Tomorrow River by Lesley Kagen Read Free Book Online Page B

Sounds that way to me, too.”
    “It does not,” I say, elbowing him in the ribs. “You’re just angling for more fritters.”
    “ Singin’ in the Rain is showing again up at Hull’s,” Beezy says, picking up her yarn and hinting on how she’d like to spend this Thursday evening. She loves old-time movie night just like Mama. Especially if they’re showing a musical one. Woody and me would wear our baby doll pajamas to Hull’s Drive-In on sweltering summer nights. Mama would turn up the speaker and her and Beezy would sing along and we’d drink Coca-Cola right out of the bottle and eat Cracker Jack under the stars and that was all so . . . well, heavenly. We’re missing those good old times up at Hull’s so I try to make up for that on the Thursdays when Papa is nowhere to be found. I chauffeur us up to the drive-in in Beezy’s old brown Pontiac that I can handle if we go slow.
    “I had to sneak into the Belmont Theater when that picture show first come out,” she says. “People of my color weren’t—”
    “Beezy Bell! Please don’t make me drag it out of you. I’m running out of time,” I say, impatient. I hold our mother’s watch up to her ear. It’s inscribed on the back with the word Speranza , which means “hope” in the Italian language. Mama got this watch from our friend Sam Moody. It’s my most prized possession. Not only does it make me feel with every tick that I’m getting closer to finding her, it’s also an excellent reminder that Woody and I got a fast friend in Sam, who is Beezy’s illegitimate, by the way. “Have you got something helpful or not? If the answer is not , then we’re gonna run over to the drugstore and talk to Vera.”
    “Sugar, it’s been so long,” Beezy says, disheartened. “Your mother—”
    “‘Defer no time, delays have dangerous ends.’” Sam used to say that to my mama all the time. “William Shakespeare wrote that. It means—time’s a-wastin’, so you better hurry up and do something before something else real bad happens.” Beezy doesn’t want my heart to get broken if I can’t find Mama. That’s why she’s holding back. “If I hadn’t waited so long to go lookin’ for her in the first place, maybe she’d be home right now,” I say, softer. “You understand?”
    Clearly not wanting to, she sighs out, “Yesterday afternoon Dorothea Dineen was tellin’ Harriet Godwin that she heard Evie applied for a library position before she disappeared.”
    It’s true Mama was at her happiest when surrounded by books, but well-to-do married women have their gardens and the pampering of their husbands and children to fill their days. They do not have jobs. I mean, Mama could’ve gotten a position at the library if that was allowed. She went to Sweet Briar College to study singing with hopes of appearing on Broadway someday, but then she fell in love with the great poets of the past and the masters of art so she switched over to learn about them until she fell in love with Papa. They got married short of her receiving her sheepskin.
    I ask Beezy, “Ya sure you heard that right? A library position?” Papa wouldn’t let us go over there anymore after Mama vanished, so I started phoning on Tuesday afternoons, which was our usual checking-out-books time. I knew it was stupid, but I kept hoping that one of those times somebody would come onto the line, saying, “Miz Carmody? Why, sure she’s here.” Moments later, I’d hear Mama’s breathy “Hello?” and when I asked her where she’s been all this time, she’d say, “Oh, dear. I’ve lost track of the time. Your father’s not home from the courthouse yet, is he?” I finally had to give up the calling. That hog of a librarian, Jeanine Anderson, squealed to Papa and that’s why all that’s left of the downstairs phone is its roots.
    E. J. stuffs the last bit of fritter into his mouth and asks, “What’s that you’re workin’ on, Miz Bell?”
    “It’s something new I’m