Holding on to Nothing

by Elizabeth Chiles Shelburne

  “Dammit!” He banged his forehead against the steering wheel, hoping by some chance he could knock out the stupid and the drunk. He briefly considered heading home, back to his porch where Cody probably still sat working on that case of beer. But he was here, and in that long moment on the porch weighing Cody’s words, he knew he wanted to be here. He regretted every drink he’d had past that first one and wished he could go back and punch himself in the face for being so stupid all afternoon. He’d been lucky as hell to get a date with Lucy, and now he’d have to work his ass off to make up for being both drunk and late for it.

  Jeptha parked at the bottom of the street. Skipping any houses with Big Wheels or kids’ toys in the yard, he began knocking on doors.

  After twenty minutes and a set of mighty sore knuckles, he knocked on 510 Maple Ave. An old lady answered the door in a multicolored floral housedress, her short, graying hair already set in curlers for bed. She clutched the doorframe with all the strength left in her frail, liver-spotted hands.

  “Yes?” she said.

  “I’m looking for Lucy Kilgore. Does she live here?”

  “Why, no. She lives next door. Right there,” the lady said and pointed to a mint-green house with a tiny sliver of concrete front porch. The swing was slowly moving back and forth, as if someone had gotten up from it a minute before.

  “Thank you!” Jeptha shouted over his shoulder as he ran across the yard. According to the clock in the lady’s living room, he was forty-five minutes late picking up Lucy.

  He wrenched open the screen door and knocked on the wood behind, recoiling as the sound echoed off the houses nearby. After a minute, he heard the sound of footsteps. He started apologizing before the door even opened.

  “Lucy, I’m so sorry! I was late leaving and then I got all the way here and realized I forgot your address. I been knocking on every door on the street trying to find you—”

  Jeptha stopped when he realized he wasn’t talking to Lucy, but to a woman he’d seen around town all his life. Her white hair poufed in a halo around her head, and she wore a matching set of red cotton shorts and t-shirt, topped with a massive purple necklace. The bright colors, though, were at odds with the look on her face. She stared at him with her eyebrows arched and her mouth puckered to the side.

  He stuck out his hand to shake hers. “Sorry, ma’am. I’m Jeptha—”

  “Taylor. I know. I knew your father. You are his …” She stopped and surveyed Jeptha. He could tell she was taking in everything from his scuffed boots, bleary eyes, and beery smell. “Spitting image,” she finished.

  Jeptha dropped his hand. “Oh. I, uh, was coming to see if Lucy was here.”

  “Young man, I’m LouEllen. I’m not Lucy’s mama, but I’m going to talk to you like I am,” LouEllen said, moving toward the porch swing and gesturing for him to sit down on it with her. “Now, showing up an hour late is not the way I would have played this one.”

  “I know,” Jeptha said, easing into place beside her. He hung his head. “I can explain.”

  “Can you now?” LouEllen eyed him with an intensity that made his stomach roil. He scooted as far away as he could on that little swing, keenly aware of the sour mash smell of beer coming off him.

  “If I could just see her …”

  “She’s not here.”

  “She’s not?” Jeptha said, his voice cracking.

  “You made a big mistake tonight.”

  “I know.” Tears sprang to his eyes, and he looked down at the porch. The glass in LouEllen’s hand clinked with ice cubes and two fondled lime wedges as she sat beside him. The piney scent of gin wafted up from her glass. He thought helplessly of all the time he’d wasted today, wondering if he should even show up. This was the only place he wanted to be, and he’d ruined it.

  “But I’m a nice woman, and I believe in second or third—or whatever this is—chances. So I’m going to tell you that she waited for forty minutes and then drove herself to the Fold. Said she was already dressed, might as well go.”

  Jeptha stood up. “How long ago did she leave?”

  “Probably ten minutes. But she’s angry, so more like fifteen with how fast she’s driving.”

  “I’m sorry, ma’am.”

  “It’s not me you need to apologize to. Save that for Lucy.”

  Jeptha nodded his thanks at her and hustled toward the stairs. He turned at the top step and said, “Do you think it’s worth trying?”

  “It’s always worth trying, Jeptha,” she said, giving him another thorough once-over. “Frankly, you don’t look like you’ve done a lot of trying in your life. And I doubt you’ll succeed. But it’s always better to have tried than not.”

  “Thank you, ma’am.”

  LouEllen nodded and, taking a large sip of her drink, gave herself a big push with her feet. Jeptha could feel her eyes on him all the way back to his car.

  WHEN JEPTHA BLEW through the doors of Carter’s Fold in ten fewer minutes than it had ever taken him before, he was sweaty and out of breath. He stopped at the bottom of the amphitheater, suddenly aware of how big the Fold was. Cut into the side of a hill, row upon row of wooden benches were slapped together and hay bales stretched out the last few rows. A tin roof covered the seats, but the sides and back were open to the breeze, or as much breeze as could sneak past all the people sitting on the edge of the cinderblock retaining wall and camped on the grass trying to peek in. On summer nights when a really good band played, every seat would be claimed by 7:00 p.m.

  Jeptha had never needed to find a jilted date in the midst of all these people before. He needed a systematic approach, like hoeing a row. He’d work up one side and down the other. He stood at the bottom, his eyes scanning each row as if he was reading a page. He lost his place ten times before he finished the left section and started on the center column of seats. It felt like a hundred rows, but finally about three-quarters of the way up, his eyes passed a girl who looked like Lucy. When his eyes came back to her, he saw it was Lucy. She was staring at him.

  He smiled and waved. Nothing. She was still looking at him but didn’t lift her hand. He waved again. She held his gaze for a moment more and then looked pointedly away from him.

  Jeptha took the stairs two at a time, coming to a hard stop just before knocking over a toddler who had wandered off his seat in order to get a good look at an abandoned piece of popcorn on the steps. He stepped around the little guy, touching his light brown curls for luck, and bounded up to where Lucy sat. He must have said, “Excuse me,” to twenty people before he got to her. Then he had to beg those same people to pretty please scoot down the bench enough so that he could squeeze in beside her.

  “Lucy, I’m sorry.”

  Her face was diamond hard—her usually plump cheeks sharply planed and her nose pinched and severe. Finally she said, “You’re more than an hour late.”

  “I walked out the door without the piece of paper you gave me. I knocked on fifty-two doors before I got to yours.”

  “You smell like a bar.”

  “I had some beers with Cody after work. But I ain’t drunk.” He was, but he knew better than to tell the truth.

  “I don’t care.”

  “Lucy, I’m sorry. I was sitting on my porch with my dog—she’s got this weird thing where she likes when I pet her with my foot. I didn’t realize how much time had gone by. And then I forgot the damn paper. I’m an idiot. I’m sorry …”

  “Your foot?” she asked, looking at him for the first time since he’d sat beside her.

  “What?”

  “You pet your dog with your foot?”

  “She likes it. I swear.”

  “She sounds dumb as you. Y’all deserve each other.”

  Jeptha winced. She was saying the things he’d been hearing in his head all day, exactly what he’d said to Cody. Still, he couldn’t disagree—he was an idiot. But Crystal Gayle wasn’t.

  “She’s way smarter. I’m the idiot,” he said.

  Lucy shook her head a
t him. “I thought maybe everyone was wrong about you. Guess they weren’t. Please leave.”

  “Aw, don’t be like that,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

  “If you don’t move, I will,” Lucy said. She excused herself down the row, and Jeptha hurried to follow after.

  Everyone in the row must have been able to feel Lucy’s anger flaring off her. They practically jumped out of their seats to let her by. For Jeptha, though, every pair of knees was an obstacle course. They glared at him and one old lady even shook her head as he stepped over her feet. Jeptha saw Lucy sit on the edge of a bench five rows down.

  He started down the steps, but that same curly-headed toddler whom Jeptha had tripped over before stepped out of his row right in front of Jeptha’s feet. Jeptha bowed his body back, just managing to keep his heels on the stairs, but bumped the little kid with his knees. Jeptha could only watch as the kid teetered back and forth and then, in slow motion, finally tottered over onto the step below and then the one below that before he caught himself on his cheek. He burst out with a scream so loud the band stopped playing for a second. It seemed the entire audience was now glaring at Jeptha, none more so than Lucy. The look of disappointment and anger on her face reminded him of nothing so much as the look on his first-grade teacher’s face on the first day of school when, at Bobby’s prodding over that long summer, he had answered “penis” instead of “here” at roll call. Jeptha reached down to try to pick the boy up, but his mom got there first, her eyes narrowed with revulsion and a too-late protective instinct. Jeptha looked up at the ceiling and mouthed a silent “Damn.”

  When he looked back down, Lucy was another ten rows in front of him. “Lucy, wait,” he yelled to her.

  “Sorry,” he said to the boy’s mom before he rushed down the stairs.

  When he finally caught up with her at the entrance of the Fold, he began to beg. “Please, Lucy,” he said, touching her arm. “Stay. I’ll make it up to you.”

  “There’s nothing to make up. There is nothing between us. Do you hear me? NOTHING,” she said, her voice laced with acid. She jerked her arm away and walked to the doors.

  “But that night …”

  “Was nothing. I was drunk. It didn’t mean a thing.”

  “It did to me. I know I messed up. Lemme make it right.”

  “How could you make it right, Jeptha, when you don’t even know how wrong it is?” she yelled. She banged open the door and strode onto the field full of parked cars.

  “At least let me walk you to your car,” he begged, having to run to catch up to her.

  “Leave me alone.”

  In the dusk, Jeptha could see her nostrils flaring. Her deep brown eyes were like a well gone bad. “I got to make sure you get home okay.”

  “I’ve been getting home just fine every day of my life up to now, without you. And I’ll continue to every day going forward. Also without you.”

  She stopped at a beat-up black Honda Civic and dug her keys out of her pocket.

  “Give me another chance,” he said quietly.

  “What for? What’s the point? It’s not like anything is ever going to come of this.”

  “It ain’t like that, Lucy,” he said, watching in despair as she got in her car. She looked up at him for a moment, and he brightened, hoping maybe she was softening.

  “I should never have gotten in that car,” she said. “I know better than to do something like that with a Taylor.”

  “With a Taylor? You think I ain’t good enough for you?” Jeptha yelled, finally losing his control on his temper. Here it was—Bobby, Cody, and now Lucy. None of them thought he was good enough for her, for anything or anyone, really. None of it mattered. He’d apologized a dozen times, and she didn’t care. He could apologize a hundred more, and it wouldn’t make a whit of difference. Hell, he could have showed up at her house an hour early, and she probably still wouldn’t care. He was a Taylor, no matter what. He banged his fists on the top of her car and then took a step back.

  Lucy shrugged in agreement and drove away too fast. Angry as he was, he still found himself throwing up a prayer for her to get home safe and then berated himself for it. She didn’t care about him. Everyone was right. Lucy was too good for him—she always had been. She’d always been the one smart enough to leave this town, and there was no way she would stay around for a man like him. That night had been a fluke. It would never matter what he did or how well he played. Nothing would ever make Lucy Kilgore want to be with him. He listened for a moment to the bluegrass filling the night air, the sound of the mandolin and the banjo competing with the rise and fall of the cicadas’ drone and the insistent rhythm of the tree frogs. The music struck him as a dirge for what might have been.

  He got in his car and slammed the door. Fiddling though the stations, he found a screaming Metallica song and turned it all the way up, wanting to obliterate the bluegrass sounds he associated with Lucy. He tried to stop thinking of her. He focused his attention on the ten or so beers he expected remained in the case beside Cody, who was no doubt passed out on the couch—beers that Jeptha planned to drink in a slow and orderly fashion until he was too drunk to remember why he’d ever thought his life might change.

  4

  “DID HE FIND you?” LouEllen asked as soon as Lucy pushed the door open. Lucy threw her keys and purse down on the table. She flopped on the couch, then stood right back up, her fingers shaking.

  “I guess so,” LouEllen said, taking Lucy in. “You look pissed as a hornet with a crushed nest.”

  “More,” Lucy said. She paced back and forth, her belly a sloshing pool of rage. She stopped in front of LouEllen. “He was drunk. Drunk! Did you know that?”

  “He’d been drinking.”

  “That asshole showed up an hour late. And drunk. For a date. Who does that?” she said. She thought of his voice breaking in his car, after they’d had sex. She had felt sorry for the man, but not anymore. “I’ll tell you who. Jeptha Taylor. What on earth was I thinking?” Lucy paced again. Every time she stopped moving, her anger overwhelmed her.

  “What happened?” LouEllen asked. Lucy could hear the pity starting to tinge her tone. The fire in her grew.

  “What do you mean, what happened? He showed up, said ‘I’m sorry’ a hundred times, and I drove away. I don’t need to listen to the apologies of a man who can’t even be bothered to show up on time for a date with the woman who is carrying his child.”

  “But he doesn’t know that, does he?”

  “Does it matter? All he’s been wanting since that godforsaken night we had sex was for me to go on a date with him. ‘Can I see you again? Wanna go to Waffle House? How about a drink? Blah, blah, blah.’ Then I finally give him a chance, feel sorry for the asshole, and he does this. I’m like a glutton for punishment. I sleep with him, I get pregnant. I give him a chance, I get stood up.” Lucy pushed her hair back behind her ears with both hands and stared at the ceiling.

  “I mean, what the hell is wrong with me? Could I be any dumber?” she asked. She shook her head as tears started to fall. “I must want to ruin my life, right? That’s what this is.”

  “You made a mistake,” LouEllen said, reaching out for her hand. Lucy pulled it away. She didn’t want comfort, didn’t deserve it.

  “Hell of a mistake.” Lucy bit her lip, trying to keep the tears from falling. Tears weren’t going to make this go away. They weren’t going to fix anything. She looked around wildly, her gaze landing on the boxes stacked in the corner. Her boxes, still packed, ready for a life she hadn’t even been sure she wanted, now forever out of reach.

  “We all make mistakes. It happens. But if you’re going to keep this one,” LouEllen said, nodding at Lucy’s belly, “then you need to at least go to the doctor. Get some vitamins. Take care of yourself. Ain’t no fair punishing that baby in the hopes it’ll go away.”

  “I’m not doing that,” Lucy said, slamming pillows into place and folding and refolding the blankets on the couch.

  “Really
?” LouEllen asked. “Have you been to the doctor? Gotten your prenatal vitamins? Decided what hospital you’ll deliver at? Asked for more shifts at Walmart and Judy’s to try to save up some money? Done anything that might signal that you understand that you are now pregnant, and going to, in seven short months, bring a baby into this world, who will be yours and yours alone?”

  Lucy hugged the blanket tight to her chest. The tears that fell now weren’t angry ones. “No,” she said, with a sigh. “I haven’t.”

  “Don’t you think you should?” LouEllen asked, gently.

  “I … I just …” Lucy didn’t know what to say. She wasn’t ready to face it yet. To admit the finality of what she’d done.

  “You need to let go of this pipe dream of yours—that Jeptha will be a totally different kind of person and y’all can settle down in a sweet little family and raise your baby and live happily ever—”

  Lucy tried to interrupt.

  “Don’t try to deny it,” LouEllen said, ignoring her objection. “I know you, I know what you’re hoping. Hell, every woman ever pregnant like this hopes that. But, I’ll tell you right now, it ain’t gonna happen. Not with that one. Not with Jeptha.”

  Lucy thought back to earlier in the night, before Jeptha was late. She had sat on the porch swing waiting for him, hugging her belly. She pushed herself hard, smiling into the wind as it blew her hair back and forth around her face. She’d felt oddly whole sitting there, like one of her missing pieces had been found and put into place. Now, the swing hung forlorn and abandoned, and all Lucy could see was Jeptha’s bleary, drunken face apologizing to her. LouEllen was right, even if Lucy didn’t want to admit it. She’d been constructing a fantasy.

  She finally made eye contact with LouEllen. “There’s no chance, huh?”