were ancient.
“Mrs. Babcock?” There was pity in his voice. “I’m truly sorry to have to tell you this… We did everything we could. Unfortunately, Mr. Nolan didn’t make it.”
“Didn’t make it?” Dixie looked at him blankly, as if his words held no meaning.
I was just as uncomprehending. “He’s dead?”
That laughing, dancing, sexy hunk of manhood?
“I’m truly sorry,” the doctor said again. “He was already in anaphylaxis when he got here and we just couldn’t reverse it. Were you with him earlier? Was he stung or did he accidentally eat something he’s allergic to?”
“Not that I know of.” Her chestnut hair swirled around her face as she shook her head.
“Those chocolate brownies?” I offered, trying to be helpful. “Nuts?”
She shook her head even more vigorously. “Foods never seem to bother him all that much. It’s the histamines and pollen, of course.”
She looked at the doctor. “Pine pollen’s so bad this time of year, but he was taking something for it. Could he have taken too much?”
The doctor looked dubious. “His condition didn’t quite present that way, but I’ll check. Who was his allergist?”
“I’m not sure. Is there a Dr. Harrison over in Winston?”
“Amos Harrison. Right. I’ll give him a call.” He patted Dixie’s hand, murmured more apologies, then left us with a nurse to finish filling in the forms.
“You’re Mr. Nolan’s next of kin, right?” the nurse asked.
“Next of kin? No, not really. He’s my son-in-law. I guess my granddaughter? But she’s only six. She couldn’t possibly—”
“Oh, no, ma’am. It would have to be an adult. What about his parents?”
“They’re both dead, but his sister’s in Maryland. I don’t have her number with me though.”
Dixie looked at me in grief and dismay and I told the nurse, “Let me take her home now and she’ll call you in the morning with that information.”
The nurse nodded sympathetically. “Certainly.”
More than ever I felt the loss of my purse and keys and the lack of a hotel room. I realized now that Yolanda Jackson at the shelter must have been the “she” that Savannah had thought could help me with a bed. I offered to try to call her, but Dixie wouldn’t hear of it, so I followed her out into the parking lot and again the cool night air felt like spring and new beginnings.
As we drove to her house on the north side of town, Dixie spoke of Chan and her daughter Evelyn, of how she had never been able to trust his salesman’s charm, his smoothness, his easy way with women.
“He even flirted with me, for God’s sake. His own mother-in-law! I knew he wouldn’t be faithful, but you couldn’t tell Evelyn. Not that I ever tried to, once she was married to him. She had to have known though. Women couldn’t keep their hands off him. They throw themselves at him and he doesn’t—
Fairness made her admit that at least Chan kept up appearances and hadn’t flaunted his unfaithfulness to Evelyn. “I honestly think he loved her as much as he could love any one woman and he did make her happy most of the time.”
As her thoughts turned from the past to the future, she sighed and worried aloud about telling Lynnette. “She’ll probably be asleep when we get home, but even if she isn’t, I think I’ll wait till tomorrow so she doesn’t lie awake all night grieving.” She sighed again. “I guess I’d better go ahead and call Chan’s sister tonight, though. It’s going to be rough. They have one of those big-brother/little-sister relationships and she still idolizes him.”
I tried to remember a little sister, but truth to tell, I’d been in such a self-destructive haze that year after my mother died that I could barely conjure up any real sense of Chan’s teenage personality beyond his groping hands and pimply face. What he talked about, whether he sneezed much, who his people were—what little I did remember was rapidly being overlaid and replaced by the vividness of the man he had become.
A few blocks east of Main Street, Dixie turned into an alleyway that formed a cul-de-sac between two old bungalows. From what I could see by the streetlights, they had been restored to prewar beauty and looked both trendy and solid at the same time.
A slender, loose-limbed man appeared in the doorway of one and came on out to the car.
Until that moment, Dixie had seemed fairly controlled, but when he opened her car door and asked, “How’s Chan?” she leaned against his thin chest and fell apart.
He held her quietly until her sobs subsided, then put out his hand to me and said, “Deborah Knott? I’m Pell Austin. Sorry we have to meet under these circumstances.”
It was almost three o’clock before Dixie was ready to call it a night. Lynnette was sound asleep, Pell told her, but as soon as we stepped inside, Dixie still had to tiptoe down the hall to her bedroom and check for herself.
As we passed the darkened living room, a woman who was lying there on the sofa bed roused up, the “decorina friend from California,” no doubt. A blanket slid off her bare shoulders as she propped herself on one elbow and I had an impression of long yellow hair that fell over full breasts.
“Dixie? Where the heck were you, girl?” Her voice was slurred with either sleep or alcohol. “I snagged you one of the cutest guys at the whole damn party. And I’d’ve brought him and his friend home with me ’cept I’m still lagged out from that red-eye special. Sorry.”
“Go back to sleep, Cheryl,” said Dixie. “We’ll talk in the morning.”
Out in the kitchen, she shook her head wearily. “I can’t deal with Chan’s death and Cheryl’s annual party-girl syndrome at the same time. I feel old, Pell.”
