Necessary Lies (19 page)

The way he said it made me feel as though I smelled sweaty. Maybe I did. I touched my hair, hoping I’d managed to comb it into reasonable shape. “I got lost coming home,” I said. “I think I saw every road in Grace County.”

He raised his eyebrows. “I don’t like you driving alone in an area you don’t know.”

“Oh, it was nothing,” I said. “I finally saw a hunter and asked him the way to Ridley Road, and—”

“A hunter? With a gun?”

“Well, yes, hunters usually have guns.” I smiled, but he wasn’t smiling back. He just shook his head.

“You’re the craziest woman,” he said. It was the sort of thing that, if he’d said it a year ago, would have sounded like a compliment. Now that I was his wife, “crazy” was not so appealing.

“Well, anyway, I found my way out but I was running late, so I’m sorry I’m not gussied up, but—”

“You look great,” he said. “You always look great. Just … I was hoping we could go to the City Club for dinner tonight, and instead it looks like we’ll be at Cooper’s Barbecue.”

“Sorry,” I said again. “How about I treat tonight? I’m making money so I can—”

“We don’t need your money, Jane.” He scowled, getting to his feet. “Don’t insult me that way, all right?”

“Sorry,” I said for the third or fourth time. “I didn’t think offering to buy you dinner was an insult.”

“Let’s go,” he said, putting his arm lightly around my shoulders, and I hoped Sandra thought we looked like a happily married couple as we walked out of the office. I wasn’t feeling like one.

*   *   *

“The country club ball is less than two weeks away,” he said as we ate hush puppies in our booth at Cooper’s. “Will you still have a chance to buy a dress and get your hair done?”

I smiled, glad the storm between us seemed to have passed. “You’re really excited about that, aren’t you?” I asked. He mentioned something about the ball nearly every day.

“It’s my first chance to show off my new bride,” he said.

“You’re so sweet,” I said. “Mom and I plan to shop next week and I’ll make a hair appointment, I promise.” I knew I was lucky to have a husband who cared about my clothes and my hair. Most wouldn’t even notice. “Should I have them do my hair up or down?”

“Up,” he said. “It’s so sexy up.” He reached across the table and smoothed his hand over the side of my head. “You have beautiful hair,” he said.

“Even after a day in the field?”

“Even after,” he said.

The waitress set our plates in front of us, and Robert began dousing his pork with barbecue sauce from the bottle on the table. “So what did you do today without your supervisor with you?” he asked.

“It was good,” I said, sipping my sweet tea. “Really good. I was nervous at first about being on my own, but then I really enjoyed it. I took some clothes to a family. Shoes for the boys.” I imagined he pictured little boys, not the three big colored boys who had intimidated me at first. I would let him hold on to his image. “I had a good talk with their mother. Before that, I met with the farmer to start evaluating one of my clients for the Eugenics Program and he was helpful.” I lifted a forkful of coleslaw. “And then I met with the client herself.”

“What’s wrong?”

I stopped the fork before it reached my mouth. “What do you mean?”

“It’s like a dark cloud passed over your face when you said the word ‘client.’”

“Really?” I set down the fork, touched that he was that sensitive to my emotions. “Well.” I wrinkled my nose. “I guess I’m starting to feel uncomfortable about that case.”

“How come?”

“Oh, everything. Remember I told you about the seventeen-year-old girl Charlotte had sterilized?”

“Right. And you have to do something to get the sister sterilized? Is that the one you’re talking about?”

“Exactly. They’re so needy, Robert. The girl’s only fifteen and she’s running the household. At least it seems that way to me. She’s the caretaker. Her grandmother is marginal. Her sister—”

“Marginal?”
He raised his eyebrows, a half smile on his lips.

I laughed. “I guess I’ve picked up the lingo.” It made me happy that the word slipped so easily from my tongue. “Anyhow, the family’s a mess.” I took a bite of the vinegary barbecue, remembering Ivy calling Charlotte a magician for knowing Mary Ella needed her appendix out. Thinking about that deception killed my appetite and I set down my fork again. I didn’t want to tell Robert about that. He’d say it was unethical and then I’d have to defend Charlotte and the department and I wasn’t sure I could. I probably didn’t have all the facts. “The older sister’s little boy has prickly heat and she accidentally put her grandmother’s arthritis salve on his rash.”

“You’re kidding.” His jaw dropped. “That poor kid.”

“He might need to be removed from the home,” I said. “They all love him so much, though. I hate the idea.”

“Yes, but the needs of that child are paramount, Jane. Next time, the mistake could be much worse.”

“I know,” I said.

He added a little more sauce to his barbecue. “It sounds like everybody in that household should be neutered,” he said, and I had the feeling he wasn’t kidding.

“I can see how the Eugenics Program is a good thing in some cases, but I’m not sure it would be in this girl’s.” I toyed with my coleslaw. “I sort of see myself in her,” I said, “and I wouldn’t want someone else making that sort of decision about my life.”

He set down the bottle of sauce. “How can you say that?” he asked. “You live in Hayes Barton, for heaven’s sake. She lives in the armpit of the country with a crazy mother and wacky sister and brother—”

“No, it’s the grandmother. And she has no brother. You’re thinking of her nephew. Her sister’s two-year-old—”

“It doesn’t matter, Jane. Comparing your life to theirs is insulting to me. I’m trying to provide a good living for us. We have a beautiful home and every damn creature comfort you could want. How can you possibly compare yourself to them?”

“I’m sorry if I sounded like I don’t appreciate all you do for us.” I pressed my hands together in my lap. “I love our home and everything, but I wasn’t talking about that. I was talking about…” How to make him understand? “Yes, she’s very, very poor. And no, I can’t relate to that. But she’s a human being. All these people I’m working with are human beings. Just like me.”

“Not just like you.”

I was getting angry. “
Just
like me,” I said, “and like you, too, in that they’re
people.
We’re all people. I don’t care how much money they have or we have or what color anyone’s skin is or how smart they are or aren’t. When I say I see myself in her, I mean I see a teenage girl with a sister she loves and worries about and I see her trying to figure out who she is and what she wants and—”

“Listen to me, Jane.” His voice was much quieter and controlled than mine and I realized I’d been loud. “This is all wrong,” he said. “
You
are all wrong for this job. If you don’t believe me, talk to your supervisor or someone in charge over there. They’ll say just what I’m saying—that you’re relating too much to these people.” Red splotches had formed high on his cheekbones. I couldn’t remember ever seeing that in his face before. “You’re a sweet person,” he said, “and that allows you to get too caught up in their problems. It’s not good for you. It’s not good for
us.
”

“Look,” I said, trying to make my voice as reasonable as his, “this was my first day alone, so maybe I got carried away. It will be
fine.
I’ll be fine.”

“There’s no reason on God’s green earth why you need to be doing this.”

“I’ll be fine,” I repeated. I would keep everything about my job to myself from now on. It wasn’t safe to talk about it with him. It only led to bad feelings on both our sides. “Let’s talk about something else.”

“Good idea,” he said.

But neither of us seemed to have anything to say, and we ate the rest of our meal in silence.

18

Ivy

I knew what the words “playing with fire” meant and I knew that’s what me and Henry Allen was doing. I sat by the crick at ten to nine, waiting for him, the note he left me that morning scrunched up in my hand.
“They’re going to a church supper,”
he wrote.
“Crick at 9.”
So here I was, feeling like him and me was risking everything to be together. For the past week, we didn’t even dare look at each other. I didn’t think I could take it anymore and when I saw that little scrap of white at the bottom of the fence post, I could of jumped for joy.

I tossed a twig into the crick, but it was too dark to see it land in the water.
“Ivy.”
He said my name in a whisper I hardly heard, but I turned around and there he was, coming through the path in the woods, pointing his flashlight toward the ground. I ran to him and threw my arms around his neck, kissing him all over his face. He laughed, dropping the blanket and his radio and flashlight. “Yeah, I missed you, too,” he said, and then he gave me a good long kiss like the one in the barn that started the whole mess.

I ducked out of his arms. “Let’s not do that right off,” I said, bending down to pick up the blanket. “I want you to tell me everything.” I opened the blanket over the mossy ground above the crick and he helped me lay it out. “What did they do to you? What did they say?”

He picked up his flashlight and radio. “First things first,” he said, holding out the radio. “See this radio?”

It looked like the same radio he brung every time we met. “What about it?” I asked.

“It’s yours.”

I sucked in my breath. “Honest?”

“Honest. I bought it for you yesterday when me and Mama went to Ridley. Had to sneak away from her to get it.”

I took it from him like it was made of glass. “You’re the sweetest boy.” I kissed him. “I love you, Henry Allen Gardiner.”

“So, put on a station,” he said, sitting down on the blanket.

I sat next to him, my body right up against his. “Show me how.”

I shined the flashlight on the dial while he found the station we always listened to on his radio. WKIX. “Sixteen Candles” was playing, and Henry Allen started singing along with the part about being his “teenage queen.” His voice wasn’t real good and it made me laugh. I felt like I hadn’t really laughed in a year.

“I can’t believe it’s mine,” I said, taking it back from him. “I never had nothing so special before.”

“You should have plenty of special things,” he said.

I looked at him, wishing I could see him better. “What did they do to you?” I asked. “What did they say?”

“Lie back and I’ll tell you everything,” he said.

I put the radio on the blanket next to me and then we laid down on our backs, looking at the million stars God put in the black sky. The tops of the trees made a picture frame around them and it was the most beautiful thing. Henry Allen held my hand and after a week of terrible things happening, I finally felt some peace.

“Did you get in trouble?” he asked. “I didn’t know if they told your grandma or not.”

“Oh, they told her for sure. She beat me with her cane.”

“Oh no.”

“It wasn’t too bad. I was in bed, so she did it through the cover and I had on my winter nightgown plus she ain’t—isn’t—so strong.”

“Why’d you have on your winter nightgown?”

I knew he’d seen me after the water made my nightgown invisible. It sure wasn’t the first time he saw me like that, but I still didn’t want to bring it up and put that picture of me in his mind, with his mama standing right there. I didn’t want to remember it, neither. “I just did,” I said. “Lucky, too, ’cause it didn’t hurt so much. Then she yelled and called me ‘trash’ and—”

“You ain’t trash,” he said.

“And she said your mama and daddy wouldn’t take me to church no more.”

“That’s true,” he said.

“They think I’m trash, too, don’t they,” I said. “They look down on me now.”

He was quiet long enough that I knew it was true. “I don’t care what they think. I know better.”

“I don’t like seeing your daddy now,” I said.

“He’s mad, all right, but Mama’s worse,” he said.

“Did your daddy whup you?” I asked.

“With his belt. He ain’t done that since I was twelve. I just stood there and took it to get it over with. The real punishment was seeing that barn gone,” he said. “All that work for all them months, gone up in the blink of an eye. It was insured and so was the tobacco, but that ain’t—”

“What’s that mean? Insured?”

“Daddy gets some money back on it, but he would of much rather had the crop.”

“I know. It was terrible.
We
was terrible.”

“Wasn’t your fault.” His voice was real quiet and I knew he felt bad about the whole thing.

“A new social worker came to see me Monday,” I said, “and I was sure she was going to take me away. She came to the barn and—”

“I saw her. I didn’t know who she was. You went off with her.”

“I thought she was going to lock me up, like my mama.”

“I was wondering the same thing. I thought maybe my daddy called that mental hospital to come take you away. I was real glad when you came back looking okay.”

I smiled up at the sky. He’d been keeping a good eye on me from the south barn. “I like her,” I said. “She’s real nice. I felt like I could tell her just about anything.”

“You didn’t tell her about us, did you?” He sounded so worried, and I poked him with my elbow.

“’Course not,” I said. “I thought your daddy might of told her, but it didn’t seem like it. But your parents know now, so what’s it matter?”

“Be careful you don’t tell nobody. I promised my parents we wouldn’t get together no more, or else they’ll send one of us away.”

“What do you mean?”

“Ain’t exactly sure. I guess they’d either kick your family out or send me to my uncle’s in Jacksonville.”

They’d never send Henry Allen away. They needed him on the farm too much. My family, though? We was getting to be more trouble than we was worth.

We watched the stars a while, being quiet together. The radio played that song “Why Must I Be a Teenager in Love,” which seemed perfect except the words didn’t fit us too well. I could of stayed like that all night, but I knew we didn’t have all night. After a while, I leaned up on my elbow and kissed him. He kissed back, but then held me away.