Bent Road

Chapter 13

Holding her hands behind her back and taking small sideways steps, Evie edges toward Grandma Reesa’s living room. Everyone else is sitting at Grandma’s kitchen table, talking about how upset they are that Uncle Ray came to the house last night wanting Aunt Ruth’s pie and a jump for his truck. Three times, Mama has told Daddy what a fine job Daniel did watching over all the ladies of the house, but Daniel is still feeling bad about it because he pulls away when Mama tries to brush back his bangs. In between chopping up a chunk of meat, Grandma Reesa keeps filling everyone’s coffee cup, and Mama frowns every time Grandma drops another sugar cube in Daddy’s. Aunt Ruth sits with her hands folded in her lap, not saying much of anything. Occasionally, she lifts her hands from her lap, wraps them around her coffee mug and takes a sip.

“Maybe you should go along and play upstairs, Evie,” Mama says.

Evie unclasps her hands, bites her lower lip and says, “Okay.”

“Mind the stairs in those stocking feet,” Grandma Reesa calls out.

At the sound of Grandma’s voice, Evie stops running and breaks into a slide that sends her floating through Grandma’s overstuffed living room. She sweeps past the coffee table, knocking over a frame, rattling a few of Grandma’s knickknacks, and stirring up the sour, moldy smell that always hangs over Grandma’s house. At the bottom of the staircase, she grabs the small plastic tote that usually holds her favorite doll’s dresses, the ones that Aunt Ruth sews for her. With a running start, she takes the stairs two at time, slides down the narrow hallway on the second floor and is breathing heavily when she pulls Aunt Eve’s door closed behind her.

Celia waits until she hears Evie’s footsteps overhead before asking her next question. “You know him best, Ruth. Was he sober?”

Daniel stands. “Barely,” he says, stepping away from Celia and leaning against the refrigerator.

“What do you know about being barely sober?” Elaine asks. She is sitting across from Celia, and as she speaks, she gazes up at Jonathon, who is standing behind her. She looks like a woman about to be proposed to and Jonathon like a man about to do the asking.

“I know plenty,” Daniel says. “I know I was there and you weren’t.”

Jonathon takes Elaine’s hand, pats it and says, “I’d guess Daniel knows what he’s talking about.”

“He was sober,” Ruth says, nodding at Daniel. “Just barely.”

“Well, that’s it then,” Arthur says. “He’s back.”

Reesa, standing near her kitchen sink, reaches into an overhead cabinet, and as she takes down the saltshaker and seasons the cubed steak she has laid out on a cookie sheet, she leans back and whispers to Celia, “You should salt the meat before you grind it. Not after.” And then, in a louder voice, “I think Ruth should move here. Farther away has to be better. Let the dust settle for a while.” She sets aside the salt and, as she takes a bag of bread crumbs from the freezer, she says, “You do know how to make bread crumbs, don’t you?”

Celia takes a deep breath and smiles. “Yes, Reesa. I do.”

“Ruth isn’t moving here,” Arthur says.

Ruth exhales a little too loudly, which makes Celia chuckle. She presses her lips together when Arthur glances at her.

“I’ll help out however I can, Arthur,” Jonathon says.

“What was that for?” Elaine asks because she, like Celia, saw Daniel roll his eyes at Jonathon.

“Nothing,” Daniel says, studying his dirty, chipped nails when Arthur looks up at him.

Reesa finishes scattering the bread crumbs over the cubed meat. “Do you want to watch, Celia?”

From her seat at the kitchen table, Celia says, “I can see fine from here. Thank you.”

“Can we forget about the meat for a minute?” Arthur says.

“When you do this yourself,” Reesa says, leaning toward Celia as if no one can hear, “you should freeze the meat first, after you’ve cubed it. Makes the grinding easier.”

Celia flashes another smile and the meat grinder begins to whine.

“Are we done with the meat, everyone?”

Reesa, breathing heavily from the effort it takes to turn the hand crank, ignores the question.

“We’re done,” Celia says.

“This is bad,” Arthur says. “He’s awful close now, and pretty soon, you’ll be big as a barn.”

Celia exhales, nodding as Reesa tilts the bowl of ground meat so Celia can see what it’s supposed to look like. “She won’t be big as a barn,” Celia says. “We can still hide that peanut for a few months.”

Nearly knocking Daniel to the floor when he stands, Arthur pinches his brows at him as if Daniel is somehow always in the way. “And what then? A half a mile away, Celia. What then?”

“Why are you angry with me? I didn’t invite the man back.”

“I didn’t say I was angry with you. I said…”

“Please,” Ruth says, pushing back from the table with one hand and holding the other over her stomach. “Don’t argue. Maybe Mother is right. Maybe I should live here. It is a good bit farther away.”

“You plan on staying locked up here for good?” Arthur says. “Never going to church again? Never going to the store? That,” he says, pointing at her stomach, “will be hard to hide in a very short time.”

“That’s uncalled for, Arthur,” Celia says, starting to stand, but Ruth holds up a hand that stops her.

“I understand what you’re saying, Arthur. Really, I do. But I’m not your problem to solve. Let me move here with Mother. It will be easier. I’ve done it before. Lived here for a time.” She pauses. “Lived here until things quieted down. Besides, Ray was sober. Maybe he’ll stay that way.”

Daniel, one foot crossed lazily over the other, clears his throat. “Ian says some folks think Uncle Ray did something to Julianne. He says folks think Uncle Ray is that crazy.”

“Ray didn’t do anything to that girl,” Arthur says, leaning against the wall. “Man’s a damn fool and a drunk, but he didn’t take that child. Folks are just trying to piece together the past.”

“How do you know that, Arthur?” Celia says, feeling that she should believe her husband, have faith in him, know that he’ll protect his family. But since the moment Ray stood on her porch, his one good eye staring at the buttons on her blouse, she doesn’t feel any of those things anymore. She doesn’t believe. She’s heard the murmurs when she and Ruth walk through the deli in Palco, seen the sideways glances. More and more, people believe it. They believe Ray is the reason Julianne Robison has never come home.

“How can you be so sure?” she says. “We should be cautious, more mindful.”

Outside, a truck rambles down Reesa’s driveway, stops and idles near the garage.

“Think your ride is here, Dan,” Jonathon says, stepping back from the table for a better view out the kitchen window. “Yep, it’s Gene Bucher.”

“Can I go, Mom?”

Celia nods, motioning for him not to forget his overnight bag.

“Your toothbrush is in the side pocket,” she calls out as the screened door slams. “And mind your manners.”

When the truck passes by on its way back to Bent Road, Arthur sits again, but this time, instead of pressing his back straight and sitting with one foot cocked over the opposite knee, he leans forward and rests his head in his hands.

“Ray didn’t do anything to Julianne Robison.” He looks up at Celia, holds her gaze. “He didn’t do it.” He stares at her until she lowers her eyes. “And please don’t you start talking about leaving,” he says, turning toward Ruth. “You know damn well I can’t have you living in this house.”

The meat crank stops.

“I’ll stay,” Ruth says. “But only if you promise to listen to Celia. Don’t be so sure of what you don’t really know.”

“Fair enough,” Arthur says. “And in the meantime, no one, I mean no one, breathes a word about this baby.” He scans the table, fixing his eyes on each person for a moment before moving on to the next. “I need some time to figure this out.”

Celia smiles until the meat grinder begins to squeal again.

Evie opens Aunt Eve’s closet slowly so that it doesn’t make any noise, lays her tote bag on the floor and walks across the room to make sure the bedroom door is latched. On the table near the closet, the Virgin Mary stands, holding out her new hands, the ones Daddy glued on after Evie told him that Aunt Eve would surely be upset if they didn’t fix her statue. Daddy asked Grandma Reesa first. She looked sad about it, but nodded and handed Daddy a tube of glue from the kitchen junk drawer. Evie runs a finger over a tiny spot of glue that Daddy didn’t wipe clean. It has dried into a hard, clear bubble. Pressing on the door twice, Evie tiptoes back to the closet, lowers to her knees and unhooks the buckles on her tote bag one at a time.

Evie tries to love all of Aunt Eve’s dresses the same, thinks that if she has a favorite among them, it will hurt Aunt Eve’s feelings but she can’t help herself. She loves the blue one best. She loves the three soft ruffles and the silky sash. She loves the silver flowers embroidered on the lapel that feel cool when she runs a finger over them. Most of all, she loves it best because, as she slips the dress off its hanger and presses it to her face, she can smell Aunt Eve. After taking one deep breath to make sure the flowery sweet smell is still there, she holds the dress by the shoulders, folds one side toward the center and then the other. Next, she drapes the dress over her left forearm and again over her right, lays it in the bag and refastens the two buckles.