Page 13 of The Night the Lights Went Out
The question surprised her. “I have no idea. I try just to think about things as they come up. Otherwise I get too overwhelmed.” Merilee tried to smile but quit when she realized it wasn’t funny at all.
Sugar turned off the water and her hands gripped the edge of the sink. “Dogs don’t live nearly long enough. It’s too hard on a child.”
“Did you never have a dog?” Lily asked.
A sad smile crossed her face before disappearing into a grimace. “I grew up with dogs. My brothers always had outside dogs, but my daddy let me keep a small one inside just for me—as long as I kept it away from Mama, since she didn’t like them. Her name was Dixie. She—” Sugar stopped abruptly. Folding the dish towel into a crisp rectangle, she said, “My shows will be starting soon and I need to see to my supper.”
Merilee felt somehow bereft, as if she’d just missed an opportunity for something she wasn’t even aware of. As if this glimpse into Sugar’s life had been the opening for not exactly a friendship but some sort of relationship that until today Merilee hadn’t really considered. Maybe it had to do with Sugar’s being on her own for so long, so that Merilee could imagine they had something in common. Could understand what it was like living alone. Could understand the loneliness, the emptiness and barrenness that haunted not just her bed but every waking moment of her day. The crushing weight of all life’s decisions, joys, and burdens that she’d once imagined sharing. The sheer hatefulness of it all because the decision hadn’t been hers. Sugar’s husband had been killed in the war, but the desertion of the heart would have felt the same.
Merilee pulled out a chair. “You’ve been on your feet all afternoon. Why don’t you sit down and let me pour you a glass of sweet tea. That’s one thing I do know how to make—my grandfather taught me, and he was born and raised in south Georgia.”
Sugar frowned. “It probably won’t be sweet enough for my liking.”
“Colin likes it, and he only likes really sweet things,” Lily said over the laptop.
“Well, then,” Sugar said grudgingly, “I suppose I could have a glass. Just one, though.”
Merilee smiled to herself as she poured four glasses from the pitcher she always kept in the fridge. Placing two in front of Lily, she said, “Your computer time has expired. Why don’t you take one of these outside to your brother and enjoy some fresh air?”
Sugar sent Lily a stern look. “Don’t forget to stay away from the woods. I don’t have time to drive anybody to the emergency room tonight, and I doubt your mama would be able to drive a car with you or Colin in the backseat with a water moccasin hanging off your leg.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Lily sent Merilee a worried look. She closed the laptop without argument before heading toward the back door, walking slowly so she wouldn’t spill. She was always so careful about making mistakes that Merilee wanted to call after her and tell her to run with the glasses, that spilling tea was one mistake in life that was easily cleaned up. But she figured Lily would probably learn that all on her own. That was the one sure thing Merilee knew about life: You’d make your own mistakes no matter how many times you’d been taught better.
Merilee put the remaining two glasses on the table and sat down. “Sorry I don’t have any lemons. I forgot to stop at the grocery store on the way home.”
Sugar took a sip from her glass and let it sit in her mouth a moment before swallowing. “I’ve had worse.”
“Thank you,” Merilee said, hoping the older woman could hear the sarcasm that she didn’t bother to hide in her voice. She watched as Sugar placed her left hand flat on the wide-plank pinewood surface of the table, a single gold band on her third finger her only jewelry.
“My daddy made this table—from the tall Georgia pines behind this house. It used to be in the big house, but my father gave it to me when I got married. Said that with my brothers going off to fight and me getting married, they didn’t need such a big table anymore. I think it made him sad to see it so empty each night.” A short, bare fingernail picked at a small nick on the edge. “This table could tell so many stories.”
She glanced up as if waiting for encouragement, and Merilee noticed how blue Sugar’s eyes were, and how her face was a perfect heart shape. She’d once been a very beautiful woman, Merilee decided. Whose husband had been dead for more than seventy long years. Merilee felt that bond again, the loneliness that stretched between them like sticky strands of a web, connecting them whether they wanted it or not.
“Tell me one,” she said, leaning back in her chair.
For a moment, she thought Sugar would refuse. Would stand up and leave and resent Merilee for interrupting her solitude. Instead, Sugar took a long sip of her sweet tea, then placed both hands on the table. “When I was eleven years old, I watched a man bleed to death on this table. And I can’t say either it or I has been the same since.”
Five
SUGAR
Sweet Apple, Georgia
1934
Isquatted by my brother Jimmy at the edge of the lake, my hands on my kneecaps slipping in sweat as I watched him drag his small net as deep as he could, hoping to find the tadpoles that were hiding from him. Grandpa’s binoculars—the ones he’d used when he fought in France during the war—hung around Jimmy’s scrawny neck, and I held my breath as they dipped close to the water.
Even though Jimmy was a year older than me, we were the same size, and one of his arms was shorter than mine altogether, and near useless. He walked funny, too, one foot turned the wrong way and nobody knowing how to straighten it. All this was on account of him getting stuck when he was getting around to being born. I didn’t know exactly what that meant other than my brother Jimmy and I looked like we were the same age.
“Quick,” he said. “Give me that jar.”
I handed him the chipped Mason jar that Willa Faye’s mama had given us to play with. We’d stuck lake muck and grass in the bottom of the jar along with some lake water so the tadpoles could be comfortable in their new home. Jimmy told me that once they grew legs we’d have to let them go because they couldn’t stay underwater all the time anymore. That’s what I loved about Jimmy—how smart he was. He knew everything about birds, too—like if they were from Georgia or just stopping by for a visit, what they liked to eat, and what they sounded like—which was why Grandpa had given him the binoculars. Harry and Will—our oldest brothers—always teased him something fearful, calling him stupid and other bad names, but Jimmy never seemed to mind it at all. It was our little joke, pretending he was just as dumb as our brothers thought he was. And that’s why Jimmy was my favorite even though Mama had told me it was wrong to pick favorites. I made the mistake once of pointing out that it couldn’t be so wrong since she did it, and I got my hide tanned by Daddy when he came in from the fields. I was never sure what was worse—the spanking or the waiting for the sound of his boots on the front porch.
With Jimmy’s tongue squeezing out between his teeth in concentration, he carefully picked up each tadpole in the net and put him in the jar, and we smiled at each other like we’d just done something wonderful.
“Where you going to keep it?” I asked.
He wrinkled his nose at me, his odd-colored eyes squinting. They were so pale that in the sun the blue blended into the white, one of the reasons why other people thought he was half-baked. But I knew it meant he could see things most people couldn’t.
