Making Waves (28 page)

“Taylor.” Sarah raised her head and looked up at me, her golden eyes wide. “That car stopped right in front of the house, then took off like a bat out of hell when I saw them looking at us.”

“Did you see who it was?” I took my arms off her shoulders reluctantly and looked down the street at the receding taillights, glowing like fireflies in the darkness.

“Your cousin Sonny. He got his eyes full.”

“Oh, shit. Shit. I'll just bet he did.” I sighed.

“And his wife was with him. She was about to break her neck looking at us.”

I sighed again and pretended to shrug it off. But knowing Ellis, especially after she'd gotten so furious with me this morning, I could only imagine what the consequences of that little scene might be.

I had only to wait a couple of days to discover those consequences for myself. Aunt Della seemed to be doing okay now, not great, still frail and shaky as hell, but no worse than when I'd reappeared a few weeks ago. Just to be sure, I'd taken her to the doctor in the new clinic outside of town. He'd been a bit more cautious than I'd expected—giving her all sorts of tests and stuff as though he suspected some kind of stroke. But she'd checked out okay, and he'd gotten her to agree to see him more regularly, which was a major feat with her. It irked her to admit she was not as robust as she'd always been.

I was spending lots of time helping Sarah get Miss Maudie's house ready for its new occupant, some old maid cousin of theirs. It was an afternoon, a couple of days later, after I'd been helping Sarah paint the kitchen cabinets, when I returned home to find Aunt Della all agitated.

“Frances Martha is coming over here in a few minutes to pick you and me up, Taylor,” she told me as soon as I got in the house. “Harris wants to talk with us. He wanted to come here, but I didn't want him to. Last time he was over here he snooped around—said I wasn't able to take care of the house and all of Papa and Mama's antiques anymore. That's why I don't want him here.”

“Crap, Aunt Della—you should've at least made him come to you! His royal majesty can't just command that you come over there and talk with him, especially now, with you not feeling well. What the hell could he possibly want to talk about anyway?”

Aunt Della shook her head and sighed. “I don't know. Last time he came here, earlier on in the summer, was when he tried to talk me into going to a nursing home. I'll bet you anything Lonnie Floyd told him I went to the doctor the other day. Her daughter's the receptionist there.”

I rubbed my eyes wearily with yellow paint—stained hands. I was dirty and tired and didn't feel like listening to His Holiness this afternoon.

“Do we have to go?”

“Well, you know Harris, hon. He'll just pester me until he gets his way.”

“Okay, okay. I guess it could be worse—they could've invited us to supper.”

The whole Clark clan was out in full regalia when me and Aunt Della got there. Evidently Annie Lou or someone had aired out the front parlor, the one Daddy Clark and I'd sat in when I was last over there. The window unit was going full blast but it still was airless, hot as holy hell, and smelled like mothballs, if moths had balls. They were all waiting for us—Daddy Clark, Sonny, Ellis, Aunt Frances Martha—each looking morbidly eager for whatever confrontation was ahead. I looked around dismissively at my dearly beloved family gathered around the Great Bald Wizard of Zion.

“Guess what, Aunt Della,” I muttered as we made our entrance. “We ain't in Kansas anymore.”

Daddy Clark was standing up, of course, lording over us, leaning against the mantel over the marble fireplace. I walked over to him, shook his hand, then turned back to help Aunt Della fold her walker away. She settled herself in a big satin wing chair, which made her look small and defenseless. I pulled up a needlepoint stool and sat right next to her, taking her hand firmly in mine. No way I was going to let him bully her like he usually did. This time, I was going to be here for her, so help me God. I looked around at each of my lovely family members, nodding curtly to them instead of speaking. I wasn't up to the Clark family scenes today.

Aunt Opal then prissed her fat ass into the parlor, surprisingly. She spent most of her time boozing it up at the country club, playing bridge with all the other bored housewives out there. I thought I was going to puke at the performance she put on, though I couldn't figure out who it was for. She came over when I got Aunt Della settled, ohhed and ahhed over her like so many idiots do around old people, shouting at her as though she was deaf, talking babyish to her, and generally acting like Aunt Della had become a retard in her old age. I swear, when I get old I'm going to keep a cane handy and brain the hell out of whoever pulls that on me.

The true retard of the bunch, Aunt Frances Martha, dear old soul that she is, excused herself right off because she was making a Bisquick pie or some such shit for supper and had to roll out the dough, or so she told us. She'd already enthralled us by describing it step by step on the ride over. Aunt Della ignored her, but I pretended to give a crap and she explained the whole process in detail, getting off on mixing Bisquick with buttermilk and poppy seeds. I guess Daddy Clark allowed her to miss the powwow because he figured she didn't have sense enough to know what was going on anyway. Such Christian compassion.

The happy newlyweds Sonny and Ellis sat side by side on the sofa, holding hands and looking mad enough to shit a brick. Neither one even spoke to Aunt Della or myself, just nodding a greeting instead. I didn't know what on earth their problem was, but I figured I'd find out soon enough. I was sure right about that. I was determined to keep my cool, not blow it, not let any of them know that I was nervous and shaky as usual, just being in this house, especially in my usual subservient position with my grandfather.

I looked up at Daddy Clark standing there, elbow on the mantel, stern and unapproachable, dressed in a starched blue shirt and sharply creased gray trousers held up on his rotund belly with suspenders. Gone was his deadly weapon, the thin belt with the gold buckle engraved with HJC, a belt I'd felt the sting of more often than I could remember.

No matter how hard I tried not to be affected, there was something about this scene that was unnerving the hell out of me, more than his summons or even the memory of the infamous belt could possibly warrant. Suddenly I knew what it was. No wonder I was so nervous—I discovered at an early age that Daddy Clark had a weapon more potent than the belt.

I was five years old, the year before I started school, the year Charlotte reappeared briefly in my life, first time since I was left crying for her in my playpen in a squalid apartment above a lush courtyard in New Orleans. It was years later before I learned she'd paid some old hag to watch me, supposedly planning on coming back for me after a little jaunt to Europe with a new lover, one of her professors, twenty years her senior. The old sot got too plastered to see about me; if the landlord hadn't heard my wails I might have kicked off before my first birthday. Too bad. Saved lots of folks, including myself, plenty of heartache.

Aunt Della, of the old school, use to take me to visit my granddaddy all the time those first five years, damned determined to establish family, especially male, bonding. She gave up only when she realized the old fart really didn't care to have me around, couldn't stand to be reminded of the shame his daughter had brought to the almighty Clark name.

But it was one of those visits; Aunt Della had left me for the afternoon and gone to some church meeting or something. I'd been baking Bisquick cookies with Aunt Frances Martha in the kitchen. She'd then gone down for her nap, and I believed Daddy Clark to be napping too. Like the dumb little bastard I was then, I took advantage of my supposed freedom to snoop around in the forbidden regions of the front parlor, just asking to get in trouble. Something my Aunt Della had told me that very morning prompted my curious snooping. Some of the things about that day are still shadowy and half-forgotten, but others are vivid as hell. Too vivid.

I'd sneaked into the big dark parlor, crawling on the floor like I was a cowboy having to hide out from the Indians who might be chasing me. I can even remember the faggy little cowboy suit I wore, one Aunt Della'd given me for my fifth birthday.

On my hands and knees, I'd scurried behind the sofa, then over to a big old antique sideboard that I'd seen Daddy Clark use, on the few occasions I'd been allowed in the parlor. I'd found what I was looking for, too, in the first drawer I lugged on. It fell open, spilling its contents out onto the polished wooden floor. I cried out, thrilled, when I spotted the photo I'd sneaked in there searching for.

At that very moment, I'd known I was not alone in that room. “What do you think you're doing, boy?” came thundering at me, and I cringed. I'd looked up to see Daddy Clark standing there by the mantel. Evidently he'd been there, fiddling around with something or other, the whole time, and I hadn't seen him in the fantasy of my cowboy games.

To a child, Daddy Clark had seemed the essence of the wrath of God, scaring the daylights out of me by his sudden appearances, his scornful glare, looking down at me from his massive height. Also like God, he seemed omnipresent, always around, seeing what I was getting into. Not that he really gave a shit, as long as it wasn't anything to shame him. That day, he towered over me and grabbed me by my arm, pulling me to my feet. At that time, though, I was too excited to be scared speechless like I usually was around him. Unfortunately.

“Look, Daddy Clark!” I'd babbled like a fool. I held up the picture I clutched in my chubby little hand, the photo of the beautiful lady I knew immediately was Charlotte Clark Dupree.

“I know this is my mama! Aunt Della told me my mama was coming to see me next week. I know this is her.”

“You don't have a mama, son,” Daddy Clark said coldly.

That's all he said, but I had to argue, dumb little hick that I was. “Uh, huh, I do, too! Aunt Della told me that my mama—Charlotte,
my
mama, was coming across a big ocean to see me next week.”

Daddy Clark looked down at the picture. He took it out of my hand and put it back in the drawer.

“My daughter Charlotte is coming here next week, boy. That much is true. But she's
not
your mama. A mama doesn't desert her child, leaving it to be raised by anybody who'll take it in. She's nobody's mama, not her.”

And he closed the drawer with a bang.

Of course the old bastard had a point, but I didn't know it at the time. I'd been too petrified to tell Aunt Della. Because if the mysterious Charlotte wasn't my mother, then who was? Maybe Daddy Clark was right; maybe I didn't belong anywhere, to anyone. I'd been so quiet afterwards that Aunt Della, old-fashioned as she was, had dosed me good with castor oil, thinking I was surely sick. That part I do remember vividly.

I shook aside my happy recollections of childhood days gone by and forced myself to go back to where I was right then. I wasn't going to let myself be distracted by any more ghosts—I owed it to Aunt Della to be here for her now. Banquo—be gone!

Daddy Clark continued to stand there staring at us, looking disgusted with the whole clan. He peered down at us like Browning's last Duchess, his looks for each of us the same. Aunt Opal, wasting her days playing cards and drinking; Sonny, too sorry to hold down a regular job; Ellis, straight out of the backwoods; and of course me and Aunt Della, his cross to bear, each in our own way. Guess he felt none of us were worthy of the prestigious Clark name. Finally he spoke, turning his attention first to Aunt Della, as I'd expected.

“Della, I promised Papa that I'd look after you when you got to this point in your life. Since you had no offspring, Papa left the house to me, with the stipulation that it was yours long as you lived. However, I've talked with your doctor. He agrees with me that you can no longer stay home by yourself,” he said.

Aunt Della opened her mouth to protest, but Daddy Clark held his hand up to silence her.

“Please. Let me finish. I have given this matter much attention in my prayer life. I am not the heartless, coldhearted person you've always made me out to be, Della.” He stood more erect and waited for his sister to look ashamed. She only looked frail and forlorn. I squeezed her hand tighter.

“Christ requires that we have compassion one for another,” Daddy Clark continued. I sighed. Shit. Now we had to listen to him pontificate as well.

“It has come to me from my prayer life that I honor my papa's dying request by doing what I can to make your final years happy, Della. The Lord has seen fit to answer my prayers. He has sent us someone to stay with you. With her help, you can stay in Papa's home as long as you are able to make it.”

Daddy Clark stuck out his chest and waited for the worshippers to fall on their knees in front of him. Something told me he'd already practiced this speech for the town's benefit, probably telling the preacher and his cronies at the church, extolling in how he was going beyond his Christian duty by his poor old sister. But I smelled a rat.

Aunt Della, for once, seemed to not know what to say, since she was expecting he'd already gotten her a room ready in the nursing home.

“Well, Harris,” she said finally, faintly. “I do appreciate that.”