When Did We Lose Harriet? (6 page)

Starting a quarrel is like breaching
a dam; so drop the matter before a
dispute breaks out.
Proverbs 17:14

I hope it won’t confuse you to hear from someone else, but poor MacLaren was so upset by the time the police left, she’s asked me to tell about what happened next. We were all on a first-name basis by then.

I am Josheba Davidson—the assistant librarian who couldn’t give out Harriet’s address. I felt real bad about that, because I’d been wondering what happened to Harriet. She was always real prompt about bringing books back, and I’d expected to see a lot of her that summer. I won’t say it worried me, exactly—I’m going to graduate school these days and only work part-time, so she could have come in while I was off—but I’d asked some of the other librarians if they’d seen her around, and nobody had. I found that puzzling. Harriet read all the time. What could make her give it up for the summer?

Anyway, when the police finally left, another librarian brought MacLaren some coffee and I offered to call
her a cab. “I can’t pay for it,” she pointed out apologetically, “unless my sister-in-law has some cash with her at the hospital.” For just an instant her brown eyes twinkled. “Which she almost never does. She’s one of those women who let their husbands carry the money.” I suspected MacLaren Yarbrough carried her own. She looked pretty feisty to me.

Our head librarian had another idea. “You’re due to go off-duty in a little while anyway, Josheba,” she said to me. “Why don’t you leave now and run Mrs. Yarbrough to the hospital?”

I glanced at my watch. My fiancé was leaving for a week’s white-water rafting trip that afternoon, and I was due to drop by his place and kiss him good-bye. Morse is a big teddy bear most of the time, but he’s more like a Kodiak if his plans get messed up. I didn’t want to make him late leaving. Still, it was earlier than I’d thought. Morse wasn’t expecting me for nearly an hour. “Sure, I’ll be glad to,” I told Mrs. Yarbrough. “Just let me finish something I was doing at the computer.”

Stepping out of the library into the midday sun was like leaving a refrigerator for a steam room. The seats of my Honda were as hot as an ironing board after a hard day’s work. “I’ll get the air conditioning going in just a minute,” I promised.

As my passenger reached to fasten her seatbelt, something crackled under her blouse. Harriet’s money, I suspected. I gave her a sideways look. “I could get fired for this if anybody finds out, but if you want to, I can run you by Harriet’s on the way. I looked up her address, and it’s just off Martha Street, right up the hill. I hate for you not to get rid of that money after all you’ve been through trying to deliver it.”

“Me, too,” she said fervently. “I’d really appreciate it.”

It seemed so simple at the time.

Although the community around our library is black, at the top of the hill is a small, old, mostly white neighborhood, Cottage Hill. It’s houses are generally one-story bungalows with big high windows and ample porches. I’d guess the neighborhood was built around 1900, but some of those oaks were around when my great-great-grandparents were slaves. Cottage Hill’s been gentrifying for a long time, so most of the houses either have been or are in the process of being restored.

The house we wanted was shabby, with scaffolding to the roof. Mac—we’d hit it off so well by then that she’d told me to call her that—asked me to come to the door, since I already knew Harriet. As soon as she rang the bell a baby started crying. A moment later a young woman in jeans answered the door with an unhappy infant on her hip. She informed us she’d just moved in in June and didn’t know anybody named Lawson. “Maybe one of the older neighbors would know something.” She gestured across the street to a blue house with cream shutters and a yard full of flowers. That neighbor was certainly older—older than God. In a straw hat and pink cotton dress, she was busily watering black-eyed Susans and trying to pretend she wasn’t watching everything that was going on.

We headed across the street.

The old woman was so bent over she was several inches shorter than she used to be. Unconsciously I straightened my own back and saw Mac do the same as she said, in a friendly tone, “Good afternoon. Did you know the Lawsons, who used to live over there? We’re looking for Harriet.”

Beneath wisps of white hair escaping from her straw hat, the woman’s eyes were a bright suspicious blue. “What you want with Harriet?”

“I found something of hers this morning and wanted to return it,” Mac told her.

“Harriet moved right after her granny died.” With a gnarled hand ropy with veins, the woman brushed away a fly from her cheek. “Went out to live with her aunt, Dixie Lawson. Dixie Sykes, she’d be now. Mrs. William T. Sykes the Third. Lives out in McGehee Estates somewhere. They’re in the phone book. He has a store.”

“Well, you’re finally getting somewhere,” I told Mac as we gratefully sank into the Honda and turned on the air.

She sighed. “Yeah, but it’s getting more complicated than I ever imagined. I think after I’ve visited with my brother a little while, I ought to just take the money back to the center and let Mr. Henly return it to Harriet.”

I hesitated. I’d only met Mr. Henly over the phone, but our dealings hadn’t been too pleasant. I’d approached him about doing a summer reading program at his center, and he’d been real curt. Said he “was concentrating on sports that summer and would rather not scare kids away from the center its first summer of operation.” A man who talks that way about reading—well, I wasn’t sure he’d really get Harriet’s money back to her now that she’d moved across town. He might spend it on volleyballs. “Why don’t you call Harriet yourself when you get time?” I suggested.

Mac picked up right away on what I was hinting. “You don’t trust him? Why?”

“I don’t want to say more than I really know,” I told her, “and it’s more of a gut feeling than anything else, but Lewis Henly is a bit of an enigma. Blew into town from nowhere and got to know a lot of important people real quick. If I had money belonging to Harriet, I think I’d take it back to her myself.”

Mac decided to follow my advice. It still sounded so simple.

After that we headed toward the hospital, exchanging the little details women use to weave friendships. I
told her I’d cut back at the library to part-time while pursuing my Masters in Business Administration from Auburn at Montgomery. She told me about her family store, her husband, two boys, and four grandchildren.

“Do you have family here?” she asked.

“Not at the moment,” I told her, trying not to feel jealous that she had so much. “Daddy died when I was nine and Mama just last year. Now I rattle around in my house all alone. I hope to change that this fall, though,” I couldn’t help adding. “I’m thinking about getting married over Christmas.”

Before I knew it, Mac had me telling her all about meeting Morse. “Last April I went to watch my friend’s son wrestle in a high school match, and Morse was coaching the other team. I recognized him immediately. He was the champion wrestler on the Alabama State team the year I won a second in track. We got to talking about college, and one thing led to another. We went out to dinner and discovered we like the same music and food. We’ve been dating ever since.” I tried to sound casual, but I suspected my face was flushed with happiness. “He’s big and handsome and athletic and looks like nothing would faze him, but he had a rough childhood. Underneath he’s a hurting little boy who needs somebody to take care of him—which reminds me. He’s leaving this afternoon for a week’s trip with some of his buddies. I ought to call from the hospital to see if he needs me to pick up toothpaste or something.”

“Would it be possible to stop by my brother’s?” Mac gave me an embarrassed smile. “I hate to ask when you’ve already been so nice, but it’s not far from here, and I could freshen up while you make your call. After two hours in that center and my nosedive on the sidewalk, I sure could use a wash.”

I thought about telling her I was supposed to be at Morse’s very soon, but since I hadn’t mentioned that already, I didn’t like to make her feel worse than she
already did. Besides, she certainly needed to fix herself up a little. One knee of her pants was slightly torn, and her makeup and hair were wilted from the heat. She’d want to look nice for her brother. There was one thing, however, I thought I ought to mention. “At the risk of bringing back painful memories, how will you get in without a key?”

“My sister-in-law hides one in the toolshed.”

Her sister-in-law hid it well. By the time Mac found it, she wore every spiderweb in that shed.

She showed me a phone in the master bedroom, and while she went to wash and change I called Morse—aware that by the time I got Mac to the hospital it was going to be past the time I’d said I’d stop by his place. He was disappointed, of course, but so excited about the trip that he didn’t fuss. He said he’d try to get his buddies to wait until I got there. “Gotta kiss my baby good-bye.” His chuckle sent nice feelings up my spine.

I heard Mac padding to the bathroom for a wash. We’d have a little time to talk before she was through. “By the way, Morse, I found out about my dance. It’s Saturday a week. You’ll be back before that, won’t you?”

“No problem, honey. We’ll be back Sunday, I think. Is this the dance where I’m supposed to wear a monkey suit?”

“Sure is. Do you need me to call about renting one?”

“Would you do that? Tell them I’ll pick it up the day of the dance.” He rattled off his sizes and I felt downright wifely writing them down.

“Are you all packed?” I asked, putting off the time when we’d have to hang up.

“All except my blue shirt. My favorite one, remember? I couldn’t find it in that laundry you left here yesterday.”

I couldn’t believe what I had done. “Oh, Morse, it’s in my ironing basket! I left it in the dryer too long, so it’s got to be ironed. I meant to do it this morning, but I ran late—”

“How could you have left it in the dryer too long, Josheba?” he demanded. “I told you to take it right out as soon as the dryer finished.”

I gave an embarrassed little laugh. “Yeah, but you know what an airhead I am when I’m working on a paper. I got to writing, and I just plumb forgot.”

“You forgot? Well, imagine that.”

His voice was mild and flat, but I started to tremble and felt a little sick. Like I said, Morse can be a Kodiak when he’s riled, and when he’s riled he always starts out slow, easy, and sarcastic.

Sure enough, words began to pour through the line like hot lava. Angry words. Insulting words. I couldn’t bear to hear them. Even though I held the receiver away from my ear, a few reached me anyway. “…stupid…if you really cared…Why can’t you do what you’re
told?”

The awful thing was, he was right. Maybe he was being obsessive about a shirt, but he
had
told me to take it right out of the dryer, and I had forgotten. “Morse,” I interrupted, my voice thick with tears, “I’m dreadfully sorry. I’ll run by the house and iron it and bring it right over. Just wait thirty minutes, honey. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

“I thought you had to take that woman by the hospital.”

“Yes, but—”

“Never mind, baby. We’re leaving. See you when I see you.” He slammed down the receiver. I called him right back, but he didn’t answer.

It’s dreadful when you have disappointed somebody you love. It’s especially dreadful when that’s the only person you have in the whole world
to
love.

The wealth of the rich is their
fortified city; they imagine it an
unscalable wall.
Proverbs 18:11

Josheba left me at the hospital and hurried away. When I got off the elevator at Jake’s floor, a woman standing in the waiting room door with her back to the hall turned to go, saying over her shoulder, “I’ll see you later, sugar. We’re thinking of you.”

“Thanks for coming, Nora,” Glenna called after her.

She was the kind of woman you hate even when you like her: close to my own age, but still thin enough to wear a full green skirt without looking like a Granny Smith apple. She had also managed to keep her hair a very natural-looking red. It fell straight to curl under at the jewel neck of the prettiest cotton sweater I ever saw—a soft swirl of green, blue, and violet. I didn’t have time to think about sweaters, though. As she passed me in a cloud of Chanel, I saw Glenna’s face. She looked like she had fallen into a deep freeze and gotten chilled to the bone.

I started telling her why I was late, but for the first time I could remember, she interrupted. “He’s worse, Clara. Dr. Watson says he doesn’t have a chance without surgery, but Jake won’t sign the papers. Says he thinks his time has come. I don’t know what to do!”

I hugged her, because I couldn’t stand looking into her eyes. “When can I see him?”

“I think they’d let you go in right now for just a minute, but don’t stay long.”

“Just long enough to tell him to get that operation,” I replied grimly.

Jake was so weak he didn’t try to smile. It nearly broke my heart to look at him, but I forced myself to sound mad. “Well, Jake, I hear you are being obstreperous again.”

He spoke in wisps and gasps. “‘s that…what they…tell you,…Sis?”

“It sure is. I won’t have it, Bubba.” I put on the voice I used to use when he wouldn’t eat his carrots. “You sign those papers for Dr. Watson and get it over with. I can’t shilly-shally around here forever. Joe Riddley needs me too, you know.”

He turned his head restlessly on the pillow. “Need…think about it.”

“What’s there to think about? Get the danged operation and be done with it!” I wanted to holler into his ashen face. But you can’t holler at a man who’s connected to a hundred tubes and whose entire life is reduced to an irregular little “blip” on a screen.

“It’s your decision, of course,” I told him, wondering when he’d gotten too big to obey me and why I’d ever let him.

He tried to shake his head, but it was a poor effort. “…don’t know…operation…any good.” He paused, then said weakly but clearly, “Maybe God’s calling me home.”

Now that
did
make me mad.

“You don’t know that, Jake. If the good Lord’s ready for you, he can take you in the operating room as well as here. But if he wants you around for a few more years, who are you to object?” I was getting nowhere fast, and I knew it. Quickly I winged a prayer for inspiration—and remembered a joke. “Maybe this operation’s your helicopter. Remember that old story about the man on a roof in the flood? How he turned down offers of help from a canoe, a rowboat, and a helicopter because he thought God was going to save him? Remember? He drowned, and got hopping mad, but God told him—”

I stopped. Jake was already mouthing the punch line. “Hey, buddy, I sent you a canoe, a rowboat, and a helicopter.” His eyes softened, then looked pleadingly into mine. “Think this…operation’s my…helicopter, Sis?” he whispered.

“I sure do, Bubba. Glenna needs you a while yet. Me, too, ornery though you are.” I reached down and lightly touched his shoulder. “You sign those papers and don’t give Glenna any more grief. You hear me?”

“…hear you, Sis. Lordy,” he said with a sudden surge of energy. “How does Joe Riddley stand you?”

“That’s Joe Riddley’s privilege.” Depositing a kiss on his forehead, I tiptoed out.

“He’ll sign,” I told Glenna.

“What did you do?” she asked, amazed.

“Beat him up a little. Big sisters are allowed.”

While Glenna and I waited for them to bring up Jake’s consent forms, I reckoned it was as good a time as any to tell her about my morning.

When I mentioned William Sykes, her face lit up. “That was his mother leaving when you came. They’re fine people, Clara. If you call and tell them you have the money, they’ll probably come get it. You’ve got such a good heart,” she finished warmly.

That made me feel like dirt. I didn’t set out to return Harriet’s money because I have a good heart. I did it because I thought I could do it faster than anybody else. “If I’d known Jake was getting sicker, I’d never have gotten involved,” I said gruffly. I still had to tell her that Jake’s car was missing because I’d been so full of my own efficiency.

Once she was past the initial shock, Glenna was far more horrified that she’d forgotten Jake’s day at the desk in the first place. “If I hadn’t forgotten, honey, you wouldn’t have used his car. I’ll tell you what. Call Harriet. If she’s home, you can borrow my car and take her the money right now. We can’t see Jake for a while, anyway.”

Harriet wasn’t home, and the girl who answered had been well taught not to give information to a stranger over the phone. She never came right out and said her mother wasn’t there, but she told me that if I called back after three, her mother could speak with me then. When I asked when they expected Harriet, she was as cagey as a riverboat gambler. “You’ll need to ask my mother.”

Since I was right by the pay phone, that was as good a time as any to call Joe Riddley about the credit cards. All I can say about that conversation is, confession may be good for the soul, but it sure can be hard on the eardrums.

By three, the weight on my chest was definitely more literal than figurative. That fresh envelope seemed to have a dozen corners. When I wiggled around trying to get more comfortable, they poked me worse. Since I didn’t have a pocketbook, I didn’t have anyplace else to put it. Jake would never forgive me if I foisted it off on Glenna. “I think I’ll just go on out there,” I finally told her. “I can explain better in person than on the phone anyway, and if I don’t get rid of this envelope pretty soon I’m going to look like that Greek who was pecked to death.”

Glenna drew me a map. “You can get there in twenty minutes. Think how good you’ll feel to be done with it.” She handed me her keys. Since it apparently hadn’t occurred to her I didn’t have a license, I didn’t like to bring it up.

Although Dixie Sykes’s neighborhood is now about halfway between downtown and Montgomery’s new eastern edge, it was way out on the edge of town in the sixties when it was built. With street names like Edgefield, Fernway, and Farm Road, I figured that the pines shading big furry lawns once shaded pastures. Cows, however, were long ago replaced by Cadillacs, grazing grass with monkey grass.

Glenna’s Ford was woefully out of place. Maids in that neighborhood drive better cars.

When I got to the Sykes’s, I liked their yard better than their house. Joe Riddley and I live in a big old renovated farmhouse that wanders all over our lot, so I’m not partial to two-story brick boxes with black shutters and tall white columns supporting nothing but a small brick stoop. I sure admired the Sykes’s big lawn, though. It looked like something out of
Southern Living
—lots of irregular, gorgeous flower beds, unexpected islands of ivy, even a little humpbacked bridge over a tiny fishpond. A creamy Mercedes sat in the drive beside a bright blue Miata with
Julie
blazoned on its tag.

While I waited for somebody to answer the door, I couldn’t help comparing this neighborhood with the one I’d been in that morning. They weren’t far apart in terms of miles, but could be on different planets. Joe Riddley was wrong about my imagination, for once. I couldn’t picture anybody from the teen center living in McGehee Estates.

If the woman who came to the door was forty, she and her beautician would never admit it. Her hair was fluffy and golden, her face as pretty as cosmetics could make it, and her lipstick could never be that fresh unless
she kept a tube right by the door. One look at her matching shell-pink fingernails and I could feel my own breaking out in hangnails.

Yet, pretty as she was, my very first thought was,
This woman is worried sick about something.

It seemed a shame to make her stand out there in all that heat, so I came straight to the point. “I’m MacLaren Yarbrough, and I’m looking for Harriet Lawson.”

Dixie’s mouth curved in a bright, welcoming smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes. “I’m afraid Harriet’s not here right now. Can I help you? I’m Dee Sykes, her aunt.”

Dee, not Dixie. The old woman got it wrong. “I’d rather talk with Harriet herself. When will she be back?”

“I’m afraid I don’t rightly know. You know how teenagers are.” Her eyes wandered to Glenna’s old Ford. “Are you a social worker or something?”

Nothing gets my goat like people who judge others by the car they drive. Besides, social workers drive better cars than Glenna’s. This wasn’t the time or place to get on a soapbox, however. Not with sweat beading my hairline. “No, but this morning I was cleaning behind a hideabed sofa at a teen center just off Rosa L. Parks Avenue—”

Her blue eyes widened in astonishment. “You clean the center?”

That did it. I fixed her with the stare I use to quell the Hopemore Garden Club, and said in a level voice that makes my grown sons quake, “Honey, let’s start over. I found something at the center this morning that belongs to Harriet. I’d like to give it back to her, so if you’ll just let me leave the phone number where I’ll be—”

About then her mental computer finally kicked in and churned up the right data: white female, well-dressed, older, Southern, does volunteer work:
One of Us!
She stepped back with a gracious smile and gestured toward the dim, cool house. “Won’t you come on in? It’s hotter than the devil’s blazer buttons out here.”

I followed her, reflecting that life could be a whole lot simpler if churches and the Junior League tattooed lifelong logos on members’ palms.

Through an entrance hall tiled in gray slate and past a formal living room with thick white carpet, quality reproductions, and what looked like a few genuine antiques, she led me straight out onto a bright sunroom overlooking a stunning pool.

“Would you like a Coke or something?” she asked.

I forgave her everything that she’d said so far. I could already feel fizzles of cold, frosty drink going down my gullet. I hadn’t had any lunch, remember, and just in the time I’d stood on her stoop the elastic in my underwear had permanently bonded to my skin.

“I never turned down a Co-cola in my life,” I said honestly. “Real, if you’ve got it.”

While she was in the kitchen, I looked around. This was no converted back porch; it was grand! I loved the white tile floor and wicker love seat, chaise, and glass-topped wicker table with four chairs. I wouldn’t have covered the blue flowered cushions with ruffly throw pillows, but my own shefflera and corn plants never looked healthier. Dee must certainly have a green thumb. Beyond the back windows blazed more wonderful flower beds.

“Here we are.” Bless her heart, she came back with not only Co-colas, but homemade chocolate chip cookies as well. You have to admire a woman who stocks pretty paper napkins that go with her sunroom cushions.

I took the love seat and she sat down on the chaise like she had nothing better to do than entertain a stranger. The blue flowers on her cushions exactly matched her eyes.

“You’ve got a lovely home,” I told her truthfully, grabbing a couple of cookies and trying not to wolf them down, “and your yard is simply beautiful.”

Dee looked around contentedly. “Aren’t you sweet? Actually, William does the yard and houseplants. He and his mama both love to play in the dirt, but I’d rather fix up a house. I wanted to be a decorator when I went to college, but then I met William. When you’re nineteen, getting married seems more important than finishing college, doesn’t it?”

It was a good thing she didn’t expect an answer. As my sons could tell you, I can go on about that particular subject for quite some time. And when Dee added, “—and as you know, a woman’s house is her life,” I could just see Joe Riddley’s face.

“MacLaren uses the glacial method of cleaning,” he always claims. “She lets piles creep from the corners to the middle of the floor, then calls out the troops to shovel them back a little.” Several years ago for Christmas he built me a set of screens, explaining proudly, “They are for parties. Just set them up around your various projects, and how big a party we can have will depend on how much space is left.”

I was reaching for a third cookie and about to ask about Harriet again when a woman called from the kitchen. “Yoohoo?” I’d vaguely heard a car in the drive and a key in the kitchen lock. She came closer, still calling. “Hey there! Anybody home?”

Where had I heard that voice? For a minute I thought it was the woman who’d called about the teen center the night before, but as soon as she came in, I recognized the woman who’d visited Jake earlier. She still wore that gorgeous sweater.

Dee looked about as happy as a wet cat, but her voice was sweet. “Hey, Nora! I didn’t know you were coming over. This is, ummm—”

“MacLaren Yarbrough.” I put out my hand. Since the visitor didn’t recognize me, I decided not to complicate things by dragging Jake in.

The woman dropped a shopping bag and a couple of catalogues onto the glass-topped table and stuck out a skinny freckled arm weighed down by three heavy gold bracelets. “I’m Nora Sykes, Dee’s mother-in-law. It’s good to meet you.” She then proceeded to completely ignore me, perching on one of the straight chairs by the table and talking nonstop to Dee. “When William called this morning, he asked for some cuttings. I’ve left them out by the garage. And here are some catalogues he wanted from that nursery up in North Carolina that sells all those unusual perennials. And while I was in Parisians a few minutes ago, I saw the cutest shorts outfit that just looked like Julie, so I bought it for her to try on. If it doesn’t fit, you can always take it back.”

From Dee’s expression, I suspected she was thinking Nora could jolly well take it back herself. It’s hard to be a thoughtful grandmother. We sometimes don’t notice when our enthusiasms make more work for our children.