“You don’t want it?”
She shook her head.
He said he’d had enough. “I’ve had enough chips too.”
He hadn’t had any chips, Livie thought. Neither of them had. The basket and sauces were untouched. It was unheard of.
“I’m starving, aren’t you?” Joe leaned back, glanced across the restaurant floor hunting their waiter.
Livie imagined he was ready to get the evening over, get back to Kirsten. She wondered why he’d even agreed to meet her.
The waiter brought their mounded plates and they made small talk while they ate. Mostly Joe talked about the food. Livie was right, best tamales he’d ever eaten. Blah, blah.
She felt nauseated and couldn’t do more than pick at her meal.
When the waiter cleared the table and asked about dessert, Joe looked at Livie and she declined. She wanted to leave, to have this fiasco finished. She was definitely not telling him about the baby. She didn’t have to. There was no law that compelled her. Besides hadn’t he said he wasn’t ready for parenting? Didn’t he already have three children? Kirsten’s children? The thoughts ran through Livie’s mind as Joe walked with her to her car.
The night was dead still and slick with the warm smell of tar, the hotter bite of gasoline.
“Do you like jazz, not the progressive stuff, but the musical stuff, you know Billy Holiday? Miles Davis?” Joe asked. “Because I know this little place not far from here, the Lizard Lounge? They’ve got this dynamite trio in from Austin, not too loud. We could have coffee?”
She shook her head. “I don’t think so.”
“Another time?”
She didn’t answer.
“Look, I’m a little confused here. You called me so I figured-- But I’m thinking you must be serious about that other guy.”
“Other guy?” Livie looked at Joe.
“The guy who brought you the irises. I assumed--”
“Cotton?”
“Are you serious about him?”
Noise burst from the restaurant doors as a crowd emerged. A woman’s bright laughter echoed.
Livie looked in that direction, saw a woman twirling, her blonde hair caught the colored neon light. A man caught her in his arms, bent her backward, kissed her strongly. “I was once.” Livie answered Joe above the sound of more laughter. “But it’s been over between us for a long time now.” She brought her gaze back to him. “What about you? Is there anyone?”
He hesitated a fraction of a second, then shook his head. “Not in a while.”
She shifted her satchel.
He lowered his chin, wanting her gaze. “I was surprised when you called and invited me out,” he said. “I didn’t expect--”
“I’m pregnant,” she said.
His eyes widened; his mouth opened, closed. His grin was brief, an uncertain sketch, almost a reflex. He flattened his palm on his chest. “Mine? You’re saying I’m the--? From when we--? That one night?”
He didn’t believe her, Livie thought. And why should he? He didn’t know her and if he did, if he knew her history, he’d be within his rights not to trust her. She’d been crazy to arrange this. She found her car keys. “I’ve made a mistake,” she murmured. “I’m sorry. You can forget this, all of it, okay?”
“Whoa. Who said I wanted to forget? Or maybe you do?” He was looking carefully at her. “Is that it? Do you want money to--? Do you want me to--?” He couldn’t make himself say it; Livie could see that. He couldn’t say the word abortion.
“No, no, I don’t want money, any money.” She opened the car door, tossed her satchel across to the passenger seat. “I just thought you should know, but you’re under no obligation to me or--or the baby.”
“No, of course there’s an obligation. I--it’s not as if you did this alone.” He studied her face again. “You didn’t--? We didn’t--?”
“Use protection? No. It was stupid. I was.”
“If I remember right, we were both there.”
“I’ll do a paternity test, if you--”
He rested the pad of his finger lightly against her lower lip stopping further speech. The gesture was mindful and quick. “It’s okay. We’re in this together. At least I hope--”
He looked away as if he was at a loss to know what he hoped. He pushed his hands over his head, snaring her gaze again, studying her. “Wow.”
She nodded. “Pretty much. Except since I’ve known a while longer than you I’ve sort of moved past that to the What now? stage.”
“Sure you don’t want to go for coffee?”
She said, “It’s late. I’m kind of tired.”
He took her elbow, half-lifting her into the driver’s seat as if she were elderly. When he pulled out the seatbelt, Livie smiled and took it from him. “I don’t think I’m that old, or that delicate, at least not yet.”
“Sorry.” Joe grinned. “Habit.”
Livie’s smile died. “Your niece and little nephews. You buckle them in.”
“All the time.”
“They’re a handful, you said.”
“Yes.” Joe looked at her, took her meaning. “But no, not so I can’t--”
Livie started her car, lowered the window.
“Will you call me?” He cupped his hands on the window ledge. “Do you mind if I call you? We have to work this thing out, right?”
“Yes, but not tonight. I’m sorry,” she added after a moment, “about everything.”
A pause fell, teetered on an edge, as if it were waiting for something, but neither of them seemed to know what.
She put her key in the ignition.
He slipped his fingers under her chin, turned her face to his, touched her temple, the corner of her jaw. “I hope you won’t be mad when I say this,” he told her, “but I don’t know yet if I’m sorry.”
#
On her way home, Livie called Kat. “He was very,” she hesitated, “nice about it.”
“Nice.” Kat weighed the word.
“I know. It sounds dumb, as if we were talking about a dented fender.”
“You mean he didn’t run out on you.”
“No.”
“Are you okay? You sound a little sniffy.”
“He’s helping to raise his sister-in-law’s kids.”
“Oh?”
“Three of them, five and under.”
“Oh.”
“His brother died a year ago.”
“What else?”
“He plays the piano, likes Chopin and Bach. He’s read--”
“What? What has he read? Penthouse? Guns and Ammo? Something sleazier?”
“The classics. Tolstoy,” Livie said. “Jack London. Faulkner. He’s read Where the Red Fern Grows. It made him cry.”
“Oh, us too, do you remember? My god, he sounds perfect, so perfect. Wait a minute. He’s ugly, right? Fat. He chews with his mouth open, farts without remorse--”
“No, silly, but there might be something with the sister-in-law.”
“What makes you say--?”
“Never mind. I’m too tired to go into it.”
They shared a breath.
“Livie? Why don’t you come and spend the night? We’ll have a slumber party. Stella’ll love it. We can initiate her, make her one of the Saunders Sistahs. Get your mind off things.”
Livie said another time. “I really am tired.”
“Well, you better sleep now, tootsie, as much as you can ‘cause you won’t get to after the baby’s born.”
Livie waited for another car to pull through the intersection at the top of Peachtree Lane. Had she said she was having the baby? Was she? Had she decided?
“Were there any sparks?” Kat asked.
Livie laughed. She went down the hill, past the place where Razz had been hit, marking it subliminally in her mind.
“What’s so funny?”
“Most couples have the sparks first, then the baby, hopefully with a good chunk of commitment in the middle.” Livie turned up her driveway.
Had she felt sparks? Had Joe? But how could they know if any warmth like that existed, the air between them was already so charged with other drama.
“Well, did you at least like him?”
“Yes,” Livie said. “I did.”
#
She thought she would tell Charlie she was pregnant. She decided in the shower the morning after she’d had dinner with Joe. She would talk it over with Charlie and he would help her figure out what to do. She scattered grain for her hens and made the coffee and as it perked, it dawned on her that telling him was going to involve telling the truth about that night after he left her at Bo Jangles. Maybe she should tell him about the other nights, too, the red dress nights. As much as she deplored them, she couldn’t pretend they hadn’t happened, that they weren’t part of her history, a way she had coped with stress . . . once. To say otherwise meant her crimes weren’t forgivable, that she wasn’t human, couldn’t make mistakes and learn from them. And she couldn’t carry that weight anymore. She wasn’t quite sure what had changed, but Charlie would understand.
Or he wouldn’t.
She gathered everything they needed for coffee onto a tray. She would tell him outside, on the front porch, where the light fell in tranquil pools and the morning breeze would carry her words away as easily as it did scraps of bird song.
She was concentrating on maneuvering the loaded tray through the screen door and didn’t see him at first, the man lifting his head from the nest of pillows she kept on the swing. She was frightened for the single instant it took to recognize him. She said his name: “Cotton?” and as she said it, many other details became clear: the pillow creases that hatched his cheek, the navy smudges under his eyes that stood out against the pallor of his complexion, the day’s growth of stubble that darkened the line of his jaw . . .
. . . what looked like a large quantity of blood dried below the shoulder of his shirt.
Her heart twisted with ungrounded compassion, a thinner coil of alarm. “What happened to you?”
“It’s okay. I didn’t mean to--to fall asleep, to be here when you-- I’m sorry. I’ll go.” The words rushed in a stream even as he was on his feet, taking the tray from her, setting it on the table.
“Is that blood? Did someone hurt you?” Her heart was stuttering even as she asked.
But he said no. “It’s from Mom. She died last night, Livie. I couldn’t do anything. I couldn’t stop it.”
“Oh, Cotton, I’m so sorry.” Livie touched his wrist.
His eyes closed.
She took her hand away.
“She must have had a bottle hidden somewhere that I didn’t find.”
“She drank again.” Livie poured coffee into a mug, held it out. “You still take it black?”
He said he did, not looking at the cup but at her and it was as if he could not see enough of her.
She had a searing sensation of his hand cradling her breast, his mouth at her nipple. She bent sharply over the tray, poured coffee for herself, shaking slightly. She invited him to sit and he did, on the swing’s edge.
She sat in the rocker where Charlie usually sat.
Cotton said there had been nothing they could do. “She’d lost too much blood.”
“You were there when she--?”
“I wish I had been. I found her on the back porch steps. I was at a meeting, a--” He paused, pinched the bridge of his nose, put the mug aside and came forward, setting his elbows on his knees. “She knew the risks, maybe she did it on purpose.”
“She was unhappy for a long time, Cotton. You shouldn’t--” blame yourself. Livie bit her lip. She couldn’t give him that. “Is Scott coming?”
“He says he isn’t.”
Kat would come, Livie thought. If this were their mom, no matter how estranged they were, they would tend to their mother’s last rites together. Livie couldn’t imagine having to handle all that would need to be done alone. And Cotton looked so raw and hurt.
“He’s only my half brother.”
Livie’s brows rose.
“Scott and I have different fathers.”
“Really.”
“It’s the reason he took off.”
“Your mother told me she was engaged to someone else once, someone wealthy.” On our wedding day, while I waited in vain for you. “Was he--?”
“Scott’s father.”
So that was it, Livie thought. She ought to have guessed. She glanced at Cotton and thought, I was pregnant and unmarried, too. But the irony and the heartbreak made the words too hard to say. She wondered if Cotton even deserved to know. “That’s why your mom drank,” she said instead. “Unwed mothers were considered such a scandal then. She lost everything. You must see that. Did you and Scott never realize that she might have had a reason to--?”
“She waited until he was grown to tell him the truth; he thought Harold was his dad his whole life and then-- It was a shock. By then she’d been drinking for years. Scott didn’t care why. The damage was--” Cotton didn’t finish. He found a pebble on the porch floor and examined it.
“I wish you’d told me.”
“I couldn’t talk about it.”
“You didn’t trust me.”
“What good was it telling you the pathetic story of my life? So you could feel sorry for me? I didn’t want your pity, Livie. I didn’t want anybody’s pity. I still don’t.” Cotton pitched the stone over the porch rail.
Livie pleated the denim of her overalls. She remembered his pride; she understood the nature of his shame. She had her own.
“I didn’t give a damn about my life until I met you,” he said.
She dropped her gaze. Why did you leave me then? The question fell like an anvil into the silence, but she wouldn’t ask. She shouldn’t have to. If he was sincere about making amends, he wouldn’t let her objections interfere. He would talk over them; he would drown them out. Whatever it took to make this straight between them, he would do it, wouldn’t he?
But maybe she didn’t ask because she was afraid to know or better off not knowing, the way Kat had suggested. Because knowing would mean having to confront the reality and Livie didn’t care what conventional wisdom said, sometimes the reality could be worse than anything you could imagine.
“It’s all such a damn mess, I don’t know where to start.” Cotton’s voice was rough.
Her head came up, her eyes collided with his. His were red rimmed. A muscle jumped at the back of his jaw.
He bent toward her. “There are nights when I dream of you, of us, of how it was between us and it’s so real--” he dropped his chin, needing a space to find his composure-- “and then I wake up and you aren’t there and it’s like reentry. It’s like coming back to hell. That’s why I didn’t look back the other night. I was afraid I had dreamed the whole--ahhh--” He groaned and flung his gaze to the porch ceiling, blinking fast.
Livie’s heart felt as if it were disintegrating. She shouldn’t care; she should not be moved to tears on his behalf. She closed her eyes and when she opened them a moment later, he was looking at her.
“I really didn’t mean for you to find me here. After I left the hospital, I just needed a place to land for a while, a--a safe, a safe place--” He was stammering.
She looked at his hands flat on his knees. His fingers were long and squared off at the tips. The half-moons of his nails were white-flecked. She’d nearly forgotten that. She thought of sliding her fingers into the spaces between his and the hair on her arms rose.
He said he would go; he stood up and thanked her for the coffee, the night on her swing. He smiled his lopsided smile and the look that held them was complicated.
A pause came and stayed without comfort or grace.
They broke the silence together, she saying, “Have you made arrangements?” While at the same time, he was saying. “I have to contact a funeral home.”
And as if they’d cancelled each other out, they fell into another awkward pause.
She broke it.
“I know the funeral director in town at Mitchell and Vaughn. I installed a fountain for Hamp Mitchell a few years ago.”
“I guess they’d be in the yellow pages, or if you don’t mind, could you give me directions? I could stop by there.”
“Not wearing that shirt,” Livie said.
And that quickly Cotton was in her kitchen, sluicing water over his face and arms, drying himself with the towel she left for him.
Livie brought him a shirt, one of Charlie’s old oxford cloth dress shirts that she slept in, and she was conscious of this as she handed it to Cotton. And conscious of his bare chest, the bare flat plane of his belly. The air between them felt electric. She hugged herself.
He looked the shirt over a moment and she knew he was picturing the owner from the size, wondering about the man it belonged to.
Let him wonder, she thought, and then she heard Charlie’s truck rattle into the driveway and her heart lurched.
Chapter 18
“Oh, no.”
“What?” Cotton pulled on the shirt. He had an overwhelming wrong time-wrong place sensation.
“Charlie. That’s his-- He’s my-- We’re doing a job--”
“Livie, gal?”
The boyfriend. Cotton fumbled with the shirt buttons. It was tight through the shoulders, a little short in the sleeves. He rolled them into cuffs.
The back screen door opened, snapped shut.
Livie flinched.
I’m going to meet the joker dressed in his clothes? Cotton palmed the sides of his head.
“You see that wreck of a Mercedes out in the road? Reckon we need to call the sher--? Oh, didn’t know you had company.”
The guy who came through the door was old, late sixties, anyway, too old for Livie, please god, and as the old guy’s glance took in the scene, Cotton could see what he was thinking and that he was waiting for a cue whether to be pleased about it.
So, did that mean he wasn’t a boyfriend?
Cotton glanced at Livie. She hadn’t moved; she had her arms wrapped so tightly around herself, he wondered how she could breathe.
The interval became unbalanced. Weird.
Cotton stepped into it. “I’m Cotton O’Dell,” he said, “an old, ah, friend of Livie’s.”
“I know who you are.”
The Ninth Step Page 19