When Did We Lose Harriet? (3 page)

As Irmalene trudged almost silently around the table removing luncheon plates and setting down bowls of ice cream smothered by Chilton County peaches, the air conditioner clicked on and whirred softly. William remembered squirming on the very same mahogany chair one summer day when he was ten years old, and the only relief from the thick warm air was a lazy fan above the table. That afternoon, his father had taken him over to Granddaddy’s to tell him “how women are.”

“You can’t ever please ‘em, boy,” he had concluded, “no matter how hard you try. But don’t act like you’re gonna run counter to ‘em, either, or they’ll have a hissy and make your life miserable. The best course is to nod and smile, then go your own way.”

Daddy had taken a big puff of his cigar and blown a cloud that made William’s stomach queasy in the hot, close room. Then he’d added, almost to himself, “Of course, a day of reckoning will come. They’re smarter’n we give ‘em credit for.”

William’s day of reckoning had come. No amount of nodding and smiling was going to settle this new struggle between Leila, Mama, and Dee.
Probably,
he thought miserably,
the only thing that will settle it is death.

Do not boast about tomorrow,
for you do not know what a day
may bring forth.
Proverbs 27:1

My name is MacLaren Yarbrough, and while it’s hard to believe now, when I flew from Albuquerque to Montgomery on Monday, July fifteenth, I’d never heard of Harriet Lawson. Furthermore, if anyone had quoted “God works in mysterious ways, his wonders to perform” to me as my plane droned above the inky Alabama countryside, I’d have told them smartly that as far as that particular trip was concerned, God had very little to do with it.

What
God
had done, so far as I could see, was finally get me sent from Hopemore, Georgia—a pleasant little town midway between Augusta, Macon, and nowhere, where I am variously known as the wife of Joe Riddley, mother of Ridd and Walker, and co-owner of Yarbrough’s Feed, Seed & Nursery—to our church’s national meeting in Albuquerque—where I could say a few things I’ve been storing up for years. It was my brother Jake who messed
things up by having a heart attack smack in the middle of a most interesting discussion on human sexuality.

Jake’s timing has been lousy for fifty-five years. He even got born two weeks early, which canceled my tenth birthday sleepover.

I was intrigued, incidentally, by how long some folks can spend discussing human sexuality. I’ve been married nearly forty-five years, have some good memories and anticipate a good many more, but I never realized how much some people like to talk about sex—particularly people who look as if they aren’t getting enough of it.

When I’d told Joe Riddley that on the phone the night before, he’d chuckled. “MacLaren, honey, we both know sex is a lot like eating—sometimes a feast and sometimes just a quick bite on the road to somewhere else—but doing it sure beats talking about it.”

By the end of that next week in Montgomery, I’d be delighted that Joe Riddley was still in Georgia where he belonged. As I pressed my forehead to the cold window, though—straining for my first glimpse of Montgomery’s lights in the country darkness—I missed him something terrible. I couldn’t help thinking that if the plane kept going for another hour or so, we’d be over middle Georgia and could land in my son Ridd’s back cotton field. I could sleep in my own bed with Joe Riddley heavy and sweet beside me. Why the dickens hadn’t Jake’s guardian angel protected him for one more week?

I was grumbling to keep from bawling, and I knew it. There I was with years of practice praying for sick people, and now that it was Jake I found myself reduced to
“Please, God, please, God, please, God!”

To make me even grumpier, I looked a wreck. I like to look nice, and while I’m no longer the slip of a thing in my wedding pictures, I still have the same big brown eyes and (with the connivance of my beauty operator) keep my hair almost the same honey brown. Joe Riddley even assures me I’ve grown voluptuous, not plump. He’s a very
nice man when he wants to be. That night, however, I was about as attractive as a wilty cabbage leaf. If I stopped looking
through
the airplane window and merely looked
in
it, I saw a woman with bags under her eyes, crow’s feet radiating to her hairline, and all her lipstick chewed off.

It wasn’t just worry over Jake that had me looking that way. Nobody warned me that national church meetings go on day and night. Leaders seem to think that just because God neither slumbers nor sleeps, neither should anybody else. Between lying awake every night for a week ahead planning what to take and what I wanted to say, and trying to stay awake in late meetings, I hadn’t gotten any decent sleep for days. When you are on the shady side of sixty, you need your rest. I’d been feeling grumpy even before Jake’s wife, Glenna, called to say he was in intensive care. Of course I had to go, right away.

When the plane landed, I could hardly wait for the pilot to turn off the engines and the flight attendants to open the door. I pushed my way almost rudely into the passenger inch-walk down the cabin, and nearly ran toward the terminal. Glenna was waiting just inside. The sight of her fairly broke my heart. How could a woman age so much in one day?

Glenna has never been a beauty. She’s tall and bony, seldom bothers with creams and powders, has been gray since she was forty, and doesn’t fuss much with her hair—just cuts it to fall straight and cup her cheeks on each side. Her big gray eyes are so kind, though, that I’ve seen grieving children fling themselves into her arms. She also has something my mother’s generation referred to as “breeding”—an easy way of carrying herself and wearing clothes that lets anybody with two eyes know she grew up in a family with enough money and education not to need to parade either one. That night, though, her skin looked like it had been left on a counter overnight when it should have been refrigerated, and her eyes had the same stricken look I had seen in a dog begging to be put down.
She was smiling as I went toward her, but when I held out my arms, her face crumpled.

We hugged awkwardly, both because Glenna is five-nine and I five-three and because we aren’t accustomed to touching. Our closeness has always been one of spirit, not bodies.

“Oh, Clara!” Glenna said over and over, clinging like she’d never let go.

I nearly melted in a puddle of tears right then and there. Since Mama and Daddy died, nobody but Jake and Glenna calls me “Clah-ra”—which was all Jake could make of “MacLaren” when he was a baby.

“How is he?” I asked. I couldn’t catch a breath while I waited for her answer. So much could have happened in those hours I’d been on the plane.

She averted her head. “Not good, honey.” Her voice trembled. “The doctor says he needs bypass surgery, but Jake won’t agree. I hope you can persuade him.”

I gave my nose a hearty blow. “Durn tootin’.” I hoped I sounded more confident than I felt. I saw I was not only going to have to make Jake get his surgery, I was going to have to prop up Glenna at the same time.

“Can I see him tonight?” I asked.

She checked her watch. “It’s way past the last visitation, but I told them you were coming and they said they’ll let you in for a minute—if you aren’t too tired.”

“I’m a walking zombie, but I won’t sleep until I’ve seen him. Let’s stop by to say hello, then go on home.”

As we left the fresh cool air of the airport, I knew I was in Alabama. The night was so hot and thick I could have shaped it in my hands like cotton candy.

Glenna pulled into the hospital parking lot and turned deftly into a waiting space. One of her many grace gifts is that she always gets a convenient parking place
when she needs one. In emergencies, I have even gotten a couple myself by chanting, “I am Glenna Crane, I am Glenna Crane.”

In the cardiac intensive care unit Jake was pale, with tubes everywhere and more monitors than NASA. I saw at once why Glenna looked the way she did. The spunk had gone out of old Jake. What little hair he had left was lifeless and dry, his skin was a peculiar ashy gray, and even his voice was a wisp of its usual boom. “Well, Clara, how’s this for a way to get you to visit?”

I had to clear my throat before I could answer. I even almost said something polite before I caught myself. If I talked nice, Jake would think he was dying. “Effective, Bubba, but not one I’d recommend. How do you feel?”

“Like an old tire retread. How do you feel?”

“Like somebody who’s been on planes all day because her baby brother’s being ornery.” I sat down beside him and took his hand. “Glenna says you need a bypass.”

He chuckled weakly. “Not wasting any time, are you?”

“Nope. Why are you?”

“Fundamental chickenism. Besides, I’m not sure that’s what I ought to do. I’ve lived a good life…” He had to stop to cough. His monitors jumped around like crazy.

I wasn’t about to stay and upset him right then. “We’ll talk some more tomorrow. I’m too tired to argue right now.”

“How long you gonna be here?”

“Until you get your bypass and get back home.”

“I’ll think about it.”

“You’d better,” I warned, in the tone I used when he was four and I was allowed to switch him if he disobeyed. “Now get yourself a good night’s sleep. I’ll get you straightened out tomorrow.”

Glenna, who had waited by the door, tiptoed in and kissed him on the cheek. “I’ll be back after I get Clara settled.”

He shook his head. “You don’t need to come back, honey. I’ll be fine.”

“I’m not coming just for you, Jake. I’m coming for me. I’ll rest better knowing I’m here.” She straightened his covers and touched his shoulder in farewell, then motioned me to follow her out.

One of the very few things Jake and Glenna don’t agree on is automobiles. To Glenna, a car is transportation. Once she gets one she likes, she hangs onto it for years and gives it just enough maintenance to keep it running. Her current blue Ford was rump sprung and dented, and my suitcases shared the trunk with two bags of clothes she was taking to a homeless shelter and three bags of sanitized cow manure she’d bought for her flowers.

Jake, on the other hand, has always been car proud. He likes new, pretty ones, and treats them more like girlfriends than steel and plastic. This year’s red Buick Park Avenue gleamed in their unpaved drive, an Auburn sticker in its back window. It was almost easier to see him in the hospital than it was to see his car in the driveway and know he might never come home to drive it.

Glenna seemed to feel the same, for although she is naturally quiet, she chattered like a squirrel as she lifted the heavier bag from the car. “We haven’t had a bit of rain for weeks. I don’t know what the yard will do if we don’t get some soon. But look! The old magnolia saved three blossoms for you. The rest bloomed earlier, but those waited for you to get here.” I peered up the fat old tree. Sure enough, three creamy blossoms glowed in the darkness.

Higher up, from towering pines, came the whir of thousands of tiny motors humming in the night. “The cicadas are certainly having a fling!” I exclaimed. Cicadas are noisy little locusts that hibernate for years, then creep
out of the ground, sing their hearts out, lay their eggs, and die. On their jubilee, the whole South gets a bumper crop, but where I live, every year a few rebels come up out of season. This was either a jubilee, or Montgomery’s cicadas have the same spirit that made that city the first capital of the Confederacy.

As I waited on the front walk for Glenna to unlock the door, I took a deep breath of thick air scented with honeysuckle, pine, and boxwood, and thought how remarkable she and Jake were. When they’d been married about three years and had just learned Glenna could never have a baby, they bought a comfortable six-room house in Montgomery’s South Hull District, a neighborhood of modest brick homes. Their house has a big yard and ceilings high enough so you don’t smother, but it also has two small bathrooms and a kitchen Glenna keeps talking about remodeling but never has. Over the years, when a lot of their friends and neighbors moved east to newer neighborhoods with roomy, modern kitchens, enormous bathrooms, and several extra rooms, Jake used to ask, “You want to move, honey?”

Glenna always replied, “Wouldn’t you rather put our money in something that really matters, Jake?” Only their family, their church treasurer, and the postman who brings appeals and carries away checks know what matters to Jake and Glenna Crane. I never let them hear me say it, but as far as I know there are no finer people on God’s green earth.

Thinking of losing Jake was like a knife in my heart. When Glenna stepped inside and called, “Coming, dear?” I could hardly see to hurry up the steps.

I saw Glenna off for her all-night vigil, kicked off my shoes, and unpacked. After a long cool shower I was padding barefoot across the kitchen’s old black and white
linoleum tiles for a glass of milk when the phone rang. “MacLaren Yarbrough,” I answered automatically, then corrected myself. “Crane residence.”

There was a silence on the other end, then an explosion. “Woman, what are you doing there? You are supposed to be in Albuquerque!”

“Joe Riddley!”

I knew I was wasting my charm. He barely paused for breath. “When Glenna called here this morning looking for you, I was stupid enough to give her your number, but five minutes later I wished I hadn’t. I just knew you’d do some fool thing like hare off to Montgomery. I never imagined you’d do it so fast, though. What’d you do—sprout wings and fly solo?”

“I got the first plane out, just like any caring sister would.”

“Caring, my hind foot. You’ll badger that poor man to death.”

“I’m not badgering him!” I took a deep breath to fortify myself. Talking to Joe Riddley can be like walking into the Atlantic during a hurricane. You don’t make much headway, and you often wind up flattened. Oddly enough, though, he is the mildest man in Hopemore when he’s on the magistrate’s bench. Did I forget to tell you? Joe Riddley is a magistrate as well as a nursery man. Judge Yarbrough, respected throughout Hope County. Some prisoners—especially those brought in in the middle of the night—ask for him by name, because Joe Riddley never gives them a hard time about being hauled out of bed.

He seldom gives anybody a hard time, except me and our younger son, Walker. He and Walker butt heads because they are so much alike, and he got used to bossing me when I was four and he was six. Joe Riddley’s daddy owned the local hardware store (the same one we converted into the Feed, Seed & Nursery when Home
Depot came into town a few years back) and one day my daddy took me there. Joe Riddley looked down, hitched up his corduroy pants, and asked, “Wanna go count nails?” To somebody just learning to count, it was sublime! They kept the nails in bright red bins, and we counted long ones, short ones, fat ones, and skinny ones. I could only go to a hundred, but Joe Riddley could count forever. After that, I begged to go to the hardware store, because I thought Joe Riddley was wonderful. Still do—although I don’t let him get away with bossing me the way he did back then.

One day when Daddy called me to go, Joe Riddley looked down at me and said gruffly, “You can’t count worth a flip, but you are the cutest little bit of a thing I ever did see.” Then he turned beet red.