“He needs to know what’s going on. I mean everything, Cotton, the whole story. Did you--?”
“No,” Cotton said. “I didn’t see Latimer on Sunday. I didn’t tell him.”
“Well, I guess I figured that since you’re still breathing, but this situation-- Cotton, it’s not good, not legally or ethically, you know? It scares me to think how it could backfire on you.”
“Everything’ll be fine.” Cotton offered his usual ten cent reassurance.
“I called the sheriff’s department there.” Anita spoke into the pause.
Cotton’s feet hit the pavement. “You did what?”
“I was worried on Sunday, the way you were talking, the way you took off. Cotton, that man has a gun. He’s evidently unstable, at least when it comes to settling a score. I just don’t think you realize--”
“Geezus, Anita. Are you crazy?”
“The sheriff already knew you were there.”
“Which department? Where did you call?
“Lincoln County. Isn’t that where the accident happened?”
Cotton wondered how she remembered. Must be the lawyer in her, he thought. “He knows I’m here? How?”
“Evidently Livie’s family is pretty concerned. The sheriff said he’d heard from them too. I’d quit going by her house if I was you.”
“What exactly did you tell the sheriff? The accident--did you--?”
“No. That’s not for me to tell. I don’t think they’ve connected your disappearance to that. The sheriff didn’t mention anything except Livie and her family. He kept asking who I was, where I was calling from, how I knew you, what my concern was. I didn’t give him any details. I just said there could be trouble.”
“Damn it, Anita. I wish you hadn’t--”
“Don’t lecture me, Cotton. I called them and if you don’t get in there and talk to them yourself pretty quick, I’ll call them again and I’ll give them details, chapter and verse. You may not care about your life, but I do.”
“Ah, Christ, Anita.” Cotton bent his head back, blinking. He told her he was sorry. “I wish you weren’t involved, that I hadn’t told you. That’s the trouble with this AA shit.”
“Just promise you’ll get with your sponsor.” Her voice was still shaky. He heard her sniffing into a tissue.
What else could he do but say yes?
#
Delia improved enough that by Tuesday, they’d moved her out of ICU and into a semi-private room.
“Doc Hoffman says she could be home in a week,” Cotton told Scott. “She’s gonna need help though.”
“Drying out, you mean.”
Cotton brought his shaving gear out of the bathroom and shoved it into a canvas duffel. “Yeah. She drinks again, she’s dead.”
“And you think if you move home, you can stop her.”
“Who else is there? I don’t see you here.”
“Like sacrificing the first seventeen years of my life wasn’t enough? Anyway, I told you, I’ve got a business to run.”
“She’s our mom, Scott. We lose her, that’s it. We’ve got nobody.”
“You can’t lose what you never had.”
“If you could see her--”
“I don’t want to.”
“She’s scared out of her mind. She thinks you hate her.”
“She’s right.”
“But she’s sober now; she’s not the way you remember. It’s like, I dunno, like she’s had an epiphany or something. You don’t think she deserves a chance?”
“She never gave a damn about either of us, Cotton, and you know it. All she cares about is her bottle and if you think she’s gonna give it up, you’re a bigger lunatic than she is.”
“Maybe so, but I can’t just walk out on her.”
“Why not? You’ve sure walked out on a lot better people.”
“Thanks, asshole.” Cotton shoved the tote off the bed onto the floor and sat down. “That’s just what I need, a little more fucking guilt crammed down my throat.”
“C’mon, Cotton, use your damn head for once. Delia’s a drunk. She’s been a drunk most of her life. She’s not gonna reform. She’s not gonna pony up and go to AA with you or do any of that damn shit and you know it. When she tanks, which she will, you’ll go with her. You ever think of that?”
“What I think,” Cotton said, making each syllable distinct, “what I can’t get out of my mind is how Livie took on the responsibility--for our mother, Scott. For six years, she kept tabs on Delia. After all the shit Delia gave her, in spite of how I treated her, Livie still--”
“So I’m supposed to be grateful? Did I ask for Livie’s help? No. And I’m not asking you either. Here’s what you don’t understand, I don’t give a fuck what happens to Delia. I gave up giving a fuck the last time I cleaned the puke off her and put her in bed. Or how about the times we came home from school and had to scrape her up off the front lawn while all the neighbors goggled out their windows? Or what about when she’d just up and take off for days and the cops would bring her--”
“Shut up. I get it. I lived it too.”
“Yeah, beats the shit out of me why you want to do it again.”
#
He was on his way back to the hospital when he got hold of Wes and once he’d explained the situation with his mom, Cotton said he wasn’t sure how quickly he could get back to work. “If you want to find someone else--”
“Hell, no. What’s left anyway? A bunch of little stuff. We’ll manage. You just take care of your family.”
“I will. Thanks.”
“Before you go, did Nikki tell you they got the punks who’ve been working the neighborhood?”
“No. When?”
“A couple of days ago. A homeowner caught them in his house, held a gun on them while his wife called the sheriff.”
“You and Nikki can finally get some sleep,” said Cotton.
“Yeah,” Wes said. “You, too. Keep me posted, will you? And don’t worry about the job, man. It’ll wait.”
Cotton thanked Wes and tried to pretend he deserved Wes’s kindness.
#
“Maybe it’s penance,” Cotton said to Sonny over coffee at Starbucks.
“You play nursemaid to your mom, you rack up the brownie points. Is that how it works?”
“I don’t know. You tell me.”
“If I had the answer to that, I’d be rich and not just good looking.”
Cotton snorted.
“Seriously, this deal with your mom, is it some kind of pay it forward scheme? Like if you can keep her sober, it’ll make up for what you put Livie through?”
“Would that be so wrong?”
“Not in theory, not if your mom’s sobriety was up to you. But it isn’t. It has to be her choice not to drink and no amount of you wanting to save her or wanting to look like Christ Almighty to your former fiancé is going to make it happen.” Sonny bent his head until Cotton met his eye. “You do know that, right? Because you’ve put yourself at risk by moving home.”
“So everybody says, but it’s different this time.” Cotton repeated what he’d told Scott. “Mom’s different. She’s actually seeing a counselor at the hospital.” He knew it didn’t count for much, that if Delia could get her hands on a bottle, she’d drink. It was up to him to make sure she couldn’t. That was his job now, to keep her dry until she could do it for herself.
He said, “I want this to work, for her to be, you know--”
“Okay. Sober. Alive.”
“I know it’s crazy.”
Laughter broke from the group at the table behind them. Somebody’s cell phone went off.
Cotton bent his weight on his elbows. “I’m thinking about fixing up the house. It needs painting, maybe a new roof.”
“More penance?”
Cotton shot Sonny a look.
He put up his hands. “I’m joking,” he said. “I’d like to help. I bet some of the other guys would, too.”
Cotton thanked him.
“So, what about Livie? Have you been able to speak to her again since your mom got sick?”
“No. I’ve emailed, but she doesn’t answer.”
“You think there’s any chance she’d turn you in to the cops?--if she knew the truth, I mean.”
“Anybody could. You could.”
“But I won’t.” Sonny wasn’t offended.
Cotton shifted his feet. “I guess where Livie’s concerned, I think more in terms of hate, that once she knows the whole story, she’ll hate me. More than now, I mean. Wes Latimer is the one who’ll turn me in. Or worse,” Cotton added, and when Sonny asked, Cotton told him about the Glock Wes had borrowed for protection.
Sonny turned his cup in circles. “You ever hear of the castle doctrine?”
Cotton shook his head.
“It’s a law Texas enacted after nine-one-one. It says a man’s got a right to use deadly force to protect his property. You get what I’m saying? It’s like a license to kill. You can murder somebody and make it look like you had a legal right.”
“That’s heartwarming.”
“I heard a story from a guy I did time with--his brother lured some jerk who was screwing his wife over to his house and then--” Sonny made a gun with his index finger-- “pow, capped him right in his balls. Severed his femoral artery, made sure the guy bled out before the cops got there. Our boy claimed he walked in on a robbery and took care of business. He was never charged.”
Sonny left space for a response. Cotton couldn’t think of one and Sonny waved his hand. “It’s probably horseshit. You know cons, none of us can tell the truth.”
The wail of an ambulance siren swelled. Cotton felt the vibration through the soles of his shoes.
“You know,” Sonny said in the siren’s wake, “if that accident went down the way you say, it’s not like it’s murder. Is there a statute of limitations? Have you checked?”
“Ten years in the state of Texas.” Cotton explained that Anita had looked it up before Cotton had left Seattle. “It’s been six.”
“Meter’s running.”
“Yeah.”
Sonny glanced at Cotton from under his brows. “You don’t want to go to jail, man, not in this state, not if you can help it.”
“Anita thinks I should turn myself in. She thought you’d agree.”
“I might have back in the day.”
“I do it her way, the AA way and work the steps, that’s the risk I take, right?”
“Yeah, I’m just sayin’, that’s all. I’d hate like hell to see it happen.”
“But the alternative, man-- I mean what if it was your wife dead, what would you do to the driver?”
Sonny wadded his paper napkin into a ball. He didn’t have to answer. It was all over his face.
#
He didn’t expect them to come to the hospital, but they did. Cotton half stood, eyes wide.
Wes’s glance bounced from Cotton to Delia and back to Cotton. “Is it a bad time?” He spoke in a low, deferential voice, a hospital visitor’s voice.
From behind him, Nikki gave a shy wave.
“No, no, it’s fine.” Cotton straightened, feeling caught, embarrassed. He looked at Delia, at her hands curled like claws near her chin, the unkempt wad of her hair. Her mouth and the corners of her eyes were rimed in a white crust. She was as dry as a husk. He said, “She’s just-- She sleeps a lot.” He jerked a helpless sidelong glance, a chagrined glance, at Wes. “This is-- I can’t believe-- You didn’t have to come.”
He heard himself stammering, tried to make himself breathe. He wondered how he could have ever read anything in Wes’s expression except the genuine kindness and compassion he saw there now.
“Nikki wanted to bring your mom a little gift to cheer her up.”
She stepped into view. “I thought she should have something pretty for her room.” Nikki’s smile was grave, a proper hospital visitor’s smile. A smile that worried, that cared.
Cotton felt it like a blow to his chest.
His glance fell to the small blue vase she held in her hands filled with flowers. White daisies mixed with baby’s breath. For innocence. He recognized the flowers, his mind parroted the meaning. He couldn’t remember where he parked his damn car half the time, but he remembered Livie’s language for flowers.
His heart whacked against his ribs. He couldn’t raise his eyes, couldn’t get his mind around the fact that Nikki had come here to bring his mother flowers, while he’d left hers to die in an intersection.
When he looked back, Cotton would think this was the day, the time and the place, where it got real for him, where it started to cut him open from the inside.
Chapter 13
The first time was three weeks after the miscarriage. She dressed in a slim, shimmery-red, body-clinging sheath that swept over her right shoulder leaving the left shoulder bare and red sandals to match, the pair Stella had found in her closet. The man Livie had gone home with that night had slid onto the barstool on her left side and bought her a Manhattan and then another. Livie remembered the tantalizing feel of his breath against her bare shoulder; she remembered the damp imprint of his mouth there, the shock of her instant arousal.
He brought her to his apartment and he’d scarcely closed the door before she was yanking at his tie, the buttons of his shirt. She pulled the dress over her head. He shucked her out of her panties and lifting her, he had her first against the small foyer’s wall. They’d knocked into a table, sending the dish where he deposited his keys, the odd pair of cufflinks and loose change to the floor. She remembered the clatter when it broke. She remembered stepping on a cufflink.
She remembered lying naked underneath him in his bed and opening her legs to him, the hot demand of his tongue, the hard shaft of his penis. She’d taken him inside her mouth; he had taken her from behind. She had done it all without thinking, without remorse.
He’d been a stockbroker, that first one, and successful. One of the wealthier brokers in Houston, he’d announced with pride. He’d built himself up in an attempt to entice her to stay. Whatever she wanted, he promised. “Just tell me your name,” he begged.
But she never did that. She never told any of the men she picked up anything about herself because she wasn’t herself when she was with them. She was no one from nowhere. A genie from a long-lost lamp, a mermaid from an ancient sea. She was grief and despair and loneliness masquerading in a red dress. A whore, scag, cunt--
--her mother--
“Livie?”
She lifted her chin, met Kat’s perturbed, somewhat perplexed glance in the bathroom mirror.
“The front door was open. Didn’t you hear me calling?” Kat’s gaze fell to what Livie held in her hand. “What’s that?”
“Pregnancy test.” She dropped the small wand into the bathroom wastebasket.
Kat’s eyes widened.
“It’s positive.” Livie caught her breath. Her head felt dangerously light, as if it might float off the stem of her neck.
“Is that good news?”
Livie made a noise, something between a laugh and a groan. “I don’t know. I can’t think. . . .” She turned to the mirror, an antique beveled oval extravagantly framed in a gilded bouquet of roses twined around a gaily fluttering ribbon. It had been a gift from her mother who had paid more for it than she could afford. When Livie had protested, Gus had cupped Livie’s face in her hands, eyes dancing with affection and said, “Sugar, the instant I saw it, I saw you. I couldn’t leave it. I don’t care how many manicures I have to do without.”
Livie touched her reflection in the glass. “It made me sick growing up, all her boyfriends, the sex sex sex in our faces all the time, the way she would say she needed it, that it was her right. ‘I work hard, I deserve to have fun.’ Remember that line?” Livie’s eyes connected with Kat’s in the mirror.
“Yes, but what’s it have to do with--”
“I hate her for it--and then she goes and does something wonderful--”
“Livie--
?” Kat moved to Livie’s side.
Her smile was bitter. “I’m exactly like her. The only difference is I’m not exposing my children, at least not yet.”
“Oh, come on, a one-night sexcapade doesn’t begin to qualify you for membership in the Goosie Loosie Gus club.” Kat rubbed a small circle between Livie’s shoulder blades. “Have you told him yet?”
“Who?”
“Joe, silly.” Kat looked uncertain. “Joe is the father, right? You haven’t--? You didn’t go and do something dumb like sleep with Cotton?”
Livie took Kat’s hand and pulled her into the kitchen. “Do you remember our club?”
“The Saunders Secret Service Club.” Kat’s eyes danced. “I was telling Stella about it the other day. We should initiate her. It would be fun, wouldn’t it, the three of us?”
“Yes, but we need to have a meeting right now. I have something to tell.”
Kat groaned. “Oh god, I knew it.”
“Where are the kids anyway? With Tim?”
“Mom has them. They’re still worn out from all the Fourth of July hullabaloo. That’s why I called. I thought we could go shopping, the sales-- Livie, c’mon, you’re scaring me.”
“They let Delia go home. I went to see her.”
“You saw Cotton, you’re starting something---”
“No. He was at work.” Livie opened the refrigerator, studying the contents as if they mattered. “He hired a woman who does home health care.”
“So?”
“So he’s trying to do the right thing. Do you want juice, a glass of iced tea?”
“Do you have any wine?”
Livie let the refrigerator door snap shut and glanced at the clock. “It’s early, isn’t it?”
“You shouldn’t anyway, if you’re pregnant.”
Livie looked down at the still-flat plane of her abdomen. “Maybe the test was wrong,” she said, although she knew in her bones that it wasn’t. What she didn’t know was how to feel. Disgusted. Right now, she felt mostly disgusted with herself. Undeserving of the gift of a child. Unworthy. Rotten. Hypocritical.
“Please just say Joe is the dad,” Kat begged.
“Do you think it’s better to tell the truth even if it hurts you to tell it, even if it hurts the people you love most?”
The Ninth Step Page 14