This One and Magic Life (6 page)

MAMA'S RUN AWAY AGAIN. I KNEW IT AS SOON AS I WOKE UP
this morning. The house had that too quiet feeling. I got up and looked in their room and, sure enough, the bed hadn't been slept in. I went in and woke up Donnie and Hektor and told them.

Hektor said, “Maybe they're just walking on the beach.” And I said, “Sure, Hektor. And maybe pigs can fly.”

But he and Donnie had to get up and go check their room themselves. And then they went downstairs and out on the porch with Hektor calling, “Mama! Papa!” loud as he could.

I went in my room and started dressing for school. Might as well. Wasn't anything we could do about it. In a few minutes the boys were back upstairs.

“Maybe they just went to get some bread or something,” I heard Hektor say.

“Maybe they did. Go on, get dressed now. We have to get you some breakfast before the bus gets here.” Then Donnie was banging on my door. “Artie!”

“Come on in.”

Donnie had slept in an old bathing suit for some reason. His hair was sticking up in spikes.

“Did you hear anything last night?” he asked.

“Nope.” I leaned closer to the mirror and started putting on the mascara Mama had forbidden me to wear.

“You think she's really gone?”

“Sure. Happy birthday, Donnie.”

“Well, hell. Where do you think Papa is?”

“Out looking for her, of course. He'll probably be back in a little while.”

Donnie sat down on the bed. He was so skinny you could count the ribs down his back. “I'm not going with him again,” he said.

“Me neither. Let her stay.”

“Let her stay.”

“Willie Mae takes care of us, anyway.”

“We can take care of ourselves. Hektor, too.”

“That's the truth.”

“Donnie!” Hektor called.

Donnie got up and went toward the door. “I wonder where she is,” he said.

“Who knows. She'll turn up.”

“Maybe one day she won't.”

“She will, Donnie. You know she will. Papa'll find her and she'll come sashaying in like the queen who never did anything wrong.”

“She's sick, Artie.”

“I know.” I had gotten some of Mama's mascara in my eyes and it was making them water. Well, hell, why not use it? It was my birthday. “Go help Hektor get ready for school. I'll get us some breakfast.”

Where had she said she was going last night? A meeting at the church? That was it. That was where
Papa had taken her after supper. She had said she would get a ride home. Well, she had gotten a ride, all right. Only not home.

Had she planned it or had it been a spur of the moment thing? Sitting in the meeting, had she suddenly thought
I don't want to be here
and left, getting into the first car that stopped? Or had she met some man earlier and gone with him? It had happened both ways before. This time it seemed without warning, though. I thought about supper last night. Mama had been okay. Hektor had knocked over his milk and Papa had jumped up to wipe it up but Mama had said, “I'll get it.” And she had put her napkin over it to keep it from spreading and then had gotten a dishrag and wiped it up. She hadn't even seemed upset. Maybe not upset enough I realized now.

I fixed three bowls of cornflakes for us. Willie Mae would be in later and would cook supper before she left. So there really wasn't anything to worry about. Donnie, Hektor, and I would be just fine. Willie Mae might even remember and bake us a cake.

They came down and we ate. We heard the bus coming just as we finished. “Get your books, Hektor,” I said.

That was when he put his head down on the table and began to cry like a baby instead of a ten-year-old. “I want Mama and Papa.”

The bus horn was blowing. “For God's sake, Hektor. Shut up,” Donnie said. “We've got to go.”

Hektor looked up. Tears rolled down his round face that looked so much like Papa's. “You go,” he said. “I'm gonna wait on them.”

Donnie and I looked at each other. “I'll stay with him,” he said.

“We'll all stay,” I decided. I ran outside to tell Mr.
Barganier that we wouldn't be riding today, that Mama was taking us all to the doctor for checkups.

Carl Jenkins stuck his head out of the window while Mr. Barganier was turning around in our driveway. “You sick?” I shook my head no. “Tell Donnie I'll be over this afternoon.”

There were whoops and catcalls from the bus. Eric Palmer stuck his head out and yelled, “You be sure and tell Donnie, Artie! He won't want to miss Carl!”

I just grinned. I knew who Carl was coming to see. He had liked me since we were in the third grade. Last year when the boys were playing football, Carl had been knocked into the goalpost and hit his head. He was knocked out for a minute. And when he came to, he was saying, “Artie. Artie.” Coach Giles teased me about it. Said he thought he was going to have to come and get me. It made me feel good.

We put on our bathing suits and went to the beach. It was October and the water was still warm. We built a sandcastle, something we hadn't done in a long time.

Sometime during the morning, Willie Mae came to the top of the bluff and yelled down wanting to know what we were doing home. “Playing hookey!” Donnie answered. “It's our birthday!”

“Well, you better come get shirts or you're gonna be sick. Out of school for real.”

We went traipsing up to the house. We knew Willie Mae was going to ask where Mama and Papa were, but she just said, “Shame on you not going to school. Gonna grow up dumb as fence posts.”

“I'm hungry,” Hektor said. Willie Mae fixed us sandwiches and we took them to the beach and sat in the shadow of Buck Stuart's sailboat to eat them.

“I wish Mama wasn't crazy,” Hektor said, his mouth full of peanut butter. It came out “cwazy.”

“Well, she isn't, always,” Donnie said. “Think of the nice parties she has. And how pretty the flowers always are.”

“Ha!” I said.

“Well, she's not!” Donnie glared at me. “You just don't give her any credit.”

I held out my arm toward him. The sun had turned the scar just above my elbow a jagged red. “You mean I don't give the devil her due?”

“That was an accident!”

“Throwing a knife is an accident?”

“She didn't mean to hurt you.”

Nobody was going to win this argument. We had it all the time. Donnie always took up for Mama.

“She's sick, anyway,” he said.

That was always the last line of the argument. We crumpled up the wax paper our sandwiches had been wrapped in and stuck it in Buck's boat.

“Let's walk to the hotel,” Donnie said. And that's what we did. A slight breeze blew across the water. Our lips tasted salty when we ran our tongues around them. We drank for a long time from the fountain by the pier.

“There's Mrs. Cates,” Donnie said. We saw her coming from one of the guest cottages, her arms full of sheets and towels. She spied us.

“What are you doing here?” she called. “There's a thing called school, you know.”

“Maybe it's a holiday,” Donnie said.

“And maybe you kids are playing hookey.” She smiled. “Well, I didn't see you. Okay?”

“Okay.” We watched her go on down the walk, carrying her bundle.

“I'm hungry again,” Hektor said. “And I have to go to the bathroom.”

“Well, you can go to the bathroom here,” Donnie said. “But we don't have any money.”

“I want some almond pie.”

“Too bad.” Donnie disappeared into the bathhouse with Hektor. I sat on a bench and watched two swimmers go back and forth the length of the pool. Back and forth. They couldn't be enjoying themselves.

And then I heard our mother's laugh. I thought for a minute that I was hearing things. And then I heard it again. It was coming from the cottage next to the one Mrs. Cates had just come from. I got up and walked toward it. And then I stopped. I turned around and saw that Hektor and Donnie had come out of the bathroom and were blinking in the light, looking for me.

“Here I am,” I said. “Let's go home. Let's walk down the road. It's closer.”

When we got home, Papa was there. And in the afternoon, Carl came. He and I sat in the swing and he showed me the schoolwork I had missed that day. But I wasn't paying much attention. All I could think of was that I knew where Mama was and I ought to tell Papa. But I didn't. Willie Mae had made us a birthday cake and was fixing meat loaf and mashed potatoes for supper; Papa was reading in his study. Hektor had fallen asleep on the front porch and Donnie was listening to the radio. Everything was peaceful. It was enough to drive you crazy.

The trouble was never knowing which Mama we were going to get. She might sit in her room for days, just sit there looking out of the window or looking at the same page of a book. She wasn't crazy like not knowing where she was. She would speak to us and even ask how school was. But it was like she was a stranger. A very formal stranger. And then we would hear her singing in the kitchen. She would hug us and
plan shopping trips to Mobile and have parties, shrimp boils and cocktail parties and seated dinners. Sometimes she would tell Papa and sometimes she wouldn't. He would come in from work and there would be a houseful of people, most of whom he didn't know. Willie Mae wouldn't help with the parties and after Mama threw the knife at me, I wouldn't either. So she would get some of the Cates kids or someone from the hotel who wasn't working that day.

The way I got cut with the knife really was an accident. At least, it was an accident that my arm was in the way. It wasn't an accident she threw it. She was slicing a roast and I was peeling shrimp at the sink.

“Goddamn dull knife!” And she threw it at the sink. I felt it slice my arm, but the funny thing was it didn't hurt. And it didn't bleed for about a minute. Mama and I stood there and looked at each other, surprised. And then the blood just spurted. She grabbed a dishrag and wrapped it around my arm. “Willie Mae!” she called. Willie Mae came to the door. “We have to go to Daphne to the clinic. Would you please put this food in the icebox?” That was when I looked down at the dishrag and saw it already getting red. And I fainted. The only time in my life. Willie Mae caught me just as I went down. She hollered for Donnie and he ran next door to get Mrs. Stuart to drive us to Daphne. But Papa drove up just then so he and Donnie took me to the clinic. Papa cried all the way there and back. Donnie cried, too. But I didn't. “Hush,” I said. “Y'all hush. I'm okay.” And I was. Even when the doctor stitched me up, it didn't hurt. It was like I was somewhere else. “Hush, Papa. Please hush.”

Maybe the worst times are when she goes away, though. Papa always goes looking for her. Takes us with him, too. Someone will call and say they've seen
her in New Orleans or Jackson and off we'll go. Of course he sat us down a long time ago and explained manic depression to us. “She's hurting as much or more than we are,” he said. But most of the time I find that hard to believe.

She's with a man at the hotel, probably Zeke Pardue. She was with a man in New Orleans and Jackson, too. Probably Zeke Pardue at least part of the time. Papa knows it. Donnie and I know it. Maybe Hektor doesn't, but he's the only one. Even Carl knows it. I've told him. Sweet Carl. He says, “It's okay, Artie.” But it's not. It never will be. She never even said she was sorry about my arm. And today's my birthday. And Donnie's.

AUGUST MORNINGS, DAWN POUNCES EARLY AND HEAVILY ON
Harlow. The air smells like coffee, bacon, tea olive bushes, and tidal pools. The fishing boats have already gone out; the automatic sprinklers at the Grand Hotel have shut off. By the time the first rays of the sun hit the water, most of the three thousand residents of the town have a start on their day. Nine women and two men attend six o'clock mass after which Father Carroll sits down with a bowl of cereal to watch
Today
. War, murder, and mayhem. Father Carroll spoons in cornflakes and watches them drag dead Bosnians away. Or are they Rwandans? Laotians? Kurds? Or maybe there was a blackout in New York. He should have listened closer. Well, he'll pray for them all. He finishes his breakfast, takes his Lanoxin, Lopressor, and a vitamin, and hits the remote. Time to go to work.

 

Dolly awakens with a sense of loss. She has slept in her clothes and has a headache.

“My God,” she says when she looks in the mirror.
She takes three aspirin and a shower. Her scalp feels sore as the water hits it. She may be getting sick.

“Telephone, Dolly. It's your mama,” she hears May calling as she steps from the shower. Dolly puts on her pink seersucker robe and goes into Artie's room. She sits on Artie's bed and answers the phone.

“Hey, honey,” Mariel says. “Now regardless of what you hear, we are on schedule. Rosary tonight. Funeral tomorrow at ten.”

“Okay,” Dolly says.

“Just act like nothing has happened.”

“All right.”

“You all right? You sound funny.”

“I have a headache.”

“Well, I'm at Mama's. I'll be over there after while. Don't let Mrs. Randolph leave any food out. I read an article about salmonella last week. Just what we need.”

“I won't.”

“Well, I'll talk to you later. Bye. Take some aspirin.”

“Bye, Mama.” Dolly wonders vaguely what her mother was talking about. She looks out Artie's window. She counts eighteen sailboats. May comes in bringing her a cup of coffee.

 

Downstairs in the living room, Reese is granting an interview to a reporter from
People
magazine. Reese has been out of jail two hours.

“Well, I really wanted to talk to a member of the family,” the reporter says, placing a small tape recorder on the coffee table.

“Anything you want to know, I can tell you. I been her faithful retainer for twenty years.”

“Her what?”

“Her faithful retainer.”

The man smiles and Reese narrows his eyes.

“It's just that I haven't heard that expression in a long time.” The man reaches over and turns on the tape. “Is that what she called you?”

“She called me Reese.”

“And what did you call her?”

“Artie. Her real name was Artemis but nobody called her that.” Reese leans forward on the Queen Anne chair and looks at the recorder. “Is that thing getting everything I say?”

“Absolutely.”

“Well, she was a fine lady and a great painter and the world is a fairer place for her having been here.”

“A fairer place?”

“Yes.”

The reporter clears his throat. “Mr. Whitley, are you sure there is no member of the family I can talk to?”

“I'm sure. They too bereaved anyway. Would you like a Coca-Cola?”

“No. Thank you.”

“Well, I'm going to get me one. I don't feel good this morning.” Reese groans as he gets out of the chair and goes toward the kitchen.

The reporter looks around. What he had been hoping for was to talk to Hektor Sullivan. That would have been the story. One of the richest men in the world talking about his famous, beautiful sister.

Reese comes back in, rubbing his knuckle against the coldness and wetness of a Coke bottle. “You sure you don't want one?”

“No, thank you.” The reporter reaches over and turns the tape on again. “Now, Mr. Whitley, about Mrs. Sullivan's husband.”

“He was Greek. Killed in Korea.”

The reporter checks his notes. “Carl Jenkins was Greek?”

Reese takes a long drink of Coke and hiccups. “Sure he was Greek. Dived for sponges in the bay.”

“I didn't know there were sponges in Mobile Bay,” says the reporter.

“I didn't either,” says Reese. Both men are silent for a moment. May walks by, looks in, and waves. “Hey, May,” Reese says. “That's May,” he tells the reporter.

“A niece?”

“Probably.”

The reporter turns off the recorder and stands up. “Thank you, Mr. Whitley, for your time.”

“You welcome.” Reese walks to the door with the man and stands there smiling. “You write a good story now.”

 

Hektor, on his way to Bay Chapel East, swerves to avoid an armadillo. He has already seen three squashed ones. Where had they all come from?

He thinks he really should go to Birmingham with Donnie. They could talk on the plane. It would be good for both of them. There's something he needs to do for Artie, though. Something important.

As he turns into the Bay Chapel East driveway, he realizes he has forgotten the money Mariel requested. She is sitting on a concrete bench on a green canopied walk looking old, anxious. She gets up and comes across the parking lot.

“What's going on? Reckon they'll take Visa?” he asks, getting out of the pickup stiffly. Every muscle in his body seems to have tightened up during the short drive.

“We're going to have the funeral.”

“But Donnie is going to Birmingham.”

“I know he is.” They reach the bench and sit down. “And tomorrow we're going to have a closed casket funeral.”

Hektor understands instantly. He sees ancient Father Carroll wafting incense over an empty casket. He hears Father Carroll's shaky voice petitioning that Artie's soul be allowed into heaven. Interesting. “Does Donnie know what you're doing?” he asks.

Mariel nods yes. She is not the frantic woman Hektor had expected from her earlier phone call. She seems quiet, thoughtful.

“And the money?”

“Another casket. Generous tips.”

Hektor rubs his stiff neck and stretches. It is hot under the canopy. “I've got to go to the bank unless they'll take Visa. I don't even have a check with me.”

“Okay. You want to see Artie first?”

“Yes,” he lies.

The funeral parlor doors are wooden, massive. Hektor opens them for Mariel and follows her into the darkness and coolness of the lobby; it's like diving into the bay. Hektor feels he is swimming toward the man seated at the desk who rises, smiling.

Mariel introduces them. “Mr. Griffin, my brother-in-law, Hektor Sullivan.”

The undertaker has an unexpectedly warm smile and hearty handshake. “Mr. Sullivan. My father buried your parents.”

“Oh?” Hektor remembers little of his parents' funeral. And right now he is having to remember to breathe.

“Yes. I remember it because it happened the very first week I worked here and, of course, it was unusual, too. I looked it up so we could have comparable ar
rangements for your sister. For instance, they were buried in our number two hundred metal caskets, gray, both of them. They still make that same casket so that's the one Mrs. Sullivan selected. I think you'll be pleased.”

“Thank you.”

“Now, if you'll come this way.”

Hektor and Mariel follow Mr. Griffin down the hall.

“In here. I'll leave you two alone. My sympathies, Mr. Sullivan.”

Hektor nods. He steps into a small sitting room decorated in blues and mauves. To his left is an alcove and a casket almost hidden by flowers.

“We asked for no flowers, but people are sending them anyway.” Mariel puts her purse in a chair and walks around looking at the cards on the floral arrangements. Hektor sits in the chair nearest the door.

“Here's one from Carl's sister. I forgot to call her, too. I need to do that.”

“Mariel,” Hektor asks, “why are we doing this?”

“Hektor, the least we can do is bury the dead decently. And I'll tell you this, it's what your mother would have wanted.”

His mother would have wanted them to bury an empty casket? It occurs to Hektor that Mariel may be as unhinged as his mother had been. It occurs to Hektor that all of them are.

“I'm going to see if Mr. Griffin has finished all the arrangements.” Mariel picks up her purse and searches through the compartments. “I'll be back in a minute.”

“Ask him about the credit card.”

Hektor sits in the chair. He smells carnations and lilies and formaldehyde. He does not get up and go into the alcove where Artie is lying in her yellow linen dress, a smile on her face. Hektor has seen death in
the jungles of Central America, on the streets of New Orleans, and on Mobile Bay. And now he has a small epiphany.

“Artie, we're all armadillos,” he whispers toward the alcove.