Summer evenings in Maryville are just about as hot as any other time of the day, but at least once the sun starts going down in the sky you don’t feel quite so much like an egg frying on a pan anymore. I stuck my arm out the window of Daddy’s pickup and felt the wind play over it, still thick with humidity even when we were going nearly fifty miles an hour, trying to pretend like it was Thanksgiving time and I was sitting outside in the crisp chill of fall.
We’d been waiting four days for the tractor belt to come into Anton’s store—four days when Daddy couldn’t use the tractor at all. Finally, on Thursday evening, Anton had called Daddy and told him the belt had come in.
“I gotta drive over and pay for it after dinner,” Daddy had said, “and hopefully I can get it in before dark tonight.” He’d scratched the back of his neck and frowned a little. “Hope I can remember how to put it in.”
“Ask Anton for a refresher,” Mama said, wiping spaghetti sauce off Mylie’s forehead.
“Yeah. I’ll have to.” Before Grandpa Kelly’s stroke, he’d always been the one to do most of the repairs.
“Can I come with you, Daddy?” I asked.
Daddy shrugged and looked at Mama. “Long as that’s okay with you, Suzie.”
“Sure,” said Mama. She didn’t even have to nag at me to load up the dinner dishes, like normal; all week long, I’d been doing my chores and plenty of hers, too, giving her as much rest as I possibly could.
I just hoped it would be enough. I still couldn’t think about Miss Tabitha and her magic honey without curling my hands into fists, so angry and sad I could scream. Surely if she’d wanted to help bad enough, she could’ve. Hadn’t that Quigley honey been responsible for miracles in Maryville longer than I’d been alive?
I ducked into my bedroom and found the little blue book of poems by Emily Dickinson sitting on my dresser. I hadn’t touched it since Saturday morning—every time I saw it there in my room, it was like I could hear Mylie’s screaming in my ears, see the blood where Mama had chewed her lip to the quick listening but not helping. I couldn’t stop thinking about it, how I could’ve done more, could’ve been there when Mama and Mylie needed me.
It wasn’t the book’s fault, everything that had happened . . . but maybe it was mine. If I’d been faster with those eggs, if I’d been doing what I was supposed to and not sneaking in time to read poems I didn’t even understand, maybe I’d have been fast enough to help get to Mylie before it got so bad.
Maybe I’d even have been able to talk Mama back into her right self, help her see how wrong her thinking had gone.
I took one last long look at Miss Emily’s book and then slid it into my purse, zipping it up so I wouldn’t be tempted to take it out again.
That purse was sitting on my lap now, bouncing a little when Daddy bumped the truck over a pothole. The weight of it felt secret and sad, like the time I walked into Arden’s house and Miss Amanda was sitting in the living room crying, crying over the little black ultrasound picture of a baby that was never born. I’d snuck past her and gone right out the back door to find Arden, and never told either of them what I’d heard or seen. I wasn’t sure why feeling the book resting on my knees gave me that same mix of shame and hot, teary prickles at the back of my throat, but it did.
The little box library was sitting out in front of the gas station just like the day Thomas put it there. I wanted to go over to it, run my fingers over all those spines again and see if any of the titles had changed, but I didn’t trust myself to be able to put Emily Dickinson back in there without taking something else out. Tonight wasn’t about getting a new book to read; tonight was about clearing up space in my head so that I could help Mama the way she needed me to, without being distracted by books or playing or anything else.
If I was going to fix Mama, it was going to take everything I had.
I followed Daddy over to the door of the Duck-Thru Food Store, but the light inside was turned off, and when Daddy pulled on the handle, it was locked. Daddy peered inside for a minute before noticing a little sign taped to the front of the door: Please Come Around Back to the House. Without a word, Daddy set off around the corner of the convenience store and down the driveway of Mr. Anton’s small brick house.
Next to the house, wrapped in a small wooden fence to keep the deer away (Not that it helps that much, Mr. Anton had told me once in a rueful voice), there was a little kitchen garden where collard greens grew high and tomato vines burst with bright red fruit. Old-timey wildflowers grew all around the path up to the doorway—blue bachelor’s buttons and red poppies and pink and white daisy-looking cosmos.
Daddy only knocked once or twice before the door opened, Mr. Anton standing so tall I thought he might hit his head on the door frame.
“Miles! Come on in. Let me get my shoes back on and I’ll go get your belt from the store.” Mr. Anton’s entryway was deliciously cool and dim, and the smell of fresh-cooked cornbread came from the kitchen. “Hey there, Della. How are you doing?”
“Just fine,” I said, even though that was probably seven-eighths a lie.
“And how about Suzanne, Miles? She still feeling under the weather?”
“She’s fine,” said Daddy, sounding as casual as could be.
“Glad to hear it.”
“You might have to refresh my memory on how to install the belt, Anton. I confess I’ve never done it by myself.”
“Sure,” said Mr. Anton, following Daddy. I didn’t move.
“Excuse me,” I said, blushing when both Daddy and Mr. Anton turned to look at me. “Um, is Miss Lorena here? I need to give her something.” I hadn’t told Daddy about the book sitting heavy in my purse. I didn’t want him telling me to keep it.
“Yep,” said Mr. Anton. “She’s right through the hall and in the kitchen. Thomas is around here somewhere, too. Mind if I take your daddy over to the shop and get him rung up while you talk to her?”
“No, sir.”
Miss Lorena was at the kitchen table, humming to the music, a bunch of papers and a thick book spread out in front of her. She looked up and saw me, that sunshine smile reaching all the way up to her eyes.
“Why, Miss Della Kelly,” she said, putting down her pen and patting the chair beside her. “You come sit down here by me. Thomas tells me every day what good folks your family are. Y’all might make a farmer of him yet.”
I sat on the edge of the chair, feeling the cool wood against the backs of my thighs, and slid the book of poems across the table toward Miss Lorena.
“You done with it?” She reached out for it. I shook my head and her hand paused, fingers spread out in the air above it. “Why you giving it back to me then, honey? It’s yours as long as you’d like to keep it. It’s one of my very favorites.”
“Oh,” I said, startled into being distracted. “Don’t you want it back, then? Haven’t you missed it?”
Miss Lorena chuckled. “Not a bit. I got another copy twice this big.”
I snuck a look down at the little blue book. Miss Lorena’s hand had drifted down and was sitting on it, her brown fingers soft and strong, but she hadn’t pulled the book closer to her. It still sat there on the table between us, whispering promises.
“Besides,” Miss Lorena went on, “I’ve got to spend all my reading time right now on classwork.” She lifted her hand off Emily Dickinson and thumped the textbook on the table in front of her. “I’m sorry to say that when you are a grown-up and in college, there is no such thing as a summer vacation.”
I stared at the textbook, its pages glossy and reflective in the evening sunlight falling from the kitchen windows. “You’re in college, ma’am?” I’d never known anybody as old as Miss Lorena to be in college, or any kind of school, before; she had to be at least as old as my parents, maybe even older. Plenty of people in Maryville never even went to college.
“Yes I am. I chose not to finish up when I was young as most, and I’ve got to do my catching up now.” She sighed, looking suddenly like a veil of sadness had drifted down over her, dimming the sunshine of her smile. “Back when I married Thomas’s daddy, I was young and so in love. All I wanted to do was to spend my days taking care of that man. He had a laugh that could fill the whole world up and make everyone around him laugh, too. Thomas takes after him that way.”
“What happened to him?” I asked, my voice hardly more than a peep.
“He died last year, honey. Cancer. His own daddy died of it, long ago, too. That’s why me and Thomas moved down here—we needed a change, and Anton needed company, kicking around by his lonesome in this house.”
“And so now you’re finishing college.”
Miss Lorena nodded. “I sure am. I’d like to be a teacher. An English teacher in a high school. Besides, all these classes keep my brain from getting lazy and forgetful in my old age.”
I itched to ask her how old she really was, but swallowed the question back. Once, when I was pretty little, somebody’s aunt was visiting Maryville and I was so fascinated by the contrast between her wrinkled skin and her movie-star yellow hair that I’d asked in the middle of the prayer at church if she was an old lady or a young one. Mama’s eyes had popped open big as dinner plates, and she’d spent the whole ride back from church lecturing me on how you never, ever ask a woman her age.
Instead, I reached my own hand out to push POEMS closer to Miss Lorena.
“I need to give these back to you for a while,” I said, sitting up so straight that my spine ran all the way up the side of the chair’s back. “I’m not gonna be able to read them right now. But—”
I stopped, chewing on my lip.
“Yes?” Miss Lorena prompted.
“But I might like to borrow it again later,” I said, voice mousy and small.
Miss Lorena looked at me for a long, long minute, her amber eyes turning golden in the window light. “You sure, honey?”
“Yes, ma’am,” I said, trying not to look away.
“All right then,” said Miss Lorena, slowly reaching for the little blue book and drawing it into her lap. Her thumb ran up and down the spine, tracing the black lettering without her seeming aware that she was doing it. “But I’m not gonna put it back in the box library. I’ll tuck it away somewhere special, so that it’s still there when you’re ready for it, child.”
“Thank you, ma’am,” I whispered, wishing I was brave enough to say more than just that.
I’d stood up to go and find my daddy when Thomas came thumping down the stairs and into the kitchen, reaching his hands up to grab a glass from one of the cupboards.
“How’s your studying going?” Miss Lorena asked, sliding her chair away from the table and standing up, too. She looked at me with a little bit of a laugh in her eyes. “We’re a household of learning today, I guess. Here I am getting ready to write a paper while Thomas is studying to retake the SAT.”
Her words were like warm honey, thick and sweet with love and pride.
“Hey there, Della,” said Thomas, tap water frothing into his glass. When it was full, he drained the glass with a few big swallows and filled it right back up again. I watched, fascinated. How could one boy possibly drink that much water all at once, even if he was nearly as big as my daddy?
“I’m hoping to bring up my score so I can be eligible for more scholarships,” Thomas said, setting the empty glass beside the sink and turning toward us. He wasn’t anywhere near as tall as Mr. Anton, but he seemed to fill the kitchen anyway, all long arms and legs. Even just leaning against the counter, there was something about the way he stood that seemed different from most people—confident without being cocky or annoying, like he knew he didn’t have a thing to prove to anyone but himself. The evening sunlight through the window over the kitchen sink highlighted his dark skin so it was almost golden.
“What he’s not telling you is that he got a pretty near perfect score the first time,” Miss Lorena said, smiling so much I swear she was brightening the kitchen all by herself. “But you’ve gotta be the best of the best to get scholarships to the places he wants to go. He isn’t gonna let anything hold him back. My boy, the world will be hearing from him before long.”
“Math is my cardinal weakness,” Thomas said, shaking his head, but he was still smiling. “I’m trying to get my math scores up.”
“Really?” The words pushed themselves out of my mouth without me trying. “Math is my best thing. I’d rather do worksheets all day than write a paper.”
“Is that so?” Thomas asked, straightening up and reaching his hands behind his neck, stretching. “I guess I’ll have to get you to tutor me sometime then.”
I looked hard for a hint of a smile or a laugh, but Thomas seemed completely serious. Something warm and light spread all through me, till I thought I maybe could float up toward the ceiling like a birthday balloon, no string holding me down to the ground.
That floating feeling lasted all the way through the drive home and into the white door of the farmhouse, but then that balloon popped, and fast.
Mylie was screaming again when we came inside, yelling and crying just like she had Saturday when Mama had refused to get her up out of bed. She was standing in the kitchen, all naked except for her diaper, her orange hair matted to her head with sweat, and big fat tears were rolling down her cheeks and splashing onto her little white chest. In front of the refrigerator there was a brand-new bottle of ketchup, all squoze out and smeared across the fridge door, the cabinets, Mylie’s hands.
Mama was on her knees on the linoleum floor, her yellow hair pulled up into a ponytail on top of her head that flew in every direction as she attacked the fronts of the cabinets with a wet sponge. The whole kitchen smelled of tomatoes and of bleach; it burned in my throat and made my eyes water.
“Suzanne!” said Daddy, his mouth moving like he didn’t know anything else to say. In the light from the ceiling fan above our heads, his brown eyes looked big and black, and just as lost and afraid as I was feeling.
I didn’t know if I’d ever be able to help Mama rest enough to keep the schizophrenia from creeping back into her this time.
I was starting to think we were long, long past the time when it already had.