The Right Thing (9 page)

Tate had raked the Bledsoes' fallen leaves and pine straw into the gutter and heaped everything into a pile. As I passed by, he picked up a long-tined pitchfork and began hefting leaves into the high-sided, homemade trailer hitched behind his truck, never once turning his head in my direction. Starr's house was in sight now, however, and Tate Barlow abruptly was replaced with my real worry. What if Starr was too mad at me to accept my apology?

Walking past the Allens' big white Victorian, a tiered wedding cake of dormers, turrets, and string work towering over the rental house next door, I almost turned around and went home. I imagined ringing the bell, Starr coming to the door and then slamming it in my face. Still, I kept putting one foot in front of the other, remembering my mother saying,
Do the right thing, Annie.
And even though I was practically walking backward, too soon I was at the rental house, standing on the cracked front step with my finger on the doorbell. The pack-like howls of the boys were growing closer. I hesitated. Buddy Bledsoe's voice was braying something. It sounded like,
“Get her!”

More apprehensive than ever now, I rang the doorbell anyway. It buzzed with a dusty clatter. After waiting a moment, I pressed the bell again. The driveway was empty except for a big oil stain and an overflowing garbage can. No one came to the door. I'd turned away and was ready to head home, apology unuttered, when Starr rounded the corner of the house, sprinting pell-mell into the weedy front yard.

“Annie!” she cried. “Run!” She grabbed my hand on the fly, and we ran like scalded cats.

I didn't ask her why we were running—I didn't have to. Buddy Bledsoe's shouts and those of the gang were closing in; they were almost upon us. We bolted down the hill between Starr's house and the Allens' sloping backyard, down to the end of their lawn, to the fence. Behind us on the other side of Starr's house, the boys bayed like coyotes with the quarry almost in view.

“C'mon!” Starr panted. We didn't have time to scale the fence, but doubled back and ran up the slope into the Allens' front yard and down Gray Street faster than ever I ran the fifty-yard dash. The boys still hadn't caught sight of us, but when they did, we'd be done for. In front of the Bledsoes' house, Tate's leaf-burdened trailer sagged on its old axles. Tate himself was nowhere to be seen. The street was deserted, but now the boy's voices were in the Allens' backyard. Thinking fast, I tugged Starr's hand and pulled her toward the trailer.

“Quick!” I gasped. “Get in.” Like squirrels we clambered over its high sides, diving into the leaves, burrowing under the big pile. We were barely covered and didn't dare even to sneeze as the gang of boys exploded around the corner of the Allens' house. In a hooting pack, they chased our trail up Gray Street. Starr's hand trembled in mine. I squeezed it back and closed my eyes, praying to the infant Jesus that they'd pass Tate's trailer by.

There's rarely an adult experience like the thump-in-the-guts terror constantly lurking beneath the still-water ordinariness of a kid's life. Hidden under a heap of pine straw and musty-smelling oak leaves, Starr and I knew down to the soles of our feet we were going to be killed outright if we were caught. That knowledge didn't ease when the gang pounded to a stop at the Bledsoes' house, massed on the sidewalk right beside Tate's trailer.

“Where'd the little bitch go?” That snarl was Buddy Bledsoe's. I was positive I could smell the animal reek of his sweat, like a hog gone bad and murderous.

“She must've run up this way,” another boy offered, sounding out of breath. “Sure was fast.”

“Yeah,” Buddy's voice agreed. “She shouldn't've spied on us. We'll get her, and then we'll stick cherry bombs up her bagina.” The other boys reacted with muffled guffaws.

“Then we'll—” Buddy's plans for further violence were cut off when the front door of the Bledsoes' house opened.

“Boys?” High-heeled shoes clacked down the brick path, and Mrs. Bledsoe's happy, drawling voice said, “Buddy! How nice you've brought your fuh-riends over to play. Y'all want to come inside, have a Co-cola and some tater chips?”

The pack shuffled its collective feet. “No'm,” Buddy said. “We're going to . . . uh, play some more football. Thanks anyway, Mom.”

“Oh, all right.” Mrs. Bledsoe sounded disappointed. “Well, if y'all change your minds, there's puh-lenty of snacks in the kitchen. Don't be too late now—it's almost dark.” And Starr and I listened with sinking spirits as our one faint hope of a reprieve clacked its way up the front steps and shut the door.

“So where'd they go?” somebody asked.

Before Buddy could issue new search-and-destroy orders, heavy footsteps shuffled across the desiccated lawn and onto the sidewalk. Starr and I clung to each other's hands, exhausted with fright. I wondered who the new arrival was but couldn't risk breaking cover to find out. Maybe another boy, maybe another indifferent adult, the situation was the same: we were trapped.

“Hey, nigger,” Buddy said. The other boys chimed in.

“Nigger, you get home.”

“Yeah, nigger.”

Tate had returned to his truck and trailer. Without a word to the taunting boys, he tossed the pitchfork into the bed of the truck with a thud and a clang. The truck's door opened, rusted hinges groaning. The trailer settled as Tate got inside the cab. He cranked the engine with a series of gagging coughs, and a dense, fuel-rich fog of burning oil and gasoline filled the air, competing with the smell of the leaves, the pine straw, and Buddy.

“Get out, nigger!”

The boy's harsh voices faded as the truck and trailer loaded with dry leaves and two terrified girls pulled away from the Bledsoes' house. Too soon, the truck was chugging down the street, too fast for us to jump out. It seemed we were out of the frying pan and into the Hinds County dump. A layer of leaves swirled upward into the cold rush of wind.

The trailer slewed right as the truck turned the corner, and Starr rolled through the pine straw until she was next to me. “Where's he going, Annie?” she whispered in my ear.

“I don't know,” I whispered back. Tate's truck turned right again and after a short distance slowed to a stop. The scratchy-sounding radio was playing over the truck's sputtering engine, someone singing about a love that wouldn't die. I thought my heart would leap out of my chest it was pounding so hard. Cautiously, I parted the leaves over my face to the deep-violet dusk shot through with wood smoke. As I sat up, Starr poked her head up out of the pile, too, her curls wreathed with brown oak leaves and pine straw. The truck idled as we peeped over the high plywood side of the trailer.

We were in front of my house.

“Hurry,” I whispered. “He might come back.” We climbed out of the trailer and down to the sidewalk, brushing the leaves out of each other's hair and off our clothes. Still trembling with the aftershock of our near-death experience, I jumped when the trailer began to pull away from the curb. Behind the wheel of the truck loomed a great shadow: Tate.

But he'd saved us. Impulsively, I ran down the middle of Fairmont to catch up with the truck. It slowed, rolling to a shuddering stop. On tiptoe I looked through the open window into the cab, into the mild brown eyes of Tate Barlow. His face betrayed nothing except a stolid weariness.

“Thank you, Mr. Tate,” I faltered. “Thanks for the ride home.”

He nodded once and shifted the truck into first gear. Then he drove away.

Back on the sidewalk in front of my house, Starr and I walked through the gate. We sat down on the cold limestone front steps, our shoulders touching.

“I'm sorry,” I began. “I shouldn't have . . .” My voice trailed off.

She brushed away a stubborn oak leaf caught in the laces of her shoe.

“It's okay, Annie,” Starr said simply.

And with that, it was. Everything was okay again. When you're seven, an apology is a magical potion, a prince's kiss, a shiny golden lamp with three whole wishes in it.

The long day was nearly done, a fat half-moon hanging low in the evening sky. My daddy was home from work, his car in the driveway. Starr and I trotted down the side of the house, past the boxwood maze to the Allens' fence.

“What did you see?” I asked after I helped her over the wire. “I heard what Buddy said, that you'd been spying on them.”

“Oh,” Starr said, her eyes round as silver coins in the dusk. “The boys were lighting farts in the old garage down by the railroad tracks! I went for a walk and came up by 'em on accident.”

“Lighting farts?” I was mystified. How could anyone manage such a thing, and why would you want to?

“I'll tell you about it tomorrow,” Starr promised. “I've got to go now. G'night, Annie.”

“ 'Night, Starr.”

That afternoon I learned that I could run almost as fast as Starr—given sufficient motivation—and that my mother had told me the truth, that doing the right thing is always easier when you get around to it straight away.

The next day, I learned that methane gas is flammable.

I
park the car around the corner and hurry through the deepening dusk, trotting up the lamplit street to my house. These high-heeled boots aren't made for anything faster than a stroll, but surely nobody sees me racing past in the dark on my tiptoes. The neighboring families should be inside by now, gathered together in their big, warm kitchens, getting ready for Thanksgiving tomorrow.

And Du's Mercedes isn't in the garage yet, thank God. With any luck at all, Myrtistine will have left for the day, too. Pinned to the screen door, the note addressed to me in her sprawling backhand confirms her absence.

 

Turky 325 oven 8 a.m. Take it out before it burn
.

 

I rip the note off the door and toss it in the garbage. My luck is holding. I don't need any witnesses for what I'm getting ready to do next.

In the kitchen I throw some milk, bottled lemon juice, yellow mustard, and Kraft Parmesan cheese in a mug and stir. The mixture promptly curdles and smells just like vomit, a trick I've used since I was nine for playing sick. Grabbing the mug, I take the back stairs two at a time and run through my bedroom to the bathroom. With a grimace at my wild-eyed reflection in the mirror, I force myself to take a bare sip of the disgusting mess in the mug, swish, spit it out in the pink marble sink, and almost vomit for real. Swallowing my gorge, I pour the rest of the malodorous concoction into the toilet.

Lord help me, Du's Mercedes is purring up the driveway. To add a visual, I rub a light dab of blusher under my eyes to approximate a fever. In my hurry to toss the mug into the laundry hamper, I almost forget to flush the toilet.

There's no time to lose. Leaving the light in the bathroom on, I yank my mink parka and sweater over my head, dump the clothes onto the closet floor, and grab my bathrobe. Myrtistine's made up the bed earlier today, carefully arranging the eyelet-embroidered boudoir pillows in an artful scatter. I heave all that preciousness across the room onto the window seat and throw back the duvet. With no time to remove my jeans and boots, I belt my silk bathrobe on over them, leap into the bed, boots and all, and am pulling the covers up to my chin at the exact moment Du's heavy tread on the back stairs reaches the landing.

He stops in the doorway. “You in bed, honey?” Du sounds confused. Why wouldn't he be? The last time we spoke, I was all on board with the partners' dinner, as bright as ever I am before my fourth cup of coffee.

In what I hope sounds like pure pitifulness, I moan. My husband tiptoes across the carpet, as absurdly light on his feet as one of those pink elephants from
Fantasia
. Did I mention that Du's a big man? Six foot four, he weighs nearly three hundred pounds, and though a fair amount of that weight is situated over his belt like a French Quarter balcony, if I squint I can still see the defensive lineman he used to be. As he nears forty, Du's taken to arranging his dark hair sideways to cover a growing bald spot, but when you subtract the excess poundage and the comb-over, he's still a good looking man with a passing resemblance to Elvis Presley. Since Du's originally from Tupelo, Elvis's birthplace, it seems fitting.

“Hey, sugar, whassa matter?” His voice is more than a little slurred. I can smell the bourbon on his breath from here. Getting a jump on Thanksgiving with the other guys at the firm, sharing the bottle he keeps in his credenza, I gather. It wouldn't be the first time he's knocked back a few before coming home, and while he usually just passes out in front of the television before dinner, this time I might can use the leverage.

“Oh, Du—I feel so stinky,” I whimper. With luck, I look as flat-out ill as I manage to sound. “It got so bad at Maison-Dit, I had to leave the car in the parking lot and take a taxi home.”

The bedsprings groan as he sits beside me and pats the duvet somewhere in the vicinity of my left hip. “You sick?” He blinks owlishly in the darkened bedroom, lit only by the glow from the bathroom. “Aw, hon. I'm sorry. Want me to stay with you?”

My eyelashes flutter at the thought. “No, sweetheart,” I whisper. “Judge Shapley's expecting you tonight. Go on ahead without me. I'll be okay—this is just some twenty-four-hour bug.”

Du flinches at my breath, which is sure to be dreadful. His hand on my perspiring forehead is like a boxer's glove filled with sand. “You sure?” He sounds dubious. “I could probably get ol' Myrtistine to come over and sit up with you. What if you're sick again?”

“I already threw up a bunch,” I murmur, hoping my olfactory ruse backs me up. “But I think if I just rest, it'll pass. Go on, honey—you need to be getting ready. Sorry about the smell in the bathroom.” Du gets up with a protesting pop of knee joints, the price of all those tackles and goal-line stands.

“Guess I'm going to have to get along without you tonight,” he says, and I feel a quick rush of relief. He sounds regretful, although I can't imagine why since I know he walks on the thinnest layer of ice around the Judge anyway and having me on his arm only adds to Du's worries. He must be repressing all those occasions when I've had a glass of chardonnay too many—it's not easy to gauge how much social lubricant I can hold, seeing as how I usually don't eat—and that fatal glass leads to saying and doing things even the most liberal soul could only term as peculiar. Like, last year when I wandered outside the country club during the Snow Ball “for some air” and didn't come back but went and smoked a whole pack of cigarettes with the parking valets instead, or how when I can't recall any one of Du's partners' names I'll invariably call the poor man Steve, or the time I asked old Dottie Bledsoe how Buddy was getting along in his new life. Buddy grew up to have a few peculiarities himself, although the sex-reassignment surgery was supposed to have been a success.

“We can pick up the car tomorrow,” Du says. He strips off his coat and tie, drops everything on the chintz chair in front of the fireplace, and kicks his shoes off with a one-two thump on the carpet. His big, slope-shouldered silhouette fills the brightly lit bathroom doorway. “Lord, Annie,” he says before he shuts the door. “You sure are sick.” Soon the muted thunder of the shower affords me a tiny bit of room to breathe and plot.

I can just make out my watch in the gloom of the bedroom. It's 5:30. Du will be gone by 6:00 so he can be at the Petroleum Club in time for cocktails. I can pick Starr up for 6:15 if I hustle. It takes two and a half hours to drive the two hundred miles to New Orleans if I push the BMW to eighty-five and don't get nailed for speeding. Figure a maximum of an hour for Starr to get her act together with her money, two and a half hours back. No matter how I do the math, it's still going to take six hours. Du will be at the partners' dinner until 11:00, 11:30 at the latest. I need to buy time—about an hour and a half, to be exact.

Inspiration strikes. Our house is way too big for us: five bedrooms, four and a half baths, great room, dining room, formal living room, study, and a kitchen that only Myrtistine has ever mapped completely. When we bought forty-five hundred square feet of imitation Tara on a hill, we were thinking of the children we were going to have and Du insisted that all the potential children have their own bedrooms. Growing up on a red-dirt cattle farm down the road from a gas station, he had to share a room with two brothers until he got his scholarship to Ole Miss, and after that he lived in a suite with three other football players. Du's a big fan of privacy, and in this house that's something we have in abundance.

He comes out of the bathroom, a billow of steam preceding him. Toweling off his hair, he says, “Sugar, anything a-tall I can do for you 'fore I go?”

“Well,” I say with a wan smile, “I think I'll go sleep in the guest bedroom tonight. That way I won't keep you awake, honey, and we can both get some rest.”

“Shoot, darlin',” Du says. He's in the closet now, getting dressed. “I'll go down the hall. You rest up, get to feeling better. I'll just kiss you good night now and not bother you when I come in.” He emerges backlit by the light in the closet, his suit coat on his arm, tie loose around his neck. “You seen my shoes?”

“They're on the floor by the chair.” It's almost as if Du's in on this conspiracy with me: I can't hope for more. “That would be great—you letting me sleep. I'll be much better for Thanksgiving tomorrow.” And I can sneak into the house around 1:45 Thanksgiving morning and no one will ever know. I hate lying to him, mostly because it's so easy, but sometimes it's the only way.

“Your mom still coming?” he asks, knotting his tie.

“Mmm-hmm,” I murmur. “And Aunt Too-Tai's still planning to come up from Chunky. Myrtistine's done everything but put the turkey in the oven. I'll do that around eight tomorrow morning, and we'll have Thanksgiving dinner by one.”

Du leans over the bed and kisses me on the forehead. He smells of sandalwood soap, bourbon, and aftershave. “Well, you get some shut-eye and I'll let everyone know you're under the weather.” Am I hearing the faintest note of relief in his voice? “See you in the ay-em, sugar.” Du shuts the door gently on his way out.

It's all I can do to stay in the bed until the sound of his car leaving the driveway fades, but after what seems like an hour, he's finally gone. I throw back the duvet and rush into the bathroom to brush my teeth. In my closet, there's no time to get picky about what to wear: it's the green cashmere and the mink parka one more time. Dressed again and ready to go, I turn off the lights in the closet. Then I turn them back on because I need cash.

You should know that I have my own money, sort of. Days after my debut, Grandmother Banks finally achieved her expiration date (done in by her own meanness, in my opinion, although the coroner pronounced it complications from shingles) inside the elevator of her house on State Street. It took the Jackson Fire Department, two policemen, and the Jaws of Life nearly a whole day to remove her body and the wheelchair from that gilt birdcage: they built elevators to last back in the twenties.

When her will was read downtown at the attorney's dark, old-fashioned office, in a quavering rumble of faintly disguised disapproval, elderly Mr. Billy Spotswood Sr. informed me that, after endowing an annuity for Pumpernickel and leaving the bulk of her estate to my father, my grandmother had also engineered an inheritance for me, her only grandchild, to be administered by Daddy. The trust fund came to a respectable amount of cash and bank stocks, plus her collection of unfashionable, exceedingly filthy diamonds. My grandmother's housekeeper, Easter Mae, received a half-dozen sterling-silver pickle forks and Wash, her manservant, got the ancient Packard, which was at death's door itself. Conspicuous in its absence was any bequest to my mother. Nonetheless, both my parents enjoyed the boost to their standard of living after Grandmother Banks's demise, and they never said a word about it. In fact, I don't think I've ever heard my mother say anything even remotely disparaging about her vicious mother-in-law, not even after Daddy passed five years ago and nobody was left to give a damn.

Now we come to the “sort of” part of my own money. After Daddy's death, my mother became the trustee of my inheritance by default. It was a convoluted trust instrument that Mr. Spotswood Sr. had crafted, one that illustrated what Grandmother Banks must have thought of my ability ever to manage my own money. I can have as much as I want or need from the estate—so long as I run it past my mother first and she agrees to it. Grandmother would surely disapprove of this development, but that's too bad: if she wanted to rule her empire forever, she shouldn't have died.

In any case, my mother's cooperation has insured that Du and I can live like we do. If we had to get by on his salary (which is by no means a small one), we'd be up to our ears in debt, but having the old trust fund to fall back on has made all the difference. So tonight, in light of the “sort of” provision, it's a good thing I've kept nearly five thousand dollars in cash inside the dreaded walk-in closet, behind our ski boots, tucked underneath my extra shoulder pads in a cedar-lined box. I call it my “running money,” and no one knows a thing about it but me. Since Du can never learn about tonight's adventure, I can't use my credit cards, and Starr and I may have need of cash, so I stuff a handful of hundred-dollar bills in the pocket of my parka. Then I arrange the heap of eyelet pillows under the duvet to stand in for stomach-virus-afflicted, sleeping Annie—just in case.

Then I run.

 

The wind has stopped and the air is crystal cold, but the night sky overhead is full of stars as I pull the car into the parking garage at the Burnside Tower. I punch the “up” button for the elevator and wait, praying there won't be someone riding it up to their condo from the lobby downstairs at the same time. The seconds crawl by. I'm beginning to think about taking the stairs, and then the doors slide open at last.

As it happens, I'm not going to be alone on my trip up to Starr's penthouse.

There's a hairy little dog in the elevator, a black-and-tan creature resembling a miniature, flop-eared version of a German shepherd. It can't weigh more than ten pounds. With a shrug, I step inside. The doors close, and the smell in the elevator assaults my nose like a slap, ripe with a warm, familiar stink. The source is a pile in the corner, surprisingly large for such a small dog. He looks up at me with an air of depression, seemingly embarrassed about the mess, and so to be polite, I avoid looking at the small mountain of shit. The dog sighs as the elevator travels in a smooth, uninterrupted climb up the seven stories to the penthouse floor.

When the door opens, the dog—it's some obscure breed of terrier, I think—gets out with me. He follows me to Starr's door and sits by my feet when I knock, just as if he's at home there.