A Slipping-Down Life

15

In the hospital lobby, on a sectional vinyl couch, sat Mrs. Harrison and Mrs. Willoughby, the old lady who lived next door to Evie’s father. They stood up when Evie entered — a bad sign. Evie and Mr. Harrison clicked toward them across polished tiles, between potted palms and standing ash trays. As they came up to the two women, Mrs. Harrison tugged her skirt down and straightened her belt and smoothed the gray pompom of hair on her forehead. “Evie, dear—” she said. Her tone made everything clear, there was no need to say more, but Evie was in the grip of a stony stubbornness and she refused to understand. “How is he?” she asked.

“He passed, dear,” Mrs. Willoughby said. Mrs. Willoughby was as small and as dumpy as a cupcake, raising her creased hands to her bosom and furrowing her powdery face into sympathy lines. Everyone else was small too. The scene was miniaturized and crystal-clear, like something seen through very strong prescription glasses. Lights were sharp pinpoints. Sounds were tinny.

“Would you like to see him?” Mrs. Harrison asked.

“No, thank you,” said Evie.

“It happened not long after you left, Bill. I wished you had known, so as to prepare Evie. I thought of coming out after you.”

“Well,” said Mr. Harrison. “This is very very sad news. Very sad. Sam Decker was as fine a man as I’ve known. How long have we known him, Martha?”

“Oh, years. Since back before — Evie, we will expect you to come stay the night. You don’t want to go all the way out to your place again, do you?”

“I think I’ll go to my father’s,” Evie said.

“Oh, no, dear. Not alone.”

“I’d rather.”

“Well, anything you say. If it were me, though—”

They drove there in Mr. Harrison’s car. Mrs. Willoughby sat in back, and Evie was urged to wedge herself in the front seat between the Harrisons. Touches kept grating against her — Mr. Harrison’s elbow as he shifted gears, Mrs. Harrison’s sharp-edged purse, her cold gloved fingers patting Evie’s wrist. Every now and then Mrs. Harrison clicked her tongue and shook her head. “Such a patient man, he was,” she said. “Oh, and all those troubles. First his wife passing — well.”

“He was just leaning across the fence, like,” Mrs. Willoughby said. “He said, ‘Mrs. Willoughby, all my potted plants are dying. I don’t understand it.’ ‘It’s that maid of yours,’ I told him. ‘Not that I have any proof, but in my heart I feel she neglects them. Yellowy leaves never pinched off, a sort of unwatered look to the soil. I could be wrong,’ I said. Or meant to say, but then he took in a breath and opened his mouth and slumped over. I couldn’t get straight what had happened. I said, ‘Mr. Decker? Why, Mr. Decker!’ The fence held him up. He seemed to be resting.”

“Now, now,” said Mrs. Harrison.

“ ‘All my potted plants are dying,’ he told me. Oh, little did he know!”

“Now, now.”

They stopped in front of Evie’s father’s house, where all the lights still blazed. At first they planned to come in and keep her company, but Evie wouldn’t allow it. “I’d rather be alone,” she said.

“Oh, no, dear, not at a time like this. I know it seems you’d rather. But we’ll be quiet as mice. I’ll just make tea and not say a word—”

“No. I mean it.”

“Well, maybe Mrs. Willoughby, then.”

“Oh, I’d love to!” Mrs. Willoughby said.

“No. Thank you.”

“Whatever you say, of course,” said Mrs. Harrison. “I would think, myself — but that’s not important. Just try and get some rest, and we’ll be by to talk about the arrangements in the morning.”

“Arrangements?” Evie said. She thought of song arrangements, then furniture, then flowers in vases. Meanwhile Mrs. Harrison and Mrs. Willoughby looked at each other in silence, as if there were no possible synonym they could think of to offer her. “Oh. Arrangements,” Evie said finally.

“Will you call us if you need anything?”

“Yes. And thank you for all you’ve done.”

“He was a mighty fine man,” Mr. Harrison said suddenly. He coughed and looked down at the steering wheel.

Evie and Mrs. Willoughby climbed out of the car and watched it drive off. Against the lighted house Mrs. Willoughby was only a silhouette, topped by a scribble of hair. Charms jingled when she moved. “There is the fence,” she said. “He was leaning over it, like. I was standing in that patch of earth, wishing it was spring and time to plant petunias. He came up slow. Leaned his elbows on that fence and said …”

She padded away, maybe still talking. Evie waited until she was lost in the darkness before she climbed her own porch steps.

The house had not yet heard of the death. Clocks ticked, the refrigerator whirred, a desk lamp lit an ash tray with a pipe resting on it and the short-wave radio was speaking Spanish. Evie clicked the radio off and then moved through the house, still in her coat. She didn’t touch anything. She looked at the dishes in the kitchen sink, then at the bed upstairs which Clotelia had left unmade. She leaned forward to study an oval photograph above the bureau: a woman in a high-necked dress, perfect creamy features curled over the back of a chair, a tail of hair tied low on her neck with a wide black bow. An ancestor, maybe; no one could tell her any more. Under her father’s bed two socks lay like curled mice, startling her.

Her old room held a bulletin board, a pennant-covered wastebasket, and the upstairs telephone. Everything else had been borne away by Drum in the U-Haul-It truck. Evie sat down on the floor and pulled the telephone by its tail until it rested between her feet. Then she dialed Clotelia’s number.

“Clotelia?” she said.

“Who’s this?”

“It’s Evie.”

“Oh. Hey.”

“I’m calling with bad news, Clotelia. My father died.”

There was silence. Then Clotelia said, “Oh, my Lord have mercy.”

“It was a heart attack.”

“Well, Lord have mercy. That poor man. Was he all alone when he passed?”

“He was talking to Mrs. Willoughby.”

“Her. I could think of better to die with.”

“Well, I was wondering. Could you come stay the night with me? I’ll be here till tomorrow.”

“Sure thing,” said Clotelia. “I be right over. Well, Lord. Did you ever?”

“I’ll see you then,” Evie said.

She hung up and dialed again. “David?” she said.

“This is his brother. David ain’t here.”

“Well, this is Evie Decker. Could I speak to Drum Casey? He’s out in your shed.”

“Shed? What shed is that?”

“Your tool shed.”

“Is that a joke or something?”

“He’s out in your tool shed.”

“What would he be doing out there?”

“Oh, Lord, I don’t know,” Evie said. “Just messing around. Give him a message then, I don’t care.”

“Well, I will if I ever run into him.”

“Say my father died. Say I’m sorry but I can’t bother sending the police after him right now and I’ll see him in the morning.”

“What?”

“Just tell him to come on home, will you?”

“Oh, well, if I—”

She hung up and started wandering through the rooms again. Now the house was quieting down. Beneath the surface noise of clocks and motors there was a deep, growing silence that layered in from the walls, making her feel clumsy and out of place. Her shoes clacked against the floor boards. Her full coat snatched at ash trays and figurines as she passed them. In the living room her mother smiled hopefully from a filigree frame, her hair tightly crimped and her lipstick too dark, remembered now by no living person. Her father’s textbook lay in an armchair on top of a sheaf of graded quizzes. And everywhere she looked there were props to pass time with: completed crossword puzzles, a face made out of used matches, a Reader’s Digest vocabulary test neatly filled out in pencil.

Clotelia arrived wearing a long striped rope, like one of the three wise men. Her head was wrapped in a silk turban. Darts of gold dangled from her ears. “My Lord, I can’t take it in,” she said. “The news don’t stick in my head. Well, been one of those days, I might have known. Where is your bangs, may I ask?”

“I’m pinning them back now,” Evie said.

“You look like trash. Go comb them down. If you want I fix you some cocoa and then you tell me how it come about.”

“There’s nothing to tell. I wasn’t there,” Evie said.

But Clotelia only waved a hand and swept on into the kitchen — swept literally, gathering with the hem of her robe all the dust balls she had left behind that day. “Now then,” she said as she took down the cocoa box. “Did he pass peaceful? What was his last words?”

“I wasn’t there, I said. He wondered why his potted plants were dying.”

“Oh, that poor man. Blamed me, I bet.”

“He didn’t say.”

“You don’t look good, Evie. How far along are you?”

“What?”

“How far? Two months? Three?”

“Three, almost.”

“Oh, my, and never told your daddy. What is it makes you act like that?” She lit the flame under a saucepan of milk. “Well, they is a silver-backed mirror in the guest room he always said he would will to me. He tell you that?”

“No, but you can have it anyway. I don’t care,” Evie said.

“He give you the house, I reckon. Well, I will say this: He always was a gentleman. Never cause me trouble, like others I could name. Now I got to find me another job.”

“You could get yourself a factory job,” Evie said.

“Oh, you be roping me in to take care of that baby of yours, I expect.”

“Are you crazy? You might sacrifice him up at a Black Panther rally.”

“Listen to that. A death night and you talk as mean-mouthed as you ever did. Here, drink your cocoa.”

She passed Evie a flowered mug and then leaned back against the sink, folding her arms in her long flowing sleeves. Her hands, striped a soft glowing yellow at the outsides of her palms, gripped her elbows. “And now I hear you quit school,” she said.

“Who said that? I never quit.”

“Been weeks since you been, I hear.”

“Well,” said Evie. She ran her finger around the rim of her mug. It was true; she couldn’t remember the last time she had attended a class. “Anyway, I’m starting back next week,” she said.

“You separated, too, ain’t you,” said Clotelia.

“Separated?”

“From that husband of yours.”

“No, I’m not separated.”

“Where’s he at, then?”

“Oh, at home, I guess.”

“Why ain’t he here, in your time of trouble? Or why ain’t you there?”

“It’s complicated,” Evie said.

“Oh, I just bet it is. No point in a husband if you ain’t going to lean on him during stress, now, is there?”

“Clotelia, for heaven’s sake,” Evie said. “Will you stop just harping at me? Will you leave me be?”

“Well. Sorry,” said Clotelia. She unfolded her arms and gazed down at her fingernails, shell-pink with half-moons left unpainted. “If I’d of thought, I’d of brought my mother,” she said.

Evie put her head in her hands.

“My mother is a consoler at the Baptist Church. She go to all the funerals and console the mourners till they is cheered up.”

“How would she go about that?” Evie asked in a muffled voice.

“Oh, just hug them and pat their shoulders, offer them Kleenex. How else would she do?”

Then Clotelia, who was not like her mother at all, turned her back and rinsed out the cocoa pan, and Evie cupped her hands around her mug for warmth.