Milicent Le Sueur Page 15

  “Also he loves me,” I declared.

  “Oh, right.”

  “That’s no small thing, Gypsy. Like you said, Tate Wade knew in his heart that I hadn’t killed anyone. He just had to prove who did.” I cleared the table. “And as far as my plan goes now, I plan to continue the winter with Miss Vinnie Ledbetter. And I have to meet some people who think I am theirs. And I have to help Miss Vinnie Ledbetter fight the competency hearings.”

  “Oh, that’s been dropped.”

  “Get outta here. When? What happened?”

  Grinning, Gypsy said, “Seems money talks. As soon as Kirkenberger and Pennebacker found out that Titus was guilty…excuse me, I meant presumed guilty…they dropped the claim. You know it was Titus who was feeding them the idea of Miss Vinnie being incompetent. Now they’re trying to make amends with her.”

  “How so?”

  “Claire took Harriet up to the hospital last night, and Miss Vinnie wants to adopt her. She has Buddy Hoffenmeir working on it. Now Kirkenberger and Pennebacker are saying they think it’s a wonderful idea and that Miss Vinnie needs this baby and that they will help all they can to prove what a fit mother she will be. Not to mention that they want her back as a client.” Gypsy and I both laughed at that.

  I poured us an after-Christmas-breakfast coffee as I asked, “And what did Miss Vinnie Ledbetter say to all that?”

  “You’ll love this, Milicent. Miss Vinnie said she would consider it, if the firm made Buddy Hoffenmeir a partner.”

  “Harriet is as good as Miss Vinnie Ledbetter’s daughter as we speak,” I said triumphantly.

  “You’d better hurry, Milicent. You do remember Wade Tate is picking you up at one o’clock, don’t you?”

  “Yes, I’ve got my eye on the clock. Didn’t mean to oversleep, but I was so grateful I figured out a way to sleep last night. Don’t run away, Gypsy. I’ve just got to freshen up.”

  She called after me as I ran down the hall, “Where are you and Wade going today?”

  “We’re meeting the Graysons at the KFC to see if I am theirs. Oh, Lord, I bet the bathrooms there are a sight. Maybe I should call him and tell him to come early so I can clean before they arrive.”

  Gypsy’s voice followed me down the hall and into the bedroom where I was changing into clean sweats. “Do you think you are a Grayson, Milicent?”

  “Maybe,” I called back. “Anyway, I’ve been practicing. How does this sound, Gypsy? ‘Ladies and gentlemen of the Academy first I would like to thank the officers and members of Price Waterhouse for counting all those votes. I have a special place in my heart for number people.’ Does that sound too mushy, Gypsy?”

  “No, it sounds just like you, Milicent.”

  “Well,” I said as I came back into the kitchen. “There’s more.”

  I practiced the speech to Wade Tate in the car going over—especially the part where I thanked Grandmother Grayson and Cousin Grayson—and then I gave a perfect performance at the KFC to the hopeful family.

  I was magnificent.

  Too bad I wasn’t really a Grayson.

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  Three months later the wintering was over, and I could go back to my place.

  “Whatcha lookin’ at?” I yelled to mothers taking kids to school.

  “Whatcha lookin’ at?” I yelled at fathers driving to work.

  And I yelled at the kids on their bikes and made faces at them as they pretended to be frightened of me as they raced by.

  “Whatcha lookin’ at?” I yelled to the sky when no one was around to ask.

  It was still chilly in Portsmith in March, and I loved the way my voice carried over the first buds on my trees—clean, clear, and bright—in air filled with pale sunshine and promises of spring rains.

  It was going to be a good summer, I could already tell.

  But first I had to get through some hearings in Upston, some legal mishmash about how I found Harriet and when and so forth. I had told it and told it, but I had to tell it one more time to a judge in Upston so that Miss Vinnie Ledbetter could keep the baby.

  Four walls were okay when Miss Vinnie Ledbetter was around, but they got awful crowded when our Harriet came to visit. Claire brought her nearly every day, and together we redid the spare bedroom, the one next to mine, as a nursery. Baby furniture is rather limiting, but filled with the necessities. I mean you’ve got to have your basic crib, your standard chest of drawers. The rocker, of course. But it was the ceiling and the walls that fascinated me.

  Miss Vinnie Ledbetter let me choose how we were going to decorate Harriet’s room, and after I told her my ideas, she wouldn’t let me come in the baby’s room for days and days. Claire and I took care of the redheaded wonder and Claire’s baby boy in the den while Miss Vinnie Ledbetter squirreled herself away in Harriet’s room. I danced for them and sat on the quilt and fed them applesauce. That’s the best baby food. Who on earth ever thought a baby would like strained beets is sitting somewhere with the devil. The green beans didn’t taste so bad, though they could have used a little salt.

  Finally she let us come in and see. It was everything I had imagined and more.

  Billowy clouds covered the ceiling and walls, and tree limbs with bright-green leaves danced on the walls. Colorful birds sang on the branches and flew high overhead. Soft white curtains stirred in the breeze from the open windows and waved to a view of wisteria vines beginning to creep up the lattice outside the windows.

  “You’ve brought the outside in,” I told Miss Vinnie Ledbetter. “I wish I had a room like this.”

  “I’ll paint you one too, Milicent,” she said, and she did. And at night, when I lay in my bed there were stars shining on the ceiling, and it was just like sleeping out under the left tree.

  All we had to do next was get through the hearing.

  I didn’t know Upston was so close to Portsmith. In Miss Vinnie Ledbetter’s black Mercedes, we bypassed all the riding arenas in the area and were there in no time flat. “Well, at least this time I didn’t have to fix my lime-green Jell-O,” I told Miss Vinnie Ledbetter as we drove into Upston.

  Nothing is as easy as it seems, and I had to stay in Upston to give Depositions and Depositions. Miss Vinnie Ledbetter had to get back to Portsmith, but I told her not to worry, that I had a place to stay in Upston and friends to boot. Miss Vinnie Ledbetter was worried about the outcome of the hearings, but I wasn’t. Ever since Wade Tate had arranged to have Harriet stay in Portsmith—after I had finally confessed that I found the baby in Upston—I felt everything was going to be okay. I could see the future as clear as the stars on my ceiling at night, and it all looked bright.

  That’s how I felt when I tracked down Cherries in Box City. I had a full complement of ten new bags and money from the rock in the green one. Since Tate Wade had told me that Miss Vinnie Ledbetter owned my place, I had got to thinking that maybe she was the one who put the money under the rock on the first of every month. But she always acted like she didn’t know what in the world I was talking about. Then I began to think it was Chief Tate himself who beat me to the rock every month. But he just laughed when I asked him. Maybe it was just plain magic, as I had always thought. Some things are best left alone.

  Cherries had had a bad winter. I was sorry to hear that. She looked like a dried-up old apple woman, the kind of doll you can buy at the consignment store for four dollars and ninety-nine cents, and her disposition wasn’t much better. I always knew that bag ladies led better lives in small towns. Cherries was on the verge of becoming a homeless person. I gave her one of my new bags—the one with the pink roses—but it didn’t seem to brighten her spirits like it had when Gypsy had given it to me. I was sorry I had given it away.

  “And to top it all off,” she complained, “the police come down here every day or so, looking for that killer from Portsmith.” She glared at me like it was my fault.

 
“He’s long gone,” I reassured her. “And this is the last place he would ever come, Cherries.”

  “Well, we’ve got other riffraff from Portsmith this year. You’d think there was a sign up that said, ‘Welcome, Portsmith,’ the way they keep washing in here like dead fish from down at the river.”

  “Who are you talking about?”

  “One of them is named Jim. Says he knew you in Portsmith. I tell you, Milicent, Upston is just so big. You keep your homeless in Portsmith. We have enough already.”

  “Big, dirty, hairy guy?”

  “Yes, and mean.”

  “Aw, I know him, yes. Only I call him Jean Valjean. I used to be scared of him too, but I think he’s mostly talk.”

  “Well, he can just talk himself back to Portsmith. He’s always asking if we’ve seen you around. Better watch out for him. He’d sell his own mother to the devil for a pack of cigarettes. I guess you want to stay here tonight?”

  I looked around at the cardboard box that once housed a refrigerator. A few dirty blankets were scrunched into the corner of the box, and a shopping cart, overflowing with assorted boxes and rags, was parked outside. The bag I had given Cherries was the only bright spot in the place. I was glad again that I had given it to her and happier still that it contained a bar of Lever 2000. Not that she would use it, but it made me feel better.

  “No, thanks, I’m going to stay at the theatre.”

  “Don’t know what you see in that place, Milicent. Too dark and junky for me,” she said.

  “No accounting for some tastes,” I agreed with her.

  I left her standing there, holding my rose bag like a lone flower growing amid the gray dirt and brown boxes under the bridge.

  Thoughts of green grass beginning to sprout on my place back in Portsmith filled my head like a cleansing of the brain with a bar of soap. I sang a song. “Two more Depositions, and it’s home for me. Whoop-de-do. Whoop-de-do.”

  THIRTY-NINE

  This is what I like about the theatre.

  No one ever knows if you’ve been gone or not, and no one ever knows or cares what you do outside the theater. Bag ladies and bank presidents can work side by side and there’s no difference. It’s what you’re doing at the theater that counts, not what you do on your day job.

  However, the director did tell me when I came back to the theater in Upston that they had missed me. I was lucky to get the lead in the last play; seems they’re always on the lookout for new faces, and mine was the newest on the block. The director was still proud of me. Besides, no one cleans the bathrooms as well as I do.

  “They’re still talking about your performance, too, Milicent. You should have auditioned for this one. As it is, we go into performance this weekend. But maybe you don’t sing?” The director’s name is Harold. Now that’s a name you can get your tongue around. It’s almost as satisfying to say Harold as it is to say Ledbetter. If you say them right, they both stay in your head like the last clap of a belfry bell.

  Harold is the only paid employee of the UCLT. The rest are all volunteers. He doesn’t direct all the plays, but the current one was his baby. He loved doing musicals and had actually written this one, he told me, as he futzed with some equipment. “It’s a comedy—sort of—and ties in the music of the twenties. The story is not important, but, god, I love the music.”

  “I’ve learned to sing lullabies, but that’s about it,” I told him.

  “Just as well then,” he said. “Can you help out, though? Pattiann needs someone to help her with gathering last-minute props.”

  “Sure, I know just about all the props in the prop room. Harold, what is that thing?” I asked, indicating the large black box he was wrestling up one of the aisles. The Upston Community Little Theater has a thrust stage that actually ended at the audience’s feet. Harold was carrying his box up into the stadium seating like it was a heavy baby.

  “It’s the control panel for the lights,” he explained as he finally rested it on the floor. “I know, most directors don’t mess with the light boards as well as direct, but you ought to see the costumes we have in this play. I want to get the lighting just right, and I don’t want to keep running down the ladder from the control booth while I do it. Now don’t touch it, Milicent.”

  “Wouldn’t dare,” I told him.

  “I have a scheme for the lights, but I changed one of the numbers last night, and now I have to reset some spots. And change the gels. Hey, can you cut some new gels for me?” Harold plugged in the light board to a cable dangling from the control booth above the seating area. The box hummed and lit up with green and red lights.

  “Is that why you’re here during the day?” I asked.

  “Yep, I have this one cool number that I restaged last night, and I want blue gels instead of orange and I can’t find any precut ones anywhere.”

  “I like blue.”

  “Great. Thanks. The gel file is over there on the floor. Use the red ones I pulled for your pattern. And don’t let anyone near this control panel, okay?”

  It was great being back in the theater again. I cut out gels for Harold and ran down props on Pattiann’s list.

  By the next day it was like I had never been away. Technical rehearsals began that night, and I was fascinated to see all that went on during the last days before opening night. When I had been in Who Am I? I’d missed all the technical preparations because the actors were running lines in the Greenroom while the technicians put the lighting and sound together.

  Set people ran around like chickens with their heads cut off, putting last-minute daubs on backdrops and completely painting the floor black. Harold was impatient as he waited for the floor to dry so he could finish the lighting.

  “Harold has certainly pulled out all the stops on this production,” Pattiann said as I brought her a basket full of the last items on my prop list. “Oh, Milicent, you found the wheel of fortune for the Charleston number. I looked and looked for it.”

  “It was right over my bed,” I said. “I mean, the prop bed upstairs. Someone had covered it with a quilt. I bet if someone slept in that bed at night that that wheel would give them nightmares. I mean, if someone was all the time worrying about choosing fame or misfortune or money or poverty.”

  “You’re so funny, Milicent. I’ve been meaning to ask. Is there any chance that you can run one of the prop tables for me during production? I had someone scheduled, but they didn’t show.”

  “I’d love to, Pattiann, but I have to get back to Portsmith this weekend. Sorry.”

  “Me too, Milicent. Maybe next play? Unless you take a part. You’re so good on stage, Milicent.”

  “Milicent, where are you?”

  “Here, Harold.” I searched for him in the darkness of the theater.

  “I need you.”

  “I need to be needed,” I said.

  “I’ve got to run home and get a clamp for the front spotlight, and I don’t want anybody—not a soul—to go on stage. That light is hanging by a thread. Keep everyone away from the stage. Pattiann, want to drive with me? I want to show you that Broadway poster I put up at the house last week.”

  “Sure,” she said. “Milicent, you don’t mind being alone here?”

  I laughed, thinking how many days and nights I had spent alone in the theater. “No, you two go on.”

  “We’ll bring back burgers from Tasty Queen, Milicent,” Harold yelled from the stage door.

  “And there’s lime Jell-O left over in the fridge,” the departing Pattiann called.

  “There always is,” I yelled back.

  Suddenly Harold reappeared through the blackout curtain that separated the audience from backstage. He said one more time, “Don’t let anyone near that ladder or that lightboard.”

  “Lock the stage door,” I called after them.

  But I don’t think they heard me.

&nbs
p; FORTY

  I sat there in the dark theater—only the house lights from the lobby area filtered into the auditorium—and thought about how well the Deposition had gone that morning. And I had met the judge who would preside at the hearing tomorrow. Her name was Madeline Rutherford. I told her I was called Madeline sometimes, and she had laughed and said that tomorrow’s hearing would be very informal. I had a good feeling about the outcome of the hearing.

  What I didn’t have a good feeling about was the sound of the stage door creaking slowly open beyond the exit to stage left.

  “Hello,” I called. “Harold? You back already?”

  “Milicent?” came a deep voice.

  “Yes, I’m in the auditorium. Who is it?”

  Out of the shadows of the curtained exit a form emerged. As it cleared the curtains I saw it was a man…or a boy. Paint-stained overalls and a worn baseball cap were all that I could make out in the dim light. I figured it was one of the legions of high school boys Harold had recruited for the play. Pattiann and I had laughed as they had come in the day before from spring baseball practice to exchange their bats for paintbrushes to help finish the set, or for canes and top hats for the spectacular finale.

  This one carried a bat.

  “Where are you?” he asked as he raised his head to search the seats.

  The auditorium could only seat 301 patrons, so there weren’t that many places to look. Then I realized in my dark sweats, I must be almost invisible to the visitor. I just started to say “over here” and direct him my way when I saw he was wearing a brown, scraggly beard. I didn’t remember any of the kids being old enough to grow a beard.

  While I was trying to figure out who it was—obviously someone who knew me—he came on in the stage area. “Where is everybody?” he asked in a hoarse whisper.

  Assuming it was someone who was going to help Harold with the lights, I answered before I thought. “I’m the only one here. Harold and Pattiann have gone out.” I hastened to add, “but they will be right back. In just a minute or two.”