Calling Me Home (26 page)

Miss Isabelle’s compliment touched me, but it saddened me, too. I drained my Diet Coke, hoping the emotion would pass.

“Oh, stop looking at me like that, Dorrie. I know what you’re thinking, and all that’s in the past. You’ve got more to worry about than an old woman and her ancient history. What I want to know is what you’re going to do about Stevie Junior. Have you decided? What about your boyfriend? Are you just going to leave him hanging until he gives up? Is that smart?”

I sighed and scraped myself together. “I’m still thinking things over. I’m taking my time on this, instead of flying off the handle and trying to fix things the first way that comes to mind. Unless—God forbid—Stevie’s decided to go ahead and spend that money and make things even worse, he can sit there and stew for another couple of hours about all the sh—the
trouble
he’s gotten himself into. Teague, well, he’s probably already given up.”

“I don’t know,” Miss Isabelle said. “Sometimes the good ones surprise you. Sometimes they stick around longer than you’d think—after they should have given up.”

We were finished eating, though Miss Isabelle had only consumed about half of her double-decker club sandwich and fresh melon balls. I crammed our litter down in the bag and tossed it in the trash can by the table. We wandered back to the car, each lost in our own thoughts.

25

Isabelle, 1940

I
F HOME HAD
felt like a prison before, now it was maximum security. In fact, it was solitary confinement. When my brothers delivered me to Mother like bounty hunters, she took my suitcase and led me upstairs. She gestured to the bathroom door, waited while I relieved myself, then followed me to my room, where she dropped my case at the end of the bed and left without a word. The door had a double-sided keyhole. I heard metal twist in the lock, then her footsteps receding deliberately down the stairs.

Patrick was already at work outside, tearing latticework from the side of the house, lopping the frail arms from the tall cedar tree closest to my window. Attempting to descend those flimsy branches would have been madness. Perhaps they thought that was the case; by then, they mightn’t have been far off. Soon, I wasn’t surprised to hear the ladder scrape my windowsill. I peered out. My brother hammered long, thick nails into the window frame to prevent me from raising the sash.

Mother and Daddy argued in the distance, her voice steady and harsh, his hushed and pleading. I’d always thought Daddy was in quiet control of our household, that he’d
chosen
to leave the running of things to my mother. Now I knew the truth.

At first, Mother brought meal trays, three times daily, and waited at the bathroom door while I bathed or relieved myself. I learned not to drink much water or tea at once as I was required to take care of life’s most basic and private needs on her schedule. I sipped until shortly before I knew she’d appear for another meal and bathroom break, for I refused to call out.

Eventually, she allowed me some meals downstairs, but only those where my brothers were present, instructed by her, I’m sure, to pursue me if I bolted. Not that they needed reminding. Mother looked at me with no expression; they still looked at me—when they acknowledged me at all—with disgust. I much preferred the meals I took upstairs.

I had no plan yet. When Mother finally spoke, it was to assure me if I had any intention of trying to contact Robert, she’d make certain he and his family were punished more severely than I could begin to imagine. Nell was conspicuously absent, and I saw Cora only for seconds at a time when she scurried in and out of the dining room to pour coffee or refill dishes. She never looked at me. I scarcely tried to make eye contact, so ashamed was I of all the trouble I’d caused her family.

All that kept me within sanity’s margins during those weeks was writing letter after letter to Robert, though I had no idea whether he’d ever read them. I realized that, in my haste to gather my things at the rooming house, I’d left the thimble on the nightstand. When I remembered, I sank to my bedroom floor and wept for hours. I couldn’t identify a single physical reminder of Robert. Everything was gone. I prayed Robert had found the thimble and saved it. I worried, too. Perhaps my failure to take it had telegraphed an unintentional message—one of rejection. I regretted now not having had the presence of mind to leave him a note. I wondered if Cora had told him how I was being kept prisoner.

I finally spoke to my father when Mother stepped into the kitchen briefly while Jack and Patrick, who had already finished eating, smoked on the front porch. Since my capture, she no longer complained about their smoking or sent them out back. I guess she considered them men now, due to their act of heroism.

I begged my father to explain why he’d let them come after me, why he hadn’t left us alone when he discovered I loved Robert. “It’s not fair. It’s
so
unfair. I thought you wanted more for me, Daddy. You wanted me to be happy. And you wanted more for Robert, too. We love each other. He can still be a doctor. I could help him. You always said I’d make a good nurse. How could you let her do this?” I babbled in my desperation, rushing through everything I’d waited to say until we were alone.

“Isabelle, my girl…” He sighed, shrugging as though I should understand. I understood, certainly, that he’d allowed the others to decide the fate of my marriage—no matter that he respected Robert, no matter that he’d trusted him for years, encouraging his education and providing for it.

“I’m not your girl anymore, Father,” I said, and looked away. We didn’t speak for a long while after that. I never called him “Daddy” again.

*   *   *

A
NOTHER DAY,
I managed a conversation with Cora. Father had left hastily after she poked her head into the dining room to report someone’s emergency. I wasn’t sure where Mother had gone. She’d complained of a headache; I assumed she’d gone to bed. She would never have left me entirely on my own. My brothers were absent. I gathered a few dishes and carried them to the kitchen under the guise of helping to clear the table—something I’d done often in the past.

I pushed through the swinging doors, startling Cora. She looked up from soapy dishwater and saw me with my load of dinner plates. She looked away again and didn’t acknowledge me other than jutting her chin to indicate where I should place the dishes, but I kept the china in hand. If anyone entered the room, it would appear I’d just arrived.

“Is Robert all right?” I asked, my voice low and hurried. I didn’t give Cora a chance to answer, though, gathering speed as I poured out my apology, fearing it might be my only chance. “I’m sorry for everything, all the trouble I’ve caused you and your family. But I love him, you know. It’s the only reason I did it. I love him, Cora.”

She dried a hand on her apron and raised it to rub at what could have been an itch near her eye but may well have been a tear. “Can’t talk about it, honey. You go on now, take care of yourself. Don’t worry none about us.”

“But Robert—”

Cora swung her head around. “We’re all fine now, but if your brothers get wind of you trying to talk to me, they’re gonna follow through on their threats. Day after they bring you home, they come to the house looking for Robert, and they mean business. He’s likely not to survive what they’ll do next if he touches you again or any of us try to talk to you. Not just Robert. They mention our house, the church, talk about accidental damage, burning things. Miss Isabelle, you’ve got to leave us alone.”

She turned away. I couldn’t see her face, but her breath caught, as if she were trying to control her emotion. My hands trembled. I set the dinner plates on the counter, the leftover splotches of gravy already congealing, their scent turning my stomach as the words Cora said squeezed my heart into my throat.

*   *   *

M
OTHER INQUIRED WHETHER
I needed sanitary supplies for my monthlies. Her concern surprised me. Then the subtle knock and scrape of the metal wastebasket against bathroom tile enlightened me. She was waiting for a sign—a sign my body hadn’t been altered to a point that would visibly shame my family.

One day, I told her I needed napkins, and she sighed audibly, relief plainly relaxing her body from head to toe. She thrust a box past my door within minutes. I felt my face flush. We’d never discussed their use beyond what was necessary. I’m sure she assumed I was embarrassed.

But it wasn’t embarrassment that drew the color. It was fury.

26

Dorrie, Present Day

I
RONY
WAS THE
answer to forty-two down, and it hit me as we started the final stretch to Cincinnati. My Stevie Junior in a panic and doing stupid things because his girlfriend was pregnant. Miss Isabelle’s mother in a panic over whether she was pregnant and doing stupid things.

The thought of Stevie conjured a call from him. I wasn’t exactly ready to talk, but there was no time like the present. We were on a straight stretch of road, so I dug my phone out and hit the answer button. He was yapping before we connected.

“Okay, Mom, this here’s the deal. Bailey is seriously freaking. She told me she better have the money by tomorrow morning, or she’s gonna tell her mom, and then her mom is gonna tell her dad, and then her dad’s gonna come over and bust my ass. Or worse—”

“Hold up! Hold up a minute now.” I reminded myself how to breathe—inhale, exhale, inhale—trying to keep my eyes on the road and my hands on the wheel, when all I really wanted to do was find two little adolescent necks and wring them. It was becoming a fairly regular desire, and not an especially healthy one.

“‘Hold up,’ Mom? You have
no
idea what I’m dealing with here.”

“Really? Is that so? You mean I have no idea what it’s like to deal with teen pregnancy? Yeah. You’re right.”

His brief silence acknowledged my subtle reference to his own birth, but he went right on. “Okay, Mom, but you have to let me use that money. Her dad might kill me or something. I’ll pay you back. I promise. First job I find, I’m there. Mom.
Please
.”

“‘Have to’?” Fuming was a mild way to describe me by then. I considered pulling over before I caused an accident, but I wanted badly to get to Cincinnati so we could settle in for the night. We were road-weary, and there was no telling what we’d need to deal with before the funeral activities started the next day. So I kept driving, only semiconscious of the speedometer inching up. “Son. That was my money. I earned it. And you stole it from me. You think I’m going to pat you on the back and let you keep it?”

He went off on me, screeching what a horrible mother I was for endangering his life and how it was probably my fault in the first place he was in trouble because all I ever did was work, work, work and ignore him and spoil Bebe, while he just tried to find someone to love him and …

A cop car merged onto the road, pulling behind me. The flashing lights served only to enhance the red I was already seeing.

I stretched my hand toward Miss Isabelle, my phone flat on my palm. She took it, then studied it, wrinkling her forehead at the angry sounds still spewing forth. I should have disconnected before I handed it over—I’d already seen her in action once that day—but it was too late.

“Young man?” she said. The noise from the phone stopped abruptly. I eased over to the side of the road, trying my hardest not to sling a string of my own expletives.

“Your mother is an angel,” she said. “An angel of
mercy.
All your yelling and carrying on is unproductive. Now, your mother’s done you a favor by not letting the police drag you off to jail for taking her money. You think about that and speak to her after you’ve cooled down. She has something else to deal with right now.”

I’d pulled onto the shoulder by then. I kept one eye on the patrolman approaching my window while watching Miss Isabelle search for the way to end the call. “The red one,” I said, then lowered my window and dropped my head against the headrest.

“In a hurry, ma’am?” the officer said.

“Oh, you have no idea.” I shook my head. A model of restraint.

“May I see your driver’s license and proof of insurance?”

I pulled my license from my wallet while Miss Isabelle located the little scrap of paper from State Farm. We waited in silence while he returned to his car to check my rap sheet. Finally, he reappeared at my window.

“I’m citing you for excessive speed. You were doing almost
ninety
in a seventy-mile-per-hour zone.” He eyeballed me, like speeding was an uncommon offense. “Also, I’m issuing a warning because your driver’s license expired two weeks ago. You need to handle that right away. Maybe over in Texas, you get a grace period, but here in Kentucky, I could haul you in.” He glanced past me to Miss Isabelle, as if she were the only reason he’d decided not to.

My face went hot and the backs of my hands tingled as if they’d been spanked. I glared at the little plastic card I mainly used for a good laugh at the picture. My birthday had passed with a minimum of fuss, and thanks to debit cards, I couldn’t remember the last time anyone had asked to see my ID. The state of Texas sent reminders for everything else—why the hell not an expiring license? Officer Shocked and Appalled passed me the electronic clipboard so I could acknowledge my exponential stupidity. (One can guess where I found
exponential,
though I have no memory of whether it was down or across.) He wished us a good evening—ugh!—and I groaned after he walked away.

“I’m sorry, Miss Isabelle. I can’t believe I’ve been driving you with an expired license. And damn Stevie Junior. He’s going to pay for this ticket, too, as soon as he finds that job he probably won’t bother to look for.” I glanced over at her. “What do we do here? You gonna drive?”

Miss Isabelle sighed. “Oh, honey, my license expired three years before yours, so I expect we’re better off with you at the wheel. Take it easy, and we’ll be fine.” She patted my hand. “By the way? In case you wondered? I’m not sorry for what I said to Stevie Junior.”