Valentine(43)
I wish she was here, Lauralee says.
As do we all, honey. Stop hunching your shoulders like that, she calls as Lauralee walks away from the car, you’ll get a dowager’s hump. Piano lessons. Check.
Arlene and Larry Compton used to drag Suzanne and her brothers all over West Texas, chasing the boom. Stanton, Andrews, Ozona, Big Lake—they were always trying to save for a rainy day, but when the price of oil fell or Arlene had bounced enough checks to get the sheriff’s attention, the family would rush to pack the car. Suzanne and her brothers sat elbow to elbow in the back seat while her parents smoked and fussed and blamed each other. If they hurried, her daddy said, they might be able to watch the sun rise over the swamp. Her mother said, Goddamn it, Suzie. If you don’t stop kicking the back of my seat, I am going to wear you out.
Back in East Texas, they’d find some little tarpaper shack at the edge of the swamp, someplace with a landlord who didn’t recognize their name—Compton, as in the Compton boys are back in town, so don’t let your cats out of the house, lock your doors and hide the silver, tell your daughters to watch out—or if the landlord did know the name, he didn’t care. Nobody else wanted to live out there.
Her mama was as unpredictable as the stray dogs that sometimes slipped into the yard when Suzanne left the gate open. When Daddy sent her outside to close it, she walked into the darkened yard, swearing she’d remember to close the gate next time, hoping the things she saw moving in the night were only moon shadows cast against the bare dirt. Some mornings before he left the house to look for work, when the brothers were still sleeping or they hadn’t come home the night before, Suzanne’s daddy would give her a dime. Make yourself scarce, he’d tell her. Your mama needs to rest.
On those days, she walked into whatever town they were living near and spent her dime, and when the sun was threatening to go down, or she was hungry again, Suzanne went home and stood on the front porch with her hand on the doorknob and one ear pressed against the door, the wood splintered and rough against her cheek, tarpaper flapping gently on the wall next to the front door, while she tried to get a feel for what might be waiting on the other side.
*
If Dr. Bauman can be believed, Suzanne is unlikely to ever carry another pregnancy to term. Her womb is chock-full of fibroid tumors, he says, and the miscarriages are hard on her body, hard on her spirit, hard on her family. They might as well go in and take everything out. Call it a day, he says, if you aren’t going to be using them anyway—them being Suzanne’s ovaries. She will hardly notice the difference, he says, except she won’t have her monthly cycle anymore. And won’t that be a treat.
When Suzanne knocks on Mary Rose’s door, she is holding a King Ranch casserole in the hand she doesn’t chew on. She admires the new baby, remarking on his size and weight and length, and Mary Rose hands him over without hesitation. When Suzanne mentions her conversation with the doctor, Mary Rose says, I’m sorry to hear that, but she is looking past Suzanne, her eyes scanning the front yard and the street. They haven’t spoken since Corrine Shepard practically accused Suzanne of being a bigot—a crazy notion that she got, or so Suzanne has heard, from D. A. Pierce.
Oh, please, she tells Mary Rose, I’m fine. There are people starving in Cambodia. Her gaze takes in Mary Rose’s thin frame, the shadows beneath her eyes. You look like you’re starving, too.
Mary Rose stares at the casserole dish she has found herself holding, and the baby, who is gripped like a bag of groceries in the crook of her other arm. All right, she says flatly, thank you.
I taped a little Tupperware catalog to the bottom of the dish.
Mary Rose runs a finger along the bottom of the glassware. Oh, I see.
I gave one to my friend who works at the credit union, too. Suzanne looks at a jagged cuticle and quickly tucks it behind her back. Do you know Mrs. Ordó?ez?
We use Cattleman’s Bank, Mary Rose says.
Well, she is just the sweetest lady. Suzanne glances at her watch. If you throw together a little green salad, y’all will have yourselves a complete meal.
Casserole, Check.
Suzanne has the best of intentions, but she can’t stop wondering aloud how some people get to be so stupid. In the midst of any calamity, she almost always says the wrong thing. A year earlier, when a tornado wiped out a trailer park in West Odessa, killing three people and injuring a dozen more, she wondered aloud why anyone would choose to live in such cheaply made structures. The ones that survived, she told Rita Nunally, ought to be prosecuted for putting their families’ lives at risk. But those homemade casseroles that mean somebody won’t have to fix supper that night? Those, she can do. When the recipe calls for a can of cream of mushroom soup, she sautés fresh button mushrooms and stirs in a can of milk with a tablespoon of flour. And while her casseroles aren’t exactly quiche lorraine, every one of them is a complete meal—meat, vegetable, and a pasta or grain.
Her chocolate-chip cookies are made with real butter, not margarine, and she never skimps on the brown sugar. Everything fresh, nothing canned. That’s her motto. No pinto beans and corn bread for Lauralee, she likes to tell her neighbors, no babies before she’s finished college. Her daughter will never eat stewed dandelion greens, alligator, rattlesnake, or collards. She will never eat catfish or carp or anything else with a mud vein that has to be removed, and there will always be a dessert course after supper, however simple it might be. Every night before dinner, she lights two small candles and sets them in the middle of the dining room table, then stands back to take in the scene. They’re pretty, she tells Jon and Lauralee. They make every night feel special, even Wednesday. And in this light no one can see the bright red knot where a pimple is trying to sprout on her chin, the chipped tooth from a fall she took when she was fifteen, the cuticles she can’t stop chewing.