Shiloh and Other Stories - Bobbie Ann Mason [71]
“I gave my antique preserve stand to Sissy,” said Imogene. “She won’t appreciate it.”
Bill was quiet. He was listening to the sounds, the TV sets and radios all blending together. He watched a blond-headed boy enter the KOOL-II van.
“Can you just imagine the trouble that girl has been in?” said Imogene thoughtfully. “I believe she was one of those runaways they talk about.”
“How do you know?”
“You never know, with people you meet, out.”
Bill watched as the blond-headed boy emerged from the van and headed toward the shower building. Bill liked the way the boy walked, with his towel slung over his shoulder. He had hair like a girl’s, and a short beard. The boy walked along so freely, as though he had nothing on his mind except that van with the red heart on the ceiling. Bill thought uncomfortably of how he had once promised Imogene that they would see the world, but they never had. He always knew it was a failure of courage. After the war he had rushed back home. He hated himself for the way he had stayed at home all that time.
Later, Imogene started crying. Bill was trying to watch Charlie’s Angels, and he tried to pretend he didn’t notice. In a few minutes she stopped. Then after a commercial she started again.
“Years ago,” Imogene said, wiping her face, “when I took your mama to the doctor—when she had just moved in with us and I took her for a checkup?—I went in to talk to the doctor and he said to me, ‘How are you?’ and I said, ‘I didn’t come to see the doctor, I brought her,’ and he said, ‘I know, but how are you?’ He said to me, ‘She’ll kill you! I’ve seen it before, and she’ll kill you. You think they won’t be much trouble and it’s best, but mark my words, you may not see it now, but she’ll take it out of you. She could destroy you. You could end up being a wreck.’ He said, ‘Now I’m not a psychiatrist’—or whatever they call them—‘but I’ve seen it too many times. I’m just warning you.’ I read about this woman that lived with her son and daughter-in-law and lived to be a hundred and three! Nobody ought to live that long!”
“Are you finished?” Imogene had interrupted a particularly exciting scene in Charlie’s Angels. Bill didn’t say anything and the program finished. Imogene made him nervous, bringing up the past. If she was going to do that, they might as well have stayed at home. Bill didn’t know what to say. Imogene got a washrag and wiped her face. Her face was puffed up and red.
“I’ve been working up to say all that, what I just said,” she went on later. “I get these headaches and I’ve got this hurtin’. And I can’t taste.”
“It’s all in your mind,” said Bill, teasing her gently. “You’ve been listening to too many old women talk.”
“I get all sulled up,” Imogene said. “Just some little something will bring it on. It wouldn’t matter if we were here or in China or Kalamazoo.”
“You just have to have something to bellyache about,” Bill said. He would have to try to humor her.
“She was your mama,” Imogene continued. “And I’m the one that took care of her all that time, keeping her house, putting up her canning, putting out her wash, and then waiting on her when she got down. And you never lifted a finger. You couldn’t be around old people, you said; it give you the heebie-jeebies. Well, listen, buster, your time’s a-coming and who’s going to wait on you? You can stick me in a rest home, for all I care. And another thing, you don’t see Miz Lillian living at the White House.”
Bill felt sick. “You would go to a rest home and leave me by myself?” he asked, with a little whine.
“I’ve a good mind to,” she said. She measured an inch off her index finger. “I like about this much from it,” she said.
“You wouldn’t do me that way, would you? Who would cook?”
“You can eat junk.”
“I bought you this pretty playhouse. You don’t want to leave me in it all by myself, do you?” He tousled her hair. “You’re not any fun anymore. Always got to tune up and cry over some little something.”
“I can’t help it.” She put her head