Elizabeth stood by her window, flattening the rolled sleeves of her paint-shirt and wondering what she would do if it took more than one chop to kill the turkey. Or could she just refuse to do it at all? Say that she had turned vegetarian? But that would give Mrs. Emerson an excuse to clap her into housework. Elizabeth had nothing against housework but she preferred doing things she hadn’t done before. She liked surprising herself.
“Andrew, I understand about Thanksgiving but on Christmas I set my foot down,” Mrs. Emerson said. “I’m not thinking of myself, you understand. I’m managing quite well. But Christmas is a family holiday, you need your family. Tell your doctor that. Or would you rather I did? It doesn’t matter to me what he thinks of me.”
She could go on like this all night, sometimes. To Elizabeth it seemed like so much busywork. If she couldn’t write those messages right then, or bother remembering them, were they worth committing to tape? Maybe she just liked pressing all those buttons on her little beige machine. But Mrs. Emerson said, “I take pride in my correspondence, letter-writing is a dying art. I refuse to turn into one of those people who sit themselves at a desk to say, ‘Well, nothing to report at this end, everything going as usual …’ ” At two or three in the morning, waking just enough to shut her window or reach for another blanket, Elizabeth would hear sudden, startling sentences floating across the dark hallway. “I resent what you said in your last letter, Melissa. Everyone knows I am not the sort of mother who interferes.” “Where is that necklace I lent you? I never said you could keep it.” Her voice was clear and matter-of-fact, the ordinary daytime voice of a woman who had been awake for hours. “How could you just hang up on me like that? I’ve been thinking and thinking, the older you get the less I understand you.” “Do you have Emily Barrett’s address?” “Someday you will be alone.” “Where is the photograph you promised?”
On the student desk in the corner sat Elizabeth’s own mother’s letter, weeks old, sheets and sheets of church stationery hoping for an answer.
… Honey if you were going to be gone so long you should have said so when you left. We would never have let you for one thing and for another we would have cooked you a finer last meal and made a bigger to-do. I could just cry thinking of that plain old meat loaf and succotash I gave you. But your sister’s wedding was still on my mind and I never knew you were planning anything but hopping off for a short summer job. I thought sure you would be back for school. Well the college called and I didn’t know what to say, I remembered you had talked about taking time off but we never thought you were serious. And we thought you meant to go by bus like ordinary people, not with just a wedding guest that none of our side knew. How could you be sure what he drove like? Nowadays they let just anyone on the road, all kinds of things can happen. But there you went and didn’t say a word more about it. I don’t know if you were planning to be gone so long or it just happened. You often do get carried away. Anyway here you are now in Baltimore you say. You should see all the times I’ve crossed addresses out and written new ones in for you since you sat here back in May eating that meat loaf and succotash.
Well there is not too much to report here. Everybody is fine although as usual your father is working too hard. He just lets these women walk all over him, taking up his time for missionary circles and all kinds of lectures and tea-parties and slide-showings and paltry illnesses and so forth, when I tell him he should rest more and behave like ordinary pastors, confine himself to sermons and funerals and maybe a few deathbeds. He eats it all up, I believe. He wouldn’t know what to do with himself if they would stop pestering him. Now Mrs. Nancy Bledsoe has gone and given him a dog, a female collie that chews up everything including magazines and table legs, and you know how scared he is of dogs and never would have anything to do with them. She says it is a token of appreciation for all he did while her mother was dying. He said thank you kindly although I notice he has no notion what to do with the thing, doesn’t know how to pet it, backs off when it jumps on him, asked me right out one day after a lot of hemming and hawing what was wrong with her that she squats to piddle when everyone else’s dogs raise their legs. Now Christmas will be coming up which is the busy time for all those deaths and melancholies as well as church services and so on.
Polly is looking so sweet and pretty now that she is married and she is just real active in the Young Wives Fellowship. I don’t know if she has told you yet about the event they are expecting in March. Me a grandmother, I’m just tickled pink. I always did want to have someone to spoil rotten but hand back when he got to fussing. Honey I just wish you would settle down yourself some, finish at Sandhill College or get married, one. I know you don’t like to hear me say that but I just have to tell you what’s on my mind. Mrs. Bennett talking the other day said there is always one in every family that causes twice as much worry as all the others, not that you would love them any the less for it, well, I knew what she meant although of course I didn’t say so.
Dommie Whitehill still comes calling on us and asks all about you, where you are and what you are doing and who you are going around with and so forth. I could just cry for that boy. You will never find anyone sweeter than Dommie, I don’t care how far you look, and that is something that is getting mighty hard to find these days and nobody waits forever.
Elizabeth I have oftentimes told your father he should drop you a line. He says it is up to you to write first and take back all you said so I wish you would. Honey he is just so hurt but would never show it for the world, you know how proud he is. Nobody is as strong as they look. I have thought of calling you on the long distance but not knowing how your employer might feel about it I didn’t. You could, though. Just one word is all it would take and it would make him so …
Elizabeth changed into older dungarees, tattered and spotted and faded white at the seams. She took a leather belt from her dresser, but instead of putting it on she raised it over her head and spun it by the buckle like a lariat, in a huge wide beautiful circle. The tongue of the belt flicked a storybook doll — Margaret’s doll but Elizabeth’s room, no one’s but her own. She awoke here every morning feeling amazed all over again that she had finally become a grownup. Where to go and when to sleep and what to do with the day were hers to decide — or not to decide, which was even better. She could leave here when she wanted or stay forever, fixing things. In this house everything she touched seemed to work out fine. Not like the old days.
When she descended the stairs, threading the belt through her jeans, she found Alvareen in the front hallway wiping the baseboards. “I’m going to take care of that turkey now,” Elizabeth told her.
“That right?”
“You wouldn’t like to do it, I don’t guess.”
“Not me.” Alvareen sat back on her heels and refolded the dustcloth. “Honest to truth, you think she could find the money somewhere to buy one. What you all have for supper last night?”