The Turner House (27 page)

“I'd complain about you not calling first, but I know how you are,” Marlene said. “You want something? Water? I'm on my diet shakes again, so I don't have a lot of
food
food.”

Over the counter Lelah watched Marlene's backside thrust in the air as she bent for something in the back of the fridge. She wore gray cotton shorts, and the fat on her dark brown legs bulged around her knees.

“I've got a bag of oranges Miles mailed me a while ago,” Marlene said. She straightened up, held a rumpled paper bag above her head. “I coulda swore it was illegal to send produce across state lines, but people seem to do it all the time now.”

“I don't want any oranges,” Lelah said. “Sit down.”

Marlene was fifteen years older than Lelah, but at some point it had stopped feeling that way. When Lelah came home at twenty-two, heartbroken, Marlene came home to Yarrow shortly thereafter, heartbroken at thirty-seven with a divorce in the works and her only son living with his father. If Lelah were ever to have her life together enough to have a best friend, to maintain such a relationship, Marlene would be that friend. Lelah knew many of their other siblings feared Marlene, particularly the men, who took her fabled dropping of Lonnie on the head as everlasting proof that she was too quick to get angry and too long to forgive, but Lelah knew that Marlene simply loved hard. She was blunt and forceful with her love, but if she cared about you, she would do everything in her power to help you.

Marlene settled in a plastic-covered gold jacquard armchair across from Lelah. The cushions wheezed.

“What's going on with you?” she said. “You look like you lost weight.”

Her eyes flitted over Lelah, then back to the orange in her lap. She peeled it slowly, around and around so that the rind made one large, connected spiral.

“Cha-Cha just called me,” Lelah said.

“Asking you about a ghost? Girl, isn't he a
mess?
I didn't answer when he called me, but Francey said that's what he's going around asking everybody about. It's just
like
him, I think. Looking for attention, or pity, or both, I bet.”

Lelah stared at Marlene, who, oblivious to her confusion, was quickly breaking off sections of orange and popping them into her mouth.

“I don't know what you're talking about,” she said. “He told me he was selling Mama's house.”

“Oh, that. Yeah, that's why I didn't pick up when he called me. I texted him my thoughts, which are basically he can go to hell if he goes through with it.”

“And what did he say?”

“He didn't answer yet,” Marlene said. “But you know Cha-Cha, he's gonna do what he wants. Or should I say he's gonna do what he thinks is best for ‘all of us,' seein as how he's the de facto patriarch.”

“He can't do it though, can he?” Lelah asked. “I mean, can he legally do it? And what does Mama say?”

Marlene extended the last section of orange out to Lelah. Lelah refused it.

“Girl, that's a whole
nother
issue. That night we went over there for that meeting about it, everybody left to get dinner and I stayed back with Mama. She was fine then, or at least fine for Mama, talkin about stuff she wanted me to get her from the rummage sale in Windsor for when she got to move back home. This was barely three weeks ago, remember. She still had plans to move back, talkin about getting new furniture or making everybody give back what they took from the house, what she let them ‘borrow,' she said. It was kinda sad. But apparently her and Cha-Cha had some kind of argument since then—what's
wrong
with him, arguing with a sick old lady? I just talked to her the day before yesterday, and now she's sayin she doesn't care about the house, that she knows she'll die at Cha-Cha's.”

“
Die
there?” Lelah said. “What are they doing to her?”

“I don't think they're
doing
anything. You know Tina loves her some Mama. I think she just said it to make Cha-Cha look bad, and maybe the pain pills make her more emotional. She wants a higher dosage, Tina said.”

A few weeks out of the loop and already drama abounded. This was why the other boys would never move back home, Lelah thought, why Berniece and Sandy kept their distance. To be in Detroit was to be at the epicenter of familial rumblings.

“Marlene, I don't want Cha-Cha to sell that house.”

“Me neither,” Marlene said. “But he's worried about how much Mama owes. Says Mama's so upside down on her loan that as soon as she dies the bank will just take the house anyway. Unless somebody agrees to keep payin that inflated mortgage.”

Marlene continued rattling off reasons, but Lelah had stopped listening. She was mustering the courage to confess, if not to everything, then to one specific transgression. Perhaps her earlier pseudo confession to David had broken some sort of seal, because now it felt like if she didn't tell Marlene, she would suffocate, never be able to get up off of her dusty couch.

“I'm living there,” she nearly yelled. “I'm living on Yarrow right now.”

Marlene stopped shredding the orange peel. Her eyes narrowed.

“You? You are not.”

“Yes I am. I been there for about three weeks. Since right after the first.”

Marlene put a hand to her temple, where her baby hairs were curling and gray. Lelah waited for her to ask why, why would anyone hole up there with so many beds and couches to crash on? If she asked, Lelah would say it was because she was tired of needing help. Tired of asking. She was forty, her daughter was grown, she had no one to look after but herself, so she should have the right to hide out in her childhood home for a few weeks until she could figure things out. She would say something about them all being one bad month away from relative poverty, that even Cha-Cha in his fancy house, almost free and clear, could not survive on his pension should he be forced to retire early. That they were all overextended. She would say that truthfully, anyplace she went she'd be a burden.

Marlene did not ask why.

“You feel safe there?”

“I don't know,” Lelah said. “Nobody's bothered me, and apparently Mr. McNair knows I'm there. I lock up good when I leave.”

“So you got evicted.”

That it was a statement and not a question frustrated Lelah. She didn't respond.

“And Brianne doesn't know,” Marlene added. “Nobody knows.”

To be that person, the one who never pleasantly surprised her siblings, rarely had good news. To be the one with nothing, periodically destitute, was a miserable position. It seemed like ever since she'd come back from Missouri with baby Brianne, this had been her perennial burden to bear. A typecast she couldn't shake, even during her stretches of stability.

“Me and Brianne are overdue for a talk,” she said. “I didn't come over here for pity, Marlene. I came over to see if you agreed with Cha-Cha about the house. Even if I wasn't staying there right now, I'd care about that house.”

“But since you
are
staying there, it matters a whole lot more,” Marlene said. She got up from her chair and sat next to Lelah on the couch, put a hand on Lelah's knee, and breathed deep.

“Oh, Lelah. You know Brianne calls me, or should I say used to call me. Before she quit school and started nursing, me and her used to talk.”

“Of course I know that, Marla,” Lelah said. “Why
wouldn't
y'all talk?”

Marlene returned her hand to her lap.

“Just say it, Marla. Say whatever you want to say.”

Lelah's heart clanged in its cage, but outwardly, she and her sister sat still. Of course Brianne talked to Marlene. And Brianne was no fool. She and Lelah had lived together for too long and were too close for Brianne not to have noticed anything. Lelah used to keep spare chips in a candy dish on her dresser, and the two of them often used her comp tickets for casino buffet feasts when money was tight. But there was no way Brianne or anyone else could know the extent, Lelah believed. She'd been careful to ensure that.

Marlene got up and walked back to the kitchen.

“All I'm sayin is that you know this family, Lelah. We're too prideful, and I think we get that from Mama.”

She opened and closed drawers. A Tupperware lid popped open.

“But we're also convinced everybody can do fine all by themselves, that nobody ever needs someone to call them out and set them straight. To
intervene.
That's a Francis Turner trait if there ever was one.”

Marlene returned to her spot next to Lelah on the couch. She held a white envelope, the kind the bank gave out for large withdrawals.

“This is nine hundred and fifty dollars, Lelah. But this is also me not doing like my daddy. I'm calling you out.”

From the way she clutched the envelope to her breast, Lelah suspected she might not give it at all.

“You always slipped through the cracks cause you're the baby and everybody was so busy doin their own thing. But you're
grown
, Lelah. You've gotta promise me you'll get some help. You can't go back there and throw my money away. This money was supposed to be for my new grandbaby, just in case Antoine ever needed help.”

“I don't want it,” Lelah croaked. “I don't want that money.”

Marlene placed the envelope in Lelah's lap and moved back to her plastic armchair.

“It's yours. You could put a deposit down on a place with it, or at least pay off Brianne's rent so you could feel better about staying over there for a while. I know you won't stay
here
, or you'd be staying here already.”

Lelah put the envelope on the couch cushion next to her. She pulled her purse onto her shoulder to go. She wondered how often David Gardenhire had given his brother money, and how far in his estimation Greg dropped each time.

“I really won't take it, Marla,” she said. She stood up to leave. “But thank you.”

Marlene stared down at her tiny fists as they kneaded her fleshy thighs.

“That's that Viola Turner stubborn pride,” she said. “Do you know after Mama's stroke last year the doctor told her that if she stayed alone in that house, she'd end up paralyzed? There's no downstairs bedroom, Lelah, and even if there was, there ain't no bathrooms down there. Doctor told her if she didn't get someone to move in and help her with her mobility being impaired the way it was, she'd have a ‘final fall,' is what he called it. And because of the nerve damage she already had, that would be it.

“But of course I don't find all this out until she's at Cha-Cha's, as good as paralyzed cause of all the pain she's in and sad about moving out of her house. More sad about that than not being able to really walk. Why didn't she tell anybody
sooner
, huh? Pride. Too much pride to tell even one of the thirteen children she raised that she needed someone to help her every day. I know you or I would have done it if we knew it was that serious.”

Marlene sniffed. Teardrops made splotchy polka dots on her shorts and shirt. Lelah handed her the box of tissues from on top of the television. She perched on the arm of the plastic chair, put her hand on Marlene's shoulder.

“I'm gonna pay you back.”

“Girl, I don't care about that. Shit, just don't blow it all on
slots
, Lelah, please. I may not be able to look at you the same if you do.”

Lelah had half a mind to tell her sister that slot machines would never get this money, that if anyplace got her money, it would be a proper roulette table. She felt ashamed of herself for the thought.

A hand on his shoulder and Cha-Cha jumped.

“It's only me,” Tina said. “Come on back inside.”

She wore his spare house shoes—a pair of moccasins Russell had mailed him from the Grand Canyon—and her feet looked tiny in comparison.

“What time is it?” Cha-Cha asked.

“Past nine already. You've been out here for two hours.”

She picked up the saucer that still held a nub of meatloaf and extended her free hand. This small, capable woman, Cha-Cha thought. If only she was as understanding as she was nurturing.

He gave her his hand, accepted her help to stand upright, bundled up his printouts, and followed her inside.

In the living room his comforter and pillow were missing.

“Where's my sleeping stuff?”

“I put them back in the guest bedroom,” Tina said. She squeezed his arm just above the elbow. “You're gonna sleep in the bed you belong in tonight.”

A younger, naïve Cha-Cha would have pitied Tina for what it appeared she was doing, begging for his companionship. But after more than three decades of marriage Cha-Cha knew better. It was Tina who pitied him, and as much as he snored, she certainly was not eager to have him back in the bed. She thought he needed this, a gradual return to normalcy. She thought he needed her. And maybe he did, but he wished he didn't. They would humor each other for the night.

Cha-Cha had missed their bed. It was a fancy one they bought after his accident, when their old bed had started to feel like a torture mechanism. This new bed had a remote to control the firmness of each side, so that Tina could have hers firm and his could be as soft as he needed. Worried that Tina had been fiddling with his settings in his absence, Cha-Cha tossed off his bathrobe, settled himself on his side of the bed, and started tinkering with his remote.

Tina made a clucking noise and Cha-Cha looked up. She was at the foot of the bed, on her knees, looking at Cha-Cha expectantly.

“You know that hurts my back,” he said.

“It's only for a few minutes, and you
know
you need it.”

“I've been praying since I knew what praying
was
, Tina. Don't act like I'm some heathen.”

At this Tina made the face—her high-eyebrowed face of righteous indignation—and Cha-Cha decided to beat her to the punch.