Graice said stiffly, Momma, it's the least I can do.
Thinking, And why do you lie? Why, always, do you lie?
Not only has Persia been lying about her drinking these past several weeks, since the blackout in Covino's; she has been lying about her lying. In her journal Graice writes, And what f she can't distinguish any longer between truth and lies, what does that mean about truth and lies ?
The floor tilting beneath one's feet. No directions fixed.
It has become a game of a kind. In the cupboard, as if on display, are a half dozen bottles. the usual. But they're un touched. Persia's re al bottles are hidden in the clothes hamper.
in the grease encrusted oven. in Persia's carelessly made bed where the bedspread's raised, nubby material can be made to appear accidentally bunched. She has even hidden precious bottles of Gordon's gin wrapped in newspapers on the outside stairway where anyone might find them. an act, Graice guesses, of flamboyant desperation.
She can stop fshe wants to. She must be made to want to.
What matters at the moment is that Persia has at last consented to see a doctor, has acknowledged that, yes, she is sick; in fact it was at Aunt Madelyn's urging, and whatever Persia told doctor McDermott, or failed to tell him, about her drinking and eating and sleeping habits, the frequency of her vomiting spells, her fugues of dizziness and disorientation and forgetfulness and weeping, whatever admixture of truth and lies, lies and truth, the crucial matter at the moment is that she's here at Hammond General Hospital to take a battery of routine tests. striding off alone and almost cheerful into the interior of the labyrinthine old building while Graice Courtney, shivering in her coat, sits in the fluorescent humming reception area adjacent to the outpatients' clinic and waits.
Another day of missed classes, another legitimate excuse: mother, medical.
The other day one of Graice Courtney's teachers asked her if it was anything serious, her mother's medical situation, and Graice said, No not at all, it's under control.
And it's true, isn't it, once the results of the tests are in, once the facts are known, the nightmare will begin to lift. won t it?
Surely?
She sits, coat unbuttoned, fingertips pressed against her eyes.
Without knowing it Graice has begun her siege of waiting. a premonitory mourning. And she's exhausted already!
Hearing a dim fading voice, I'd cut the child's throat and then my own, to spare her.
Graice's attention is drawn by voices and movement in the outpatients' clinic. a young mother is wearily scolding her two small boys, who are fighting together, her West Virginian voice raised in pro test.
Y'all stop that, damn you, ain't I told you, do I got to beg you?
There is something familiar about the woman's pale, plump, sallow skinned face, the set of her features, the foxy eyes. she's in her early twenties but has the worn look of a much older woman, hair so sadly thin that patches of scalp show through, swollen ankles and she's pregnant, hugely. She's wearing an army surplus jacket, unbuttoned, and a shapeless black skirt, and thick cotton support stockings, and men's boots; she watches with an air of spiteful helplessness as one of her little boys crawls prankishly beneath a row of connected chairs, annoying patients who are sitting in them, while the other boy, whose face is covered in sores, runs beside him trying to kick him, screaming with laughter. The child might be mildly retarded. perhaps both boys are retarded. it's amazing that he doesn't seem to see the clublike white cast on the foot of a man seated in one of the chairs but trips over it, falls, goes sprawling. The mother calls out plaintively, Y'all stop that!
Danny! Bud. Come back here!
Graice Courtney hurries over to pick up the wailing boy, brings him back to his mother, who seems startled at such kindness and flushes with embarrassment and pleasure. Oh, thank you, that's real nice of you, seizing the little boy by his shoulder and giving him a violent shake. Ain't you terrible You and him. Y'know I'm gonna tell your daddy about all this, tonight! Graice says, Aren't you Edith Garlock?
and the woman smiles at once, showing damp babyish teeth, That's right, used to be, now I'm Edith Bonner.
still Garlock, I guess.
So they chat together for several minutes.
So Graice Courtney, who could never have premeditated such a meeting, who would have laughed in horror at the very possibility, finds herself talking companionably or almost companionably with a woman re lated to Little Red Garlock: a cousin of his, as it turns out. Graice tells Edith that she and her family used to live on Holland Street, near Gowanda. she went to school with several
Garlock children. and her mother was friendly with Vesta Garlock, sort of.
Edith gives a little cry of pleasure. Did she! You tell your momma my Aunt Vesta's all improved now. she went back home to West Virginia that she never wanted to leave. poor woman was just so unhappy up here. And I don't blame her none, the nasty weather we got to put up with, and casting a covert glance at the nurse receptionist close by the kinds of people you run into that don't give a damn if you live or die once they get the word on you you ain't rich. They see you're on the county, they look at you like you re shit, make you wait long as they damn please. My little Bud here Bud, you sit still that's got these nasty sores on his face, and near a constant flu, they're telling me he's allergic, handed me a list of, I swear, one hundred things the child can't come near let alone eat. Like dust, like animal fur, like whole grain, like milk! I mean, milk! You ever heard of anything so crazy? When I come home with that list, last time, my husband just about.
Graice Courtney's eyes mist over in sympathy.
I can imagine, she says.
Edith Garlock glances up at her, amused. Maybe you can and maybe you can't. Not at all sarcastic.
Graice draws a deep breath. Little Red, he was in school with me it was such aa shock about him. I guess the police never found who killed him, did they? There was all this talk about motorcyclists, but Edith astonishes Graice by laughing derisively.
Huh! That!
To quiet her little boy, who has stopped crying and is now fretting and squirming beside her, Edith re aches into a deep, zipped open side pocket of the army jacket and draws out an orange which, as she talks to Graice, she peels with quick, precise little pluckings of her fingernails, as if she were defeathering a small bird and enjoying the process. Listen, lion, it was never any secret to some folks, what happened. Who did it.
It. wasn't?
Naw.
_________________ ____ ________ 1
Edith gestures for Graice to step closer, she has something to tell her she doesn't want overheard. as if, in this noisy place, with a baby wailing two chairs down and the hospital PA. system blaring announcements, anyone could overhear. The sweet tart aroma of orange and orange rind lifts to Graice's nostrils mixed with the grimmer odors of damp wool, oily hair, the white flaking salve on the boy's face.
Not quite boastfully, but with an air of pride, Edith says, We knew.
The men, anyway. A quarrel like that is bad blood between folks dating back to home. West Virginia, I mean. It gets settled. It gets put right. Don't matter what the fool police think they know or don't know. She pauses, handing over sections of the orange to her boy and dumping the peelings into an ashtray, not noticing that some of the peelings have fallen onto the floor.
Graice is struck by the simplicity and logic of these re marks. She feels, in a way, subtly rebuked. as one whose comprehension of the universe has been mistaken and is now exposed. So that's how it is!
The family settled it.
Edith smiles mysteriously. The men, they did. Like they always do.
By 3:30 P. M. , Persia is back.
Graice quickly lays down her book and stands. She looks at her mother searchingly.
I guess it went a little faster than you expected ?
Graice, it went slowly enough. Don't ask.
Persia's bronze red lipstick is gnawed partly off and there's a glisten of sweat at her hairline; she looks both tired and euphoric with re lief. Her hair has been fastened at the nape of her neck with a clip, she's wearing nondescript wool slacks and a shaggy mohair sweater. an old sweater she'd fished out of a drawer, wears frequently now because it hides her embarrassing little potbelly as well as the protruding bones of her shoulders and wrists. Still, there's an air of glamour about her. Her dyed hair, her heavy cosmetic mask, her brittle public manner. she draws attention from strangers; it never fails.
First thing Persia does is rummage through her purse, locate her cigarettes, light up. Her eyelids tremble with re lief; she's been so long without, in the interior of the hospital where smoking is forbidden: an hour and ten minutes.
Persia draws on the cigarette as if it were oxygen itself.
Next, in a pose of indignation, she pulls up her sweater sleeves, shows Graice a half dozen small circular Band Aids on her arms. There was this crude, cruel nurse who kept poking me with a needle, couldn't find a vein and blamed me. Jesus, those needles hurt! Duke was scared to death of them, re member he said he'd end up like Al Capone, he'd die rather than have a needle stuck in him?
Well, I'm not that bad, thank God, but I couldn't help flinching when that woman came at me, I swear she had it in for mea woman's worst enemy can be a woman, you know, especially a woman in authority like a nurse. You better get used to it,' she warned me, sort of smug and nasty as if she knew something about me I didn't know. Can you imagine! Seeing people in the vicinity staring at her, Persia hurriedly pulls her sleeves back down, well over the wrists. She stands for a moment swaying on her feet as if she can't re member where she is or what she has been doing.
Graice gives her a gentle half hug. Momma, I'm sorry, she says guiltily, but anyway it's over now?
Over for now.
'And when will the results be in, did they say?
Persia shrugs, not meeting Graice's eye. They didn't say.
It is at this precise moment that the thought occurs to Graice Courtney, too swift and too chilling to be absorbed, that maybe, just maybe, Persia walked out without submitting to the re st of the tests.
no matter that her new doctor McDermott prescribed them and that Graice has paid for them. Graice says, fumbling, I guess the hospital will telephone your doctor. I guess that's the procedure. When the results are back from the laboratory.
Persia murmurs carelessly, I guess.
She snatches up her coat and Graice helps her slip it on. the old fake fur meant to re semble silver fox that Virgil Starling used to bury his face in, clowning in ecstasy, declaring it sure had class just like Persia. The coat is frayed and shabby now and Graice is embarrassed by it, as Graice is embarrassed by her mother's Hollywood color hair and excessive makeup and a certain tough histrionic manner that comes over her in public. As if she's keenly conscious of being watched: both shrinking from attention and inviting it.
Graice herself wears an imitation camel's hair coat, a classic style, neat, attractive, schoolgirlish in its covered belt and tortoise shell buttons. camel's hair coats, the authentic kind, are worn by most of the well to do girls at Hammond Central High School.
Outside, it's a blinding winter day. Early February. The wind off the river lifts skeins of dry powdery snow like snakes many yards long.
Persia, bundled in her coat, a white angora scarf wound about her head, shivers and says, I'd never miss this damn weather, that's for sure!
Graice doesn't quite catch this. Her eyes flood with tears from the cold.
Persia deserves a re ward, and Graice is readily talked into the proposition that they see a movie instead of going right home; Butterfield 8 is playing at the Palace, and Elizabeth Taylor is Persia's favorite actress. Then we can have dinner at Schrafft's, maybe, Persia says, squeezing Graice's arm as if they were girls together, on an impromptu lark. I'm sure I'll be able to eat if the food is good and the atmosphere is attractive. That's what I tried to explain to McDermott, but I don't think the man heard. You know, a woman can speak directly and lucidly to a man and the man will not hear.
Graice quickly shuts her mind against the memory of Persia, the other morning, vomiting up a soft boiled egg and toast Graice brought to her for breakfast, in her bed, eyes bulging, frantic with the terrible strain. Heaving and heaving as if to turn herself inside out long after there was nothing further to bring up.
Graice had to run for a basin, brought it to her just in time.
Graice, I don't know what comes over me.
Graice doesn't think of that now, it's the prospect of an afternoon movie with Persia that excites her: the two of them, mother and daughter, have not gone to a movie together for years. Graice too is in awe of Elizabeth Taylor, gorgeous Liz with her heartbreak skin, impossibly lavender eyes, sumptuous lips, breasts, hips, palpitating life, and there's the tacky elegant Palace, with plush crimson draperies, deep cushioned seats, a golden Egyptian motif. Suddenly Graice Courtney wants nothing more passionately than to see Butterfield 8 with her mother.
