Between Heaven and Texas (13 page)

C
HAPTER 23

F
or a few days, Mary Dell was convinced that Donny's disappearance was the result of an accident or even foul play. By the time his letter arrived, she had begun to suspect otherwise.

If he had been killed in a car accident, or stopped to pay for a fill-up at precisely the moment a hooded gunman had picked to rob the mini-mart and so been shot in the shoulder or taken hostage, or contracted a case of amnesia while on his way to World of Wheels, she'd have heard something by now. Someone would have spotted him somewhere, or seen his truck ditched by the side of a road, or discovered a peacock-blue cowboy shirt with gold stitching on the collar and cuffs and bloodstains on the sleeve stuffed in a trash can in an alley behind a barroom, wouldn't they? There was only one logical explanation: Donny's disappearance was not an accident. The reason no one could find him was because he didn't want to be found.

Mary Dell knew he wasn't coming back. Even so, when the letter arrived, it was hard to open the envelope, hard to read words written by a man whose handwriting she knew as well as her own but whose outlook on the world and response to it was so foreign and confusing that she wondered if she'd ever really known him at all.

Later she would succeed in being grateful for the knowledge that he was safe. She loved him enough for that. But when she opened and read the first lines of the letter he had written and dropped into a mailbox near Midland, Mary Dell was overcome by the thought that it would have been less painful to believe he had perished by accident or violence than to know he had left by choice.

When she finished reading, Mary Dell laid her head on the table and sobbed herself dry. She loved him enough for that too.

C
HAPTER 24

F
or the first time in her life, Mary Dell was depressed. Not just sad, or blue, or wistful, not filled with regret or the fury of a woman scorned, but truly depressed.

When she called her sister in tears and told her about the letter, Lydia Dale came right over. Taffy asked if she could come along too, but Lydia Dale didn't think that would be a good idea. Mary Dell had barely spoken to her mother since coming home from the hospital.

However, Taffy felt this crisis presented the perfect opportunity for her to return to her daughter's good graces. After what Donny had done, surely Mary Dell would realize that her regrettable but innocent utterance of one teeny-weeny offensive word was not so terrible, or at least not spoken with malice. After all, Howard was her grandson and Mary Dell was her daughter and she loved them both, no matter what. And Taffy really did need to talk to Mary Dell about some things.

Dutch was doing his best to keep up with the ranch work, but considering his age and health, it was too much for him to manage alone, especially since lambing season was just around the corner. Too, there was the question of finances. It wasn't like Donny's departure only affected Mary Dell. This was a blow to the entire family, and Taffy felt this was the ideal time to discuss it. Besides, it was the duty of a mother to come to the aid of her daughter at her moment of anguish and despair. Mary Dell needed her.

It took some doing, but Lydia Dale eventually convinced Taffy that this was
not
the proper moment for a mother-daughter reconciliation or to bring up financial issues, however pressing, and that if she really wanted to help, the best way to do so was to take care of Jeb, Cady, and Rob Lee while Lydia Dale went to help Mary Dell.

In spite of her sister's ministrations, Mary Dell didn't get better. She didn't eat, didn't sleep, and didn't seem interested or capable of caring for Howard. She nursed him, but only when Lydia Dale brought the baby to her and put him to the breast. Other than that, Mary Dell just sat in the rocking chair, alternating between long jags of crying and long stretches of silence spent staring into space. Lydia Dale was afraid to leave her alone. By the third day, she was exhausted and worried because Mary Dell showed no signs of improvement.

On the fourth day, Grandma Silky showed up with a picnic basket over her arm and a face like the business end of an ax.

“I stopped off at the big house before I came down here. Lydia Dale, you need to go home and tend to your children. Cady has been crying herself to sleep at night because she misses you. And Jeb got sent to the principal's office today for passing out Luckies to every boy in the fourth grade and letting them take a peek at a pair of black lace underpants he'd hid in his lunch box.”

“What!”

Silky nodded deeply, confirming that Lydia Dale's horror was entirely justified. “He was charging them a nickel each for a peep at Carla Jean's unmentionables. The cigarettes he was giving away for free.

“You need to take that boy in hand, Lydia Dale. He needs a good talking-to. A hairbrush on his behind wouldn't hurt either. Back in my day the principal would have done it for you,” she grumbled to herself.

“And when you're done with that, you need to call up your no-account ex-husband and tell him that he needs to keep a better eye on his children. Or at least lock his bedroom door when they come to visit! Get going now,” she commanded, pushing Lydia Dale, who had already buckled Rob Lee into his car seat, toward the door. “I'll take care of your sister.”

Mary Dell was sitting in the rocking chair next to the window, staring into space with a vacant expression. Her normally buoyant bouffant was flat, and the bags under her eyes were dark from lack of sleep and smudged with a slurry of old mascara and tears. She was dressed in the same clothes she'd been wearing for days, the turquoise spandex pants she'd worn home from the hospital, now too big for her and baggy at the knees, a wrinkled pink paisley blouse, a purple ultrasuede vest with faux-fur trim, and no shoes.

Grandma Silky stood in front of the rocker and clapped her hand over her breast, distressed at the sight of her granddaughter looking so sorry.

“Bless your little cotton socks! Baby girl, you look just awful. But Granny's here now. Everything is going to be all right. Why don't you go get yourself cleaned up while I set the table and put out the supper?”

Silky, used to having her instructions obeyed, turned and went into the kitchen without giving Mary Dell a backward glance. She put on an apron, made a pitcher of sweet tea, and unpacked the contents of her picnic basket: homemade biscuits; green beans boiled to a pale green, then sautéed with plenty of bacon fat; carrots glazed with a half cup of butter and a whole cup of brown sugar; potatoes mashed with more butter, salt, pepper, and pure cream; peppery gravy to go with it; and a whole chicken, skin-on, cut into quarters, dipped in buttermilk, dredged in a secret mixture of flour, salt, and spices, then fried in a cast-iron skillet with Crisco to a crispy and delicious golden brown. It was the recipe that drove her late husband Hooty's fiancée straight out of his head and would, she hoped, do the same for her granddaughter, helping Mary Dell forget Donny and the hurt he'd done her.

And in case it didn't, just to be sure, Silky had also brought a bowl of homemade banana pudding topped with vanilla wafers and whipped cream, a red velvet cake, and an entire pecan pie, the filling loaded with chopped nuts and a good tot of bourbon, just to give it some punch. Silky had great faith in the restorative power of desserts. Her feeling was that if the Friar had thought to feed Romeo a nice piece of pie when he discovered the seemingly deceased Juliet in the family tomb instead of running off in the night, Romeo would have decided that life was worth living after all and Mr. Shakespeare would have had to find himself some other tragedy to write about.

When she finished heating up the food and setting the table, Silky went back into the living room. She was shocked to see Mary Dell still sitting in the rocker exactly where she'd left her, looking as disheveled as before.

“Mary Dell, didn't you hear me? I told you to go on and get yourself cleaned up. Go on, now. Dinner's ready.”

But Mary Dell didn't go on. Instead, she turned her head to the side and closed her eyes. Tears seeped out from beneath her closed eyelids, ran down her cheeks to the tip of her chin, and splashed onto the front of the purple vest, leaving a dark, wet blotch on the ultrasuede.

Silky approached the rocker, leaned down to Mary Dell's eye level and, adopting a firmer tone of voice, issued a more specific set of instructions.

“Mary Dell, get up out of that chair, go into the bathroom, take a shower, brush your teeth, put some rollers in your hair, and fix your makeup. Then go put on clean clothes and some shoes and come sit down at the table and eat the nice supper I made you. Mary Dell?”

Mary Dell twisted her neck even farther away, as if she couldn't bear the sound of Silky's voice. “I'm not hungry.”

Silky straightened herself up and put her hands on her hips. “Your sister told me you haven't had a bite in three days. Of course you're hungry. And even if that were true, you're nursing a baby. A cow can't make milk on an empty stomach and neither can you. You ought to know that, living on a ranch all your life. What kind of farmer's daughter are you anyway?”

Silky, who had no way of knowing that she had just repeated the very words that Donny had uttered in love before carrying Mary Dell to the hayloft to conceive their long-desired child, was shocked when Mary Dell buried her tearstained face in her hands and began to wail, keening with an intensity generally known only to certain nomadic tribes in the Arab world, all of whom, Silky was sure, were godless infidels. What was going on?

On some level, Silky understood what Mary Dell was going through. She'd lost a husband too. She too was acquainted with grief. But this? This was a grief she could not relate to. It was beyond the bounds of reason and good taste. It was disproportionate! And if there was one thing Silky hated, it was disproportion.

To make the chaos complete, Howard, who had been woken from his nap by the sounds of Mary Dell's howling sobs, added his cries to hers, the two joining together to create what can best be described as a Hallelujah Chorus of misery.

For a moment, Silky was at a complete loss, without the slightest idea of what she should do or say. It was a situation she had very little experience with, and so it confused and frightened her. Silky hated feeling frightened, and so of course this made her angry, and that anger helped her find her tongue.

“Mary Dell Tudmore Templeton Bebee, that will be just about enough of that! Get a hold of yourself right this minute!”

“I can't,” Mary Dell wailed. “I just can't! I can't go on without Donny. I want to die, Granny. I just want to lie down and die!”

Silky grabbed her granddaughter by the shoulders and pushed her backward so Mary Dell was forced to look her in the eye.

“Stop that! I am not standing still for any of that talk. Until a few weeks ago, if you had decided to turn into a great big selfish coward, to quit eating and drinking and sleeping, to worry your family half to death and be the guest of honor at your own pity party, then you could have gone right ahead and done it. But you gave up that right on the day Howard was born. You're a momma now, Mary Dell. Mommas
don't
lie down and die! You've got a child to care for, a job to do. So get your butt up out of that chair and start doing it. Because I am too old and ornery to do it for you. And I won't. Neither will your sister. That's your job, baby girl, yours alone. And if
you
don't do it, it won't get done.

“I know your heart's been broke and your dreams have too, and I'm sorry for it. But when your dreams turn to dust, well . . . maybe it's time to vacuum.”

Having spoken her mind as plainly as she knew how, Silky marched into the dining room, sat down at the table, and began filling her plate. Howard's cries were growing louder and more insistent by the second. As she ladled gravy into the well of her mashed potatoes, Silky took a moment to be impressed that such a tiny creature could make so much noise.

By the time Silky finished serving herself and saying a silent grace, thanking the Good Lord for making babies so loud and mommas so tender, Howard's cries were beginning to subside a little bit. Her hearing wasn't what it used to be, but beneath the noise of baby tears and muffled sobs, she thought she heard the sound of humming and sung snatches of a lullaby.

A few minutes later, Mary Dell, eyes still rimmed red but cleared clean of black rings by a splash of cold water, entered the dining room with Howard in her arms. She pulled up a chair and took a seat at the table.

“That smells good,” she said.

“It is,” Silky replied. “Here, baby girl, let me fix you a plate. When you're finished with that, you can have a nice big slice of pie.”