“Lacy Adams, master of science.” Aaron handed her a cluster of bluebonnets.
“You came,” she said. “You came home.”
“I came for you. Don’t cry, Lacy!” He wiped a tear from her cheek and took her in his arms. She held him close, her hands searching the hard angles of his frame until he let out a small cry. “Nothing,” he mumbled apologetically. “My hips still give me trouble.” He kissed her timidly. Their faces lingered close. “Nice to meet you, Lacy,” he said. “You hungry?”
They went to lunch. Lacy’s diner would take them, on graduation with no reservation, so there they settled in a booth. The conversation was halting and factual on the walk over: when and where Aaron processed out, how he bought an old truck and drove forty hours straight to get there in time. He gave her hand a squeeze on the table. She smiled. He squeezed again. “So,” he blurted.
“It’s a little weird,” Lacy offered.
“A little bit. Yeah. Because, the thing is…”
The thing hung in the air as Aaron searched for words. Maybe it was their presence revealing the nakedness of their letters, and leaving them bashful. Or the unmet expectations hovering like a chill mist—Lacy heavier than her picture let on, Aaron holding his water glass in a rough way she never imagined. Maybe the thing was that their letters were letters and nothing more. A few months of scribbling at a hard time. A civic duty. A situation that was over now, no matter their words or the places her heart had been.
“The thing is,” Lacy declared, “we have to order.” Firmly she discussed the ups and downs of the menu with Aaron. She analyzed his Reuben when it came, and her cottage cheese salad and a lot of nothing, while Aaron nodded with a lost expression on his face. He finished his sandwich. She stopped to take a bite.
“What are you doing tomorrow?” he asked.
“Moving.” Lacy sighed. “I should be packing now.”
“This is your last night in town? Tonight?”
“Yes. The school found an apartment for me. They’re training me this summer.”
“Great.” Aaron stared at his plate. “I could move you. Drive you there.”
“Oh.” She flushed. “How generous. But you must have plans. You haven’t seen your family yet. Are you going to Midland?”
He thought of his dad driving around town, sucking dirt out of rich folks’ rugs, feeling bigger as he made Aaron small. “No,” he replied. “Nothing much for me there.”
The check came. Aaron insisted on paying. He told Lacy one last time what an amazing accomplishment, and congratulations.
“Where are you staying tonight?” she asked as they were leaving.
“Hadn’t thought that far ahead,” he mumbled, “but I got a new old truck and—Lacy?” He turned to face her on the street and gripped her shoulders. His eyes were glassy and distant. “I don’t know how to thank you for all you’ve done for me, but—”
“Are you leaving?” A wave of terror hit her. “Sleeping in your car? No.” She threaded her arm through his and pulled him along. “You’re staying with me tonight. We’ll figure it out. If anyone sees you, you’re my brother. Long-lost family here to help me pack.”
And once they made it to Lacy’s room, he did help. She packed her clothes while Aaron sat boxing her books. The activity relaxed them. They talked about their college years, a few of them overlapping on campus, and memories of childhood. They laughed and heard each other’s voices again, even in the same room looking at each other. Lacy sat closer to Aaron on the bed. Letting go of the past seemed possible. So did having a future, stepping into a life that belonged to them and no one else. And gradually, by a conspiracy of glimpses, they were touching, and kissing, and loosening their clothes.
With hands and tongue Lacy explored the body she had long imagined, broken, marked with scars, but warm and manly too. She worked with a zeal that startled Aaron, especially as he made his way into her and confirmed, through her clenched jaw and eyes squeezed tight, that he was her first. They found a rhythm, and it calmed him. The first breath of true protection he felt in years. When he grunted with pleasure, Lacy asked if he was OK and was it his hips? Aaron nodded and beamed at her rocking above him. She slid her fingers into his mouth. They fell asleep around sunset, embracing, and slept through the long cool night.
* * *
In the morning Aaron awakened to Lacy watching him from the windowsill. She was smoking in a silky white bathrobe. She turned away and tossed him the pack of cigarettes. “Lighter’s in there. Pretty day,” she mumbled, pulling her knees up and looking out the window.
“Let’s get married,” Aaron said.
Lacy flinched. “It’s 1970. We don’t have to, just because…” Her eyes traveled over the duvet on the floor and the sheets scrambled on the bed.
“I know.” He lit a cigarette. He grabbed The Two Towers off her nightstand and shuffled its edges. Carefully he inched his back up the wall, and smoked, and stared at his feet. “But,” he said, “I’ve been alone my whole life. Maybe I don’t have to be. Or you either.” He looked at her with a raw intensity. “Maybe we could have a kid someday, and tell him about how we met and the day we got married, and protect him so he’s never alone like we were. Maybe he’ll grow up and change the world.”
Lacy’s eyes shined. She nodded. “Yeah?” he cried with a silly grin. “Right now?” She nodded bigger, and the tears started rolling. They didn’t shower. They laughed as Aaron threw on his jeans and helped Lacy into the red crepe de chine dress that fell most forgivingly on her curves. She ran her fingers through her wild bed hair. As they were leaving, Lacy noticed an old black woman coming out of a room down the hall. She was hunched over, walking slowly.
“Ma’am?” Lacy said. “That’s Miss Clifton’s room, isn’t it?”
The woman stopped and looked through Lacy. “Do you know Helen?”
“Yes.” Lacy took Aaron’s hand. “She put us in touch. This is my fiancé, Aaron.”
“Ma’am.” He nodded.
“He served with Helen’s fiancé. I was sorry to hear about him. And for her.”
The woman clutched her purse. “She tried coming back for the spring semester, for a few weeks. The university said, ‘No rush picking up her things, nobody moving into her room soon.’ So I came now.” She turned to Aaron. “Were you there? When he died?”
“With Big Boy? Private Williams. Yes.”
“It wrecked my girl. For now. Was it bad, what happened to him?”
“He died saving—” Aaron paused. “Trying to save a life.”
“But was it painful?”
“It was quick. For him it was quick.”
“Thank you.” The woman touched their hands. “I’m Beverly Clifton. Marriage is a wonderful thing. God bless this marriage.”
Somberly Aaron and Lacy walked to city hall. While they waited in line she thought of how modern they were, dispensing with the white dress and wedding, beginning a new life together that would be a serious one, about the right things. When it was their turn, they handed the paperwork to a woman with a frosted bouffant at the counter. She glanced over it. “There’s another for name change,” she said.
“Sorry?” Lacy replied.
“Another form to fill out. You’re taking his name, right?”
“Not if I take hers first,” Aaron deadpanned.
The clerk’s face puckered. She worked in silence. “I would appreciate it,” she said when she handed them their license, “if y’all didn’t make light of God’s plan.”
They kissed and left a trail of giggles behind them in the hallway. At a deli they made a picnic and walked to Town Lake. Aaron and Lacy sat close and fed each other. They talked about the sunshine on the water, and the cheese, the nice breeze, everything immediate and in front of them. In quiet moments, their minds wandered to the things they didn’t know about each other yet, and the drive to Houston, and whether God had plans. But mostly to what their lives would be like as Mr. and Mrs. Warner.
II.
4
Escalate the Call
The phone had been ringing a lot at the Warner house. For weeks its brassy cries disturbed the kitchen air, startling Lacy every time. She would watch it a moment from the sink or stove, as the beige handset jiggled on the wall and the cord swayed like a long, rangy tail. But when she picked up there was often no one on the line—or rather, there was a breather who wouldn’t speak.
It happened again one morning while Lacy was making breakfast. She picked up and said her usual bright hello. After three hellos she heard the breathing, and she decided enough was enough. She craned her neck toward the pass-through and confirmed that Julian was still in the bathroom, his little legs dangling from the toilet as he bore down with a focused look.
“Go ahead, make my day,” Lacy hissed, cupping the mouthpiece fiercely. “But have the balls to say who you are, sicko.” She slammed the phone down, adjusted her T-shirt around her hips, and scooped cottage cheese onto her grapefruit.
“Who was that?” Aaron entered the kitchen and poured himself coffee. He looked sharp in his suit and paisley tie, blond hair parted neatly at the side. Fifteen years, Lacy thought with an ache as she studied him, nearly over the hill and still as fit and fine as the day they met.
“Same prank caller.” She sighed. “I’m getting tired of it.”
“Let’s get the number unlisted.”
“No,” she said decisively, wondering as soon as she did who in the world might be trying to find her, or be unable to if they unlisted. “Sit down. I made you eggs.”
“Can’t.” Aaron scanned the newspaper and sipped at the counter. “Early meeting today, the whole HR staff. You need cash for groceries?” He took four twenties from his wallet and set them on the leather Post-it station by the phone.
Lacy waited to see if he’d look her way, but he passed into the foyer. “Thanks,” she said, following him. “I’m going shopping later, after his lessons and lunch with Bonnie. She’s filling me in on the latest at school.”
“Do you care?” Aaron asked, putting on his coat.
“Well,” Lacy muttered, a little tender and shrunken, “if I’m going back to work I guess I should know what I’m getting myself into.”
“See you tonight.” He gave her a dry peck on the cheek and left.
Lacy stood in the foyer, listening to the rumble of the Taurus as he pulled away, until a flush and a cheer from Julian brought her back to life. “I didn’t hear the faucet!” she called out reflexively. “No Cheerios till those hands are washed.”
* * *
When Julian was almost three, Lacy passed his room one afternoon and heard him talking at an odd, deliberate pace. He sat in the wicker rocking chair where she read to him, wedged between his stuffed bear and bunny instead of on her lap. He held a picture book upside down and was saying the words. Lacy was startled, unable to discern whether he’d memorized it or was really reading, so when he stopped and looked at her, she turned the book right side up—“Try that,” she said—and left. The next day she heard him again, so she put a new book in his hands, one they had never read together, and Lacy lost her breath to see that her son had taught himself to read. This was the beginning of Julian’s lessons.
By the morning Lacy went full Clint Eastwood on the phone breather, she had crammed Julian’s head with heaps of schooling and knowledge far beyond his years. He read the Narnia books, some Orwell, Dickens, and all of Twain. He could rattle off Linnaean taxonomy and was on track to start his multiplication tables that very week. After Julian rinsed his cereal bowl, they sat beside each other in the breakfast nook that Lacy called the dining room, and she announced the plan for the day: language arts from eight to nine, focused play for thirty, an hour of math, snacks and manners for fifteen, and ninety minutes of science before lunch.
The lessons began well. Smoothly Julian read aloud from Great Expectations and, upon quizzing, knew the meaning of “consternation” and “augment” and every other vocabulary word Lacy flagged. She shifted to critical thinking, as she liked to, and asked why Pip in the story would want to help a convict he met in a graveyard. Julian pondered this. His chestnut hair tilted like a shining bowl on his head. A fervent intelligence lit his hazel eyes. Lacy noted the slight rise in his posture, the influx of poise that filled her son as thoughts turned to words. He opened his mouth.
And the phone rang. Julian stopped short and watched her.
“It’s OK,” she said. “The machine’ll pick up.”
But the caller didn’t leave a message and instead kept trying, cutting off Julian twice more as he tried to answer Lacy’s question. “Are you gonna get it?” he asked. “Can I go play?”
“Not till we’re done with language arts.”
“We have all day and all week and all year.” He sighed with a vague air of superiority. “I always answer my phone. You never know who’s calling.” Lacy had recently bought him a red and yellow Fisher-Price phone, on which he spent most free playtime chatting with Isaac Newton or Mr. Belvedere, the British butler from his favorite sitcom.
“Julian,” she said in her serious, bordering-on-displeasure tone. She shut the book and waited for the gravity of the moment to sink in. “We’ve studied together for a long time. Next week we’re going to a school and you’ll take some tests. If you do OK on them you’ll go to kindergarten, but if you do well you can skip a grade or two. Or three. Isn’t that exciting?”
“You teach me,” he chirped. “Why do I have to go to school?”
“Because you’re old enough. We’re both going. Mommy was a teacher before you were born, remember? Now when you go to school, I’ll be a teacher again and you’ll have new ones.”
“At the same school?”
“I’ll be next door at the high school, so I’ll drop you off and pick you up every day.”
The phone rang.
Julian watched her with troubled eyes. “Can I go play?”
“In your room. I’ll be right there.” Lacy waited until he was down the hall before snatching the phone off the wall. “Enough!” she snapped. “I don’t know what kind of dirty kicks you get harassing a woman at home with her baby, but I’m calling the cops!”
“Good morning,” said a cheerful voice, “I’m David, a customer care specialist for Lone Star MasterCard. Can I please speak to Aaron Warner?”
“He’s at work,” she said with a cringing defiance. “This is his wife. Can I help you?”
“Is there a convenient time when I could reach Mr. Warner at this number?”
“I’m sure there is,” she replied hotly, “but I paid the full balance like I do every month, so what’s the problem? My phone’s been ringing off the hook all morning.”
“Ma’am?” The voice paused. “I think there’s some confusion going on. I’m just now trying this number after the primary—I tried the primary phone for the account, but I was told Mr. Warner is no longer working there.”
“You called him at work? At Enron?”
“Yes, ma’am. They said he’s no longer employed there, so if there’s a new work number where I could reach Mr. Warner, I’d appreciate—”
“No,” Lacy barked. “No, no, escalate the call.” She pressed her hand to the mouthpiece and shut her eyes. “Nothing personal,” she resumed, “but you’re not making any sense, so just put me through to your supervisor and we’ll take it from there.”
“Please hold.”
Wait music blasted. Until that day she’d never endured a full listen of Carly Simon’s “You’re So Vain,” which irritated her and now plagued her anxious mind. She remembered the episode of L.A. Law where she’d heard the phrase, “escalate the call,” and how the blond woman partner said it, oozing with power, to a congressman’s chief of staff. Lacy had to be powerful. She had to get a supervisor and tell him he was wrong and that Aaron was at an early meeting of the HR department. She thought of lunch with Bonnie, and going back to work after years, and Julian’s lessons sitting undone
right before his tests while she waited on hold. She stretched the phone to the living room until she could hear Julian having a conversation of his own.
“Mrs. Warner?” said a new man’s voice. “This is customer care manager Robert. I’m sorry to bother you, but it seems we’re having trouble reaching your husband.”
“It is a bother,” she snapped. “He’s in an important meeting, and I have a busy morning myself, and now I have to take time from my day to give you his work number because you must have it wrong in your system, you ready?”
“That won’t be necessary, ma’am. We did reach his former employer.”
“Well, obviously not,” she faltered, “because he just left for—I hope my call with David was recorded before,” she shifted gears imperiously. “I probably asked him five times what the problem was, but he wouldn’t say.”
“Unfortunately, we can’t speak to persons not listed on the account.”
“It’s a joint account, Robert! Just escalate the call.” Lacy’s face flushed. “Go on. Put me through to your supervisor.”
“There’s no one else to speak to here.”
“Whoever’s up the food chain, your higher authority.”
“Ma’am, I manage this center and you are not listed on the account ending 7602.”
“For God’s sake, do I have to read it to you?” Lacy stretched to her desk where she paid bills, a rolltop oak veneer hulk that looked more elegant on the floor at Sears, and grabbed their last card statement. “Here we go, I’m looking at—” She ran her eyes over the account number once, and twice. It was like a truck hit her.
“A Popsicle, Belvedere!” A bit of Julian’s chatter floated into the living room.
“Ma’am,” the voice said gently after a time. “I do see you listed on an account with Aaron Warner, ending 5733, with a current balance of zero. I think I understand. I am not authorized to give you details,” he continued at a pregnant pace, “about this other account, with a high credit limit, that you are not on.”
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