The Do-Right (18 page)

Delpha stood fixed but no other sounds came. The night, a cricket somewhere in the room, the silent woman on the bed.

A car door creaked open.

Delpha's head whipped around to the window and back. She was wide awake now. The circus was about to hit town, and she didn't want a ticket—whether it was lions or clowns. Miss Blanchard acted like she didn't hear a thing.

Car door slammed.

Miss Blanchard spit out a laugh and said, “C'mere.”

Delpha skirted the bed and went over to the vanity. Miss Blanchard's finger pecked, and Delpha read a paragraph of Palmer script informing Mrs. Speir what Mr. Speir wished to do with several cherished parts of her body as soon as the train rushed him home. He proposed they carry out his wishes in the automobile and asked that she wear her French-heeled shoes and white stockings and leave off her drawers. Delpha glanced back at the woman on the bed.

A grin flashed across Miss Blanchard's face.

Faint ratchety noise from downstairs.

A scratchy rattle. Miss Blanchard motioned for Delpha to get her the bag she'd brought.

A caw, then another, shrilled downstairs in the foyer, as if a melancholy crow had made its way through the front door.

Footsteps, a dragging sound.

Calinda carefully laid the bundle of letters into the tote bag Delpha held. “Call the undertaker now. And if it gets to be five-thirty and I'm busy, call Moselle. She'll be up.”

Step, drag, thump. Step, scuffling drag. Low conversation going on, with plaintive question marks in it, then some crying
hoo hoo hoo
, then steps.

Standing by the small table next to the armchair, Delpha dialed the black phone as fast as she could force its rotary wheel around. Miss Blanchard was right. A man answered on the first ring, and all he wanted from her was the address. Delpha faded back as Ida took the doorway.

Short pink tent dress banded green at the hem, sandals, blond flaps frizzed from the humid night. She clutched the torn shoulder strap of a humiliated purse that trailed behind her on the floor.

“I had to think all the way home from the casino boat,” she said. “I thought till it was all clear and right in front of me, like a kaleidoscope. All this time and I refused to see it.” Ida abandoned her purse by the doorway and tripped over to the leather armchair, sat herself down into it and stretched her legs out straight on the ottoman, lining up her tiny ankles and her white sandals. The piney gin-perfume accompanied her like a theme song.

Delpha edged sideways toward the vanity table.

“Calinda. We've been at each other like cats and dogs, and it's time to stop. Just stop. Honestly, it is. We should comfort each other when we need comfort. Besides Grandma, we're all each other has in the world, and she could go any day. She holds us together, but when she's gone, who's going to care about us?”

Calinda Blanchard tipped her head and sent Delpha a meaningful glance. Delpha bent and gathered the empty jewelry cases, quietly stacked them back in the lower drawer.

“Know what I remembered? You holding me in your lap, do you remember that? You were more a mother to me than anybody. That's what I realized driving home. All those years of pining for my mother who left me, and you were my mother. I loved you. Did I…did I ever mention that?”

“No, Ida.”

“Come here, hug my neck.” Ida held bare arms wide.

Delpha could see only the back of Ida's head. The muscles of Calinda's weathered brow and jaw softened so that her face sighed downward and her hooded eyes began to glint. Hands behind herself, Delpha pushed shut the drawers that Miss Blanchard had heedlessly jerked out. Then—Calinda probably wouldn't want Ida to have the marijuana either, not that Ida had a snowball's chance of finding it—Delpha pulled the top one back out and dislodged the fake back. Reached in and drew out the pouch and the packet of rolling papers. She dropped both in the tote bag bulging with pill bottles and checked back over her shoulder.

The two women's heads side-by-side, one gray and tipped down, one yellow and tipped up.

“Calinda, do you believe it's too”—a hiccup of weeping—“late for me?”

Calinda, staggering in the shorter woman's grip, sat down heavily on the leather footrest. Her hand went automatically to the trailing bangs, brushed them back in a way she must have done many times before. “No, baby, I don't think it's too late for you.”

“Really? Oh, God, please. You really think it's not too late?”

“You're only forty-two. But you have to keep company with a different kind of people.”

“Oh, I will! I'll change people, I will!”

“And you have to stop drinking, Ida.”

The sobbing ceased. Ida raised her head. “I will,” she said. “I'll…I'll stop tomorrow.”

Calinda peeled herself out of her cousin's clutch, but she retained one small hand and rubbed it tenderly. “Good deal, baby,” she said. “Good deal.”

Delpha sighed without sound, jerked up the pile of sheets, and ducked out of the room. She was stepping quietly down the worn carpet of the stairs when the front door's knocker tolled. Four heavy strokes.

Two men in wrinkled suits and water-combed hair bumped in a gurney.

A scream from upstairs made Delpha about jump out of her flats, but only the younger man reacted, raising his head glumly. The jowled man in the lead, eyeing the staircase, muttered, “Fold the legs up, Jake,” and pulled some lever under the gurney.

“Oh, man,” the young one said. “It a fat person up there?”

“Shut
up
. I 'pologize for Jake, ma'am,” said the older.

She held the door as they wheeled Mrs. Speir out. Quarter to six, birds chittering in the bushes telling the news, quiet upstairs from Miss Blanchard and Ida. Delpha used the kitchen phone to call Moselle, who surprised her by breaking into sobs. Was growing light outside, the sun beaming out its spokes. Delpha was sweaty and wrung out.

Sniffling, Moselle told Delpha to tell Calinda she had the papers Mrs. Speir had wanted to give her. She'd bring them down to the hotel at nine.

“Papers.”

“The papers that was in a old envelope in the drawer with
her pill bottles. I brought 'em home to my house, 'cause Mrs. Speir said whoever had the papers was who they belonged to. She wanted Calinda to have them, and I was fraid Ida'd find them.”

“Miss Blanchard was looking for jewlery last night.”

“That's what Mrs. Speir said she was looking for too, more'n sixty years ago. Jewlery for her first anniversary. But Mr. Speir, he gave her paper, according to the rule.”

“What rule?”

“Lord, some made-up rule. Gold for married fifty years, silver for twenty-five, I don't know what all. But for the first year, it's paper. You tell Calinda.”

XXVI
XXVI

MONDAY MORNING PHELAN was raring to tell his secretary about Real-Mrs. Lloyd Elliott, but he was held up by the sight of Delpha's snap-button western shirt with history, tucked into blue jeans, and pink flip flops. Her brown hair was tousled. She looked younger. He smiled, and she stood up.

“Morning, Mr. Phelan. Rustled up some money for the kitty.”

She told him Mrs. Speir had passed on Friday, and the burial was today. Miss Blanchard was putting on some food at the New Rosemont and had asked her to help with that, and probably with her cousin Ida. “Dressed for the kitchen,” she said, glancing down.

“Looking good anyway.”

She held out an antique-looking envelope. “Here's the job. I told her I'd see if you had time. Mrs. Speir left these papers for Miss Blanchard, and she wants to know if you can find somebody to tell her what they's worth. She doesn't trust the lawyer. The library's not open on Sunday, or I'd've seen what I could do. Oh, and I wrote up a note that says what you're doing, and Miss Blanchard signed it.”

Phelan took the envelope. “Miss Wade, you are one excellent employee.”

Her face lifted, bright. “Thank you for saying.” She
handed over two hundreds from Miss Blanchard and broke her own rule about the business having dibs on all the money. “I won't write that in our income, you don't want.” She descended the stairs quick and light.

Phelan folded the bills into his wallet. Old lady Speir: a score and ten past her given years, no surprise there. He went over and peered out his window—sure enough, broad black bow drooping on the Rosemont's door.

He opened the envelope. Heavy, yellowed papers, two of them. Once he'd studied the goddessy, Miss Liberty-type figures, read the different-sized numbers, the large and the spidery print, he knew exactly where to take them. How he'd get in to see her, he didn't know. He sat, put his feet up on the metal desk. See, if he had a classy, varnished oak one, he'd have to worry about scuffing the thing. Phelan watched the sky, clouds drifting, and thought and then picked up the phone and left a message for Miles. Two hours later, Miles called him back and answered his question: yes, his firm did hire college kids for summer, but all interns were already hired.

“Interns? Thought those were doctors.”

Miles told him interns were gofers who worked for minimum wage, the experience and the contacts. Mostly partners' kids or their friends' kids.

“How about next summer?”

“We don't schedule that far ahead. You changing careers already?”

“No, what I'm wondering is if your law firm or one you know might extend itself and offer some experience to a college kid that isn't related to anybody with his name on your letterhead.” Phelan floated the particular idea he had in mind.

The other end of the line was quiet.

“Being as America is the land of equal opportunity,” Phelan added. He played his ace to the silent receiver. “We inherited a crummy world, Miles. How we gonna fix it 'cept one by one?”

Half a minute after he'd rung the bell, and probably ten seconds after the woman on the other side had inventoried him and his suit through the peephole, she opened the door with mathematical calculation, her stance such that she could slam the heavy oak with minimum effort. Phelan gazed onto a strip of unsmiling face.

“Morning, ma'am. I'm Thomas Phelan, and I'm here to see Mrs. Elliott, please.”

“She has no appointments on Mondays. Goodbye.”

“Wait, she'll want to see what I brought.” Surely she would. Maybe she would. Maybe not. He hoped she would.

The door shut.

Phelan knocked on it. Knocked again. Spoke loudly to it. “Ma'am, your daughter's the business major, right. Right?”

The door cracked again, the black woman still unsmiling, but looking toward him. “Your daughter said I'd never get past you, so I didn't come empty-handed.”

The woman glanced down at his hands and back up to his face.

“Job for your girl next summer. Law firm.”

Her head lifted.

“Well, I can get her an interview anyway. A friend promised me he could do that, and he's a good guy.”

“What do you have that Mrs. Elliott would care about, Mr. Phelan? I will not let you in if you're selling anything.”

Phelan pulled out the yellowed papers. “Not selling, scout's honor.” Hastily, he flipped her a peace sign. “I just
want Mrs. Elliott to look at these because she's the only expert I know. Or know of. Not for me, ma'am. Tell Mrs. Elliott I'm a private investigator doing a job for friends. A lady died Friday night and left these to her niece. Niece is an old lady herself. She's not a rich woman and not the trusting kind.”

A palm extended toward him. Phelan set the papers into it. The door closed.

Presently, Mrs. Lloyd Elliott's front door opened again, and he crossed her threshold.

XXVII
XXVII

TWO FANS RUNNING full blast over the measley central air and the straining stoves. Delpha liked deviled eggs but disliked making them. It was so easy to tear the rubbery white boats that the cooked yokes—mashed with mustard, mayonnaise, cayenne, pickle, and salt—had to fit into. This was the task that Oscar, presiding over a Calindaless kitchen like a hard-eyed Santa over two backward elves, had assigned her—boil four dozen eggs, peel them, cut them in half, devil them without tearing them up. He had his friend Shayla, who'd already pared three dozen apples, chopping celery for Waldorf salad, sacks of Diamond walnuts beside her. Delpha noticed that the shine Shayla once directed Oscar's way had dimmed a mite. A ham was baking. Oscar, smelling of cinnamon and nutmeg, was crimping dough on the piecrusts and whisper-singing
Ain't Too Proud to Beg
. It'd be out with the ham and in with the pies.

“Ain't nobody begging here,” Shayla muttered to Delpha. “Lotta ordering around going on. You know he be this bossy?”

“Been nice to me.”

Delpha tore an egg white. Oscar wasn't looking. She ate it, which made Shayla titter and elbow her. The mood in the kitchen elevated. They labored on through the storing of the deviled eggs and Waldorf salad, set the ham to cool, then the baked pies Oscar favored with a Cheshire-cat grin. Now he
was lining up restaurant-sized jars of bread and butter pickles and pickled pearl onions, cans of cashews for them to arrange in dishes and set out before five p.m.

The manager of the pool hall across the street had sent over ten pounds of brisket and hot links. Mr. Dinwiddie the lawyer had sent the centerpiece, lilies. The bank had had three boxes of pecan pralines delivered, and the CPA's wife had tottered through the lobby with an iced sheet cake she'd baked herself.

The two extra leaves were already installed in the big table in the lobby. Delpha dressed it with a linen cloth she'd ironed—first-class pain in the butt, you had to sprinkle water and press hard on the iron to flatten wrinkles out of linen—and warned off the residents. No one was to sit there to drink their coffee and put coffee rings on the fine cloth.

The residents watched her work. Mrs. Bibbo evened out the corners of the linen tablecloth for Delpha, stood back and then adjusted again, received her thanks in sober silence. The lobby's air was not grim, not with such a holiday spread to anticipate, but it was determinedly solemn. No checker sets in evidence, no Bicycle playing cards. This was Calinda's family today being laid in the grave. Calinda's elder, which left her now the generation next to heaven, a member of their club.

At three, the funeral home's car arrived for Calinda. Delpha knocked on the door of the back apartment that adjoined the kitchen. “Car's here, Miss Blanchard.”

“C'min.”

Cautiously, Delpha opened the door. She hadn't seen inside this apartment before. A spacious room with busy old wallpaper—vines and leaves and berries—wide-plank floors, a sitting area with sofa and upholstered chairs, double bed with two night tables and a lamp with a white shade. Miss
Blanchard, smoking, rocked slowly in a high-backed chair, her legs crossed. She wore a black dress and hose
hose
that gave a sheen to her shins. There was a sheen to her face, too, and an acrid smell in the room.

The tobacco pouch lay on a round table by the rocking chair, its packet of rolling papers open like a tiny cabinet with orange doors. Delpha had smelled reefer before and this was it.

“Funeral home sent the car.”

“I heard you. Where'd you find this stuff?” Calinda gestured toward the pouch.

“In the back of a drawer, kinda hid.”

“Hid.” She rocked for a while. “One of the rolling papers had handwriting on it.”

Delpha nodded.

“Like getting a letter that was thirty years in the mail. That's Hettie's writing.”

“Y'all keep the pouch back in that drawer?”

“No, we did not. Kept it in this room. It disappeared. Before she did. Ida would've been twelve or thirteen, and she was one nosy child. Always had her eye peeled for things could've been her mother's. Bless her drunk heart.” Pinching the cigarette between finger and thumb, she took a pull, held it, closed her eyes, rocked. Miss Blanchard blew out the smoke slowly, then spit-tamped the fire from the tip.

“Hand me that jacket, will you please?”

Delpha gave her the black jacket lying on the bed. Miss Blanchard stood and put it on over the shapeless black dress. “Shoes're already killing me. Oscar and y'all got the food ready?”

“Ready to go.”

“Good. Thank you. I am grateful to you.”

Delpha understood she was not talking about the food.
She stepped back from the door. The old woman held herself loosely, like there was no hurry in the world today.

       
Don't smoke all this without me, sunshine

       
I wouldn't never, baby, you'd been here. Why'd you go?

       
Had to. No choice, sunshine, no choice at all
.

The whole hotel, some eighteen retired citizens, was assembled in the lobby. Residents approached and offered condolences as Miss Blanchard passed, each coming forward to meet her where they were, as if they lined a boulevard. They were mourners today, significant, confident in their part, if not in other things. Near the door, which was held open to the seething summer heat by a moist-faced chauffer in a black suit, Mr. Rabey hoisted himself to his feet. He did not speak to Calinda, but he removed his cap, revealing a bristling head of iron-gray hair, and nodded to her.

The polished black car drove Miss Blanchard away from the Rosemont.

“Didn't she look peaceful?” Mr. Finn said.

“That's what you say about the deceased,” Mr. Nystrom chided.

“I can say it about whoever looks peaceful, Harry.”