Part One: Four Tires and a Steering Wheel
Chapter One
The mirror had always been unkind. She shouldn’t be surprised.
Why had I thought today would be any different?
It didn’t matter how much Sissy stressed the vital importance of the interview with the Ladies' Home Journal, Irene Carson knew that the curve of her left eyelid would remain slightly higher than the right. As her husband had said, folks didn’t know if she was sleepy, winking, or skeptical.
“Delia said this is how Barbara Stanwyck’s eyebrows are shaped, but do you think it looks odd on me?” Irene glanced in the large vanity mirror at her daughter, who was leaning over Irene’s shoulder. “Are they perhaps a little too arched? I know she does her best.”
“Don’t forget she sells us Avon at cost.” Sissy narrowed her eyes at Irene’s reflection. “I think it’s sophisticated. It helps.”
Irene wasn’t sure what Sissy thought had been helped by all the fussing, and she wasn’t about to ask, not when Sissy had been hissing all day like a mad cat.
“She was good to come in special for the interview,” Irene allowed. Delia had worked at a Hollywood studio for two decades, and she said Irene’s eye color was the same “sunny lake” blue as Grace Kelly’s. That was certainly lovely to hear, but Irene had studied Grace Kelly’s picture in the magazines at the salon and knew it wasn’t true. Grace Kelly’s eyes were like a lake in high summer, with not a storm in sight.
“Well, it’s too late to change it now. They’ll be here any minute.” Sissy frowned at her own reflection. “This will have to do.”
“You’re perfect,” Irene told Sissy’s reflection. “I do like that lacy collar the seamstress picked out, and your waist looks the size of a toothpick.”
Sissy’s worried gaze moved from Irene to her own reflection. The mirror had always been kind to Sissy. She had her father’s sharp, bright blue eyes and thick black eyelashes. The pointed collar on the new chintz dress was stark white to match the piping along the hems. It framed Sissy’s wide smile, which lots of folks said she’d gotten from Irene. So there was that much of her in Sissy, at least.
The lightweight fabric Sissy’d chosen for the new dress was perfect for a warm summer day and had a Parisian-inspired print of orange and yellow butterflies, just a few, scattered across the flounces of the skirt. She was slender and tall, like the drawings of fashion models in the magazines. The height she’d gotten from her father.
Irene thought longingly of the summer dresses of her own in her small closet. Any of them would be much cooler, but Sissy was right, they were too drab for photographs. Her new fitted suit, with the A-line skirt and buttoned, belted jacket over a thin white blouse, slimmed her tummy while accentuating Irene’s hourglass shape. Suitable, as well, Sissy had said, for a matronly woman Irene’s age.
How did I get to be forty-two? She looked the question at herself in the mirror. The math wasn’t hard. Seventeen years a girl, twenty-three a wife and mother, two a widow — the years all added up to matronly apparently.
“Mama, you’re not listening!”
“Sorry. She trimmed your hair just right.”
Sissy’s waist-length, smooth hair shimmered in the filtered sunlight from Irene’s bedroom window. It was like Irene imagined spun gold would be, and under stage lights it positively glowed. It reminded Irene of her mother’s long, thick hair — the trait had skipped over Irene, as had the singing voice that filled the church seats for Sister Sissy.
Her gaze returned to her own hair. The stylist at the salon had rinsed the strawberry blond to a more respectable honey hue like her daughter’s, though nothing artificial could actually match Sissy’s. It was better than red hair, Sissy said, because red hair was notorious. That remark, made over breakfast, was meant to remind Irene of her notorious past. As if I’ve forgotten.
“You know this is an important interview, Mama.”
“So you’ve said, including only a minute ago.” She said it more tartly than she should have.
Sissy glared. “I know. But reporters are sometimes too clever. Nobody needs to know where you and Daddy got married. Or how long it was after the wedding that I was born.”
“Honestly, Sissy. Why do you think I would tell anyone that?”
“I wanted to be sure.”
Irene would have bit her lip if it hadn’t meant ruining her lipstick. She settled for clenching her jaw and counting to ten. Sissy was nervous, and there was no reason to fight about anything. Sissy gave her no credit, though, if she thought Irene would admit to a reporter that she and Zeke Junior had been married at a quickie chapel in Mesquite, Nevada, the day after Irene had turned eighteen. Or tell them that Pastor Ezekiel Carson Senior hadn’t officiated the wedding for his own son.
Of course she wouldn’t bring it up. She might be a notorious matron, but she’d only been foolish one night in her whole life.
It was the truth that she and Zeke had had to run away and get married. Zeke had been handsome in his army uniform and could Charleston like people in the penny talkies. The other girls avoided him because his daddy was a preacher and that meant he wouldn’t be any fun. They’d been wrong, though. He was fun, and kind enough — at least then — that Irene hadn’t been scared when he’d come up with a bottle of local moonshine to share, and kisses had led to, well, Sissy.
Even though some of it was hazy, that night had been the most fun Irene had ever had in her whole life up till then.
She cut off the thought that wanted to add, “And in your whole life since.” There’s no point to that way of thinking. Even if she did want to think about it, today was not the day.
It truly wasn’t shame that bothered her, though she had no desire to be branded with the scarlet letter. It was getting pregnant the first time she’d had intimacies with a boy — that didn’t seem fair. Here she was, decades later, a matron. She missed the light red of her hair. All the visible parts of her were covered in Avon or Aqua Net.
“So you know I’m hoping that we talk about more than the Ministry.”
“Didn’t the reporter say they wanted to hear about how you mixed writing and performing songs with running the Ministry after Daddy passed on?”
“Yes, and I want to be sure that’s how it goes. So don’t you go bringing up the revival days or how I was singing for Jesus since I was three. It wasn’t for Jesus.”
“I know that, Sissy. You’ve always sung for the joy of it, like my mother did. Your daddy was the one who insisted the gift came from Jesus so singing had to be for His glory.”
Sissy shot her a hot glance. “Don’t blame Daddy. You said it often enough — all part of the Lord’s plan.”
The Irene in the mirror grimaced. “One of my jobs was to repeat what your father said, loudly and often. You did the same thing.”
“I’m not a child anymore, Mama.”
Irene forced her lips to relax from the unhappy moue and thought better of asking Sissy if Medium Golden Honey hair dye was part of the Lord’s plan. “I guess I won’t be saying you sing for Jesus anymore, then.”
“You can say it in church.”
Zeke always said to show one face to the audience, another to your kin, and always your true face to the Lord. And another face to the Ladies' Home Journal, she thought. “What about Gospel Girl with a Guitar, like in the church bulletin?”
“Please, Mama, not that one! I’m hoping they don’t say that in the article.”
“Very well.” Irene uncapped the white-and-red can of Aqua Net the stylist had sold them, shaded her eyes with her hand, and sprayed the finger-length, gentle curls of the Italian cut that framed her face and brushed at the collar of her suit jacket. Just like a blond Elizabeth Taylor, the stylist had cooed. It was a new hairdo for her. The style was popular with younger women but still suitable to a woman of her years, Sissy said. Irene did think it looked nice. Maybe her eyes weren’t so noticeable after all.
Sissy fanned the hairspray away from her. “Remember this is really important, Mama!”
“How could I forget? This is only the tenth time you’ve reminded me today.” This time, Irene wasn’t sorry her tone was tart.
If Sissy was chagrined it didn’t show. “I’m so nervous. Ever since that man from the recording studio said my voice should be heard by everyone all the time, not only during services, and then this reporter calls out of the blue? Well, it feels like Jesus is pushing me toward something… Something bigger. Bigger than a San Bernardino church that seats two hundred. I’ve never liked the moving around we used to do all summer with the big tent. It did pay the bills, I do understand that, but I don’t want to start up doing it again. I’m hearing that folks don’t turn out for the tent like they did. They’re staying at home and listening to preachers on the radio. I think Jesus wants me to be on the radio.”
Irene lost control of her tongue. “I didn’t know Jesus had a radio.”
“Mama!”
Irene had always helped with the Ministry ledgers. Zeke’s fire and brimstone had filled the church benches just as well as it had revival tents. Since moving to California there’d been money enough for a decent house and good, serviceable automobiles and clothes. Irene knew how to stretch the cash Zeke gave her for groceries and the like.
Sissy didn’t watch the dollars the way Zeke had. Flowers for services, finer robes for the celebrants and choir. A sporty new coupe last year, and a series of moves, always to a better neighborhood.
She knew they had perhaps two more years before the spending exhausted the income and reserves. This big house in a quiet, fashionable neighborhood was a blessing, to be sure, rent-free, even if Irene was uncomfortable with Sissy accepting a gift like that from a church member, even if he was a widower.
Sissy was a grown woman, however, and entitled to make her own mistakes. Maybe if she made a few she wouldn’t harp on Irene’s. She had no high moral ground from which to judge Sissy, but more than once she’d wanted to remind Sister Sissy that plenty of preachers had been brought down by less than holy private lives.
It was her own selfishness that kept her from warning Sissy, though, and that was on her conscience. Irene didn’t want to go back to doing revivals either. She and Sissy shared a dislike of the bugs, the never getting a good night’s sleep, the arguments with locals about the noise and the crowds. It had been bearable when they’d stayed in a boarding house with indoor plumbing. Not as much when they were loaned a caravan and stayed near the tent, sweating through the night like a side of pork in a smoker, and without a light to read a bit before trying to sleep.
When asked, Zeke had told folks that their marriage was successful because they shared the same fire of love for the Lord.
Nobody had ever asked her that question. Truth be told, though, she wouldn’t have answered. She suspected there would be no stopping once started.
A town newspaper once wrote that Zeke Junior could persuade the Devil to praise Jesus. He’d managed the summer revival tours — and all of life — like a steamroller, and folks had either gotten out of his way or been flattened. I did succeed at not being flattened, at least not completely. She had to smile at that thought. Nobody would call her flat, at least not on the outside.
“Mama, you’re not listening again. That’s exactly the kind of thing you can’t say in front of the reporter. Does Jesus have a radio? Be serious!”
Irene realized she was serious. “Your father said what Jesus needed from us was getting people baptized and saved. Are you thinking you’re done with that?” If she’s done, am I?
She pushed that thought away, hard. Not today.
“I believe in the Ministry’s work saving people.” The words lacked fervor. “Maybe I don’t hear Jesus the same way Daddy did.”
“If you don’t, then you should say so, Sissy. Stop telling folks to live a life you don’t want to live yourself. Concentrate on your music, if that’s what you want.”
Sissy left off smoothing her hair. “I won’t be saying anything like that for this interview. My chickens ain’t—”
“Aren’t.”
“I know,” Sissy snapped. “My chickens aren’t hatched. I’ve got the church and my own self to think—”
The doorbell sounded downstairs, echoing through the spacious house. Sissy squeaked out, “They’re here!” and flew across the room and out the door. Her footsteps thudded down the stairs.
Even though Irene had suspected Sissy’s heart wasn’t in the church the way Zeke’s had been, it was still jarring to hear that Sissy had plans, and Irene wasn’t to be consulted even if those plans changed her own future too.
You’ve got no reason to be surprised that she takes after her father that way, she scolded herself, but she was. The emphasis on keeping up good appearances, this house, all music services on Tuesday nights, having Irene call around like she was an agent to try to book Sissy on gospel radio, the new clothes, the Avon and the Aqua Net. It all made sense.
Zeke had always had their journey planned.
There was no pretending anymore that Sissy wasn’t changing the map.
Irene checked her reflection to make sure the shock didn’t show. Barbara Stanwyck’s eyebrows, Elizabeth Taylor’s hair — Zeke’s “Missus” wasn’t there anymore. This was Sissy’s “Mama” in the mirror. There was no sign of plain old Irene.
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