Family Linen (4 page)

“Tell me about your real father,” Bob directs.

“I don't know why I said that,” Sybill says. “Calling Verner Hess my stepfather, I mean. Verner Hess
was
my father for all intents and purposes, and that's that.”

“Yet he was in fact your stepfather . . . ” Bob is like a cat, Sybill thinks suddenly, sneaking along a garden wall in the dark.

“Just forget it,” she says. “I have these two aunts, you'd just die if you got a load of either one. I mean they're so crazy you could get papers on them in one minute flat.”

Bob makes the tent with his fingers, looking at her, and Sybill goes on. “Fay and Nettie, that's them, and Mama hasn't had a thing to do with either one for years and years. As you might imagine. Neither do I, of course, if I can help it. They live out at the One Stop on Route 460, in two rooms behind the store. Nettie runs the service station—she must be, let's see, seventy by now. I can't believe it! And Fay, that's my other aunt, has never been right in the head. So she stays out there with Nettie. She used to live with Mother, years ago.”

“And you mentioned, I think, a sister named Candy—”

“That's my next-youngest sister, Candy Snipes, who is a beautician by choice,” Sybill says. “She could have gone on to school the same as the rest of us, but oh no. Too busy dating the boys, just couldn't be bothered with school. Ran away and got married. You can imagine how upsetting this was for Mother, for Candace to do it that way. Candy is just infantile, even now. That's one reason I'm glad I live here, so I don't have to see Candy all the time. If Candy takes after anybody, it's Nettie. Certainly it's not Mother, I have to say.”

“And your other brothers and sisters?”

“Well, there's Arthur, he's in his early forties now and pretty much of a mess himself, if the truth be told. He's divorced. And then there's Myrtle who married that nice dermatologist, Dr. Don Dotson, she's certainly the best of the lot, even though we don't always, of course, see eye to eye. But actually we get along fine.”
Even though Myrtle has always had everything she wanted in this world and still does, without lifting a hand . .
 .
“Then there's Lacy who's an intellectual. Lacy got all the brains from Mother, you might say, although she has never put them to any good use.”
Imagine spending your parents' money on years and years of graduate school and then just up and deciding you won't even bother to write your dissertation! Imagine that!
“Arthur still lives in Booker Creek. So does Candy of course and Myrtle. Lacy lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. She's kind of an egghead, as I said. You know what I mean.”

Bob grins. “Who's the youngest?”

“Lacy. And she's real pretty, too, or she would be if she kept herself up. They wear
anything
in Chapel Hill.” Sybill squares her shoulders, in her off-white, linen-looking suit. You dress up to visit a doctor, that's one of the things her mother always taught her, just like you wear clean underwear every day and wash out a tub the minute you're through, and keep an open box of baking soda on the refrigerator shelf at all times, to absorb odors. Sybill is proud to be her mother's only responsible child—to be, in some ways, her mother's
only
child. Talking to Bob is fun, but this is Sybill's money down the drain. Suddenly, she's tired of fooling around. “Let's go for it,” Sybill says.

“As I count to five,” Bob begins, and Sybill is thrilled, really thrilled, he's finally
doing
it, she wishes Betty could be here, too—“As I count to five, slowly, you will fall into a deep, deep sleep. While you are asleep, you will have a dream which concerns your headaches. You will dream about that time in your life which is most closely associated with your headaches, that time which you cannot remember now. You will remember that time, and you will dream about it, and when you wake up, you will tell me your dream.”

It won't work
. Then Sybill wonders, in a moment of pure idle pain, why none of them—her brother and sisters—ever liked her. But of course that's foolishness, of course they liked her, they like her now, and look how things have turned out, anyway, most of them living such messy lives!
The way yours will be if you take up with Edward Bing
. Suddenly Sybill remembers the rush of cold air the day she threw up her office window, saved from love by the abrupt departure of Joe Ross Miller. She remembers how the cool air tingled on her face.
It won't work
.

“
One,
” Bob says. He clears his throat modestly, apologetically. “You feel as if you have weights on your eyes, your eyelids are so heavy, your eyes are closing now of their own accord.
Two
. You are growing very, very sleepy. Your feet feel heavy, very heavy. It's time to let them go, relax and just let them go, let your legs go now, that's right, and your arms, Sybill, you're letting go, letting go, letting go.
Three
. You are asleep now. You are soundly, soundly asleep.
Four
. You feel yourself beginning to dream, to slip into the dream, to . . . ”

* * *

“Five
. You are almost fully awake now. You stretch, you yawn, you are waking up now. Your eyes will open when you are ready.” Sybill knows the voice, that's Bob, but she can't really hear him because of the awful, awful pain in her head, just like somebody's taking an ax and chopping straight into her brain, it's so bad she can't even speak, she simply can't say a thing. From a long way away, she hears Bob's slow smooth voice . . . “your headache. You will not have this headache. You will go back to sleep now, now as I count
one
 . . . ” Sybill thinks she hears the rain outside; she sleeps.

Later, waking up, she's surprised to find she's so tired.
Lord!
is she ever tired, so tired it's all she can do to hold herself up in this chair. Sybill looks at her watch and it's four fifteen—three hours she's been here, doing what?
Sleeping
. A waste of time. A waste of money. Sybill wonders if he'll charge her by the hour, or just make up a flat rate for the day. She won't pay seventy-five dollars, that's all there is to it. It wasn't her fault she slept so long.

“Okay,” Sybill says. Her own voice sounds funny, ringing in her ears. And outside it's still raining; it seems it's been raining for years. Sybill envisions huge modern houses sliding down cliffs into the ocean. But this isn't California, or Nevada, or even Utah.

“Tell me about your dream,” Bob says. His black shirt is all crumpled; it looks like construction paper as he leans forward in his chair.

“In the dream I was real little,” Sybill begins in a voice which is not her own, or at least it's a voice which she doesn't have anymore, that mountain twang she has so carefully gotten rid of. “I'm real little and I wake up in the night. I call for Mama but she don't come. I called and called for Mama but she didn't come, and it was thundering, and the thunder came into my window. The lightning came into my window too. I saw the lightning come into my window and it flashed in the mirror too, the one over the dresser, I could see everything then, Molly and the pillow too and my new silver brush-and-comb set, and the ruffle around the dresser. Fay made that.”

“Sybill, who is Molly?”

“My doll, the one I got for Christmas. Christmas came before, and Molly was there, too.”

“And what did you do, Sybill, when you woke up?”

“I got out of bed and put my slippers on, the fuzzy ones, and I put my robe on too, and I tied the tie and me and Molly went out into the hall where it was dark and then I heard Mama downstairs, I heard voices, so I went down. I am not allowed to slide down the banister,” Sybill says.

“And then?”

“They were on the back porch,” Sybill says.

She went down the steps one by one, sliding her hand along the cool smooth wood of the banister, until her hand hit the hand-carved newel post and she knew she was on the rose-flowered rug in the hall at the foot of the stairs. She knew this even in the dark, and knew that the parlor was there to the left, and the dining room. Thunder crashed outside and then lightning came right after, lighting up her mother's big cabinet full of cut glass which sent out sparks of light in every direction. More light, real light, came from the crack under the kitchen door, and Sybill pushed it open, cautiously. “Mama?” she said. But the kitchen was empty even though you could tell they had just been there. The bulb in its wavy yellow shade hung low over the round wood table, swaying ever so slightly. The refrigerator hummed. Mister Cat, the cookie jar, sat on top of it, with his orange-and-white striped tummy full of oatmeal cookies. Fay made those cookies yesterday. The faucet dripped into the sink, Mama had been trying for days to get the plumber to come, and outside it was raining cats and dogs, beyond the blue-and-white figured curtains with the pattern of little houses on them, little red-roofed and yellow-roofed houses hundreds of them with smoke coming out the chimneys. The houses had blue front doors. Smoke hung in blue waves above the polished tabletop, her daddy must be home. But where were they?

“Mama?” Sybill said. The blue china clock on the wall chimed out but Sybill had not yet learned to tell time. About the clock, she would mainly remember the smiling face of the sun at the center of time and she would not remember at all what happened next. She heard a sound like a pig grunting, and a voice crying out which abruptly ceased. These noises came from outside, from the porch, beyond the cold-pantry. Sybill walked carefully across the yellow linoleum, sniffing the smoke from Daddy's pipe. It had a sweet smell to it, a kind of richness. She could smell the other smell, too, the way his breath was.
Liquor! Mama said
. “Mama?” Sybill said, and again she heard the sound like a grunt, like an “oof' noise in the funny-papers.
Oof! Ugh! Glunk!
Like little animals in the funny-paper, talking out loud. “Mama?” Sybill was not afraid. She opened the back door, slowly turning the cool white porcelain knob. She walked across the cold-pantry and opened the outside door. Air came blowing in cold, all around her. Freezing rain whipped across the wood planks of the porch.
Winter thunderstorm brings bad luck, Nettie says
. The cold March wind pushed and pushed, shutting the door behind her. Sybill put her hand to her eyes, and tried to look out in the yard. It was a night like nothing she had ever seen, a solid blackness swept by blasts of cold, by stinging freezing rain, drumming loudly on the tin roof, making it hard to hear or think: she couldn't see.
Boom! Oof! Thunk!
The thunder came then, rolling long and slow like a horrible horrible train, and then the lightning.

Then Sybill saw the figure out in the yard, with the long-handled ax upraised, and saw her bring it down again and again into the man who lay on the hillside in the streaming rain, the washing mud. Sybill saw everything: his face and hair all red with blood, the blood running down into the steep muddy yard, his black hat where it lay in the pouring rain, all that blood.
Thunk! Splat!
Sybill was so cold. She stood and saw when the lightning flashed but the storm was going away by then, the flashes fewer, shorter, the thunder a disgruntled kind of grumbling in the big black sky. Then they were together like some kind of enormous animal moving across the yard, moving across the rainswept hillside, toward the well. Sybill saw the red-shingled roof of the well in the flash of light, the rusty dipper dangling from the rope, the huge dark creature creeping through the rain. Then Sybill reached back and opened the cold-pantry door. She walked through it and into the kitchen, shutting the kitchen door behind her, and across the yellow kitchen floor and into the hall. She walked through the dark hall past the dining room and the parlor and across the flowered rug and then up the stairs, sliding her hand along the banister. Sybill was very, very cold. She walked into her room and took off her robe and her fuzzy slippers and put them back into the closet, shutting the door. Then Sybill got back into bed, pulling Molly to her, and closed her eyes and immediately slept, her face tight against Molly's smooth china cheek.

Sybill blinks, so slowly she can feel her eyelids open and shut like heavy garage doors. Sybill feels old, old: it's the Change of Life, for sure. She feels old, and sad, and sick. She doesn't feel like crying, though: a person has a duty in this world. So it was right, all along, that voice inside her that said, “Sybill honey, don't do it! Don't spill the beans!”
Lord
. Whoever thought it would be anything like this, though, anything like her own mother killing her own father, and all those years ago? Let's see, it must have been about 1940, because Mother married Verner Hess in 1942, although she never really loved him. Mother really loved Jewell Rife, who disappeared, but Verner Hess loved Mother. And so does Sybill, of course, or maybe she really hates her. Who knows what else is down there, after all? Sybill wishes she'd never let Bob step one foot down in her subconscious. She wishes she'd never come here. Sybill shakes her head to clear it, which she can't. It seems to be full of smoke, or fog, but at least there are no lights to tell the beginnings of headache. Sybill realizes to her surprise that Bob, the hypnotist, is holding her hand between his two pudgy white ones. Bob presses her hand.

“My dear Sybill,” he says. But Sybill hates him! He looks like a crazy Kung Fu in that tacky black rumpled shirt, blinking his eyes behind the thick pink glasses. Probably his wife is just a sight.

“Betty'll have a fit,” Sybill says. “It serves her right.”

“I think you should proceed very slowly in terms of what you envision doing next,” Bob says. “It's a far-from-foolproof process we have here, you know. The reason I directed you to recapture the experience through dream is so that you would repeat it aloud upon awakening, as you did, so that I would not be the only one of us who heard the explanation.”