Unexpected Dismounts (16 page)

“I liked your spirit the other day at 95.”

Mercedes’s eyes sought out mine, already halfway to deer-in-the-headlights.

I pulled a Bonner and cleared my throat. “We haven’t had a chance to apologize to you for that, Ms. Willa,” I said.

“Apologize?” The old lady looked offended. “Anybody who can go after Troy Irwin like that doesn’t need to apologize. You ought to receive a medal.”

“Now, Ms. Livengood,” one of the women said. She sounded like she was scolding a four-year-old. “I was just about to ask Allison if she’d gone to him for donations. He’s very generous. I won’t tell you how much he’s given to the Heart Association because he’s so modest he’d die if you knew, but—”

“If you take a penny from that criminal, you’ll get nothing from me.” Ms. Willa was looking straight at me. “He took everything that was ever decent about old St. Augustine money and soaked it in his poison. I’m the only woman of substance left in this town who hasn’t been poisoned right along with him.”

I expected some show of indignation, but everyone within earshot just shook their heads or clicked their tongues or otherwise indicated that Ms. Willa was to be placated because she was richer than any of them. As for agreement, she got none.

Which cramped my innards like a clenching fist.

“Not to worry, Ms. Willa,” I said. “I won’t be asking Troy Irwin for money. He’s offered on a number of occasions but, quite frankly …” I brought my face close to hers. “I’d rather be shot.”

I
didn’t get any agreement from the crowd either.

But Ms. Willa gave a satisfied nod and turned back to Mercedes, who presented her with her lunch, complete with linen napkin spread across her lap.

“You’re doing a fine job, Mercy,” Ms. Willa said.

“Yes, she is,” Surely Not said, as if I hadn’t just practically insulted her to her face. “Now, I have to know, what agency are you using for these servers? India said the food was all prepared here, but these girls you have waiting on us, they’re some of the best I’ve seen.” She leaned in as if she were about to impart a state secret. “I just have to have them for the fund-raiser I’m hosting for the Lightner next month.”

Ms. Willa turned to her, face puckered in disbelief. “Don’t you know who she is?” she said, flinging a hand back toward Mercedes.

“No.”

“She’s a prostitute, for heaven’s sake.”

Someone gasped.

“
Was
a prostitute,” I said.

“Her, too, I assume,” Ms. Willa said, pointing to Jasmine on the lawn below and then at Sherry. “And her, even though she’s white.”

Ms. Willa raised an eyebrow at me.

“No, that’s one sin I haven’t been guilty of,” I said. “But I have my own, just as bad.”

Surely Not’s sorority sister took hold of her arm as she honed in on me. “I thought they just had problems with drugs.”

“How do you think they got the money for the drugs?” Ms. Willa said. “You bunch of turtles need to pull your heads out of your shells.”

India swooped in on the wings of her caftan. “Ms. Virginia, honey,” she said to Surely Not, “we were just about to start our presentation that will clear all of that up.” She shaded her eyes with an elegant hand as she looked out over the yard. “Chief, where are you? Would you get everyone’s attention for us?”

There was no need. All eyes were on the porch, accusing eyes that shifted from India to me and back again. Eyes that clearly said,
We have been duped
. But India prayed her hands under her chin and swept her gaze over them.

“If I had told you I wanted you to support a group of former prostitutes, would you have come?” she said.

No one answered. Except Ms. Willa, who barked, “They most certainly would not.”

“It was not my intention to mislead you,” India said. “I only wanted you to see what’s happening at Sacrament House before you had a chance to form a wrong opinion.
This
is what’s happening.”

She put her arm around Mercedes.

“When Mercedes came to Sacrament House four months ago, you would never have believed she could have become the beautiful young woman that she is today. Is she not exquisite?”

There were murmurs of assent. Mercedes looked as if she would prefer to be enduring a beheading.

“We wanted you to have a chance to discover that she is just as exquisite on the inside,” India went on. “The same is true for Jasmine. Where are you, honey?”

Jasmine waved weakly.

“Ask her to tell you her story,” India said. “And if you are anything like me, you will pull that checkbook out of your purse and you will say, ‘How much is enough?’ and then you’ll give a little more.” She looked around. “Sherry? She must have gone inside.”

Escaped would be a better word. Bless India’s heart, but this was making me squirm in my apron.

“Listen,” she went on, “I am ashamed to say that I ran like a rabbit when Allison Chamberlain first gave me the opportunity to be part of this ministry. But when I finally allowed myself to get to know these amazing women and see how hard they’re working to better themselves, I couldn’t run. I didn’t want to run. And I know, because I know you, that most of you are far better people than I am. You’re not going to disappoint me and run off from this.”

She waited as if she could see them adding zeroes to the obligatory amounts they already had in mind. I, on the other hand, witnessed them eyeing one another in a supreme effort not to look as if they were waiting to see what the others would do. I could imagine them doing the same thing forty and fifty years ago when somebody in the cotillion broke into the Watusi in the middle of the dance floor. India waited some more, and a few reached for their Louis Vuittons and their Montblancs.

But suddenly, I didn’t want their zeroes.

Will you do it now, Allison? Will you?

As India continued to talk, I leaned over the porch railing to Desmond. “Go tell Hank I need as many big pitchers as she can find. Tell her to fill them with water.”

Desmond flipped his towel over his arm and headed inside. I crooked my finger at Owen.

“Can you find me some buckets?” I hissed. “Maybe four or five?”

“How big?” he said.

“Big enough for a pair of feet.”

I went to stand beside India, who still had her arm firmly around a stiff Mercedes.

“Will you go find some towels, Merce?” I said.

India blinked. Mercedes nodded and pulled away as if she’d just been released from custody. The crowd fidgeted as India feigned delighted surprise.

“I just never know what Miss Allison is going to come up with,” she said.

She should have, in my view. She should have known I was going to say, “Put your checkbooks away. That isn’t what we want from you.”

I went down the steps and stopped at the group from the Garden Club. “Would any of you well-connected ladies be willing to hire one the Sisters of Sacrament House,” I said, “or recommend them for employment?”

I didn’t wait for an answer because I knew there wouldn’t be one. I stood before the Junior Leaguers. “Would any of you successful women give a few hours of your time every week to teach the Sisters job skills? Help them learn how to present themselves the way you do?”

I did wait this time. The expected silence was deafening.

I turned to the United Daughters of the Confederacy sprinkled jarringly among the HOGs. “What we need are more people to drive them to doctor’s appointments and go to court with them to settle their past mistakes. Are any of you influential members of society available to do that?”

Owen came up behind me, clattering buckets. “Where do you want these, Ally?”

I took two and nodded for him to follow me with the others. I set one down in front of a now white-faced member of the UDC, another in the flustered midst of the Garden Club, a third with the Junior Leaguers whose fingers were poised over their cell phones, Facebook on the screen. The fourth bucket I took up the steps and placed before Ms. Willa.

“What do you intend to do with that?” she said.

“I intend to wash your feet, Ms. Willa.”

“Why on earth would you want to do such a thing?”

“Quite frankly, I don’t,” I said. “I imagine you’ve got corns for days and heels like the soles of cowboy boots.”

She narrowed her already screwed-tight eyes. “Go on.”

“I’m not going to wash your feet because I think I’ll enjoy it. Heaven knows it will be probably be fairly disgusting.”

“You’ve been talking to my podiatrist,” she said. A tiny star formed in each eye.

“I’m washing them because I want you to know that I’m here to serve you, no matter how nasty and gross and full of fungus that service might turn out to be. It’s what the people of God are called to do for each other.” I turned to the mismatched crowd on the lawn. “It’s what all human beings ought to do for each other. I—no,
all
of us in the Sacrament House ministry are here to wash your feet. Literally. Maybe then you’ll experience the kind of love it takes to come to the table with more than your money. What we want goes deeper than that. We want to wash you so you can become part of the story. Our story. The big story.”

I squatted in front of Ms. Willa and slid off one of her pink ballet flats. Mercedes leaned over me.

“You want we should wash some feet?” she said. “For real?”

I looked up, expecting the mother of all eye rolls. What I got was a smooth smile and a look full of knowing.

“For real,” I said. “Wash any feet that are willing.”

I went back to Ms. Willa and her white knee-highs. I heard Mercedes take the steps and say, clear and strong, “Whose feet needs washing today?” Beyond her, Jasmine’s laughter bubbled up and Stan said, “Over here.”

“Is that water cold?” Ms. Willa said.

I hadn’t thought of that. For all Hank knew, we were going to drink it. But when I dipped my finger into the pitcher, I felt myself break into a full-body grin. It was just the right temperature for a satisfying bath.

I swung Ms. Willa’s knotty-toed feet into the bucket and poured the water over them.

“You don’t know what I’m doing, Ms. Willa,” I said. “I’m not sure I do myself. But just by doing it, maybe God will let both of us understand how to really love.”

The hard sole softened in my palm. She nudged my hand with her other foot, and she spread her toes as I massaged the swollen joint below her big toe. I could feel the sigh in her muscles.

When I’d pulled her feet from the bucket and wrapped them in the Harley Davidson beach towel Mercedes had provided, India tapped my shoulder. Her lips were so close to my ear they brushed at my lobe.

“I thought we agreed you’d tell me if you were going to do things like this,” she said almost inaudibly.

I stood up. “I would have if I’d known,” I murmured back as she stood with me. “It just came to me and I had to go with it.”

Actually, it hadn’t
just
come to me. God had been trying to get me to do this since Ash Wednesday when I’d first felt it in my soul. I couldn’t apologize for going with it when I finally got it. Not with Ms. Willa looking at me with the wisdom of the ages in her eyes.

“Well, I’m sorry,” India said, “but it’s a train wreck.”

I picked up the bucket and turned to look out over my front yard. I could see how India might interpret it that way. Surely Not and her sorority sister were hurrying, arm-in-protective-arm, toward the Lincoln they’d arrived in. Trish Whatever-Her-Name-Was had her sizeable purse over her shoulder and was headed for the gate with her equally sizeable checkbook still in it. The entire pack of forty-somethings must have left en masse with their iPhones the minute I poured the water into the bucket because all their seats were empty. One of the chairs was even upside down on the grass, as if its occupant hadn’t been able to get away fast enough. India was right: The scene could qualify as a vehicular disaster.

If Sherry weren’t bathing the hair-tufted foot of Ulysses, while Rex waited, socks off, for his turn.

If Liz Doyle weren’t kneeling before a UDC member with a severe bun, quietly sponging a callus I could see all the way from the porch.

If Desmond didn’t have Miz Vernell’s feet in a five-gallon bucket with water up to her doorknob knees, going on about how he didn’t have no neighbor better than her, ’less maybe it was Mr. Schatzie, but, then, everybody couldn’t be Mr. Schatzie, could they?

This wasn’t a train wreck. This was a body of people who were so on track, the speed of it took my breath away.

“I need to get fresh water in those pitchers,” I said, and started for the steps.

India caught my arm. “You realize that I can never ask any of those women for money again. Not just for us, but for anyone.”

Her eyes smoldered, but it wasn’t anger I saw. The film of tears, the confused blinking, that could only be fear. I put my bucket-free arm out to hug her neck, but she stepped back, nearly trampling Sherry, who was on her way out of the house with clean towels.

“If we make one dime off of this, I’ll drop my teeth,” India said. “And if we get a single volunteer, you can order my casket because I will probably drop dead.” Her voice caught. “So I don’t see what you accomplished today, Allison, except to make everybody feel so guilty they won’t even look us in the eye, much less give us any kind of support.”

“Not everybody,” I said.

Because right behind us, Ms. Willa had the young prostitute’s legs across her lap. The girl’s feet were soaking the pink flowered pants, but Ms. Willa didn’t seem bothered as she reached an almost transparent blue-veined hand for the towel and used it to get between those grimy toes.

“I know you say you don’t use drugs,” she said to the girl. “But you can’t hide what’s on your breath, and that will get you into just as much trouble if you overdo it. My first husband took to drink when Troy Irwin walked away with everything he had and he couldn’t stand the pain. But you—” Ms. Willa stopped rubbing and looked into the young woman’s stunned eyes. “You have a chance.”

Ms. Willa’s hands seemed young now, ropeless and smooth, and I felt like I ought to kiss them, and possibly even her feet. She could give us a check or not. Because the old money of a St. Augustine matron had just washed the filthy feet of a St. George Street hooker and shown us Jesus Christ.