I walked around the house, making sure all the doors were locked and windows bolted. It would be just like Aunt Stella to open either of them in the dead of winter and then forget about it. I studied each room as I went along, wondering how I might bring them back to their former glory, as Aunt Stella put it.
The walls, floors, and ceilings would need to be stripped and either repainted, repapered, or refinished. The thought of it made me more tired than I already was. I looked up at the chandeliers in each room. They hung forlorn and lonely. Half the bulbs had burned out on most of the fixtures. Others— those that could have boasted brilliant light from a dozen or more bulbs—were dimly lit by a single low-wattage bulb. All were dust-caked and woven with cobwebs.
The kitchen and baths were another story. I wondered about the plumbing and the fixtures. The tubs were claw-foots, and there wasn’t a shower anywhere in the house. “If God had wanted us to take showers,” Uncle Jim had said to me once, “he’d-a told us to stand out in the rain.”
I smiled at a memory of the day when a fierce rainstorm had rushed in from the fields. It was the middle of a hot summer’s afternoon in my seventh year and we’d been out on the tractor all day, Uncle Jim operating it with me riding shotgun, thanking God I wasn’t inside the stifling kitchen where Mother and Aunt Stella were canning vegetables. Uncle Jim and I had already made it back to the house and had drawn water from the well to sip on while we sat at the top of the back porch steps. The air was heavy and the insects hummed.
“Yonder she comes.” Uncle Jim nodded toward the fields. I sat with my knees spread wide, my elbows perched on them, arms swinging between my legs. I looked up, wondering at his words, to see a sheet of rain moving toward us.
“I thought we’d get some rain today. Praise God, praise God . . .” And then he sang, “From whom all blessings flow . . .”
“Look at that,” I’d said, wiping beads of sweat from my forehead with the palm of my hand. I felt my bangs stick straight up, but I didn’t care. “I’ve never seen such a sight.”
The glint I loved so much appeared in his eyes. “Tell you what let’s do. Grab that bar of Octagon on the ledge there.”
I jumped up to do as I’d been told. When I handed the large, gold block of laundry soap to Uncle Jim, he rushed down the steps just as the rain reached us. He peeled off his shirt and began scrubbing the day’s work from his arms. I giggled the way little girls do, unbuttoning the cotton print shirt Mother had made for me on her new Singer, and joined him in the downpour that thrashed against our bodies.
Seconds later, no doubt drawn by our laughter, Mother and Aunt Stella stood stern-faced on the back porch, scolding us as though we were both infants. “Jim Edwards, what in the world are you thinking? You could be struck by lightnin’— and that precious child too!” Aunt Stella’s words were barely audible over the storm.
Uncle Jim and I stood like two frightened deer staring down the barrels of shotguns in the middle of hunting season. Then Uncle Jim looked down at me, back at his wife. “Go on with yourself, Stella. It’s just rain. There’s not a rumble in the sky.”
“Never mind that, then,” she called back. “You’ve got that child near naked.”
Uncle Jim looked at me and, this time, winked. I giggled in spite of the fact that my mother’s look said she was ready to send me to the groves for a whipping switch, which she’d never actually done but had often threatened. “She’s got more clothes on now than she does when she runs from the tub to the bedroom, I’m thinking.” He laughed again, then sobered as Aunt Stella raised her chin. “She’s just a child, Stella,” he said. “She ain’t no growed girl.”
Now, standing in the downstairs bathroom, I remembered feeling shame for the first time in my life.
I buried my face in my hands and groaned. Life was so innocent then. No one really worried about little girls and boys playing near-naked in a sprinkler’s cool delights or on open lawns during a summer downpour.
I stood and walked out of the bath and into the kitchen, where I retrieved the purse I’d left sitting by the pantry, then back into the hallway, where I made my way up the staircase to the second floor. A broad, empty hall greeted me. It was pitch dark, and I widened my eyes in an attempt to see the doorway leading to my old bedroom. It was one of the four upstairs—not counting the nursery—along with a reading and sewing room for the women of the house and a single bath at the end of the hall. When I had my bearings I moved to the opened door, leaned against the frame, and slipped my right hand up the wall until it connected with the light switch.
The room struggled to life in a haze of old quilts and musty, thirsty furniture. I shivered, wishing I’d brought one of the logs from Doris’s tote with me. It would have been nice to have a fire in the white-brick fireplace sitting catty-corner in the room. I could then turn off the overhead light and ignore the dust that covered the dresser, chifforobe, and the narrow bedposts and feather carved urn finials of the regency tall post bed.
Tomorrow, I decided, I’d dust the house from top to bottom if I did nothing else. It could easily take all day.
I threw my purse in the center of the bed, then climbed on beside it, hiking my knee-length black skirt up over my thighs until it bunched around my waist. Still kneeling, I pulled my dark brown hair from the clamp that had held it into place all day, felt it swirl around my shoulders. The mild headache I’d been unaware of until now seemed to dissipate as the roots of my hair sprang back to life.
I lay back on the bed and stared at the ceiling, noting every crack that ran along it like rivers on a map. They had been there as far back as I could remember. As a child I’d lain here many a summer morning and imagined where the cracks might lead to, if they led anywhere at all. When I’d asked Uncle Jim about them, he stated simply, “It’s where the house settled, that’s all.”
A house settling, I now thought. As though it were content— finally—with where it’d been built.
I lifted my hips and reached for the band of my control-top pantyhose in one fluid movement. I tucked my thumbs in, then tugged that which had held me captive all day, sliding it toward my feet, groaning as though in ecstasy. Reaching my ankles, I kicked off my shoes and removed the pantyhose, dropping them all to the floor. “Ahhh, that feels good.” I unbuttoned my suit jacket, peeling it away, followed by my blouse and skirt, tossing them over the edge of the high bed where they joined the rest of my clothes.
I shivered, then scampered under the mounds of covers and between ice-cold sheets. I felt my jaws lock, and my teeth began to chatter. I glanced toward the large dark chifforobe. Stripped of dust and time, it would be a glorious rich mahogany. I also knew that on the other side of the mirrored door was the thick robe I kept for the occasional bath I took here, but I was too cold to get out of bed and get it.
I pulled my purse toward me, then dug into its insides, searching blindly for my cell phone. A minute later, I placed a call to my mother. “What’s she up to?” she asked by way of greeting.
I closed my eyes, picturing Mother sitting in her favorite chair in the family room, wrapped up like a little girl’s birthday gift in a satiny pink housecoat. “I’m exhausted and it’s too complicated to explain,” I answered. “I’m spending the night here.”
“You’ll do no such thing. You get yourself in the car and get home. I won’t be able to sleep until you tell me what’s going on.”
I kept my eyes closed and shook my head. “Mother-dear, I’m too old for you to boss me around and I’m too tired to argue with you. Let’s just say that Aunt Stella wants me to move in here and restore this old house.”
Mother was as quiet as the countryside around me.
“Mother?” I opened my eyes in my quilted cave. I was beginning to warm up, as long as I didn’t move.
“I’m here.”
“And?”
“What in the world does she want you to do that for? Not that I wouldn’t give my soul for the opportunity to decorate that old relic, but . . . why now? At her age?”
I sighed. Obviously I wasn’t going to get out of explaining this to her. “Some woman is buying up Cottonwood. Or at least buying it for some company.”
“Buying up Cottonwood?”
“Look, Mother. I’m really, really tired. I’m in bed and I’m heading off to dreamland. I promise I’ll explain everything in the morning.”
Another moment of silence passed before she said, “Evan wants you to call him.”
I sat upright, exposing my flesh to the room’s chill. “Why did he call you? Why didn’t he just call my cell?”
“You’ll have to ask him, dear. But do call him back tonight. I don’t want him calling here again. It makes me uncomfortable, feeling like a go-between.”
“Mmm.”
“Jo-Lynn.”
“Mother.” I burrowed back under the covers.
“Too sassy for your own good.” She paused. “Good night, my love.”
“Night, Mother.”
I ended the call, then stared at the slide show on the face of my cell phone, contemplating whether or not I wanted to have a conversation with Evan. I opted for calling, figuring I’d wonder all night what the man wanted anyway; I might as well do it and get it over with.
Evan answered on the second ring. “Jo-Lynn?”
“Mother said you called.”
“Yeah.”
I swallowed before continuing. “What do you want?”
“I just wanted to know how you’re doing. How the family is doing.”
I pulled the cover over my head and rolled over to my side. “It was a funeral, Evan. The whole day was sad.” I almost told him about Aunt Stella’s crying but decided against it.
“Bet Mrs. Patterson brought some of her banana cream pie, huh?”
“Yeah.”
“I knew I should have gone with you.”
His attempt at humor didn’t work with me. “It wasn’t your choice, Evan.” I pressed my lips together. “It was mine.”
I heard him sigh. “So, when are you coming home?”
I wondered if he missed me or simply my presence on his arm at the country club. I wanted it to be the former but feared it was the latter. “I’m not sure.”
“But in a few days?”
I placed my free hand on the pillow beside me, rubbing it lightly with my fingertips. “That depends.”
“On?”
I smiled then. “I may have a job here. I’ll call you tomorrow and fill you in. Good night, Evan.” I slapped the phone shut, ending the call.