“Mary Ella!” I started toward her as she walked down the stairs, but when she saw me, her face registered absolute panic, and she took off at a run in the direction of the path leading to her house. “Mary Ella!” I called again. “Please wait! I want to talk with you!”
She kept running without looking back, the basket over her arm swinging with each step. I wouldn’t chase her. There was no way I could catch up to her now, anyway.
“Hello, there!” Mr. Gardiner came out of the house. “Didn’t see your car.”
I was still watching Mary Ella run toward the path through the woods, and it took me a moment to shift my attention to Mr. Gardiner.
“Hello.” I set my briefcase on the ground and tried to smooth down my hair. I was sure I was a sweaty mess after the last half hour. “That’s just it,” I said. “I ran out of gas on … I’m not sure the name of the road. I can’t believe I didn’t check the gauge before I left home this morning. Eli happened to be driving by and he gave me a ride here.”
He chuckled. “That’s the kind of thing you only let happen once,” he said.
“Could I use your phone to call a garage?” I looked toward the woods again. Mary Ella had disappeared inside them.
Mr. Gardiner followed my gaze. “She came over to see if there was a way I could get her boy back for her.” He shook his head. “Sad situation there.”
“It is,” I agreed. “There are no winners.”
“I appreciated your help with it. It needed to be done.”
I nodded.
“That poor boy,” he said. “He’ll have some mental scars from it all, don’t you think?”
“I hope not,” I said.
“I know Mary Ella and her folks are tore up about him being took away, but the next mishap might have been the last, if you know what I mean.”
“Exactly,” I said, relieved to talk to someone who understood why William had to be removed.
“Well, come on now,” he said, nodding toward his car, where it was parked at the side of the house. “You don’t need no garage,” he said. “I’ve got a gas can in the shelter and we’ll fix you up good as new.”
“Oh, that’s really kind of you, but I don’t want to put you to any trouble.”
“No trouble at all.”
We got in his car and he drove to the shelter, where Eli was unloading whatever he’d had in the truck. Mr. Gardiner got out of the car, and I heard him say something to Eli about the gas can. Eli looked in my direction, but not for long. In a moment, Mr. Gardiner returned with the can. He put it in the trunk and we turned around and headed back toward Deaf Mule Road.
“Mr. Gardiner,” I said, as he turned onto the road. “Eli said something disturbing to me.”
“Eli did? He’s a good boy. Ain’t the type to do no harm. I’ll have a word with him.”
“No, no. I don’t mean anything … like that. I mean, I jumped to the conclusion based on some things Charlotte … Mrs. Werkman had said that Mary Ella’s little boy was … well, his. Eli’s.”
He chuckled again. “I can tell you that ain’t the truth.”
“I said something to him about it, and he said … well, he implied that Mary Ella is actually his sister. He was angry at my accusation, I think, so maybe he was just saying—”
“No, that’s true.” He turned onto the road where my car had run out of gas. I could see it in the distance. “They’re half sister and brother,” he said. “But don’t go spreading that around now, all right? No need to write it in your little notebook there.” He motioned to my briefcase. “Eli shouldn’t have said it.”
“How can that be?” I asked.
“Let’s have a look-see at your car.” He pulled up behind my car and we both got out of his. I watched as he poured gas into my empty tank. Then he checked the tires on the right-hand side to be sure I wasn’t stuck in the sand on the shoulder.
“You’re good as new and can be on your way now,” he said, putting the gas can back in his trunk.
“I can’t thank you enough,” I said, “but Mr. Gardiner, please explain to me about Eli and Mary Ella…” My voice trailed off.
He looked toward the fields in the direction of his house. “You ain’t got to be no scholar to figure it out, now do you? Their daddy, Percy, and Lita Jordan and me … we all knowed each other since we was little. Percy had it bad for Lita, right from when we was kids. Of course, he couldn’t marry her, so he married Violet, who even back then was crazy as a loon, but pretty, too. Looked a little like Mary Ella. The thing was, Violet started suspecting Percy of messin’ around, only she guessed the wrong woman. Thought it was my wife.” He glanced over at me, and I’m sure I looked as shell-shocked as I felt. “When Percy got killed, that’s when Violet cut my wife,” he said. “Violet blamed her. Said he was thinking about her instead of his work.”
“My God,” I said. “So … Eli is Percy Hart’s son? He’s truly Mary Ella’s … and Ivy’s … half brother?”
“Not just Eli. Him, Sheena, Devil, and Avery. All four of ’em. Only one’s not Percy’s and that’s little Rodney.”
I thought of Lita Jordan, who everyone thought had five illegitimate children with five different fathers. “Did she love him? Lita?”
“Yes, ma’am, I sure believe she did. I told him many a time he was looking for trouble, but—” He looked worried all of a sudden. “Now look,” he said, a warning finger in the air, “this don’t go no further than me and you here. I don’t want no more trouble on my farm. We got enough already.”
“Who else knows?” I asked. “Do Ivy and Mary Ella know?”
“Hell no. But Winona, she knows. Percy was her son, and she knew he was pining for Lita from when we was young. She’d smack him around when she’d catch him looking at her. She didn’t figure it out for sure, though, until after Percy was dead and Avery got that eye disease. Winona’s daddy had it, too. It runs in families, so she knew, but she won’t ever admit to nothin’. You could tie her to the tractor and drive her through the tobacco and she wouldn’t say nothin’. My wife … she bears the scar of that misbelief in more ways than one, but we all just keep it quiet.” He gave me a warning look. “And you will, too.”
“There’s no need for me to ever say a thing about it,” I said. “But … I do wonder now who William’s father is? I thought it was Eli.”
“What does it matter? Mary Ella … she’s different, in case you ain’t noticed. She got her pick of boys. And she’s fixed now, so we don’t got to worry about her having another one. Way I look at it, let her enjoy herself. She don’t have much pleasure in her life.”
“No, she doesn’t,” I said. “But it’s not good for her to be so … promiscuous, whether she can get pregnant or not. She could get a venereal disease or just … it’s not good for her self-esteem.”
“Her self-esteem?” He laughed and I knew it was at me. “When you’re wondering if you’ll have enough food for dinner, you ain’t thinking about your self-esteem.”
I smiled. “I guess you’re right,” I said, “although everyone feels one way or another about themselves, don’t they?”
“It’s the other one I worry about now,” he said. “You’ll get Ivy fixed after she has this baby, right?”
I was suddenly uncomfortable talking about Ivy with him. Here we’d talked about the most intimate details of people’s lives, and we’d certainly spoken about Ivy before, but there was something almost desperate in the way he asked the question, and I felt like saying, “What business is it of yours, really?” I felt protective of the little bit of privacy she had left.
But he was the one who controlled their lives, who could snatch their house right out from under them.
“Yes,” I said. “It’ll be taken care of.”
39
Ivy
I had to be real careful sneaking out of the house this time. If Nonnie caught me, I didn’t know what she’d do. I’d gone to bed in my clothes, sneaking under the covers so Mary Ella wouldn’t see, but it
probably didn’t matter. Mary Ella got a blank look in her eyes these days and she don’t care about nothing. She keeps running her hand over the big empty space in our bed that Baby William used to fill. I missed him kicking me during the night. Funny how you could miss something like that. I thought about him all the time. We had to get him back, but I didn’t know how. We didn’t even know where he was and nobody would tell us.
Nonnie was on the sofa like usual, snoring up a storm, and I tiptoed past her and out the door. It was chilly out tonight, so I had to close the front door and I pulled it shut slow and quiet. I didn’t think she heard a thing.
Lita brung over the note with my tea that afternoon, slipping it in my pocket when she pretended she was feeling the baby doing its somersaults. Nobody but me and her was in the kitchen, but she was being real careful about Nonnie finding out, and I ’preciated it.
“Midnight, crick,” was all he wrote, but they was the two most beautiful words I’d read in the three weeks since his last note. Three weeks since he wrote me anything and six weeks since we got to be alone. Last time was when I told him I was having a baby. He’d seen me around the farm since then, but not up close. I wondered what he’d think of how fat I was now. All of it baby fat, though. His baby. I thought of him going to school every day, seeing the other girls there, and I felt right jealous. It was like the whole world was moving forward, taking Henry Allen with it, while I was holding still.
* * *
He was there before me, sitting on the ground in the dark, his flashlight pointing across the crick at the other bank. I couldn’t see no blanket or his radio and I didn’t hear no music, either. He stood up fast when he saw me coming. He rushed up to me and hugged me tight, then he took a step back and touched my belly through my sweater. “Is it okay?” he whispered. “Did I hug you too tight?”
“No,” I said. “You can hug me tight as you want.”
“Listen.” He seemed real nervous. “I only got a few minutes.”
“Where’s the blanket?” I asked.
“I didn’t bring it. We don’t have time. They check on me all night long, Ivy. It’s like I’m in jail. I told them I got a new girlfriend at school, so if you hear anyone say that, it’s not true. Okay?”
It wasn’t really okay. I hated hearing him even say them two words, “new girlfriend.” “Why’d you tell them that?” I asked.
“So they won’t be spying on me every minute,” he said. “I don’t want them to think I still care about you.”
“Do you?” I’d never wondered that before, but too much time had passed now for me to know for sure.
“Ivy! Don’t even ask me that! Of course I do, and I’ve been trying to figure out how we can get married, but we—”
“But what?” I felt so scared. But what?
“I found out we can’t do it without permission. Not till we’re eighteen.”
“Henry Allen!” I clung to his hands where they was between us, right above our baby. I didn’t want to cry. That wouldn’t solve anything.
“Mama and Daddy won’t never say yes,” he said. “I can’t push them. If they knew we was here right now, they’d kick you and your grandma and sister off the farm to get you away from me. They’re ready to do it at the drop of a hat. So we still got to act like we don’t mean nothin’ to each other no more.”
“We can’t wait, Henry Allen!”
“I know, I know.”
“No, you don’t know! You don’t know what they done to Mary Ella and they’re going to do to me!”
“Sh.” He squeezed my hands real tight. I’d never seen him so shook up. “What’re you talking about?
“They fixed it so she can’t have no more babies, and—”
“Who did?”
“Mrs. Werkman. And now Mrs. Forrester’s going to do the same to me.”
“You got to be wrong. How can they do that?”
“They just can. When they said she had that appendix operation … that was a lie. I don’t want them to do it to me, Henry Allen! Please.”
“Sh.” He pressed his fingertips to my lips to shut me up. “When would they do it?” he whispered.
“When I have the baby.”
“Don’t worry,” he said. “I’m saving money for bus tickets to California. We’ll pretend like we’re married when we get there. No one’ll know.”
“But when—”
“Sh, Ivy. I got to get back. You just got to trust me, okay?”
He kissed me quick and picked up his flashlight and went back into the woods, leaving me standing there all alone. I watched the light from his flashlight jump around in the trees and then everything went dark and I knew he’d turned it off in case anybody might see him.
We couldn’t get married. I was sure Nonnie would give permission—she didn’t want another bastard grandbaby. But his parents never would. I knew he wasn’t lying about that. We needed some kind of miracle. He didn’t understand how soon this baby was coming. Thanksgiving was only two months away.
40
Jane
Lois died over the weekend. I’d visited her twice while she was in the hospital. The first time she was almost cheerful, asking me questions about my work and my life, listening attentively to my answers. She didn’t want to talk about herself or her husband or her little daughter, so I did as she wanted and filled the half hour with my own life. She asked me if I’d made friends with any of the other country club wives and I had to admit that I hadn’t, but I promised I would try.
The second time I visited, she was weak and quiet but peaceful, as though she were finished with this life and looking toward the next. Now she was gone, and I felt the loss in my bones. I wished I’d had the chance to know her longer. I had the feeling she would have understood me. Nobody else seemed to these days. I wasn’t even sure I understood myself anymore.
Robert and I sat together through the Monday afternoon funeral and then drove to the country club for a reception.
“I’ve made my plane reservations for the medical conference in Atlanta,” Robert said as we drove. “Are you sure you’ll be okay with me gone all week?”
“I’ll be fine,” I said. His family was in Atlanta, so he planned to attend the medical conference during the week and then spend the weekend with his parents. I didn’t want to admit, even to myself, how much I was looking forward to the time alone. I wouldn’t have to worry about getting home late or saying something that might annoy him. The littlest things could set him off. We hadn’t been getting along very well before the lice, but since that fiasco, I was walking on eggshells.
The reception was quite casual, despite the country club setting. People milled around the room nibbling hors d’oeuvres from the buffet table and balancing glasses of iced tea or punch. As usual, I felt like a fish out of water. I watched the other girls in the room. They all seemed so connected to one another, while I stayed close to Robert’s side.
When it was time to leave, Robert and I still hadn’t had a chance to speak to Gavin. He’d been surrounded by family and friends all afternoon, and as we approached him, I felt awkward. Normal, I thought. Nobody knew what to say to someone who’d just lost the love of his life, for that’s what I was certain Lois had been to him.
Gavin was holding his and Lois’s sleepy little two-year-old daughter in his arms, so Robert didn’t try to shake his hand. Instead, he patted his shoulder. “Please accept our condolences,” he said, sounding a little stiff, but there was warmth behind the words. I knew he liked Gavin.
“I’m so sorry, Gavin,” I said. “I was glad I got to know Lo—”
The little girl suddenly reached for me. Instinctively, I raised my arms to her and she moved into them.
“Brenna!” Gavin said with a laugh, then to me, “I’m so sorry. She’s very tired.”
“Oh, it’s fine,” I said. Brenna rested her head on my shoulder, and I patted her back. Her brown hair was soft against my cheek and it smelled sweetly of baby shampoo. Gavin reached forward as if t
o extract her from my arms, but I turned away. “She’s fine,” I said. “I’ve got her.” I felt Robert’s hand on the small of my back.
“This is all very confusing to her,” Gavin said. “I probably should have left her home with a sitter, but … I wasn’t sure what to do, really.”
“I’m glad she’s here,” I said. “Someday she’ll ask about today and you can tell her she was here. That she got to say good-bye to her mother.”
Gavin’s blue eyes filled, and Robert squeezed my elbow and I had the feeling he thought I’d said too much. “We should go,” he said.
I gently handed Brenna back to her father and his eyes locked warmly with mine. “Thank you,” he said quietly. “Thank you.”
* * *
In the car, Robert was quiet while I talked about how lovely the service had been and how much I would miss Lois, but I was sure that what was on our both our minds were those last few minutes with Gavin and his daughter.
“It was so amazing how she went right to you,” Robert said finally. “It made me realize what a great mother you’ll be. You took her into your arms so easily, like you did it every day.”
We were driving straight into the setting sun—a ball of red fire. I leaned my head against the car window, remembering how light and precious Brenna had felt in my arms. “She’s darling, poor little thing,” I said.
“Jane,” Robert said in a voice that made me sit up straight again, “I think I’d like you to see an ob-gyn guy I know. I’m worried you haven’t gotten pregnant yet.”
“It hasn’t even been three months,” I said.
“Well, I just want to make sure there’s nothing wrong.”
I leaned against the window again, and all at once, I realized how wrong I was to deceive him. I’d thought it was so unfair not to tell Mary Ella and Ivy why they wouldn’t be able to have more children, yet I’d left my husband in the dark about our own inability to conceive. I pressed my fist to my mouth, horrified with myself. What was wrong with me that I could sympathize with the feelings of near strangers and not with my husband?