“Lili Belle, I am awfully sorry,” he said. “It’s bothered me for so long I couldn’t see any way to get rid of it now but to tell you, and say how sorry I am.”
“Well, that’s all right, Ben Joe.” She licked her lips nervously, still frowning off into space. “That’s all right — it didn’t make no difference, did it? Everything would’ve happened the same, I reckon, letter or no letter.”
“But I—”
“You didn’t do nothing wrong, Benjy. Why, it seems to me your family is kind of queer-like sometimes. Meaning no offense. It’s not natural to come see me and all, not even to speak to me on the street, but you do, and I reckon it’s even a little relief, maybe, having you do something on your mother’s side like most would do.”
“Well—” Ben Joe stopped, not certain what to say. “What bothered me,” he said, “is that maybe Dad would have gone back to you soon as he got your letter. And then, who knows, not had that heart attack a week later. Old Gram, she’s blamed herself forever for forgetting to refill the ice-cube trays. Says that’s why he died — going downtown to get ice. Though Mom says he could have stepped next door if he’d been sober enough to think of it. But sometimes when Gram gets on those ice-cube trays I’m almost tempted to show her the pink envelope, to prove it’s not she that’s to blame.”
“Well, it surely ain’t you,” Lili Belle said. She bent forward to rub her eyes, tiredly, and then leaned her head back again and smiled at him. “I don’t guess my letter would of made any change in him one way or the other. If your mother’d said one word he’d have stayed with her, always would have. He was just wanting her to ask him. But she didn’t. He waited two weeks, and I guess he would have waited that long if I’d sent fourteen letters, even. Then he came back to me, not even planning to but just drunk and tired, and I took him in.”
“But you can’t say for sure,” Ben Joe said.
“What?”
“You can’t say for sure your letter wouldn’t have made him come back earlier, you can’t say—”
“Benjy honey, don’t you worry. Can’t say nothing for sure, if it comes to that. Don’t you worry.”
Both of them were silent for a minute, Lili Belle rocking steadily in her chair and filling the silence with slow creaks. Then she sat up straight again and said, “Well, how long you going to be here?”
“I don’t know yet. Not too much longer, I guess.”
“I heard your older sister’s in town.”
“That’s right.”
“Well, it’ll work out. Her husband’ll come and get her, you just watch. She’s a right pretty girl — I seen her downtown before — and he’ll come claim her. You just wait.”
“Well, maybe so.”
“Uh, you know my brother? Freeman? Well, Freeman he—”
“I thought his name was Donald.”
“No, he changed it. That’s what I was about to tell you. He said he was sick of this town and sick of blue denim and wanted to be free, so he changed his name to Freeman and went to work in a diner in New York. He likes it right much, I hear. Sent us this picture postcard saying, ‘This here New York is a right swinging town.’ That’s what he said, ‘a right swinging town.’ You being in New York reminded me of it.”
Her head was against the back of her chair again, lolling wearily. There was no telling how many nights she had sat up with little Phillip.
“You’re tired,” Ben Joe said. “I’ll be going, Lili Belle. Here’s the letter.”
He pulled out the pink envelope and put it in one of her hands. She took it listlessly, stopping her rocking to frown down at it.
“Oh, land,” she said. “Land.”
She didn’t go on speaking, though Ben Joe waited. She dropped the letter in her lap and went on rocking.
“I’ll find my own way out,” he said finally. “And I’m going to take care of that hospital bill, Lili Belle. Soon as I get it from the bank.”
“No, Benjy, I don’t—”
She was up on her feet now, wanting to protest, but he pulled on his jacket and left hurriedly. “You tell little Phil hey!” he called back.
“Well—”
He ran down the porch steps and into the yard. The sky above the river had grown churned and dark, and a cold wind was rising. As he walked he stuck his hands deep into his trouser pockets and hunched up his shoulders against the cold.
8
When he had finished what he had to do at the bank, Ben Joe headed toward Stacy’s. It was a small, grim-looking café, but he and his friends had almost lived there once, back when they were in high school. They could meet up with almost anyone they wanted to see there if they waited long enough. Now, looking at the dirty gray front of the building while he waited for the traffic light to change, Ben Joe wondered why they had ever liked it. The picture window was dark and smudged, cluttered with neon beer signs and hand-lettered pizza posters. In front of it two weird-looking high school boys slouched, watching the people who passed by. When Ben Joe crossed the street and came closer to them, he stopped looking in their direction and stared steadfastly at Stacy’s doorknob in order to avoid those amused eyes of theirs. But once inside it was no better; clustered in the dimness, lit briefly by the twirling rainbow from the jukebox, were more slouching boys and more leather jackets. Occasionally he caught a glimpse of a girl or two, with her hair piled in a fantastic frizzed mountain on her head and her skirt well above her knees. It was only after he had blinked a couple of times and strained his eyes into the farthest corners that he found Joanne.
She was sitting at a booth with her red coat thrown back behind her and a cup of coffee sitting on the table in front of her. But the coffee was going unnoticed; Joanne stared out at the empty dance floor with her mouth partly open and her eyes thoughtful.
“Hi,” Ben Joe said.
She started a little and looked up at him. “Oh, hi,” she said. She turned toward the cash register and called, “Stacy!”
Stacy was a fat blond woman who hated everyone under forty. No one knew why it was to her place that all the high school kids came. She bumbled toward them down the aisle, muttering something under her breath and slapping her round feet hard upon the floor at every step.
“What, “ she said.
“Ben Joe’s here now.”
“Hmm!” She stared at him blankly, with her eyes narrowed. “What you want?”
“Coffee. With double cream.”
“With what?”
“Double cream.”
“Double cream, hey. Double cream. My soul, double cream.” She stamped off again, still muttering.
“Seven years gone by and she hasn’t changed a mite,” Joanne said. “How long’s it been since you’ve come here, Ben Joe?”
“Oh. I don’t know. Couple of years. Why?”
“I just wondered. Seems to me it used to be more lively.”
“Mmm.”
“Doesn’t it to you? Seem that way?”
“I guess.”
“On one of these tables there’s a monument carved,” she said. “It says, ‘Memorial to Joanne, for her spirit.’ Buddy Holler did that the day I walked out of chemistry class because it was boring.”
Ben Joe smiled across the table at her. He wasn’t listening to what she said; he was just glad to be having that cheerful voice of hers babble on. Before he had been walking too thin a line, losing sight of the division between Lili Belle’s world and his mother’s. Now there was Joanne to help. She was talking in an everyday voice about matter-of-fact things, and she was from home and reminding him that that was where he was from, too.