The Secrets She Carried

by Davis, Barbara

  The waitress left and returned with a saucer, sliding it in front of Jimmy with a pointed look at the cigarette fuming between his fingers. He pushed it away, in no hurry to use it. Jay let the silence thicken while Jimmy struggled to get his cup to his lips. He’d seen more lifelike faces in a wax museum. Served the bastard right after last night, though he was surprised the man wasn’t immune to hangovers.

  “Why are you here, Mr. Nichols?”

  Jimmy glared at him. “Your meeting. You tell me.”

  “I want to make sure we understand each other.”

  Jimmy spewed a pall of smoke and crushed out his cigarette. “You think I don’t understand you, Hemingway? You think I been back a whole week and I don’t know how you’re all tangled up in this?”

  Jay let the remark pass. “Your daughter told me what you want.”

  “Did she, now?”

  “You’ve wasted your time coming back here. Leslie doesn’t have a cent. And if she did, I’d make damn sure you never saw it.”

  Jimmy’s fist crashed to the table, overturning the makeshift ashtray. “Let me tell you something, fancy boy—”

  The rest of the threat never came. Jimmy closed his eyes, shoulders hunched as if the weight of his head was suddenly too much for him. The spell lasted less than a minute, but when he finally opened his eyes the anger was gone. His hands shook as he pulled a soft pack of Winstons from his jacket, then tossed it down in annoyance.

  Jay looked at his watch, ready for the meeting to be over. “Mr. Nichols, let’s not waste time. Leslie doesn’t want you here. And I wasn’t kidding about the money. She’s broke.”

  Before Jimmy could respond, their waitress reappeared. She dropped off their plates, fished a bottle of ketchup from her apron, and left without a word. Jay picked up his knife and began buttering his pancakes, as if he actually meant to eat them.

  “I didn’t come for money.”

  Jay laid his knife across his plate. If possible, Jimmy had grown paler, sagging now in the blue vinyl booth. “If last night wasn’t about money, what was it about?”

  “I told you. I wanted to see my daughter. I’ve been…away.”

  “You can drop all the mystery. I know where you’ve been. I also know what happens every time you get out, only this time you’re going to have to find another meal ticket.”

  Jimmy jabbed his fork at the congealing yolks on his plate, then shoved the mess away. “Davenport, you can take it to the bank when I tell you a meal ticket’s the last thing I’m worried about. I just want to see my little girl. We’ve got business we need to get straight.”

  “And did that business include getting liquored up and embarrassing your daughter in front of half the town?”

  Jimmy looked as if he’d been slapped. “She thinks I was drunk,” he mumbled thickly. “Hell, I guess she would. I know what people think, and I know why they think it. But I wasn’t drunk. It wasn’t easy coming back here, you know. I had one, maybe two.”

  “For a man who wasn’t drunk, you’re nursing a hell of a hangover.”

  “I’m sick.”

  “I’m not surprised, considering what you must have put away.”

  “I’m sick,” Jimmy repeated, and suddenly Jay knew he didn’t mean hungover.

  “What kind of sick?”

  “The bad kind.”

  “How bad?”

  “About as bad as it gets, I’d say.”

  The waitress was looming with her coffeepot. Jay waved her away. “That’s why you came back.”

  “Yes.”

  Jay pushed his pancakes away, suddenly queasy. He’d just accused the man of being hungover when there was a very real possibility that he was seriously ill. There was also a very real chance that he was bullshitting, though it was hardly the kind of thing you called a man’s bluff on.

  “You’re saying you’re—”

  “Dying? Yeah. Or so the prison doctors tell me.”

  “How long?”

  Jimmy shrugged. “A year, maybe.”

  Jay narrowed his eyes, still not convinced. “What are you supposed to be dying from?”

  Jimmy frowned into his coffee cup. “Living,” he said finally. He set his cup aside and looked Jay dead in the eye. “I’ve done a long, awful dance, Davenport. Made a lot of mistakes. Hurt a lot of people. And now my sins have followed me home.” He paused, clearing his throat with a phlegmy rumble. “And that’s why I came back. There are things I have to say, before I can’t say them anymore. I don’t want anything from her. I just want her to listen.”

  “You want forgiveness.”

  “No,” Jimmy said flatly. “I don’t deserve that. But there are things I need her to know.”

  Jay couldn’t think of a polite way to say what he was thinking, so he just came out with it. “You wouldn’t be bullshitting me, would you?”

  “I can’t say I blame you for asking, but no, I’m not bullshitting you. I met a man in the infirmary, sicker than me. He told me when I got out I needed to mend my fences with the people I hurt. Most of them are dead now. But Leslie…well, maybe that’s a fence I can still mend.”

  Jay felt his throat thicken as Jimmy’s eyes sheened over. Goddamn the man. Was he supposed to just take him at his word? After last night, how could he let him anywhere near Leslie? But if it was true, did he have the right to block what might be a dying man’s last chance to make things right?

  “Mr. Nichols—Jimmy—it pains me to say it, but I think you’re right. Leslie should know.”

  “But she isn’t going to know.”

  Jay’s brows shot up. “Why the hell not?”

  “Because I want her to hear what I have to say as her father, not some sickly old man she has to feel sorry for. I’ve done a lot I’m ashamed of. Coming back to see my daughter isn’t going to be one of them. I’m going to say my piece, and maybe die with a little self-respect. And no one’s going to stop me.”

  “I’m not going to try to stop you, Jimmy. But I am going to ask you to wait.”

  “In case the dying thing didn’t give it away, Davenport, time isn’t exactly on my side.”

  Jay nearly smiled. “I want time to check out your story. And because if what you’re saying is true, I might know someone who can help. A friend of my father’s is head of Internal Medicine at Bristol Medical Center. But if I agree to help you, you’re going to do what I say.”

  If Stephen Gates agreed to take Jimmy as a patient, and the fool managed to keep himself out of trouble, there might still be time to heal the scars between father and daughter. He didn’t know if the man was telling the truth or just rewriting history, but he did know something had to give. If not, Jimmy would die with his version of the truth, and Leslie would go on living with hers. And nothing good would come of that.

  Jimmy eyed him warily. “Why would you do all this for me?”

  “I wouldn’t do it for you. But I would do it for your daughter.”

  “You two an item?”

  “We’re business partners.”

  “But you love her.”

  Jay squirmed under his narrowed gaze. “We’re friends,” he said evenly. “And I’d like her life to be easy for a change, which isn’t likely with you hanging around looking like you’ve just come off a ten-day drunk. Maybe if you cleaned up your act she’d at least listen to you. When was the last time you saw a doctor?”

  “A week before I got out. Almost three months ago now.”

  “If I decide to help you, you’re going to have to spend some time up north. I’ll call my father and see if he can help me set something up.”

  Jimmy put a hand up, cutting him off. “I appreciate all this, but I don’t have money for any fancy doctor.”

  “Let me worry about that. Right now you’re going to tell me why you deserve a second chance with your daughter. If I’m satisfied, I’ll make that call. Your end of the deal is to walk the straight and narrow and do what you’re told. If you don’t, I pull the plug and you kiss your chances with Lesli
e good-bye. In the meantime, make yourself scarce until you hear from me. And I promise you, if it turns out you are bullshitting me, I’ll bury you under the grapes where they’ll never find you. Do we understand each other?”

  Jimmy surprised him by smiling. “You sure you don’t love her?”

  Chapter 30

  Adele

  Henry has a son.

  Minnie Maw lays him across my middle, a small slippery stranger, and yet familiar somehow, part of me still, despite the midwife’s neat work with her scissors, as if the cord that has bound us all these months has not been severed at all and is never likely to be. Something wells up in me then, something fierce and almost feral, as I look into those tiny unseeing eyes. His name is Jemmy, and whatever comes, he is mine.

  It is all I can do to let him out of my arms when Minnie Maw takes him from me and passes him to Henry.

  “A boy,” she murmurs gruffly, then jerks her chin at Annie Mae, who has gone faintly green and stands cowering behind Henry. “Bring the basin, girl, and stop fooling. It’s all over now but the mopping up.”

  Henry’s eyes are wet with joy, his face shining as he stares down at the life we have made. If he cares that his son is more Laveau than Gavin, he gives no sign—there is only love on his careworn face. His Adam’s apple wobbles as he glances up at me, lying spent against my pillows. His expression is a mixture of wonder and relief, and I see that he’s as worn-out from worrying as I am from hollering. But that’s what comes, I guess, of sitting helpless in some other room, waiting for the storm to pass.

  I sleep for a while, the dense and dreamless sleep of the bone weary. When I wake, Minnie Maw is gone and Henry is dozing in a chair, one hand draped over the edge of the bassinet in case the baby stirs. I lie quiet, watching a while and reveling in the goodness of the moment. The sunlight has mellowed, leaving deep yellow patches on the floorboards, glinting where it touches the heavy stubble on Henry’s chin. He has been with me all day, I realize. It is only the second time I’ve ever known him to miss a day’s work—the other was the day Maggie was born. He has always been a good father to Maggie, and he will be a good father to our boy.

  As the months skim past, it becomes plain Jemmy will not favor Henry. He is cut from my kin’s cloth, a sturdy, honey-skinned boy with russet eyes and a head of curls like spun copper. It’s a strange thing to look at your child and see the echo of a man you’ve never met, but one day while I’m peeling potatoes I look down where he’s crawling around my ankles, and there it is, staring up at me, a younger version of the photograph Mama keeps on her dresser and dusts faithfully every Saturday morning. The realization knocks me back a little, because somehow I have never noticed it, and because I know the time has come to write to Mama.

  It is a letter I am loath to write, but one I know I must. God knows I have waited as long as I can before finally picking up my pen, but it’s time now to confess what a mess I’ve made of all her careful plans. Time, too, that she knows she is a grandmother. She will take little pleasure in the news, or in the life I have chosen. How can she, when the same mistakes have brought her nothing but heartache?

  I wait until Henry is out in the fields to sit down with my paper and pen. I am ashamed as the words begin to spill onto the plain white page, but there are things that must be told, and so I keep my hand moving, each tear-blotched line a testament to my sins, each word a fresh wound. My belly knots as I picture her face when she reads that I am unmarried, that the man I love, and whose son I have just borne, is not free. I can only hope the news that Jemmy favors my father will somehow soften the blow. It will not atone, I know, but it might help her forgive me a little.

  When the bad news is all out on the page, I beg her forgiveness and assure her that what I have done cannot be laid at her door. I tell her I am happier than I have a right to be, that I care nothing for the world’s opinion so long as I have Henry’s love and can hold my little patchwork family together. It will not matter, I think, as I seal the envelope and fix the stamp. She will blame herself. I could have lied, I suppose, or at least softened the news, but that has never been the way between Mama and me. She deserves to know the truth, even if it shames us both.

  A week later Henry brings me a present, a small box of dark green velvet he pulls from his pocket when I’ve finally gotten Jemmy to sleep. I wonder if he bought it because he has sensed a change in my mood. I have become sullen and restless since mailing the letter, anxious about what Mama will say when she writes, but more afraid that she will not write at all.

  I am shy about opening the box; I’m not used to presents but can see that he’s eager. I hold my breath as I raise the lid, then let it out again when I catch sight of the pendant—a tiny book fashioned of silver. It is a lovely thing, bright and charming, though I have no idea why Henry has chosen it. Still, I smile as I lift it out by the chain, watching it glitter and twirl in the lamplight.

  “I drove over to Level Grove to get it,” he says, sidling closer to me on the settee. “It’s a locket. Here, let me show you.” He works at the hasp a moment with his thumbnail, then hands it back. “See? There are little pages inside for…family pictures.”

  The last words are a whisper, an apology for all he cannot give me and for all that’s been taken away. I manage a nod, but my heart squeezes hard against my ribs, the ache suddenly too much to bear. When his arms go around me, I finally break, all the months and years of holding in, of pretending this half-life is somehow enough, spilling from me in great, wrenching sobs.

  We have each played our part in this wicked thing, each turned our backs on decency. But I am the woman. It was my place to say no, to stay strong and not yield. Instead, I sold my soul.

  Chapter 31

  It’s plain that Maggie blames me.

  She is still too young to ask questions, though they live unasked in her sharp gray eyes whenever they settle on Jemmy. He is her rival—and he is my fault.

  Henry’s love for his little girl has not faltered; she has always been, and still is, the brightest part of his life. But I would be lying if I said he is not smitten with his new son. He is gone from the Big House now, for longer and longer stretches, spending two or three nights out of each week at the cottage, while Maggie is left alone in her rosebud-papered room down the hall from Susanne.

  I miss her terribly. She rarely comes to the cottage now, and never when Henry is gone. And in those rare and precious times when we are all together, she makes it clear she wants no part of me, casting sullen looks in my direction while she clings to her father. It hurts me to see it, though I do my best to pretend I don’t. I think of all the frigid mornings I held her hand while she waited for the bus, or the afternoons when we played dress-up, and I wonder if it can ever be like that again. I fear it cannot. I lost the affections of Henry’s daughter the day I gave him a son.

  By the end of summer Jemmy is toddling and Maggie has come around. She has all but forsaken her favorite doll, preferring to dress up poor Jemmy instead, pouring out endless cups of imaginary tea or hanging on for dear life while I haul the pair of them up and down the drive in her wagon. She is leery of me still, but less sullen, and now and again, I fancy I catch a longing in her eyes when they fall on me, a sort of wistfulness for the way things used to be before Jemmy was born. I know that she has not forgiven me yet, but for now it is enough.

  I adore every part of being Jemmy’s mother, but there are times I find it hard to believe that one tiny boy has so altered my life. There is no longer any order to my days, only an unrelenting sense of never enough sleep, never enough quiet, and always, always, more to do. I wouldn’t trade any of it for the world.

  At least going into town is easier now, with Jemmy in tow. There is still always the customary knot of loiterers in front of the barber’s, but they pay me less mind now. I am no longer the naïve young girl Henry dropped off in their midst all those years ago—no longer a ripe little peach. Now when they look at me, their eyes hold different kinds of questions, mo
stly about who might have fathered my boy. These are the moments I’m actually glad Jemmy looks nothing at all like his daddy.

  The gossip has finally quieted. It helps that the Gavin Historical Society has disbanded and that Celia Cunningham has moved away—gone to live with her sister in Kentucky while her husband serves his time for stealing from the bank—though, if you were to ask Mama, she’d probably tell you folks are just too worn down with their own trials to care about sticking their noses in their neighbor’s troubles.

  Lottie comes less and less now, usually on her way home, when it’s dark and she can’t be seen from the house. Susanne has threatened to fire her if she catches her visiting me.

  “I ain’t worried, though,” Lottie tells me with a grin. “Mr. Henry won’t let her do that. He hired me way back when. He ain’t gonna let me go just for being neighborly.”

  I nod my head, but I wonder. I see that deep down she does too, now that Henry takes most of his meals at the cottage. And now that Susanne’s got a new girl to fetch and carry for her.

  “At least you don’t have to spend your days running up and down stairs now that Lyla’s come to look after Susanne.”

  Lottie sucks her teeth, then follows it with a snort. “Shoot, that girl can barely find her way around the house yet. She ain’t lazy, but she’s scared of her own shadow, and slow-witted as all get-out. You should have seen her face when them boys came knocking at the back door.”

  I frown as I hand her a piece of sweet potato pie. “What boys?”

  “The same bunch who used to bring Susanne’s bootleg. She can get it legal now, but she still pays them to come over from Level Grove a couple times a week and do odd jobs, hauling trash, raking leaves, toting wood in from the shed. Never see ’em do any of it, though, just come round for their money at the end of the day. Shifty no-accounts is all they are. Wouldn’t want them hanging around my place, or hanging around my girl either.”

  Lottie’s expression makes me uncomfortable, like she’s trying to say something without saying it. I wait to see if she’ll say more, but she just keeps pecking away at her pie. Before I can ask her more, I hear Jemmy start to cry.