This One and Magic Life (17 page)

FATHER CARROLL COMES OUT OF THE CHAPEL. HANDSHAKES
, hugs. The introduction of Delmore Ricketts. The door opens, closes. Neighbors, friends. They finally go into the chapel where the closed gray casket is in an alcove at the front. Each person, even Donnie, sees Artie in it in her yellow dress.

“My friends,” Father Carroll says. “Our sympathy is extended to the family of Artemis Sullivan Jenkins. She was a very special presence on this earth and she will be missed. We welcome you to this service in her memory. May we pray:

She's gone, Donnie thinks. She's gone, thinks Ma
riel, and Hektor, May and Mrs. Cates, Delmore Ricketts.

She really wasn't all that bad, Mariel thinks. She had her problems, too. I was too judgmental.

“I hate God,” Hektor hears Artie say, opening the telegram from the War Department. She didn't mean it, God. You know she didn't. Forgive her. Forgive her for everything else, too. Please. And Donnie and me, too.

“Amen.”

Father Carroll clears his throat. Purses open; beads click. Crucifixes are held. “I believe in God, the Father Almighty…”

Donnie's fingers touch the beads, so familiar from his childhood. He is surprised that he remembers them perfectly, at how easily the words come. He feels the tenseness relax in his shoulders. “Pray for us, O Holy Mother of God, that we may be made worthy of the promises of Christ. Amen.”

Ghosts sit by everyone in the chapel. They walk the aisles, young, vibrant. Carl Jenkins, dressed in his
wedding suit, a rose in his buttonhole, smiles at his sister. He stands at the altar, shifting nervously from one foot to the other. He is chewing gum. Oh, Carl, for God's sake. Dorothy Jenkins chews mightily; he gets the message and swallows, guiltily. The music changes. Artie on Donnie's arm. A child. All of them children. Be happy, children.

The ghosts push their way between people. Mariel moves over to make room for her father who insists on sitting between her and her mother. Thomas and Sarah Sullivan's beads click.

Ana touches May's black hair. Hektor puts his arm around May and pulls her toward him. But May has felt the touch on her head; she looks up and sees her father scowling. She pats his hand. It's all right.

Artie throws Dorothy Jenkins her bouquet of gardenias. She kneels beside Donnie, embracing him. Her hair spills, golden and smelling of Halo shampoo, across his arm. She touches Father Audubon on the shoulder and ignores Zeke Pardue who sits in the back row, grinning.

“Grant it O Lord.”

Father Carroll casually pushes his way through the ghosts to shake hands with the family. He's an old hand at this.

“Thank you, Father.”

The crowd moves into the parlor. Outside it is night.

“I remember her wedding dress,” Dorothy Jenkins tells Mariel. “It had seed pearls all over the bodice. I always meant to ask her if it was her mother's.”

“It wasn't mine,” Sarah Sullivan says. “Actually I got married in a pink dress. Shocked everyone in Montgomery. They thought I was admitting I wasn't a virgin.”

“No,” Mariel tells Dorothy. “It wasn't her mother's.”

“I wonder what happened to it.”

“I'm sure it's stored somewhere at the house. Why? Do you think Cindy could use it?”

“Heavens no. All my girls make two of Artie. I was just thinking about it. You know how things pop into your head. What did you bury her in?”

“A yellow dress. Linen.”

“I know she looked nice.”

Mariel sees the package on the mantel. “Yes. She didn't want the casket open, though.”

“I don't either when my time comes. People stand
ing around looking and you not able to say a thing. Where's Dolly?”

“She's got a sinus infection and fever. I took her to Dave Horton this afternoon. I think she'll be able to be at the funeral tomorrow.”

“You give her my love.”

“I will. Thanks.”

“Mariel.” Father Carroll comes up. “That friend of Artie's from San Francisco seems very nice. He must have thought a lot of her to come all this way.”

“Yes. Hektor tracked him down.”

“I have to be going,” Dorothy says. “I'll see you tomorrow.”

“Fine, Dorothy. Thanks.”

Carl is waiting for Dorothy in the car. “Sister,” he says. They drive home, the smell of gardenias strong as a wall between them.

AT THE HOUSE, DOLLY IS WANDERING FROM ROOM TO ROOM
. She opens closet doors, cabinets. Uncle Hektor must take some things for May. Their grandmother's china or silver. Something in particular of Artie's that says Family. The cameo that had belonged to their great-grandmother. The vase with the embossed roses. How strange to think that these things cherished by generations are now hers, hers to take care of and cherish.

She feels dizzy when she moves too quickly. Nevertheless, she can't stay in bed. She fixes a cup of spiced tea. It smells like fall, like cloves and cinnamon and orange zest. She looks at Artie's almost nonexistent collection of cookbooks and opens one entitled
Jubilee
. Published by the Mobile Junior League, it must have belonged to Sarah Sullivan. Recipes are written in bold handwriting on all the flyleaves; notes crowd the margins.
Cook five minutes less. Doubled will serve twenty
. Pies and cakes have the most notations. It seems to Dolly that she must have come by her sweet tooth naturally. One recipe that catches her eye is for spoon
bread. When she feels better, she'll try it.
Delicious
, her grandmother has written beside it.

Dolly takes her tea and continues her wandering. She's looking for something. “Cold,” says the living room. “Warmer, warmer,” says the hall.

She should be at Artie's rosary. She sits on the steps and thinks of the service. “Hail, Mary, full of grace,” she begins and then realizes how her voice is echoing in the empty house. She drinks the tea and listens to the hum of the air conditioner. Hot and cold. She gets up and continues wandering.

She turns on the light and steps into the small bedroom that Artie had used for the last few months when the steps had gotten too hard for her to climb. It's the first time Dolly has been in this room since she got home and, with the exception of a small antique desk Artie had had brought down from her bedroom, it looks like the familiar guest room that Dolly has known all her life. Mrs. Randolph has thrown all the medicines into a plastic garbage bag, washed the linens, Lysoled. Death was just a transient visitor.

The bedspread is blue and white checked. Matching curtains hang at the windows. They were ordered from Penney's. Artie had let Dolly choose them and she had pored over the catalog for days before finally deciding. It had been a good choice, she realizes now, sitting on the bed, feeling the coziness of the room. One of Artie's paintings of Dolly, a child running down the beach with a blue bucket, hangs above the white wrought-iron bed. Beneath the bed, Dolly knows, are empty boxes, Christmas boxes that are taken out, dusted off, and used again and again. There's a sack of bows under there, too.

Dolly reaches over and opens the nightstand drawer. It yields nothing more dramatic than a tele
phone book and a couple of old photographs. One is of Dolly and Kelly Stuart building a sandcastle. They look to be about nine. Hardened glue on the back shows it has fallen from an album. Dolly tries to remember when it was taken, but there were so many days like that. Neither child knows the picture is being taken; they are too absorbed in their work. They have been at it a long time. There are turrets and moats, and both girls have sand in their hair and on their foreheads. Dolly puts the picture on the bed to show to Kelly.

The other picture is wonderful. It's her Uncle Hektor perched on the back of a buffalo. He's tiny, and someone is holding him on the buffalo. You can see a man's hands. But it's the expression on Hektor's face that makes it so perfect. He's looking straight at the camera which has captured not just fear and anger, but the whole indignity of being a child. Dolly puts it on top of the bed, too.

The small desk has always sat in the upstairs hall, a catchall for extra Gem clips, for pieces of stationery without envelopes. Old canceled checks. The junk desk. For some reason Artie had had it moved down here, though. Dolly goes to it and opens the top drawer.

Here are old income tax returns on which Dolly recognizes her father's handwriting. He would come out and do Artie's taxes for her. Artie's theatrics over the amount owed and what could be claimed as an expense were one of the highlights of Dolly's year. “But the trip was
necessary!
And those lunches were with potential buyers, for God's sake!” Artie would pace the floor and wring her hands. “I didn't make a
dime
last year and you want me to support the government single-handed!”

“Get real, Artie. You made a bundle.” And Donnie would show her the figures.

“But I had so many expenses!”

“Too many,” Donnie would agree, “and how many times have I told you clothes aren't a legitimate expense?”

“They are if they're necessary. Carol Burnett and Julie Andrews get to deduct their clothes.”

“They're considered costumes, Artie.”

“So are my clothes. Don't you think so, Dolly?”

“Absolutely.” Dolly loved this ritual. She recognized some theme being played out. The artist and the businessman. The brother and sister. This is my role; that is yours.

But eventually things would be settled and they would sit in the kitchen and eat Baskin-Robbins Pralines and Cream ice cream. It was Artie's favorite. “Enjoy,” she would say. “After today I won't be able to buy any more.” And they would enjoy, the three of them, sitting around the kitchen table. Mariel never came with them to do the taxes. She wouldn't have eaten the ice cream anyway, Dolly thinks. She was always on a diet. Not for the first time, it occurs to Dolly how unfair the competition had been between Artie and Mariel. She feels her mother's hands holding the cool cloth against her forehead this afternoon. She suddenly wants to see her, tell her it's all right that she won't eat Pralines and Cream. She probably would think that she, Dolly, had lost her mind. On the other hand, she just might understand. Mariel has surprised Dolly several times these last two days. Even her determination and subterfuge about the funeral have been surprising.

In the next drawer are some bundles of letters with rubber bands around them. The first packet Dolly picks up are from Carl to Artie. She opens the top one.
My darling
, it begins.
Don't worry about me, sweetheart
. She closes it and puts the rubber band back. Maybe later.
How young they had been. Artie had been a widow six years when she was Dolly's age.

Suddenly Dolly realizes that surely Artie had had other loves. Carl was a small-town boy who never had a chance to grow up, to live. You can't have experienced the only love of your life by the time you are twenty-two. Especially if you're someone as passionate as Artie. Somewhere there must have been a mature love. Not just an affair—a love. Dolly is surprised she hasn't understood this before. But if it were true, why had no one ever mentioned it? Strange.

Another packet of letters turns out to be from Thomas Sullivan to Sarah.
My darling
, the first one begins, just as Carl's had. Dolly reads this one. Her grandparents, dead before she was born, have always fascinated her.

We are not whole without you
. Dolly sees her grandfather trying to keep his family together, trying to deal with her grandmother's illness. How hard it must have been to see the dynamic, beautiful Sarah spiraling into her own hell. How much of them she must have taken with her again and again. Dolly folds the letter and puts it back. She will read these later, too.

Dolly still feels that somewhere in the house there is a message for her, a magic potion, maybe, that says, “Dolly, drink me.” And she will drink and understand the people who have lived in this house. Her family. Her place in the family. She wanders to the window in Artie's room. One strip of orange still glows at the horizon; the other side of the world where Carl Jenkins died is lightening. Across the bay in Mobile, lights are on. People are eating dinner, arguing, making love. And like Artie, Carl, Thomas, and Sarah, they are creating stories that no one will ever be able to tell correctly, not even the ones making them.

She picks up the pictures from the bed. She picks up the telephone book to put it back in the nightstand and a scrap of blue paper falls out. On it is written in unfamiliar handwriting,
I scarce know which part may greater be / what I keep of you or you rob from me
.

Dolly sits back on the bed and studies the words.
I keep of you; you rob from me
. On the back of the paper, in Artie's handwriting, is
Fruit-Gathering, Tagore. The purifying process of fire. Transformation. (Donnie)

Her head is too fuzzy from the antihistamines to try and think it out now. She slips the piece of paper and the two pictures into her pocket. Then she goes to the kitchen and looks in the freezer. It's there, Pralines and Cream. She doesn't bother to get a bowl. She eats it right out of the carton.