Say Goodbye

TEN

IN PREPARATION FOR HER MORNING GUEST, RITA WAS fixin’ to buy some food. It was a slow process. First she climbed into the old, claw-foot tub. Ran a trickle of lukewarm water-waste not, want not-scrubbing what needed to be scrubbed with an emaciated bar of Ivory soap.

She used to have a nice young girl in town set her hair. The cost had become a bit much. The drive into town as well. So she’d been letting her hair grow, a long, thin veil that shadowed her shoulders like brittle lace.

She rolled on long johns. Flannel pajamas. One of her mother’s old pairs of black pants, belted tight at the bunched-up waist. Her father’s red plaid shirt nearly fell to her knees, but it was warm, in good shape. Still smelled faintly of his tobacco pipe even after all these years.

She wore his socks, too, the woolen ones that could make your toes feel nice and warm even when it was thirty out and the wind blew like a son of a bitch.

Then came the heavy peacoat, a hat, a scarf, a pair of her brother’s gloves. She nearly staggered under the weight of the clothing by the time she made it to the kitchen, finding the cookie jar and counting out its precious contents. Social Security paid her $114.52 every month, not bad in the summer when she grew her own vegetables and picked berries in the brambles along the road. Winter, however, was tough. She bought the day-old pastries, the expired meat, the long-gone vegetables. She figured if you cooked anything long enough in a stewpot, then it was safe enough to eat.

She allowed eleven dollars and forty-five cents. That oughtta get the job done.

More shuffling, then she was at the front door.

“Now, Joseph,” she said before departing. “No funny stuff just because I went out. I know exactly where I left my hairbrushes and the silverware. You want trouble, go play next door. Mrs. Bradford was always colder than a witch’s tit, anyway.”

Rita cackled at her own joke, opening the door and working her way slowly down the front steps, clinging tight to the wooden rail.

She and her brothers had never liked Mrs. Bradford. The neighbor woman had once told on them after discovering them eating apples from her tree. Well, if she hadn’t wanted the kids to eat them, then she should’ve picked ’ em herself. Whoever heard of a neighbor who couldn’t spare an apple or two?

Mrs. Bradford had died ten years ago. Maybe Joseph could look her up, dial direct, do whatever it was ghosts do for fun in the hereafter.

Rita found her pace, a steady rocking shuffle, and set out down the road.

She lived on a side street not far from town. Once, this area had been large lots with small but grand summer homes. Her great-great-grandfather had built the quaint Victorian that belonged to her family, looking for a respite from Atlanta’s heat. Times changed. Properties were sold and subdivided. Bit by bit, the old summer homes disappeared. Now she lived amid an odd patchwork quilt of prefab Colonials, double-wides, and low-slung ranches.

She supposed her neighbors were young couples. Folks that worked the restaurants and staffed the hotels for the summer and autumn seasons when the tourists outnumbered the locals ten to one and even buying a loaf of bread became a major inconvenience.

Rita didn’t know. She didn’t leave her house much or socialize with her neighbors. She was too busy with the dead.

She thought she knew where the boy came from, however. The house was tucked farther up the street from her, looking down over the rest. One of the last grand homes, it now featured peeling paint, skewed windows, a cockeyed front porch. Sometimes she saw lights on up in that house, in the middle of the night when God-fearing people should be asleep, not lying wide-eyed in their beds as she so often did. People in that house kept strange hours.

House fit her idea of who would have a half-starved boy who spent his time catching spiders.

She finally arrived at the store, weaving around the muddy, snow-rimmed trucks, past the gas pumps, into the little shop that always smelled of diesel and cigarettes.

She walked the aisles first, making a careful inventory. Bread, eggs, milk. She eyed bacon, it had been a long time since she’d had bacon. But the price put it out of the picture. Boys liked cereal. Heavens, the number of boxes she used to go through, when she had boys in the house. Not those sugarcoated cereals. She didn’t hold for that. But the other brands, the basics.

She read the shelf label carefully. She had no idea puffed wheat could cost so much. Why, in her day…

In the end, she stuck with her original three choices. It would have to do.

Mel worked the register. She saw him most of the times she came in, which was to say she saw him every two weeks. He nodded at her, smiling at her odd getup.

“Cold walk, Rita?”

“Not once I got movin’.”

“Fixin’ to make some breakfast, I see.”

“Yup.”

“Looks good. All you’re missing is some sausage. I’m running a special, if you’d like. Two for one.”

She paused, contemplating. More protein would be good for the boy. And oh, the smell of hot sausage patties, browning up in her mother’s cast-iron frying pan…

She sighed, counted out her money. “I’m fine, thank you much, Mel.”

“Not a problem, Rita.”

He wrapped up her groceries for her, then looked concerned. “Not sure about that bag, Rita. Especially if you’re afixin’ to walk home.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I could give you a ride.”

“Nothin’ wrong with the legs God gave me.”

“Well, if you’re set on it, maybe I can go in the back, get you a box instead. I’d hate for you to drop those eggs.”

“As you wish.”

Mel returned a short time later with a small box, set inside a plastic bag. He fixed it so she could hold the handles, then she was on her way. She gave him one last nod in parting.

Halfway home, having a resting moment, she checked her bag. He’d added two packages of sausage, plus a box of Earl Grey. For a moment, she was almost overwhelmed at the prospect of a brand-new tea bag, instead of a limp, tired one, three or four steepings gone.

One day, she should thank Mel, but thanking him would mean acknowledging what he had done, and so far, both of them had preferred this system.

It took her a long time to get home. She was starting to feel a little unsteady, swaying more and more with each step.

It would be good to get inside, have a cup of Earl Grey, hot, black, and strong. She would put her feet up in the front parlor as her daddy used to do. Maybe take a little nap.

But when she opened her front door, she discovered she had a guest. The boy had already returned, except this time, he was not waiting on the back porch. He was standing in her parlor, holding a framed portrait of her family.

For a long time, they simply regarded each other. Then Rita stepped firmly into her house, closing the door behind her, unwrapping the scarf from her neck.

“Son, the proper way of entering someone’s home is to knock on the door and ask permission. Did you knock on my door, did you ask permission?”

“No, ma’am.”

“Then this was not the proper way of entering my home. Do not do it again.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

That settled, Rita shrugged out of her coat, discarded her hat. “I was going to have some tea, but I suppose I could make hot cocoa instead.”

His eyes lit up.

“I don’t have marshmallows,” she warned. “Too expensive, that kind of nonsense.”

He nodded his head.

She shuffled past him into the kitchen, pretending not to see the way he watched her through half-slit eyes, nor the slim blade protruding from the back pocket of his jeans.

When your time comes, your time comes, Rita knew. But she was a tough old bird, and she figured the boy would discover soon enough that she had plenty of time left.