The Darling Dahlias and the Silver Dollar Bush (10 page)

Lizzy often wondered whether she had bought the house as a way of fending off Grady’s determined courtship. True or not, she had definitely put off saying yes to him, much to her mother’s chagrin.

“The Alexanders are fine Christian people,” Mrs. Lacy frequently fretted. “I think the world of Mrs. Alexander, and Grady has a good job, and gumption. And he takes such good care of his mother, too.” She would pause to let the full implications of that sink in, then add, “You’ll never find anybody better, Elizabeth. And you’re not getting any younger, you know. Shilly-shally much longer and you’ll lose your looks, and then you’ll never find a husband. You’ll be an old maid, that’s what you’ll be. And you won’t have anybody to blame but yourself, my girl.”

Lizzy didn’t disagree with what her mother said about Grady as a prospective husband, for he had gone to college and gotten an agriculture degree and worked as the county ag agent. The job didn’t pay a lot but it was steady, and he was good at it. But while her mother seemed to feel that old maids led unhappy lives, Lizzy wasn’t so sure. Just look at Bessie Bloodworth, who had never married but who was perfectly content to look after her little family of boarders at the Magnolia Manor. And Verna, who often said that she wouldn’t have another man if somebody paid her to take him. And Fannie Champaign, who—

No, not Fannie, Lizzy thought. Fannie might be an old maid, but she wasn’t contented. Fannie wanted a husband. Actually, she wanted Charlie Dickens (or thought she did), although it didn’t look like she was going to get him.

“And Grady is
extremely
good-looking, Elizabeth,” Mrs. Lacy would add, in a censorious tone. “You cannot object to him in any possible way. It’s just sheer obstinacy on your part. You are every bit as stubborn and hard-hearted as your father. You never think of anybody but yourself.”

Lizzy never understood exactly how stubborn and hard-hearted that was, since her father had had the misfortune of dying when she was a baby. She only knew that whenever she fell short of her mother’s expectations, she was her father’s daughter. He apparently had never measured up, either.

Grady himself never came right out and said that Lizzy was stubborn and hard-hearted. She suspected he thought so, though—but not for the reason her mother did.
He
thought she was stubborn and hard-hearted because she wouldn’t . . . well, go all the way.

Now, Lizzy was no prude. She certainly enjoyed their steamy sessions in the hot, breathless dark, parked in Grady’s blue Ford on the hill above the Cypress Country Club’s eighteenth green. But she always made him stop when she knew that if she didn’t make him stop right that very second she would stop wanting him to stop, and that was dangerous. It wasn’t wrong, exactly, at least not morally wrong—at least not morally wrong in
her
view, since in spite of what the preacher said on Sunday mornings, it seemed to her that God had better things to do than punish his children when what they were doing didn’t hurt anybody else. And she wasn’t worried about getting pregnant, because Grady carried those rubber things in his wallet, just in case she might change her mind, which wasn’t revolting at all but rather sweet and touching. She knew, because she had found one there when he gave her his wallet to run into Jake Pritchard’s filling station and buy them each a cold soda.

But it was dangerous in a different way, for if she and Grady had sex, he would take it as a signal that she was ready to marry him. And while she cared for him—sometimes she even thought she loved him—she wasn’t ready for marriage. At least, not just yet, although she had been shaken by the intensity of the jealousy that had gnawed away at her when she’d thought that Grady was planning to take DeeDee Davis to the Kilgores’ party last summer.

This jealousy thing was on her mind because the previous Friday, she’d run into Alice Ann Walker at the post office, and Alice Ann had told her that her husband, Arnold, had seen Grady driving around with a girl from Monroeville. The girl was blond and very pretty, Arnold had said. And young, barely twenty.

“Just thought you should know,” Alice Ann said sympathetically, and reached out to squeeze her hand.

Now, the thought of another girl riding around in Grady’s Ford was troubling, and Lizzy pushed it away. Rumbling his anticipatory purr, Daffodil was rubbing against her ankles. “Come on, Daffy,” she said, and scooped him up. “Let’s get your supper.”

As she went down the hall, Lizzy savored the quiet space—a space that was all hers. On the left, polished wooden stairs led up to the two upstairs bedrooms. On the right, a wide doorway opened into the parlor, with its small Mission-style leather sofa, a used armchair that she had reupholstered in brown corduroy, a Tiffany-style stained-glass lamp, and several bookshelves lined with books. Behind the parlor was the kitchen with its dining nook and the window that looked out into the garden. At the end of the hall, the bathroom (converted from a storage room) held a claw-footed tub, a tiny sink, a pull-chain toilet, and newly tiled floor. It was the most perfect house in the world, Lizzy felt, a perfectly private place, a sanctuary from all the dark things that were going on around it.

She put down a dish of cooked chopped beef liver for Daffy and fixed a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and a glass of milk for herself. Then she ran upstairs and took her pretty blue silk crepe dress—Grady’s favorite—out of the closet, the one with the ruffled cape sleeves and the shiny blue belt. In front of her vanity mirror, she brushed out her golden brown curls and fastened them back with a pair of blue barrettes, then added a smudge of rouge to her cheeks and some glossy pink lipstick to her lips. She smiled at herself, thinking that for someone who was past her thirtieth birthday, she looked . . . well, young. Not as young as that girl in Grady’s car, maybe, but not nearly old enough to be an old maid.

She heard Grady’s knock and ran down the stairs to open the door. He was wearing his usual date-night clothes, a white shirt with the collar open and the sleeves rolled above the elbows, showing tanned, strong arms; dark twill wash pants; and a brown felt fedora tipped to the back of his head. His brown hair was rumpled, as usual, and a little long on the back of his neck.

But he wasn’t wearing his usual rakish, devil-may-care grin. Instead, he had what Lizzy thought of as that “Grady look” on his face, the intent, frowning expression he wore when he was thinking of something serious.

And he didn’t tilt his head and say, “Hey, doll, ready to rumble?” the way he usually did. Instead, he pulled off his hat and said, “May I come in, Liz? I need to talk to you.”

“Sure,” Lizzy said, stepping back to let him in. “But hadn’t we better be going?” Monroeville was fifteen miles away, and Grady always insisted that they get to the theater in time to get their buttered popcorn and Cokes and find exactly the right seats before
the newsreel began.

Grady didn’t answer. Instead, he stepped into the little parlor and gestured toward Lizzy’s corduroy-covered chair. “Have a seat,” he said, and sat down on the sofa, hunching forward, elbows on his knees.

Lizzy perched on the edge of the chair. “I don’t understand,” she said, uncertain. “Is something wrong? Why are we—”

“Because we are,” he said huskily. He looked at her with the oddest look, his eyes lingering on her blue dress, her hair, her face. It was a hungry look, as if he were storing away the memory against a famine.

“Well, then.” Uneasily, she groped for something to say. “Can I . . . can I get you something? Lemonade, maybe? Coffee?”

“No. Nothing. I don’t want anything.” He put up a hand and rubbed his eyes, closing them for a moment, as if he were closing them against a sharp pain. His mouth tightened, and when he opened his eyes and looked at her, she saw that they were red rimmed and bloodshot, as if he had been crying. But that couldn’t be right, because Grady never cried, not even when he’d had to shoot the horse he’d ridden ever since he was eight.

“But there’s something wrong, Grady.” She was now thoroughly alarmed, and she could feel her heart beginning to pound. “Has somebody . . . died?”

“You might say that,” he said, and his voice cracked. “But not exactly.” He cleared his throat and tried again. “I . . . I . . . Oh, God, Liz, I’d give anything on this earth if I didn’t have to tell you.”

“Tell me
what
?” she cried, clenching her fists. “Grady, what’s wrong? Is it your mother? Is it—”

“No, it’s me, Liz. It’s me, just me, nobody else. I’ve done something . . . really awful, and I have to pay the price. And that means that you and I . . . we can’t . . . we can never . . .” He stopped.

Done something awful? Pay the price? It sounded as if he had been arrested and would spend the rest of his life in prison! Lizzy stared at him, perplexed.

“We can never
what
?” she demanded. “What in the world are you
talking
about, Grady Alexander? Why don’t you just come out with it?”

He dropped his face into his hands. His voice was so muffled that she had trouble making out the words.

“. . . have to . . . don’t want to . . . hate like hell . . .”

“Grady,” she said firmly. “I cannot hear a word with you talking that way. Now, sit up and look at me and say whatever you’ve got to say.” She sounded like a schoolteacher, she knew, but he was behaving like a schoolboy, when he needed to act like an adult.

He looked up and the expression on his face hit her like an almost physical blow. “Liz, I . . . I have to get married.”

She was nonplussed, then impatient and angry. “Grady, we have discussed this over and over. I am just not ready to get married. I don’t—”

He shook his head from side to side, hard. “No. No, Liz.” His voice was savage. “Not to you. I can’t marry you. I’m marrying Sandra. Sandra Mann.”

She stared at him, her heart thumping like a hot fist against her ribs. “You’re . . . getting married?” she asked incredulously. She swallowed, trying to make sense of this. “And who is . . . Sandra Mann? I know Twyla Sue and Archie Mann, of course, but I’ve never heard of your . . . fiancée.” It took every ounce of courage to say that last word.

“She’s Archie’s niece,” he said flatly. “She lives over east of Monroeville, works at the grain elevator there. I . . . met her last fall. We’ve gone out together a few times.”

Lizzy felt the way she did the time Lily Dare took her for a ride in her airplane and did a loop-the-loop. It was as if the bottom had just dropped out of the world and she wasn’t sure whether she was upside down or right-side up. She struggled to get her breath, to form words that made some sort of sense, but her lips were stiff and cold. Anyway, she couldn’t imagine what she was supposed to say in a situation like this.
Congratulations,
maybe? Or
I hope you will be very happy.

The silence seemed to stretch out like a rubber band. Just when it was about to snap, she managed to say something reasonably honest. “Grady, I don’t see how you can possibly marry a girl you’ve only gone out with a few times. I don’t understand—”

And then she did.

“Oh,” she said, in a small, thin voice. “This girl. Sandra. She’s . . . going to have a baby. And you have to do the right thing.”

“Yes.” Grady clasped his hands, unclasped them. His face was gray, his mouth pinched. “I’m sorry. Oh, God, Liz, I am
so
sorry. I didn’t mean to . . . It just happened . . .” He closed his eyes. “Oh,
hell
.”

She looked away, biting her lip, thinking of those rubber things in his wallet and wondering why the girl . . . why Sandra hadn’t made him use one. Did she
want
to get pregnant? Had she deliberately trapped him? Or—

She took a deep breath. Still not looking at him, she said, “You’re a hundred percent sure you’re the father, Grady?” The minute the words were out of her mouth, she was sorry. If he hadn’t thought of this himself, she had just planted a seed of suspicion that could doom whatever happiness he might have achieved. But he
should
have thought of it, shouldn’t he?

He cleared his throat. “How can I . . . I mean, I guess I have to take her word for it. Don’t I?” It sounded like a genuine question, a possibility he hadn’t thought of until Lizzy asked, a possibility that raised an unexpected hope, like a life preserver thrown to a drowning man.

“I didn’t think of that,” he said, his voice lightening. “Is there a way you can tell ahead of—”

Then, realizing the futility, he drew back into himself. “No, I guess not. Anyway, it’s no use. It’s too late. The wedding is all set. It’s on Saturday.”

“Saturday!” She felt as if a big fist had just knocked all the wind out of her. Grady was getting married on Saturday, and she could have prevented it so easily. All she’d had to do was say yes, or not say no, or say nothing at all, and they would have done it. She would have given herself to him there in the hot, sweet dark. And that would have been the end of the story.
They
would be getting married, she and Grady. There would be no Sandra, no hurry-up wedding.

She raised her eyes to look at him. “Do you love her?”

“Jeez.” His face was tired and drawn, and his eyes brightened with unshed tears. “How could I love her? I love
you,
damn it, Liz. But you—”

He stopped, biting back the words. He didn’t say, “But you wouldn’t marry me.” He didn’t have to. Unspoken, they hung in the air like smoke, heavy with a sad significance, dark and dense with loss, until he exhaled a long, hopeless sigh and said simply, “I’m sorry.”

Sorry sorry sorry.
Such a little word, so frail, so desperately, hopelessly inadequate. Lizzy sat there for a moment, feeling utterly desolate, devastated, as if she were mourning a death. But to her enormous surprise, she suddenly understood that it wasn’t herself she mourned for, or even their relationship. She was mourning for Grady. She knew him, knew him too well. He would marry the girl and he would love her and their baby, because both love and marriage were right, and expected, and honorable.

But somewhere deep down inside the loving and dutiful husband and father would be a dark, unhappy core. Grady would always hate himself for what he had done, and the hate would undermine whatever love had grown, like a river flood undercuts a grassy bank until it gives way and crumbles into the brown rushing water. Or maybe it wouldn’t happen that way. Maybe that dark core would grow cold, like a fire going out, the cinder growing dark and hard, and Grady would become resigned and acquiescent and even, eventually, accept what he had done