The Sweetest Hallelujah. Elaine Hussey

      The phone stopped ringing a while, then commenced again. It was probably Fay Dean. She’d promised her sister-in-law they’d see East of Eden tonight. “We can salivate over James Dean,” Fay Dean had said, and Cassie had laughed at the idea she could salivate over anybody except Joe Malone.

      Closing her eyes, she slid under the water and her hair floated out behind her. I could drown in here. I could stay under and let the water steal my breath, still my beating heart.

      “No!” She scrambled up, sputtering. “Liar! Cheat!” Cassie fought her way out of the tub, slid through the overflowing bubbles, then slammed the bathroom door on the whole mess. Joe’s baseball jacket was hanging next to her white linen blazer, polluting her closet, filling it with the stench of betrayal.

      Holding it at arm’s length, Cassie started to enter her warzone of a kitchen, then backtracked for shoes and a robe. Back in the kitchen it took her a while to find the lighter fluid, the matches.

      When she stepped onto the patio, she was soul-punched by the universe. It was her favorite time of evening, that perfect moment when you can see the faint colors of sunset still bleeding all over the sky while a sliver of moon hangs around on the opposite side waiting for the stars.

      It seemed a shame to ruin a perfectly good evening with a bonfire of deceit. Cassie sat in the wrought-iron glider and rocked back and forth, trying to find ease.

      There was none. Cassie thought about the sneaky nature of disaster, how it could creep into the room without warning and announce itself in the quiet voice of a dying woman. Shouldn’t there have been thunder shaking the ground, sirens screaming, people scattering to take cover? Maybe the quietness itself should have been a warning—the lull before a tornado rips your house apart.

      She got up, poured lighter fluid into the bowl of the grill, tossed in a match. She was getting ready to toss in Joe’s jacket when grief buckled her knees. She buried her face in the leather and cloth that still retained Joe’s scent.

      “How could you?” she moaned.

      She remained on her knees with the flames licking out of the grill and the sky popping with stars. Finally she smothered the flames with the grill’s lid, then went inside and lay down on her bed, clutching Joe’s jacket. She cried until exhaustion claimed her.

      Her fitful slumber was raided by memories, all bent on inflicting pain. When she awoke, Cassie huddled in a fetal position in the middle of the bed she’d shared with a man she didn’t even know, a stranger who’d had a life beyond their marriage.

      She’d told Joe everything. She’d kept no secrets. Until today, she’d thought he’d done the same.

      Was it still today? It was too dark to tell.

      The phone was ringing. Cassie counted twelve rings before it stopped, then started all over again.

      Fay Dean was probably upset that she hadn’t shown up at the theater, and maybe worried, too.

      “I’m sorry,” Cassie whispered.

      She stumbled to the bathroom and turned on the light. She didn’t know the puffy-faced, dead-eyed woman with her feet sunk in wet, bubble-ravaged carpet. She used to find part of her definition as the woman Joe loved, but he’d stolen that from her. He and Betty Jewel.

      She wanted to smash something. Hard. She picked up her perfume, gardenia, Joe’s favorite fragrance. With her hand raised she was fully intent on hurling the bottle into the mirror.

      What if Betty Jewel’s lying? Her tilted world righted itself. “Of course. That has to be the answer.”

      Cassie’s gut reaction to Betty Jewel’s shocking revelation had nothing to do with logic. How could she have let the words of a virtual stranger destroy fifteen years of marriage? How could she have doubted Joe’s love?

      Powered by restored reason and burgeoning hope, Cassie started jerking on white pedal pushers, a green short-sleeved sweater set. She was planning how she’d race back to Shakerag and force Betty Jewel to admit her lies when she glanced at the clock. It was past ten. She couldn’t barge over there and disturb that sweet old lady, Miss Queen.

      And what about Billie? She was innocent. No more than a pawn in her mother’s cruel game. Cassie couldn’t bring the child’s world tumbling down as carelessly as Betty Jewel had hers.

      Fully clothed, Cassie lay in the dark, waiting for morning.

      When Billie woke up to the smell of ham and red-eye gravy, she thought she was in the wrong house. Queen reserved fancy breakfast fixings for Sundays and special occasions. Ordinary days meant biscuit and molasses.

      Her mouth watering, she bounded out of bed, slipped into shorts and a halter Queen had made from the printed cotton sacks her Martha White flour came in, then made a beeline for the kitchen.

      “Good morning, sleepyhead.” The way Mama was smiling almost made Billie think this was just another summer day.

      Billie pulled up a chair and helped her plate, as if she’d never heard of cancer. What would it hurt to pretend for five minutes?

      “That Miss Cassie Malone is sho’ a fine lady.” Queen buttered another biscuit and handed it to Billie, though she already had two on her plate. “And smart. Mmm-hmm. I reckon she got mo’ sense than any white woman I ever knowed.”

      There went pretend right out the window. Billie couldn’t believe her ears. All Queen had talked about last night at supper was that newspaper lady. How smart she was, how pretty, how kind, how nice. Billie didn’t know what had got into her. If Miss Cassie Malone told her pigs could fly, Queen would race to the window to see how much pork was in the sky.

      “I don’t know how you could tell all that with one visit, Queen. I thought she was just a skinny white woman with ugly red hair.”

      “Young lady, I ain’t puttin’ up with no sass from you.”

      Billie figured she was in for a session with Queen’s willow switch. She didn’t care. She’d go off and spend the day on Gum Pond and maybe the monster who got Alice would get her, and then everybody would be sorry.

      “Mama. Go easy on Billie. She’s got lots on her plate.”

      You could say that again. Three biscuits. Two pieces of ham. A pile of backberry jam. It was going to take her practically all morning to eat it.