I parked at Big Jack’s place, Marleah said she didn’t want to go back to the party right away. We could hear firecrackers popping and crackling down the road. Marleah moved closer to me, and I heard her catch her breath. I put my arm around her, stroked the back of her neck. She leaned over and kissed me on the mouth, and then she put her head on my shoulder. Having her close to me, I wanted that to last.
We kissed again, this time tonguing, then I was biting her lower lip. She pulled away from me, I knew I’d gone too far. I hadn’t known when to put the brakes on.
She smoothed her skirt out. “I hope you didn’t get the wrong idea.”
Without moving an inch, I pitched my voice into casual. “Far as I’m concerned, nothing happened.”
Marleah said we should get back to the party.
When we got back, Marleah went right over to Dottie Lazenby. She listened to Dottie talk about their trip to Disney world and Epcot Center. Sandy said to me, “You missed the bottle rockets.”
A week went by. I couldn’t get Marleah out of my mind. I even called her house from the parts department, but all I got was her voice on the answering machine. That same day after I got off work Sandy told me she couldn’t sit with my father this evening. She asked me if I would sit with him. She was taking Mama to Walmart to stock up on trash and garbage bags, laundry and dishwashing detergent, a long list of household items substantially cheaper at Walmart than they are at Winn-Dixie, Sandy said, when I asked her why go across town to Walmart when Winn-Dixie was two miles down the road. I was wishing Sandy didn’t have the summer off from teaching, that way Sandy would have been been at Beauregard High, not here asking me to sit with my father while she took Mama shopping on her day to sit with him. I took six garbage bags out to the car and opened the trunk and stashed them.
I brought the radio to the bedroom and plugged it in. We got a rundown on the ball games that afternoon and some stuff on the Braves game coming up, then some call-ins, then gospel. It wasn’t long before we were playing the leg game. My father’s left leg would fall off the bed. I’d intercept his foot, taking care to avoid his toenails, catch his ankle, and hoist the leg back up onto the bed. He would lower it and I would raise it again. We played the leg game without saying much. Are you comfortable? I’m okay, Wayne.
Through the bedroom window, across the road, I saw Wyatt Kirkpatrick’s wife, Stephanie, come around their house driving a lawn tractor. She was wearing a halter and loose-fitting shorts. She raised her hand once and patted her hair. The next time I tried to lift up my father’s leg he wouldn’t let me. “Leave it be, Wayne.” So I let it be.
On Saturday I drove by Marleah’s house. She was outside moving a lawn sprinkler away from the mailbox. She gave me a fluttery hand wave and smiled. I waved back but I didn’t stop. I drove on over to the Lazy Bee and picked up a six-pack of Diet Coke. There was a telephone outside the Lazy Bee. I thought of calling up Marleah then and there, why not, hey Marleah it’s Wayne, I’m down here at the Lazy Bee and thought you might be out of Winston One Hundred Lights. On another Saturday, I might have done it. But on this one I was scheduled to sit with my father.
Mama was outside weeding her marigold bed, and she looked up when I came up the front steps, my feet crunching down on the welcome mat, and she said Wayne Junior’s in there with him, Wayne.
My father was sitting on the side of the bed. He had Wayne Junior’s Walkman on. He had his legs spread and his hands on his butt, tapping one foot on the carpet. When Wayne Junior saw me coming, he slipped the earphones off my father’s ears, trying not to upset him too much. Wayne Junior put the earphones over his own tender ears, waiting for me to start in on him.
His voice was going, “Gimmee that, Wayne.” Wayne Junior looked at me for direction and I told him to turn the damn thing off.
My father’s hands weren’t on his hips anymore, he was on his feet, he was doing this ballerina twinkle toe step across the bedroom and out the door. We caught up with him in front of the TV set, channel surfing with the remote.
After Mama talked to Marleah after church, Marleah came over to do what she promised she would do, sing a hymn for my father, whatever hymn he wanted to hear. My father wasn’t wearing a diaper. He had a T-shirt on, khaki pants. Mama had cut his toenails.
While Mama went on back to the bedroom, to tell my father Marleah was here, I was talking to Mama, in my head—why does this have to happen, how sad can this get? Don’t you understand, Mama came back in my head, he just wants to hear her sing.
Marleah was standing in front of my father’s unit map. It was just us, in the living room. “I’m really not sure I should do this.”
“Do what?” I chanced it. “See me again?”
“I told your mama I’d sing for your daddy. I didn’t think you’d be here, Wayne.”
Marleah was smoothing her skirt out again. The skinny soldier my father used to be was where he usually was, tacked to the unit map. Then Mama was back. She said we could see him now.
Mama went in first, Marleah next. My father was sitting up in the bed. His hands were folded over his belly. Mama sat near the foot of the bed, Marleah stood next to the dresser. When Mama called her over, she came. She let herself down in the ladder-back like my father was holding the chair for her. Leaning forward inches away from him, she took his right hand in one of hers. “How you feelin’, Mister Creel?”
“He’s doing real well,” I had to say. Paul Creel in his blue suit, the man in the photograph, what if he were here in his Sunday suit, would his left hand be flopping like a fish? But he couldn’t fit into that suit anymore.
“Mister Creel?” Marleah raised her voice. “Mister Creel, I came here to sing a hymn for you. What hymn would you like me to sing, Mister Creel?”
“You sing whatever you feel like singing,” Mama said.
My father’s left hand flopped like a fish. I couldn’t allow him to go on this way. I grabbed his left hand and stopped it. I dragged his right hand loose from Marleah’s.
My father gave me a look I’ll never forget. He yanked his hands away like I was contaminated. “Leave, Wayne! You hear me? Leave!”
I wish I hadn’t but I stayed where I was. My father glared out the window at the front yard, the mimosa out by the mailbox, the birdbath, Marleah’s white Honda Civic, Wyatt Kirkpatrick’s place across the road. He had his chin in his hand, his feet stretched out like he wanted to float away somewhere with Marleah floating with him. The air came on with a rush. Nobody said anything. Finally Mama signaled us to leave the room.
I walked Marleah on out to Mama’s marigold bed. It was hot outside. Marleah’s frilly white blouse was damp. Sweat streaked her layer of face powder. A butterfly flickered behind her. I heard a mocking bird going—joodeejoodeejoodee. I heard a car down the road somewhere.
Marleah looked at me hard when we got to her car.
“I only came because your mother asked me to. I didn’t expect to see you here.”
“Next time you come I’ll make sure I’m somewhere else.”
“There won’t be a next time,” Marleah said.
Marleah got in her car and drove away. Across the road Wyatt Kirkpatrick’s underground lawn sprinklers poked their heads up into Wyatt’s
