Not only was her purse where she remembered, Sal's galoshes were lying at the front door. Mavis grabbed the purse, stuck her feet in her daughter's yellow boots and escaped onto the front porch. She did not look toward the kitchen and never saw it again. Getting out of the house had been so intense, she was pulling the Cadillac away from the curb when she realized she had no idea of what to do next. She drove toward Peg's; she didn't know the woman all that well, but her tears at the funeral impressed Mavis. She had always wanted to know her better, but Frank found ways to prevent acquaintance from becoming friendship.
The one streetlight seemed miles away and the sun reluctant to rise, so she had trouble finding Peg's house. When, finally, she did, she parked across the street to wait for stronger skylight before knocking on the door. Peg's house was dark, the shade of the picture window still down. Complete quiet. The wooden girl in the petunias, her face hidden by a fresh blue bonnet, tilted a watering can, a family of carved ducks lined at her heels. The lawn, edged and close-cut, looked like a carpet sample of expensive wool. Nothing moved, neither the tiny windmill nor the ivy surrounding it. At the side of the house, however, a rose of Sharon, taller than Peg's roof and older, was shaking. Stirred by the air conditioner's exhaust it danced, roughing blossoms and buds to the grass. Wild, it looked wild, and Mavis' pulse raced with it. According to the Cadillac's clock it wasn't five-thirty yet. Mavis decided to drive around for a while and return at a respectable hour. Six maybe. But they would be up, too, by then and Frank would see that the Caddy was gone. He would call the police for sure. Mavis swung away from the curb, sad and frightened by how dumb she was. Not only was the whole neighborhood familiar with the car, a photograph of it would be in today's paper. When Frank bought it and drove it home the men on the street slapped the hood and grinned, leaned in to sniff the interior, hit the horn and laughed. Laughed and laughed some more because its owner had to borrow a lawn mower every couple of weeks; because its owner had no screens in his windows and no working television; because two of his six porch posts had been painted white three months earlier, the rest still flaking yellow; because its owner sometimes slept behind the wheel of the car he'd traded in-all night-in front of his own house. And the women, who saw Mavis driving the children to the White Castle wearing sunglasses on cloudy days, flat-out stared before shaking their heads. As though they knew from the start that the Cadillac would someday be notorious.
Creeping at twenty miles per hour, Mavis entered route 121, thankful for the shelter of darkness left. As she passed the County Hospital, a silent ambulance glided out of the driveway. A green cross in a field of white slid from brilliant emergency light into shadow. Fifteen times she had been a patient there-four times for childbirth. During the next-to-last admission, when the twins were due, Mavis' mother came from New Jersey to help out. She kept house and minded the other children for three days. When the twins were delivered, she went back to Paterson-a three-hour drive, thought Mavis. She could be there before The Secret Storm, which she had missed all summer long.
At a Fill 'n Go gas station, Mavis checked her wallet before she answered the attendant. Three ten-dollar bills were folded behind her driver's license.
"Ten," she said.
"Gallons or dollars, m'am?"
"Gallons."
In the adjacent lot, Mavis noticed the window of a breakfast diner reflecting coral in the early light.
"Is that there place open?" she shouted over highway truck roar.
"Yes, m'am."
Tripping occasionally on gravel, she walked toward the diner.
Inside, the waitress was eating crab cakes and grits behind the counter. She covered her plate with a cloth and touched the corners of her mouth before wishing Mavis a good morning and taking her order. When Mavis left, carrying a paper cup of coffee and two honey dips in a napkin, she caught the waitress's broad smile in the Hires Root Beer mirror by the exit. The grin bothered her all the way back to the gas station until, stepping into the car, she saw her canary-yellow feet. Away from the pump, parked behind the diner, she put her breakfast on the dashboard while rummaging in the glove compartment. She found an unopened pint of Early Times, another bottle with an inch or so of scotch whiskey, paper napkins, a teething ring, several rubber bands, a pair of dirty socks, a battery-dead flashlight, a tube of lipstick, a Florida map, rolls of breath mints and a few traffic tickets. She dropped the teething ring into her purse, twisted her hair into a sad little ponytail that stuck out from the rubber band like hen feathers, and smeared the stranger's lipstick on her mouth. Then she sat back and sipped the coffee. Too nervous to ask for milk or sugar, she'd ordered it black and could not force herself to take a third swallow. The stranger's lipstick smirked sloppily from the cardboard rim.
The Cadillac drank ten gallons of gasoline every ninety miles.
Mavis wondered whether to call her mother or simply arrive. The latter seemed smarter. Frank may have called his mother-in-law by now or might do so any minute. Better if her mother could say truthfully, "I don't know where she is." Paterson took five hours, not three, and she had four dollars and seventy-six cents when she saw its sign. The fuel gauge touched E.
The streets looked narrower than she remembered, and the stores were different. The northern leaves were already starting to turn. Driving underneath them, in the dappled hall they made, she felt as though the pavement slid forward instead of retreating. The faster she traveled, the more road appeared ahead.
The Cadillac shut down a block from her mother's house, but Mavis managed to coast across the intersection and incline the automobile against the curb.
It was too soon. Her mother wouldn't be home from the preschool till the afternoon children had been picked up. The door key was no longer under the reindeer, so Mavis sat on the back porch and struggled out of the yellow boots. Her feet looked as though they belonged to somebody else.
Frank had already called at five-thirty a. m. when Mavis was staring at Peg's rose of Sharon. Birdie Goodroe told Mavis she had hung up on him after telling him she couldn't think what the hell he was talking about and who the hell did he think he was, dragging her out of her sleep? She was not pleased. Not then and not later when her daughter tapped on the kitchen window looking like a bat out of hell, which is what she said as soon as she opened the door. "Girl, you look like a bat out of hell what you doing up here in little kiddie boots?"
"Ma, just let me in, okay?"
Birdie Goodroe had barely enough calf liver for two. Mother and daughter ate in the kitchen, Mavis presentable now-washed, combed, aspirined and swimming a little in Birdie's housedress. "Well, let me have it. Not that I need to be told."
Mavis wanted some more of the baby peas and tipped the bowl to see if any were left.
"I could see this coming, you know. Anybody could," Birdie continued.
"Don't need more'n a mosquito's brain."
There were a few. A couple of tablespoons. Mavis scraped them onto her plate wondering if there was to be any dessert. Quite a bit of the fried potatoes were still in her mother's plate. "You going to eat those, Ma?"
Birdie pushed her plate toward Mavis. There was a tiny square of liver, too, and some onions. Mavis scraped it all onto her plate. "You still have children. Children need a mother. I know what you've been through, honey, but you do have other children." The liver was a miracle. Her mother always got every particle of the tight membrane off.
"Ma." Mavis wiped her lips with a paper napkin. "Why couldn't you make it to the funeral?"
Birdie straightened. "You didn't get the money order? And the flowers?"
"We got them."