Tommy and Pearl stood in Mama’s kitchen, each on either side of the tub, gripping a side, leaning over the center. Their eyes met and they grinned, excited for their plan. He imagined Mama’s face when she saw it, the way her tense shoulders would soften at the sight. She would take his face in her hands and cover it with kisses that he would pretend to not want at all. And at least there would be an opening for Mama to begin to forgive him. He knew it would take more than a bath, but he hoped she felt the gesture deep in her heart.
“Can’t believe McCrady said you could borrow it.”
“Rent. I paid a handsome fee.”
Pearl put her hands on her hips. “Two bits for it and the wagon isn’t too much fer yer ma. Deserves it every day of the year, way I see it. And you threw in a prayer. That was really nice of ya.”
He nodded. “Let’s fill it,” Tommy said, turning to the stove. “The other day I dropped prayers to some of the ladies who stopped hiring me.”
“They paid?”
He shrugged. “Nah. I just kept thinking about them and their troubles, and the words just flowed onto paper, and what am I going to do? Keep them for myself? So I delivered them. Mrs. Hamilton even refused it because she’d spent all her prayer funds on Dreama, but I put it through her mail slot. Just in case it’s helpful to her.”
Pearl ran her finger along the edge of the tin tub, the blue paint along the outside bright and cheerful. “That’s . . . exactly what I’d expect from ya.”
Tommy adjusted the flue on the stove. “Thanks, Pearl.”
“And,” she said, “this’s the prettiest tub I ever seen. Saw, I mean, saw.”
Tommy nodded. “Same here. Even the large tub at Miss Violet’s isn’t as good-looking as this.”
“If I ever have a tub so nice, I’m gonna put it right in the center of my home, on permanent display.”
Tommy glanced at the clock above the dry sink. Nearly six o’clock. Where was Mama? She should have been back from Mrs. Hillis’s panel discussion hours back. They were probably caught up in the crowd, waiting for the trolley.
“You listening, Tommy?”
“Yes, Pearl. But the other day you very clearly illustrated that you were going to have a house with six bedrooms and indoor plumbing. So naturally you’d put your tub right in the same room with your toilet. Or your bedroom. Houses like the one you’ll have don’t boast tubs in the parlor.”
Pearl shrugged. “Changed my mind. This here blue tub is pretty ’nough for it to be displayed in public rooms.”
Tommy got an image of Pearl as a grown woman sitting in a full tub in front of her front parlor window, callers coming by and visiting right there while she bathed. He laughed out loud. “You put me in stitches, Pearl, you really do.”
She grinned, her cheeks flushing red.
Tommy enjoyed every moment with Pearl. He often thought of her meeting his father who would adore her because she had spirit. Pearl had dreams, air-castles, like his father regularly built. Mama sometimes called them ridiculous when she was frustrated with Father.
But Tommy thought what Pearl built in her mind, her plans, were wonderful. When he caught Pearl staring at him, her upturned face full of warmth, it was as though she saw all the good in him, only the good, and that just made him wonder if Mama had ever loved his father at all. And if so, was Tommy unlovable? Perhaps a mother forced her affection on the children who weren’t quite a fit in the family out of duty, not really out of love at all. Maybe that’s why Tommy and Mama seemed to have to try so hard with each other.
Much as his father disappointed him, his father wouldn’t mind Pearl being grimy around the edges or that her words often came in jagged, truncated bits when she wasn’t concentrating on sounding fancy or rich, as she termed it. He imagined his father loving the idea of a tub in the front parlor. Tommy could hear his father’s laughter at the sight, a small chuckle growing into rolling laughter as he let it take hold and humor him fully, laughing with his whole body.
“Let’s at least heat the water,” Tommy said. “Mama’ll be exhausted when she gets home, and I’d like to treat her to peace and quiet and warm water the minute she walks in.”
Pearl nodded. “And tea and those biscuits yer sister brung over.”
They hoisted a large bucket of water onto the stove.
“Still think the water would warm faster if we heated small amounts,” Pearl said.
Tommy shrugged. “Half-dozen one, six the other. Small amounts will take longer.”
Pearl craned her neck studying the water.
“Watched water never boils,” Tommy said.
She turned, the lantern light from the table casting her face angelic gold, hiding her grimy skin. Tommy had never seen a girl so perfectly beautiful, naturally so, without any of the fixings that the ladies next door used to greet clients. He couldn’t take his eyes from her. She sashayed back to the table and sat.
“Tell me again ’bout Christmas morning when you lived in the house on the hill.”
He sat beside her, his shoulder rubbing against hers, wondering again why it felt so much worse to talk about things he used to have than it was for her to imagine things she’d never had.
“Tell me how your ma made sure you each got exactly what you wanted and some things you didn’t even know you wanted.”
“I told you that?”
“Why yes, you did. When you got back from your meeting with Hank and Bayard. When you got that shiner?”
Tommy shrugged. He must have been drunker than he thought that night. He was surprised he’d lied to Pearl or that she believed it. Tommy’s leg rubbed against Pearl’s as he shifted in his seat. She moved closer to him, the warmth of her body exciting. He was growing fonder of her every moment they were together.
“I went to the library the other day and read up on some of yer ma’s columns from before you went west. Boy, oh boy, she knew how to run a house. And everything just right. Pretty, too? Right?”
Tommy nodded. He supposed so. Nothing was as dirty as the dugout on the prairie. By those standards, a coal mine was clean.
Pearl lifted her hand and, with fingers spread, swept it through the air in front of them before flipping it palm up and wiggling her fingers as she dropped it to the table. “I could see every flower arrangement in my mind. And the roasted rosemary chicken? I could smell it. Taste it.” Her hand was in the air again, flitting in the lantern light.
“And the sheer summer curtains wafting in the cool breezes, curling and dancing back and forth while you took visitors and sipped lemonade so sour I bet your little lips tightened up just before you swallowed. You know she always wrote about you in the articles, Tommy. You really were something. She doted on you like you were carved from sugar cubes and might melt in the rain if she wasn’t careful enough with you.”
Tommy listened to her retelling of articles he’d never read, but he could envision, as he’d lived it. Except for the doting. “No, you must have misread. James was the one she doted on. And Katherine.”
“Well, maybe she favored them in this way or that, but the way I see it, a ma’s got enough favoring for each child. It’s the way it works. ’Specially yer ma.”
Tommy thought of Pearl’s Letters to Heaven that he’d seen when he borrowed paper from her bag. He’d never pressed her to discuss her family situation, not wanting to embarrass her for being orphaned, living in awful circumstances, but that night he felt as though he could, that he should. “Where’s your mama, Pearl?”
She pushed the cuticle back on her thumb. “No idea. Never knew her for even a second. Been told my papa dropped me at Widow Fontell’s. Suspect my ma died giving birth to me. Or somethin’. Don’t know. Sometimes I wonder if I even came from a mother, or if I was just cobbled from the dirty earth, a tree, river-clay, stone . . . somethin’ other than a soft, warm ma.” She wet two fingers and rubbed at the back of her hand, scrubbing the dirt. “Nah, I’m joshing. You know how I love my fairy stories. I can feel a ma, my ma somewhere. She’s . . .” She shrugged.
Tommy tried to imagine never having known Mama. “So how do you know so much about mothering, then?”
She squinted. “Suppose it’s something I learned just being in my mama’s belly. She must have been a good woman fer me to know such things. Suppose it’s that.” She squeezed her eyes shut. “Yeah, when I really think on it, I’m sure. Mine must’ve been a lot like yers—exquisite. I’m sure if I knew my ma, she’d be like yers. I mean, I hope so.” She touched her lips. “I’m positive I got my good teeth from her. Leastways, that.”
Tommy was surprised by Pearl’s view of what her mama would have been like. She was normally practical and saw right into the grit of life, unafraid. Even her love of fairy tales didn’t color the way she saw everyday limitations. He considered his mama. She was special. He just wished she recognized his value. But maybe, like he was slow to see hers, she was slow to see his. This would help, this tub. “What about your father?”
She wafted her hand, making a pfft sound. “My papa? I rarely give men a thought in terms of fathering. Ms. Fontell at the orphanage said he dropped me off like a sack of potatoes, with a couple a pearl-handled knives and a box to my name. Suppose that’s something. Those things are precious to me. They’ve seen me through hard times, that bowie knife ’specially.” She turned and glared at Tommy. “Have ya paid much attention to men and their fatherin’?”
“Well, my father, yes.”
She shook her head. “I’d trade all the fathers and their lofty perches in the world, how easy it is to be a man. My papa dropped me off with a sack of things and left.” Her voice was tight. “I’d trade one hundred papas for the arms of just one ma.”
Tommy was stunned. He pushed his hand through his hair. “You just haven’t worked at imagining hard enough what a father can do. A good father is everything. It makes the world right. I’d know. I used to have both together, and now look: one’s gone and one’s here so . . .”
He could feel Pearl staring at him.
“Both is what I want. Mamas can’t be everything, that’s all I mean.”
Pearl smoothed her hand over the pine table. “True. All men aren’t all like those I met up till now. Take you. You’re not a thing like the others.”
Tommy straightened in his chair, feeling proud. “Well, that’s because I’ve a father who taught me to be a man, Pearl.” Even as the words were out of his mouth, they turned his saliva bitter. That’s what he wanted to be true, but he was wondering more now than ever if he’d even see his father again, let alone learn anything more from him.
Pearl’s heavy gaze warmed his cheeks.
“Suppose you’re right, Tommy Arthur. I probably haven’t considered papas in just the right way.”
Tommy smiled. Her blaze-green eyes turned slightly up at the outside corners, making her always appear kind and sweet, even when she was scolding him. Looking at her, sitting that close in the lantern light, staring right into her fine-featured face, he wanted to kiss the corners of her eyes, brush his lips against her skin. The stirrings started, his body tingling and hardening, but he’d never felt this overwhelming urge to just kiss someone and hold her and never let her go.
“I feel like I was born to something bigger than that orphanage, bigger than Rupert’s, too. But look at me. Ordinary, dirty, barely getting by.”
“Maybe you were born to grow into something bigger. Americans don’t have to be born into something big.” He wanted to encourage her, to keep her thinking, dreaming. “Yeah. You’re headed to something special. Like all those tales you read. I’m sure of it.”
“Yeah,” Pearl whispered. She shifted to face Tommy directly. “I feel like you really understand me . . . and my stories. You really understand.”
He watched her lips move as she talked and found himself leaning in, wanting to feel his lips on hers. She looked away, explaining how Prince Aeriel was good-looking and the hero of the story and Furiban was ugly and bad.
Tommy inched closer to her, unable to make sense of her words as he wondered if he should take a chance and hold her in his arms.
“Maybe.” She shook her finger at Tommy. “That’s it.”
“What’s it?” he asked as he jerked back.
“You should write something to yer ma to go with the tub apology. You could turn out the sorrowful contents of yer heart onto paper, and then she could savor it and keep it in her handbag or stuffed under the mattress or stowed in an old trunk. Or in her pocket. It would be there, with her for always. Like the prayers you sell and leave for people to comfort them later.”
Tommy cocked his head and slid his arm around Pearl’s shoulder squeezing it. She shifted closer, her entire leg touching his from hip to knee.
“Maybe I should do just that, Pearl.”
The bubbling water on the stove made them hop up, ready to pour it. He found a piece of paper and pencil and recorded his very sorry thoughts on his behavior the other night.
**
Tommy wrote his note, and he and Pearl had filled the tub and even reheated some of the water several times before they heard footsteps on the porch stairs. Tommy couldn’t wait. He flung the door open. Mama’s eyes went wide, Yale wrapped in her arms, asleep on her shoulder.
“Shhh. Yale’s sleeping.”
“Where were you?”
“Women’s club meeting.”
Mama looked past Tommy. He turned to see Pearl had stepped behind him.
“Hello, Pearl,” Mama said.
Pearl gave one of her curtsies she seemed to do every time she saw his mama. “Hello, Mrs. Arthur.” Pearl put her hand out. Mama juggled Yale and shook Pearl’s hand, then looked over her shoulder.
“Mama?” Tommy said. “I have a surprise for you. I know it will take a lifetime to apologize for my behavior when I was so cruel. But I wanted to do something to show you right this second how sorry I am.” He pulled her into the house. She looked over her shoulder again.
“Tommy, wait.” She went back on the porch. Tommy followed her out as Reed Hayes started up the first stair. He backed away and sighed. He removed his hat. “Good evening, Tommy.”
Like gas being lit, Tommy’s recently muted anger flared. He glared at Mama. He told himself to just leave the house before he said something spiteful again. “Him? You’re with Mr. Hayes again? I spent all day orchestrating this big apology for you. And this is what you were doing? You were with him?”
“We’ve brought dinner from the meeting, Tommy. Sit with us. And thank you for the beautiful bath—”
“He can’t stay if you’re enjoying your bath. So he can go.”
“Let him eat and then he’ll go. Look at this beautiful tub. You remembered how much I love a bath. Thank you.”
Tommy glowered at Mr. Hayes, waiting for the man to politely dismiss himself.
“The water’ll be cold if you don’t—”
“We can reheat it again,” Pearl said.
Mr. Hayes backed out of the kitchen and went into the yard. Mama followed. “At least take your food, Reed.”
Tommy’s breath grew shallow.
Pearl took Tommy’s arm. Enraged, all he could see or think about was the man who ruined everything. He wrenched away from Pearl and loped across the porch, leaping down the stairs and tackling Mr. Hayes to the ground. Tommy pinned the man’s hands. Mama and Pearl screamed for Tommy to stop. He looked over his shoulder, letting up on Mr. Hayes. The older man, large, but spry, took advantage of Tommy’s distracted moment and flipped him to his back, holding him down. Tommy kicked his legs, flailing as Mr. Hayes restrained him.
“I’m going to let you up, Tommy. But you calm down. We aren’t doing anything wrong. Your mother’s a friend, and there is nothing wrong with that. We had a meeting and were going to have a meal here, with you and whomever else. That’s it.”
Tommy squirmed more, testing to see if he had a shot at reversing his situation.
“Now you stay calm.” Mr. Hayes hopped up and dusted off his trousers. “Let’s get inside and talk this out.”
Tommy stood, heaving for breath. Mama had Yale in one arm and Pearl wrapped in her other. Humiliation bloated his insides. He looked at Mr. Hayes, who was retucking his shirt. He straightened and extended his hand to Tommy.
Tommy glanced at all of them. Who’d they think they were?
“What’s wrong with you? Come inside. Please,” Mama said, coming down the steps. He might have gone in with her, but she let Mr. Hayes take her elbow, helping her down the stairs into the yard. Tommy knew it was over. Mama had made her choice. She didn’t appreciate any little bit of him. Not even when he tried.
Pearl looked at him with a sad face. “Please. Just listen.”
Tommy shook his head. Listen . . . Mrs. Schultz had said how gifted Tommy was at hearing . . . But this, he didn’t want to hear the secrets, the private lives woven into Mama and Mr. Hayes’s words. And, now Pearl . . . siding with Mama. He leapt the fence and took off down the street, not sure where he was going but needing to leave all of them behind.