[title subtitle=”fiction: Marla Cantrell
Image: Tyler B.”][/title]
Lilah stayed up too late and now, at eight in the morning, it shows. She squints at the entryway mirror, car keys in hand, and doesn’t like what she sees. “Well, I can’t say I ever did,” she says out loud.
Beside the mirror is a black and white photo of her father wearing the kind of slacks men wore in the 1940s, cuffed and baggy. A thin belt shows at his waist. It sounds like a normal photo from that era, except Lilah’s father is standing on his head, his pants hiked up above his ankles, his upside-down tie covering the middle of his face.
Her father was a funny man, that was true enough, but he was also moody, and if he grew angry at Lilah, there would be days of silence between them. After Lilah married, before Junior dove off the bluff at Belle Lake and missed the water, she talked to her husband all the time. She thought if she could keep him talking, everything would be fine.
If Lilah could conjure up Junior again, she’d ask him why he jumped; he was not a strong swimmer. He was only fortythree. Not old, but too old to take chances.
In the car, Lilah plays the oldies radio station. A song about a bluebird comes on, and Lilah feels her eyes sting. She has grown sentimental in her old age. Sixty-seven years. She checks her reflection in the mirror, proud of her hair she keeps dyed a soft brown. Ashamed of her strong jaw, the nose that hooks at the end. The loose skin of her long neck.
She is thirty minutes early for her optometrist’s appointment but goes in anyway. She sits in the mauve-colored chair beside a plastic plant that’s nearly as tall as she is. The room is empty except for her; all the employees are behind the glass door. She can hear their chatter. If she tried, she could make out their words, but instead, she closes her eyes.
Lilah cannot believe she’s fallen asleep, but when her name is called, she’s so startled she jumps, and her purse falls from her lap onto the painted concrete floor. The doctor tells her that her glaucoma is worsening and hands her a prescription for stronger medicine. “This should help lower the pressure in your eyes,” she tells Lilah. “If it doesn’t work, I’m sending you to a specialist.”
She walks to the pharmacy, Lilah stands in line with the prescription tight in her hand and feels the dampness of her fingers. The last few days, there have been moments when her vision goes blurry, a new development that terrifies her. She looks to the farthest aisle and then to the woman in front of her who’s wearing cut-off jean shorts and an orange tank top. Everything looks the way it should, at least for now.
When she leaves, she heads to the café where all the tables and chairs are painted pink. She orders a Coke, wrestles the cap off her new prescription bottle and pops a pill. “Anything else?” the server asks, with his pen held inches above the pad of green paper. Lilah orders a meatloaf sandwich, a side of fries, peach cobbler for dessert, although she can’t say for sure that she’s even hungry.
Before the food arrives, Lilah takes a small mirror from her purse and touches up her lipstick. This is a sort of vanity she ascribes to, even though she doubts there’s a person in this place who’d really notice her.
The meatloaf is dry and Lilah shakes catsup over it. As she’s doing this, Bobby Milam comes in. She hasn’t seen him in ages. An image comes to mind of a much younger Bobby dressed in short pants on a perfect Easter Sunday, his small hand held safe inside his mother’s. She was six years old that year, so he must have been five.
“Lilah,” he says and tips his hat. His hair is neat, mostly white, and he runs his fingers through it.
“Why don’t you take a load off?” Lilah asks, and he sits.
“Had to bring my tiller in to the hardware shop. Motor’s not running right. I used to could fix near about anything, but now everything’s gone all high-tech computerish.”
“Don’t I know it,” Lilah says. Truth is she doesn’t know it. She doesn’t even have cable television or a cellular phone.
“I was thinking about Junior the other day,” Bobby says, and as he does, he drums his fingers on the table. Lilah sees the pinky ring with the big red stone. A ruby maybe. Probably a garnet.
“Do tell,” she says. Hearing Junior’s name is always a small shock, even after all these years.
“This was right before you two got married. A bunch of us guys was hanging out in the parking lot at the Dairy Wonder, and there comes Junior in his dad’s Impala, that yellow one with all the chrome. Junior had just finished washing and waxing it, and it was like staring at the sun.”
Lilah smiles. “We drove that car on our honeymoon to Natchez.”
Bobby raises his hand so the server will see him. After he orders coffee and a BLT, he says, “So Junior pulls in real fast and squeals his tires. He was a big guy even then, but he jumped out of that car like a cat on fire. So, he goes up to Tank LaCrue and he pokes him in the chest. ‘Buddy,’ he said, ‘if I ever hear my sister’s name come out of your mouth again, I’ll break your neck!’”
Lilah has never heard this story before, but it sounds right. Junior’s younger sister Ramona had a reputation. She had the good looks of a movie star back then. It was a powerful combination.
“What did Tank do?”
“That’s the thing. We all figured there’d be a knock-down drag-out. You know how tough Tank was. But Tank just raised his hands and backed away.”
The server brings Bobby’s BLT, slides it right in front of him and dashes away. The tables are filling up now, and Lilah can hear the sizzle of the griddle as burgers are being turned. The place smells of grease and salt, of coffee and onions. Lilah pushes her plate away.
“I don’t know why I thought of that, Lilah. But I could see it just like a movie playing.”
Lilah rubs her eyes. “I’ve got glaucoma,” she says. “The doc is trying a different medicine, but if that doesn’t work, I have to go see a specialist.”
Bobby holds his sandwich mid-air and says, “You’ll be okay, Lilah. Dooter Wilson has the same thing and he got a high- priced, special trained dog that runs around with him. He does just fine.”
“So Dooter’s blind now?”
Bobby looks away, over toward the jukebox, also pink, that plays music from the 1950s. “Well,” he says, “maybe Dooter’s not a good example. What I was trying to say is that I think you’ll be fine.”
The peach cobbler arrives and Lilah turns the bowl around in a circle. The peaches look the same color as the crust, which is not the prettiest thing. When she takes a bite, she tastes the sweetness of the peaches, the cinnamon and salt of the perfect crust.
After a few bites, she says, “I never had a man fight for me.” She feels the pressure of tears coming. “No one ever had a reason.”
“Because you were a good girl, Lilah. We all knew that. And you always seemed a little above everybody else. I don’t know how to explain it. Not snotty or anything. Just better somehow.”
Lilah takes her paper napkin and wipes her mouth. Her lipstick is coral colored and some of it comes off on the paper. “I can’t believe you thought that,” she says. “I wasn’t better, Bobby. I wasn’t even good enough. My dad,” Lilah says, and clears her throat. “My dad had high standards.
“So, I was a good girl and then I was a good wife. The only reckless thing I ever did happened in Florida two months after Junior died. I’d taken one of those tour buses from Little Rock to see the ocean. A man as old as I am now took an interest inme. After three days on the bus, I married him on the beach, a few yards away from a sign that said Deep Holes, DangerousCurrents, Slippery Rocks. When the trip was over, I sent him on his way. The only other time I ever spoke to him was when I asked him to sign the divorce papers.”
Bobby rubs his forehead with his thumb. A young woman with a toddler scoots by their table. Someone puts a quarter in the jukebox and “Heartaches by the Number” comes on.
“Well,” Bobby says, “loneliness,” and after saying it, stops talking.
Lilah rubs her eyes, and the rubbing, or the glaucoma, she is not sure, causes everything to blur.
Once, her sister-in-law Ramona rode with a truck driver across the country. She had a shoebox full of photos of herself beside cactuses and oceans. She smiled every time she drug them out.
“Does it make you think differently about me?” Lilah asks, and Bobby wads a napkin into a ball and tucks it under the edge of his plate.
“It makes you seem a little more like the rest of us,” he says.
“Ramona married an insurance salesman in Missouri eventually. Changed her first name to Crystal. She teaches a meditation
class twice a week.”
Bobby takes his wallet out, puts a twenty and a ten on the table. Lilah objects, but he waves her off.
“Good for Ramona,” Bobby says.
He stands and tips his hat to say goodbye. But then he sits down again. “If they send you to an eye specialist, you won’twant to drive yourself. Sometimes those city doctors talk too fast. You’ll need somebody to help you sort it all out.”
“That’s good advice,” she says, but the truth is that the thought of asking someone to help fills her with dread.
“What I’m saying is that I’d be happy to drive you.”
The day Junior died, their family doctor had shown up at her house and handed her a pill she took without reservation. In a few minutes, she felt the muscles in her jaw let go and her shoulders relax. Lilah thought it had more to do with Doctor Jim, who’d stayed beside her, holding her hand, than it did with the chemicals tango-ing through her body. She thought she’d never see that much kindness in this world again, but here it is.
Right here beside her.
