Gregg glanced at her. “You really think your mom’s changed her tune?”
Elizabeth sighed, feeling at a loss for words. She felt confused and scared. “I don’t know. I really don’t know.”
TWELVE
IN THE FOLLOWING weeks, Elizabeth paid close attention to what her mother said about Diana. She also paid attention to how they interacted with each other.
Where before Laura tried to be friendly to Diana and then stopped caring about being nice when she seemed indifferent in her effort to include her in the family, now she was going the extra mile to make sure her brother’s girlfriend felt like she was part of the family. Pictures of Rick and Lily appeared on the refrigerator, sharing space with Eric and Mary in one of those refrigerator magnets with the emblazoned motto, I Love My Grandchildren. Elizabeth bit her tongue on the sarcasm that wanted to leap out when she first saw that. The few times Diana was at the house when Elizabeth dropped in to pick up Eric, she was chatting with mom in the kitchen like they were old friends. And while mom acknowledged Elizabeth, there was something different about her tone of voice and behavior. It was as if all her attention was being diverted to Diana and it was being done unwillingly.
The first weekend after Cindy’s funeral, Elizabeth made good on her offer to have Mary sleep over at the house. But when she called her mother to make the arrangements, Laura said that Diana was looking forward to having Mary and Lily spend the weekend with her. When Elizabeth told her mother that the invitation wasn’t extended to Lily, mom got huffy. “I don’t see what the problem is, Elizabeth,” her mother said. “Lily is Mary’s sister now.”
“No, she’s not!” Elizabeth shot back, feeling suddenly angry at her mother for letting Diana manipulate her.
“Well I’m sorry for the misunderstanding,” Mom said. “But I was led to believe that the sleepover was for both the kids, not just Mary.”
Elizabeth was furious. “Bullshit, mom! I told you the day after the wake.”
“Well I must’ve forgot. What am I going to tell Diana?”
“You’re not going to tell Diana anything,” Elizabeth said. “I’m calling myself.”
When Elizabeth called her brother’s house, Diana answered the phone. Elizabeth had waited ten minutes before making the call in an attempt to calm down. “Just calling to let you know I’ll pick up Mary at six,” she said.
“I’ll have them ready,” Diana said, sounded indifferent, in a hurry.
“Oh, Diana? This invitation was for Mary only. I’ll be picking Mary up, not Lily.”
The pause on the other end of the line spoke loud and clear: How dare you say that! When Diana managed to speak she sounded annoyed. “I’m sorry to hear that. Lily was looking forward to spending the weekend with your family. This will crush her.”
“She’ll get over it,” Elizabeth said. God, I sound like a bitch, but I don’t give a fuck.
“I’ll have to check with Ronnie,” Diana said. “He was led to believe that you were taking the girls, so we made plans this weekend.”
I’ll bet, Elizabeth thought. “Well, check with him, then call me back,” she said, the urge to hang up resounding strongly.
“Okay,” Diana said, bored.
An hour later Diana called. “If you’re not changing your mind about having Lily over, we’re going to cancel our plans. Ronnie says he’d rather have you take both kids for the weekend.”
Since when did my stupid brother become my Lord and Master? Elizabeth’s true feelings came to the surface. “Well obviously we don’t think alike because I don’t want Lily all weekend. Just forget about it!” She hung up, suddenly angry with herself for letting her emotions get the better of her as she burst into tears.
Gregg had already come home from work and he came downstairs as soon as she started crying. Eric was in the basement playing air-hockey with one of the neighbor boys. Elizabeth told Gregg what happened and gained control of herself. “I fucking hate that bitch,” she said, sniffling.
“I’m glad you stuck up for yourself,” Gregg said, leaning against the kitchen counter. He looked concerned when Elizabeth told him about the exchange. “We don’t need to be kissing Diana’s ass the way your folks have been.”
“I know, but I feel bad for Mary,” Elizabeth said, sniffling back tears. “I feel like I’m letting her down.”
It turned out to be not a very good weekend.
Laura seemed different in the week following Cindy’s funeral and wake. Elizabeth wanted to talk to her but Laura was distant, almost cold. On Monday when she picked up Eric she was about to mention the spat she’d had with Diana when her mother beat her to it. “I heard you and Diana got into a bit of an argument.”
Elizabeth stiffened at the sound of her mom’s voice. Eric was washing his hands in the bathroom after having come inside from playing in the back yard with Mary and Lily. Jerry had raked the newly fallen leaves into a big pile for the kids to jump in, and Eric had dead leaves and mulch all over him. “What did she tell you? That I got upset with her because I didn’t like how she was trying to push her kid onto me?”
“She said you were clearly upset about taking Lily for the weekend.”
Elizabeth felt herself growing angry. She felt light-headed. The tone of voice her mother was using was the one she used when she was trying to be the stern disciplinarian. It was the tone of voice that used to preclude a stronger reprimand from her father that was usually more devastating. “She obviously didn’t pay attention to the part in my original proposal when I suggested that Mary come spend the weekend with us. Where she might have heard the syllables that pronounce what sounds like Lily in that sentence is beyond me.”
“You don’t have to be so sarcastic,” Laura said in a clipped tone. “Lily and Mary were very disappointed they didn’t spend last weekend with Eric.”
Eric emerged from the bathroom at that moment and Elizabeth used the opportunity to take her son’s hand. “We’ve gotta go,” she said. She picked up Eric’s book bag and started ushering her son out of the house through the garage. “We’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Fine.” There was dismissal and disappointment in her mother’s voice.
Elizabeth held her rage in check all the way to the car. She didn’t want Eric to see her like this but she couldn’t help it. The minute they were in the car she slammed her fist into the dashboard. “Dammit!”
“Mom?” Eric’s eyes were wide. He looked frightened.
“I’m okay,” Elizabeth said quickly, trying to calm down. “I’ll be okay...just...” Just leave me be for a moment.
Eric looked at her, understanding the silent communication that passed between them.
When Elizabeth calmed down she turned on the car. “I don’t want to talk right now, okay? Do you want me to put the radio on?”
Eric nodded. He looked concerned. “Okay.”
They drove home to the sound of classic rock and roll coming out of the speakers.
That evening Elizabeth told Gregg about what happened. “Your mom sounds like she’s really trying too hard to get on Diana’s good side,” he said. “It might be a good idea to just lay low on her for awhile and see if she comes to her senses.”
“At this point I don’t even think I can talk to her,” Elizabeth said. They were in the kitchen putting away the dinner dishes. Eric was sitting at the dining room table doing his homework. “I’m just so angry right now.”
“I know,” Gregg said. He began stacking the dishwasher. “When things ease up a bit maybe the two of you can talk without letting your anger get out of control.”
Elizabeth was on the verge of saying, don’t you think I have a right to be angry with my mother? Are you on her side now? Those thoughts came to her quickly, so naturally, that she almost voiced them but she held her tongue. “I guess we’ll see how the rest of the week goes.”
Elizabeth decided to pick up Eric from school after work rather than hang around the office when her classes let out. She wanted to avoid the troub
le at her parents’ house, and she didn’t want Eric exposed to any negative vibes. The rest of the week passed without incident. With the exception of a brief conversation with her mother Tuesday afternoon when she told her she’d be picking up Eric after school for the rest of the week, she had no contact with her parents. Her mother’s tone was clipped and hurried, as if she didn’t care she wouldn’t see Eric during the week. Elizabeth didn’t want to get into it again with her mother, so she kept the conversation short. Maybe Gregg is right, she thought. Maybe I should give her some time and space and she’ll come to her senses.
The next two weeks were spent with little communication between Elizabeth and her parents. After work she picked Eric up from school and, if she didn’t take him along on shopping errands, they went straight home. Elizabeth would prepare supper while Eric played outside with his friends, and after supper Elizabeth and Gregg spent time together in the living room. Elizabeth wrote after nine p.m. for about an hour or so, and on weekends she put in two hours a day. Thank God she was starting a new novel; her publisher already had another novel in preparation for publication, and Elizabeth knew if sales from the last two books were good, they would want another. Getting her mind into a completely different world was also a great release; once she was in the world of her own creation it was like relaxing with a martini after work. The social interaction she engaged in with her fellow writers via e-mail also helped. It reduced the stress from a hectic day.
The three of them took in dinner and a movie one late Saturday afternoon. Gregg remarked that fall was going away rapidly. “It already feels like winter,” he said. The high temperature that day was forty degrees, and it was supposed to dip down to the twenties in the evening. That morning the front lawn had a fine bed of frost.
Elizabeth got through both weeks by putting her family and her work first. The days flew by.
Her mother didn’t call once during the entire two weeks.
GARY SWANSON WAS getting off work at the lumberyard where he was employed as a foreman when he saw the skinny guy who had been at Cindy’s funeral and wake leaning against his car.
Gary squinted in the late afternoon sun as he approached the car. It was chilly and it had rained earlier that morning. He was in his early thirties, with a stocky build. He wore his hair in a buzz cut and sported a goatee. He was wearing a denim jacket over a red-checked flannel shirt, blue jeans, and brown work boots. As he approached the car, the skinny guy looked at him and stepped forward. “Gary?”
“That’s me,” Gary said. He approached his car warily. He was pretty certain the guy was an acquaintance of Cindy’s. He remembered seeing him at the funeral and the wake, which followed at Laura and Jerry Baker’s house. He hoped it wasn’t one of her drug dealers coming to collect money. “What can I do for you?”
“Was wondering if I could talk to you for a minute?”
“What about?”
The guy looked nervous; embarrassed even. Gary pegged him as a worn and weathered twenty-five, with collar-length brown hair, wearing faded denim jeans, a long sleeved t-shirt, and an insulated denim jacket and boots. A dirty baseball cap sat perched on his head. “I don’t think we had a chance to talk much at the funeral service.” The guy held out his hand. “My name’s Ray Clark. Cindy and I were friends.”
Gary shook Ray’s hand. Ray’s grip was firm, an honest handshake. Gary felt some of the wariness leave him. “Just friends?”
“Yeah, just friends. We used to hang out together at the Cocalico tavern. I let her move in with me for awhile after she broke up with Carl Eastman till she could get back on her feet.”
Another one of Cindy’s fuck buddies. What else was new? “She wasn’t living with you when it happened though,” Gary said. “What happened?”
“She met a guy at the Cocalico,” Ray said. “Scott Anderson. He’s in Lancaster County jail now on parole violation because of what happened.”
“Oh yeah? How so?”
“The gun she used was one he’d taken in a robbery a few years ago. Cops traced it. He was on parole for possession of heroin when all this happened and, well...it really fucked him up.”
“Guess it did. So what do you want to talk about, Ray?”
Ray looked around quickly. He looked embarrassed. Scared. “You heard the whole story of what happened that night, right?”
“Yeah, Ronnie told me most of it at Jerry and Laura’s,” Gary said. “Cops told me some the day after it happened, too. Why?”
“They told you Cindy broke in the house and that she was high on dope, right?”
“Right.” Gary fished for his pack of cigarettes in the front breast pocket of his flannel shirt. He extracted one, got it lit with his lighter. He regarded Ray calmly. “That’s what happened. Didn’t surprise me a bit. She was getting’ crazier and worse in her behavior the past few years. She tell you why I left her?”
Ray opened his mouth, and then shut it. He looked embarrassed. “Yeah, but...”
“But what? What did she tell you?”
“She told me she got fucked up one night and threw a telephone at you while you were arguing and that it hit your son instead,” Ray said. “She told me all about it, and she said she felt bad about it but—”
“Let me tell you something about Cindy,” Gary said, feeling the anger and resentment that had been building up in the past year since the breakup came to the surface. “I did everything I could to help her. We all did. Ronnie Baker didn’t even divorce her until she had been living with me for two full years. You know how that makes me feel sometimes, knowing I had hurt him and cheated on him by committing adultery with his wife? You know how that made me feel when I finally sobered up?”
“No,” Ray said, clearly at a loss for words now. Whatever he had wanted to talk about to Gary seemed forgotten now.
“It made me feel less than a man,” Gary said. He took a drag on his cigarette, regarding the younger man who was looking more nervous as the minutes ticked by. “Made me feel like a goddamn piece of shit for neglecting myself and my son, and I got two DUI’s and I did time for attempted murder ten years ago. I feel bad about that too, but I was too fucked up even after that to get help. To tell you the truth, after I did my time I got worse. Guess I felt guilty for almost killing James Short in that fight and I was on a mission to slowly kill myself. When I did get my shit together, it was my choice to finally get sober and Cindy didn’t want to get on the wagon with me. I didn’t push it. I asked her if she would stop drinking and partying for the sake of our son, but she said she didn’t have a problem. I used to say that, too, so I thought she’d eventually come to her senses.” Another drag on the cigarette. “Obviously she didn’t. Her addictions got worse. We started fighting about it all the time and the more sober I stayed, the more I started to fear for Jason. When she accidentally hit him with the phone that was the last straw. She knew goddamn well why I packed up and left, but all she could think about was herself. All she could do was beg me to come back, that she needed me and Jason back in the house, but when I told her Jason and I would come back only on the condition that she stop drinking and get some help, she refused. I washed my hands of her then. I filed for full custody of Jason because I didn’t trust her for shit to be with him by herself, especially when she started hanging out at the Cocalico Tavern more. Bunch of low-life fuckheads is all that hang around there.”
There was no flinch or flicker of embarrassment on Ray’s face at that. Gary smoked calmly, feeling the tension ease as he blew steam. “When I met Ronnie Baker at the funeral, I asked him to forgive me. I never knew him that well before all this happened. Always thought he was a dumb shit for letting Cindy go the way he did, but—”
“So you knew Ronnie before all this happened?”
“A little.” Gary took another drag. The few remaining members of his crew were leaving the warehouse, and amid the sound of gravel crunching beneath booted feet was the sound of cars and pickup trucks starting and driving through the rough driveway. �
��I knew who he was, had a nodding acquaintance with him because he used to drop by our place with Mary, but that was it.”
“How did Ronnie look to you at the funeral?”
“Like shit.”
“Don’t you think that’s unusual?”
Gary was about to ask what Ray was trying to get at but then it dawned on him. The last time he had seen Ronnie before the funeral was when? Last Spring? He’d looked fine then. Normal. But at the funeral he’d been...well, almost sickly.
He remembered vaguely thinking Ronnie had lost a lot of weight in the four or five months he’d seen him when they shook hands and talked quietly at the Baker house. Gary had still been stunned by all that had happened, and he’d been tired and buzzing from too much caffeine. Ronnie had looked like he’d lost a lot of weight, and his face had looked very thin and haggard. There had been dark circles under his eyes and his skin had looked yellow. Gary hadn’t thought much of it because he had probably been going through the same range of emotions—rage, sorrow, worry for his kid, wondering if he could have done something to prevent this.
“No,” Gary said, feeling a little unsure of his answer. “I don’t think it’s unusual, considering all that he’s gone through. I probably looked like shit to him, too.”
“Did Cindy ever tell you about the harassing phone calls she got from Ronnie and Diana’s house?”
This was something new. He’d never heard this. Cindy hadn’t talked to him much in the four months leading to her death, even though he still tried to keep the communications open. When he did talk to her, all he could ask her about was the people she was with and if she was working. That usually pissed her off. “No, she didn’t. What’s this about?”
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