The Language of Sycamores (8 page)

“Hmmm,” I muttered, turning to Kate. “Are you sure Dad and Aunt Jeane don’t know anything about this?”

Kate shook her head and laid her stack of letters in the box. “They both said they didn’t know anything except that Grandma Rose had a falling-out with her family and it was a forbidden subject around the house.”

“Mrs. Gibson might know something,” Jenilee mused. “She’s our neighbor down the road from Daddy’s place. She was cousins with Rose and Augustine. I’ve always had a feeling she knew some things about my family she didn’t want to tell me. I can stop and ask her on the way back to St. Louis.”

“Well, maybe she can tell us something.” Kate climbed stiffly to her feet and stretched. “In the meantime, my stomach’s telling me it’s time to get some supper going. Rose ought to be waking up any minute.”

Dell stood up with her legs still crossed. “I’ll go get Rosie. She likes it when I wake her up.” She didn’t wait for an answer, just turned and hurried through the door.

“She sure loves the kids,” I observed.

Kate’s forehead wrinkled with concern. “That worries me a little. I mean, it’s great that she has fun with the kids, but she’s already starting to talk about when she has one of her own. Her granny seems to think it’s fine for her to talk that way. Her mother was fifteen when she got pregnant, and Dell’s set to fall into that same trap. She doesn’t have much at home, the kids are hard on her at school, and she’s looking for a way out.”

Jenilee nodded like she knew exactly what Kate was talking about.

“Music could be her way out,” I blurted, not thinking of whether I was stepping on Kate’s toes. In my mind, I could hear Dell coaxing melodies from the old piano, singing in a clear, sweet soprano. “I know
I keep pushing, but she’s incredibly talented. You only have to look at her to know that she needs to be incredible at
something
right now.”

Kate sighed. “I’ll try to work it out—I promise. Maybe one of the older guys who do the picking and grinning downtown on Saturday nights would be willing to get her started on guitar or violin, something like that. James plays guitar with them when he’s here on layover, and he’s taken Dell along a couple of times.”

“James?”
I repeated incredulously. “
My
James?” I hadn’t heard him play a guitar in years. Now Kate was telling me he hung out at the pickin’ and grinnin’ on Saturday nights in Hindsville?

“Sure.” Kate cocked her head to one side, confused. “He goes down there quite a bit. They even ask about him at the domino table when I go into Shorty’s for groceries. He’s taken Dell along a couple of times when she was bored around here.”

“You’re kidding.” Suddenly, I felt like my husband had a secret life I knew nothing about. He played guitar on Saturday nights, he and Dell spent time fishing and at the weekly jamboree, and he’d never said a word about it. Had he? Had he tried to tell me, and I wasn’t willing to listen? Every time he talked about the farm or his work on the land we’d inherited from Grandma Rose, I took it as pressure to come to Missouri for a visit. It was a discussion that started fights, an issue I didn’t have time for, with everything that was going on at Lansing. We’d finally quit talking about it.

“Guess you guys need to converse more.” Kate was joking, but she was so close to the truth that the comment stung.

I quickly turned the conversation back to Dell. “Do any of them play piano? Maybe one of them would come out here and start Dell on some lessons, or maybe they could use the church piano.”

“I’ll try to set something up,” Kate repeated. “But you know how Dell is about new things and new people. There’s a good chance she won’t be willing to go.”

“What if I came back in a week or two and got her started?” I heard myself ask. “I’m going to have some time off . . .” I suddenly realized what I was saying, and my pulse rocketed, sending blood into my cheeks. Now Kate would ask why I was having time off.

The phone rang somewhere beyond the screen door of the little house, and I was never so glad for a distraction in my life. “I’d better get that. It’s probably James.” I hurried off the porch without waiting for an answer, feeling completely unlike myself. It wasn’t normal for me to run away from my little sister, or from reality.

Reality, it turned out, was waiting on the other end of the phone line. James had landed in Kansas City, and he was going to be at the farm in a couple of hours. With the pressure of flying out of the way, he was now fully zeroed in on the fact that something was wrong.

“Karen, you want to tell me what’s going on?” he said when all of the normal trip talk was out of the way. “You know my mind’s not all here when I’m in the middle of a trip, but the radar’s going off now. What’s up, and why this sudden junket to the farm?”

I closed my eyes, determined not to get into it over the phone. “Let’s just talk when you get here, all right? I need to help Kate get supper on.” He didn’t answer right away, so I added, “Don’t worry. It’s not life or death or anything.”
It could be,
a voice whispered in my head. “Just job stuff and . . . I thought a weekend at the farm would help me get some perspective.”

He waited before agreeing. “All right. I’ll see you in a couple of hours.”

“O.K.” Suddenly, I felt tired, uncertain, as if I were in a movie and had just forgotten which character I was supposed to be. “James?”

“Yeah?”

“Why didn’t you tell me you’ve been playing guitar down at Shorty’s?”

Another pause, a hesitation during which I wondered what he was thinking. “Guess you didn’t ask.”

“Guess I didn’t,” I whispered. And then we said good-bye.

The little cabin suddenly felt too empty, too quiet, so I returned to the main house. Kate, Jenilee, Caleb, and Dell were in the kitchen working on supper while baby Rose played with Tupperware containers, babbling gleefully and shaking measuring cups in the air.

“Hi there, Rose.” I squatted down to talk to her. “Did you have a good nap?”

Rose gurgled, then popped the pacifier from her mouth and tried to put it in mine. I probably looked like I needed it. “She’s so cute,” I said over my shoulder as I smoothed the faint curls on Rose’s mostly bald head. “My gosh, Kate, do you think she’s going to have red hair?”

Kate stopped in the middle of chopping a bell pepper and pointed the paring knife at me thoughtfully. “You know, I’ve been wondering about that. She had light brown peach fuzz when she was born, and then that fell out, and now it seems like her hair is turning kind of reddish. But none of us have red hair, so I don’t know.”

“My mom had red hair,” Jenilee pointed out.

“And Sadie had red hair,” Dell added.

Kate nodded and went back to cutting up the pepper. “I guess that’s true. I guess it’s a family trait we just never knew about.” She paused for a moment, seeming to think about something, then went on, “Speaking of family traits and things like that, Jenilee and I have come up with a plan.” Clearly, she had something she wanted to ask me, but she was worried about how I would respond. “Jenilee and I thought maybe we’d try to get everyone together for Memorial Day—our family and Jenilee’s family, and this cousin of Grandma Rose’s who lived down the road from Jenilee. Sort of have a mini family reunion.” She stopped and stood there with her back turned to me, stiff with anticipation.

“And maybe see if we can piece together the mystery of the three sisters and whether or not my mother was adopted,” Jenilee added quickly.

“You could teach me some more piano.” Dell threw her comment awkwardly into the mix like bait into a rat trap.

It was clear that I was the rat. They had been talking about me in my absence, and all of them were worried that I wouldn’t go for the idea of a family gathering—probably because a family gathering would be likely to include my father.

I resisted the urge to respond out of habit, instinct, and old sibling rivalry. Kate had obviously portrayed me as the family stick in the mud. What I really wanted to do was tell her I didn’t appreciate it. Of course, if I did, everyone would know she was right.
Kate is the sweet one, and
Karen is the snotty one with the attitude and a chip on her shoulder the size of Nebraska.
Those were pretty much the roles we’d always portrayed in the past.

Don’t answer yet,
I told myself.
Count to ten first,
which for me was an unusual measure of reserve.

“Sure,” I said finally. The word sounded almost natural. “A family reunion sounds great, and it just so happens that I’m free on Memorial Day.”

Chapter 8

A
fter supper, Jenilee, Caleb, Kate, and Ben decided to take the kids down to the river. Dell and I went to the little house to play piano. Dell was filled with enthusiasm at the prospect of a lesson, but my mind was elsewhere. I was thinking of James driving in from the airport. What was I going to say when he arrived?

My stomach had tightened into a knot. I wasn’t sure why. James was never reactionary about anything. He would take the news about the layoffs calmly. His engineering mind would begin analyzing the house payments, car payments, severance, résumés, job prospects, adding me to his insurance policy—all of the practical issues.

Maybe that’s what I was afraid of. Maybe I was afraid that he wouldn’t see, that he wouldn’t realize how I
felt
about being betrayed by the company I’d helped build. Maybe I was afraid he would react the way he did when we lost the baby and found out we’d never have another.

“We’ll get through this,”
he said as he sat by my hospital bed.
“We’ll go ahead with the trip to Bali next month, the way we planned. That’ll take your mind off things. . . . Come on, honey, it’ll be all right. This just wasn’t meant to be right now.”

Right now?
I thought. What he meant was
ever
. This wasn’t meant to be, ever. The truth was that no matter how much he hedged, or
danced around the subject, or tried to be supportive about our accidental pregnancy and then the loss of it, he didn’t want a baby. Not then, probably never. He’d helped his father raise the three younger children after his mother died of cancer, and the idea of taking on parental responsibilities again didn’t appeal to him, not at thirty-five anyway.
“Maybe in a few years we can explore our options for having a family,”
he’d said.

Options?
I didn’t want to explore options. I didn’t want to move on or get through. I didn’t want to talk about whether we would someday replace the baby. I wanted to grieve for the loss, to fall into James’s arms and cry until I didn’t ache anymore. I wanted him to understand the sense of loss. Even though it wasn’t planned, this baby, this child, was part of us. Our child. I had begun to imagine that tiny new life as a person, a son or daughter. Blue eyes, brown eyes, blond hair, brown hair, short, tall, shy, outgoing, straight toes like mine, curly toes like his . . .

James didn’t want to talk about that. He wanted to move on to the next logical step. To keep things on an even keel, to put off the decision of whether we would ever slow down our lives and make the sacrifices necessary for a family. It wouldn’t help to dwell on what had happened, to try to reason it out, he said. We just had to let time pass and get back to normal. It wasn’t like we didn’t have a good life, just the two of us. . . .

Finally, I gave up and did what he wanted. I moved on. By silent mutual agreement, we never talked about the miscarriage or the partial hysterectomy that followed it. We didn’t talk about my mother’s sudden death in a car accident that same day, or how I suddenly felt like an orphan in the world. James went on his way and I went on my way, and occasionally we slipped off together for a romantic weekend, where we could crowd our senses with the sights and sounds and tastes of an exotic location, so as not to notice that there were things we’d never talked about. Only now I needed someone to talk to. I needed him. . . .

Dell stopped playing “Eagle Summit” on the piano and turned toward me. “What’s wrong?” she asked quietly. I realized I’d been off in my own little world and hadn’t been listening.

“Nothing,” I said. “It’s just kind of a strange weekend for me.”

“Want me to quit?” She motioned to the piano. “I don’t sound very good.”

“Oh, no, it’s not you,” I rushed. “You sound wonderful, and I love hearing you play. It’s just that I have some things on my mind. . . . It’s a little hard to explain.”

She focused on the keys, her face solemn, one slim brown finger wiping a piece of lint off middle C. “Granny doesn’t like me to bug her sometimes. Maybe I hadn’t ought to bug you right now, huh?”

“It’s all right. Really.” Slipping an arm around her, I hugged her against me. It didn’t feel the least bit stiff or strange, and she didn’t pull away. “When we sit here and play together, I feel great.”

“Are you sick?” The question seemed to come out of the blue. “My granny’s been sick.”

I shook my head. “No. I’m fine.”
I hope
. “What’s wrong with your grandmother?”

Dell shrugged noncommittally, her chin still tipped downward, as if she were conversing with the piano rather than me. “Sometimes she has a spell for a day or two, then she’s all right.”

In spite of the quick answer, she was obviously worried. It was hard to imagine being only twelve years old and having to deal with those issues. “Is there anything we can do? Maybe pick up some medicine for her or send over a meal?”

“No,” she said quickly. Too quickly, I thought. “It’s O.K. Anyway, she’s got Uncle Bobby to help her out. He don’t have an apartment no more, so he’s been stayin’ at Granny’s, unless he’s got a girlfriend.”

I paused, unsure of what to say next.

Dell didn’t wait for an answer. Instead, she started picking out the melody to the hymn I’d heard her singing in the woods earlier.

“You have a beautiful voice.”

Spitting a puff of air, she rolled her eyes. “Ppfff. Yeah, right.”

“You do,” I said, elbowing her playfully.

Cocking her head to one side, she gave me an almost smile. “You sound like Grandma Rose.”

I reached up and tweaked the end of her nose. “Well, Grandma Rose was right. You know, she was
never
wrong about
anything
.” I
performed a fairly good imitation of Grandma Rose. It won a giggle from Dell.

“Grandma used to sing this song.” Giggling, she began singing in a facsimile of Grandma’s high, squeaky old-lady voice.

Laying my fingers on the keys, I played chords to her melody, and together we managed a fair duet, all the while laughing and singing in our best old-lady voices. By the time we finished, both of us were red faced and breathless. We collapsed against each other, laughing. It felt good. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d let loose like that.

The sound of a truck coming up the drive put an end to our merriment. Dell stiffened against me, turning an ear toward the door. Outside, someone laid on the horn, the sound rattling the evening stillness.

I stood up and started toward the door with Dell, suddenly somber and quiet, following me. We rounded the corner of the house just as an old primer-spotted pickup with a rebel flag decal rattled to a stop near our garage. A strange disquiet tickled my senses as the driver stepped out. Dressed in torn jeans, a grease-stained denim shirt, and a dirty ball cap with long, stringy hair hanging out the back, he looked more like a criminal than a neighbor.

I hurried to beat Dell to the yard gate. “Can I help you?” I said, blocking the opening.

Pulling off his baseball cap, the stranger combed dampened strings of salt-and-pepper brown hair out of his face, then replaced the cap, staggering backward a step. He had the look of someone who’d spent forty-some-odd years the hard way, on beer, cigarettes, and probably various kinds of drugs. His clothes had a sweet smell, suspiciously like marijuana, and his breath, even from three feet away, reeked of beer. “I come to pick up Dell,” he said. “Her granny said she’d be here.” Without waiting for an answer from me, he motioned to Dell, who had stopped a few feet away. “C’mon, don’t act all shy on me. I ain’t got time for that,” he said to the top of her head, looking her up and down in a way that was anything but parental.

“ ’K,” she muttered, her chin still tucked.

He moved forward, then took a step back when I didn’t vacate the
gateway. “Well, let’s go, girl. I gotta go to town and get some hamburger meat for your granny. I’ll buy ya an ice cream.”

“I just ate,” she said, crossing her arms over herself, darting a nervous glance toward him.

“I can give her a ride home,” I interjected, a prickle crawling up my spine. Dell didn’t want to go, and I didn’t want her to go. I wished Kate were here, instead of down at the river with everyone else. I had no idea whether it was normal for Dell to go with this man, but it didn’t feel right.

Think, Karen. Think of something.
“I want her to take home a plate of cookies for her grandmother,” I blurted. “I was just going to get them ready. I can give Dell a ride home in a minute, if you want.”

He returned a narrow-eyed look that was hard to read. “No need. She can come with me.” He waved a hand irritably at Dell. “Go git yer stuff, girl. I ain’t got all day.” Without waiting for an answer, he turned and staggered back to his truck, climbing impatiently into the driver’s seat.

I started toward the main house with Dell beside me. “You don’t have to go if you don’t want to,” I said when we were safely in the kitchen. “I’ll give you a ride, or we can go down to the river and get Kate so she can take you.” I wanted her to say yes, even though I knew I might be getting her into trouble with Uncle Bobby. He clearly didn’t want to take no for an answer.

“It’s O.K. I better go on now,” she muttered emotionlessly. “Granny might get mad. She doesn’t really like it when people come around.”

I caught her gaze as I opened the cookie jar and quickly filled a paper plate. “Are you sure it’s all right? Dell, if there’s anything you need . . . if there’s a problem, I can help.”

“No, ma’am,” she said and hid herself behind a curtain of dark hair. “I gotta go or Granny’ll be mad. I’ll see ya tomorrow. Are you gonna go to church with Kate and Ben?”

“Oh . . . I . . .” The last time I’d been to that church was the day of Grandma’s funeral. I didn’t want to go back, but the expectant look in Dell’s eyes made me say, “Sure. Of course I am. I’ll see you in the morning.”

She smiled as I covered the cookies with plastic wrap. “See you in
the morning.” Taking the plate, she turned and scurried out the door as the truck horn blared, demanding action. I followed her out, crossing the yard and standing uncertainly at the gate. Uncle Bobby leaned over and opened the passenger’s side door for Dell.

“So how’s my little nigger girl?” I heard him say as she climbed in with her plate of cookies. “What you been doin’ over here again, hangin’ out with the white folks. . . .” The rest was drowned out by the sputter of the engine as the vehicle pulled away.

Standing at the gate, I hugged my arms around myself, feeling sick.

Kate came up the river path carrying Rose just as the truck was disappearing down the driveway. “We heard someone honking up here.” She stopped beside me, giving me a questioning glance as I watched the vehicle disappear. “Who was that?”

“Uncle Bobby,” I said. A shiver traveled up and down my arms, even though it wasn’t cold. “What a jerk. Is it all right to let her go with him?”

Kate sighed, wrapping her hand around the gate and tapping her ring impatiently against the metal pipe. “I hope so. I’ve asked her, but she won’t say much. I’d go talk to her grandmother, but every time I try to get involved, her grandmother quits letting her come over here. She doesn’t like people interfering. When the school started pushing her about Dell’s attendance, she threatened to pack up their stuff and move to another county. If she does that, we won’t have a clue where to find Dell.”

“What a mess,” I muttered.

“I know.” Kate let out a long sigh. “I just keep trying to have faith that there’s a plan here—somehow it’s all going to work out.”

I glanced sideways at Kate, surprised. She was starting to sound like Grandma Rose. “I hope so,” I muttered, wishing I had Kate’s confidence. “It seems like there ought to be . . .” I caught myself about to say
something we could do.
I knew Kate would take that as criticism, so I finished with, “ . . . some solution.”

Kate sighed, looking tired, like she’d already been up and down this road a dozen times. Shaking her head, she pushed the gate open and started toward the house, saying, “I’d better go change Rose’s diaper.”

I knew she’d taken my comment as criticism, maybe because in the past we had criticized each other so much. I wasn’t the one to be giving her advice.

When she came back out with Rose I was sitting on the porch of the little house. “Want to come back down to the river with us?” she asked.

“No, I think I’d better wait here for James.” I waved at Rose, who was fanning her chubby hand furiously and hollering, “Ba-ba, ba-ba, ba-ba,” which was baby language for
Let’s get back to the river right away.