Cavedweller (14 page)

Delia nodded.

“Well, after that Clint went to live with his mama for a few years, straightened up a little. But he kept your old house, used the money from his daddy’s insurance to buy it outright. I think his mama wanted him to stay with her and the girls, but he didn’t.”

Steph spun around in her chair. “My Lyle swears Clint can’t stand his mama and that’s why he keeps the house, so he don’t have to stay where he can’t stand to be.”

“She is a hard woman.”

“Yeah.”

“It’s a fact.”

“But do you think he’s really sick?” Delia stood up and grabbed the mop again.

“I don’t know,” M.T. said. “I just don’t know.”

“I’ll find out,” Steph promised. “Just give me a few days and I’ll find out everything.”

 

 

T
he plan was to reopen the Bonnet in February, and there were only two real obstacles. One was the effort required to get the shop itself ready, but Rosemary’s check helped immensely, and neither Delia nor M.T. was afraid of hard work. Steph complained a lot, but she got down to it too, helping with the scraping and scrubbing while M.T. and Delia did the painting themselves. Most of the paint came again from Sally, who seemed to have endless stockpiles stored out in her garage, cleansers and paper goods bought at discount and bins of stuff other people had thrown out that Sally knew would come in handy someday. That meant that some of the paint was old and useless and all of it came in odd colors. Delia and M.T. experimented until they produced a great quantity of a curious peach glaze.

“I like it,” Steph told them, and they took that as gospel. It was a good thing they all liked the color, because the greasy, stained walls of the old beauty shop needed three coats. It was also fortunate that they had a little money to buy white for the ceiling.

“Too much of a good thing is always a problem,” Steph said. “And I think I would turn bilious if this was all there was all over everything.”

The curtains Granddaddy Byrd had brought were faded and tattered, but Delia put the pots to good use in the front window, salvaging a few of Mrs. Pearlman’s plants and buying new ones to create a fantasy jungle that would draw people into the shop.

Once the work was in progress, the other obstacle loomed larger. Nadine Reitower confronted M.T. on the sidewalk one afternoon, demanding to know what they thought they were doing giving over an institution like the Bonnet to a woman like Delia Byrd. Since she hadn’t made any headway with Marcia Pearlman, she had decided to confront the beast in its lair.

“I didn’t give her nothing,” M.T. said, “though I would sure enough. You know perfectly well that Marcia’s leasing the shop to Delia now that she can’t run it no more.”

Nadine plucked at the thin lace collar that protruded from her pink sweater, which was buttoned all the way up. “I told Marcia before I wouldn’t have Delia Byrd touching me. Now that hussy’s taking over the only place I’ve ever gone to get my hair done!”

“Nothing is going to rub off on you, you know,” M.T. said. “You an’t gonna take sin from the touch of Delia’s hand.”

“Marcia should never have given that woman the shop in the first place.” Nadine tossed her head, and her hen-brown bun bobbed dangerously. She was showing the effect of not having been to a hairdresser for a while.

“She didn’t give it to her.” M.T. spoke impatiently. “It’s a lease. Steep rent too, and money Marcia is going to need. Seems to me you should be more concerned with making sure Marcia gets her money out of the fallen woman than keeping the fallen woman from doing decent work. If she don’t manage the Bonnet, what you think she’s going to do? She won’t have no choice but to offer sin and wicked ways at half price to support herself and her child!”

“You are a rude and vulgar woman.” Nadine’s forehead was shiny with sudden sweat.

“Yes, I am, and I’m late too.” M.T. stepped around Nadine and marched to the Bonnet’s door.

That evening M.T. and Steph discussed the problem over a plate of fried potatoes and shrimp at Goober’s restaurant and bar.

“You think anyone will come?” Steph fretted.

“I think a few will come just because Delia’s so scandalous,” M.T. said. “And a few will never come no matter if Delia suddenly had a halo light up over her spotless soul.” She dipped a potato stick in ketchup and popped it in her mouth. “Hell, if she hadn’t run off to become rich and famous, Delia would own the Bonnet by now.”

“She is good with hair,” Steph agreed.

M.T. chewed happily. “We just have to remind everyone of that before Nadine Reitower can remind them what a sinner Delia is.”

“It would help if Delia made up with Clint.” Steph picked at her shrimp. They were pitiful, but Goober’s made the best fried potatoes in the state. “I asked around, and it looks like old man Byrd is right. Way I hear it, that man might die.”

“One thing at a time,” M.T. said. “One thing at a time. How we gonna get these fool women into the Bonnet?” She bit into another potato. “What you think? Should we run some contest? Or offer makeovers to the home economics teachers?”

“Naaa.” Steph swirled ketchup all over her shrimp. “Junior discount maybe. But all we got to do is get the girls to talking about how their mothers won’t go to Delia. Make her sound really dangerous and scandalous, and they’ll come to us. We’ll get the mothers when they see what she does for their girls. And we’ll keep our rates lower than Beckman’s.”

M.T. laughed. “Stephanie, you are one smart woman,” she said, and ordered another plate of fried potatoes.

R
everend Hillman drove out to the old Windsor farm three times in one month to talk to Louise about letting her granddaughters see their mother. He had known from the first it would not be an easy task; Louise Windsor was not easy about anything. It was a family characteristic. Old man Windsor had refused to go to church more than twice a year, the week before Christmas and the week before Easter—on the holidays themselves he kept at home—but Louise had been a reliable face in the pew three rows from the front. Always at her side were those two stern-faced little girls, in cheap matching cotton outfits obviously chosen by the grandmother. The older girl, Amanda, was a regular at vacation Bible school and weekly prayer meetings. The younger, Dede, came to Holiness Redeemer only because her grandmother dragged her, and never looked up at him when he tried to speak to her. She was the one whose image chided him, reminding him so painfully of Delia’s mother that he was grateful for the days she wasn’t there.

“It’s a shock to see her,” his wife declared one time, surprising him by saying exactly what he had been thinking. “She’s just the image of Deirdre Byrd, isn’t she?”

“Children are like that,” he had replied. “Every now and then one will come out the dead-on copy of some relative or other. It’s like God is making another run at getting the model right.”

Mrs. Hillman sniffed. “Well, that’s a family needs remaking. Didn’t none of them live long enough to do much more than make a few babies and go on.”

Only once in ten years had Reverend Hillman met the girls’ father, and that was the week they buried the old man. Clint had given the reverend a brief inclination of his stiff neck and turned away before the service began. He had watched the burial from off to one side, hands on his hips, eyes fixed on the casket. At no point did he look at his daughters, though they looked at him often. The hunger Reverend Hillman saw in those two girlish faces pushed him to preach more adamantly about the importance of love and forgiveness. Afterward several people told him how inspired his words had been, but neither Clint nor Louise Windsor said a thing. All Clint did was give another abrupt nod and hand over an envelope that contained exactly thirty-five one-dollar bills.

The reverend’s wife had shaken her head. “That was a fifty-dollar burial if I ever heard one,” she said, “but the Windsors wouldn’t know the difference. Bet that boy would have planted his daddy in his peanut field if he could and saved the cost of the coffin as well.”

On his third trip out to the Windsor place, as he pulled up to the farmhouse, Reverend Hillman recalled his wife’s words with a heavy heart. He had reproved her for her tone but had been unable to deny that she was right. Clint Windsor would probably have loved the notion of plowing over his daddy’s bones every spring, and Louise would have come out to watch with glee. What would it be like, he wondered, to see that old woman smile? In all his years at Redeemer he had never witnessed it. But what, after all, had she to smile about? Her husband was a brutal drunk, and from all accounts the son had turned out just the same. Reverend Hillman wiped sweat from his brow and remembered how many times the woman had come to church with bruises on her neck or puffy eyes. He had never been able to get her to admit that anything was wrong. What made the kind of woman who would take that as her due? he asked himself for the thousandth time. And what kind of women was she making out of those two youngsters in her care?

“You’re getting to be a regular visitor,” Louise said when he came up on the porch. Behind her he could see Amanda, with her hair in a kerchief and an apron tied tightly around her hips. “But this is my boiling day and I haven’t any time to sit and argue with you.”

“Boiling day?” He sniffed the steamy, bleach-scented draft off the porch.

“Oh, you wouldn’t know. Your wife’s young for it, but some of us were taught a woman changes over her sheets and sheers when winter passes. February fifteenth, my mama always told me. By then you’re supposed to have boiled your whites and be ready to think about spring. Some years I do it a little earlier, some a bit later.” She looked into the house once and rubbed her lower back. “This year I got buds on my forsythia real early, so I’m pushing it a bit. It’s been such a damp, ugly winter. Maybe I’m wanting to move on into spring earlier than usual.”

Reverend Hillman smiled. “I think we all are,” he said.

Louise shot him a suspicious glance. “You come around to nag at me some more?”

“I’ve come for us to talk again. And yes, I do want to talk about the girls and their mother.”

“Mother!” Louise’s mouth twisted. “I’ve been more a mother to these girls than she will ever be.” She shook her head. “You’re wasting your time, Reverend. Delia an’t no mother. She comes around here, she’ll just get the girls all upset. First little trouble comes along, she’ll take off again. Then what, huh? She goes away another few years and comes back, you gonna come speak for her all over again?”

“She seems set on staying in Cayro,” Reverend Hillman said. “I don’t think she wants to do them any harm. And having them know she cares about them might do them some good.”

Louise snorted. “Good! There’s no good in that woman.”

“There’s good in all of us,” the reverend said carefully.

“So you say, but I an’t no preacher. I’m a working woman raising two hardheaded abandoned girls growing fast into women themselves. And I don’t want her putting no notions in their heads. Got enough trouble now.” She looked back at the house again, clearly not wanting the girls to be part of this conversation. Reverend Hillman looked past her and saw that Amanda was gone, maybe back to the kitchen and the boiling pots.

He cleared his throat and decided to try another tack. “Trouble,” he said, his eyes slowly sweeping the yard. “I know you don’t want no trouble. That’s what I was saying to Deacon Hayman when he told me he was worried what might come of all this. None of us want to see no family fighting in court, lawyers telling everyone what to do, the county welfare folks getting in on it.”

“They wouldn’t have no say in what I do.” Louise’s face pinked at the thought of lawyers and county officials. “I’m raising these girls right.”

“I would support you in that anytime, anywhere.” Reverend Hillman nodded firmly. “If you have to go to court, I would tell everyone how hard you have worked with Deirdre and Amanda.”

“I wouldn’t have to go to court.” Now she was truly alarmed.

“Well, I would hope not. But you know how bureaucrats are. I remember when the child protective people gave you all that trouble before.”

“That was’ cause of that hippie she took up with, him and his money, him and his lawyer,” Louise fumed.

“Well, lawyers do make trouble.” Reverend Hillman watched her face.

She thought for a moment. When she spoke, her voice was uncertain. “Delia got lawyers now?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “But she seemed very determined when she talked to me. And I had hoped we could make sure there would be no trouble. She said what she wanted was to see the girls.”

“She an’t gonna take ’em,” Louise said quickly.

“Well, how could she do that?” Reverend Hillman waited a beat while Louise grew more and more nervous. “Didn’t the court give you custody?”

“They gave Clint custody. I’m not on the papers. I just been doing all the work.”

“Well, Clint.” Reverend Hillman shrugged. “That wouldn’t be a problem, would it?”

Louise looked him speculatively up and down. “You been talking to her a lot?” she asked.

“No,” he said. “I’ve just spoken to her the one time.”

“Well.” Louise gazed off across the yard. “Maybe we could talk about her coming to see them once or twice. Long as that’s all we’re talking about.”

The reverend inclined his head in agreement, keeping his eyes level with hers. “That’s all we’re talking about,” he said. “She just wants to see the girls.”

Louise’s mouth twisted again, her lips drawing up into a grimace. As she showed Reverend Hillman into the house, he realized that she was afraid. Probably thought everyone was some kind of danger to her. And the problem was, of course, that she was partly right.

Dede and Amanda took the news of their mother’s return with little visible response. To the reverend they simply said they would do what their grandmother wanted. What they said to her, he had no way of knowing. But they had grown up in that dusty yard, eating their grandma’s grits and stewed tomatoes, swallowing her sour resentments and seething distrust of anything she could not bleach or scrub or bury in lye. They wore her expressions and hid their thoughts so carefully that they might not have known what they wanted anyway. Their days were full of Grandma Windsor’s favorite Bible verses, Revelation and the whore of Babylon, not the parables but the fallen woman. Delia was the curse and the stink of their lives. Packages that came at holidays were refused or remained unopened. Cards were burned in the trash fire. Bitter jokes were told behind their backs or repeated purposely to teach them a lesson. The smell of homemade soap trailed behind them, and their classmates laughed at the clothes their grandma made them wear. The sisters breathed in rage like steam off soup. Their mother had not loved them enough. What did they care if she came around now?