Why Sarah Ran Away with the Veterinarian (9 page)

Willene Wooten is pounding on the organ, “I Come to the Garden.” I can feel every note shooting through my temples. Wish Donna was playing instead. Something happier like “Heart and Soul.”

When Granny Crawford died and left us her piano, Mama signed us up for lessons. For me it was almost as bad as shots although I didn't hate Mama for piano lessons. What I did hate was sitting on that hard, cold piano bench for a solid hour every day. Mama said I should be able to play well, I had the hands for it. Then she would turn over a little hour glass she kept on the piano. I'd have rather counted the grains than practiced, but Donna was pretty good. I think she could have been professional if our piano teacher hadn't moved to Atlanta. Donna taught herself to play some pieces just by listening. She used to play for chapel at our elementary school back when it was okay to have chapel. She'd do hymns during the service but she always played “Blue Moon” to march in and “Heart and Soul” to march out.

Then there was tap dancing. Mama said it would make us “at ease socially.” Daddy said it was a waste of time, and “Nobody tap dances through life, socially or otherwise.” But he came to our recitals just the same. Mama took us every Saturday morning for lessons. That was after our piano teacher left town and I liked dancing better because I didn't have to sit still anymore—just shuffle tap, shuffle tap, heel toe, heel toe, and on and on until I felt like one of those little marionettes that came around to school once in a while and talked about tooth decay. Recitals were fun because we got to dress up in costumes—Siamese cats or valentines or poodles. Donna usually had a lead part, not that she was that good at tapping but she was so cute. When Mama fixed up Donna in her costume, she could put Shirley Temple to shame. Blue, blue eyes and Q-tip dimples under a halo of blond curls waiting for a place to land. She looked like Little Miss Sunbeam. In fact, she won the Dixie store's Local Little Miss Sunbeam Contest. Aunt Kate said Donna could have made a living just tearing bread.

The best recital we ever had was the year we were poodles. This doesn't have anything to do with my feeling guilty about Mama. I just thought about it. I wonder if Donna remembers. Mama borrowed our teacher's pattern and made Donna's and my costumes. They were white and satiny with cotton balls glued around the edge of the skirts, like fringe, and around the wrists of the sleeves. Attached to the back of each skirt was a cord with a pompon on the end. Those were our tails. Aunt Kate said we looked more like snowflakes with tails than poodles. But our costumes were just like the picture on the pattern envelope and better than any of our classmates'.

Donna and Joanne McJunkin had the lead parts. Joanne was cute back then but not as cute as Donna. Lead part just meant they got to stand in front of the rest of us and do the same moves. The only difference came at the end. Donna and Joanne were supposed to curtsy to each other, turn, rub their little tail ends together, and tap off in opposite directions. It went well in rehearsal, but the night of the recital their tails wrapped around each other and the pompons knotted up. They didn't realize what had happened until they tried tapping off in opposite directions. Sort of a poodle tug of war developed. We all got to laughing in the background. Then the audience got into it. I could see Mama and Daddy. Mama looked embarrassed, Daddy just looked, but Aunt Kate was yelling, “Pull, Donna, pull!” Finally Joanne's tail ripped off taking a sizeable chunk of fabric with it. Then Donna lunged forward and disappeared behind the curtain. I was afraid she'd be embarrassed, but she heel-toed right back out on stage and curtsied to the audience.

I want to lean over to Donna and say “Nonna, remember the poodles?” Then break into giggles. It would be such a relief. I can almost picture Scarlet and Charlotte in our outfits.

Donna was the crowd pleaser all right and that suited me just fine. Except for one thing. That's the way she met Andrew. He was a judge for the Peach Festival beauty contest the year Donna was in it. The sponsors knew Crystabelle Dean was going to be in the pageant. Her family of wrestlers invented the grudge match if that tells you anything. The sponsors aimed for out-of-town judges. Yankees if possible. Donna won. When they called her name, her hands flew over her mouth and her knees buckled like she always did when she won a beauty contest. But she ended up with Andrew. She's still pretty and she still has Andrew. Aunt Kate calls that “irony of situation.”

I was thinking about that beauty contest on the way home from the airport and wondering what if Donna had skipped Miss Peach Queen, not that I hate Andrew or anything. Just wondered if she couldn't have done more on her own, like being an airline stewardess or making commercials or being a beauty consultant for Maybelline. Jack tried to get her to do commericals for his dealership a few years back. All she'd have to do was point at a new Cadillac or Tornado or Cutless and say, “Jack Brighton treats you right!” But she wouldn't do it. Said she didn't have the confidence anymore. Still she was flattered to death and she told me so. I've missed Donna more than I ever thought. But she has the girls to fill her heart and occupy her time even if she does have to put up with Andrew.

I've missed Mama too. For the first time, I've started understanding that look in Mama's eyes, the distant look she got sometimes when she wasn't focused on anything in particular. I wondered if she loved Daddy, really loved him, if there'd ever been another man in her life. I wanted to sit down and ask her if she ever thought about leaving. And to hear her tell me, “Sarah, it's all right to feel that way—like you're floating and you can't get your feet to stick to the ground. All women feel it sometimes, even me.”

I wish I could get back to where I was at Mimosa years ago, but I'm not sure I was ever really attached. More like an astronaut in a space capsule, grabbing whatever's nearby to keep from floating away. Like Mama, hanging on with all those projects.

God, I'm sweating. This dress must be made of rubber, black rubber, the stuff they make tires out of. It's smothering every pore in my body. I shouldn't complain. Donna went out and got it for me. But God! It's hot! How does Reverend Pierce stand that robe? I feel like I'm floating in a pool of sweat. The humidity and all these people. Guess I got used to a different climate.

This past year I haven't felt so unattached either, not like I did here. I've been too busy collecting little bits of life, the kind you organize and put in a letter or give form and music and fit into a poem. Then it all makes sense.

Sometimes at the ranch where Michael and I stayed I'd go out and watch the blacksmith. He'd work his way around the horse, leg by leg, prying off the old shoe, clipping and trimming the bare hoof. He'd fire up a new shoe until it was red hot, hammer it on his anvil, then fit it to the hoof. Steam would shoot off but the horse wouldn't flinch. “No feeling there,” he said. But it was still so hot that if he dropped it, it would set little bits of hay on fire. He'd stick the hot shoe sizzling into water, then nail it on the hoof.

I loved watching him work. The orange sparks, the steam, the ringing of the hammer against the anvil. He had a rhythm, almost a song. After he finished, the horses always looked so steady, so sure-footed like the shiny new metal gave them a firm hold on the ground, a place to leave a pattern like no one else's.

I kept thinking about that blacksmith on the flight home. Don't know why. That and Mama and how things like lame horses and beauty contests can change the course of your life. Andrew met me at the airport. I should have known Donna wouldn't drive if she could help it. Andrew's the same ole Andrew. I wasn't in the car five minutes before he started a lecture on the various stages of the female condition. I tuned him out and escaped into my own female condition. When he got to their house, Donna ran out and started hugging me almost before I was out of the car. Then we hugged and hugged some more just like we did as kids when we had a secret or a birthday or a trip to go on. For a few minutes I almost forgot the reason I'd come home. When I got to the hospital, I remembered.

Mama was white, bone white. Pale as she is right now. Her lips blended into her face. Her skin looked as thin as wrapping tissue and her hands like small translucent gloves. Daddy sat beside her. He looked up at Donna and me, not saying anything. Donna whispered something to him and they left the room. I sat beside Mama. The chair still held Daddy's heat. I picked up her hand. I can feel it now, cool and light and so small, I'd never realized how small. Her nails were smooth and clear with little white moons. Her fingers draped into my palm like they were melted together except the little finger. It had its own direction. Mine's the same way, a crook in the little finger. Mama was proud of it, said we inherited it from her mother. But my hands aren't really like Mama's. She always called mine “artist's hands,” because I have long thin fingers and an unbroken M in each palm. I never knew what the M was supposed to mean but Mama said it was special. Holding her hand, I kept looking for other connections but the little finger was all, a crooked little finger.

I tried to talk. To tell her why I left, to ask her how she'd been, to make her understand how sorry I was. She never opened her eyes or even moved. Finally I laid my head beside her shoulder and wept.

Mama died that night. The doctor said her heart just quit. Aunt Kate said it was for the best that the body goes when the heart does. Whatever that meant. She doesn't explain herself too often. But Lois Turpin agreed and got on the phone to everybody in the community. Then the people and the food started pouring in.

Donna and Daddy made arrangements with Mahoney funeral home. Mostly Donna. She had a time. Daddy insisted on putting this little stuffed dolphin Mama got at Sea World in her hands in the open casket. Donna told him people would think they'd gone crazy. She finally talked him into letting her put it at Mama's feet, “like it was swimming around down there.”

Then Kate said, “Just have a closed casket. Viv wouldn't want people staring at her.”

“They'll think she's all eat up with cancer,” Donna said, “or withered away. And people like to pay their last respects. Andrew says you need to see the body to accept death and get on with your life.”

So they left it open for the funeral home. Donna and Daddy stood next to the open end and Kate and I stood at the dolphin end. For two solid hours we listened to last respects. Funeral home visitation must be the closest thing in the civilized world to Indian rites of passage. A way of seeing how much the grieving family can endure to prove themselves worthy of the dead. “She looks so natural.” “She's better off, you know.” “Did you donate any organs?” I went home with Aunt Kate.

The farm felt welcome. Even in the dark, I recognized most of the ruts in the dirt driveway. Some felt larger. “Need to asphalt,” Kate said, swaying the Blazer around the edge of the ruts like a barrel racer. We went in through the kitchen. Not much on the counters, a few letters, a book, an ashtray. I guess you could call it clean, as clean as I'd ever seen it, but more empty than clean. Before, there'd been jelly jars, cereal boxes, crackers, a loaf or two of bread, tea jug, telephone books, a clock in the shape of a horse's head, hand towels, at least two novels, and other bits and treasures filling in the cracks, all layered and pushed back on Aunt Kate's counters.

“What happened?” I asked.

Kate slid her keys the length of the counter. “Simplicity,” she said.

“What?”

“I've simplified my life,” she said. “You know, cleaned out, gotten rid of, molted like an old parrot.” She disappeared behind the refrigerator door and reappeared with two cans. “Don't have any of that light stuff,” she said. “You want a glass?”

I shook my head and we settled at the kitchen table. Kate popped her beer and lit a cigarette. “You know what gets me?” she said staring at the filter, “Clean living doesn't mean shit when it comes to dying.
Quelle merde, cette vie!
Pardon my French.”

“Wish you could have seen her when we were growing up,” Kate said. “She was so feminine, like Donna, only more fragile.” She pulled on her beer. “Not that Viv was all that fragile, she just looked that way.” Kate took another drink. “In a way,” she said, “I was jealous.” She turned the can up then made a grimace, a bitter smile. “I hate that last little bit. It always tastes like metal. You ready?” I shook my head and she disappeared behind the refrigerator door again.

“Why were you jealous?” I asked, watching Aunt Kate pop and light at the same time.

“Because Viv was so delicate-looking and there I was, sturdy as a fence post.” She inhaled as though it was her last breath, then opened her mouth and let the smoke cloud around her face. She sat there not saying anything for a while. Just smoking and drinking like she was alone at a bar listening to a sad country song. “Funny thing is,” she finally said, “she was stronger than me too. Not physically, but every other way.”

“How?” I asked.

Kate stared into space, then back at me. “Did you ever see that picture of us?” Not waiting for an answer she stood up fast, swayed a little, then disappeared into the next room. When she came back, she cradled a small pewter frame in her hands as though it might break. She held it for me to see but didn't let go. In it stood Mama and Aunt Kate, barely in their teens. Mama was a little taller. Her light brown hair was long and pulled back. A fringe of curls framed her face and neck. Kate's hair was darker and in a bob. They both smiled. Mama's was more a hint of a smile, her mouth a tiny rosebud like Donna's. Kate's smile was broad, flirtatious.

“Both our dresses were white,” Kate said, “but the photographer thought we needed color. He made Viv's blue ‘to match your beautiful eyes' he said and mine soft yellow ‘because you're warm as sunlight.' That's what he said.” She laid the picture down and finished her beer. This time no grimace. “Say when,” she shouted from the refrigerator.