The Beloved

by Gonzalez, J. F.

  Ray told Gary about the harassing phone calls from Ronnie’s new girlfriend. He detailed the increasing frequency of the calls, Cindy’s initial reactions to them, and the police investigations into them. “Most of them were pretty bitchy,” Ray said. “You know, chicks cat fighting and shit. It was almost like Diana was baiting her, you know?”

  Gary nodded. He knew very well what Ray was talking about. The more Cindy drank, the easier it had been to draw her into fights.

  “The cops always dismissed our complaints, though,” Ray said. He had lit his own cigarette and was smoking it as Gary finished his. “They kept saying that we couldn’t prove the allegations, that they’d have to go to the phone company and it was a big process. They said it was better if we just let it drop and ignore the calls if they kept coming. Besides, there wasn’t much they could do on harassing phone calls.”

  Gary nodded. He had a sick feeling that there was more to this story than harassing phone calls.

  “They stopped for awhile,” Ray said. “There was some shit going on with Cindy and...well...I asked her to move out. She kept getting into shit, you know what I mean?”

  Gary nodded and lit another cigarette. “That’s been the cycle of her life the past three years.”

  “Right before she moved out she claimed Diana called again. I wasn’t there when she called, but I was just getting home when Cindy started heading out. She had found the gun I keep in my closet and was going over to kill Diana.”

  This interested Gary. While Cindy became violent at times when she drank, he’d never known her to be so violently angry with somebody to the point of deliberately wanting to kill them.

  Ray brought the narrative to a close, and at the mention of the threats Diana made to Ronnie’s daughter, Gary flinched. “You serious?”

  “Damn right, I’m serious.”

  “Cops know about it?”

  “The cops don’t give a shit. Cindy told them about it twice and they dismissed it, just like all the other times.”

  Gary finished his cigarette and threw the butt on the ground. “Shit.” He had a sick feeling in his stomach. Ray looked like he had seen a ghost. The younger man was pale, his eyes wide with fright. “You were never around when those particular calls were made?”

  “No.” Ray looked embarrassed, as if he resented not being around to witness the threats against Mary. “Of all the calls Diana made, the ones she made where she threatened Mary were the ones that really drove Cindy wild.” He paused, licked his lips. “Tell you the truth, I’d’ve been ready to kill the bitch myself.”

  Gary nodded, stuffed his hands in his denim jacket pockets. Cindy wouldn’t have made up a story like that. Much as she had been a fuck-up, she would never have made a disparaging remark against either of her two children, even in jest. She had been fiercely protective of Jason and Mary; he could believe that threats leveled against Mary would have driven Cindy to violence. “So you think she went over to the Baker house to kill Diana because of these threats. Is that it?”

  Ray nodded. “Yeah.”

  “Fuck.” Gary took out another cigarette, lit it, smoked.

  “Remember when I said the cops didn’t pay attention?” Ray asked. Gary nodded, looking out at the hill towards Ephrata. “Well, the first few times this happened, the cops kept threatening they’d go to the phone company and pull the phone records, see who was telling the truth. Back in October they finally did. Guess what they found?”

  “Diana never made the calls,” Gary said, calmly smoking.

  “Yeah.”

  The two men looked at each other and Gary felt lightheaded. He felt his skin tingle. “They pulled records on the first few incidents she reported?”

  “No. But they told us if she kept calling they would pull the records, and if they showed she made those calls, they would have her arrested.”

  “But obviously Cindy did call the police again,” Gary said. “When Diana threatened Mary, right?”

  “Right. And the cops didn’t do anything. They just threatened to take her to jail.”

  Gary smoked his cigarette. He felt scared and nervous and for the first time in a long time he craved a drink.

  “I’m sorry to have to...you know...spill all this shit on you,” Ray said. “But I thought you should know.”

  “I’m glad you told me,” Gary said, turning to Ray.

  “What are you going to do?”

  Gary took a drag on his cigarette. “Fuck if I know.”

  THIRTEEN

  THANKSGIVING WAS GOING to be hell.

  Elizabeth had been dreading it ever since the fight with mom, and the closer the weekend came, the more she felt the need to try to mend the wounds that had been opened. She called one afternoon after school, and while her mother sounded happy to hear from her and seemed like her old self, Elizabeth caught the vague sense that she was not sincere in her efforts at being nice and talkative. She’d mentioned this to Gregg that evening in bed. “She’s probably still a little mad but give her time,” he said. “She’ll get over it.”

  The following day Elizabeth swallowed her pride and called her mother from school. Would she and Dad like to do something for dinner that evening? Mom said she was making beef and noodles and invited them over. She sounded a lot better, too, like her old self. Elizabeth felt better at the sound of her mother’s voice. “Eric and I will be over around three.”

  That afternoon was nice, but it was still awkward. Elizabeth expected Mom to have the kids, and she had Lily, but Mary wasn’t there. “Mary is involved in an after school project,” Mom said when Elizabeth asked her about it. They sat at the kitchen table with the Lancaster News and this week’s People magazine spread out before them, the beef simmering in a pot on the stove. Eric and Lily were in the living room playing some electronic game that whirred and buzzed. “Diana says she’s really into it. It’s the school play.”

  “Really?” It reassured her to hear Mary was participating in after school activities. At least it got her out of the house and away from Diana.

  Dinner would have been uneventful had it not been for the subtle change in behavior Elizabeth noticed in her mother. During dinner, Lily didn’t say a word and picked listlessly at her food. Elizabeth peppered her mother with gossip. Her father listened, grunted and nodded, made a comment every now and then about what was going in the news while he ate. Eric ate heartily, tried to participate in conversation with his mother and grandmother, and was rebuffed twice by Laura. She wasn’t overtly rude, certainly not enough to attract attention if a casual observer had been watching them, but it was enough to register with Elizabeth. Eric noticed, too, and he ate the rest of his meal in silence. Elizabeth tried to pretend she hadn’t noticed, and she continued talking, paying attention to her mother. She noticed mom was more cold and harsh with Eric than usual.

  By contrast, she treated Lily the exact opposite. She not only showered the little girl with praise for “eating real good”, she used the tone of voice she normally reserved for Mary and Eric. She spoke to Lily as if she were her own daughter or grandchild.

  Elizabeth tried not to let this bother her, but it did. On one hand, it was part of her mother’s nature to make friends feel like they were family. For mom to treat Diana’s children well was something that had come naturally. It was part of Elizabeth’s personality as well; she’d gone out of her way to be nice to Diana and her kids, to be friendly and make them feel welcome. And while Diana had not been outright rude, she’d not been very friendly either. Her kids had been worse. Mom had noticed this as well, had talked about it with Elizabeth numerous times, had confided to Elizabeth that she didn’t think much of Diana and she wondered what Ronnie saw in her, but ever since Cindy’s funeral she’d done a quick about-face.

  So much that Elizabeth got the faint underlying feeling that her mother preferred Diana’s company over hers.

  She brought this up to Gregg that evening. Gregg listened as Elizabeth related her and Eric’s evening at her mother’s
, and then he said, “You’re mom is really stuck between a rock and a hard place, honey. You know how she is. She wants everybody to get along. She doesn’t like confrontation. She’s trying to make the best out of a situation that she doesn’t agree with. Think of it this way; picture us twenty years from now when Eric brings home a girlfriend that you might not like.”

  “Gregg!” Elizabeth scoffed, resenting the implication but quickly understanding where he was getting at. “This is different!”

  “How different? We don’t like Ronnie’s girlfriend. Your parents don’t like her, but obviously Ronnie thinks the world of her and has moved in with her. Ronnie’s your mother’s son, her youngest child. She loves him and wants him to be happy. So she swallows her pride and smiles and makes nice to Diana for the sake of her son. She does that because she loves him. She might not like his choice of women, but he is an adult and she has to accept that. She’d be doing herself and your family a bigger disservice if she were to express her dislike of Diana.”

  Elizabeth picked up the paperback she was reading and got into bed. “I hate it when you sound reasonable.”

  She didn’t pick Eric up from school that week. Things went back to normal, to the way they were before where Eric went to his grandmother’s immediately after school and Elizabeth picked him up on her way home. Lily was always at the house, but Mary was never around. Her mother seemed fine, her old self, and everything appeared normal with the exception of Mary’s absence.

  Elizabeth asked Eric about this the Tuesday before Thanksgiving as they drove home.

  “When was the last time you saw Mary?” Elizabeth asked casually.

  There was a long silence. She caught a glimpse of Eric frowning slightly out of the corner of her eye. “Maybe...since after Aunt Cindy’s funeral.”

  Over two weeks. “She’s never in the car with Diana when she drops Lily off?” Elizabeth tried to keep her voice casual.

  “Nope.”

  “Diana drops Lily off everyday?”

  Eric nodded. “Sometimes Lily’s already there when I get there.”

  “What do they do? Does Lily play with you?”

  “Sometimes.”

  Elizabeth sensed the hesitation in his voice. “Do you not like playing with her?”

  “Not really,” Eric admitted, looking sheepish.

  “What does grandma do? I’m sure she finds time for Lily.”

  “They usually take naps together,” Eric said.

  Elizabeth felt her flesh crawl at the thought as Mary’s story came to mind. She thought of what Mary saw in her father’s bedroom as he lay sleeping, that shapeless mass of flesh attached to his slumbering form like a giant leech. Elizabeth tried to control the tremble in her voice. “How often does this happen?”

  “Every day.”

  “What do you do? Where are you when this happens?”

  “A lot of times I’m outside with the Becker twins when grandma tells me she’s going to lie down with Lily for a nap.”

  Elizabeth nodded, her imagination running. Why is this bothering me so much? Why am I letting this get to me when it isn’t any of my business? “Does Diana come in the house?”

  “Sometimes,” Eric said. “She never says anything to me. She just comes in and drops Lily off, she and grandma talk for a little bit, then she leaves.”

  “Where does she go?”

  Eric shrugged. “Grandma always says she goes shopping or runs errands or has stuff to do at the house.”

  For a stay-at-home mom with loads of free time courtesy of my stupid brother, she sure dumps her kids off with mom every chance she gets, doesn’t she? Elizabeth thought about the situation, tried to see it for what it seemed on the surface; a woman with no parenting skills, with no real desire to be a mother, who seizes the opportunity when a man comes along who makes good money. She ensnares him, moves in with him, and once she’s got him wined and dined she convinces him she doesn’t have to work, she’ll stay home and keep house and take care of the kids. He believes her, and because he is so smitten by her, because he’s so whipped, he works double-shifts to pay for everything he’s bought her—new car, diamond rings and bracelets, the construction of a new house, food and clothing for her kids—and he doesn’t see what’s going on. All he sees is a woman who showers him with affection. And he believes everything she tells him. Why wouldn’t he? As long as his kid was getting fed and had clothes on her back, he was fine. He had his job, he had his house, now he had his idea of the perfect family. And meanwhile Diana was right where she wanted to be. Living rent free, not taking care of the kids, and free to come and go when she pleased.

  The thought that Diana had shacked up with her brother in order to take advantage of him occurred to her a month ago, but she’d dismissed it, part of her still wanting to give the woman the benefit of the doubt. The more Elizabeth was hearing about Diana from her mother and Eric, the more she was beginning to believe that was the case. She was now firmly of the opinion that Diana didn’t care about Ronnie and Mary, or even her own kids. She just wanted somebody to pay her bills, feed and clothe her kids and, thanks to mom, she got free babysitting as well. Why keep the kids at the house when mom would watch them all day for free with no complaints?

  And then there was the affect this was having on Mary. The psychological stress was putting Mary over the edge. Following Cindy’s death, the subject of what Mary was alleged to have seen in the master bedroom had been brushed under the table. Elizabeth had tried to bring it up but Laura always dismissed it, attributing it to a case of Mary’s overactive imagination. Elizabeth wanted to believe this, and logically she did believe it. But part of her also wondered if there was something more to the story, and she kept her ears open for the slightest chance of anything weird that was even remotely related. She also paid close attention to reports from Laura regarding Mary.

  When she asked her mother how Ronnie was, the response was always the same. “Oh, he’s fine!”

  Elizabeth learned for herself the day before Thanksgiving.

  ELIZABETH WAS SITTING at her desk in Room 145 while her fourth period class—American Literature—was silently absorbed in the assignment she had handed them yesterday: reading Chapters Twelve through Fifteen of Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter. She was giving them until Monday to read the chapters and compose a critical analysis of what they read. They were being tested on the novel in two weeks, and they were already ahead of schedule when it came to their discussions of the book.

  When the lunch bell rang her students closed their books, put papers into notebooks, and filed out of the room. Elizabeth called out, “Happy Thanksgiving, class!”

  A couple of her students smiled and wished her Happy Thanksgiving. Elizabeth smiled and waited for her students to empty out of the room. She had forgotten to pack her lunch this morning; normally she ate lunch in her room while reading a book, but today that was out of the question. She was starving, so she gathered her purse up and was just about to head outside when her cell phone rang.

  She scooped it out of her purse and her eyes lit up when she saw Ronnie’s name in the LED screen. She hit the green Receive button. “Hello?”

  “Elizabeth.” Her brother’s voice sounded tinny, as if he were far away. “It’s Ronnie.”

  “Hey, what’s up?” Elizabeth felt suddenly excited to be talking to her brother.

  “I’m on my way to work.” Ronnie sounded good; he sounded normal, and Elizabeth wondered if everything was okay now. “I was wondering if you had time for lunch today so we could talk?”

  “You caught me just in time,” Elizabeth said as she headed out of her room. She closed and locked the door behind her and headed to the teacher’s parking lot. “I was just on my way to lunch.”

  “I’m heading toward the school now,” Ronnie said. “I’m on Mannheim Pike.”

  “There’s a McDonald’s there,” Elizabeth said. “Is that okay?”

  “That sounds good. See you there.”

  As Elizabeth dro
ve to the McDonald’s three blocks from the school, her mind raced. It had been over three weeks since she’d seen Ronnie, and she was sure Diana had told him about the fights they’d had regarding letting Lily tag along with Mary when Elizabeth invited her niece over a few weekends ago. She’d expected Ronnie to be angry with her about that, but he hadn’t sounded the least bit. Instead he had that tone of voice that seemed like he was on the verge of unloading all of his guilt on her. She wondered briefly if he had been thinking about her invitation to call her. She wondered if he had been mulling this over and finally decided to take her up on it, but had to do it outside the house lest Diana overhear their conversation. Catching up with her on his way to work would provide the perfect opportunity.

  She saw Ronnie pull in to the McDonald’s parking lot ahead of her and made a left hand turn, following him in. She raised her hand, hoping he’d see her in his rearview mirror and he did. He pulled in to the next available parking slot and she pulled into one two cars down from him. She turned the engine off and got out. Ronnie had already gotten out of his pickup truck and was standing at the rear of her car. He looked the same way he did when he’d finally gotten off of coke; sheepish, a little guilty, and a what-the-fuck-was-I-doing look.

  “Hey!” Elizabeth said, forcing a smile. “How you doing?”

  Ronnie glanced at her quickly and she could tell there was something wrong. He was still thin and sickly looking, even more so then when she last saw him. He was wearing his blue denim jacket and a pair of faded blue jeans and a baseball cap. His long hair blew in the chilly wind, and his hands were thrust deep into his jacket pockets. “Shit, I must be crazy to have come here,” he said.

  “Ronnie, what’s the matter? You look sick. Do you feel okay? I told you at the wake that if you ever wanted to talk, I’m here. I want to help you.”

  “I know,” Ronnie said. He looked at her again and there was that look of shame again, as if he were afraid to talk to her for fear she would chastise him for something he had done. In a way they had been through this before when Ronnie had gotten off coke. Elizabeth had been the first person he had come to talk to, and he’d been nervous then. He looked nervous now.