Lovesick (16 page)

As she walks back to the car, she contemplates how she will explain this to Jewel. To Mr. Odom. She knows she cannot just stand by the car and wait. She has to do something, try to find her. She sets back off toward Evans Street. Just as she rounds the corner, she sees her, hurrying down the steps of the post office. Isabelle throws up her hand in a meager wave. Freddie wants to shake her for alarming her so, but Isabelle looks sad, tired, anxious.

“You shouldn't just leave without telling me where you are going,” Freddie says. “It wasn't polite. You frightened me.”

Isabelle stops. “Why would you care?”

“I told you before that I wanted you to know that you can count on me. I meant that.”

“Are you going to tell them?”

“What is there to tell?”

Isabelle gives her a queer look, as if deciding whether or not to trust Freddie.

“Nothing, I guess. Nothing at all. I came for a walk, that's all.”

Freddie wants to tell her she knows this is not true, that she knows she has come to mail a letter to someone. The boy? She wants to tell her that she will help her, will be her friend, but does not, cannot find the right words. Instead, she offers to buy Isabelle a soda from the drugstore she has passed. This becomes part of their ritual when they visit the doctor's each month for a checkup. Freddie no longer walks around, but waits patiently where she can keep an eye on the door. Then, after Isabelle's appointment, they stop for a treat. A soda. A hot dog. A portable record player. Several albums by Isabelle's favorite singers: Patti Page, Jo Stafford, Perry Como. Jewel scoffs at the gifts, asks Freddie what she thinks she is doing, but Freddie doesn't listen. While Jewel drones on, she can conjure the excitement on Isabelle's face searching through the record bin to find an album.

“I love this one,” she squeals, and though Freddie has no understanding of which singer is which, she is pleased she can make Isabelle smile.

On the day they drop Jewel and Mr. Odom off at the train station, Freddie suggests they don't head home but go out for dinner.

“Why should we have to eat one of those casseroles when they will be eating in a restaurant?”

“But they are getting married,” Isabelle reminds her. “It is a special day for them.”

“Well, it is a special day for us as well,” says Freddie. “I imagine we must be related in some way or another. By marriage. If they can celebrate, so should we.”

They stop at a roadside café for barbeque, fried chicken, homemade peach pie. When Freddie crawls into bed that night, the same feeling she had on the stairs the first day Isabelle arrived floods over her. She recollects Isabelle laughing as they ate, her lips pursed as she studied the little jukebox at the table, selecting which songs she wanted to play, how she curled up in the passenger seat next to her like a small child and slept on the way home. Freddie remembers watching the moon rise in the distance as she followed the familiar road, and as she dozes off, she smiles to think how the moonlight streaming in on her also finds its way to Isabelle sleeping just down the hall.

Freddie wakes early, when the world slumbers in twilight. The house is so still that she strains to try to hear a sound, but nothing returns to her. She makes her bed, pulling the spread to make sure it is even all around. When she is finished, she inhales quickly, knowing it is time to dress. Knowing that what she wants to do, plans to do has been forbidden by Jewel. It is a risk. She knows she would not dare this if Jewel was here. Jewel would not allow it, call it unseemly. But Jewel is not here. There is no one to see. And Isabelle will not wake for an hour or more. She goes to the dresser and pulls out her men's trousers, the overshirt, her brogans. They are like friends discarded, lost—now returned. She goes downstairs, makes her coffee, sits on the front porch until the sun crests the horizon, then walks out into the fields.

She has not attempted the walk since Mr. Odom and Isabelle arrived. She has watched from the porch while the foreman they have hired to tend the farm for them and his workers plowed and planted the field crops, only coming down to confer with him before and after the work was completed.

“Winter wasn't too hard,” Mr. Ray had told her. “So if we don't have that dry spell like we did last summer, I expect we can get a pretty good yield on the tobacco. And if cotton holds true to last year, we should be near three-quarters bale per acre.” They had talked about the acres planted in soybeans, a new crop for Freddie, one that Mr. Ray tells her will probably do better than corn. She doesn't care. She will not give up planting corn even if it is not as reliable as cotton, less profitable than soybeans.

Freddie walks up and down the rows, marveling at the precision of the order. The cool spring mornings have given way to summer's thick, moist air. Looking out over the field, it is as if she is standing waist deep in a green sea. She wishes that the world could stay just as it is at this moment. The sun warm on her face. Jewel and Mr. Odom far away in Savannah. Isabelle and her unborn baby sleeping soundly upstairs. She thinks about how the world will change by the time it is ready to harvest, when the crops have grown so tall that she will not be able to see over them.

When Freddie returns to the house, she removes her heavy shoes, partly because she does not wish to track any telltale signs of dirt into Jewel's kitchen, partly because she wants to be as quiet as possible, change into her familiar dress before Isabelle wakes. However, as she steps inside the back door, Isabelle sits at the kitchen table in her nightgown, spreading Jewel's homemade fig preserves onto a piece of toast. When she sees Freddie, she says only, “I was hungry. When I didn't see you downstairs, I made myself something to eat.”

“I was going to cook some eggs. I can make you some as well.”

“Yes, that would be good. I would like that.”

Freddie moves toward the door to the hall, the stairs, her room. “I just need to get dressed.”

Isabelle wipes a bit of preserves from the corner of her mouth. “You look plenty dressed to me. No need to change on my account.”

“It's just that Jewel doesn't like me to look like this,” she says.

Isabelle shakes her head. “Well, then we just won't tell her, will we?”

She quickly turns away so Isabelle will not see the flush in her cheeks, the tears in her eyes. Freddie wants to weep, wants to fall on the floor at Isabelle's feet, thank her for this gift. Instead, she pulls some bacon and a bowl of eggs from the refrigerator, fumbles for a pan.

“You know,” Isabelle continues, “you and your sister are nothing alike.”

Freddie laughs. “No, not really.”

“I don't see why she wanted to marry him,” Isabelle says.

Freddie stops, looks at her. “What do you mean?” she asks.

“Him. My stepfather. I don't know why she would want to marry him. You two seem to do perfectly fine here on your own.”

“Jewel is made to be someone's wife,” says Freddie as she unwraps the bacon, sets several slices in the pan, adjusts the burner to low to render the fat. “I think she needs more company than I can provide her.”

“Well, she has sure picked herself a winner. A gold-plated chump! He was a real jerk to my mom before she got sick. And then he acted like she was an angel sent from heaven.”

Freddie wants again to ask Isabelle why she has returned to him, but says instead, “It isn't my business. If they are happy, then who's to say?”

“I guess,” says Isabelle. She pauses for a moment. “Have you ever been married?”

Freddie over cracks the egg, so some of the shell goes into the pan. “Yes,” she says, surprised by her own response. “He died. Does it surprise you? That I was married?”

“A bit. I was thinking you seemed like someone who . . . who was different. I always thought that I wanted to get married. Now, with all that has happened, I don't know. I don't know.”

“Well,” says Freddie. “There is time for that. That is still down the road. Now, let's just tell ourselves today we aren't going to worry about what is to come tomorrow. It will get here soon enough on its own.”

Jewel and Mr. Odom are gone for five days. One day traveling each way, with three days for the ceremony and sightseeing. Jewel says that any less will make it seem too much like “running off” rather than a planned elopement. Freddie is content to have them out of the house. She tries to make each day an adventure for Isabelle, for herself. One afternoon, they drive into town to see a Doris Day picture,
By the Light of the Silvery Moon
; one evening Freddie announces they will have breakfast for dinner and serves them both big plates of pancakes, fried eggs, and sausages. Isabelle enjoys the movie, likes the attention—she can tell, but she can't help but think that something works beneath the surface as well. One afternoon she happens upon her in the front parlor fiddling with the phone. The girl jumps when she sees Freddie.

“I noticed that it never rings,” Isabelle says. “I thought it might be broken.”

“Not broken,” replies Freddie. “It was a nuisance, so I cut the cord.”

“Wow! You must have been pretty mad.”

“Yes,” Freddie admits. “Pretty mad. Was there someone you wanted to call?”

“No, no one.” But even as Isabelle returns the phone to the cradle and walks out of the parlor, Freddie knows they both recognize she is lying.

The day before Jewel and Mr. Odom return home, Freddie asks Isabelle to choose what she wants to do for the day.

“Anything?”

“Of course,” says Freddie.

“I have never seen the ocean . . . if that isn't too much, I would like to go to the shore.”

“It's not far,” Freddie assures her. “We can be there for lunch. Take a walk on the beach. Put our feet in the water.”

“I won't look funny if I am not wearing a bathing suit?”

“No,” Freddie says. “We can roll our pants legs up. And I will find someplace that isn't crowded. Who wants that anyway?”

It is a bright, brilliant day, though the clouds on the horizon promise a late-afternoon thunderstorm. Freddie packs an old spread so they will have a place to sit on the sand, and after they park along a stretch of road without too many cars, they both take off their shoes and she helps Isabelle over the sand dunes to the beach itself. The sand is hot, but it doesn't burn—still, the dark, wet sand at the water's edge is a welcome comfort when they reach it.

Isabelle giggles with delight as the waves crash in front of them. “I knew it was enormous,” she says. “But who could imagine?”

Freddie agrees with her that it is an amazing sight.

“I wish I could swim,” says Isabelle. “I would swim as far out as I could till I couldn't even see the land. Till there was nothing else. Just me and the water all around me.”

Freddie thinks about the feeling she gets when she stands swallowed up in the middle of the corn field. “Yes, that would be grand.”

“And then I would drown,” says Isabelle. “Sink to the bottom of the ocean and be forgotten.”

Freddie laughs, but realizes that Isabelle isn't joking. “Why would you want to do that? Isabelle. Honey. You have so much in front of you. The baby.”

Isabelle's face darkens like the distant clouds on the horizon. She turns away, her back to the ocean. “I don't want this baby. I never have wanted it. I hate it. I want it to die. I wish that I would die, too.”

“No. No, you mustn't talk like that.” Freddie is unnerved, doesn't know what to do. She wants to pet Isabelle, like you would pet an animal to comfort it, but cannot bring herself to touch her. Isabelle wraps her arms around herself, hugging herself tightly, hangs her head, and begins to cry. It is the same crying that she saw in the car, the same crying she has heard sometimes when Isabelle is alone in her room.

“I know you must be afraid,” she said. “I am here to help you through this. We are all here to help you. Jewel. Mr. Odom. You don't have to be scared.”

“Him!” spits Isabelle. “Him. Why do you think I ran away?”

“I thought there was a boy. I thought the two of you ran away together.”

“There was no boy,” says Isabelle. “That is a lie that he concocted to make himself look good. There was no boy. I ran away to get out of that house—to get away from him. My stepfather.”

4

Freddie has come to the conclusion that killing Mr. Odom is more than just a necessary part of a plan. It is justice. And she has begun to look forward to it.

Isabelle doesn't speak to Freddie the whole ride back into Morris, sits with her face turned to the open window, as if searching for something she expects to fly by at any moment. As she starts up the stairs, she turns to Freddie. “I know you meant well.” And then she is gone, up to her room.

Jewel and Mr. Odom return the next morning, and in the two months that follow, the house, which normally feels large and rambling to Freddie, becomes as closed and confined as a sharecropper's cabin. She can count on one hand the times she has been alone with Isabelle, and then only for just a moment. If she invites Isabelle to drive to town, then Jewel remembers that she needs to fetch something at the Winn Dixie. If she sees Isabelle sitting in the front porch swing and joins her, Mr. Odom will appear like a mosquito at sunset before she has time to settle into a rocker. Most of the time, however, Isabelle secludes herself in her room. They have missed Isabelle's last two doctor's visits—postponed because Isabelle complains she doesn't feel up to travel. Freddie protests to Jewel that someone should insist she go, but Jewel chides Freddie as a worrisome nag.

“It is her decision,” says Jewel. “I can't say I would want to get jostled all the way to Florence and back in this heat if I could avoid it.”

Freddie understands that with her swollen, ripening belly and the heat, Isabelle has to be uncomfortable. And scared. She thinks about the waiting room full of noisy, clucking women. How hard that would be for Isabelle.

She has not spoken to Jewel about what Isabelle told her on the beach, just like she has never spoken to her about seeing Isabelle come out of the post office all those months ago, just like she would never tell about her trying to use the phone. She feels loyal to Isabelle in a way that she has never felt with anyone, particularly Jewel. She understands Isabelle's loneliness, her isolation. There is someone out there whom she thinks of—someone whom she has written to, someone she has tried to call. The worry of it all has worn her down, Freddie thinks. Perhaps that is why Isabelle has been so poorly. The baby—which she will not discuss. A boy who has abandoned her when she needs him most. However, Isabelle was adamant there was no boy, and Freddie believes her.

The first parts of the pregnancy seemed to be a breeze for her. She was never sick, seldom complained. But since her last doctor's visit, as the time for her delivery approaches, she has changed. Her color is off, her cheeks flushed. She has headaches. She is listless. Has little appetite. In fact, Jewel has taken to preparing meals for her on a tray when she doesn't want to come down. She likes grits. She tolerates chicken and dumplings. Freddie thinks she would live off scrambled eggs and toast with Jewel's fig preserves if given the choice in the matter.

Freddie offers to take the trays, but Jewel will not allow it.

“She is in my charge now,” she says. “You tend to the outside chores. I will tend to the inside ones.” Freddie agrees, happy enough that at least it won't be Mr. Odom who is caring for her. Nevertheless, she often finds herself hovering around the door whenever Jewel comes out, hoping for a word, perhaps an invitation to step inside. One afternoon, she starts when she sees a bloody cloth in Jewel's hand. Freddie asks if Isabelle is okay. Should they take her to the doctor?

“It is perfectly normal,” says Jewel. “I was talking about it with Betty Robinson after church. Isabelle is spotting. Betty says it is not unusual at all. Just bed rest and she will be fine.”

Freddie asks what expertise Betty Robinson has in such matters, but Jewel shoos her away. “She knows more than you do, that's for sure. Now, go on. Stop hanging around here. I don't know what has gotten into you. If you want to make yourself useful, go catch that rat I saw running off from the henhouse this morning.”

Freddie tells Jewel she must be mistaken. “That rooster isn't going to tolerate any vermin around those brood hens.”

“I know a rat when I see one. I don't want to go in one morning and get bit. Just put out some bait.”

When Freddie goes to the barn later, she is surprised to see the box of Dairyland is nearly empty. It has been a while since she has used it. She doesn't much care for poison, but she figures if you are going to poison a rat, Dairyland is about as painless as it comes. She goes that afternoon and buys a new box at Standard's. She also goes into the drugstore to find a magazine for Isabelle, tries to imagine something that she would enjoy reading. She can find nothing except for
Good Housekeeping
or
My Home.
These would not make Isabelle feel better. She buys her a Milky Way bar instead, and for herself a Coca-Cola, which she drinks on the way home. She stops at the end of the driveway to gather the mail—it will avoid the walk in the sun later. She parks the car, puts the sack with the Dairyland up on a shelf. Is it accidental or providence, she asks herself later, that she just happens to notice the letter addressed to Isabelle. How strange to see her name there in print. Isabelle Odom. Her name the same as his. There is no return address. She puts the letter into the pocket of her dress, lingers for a minute in the barn, considering what to do. She knows instinctively that she cannot tell Jewel about this—to tell her would be just as good as handing the letter directly to Mr. Odom.

Later, after lunch, she asks Mr. Odom to join her to spread the pellets for the rats. He protests—he doesn't have gloves, will have to change, isn't sure he would be much help—but follows her out to the barn.

“Don't worry,” she tells him. “I am not going to ask you to work.”

“It's not that I am not willing to . . .”

“I just didn't want to speak in front of Jewel. I was thinking that you and Jewel might enjoy an evening out together. What, with you being newly wed and everything. It can't be much fun to be stuck here with me all the time.”

She watches him roll the idea around. He wants to drive the car. Not be chauffeured around like a guest. Would enjoy a night out on the town.

“I don't know that Jewel will want to leave Isabelle,” he says. “What if . . .”

“The baby isn't due for two weeks. Besides, you are only going to be gone for the evening. Jewel is gone to church for that long or more when she goes to Lurdelle's or to her committee meeting. It is barely an hour down to Myrtle Beach. You could get some fried oysters. Walk on the boardwalk.”

“Yes,” he says. “What a nice idea. But I think Jewel has already begun dinner preparations. You heard her at lunch. Roast chicken. Fried okra.”

“Then tomorrow. It will give her something to plan for besides our next meal.”

He ambles back toward the house to tell Jewel. Freddie touches the letter to make sure it is still there, knowing that tomorrow night she will be alone with Isabelle. The heat in the barn nearly makes her swoon. She pulls on her sunhat and begins her chores.

 

Freddie knows Jewel is suspicious of her as Jewel and Mr. Odom drive off the next afternoon. Freddie doesn't care. This is not something that involves her. She has even managed to keep the Milky Way bar a secret, hidden at the back of the freezer. Jewel tells her they will be home early. She has left a cucumber salad in the Frigidaire and a cold plate of chicken. Isabelle has been fed. She is resting. There is no need to disturb her.

Yes. Yes. Yes, says Freddie. Once the car disappears down the road, she waits as long as she can and then takes the candy bar to Isabelle. She knocks gently on the door in case Isabelle is sleeping, but Isabelle calls her in straightaway. She is lying on her bed, on top of the covers, propped up by pillows. There is a small fan on the highboy that oscillates the air back and forth in the room. Freddie notices that Isabelle's hair is pulled back into a loose ponytail, her neck damp with perspiration. Freddie leaves the door open to get some breeze in the room. It seems to Freddie that Isabelle's belly is even larger than she can recall.

“You never come see me,” Isabelle says.

“Jewel is worse than a prison guard,” Freddie replies. “She tells me I shouldn't make a nuisance of myself. That you need your rest.”

“I don't know why she has me in solitary confinement. She won't even let me go downstairs. She is so bossy.”

“It's just easier to do what she says sometimes. Else she will just go on about it until you end up doing what she wants just so she will shut up. I think Mr. Odom has learned that already.”

“He won't stand for it too much longer. You wait. They will have a fight sometime when she tells him what to do and he just tells her to go suck an egg.”

Freddie laughs. “I think I could enjoy that. It's been an adjustment for everyone to be here together. Takes some getting used to.”

Freddie asks how Isabelle has been feeling, if the heat and the humidity are wearing her down, asks if she has packed a bag yet for the hospital. She does not mention the bleeding, does not want to embarrass her, frighten her to think that it mattered enough for Jewel to mention it. She gives her the Milky Way, still cold from the freezer. “I like them frozen like that,” she tells Isabelle. “Especially when it is so hot. Otherwise, they just melt.”

Isabelle breaks off a bit and shares it with Freddie.

“And I brought you this as well,” she says, pulling the envelope from her pocket. She holds it flat in her hand as she offers it to Isabelle. “It came for you yesterday. I figure whomever you wrote to all those months ago must finally have written you back.”

She can see Isabelle's hand shake as she reaches out for the letter as if she is handing her a sacred relic, a charm. She studies it for a moment, as if to make certain that it is real and she is truly holding it, that it is not an apparition. She does not make a move to open it. After a moment Freddie backs away from the bed.

“I will let you have some time to yourself,” she says.

“Thank you,” says Isabelle, but Freddie knows she means more than just the offer to leave her alone.

The sun has begun to cast long shadows of evening before Freddie returns. She has not turned on any lights downstairs, letting the house cool as dusk settles over the farm. It is dark upstairs as well when she climbs the staircase, and as she stands at the top of the landing, she can hear Isabelle playing a song on the record player. When it ends, she picks up the needle and begins it again. Freddie walks to her room. It takes a moment to discern Isabelle's silhouette obscured amongst the gloom. Isabelle makes no indication that she sees Freddie.

“Listen to this,” she says softly. A mournful guitar strums a tune. A woman begins to sing:

“She's getting married,” she says, turning toward Freddie.

“The girl in the song?” Freddie asks.

Isabelle looks at her funny, as if surprised she does not understand. “Yes, her too. My friend Alice, though. She is the one I meant.”

“Is that who the letter is from?”

“No,” says Isabelle. “It is from her mother. Alice asked her to send it to me so I would know.”

Freddie knows this news has made her terribly sad, and Isabelle's mood frightens her. She is the same as when they stood on the beach. Absent. She thinks to turn on the light but does not, afraid a sudden burst of light would startle her like it would a skittish animal. She walks over to her. She stands so close that she can smell the powder on Isabelle's neck. She wants to place her hand on Isabelle's shoulder—to comfort her. She does not.

Isabelle begins to sing along with the music:

“Why are people so cruel?” she asks.

Freddie thinks suddenly of Lt. Calder, of the men whom she and Jewel have killed, the ruse that has brought Isabelle to this house. “Perhaps I am not the best person to ask. Each of us has our own share of brutalities to answer for. Our own selfishness. Our own greed.”

“Not Alice,” says Isabelle. “Not Alice.”

The song has reached its end, and a snappy pop melody fills the room. Isabelle grabs the arm of the record player so abruptly there is a scratch as she picks it up and returns it to where she wants.

“What do you notice about this song?” she asks.

“I am not good at music,” says Freddie. “It's sad. It's a sad song.” She knows Isabelle is reaching out to her, but feels lost, helpless. “I can't say. I don't even know who it is singing.”

“It's Patti Page. But that isn't important. That isn't what I am asking you. What do you hear?”

Freddie listens closely to the music, finds the story hidden in the words.

“Someone she knows is getting married. Someone she loves very much. And she feels like her life is over.”

“Yes,” says Isabelle. “But there is more.”

Freddie listens intently, but she cannot hear what it is that Isabelle wants her to hear. She can feel the night on her arms, her legs, like it has reached in and swallowed them up inside it. She and Isabelle have disappeared into nothing—there is only the music. Their disembodied voices.

“I don't know,” she says. “I don't know.”

“She is singing to the bride,” says Isabelle. “The groom doesn't walk down the aisle. Whoever heard a groom described as a ‘vision of loveliness.' She is singing to the bride.”