Forever Friends (9 page)

“I never had no gun,” he said to the preacher as if she had asked. “Somebody else stuck that under my seat when the cops stopped us.” He pulled his hands along the sides of his head. “I ain't never agreed to using no guns.”

Charlotte didn't know what to say to the teenager; she wasn't sure what he wanted from her, where he was going with this line of conversation. So she was silent.

“We had decided to pull something simple. Nobody was supposed to be there and nobody was going to get hurt. We just needed some money for a party.” He stuck his fingers through the open window as if he was testing to see how cold it was or to feel the wind on his skin.

“I said I'd never be with nobody who used guns.” He pulled his hand in. He wondered how long he could wait before taking another cigarette.

“Why would you think your grandmother is afraid of you?” Charlotte finally asked.

Lamont explained sharply, “Well, that doesn't take a genius to figure out, does it? A grandson in jail who steals, who's been caught with a gun? The church ladies must love that.” He gripped the handle on the car door.

“I don't think the church ladies know,” Charlotte said, noticing how nervous he seemed.

“Yeah, right. Like everybody in that small town doesn't know everybody else's secrets,” he replied.

Charlotte thought about it. She wasn't sure what anybody else knew about Peggy and Vastine's situation. No one had mentioned anything to her, but that didn't always mean they were without information. Sometimes they were a little careful with their gossip around the preacher.

“So?” Charlotte said. “Even if the church ladies do know, what difference does that make?” She changed hands, resting one in her lap. “If your grandmother didn't want you to come and stay with her, if she was worried about what others think, or if she really was afraid of you, she wouldn't have bailed you out, and she certainly wouldn't let you stay with them.”

Finally Lamont couldn't stand it anymore. He opened the compartment at his knees, took out another cigarette. Charlotte watched as he lit it, taking another long, drawn-out breath as he sucked in the smoke.

“You ever done anything you're ashamed of?” He pulled the cigarette out of his mouth and studied the way it was made. He rolled it around in his fingers, noticing the straight tight line where the paper was glued, the compact way the ashes stayed together as the fire burned along the edges.

Charlotte thought about the question. She cracked her window to let out some of the smoke that had collected in the car. Lamont opened the window more on his side, following suit.

The minister realized that she had known lots of emo
tions—disappointment, sorrow, regret, fear, anger. Many of these feelings she had discussed with Marion. They had spent months of sessions dealing with her issues about her sister's death, her mother's alcoholism, and her father's abandonment. They had talked of her ministry and the depressed way she felt when she attempted the work of a pastor.

They analyzed her dreams, the sense of loss and dread that stayed with her, and the slight pressure of sadness that always lay upon her heart. They spoke of unfulfilled dreams, clinging to the past, and how much pain one person can bear. But in all their conversations, in all their moments of clarity and insight, in all of Marion's wise renderings and Charlotte's vulnerable sharing, they had never spoken of shame.

Of course, Charlotte thought, I have felt ashamed of my mother's drinking and my father's disappearance. Of course, she thought, I have been ashamed of how Serena died and how I wasn't there with her when it happened. I have been ashamed of the things I have said at times, the moments I lashed out in anger. But as she glanced over at the young man who had asked the question, a teenager who had already fallen into the downward spiral of addiction, a young boy who had already caused his family so much pain that his mother had kicked him out of her life, she realized that she had never lost herself to that brand of sorrow.

In her careful and sober way of picking through a life, she had encountered many demons, but that was one she had never wrestled with and lost.

“No,” she answered. “Not like what you're talking about.”

Lamont put the cigarette to his lips and closed his eyes. He seemed appreciative of her honesty. He waited a minute, blew out a breath of smoke, and then responded. “I sold my mother's wedding band.” He stuck the cigarette through the crack in the window.

Charlotte watched the road.

“I figured she wouldn't miss it anyway. She and my dad had been divorced a long time. So, I went through her jewelry and found it in a small black box in the far corner of her drawer.” He rested his head against the back of his seat.

“It was a set, you know,” he said, explaining. “A little diamond on one ring and another plain one that fit beneath it. There were little chips of stones all around the big one.” He pulled his hand in and took another drag off the cigarette.

“I sold it to a pawn shop down near where she works. Seventy-five bucks,” he said, the memory clear in his mind. “When I got home, after blowing the money, she was sitting in the middle of her bedroom, down at the foot of her bed, the drawer pulled out, all the jewelry scattered on the floor, the little black box on her lap, open and empty.” The teenager thumped the cigarette out the window. “She had been crying but she wasn't then. She just looked up at me while I was standing at the door. Just looked up at me.”

Charlotte took the exit off the interstate, heading into Hope Springs.

“Then she said to me all soft and lonely sounding, ‘Don't matter anyway; he ain't coming back.'” Lamont spoke qui
etly, his voice stretched and thin. “That was the worst time,” he added, his confession finished.

Charlotte drove without responding. She wasn't sure why he had told her or if he needed something from her. It felt complete and whole in just the way it had been said.

He opened up the glove compartment to get another cigarette, and Charlotte reached over and pulled out the pack.

“Here,” she said. “Just take the whole thing. I'll buy some more for the old woman.”

Lamont nodded, wiped his nose with the back of his hand, and stuck the pack of cigarettes in the pocket of his coat.

She drove the rest of the way without either of them speaking. For the next seven miles they rode in silence, the air heavy with smoke. When they pulled into the driveway of his grandparents' home, they both saw Peggy watching from the front window.

They got out of the car without looking at each other.

“Thanks for the smokes,” was all that the young man said. Together they walked to the door.

D
ick!” Beatrice came in from her morning walk and took off her shoes while she called out for her husband. She noticed how dirty they had gotten, and she
wondered if she should go ahead and wash them right then.

“Dick?” She stood at the door and massaged the top of her right foot, which was sore and a little swollen. She had trouble with gout, but she knew that if she got out of the habit of walking, she would never pick it back up. She tried to exercise even when it hurt.

She slid out of her coat and hung it on the hook in the entryway. She dropped her keys on the counter, yelling out his name once more. “Dick?”

The house was silent and Beatrice peered through the kitchen door into the garage, noticing that her husband's car was gone. He had left while she was out on her walk. She wondered how long he had been gone, but she didn't worry because she knew that he would call before lunch and let her know where he was and if he would be joining her for the midday meal.

She blew out a breath, poured herself a glass of water, sat down at the table, and began going through the mail that he had placed there before he left.

Gerald must have come by early, she thought, noticing the clock and confirming that it was just before 10:00
A.M
.

There were a couple of bills, her
Southern Living
magazine, and a newsletter from some funeral home, but she spotted the postcard right away.

It was a picture of a lioness and her cubs resting beneath a tree out on the African plains. The photograph, she guessed, appeared to have been taken late in the afternoon as the sun
was low and the shadows were long and deep behind the family of cats. The cubs played at the mother's feet while the older lioness looked up, seeming to spot the photographer just as the picture was being snapped. A broad and shorthaired yellow beast, she was poised but surprised that she and her family had been captured at just that moment.

Beatrice examined the picture carefully before finally turning the card over to read,

Beatrice put the card in front of her nose and sniffed. It was a strange thing to do, smelling a postcard, and she wasn't sure if she was doing it because she missed Jessie and hoped to recover a familiar scent from her friend or if it was because she was curious as to whether there might be odors clinging to the picture or the words from a place she had never visited.

There were neither. It smelled like any other piece of mail that had been fingered and handled by many hands.
Disappointed, she leaned it against the fruit bowl in the middle of the table, sat back, and drank some of her water. She was hot and spent from her walk and she finished almost the entire contents of the glass before she set it down on the table.

She thought of Africa and what Jessie might be feeling being in a country so far away, the birthplace of her ancestors. Was it how it had been for her when she visited, for the first time, her great-grandparents' farm, high in the mountains of Tennessee?

She had gone with her oldest daughter, who arranged the trip for her birthday several years earlier. Beatrice had mentioned once that she had never seen the part of Tennessee where her father's people lived, and so Robin had researched the exact location of their family's whereabouts and surprised her mother with a two-day trip back home.

Once they got there, Robin decided that it was something her mother should experience alone, so she dropped Beatrice off on a street corner, giving her specific directions for finding her family's original property, and drove away, beaming with pride.

The older woman stood unmoving for a while, disoriented at first, and then walked the length of her home place end to end, now a housing development for first-time home buyers, an inexpensive but tasteful subdivision. As she walked from corner to corner, north to south, east to west, she listened to the wind and imagined that she heard the sounds of her great-grandmother calling to her children and whispering her long-ago dreams.

It had meant something to her, something deep and precious, but it had also touched a place inside her that made her feel a little lonesome. When Robin picked her up, the young woman hopeful and expectant of her mother's arranged happiness, Beatrice had not known how to talk about it. She said that she was grateful for the opportunity to go to Tennessee, back to the mountains where her bloodlines pulsed, and that it was a very thoughtful gift; but she knew that she had disappointed her daughter when she could not explain why she hadn't been completely overjoyed with the birthday present.

Was Jessie feeling some of the same emotions, joy at touching a homeland but sadness that it was no longer hers?

She sighed at her thoughts and then returned her attention to the postcard. She folded her arms across her chest, admiring the picture.

She liked the way the lioness stared right into the lens of the camera, daring and confident. It was as if she was not afraid of anything; she was bold and unswerving.

Beatrice wished that she was like that. She wished that she was strong and unmoved, unwilling to change her stance or expression when she saw a camera being pointed in her direction. She wished that she was comfortable being photographed.

She acted like she enjoyed having her picture taken, that it was a pleasure to be posed and smiling, but the truth was she hated it. She hated it because she knew that the proof of her age and sorrow would now be processed through the hands and eyes of people who did not even know her and would be examined by those she had tried to fool.

It had become disconcerting to her to be photographed ever since she had first heard about tribes of people who would not allow their pictures to be taken because they believed it captured a part of their souls. While Dick shook his head at the silliness of the superstition, Beatrice quietly believed that such a thing was possible.

She believed, in fact, that it had happened to her and that every time she had been frozen in the piece of somebody's film, beginning more than sixty years ago, when she was only a baby, a tiny edge of her spirit had been pulled away, separate and lost. By now, she thought, there must not be very much left of my soul since there are too many albums and boxes of photographs even to count.

She thought of all the occasions when her picture was taken, happy times like the births of her children, the parties and the holiday gatherings, the graduations, the anniversaries, the milestones met and passed, generation to generation. She remembered the celebrations, the ready-made smiles and steady poses she had learned and perfected over the years.

She thought about the way she felt when someone pointed the camera in her direction. And as she sat at her kitchen table, her eyes focused on the picture of a mother and her babies, a cat in Africa that was probably dead and gone now, she raised her shoulders, folded her hands in her lap, tilted her head at a slight angle, lifted the corners of her mouth, and said out loud, “Smile.”

She blinked her eyes as if there had been a flash of light,
lowered herself, and leaned back in her chair. “There must be hardly any soul left,” she said to a picture of a lioness and to nobody else in the room. She sat without speaking again, the image of herself frozen at the kitchen table, and remembered the event from the night before, how she had cornered her husband just after supper.

She had fixed pork chops in the large iron skillet that had been her mother's and the small English peas that Dick preferred. She tossed a salad and made sure the tea was cold and sweet before she poured it into the glasses and called him from the garage to get ready to eat.

She had cooked and prepared the table with hardly any thought of what she would discuss with him after they ate, and even though she was fixing her husband's favorite meal, it was not a part of a scheme or ploy to manipulate him into sharing information. She was simply doing what she enjoyed, delighting someone she loved with pleasure.

There had been uncomplicated conversation during the meal, talk of the weather and who had died, keeping him busy at the funeral home he ran, how Dick was thinking about buying a new golf club he had seen advertised in a magazine, and how her mashed potatoes were whipped especially light.

She had purchased a new dress at a winter sale at the mall, and while Dick ate a piece of the banana cream pie she had made over the weekend, she left her dessert and went to the bedroom, put on the new article of clothing, and modeled for him in the kitchen.

He had her turn around and step to the sink, then walk over to him so that he could feel the material; and he smiled at his wife and claimed that she appeared younger and thinner than she ever had and that if it was up to him, he'd marry her all over again as long as she wore that dress. Then he tilted his head back, exposing the front part of his neck, and Beatrice leaned down and kissed him just below his Adam's apple. In her mind, he had said exactly the right thing.

She returned to the bedroom and changed into what she had been wearing before, walked into the kitchen, and cleaned up the dinner dishes. Dick moved into the den and turned on the television while she finished her chores.

After nearly an hour she turned on the dishwasher, covered the pie with clear plastic wrap, put it in the refrigerator, and stood at the kitchen table, finally ready to ask the question.

She walked into the den and turned off the television. “I want to know,” she said to him as he sat in his chair reading the paper, only minutes after the start of his favorite game show, “I want to know what is going on with your brother and his wife.”

She had considered and honored what Louise had said to her. For days she had pondered the necessity of keeping certain secrets. She had agreed with her friend and had made a decision that she had no right to ask that her husband betray his family member's confidence and tell his wife what wasn't hers to know. She tried not to think of herself as being jealous of his sister-in-law.

She had not pestered him when he returned from the last trip to Winston. She did not snoop in his pockets or check the mileage on his car. She didn't needle him or inquire about the visit; she had remained steadfast and detached for more than eleven days. But then another day passed, and on the eleventh night of silence, the eleventh night of hearing nothing, knowing nothing, discussing nothing, she could not take it any longer.

“I want to know what is going on with your brother and his wife,” she repeated when he did not put down his paper.

She stood just in front of the television, no more words spoken, and the sudden absence of any other noise in the room made her question and her questioning feel even more dramatic.

Dick folded the newspaper across his lap and studied his wife as she stood above him.

She was determined, her lips pursed in two tight lines, her eyes filled with an uneasy confidence, her chin high, her shoulders steady; and she just stood there, not quite close but near enough that she would not be turned away.

He took off his reading glasses and placed them on the small table next to his chair. He rolled his chin in his hand, still without saying a word. There was a long, drawn-out pause as she waited and as he thought of how to begin, how to speak to his wife's confusion and how to answer her question.

“O. T. and Jean are the only family members I have left,” he said as if she didn't know it. “Nobody's heard from my
brother Jolly in years. Mama passed ten years ago, and Daddy, well, you remember that story about him getting killed in that tractor accident.”

Beatrice remained as she was, standing in front of Dick as he finally spoke of the truth. She already knew the strength of the relationship between Dick and his brother, even between Dick and his brother's wife, at first having mistaken her for his sister.

Dick began telling the story slowly and with great thought. He did it as if he had been waiting for her to ask, each word a stone on a path or a fingerprint at the scene, a clue to the mystery behind his silence.

“O. T. was more than just my brother. He was my best friend.” Dick pulled his hand away from his face, settling in his chair. He set the story loose.

“He was the one who taught me how to pull and string tobacco and how to rewire the ignition system on the old Buick. He showed me how to fish and hunt, taught me everything I know about farming and money.” Dick paused. “O. T. was the one who was always there for me.” He thought about how much stronger his relationship was with his oldest brother than it was with the middle one.

Dick went on without prompting from his wife. “O. T. was—is,” he corrected himself, “a good man, a really good man.”

Beatrice nodded. She had liked her brother-in-law from the first time they met. She knew that Dick adored him.

“He fell in love and married Jean and brought her back to
the farm when I was just a little boy.” He recalled how it was when the young couple moved in with them. “Jean wasn't very old herself, and I don't think Mama ever liked her, but me and Jolly did.” Dick thought about his other brother and how he seemed especially smitten with the oldest son's young bride.