Making Waves (9 page)

Charlotte may have suspected my true feelings. All mothers, whether they're worth a crap or not, seem to have some kind of ESP when it comes to their offspring. Right now, though, she was so pissed with me I hadn't heard from her all summer. Of course, she was traveling in Europe with a new lover and that gave her an excuse. This past Mother's Day I sent her a Mother of the Year plaque, thinking it'd be a hoot. Evidently the new lover raised eyebrows at that and she practically quit speaking to me. I sent Aunt Della a dozen silk roses of her favorite color, mauve. I'd rather have sent the real thing, but the way she kept things, they would stay in her house forever, dead as hell. Aunt Della never threw anything away. Especially not me, the prodigal. When everyone else was through with me, she hung on for dear life. Probably saved me, I was in such bad shape then. I refused to let them cart her off to some smelly old nursing home, no matter
what
I had to do.

I put out my cigarette and settled back on the pillows, feeling my eyelids get heavy as the night air from the open windows got softer and sweeter. I could feel sleep coming on now, thank God. The last thing I thought of before I slept was Tim, and the thought was a sudden stab of pain, like the piercing earaches I had as a kid. I couldn't help it; until now I'd been successful at putting him out of my mind. But I'd have to face him again, now that I was back in Clarksville. I'd have to do it eventually.

The next day, as promised, Aunt Della and I caught up on two years, yakking on and on way into the morning.

She had risen early and baked biscuits to go with the fig preserves she'd just put up. No matter that she could barely stand without the walker; she and her cousin Carrie, almost ninety, and old black Eula Mae, who'd helped her do these things for years, tended a garden and canned and pickled and preserved its harvest. I figured anyone who could do all that wasn't ready to be put out to pasture.

But in the morning sunlight as we sat at the breakfast table, Aunt Della looked frailer than last night, even. Her age-spotted hands shook as she poured my coffee, and her voice was much weaker than on the phone. Even so, she was more like the Aunt Della I remembered, and I hid a smile as she rattled on and on, like she had as long as I've known her, talking to herself when no one else was around. I just drank coffee and stuffed myself with hot biscuits and preserves, letting her talk to her heart's content.

“It's Harris, hon,” she told me. “He's the one insisting I can't stay by myself anymore. Oh, give him credit, he did offer for me to live with him and Frances Martha in that three-ring circus he calls a home. Ha! Papa would turn over in his grave—he knows me and Harris never got along.”

Aunt Della always referred to her papa as though he were still alive. It used to tickle the hell out of me, but now it seemed unbearably sad, and I blinked rapidly when tears stung my eyes.

Every time she started to bite her biscuit, she'd think of something else to tell me and began blabbering again. She hadn't eaten a whole biscuit yet.

“I been here eighty-two years, right here in this house. Papa wouldn't want me to go anywhere else,” she said. “And he sure wouldn't want Sonny living here.”

That got my attention.

“
Sonny?
What's he got to do with it?”

“Why, I thought I'd told you, sugar.” Aunt Della's cloudy blue eyes narrowed as she continued. “Oh, it's not just Harris—it's Sonny and Opal, too. They've decided that they want my house for Sonny and that prissy fool he married.”

I laughed and buttered another biscuit.

“That really slays me, Aunt Della. I can't for the life of me picture Sonny married to that mousy little Glenda Rountree. Ever since you told me—”

“Lord, I thought I called you back about that!”

Aunt Della was also getting more forgetful, I'd noticed.

“I had it all mixed up, Taylor. That's what I could have sworn Opal said when she called me—that Sonny married that Glenda Rountree you finished school with.”

“You mean they didn't get married after all?”

Old Sonny the hell-raiser had shocked everyone last month by up and marrying suddenly. I figured she was pregnant. But I was astonished to hear that he'd married a former classmate of mine, a girl so plain and unknown I had to look her up in the yearbook to remember her. Then I couldn't believe my eyes. What a hoot.

“Oh, no, he didn't marry Glenda, dear.” Aunt Della gave up on her biscuit and stared at me wide-eyed. “He married the older sister, the one with the funny name.”

I was flabbergasted at this news. “
What?
Ellis Rountree—you don't mean to tell me that Sonny married Ellis Rountree, the Baptist preacher's secretary?”

“Yes. That's the one. Ellis.” Aunt Della sat back in her chair and sipped her coffee.

“But—Aunt Della—that's just not possible!” I was bowled over at this news, stunned. “She's much older than me, so she'd be—what? Four or five years older than Sonny?”

“I was older than Rufus when we married,” Aunt Della reminded me, primly.

“Yeah, but—Sonny! Naw—I cannot believe it!”

Old holy-roller Ellis Rountree, marrying Sonny! It was too much for me this early in the morning. Ellis Rountree—memory flooded over me and I felt my face flush hotly. Oh, God. Ellis Rountree, married to my cousin Sonny—what if she told him about … no, she wouldn't. I could count on that. She'd never tell anyone that. I glanced sheepishly at Aunt Della and saw her forlorn face.

“Well, it seems that Miss Priss Ellis has long coveted this house, working right across the street from us at the Baptist church and seeing it out her office window every day. I can remember now, her always stopping to talk when I was working in the yard, asking about things. But I never thought nothing of it. Guess she thinks she's found a way to get her hands on it now.”

I couldn't think straight, couldn't process this new information. “Where are the newlyweds living?” was all I could think to ask.

The Rountrees were a strange family, raised in a little frame house out from town and keeping mostly to themselves. They were religious as hell, about all that I or other folks in town knew about them. The Rountree girls never wore any makeup nor took part in any of the school activities like everyone else. Old Man Rountree didn't believe in frivolities. They went to some foot-washing primitive Baptist church out in the sticks that the other Baptists in town looked down on. It was hard to imagine Sonny in that family!

“They're living with Opal, of course, at Harris's, with everybody else,” Aunt Della said with a sniff. “Miss Priss is really putting on the airs now. She quit her job at the church, went off to Columbus to some business college for a year, and now thinks that she can run all the Clark businesses! Can you imagine? And she's gotten that old fool Harris eating out of her hand. Of course, Opal's so glad Sonny's settled down that she dotes on her, too. Beats all I've ever seen.”

That it did. I couldn't help it. In spite of Aunt Della's look of disgust with the Clark clan, in spite of learning that Ellis was the new bride and not her mousy sister Glenda, I started laughing.

“Next thing you know, ole Sonny will be working,” I teased her. Sonny played the role of the good-ole-boy so well that he'd never worked a day in his life.

“Oh, he already is. He's with Cleve at the funeral home,” Aunt Della told me solemnly.

That really cracked me up, and I strangled on my coffee. Aunt Della went on with her story, oblivious.

“He drives the hearse. You know, I must say that Sonny looks right nice in a dark suit, with his hair cut short. He's never looked a thing like his daddy, though. Always favored Opal's folks to me, especially Hoot Hamilton.” She bit into her biscuit again.

Not only did Sonny look like his maternal grandfather, I thought, wheezing and coughing, Sonny was his namesake and took after him in other ways, for old Hoot had been a notorious womanizer, finally shot by a jealous husband, over at Mt. Zion. Caught in the act, so to speak. One of our local scandals.

I never knew Sonny's daddy, my uncle Harris Jr. He was one of Zion's war heroes, killed in Vietnam when Sonny was a baby. Aunt Opal'd lived in the big old house with all the Clarks ever since. She and Aunt Frances Martha stayed on and ran the house for Daddy Clark after Grandma Clark died, years and years ago. It took two women to wait on that old geezer, he was so used to having everything his way. My mother's father, yet I'd never felt one ounce of affection for him. Nor he for me, nor my mother. What a loving family we were.

I turned my attention back to Aunt Della as she began telling me about other family members, cousin Carrie and Aunt Mary Frances and Uncle Cleve and their daughters. I let her go on and on, but I was only half listening. At some point, I planned to stop her and ask about Tim and Donnette. She hadn't even mentioned them in almost a year. She had kept me posted on Tim's progress after the accident, when he got out of the hospital and rehab and began to recover, then when he and Donnette married. After that, she wouldn't mention them again and was evasive when I asked her, claiming she didn't get out or see people like she used to. For all I knew, they could have moved or divorced or something. But somehow, every time I'd open my mouth to ask about them, I'd stop myself. Aunt Della was talking about Miss Maudie now, and the funeral arrangements, so I decided to wait until later and ask about Tim. After I'd been home a day or so would be better. One thing at a time.

The phone rang and interrupted our breakfast, finally. I started doing the dishes while Aunt Della talked and talked on the phone to Aunt Frances Martha. Though I grimaced and waved soapy hands to her, trying to signal her
no
, Aunt Della told her all about my arrival and detailed everything we'd eaten since then.

To make matters worse, Aunt Della then accepted a dinner invitation for me to go to the Clarks' that night. Shit. She'd be so horrified if I didn't go that I had no choice. She was of the old school, and, despite all their differences, to Aunt Della family was family and that was that. If you came back into town after two years' absence, regardless of the reason for your leaving, you visited all your relatives. Period. End of argument. Oh well, I might as well get it over with. I needed to talk with Daddy Clark about Aunt Della anyhow.

Aunt Della and I spent the rest of the day doing my laundry, which had piled up for days and needed either immediate attention or a dose of Lysol. She talked the whole time, contented to have me there with her again. And I admitted to myself that it felt good to be with her. Good and secure and right. Like I should have been back long before now. If only I didn't have to visit the damn Clark clan tonight!

The Clarks always eat dinner early as country hicks, before dark—six o'clock on the nose—so about that time I took off walking the few blocks over to the ancestral manor, walking west and facing the slanting rays of the late afternoon sun. The heat rising up from the sidewalk almost took my breath away before I'd gotten to the end of Hiram Street. I soon regretted my decision for a stroll because my tee shirt and cutoff jeans were wet with sweat before I'd gotten out of Aunt Della's sight.

I regretted it even more when I noticed that folks were staring at me as though I were a ghost as I strolled along. At least there were only a few people around this time of the day. Elton Davis, the vice president of Daddy Clark's bank, was just coming home from work. I was right in front of his driveway when his flashy white Cadillac pulled in, and he craned his neck and stared like hell at me before getting out of the car. I scurried on down the street before he had a chance to speak to me. Just as I crossed over to Clark Street, two little kids on Big Wheels came bearing down on me, squealing and va-rooming, the only noise in the still, hot afternoon. Even they stopped and looked at me curiously as I walked past them on the sidewalk, shielding their eyes with chubby little hands. The older of the two, a nasty little porker about five years old, shot me a bird. They both giggled and snorted and wheeled themselves into their driveway as though I were going to chase them. I glanced up at their house, a shabby ranch-style that the Clarks rented out, trying to remember who lived there. Not that it mattered. Shitty little kids.

Finally I reached the end of Clark Street, where I could see the dark red ancestral manor looming way back from the sidewalk, looking deceptively dignified and grand. The Clark house was the grandest one in Clarksville for sure, but certainly not in Zion County. Other folks in Zion who had money lived in modern houses with swimming pools and central air, not old Victorian monstrosities like this one. Even an antebellum heart-of-Dixie number would have been better than this Dickensian horror. Despite its impressive size, the Clark house was embarrassingly tacky, with gingerbread swirls and gothic turrets and iron reindeer on the sterile manicured lawn. The black iron fence around the whole monstrosity made me think of a cemetery, appropriately enough. I opened the heavy gate and started up the walkway. I hated the way all of the trees and shrubs were so thoroughly pruned here, such a contrast to Aunt Della's lush yard.

In the backyard I could see John Moses Jackson, a black man who had to be in his eighties yet was still considered Daddy Clark's yard boy. Anxious to flaunt my liberal views, not to mention bug hell out of the Clarks, in the past I'd tried to befriend old John Moses. But no; he was such an Uncle Tom he insisted on calling me Mister Taylor, bowing and scraping, so I gave it up as Daddy Clark smirked at my failure. Of course, if John Moses hadn't been so servile, he'd never have lasted with Daddy Clark, even though the old geezer pretended to accept all “Nigras” as brothers in Christ. Putting up with that kind of shit all his life eventually softened John Moses's brain; he was notoriously senile. Last few years he'd taken to pruning hell out of the shrubbery so it was practically denuded, forcing it into unnatural shapes, tottering around talking to himself. Even from here I could hear the crazy old fart as he attacked the bushes in the back with his pruner, muttering away: “Yassir, Mist' Harris—I done tol' you these dogwoods looks bad … uh, huh, sho is.”