Tempest Rising - Diane Mckinney-whetstone [50]
Then there was the passbook for the savings account. He’d always kept it in the top drawer of his chest right next to the thin nylon socks he wore to church. Suddenly it was in the bureau drawer where Clarise stored her lacy French-cut bras, the ones she’d wear when the girls were at their Scout meetings on Friday nights and she’d primp into his studio, where Finch was preparing the food for some lavish Saturday event, and she’d have her top unbuttoned, two, three buttons down, and just the hint of her flesh pushing itself up through the lace did as much for Finch as if she’d paraded in there butt naked. He’d work the dials on the stove then, like a pilot putting his craft on automatic, and turn his attention to Clarise, who’d unwrap her nature all over him and whine and hiss and coo so until Finch was singing opera by the time he got back to his stove.
Now she thought about the passbook too, couldn’t figure why he’d moved it from his sock drawer and placed it with her good bras instead. It had taken her almost a week to find it; with Finch missing and presumed dead, she had no reason to dress her breasts so. But on the day of his memorial service—they couldn’t call it a funeral because there was no body to lower into the ground—she needed a black bra since she was in mourning and would be dressed in black from the netting around her hat to the supersheer nylon hose, and her only black bras were lacy and in her good bra drawer. That’s when she’d found the bankbook. That’s also when the haze started to darken her world. As if it weren’t already dark enough because of her grief, which was so tight around her she couldn’t poke a hole in it with her sharpest nail. Finch after all had been her only love since she was sweet sixteen. They’d even breathed in sync, as her aunt Til reminded her when she’d tell her it was okay to grieve. Even when Finch interrupted his breaths to snort occasionally, Clarise would anticipate, would hold her own breath for the count of three; then both their chests would rise again and fall to their own syncopated beat. Now the air around her moaned in grief for this sad solo of a breath that should be a duet.
Her grief, though, had a naturalness about it; it was smoky and foggy and still let in light. But the haze that began to fall right about the same time that she’d found the bankbook was dripping navy, slowly at first, as her doctor increased the prescription for her nerves in small degrees, until there was just the blue. So by the time the insurance policy surfaced, the one that was above and beyond the substantial whole life policy Finch had left, the one that the aunts had found between the mattress and box spring after they’d stripped down the bed on the twenty-eighth day, the haze was falling and lifting so often that Clarise couldn’t tell if she was blinking erratically, or if the blinds in her room were opening and shutting on their own, or if the daylight was obliterated behind the night only to return again a few minutes later.
She pulled her mind from the haze and her Finch because the aunts and uncles had just emerged into the courtyard under her window. They walked four across, her uncle Blue tall and graceful in his black and tweed chesterfield, and next to him Til with the perfectly straight back, then Ness tipping along in her high-heel boots holding on to Show’s arm, and Show in a ten-gallon top hat to give himself some height. She pressed her fingers to her lips when she saw them and blew a kiss through the chain-link screen covering the window. How blessed she felt to have them in her life. She was about to close her eyes and whisper a prayer of gratitude, but right then she let out a small scream instead. Suddenly she remembered what revelation had tried to come to her earlier as the aunts massaged her hands. It did come to her now, tiptoed