The Tie That Binds(70)
“I know. And it sounds like a wonderful idea.”
“Oh, it is,” Mavis said. “It’s strictly a big deal. Definitely groovy.”
“Mom,” Rena said. “We don’t say groovy anymore. We say stud.”
So Edith hugged my daughter close to her that afternoon, and then she whipped up the new cream from the store and the three of them sat down and ate at least a third of Lyman’s pumpkin pie. They had a fine time for a while, visiting and chatting, talking about nothing as if there was nothing particular to talk about—and all that time, you understand, Edith still had in mind what she was going to do later. When they left, having wished the season’s greetings to Lyman and listened in turn to his mumbled confusion about postcards, Edith thought it was for the last time. According to her plan she wouldn’t see them again. But, in the iron manner in which she had done everything else in her life, she pushed that thought away from her—or accepted it—and just put her coat on.
Now I think I told you when I first started talking, telling you this story, I believe I mentioned that business about the chicken feed and the tied-up dog. Well, I haven’t forgotten. And not just because it was after my wife and daughter left her that Friday afternoon that those things happened, but because they seemed to clinch the matter, to finish it. What I’m saying is, she took the dog outside again. It didn’t want to go; she had to force it, to take the dog by the collar and lead it, its back legs dragging in weak objection while she talked to it, coaxingly, out to the garage. There she tied it to the latch in the open doorway with a length of rope, with enough food and water to last it a day or two. Then, ignoring that pitiful whimpering and complaint behind her, she went on to the chicken house, to leave food for the half-dozen red chickens. I mean she lifted or dragged—don’t ask me how—a fifty-pound bag of chicken feed into the center of the dirt floor and cut it open so that they too would survive until somebody happened to remember them afterwards. And that clinched it. It was then, while walking back to the house under that late purpling sky, that she understood for the first time that what she was doing was a real thing, a certainty. Up to that point it hadn’t been real, even to herself.
“But I knew it then,” she said. “Nancy was crying at me from the end of the rope. I kept hearing her all evening—or thought I did. And I wanted to release her, I wanted to let her go, Sandy. But I didn’t. I went back to the house and shut the door.”
So there was really only one thing more for Edith Goodnough to do before she put supper on the table. She wanted to iron Lyman’s shirt. And she did that then, while the potatoes and green beans boiled, pressed his best white shirt out neat and clean on the ironing board so that he would appear gentlemanly. When she was satisfied she took it in to him where he still sat in the parlor, fumbling with faded pictures of Memphis and Mobile, New York and Boise, and somehow persuaded him to not only put on a different shirt than the one he’d been wearing all day but to also get into a blue suit jacket that matched his dark pants. He didn’t know why. It didn’t matter. I suppose all he understood was that it was an imposition, a damn bother, but like I’ve already said, she managed that too, somehow. And afterwards, when he was dressed to her satisfaction, she herself changed clothes, put on a fine dark skirt and pink blouse and brushed her hair. So they were ready for supper now. They sat down in the kitchen across the table from one another, looking, I fully believe, as if they were contented, even happy.
They didn’t talk much. Edith said she hadn’t expected that they would. It was enough to be dressed up, to be seated at a table with red candles flickering, to be eating a satisfactory supper of baked chicken and pumpkin pie. The only thing she remembers saying was, “I’m still glad you came home, Lyman.”
Lyman was nodding in his chair, almost asleep.
“I know you don’t understand. But I am glad you came home when you did. It was worth the wait. Can you remember all we’ve done?”
“I’m too tired,” he said.
“You want to lie down now, don’t you?”
“I want to sleep.”
“Yes, it’s been a long day. Come on then, I’ll help you.”
She lifted under his arm to help him rise from the chair, and together they walked into the living room. She laid him down on his bed in his suit clothes, took his slippers off. When she pulled a blanket up over his long quiet body she saw that he was already asleep, the blue veins and age spots at his temple showing dimly in the fading light, his chin fallen onto his bow tie. She ran her hand over his forehead once and bent to kiss him, then she went back to the kitchen and put the candles out with moistened fingers and locked the back-porch door. She had thought she would clear the table, put things away, but that seemed excessive now, and so she returned to the living room, where she locked that door too, that outside door that opened formally into the house but was never used, and finally she sat down in the rocking chair between the two beds. Rocking a little, she watched the dark collect in the room while she waited for the moment when she knew she would rise again and strike a match to the old dust coated travel papers on the stairway, which her brother and my daughter had allowed her to store there on the steps in the past years. But that moment hadn’t arrived yet. For a time, for a while longer, she was content to sit and rock quietly, with the matches in her lap. She looked past her brother and out through that south window toward the elm trees that stood in the yard, bare and clean and dark, against a sky that was lighter only by comparison to the dark trees. Still she waited, thinking: In a minute now. Soon, soon I’ll stand up.