"Hey, old lady." A woman's voice, light, loose.
Mavis turned and saw a dark-skinned woman, limber and moving quickly, mount the steps and halt when she didn't see what she expected.
"Oh, excuse me."
"That's okay," said Mavis. "She's upstairs. Connie."
"I see."
Mavis thought the woman was looking very carefully at her clothes.
"Oh, lovely," she said, coming to the table. "Just lovely." She stuck her fingers into the bowl of pecans and gathered a few. Mavis expected her to eat some, but she let them fall back to the heap. "What's Thanksgiving without pecan pie? Not a thing."
Neither one of them heard the bare feet plopping, and since the swinging doors had no sound, Connie's entrance was like an apparition. "There you are!" The black woman opened her arms. Connie entered them for a long swaying hug. "I scared this girl to death. Never saw a stranger inside here before."
"Our first," said Connie. "Mavis Albright, this is Soane Morgan."
"Hi, hon."
"Morgan. Mrs. Morgan."
Mavis' face warmed, but she smiled anyway and said, "Sorry. Mrs. Morgan," while taking note of the woman's expensive oxford shoes, sheer stockings, wool cardigan and the cut of her dress: summerweight crepe, pale blue with a white collar.
Soane opened a crocheted purse. "I brought some more," she said, and held up a pair of aviator-style sunglasses.
"Good. I got one pair left."
Soane glanced at Mavis. "She eats sunglasses."
"Not me. This house eats them." Fitting the stems behind her ears, Connie tested the dark lenses at the doorway. She turned her face directly to the sun and the "Hah!" she shouted was full of defiance. "Somebody order shelled pecans, or is this your idea?"
"My idea."
"Make a lot of pies."
"Make more than pie." Connie rinsed the sunglasses under the sink tap and peeled away the sticker.
"I don't want to hear, so don't tell me. I came for the you-knowwhat."
Connie nodded. "Can you get this girl some gasoline for her automobile? Take her and bring her back?" She was drying and polishing the new glasses, checking for spots and lint from the towel. "Where is your car?" asked Soane. There was wonder in her voice, as though she doubted anyone in thongs, wrinkled slacks and a child's dirty sweatshirt could have a car.
"Route eighteen," Mavis told her. "Took me hours to walk here, but in a car…"
Soane nodded. "Happy to. But I'll have to get somebody else to drive you back. I would, but I've got too much to do. Both my boys due on furlough." Proudly, she looked at Connie. "House'll be full before I know it." Then, "How's Mother?"
"Can't last."
"You sure Demby or Middleton's not a better idea?" Connie slipped the aviator glasses into her apron pocket and headed for the pantry. "She wouldn't draw but one breath in a hospital. The second one would be her last."
The small pouch Connie placed on top of a basket of pecans could have been a grenade. Positioned on the seat of the Oldsmobile between Mavis and Soane Morgan, the cloth packet emanated tension. Soane kept touching it as though to remind herself that it was there. The easy talk in the kitchen had disappeared. Suddenly formal, Soane said very little, answered Mavis' questions with the least information and asked none of her own.
"Connie's nice, isn't she?"
Soane looked at her. "Yes. She is."
For twenty minutes they traveled, Soane cautious at every rise or turn of the road, however slight. She seemed to be on the lookout for something. They stopped at a one-pump gas station in the middle of nowhere and asked the man who limped to the window for five gallons to carry. There was an argument, peppered with long silences, about the five-gallon can. He wanted Mavis to pay for it; she said she would return it when she came back to fill her tank. He doubted it. Finally they settled for a two-dollar deposit. Soane and Mavis drove away, turned into another road, heading east for what seemed like an hour. Pointing toward a fancy wooden sign, Soane said, "Here we are." The sign read ruby pop.360 on top and lodge 16 at the bottom. Mavis' immediate impression of the little town was how still it was, as though no one lived there. Except for a feed store and a savings and loan bank, it had no recognizable business district. They drove down a wide street, past enormous lawns cut to dazzle in front of churches and pastel-colored houses. The air was scented. The trees young. Soane turned into a side street of flower gardens wider than the houses and snowed with butterflies.
The odor of the five-gallon can had been fierce in Soane's car. But in the boy's truck, propped between Mavis' feet, it was indistinguishable from the others. The gluey, oily, metally combination might have made her retch if he had not done voluntarily what Mavis had been unable to ask of Soane Morgan: turn on the radio. The disc jockey announced the tunes as though they were made by his family or best friends: King Solomon, Brother Otis, Dinah baby, Ike and Tina girl, Sister Dakota, the Temps.
As they bounced along, Mavis, cheerful now, enjoyed the music and the shaved part in the boy's hair. Although he was pleasanter than Soane, he didn't have much more to say. They were several miles away from Ruby pop.360 and listening to the seventh of Jet magazine's top twenty when Mavis realized that, other than the gas station guy, she had not seen a single white.
"Any white people in your town?"
"Not to live, they ain't. Come on business sometime." When they glimpsed the mansion in the distance on the way to the Cadillac, he asked, "What's it like in there?"
"I only been in the kitchen," Mavis answered.
"Two old women in that big of a place. Don't seem right." The Cadillac was unmolested but so hot the boy licked his fingers before and after he unscrewed the gas cap. And he was nice enough to start the engine for her and tell her to leave the doors open for a while before she got in. Mavis did not have to struggle to get him to accept money-Soane had been horrified-and he drove off accompanying "Hey Jude" on his radio.
Behind the wheel, cooling in the air-conditioned air, Mavis regretted not having noticed the radio station's number on the dashboard of the boy's truck. She fiddled the dial uselessly as she drove the Cadillac back to Connie's house. She parked, and the Cadillac, dark as bruised blood, stayed there for two years.
It was already sunset when the boy started the engine. Also she had forgotten to ask him for directions. Also she couldn't remember where the gas station with her two-dollar deposit was and didn't want to search for it in the dark. Also Connie had stuffed and roasted a chicken. But her decision to spend the night was mostly because of Mother.
The whiteness at the center was blinding. It took a moment for Mavis to see the shape articulated among the pillows and the bonewhite sheets, and she might have remained sightless longer had not an authoritative voice said, "Don't stare, child."
Connie bent over the foot of the bed and reached under the sheet. With her right hand she raised Mother's heels and with her left fluffed the pillows underneath them. Muttering "Toenails like razors," she resettled the feet gently.
When her eyes grew accustomed to dark and light, Mavis saw a bed shape far too small for a sick woman-almost a child's bed-and a variety of tables and chairs in the rim of black that surrounded it. Connie selected something from one of the tables and leaned into the light that ringed the patient. Mavis, following her movements, watched her apply Vaseline to lips in a face paler than the white cloth wrapped around the sick woman's head.
"There must be something that tastes better than this," said Mother, trailing the tip of her tongue over her oiled lips. "Food," said Connie. "How about some of that?"
"No."
"Bit of chicken?"
"No. Who is this you brought in here? Why did you bring somebody in here?"
"I told you. Woman with a car need help."