Miss Julia Rocks the Cradle (25 page)

“So, Lillian,” I said as I walked in the door, “that was my good deed for the day, although how much good it did I don’t know. Probably gave me pneumonia from standing out in the cold, but Helen saw me there and that was the whole purpose.”

Lillian turned around, her eyebrows raised. “You didn’t go to the house?”

I stopped with my coat halfway off. “Why, I didn’t even think of it. But you’re right, I should’ve gone on to Helen’s for the reception. But everybody was getting into cars and leaving, and nothing was said about any kind of gathering.” I studied the situation for a minute. “Maybe I should run over to her place and see if anybody’s there. Attending the service was only half a good deed.”

“Don’t stay too long, ’cause we gonna eat early. If I got to wander all over creation in the middle of the night, I got to get to bed.”

I smiled with relief. She would be going with me when the time came.

I drove to the area Helen had moved to when she’d had to give up her home to help pay the restitution demanded of Richard by the court. That would’ve been a bitter pill to swallow, right at the time of life when a woman would expect financial demands to ease off. I knew how she must’ve felt because there’d been a time when it seemed that Wesley Lloyd Springer had sent me to the poorhouse, and I still had the occasional nightmare of being homeless and penniless in my old age.

Coming up to the Laurel View condos, I turned into a paved parking area and studied the four two-story buildings to find Helen’s address. It was in the fourth building, the one at the back, and as I parked at the curb, I made note of the many empty spaces. If Helen was having a postfuneral reception, not many mourners had shown up.

Standing on the small stoop, I rang her doorbell, waiting and hoping that at least one or two people would be there. I had no desire to be the only comforter. Shivering as the wind gusted around the corner, I checked the address I’d written down against the number on the door. I was at the right place, but nobody else was. Ringing the bell again, I looked around to see if any others were coming to comfort the widow. There wasn’t another soul anywhere.

Turning away, I thought that maybe Helen had had all she could stand and didn’t want to see anyone. I could understand that. She was probably in bed with the covers over her head, as I would be—and often was after discovering Wesley Lloyd’s perfidy. I slipped a calling card behind the brass house numbers so she’d know I’d been there and walked to the car.

Interesting, though, that Helen’s white Volvo was nowhere to be seen. There were no garages or carports for the residents of Laurel View, only assigned parking spaces for each unit. Maybe the reception was being held at the church in the Fellowship Hall. But no, from my house across the street, I would’ve seen people going and coming.

There was only one conclusion: Helen’s grief, if any, was being assuaged somewhere else. But I couldn’t think of anyone close enough to her who would provide it. Maybe she was at her attorney’s office, seeing to last-minute legal issues. That was the most likely explanation.

On the way home I thought of swinging by Sam’s house, just stop, go in, and have it out with him. In a sweet way, of course. But not begging either. There was no reason in the world why two mature individuals who loved each other couldn’t sit down and work out their problems without one walking off and taking up residence in his own house. The thought of it still frosted me, and as I approached his house, I could feel the resentment building up. There it was, with the yellow glow of lamps in the windows, smoke curling from the chimney, all looking so warm and homey that it about tore me up. And to top it off, I could see James inside the hall, busily Windexing the windows in the front door—something he probably hadn’t done in weeks. I had no doubt that there would be a meal in the oven, filling the house with the aromatic promise of good things to come.

I sped on past, fuming as I realized that the rival for my husband’s attention had turned out to be none other than that sorry James.

“Lillian,” I whispered, as I leaned over the bed in the dead of night to put my hand on her shoulder.

She didn’t move, but Latisha groaned, turned over, and flapped her arm across Lillian’s head. I carefully moved the arm and gave Lillian a gentle shake. “Lillian!” I whispered a little louder. “Wake up. It’s time to go.”

Lillian’s eyes popped open, or at least I think they did, because I was stumbling around in the dark for fear of waking everybody. I felt her staring up at me, then she carefully slipped out of bed, adjusted the covers over Latisha, and reeled out of the room behind me.

“My clothes in the bathroom,” she mumbled. “I gotta get ’em on.”

“I’ll be in the kitchen,” I said, and felt my way downstairs, thankful for the meager glow from the streetlight on the corner.

Dressed in all the layers of clothing I’d earlier laid out, I waited by the back door, holding two of the large flashlights we’d used when the power was out. Lillian shuffled in, looking twice her size from all the sweaters under her coat. She didn’t look at me, just went through the door I held open, grumbling with every step. I ignored her and stepped outside, pulling the back door shut as firmly and quietly as I could, and stumbled down the steps behind Lillian. And ran into her as she came to a dead stop in the yard.

“You got yo’ car keys?” she whispered.

“We’re not taking the car. I don’t want to wake anybody.”

“Yes’m, but if you have yo’ car keys, that mean you have yo’ door key too.”

Oh, Lord, locked out! It took me a minute to come to grips with my lack of foresight, but there was nothing to do but plunge ahead. Clasping Lillian’s arm and urging her onward, I said, “Let’s worry about it when we get back.”

“I can’t see a thing,” she said, bumping up against me.

“Well, I can’t turn on a flashlight yet. Hold on, Lillian, and we’ll be on the sidewalk soon. Careful,” I said, steering her to the right. “Don’t run into the car.”

When we gained the sidewalk, the walking was easier, lit by pools of light from the streetlamps on each corner. I could see one circle of light after the other stretching out before us in the still, cold air. Worried that some insomniac neighbor would glance out a window and see us, I walked as if I had a purpose for being out at such an ungodly hour. I had discarded the idea of slipping from bush to bush through backyards to avoid being seen. It was too cold and too dark and too treacherous underfoot for such evasive action when all we had to do was act as if it were normal to take a walk at two-thirty in the morning with the temperature hovering around eighteen degrees.

As we passed through a circle of light a block from the house, our shadows stretching out behind, then in front of us, I looked at Lillian, whose breath was steaming out of her mouth in puffs.

“Here,” I said, pulling Lloyd’s hats from my pocket. “We better put these on to keep from losing heat. That’s what they say, anyway.”

We each pulled a toboggan cap over our heads and down across our ears and foreheads. I looked at the light blue cap with a Tarheels basketball logo on her head and had to laugh until I saw she was doing the same at me. And no wonder, for the one I put on was a garish mixture of red, olive green, and orange with a yellow tassel on the top. It was too cold for humor, though, so we hurried on, Lillian pulling a scarf over her mouth and nose leaving only her eyes showing, while I did the same with my coat collar.

“Come on,” I said, urging her on. Then glancing down, I almost tripped. “Why, you’re wearing pants! I’ve never seen you wear pants before. Where’d you get them?”

“You never seen me walking ’round when it so cold before either,” she said. “I get them at Walmart when I know you gonna go through with this. They got flannel on the inside.”

“Well, you were smart. I wish I still had those green polyester ones I threw away. Let’s step it up. I’m about to freeze.”

Six blocks is a long way to walk when you’re trying to blend into the shadows and keep blood circulating in your feet. And as it turned out, the walk was longer than six blocks because I realized that we’d be better off approaching the toolshed through Miss Petty’s yard rather than through Thurlow’s. So we had another block to go around before stopping at the edge of her yard. Her house was dark, and I pictured her lying asleep, dreaming of raucous middle schoolers and how she could tame them. At least I hoped she was asleep. I didn’t care what she was dreaming of.

The streetlights at each corner of the block gave us enough diffused light to see a thick hedge along what seemed to be Miss Petty’s property line.

“Let’s scoot along the hedge,” I whispered. “We’ll follow it to the backyard and find the toolshed.”

Lillian didn’t move. “I don’t know, Miss Julia. Scootin’ don’t suit me, an’ it too dark to see anything, much less no toolshed.”

“We can’t stop here, Lillian. There’s nothing to see. We might as well go home.”

“That’s what I think,” she said, turning away. “Le’s us go.”

“No, wait, don’t leave me now. We’re almost there.”

“What if she got a dog?”

“I already thought of that,” I said, pulling a wad of tinfoil from my pocket. “I brought a chunk of meat, just in case.”

“That from the roast I cook for supper?” Lillian’s voice edged up in disbelief.

“It’s in a good cause, Lillian. Now, come on. We could’ve been halfway there.”

I eased into the shadow of the hedge, and after a brief hesitation, she followed me, her hand gripping the back of my coat. I couldn’t tell what kind of hedge it was, maybe laurel or rhododendron or, more likely, as I felt needles swish across my face, hemlock.

Lord, it was dark. No moon or stars visible in the cloudy sky and too scared of discovery to turn on a flashlight, we stumbled along, stepping in and out of dips in the uneven ground, and slipping on frozen patches of snow. Passing the house, I could barely make out a smaller building, or rather a darker, uneven blob, a little farther back. Surprised at the size of Miss Petty’s lot, I mentally figured it to match Thurlow’s, which was one-fourth of the block, facing the opposite street.

I took Lillian’s arm and stepped out of the cover of the hedge, moving across the yard toward the darker shadow at the back of the lot. I almost stumbled as my foot stepped off the uneven ground onto a gravel drive. We followed it to the black shape that indicated a building of some kind, and feeling around on the weathered and splintered boards, I was able to make out a pair of large doors.

“It’s a garage,” I whispered. “The toolshed must be on the side.”

Lillian was breathing heavily by then, not from exertion but from anxiety, maybe from pure fear. She was walking so close to me that she was almost on my heels. I felt my way past the garage, heading for what appeared to be an appendage on the side. Tall weeds beside the wall hindered our way, and Lillian almost fell as she sidestepped what turned out to be a discarded bucket.

“A little way more,” I whispered. “I can’t find the door.”

As I turned the corner, a long moaning sound floated through the night. Lillian stopped, stiff as a board, just as my hand found a tattered strip of slick weatherproof tape. Torn crime-scene tape, I figured because I watch television.

“This is it,” I whispered, relieved that we were on the spot. “The door will be here somewhere.”

She didn’t move. “You hear that?”

Another moan, ending in a muffled bark, stiffened me beside her. I stood stock-still, staring at Miss Petty’s dark house.

“That’s
Ronnie
!” Lillian said, panic edging her voice.

“Who?”

“Mr. Thurlow’s ole dog. We got to go ’fore he get here.” She started to turn away, but I grabbed her.

“Wait, don’t leave. He’s in the house, Lillian, and Thurlow won’t let him out. It’s too cold, and that dog’s as old as the hills. Please wait—it’ll only take me a minute to look inside.” Even as I reassured her, I pictured Thurlow’s huge, slavering Great Dane bounding across the yard, intent on launching himself through the air and onto our backs. My hands trembling and my heart banging in my chest, I kept scrambling along the wall, hoping to finish up and be gone.

“Gimme that chunk of meat,” Lillian said, her voice quavering. “Maybe it hold him off if he come.”

I pushed the foil-wrapped meat into her hand, and hurriedly feeling my way, I found the door to the toolshed and pushed it open. Now was the time for the flashlight. I clicked it on and swept it around the dirt-floored room. Shelves filled with old pots and various hand tools lined the back wall, while rakes and shovels leaned against a side wall. An old power mower stood in a corner, and half-empty bags of fertilizer and potting soil rested haphazardly under the shelves.

But not entirely haphazardly, for as I played the light around the room, I saw that two full fertilizer bags—one stacked on the other—had been placed a suggestive length from the side wall—the wall at the very back of Miss Petty’s property.