I hadn’t paid much attention when Charlotte was driving us around Grace County, so I shouldn’t have been surprised when I faced an unfamiliar fork in the road after leaving the Gardiner farm and had no idea which way to go. Fifty-fifty chance it would be the right way, I thought, and I turned left. Ivy was on my mind as I drove. I felt a little shaky about my conversation with her. I’d rushed into asking her about her father way too quickly. Such a sensitive topic and I just dove in. I’d made her sad and hadn’t meant to do that. Still, I could tell the moment she’d decided to trust me and I’d felt that trust deep in my bones. She was brighter than I’d expected. An IQ of eighty? That test had to be wrong. I wished she didn’t have epilepsy. Was it so awful, having a baby if you were epileptic? Some women did it, didn’t they? Plus, it seemed like she’d stopped having seizures. Yes, her children would probably end up on welfare, just like her, but I hated being the person who prevented her from ever having a family if that’s what she wanted.
I came to another fork, this one even less familiar than the first. I made a right, and before I knew it, I was utterly lost, surrounded by woods so dense I could barely see the sky. I remembered the one and only time my family went camping. I’d been twelve, which would have made Teresa ten. She and I became separated from my parents in the woods. Within seconds, we were completely disoriented. I remembered holding her hand, trying to be the brave, reassuring older sister to keep her calm even though I felt panicky myself. With every step we took, I didn’t know if we were moving toward my parents or away from them. Finally, we stopped walking and shouted for my parents, and after what seemed like a lifetime, they found us.
I had some of that same panic now, realizing I hadn’t seen another car for at least twenty minutes. I drove another mile or two along a narrow road before deciding I’d better try retracing my steps. I turned around, but the road suddenly seemed full of forks and turns, and with each one I guessed, realizing after a half mile or so that I’d most likely guessed wrong. I finally pulled over and checked my map, only to discover that the little road I was on was nowhere to be found on that creased sheet of paper. I was supposed to meet Robert at his office for a dinner date at six and I wondered if I would make it—or if I’d ever get out of the woods at all.
Far ahead of me, I saw a man and dog walk out of the trees, the man’s green jacket nearly blending into the undergrowth. I pressed on the gas and drove forward until I was close enough for him to become aware of me. He turned and looked at me over his shoulder. His face was weathered, and he carried a shotgun at his side.
I pulled up next to him and leaned over to roll down the passenger-side window. “Excuse me,” I said. “I’m trying to find my way to Ridley Road.”
“You’re a long way from Ridley Road.”
“Can you point me in the right direction?”
He told me several turns I’d need to make, and I thanked him and began driving again, determined this time to pay attention. I looked at him in my rearview mirror as I pulled away. He was shaking his head slowly, and I imagined he thought a girl like me had no business driving around the back roads of Grace County.
* * *
By some miracle, I arrived at Robert’s office a few minutes before six o’clock. I parked at the curb in front, admiring the white shingle that stood outside the small brick building. ROBERT FORRESTER, M.D., PEDIATRICS. I’d hoped to have time to run home and change my clothes, but that wasn’t to be. I took off my saddle shoes and put on the black pumps I kept in the car, but I was still wearing the casual skirt and blouse I’d had on all day. I knew I was a dusty mess, especially after sitting on the dirt by that barn with Ivy.
Robert’s receptionist, Sandra, greeted me when I walked into the waiting room.
“He’s just wrapping up,” she said. “You want to have a seat?”
The waiting room was filled with color: sky-blue walls, Kelly-green carpet, and chairs that looked like they came out of a crayon box. I sat down in an orange chair. I had the feeling Sandra was watching me out of the corner of her eye, most likely appalled that I was going out to dinner looking as though I’d been doing farmwork all day.
The door leading to the examining room opened, and I watched Robert walk into the hall with a little girl and a woman. The girl’s cheeks were red as though she’d been crying, and Robert squatted down in front of her, saying something to her that made her nod and then laugh. He gave her shoulder a squeeze and I felt so much love for him. He was wonderful with his patients. Someday, he would be wonderful with our own children. He got to his feet and spotted me, acknowledging me with a nod and a smile, then he disappeared into his office. I waited until the little girl and her mother had left before walking into his office and shutting the door behind me.
He was writing notes at his desk, and he nodded toward one of the chairs.
“I love seeing you with your patients,” I said as I sat down. “You’re so kind with them. So good with children.”
He smiled. “That little girl you saw might not agree,” he said, still writing his notes. “Had to give her a booster shot today and she wasn’t very happy with me.” He closed the folder on his desk and sat back, a frown replacing his smile. “You’re not dressed for dinner,” he said.
“I didn’t have time to go home and change,” I said. “Sorry.”
“I thought you were going to be done early today. You said you’d have time to go home and freshen up.”
The way he said it made me feel as though I smelled sweaty. Maybe I did. I touched my hair, hoping I’d managed to comb it into reasonable shape. “I got lost coming home,” I said. “I think I saw every road in Grace County.”
He raised his eyebrows. “I don’t like you driving alone in an area you don’t know.”
“Oh, it was nothing,” I said. “I finally saw a hunter and asked him the way to Ridley Road, and—”
“A hunter? With a gun?”
“Well, yes, hunters usually have guns.” I smiled, but he wasn’t smiling back. He just shook his head.
“You’re the craziest woman,” he said. It was the sort of thing that, if he’d said it a year ago, would have sounded like a compliment. Now that I was his wife, “crazy” was not so appealing.
“Well, anyway, I found my way out but I was running late, so I’m sorry I’m not gussied up, but—”
“You look great,” he said. “You always look great. Just … I was hoping we could go to the City Club for dinner tonight, and instead it looks like we’ll be at Cooper’s Barbecue.”
“Sorry,” I said again. “How about I treat tonight? I’m making money so I can—”
“We don’t need your money, Jane.” He scowled, getting to his feet. “Don’t insult me that way, all right?”
“Sorry,” I said for the third or fourth time. “I didn’t think offering to buy you dinner was an insult.”
“Let’s go,” he said, putting his arm lightly around my shoulders, and I hoped Sandra thought we looked like a happily married couple as we walked out of the office. I wasn’t feeling like one.
* * *
“The country club ball is less than two weeks away,” he said as we ate hush puppies in our booth at Cooper’s. “Will you still have a chance to buy a dress and get your hair done?”
I smiled, glad the storm between us seemed to have passed. “You’re really excited about that, aren’t you?” I asked. He mentioned something about the ball nearly every day.
“It’s my first chance to show off my new bride,” he said.
“You’re so sweet,” I said. “Mom and I plan to shop next week and I’ll make a hair appointment, I promise.” I knew I was lucky to have a husband who cared about my clothes and my hair. Most wouldn’t even notice. “Should I have them do my hair up or down?”
“Up,” he said. “It’s so sexy up.” He reached across the table and smoothed his hand over the side of my head. “You have beautiful hair,” he said.
“Even after a day in the field?”
&n
bsp; “Even after,” he said.
The waitress set our plates in front of us, and Robert began dousing his pork with barbecue sauce from the bottle on the table. “So what did you do today without your supervisor with you?” he asked.
“It was good,” I said, sipping my sweet tea. “Really good. I was nervous at first about being on my own, but then I really enjoyed it. I took some clothes to a family. Shoes for the boys.” I imagined he pictured little boys, not the three big colored boys who had intimidated me at first. I would let him hold on to his image. “I had a good talk with their mother. Before that, I met with the farmer to start evaluating one of my clients for the Eugenics Program and he was helpful.” I lifted a forkful of coleslaw. “And then I met with the client herself.”
“What’s wrong?”
I stopped the fork before it reached my mouth. “What do you mean?”
“It’s like a dark cloud passed over your face when you said the word ‘client.’”
“Really?” I set down the fork, touched that he was that sensitive to my emotions. “Well.” I wrinkled my nose. “I guess I’m starting to feel uncomfortable about that case.”
“How come?”
“Oh, everything. Remember I told you about the seventeen-year-old girl Charlotte had sterilized?”
“Right. And you have to do something to get the sister sterilized? Is that the one you’re talking about?”
“Exactly. They’re so needy, Robert. The girl’s only fifteen and she’s running the household. At least it seems that way to me. She’s the caretaker. Her grandmother is marginal. Her sister—”
“Marginal?” He raised his eyebrows, a half smile on his lips.
I laughed. “I guess I’ve picked up the lingo.” It made me happy that the word slipped so easily from my tongue. “Anyhow, the family’s a mess.” I took a bite of the vinegary barbecue, remembering Ivy calling Charlotte a magician for knowing Mary Ella needed her appendix out. Thinking about that deception killed my appetite and I set down my fork again. I didn’t want to tell Robert about that. He’d say it was unethical and then I’d have to defend Charlotte and the department and I wasn’t sure I could. I probably didn’t have all the facts. “The older sister’s little boy has prickly heat and she accidentally put her grandmother’s arthritis salve on his rash.”
“You’re kidding.” His jaw dropped. “That poor kid.”
“He might need to be removed from the home,” I said. “They all love him so much, though. I hate the idea.”
“Yes, but the needs of that child are paramount, Jane. Next time, the mistake could be much worse.”
“I know,” I said.
He added a little more sauce to his barbecue. “It sounds like everybody in that household should be neutered,” he said, and I had the feeling he wasn’t kidding.
“I can see how the Eugenics Program is a good thing in some cases, but I’m not sure it would be in this girl’s.” I toyed with my coleslaw. “I sort of see myself in her,” I said, “and I wouldn’t want someone else making that sort of decision about my life.”
He set down the bottle of sauce. “How can you say that?” he asked. “You live in Hayes Barton, for heaven’s sake. She lives in the armpit of the country with a crazy mother and wacky sister and brother—”
“No, it’s the grandmother. And she has no brother. You’re thinking of her nephew. Her sister’s two-year-old—”
“It doesn’t matter, Jane. Comparing your life to theirs is insulting to me. I’m trying to provide a good living for us. We have a beautiful home and every damn creature comfort you could want. How can you possibly compare yourself to them?”
“I’m sorry if I sounded like I don’t appreciate all you do for us.” I pressed my hands together in my lap. “I love our home and everything, but I wasn’t talking about that. I was talking about…” How to make him understand? “Yes, she’s very, very poor. And no, I can’t relate to that. But she’s a human being. All these people I’m working with are human beings. Just like me.”
“Not just like you.”
I was getting angry. “Just like me,” I said, “and like you, too, in that they’re people. We’re all people. I don’t care how much money they have or we have or what color anyone’s skin is or how smart they are or aren’t. When I say I see myself in her, I mean I see a teenage girl with a sister she loves and worries about and I see her trying to figure out who she is and what she wants and—”
“Listen to me, Jane.” His voice was much quieter and controlled than mine and I realized I’d been loud. “This is all wrong,” he said. “You are all wrong for this job. If you don’t believe me, talk to your supervisor or someone in charge over there. They’ll say just what I’m saying—that you’re relating too much to these people.” Red splotches had formed high on his cheekbones. I couldn’t remember ever seeing that in his face before. “You’re a sweet person,” he said, “and that allows you to get too caught up in their problems. It’s not good for you. It’s not good for us.”
“Look,” I said, trying to make my voice as reasonable as his, “this was my first day alone, so maybe I got carried away. It will be fine. I’ll be fine.”
“There’s no reason on God’s green earth why you need to be doing this.”
“I’ll be fine,” I repeated. I would keep everything about my job to myself from now on. It wasn’t safe to talk about it with him. It only led to bad feelings on both our sides. “Let’s talk about something else.”
“Good idea,” he said.
But neither of us seemed to have anything to say, and we ate the rest of our meal in silence.
18
Ivy
I knew what the words “playing with fire” meant and I knew that’s what me and Henry Allen was doing. I sat by the crick at ten to nine, waiting for him, the note he left me that morning scrunched up in my hand. “They’re going to a church supper,” he wrote. “Crick at 9.” So here I was, feeling like him and me was risking everything to be together. For the past week, we didn’t even dare look at each other. I didn’t think I could take it anymore and when I saw that little scrap of white at the bottom of the fence post, I could of jumped for joy.
I tossed a twig into the crick, but it was too dark to see it land in the water. “Ivy.” He said my name in a whisper I hardly heard, but I turned around and there he was, coming through the path in the woods, pointing his flashlight toward the ground. I ran to him and threw my arms around his neck, kissing him all over his face. He laughed, dropping the blanket and his radio and flashlight. “Yeah, I missed you, too,” he said, and then he gave me a good long kiss like the one in the barn that started the whole mess.
I ducked out of his arms. “Let’s not do that right off,” I said, bending down to pick up the blanket. “I want you to tell me everything.” I opened the blanket over the mossy ground above the crick and he helped me lay it out. “What did they do to you? What did they say?”
He picked up his flashlight and radio. “First things first,” he said, holding out the radio. “See this radio?”
It looked like the same radio he brung every time we met. “What about it?” I asked.
“It’s yours.”
I sucked in my breath. “Honest?”
“Honest. I bought it for you yesterday when me and Mama went to Ridley. Had to sneak away from her to get it.”
I took it from him like it was made of glass. “You’re the sweetest boy.” I kissed him. “I love you, Henry Allen Gardiner.”
“So, put on a station,” he said, sitting down on the blanket.
I sat next to him, my body right up against his. “Show me how.”
I shined the flashlight on the dial while he found the station we always listened to on his radio. WKIX. “Sixteen Candles” was playing, and Henry Allen started singing along with the part about being his “teenage queen.” His voice wasn’t real good and it made me laugh. I felt like I hadn’t really laughed in a year.
“I can’t believe it’s
mine,” I said, taking it back from him. “I never had nothing so special before.”
“You should have plenty of special things,” he said.
I looked at him, wishing I could see him better. “What did they do to you?” I asked. “What did they say?”
“Lie back and I’ll tell you everything,” he said.
I put the radio on the blanket next to me and then we laid down on our backs, looking at the million stars God put in the black sky. The tops of the trees made a picture frame around them and it was the most beautiful thing. Henry Allen held my hand and after a week of terrible things happening, I finally felt some peace.
“Did you get in trouble?” he asked. “I didn’t know if they told your grandma or not.”
“Oh, they told her for sure. She beat me with her cane.”
“Oh no.”
“It wasn’t too bad. I was in bed, so she did it through the cover and I had on my winter nightgown plus she ain’t—isn’t—so strong.”
“Why’d you have on your winter nightgown?”
I knew he’d seen me after the water made my nightgown invisible. It sure wasn’t the first time he saw me like that, but I still didn’t want to bring it up and put that picture of me in his mind, with his mama standing right there. I didn’t want to remember it, neither. “I just did,” I said. “Lucky, too, ’cause it didn’t hurt so much. Then she yelled and called me ‘trash’ and—”
“You ain’t trash,” he said.
“And she said your mama and daddy wouldn’t take me to church no more.”
“That’s true,” he said.
“They think I’m trash, too, don’t they,” I said. “They look down on me now.”
He was quiet long enough that I knew it was true. “I don’t care what they think. I know better.”
“I don’t like seeing your daddy now,” I said.
“He’s mad, all right, but Mama’s worse,” he said.
“Did your daddy whup you?” I asked.
“With his belt. He ain’t done that since I was twelve. I just stood there and took it to get it over with. The real punishment was seeing that barn gone,” he said. “All that work for all them months, gone up in the blink of an eye. It was insured and so was the tobacco, but that ain’t—”