The Stone Necklace

by Carla Damron

  “You sure you can’t lend me some cash?” This time, her voice sounded weak and young, like a girl was asking, not a woman.

  He stopped, turned, and faced her. “Who you owe?”

  She looked at him, then away, rubbing her hands against the dirty folds of her skirt. “Nobody,” she whispered.

  He knew better than to believe her.

  BECCA SETTLED INTO THE familiar leather La-Z-Boy, squirming until her butt found the concaved center of the leather cushion that had fit her father perfectly. She felt for the wood handle and tugged, raising the foot stool, and inserted her heels in the two dents that marked where Dad’s giant feet used to rest. The remote rested on the narrow table beside his chair. His fingers had been the last to hold it. She sniffed the hard plastic for a trace of him but found none.

  He would be watching a football game right now. Maybe the Gamecocks were playing—he never missed his favorite team. Or Clemson, which he’d watch in hopes that they’d lose. He’d have a diet soda beside him, or maybe a beer, and chips in an old plastic bowl. The sound would be turned way up, which would annoy Mom until she’d stick her head into the den and say, “Really, do the neighbors need to hear, too?” to which he’d answer, “I’ll bet they’re watching the game, too” or “Sit with me, Lena,” except she never did. It was all he wanted—all he ever wanted—but she always had something else to do.

  Becca turned on the TV and found ESPN where a gold and black team was playing a royal blue team. The score flashed at the bottom of the picture: Vanderbilt losing to Kentucky. Dad hated Kentucky, almost as much as he hated Clemson. He had a long list of hate teams, but thought the South Carolina football coach was a deity to be worshipped.

  “Is the game on?” Sims entered the den carrying a large bowl of Doritos. Elliott followed, a beer in each hand. They plopped onto the sofa in their usual spots, Sims on the right end, Elliott on the left, the chips balanced between them. Elliott gave Sims one of the bottles.

  “There are probably ten games on,” Becca said, not relinquishing the remote.

  “Cocks are playing Troy U. Should be a slaughter.” Sims mimed pushing the remote.

  She scrolled down the channels, pausing on a figure skating event—a couple in red and gold sparkles spinning on the ice. They looked like fire.

  “Becca, come on!” Sims said, reaching for the remote.

  She held it out of his reach. “Maybe I want to watch this.” The female skater leapt into the arms of the twirling male, who lifted her over his head. How much did she weigh? She was tall and thick-muscled, her legs stretched into a perfect split.

  “Ouch, that’s gotta hurt,” Elliott said.

  “I’ll pay you to change the channel,” Sims said. “Figure skating will make my eyes bleed.”

  “How much will you pay me?” She kept her eyes on the screen like she was mesmerized.

  Sims pulled out a wallet. “How much do you charge these days?”

  She looked over at the bottle in his hand. “I want a beer.”

  “No beer for you, squirt,” Elliott said.

  Tucking the remote beside the cushion under her, she said, “Figure skating it is, then.” Balanced on one skate, the woman glided around the man like a sailing ice sculpture. She burned enough calories to eat whatever she wanted.

  “A sip of beer,” Sims commented. “One sip.”

  The black remote was exchanged for the Corona bottle. Becca took three quick swallows, the beer bitter and frigid-cold as it slid down her throat. Dad always held the beer to limit her to a mere taste, yet never noticed that time she and Kayla snuck three Amstel Lights from the fridge.

  “Here we go.” Sims found the game. Gamecocks in garnet and white, Troy in red and silver.

  “You’re shitting me,” Elliott said. “It’s the Troy Trojans?”

  “Yep. Maybe our Cocks can penetrate the Trojan defense,” Sims said.

  “Or will the Trojans block the Cocks’ drive?” Elliott answered with a laugh.

  “Oh . . .” Becca got it. Boy humor didn’t change no matter how old the boys were.

  Sims’s cell phone rang. He frowned at the number displayed and disappeared through the doorway

  “We need dip.” Elliott hurried off to the kitchen and returned with neon green guacamole which he’d plopped in a pottery bowl. He also carried a glass of orange juice and handed it to Becca. “Since you’re not getting any more beer.”

  She eyed the chips, doing a quick calorie count of her day so far. One hundred forty-three at breakfast because Mom had insisted on the banana on her cereal. Lunch: about two hundred, because she’d eaten half of the chicken salad sandwich and buried the rest in the trash when Mom wasn’t looking. The milk—whole milk, because Mom hadn’t bought the skim she’d asked for—one fifty. She was almost at five hundred calories for the day!

  Sims returned, slipping his phone into his pocket. “That was the insurance company. We may have a problem.”

  “Dad’s insurance?” Elliott asked.

  “Yeah. They’ve been trying to work out a settlement with the other driver. Dad was ticketed, so we have to cover the accident. It looks like the woman in the other car is getting litigious.”

  “What’s litigious?” Becca asked.

  “Sue-happy,” Sims said. “As in, not settling with what the insurance company has offered. As in, going to one of those shyster TV lawyers so they can squeeze more money out of us.”

  “We’d have to pay them? Where would we get the money? We have that huge mortgage and everything.” Becca heard the panic in her own voice, more than she wanted to give away.

  Elliott frowned at his brother. “He doesn’t mean our family. He means the insurance company. They’ll have to settle this.”

  Sims nodded. “It’s going to be a pain in the ass. If any of the calls come here, make sure you give them my number. We don’t want Mom worrying about this.”

  Of course not. Don’t worry Mom: the family mantra.

  “What’s going to happen with Dad’s business?” Elliott asked. “Calloway and Hastings without the Hastings?”

  “Damned if I know,” Sims answered.

  “You and Phillip have gotten to be buds. Has he talked to you about joining the company?”

  Sims downed a swallow of beer. “I expect he will, but I dread it.”

  “Why?”

  He shrugged. “I like what I’m doing. I spend my day with numbers. The people I deal with work for me. What Dad does—did—I could never do. There are too many idiots out there and I don’t have the patience.”

  When Elliott scooped a giant glob of guacamole on his tortilla chip and popped it into his mouth, green seeped out the corner of his lips. Guacamole had a ton of calories, even though it was basically a vegetable. She loved it though. And chips—if she ate a couple it would add a few dozen calories. The orange juice was two hundred. She could eat three fistfuls of chips for that. She slid the glass away.

  “Don’t throw the ball away. Damn it!” Sims waved a hand at the TV like the quarterback needed his guidance. Dad used to yell at him, too, though he loved one of the running backs. “Kid has golden arms,” Dad would say.

  Their home was so silent now. Even with Mom, Aunt Abby and Elliott puttering around, it seemed like the house was waiting for Dad to speak. This chair molded to him, not her. This room ached for his words, not her brothers’.

  Elliott walked over to the wall of shelves and stooped down to look at the long line of record albums, which Dad had filed alphabetically by genre. “Man, I can’t believe they kept all these.”

  “Remember when we bought him the CD player? He complained that CDs didn’t sound as good as albums,” Sims said.

  “He may be right. There’s something very authentic about vinyl that gets lost in digital.” Elliott pulled out a stack of albums. “I always envied him his Coltrane collection. Think maybe I can take these?”

  “No,” Becca blurted out.

  “Why the hell not?” Sims asked. “You an
d Mom don’t listen to that stuff.”

  “But it’s Dad’s,” she said, swallowing.

  Elliott and Sims both turned to stare at her. She felt like an idiot. Of course she knew Dad wouldn’t be listening to any of these albums. Of course she knew he was dead, but that didn’t mean they got to paw through his stuff, helping themselves to whatever they wanted.

  “You’re right. I didn’t mean to be insensitive.” Elliott replaced the albums and returned to his spot on the sofa. He lifted the bowls of chips and dip, offering them to her. She could almost taste the salty Dorito, the ooze of rich guacamole. She could take another run later to make up for the added calories.

  She crammed three into her mouth.

  “The dip’s delicious.” Elliott rested the bowl on the arm of her chair.

  He was cruel to put it so close. She skimmed a chip across the surface of green, ten calories. She could afford that many.

  The second chip dug deeper and the third worked like a shovel, scooping up a big dollop of avocado.

  Elliott’s cell played some jazz guitar tune, and he pulled it from his pocket to read the text. He smiled and punched buttons faster than Becca had ever seen—and she knew some texting wizards (Kayla could do it without even looking).

  “Who are you talking to?” Sims asked.

  “Chloe. A woman in my band.”

  Sims leaned forward, turning away from the game. “Just a bandmate? Or something more?”

  Elliott replied with an evasive shrug.

  “Holy crap, you have a girlfriend.”

  “And you’re surprised, why? You think I live like a monk? Or maybe my affections leaned in a different direction?”

  “I stopped thinking you were gay after the Megan fiasco.”

  “Who’s Megan?” Becca asked. She moved the bowl of chips to the other side of her brothers, out of reach.

  “Freshman year at Carolina. The art student who made collages out of road trash. Had your brother by the gonads for an entire semester,” Sims said.

  Becca giggled. It made her feel grown up when they talked like this around her.

  “I’d argue with you if that wasn’t true,” Elliott said.

  “You almost failed half your classes. I thought Mom was going to have a stroke.”

  “Really?” Becca couldn’t imagine either brother failing anything. Getting As was important in the Hastings household. Bringing home more than two Bs meant restriction and no cell phone.

  “Yes really. Elliott and Megan did a lot of reefer back then.”

  “Sims!” Elliott cautioned, cutting his eyes at Becca like she didn’t know about such things. She almost blurted out that she and Kayla tried pot last year, but she didn’t like it because she’d eaten an entire sleeve of Fig Newtons.

  “Mom and Dad acted like every test score was a direct reflection on them,” Elliott said.

  Becca knew what Mom and Dad had expected of her, and could recall, in excruciating detail, all the ways she’d let them down. But Elliott and Sims felt the same way?

  “Remember when Mom summoned you home?” Sims asked. “You looked like you were facing the guillotine.”

  “More like the Inquisition. They grilled me for three solid hours because I’d gotten three Cs on midterms.”

  “But you straightened up after that. After Megan got bored and moved on.” Sims lifted his bottle in a mock toast.

  “Mom said if I didn’t get my grades up, they’d send me to Tech school to study HVAC repair.” Elliott scratched at the label on his bottle, his lips pressed into a tight pale line. “Might have been better if they had.”

  Becca felt a flash of anger. Why did Mom think every little thing reflected on her? Her piano recital in sixth grade: Becca had been terrified during the days leading up to it, how she considered breaking a finger to get out of having to perform. Shaking on the piano stool, lights too hot against her scalp, quiet coughs and foot noises in the audience. Her trembling fingers tripping on the sixteenth notes and her mind forgetting chords she could play in her sleep. Leaving the stage with the piece half-played, horrified, humiliated. Dad hugging her and saying, “It’s okay, kitten,” but Mom crossing her arms and saying nothing at all. There had been no mention of piano lessons after that disaster.

  She reached for the Doritos.

  “So Becca, are you making straight As?” Elliott asked, concern in his voice like he was asking if she had a cold or the flu.

  “She’s AP in all her classes,” Sims said. “She’s smart as a whip.”

  “I hate math.” Becca didn’t like being talked about. “And lately, I hate poetry.”

  “Lately?” Elliott asked.

  “We have a stupid artist-in-residence. He gives me the creeps.” She took another handful of chips. She’d eaten too many. Probably three, four hundred calories. She’d need to run three miles to burn them. Of course, there was always the other alternative. She stood, brushing crumbs from her lap.

  “Where you going?” Elliott asked, narrowing his eyes at her.

  “Upstairs,” she answered in a tone that let him know it was none of his business.

  As she left the room, she heard Elliott say to Sims, “This is what I was talking about. You know what she’s going to do.”

  Screw him. Screw them both. She pounded up the stairs.

  THE NEXT MORNING, LENA looked up at the clock on the mantle: ten fifteen. Phillip was late, but the man was never on time for anything. Sims and Elliott rattled around in the kitchen getting coffee. She could hear tension in their voices, but couldn’t make out the words. They had once been so close. Of course, they had their battles; Sims loved to taunt the more sensitive Elliott, but Elliott would have his revenge. She recalled marshmallow whip oozing out of Sims’s baseball glove. A bumper sticker placed on Sims’s first car: “I (heart) N Sync,” which resulted in a threat of fratricide. But the boys were always quick to defend each other, to compose alibis against accusations from either parent: “I was still up when Elliott came in, just after eleven” or “Sims didn’t start it! The third baseman threw the first punch.”

  They lived such different lives now. Did they talk on the phone other than birthdays and holidays? Surely they emailed or texted each other. She hoped so. She prayed they didn’t lose each other to the distance the way she and Abby had. It was hard to get it back once it was gone.

  Elliott poked his head through the door. “You want coffee or tea?”

  “Coffee would be great.”

  “You okay?” Elliott came closer, peering at her like she needed assessing.

  “I’m fine, honey.”

  “You look . . . contemplative.”

  “Phillip’s late,” she answered. She wasn’t only anxious to get the meeting over with, she had a nagging fear that Phillip was bringing bad news. She had never stayed abreast of the business, because Mitch kept details sketchy, but the papers told her that the real estate business had been rocky. Thank God for Mitch’s insistence on a safety net. He always kept at least a year’s wages in the bank—more after the boys got out of school—his “just in case” fund. So while the business had suffered, she knew they could manage until the market righted itself. There would be life insurance, too; it would help with the mortgage and Becca’s education. Still, that niggling worry that there was something she didn’t know.

  She reached into her pocket and gripped the stone she’d taken from Mitch’s jacket. Her rock rosary.

  “Why does he want to meet with all of us?” Elliott asked.

  “I think he wants you boys to know where things stand,” she answered as she squeezed the stone. There was the matter of Phillip, too. Mitch had thought of him as a brother, had since their frat boy days at USC, even though the allegiance wasn’t deserved. Could she trust him? His personal life was often in shambles. Several marriages, and he’d cheated on his wives—not that she was one to judge. Come to think of it, his partnership with her husband was the one stable relationship Phillip had.

  “Coffee’s
ready,” Sims yelled out.

  Lena started to stand but Elliott motioned her to stay seated. “I’ll get it.”

  More commotion as Becca bounded down the stairs, Abby close behind. Becca wore her sweat pants and fleece zip-up, her hair gathered in a ponytail.

  “You should have some breakfast before you run,” Abby said as they reached the bottom of the steps. Abby wore a bulky cardigan with thick wooden buttons.

  “I’ll eat later. Don’t like to run on a full stomach.” Becca tightened the laces on her running shoes.

  “But you need energy. You’ll run farther if you have a little something.”

  Lena found it amusing that Abby had assumed her role as food police in this Becca issue. “Please, a Power Bar at least,” Lena would often say, and Becca would pretend not to hear. Then Lena would insert herself in front of the door, holding up a banana. Becca would grimace as she broke off a chunk to eat on her way out.

  “Back in a few,” Becca said and was out the door.

  “That child is no bigger around than a twig,” Abby commented, hands braced on her ample hips. Lena wasn’t ready for this conversation. She had expected the boys to raise the “Becca matter,” especially after her outcry at the funeral, but so far, it hadn’t surfaced. What would she say when it did?

  Elliott carried in the tray, Sims close behind him, and Abby helped herself to coffee cake as she sat in a rocker by the window. She took a large bite, crumbs sprinkling down the front of her sweater like dandruff. Abby didn’t look half-starved, or anything close to it, yet she stuffed the pastry into her mouth like it might be snatched away from her.

  The doorbell rang.

  When Sims answered the door, he pulled Phillip into the corner of the entry hall and whispered something to him. Whatever Phillip answered had Sims shaking his head, his mouth pressed into a grim frown. Something tightened under Lena’s sternum. She didn’t stand as he came into the living room, carrying a bulging soft leather briefcase in one hand, a steaming Starbucks cup in the other. He wore a gray basket-weave tweed and maroon tie. His steel-colored hair and goatee could use a trim, and would turn a shade darker after a visit to whatever expensive hair salon he used. Mitch had once described an argument he’d had with his partner: “Sixty dollar haircuts are not a business expense.”