Frances picks up her spoon and stirs it against the sides of her cup making dissonant circles.
“I know you won’t believe this,” Esther finally says, “but what happened hurt me more than it hurt you.”
Sophia laughs, a short bark. “So I should pity you? You don’t want forgiveness, but pity, and my unending gratitude? I don’t even know where Dylan is buried!”
At the mention of his name, Esther flinches.
Frances keeps her head bowed.
“I have to go.” Sophia thrusts her chair under the table. “Carolyn has started her period and I forgot to pick up tampons for her at the store.” The lie pops out spur of the moment. I know about your lover, Mother. The thought springs into Sophia’s mind. I know you were unfaithful to Daddy. It is all she would have to say to bring Esther down from her moral mountain, yet for reasons Sophia only half understands, she can’t vent the accusation. There is her leftover girlhood disgust at the idea of her mother ever having had a lover and there is her suspicion that taking the lover may have been the only sweetness Esther has savored in her life.
“I never meant you to suffer, Sophia.”
“Then I suggest you leave Carolyn out of what is between us, Esther, because I promise you if you ever again raise the subject of Dylan to her, if you ever allude to that time in my life in any form or fashion again, I will stop speaking to you. You will be alone. You will die alone. And I. Won’t. Care.”
A small cry escapes Frances, but the only sign of distress Esther gives is evident in her trembling chin. Something else is chewing in her eyes that might be anxiety or fear, but not remorse. Her chair scrapes the floor as she stands. She carries her cup and saucer to the sink.
Sophia jerks her purse onto her shoulder. There is never remorse, she thinks and she’s dismayed, not that her mother has failed to offer it, but that she is still waiting for it. Waiting for Esther to apologize, to somehow close the gap of heartbroken years between them. How can she still cling to this hope?
I feel the softness of your palm against my cheek, the love in your gentle gaze....
The line from one of Teddy’s love letters to Esther slips through Sophia’s mind. She would not have known her mother was capable of allowing herself to be wooed with such tender affection if not for those letters. It is a gift of sorts; there is a kind of peace in it, knowing that her mother had, at one time anyway, been capable of loving someone. If not Sophia then a man named Teddy.
“You know, Sophia,” Esther keeps her back turned, “even a common criminal is allowed to speak in their own defense.”
“I have no idea what you mean,” Sophia says.
o0o
She’s halfway to her car when Frances comes to the door and calls her back. “Carolyn’s on the telephone. She says it’s important.”
“Is she all right?”
“I think so. She said she tried your cell phone, but you didn’t answer.”
“Oh, I must have left it in the car.”
They hasten into the front hallway where the sisters keep the only telephone in the house, a heavy old fashioned rotary dial phone on a small table. Frances hands Sophia the receiver and then retreats. But she’ll listen. Both sisters will. If confronted, they would claim it was their telephone as if ownership entitled them to eavesdrop.
Sophia has barely said Carolyn’s name before she is speaking in a rush. Something about last night, Thomas Capshaw, a car accident, now he’s missing.
“Wait.” Sophia interrupts. “He’s missing from the scene of the accident?” She’s thinking head injury, that he must have become disoriented, but Carolyn says no.
“He was taken to the emergency room with his friend Luke, but Thomas left before they could treat him.”
“How do you know all this?”
“Grace called. She thought he might be here. It was raining last night when we left the restaurant, remember? The streets were slick. They were drinking,” Carolyn adds.
“Oh, no.”
“They lost control and hit a telephone pole.”
“What about Luke?”
“He’s in critical condition. But Mom, the police have told Grace Thomas was driving. She’s beside herself.”
“I don’t guess you’ve heard from him?”
“No, but that reporter Trent Hunter called.”
Sophia straightens. “About Thomas? Did you talk to him? What—what did he say?”
“He has information he thinks will interest you. He wants you to call him.”
“What information?” Sophia’s breath stalls in the center of her chest. She puts her hand there.
“I think he must know you’re counseling Grace or that Cort’s painting the house. He’s found the connection, the Capshaw Connection,” she says.
Sophia assumes she’s making an allusion to the movie, The French Connection. And truthfully, it’s beginning to feel like a movie, a bad melodrama, one that is farfetched and unimaginable. Suppose it isn’t the Capshaw’s connection to her that Trent has uncovered, but Russ’s connection to Louis Tilley and his smuggling activities? And Carolyn, who has no idea, will be blindsided by the revelation because Sophia has lacked the courage to look into it. She tucks her free hand beneath her elbow. Her fingertips are cold against her ribs. “Did Trent mention the Capshaws or the accident?”
“No, but the story was on the noon news, all this hype about the volunteer’s son. It’s terrible, Mom. The car was really wrecked.” Carolyn sounds shaken.
“He’ll turn up,” Sophia says, although she’s far from certain. She remembers what Thomas’s grandmother said to him, that if he wasn’t careful he would land in a cell next to his father’s. But Sophia senses that Thomas wants answers, an understanding of what has happened to his family and why. He wants the truth. You don’t run away from the truth, even when you’re afraid, unless you don’t want it. For that reason, Sophia thinks, Thomas will bring himself back. He’ll take responsibility. She wants to be right about this, about him. For his sake. And Grace’s.
Carolyn says she has Grace’s cell phone number and Sophia jots it down, but when Carolyn offers Trent’s number as well, Sophia stops her. “I don’t want to talk to him.”
“You mean not now?”
“I mean not ever.” Sophia pauses. She wants to ask whether Carolyn has told Larry about the baby, but sensing the sisters’ nearness, she thinks better of it. “About last night,” she says instead.
“I’d rather not—”
“Carolyn, listen to me, please.” Sophia keeps her voice low. “I never wanted to give you the impression that I don’t trust you.”
A silence becomes unnerving.
“Cecie? Did you hear me?”
“Yes.”
“There are things that happened to me that you know nothing about. That you should know. That your grandmother does know,” Sophia adds and she realizes the decision to tell Carolyn is made. There’s no way around it. She can’t bear the thought of Carolyn hearing the truth from Esther, or God forbid, some stranger. Why tell if no good can come of it? Russ’s constant question pushes into Sophia’s mind. Think of the risk, he warned. “She could hate you,” he’d said. Is the truth worth that? But there will be honesty, Sophia thinks. Carolyn will know why she hates me. There won’t be all this conjecture and supposition, this talk of revenge and grudges and lack of trust that Sophia shares with her mother. Sophia won’t have that for Carolyn even if it means losing her. Wasn’t it someone famous who said that sometimes you had to love your children enough to let them hate you?
“Mom?” Carolyn prompts.
“I haven’t been entirely honest with you, Cecie, about who I am.”
There is another short silence and then Carolyn’s voice, faltering, confused. “What—what do you mean?”
“When I come home, we should sit down.”
Chapter 21
Late Spring - 1954
Sophia thought Terrence’s beatings were the worst things that could happen to her until
Dylan died. The very day she lost him, she woke up in a world of pain so hard and deep, she couldn’t imagine anything more terrible. It took up all the space in her mind.
Even breathing hurt. She took shallower dips of air. Still it felt as if a shard of glass was lodged in her side just under her left breast. Her tears were reflex, molten pools that burned beneath her shuttered eyelids. Her ribs were probably broken. That was her first coherent thought, that Terrence had broken her ribs again. She splayed her fingers, feeling the sheet beneath her, the pillow bunched under her head. She was in bed, but with no remembrance of how she’d gotten here. Under her own power? Had Terrence brought her? He often did that when she needed assistance, although he no longer apologized as he had in their early days together.
He never brought her roses.
Was he here? Watching her even now? She lay rigid, alert through every pore of her skin for some sign of his presence, but sensing none. She cracked open her eyes to empty space and light like pearls. It was morning then. She crawled her hand across the expanse of mattress, encountered no one, heard nothing other than a patter of rain, the whisper of a breeze, damp, sweet smelling.
A window must be open somewhere.
Oh, no! If it rained in on the carpet— Sophia threw back the bed clothes and clenched her teeth to keep from crying out. Wrapping one arm around her midsection, she used the other to lever her body upright. On her feet, she hobbled through the loft, found the offending open window in his office and shut it.
It was when she turned and saw the door to his dark room standing open that she remembered. Marbella. Terrence was en route to Marbella on the Costa del Sol in Spain to do a photo shoot for a fashion catalogue. She vaguely remembered hearing him call for a cab, near midnight, after he’d beaten her. He wouldn’t be home for days. He would stay on after the shoot to party with the models he photographed. Sophia didn’t any longer delude herself that she would ever be one of them; he hadn’t kept that promise or any promise he’d made when he’d rescued her and Dylan.
In the bathroom, she looked at her image in the mirror, that was unmarred. Two years had passed since she’d moved in with him and all this time, he had been faithful to his habit of never hitting her where it would show and she was no closer to understanding what might set him off. Last night he’d lost his temper when he found out from a neighbor that Sophia had let a plumber into the house. She’d had to because Dylan had pulled off his diaper and flushed it down the toilet and it had overflowed.
It would have been fine, too; she’d had it all cleaned up and working and the plumber had gone, but then Terrence had run into that meddling Frieda Lampert who clerked at Baker’s Drugs and Liquor down the block. Nosy Frieda who knew everyone’s business in the neighborhood and who could never keep still about it. Sophia opened the medicine cabinet, looked in at the array of prescription bottles: Seconal, Nembutal, Demerol, Milltown. There were others she took with names she couldn’t pronounce. A few years later, when she would buy the bestselling novel, Valley of the Dolls, the similarities of herself to Neely O’Hara would make her cringe. Sophia wouldn’t be able to finish reading the book.
But the drugs weren’t cause for alarm or shame or regret while she was living with Terrence. Only he was the source for those. How can I pound it into you, that you can’t let strange men in the house? You’re lucky you weren’t raped. I’m punishing you to save you, so you’ll remember next time. His voice ran on and on in her mind.
For your own good ...because I care about you....
How? How could that be true? Last time when she’d gone to the emergency room at All Saints, the doctor had said if he saw her there again, he’d call the police. Sophia had not thought of what Terrence did to her in criminal terms until then. She’d refused treatment that day and left the ER, but not before she’d told the doctor that Terrence would kill her if he found out she’d come to the hospital, much less if the police appeared at their door.
He would kill her plain and simple.
The man she loved and feared and hated would put her in her grave. For what? What had she ever done to him?
Sophia closed the medicine cabinet. She was taking too many pills. Terrence said so, which confused her because he was the one who procured them, who encouraged her to take them. To loosen her up, he said. For sex, he meant. Another thing he said she was no good at. She held onto the sink edge fighting a wave of sickness. Yesterday had been her nineteenth birthday and he’d bought her exactly nothing. She had exactly nothing: a man who beat her for no reason; a child she didn’t want and couldn’t take care of.
What had ever made her think she could? She limped into the kitchen, filled a juice glass with wine and drank it in one swallow. She drank another and another. Poured a fourth glass and swirled it, not drinking, agitation growing, thinking of Dylan’s birth father, the boy who when she’d told him she was pregnant with his child had called her a lying whore even though he knew she’d never slept with anyone else. He’d walked away and no one had thought one bad thing about him. While she’d been stripped of everything, including her junior and senior years of high school, he’d graduated with their class and been awarded a football scholarship to Texas Tech. He was there now, having the time of his life. While she was here, stuck with nothing. His brat that she hated. And herself that she hated even more.
And now the brat was crying.
Stupid Dylan always cried.
Goddamnit!
“Shut up!” she shouted and with the fresh glass of wine in hand, she flew from the kitchen into the bathroom. Dylan’s cries broke over her head, sheered the crust from what little was left of her self control. She set the tumbler down on the vanity, jerked open the medicine cabinet door, fingering the array of bottles, tumbling them from the shelf into the sink, onto the floor. She knelt, whimpering, scrabbling until she found the Demerol. In moments, she had swallowed several tablets, washed them down with wine, and leaving the mess, she ran into Dylan’s room. The noise of his screaming deafened her, addled her wits.
But then when his eyes saucered at the sight of her, she realized she was the one making all the racket. The horrible screeches were coming from her and she clapped her hands over her mouth to stop them. She made herself take a breath and for a second or two, she thought she would be all right. She would not go off the ledge of what little sanity she had left. She would not lose herself to the rising funnel of pain that clawed at her ribs and grayed her vision. But then she was overwhelmed by the stench of the filth in his pants and screaming, she scooped him from his bed and put him down hard on his feet.
“Sorry, Mommy,” he hiccupped, and he kept on repeating it over and over, faster and faster, “Sorrysorrysorry....”
But her voice rose over his: “Big boys don't shit their pants,” she lectured, jerking his elbow. “Do you hear me?”
And then she pulled him, sobbing, into the bathroom. She stood him beside the tub, began stripping off his clothes, overalls, T-shirt, socks, which she looked on with vague wonder: Why wasn’t he in his pajamas? Had she forgotten? All were tossed into a heap on the floor until Dylan was standing in front of her naked and shivering, eyes reddened and full of bewilderment and fear.
Sophia’s own eyes filled with tears. It hurt her to lift him into the tub. “I can't do this,” she whispered. “I'm no good for you,” she told him. “I don't know what to do, don’t know what to do.” The words were a mantra repeated as she soaped him, rinsed him.
Once he was toweled dry, she dressed him in a fresh pair of green-plaid overalls and a shirt and pushed his arms into the sleeves of his red cardigan sweater, the one with the train engine from The Little Engine That Could appliquéd on the pocket, and then she knelt down and peered at him, using her thumb to wipe away the salty tear tracks and the mucous that was puddled under his nose. She brushed his hair off his brow. “Don't cry,” she said softly. “Mommy's sorry too.”
They were in the car then, Terrence's precious silver Jaguar taken without his
permission, speeding out beyond the city limits north of Fort Worth, driving on the wet highway toward Henrietta and home. She didn't have a plan, only the vague idea that if she was physically present, literally standing on her parents’ doorstep, surely her father would take her side. Surely he wouldn't let Esther turn Sophia away.
And Esther didn’t. Not at first.
She was at the kitchen sink washing dishes when Sophia arrived and although the back door was open to the misty April air, she gave no sign that she’d heard the car, or Sophia’s steps. And Sophia didn’t give her presence away as she might have. Instead she stood on the back stoop holding Dylan in her arms, looking through the screen at her mother. At Esther’s elbows that made angry corners, at her spine that seemed set at an unforgiving angle, and her heart filled with misgiving. Her mother would never let her come back to the farm again, not to live.
But now Esther turned and at the sight of Sophia turning away, she said: “Sophia, is that you? Heaven’s alive, you look like a ghost out there in all the fog and rain.”
“Hello, Mama. I’ve brought your grandson to see you.” Sophia boosted Dylan a bit, making an offering of him.
“Well, come in.” Esther approached drying her hands briskly on a kitchen towel. “Wipe your feet. Don’t mess up the floor. I just mopped it. You drove here in all this terrible weather? I wish you’d called first.”
“I knew you'd say no.” Sophia shifted Dylan in her arms. His head bobbled on her shoulder. He was still half-asleep from the drive, breathing through his mouth.
“He needs changing,” Esther said making a face. “I can smell him from here. He’s not toilet trained yet?”
“I think he has an upset stomach, from—from teething, you know.”
“You have a fresh diaper, I trust?”
Sophia groaned. She’d left the diaper bag and her purse at the loft, hadn’t even thought— “I—I’m not feeling right, either, Mama.” She touched her temple. “Can I use the bathroom?”
“Here, give him to me.” Esther took Dylan, not gently. “Go on.” She made a shooing motion.
The Volunteer Page 18