Sweet Water (10 page)

“Ralph doesn’t much anymore. I mean, would you, if you were him? Troy used to, but Mother’s always clawing at him to stay, and he can’t stand that.” She was staring out the plate-glass window. I followed her gaze to the flag in the park, wilting against the pole in the still heat of afternoon. “Soon as I can get up the money I’m going to Atlanta to join them,” she said. “I really, really am. I’m tired of this one-horse town.”

    When we got back to Clyde’s, Alice stopped at the curb with the motor running. “About what I told you. About Clyde.” She leaned forward as if she thought we might be overheard. “I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t repeat that story to anyone.”

“I won’t.”

“Well, I know. I’m just making sure. Things have a way of slipping out sometimes, at least they do with me.” She shifted in her seat.
“Clyde is just about the proudest person I know. She’d
really
be upset if she thought we were talking about her.”

“I’ll be careful,” I said. “I’d hate to see her
really
upset.”

Alice grinned. “Boy, watch out!” We started to giggle. “Hey,” she said, “sometime soon maybe we can go swimming or something. Mother and Daddy belong to a club.” She grimaced. “I guess that means I have to get back on her good side.”

“That won’t be too hard, will it?”

“Not if I kiss her manicured toenails and beg forgiveness.”

“One minute of groveling for a whole afternoon in the pool. That sounds reasonable.”

“Sure, why not?”

As I walked toward the house I saw Clyde in the kitchen window, staring out at us. She looked small and frail, with her thin white hair and thick glasses. She’s just a little old lady, I was thinking, just a sad, lonely little person. I smiled and caught her eye, and she ducked out of sight.

    After dinner I called my dad from an extension in the bedroom. He wanted to know why I hadn’t seen the house yet.

“Clyde’s holding me hostage,” I whispered.

“What’s the ransom? Do I have to pay?”

“No. I think the ransom is the house.”

He laughed. “I never say I told you so, so I’m not going to start now.”

“Oh, go ahead. It’ll make you feel better.”

“Told you so. So how do you like your relatives?”

“I like them,” I said. “Alice is great.”

“She’s Elaine’s daughter, right?”

“Yeah, don’t hold it against her.”

“This is purely academic information for me, Cassie. I’m not planning on coming down there anytime soon. I’ll let you conduct the field study.”

I twirled the phone cord between my fingers. “You know, Dad, I’m
kidding, but I’m serious. There’s something strange about all of this. I get the feeling Clyde really doesn’t want me to move in.”

“Well, that’s understandable,” he said. “She did live in that house for almost forty years. Giving it up to you will be like giving up a big part of her life. I’m sure she’s incredibly ambivalent.”

“I can understand that,” I said, chewing my lip, “but for some reason I get the feeling there’s more to it. It just constantly seems like I’m overstepping some invisible line.”

He sighed. “Don’t make it more than it is, Cassie. She’s a difficult woman, always has been, and she’s not getting any younger.”

“Okay. You’re probably right.” I remembered my first encounter with her. “Clyde says they all think I want something from them.”

“Well, that doesn’t surprise me. They’re not the most generous-minded bunch you’ll ever meet. And to be fair, you can hardly blame them for being suspicious. Look, you’re a complete stranger. They don’t know you, so how can they possibly know why you went down there? I’m still not sure myself. Give them time, Cassie.”

“Maybe this was all a big mistake.”

“Maybe, but consider it grist for your artistic mill. Someday they’ll call it your blue period.”

“Oh, Dad.”

“I’m always here if you need me, honey,” he said. “If you want to come home, you know you always can.”

I thought about Susan and the baby in the small apartment above the restaurant. The place had been crowded when Dad and I lived there alone. “Thanks,” I said, “but I think I’ll tough it out here for a while. Anyway, Horace is coming by tomorrow to take me out to the house.”

“The great escape, huh?”

“I plan to be armed and dangerous.”

    Drew picked up the phone, breathless, on the second ring. “Cassie, I’m running out the door, can I call you back?”

“Where are you going?”

“To a party at Mara’s.”

“Oh?”

“It’s her boyfriend’s birthday.” “Her boyfriend?”

“You know, the chain-smoking Israeli,” he said, impatient. “Look, I really have to go. How is everything?”

“Oh, Drew, I’m not even going to talk to you now. Call me later.” “You’re mad.”

“No, I just don’t understand what the big rush is.” “Oh, for God’s sake, Cassie, it’s New York, that’s what the big rush is. Joel’s waiting for me downstairs in a taxi.” “Joel, huh?” “Yes, Joel.”

“So you’re seeing Joel now.”

“Don’t start with me, I’m warning you.”

“Will you tell me everything later?”

“Maybe.”

“Drew …”

“What? What?”

“You’ve forgotten me already,” I said petulantly. “And now Joel is moving in on my territory.”

“Honey, if I’m lucky Joel’s going to be on territory you’ve never even
imagined.”

“I don’t want to know.” He laughed. “I’ll call you later in the week.” “No, I’ll call you. You don’t have my number.” “Oh, yeah.”

“And Drew? I know deep down that you’re sad I left. You’re drowning your sorrows in parties and men, and I understand.”

“Is that what I’m doing? How long does this mourning period last? A while longer, I hope.” “Have fun tonight.”

“I will. Give my best to the Absent Other.
Goodbye!”

W
hen Ellen went north and stayed I felt like everything I had lived for was meaningless. Amory didn’t approve of what she was doing, taking up with a troublemaker who didn’t have any money, harboring draft dodgers and inciting the blacks to riot. He said society had certain rules and you had to live by them. But in my secret heart of hearts I was a little proud of her, standing up for what she believed in that way. Amory never stood up for anything in his life except to give a lady his seat. He said that the country had its big problems and we had our small ones and neither should meddle in the other’s affairs. But Ellen said it wasn’t like that at all: we had a responsibility to meddle. If we murdered and raped and pillaged we were accountable for it in the courts of the land, and if our country killed innocent people, sanctioned and encouraged discrimination, it should be held accountable too. Amory would shake his head and say, “Whose side are you on?”

“I’m on your side, Dad,” she’d say. “The side of the people.”

“The people are idiots,” he’d answer.

She cut her beautiful hair short like a boy’s, and her husband grew his long. From the back it looked like she was the husband and he was the wife. The last time she and Ed visited together, she was wearing a skimpy dress in a sickly green color and he had on a shirt with big bright flowers all over it. It was kind of embarrassing. They drove a white Volkswagen bus with giant cheerful butterfly stickers on the doors, little Cassandra in a car seat in the back.

Ellen was the first of the neighborhood children to get political, and
it made a big splash. Horace and Elaine were mortified. Larry was trying to get started on his preaching career, and Elaine didn’t want anything to sully his reputation. “You know how people talk, Mama,” she said. “Why can’t Ellen just behave herself and act normal?” Taking Edgar aside one evening, Horace told him that he suspected him of brainwashing Ellen and was considering turning him over to the police, and furthermore, it was about time Edgar stopped acting like a freak and started taking responsibility for himself. It was time to act like the husband and father he was and make some money.

But I knew it wasn’t Edgar’s fault. Ellen had always been different. Horace was captain of the high school football team, Elaine was crowned Sweetwater Sweetheart, but Ellen hung around with another crowd. I found cigarettes in her pockets when I did the laundry. She’d buy New York magazines and try to imitate the fashions she saw. Elaine told me that people were laughing behind her back, but Ellen didn’t seem to care. In fact, she was almost proud of it. She scrawled poetry on napkins, left paperbacks all over the house: Kerouac, Ferlinghetti, Ginsberg, names I saw for the first time and then read some of myself, trying to understand the person she wanted so desperately to become. Funny, but she was more like the Amory I had fallen in love with than either of the others were. She was high-strung, nervous as a racehorse. She wanted to live the kind of life Jack Kerouac talked about, to burn like a fabulous Roman candle.

Ellen wasn’t the only one to leave, but she was the only one to stay away. She got a big scholarship, which she’d applied for without even telling us. One day I returned from doing errands to find her standing in the kitchen by the sink, clutching a letter in one hand and sobbing. I threw down my packages and rushed over to her, thinking maybe she was pregnant or expelled from school. I grabbed the letter out of her hand and read: “The Admissions Committee of Wellesley College is pleased to offer you a place in its Freshman Class of 1962.” I looked at her in astonishment. “I’m finally getting the hell out of here,” she said, tears streaming down her face.

Horace had left for UT Knoxville two years before, but it never really felt like he was gone. On Saturdays Jeb Gregory and I would take the girls to see him play football (Amory wasn’t really interested), and on Sundays Horace came home for church and dinner. Sunday afternoons he’d sit at the dining room table concentrating on his books as long as he could—fifteen minutes or so at a stretch—until one of the Clifford boys from over the hill came by to toss a few. Horace flunked his second semester, but he met Kathy at a Memorial Day barbecue at his fraternity and she convinced him to take summer classes, so he stuck it out. They were married a year later. We saw them every weekend.

The summer before Ellen left she spent a lot of time in her room with the door shut. I’d go up and stand in the hall, straining to hear. I was worried about her. She was smoking openly now, quarreling with Amory all the time. She wanted to learn how to drive and he said she was too young. “You taught Horace at my age,” she’d yell, and Amory would say, “Horace didn’t smoke cigarettes. Horace respected my rules.” This made her even madder, and she started going out at night with reckless boys in fast cars. They’d drive up to the house, wheels screeching, and honk the horn for her to come out. The screen door banging shut behind her echoed in the stillness like a dirty word.

The day she left for college was a scorcher. There was no wind at all; the air smelled of rhododendron, so thick and humid that it was like walking though a hot loaf of bread. Amory took off from work to drive her to the bus in Atlanta, and they almost didn’t make it. She was up in her bedroom getting ready while he stood at the bottom of the stairs, fuming with impatience, hollering, “What in the name of God are you doing up there?” She hollered back, “Nothing in the name of God, Daddy,” and came out half an hour later with hair the color of copper and bright red nails, wearing black skintight pants and a black sleeveless cardigan. Amory almost refused to take her.

As she left she took my shoulders and brushed my cheek with her own, imitating a kiss she must have seen in a movie. “Don’t let them get to you, Mama,” she whispered. “Leaving isn’t so hard.” I held her
hand and tried to smile, but my mouth was trembling. She had a distracted look in her eyes, as if she were already gone. Each time she came home after that—Christmases, summer vacations—that look became more and more familiar. After a while it wasn’t like she was coming home anymore; it was like she was just passing through.

H
orace came to Clyde’s around eight o’clock on Tuesday morning to pick me up. He wore a gray suit that was a little tight through the waist, a pink tie, Reebok sneakers, and a red baseball cap. His neck was burnt. He kept playing with his cap, taking it off and putting it on again, stepping back in a restless dance when he removed it, as if he were about to bow with a flourish. When he arrived Clyde and I were at the kitchen table reading the paper.

“Get yourself some grits and a biscuit, son, they’re on the stove,” she said.

“Thank you, Mother, I think I will.” He banged around for a minutes, then came over and sat down. “Fred Conroy’s leaving town,” he said. “I’m putting his house on the market today.”

“Well, I’ll be.” Clyde was scanning the color ads. “Where’re they going?”

He spread his napkin on his lap. “Kansas. Wife’s got folks out there.” He started to eat, reaching for the salt. “Sad story, really. That restaurant never had a chance. Tried to tell him, but he wouldn’t listen.”

Clyde got up. She went over to the counter, took out a pair of scissors, and settled back into her chair to clip coupons. “It couldn’t decide what it was,” she said. “Too expensive for a burger place but not somewhere you’d want to go special. It scared people off.”

He nodded. “Now I hear Harold and June Watkins want to buy it, expand their barbecue business.”

“Doesn’t surprise me.” She cut out another coupon. “They’re greedy people. Can’t be contented with what they’ve got.”

Horace shook his head energetically, his mouth full of grits. “You can’t say that, Ma! That’s what’s so darn special about this country. If I told my kids once I told them a hundred times, what you want is here for the asking. You just got to work a little, that’s all.”

“Well, those people are vultures, if you ask me. Waiting until a man’s down and going after all he’s got.”

“They probably saved him from bankruptcy.”

“It’s not Christian.”

Horace stood up. He took his cap off and put it back on. “They just want to make a living like everybody else. God bless ‘em if they do a better job of it.”

“I’ll never eat there,” she muttered.

“Well, Cassandra, you ready to see that old barn up there on the hill? I got about an hour to show you the place.” Horace looked at his watch. “Just under an hour. We better get moving.”

“I’ll be out when you get back,” Clyde said without looking up. She shuffled the coupons into a neat pile. “I’ll leave the garage open.”

I followed him to his car, a green Buick Le Sabre, and he opened the passenger door for me. The plush gray interior smelled of musk. When Horace got in he leaned over confidentially and said, “We all wear seat belts in this neck of the woods.” He sat back and buckled up, and I did too. “Lots of kids around here get their license and start drinking at the same time. They say there’s not much else to do. Next thing you know, they’ve gone and got themselves killed, and probably killed somebody else in the process.” He pulled out of the driveway, looking over his shoulder. His suit jacket hung open awkwardly, stretched tight at the armpit.

“Same in New York, except with semiautomatics,” I said.

“So I heard.” He was driving with his left hand, his right arm dangling across the top of the seat. “How do you like it down here so far? About what you expected?”

I thought for a moment. “I didn’t know what to expect. I was surprised when I saw supermarkets—I guess I thought there’d be a general store with barrels of sugar candy and bolts of cotton behind the cash register.”

He grinned. “Wait till you see the Fair Oaks Mall. They’ve got escalators and everything.”

“I passed it yesterday with Alice. Eighty-nine stores.”

“And a Food Court.” He slowed for a red light, looked both ways, and glided through it. “What about Clyde? You getting along okay with her? She giving you a hard time?”

“We’re getting along fine.”

“Well, that’s good,” he said. “‘Cause,
whoo-ee,
she can be tough to deal with.”

Out my side window, fields were flashing by: rich red dirt, lush green crops, the occasional scarecrow in the distance. I could see farmers riding tractors, testing the soil. Clusters of cows dotted the sloping hills in the distance like flocks of birds. Though it was early, the sun was hot.

“She wasn’t always like this,” Horace was saying. “Must be her age or something turned her cranky. She used to have the sweetest disposition you ever saw.” He flipped the sun visor down and up again, then reached over my legs to the glove compartment and retrieved a pair of sunglasses. “You know, she loved your mama like nobody else. I think she would’ve given her own life if she could’ve saved Ellen’s.”

“Really?”

“I don’t think she ever got over it.”

We sat in silence for a few miles.

“Yesterday we were looking at old photos and she got kind of upset,” I said. “I was asking some questions, and she—she acted like I was attacking her or something.”

“Pictures of your mama?”

“Yes.”

He shook his head. “Ellen’s death just tore her up. I think for her it’s as fresh as if it happened yesterday.”

We pulled off the road onto a dirt drive marked by a wooden stake. Horace told me that the turnoff was exactly four and a half miles past the intersection of 622 and Briarcliff Road, on Briarcliff going south. “You’ll know when you’re close because of that big old sign for the Cooperative Tire Center we just passed on the left,” he explained.

The drive was overgrown with grass and lined with orange and yellow wildflowers. A gully ran alongside it, and beyond was a stand of trees. After about five hundred yards the trees thinned out, and we wound up an incline to the left. As we reached the top I could see a large white house sitting alone on the next rise, with the deep-rutted drive leading up to it.

“Well, there it is,” he said, pointing as if he wasn’t sure I’d seen it.

From a distance the two-story structure looked solid and imposing, even grand, as if still inhabited by a prosperous family. As we got closer, though, I could see the results of years of neglect: the screen door hanging against the frame, one-hinged; broken windows on either side; peeling paint. Tall dry grasses, wild and yellow-green, poked up through banister spokes and porch slats.

“What’s wrong with that dang door?” Horace said, peering out the windshield. “I swear, every time I come out here there’s something new to fix.”

He stopped the car and we got out. Beer bottles and crumpled cigarette packages littered the ground near the front steps. Horace told me that local kids had been coming up here to get into trouble late at night. They weren’t bad kids, just mischievous, but he’d see to it that this kind of activity stopped right away. We made our way to the porch, Horace kicking at bottles with the side of his shoe. He had assumed a resigned air, as if he was showing me the place against his will.

“Nobody says you got to live here, you know. And I, for one, won’t blame you a bit if you decide to let me get rid of the place for you
and put some money in your pocket. I’m sure we could sell it in a handshake. This is prime land.”

He tested the steps one by one, holding out his arm to keep me back until he was sure they were safe. Making his way across the porch, he jumped on each slat first with his right foot, then with his left, like he was tap-dancing in slow motion. When he got to the screen door he moved it aside cautiously and tilted it so it leaned against the house. Waving me over, he took out his keys.

“Got to put new panes in these,” he said, nodding his head toward the windows, “but otherwise, so far so good. The inside should be just as Clyde left it.”

The door swung inward, and we were in a dim hallway. To the right I could see the kitchen, to the left a large room with furniture piled up in it. Straight ahead the hall narrowed and a staircase led to the second floor. I wandered slowly into the kitchen, with Horace following. It was narrow and bare except for an old white refrigerator with rounded corners, a gas stove, and a porcelain sink set into a built-in counter that ran the length of the wall. The wallpaper, curling at the edges and faded from the sun, was pale yellow. A window above the sink faced the drive. The room smelled faintly of pine.

Horace examined the refrigerator and told me he thought it should work fine. He pointed to electrical outlets and tried the water faucets and the stove, which needed to be hooked up. He opened all the cupboards and drawers and, crouching down, ran a finger along the baseboard. “You like cats? Might want to get one,” he said. “There’s a nest of mice in here somewhere.”

The ground floor was designed so that each room led into the next: kitchen, dining room, living room, hall. I followed Horace through the large dining room, where he pointed out a dusty gold-and-crystal chandelier and a large cherrywood sideboard. In the adjoining living room he showed me the carved mahogany fireplace Amory had found at an abandoned plantation near Knoxville. With no shades or curtains, the rooms were brilliant with sunlight.

Back in the kitchen again, Horace opened the door to the base-
ment. We went downstairs and he explained the fuse box, the water heater, how to check for gas leaks.

At the landing on the way to the second floor I stumbled over a stuffed animal, badly worn and missing an eye. I picked it up.

“That was Ralph’s. Must’ve been left in the moving.” Horace took it from me and rubbed its ear between his fingers. “He used to carry this thing everywhere.” He dropped it and continued up the stairs.

“What’s Ralph doing now?” I asked.

“He says he’s an actor, but as far as I can tell he’s just waiting tables.” His voice was clipped. “He’s sharing an apartment in Atlanta with another cousin of yours.”

“I know—Troy.”

“Yeah. They both have what you might call abnormal life-styles. I guess Troy’s in some kind of band.”

“Have you ever been down there to visit?”

“No.” Horace looked at his watch. “I’m about out of time. Let’s get a move on.”

We glanced around the second floor, one bathroom and three bedrooms filled with box springs and mattresses and bureaus. I asked Horace to show me the room that had been my mother’s, and he led me into a bedroom in the southwest corner, with windows on both sides. “Twin beds,” he said, pointing to two walls. “Ellen and Elaine had to share. I got my own room, of course, being the only boy.” He motioned toward a dark walnut bedframe with a carved headboard leaning against the wall. “I believe Elaine took her bed for Alice. That must be your mother’s.”

I went over and ran my hand slowly along one of the uprights. It was covered with dust, but the wood was smooth.

“If you want to use it, all you need is a mattress.” He grinned. “Of course, that’d be assuming you weren’t expecting visitors. A single bed is awful small.”

On the way downstairs Horace said he’d send somebody over to fix the screen door. He measured the broken windows for glass and
jumped up and down on a few more boards. He told me who to call for plumbing and gas and electricity.

As we stood on the front porch I thanked him for showing me around. “I know it must be strange for you,” I said. “I mean, it’s your house. You grew up here.”

“I never liked it much. It was too small for the five of us.”

“But still. All the memories you must have—”

“Ma hated this place. She felt trapped out here in the country with nobody around except us kids. They fought about it all the time.” He laughed a little, removing and replacing his cap. “As for the memories, I’d just as soon forget.”

“There must’ve been
some
good times,” I insisted.

“Well, sure. Christmases were generally pretty nice, as I recall. I used to like to hunt out there in those woods.” He leaned against the porch railing. “To be honest, though, I try not to think about the past too much. There’s no sense in dwelling on things you can’t change.”

I nodded, running my toe along a crack between the wooden slats.

“What’s done is done.”

I heard an edge in his voice and looked up.

“Cassandra—I don’t know how to say this. It’s just … well …”

“What?”

“I’d hate to see you looking for something that isn’t here.”

“Like what?”

“Like I don’t know. Whatever it is you packed up and came down here looking for.”

“But—”

“You got to understand, we don’t talk about Ellen,” he said. “We don’t talk about what happened. Your being here—well, you stir up memories folks are still trying to forget. It’s not your fault—that’s just the way it is. So what I’m saying is, what’s over is over. Ellen’s dead. That’s all there is to it.”

“So what you’re saying is, don’t ask any questions. Leave well enough alone.”

Horace shrugged, looking down into the yard, his hands in his pockets. After a moment he wheeled around and started down the steps to the car. “You could say that. Come on, I’ll drop you back home.”