Wray was unmarried and lived alone after the death of his father and the closing of their family’s dry goods store downtown. He did not work. Though his clothes suggested some involvement in large concerns, he seemed to have none. For holidays or special dinners, he came to our house or to Mammy’s, never sitting in the living room with the men, but always drifting toward the kitchen. His face went red when my father or Harry or Bill laughed in the other room, and he did not join in the talk at the table, just listened, fingers shaking so that Betty’s aunt Bess would reach out for the dishes to spear him some meat or ladle out the gravy. My father said his name in a way that was both too nice and not nice at all. Wray. Wray. Daddy added a kind of flourish that somehow diminished his greetings and their recipient and left me anguished. It seemed like my father had sided with the enemy.
Usually when Wray came to our house, he was invited with the ladies, the widows—Mrs. Bloom who ran the silver shop in Moberly; Betty Riley, a doctor’s widow who went to Mississippi every winter to ride horses. My father plied him with cocktails. Everyone else tried to get Wray not to drink, but my father always kept asking, again and again, if he needed a refill. On holidays, Big George always got him drunk and my mother’s brother Bill Baker would catch my father’s glance and roll his eyes or chuckle when Wray stumbled or slurred his words. Big George was nice to everyone, but somehow Wray was okay to laugh at, even when he was present, just sitting there, bothering no one. My father served his cocktails with a twist of contempt that I could taste too when he held out the glass. Maybe it was just for entertainment for my uncles. Maybe it was because it was a relief for my father to have someone farther outside the circle than he was. No one kicks you harder than a pal on the bench who sees his chance to join the team.
The Chownings were among Madison’s fine old families, a circle with the Bakers on the periphery that included the Thompsons, who knew Harry Truman and wrote to him if someone in Madison changed their party alliance. There were also the Threlkelds, and the Atterburys, whose son, Newton, dead for years by this point, had been Wray’s great friend when they were young. When people spoke of Wray, they always brought up Newton too. Newton had married and left for Jefferson City. Wray, it was implied, was lost without him and began to drink, more and more.
Wray had hair of pure silver; any tarnished part was carefully combed over. He wore cuff links, suits tailored in St. Louis, shirts so fiercely pressed that life dared not intrude. He smoked extralong Salems lit by a shiny gold lighter meant to resemble a fountain pen. He was always the first to leave the gatherings. In the pocket of his vest there was a shiny watch, produced just after meals when he took it out to suggest he had some other pressing engagement. Sitting beside him at the table, you could hear it, ticking out the minutes until he could safely get away.
There was something about him that scared me. Bill called him a “mama’s boy.” From early on, I had a sense for secrets, for the places where people were hiding things, the spaces where words went unsaid, the moments when someone at the table shifted the subject away from something or someone. Mostly, I shied away from Wray. I didn’t like the way they treated him, the way my father said his name. Wray, Wray, Wray. I can still hear the way he said it. My father’s rendition of the name made too fancy by its extra letter was almost enough to make me cry. This was my father, the one who I believed would always be loyal. Who said I could tell him anything.
. . .
My parents were gone for the weekend. Maybe a lumbermen’s convention. I was staying with Mammy, who was walking by then on a cane left over from someone. Constantly she asked me to check the thermostat to make sure we weren’t using too much power.
One of the most intriguing aspects of a visit to Mammy’s was the gun kept under her pillow—a pistol, metal, cold, and surprisingly heavy for its size—given to her by my uncle Bill for protection. Betty said she would like to use it to shoot Bill.
During one of my stays at my grandmother’s, Mammy realized that she was supposed to play bridge, and a neighbor named Edith came to the rescue. She tried to get me to sleep in Mammy’s bed so she could watch Love of Life. This seemed unfair. After Edith left the room, I grabbed the gun. As a joke, I took it into the living room and pointed it at Edith. “Lordamighty!” she screamed, throwing her hands up. “Lordamighty!”
I gave up the gun with no discharge, but this was not the end of it. Edith told Mammy, who told Betty. “Edith will tell this all over town,” Betty remarked to my grandmother.
“Well, he didn’t shoot her,” Mammy said.
I remember checking several times for the gun on the weekend I am recalling, but it was nowhere to be found. On Saturday, Mammy burned an angel food cake. Later, she baked another, as the dessert was for Study Club. She beat the batter up as the radio played. It was Oldies Hour: “Someone’s Rocking My Dreamboat.”
That night, Mammy popped popcorn, as was her custom on our nights together. She talked to me about life, said what she had wanted most for her kids was for them to see the world.