Carolina Moon (17 page)

“Don’t leave, Tommy.”

He swung his legs off the bed and rubbed his eyes. He heard the mail truck on the other side of the thick pines as it rattled down to the next house. “Do you love your husband?”

There was silence, and then a weak yes.

“Do you think that you might one day soon leave him and join me here in the camper?” He forced a laugh without looking at her.

“I hadn’t really thought about it.”

“So what have you thought?”

“That I want a baby.” Suddenly she was sitting up with her shirt pulled up to her chest. “For four years I have.” She began crying, openly, loudly, the same kind of crying she did when they broke up. Something clicked inside him.

“Is that why you’re here?” He shook her by the shoulders. “Yoo-hoo, was
that
what you were thinking?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t know what I was thinking. It’s been so hard. It’s so frustrating, I mean I know that I
can
get pregnant, right?”

“Yes, that we can do. But Sarah.” He pressed his hands on either
side of her face, kissed her forehead. “I ain’t your guy, honey. I’d only want the baby if I got the mama.” He kissed her again, this time on the lips; this time he was in control. “In that way, nothing has changed.”

“Do you wish that we’d had a baby?”

“No,” he said. “Because you would have hated me before it ever had the chance to grow up.”

“Are you positive?”

“Yes.” He didn’t offer her any of the ideas he’d had, things he would have done to make it work. Why should he? There would have been no guarantees. Maybe she would have grown to despise him, to blame him for existing in this town. And now, as she slipped back into her clothes and dabbed at her eyes with a tissue, somewhere in this town the young Mack McCallister was probably wondering if it was all going to work; wondering what he could do to hold it all together.

TOM PULLS HIS
shirt, warm from the sun beating down on Quee’s bush, back over his head. He hates himself for having not given in to her. If he had the chance to go back he would not be so stubbornly practical and moral. He wouldn’t give a damn about Mack McCallister or the mailman or the confused dogs. He sits down and lights a cigarette.

“Hey, you.”

He looks up to see Denny leaning out the window of her apartment.

“Are you talking to me?”

“Of course.” She is grinning now. He’s not sure if he has the energy for her. Surely if you give this one an inch she will flat take a mile. If she were a dog, she’d be one of the high-maintenance varieties like his little Anne Bonny or even Blackbeard, one that has to be stroked and groomed or else winds up dull and matted and looking like shit.

Jones Jameson didn’t even glance Myra’s way when he passed that morning, and she had been so relieved, seeing as how little Sharpy was taking care of other things and she found this terribly embarrassing, which is why she tends to walk the dog so early to begin with. It was six-thirty in the morning (Sharpy’s bladder is more punctual than any clock), and Jones Jameson was driving fast. Gravel sprayed as he raced past on West Seventh Street, and it scared Sharpy. She stood and watched him heading towards the downtown area.

Sharpy perches on Myra’s lap the whole time she gives all of this information to the
seemingly
nice young officer who is seated in her living room. He is sitting in the chair that poor Howard used to sit in, and just seeing a body in that chair, seeing a MAN in that chair makes her furious all of a sudden without warning; she would like to smash something. These feelings come to her suddenlike and have since Howard died. She called it grief for five years and then in her head began calling it relief. She was glad when he died; she was tired of having to share her belongings. She had
shared
her whole life, and she was sick of it. She was looking for a good therapist to tell this to. I am
so glad he’s dead, she wanted to say, what a relief, what a blessing, what a load off of my back. She would also tell that in secret she always listened to Jones Jameson’s radio show, that she didn’t necessarily
like
the way he chose to say things, but the ideas behind his words, ideas like that the Negroes had been given enough free handouts and it was time for deserving whites to get a chance. Yes, and she agreed with him about all these women out there wearing suits and trying to pass themselves off as something with a
you know what
. Jones Jameson had said the word. He had said “penis,” and despite herself it had made Myra laugh a little.
Damn right
she said in her head, “Stay away from what’s mine.”

“Jones and his wife did fight from time to time,” she tells the officer.

“How do you know?”

“I have ears.” She says this and then pauses for effect, like she has seen people do on
Oprah
, people who say things like
I am in touch with a ten-thousand-year-old Indian
.

“I do hope that smart young man isn’t dead,” she says, not meaning to think out loud; it’s something that begins to happen naturally when you live alone. “He needs to improve his manners, but he has a lot to give this world. He would make us a fine mayor or senator one day.”

“Why do you say that?” he asks. “Any reason?”

“He was Phi Beta Kappa. He is for equal rights to the white people.”

“No, I mean about him being dead.”

“Well, because that’s the first thing you might think when somebody’s missing now isn’t it? Like that Exxon man who disappeared from his very own driveway? Isn’t that why you’re here?” She smooths out some wrinkles on the dog and then lets the loose folds of skin fall back the way they do, like an accordion. “A lot of people stopped using the Exxon after that little spill, but I always said, well it was an
accident. Little accidents happen.” She pauses and stares at the young man. She bets he was one of those children people thought were so ugly they didn’t know what to say to their mama. He looks okay now but, you can just tell he was that kind of child. “Now take Howard’s accident.”

“Excuse me, but I’m going to need to leave now.” He stands. “Is there anything else you needed to tell?”

“Well, not if nobody’s listening.”

“What kind of dog did you say that is?” He maneuvers his way through her living room, where she keeps a big pasteboard box full of eggs for Ruthie.

“A shar-pei,” she says slowly. “Sharpy is a shar-pei.” She is suddenly desperate for company. This man would not be her number one A-plus choice, but beggers can’t be choosy. “I can see how he could be dead, you know?” This gets the officer’s attention. “I mean, my Howard seemed to die so suddenlike, and they never quite figured what had brought it on.” She stops and smiles at him the way her Sunday school leader, Connie Briley, always does; it’s a smile that says, “I’m perfect and you are not; if you touch me, I will knock the ever loving feces out of you.” Myra hates Connie and would love to see her up and stricken with a hemorrhage; sometimes at night she gets herself to sleep with an image of Connie blue in the face and pop-eyed with that smile still intact. She thinks this, too, is something that she would like to tell a therapist. She would like to be reassured that such thoughts do not mean you are not a good Christian.

“You know, arsenic is real big in this state,” she tells the officer, but surely he knows this. If he doesn’t, then he doesn’t deserve that badge he’s wearing on that bony chest. “There was the woman on death row back a ways. That was a sad one. A Christian grandmama gone bad. That’s what the newspaper said. Said she was on drugs. And who would have thought? And her coming from such a nice little town,
too.” Oh, she has the officer’s attention now. She might even be able to get Ruthie a date with him before it’s all over. Ruthie would say he wasn’t “her cup of tea”; Ruthie would say what she has been saying for years: “But if your backdoor neighbor ever gets a divorce, I’ll be sitting there on his steps. Mmmm, mmmmm, mmmmmm.” Myra is still convinced that that’s why Ruthie has enrolled herself in that fool-fangled smoking clinic. Ruthie wants to rub shoulders with Alicia Jameson and work her way into their lives. Why else would she be there? Myra warned her over and over about that Quee Purdy, about how nobody who was a good decent person would pass any time with her. She told Ruthie that for years people had said she was a W-H-O-R-E; she told Ruthie how Quee Purdy had attacked Myra right there in the Winn-Dixie less than a month ago.

“Are you saying that you think Jones Jameson could have been poisoned?”

“Anything’s possible.” She beckons for him to follow her into the kitchen. It’s kind of exciting leading a man through her house this way. “Then there was another woman not too far from here, did the same thing. Arsenic.” She stops to point out the portfolio of when Ruthie was wanting to be a fashion model way back. “Ruthie has always had big ambitions,” she says, and shows him one of Ruthie in a macramé swimsuit. Myra thinks she looks like a skeleton with her cheeks all sucked in like that. “Isn’t she something else?”

“Absolutely.”

Myra doesn’t tell him that the agency in Raleigh told Ruthie there was more to modeling than looking like a starved refugee, even though Ruthie herself will tell of how her
disappointments
in life led her to her present vocation of spilling her emotions onto the paper. Ruthie talks so often of spurting and spilling and spewing that Myra sometimes thinks she ought to keep a mop by the door.

“Ruthie’s single, you know.”

“Where did these women get the stuff?”

“Now son, you should be ashamed of yourself.” She shakes her head and pulls out her favorite photo of Ruthie; she’s dressed up to look like a little girl with her hair in braided pigtails and short, short dungarees like that girl with the big bosoms on
HeeHaw
. Howard loved that show, and Myra used to always tell him that if breasts were something good, then the Lord would have given big ones to more of the
good
women. He nods and she pulls out one with Ruthie trying to look like Greta Garbo turned backward and looking over that bony shoulder. Bones and More Bones. This might be the man for Ruthie. “Arsenic is so easy,” she says. “Ant killer. Rat killer.” She fans herself with the photos, suddenly feeling quite girly and coy though she can’t for her life say why. “Those women just decided to go for the big pests.”

“Is Jones Jameson a big pest?”

“Oh, no, like I say, he’s a darling boy. He was handsome the day he was born. Now he might drink a bit too much on occasion, and of course his language and those jokes on the radio are just awful, but you know his mama, who I have known my whole life, says that that’s all part of Jones’s image down at the radio station. If he’s to make it big, he HAS to do those things.”

“I see,” the officer turns to write on his little pad. “And what about Mrs. Jameson?”

“What I can gather,” she says, “you know from bits and pieces I’ve heard over the years. Um. How can I say this? I’m afraid I might blush.”

“Please,” he says, “it’s very important.”

“She just wasn’t satisfying him. And we all know what happens when a man is not satisfied.”

“What?”

“Like you don’t know, a big fella such as yourself!” She snatches the photos and puts them in the envelope. It’s coming back, the anger, like a great big dark wave breaking over her head.

ROBERT FOLLOWS MYRA
Carter into her kitchen for coffee and a snack before he wraps up the questioning. There is a joke around town that people who go to visit Myra Carter sometimes disappear, that she talks them to death. The paramedics who came when her husband died said that they were wanting to die, too, before they could get out of there. Alicia once defended this very issue; she called it “the widow syndrome.” She called it loneliness; her work with lonely widows is what got her hooked up with Quee Purdy in the first place, though people around town will quickly tell you that “lonely” and “widow” are two words that do NOT fit Ms. Quee Purdy.

“You know, they live practically in my backyard,” Myra says and points to the window over her sink where she has all kinds of knick-knacks: little Dutch children kissing and a bird that bobs his head into a glass of water, a little tiny wooden outhouse that holds toothpicks. “From the window you can see the deck and their family room. Get to the far end of my garden in the new potatoes and you can see their bedroom.”

Robert gets up and follows her lead. He leans close to the window and, sure enough, he can see the back of Alicia’s house. He can see the deck where he was once invited to a cookout where he was way out of place and out of style. Alicia was hoping Robert would enjoy meeting some people since he had just moved to town. Maybe that was her way of letting him know she had a life that didn’t include him, that they could be friends but nothing else. Before the night was over, right there on that deck, Jones Jameson announced that he had
knocked up Alicia. She was sitting beside Robert, and he saw her jerk to attention.

“See? You want let’s walk outside?” Myra pushes herself out of her chair. Her hair is a brassy strawberry blond, like somebody used the wrong bottle of solution when she went in for a rinse. “I’ll give you the tour. Besides,” and her voice gets high and squeaky, “Mr. Sharpy has to wee-wee.” The dog waddles over to her, his rolls wiggling in excitement. “A weedle-wee for Mr. Sharpy.”

Robert hesitates as he stands there in the afternoon sunlight, looking out over Mrs. Carter’s backyard. As boring as it is listening to this woman talk, he is oddly comforted by her surroundings, soothed by the smell of pine paneling and oilcloth, coffee and toast. The little junk bits she’s collected over the years. Robert has already learned not to comment on anything; there’s a whole long story behind whatever it is. It will begin with something like: Well, my Howard had just returned from
the War
. . . . Everything began when Howard returned. What on earth will Robert use to measure his life? Has it already happened? Was it when he took to croissants and foreign flicks?

He follows her outside. It’s so hot, like being wrapped in a thick heavy blanket, his eyes blinded by the brightness. She makes a funny clicking sound, and Sharpy waddles right beside her, lifting his leg on a fence post as she opens the garden gate and leads Robert in. The smell of the garden is overwhelming, rich with newly spread manure and the acrid odor of tomatoes and marigolds. The garden is perfectly manicured, not a weed to be found and, Myra boasts, she does NOT use weedblock, as do all of her young careless neighbors who might think they “garden.” One compliment and now Robert is getting the full garden spiel, how she uses tin cans to protect her tomato plants’
roots, and how she orders her topsoil from down near the river, where there’s lots of decay and the soil is slightly acidic.