Lesley Kagen: Tomorrow River

Beezy asks, “Ruth Love been stayin’ on track?”

“Mostly.” I wish she wouldn’t go down this road. I know she and Gramma used to be on friendly terms so she always asks after her, but Woody’s been having a bumpy time of it with our gramma, who if there ever was a race for the best Southern belle in this county would win by a mile. She does beautiful needlework. Can make a pot roast that just falls off the bone and mashed potatoes without one lump. And her pies? They win every prize at the county fair. She’ll also play card games with Woody and me, not poker though, since she is also real holy and gambling is against the Bible. All in all, we couldn’t ask for a more lovely grandmother.

Most of the time.

Occasionally, Gramma has what we’re supposed to call “episodes,” but I always tell Woody to stay clear if I think Gramma’s winding up to “pitch a conniption fit.” Some conniptions are a lot worse than others. She took a hatchet to the grand piano in her parlor a few years back because the Lord told her she was getting too much enjoyment out of playing ragtime music. Grampa Gus told folks that his wife had a heart problem, not a head problem, and that’s why she had to stay in her bedroom with the curtains drawn for a month. Then he sent her off to the Virginia State Colony for Epileptics and the Feebleminded over in Lynchburg to get better and thank goodness, she did-after the doctors told her to quit being so religious and gave her some electrical treatments.

“What do you mean mostly ?” Beezy asks suspiciously. She knows things about Gramma Ruth Love that outsiders don’t because Mama told her. Even though she wasn’t supposed to. We’re not to tell anybody what goes on in the Carmody family. “Ruth Love hasn’t gone haywire, has she?”

“No, no. Why would you think that?” I pshaw . “She’s just been puttin’ on way too much Ben-Gay and it’s been bothering Woody’s sensitive nose, that’s all.”

That Ben-Gay part is true, but what I don’t tell easily upset Beezy is that on her last visit, our grandmother made us play Holy Communion with her all afternoon. That also bugged Woody, but can you blame her? A person can only stand eating Wonder Bread that’s been crushed into religious wafers for so long without getting bloated.

“Got any new wiggle-waggle?” I ask, trying to draw Beezy off the Gramma topic and back to the business at hand. Her eyes may not work, but her ears are like sponges soaking up the juicy gossip getting spread by the women that strut past her place on their way downtown. She’s got to have heard something. Mama’s disappearance is still big news.

“Lemme see, lemme see,” Beezy says, letting what she’s working on slip to her little lap. “Well, just about everybody’s talking ’bout how Mary Jane Upton showed up at the grocery yesterday wearin’ a bathing suit and calling herself Rita Hayworth.”

Mrs. Upton is always going around town underdressed asking after her tomcat of a husband who works nights at the Old Blue Hotel. You’d think everybody would be used to her by now. “Ya got anything new ?”

Beezy considers, then says, “I heard that Abigail Hawkins been elected president of the Ladies Auxiliary.”

“Big deal.”

“I also heard she’s been showin’ up at your place on a regular basis. Any truth to that?”

A taste something like an iron handrail comes into my mouth. “She’s been bringing up corn bread and rhubarb pie and… I swear, that woman is tryin’ to give Betty Crocker a bad name.”

Beezy tsks… tsks. “It’s not a fondness for cookin’ that’s bringing Miss Abby up to Lilyfield and I expect you know that, Shen.”

I protest, “Whatta ya mean?” like I have no idea what she’s referring to, even though I have my suspicions. I heard Father Tommy tell Papa after church, “A year’s time is considered long enough to grieve, Walter. The twins need a mother.”

For God’s sakes, where’s his faith? His hope? I can’t believe that priest is forgetting the same way that some of the single ladies in town are that Mama is not gone forever, only temporarily so. Abigail Hawkins is the worst of them, but I’ve kept a list of every one of those women who bat their eyes at Papa after Mass. Woe to them is all I got to say on that subject. (I’m planning on getting Miss Delia who lives at the boardinghouse to put a hex on all of them. You should see what she did to Charity Thomas who got on my bad side. Miss D gave her a hump. A big one. Think camel.)

“Yes, indeedy,” Beezy says, rocking back. “Sounds to me like Miss Hawkins is busy settin’ a web for your father.”

E. J. comes bursting back onto the porch with a fritter in each hand and chewing another. He’s coated them in mayonnaise. I think you could get him to do just about anything for a jar of Hellmann’s. He swallows and says, “Miss Abby settin’ a web, yup. Sounds that way to me, too.”

“It does not,” I say, elbowing him in the ribs. “You’re just angling for more fritters.”

“ Singin’ in the Rain is showing again up at Hull’s,” Beezy says, picking up her yarn and hinting on how she’d like to spend this Thursday evening. She loves old-time movie night just like Mama. Especially if they’re showing a musical one. Woody and me would wear our baby doll pajamas to Hull’s Drive-In on sweltering summer nights. Mama would turn up the speaker and her and Beezy would sing along and we’d drink Coca-Cola right out of the bottle and eat Cracker Jack under the stars and that was all so… well, heavenly. We’re missing those good old times up at Hull’s so I try to make up for that on the Thursdays when Papa is nowhere to be found. I chauffeur us up to the drive-in in Beezy’s old brown Pontiac that I can handle if we go slow.

“I had to sneak into the Belmont Theater when that picture show first come out,” she says. “People of my color weren’t-”

“Beezy Bell! Please don’t make me drag it out of you. I’m running out of time,” I say, impatient. I hold our mother’s watch up to her ear. It’s inscribed on the back with the word Speranza , which means “hope” in the Italian language. Mama got this watch from our friend Sam Moody. It’s my most prized possession. Not only does it make me feel with every tick that I’m getting closer to finding her, it’s also an excellent reminder that Woody and I got a fast friend in Sam, who is Beezy’s illegitimate, by the way. “Have you got something helpful or not? If the answer is not , then we’re gonna run over to the drugstore and talk to Vera.”

“Sugar, it’s been so long,” Beezy says, disheartened. “Your mother-”

“‘Defer no time, delays have dangerous ends.’” Sam used to say that to my mama all the time. “William Shakespeare wrote that. It means-time’s a-wastin’, so you better hurry up and do something before something else real bad happens.” Beezy doesn’t want my heart to get broken if I can’t find Mama. That’s why she’s holding back. “If I hadn’t waited so long to go lookin’ for her in the first place, maybe she’d be home right now,” I say, softer. “You understand?”

Clearly not wanting to, she sighs out, “Yesterday afternoon Dorothea Dineen was tellin’ Harriet Godwin that she heard Evie applied for a library position before she disappeared.”

It’s true Mama was at her happiest when surrounded by books, but well-to-do married women have their gardens and the pampering of their husbands and children to fill their days. They do not have jobs. I mean, Mama could’ve gotten a position at the library if that was allowed. She went to Sweet Briar College to study singing with hopes of appearing on Broadway someday, but then she fell in love with the great poets of the past and the masters of art so she switched over to learn about them until she fell in love with Papa. They got married short of her receiving her sheepskin.