Chasing Lilacs (18 page)

I didn’t really want to stay home all the time with Aunt Vadine either, but she had been nicer since I’d had that nightmare.
Of course, Daddy had been home most evenings too, and she always put on her drippy sweet disposition around him. Sometimes
it gave me the heebie-jeebies, but if Daddy meant for her to stick around permanently, he would’ve gotten me a real bed and
not just a featherbed on top of an army cot. Maybe when Aunt Vadine left, Daddy and I could get back to normal. Not that I
knew what normal was. Still, I kept my fingers crossed.

One good thing was seeing Mrs. Gray every day. She always had this breezy way of helping us come up with good ideas when we
did our layouts for the
Cougar Chronicle
. And she loved my article about Mr. Howard.

“Excellent! Who would’ve guessed our own principal once had
a dream to shape and nurture trees and gave it up to shape young lives instead?” Mrs. Gray’s reading glasses hung on a chain
around her neck. Shiny, black sticks bobbled in her topknot.
Japanese princess
popped into my head. She smelled good too. Like Ivory soap.

The day after the paper came out, Linda Kay Howard scooted her lunch tray next to mine in the cafeteria.

“Your article sent my mother into hysterics.” She crunched a carrot stick. “She’s been trying to get my dad to prune the roses
for two years, and come to find out he had horticultural tendencies all along.” She laughed like a donkey braying.

I went through each day numb, answering questions in class, turning in my homework, laughing with the kids in the lunchroom.
Still, nothing felt right. In the back of my mind, the word
depression
whispered to me over and over. And I couldn’t get it out of my head.

O
NE AFTERNOON I HAD
Scarlett outside when Daddy came home from work whistling.

“Sis, I thought we ought to pay Slim a visit this evening.” He threw a stick for Scarlett to fetch.

My stomach knotted up. “I don’t know. Why do you want to visit Slim?”

“Just bein’ neighborly. Maybe he could teach me that game you’re so fired up about.”

Could this be Daddy’s way of moving on? After supper he took his everyday cowboy hat from the hook and told Aunt Vadine our
plans.

“What? No dessert? There’s still some of your favorite coconut cake.”

I noticed she’d put on a nice dress and had started wearing rouge and lipstick.

“Not tonight. Gotta watch my figure.”

Aunt Vadine’s eyes squinted for a flash. Then the corners of her lips tilted up. “Don’t be too late.”

I put my plate in the sink and grabbed my purse.

The wind had picked up, a bit of a chill in the air, so Daddy said we’d better take the Chevy instead of walking. When we
got to Slim’s, he was lugging a basket from the garden. “Green tomatoes.” He set the basket down. “Accordin’ to
The Old Farmer’s Almanac
,
we could have a frost tonight. Another week or two and we could get a hard freeze. Don’t want these ’maters going to waste.”

“Definite nip in the air. Sis and I wondered if we might keep you company this evening.”

“You betcha. Come in, and I’ll fix you a skillet of these babies. Best things you ever had.” Slim battered thick slices of
the tomatoes, rolled them in cornmeal, and fried them in bacon grease.

“Delicious.” Daddy took a second helping.
Watching his figure, huh?

I helped Slim clean up. I’d forgotten how homey his house felt.

“The reason we came over…” Daddy leaned on the door frame, working a toothpick around in his mouth. “Couple o’ reasons. I’ve
been wanting to thank you for putting up with Sis here, letting her come around all summer and all.”

“She’s good company. Been good for young MacLemore too, who, if I’m not mistaken, promised me he’d come by tonight for a rematch.
That scoundrel beat me six for eight a couple nights ago.” Slim handed me the last plate to rinse and put in the drainer to
dry.

“That’s the other thing. Figured I’d see for myself what all the fuss is about this game. I thought maybe Sis and I could
play this winter while her aunt knits her fingers to the bone.”

“Crochet, Daddy. That’s what she does.”

“Beats me. Some frilly fancy work’s all I know.”

Just then Cly hollered at the screen, “Hey, Big Daddy, didn’t know you had company.”

“Just a regular hive of activity. Seems we got another taker on backgammon. Unless, of course, you’d like to play dominoes.
Old fogies against you
cool cats
.” Slim winked at Cly.

Slim got out the dominoes and shuffled the “bones” as he called them on the enameled kitchen table.

Click.
Cly slapped a domino down and scored ten.

A teakettle whistled on the stove. Slim put Sanka in two cups
for him and Daddy. “You kids want some Ovaltine?” He filled our cups and brought them steaming to us.

Cly and I won the first game.

“Some sorry partner your pop makes.” Slim gave a husky chuckle and shuffled the bones.

Daddy clicked a double five on the table. “Give me ten, Sis.”

Cly groaned and played without scoring.

The whole time I sipped my Ovaltine and listened to Daddy’s tapping one of his dominoes end over end, I kept trying to think
of some way to ask Slim about Mama and the day she died. Every time I’d think of a question, Slim would score five or it would
be my turn to shuffle the dominoes.

Then, out of the blue, Slim brought up the subject. “Tough go on your own, without Rita.” He looked at me. “And your mother.”

Daddy cleared his throat but didn’t say anything.

“I ain’t over my Dottie yet. Young Cly here’ll tell you, I keep myself company talking to her.”

“Bonkers, that’s what he is.” Cly slapped down a domino and scored ten.

“You gotta remember the good times. Yessir, Dottie and me sitting on the porch swing, counting the lightning bugs and dreaming
about our girls growing up.”

“Your girls? I thought you only had one daughter.” I remembered he’d bought an extra paper last summer.
For my daughter
, he’d said.

“Two, actually.” His fingers, knobby at the joints, gripped a domino. “Some dreams turn out different than you plan. Can’t
be helped, I reckon.”

Daddy leaned back in the kitchen chair and rubbed his chin.

“The good times, huh? The trip to Red River’ll be worth remembering, huh, Sis?”

I smiled and nodded. Except for Mama’s mixed-up memories, it had been a good vacation.

“And dancing. My, how Rita loved to dance. Met her that way.”

Slim must’ve put something in Daddy’s Sanka the way he started talking. “After the army, I came strutting home to Midland,
and the first night back, some buddies took me out on the town. Whoo-ee. Met Rita that night, with her flaming red hair, twirling
to Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys…” His eyes had a faraway look—not sad, but like remembering the sweetest thing that ever
happened.

“That’s how Tuwana’s mother met her dad,” I said. “I think it was in Pampa, some dance at the armory.”

“Is that a fact?” Slim clicked his last domino on the table. “Twenty-five. And I’m out. What’s the score?”

Groaning, I shoved the paper full of
X
s across. “You win.”

“Tied up.” Slim pushed back from the table. “Think I’ll go out and check the weather. See if that pesky almanac is right.”

Daddy followed him, and I wanted to kick myself for not saying something about the day Mama died. Maybe Slim wouldn’t tell
me, but he
was
the one who found her. And as near as I could tell, I was the last person on earth to talk to her. Maybe she was still breathing
when he found her and said something, some last-minute thing she wanted me to know. I stared at my hands and fiddled with
the dominoes.

Cly waved his hand in front of my face. “Hey, anybody home in there?”

“Yeah, just thinking.” I took the last sip of my Ovaltine, which had turned cold with a grit in the bottom of the cup.

“Me too. I’ve been thinking about that big dance coming up. Doobie can’t go with me. He got himself a date with PJ.”

“So I heard.”

“Uh… I was wondering…” Cly lined up the dominoes in piles of three. “I guess to be cool at Mandeville you have to have a date.”

“Tuwana says Linda Kay Howard wants you to ask her. She’s really pretty nice.”

“Have you ever heard her laugh? She sounds like a hyena. Besides, I know who I’m going to ask to the dance.”

The Ovaltine mixed with fried green tomatoes sloshed around in my stomach. “Who’s the lucky girl?”

“You… if you’ll go with me.”

My forehead broke out in a sweat, and the first thing that popped out of my mouth was, “A donkey. That’s what Linda Kay laughs
like.”

“You numskull. What kind of answer is that?”

The lightbulb over Slim’s table made tiny pear-shaped lights in Cly’s dark eyes, and I started laughing.

“Yes. My answer is yes. And don’t call me a numskull.”

O
N THE WAY HOME
I told Daddy about Cly asking me to the dance. In the dark of the car, I couldn’t see his face, but when we pulled into the
driveway, he put the car in park and said, “The MacLemore kid seems all right. Slim’s pretty high on him. Don’t rightly figure
you’re old enough for a date—”

“It’s not a real date—just a school dance. Tuwana can’t stop talking about it. Her parents are chaperones.” I half-wished
he’d say I couldn’t go. Why I’d blurted out to Cly without thinking,
I
couldn’t even figure out. For one thing, I didn’t know anything about dancing, except the square dancing we did in fifth
grade music class.
Do-si-do
and all that.

In the faded moonlight, I could see a funny grin on Daddy’s face. “You’ll always be my little girl, but you’d be in good hands
with the Johnsons. Maybe it’s time you had a little fun.”

He said I could go?
I thought I might faint. Or throw up. Why else would I feel light-headed and tingly?

“Sis, you think you could open the garage?”

I sat glued to my spot. Open the garage? Pull the door open where all that blackness waited? I gripped the armrest on the
door. When Daddy cleared his throat, I yanked on the handle and ran into the house.

That night I had the dream again. The black hole that tried to pull me in. Like the garage. Black and empty. I didn’t hear
the
screaming this time, but when I woke up, I had cold sweats and Daddy had his arms wrapped around me. He pulled Mama’s robe
from the tangle in my covers and held it up to his face. He closed his eyes, and I thought he was trying to get a whiff of
Mama. Tears ran down my cheeks as I buried my face in Daddy’s undershirt. It smelled of BO and Old Spice.

Tuwana jumped up and down when I told her I had a date to the dance. “See, I told you if you acted interested, Cly would ask
you.”

“All I did was play dominoes over at Slim’s with him and Daddy.”

“Which is repulsive in itself. How you can stand to be around that creepy old guy is beyond me.”

“Slim’s not creepy. He had a wife once and two daughters.”

“And why don’t you ever see his daughters coming around? Think about it. He murdered his wife. That’s what Mother says.”

“I like him, and I think your mom got her information mixed up.”

“Forget Slim. Let’s plan for the dance. Ask Cly if y’all can ride with us. Since Mother and Daddy are sponsors, they said
I could just meet Mike at the VFW. Oh, and Mother’s taking me shopping to buy a new dress….”

Sometimes I just wanted to scream when Tuwana talked about her mother. Not that I didn’t like Mrs. Johnson, but it was always
Mother this
and
Mother says
, like Tuwana had her own private dibs on everything about mothers. So I didn’t have a mother to talk about. So what? It just
wasn’t fair. Sometimes I tried to remember the look on Mama’s face when we picked out the ruby sweater and skirt from the
catalog. She hadn’t known I’d be wearing it to my very first dance. Would she be happy? Would she look down at me from heaven
and say, “That’s my daughter”?

On my cot I held her robe next to me and rubbed it against my cheek, trying to remember how she smelled and the exact shade
of red in her hair, and everything blurred in my mind. And every night I asked God to let me please, please, please get up
the nerve to go in the garage and see and feel the last place on earth where Mama had been. But when morning came, I couldn’t
even look at the garage.

One night when Daddy had evening shift, Aunt Vadine had one of her moods where nothing I did suited her. After supper I told
her I needed to take Scarlett for a walk. She hollered as I went out the door, “It’s nearly dark. Why your daddy lets you
run wild…”

I shut the door behind me before I had to hear any more about what a juvenile delinquent I had turned into. Wild? How could
taking Scarlett for a walk be wild?

A couple of blocks from home, Scarlett took off after a cottontail that jumped under the Bradys’ hedge. She yanked the leash
out of my hand, and I ran after her. She streaked across three yards before I caught her. I picked her up and scolded her,
then went back toward the street and saw Cly coming from the direction of Doobie’s house. I don’t think he saw me the way
he bounced his basketball on the street, cut to the left, dribbled, and made another quick turn. Then he held the ball up
like he was getting ready to shoot.

“Hey, pass over here.” I set my purse down and looped Scarlett’s leash around my arm.

Cly looked up sorta sheepish and tossed me the ball. I dribbled up to him and asked him how basketball was going. First string
on the B-team.

“Congratulations. Bet your uncle is proud.”

He shrugged and went over to scoop up my purse. “Hey, cat, what do you carry in here? Bricks?”

“Maybe. Maybe not. Be nice and I might show you.” I started toward home, and he fell in step beside me. A patch of grass,
now crusty brown, grew between our incinerator and the garages for our block. You couldn’t see the garage door from here so
it didn’t creep me out too bad to just see the side of the tin building. I motioned for him to follow me, and we sat down
with our backs against the warm incinerator.