LJ Idol Week 6 -- "Cards on the Table"
Ella Mae’s house is cloaked in darkness when I pull up their driveway. No friendly porch lights wink at me, no bright spots from inside. Just darkness, like the woods around the house have reclaimed it, finally, turning the birch floors and oak doors back into the trees they originally were. But I know the place is there. I turn off the lights on my daddy’s pickup and grab the bottle I brought with me. We’re going to need it tonight.
When my phone rang at five AM this morning, still early enough to jolt me out of a deep sleep, I rolled over and growled, “Who’s dead?” into the receiver. I hadn’t heard Ella Mae’s voice that shaky since that summer back when we were sneaking around trading kisses in college. “Rosalie?” she said. “You got to come. It’s Mama. Come tonight. Bring a bottle of Ol’ Granddad.”
My heart dropped down to my toes, to the place it goes sometimes that’s past your feet, all the way down to hell or someplace like it. “Your mama’s dead? Oh Christ. Yes,” I managed. “See you tonight.” I curled up and hugged my cat and let my shoulders shake for a long time. She was only sixty four.
Every Southern family has a bottle of something they keep around when times get bad. Ol’ Granddad was ours. The alcohol gets soaked in the memory of tears, of wailing, of those nights when it’s all you can do to grip the neck and pour another finger and hope your heart doesn’t literally shatter straight through your chest in the night. The smoke and the salt get all mixed up in your brain.
So in the night, I creep toward the house, bottle of Ol’ Granddad tucked under my arm, half empty from when my own granddad died and Mama and Daddy drank it between the viewing and the funeral, and swayed and cried like infants to “Your Long Journey” at the church. The front door was open, as was custom; everyone who wanted to could walk right in, and the soul of the dead person could walk right out. Assuming souls can walk.
“Rosalie?” I call in the front hall. The sideboard table is covered with sympathy cards already, sitting there heavy and sad in their white and yellow and blue envelopes. When Granddad had died, we had kept some of them, the ones from people we knew, but most of them went in the trash after we’d written our utterly perfunctory thank you notes. Strangers’ sympathy didn’t mean a damn thing when there was a person-sized hole in your chest. I’d have to help her go through them the way I’d helped my own mama go through Granddad’s. Death might be hard, but at least you knew the habits after a few of them.
Rosalie appears at the top of the stairs, her face pale and blotchy, her hair a mess. But the ghost of a smile pulls at the corners of her mouth as she comes down, and she runs a familiar hand across my back as I hug her. “It’s always good to see an old friend,” she says, and I can’t tell if she’s talking about me or the bottle. Either way, I'm glad I can be here.
When my phone rang at five AM this morning, still early enough to jolt me out of a deep sleep, I rolled over and growled, “Who’s dead?” into the receiver. I hadn’t heard Ella Mae’s voice that shaky since that summer back when we were sneaking around trading kisses in college. “Rosalie?” she said. “You got to come. It’s Mama. Come tonight. Bring a bottle of Ol’ Granddad.”
My heart dropped down to my toes, to the place it goes sometimes that’s past your feet, all the way down to hell or someplace like it. “Your mama’s dead? Oh Christ. Yes,” I managed. “See you tonight.” I curled up and hugged my cat and let my shoulders shake for a long time. She was only sixty four.
Every Southern family has a bottle of something they keep around when times get bad. Ol’ Granddad was ours. The alcohol gets soaked in the memory of tears, of wailing, of those nights when it’s all you can do to grip the neck and pour another finger and hope your heart doesn’t literally shatter straight through your chest in the night. The smoke and the salt get all mixed up in your brain.
So in the night, I creep toward the house, bottle of Ol’ Granddad tucked under my arm, half empty from when my own granddad died and Mama and Daddy drank it between the viewing and the funeral, and swayed and cried like infants to “Your Long Journey” at the church. The front door was open, as was custom; everyone who wanted to could walk right in, and the soul of the dead person could walk right out. Assuming souls can walk.
“Rosalie?” I call in the front hall. The sideboard table is covered with sympathy cards already, sitting there heavy and sad in their white and yellow and blue envelopes. When Granddad had died, we had kept some of them, the ones from people we knew, but most of them went in the trash after we’d written our utterly perfunctory thank you notes. Strangers’ sympathy didn’t mean a damn thing when there was a person-sized hole in your chest. I’d have to help her go through them the way I’d helped my own mama go through Granddad’s. Death might be hard, but at least you knew the habits after a few of them.
Rosalie appears at the top of the stairs, her face pale and blotchy, her hair a mess. But the ghost of a smile pulls at the corners of her mouth as she comes down, and she runs a familiar hand across my back as I hug her. “It’s always good to see an old friend,” she says, and I can’t tell if she’s talking about me or the bottle. Either way, I'm glad I can be here.