The Runaways
Dan DeNoon
It took Rosemary several minutes after she woke to realize she wasn’t dreaming. She really was in her father’s Oldsmobile. She really was running away from home, the house where she grew up, where Daddy had taken her after her … accident.
That’s what Daddy insisted on calling it ever since she was six: Was it just an accident that Mother drowned after driving her car into the canal, accelerator floored, no tire marks from desperate braking?
And that’s what he called it this time, when he’d flown up to Philly to check her out of the psych ward and take her back to Miami. An accident that she’d bought her first-ever packet of heroin, intending to OD by snorting the whole thing in the parking lot. Rosemary’s bitter laugh caught in her throat. The only accident had been that someone passing by had run to the corner deli to call an ambulance.
But now why was her head so foggy? She hadn’t taken anything since then. Which was, what? Days ago. Now she really had taken Daddy’s car, and here she was lying in the back seat no less. Yes, not a dream; she’d really stopped to pick up those hitchhikers, standing outside the rest-stop bathrooms with their pathetic “Will Play for Food” signs taped to their guitar boxes. That’s why she was curled up next to that girl in black denim, Julie, no, Georgia was her name. And the boy … Clifton … hah, funny; Clifton “on account of the cleft on my chin,” he’d said, emphasizing the pun in a South Georgia drawl and pointing to the clean-shaven facial feature.
How long had she been out? She rubbed her temples, sat up, drew her hands back through her long hair and checked her watch. About seven o’clock, late summer daylight fading to dusk.
Georgia’s soft snore turned to a cough as the car’s deceleration waked her. Rosemary leaned forward to catch a glance at herself in the rearview mirror, winced, looked away. It had not been a refreshing sleep; the face in the mirror looked a lot older than twenty.
“Where are we?” she demanded, annoyed that her voice sounded more sleepy than authoritative. She reached into her purse for a hairbrush but recoiled as her fingers touched one of the hard plastic pill bottles she’d found in her mother’s old vanity. Damn, she had to be crazy if she was letting a hippie hitchhiker drive. Nearly as crazy as they were to get into her car – before Clifton not-too-gently suggested switching drivers, she’d nodded off and nearly run the car into a ditch.
“Comin’ to the end of the turnpike. How’s about I pay this toll here, and you catch the fill-up at that one of those stations up ahead? This big bucket’s about runnin’ on fumes.” Clifton flipped down the sun visor and retrieved the toll ticket from the built-in pocket.
The girl’s coughing ended in an unwholesome gurgle. Georgia leaned forward and spat into her bandana. Her unevenly cut hair was all spiky on the side where she’d slept on it. “Where are we?” she asked as the car pulled up to the tollbooth.
“The middle of nowhere,” Rosemary said.
“Outskirts of nowhere, actually,” Clifton said. “But we’re gettin’ to nowhere fast.”
Rosemary was slow to get the joke. While she was still trying to formulate a response, he leaned out the window to exchange countrified pleasantries with the collector. The chain on his wallet clinked against the steering wheel as he paid the toll. A few words blew back in the breeze; mismatched pieces of a metaphor involving a horse and a mule. Rosemary thought he laid it on way too thick, but the uniformed woman’s laughter pelted the car as they accelerated away.
Georgia fluffed her hair and smiled at Rosemary’s expression. “Damnedest thing, ain’t it? He could charm the bite off a snake.”
“You’ve got your hands full,” Rosemary agreed.
Clifton powered up the window and grinned back at them. “Well, now that you all are back in the world, maybe we should talk about where we’re going. Rosemary, what you planning to do once you drop us off?”
As if she’d been sucker-punched, Rosemary sat back hard and winded; the first answer that came to mind was the big bottle of pills. After a small eternity she took as deep a breath as she could, forcing air past the steel bands that gripped her lower torso. It came out as a sigh.
Clifton flicked on the turn signal; its metronome clicks tolled in Rosemary’s ears. He reached an arm back over the seat in an exaggerated turn to check the blind spot as he changed lanes, exchanging a quick look with Georgia.
It was Georgia who broke the fraught silence. “Clifton, honey, I see a Waffle House up there on the right. Why don’t you drop me and Rosemary off and we’ll freshen up and order some coffee while you take care of the car.” She turned to Rosemary. “You okay with giving him your gas card?”
Grateful for something to do, Rosemary nodded, then busied herself with retrieving her wallet from her purse without touching anything else that was in there. She wondered what she might do if Clifton never came back, if he were to disappear in the night. It was reassuring to think this – to think that she would have an excuse not to be anywhere at all.
Clifton pulled up to the diner and Georgia popped out of her side of the car, yanking out her guitar case and holding the door open. Rosemary pulled the strap of her pocketbook over her shoulder and slid across the seat. She handed her father’s credit card to Clifton.
“I’ll bring the receipt,” he promised as she swung open the passenger door and climbed out.
Although it was nearly autumn, the air here was just as hot and humid as it had been in Miami. “Fucking Florida,” Rosemary said under her breath. “No seasons, and you can drive all day and still not be anywhere.”
“Say what?” Georgia said, but they both just kept walking toward the glass-enclosed restaurant.
A stout pink woman in a brown polyester uniform nodded at them from behind the counter as they entered. The short-order cook glanced up at them, turned the page of his comic book, and started back down at it. Otherwise the place was empty.
“Two coffees, please,” Georgia said. Rosemary let herself be led past the booths into the small restroom: clean, she noted compulsively, and reeking of pine disinfectant. She went to the sink while Georgia wedged herself and the guitar case into the single stall. Rosemary splashed cold water on her face and risked a look in the mirror as she pressed a coarse brown paper towel to her face then peeled it off like the skin from a burn wound.
Georgia emerged, clutching the black case to her chest and pressing back on tiptoe to let Rosemary by. “I can recommend this stall, madam!” she joked. “I’ll wait at the table, okay?”
Rosemary nodded and took what might be her last look at the young woman’s hennaed hair as it left the room. She wondered: Would Georgia miss her? She unfastened her jeans and automatically thought about covering the seat with paper, then thought what-the-fuck and sat down. In the instant she remembered: Georgia, an over-sharer, told her she’d gotten HIV in the days before rehab. Maybe just to get her sympathy? She’d seemed sincere. Anyway, a good test of the can’t-get-it-from-a-toilet-seat hypothesis, she joked to herself. Well, what the fuck. Maybe this was as good a place as any. She reached into her purse and fingered the pill bottle.
Then there was a letting go and her water poured into the bowl. The wipe and flush were automatic, and before Rosemary could think about the pills she had pulled up her jeans and was out of there, making her escape from this tiny room of stark light and dangerous plumbing.
Georgia’s off-red hair clashed with the orange plastic booth. She sat hunched, stirring sugar into a thick white mug, her open mouth coughing into its thin vapor. She looked up, startled, as Rosemary slid in opposite, then pushed a mug toward her. Rosemary looked into her faded blue eyes and held them a moment too long.
“What?” Georgia asked.
Rosemary’s voice was small. “Nothing. I just forget I’m not the only person in the world sometimes. I’m sorry to be in such a funk.” She stirred whitener into her coffee from the tin creamer and took a sip, cradling the cup in both hands. “What was it that Clifton said when I told him I wasn’t sure how far I’d be going? ‘Only important thang to know is: How you goin’ to act?’ I don’t know, Georgia. Not sure I ever did.”
“Yeah.” Georgia cradled her face in her hands, elbows on either side of her coffee. “Sometimes I sit in a place like this, you know? And I look at all the people going to work or shopping with their kids and I don’t know, it seems like they know exactly how to be that kind of person. Like only my kind came without instructions. Or even a warranty.” She laughed at this and Rosemary was surprised that Georgia could find it amusing.
“But you’re dying.” Rosemary flushed, having blurted out more truth than she’d meant to tell. She looked down into her coffee.
“It may not look like much, but I’m living,” Georgia said. “Was dying, but I’m done with all that; hopin’ for a cure and no more needles in the meanwhile. Funny thing, HIV was the best thing ever happened to me. Put the fear of God into me as they’d say back home in Waycross, ‘though I ain’t no church lady. I’m just through wasting time.”
A wash of headlights lit the windows as the Olds pulled up to park.
“But you’re hitchhiking. And from the way you keep that guitar case so close, at least one of you is either smuggling diamonds or dealing drugs. Clifton may be charming, but he isn’t a prince.”
Georgia caught Rosemary’s eye and smiled at her. “Life’s a bitch, ain’t it? But here’s a secret: the romance between Clifton and me may be kinda one sided, but Clifton needs me. I’m his Jiminy Cricket.”
Clifton sauntered in grinning a too-loud “Howdy” to the waitress. Coffee, hon?” she asked.
“You bet. Hey girls.” He plopped down next to Georgia and snapped the credit card smartly on the table. “Man, that boat can burn some gas. Took about twenty gallons. Here’s the ticket.” He produced a yellow receipt from the flap pocket of his denim jacket and pushed it and the card toward Rosemary.
“You all want to eat?” The waitress set a coffee in front of Clifton, spilling a little on the pitted Formica.
“Give us a minute to look over this fine kroozine,” he said, gesturing at the menu. He took a small napkin from the table dispenser and blotted the spilt coffee while slurping from the mug he held in his other hand. His eyes darted back and forth from Georgia to Rosemary. “What? You two talkin’ about me?”
“What else?” Georgia said.
“Well,” Clifton said, exaggerating the word into a long Way-ull. “If we’re gonna keep going we should maybe think on where we might be headin’. It’s getting on dark, and I don’t fancy sleepin’ outside with the skeeters.”
Rosemary put down her coffee cup. “I don’t really have a plan. I just needed to get out of Miami. Probably I should go back to school. I, uh, took a semester off from Penn.”
“We could make it to Waycross in a few hours,” Georgia said. “Not that anybody there is particularly anxious to see me.”
“Okay, look Rosemary,” Clifton said. “My mama’s place is on up near the Okefenokee. ‘Bout as small a place as ever you saw, but not no double-wide or nothin’. We’re trash, but not trailer trash. Three, four hours we could be there and she’d put us up.”
Rosemary looked from Clifton to Georgia and back; they glanced at each other and returned Rosemary’s stare. “Way-ull,” she mimicked. “Ain’t like I got a better idea.”
The waitress returned with more coffee. “Waffles on me,” Rosemary said. “Least I could do for a night’s lodging.”
As soon as they turned off the highway, darkness surrounded the car, dividing only grudgingly for the twin-beam headlights of the Olds. The pitted two-lane road more or less followed the Suwanee River, Clifton said, but the only signs of water Rosemary could see from the shotgun seat were the looming silhouettes of live oaks, darker somehow than the night. When revealed by the headlights they loomed bearded and ancient, guardians of long-forgotten secrets. But later, just as Clifton turned on to a dirt-road shortcut, the clouds parted to reveal a few brilliant stars that strobed through row after row of timber pines. Soon after they crossed a paved road Clifton turned again onto a softer dirt road that cut directly through the trees.
“Am I going to be able to find my way out of here?” Rosemary asked, peering among the identical trees for a landmark and finding none. For a moment she let herself imagine Clifton and Georgia as crazed killers who would leave her corpse here under the stars, maybe buried under one of these very trees to anonymously mark her grave. What a relief that would be, she thought.
“Oh, yeah, you can stay on paved roads all the way to Fargo,” Clifton said, not answering her question. “But that way you gotta go all the way ‘round your elbow to get to your thumb.”
“He always thinks a shortcut is better, no matter how much longer it takes,” Georgia said from the back seat.
“You don’t think I’m lost, do you?” Clifton said, looking back at Georgia with a defiant tilt of his eponymous chin. The Olds lurched over a bump and Clifton spun the wheel to turn down another unmarked road. Rosemary grasped the armrest and felt her seatbelt go tight across her hips. Unbelted Georgia bounced against the back of her seat and then, regaining her balance, bounced herself forward again to throw her arms around Clifton’s neck.
“Not too lost,” Georgia said. “Not since I found you.”
Clifton grinned and slowed the car. “Well, here we are.” Across a mown but sparse little lawn, lit almost to the point of x-radiation in the yellow-white halogen glare of a megawatt pole-lamp, Rosemary saw a red brick ranch house close to the road. Wincing at the sudden light, Clifton parked in the short asphalt driveway next to a turd-brown Plymouth.
“Mama’s scared some inner-city father-raper’s gonna find his way here and break down her door, so she got this light put up,” he explained.
Rosemary thought it wise not to chime in with her own recent fantasy. “At least there are no neighbors,” she said.
“No such luck. The Putnams just down the road say they can’t hardly see the moon anymore. ‘Course, she still doesn’t lock her door. But you can’t tell Mama nothin’”.
“Always seemed to me like a general rule: You can’t tell anybody anything,” Georgia said. “Especially you.”
“O Lord Jesus, it’s come to philosophy. Come on, let’s go see what Mama’s got on the stove.”
Rosemary checked her watch as they each got out. “It’s after midnight. Nearly twelve-thirty,” she said over the roof as they closed the doors. The three slams resounded like shots through the stillness. An aged grey-brown hound dog on the doorstep raised its head with a weak growl then settled back down with one cloudy eye open.
Georgia, guitar case in hand, waited for Rosemary. “She likes to watch Johnny Carson. She’ll still be on the couch, even if she’s dozed off. But she’s a real light sleeper, let me tell you.”
On cue, a short heavy woman in a faded chenille robe opened the door and stepped out on the stoop. Her thin gray hair was loose on her shoulders. She looked far too old to be Clifton’s mother. The old dog, with great effort, wagged its tail once or twice, made as if to stand and then lay back down. The woman ignored it.
“Evvie, that you?” she asked in a loud little-girl’s voice, pulling her robe close about her neck.
Rosemary thought the woman must be confused until she remembered that Clifton was just a nickname.
“Yeah, it’s me, Mama.” Clifton stepped close and bent down to give her a kiss on the cheek. She didn’t smile, but the sharp lines around her eyes eased. “My friend Rosemary here gave me a ride back from that gig in Florida. It got late so I told her she could spend the night. And you remember Georgia.”
The woman’s face hardened again as she sized them up. Rosemary tried to step forward to offer her hand, but with a tiny turn of the head the woman indicated that they should follow her back into the house.
“Let’s get our stuff,” Clifton said. He opened the trunk and gave the keys back to Rosemary. “If you ever sell this baby let me know.” He handed his instrument case to Georgia and the small suitcase to Rosemary, then took both backpacks himself. Rosemary shut the lid as quietly as she could, but the sound still echoed in the night.
“Lead the way, John Everett. Evvie,” Georgia teased.
The dog growled softly and bared a single fang, but otherwise didn’t move as they entered. The overheated house smelled of stale cooking, talcum, and, even though Rosemary didn’t see a house pet, cat urine. Every flat surface was covered with stacks of paperback romances, yellowed Good Housekeeping magazines, and religious tracts. Dim lights barely penetrated the thick air although light from the outside lamppost seeped through the grimy Venetian blinds and handsewn curtains. Clifton led Rosemary to a guest room stuffed with odds and ends: A floor lamp with no shade, a canister vacuum, an ironing board, and a folded card table lined the walls. Fabric bulged out of the corners of the bureau drawers. An impossibly small bathroom opened off to one side, and a man’s plaid bathrobe dangled to the floor from inside the tiny door, keeping it from opening fully and making a sideways entrance necessary. Rosemary laid her suitcase on the twin bed and waited with Georgia in the hall while Clifton put the backpacks in another small room; through the door Rosemary saw a bunk bed and blue cowboy wallpaper.
“Ol’ Miz Jenkins doesn’t like us staying in the same room, but she pretends that nothing can happen in a bunk bed,” Georgia said. “And come to think of it, she may have a point.”
When Rosemary smiled at this, Georgia took her hand. “First time I’ve seen your real smile,” she said.
She led Rosemary a few steps into the next room. Georgia’s lips tightened to a line. “Listen up,” she said in a hushed voice. “I been there. Where you’re hanging. Seen that face a million times on folks coming into rehab for the first time. Seen it even more times in the looking glass. Peeked in your purse when you were sleeping back there. Big bottle of benzos – you could get like five dollars apiece for those, you know. No, don’t look at me like that, I didn’t take any. Time was, maybe. Thing is, what they tell you isn’t bullshit: One day at a time, okay?”
Focused on Georgia, Rosemary didn’t see that Clifton was now standing in the doorway.
“I don’t know about that rehab stuff,” he said. “Sounds a lot like the old-time religion Georgia and me grew up on, singin’ in the choir and stuff. If there is a heaven, it’s gonna be damn boring with that all-day rendering of glory to God. Seems to me days are few enough without bein’ in any hurry to see what’s next. Only real question? Deciding how you goin’ to act.”
Rosemary drew herself up. “Just stay out of my stuff, okay?”
“C’mon,” Clifton said. “Let’s go see what Mama’s got on the stove.”
As they walked back out through the living room, Clifton pointed to some framed pictures that took up the little space left by the paper stacks. “My sisters and their husbands and my nieces and nephews,” he said. Rosemary looked at the pictures and then back up at him. All of the women seemed old enough to be his mother. He caught her look.
“I’m the youngest,” he explained. “You know, kind of an October surprise? Before he passed on Daddy used to say that was the last time he ever got Mama to do her wifely duty. He was kind of a card.”
“He was a preacher. At, what’s it called, Christ’s Bloodbath Baptist?” Georgia teased. “That’s why this settlement is still here in the middle of paper company land. Nobody can sell out ‘cause it’s all held by the church – what’s it called?”
“Mount Gethsemane Church of Christ,” Clifton said. “Where I spent ever’ Wednesday night and Sunday of my young and impressionable life. You should of seen Daddy preach. He was a real hum dinger.”
“I can imagine.” Rosemary said, softening, imagining his how-you-going-to-act advice embroidered on a throw pillow. And Georgia’s presumption, she had to admit, rang more true than her father’s cold denial that anything could be wrong. Yes, she could easily see Clifton at a pulpit. Probably still an option for him, she thought.
They went into the kitchen where Mrs. Jenkins, an appliqué apron over her robe, was stirring a pot at the stove. The kitchen had the pervasive smell of long-simmering soup, but it was a relief from the rest of the house. The table was set for three, with a pitcher of sweet tea and a jar of instant coffee in the center. Rosemary and Georgia sat while Clifton went to the refrigerator and got a half-gallon jug of milk. He filled his glass and put the jug on the table. Mrs. Jenkins ladled out bowls of soup and set them before each of them. “I got pork chops if anybody wants,” she said, looking directly at no one.
“Thank you, no,” Rosemary said. “This soup smells wonderful.”
Without replying, Clifton’s mother returned with two-thirds of a cold white corn pone. Clifton broke off a piece and crumbled it into his soup. Rosemary tried a spoonful of soup; it had the rich salty taste of stock that has boiled for days. In the mix were various more-or-less identifiable pieces of vegetables and meat, the leftovers of several meals at least.
“You just leave the dishes, I’ll get them in the morning,” Mrs. Jenkins said, wiping her hands on her apron, her eyes still focused on empty space.
“Thank you again, ma’am,” Rosemary said to the woman’s receding back. “I’m sorry to impose on you like this.”
“G’night, Mama,” Clifton said.
Rosemary looked back at her friends with raised eyebrows. “Is she always like that, or am I just not welcome?”
“Don’t let her get to you,” Georgia replied. “She usually doesn’t say that much. I should of warned you about the cornbread. I think she makes it with just meal and water and maybe a little lard.”
“It was Daddy’s favorite dish,” Clifton said. “At least he’d say so when we were having dinner at someone else’s house. I think she started making it like that to get even with him for something and then she forgot how to do it any other way.”
By the time they had finished their soup, Clifton’s eye’s drooped and it looked like his spoon was as heavy as a dumbbell.
“Go on to bed, honey, I’ll get the dishes,” Georgia said.
“I’ll help,” Rosemary offered.
“Not enough room for two here. Why don’t you all go on and I’ll see you in the morning.”
“Thanks for doing the driving,” Rosemary said. “I really don’t know where I’d be without you. Although, come to think of it, I really don’t know where I am. And good night, Georgia. Thanks, really.”
“Anytime,” Clifton said. “I’ll give you directions in the morning. It ain’t that hard to get someplace else if you weren’t born here.”
“Really,” Georgia said. “It’s us who should be thanking you. A straight-shot ride isn’t easy to come by.”
Rosemary made her way to the small bedroom. Her suitcase and pocketbook lay in the center of the bed. “One thing at a time,” she said quietly. She took a nightgown from the valise, then put it back, taking off only her shoes.
As she retrieved her bathroom kit she tried not to look at the pocketbook, but it was growing in mass, becoming a black hole that bent all the light in the room toward it. Rosemary pulled herself out of its orbit and went into the bathroom. She took a long time to brush her teeth and remove the little makeup she was still wearing. When she had rinsed the soap from her face her heart thumped in her chest, but she forced herself to open her eyes and look into the mirror, clutching the sink with both hands and leaning hard on it. She sighed with relief, almost a sob; then, checking the reflection once more, dried her face. She knew her hair would be even more tangled in the morning, but she didn’t have the energy to brush it out now so she shut the bathroom light and went to the bed. The pocketbook with its dread cargo was not so heavy now, it seemed, and she hid it beneath her valise. Then she turned down the bed and got in. The sheets were stiff but only a little musty, so she fluffed the single feather pillow and put out the light.
An alarming vision appeared on the wall opposite the bed: catching a ray of the light outside, the suffering face of Jesus floated before her, painted in glow-in-the-dark blacklight colors, looking heavenward and pointing in the same direction with one thin bloody hand. Rosemary’s heart skipped a beat; the specter’s other hand seemed to beckon to her. She closed her eyes, shook her head, and forced herself to breathe. A long moment later, she looked again at the apparition. Instead of gesturing, Jesus’s other wounded hand held a shepherd’s crook. Rosemary half snorted half laughed. “Not tonight, old sport,” she said aloud.
But when she closed her eyes she found sleep elusive. A vague dread of the next day paralyzed her mind: She couldn’t think clearly about what she was going to do, about what she had done, and she couldn’t not think about it. She thought about all the ways she’d hurt everybody she loved – not least her mother and later her father and Ted. About the weird fairy story her mother had been telling her about the girl who betrayed her prince and leapt to her death — why hadn’t she told Daddy, or anyone? Why did she used to let Daddy hold her like that? Why couldn’t she just fuck Ted as he’d so badly wanted, or at least explain why not? It had been so damn much easier than she’d expected to get the heroin. Flirt a little with the wrong guy in the right bar, hand him some cash, follow him into a smelly men’s room and let him show you how snort a little, then just slip away and do up the whole packet when she got to her car. And yes, it seemed at first to be working; it made all those regrets turn to fog and just drift away.
When Rosemary finally checked her watch it was nearly half past two. Maybe some warm milk would help her sleep. She got up and grabbed the not-too-musty bathrobe from behind the door, pulling it on as she went to the kitchen.
She groped her way to the kitchen. Switching on the light she found a small pan on the sideboard and some milk in the fridge. The gas burner popped as it lit and as it warmed the milk gave off a soporific scent. She had just finished heating it when she became aware of a presence. She looked up to see Mrs. Jenkins’s gruff face regarding her.
“Oh! I’m sorry”! Rosemary blurted. “I couldn’t sleep. The — the excitement of traveling, I guess. I hope it’s all right; I’m heating up a little milk. Would you like some?”
To her surprise, Clifton’s mother’s face warmed a few degrees. “That’d be nice,” she said in her little voice. Rosemary poured her a cup and put some more in the pan to heat.
“It’s awfully good of you to put me up,” she said.
“Christian thing to do.”
Rosemary turned back to the stove. When the milk was hot she poured some out for herself and sat facing Mrs. Jenkins. There were several long moments of silence. Then, without looking directly at her, the old woman began to speak in her odd, childish voice.
“You done good heating the milk not to get a skin on it. I don’t like that.” And then, after a long pause, “You got real pretty hair. Not like that other one.”
Rosemary remained silent, not knowing what to say. Another few moments passed, somehow a bit more easily than before. And then, for no apparent reason and with startling effect, Mrs. Jenkins suddenly looked Rosemary in the eyes, a deep and searching look, at first shifting back and forth to look into one eye and then the other, and then a long eye-to-eye stare. Rosemary looked back at her and at first saw only stubborn defiance. Then, she thought, there was a little spark. Without warning the old woman broke contact and shifted her gaze to the dark window.
“It happened when I was a little girl. That long ago: six and a half years old,” she said without explanation. “It had been a very hard winter, and spring was just startin’ to bust out. Oh, I loved the springtime back then.”
She paused and her lips worked wordlessly for a moment. Just when Rosemary began to fear that she might have suffered a stroke, she began to speak again.
“Then I took sick with the scarlet fever, they said it was, and I had to take to my bed. More than anything I wanted to be outside. All the trees had gone soft with catkins on every twig, and the tulip trees were opening those big cotton-candy flowers. And Mama, she had a peach tree right outside my window. I can still see it full of those pale little orange-pink blossoms. It don’t bloom that way no more. Prettiest sight in the whole world. I asked my daddy would he bring me a bough into my room and he said he would soon as it got light in the morning. Promised he would. But when I woked up …” The lips worked wordlessly again. “When I woked up, all the flowers were gone. The tree was all bare again.”
She again turned her eyes toward Rosemary. Their spark, lacking tinder to ignite, had gone out; with a chill Rosemary saw her mother just before her “accident,” minus Mother’s determination to take one final action. Mrs. Jenkins’s voice was small. “It was winter again, don’t y’ see. I had gone to sleep and missed the whole spring and summer and fall.”
Rosemary didn’t dare speak. She was sure her voice would break. After a moment Mrs. Jenkins got up and slowly padded back to her room. Rosemary lowered her eyes and stared into her milk. It was white as bleached bone.
The next morning, the sound of the Olds roaring to life half-roused Rosemary from a dream. Her mother was telling her a fairy tale about a girl named Ybarra, a girl who at first seemed just like Rosemary but who, as the story progressed, was clearly more and more like Mother. They sat at Mother’s beautiful vanity and as Mother talked she ran a silver brush through Rosemary’s hair. Her hair grew longer with every stroke, until the brush suddenly caught on a snarl and just as the girl cried out in pain Rosemary came fully awake.
She rushed to her purse. The keys were gone; the credit cards were still there. A note on yellow paper was where the bottle of sleeping pills had been. “Had to go on up to Waycross for a little bit,” it read in a surprisingly legible script. “Don’t worry about the benzos. We’ll hand over what we get for them.”
Rosemary smoothed the clothing she’d slept in and followed the smell of fried bacon into the kitchen. Mrs. Jenkins, wearing the same robe and apron, was at the kitchen table drinking instant coffee and reading a paperback. “Them two always in such a hurry,” she said, then looked up at Rosemary with a little smile. “If they ain’t back before tomorrow you can come with me to church.”
“I’d like that,” Rosemary said. She poured herself some coffee and picked up a spoon to stir the pot of grits keeping warm on the stove. Outside the kitchen window she saw a small grassy back yard. A perfect place for a peach tree. In her mind’s eye she saw it standing there, its boughs heavy with fruit.
Dan DeNoon
It took Rosemary several minutes after she woke to realize she wasn’t dreaming. She really was in her father’s Oldsmobile. She really was running away from home, the house where she grew up, where Daddy had taken her after her … accident.
That’s what Daddy insisted on calling it ever since she was six: Was it just an accident that Mother drowned after driving her car into the canal, accelerator floored, no tire marks from desperate braking?
And that’s what he called it this time, when he’d flown up to Philly to check her out of the psych ward and take her back to Miami. An accident that she’d bought her first-ever packet of heroin, intending to OD by snorting the whole thing in the parking lot. Rosemary’s bitter laugh caught in her throat. The only accident had been that someone passing by had run to the corner deli to call an ambulance.
But now why was her head so foggy? She hadn’t taken anything since then. Which was, what? Days ago. Now she really had taken Daddy’s car, and here she was lying in the back seat no less. Yes, not a dream; she’d really stopped to pick up those hitchhikers, standing outside the rest-stop bathrooms with their pathetic “Will Play for Food” signs taped to their guitar boxes. That’s why she was curled up next to that girl in black denim, Julie, no, Georgia was her name. And the boy … Clifton … hah, funny; Clifton “on account of the cleft on my chin,” he’d said, emphasizing the pun in a South Georgia drawl and pointing to the clean-shaven facial feature.
How long had she been out? She rubbed her temples, sat up, drew her hands back through her long hair and checked her watch. About seven o’clock, late summer daylight fading to dusk.
Georgia’s soft snore turned to a cough as the car’s deceleration waked her. Rosemary leaned forward to catch a glance at herself in the rearview mirror, winced, looked away. It had not been a refreshing sleep; the face in the mirror looked a lot older than twenty.
“Where are we?” she demanded, annoyed that her voice sounded more sleepy than authoritative. She reached into her purse for a hairbrush but recoiled as her fingers touched one of the hard plastic pill bottles she’d found in her mother’s old vanity. Damn, she had to be crazy if she was letting a hippie hitchhiker drive. Nearly as crazy as they were to get into her car – before Clifton not-too-gently suggested switching drivers, she’d nodded off and nearly run the car into a ditch.
“Comin’ to the end of the turnpike. How’s about I pay this toll here, and you catch the fill-up at that one of those stations up ahead? This big bucket’s about runnin’ on fumes.” Clifton flipped down the sun visor and retrieved the toll ticket from the built-in pocket.
The girl’s coughing ended in an unwholesome gurgle. Georgia leaned forward and spat into her bandana. Her unevenly cut hair was all spiky on the side where she’d slept on it. “Where are we?” she asked as the car pulled up to the tollbooth.
“The middle of nowhere,” Rosemary said.
“Outskirts of nowhere, actually,” Clifton said. “But we’re gettin’ to nowhere fast.”
Rosemary was slow to get the joke. While she was still trying to formulate a response, he leaned out the window to exchange countrified pleasantries with the collector. The chain on his wallet clinked against the steering wheel as he paid the toll. A few words blew back in the breeze; mismatched pieces of a metaphor involving a horse and a mule. Rosemary thought he laid it on way too thick, but the uniformed woman’s laughter pelted the car as they accelerated away.
Georgia fluffed her hair and smiled at Rosemary’s expression. “Damnedest thing, ain’t it? He could charm the bite off a snake.”
“You’ve got your hands full,” Rosemary agreed.
Clifton powered up the window and grinned back at them. “Well, now that you all are back in the world, maybe we should talk about where we’re going. Rosemary, what you planning to do once you drop us off?”
As if she’d been sucker-punched, Rosemary sat back hard and winded; the first answer that came to mind was the big bottle of pills. After a small eternity she took as deep a breath as she could, forcing air past the steel bands that gripped her lower torso. It came out as a sigh.
Clifton flicked on the turn signal; its metronome clicks tolled in Rosemary’s ears. He reached an arm back over the seat in an exaggerated turn to check the blind spot as he changed lanes, exchanging a quick look with Georgia.
It was Georgia who broke the fraught silence. “Clifton, honey, I see a Waffle House up there on the right. Why don’t you drop me and Rosemary off and we’ll freshen up and order some coffee while you take care of the car.” She turned to Rosemary. “You okay with giving him your gas card?”
Grateful for something to do, Rosemary nodded, then busied herself with retrieving her wallet from her purse without touching anything else that was in there. She wondered what she might do if Clifton never came back, if he were to disappear in the night. It was reassuring to think this – to think that she would have an excuse not to be anywhere at all.
Clifton pulled up to the diner and Georgia popped out of her side of the car, yanking out her guitar case and holding the door open. Rosemary pulled the strap of her pocketbook over her shoulder and slid across the seat. She handed her father’s credit card to Clifton.
“I’ll bring the receipt,” he promised as she swung open the passenger door and climbed out.
Although it was nearly autumn, the air here was just as hot and humid as it had been in Miami. “Fucking Florida,” Rosemary said under her breath. “No seasons, and you can drive all day and still not be anywhere.”
“Say what?” Georgia said, but they both just kept walking toward the glass-enclosed restaurant.
A stout pink woman in a brown polyester uniform nodded at them from behind the counter as they entered. The short-order cook glanced up at them, turned the page of his comic book, and started back down at it. Otherwise the place was empty.
“Two coffees, please,” Georgia said. Rosemary let herself be led past the booths into the small restroom: clean, she noted compulsively, and reeking of pine disinfectant. She went to the sink while Georgia wedged herself and the guitar case into the single stall. Rosemary splashed cold water on her face and risked a look in the mirror as she pressed a coarse brown paper towel to her face then peeled it off like the skin from a burn wound.
Georgia emerged, clutching the black case to her chest and pressing back on tiptoe to let Rosemary by. “I can recommend this stall, madam!” she joked. “I’ll wait at the table, okay?”
Rosemary nodded and took what might be her last look at the young woman’s hennaed hair as it left the room. She wondered: Would Georgia miss her? She unfastened her jeans and automatically thought about covering the seat with paper, then thought what-the-fuck and sat down. In the instant she remembered: Georgia, an over-sharer, told her she’d gotten HIV in the days before rehab. Maybe just to get her sympathy? She’d seemed sincere. Anyway, a good test of the can’t-get-it-from-a-toilet-seat hypothesis, she joked to herself. Well, what the fuck. Maybe this was as good a place as any. She reached into her purse and fingered the pill bottle.
Then there was a letting go and her water poured into the bowl. The wipe and flush were automatic, and before Rosemary could think about the pills she had pulled up her jeans and was out of there, making her escape from this tiny room of stark light and dangerous plumbing.
Georgia’s off-red hair clashed with the orange plastic booth. She sat hunched, stirring sugar into a thick white mug, her open mouth coughing into its thin vapor. She looked up, startled, as Rosemary slid in opposite, then pushed a mug toward her. Rosemary looked into her faded blue eyes and held them a moment too long.
“What?” Georgia asked.
Rosemary’s voice was small. “Nothing. I just forget I’m not the only person in the world sometimes. I’m sorry to be in such a funk.” She stirred whitener into her coffee from the tin creamer and took a sip, cradling the cup in both hands. “What was it that Clifton said when I told him I wasn’t sure how far I’d be going? ‘Only important thang to know is: How you goin’ to act?’ I don’t know, Georgia. Not sure I ever did.”
“Yeah.” Georgia cradled her face in her hands, elbows on either side of her coffee. “Sometimes I sit in a place like this, you know? And I look at all the people going to work or shopping with their kids and I don’t know, it seems like they know exactly how to be that kind of person. Like only my kind came without instructions. Or even a warranty.” She laughed at this and Rosemary was surprised that Georgia could find it amusing.
“But you’re dying.” Rosemary flushed, having blurted out more truth than she’d meant to tell. She looked down into her coffee.
“It may not look like much, but I’m living,” Georgia said. “Was dying, but I’m done with all that; hopin’ for a cure and no more needles in the meanwhile. Funny thing, HIV was the best thing ever happened to me. Put the fear of God into me as they’d say back home in Waycross, ‘though I ain’t no church lady. I’m just through wasting time.”
A wash of headlights lit the windows as the Olds pulled up to park.
“But you’re hitchhiking. And from the way you keep that guitar case so close, at least one of you is either smuggling diamonds or dealing drugs. Clifton may be charming, but he isn’t a prince.”
Georgia caught Rosemary’s eye and smiled at her. “Life’s a bitch, ain’t it? But here’s a secret: the romance between Clifton and me may be kinda one sided, but Clifton needs me. I’m his Jiminy Cricket.”
Clifton sauntered in grinning a too-loud “Howdy” to the waitress. Coffee, hon?” she asked.
“You bet. Hey girls.” He plopped down next to Georgia and snapped the credit card smartly on the table. “Man, that boat can burn some gas. Took about twenty gallons. Here’s the ticket.” He produced a yellow receipt from the flap pocket of his denim jacket and pushed it and the card toward Rosemary.
“You all want to eat?” The waitress set a coffee in front of Clifton, spilling a little on the pitted Formica.
“Give us a minute to look over this fine kroozine,” he said, gesturing at the menu. He took a small napkin from the table dispenser and blotted the spilt coffee while slurping from the mug he held in his other hand. His eyes darted back and forth from Georgia to Rosemary. “What? You two talkin’ about me?”
“What else?” Georgia said.
“Well,” Clifton said, exaggerating the word into a long Way-ull. “If we’re gonna keep going we should maybe think on where we might be headin’. It’s getting on dark, and I don’t fancy sleepin’ outside with the skeeters.”
Rosemary put down her coffee cup. “I don’t really have a plan. I just needed to get out of Miami. Probably I should go back to school. I, uh, took a semester off from Penn.”
“We could make it to Waycross in a few hours,” Georgia said. “Not that anybody there is particularly anxious to see me.”
“Okay, look Rosemary,” Clifton said. “My mama’s place is on up near the Okefenokee. ‘Bout as small a place as ever you saw, but not no double-wide or nothin’. We’re trash, but not trailer trash. Three, four hours we could be there and she’d put us up.”
Rosemary looked from Clifton to Georgia and back; they glanced at each other and returned Rosemary’s stare. “Way-ull,” she mimicked. “Ain’t like I got a better idea.”
The waitress returned with more coffee. “Waffles on me,” Rosemary said. “Least I could do for a night’s lodging.”
As soon as they turned off the highway, darkness surrounded the car, dividing only grudgingly for the twin-beam headlights of the Olds. The pitted two-lane road more or less followed the Suwanee River, Clifton said, but the only signs of water Rosemary could see from the shotgun seat were the looming silhouettes of live oaks, darker somehow than the night. When revealed by the headlights they loomed bearded and ancient, guardians of long-forgotten secrets. But later, just as Clifton turned on to a dirt-road shortcut, the clouds parted to reveal a few brilliant stars that strobed through row after row of timber pines. Soon after they crossed a paved road Clifton turned again onto a softer dirt road that cut directly through the trees.
“Am I going to be able to find my way out of here?” Rosemary asked, peering among the identical trees for a landmark and finding none. For a moment she let herself imagine Clifton and Georgia as crazed killers who would leave her corpse here under the stars, maybe buried under one of these very trees to anonymously mark her grave. What a relief that would be, she thought.
“Oh, yeah, you can stay on paved roads all the way to Fargo,” Clifton said, not answering her question. “But that way you gotta go all the way ‘round your elbow to get to your thumb.”
“He always thinks a shortcut is better, no matter how much longer it takes,” Georgia said from the back seat.
“You don’t think I’m lost, do you?” Clifton said, looking back at Georgia with a defiant tilt of his eponymous chin. The Olds lurched over a bump and Clifton spun the wheel to turn down another unmarked road. Rosemary grasped the armrest and felt her seatbelt go tight across her hips. Unbelted Georgia bounced against the back of her seat and then, regaining her balance, bounced herself forward again to throw her arms around Clifton’s neck.
“Not too lost,” Georgia said. “Not since I found you.”
Clifton grinned and slowed the car. “Well, here we are.” Across a mown but sparse little lawn, lit almost to the point of x-radiation in the yellow-white halogen glare of a megawatt pole-lamp, Rosemary saw a red brick ranch house close to the road. Wincing at the sudden light, Clifton parked in the short asphalt driveway next to a turd-brown Plymouth.
“Mama’s scared some inner-city father-raper’s gonna find his way here and break down her door, so she got this light put up,” he explained.
Rosemary thought it wise not to chime in with her own recent fantasy. “At least there are no neighbors,” she said.
“No such luck. The Putnams just down the road say they can’t hardly see the moon anymore. ‘Course, she still doesn’t lock her door. But you can’t tell Mama nothin’”.
“Always seemed to me like a general rule: You can’t tell anybody anything,” Georgia said. “Especially you.”
“O Lord Jesus, it’s come to philosophy. Come on, let’s go see what Mama’s got on the stove.”
Rosemary checked her watch as they each got out. “It’s after midnight. Nearly twelve-thirty,” she said over the roof as they closed the doors. The three slams resounded like shots through the stillness. An aged grey-brown hound dog on the doorstep raised its head with a weak growl then settled back down with one cloudy eye open.
Georgia, guitar case in hand, waited for Rosemary. “She likes to watch Johnny Carson. She’ll still be on the couch, even if she’s dozed off. But she’s a real light sleeper, let me tell you.”
On cue, a short heavy woman in a faded chenille robe opened the door and stepped out on the stoop. Her thin gray hair was loose on her shoulders. She looked far too old to be Clifton’s mother. The old dog, with great effort, wagged its tail once or twice, made as if to stand and then lay back down. The woman ignored it.
“Evvie, that you?” she asked in a loud little-girl’s voice, pulling her robe close about her neck.
Rosemary thought the woman must be confused until she remembered that Clifton was just a nickname.
“Yeah, it’s me, Mama.” Clifton stepped close and bent down to give her a kiss on the cheek. She didn’t smile, but the sharp lines around her eyes eased. “My friend Rosemary here gave me a ride back from that gig in Florida. It got late so I told her she could spend the night. And you remember Georgia.”
The woman’s face hardened again as she sized them up. Rosemary tried to step forward to offer her hand, but with a tiny turn of the head the woman indicated that they should follow her back into the house.
“Let’s get our stuff,” Clifton said. He opened the trunk and gave the keys back to Rosemary. “If you ever sell this baby let me know.” He handed his instrument case to Georgia and the small suitcase to Rosemary, then took both backpacks himself. Rosemary shut the lid as quietly as she could, but the sound still echoed in the night.
“Lead the way, John Everett. Evvie,” Georgia teased.
The dog growled softly and bared a single fang, but otherwise didn’t move as they entered. The overheated house smelled of stale cooking, talcum, and, even though Rosemary didn’t see a house pet, cat urine. Every flat surface was covered with stacks of paperback romances, yellowed Good Housekeeping magazines, and religious tracts. Dim lights barely penetrated the thick air although light from the outside lamppost seeped through the grimy Venetian blinds and handsewn curtains. Clifton led Rosemary to a guest room stuffed with odds and ends: A floor lamp with no shade, a canister vacuum, an ironing board, and a folded card table lined the walls. Fabric bulged out of the corners of the bureau drawers. An impossibly small bathroom opened off to one side, and a man’s plaid bathrobe dangled to the floor from inside the tiny door, keeping it from opening fully and making a sideways entrance necessary. Rosemary laid her suitcase on the twin bed and waited with Georgia in the hall while Clifton put the backpacks in another small room; through the door Rosemary saw a bunk bed and blue cowboy wallpaper.
“Ol’ Miz Jenkins doesn’t like us staying in the same room, but she pretends that nothing can happen in a bunk bed,” Georgia said. “And come to think of it, she may have a point.”
When Rosemary smiled at this, Georgia took her hand. “First time I’ve seen your real smile,” she said.
She led Rosemary a few steps into the next room. Georgia’s lips tightened to a line. “Listen up,” she said in a hushed voice. “I been there. Where you’re hanging. Seen that face a million times on folks coming into rehab for the first time. Seen it even more times in the looking glass. Peeked in your purse when you were sleeping back there. Big bottle of benzos – you could get like five dollars apiece for those, you know. No, don’t look at me like that, I didn’t take any. Time was, maybe. Thing is, what they tell you isn’t bullshit: One day at a time, okay?”
Focused on Georgia, Rosemary didn’t see that Clifton was now standing in the doorway.
“I don’t know about that rehab stuff,” he said. “Sounds a lot like the old-time religion Georgia and me grew up on, singin’ in the choir and stuff. If there is a heaven, it’s gonna be damn boring with that all-day rendering of glory to God. Seems to me days are few enough without bein’ in any hurry to see what’s next. Only real question? Deciding how you goin’ to act.”
Rosemary drew herself up. “Just stay out of my stuff, okay?”
“C’mon,” Clifton said. “Let’s go see what Mama’s got on the stove.”
As they walked back out through the living room, Clifton pointed to some framed pictures that took up the little space left by the paper stacks. “My sisters and their husbands and my nieces and nephews,” he said. Rosemary looked at the pictures and then back up at him. All of the women seemed old enough to be his mother. He caught her look.
“I’m the youngest,” he explained. “You know, kind of an October surprise? Before he passed on Daddy used to say that was the last time he ever got Mama to do her wifely duty. He was kind of a card.”
“He was a preacher. At, what’s it called, Christ’s Bloodbath Baptist?” Georgia teased. “That’s why this settlement is still here in the middle of paper company land. Nobody can sell out ‘cause it’s all held by the church – what’s it called?”
“Mount Gethsemane Church of Christ,” Clifton said. “Where I spent ever’ Wednesday night and Sunday of my young and impressionable life. You should of seen Daddy preach. He was a real hum dinger.”
“I can imagine.” Rosemary said, softening, imagining his how-you-going-to-act advice embroidered on a throw pillow. And Georgia’s presumption, she had to admit, rang more true than her father’s cold denial that anything could be wrong. Yes, she could easily see Clifton at a pulpit. Probably still an option for him, she thought.
They went into the kitchen where Mrs. Jenkins, an appliqué apron over her robe, was stirring a pot at the stove. The kitchen had the pervasive smell of long-simmering soup, but it was a relief from the rest of the house. The table was set for three, with a pitcher of sweet tea and a jar of instant coffee in the center. Rosemary and Georgia sat while Clifton went to the refrigerator and got a half-gallon jug of milk. He filled his glass and put the jug on the table. Mrs. Jenkins ladled out bowls of soup and set them before each of them. “I got pork chops if anybody wants,” she said, looking directly at no one.
“Thank you, no,” Rosemary said. “This soup smells wonderful.”
Without replying, Clifton’s mother returned with two-thirds of a cold white corn pone. Clifton broke off a piece and crumbled it into his soup. Rosemary tried a spoonful of soup; it had the rich salty taste of stock that has boiled for days. In the mix were various more-or-less identifiable pieces of vegetables and meat, the leftovers of several meals at least.
“You just leave the dishes, I’ll get them in the morning,” Mrs. Jenkins said, wiping her hands on her apron, her eyes still focused on empty space.
“Thank you again, ma’am,” Rosemary said to the woman’s receding back. “I’m sorry to impose on you like this.”
“G’night, Mama,” Clifton said.
Rosemary looked back at her friends with raised eyebrows. “Is she always like that, or am I just not welcome?”
“Don’t let her get to you,” Georgia replied. “She usually doesn’t say that much. I should of warned you about the cornbread. I think she makes it with just meal and water and maybe a little lard.”
“It was Daddy’s favorite dish,” Clifton said. “At least he’d say so when we were having dinner at someone else’s house. I think she started making it like that to get even with him for something and then she forgot how to do it any other way.”
By the time they had finished their soup, Clifton’s eye’s drooped and it looked like his spoon was as heavy as a dumbbell.
“Go on to bed, honey, I’ll get the dishes,” Georgia said.
“I’ll help,” Rosemary offered.
“Not enough room for two here. Why don’t you all go on and I’ll see you in the morning.”
“Thanks for doing the driving,” Rosemary said. “I really don’t know where I’d be without you. Although, come to think of it, I really don’t know where I am. And good night, Georgia. Thanks, really.”
“Anytime,” Clifton said. “I’ll give you directions in the morning. It ain’t that hard to get someplace else if you weren’t born here.”
“Really,” Georgia said. “It’s us who should be thanking you. A straight-shot ride isn’t easy to come by.”
Rosemary made her way to the small bedroom. Her suitcase and pocketbook lay in the center of the bed. “One thing at a time,” she said quietly. She took a nightgown from the valise, then put it back, taking off only her shoes.
As she retrieved her bathroom kit she tried not to look at the pocketbook, but it was growing in mass, becoming a black hole that bent all the light in the room toward it. Rosemary pulled herself out of its orbit and went into the bathroom. She took a long time to brush her teeth and remove the little makeup she was still wearing. When she had rinsed the soap from her face her heart thumped in her chest, but she forced herself to open her eyes and look into the mirror, clutching the sink with both hands and leaning hard on it. She sighed with relief, almost a sob; then, checking the reflection once more, dried her face. She knew her hair would be even more tangled in the morning, but she didn’t have the energy to brush it out now so she shut the bathroom light and went to the bed. The pocketbook with its dread cargo was not so heavy now, it seemed, and she hid it beneath her valise. Then she turned down the bed and got in. The sheets were stiff but only a little musty, so she fluffed the single feather pillow and put out the light.
An alarming vision appeared on the wall opposite the bed: catching a ray of the light outside, the suffering face of Jesus floated before her, painted in glow-in-the-dark blacklight colors, looking heavenward and pointing in the same direction with one thin bloody hand. Rosemary’s heart skipped a beat; the specter’s other hand seemed to beckon to her. She closed her eyes, shook her head, and forced herself to breathe. A long moment later, she looked again at the apparition. Instead of gesturing, Jesus’s other wounded hand held a shepherd’s crook. Rosemary half snorted half laughed. “Not tonight, old sport,” she said aloud.
But when she closed her eyes she found sleep elusive. A vague dread of the next day paralyzed her mind: She couldn’t think clearly about what she was going to do, about what she had done, and she couldn’t not think about it. She thought about all the ways she’d hurt everybody she loved – not least her mother and later her father and Ted. About the weird fairy story her mother had been telling her about the girl who betrayed her prince and leapt to her death — why hadn’t she told Daddy, or anyone? Why did she used to let Daddy hold her like that? Why couldn’t she just fuck Ted as he’d so badly wanted, or at least explain why not? It had been so damn much easier than she’d expected to get the heroin. Flirt a little with the wrong guy in the right bar, hand him some cash, follow him into a smelly men’s room and let him show you how snort a little, then just slip away and do up the whole packet when she got to her car. And yes, it seemed at first to be working; it made all those regrets turn to fog and just drift away.
When Rosemary finally checked her watch it was nearly half past two. Maybe some warm milk would help her sleep. She got up and grabbed the not-too-musty bathrobe from behind the door, pulling it on as she went to the kitchen.
She groped her way to the kitchen. Switching on the light she found a small pan on the sideboard and some milk in the fridge. The gas burner popped as it lit and as it warmed the milk gave off a soporific scent. She had just finished heating it when she became aware of a presence. She looked up to see Mrs. Jenkins’s gruff face regarding her.
“Oh! I’m sorry”! Rosemary blurted. “I couldn’t sleep. The — the excitement of traveling, I guess. I hope it’s all right; I’m heating up a little milk. Would you like some?”
To her surprise, Clifton’s mother’s face warmed a few degrees. “That’d be nice,” she said in her little voice. Rosemary poured her a cup and put some more in the pan to heat.
“It’s awfully good of you to put me up,” she said.
“Christian thing to do.”
Rosemary turned back to the stove. When the milk was hot she poured some out for herself and sat facing Mrs. Jenkins. There were several long moments of silence. Then, without looking directly at her, the old woman began to speak in her odd, childish voice.
“You done good heating the milk not to get a skin on it. I don’t like that.” And then, after a long pause, “You got real pretty hair. Not like that other one.”
Rosemary remained silent, not knowing what to say. Another few moments passed, somehow a bit more easily than before. And then, for no apparent reason and with startling effect, Mrs. Jenkins suddenly looked Rosemary in the eyes, a deep and searching look, at first shifting back and forth to look into one eye and then the other, and then a long eye-to-eye stare. Rosemary looked back at her and at first saw only stubborn defiance. Then, she thought, there was a little spark. Without warning the old woman broke contact and shifted her gaze to the dark window.
“It happened when I was a little girl. That long ago: six and a half years old,” she said without explanation. “It had been a very hard winter, and spring was just startin’ to bust out. Oh, I loved the springtime back then.”
She paused and her lips worked wordlessly for a moment. Just when Rosemary began to fear that she might have suffered a stroke, she began to speak again.
“Then I took sick with the scarlet fever, they said it was, and I had to take to my bed. More than anything I wanted to be outside. All the trees had gone soft with catkins on every twig, and the tulip trees were opening those big cotton-candy flowers. And Mama, she had a peach tree right outside my window. I can still see it full of those pale little orange-pink blossoms. It don’t bloom that way no more. Prettiest sight in the whole world. I asked my daddy would he bring me a bough into my room and he said he would soon as it got light in the morning. Promised he would. But when I woked up …” The lips worked wordlessly again. “When I woked up, all the flowers were gone. The tree was all bare again.”
She again turned her eyes toward Rosemary. Their spark, lacking tinder to ignite, had gone out; with a chill Rosemary saw her mother just before her “accident,” minus Mother’s determination to take one final action. Mrs. Jenkins’s voice was small. “It was winter again, don’t y’ see. I had gone to sleep and missed the whole spring and summer and fall.”
Rosemary didn’t dare speak. She was sure her voice would break. After a moment Mrs. Jenkins got up and slowly padded back to her room. Rosemary lowered her eyes and stared into her milk. It was white as bleached bone.
The next morning, the sound of the Olds roaring to life half-roused Rosemary from a dream. Her mother was telling her a fairy tale about a girl named Ybarra, a girl who at first seemed just like Rosemary but who, as the story progressed, was clearly more and more like Mother. They sat at Mother’s beautiful vanity and as Mother talked she ran a silver brush through Rosemary’s hair. Her hair grew longer with every stroke, until the brush suddenly caught on a snarl and just as the girl cried out in pain Rosemary came fully awake.
She rushed to her purse. The keys were gone; the credit cards were still there. A note on yellow paper was where the bottle of sleeping pills had been. “Had to go on up to Waycross for a little bit,” it read in a surprisingly legible script. “Don’t worry about the benzos. We’ll hand over what we get for them.”
Rosemary smoothed the clothing she’d slept in and followed the smell of fried bacon into the kitchen. Mrs. Jenkins, wearing the same robe and apron, was at the kitchen table drinking instant coffee and reading a paperback. “Them two always in such a hurry,” she said, then looked up at Rosemary with a little smile. “If they ain’t back before tomorrow you can come with me to church.”
“I’d like that,” Rosemary said. She poured herself some coffee and picked up a spoon to stir the pot of grits keeping warm on the stove. Outside the kitchen window she saw a small grassy back yard. A perfect place for a peach tree. In her mind’s eye she saw it standing there, its boughs heavy with fruit.
