“Write him to bring you a personality,” Lester shouted through the closed window, “but you probably couldn’t spell the word.”
“You see, that’s just what Norman was talking about, Shit.”
“Just lay off me, Willie.” Lester slumped in the corner of the seat.
A few minutes later, Norman came back to the cab and tapped on the window. “Okay, now, here’s the deal. Mrs. Dumont and her grandmother are in the house alone. And I figured she’d need someone to shovel the snow for them after the storm’s over. So you and Lester come back tomorrow and do it. No charge. A favor for a favor.”
“No charge?” Lester sat up. “Norm, did you see this place? That front and side walkway alone must cover half a city block. And it’s gonna snow all night.”
“It would have still snowed if you were in jail, Les,” Norman said gently.
“We’ll be here, Norman,” Willie said. “Nine o’clock sharp—blizzard or no blizzard.”
“Good boys. Okay, you take the cab and get on back home. I can call another. Her grandmother wants me to stick around for a while. It seems like Ruth’s friend is in a bad way.”
“What, is she sick?”
“Well, not physically, Willie—if you know what I mean. She and her old man just split up and a whole lot of other mess.” Norman sighed, looking up and down the street. “You know, it’s really funny. If anybody just took a quick ride through here, you’d think these people shouldn’t have a care in the world.”
December 23rd
She had been staring at Evelyn Creton’s last page for hours. Sitting up in her cot, she would doze off with the book still in her lap and awaken to stare again, the stiffness of her neck telling her whether she had been asleep for hours or just minutes. Her mind was completely blank and her fingers lay still and calm on the edges of the cover. She now looked up at the clock on the basement wall and the westward angle of the metal hour hand told her it was nine o’clock. But nine o’clock in the morning or evening? Nine o’clock of what day? Of what season? It was cold, colder than it had been when she first came down, so it must be winter. It was nine o’clock and it was winter. It snowed in the winter. And the air got warmer when it snowed. She could feel it becoming warmer down there now. Was there snow on the ground outside? A lot of snow? Snow that would melt when the spring came, to create water that drained into the soil, nourishing the trees out there so they would produce leaves in the summer to disappear in a burst of flaming color in autumn, leaving the branches bare, bare and ready for more snow. The seasons—whatever season it was now—would change.
The book left her lap in one fierce sweeping motion and crashed against the clock, bouncing onto the floor. A jagged vertical line now cut across its circular face. She had enjoyed those changes; each one had brought some sort of beauty into the world. And that beauty had given her comfort. She wasn’t like these other women; she had coped and they were crazy. They never changed. She pressed her lips together and looked at the crack on the clock. Anger began to scratch at the scars in her mind and she trembled as fresh blood seeped through the opening wounds. That’s why Luther never talked about them: there wasn’t a normal one in the bunch. But there was nothing wrong with her. She remembered loving the seasons, loving life. And there just couldn’t have been anything wrong with what she had wanted. A home. A husband. Children. That was all, and that was so little. To ask for so little and to have it taken away. No, it wasn’t wrong. It wasn’t sick. If there was any sickness, it was in this house, in the air. It was left over from the breaths of those women who had come before her. The Luwana Packervilles, Evelyn Cretons, and God knows who else. Blood from the open scars dripped down behind her eyes as she looked around the basement, futile and bewildered. This didn’t happen in a moment or even in a marriage. This had happened a long time ago. She could taste the anger at the back of her throat as her eyes came full circle to her son. His lace-draped arms were still spooned toward the air, the outline of her body permanently carved into the curve of his limbs. The blood’s saltiness created a craving to strike out at what had happened, to destroy those beginnings. But she couldn’t touch what had already escaped her long before she came to Tupelo Drive. She was left with only the ends. She grabbed up the other book and began ripping out the pages. Goddamned insane—all of them. She balled up handfuls of the delicate pages as she relentlessly tore away. She was too weak to break the heavily sewn binding, so she flung it to the floor and, swinging her legs over the cot, stepped on it savagely. Sick. Every last one, sick. The taste of blood spurred her on and she stumbled to the corner, kicking aside the cookbooks littering the floor.
She overturned boxes, pulling out dresses and scarfs, ripping easily through the rotting material. Shoes were thrown against the wall. Blouses, feathered hats, and beaded bags lost their buttons, trimmings, and sequins. Dried flowers spilled out of diaries and letters as she mutilated the pages. Shredded paper floated down around her feet in pastel heaps. She didn’t have to read them. She would read nothing else. Nothing. She just didn’t care anymore about their sad, twisted lives. She was surrounded by the perfumed fragments of the Nedeed women. What she couldn’t tear, she stomped on, regretting that her mouth was too dry to summon up enough spit. The pleasure of her destruction mingled with the anger in her blood as one box spilled out piles of photographs and she tore at them blindly. The slick, thin paper gave way too easily so she gathered huge handfuls and dozens of women disappeared with one pull. She started on another and another until she wanted to scream from the sensation building within her. Her breathing was labored and her forehead clammy as she forced her tired arms to keep going. She pulled at the pages between the covers of a heavily padded album, but the cellophane cut into her palms, resisting destruction. She threw it on the floor and tried to mangle the pictures with her heels. Her foot skidded across the slippery surface and she lost her balance, falling to her knees. Kneeling, she slammed the album against the wall; it bounced back, fell open, and she found her frustration met by a pair of soft, compassionate eyes.
The young woman’s heavy, wavy hair was parted in the middle and swept down the sides of her ivory face into a French knot that rested on her lace collar. Her upturned pug nose and narrow chin were tossed over the left shoulder, and the slender arms seemed poised to spring her body off the cushioned seat as if her full lips were caught in the act of saying I knew you would come, and I’m so pleased to meet you.
She knew it was the shadows cast by the light in the basement, her trembling body, and weakened vision—those lips hadn’t just closed in front of her, they were never open. They sat there now on the girl’s face, full and still. It’s just that there seemed to be so much life in that posture. The thrust of the chin and the tilt of the waist, straining against the creamy band. But what held her were the eyes. Large, oval wells with a bottomless capacity to absorb any seen or unseen challenge. They slowly drained away her desire to destroy their owner, but even if she still wanted to, the finely arched brows told her they would understand.
Almost against her will, she turned the page. The girl was posed by an old Packard, one hand drumming the roof and the foot propped on the running board revealing a white-stockinged leg and T-strap shoe tapping a restless staccato while the hand on the left hip pushed back an open fur coat over a pleated mid-calf dress. The same thrust of the chin, this time with an impatient pout that only managed to escape being ridiculous on the face of a beautiful woman. The next image that shutter would capture was so evident: a cloud of dust as she jumped in that car, gunned the motor, and sped away. A cigarette dangling from her fingers and a passing wave to the local bootlegger as she went to buy another set of dancing slippers that would grow worn before they grew old. Whoever she was, she wasn’t a Nedeed.
Flipping the page, she discovered she was right. A yellowed newspaper clipping was slipped under the cellophane:
Mr. and Mrs. Delmore McGuire of New Canaan, Connecticut, have announced the engagement of their daugh
ter, Priscilla, to Mr. Luther Nedeed, son of Mr. Luther Nedeed and the late Evelyn Creton Nedeed. An April wedding is planned.
And in the next photo, Priscilla McGuire sat smiling upstairs in the den—married to her Luther. He stood posed beside the girl and the same leather wing chair that was still in front of the fireplace. His dark immobile face, protruding eyes, and short barreled torso sent an immediate shock of recognition through her, defied only by reason and the man’s clothes. The spats, butterfly collar, and pocketed vest. One hand hooked in a heavy watch chain and the other firmly planted on the bride’s shoulder. Her costume was as formal as the announcement. Triple-tiered lace on the scoopedneck gown, a pearl necklace and matching tiara fastened on her thick, wavy hair. Her legs were positioned tightly together, so the huge bouquet rested securely on her lap. But just to the right of a white rose petal a slender pinkie finger was crooked in a salute to the photographer as the arch of her brows and lips seemed set to burst into laughter the moment after the flash went off.
The bride was laughing openly in the next picture. Bent dangerously over the railing of a steamship, her fur boa and loosened curls flying in the wind as she watched the arc of the bouquet flung toward the camera. But her husband’s expression had never changed, with that same dark hand still firmly on her shoulder. She found her eyes riveted to his short blunt fingers. They just didn’t belong there. They interfered with the effects the wind had on the loose silk coat. The light material billowed up gently, giving her shoulders the space they needed to sweep into that posture of ascending wings. But in spite of his hand, the cloth still hung on her as it would on those sea gulls near the boat’s smokestack.
She saw that in the next picture his hand had finally left her shoulder. Priscilla McGuire was now held down by the child on her lap. She was again seated in the wing chair and had positioned the infant to face the camera, her hands gently supporting the arms as its spine rested under her bosom. Her shoulders and chin were bent down in a protective curve that demanded the lens capture her pride in this new extension of her flesh. With its dark oversized head, huge eyes, clenched fists, and bowlegs, only the veiled anxiety and awe in her eyes proclaimed her as the mother; but even the blindest fool could see that the man standing beside them was the father. His hand was resting contentedly on the back of the chair. And for the first time, he smiled. Lilac-colored ink had marked the bottom—Luther: 1 month.
Luther: 1 year. The child could now sit upright in Priscilla McGuire’s lap, so her long pale fingers were only clasped around its middle. The next five photographs were exactly alike except that her hands kept getting farther and farther apart as the child’s body widened and grew. At Luther: 6 years, the child stood up, at the other side of the chair. Priscilla McGuire’s hands were now free to be placed wherever she wanted them, but they were folded completely still in her lap—as if she’d grown accustomed to them being there. She was a striking contrast to the dark figures on each side of her, the son a miniature of the man, in almost identical poses with their matching tweed suits and vests. As the years went by, they could have been three wax figures but for the determined animation in the arch of her brows and her insistence on changing the way she held her head: a little to the left, a quarter turn to the right. No one called this woman just Mrs. Nedeed; they sent cards to Priscilla. Rang up and heard a clear, bell-like voice announce that name. She decided which parties to attend, who bored or amused her, and whom she would have in that house. She was already telling the photographer that she had her own way of thinking and acting, her own definition of important or trivial, right or wrong. Twenty minutes of instruction to the housekeeper and she was off. Those rigid rooms upstairs couldn’t contain her, and it was hard to imagine that she would have come back. But obviously she did each day because it was so important to sit each year and mark the progress of her child with lilac-colored ink.
There was no change—the same den, the same wing chair and the assorted beige dresses of which she seemed so fond. And the same dark fire in those eyes, matching the dark figures on each side of her. The first at the polls for the national elections in 1920. And she voted the Socialist ticket. She believed that Darwin was a fool and that Ida B. Wells should be canonized. She ran for president of the local Association of Colored Women three years in a row—and won. She urged her friends to get tickets for A Doll’s House, and later would think Lady Chatterley’s Lover the most important book of the decade. Luther: 8. Luther: 9. Luther: 10. But she cried at the club ceremony that made her Mother of the Year.
Ten years passed before she noticed the shadow. As the child grew, the height of his shoulder cast a faint shade across Priscilla McGuire’s body. It had started at her lap and then slowly crawled up across her stomach, chest, and neck. What began as a slight, gray film was now deepening into a veil. She squinted in the light. It was just another illusion; the woman wasn’t fading in the photographs. It was so easy for the eye to follow the dark lines from the son, across her body to the identical dark lines of the father. Her light skin, beige dresses, and prematurely graying hair could be easily dismissed if you didn’t stop to catch the flashing highlights in those eyes. Why didn’t she sit up in these pictures? She was leaning too closely toward the son, causing herself to be lost in his shadow.
A tight knot gripped her middle. The veil was now over her chin, drawing closer toward her mouth. The woman was not disappearing. She turned much more quickly now, forcing herself to stare only into Priscilla McGuire’s eyes and fix her on that page. She knew she was losing her mind. They were nothing but family portraits taken at a time when photography wasn’t sophisticated about angles and lighting. These were probably only the rejects that she kept for herself, placing them here as some sort of joke: the wedding portrait with the crooked finger, the bouquet flung into the wind. This woman loved to laugh: Look at her now, sitting there obviously amused by her position between the two grown men. Priscilla McGuire was staring straight ahead, surely laughing inside at something. But there was nothing in front of her except a round camera lens with her aging reflection caught permanently in a staid leather chair. Luther: 20 years. He had gotten no taller, so why was the veil now across her bottom lip? And in the next, it had finally crept up to cover her mouth. She had to know what was happening. Luther: 21 years. She was no longer recording the growth of a child; the only thing growing in these pictures was her absence. In the next, she would finally stand up. She would be out in the garden or strolling on the beach. She kept turning the years over and hoping.
Willie’s shovel lifted another wedge of heavy snow. He had just picked up some momentum when his blade hit yet another raised flagstone that jarred his spine.
“Aw, shit!”
“You rang?” Lester looked back over his shoulder, a light spray from his shovel hitting the corner of the house.
Willie pointedly ignored him.
“I told ya, you’re doing it the wrong way,” Lester said. “This stuff is too deep to clear it with one stroke. You gotta take the top off first and then do another layer. At the rate you’re going, you’ll be tired out before we even get around to the front of this barn.”
“Well, nobody can say that of you.” Willie arched his sore back, turning toward the rear of the Dumonts’ house. At least three inches of snow still remained on the side of the patio that Lester had cleared, while Willie’s half was so clean the color of the flagstones was visible. “When I say I’m going to do a job, I do it right. And if you think I’m going back over your mess, you’re crazy.”
“By the time we make it to the front, nobody’s gonna be able to tell the difference the way it’s still snowing.”
“This is nothing but flurries,” Willie said as he began working again.
“But-it’s-stick-ing, Wil-lie,” Lester sang. “Look at what’s happening already.”
“So I’ll go around again for good measure and when you go around again, you’ll have twice as much to do.”
“Not me.” Lester shook his he
ad. “Even if I had gone to jail, it wouldn’t have been sixty days at hard labor. And anybody who can afford a set-up like that”—he nodded toward the covered Olympic-size pool with its high diving platform—“should be able to cough up for a lousy snowblower. They get one free round from me, and that’s it.”
Willie pressed his lips together and snow started flying from his shovel.
“I don’t know what you’re trying to prove, Willie. But these folks ain’t worth it.”
“Maybe what I’m trying to prove is that I’m not an ungrateful, self-serving bastard like some people.” A huge clump flew to the side and Willie’s blade dug in again. “And if it takes breaking my ass to do it, then I think it’s worth it.” He kept his eyes on the path in front of him, refusing to look into Lester’s face. He knew he had hurt him, but being justified didn’t make him any less ashamed of his words. When he finally sneaked a glance at Lester’s silent back, Willie saw that his friend was fiercely clearing his section, the blade scraping the packed gravel.
“Hey look, Shit. You were right, it’s coming down too hard to get this driveway clean.”
“No, you were right,” Lester said without turning around. “If you’re going to bother to do something, then you do it like it should be done.”
Willie watched him for a moment, sighed, and then anchoring his shovel, approached him. “Well, then what I was trying to do was apologize. And I should do it like a man and just come out and say I’m sorry.”