Lesley Kagen - Tomorrow River

An enraptured blush comes to her crepe cheeks. I usually tell her at this point that Jesus wants her to take her special medicine and go lie down, but I need to take my time. I can’t rush. If I do, she’ll only get more wound up. Maybe if I mention her pies. That always gives her a warm glow. I remember what Grampa said downstairs about the “special” ones she made Clive and how he never saw that coming. Gramma must’ve come up with a new recipe to surprise our neighbor on Thursday afternoons. She’s always experimenting with different fruit combinations. Yes, that should do the trick. “About your pies-”

“Is Jesus telling you that he’s hungry?” she asks like a concerned hostess.

“No, he’s full right now, but… He wants me to tell you that he is so proud of you for taking those pies over to Mr. Minnow the way you always did.”

“Oh, for goodness’ sakes! Jesus is playing a joke on you, Shenny. He’s the one who told me to take them over there in the first place.” She giggles too loud, too long. “Bless his heart, Mr. Clive is dead now, you know,” she says, turning morose on a dime.

She’ll miss those afternoons with him. They had developed a pleasant friendship over the years. Gramma was patient with Clive. Delivered a pie and stood over him until he ate the whole thing. They played whist sometimes, too.

“What was so special about the pies you took to Mr. Minnow?” I ask.

She grins impishly. “They had a secret ingredient.”

“And what was that?”

“You promise not to tell?” She looks around like somebody might be listening in. She lowers her voice. “It’s a family secret.”

“I promise.” It’s probably nutmeg. She likes to throw in a pinch now and again.

“Well,” she says, clapping her lipsticked hands together, “I tried mixin’ in a few things from under the sink, but that didn’t seem to work, so like always, I prayed on it. Sure enough, the Lord answered. He told me to put rat poison in the dough and knead it up good. That worked like a charm.”

Poor thing. She’s worse than I thought. She’s suffering again from her made-up-in-her-mind stories. What the Colony doctors called delusions.

I can hear the men downstairs. They’re bickering and somebody’s knocked over a chair.

Trying another tactic, I say, “Well, we better finish up praying now and get back to the kitchen. You hear that? Isn’t that Grampa callin’ your name?”

She would usually blanch white when I mention his name, but she doesn’t even hear me. She has slipped into a world of her own. Her eyes glossy, her lips wet.

I pat the bed and say, “Or maybe you’d like to lie down and rest a bit. Wouldn’t that feel nice?”

“Your neighbor shouldn’t oughta stuck his nose and his camera into a family matter. Then he had the nerve to tell my Gus that if he didn’t pay him lots of money for the pictures he took of us that night, he’d call up the sheriff. Even after Gus paid him, Clive demanded more,” she says. “Greed’s a sin, you know.”

“Pictures?” What is she going on about? “What pictures?”

“Jesus doesn’t care for that sort of thing, Shenny,” she says, prissy. “It is written in Deuteronomy: ‘You must purge the evil among you.’”

“What… what do you mean?” I’m completely confused. Her normal delusions aren’t usually this complicated. They’re mostly about the Lord demanding something or one of the saints instructing her to do this and that. Perform the Stations of the Cross over and over. Chop up the grand piano with an ax.

“You have no idea what hard work that was. I had to search and search, but I found the pictures in a sea chest way down on the bottom. Gus didn’t think I could, but he was proud of me when I did. I could tell.” Perspiration is beading on her top lip. She smiles, but it’s not a nice one. “I ripped Clive’s place up good.”

The day I was over at the Minnow place fetching Ivory, I had to step over a slew of photos that’d been scattered over Clive’s parlor floor. The cushions ripped apart. The mantel swept clean. And the bathroom-that awful smell. Could she have…

“Would you like to see the pictures?” She reaches behind her and lifts The Good Old Days photo album off my pillow.

I remember the afternoon when I expressed my concern to Clive that he was spending too much money. How he told me, “Don’t you worry about me, little girl, I got myself a permanent source of income.” And he bought that new metal-detecting device and that nineteen-inch color television and that fancy camera with the long lens and new trays for his developing room. He’d been bellyaching to me about stomach pains. I thought it was just more of his usual Clive hypochondriac talk. Or the flu. But there were dead mice on his kitchen floor and I don’t think they get the flu. Could Clive have been getting money from my grandfather the way Gramma just told me? Lots of money to keep quiet about some pictures he took? Did he start recently asking for more?

“Oh… Jesus,” I utter.

“That’s right, honey. Praise be to Him.”

“What… what did Clive see you doing? What did he take a picture of that he wasn’t supposed to?”

“Your mother and me.” She’s paging nonchalantly through the album. “I don’t know what went wrong with that gal,” she says, like she’s talking about a recipe that didn’t turn out quite the way she expected it to. “No matter how much I lectured her about her wifely duties, Evie wouldn’t listen to me. You know how she could be, Shenny. You complained enough about her. So independent. So Northern. Not bending to Walter’s will the way she was supposed to. Here we go.” She taps her fingernail on a picture of Mama lying on the ground. Her head is resting on the grass in the clearing. The full moonlight is shining down on her white blouse with the red trim. A puddle of blood is turning her honey hair black. Gramma is standing over her. Triumphant.

The candle on the dressing table is spurting and the room is spinning and the look on my grandmother’s face-I… I feel like I have risen and am looking down at her from above. “What did… what did you do?”

Bursting with pride and piousness, she says, “What was demanded of me in the Good Book. In Timothy it is written: ‘I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man. For Adam was first formed, then Eve.’ Eve , ya see? That was your mother’s name. And if… if you add the l on the end… it’s Evel. You can see what Jesus wanted me to do, can’t you?” When I don’t respond, she raises her voice. “Answer me!”

“I…”

“Did you know that your mother was planning on runnin’ away from my Walter? She gave me a note. I was supposed to give it to you and Janie, but I’d never pass that garbage on.”

Mama loved Gramma. Trusted her. Would have wanted to say good-bye to her.

That night.

Woody woke me, babbling, “Mama… mama… gone.” I tried ignoring her, and when she wouldn’t let me, I groused, “What’re ya doin’ up? Did ya eat too many Red Hots? You’re having a bad dream. Lie back down and go to sleep.” I rolled away from her, but she came after me. “Papa… Papa,” she moaned, and that’s when I heard him, too. Thrashing about in the woods, bellowing, “No… no. Mother… how could you?” At the time, I thought he meant our mother. That in his drunken state he was referring to her in an outraged way. Somebody else was back there with him, but I couldn’t make out who and by the time I found my binoculars, I heard our father’s grunting, cursing effort to get his feet situated on the fort steps and Woody could, too, and she grabbed on to my neck when he hollered up the trunk, “She’s… she’s… gone. Get down here.”