The Way Back to Happiness (28 page)

She hunched over the wheel, head aching. “I’m sure she’ll come back,” she repeated. “Or Tom will bring her back. She’ll never be able to manage on her own. Especially not with a baby.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of,” Gladys said.

 

“Aunt Bev?”

Bev looked over at Alabama. She’d been so lost in memory she wasn’t even sure how far they’d driven.

Alabama looked as if she’d been thinking, too. The earphones from the Walkman she’d retrieved from Gladys were dangling around her neck. “What if the Jacksons don’t like me?” she asked.

She sounded so desperate to be accepted, to be loved, Bev’s felt her heart might shatter into pieces. Alabama was dressed in her new clothes and wasn’t at all scruffy looking for once, if you didn’t count the laddered stockings from where she’d scratched at her leg nervously, or the striped hair, or her earrings, which at first glance seemed to match her new tomato-red jacket but upon closer inspection revealed themselves to be miniature chattering teeth.

“Of course they’ll like you. Why shouldn’t they?”

Alabama mulled the question over and seemed calmer. She sank back against the seat rest.

They won’t like her,
Bev thought.

She felt that certainty in her bones. That cold old lady and her daughter would chew up Alabama’s hopes and spit them out like an olive pit.

And then what would happen?

H
er aunt was lying through her teeth about the chances of the Jacksons liking her. Alabama could tell. Why else would she keep repeating the advice to “hold your head high and remember you’re as good as anyone else” as they finally came to the outskirts of Houston?

Driving through her new grandmother’s neighborhood, she began to understand. The houses were enormous—hulking, swank edifices like nothing she’d ever seen, except on television. All had perfectly clipped lawns, some of them green as golf courses even in November. They reminded her of the big house in the opening credits of
Dynasty,
except there were scores of them all packed into one neighborhood. She was stepping into a new world.

It didn’t occur to her until later, much later, that Bev never consulted a map to navigate her way through the neighborhood.

“Granny Jackson lives in one of these?” she couldn’t help asking. “All by herself?”

“She probably has help,” Bev said.

Of course. Maids and gardeners, a cook, and maybe even a chauffeur. Or a butler. Did people still have butlers, or was that only in the movies?

During all these weeks, she hadn’t imagined her grandmother as a physical person. So far, Dorothy Mabry Jackson had existed as slanted writing on a page, and spiky opinions, and a dream of something different, something better. But now, in this setting, Alabama feared she was out of her league. A person in a house like one of these would be used to pulling strings and getting her way, like Phoebe Wallingford from
All My Children.
That character never liked anybody.

She chewed down an entire thumbnail in the last three blocks before Bev stopped in the driveway of a two-story brick house. It seemed older and not quite as huge as some of the ones around it. Still, its elegance intimidated her. A long flat lawn led up to a raised porch with several columns shooting up to an overhanging balcony. The house and grounds were shaded by extravagantly large trees, including a magnolia that looked as if it was going to devour the side porch.

“Don’t worry. She really is just a person,” Bev said. “Also, don’t forget we have a car. Give me the signal, and we can always make a quick getaway.”

They got out and approached the imposing front door, which was painted a thick glossy black. In the center of it, a brass lion head knocker peered at them from eye level. Bev lifted the lion and let it drop, and the resulting sound was so loud that Alabama imagined neighbors sending their maids to peer out the window and report back.

She didn’t know what to expect next—a tuxedoed butler, maybe. Not the person who opened the door. The woman, around Bev’s age, was tall and made no attempt to disguise it. She even wore chunky high heels with her pantsuit. Her hair was dark, almost black, and cut short, although she wore enough gold and sparkly jewelry to counteract the mannish hairdo. Her dark eyes, shadowed with shades of brown, zeroed in on Alabama, inspecting her, before they spared Bev a glance.

“Hello, Bev,” the woman drawled. “You haven’t changed a bit. Glad you could make it.”

Bev’s tight, superficial smile mirrored the other woman’s. “I couldn’t let Alabama make the trip alone. She’s only fourteen, you know.”

The woman’s gaze snapped back to Alabama. “She looks older than that.”

“I’m almost fifteen,” Alabama said.

“Dot, let me introduce my niece, Alabama.” Bev laughed dryly. “Well,
our
niece, we could say.”

Dot’s glassy smile turned on her again. “We could, but why don’t we wait?”

“Alabama, this is Dot Jackson,” Bev said. “Tom’s sister.”

The sensible judge.
My aunt.
She didn’t look like any woman Alabama had ever expected to be related to, and those sharp dark eyes told her that Dot wasn’t relishing the idea of kinship. “Hi,” was the most that Alabama could choke out.

Unimpressed, the woman motioned them inside. “Mother is waiting for us in the library.”

She ushered them into a hallway that made Alabama’s mouth gape. The black-and-white marble floor and high ceilings were polished to a high gloss, and a huge chandelier hung from the ceiling, near a wide staircase that twisted up to a second floor. It felt as if she was in a museum, or on
The Beverly Hillbillies
set. She made mental notes so she could tell Stuart all about it.

Dot Jackson’s heels clacked behind her. Alabama felt as if she was being herded.

“You remember the way, don’t you, Bev?” Dot asked.

“How could I forget,” Bev said.

The frosty exchanges between those two intensified Alabama’s nervousness. It sounded like they hated each other. And obviously Bev had been here before. In this house. That thought confused her. Why hadn’t she said so?

As they approached a large carved door, Dot accelerated so she could reach it first and announce them. “Mother, they’re here.”

At the threshold, Alabama felt Bev’s hand on her arm for an instant. The light squeeze reminded her of Bev’s words.
Stand up straight.... You’re as good as anyone else.... The car’s outside and we can always flee.

The room seemed designed to make people feel small. Floor-to-ceiling bookcases in dark wood lined the walls and were packed with expensive-looking volumes in cloth and leather bindings with gold lettering. Overhead, two heavy iron fixtures hung down, their amber shades casting a twilight glow even though it wasn’t even noon yet. A real statue of a mostly undressed woman holding grapes stood against one wall, but littler treasures—knickknacks and clocks and framed photographs—resided on every table or shelf. Alabama wondered if she could go through an entire day without touching anything.

At the opposite end of the room from the statue, next to a set of double doors whose curtains had been drawn back to give a view of the outdoor patio, sat an old lady. She wore a burgundy jacket in raw silk over a matching dress, and her hair was impressive and upswept, like Margaret Thatcher’s. She was obviously a tall woman, like her daughter, although it was a little hard to tell because she was leaning forward with interest, and the chair she sat in was a wheelchair.

As Alabama drew closer, the woman’s head jutted forward, and she regarded her with bright, birdlike eyes.

“This is the girl, Mother,” Dot said.

Bev bristled. “Her name is Alabama.”

The older woman’s gaze flicked over to Bev. “You’re looking well, Bev. You certainly haven’t changed much.”

“Thank you. Neither have you.”

“Nonsense,” the woman snapped. “I’ve got arthritis and a bad hip. Can’t even golf anymore. I’m fifteen years older, and I wasn’t a spring chicken when you knew me. But you always seemed older than you were, so naturally you seem the same.”

Bev didn’t answer, but a response didn’t seem necessary, since the older woman had gone back to inspecting Alabama. Alabama tried hard not to flinch under that keen, unwavering gaze. Dot’s attitude must have been wearing off on her, because she felt like a fraud. After all, only her mother’s say-so connected her to these people . . . and had her mother been the most reliable source? Obviously not. Recently, she’d even begun to doubt that her mother was actually her mother, so how could she possibly trust her mother’s word on who her dad had been?

“Alabama Putterman!”

She gulped. The way Dorothy Mabry Jackson intoned her name was like a judge about to pronounce sentence on the condemned.
She thinks I’m a fraud, too.

“Look at her, Dot,” Dorothy said.

“I did.” With those two short words, Dot conveyed how unmoved she was by what she’d seen.

“Come closer,” Dorothy Jackson commanded.

Alabama took two tentative steps.

In the wheelchair, her gaze razor sharp on Alabama, the woman began to tremble. It was a little bobbing of her head at first, but then grew so pronounced that Alabama worried she was having some kind of seizure. The woman’s shaking hands grabbed the arms of her chair and she pushed herself up onto legs that wobbled like a newborn colt’s.

Dot bolted forward. “Mother, wait!”

But Dorothy took an unsteady step toward Alabama, almost stumbling into her.

Alabama reflexively reached out to grab the woman’s arms, thin as twigs. They ended up clutching each other by the forearms. This woman, she realized, wasn’t really that much taller than herself—she just projected big.

She wasn’t sure she should go on holding the arms, which felt as if a little too much pressure could snap them, but when she tried to let go, Dorothy Jackson clung that much tighter, her manicured nails digging into Alabama’s forearms like needles. The woman’s glassy eyes frightened but also mesmerized her. Ferociously they drank in all her features, and Alabama fought the urge to break eye contact.

It seemed if they stood locked together for an eternity. Then, slowly, she realized that what she’d perceived at first as fierce was really frantic, raw emotion. Tears stood in Dorothy Jackson’s eyes.

“You’re my Tom all over again.” Her voice cracked, and as she lifted one hand to Alabama’s face, the tears spilled over. “You’ve got his eyes, exactly. I didn’t see it at first, but when you stepped into the light of the window, it was as if Tom was standing in front of me, after all these years. As if he never went away . . . never died so far away.”

Alabama swallowed. “Nobody told me that.”

“Oh yes—look at a picture.” Dorothy turned, took a painful step, and then pointed to a shelf nearby. “Dot, bring me that picture of Tom.”

Her daughter reached over and then handed the silver-framed picture to her. Dorothy showed it to Alabama.

“You see?”

The black-and-white photo was of her father, who was sitting on a bench outside with a woman who was only visible in profile—Bev, she noticed when she looked closer. In the background she could make out the side of a house that appeared to be this one. It reminded her of the pictures she’d seen in Bev’s attic. Maybe it was from the same batch.

“Who took this?” Alabama asked.

“I did,” Dot said.

No one seemed to think it was necessary to explain the reason why Bev was in a picture that Dot had taken of Tom. Her grandmother reached for another picture. “And here’s one of Tom when he was a teenager, closer to your age now.”

It was a school photo. Although she was distracted by his hair, which was parted severely on one side with a wavy curtain of bangs across his forehead in a style she thought of as early Greg Brady, Alabama could see that the shape and color of their eyes were similar. She hadn’t noticed that when she’d looked at pictures of Tom Jackson before. Maybe it was a thing only a mother would notice.

“I’ve always thought Alabama favored him,” Bev said.

Alabama flinched. Even now, she couldn’t forget Stuart’s theory, or her mother’s—Diana’s—letter.

From that moment on, Dorothy Mabry Jackson appeared to embrace her wholeheartedly as a member of the family. Her grandmother instructed her to walk beside her chair—Dot was relegated to pushing—and gave her the grand tour of the house, or at least the first floor of it. The old woman would direct Dot to stop at points of interest—Thomas Sr.’s portrait, for instance, or the cabinet that she’d found in England during her wedding trip, which had cost more to ship, even back in those days, than the antique dealer had charged.

Strolling dutifully alongside the chair, Alabama felt as if she were in a dream. Her new clothes, which Bev had let her pick out and buy even though they weren’t even on sale, made her stand straighter, like a different person. A Jackson? And yet, she couldn’t help wondering . . . what if her eyes had been a different color? Would her grandmother have rejected her, banished her from her sight?

Thanksgiving dinner marked the first time she’d eaten a meal served by a maid, although Alicia didn’t
look
like a maid. She wasn’t wearing a uniform or anything. It felt weird. They sat around the dining table, in a room decorated with gold-flocked wallpaper and a huge painting of a windmill, waiting for Alicia to come in and put dishes down for them to hand around, including a turkey big enough to feed fourteen people, not four. Talk was strained, and Alabama couldn’t help thinking that they could have started eating a lot quicker if they’d given Alicia a hand.

After she was done, Alicia smiled and withdrew to the kitchen.

“Doesn’t Alicia get to have Thanksgiving, too?” Alabama asked, watching the connecting door to the kitchen swing to a standstill.

Dorothy chuckled. “Of course. She’s going to eat with her family tonight.”

“I told her she could bake something for her family while she’s waiting to clean up today.” Clearly, Dot thought she’d made a queenly concession. “And she’s always welcome to leftovers.”

It seemed weird to be pigging out on turkey while somebody else sat in the next room waiting for them to finish.

“It all tastes wonderful, doesn’t it, Alabama?” Bev asked her—pointedly—drawing Alabama’s gaze away from the kitchen door.

Even though she hadn’t taken a bite yet, Alabama murmured her agreement and focused on her food. Unbidden, a memory of last Thanksgiving came to her. It was the last happy holiday she and her mom had together, and it had been perfect. Almost perfect. Before, she and her mom had usually ordered Chinese takeout or pizza on Thanksgiving, but last year, because of Charlie, her mother wanted to do a turkey and all the trimmings. The holiday began with staying up late so Diana could put the bird in the oven in the middle of the night. That’s what Gladdie had always done, she said.

“At two in the morning?” Alabama asked.

“Or thereabouts.”

“Couldn’t we check the time in a cookbook?” Alabama was pretty sure there was a battered, stained
Joy of Cooking
somewhere. For years it had been used to prop up a couch with a broken foot. Then they’d moved, and abandoned the couch. She began opening and closing cabinets. Where was it?