5

I COULD NOT DISCERN the quiet of Boiling Waters that afternoon. No sirens going off, not even a cat stuck up a tree. The bare trees shadowing the highway seemed to turn their backs to Delia and me; a few dying wheat fronds—the kind you see sparsely growing along the highway after a grain truck drops seed on the road—listed in the wind. All at once, every little mom-and-pop business storefront looked large to me, as if I were seeing each shop newly. I knew most of the buildings by memory, even though the ownership changed hands as often as the economy fluctuated. A single American flag hung in the front window of a cafe. A mobile sign out by the road advertised coffee better than Starbucks; a yellow ribbon tied to one leg of the sign explained the caption under the coffee ad that said, “Until Bill comes home, we pray.” I had been away from Boiling Waters too long to know whose son or daughter had enlisted and gone off to the Middle East.

Delia dug through her purse for a cigarette.

“You can’t smoke in my car. I’ll find a place to stop for lunch, though.”

She tossed her purse onto the floorboard.

“You like Wendy’s?” I asked.

“Anything with a smoking section,” she said.

We parked on the back side of the parking lot. Inside, I led us to a booth in the center of the fast-food restaurant away from the story-tall plate-glass windows.

She picked out another booth and sat down, expecting me to buy her food. “Just get me a hamburger, ketchup, fries, large Coke,” she said. She looked like my father lighting a cigarette. The cigarette hung sideways out of her mouth, flopping up and down when she spoke. I had seen Daddy do the same thing, sitting on the back porch after breakfast.

I ordered and brought Delia her lunch on a tray. She still seemed out of place in a restaurant. Except for the Waffle House, she had never been one to go out and eat much, not in the light of day at least. I thought that over time, as she worked and earned her own keep, she’d ease into the social graces of ordering food. But come to think of it, I had never seen my father order a meal in a restaurant either. Eating-out culture had come up around them both but had evaded their simple daily practices.

“They got any ketchup around here?” She unwrapped her burger and set her cigarette in the ashtray to smolder.

I pointed to the condiment island. She could get her own ketchup.

She got up wearing the same pouty smirk that dimpled her cheeks as a girl. Delia could never walk across a public room without drawing attention, not since she could walk. I assumed it was her way of trying to look cute for the adults, to make the aunts fawn over her, or to make my father take notice. But Daddy did not notice us girls in that manner. Even when we bought new swim-suits and Mother had us parade out in front of him for approval, he would glance at us as if we were distracting him and then glance down at the floor. Delia skipped to the condiment island. The smirk was in place, as if she was playing her hand again at age six; only at age twenty-eight, cute was not in her deck.

The restaurant was filling up, mothers toting infants and a paint crew stopping for lunch. No one noticed Delia dancing to the condiment island except one Latino employee pushing a broom outside the women’s rest room. He glanced at her and then looked away as if he were being polite, as if he would look back and this woman would have somehow composed herself.

Delia picked up a round empty condiment container and held it under a ketchup pump. She filled it with a flourish, pumping wildly, giggling, and glancing up and down to see who was watching. I looked down at my food.

She filled a second one and carried them both back to the table, holding two condiments out at arms-length as if she were delivering something mysterious back to the table. “I like those ketchup gadgets,” she said. “It’s like, all-you-can-eat ketchup, no end to ketchup.”

“I’m glad you like it, Delia, but do you have to draw attention like that? I mean, you should think about a low profile from now on until we figure out what to do about Sophie.”

She took a bite and rolled her eyes as if tasting burger for the first time.

“Don’t you and your friends go out?” I asked.

She dipped a fry in ketchup. “Ain’t got the money. I do got a friend, though. Juanita. She’s not Spanish, though, except her name. We went out for a beer once after I got paid. Freddy, he got mad, took the rest of my money and said he’d save it. I never saw it. Said he paid the bills, but they shut the lights off after that.”

“Delia, you got to take care of your own money,” I said. “How’d you meet this Freddy anyway?”

She reflected on the shape of her fry and then said, “He worked the assembly line at Hamby’s. We sat and talked each day over lunch. The more we talked, the more he liked me. He told me I was funny. Then we went out for a smoke during break, a drink after work, one thing led to another.” A smile spread slowly across her face.

A squad car pulled up outside. One of two officers sat in the car talking on the radio, looking down at something, perhaps a computer screen. The other got out and waited at the door for his buddy to join him. His face was a pumpkin, wide and nearly yellow. His head tilted in the cold wind, causing him to step more quickly to gain balance.

Delia turned her face away from the cops.

My food tasted the way nothingness would taste if served between stale buns. I swallowed a bite with soda that was more carbonation and less syrup.

She leaned toward me and said, “Should we make a run for it?”

The second cop got out. He stopped in the doorway behind his partner.

“Delia,” I whispered.

She looked at me. Her nose freckles had faded, but under the fluorescent lights they were suddenly visible, and she looked nine again.

“It’s Deputy Bob. Keep eating and don’t look up,” I told her. He was the same Bob who arrested her boyfriend Ray for growing weed. But he had told Delia to come along too for questioning. When he frisked her, he slowed down over the vulnerable places. Delia slapped him, and he dragged her out to the car. She cried so loudly that he stopped the squad car and made her get out. She skipped back to the trailer, she told me later, not believing that he had let her go.

“Look what the cat drug in, Johnny.” Bob spotted Delia right away and crossed the room to walk up to our table. He stood alongside her, looking down at her. He got this look where his mouth opened and faintly smiled at her. Delia might not have known why Deputy Bob let her go that day, but it was then that I knew.

“I ain’t botherin’ you, Bob,” said Delia. “And I ain’t looking at you, neither.”

He was standing close enough that she could see her face in his belt buckle if she would only look up. His right hand moved down away from his waist and tapped the set of handcuffs linked to his belt. “You seen any mischief out around your place, Delia?”

The big-faced deputy, Johnny, stood with his feet apart next to Bob, listening to his partner but also checking out the lunch deals on the overhead marquee.

My sister finally looked up at me.

“We’ve been at my father’s house, Deputy,” I told him. “He passed this week.”

Bob said, “Yes’m. Heard the news about your daddy. Sorry to hear it.” He glanced back at Delia and then slowly returned his gaze to me. “Neighbor called from out your way, Delia. Said she heard gunfire in the neighborhood,” he said. “I figured it was boys out hunting too close to home.”

“It is, after all, hunting season,” said Delia. She wrapped the remaining wedge of burger in the aluminum paper. “I ain’t got much of an appetite. Lets go, Gaylen,” she said. She slipped on the thin hooded green sweater left in her closet by Freddy.

I expected the deputy to grab her and haul her out kicking and making a scene, but Delia walked out free. Deputies Bob and Johnny fell in line to order lunch.

I followed her out of Wendy’s and to the car. I sat staring out over the steering wheel until Delia said, “Time to go.”

The parking lot had filled up. Two more cops pulled in next to Bobs squad car. “They’re meeting for lunch, I guess,” I said. I had to make a choice right then and there. I imagined Deputy Bob putting his hands on my sister.

“This place we going have a TV?” she asked. “I like to watch the war.”

Highway 74 would be less trafficked than Interstate 40 and give us a view of the towns. We drove out of Wilmington and crossed the Brunswick County line. A white cupola surrounded a clean white steeple pointing to the sky. Delia pulled on a loose green string hanging from her sleeve.

“You need your own clothes,” I said.

We drove off the James B. White Highway, a strip of road shadowed by a row of naked bay trees, the fruit long eaten by mockingbirds. A ladies’ dress shop called Kramer’s advertised a sale. I parked and led Delia inside.

The store catered to a mostly retired set, women who bought the brightly adorned clothing only to hang, tags still attached, inside long closets against their everyday drab attire. Delia was fascinated by the riotous colors. She pulled out a dress and held it against her.

“Jeans are more practical,” I told her.

“Ladies wear this kind of thing to mass,” she said.

“When have you ever attended mass?” I asked.

“Freddy’s Catholic.”

“Do you want a dress then?” I asked.

A shop lady watched her from the counter. Her eyes raked over Delia, every light in her eyes scrutinizing Delia’s grating voice and ungainly movements. Delia could not simply walk, of course. She galloped rack to rack, excitedly pulling out items of clothing like an adopted foreign orphan.

“I’ll show you the dressing room,” the woman said blandly.

Delia disappeared behind the hand-sewn curtain. I rummaged through a pile of women’s winter sweatshirts.

A choked gasp emanated from the dressing room.

Another salesclerk appeared from the back. She held a coffee cup and was looking curiously toward the dressing room.

“Delia, are you all right?” I asked as if cued. I knew that she was fine, of course, but unfolding a small plan to draw attention.

She threw back the curtain, strutting onto the sales floor. The dress was not well suited for her frame. It was a fuchsia and white print with a full skirt and long sleeves. She twirled. The skirt fanned out like a parasol spinning in a geisha dance.

The clerk covered her mouth and glanced at her friend who still had not come out from behind the counter.

“I want this,” said Delia. She stared in the mirror at the long skirt hanging in chiffon fingertips above her bare toes.

I held up a blue sweatshirt and a pair of jeans. “Try on?” I suggested.

She complied, however reluctantly. The jeans and sweatshirt fit her perfectly, giving her more of a shape than Freddy’s jeans and hoodie. I handed her a pair of sneakers and socks. She carted them into the dressing room.

“Do you carry lingerie?” I asked the clerk. They did.

She helped me select a half dozen pairs of panties. “Mind if I give her a pair now?” I asked.

The woman looked troubled, as if shoplifters were afoot on her watch. She acquiesced and asked if she could get me a coffee too. I accepted and handed Delia a pair of panties through the curtain. “Hand me the tags off those,” I said, “and put them on.”

The clerk appeared with the coffee and gave it to me. “Everything all right?” She smiled in a painful way, as if the training she had gotten her first week was the only scaffolding sustaining her composure.

Freddy’s underwear flew over the top of the curtain and landed at our feet. “She’s done with those then, I guess,” said the clerk.

We drove out of Whiteville, past the yards dotted with purple pansies. The day was nearly gone. A band of pink dimmed on the horizon like a fading influenza fever.

“I wish you’d stop making everyone stare. Everywhere we go, Delia, you have to make everybody in the whole place look at you,” I said.

“Why you got to criticize me, Gaylen? There you go, like always, picking me apart.” Her tone was deep and full of pain.

“All I mean to say is that if you have a mad drug dealer on your tail, why do things to make people remember you?”

“I was only having a little fun. Can’t a body do that without being criticized?”

I wanted to understand her. “Are you trying to be funny?”

“Maybe I am funny. Other people seem to think so, other people who ain’t you.”

“Funny and silly are not the same thing. You don’t act your age, Delia.”

She pulled a cigarette out and then, remembering not to smoke in my car, sat tamping it against her knee. “Ever heard of being young at heart?”

“That’s not what that means. It’s like people who have a good attitude about life, that’s all, Delia. It’s not permission to act a fool in public places. Teenagers do it, but not grown women.”

“You sound like Mama. Pick, pick, pick.”

“Mother wanted to help. She didn’t mean to pick. Besides, she’s dead. Have respect,” I said.

Delia shook her head. “She didn’t love me.” She held the vowel in love, almost yodeling. “You don’t know how she did me, Gaylen, at the end. You wasn’t around.”

“Mother loved you.”

“The day she died, I went over to her bedside to tell her ‘goodbye,’ like you’re supposed to do when someone is dying, right?” she paused. “She slapped me.”

“Her sister told me how Mother was that day before I arrived. She had been singing a song about Jesus, Delia. That doesn’t sound like a woman who slaps her daughter.” I halfway believed Delia but wanted to talk about something else.

“She was slapping at my face, over and over. What was I supposed to think?”

“That she was a woman on morphine,” I said.

“You didn’t know her. Why do you think I’m lying?”

“Delia, it’s hard to know when you’re telling it straight. If you would remember right, then people would believe you.”

“I remember the truth. I say it like I see it.”

Delia was a revisionist. I knew that, but she never admitted it. “Do you say those things about our mother so people will sympathize with you? Like, you know, when we were ten and we wanted sympathy so that adults would lay off us?” I asked, thinking that if I used a gentler approach, Delia would finally admit something, allow me a minor concession.

“She treated me like she treated her son, Truman.” There was a familiarity in her tone, as if she knew Truman better than I did. That was impossible. She was too young.

“What do you remember about Truman?” I asked.

“Aunt Tootie told me all the dirt on Mama. I asked and she told.”

Considering we had just talked about Truman over wine coolers, I doubted her. “You didn’t say anything about him the other night?”

“I knew if I told Fanny, she’d squeal to Renni.”

Since when had Delia cared what anyone thought? “Tootie hated her, Delia. Why would you sit gossiping with her about your own mother?” I watched for a highway sign. The meandering maze of Highway 74 was easy to venture off of. It could spit us off into South Carolina and we wouldn’t know it for miles.

“Tootie knows because she knew Mama before she married Daddy.”

Even if she was making it up, she had me curious. I didn’t want to talk anymore anyway. I wanted to get us as far as Charlotte before stopping. Listening to Delia’s chatter calmed me more, I realized, when I stopped arguing with her. I took a deep breath.

“Mama, Tootie said, moved away to California. Truman was young. Like, not in school yet. She lived two apartments down from Aunt Tootie. That’s how they met, Daddy and Mama.”

“Tootie introduced them?” That was news to me. I fingered the bottom of the steering wheel with my one good hand. That was not the story my mother had told me about how she met Daddy.

“Tootie said that little Truman would go door to door, knocking and asking the neighbors for food,” said Delia.

“She lied.”

Delia was nervously tapping the cigarette against one palm. “He was covered in filth, not taken care of by Mama. Naked, he was, and neglected.”

“Delia, our mother was meticulous. Remember how she sewed for us, kept our clothes starched and ironed, our hair curled?” My frustration grew. “Does that sound like her?”

“Tootie said she had Truman too young.”

“Why, Delia? Why would she change that much?”

“Ask Tootie.”

Tootie was not like Renni. She was my father’s quieter sister, a brooding woman who seldom made an appearance at the Syler house until Daddy’s death. Even then, she said almost nothing to me. “I never see her. When did you see her, come to think of it?”

“She’s Catholic.”

“I see. And Freddy’s Catholic, and apparently, now, so are you.”

“I like the priest. He’s nice.”

“Are you saying that Tootie told you all of this at mass?”

She hesitated. “I saw her at mass, and she invited me over for supper.”

“Why did Mother never mention any of this before, that she lived next to Tootie in Salinas or that she met Daddy there?”

“You were born in Salinas.”

“They were married two years when I was born, Delia.” Mother had made a huge deal about it.

“You ever see the marriage certificate?”

I looked for it once, but never found it. One hot summer I stayed inside to keep cool and teach myself how to sew. Mother’s electric sewing machine was difficult to thread, so she let me practice sewing on her grandmother’s Singer treadle machine. The smell of machine oil was suddenly alive in my memory. While digging through a drawer for thread, I found a work card. It was for a factory where she had worked in Salinas. Her name was wrong, typed as Fiona Polette, so I asked her about it. She told me I ought to be an attorney.

“Was she ever named Polette?” I asked.

“That was her second husband,” said Delia. “Tootie told me that too.”

“So she was married to Polette in Salinas?” I asked.

“They was divorced, and she moved away from Boiling Waters to get work in Salinas.”

“It’s still not right, Delia. I was born in Salinas and my name is obviously not Polette but Syler.”

The sky was the color of ash. The sun slipped out of our sight as we drove toward the west. Delia did not talk for the next couple of miles. She was not the kind of woman who liked the quiet or allowed silent spaces in the conversation, so it was a clumsy silence. Finally she said, “Mama was two different women. The one she wanted us to believe was her and then the real Fiona Syler.”

“You don’t know that, Delia.” Whether or not she was right was not plainly obvious at the time. But what we both knew, or felt we knew, was most likely some combination of the truth of the matter; who my mother was before I was born and why my version of her was so different than Delia’s seemed best left untouched. But Delia could get her facts confused within minutes after having heard the truth.

“I’ve heard people say that everyone is really two different people,” said Delia. “Not me. What you see is what you get.”

She was finally right about something.

Uncle Malcolm, Amity’s husband, liked singing a Randy Travis song.

Im digging up bones, Im digging up bones.
Exhuming things that’s better left alone.

I did not know why that song stuck in my head the whole trip to Cashiers.