Valentine(23)
People get old and die. Mr. Shepard was already sick when he had his hunting accident, even if he didn’t want to talk about it. His hair fell out, he started to walk with a cane, he forgot things, and toward the end, he couldn’t always say Debra Ann’s name. Everybody knew.
Men die all the time in fights or pipeline explosions or gas leaks. They fall from cooling towers or try to beat the train or get drunk and decide to clean their guns. Women are killed when they get cancer or marry badly or take rides with strange men. Casey Nunally’s daddy was killed in Vietnam when she was just a baby, and Debra Ann has seen photographs hanging in their hallway—a high school portrait taken just a few months before he left for basic training, a wedding photo taken when he was on leave, and the girls’ favorite, a snapshot of him taken at the Dallas/Fort Worth airport. He wears his dress greens with a single patch sewn to the top of his left sleeve, and he holds his baby daughter up to the camera, his grin wide and toothy.
I never knew him, Casey says. To her, David Nunally is the flag that Mrs. Nunally keeps folded in her cedar chest. He is three medals resting in a small wooden box lined with purple satin, and paint peeling off the wood trim on their house. He is Mrs. Nunally’s job at the bowling alley, the grocery store, the department store, and her praying for help in a dozen different churches, each a little stricter than the one before. He is Casey wearing the long skirts of all Adventist women and girls, even in the summer, and church on Saturdays instead of Sundays. He is Casey saying to Debra Ann, Everything would be different if—
When people die, there is proof and protocol. The undertaker dressed Lauralee’s grandmother in her favorite wig and blouse. He tried to hide her cancer with a thick layer of face powder and arranged her hands so they rested just beneath her breasts, one pale and wrinkled hand crossed over the other. Lauralee reported that her grandma’s cheek was cool and rubbery, and Debra Ann had already taken Casey’s hand to guide it into the casket when Mrs. Ledbetter grabbed both girls by the tender, fatty part of their arms and squeezed hard, when she leaned down and breathed in Debra Ann’s ear, What in the world is wrong with you?
But Ginny Pierce is not dead. She left—left town, left a note and most of her clothes, left Debra Ann and her daddy. So Mrs. Shepard pats her arm and offers to trim her bangs for her, and Mrs. Nunally purses her lips and shakes her head. On Sunday mornings, her daddy makes breakfast for them. Sunday afternoons, they grill steaks and drive over to Baskin-Robbins. When they come home, he sits in the living room playing albums or wanders down the block to sit in Mr. Ledbetter’s backyard and drink a beer.
When Ginny comes home, Debra Ann doesn’t want the house to be such a mess that her mom turns around and walks right back out the door again, so she straightens up and tries to figure out how to help Jesse get his truck back. She worries about her dad, who doesn’t sleep enough, and Mrs. Shepard, who sometimes pretends she isn’t home, even when Debra Ann lies down on the front porch and hollers, I can see your tennis shoes under the door! She waits for her mama to call, jumping every time the phone rings and then sighing when she hears her daddy’s voice on the other end. She practices what she’ll say when her mother finally calls home. She will keep her voice causal, as if Ginny is calling from the customer service desk at Strike-It-Rich to see if they need ice cream. When she calls, Debra Ann will sound friendly but not too eager, and she will ask the question she has been hanging onto since February 15, when she wandered home early from the basketball courts and found Ginny’s note pinned to her pillow.
When are you coming home?
Ginny
Sunday morning, February 15—It will be cold comfort, knowing she is not alone. Plenty of other women have gone before her. By the time she pulls into the fire lane at Sam Houston Elementary, two suitcases and a shoebox of family pictures hidden in the trunk, Ginny Pierce knows plenty of stories about those other women, the ones who ran off. But Ginny is not the running-off kind. She will be back in a year, two at the most. As soon as she has a job, an apartment, a little money in the bank—she is coming back for her daughter.
Mama, why are you crying? Debra Ann asks, and Ginny tells her, It’s just my allergies, honey, and D. A. shakes her head in the same manner she does everything, fiercely—It’s February, too early for allergies—as if that settles it. And Ginny swallows the stone in her throat. Could you scoot over here for a minute, honey? Let me see your face?
Her daughter is nearly ten. She is going to remember this day—the two of them sitting together in the front seat of the getaway car, a shaky and capricious Pontiac Ginny has been driving since high school. D. A. will remember her mother reaching out suddenly and pulling her across the front seat until they are sitting with their shoulders pressed together. Ginny will remember pushing her daughter’s fine brown hair out of her eyes, the smell of oatmeal and Ivory soap, the chocolate on her chin from the Valentine’s candy she’s been eating all morning, and the shine on her cheeks from the suntan lotion Ginny swiped across her face before they left the house. When she reaches for her daughter to rub in a smudge of lotion on her chin, Ginny’s hand trembles and she thinks, Take her. Make it work somehow. But Debra Ann scoots away, saying, Quit it! Because to her, this is still like any other Sunday morning and her mother might be nagging her about any of the usual things. To her, even Ginny’s tears have become old hat.
The car door, when it slams closed, nearly catches Ginny’s finger. A backpack slung over one shoulder, D. A.’s basketball striking the concrete and rolling onto the dusty playground, a hand thrown casually in the air, her daughter walking away from the car. Bye, Mama. Bye, Debra Ann.