“Well, I was looking for Mrs. Whitshank.”
“Mrs. Whitshank is in the kitchen.”
“Thanks.”
Mr. Whitshank veered off the flagstone walk toward where the men were working. Abby, gazing after him, wondered where on earth he bought his shirts. They were white, always, and unfashionably high in the collar, so that a tall band of white encased his skinny neck. She often had the feeling that he might be modeling himself after some ideal—some illustrious figure from his past that he had admired. But his narrow black trousers looked empty in the seat, and the Y of his suspenders accentuated the weary, burdened posture of an ordinary laboring man.
“Mitch here yet?” she heard him call, and a murmur of answers rose above the buzz of the chainsaw like bees humming in a log.
Abby climbed the steps, crossed the porch, opened the screen door, and tootled, “Yoo-hoo!” It was something Linnie Whitshank would have done. Automatically, Abby seemed to have switched to Mrs. Whitshank’s language and to her tone of voice—thin and fluty.
“Back here!” Mrs. Whitshank called from the kitchen.
Abby loved the Whitshanks’ house. Even on a hot July day it was cool and dim, with the ceiling fan revolving high above the center hall and another fan gently stirring in the dining room. A folded tablecloth had been placed at one end of the table with a clutch of silverware resting on top, waiting to be distributed. She continued through to the kitchen, where Mrs. Whitshank stood at the sink rinsing okra pods. Mrs. Whitshank was slight and frail-looking, but an incongruously deep, low bosom filled out the top of her gingham housedress. Her pale hair hung limply almost to her shoulders. It was a young girl’s hairstyle, and her face when she turned to Abby seemed young as well—unlined and plain and guileless. “Hey, there!” she said, and Abby said, “Hi.”
“Don’t you look pretty today!”
“I came to see how I could help,” Abby said.
“Oh, honey, you don’t want to spoil those nice clothes. Just sit and keep me company.”
Abby pulled a chair out from the kitchen table and settled on it. She had learned not to argue with Mrs. Whitshank, who was a force of nature when it came to cooking and would only find Abby a hindrance.
“How’s that tree coming along?” Mrs. Whitshank asked her.
“They’re starting to cut up the branches now.”
“Did you ever hear of such a thing? Bringing down a whole poplar for the sake of a photograph.”
“Photy-graph,” she pronounced it. She had a country way of talking, and unlike her husband, she made no attempt to alter it.
“Dane says the tree was already dying, according to Mr. Whitshank,” Abby said.
“Oh, sometimes Junior will just get this sort of vision about how he wants things to be,” Mrs. Whitshank told her. She shut off the faucet and wiped her hands on her apron. “He’s already bought frames for the photos, isn’t that something? Two big frames, wooden. I asked him, I said, ‘You going to hang those over the mantel?’ He said, ‘Linnie Mae.’ ” She made her voice go deep and gruff. “Said, ‘People don’t hang family photos in their living rooms.’ I said, ‘I didn’t know that.’ Did you know that?”
“My mom’s got photos all over the living room,” Abby said.
“Well, then. See there?”
Mrs. Whitshank took a bottle of milk from the refrigerator and poured some into a bowl. “I’m fixing okra and sliced tomatoes,” she told Abby. “And fried chicken, with some of my biscuits. Oh, later on you might help with the biscuits, now that you know how. And peach cobbler for dessert.”
“That sounds delicious.”
“Did Red tell you he would give you a ride to the wedding?”
“He did,” Abby said, “but I’m not sure yet if I’m going.”
She felt embarrassed now about waiting so long to make up her mind. If her mother had known, she would have been horrified. But all Mrs. Whitshank said was, “Oh, I wish you would! I need someone to prop me up.”
Abby laughed.
“Merrick had me buy this yellow dress at Hutzler’s,” Mrs. Whitshank said. “It makes me look like I’ve got the jaundice, but Merrick was real set on it. She’s like her daddy; she takes these notions.” She was spooning cornmeal into a second bowl.
Abby said, “I’m just afraid I wouldn’t know anybody. Merrick’s crowd is all older than me.”
“Well, I won’t know them, either,” Mrs. Whitshank said. “It’ll be her college friends, mostly—not many from around here.”
“Who all in your family is coming?” Abby asked.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, grandparents? Aunts and uncles?”
“Oh, we don’t have any of those,” Mrs. Whitshank said.
She didn’t sound very regretful about it. Abby waited for her to elaborate, but she was measuring out salt now.