The Lost Saints of Tennessee (22 page)

“Thanks, honey,” Jackie says. “Why don't you go ahead and go to bed? I know you've got an early call in the morning.”

I keep my eyes glued to Lou's trophy, admiring it from every angle, while they exchange a good-night kiss.

Louisa tells me I should go talk to Honora. “Maybe she'll listen to you,” she says.

“Do you really think that?”

She raises her eyebrows. “You've got to try, Dad. It's, you know, your job.”

Jackie watches us from the doorway, inclining her head just the slightest, so I know she is amused by Lou's comment.

“Well, in that case, boss,” I say, “I'm going in. What kind of protective gear do you think I'll need? A helmet? Maybe a chef's hat?”

Lou giggles. Jackie even manages a smile.

The kitchen is twenty by twenty-four feet, at least. Every
inch of the island running down the middle of it is cov
ered in wire cooling racks holding cookies—chocolate chip, peanut butter, lemon. My daughter has the oven door open and is peering inside. In profile, the bones of her face reveal the
changes of the past year—the cheek and brow finely de
fined,
the round innocence of little-girldom gone. Despite the
dyed black hair and ratty pajamas she wears, she is a stunning girl.

A bag of flour is ripped open on the floor. Honora closes the oven and looks up. Our eyes meet and she inhales sharply.

“Smells good, honey.” I walk to the island, grabbing the closest cookie. “Tastes great. How are you?”

She folds her arms across her chest and leans against the counter facing me.

I tell myself not be afraid of my own kid.

“I missed you, sweetheart. You okay?”

Her gaze narrows. She shakes her head slowly.

“You're not okay?”

She points as if to say,
Bingo
.

I step closer and she holds up a hand. I step back.

“What can I do?”

Honora responds with an eye roll and then looks entirely disgusted. She stares so intently I have to break the eye contact. She stoops down to grab something off the floor.

We are standing two feet apart and all it takes is one quick motion for her to dump the remainder of the bag of flour on my head.

I wipe what I can off my face, quelling the desire to smash a stick of butter in her hair. The girl is pissed.

She points again, this time at the doorway. When I don't move, she scribbles on the shopping list and then holds it up.

“Get out now” it says.

“I love you,” I say.

Honora ignores me and removes a fresh tray of cookies from the oven, shutting the door with a swift bump of her hip.

My daughter does not want my help.

I slip out the back door without saying good-bye to Lou or Jackie. The patio furniture trips me up as I make my way in the dark to the gate. A chair crashes to the ground.

“Everything okay out there?” Curtis calls out from the bedroom window.

“Fine,” I say. “Just fine.”

By eleven o'clock, I park in the carport of Daisy's house and drag myself through the side door.

“Hey, brother.” Daisy stands at the sink washing dishes. When she looks up at me, she frowns. “What happened to your hair? Did you go gray between the hospital and here?”

“Don't ask. Honora's having a crisis. We don't know
what it's about or why.”

My sister dries her hands on a towel. “Is it something big, do you think?”

“I'm not sure.”

She wants to ask more questions but stops herself. “You look awful. Go get settled on the couch in the living room.”

Streetlights shine in through the big picture window. The house is in the older section of Mabry, the one Mother used to take us through on Sunday drives after church. While
we stuffed ourselves with the pimento cheese sandwiches
she always packed, wrapped in the crinkly wax paper, Mother drove down street after street. She would stop in front of a house every so often and let out a big sigh.
Isn't that just beautiful? Look at that green grass and the black shutters and the two-car garage!

A switch on the wall next to the mantel catches my attention and I flip it on. Bright blue gas flames pop up in the fireplace.

Rosie throws herself down on the couch next to me. She has apparently gotten the honor of staying in the guest room.

“Hungry?” she asks.

This is the closest she will come to an apology. Daisy carries in a tray loaded with coffee and Little Debbie Oatmeal Creme Pies and Nutty Buddy Bars. Rosie and I look at each other.

“What?” Daisy asks.

I take the tray out of her hands. “You sit. Drink your coffee. We'll go fix a little something more in the kitchen.”

“You both drove miles to get here today. I'll get it.”

“You look like hammered shit, Daisy,” Rosie says.

This is not something I could say to either of them, but
it seems acceptable between sisters. “If you don't sit down,
we're leaving and going to Vi's so you can get some rest.”

Daisy throws up her hands. “Fine.”

The light over the stove guides us into the kitchen. Rosie opens the fridge and we both let out a sigh when we spot the ham. I make sandwiches while Rosie pulls out Piggly Wiggly containers of potato and macaroni salad, core food groups in Daisy's house.

Daisy calls out not to fix her anything; she's not hungry. When Rosie hears this she says, “Oh, no, she needs to eat.” So she heaps a plate with a sandwich, potato chips, and scoops of both salads.

“Grab that bottle of Dr. Pepper, Zeke. Better yet. Check to see if they've got any beer in there. With all those grown sons of hers, there's got to be.”

The Budweiser is hidden behind a gallon of milk, and I take out the whole six-pack.

“Is there anything left?” Daisy asks. She clears off the coffee table.

I toss Rosie a beer and open my own.

“What about me?” Daisy asks.

“Sorry,” I say. “Thought you didn't drink.”

“I don't. Not on a regular basis.” She pops a top and takes a long swig, after which she lets out a huge burp.

Rosie giggles. “Remember how Momma always told us ladies don't burp and don't fart and don't eat more than two bites in public? She was so crazy. Trying to raise us up like Scarlett O'Hara with an outhouse.”

Boys didn't require the same rules. Mother would only tell me to sit up straight and keep out of fights. Daisy takes a small bite of the sandwich, chewing it delicately.

“It's good. Thanks.”

Rosie eyes her. “You've lost more weight since the last time I saw you, which wasn't but two months ago.”

“I'm almost fifty now, Rosie. Got to watch out for the middle-age spread.”

“Bullshit.”

“Easy for you to say. You're not even forty yet.”

One of the things I appreciated about being married to Jackie was that she liked to eat. Was, in fact, one of the few women in my life who never talked about how fat she was, what diet she was on, and how much weight she wanted to lose.

Daisy stuffs a handful of potato chips into her mouth and glares at Rosie.

“That's better,” Rosie says.

“If you'd grown up having Momma tell you every time you turned around that it was a shame you'd inherited the Cooper women's hips and thighs, you wouldn't eat much, either.”

“When she's dead, there'll be nobody left to say that, so you can eat all you want.”

Leave it to Rosie to speak the unspeakable. The clock on the mantel reads eleven thirty. It's twelve thirty back in Virginia. Is Elle asleep? Or maybe she's still up reading one
of the many horse books on her nightstand. Until now I
haven't had time to miss her, but it hits me, a longing to
be back in her bedroom, tracing the constellation of freckles across her back.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” Rosie says. “We all know Mother thinks she's dying.”

“You don't have to sound happy about it,” Daisy says.

Rosie finishes her beer, letting out a burp to rival her sister's. “I'm not happy about it. I don't know what I am.” She pulls an old quilt from the rack next to the sofa and wraps it around her.

Daisy finishes most of her sandwich before speaking again. “Mother is proud of you, Rosie. She talks about you night and day so that you'd think you were her only daughter, you know.”

“She didn't give a goddamn about me until I got a job in Nashville. She ignored me my whole childhood, told me I was out of my mind to think I could waltz up to Nashville and get a job in the music business, then turns around and makes me her favorite when I do. That's fucked up.”

“Watch your language,” Daisy snaps.

“You sound like Momma.”

I make a time-out signal with my hands. Both of them tell me to butt out. The plates need clearing, so I grab them up. I return with what's left of a chocolate Bundt cake from the counter. This shuts them up.

“Put another pot of coffee on, will you, Zeke?” Rosie asks.

After finishing off the cake and the coffee, we all spread out on the floor in front of the fireplace. The whistle of a freight train echoes through the night's quiet. A whip-poor-will responds with a high-pitched cry. Rosie shivers.

“Mother hates whip-poor-wills. Says she always feels like they're stepping over her grave when they cry out like that.”

“Jesus, Rosie,” I say.

“What?”

We plan to meet Vi at the hospital by eight o'clock in the morning. The surgery is scheduled for nine and it should take around three hours to remove the cancerous part of Mother's right lung.

Tonight is the first night in a long while when the three of us have slept under the same roof. It's comforting having them both down the hall. The fireplace timer clicks off and the blue flames vanish.

Thirty-Seven

1985

By nine o'clock the next morning our family occupies the third-floor waiting room. Jackie sits between Honora and Louisa on a couch. Honora passes around a tin of lemon cookies—­Mother's favorite. I was unsure about the girls being here and told Jackie as much, but she said they refused to go to school, saying they should be with their grandmother. Daisy and I have already smoked a pack of Luckies between us. We saw Mother briefly before they took her in for surgery. The nurse had given her a Xanax, but she still looked anxious. She called each of us to the bed for a hug and an “I love you”—first Daisy, then Violet, then me, Rosie, Lou, and lastly Honora. Mother almost wouldn't let go of Honora. The nurse appeared in the doorway to take her down and Mother called each of us over
again, either forgetting she'd already done it or needing to
hold us one more time.

“Why don't we all join hands for a second and say a prayer for Mother?” Violet says. She wears a white blouse with flowers painted on it and a matching skirt. Her dark hair is pulled back in a ponytail, making the silver streaks more visible.

“You know what, Vi? I don't feel like holding anybody's goddamned hand right now,” Daisy says. She takes the last cigarette from my pack and lights it, ignoring the stricken look on Violet's face.

Rosie gets up from her chair and moves next to Vi, taking her sister's hand in her own. “Go on, Vi. I'll say it with you.”

“Me, too,” Lou says, dragging Honora and Jackie over.

Daisy mutters about needing more cigarettes and walks out. This leaves me sitting across from Vi and Rosie, who is motioning her eyes toward the seat on the other side of Violet. Once the three of us are sitting together, Vi holds on to each of our hands and begins to pray.

I don't listen to the words. Instead I notice how the walls hold multiple framed prints of water—a lake, an ocean, water­falls. Are you less likely to sue the hospital when you hear bad news if you're feeling blissed out by all the water images?

“Amen,” Violet says, echoed by my daughters, Jackie, and Rosie.

They all look at me. The second hand of the clock mounted on the wall makes a solid click-click-click sound.

Lou scowls. “Dad.”

I sigh. “Amen.”

Five hours later, when all of us are eating the ham sandwiches Vi brought from home, Dr. Trent walks into the room. He wears green scrubs, and his surgical mask hangs loosely around his neck. His hands are clasped in front of his body as if he, too, might be saying a prayer.

Daisy walks right up to him. The rest of us are frozen in our seats.

“So, how did it go?” she asks.

Dr. Trent pauses. “As you know, we planned to do a lobectomy, which would have only removed one of the three lobes in her right lung. But when we got in there, we saw that the tumor was much larger than the tests had shown.”

“So you had to remove the whole lung?” Rosie asks.

He looks at her and then at all of us, his eyes lingering on Louisa and Honora. Jackie places her arms around the girls' shoulders.

“We were attempting to remove the entire lung when Mrs. Cooper began hemorrhaging.” He clears his throat. “We couldn't stop the internal bleeding. I'm sorry to tell you that she did not survive the surgery. Please accept my condolences.”

He hangs his head in a kind of defeat, and I consider briefly what it must be like to deliver bad news to a family, knowing that your efforts had not been enough to save someone's life.

Vi puts her head on my shoulder and begins to cry. Daisy backs away from the doctor and lowers herself into a chair. Rosie grabs my hand. I cannot take in the words. Not yet.

I reach out a hand to my daughters, but only Lou comes to my side. Honora allows Jackie to enfold her in a hug.

I stroke Lou's hair and lie and say it will be all right.

Mother was only sixty-eight. My sisters and I spend the next five days trying to accept that the four of us are the surviving members of a family that once numbered seven.

At the funeral home in Mabry, Rosie and I do battle
with Vi and Daisy over the particulars of mother's casket. Despite Mother having left instructions for a simple pine casket, Vi and Daisy feel she deserves better. They want the oak one lined in pink satin. When Rosie and I point out that Mother is dead and deserves to have her wishes obeyed, our older sisters call us heartless and cheap. In the end, Mother's body is laid to rest in an oak casket lined in hot pink satin, the more demure pink having been on back order. “Looks like a goddamned hooker's casket,”
Rosie whispers to me during the viewing.

Cousin Georgia called to say she couldn't make the service. Osborne ran the car off the road, intentionally or unintentionally, she didn't know which, and broke his collarbone. After inquiring after Oz, I told her I planned to pack up my old house, the shed, on this trip.

“Moving into your mother's house?” she asked, her voice guarded.

“If it's okay with you, I'd like to come back to Lacey Farms for a while and help out.”

“Ezekiel, you don't even have to ask,” she said.

We bury Mother on a small hill in the Mabry cemetery, right next to Daddy and Carter. The four of us—Vi, Daisy, Rosie, and me—stand shoulder to shoulder at the gravesite. The weather report called for rain, but the sky is stubbornly clear, as if reminding us that we could go fishing or walk in the woods. The preacher rambles on about the afterlife. I can't help but think,
What does he know? What does anybody here know about the afterlife?
There is a large family plot near ours, and I watch as a short woman in her eighties shuffles over to it. She carries a bouquet of yellow mums. The flowers are placed in front of the smallest tombstone. Two cherubs are carved into the pale pink marble. She then walks over to the larger tombstone and stands before it. I wonder if it's her husband's grave and the smaller one her child's. Is she all alone now?

A hand slips into my own. When I look down, it's Honora's. Mother's coffin disappears into the earth and my daughter squeezes my hand tightly.

After the funeral, my sisters put food out at Mother's house.
Funerals and weddings are Clayton's main social gath
erings, so most of the town shows up. Violet and Pearlene Wash
ington stand in a corner of the living room. Pearlene hugs
my sister close while Vi cries. In the kitchen, Daisy smokes a cigarette with Aunt Charlotte. She looks even more worn
down than usual and I turn away, heading for the back door.

I grab an RC Cola from the ice chest, wishing it were
a
beer, and head outside. In the backyard, Moses Washington
catches a pitch from Vi's son, Owen, who always carries a ball in one of his pockets and has even been known to sleep with one in bed. This year he hopes to be the starting pitcher for Mabry High, even though he's only a sophomore.

“You just about broke my hand, boy,” Moses says, shaking out his fingers.

“Sorry,” Owen says, looking worried. “You all right?”

“I'll live.”

“Let me run home and grab you a glove. I'll be right back.” Owen takes off at a jog up the street.

“You need some ice for that hand?” I ask.

Moses and I haven't seen each other since the day at Gerald's Gas when the dog and I were leaving Clayton. Forever, I had thought. Dressed in a black suit one size too big, his face softens when he sees me.

I reach out a hand but he bats it away. When his long
arms make their way around me, it is the first time since
­Mother's death that I feel as if all the emotions piled on top of one another may collapse. Maybe it's because the strength in his arms reminds me of my father's embrace—a rare occurrence but remembered all the more because of its scarcity. Moses and Pearlene knew Mother's story as well as any of us and loved her, deeply, I think. For a moment, I lean into Moses and bow my head.

“Your family has lost too many of its own. I know what that's like. You're going to be okay, though, you hear me?”

I should have told Mother I forgave her. Even if it was only partially true. Or not true at all. She deserved to pass on believing that her son harbored no ill will toward her. I should have said
I love you
. That would have been true, and not just partially. Wholly. I just never figured out how to love her and be so mad and disappointed at the same time. When was the last time I said those words to her? I can't even remember. The last time I wrote them was in a letter. Twenty-five years ago.

Owen reappears with a glove tucked under his arm. “Let's go throw out back, Moses. You can come, too, Uncle Zeke.”

Moses releases me with a final firm pat on the back.

“Now we'll see who can really throw,” Moses says, walking over to Owen. “You ain't seen nothing yet. Coming, Zeke?”

I shake my head. “Real men play basketball.”

“Don't start,” Moses says.

“Ignore him,” Owen says, grinning. “He couldn't hit a ball to save his life.”

Slats of wood are nailed to the old oak next to the
shed.
I peer up into the leafy middle and spy the tree house. My
father built it for Owen when he was only three or four years old. Mother tried to stop its construction, arguing with Dad about how Owen was too small to get up in a tree house, that he
could fall and break his neck, was that what his grandpa
wanted to happen? I climb up to it, my head barely fitting through the opening in the floor. Old plastic swords, Superman comic books, and tiny soldiers are strewn everywhere.

“Still climbing trees in your old age, Zeke?”

I hit my head on the side of a branch as I turn toward the voice. Jackie stands below me.

“Listen, Honora's disappeared.”

She wears a navy blue dress scooped low in the front. From the height advantage of the tree, the satin material of her bra is visible.

I climb down a few steps before leaping off, trying not to wince when I land funny.

Our daughter stopped baking long enough to come to the service. She had resumed the cookie marathon the same
day Mother died, returning from the hospital to whatever
safety she found in the kitchen. She still hadn't spoken to anyone for a week. The boyfriend has not called the house, confirming our suspicions that all of this must have something to do with him.

“Find her, Zeke. I need to stay with Louisa in the house.”

Having a purpose energizes me. As a small girl, Honora loved exploring the neighboring woods, so I instinctively walk toward them. She would make up stories about fairies living beneath the mushrooms and gnomes colonizing hollowed-out oak trees. The forest floor is damp beneath my feet, releasing the smells of earth and decaying leaves. The afternoon has brought gray clouds and a light drizzle falls. I peer through the maze of pine trees. A flash of purple stands out against the darkness of a tree trunk. I call out. She pushes off the tree and begins running.

Even in fancy shoes she's fast. My breath comes harder as I wind through the trees, keeping an eye on the moving ­egg
plant-colored target ahead. My leg muscles begin to cramp
and I remember what it was like to run as a boy. How strong my legs felt, pushing off the ground with each step. Fast. So fast. Arms pumping. Heart easily expanding. The certainty of knowing my body could do whatever I asked of it.

I lose sight of her for a minute. Stop. A muffled crying comes from nearby. I walk toward the noise. Honora sits on the ground, her hand clutching her right ankle. Already there is a faint blue tinge to the skin. When I kneel next to her she turns her face away, flinching when I gently probe the ankle. No broken bones.

“Do you think you can walk, sweetheart?”

No response.

“Do you want me to carry you? I think your old man's got enough juice to do it. We might have to take a break every so often, though.”

She does not object as I lift her into my arms. Her head rests beneath my chin and the scent of rain comes from her hair. We walk a few minutes before the strain on my back makes me gently set her on the ground.

“We'll just take a rest, okay? Are you cold? You look cold. Take my jacket.”

I pull off my suit jacket and place it around her shoulders. She sits on a tree stump, the bad leg stretched out in front. A smile flickers across her face.

“You haven't carried me since I was nine. I must weigh a lot more now.”

The week of silence is broken.
Don't make a big deal of it. Keep her talking. Play it cool.
By habit, I reach for a cigarette, then reconsider. I grab the pack of Doublemint instead, offering Honora a piece.

The loud sound of our chewing draws a scrub jay, investigating.

“This was Mee-Mee's favorite gum. She always let me
dig in her purse to find the pack she kept in the bottom.”

The ankle is now easily twice its normal size. We need to get back to the house and put ice on it. I move to pick her up again but she shakes her head.

“Let's sit a little while longer. It's not hurting as much now.”

This can't be true. But we stay. The branches of a nearby pine keep the rain off us. She picks at a stray thread from an embroidered flower on her dress.

“Brian and I slept together. A couple of times. Then he said he didn't want to go out anymore. Stupid, huh? I actually thought I loved the loser. And now—”

She stops, pressing her lips firmly together and wrapping the thread around a finger tight enough to stop the circulation.

“And now?” I struggle to keep my voice neutral. My fifteen-year-old daughter has had sex. More than once.

“He's saying stuff at school. To other guys. And now, some of them are coming up to me.” She places the back of her hand against her mouth.