“Back here!” Mrs. Whitshank called from the kitchen.
Abby loved the Whitshanks’ house. Even on a hot July day it was cool and dim, with the ceiling fan revolving high above the center hall and another fan gently stirring in the dining room. A folded tablecloth had been placed at one end of the table with a clutch of silverware resting on top, waiting to be distributed. She continued through to the kitchen, where Mrs. Whitshank stood at the sink rinsing okra pods. Mrs. Whitshank was slight and frail-looking, but an incongruously deep, low bosom filled out the top of her gingham housedress. Her pale hair hung limply almost to her shoulders. It was a young girl’s hairstyle, and her face when she turned to Abby seemed young as well—unlined and plain and guileless. “Hey, there!” she said, and Abby said, “Hi.”
“Don’t you look pretty today!”
“I came to see how I could help,” Abby said.
“Oh, honey, you don’t want to spoil those nice clothes. Just sit and keep me company.”
Abby pulled a chair out from the kitchen table and settled on it. She had learned not to argue with Mrs. Whitshank, who was a force of nature when it came to cooking and would only find Abby a hindrance.
“How’s that tree coming along?” Mrs. Whitshank asked her.
“They’re starting to cut up the branches now.”
“Did you ever hear of such a thing? Bringing down a whole poplar for the sake of a photograph.”
“Photy-graph,” she pronounced it. She had a country way of talking, and unlike her husband, she made no attempt to alter it.
“Dane says the tree was already dying, according to Mr. Whitshank,” Abby said.
“Oh, sometimes Junior will just get this sort of vision about how he wants things to be,” Mrs. Whitshank told her. She shut off the faucet and wiped her hands on her apron. “He’s already bought frames for the photos, isn’t that something? Two big frames, wooden. I asked him, I said, ‘You going to hang those over the mantel?’ He said, ‘Linnie Mae.’ ” She made her voice go deep and gruff. “Said, ‘People don’t hang family photos in their living rooms.’ I said, ‘I didn’t know that.’ Did you know that?”
“My mom’s got photos all over the living room,” Abby said.
“Well, then. See there?”
Mrs. Whitshank took a bottle of milk from the refrigerator and poured some into a bowl. “I’m fixing okra and sliced tomatoes,” she told Abby. “And fried chicken, with some of my biscuits. Oh, later on you might help with the biscuits, now that you know how. And peach cobbler for dessert.”
“That sounds delicious.”
“Did Red tell you he would give you a ride to the wedding?”
“He did,” Abby said, “but I’m not sure yet if I’m going.”
She felt embarrassed now about waiting so long to make up her mind. If her mother had known, she would have been horrified. But all Mrs. Whitshank said was, “Oh, I wish you would! I need someone to prop me up.”
Abby laughed.
“Merrick had me buy this yellow dress at Hutzler’s,” Mrs. Whitshank said. “It makes me look like I’ve got the jaundice, but Merrick was real set on it. She’s like her daddy; she takes these notions.” She was spooning cornmeal into a second bowl.
Abby said, “I’m just afraid I wouldn’t know anybody. Merrick’s crowd is all older than me.”
“Well, I won’t know them, either,” Mrs. Whitshank said. “It’ll be her college friends, mostly—not many from around here.”
“Who all in your family is coming?” Abby asked.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, grandparents? Aunts and uncles?”
“Oh, we don’t have any of those,” Mrs. Whitshank said.
She didn’t sound very regretful about it. Abby waited for her to elaborate, but she was measuring out salt now.
“Well, I told Red I appreciate the offer,” Abby said finally. “It’s good to know I’ve got a ride if I need one.”
Really she should just say yes and be done with it. She wasn’t sure what was stopping her. It was only half a Saturday, a tiny chunk of her life.
The Saturday after she spent the night with Dane. If she spent the night.
She imagined how he might say, “Aw, you don’t want to leave me all by myself, the morning after we …”
After we …
She looked down at her skirt and smoothed it across her knees.
“How’s your job going?” Mrs. Whitshank asked her. “You still liking those little colored kids?”
“Oh, I’m loving them.”
“I hate to think of you going down into that neighborhood, though,” Mrs. Whitshank said.
“It’s not a bad neighborhood.”
“It’s a poor neighborhood, isn’t it? The people there are poor as dirt, and they’d as lief rob you as look at you. I swear, Abby, sometimes you don’t show good sense when it comes to knowing who to be scared of.”
“I could never be scared of those people!”
Mrs. Whitshank shook her head and dumped the colander of okra onto a cutting board.
“Oh, what a world, what a world,” Abby said.
“How’s that, honey?”
“That’s what the wicked witch says in The Wizard of Oz. Did you know that? They’re showing a revival downtown and I went to see it last night with Dane. The witch says, ‘I’m melting! Melting! Oh, what a world, what a world,’ she says.”
“I remember the part about ‘I’m melting,’ ” Mrs. Whitshank said. “I took Red and Merrick to see that movie when they were little bitty things.”
“Yes, well, and then she talks about ‘what a world.’ I told Dane afterward, I said, ‘I never heard that before! I had no idea she said that!’ ”
“Me neither,” Mrs. Whitshank said. “In a way, it sounds kind of pitiful.”
“Exactly,” Abby said. “All at once I started feeling sorry for her, you know? I really believe that most people who seem scary are just sad.”
“Oh, Abby, Lord preserve you,” Mrs. Whitshank said with a gentle laugh.
Loud, sharp heels clopped down the stairs and through the front hall. The clops crossed the dining room and Merrick appeared in the kitchen doorway, wearing a red satin kimono and red mules topped with puffs of red feathers. Giant metal curlers encased her head like some sort of spaceman’s helmet. “Gawd, what time is it?” she asked. She pulled out a chair and sat down next to Abby and took a pack of Kents from her sleeve.
“Good morning, Merrick,” Abby said.
“Morning. Is that okra? Ick.”
“It’s for lunch,” Mrs. Whitshank told her. “We’ve got all those men out front who are going to need feeding.”
“Only Mom believes it’s impolite to make your workmen bring their own sandwiches,” Merrick told Abby. “Abby Dalton, are you wearing hose? Aren’t you melting?”
“I’m melting!” Abby wailed in a wicked-witch voice, and Mrs. Whitshank laughed but Merrick just looked annoyed. She lit a cigarette and let out a long whoosh of smoke. “I had the most awful dream,” she said. “I dreamed I was driving a little too fast on this winding mountain road and I missed a curve. I thought, ‘Oh-oh, this is going to be bad.’ You know that moment when you realize it’s just got to, got to happen. I went sailing over the edge of a cliff, and I squeezed my eyes tight shut and braced for the shock. But the funny thing was, I kept sailing. I never landed.”
Abby said, “That’s a terrible dream!” but Mrs. Whitshank went on placidly slicing okra.
“I thought, ‘Oh, now I get it,’ ” Merrick said. “ ‘I must already be dead.’ And then I woke up.”
“Was the car a convertible?” Mrs. Whitshank asked.
Merrick paused, with her cigarette suspended halfway to her mouth. She said, “Pardon?”
“The car in your dream. Was it a convertible?”
“Well, yes, as a matter of fact.”
“If you dream you’re in a convertible it means you’re about to make a serious error in judgment,” Mrs. Wh
itshank said.
Merrick sent Abby a look of exaggerated astonishment. “I wonder what error you could possibly be thinking of,” she said.
“But if the car is not a convertible, it would signify you’re going to get some sort of promotion.”
“Well, what a coincidence, I dreamed about a convertible,” Merrick said. “And the whole world knows you’re dead set against this wedding, so don’t waste your breath, Linnie Mae.”
Merrick often addressed her mother as “Linnie Mae.” The twisted sound of the name in her mouth somehow managed to imply all of her mother’s shortcomings—her twangy voice, her feed-sack-looking dresses, her backwoods pronunciations like “supposably” and “eck cetera” and “desk-es.” Abby felt bad for Mrs. Whitshank, but Mrs. Whitshank herself didn’t appear to take offense. “I’m just saying,” she said mildly, and she slid a handful of okra spokes into the bowl of milk.
Merrick took a deep drag of her cigarette and blew smoke toward the ceiling.
“Anyhow!” Abby told Merrick. “I bet it was one of those dreams you were really glad to wake up from, wasn’t it?”
Merrick said, “Mm-hmm,” with her eyes on the fan blades spinning above her.
Then a girl’s voice called, “Mare? Hello?” and Merrick straightened and called, “In the kitchen.”
The screen door slammed, and a moment later Pixie Kincaid and Maddie Lane arrived in the kitchen, both wearing Bermuda shorts, Maddie carrying a powder-blue Samsonite vanity case. “Merrick Whitshank, you’re still in your bathrobe!” Pixie said.
“I didn’t get home from the party till after three in the morning.”
“Well, neither did we, but it’s almost ten! Did you forget we’re practicing your makeup today?”
“I remember,” Merrick said. She stubbed out her cigarette. “Come on upstairs and let’s do this.”
“Hi, Mrs. Whitshank,” Pixie said belatedly. “Hi, um, Abby. See you later.” Maddie just gave a little wave like a windshield wiper. Then the three of them walked out, Merrick’s heels clattering. A sudden quiet descended.
“I guess Merrick must be feeling kind of tense these days,” Abby said after a moment.
“Oh, no, that’s just how she is,” Mrs. Whitshank said cheerfully. She had finished slicing the okra. She stirred the slices around in the milk, using a slotted spoon. “She was a snippy little girl and now she’s a snippy big girl,” she said. “Nothing much I can do about it.” She began transferring the okra slices to the cornmeal mixture. “Sometimes,” she said, “it seems to me there’s just these certain types of people that come around and around in our lives, know what I mean? Easy types and hard types; we run into them over and over. Merrick’s always put me in mind of my granny Inman. Disapproving kind of woman; tongue like a rasp. She never did think much of me. You, now, you’re a sympathizer, same as my aunt Louise.”
“Oh,” Abby said. “Yes, I see what you’re saying. It’s kind of like reincarnation.”
Mrs. Whitshank said, “Well …”
“Except it’s within one single lifetime instead of spread out over different lifetimes.”
“Well, maybe,” Mrs. Whitshank said. Then she said, “Honey, you want to do something for me?”
“Anything,” Abby said.
“Fetch that pitcher of water from the icebox and those paper cups on the counter and take them out to the men, will you? I know they must be dying of thirst. And tell them lunch will be early; I’ll bet they’re wondering.”
Abby stood up and went to the refrigerator. Her stockings were sticking damply to the backs of her legs. It might not have been the best idea to wear them on a day like today.
As she was crossing the front hall, she overheard Mr. Whitshank talking on the phone in the sunroom. “This afternoon? What the hell?” he was saying. “Goddammit, Mitch, I’ve got five men out there waiting on you to tell them how to do that tree stump!” Abby made her footsteps lighter, thinking he might be embarrassed that she’d caught him using swear words.
Outside, the air hit her face like a warm washcloth, and the porch floorboards gave off the smell of hot varnish. But the soft, fresh breeze—unusual for this time of year—lifted the damp wisps along her hairline, and the water pitcher she was hugging chilled the insides of her arms.
Landis had gotten hold of a second chainsaw from somewhere, and he and Earl were slicing the thickest branches into fireplace-size logs. Dane and Ward were hacking off the thinner branches and dragging them to a huge pile down near the street, while Red had set up a chopping block and was splitting the logs into quarters. They all stopped work when Abby arrived. Earl and Landis killed their chainsaws and a ringing silence fell, so that her voice sounded shockingly clear: “Anybody want water?”
“I wouldn’t say no,” Earl told her, and they set down their tools and came over to her. Ward had taken his shirt off, which made him look like an amateur, and he and Dane were deeply flushed. Red, of course, had been working this hard the whole summer, but even he had rivulets of sweat running down his face, and Earl and Landis were so drenched that their blue chambray shirts were almost navy.
She distributed paper cups and then filled them while the men held them out, and they emptied them in one gulp and held them out again before she’d finished the first round. It wasn’t till halfway through the third round that anyone said more than “Thanks.” Then Red asked, “Did Dad get ahold of Mitch, do you know?”
“I think he’s on the phone with him now.”
“I still say we just go ahead and take the whole thing down,” Earl told Red.
“Well, I don’t want Mitch showing up and saying we made his job harder.”
Dane and Abby were looking at each other. Dane’s hair was damp, and he gave off a wonderful smell of clean sweat and tobacco. Abby had a sudden, worrisome thought: she didn’t own any nice underwear. Just plain white cotton underpants and white cotton bras with the tiniest pink rosebud stitched to the center V. She looked away again.
“Hello?”
It was a beefy man in a seersucker suit, parting the azalea hedge that bordered the lawn next door. Twigs crackled under his chalk-white shoes as he walked toward them. “Say, there,” he said when he reached them. He had his eyes fixed specifically on Red.
“Hi, Mr. Barkalow,” Red said.
“Wonder if you realize what time your men started work this morning.”
Landis was the one who answered. “Eight o’clock,” he said.
“Eight o’clock,” Mr. Barkalow repeated, still looking at Red.
Landis said, “That’s when me and Red and Earl here started. The rest of them showed up later.”
“Eight o’clock in the morning,” Mr. Barkalow said. “A Sunday morning. A weekend. Does that strike you as acceptable?”
“Well, it seems okay to me, sir,” Red said in a steady voice.
“Is that right. Eight o’clock on a Sunday morning seems a fine time to run a chainsaw.”
He had ginger eyebrows that bristled out aggressively, but Red didn’t seem intimidated. He said, “I figured most folks would be—”
“Morning, there!” Mr. Whitshank called.
He was striding toward them down the slope of the lawn, wearing a black suit coat that must have been put on in haste. The left lapel was turned wrong, like a dog’s ear flipped inside out. “Fine day!” he said to Mr. Barkalow. “Good to see you out enjoying it.”
“I was just asking your son, Mr. Whitshank, what he considers to be an acceptable hour to run a chainsaw.”
“Oh, why, is there a problem?”
“The problem is that today is Sunday; I don’t know if you’re aware of it,” Mr. Barkalow said.
He had transferred his bushy-browed glare to Mr. Whitshank, who was nodding emphatically as if he couldn’t agree more. “Yes, well, we certainly wouldn’t want to—” he said.
“It is perverse how you people love to make a racket while the rest of us are trying to sleep. You’re hammering on your gutters, you’re drill
ing out your flagstones … Only yesterday, you sawed an entire tree down! A perfectly healthy tree, might I add. And always, always it seems to happen on a weekend.”
Mr. Whitshank suddenly grew taller.
“It doesn’t seem to happen on a weekend; it does happen on a weekend,” he said. “That’s the only time we honest laboring men aren’t busy doing you folks’ work for you.”
“You ought to thank your lucky stars I don’t report you to the police,” Mr. Barkalow said. “They’re bound to have ordinances dealing with this kind of thing.”
“Ordinances! Don’t make me laugh. Just because you all like to lie abed till noon, you and that spoiled son of yours with his big fat—”
“When you think about it,” Red broke in, “it doesn’t really matter if there are ordinances or there aren’t.”
Both men looked at him.
“What matters is, we seem to be waking our neighbors. I’m sorry about that, Mr. Barkalow. We certainly never intended to discommode you.”
“ ‘Discommode’?” his father repeated in a marveling voice.
Red said, “I wonder if we could settle on an hour that’s mutually agreeable.”
“ ‘Mutually agreeable’?” his father echoed.
“Oh,” Mr. Barkalow said. “Well.”
“Does, maybe, ten o’clock sound all right?” Red asked him.
“Ten o’clock!” Mr. Whitshank said.
“Ten?” Mr. Barkalow said. “Oh. Well, even ten is … but, well, I guess we could tolerate ten if we were forced to.”
Mr. Whitshank looked up at the sky as if he were begging for mercy, but Red said, “Ten o’clock. It’s a deal. We’ll make sure to abide by that in the future, Mr. Barkalow.”
“Well,” Mr. Barkalow said. He seemed uncertain. He glanced again at Mr. Whitshank, and then he said, “Well, okay, then. I guess that settles it.” And he turned and walked off toward the hedge.
“Now see what you’ve done,” Mr. Whitshank told Red. “Ten o’clock, for God’s sake! Practically lunchtime!”
Red handed his paper cup to Abby without comment.
Landis said, “Uh, boss?”
“What is it,” Mr. Whitshank said.