Pulling Home (6 page)

He hoped he was right.

“You’re gonna have a daddy, Sweetheart.”—Corrine Valentine

Alice plopped the dough on the countertop and flattened it with the rolling pin, using quick, even strokes as one long accustomed to molding and shaping. Today she was making sweet rolls, one of her granddaughter’s favorites.

“I brought the child a few of the grandkids’ coloring books and crayons,” Joyce

said. “And there’s a Shrek puzzle she might like, even though she’s only here one more day.”

“Thank you,” Alice murmured,
whacking
the dough into a pliable shape. She spread the sugar-cinnamon mixture over the flat surface, careful it reached the very ends.

Her mother taught her the trick to decent sweet rolls was covering the whole area and using extra butter. Alice had already rolled out one apple pie, baked a banana bread for Father Benedict and one for Pastor Richot, and set a batch of dough for sugar cookies.

Heaven knew who was going to eat all this food, not that it mattered. Baking helped her deal with problems, and with the way the good Lord had laid out these past days, she’d be baking into her grave.

“Walter said thank you for the streusel. He’s coming to mow your lawn this

afternoon.”

“He doesn’t need to do that. Joe can get around, slow but sure.”

Joyce shook her gray head. “He needs to feel needed. Being laid off doesn’t help a body’s self-esteem.”

“If that isn’t the truth,” Marion said, glancing up from her knitting. This skein was royal blue, Hannah’s color of the week and would become a sweater with pearl buttons.

“When they laid me off from the shirt factory, I didn’t know what I was going to do. I mean to tell you, I suffered horrible, worrying about how I was going to pay the gas and what about little Rose’s braces, and dang if we didn’t need the roof patched. It was a terrible time.”

“You only had one child,” Joyce said. “Try five and a husband on disability.”

“Try no husband,” Tilly piped in, shaking her curly head. “That was a rough

time.”

Alice let out a sob and swiped a hand across her cheek. “I know the Lord doesn’t want us questioning, but my shoulders are heavy and I don’t know what I’ll do if something’s wrong with Kara.”

“She’ll be fine, you’ll see.” Joyce patted her back. “The Lord would not be so

cruel as to bring harm to that baby girl after what happened to her father.”

“Have faith, Alice,” Marion chimed in. “The Lord only gives us what we can

handle and besides, with that doctor son of yours, if he thought it was serious, he’d make her stay.”

Tilly set her coffee mug on the table and crossed both gnarly arms over her flat chest. “What did
she
say about it?”

She
being Audra Valentine.

Alice sniffed and cut square sections of sweet roll. “Of course she denied my plea to let Kara stay on a bit longer. I was even willing to put up with the mother if I could have my granddaughter a week or so extra. But she flat out turned me down, and when that headache episode occurred, she turned her nose up at Jack and said she was taking her child
home
.”

Tilly snorted. “What a slap in the face.”

“I’m sure sorry it had to be this way, I know how much you want to spend time

with your granddaughter.” Joyce had twelve grandchildren, all within five miles of her home and she saw them at least once a week. She said it was how traditions were built and Alice agreed. Unfortunately, her own children had other ideas.

“The woman really does look like her mother, if you change the hair and such,”

Marion said. “Boobs were a little bigger I think, or maybe the sweaters were just tighter.

Dang, I hate to admit it, she’s a beautiful woman.” When the others glared at her, she merely shrugged and said, “I’m just saying, she is.”

“And what did it get her or her mother?” Tilly’s beady eyes shrunk to dots. “What did either of them use that beauty for other than no good?”

“She’s kind of standoffish,” Marion said, “but she isn’t hoity-toity like I thought she’d be.”

“Why on earth would she be hoity-toity coming from a background like she did?

Poor Lenore, God rest her soul, how she ever birthed a daughter like Corrine, I will never know.” Joyce let out a huff and made a quick sign of the cross.

“What’s Audra do back in San Diego?” Marion asked.

Alice shrugged. “Some kind of writing. Magazine, I think.”

Tilly scoffed. “More like living off your son’s paycheck. There’s a reason they

call them starving artists.”

“I guess it would be polite to inquire, but I never had the inclination.”

“She’d probably fabricate a story anyway.” This from Tilly who wanted nothing

to do with loose women or loose morals.

Alice sighed and lifted the tray of sweet rolls. “It doesn’t matter anyway. I doubt anyone would believe what she said.”

***

Giants pennant.
It was a simple headache
. That’s what she’d told Dr. Vincent, Kara’s pediatrician in San Diego, when she’d called this afternoon for an appointment. What did she expect of an eight year old whose father suddenly died? The pain had to go somewhere.
A simple headache
. Audra would continue repeating this until she had proof otherwise because she could not permit her brain to consider any other possibility. And God, wherever He was these days, would not be so cruel as to strike one family, twice in one month. Would He?

Kara slept next door in Rachel’s room amidst a mountain of ruffles and Barbie

dolls. Each year since Rachel’s death, Alice Wheyton bought a Barbie doll, carefully removed the packaging, dressed and accessorized her, and placed the doll on the shelf near the one from the previous year. There were twenty Barbie’s since Rachel’s passing —blondes, brunettes, redheads, swimmers, skiers, dancers, veterinarians, and pilots, wearing sandals, stilettos, clogs, tennis shoes, and cowboy boots.

Alice vowed Rachel would have loved them all. Kara certainly did. She traced

their faces and curls with the reverence of one who realizes she’s been granted a unique gift. Audra remembered Grandma Lenore talking about the tragic loss of the Wheyton’s only daughter. Meningitis, the feared fever of the brain. Audra hadn’t known Christian or Jack then, and had only heard her grandmother speak of Alice as one of St. Peter’s Guild members. How much sadness filled the world every day and yet, people went about the business of breathing, eating, sleeping. Hoping.

The pains in the world were not only relegated to the deserving. No one was

immune, not even the good-hearted or the young. Did the Wheytons think Audra

deserved the ill that befell her? What if they knew the truth behind her actions? It didn’t matter because they would never find out.

She lay on Jack’s bed as the cool breeze from the open window blew over her

skin. Alice chose Jack’s room for Audra, an ironic gesture considering the situation.

Christian’s door remained closed, the memory of his teen days plastered at eye level.

Before she left, Audra would slip inside and revisit the childhood room of her dead husband. She’d only been in the Wheyton house three times as a teenager, never as an adult until this week. It was hard to imagine Jack as a child, peering out the window into the blackness of night or stirring up mischief by dropping a ball or cup of water out the window. Perhaps he’d done both or none of those things. By the time she met him, he was a serious medical student with a constant four o’clock shadow who rarely smiled and spoke little. But there’d been no need for talk in those days. No need at all.

***

through gossip, others firsthand, and by the time Audra was eight, she knew, too.

Grandma Lenore did her best, cooking vegetable soup and homemade stews,

canning tomatoes from the garden out back, making Vick’s rub soaks when Audra’s chest grew tight,
to ward off the croup
, she said, and lemon-honey tea
to ease a sore throat.

There was always plenty of food, and Audra’s clothes, though often hand-me-downs from Mrs. Mertigan’s grandchildren, were clean and neat. And every Sunday, they

walked to St. Peter’s Church, three blocks away, Audra holding her grandmother’s arm as the elderly woman shuffled along, a black sweater thrust over her shoulders, a cotton print housedress covering her ample shape to just below the knees, white sneakers on her bunion feet.

Corrine never went with them, never even offered to drive them in her Chevy

Nova. She was always sleeping at 9:00 a.m.—when she was there. Most times her bed was still empty when they left for St. Peter’s and when she did show up, usually close to lunchtime, her clothes were wrinkled, her white-blond hair a giant tangle, her dark eyes smudged with mascara.
Hi, Baby
, she’d say, rushing to Audra and giving her a peck on the cheek, barely touching, and a half hug, ignoring Grandma Lenore’s tight-lipped stare.

The staleness which clung to Corrine on these mornings still lingered after all these years

—Emeraude, Virginia Slims, and alcohol.

Grandma Lenore tried to compensate for her daughter’s lacking by reading Audra

stories from the Bible and teaching her about respecting oneself, honoring one’s word, and keeping the Ten Commandments. Her voice was quiet and tired, but steadfast as she recited her beliefs with her tight gray bun and stooped shoulders, her arthritic fingers kneading bread or pushing a needle slowly through a ripped hem on Audra’s skirt as she spoke.

Sadly, there was nothing she could do for her own daughter. The old neighbor

ladies, Mrs. Gloodinski and Mrs. Rooney threw names at Corrine like
loose, wild,
embarrassing, and immoral.
The other secretaries at Cummings Communication, where Corrine worked for Mr. George Cummings as his personal secretary, called her
slut
and
whore
, words Audra looked up in the dictionary one night after she heard Grandma Lenore telling Corrine about the phone call she received from Mr. Cummings’s wife. The other mothers at Audra’s PTA meetings refused to acknowledge Corrine in her tight-knit dresses and overdone makeup. The fathers expressed more interest, their gazes sliding from her full red lips, working around the curves of snug fabric hugging her hips, inching to her tiny ankles and three-inch pumps. She liked it when men said she could be Marilyn Monroe’s sister and flashed each of them smiles, even Mr. Dandwood, who was bald and smelled bad. They smiled back and stared at her in a strange way that made Audra look down at her loafers. If the men’s wives were there, they grabbed their husband’s arms and dragged them away. If they weren’t, then the men, four, five, six of them, sidled up to Corrine, talking, laughing, forgetting all about their children’s report cards and papers.

Every man loved Corrine Valentine, loved the way she looked, the way she smelled, the way she smiled.

It wasn’t until years later, when Audra was just shy of fifteen that she realized no man
really
loved her mother, not enough anyway to keep her from destroying herself.

When Stanley Osgooden came into Corrine’s life with his bow ties and starched white shirts, she said,
This is the one
.
This is the one I’m going to marry.
He was small built and quiet with pale gray eyes and a soft voice.
He’s
wonderful. I’m going to get you a
Daddy, Audra
. Her mother had been so filled with excitement and hope. Her makeup became more subdued, the Emeraude less intense, the nails a light shade of pink.

Grandma Lenore said nothing, just prayed the rosary and left the room when

Corrine started talking about Stanley. Audra began to believe maybe Mr. Osgooden was
the
one. Finally
, finally
, she’d have a normal life. A mother
and
a father.

One night, three months after they met, Stanley Osgooden made reservations at

The Elderberry Den, a fancy restaurant that served surf and turf and prime rib
. I know it’s
kinda soon, but I just know he’s going to propose tonight,
Corrine told Audra as she fluffed up the back part of her blond hair with a teasing comb and slipped into black pumps.
I just know it.
She hugged her and whispered
, You’re gonna have a daddy,
sweetheart.

But Stanley Osgooden hadn’t been thinking of a proposal, at least, not the kind

Corrine anticipated. He did want her though, like all the other men did, but his offer had a bit more gentleman’s flair to it. He wanted her to move to Atlanta with him and his
wife
and two children—he neglected to mention his marital status before that night—and become his mistress.
He said he’d set me up, Mama
, Corrine told her mother, tears flooding her face, voice suffocated with sobs.
He’d set me up real nice. Take care of me.

Audra too, if I wanted.
More sobs.
He didn’t want a wife. He already had one. When will
I ever learn? Nobody wants me.

The tears had been so hard, so consuming, Audra feared they would pour out until they sucked her mother dry, and then she’d crack open, a shriveled empty shell filled with nothing. But then the tears stopped, just like that. Corrine sniffed, swiped her hands across her face and walked to the liquor cabinet where she poured a gin, straight up, swallowed it, coughed, and poured another, and all the while Audra and Grandma Lenore watched and waited, for what, they didn’t know.

I’m fine,
Corrine said, pouring another drink.
I think I’ll go lie down a while.
Her voice was steady, her gaze firm as she disappeared into her bedroom, drink in hand, and closed the door.

The next morning Grandma Lenore found Corrine in her black slip lying face

down, an empty bottle of valium on the nightstand. Her body was cold, her lips blue.

Three months and two days before her thirty-first birthday, Corrine Alice Valentine was dead. Dead too, was Audra’s dream of becoming part of a normal family. Only a few people attended the funeral, neighbors mostly. Mr. Cummings sent flowers but didn’t make an appearance. Stanley Osgooden did neither.