she always wore around home.
“Hello?” Mr. Rhodes voice was loud and deep as he stared at the speckled linoleum of the kitchen, flicked the cover of a book of matches open and closed. “Yes, I’m here.” He glanced over at us, but it was like he could see through, as if we were made of glass or not even there. “You should have called sooner. You should have . . .” He stopped, again looking at us, his eyes dull. Then it seemed an eternity that he listened, tears rolling down his thin bony face and him not even bothering to wipe them away, not even turning his head so that we wouldn’t see. Dean dropped the tiny wheel, and it rolled off the card table and was lost in the thick shag carpet. I reached out and began feeling for it, but he just sat there, like Misty, staring at Mr. Rhodes, who now was holding the receiver so tightly that his knuckles were white.
“Chainsaw?” Lucy Ricardo asked to an explosion of laughter.
“You’re not thinking, Mo,” he whispered. “It’s not worth it. What about . . .” Again he listened, cleared his throat. “Look, you do what you want.” He sighed, pulled a cigarette from his shirt pocket and lit it. “But you bring the baby home. The baby stays with us.”
“Oh, great.” Dean jumped up from the table, his fold-up chair falling behind him, crashing against the bricks of the fireplace. “She’s really left us. She’s gone.” He was looking at Misty now, his face contorted as he tried not to cry, a smaller darker version of his father. “That son of a bitch.” His high boyish voice sounded so foolish uttering the big manly words, and yet he still gained our attention and respect. Ethel was on the telephone asking, “Do you think you can get a loving cup off of a woman’s head?”
“That’s just your oldest son voicing his opinion,” Mr. Rhodes said, his voice made stronger by Dean’s words, threatening. “Yes, she’s here. Kate is over here with her.” Misty sat staring at the mention of
her name, a look of hope on her face, as Dean pushed the table up and over, hundreds of tiny black and silver parts disappearing into the carpet.
“You cannot have Buddy.” His voice was loud now, forceful and angry. “I don’t give a damn about you.” He paused and in that second Misty was up and running to him, reaching for the phone, crying, begging, but he held her away with one hand against her chest. “But Buddy’s place is here. You’re not fit to have him. And hey”—he laughed loud and sarcastically—“how about asking the son of a bitch to give Betty a call. She still doesn’t believe it’s true, doesn’t believe you would do this to her.” He cradled the receiver under his neck and with his other hand pressed down to break the connection. Misty slapped his hand away and sat on the floor, face in her hands.
“It’s all your fault,” she screamed when he tried to lift her. “I hate you. You let her leave. You let her.” He knelt there, his hand suspended above her back as if he were afraid to touch. “It’s going to be all right, baby,” he said. “Maybe she’ll change her mind. Maybe she’ll decide to come home.”
“Will she?” She spat the question and then stopped cold as she crawled towards him.
“She’s bringing Buddy home. She’ll be here tonight,” Mr. Rhodes said. “She promised.”
“But will she stay?” She looked up at her father, and he looked away, over at the sink where Mo’s wildly colored apron hung.
“I don’t know,” he said.
Neither of them looked up as I put all of the Chinese checker marbles in their right color and then closed the box. Lucy still had not gotten the trophy off her head and was sitting there crying, Ethel by her side. Neither Misty nor her father looked up as I tiptoed past and out the side door into the carport, where Dean was throwing a rubber ball up against the brick wall. He held his throw while I started to walk past and then right when I got in front of him, threw it hard into my side. I stopped and stared at him, his teeth bared like a bony-faced camel as he stepped up to me. “Why don’t you get the hell out of here?” he said, his breath like soured milk, but when I took a step forward, he threw his arm out and caught me under the neck. “You are the ugliest girl I know,” he said, and pressed in closer, pinning me to the wall of the carport where his superball had left perfect little circles of dirt. I stared down, at the grease stains on the concrete, at the bright yard beyond the shade of the carport, seeing clover patches and a huge bumblebee, the sway of the oaks lining our driveway, taking in the smell of cut grass and the sound of a distant mower droning like the window units and the traffic of the interstate. “Why are you always hanging around here? Huh?” He pressed in closer, his soured mouth open on my neck, on the right side, as I pushed against him, surprised by the strength in that thin chest and wiry arms.
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