The Sweet by and By (34 page)

one, didn’t I? Or maybe he found me, I’m never sure how that works, but I do know enough to be grateful. I’m sure Connie would be more than glad to take credit and that’s all right, she earned it.

I don’t go to the nursing home now. Sometimes I think I will again, but then there’s life. Just life, you know? I didn’t want to be there much anyway after Margaret Clayton died. That was the hardest part for me, I’d been meaning to get to the hospital but I didn’t make it. Then she was gone, it wasn’t like I didn’t know it was coming, but the longer it takes, you feel like the longer you have, and that ain’t the way it is. I did stop at Ridgecrest one time to see if anybody I knew was still there but I didn’t recognize a one. A young nurse, a jock sort of guy with a suntan, told me Lorraine Bullock had retired. She was one of the last people I knew there. He’d heard her house had burned down but that she wasn’t in it. “You’ve got to be careful with those old houses,” he said, “all the wiring, you know?” I answered, “Yeah,” thinking about how old my own house was and whether I could start a fire and not even know it. He didn’t know where Lorraine was now, maybe living closer to her daughter, and asked if I wanted him to try and find out at the nurses’ station. I told him no, that was all right.

I do miss my ladies. I put their picture out on the coffee table so every day I can look at the three of us, me standin in between Ber- nice and Margaret, all wearin Santa Claus hats like something crazy. Connie still asks me if I’m gonna keep it out all year long even though it’s a Christmas picture, and I still tell her, “Yes I am, Connie, and the answer is gonna be yes next time you ask too.” They wanted me to be happy, those two, they wanted it, and it happened. It’s happening now. I feel like they know. And I’d love to think that wherever they are they might bring some Christmas cheer to my old sourpuss of a grandma, but I reckon they’d all have to be in the same place to do that, and there’s no way those two sweet things are with her.

So things are good. Really good. I got a lot of people coming to the shop already. Some people who I used to do at Evelyn’s followed

The Sweet By and By
287

me out here. Evelyn don’t care, she’s about half retired anyway, and most of the time you can’t even find her cause she’s in her car headed to the beach. Mike and me have been talking about having a baby. Connie says I’m out of my mind, kids are for young people, but I tell her last time I looked I didn’t have one foot in the grave. Connie’s like that though. I love her to death, but she always tries to make what she’s decided to do the thing that’s best for everybody else to do too. It’s true that everybody we know is already done with the kid thing, but we might still do it. And if not, that’s all right too. I can take what comes. So can Mike. We’re the same that way.

Next month I’m f lying to Las Vegas to go to a hairdresser conven- tion for three whole days. Mike asked if he could come and said he would take vacation from UPS, but I said, “Hell no, you’re not comin. I’m takin Connie. You go on fishin or somethin.” He acted like he was disappointed but I know he wasn’t. He don’t want to do one thing in Vegas except sit at a blackjack table, and he knows I ain’t gonna stand around while he does that. Connie will be w-i-l-d fun. She’ll do anything and drag me with her. I haven’t told her yet that I’ve reserved us on the Gene Autry Sunset Steak Dinner Ride and Sing-along. I thought it sounded like a bargain. You get to ride horses for five hours through the desert, they feed you, and then they take you back to your hotel. Connie will hate the singing part, but the only other option is a breakfast ride and there is no way she will go on that after staying up all night partying. When we get back we’re goin to see Martina McBride at the MGM Grand. She’s expensive, but I got tickets as soon as I knew I was taking the trip because I love her. There’s gonna be a lot of beauticians around so everybody oughta look real good if you think about it. I hope I come home with some new hair ideas too. I’m always looking for new possibilities.

c h a p te r th i r t y-s e v e n

April

D

o you mind if I hold your hand?” I asked, not sure whether he might slap me away as he had his own daughter. He did

not answer. I should be used to this by now, but it always felt like something was being pulled up by the roots inside my stomach.

“Mr. Massey, do you mind if I hold your hand while the nurse takes your blood pressure?” I asked again, as gently as I could.

“She’s leaving me here!” he barked. “There was not another living soul besides me to raise her after her mother died, but I did it. I did it by myself with these two hands. I don’t understand it. I never spoke a cross word to her in my life.”

I looked at Mr. Massey’s daughter, Denise, a well-dressed woman in her midfifties who, in spite of trying her best to remain composed, was reduced to sniff ling and dabbing the corners of her eyes. She did not speak.

“You’re going to be taken care of here, Mr. Massey. Denise asked me many times what I thought, and I told her I thought it was a good idea. You’ll be safe here, where someone can look in on you whenever you need something.”

“Bullshit.”

“Dad!” Denise was embarrassed.

“It’s normal.” The nurse tried to comfort her and exited the room.

“Let him talk,” I said to Denise over my shoulder. “That’s

right, Mr. Massey. It is bullshit whenever anybody has to leave his home against his wishes. What else do you want to say about it? Tell it.”

“She doesn’t know,” he ranted. “I’m fine by myself. This is all because I forget things sometimes, is that it? It is, isn’t it?” He turned to Denise. “I hope no one ever abandons you. I hope you never know what it feels like to be left alone, pulled out of your own house, and not told where you’re going.”

Denise interjected. “That’s not true, I spoke to you about this. Sev- eral times, Dad. I’m doing everything I can, you don’t see that? But I can’t . . . I . . .” She broke off in sobs.

“I took care of you, my only daughter, and for once I need you to take care of me. Is that what you can’t do? Can’t any daughter who feels anything for her father do that?”

“Mr. Massey.” I was still calm but it was time to intervene. “We’re all going to do the best we can. Denise and I, and you too. We’re going to have dinner this evening, sleep through the night, then we’re going to wake up tomorrow, and we’re going to do the best we can. We have to try to do that.”

“Well I won’t stay here. I know my rights and I’ll find a way to get out. You will not do this, Denise, not to me. I may be feeble of body but not of mind. No! I still have a mind and I don’t intend to lose it in this place.”

He had become a caged leopard, clawing to get out, scratching to draw blood; he would do anything if he thought it could change the reality of this day and the life that would follow.

“Denise, why don’t you go ahead?” I placed my arm around her. “I’m going to give your father something to calm him until they bring supper. It’ll be more important that you come tomorrow.”

Denise approached the bed and bent over her father, kissing him lightly on the cheek. She was about to speak when he whispered through clenched teeth, “The kiss of Judas.” She had been shot by a bullet that she could not dodge even if she had seen it coming a mile away.

The Sweet By and By
291

“Go on,” I said to her and I gave Mr. Massey a mild sedative. “She’ll be back, Mr. Massey. And I am still your doctor, so if you have any complaints or questions or you need anything, you pick up that phone by your bed and you call my office. I am the doctor; all these people are just trying to run a smooth organization and they have to pay attention to a lot around here. The only thing I have to pay atten- tion to is you. So you call me.”

“What can you do? You can’t do anything for me.”

“I can tell you that it will get better, but we’re all going to have to work at it. This is a big change, and neither you nor I is stupid enough to think that it will be easy.”

“Bullshit,” he mumbled, now emotionally spent. “I know,” I said. I would wait until he nodded off.

My mother is at home now thinking about dinner. She will prob- ably reheat the barbecue plate that she couldn’t finish yesterday when I took her to lunch and shopping. It’s our Wednesday ritual, now that she lives close by. I always pick her up around eleven fifteen in the morning and we drive all the way to Sturgess Barbecue, which has been in the exact same location for as long as I can remember, on a lake in a grove of pine trees about twenty minutes from where she used to live. I try to get her there by noon because that is the time that she feels lunch should be served everywhere in the world, or at least in North Carolina, regardless of what happens in the course of a person’s day. I think it’s as much about regularity as it is food, although Mama is not shy at all about ordering enough for two people. And she always gets exactly the same thing: a pork barbecue sandwich, chunky and vinegary the way it is done down here in the eastern counties, with french fries, slaw, hush puppies, a side order of Brunswick stew, and always a copious serving of pie, usually lemon chess if they have it. I wouldn’t go all the way to Sturgess’s if Mama didn’t insist. It’s not that I don’t feel welcome, even though there are not only no other blacks, but no Mexicans, who have become the new Southerners, the new

backbone of hard labor. In fact, Mr. Sturgess always speaks to Mama and me by name and puts us at whatever table we pick. And his wait- resses, all of whom are white, are nice and down-to-earth. Those are Mama’s words, not mine, but I do agree with her. Still, my body feels smaller when I’m in that pine-paneled dining room where tobacco farmers have come to eat since before I was born. I think about the generations of black field labor, Mama’s ancestors among them, who never sat at one of these tables. I can feel the ghosts of those who, even now, wouldn’t want us here, standing close to the walls, leaned up cross-legged, sneering ever so slightly and looking at us from a distance, wishing us back to another era in which they are the guaran- tors of where all boundaries lie and content with their chalk-drawn lines of existence. I look around me and there are smiles, warmth. Thankfully the world is not run by ghosts, but I believe they’re never far away.

I am grateful for this simple ritual. I want sameness. I want perma- nence. When I see Mama shuffle as she rises to her feet or dip slightly, favoring a weak knee as she steps out of my car, or the slight tremor of her hand as she raises a spoon, her lipstick unevenly applied, I am aware of change, the time for giving up what is. And I can’t bring myself to speak about it. I keep silent before that which scares me, the inevitability of a slowing march, then no march at all, a crawl, infant- like. She will need me more and more. I will hold this fact at bay for as long as I am able, if only because of the visible language of its fierce encroaching. And so next Wednesday I will pick her up again and compliment her on how pretty she looks. And it will not be patron- izing; I will mean it, because I will be even more determined to keep her in my heart’s eye as she is, a gallery-worthy marble statue of my mother, teacher, my friend, the woman who was the first person to ever love me.

c h a p te r th i r t y- e ight

Lorraine

A

pril was walking ahead of me to get through the crowd, holdin my hand cause I guess she thought I needed draggin

or else get lost. I had to yell to make her hear me.

“Honey, I don’t want to sit too close to that band. I’m gon go deaf or crazy, I don’t know which one.”

“I think they’re almost f inished,” she screamed back, and a tall woman beside me laughed so loud it scared me to death while she reached her arm way across in front of my face and took a full champagne glass from a waiter, then handed him her empty with the other hand. I got the idea it wasn’t her f irst time.

“Don’t you want something to drink?” April yelled again when she let go and planted me at a table in one corner away from the party.

“Yes I do. I’m ’bout to thirst to death.” She started to head for the bar, behind her, crowded with people, like bees in a hive.

“What do you want?” she said. “I know you’re not going to drink champagne.”

“And you ought not be drinkin liquor this early either, but I know you’re gon do exactly what you want to. Bring me Dr Pepper. And not diet.”

“Mama, we’re on vacation.”

“Don’t I look like I’m on vacation?” I pulled a pair of sunglasses out of my pocketbook and put em on against the last light of the af- ternoon.

“They might not have Dr Pepper. Is Coke all right?”

“Yes, and see if they got somethin to nibble on too. They ought to, much as you paid for this trip.”

It was her idea that we should go on a cruise in the first place. Now April of all people knows I don’t think much of water, and the only time I’ve ever been on a boat was a ferry at Jamestown, Virginia, that was enough for me. But you can’t tell my daughter anything, she’s got a mind and will to go with it. She brought in some picture brochures after I got home from church one Sunday.

“Mama, you won’t even know you’re on a boat, it’s so big. You’ll love it,” she said. “There’s plenty to eat and you don’t have to walk much. Now can’t I make these plans? It’ll be a belated Christmas pres- ent, we’ll spend New Year’s in the Caribbean.”

“It costs too much. You ain’t told me but I know it does,” I said. “Don’t worry about that,” she said.

“Hmm.”

“Oh Mama, come on. Now how about if I invite Althea to go with us? If she will.”

“Althea will go to a dog fight if somebody’ll take her.” “Does that mean you’ll go?”

“I want a room near the lifeboats.”

And that was the end of it. April said she had always wanted to take me on a big trip and there wasn’t no better time, so I let her. Althea decided she couldn’t come at the last minute, she got the f lu, but April got trip insurance so she said that was all right, she’d get her money back. I’m the one who told her to get it, she might have on her own, I don’t know, but I’ve read too many articles in the newspaper about people who wanted to go somewhere then they got sick or something and was out every penny they spent.