Blood Sisters

by Jo Barney

  Later, as first grade approached, he was calmed by the drugs that made his handicap more tolerable for him, for us, and for his teachers. He spent an hour a day in the special-ed room where Mrs. Black worked on his words, one at a time.

  Hank continued to attempt to cure his defective son by demanding that he talk. As Jimmy got older, his father demanded even more of him. I was relieved when Jimmy learned to say, “No,” to turn away not to his Legos anymore, but to his complex colored-pencil drawings.

  I remember trying to understand one night, as I nursed my shoulder that had caught the brunt of Hank’s midnight thrashing, what could be behind the animosity that flooded our home, drowning all efforts to show love, or even kindness, when the three of us were together. After all, my secret had remained hidden from the world, even from the doctor who had delivered the fully developed “preemie” without question. What else could it be?

  My glass is empty. I can no longer avoid the reality that Lloyd has returned. And worse, I cannot imagine what Hank will do if he ever learns the truth.

  14

  Hank just put on his hard hat and waved to a buddy whose name he can’t remember, a veteran like himself, as he goes to his position in front of the moving machine spewing out sheets of metal. His job is to make sure the sheets move along the belt in an orderly way. Something about the noise, the heat, the way the metal shimmers makes him forget to put on his gloves. Maybe it is the fact that he has only one more week of work here. Maybe something else.

  He runs up to the opening of the hooch and tosses in the grenade. He turns and backs away, but he catches a movement inside the hut, and he pauses, raises his rifle, ready to defend himself if the gooks inside make it out before the explosion. A little kid, maybe five or six, in a red T-shirt, appears in the doorway, looks at him, the grenade in his hand as if he were offering a gift to him. Behind the boy, a woman screams, reaches for the boy, grabs his T-shirt. Hank fires and turns at the same moment he hears the grenade explode. When the smoke settles, parts of the woman and the boy are scattered at Hank’s feet; pieces of red shirt drape across his boot.

  “Two for one,” Riley laughs. “But you wasted a round. Should have waited a couple of seconds and the grenade would have done the whole job.” Hank looks at the scrap of cotton he is untangling from his foot, the red shirt; a hole the size of a bullet marks the spot where the boy’s heart had been.

  “Get ready, buddy. Another wave of Chinks is just over the hill.”

  “Hey, Hank! What’s going on? You almost got your leg amputated by that loose sheet. Hank?”

  Hank feels himself sink to the floor. Hands help him to his feet. He is led to the lunchroom, given a glass of water. He is sweating, his heart racing. Like in my dreams, he thinks, but I’m awake. “I’m okay now.”

  “Maybe you’d better go home and rest.”

  At his supervisor’s suggestion, he shakes his head. “No, I feel okay. Must have been something I ate for lunch making me dizzy. I’ll take another few minutes, then get back on the line.” He realizes his cheeks are wet, and he dries them with a paper napkin.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Shit. Of course, I’m sure.” He breathes, gets up, and walks out of the lunchroom, hoping no one will notice how his legs are shaking. The guy from earlier, whose name—Wes—has now come to him for some reason, looks at him as he approaches.

  Wes touches his shoulder. “I do that sometimes, too. Relive the war.”

  Hank puts on his hard hat again. “How did you know? About me, I mean.”

  “I cry, too. Maybe we can talk sometime?”

  Hank nods, but he knows he can’t talk about the kid in the red T-shirt. Ever.

  * * *

  When he walks in the front door that night, he’s glad Jimmy is not there, probably still at work. Hank can’t deal with any shit right now. He finds the newspaper, turns to the sports page, but he can’t focus on the words. His chest tightens as he hears his son’s footsteps on the porch. He breathes, wonders whether there is a connection between the weirdness of this afternoon and a son who upsets him every evening. The dreams, today’s flashback, the tightness right now, are all about anger, aren’t they?

  He heads for bed, says he has a headache.

  The next day, Hank stops Wes on the way to his station on the line. “Got a minute?” he asks, taking the man’s arm and leading him to the lunchroom. “Don’t mean to be personal. But maybe you’re like me. Do your flashbacks happen most when you have something on your mind, a problem maybe?”

  Wes nods. “When I have something bothering me, the flashbacks come more often. Like problems with my wife. I’m trying the VA’s outpatient program, getting counseling, a med or two, and I’m calming down. Haven’t had a nightmare for two weeks.” Wes signals to the server, points to his cup. “Still waiting for the wife problem to calm down. One thing at a time.”

  Wes reminds Hank of the born-again guy in the bed next to him in the hospital in Tokyo where his mangled butt was sewn up. “It’s real, you know?” the earnest-eyed soldier had said, pointing at his own missing leg. “But God’s got a reason for this happening to me.” Hank sometimes wonders whether the guy ever found out the reason.

  Hank picks up his cup, drains it. “Yeah, I’ve been thinking that maybe my nightmares are connected to something closer to home. A grown-up son who is so retarded he can’t read and barely talks. And he won’t get cured with counseling at the VA, I’m sure.”

  Wes looks across the table, nods. “Sounds like maybe you don’t have the feelings you think you should have for a son who isn’t perfect.”

  Hank wants to smash Wes’s face with the doubled-up fist in his lap. Instead, he uncurls his fingers and tries to relax. “You’re like the guy who interviewed me before I got out. ‘Sounds like…sounds like…’ You bet your life, it sounds like. My son is not perfect. And I am not the perfect father for him.” He pushes back his chair. “This is the rest of my life. And now I don’t even have a job.”

  Wes holds up the palms of his hands. Peace, the gesture says. He doesn’t smile, but he meets Hank’s gaze and holds it. “Doesn’t have to be this way. Send him somewhere better. There’s a place—Wilcox House in Salem.”

  “You mean commit him to some institution?”

  “Your words, not mine. It’s a good place. They’ll take care of him. And then, at least, you’ll know you’ve done your best.”

  Hank shakes his head. “Who are you to give me advice?”

  “After I left Vietnam, I went back to school, got a degree in social work. Turns out, there’s not that much money in helping people. I came here for a job that could pay for a wife and a kid. I gave up a few dreams. Tell your wife about Wilcox. She might like the idea.”

  “How do you know about this Wilcox place?”

  “I have a stepdaughter there.” Wes smiles. “She is doing great, is happy, and even has a best friend. The first in her life. We couldn’t have done that for her.”

  “And your flashbacks?”

  “Like I said, they’re calming down.”

  15

  If it hadn’t been the startling blue of his eyes, I would have never recognized him.

  “Hello, Eleanor.” Lloyd’s lips barely move. His mumbled greeting matches his appearance. An unkempt beard drags against the collar of his jacket. The jacket is bunched into a snarl at his waist where his left hand is fiddling with the zipper, yanking, giving up. “Guess you never thought I’d show up here after you hung up on me.”

  I try to close the door, but his foot stops me. “What do you want?”

  “Let me in and I’ll tell you. I know your husband is at work. No reason not to let me in.” His fingers curl around the edge of the door.

  I pound at them. He laughs. I lean against the door, my body blocking his way in. “There’s one good reason, Lloyd,” I hiss. “You are not part of my life. After all these years, I’ve wiped you out. I owe you nothing, and I ask nothing of you except that you leave and never come ba
ck.”

  Lloyd laughs again, a gag of a chuckle, and he pushes the door open, sends me stumbling back into the room. “Oh, I think you owe me something, Eleanor. You’ve got my son.”

  “No!”

  He steps into the room and slams the door behind him. “Oh, do I frighten you? Good. Because I’m going to make your life hell.”

  Lloyd smells. His shoes crunch something, shit maybe, into the rug. His narrow vibrating body drops itself onto my sofa. “Maybe a drink?”

  “I’m sure I don’t have any of whatever you are on.” I hesitate. Why is he here? “A glass of white wine?” I must find out.

  “Chablis, vodka. Even beer. I’m not picky.”

  “Why are you here?”

  “Wine first.” Lloyd stretches out his legs, his feet on the coffee table, and I see that it is indeed shit on his shoe. I resist the urge to cringe. Instead I go to the kitchen, pour a glass of wine, find a bunch of paper napkins, hand them to him along with the glass. “Your shoe. Dog shit.”

  “Ever gracious, Eleanor, even when you’re pissed.” He wipes the bottom of his shoe, throws the napkin into the fireplace, and I see that he has lost incisors on each corner of his smile. “I am here to claim my son. He is twenty, earning money. Money that will be helpful to me.”

  “Absolutely not.”

  “Then I’ll tell your stalwart, conservative husband what you were doing during that year he was killing Communists—your son a souvenir of our romps in that closet of an apartment. It’s still there, you know. A monument to true love.”

  “You can’t prove anything you’re saying.”

  “Really? That new DNA test will do it for me. All I have to do is go to court and contest the fatherhood of our son.”

  Those nights—so long ago they seem to be someone else’s life. “What has happened to you, Lloyd?”

  “Life’s happened, darling.”

  “Your wife, your family?”

  “Gone with the wind. Tomorrow is another day.” He grins, or grits his teeth at me; it is hard to tell which. “What about you?”

  I cannot imagine ever having had sex with this dirty, eye-rolling person, twitching with some drug. “I am doing what I should be doing.” My words surprise me. “I am a housewife, a good wife to a returned veteran, a mother to a son. It’s been more than twenty years, Lloyd.” I sound so steady, so solid. As I lie, I feel the plastic bag pressing against my cheeks. I blink it away. “Whatever happened between us is in the past. We were two people who needed to be touched. Our coming together was only a brief, needy moment.”

  “You know, my wife suspected it. Not only about you but about the others. When she left, I was relieved. Then I understood that her leaving robbed me of what I had imagined to be my life.”

  For a minute, I hear the appealing young man he once was, then he gives me his gap-filled smile and brings me back to the present. But I feel an unexpected wave of empathy for him. I, too, have lied to keep a dream alive. It hasn’t worked for me, just as it hadn’t worked for Lloyd.

  “What do you want?”

  “I have no income, no place to be. I am no one. But maybe I have a son who might want to help me.”

  “Lloyd, you can’t depend on support from Jimmy. He can’t look out for himself, much less a homeless father.”

  He nods, and I am shocked to see that I am not telling Lloyd anything he doesn’t already know. “I’ve followed him to his job at the workshop, I know what he’s like. That’s why I’m willing to negotiate.”

  “You’re asking for money? For keeping a secret? Blackmail?”

  “Yes, I guess you can call it that. I’ll get out of your life for a monthly payment that will help me move on. The deal will be helpful to you, too, I imagine.”

  “How much?”

  “A thousand a month.”

  “Forever?”

  “Maybe not. I have a couple of other things going.”

  `“More blackmail? How many women are you using to fund your failure?”

  “Clever, Eleanor, but you are who I’m talking to right now.”

  Blackmail. Because of some naïve longing twenty-some years ago—a desire to be held by warm arms. That longing has been never satisfied. Ever. And now I’m going to pay for it, past and present. I have a son who will not understand the truth. And an erratic husband who must not know.

  “I might be able to find three hundred or so without Hank knowing. He gave up on our budget years ago, and I write the checks for bills.”

  “Five hundred. Bottom line. No checks. Cash delivered in two days to my PO box. First of the month, every month. I’ll visit again if this doesn’t work out.”

  Lloyd gives me a key and a torn slip of paper on which the number of the post office box where I am to deliver the money is scribbled. I jam them into my pocket as he drains his wine glass and gets up. He looks at his shoe, wipes it on the rug, turns, and waves as he goes out the door.

  Loneliness got me into this. I’m lonely right now. Have been for a long time. Where will it lead me next? I pour a glass of vodka. Wine won’t do it anymore.

  * * *

  I am a little drunk when I hear the knock at the back door and Patsy’s voice. I must look drunk because she asks whether I’m okay.

  “Yeah, sort of. Took a cold pill a while ago and I’m feeling liquidy.” It’s a half-truth, at least.

  Patsy glances at the glasses at in the sink and back at me. “So I guess today is not a good day to finish off the hedge?”

  “Guess not.” I have other things to worry about, including the key I have in my pocket. “How about tomorrow? And how about a cup of coffee right now?” I’m not sure why I am suggesting this because I’m not going to tell Patsy about Lloyd and his visit this morning. Probably because I’m still drowning in loneliness.

  “Mom said to call her if I needed her to be with Izzy, but she sounded as if she had chores to do before she begins her shift at the station. Probably best to postpone until you are feeling better. If the weather is good tomorrow, I can put the little girl in her playpen and she’ll enjoy watching us sweat.”

  The hedge. Something safe, manageable. Something I can distract myself with. “How does Jimmy’s work look on your side? I worried about him climbing that high on the ladder, but from here it looks as if he got most of the long stragglers cut back.”

  “He did just fine. Maybe you worry too much.” At the door, she waves. “Save the coffee for tomorrow, and get well.”

  My friend knows something is wrong. Well, today I’ll get my budget rearranged, find the money somehow, and organize a few things. No one will know about Lloyd, about anything. That is, if I dare trust the man who is blackmailing me. I look through our bills, our monthly commitments, our balance in our checking account. We could cancel our magazine subscriptions. We could end our automatic donations to the Red Cross.

  “You had company?” Hank’s voice stops my pencil, and I do not let my guilty hand cover the paper in front of me. Hank, though, is looking at the glasses lining at the sink.

  “Patsy came by this afternoon. We had a glass of wine.” I should have gotten rid of the evidence as soon as Lloyd left. Two witnesses to a visit that could change everything, if they ever compare notes. Hank could get suspicious. I change that thought. Will get suspicious. His paranoia festers.

  “Yeah? Since when are you drinking during the day? Do I have to lock the liquor cabinet in order to get dinner?” He sets his lunch box down, frowns at me.

  “You’re early.” I need to change the subject. “I’ve been working on the budget. Dinner is coming as soon as Jimmy gets home.”

  “What kind of budget can we have when I am not working? Food stamps? Or are you planning to go to work? At Lerner’s?”

  I dig for an answer. All lies. “I’m thinking you won’t be out of work for long, and in the meantime, we could get a second mortgage on this house. And maybe I will get a job. Helen said the other day that they are hiring at the shop that does mailings. Clerical.”<
br />
  Hank opens the refrigerator, pulls out the bottle of vodka, inspects it as if he suspects it’s not just wine I’ve been drinking. He pours a glass, then two, gives me one, and chooses a chair at the table. Apparently, tonight he’s not going directly to his overstuffed chair and the paper. “I learned about a place for Jimmy today that might make things easier around here. It’ll cost money—not much, though. It’s based on our income, which is about to disappear.”

  This time I do cover the papers I’ve been working on. “You sound cheerful. I want to hear about it. Maybe tomorrow?” Do I dare drink more vodka? Yes, I do.

  16

  Hank has been noticing the changes in the hedge. Did they think he wouldn’t, sneaking around, hiding the black bags out by the garbage cans, avoiding the backyard and the need to mow it, Eleanor not even reminding him to get out the mower? Doesn’t matter. Nothing matters anymore. Not even losing his job. Well, it does, but he can’t do anything about it, can he? Wes says he’ll apply for unemployment checks and go out and find something else. Wes is ten years younger than him, looks even younger and has some sort of degree. Who’d hire a balding guy who has worked twenty years in an aluminum factory and not much else?

  Still, cutting back the hedge is something he told Eleanor not to do. His wife, son, and that neighbor went ahead anyway. Probably wouldn’t have made any difference if he’d talked to the husband about it. He hasn’t showed his face during all this. Hank opens the new bottle of vodka and pours himself a drink. From the kitchen window, he can see the hedge. It is ugly now, full of holes and bare branches. The neighbor’s house, the second story at least, looks right at him. Not one damn thing is his own anymore, including his privacy.