Cold Tea On A Hot Day

Six

Maybe She’s Human

Marilee came out of Tate Holloway’s office and closed the door firmly, then held on to the doorknob for some seconds. Behind her, through the door, the low tones of music began—Charlie Rich singing from Tate Holloway’s stereo.

Pushing away from the door, Marilee wrestled with high annoyance at her new boss. Tate Holloway was way too full of himself.

The next instant Reggie was sticking a pen in front of her face, saying, “Tell us the news, Ms. James. Are we all goin’ to be swept out to make way for new employees to go with the new publisher?”

This had been a major worry of Reggie and Leo’s, both being employed at the same place. Mainly it appeared to be a great worry of Reggie’s, since Leo wasn’t given to worrying over steady employment. Before coming to work at The Valentine Voice, he had held various positions in automobile sales, insurance, cattle brokering, photography, trucking and a half-dozen others, several for no more than a week or two before either quitting or being fired. While Reggie defended her husband as trying to find himself and being a victim of too much feminine attention, it had been fact that he had not been able to keep a job of any secure endurance, until he had landed the one of sports reporter at the Voice. He proved excellent at it, and the one time he had shown any inclination to quit, Reggie had come in behind him and finagled a job of her own, thereby being on the scene to make certain he kept his position.

A part of Marilee’s brain tried to be sensitive to all of this, but seeing everyone’s eyes, even Willie Lee’s and Corrine’s, turned in her direction made her very irritated.

“Don’t put that thing in my face, Reggie. I need both my eyes.” She pushed Reggie’s hand aside and strode to her desk and began shuffling through files to take home.

“Okay. So are you pissed off because you do not want to tell us that we are all about to be fired?”

The breathlessness of the question struck Marilee, and she looked up to see Reggie’s thoroughly uneasy eyes. The precariousness of all their positions came fullblown into her mind, and she felt sorry for her short temper.

“Of course we aren’t all going to be fired. Who would he get to replace us? The paper can barely pay for itself now.” Just a mild fib. “He can’t afford to be hauling in a whole new crew of Pulitzer prize winners to Valentine. Right now he’s dependent on us. We are all he’s got.”

She felt as if she were withholding from her friends, being unable to tell the entire truth about the change from a daily to twice weekly. Darn him for confiding in her.

Turning from this dilemma, and from Reggie’s searching eyes, she said, “He said it will be fine for me to work at home,” and went on to briefly explain about Willie Lee and Corrine not going back to school. “I want to be home with them, like I used to be with Willie Lee, and this will work fine, because Mr. Holloway is getting us all laptop computers and a networking system.”

“Wow,” Reggie said. “Guess there’s more money than we thought.”

She jumped from Marilee’s desk and went over to hug Leo, who said quite practically, “Doesn’t mean money. Just good credit.”

“I finally got my machine working how I like it,” Charlotte said, frowning. She had gotten so furious with the technician who had first set up her computer that she had refused to allow him to touch it again, read the manual front to back and now knew enough to maintain her machine herself.

Marilee, who was gazing at her typed up notice for Lost and Found, crumpled up the paper and tossed it into the trash. The dog was Willie Lee’s now, she figured, and she was going to let it be.

“Let’s go get some ice cream,” she said to the children. “You, too, Munro,” she added, when Willie Lee opened his mouth to remind her.

With Willie Lee holding one hand and Corrine the other, and Munro running along beside them, Marilee headed directly to where she went whenever she felt her spirits in disarray—to her aunt and uncle’s drugstore.

Blaine’s Drugstore and Soda Fountain had been in business for over seventy years, in the same spot on Main Street. There was a rumor that the outlaws Bonnie and Clyde had once gotten lemonade and bandages from the distant relative of Perry Blaine who had opened the store in 1920. Perry had taken over from his father in ’57, when he had come home from Korea. Things had been booming in Valentine in the fifties, with oil pumping all around, and farming and cattle going okay. That same year Perry had installed the sign with the neon outline that still hung between the windows of the second story.

Ever since the fateful summer of ’96, when it had been featured in both the lifestyle pages of the Lawton paper and then on an Oklahoma City television travel program, Blaine’s Drugstore had received visitors from all over the southern part of the state. People, enough to keep them open on Friday and Saturday evenings in the summertime, came to order Coca-Colas and milk shakes and sundaes in the thick vintage glassware. Some of the glasses were truly antiques, and to keep the visitors coming, once a year Vella drove down to Dallas to a restaurant supply to purchase new to match. She would covertly bring the boxes into the storeroom and place them behind the big boxes of napkins and foam to-go containers.

When taken to task by her daughter Belinda for perpetrating a hoax, Vella said with practicality, “People like thinkin’ the glasses are old, and they would rather not be apprized of the truth. Besides, they will be antiques in another fifty years—and I sure pay enough for them to be looked at.”

As Marilee and the children entered the store, the bell above the door chimed out. Immediately Marilee was engulfed by the dearly familiar scents of old wood, simmering barbecue and faint antiseptic of the store that had not changed since she was a nine-year-old child and so often came running down the hill to escape the sight of her father sitting in his cracked vinyl recliner, beer in hand and glassy eyes staring at the flickering television, and her mother in the kitchen gone so far away into country songs on the radio that she would not speak.

“We have come for ice cream,” Willie Lee said as he went directly to his Great-Aunt Vella, who was sitting at the rear table, with glasses on the tip of her nose so she could more easily read the IGA ads in the newspaper spread wide before her.

“You’ve come to the right place then, mister,” said Winston Valentine, who was sitting across from their aunt and who nudged an empty sundae dish that sat in front of him. Being yet spring and midmorning, the place was empty except for these two.

“Hel-lo, Mis-ter Wins-ton,” Willie Lee said.

“Hello, Mister Willie Lee.”

Willie Lee extended his hand, as Winston had taught him, and Winston shook the small offered hand with great respect.

Marilee saw that Winston’s big, gnarled hand, when it released Willie Lee’s, shook slightly. The blue veins showed clearly when he used that same hand to push his tall frame up from the table.

“If you ladies and gentleman will excuse me,” he said, polite as always, “I have to walk on home and make sure Mildred has not drowned Ruthanne in her bath this mornin’. The nurse has the day off.” He checked his watch. “They ought to be done by now.”

Mildred Covington and Ruthanne Bell, two elderly ladies, shared Winston Valentine’s home. Since Winston’s stroke the year before, a home health nurse came in to check on all three of them three times a week. Aunt Vella had once told Marilee that on the days the nurse did not come, Winston, after making certain the women had breakfast, tried to leave home at midmorning, so as to not be present when the women were getting bathed and dressed; Mildred seemed to have a penchant for running around naked in front of him whenever she had the chance.

“Winston’s really aging now,” Marilee said, watching the old man lean heavily on his cane as he went out the door. He was eighty-eight this year, and only since his stroke had he slowed any.

“There’s more life in him than many a man I know,” Vella said, and in a snapping manner that startled Marilee a little. It only then occurred to her that her Aunt Vella was not getting any younger, either; no doubt it was distressing to her aunt to see a dear friend declining and heading for the border.

Marilee found the fact depressing, as well. She felt as if her life were going down a hole, and she could not seem to find the stopper.

“Now, what’s this about my darlin’s wantin’ ice cream?” Aunt Vella asked.

“We want sun-daes,” Willie Lee told her and scampered over to haul himself up on a stool at the counter.

“We’ll have three chocolate sundaes, please,” Marilee said, slipping onto a stool.

She set herself to getting into a better mood. Children learned by example and picked up on things easily. She did not need to add to any of their numerous wounds by being in a poor mood.

“Me and Mun-ro want va-nil-la,” Willie Lee said. “Cor-rine says dogs should not ev-er have choc-o-late.”

Marilee only then remembered the dog and looked down to see him already curled beneath Willie Lee’s feet, as if knowing that he would need to be quiet and unseen to remain.

Aunt Vella took a cursory look around the end of the counter, then said, “We surely can’t leave Munro out.”

“No, we can-not,” Willie Lee said.

“Is your choice chocolate, too?” Aunt Vella asked Corrine.

Corrine frowned in contemplation.

“I’ll give you another minute.” Aunt Vella went about lining up four dishes and making the sundaes—cherry for Corrine, it turned out. While doing this, she threw conversation over her shoulder, telling about the Rose Club meeting held the previous evening—“We had ten people!”—and how they had already voted as a first project to plant roses around the Welcome to Valentine signs at each end of town.

“Winston and I are goin’ up to Lawton tomorrow to buy bushes,” Vella reported, feeling increasing excitement with the telling.

She had been very pleased with the respectable turnout of people for the first rose club meeting, and felt a glow that her idea of a rose club had proven out. Especially after Perry had rather pooh-poohed the idea as frivolous. She almost had not pursued the idea, after his attitude, but it had turned out that a number of people, such as their mayor’s wife, Kaye Upchurch, had liked the idea immensely. While Kaye Upchurch could be on the frivolous side, she was truly knowledgeable about what was good for the town. Her enthusiasm for the Rose Club’s place in the community was heartening.

Vella was also becoming more and more excited about going up to Lawton with Winston. She had never been anywhere with Winston, outside of her own backyard or here at the store.

“We’d like to get the bushes in the ground soon. It’s already so late to be planting,” she added, bringing her thoughts back to the moment. “We could very well get a repeat of last summer and all that heat. Winston thought we could install some sort of watering system by the welcome signs,” she said, focusing on a plan. “If the city doesn’t want to pay for it, Winston said he would.”

In Vella’s opinion, Winston was a little free with his money, and this was both quite amazing and refreshing. Her husband Perry pinched a penny until it gave up the ghost. Vella thought she needed to take lessons from Winston in being more free and easy. She did not want to spend her remaining years being as controlled as she had spent her entire life to this point.

Marilee, only halfway listening to her aunt’s conversation, other than to observe that the Rose Club seemed to make her aunt very happy, watched the loose skin at the back of her aunt’s arm wiggle, while her biceps worked sturdy and strong. Marilee had lately been trying to exercise the backs of her own arms, which were the first thing to go on a woman; she was amazed that her aunt was so strong, though, despite the sagging back of her arm.

Then Marilee found herself looking over the counter, at the age-spotted long mirror, the shelf of neatly lined and glimmering tulip glasses, the modern licenses in dingy frames, and the yellowing menu with the Dr Pepper sign at the top. The drone of Uncle Perry’s television reached her from the back room of the pharmacy, where her uncle would be sitting in his overstuffed brown chair.

Aunt Vella brought a dish of ice cream around the end of the counter and set it down for Munro. “I didn’t think he needed whipped cream or a cherry,” she said, then stood there, watching the dog, as they all were.

“I sure hope this doesn’t give him a headache,” Vella said, as the dog began to lick the cold sweet ice cream with some eagerness.

“He likes it,” Willie Lee pronounced quite happily.

“Hmmm…”

Aunt Vella went back to put the finishing touches on the people’s sundaes; they definitely got whipped cream and a cherry. She then set the children’s sundaes on the granite counter, with a “There you go, sugars,” pronouncing the word as shu-gahs in a way that caused a particularly strong pull on Marilee’s heart.

As her aunt scooted a sundae across toward her, Marilee looked at it and suddenly realized she was sitting on the last stool at the far end of the counter, right where she had always sat as a child when she came running into the drugstore, dragging Anita by the hand. Aunt Vella would lean over the counter, dab at Anita’s tears and ask, “What can I get for my two shu-gah girls today?”

Marilee would be choking back tears but would manage to get out quite calmly that she and Anita would like chocolate milk shakes, please. Her Uncle Perry always called Marilee a little lady because she never yelled or screamed or cried. There were so many times when she wished she could yell and scream and cry.

Now, as then, she took up the long-handled spoon and smoothed the chocolate syrup around on the vanilla ice cream. She liked to let the ice cream get a little soft and then mix it with the chocolate syrup. She would have to admit to being addicted to chocolate, but after having taken tranquilizers for too long after her heartbreak with Stuart, she thought chocolate a fairly harmless aid to getting along in turbulent times. Chocolate tasted good and felt good going down, and it did not make her brain so fuzzy as to spin out of the world.

As she spooned the chocolate and vanilla ice cream onto her tongue, she looked across and caught hers and Corrine’s reflections in the wide old mirror. Corrine’s dark eyes, for a moment, met hers in the mirror, before looking down at her sundae. Marilee watched Corrine’s reflection, the bend of the dark head, the way she tilted it slightly, looking for all the world like her mother at that age.

Marilee’s gaze returned to her own reflection. It struck her quite hard that here she was staring at middle-age and still employing the same coping skills she had employed as a ten-year-old girl.

“You’ve been workin’ way too hard,” Aunt Vella said. “You just need a little boost. You should take a potent mixture of B’s for three months, and it wouldn’t hurt for you to start taking calcium…you need to start thinkin’ about keepin’ your bones. Every woman’s bones start to fade after thirty-five.”

Marilee had followed Vella over to the pharmacy shelves, where her aunt perused the bottles of vitamins and herbs, while the children occupied themselves twirling on the stools at the counter. Actually, it was Corrine being twirled by Willie Lee. She held on to the stool with her thin little hands, while Willie Lee got a kick out of spinning her around. Corrine was always so patient with Willie Lee. She displayed strong mothering instincts with him, and very often she did things for him that he was capable of doing for himself. Willie Lee allowed this, in the pleasing way he always went along with people.

“You worry about them too much. They’ll be fine. They have God, just like you do. He cares for you. Trust Him.”

At her aunt’s statement, Marilee looked over to see that the older woman had noticed her wandering attention.

“Then who looks after the children who are abused and forgotten all over the place?” Marilee asked, more sharply than she had meant to.

“I don’t know,” her aunt answered in the same fashion. “I’m not smart enough to know that. I only know what I know, that there is a God who cares for us, and that worrying never solved a thing. Change what you can, accept what you can’t, and leave off worrying. It just wears you out.”

Marilee sighed, her mind skittering away from a discussion she didn’t wish to get into.

“I couldn’t stand it anymore,” she said. “I took them out of school for the rest of this year. Corrine looks like she’s going to face the firing squad each day she goes to school, and Willie Lee just keeps runnin’ away. Maybe I’m not even addressing the true problem…. I know I’m not…but it just seemed the one thing I could do.”

“Good. You changed something. And there aren’t enough days of school left to worry about it, anyway.” Vella was peering at the labels on the vitamin bottles through her reading glasses at the end of her nose. “Do you have the kids on vitamins?”

“Dailies.”

“Not enough.”

Marilee watched her aunt set about deciding which vitamins would be sufficient for the children. She felt an anger well up inside.

“Can vitamins fix a brain damaged by birthing?” she asked. “Or a heart broken by an irresponsible mother who prefers to drink rather than take care of her daughter?”

Vella’s dark eyes came up sharply. “No one prefers to drink. Anita is sick, Marilee, just like your daddy was.”

Marilee could not address this. She felt guilty for feeling so angry at her sister. Even as she thought about being angry, the anger began to ebb and slip into sadness and guilt, which she hated worse. The guilt threatened to consume her. She kept thinking there ought to be something she could do to help her sister, but everything she had tried had failed. She could not look at it anymore.

“Mrs. Blankenship thinks Corrine needs a therapist,” she said, the words falling out almost before she realized.

“Half of America needs a therapist,” Aunt Vella said, “but where do you find a sane one?”

Marilee had to chuckle at this, said so seriously. She gazed at Corrine, who was now twirling Willie Lee on the stool. “I think a therapist is worth trying, but I just don’t know how I can afford it.”

“Children have an amazing ability to survive. Don’t discount it.”

“That’s another question,” Marilee said, her gaze coming back to her aunt. “What’s goin’ to happen if Corrine gets really sick? How will I pay the doctor bills? My doctor charges sixty dollars a visit.” The limit of those could plainly be seen. “She isn’t my daughter, so I can’t put her on my insurance.”

“Oh, my heavens, don’t go makin’ up worries that likely won’t happen.”

Marilee looked at her aunt.

Her aunt looked back and said, “We’ll help you, Marilee. You know that.”

“I know it, but how far can we all go? You know perfectly well a catastrophe could bankrupt us all without insurance.”

Aunt Vella said very quietly, “Have you thought about adoption?”

“I’ve thought about it.” Marilee felt guilty for admitting what seemed a very bad thought. “But I don’t think Anita would willingly go along with it. I could press it. I could take her to court and prove she isn’t able to care for Corrine, but what would that do to her?”

“You can’t take on Anita’s burdens for her, Marilee. She has to own up to being responsible for her own actions. If she’s going to be a drunken sot, she’ll have to take the consequences. You don’t help her by letting her off. Maybe if you pressed, Anita would have more reason to try to get herself straight.”

Marilee clamped her mouth shut. Discussing this was making her too depressed. She did not have faith in Anita, certainly. And now she was having doubts about having faith in herself. She was sinking into a full decline when the bell above the front door rang out.

It was Fayrene Gardner entering the store. She came swiftly toward the pharmacy counter and presented Aunt Vella, who stepped forward, with a prescription. Fayrene, sniffing loudly, was clearly distraught.

“We’ll get this straight away,” Aunt Vella said and immediately stepped through to the back room, calling, “Perry…we need this filled. Perry!”

Fayrene noticed Marilee, who just then found she was staring, feeling connected by her own distress.