Loneliness was what I saw.
Chapter 27
When I think back on it now, the time at the water tower was a turning point, a moment when I’d realized my ability to divine water hadn’t left me, and confirmed that Daniel had, in some way. When we’d started out, he’d seemed excited about showing me this special place, but once there, it was like it swallowed him up somehow, like he was looking into the distance and thinking of faraway places, maybe imagining he was anywhere but Jones County. Despite my fear, it was now a special, unique place for me too. I wanted to make it our spot, like the stage in the barn at the old house, or the pond.
On our way back, I said, “We ought to come back soon.”
I was surprised when he said, “No.”
“Why not?”
He didn’t answer, and I took it to mean he regretted sharing his place, as if allowing me to come had taken something away from him. The ride back seemed faster, and soon we were zooming down Turtle Pond Road, then bumping down the tractor path. He stopped at the pond, and I got off the handlebar, grabbed the stick, held it proper, and walked alongside the water. It happened quick, and the wonder of it made me smile as the branch thrummed, and hummed, and sent the little signals I’d wanted so badly all those months ago. Daniel flopped down onto the dock. I pointed I was going to the field near the house, and he waved a hand in acknowledgment, remaining on his back, looking at the sky. I ran until I reached to Daddy’s gravestone, certain my happiness would shoot through my feet, into the ground, telling him it had finally happened.
I placed my hand on his stone and said, “Watch this, Daddy.”
I walked through the plowed field. My little damaged stick spoke without hesitation, sending messages of flowing water, pointing down with the consistency and accuracy of the sun rising and setting. I let the moment soak in, my doubts, at least about this, now gone. When Daniel finally came to see what I was up to, all I could do was grin.
He said, “It worked?”
“It did.”
“I knew it would.”
“It ain’t happened for months.”
He repeated what Aunt Ruth had said. “We’ve had enough rain now. Water tables during a drought are lower.”
I should have figured he’d know the scientific reason behind it. All that mattered to me was it had happened. I was contented.
Daniel said, “I got to go.”
“When will you come back?”
“Ain’t no chance of running into him over here, is there?”
I shook my head. “Not when it ain’t planting season.”
“This weekend, then?”
I was surprised, but nodded eagerly. “Yes.”
And this was where I would say we entered a time when we settled back into a regular routine. Daniel’s visits grew more frequent, with us spending hours at the old house every weekend. It was a lot like before, sometimes we’d be on the barn stage where Daniel got back into a bit of his acting, showing me a new scene from a movie called Rebel Without a Cause. Sometimes we’d end up inside the old house, using the key left under one of Mama’s old flower pots by the back door. I wandered the rooms, touching this and that. We’d sit at the kitchen table, or we’d meander down the dogtrot to my old bedroom, where we’d lay on the bed, and I would be consumed by a heavy ache of homesickness weighing me down into the mattress such that I was sure I might not be able to get up. We grew comfortable, perhaps complacent, but if I thought my absences from Mr. Fowler’s house went unnoticed, I was wrong.
* * *
A brand-new bicycle sat under the tree, a Schwinn Catalina, light blue, my favorite color. I wanted it, yet I didn’t want it. He sat beside Mama on the couch, his hair all messy, like he’d had a rough night, stubble on his chin and cheeks, eyes bloodshot. They sipped hot coffee, and she’d brought in a tray of sausage biscuits. He wore a phony smile.
Mama said, “Oh my, Sonny, ain’t it nice? You needed you a bike.”
The shine of it seemed all wrong in this dull room. I got to thinking maybe a bike could be just what I needed. I could be quicker about where I was getting to. Freedom. That’s what I realized came with this gift, and it was the only reason I accepted it by going over and putting my hand on the seat.
“Thank you,” I said.
Mr. Fowler said, “No need to sit on somebody’s handlebars no more.”
Mama looked at me, then at Mr. Fowler. “What? Whose handlebars?”
Mr. Fowler grinned, a reaction that didn’t fit with the tone of his voice or the look in his eyes. “She knows who.”
My heart set to racing, like I was already pedaling hard uphill. He knew. Mr. Fowler took a deep puff on his cigarette, and let out a stream of smoke through his nose. His color was like he’d been working out in the hot sun. I was quiet while he gave a small nod of his head, as if to say, yeah. I know all about that. He looked like a pressure cooker about to blow.
He said, “Expensive gift is what that is. Hope it ain’t a waste of money for being disrespected.”
I was probably the only one who saw the intensity in that hot gaze, how his throat worked like something was trying to come out of him.
Mama said, “Frank, whatever are you going on about?”
He leaned over and patted her leg, more like pounded it, and gestured. “Hell, I’m only saying it cost me a pretty penny.”
Mama moved her leg away and said, “Frank, dear, easy. You’re gonna leave a bruise.”
Mr. Fowler said, “Awww, sugar britches, don’t you know how much I love you?”
Mama cleared her throat and said, “She appreciates it, don’t you, Sonny?”
“Yes, ma’am. Thank you . . . Frank.”
His gaze shot back to me, eyes narrowed. I’d conceded and finally said his name, for Mama’s sake, and my own.
He relaxed and said, “Stuff ’s expensive these days. Took a good chunk out a my account, let me tell you what.”
Mama’s smile looked like somebody had pinned the corners of her mouth up.
Ross and Trent waited to open their gift, and she sighed and said, “Ross, what did you get?”
Mr. Fowler’s attention shifted, and it was as if the broiler I’d been under was shut off, at least for now. Ross had a large box near his feet, and he started to open it. We all leaned in as he lifted out a new record player, an RCA Victor, and a bunch of 45s to go with it. He went through them, calling out songs like “Sh-Boom,” “Earth Angel,” and “Shake, Rattle and Roll.”
“Thank you,” he said, a hint of surprise in his voice that Mr. Fowler had bought a gift he’d enjoy.
Mr. Fowler said, “Spent a half a week’s groceries for it.”
Mama said, “You shouldn’t spend so much, Frank.”
He said, “I didn’t want a bunch a mopey faces.”
Mama said, “The kids know better.”
He said, “Hm.”
Appearing exasperated, Mama turned to Trent and said, “Trent, your turn.”
Trent’s box was long, and I had all ideas what was inside it. He opened it and yep, just as I figured, out came a new shotgun. He was so excited his hands were shaking as he brought it up, and sighted on the chandelier overhead.
His voice cracked, like it had been doing lately, when he said, “Wow! A Remington!”
This was a gift Mr. Fowler seemed to take interest in.
He leaned forward and said, “It’s a 12 gauge, Model 870 slide action. That’s a good gun there.”
“Gee whiz, thank you, Daddy Frank!”
Ross caught my eye, and rolled his. Trent knew what side his bread was buttered on. Funny that, cause after having asked us to call him Daddy Frank, every time Trent did, I’d noticed Mr. Fowler gave a little twitch to his shoulder like he didn’t much like hearing it, as if it didn’t suit him in some way.
He said, “Don’t be shooting at the house.”
Trent gave him a confused look.
Mama set things onto a more congenial path when she said, “Sakes alive, Fran
k, this is all too much!” and soon as she did, he became magnanimous, his back straightening up as he waved a hand.
“It ain’t nothing, darlin’. Anything for my baby.”
When Mr. Fowler wanted to play nice, he could be as smooth talking as a Sunday morning preacher. He hugged her, while over the top of her head his eyes trailed around the room, landing on each one of us like he was still trying to figure out how to make us vanish.
I said, “Mama, we got you something too.”
Actually, Ross had been the one to get it with the money he’d saved up. Trent and I were part of it though, agreeing to do his share of chores for a month as a way to help pay.
Mama said, “Oh, you children shouldn’t have done that!”
Mr. Fowler released her as Ross handed her one of the boxes under the tree. She tore the wrapping paper off, and instantly grew teary eyed. We’d got her a new winter coat. A pretty dark blue color with a soft inner lining she could zip and unzip as the weather warranted.
She held the coat up and said, “I love it! Look, Frank. Look what they’ve gone and done.”
Mr. Fowler yawned and scratched his belly. He looked about as interested in Mama opening a gift from us as replacing a roll of toilet paper in the bathroom. She made over each of us, coming round to where we sat, squeezing us tight, and kissing the tops of our heads. Giving Mama a gift was the best feeling, especially to see her smiling and happy. She held it up again and sighed.
She said, “You kids outdid yourselves this year,” and gave us that look, like she might come around and hug us again.
So wrapped up were we in our moment with Mama that when Mr. Fowler cleared his throat, and looked at his watch, it was like being thumped on the head.
Mama jumped, like he was reminding her of the time, and exclaimed, “If I’m gonna have Christmas dinner on the table at noon, I best get to it.”
Mr. Fowler grabbed her arm and pulled her back down on the couch.
He said, “Hold on, darlin’.”
He reached underneath the couch, pulled out a small thin box, and held it out.
She put a hand to her mouth, then to her chest, and said, “Frank. What have you gone and done?”
Like a kid on his first day of school meeting a pretty new teacher, he had an “aw shucks” look.
He said, “It ain’t much.”
She opened it, and once the paper was off, she held a red leather box, and inside it was a bracelet, diamonds galore, and even from where we sat, the sparkle of it could have lit the room had the sun hit on it just right.
Mama draped it over her fingers, staring at it, and said, “Frank! I never . . .”
“That’s right, you ain’t never had nothing like that, have you? That’s what it means to be married to Frank Fowler. Look a that there, now. Ain’t it something?”
Mama shook her head in confusion, staring at it like it wasn’t real. She frowned, and seemed tongue-tied. He took it from her, turning it this way and that, admiring it. Ross and Trent had gone back to fiddling with their stuff, and missed the implications of Mama’s reaction while Mr. Fowler preened like a peacock, proud, instead of considering the impracticality of such a gift. He stopped fawning over the bracelet long enough to notice his enthusiasm for it exceeded Mama’s.
His head reared back. “What’s the matter? Don’t you like it? I paid . . .”
Mama interrupted him. “Frank, when would I wear this? I mean, it’s beautiful, but . . .”
It got quiet. Oh. She shouldn’t have said that. The entire time we’d been in the living room, supposedly having a nice Christmas morning, I’d viewed Mr. Fowler no different than a king overseeing his peasants. He snatched it from her hand.
“Fine.”
He grabbed the box too.
Mama said, “Frank. I didn’t mean . . .”
“No. It’s fine. I shouldn’t have bought it. I figured you’d appreciate it, is all.”
“Well, of course I do, it’s just . . .”
He snapped the lid shut and she stopped talking. She had a helpless look, as if she’d been going along a familiar path only to find herself now lost. Mr. Fowler stood up, his manner gone stiff and formal. Box in hand, he headed out of the living room.
Mama said, “Where’re you going?”
He didn’t answer. She got up to follow and by then Ross and Trent realized something had gone amiss. They stopped admiring their gifts and watched as Mr. Fowler exited the room with Mama trailing after him, one hand reaching out to touch his shoulder. He shrugged her off, a gesture of aggravation. We stayed put. Mama could handle him, and I was certain she’d persuade him to calm down, and that would be that. His gift didn’t suit her, which proved he didn’t really know her. She’d have loved something practical ’cause that was how she thought, even I knew that. He’d have done better to have given her a pretty dress for church, or if it had to be jewelry, a string of soft iridescent pearls that would lay against the creaminess of her neckline, something less expensive, and appropriate, although that would have seemed extravagant too.
Ross looked at Trent and me and with sarcasm, he said, “Merry Christmas.”
I said, “Yeah. No kidding.”
I almost didn’t want the bike now. I honestly didn’t want a thing from him. A loud noise came from the kitchen, a sound like something had been thrown. We jumped to our feet and next came raised voices. We rushed down the long hall, through the dining room, and into the kitchen. Mama was the only one in there, cleaning up a mess on the floor, her homemade cranberry sauce. She cried as she picked up pieces of a broken bowl. Strangely, it had been a gift from Daddy one year. Had Mr. Fowler known that? The red berries all over the floor looked like blood.
She refused to look up though, and all she said was, “The bowl slipped.”
Ross put his hands on his hips and said, “Mama.”
She shook her head, as if to dismiss any ideas it was anyone’s fault but hers.
She said, “It got dropped, that’s all.”
“How?” he asked.
She repeated herself, and I suppose, technically, it wasn’t a lie.
I knelt down beside her, and started helping get the berries up. It was quiet, nobody talking. Ross went outside, and I figured he might be going to find out where Mr. Fowler was, and maybe even ask him about it. Trent drifted back off to the living room, casting worried looks over his shoulder as he went.
When it was just us, I said, “Mama? You all right?”
She sniffled a bit and then said, “If I can just get us through this holiday.”
Which said a lot more than she realized.
Chapter 28
It was after the New Year, and we were back in school, but all I could do was worry about Mama being at home alone with Mr. Fowler. Ever since Christmas Day he’d changed. Where he’d once catered to her, he’d started griping about everything she did. And where she’d once been able to quell his moods, if she even attempted to rationalize, he took it wrong.
“Are you telling me I’m stupid?”
“No, Frank, that’s not what I’m saying, I’m only trying to tell you . . .”
“I’m your husband, not some imbecile. I don’t need explanations.”
“Frank, it’s not a big deal.”
“Says who? I’ll decided what’s what around here. Do you hear me? This is my house.”
It went like that. Mama could not win. And all it took was that one mistake about the bracelet and it got him all twisted around, like he suddenly got turned inside out, revealing to Mama the Frank Fowler I’d seen all along. The atmosphere in the house went from murky to moldering. No matter how nice Mama talked to him, carrying on as if nothing happened, his responses were cryptic. He tried to pick fights, figuring out ways to nitpick. How she kept house. How she washed and ironed his clothes. She tried to bake him his favorite blackberry pie, using frozen berries she’d put up last year.
“My mama, she didn’t fix this pie like this. It ain’t nowhere as good as hers.
She only used fresh berries. Why can’t you do it right?”
Mama was gutsy enough to say, “You liked the way I cooked before, Frank,” which earned her the sort of look that was the sole cause of my worry about her being alone. It was as if her comments about the bracelet had been a direct rejection of him.
I told Daniel at lunch, “He’s done gone looney tunes.”
Daniel made a disgusted noise and said, “No he hasn’t.”
We were standing at our spot by the fence on the playground, huddled up against the cold, and I pushed off it so I could face him. I was ready to give him what for when he clarified what he meant.
“He’s always been that a way.”
I relaxed and said, “S’truth. I don’t know how he did it, but he fooled her. Now, all hell’s busting loose.”
I couldn’t bring myself to concede to Daniel’s original point about us being trapped. The bell rang, and we headed for the school.
He said, “Hey, we meeting on Saturday, like usual?”
“Yep.”
We parted ways in the hall, and if there was one thing I could be happy about, it was that Daniel and I had more or less regained our old footing with one another, even if I couldn’t completely understand what was going on with him.
When Saturday came, Mama seemed out of sorts. She looked pale, sickly, with the shine of sweat on her forehead, while the house, if anything was cool and damp.
I studied how she looked and said, “Mama, you feeling sick?”
“I’m a bit off this morning. I probably just need to eat something.”
I said, “I’ll fix toast. Can you eat that, you think?”
The Forgiving Kind Page 26