Finally I went in and asked Jennifer why it was that she could calm Brooke whereas I couldn’t. I’m doing everything you do, I told her.
That’s the problem, she said. Stop trying to be me and just be the real you.
For a few minutes I stood there wondering what that was supposed to mean. Then I thought about other times I’d taken care of Brooke and remembered what it was that made her happy. I zipped her into a snowsuit, buckled her into her car seat and we went for a nice long ride. And just like always, she was sound asleep in less than fifteen minutes.
Remembering that made me realize I’ve been trying to do everything the way Jennifer did but all I’ve done is made a mess of it, which ultimately only makes Brooke miss her mama more. What I need to do is come up with some new thoughts, different ways to do things so Brooke and I can become closer. I’m not a good mother and I probably never will be, but I can be a really good father and perhaps for now that’s enough.
Thirty-Six
Years Ago
In West Virginia
Sally Hawkins was not only a hopeless romantic; she was also as gullible as they come. When Billy Crowder stuck his hand up her skirt saying how he was crazy in love with her and had to have her, she believed him. There in the back seat of a Pontiac that smelled of whiskey and stale smoke, she could almost see a little house with a railed fence and him coming home to her every night.
Of course such a dream didn’t last; before the week was out he was walking arm in arm with Jean Marie Mosley and saying he was going to marry her.
Sally was devastated but not nearly as devastated as she was a few months later when her belly began to swell. Her mama and daddy were church-going people who had zero tolerance for harlots, so she knew she had to do something and do it quick.
In her fourth month she went into downtown Charleston and got a job waiting tables at a south side gin mill. That’s where she met Otto Coggan. He was sitting at a table alone, drinking boilermakers. When she set the foamy mug and a shot of whiskey in front of him, he looked her up and down as if she was standing there naked.
“What time you get done here?” he asked.
Sally put on her sexiest smile and answered, “Midnight.”
“I can wait,” he said and downed the whiskey.
That night Sally gave him the best sex she knew how to give and promised there was more where that came from. Three days later they were married, and she returned home claiming he was the daddy of her baby.
Otto had a stomach way bigger than hers ever would be and a bushy beard with crumbs of food stuck to it, but he was the best she could find on such short notice. It’s possible that she’d have kept looking if she’d seen his meanness in those early days, but she didn’t. All she saw was an ugly man looking for a pretty girl and a good time. She was willing to make the trade to avoid the wrath of a daddy who would have beat her black and blue for shaming the family.
Five months later the twins were born, and both of those boys had Billy Crowder’s pale gray eyes and coppery red hair. Otto was dark complexioned with coal black hair and eyes close to the same color. With Sally’s hair and eyes being the color of dirt, there was no way of explaining the boys’ appearance. In the end poor Sally was not only shamed, but she was also stuck with a husband who was bad natured on a good day and flat out abusive most of the time.
It was no wonder the boys grew up as they did. They had Billy Crowder’s genes and Otto’s penchant for drinking and violence.
When they were ten years old both of them quit going to school, and the teacher, Missus Boyle, didn’t bother reporting it. Actually she was glad to have it be the last of them. They were a disturbance to the class, and there was no way of disciplining either one of those boys.
She’d tried once with Eddie. The following morning she found her cat lying on the doorstep, dead as a doornail with a rope tied around its fragile little neck.
Before their fourteenth birthday, both boys walked off the mountain and were never again heard from. There were rumors that they’d been seen in Charleston, then Huntington, and even as far away as Portsmouth, but nothing was ever known for sure.
~ ~ ~
For a good number of years the Coggan boys stuck together. They got by with petty thievery. A wallet here and there, a few snatch-and-runs, an occasional check lifted from a mailbox; nothing big enough to set the cops in search of them. They bounced around from place to place, never staying in one town long enough to become known or get caught.
They’d just turned eighteen when they left West Virginia and traveled south into Kentucky. There they met up with Willie Brice, a moonshiner who needed a distribution arm. Tom would have been content to stay there forever, running deliveries at night and sleeping it off during the day, but Eddie pushed Brice to the wall and demanded a cut of the action. That’s when the whole deal went sour, and they both hightailed it south to Tennessee.
Tennessee is where Eddie met Cassidy.
Everything changed with Cassidy. She wanted more than getting by.
“You’re capable of bigger things,” she told Eddie, and being a bit like his mama he was gullible enough to believe her.
“I already checked out the big liquor store off the highway,” Cassidy said. “After nine o’clock there’s only one night clerk. You guys can take him, easy. I’ll wait outside with the car running.”
“I don’t like it,” Tom said. “What if they’ve got one of those silent alarms?”
Short on patience, Cassidy gave a snort of annoyance.
“So what if they do?” she said. “You’ll be in and out before the cops have time to get there.”
When Tom continued to argue against the plan, she rolled her eyes and called him a chicken shit.
That’s when the rift between the boys started. Tom didn’t like Cassidy, and the feeling was more than mutual. A dozen or more times she whispered in Eddie’s ear that they ought to ditch Tom and move on, just the two of them.
In spite of the constant bickering, the three of them stayed together for another two years. They were passing through Alabama when the split finally happened.
It was two weeks before their thirtieth birthday on a day when it seemed the rain would never let up. Since the first of the month they’d been staying in a motel a few miles north of Route 20, and Cassidy was as agitated as a soaking wet cat. She pulled the rubbery curtain back and squinted out the window, watching rainwater drip from the eaves.
“This place gives me the willies,” she said. “We oughtta go back to Tennessee.”
“Fine by me,” Eddie said.
Tom was staunchly against such a move. The cashier in that last convenience store had gotten a good look at Eddie, and with that red hair he’d be easy enough to pick out of a lineup.
“It’s too soon,” he said.
One word led to another, and before long the argument got out of control. Tom said nobody but an idiot would go back to where the police were sure to be looking for him, and Eddie then accused Tom of calling him an idiot. Once Cassidy had them going at each other, she simply stood by with a smirk on her face.
After a while the argument was no longer about going or staying; it was about who was in charge. Eddie grabbed Tom by the front of his shirt and screamed, “I say we go, and if you don’t like it then get the hell out!”
Tom did. He counted out one third of the money they had left and stuck it in in his pocket. Then he walked out into the rain and didn’t bother looking back.
Tom didn’t hear from them for nearly a year, and when he finally did get a call on his cell phone it was Cassidy telling him that Eddie was in the West Tennessee State Penitentiary.
“He got three years,” she said unapologetically. “I ain’t big on working alone, so I was thinking if maybe you changed your mind about coming to Tennessee we could hook up.”
“Ain’t you supposed to be waiting for Eddie?” he asked.
“For three whole years?” she replied.
For a moment
Tom sat there waiting for such a thought to fade away or for her to perhaps offer more of an explanation. When neither one happened he pushed the button and disconnected the call.
“Piece of trash,” he muttered.
That night he wrote a letter to Eddie saying he was still in Alabama and had settled in Clarksburg.
“When you get out, come look me up,” he wrote. He gave Eddie the address of his apartment building. Then at the bottom of the letter he added a P.S., saying that if Cassidy was with him not to bother coming.
That was the last communication the Coggan twins had, because Albert Dunninger shot Tom to death five months before Eddie was released.
The Text Thing
Two days after the meeting with Miss Abrams, Drew came up with a plan that he hoped would help him connect to Brooke. When he picked her up at school that afternoon there was a gift-wrapped package lying on the back seat of the car.
“What’s this?” Brooke asked.
He turned, gave her a quick smile then pulled out of the pick-up line.
“It’s a special present for you,” he said.
“It’s not my birthday, you know.”
Drew glanced in the rear view mirror and saw her already starting to open the package.
“I know it’s not,” he said. “But I thought you deserved a present anyway.”
When she lifted the lid from the box she scrunched her nose and frowned. “This isn’t a present, it’s your phone.”
“Not my phone,” Drew corrected. “Your phone.”
The corners of her mouth curled slightly. “Mine?”
“Yep.” He glanced into the rear view mirror again and gave her a grin. “I’ve already programmed it with my number, Grandma and Grandpa Green’s number, and Grandpa Bishop’s number. Now you can talk to the whole family anytime you want, and you’ll never have to worry about being alone again.”
“But Mama said I couldn’t have a phone until I was twelve.”
“Under the circumstances, I think she would want you to have it now.”
Her smile broadened. “Really? And it’s for keeps?”
“Absolutely.”
He heard the seat belt snap open then felt the thump of her arm as she reached across the back of the seat to hug him.
“Hey, back in your seat,” he said, laughing affectionately.
That afternoon they sat side by side at the dining room table. He taught her how to answer calls, make calls and text.
“Use your thumbs,” he said and placed the phone in her hands.
For the first time in months the side-slanted looks of anger were gone. He’d found something that didn’t remind her of Jennifer. As he demonstrated the use of voice commands, she scooted her chair closer and asked questions. When he’d finished going through the how-to’s he handed her the phone.
“Go ahead and try it,” he said. “Send me a message.”
With a look of determination, she tapped out her first message and hit Send. Seconds later his phone buzzed, and he tapped on the Message icon. Her message read, “I love you, Daddy.” He smiled and hit Reply.
Her phone buzzed, and she grinned ear to ear. “I got a message.”
She tapped the Message button and read his response. “I love you more.”
Not wanting to let go of this moment, he told her the phone could also be used for a number of fun things then suggested they play a game. He set up an e-mail account for her then signed them up to play Words with Friends.
“It’s like you and me playing Scrabble,” he said. “Only you’re on your phone and I’m on mine.”
Drew started the game by feeding her spots where she could add a single letter and form some easy words to get started. “Do” became “dog,” “or” became “ore” and “at” became “cat.”
After they’d begun whizzing along she took the “m” in his word “team” and created the word “mother.” The H landed on a triple letter spot and the R on double word. She scored thirty-seven points and laughed with delight.
“Ouch!” Drew said. “You’re killing me!”
Again she laughed.
They continued playing until it was well after suppertime; then he suggested they go out for hamburgers.
“Sort of like a date,” he said.
She grinned and gave an enthusiastic nod. “Okay, but let’s go to Papa’s Pizza! It’s really, really good, and they give kids free ice cream.”
Drew gave a half-hearted smile.
“Sure,” he said, ruefully remembering the hundreds of times he and Jennifer had done the same thing, especially in the early years before he began to do so much traveling.
Brook pulled on her sweater then asked, “Can I bring my phone?”
“It’s yours. You can bring it wherever you want. The only rule is you can’t turn it on while you’re in school.”
“Can bring it to school if I leave it off during class?”
“Absolutely,” he answered. “I want you to know you always have your family right there with you all the time.”
Already thinking of how Ava would be green with envy, Brooke hiked her shoulders up around her ears and grinned.
Papa’s Pizza was at the other end of Commerce Street, a half block down from Dunninger’s Drugstore. The drugstore had remained closed ever since the shooting, and according to the Clarksburg Times there was no knowing when it would reopen. Albert Dunninger was discovered dead in his own home a week after the incident. A heart attack, the newspaper said, and since there was no next of kin his entire estate including the drugstore had been turned over to an attorney.
This was the first time Drew had been downtown since the day it happened. For nearly three months he’d avoided passing by the store or even driving along Commerce Street. Now here he was, less than a block from where Jennifer had been killed. The weight of that memory settled in his chest as he parked the car on the side street next to Papa’s Pizza.
Torn between the heartache of the memory and his desire to give Brooke some much-deserved happiness, he tried to remain upbeat but when they rounded the corner to Papa’s entrance the glow of the green neon light smacked him in the eye. Although the drugstore was a distance away, Drew could see it was now open with the sign burning as brightly as ever.
It felt as if he had been punched in the chest. How could the damn drugstore be open again? Their life had been torn apart, and yet the drugstore was moving ahead as if nothing had ever happened.
Where in God’s name is the fairness in this?
As they entered Papa’s he saw a crowd of teenagers laughing in the back of the room. They had several tables pushed together just as he and Jennifer had done with their friends. He thought back on the time they’d come here with Molly and George Paley and that other couple whose names he could never remember.
The Paleys now lived crosstown. They’d come to the funeral, and Molly had stopped by once the week following. After that she’d called a few times and George had sent a text or two, but now it was well over two months since he’d heard from either of them.
Was that the way it was supposed to happen? Had he somehow gone from being part of a group of friends to being an outsider? Someone to be excluded from phone calls or gatherings? Now that he was a single parent, the Paleys apparently felt they no longer had anything in common with him. Through no fault of his own he’d become a reminder of what, God forbid, could happen to them.
The Paleys weren’t the only ones. There were other friends he hadn’t heard from, friends who no longer called. It was obvious; nobody wanted to face the reminder of such a tragedy so they stayed away.
Seeing the look of sorrow settle on his face, Brooke took hold of his hand and tugged him from his reverie.
“Daddy, are you sad because we came here?”
“No, sweetheart,” he answered and forced a smile.
Luckily Papa’s was a place where it was difficult to hold on to sorrow. It was a brightly-lit mix of chrome counters, tables with checkered tops and c
herry red plastic booths. He and Brooke slid into a booth and sat across from one another.
Drew absently picked up the menu and looked at it, but the Dunninger’s sign flickered back and forth in his mind.
It had to happen. Sooner or later the drugstore would reopen, or something else would take its place.
He stared at the menu for a moment then handed it to Brooke. “What would you like?”
“Daddy! You said we were going to get a pizza, don’t you remember?”
Her voice was so like Jennifer’s, a playful scolding. Even though they were sitting across from one another he’d lost himself to other thoughts, just as he’d so often done with Jennifer. Back then it had been thoughts of business; now it was simply a sorrow that refused to let go.
He tried to turn it off as a joke. “Pizza? I thought you wanted a hamburger.”
She giggled. “You’re not tricking me. You’re the one who wanted a hamburger.”
They both laughed. A few seconds later she pulled the phone from her pocket, pecked out another message and hit Send.
“Pizza w/ ice cream 4 dessert,” it read.
He smiled at her use of the abbreviated words he’d taught her then tapped out an answer. Their exchange went back and forth several times. When the pizza was delivered to their table, she typed out one last message then stuck the phone back in her pocket.
“Daddy dates r fun!”
Later that evening after he listened to prayers and tucked Brooke into bed, Drew wandered aimlessly through the house.
Every spot held a memory of Jennifer. In the kitchen he could see her cooking dinner with that funny-looking apron tied around her waist, and in the living room he pictured her curled up on the sofa with her nose in a book. He heard the sound of her laughter and caught the fragrance of the jasmine shower gel she used. No matter where he went her presence was close by, the way it would be if she was off in another room waiting for him to cross the threshold.
Silver Threads Page 4