Shooting Stars 03 Rose (4 page)

The sound of the door buzzer made her eyelids flutter. The policemen pressed the buzzer again and Mammy opened her eyes, looked at me, and sat up.
"Was that our front door?"
"Yes, Mommy," I said. I couldn't swallow.
"Well, who would be here at this hour?"
I glanced out the window and then back at her. "It's the police, Mammy."
"The police?"
She smothered a cry. She seemed frozen. Her hand hovered near her throat. Something horrible exploded in my heart just watching her reactions,
"Go," she finally managed to utter.
I went quickly to the door and opened it. They had their hats off again. Both looked so tall and impressive, larger than life, beyond reality, like two characters who had emerged from the television program we were barely watching.
"Is this the home of Charles Wallace?" the slightly taller one on the right asked me.
"Yes."
"Is Mrs. Wallace here?"
"Yes." I'm glad they didn't ask another question. I didn't think I could say more.
They stepped in and I backed up. The second patrolman closed the door behind him.
"May we speak with her?" the first patrolman asked me.
I nodded and went to the living room doorway. They followed. "Mrs. Charles Wallace?" he asked.
Mommy nodded-- slightly, stiffly. Quickly. I went to her side and she reached up for my hand.
The patrolman approached us. In the light his face looked pale, his eyes two ebony marbles.
"I'm sorry, ma'am, but your husband appears to have been in a serious hunting accident. A few hours ago, a farmer out in Granville Lake called the local police to report a row boat with a man slumped in it."
A long sighed escaped from Mommy's choked throat. She swayed and would have fallen forward, if I hadn't held tightly to her hand.
"The patrolman on the scene reported what looked like a gun accident. ma'am. Searching for identification, he came up with your husband's license and other items. He had a fatal wound in his chest area. I'm sorry." the patrolman said.
"My husband... is... dead?" Mammy asked. She had to hear the definite words.
"I'm very sorry," he replied, nodding. "It's too early to tell, but preliminary examination suggests he was killed instantly and some time before he was discovered."
"I called the police to report him being very late,"
Mammy said, as if that should have prevented it. "They told me I would have to wait longer."
The patrolman nodded.
"Yes, ma'am. What we have here is an unattended death, ma'am, so there is a mandatory autopsy."
My leas finally gave out on me and I crumpled to the sofa and sat beside her. Mammy just stared at the two patrolmen.
"Maybe there's someone you should call." the second patrolman directed to me.
I shook my head.
"Someone will be here in the morning to tell you more," the first patrolman continued. "Is there anything we can do for you at the moment?"
Mammy shook her head.
I didn't feel myself. I thought I had turned into pure air and a breeze would come along and simply scatter me everywhere. My daddy was dead? He wasn't corning home for his duck dinner. He was never coming home again. Mammy and I were alone forever.
The second patrolman stepped forward and held out a plastic bag with Daddy's personal things in it. I saw his wallet, his watch, and his wedding ring. Mammy just looked up at it. I reached out and took it.
"We located his vehicle about a mile upstream," the patrolman said after I took the bag. "After we examine it, we'll have it brought back."
"This is very unfortunate, ma'am. Did your husband go out by himself, do you know, or did he go with someone else?" the first patrolman asked softly.
Suddenly, I felt we really were in a television movie. The police were trying to determine if Daddy's death was truly accidental.
"Himself," Mammy managed to utter.
"You're positive, ma'am?"
"He didn't go out with anyone," I said sharply. The patrolman nodded.
"Was he upset when he left today?" he continued.
"Upset?" My mother smiled. "No, not Charles. Not Charles, never upset."
They stood there silently. What were they after? What were they tying to say?
"What could have happened?'" I asked. The second patrolman shook his head.
"He could have tripped and accidentally discharged the gun," he suggested. "It's not the most uncommon thing to happen."
"It's never wise to go out alone," the first patrolman said, as if we could learn an important lesson from this.
"Tripped?" my mother muttered.
"Well, we did find he was drinking some, ma'am. There was a bottle of bourbon in the boat. Guns and whiskey just don't mix," he added. Another valuable lesson.
Mammy just stared up at him. I looked at the floor. The words were all jumbling in my mind, stacking up and sprawling out like some product on an assembly line in the Lewis Foundry going awry.
"You're sure there's nothing we can do for you?" the second patrolman asked.
Mammy shook her head, her eyes so glassy they looked fake.
"Please accept our condolences, ma'am."
They stood there a moment and then both turned and walked out the door. We heard them open the front door and close it behind them. I looked down at the plastic bag containing Daddy's things in my hand. Mommy followed my eves and stared at it, too.
She reached out and took the bag, plucking the ring gently from the bag and turning it in her fingers.
"Charles," she said and she started to sob, deep rasping sobs emerging from her throat, but no tears yet from her eyes. It was all taking hold slowly, but firmly, the realization, the reality that this was not some nightmare. This had just happened.
I saw the words and the thoughts forming in her eyes. Her husband was gone.
I took a deep breath. I had to let reality in, too. I had to let the thought take shape.
My daddy was gone.

I had only vague memories of both of them, and the one picture Mammy had of her father was of him staring at the camera, almost
daring it to capture his image. Mommy told me he didn't believe in smiling for pictures because it made him look insubstantial and foolish, and he hated being thought anything but important. Looking at him in the picture frightened me so much, I had nightmares.

Neither he nor my grandmother responded to the announcement of my father's death and more importantly didn't offer any assistance. It compounded my mother's sorrow and laid another heavy rock on her chest.

The only time I could actually recall my father talking about death was when he said, why talk about it?

"As I see it, there are things over which you have some control and things over which you don't. Rose. Just forget about the ones you don't. Pretend they don't exist and it won't bother you," he told me.

However, for us, that translated into all sorts of big problems beginning with no money for a real funeral, a grave site, or a tombstone. When Mammy lamented about these things. I wondered why she had permitted it to happen, too, why hadn't she insisted on facing realities? Why hadn't she seen to it that these things were addressed? Why did she bury her head in the sand Daddy poured around us? I wanted to scream at her, demanding to know why she had put up with all of this irresponsibility.

But how do you ask such questions and say such hard things to a woman who looked like she was being dragged over hot coals by a cruel and indifferent Fate? Was there any way to have such a sensible conversation with someone who looked stunned, who barely could eat or talk or dress herself in the morning? She was always a woman who paid attention to her appearance, and now, she didn't care how washed-out and haggard she looked.

Fortunately for us. Mr. Kruegar decided he would pay Daddy's salary for two more months and help with the funeral costs. Apparently, he really did like Daddy and enjoyed his company at the
dealership. As soon as the news of Daddy's death was out. Mr. Kruegar was the first one to come calling, and that was when he made all these offers.

"We got a lot of new business out of sponsoring you in the beauty contest," he told me as we all sat in our living room. It was so still and quiet, it did seem as if the world had been put on pause. "I'm glad your father asked me to do it."

I simply stared at him. How could he talk about something like that at this horrible time? I wondered.
He smiled at Mommy. She nodded, but she looked like she would nod at anything, even if he merely cleared his throat.
"You know, next month is Kruegar's twentyfifth anniversary. I'm thinking of having a big celebration. Refreshments, balloons, little mementos to give out, special discounts on the new cars and used cars, stuff like that. I'm going to have the local television network there and a radio station
broadcasting from my site. I'd like you to come down and be one of my hostesses." he told me. "Maybe you could wear that beauty contest swimsuit and do that hula-hula dance you did. You'll be on television.I'll pay you a hundred dollars a day that weekend." he added. Mommy raised her eyebrows and looked at me.
"I don't feel much like parading around in a bathing suit and dancing, Mr. Kruegar."
"Oh, I know that. Not now, but next month. Give it some thought. okay? I'd like to do what I can to help you people. I'll miss him. Great guy, great salesman. Broke a record in March, you know. I gave him that thousand dollar bonus for it."
He turned to Mammy, but she shook her head and I realized Daddy had never told her. I wondered why. I think Mr. Krutzar realized it, too, because he suddenly looked embarrassed and made his excuses to leave.
Some of my school friends came to visit and a few of the women Mammy had gotten to know and be friendly with brought baskets of fruit and flowers, some coming with their husbands, but most coming alone. Everyone wanted to know what we were going to do now, but few came right out and actually asked. I think they were afraid she might ask them for help.
Mommy was still considering going to work at the insurance company. We were in very bad financial condition, even with the two months' salary from Mr. Kruegar, because Daddy's income really came from commissions. We had little in a savings account and all our regular expenses loomed above and around us like big old trees threatening to crush us. In the evenings Mommy would sift through
her possessions, considering what she could sell to raise some money. I felt so terrible about it. I offered to quit school and get a job myself, Of course, she wouldn't hear of it.
"You're so close to graduation, Rose. Don't be stupid."
"Well, how are we going to manage, Mammy?" I asked. "Bills are raining down around us like hail."
"We'll get by, somehow," she said. "Other people who suffer similar tragedies do, don't they?" she asked. It sounded too much like another of Daddy's promises floating in a bubble. I didn't reply, so her warning continued.
At first she didn't tell me about her desperate pleas to her father, how she had belittled herself, and had accepted his nasty descriptions of her and of Daddy just to see if she could get him to advance her some money. In the end he relented and sent a check for a thousand dollars, calling it charity and saying since he would give this much to the Salvation Army, he would give this much to us. But he left it pretty clear that Mammy shouldn't ask him for another nickel. He told her he thought struggling, suffering, would be the best way for her to understand fully what a mess she had made with her life by not listening to him. It was very important for him to be right than generous and loving. When she finally broke down and told me all of it, she was shattered.
"I used to love him." she moaned as if that had been something of an accomplishment.
"Doesn't everyone love their fathers?" I asked.
"No," she said with her lips twisting and writhing with her pain. "There are some fathers you just can't love, for they don't want your love. They see showing emotion as weakness. I can't even remember him kissing me, whether it was good night, good-bye or on my birthday."
I decided Daddy had been correct about people like that: just cut them away as you would cut away so much swamp grass and keep your boat surging forward.
After the funeral and the period of
bereavement. I returned to school. The night before I told Mommy that I had decided I was going to pretend Daddy wasn't gone. He was just on some sales trip. I was doing what he always did when he was faced with unpleasant events and problems. I decided, I was ignoring death. She became angry as soon as I finished telling her.
"I won't let you," she said. "You're not going to fall into the same traps I fell into, traps he set with his promises and his happy-go-lucky style. I let him mesmerize me, bedazzle and beguile me until I became too much like him. Look what it's gotten me!" she cried, her arms out. She turned to the mirror. "I'm old beyond my years because of all this worry and trouble.
"No, Rose. No. Your father is dead and gone. You must accept the truth, accept reality, and not live in some make-believe world as he did, and as I permitted myself to live in as well. Now we have to find ways to make the best of our lives without him.
"I'm sure wherever he is, he's belittling what happened to him and telling other souls to forget it. He's telling them they can't do anything about it, so just say. "Whatever' and play your harp. He's probably looking for ways to move on to another heaven or hell for that matter, trying to get himself thrown out," she said. She smiled, but she was crying real tears, too.
I hugged her and promised not to ignore reality anymore. She forced me to confront it dramatically that night by helping her box all of his things, most of which she had decided to donate to charity.
"If we only made enough money to use it as a write-off," she muttered.
I hated folding his clothes and stuffing them in cartons. The scent of his cologne was still on most of them, and when the aroma entered my nostrils, it stirred pictures of him in my mind and the sound of his voice in my ears. I worked with Mammy, but I cried and sobbed, especially when I felt him twirling my hair and heard him reciting. "Your eyes are two diamonds. Your hair is spun gold. Your lips are rubies and your skin comes from pearls. My sweet Rose."
Closing the cartons was another way to say, "Good-bye. Daddy. Good-bye."