by Gina Holmes
Mortified, I rushed from the room.
Unsure whether to retreat or return, I leaned my back against the kitchen wall. Crying at my circumstances. Laughing at myself. Wondering if the mind really was the first thing to go.
After a few minutes, Craig came to my side. “Hey, I’m sorry,” he said.
Feeling self-conscious about the raccoon eyes I undoubtedly had, I rubbed away the wet mascara. Trails of black now marred my fingers. “What are you sorry for?”
“Honestly? I have no idea. I’m always saying stuff to upset women.” He tucked his hands into his jeans.
“It wasn’t you. I’m just going through a lot. I’m the one who should be sorry for acting like a freak.”
He exhaled. “Want to talk about it?”
And then I remembered a time years ago when he’d asked me the same thing. Ninth grade. I’d just learned I hadn’t made the cheerleading squad. I stood against the chain-link fence that bordered the soccer field. As my classmates chattered and laughed, I wept silently into the bend of my arm. I had thought no one was watching.
A younger Craig asked if I wanted to talk about it, just like now. I shook my head, wanting to talk about it, just not to him.
Just like now.
“Thanks, Craig.” I softened toward him then, reminding myself the true nature of people didn’t change. The considerate boy he had been was still a part of the man standing before me. “But it’s personal.”
“Stuff with your dad?”
“Actually, Isabella’s dad.”
“David Preston.”
My heart froze. “How do you know?”
“It’s not rocket science. You two were dating.”
Shame filled me and I looked down. “You must think I’m . . .”
A gentle hand guided my chin up, forcing me to meet his gaze. “I think you must be very strong.”
I snorted. “Yeah, real strong.”
“You’re raising a child on your own. I mean, I sure couldn’t do that.”
“You’d be surprised what you could do if you had to.”
“It can’t have been easy,” he said.
“Easy? No, it definitely wasn’t that.” I felt the weight of that burden anew. “I sold my blood more than once to buy diapers, and if I ever see another ramen noodle, it’ll be too soon.”
“See, that’s what I mean, Jenny. You’re an amazing woman. Not everyone is that strong.”
“If I was so amazing, I wouldn’t have needed to be.”
Chapter Three
I lay with Isabella until she drifted off to sleep, then made my way down the stairs. Mama Peg reclined in her easy chair. Veins protruded atop her feet like earthworms, which told me her legs were swollen and probably hurting. Of course if I asked, she’d only deny it.
Not taking her eyes off the TV, she reached to the end table, blindly felt around, and lifted a coffee mug resting on its Reader’s Digest coaster. Meanwhile, Lucy Ricardo whined at Ricky, mesmerizing my grandmother as though she hadn’t seen the episode a hundred times before.
The last step I touched down on creaked under my weight. Mama Peg aimed the remote at the set, muting it, then turned to me.
“Hey,” I said.
“Hey, kid. Your dad’s on the porch having his evening pipe.”
I plopped down on the love seat. She cleared her throat and stared at me expectantly.
“What?”
“I said your father’s on the porch.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Alone.”
Oh. “What kind of mood’s he in?”
“He’s been giddy ever since he found out you were coming home.”
I thought she needed to clean her rose-colored glasses but didn’t say so. Facing forward, she hit the remote again. Ricky exclaimed, “Oh, Lucy!” and I took it as my cue to go.
When I opened the front door, the groan it made echoed my sentiments.
My father glanced over as he slipped the pipe from his lips. “You want to hit that off?” He motioned to the porch light smothered by fluttering moths of various sizes. I ducked back in, flipped the switch, then joined him again.
He sat in the same rocker he had occupied most summer nights ever since I could remember. The moon cast a soft glow over him, hiding his gray and wrinkles and making him look like the man I once called Daddy.
I took the porch swing, curling my fingers around the cool metal chain suspending it. The sweet scent of pipe tobacco flooded me with nostalgia. I never told him how much I loved that smell. “Keep smoking that—” I nodded to his pipe—“and soon you’ll be dragging around a tank like your old lady.”
He snorted in good humor. “There’s a big difference between this and two packs of Pall Malls a day.”
Sweet Pea climbed the porch steps and rubbed against my father’s leg.
I motioned to the purring cat. “I think he wants you to pet him.”
“No thanks. I value my fingers.” He shooed Sweet Pea away with his foot.
The cat’s fur stood straight up along the length of his spine as he hissed his disapproval. Sweet Pea must have heard something in the distance because he jerked his head toward the yard and slunk off into the night.
We said nothing for a few moments as a cricket choir serenaded us. “Man, I’d forgotten how loud those things could be.”
Back and forth he rocked as though he didn’t have a care. As though the tension between us wasn’t thick enough to dull a chain saw. “What things?”
“Crickets.”
“I guess I tune them out.” He tapped the side of his pipe against his armrest, then slid it back into his mouth.
“You’re good at that.”
“Are we going to start fighting again, Genevieve?”
“It’s not your fault. It’s common to your gender.” I winked to let him know I was playing. Or at least to pretend I was.
“That’s true enough. I wonder why God made us that way.”
“Coping mechanism, I guess.” I walked my feet back, then picked them up, sending the swing gliding. Warm air stroked my cheeks and pushed wisps of rogue hair off my face. “I bet Eve was a talker.”
An owl hooted. I searched the night for the reflection of its eyes, but the only forms visible were the silhouettes of treetops swaying against a velvet blue canvas.
“She’d have to be.” He stared at the half-moon as though conversing with it instead of me. “She and her husband only had a few million things to name.”
“I bet she named 90 percent of ’em too.”
When his rocking stopped, so did my heart. “You want to tell me what happened five years and nine months ago?”
I really did.
And I really didn’t.
I planted my feet on the porch, making the swing halt abruptly and my stomach lurch. “I guess.”
And so I did.
I told him I’d had every intention of doing the right thing, of keeping myself until marriage, but when Mom died, I was hurting, and David was there. Of course I left out the gritty details. I didn’t tell him I was furious with God and didn’t care if I broke His laws. In fact wanted to break as many as I could. I didn’t tell him David’s touch served as an effective, albeit temporary, anesthetic. And if only for the short time we made love, I didn’t think about my mother’s suffering. Didn’t think about the fact that the person who knew and loved me best in the world was forever gone.
Moving as slowly as if he were wading through petroleum jelly, my father laid his pipe upright by his bare feet. “Mosquitoes getting you?” He stared ahead into the night.
“Not yet.” I studied his face and body language for any sign of repressed anger.
“I keep meaning to get some tiki torches out here.” His tone was flat. His expression stoic.
“They’ll look good with the fifteen-foot totem I’m buying you for Christmas.”
“Can’t wait for that.”
Were we really not going to mention the elephant in the room? I had no choice but
to. It was crushing me. “We going to keep making small talk, Dad?”
He leaned his head against the back of the chair and turned toward me with a look that wasn’t softened even by the moonlight. “What do you want me to say, Genevieve? that I’m disappointed in you? Okay, I’m disappointed in you. The last time I voiced my opinion, you hung up and I didn’t hear from you again for almost six years.”
“Maybe you could skip the lecture this time and—”
“I share a grandchild with the man who murdered your mother. Do you want me to be happy about that?” The tendons in his hands protruded as he clutched the wicker arms of his chair.
I kept waiting for him to continue. After the longest five minutes of my life, he started rocking again.
“Well?”
“Well what?” he snapped. “His father killed your mother.”
I winced. His flaming anger hadn’t cooled an iota over the past six years. “That’s a little over the top. He wasn’t even her doctor.”
His nostrils flared, his lips disappeared, and his breath became short, angry bursts. “She trusted him. He should have sent her to a specialist. He knew he screwed up. Knew it. All he had to do was admit it. Say he was sorry.” His words were clipped and an octave higher than he normally spoke.
“Daddy—”
“Did you do it just to spite me?”
I’d mistakenly thought he was on the verge of tears, but fury, not sadness, was the ledge he teetered on. “What?”
“Did you do it—”
I bolted up, lava coursing through my arteries. “I heard you. Did I get pregnant, make my life a hundred times harder than it had to be, and bring a child into the world to raise alone just to spite you? Is that your question?”
He expelled a loud breath, pushed himself out of the chair, and marched off down the dirt road. I watched him walk into the night until a cloud of billowy gray blanketed the moon. I could no longer see him. That was just fine, because I no longer wanted to.
Chapter Four
The smell of frying bacon woke me. My head felt like a block of cement as I tried to lift it from the pillow. The bright morning sun speared through the wooden blinds straight into my eyes. I squinted, making everything around me appear cast in golden halos and veils of gauze.
For the briefest moment, I was a child again. Eight years old, pigtailed and slight, with every dream for my life still a possibility. I rolled over and sat up, feeling pushed to hurry. If I missed the bus again, Mom was going to kill me.
No, that wasn’t right. I rubbed the slumber from my eyes. The Polly Pocket backpack lying on my dresser belonged not to me, but to my own daughter.
I sighed and trudged to the bathroom.
Having showered and dressed, I made my way down the stairs, and my heart fluttered at what I saw. Still wearing her footed pajamas, Isabella sat at the kitchen table, a stub of tongue jutting from the corner of her mouth as she meticulously traced a picture with a fat blue crayon.
When I entered the kitchen, she glanced up, then went back to work. Mama Peg finished pouring a cup of coffee before giving me her attention.
“Aren’t you supposed to be giving up caffeine?” I asked.
“It’s decaf.” She said it as though it were less appealing than a mug of sewer water. “Sorry to make the whole family suffer with me, but Hurricane Craig came through this morning.”
The melodrama in her voice made me laugh. “You really shouldn’t talk that way about your father.”
“Hardy-har-har.” She wrinkled her nose and took a sip of unleaded.
I pulled a mug from the cabinet and poured myself a cup, adding a splash of half-and-half from the carton resting on the counter. Behind me, a chair leg scraped the floor.
“Sit. Let me fix you a plate.”
An empty cast-iron pan still lined with grease sat on the stove, along with a mound of bacon piled on a plate lined with paper towels. My stomach grumbled, and for the first time in weeks, I felt hunger instead of nausea.
Taking a seat next to my daughter, I eyed the picture she was coloring—Cinderella dancing with her prince at the ball. Isabella outlined her gown in royal purple and his suit in navy. Her strokes were almost perfect; only rarely did a small mark venture outside the lines.
“Bells, you sure are good at that.”
Fighting a smile, she colored the glass slippers lemon yellow.
I looked past her, through the window, at a small tree. Its branches dripped with dark green leaves and small, pale apples. I turned and smiled at Mama Peg. “Mom’s tree has fruit!”
She followed my gaze. “Ain’t that something? This is the first year it’s done that. I told her that thing would never produce if she didn’t cross-pollinate by planting another variety. I guess she was right. I should have had a little faith.”
Memories of my mother’s gaunt face smeared with dirt as her bony fingers pressed the hand spade into earth replayed in my mind. I wished she could be here now to see it. “I always thought it was strange she took the time to plant that when she knew she was dying.”
Mama Peg set her sponge down and looked thoughtfully at the ceiling. “The true meaning of life is to plant trees whose shade you never expect to sit under. Or something like that.”
I considered it a moment. “Wow, did you just make that up?”
She shook her head. “I’m not that profound. Just heard it once or twice and it stuck with me.”
I ran my hand over Isabella’s soft cheek. “Did you eat breakfast?”
After a minute of silence, Mama Peg answered for her. “She had two hotcakes, four pieces of bacon, and a glass and a half of orange juice.”
I snorted like a hog into the bend of Isabella’s neck, sending her into a laughing fit.
Moments later, my grandmother laid three steaming pancakes, several strips of bacon, and a glass of orange juice before me. I grinned my thanks and got busy spreading butter.
Coffee in hand, she took a seat across from me. “How’d you sleep, kid?”
I drowned my plate in maple syrup. “Perfect. Where’s Dad?”
I had to wait for her coughing fit to subside to get my answer. “Probably still in bed. He came in late.”
Maple and butter played a delicious melody in my mouth. I swallowed my bite and took a sip of juice. Its bitter taste ended the symphony and killed my appetite. “How late?”
“Two.”
A piece of bacon tried to enter my lungs instead of stomach, making me cough so hard I thought my eyes would pop out.
“Put your hands above your head,” Mama Peg said.
Ignoring her advice, I took another drink instead.
“You okay, Mommy?”
I caught my breath before answering. “I’m fine. I laid your clothes out on our floor. Go get dressed for me, okay?”
She closed the coloring book without an argument, and I felt a surge of thankfulness. When I heard her feet on the stairs, I asked my grandmother, “Why did he come in so late?”
“What happened between you two last night?” Her milky gaze bored holes through me.
“I told him.”
“About Isabella or about—”
“Just Bella.”
She nodded as though agreeing with my decision. “So you’re throwing one grenade at a time instead of taking the mushroom cloud approach. That’s probably wise.”
“If I wanted to tell him everything, I would have had to run after him screaming.”
“He walked away?”
“Doesn’t he always?”
A wry smile met me. “You might want to move out of that glass house of yours before you hurl stones at his.”
The truth of her words stung. Maybe I was more like him than I’d considered. Not liking the thought, I swept it away. “I wonder where he went for four hours?”
“Finish your breakfast.”
Though I no longer had any desire to eat, to please her I pushed my fork into another square of pancake.
She plucked a h
alf-eaten piece of bacon from my plate and popped it into her mouth, speaking between crunches. “With him, who knows? He might have walked, or fallen asleep in the canoe, or—”
My father’s footsteps bit off her words. He walked through the doorway with a bottom lip twice the size of the top and a left nostril crusted with red. Mama Peg and I exchanged questioning glances.
I’d forgotten I was no longer speaking to him. “What happened to you?”
He made his way to the cupboard and pulled out a coffee mug. “What happened to me when?”
Mama Peg coughed, then pointed to his mouth. “Your face.”
He busied himself pouring coffee into his mug.
“Jack, what did you do?” She shook her head as though she already knew the answer.
My insides burned. “Please tell me it doesn’t involve the Prestons.” His silence knocked the wind out of me. “Daddy, no.”
When he turned to face us, I noticed a long scratch on his right cheek.
Alarm filled me. “What did you do?”
Mama Peg stood, her face grayer than usual. “Jack?”
His gaze lingered on the linoleum as he spoke. “I confronted him.”
“David’s father?” This couldn’t be happening. “Again?”
“I demanded he acknowledge . . .” He paused when his bloodshot eyes met mine. “He still denies it. Even now that we share a grandchild, he refuses to do the right thing.”
Blood pounded against my temples. “Say you didn’t tell him about Bella. Tell me. Tell me!” I was screaming now. My body seemed to be acting of its own accord while my mind floated high above the scene, watching with deaf horror. “David doesn’t know. You know I haven’t told him yet. How could you!”
My father hung his head and covered his face with both hands.
“Jesus, help us,” Mama Peg prayed aloud as I snatched my keys and bag from the counter and tore out the back door.
Chapter Five
I sped out of the saddle barn’s gravel driveway, down the bumpy road, and across the single-lane bridge leading to town. Scanning through radio stations, I flipped past the talk shows, past the easy listening, past the country, to rap. Angry and loud, it suited my mood.