The Sweetest Thing (5 page)

“Oh. The boy who can't talk. I've always felt a little sorry for him.”

She headed over to the lake and without a second thought waded in, the water reaching up to near the horse's belly. And before I knew it, Dobbs had slid off the horse and was laughing and splashing water around her while her teeth chattered. I brought Red down to the bank and watched, fascinated.

She was twirling around and saying in a singsong voice, “Water! Isn't it wonderful? Smelly lake water.”

Then she turned toward me and sent a long arc of that water right into my face.

“How dare you!” I squealed. “I don't want to get wet!”

Eyes flashing, she laughed. “It's too late for that.”

Infuriated, I gritted my teeth and kicked Red, and we descended into the lake. I took off my riding hat, dipped it into the creek, and drew it up full, then came beside Dobbs and turned the whole hatful of water onto her head.

She let out a bone-chilling scream and burst into laughter, and for some reason, I slid off into the water and started splashing her for all I was worth.

Before long, we were soaked to the bone and my sides ached from laughing. We collapsed on the side of the lake and shivered as the chilly March breeze rippled over us.

I looked over at Dobbs—her eyes were shining with pleasure—and whispered, “You're the strangest person I've ever met.”

“Thanks.”

A little while later, Dobbs pulled out a sack of food from the saddlebag and laid a blanket on the ground. “Eat up. Yummy picnic made by Parthenia. The kid's only eight, but she sure knows how to fix food.”

We nibbled on pimento-cheese sandwiches and deviled eggs, neither of us saying a word, but all the while I observed Dobbs, with her long black hair, wet and pulled back into a ponytail, and her slim legs tucked into sopping wet riding breeches.

When she stretched out on her back and stared up into the sky, I spoke. “You know how to ride, don't you?”

“Sure. My father taught me a long time ago. He told me that he used to ride all over this property when he was a boy.”

“So why'd you act like you didn't know a thing about riding?”

She kept staring up, and I thought she might not answer. But finally she said, “Just wanted to help take your mind off of things. And I wanted to hear you laugh.”

She paused, and I said nothing.

“I don't mean to make light of your tragedy, Perri. Not at all. The Bible says to ‘rejoice with them that do rejoice, and weep with them that weep.' But I've grown up watching my parents help people who are hurting inside. And one of the things that seems to bring a little relief to people's deepest pain is for others just to be there and help get their minds on something else for a while.”

It struck me later that Dobbs Dillard knew exactly what she was doing. No matter how impetuous she seemed, she had a plan in her overactive imagination. Her plan on that spring day was to make me laugh, and amazingly enough, she succeeded.

CHAPTER

4

Dobbs

Mother always said that I had boundless enthusiasm and a love of the spontaneous. Perhaps that was why I got the idea in my head that Perri needed to come riding with me on the day after the funeral. When I had an idea, I tended to be very convincing, and even though Perri looked at me as if she were seeing the Loch Ness monster when I invited her over that day, she eventually came—and we rode and we laughed and we got so wet in the lake that I knew I couldn't send her back home looking like a perfectly beautiful drowned rat.

Cornelius put up the horses for us, and we traipsed back to the house with the water squishing up in our riding boots. “Don't let Parthenia see us,” I whispered to Perri. “She'll have a fit.” We left the boots by the back door and climbed the stairs, leaving puddles of muddy water on the tiles and on the wooden stairway.

“Your aunt is gonna kill you for this!” Perri said, but she was smiling and her eyes had a sparkle in them. Her teeth were chattering too.

I went into my bathroom, quickly threw off the riding clothes Aunt Josie had lent me, and dried off with a big fluffy towel. Then I put on a thick yellow robe. Coming out, I handed another towel to Perri. “You take a bath first,” I instructed. “I'll find you something to wear.”

She took the towel and giggled a little.

I began going through my drawers and closet, and then with an exasperated sigh, I said, “I don't think any of these clothes are going to fit you. You're not skinny like me.” I held up the bright pink day dress for her to inspect.

“It's a lovely frock, but you're right. It wouldn't fit me.”

I started down the hall to the bedrooms of Uncle Robert and Aunt Josie's two daughters, both grown now.

Perri followed me. “What in the world are you doing?”

“We've got to find you something to wear. Otherwise you'll come down with the croup or worse.”

“Well, it isn't proper to search through the house. You don't just look into other people's private affairs.”

Hands on my hips, I retorted, “If my aunt were here, I'd ask her permission. But she isn't, and you're freezing to death. Now go draw a bath, and I'll find you everything you need.”

Obediently Perri disappeared into my bathroom.

I found a dress in my cousin Becca's closet, which was twice the size of the bedroom I shared with my sisters in Chicago and filled with the most gorgeous dresses and evening gowns. Rummaging through Becca's drawers, I found a clean pair of panties—I wasn't about to lend Perri any of my moth-eaten ones—and a brassiere that just might fit her. It was certainly too big for my pitiful excuse for a chest.

I had laid the clothing out on Becca's bed and was searching the closet for a pair of pumps when I came across three photo albums. I opened the first one's brittle pages and found a journal of sorts with a few photos adjoined with little gold corners. I stared at a picture of this house long ago, a horse and carriage in front and a woman—my grandmother, I recognized from the one photograph we had of her—holding on to a little boy's hand. My father! He was dressed in a lacy white outfit that looked more appropriate for a girl than for him, and he was smiling his famous smile, which showed an array of teeth. I sank to the floor, enthralled.

I wondered about my father. Why had he left such opulence? How could my aunt and uncle have so much and my father have so little? It didn't make sense to me.

I don't know how long I'd been sitting there, wrapped in the robe and nothing else, slowly turning the yellowed pages and squinting to read the faded black-ink notations written underneath the old photos, when I heard a noise coming from down the hall. I paid no attention for a while until, the noise became louder and I recognized Perri's voice.

“Dobbs! Mary Dobbs Dillard. Yoo-hoo! Where in the world are you? I'm standing here buck naked under this towel. Hurry up, for goodness' sake.”

I left the album, determined that I'd come back to it later, retrieved Becca's clothes, and presented them to Perri in my room. She hurriedly pulled on the panties and bra—giggling, “Where in the world did you get these old things?”—and the dress, surveyed herself in the full-length mirror, and said, “I look like a complete disaster. Heavens! What will Mamma say, and with everything else on her mind?”

“I doubt she'll notice.”

“You don't know Mamma. This is precisely the kind of thing she would notice.”

I quickly bathed and then put on the blue dress I'd worn that first day and ran my fingers through my hopelessly tangled hair.

Perri had little bobby pins in her mouth and was busy pinning back her hair and muttering to herself. Finally she said, “I've got to get home! Can you try to find Mrs. Chandler's servant and get him to drive me back?”

“Is that an order?”

She looked around at me, creased her brow, and grinned. “A request. Please.”

“Why do you need to get home?”

“Why? Don't be an idiot! To help Mamma! To care for Barbara and Irvin. To do a thousand other things.” She pinched her cheeks twice, looked in the mirror again. “I'm as pale as a ghost. And I've got things to do for school—getting ready for the yearbook meeting and the May Day celebration and the Phi Pi tea and . . .”

“Are you crazy? Your father just died. No one in the whole wide world expects you to do anything at all about school. And my aunt and loads of other people are there with your mother. She'll be okay for a while. You should just stay here.”

She turned on me suddenly. “Mary Dobbs Dillard, I don't know what planet you come from, but nothing will ever be ‘okay' again. Don't you see that?”

“I see that's what you believe.”

“What I
believe
?”

“Perri, it's not up to you to work everything out for your family!”

“And who will do it, I ask you? Have you looked at my mother? She is pretty and kind, and she knows how to serve tea and sit with her legs crossed and fix a good pot roast. None of which will earn us a cent.”

“It will work out. I just know it.”

“You just
know
it? Excuse me, but your father didn't watch his fortunes evaporate in front of his eyes. And your father isn't dead. You have no idea!” Now two perfect crimson spots appeared on her cheeks. “Call the servant!” she ordered.

“His name is Hosea,” I said under my breath as I left the room.

“I heard you, Mary Dobbs Dillard!” she called after me. “Don't you act all condescending, you of all people in your potato-sack dress!”

I turned around, eyes wide open, and I could tell Perri was horrified by what she had just said.

The crimson spots turned to a deep red stain, and she mumbled, “Heavens! I'm sorry. I can't imagine why I said such a thing.”

I went over to her, grabbed her by the shoulders, and put my nose to within an inch of hers. “You said such a thing because it is absolutely true. This
is
a potato-sack dress. A lovely Idaho-potato-sack dress, the finest and newest style. All the swell girls are wearing them.” I began wiggling my hips and twirling around, with my hands making circles over my head as I spun and hummed the theme from
Madame Butterfly
.

Perri gave a little whimper of a laugh. “You're insane.”

“Perhaps.”

“Are you trying to get me to laugh again?”

I shook my head and stopped. With one last shake of my hips, I said, “No. This time, I actually think you need to cry.”

“Cry?”

“For your father.” To my astonishment, she sank onto my bed and burst into tears. Mother always said that tears were a healthy part of grieving. I knew what grieving looked like, from accompanying my father to all his revival meetings and from our own family's troubles, and I could see what was brewing under the surface in Perri Singleton. Rage. Horror. Fear. And just about anything else that went along with tragedy.

I certainly didn't understand all the waves of emotion she was feeling, but I did know how the death of a loved one cut a person in two, and I did know what a father looked like when he saw his family hungry, and I did know the horrible faces of grief and loss that paraded before Father at his tent meetings, and I had seen Mother take the meal she'd prepared for us across town to the family whose daughter just died—and felt my stomach growling because we suddenly had nothing to eat.

And I'd seen something else. I'd seen God show up and provide again and again and again.

But I didn't know Perri well enough then to tell her that, so I whispered, “You're right, Perri. There's no way I can understand everything you feel. I only wish I could help you.”

She turned her see-through green eyes to me and whispered, “I hate him! I hate him! Why did he do this? Why did he leave us? Leave me with all of this!”

I sat down beside her. “I don't know. I'm just so sorry.”

She threw her arms around me and began to cry again. In between her gasps for breath and her sniffles, she sobbed, “I h . . . ate him for doing . . . this to us. For leav . . . ing us with n . . . othing. He'll k-k-kill Mamma too.”

Then she collapsed on the bed, arms still around my waist, and began to moan, “I loved him so much, Dobbs. I can't begin to tell you how much. So, so much. He was . . . He was a great father. He really was. Now everyone will think badly of him. I can't bear that, Dobbs.”

Stunned, I whispered, “
Shhh.
No one thinks badly of him. They're just hurting for all of you.”

She didn't hear me but continued talking to herself. “He was . . . He was my friend. I understood him and he understood me. And now he's gone.”

That is how she fell asleep that day, holding on to me. I sat there for a long while, gently rubbing her back. Later, I carefully unwrapped myself from her embrace, slid off the bed, and left her there, covered with a worn quilt and her grief.

Perri spent the night at the Chandler house, right there in my bed, sleeping straight through the night. I stayed in Becca's room, carefully turning the pages in the brittle album, watching my father grow up before my eyes and wondering about the life he lived in Atlanta and how he could have left the wealth, sophistication, and security all behind. And why?

When the postman came, I hurried out of the house, before Parthenia could even set down the feather duster she was using in the downstairs library. I galloped down the driveway and met the postman at the curb. He nodded to me with a smile. This was my third day to greet him with anticipation in my eyes.

“Hello, Miss Dillard.”

“Hello, sir. Any mail for me?”

“I do believe there is.”

He handed me a letter, and I immediately recognized Hank's handwriting. “Oh, thank you, sir! Thank you!”

The postman's face broke into a grin as he tipped his hat and said, “My pleasure, Miss Dillard. All my pleasure.”

I had the letter opened before I got to the porte-cochere entrance, and I began devouring it with my eyes. The letter was a balm for my soul and ended with the most wonderful declaration.

. . . I am already missing you, and I just told you good-bye. . . .

Do you think your father suspects my affection for you? He has never said a word to me. . . . Coobie, the little stink, as you call her, hangs on my every word. She is the perfect spy. . . .

I feel compelled to speak frankly with your father soon. . . .

With my love and prayers for you, dear Dobbs,

Yours, Hank

“What are you doing?”

Perri's voice shocked me. She was standing at the bottom of the circular stairway, all cozy under the thick yellow robe that she had found in my bathroom. Her feet were tucked into two yellow slippers.

I stupidly thrust the letter behind my back, as if she hadn't seen it, hadn't read the delight on my face. “I was just getting the mail.”

“Yes, I see that. And from the way you look, you must have heard from Mr. Roosevelt himself.”

“Oh no.” I shrugged, embarrassed.

This time Perri surprised me and let out a cackling laugh. “It's written right across your face, Mary Dobbs Dillard. You've heard from your steady, haven't you?”

I squinted at her, frowned a little, and wondered if I could trust her. I looked at the circles under her eyes and their red rims. She must have been crying, but in those hurt green eyes sparkled a hint of mischief.

“Oh, come on, Dobbs! I bawled my eyes out in front of you. Surely you can tell me about your steady.”

I brought the letter from behind my back, looked down at it again, soaking in Hank's handwriting, running my fingers across the paper, as if in so doing I could touch the hand that had written those beautiful words, and then whispered to Perri, “Would you like to hear about him?”

“Would I ever!”

I stuck the letter in the pocket of my skirt, grabbed her hand, and whisked her through the foyer and down the hall to where I found Parthenia in the kitchen. I screeched to a halt, let go of Perri's hand, and said, “Parthenia, I'd like you to meet my good friend Perri Singleton.”

Parthenia's eyes grew wide, and she curtsied a little. “Nice ta see ya, Miz Singleton.”

Perri nodded. “It's nice to see you too.”

I went to one of the cabinets, opened it, and retrieved two tall glasses. “I came to get us each a glass of iced tea. We're going to sit out on the back porch.”

Parthenia showed the whites of her eyes, stopped cutting an onion, and said, “She ain't even had breakfast yet, Miz Dobbs. She's still in her robe.”

Perri laughed again, a light, delicious laughter. “It's okay, Parthene . . . Parthenia. I'm not hungry for breakfast. Iced tea will do just fine.”

Before Parthenia could make her way to the Frigidaire, I'd taken out the glass pitcher filled with tea. I pulled open the rack underneath where the ice was kept and, with a blunt knife, chipped off two pieces of ice and plopped them into our tall glasses.