Lyla, page 24
A brown haired young man scurried out of the driver's seat, wearing tan saddle shoes and a bow tie. He jogged around the front of the car and opened up the passenger door of the vehicle. Emma Claire stepped out like a royal queen, dressed in a pink gown I'd never seen before. She walked like a lady. Her legs were long, and her shoulders were broad like Daddy's had once been.
She was his twin.
The boy hooked his arm around Emma Claire's. They walked side by side, clicking their shoes on the pavement. They held their heads erect, like a couple of young roosters.
She was marvelous.
“Quinn?” she said. “Is that you?”
I staggered to my feet, brushing off my dungarees.
She hurried toward me, galloping like a gazelle. We embraced. I held her closer than ever before and squeezed her.
Lord, how I'd missed that girl.
“What in God's name are you doing here?” Emma Claire released me.
The boy in the tweed jacket cleared his throat.
“Oh, I'm sorry,” Emma Claire said. “How rude of me. Quinn, this is Spencer. Spencer, this is my brother Quinn.”
Spencer leaned in and thrust his hand outward.
The boy had a firm handshake, and a few freckles on his face.
I trusted people with freckles.
“Glad to meet you, Spencer,” I said. “I'm Quinn, Emma Claire's moderately ugly brother.”
He did not laugh.
“Pleased to meet you, sir,” he said.
He called me sir.
A good sign.
Emma Claire was finished with formalities. “Tell me what's up, Quinn. Why are you here like this?”
“Well, I tried to call, but no one knew where you were.” I rubbed the back of my neck. “It's about Mother.”
Emma Claire's face became hard.
“The truth is, Emma Claire, she's not well.”
“What do you mean?”
“What I mean is, she's been sick.”
“What?”
I shook my head. “Really sick.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means we don't know how long she has.” I shifted onto my cane. “We don't think she has much time. Doctor says it's bad.”
Emma Claire brought her hand up over her mouth. “Oh Jesus-Jeremiah.”
She sounded like a cracker when she said it.
Her big brown eyes glassed over. “I had no idea; I didn't know she was sick.”
“Well, we didn't want to tell you, since you're so busy up here in Cuthbert, with school and all.”
“Is this from the baby?”
I didn't know how to answer such a question. It felt strange to call Pin a baby, I'd grown to know him as just Pin.
Emma Claire thought for a moment. Then, she wiped the tears from her eyes. Her make-up made her look much older than she was.
She smoothed her hair, and finally said, “I'll run upstairs and get my things, and I'll be fast.”
I believed her too.
Emma Claire never did anything slow.
͠
Sonnet and I played with Pin on the front porch of Mother's house, bouncing him up and down. The pollen from the pine trees fell in huge yellow sheets blanketing everything in gold. The yellow pollen dusted the surfaces our whole world. The hood of my old truck, and every upturned leaf on the ground lay covered in it. It was a pale dust that clung to all things.
Even water.
Pollen is what happens when the pines make love.
And they do it without a hint of shame.
Some people were allergic to pollen. Deathly allergic. In fact, some folks were so allergic to the pollen that they had to stay inside all summer because of it. Suzie Connors used to stay trapped inside during the dog days and miss out on the fun. Poor Suzie. But her absence suited me just fine.
Suzie always was a little tattle-butt.
I was not allergic to pollen. Not at all. No one in my family was. We could've snorted a pile of the stuff and be just fine. Once, one of the Chaplain boys tried that very thing. He was a drunk as duck at the time. The pollen made him cough like dog for a whole day afterward.
Emma Claire was in Mother's back bedroom for several hours. When I'd peeked my head into the room to check on them, Emma Claire was sitting next to Mother's bed. She held her knees against her chest, talking in a soft voice. I didn't know what they talked about, whether it was good or bad. It wasn't any of my business.
They had a score to settle that dated back a long time.
Sonnet pinched Pin's white cheek, he erupted in a giggle.
“You think it'll rain?” Sonnet asked.
I glanced upward. The sky looked like rain, but I knew it was a false alarm. Real rain clouds didn't look quite so jittery. Real storm clouds looked fierce.
“Naw,” I said. “Think it'll blow over.”
“How do you know?”
“Easy. See those birds right there?”
“Yes.”
“They wouldn't be there if it was going to rain.”
She squinted her eyes at me, to see if I was lying or not, she knew how I liked to tease her.
“Really?” she asked.
“Hand to God.”
She relaxed her face. “Well, that's interesting, I never knew that.”
There's no way she could've known it.
Because I was teasing.
Sonnet handed Pin to me. I set him on my lap, bouncing him on my aching knee. His head bobbed from side to side like a rag doll. I remembered bouncing Emma Claire in the same way long ago. She loved to open her baby mouth and make noises of all kinds. Humming happy infant sounds. As a baby, Emma Claire loved the sound of her own voice more than anything.
I suppose not much had changed.
“What do you think they're talking about in there?” Sonnet asked.
I shrugged. “Lord knows. I hope good things.”
Sonnet swiped her finger in the yellow dust on the porch. “I reckon they have a hundred years’ worth of grievances to hash out.”
“Reckon so.”
“You know, Emma Claire seems so different now.” Sonnet inspected the tip of her yellow finger. “She's changed, gotten older.”
Emma Claire did seem older.
Tougher.
“Quinn,” she asked. “Have I gotten older-looking?”
“You? Never.”
She leaned back. “I feel older.”
“Join the club, sister.” I patted my bum knee.
She smiled. “Will you still love me when I'm old? When I'm gray?”
“Honey, I'll still love you when we're dead.”
She liked that answer.
I looked down at Pin in my lap, his eyes had that same wildness Mother had, that same zip of electricity behind them. It was the same look that Emma Claire had long ago before she'd been overtaken by sadness.
Before she got older.
The screen door slapped shut, and Emma Claire's bare feet thumped on the porch behind us. She leaned against the post, and wiped her raw pink nose, sniffing. It wasn't the pollen that had her all stuffed up. She looked out at the forest and said nothing.
Her eyes were worn bloodshot.
“How's she doing?” Sonnet asked.
Emma Claire let out a breath that was strong enough to blow over a sailboat. “She seems weak. And she really, really wants a cigarette.”
I handed Pin to Sonnet and stood onto my shaky legs.
“Where are you going?” Sonnet asked.
My eyes were getting bloodshot too.
“Dammit,” I said. “I'm going to give that woman a cigarette.”
16.
We all watched Pin leap up from his seat at the supper table and run to the front door with heavy feet. He galloped it the clumsy way that four-year-olds do. He moved so fast that it looked like he might fall face first onto the floor. But he somehow managed to keep himself upright.
Clever little man.
“Get back here, Pin.” Sonnet snapped her fingers. “Finish your supper.”
Pin turned to look at her.
“You do as I say,” Sonnet said.
Pin did not move. He touched the knob of the front door and rested his hand there. He was taking his life into his own hands.
Sonnet came unglued.
“Did you hear what I said? Don't you dare, or I'll tan your little white ass with a wood spoon.”
She would, too.
I'd seen it at least a million times.
Pin had a bad case of the touches. That's what Sonnet called them. She said that Pin had to touch everything he could get his grubby hands on. Once, Pin pitched a fit because he wanted to touch the red money box on top of the icebox. He would not rest until he could lay his white hands on it. So, Sonnet brought the box down for him to look at, and removed the lid for him.
Pin's eyes got as big as baseballs.
The box was filled with silver coins. Not a copper penny in the bunch. Sonnet's Daddy told her long ago that if she filled the tin box up with nickels and dimes, she'd have over one thousand and seven dollars. I'm not sure how they came by such a number. But that's what they said. Throughout Sonnet's life, she found herself unable to leave the red box well enough alone.
The box was never in any danger of filling up.
Sonnet snapped her fingers again at Pin.
“She's not here yet, Pin, now I said get back here and finish your supper, or so help me….”
I always shuddered at what came after those words.
Something terrible, I'm sure.
Pin let go of the doorknob and walked back to the supper table with his head down.
“When's she coming?” Pin asked.
“Soon enough,” Mrs. Rena interjected. “Now eat your supper like your momma said, Pin.”
Rena was an expert with babies and toddlers. And Pin could sense Rena's confidence in matters of childrearing. Mrs. Rena knew what to do in every toddler-related circumstance, no matter what the situation was. She knew how to treat sick babies with pickle juice, and how to rub fresh pine sap on their chests when they had colds.
“Do you want any more milk, Pin?” Rena asked, holding the jug.
“Yep,” he said.
“Yes what?”
“Yes, ma'am.”
“Try again.”
“Yes, please, ma'am.”
Rena smiled, and Pin got his milk.
Mrs. Rena taught Sonnet many things. Like how to make cloth diapers out of old hominy sacks, or how to boil vegetables in sugar water so that Pin would eat them. And Sonnet heeded her mother. She boiled our carrots and peas in so much sugar, Pin couldn't get enough of them.
Neither could I.
Pin was a quiet boy, and I never heard him cry much. Sonnet said it was rare for him break down and sob like many children do. He was a sunny child, and curious as hell.
Sometimes Pin would ride on the oyster skiff with me during the days. He would watch the birds high step in the shallow marshes of the bay like slow soldiers. Most of the time Pin was as silent as a turtle on the water. But now and then he would get so overcome with giddiness that he would shout at the birds at the top of his lungs. Then he'd mope when they flew away.
I explained to him that birds didn't like to be shouted at.
He started whispering to the birds from then on.
“Would you look at that,” Brother said to Pin. “Little Pin's eating a Pinfish. Pin's eating a pin. I must be seeing double.” Brother blinked his eyes. “Am I seeing double? I think I am.”
Pin smiled at Brother, and the whole table smiled with him.
“It's me, Gandy,” Pin said, raising his hands high up in the air.
Pin called Sonnet's father Gandy because it was the closest he could get to the word granddaddy. Brother liked the nickname, and often referred to himself as Gandy out in public.
It was Brother's honorary title.
We would never call him Brother again.
The other fellas in town all knew Brother was proud as a government mule regarding Pin; they'd roll their eyes whenever Brother started talking about Pin. But they never goaded Brother about such things, not to his face. It would've been indecent to do such a thing.
Brother carried Pin in his arms wherever he went.
He reached across the table and poked Pin in the shoulder.
“That's right,” Brother said. “You're a little old pinfish.”
Pin giggled. “I am not, Gandy.”
“You are so.”
“Am not.”
“You are so.”
“Y'all two hush,” Rena said.
If Rena wouldn't have stopped their playful argument, it might've gone on until Pin was eighteen years old.
I watched Brother with Pin and remembered how my own daddy sat in the very chair that Brother occupied. Daddy was never as playful as Brother. Daddy was calm, eating his supper, quiet as a rock. Then, Daddy would pack his pipe with dark tobacco, and let the smoke waft around his head in big blue swirls. Sometimes he'd blow big O-rings into the air.
That was about as playful as he ever got.
After Mother died, we moved into Mother's old house and made our home there. The house I grew up in. I loved being there. It felt right. Sonnet's family moved into the white clapboard house across the way, the one Brother helped me build. It was the first time in Brother's life he didn't pay a dime to live somewhere. That man had paid rent every four weeks, without fail, since he was a boy living in Perry.
If anyone deserved a break from such things, it was Brother.
“Where are Crick and Blair tonight?” I asked.
“Good Lord,” Brother said. “There ain't no telling with them two. Probably tearing up the roads, sniffing every female between here and Saint Joe.”
“Reginald.” Rena swatted Brother's shoulder. “You hush that kind of talk in front of Pin, hush it right now.”
I tried not to let Rena see me laugh.
She did.
And she gave me the stink-eye for it.
At night, Sonnet and I slept in Mother's old room. Pin took over my old room at the end of the hall. Sometimes, when he was sleeping in my old bed he looked a little like Emma Claire did when she used to sleep there. Sprawled out like dead wood, sleeping harder that I could myself.
Sleeping as hard as mother once slept.
The whole house reminded me of Mother, and I could smell her scent in every room. It was as though she were waiting behind the open doors, lurking to surprise me.
Like she used to do when I was a boy.
Earlier that day, underneath a loose floorboard in Mother's closet, I'd found a shoebox covered in thick dust. Inside the box were magazine clippings of black and white movie stars. A whole pile of cutout photos of glamorous women in big dresses and dashing young shirtless men. I found a post card with a picture of Ireland on it, and a red colored photograph of the Grand Canyon.
That woman was nothing if not a dreamer.
And she never visited any of the places she wanted to.
Also in the shoebox was a curious collection of love notes written by a man named Percy, who I'd never heard of. The sloppy cursive letters revealed he was smitten with my young mother. They read like the voices of melodramatic children, whining. Percy wrote that he'd rather die than not be in my mother's arms. And in another letter, Percy threatened to kill himself if Mother didn't run away with him to Columbus.
I wondered where Percy was, what he was like.
He must've been different than my daddy.
When I finished pilfering through her box, I placed the lid on it, and tucked it back beneath the floorboard. I had no intentions of ever moving it.
Not ever.
Hidden in the house were many things belonging to Mother. I found Mother's old coffee mug in the back of the cabinet, filled with money. I found a dusty pulp magazine fallen behind her dresser. She loved romance stories. I found a little box of chocolates that had melted beneath her bed, half eaten. I also found a pack of Chesterfields buried in the back of a drawer in the kitchen, wrapped up in an old dish towel. I smoked one. Then I wrapped the package of cigarettes up in the rag and hid it again.
They would always be hers.
There was a knock at the door, and we all looked up from our plates. Pin leapt off his seat again and ran to the front of the house like his pants were on fire.
“She's here!” Pin shouted in a voice loud enough to wake the fish.
I rose from the table and shuffled to the front door, clicking my cane on the wood floor. Pin led the way for me. I could see her through the front window, standing there on the porch in the darkness. That familiar long, dark hair.
Two big cow eyes blinking back at me.
I opened the door, and Pin shot toward her like a bullet. She squatted down and swept him up into her arms, swinging him in a circle.
“Emma Kare,” Pin shouted.
͠
Emma Claire wore a long white gown that came all the way down to the floor. It was a beautiful dress that our mother would've killed to have–if she'd been alive.
The nicest dresses my mother ever owned were the ones that she made herself from bolts of discounted fabric. They were pretty dresses, and she was proud of them. But they weren't gowns. She never had a reason to wear such a thing.
Much to Mother's disappointment.
I rested my chin on my cane, looking at a framed picture of Jesus on the wall of the dressing room. He was sitting in a field with several sheep gathered around him, wearing a queer look on his face. I didn't much care for Jesus. He never did much for me. Out of all the Bible characters, I was sure I liked Lady Eve the best.
She was misunderstood.
“Do you like your suit?” Emma Claire asked.
“Oh, it's just dandy.”
“Really?”
“Unquestionably.”
“Stop it. It was an expensive suit.”
“The suit's fine,” I said straightening my tie. “Appropriate for a church. Or for a funeral.”
“Quit being daft, I think you look good in it.”
I looked like a circus goat.
The truth was, I felt uncomfortable in churches. I didn't hate them. But they felt confining to me. The white paneling of the chapel only closed out the towering pines and serene water outside. The interior of the church, no matter how holy, was no match for the forest, or the river. I was inclined to agree with the ancient Indians. The forest was chapel enough for me.
