Apron Strings (33 page)

It seemed to me that, although the sun was burning bright, there wasn’t a single sparkle—no sunlight danced today; not around those two. The water was as dull and lifeless as my baby brother’s body. A black hole would have been more inviting. “Yikes, it’s creepy here today,” Jilly whispered as we neared the boathouse. “You wanna ride bikes? I wish that you didn’t have to go home tomorrow. Dumb old funeral.” She glanced at me when she said it, like she wasn’t sure if I was going to be upset.

I just looked down at the ground. “I know I…God, why did he have to die? You know, don’t tell anybody. Promise me you won’t ever tell I said this?”

She nodded.

I dropped my voice to a whisper. “I’m kinda glad he’s dead. My mother hasn’t stopped crying since he was born. Maybe now she can get it over with. But poor old Ethel, I don’t think she did anything wrong. Do you?” I was sorry I had asked that question. The expression on my cousin’s face shouted her answer. I bit my lip and turned away so that Jilly wouldn’t see that I had started to cry.

Two mornings after Denny died we packed up and headed home. Jilly got to stay at the beach with Carrie. She did her best to convince her parents to let me stay too.

“Please,” she begged. “Can’t Sallee stay here? Why does she need to go to that old funeral? Isn’t she too young?”

“That’s enough, Jilly,” her father said. I had never heard him be short with her. “Sallee needs to be with her mother now. Her mother needs her.”

I couldn’t see how I was going to be any help. Stuart, yes; me, no. But I wasn’t supposed to be listening to that conversation, so I just kept my fingers crossed and my tongue still. I had to go. Uncle James volunteered to take the kids and Ethel in my mother’s car while Ben drove my mother and Aunt Lizbeth home. Stuart sat up front with Uncle James,
while Ethel sat in the middle seat. Gordy, Helen, and I took turns sitting next to her while the other two sat in the way back. Ethel didn’t say two words the whole way. She’d sigh and look out the window. I tried to hold her hand. She’d let me for a minute or two, but then she would move or scratch or just pull away, so I gave up. Helen tapped me on the shoulder when she wanted my seat. I scampered over the back of the seat and Helen crawled up under Ethel’s forearm, snuggled into Ethel’s great bulk, plugged her thumb in her mouth, and fell fast asleep. Ethel’s arm stayed put all the way home. Gordy and I shared whispered speculations about the upcoming funeral until that too held no interest.

“Uncle James, where’s Denny?” I asked when we were almost home. Gordy gently kicked my foot and scowled at me with disapproval.

“In heaven, honey,” he said.

“No, how did he get back from the beach?” I asked.

Gordy rolled his eyes and mouthed, “Don’t ask stupid questions.”

“Well, do you know, smartie pants?” I whispered at him. I saw Uncle James’s eyes dart at me from the rearview mirror. “I wasn’t talking to you, Uncle James. I mean I was asking you about Denny and then Gordy…never mind, I’m sorry.” He never did answer my question. But at the funeral Denny was there in a little white casket. Well, at least they said he was in the casket. Daddy was there, too. He sat with us during the service, between Helen and me, and held our hands. He didn’t stay long, though. He told Stuart to call him when she needed to be picked up. I don’t think Daddy and my mother spoke one word to each other that day.

After the funeral, Ethel didn’t come to work for almost a month. She was probably catching up on the stuff she didn’t get done while she was away. I remember hearing my mother telling her friends that it was so ridiculous seeing Ethel in her bathing suit. I hated it when she laughed at Ethel. Ethel didn’t deserve that. I sometimes thought she knew people were making fun of her and didn’t come to work because she was embarrassed about it. I didn’t really know, but I sure did hate it when she didn’t come to work. Those days, no matter what, the weather seemed dark and the clocks seemed to move in slow motion too. My mother was always grumpy and complaining about Ethel. But when Ethel came back, my mother never said a word about her being gone for so long.

Bourbon bottles got bigger. Even after Daddy left, the bourbon came in regular size bottles; but after Denny died it started appearing in bottles as big as lemonade pitchers, complete with handles. Trips to the ABC Store happened more and more often. I had never been into an ABC Store until after we got back from the beach. Now it seemed every time we went to the grocery store we would make a stop. The first time I was dumbfounded. I had imaged letters of the alphabet painted all over the walls like a nursery school mural. I imagined lambs and other baby animals cavorting around and through elaborately drawn a’s and b’s; great garlands of flowers festooning the corners and draping the walls; multicolored blocks scattered about in skillfully arranged stacks; and pastel shades and primary colors artfully interwoven. The drab industrial green stood in bitter contrast to my vision, and they didn’t even have enough green paint to paint the whole thing; it stopped halfway up the wall. “Well, what does ABC mean, then?” I grumbled as we left the store.

“What? I can’t hear you. Stop mumbling, Sallee. I’ve told you a thousand times not to mumble. If you have something to say, say it,” my mother lectured.

“ABC, what does it mean?” I shouted over the traffic and bustle.
Why would you name a store the ABC store if it looked like nothing but an old hallway with a counter cutting it in two and a man standing behind it, plain as pitch?
I wondered to myself.

“Shhh,” my mother said then grabbed my hand as we headed to the car.

Having a cocktail before dinner had been a nightly ritual with my parents. Now that Daddy wasn’t around, my mother began to entertain more, but with a whole lot less pomp. Her new friends visited while we ate supper in the kitchen. They were mostly ladies who liked to drink as much as she did. It used to be that when people stayed for dinner it was an elaborate affair. Now it seemed that my mother and her friends didn’t eat at all. They just stayed holed-up in the living room, talking to each other about Lord knows what. The trips to the bar outside the kitchen were frequent. The first couple of times they’d stick their head round to say “hey.” But by the time our dinner was over, they had run out of things
to say to us kids. Besides, they had moved on to a place we didn’t want to be. Even when she didn’t have friends over, my mother’s trips to the bar became a nightly occurrence. Ethel would shake her old head, sort of tutting to herself as she wiped up the sticky puddles of bourbon on the counter in the morning. I’d watch her over my breakfast plate as I bit my tongue to keep from asking her, if she disapproved so much, why didn’t she lay off the booze herself?

For a while my mother and Ethel seemed to have a tag team approach to drinking. First one would hit it pretty hard, then the other; but never both at once. Ethel would come to work sloppy and unkempt. Her clothes would look as if she had slept in them and she would smell like it too. When she was fuzzy, she was also surly and mean. When she was like that I was grateful for school, our weekends with Daddy, and Stuart’s required overnights at our house.

Ethel hadn’t come to work for a day or two. My mother had a new friend over. They had been having cocktails for the last two hours and neither of them had made a move to start cooking dinner. Gordy and Helen and I were watching television. My stomach had been growling for a good long time. During a commercial break I went into the kitchen to see if there was anything in the icebox to eat.

“Is anybody else hungry?” I asked.

“Starved” Helen said.

“Yeah me, too,” Gordy added. “What are we going to eat?”

“There’s nothing in the refrigerator. No hot dogs, bolongna, or cheese.” I reported.

“Let’s make peanut butter sandwiches,” Gordy suggested.

“I thought of that—no bread,” I said. “I’m going in there and tell her she’s got to make dinner. Now,” I announced with more bravado than I really possessed.

“Sure.” Gordy said with a sneer. “Let’s make pot pies. That’s all she’ll do anyway. How hard can it be? You have to turn the oven on and put them in there until they’re done. It’s on the box.” He got up and checked the freezer. There were three chicken pot pies. He pulled them out and read the box. “I’ve got this,” he said then flashed a thumbs up. He turned the oven on and put the pot pies on the rack, set the timer for forty
minutes, and then strolled out of the kitchen full of self-importance. Thirty minutes later the smell of smoke began to waft from the kitchen. We were panicked. Some gravy had leaked out and was burning on the floor of the oven. Gordy was frantically waving smoke out the back door. I heard ice rattling in a glass behind us.

My mother was standing in the door looking a little tipsy. “What do you think you are up to?” She demanded.

“Fixing our dinner,” I announced with pride over Gordy’s achievement.

“Don’t you talk back to me,” she slurred. “Go to your room. No dinner.”

I couldn’t believe it. “I was just answering your question.” I started to argue when she hauled off and slapped me across the face.

Later that night Gordy snuck into my room with an apple. “Here. It’s all I could find.” He handed me the apple and climbed up on my bed. “I can’t believe she did that to you,” he said.

I started to whimper again. “I’m telling Daddy.”

“Don’t,” he said. “He can’t do anything and it’ll make him really sad. Remember how he was at Denny’s funeral. It was awful to see.”

“Yeah but…” I started to argue.

“Sallee, what’s he going to do? If he says anything to her she’ll only take it out on us. The judge already said…He can’t change what the judge said.” We sighed.

“I know. I’ll tell Stuart. She got the judge to listen to her. I’m sure she can do something.”

Gordy shook his head. “You want to start World War Three?”

“Yeah, I guess you’re right.” We sighed again.

Chapter 18

I
t was cold for early October. My mother had gone out, leaving Stuart in charge. Ethel was waiting for Big Early to pick her up, and she was in a particularly prickly mood. Gordy, Helen, and I were under the dining room table watching television. My mother had moved a television into the dining room so that she could eat lunch and watch her soap operas. It turned out to be our favorite place to watch TV. We’d take pillows and blankets under the table, making a little fort. When the chairs were pushed in they formed a compact wall around us making us barely visible to passersby. You got a safe feeling under there, like hiding under the covers during a storm. That night Ethel was prowling around the kitchen, grumbling about her ride. We pulled the chairs in closer and hunkered down on our pillows.

“I wish she’d go home,” Helen said. “I hate it when she’s drunk. Where’s Stuart?”

“She went to Judy’s. I’m supposed to call her when Ethel leaves.” I couldn’t hide my satisfaction at being placed in charge.

Ethel bounced from one wall to the next as she passed the dining room door. Helen and I turned and watched her as she stumbled to the back hall to make a phone call. We moved so that the dining room chairs obscured us from her view in the hallway.

“Go home,” Helen hissed after Ethel.

“Shut up. I can’t hear,” said Gordy.
Wyatt Earp
was his favorite show. He had the ability to block out all kinds of things if he liked the TV program. Helen and I continued to watch out for Ethel. We’d take turns crawling out from our fortress to reconnoiter. We heard Ethel mumbling,
then a metallic clunk and sharp knock as the receiver banged against the radiator and the back of the chair smacked up against the wall. Helen and I glanced at each other, both of us hesitant to move. Finally, Helen squeezed out through the chairs and ran to the door to investigate. In an instant she returned and scuttled back under the table. Her eyes were wide with alarm. “She’s fallen flat on the floor. Call Stuart. She might be dead.”

Horrified, I scrambled out from under the table. Ethel lay sprawled out in the back hall with one shoe kicked off. The telephone receiver dangled above her, clanking against the radiator. A disjointed voice was still talking through it. The chair she had been sitting in was upended behind her. My old dream of Ethel under my bed came back to me. I clambered back under the table. My breathing was fast and furious. “What are we going to do?”

“Shhh,” hissed Gordy. He was riveted to the television as he watched the show with the intensity of someone watching a rocket launch.

“She’s dead,” Helen said. “I’m scared.” She started to cry; big, gulping sobs.

“What are we going to do?” I repeated.

Helen cried. Gordy watched TV.

“We’ve got to do something,” I insisted, near panic.

All of a sudden, as if slapped, Gordy came to life although Helen only nudged him, “What? What are we going to do? Go hang up the phone and call the police? You do it. You’re so big and in charge,” Gordy said.

“Not me. What if she’s not dead? What if she gets mad and kills me?” I started to cry, too. “You do it.”

He went back to his extreme television watching.

I couldn’t stand it. Ethel was dead, my brother was in self-protection mode, and my little sister was bordering on hysteria. I crawled back out from under the table. Somebody had to do something. I ran upstairs hoping the person on the other end of the phone was still there. The extension in my mother’s bedroom droned the incessant beep- beep-beep of the busy signal. Fevered clicks would not clear the line. Maybe, I thought, if I take a bath it will all work itself out: Stuart will come home
and Ethel will wake up. I almost had myself convinced that taking a bath would be an excellent course of action when one of Mazine’s stories came to mind—a story about someone having died at home. When she told the story I thought it was ridiculous, but that was back in a time when I could afford the luxury of rational thought. Back before I had a possible dead body—Ethel’s body—lying on the floor in my house. “If’n ya don’t tend to ‘em right away an’ they git hard, then they think ya didn’t never care fo’ ‘em and they will turn into a haint and chase ya fo’ever.” The memory of her voice was so clear; it was as if she were standing next to me.