The Volunteer

by Barbara Taylor Sissel

  Cort gets into his truck.

  Grace offers an apology for creating a scene and her manner suggests exasperation, a degree of chagrin.

  “It’s all right.” Sophia and Carolyn utter the reassurance together, but it’s Carolyn who reaches out her hand as if she, like Cort, would soothe Grace with her touch.

  “It’s so terrible what you’re going through.”

  “Yes.” Grace fishes her keys from her purse anxious to be away.

  Relieved, Sophia starts for the house, but then Carolyn announces that she and Thomas have talked. “I don’t know if it will help you to know this, but he’s afraid you’ll blame him.”

  Sophia takes her hand from the door.

  Grace pockets her keys. “He told you that? When?”

  “Yesterday. I made lemonade and took him a glass and we started talking. You know, sometimes it’s easier to tell someone other than your mom—” the word sounds overly weighted with emphasis to Sophia— “when you’ve done something stupid, when you’re— Oooh—” The sound Carolyn makes is brittle, wincing.

  “Cecie? What is it?” Sophia takes a step toward her.

  “My head!” Carolyn’s eyes squeeze shut; her fingertips dig into her temples. “It feels as if someone just planted an ax in my skull.” Beads of moisture clot her hairline, show up beneath her eyes, slick her upper lip.

  “Is it your sinuses? She gets these terrible sinus headaches,” Sophia explains for Grace’s benefit.

  “You should probably go inside,” Grace says.

  “Yes, go on, get out of this air.” Sophia makes a little shooing motion.

  “I hope you don’t mind about Thomas.” Carolyn squints at Grace. “I would never repeat our conversation to anyone.”

  Grace assures her it’s fine.

  “He wants to fix things, but he doesn’t know how,” Carolyn says walking backward toward the house. “It’s like when you wish you could take something back, but you can’t.”

  Sophia feels a nibbling concern. She calls out that there’s aspirin in her medicine cabinet if Carolyn wants it. Sophia won’t keep anything stronger.

  Carolyn’s small wave of acknowledgement is like a flag asking for mercy. Sophia’s heart sinks. There is some other meaning here, as with the extra baggage, something else Carolyn is trying to say. If Russ were here Carolyn would confide in him and he, in turn, would tell Sophia. But how would it work now? Would Sophia just never know Carolyn’s troubles? Would they drift farther and farther apart until there was nothing left of a connection? Was she to have no one? No family at all?

  “Thomas didn’t say what exactly was his fault.” Carolyn’s voice lifts.

  “I think I know,” Grace answers. “Thanks for sharing.”

  Carolyn waves again.

  “I like your daughter,” Grace says when the door closes behind Carolyn, “but I hate when my kids do this, when they talk to someone other than me about their problems.”

  “Or when they won’t talk at all.” Sophia speaks almost unconsciously and then goes on before she can stop herself explaining that Carolyn’s visit was only to have lasted the weekend, that she’d appeared with this ridiculously large amount of luggage. “She’s been home two weeks now,” Sophia says, “and all I know for sure is that she turned down the job opportunity of a lifetime and broke her engagement. It’s all very—” She stops. What is she thinking? As if this could possibly matter to Grace Capshaw of all people? How foolish she sounds. “I’m sorry. It’s nothing compared.”

  “Please, you have no idea how much I miss being an ordinary mom having a kibitz about the kids....” Grace trails off on such a wistful note that Sophia reaches for her hand.

  They exchange a look. Grace says, “I’m still not sure talking is such a good idea. It makes me feel so— So exposed. I’m scared of losing control, of not getting it back.”

  Sophia waits.

  Grace finds her keys. “But I’ve slept better since we started.”

  “Well, that’s a good thing.”

  “Yes.”

  “Cort seems to care very much.” Sophia hazards the observation.

  “I wish he didn’t.”

  No, Sophia thinks. That would be the last thing on Grace’s list of wishes.

  “Cort wants me to leave Thomas alone, to stop pressuring him, but what if I lose him? How will I stand it? I already feel as if our relationship will never be normal again.”

  “I know,” Sophia says and she’s speaking straight from her heart, from her own burgeoning concern. She and Grace exchange another glance, another moment that is full of understanding and mutual commiseration. They are just mothers, two mothers, who by sharing their worry are lightening their burden and it’s lovely. Sophia had forgotten the refuge a friendship could provide.

  “Do you like Carolyn’s fiancé?”

  “Very much,” Sophia replies and when Grace asks what happened, Sophia tells how Carolyn’s snooping led to her discovery of the divorce decree dissolving Larry’s prior marriage that she had known nothing about. “She feels he betrayed her.”

  “You sound as if you think she’s making too much of it.”

  “Yes, but what do I know?” Sophia shrugs.

  “Absolutely nothing. I mean you’re just the mom and a psychologist with years of experience.” Grace smiles.

  A psychologist who isn’t acting like a psychologist, Sophia thinks. She should shift this dialogue into clinical mode or else end it. Instead, she returns Grace’s smile, ignoring the lecture going on in her head.

  Grace fingers her keys. “I guess you haven’t had a chance to talk to him.”

  “Thomas? Not yet. What did you mean when you said you knew why he felt he was at fault?”

  “The last time he saw his dad, Thomas blew up. He called Jarrett a loser and said he hated him.” Grace tips back her head, blinking rapidly. “This is hard.”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “He said he’d be glad when Jarrett was dead. And then he— He called his dad an f-up, only he didn't say f—”

  Sophia shifts the carton of paint samples, tucking it under her elbow. She realizes she hasn’t heard the hammer and resists an urge to look around. What if Thomas is nearby?

  “It was a few days later that Jarrett petitioned the court to stop his appeals and it seems pretty obvious that Thomas thinks he’s to blame and he can’t face his dad.”

  “Do you blame Thomas?” Sophia asks softly.

  “No. Maybe. I mean Jarrett denies it, but what if Thomas’s outburst is the reason he dropped his appeals? I keep wondering what would happen now if Thomas apologized, whether Jarrett would change his mind. It’s a long shot, I know. Thomas would have to see Jarrett, for one thing.”

  “He doesn’t want to.”

  “No, but they’ll be moving Jarrett soon from the Terrell unit to The Walls in Huntsville. “That’s where they—”

  Sophia nods. She’s aware that The Walls is the unit where the death house is, where the actual executions are carried out.

  “Jarrett doesn’t want us to see him there, so after school today, when I picked up the kids, I told them we had to visit their dad before he leaves Terrell and Thomas just went off. He started yelling that he didn’t want to hear another word about Jarrett. Not another fuck-ing—” Grace’s voice breaks.

  Sophia slides her hand under Grace’s elbow as if she might hold a part of Grace’s pain.

  “What if his last words to his father are words of hate? I don’t care what Jarrett did, he doesn’t deserve to have his life end thinking we hate him.” Grace shields her eyes. “How am I going to live with it? I might as well put the killing drugs into him myself. Truthfully? I wish I could go with him.”

  “Grace?”

  “It’s my fault this has happened.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Grace drags in a breath, wipes her face. “After Dad got the tip about the double sale, he had Jarrett take the codex out of the restaurant, so it wouldn’t be there when Ra
fe came for it. Dad used Jarrett that way, you know? He gave him the corner office and the six-figure salary, but he treated Jarrett like his flunky. Jarrett knew it, too, but it was a game to him, and to Dad and Rafe. They used each other, manipulated each other.”

  “What happened, Grace?”

  “Jarrett brought it home. He knew it was stolen, knew people, dangerous people were looking for it. He and my father both knew. They put my children at risk and I couldn’t ignore that. I gave Jarrett an ultimatum. I said he had to take the codex back to my dad, immediately, and quit the whole sorry business, or I would take the children and we would leave him. He would never see us again.”

  “Did he believe you?”

  “He was— It was like something broke inside him. If only I hadn’t threatened him. I sent him back there to—to the restaurant right when—just when—”

  Sophia rubs Grace’s arm murmuring, “It’s all right,” but of course it isn’t.

  “When he got there, Dad had already shot Rafe. He was dead on the floor, blood everywhere. There were federal agents everywhere, too, but neither Dad nor Jarrett knew that. I think by then Dad had completely lost every sense of reality. He was waving the gun around, shouting at Jarrett that they had to get the mess cleaned up and get rid of Rafe’s body and when Jarrett argued, Dad pointed the gun at him and said Jarrett could die too, as easily as Rafe.”

  “Jarrett didn’t back down?”

  “No. He went for the gun and he and Dad struggled. The gun went off and then it was my dad who was dead.” Grace’s shrug is small, defeated. “Because of me. Because I threatened Jarrett with losing us. If I hadn’t, Dad and the marshal would still be alive and Jarrett—”

  “Oh, but I think you’re taking on—”

  “Dad shot Rafe in the back of the head. The bullet Jarrett fired into my dad blew apart his femoral artery. He bled to death. The marshal was shot in the abdomen. He died three days later from a massive infection. Jarrett talked about the sound, how after the gun went off, he couldn’t hear anything. He said he went stone deaf.”

  “Grace, why don’t we go into the kitchen? I’ll make—”

  “That isn’t all.” Grace levels a glance at Sophia. “When I gave Jarrett the ultimatum, when I said he had to quit working for Dad or I’d leave him, a part of me wanted him to refuse.”

  “You wanted him to let you go?”

  “Yes, then no one could blame me, not even the kids, when they learned the truth.” A small pause is filled with rue. “I didn’t— I didn’t love Jarrett as much as I should. I didn’t cherish him. I think I didn’t know, didn’t really know what that meant, not until—” Tears collect in the corners of Grace’s eyes and she clenches her jaw as if that will lock them in place. “What can I do? It’s so complicated and—and it isn’t only because of what I did or—or Thomas or—”

  “Yes.” Sophia looks purposefully at Grace now so that there can be no confusion between them.

  Grace’s face crumples, her tears brim over, tracking her cheeks, making silvery threads. “Am I so obvious?”

  Sophia gives her arm a squeeze.

  “I’m afraid of my feelings for him. It’s as if in loving Cort, I’m being unfaithful to—aahhh. I should go on daytime TV. Not that we’ve done anything. It isn’t physical. I—I want that. I’ve asked, but Cort is so—” Grace gropes for the proper description— “honorable.”

  “That’s an uncommon word nowadays.”

  “Cort is an uncommon man.” Grace presses her fist to her mouth. “I shouldn’t do this, make comparisons. I shouldn’t be in love with my husband’s brother. I am not honorable.”

  Chapter 14

  Fall - 1979

  The old neighborhood was scarcely a twenty minute drive from where Jarrett lived with Grace, but it was another world. His world, the one he’d been raised in. The one he couldn’t get out of fast enough, but not long after the wedding, he found himself back there, cruising the streets, looking at the houses, squat brick boxes, each on their gruff square of used-up lawn, and his throat closed. He felt like he might break, bawl like a baby and he hated the weakness and the voice in his brain that said this was his turf, where he belonged. He didn’t fit in Grace’s world.

  He told his mother he was a fish out of water. She was down on her knees in her vegetable patch in the back yard, yanking out a yellow-mottled snarl of tomato vines, what was left of a rotting row of peppers. She planted the garden every spring in a manic rush of anticipation and then within weeks she’d be crushed by the heat, overcome with her chronic despair. There never was much of a harvest except for what the coons got.

  She sat back on her heels and squinted up at him. “I tried to tell you those people don’t mix with folks like us.”

  Stick with your own kind, had been her advice. She practiced her own version of snobbery.

  “Have you had a fight?” she asked and her face reflected grim satisfaction: Grace was trouble, she’d been right.

  Jarrett broke his gaze from hers. A chain link fence smothered in wild trumpet vine surrounded the lot and he watched the bees weaving in the air above its orange-red blossoms. “I know everything you’re going to say.”

  “Then why did you come?” Since you know everything, Mr. Big Shot, Mr. Want-It-All.... It was how she thought of him. His marriage into the Tilley family was a slap in her face. He’d flouted every hard thing she knew about society, about knowing your place and sticking to it. She went back to digging, resentment sharp in every move.

  Jarrett shifted his feet so that his shadow fell over her, affording her protection from the sun. He remembered a story she told about a trip they’d made to Galveston Bay once when he was around four. She’d been distracted a moment, tending to Cort, but some sixth sense had caused her to look up in time to see Jarrett venturing into the surf, being swept into deep water. His mom was no swimmer; the ocean made her nervous, but she came after him that day. When he regained consciousness after she used CPR to revive him, the sand was warm under his back and his mother’s tears of relief were freckling his salt-crusted face. His clearest memory from that day was of her smile. She had looked like an angel to him. She had plucked him from certain disaster; she had saved him.

  Maybe that was why he’d come today because he felt as if he was drowning.

  “Is it the job then?” His mother started to rise and Jarrett put his hand under her elbow. The point was sharp against his palm. There was nothing to her really, a little papery flesh stretched over a thin network of bones. He wondered if she’d ever been happy.

  “How is it you can take off in the middle of the workday? I don’t understand what it is that you do.” She dusted dirt from her knees. “That fancy title you have, VP of whatever—”

  “Property development. I’m the vice president of property development.”

  “Yes, I have your business card. But what does that mean?” Mistrust rode in her voice. In her world, the world of the pissed-off poor, a guy didn’t start at the top. He didn’t get the corner office, the Cadillac, the hefty expense account, but Jarrett had all those perks. Tilley had made sure of it, that his post-wedding job offer was more substantial than a check Jarrett could tear up and walk away from.

  Keep your friends close and your enemies closer....

  Jarrett knew the game and the rules and he figured as long as he was onto Tilley it didn’t make a shit if he was the low-man, acted the grateful protégé, because look how he was living? The lifestyle was beyond his dreams. But it wasn’t working; he didn’t feel right. He didn’t get how to relate to Tilley’s cronies, the bunch of ozone-rich, over-educated money men Tilley ran with. Philanthropists, the old man said. Venture Capitalists. Captains of Commerce. The list of their names read like a who’s who straight from society reporter Maxine Messenger’s column in the Houston Chronicle. They played polo and golf; they belonged to clubs, sat on the boards of do-gooder charities. Jarrett had nothing in common with them. He wasn’t good at their kind of bullshitting; he didn
’t know the difference between a salad fork and a dessert fork. The thick forest of crystal that confronted him at a formal dinner broke him out in a sweat.

  The worst thing was Tilley knew Jarrett’s humiliation; the old bastard took pleasure in it.

  Jarrett could tell his mom all of this, but instead he described his “job”. He said he was responsible for looking at property, that he scouted locations for resorts, that it wasn’t the kind of work that required regular hours. He made it sound as if he was important to Tilley and his organization. It was how Jarrett wanted it to be. If it was an ego thing, which was what his mom would say if she knew, so be it.

  She cleaned the tines of her trowel. “You don’t even have a college degree, Jarrett. You’ve done remodeling jobs with your brother, worked as a mechanic.”

  “Jesus, Ma, how many times do I have to tell you? I ran the whole fleet.”

  “I don’t mean to hurt your feelings. I just—”

  “Do you have any tea made? It’s hotter than hell out here.” Jarrett followed his mother through the screen door letting it slam behind him and even if she hadn’t said: “Don’t slam the screen door,” he would have heard her anyway, she’d warned him so often. The same as she’d warned him it was useless to dream, to wish for more than what life gave you. It was as if she’d imprinted his mind with her caution and while he realized she only wanted what was best for him, it aggravated him that he couldn’t shut her out. Couldn’t rid himself of the stifling sense that he’d never be free of this place and that he’d never feel okay anywhere else. He sat at the table, boiling and unhappy, and when the old A/C window unit kicked on, honing the worn underscore of mildew in the air, it set him off. He slapped the table. “Goddamnit, Ma. When are you going to replace that piece of shit?”

  “When I get the money.”

  “I told you I’ll buy you one. I’d move you out of this dump if you’d let me.”

  His mother set down the tea glasses and ignored him.

  He passed his glass back and forth between his palms, took a swallow, thought about leaving.