In the Shadow of Alabama Read online

  But he plays “Taps.” Sandra clutches my hand, and I squeeze her fingers. Though I thought I would cry, I can’t. Sandra’s eyes melt into black streamers of cheap mascara, my mother’s lips turn down in a tight arc of pain, her eyes fill up and spill over, but I cannot join in. My uncle dabs at his eyes with a snow-white hankie. Who carries hankies anymore? But my heart stays empty, and my eyes stay dry like the dust and sand beneath our feet. The final notes sigh away in the heat; the soldiers turn smartly, board the bus, and pull away.

  The contingent from the Jewish War Veterans has finished murmuring their sympathies. We each put a handful of dirt on the coffin—a Jewish custom, a symbol of burial—then wash our hands from a small bottle of water, also custom, to wash away death.

  It is all over. We can go home now. Without him. Everyone has gone, but the black woman remains, looking toward us, waiting, it seems, to say something. Finally, she approaches my mother.

  “Mrs. Fleischer?” She extends her hand, and my mother stares at it, confused. “It was a lot of work to find you.” She takes my mother’s fingers and gently holds on to them.

  “Who are you?” my mother asks.

  “Rowena Jackson,” the woman replies. “You don’t know me. You knew my father.”

  My mother looks at her, puzzled, searching her memory for the name.

  The woman produces a tattered old picture from her purse and hands it to her. My mother scrutinizes the picture. Something crosses her face that I don’t understand. She touches Rowena Jackson’s arm and nods, the expression on her face softening with recollection. She clutches the picture for a moment before handing it back. “Of course I remember him,” she says. “Willie Jackson.”

  Rowena Jackson’s voice fills with regret. “He wanted to come, but, you know, at his age, his health wouldn’t permit. I came instead, to pay his respects. I’m sorry I was too late, but my father tried to locate your husband for the longest time.”

  She pulls a package—square, thick, wrapped in brown paper—from the stylish bag hanging on her arm. “My father wanted you to have this.” She hands the package to my mother. “He wanted Sergeant Fleischer to know that he’s sorry he didn’t do this sooner.”

  My mother’s lips make a tight line; she takes the package, but doesn’t look at it.

  Rowena Jackson continues. “He wanted Sergeant Fleischer to know that he never really thought he was a murderer. He deeply regrets he ever said that, but he was—you know, so—so—heartsick—and—angry at the time.”

  My heart freezes at the word murderer, and I shoot a look at my mother. This woman couldn’t possibly mean my father. He had been surly, bristly, cranky, but that is certainly not murder.

  My mother acts like she hasn’t heard that word. Or maybe like she has heard it too much before and is steeled against it. “Tell your father thank you,” she says evenly, then suddenly remembers to introduce Sandra and me and our uncle. We all shake hands. I like Rowena Jackson. Her handshake is firm; her face is open and forthright.

  “Are you hungry?” Sandra asks her.

  “Yes, we might go for coffee,” says my mother. “Would you like to join us?”

  “Thank you, but I have a plane to catch. I have to get back to Boston. I could only take one day off to come here.” She shakes my mother’s hand again and holds on to it. Their eyes meet.

  Please, read Rowena Jackson’s eyes. Please understand.

  “Thank you so much for taking the trouble to come,” I interject. “My mother, I know, appreciates it.”

  “Yes,” my mother finally says. “It was a bad time.” I’m not sure what bad time she means, the past, or watching my father die.

  “My father says thank you,” the woman whispers. “He said to tell you that it was in the heat of passion. He wanted you both to know that. He says there are no words to thank your husband for what he had done. I thank your husband, too.” There are tears in her eyes. Even she can shed tears.

  “My husband tried,” my mother says. “He was always trying.” Suddenly they embrace, and the woman gives my mother a gentle kiss on the forehead.

  I watch Rowena Jackson climb into her car with slow dignity, her face peaceful at having done the right thing, even though I don’t know what it was.

  Chapter 6

  “Anyone feel like eating?” Sandra is driving us home from the cemetery, our uncle following in his rental car; she is chewing on her ever-present candy. I’m sitting next to her, and turn sideways to stare, wondering how she could possibly be hungry. Her eyes are red and puffy from crying; the now-dried Great Lash makes it look like someone has been skiing down her cheeks. “Coffee and cake?” she asks. “Maybe a burger?”

  “Nothing for me,” I say. How can she be so oblivious to what has just been exchanged? Hadn’t she heard—that word? But she is concentrating on driving. And chewing. Then I realize, she needs to feed her heart, which is breaking. She needs to pat and comfort herself, hold herself, make it okay. She needs to do this for herself, because in our entire lives, no one else ever did it for us.

  “Well, I’m just starving,” she says. “Maybe look for a fried chicken place.”

  I am thinking that if we do stop, we should eat something dignified, that somehow tucking into a bucket of finger-lickin’ doesn’t seem quite—respectful. Besides, my father hated fast food.

  “Mom?” I ask. She has been quiet since we left the cemetery.

  “Actually, I could go for a bite,” my mother says softly. “I haven’t had anything to eat today.” She looks lost, shrunken into the backseat, small and frail, a Q-tip, a thin stem with a fuzzy white top.

  “Just let me know where,” Sandra says, cheerful now at the prospect of food. I scan the sides of the road for something appropriate.

  “That looks like a good place,” I say, as we come up to a small scenic restaurant in an upscale shopping center. The fresh, bright red bougainvillea that hang in pots, framing a polished oak door trimmed in new brass, give it a cultivated and private club look.

  “There’s a Church’s Chicken on the next corner,” Sandra says briskly, ignoring me. “Next to an Arby’s. And two blocks down, if I remember from this morning, a McDonald’s, which I think I prefer.”

  “Why don’t we get some real food?” I ask. “Something more ceremonial.”

  Sandra gives me a look, then says dryly, “‘Ceremonial’? I suppose we can pass a cheeseburger around so everyone can take a bite.” We both smile at this. “We don’t need a white tablecloth to eat lunch, you know,” she adds. “It’s not really about the food.”

  * * *

  The Arizona sky is blindingly blue, and I concentrate on the fluffy white French poodle clouds. My eyes trace where the sky meets the carved rock mountains that surround the city in a steadfast embrace of azure blue and deep red. Phoenix is encircled by landmarks: Squaw Mountain, Camelback Mountain, the Praying Monk, stone monoliths that have been there through the ages. I am not going to fight with Sandra over what to eat.

  She drives to the McDonald’s. Are hamburgers more decorous than fried chicken? I suppose she is right; it’s not about the food.

  “McDonald’s?” my uncle says with a bemused smile as we emerge from our cars after parking. He is a psychologist and a health nut. “Maybe they’ll have salads.”

  Five minutes after we are all seated and eating, Sandra is complaining about the packet of honey-mustard sauce that comes with the chicken nuggets. Too spicy, it has irritated her tongue. Not nearly as good as the honey-mustard sauce from the McDonald’s in Georgia, it has offended her trained palate. She is upset over this lapse in culinary standards.

  “They make it all in one huge vat in some factory in China,” I start to explain, but Sandra has already gotten up from the orange plastic kindergarten-style chair-and-table combo to speak to the manager. She wants twenty cents back from two packets of honey-mustard sauce, for which she, as a certified school crossing guard with advanced training in rerouting lost pedestrians and parades, had the for
esight to deduct the prorated cost from the price of the nuggets themselves before lodging her complaint.

  “Why does everything have to be so difficult with her?” I ask no one in particular. “They’re just stupid compressed chicken parts. Yesterday morning she complained to the volunteer lady in the VA cafeteria that the wheat toast was too wheaty. Too wheaty! What does that mean?”

  “She has a lot of anxiety,” my uncle says softly, picking over his wilted salad with a look of bemusement.

  “She was a very fussy child,” my mother replies. “She gets nervous.”

  “She gets obnoxious. Sometimes I feel like I want to just murder her.” I realize immediately that this was a stupid choice of words, but “murder” has been on my mind since the cemetery. I look at the brown package from Rowena Jackson that my mother has left out on the table and change the subject. Books?

  “Aren’t you going to open it?” I ask.

  She looks down at the package with some surprise, having absentmindedly brought it in with her. “I suppose,” she says.

  “I mean, that woman, Rowena Jackson, came all the way from Massachusetts to apologize to Dad and deliver that. I’d be dying from curiosity.”

  My mother stares blankly at the brown wrapping paper. Okay, maybe I shouldn’t have used the word “dying.” It was another stupid choice. I make a mental note not to use “dying” or “murder” anymore today, if I can help it.

  “Why don’t you open it, Ruth?” my uncle encourages her.

  My mother takes her white plastic knife and slips it under the flap, then starts sawing it open. She turns the package around and does the same thing on the other side. Sandra sits down triumphantly, holding twenty-two cents in her palm.

  “I know my rights. And I think the manager knew it, too,” she explains. “I don’t know what they did, but I know my honey-mustard sauce and this doesn’t taste one bit like it does in Atlanta.” I look up at her to say something, something withering, but I realize that she needs to do this to keep her emotional compass straight. Bickering with the world is a distraction for her.

  “Mom is opening the package,” I point out. My mother is still sliding the little plastic knife back and forth, sawing through the paper while the knife is practically melting from the friction.

  “Maybe you should open that at home,” Sandra says. “It might be something very personal. Something you don’t want to expose to the public eye.” I look around at the public and note that their eyes are focused on their Big Macs. My mother’s hand stops.

  “No one cares,” I reassure her. “And it might be something nice.”

  Sandra tightens her lips in disapproval while my mother finally lays the paper open to reveal the cover of a very old record album, fat with 78 RPMs tucked into tan sleeves, like pages of a book. The name of the album is Sophisticated Lady, with Duke Ellington featuring “Take the ‘A’ Train.”

  “Whoa!” exclaims my uncle. “Haven’t seen real records in years.”

  “Are they collectibles?” Sandra asks, putting down a chicken nugget to examine them. “They might be worth something.”

  “They can’t be worth much,” I reply, “unless you also collect old phonographs to play them on.”

  “It’s not the playing value,” Sandra says, going back to her nugget. “It’s the owning value.”

  I touch the album; the cover is dry with age. “Were these Dad’s?”

  My mother shakes her head.

  “If you don’t want them,” Sandra starts, “I can take them.” She reaches over and picks a record up with a napkin.

  “Maybe that Rowena woman made a mistake and thought he was someone else,” I say, taking the record from Sandra. It is bright red with black music notes and a picture of Duke Ellington painted across the grooves.

  “That’s just it,” my mother says, fingering the tattered album sleeves. “She got his name right, but I don’t understand why she would come all the way from Boston to deliver this. Your father hated listening to music.”

  * * *

  The sun has eased from the sky, but even at night, the dry heat doesn’t give up on trying to kill us. My uncle has caught a plane back to Cape Cod, and there is nothing to do. My mother turned the air-conditioning off and the condo is ninety-seven degrees. We sit at the kitchen table, she with a glass of iced tea, me pressing ice cubes to my temples. I want to ask her about the word “murder.” I want to ask her why Rowena Jackson specifically used that word, but I don’t want to bring up something that might upset her. I am burning up from the dry heat and dying with curiosity—ha, burning up and dying, an Arizona pastime.

  David hasn’t called me. I’ve been gone three days and totally expected that he would. I’m angry and disappointed and want to call him again, but my stubbornness won’t allow me. I’m the one whose father died. He should be calling me, consoling me. Telling me that he loves me and to hurry home. There are no voice mails on my cell phone. What could be so compelling that he would forget to call me? I don’t want to know.

  * * *

  “What on earth are these?” Sandra’s voice rings out through the apartment, and my mother and I follow it into my father’s office. Sandra is standing over a carton of what looks like old radio parts, and holding a small whisk broom with a face on it, the straw bristles pointing upward to simulate hair, a stuffed sock-body wrapped around the handle.

  “Where did you find that?” my mother asks, taking the broom-doll and holding, cradling it almost, in her hands.

  “Back of the closet,” says Sandra. “There’s nothing in this box except junk, really. I guess I’ll throw it out. Hello! What’s this?” She pulls something from the carton, a small white cardboard jewelry box that she opens. It contains a string of tiny silver stones carefully strung together in an awkward attempt to look like a necklace, but it is too odd to be ornamental. There are a few other pieces of electronic flotsam and jetsam also trying to resemble jewelry. The stuff is eccentric, primitive. And ugly.

  “Don’t touch anything in there,” my mother replies, laying the broom-doll on top of the carton and reaching over to finger the artifacts. She looks up at Sandra, and her eyes are watery. “Leave this box with me,” she says firmly. “Everything in there was a gift from your father.”

  Next to the jewelry box is a blue velvet bag. Sandra empties the contents into her palm. There is a gold watch and a gold college ring with a red stone.

  “You can have his college ring,” my mother says to no one in particular. “But I want the watch.” She thinks for a moment. “He had this college ring, but he also had a bar mitzvah ring. I think it got lost.”

  “I’ll take his college ring,” Sandra says right away. “If you ever find the other ring, Rachel can have it.”

  I watch her stuff the college ring into her pocket and the word “murder” comes back to mind.

  * * *

  We are sitting in the kitchen again, my mother and I, drinking overly sweetened iced tea while Sandra continues to pack like she’s all seven of the Santini brothers.

  “I’ve never been by myself,” my mother says softly, running her finger around the rim of her glass.

  “Maybe you could move near one of us,” I suggest, but her eyes widen with horror.

  “I couldn’t leave your father out here all alone,” she says, “with no one to talk to.”

  “Actually, now you can talk to him from anywhere,” I point out.

  “He’d want me to stay near,” she says, watching me get up to take two more ice cubes from the freezer to make my iced tea icier. “I’ve always been with him, and I’m not going to stop now.”

  “You don’t have to move right away,” I reassure her. “When you’re ready. Or maybe you can get some kind of a pet.” My father had never allowed us pets. Not anything alive. Ever. “A canary, maybe,” I add. “They’re easy to take care of.”

  “No birds,” my mother says. “Your father doesn’t want birds in the house.” I wonder for a moment whether I should point o
ut that there’s no way he could know, but remembered that she previously argued how he wants her to stay near him in Phoenix. She gets up from the table and busies herself filling the ice cube trays, concentrating on pouring water into each little square, making very sure they are perfectly filled to the edge. “There,” she says, “now you don’t have to buy more bags of ice. I never saw anyone go through so many ice cubes. What, are you building an igloo?”

  I watch her carefully set the trays in the freezer and decide to ask her about that word. “What did Rowena Jackson mean about her father—being so—angry with Dad?”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” she answers.

  If my mother doesn’t want to get into a discussion, she deflects the conversation by saying she doesn’t know. If she really doesn’t know something—for instance, where my shoes are—she’ll just say, “How am I supposed to know where your shoes are?” but if she’s avoiding something, she sighs, hesitates a beat, and says, “Oh, I don’t know,” dropping her voice on “know.” She dropped her voice.

  “Did they have an argument?”

  “Oh, I don’t know, Rachel.” My mother drops her voice again and looks away, looks over at the flat triangle of flag from my father’s coffin that she had put down on the kitchen table.

  My eyes follow hers. “Put that in a safe place,” I tell her, meaning, “It’s all you have left of him; don’t let Sandra take it home with her.” My mother carefully pours the rest of her iced tea down the sink drain. The kitchen trash pail is next to the sink and I suddenly notice that she had placed the music album on top of it.

  “What are you doing with that?” I point to the album.

  “Throwing it out.”

  “Why?”