Etta Mae's Worst Bad-Luck Day (14 page)

I let Skip push the wheelchair, even though he looked as weak and crippled as Mr. Howard actually was. We went across the hot pavement toward the entrance to the basement of the courthouse, where a lot of the county offices were located for easy access of just the kind of handicapped individuals I was in the present company of.

“Hold on a minute, Skip,” I said, as we got into the hall. It was a relief to feel the air-conditioned air after what we’d been enduring. I stooped over and straightened Mr. Howard’s tie and buttoned his suit coat. I knew he wanted to look presentable, and he did after I smoothed his hair down and gave him a smile.

“It might be a good idea,” I said to him, “if you let me handle everything and not strain yourself trying to talk, okay? Let’s go, Skip. The office is down this hall and around the corner.”

Skip kept pushing, following me, and I noticed that both his back and his leg were the better for the exercise. Though neither was completely back to normal working condition.

“Where we goin’, Etta Mae?” Skip whispered loudly. He’d been in enough courthouses, or rather court
rooms,
not to want to draw attention to himself.

“Me and—I mean, Mr. Howard and me—have some business to take care of,” I told him. “And I don’t want to hear anything from you while we’re doing it. You ought to’ve stayed in the car, so you just act like you’re not even here and don’t know what’s going on.”

“Well, I don’t.”

“That’s the way I want it. Here we are.” I opened the door next to a sign that read
REGISTER OF DEEDS
.

Holding the door for Skip to push Mr. Howard through, I was relieved to see the waiting area empty. Not that it would’ve held many people, for almost immediately in front of us was a counter that came almost to my shoulders, and ran the width of the room.

“Push him on up here,” I said to Skip. “Then you just stay back out of the way till we’re through.”

Skip pushed the wheelchair up against the counter, so that Mr. Howard had nothing to look at but the wood paneling on the front of it. I would’ve rearranged him if there’d been anything else for him to look at, but there wasn’t. Not even a wanted poster to read.

Willing to please as he always was, Skip took a couple of limping steps back and leaned against the wall, propping his tingling leg against it. He looked around with interest, checking out the light fixtures in the ceiling and the tile on the floor, but even at his height there was little enough to see.

Leaning against the counter, I waited to be waited on. The room on the other side was large and spacious, but filled with desks and file cabinets and wastepaper cans. There was a white-haired woman banging away at a typewriter over in the far corner. She didn’t look up.

Another woman, chewing gum like a cow with a cud, ambled across the room with an armload of papers. She was in a world of her own, and didn’t turn her head. Closer to the counter, there was about the fattest woman I’d ever seen, and I’ve seen some. She was sitting at a desk in a little secretary’s chair that, I swear, underneath her overlapping bottom, looked like one of those banana seats on a racing bicycle. She didn’t pay any attention to me, either, as she shuffled papers from one pile to another.

I picked up a ballpoint pen laying there, and tapped it on the counter, polite-like. “Excuse me?” I said, trying to attract the fat woman’s attention since she was the closest. “Excuse me, but can we get some help?”

She turned my way but didn’t say anything, so I said, “We’d like to take out a marriage license, please.”

She heaved a sigh and pointed to a big round clock on the wall. “I don’t know why,” she said to the air in front of her, “people can’t come in during the eight business hours we keep every day. But here they come at fourteen minutes till five, knowing we close at five.”

“Well, but we write real fast, and we’ve both done it before and know what to do. Please, we’ve come from Delmont and it’ll be awful hard to get back over here. I promise we won’t keep you late, if you’ll just give us the forms.”

I don’t know how I could’ve been any nicer, but she sat where she was while the big hand jerked off another minute. My hands were trembling by then, as I thought of all I’d been through that day, to say nothing of the night before, and there I had to stand, watching this fat woman let my time run out. It was getting close to being all I could take.

Just as I was about to crawl over the counter and slap her silly, she moved, sighing loudly as she leaned on the desk to heft herself out of the chair. She waddled over, ànd I saw she was shorter even than me. We both glanced up at the clock, then looked at each other, almost eye to eye, over that shoulder-high counter.

“Fill this out, then,” she said, sliding a form over to me. With an exasperated glance, she gave Skip a quick once-over, as if that was all he deserved. Then she leaned against her side of the counter, waiting for us and, I expect, counting off the minutes.

I quickly filled in the bride’s part—my maiden name, where I lived, my parents’ names, my age, how far I’d gone in school, and how many marriages this one would make for me. Then I squatted down beside Mr. Howard’s chair and filled in his part, which he gave me the information for. I had a jolt when he told me his birth date and age, for my guess of his age had been off by a number of years because of his recent friskiness.

“I’m going to turn this in now,” I whispered, beginning to rise from my squat. “Unless you’ve changed your mind. I don’t want to rush you if you need to think about it some more, but if you do, you have to do it quick. That woman’s going to kick us out in a minute or two.”

I could see a flash of anger in his watery old eyes as he motioned with his head toward the woman behind the counter. He’d heard her, though he hadn’t been able to see her, and he knew she’d tried to blow me off and had treated me like dirt. I think he was trying to tell me that if he’d been his normal self, he’d’ve lit a fire under her, and I didn’t doubt that he could’ve.

He patted my hair with his good hand, smiling with half his face, and motioned for me to turn the form in.

I knew he was happy, and I was, too. Though more determined than anything else.

I straightened up and faced the woman again. “Here it is,” I said, sliding the form toward her. “All done, and in plenty of time.” The clock said eight minutes till five.

She stared at me.

“There it is,” I said, nodding at the form.

She kept staring.

“Lady,” I said, beginning to wonder if she was having a seizure or something, “we’ve filled it out. Now we want the license.”

She reached slowly for the form, then, with a backward glance at me, went to the typewriter and began to type the information onto the official license. At one point, she stopped dead and said, “Is this information correct?”

“Of course it is,” I said.

“He don’t look that old to me,” she mumbled.

“I know he doesn’t. It surprised me, too.”

As she came back to the counter with the license, she said, “You both have to sign at the bottom, all three copies, no carbons. Then swear that all this information is true, and if it’s not, be held for perjury.”

I snatched the license from her, fuming that she’d think we’d lie about our own selves. I signed the bride’s name, then squatted down again by Mr. Howard’s chair. Holding the form against the arm of his chair so he’d have something to write on, I showed him where and how many times to sign his name. Standing again, I slid the license back to the woman, who started that staring again.

“There it is,” I told her. “Signed, sealed, and delivered. At least, our part of it.”

“I don’t know what you take me for,” she said, as her face began to get red, “but I am not a fool. Do you think you can stoop down on the floor and fill out the form and then sign for both of you while that big ox is standing over there in plain sight, and me not know it? I don’t know what’s wrong with him, he can’t sign his own name, but this thing’s not legal.”

She reached for the form, crumpling it as her hand came down on it. Quick as a snake, I braced my hands on the counter and flung myself across it, my legs dangling in the air. I snatched the form away from her and slid back down on my side.

Smoothing the papers as best I could with trembling hands, I hissed, “You do what you have to do with this thing and you do it now. I’m not marrying that big ox over there, although how anybody that’s carrying around as much blubber as you are can call anybody else big, I don’t know. The man I’m marrying is down here in a wheelchair,” and I stabbed my finger down toward him, “and his name is Mr. Howard Connard, Senior—hello, does that ring any bells?—not that it’s any business of yours who I marry. Now, move that fat ass of yours and finish this up!”

The woman at the typewriter had stopped typing and was rising from her chair. The one crossing the room clasped her papers to her bosom and stood there with her mouth open.

The one in front of me had paled considerably. “Mr. Howard Connard, Senior?” she said. “I thought he was dead.”

“Well, he’s not. He’s right here,” I said, “in good health and sane mind, with the exception of a weakness in his side. And by tomorrow, I am going to be
Mrs.
Howard Connard, Senior, and if I ever have reason to come back into this office, which I don’t ever plan to again, I expect to have better service than I’ve gotten today.”

“Yes, ma’am,” she said, swallowing hard and pulling a Bible out from under the counter. “If y’all have no objection to swearing on the Bible, put your left hands on it, and answer ‘I do,’ if you do.”

“Left hands?”

“Yes, ma’am, and raise your right ones.”

“Raise your right hand, honey,” I said to Mr. Howard as I reached down and lifted his half-dead left one up over the edge of the counter onto the Bible and covered it with mine to hold it there.

The fat woman read from the license: “We hereby make application to the Register of Deeds for a marriage license and solemnly swear that all statements contained in the above application are true. We further make oath that there is no legal impediment to such marriage. Say, ‘I do.’”

“I do,” I said.

“Ahdo,” Mr. Howard said from below the counter, sounding like a sneeze or somebody from Georgia. She didn’t question it, though.

The woman tore off our copy of the license to take to our preacher and, in a fast, practiced jumble of words, asked if we wanted an additional document with a gold seal suitable for framing for three dollars extra. I certainly did, thinking I’d put it on the mantel in Mr. Howard’s living room, along with the knickknacks left over from the first Mrs. Connard, Senior.

“I hope y’all will be very happy. That’ll be forty-three dollars, total.”

“Forty-three?” I didn’t remember paying that much for a license before.

“Yes, ma’am, twenty of that goes to the North Carolina Domestic Violence Fund. The rest for processing.”

“Well, I don’t plan to be needing that fund, but if we have to pay it, I guess we will.”

I scrambled through my purse and found a couple of twenties and some ones, noting that all that was left was two tens and some change. But if Mr. Howard’s name could bring about the kind of change in attitude I’d just witnessed—not once after learning who I was marrying had that woman looked at the clock, which now said six minutes after five—I figured it for the best forty-three dollars I’d ever spent.

Before we left the Register of Deeds office, the woman handed me a Newly-Wed Sample Pack, a plastic bag filled with some of the necessities for starting married life. As soon as Skip had pushed Mr. Howard out into the hall and we were on our way out of the courthouse, I tore into it. I hadn’t had any showers for the bride and we hadn’t sent out any wedding invitations, so this looked to be the only gift we were going to get.

“Look, Mr. Howard,” I said, pulling out a roll of paper towels. “Isn’t this nice? And here’s some deodorant and a bottle of Scope. And, look, a box of Bounce and a whole book of coupons that’ll come in real handy. That was nice of her, wasn’t it? And after being so put out with us for coming in late.”

“She was nice there at the end,” Skip said, as I held the door for him to push Mr. Howard’s chair out of the building. “Uh, Etta Mae, I couldn’t help but notice, but are you gettin’ married again?”

“Yes, I am.”

“To
him
?” Skip whispered as he pointed at the back of Mr. Howard’s head.

“That’s right. You wanta make something of it?”

“No-o-o,” Skip said, shaking his head and frowning as he thought about it. “I just kinda hoped I was still in the runnin’.”

“Oh, for goodness’ sake,” I said, rolling my eyes.

We’d reached the car and I opened the door as Skip helped Mr. Howard out of the chair and into the passenger’s seat. He folded the wheelchair and put it in the trunk, while I made sure Mr. Howard was comfortable.

“I know it’s hot, honey,” I said to him, “but we’ll cool off as soon as I get the car started. Skip, crawl in the back, and let’s go.”

“Do I have to get on the floorboard again?”

“I guess not,” I said, straightening my seat after he slid behind it. “At least not till we get closer to Delmont. But don’t you mess up my clean clothes back there. Move them over so you’ll have some room.”

As we headed back toward Delmont, I kept an eye on the rearview mirror, watching for a blue-and-white van. I was beginning to think that the Pucketts had given up and gone back to Gastonia. Or maybe Skip had just imagined they were after him. So far, the only evidence I’d had that they were even in Delmont was my trashed trailer and Junior’s sore head. And there could’ve been another explanation for both, though I didn’t know what it could’ve been.

“You doin’ all right, honey?” I asked Mr. Howard.

He smiled and nodded, but he looked tired and a little peaked. The heat, I expect, was getting to him. And the excitement, too, of course.

“Just lean your head back,” I told him, wishing I had a newer car with body-conforming seats, “and rest awhile. We’re almost home, and I think we better put off the ceremony till tomorrow. You need your supper and you ought to get to bed early.” I hated not tying the knot while I had the chance, especially since Junior might be home by morning, but I had to take care of Mr. Howard. I didn’t think he could stand much more excitement or physical exertion. I mean, just getting in and out of the car put a strain on him.

“All right, Skip, get down on the floor. We’re coming into Delmont.”

“Aw-w-w,” he whined as I felt him knee the back of my seat. “I just don’t fit down here, Etta Mae.”

“Well, put up with it. We’re almost there.” But what was I going to do with him when we got to Mr. Howard’s house? I hadn’t thought that far ahead, being so taken up with seeing about Granny and getting the license and looking after Mr. Howard and taking that fat woman down a peg or two.

“Skip,” I called over my shoulder, “have you thought about what you’re going to do when we get back?”

“Whatever you think, Etta Mae.”

I swear, I had my hands full with him. I wondered if every other divorced woman had to take care of their exes for the rest of their lives. At least Bernie hadn’t shown up, for which I was thankful.

“Look,” I said, “as far as I can tell, you’ve played out the two places where I thought you’d be safe. It’s a settled fact you can’t go back to Lurline’s. For all we know, they’re still watching her house, figuring you’re in there. If, that is, you really did get out without them seeing you. And you can’t go back to my trailer, because they know where that is. Don’t you know anybody else you could stay with?”

“All my kin’s gone, Etta Mae, you know that. When the mill shut down, they all had to move. They’re mostly in Burlington at the mills there. Besides, I don’t see why not.”

“Why not what?”

“I can’t go back to your trailer.”

“Because, Skip,” I said, gritting my teeth, “they’ve
been
there. They know it. They know where it is, and they probably know you don’t have too many other options.”

“Well, shoot fire,” he said, “I’d think that’d just make it even better. I mean, why would they come back if they already been there and seen I wadn’t there?”

I thought about it, and he might’ve been right. Surprise, surprise. The thing was, though, I didn’t want him in my trailer. Somebody would have to sleep on the couch, and I didn’t want it to be Skip. Which meant it’d have to be me. It was the night before my wedding day, and I had plans to make and things to do, and I didn’t want company.

I thought about it some more. All my life, I’d been the one to give up my place in a bed for anybody who came along. I can’t tell you how many times I’d slept on couches, roll-away cots, and pallets on the floor.

But that was all over, now that I was a grown woman with a place of my own with the final say-so on who came and who stayed and who slept in my bed.

I sighed as I stopped for one of the two traffic lights in Delmont. Glancing over at Mr. Howard, I saw he’d fallen asleep. I took a Kleenex from my purse and mopped a line of drool from the corner of his mouth. On his bad side, so he couldn’t help it.

“Okay, Skip. I guess you’re right. You can stay with me, but I warn you, I’ve got to be up and out early tomorrow morning, so you’ll be on your own after that.”

“Thanks, Etta Mae. Maybe I can get to Atlanta tomorrow. I’ll be all right then. But I’m coming back and giving you half, don’t you worry about that.”

“I don’t want your money, Skip, I’ve already told you. Although, if you want me to, I’ll take half and put it in the bank for you. That way, you won’t be tempted to spend it. Here we are,” I said, turning into Mr. Howard’s driveway. “We’ll get Mr. Howard settled, then we’ll go on to my place.”

I drove up the curving drive, coming into the graveled parking area on the side of the house. The first thing I saw was a little green Mercedes sports car, and my heart sank through the floorboard.

“You stay right where you are, Skip,” I said. “Don’t get up and don’t show your face. You stay right there.”

“Why? What is it?”

“Mr. Howard has company. But don’t worry, it’s not your friends. Unless they hit the jackpot, too. Emmett’ll help me get Mr. Howard in the house, so you just keep your head down and don’t add to my problems.”

“Okay, I will. I mean, I won’t, but I wish you’d tell me what’s going on.”

“Just take my word for it. I’m going to have my hands full in about two minutes, and the best thing for you and me both is for you to stay out of it. Regardless of what you hear.”

I pulled up close to the house so Mr. Howard wouldn’t have so far to go, hoping Valerie McLean Connard wouldn’t come out to help. I doubted she would, but if she did, she’d see Skip huddled on the floorboard and questions would naturally come to her mind. Skip was hard enough to explain under normal circumstances.

Under the present circumstances, when I was going to have a lot more to explain, it didn’t bear thinking about.

 • • • 

“Miss Valerie here,” Emmett whispered when I opened the kitchen door. He cocked his head toward the front of the house, letting me know where she was.

“I figured, from the car. Has she asked about Mr. Howard?”

“No’m, not a word. She eat her salat, tole me to clean the toaster, which I been doin’, and went to the drawin’ room to read her magazine. She take a glass of wine with her, so maybe she be loosnin’ up.”

“I wouldn’t count on it.”

“No’m, I’m not.” Then lowering his voice even more, he asked, “You an’ Mr. Howard get married?”

“No, Emmett, not yet,” I whispered back, but seeing the way his face fell, I added, “He was too tired after we got the license, so I’m planning for tomorrow morning. Real early, before he gets too worn out.”

“I don’ know, Miss Etta,” he said, shaking his head. “I was sure hopin’ it’d be done today, before Mr. Junior and Miss Valerie catch wind of it.”

“I know. Me, too. I told Junior, you know, but he may not remember it, what with being concussed and all. But putting it off just couldn’t be helped. As tired as Mr. Howard is, I didn’t want to put any more strain on him. Will you help me get him in the house?”

“Yessum, let me dry my hands off.”

He followed me out to the car, where Mr. Howard was just coming awake. Emmett opened the door and, as he did, saw Skip stuffed down in the back. He jumped back about a foot, saying, “Whoa! What that man doin’ down in the flo’board?”

It was too much to explain, so I just said, “I didn’t want Valerie to see him if she came out here. She might get mad if she thought Mr. Howard was riding around with a stranger.”

It didn’t sound too good to me, but Emmett, frowning, nodded. He helped Mr. Howard out of the car and onto his feet. “Jes’ lean on me, tha’s right. I gonna get you to bed and bring yo’ supper on a tray. Step real easy now.”

As the two old men moved toward the house, Mr. Howard looked back at me, trying to call my name.

“I’m here,” I said. “I’ll help you get settled, then I have to go. I want you to get a good rest, ’cause I’ll be back early tomorrow and we’ll do what we didn’t have time to do today. Don’t you worry. I’ve got the license in my bag and we’re going to use it tomorrow.”

I hurried across the hall in front of them to turn down Mr. Howard’s bed, hoping Valerie wouldn’t hear us. Emmett had put fresh sheets on the bed while we’d been gone, and I thought again of how easy life could be with the help of extra pairs of hands. If you could afford to pay for them.

“I’ll help him get his pajamas on, Emmett, while you fix his supper. If you don’t mind. Something light is probably all he needs.”

“Yessum, I thought jes’ soup and some chopped-up peaches,” Emmett said, eyeing the pajamas laid out on the bed.

I knew he was thinking it wasn’t right for me to undress Mr. Howard. Emmett was the modest type. So I said, “Emmett, I’m a nurse and used to helping people in all sorts of ways. I could leave it all for you to do, but I think he needs to get settled in as quick as we can do it. And besides, by this time tomorrow, we’ll be man and wife, and you won’t think a thing about it then.”

“Don’ know ’bout that,” he mumbled as he left the room. “Maybe I will and maybe I won’t.”

As I was putting Mr. Howard’s feet into his pajama bottoms, there was a tap on the door and, as it opened, Valerie called, “Daddy Connard? How are . . .” Then she saw me. “
What
are you doing?”

“Getting him ready for bed,” I said, snatching up the bottoms to cover Mr. Howard’s scrawny parts as he let out a croak of embarrassment.

“This is too much,” she said. “First, I catch you in my husband’s room, and now here you are in my father-in-law’s room. Every time I turn around, there you are. I want to know what right you have to go and come in this house like you own it?”

I wanted to tell her, oh, I wanted so bad to throw it in her face, that this house was all but mine and that from now on she’d have to ask my permission to go and come in it. But I didn’t.

I reined in my tongue and my temper and swallowed the words I wanted to say. Instead, I said, “I’m sorry, Miss Valerie, I thought you knew I work for Mr. Howard. We’ve just come back from a drive and he’s very tired.”

“Emmett can help him. Where is he?”

“Getting his supper. Lie down, Mr. Howard, and I’ll elevate your bed so you can manage a tray. Sh-h-h,” I said to him, noticing how red his face was getting as he tried to speak to Valerie. I noticed, too, that she was paying no attention to him, treating him like a piece of furniture. I spread the sheet over him and patted his shoulder. “It’s all right now. Don’t you worry about a thing.”

Valerie came farther into the room, stopped right in front of me, and put her hands on her skinny hips. “We don’t need your help anymore. Although
help
is not the right word, is it? Interference is more like it, but no longer. I’m giving you notice as of this minute. Daddy Connard will be leaving as soon as my husband is able to travel, so you can just get out and don’t come back.”

She waved a hand toward the door, dismissing me like I was hired help. Which I was, but not really. Mr. Howard tried to rise up in the bed, gurgling and croaking, trying to make himself understood. He was like me—when I get mad, I can’t get the words out. And he was in worse shape than me to begin with.

I bit my lip, feeling my face redden as she dressed me down. I wanted to get in her face with a few words of my own. No, what I really wanted to do was smack her cross-eyed. But it wasn’t the time or place, not if I ever hoped for a happy family life. I had to stay, or rather get, on her good side. All we needed was to know each other better, and I didn’t want to say anything that would make her mad. Madder.