The Tin Can Tree (16 page)

“What?”

“Will you help me out?”

“Oh, why, sure,” Simon said, and would have been asleep again if Joan hadn’t pulled him to a sitting position. He stayed there, slumped between her hands, with his head drooping to one side. “I was in this boat,” he said.

“Come on, Simon.”

“Then we started sinking. They told me I was the one that had to swim for it. Do you believe that’ll happen someday?”

“No,” said Joan, and pulled hard on him till he was standing beside the bed.

“They say everything you dream will happen,” Simon told her. “It’s true. Last year I dreamed Mama would find out about me smoking and sure enough, that night at supper there was my half-pack of Winstons lying beside my plate and Mama staring at me. It came true.”

He bent down to examine a stubbed toe and Joan stood up, preparing to go. “You come down when you’re dressed,” she said.

“I don’t have any clean jeans to wear.”

“That’s just something you said in your sleep. You have lots of jeans.”

“No, really I don’t,” Simon said. “No one’s been doing the laundry.”

Joan crossed to his bureau and pulled open his bottom drawer. It was bare except for a pair of bermudas. “Oh, Lord,” she said. “I forgot all about the laundry.”

“I told you you did.”

“Well, wear bermudas till this afternoon, why don’t you. By then I’ll have you some jeans.”

“Have my
knees
show?” Simon asked.

“What’s wrong with that?”

“Boys don’t
have
their knees out any more. You ought to know that.”

“Well, la de da,” said Joan, and rumpled the top of his hair. “Wear a pair of
dirty
jeans, then.”

“They’d all call me sissy if my knees showed.”

“All right. Hurry up, now.”

She closed the door behind her and went downstairs. In the parlor she sat down on a faded plush footstool and reached for the telephone, which sat on a table
beside her. She hooked the receiver over her shoulder and then opened the telephone book to the very back, where there was space for frequently used numbers. The page was filled to the bottom, and looked messy because of so many different handwritings. Mr. Pike had listed the names of bowling pals in a careful, downward-slanting script, and Simon had scrawled the names of all his classmates even though he never talked to them by telephone, and Janie Rose had printed names in huge capitals that took two lines, after asking several times how to spell each one—the four little Marsh girls, each listed separately, and the milkman who had once brought her a yellow plastic ring from a chicken’s leg, which she had worn every day until she lost it. Mrs. Pike’s handwriting was small and pretty, every letter slanting to the same degree, naming off her steady customers one by one with little memos to herself about colors and pattern numbers penciled in lightly beside them. Joan went down the list alphabetically. Mrs. Abbott, who never talked. Mrs. Chrisawn, who was in such a black mood most of the time. Davis, Forsyth, Hammond … She stopped there. Connie Hammond was always good to have around during a tragedy. She brought chicken broth whether people wanted it or not, and she knew little things like how to make a bed with someone in it and what to say when no one else could think of anything. As far as Joan was concerned, having a person talk incessantly would be more harm than help; but her aunt felt differently. Her aunt had actually sat up and answered, the last time Connie Hammond came. So Joan smoothed the phone book out on her knees and dialed the Hammonds’ number.

Mrs. Hammond was talking to somebody else when
she answered. She said, “If that’s not the
worst
thing—” and then into the phone, “Hello?”

“Mrs. Hammond, this is Joan Pike,” said Joan.

“Why, Joan, honey, how
are
you?” Mrs. Hammond said, and then softened her shrill voice to ask, “How’s your poor aunt?”

“Well, that’s what I wanted to talk to you about,” said Joan. She spoke at some distance from the receiver, in case Mrs. Hammond should grow shrill again.

“What’s that you say?”

“I said I wanted to
talk
to you about that. Aunt Lou is just miserable.”

“Oh, my.” There was a rustling sound as Mrs. Hammond cupped her hand over the receiver and turned away. “Lou Pike is just
miserable,
” she told someone. Her hand uncupped the receiver again and she returned, breathless, to Joan. “Joan, honey, I told Mr. Hammond, just last night. I said, I haven’t ever
seen
someone take on so. Well, of course she has good reason to but the things she
says
, Joan. It wasn’t her fault; it was that noaccount Ned Marsh who did it. How he manages to drive even a
tractor
recklessly is more than I can—”

“Um,” Joan said, and Mrs. Hammond stopped speaking and snapped her mouth shut audibly, to show she had been interrupted. “Um, she hasn’t even gotten up today. She’s still in bed. And Uncle Roy’s at the tobacco barns—”

“The where?”

“Tobacco barns. Working tobacco.”

“Why, that man,” said Mrs. Hammond.

“Well, he can’t just sit staring at the
trees
all—”

“He could comfort his wife,” Mrs. Hammond said.

“She won’t listen. So I was thinking, as long as he’s away today—”

“Men are like that,” Mrs. Hammond said. “Work is all they think about.”

“As long as he
is
at work,” Joan said firmly, “I think maybe Aunt Lou should start working too.”

“
Working?
”

“Working at sewing. Missouri said—”

“Mrs.
who?
”

“Mrs.—never mind. Wait a minute.” Joan switched ears and leaned forward, as if Mrs. Hammond could see her now from where she stood. “Mrs. Hammond,” she said, “I know how good you are at helping other people.”

“Oh, why, I just—”

“I know you could help Aunt Lou right now, if anybody could. You could bring that dress she was working on, that—was it purple?”

“Lilac,” said Mrs. Hammond. “Princess style.”

“That’s the one.”

“Lou said it would add to my height a little, a princess style would.”

“That’s right,” Joan said. “That’s the one.”

“Especially since it has up-and-down pinstripes.”

“Yes. Well, I was thinking. If you could just bring it over and get her to work on it for you, just take her mind off all the—”

“You might be right,” said Mrs. Hammond. “Why didn’t I think of that? Why, the day before the funeral, when I came—
you
remember—I did feel she was doing wrong to sit so quiet. I said so. I have always believed that baking calms the nerves, so I said to her, ‘Lou,’ I said, ‘why don’t you make some rolls?’ But she looked at me as if I’d lost my senses. After all, I’d just
brought
two dozen, and a cake besides. Yet I felt she ought to be doing something; that’s what I was trying to tell her. You just might be right, Joan.”

“Well, then,” said Joan, “do you think you could come over sometime today?”

“I’ll come over right this minute. I just wouldn’t feel at rest until I had. You say your aunt’s still in bed?”

“She was a minute ago,” Joan said.

“Well, you try and get her up, and I’ll be there as fast as I can find the dress. I’ll be there, don’t you worry.”

“All right,” Joan said. “It certainly is nice of you to come, Mrs. Hammond.”

“Well. Goodbye, now.”

“Goodbye.”

Joan hung up and sat back to rub her ear, which felt squashed. Now that all that was settled, the next step was to get Simon downstairs. He would have to back her up in this.

Simon was standing in front of his mirror when Joan came in. He was wearing blue jeans but no shirt, and scratching his stomach absently. “Hey,” Joan said, and he jumped and looked up at her. “Find yourself a shirt,” she told him. “Connie Hammond’s coming.”

“Aw, gee, Joan. Mrs.
Hammond?
”

“She’ll be here any minute. Come on, now. It’s a special favor to your mother.”

“I bet she’ll never notice,” Simon said, but he pulled a bureau drawer open. Joan closed the door and went on to her aunt’s room.

Mrs. Pike was sitting up against two pillows, fat and soft in a gray nylon nightgown. She had her hands folded across her stomach and was looking vaguely at the two points her feet made underneath the bedspread.
“Good morning,” Joan said, and Mrs. Pike raised her eyes silently and peered at her as if she were trying to pierce her way through mist. But she never answered. After a minute her eyes passed on to something else, dismissing Joan like the wrong answer to a question she had asked. Joan came to stand at the foot of the bed.

“Aunt Lou,” she said, “would you like to get up?”

Her aunt shook her head.

“Mrs. Hammond’s coming. Do you want her to find you in bed?”

“No,” said Mrs. Pike, but she didn’t do anything about it. She settled lower into the pillows, with her eyes worrying at the wallpaper now, and in so much dim clutter she appeared to be sinking, overcome by the objects around her. Under Joan’s feet were cast-off clothes, everywhere, everything her aunt had been persuaded to put on in the last few days. She had stepped out of them and left them there, returning wearily to her gray nightgown. Mr. Pike, on the other hand, had made some effort at neatness. He had laid his clothes awkwardly on the back of the platform rocker, where they rose in a layered mountain that seemed huge and overwhelming in the half-dark. On the bureau were hairbrushes and bobby pins and old coffee cups with dark rings inside them. The sight of it all made Joan feel caved in and despairing, and she went over to raise the window shade but the light only picked up more clutter. “Aunt Lou,” she said, “we just have to get organized here.”

“What?”

“We have to start cleaning things up.”

Her aunt nodded, without seeming to pay attention, but then she surprised Joan by moving over to the edge of the bed and standing up. She stood in that old woman’s
way she had just acquired—searching out the floor with anxious feet, rising slowly and heavily. For a minute she stood there, and then she shook her nightgown out around her and faltered toward the bureau. “I’m going to clean up,” she told Joan.

“That’s it.”

But all Mrs. Pike did, once she reached the bureau, was to stare into the mirror. She put both hands on the bureau top and leaned forward, frowning into her own eyes. The alarm clock in front of her ticked loudly, and she reached out without looking to set it farther away. “Some people stop all the clocks when someone dies,” she said.

“What’re you going to wear, Aunt Lou?”

“If Connie Hammond’s coming, why, she’ll have to turn around and go off again.”

“What
dress
are you going to wear?” Joan asked, and the sharpness of her voice made Mrs. Pike sigh and stand up straight again.

“Any one will do,” she said. She pulled out a small plastic box from a half-open drawer and began putting bobby pins into it. One by one she scraped them off the top of the dresser, working like a blind woman with careful fingers while she kept her eyes on the mirror. Joan watched, not moving. Each bobby pin made a little clinking sound against the bottom of the plastic box, and each time the sound came Mrs. Pike winced into the mirror. “My grandmother stopped all the clocks,” she said. “She would also announce the death to each fruit tree, so that they wouldn’t shrivel up. But we don’t have no fruit trees.” Her fingers slid slowly across the bureau top, and when she found that all the bobby pins were picked up she closed the box and set it down again. Then she went back to bed. She tucked her feet down
under the covers and drew the top sheet with great care over her chest.

“No, wait,” Joan said.

“I did what I could, Joan.”

Joan went over to the closet and pulled out the first thing she touched, a navy blue dress with white polka dots. “Is this all right?” she asked.

“No.”

“This, then.” And she lifted a brown dress from its hanger and laid it on the bed without waiting for an answer. “It’s the prettiest one you’ve got,” she said.

Outside, a car screeched to a halt and sent up a spray of gravel that Joan could hear from where she stood. She looked out and saw Mrs. Hammond’s Pontiac swerving backwards into the yard with one sharp turn of the wheel, while Mrs. Hammond herself remained rigidly facing forward. The car came to rest right beside James’s pickup, within an inch of running over Simon’s bicycle. Then Mrs. Hammond shot out, clutching bits of cloth and tissue paper to her chest and leaving the car door open behind her. All she needed was an ambulance siren. Joan leaned out the window and called, “Mrs. Hammond?” and Mrs. Hammond looked up, with her face startled and worried-looking.

“Just walk on in and come upstairs,” Joan told her. “Aunt Lou’s in bed still.”

“Oh. All right.”

She bent her head over her armload of cloth and started running again, and Joan could hear her quick sharp heels along the porch and then inside, across the parlor floor and up the stairs. “Oh, law,” she was saying to no one. She sounded out of breath.

But Mrs. Pike didn’t say a word to all this. She just lay back against the pillows and folded her arms across
her stomach again, her face expressionless. When Mrs. Hammond burst into the room and said, “Why,
Lou!
” as if Mrs. Pike had somehow taken her by surprise, Mrs. Pike only nodded gently and watched the wallpaper. “Lou?” said Mrs. Hammond.

“She was just now getting up,” Joan told her.

“Well, I’ll help. That’s what I came for.” She set her load down on the dresser and peered into the mirror a second, pushing back a wisp of hair, and then she came over to sit on the edge of the bed. Every move she made was definite; now that she was here, the room seemed to lose its swampiness. Her face was carefully made up to cover the little lines around her mouth, and she was packed into a nice summery sheath that Mrs. Pike had made two years ago. The sight of so much neatness made Mrs. Pike sit up straighter and pull her stomach in, even though her face stayed blank.

“I was talking about stopping all the clocks,” she told Mrs. Hammond.

“
Oh
, no.”

“I’ve about decided to do it.”