Liberating Paris

by Linda Bloodworth Thomason

  Wood was in the street now, running past the Grecian House of Beauty, Blackburn’s Shoes, and Arkansas Tire and Supply. Someone behind him was honking. When he turned around, he saw his grandparents in their old Buick. There was a JUST MARRIED sign on the bumper and his Grandfather McIlmore seemed to be in a hurry. He wagged his finger at Wood, and Wood didn’t know if it was because he was standing in the street or that he had an affair, but you could tell there was some love in it. Belle reached both her arms out toward Wood, but his grandpa sped up, leaving her to only blow him a kiss. Wood returned it and moved on toward Garfinkel’s, where a crowd had gathered around a window as one of the well-dressed mannequins seemed to have come to life. She was shy and luminous and looked to be about sixteen, as she twirled in her shimmering blue skirt. When he got close, he could see that it was who he thought it was. She cocked her head as she turned and looked straight at Wood and told him with eyes that matched her skirt that she loved him. Then the crowd looked at him, too, as though they were expecting him to do something about it. But all he did was take off running, past Lena Farnham Stokes’s and Falkoff’s, toward some music that was playing up the street.

  As he got near, he could see another crowd of spectators who were riveted by something going on at the center of them. Wood recognized many of his friends’ parents and people from Main Street he hadn’t seen in years. They were young again, the way he remembered them, including the Brundidges, who didn’t have cancer yet and looked wonderful. Then Mr. Brundidge and some of the dads gave him the thumbs-up, the way they probably had to Dr. Mac on the day Wood was born and the way they had throughout Wood’s entire life, even for something as small as a touchdown or as easy as fathering a baby or delivering one of theirs. And the mothers were smiling at him in the same way they always had, as though he were their son, too.

  Wood began walking toward them, wanting to embrace the mothers of his friends and shake their fathers’ hands and they seemed to want to speak to him, but one by one they disappeared, leaving only the couple who was dancing in the middle. Dr. Mac was in his military uniform and Slim had on big earrings with her hair swept up in a roll—just the way Wood had seen them in pictures. They looked good together, as his father spun his mother around, holding one finger perfectly still in the air, while he continued his deft moves. Wood always thought most people looked silly doing the jitterbug, but his dad looked like a man who knows exactly what he is doing. Like Gene Kelly. Dr. Mac saw Wood and motioned to Slim to look who was here! Now they were both smiling and waving to their son. And it seemed to Wood that his dad had something he wanted to say, too. But as the music got faster and faster his parents and their dancing were slowing down and starting to go away. Someone was honking again. He was getting angry at his grandfather when he turned around and saw that it was Brundidge and Charlotte—saw them so clearly that it startled him. Brundidge rolled down his van window and said, “What the hell are you doing in the middle of the street?”

  Wood wanted to grab him and say, “I just saw your parents and they look great!” But instead, he shook his head, collecting himself. “Nothing. I was going to meet my mother at the cemetery.”

  “Get the hell in the van.”

  Wood was too tired to argue. He got in, smiling at Charlotte, who didn’t even bother anymore to regard him curiously. Brundidge then sped off before Wood could get the sliding door closed.

  Brundidge grumbled, “It’s not enough we just got out of jail! You gotta go wandering up the middle of the goddamn street!”

  There was still a chill in the air as morning dew lingered on the grass and the headstones at Whispering Pines. Wood had promised last week to meet Slim here, knowing that the two of them had agreed to visit Dr. Mac on special days and Elizabeth’s wedding was such an occasion. Some of the flat grave markers were over a hundred and fifty years old, and Wood noticed that the Lanier family patriarch, Lucius, no longer had a birth date that was legible. A large standing angel with “Rhinehart” scripted under it seemed to stare at him disapprovingly. Wood moved away. He was glad Jeter had been cremated. He was thinking how it wouldn’t be right for him to end up in the same cemetery with the man who killed him. And that there should be a cemetery for SOBs. Then he was wondering if he himself might be buried there.

  It startled him a little when Slim pulled up in her station wagon looking considerably older than when she had been dancing on Main Street. Wood crossed and opened her car door and took out the robust blue hydrangea that she had brought for his father. He sensed immediately by her manner that she was completely aware of his drunken lawless activities. For one thing, his mother was a good friend of Serious West and Serious knew everything that went on at the police station. He would not have called Slim to gossip, but rather to give her a heads-up and to say that he would be there if she needed him. Slim coolly surveyed Wood and then said with sincerity, “Well, how was your brief incarceration? Did it provide you with some quiet time to think?”

  He smiled a little. “You know, it did.” They were walking toward Dr. Mac’s grave now. She took his arm.

  “Good. You needed that, Woodrow. It seems you haven’t been thinking as well lately as I know you are capable of.”

  Wood sighed. “It’s true.” She had always been this way, somehow able to communicate disappointment and confidence in her son, all at the same time. Understating, but never underestimating. Even when he got injured playing football and people sitting in the bleachers would encourage Dr. Mac to go to him, Slim would always stop her husband, saying, “Don’t worry. He’ll get up.” And Wood always did.

  Suddenly, they stopped, noticing that some graffiti had been spray-painted on Dr. Mac’s grave marker, as well as those of Wood’s grandparents and several others in the area. Slim caught her breath and Wood cussed under his. They stared at it for a long time. It didn’t appear to be personal, just some nicknames and numerals, spray-painted by reckless kids. Wood fell to his knees and, using the sleeve of his jacket, tried to rub the paint off.

  Then he said, surprisingly anguished, “Who would do this to him? There’s no town here anymore. If there was, this wouldn’t happen.” He scrubbed the granite harder until his mother finally said, “Son, stop it!”

  Wood looked up at her, surprised by the harsh tone. Slim said, “Don’t you get it? That’s not the monument.” She stepped closer to him. “You’re the monument.” Her words cut him like a sharp, clear knife. He stood up and looked into her eyes. She nodded and smiled in a way that put him in mind of all the people he had just seen on Main Street. Could that have been what they, too, wanted to say? He pulled his mother close. They stayed that way for a long time, both knowing that something important had changed.

  Wood was standing in the doorway of Duff’s motel room. He was breathless, having run all the way from the cemetery. She was looking out on the little concrete balcony.

  “Kathleen—”

  “Please don’t say that you would take it all back.”

  He closed the door and told her with his eyes that he would.

  “My God, you can’t even let me have that?”

  He crossed and stood next to her. He stared at his shoes, moving them around a little. Then, finally, he spoke.

  “I could never leave my wife. And I’m pretty sure I already knew that.” There was a long silence before he added, “I don’t expect you to forgive me.”

  She sat for a while, then, “I lost my son. I’m gonna need a little more than an embarrassing cliché here.” He was quiet. She went on, “What I was thinking was, we now have nothing to lose. We could go on seeing each other and it would be so awful and so terrible of us that no one would ever suspect or know.”

  Now he was completely off-balance. “Well, see, here’s where they get you on that deal. We would know.”

  “I see. Now we have morals. And a conscience. I don’t know why, but I keep expecting something more original.”

  Wood stared at her for a long time. “Kathleen, I’m in love wit
h her.”

  She recoiled a little, as though he had struck her. In her list of potential reasons Wood might give for not seeing her anymore, this was the only one she hadn’t considered. They sat for a while, like two old friends who can immediately calculate the distance now between them.

  Seeing that Wood looked tired and hungover, she said, “Don’t look so sad. At least you made an old, beat-up woman feel pretty again. That’s not a little thing, you know”—she cleared her throat—“to remind someone of who they used to be. But,” she added softly, “not worth a son.”

  His eyes were red and swollen and full of regret. “I guess I could tell you some things, but nothing that would mean much now.”

  “No.”

  “All right, then. I won’t.”

  “You know them, anyway.”

  “I do.”

  “Okay, then.”

  “Okay.”

  Wood was at the gate to Fast Deer Farm. He had run all the way from the Holiday Inn, stopping only to dash in the nursing home and tell Miss Phipps that today was the cutoff date for wearing white shoes. He knew she would be coming to the wedding and he had promised to do that for Jeter. Strangely, he would not have thought of it yesterday, even though, as it turned out, it didn’t matter. Since Jeter’s death Miss Phipps had gone completely downhill. She had ignored Wood’s announcement, brushing the sweat off his forehead and telling him, “You’ve been playing too hard again, haven’t you?” Then she added that if he didn’t get his alphabet work in by tomorrow, she would have to grade him down.

  Now Wood could see his house in the distance. He felt sure that Milan had heard about his arrest. For one thing, her mother and siblings used police scanners for entertainment. There was so much he wanted to say to his wife and yet he knew he didn’t have a right to say any of it. What he figured was that he would walk through his favorite pasture and try to collect his thoughts. But by the time he arrived at his barn, he hadn’t come up with a single sentence that seemed credible, much less not laughable. All the usual generic excuses, “We were drifting apart,” “I was having a midlife crisis,” “The grass is always greener,” sounded like lame, catchall impersonations of the truth.

  For the first time in his life, he hadn’t a clue as to what Milan might be thinking. He had always been sure of her and now he wasn’t. She had been so calm the night she told him to go. And at the rehearsal dinner. Now his palms were sweating. What if she had finally made up her mind about him, the way he had once made up his about her? Milan had already mastered her half of the most noble symbiosis that can occur between two people—loving someone else more than yourself. Could he really now expect her to also perform the most extraordinary human act on record—forgiveness? He didn’t know. But right now he had to stay focused. Yes, they had a wedding to get through, but first he wanted to at least plant the seed of reconciliation and then, who knows? Maybe by Christmas, her favorite time of year, they could start over again. He stopped inside the barn long enough to pat Sook, reminding himself that Milan did not care for long speeches. He would apologize and then lay out all the reasons for staying together. Maybe suggesting that they discuss it again in a few weeks.

  Wood thought he had pretty well organized what he wanted to say. But when he got to the top of the stairs, he didn’t even knock. He just opened the door and, seeing her standing over by the window, said none of the things he had planned, but instead crossed to the middle of the room and stood there, panting, like a dog. Milan turned and looked at him…. “You’re having kind of a hard year, aren’t you?”

  He didn’t answer, but just continued standing there, thinking she was like a little round mirror that you put under someone’s nose to see if they’re still alive, and that maybe she had just shown him that his now had a small spot of mist on it. Finally, he said, “I was running down Main Street this morning and I saw you in Garfinkel’s window. You were about sixteen and you had on one of those full skirt deals and you were twirling around. Do you think I’m crazy?”

  “Yes.”

  Wood went on. “You were smiling at me and I ran away because I knew I was gonna disappoint you…and then I ran all the way here to tell you how sorry I am for that. And that I know I’m not the man you thought I was…but I think I know the man that I could be.” Then he said with his voice sounding hoarse and emotional, like he hoped it wouldn’t, “I don’t expect you to answer right away, but if I just keep coming here…could you picture yourself ever letting me hold you again?”

  She looked at him for a long while and then, thinking how much he looked like their children, said evenly, “I’m picturing it now.”

  Wood decided not to breathe. His eyes were so full of his feelings, he could hardly see her. “That can’t be true.”

  She seemed to have thought about this before. “I’ve watched people throw things away all my life. That isn’t for me. I love you. I won’t waste one day of that.”

  This caused him to weep. In the space of twelve months, he had lost his father, his best friend, and his wife. And now it seemed, miraculously, that he might get one of them back. He grabbed her, holding on, the way he had once held on to logs in the Champanelle River when the current got too strong.

  CHAPTER 26

  It was almost 10 A.M. and Fast Deer Farm resembled an Aztec village with scores of people moving about and performing their assigned tasks. Four hundred white wooden folding chairs were lined up with the same precision as crosses at Normandy. In front of them, an enormous rounded trellis was dripping with diaphanous ribbon and Cecil Bruner roses. A huge white tent loomed majestically near the pond, which was strewn with an armada of gardenias floating on lily pads.

  Upstairs, Wood was now in the shower. He lathered his hair with Milan’s expensive shampoo for people with highlights, not caring that he didn’t have any. He let the steaming hot water wash over him. He rubbed a circle in the mist that had accumulated on the door, creating an oval through which he now saw Milan remove his tux from a cleaner’s plastic bag and brush it, almost respectfully, with her hand. Then she hung it on the hook of the bathroom door, so that the steam might take care of any unseen wrinkles.

  He suddenly realized the he hadn’t even thought about his tuxedo, much less made an effort to see where it was or if it needed to be cleaned. He rubbed soap under his arms. She had to have gotten his tux cleaned when she was still mad at him. That was so Milan. Not letting the sorry behavior of others interfere with the things that needed to be done. Wood turned the water off and stepped out of the shower. He could see a stack of thick fresh towels sitting on the bed. He entered the bedroom, on his way to retrieve one, and noticed that Milan was seated at her dressing table. He was thinking how much she still looked like that girl on Main Street. He crossed to her. Then he leaned down, wrapping himself around his wife, his naked body outlining her and the little velvet stool with the crown-shaped back that she was sitting on. He stayed that way, his face buried in the softness of her neck, getting her slip and her hair wet, which felt good and right to both of them. After a while, he went back to the bed and picked up a towel.

  Milan brushed her hair, but continued watching him in the mirror. There was something so comfortably masculine about him. A trait that was deeply imbedded and that he himself was completely unaware of, which made it all the more appealing. For some reason, she was thinking how much she liked his ability to shake his head and laugh while lying in the ditch. And that she also liked the way he was leaning over right now, unself-consciously drying himself off, his genitals resting against his thigh. For a moment, she forgot to breathe. She felt like a newlywed. He caught her watching his reflection. She looked away. He smiled to himself, grateful, thinking of the days that lay ahead, and then reluctantly put his shorts on.

  The window was open and the sound of an argument was drifting up. Dwight and Denny were in bitter disagreement over the number of lily pads in the pond.

  “You’ve got too many. It’s contrived. It’s looks all…Jungle C
ruisey.”

  “No, it doesn’t. And you don’t have to be so darned snippy.”

  “How many times do I have to tell you, you never want an even number? Nature is odd.”

  Milan and Wood laughed a little together. It wasn’t much, but it felt good, too. There was a knock at the door. Then, without waiting, Luke and Elizabeth entered.

  “We have to talk.”

  Milan stood up, “Sure, honey, come on in.”

  Wood struggled to finish dressing.

  “Excuse me, I’d like to get my pants on here.”

  Elizabeth brushed past him and said without humor, “Yes, we’d all like that.” Then, she struggled to begin. “This is hard. So, I’m just gonna say it. Luke and I have decided to call off the wedding.”

  No one made a sound. Finally, Milan found her voice. “Are you sure?”

  “We’ve gone back and forth all morning. But yes.”

  Luke spoke up. “We appreciate all the trouble you’ve gone to. But considering everything that’s happened and the stress at the rehearsal dinner…it’s just not how we want to start off.”

  “Now wait a minute. Let’s not lose our heads here. People get married under all sorts of adverse conditions, even when one of them is shipping off to war.”

  Elizabeth and Luke gave him a look that said that his opinion counted less with them than a child’s. Then Elizabeth pressed on, “We did, however, decide to go ahead and consummate our relationship.”

  Milan said, “Oh, my God.”

  Luke was embarrassed. “Lizabeth, you don’t have to tell everything. That’s not their business.”