Rain (4 page)

The charade played out by Miriam when she sat down and opened her gifts far outdid any of the performances the ladies put on during a real game of charades later. Miriam looked with excitement on a new adding machine, but she didn't see much good in pink underwear and fuzzy bathroom slippers. She was, however, as gracious as she was capable of being, and afterward even Elinor went so far as to say, "You could have made things very unpleasant, but you didn't."

"There was no point," said Miriam. "They were being nice to me."

"Sometimes," said Elinor, "I think you may be growing up."

"The question is," sighed Miriam, "how the hell am I gone get rid of all that damned junk1?"

Sister could not be reconciled to the wedding. She would have nothing to do with it, and she wouldn't hear it spoken of in her presence. She refused even to admit aloud that Miriam was marrying Malcolm. Queenie had been forced to desert her in this busy time, so the whole thing rankled even more. Ivey sat with Sister every day, in the straight chair beside the radio, but Ivey wasn't one for gossip, and Sister was bored and restless and stared out the window through binoculars at Elinor's house. But she never saw more than Zaddie or Elinor occasionally passing a window.

Ivey wouldn't relay any news from next door, for her feud with Zaddie had kept up, and they were not speaking. No one had ever discovered the reason for this coolness between the aging black sisters, for it was a private affair, and neither Zaddie nor Ivey ever said anything about it directly.

In the drawer of her bedside table, Sister kept a calendar on which she marked off the days until Christmas, and every day she would count up those remaining. This ever-decreasing figure preyed on her mind to an extent that Ivey found alarming. Ivey began to ply Sister with sweet liquids poured out of unmarked blue bottles, but these nostrums did not appear to help. Sister grew weaker—but crosser— and every morning she seemed to have sunk down deeper into her bulwark of goose-down pillows.

About ten days before the wedding, Miriam went to New Orleans on an unexpected and unavoidable trip. When she returned at suppertime two days later, Ivey was waiting for her behind the screen door. "Miz Caskey sick," she said simply. "She want to talk to you."

Upstairs, Miriam was shocked by Sister's appearance. "You are sick," she said bluntly. "I don't think I've ever seen anybody look worse."

Sister seemed scarcely able to open her eyes. Her head lolled forward on her neck; her hands lay curled and helpless atop the neatly folded coverlet. She looked as if she had not moved for days, a frail puppet whose strings had all been cut.

"Put it off," she whispered. Her lips scarcely moved. Miriam moved closer to the bed.

"Put it off," Sister repeated, no more loudly than before.

"No," said Miriam, finally comprehending the cryptic command. "For one thing, Elinor and Queenie have gone to a great deal of trouble. For another thing, it's too late. And last of all, I want to go through with it."

Sister's head lolled to one side. "It'll kill me," she whispered. Her head lolled to the other side, and her eyes shut with the motion.

Miriam sat on the edge of the bed. It was dark outside, and a single low lamp burned on the bedside table. Miriam took Sister's hand. "Sister," she said firmly, "even if I believed that, I'd go through with it."

Sister opened her eyes slowly, and peered up at Miriam through tears. "You'd kill me, wouldn't you?"

"Sister," said Miriam, now taking her other hand, and pressing them lightly against Sister's breast, "you are turning into Grandmama."

"Noooo..." Sister's protest was no more than a slow exhalation of breath.

"You are. You want to trick me into putting this wedding off. Just the way Grandmama would have done. But you're not Grandmama, you're Sister. And I'm not you, I'm not Oscar. I'm not even me when I was younger. Nobody's going to run roughshod over me—not about this, and not about anything else. You think you can get me to put off this wedding by pulling this business—"

"Not business..."

"Whether it is or it isn't is of no concern to me," Miriam went on. "If you're really sick, then I'm sorry, but it makes no difference. I won't let it. So you might as well get better, Sister, because next Saturday night there are going to be four hundred and thirty-seven people tromping through this house giving me their congratulations, and I wouldn't want the noise to disturb you."

Miriam released Sister's hands, then rose and walked put the door and down the hall to her own room to unpack.

"Put it off," whispered Sister Haskew a few moments later, not realizing that Miriam was no longer in the room.

S
ister's condition remained the same in the week before the wedding. Oscar, on his return, was shocked to find her so deplorably weak and wandering. Christmas came and after presents had been opened at Elinor's in the morning, everyone went over to give Sister her gifts, congregating in the hallway outside her room, but entering only one at a time. Sister smiled wanly, but she wasn't always able to open her eyes. Lilah sat on the edge of the bed and placed a wrapped box on Sister's upturned hand. One finger clawed briefly at the ribbon, but then Lilah had to open it herself. It was a box of Sister's favorite powder, that smelled of dead roses. "Thank you, child," Sister whispered, and her eyes, wet with tears, flickered open briefly.

No one, not even Elinor, dared suggest that the wedding be postponed on account of Sister's illness. Miriam had been preternaturally good about all the wedding arrangements, acquiescing to each and every suggestion put forth by Elinor or Queenie, but who knew what might happen if Miriam were asked to put off the date of her marriage to Malcolm Strickland? She might not go through with it at all. She might cart Malcolm off to a justice of the peace, and never come home afterward. She would certainly never set foot in Sister's room again. "And I'm not sure Miriam's not right," sighed Oscar, who was much affected by his sister's increased infirmity. "I remember how I put off and put off to please Mama, and it got us into nothing but trouble."

Elinor did not contradict him, and the wedding remained scheduled for Saturday.

The day after Christmas, workers from the mill came and erected open-sided tents in the yards behind all three of the Caskey houses, using the tall, narrow trunks of the water oaks as poles. The striped canvas tents stretched from the back porches of the houses all the way to the levee. A stage was erected on the edge of the forest, and here the small orchestra from Mobile would play. Malcolm was in charge of chairs and tables, and he had gathered them from churches, armories, and VFW halls all over the county. These preparations were of great interest to Perdido, and cars drove slowly up and down the road in front of the house all day long. Children sat perched on the fence around the orchard across the way, wearing their new Christmas clothes and showing off to one another their new toys as they watched the proceedings.

During all of this, Oscar felt only that he was in the way—in his own home—and the only place he might be out of the way was with Sister. So he made his way over to her house and sat at her side, talking of old times. Only occasionally would Sister respond to her brother's long stories and reminiscences, and rarely in a voice loud enough for him to make out the words. And when he did understand her, he shifted uncomfortably in his chair, for it appeared to him that Sister hadn't comprehended a word he had said to her. Yet there he continued to sit. He held Sister's hand, and he talked about the years in which he and Sister had grown up in this house with their mother Mary-Love. "And, Sister, you know what?" he said. "You're getting to look more and more like her every day."

All the Caskey cooks working for weeks together wouldn't have been able to prepare food for the crowd of people that was anticipated, and the caterers began arriving soon after dawn on Saturday morning.

The day was overcast and dim, though warm. The caterers worried about rain, but the Caskeys had no fear. Elinor had declared, succinctly but with absolute authority, "No rain today."

At nine o'clock, Elinor and Queenie, already in their finery, converged on Miriam's house and went upstairs to help Miriam into her dress. They found her struggling into it without ceremony or sentiment. "Damn! Damn! Damn!" she cried. "Don't people know enough to take the damned pins out?"

She was ready in another quarter-hour, and there was nothing to do but sit and wait until ten o'clock. Miriam sat impatiently by the window, beating her bouquet in the palm of her hand and occasionally calling out greetings to one of the workmen passing by below. Queenie went home to make certain that Malcolm got his tie on straight. Lucille and Grace came by, kissed Miriam, and said, "You are making a great mistake getting married to a man. We hope you're gone be the happiest woman in the world."

A few minutes before it was time to go next door, Elinor got up and shut the door, then strode back across the room and stood before her daughter. She and Miriam were alone.

"Well?" said Miriam impatiently. "Am I unzipped?"

"You look beautiful," said Elinor quietly. "I just wanted to ask you what you and Malcolm are doing about a ring?"

Miriam laughed, and pointed at the dresser in the corner of "the room. "Go ask Lilah if I don't have a whole damned case full of rings in the bottom drawer over there—and that's not to mention my safety-deposit boxes. I reached in there and pulled one out and gave it to Malcolm. No reason in putting out good money when I've got so many already."

"Miriam," said Elinor, "you know I haven't given you anything yet."

"Well, you've arranged all this," said Miriam, waving her hand inclusively toward the window. Below were the striped tents, a dozen servants and hired men; the sound of rattling bottles and a murmur of directives floated up. "I couldn't have done all that."

"I have something else for you though."

"What?" asked Miriam suspiciously.

"This," said Elinor, reaching into her purse and drawing out a simple diamond ring. The solitaire was cloudy but large, nearly three karats; the setting a four-pronged gold band. Miriam took it from her mother slowly, fingered the facets of the jewel, and then glaced back up at Elinor.

"This was Grandmama's," said Miriam slowly. "You took it off her when she was lying in the coffin. Before I got there."

"That's right," said Elinor.

"I have never forgiven you for that."

"I know," said Elinor.

"It didn't matter that you were the one who told me where the oil was down below Gavin Pond Farm, it didn't matter that you never tried to interfere with me in the running of the mill, it didn't matter that you kept this family together and made everybody pretty much happy—I have never forgiven you for taking this ring."

Elinor said nothing.

"I suppose," said Miriam, "that you want me to forgive you now."

"I don't expect that," said Elinor. "But it was right that you should have the ring, now that you're getting married."

Miriam glanced out of the window. "It's getting time," she said. "I'm going to have to go speak to Sister." She slipped the ring on her finger, rose and went out of the room, leaving her mother alone.

Miriam stood at the side of Sister's bed, holding her bouquet in her hands before her. It was the fragrance of those fresh flowers, so pervasive in the room that for so many years had smelled of only dead blossoms, that caused Sister's eyes to open.

"Sister," said Miriam, "I'm going over to Elinor's now, and Malcolm and I are gone get married."

Sister tried to turn away her head, but hadn't the strength. Her eyes fell shut again.

"We'll spend the afternoon getting ready for the reception this evening, and then after that Malcolm and I are taking off for New Orleans for our honeymoon. We were gone go to New York, but there's some business I need to get done in New Orleans, so we changed our plans. Malcolm says we'll go anywhere I want to go, and if I don't want to go anywhere we can stay right here. Queenie's gone stay with you while I'm gone, the way she always does. And when we get back, I'm moving Malcolm in over here. I haven't decided yet whether he's gone stay in my room, or whether I'm gone put him across the hall. But that doesn't matter to you, I guess, since you never get out of this room anyway. You don't have to worry about Malcolm, because I've already told him to leave you alone, and not come near you unless you call him. And he's already bought three new pairs of shoes with soft soles, so he won't be stomping through the house the way he usually does."

By no movement or other sign did Sister indicate she had heard a thing Miriam had said to her.

"Elinor just gave me Mama's ring, Sister. I thought that ring was gone forever. It's bigger than I remembered it, but the stone is flawed."

Sister still did not move. Her hands lay lifeless atop the coverlet.

Miriam suddenly turned and dragged a chair up to the bed. She tossed her bouquet aside. She sat in the chair, reached forward, and grasped both Sister's hands and squeezed them.

"Your blessing!" she hissed. "Give me your blessing, Sister!"

Sister slowly opened her eyes, arid even more slowly, she shook her head no.

• • •

The wedding ceremony was quiet and hurried. Ruthie Driver officiated. Ruthie, as everyone had predicted, had grown up to be just like her mother, Annie Bell. When Annie Bell Driver died, Ruthie took over the pastorship for the Zion Grace Baptist Church. Now she was married herself, but most people were hard put to remember her husband's name. Neither Miriam nor Malcolm attended Ruthie's church, but Miriam said she felt more comfortable being married by a woman. Billy Bronze was Malcolm's best man, and Lilah was the single bridesmaid. Oscar and Elinor held hands, as did Grace and Lucille. Tommy Lee put his arm around Queenie's heaving shoulders. The only music was that of a carpenter's last-minute hammering outside.

"All right," said Miriam, as soon as Ruthie had cried Amen to her prayer, "let's get this show on the road."