“I thought we might go see Jamie Dower tonight, Gram,” he said. “Car’s free.”
“Oh, well, I don’t think so, Ben Joe. Not tonight.”
“Why not?”
“Well …” She frowned at the cards in her hand. “I’d rather wait awhile,” she said. “He wouldn’t have settled his self properly yet.”
“What’s to settle?”
“Can’t be much of a host when you’re still feeling like a guest yourself, can you? Give him a couple more days.”
“A couple more days?” said Ben Joe’s mother. “How long are you planning on staying here, Ben Joe?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, it seems to me you should be gone by then. Columbia’s not going to wait on you forever.”
“Oh, well,” Ben Joe said. He was wandering back and forth with his hands in his pockets, occasionally kicking gently at a leg of the coffee table as he passed it. “Susannah?” he said.
“Hmm.”
“Where’s the guitar and the hourglass and all?”
“I’m not sure.”
“What you mean, you’re not sure?”
She brushed a piece of hair off her forehead with the back of her wrist and then switched a card in her hand from the left end of the fan to the right.
“I asked you if you wanted them,” Ben Joe said. “I asked if you would take care of them. ‘Yes, Ben Joe. Oh yes, Ben Joe.’ ” He made his voice into a silly squeak, imitating her. Of all his sisters, Susannah was the only one he was ever rude to — maybe because she was always so cool and brisk that he figured she wouldn’t change toward him no matter what he did. “I can just see it,” he said now. “Bet the whole shebang has just mildewed away to nothing, right?”
“In the winter?” Gram said.
“I bid two spades,” said Susannah. “Ben Joe, I am sure everything’s right where you left it. Except the guitar. The rest of the things I just hadn’t assimilated yet.”
“Well, where’s the guitar, now that you’ve assimilated that? In the bathtub? Out in the garden holding up a tomato plant?”
“In the winter?” Gram said again. “A tomato plant in the winter?”
Ellen Hawkes laughed. When they turned to look at her she stopped and looked down at her sewing again, still smiling.
“I declare,” said Gram, “you got no sense of season, Ben Joe.”
“Where’s the guitar?”
“Under the couch in the den.”
“Aha, I wasn’t far wrong. Right where it belongs.”
“Ben Joe,” said his mother, “there’s no reason to get so excited about a few possessions you’ve already given away. What’s the matter with you tonight?”
“But they’re my favorite possessions. That I missed all the time I was gone.”
“Then you shouldn’t have given them away. You’re too old to be missing things, anyway. Why don’t you stop that pacing and read something?”
He picked the newspaper up from the coffee table and began to read it listlessly as he stood there.
“And not upside-down!” his mother said.
“Ah, hell.”
He threw down the paper and turned toward the den.
“You need someone to take you out walking with a leash around your neck,” said Susannah. “Are you going to bid or not, Gram?”
“Pass.”
Ben Joe stuck his head inside the doorway of the TV room. “Tessie,” he said.
“Sssh.”
“Tess, I want to ask you something.”
“I’m watching television.”
“It’s only a cigarette commercial.”
“Leave her in peace,” said Jenny. “And don’t hold that door open, Ben Joe. The noise’ll bother the others.”
“Don’t either one of you want to go to the movies?”
Tessie shook her head, not taking her eyes from the screen. “It’s only what it just about always is,” she said. “Phantom of the Opera.”
“Why don’t you come in and watch TV?” Jenny asked.
“I don’t feel like it. I feel all yellow inside.”
“Well, close the door, then.”
He closed the door and came back into the living room.
“What happened to all those boys you used to go around with?” his mother asked.
“They went north, all of them. A long time ago.”
“Do you know any girls any more?”
“Them too,” he said.
“What?”
“They went north too.”
“Oh.”
“Gram,” said Susannah, “if you keep holding your hand that way I’m going to have to shut my eyes not to see what cards you have.”
“What about Shelley Domer?” his mother asked.
“Oh, Mom. She was my first girl. Her family went off to Savannah seven years ago.”
“Gram, wasn’t that Shelley Domer we saw the other day?”
“It was,” said Gram. “You have another diamond, Susannah. I know you do.”
“I don’t either. Want to see my hand?”
“What’s she doing here?” Ben Joe asked.
“I don’t know,” said his mother. “Their family kept their house here, I think. Kept planning to come back someday.”
“You mean she’s living in her old home?”
“She wouldn’t have been sweeping the front porch of it if she wasn’t, would she?”
“I’d go see her if you’ve nothing better to do,” Gram said. “Be something to keep you occupied. And you saw right much of her once upon a time.”
“Oh, she was all right.”
“That all you can find to say about her? Spades are trumps, Susannah. Keep your mind on your game. Only thing I ever had against Shelley Domer was her family, to be frank.”
“What was wrong with her family, for heaven’s sake?”
“Well, I’m not saying they didn’t have money. Or weren’t nice. But money and niceness neither one isn’t all there is. Mrs. Domer still went grocery shopping in shuffly old slippers with pansies sewn on them, and that Shelley, well, she was a sweet child and it was no fault of hers, but many’s the time I seen her in a flowered calico skirt and a plaid blouse together, like a tenant farmer’s girl would wear, and in wintertime overalls under her dress, which is a sure sign, a sure sign. As if having those glass-blue, empty-looking eyes like the bad Dowers have wasn’t enough—”
“Well, for one who wears black gym shoes to the grocery store—” Ellen Hawkes began.
“I can afford to. My family is different, and don’t have to worry about being taken for the wrong kind.”
Ben Joe’s mother bit a thread off the white collar. “Well, I don’t see what slippers have to do with it,” she said. “Shelley Domer can’t help her ancestry, that’s for sure. No, all I ever had against her was the way she hung on Ben Joe all the time. None of my girls has ever been a boy chaser, I’ll say that for them. They’ve been raised to have pride, and—”
“Pride nothing,” Gram snapped. “Nicest thing about that girl was her being so sweet on Ben Joe. She used to wait for him every day after school, I remember. Even in wintertime. Till he’d come ambling out at whatever hour he chose to say hey to her.”
“That’s what I’m—”
“Oh, forget it,” said Ben Joe. “I’ll go and see her now while you two are arguing.” He went to the hall closet and pulled his jacket from a hanger. “Anyone want anything from outside?”
“No, thank you. Have a nice evening.”