Trust
Thirsty Work — Chapter 5: fingers crossed
Two young women from California travel to New Orleans in search of redemption after the death of their mother. Carolee thinks she will show her little sister the world, but what they find in the barrooms of the French Quarter at Mardi Gras is more than she knows how to handle, or could have imagined back home. This is the fifth chapter of the novel Thirsty Work.
My father didn’t think it was a great idea either. Or maybe, more accurately, he didn’t care. He was in his bedroom the morning I told him. I knocked tentatively on the door, cracked it open, leaned close to the blank blonde veneer. “Daddy? Can I come in?”
“What is it?” he answered, irritated. Not exactly an invitation, but not a dismissal either. I opened the door a few more inches, wove my voice through the space. “There’s something I want to talk to you about,” my tone was melodic, ingratiating; my feet securely in the hall.
No answer. I waited a few seconds. “I can come back later…”
“No, forget it. Come in.”
I walked cautiously down the short entryway to his bedroom. He was sitting at his big metal desk, facing the wall. Papers were scattered over the surface, stacked in disorderly piles along the back. Papers covered the top of the tall file cabinet to the right of the desk, the top of the short file cabinet to the left. Papers spilled out of a big cardboard box on the floor. Paper littered his landscape like a voracious weed. Some stacks were covered in a thin, brown dust. One sheet with thin blue veins folded under his foot, gasping for breath.
I sat down on the bed directly behind him, thought maybe I could shellac the entire scene, turn it into a tableau for a museum, call it “Man at Office.”
“What are you working on, Daddy? Taxes already? It’s only January.”
“Just catching up on a few things.” He reluctantly swung his desk chair around to face me. His eyes were cloudy and yellow. His nose porous and red. He wore an old white tee-shirt that was stained yellow under the arms, navy blue polyester pants specked with lint, faux leather slippers with a soft, quilted lining. “So what do you want to talk about?” he crossed his hands over his chest, looked at me without paying attention.
“I just wanted you to know that Cathy and I are thinking of taking a little trip. A friend of ours, you know Doug, is going to New Orleans next month. We’re thinking of meeting him there — for Mardi Gras. A whole bunch of us kids are going. We’ll be gone a few weeks, maybe a month at most.”
He nodded distractedly, looked out the window. I wasn’t sure he’d even heard what I said. A half minute later, he spoke. “Is Cathy going to be out of school by then?”
“Yes, Daddy. You know that! She’s graduating this month. We’re going out to dinner to celebrate.”
“Oh yeah. I guess I do. I must have forgotten.” an old twinkle lit up his eyes, then quickly snuffed. “How are you going to get there?”
“In my car, Silly.” I tried to engage him in my project. “We’re going to bring a frying pan and sleeping bags and camp along the way. I’ve already called Triple A and got the maps and everything.” I felt eager to show him how grown up and efficient I could be.
“New Orleans is a long ways from California. How long do you think it will take you to drive there?” It seemed he was interviewing me for a job in a travel agency, might make indifferent notes on a big yellow pad.
“We’re figuring on a week, if we take it easy. We want to see some of the sights along the way.”
He nodded again. “Where are you going to stay when you get there, with the infamous Aunt Viv?” He almost smiled.
“Well, no, we’re not planning to. Doug is going early to rent an apartment in the French Quarter. We want to be where the action is. But we’ll check in with Aunt Viv, of course. She’ll know where we are. She’ll keep an eye on us.”
“Yeah, I bet,” he snorted derisively. “She’s such a maternal type.” Then he seemed to consider what I was telling him for the first time. “Do you really think New Orleans is a good place to take your little sister? What are you going to do there, get drunk?”
“Well…yes, I guess, a little. I mean, it will be Mardi Gras. But that’s not why I want to go there. It’s just that I’m feeling…”
We had never talked about it, really. The whole thing had happened so fast. We’d discussed the schedules: who would be at the hospital when; who would cover breakfast, lunch and dinner; who would brush her teeth and comb her hair. We’d brought back reports on her condition. But we’d never talked about how we were feeling. Now that I’d started, I didn’t want to stop.
“I’ve been feeling so boxed up, so desperate to get out of here, ever since… ever since Mom told me she was dying.” I closed my eyes, counted back. “Three months ago.”
I looked up to the corner of the ceiling. A loop of dusty, brown cobweb made a tawdry decoration there. I squirmed uncomfortably on the mattress; waited for my father to respond. He was paying attention now. I felt his eyes pasted on me, saw him leaning forward in his chair.
“I feel like I’ve been walking around for months with a big, wet, stinky blanket over my head,” I continued. “I’m cold all the time. I’m always shivering. I just want to get away from this house.”
Daddy stared at me hard and worked his chin. I thought he was moved by my desperation. He rubbed his cheek, as if he had a toothache. “She told you?” he finally blurted.
It wasn’t what I had expected. It took me a moment to shift gears. “What do you mean?”
“She told you she was dying?”
“Yeah,” I nodded slowly, puzzled. “Of course she told me.”
“When? What did she say?” He seemed upset, or angry.
“She was right here, Daddy,” I tried to soothe him with the tone of my voice. “She was folding laundry at the foot of the bed.” I gestured with my hand. “It was the night I had my car accident. You remember. I was talking to her about my plans for Christmas vacation. She said she wasn’t going to be around much longer. She said she probably wouldn’t be here for Christmas.” I was thrown back into the moment.
My mother stood folding the laundry at the foot of the bed. She held a shirt to her chest with her left hand, the sleeves extended to the side with her right, as if she was dancing. The laundry basket brimmed beside her on the mattress.
“What do you mean, you’re not going to be here?” I laughed foolishly from my place on the pillows. “Where are you going to go?”
“The cancer has come back,” she said bluntly. “I’m dying.”
Her words fell onto the clean bedspread like greasy, black, metal car parts. Time stopped as I watched her fold the sleeves over her belly, jacknife the shirt, lay it carefully on the bed, retrieve another. Time stopped, but she continued. I stared at her, stunned.
“That’s not true!” I finally croaked out, in horror.
She nodded grimly, not looking at me, looking down at her laundry. She held onto the basket as if it might float away. Her face was implacable; carved in slate.
“Who says so?” I whispered.
“The doctors.”
“Can’t they do anything?”
She shook her head.
“But when is it…when do they say…when do they say it’s going to happen?” I couldn’t comprehend the horror of what I was asking her. Bitter bile rose to my throat. The bedroom receded down a dark tunnel.
“I’m going into the hospital next week,” I heard her voice swirling in the background. “There’s no telling how long it will take. It could be a month, maybe two.”
My head filled with gasoline. Hot oil splashed inside my chest. I tried to hold down, to hold on. I tried not to detonate. Tension filled the big bedroom to the bursting point. The walls bowed. “I don’t believe you!” I shouted before I rushed and tumbled to my car, sped toward Bristol House through a thick film of tears. Three blocks before I got there, at the corner of Bristol and Rose, a small gray car suddenly appeared on my left. Then my back was against a tree, warm blood spilling down my face. My yellow car upside down on on the bright green lawn.
My mother showed up at the hospital, held my soft hand in her bony one while they stitched up my forehead.
The sound of my father gasping brought me back. My eyes refocused on the worn, brown bedspread. The room seemed emptied of air, strangely dim.
“I’m sorry, Daddy,” I said softly. “I’m sorry I reminded you.”
“It’s not that,” he shook his head, blew his nose loudly.
“She never told me,” he finally bleated. One plump tear slid down a deep crease in his flaccid cheek. “She said she was going to the hospital to get a few tests. She never said she was dying. She never told me she wasn’t back coming out!”
A blue jay shrieked outside the window. The door to the garden creaked open. The dusty cobweb lost its grip on the wall.
“Oh Daddy, I’m sorry,” I put my hand over his. I wanted to put my arms around him, but I couldn’t. We didn’t.
“Maybe she… maybe she was just trying to protect you?”
He covered his damp face with fat fingers and groaned.
Grandma Lillian was not a big fan of the Mardi Gras plan, either. “Your father tells me you and Cathy are planning a trip,” she opened. We were sitting at her dining room table, where I’d been summoned to pick up some homemade raspberry jam and Chex Party Mix. Four little jars of red jam stood in a line on the table, each covered with a hard, white wax lid. The party mix was sealed in a red Folger’s coffee can beside them. I wanted to open the can and pick out a few peanuts, but I suppressed the urge.
“That’s right,” I replied, a little too cheerfully. My fingers fiddled with the tassels on the white lace tablecloth. “We’re going to New Orleans next month.”
“That’s what your father said. To New Orleans,” Grandma nodded. “What made you decide to go there in February?”
“Oh, Grandma, don’t be silly! We’re going for Mardi Gras, of course. And we’ll stop in and see Aunt Viv. Say hello for you.”
“Mardi Gras doesn’t sound like much fun to me,” she continued, ignoring the reference to Viv. “Just one big parade after another. You didn’t want to see the Rose Bowl Parade when you visited your cousins in Anaheim. I thought you didn’t like parades.”
“That’s different. Mardi Gras is exotic! And we’re meeting some friends there. I’m sure it’s going to be fun.”
“Friends? What friends are you meeting in New Orleans?”
“You know Doug. From UOP. He plays football. You like him. He’s the one who came up with the idea.”
“No,” Grandma shook her head. “I can’t say I remember a Doug.” A wisp of white hair escaped her faux bun and stuck straight out from the side of her head, like an antenna. Behind her, in the front bedroom, I saw the gauzy white curtains billow away from the window and heard cars whizzing past on Elmwood Avenue.
“But I have heard that New Orleans is a dangerous place for young ladies. There are a lot of unsavory people who go to Mardi Gras. Your aunt used to tell me stories.”
“Come on Grandma, Cathy and I are going. Our friend Doug is going. We’re all nice people. And if we run into any trouble, we can call Aunt Viv.”
“Humph,” Grandma snorted. “I can’t say that makes me feel any better.”
“Why not, Grandma? What’s wrong with Aunt Viv, anyway? Mom never said anything bad about her. I know you weren’t happy when she decided to stay in New Orleans. But is that the only reason you’re mad at her? It seems like you’re mad about more than that.”
“What a foolish thing to say, Carolee. Of course I’m not mad at Vivian!” Grandma looked off into the living room. Now the stray hair pointed right at me. Her small foot in its tight black shoe made a tiny tapping sound on the hardwood floor. But she didn’t say anything more.
I looked at the small gold seeds in the deep red raspberry jam, plastered up against the jar as if trying to escape. I knew that when I spread the jam on my toast, the little seeds would become grit between my teeth. Some might work into my gums, like splinters.
“Well, Carolee, I can see your mind is already made up. I just hope you don’t regret taking Cathy to a place like that.” Grandma stood up then, a signal that I was dismissed. But as I was gathering up the jars and the can, she remembered something.
“There’s one more thing,” Grandma said. “Put those down a moment. Follow me.” She walked down a short hall to the little back bedroom, her shoes making a click clacking sound on the hardwood floor.
The back bedroom still looked as if it could still belong to two young women, if it weren’t for the musty, mothbally smell. Two twin beds covered with soft, knubby white bedspreads stood against the back wall. There was a table between them. A yellowed lamp. Little white and pink hooked rugs on the floor.
“That one was Mom’s bed, wasn’t it?” I asked, pointing to the one farthest from the door.
Grandma was already in the closet, busily unzipping the plastic bags that were hanging in there. She turned from her task to look at me, puzzled. “Yes, that was Rose’s,” she said softly. “Viv slept over there,” she tilted her head.
As Grandma searched I walked over and sat down on Mom’s bed. The mattress sagged in the middle. I lightly brushed my hand over the bedspread. It was soft, on the verge of disintegration. It seemed with too much touching, the fabric would come apart. When I laid back against the pillow, the bedsprings creaked. Grandma poked her head out of the closet and frowned at me. “Don’t put your feet on the bed,” she scolded.
“I wasn’t.”
I heard the traffic outside; saw beams of sunlight pushing through the yellowed blind and gauzy curtain. “This is what Mom saw when she was a little girl,” I thought. I tried to imagine her more accurately — to become her. On the far wall, was a picture of Jesus in his crown of thorns; pulling open his white robes to show a wounded heart. Grandma’s big rear end poked out from the closet door. “Well, that hasn’t changed any,” I laughed to myself. “Grandma was probably always in this room, throwing her weight around, snooping in the closet, rifling through drawers.”
On the chest of drawers beside me stood a framed picture of the family. My mother, eight or nine, stood on one side of the frame, glaring at the camera. The big, white bow in her hair slipped unceremoniously to one side. Grandma stood in the background, shoulders straight, smile frozen. Her hair was black instead of white, but otherwise she looked the same. Grandpa sat in the center, wearing a hat, a white shirt, and his signature red suspenders — at least they appeared to be red in the black and white photograph. A big cigar poked from between his lips. Aunt Viv nestled on his lap. She had the plump cheeks of a six year old. Her belly button peeped out from between her shorts and shirt, framed by Grandpa’s fat fingers. His thumb disappeared under the edge of her shirt.
“Here it is,” Grandma called, backing out of the closet. She held a pale pink sweater on a padded hanger, iridescent white beads were sewn on the chest in the shape of a flower. She frowned when she saw me. “Get off that bed, Carolee. You’re mussing the covers.”
“No I’m not.”
The sweater had been my mother’s, Grandma told me. She wanted me to have it. She’d been meaning to give it to one of Rose’s daughters for several years. It was too pale, and too old fashioned, and smelled like moth balls. But I was glad to receive it; glad to have something that had belonged to my mother and glad that Grandma had chosen to give it to me. I wasn’t usually her favorite.
“Thanks Grandma.” I gave her a hug. She held her body stiffly.
“You’re welcome.”
As I walked toward the door, Grandma put one small hand on my shoulder. “One more thing, Carolee,” she said softly. “About Aunt Viv.”
“What?” I turned back. Grandma’s eyes were filled with splinters.
“She’s got a wild imagination.”
“What do you mean?” I stared at her.
“Oh nothing,” she released me. “Nothing important. I just want you to know that you can’t always trust her. You be safe. You be careful. Take care of your little sister. And remember, you can’t always believe what Vivian says.”
Follow the free chapter links above or buy a digital copy of the whole book:
Copyright © 2020 by Patsy Fergusson. All rights reserved.
My writing is always free to readers who follow my links from Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn, but if you’d like to browse more, click here to join Medium and help support my work at the same time. Want an email when I publish a new story? Click here. Find more of my fiction, including another novel, on this List. And for more of the good stuff, follow Fourth Wave, where we’re changing the world for the better, one story at a time. Got one of your own? Submit to the Wave!