I pulled into the driveway, turned off the ignition and just sat there, thinking. The last thing Hazel Marie had done before I left the hospital had been to beg me not to tell Sam and Lillian.
“I don’t want them to know,” she’d said. “I’m too ashamed.”
“Hazel Marie,” I told her, “I have to. They are worried sick about you, and you know they’ll keep on after us and after us, wanting to know what’s wrong. By the way, what
is
wrong? I mean, I never heard of being with child turned into Latin before.”
“Oh,” she mumbled, “the doctor said it meant a lot of vomiting due to pregnancy. Something like morning sickness all day long.” She sniffed, then blew her nose. “And I didn’t even know there was such a thing.”
“Well, me either,” I’d said, amazed at what you can learn if you just listen. “Now, Hazel Marie, I want you to let me tell Sam and Lillian before you get home. That way, you won’t have to do it yourself, and they’ll have time to get used to it. But not Lloyd. I’ll let you do that in your own time and in your own way. And when you get your strength back, we’ll sit down and figure out what to do.”
She’d finally agreed and I’d left, only to find myself still sitting in the car trying to figure out the next step.
“Lillian,” I said as I walked through the door and into the kitchen on my way to the living room, “is Sam here?”
“No’m,” she said, wiping a pan with a dishrag. “He at his house.”
I didn’t stop, just turned in a half circle and headed back to the door. “He’s always somewhere else when I want him.”
I got to the door, but, on second thought didn’t open it, just turned in another half circle and walked back into the kitchen. “Well, I wanted to tell him first, but since you’re here and he’s not, I’ll tell you. You were second on my list, anyway. You might better sit down, Lillian.”
“
Oh, Lord!
” she cried, flinging the pan in the sink and throwing the dishrag in the air. “I knew it, I knew it! Oh, my sweet Jesus, Miss Hazel Marie got something awful! What we gonna do, Miss Julia, what in the world we gonna do?”
“Lillian, Lillian,” I said, taking her by the arm and leading her to a chair at the table. “Sit down now and listen to me. It’s not something awful. Well, I mean it is, but not the way you’re thinking. Just listen to me now because we’re all going to need your help.”
Tears were gushing from her eyes and I could feel her trembling as I sat beside her. “Oh, that pore little boy without no daddy and now no mama, neither. They say good folkses die young, and nobody better’n Miss Hazel Marie. Oh, that sweet little thing, she too good for this world.”
“I know, I know,” I crooned, handing her a dish towel since the Kleenex box was out of reach. “But she’s not dying, not even close to it. No, listen now and pull yourself together. That’s not what I have to tell you. Are you listening?” I pulled the dish towel from her face, looked her in the eye, and took a deep breath. “Hazel Marie’s going to have a baby.”
Lillian’s eyes got wider and wider as she took in the news. She stared at me in wonder, then she sprang from the chair and let out a shout that could’ve been heard on Main Street. “A baby! She gonna have a baby? Thank you, Lord! Oh, thank you, Jesus! We gonna have us a baby in the house!”
Then she spun around and stopped. “We need us a new dryer, Miss Julia, for all them diapers. That ole one gettin’ finicky on me. Oh, thank you, Jesus, a new little baby!”
I didn’t remind her that nobody washed and dried diapers anymore. I just let her enjoy planning for the addition to our family, while waiting for her elation to run its course. In fact, I couldn’t look far enough ahead to worry about diapers, since we had to get through the next few months first.
“Lillian,” I said, “one thing to keep in mind. We cannot tell Lloyd. His mother needs to do that, so we have to keep it to ourselves. I’ll tell Sam, but it’ll only be the three of us who knows. Well, and Hazel Marie, of course.”
Lillian’s eyes squinched up as she thought it through. “What about Mr. Pickens? He make another one what knows.”
I shook my head. “No, apparently he doesn’t, and furthermore she doesn’t want him to know. Have you ever heard of such a thing? I can’t get over it.”
Lillian’s voice dropped low as she asked in wonder, “He don’t know?”
“No, and I’d think a man of his knowledge and experience would know that when you play with fire you’re likely to get burned. I am very upset with him, Lillian, and I don’t care what Hazel Marie says, he is going to get himself back here and accept his responsibility. This new baby will have a father if it’s the last thing I do.”
“Oh, he do that, Miss Julia,” Lillian said, nodding her head in complete confidence. “Mr. Pickens, he a fine man an’ he get her married ’fore you know it.”
“I’m not so sure, Lillian, because there’s another fly in the ointment. I guess I haven’t told you, but Hazel Marie has broken up with him and he’s moving to Charlotte. She made me promise not to call him and says she never wants to see him again. I am just heart-broken over it, especially with a baby on the way.”
Lillian was rarely speechless, but this time she was. She stared at me with her mouth wide open, then she snapped it shut only to open it again to speak. “You don’t mean it,” she said in utter awe. “Why, that pore little thing don’t know what she doin’. No wonder she sick. Miss Julia, they’s only one thing to do. We got to get Mr. Pickens back here, an’ tell Miss Hazel Marie she don’t have to see him, she jus’ have to marry him.”
“My feeling, exactly. Be thinking how we can get him here, especially since she made me promise not to call him.”
“Oh, I already figure that out. I know how to use the telephone, an’ nobody make me promise nothin’.”
“Lillian,” I said, as a great weight rolled away, “I don’t know what I’d do without you.”
“Me, neither,” she said, and we smiled at each other in complete agreement.
By the time I got to Sam’s house to tell him the news, I’d worked myself into a fiery state over Mr. Pickens’s careless ways. He’d taken advantage of Hazel Marie, then walked off, leaving her with the consequences. The very idea, I fumed, strewing seed hither and yon, then leaving before the harvest. I was not going to have it.
And Hazel Marie could just get herself off her high horse and walk down the aisle like many another had done before her. Those two had more than themselves to think of, namely Lloyd and the new little bundle of joy or whatever it was. They’d made themselves a family, so now they could just act like one.
The garage door was closed, so I got out of the car and walked up on the porch, taking care not to slip on the wet leaves that covered the steps. I rang the doorbell, still reluctant to just barge into another woman’s house, even though Sam’s first wife had been dead and buried for longer even than Wesley Lloyd Springer.
James opened the door and immediately stepped back. “Miss Julia, how you do? Come in, come in an’ dry off. It gettin’ airish out there, don’t you think?”
“I hadn’t noticed,” I said, walking into the wide entrance hall. “If you’ve finished with the garage, James, you need to get those wet leaves raked off the steps and the walk.”
“Well, I ain’t ’zactly finished with the garage. They’s still a heap to do in there.”
“Take time out like you’re doing now and get rid of those leaves. Somebody’s going to fall and break something.” Sam was entirely too lenient with James, who could look at work to be done and never see it. “Is Sam in his office?”
But just then, Sam opened the door into the hall and my heart lifted as it always did at his welcoming smile. “I thought I heard somebody out here. Come in, Julia, I’m glad to see you.” Then his face sobered. “Has the doctor . . . ?”
“Yes,” I said, cutting him off, aware of James standing there, listening. “And it’s nothing but a touch of flu. She’ll be coming home tomorrow for a few days of rest. No visitors and no running around until she gets her strength back. I am so relieved.”
I marched into the big front room that was Sam’s office, waited for him to follow me, then turned to James. “Now’s a good time to rake those leaves.” Then I shut the door.
Sam’s eyebrows went up, as he gave me a questioning look. “Just the flu?”
“That’s right,” I said, slightly louder than usual in case there was an ear pressed to the door. “One of those new strains, it seems.” That would buy us a little time, I thought, as I pressed my own ear against the door until I heard James’s footsteps going into the kitchen. It took some little while since an Oriental rug covered most of the hall. Satisfied that he was gone, I nodded and made sure the door was tightly closed.
“Julia, what are you doing?” Sam asked, torn between laughing and worrying about my unusual behavior.
“Waiting for James to get out of earshot. He’d have everything I say spread all over town by nightfall. And, Sam, we have to keep this to ourselves. Only you and Lillian will know it. Well, and me, too, of course. But nobody else.”
“All right. Come sit down and tell me. I take it, it’s more than the flu?”
“I should say it is,” I said, flopping down on the leather sofa. “I had to beg Hazel Marie to let me tell you and Lillian, because she didn’t want anybody to know. As if,” I continued with a sniff, “everybody in the world won’t know eventually. There’s no easy way to tell you, Sam, so I’ll just say it. Mr. Pickens, that reckless, three-time loser in the marriage market, has put her in the family way.”
“Well,” Sam said, laying his head back on the sofa and gazing at the ceiling. “Well, this is a surprise. There’s no doubt? She really is pregnant?”
I nodded. “As she can be. And even with all that morning sickness, she didn’t have a clue. Although,” I went on, “you’d think she might’ve suspected, especially since, after having Lloyd, she obviously knows what causes it. Although I will admit that because of her age, if nothing else, it didn’t occur to me.” I paused to draw a breath. “And apparently it didn’t to that young doctor, either. A nurse had to suggest it to him and thank goodness she did before he ran up a horrendous bill doing all those tests. And I tell you, Sam,” I went on, right on the verge of outrage at the thought, “it looks like they just turn young, inexperienced doctors loose on the public with their minds so filled with esoteric classroom ailments like parasites and generalized infections that they can’t even think of common, everyday conditions like being with child. Obviously, Dr. McKay knew Hazel Marie wasn’t married, but he should’ve also known that being unwed hasn’t stopped anybody yet.”
“Well,” Sam said again, apparently unable to quickly come to terms with the news. “I would’ve thought Hazel Marie might be a little, well, maybe old to have to worry about such a thing.”
“She did, too! That’s what got her in trouble. But it’s all those vitamins that people take, Sam. Change-of-life babies are quite common these days. Actually, though, I thought she’d passed the danger zone, myself. But,” I sat up straight to look at him, “it was San Francisco that did it. You remember that trip they took with another couple to chaperone? Well, a lot of good that did. I knew she shouldn’t’ve gone off across the country with him, but what could I do? I thought they both had enough sense not to get in this predicament. And, now, it’s left to us to make the best of it. Sam,” I said, grasping his arm, “we’ve got to find Mr. Pickens and get him back here before her condition begins to show.”
“I hate to ask this, Julia, but are we sure Pickens is the father?”
“Why, Sam, how could you ask such a thing! Of course, he’s the father. Hazel Marie is not a loose woman, and she’s been as true to him as any wife. No, I don’t have a doubt in my mind that he’s the guilty one. Besides, she told me he is, and what is that sorry thing doing? Moving to Charlotte, that’s what.”
Chapter 9
“He’s moving?”
“That’s what she said.”
“Well, that’s hard to believe,” Sam said, frowning. “It’s not like him to shirk a responsibility like this.”
“He’s shirking because he doesn’t know it. Which I intend to remedy just as soon as you help me locate him.”
“Now, Julia,” Sam said, turning his frown on me. “We ought not get in the middle of this. Didn’t you promise her you wouldn’t call him?”
“Things have changed since then, but, yes, I did. I was hoping Lloyd would do it, but of course he doesn’t know about the baby. So even if he did call Mr. Pickens, he wouldn’t have the best of all arguments to get him here. So, Lillian’s going to do it. And don’t frown at me, Sam Murdoch, I don’t have any control over what Lillian does. She’s her own woman, and if she thinks he ought to know what he’s done, why, I say more power to her.”
“My goodness,” Sam said, trying not to smile, “you are a devious woman.”
“Not devious at all, just determined. See, Sam, I am less concerned about Mr. Pickens and Hazel Marie and what
they
want than I am about what Lloyd and that new little baby need. I mean, Hazel Marie and Mr. Pickens are adults and they’ve
had
what they wanted, so now they can just think about the innocent ones in this mess. And when you think of it that way, you can ignore promises, and you can forget about Hazel Marie saying she never wants to see him again, and you can make Mr. Pickens get himself here so he can do the right thing. And furthermore, we don’t have a lot of time for fiddling around. Hazel Marie’s so skinny now that she’s going to be in maternity clothes before we turn around good.”
“Well, when you put it that way . . .”
“It’s the only way to put it. Now, the thing for you to do is track down Mr. Pickens. His answering service doesn’t know where he is and Hazel Marie says she doesn’t either. So I’m thinking that you should see if he has his house up for sale. If he does, a real estate agent will know how to reach him. And if that doesn’t work, you can call that insurance company that has him on retainer. They’ll know, unless he’s thrown all common sense to the winds. Which I doubt. But in that case, we’ll ask Coleman to track him through the Charlotte police department.”