Michael McDowell - Candles Burning

“When we goin’ home?”

Mama turned to Tansy. “Tansy, I believe your brioche are much superior to the brioche at the Hotel Pontchartrain.”

Tansy’s smile went by so fast, it was hardly ever there.

Maybe the mention of the Hotel Pontchartrain reminded her that the brioche baker there had proved to be a homicidal maniac. When I saw Tansy’s face go blank, it crossed my mind that Mama might have been a little more delicate in her compliment.

Ford gave Mama a minute or so and then asked, “You gone bust some more windows today?”

“Maybe I will. You want to help?”

“’Less I get a better offer.”

Mamadee always had her first coffee in bed. Mama was still buttering brioche when Mamadee came down.

Ford immediately begged Mamadee to be excused and was, with a kiss.

“Excuse me, Mamadee,” I piped up.

“Are you still here, Calley?” asked Mamadee, watching Ford’s exit with the addled ecstasy of a dog tracking a raw steak.

“Yes, ma’am.”

Her gaze moved glacially in my direction until she was staring at me. Then she made a noise of disgust—a tzzt .

“I’ll be glad when the Good Lord closes my eyes and I don’t have to look at your sullen pout until Judgment Day.”

“Me too,” I retorted airily.

“What?”

“I’ll be glad when you’re dead.”

She slapped me across the face and then across the back of the head.

“Shame!” Then she clutched at her chest and sank back in her chair. “Vipers in my bosom!”

Having heard from more than one preacher that the Good Lord never sends us trials we cannot bear, I wanted to hang around to see if she died, but keeping in mind that she might still have strength for more slapping and calling on the Good Lord, I went as far as the door and stood outside it.

The heart attack passed instantly.

“I swear that child is not human at all. Some troll stole your real baby and left Calley in her place,” Mamadee told Mama in a perfectly normal voice. “Winston Weems will be here at eleven-thirty, after church.”

“Really.” Mama lit a cigarette. “Gallbladder crisis all over?”

“It would seem so. I remember how I suffered with mine. Why, I begged Lewis Evarts to take it out and end my misery over and over, and he would not, because the operation is so dangerous. I was in bed from the day after Thanksgiving 1954, to Easter 1955, and thought sure I would faint and fall down right there in church, Easter Sunday.”

Mamadee’s medical and surgical reminiscences might very well continue; the list included, besides the gallbladder, four lying-ins, an appendectomy, kidney gravel, a hysterectomy and chronic migraine, all a lot tougher on Mamadee than on other individuals so afflicted.

From up in the old oak, I occupied myself watching Leonard remove the bits and pieces of the broken French doors and sweep up all the glass inside and out. He measured every which way and scratched the numbers in a greasy old notebook.

He went off for an hour and came back with his old daddy. Daddy Cook was at least as old and deaf as God but he still helped Leonard out when it was a two-man job. It wasn’t the work he enjoyed so much as bossing Leonard. Leonard backed his old homemade pickup truck as close as he could and the two of them unloaded several sheets of plywood. Leonard told Daddy Cook what to do and then Daddy Cook, who hadn’t heard a syllable of it, told Leonard what to do. Their method seemed to work just fine.

It looked like the salon was going to be too dark for Mama’s meeting with Mr. Weems.

Old Weems drove up the driveway on the mark of eleven-thirty. He had his big lawyering briefcase with him. On the verandah, he stopped to mop his brow with his handkerchief.

By then I was on the roof outside the window of my room, in the shadow of the eaves, watching for him. Ford was inside on the iron-framed cot, leafing through an old National Geographic and snapping a brass cigarette lighter that he had found behind the paperback books on the shelf over the bed. The lighter did not work as it had no fuel in it but the clicking was sufficiently irritating to amuse Ford.

“He’s here,” I said.

Tansy admitted Mr. Weems into the house.

“He look sick to you?” Ford asked me.

“No more than usual. He’s still all grey.”

From the top of the short flight of stairs, I could hear Tansy showing Mr. Weems into my granddaddy’s library. Then Mamadee came to make Mr. Weems welcome.

I hissed at Ford. He dropped the National Geographic and the two of us crept to the corner of the short flight, waiting for Mama to leave her bedroom.

Tansy stumped upstairs and softly knuckled Mama’s door. Mama came out wearing one of her Lauren Bacall getups: her navy silk trousers with the sailor waist and a striped jersey, with high-heeled sandals. Her hair was up, revealing her slender neck and the sapphires set in gold flashing from her ears. She did not look like a widow. Of course, besides the store-bought weeds, she had only the clothes with her that she had packed for New Orleans.

When Mama and Tansy were safely down the stairs, Ford and I crept into Mama’s bedroom and gently eased the door shut. Her room was over the library. Since the library hearth shared the chimney with the one in hers, all we had to do was stretch out on the hearth and put our ears to the cool ceramic tiles.

“Mr. Weems,” I heard Mama say on entering Senior’s library.

“Miz Dakin.” Mr. Weems sounded cold and dry as a dug-up old bone. I wondered if he smelled that way too.

There was a settle in the library, with two chairs to either side. Mama took the chair on the side nearest me. Mamadee dithered a moment and then punished the settle. I do not mean that Mamadee was heavy. She had a biggish bottom but the rest of her was no more than well upholstered. What I mean is that the settle was on the delicate side. Mr. Weems lowered his skinny buttocks into the other chair.

“I trust you are recovered,” Mama said.

“Thank you, my dear, I am.” Mr. Weems coughed then, as if to threaten a relapse. “May I ask when the visitation hours will be?”

“Never. I am not having every fool in Alabama gawking at my husband’s coffin and trying to imagine what’s inside and what it looks like. The funeral will be the day after tomorrow at ten.”

Mr. Weems drummed his fingertips nervously on the arms of his chair.

“I have spoken to the police,” he said, “and also an agent from the Birmingham office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The FBI would like to interview you again at your earliest convenience. The search of the house has been completed. There is no objection to your returning there from either the police or the FBI. However, the lien-holder does object.”

“The lien-holder?” Mama’s voice faltered and then recovered to assert, “There are no liens on that property. Joseph bought it outright. We owned it free and clear.”

“I am sorry to have to tell you, dear lady, that it is not free and clear. Your late husband, God rest his soul, mortgaged the property to the hilt. It has been in the process of foreclosure for some time. Had not the tragedy intervened, the foreclosure would have occurred on Ash Wednesday. The lien-holder has been patient because of the circumstances.”

Mama jumped up. “I don’t believe you! It’s a lie! He would have told me. He never kept his business secret from me. You know perfectly well that he always wanted me to know everything! You’ve heard him say it yourself, that he would be dammed if he left me a widow without a clue, the way so many men leave their wives! I have my own checking account and not only did he keep it full, he never once told me that I spent too much or unwisely!”