Candles Burning

Thirty-eight

TO Mama, knowing whether Mamadee was alive or not was minor compared to the reassurance that Roberta Ann Carroll Dakin could not be blamed for whatever it was that had happened in Tallassee. The death certificate signed by Dr. Evarts gave the cause of Mamadee’s death as exsanguination caused by a tumor of the throat. The usually discreet doctor’s hints that Mamadee’s sudden dementia had been caused by a brain-storm brought on by hypoxia, from the tumor cutting off her oxygen, were eagerly retailed around Tallassee. Deirdre Carroll had never been beloved of the town, and her gaudy death, entertaining as it was, had shifted the town’s sympathies back to Mama. In hindsight, Roberta Ann must have witnessed the first sign of her mother’s dementia and sensibly fled, even though it would have been only the second sensible thing that Mama had ever done, the first being marriage to Joe Cane Dakin, and look how that turned out. Even the fact that Roberta Ann and her pathetic child had not returned to attend the brief funeral was not condemned, as no one else had either, aside from Ford and Dr. Evarts and Mr. Weems. Mrs. Weems and Mrs. Evarts had both vehemently refused, on the grounds of declining to be hypocrites. It must have been the only shining moment of nonhypocrisy in either of those two matrons’ existence, but was consistent with their parsimonious practice of charity.

“Oh, it’s terrible, it’s all so terrible I can’t even bear to think of it,” Mama said.

Of course not.

Adele Starret asked Mama slyly if she was getting up her strength for the drive up to Tallassee.

Mama came right back at her. “I will go, but in the morning, when I have had sufficient time to recover myself a little. Since I have already been deprived of the comfort of being at my mama’s deathbed and holding her hand at the moment she passed over—since I was not allowed to weep at her funeral—since I was prevented from seeing her casket lowered into the earth of a snake-handler’s cemetery, there is nobody who is going to keep me from at least being there when poor Mama’s will is read! Nobody, do you hear me?”

“Well, you won’t have to make a trip to Tallassee at all,” said Adele Starret, “because the will has already been read, probated and executed.”

Mama caught her breath in shock.

Adele Starret presented a long narrow envelope to Mama. Quick-fingered, Mama plucked out a single folded page. She went stiff and then thrust it at Adele Starret.

“Please read it for me, Miz Starret,” she asked, with a tremor in her voice.

Adele Starret did so.

Everything that Deirdre Carroll, late of Ramparts, City of Tallassee, Elmore County, Alabama, owned, possessed, had control over or interest in, all her possessions, goods and chattels, were bequeathed to her grandson, Ford Carroll Dakin. Until his twenty-first birthday, that inheritance would remain under the control of his guardians, one Winston Weems, attorney, and one Lewis Evarts, physician, of Tallassee, Alabama. The custody of Ford Carroll Dakin had been assigned in separate documents to Dr. Evarts, until such time as Ford Carroll Dakin was twenty-one.

To her daughter, Roberta Ann Carroll Dakin, Deirdre Carroll bequeathed a particular pen, which was contained in the envelope.

Mama still held the envelope, forgotten, on her lap. Slowly she turned it upside down and a cylindrical object rolled out onto her open palm, presumably the aforementioned pen. She dropped the envelope to the floor of the verandah.

Mama sat there stunned.

Adele Starret read on: “To Roberta Ann Carroll Dakin’s daughter, Calliope Carroll Dakin, Deirdre Carroll bequeathed twice what Calliope Carroll Dakin had inherited from her father, the late Joe Cane Dakin.”

Mama seemed not to hear that clause as Adele Starret declaimed it. Her fingers had closed around the pen. In the silence that followed Adele Starret’s reading of the will, Mama clicked the pen. Its nib emerged and Mama winced and let the pen fall onto the floor. It rolled gently to the nearest gap between the floorboards and fell through onto the sand beneath.

“I caint believe Lew Evarts would do this to me,” Mama muttered. Then she said, “Mama must have been as crazy as a mockingbird on a live wire when she wrote that thing. But that’s it, Miz Starret!”

“What’s it?”

“My mama didn’t write the will. Winston Weems wrote it—that snake dipped his forked tongue in ink and signed my dead mother’s name to a lie!”

“I photostatted the will at the courthouse,” Adele Starret said, “and had a handwriting expert examine it, along with some samples of your mother’s handwriting. Your mother very definitely wrote out that will.”

I wondered at how quickly Adele Starret must have worked, to have obtained the will (and have it examined by a handwriting expert), samples of Mamadee’s writing, the death certificate, and the whole long story of Mamadee’s death, since Mrs. Mank had phoned her.

“Then he held a gun to her head while she dictated it!”

“He wasn’t there. I interviewed the two witnesses, and your mother was alone but for them.”

“Who were the witnesses?” Mama demanded.

Miz Starret rattled her copy of the will. “Mr. Vincent Rider and someone named Martha Poe.”

“Rider? I never heard of him. And Martha Poe? What was she doing at the house?”

“Perhaps she was helping your mother with the will.”

“Why the hell would she do that? Martha’s a nurse!”

“Really?” Mrs. Mank said. She had been so quiet that I had nearly forgotten that she was there. She was smiling in amusement. “I was under the impression Martha Poe was another girl lawyer—like Adele.”

Usually Mama remembered and kept track of her lies. That she had forgotten this one was a measure of her distress.

Mama hesitated a moment, then said, vaguely, “I believe Martha studied both medicine and law—at Huntingdon College—but couldn’t make up her mind which one to devote herself to—curing people or getting them off the hook.” She changed the subject. “And that other one, Rider—some stranger, stranger to me, anyway.”

“Mr. Rider is new to Tallassee,” Miz Starret said, “so perhaps you never met him. He deals in pianos. Evidently your mama asked him to assess a piano that she had in mind to sell. He is a respectable businessman.”

“Mama would never have two strangers, one of them a complete stranger, some piano peddler, witness such an important document.”

“Nevertheless, the witnesses both confirm that your mother wrote out the entire will, signed it, enclosed it with the pen in the envelope, and sealed the envelope.”

Mama lit a cigarette with quivering fingers. None of it made sense. It was all bad.

What Miz Starret told Mama next was very much worse. “Your son will inherit somewhat over ten million dollars from your mother.”

Mama snarled, actually snarled. “Mama didn’t have ten million dollars! Mama didn’t have anything like that! She bought her Cadillacs on time!”

“I tend to estimate low in such matters.”

“I am listening to a lie!”

“Then it’s not me that’s lying,” returned Adele Starret. “It’s U.S. Steel and AT&T and Coca-Cola that are lying when they tell me how much of their stock your mother owned.”

I waited for Mama to speak, to protest, to question, to prompt some mitigating response from Adele Starret. But she was rendered silent for a long moment. Cups clattered, the women sipped their coffee, Mama smoked.

Finally: “I want my baby boy. I’m his sole living parent. I only left him with Mama because he’s sickly and she could take care of him. I was always gone go back for him. He’ll surely be cheated out of his inheritance by that wicked old shyster Weems. Isn’t there something I can do?”

“You did sign him over to your mother, and she made the choice to assign his protection to Mr. Weems and Dr. Evarts. But certainly you can sue to regain custody. You have a good chance. Most courts would be sympathetic to a blood relative, let alone a parent, seeking custody of a minor in your son’s situation. Of course if you won, you would still have to work out some arrangement with Mr. Weems and Dr. Evart about access to his inheritance.”

“I was cheated once, and now I’ve been cheated twice,” said Mama. “First by the man I married, and then by the woman who gave me birth. It’s not up to you and me anymore, Miz Starret, because they both are dead and beyond our reach.”

Miz Starret ignored the theatrical declaration to proceed to the practical. “What day did you leave Tallassee?”

“I didn’t leave. My own mama hounded me out of town. The day Mama died.”

Miz Starret’s voice became impatient. “What day of the week did your mother hound you out of Tallassee?”

Mama finally got what she meant. “Thursday. I know it was Thursday because there was a brand-new wheel of butter on the table Wednesday night, and the butter-lady comes on Wednesday morning, and there wasn’t any left the night before.”

“So it was Thursday, the twenty-fourth of the month,” said Miz Starret.

“Yes. Thursday the twenty-fourth.”

“Thursday, the twenty-third,” said Miz Starret pointedly, “is how she dated the will. Either your mother got the day of the month wrong, or else she got the day of the week wrong.”

“What damn difference does it make? Mama couldn’t even remember my birthday and on Thursday she was always thinking it was Friday.”

“Here’s the damn difference it makes,” said Miz Starret, sounding like a real lawyer. “If she made out the will on the twenty-third and just got the day of the week wrong, then she was probably sane, and you are out of luck.”

Mama sat up straighter. “But if she got the day of the month wrong, that means she wrote the will on Thursday, the day she lost her mind and went out buying up every umbrella in town. And if she was crazy when she made out the will, then—”

“Then we can contest it,” Adele Starret said with great satisfaction.