“Mom, I don’t want to hug Grandma, she’s being rude,” Eddie said.
Both Neddie and Pat laughed loudly.
“Momma’s finally met her match,” Neddie said.
“I’m not sure—I think the outcome is still in doubt,” Pat said. “What we have here is a battle of the Titans.”
“Little boy, I’m older than you,” Ethel said.
Eddie ignored her. He marched over to the table and put Eli the turtle beside his plate.
“Turtles don’t eat pancakes up but Eli can watch,” Eddie said.
“Sty, make him get that filthy thing off my table,” Ethel said. “I won’t be bossed around in my own kitchen by no five-year-old.”
“I’m five and a half, Grandma,” Eddie said politely.
“Let’s eat, before this tasty food goes to waste,” Sty said. “All my daughters are good cooks. I can’t say the same for my wife, not without fibbing a little.”
“Is it real maple syrup, Aunt Neddie?” Eddie asked, climbing into his chair. Iggy yipped to be lifted up, but no one lifted him up. Harmony knew her mother wouldn’t put up with a dog and a turtle on her table, particularly since she had never before even allowed an animal to come in her house. Iggy continued to yip; he was annoyed that he couldn’t sit in Eddie’s lap and eat pancakes.
“It’s the only maple syrup we have, let’s hope it’s real,” Neddie said.
“I do hope it’s real,” Eddie said. “I do not like syrup that isn’t real maple syrup.”
“That child’s spoiled rotten,” Ethel said. “Somebody get that filthy turtle off my tablecloth and pitch it out in the road where it belongs. Ned, you’re closest.”
“I’m closest but I’m letting it lie,” Neddie said.
Eddie looked his grandmother over with a cool eye.
“I don’t think she’s a grandmother,” he said. “I think she’s an alien pretending to be a grandmother.”
“Could be,” Pat said. “She never has been quite normal.”
“Just kidding,” she added, after a glance at her mother.
“I wasn’t kidding,” Eddie said. “I think Grandmother is an alien and the reason I think so is because she’s rude to turtles and dogs. Eli is a nice turtle and Iggy is a nice dog.”
Laurie came downstairs at that point. She had washed her face and combed her short hair. She smiled at everyone, but she looked nervous. Harmony could tell she felt a little out of place; after all, it was a family gathering except for her.
“Just sit anywhere, young lady,” Sty said, sitting down himself. “If you like turtles sit by Eddie.”
“Well, she does like turtles because she’s my friend,” Eddie said. “And I love her and she’s always going to be my friend.”
“Yes, I am always going to be your friend,” Laurie said, sitting by Eddie. “That’s a really cute little turtle.”
“Be careful, it’ll tinkle on my tablecloth,” Ethel said. She ladled up a big plate of pancakes and set them in front of Eddie, along with a butter dish filled with butter.
“If you don’t like the syrup it’s your problem,” she said. “It’s all the syrup there is.”
“Well, it’s your problem if you don’t like Eli, Grandma,” Eddie said. “He’s the only turtle I’ve got and I just met him and he’s my pet.”
Then he considered his grandmother solemnly for a minute. He gave her one of the looks that made people a little nervous if they happened to notice that he was looking at them that way.
“You could be my friend, too, Grandma,” Eddie said. “Because I don’t have any other grandma and you could be my grandma and my friend too. Do you want to, Grandma?”
“Yep,” Ethel said. Then she gave Eddie a lipsticky kiss and, a second later, burst into tears.
“Whoa, there she blows,” Sty said. “Now we’re in for it.”
“Momma, what’s wrong?” Harmony asked. She had forgotten how horrible it was to see her mother cry.
Eddie regarded his grandmother’s tear burst coolly.
“Everybody’s against me, they always have been,” Ethel wailed. It was a wail all her daughters had heard many times—usually when her mother figured out that she wasn’t going to get her way about something.
“No, everybody isn’t against you,” Eddie insisted. “Eli isn’t and Iggy isn’t and I’m not. And my mom’s not and Laurie’s not and my aunts are not against you. Maybe you just need to see a psychiatrist, Grandma?
“Mom, I think Grandma’s paranoid, maybe you better call a psychiatrist,” he added, turning to Harmony.
“A psychiatrist—where would your mother meet a psychiatrist, little boy?” Ethel asked.
“She meets her in her office, her name is Dr. Short,” Eddie said, sampling a pancake. “Don’t you have a psychiatrist you could talk to, Grandma?”
“No, and I don’t want one and no one in this family needs one, either,” Ethel said. “Why would anyone go listen to a woman psychiatrist anyway? What would an old woman like that know about other women?”
“Dr. Short isn’t old, Mom—she’s younger than me,” Harmony said.
“I don’t think Grandma likes psychiatrists, Mom,” Eddie said. “She glares out of her eyes when she talks about them.”
“My mother didn’t approve of them either,” Laurie said, smiling at Ethel.
“A psychiatrist is just a doctor who doctors you when your emotions hurt, Grandma,” Eddie explained. “Everybody needs one sometimes.”
Harmony was hoping that Eddie wouldn’t mention that he had gone to the counselor a few times himself, when he was feeling unhappy—maybe it was about his father never coming to see him, or maybe it was about her boyfriends, who farted too much or had other bad habits. But of course Eddie had no bias against psychiatrists and no reason to hold back, he promptly revealed to his grandparents that he had a counselor all his own.
“My shrink is named Dr. Prichard and she’s pretty and she helps me when I’m hurt in my emotions,” Eddie said.
“My Lord, she’s ruint that little child already, Sty,” Ethel said. “We can’t tell a soul about this.”
“We talk about what hurts my emotions,” Eddie went on, blithely. “Sometimes I get a sucker when I leave, like at the bank.”
“Can’t tell a soul what?” Sty asked. Harmony knew he turned down his hearing aid when he was in the house; that way he didn’t have to be involved in every single argument that was going on. It seemed like a sensible policy; after all, her mother never seemed to do anything but argue. At least that was all she had done since they got home.
“Why don’t you like psychiatrists, Grandma?” Eddie asked, looking at her curiously, as if he had not completely abandoned the notion that she might be an alien.
“Because I don’t need one and no one in this family has ever needed one or ever will,” Ethel said. “You’re not even six years old yet, you couldn’t possibly be crazy. Why would you need to talk to some old woman?”
“Dr. Prichard isn’t old, she’s pretty I told you,” Eddie said. “Don’t you ever listen to other people’s words, Grandma?”
“No, she wouldn’t see any reason to listen to other people’s words, son,” Sty said. “She knows it all already—why listen?”
“Nobody pulled your string, I’m trying to save this whole family from disgrace,” Ethel said.
“You’re too late by forty years or so, if that’s what you think you’re doing,” Pat said. “I think I’ll go home and see if I got any love letters, or if anybody sent me flowers.”
“I’m going home and spread a little manure, myself,” Neddie said, in her matter-of-fact voice. “That always relaxes me after a long trip.”
“What’d you think of New York City, girls?—you didn’t say,” Sty asked. “Here all of you went to New York and we ain’t even had a postcard.”
“They really didn’t have time to see much of the city,” Laurie said.
“I didn’t know what to make of it, really,” Neddie said.
“I could probably have made something of it if I’d got to the right dance spots,” Pat said. “But of course these stick-in-the-muds wouldn’t take me.”
Ethel took a big sponge out of the sink and began to scrub the blackened wall beside the stove. All she accomplished was to move some of the smudge over to a part of the wall that had been cleaner. Nonetheless she kept on sponging vigorously.
“Mom, she’s just making it worse,” Eddie observed at once. “Make her stop before the whole wall gets smudgy.
“Maybe she has on the wrong glasses,” he added generously.
“Telling Momma to stop would be like telling a fly to stop buzzing,” Neddie said.
“Eddie, she’s my mother, I can’t make her stop,” Harmony said.
“What about Billy—has everybody just forgot him?” Pat asked, looking at Harmony. She seemed a little truculent, to Harmony.
“Don’t talk nasty about your brother just because he’s in jail,” Ethel said, instantly. “All Billy needs is a good woman. He certainly don’t need them psychiatrists they keep sending him to.”
“What is she talking about, money?” Sty asked. “That’s all she usually talks about. Ethel likes money better than she likes anything else.”
“See how far gone he is, he can’t even follow a conversation,” Ethel said. “Talking to him is like talking to a fence post—boring.”
“I’m going to make more pancakes, if no one minds,” Laurie said.
“Nobody minds, but this is not real maple syrup,” Eddie said. “It’s good but it’s not real maple syrup.
“I think it’s cabbage syrup,” he said, giggling at his own wit. “I think it was made from big green cabbages.”
“Well, Ed’s about through with his vittles, I think we’ll gather up the equipment and go see if we can hook a fish or two—if we can’t we can just have a conversation somewhere where there ain’t no females,” Sty said. “I don’t know about Eddie, but I’m about out of the mood for females.”
“If you meet anybody while you’re fishing don’t let on that Eddie’s seen a psychiatrist,” Ethel said. “We got our good name to worry about.” She was still sponging the smoky part of the wall onto the clean part.
“What’s that I’m not supposed to tell ’em? Sty inquired.
“Dad, just ignore her, she’s crazy,” Neddie said.
“Shut up, don’t tell your father to ignore me when I’m giving instructions,” Ethel said. “He better not ignore me—it’s never too late for divorce.”
“How many fishermen around Tarwater are going to care whether Eddie’s been to a shrink or not, Momma?” Pat said. “Get real.”
“I can’t hear a word anybody’s saying,” Sty complained.
“Well, I hear their words but I don’t like them,” Eddie said. “They’re not very nice words.”
“Got any Velveeta cheese?” Sty asked, addressing the question to Ethel. “Eddie and I might fish all day. It would be nice to have some cheese and crackers to nibble on in case the crappie are biting.”
“I can’t believe a daughter of mine was foolish enough to take her son to a psychiatrist before he was even six years old. I’d go see my minister about this if he wasn’t such a blabbermouth.”
“Momma, I live in Las Vegas, people have a different attitude there,” Harmony said. “I really wish we could change the subject.”
“That minister’s from Kansas—they’re too talky up in Kansas,” Ethel said. “They oughtn’t to let preachers from way up in Kansas preach in Oklahoma.”
Laurie was at the stove, making pancakes. She looked over her shoulder at Harmony and smiled a nice smile. It was a smile to let Harmony know that she sympathized where Ethel was concerned. Probably Laurie’s mother wouldn’t get off an awkward subject either, once she got on one. When the pancakes were ready Laurie gave some to Harmony, who passed them on to Neddie—she would need to eat if she was going to spread manure.
“My stomach feels funny—maybe it’s just from being home,” Harmony remarked.
“Maybe it’s because there’s an alien in the kitchen,” Eddie said, with a grin. “Mom, would you watch my turtle while I go fishing? He doesn’t move very fast. I think he’ll be easy to watch.”
He gave her a sticky kiss before going off to wash his hands.
“I’m going to get rid of that filthy turtle,” Ethel said. She came around the table and tried to snatch Eli, but Harmony saved him just in time.
“No, Mom—it’s Eddie’s pet,” she said. “Didn’t you hear me tell him I’d take care of it?”
“We could tell him it escaped—turtles are filthy,” Ethel said. “This is my house. I’ve never kept a reptile in it and I don’t intend to start.”
Harmony felt a little emotional as she watched Eddie and her father get ready to go fishing. It was something her father had been mentioning for years. He seemed to think the prospect of fishing would bring them home.
“We’ll just put the turtle in a box, so it won’t hurt anything,” she said, to placate her mother.
“It has a name, Eli,” Eddie reminded her as he was leaving.
9.
Later in the day Harmony took a nap, on an old purple Sears and Roebuck couch, on her parents’ back porch. Eli the turtle took a nap with her, in a shoebox by her side—Harmony knew her mother would throw Eli out if she could find him, so she hid him under a quilt. The quilt was the same blue Arkansas quilt that had been there in her childhood.
Iggy had gone fishing with Eddie and her father—nobody trusted Ethel in relation to Iggy, either.
Laurie, too, took a nap. She simply went outside and stretched out on the newly mown grass.
“That girl will get chiggers—they’ll be up to her undies,” Ethel warned. “If she don’t get chiggers she’ll get pneumonia—that ground’s sopping wet underneath.”
“Momma, you can’t see underneath the ground,” Harmony pointed out.
“No, she can’t even see the top of the ground, much less the bottom,” Pat said. “If someone offered her a million dollars to find a june bug she couldn’t find one in a week, and this place is crawling with june bugs.”
“Shut up and go home!” Ethel said—actually Pat and Neddie were just waiting for Neddie’s husband, Dick, to arrive. Harmony tried gamely to stay awake, so she could say hello to Dick, but she didn’t make it. It felt so relaxing to lie on the old couch that despite herself, she drifted off. As she was drifting off, she heard her mother complaining to Neddie about Dick’s problems with his tractors.
“He oughtn’t to be driving tractors at his age, anyway,” her mother said.
“Momma, he’s just sixty,” Neddie said. “I’d like to see someone try to stop me from driving my tractor because I’m sixty years old.
“Which I won’t be yet for quite a while,” she added quickly.
“Tractors flip over and when they do the driver is always killed, that’s a well-known fact,” Ethel said.
“Don’t argue with her, she’s cracked,” Pat said. “I wish Dick would hurry. I’m in one of those moods where I might become a serial killer, and I might start with my mother.”
Harmony remembered, as she was fading, how happy Eddie had looked when he climbed into the old blue pickup, to go fishing with his grandfather. Except for Gary, Eddie had lived all his life with women: finally, there was a man who was paying some attention to him, and not just a man off the street, either. The man was his grandfather. When Eddie shut the door of the pickup she couldn’t even see the top of his head, but she could hear his voice, relaying to his grandfather some fish facts he had learned on the Discovery Channel. It was a good sound to go to sleep with; better, for sure, than her mother’s complaining.
When she woke up, Eddie was standing by her, holding three small green fish on a string.
“Mom, these are perch, I caught them!” Eddie said. “I caught them on a hook and Grandpa and I are going to clean them. They’ll be very clean and then we’ll cook them in a pan and eat
them.”
“Perch are too bony to eat,” Ethel said, popping back onto the porch. “If you eat them you’ll get a bone in your throat and we’ll have to run you to the emergency room and they’ll take it out with tongs.”
But Eddie had already run off in search of his grandfather, the three perch jiggling on the string.
“Oh, Eddie, I knew you’d be a good fisherman,” Harmony said, though he probably didn’t hear her—he was too excited. It was one of those moments when parenting was mixed; it was difficult. Now Eddie was happy in Oklahoma. He was going to want to stay with his grandfather for a while, and learn more about country living, whereas she herself had been thinking about calling Gary and asking him to meet her at the airport in Las Vegas. She was thinking of going right back, and it wasn’t because her mother was so critical, either.
One reason she felt comfortable on the porch was that it really wasn’t in her mother’s house—the porch was just sort of tacked on. She had not even gone upstairs yet, to see the room that had once been hers. The stairs to the second floor were pretty narrow; she felt she might get claustrophobia if she tried to squeeze through. It wasn’t just the stairs, though. The whole experience of being home was making her feel that she just wanted to go, even though she knew that to be a good parent she should get a room or something and give Eddie time to soak up some attention from his grandparents.
“Where’s Laurie?” she asked—it was almost evening.
“She got up and walked off down the road without a by-your-leave,” Ethel said. “You slept all day. I guess she got bored. Why’d you bring a girl like that all the way to Oklahoma?”
“Momma, she was Pepper’s best friend, I wanted to spend some time with her,” Harmony said. “We need to be with one another for a while.”
“Why didn’t her husband come?” Ethel asked. “Does he just let her run all over the country like a chicken?”
“Laurie’s not married,” Harmony pointed out—of course she had no intention of mentioning that Laurie was gay.
“Then what’s she doing wearing a wedding band?” Ethel asked. “The first thing I notice when I meet somebody is whether she’s wearing a wedding band.”