Tomorrow River (22 page)

I begged my sister to “please, please, tell me. I can’t stand not knowin’. Your suitcase drawing shows that Mama was going to leave, but . . . then what happened? Did she fall down the well the same way Mars did? Or get a heart attack? She
was
looking very pale under those carnival lights. I saw another person back there that night besides Papa, did you?” But no matter how much I begged or how hard I tried to convince her to share her secret with me, she stayed resolutely mute.

E. J. must’ve gotten worried out of his mind when Woody and I didn’t show up in the morning to start our search for Mama the way we’d planned, because he came to the fort as well.

He didn’t call up, “Ollie . . . ollie . . . got room for one more?” like he always does. He stood beneath the branches and sang, “Love me tender, love me true” in a reedy voice and then he climbed up the fort steps, poked the hatch open just wide enough to slide in a basket of fresh-picked blackberries.

Lou came, too. Instead of squawking from the porch like she usually does, she called up meekly from below, “I got flapjacks and bacon for ya in the cottage. Extra syrup. You gotta eat.”

I didn’t understand why she was being so out-of-character nice until I remembered that after Papa told me about Mama’s being dead and he disappeared into the rain, I saw Lou still plastered up against the shed, spying on me the same way I’d been spying on her with Uncle Blackie. She must’ve followed me back to the fort, listened to my ranting at Woody, then run back and told Mr. Cole because he came, too.

Our caretaker asked, “You two all right?”

I don’t know why, but I yelled back at him, “Right as rain,” which made me sound a lot braver than I was feeling.

Mr. Cole must’ve went and fetched Beezy because some time later I heard her froggy voice scolding Lou from below, “Don’t you dare go up there. They don’t need you throwin’ no bones or chantin’ conjurations. Leave those girls be. They’s in mourning.” She gentled her voice when she called up to Woody and me, “Ya got to keep your strength up. Here come some fritters in the Bucket Express. When you’re ready to talk, Shen, I’ll be waitin’ to listen.”

I know she will. She is an expert on death. Not only did she kill her husband, she lives across the street from Stonewall Jackson Cemetery. That’s where Mama must be. No, Bootie Young would’ve told me he dug her grave and expressed his utmost sympathy.

When I find where she’s buried, and I will, I won’t set white peonies at her headstone because of what she told me the day I brought them to her from Beezy’s. “It’s important to let flowers grow, Shen. People, too. Do you understand?” It’s so obvious to me now that she was talking about Papa. And how he made her feel trampled beneath his feet. I’ll also tell my mother’s dearly departed soul, “I’m so sorry for the way I treated you. Woody has stopped talking, but I know she wishes you well, too. Don’t worry. I’ll take good care of her. When we move to New York City, we’ll be the talk of the town.” Then we’ll weep and I’ll quote Emily Dickinson since she was Mama’s favorite. The poem where death stopped and took someone away in a carriage.

But the carriage didn’t hold just Mama and immortality. Papa was in the clearing the night Mama died. And there was a shadow of another person weaving around in the trees—I didn’t imagine that, I know I didn’t.

From the way they’re all acting, seems to me like everybody either knew or suspected that Mama had passed away the whole time I’ve been looking for her. Feels like they hung me out to dry. But maybe, I guess, they
were
trying to tell me and I was just too wrapped up in my plan to find her that I didn’t take notice. Beezy was always discouraging me from looking for Mama. Telling me it was too hard a task to take on all by myself or trying to distract me with some gossip. And sometimes I would catch Mr. Cole staring at Woody and me with such pity in his eyes. And Sam. He never was enthusiastic about doing detective work for me. He must’ve known that searching for his good friend would be useless. Even E. J. Thinking back on it now, he seemed to lose his merry smile whenever I brought up the subject of finding Mama.

I am the last to know.

No. That’s not true. Somewhere inside me, I’ve known all along that our mother’s life had ended.

Woody told me.

She played possum with Mama’s Chantilly powder, covering herself white from head to toe. Those utterly black drawings. I convinced myself it was my sister’s despair over Mama’s disappearance that had gotten hold of her and drug her to the depths the same way it had me early on, but it wasn’t. Her acting like that, it was the only way she could let me know that Mama was dead. Woody’s running off makes sense to me now, too. She wasn’t climbing down the trellis and cantering off to the Triple S or the hobo camp to torment me. My twin was doing the same thing that I’ve been doing, trying to run away from the truth.

When I find enough strength to pull out of my sister’s grip, the sun is melting behind the mountains and streaking the sky the color of orange and raspberry sherbet. We ate the berries that E. J. brought and the fritters from Beezy, but I’m hungry again, so my twin must be, too. The pill-laced fudge that she spit out is sitting next to a candle on the Saint Jude coffee can altar. This whole time it wasn’t our mother’s return that my sister’s been praying for night after night the way I thought she was. She knew Mama wasn’t ever coming back. My twin was begging Saint Jude to intercede on my behalf.
I
was the lost cause.

“Stay put, would you? I’m gonna get us something to eat.” Woody is still lying huddled on the fort floor. Using Ivory like a pillow. I run my finger down her cheek, following the tear trail.

“
Ciao
,” I say, thinking that speaking some Italian might remind her of Mama and make her smile and that’s the best I can muster.

That’s what people do at a funeral. Bring food. Recall fond memories. Pretend the whole time like they will be able to take the next step down the road of life without holding on to the hand of the one they loved and lost, when they know in their hearts that’s nothing more than the most hopeless of dreams.

C
hapter Twenty-one

I
’m on my way to E. J.’s by way of the stepping stones.

The creek is running fast. How tempting it is to wade in. Watch the emerging stars as I float downstream to finally get swept over the falls. Is that what Mama did? Did she feel so sad about her unhappy marriage that she threw herself in? That might be the reason why Papa has kept her passing so hush-hush. He wouldn’t want folks to know that his wife did away with herself rather than face one more day being married to him. That would embarrass him, and His Honor hates being embarrassed as much as he does being pitied.

It was the talk of the town when Mama’s fellow choir singer, Mrs. Clayton, put on her wedding dress, threw a rope around a barn rafter, climbed onto a milk can, and stepped off into eternity after her husband told her that he didn’t love her anymore. But Mrs. Clayton was childless and Mama had Woody and me to think about. No. She’d never do that. But if she did, in a moment of weakness, I’d understand. Nobody can get at your heart once it’s lying six feet under.

That makes me say out loud Mr. William Wordsworth’s poem that Mama cried over so often. “‘What though the radiance which was once so bright be now for ever taken from my sight, though nothing can bring back the hour of splendor in the grass, of glory in the flower, we will grieve not, rather find strength in what remains behind.’”

I know I will not be able to “grieve not,” as he suggests, but I am determined to reach deep within myself to find “strength in what remains behind.” During those forlorn nights in the fort, I vowed to myself to discover the truth about Mama’s passing. Finding out what happened to her is the only way I’ve got left to respect her memory, to honor her.

The first and best place to start looking for answers, as always, begins and ends with my family.

Papa knows what happened to Mama, so that means Grampa and Blackie must know, too. His Honor is putty in their hands. But our grandmother? Since the Carmody men keep everything that’s important to themselves, Gramma Ruth Love might
not
know about Mama’s passing, unless she overhead them talking, which she probably has. Even though Grampa has her kowtowed, she doesn’t let that stop her from placing a drinking glass on walls to listen in on conversations or picking up the telephone extension in a very stealthy way. But if our grandmother knows about Mama’s passing, why hasn’t she told Woody and me?

Grampa probably caught her eavesdropping and forbid her to tell us. When she comes for Founders Weekend, I’ll get her out of his clutches the same way our mother used to. I’ll have her join us in Woody’s and my bedroom and ask her questions about our dearly departed. I’m sure she’ll confess to me that she’s known all along and just couldn’t stand to be the bearer of such bad news. And after we all get done crying together, she’ll say a Bible passage for her good friend and daughter-in-law. Probably that lying-down-in-green-pastures part.

Oh, Mama.

I want to be with you.

It would be so easy to let the creek water wash away this pain forever.

I better take the road way to E. J.’s.

 

 

C
rickets are singing soprano and alto frogs are harmonizing. They’re romancing. I’ve made up my mind never to join that choir. You get swept away by love and before you know it, you’re married. And marriage rusts. No matter how hard you work to scrap it off and polish it up, it will never come back to its original shine. It’s not just Mama and Papa’s or Grampa and Gramma’s wedded unbliss that I’m thinking about. Look at Mary Jane Upton wandering around town half clothed, looking for her tomcat of a husband. And the ladies down at Filly’s beauty shop are all the time complaining about how their men chew with their mouths open and how lazy they are until it comes time for them to go hunting or fishing.

There’s only one exception to that marriage disaster that I know of. Dorry and Frank Tittle. This dirt-poor couple have got the Midas touch when it comes to love.

I was trying to be quiet as I came up their dirt drive, but the Tittles’ next-door neighbors, the Calhouns, raise hound dogs. They must’ve picked up my scent. They’re baying loud enough to make Mrs. Tittle come out onto the sagging porch of her ramshackle house with the new baby pressed to her breast. She is a plain woman with straight brunette hair that ends at her chin. She’s barefoot, but wearing a fancy white dress that was my mother’s, and I have to bite my cheek to keep from crying out. Mama couldn’t tell our father that she didn’t care for all the frilly outfits that he bought her. When Papa asked her, “Why aren’t you wearing the new frock? The one with the big bows?” Mama would say, “I’m sorry, dear. I can’t zip it. I must’ve gained a few pounds.” Then she’d bundle up those flouncy gowns and bring them over here.

“Shenny? That you?” Mrs. Tittle calls into the dark.

Stepping out of the shadows, I say, “Yes, ma’am. Sorry for disturbing you. How has Mr. Tittle been feelin’?” The sound of his hacking cough is coming out of the screened windows. E. J. told me when his daddy tries to rest, all the black sludge in his lungs wakes up.

E. J.’s mama says, “Mr. Tittle is doin’ just . . .”

She’s about to tell me that her husband is good and fine. I save her from committing a venial sin by saying, “Lovely evening, isn’t it?”

Mrs. Tittle doesn’t lift her eyes and she doesn’t ask me what I’m doing here. She knows I’ve come for her boy. When Baby Fay starts whimpering, she jiggles her gently. Coos that song that only mothers seem to know.

“Well, night then,” I have a hard time saying.

After she goes back into the house, all I want to do is chase after her, crawl into her arms, and have her rock me like I’m her baby, too. The empty space where Mama used to be is weighing so heavy on my heart . . . it takes all I got to put one foot in front of another.

I find E. J. setting rabbit traps out back. He always does about this time of night.

“Hey,” I call to him.

He knocks over his red lantern when he jumps to his feet. “Hey.”

This is not the first nor do I imagine it will be the last time I come over here for his help.

I right the lantern and say, “Get your shoes on.”

“What’s goin’ on? Is it Woody?” he asks, alarmed as he reaches for his sneakers that are next to him on the log. “Has she run off again?”

“No, no, she’s all right.” I cross myself in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost to guarantee that she is.

E. J. points and says, “That’s a nice ring. Where’d ya get it?” I bet he’s thinking something like it would make a nice engagement present for Woody when the time comes.

I sit next to him and hold the mother-of-pearl in front of my face. “Clive told me I could have it after he died.” The ring really is gorgeous. It even smells good. Like the ocean. “I took it from his place when I went and got Ivory.”

E. J. gives me a smile and a nod. He knows that my bark is worse than my bite. Having that dog by Woody’s side will calm her down better than almost anything.

I watch as he laces up the high tops he got at the church rummage sale. They’re royal blue and two sizes too big. “Thanks for bringin’ the berries up to the fort. I coulda done without the song, though. Can’t for the life of me understand why Woody liked it so much.”

He grins.

“Our mother’s dead,” I say.

“Yeah,” he says, not looking up. “I suspected she might be.”

“Really? Why’s that?” I ask somewhat eagerly. The Tittle place is so close to ours and E. J.’s always running around in the woods and going back and forth across the creek searching for something good to eat. Could he have seen what happened to Mama and just been too nervous to tell me?

He says, “When she didn’t come back for such a long time . . . she wasn’t the kind of person who would just up and leave her babies. She just wasn’t.” Mama was always kind to E. J. Paid him too much money to do odd jobs around Lilyfield and gave him plates of her pecan fudge to take home to his other two sisters, who thought it was delicious because they’re not very picky eaters. “My mama thinks so, too. She told me that if she could, Miss Evie would’ve come home by now. That had to mean that she couldn’t. That she was . . . ya know.”