Original Sins (56 page)

On came a slide of the American memorial at Pearl Harbor: “… and I want to tell yall, it brought tears to my eyes just thinking about those brave Amurican boys who gave their lives there on that December morning that we might be together here this afternoon in peace and in freedom. Harvey and I looked at each other, and we was just so choked with emotion that …” Her voice cracked. “Well, ladies, words just fail me, is all.”

“Lord, I tell you, it makes you think,” someone said.

“Makes you think about them Reds down at the mill,” someone whispered to her neighbor.

“Are you trying to say that union members aren't ever bit as much loyal Amuricans as our boys that died at Pearl Harbor?” Clara Campbell demanded in a loud voice.

The room erupted. Mother Tatro sat silent, with a son on each side.

Sally was sitting in the living room clipping a recipe for Cherry Cheese Delight out of
Modern Wife
when Jed walked in.

“Hey,” he said, kissing her.

“What's wrong, honey?”

“What makes you think something's wrong? Can't a man be in a bad mood without always having to explain himself?”

“Sure, honey. Here, have a seat.” She went into the kitchen.

She called, “It's Coach Clancy, isn't it?”

No answer.

“You must be real sad.”

“Stop telling me what I feel.”

“OK, honey.” She was seized with anxiety. What if it wasn't Coach Clancy? What if it was something she'd done? Was it that she'd asked him to put his clothes in the hamper? Did he have himself another woman who wouldn't ask him to do this? She went into the bathroom and looked in the mirror, tracing the faint wrinkles at the corners of her eyes with her fingertips. She fluffed up her hair, molded her breasts with her hands and lifted them. Not all that much sag yet. She smiled her pep squad smile.

For breakfast Sally cooked Jed's favorite—fried eggs, grits, fried potatoes, sausage, toast and coffee. He declined to speak while eating. Sally only wished she'd been struck dumb before asking him to put his clothes in the hamper. He'd been doing it ever since—and speaking and making love very little. She thought about strewing dirty clothes around the bedroom, so he'd get the idea it really was OK. If he resumed dropping his clothes on the floor, maybe he'd resume speaking and making love.

During the afternoon Sally was in the kitchen making corn bread for supper, using Mother Tatro's ghastly sugarless recipe. The kids had just gone down for naps. She heard Jed calling from the garage.

He was lying on his back under the Chevy with just his legs, in green work trousers, sticking out. She stooped and called, “What, honey?”

He pulled himself out from under the car. His face and hands were black with grease. “I'm having me a crisis here. I wonder could you run down to Ben's Body Shop and ask him for an oil pan for a '58 Chevy Impala?”

“Will you listen for the kids?”

“Yeah, sure. Take some money out of my wallet on the dresser.”

She drove out to the highway, thrilled to have him let her do something for him. Maybe he was going to forgive her. She got the oil pan and crept through heavy traffic back to the mill village.

As she walked over to the Chevy, she had an inspiration. The kids were asleep. The house blocked the garage from the street. Jed wanted her to surprise him … She crept up to the car, squatted, put down the oil pan. Then she quickly unzipped his green trousers and began stroking his penis, fighting repulsion at the pale squishy little thing.

A voice croaked, “What the …” He tried to double up. There was a dull thud, and he lay still.

She laughed. “Just relax and enjoy it, darling.”

He wasn't getting hard.

“Bad idea, huh?” she called anxiously.

No answer.

“You don't like this, Jed?” What a horrible mistake. He wouldn't even speak to her now.

“Here's the oil thing anyway.” She shoved it under the car, feeling frantic. She put his penis back in his trousers and zipped them up. What could she do to win his love again? Who was this other woman she was competing with anyway? Was it someone she saw every week at church, passed every day on the sidewalk, shopped with side by side in Kroger's? Did everyone in town know about it except herself? Were they pitying her behind her back? How could Jed make it so humiliating for her? What had she ever done except love him and try to make his life easier and more pleasant? She walked in the kitchen door, tears streaming from her eyes. Jed walked out of the bathroom. She stared at him.

“Any luck with the oil pan?” he asked pleasantly.

“It's under the car,” she whispered.

He started for the back door.

“Jed?”

“Huh?”

“Who's under the car?”

“Oh, Hank come over to help me out.”

“I thought it was you.”

“Huh-un.”

He pushed open the screen door.

“Jed?”

He turned. She blurted out what she'd done. He laughed. Relieved, she joined him through her tears. They could laugh together. He'd forgiven her for whatever it was she'd done. They went out to the garage.

“Hank?” he yelled. “How's that for hospitality, buddy?”

No answer.

“Hank?”

He grabbed Hank's ankles and dragged him out. He was motionless, a gash across his forehead. “Christ, you've killed him!”

She stood with her hands to her mouth, her eyes wide.

“Well, call the Lifesaving Squad or something! But shit, how do I explain this?”

“Just tell what happened.”

“What, that my wife was playing with my best friend's dick?”

“But I thought it was you, Jed.”

“That my wife can't tell my dick from my best friend's? Shit, Sally, what the hell did you think you was doing?”

“I was just trying to be how you wanted me to be—surprising you and all.”

“I never asked for no hand jobs under the Chevy.”

Her chin began quivering.

“Well, shit, Sally, don't start crying again. Go call the Lifesaving Squad, and then stay in the house and let me handle it.”

She sat in the living room reading the
Modern Wife
“Can This Marriage Be Saved?” It sounded unlikely. The ambulance arrived and departed, Jed with it. Laura began whimpering, and Sally got both kids up and gave them juice and cookies.

Jed walked in. She was scared to look at him. “How is he?”

“He'll be all right. Some stitches in his head and a broken arm.”

“Broken arm? I didn't touch his arm.”

“Well, at first I wasn't going to tell them lifesavers nothing. But when we got to the hospital, I realized when Hank came to, he might think it was me feeling him up or something.”

“You? Why would you do something like that?”

“Well, I wouldn't.”

“Why would Hank think you might?”

“Well, he wouldn't.”

“So why were you worried?”

“Ah shit, I don't know! I had to tell them something, didn't I?”

“I guess.”

“So I told them the truth. They got to laughing so hard, they dropped him and broke his arm in two places.”

“Oh poor Hank. I feel awful.”

“Some of them lifesavers is on over at the mill. It's probably all over town by now.”

Sally began putting sweaters on the kids. “Well, I'm sorry.”

“I don't know, Sally. It just ain't right. The mother of my kids and all, acting like some kind of … whore or something. And now it's all over town.”

Sally clenched her teeth. “I can't figure out what you want, Jed. If I could, I'd do it. But I just can't.”

She strapped Laura in the stroller and took Joey's hand. “We're going for a walk. See you later.”

If only she could turn this feeling in her guts into tears. She tried to, tried reminding herself of the many ways she'd tried to please Jed, and how consistently she'd failed. Boo hoo. The tears wouldn't start up. She tried quivering her chin. Still no tears. And that awful feeling remained. It was alarmingly close to anger. Except that it wasn't “like her” ever to get angry.

Joey galloped half a block ahead, then looked back and waited with tolerant superiority. They came to a low wall. Joey struggled to climb up on it, then fell onto the sidewalk. Sally tried to lift him up, but he pushed her away and resumed his combat with the wall, saying, “Joey can do it!”

“I'm sure he can,” Sally murmured automatically.

Laura threw herself against the straps of the stroller. She pointed frantically to the wall, which Joey was now tottering along. “Uhuhuh!”

“Be still, Laura! Be a good girl.”

They reached the sidewalk outside the sports stadium. The doors were open, so Sally pushed the stroller into the hallway beneath the tiered seats. An old Negro man in tattered khaki work clothes was pushing a broom past the shuttered concession stand where the Rebels sold candy and soda pop during the games. Joey's galloping feet echoed through the hallway.

The hallway opened out onto the bleachers. Leaving the kids, Sally walked out among the rows. She looked down to the manicured green field. This was the first time she'd ever seen this place empty. The stands had always been packed. She could raise her arms and make the band play, make the crowds yell. She had ridden around this field on the back of a white Cadillac, while the entire place thundered with applause. She had sung and danced on a stage in the middle of this field. She had stalked across that stage in a bathing suit, while every man in the audience devoured her with his eyes.

But act on it—take a boy in your arms, give him the body dozens had slobbered over in their wet dreams …

Cheerleader, Miss Newland, Homecoming Queen, Virgin, Wife, Mother, Daughter, Whore. What about plain old Sally? Everybody was always telling her how to be. The feeling that was alarmingly close to anger was churning in her guts.

She looked back into the hallway. Joey was pushing the stroller. Two pale naked larvae. She could take them in her arms. She could drop them over the wall behind her. They would splatter on the sidewalk below. She could flee with the bag boy from Kroger's, the man at the lumberyard. Or she could find a small dog and kick it very hard. She could pull the wings off butterflies …

She walked into the hallway, took Joey's hand, and pushed the stroller. As she passed the Negro janitor, he said, “Hidy, missus. Yall right today?”

“Why, I'm just fine, thank you,” she said with a bright smile. “How yall?”

“I be just fine, thank you, ma'am,” he replied with a big grin. Their eyes locked.

Out on the sidewalk she unstrapped Laura from the stroller, lifted her down, and let her stumble alongside Joey.

Part Four

Chapter One
Emily

The line of friends and neighbors viewing Jed in his casket wound through the sanctuary of the Methodist church in the mill village. Directly in front of Emily were her parents and grandfather. They peered into the coffin. At the Episcopal church on the hill, coffins were always closed, as though the corpse inside were a shameful secret that everyone tried politely to pretend didn't exist. But her parents knew the forms: When in the mill village, behave as the villagers. Even so, they couldn't quite bring themselves to wail and moan, as the Webb sisters ahead of them were doing on the way back to their pew.

A gospel quartet from the village was up front singing hymns in tribute to Jed. At that moment, “…
drop kick me, Jesus, through the goal posts of life. / Not to the left and not to the right
…”

Behind Emily were dozens of Jed's relatives down from Tatro Cove, beginning to sniff, preparatory to weeping. Thoughtful of Jed to arrange his accident at Christmastime so that she didn't have to make a special trip. The fewer trips to this loony bin she called home, the better. She'd spent a lot of time deciding what to wear, whether or not to conform to what Newland considered appropriate funeral attire. She'd have had to go out and buy a black dress and hat, which she'd never wear again. Until the next funeral. So she was wearing her dark brown pants suit and vest, boots, a silk shirt, and loosely knotted tie. As she came downstairs, her parents in their basic black studied her. Finally her mother murmured, “Oh well, I suppose it's your life.”

In front of the church waiting to process, she saw Raymond in bib overalls, work shoes, and a suit coat. He grinned, sidled over, and whispered, “So it's come to this, huh, Em? Well, it's just like you to come out at a funeral.”

She squelched a smile. People on all sides were glancing at her and whispering to each other. Fuck them. It had taken her her entire life to get here, but she no longer cared what Newland thought. In fact, she felt pleasure at their outrage.

Matt was holding her hand tightly. He'd never seen a corpse before. “Will Uncle Jed be all bloody, Mommy?” he'd asked on the way to the church with a delighted shiver.

“No, honey. They clean them up, and dress them in their best clothes, and put makeup on them.”

“Makeup on boys?”

“Yeah, on dead boys anyhow.”

She'd scarcely thought about Jed in recent years. Hardly at all since the time she and Justin were doing community organizing in Cincinnati and brought Matt down to Newland. Jed almost punched Justin out half a dozen times over his analysis of the character structure of Southern mountaineers. “They're just so irrational,” Justin explained. “The feud mentality lives on. If something doesn't go their way, they get violent.”

“Oh yeah?” said Jed, jutting out his chin and clenching his fists.

But as she stood looking down at Jed (or at what was left of him after being totaled by a semi), dressed in his Sunday suit with his head resting on mauve satin, she felt the sorrow she'd been warding off for days start to well up in her. Now that he couldn't swagger around, she realized there had always been something pathetic about her poor brother-in-law. A hero manqué, a pioneer with no wilderness, a cowboy without a horse. He was the type of man who, if he walked past someone trying to parallel park, would stop and direct. At gas stations he used to get out of his car and purposefully kick his tires. Courage, Loyalty, all those tired old virtues pronounced with capital letters—he possessed them in an abundance equal to his brawn. But who needed them to detach bobbins from spindles day after day?