The Ninth Step

by Barbara Taylor Sissel

  “But she did.”

  “You almost waited too long, Mom. I heard them say so.”

  “Livie, for heaven’s sake, it was years ago. Why--?”

  “Kat has cried about it. Did you know? She’s convinced you wouldn’t have cared if she died. She says we were like baggage to you, that you only claimed us when it suited you.”

  Gus shook her head and crossed her arms. “I don’t know that I want to even dignify such a ridiculous statement with a reply. I worked hard. I rarely left you and your sister to languish in some daycare. I kept a roof over your heads and food in your stomachs. I won’t apologize for being human.”

  “I don’t want an apology,” Livie said softly. She turned her tea glass around on its coaster. What she wanted was a guarantee that, as a single parent, she would not be as careless with her own child as her mother had been of her, as Livie had been of herself.

  She felt her mother’s arms come around her. “You aren’t me, chickie, if that’s what’s worrying you. Those nights you went out, the drinking and the men . . . your heart was broken.”

  Livie turned her face into her mother’s hip.

  “I’m so sorry you didn’t feel you could come to me after Cotton left when you lost the baby. I hate that you went through that alone.”

  A sound loosened from Livie’s chest, a truncated sob.

  Her mother knelt in front of her, taking Livie’s face in her hands. “I know you girls would have preferred for me to be more conventional.” She drew Livie into her embrace. “I did try,” she said, “twice, with your father, but when he walked out . . . I don’t know. Life, the human heart, the need to be with someone, to have them hold you. . . .” Her sigh was ragged. “It’s so complicated, or maybe I just make it that way. I don’t half understand myself.”

  She rubbed Livie’s back and Livie grew quiet, taking comfort from the sound of her mother’s voice, her touch, her smell, the familiar scent of White Diamonds that had faded now at the end of the afternoon.

  She brought Livie a tissue and when Livie finished mopping up, she cupped Livie’s chin and looked down at her and without an ounce of shame or remorse, she said, “I know I could have been a better mother. Most mothers could say that and I’d be willing to bet that when it’s said and done, you will too.”

  Livie’s glance fell to her hands twisting the tissue in her lap. She felt her mother’s fingertips stir the hair near the crown of her head.

  “I’m here for you now, my little chick. Okay?”

  Livie nodded, not trusting her voice.

  “Kat said you wanted to keep the baby.”

  “I don’t know,” Livie whispered.

  “Have you told the baby’s father?”

  “What if he’s like my father?” Livie met her mother’s gaze. “What if he doesn’t want a child?”

  “All men aren’t like your father. There are good men in the world.”

  “I never thought I’d hear you say that.”

  Her mother laughed and she was beautiful. Well-kept and elegant, like a sumptuously wrapped present. Livie had wanted to look like her when she grew up; she had wanted to be as articulate, as glibly flirtatious and irresistible to the opposite sex. She’d even gone so far as to put the same henna rinse on her hair. It had looked awful. Her mother had helped her strip it off.

  Now she touched Livie’s temple, the underside of her chin. “He deserves to know, don’t you think?”

  When Livie didn’t answer, her mother said, “Kat told me he came to see you, that he offered his apology. A lot of men, most men, wouldn’t have. I’m thinking he might be one of the good ones.”

  Livie made a face. None of the other ones had been good. Cotton hadn’t been.

  “They aren’t all like Cotton either,” Livie’s mother said as if she’d read Livie’s mind.

  How do you know? How did anybody know? Would Kat say Tim was one of the good ones? What’s-his-name, Phillip, her mother’s current flame . . . was he one of the good ones? Wasn’t he cheating on his wife? Livie dabbled in the moisture puddled around her tea glass.

  “It’s time to move on, sugar, long past time,” her mother advised. “Life has a way of getting by you. One day you’ll wake up and wonder where did that sweet girl and all her dreams go?”

  #

  “I thought you’d be so mad at me for ratting you out to mom that you wouldn’t come for dinner.” Kat cored the head of lettuce and rinsed it.

  “I almost didn’t.” Livie brought out a cutting board and started slicing tomatoes. They were outside, in Kat’s outdoor kitchen. Tim had lit the grill and the smell of mesquite drifted in the languorous late afternoon heat. He was in the pool playing a game with Zachary and Stella, something they’d made up and named Shark which involved a lot of underwater diving, splashing and shrieking.

  “I’m sorry, but I had to tell her, Livie. She was going to know--”

  “About the baby, but not the rest.” Livie paused to look at Kat. “What happened to the Saunders Sister’s Secret Service Club, Rule Number Two?”

  “I know.” Kat patted the lettuce with a towel as gently as if it had been the head of one of her children. “I couldn’t keep this one to myself, Livie. It’s too big. It still makes me shake thinking what could have happened to you.”

  Livie pierced the skin of the tomato with the knife.

  “Some secrets shouldn’t be kept.” Kat went on when Livie didn’t answer. She wiped her eyes with the back of her wrist. “I would never have kept anything so huge from you. I can’t get over that you didn’t trust me.”

  “It’s not that, Cookie.”

  “Then what?”

  “I told you, I was ashamed.”

  “I get that, but I’m your sister and Mom is Mom, and even when I hate her, I love her and we both know she’d walk over hot coals for us.”

  Livie arranged the tomato slices on a plate.

  “She needs to know when you’re badly hurt, Livie. I would need to know if it were Stella or Zack. You will, too, when it’s your own child.” Kat’s glance fell to the still-flat plane of Livie’s abdomen. “You don’t always have to be so strong. You don’t always have to do everything alone.”

  The silence that shaped the air between them was a fragile vessel filled with everything familiar and strange and it was rocked by the splash of sun-shot water and peals of laughter that broke against the pool’s stone perimeter. Livie felt Kat’s arm slip around her and Kat’s hip bump against her own.

  “I’m sorry,” Kat said.

  “Me, too,” Livie said.

  #

  “I want you to know I’m taking a ration on your account.”

  “How so?” Livie looked at Tim sidelong. They were standing at the pool’s edge. Tim was drinking a beer. Kat was inside settling Stella and Zachary down for the night.

  “You’ll be a working mother. I mean once you have the baby.”

  “If I do.”

  “If you do, you’ll have to keep working.”

  “I could move in with you and Kat and you could support us.” Livie was surprised when Tim smiled.

  “You’d never choose that option.”

  “I can’t even imagine that it would be an option.”

  He rubbed his eyes. “My mother worked and what I remember is going home afternoons after school to an empty house. I remember she was always tired, she was always begging me to be quiet, begging me to leave her alone. We were never close. We aren’t now. I haven’t seen her in more than three years.”

  Livie looked at the water.

  “I don’t want that to happen to Stella and Zack. I don’t want them to feel like they lost their mom to some damn job, especially when she doesn’t need to work.”

  “I don’t think Kat would let that happen.”

  “She’d be the first one to be heartbroken if it did.” He rubbed his face. “She’s a good mom; she could be a little more frugal,” he added.

  “I think she’s trying.”

  “
We both are. It’s a lot better now since we’ve started counseling.”

  “So, it’s helping.”

  “Yeah, big time.” He drank his beer. “Your sis is irrepressible. I love that about her. I’m a tight ass. We compliment each other.”

  “You’re a good guy, Tim.”

  Chapter 16

  He was at the corner market near home pumping gas into the Mercedes when he saw Nix. Cotton jerked the nozzle out of the tank, hoping for escape, but he was too late.

  “Cotton O’Dell? Man, it is you. You sonofabitch, how long have you been back? Why haven’t you called?”

  Cotton holstered the nozzle. “What are you doing in this part of town? Slumming?”

  The men embraced briefly, exchanged thumps on the back.

  “I’ve got a client who owns some rental property out here, two streets over from where your mom lives actually. Guy’s being sued by the neighborhood association over some nickel and dime shit that has to do with the tenants, but try talking reason to any of these yahoos.” Nix’s grin was a lopsided mix of humor and frustration. “Remember when we were gonna be hotshots, raking in the big bucks?”

  Make our first million by thirty, retire at forty, fish every ocean in the world . . .piece of cake. . . . Cotton flicked his glance over Nix’s shoulder.

  “But here I am chasin’ chump change, bro’. How about you?” Nix cast a wary eye over the Mercedes. “What are you doin’ with this piece of shit? Restoring it?”

  Cotton said, “Yeah, maybe.”

  “Huh.” Nix studied the car a moment longer trying to puzzle it out, getting nowhere. He’d only known Cotton in his sleek, high-dollar hot wheels days, his high rolling, fast living days. Nix knew Cotton had fallen since then, but he didn’t know why or how far. Not exactly.

  Cotton pulled his keys from his pocket.

  Nix found his glance. “What’re you doing right now? Let’s go grab a beer and a burger and catch up.”

  Cotton said he couldn’t. He told Nix about Delia. “She’s home now, but she still can’t be by herself for long.”

  “You can’t trust her with the booze, I guess.”

  Nix was serious. Like you’d keep liquor around after a thing like what had happened to his mother. But it was okay. Let him assume Cotton was watch-dogging, or whatever he wanted. It was easier. Cotton wasn’t the guy Nix had known; he wasn’t anyone he could even explain. If they went for a beer and tried to grab the old buzz, it wouldn’t happen. Too much garbage under the bridge.

  “Have you seen Livie yet?” Nix was grinning, broadly this time.

  Cotton had an unreasoning urge to punch him. He said she wouldn’t give him the time of day.

  “So, are you okay with that?”

  “Look, I should get going.” Cotton had forgotten what a talker Nix was; he’d forgotten what they’d said about him back in the day, how Nix was as good at gossip as any woman.

  “I guess you know she got her country place like she wanted. I wouldn’t advise going out there, though, if I was you. She’s as liable to put a cap in your ass as to invite you in for tea and crumpets. You know what they say, hell hath no fury, right?”

  Cotton shifted his keys, one hand to the other.

  “I never did hear what happened. Me and the other guys--we always wondered if it had something to do with us getting you so drunk the night before.”

  “Thanks, Nix, but honestly?--I got myself drunk.”

  “Okay, well--” Nix pulled out his wallet, extracted a business card, handing it over. “You need anything, you or your mom, you call me, okay?”

  Cotton thanked him again. He said he knew he should have been in touch before.

  “Yeah, I’ve been wondering what was going on ever since you called from Seattle. You said you might need an attorney.”

  “Uh, about that--”

  “You shitbird, you didn’t get somebody else, did you? I thought you said you weren’t ready to talk about it.”

  “I’m not. I’ll let you know.”

  “All right, so I’m not gonna force you, but I can always tell when something’s bugging you.”

  Cotton squinted into the distance wishing they hadn’t run into each other. Wishing Nix would write him off, knowing he wouldn’t. Nix might be a big goof, he might act the fool, but he was a good man, he’d been there for Cotton no matter how much time went by between their phone calls, Nix picked up like it was only yesterday since they’d last spoken. He never asked too many questions. He never pushed.

  He was saying something about how long they’d been buddies. “Since junior high, right?” He had his head cocked to one side now, seriously perplexed, brow furrowed in concern. Cotton wanted to tell him to knock it off, he didn’t need another reason to feel regret.

  “On that score alone you’ve got to know I’d never rat you out,” Nix was saying, “but friendship aside, you know attorney client privilege is sacred. I violate that, I get disbarred.”

  “When I’m ready.”

  “All right then.” Nix saluted. “When you’re ready.”

  “I’ve got your card.” Cotton patted the pocket of his jeans.

  Nix turned away, turned back, made a phone with his fingers by his ear.

  Cotton stuck up his thumb, got in the Mercedes, fumbled the key into the ignition. Stupid. He was so damned stupid to have kept Nix in the loop. But who else was there? Who else would he call? He’d need a lawyer when it went down, wouldn’t he?

  If it went down.

  #

  “Is he a criminal attorney?” Anita asked when Cotton told her about running into Nix, that he thought Nix would help him.

  “No. Civil stuff mostly,” Cotton answered.

  “See if he’ll refer you. You need someone who’s experienced in criminal law, who can get you the best deal with the DA.”

  “So, it’s not about me telling the truth, it’s about making a deal. Maybe I should call Monty Hall.”

  “Funny guy. The system’s not perfect, but it’s all we’ve got.”

  He walked outside onto the porch of the Latimer’s made-over garage. “I want to wait until Nikki’s party’s over before I do anything.”

  Anita snorted.

  “I know it’s hard to believe, but she really wants me to come and I really don’t want to disappoint her.”

  “Yeah, I hear you, on top of running her mother down and killing her, missing a birthday party’s a real heartbreaker.”

  “Look, what does it hurt waiting to go to jail for a few more days?”

  “It’s possible that won’t happen at all. You might get probation instead. Your record’s clean, there’s no juvie stuff and the fact that you’re coming in on your own, that you’re involved in a twelve step program, it’s going to weigh in your favor.”

  “Think it’ll weigh in my favor with Wes Latimer?” Cotton sat down on the porch step. “Do you think he’s going to care that I go to twelve step, that I’m voluntarily turning myself in?”

  “I don’t know, Cotton. Is there an alternative?”

  “I have to tell Livie first. I don’t want her reading about it in the newspaper.”

  “After Nikki’s party, once I tell Livie, you keep making these bargains, these arbitrary deadlines--”

  “You know what else I keep thinking about, Nita? Who’s gonna take care of my mom if I’m not around? She’ll start drinking again, it’ll end up killing her, then what?”

  “Then that’s her choice, Cotton, as hard as it is. I read something once, that you can’t go back for your buddy who’s got his pant leg caught on the fence, you know what I mean?”

  “Yeah, but this isn’t some buddy, it’s my mother. Would you leave your mother jammed up that way? Wouldn’t you go back for her?”

  “God, I don’t--”

  “It’s like if I do this, turn myself in, I’m not the only one facing heavy consequences. I mean Mom’s got a chance now, she’s sober. We’re doing pretty good. If she keeps on, maybe Scotty’ll come home. Ah, geez--�
�� Cotton stood and went down the steps, turned and came back up them. “I can’t believe I’m talking like this, like it could happen in a million fricking years.”

  “You want to believe it; you want to believe you can have a family, a normal family. It’s only human. Everyone wants to believe they have people they belong to, who care about them.”

  “I feel like I’m tossing Mom under the bus, Nita. I don’t know how I can walk away from her, just pretend she’ll be all right.”

  “Can you walk out on the Latimers?”

  Cotton remembered a few weeks ago when he’d thought he could, when he’d planned to do exactly that.

  “Can you walk away from Nikki,” Anita asked, “And Livie? You’ll have to walk away from her too. Can you do it? Can you keep your mom off the bottle, never mind yourself, and get Scott home? Fix it for everyone? Maybe you could hold up the sky, too, turn the sun on every morning all while you whistle a few bars of Zipitty-Do-Dah.”

  “So, what do you recommend? What’s the right thing?”

  “I can’t answer that, Cotton. About all I can say for sure is that all those other people?--the Latimers, Livie, your mom--they aren’t the ones who have to lie down in your skin every night. They aren’t the ones who have to look in the mirror, who have to carry your garbage around.

  #

  “I cheated on my wife,” Jake L. said. “Too many times to remember. She doesn’t know.”

  Cotton had heard Jake talk at past meetings and he could never decide if Jake was a liar. If no one shut him down, the guy would go on and on, seeming to manufacture details as long as he could keep everyone’s attention. It was part of what Cotton hated about the program, the need for attention, the constant me-me-me. A lot of these people got off on being the victim. He bent forward on his elbows.

  Patty C. said if Jake’s wife didn’t know, why go there? “Why open it up?”

  “How long’s it been?” Sonny asked.

  “Five years,” Jake said, “since my last bender.”