If Wishes Were Horses (2 page)

The clock would go for ten or twelve days on one winding, but Roy had wound it every Monday morning because that had been how his mother had done it. Roy doing that one thing so reliably seemed the strangest thing. Roy was not a reliable sort of man, which was not to say that he was never reliable but more saying don’t count on him to be.

Then, sinking down on the side of the bed, pressing her arm tight over her midsection and a hand tight over her mouth, Etta rocked back and forth and thought: Roy
was
no longer and had become
had been
.

In that moment, if anyone had asked Etta what she wanted most in the entire world, she would have said, “Coffee!”

She would have screamed it. She had lost her husband and was little by little losing all she possessed, and here she sat thinking she would just about kill for a cup of coffee. That struck her as obscene, if not on the verge of insanity.

Oh, Lordy
, she thought, wiping the cool, moist RC bottle across her forehead.

Here she was, six months pregnant and still suffering morning sickness until noon. The mere aroma of coffee at dawn would send her rushing for the bathroom. The sound of her retching had so unnerved Roy that he took to driving down to Obie’s cottage to enjoy his morning coffee. The fancy obstetrician prescribed a new wonder drug, but it didn’t work. The obstetrician said it was all in Etta’s mind, and she told him that it was there and in her stomach, too, and if he wanted to find out to please come over one morning and she would throw up last night’s supper on him.

Latrice’s footsteps broke into Etta’s thoughts. Latrice wore thick, lace-up shoes with heels you could hear coming. She was a big woman, not fat, simply substantial with big bones and an hourglass shape, and she walked as if intent on planting her mark in the world.

She entered the room. “Here’s some hot cola syrup, honey, and a piece of jelly bread.” These were Latrice’s anti-nausea potions. They did not cure but they did a sight more than the fancy doctor’s medicine. These foods stayed down.

Twenty years ago Latrice had been a midwife, learning her skill as an assistant to her own mother. She had delivered babies, Negro, white, Indian, and a mixture, many of whom had been turned away from real doctors because of their race or inability to pay. Times changed and a worship of hospitals flourished, curtailing Latrice’s practice, a fact she considered an outrageous waste of her talent.

Etta lifted the cold bottle of RC for Latrice’s viewing.

“Give me that.” Latrice snatched the bottle away. “You shouldn’t be havin’ cold stuff on your stomach.”

“Well, you made yourself coffee,” Etta accused, vaguely realizing the two statements did not at all relate.

“Yes, I did. I felt the need of sustenance. Now, here . . . drink this cola while it is hot so it will calm your stomach.”

“It isn’t coffee.”

Etta had the urge to throw the cup across the room and was somewhat shocked at herself, for she had never done such a thing. Momentarily intrigued by the prospect, she wondered what such a burst of emotion would feel like. The next instant she thought about having to clean up the mess and simply felt too tired for it.

“Apparently,” she said, casting Latrice a dark look from beneath her lashes, “I am quite alone in my sufferin’.”

“No, you aren’t, honey . . . we’re all sufferin’ right along with you, believe me,” Latrice said smartly. Then she noticed Etta’s hand shaking and guilt pricked her. Her mood was stretched thin; her quickly gulped cup of coffee had only made her crave more.

Sucking in a deep breath, Latrice lifted her shoulders and straightened her spine, pushing up her black lace-covered bosom. Beneath her floral cotton apron, she already wore her favorite black crape funeral dress, which she counted on to give her the proper attitude. She thought the best thing to do was to get Etta into her funeral clothes.

“Come on, honey. Let’s get a look at you in this pretty dress,” she said, pulling from the chiffarobe the black wool flannel dress Maisie Nation had whipped up in a day’s time, there not being a single black dress in town to fit a skinny pregnant woman.

Latrice believed in funerals as much as she believed in regularly eating garlic paste. Funerals made people remember the good things such as fine china and high respect, and the value of being alive to enjoy both. And if asked, Latrice would openly admit to a certain enjoyment of funerals. There was the enjoyment of dressing and visiting and giving forth of emotion and most especially watching others give forth of emotion. She herself had been known to think:
Oh, I could use me a good funeral
. Although she was having to put up with a lot for Roy J. Rivers’s funeral and felt she was not getting a sufficient return.

“It’s a funeral dress,” Etta said, looking dourly at the dress. She wasn’t happy with the idea of getting dressed at all, much less in black. She had always looked ghastly in black.

Etta had always considered blue her best color. Blue had been Roy’s favorite color for her, too. “Blue brings out your eyes, Precious.” His pet name for her was Precious. Or it had been, she thought.

“That doesn’t mean it isn’t pretty,” Latrice said. “Oh, law, you don’t have any stockin’s down here.”

“Oh . . . no,” Etta said vaguely. “I guess they’re back in my dresser.” She noticed Latrice giving her a look. Not only was Latrice very tall and very dark but she could put forth a look that could move mountains and make sinners repent.

Etta, however, had known Latrice all her life and simply reached over and took up the jelly bread.

Latrice went from the room, saying, “You are goin’ to have to go back into that bedroom sooner or later, and it’d be a lot better sooner so that I wouldn’t have to keep goin’ back and forth.”

Etta felt her insides shift around. With shaking hands, she tore a piece off the bread, putting it into her mouth while she listened to Latrice’s firm footsteps go down the hallway to the front bedroom.

Since the morning Sheriff Atkins had come to tell her Roy was dead, Etta had refused to enter their bedroom. She panicked every time she thought about it.

Considering Latrice’s statement as she finished off the cup of warm cola and wished it were coffee, she couldn’t see any reason that she would ever have to go into the bedroom. She could have the entire room emptied without ever having to enter it, or even look into it. She pictured the scene: men carrying the big bed with the pineapple-topped posts out the door and off into a moving van. She would give it to the poorest family in town—the poorest woman with the most children and a boldly philandering husband—she thought, suddenly warming to the plan. It made her happy to picture a poor, worn woman lying in her magnificent bed, and with all the fine cotton percale sheets and thick chenille coverlets and down-filled pillows, too.

Then she imagined the door to the bedroom boarded right over so she never had to enter or look into the room again. At first she saw a man hammering a nail into the board, but then she herself was hammering the nails in, pounding with the hammer, again and again.

“I hope none of these have runners,” Latrice said when she came back through the door.

“Why?” Etta asked, licking her fingers.

“Well, it’s a bit hard for a woman to look dignified with a runner in her stockin’.”

Etta looked at her and blinked. She had not fully left behind Latrice’s earlier comment about having to return to the bedroom.

“No . . . I mean why do I ever have to go back into that bedroom? I don’t see the truth in that statement.”

Latrice put her hand to her hip. “Well, it
is
your bedroom. You spent all that time and money tearin’ out the wall to make it bigger and bought that fancy new mahogany bedroom set from Dallas. And all of your things are in there,” she added.

“Pretty soon all of my things will be in this guest room,” Etta said, “and this bedroom set is perfectly acceptable. I’ll give away the mahogany bed to a poor lady.” She looked around. “We will have to make new draperies, though. It is too bright in here first thing in the mornin’.”

Latrice murmured, “If you ask me, we may turn out to be the poor people.” Then she fixed Etta with one of those looks. “It is plain foolishness avoidin’ that room. It isn’t as if Mr. Roy died in there.”

The next instant, realizing her error, she shut her mouth tight.

“I know perfectly well where my husband died, thank you.”

Etta felt a heat, like a flame, burn up from her chest and fill her brain. She blinked, thought she might cry, and flopped her hand over the nightstand, looking for the handkerchief Latrice had put there. Latrice had put handkerchiefs all around, to be ready for use, although thus far Etta had not been able to have more than blurred vision.

“Oh, honey, you go ahead and cry.” Latrice sat and gathered Etta against her full bosom. “You need to cry it all out . . . let those tears wash away the hurt.”

Etta inhaled the warm, sweet scent of Latrice, of talcum powder and rosewater so familiar since childhood. She held on to Latrice’s stout body and felt emotion seething and roaring, but it simply wouldn’t pour forth.

“Well, I can’t!” She pushed away and jumped to her feet. “I can’t cry, damn it. Why can’t I cry?”

Even in her distress she realized she had sworn, and Latrice had such a fit when she swore, and oh, Lord, what did it matter? Stalking across the room, she caught sight of her image in the mirror as she passed. The sight of herself, swollen belly and colorless face drawn tight, was startling.
Who was that woman? Who had she become?

She whipped around and tossed at Latrice, “Well, say it. You certainly said it enough before—it was a great mistake for me to marry Roy Rivers.”

Latrice looked patiently calm. “A time for every season. This is a season of mournin’, and nothin’ else matters right now."

Etta, shaking her head, reached out and gripped the turned footboard. “Nothing else matters? Well, I don’t know what I’m doin’—mournin’ or cussin’. How does that sound? It’s real hard to mourn a husband who went and died in another woman’s bed.”

Latrice said, “Honey, you just have to get through it.”

“Well, that is not much of a suggestion,” Etta said. She stared at Latrice, who looked pained and a little at a loss. Etta wasn’t accustomed to Latrice being at a loss. Usually Latrice had the perfect answer for everything—or at least she could appear to have the perfect answer.

“Well, I cannot go through all this today,” Etta said. “No. Everyone will be lookin’ at me and whisperin’. Half of them will be sayin’ they knew it would never work out with me and Roy Rivers from the beginnin’. That Roy married down, and it all told out because I could not satisfy him.”

“Now, that’s not true. Plenty of people, like sweet Miss Heloise, have been on your side all along . . . and those that aren’t, well honey, just like ornery dogs, if you face people and show no fear, they are gonna slump away and let you be.”

“Oh, no, they won’t,” Etta said emphatically. Now that she was talking hard truth, she was no longer teary. “I’m not sayin’ people are all that bright, but most of them can think a little ahead of dogs. Oh, you better bet people are gonna chew on this for a long time"—she pressed a hand on her belly—"and someday somebody will tell the whole story to my child—in a nice way and for her own good, of course.”

“I imagine that might happen,” Latrice conceded. She appeared momentarily flustered, which added to Etta’s own upset. “But I think there’s enough on our plate today without worryin’ over tomorrow.”

“You make a good point,” Etta said. “There is enough on our plate today, so I don’t see the need to add to it by goin’ to the funeral. I simply don’t need to put myself through it.” Her gaze lit on the bed. “I’m goin’ back to bed, and you can just tell people I’m too sick to come out.”

Throwing herself across the bed, she fell back on the thick feather pillows and dropped her arm over her forehead in a dramatic gesture that somehow soothed. She felt she had come upon the answer at last. She simply would not go. She would stay in this bed. They could all come and take everything around her, but she would stay in this bed. She would possibly stay in this bed for the rest of her life, an idea that seemed at once perfectly strange and perfectly logical.

“You know you can’t do that.”

Latrice’s voice cut into Etta’s spinning thoughts. She refused them and talking entirely. She was in bed. She was not conversing.

Latrice said, “You cannot continue to claim bein’ sick and not go into the hospital. You got out of visitation yesterday evening with that, but it won’t wash windows today.”

Etta pulled a pillow over her head and tight around her ears. She began humming and forced into her mind the picture of the red flying horse from the gasoline sign. She imagined herself flying away on him.

Latrice grabbed the pillow and the two of them grappled with clawed fingers and heavy breaths. Latrice won because she was twice the size of Etta. Etta pressed her hands over her ears, squeezed her eyes closed, and hummed louder, feeling herself spinning and spinning in a desperate wind.

Then Latrice was right in Etta’s face, the sheer force of her causing Etta’s eyes to pop open.

“No, I am not goin’. I will not see Roy dead!” Etta yelled, coming up to her knees.

“You will,” Latrice said, her eyes dark, hot pools. “You have to, honey. If you turn from this now, you will always be turnin’. That is the way your mother went. Is that what you want for yourself?
For your child?
”

Etta, staring into Latrice’s eyes and hearing the cracking of emotion in her voice, went rigid.

Latrice said with a soft, even tone, “Mr. Roy, bless his soul, has done enough to disgrace himself and you. The only way you can turn that around is to show honor. You have to do that for your child, and for yourself.”

The words your child echoed in Etta’s mind and in her heart, and she thought of Roy, and of her mother, and of the dear baby in her womb. Pressing her hand to her belly, she got off the bed and got dressed because she knew the truth in all Latrice said. She had had her little hissy fit and felt a bit better because of it.