by C. E. Case
"Thanks for doing this," Natalie said, for the fourth time.
"Our grandkids will only get one first day of school. We want it to be special."
Natalie nodded.
Merritt ran up with a red backpack.
"What's the logo?" Natalie asked.
"Digimon."
"Maybe," Natalie said.
Merritt pouted.
"Have you seen them all yet?" Natalie asked.
Merritt shook his head.
"What if the perfect one is buried? What if there's something better and you haven't seen it yet?"
Merritt ran back to the backpacks.
"Do you often trick the children?"
"Often," Natalie said.
"They seem happy."
"I guess."
"We thought this transition would be more difficult."
"Would it have been, if they weren't in the same house, surrounded by their things, their neighbors, reminders of their mom?" Natalie asked.
"If there weren't reminders, maybe they would miss them less."
"They would just be confused, having feelings and no place to anchor them."
"What do you know about child psychology?"
"I've been reading. What do you know?"
"I raised a good man. He made beautiful children."
Natalie squeezed the bridge of her nose.
"We probed them, you know," Anthony said.
"You did what to those boys?"
"I mean, we questioned them. About what goes on at your place. About food, playtime. Arguments. Nothing about when they lived with Meredith--we can use our own imagination--but how exactly they're being treated. Are they hurt? Or, on the flip side, are they spoiled?"
Natalie wondered if all of Walmart could feel her rage.
Anthony went on. "They weren't evasive. They were confused. They bragged about, 'Getting to write mommy.' They don't like it when you have to go to work. Beau says he can write his name because you're a lawyer."
"Merry taught them." Natalie massaged her forehead.
"They seem to be doing okay. I don't know we would have done a better job," Anthony said.
Natalie nodded, squeezing her eyes shut.
"But we love them more. We're family."
"We're a family. We want to be a family."
"Why?"
Natalie opened her eyes. "Why?"
"You seem like a decent woman, Ms. Ivans."
"Thanks."
"Why Meredith?"
Natalie watched Beau and Merritt traipse up and down the aisles, backpacks on their backs. Next would be lunchboxes. Another battle. Natalie and Anthony were supposed to be tackling the less glamorous stuff on the kindergarden list. Crayons. Paper. Kleenex. Glue sticks. She tried to imagine why they needed so many glue sticks.
"Why Meredith? Because I love her?"
"That's not an answer."
"It was good enough for you. What do you want me to say? She's smart, she's funny, she's solid. She's faithful. She's generous."
"She's not perfect. She--"
"I know. She gets depressed. More easily than she'd ever admit. She eats horrible things. She's not intellectually curious. She feels way too much. She lives in her own world despite what the rest of us say."
Anthony said nothing.
"Do you want a list of my faults, too?" Natalie asked. Her anger wasn't fading, but radiating through her, even as Irene waved at them and they loyally pushed the cart after her to the next section.
"She married our boy. She made a family. And then when she found out he was--he was." Anthony hesitated and took a deep breath. "She got jealous and took him away from us. Rather than divorcing him or even making it a public scandal. She had options. Even if he betrayed her. We would have helped him."
"Wait," Natalie said. She put her hand on the cart to stop their momentum.
Anthony turned to her.
Natalie closed her eyes briefly. This was going to be hard. This was so not her responsibility. She met his gaze and said, "Meredith knew Vincent was gay before she married him."
"She what?"
"She did. Those boys are not--They got help. With the conception. They wanted a family."
"To be a facade?"
"No. A real family."
"But Meredith found out about Vincent's friend in the war. He was going to take his boys and leave her."
"You know, Mr. Jameison, I just thought you didn't actually believe that. I thought you were just punishing her."
"And I think you're a moron for believing they lived some fairy tale," he said.
Her grip tightened on the cart.
"Ms. Ivans," he said.
"You have noticed who Meredith's with now, haven't you? Did you ever consider Meredith and Vincent had an arrangement?"
Anthony's eyes widened. Natalie could see he never, in fact, considered what she and Meredith did together. And he was imagining it now, in vivid color. She winced, but was still furious enough to ask, "What, you thought we were sisters?"
"Or you were after the boys."
Revulsion hit her like the roof collapsing. She leaned on the cart.
Anthony tried to change the subject. "Meredith just seemed so happy. You know. With Vince."
"She was." Natalie gasped, trying to take in air.
"I'm sorry. We did ask the boys. Obliquely, of course. This explains why Beau said, 'No, she's mommy's friend.'"
"I didn't ask to come to Tarpley. I just ended up here."
"So you have no personal responsibility at all."
"To Beau and Merritt. To Merry. Not to anyone or anything else, Mr. Jameison."
Anthony shook his head. "I got no problem with how people live their lives. As long as it doesn't affect the kids. And they seem all right."
"If you knew, why did you let it go on?"
He frowned.
"About Vincent, I mean." Saying his name felt sacrilegious, but he was a part of her life now.
"I guess Merry was a distraction. We thought if she weren't around so much, he could meet someone else. He always had such good buddies. Like Jake. I know he babysits sometimes. I mean, he was popular. We thought the guys would set him straight." He chuckled bitterly.
Natalie opened her mouth.
"Why didn't he just tell us?"
She closed her mouth.
"Why not just come out? Both of them? We didn't raise him in a hateful environment. We didn't tell him to go hating gay people or anything like that. But he went and joined the army. For God's sake, why would he do that if he was--That confused us so much."
"Meredith said--" But she stopped herself. She wouldn't do that. Those were Vincent's most private feelings. The kind of man he was--only Meredith knew. And Jake. Now her. Maybe one day, the kids. But not his parents. Vincent's feelings were none of their business. So instead of telling them truths about the war, she made guesses about his sexuality.
"It's hard enough in the city. Where meeting someone is just going down to the 'arts' district and finding a coffee shop. Maybe going to a film festival. Or going to a school where there are two thousand students, so a good twenty of them are in the Gay Straight Alliance. Growing up in Tarpley? Vince probably only knew one or two people like him. Even in the Army, the way it is, I'm sure there were more."
"Obviously," Anthony said, snorting.
"Maybe settling with Meredith meant he didn't have to leave home. She's--"
"She's poor white trash," Anthony said.
Natalie hadn't expected those words to come out of his mouth, but the hard expression told her he was serious.
"She went to college," she said, lamely, unprepared to defend Meredith's reputation this way. Murder, religion, sexuality, sure. But the rural ways of North Carolina were still a mystery. Like learning a foreign language, she felt like she needed to go to the bathroom and could only remember the word for "bus station."
"Yeah, who do you think paid for it?"
Natalie didn't know much about Meredith's parent
s. They were still alive, somewhere in western North Carolina, which might have been another continent. Meredith didn't talk about them much but she seemed to like them all right, and Natalie assumed they were marginally better than the Jameisons.
"And look who's paying now," Anthony said. "She upgraded."
The hate, Natalie realized, was something she would never be able to relieve or talk them out of. The boys could go to Harvard, Meredith could save their lives at the hospital, she could bake cookies or fix parking tickets or pray for them, but their hatred of Meredith would remain absolute. It was a fact of Natalie's life, like air and water. And love.
Beau came up to them, proudly holding aloft his box of 64 Crayolas. Natalie knelt and asked him what his favorite color was and watched him pry open the box until the crayon smell, waxy and rubbery and childhood, filled her senses. She put her hand on Beau's back, listening to him talk, resisting the urge to take Beau in her arms and shelter him from the world swirling around them.
# #
Chapter Forty-Four
The alarm woke Natalie early. Sunlight taunted from outside her window. She'd been getting the boys up at seven every morning for the week before school started, timing breakfast and dressing before the bus was due to arrive at 7:45. She wanted to drive them to school. She saw no good reason not to. But Meredith insisted they embrace their independence.
Natalie took them on a couple of dry runs to their classroom, met their teacher, pointed out repeatedly which bus number to ride. The alarm clock read 6:02 before she finally moved enough to turn it off. The bed was too big--a sea of empty space to traverse. She rolled onto her back. "You should be here," she thought to Meredith.
Next to the clock was a picture of Meredith and Vincent, arm in arm, taken on the porch the day they'd moved in. The boys were already two years old by then, and Meredith was working at the hospital. The newest nurse on the block.
"You should be here, too," Natalie said to Vincent.
Natalie wasn't quite sure when she'd started praying with Vincent in her thoughts. She still felt like an interloper in this house, with the boys, while their parents were absent. But she felt inside their realm, invader or not.
She got up at 6:15 and wrapped a robe around herself. She could take a shower when the boys were gone.
When the boys were gone. No more cloying attention all day long when she was trying to file briefs or do research. No more begging Mrs. Cranston for help. No more sounds. No more cries. No more lunch around the kitchen island, with Merritt throwing cereal at Beau. No more Hide and Seek Hollingsworth.
Maybe she should homeschool them.
Meredith's voice echoed in her head, telling her they needed a chance. They needed to try. If it was a mistake, she could homeschool them to be perfect, faithful, shut-in lawyers later. But the mistake had to be made.
Natalie slunk downstairs. In the kitchen, she made peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Two each, cut in half.
"Too much food," she heard Meredith's voice in her head.
"One to eat and one to trade."
"I don't want them trading."
"Let's just see what happens? If it's a mistake..."
"I should never give you a good argument."
Natalie chuckled and spread peanut butter. The bread and the peanut butter came from WIC, the raspberry and apricot preserves from Jake's father's farm. She was still grinning as she tucked the sandwiches into plastic bags and added an apple, chips, cheese slices, and filled their thermoses with half orange juice, half water.
She made coffee.
At 6:45, the alarm clock upstairs began to blare.
She listened.
The sound went off. But no other sounds were heard. She'd set out their clothes last night, hoping they would serve as a reminder of what today was. No shuffling. No yelling.
She frowned and took the first step. The door flew open at the top of the stairs.
Merritt, dressed, hair uncombed, rushed down the stairs. "Hungry," he said.
"Make yourself some cereal."
Beau was still in his pajamas. He carried his first-day-of-scool jeans and looked tousled and confused.
Natalie called to the kitchen, "Make me and Beau some, too."
"Aw," Merritt said.
Natalie ascended the stairs. "Mornin', Beau."
He nodded.
She herded him back into his room and picked up his shirt. "Drop the pants," she said.
He dropped his bundle and raised his arms. She draped the shirt over his hands first and he giggled as she pulled it down.
"Pants, Beau," she said.
He nodded.
She went to the door.
"Hey, Nat," he said.
She glanced back.
He grinned. "It's the first day of school!"
#
"How was school?" Natalie asked. She'd been pacing in front of their block, but now the bus came and disgorged ten children, including hers, with their fingers and toes intact.
"Fun. Katie was there. And Josh. And Patricia." Beau rolled the pronunciation. "Patreeceea."
Natalie laughed.
Merritt took her hand. "I don't want to go back."
"Why not, Merry?"
"It was boring."
"Merry knew everything. Every time the teacher did something, he knew it," Beau said.
Merritt ducked his head.
"Do you have homework?" Natalie asked.
"You have to read us a poem," Beau said.
Natalie nodded.
"Do I have to go back?" Merritt asked.
"Do you think you'll be able to keep our deal?"
Merritt considered as they walked into the house and into the kitchen, where she'd set out crackers, apples, and peanut butter. She sat down across from him at the table.
"I can," Merritt said.
"Good. I promise when mommy's home we'll talk, okay?" Homeschooling would only be an option with two parents, but she believed in it as much as Meredith did. In theory.
"When's mommy coming home?" Beau asked.
"Soon."
#
That night, she chose from Meredith's side of the poetry shelf, a ratty second-hand book marked from years of school use. Her own book collection, moved down from Charlotte in a U-Haul, augmented Meredith's--nearly tripled it--But she wanted the boys to experience their mother's tastes. She took the book upstairs to where the boys were already in bed. She checked their teeth. Both minty fresh. She sat on Beau's bed.
"This is your mother's book," she said.
Merritt beamed.
"Have you heard of Langston Hughes?"
They shook their heads.
"Well, here's the poem. The first of many, okay?"
She should have done this earlier, when they'd watched cartoons before starting dinner, before baking cookies for their lunch boxes. She should have made copies for them, and wrote down how they felt after she read it, and put it in their book bags to talk about tomorrow.
Homework. She'd learn.
"Ready?"
They nodded.
"It's called 'Daybreak in Alabama'…"
# #
Chapter Forty-Five
The sign was posted prominently at the front gate of the prison, but Natalie parked anyway, willing it not to be true.
"Stay in the car," she told Beau and Merritt.
"But--"
"Stay in the car."
Merritt began to tear up.
Beau scowled as she crossed the parking lot, toward the gate. Ida was at the top of the steps. "Visitation’s cancelled."
"What? Why?"
"No leave today. All I can tell you."
"What happened?"
Ida's expression tightened.
"Ida, please. I drove a long way."
"So did we," said a man leaning against the fence. "I'm not leaving here until I get in."
Ida said to him, "It won't be today. Please, go home."
But Natalie couldn't go home, not yet. Her body a
ched. The thought of another two hour drive made her sweat. "Can I call her?"
"No."
Natalie glanced back at her car. "The kids..."
"You're not the only family who came a long way."
"Damn straight," the man said.
"It'll be better if you just go."
"Is Merry--" she didn't know how to ask the unthinkable. "Do I have to worry about Merry?"
Ida softened. "You never have to worry about Merry."
Natalie nodded. She gazed at the buildings beyond the gate. She searched for Meredith in the windows and didn't see her.
"What do I tell my children?" she asked.
Ida shrugged. "The truth."
"Why--"
"There's no visitation today, Ms. Ivans."
Natalie strode across the parking lot, despite her knee about to buckle. Beau and Merritt got out of the car.
"Boys, what did I say?"
"Can we see mommy now?"
"No. We're not going to her today."
"Why not?"
Natalie knelt and held them at arm's length. She considered telling them someone had been bad at the prison, and it had been locked down. They understood lockdown. During their first week of school, they practiced. In case of a bomb or a shooter. Would they accept the explanation? But the prison wasn't locked down. There were no alerts, no armed guard posts. Just no visitation.
She considered telling them Meredith was with a patient who needed her. An emergency. They would be jealous, though, that Meredith would choose a stranger over them. Natalie would have to explain sometimes people had to make sacrifices to help other people--it wasn't easy--Merry was a hero.
They wouldn't like it.
"I don't know," she said, and hugged them.
"Are you going to cry, Natalie?" Merritt asked.
"I might. I miss your mother."
"Me too," Merritt said.
Beau was silent. He lifted his chin off Natalie's shoulder and gazed at the prison.
"So, we can't spend our morning here at prison," Natalie said, stressing 'prison' like it was an icky, ironic thing. "Let's do something else in Rocky Mount instead."
"What can we do in Rocky Mount?"
"Well, we can go to McDonalds." She felt guilty when their faces lit up. Teaching them to gorge on bad food when times got tough was not a positive life lesson. But she wanted to defy all the rules of the universe, if they were going to change arbitrarily on her anyway.