Lila: A Novel (24 page)

When that woman at the house in St. Louis asked Lila what she would call herself, since none of them used their own names, she said, “Doll, I guess,” and the woman snorted, which is how she laughed. She said, “We already got a Doll. Had two of them till a couple months ago. The one ran off with some salesman. She’ll be back pretty soon. Think she’d have better sense. So you ain’t Doll. We don’t have no Rose just now. Put a little henna in your hair—Rose’ll do. Ruby. We’ll think of something.” Her knuckles were big, and her rings hung loose on the bones of her fingers. She was always turning them up the way they were supposed to be, and they wouldn’t stay because of the weight of the stones. Bright red, bright green, big as gumdrops. Lila and Mellie used to keep bits of broken glass they found in the road sometimes, and they called them jewels. Why was she thinking about any of this? She was so scared that day, in that parlor with the drapes closed at noon and that damn credenza with the vase of dusty feathers sitting on it. Looking like a coffin. There was a stirring under her heart, so she said to the child, “I won’t breathe a word to you about that place, but I guess you might know anyway. Because that fear has never left my body, has just hidden in it, waiting. You might feel it, down in your poor little bones. God bless ’em.”

She heard the Reverend at the door, and she went down to meet him. He was smiling up at her as if he still hadn’t gotten over the surprise of finding her, his wife, lowering herself down the stairs, with her hand on her belly so he would know she was being careful for the child’s sake. And then his arms around her and his cheek against her hair. “So,” he said, “how are you two?”

“Fine, I guess. We pretty much wasted the morning, daydreaming. I keep trying to read the Bible, but my mind goes wandering off. You wouldn’t want to know where. The things I find myself thinking about, with the Bible right there in my lap.”

“Well,” he said, “you know I’m always interested. If there’s anything you want to talk about.” He hung up his hat and his coat.

“One thing. Do you think the child knows what I’m thinking? I mean, by the way it makes me feel? Do you think it might get scared or something? Sad? Because I do worry about that. Now and then.”

He searched her face, abruptly serious.

“You don’t know nothing about me,” she said, because that was what he was trying not to think. “I got feelings I don’t know the names for. There probly ain’t any names. Probly nobody else ever had ’em. I tell you what, I wouldn’t wish ’em on a snake.”

“Well,” he said. He cleared his throat. “Is there something I can do?”

“No. You haven’t even ate your lunch yet.”

He shrugged. “Lunch can wait.” Then he made his voice just as gentle as he could. “Lila, I know I’ve said this any number of times. But people do talk to me. About all sorts of things. Sometimes it helps. At least that’s what they tell me.”

She said, “Then for the rest of their life you’re gonna think about it. Every time you look at them. Hear their name even.”

“True.”

“Well, I spose it would have to be true, wouldn’t it. The worse it was, the more you’d remember. Maybe I don’t want you looking at me that way.”

“Fine,” he said. “Whatever you say.”

“I don’t know how those people go on living in the same town with you.”

“A few of them do leave the church. Maybe because they’ve told me more than they meant to. I’ve suspected that was part of it. In some cases.”

She said, “Now you’re looking at me. Probly thinking it’s worse than it is. Maybe it couldn’t even be no worse.”

He laughed. “I don’t know how this happened. I hardly even step through the door and I seem to be in a whole world of trouble.”

“Well,” she said, “I ain’t going to talk about it. I’m going to make you a sandwich.”

“That’s wonderful.” He sat down at the table and picked up the newspaper he had read at breakfast. He glanced over it a little. Then he said, “I like to look at you, Lila. Lila my wife. There’s a lot of pleasure in it for me. Of course I also like to talk with you.”

“Well, that’s probly because I never tell you nothing.” She thought, Anything. I can talk better than this. I guess I just don’t want to.

“You’ve told me a couple of things. I don’t think either one of us is any the worse for it.”

She almost said, There was a man. Why did she feel so mean sometimes? He would say, Well, yes, of course I assumed. Well, of course I knew—and he’d blush because he’d said that. There would be tears in his eyes, the poor old devil. What else could he say? He went and married her, and now he has to make the best of it. But she felt those words in her mouth and her heart was thumping. And she could have said something else. Probably worse. There was a child. She never did lie to him, and he knew it, so there were things she had to be sure not to tell him, things she could never say. She wanted to rest her head on his shoulder, but he was looking through the paper again. She could pull a chair up next to him and he’d probably put his arm around her. So she came and stood beside him, against him, and touched his hair. She said, “I never even thought of telling anybody what was on my mind, all those years. Not Doll, not any of ’em. I don’t even think I knew people did that.”

“Have I told you everything about myself? I suppose I have. Not much to tell, really.”

She said, “Well, you never told me what you’re scared of. There must be something, with all the praying you do.”

He laughed. “You can probably guess.” He glanced up at her. “I’m afraid to death some fine young man you knew once will show up at the door and you’ll pack your bag. Just the things you brought with you. And you’ll leave a note for me that says, Goodbye, Reverend. I won’t be coming back.”

“Will I take your mama’s locket when I go?”

“No. But you’ll have to ask the young man to help you undo the clasp. Then when I see it there, I’ll know. That you’d left with somebody.”

She shook her head. “Most likely I’d take it.”

He said, “I’d be grateful if you did.”

“Well, I believe you would. You’re just the strangest man. I guess this better all happen after the baby comes?”

“I suppose so.”

“It would have to. I never knew a man who would want to take on another man’s child like that. I mean, before it was even born. Then I guess he’d make me leave it here anyway.”

“I hope he would. I mean, I hope you would let me keep it. I’d work something out, hire a woman to take care of it. People would help. We’d be all right.”

After a minute she said, “Well, I never made you that sandwich.” But she sat down at the table across from him. He met her eyes. “You sure been thinking about this.” She heard her voice break.

He said, “I have to believe I wouldn’t die of it. For the child’s sake. And for yours, if you ever wanted to come back. But I do feel that a child should have a living father, if the old codger can manage it. Someone to fall back on. As long as possible.” He shrugged. “I think through things. It calms me. Otherwise I don’t react as well as I could have. As I would have wanted to.”

They’d been married a year, no, almost a year and a half, and he was still just as lonely as ever, and that scared her. So she said, “It’s nice you think some man somewhere’s going to bother to come looking for me. No chance of that happening, Reverend. You got me all to yourself. If that’s what you want.”

He said, “I guess I want it too much to believe I have it.”

She said, “I feel the same way, pretty much.”

He nodded. “That’s good to know.”

“I never thought I’d be living in a house like this, that’s for sure. I mean a house where I was the wife and anybody cared if I stayed or left.”

He nodded. “I hope sometime you’ll feel—a little more at home, Lila. I hope sometime you’ll move things around a little in here. These old pictures my mother put up—I probably haven’t looked at some of them in fifty years. Most of them she just cut out of magazines. Well, you can see that, the way they’ve faded. My grandfather made the frames for them. I think it was mainly a way she had of keeping him out of her kitchen. He always wanted to be doing something. My point is that things don’t have to stay the way they are. If you want to change them.”

She said, “You ever heard of a credenza?”

He laughed. “A credenza. I’ve seen the word somewhere, I suppose. I’m not quite sure I know what one is.”

“Well, I’m glad if you don’t.”

He nodded. “Happy to oblige.”

“That’s one thing I don’t ever want around here.”

“It might be hard to find one in Iowa. So that’s good.” He said, “Because this is your house, Lila, no credenza will ever come under its roof!”

“Now you’re laughing at me.”

“I’ve made a solemn promise! I gave you my word. I’ve never been more serious.” He was at the cupboard, rummaging. “Sometimes I just laugh because I’m surprised. But I’d better have a little lunch. I get cranky on an empty stomach. Can’t risk disheartening some poor sinner. You never know when one might wander in. Just a peanut butter and jelly sandwich will make me worthier of my calling. Till supper anyway.”

“I was going to do that, then we got talking.”

“I’m glad we got talking. I’m always glad when we talk. I have so much to learn. Here I could have wandered in someday with a credenza, meaning no harm—” Then he looked at her. “I’m sorry!”

“It don’t matter.” She had put her hands to her face. “I was just thinking.”

He stood looking at her. “Well, why don’t you come down to the church with me. It’s quiet today. Some people are coming from Des Moines to talk with me about a funeral. I didn’t really know the fellow, he just happened to die here, and I have to have something to say about him. But you could wait for me in the sanctuary. Do your thinking there.”

She shook her head. “It ain’t that kind of thinking.” She said, “It’s on my mind now, so I might as well get it done with. It’s so different here it makes me remember other places I been. I guess I have to do that. Sort things out a little. Seems like I don’t even know myself, everything’s so different.”

“Yes. Well, as soon as I can get away I’ll be home. Unless you want the afternoon to yourself.”

“I’ll come to find you like I always do.”

“All right.” He kissed her forehead. “Five o’clock, then.”

It came over her, before he had even closed the door behind him, the thought of that house in St. Louis. It was just pure misery. Misery must have been what she was looking for, because she felt it the minute she walked in that door. The twilight of the parlor made her feel as if she had stepped into deep water with her eyes open. Breathing came hard and sound reached her a heartbeat after she should have heard it. She could hardly speak. Nothing was the way it was in daylight, but the place had its own ways and you got used to them. Like death, if something comes after it. That first day there were girls fighting over a hairbrush. Mrs. got up from her chair and went and took the brush away from them and put it in the credenza. When they saw her coming they shrank away from her, watching her. “Now,” she said when she came back to Lila, “you get a safe place to live, so long as you act right. Any trouble and you’re gone. I don’t like drinking or yelling. I don’t want you out on the street. This is a respectable house. Quiet. Our gentlemen like it that way.” She called them gentlemen. And the girls were supposed to be ladies.

But they were always fighting over something, a pair of shoes or a scrap of ribbon. And Mrs. would be slapping or pulling hair. The gentlemen brought in liquor, so they didn’t have to steal it out of the cabinet unless they just wanted to. Mrs. went off sometimes to visit her sister and left the woman they called Peg in charge, and she’d let them drink if they let her boss them around a little. Then they’d fight over nothing at all, and cry for their mothers, and say they were going to leave that place and that life and never look back, and the gentlemen would say, “Sure you will, sugar. Just not tonight.” But they never opened the shades or stepped out the door, and they never touched the credenza. Then they were glad when Mrs. came back. She’d yell at them for their cheap carousing and say she was going to toss them all out, and she’d add what she said was the cost of the liquor to the amount of money she said they all owed her already, and they’d just be glad she was back anyway, and they’d be so quiet and so careful to mind her that she had to calm down sometime. They’d be begging her to let them brush out her hair. A few of them had lived there since they were almost children, one or two of them probably feeble-minded. And two or three of them were just like Lila, no better and no worse. All crowded into two rooms, sleeping on cots so that the other rooms stayed nice for entertaining.

If one of them got sick they’d all get sick, or say they were, and Mrs. would close every blind and turn off every light, so the gentlemen would know they couldn’t have company, she said, but really to make everything miserable enough to get back at them if they ever dared pretend. When a house is shut up like that in the middle of a summer day the light that comes in through any crack is as sharp as a blade. And there would be a pot of potato soup simmering from morning to night, and the steam from it would bring out the tobacco smells and the sour old liquor smells in the rugs and the couches and the drapes. And she’d put the poker deck and the checkerboard in that damned credenza, and anything else that could help the time pass. Not that they could have seen the spots on the cards, dark as it was. In a day or two they’d start saying they were better, and could they open a window a crack. Just the darkness made some of them cry. Then when she had turned on some lights and opened a window or two and they had put the place to rights, she would open the credenza and pass out the things she had put in it, the darning egg and the harmonica, and they’d be happy to have them back, as if she had done them a kindness. That credenza was the shape of a coffin, with little legs on it, and flowers of lighter-colored wood on the front of it, some of them peeling off, some of them gone, just the glue left. It was always locked. Any one of the girls could have figured a way to break into it, but they never did. One time Mrs. found some letters that belonged to the girl they called Sal and locked them up, for safekeeping, she said. That girl was begging for them until finally she just gave up, and that was when Mrs. got around to letting her have them back for a while. Lila had hidden her knife in a gap between boards in a closet floor. There were boxes stacked in that corner and the knife was underneath them, so she thought it was safe. Mrs. had nothing that mattered to take from her, nothing of hers to lock away.