The Lost Saints of Tennessee

by Amy Franklin-Willis

  “Do you think you can walk, sweetheart?”

  No response.

  “Do you want me to carry you? I think your old man’s got enough juice to do it. We might have to take a break every so often, though.”

  She does not object as I lift her into my arms. Her head rests beneath my chin and the scent of rain comes from her hair. We walk a few minutes before the strain on my back makes me gently set her on the ground.

  “We’ll just take a rest, okay? Are you cold? You look cold. Take my jacket.”

  I pull off my suit jacket and place it around her shoulders. She sits on a tree stump, the bad leg stretched out in front. A smile flickers across her face.

  “You haven’t carried me since I was nine. I must weigh a lot more now.”

  The week of silence is broken. Don’t make a big deal of it. Keep her talking. Play it cool. By habit, I reach for a cigarette, then reconsider. I grab the pack of Doublemint instead, offering Honora a piece.

  The loud sound of our chewing draws a scrub jay, investigating.

  “This was Mee-Mee’s favorite gum. She always let me dig in her purse to find the pack she kept in the bottom.”

  The ankle is now easily twice its normal size. We need to get back to the house and put ice on it. I move to pick her up again but she shakes her head.

  “Let’s sit a little while longer. It’s not hurting as much now.”

  This can’t be true. But we stay. The branches of a nearby pine keep the rain off us. She picks at a stray thread from an embroidered flower on her dress.

  “Brian and I slept together. A couple of times. Then he said he didn’t want to go out anymore. Stupid, huh? I actually thought I loved the loser. And now—”

  She stops, pressing her lips firmly together and wrapping the thread around a finger tight enough to stop the circulation.

  “And now?” I struggle to keep my voice neutral. My fifteen-year-old daughter has had sex. More than once.

  “He’s saying stuff at school. To other guys. And now, some of them are coming up to me.” She places the back of her hand against her mouth.

  Accelerated from running, my heart rate now threatens to flatline. The noises of the woods fade back and all I can hear is the child beside me, taking in shaky breaths, scared to speak whatever terrible thing needs to be spoken.

  When she begins, I have to lean down so my ear is almost next to her face, her voice is so low.

  “The guys are saying stuff like now that Brian’s done with me they want a ‘go at me.’ Some of them write stupid notes and put them in my locker.”

  She wipes her nose with the back of her sleeve. “You know what really pisses me off? Nobody, and I mean NOBODY, gives a crap that Brian is having sex. It’s, like, what he’s supposed to do. But because I’m a girl? Now I’m the school slut? I don’t want to have sex with anybody else. I wasn’t even sure I wanted to do it with Brian. But I liked him. Really liked him.”

  The flash of anger is gone as her face crumples again. She looks so young, like the tiny girl I used to carry on my shoulders who yelled, Run fast, Daddy, run fast, as she bobbed up and down.

  A degree of rage I haven’t felt since beating up the Smith boys stirs.

  “I was so stupid.”

  Her voice draws me back.

  “You were trusting. You liked this guy and he broke your heart and now he’s being a son of a bitch. How old is Brian?”

  “Seventeen. His birthday is in May. He skipped a grade in elementary school. I was going to bake him a hummingbird cake for his birthday.”

  “Too bad he’s not eighteen. I’d haul his ass down to the sherriff’s.”

  The corners of her mouth lift. “I’d like to see him in jail. That would be nice.” She exhales loudly. “I’m just so sad, Daddy. About Brian. About Mee-Mee.”

  This is the part no one tells you about. The part where your child experiences pain. It used to be my job to make it go away, to kiss the hurt and cover it with a Band-Aid. Now it cannot be made better. Happy beginning, happy middle, happy ending that never comes. I want it for her, but she has only to look at her parents to see that happily-ever-after can end.

  “I’m sad, too,” I say carefully, worried about saying too much or too little. This is the longest conversation she and I have had in two years. She has evolved from girl to young woman without my noticing.

  “I’m sad the first guy you really liked was a bastard. I’m sorry I wasn’t here when all of this was happening. I’m sad about Mee-Mee dying. Your grandmother loved you so much, Honora. I think a part of her will stay with you. I do.”

  “Don’t give me spirit-in-the-sky shit, Dad. God, why do people think that makes you feel better? She’s gone. I’ll never get to bake birthday cupcakes with her again. She’ll never see me graduate from high school.”

  She pushes off from the trunk and stands up, hobbling toward the road. When I try to help she shakes off my arm at first but then relents. I wrap one of her arms around my neck and steady her so she can hop on the good foot. The rain has stopped.

  “You’re right. Why would that make you feel better? And guess what? Your uncle died ten years ago and I still miss him. A lot. He would have loved to see you grow up. Your cookies alone would have sent him over the moon.”

  We rest for a moment in the clearing near the house. Honora leans against me, putting her head on my chest. The wind shifts and clouds mottle the sky.

  “Love basically sucks, doesn’t it?” she says.

  “No, not always. Sometimes love is the best thing in the whole world.”

  “Until it isn’t,” she says, challenging me to disagree.

  I want to tell her it can work out. That loving the right someone can make you better than the person you are alone. But what proof do I have to offer?

  “You left.” It is an accusation. “You didn’t even tell us good-bye, Dad. What kind of love is that?”

  This is what looms between us, beneath the pain of Mother’s death and the boyfriend’s betrayal.

  “I’m sorry, Honora. I screwed up.”

  She looks up at me. “Why is it so hard to love us?”

  More than anything else she has said today, these words leave me breathless.

  My girl thinks the reason I’m such a shitty dad is something she or Lou did. How could I forget how innocent they are? People say children are resilient, and maybe that’s true, but what is not said enough, or at least not by anyone I know, is how small the world is to a child. It begins and ends with her family and when that breaks down somehow—through divorce, adultery, sickness, death—the child loses trust in every­thing she knows.

  “I need you to listen right now. Okay?”

  Eye roll.

  I step back a little so we can really see each other. “Loving you and loving your sister is the easiest thing I’ve ever done. I loved you before you were born. Do you know that? Your mom and I had been trying for a while to have a baby, and when she finally got pregnant with you, I couldn’t believe how lucky we were. I think you and Louisa are pretty much the best thing on the planet. Everything wrong I’ve ever done when it comes to you girls has had nothing to do with you and everything to do with the messed-up person I am. Can you under­stand that, please? It’s really important.”

  She shrugs.

  “I went to Virginia to try and get unmessed up.”

  This is the short version. She doesn’t need the long one.

  “Are you home now for good?”

  Of course this is the question she would ask. Can I postpone the answer?

  “I’m going back to Lacey Farms. I’d like you and your sister to come check it out.”

  “How long are you going to stay there?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  Her silence confirms my ongoing pater
nal failure. Next to us is a toppled old oak tree, broken in half. The sun shines briefly and dances across the trunk.

  “The gnomes should be up for a sunbath soon,” I say.

  Honora frowns. “What are you talking about?”

  “The gnomes. Remember? You used to believe they lived in fallen tree trunks.”

  “That was a long time ago, Dad.”

  But it wasn’t. It was a few years ago. It could have been yesterday.

  Thirty-Eight

  1985

  Honora gets settled on the couch with her leg up on a bag of ice, surrounded by her sister and cousins, one of whom figures out how to connect the Atari game console to Mother’s ancient TV. Space Invaders march across the screen.

  I catch Jackie’s eye and motion toward the door. We walk to the back end of the property line, passing a few leftover pumpkins in the vegetable garden.

  “What is it, Zeke? Tell me.” Jackie gnaws a thumbnail, her eyes never leaving mine.

  “She slept with him. More than once. Then he dumped her. Now he’s running his mouth at school.”

  “Goddamn, motherfucker, son of a bitch.” She grabs an old piece of brick off the ground and hurls it at the nearest tree, hitting it dead-on.

  “Shit. Shit. Shit. Is she pregnant?”

  It never crossed my mind. Stupid.

  “You didn’t ask her, did you? Jesus Zeke.”

  “I don’t think she is. She would have told me.” God, how I hope this is true.

  Jackie paces in front of me, treading a path back and forth between the last rows of Mother’s shriveled tomato plants. “We shouldn’t have gotten divorced. I shouldn’t have married Curtis. This is my fault. I haven’t been paying enough attention to her.”

  “And I’ve been gone. Look, right now it doesn’t matter whose fault it is. What matters is what comes next. School must be hell.”

  Jackie freezes. “What are you thinking?”

  An idea spins out as I speak. “Let Honora come back to Virginia with me. Stay for the rest of the school year. Then she can come back to Clayton when Brian and his loser friends have graduated. Let’s give her a chance to get away from this guy.”

  She collapses into a rusted lawn chair. I kneel down next to her. “Look, we’ll figure this out, okay? Maybe Virginia is the right answer. Maybe it’s not.”

  “You’re thinking of moving there, aren’t you?”

  The idea appears to upset her almost as much as the news about our daughter.

  “Cousin Georgia has asked me to stay for a while. Osborne’s got Alzheimer’s and it’s getting worse. There are things I could do there. Be of use.”

  “Why not take Louisa, too?”

  It isn’t just the girls she’s thinking about. The heat rises in my face.

  “Jacklynn, you’ve got no right to be thinking what you’re thinking right now.”

  “And what might that be?”

  “You’re not mad at me moving for the girls’ sake. You’re mad because the possibility of a good screw with your ex-husband won’t be a phone call away. That’s bullshit, Jackie.”

  She turns her face away, looking back toward the house. Before speaking again, she lowers her voice. “You’re not that good of a fuck, Zeke.”

  How has this conversation become more about us than our daughter?

  “I can’t stay here. You can understand that.”

  Jackie walks over to a holly bush and twists off a berry, cursing when a sharp leaf scratches her hand. All must not be well in newlywed land. This is not my problem, cannot be my problem.

  “I don’t want to take the girls away from you. I could never be as good a parent as you are. I know that. If I could, I’d move the three of you out there.”

  Her face softens. I put my hands on her shoulders. “Why don’t you leave that old car salesman and move out there with me?”

  In some ways it would make everything so simple. There is a pull here, a history with Jackie that will not let go. But an image of Elle’s face beneath me as we make love appears in my mind.

  The wind gusts out of the east and knocks over the lawn chair. I try to give Jackie my jacket but she bats it off.

  “I happen to love Curtis.”

  That she has to say it makes it doubtful, but I keep quiet, trying not to betray the rush of relief flooding through me.

  “I’ll think about it, Zeke. Okay? Honora won’t want to go. But maybe it’s the right thing. I don’t know what is. Give me a couple of days.”

  She walks back to the house, leaving me alone in the empty yard. A semicircle stand of poplar trees forms the eastern property line, some well over one hundred feet tall, their tops meeting the sky. I lower myself down on one knee. The wet ground soaks through the thin material of my suit pants. I want to hear the deep timber of my father’s voice yelling from the front yard that he needs an extra pair of hands to work on the truck. I want to hear Carter again, the voice most like my own, teasing me for missing a basket. Mother calling to us through the screen door to come in for dinner. Honora’s little girl voice at bedtime, Read one more story, Daddy. Please.

  Thirty-Nine

  1985

  Another leaving day arrives. Rosie pitches in to help pack up the shed. The family still calls my former living quarters “the shed,” even though it looks like a small house now. Mother put flower boxes under the front windows a couple of years back, and Violet makes sure something is always planted in them. Marigolds this month.

  Rosie looks around the living room and kitchen, no bigger than a normal house’s hallway, and shakes her head. “How long did you live here?”

  “Five years before I got married and then since the divorce.”

  “Jesus.”

  What did I need more space for? My daughters never spent the night; Carter had been dead for ten years. It was just me.

  “No wonder you’ve been depressed.”

  I look at the place through her eyes—the beat-up linoleum floor, leftover pieces from when Daddy redid Mother’s kitchen floor twenty years ago, the bare walls, the white paint beginning to peel, the tiny bedroom with a mattress on the floor since I’d never gotten around to getting a bed frame. The fake pine nightstand I found on the side of the road holds a picture of Honora and Louisa when they were little and there is also a lamp with a Budweiser beer–can base. Carter picked the lamp out himself at the Corinth flea market a year after we moved in together.

  Rosie calls from the kitchen and asks what she should do with all the pots and pans. I tell her to pack it up; we’ll drop it off at the thrift store in Mabry. The only things I want to take with me are my clothes and Carter’s. It takes me five minutes to empty the dresser drawers. The hall closet holds Carter’s things. It is the only closet in the place, located halfway between the bedroom and the bathroom. My father and I had worked night and day for a week straight putting in the bathroom. Mother kept coming out and saying how silly it was to waste all this time on it when Carter and I could just come and use the bathroom in the house. The thought of having to deal with her every time I needed to piss was enough to make me finish the project as soon as I could.

  The closet hasn’t been touched in years. I grab a couple of boxes, intending to throw everything in at once. Carter’s clothes are on the bottom shelf—jeans, old T-shirts, some socks. I decide that these can go to the thrift store, too. As I toss them into the box, something falls out from between a pair of jeans and lands on the dusty floor. It is a small, infant-size sweater faded to a dull navy color. I remember pictures of Carter and me dressed in matching ones when we were babies. The cuffs of the sweater are frayed, but it’s in pretty good shape for being over forty years old. Rosie comes up behind me.

  “How cute. What is that?”

  I tell her and she reaches out to touch the sweater gently,
as if she is afraid it will crumble. “This was Carter’s?”

  “Probably. Mother told me Grandmother Parker made them for us when we were born.”

  Rosie flops down on the floor, fingers the material. “You’re not going to throw it away?”

  I tell her no, and take the sweater from her hands. The after­noon light is fading to dark outside, bringing a chill into the room. I want to finish before it settles around me.

  “It’s still strange having him gone, isn’t it?”

  I turn my back on her, letting my silence do the answering.

  My sister stands up, hands me an old University of Virginia sweatshirt. “I would like to see Carter at forty-three.” She touches the hair at my temples. “I bet he would have gotten really gray on top like Daddy. Maybe a little belly, too?”

  I push her hand away from my stomach and she retreats to the kitchen.

  After clearing out the clothes, the sight of a basketball at the bottom of the closet makes me smile. Carter used to make me play a game of one-on-one the second I walked in the door from work. When Jackie and I first got married, playing basketball instead of coming in to dinner right away aggravated her. But after a while she seemed to understand it was our way of saying hello to each other after being apart all day.

  Not long before Honora was born, Carter came up to Jackie and put his hand on her belly. I will teach the baby to play basketball, he said. And sure enough, as soon as Honora learned to walk, Carter took her out in the driveway with a baby-size basketball for her and a big one for him. Her second Christmas we bought a kid-size hoop. You’d have thought we’d given her the moon by how excited she and Carter got. Look, Uncle Car-Car, she said, we can play now.

  Louisa doesn’t even remember my brother. He drowned when she was two.

  I put the basketball in the save box with the baby outfit, then stand on a chair to check the back of the top shelf. Shoved in the far corner is an old Dixie Maid cigar box. My father smoked Dixie Maids on holidays and his birthday, the only times Mother would put up with the smell of them. The box feels too light to be holding any cigars. Bits of paper poke out the sides, and when I open it, some flutter down onto the floor. A few old newspaper clippings are in the pile.