A Virtuous Woman (Oprah's Book Club) (8 page)

It took everything Tiny Fran had to act civil towards
me, and when she was, there was a catch to it, something behind it, like the time they needed to go stay with her mother during an operation and she called over here, cordial, friendly as she could be. I kept wanting to say, “Get to the point, Tiny Fran, go ahead and get to the point.” And when she finally did she told me she wanted to know if Jack and I could look after June and Roland the week she and Burr would be gone. I knew that by then she’d called everybody she knew and they’d all said the same thing I was about to tell her, “June, fine, but I can’t handle Roland. I just can’t handle him.” He was too wild. I couldn’t control him. They ended up having to take Roland with them, leaving June here. She was six then.

I can’t think of anything in the world, outside of a very good, very long dream, to compare that week with her to. I’ve not had another one like it. We’d all get up in the morning, play, have lunch, play some more, eat dinner, play. I’d have to nudge Jack out the door to go over to Burr’s and keep things running, keep the help busy. He said he’d rather stay here with us and weave potholders, and I believed him. She slept in the back bedroom with puppies she’d sneak out of the pen out back and turn into the house. Jack would wake me up in the middle of the night and tell me to go in there and look at the baby asleep in a bedful of dogs.

When Burr came to get her he came in the kitchen and
sat down by her and asked her if she’d had a good time. She wouldn’t answer. I told her to tell her daddy what all we’d done, maybe show him some of the potholders we’d made. But she wouldn’t speak. She wouldn’t even look at him for rolling her fists around in her eyes, shuffling her feet, shrugging when he touched her. I told her she should be sweet and he’d let her come and stay again, but I knew how she felt. I didn’t want to be sweet myself. Jack couldn’t watch her go. When he’d seen Burr driving up in the yard he went to the bathroom and told me to tell him he was tied up and would see him later that day.

Some childless couples, my brother and his wife for one, get along by pretending that their dog or cat is a member of the family. And it’s all over television, all the money people are willing to spend on fancy pet food. Jack and I had sat here many a night laughing about a woman we saw at the bank who had her little poodle dressed in a Santa Claus suit. But we couldn’t say anything anymore, not after the way we behaved when June left.

We were out in the yard not more than two days later, weeding, patching up the dog pen, and I noticed Jack over in the big circle Prince Albert ran around in. He had the dog up on his hind paws, holding his front ones, making him dance a little jig. Prince Albert was so old and floppy by then he just went along. Jack even called out for me to look at the dog dancing. And it wouldn’t be right if I didn’t tell the rest of it. I ran inside and got my Brownie
and took half a roll of film of Jack making the dog dance. After all that Jack walked to the store and came back with canned dog food, and he went inside and came back out with it all scooped out in a good dish. While Prince Albert ate Jack explained to me about how nutritious the real meat chunks were, and I couldn’t help but think about how many times I’d reminded Jack to put a little spigot water in with that dry, cheap old dog chow, and how he’d told me gravy’ll take the edge off a dog. And there he was, throwing this old dog a little party.

And we kept on, and it got worse. Jack would try his baseball hat on Prince Albert’s head and I’d break my neck trying to get inside and get the camera before he lost that pose. Jack would come and stand over me fixing a roast or something and tell me to save a good piece, not to pepper it too much. And we were even sillier over the puppies, sitting on the back steps, looking at them rolling around in the pen, wondering what sort of dogs they’d grow up to be.

But all that stopped when we got the film developed. I thought we would’ve been happy to go over it all again, but all the pictures did was show us how badly we wished it was a baby in a highchair, birthday cake all over her face, not our half-deaf, half-blind dog slobbering all over a good piece of shoulder roast, licking one of my blue flowered plates.

We looked at all the pictures and then put the envelope
away. I run across it every now and then but I’ve not opened it up. I don’t need to, knowing what’s in it, knowing what’s not in it. The next time June visited us I took just as many pictures of her, and I kept on taking them. Those I don’t mind looking at. I can stare at those long enough to see what I want to, see her mine. It’s just a matter of seeing what you want to see. People do it with hearing, thinking, and saying all the time. But seeing’s harder, especially when you know that an old bulldog is never going to get you confused with her mama, but a little girl might. If you stay by her, she might.

B
urr told me last week, he said to me, “The years my wife’s been gone have been the happiest years of my life.” He said all he missed about her leaving was wishing she’d go. I told him it was a shame in this world he couldn’t have had a woman like Ruby, and he just had to shake his head like “I know.”

Tiny Fran left him right after June went off to college. I was out sweeping under the pony shelter and he showed up and said to me, “Well, she left.” He said they’d had a royal knock-down drag-out over how much money he’d been mailing to June, and one thing led to another and she got her suitcase out and what she didn’t cram in it she threw at him. Then he asked her what she was going to live on and she told him she’d borrow on or sell off her part of the farm and that’d keep her fairly well. Burr said he thought, Oh,
hell no you won’t. And he went and got his checkbook and bought her out right there, wrote out something and she signed it. I said, “Well, congratulations, let’s take a drink.” He said he could use one. He needed more than one, that’s for damn sure. I told him I’d be interested to see how long the money held out. He said that’d depend on how many times she walked by a shoe store. And sure enough, last year about this time she called him and said she was in a bind, and every month since then he’s been sending her a check. Ruby told him it was the best investment he ever made, that maybe she’d fall in love with a shoe salesman. We all had to laugh.

Ruby loved Burr and June, tolerated Tiny Fran, but pure couldn’t stomach Roland. From the time Roland was born until the time they led him off away from out here Tiny Fran stayed right on top of him like she was the hen and he was the damn egg, just raising all grades of hell if anybody came near him. You’d go up in the yard and she’d be hanging out the wash, him pulling on her skirt and whining, and you’d hear her saying, “Mama’ll make you a big old cake soon as she’s done.” They’d sit down and split a chocolate cake but she wouldn’t have given June air if she was in a jug. June’d have to come over here to have a treat. Roland wouldn’t have anything to do with us, least not until he came and killed Ruby’s mule. Before that, Ruby’d say, “Well, Roland’s like he is because his mama keeps him
so close, and you might not want to excuse him but you can see why he’s a problem.” Then after the mule Ruby had to stop making a allowance for him. You’d see her tighten up when somebody talked about him.

June turned out though, I and Burr and Ruby jumping in between her and Tiny Fran every time she tried to ruin her. She’s a architect in town now. I still get to see her right much. You won’t see Roland though. He’s in jail they said for at least ten years. And I’ll tell you what, I think it ought to be ten hundred years.

Listen and let me tell what else I think about it. Listen to how God up there is supposed to make everything and everybody and everything’s due to turn out according to his will and all. And we get the wars and the people starving and people hurting people and animals the way Roland did, and I’m supposed to go down there to Ephesus on a Sunday morning and say, “Thank you, Jesus, thank you for the sunshine and the food on my table and all the birds singing and the likes of Adolf Hitler and Roland Stanley.” No thank you! I’ll have no part of it! Beats the hell out of me why somebody’d want to sit up somewhere and think up harm, start it to going, then say, “Oh, let me make it up to you. Here’s this rainbow so you can remember how I can kill everything and everybody, but I swear I won’t again.” How would you like it if I slammed your fingers in the car door and then watched you standing there holding
your hand and it throbbing and turning blue, and I said, “Oh, let me make it up to you. Here’s a quarter and I promise I won’t ever do it again”? How good do you think you’d be listening to somebody then, especially somebody who ought to be hustling you in the car to take to the doctor, not giving you a quarter to hold in a busted up hand? I think about that and want to tell it to Cecil Spangler and every other gung-ho Christian that’s been out here trying to save me, and then I’d say, “Think about that, O ye of all that faith!”

More than one time when Tiny Fran’s heard me comment on the way she handled her children, especially Roland, she’s said, “How come you can profess to know so much and you and Ruby can’t even have any babies? Who made you the expert?” I used to tell her I and Ruby had the instinct for it whereas she’d be better off with billy goats and guinea pigs. Burr used to hear us going at it like that and laugh his head off.

Tiny Fran was known for showing her tail, but she couldn’t just show it, then you’d laugh, and that’d be all until the next time she’d do something ignorant. No, half the time she’d fairly well stun you with something so ugly you’d have to say to yourself, I cannot believe that came out of a human being, like at the beach one time, like with Ruby this summer be eighteen years ago.

It was hot and summer like it is now and Burr came over
here late in the day and asked me why I and Ruby didn’t ride to the coast with them the next weekend. He said Tiny Fran threw a natural-born fit over the idea but June threw a bigger one over the idea of us not, and you can bet which one Burr went along with. I told him we’d go, long as Tiny Fran stayed away from Ruby and didn’t bother her. He said he’d do his best to keep the lid on her.

We went all crammed into Burr’s car, and before we’d backed out of the driveway I wished we’d put Roland in the damn trunk. I know he was just six and you’re supposed to make a allowance for them that young, but you tell that to somebody that’s not shut up in a car with a damn demon child and his mama.

When we got going Ruby kept trying to be friendly and pleasant, talking about how nice it was to be going to the beach and so forth and so on. I can still see her riding the whole way with a pineapple cake between her feet and holding a pound cake. Then it started to be every single time Ruby’d open her mouth to say something Tiny Fran’d cut in, irked me so bad. Finally Burr told her to let Ruby finish a sentence. That made her so mad she twisted and got herself up on one thigh and rode the rest of the trip with everything pushed into the door, looking like she was looking out the window. We even stopped and all of us but her got out to get a hamburger, and I thought, Stew then, stay mad, my dogs wouldn’t sit in a car with it this hot.
I know she was about parched but she’d have swallowed poison before she’d have got out and had a mouthful to eat with us.

The rest of the way Tiny Fran sucked her breaths in and blew them out like she was having to strain for air, huffing and puffing, hot with all of us. Then Burr told her just to keep on like that and she’d have a real fine time that weekend, if she didn’t make herself pass out before we got there. Then he went on into how he intended to enjoy himself that weekend, fishing, relaxing, flying a kite, watching the young girls. Then she said something. She said, “What do you intend for me to be doing while all that’s going on?” He said it was plenty she could do, play with the children, go all through the shell shops with Ruby, play miniature golf, go down the strip to the little amusement park and have her weight guessed. I thought I was going to fold over laughing on Ruby when he said that. Then she told him to go to hell, said that applied to everybody. I know Ruby hated to laugh at a woman making a ass out of herself, but you couldn’t help it. You just couldn’t.

We finally got there and we pulled up at the Pettigrew’s Cottages. I remember it was Pettigrew’s because I couldn’t imagine somebody being named something something Pettigrew. I can’t picture a Pettigrew. But we pulled up and I leaned over to Ruby and I said, “I thought we were staying
at a motel. These are just shacks!” She said it didn’t matter as long as they were clean. And Lord was it hot! Hotter than forty hells, not enough breeze to do any good.

After we got everything unloaded and inside, Burr told me to let’s get the fishing mess ready and go buy some bait and go on out. Then listen and tell me if you hear something funny. Tiny Fran broke in and asked him where he’d put the folding chairs, and Burr said, “What?” and she said, “You know, my brand new folding chairs I got especially for this trip.” Burr told her he didn’t remember packing or unpacking them and he went on about his business. Then she got hot, she yelled at him, “Well, what do you expect me to sit on?” Then listen, he said, “I guess you can sit down on your fist and lean back on your thumb!” I laughed and Ruby laughed and I thought Burr was going to choke he laughed so hard. Tiny Fran told us all to go to hell and went on inside.

Then we all went out to see the water, stayed out there about all afternoon. I wore some Bermuda shorts Ruby’d got me when she bought her bathing suit. I said she could take the matched T-shirt back to the store. She’d gotten a idea I’d look good in red, but I told her to take it on back, I’d wear a undershirt. You ought to have seen Ruby. She was the one who looked like something in red, red top with a blue bottom, two-pieced. She was only twenty-seven
then and her skin still snapped back like a rubber band. Tiny Fran getting into her feed sack of a bathing suit must’ve been like cramming mud in a glove.

Well, when the sun was cooling down Burr said he guessed we’d all better get on back up to the house, that the children looked about played out, and he knew Ruby must be tired of chasing them. Then he called out and asked Tiny Fran what she had on the menu. She looked up, looked like a turtle pulling his head up, and she said she was on vacation and that folks could fend for themselves tonight.