The Wedding Gift (25 page)

I nodded at that, but I had
to interrupt and ask her what she thought the words had
meant.

Mama just shook her head
and said that the sheriff and Old Doc Miller (our present Doc
Miller’s daddy) had said that the poor woman was just raving, and
it didn’t mean anything. “
Anyway, Honey,
it took me three days just to get the gore gone, and then I called
Miz Bethany and asked her if she wanted me to pack out the house,
their personal things and such. She told me to just put all Robina
and Roger’s clothes and personal things up in the attic, and to
leave the children’s rooms alone; that that was what Mr. George
wanted. I thought it was wrong, but I did it. I finished that night
about five and your daddy picked me up. We drove over to Miz
Bethany’s house and gave the keys back and she wrote me a check for
the full two thousand dollars and a hundred extra. That was the end
of me and that house I thought … then Charlie, and now you. Wwell I
guess it’s time, then
.”

I asked her what she meant
- time for what?

She got up heavy, like she
weighed a million pounds and was a hundred years old to boot, and
told me she had something for me … to wait here.

Well, I must say, I hadn’t
been expecting that story. It appeared that my family and the
Willets had overlapped a few times before old George and I had come
together. I wondered what the hell Mama was going to bring back. At
this point I figured nothing could have surprised me. I was wrong
about that as it turned out.

When Mama came back, she
was holding a stack of little books in her hands. They were all
pale blue leather and they all had the same title – ‘My Life’. They
were done in handwritten gold paint, like a young girl might do. I
guess I knew right away whose life they were about. What I didn’t
know was what in the name of all that’s holy my own mama was doing
with them.

Turns out that Mama, like
daddy, had had encounters over the years with Robina and that, like
Daddy, she had found her kind and sad. She told me that Miz Robina
had even dropped off clothes for Charlie and Randy, clothes her own
boys had outgrown. Mama said Robina had been so young and beautiful
and lonely that she had touched my mama’s already big
heart.

Mama agreed with Daddy that
Roger was a rotten man, and a worse husband, but, unlike Daddy, she
stated it as gospel that Roger had been running around on Robina,
cheating on her and hitting her besides. There was no point in
asking Mama how she might have known that. Dalton had a gossip line
that found out things about all of us who lived here, sometimes
before it even happened. If Mama said she’d heard it on the
grapevine, then you could take that to the bank.

Anyways, because of her
fondness for “
the poor little
thing
” when Mama found the little stack of
the books up in the attic when she was putting the boxes up there
as instructed, well she didn’t give them to the police, and she
didn’t give them to Miz Bethany or Mr. George. Nope, she brought
them home and put them in her lace box.

I was aghast, I really was,
and I had to say it.

Chapter 33

“
Mama, what the hell? You
concealed these from the police, and hid them from her family too?
Did you want them so you could read them? Did you read
them?
”

Damn, I forgot in Mama’s
world you don’t cuss, and she means ever. So first she had to tell
me that I wasn’t too old to have my mouth washed out with soap, and
then she told me that she didn’t “
see much
call for giving them to the police, because they already knew who
had done it
.”

And as to giving them to
her family, well… “
Bethany and George
Willets, and Old Miz Willets, were not family to that poor
girl
.” No, she hadn’t read them, she had
just taken them, her only plan at the time being to protect Robina
from further gossip and slander. Really, until Charlie got killed,
she forgot about them. She said she had thought about reading them
then but had been too sad and, after a while, the impulse to read
them at all passed. She was giving them to me now because maybe
reading them would help me and Jessie to figure out what to do
next.

As it turned out, Mama
thought Jessie’s idea about finding out what Robina wanted so that
she could go on over to the light sounded fine to her. I asked her
if she didn’t hate Robina now that I had told her about Charlie and
Donny.

She said
“
No, Baby, I don’t guess I hate anyone on
earth. I don’t guess that’s God’s plan for any of us. I made my
peace with my lost boy long ago … he’s with God and I will see him
again one day. I don’t know what happened to that little gal to
make her do the things that she did that day, but I do know that
she wasn’t a bad girl when she lived. I think bad things happened
to her and she just went crazy. You know, Baby, not everyone can
live straight when the dark days come. It’s not given to all of us
to be strong but, Leeann, and this is real important to remember
now, when the dark times fall on you and you think you can’t face
things no more, well you don’t have to. You just fall on your knees
and ask God to get you through, and he will, Baby, he always
does
.”

I put my arms around her
and told her how much I loved her. I thanked her for being my mama
and told her, if she wanted, why maybe we could pray together right
now. That’s just what we did too. And I did feel better then, I
really did. Of course, right about that time, Daddy came down the
stairs, and the minute he saw me in my nightgown sitting there, he
said he was getting his hunting gun.

He said
“
I guess after I have my breakfast, I
might as well go on over to the house and up and kill George
Willets and murder him later
.” He told me
and Mama that far as he was concerned George was already
“Toes up for whatever he done to send my baby
girl running out of the house all naked and a mess like you
is.
”

You had to hand it to
Daddy, no matter what the situation was, he could blow it up more
somehow.

Mama for some reason
thought what he said was cute. She said it kept him young being so
feisty. I don’t know about that. For one thing, I was far from
naked. I was wearing one of the nightgowns that I had bought for my
trousseau at Neiman’s. It was a long white cotton one, with this
real pretty lace around the neck and sleeves. Actually, I had liked
it so much I had bought three of them that were almost the same.
Wearing them made me feel like an old-fashioned girl in a book.
Heck, I remember when Jessie saw them she said it was obvious I was
trying to say “
Hell no, look but don’t
touch
” to fat old George.

That wasn’t true … really
it wasn’t. I just liked them. Though, to be strictly honest, I
guess that I wasn’t feeling too Frederick’s of Hollywood the day I
went shopping. God knows, George didn’t need any extra
encouragement.

Mama jumped in and calmed
Daddy down, telling him George hadn’t done anything to me except
hurt my feelings, and that I had had a scare, and that’s why I was
here.

“
And she is not anywhere
near naked, Charlie Honey, so calm down now and I’ll get you your
breakfast
.”

Of course, then Daddy had
to know what had scared me, so Mama told him the G rated version
...that was the one without Donny’s story, as he would have gone
crazy if he had heard that. He listened, and then he started to
laugh and laugh, and the more he laughed the madder I got. Pretty
soon Mama was mad too, because she told him to “
Shut up, Charlie. None of this is the least bit
funny
.” I could count on one hand the times
she had told Daddy to shut up, and it surprised him too, because he
did.

But then he had to start in
with telling me most everything George had already told me, that I
had been under a strain, was in a strange place, etc, etc. Then he
said, oh hell, that was what Jessie and I had come down to Downey’s
for and, if he had known that, he wouldn’t have told us a G.D.
thing, because it had obviously gotten me even more worked up.
“
There ain’t no such thing as ghosts,
Honey. Now I’ll tell you what I’m going to do. Elma, you just hold
that breakfast. I’m gonna drive on over and pick up poor old George
and bring him over here to have a hot meal with his wife. We’ll
talk some over our food and see what we can all do to make baby
girl here feel less jittery. How’s that sound to
everyone?
”

Mama didn’t say anything to
that. I think she thought it was probably a good idea, though,
George being my husband and all. Daddy took her quiet for
admiration of his idea. I started to tell him that I was too mad at
George to see him right now … that’s why I was here in the first
place, and that none of this was in my head, but he just kissed me
on the head on the way out the door, and told me that
“
He knew just how these things were with
young folks.”

He left to get George and I
jumped up and called Jessie. I knew she would be pissed again about
it “
being the butt crack of
dawn
”, but I needed her. I figured Daddy
and George against me and Jessie was about even odds.

Jess was pissed as hell
but, after I told her what had happened to me last night and how
George acted and what Mama had told me, and that Daddy was off
getting George right now so that everybody could talk some sense
into me, she said she’d be right over. And if I wasn’t dressed,
then hell, she would come in her P.J.s too.

I could tell that she was
talking to Mark at the same time as she was talking to me because
she said she was bringing Mark over too. I asked her why, and she
said it was a home-cooked breakfast, and he hadn’t had one in so
long he’d forgotten what they looked like.

She said the least I could
do was make her look like a good girlfriend, by letting my mama
feed Mark before he went to work. I said what the hell, and went
back into the kitchen to help Mama start breakfast for
six.

C
hapter 34

Mark and Jessie got over to
the house in about five minutes. True to her word, Jess was still
in her Scooby Doo pajamas. She kissed Mama on the cheek, and asked
her if she wouldn’t mind feeding Mark too because he had to be at
work in half an hour.

Mama said not one bit and
she would love a chance to fatten him up. Mark looked awful happy
at this prospect.

It has to be said that
Jessie was all kinds of good things, but a cook wasn’t one of them.
She hit me on the shoulder and said that one more morning wakeup
call and she would kill me herself and save Robina the trouble.
Then she spied the little blue books and said that she called dibs
on first read and went and lay down on the couch with
them.

Mama had already fed Mark
and still no sign of Daddy and George and then, just as she was
getting upset, we heard Daddy’s old pickup pull into the drive. He
didn’t come in.

We looked out the window
and he was just sitting there in the cab of his truck with his head
down on the steering wheel. Mama harrumphed and said this was
getting to be a bad habit with her family, and she went out to
bring him in. Jessie and I were watching from the window as she
walked up to him. We saw her say something to Daddy through the
driver’s window and whatever he said made her nod and then she went
around and climbed into the passenger seat.

We could tell Daddy was
speaking serious about something and then, even from here, we saw
that it looked like Mama was screaming, and then we watched as
Daddy pulled her into his arms. Jessie was saying
“
What the hell?
”
but not me … I was already backing away from the window. And when I
couldn’t back up any further, I sat down on the stairs to wait for
them to come inside and tell us what we had to hear.

Jessie was staring at me
funny and, in this little high voice I’d never heard from her
before, she called for Mark. He came in from the kitchen, still
wiping his mouth, saying “
What’s up,
Baby?
”

Then Mama and Daddy came
inside. They just stared at us, and then Daddy walked over to me
and sat down on the stairs beside me and pulled me to
him.

He said
“
Baby, you need to be real brave
here.”

I knew what he was going to
say, so I said it to him instead.

“
George is dead, isn’t he
Daddy?
”

He nodded and looked at me
funny, and then he said it. “
Baby, is
there anything you want to tell your mama and me? Because, if there
is, it's all right. I haven’t called the police yet, no one knows
anything but us. I came right home. So, Baby, if there is something
you need to say, best to say it now. No one in this room is ever
going to repeat a word you say, isn’t that
right?
” Here he glared at Jess and Mark
like they might talk.

Jess didn’t bother
answering him, she just ran over and grabbed me, and started
screaming at Daddy. “
Charlie, what the
fuck are you saying? Leeann didn’t do this. What are you thinking …
what are you saying?
”