AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“On Sunday, in the car. I can explain what happened. It’s not as bad as it sounds.”
Mrs. O’Brien’s forehead folded into deep creases. She seemed on the verge of speaking but unable to find the right words. I got frightened and wished I’d never said anything. Finally, a pink flush crept into her broad, smooth cheeks. “You think you can explain it?” she gasped. A tiny drop of spittle broke from her lips and sailed in a gentle arc toward me. I felt it land on my arm, but I didn’t take my eyes off her. “You could explain from now until Sunday, and it wouldn’t get any better. This is what I’ve been trying to teach you, but you’re as hopeless as your mother. You can’t explain away trouble. Explanations don’t do any good when the truth is so bad. Eddie Boggs was drunk and half-naked in the back of your mother’s car. Explain it? What are you going to tell me—that you didn’t know he was there?” Her face was bright red now under her carrot hair, and I could feel her breath when she talked. “It’s the same with you, Martha. You were caught undressing in front of a nine-year-old boy. What can you possibly say? What? I’d like to know!”
I didn’t say anything. Tears were welling up in my eyes and my throat was choked. Her anger had caught me totally unprepared.
She wiggled forward a few more inches. “You Calhouns think there’s an excuse for everything. Nothing’s ever your fault. Somebody always did it to you. But why are you always in trouble? Did you ever think of that? Why doesn’t it happen to other people? Why is it always you? Explanations!” She tried to spit the word out, but her tongue got tied, and the effect was soft, like someone trying to flick a spot of tobacco off his lips.
The tears started streaming down my cheeks. I didn’t dare look at Bunny. I knew my face was a horrid, splotchy, drippy mess. And yet I wanted to argue with Mrs. O’Brien. I wanted to fight her point by point. She was right in a way—but she’d missed it, too, and that’s why I thought I could challenge her. She didn’t understand how trouble can spiral, so that each little piece of it gets compounded by the weight of what’s gone before. I wasn’t trying to make excuses about what had happened, but simply to remove the latest piece of trouble so it could be judged on its own. That was my argument, and I wanted to force it coolly on Mrs. O’Brien, who was now sitting there silently, breathing heavily. I wanted to make her understand. But I was helpless, trapped by my sobbing. Tears were streaming from my eyes, my nose was running, and my throat was choked so tight I could hardly swallow, let alone speak.
Mrs. O’Brien let a minute or so pass in silence. She stared at both of us, then looked out the window. Finally, she turned back to contemplate the little cream-cheese sandwich, still untouched beside her. I knew she was thinking that she could finish it off in a single bite, that it would be in her mouth and gone in an instant, and she wouldn’t have to suffer the embarrassment of holding a half-eaten sandwich in her hand while I wept and Bunny sulked in front of her. Her eyes lingered on the morsel, but she chose to pass it up. “I know it’s hard,” she finally said with a sigh. “You can’t change overnight. It takes time and trauma.”
She smiled. My sobbing started to let up. I soaked several cocktail napkins wiping my face. Bunny was still curled up on the sofa, gazing off distractedly.
“I’ve had worse cases than this one, God knows,” Mrs. O’Brien went on. “You’d be shocked at the things that go on right here in Katydid County—things you wouldn’t expect to find in the worst Southern trash novel.” Suddenly, her manner softened. “Oh, I forgot. Remember that girl I told you about who stole the car parts and ran away with her boyfriend and then got pregnant? She miscarried! What a relief. I mean, it was difficult for her,
but now, at least, she can begin to pick up the pieces. She can take a deep breath and start over.”
On cue, I took a deep breath, letting the air out slowly through my nose.
“That’s it,” said Mrs. O’Brien. With her hand, she gave a kind of womanly salute, a little wave by the side of her face. In the same motion, she swept up the sandwich and popped it in her mouth. With a few nearly invisible movements of her jaw, it was gone.
“Now,” she said, “where do we go from here?”
I smiled and shrugged. I felt weak.
“Well, there’s no doubt it’s got to start with Eddie Boggs. I’m sorry, Mrs. Calhoun, but I’ll say it as plainly as I can: Get him out of your life.”
For the first time in minutes, Bunny stirred. She looked at both of us, then stood up. “I’ve got to get to work,” she said.
“So soon?” Mrs. O’Brien glanced at her watch. “I didn’t think you had to be there so soon.”
“I have to go,” Bunny said, pulling on the bottom of her jacket to straighten it.
“Can’t we talk a little?” I asked. “There’s not much time.”
“No, Martha,” said Mrs. O’Brien. “It’s up to your mother. She knows what the stakes are. It’s up to her.”
I looked at Bunny pleadingly, but she stared back coldly. “Walk me to the door, please,” she said.
I followed her into the hall. She stopped just before the front door. “Why’d you let her make you cry?” she demanded.
“I couldn’t help it. I didn’t want to, but it just happened.”
“She’s trying to break us. We can’t let her. We’ll win.” Bunny spoke as if each little sentence were a separate pronouncement, unconnected to anything else.
Mrs. Vernon stepped out of the kitchen, surprised to find us in the hall. “Oh, you’re leaving?” she said to Bunny.
Bunny opened the door and then turned back. “You better watch out,” she said to Mrs. Vernon. “I saw a snake on your lawn.”
Mrs. Vernon’s smile twisted and disappeared. Her hand darted up to her mouth. “No,” she murmured.
“Snakes. A whole nest of them,” Bunny called out, slamming the door behind her.
TWENTY-TWO
Mrs. Vernon’s vegetable garden is a long, rectangular patch of uneven greens planted in the backyard, out of the shade of the oak. On Wednesday morning, at her suggestion, I put on an old T-shirt and jeans and went to the garden to weed. She said I was worrying too much, that I should keep busy to get my mind off my problems. For a while, I plucked diligently at the unwanted, leathery sprouts that circled and closed in on the vegetables. The garden was small enough that I got the idea you could make it completely weed-free—a perfectly controlled piece of land. That image of pure, black, cleared soil, the very neatness of it, kept me occupied. Kneeling in the dirt, I moved forward inch by inch. Every few feet, I’d turn up a shard of glass or a bent nail, or an ancient, rusted bottle cap. On soft nights, looking out Sissy’s window, I’d seen the glint of moonlight off the junk in the garden, bits of glass and metal that had worked their way to the surface after a hard rain. The whole world is built on an old trash heap, I thought. You can’t keep the stuff down.
My hand turned a gaudy green from the plant juice. Soon my back started to ache, and my thighs got sore. I had to stand up every few minutes to stretch my muscles. I’m so tall that I don’t bend easily, and working close to the ground is terribly awkward for me. The more I worked, the clumsier I felt. Stretching once, I saw Dwayne standing on the sidewalk by the house, holding his bicycle and watching me. I ached too much to wave. The unweeded row seemed to go on forever. Mrs. Vernon worked on her garden every day of the summer, and still the weeds were unstoppable. It’s amazing, really, all the weeds and junk in the world. It’s a wonder anyone gets anything worthwhile done.
