Holding on to Nothing

by Elizabeth Chiles Shelburne

  “One day, you may want these. Not now. But one day, it might help.”

  Lucy had been so infuriated that she stomped out of the room, but not before she noticed LouEllen tucking the letters into a Tupperware that she slid up onto the cabinet above the refrigerator. There had been nights, particularly in the beginning, when Lucy had stolen into the kitchen at three in the morning and sat at the table staring at that cabinet. Sitting there, unable to sleep, she considered digging them out, her loneliness at such a pitch that even Jeptha’s mutterings sounded like something akin to comfort. She had never actually succumbed, though—the closest she had come was pulling out the Tupperware and resting her head on it until the feeling passed. She’d fallen asleep there more than once, Jared’s lovey in her hand.

  Lucy saw LouEllen’s face then, her lips pursed, her cheeks drawn. “You think I should read them?” Lucy said, angrily. “Three years later? Do you really think there is something in them that might help?”

  “I think you are still so angry you can barely breathe. Maybe the letters would help.”

  “I can’t see how.”

  LouEllen shrugged her shoulders. “There’s something else there for you.”

  Lucy pawed through the pile of mail on the table. A large white envelope with a bright orange UT symbol had her name on it. She brought it with her into the living room where LouEllen had gone to sit on the couch. “What is this?”

  “Why don’t you open it?”

  Inside was a folder of brochures, pamphlets, class descriptions, and a letter describing the Older Adults Bachelor program. “What is this?” Lucy asked again.

  LouEllen sat up, as excited as Lucy had seen her in years. “I saw it online. It’s this program at UT where they do a special thing for older adults applying to school. I know you’ve been wanting to go, have forever. But it’s not like you could go as a freshman, living in a dorm. Not after everything …”

  Lucy busied herself looking at the happy people in the pictures. Getting drunk in a dorm was definitely not something Lucy was interested in. But going to college? It had been so long since she was excited about anything that it took her a minute to recognize the sensation. But then Jared’s face swam up in front of her.

  “No,” she said. “I can’t.”

  “You can’t stay here forever, Lucy. Not because of him.”

  “It’s where he is.”

  “It’s where he was. You can’t stay for him. He’s gone, honey.”

  Tears streamed down Lucy’s face. She couldn’t leave. She couldn’t leave the only place where Jared had ever lived. It was disloyal, wrong. She had finally relinquished her soap opera fantasies of him coming back, knowing her baby was gone forever. But leaving this place when he never could? Growing up, moving on while he was stuck here forever at ten months old? She shook her head at LouEllen and stood up.

  “I can’t. I have to get ready for Judy’s. Can you throw this away for me?” she asked, dropping the envelope on the couch beside LouEllen.

  “LUCY!” DELNOR SAID as soon as she walked through the door at Judy’s. His was the first condolence note that Lucy had received and the only she still had, scratched out on a faded piece of nicotine-stained stationery. He’d also been the first person to drop the pity smile and treat her like she was normal. Every time she saw him, she felt more so.

  “Hey, Delnor. How’re you?” she asked, throwing her bag behind the bar.

  “You’re here. I’m good.”

  “You’re an old charmer,” Lucy said.

  “Definitely old. I’ll have to take your word on the charming,” he said, a shy blush creeping up on his face. “How are you?”

  “I’m all right, Delnor. Thank you,” she said, more serious now. It was funny how easy it was to tell when people were asking for real or just to be polite. Good ol’ Delnor. He always asked for real.

  “How’s everything here?” Lucy asked. Since Delnor spent most of his waking hours at the bar, he usually knew more about the place than Lucy did.

  “Judy’s in a bad mood. Says the new mandolin player is awful. Says he’s so bad even she can tell.”

  The sound of the mandolin, which used to be her favorite, clawed at her brain now—she even hated the word. She swallowed past the lump in her throat and nodded. “I’m sure they’ll find someone.”

  Delnor looked worried and hurriedly said, “Um, could I get another beer?”

  Lucy looked at him with her eyebrow raised. “How many have you had already?”

  “This’ll be number two. Promise.”

  Lucy stared at him, but he didn’t drop his eyes. “Promise,” he said again.

  Lucy grabbed another can for him. After everything with Jeptha, Delnor had asked Judy to keep him to four drinks a day. He couldn’t quit, he said, not now. He was too old, too dependent. But he didn’t want to do anyone the way Jeptha had done, he’d told Judy, and meant it.

  “Thank you,” Delnor said as she slid the can over to him. “You figured out what you’re going to do yet?”

  “Do?” Lucy looked around the bar. “You’re looking at it.”

  “Not here. After this, I mean.”

  “There is no after this, Delnor. This is it.”

  “It doesn’t have to be,” he said. “You’re young. Smart. You could go to school, be a teacher or something. Hell, even a lawyer. Don’t never seem to be too many of those. Move out of this town.”

  “No, I cannot, Delnor,” Lucy said, with finality. He stared sadly at her, his eyes full of pity, and then dropped his gaze. She picked up a rag and wiped off the bar.

  THE IDEA OF going to school, though, wasn’t as easy to dismiss in her head as Delnor had been. It stayed with her all through the early part of the evening, niggling at her, always competing with Jared’s face. She was so consumed by the thought that she barely registered the bar filling up and didn’t notice the band had begun to play until they were four songs in and she finally heard the new mandolin player. He was, as Delnor had said, truly awful. For the first time in three years, the mandolin had no impact on her. She heard it and not even a single tear threatened. There was something freeing about the realization, even if it wouldn’t be the case if she were to go to the Fold and hear someone truly gifted play.

  Still, when Cody came up to say “hi” to her, as he did every week, she wasn’t her usual pissed self. She smiled at him as he walked toward her.

  “Hey, Lucy.”

  “Hey, Cody.”

  “Did you hear?” he said, jerking his head back to the stage.

  She grimaced. “It wasn’t good.”

  “Nope. Hopefully Judy will let us keep playing.”

  “Well, she let y’all stay when you didn’t have a player at all, so I guess she’ll let you stay with a bad one.”

  “Speaking of …” Cody said, casting his eyes down.

  “Cody, don’t.”

  “He had his hearing. He’s probably getting out. A couple months.”

  Lucy dropped the glass she was drying, which struck the bar with a bounce. Judy grabbed it before it fell to the floor. Lucy’s hands shook. She couldn’t breathe.

  “I’m sorry. Marla said someone should tell you. Maybe this wasn’t the best time.”

  Lucy bit her lip and stared into the crowd, not seeing anything but Jeptha holding her and Jared, rocking with them at the end. She ground her jaw tight, her teeth creaking, trying to tamp down the scream that wanted to escape her lungs.

  “Go, Lucy,” Judy said, her chin pointing in the direction of the back door. “Go on home. I got this.”

  LUCY DIDN’T REMEMBER getting in her car, driving home, walking up the stairs to the house, or clambering up on the kitchen counter to pull down the Tupperware from above the refrigerator. But suddenly, there she was, a pile of letters in front of her, tears flowing down her face as she read the first one, written two days after Jared died.

  Oh, God, Lucy. I wish I had the words in my head to tell you how sorry I am, to change what happened, t
o have had it be me. Me gone would’ve been no great loss to the world. But Jared … I am so sorry.

  There is no hell hot enough for what I done.

  She slowly read through the pile, her sobs filling the kitchen. She recognized her own hurt in the words, as if in grief she and Jeptha had finally become the partners they had never been in marriage. He mirrored her fury, her sadness, and her despair that there would ever be a life after that day.

  By the time she got to the last letter, her sobs had subsided.

  Had my parole hearing today. Told them I shouldn’t get out, that I never deserve to. There is no atonement for what I done, no way to make amends. Three life sentences wouldn’t do it. I took everything from Jared, from you. There are not enough sorrys in the world. I’d kill myself if I didn’t know it was the easy way out. Only thing I can do is live with this, all my life.

  “Live with this, all our lives,” Lucy said out loud. She’d felt so alone the last three years, like she was the only one whose job it was to remember Jared. As much as she hated Jeptha, she was less alone in her grief—she wasn’t the only one shouldering the burden of remembering him.

  Lucy walked over to grab a paper towel for her eyes. There on the counter above the trash cans was the envelope from UT, like LouEllen had started to throw it away and then stopped. Lucy pulled out the folder inside and scanned the application. The essay question on the back of the application was, “Why are you applying to college later in life? Why are you ready now?”

  Lucy opened up LouEllen’s computer and started typing.

  27

  FOR WEEKS, JEPTHA HAD been staring at the letter from the parole board, eyes on only one word: approved. He shook every time he saw it. He’d meant what he’d said to Lucy in his letter—he had told the parole board in no uncertain terms that they should never let him out. He would never deserve it. Apparently, they disagreed. Quaking, he wondered if he could refuse to leave. When his hands shook too much for him to stop, he picked up his mandolin and began to pick out a new song he’d been writing.

  The mandolin had saved his life in here; it was the only thing that got him through the long days and even longer, nightmare-filled nights. Remembering that one throwaway comment from Lucy one night at the Fold when she told him he had a nice voice, he’d started singing. It was whispered mumbles at first, but when the guys on either side of him, hardened men both, had asked him why he stopped singing one morning, he’d kept going with it.

  Then, one day when he sat with a pen and paper to write his weekly letter to Lucy—knowing she’d never respond, but he didn’t care, he’d set himself a penance and he’d be damned if he wasn’t going to stick with it—he wrote down words. He’d never been much for writing, and it took him a few days to realize it was a song he was putting together. When he reread the lyrics, the music came to him all in a burst. He tinkered with it all that morning, and when he finally put it all together that afternoon and sang it in his cell, long slow claps came out of the cells around him. He remembered then where he was—in his head, he’d been holding Lucy and Jared in his shitty trailer. He figured he’d spend most of his life in that room, never able to let go of that moment. As he listened to the slow claps around him, he’d have been glad to remain there in jail for the rest of his life. But the parole board had other plans.

  The day he got released, three months after his hearing, the guard handed him a pair of stiff-legged jeans and a white t-shirt to change into, his first clothes in three years. Scratchy and cheap as they were, there was something nice about being in clothes again. Jeptha immediately began itching to take them off. It was one more thing he didn’t deserve. He sat on his bed with his head in his hands and stared at the concrete floor, tears slipping down his face.

  Then he took a breath and tried to, as they said in his AA group, “change the narrative” in his head. He’d been sober since the day Jared died, the need to drink scared right out of him by what he’d done, but going to AA had helped him come to terms with the many mistakes in his life. Counting the ones he’d sent to Lucy, he must have sent hundreds of letters to the people he needed to make amends to: Ethel and her husband for giving him chances and him missing the job; Brandy Anne, for treating her like shit; Cody, for messing up more times and in more ways than a friend should; his boss, Tom, at that last job, for not being someone he could count on; and Deanna and Bobby, for not working harder and for blaming them for his own mistakes. The list went on and on. Every letter helped, made him feel like maybe he’d be able to find a place in the world that wasn’t completely worthless. He wrote Lucy most, of course, even though he knew she’d never be able to forgive him. He didn’t want her to. He could forgive himself for some of the shit behavior he’d been capable of all those years, but he knew he would never forgive himself for killing his son, even if it had been an accident. His whole shitty life had been an infinite number of stupid, drunken mistakes leading up to that one horrible moment. No father would be able to forgive himself for that—maybe the goal was just accepting all the reasons why he’d done what he’d done and trying to never find himself in that place again.

  He wiped the tears off his face when he saw the guard standing by his door. It opened with a slow groan and metallic clang.

  “It’s time to go, Jeptha,” he said. When Jeptha stood, empty-handed, the guard nodded at his mandolin. “Don’t forget that.”

  Jeptha’s steps were slow down the hall and even slower walking through the fence. He wasn’t sure how he was going to get home, or even whether he should go home, but then he saw Cody’s familiar truck parked outside and the man himself leaning against the fence. Jeptha never thought his heart would swell from seeing that old too-small Harley shirt, but his steps quickened toward Cody. They hugged each other, hard, and Cody pounded him on the back.

  “It’s good to see you, man. You look good.”

  “You too.”

  “Ah, hell, I look the same. It’s good to lay eyes on you, though.”

  Jeptha nodded. It was wonderful to see Cody. For a minute, he thought it was the kind of good that meant he shouldn’t be enjoying it, but he shook the thought from his head. Acceptance, he reminded himself.

  “You should of let me come see you in there,” Cody said.

  “You don’t want to see that place. ’Sides, I didn’t deserve any visits in there.”

  “It was an accident, man.”

  “Don’t matter much. He’s still gone.”

  Cody was silent as they got in the car. After a few minutes of driving, he nodded at the mandolin case in the seat between them. “You been playing?”

  “A lot. Been writing some stuff. Singing.”

  “You? Writing?”

  “I know.”

  “I’d like to hear it. Our new mandolin guy is something awful. We’d love to have you back.”

  Jeptha didn’t know what to say. He wasn’t sure he could ever play in front of people again. It felt wrong.

  “I got to study on it,” Jeptha said.

  “Well, let me know—we still got the gig at Judy’s.” Jeptha’s heart went cold, and he shook harder than he ever had since he got the notice he was getting out. What if Lucy was still there? How could he sing those songs in front of her? He’d written them for her, but he had never supposed she might hear them.

  “Would Lucy be there?” Jeptha finally asked.

  “Would you want her to be?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. He had never wanted anything more in his life than to see her, apologize to her in person, but he’d never been more terrified. “Depends on what she wanted, I think.”

  JEPTHA THOUGHT HIS heart and his body would seize up with every step he made toward Judy’s two weeks later. He could handle the looks, none of which were exactly friendly; it was his own fear that was killing him. Cody had said Lucy wasn’t going to be there—on purpose. But he was still terrified. After a walk that seemed to take years, he pulled open the door. The smell of leather, beer, and sweat was t
he same, as if it was just yesterday, and not years ago, when he’d started down this road.

  Judy came out from behind the bar to give him a hug. “It’s good to see you,” she said, and—Jeptha had to check twice—smiled at him. In the moment, he couldn’t speak, but he made a note to thank her later for stocking his fridge at the trailer with tiny bottles of real Coke, the kind from Mexico, full of real sugar that was so much better at soothing the cravings he still had sometimes, three years after his last drink. He started to the stage. A few feet in, though, a calloused hand grabbed his arm and pulled him to a stop.

  “Hey there, Jeptha,” Delnor said.

  “Hey, Delnor,” Jeptha said, nodding at him.

  “You playing with them boys tonight?”

  “I am.”

  “I’m glad of it—been too long since we had some decent music.”

  “I’ll do my best,” Jeptha said.

  Delnor squeezed Jeptha’s arm and held his gaze with his piercing blue eyes. “I know you will.”

  THE AUDIENCE GREETED his appearance with silence, but Jeptha didn’t care. He slid his strap over his head and began to play, following Cody’s lead on the first several songs. It felt good to be playing with a band again. His fingers flexed and yearned for the strings for the pleasure of it, as opposed to the desperate heartache that had driven his playing for the last three years. A few songs in, Cody stepped away from the mic and nodded at Jeptha. He shook walking over to it.

  He wanted to sing the simple truth, whether Lucy was there to hear it or not. For that, it had to be one of the old songs, a touchstone for Jeptha since it’d always felt true. It felt even more true now. He looked at his bandmates and said, “Follow me, real slow.”

  I am a man of constant sorrow,

  I’ve seen trouble all my days.

  I bid farewell to old Kentucky

  The place where I was born and raised.

  For six long years I’ve been in trouble

  No pleasure here on earth I found