Prayers and Lies (40 page)

“Anyway, that’s where I met your grandmother. EmmaJane worked for my Grandma LucyAnne. She helped with the laundry and cleaning during the week and went home on the weekends. We shared a room. She was sixteen then and as pretty as she could be. She had sandy-brown hair and big green eyes. You favor her, Reana Mae.

“We were the only girls around. It was pretty much a mining town, you know. And the miners mostly sent their children up to St. Albans for school. So we were friends. On our days off, Grandpa Michael took us upriver to visit EmmaJane’s mother and father—Loreen and Ray, that is. EmmaJane had a boyfriend, too. He was Ida Louise’s brother, Lloyd, and he was so sweet on her. He’d come sometimes and take EmmaJane and me riding in his daddy’s car. EmmaJane liked him pretty well, but she had her heart set on moving to Charleston or Huntington and meeting a rich Prince Charming. She wanted someone older and sophisticated and wealthy. I suppose I did, too.

“One day in May, EmmaJane told me she had met a man—not a boy, mind you, a man. She said he was older and very handsome. He was staying at the hotel, he had a car of his own and lots of cash, and he took EmmaJane to the only restaurant in town and bought her pork chops and a beer. She made me promise not to tell my grandmother, because LucyAnne frowned on girls dating. She would have sent EmmaJane packing for home if she knew. So I didn’t tell Grandma. I didn’t tell anyone. I thought it was romantic and very grown up.

“That Friday night, I walked down to the river by myself. Em-maJane was going to meet her Romeo, and I was feeling kind of left out and lonely. Before I got to the clearing, I heard a voice—a man’s voice—and I knew. I knew who EmmaJane had met.

“My father’s voice was slurred. He was saying over and over, ‘Helen, baby, don’t cry. Daddy’s here.’

“I looked through the bushes and saw him on top of Emma-Jane. He had his hand over her mouth so she couldn’t scream. Her dress was torn. It was awful.”

“What did you do?” Reana Mae asked, her eyes wide.

“Before I could do anything, it was over,” Mother said. “My father got up, zipped up his pants, threw a whiskey bottle into the bushes, and walked up the path toward town. He just left Emma-Jane lying there on the ground with her dress all torn up.

“I went to her and helped her pull her dress together around her. I took her back to the house and got her inside and up the back stairs to our room without anyone seeing us. And I took care of her there. I told my grandmother that EmmaJane had gone home for a long weekend, and I did her chores and took food up to her and tried to take care of her. But we never talked about it, not even once. She just stayed in bed and ate what I brought her and then turned her face to the wall and slept.

“On Tuesday, she got up and got dressed and went downstairs and started working again. She never told anyone, so I didn’t either.

“A few weeks later, she started having morning sickness. She tried to hide it—I think she was trying to ignore it. But then she began to show, and my grandmother made her leave. Grandma assumed the baby was Lloyd’s, and EmmaJane never told her anything different.

“So EmmaJane packed her suitcase, got on a bus, and left. But she didn’t go home. We didn’t know that at first. We didn’t know until a couple weeks later, when Lloyd drove down to see her. By then, she had a two-week start, and we didn’t know where she’d gone. I still don’t know where all she went—only that she ended up in Huntington with Jolene.”

Mother looked at Reana Mae again. “I never told Jolene, because I thought she’d be happier not knowing. It’s such an ugly story, and she’d already had such ugliness in her life.”

She sat still then, watching my face and then Reana Mae’s. I stared back at her, at her lovely, familiar face. I couldn’t believe she had been through all that. And that I didn’t know.

“Aunt Helen,” Reana Mae said softly, holding tight to her hands. “It’s my fault Tracy died.”

Oh, God,
I thought,
please don’t do this. Not now, Reana! You can’t tell Mother now! It will kill her.

“I was playing around with Paul,” she said, looking right into Mother’s eyes. “I wanted her to see us. I wanted to hurt her. That’s what she and Paul were fighting about when Bethany came home. That’s why she ran away from him … when she fell.”

Mother stared at Reana for a long minute, then wrapped her in a tight embrace.

“It’s not your fault, Reana Mae. You wanted to hurt Tracy because she hurt you so much. But you didn’t want her dead. And you know now that she didn’t want to hurt you, either. Not really. She just couldn’t help it. Poor Tracy couldn’t help it. She had the bad blood.”

35
No More Bad Blood

W
e buried Tracy next to Grandmother Araminta. The church was so crowded that some people had to stand at the back. Everyone from church came, and the folks from Daddy’s office. It seemed like half the high school was there. Lynette sat next to Paul, who still looked as if he might throw up at any minute. He and Reana Mae avoided looking at each other at all. I heard later that Paul dropped out of college and moved away. I never saw him again after the funeral.

Mother and Daddy sat in the front pew with Aunt Belle. Mother sat straight and tall, her face pale, her eyes dull. Daddy slumped over, as he had at Araminta’s funeral. He looked beaten down. Aunt Belle kept hold of them both, tightly by the hand. But even she looked small that day. And her face was an ashy gray.

Nancy sat behind them with her husband.
Poor Neil
, I thought, watching them at the funeral dinner.
He must be wondering what kind of family he’s married into.
But Neil still seemed happy, watching his young bride. And Nancy seemed … well, if not happy, at least satisfied.

Melinda sat next to Nancy, holding her hand, but her eyes never left Mother. Melinda had been a godsend at home, cooking and cleaning and taking care of Mother. She was almost twenty, and while she might never be beautiful, she certainly was tall and tanned and healthy. And, of course, she was smart. Melinda read so much and understood so much, it seemed she could always find the right words at the right time. I envied her that.

Beside Melinda sat a young man named Barry, who was a sociology major at Indiana University. He’d arrived early in the morning, and Melinda seemed very glad to see him. He was tall and freckled, just like Melinda, and wore wire-rimmed glasses. He held Me-linda’s free hand and watched her just the way she watched Mother. I thought he seemed nice.

Reana Mae and I sat beside Mother. We held hands during the service and, for the first time ever in our church, Reana Mae prayed. She prayed along with the preacher when he led us in prayer, and she prayed silently during the communion service. She sang the hymns and prayed and cried through the entire service. I thought she’d never been prettier than she was that day.

I’m pretty sure Harley thought so, too. He’d driven up on his own for the funeral—without permission from his grandparents. We got a phone call at the house from Ida Louise just before we left for the church. Melinda took care of it, bless her heart. She told Ida that she’d watch out for Harley and send him back home the next day. Then she told Ida what a comfort and a blessing it was to have Harley at the house, and how much he was helping my parents. That was a lie, of course. Harley had shown up barely half an hour earlier and hadn’t even seen my parents. But Melinda had a way with words, and she calmed Ida Louise down enough to get her off the phone. I was sure, though, that Harley would have hell to pay, once he got back home.

He sat behind us, in a pew with Ray and Uncle Hobie, Aunt Vera, Ruthann, and Lottie. His eyes never left the back of Reana Mae’s head. I didn’t look back, but I knew it was so.

Brian sat farther back, with some friends from school. He’d been to the house earlier, with flowers for Mother and some for me and some for Reana Mae. He kissed me, told me he loved me, and said he was glad Reana and I were okay again. I hadn’t told him yet about what I’d learned the night before. But I knew I would tell him. I told Brian everything, even then.

So on a warm, sunny day in May, we laid Tracy in the ground, tossing our roses into the hole that had been dug to receive her. I thought about all the things she’d done, all the mean, hateful things she said, and about how sometimes she could be so kind. About how she’d buried Essie in the mud, and then how she’d bought a new dress for the little doll. About how she said she might kill me someday, and how she let me curl around her on cold nights in our attic. About how she’d told the kids at school about Reana Mae and Caleb, and how gentle and kind she was with our Grandmother Araminta.

I thought about the bad blood Aunt Belle had talked about, and how miserable Tracy had been so much of the time. And as I threw my rose onto her casket, I said the first prayer I’d prayed in a long, long time.

Dear God, please accept Tracy into Heaven. Let her be with Grandmother Araminta and Winston and DarlaJean. And please, God, let her be happy at last. Because really, God, when you think about it, it wasn’t her fault. Tracy had the bad blood. And surely, in Heaven, that’s all healed.

Epilogue

1982

T
he valley seems almost unchanged, as I sit on the porch swing, watching the dark water of the river. From here, you can’t see the newly paved road, the vinyl-sided houses, the manicured lawns. Only the party lights draped on the back porches along the water look new from here.

The valley has become quaint, you see. People from Charleston started buying up the cottages for summer places a few years back. They painted and roofed, added window boxes and air-conditioning, landscaped the yards and refinished the floors. Or they simply tore down and started over. Brand-new houses now sit on double lots alongside cottages so prettified their original owners wouldn’t recognize them.

A garbage truck rumbles through every Tuesday morning, followed by a recycling pickup service. A man from Cincinnati bought the beach and imported tons of white sand; then he built cabanas and a small restaurant. Now people drive in from St. Al-bans to swim and eat by the river. There are even plans for a boat launch, I hear, so weekend fishermen can ply the river.

There’s a campground by the beach now, too, filled every weekend from May till September with nylon tents, pop-top campers, and huge RVs. Some nights I can hear the music from those RVs all the way down the river. Then one of the locals—a few still live here- abouts—calls the sheriff’s office, and Harley has to drive down there and show his badge and ask the campers to please turn down the volume.

A nice retired couple lives in the cottage that was ours once upon a time. When Aunt Vera told them I had lived there before, they invited me to come see the place. I had dreaded that, but since there was no polite way around it, I walked down the road my second week here and knocked on the gray door. I needn’t have worried, though, because inside was not a trace of the cottage I remembered. The walls had been papered, the windows and trim replaced, wall-to-wall beige carpeting hugged the floors, and a sparkling yellow kitchen filled what had been the back porch. It looked like any other house now. Only the loft remained the same. But, Mrs. Baker told me proudly, next summer they are putting in a real stairway and finishing the loft into a home office. I came home oddly relieved, then cried myself to sleep.

Aunt Vera still lives in her cottage, its dock now one of dozens dotting the river. Uncle Hobie is buried in the tiny hilltop cemetery, and Ruthann married a man from Tennessee two years back and moved away. But Lottie still lives with her mother. She’s a pretty young woman now, working at the beach restaurant and engaged to Harley’s deputy. She and her beau plan to buy the cottage from Vera when they marry. Vera will live with them. Lottie is still her mama’s little girl.

Uncle Ray’s store has reopened, much to the joy of the valley. After Loreen died, Ray talked about selling the place. Instead, he left it to Bobby Lee, who showed no sign of returning to run it in this lifetime or the next.

Two years ago, Bobby did come back for the first time since he left in 1972. But it was only to sign papers selling the shop to a man from Charleston, who runs it now.

The new owner has made a lot of changes to the store. Oh, he still sells bread and milk, hardware and cold beer. But the shop now carries gourmet coffee beans and expensive wines, plus seven different brands of suntan lotion, brie cheese, and lots of film. He’s even added a coffee bar, serving latte and biscotti.

As for Bobby Lee, he’s living in Dallas with a woman from California and her three kids. Last year, he visited Reana Mae and her husband, Mike, out in Idaho, and Reana says he took to the boys right away. She’s been out there a while now, left right after college to work as a ranger in Yellowstone. She’s finally living under that big western sky, married to a real-live cowboy and raising his three sons from his first marriage. She writes to me every week, and we talk on the phone most Sundays. She’s happier than I ever thought she could be.

And I’m happy in my house. I haven’t changed it much. The place still looks like Aunt Belle has just gone out to the store. Of course, it’s dustier than Donna Jo would have let it get, and a port-a-crib graces the living room. But if Belle walked in tonight, she’d find her own pictures on the wall, her knickknacks on the shelves, even her brand of bourbon in the kitchen. She left the place—whole and full—to Daddy and Mother. But since Belle died, Daddy can’t bring himself to be here. So, it stayed closed up.

Now it’s mine. Brian and I bought it from Daddy two months back, and we’ve brought our Lily Belle to live in the valley where I always felt most at home. This is the only place I can imagine raising her. Even with the bad memories of Reana Mae and Caleb, of Jolene losing control, the valley is home for me … the only place I ever really fit. Belle’s house is my house now. It’s home.