by Cathy Holton
“I've let you down,” he said, his voice breaking. “I've let you down when you trusted me and now there's nothing I can do to make it right.”
Her mind was racing. Her heart swooped and veered through her chest like some monstrous bird.
“The state's closed down the job site,” he said. “They're shutting down the site until they've had a chance to excavate the ridge. There's Indian artifacts buried there and it might take years before we can develop the island and get our money out. Redmon says his attorneys are good and he'll fix it eventually but in the meantime I've lost everything.” He breathed heavily. “Everything,” he said.
There was a sound in her ears like the wind moving through a pine grove, a steady insistent noise, creeping through her head and drowning out the low-pitched radio, her own ragged breathing, the broken sound of Jimmy Lee's voice.
“I've lost everything you had,” he said. “Everything you trusted me with.”
She had been sitting on the screened porch, reading, when the sheriff's deputy served the Child Custody Complaint. He was an old friend of her daddy's and his face was solemn and apologetic as he handed it to her through the screened door. She took it and signed where he told her to sign, feeling a dull thudding pain in the pit of her stomach. She stared at the document without reading it as the deputy said his sad good-byes and drove away. A slight breeze, heavy with the scent of rain, blew softly across the porch. Gradually her eyes began to focus. She read the complaint, from top to bottom, and then read it again.
“I don't expect you to forgive me,” he said. “I'll never forgive myself.”
All this time she had expected Charles to be the one who took her children away, and now it seemed it was Virginia who wanted them. Not both of them, just Whitney.
“I'll pay you back if it takes me the rest of my life to do it,” he said fiercely.
She had tried to reach Virginia on the telephone but no one had answered at the house. Whitney's cell phone appeared to be turned off. They were probably on their way to Florida but Nita had to see for herself. She took a sharp right and swung back onto the highway. The sun broke sporadically through the clouds. Green forests rose on either side of the road shimmering like a mirage.
He said, “Please say something, Nita.”
Waves of heat rippled off the asphalt, collecting in distant puddles that thinned and evaporated as she got closer. A putty-colored bird swooped above the highway.
“I can't talk to you right now,” she said, and hung up.
VIRGINIA, OF COURSE, WAS GONE. HER MERCEDES WAS IN THE drive but her house was deserted. She had most likely taken Redmon's Volvo convertible to the beach as it was the car most likely to impress two adolescent girls. Too late, Nita had caught on to Virginia's ploy. She tried to call Redmon but his secretary said he was in a meeting with his lawyer. Desperate, she called Charles, and his secretary said yes he was in, and yes he would see her if she would come now. Charles picked up the phone then as if he were afraid she'd change her mind. She told him she'd be there in ten minutes.
She drove slowly, slumped against the door, her cheek resting against her hand. The storm broke finally, lashing the trees and drumming against the windshield, but Nita drove on, numb to everything around her, even danger, weighed down by a fierce heavy sorrow that swung from her breastbone like an anvil.
Charles stood at the window in his office watching the storm and waiting for his wife. He refused to think of her as his ex-wife. He had been expecting her call but he had not expected the degree of suffering he heard in her voice. It had thrown him a little, and made him question whether he would have the courage to do what he had to do.
To steady his resolve, he thought of his wife in the arms of that shiftless carpenter. Rage welled up inside him, damp and heavy, poised above his heart like an avalanche. He could feel it giving way, sliding and tumbling, a sudden sense of weightlessness and violent flight, falling past his heart, his liver, his spleen, and churning into his bowels. All his life he had fought against fate. All his life he had waited for his luck to change. Only child of the bold and sadistic Judge, he had fought tooth and nail for his mother's attention. Fought and lost. The old man had sucked it out of her, all the love and attention she was capable of giving, the small degree of tenderness, her meager capacity for self-sacrifice, leaving nothing for Charles. The marrow- sucked bones of a bleached carcass, that's what his mother's love had been to him. But then he met Nita James and he had felt his luck changing. He had seen her vast capacity for love, had immersed himself in it like a parched man, had dreamed of starting a new family with her, different from his own.
But fate had turned that dream to dust, had crumbled it in the time it took his wife and children to drive away from him on that gray November afternoon into the arms of an impoverished carpenter. In the time it took for his law firm to come crashing down around him amid rumors of moral turpitude and fiscal mismanagement. Charles had thought his life was over. He had mourned the loss of his wife the way an artist mourns the loss of his greatest creation.
And now she was on her way to see him, to beg him to take her back (oh, not in so many words, but surely she understood by now that in order to have the child, she must take him, too). She would throw herself on his mercy and he would make everything all right again. He would call off his mother and retrieve Whitney. He would make his family whole again.
He heard her come into the waiting room and he went to his desk and sat down, pretending to read a brief while Mrs. Corley did her best to comfort Nita. “Go right in, Mrs. Motes,” he heard her say, and he cringed at the sound of that odious name. “He's expecting you.”
He stood up and stepped around his desk as she came in, and he had just a glimpse of her pale, tearstained face before she threw herself into his arms. She sobbed for some time, her little head resting beneath his chin and her full round bosom heaving against his chest, and he thought how right she felt wrapped in his arms. Holding her again, he wondered how he had ever taken her for granted.
Her sobs gradually subsided and she seemed to remember herself, and pulled away in embarrassment. She slid down into one of the chairs facing his desk and when he didn't release her hand, she moved it gently, and reached in her purse for a Kleenex.
“Sorry,” she said, dabbing at her face.
“Now, what's all this about,” he said briskly, moving around his desk and sitting down in his chair, facing her. He had decided earlier his manner would be that of a trusted adviser, courteous but emotionally distant.
She looked at him, her eyes swollen with crying. “Don't you know?” she said in a small voice. “Don't you know what's happened?”
“No,” he lied. “Tell me.”
She told him, beginning in a trembling voice that grew firmer and more determined as she went on. Her eyes hardened until they were small and red-rimmed, smoldering in the smooth flat plane of her face. Looking at his wife's fierce expression he was reminded of that time, right before she left him, when she discovered the truth about the annual Montana hunting trip and went around the house with a look of numbed outrage on her face. Charles, unaware of her discovery, had caught her several times standing behind him holding a gleaming kitchen utensil in her hand and looking down at him with the blank expression of an executioner gazing down at the neck of the condemned prisoner. He had been frightened of her then, and he was frightened of her now.
She blew her nose and looked at him. “So you knew nothing of your mother's plans?” she asked coldly.
“N-N-No,” he said. Goddamn it. He always stuttered when he was nervous. To throw her off track he said, “She must have gotten her attorney to allow her a private hearing in front of the judge.”
“Is that legal?”
He smiled, relaxing. He was on firmer ground now. “Not exactly,” he said, tenting his hands in front of him. “And I don't know a lot about grandparents' rights, it's a relatively new phenomena, grandparents seeking custody of minor children. But remember, thi
s is Ithaca, Georgia, and my mother was married to a judge and she has a lot of influence. I'm sure there is a hearing set for sometime in the next few weeks to give you a chance to voice your case.”
“Two weeks,” Nita said tersely. “August eleventh.”
“Okay, well in two weeks you'll be able to at least get all this out in open court. Although I'll tell you my concern.” He frowned and put his tented fingers up in front of his mouth as if he were just now realizing this.
She waited and then said, “What? What is your concern?”
“I can't believe the judge would go ahead and grant Virginia custody unless he thought there was some kind of endangerment to the child.” He was trying to sound like a trusted legal adviser, but instead he sounded judgmental and insincere. Referring to Whitney as “the child” had definitely been a misstep. Nita looked at him suspiciously.
“Don't be ridiculous,” she said coldly. She looked down at her hands in her lap. After a minute, she looked up again and said, “Do you know something about this, Charles? About this endangerment thing?”
“Well.” He wasn't sure how to proceed without giving away the fact that he'd been in on his mother's scheme. He hadn't approved of it, but he hadn't stopped it, either. And if Nita got wind of any collusion on his part, the reconciliation would never occur. Never. “There is something Virginia, I mean Mother, mentioned some time ago. At dinner. I really didn't think much about it at the time, of course, I'm sure there's no impropriety on Jimmy Lee's part …” He put his hands out in front of him, palms up, as if trying to reassure Nita of his belief in Jimmy Lee's innocence, but she motioned impatiently for him to go on. “Well, Virginia,” he began, looking at her, and then changed course again. “Mother,” he said firmly. “Mother told me that Whitney had mentioned to her several times that she and Jimmy Lee always play around. Those were her words. We like to play around. And when Mother pushed her on it, she admitted that sometimes Jimmy Lee puts his hands under her shirt, on her belly …”
Nita shot up out of her chair. “He was tickling her,” she shouted. “Oh my God, what is Virginia implying? I don't for one minute think Whitney would ever accuse Jimmy Lee of anything improper. This is all Virginia's doing! Virginia has taken a perfectly innocent event and twisted it into something evil!” Charles had never seen her so angry. He sat in stunned amazement while she continued, leaning her hands against his desk. “She's made something evil out of something innocent because that's the kind of lying, coldhearted snake she is.” She flushed, remembering suddenly that she was talking about his mother. She sat down rigidly, trying to compose herself. Her lower lip trembled for a while and then got still. “I'm sorry, Charles,” she said finally, sounding stiff and formal.
Charles, who had only recently compared his mother's love to the marrow-sucked bones of a bleached carcass, took no offense. He dipped his head politely, trying to regain his position of trusted adviser. “I'll make a few phone calls tomorrow,” he said, pretending to write something on a legal pad. “And see what I can do.”
“Thank you,” she said, her voice breaking.
“Of course I'll do what I can,” he began, wondering if it would be inappropriate for him to rise and take her in his arms again, wondering if it might not make her sullen and distrustful.
She wiped her face again with a Kleenex. “She's our child and we must work together in her best interests.”
“Of course.”
She blew her nose and rose, and he rose with her. “Any help you can give me will be much appreciated,” she said. “And that includes calling your mother and talking her out of this foolishness before it goes any further and causes irreparable harm to our family.”
“Yes. I'll try and call her tonight.” He came around the desk, wondering if it might be all right to take her hand, to put his arm around her shoulders, or better yet, embrace her. With any luck, his touch would set off another flood of tears and he would have an excuse to comfort her. He put his hand up to her cheek but she moved slightly and the hand fell awkwardly to her forearm, where it rested like a bloated corpse.
“Of course I'll hire an attorney,” she said. “I can't expect you to involve yourself legally.”
He hadn't expected this. His breathing quickened and a fluttering sense of panic gripped his stomach. How would he thread the narrow tightrope between his mother and Nita, how would he maintain his duplicity with another lawyer involved? “Maybe that won't be necessary,” he began hesitantly.
She looked at him, her eyes hard behind their wet lashes and her face set in the fierce expression he remembered so well. He dropped his hand to his side. “She's my baby,” she said evenly, “and I mean to have her back. No matter what it takes. No matter what I have to do.”
He cleared his throat, trying to think of something supportive to say. Something that didn't commit him one way or the other. “Look on the bright side,” he said finally. “When she's fourteen, which is only a couple of years away, she'll have the right to choose who she wants to live with anyway.”
Nita's face clouded. She said, “After a couple of years under Virginia's roof, under Virginia's influence, who do you think she'll choose?”
She was clever to have realized this. Virginia was a formidable enemy, as Charles well knew. He had spent most of his life in skirmishes with his mother, determined to get the upper hand, and always losing. The only battle he had ever won was the one over his engagement to Nita, which Virginia had vehemently opposed. And now it was his mother's scheme, the one he had refused to participate in, that had brought Nita back into his arms, where she belonged. There could be no doubt, now, what he must do. He would promise to help Nita but he would allow his mother to go on with her revenge, unchecked. He would wait until Nita's marriage crumbled under the strain of Virginia's plot, and then he would make his move. The deceit of this decision posed no moral dilemma for Charles. He had been practicing law for twenty years and had long ago given up the illusion of morality. A man had to do what a man had to do, to get his family back. Once Jimmy Lee had gone and Nita had returned to him, they would retrieve Whitney and settle down again as a family.
They would be one big happy family again.
NITA DROVE HOME THROUGH THE RAIN-DRENCHED STREETS. THE storm had passed and the sun, wreathed in ragged clouds, dropped slowly behind the dark line of distant trees. She felt drained, lifeless. Nothing had ever mattered as much to her as her children, and now she had lost her only daughter to her heartless conniving ex-mother-in-law. She had built her defenses against Charles and instead it had been his mother who snuck around Nita's unguarded flank in the dead of night and stole her child. For the first time in her life, sweet Nita, former Homecoming Queen and Crusader for Christ, understood why one human being would kill another. She could understand why Angel Phipps's mother had poured antifreeze into her husband's oatmeal to protect her child. Once on this tack, her imagination veered off into uncharted waters. She spent the rest of the ride home with her mind crowded with images of Virginia shrieking in pain from arsenic poisoning, Virginia flopping down a flight of stairs like a broken rag doll, Virginia lying in a watery grave at the bottom of the Black Warrior River, food for fish and slimy gastropods. Caught up in her visions of vengeance, Nita could think of nothing else.
When she arrived home, Jimmy Lee was gone.
LAVONNE AND EADIE ARRIVED AN HOUR LATER. THE house was dark except for the kitchen. Nita sat alone at the table in a pool of light clutching a shot glass. On the table in front of her sat a bottle of tequila and two small glasses. Eadie hugged her and Lavonne sat down across from her and said, “Okay. Start at the beginning and tell us exactly what happened.” Nita poured out three shots of tequila and told them.
“That low-life bitch,” Eadie said, when she'd finished. “That slimy, backstabbing female Judas. You know why she's done this, don't you? She's getting even for what we did to fucking Charles. She found out what happened in Montana and now she's getting even with all of us, through Nita. She w
as pumping me at Nita's wedding, trying to find out what happened on the hunting trip, and I'll bet she finally figured out some way to get Redmon to spill the beans. Some way I don't even want to think about.” Eadie made it a habit not to think about other people's sex lives, but she knew a dominatrix relationship when she saw one. Even if the dominatrix dressed in Anne Taylor suits and talked like Scarlett O'Hara on speed.
Lavonne patted Nita's hand and looked through the doorway to the darkened house beyond. “Where's Jimmy Lee?” she asked.
“Gone with the wind,” Nita said bitterly, lifting her glass. She told them about the failed business deal with Virginia and Redmon.
“He'll be back,” Eadie said, pouring another round of drinks. She was an expert when it came to hot-and-cold relationships, and she figured, given the right circumstances, Jimmy Lee and Nita's would heat up again.
“He should be here now,” Lavonne said firmly.
“He's probably feeling humiliated and guilty.”
“That's no excuse.”
“I don't want to talk about Jimmy Lee right now,” Nita said in a brittle voice, setting her glass down on the table. “I want to talk about how to get my child back.”
“Did you get an attorney?” Lavonne said.
“I got Rosebud. She says it's going to be a long, expensive fight going up against Virginia and Redmon. She says his pockets are pretty deep and I have about six hundred and eighty dollars in my checking account.” Nita looked like she might cry and Lavonne said, “Don't worry. I'll help you with the attorney's fees,” and Eadie got out her checkbook and wrote her a check. “Y'all don't have to do that,” Nita said. Then she began to cry in earnest and Eadie and Lavonne put their arms around her. After a while, Nita sat up and blew her nose. “I'll get a sinus infection if I don't stop,” she said, sniffing.