Unto These Hills (25 page)

Then, with supreme effort, I pushed away Daniel’s image with a raw pain that had never ceased in all those years. And I reminded myself
why
I’d not allowed myself this luxury. The plunge from ecstasy to agony was too, too harrowing.

Fact was, Walter and I were imbedded in deep-debt dung, mainly due to bailing Muffin’s cute little tail out so many times since she and Russ had filed for divorce. Walter lost no sleep over it. But then, Walter lost no sleep over anything.

I fought down a surge of resentment, squeezed my eyes shut, counted to ten, then attacked the kitchen sink with a damp Ajax-crusted wash cloth. While on the phone with her, I’d been about to ask my daughter to dash over to Russ’ small village house later in the day and locate some of the children’s missing clothing. With them shuttled back and forth between the two dwellings, tracking their outfits proved difficult

Muffin’s abrupt dismissal of me, of course, got her off the hook. I snorted. Muffin
? Responsibility
? She’d managed to avoid it like a slippery eel, through two births and all that followed. I dried off the counter and swallowed my anger, deciding to drive over to Russ’ myself and round up their wardrobe, most of which would need to be laundered and ironed. In the next instant, I thought of my little Gracie and Jared. My anger dissolved.

I reminded myself that I did it for
them.

Walter and I, ten years into our marriage, had moved into this two-story, six-room dwelling, the extra space a luxury. Now, the walls bulged with two extra warm, squiggling, moving bodies vibrating tons of energy that I’d’a sworn could blow them out. Of course, Muffin occupied her hallowed quarters. A second bathroom, upstairs, was under construction. That way, we’d run into each other less.

Perhaps peace would prevail.

I’d just run the mop over the worn, yellow linoleum-tiled floor when Timmy sauntered in, loaded with carpentry gear. He paused to give me my due hug and kiss. Even at five-foot-seven, I had to reach up to hug his strong neck. He’d made a handsome man, quite masculine, yet gentle. “Hey, Sis,” he muttered in his soft, inimitable way. “How’s it goin’? Enjoyin’ a bit of quietness, huh?”

“Oh, yeh. Until three.” I closed my eyes in bliss, ecstatic bliss after all these years of potty-training and refereeing and hauling little ones to church so they wouldn’t grow up to be heathens. Finally, this year, with Gracie, eight, in third grade and Jared, five, in kindergarten, most of my day was calmer.

“Quiet but —
free?”
I shook my head and gave another snort. “That’s a laugh. I’m not whining, mind you, just stating facts. It’s like startin’ all over with raising a family. I never run out of things to do.” My hands rarely ceased labor until at least eleven at night, long after Walter lay snoring.

“Walter don’t help?” asked Timmy, quietly, so Walter, watching The Price is Right in the next room, wouldn’t hear.

“Oh, he’d help if I asked him to. I rarely do, honey. He’s just —”

“Slow?” Tim whispered, kindly, understanding the situation.

I nodded. I could usually complete the task before Walter struggled past uncertainty and grasped the
how.
Walter’s desire to please was childlike and extreme. Another reason I didn’t rely more on him. To see him strive so hard to please just — well, it tore me up inside.

Then, I noticed Timmy seemed bothered by something. “Spit it out,” I murmured, motioning for him to sit and taking a seat myself. “Tell big sister what’s troubling you.”

He plopped down in the kitchen chair facing me. “You’re not gonna like it, Sis.”

“So what else is new?” Despite my nonchalant shrug, I experienced a trickle of trepidation.

“Sheila’s car’s been parked at Francine’s house a lot lately.”

The alarm grew. “So?”

“While Francine’s at work.” He carefully monitored my reaction. “I pass there every day and, lately, it’s always there.”

I stared at him, a cold knot forming in my stomach. “What are you saying, Timmy? Do you think —?”

“I stopped by yesterday, just to see what was going on. The doors were all locked but I knocked till Sheila come to the door. Her hair was all messed up and her makeup smeared.” He shook his head, gazing unbelieving at me. “Crazy thing was — she looked smug as a bug in a rug, y’know? Wudn’t even embarrassed that I’d caught ‘em together.”

Sick to my soul, I asked. “What did you do?”

“Nothing. Tack come dragging outta the bedroom, all mussed up, too. He looked a mite scared, truth be told. But he bluffed it, saying as how Sheila’d been helping him clean out from under the bed. ‘Spring cleaning’ he said. Said he paid Sheila to come by and help out, since Francine don’t ever do nothing to the house.” He snorted. “Now, one thing Francine does do is pay Trixie Brown to keep ‘er house clean. So Sheila ain’t needed for that. But seein’ as how Francine’s always out doin’ her own thing, well….” He let it drift off, leaving little to the imagination.

“Dear Lord,” I muttered, “how did it come to this?” I’d been hearing rumors of Francine’s trysts for years. Seems my sister was neither selective nor discreet. Tack had, apparently, just looked the other way, knowing she’d always come back home.

“So that’s where Sheila’s been getting money to buy all those new clothes,” I murmured as shame, thick and slimy as ever, oozed through me.

“Sheila’s been heading this way all her life,” Timmy murmured, hurt and disappointment a’swirling in his big whiskey colored eyes. “And we always knew what Francine was. All the way back.”

I nodded, recalling the time — when Sheila was fourteen and coming by to clean for me while I was in my first year at Clemson — that she told me
“Walter makes love to me while you’re gone. He loves me. And I love him.”

“She’s lying,”
Walter said when I confronted him, looking genuinely indignant. “
I’ve never laid a finger on her.”

“Why would she say you did those things to her? There must be something going on for —”

“Listen, she’s always lied about everything,” Walter implored in a reasoning tone. “Who’re you gonna believe — me or her?”

I recalled the times she’d lied all through the years, getting each of us in trouble. “You,” I’d said. “I believe you.”

Sheila had stormed from the room, tears spilling down her cheeks, leaving me feeling rotten for days afterward.

“Actually,” Tim’s voice pulled me back from the past, “I don’t think Tack can — you know.” He blushed a little but his golden gaze remained unwavering. “If they haven’t…well, sacked up together, it’s not Sheila’s fault.”

“Francine said Tack is impotent,” I corroborated his suspicions. “Has been for years, a result of diabetes. ‘Course, that doesn’t mean Sheila couldn’t seduce Tack in other ways. She’s probably flirting like crazy and he’s slipping her money on the sly.” Tack and Francine had invested money wisely — the one frontier upon which they’d united all through the years — amassing a sizeable retirement nest egg.

Timmy huffed a mirthless laugh, rising to his feet, “Francine’ll kill ‘er if she finds out.”

I stood too, inhaling the deep sigh of distress. “Let’s just hope she doesn’t.”

“Gotta get to work on that bathroom.” Timmy aimed for the stairs, whistling softly, obviously lighter since sharing his burden with me. The heaviness now sat on me like a belly-busted 747. I’d rather not have known about Sheila’s current rendezvous but would never hurt Timmy by saying so.

Lord help me.
I pulled thawed hamburger from the fridge and began shaping patties for supper, seasoned, then sealed them in a Tupperware tray until later.

Going through normal motions, I felt myself relaxing and dark thoughts ebbed away. Through the years, I’d learned to turn most things off, like a remote control. It didn’t work with Muffin. But, even there, I could “shelve” each problem until “later.”

It didn’t work with Daniel. I could just whiff
Aqua Velva
or banana pudding or fudge or buttery popcorn or any of dozens of flavors and memories of him would cork up like fizzly soda bubbles.

Sometimes, I simply closed my eyes and let them burst over and flood me. I’d marinate there until pleasure turned to pain. When they became too much, I would go sit down, take out paper and pen, and write little satire pieces about the kids and myself, or serious things, such as today’s news about Sheila.

Moments later, the hammering began. The pounding was music to my ears. My little brother — would I ever consider him otherwise? — did quite well with his finished-carpentry business, one he’d begun when the mill began to curtail and lay off. Like Walter and myself, he’d bought his dwelling when Mr. Montgomery began selling them.

I felt peaceful with Timmy’s lot in life. He had a good head on his shoulders and first-rate work ethics. He went to church with his family. Lord knew he didn’t have the best role model in either father or mother but he passionately loved his wife, Noreen, a tall, lanky village girl, and his daughter, Gale. And he took good care of them.

I began singing along with James Taylor’s
You’ve Got a Friend
as I rinsed the linoleum floor, shedding the sordidness of my sisters like a dead snakeskin.

~~~~~

More and more during the eighties, I thanked the good Lord I’d grown a tough skin along the way, a hide that arrows couldn’t always penetrate. I convinced myself that I truly didn’t need anyone to lean on. I really didn’t want anyone close enough to me to get to know the Sunny with a past. I numbed out to anyone who reached out to me, pretending I didn’t notice.

So, when Nana died in 1988, at the ripe old age of ninety-two, I grieved not. Oh, I missed her then and always will. But the deep anguish I’ve witnessed in others simply was not there. I felt gratitude, that she’d lived a long life, plagued only by chronic arthritis before her first stroke. Three more struck before the stubborn life and will inside her succumbed. In the end, I believe, she simply tired of fighting, went to sleep and didn’t wake up.

Even so, she’d outlived Tack Turner by four years.

~~~~~

It was right after Timmy told me about Sheila hanging out at absentee Francine’s house that Tack grew critically ill. In Francine’s frequent absences, Sheila simply revved up her devotion to Tack. By now, I knew that Sheila did few good deeds without ulterior motive. Did Francine find out? Oh, yeh. She and Sheila had one helluva cat fight, which changed little of the situation except to stoke the fires of loathing. During that interim, my sisters avoided me like strep. They both, to some degree, loved fighting, got high on it, and knew I’d put a damper on it.

As for Francine, she had her own thing going. This time, with a married man, if gossip held truth. I can still hear Nana, lying in her sick bed, saying, “I don’t see how that Francine can roll over on her back for every man sniffing around….”

~~~~~

Tack’s death seemed anti-climactic, with all the shameful goings on. He died more nobly than he’d lived, with nary a whimper, from what Sheila relayed every chance she got to anybody who’d listen. Francine was furious but tried, for once, to hold her acerbic tongue. I think perhaps one reason being that if she spilled the beans about Sheila’s transgressions, her little sister would, by her very nature, be compelled to return the deed a hundredfold.

On the day of the funeral Francine summoned Timmy and me into her bedroom and shut the door. “Listen,” she said conspiratorially, “there’s a second will somewhere. I just
know
it. It’s just the way Sheila’s acting. Like something’s up. Y’all gotta help me find it ’fore Sheila gets her greedy little hands on it. That hussy’s
shameless.”
She fought to hold her temper in check. Even Francine knew better than to throw a conniption during a family wake.

“I’ve got the keys to that Cadillac in the garage that Tack always kept locked up. The one he’d fixed up to resell? Toward the end, he didn’t want me around it. I got this feeling about it, y’know? Tim, I want you to go out and check in the trunk and see if you turn up anything. Sheila’s just left with that boyfriend of hers. I heard her say she’s going home to change clothes. So its best you do it now, so she won’t know. She’s been plundering around like she’s trying to find something. Probably lookin’ for the car keys.”

Tim hesitated. “I don’t know —” He looked at me. I nodded. If he didn’t do it, I feared Francine would and might truly freak out if she found something.

“Look,” Francine grew as solemn as I’d ever seen her, “I’ve took care of Tack all these years. I done right by him till he got — well, till he couldn’t be a husband no more. But I still took care of ‘im, making sure he took his medicine and feeding him the right food and all. I know I’ve done things that I shouldn’t but at least I took care of ‘im. I feel I’m entitled to all we’ve worked together to have all these years. And I’m not gonna let somebody like that useless Sheila steal it away from me.”

Timmy gazed at her for long moments, then took the keys from her and went outside. I watched her pace while waiting. Middle age rode and slightly drooped her features, yet passion buoyed them, painting them young and vital. I gazed at my own in the big mirror, seeing the same genetic sag in my jawline and beneath my eyes. Plus, I carried at least 30 extra pounds, maybe more, which bloated my features. Only difference was mine lacked the magic transformation of Francine’s. I thought how I looked every day and minute of my forty-four years.

A few minutes later, Timmy returned with a large brown envelope. Francine locked the bedroom door, ripped into it and read, her features turning darker by the moment.

By the time she finished reading, she was livid.

She thrust the pages at me. I sat on the side of her Queen Anne high-poster bed. Tim lowered himself beside me and read over my shoulder. Tack had bequeathed one property, with a white comfortable cottage, to his sister, Elaine Carly. Elaine’s husband Gene had died drunk the year before. Her son, Junior, now in his twenties, followed stealthily in Senior’s tracks. Poor Elaine worked at waitressing, sometimes holding down two jobs simultaneously to pay rent on a rundown apartment in Spartanburg. The deed to this nice house would ease her burdens and make her comfortable for the remainder of her life.