The Right Thing (10 page)

The door opens and Starr steps out into the foyer. She's changed into a pair of baggy acid-washed jeans and what looks like a man's Arran-knit sweater, the heavy, cabled sleeves hanging past her fingertips, the hem falling halfway to her knees. In spite of wearing what must be the last of Bobby's clothes, Starr looks beautiful: her color is high, and her pale eyes are bright as, well, stars.

“I'm ready,” she says. She reaches down to pat the dog. “Hey, Troy Smoot.” He looks up at her with recognition, tail wagging, his grin full of sharp white teeth. “You meet Troy in the elevator?” she asks.

“I met him and his shit,” I say. “What the hell's that about? Is he yours?”

She ruffles the wild hair sprouting behind the terrier's ears. “Jesus wept, no. Troy here lives next door with ol' Jerome and Lollie Treeby. Remember Lisa's parents? Lollie can't even recall her own name anymore, and he can't be bothered to walk a dog, so three times a day ol' Jerome just sticks Troy in the elevator and lets him ride up and down until he's done his business. Then he phones down and tells Mr. Jarbo, the maintenance man, to clean it up and spray some Glade around. Bobby said Mr. Treeby's been doing it for years.”

I can't believe what I'm hearing. “You mean to tell me he keeps a dog up here and doesn't even walk it?” It explains the howling earlier and the atomic cloud of air freshener on my previous trip up in the elevator this afternoon. “That's cruel. Not to mention disgusting.”

“Honey,” Starr says patiently, “people think this place is the last word on gracious living, but let me tell you what, the Burnside is full of mean old folks who're used to getting their own way. When they say ‘shit,' they mean for somebody to drop their drawers. If Mr. Jarbo wants to keep his job in this crappy building, he'll keep on cleaning up after all of them, not just the Treebys. You ready to go?” Starr slings her purse over her shoulder and locks the door behind her.

“Someone should report this to the Humane Society.” I've known that after Lisa grew up to become a geneticist and went to work bioengineering soybeans for ConAgra in Dubuque, Mr. and Mrs. Treeby sold their old place and moved to the Burnside. I had no idea that they'd gotten themselves a dog, but with Lisa and her allergies gone, there wasn't any reason not to, I guess, and Mr. Treeby must have missed having someone to boss around. In her old age, Mrs. Treeby has become increasingly dim, so I'm betting he takes it out on the dog instead of her these days. And knowing Jerome Treeby, he must have been as appalled by Starr's presence next door for the last six months as I am about him making his dog shit in the elevator.

The doors to the elevator slide open again, and the little terrier trots inside. “Does he just ride up and down until they let him out?” I ask as we walk in after him.

“That's right,” Starr says. The elevator descends. “That's how come Troy and me got to know each other. I call him Troy Smoot after a boy I knew what got ten years at Parchman prison for a crime he didn't even do. Poor thing. It isn't his fault.” Troy looks stoically away from the mound in the corner.

The door opens onto the parking garage and the clean, cold November night smells like freedom. Starr and I get out of the elevator. The dog stays behind, intelligent brown eyes mournful, head cocked in wistful farewell as the doors begin to close.

“Wait!” I shove my arm between the closing doors to hold them open. “C'mon, Troy.”

Troy trots out of the elevator, his stub tail wagging. “What're you doing?” Starr asks. Her voice echoes in the cavernous garage. “We're going to New Orleans, right?”

“That's the plan,” I say. “And Troy's coming with us.” Not content with being a liar and a coward, I'm a dog thief now. I open the door to the BMW, and he jumps into the front seat.

“What're we going to do with a dog?” Starr sounds confused. “Annie, I thought we were going to travel light.” She gets in the passenger's side and pats Troy's head. The dog leans into her hand and exhales a gusty sigh. “Don't get me wrong—me and Troy are good to go, if that's what you want.”

It's like this morning's black silk dress, still hanging in the back seat of the car; it's like this furtive trip to New Orleans in the dark. Taking this poor bastard away from his miserable life with the Treebys is something I'm going to do because I just know it's the right thing to do, even if I can't explain why.

“Get in the back, Troy,” I say, pointing behind me. The dog hops across the console and sits up on the back seat, ears pricked and ready for a ride in the car.

“Time to get this show on the road, then,” Starr says. “And no smoking 'round the baby.”

My grandmother would just die if she weren't already dead.

M
y grandmother was only one reason why I'd never liked Thanksgiving.

At my house, the morning always began with a frantic dash to get to church for the early service. My Sunday clothes were uncomfortable in the extreme. Starched petticoats, stiff patent leather shoes, my Sunday coat's blue wool collar scratching the back of my neck, and a tight black velvet, wide-brimmed hat—by the time Daddy pulled the Buick up to the Gothic palace that was St. Andrew's Episcopal Cathedral, I was already surly and wanted to get the hell out of there before we even walked in the doors. “Thankful” was the last thing on my mind, believe me.

This Thanksgiving, after an hour of sermonizing and hymn singing, scribbling pictures on all the tithe cards and in the back of the prayer book with the pew's little pencil, wriggling and sighing in discomfort until my mother had given me a swat on my leg, I'd come to a gloomy reappraisal of the benefits of going to heaven. If church was any indication of what I could expect for eternity as a reward for good behavior, I was ready to be my usual bad self and take my chances with the place Starr called you-know-where.

Needless to say, when we arrived at home on Fairmont Street, I bolted out of the back seat of the Buick.

“Annie Banks!” my mother called. “Keep your good clothes clean.”

And Thanksgiving dinner, the whole point of this obnoxious day, was still a good three hours away. Upstairs, I threw the blue wool coat with its scratchy collar onto my bed and sailed the hat after it. The petticoats and shoes I could do nothing about, so I resigned myself to a long day of irritation, boredom, and interrogation. Grandmother Banks was coming for dinner around one, and her arrival would put an effective end to any hopes I had of enjoying the day. For a pallid little bright spot, Aunt Too-Tai was coming, too.

Younger sister to my awful grandmother, Aunt Too-Tai was old—at least sixty—a chalk cliff of a woman in bib overalls. She lived in a poky, run-down house in the Mississippi countryside, out from Chunky, off the highway to Meridian, which had an attic fan and no television. When she came to Thanksgiving dinner at our house, her rump-sprung tweed suit always smelled like motor oil and a whopping dose of mothballs. By the time the turkey was on the table, my aunt would smell even more powerfully of bourbon, for even though Hinds County was ostensibly dry in 1963, my daddy could buy package liquor at the bootlegger's drive-through down the road in Pearl. He and Aunt Too-Tai could put away nearly a whole fifth between them whenever they got together on Thanksgiving Day, talking politics and Ole Miss football. Watching the grown-ups get plastered made for a break in the long tedium of the holiday, a small measure of cheer in an otherwise cheerless day.

Downstairs in the kitchen, Methyl Ivory was busy basting the turkey, the big, golden bird glistening under the oven's bright light. Pumpkin and mince pies were cooling on the kitchen table. Nobody would notice if I broke off a little piece of crust, I thought, so I sidled up to the table to sneak a bite of something to eat.

“Git,” Methyl Ivory ordered, not even turning around.

“Fine!” I flounced through the door into the hall. In the living room, my daddy was watching a bowl game by the fire, while my mother was in the dining room, making sure that the table was set perfectly so that her mother-in-law would have one less thing to criticize. And me, I was set adrift on the day with nothing to do, held hostage to my clothes.

It seemed that my parents wouldn't care if I took myself outside for a walk around the backyard as long as I stayed clean, so naturally I went down by the fence even though I hadn't any expectation that I'd see Starr. After all, her father was a preacher and today would be a big day in the little Pentecostal church over on the other side of Fortification Street. I comforted myself with the thought that likely Starr would be bored to death and wearing uncomfortable clothes, too.

The day was crisp as good stationery, a seamless cold with a deckle edge, and full of starlings. Overhead the massive cloud of birds swirled in an impossible earthbound arc, at the last instant breaking free of gravity, rushing upward with an explosion of wings. I hung my fingers in the wire mesh and looked across the Allens' backyard at the rental house with longing. To my delighted surprise, Starr was sitting on the back steps with her head in her hands.

“Hey!” I pitched my voice over the starlings' mad whirr. “Hey, Starr!”

Starr's margarine-yellow head lifted, and she raised her hand in a listless wave. It seemed to take forever for her to walk down through the Allens' backyard to the fence.

Starr wasn't dressed up for Thanksgiving. She was wearing the boy's corduroy pants and her old sweatshirt. Her feet were bare.

“Hey, Annie,” she said. Up close, her eyes were red-rimmed.

“What's the matter?” I asked.

Starr looked at the ground. “Nothing.”

“Oh.”

She looked up and swallowed hard. “See, it's just my poppa won't get up out of the bed this morning to go to the church. I tried and tried, really I did, and the phone just kept on a-ringing. I know it was folks from the church, wanting to find out where he was at.”

I had no idea how to respond to this. “D'you think he's sick?” I finally asked.

Starr laughed without humor, sounding shockingly adult. “No, Annie. He's not sick. My momma used to get him up when he goes like this, make him drink a pot of coffee and see he made it to the church, but I couldn't do it.” She wrapped her thin arms around herself and shivered. “No turkey either. He forgot, I guess.”

“But it's Thanksgiving,” I said, round-eyed. Much as I disliked this holiday, it seemed to me that there were
rules
about this sort of thing, and here was Starr's poppa, breaking a lot of them. “What are you going to eat?”

Starr shrugged. “There's a can of hash and some eggs. I can make that, hash and eggs. We're out of whatever else.”

This was just plain wrong. “C'mon,” I said. “You can come to my house for dinner, if you want.” Of course she could. Hadn't Bishop Thwaite said just this morning that we needed to feed the hungry on this special day?

“I better not, Annie,” Starr said. “Look at me—I bet your family gets all dressed up.”

“Well,” I said, “go home, change into your Sunday clothes, and come back!”

Starr's face brightened ever so slightly. “Really?”

“Sure,” I said. “Hurry up. I'll go tell my mother.”

 

“You did
what?
” my mother demanded.

“Asked Starr to come to Thanksgiving dinner?” My voice was small. “I had to—her father's in the bed and he won't get up.” I hung my head. It hadn't occurred to me that feeding the hungry was a Christian duty only so long as it wasn't at our table.

“Well, you'll just have to uninvite her.” My mother leaned across the snowy Irish linen tablecloth set with the Haviland dinner plates and good silver, straightening a candle that was just out of true in a way only she could discern. “Thanksgiving is a
family
holiday, Annie. Besides, you never ask someone to dinner without getting permission first.”

“But what about Bishop Thwaite?” I asked defensively. “He came last year, and he's not family.”

“That's different,” my mother said, sounding as though she was keeping her temper on a short leash.

“But why?” I insisted. “Why can't Starr come?”

Before my mother could answer, Methyl Ivory poked her head in the dining room.

“Miz Collie?” she said. “That child from 'cross the way's at the back door. She say Annie ask her to Thanksgiving dinner.” Methyl Ivory's broad, dark face was expressionless, bland as unsalted rice.

“Well, I'll just have to explain to Starr that Annie was wrong, inviting her without asking first.” Her cheeks flushed, my mother was untying her apron as she stalked around the dining table to go to the sunporch through the kitchen.

“But we've got tons of food!” I stomped my foot in its uncomfortable Sunday shoe. How could she be so mean?

“Absolutely not.”

“Aunt Too-Tai won't care,” I argued, following her through the swinging door into the kitchen.

Just inside the doors to the sunporch, Starr was standing with her hands clasped together at her waist. She'd changed into a dress that I knew was her favorite—pink candy stripes on pale-blue cotton—and her cracked-leather pair of school shoes. But the wrinkled dress looked tired to death, the sash hanging unevenly where she'd had to tie it herself. She'd forgotten to brush her hair, too, the yellow curls drooping around her downcast face. Now, I can look with memory's eye and see Starr as my mother must have seen her: an undernourished, untended child standing on the doorstep of poverty, wearing a worn-out dress and cheap shoes.

But that Thanksgiving morning on the sunporch, I didn't notice how my mother had fallen silent, too caught up in arguing my case.

“Starr's daddy didn't even get a turkey!” I howled in righteous indignation. “It's Thanksgiving and he forgot the turkey. Starr's going to be hungry!” I'd played my trump card.

My mother turned her head and frowned down at me. “That's enough from you, Mercy Anne Banks,” she said coldly. I shut up, looking at the red-tiled floor with tears in my eyes, biting my lip. When my mother used my whole given name, all hope was lost.

In her blue wool challis dress with the white silk cuffs and collar, her pearl necklace and black suede pumps, my mother slowly crossed the sunporch. She sat on her heels in front of Starr, put her fingertip under Starr's chin, and lifted it so that she looked at her face.

“Come with me,” she said. Taking Starr's hand in hers, she led her through the kitchen, then out to the front hall's staircase. I followed behind them. “You wait down here, Annie Banks.” They vanished up to the second floor, Starr with one perplexed look at me over her shoulder. After a minute of looking up the empty staircase in complete mystification, I went back to the kitchen.

“What's my mother doing?” I asked Methyl Ivory. “Why'd she take Starr upstairs?”

“That you mama's business, I 'spect.” She stirred the saucepan of bubbling giblet gravy. “Here.” Methyl Ivory handed me my mother's discarded apron. “Make you self useful,” she said, pointing at the sink full of pots and pans. With a long-suffering sigh, I dragged the step stool to the sink and began washing.

It seemed to be taking forever for my mother and Starr to return. Not knowing what was going on up on the second floor strung out the time like a dangling fly on a spider's silken strand. I finished washing the pots and pans and dried them, even. Methyl Ivory took the turkey out of the oven. The kitchen clock's hands ticked the long minutes off until it was one, and then the doorbell rang.

“I'll get it,” my daddy called from the living room.

“Quick, child,” Methyl Ivory said. “Take off that apron and go kiss you grammaw.”

“Do I have to?”

“Git!”

In the entryway by the front door, Daddy was helping Grandmother Banks out of her coat and mink scarf, the one with the stuffed minks' tiny jaws biting each other's hindquarters in a gruesome chain of fur. The coat-removal operation was fairly complicated. Wash stood behind Grandmother Banks's wheelchair, looking as though he were waiting for a bus that was a long time in coming.

My grandmother's sharp, faded blue eyes caught mine the instant I walked around the corner into the long center hall. “Come here, Annie Banks,” she said sharply, “and give me a kiss.” With dragging feet, I walked toward her wheelchair, dreading the tribute I knew had to be paid on arrival. Like always, she smelled of attar of roses and Vick's VapoRub. I felt like wiping my mouth as soon as I delivered the ritual kiss on her powdered, withered cheek, but knowing better, instead I backed away and hid behind my daddy.

“Wash,” Grandmother Banks ordered, “go wait in the car.” She folded her liver-spotted hands, knuckles ringed in old diamonds, over the pocketbook in her lap.

“Yes'm,” said Wash. He opened the door, whistling as he walked down the sidewalk to the Packard, tossing the keys in the air and catching them. Daddy shut the door and rubbed his hands together.

“Can I get you a little glass of sherry, Mother?” he asked. He took the handles of her wheelchair and began to push it down the hall to the living room, where the fire crackled on the hearth.

“Oh, I don't know, Wade.” My grandmother bridled like a spoiled flirt. “You wouldn't be trying to get me tipsy, would you?” I was surprised to hear my daddy laugh in what sounded like embarrassment, and then at that moment my mother and Starr came down the stairs. My mouth fell wide open.

Starr had changed clothes. She was wearing one of my Sunday dresses—the red plaid taffeta with its white bell of crinoline and black velvet sash—clean socks and my second-best pair of patent leather Mary Janes. Her curls were caught back with a black velvet hair ribbon, and her scrubbed cheeks were as pink as if she'd just come in from out of doors.

“Mother Banks,” my mother said smoothly, reaching the bottom of the stairs. “Happy Thanksgiving to you.” She took Starr's hand. “This is Starr Dukes, one of Annie's friends. She'll be having dinner with us today because her father's feeling poorly. Starr, meet Annie's grandmother Mrs. Banks.”

Starr's smile was shy. “Pleased to meet you, ma'am,” she said politely.

Grandmother Banks lifted one imperious, sparse eyebrow. “Dukes?” she said, sounding as though someone were trying to sell her an inferior brand of mayonnaise. “I don't believe I know that family.” Grandmother Banks turned in her chair and lifted her chin to look up at my father. “Surely she must have someone else at home, Wade. We'll have Wash drive her back to her house.”