The Lost Saints of Tennessee

by Amy Franklin-Willis

  Of course we agreed to the deal with the Smiths. I didn’t want Rosie anywhere near a jail, juvenile or not. But no one felt like justice was served. Preacher Dawson told me God would reckon with those boys in ways we couldn’t imagine, and I said that was fine for the hereafter but I had to live in the here-now.

  By November, Carter’s memory began to return. He recognized me. His sisters. The first words he spoke were Where’s Zeke? And this is where I messed up. I know that now. But at the time, I did what I thought was best.

  After the attack, I refused to let anyone in the family write to Zeke or call him about it. It would only have taken him away from schoolwork. The thought of my boy studying in some grand library was the only happy thought I had during those hospital days. Carter Sr. wanted to send a telegram, but I said, No, we’ll wait and see. If Carter’s not better by the first of the year, we’ll send the telegram.

  Ezekiel’s stream of letters to his brother went unread and unanswered. I wrote when I could and told of things like the weather and how much we all missed him and how proud we were of him. It was too expensive for Zeke to call us on the phone back then, even though Cousin Georgia wouldn’t have minded, so it had been pretty easy to stop the word from spreading.

  When Carter asked for his brother, I reminded him Ezekiel was in Virginia.

  “Get him,” Carter said. He talked funny, garbled, like his mouth was full of rocks.

  If my son had asked me to get him Bob Pettit from the St. Louis Hawks, his favorite basketball player, I would have. If he had asked me to get him the moon, I would have called NASA and done my best. But I would not give him Ezekiel. His brother was where he needed to be. If he came home now, he might never return to school.

  The only other thing Carter kept mumbling about sounded something like Where’s my yo-yo? When I mentioned this to Rosie, she closed her eyes for a second before telling me one last detail of that afternoon at the theater. Every Saturday and Sunday matinee show, Bob Dunlap held an audience contest during intermission—silly games like how fast can you drink a Coke or sing a famous song backward. That Saturday it had been the yo-yo contest. Carter loved yo-yos, so Rosie urged him to go up on the stage. He beat out everybody else by keeping the yo-yo going the longest and won a brand-new glittery red Fli-Back wooden. Rosie figured it must have gotten knocked out of his pocket during the attack, so I called up Bob Dunlap and asked him about getting Carter another one. Sure thing, Mrs. Cooper, he said. I gave it to Carter the very next day, assuring him that it was, in fact, the exact same one he had won.

  As Christmastime grew closer and Carter continued to get better, however slowly, the hospital began pestering me to take him home. The circumstances of Carter’s injuries led the staff to be kind to us in the beginning, to give us the benefit of the doubt about our ability to pay for the room, the medicines, the tests. The third week of December, the doctor took me aside. Bone skinny with a tendency to stutter when he had difficult news to deliver, Dr. Sidwell spoke in a tone meant to ease my mind.

  “Institutionalize him, Mrs. Cooper,” he said. “Or care for him the rest of his life. Th-these are your choices. We’ve done all-all we can for him here.”

  “I’ll discuss it with my husband.”

  “Soon, Mrs. Cooper.”

  As I watched him walk down the hallway, I reached inside my purse for a cigarette, my hand groping among the lipstick I hadn’t used in months and the scraps of paper with notes I’d scribbled. Call Charlotte to pick up Rosie. Remind Violet to get mail. Tell Carter stories from when he was little. So he’ll remember. My hand found the pack. Empty.

  I went home that night. Got dinner ready for poor Rosie, who had barely seen me or her daddy since the beating. It was the first time I had cooked. The sizzle of the corn bread batter as it hit the hot skillet made me happy. This meant the bread would have the crispy bottom and soft top Rosie liked. She sat at the kitchen table working on algebra homework.

  “You’re going to like this, baby girl.”

  She smiled without looking up from the math problems. Carter Sr.’s truck wheezed to a stop in the driveway.

  “Daddy’s home.”

  “You go on and finish your homework in the living room, okay? Your father and I need to talk.”

  Rosie stared right back at me with the look she’d been giving me since she was two, the look that said, I’ll be damned if I’ll do anything you tell me.

  “Just go. Please.”

  “Fine,” she said, picking the paper and books up from the table. “Go ahead and fight. It was better when you stayed at the hospital.”

  If she’d been closer, I’d have slapped her. But Rosie was smart. She was already halfway to the living room and out of reach. The sound of Carter’s heavy footsteps came up the back stairs. I busied myself at the stove, pushing hamburger around in another pan. I could hear him taking off his work boots, one, then the other, dropping into the dirt with a solid weight. The slap of the screen door shutting made me jump.

  My husband filled the doorway. The smell of the cold outside air clung to him. He was not a tall man. I could wear one-inch heels but no higher during the forty-two years of our marriage. His shoulders and arms were the biggest thing about him, built up from years of welding together pieces of pipe. There was a space within those arms where I felt safe and treasured. He came up behind me and rested his hands on my hips.

  “Nice to see you cooking, Lillian.” He kissed the back of my neck, letting his mouth trail down inside my blouse.

  I kept stirring the hamburger, steeling myself against the kisses, focusing instead on the faint smell of sweat on him.

  “Where are the girls?” he asked.

  The question came as his hands reached the roundness of my bottom. He kneaded the flesh gently.

  “Daisy’s over at Charlotte’s helping with the kids.” My mind skittered toward the bedroom, and I tried to put space between our bodies.

  “Rosie’s in the living room, Carter.”

  He mumbled something into my neck, his teeth nibbling at my skin.

  “The living room,” I said again, louder.

  “Nothing wrong with a man loving his wife, Lillian.”

  There had been nothing of man and wife between us since Carter went into the hospital. Rosie walked in.

  “Hey, Daddy.” She kissed him on the cheek. “Finished my homework. I’m going to Aunt Charlotte’s for dinner.”

  She spoke this to her father, not me, knowing that I would object.

  Carter’s hand squeezed my waist. “Sounds fine.”

  I shook my head. “I made your favorite meal, Rosie. You’ll stay.”

  My husband whispered, “Don’t,” into my ear. He peered over my shoulder into the pan. “Looks great. I’ll eat Rosie’s, too.”

  My daughter knew the battle was won and she left. When the front door shut, announcing that we were alone, Carter walked over and turned the lock. He came back to the kitchen and put the latch on the back door.

  “Never mind about dinner,” he said, pulling me to him. “We’ll eat later.”

  I let him lead me into the living room, wanting to feel close to my husband again. To forget the weight of the hospital and what was to come.

  We left a trail of clothes behind us. My blouse. His shirt. My bra. His belt. In the living room, Carter took the wedding-ring quilt draped over the couch and laid it out on the floor. We kissed standing up. On and on we kissed, the silence of our never silent house wrapping around us. His hands found my breasts and we lowered ourselves to the floor. The old fabric of the quilt was soft and smooth against my back. Carter slipped into me quickly and easily. We moved together and let ourselves cry out. Loud. Without fear of a teenager stumbling upon us.

  The chill of evening dropped down on us. Carter pulled another quilt from the couch on top of us. We lay there, ar
ms entangled around each other, for a long time. Not talking. I wanted to stay like that for another hour. Another day. Forever.

  I broke the silence first. “We need to talk about Carter.” On our backs, we faced the ceiling. I didn’t turn to look at my husband, just kept talking.

  “The hospital’s done all it can for him. They want us to take him home or put him in the state institution.”

  He went still beside me. I could feel his rib cage push against my own as he took a breath.

  “We’ll bring him home, then, Lillian Grace.”

  The use of my first and middle names meant he would not argue the subject. It was the response I had expected. It was the answer I wanted to give. But couldn’t.

  “Who’s going to take care of him? You’re gone most of the time, Carter. I’ve taken care of that child and four others for the past twenty years. We don’t know what’s going to happen to our son. He could get worse.”

  “He could get better.”

  I got up and found my blouse, stood with my back to him, buttoning it.

  “You’re his mother, for God’s sake.” He came up behind me, put his hands roughly on my shoulders to turn me around. “You’d rather see our boy in a crazy hospital. Are you sure about that, Lillian?”

  Of course I wasn’t. But all I had been thinking about on the drive home from the hospital was how tired I was. How Ezekiel was gone. How Carter would never get better than he was. All I could see were days stretching ahead of me that looked the same—get up, cook breakfast for Carter, help him bathe, help him put on clothes, do housework, keep him out of trouble, fix lunch, take him shopping, where everyone would stare at him, fix dinner, get him ready for bed. On and on until my hair turned gray and so did my son’s.

  “I can’t.”

  The words came out so quiet I didn’t know if Carter Sr. heard me. He placed a finger beneath my chin and tilted it upward, the wetness on my face visible. In our years of marriage, I had never said those words to him. Not when he left for a whole year to look for work, leaving me with the kids and ten dollars. Not when his mother took sick and I invited her into our home and turned the dining room into a sick room, caring for her until the day she died. I had done what needed to be done for our family. And more.

  “Lilly.” He breathed a thousand questions into the word. “Our boy will die in there. You know that. He’s barely held on in the regular hospital.”

  I brushed my cheeks with the back of my hand. “We can go see him every week. They’ll take care of him. Don’t you understand? They’ll do better than me. I can’t. He’ll be okay, Carter. He’ll be okay.”

  The house had gone dark. Only the light from the kitchen could be seen, slicing the space between us. My husband looked at me for the longest time before dropping his face in his hands. I couldn’t tell if he was crying or praying or both.

  The burned stench of the forgotten corn bread filtered into the living room, replacing the warm smells of our bodies. He raised his eyes to mine.

  “We’ll do what you want for a little while. You just need a rest, Lillian. That’s all. You’re tired.”

  He opened the circle of his arms, and I stepped in, not realizing that nothing would ever be the same again.

  Twenty-Seven

  Last week I quit playing dumb at the old folk’s home. The game wasn’t fun anymore and it was too hard pretending in front of my daughters. And I wanted to go home. But instead of letting me go, the doctors just moved me over to Tolliver Hospital. The surgery is tomorrow. Dr. Trent started to tell me about the operation this morning—So, Mrs. Cooper, we’ll begin with an incision along the rib—I told him to shut the hell up. Why does the man think I would want to know what he’s going to cut on me? Really. Men are just stupid sometimes. But not as dumb as women can be. I made a list today, nothing else to do, on the back of my breakfast napkin. “Lillian’s Life Lessons,” that’s what I’ll call it:

  You can be pretty until the cows come home but it doesn’t get you a life you want.

  (which is related to 1.) Eventually everybody gets old, and being pretty, no matter how much Mary Kay you put on, is not an option anymore.

  Your children will suck the life out of your bones and then be mad at you for not baking their favorite chocolate cake for their tenth birthday (Daisy is still mad at me over this one).

  For women, our children are all we’ve got and if we screw them up, it’s all over.

  (which is related to 4.) Once a woman falls in love, she can’t get anything done after that.

  That’s it. Nothing earth-shattering, I guess. But can I tell you how much I messed up? The whole damned thing, I think. Maybe if I’d been able to keep my knees tight against the persistent pressing of one Carter Cooper, I’d be in Manhattan right now. Living in my penthouse apartment with my younger live-in lover, managing quite nicely on my occasional guest appearance in a Broadway show—Come and hear the legendary voice of Lillian Grace Parker in a limited engagement.

  At night over at the Preserve, when all the crazy people were sleeping their hazy-dazy dreams, I would think about my boys, Ezekiel and Carter, and my girls—Violet, Daisy, and Rosie. If New York had worked out, what about them? Those children wouldn’t have walked the earth. And while some, namely my own children, might think I’d get up and do a dance about that, I wouldn’t. Not hardly.

  Carter was the hardest for me. Would have been for any mother. I wanted my kids to get more from life than I had been able to grab. And because of that rubeola, Carter wasn’t ever going to get two miles past Clayton. Not two miles. Just like me. Just like me.

  I tried to make Ezekiel understand why I put Carter in the state hospital all those years ago. But he wouldn’t listen, thought I was some kind of monster for putting his brother away. Throwing Carter away, that’s what Ezekiel said. That’s what it looked like. I know. I didn’t want to throw Carter away. Forget, maybe. For just a little while. Until I got some rest. Until Carter got better.

  The boy I thought I wanted to lose was never lost to me. His brother, on the other hand, never came back. Ezekiel hasn’t hugged me the same since he came home from Virginia. When he puts his arms around me, he doesn’t pull me close. He just holds me out so I can barely catch the scent of warmth and little boy that was like air to me.

  Part of me hoped that if Zeke found a way to forgive himself for not saving his brother from drowning, maybe he could figure out how to forgive me. I know he blames himself for Carter’s death. When the police investigated the drowning, they asked me if I had any reason to think Ezekiel would want to cause Carter harm. None, I said. Those boys loved each other the way most families can only hope for. No, it was a terrible accident. Nobody knows what happened.

  After Carter moved in with Zeke, he brought me wildflowers every day until the day he died. If I wasn’t home, he’d leave a note: Where are you? Here’s the flowers. Love, your son.

  I’m ready to see Carter again. It’s not going to be long now. And when we meet up, I’m going to love that boy to pieces.

  PART III

  EZEKIEL

  I will seek that which was lost, and bring again that which was driven away, and will bind up that which was broken . . .

  Ezekiel 34:16

  Twenty-Eight

  1985

  The day after the tornado, the phone rings nonstop. And every time it’s answered, a Cooper woman is on the end of the line worrying about me getting blown to bits. My sisters call, one after the other. The phone hardly rests in the cradle before jangling again. Osborne emerges from his room to grab coffee in the kitchen. He wears a large, brown bathrobe and navy socks with frayed holes at the heel. We manage to say hello before being interrupted. He looks at me, then looks at the phone. All I can do is shrug. But I will not pick it up. With a snort, Osborne crosses to the phone and answers it. He holds it out to me.
/>   “Your ex-wife.”

  Technically, Jackie doesn’t qualify as a Cooper but she still acts like one.

  “Are you okay? Are the Laceys okay? I put the TV on this morning and there was Bailey, front and center. ‘Killer tornado,’ they said. God, Zeke.”

  Louisa gets on the phone next, telling me she has been praying all morning I’d be okay. “Come home, Dad. Please.”

  Honora refuses to speak to me directly, choosing instead to shout in the background. “Way to pick a place to go, Dad. Nice choice.”

  Jackie gets back on and says pretty much the same thing. When she lowers her voice so the girls can’t hear, I brace myself.

  “You need to know that your daughter is getting very serious with this guy, Zeke. This senior guy. I just wanted her to go to homecoming with him, but now they’re studying together every day after school and going to the movies on Fridays.”

  Our daughter has sworn up, down, and sideways that boys are “the stupidest dorks on the planet” and she will have nothing to do with them. And though I’m no fan of her weekly hair-dye jobs, they serve the purpose of making her look “weird,” something I know most Mabry teenage boys are not interested in exploring.

  “Who is this boy? Does he play sports?”

  “He plays drums in the school marching band.”

  “Are you kidding? You’re letting her go out with a musician? Is she smoking and drinking now, too? Goddamn it, Jacklynn. Just tell her no.”

  Curtis bellows in the background that they are going to be late for dinner at his parents’ house. Jackie lowers her voice again.