Tomorrow River (6 page)

“No, no. Why would you think that?” I
pshaw
. “She’s just been puttin’ on way too much Ben-Gay and it’s been bothering Woody’s sensitive nose, that’s all.”

That Ben-Gay part is true, but what I don’t tell easily upset Beezy is that on her last visit, our grandmother made us play Holy Communion with her all afternoon. That also bugged Woody, but can you blame her? A person can only stand eating Wonder Bread that’s been crushed into religious wafers for so long without getting bloated.

“Got any new wiggle-waggle?” I ask, trying to draw Beezy off the Gramma topic and back to the business at hand. Her eyes may not work, but her ears are like sponges soaking up the juicy gossip getting spread by the women that strut past her place on their way downtown. She’s got to have heard something. Mama’s disappearance is still big news.

“Lemme see, lemme see,” Beezy says, letting what she’s working on slip to her little lap. “Well, just about everybody’s talking ’bout how Mary Jane Upton showed up at the grocery yesterday wearin’ a bathing suit and calling herself Rita Hayworth.”

Mrs. Upton is always going around town underdressed asking after her tomcat of a husband who works nights at the Old Blue Hotel. You’d think everybody would be used to her by now. “Ya got anything
new
?”

Beezy considers, then says, “I heard that Abigail Hawkins been elected president of the Ladies Auxiliary.”

“Big deal.”

“I also heard she’s been showin’ up at your place on a regular basis. Any truth to that?”

A taste something like an iron handrail comes into my mouth. “She’s been bringing up corn bread and rhubarb pie and . . . I swear, that woman is tryin’ to give Betty Crocker a bad name.”

Beezy
tsks . . . tsks.
“It’s not a fondness for cookin’ that’s bringing Miss Abby up to Lilyfield and I expect you know that, Shen.”

I protest, “Whatta ya mean?” like I have no idea what she’s referring to, even though I have my suspicions. I heard Father Tommy tell Papa after church, “A year’s time is considered long enough to grieve, Walter. The twins need a mother.”

For God’s sakes, where’s his faith? His hope? I can’t believe that priest is forgetting the same way that some of the single ladies in town are that Mama is not gone forever, only temporarily so. Abigail Hawkins is the worst of them, but I’ve kept a list of every one of those women who bat their eyes at Papa after Mass. Woe to them is all I got to say on that subject. (I’m planning on getting Miss Delia who lives at the boardinghouse to put a hex on all of them. You should see what she did to Charity Thomas who got on my bad side. Miss D gave her a hump. A big one. Think camel.)

“Yes, indeedy,” Beezy says, rocking back. “Sounds to me like Miss Hawkins is busy settin’ a web for your father.”

E. J. comes bursting back onto the porch with a fritter in each hand and chewing another. He’s coated them in mayonnaise. I think you could get him to do just about anything for a jar of Hellmann’s. He swallows and says, “Miss Abby settin’ a web, yup. Sounds that way to me, too.”

“It does not,” I say, elbowing him in the ribs. “You’re just angling for more fritters.”

“
Singin’ in the Rain
is showing again up at Hull’s,” Beezy says, picking up her yarn and hinting on how she’d like to spend this Thursday evening. She loves old-time movie night just like Mama. Especially if they’re showing a musical one. Woody and me would wear our baby doll pajamas to Hull’s Drive-In on sweltering summer nights. Mama would turn up the speaker and her and Beezy would sing along and we’d drink Coca-Cola right out of the bottle and eat Cracker Jack under the stars and that was all so . . . well, heavenly. We’re missing those good old times up at Hull’s so I try to make up for that on the Thursdays when Papa is nowhere to be found. I chauffeur us up to the drive-in in Beezy’s old brown Pontiac that I can handle if we go slow.

“I had to sneak into the Belmont Theater when that picture show first come out,” she says. “People of my color weren’t—”

“Beezy Bell! Please don’t make me drag it out of you. I’m running out of time,” I say, impatient. I hold our mother’s watch up to her ear. It’s inscribed on the back with the word
Speranza
, which means “hope” in the Italian language. Mama got this watch from our friend Sam Moody. It’s my most prized possession. Not only does it make me feel with every tick that I’m getting closer to finding her, it’s also an excellent reminder that Woody and I got a fast friend in Sam, who is Beezy’s illegitimate, by the way. “Have you got something helpful or not? If the answer is
not
, then we’re gonna run over to the drugstore and talk to Vera.”

“Sugar, it’s been so long,” Beezy says, disheartened. “Your mother—”

“‘Defer no time, delays have dangerous ends.’” Sam used to say that to my mama all the time. “William Shakespeare wrote that. It means—time’s a-wastin’, so you better hurry up and do something before something else real bad happens.” Beezy doesn’t want my heart to get broken if I can’t find Mama. That’s why she’s holding back. “If I hadn’t waited so long to go lookin’ for her in the first place, maybe she’d be home right now,” I say, softer. “You understand?”

Clearly not wanting to, she sighs out, “Yesterday afternoon Dorothea Dineen was tellin’ Harriet Godwin that she heard Evie applied for a library position before she disappeared.”

It’s true Mama was at her happiest when surrounded by books, but well-to-do married women have their gardens and the pampering of their husbands and children to fill their days. They do not have jobs. I mean, Mama
could’ve
gotten a position at the library if that was allowed. She went to Sweet Briar College to study singing with hopes of appearing on Broadway someday, but then she fell in love with the great poets of the past and the masters of art so she switched over to learn about them until she fell in love with Papa. They got married short of her receiving her sheepskin.

I ask Beezy, “Ya sure you heard that right? A library position?” Papa wouldn’t let us go over there anymore after Mama vanished, so I started phoning on Tuesday afternoons, which was our usual checking-out-books time. I knew it was stupid, but I kept hoping that one of those times somebody would come onto the line, saying, “Miz Carmody? Why, sure she’s here.” Moments later, I’d hear Mama’s breathy “Hello?” and when I asked her where she’s been all this time, she’d say, “Oh, dear. I’ve lost track of the time. Your father’s not home from the courthouse yet, is he?” I finally had to give up the calling. That hog of a librarian, Jeanine Anderson, squealed to Papa and that’s why all that’s left of the downstairs phone is its roots.

E. J. stuffs the last bit of fritter into his mouth and asks, “What’s that you’re workin’ on, Miz Bell?”

“It’s something new I’m tryin’ out. It’s a muffler.” She holds up the piece of chartreuse and puce knitting. It’s anything but muffled. Since she can’t see what yarns she’s combining together, her stuff is louder in color than a marching band. “Ya like it, Shenny?” she asks, waving it my way.

“Love it,” I say, getting more and more riled by the second. We don’t have time for a regular visit like this, but trying to get Beezy to hurry through polite talk is like pushing a mule up a hill.

“Speakin’ of work,” she says, back busy with hers. “Little Walter thinkin’ of gettin’ himself back to the courtroom any time soon?” That’s what she calls Papa.
Little Walter
. So what if he’s got to sit on a phone book to see over his judge’s bench, she doesn’t have to say so, does she?

“I’m sure after Mama returns, His Honor will be rarin’ to get back to his gavel,” I answer, because it seems too disloyal to tell her that I can’t picture his erratic self in a courtroom any time soon. Who cares when he gets back to work anyway? It’s not like we need the money. We’re the richest family in town and my grandfather owns half the county.

Beezy hears me yawn and asks, “Not gettin’ your eight straight?”

“Not even six. Woody spends most of the night . . .” I glance down at my sister.

Her coloring arm is back and forthing with the only crayon she’s uses anymore—funeral black. It really bothers me that she won’t write words. If she can’t talk—fine. But she’s got the paper, she’s got the crayons, would it kill her to jot down one of these times
Hey Shen, I love you
?

“Have ya been takin’ her to visit the doc?” Beezy asks, sensing my upset the way she can.

“A course I have.”

Papa gave me permission to take Woody to Doc Keller’s office above Milligan’s Hardware every Sunday evening after the sidewalks get rolled up. Mostly all he does is ask lots of questions about what we think might’ve happened to Mama. I stonewall him, because what business is it of his anyway? “Can’t you just fix her?” I ask every time, hoping he’ll change his answer.

“I could. If there was something physically wrong,” he tells me when he’s done examining my sister’s throat. “Her vocal cords are in fine working order. She’s got hysterical muteness.”

Chester Keller may be Papa’s fraternity brother and oldest friend, but I think he’s gone over the hill and isn’t ever coming back. What’s so funny about my sister losing her voice?

Beezy’s forehead gets as furrowed as her knitting. “This lookin’ for Evelyn . . . it’s . . . it’s a lot to take on all by yourself, Shenny.”

I almost cry out,
What am I supposed to do exactly? Papa’s threatening to send Woody away because she won’t talk. . . . We need to get Mama back more than ever.
Beezy may be privy to a lot of what goes on around town, but she doesn’t know half of what’s happening up at Lilyfield. She knows that Papa is keeping us close, but has no idea how close. If I
did
clue her in to the root cellar and the interrogation sessions and all the other stuff, there’s not one thing she could do to help so there’s no sense in getting her worked up. That could be dangerous for her.

“Please don’t fret,” I say. “I’m
not
takin’ this on all by myself. There’s somebody else I’ve got in mind to lend a helping hand.”

Beezy knows
exactly
who I’m talking about and her lips are saying, “
Mmm . . . hmm
,” but she doesn’t mean it. If I could spend a minute more reassuring her, I would, but my sister has gone into a prey stance, rigid as a hound. If she had a tail, it’d be pointing.

“No . . . no . . .” I reach out for Woody, but she slips right through my fingers.

“What’s happenin’, Shen?” Beezy asks, always alert.

“It’s all right. It’s fine.” I pat her knee, which feels exactly like a glass doorknob.

“Woody’s just run off again. I’ll take care of it.” From the edge of the porch, I holler, “Get back here!” She not only ignores me, my sister doesn’t even bother to look both ways as she tears across the street to what she’s honed in on—the cemetery. “Don’t ya wanna finish your picture of . . . ah?”

I look down at what she’s been coloring on, already knowing that it’s going to be something morbid. Like a woman getting beat by a horned Satan or a hairy beast with foamy madness dripping off its stalactite teeth. Sure enough, today’s drawing reminds me a lot of our dog, Mars. Only it’s real bloody and gutsy. I should tell Woody that dog is never coming back. I really should.

“Quit catchin’ flies with your mouth and do something!” I shout at E. J. He’s lazing against the railing, watching with jaw-dropping adoration as my sister zigzags through the headstones to the side of Bootie Young, who is up to his belly button in a fresh grave. The reason E. J. is not rushing after her is that he knows what Woody has got herself all worked up about and it’s
not
Bootie Young.

Making my point, she doesn’t even seem to notice that handsome hunk as she begins pacing. Up and down . . . down and up . . . flapping her arms the length of the grave. Flapping is the second most irritating thing she does next to eye blinking, which always makes me think she’s trying to send me an SOS in Morse code and I don’t know Morse code. I better get over there quick before she does something wholly unpredictable.

“She’s not hurtin’ anybody,” E. J. says, clamping on to my arm as I rush past him. “Leave her be, Shen.”

I rip out of his grasp. “Get off me!” I’m surprised by how mad I am, and by the look on his face, E. J. is, too. “Quit telling me what to do and if you ever touch me again you . . . you . . . minin’ sludge . . . I’ll . . . I’ll—”

“Shenandoah Wilson Carmody!” Beezy admonishes. “Apologize to Ed James right this minute.”

“But he . . . he—”

“Shenny,” Beezy demands with a stomp of her little foot.

“Yes, ma’am.” I back off and say to E. J. in my most ladylike voice, “Pardon me ever so much,” so Beezy will forgive me, but she can’t see me lifting my fingers up to his cheeks and pinching him hard as I want.

Stupid kid. He’s acting like Woody and him have already tied the knot.

C
hapter Five

F
ollowing the exact same route through the headstones and mausoleums that Woody did, I pass a slew of our dead relatives on the way towards Bootie and his hole. Grampa’s also got a graveyard up at his place where some Founders are laid to rest because this cemetery wasn’t around back when they succumbed to Indian raids or plow accidents or plain old scarlet fever.

“‘Hurrah! Hurrah! For Southern rights, hurrah!’”
Bootie is singing. He’s rehearsing. He always performs the traditional Civil War song “The Bonnie Blue Flag” at the opening ceremonies of Founders Weekend because he was born with a creamy baritone that can reach out into a crowd and grab it by the throat.

The Young family works a dairy farm, but according to a couple of reports that I heard him read up front of the classroom when Woody and I were still attending school, waking at the crack of dawn to milk crabby cows holds no interest for Bootie. He wants to attend college so he can be an archaeologist, which is a bone digger, so this cemetery job is good practice. Because he’s had to miss so much school during planting and harvest times, even though he’s in the same grade as Woody and me (going into seventh), he’s a year older at thirteen but looks even older, like all the farm boys do. I bet there’s still plenty of girls that draw his name inside hearts all over their schoolbooks or pass him mushy notes that are SWAK—Sealed With A Kiss. I don’t have time for that lovey-dovey stuff. I’m too busy worrying about Mama, taking caring of Woody, and keeping watch over Papa, so I am always courteous to Bootie when I run across him, but never overly so. Wouldn’t want to give him the wrong idea.