The nearest Greyhound bus station was a converted railroad depot thirty miles from Fayeville, Mississippi. Jiminy had been sardined against a window for sixteen hours, pinned by the girth of a woman who was unapologetic about her considerable overflow. After some initial wriggling and tentative throat clearing that produced zero response, Jiminy had resigned herself to her fate and endeavored to find something good in her predicament. Sixteen hours on a bus was never going to be a fantastic time, but there was something comforting and snug-in-the-womb-ish about not being able to move even a tiny bit. Jiminy fantasized that she was somehow gestating, and might emerge from this trial a more evolved being. How wonderful if it could be that simple.
Willa was waiting for her granddaughter at the bottom of the bus stairs, her fleshy arms outstretched for their standard perfunctory hug.
“Are you hungry?” she asked. “Lyn’s got a great supper waitin’ at home, God bless her. Jiminy? You okay?”
Jiminy had gripped harder and sagged further when Willa had started to pull away. And now she was burying her face in her grandmother’s shoulder, wishing she could be four years old again, when a person could burst into tears for no good reason at all.
Willa watched her granddaughter out of the corner of her eye as she made a careful turn off the interstate onto the access road that led to town. Jiminy had stopped crying a few miles back and was now staring straight ahead with a distant, pensive expression. Willa worried that something must have gone terribly wrong for her to come running to Fayeville, of all places. And so suddenly, away from so many more alluring plans. They hadn’t seen each other in years, so for Jiminy to spontaneously visit was already strange. For her to seem so fragile was downright alarming.
Still, Willa hadn’t pressed Jiminy to explain herself. She knew better than most that some things just didn’t want to be talked about. In addition to its many charms and eccentricities, her tiny corner of the world was riddled with sad secrets. Had her granddaughter sensed that? Was that why she’d come—because she’d needed a place of solace to keep her own unhappy counsel?
“There’s the new restaurant,” Willa remarked as they cruised past its yellow painted porch. “Mexican. Can you believe it?”
Jiminy stared at the caramel-skinned young woman sweeping the pavement in front, captivated by the way her long braid was swinging in rhythm with the broom, hypnotizing passersby.
Jiminy remembered roller-skating across that same concrete as a girl, counting the cracks that rattled her teeth. Now she found herself counting again, silently, as she rolled past familiar, faded buildings. There was the old movie theater, abandoned for years, and the feed mill, and the teeny-tiny bank that looked like it could only handle toy money. There was the Comfort Inn, which had never done much business. The four hundred Fayevillians who populated the town put any guests up in their own homes. They considered the motel nice but unnecessary, like car washes or dry cleaners. They believed in handling things themselves.
As a child, Jiminy had always considered Fayeville the perfect size. There was enough to intrigue, but not overwhelm, at least as far as she knew. So she’d always felt comfortable here. Watching things slide by her now, she yearned for that feeling to again overtake her.
Lyn saw the headlights approach from the kitchen window. She hated waiting for loved ones to arrive, because sometimes they never did. She passed her hand over her eyes to wipe away the pain that crept in during the day to hover there, then watched Jiminy climb out of Willa’s car. She was surprised to see that she only had one bag, but seemed burdened with much more. That pale-skinned young little thing, so much more timid than her own Jiminy had been, so much more frightened of a world that rolled out a carpet for her, looked up suddenly and caught Lyn’s eye. In the glow of the porch light, Jiminy’s face brightened with a reflexive smile, and she stuck out her tongue and waggled it around. Despite herself, Lyn grinned back. She even chuckled. And for a split second, she felt a foreign surge of hope. Something was going to change.
Chapter 2
Jiminy knew that she was genetically predisposed to nervous breakdowns, and had long tried to guard against them, but she worried one had crept up on her at last. She asked her grandmother as much, over breakfast her second day on the farm.
“Do I remind you of my mom? Do I seem like I’m going crazy?” she inquired anxiously.
Willa continued buttering her biscuit, and for a moment Jiminy wondered if she’d even heard. Jiminy had a tendency to speak too softly, and for all she knew, her grandmother might be going deaf as well.
But just as Jiminy was about to repeat her question more loudly, Willa cleared her throat.
“You seem like you need a good, long rest,” she said. “The world’s what’s gone crazy. You just got old enough to notice.”
Willa took a sip of her iced tea, then rose from her chair.
“So take your time,” she instructed, as she placed her dishes by the sink for Lyn to clean. “Take it slow.”
Jiminy watched her grandmother amble out of the kitchen toward the living room in her steady, deliberate way. And she felt comforted. Even if she was in fact on the brink of a full-scale meltdown, she didn’t have to be in a rush about it. This was a relief.
Over the next several days, Willa and Lyn let Jiminy be for the most part—going about their regular routines, leaving her to wander the farmhouse in search of herself.
The house was more modern than many in the area—a long rectangle with large windows and a minimalist edge. Some rooms were crammed with too many things, but most felt airy and comfortable, if a bit musty. Jiminy found dead spiders and dust bunnies in most of the places she looked, but they didn’t bother her. She found them reassuring actually, after the antiseptic fluorescence of the places she’d fled. She appreciated dirt and imperfection and messy signs of actual life. She didn’t leave the house much—she didn’t feel quite ready for that. The outside world still seemed pregnant with disappointment.
Willa waited patiently for her curlers to set beneath the heated helmet that she secretly feared might fry her brain if there was a freak power surge.
Every other Tuesday, Willa picked her best friend Jean up and drove the fourteen minutes into downtown Fayeville for their hair appointments. Jean herself wasn’t allowed to drive since her county councilman son had confiscated her license a few months previously. Willa was still comforting Jean through this trauma. Especially out here, especially if you lived alone, not being able to drive was tantamount to house arrest. Everyone was just too spread out to get to one another easily.
Their biweekly field trip destination was Trudi’s Tresses. There, Willa and Jean spent ninety minutes getting dyed, crimped, and scorched, before driving the long way back through town, talking about times past and present. Willa and Jean could glide easily from discussion of the latest store display to reminiscences about a county fair that happened thirty-five years ago. Time was a fluid plaything in their conversations. They had so much shared history that they could happily pick and choose from it to entertain themselves for hours on end. It was simply a decision about whether to stay in the present or skip around, and they let their whims direct them.
“Any hints about how long she’s gonna stay?” Jean asked.