“How are your sisters?” Shelley asked suddenly.
“They’re fine.” Almost immediately he felt guilty for that; he thought a minute and then offered: “Joanne’s left her husband, though.”
“Left him?”
“Yes.”
“Well, I declare.”
“She’s back home now.”
“Well.”
“Her and her baby.”
“I’m going to get you some coffee,” Shelley said.
“No, wait. I’ve got to be—”
“It’s hot already.” She stood up and almost ran to the kitchen, still managing to make it slow motion. Behind her, Ben Joe shifted in his seat uneasily and crossed his legs.
“You’re hungry too, I bet,” she said when she entered the room again.
“No, I’m all right.”
“You look right thin to me, Ben Joe. I got this marble cake from the Piggly-Wiggly. Course it’s not real homemade, but anyway—”
“Shelley, I really don’t want it.”
“Well, all right, Ben Joe.”
She was carrying a chipped tin tray with two cups of coffee on it and a sugar bowl and cream pitcher that didn’t match. When she set it on the coffee table everything clinked like the too-loud clinking of tea sets in movies.
“You take yourself lots of sugar,” she said. “I declare, you are thin.” She hovered over him, shadowlike, while he took up his coffee cup. He could smell her perfume now — a light, pink-smelling perfume — and when she bent over the table to hand him the sugar bowl, he could even smell perfume in her hair. Then she moved back to her seat, and he relaxed against the sofa cushions.
“Seems like I have got to get used to you all over again, it’s been so long,” Shelley said. “Are you feeling talky?”
He had forgotten that. She always asked him that question, to give him a chance before she plunged into her own slow, circuitous small talk. This time he remained silent, choosing to have her carry on the conversation, and smiled at her above his coffee cup because he liked her suddenly for remembering. Shelley waited another minute, sitting back easily in her chair. Once the first awkward moments were over, Shelley could be as relaxed as anyone.
“I don’t know if I did right or not,” she said finally, “coming back here like this. But my family’s passing came so sudden. Left me strap-hanging in empty space, like. And I chose to come to Sandhill. I don’t know why, except I was helping to run this nursery school for working mothers’ children down in Georgia and so sick of it, you’ve got no idea, and saw no way out. I think I got something against Georgia. I really do. Seems like if there is one thing makes me ill, it’s those torn-up circus posters on old barns. You know? And Seven-up signs. Well, Georgia’s plumb full of those, though one time this girl I worked with told me she thought it was real snotty of me to say a thing like that. That’s what our trouble was down there — the trash thought we were snotty and the snotty thought we were trash. Now, my daddy had to work himself up the hard way, but you know how fine he was, and anyway his mama’s folks were Montagues, which should have some bearing. And there’s nothing wrong with Mama’s side of the family, either. But anyway I was lonely there. Didn’t seem like there was any group we could really say we belonged to. Back in Sandhill it was better. I always have remembered Sandhill. And I still carry your picture.”
She smiled happily at Ben Joe.
“That real goofy-looking one,” she said, “that we had taken of you in the Snap-Yourself Photo Booth. Mama used to tease me about keeping it — said I might as well throw it out now. Though she always did like you. When you wrote me that letter, after we’d moved, about you starting to date Gloria Herman I thought Mama would cry. She said Gloria was real fast and loud, though it was my opinion that you knew better than Mama who was good for you. And at least you were right honest, telling me. I said that to Mama, too. And then a month later Susan Harpton wrote to tell how Gloria had moved on to someone new and you’d started dating Pat Locker. It got so I couldn’t keep up with you any more. But I wasn’t mad. Things like that happen when people get separated from each other.”
“Well, it was a long time ago,” Ben Joe said.
“It was. I know. Well, don’t you worry, Ben Joe, I’m dating a real nice boy now. You’d like him. His name is John Horner and he’s starting up a construction firm in Sandhill. You know him?”
“Horner.” Ben Joe frowned. “Not offhand,” he said.
“Well. You’d like him, though. Course we aren’t too serious yet — I only been in town a month or so. But he is the kindest man. I don’t know if I could marry him, yet.”
“Has he asked you?”
“No. But I reckon he will one of these days.”
The idea of Shelley’s marrying someone else surprised him. He looked at her as a stranger suddenly, evaluating her. She smiled back at him.
“Course,” she said, “I was surprised he even wanted to date me. But I figured if maybe he could just endure through the first few dates, till I got easy with him and not so silly and tongue-tied any more, it’d be all right. And he did. He endured.”
“Well, I’m glad to hear it.”
She nodded, finished with that piece of news, and then frowned into space a minute as if she were fishing in her mind for the next piece.
“Oh, I know,” she said finally. “I know. Ben Joe, I was so sorry to hear about your daddy. I wrote you about it and you never answered. But I hope it was a peaceful passing. He was a sweet man, your daddy.”
“Thank you,” said Ben Joe.
“Susan Harpton told me about it. And about your going to work at the bank after classes and Joanne getting married and all. She said the whole town missed your daddy.”
“I did too,” said Ben Joe. “Took to riding trains.”
“What?”
“Trains. Riding trains. I rode trains all the time. One time I spent a whole month’s salary that way. Mom about had a conniption fit — I was almost the family’s only support back then.”
“Oh,” Shelley said. She frowned; she was on uncertain ground now. “Well, anyway, I just wanted to tell you I missed him. And if he lived a little different from most people, I don’t think anybody held it against him. Not your daddy. Remember how when he got to drinking he always wanted someone to sing to him? ‘Life Is Like a Mountain Railroad,’ that’s what he liked. Many’s the time I’ve sung it to him.”
“And ‘Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen,’ ” said Ben Joe.
“That’s right.” She smiled into her coffee cup and then looked up again, with the next subject decided upon. “I hear you’re in law school up north,” she said. “Mrs. Murphy told me that. She’s the one that’s been keeping an eye on the house all these years. She’s nice, though I found when I came back that she’d looked through the photograph albums and all Mama’s love letters. When your mama and grandma passed by the porch as I was sweeping I called out ‘hey’ to them, meaning to ask about you, but I had trouble making myself heard, as your grandma was doing some of that singing of hers and your mama was trying real hard to hush her. When your grandma saw me she recognized me right off, though. She shouted out to tell me you weren’t married yet, which I already knew, and a minute later your mama remembered me too. Your mama is a little slow in recognizing folks, but I don’t hold with what Mrs. Murphy says, that she’s on purpose slow. This town has always been of the opinion she is coldhearted, but I think it’s because your daddy was their fair-haired boy, and they didn’t want him hurt. Not that I think she meant to hurt him. I reckon she is just a little prideful and thinks pride’s the same as dignity so she doesn’t try and change herself. Mrs. Murphy said many’s the time she herself went to your mama to tell her all she had to do was let herself get to crying and then, as soon as the tears got started good, go to … urn, where your father lived at and tell him she wanted him back, but your mama always just tossed her hair and said who cared and offered Mrs. Murphy a slice of angel-food cake. It was the doctor’s business and no one else’s, she would say, though if it wasn’t the doctor’s wife’s business too, then what did they get married for?