Part 10 (1/2)

Lolly's mouth fell open, and I threw myself across her bed. ”Now that my daddy's dead, she's shown up to let me know that she loves me. You know my mama has an absolutely beautiful singing voice. I mean it would have been a sin if she had kept that gift to herself. So she went and followed her big dream, and I think that took her right back to Willacoochee. And the best part, my daddy knew she was alive, sharing her gift with a bunch of drunken men in some no-good, sleazy honky-tonk. But Martha Ann, she doesn't really care what he did or what she did. She's just so happy to have a mother, any mother, heck, she'd probably take yours,” I said, without thinking about Lolly's feelings.

”I'm sorry, Lolly,” I said. Somehow I'd always found some rotten comfort in thinking that no matter how unfair my life seemed, it was always better than Lolly's. But now I wasn't so sure. Mrs. Dempsey might not like Lolly, but at least she never abandoned her.

Lolly asked me about Miss Raines's baby, if what Emma Sue had been saying about town was really the gospel truth. I told her, yep, my dead daddy was going to have a baby. Lolly's mouth fell right open, but then she started talking in her kind, smooth voice, trying to rea.s.sure me that my life was not as tragic as it sounded. As the sound of Lolly's voice filled my head, my eyes were drawn to a small crystal vase sitting on the table next to her bed. I picked it up and turned it over and over in my hands. I had never seen anything so beautiful in Lolly's house.

”Where'd this come from?” I asked, interrupting her good-hearted effort.

”How about that?” she said with a smile on her face. ”My mama gave that to me for my eighteenth birthday.”

I couldn't believe something so fine had come from Mrs. Dempsey. She didn't seem capable of giving anything of any beauty to anyone. I kept turning it over in my hands, trying to absorb the unexpectedness of her gesture.

”Catherine Grace, have you talked to your mama?”

”A little bit. No, not really,” I said. I told Lolly there was nothing much to talk about. I didn't believe there was any good reason for leaving your children and letting them think that you're dead. But what I didn't tell Lolly was that I was really afraid that the woman sitting at my kitchen table was going to tell me that she left because she just hadn't wanted to be a mama, that she wanted something else more than her girls.

”All I'm saying, Catherine, is that you of all people ought to understand what a powerful hold a dream can have on a person.”

”d.a.m.n it, Lolly. Why does everybody keep telling me I should understand? I didn't float down some river leaving two little babies behind thinking I was dead.”

”No. No, you didn't. But if you had been walking around in your mama's shoes, you might have wanted to float away, too,” Lolly said as she moved next to me on the bed. She wrapped me in her arms and we sat there for a long time before she said another word.

”Catherine, your daddy always said that the Lord plants a small seed of goodness in each and every one of us. Sometimes that seed grows into a mighty tree, and sometimes it struggles to take hold at all. It's up to us to help the Lord nurture the good in ourselves and the people around us.”

”Yeah, well, he said a lot of things that weren't true.”

”Maybe. But you know there's some good in all of us,” Lolly said, taking the vase into her hands. ”You just got to be willing to look harder in some than others.”

I fell back on Lolly's bed. Her room was so wonderfully still and quiet. I closed my eyes, trying to absorb the peacefulness through every part of my body. Then Lolly touched my hand. ”Catherine Grace, I really don't know which is worse, having a mama who leaves you thinking that she loved you or having a mama who lets you know almost every day of your life that she wished you'd never been born. I just think you need to hear her out.”

I pulled my body up and rested my head on Lolly's shoulder.

”Just hold on to the good,” she said, still holding the vase in her hands. ”Remember, Hank found the goodness buried way down deep in Ruthie Morgan.” Lolly laughed, trying to lighten the mood.

”Yeah, I guess poor Hank had to water and fertilize that scrawny little vine every day to get it to take root.”

”Yeah, but I think Ruthie may be heading into a hot, dry summer,” Lolly said, smiling, waiting for me to beg her for more information. I tried to act like I didn't care, but Lolly knew better.

She slowly unfolded the details of her information like she was unwrapping a beautiful package, trying hard not to rip the paper as she went. Lolly said that before I had come home from Atlanta, Hank and Ruthie had been over to my house to pay their respects to Martha Ann. Hank had asked Lolly if I was home yet, and apparently Ruthie thought he had kept an awfully close eye on the front door.

I told Lolly that didn't mean anything. Hank was just being Hank.

”Maybe. But I walked out behind them. I just wanted to get a little fresh air, so I stood out in the driveway away from the crowd that had gathered on the porch. Anyway, they started arguing about something.”

”About what?”

”I don't know for sure, but I think Ruthie was mad that Hank kept looking at that door, obviously waiting to see you. But I did hear this. Ruthie said something about Miss Raines's illegitimate baby, as she called it, and then she said something about it explaining the way you turned out.”

”Huh? Like what? What'd she mean by that?”

”Who knows, who cares? That's not the point. Hank was so mad he walked her straight to her front door and left her there, not even waiting to see that she got inside,” Lolly said triumphantly.

My heart suddenly felt a little lighter, and yet I hated to credit Hank Blankens.h.i.+p with that. ”Well, I guess that's a tiny bright spot in an otherwise crummy day.”

”Tiny bright spot! d.a.m.n it, girl, are you blind? Don't you get it, Catherine Grace? Hank still loves you.”

CHAPTER ELEVEN.

Finding Salvation at the Dairy Queen Mrs. Dempsey was sitting on the sofa watching The Price Is Right when I walked back into the living room. A fresh cigarette was clenched between her lips, and she was maneuvering a lit match toward its tip. I said a quick good-bye, barely raising my head as I walked toward the door. I'd learned through the years not to expect any conversation from Mrs. Dempsey, especially when she was watching one of her programs. She never offered much more than a grunt and a wave of the hand, and even the effort of doing that seemed to annoy her most days.

Today wasn't any different. But as I opened the front door, I glanced back at her, and even though the room was filling with smoke, I could see that her eyes were saying something I had never noticed before. They were wounded and dull. She looked like an animal that's hurting but can't tell you where.

When I was little, I couldn't imagine Mrs. Dempsey not loving Lolly. I couldn't imagine any mama not loving her baby. Truth be told, it scared me, but not for Lolly. I figured if Mrs. Dempsey could hate her own daughter, then maybe it was possible that my own mama hated me. I mean, if she had loved me, really, truly loved me, then she would have been more careful in that creek and not gone and gotten herself killed. That's what I used to think, but now not even that crazy talk makes any sense anymore.

Turns out, Mrs. Dempsey does love Lolly. I mean, she sure doesn't love her right, but in some small or strange way, that woman sitting on that faded old sofa loves her daughter enough to save what little money she has to buy her something as beautiful as that crystal vase.

Daddy said you can see the devil in people's eyes, but maybe the devil is nothing more than the sadness they carry around inside of them, bottled up so tight that it comes out as pure ugliness, like it does with Mrs. Dempsey. And maybe my own mama was too filled with sadness to love Martha Ann and me right. Maybe she wanted to be up on some stage so badly that she couldn't figure out a way to make herself happy without it. And maybe that's the way it is sometimes, that there are some mamas so filled with sorrow that it's better that they leave the mothering to somebody else. I needed to see my mama's eyes.

”Three hundred and forty-five dollars,” Mrs. Dempsey shouted, bringing my attention back to the Price Is Right and the new Maytag was.h.i.+ng machine that the beautiful woman on the television was caressing with her hands.

Out of nowhere, a smile came over my face, and I stepped onto the front stoop and into the chill of that January day. The sky was growing darker. It felt like it might snow. I started walking toward home but stopped and watched a wave of dark, heavy clouds settle in over Taylor's Ridge. As I stood there, something down the road caught my eye, a light blinking on and then off, and then on, warming up an unusually bleak, wintry day. It was the red-and-white sign at the Dairy Queen. I felt like it was calling me, begging me to follow its light right to the counter where Eddie Franklin was waiting for Catherine Grace Cline to come and place her order.

”Hey there, stranger,” Eddie said with that warm, expectant smile on his face that in my eighteen years on this earth had become wonderfully familiar. ”Kind of thought I might be seeing you today. Sorry to hear about your daddy,” he said as he shook his head to add a little more emphasis to what he was saying. ”Reverend Cline sure was a great man, yes sir, a great man of G.o.d, and this town is really going to miss him something bad.”

”Yeah, great man of G.o.d,” I repeated, with a slow, flat voice, not even trying to disguise my sadness, ”really great.” Eddie Franklin obviously hadn't heard that the great man of G.o.d had been an even greater liar, bearing false witness all about town or at least in the bedroom of one special member of Cedar Grove's devoted congregation.

”So what can I get for you, Catherine Grace?”

”Oh, I don't know, Eddie. Maybe I'll have a Dilly Bar.” I acted as though I had to give it a bit of thought, pretending that it didn't bother me that Eddie was still asking me the one question I was absolutely certain he knew the answer to.

”I guess now that you're living in Atlanta, you haven't had much need for a Dilly Bar, huh?” he asked.

I hadn't really thought about it till now but Eddie was right. I hadn't been to any Dairy Queen in months. I didn't even know where one was, and for some reason, I guess I felt like I'd be cheating on Eddie Franklin if I told him about my trip to the Varsity or my midnight run to McDonald's.

All those years growing up in Ringgold and hardly a Sat.u.r.day had gone by when I hadn't been standing right here right before Eddie Franklin, offering up part of my allowance just as faithfully as I had those two s.h.i.+ny quarters I tossed in the offering plate on Sunday mornings. I stood real still for a moment, letting the days since I left town pa.s.s before my eyes as if I were watching them on the giant movie screen at the Tivoli up in Chattanooga, hoping, I guess, to see how this story was going to end. All of a sudden I came to the part where I was standing in this very parking lot, next to a Greyhound bus, saying my last good-byes to my daddy. That seemed like a lifetime ago now, and my daddy seemed so far away.

I dabbed a few tears on my coat sleeve and looked down at the ground. ”How ya been, Eddie?” I said real quickly, not nearly as interested in his answer as I was in changing the subject. Somehow it didn't seem proper to do my grieving standing at the counter at the Dairy Queen. And I surely wasn't in the mood for Eddie to try to make me feel better by saying something stupid like ”the good Lord sure must have needed your daddy or heaven's s.h.i.+ning even brighter now that your daddy's gone home.” I'd heard all that talk when my mama pretended to die, and it didn't make me feel any better then either. Thankfully, Eddie just answered my question.

”Real good, to tell you the truth,” he said kindly, pretending not to notice that my eyes were starting to puddle. ”We haven't had much cold weather till now and that's been real good for business. You know some Dairy Queens just close up altogether in the winter, Catherine Grace, just lock the doors till the first sign of spring. I can't imagine that. Heck, I've sold more dip cones from Thanksgiving to Christmas than I ever have before. Seventy-three, to be exact.”

Eddie could probably tell from my blank expression that I wasn't sure that that was intended to be an impressive number. ”Oh come on, girl, that may not seem like much to you, not being in the ice cream business and all, but it makes me happy to know some people never lose their appet.i.te for a chocolate-dipped ice cream cone, no matter how cold it is outside,” he said, again flas.h.i.+ng that calm smile of his that made me think he was telling me more than he was saying.

”But enough about me. How's Atlanta? Guess it's a lot more exciting than Ringgold.”