The House on Persimmon Road Page 3

  Secret wishes seldom came true. Voiced, they just made a man sound silly or sissy—or both. Holding firm to that conviction, Tucker covered the typewriter, swiveled around on the stool, and scrutinized his father. Perspiration beaded the old man’s face.

  “Did the sun chase you in?”

  “Nope, I like working up a good sweat. I weeded the tomatoes. The beans are coming on good. You’ll have a mess within the week. That is, if the chickens don’t beat you to ’em.”

  “Thanks. The garden gets ahead of me. Don’t know why I keep putting one in year in and year out.”

  But of course he did. It was so his dad would have something he believed useful to do when he visited.

  “If I lived here…all the time, I mean,” Wheeler advanced, “I could keep it up.”

  “Ah, Dad,” Tucker said gently, “that’s out of the question right now.”

  Wheeler Highsmith sighed low. “I know. But I wish it. It’s okay to wish, ain’t it?”

  “Wishing doesn’t hurt a thing,” Tucker said, knowing his reply was contrary to his own philosophy.

  Wheeler shuffled over to the table and sat down. His hands trembled. “Is it okay if I have a pipe, now?”

  Tucker retrieved pipe and tobacco tin off a high shelf and handed them over. He watched his father fill the pipe, tamp the tobacco, check the draw. The palsied hands shook as Wheeler struck the match.

  “I do love a good pipe,” the old man said upon exhaling. “It’s the one thing I crave they won’t let me have at the nursing home.”

  “Can you blame them? It’s what got you there in the first place.”

  Wheeler chuckled. “Caused some kinda ruckus, didn’t I?”

  “Being careless with lighted pipes,” Tucker said reproachfully, “burning your house down around yourself and having the court order you to live under supervision is a bit more than ‘a ruckus.’ ”

  “Guess so,” said Wheeler dryly, “but it wasn’t much of a house to begin with. What about the new neighbors? Promising?”

  “Nothing special.” Tucker shrugged, then heard himself saying, “I thought when you took your nap I’d go see if I could lend a hand. Just to be neighborly. The front screen door needs to be rehung, and there are a few other things—”

  Wheeler blew a smoke ring, watching it rise to the dark, beamed ceiling.

  “She pretty?”

  Tucker felt a sudden discomfort. “I suppose, if you like her type. Married, though.”

  “Whoa! Stay away from that, boy. You’ll get yourself shot.”

  “No advice, Dad. I’m a grown man now.”

  “And, on your way to gettin’ old, like me.”

  Tucker shook his head. “You’re trying to lay a guilt trip on me again.”

  Wheeler put on a display of innocence. “I ain’t. I tried it before and it didn’t work.”

  Tucker gave his dad a half smile. “You’re learning all kinds of little tricks in that old folks’ home, aren’t you?”

  “Ain’t learned none that works—yet.”

  “Maybe the one you just pulled did. You want to stay over another night? I’ll clear it with old Iron Bottom.”

  “Unless she has somebody else to pick on, she’ll say no just outta spite. She can’t go a day without being mean.”

  “C’mon… she adores you.”

  “Her kinda lovin’ I can do without. Do I get lunch, or do I have to bed down on an empty stomach?”

  “Lunch. What do you say to a fresh egg-and-cheese omelet?”

  “With spring onions?”

  “You got it.”

  “And a cold beer?” said Wheeler, all hope. “Weedin’s thirsty work.”

  “We’ll share one.”

  “Fair enough.” Like a child who knows the rewards of good behavior while under watchful eyes, Wheeler scraped spent ashes from his pipe and laid it with care in the ashtray. “I’ll just go get this grit out from under my nails.”

  Tucker watched his father shuffle off, back still straight, still proud.

  Before the woman they both loved had died, Wheeler had been the best father a boy could wish for. Helena’s death had devastated father and son alike; but while Tucker had toughened, his father had weakened, becoming a shell of his former self.

  Tucker had determined never to love like that. Never to become so dependent upon a woman he couldn’t exist without her.

  Just thinking of a commitment of that magnitude brought him as close as he would ever allow himself to a feeling of fright. He didn’t want to become the man his father had, pride notwithstanding.

  Wheeler had no control over his life. He hated the nursing home. Tucker hated that the old man had to stay there, but he couldn’t afford the court-ordered supervision Wheeler required. He made a good enough salary as a telephone lineman, but after his own expenses, there wasn’t enough left to provide the exorbitant cost of hiring full-time help.

  He hoped the cookbook, if he could get it written and if he could get it published, would provide the funds to bring his dad home. Wheeler had a few good years left yet. Tucker wanted him content.

  As he cracked eggs and measured spices and cream, his thoughts moved full circle, back to Justine.

  Until his dad was happy he couldn’t afford to get involved with a woman, either.

  The muscles in his nether regions tightened, reminding him how long he’d been without the solace of a woman.

  Well, he could get involved; he just couldn’t consider marriage or having a family of his own.

  A face materialized in his mind’s eye. It was an intelligent face, composed of uneven planes and angles, anchored with extraordinary green eyes.

  Justine Hale, he thought, you had the whole world to choose from. Why’d you have to move into mine?

  — • —

  Justin sat on the steps and watched the moving van depart. It had Virginia plates, a reminder of her past life. It had been a good life, too…once.

  The van picked up speed. A trail of red dust obscured the tags, obscured her final link with the kind of life she’d never know again.

  She would be in shock yet, she supposed, if reality had not slapped her in the face.

  She had learned all too quickly that a single-income household could not live as if there were still two. In spite of her share of the profit from the sale of the house, her bank balance threatened to shrivel like a grape in the sun.

  Only moments ago she had debated how much to tip the movers. Six months ago she would’ve been far too generous. Financial reality was that she could no longer afford generosity. It was a humbling experience.

  Even more humbling had been her efforts to borrow money against her share of the house until it sold. That had scared her.

  The credit application had been the first she had filled out since the divorce. Single. Separated. Married. Widowed. Divorced. It had taken all the strength she could muster to mark the box, Divorced.

  She had become a statistic, labeled as abandoned and unloved. She had two children to raise and no credit of her own. The loan had been turned down.

  Sadly, her circle of friends had shriveled, too.

  If divorce could happen to Justine, they said, it could happen to anybody. They didn’t like being reminded. Invitations dwindled into nothing.

  So now they didn’t have to be reminded. She was eight hundred miles away.

  She reached for her purse and extracted a cigarette. Except for the occasional puff, she had stopped smoking years before, when she’d become pregnant with Pip. She’d only taken the habit up again when Philip had started talking about becoming a monk. It was a terrible habit, but she had convinced herself that cigarettes were cheaper than doctors and buckets of Valium. Once her life was back on track, she’d quit again. Right now she needed something to hold her ragged nerves together. Nicotine was it.

  The smell of tobacco wafting into the great room through the opened windows lured Lottie onto the porch. I used to smoke a bit, myself, she said conversationally. I d
o miss having a pipe of an evening. We used to grow the finest golden tobacco hereabouts. Elmer had a special way of curing the leaves. Mild, our tobacco was. A man came up every year from New Orleans to buy it. Said it made a cigar to rival that from the islands. Got a good price, too.

  ’Course, once the war started, nobody came. The last crop just cured until it rotted. A terrible waste, that was.

  The heavy scent of smoke hung about Lottie like an invisible fog. She inhaled and noted precisely where in the purse Justine placed her cigarettes.

  Oh, for the day she’d be flesh and bone again, Lottie thought. She longed for so much. Not riches, just the simple, everyday pleasures of life.

  Before the new tenants had arrived, the balance of eternity stretched before her like a vacuous gauntlet, its torture being the promise of hours linked by boredom. Now that was all changed.

  Lottie wished there was a way to let Justine know how welcome she was in her home. The expression on Justine’s face was sad. There was a line of perspiration on her brow. You’re too young to appear so downhearted, Lottie advised. Why, when I got word that Elmer had been killed, I went straight out to the fields and worked past sundown. Slept good that night too. So get up. Get busy. That always worked for me.

  “Justine!”

  “I’m on the porch, Mother Hale.”

  Agnes emerged, her mouth turned down in annoyance. “There aren’t any clothes closets. Not one!”

  “Well, the house is older than I thought if it predates closets. We’ll just have to use chests of drawers and chifforobes. I’m sure there are pantries with shelves.”

  The elder woman wasn’t to be appeased. “I don’t think I’m going to like it here, Justine.”

  “Oh, Mother Hale, not you, too? Look out there. Don’t you think that’s a setting straight out of Gone with the Wind? It’s going to be good here for the children—for all of us—I know it is.”

  “But we aren’t going to live in the yard, are we? We’re so isolated. Suppose one of us gets hurt?”

  Justine almost mentioned Tucker Highsmith, but he was a man; who could depend on one of them? “Try to think positive.”

  “The only thing I’m positive about is that our lives have turned topsy-turvy. You never laugh anymore, Justine. You used to laugh all the time.” Agnes averted her eyes and lowered her voice. “You don’t miss Philip at all, do you?”

  Justine winced. “Yes, I miss him. But he’s on the other side of the world. So missing him doesn’t do much good.” It went unsaid that Philip apparently did not miss any of them. His only communication since Easter had been but a single card posted from some forsaken little island whose name she couldn’t even pronounce. He hadn’t said, “Wish you were here.”

  Agnes looked off into the woods across the narrow dirt lane. “You blame me for his going, don’t you?”

  “Actually, I don’t. Philip did what he thought was best for him. Now I’m doing what I think is best for us. I’m sorry you don’t agree.”

  Agnes’s thin lips trembled. “Well, I’m scared. I’m old, I ache, and I’m infirm…”

  Old! exclaimed Lottie. Old! Why, you don’t know what old is. How’d you like to be a hundred and fifty-nine! As for being infirm, trade places with me. Hah! Try out my condition and see where it gets you.

  “Justine, are you whispering?”

  Lottie froze. Had she almost gotten through? She forgot to flutter and dropped down to the steps and sat there, pondering possibilities.

  Justine smiled. “Maybe you’re reading my mind. I’m scared too, Mother Hale. You don’t have a corner on fear.”

  The words spoken, Justine thought, I may be less than sure of myself, but I’m far from willing to surrender. She decided then and there the image she was going to present was one of strength, not weakness.

  She slipped her arm through Agnes’s. “C’mon, let’s go back in the house. We have more important things to do than engage in self-pity.”

  “Justine!”

  “Oh, Mother! What now?”

  “This room,” Pauline said, flailing her arms to indicate the great room when Justine stood on the threshold. “I’ll do it up. The wallpaper has gone past fading into death, but ignoring that…”

  “Let’s do ignore it for the moment. Later on we can budget some paint.”

  “Budget?”

  Until recently that was a word that had not been in Pauline’s vocabulary. Justine watched her mother struggle with its implication and give up the struggle.

  “My peach sofa can go over there, the pickled-wood pedestal table behind it. And, I think the dhurrie rugs. We can frame the fireplace with your father’s collection of Japanese Buddhist sculpture.”

  “No Buddhas, Mother. They’re too monkish.”

  For an instant Pauline looked blank. “Oh, of course, how tactless of me. The furniture in here will have to go, especially that chair and stool. It looks carved by a one-armed woodsmith.”

  Lottie swept into the room and plopped down in the chair.

  This chair stays, she said, glaring at Pauline. This is my chair. She had painstakingly created the needlepoint for the footstool. She’d spent two lifetimes in that chair. It was her anchor to the past and the present. It was made of cypress and the first thing Elmer had built for her after they were married. Lottie quivered. She’d give in on the wallpaper, but the chair stayed. That’s my final word! she huffed, watching to see if anyone heard.

  Justine was trying to see the room completed through her mother’s eyes. All she saw was dirt and dust and cobwebs. “Keep in mind Pip, Judy Ann, and jelly. The television has to go in here.”

  “They can learn to keep their feet off the furniture. You did. We can eat our meals in the dining room, like civilized people. Being suddenly poor doesn’t mean we lack manners.”

  “I’ve decided on the dining room for my office.”

  Pauline’s elegant jaw dropped. “That means we’ll have to take all of our meals in the kitchen!”

  “You’ll get used to it, Mother. Anyway, where we eat is the least of my worries.”

  “We’ll have to find a place for my writing desk,” put in Agnes. “Someplace that gets good light, so I can read the fine print on entry blanks.”

  “You and your contests,” Pauline said waspishly. “What have you ever won other than that plastic camera that didn’t work? The money you spend on postage…”

  “You never know. I might win a million dollars. That’d stick in your craw, wouldn’t it? And anyway, it’s my money I spend on postage—out of my social security check. For a widow in the throes of bankruptcy, Pauline, you’re awfully snooty about money.”

  “How impertinent of you, Agnes. It’s ill-mannered to speak of another’s ill fortune.”

  Agnes tossed her head; purple curls bounced. “I like being impertinent. It’s good for my constitution. Like it or not, I’m putting my desk in here.”

  “Justine, are you going to allow her to speak to me like that?”

  “Mother, you have a perfectly good tongue, which you’ve been using to great advantage. What I won’t allow is the two of you to continue to drag me into your quarrels. Settle it yourselves. It’s all I can do to referee battles between Pip and Judy Ann. But if you’d like my opinion of what would go nicely in here, may I suggest dueling pistols, loaded? Now, if you will both excuse me, I’m going to change into some jeans, then see about lunch.”

  “I’ll be along to help in a minute,” said Agnes, falsely contrite.

  “So will I,” said Pauline, not to be outshone.

  If it was me, said Lottie as she accompanied Justine to the kitchen, I’d serve those two up a saucer of cream and be done with it, that catty they are.

  Chapter Three

  “Mom, why don’t we just go find a McDonald’s?”

  Judy Ann seconded Pip’s suggestion with enthusiasm. “Listen, you two, we can’t drive miles and miles for pizza or hamburgers for every meal. Besides the expense, we’re in the country now. Keep look
ing, try those boxes over there in the corner.”

  “You should’ve told Daddy he couldn’t divorce us and leave us poor,” accused Judy Ann.

  “Dear heart, we’re not truly poor. We’re on a budget. It’s just that the money we have has to last.”

  Pip frowned. “For how long? Into the next century?”

  Justine turned her green-eyed gaze on her son. “You know what I think… the art of sarcasm must be genetic. You sounded just like your father.” Or either of your grandmothers, she amended ruefully.

  “If Dad ever sends for me, I’m going.”

  “If he ever sends for you and buys your ticket, I’ll help you pack.”

  Justine was instantly contrite. Pip’s threat was an empty one. They both knew it.

  “I’m sorry for that remark.”

  “Why did Dad leave, Mom?”

  “I don’t know exactly. I wasn’t to blame, nor were either of you. It was something eating inside him.”

  Judy Ann climbed on a box and dangled her legs. “He went ’cause he didn’t like us anymore. Daddies who love their kids don’t shave their heads and wear yellow nightgowns. Melissa’s mother said so. She said Daddy was crazy.”

  “Your father is not crazy. He…”

  Justine threw up her hands in a defeated gesture. Damn Philip for slinking off without giving the children an explanation. It was the least he could’ve done. The onerous task was left to her. Even under the most ordinary of situations, it was hard to explain adult actions to youngsters. Do as I say, not as I do. Kids were smarter than that now. They wanted truths. She wasn’t a psychologist, so how was she to explain Philip’s actions when even he couldn’t put them into words beyond shouting and screaming that he had to leave. Had to! Recalling their last verbal battle, after which he had slammed out of the house, filled her with a desperate sadness. It took her a few seconds to shake loose from the lingering aftereffects of recall.

  “Mom,” Judy Ann said, voice raised slightly, “you look like you’re about to cry.”

  Justine’s eyes lost their glazed look and she blinked back tears. “I’m not about to cry. I was lost in thought there for a minute. Listen, why don’t we talk about your dad another time?”