Sweeping Up Glass (22 page)

“Will’m,” I say, “you sure can’t haul that cub to California with you. Not on a bus, day and night. It’ll be all right here. I can look after it.”

I don’t think he’s eaten a thing. Pauline can hardly sit still; I’ve just given her permission to take the boy.

I must keep moving, too. I clear the table before Ida’s done and when I send Will’m to take her home, he folds the last corn cake and tucks it in his pocket. He’ll slip it under Ida’s pillow, for when she wakes hungry in the night. I wash up the dishes while Pauline combs out her yellow hair, and rouges her cheeks and lips.

“Don’t I look pretty in this dress, Mama?” she says, twirling. “Isn’t this a lovely shade of lipstick? I bought it at a drugstore on Hollywood Boulevard.”

I’m reminded of the night Ida and I wrestled around on the bedroom floor. “Looks like your rouge could be softened some.”

Pauline’s hands flutter like sparrows with no place to land. “Oh, you don’t know anything, being stuck back here in these hills. You ought to get out more.”

I can’t think why on earth I’d want to get out more. What could there possibly be for me anywhere else? But then, of course, there’s Will’m, and it would behoove me to visit them in California. The thought of life without him is more than I can stand.

Pauline fishes her high-heeled shoes out from under the table and wiggles her feet into them. Then she puts on her cotton coat. “I reckon Pete’s place is still there and open on a Sunday night?” she says, referring to the smoky little beer joint around the corner and up the hill from Ruse’s Cafe. It is indeed. I won’t let Will’m anywhere near the place with its insides as dark as a whale’s behind and smelling of week-old ale. Silty’s, where I used to go before Pauline was born, was torn down a long time ago.

She pats her hair and goes out the door.

After that, it’s just me and the boy and the beating of our hearts, while he sits at the table cradling the pup. Will’m loved the other one so much, I wonder if he didn’t flat stroke it to death. It gets late, but neither of us goes to bed. I’m in danger of dying right here in my kitchen—Love Alice would say that’s a truth. But more than anything I need Will’m to be safe.

A
t midnight, Pauline still isn’t home. I should have known it would be so. Will’m will grow up loosening his ma’am’s fingers from the neck of a bottle. But dead is far worse.

It is nearly two o’clock when Will’m, in his longhandles, wakes me. Pauline’s snoring in the bed beside me, although I never heard her come in.

“The last one’s dying, Gran. I think it’s lonesome for its brothers—”

I get out of bed, my toes curling on the cold wooden floor, and wrap a thick shawl around me. He’s right, the cub’s breath is a death rattle. I am amazed that anything that small can make a sound so enormous when it’s leaving this world. I have always believed when the soul makes up its mind to go home, there’s not much a body can do, and I’m fairly certain these cubs have souls, same as every living thing and some things that aren’t.

But this is my boy, my Will’m, who shouldn’t have to take on more pain, and in my kitchen the stove has gone out. The bulb burning over the box is not enough, and the cub’s shivering miserably. Will’m lifts it out while I bring kindling and wood from the porch, and make a fire. I leave the oven door open.

I pull out a chair. “Bring him here.”

He sits in the chair, and I unfasten the top three buttons of his long johns.

“What are you doing?”

I slap away his hand and put the pup’s belly to his chest. “Hold him—so.” Then I button the long johns around them both. I hitch up my own chair and wrap the shawl around the three of us. Will’m’s eyes are wide, as if we’re waiting for some miracle.

Before long I hear the pup sigh, and Will’m says, “Gran?”

“Well,” I tell him, “I believe he’s gone to sleep.”

Not for anything would he let go of the cub, nor I of him, and inside my shawl I hold us together, as if one of the three might fly away. “He can hear your heartbeat, Will’m, your breathing. He hears your tummy rumble. He remembers those things—they remind him of his ma.”

Will’m leans into me. I reach up and turn off the light. A lovely orange glow spills from the oven and warms the floor and our bare feet.

“When I was little,” he says, “did you hold me like this?”

I stroke his hair. “Well, you were never this little, but I rocked you, yes.”

“Even though I wasn’t your boy.”

I wonder how much it cost him to say that. How blunt he is, and how brave!

“You
are
my boy. You have my bones, and my blood. It took your ma to put us together. We ought to be grateful. You and I, Will’m, are peas in a pod.”

“Peas in a pod.”

“Yes.”

“But why did Pauline leave me here?”

So he’s going to call her by her first name. I admire this child, the way he figures out what he can take on and what he can’t. He’s going to be one of those purely good men.

“Women hand things down,” I tell him. “Generation to generation. When I was born, Ida was out of her head. She wasn’t any ma’am at all. So, when I had Pauline, I didn’t know how to take care of her. Then, without me to show her, she didn’t know what to do with you.”

“But you took care of me.”

“A body learns over the years.”

“If you could go back and do things again, Gran, would you do them different?”

I put my cheek to his ear. “Well, that’s the thing. We can’t back up. Even if we could, I imagine we’d make the same mistakes.”

“But …” He rubs his chin on the pup’s soft head. “If you could change one thing, what would it be?”

That’s almost too much to think about. There’s Pap, of course—I’d not have run my mouth so much that night when we went into the ditch. Or Wing. Maybe I’d have been more understanding when he lost his ma’am and pap. Then there’s Pauline, and Ida—or any one of a million other things.

“If I could do it over,” I tell him, “I’d have us sit like this, together, every night of our lives.”

“Then why,” he says, in a voice I can barely hear, “do you want me to go?”

One question shouldn’t carry so much weight. The only sound is the wind howling around the eaves. “Because it’s best.”

After a moment he asks, “Why is it best?”

“Will’m—”

He pulls away from me. “I do for you. I help out all the time.”

“You do, yes.”

“I don’t give you trouble. I finish my schoolwork. Bring home A’s.”

“It has nothing to do with—”

Pauline stands in the doorway, in her nightgown. Even with sleep in her eyes, she’s pouting. “I heard you-all talking.”

“Go back to bed,” I tell her. “Or at least put something on your feet. There’s a pair of old house shoes under the bed.”

“You-all were talkin’ about me, weren’t you? Mama, you can’t tell me what to do with my boy.”

I want so to smack her, I can hardly stand it. Or maybe it’s that she’s interrupted this moment.

Will’m talks like she’s not there. “I want to know why I got to go.”

He’s stubborn, and I don’t blame him.

“You’re trying to get him over to your side,” Pauline says.

Neither of them understands. There are no sides. I settle things in my usual way. “Since we’re all up, I’ll start breakfast.”

“Gran,” Will’m says before I can move, “are we like the Bible story with King Solomon and the baby with two mothers? And the one that loves him most says, ‘You take him’?”

Lord, Lord, he can read my thoughts.

“Stop that talk right now,” Pauline says, stamping her bare foot. “I birthed you!”

“Oh, for God’s sake, Pauline,” I tell her. “How is it, in all these years, you never grew up?”

She hugs her elbows. “You got no right to say that to me, Mama. Don’t you ever think I’m sad and lonesome, too?”

“You could have come for a visit anytime.”

“No, I couldn’t. You didn’t want me. After Daddy Saul died, nobody wanted me.”

“That’s foolish talk.” I’m throwing words at her now, without thinking. I tamp the fire, add a few sticks, pour water in the pot.

“That’s it?” she says. “That’s the only thing you’ve got to say to me after all these years?”

“What is it you want to hear?”

“Some mamas tell their daughters they love ’em.”

I take out a box of Farina and open the lid. Pour. Stir. Feel it coming—in another minute, Pauline’s going to walk out of here, and it will be years before we see her again. Ida has taught me one thing—ma’ams don’t necessarily love that which they squeeze out of their bellies and into this world. And Pauline appears only when she wants something.

“If I knew you, Pauline, I might come to love you.”

She turns away. I stir in the cereal and feel sick to my stomach.

“Well, it should matter what
I
think,” Will’m says. “And I don’t want to go to California.”

“Hollywood’s real nice, Will’m,” Pauline says, changing her tone. I see how scared she suddenly is. “Movie stars, just standin’ on the corner.”

There’s a long silence while the Farina cooks. I put the pan on the table and ladle it up. Pauline sits down and stirs hers with a spoon.

How torn I am! If Will’m stays here, heaven knows what will happen. I have no right to put him in harm’s way. Still, Pauline’s going to be no better a ma’am than I was. She’ll tuck him away over that liquor store and leave him alone days and nights, and there’s no telling whether he’ll finish school or have enough to eat. One other thing’s itching me. “Pauline, after all these years, why do you want him now?”

“Look what a good-looking boy he is, Mama.”

“You want him because he’s got a sweet face?”

“Child stars are the rage,” she says. “If producers give him even bit parts, he can help pay our rent. If he makes it big in the films, we can move to our own place, and I can drive around in a fancy car. I’ll get a maid and—”

I’m both glad to hear it, and outraged. I plunk myself down in a chair. “Well, that does it. He’s not going with you if hell freezes over.”

Will’m’s eyes widen, and his mouth opens up. “You mean it?”

“Don’t talk with your mouth full. Of course I mean it.”

“You can’t do that,” Pauline says. “You can’t just change your mind.”

“I can do more than that. Soon as you’re done eating, Pauline, pack up your things and get out of my house. No judge in the country will give you the boy to use in that way.”

Her eyes fill with tears, and air jerks around in her throat while I look at a spot on the tabletop. With what sounds like a sob, she gets up and flounces off into the bedroom. I hear her throwing things around, and in a few minutes she comes back wearing the same dress and cloth coat, the same high-heeled shoes, that she came in. I wonder if she’s going to apologize to her son, but she simply takes her handbag from the drainboard and walks out through the grocery, slamming the door.

Will’m’s eyes are round as quart jars.

“Eat your breakfast,” I tell him.

“Yes, ma’am,” he says, but we are both on fire with the need to grin. In another instant he’s gotten up from his chair and come to put his arms around me, bury his face in my neck.

“Well!” Breath explodes from my chest. “Peas in a pod shouldn’t be separated. Besides, I can’t care for that cub near as good as you can.”

“I love you, Gran.”

“I love you, too, Will’m. But now that you’re staying, there’s things you’ve got to know. Bad things.”

“What things?”

“There’s going to be trouble—though I’ll be damned if I know why.”

He sits down in what was, a few minutes ago, Pauline’s chair. “Tell me,” he says. “I want to know.”

“Will’m, I came upon Alton Phelps on Cooper’s Ridge yesterday. Most of what he said didn’t make a lick of sense, but he threatened us both.”

“Threatened us how?”

“Said—first it was the wolves, and then us. That he didn’t have to worry about Ida.”

“What’d he mean?”

I shake my head, put down my spoon. I don’t tell him what Phelps said about killing him slow. “I thought he was talking about the night James Arnold died—I told you that story—and was still holding Pap and me responsible. I said over and over how sorry I was, but I don’t think that’s it.”

“What, then?”

I shake my head. “Maybe he believes Pap ran over James Arnold on purpose.”

“And did he?” Will’m says.

“I can’t think why.”

“What do you think he’ll do now?”

“I have no idea. But he means us harm.”

“And that’s why you were sending me away.”

I let a few seconds pass, and then I nod.

“Well—now that I’m staying,” he says, rubbing his hands together in a way that would make me smile if this wasn’t so serious, “we’ll figure this out.”

“Will’m, this is not a game. We’ve got to put the pieces together, all right, but I can’t have you in danger’s way while we’re doing it.”

“We’ll have to watch each other’s backs, Gran. You could have been in a mess all alone, while I was off in California, starin’ at palm trees.”

“If anything happened to you—”

“Same goes double,” he says.

“Well, here’s the thing. I’m keeping the rifle loaded. If I think there’s trouble coming, if I see it ahead, you go down to Wing’s and stay till I fetch you.”

“But—”

“Will’m, it wouldn’t take me five minutes to catch up with Pauline. Is it a deal?”

Will’m sighs. “It’s a deal.”

B
efore noon I’m up and dressed. In fact, I’ve just finished feeding the goats and the chickens and gathering four eggs when Wing drives up in his station wagon.

“Olivia!” he calls, getting out.

“Wing,” I say, clumping up the steps, banging snow from my boots. I feel myself tightening, closing up.

He comes around to the yard. “I see lumber stacked out in your barn. You renovating?”

“Something like that.” What business is it of his what I do? But the illogic of that stymies me and forces me to put it away. “I’ve cleaned out the cellar and—things.”

Even though we’re on the porch and out of the wind, Wing shivers with cold. I’m so irritated with him I could shove him down the steps. A realization comes—the opposite of love is not anger, it’s indifference. But which is it I feel?