Page 55 of The Night the Lights Went Out
It was another one of the few things that made getting older worthwhile, the ability to speak without preamble. Being old was a good excuse for getting away with almost anything. And she wanted to know. Not because she was nosy—she wasn’t. But because she had a deep-seated belief that the shadows she saw behind Merilee’s eyes were similar to her own. She simply didn’t have enough years left to wait until she knew Merilee well enough to ask.
When Merilee turned to her in the dimming light, she didn’t feel guilty. Because instead of being upset or affronted, Merilee wore the expression of somebody who’d been holding her breath for a very long time and been finally told it was time to breathe.
“He drowned. My grandparents had a house on Tybee, and we went there for most of our vacations. I loved my grandparents—especially my grandfather. He’s the one who bought me my first old map.” She smiled at the memory, looking down at her glass as she sloshed the ice back and forth. “David was seven years younger than I was, so I was always the designated babysitter. Not that I minded—I adored him. We all did. I knew he was my mother’s favorite, but I didn’t mind because I understood. He was funny and smart and sweet—since the moment he was born. Everybody loved him.”
Merilee looked out toward the white fence, the rails gleaming in the yellow light of the moon. Sugar didn’t say anything, not wanting Merilee to stop. “We were kayaking in the ocean—but keeping really close to the shore because I’m afraid of sharks and things I can’t see.” Her smile faded as quickly as it had appeared. “He had on a life jacket—he’d put it on himself, saying that he knew how to do it and didn’t need my help.” Her voice caught. “He was seven years old, and I figured he did probably know how to do it. He was such a smart kid.”
Sugar sat back in her rocker, the wood creaking against the floorboards of the porch.
“I didn’t see the wave in time to turn us around to face it head-on, and it hit us broadside, knocking us out into the water. It couldn’t have been more than six feet where we were, and if his life jacket hadn’t slid off of him in the water, I could have pulled him up. I wasn’t even worried at first because he was such a great swimmer. But the boat hit him on the head when he was tossed out, and he must have lost consciousness.
“I searched and searched for him. Even after the rescue people came, I refused to stop, though I was so tired I could barely hold my head above the water anymore. They pulled me out of the water, saying that I would drown, too, if I didn’t get out. I used to think that I would have been better off if they’d let me drown. My mother blamed me, you see. And my father always takes her side, so he blamed me, too. My grandparents died shortly after that, so all I was left with was the blame and the disappointment of my parents that I was the child who’d survived. I don’t have a good relationship with my parents still, because they will never forgive me.”
Sugar was surprised at the anger she felt toward people she’d never met. Maybe because she couldn’t help but picture her own daughter. And how she would have given anything to be able to watch her grow into adulthood. To be given the chance to cherish her.
“I suppose your mother had no business having a daughter.” Sugar stopped talking, except the words pressed against her throat, demanding to be let out. If there was anything she still believed in, it was fairness. “I had a little girl. I named her Mary, after Tom’s mother. She lived less than a day.” She paused, waiting for the familiar sting in her chest, which never faded no matter how many years had passed. “Sometimes I think I should be glad that she didn’t survive, because I might have treated her the same way your mother treated you because I didn’t know any better. I think some women are just born without that mothering instinct.”
Merilee reached over and squeezed Sugar’s hand. “No. That’s not true. I see how you are with my children, and with me, and I know that the person you show to the world isn’t the real Alice Prescott. You have a huge heart, and you would have been a wonderful mother.”
“A huge heart?”
Merilee nodded. “But I promise not to tell anybody.”
Sugar pressed her lips together, but only so Merilee couldn’t see her smile.
The sounds of a late-summer evening lent the night a melody, the song of the tree frogs and crickets filling the trees in the woods behind them, cocooning the two women in the illusion of friendship and a shared past.
“What about Jimmy, Sugar? What happened to Jimmy?”
Sugar stared out toward the woods, imagining the dark shadows that lingered among the tall Georgia pines, smelling again an autumn evening and the coppery tang of blood.
“In the end, I guess you could say it was his heart that finally gave out. At least that’s what the doctor said. But that’s not the real story. That’s not the real story at all.”
Nineteen
SUGAR
1943
Willa Faye hit the brakes too hard on her daddy’s 1939 Plymouth, then tried again to get it to stop slowly before grinding it to a halt in front of my house. We still wore our head scarves from our jobs at the Bell Bomber plant in Marietta, too exhausted at the end of our shift to take them off before staggering to the car.
It had been Willa Faye’s idea, that we should do our part for the war effort by making B-29s to drop bombs on the damned Germans. That’s what Willa Faye called them, anyway. I tried not to think of them at all just in case God was listening. I was pretty sure he didn’t approve of cussing even if it was directed at the Germans. But as I touched each piece of metal in the assembly line that would go into one of the Superfortresses, I said a prayer that it would bring the pilot and crew back home safely. I’d started out by just thinking of Tom until I realized that God might not take too kindly to my selfishness.
I wasn’t Catholic, but every time I thought of Tom, I did a sign of the cross like Willa Faye had shown me. I wasn’t sure what religion God was, but I hoped he’d at least recognize my devotion. When Willa Faye wasn’t looking, I also knocked on wood and refused to step on cracks in the sidewalks just to make sure I’d covered all my bases.
I’d always prided myself on being a stronger woman than my mother, on being a woman who stuck to her principles and wouldn’t allow her world to be guided by her heart. I saw what a mistake that could be by looking at my mother, who believed marrying someone for love was enough to guard you from all of life’s disappointments and losses. Because I knew it wasn’t. Love didn’t guide men’s actions. I’d witnessed it when Rufus had died and when Dixie had gotten hurt. I wanted to believe that I was too old for that kind of foolishness. That I was too strong. That was why I’d said no the first six times Tom had asked me to marry him. But that didn’t mean I couldn’t care about whether he was called up or that he didn’t come back home.
“What’s he doing here?” Willa Faye asked, nodding in the direction of the front porch. My stomach clenched like it always did when I saw Curtis Brown.
“He’s supposed to be at Fort Benning in Columbus doing infantry training. He just shows up here whenever he has leave, and I don’t know why since Harry and Will aren’t here—they’re training at Hunter Field in Savannah. And Bobby’s been in France for almost a year already.”
He was watching us now, and Willa Faye plastered a polite smile on her face. “Maybe your daddy needs his help. I hear they’re asking farmers to increase their output from what it was before the crash. Can’t see how that’s possible with all the fellows signing up and shipping out despite the draft deferment for farmworkers.”
I knew she hadn’t meant to sound callous, but with Tom’s departure imminent, I was overly sensitive. “He’s probably trying to get into my daddy’s good graces, seeing how there’s no competition now with my brothers temporarily gone. Probably wants to be given more land to farm when the war’s over.”
“Why? So he can ruin it like the farm he was supposed to be tending before the war?”
“Apparently.” I felt uneasy, seeing him there just watching us. Especially since I knew my daddy had gone to Augusta to see about using some of the German and Italian POWs at Camp Gordon to help with the fall harvest. It was only me, Mama, Jimmy, and Lamar. And now Curtis.
