Tomorrow River

Chapter Twenty-four

It’s ten past closing at Slidell’s.

The tan counter with the red vinyl stools runs along the right wall of the shop. The lights are off, except for the one above the grill, but I can still see the aisles chock-full of soaps and hot-water bottles and coloring pads and crayons and anything else you might need. In the way back of the shop is where Mr. Slidell sits on a stool and doles out his pills. He’s a grouch. Vera told me that he’s all the time crabby because he’s been married to his wife too long. That I can understand. Sara Jane Slidell is the treasurer of the Ladies Auxiliary. She always went out of her way to be snooty to Mama, who she referred to as “the gal from up North.” It didn’t seem to bother our mother all that much when Mrs. Slidell was rude to her, but it did me. (I might’ve dropped a box of weed killer in her award-winning rose garden one night. I’m not saying that I did. But I might’ve. Twice.)

E. J. and I are dawdling near the front door, not exactly sure what to do. We’ve never been in here when it’s empty. The drugstore, especially the lunch counter, is usually bustling. When Papa was still sitting behind the bench, he almost always came home to check up on Mama’s whereabouts when Saint Pat’s bells struck twelve. Then he’d come back here to join the other members of the Men’s Club who traditionally eat breakfast at Ginny’s Diner and meet again at Slidell’s counter at noon. That’s how Vera knows His Honor personally. She serves him his tuna fish on toast, no pickle, no chips.

Vera looks up from the counter she’s wiping with a checkered red towel and calls, “What are you waitin’ for? An engraved invitation?”

Vera is twenty-eight years old, but looks younger with that pinkish skin that strawberry blondes have, a smattering of fairy kisses across her nose and eyes the color of a July sky. These days she’s a wonderful cook, but Beezy told me that she used to work entertaining the sailor boys over in Norfolk, where there’s the world’s largest naval base. Vera’s tough in her personality on the outside. Rough trade, you know. But on the inside, she is as mushy as one of her marshmallow cloud sundaes. She’s an animal lover, just like Woody and Mama. Over at her place, there’s a parrot named Sunny Boy living in a wrought-iron cage. He can say, “Ahoy, sailor, hop aboard,” and a few other things that I’m not allowed to repeat. Vera told Woody and me that she moved from Norfolk to Lexington “to get a new lease on life,” and now she works at Slidell’s and sings in the church choir. That’s how her and Mama became friends. They met over “Amazing Grace.” The Auxiliary Ladies don’t like Vera neither, but their husbands sure do. They’ll drop their keys on the other side of the counter and look up her skirt when she bends over to pick them up. As Grampa likes to put it, Vera is “built like a brick shithouse.”

Sausage curls are escaping from her hairnet and her red fingernail polish is chipped at the tips. “What was that all about? With the sheriff and Sam?” she asks, setting down the two brown cows.

I can’t look at E. J. when I explain, “Somebody told the sheriff about Sam and Mama’s friendship.” (I’m not sure if Vera knows that her good friend is dead. She probably does since she’s tight with Beezy, but unless she says something, I’m not going to tell her that Mama’s passed. That would be mean.) “He’s takin’ Sam in for questioning in her disappearance.”

“Admiral Jesus H. Christ,” Vera says, very rattled. The lines between her eyes look like her first initial-V. “That changes things.”

I take a slurpy sip of the float and say, “Not really. I’m sure it’s just routine.” But then suddenly, something pretty bad occurs to me. What if the sheriff knows that Mama is dead, too? If he does, then I know from spending many hours in my father’s courtroom that the first thought that will come to his mind is foul play. Law-men can’t help it. They’re born suspicious. That’s why they become policeman and not poets. Yes, murder is what will dart across the sheriff’s mind. Before Papa threw our television set out the window, my favorite show was Mannix. When people went missing in that show, every stinking time they never made it back home alive. Joe Mannix would look and look, but those missing loved ones always turned up shot in an alley or stabbed on a park bench or smothered in their sleep the way Yolanda Merriweather was by her husband, Jimmy.

Seems like when a wife gets murdered, it’s almost always by her husband, but Papa didn’t do that to Mama. The most superior court judge in Rockbridge County placed his hand on the Bible and swore to uphold the law, not break it, no matter how furious he got at his willful wife. His Honor could lash out at her, even kick her when she was down, but he could never take her life.

But if I thought that Mama could’ve been murdered, that would mean the sheriff might think the same. Not about Papa, but Sam. It would never in a million years occur to Andy Nash or anybody else in this town that my father would be capable of doing away with my mother.

Vera searches in her apron pocket and comes out with a pack of Pall Malls. She shakes one out, tamps it down on her thumb, and struggles two times to get a match lit. Picking a piece of tobacco off her tongue, she says, “Y’all better finish up and get back home. It’s gettin’ late.” Where’s Jane Woodrow anyway? Don’t think I’ve ever seen you two apart, Shenny.”

“She’s back at the fort. She was too weak from hunger to come with me.” The red glowing Coca-Cola clock is letting me know that it’s fifteen past nine o’clock. I’ve left my sister alone for an hour and a half and Vera’s right, I hardly go anywhere without her. Feels weird, but not completely bad. I love her with all my heart, I do, but being with Woody, it’s like spending every minute of every day inside a Mixmaster. “Would you mind makin’ me two of your famous egg salad sandwiches?” E. J. nudges me hard in the ribs. “Make that three. One with extra, extra mayonnaise. To go?”

Vera sets her cigarette into a slot on the gold metal ashtray and says, “Three sammies, one with x mayo comin’ up.” She bends to slide the sandwich fixings out of the Frigidaire, but her shoulders are shaking with the effort. Woody gets like that sometimes. I’ve always thought that means she’s struggling to keep something inside her and it’s struggling to come out. Like having a tug of war, with yourself.

“Vera?” She looks at me in the mirror behind the counter that she uses to keep an eye on her customers. She’s having a hard time holding my gaze. I want to reach across the counter and pat her on the back. It’s unnerving to see a woman with an Anchors Away tattoo inked into her bicep burst into tears. “Are you wantin’ to tell us something?”

She snivels, packs the sandwiches into a wax bag, and places them on the counter in front of me. “About your mama, Shen,” she says in a drawl thicker than one of her malts. “I’ve been meanin’ to…” She doesn’t know what to do with her hands. They’re at her neck, then her hair, and finally, she’s rubbing them together.

“Did your mother ever mention to you… did she tell you that she was plannin’ to… damn it all.”

Maybe Vera was the one who told the sheriff about Sam and Mama, and she wants to get it off her abundant chest.

“There’s something you need to know,” she says. “Evie… your mother… she was gonna leave your father.”

E. J. shovels a spoonful of vanilla ice cream into his mouth and asks, “Where?”

I already know that, but since his mother and father are so happily married, he doesn’t get what Vera means.

“When Mama… do you know if she was planning on asking Woody and me to join her when she left?” I ask Vera in the smallest voice. Even though she’s dead, it matters to me more than anything ever has that my mother wasn’t going to leave without asking her peas in a pod to come along, the same way she had that Easter in the garden.

“Your mother had been plannin’ her getaway for months,” Vera says, like she didn’t even hear me. “She had every little detail down pat. She was gonna take the steppin’ stones across the creek, and your mama, E. J., she was gonna borrow the Calhouns’ car and give Evie a ride to the bus station.” She’s trying to remove a napkin from the container to use as a hankie and it’s giving her a hard time. She finally gives up and uses her capped sleeve to wipe off her drippy nose. “I’ve gone over this in my mind a dozen times. I don’t know what the hell went wrong.”

I know how she feels.

“We all kept hopin’ that we’d hear from her,” Vera says.

The same way I was. Before I found out from my father that night in the woods that he was “sorry for the way things worked out.”

Even though I would have told my mother that I couldn’t leave Papa back then because I was a daddy’s girl, her asking again would’ve made all the difference. I ask Vera, louder this time, “Was Mama gonna ask Woody and me to come along with her?”

“A course she was, cookie,” Vera says, snubbing out her cigarette and patting my hand. “Didn’t you get her note?”

“What note?”

“Your mama was supposed to leave a note behind for you. A beautiful note. She knew how much you twins loved your father, especially you, Shenny, but once you read her explanation, Evie was sure that you’d…” She stops to faraway smile, the way you do when you’re having a nice memory. “I offered to take you girls to her when the time came, but your mother, she wanted Sam to do it. She thought it best that a family member bring you.”

E. J.’s mouth drops practically down to the counter alongside mine. Sam? A family member? Why would she say something like that? What is wrong with… oh, poor thing. Working these long hours at the lunch counter. Those deep fryers can get awful hot. Vera probably has a severe case of heat exhaustion. Bootie Young told me there was this one time that his dairy-farming daddy was working too long under the sun and his mama found him trying to milk one of the bulls.

“Now, Vera,” I tell her in the voice you use when dealing with the sick or maimed, “a little rest and relaxation is what you need.” I’ve gotten up off my stool, taking care not to make any sudden moves. I’m going to walk over to the pay phone and call Doc Keller to come over here quick as he can. “You know Sam is our friend and not a relative, right? You just got mixed-up.”

“Well,” she says, throwing her hands into the air, “like they say in the Navy, the torpedo is outta the tube now. No sense pretending it ain’t.” Vera comes from around the counter and steers me back to my stool. “You’re gonna want to be seated when I break this to you. Me, too. Move over, E. J.” She gets situated between us. “A long time ago, when Beezy was just a girl, she worked for your grandfather cleaning his house, Shenny.”

What could Beezy have to do with Sam being a family member? Vera is getting more confused by the second. She really does need help. Is Doc’s number Hopkins 4563 or 4653?

“She hadn’t married Carl yet so she wasn’t called Beezy Bell back then,” Vera continues. “She was poor and pretty Miss Elizabeth Hortense Moody, and Gus Carmody was a rich and a very handsome young man.

I’m not sure what this has to do with the price of a cup of coffee either, but she’s saying the truth. That old coot wasn’t always uglier than a pig snout. Gramma Ruth Love has lots of pictures of him pressed into a photo album that has THE GOOD OLD DAYS stamped on its cover. As much as it pains me to admit it, Vera’s right-Grampa was a looker.

“I’ve heard customers remark many times that Gus was quite the charmer,” she says.

“You heard that wrong,” I say back, gruff. “My grandfather’s about as charming as a funeral.”

“That may be true now, hon, but back then? They say that your grampa could talk the sweet off a sugar cube.”

I’m trying to alert E. J. to Vera’s rapidly deteriorating condition by leaning behind her back and vigorously tapping my temple, but he’s too busy hanging on her every word to notice. Being a mountain man, he’s fond of tall tales.

“Then what happened?” E. J. asks on the edge of his stool.

“That depends.” Vera looks back and forth between us, her curls bobbing. “I don’t know much about kids. Are the two of ya old enough to know how babies are born?”

“Yeah,” E. J. and I say. He’s got a goat that he delivered babies to and I watched.

Vera pauses, like she’s about to change her mind, but then says, “When Beezy was young, she was desperately in love with Gus Carmody.”

“What?” I say, aghast. That’s proof positive that the woman has lost her mind. I have never in all my days heard something more harebrained.

Vera ignores me. “And when two people get hot and bothered like that, they… uh… they do it.”

“Do what?” E. J. asks.

“Shuck the oyster,” Vera says like she’s reciting the soup of the day.

E. J. looks as confounded as me.

“They zalleywhack. Play the game of twenty toes?” Clearly, Vera’s not getting the reaction from us that she expected. Exasperated, she says in a voice that echoes up the drugstore’s empty aisles, “Beezy and Gus fornicated.”

Root beer comes squirting out of E. J.’s nose and I jump up off my stool, “Oh, that’s so disgustin’ and… and… unappetizing and… Vera! What is wrong with you? Beezy wouldn’t shuck with Grampa. You’re her friend, you know how much she hates him. You’re the one that’s hot and bothered. I’m calling Doc Keller right this minute.”

Vera puts me back in my place. “You mean Beezy hates your grandfather now. Back then was different. Hear me out.”

She seems so convincingly upset, I grit my teeth and say, “Go on,” but the second she’s done, I’m rushing to the phone.

“Well,” she says, “after he got what he wanted from her, Gus turned his back on Beezy. Threw her right outta his house despite her condition.”

The condition Vera means is that Beezy was feeling sad and stupid about something he did to her. Grampa puts me in that condition, too. But this still doesn’t explain her earlier loopy remark about Sam.

Vera spins her stool my way, leans in close, and says, “You’ve got a lot on the ball, Shenny. You musta noticed the resemblance between your father and Sam. Their hooked noses, those same caramel eyes. How they both got an interest in law enforcement?”

I’m afraid she is giving my powers of observation too much credit. I’ve never noticed anything of the sort.

“What I’m tryin’ to tell you… what I mean to say is-” She breaks off like she’s having second thoughts.

“What, Vera?” I ask, curious now what her over-fried brain is trying to get at. “For God’s sakes, spit it out.”

“Just a second.” Vera digs into her apron pocket and slaps three rolls of Rolaids onto the counter before gushing out, “Sam Moody is the bastard child of Beezy and your grampa’s old-time love affair. Sam… he’s your uncle, Shenny.”