Sassafras, Part 19


Joan

That morning I woke up dreaming about Rick. I sat up and my head started pounding. What had I done last night? I remembered meeting Rick, and I remembered drinking a lot of beer. I remembered spilling beer on my favorite dress, and walking around barefoot. Had something happened to my shoes, too? They were my best black shoes. I knew I should have changed when I got home yesterday. I got out of bed and picked my dress up off the floor. I didn’t see any stains on it, but it smelled like beer and cigarettes. I was going to have to take it to the cleaners today. I looked for my shoes but couldn’t find them. Surely I didn’t walk all the way home from Tanner’s barefoot. Please tell me I didn’t leave $135 pair of shoes in a bar, I thought. I hadn’t been that drunk, had I?

I sat on the edge of the bed and went over the whole night in my mind, or at least as much as I remembered. Honestly, the last half of the night was pretty hazy. I remembered talking a lot, which was unusual for me, and I even remembered laughing, which was even more unusual. I remembered having some kind of panic attack, but I also remembered feeling more relaxed than I had in years. I remembered how comfortable I felt with Rick, like I had known him for years, not just hours. I hardly knew anything about him. I didn’t know where he lived or worked, even what his last name was. Something that started with a G, Gillette maybe? I wondered if I would ever see him again. I thought about going back to Tanner’s tonight. Maybe he would be there.

And then I remembered kissing him. I couldn’t believe it, but I remembered it. I could count on one hand the men I had kissed in the last year, and that was including Rick. One hand would probably be enough to count all the men I had kissed in the last two years, but I definitely remembered kissing him. The more I thought about it, the clearer the memory became. I could remember the way his arms felt, his hand running through my hair, the way his lips moved over mine, the way he tasted, the way he smelled.

Get a grip, I thought. A stranger I met in a bar should be pretty low on my priority list. I should be concentrating on Jenny’s funeral, breaking the news to Mom, figuring out how I was going to convince Billy moving to New York wouldn’t be the end of the world. Not sitting around daydreaming about some man I would probably never see again. It was time to take care of business. I put on a long light blue skirt and dark blue sweater then walked into the kitchen. Billy was sitting on the couch watching TV and eating a bowl of cereal.

“Good morning, Billy,” I said, but he just ignored me. I picked up the phone and called the funeral home to see if everything was on schedule. They said they picked up Jenny's body that morning, and needed me to bring them the clothes for her to wear. I picked up the phone book after I hung up and looked for a dry cleaner’s in Sassafras, but wasn’t surprised when I didn’t find one. There was one in Bond, so I called to see I they had 1-hour cleaning. They did, so I could drop my dress off on the way to Whispering Acres. When I put the phone down I noticed my shoes kicked under the coffee table. I knelt down in front of the TV and picked them up. They were fine, no scuffs and the heels looked okay. That was a relief.

"Billy, I'm going to the funeral home. Do you want to come with me? We could stop and get you something nice to wear tomorrow."

"I don't need you to buy me anything. Why don't you call your boyfriend and see if he wants to go with you?" he said and stormed to his room and shut the door. I walked over and stood out side his room for a minute, my hand on the doorknob, trying to think of something to say, but nothing came. I leaned over and pressed my forehead against the door, part of me wanting to shake some sense into Billy and part wanting to shake some sense into me. My boyfriend? Did he mean Rick? I vaguely remembered being in a car, something small and sporty. He must have driven me home last night. I got in a car with a total stranger? What had I been thinking last night? I came here to bury my sister, not pick up strange men in bars.

I straightened up and let go of the doorknob. I thought of a line from Gone With The Wind that Scarlet always said when things overwhelmed her. ‘Tomorrow is another day.’ I’ll deal with this tomorrow, I thought. I went through Jenny's closet and picked out a pink dress with pale yellow flowers.

It was weird going through Jenny's room. I didn't know what I was going to do with all her stuff. Her clothes were all too big, and I don't think I would have taken any even if I could wear them. I stood in the middle of the room and looked around, then picked up her jewelry box and sat on the bed with it on my lap. She got that jewelry box for Christmas one year, I think she might have been 14 or 15. Once again, I had been jealous. It was dark wood, and shone even at night when the only light was Jenny’s little dragon nightlight next to the door. It had a lock with a tiny golden key, and there was a little tray that lifted out, revealing a roomy area perfect for hiding important things, like makeup and letters from boys, from the prying fingers of little sisters.

When I opened the lid a little ballerina wearing a white ruffle of a tutu started spinning around, bobbing up and down, one leg pointed straight down and the other leg swaying back and forth like she had epilepsy. I couldn’t remember the name of the tune it played, but I could remember every note as if I had heard it only yesterday. There wasn’t much jewelry in it, just her class ring and Bill’s class ring, his wedding ring, and a handful of lesser jewelry. Under the tray there were a couple of Billy’s baby teeth and a lock of his hair, a medal of Bill’s and a stack of letters he wrote her, some when they were in high school and some after they were married and he was away in the Marines. No life insurance policy or big wad of money, but it was all the treasure Jenny had.

I carried the clothes out to the car and folded them across the back seat. I had Jenny’s keys now, and after I put them in the ignition I sat there for a second, staring at them, then pulled them back out. There weren’t many keys on it, just the house key, the car keys, and a couple of smaller keys. I looked at the smaller keys. Yes, one looked like a bank key. At least now I could hopefully find out if she had anything in her safety deposit box

I decided to go ahead and stop at the bank, but they weren’t any more helpful than the first time I went in. They still insisted Jenny didn’t have a box there, even when I showed them the key. Finally the bank employee looked the numbers on the key up in his computer. He was right, my sister didn’t have a box, my mother did. Actually, it was still in my father’s name, but he did see where Jenny’s name was added to the account after Mom and Dad. Unfortunately, he didn’t see my name there, so I still couldn’t get in the box. What an asshole, I thought as I left the bank, Jenny’s keys clutched in my fist.

I dropped of my dress at the dry cleaner then went to the funeral home and talked to the secretary for a minute. She gave me a manila envelope from the coroner. Inside was a bunch of papers and a little plastic bag with her jewelry and what she had in her pockets. Her wedding ring, a necklace, 7 dollars, a hair clip, a pack of cigarettes and a lighter.

After I left the funeral home I had some time to kill, so I did a little sight seeing. I went through town and got on River Road, a small gravel road that followed the Stoney River to Sassafras. When we were young Deana and Jenny and I would drive all over looking for something to do. There were a lot of clubhouses on River Road, most of them owned by city people from Stoneypoint or even Columbia or Jefferson City. I couldn’t believe people would drive that far just to fish and drink beer, but they did. We could usually find some guys willing to share their beers with us.

I drove slowly, watching seagulls hover in the air over the river. Once it got cold enough eagles would join them, hunched up in the tops of the cottonwoods like wise old men in black coats, but there weren’t any eagles yet. There weren’t any clubhouses, either. A flood had come years ago and washed away most of them. The few that remained had gradually fallen apart and lay in pieces here and there on the side of the road, the concrete block piers that used to hold them up jutting through the mossy, rotten roofs.

I stopped in front of the ruins of one and got out, holding up my skirt and kicking the weeds and fallen branches. I don’t know what I was looking for, but I didn’t find anything. I walked back to Jenny’s car and leaned against the hood, looking out at the water, wishing she was there with me. She would have made a joke about something and we would have both laughed, or she would have picked up a stone from the gravel road to see if she could make it skip across the water. I picked up a rock, but it fell into the water with a quiet splash. I couldn’t think of anything to laugh about.