Graceland

by Lynne Hugo

  “I told you, Lydia’s not here. Madalaine’s not here either. I have no idea where either one of them is. What do you want, Wayne?”

  Wayne looks around again, which Ellie takes to mean he doesn’t believe her.

  “She’s not here, I told you. What’s going on?” Ellie is irritated now, with a little insult mixed in. She sets the kitchen rag down with unnecessary emphasis and puts her hand on her hip.

  “She been here?”

  “Who? Lydia? No. And no, Madalaine hasn’t been here either. You don’t think either one of them would come see how we’re doing, do you?”

  Wayne’s neck flushes. “Sorry. Bad idea…shouldn’t of…” he mutters and abruptly leaves, letting the screen door slap shut behind him.

  Ellie is not about to be treated like that. “Wayne,” she calls, following him to the door and through it. “Wayne,” she calls to his back. “You can at least talk to me a few minutes and tell me how Claire is.”

  Wayne doesn’t even turn around. “No change.” He raises his voice enough for her to hear it over the sound of the car door opening and letting its slam provide the period for the terse response.

  CHAPTER 16

  It’s Madalaine who finally gets up and goes to the front door. She and Bill and Jennifer have been sitting in early twilight at the kitchen table finishing the lasagna that Evelyn, the next-door neighbor, brought over.

  In this singular light, the walls, counters, and appliances appear nearly a pewter-gray, like an old mirror that has lost its spirit and purpose. The kitchen still isn’t back to its normal pristine clarity. Pyrex dishes and silver trays list in stacks on the counter, ready to be returned when someone is willing to venture out.

  They have been talking about Jennifer going back to school tomorrow, her concern that she’ll be either fussed over or ignored. Madalaine understands all too well. She’s ducked as many phone calls as she can and dreads going back to the office, whenever that comes about. She feels utterly unlike anyone she knows, as though Mother of the Dead Boy is stenciled across her chest. It’s altogether too easy to sense the relief of another woman that this happened to Madalaine’s child, not hers, as sympathy is dished up along with the gifts of casseroles and cakes. A certain bitterness sometimes creeps into Madalaine’s thanks.

  When they hear the knocking, all of them freeze a little, and they look at one another without voicing the question: Should we ignore it? The garage door is closed and they’ve not yet turned on any lights. Perhaps whoever it is will leave their offering on the step and go away. Thank goodness the flowers and plants have trickled off. There were enough to stock a greenhouse. Yesterday, Bill loaded the car with some of the more ostentatious ones and took them to a nursing home. At least, that’s what he told Madalaine he’d do, though he’d also said that they made him a little crazy with anger and he had a mind to drop them in the trash.

  It occurs to Madalaine as she crosses the living room toward the door that it might be Melody. As far as she knows, Bill hasn’t even called Melody. How like Bill. Even though she’s been on the other side of an unringing phone, she takes a small, secret pleasure in what she can guess is the other woman’s distress. Yes, Madalaine’s been there, done that. Would Melody dare to come to Madalaine’s home to grab Bill by the scruff of the neck and drag him back to their apartment while they await their baby? Madalaine knows how a woman can be impelled to do the unthinkable. She herself showed up at Melody’s one evening to create a scene that makes her cringe when she recollects it.

  The thought slows her pace and she reconsiders the notion of just not answering. Surely they can just not answer the door for at least a few days. Maybe then she’d begin to feel ready. Lord knows she’s not now. She can’t give Bill up. He and Jennifer are lines mooring her, however loosely, to reality’s dock. It’s a fair trade, she thinks, you get a baby and lose the man, I lose the baby and get the man back. She has wild, bitchy thoughts like this one off and on, feels ashamed and then gets right back to them.

  I’ve got to be a better person or I might lose Jennifer. Madalaine feels sick and clammy again as she does whenever she sees that particular fear crouching in a dark, unvisited corner of her house, clogged with gray webs that trap and kill small lives. That thought, because it’s the one that coincides with the front door knob being in front of her, is the one she acts on. When she opens the door a scant eight inches, Wayne is standing outside, his baseball cap folded lengthwise in one hand and promptly shifted to the other. His short-sleeved shirt is dirty, coming untucked again.

  “It’s Wayne,” Madalaine calls over her shoulder as she opens the door the rest of the way and pushes on the screen latch. “Come on in.” Of the possible people to be on her front stoop, Madalaine considers Wayne the most innocuous.

  “Lydia here?” he asks without ceremony as he steps into the little entryway that quickly becomes living room when a guest steps off a small square area of hardwood flooring onto plush off-white carpet.

  “No, why?” Madalaine says with a degree of caution in her voice. She wants nothing to do with Lydia.

  “Maddie, look, I don’t know…I mean, it’s a bad time, but I’ve got to talk to you. You’ve got to stop her.”

  “Stop her from what?”

  “I think she’s gone back to him.”

  Madalaine’s forehead wrinkles. “Him? Who? Claire?”

  “Lydia. The guy. The guy she…you know.” The two of them are standing on the edge of the carpet as though it were a cliff. Wayne feels a flush rise to a burn on his face and neck.

  “What?”

  Bill appears in the hallway. “Hey, Wayne,” he says, and after hesitating a moment, crosses the living room in five long steps, hand extended.

  Wayne’s eyes dart to Madalaine and, back on Bill, narrow almost imperceptibly. “How’re ya doin’,” he mutters, not a question, and returns the handshake with something like reluctance.

  “Now, what’s this?” Madalaine says to Wayne. Confusion and curiosity have won. “Lydie went to who?”

  When it comes right down to it, Wayne doesn’t exactly know how much Madalaine knows, but he’s guessing it’s the most part of the truth. His shoulders sag at the thought of trying to explain it if he’s wrong. Still, he’s got to have someone’s help, and there’s no one else he can think of. He hates every part of this. “John,” he finally answers and, unaccountably, his eyes fill with tears. “I know you know about it,” he says and his voice has a ragged edge of pleading.

  Madalaine knows all right, not that Lydia had confided in her.

  No, she had to stumble on the dirty little secret and discover what her sister was about all by herself. “Oh, I know all right,” she says. “I just doubt that you do.”

  Bill catches the tone in Maddie’s voice. “Maddie,” he says, as though her name were an order.

  She wheels. “Don’t you Maddie me,” she snaps. “Nobody saved my child.”

  Bill has no idea what she’s talking about, but he recognizes this side of Madalaine, the one that always put him in mind of a snarling dog. He tries to speak to the other Maddie, the new one who’s willing to see which way he wants to go before taking off around her own block. “Hon, let’s be careful here,” is as far as he gets.

  “I will not be careful. She wasn’t careful, not that you’d know anything about that. I’m sick of being careful. Listen, Wayne, Lydie isn’t here and if she were, I’d tell her to get out anyway. Don’t you think it’s about time you woke up? If John’ll have her, that’s where she’ll be. Did you ever even figure out where your precious Claire came from?” Madalaine’s eyes are like a desert glare now, the light in them a killing one.

  Wayne’s jaw visibly tenses and a small muscle jumps coincidentally below one eye. He doesn’t answer. Bill takes a step backward, elongating the triangle the three of them had formed. “I’ll not listen to this. If you’re going to be like this, I’m leaving.”

  “Oh, that’ll be a big change, won’t it?” Even as she spits the
words, though, Madalaine knows she’s gone too far. Heat spreads from her neck up into her cheeks as if she’d stuck her head too close over an open oven. “Oh, God, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that,” she says. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.”

  “I need to get going anyway,” Bill says, the words wooden as his body.

  “Please. Please, I’m sorry. You’re right,” Madalaine says, taking a step toward him to close the gap again.

  Wayne stands awkwardly in the same place, apparently forgotten by the other two. It is as hard for him as anything he’s ever done in his life to push his way back between them. “You can’t be talkin’ like that. Claire’s my girl, no one else’s.”

  “Of course she is,” Bill says. “Come on, I’ll walk you to the truck. You’re probably blocking me in.”

  “No, I’m out on the street. I’ve got to talk to Maddie,” Wayne says. He hands his cap off to the top of a chair, as if to make it plain he intends to stay.

  “Have it your way, then,” Bill says, shaking his head in an involuntary negative gesture, as if to say this is not a smart thing to do.

  “Don’t leave, please don’t go.” Maddie is crying now. “You’re just doing this to punish me. I said you were right.”

  “It’s time I got going, anyway. I’ll go talk to Jen and go out through the garage.” He turns to Wayne and says, “Thanks for your help at the service.” Maddie takes a couple of steps toward him, opening her mouth, but Bill holds his hand up, palm to her, as if to make a stop sign of it. Then he leaves the room.

  “Okay,” Wayne answers.

  Maddie makes her way to the closest chair, the wingback one that Wayne has set his cap on, and lowers herself into it while tears course soundlessly down her face.

  As Bill heads for the kitchen, Wayne avoids his sister-in-law and crosses the room to the couch, a distance from which he could not possibly comfort her.

  A flair of fresh anger ignites in Madalaine when she sees Wayne plunk himself down to demand something of her at the same time Bill is walking out on her for telling the truth, but it is a dud, fizzling quickly and falling out of the black sky inside her. She shakes her head as if in disbelief.

  “What do you want?” she finally says.

  “I don’t want you to say that again.”

  Madalaine knows what he is talking about, but she’s wary. “What?”

  “About Claire.”

  “What about Claire?” They are dancing around each other now, both of them unsure by a hair exactly what the other knows. “Please, this isn’t a good time, you can see…” The sound of the door from the family room into the garage closing reaches them.

  “About Lydie…and Rutledge. Claire.” It is as much as Wayne will put into words.

  “Did you…know before?”

  “Yeah. I always knew. Lydie told me,” he answers.

  Madalaine is surprised. “Well, I wasn’t a hundred percent sure myself, even though it seemed…well, pretty obvious, given the problem you two…” She breaks off, aware that Wayne’s neck is blotchy red. “Bill doesn’t know anything,” she adds, surmising that Wayne assumes he does and is embarrassed.

  “And you don’t think he’ll figure it out now?” Wayne is angry, she sees, and also that his is the quiet sort of anger that simmers invisibly.

  “Well, he’s gone now. He may think about it or not, but he won’t say anything, anyway. It’s not his way.” Madalaine feels a wave hit her again, and tells herself that Bill would have left even if she hadn’t unloaded onto Wayne. She never should have allowed herself hope. Outside, she hears Bill’s car door open and shut, his engine turn over in instant metallic cooperation with his will, equally hard and mechanical. She wants Wayne gone so she can go ahead and cry. “I told you, Lydia’s not here.”

  “Claire’s goin’ to need a transplant.”

  “I know.”

  “I’m not a match and neither is Lydie. She called him.”

  “Him…John?”

  “I’m trying to stop her.”

  Madalaine holds up a hand, palm out, as if to slow him down. “She wants…?”

  “She wants him to get tested, wants to ask him to give a kidney to my daughter.”

  “Well…” Madalaine is stalling, trying to sort out the ramifications. “Maybe that’s best…a relative…a parent…is usually the best match, right?”

  Wayne sits mutely, staring at her, waiting for her to get it.

  “Oh…you don’t want anyone… Oh, you don’t want Claire to know.”

  “I don’t want Claire to know.” There is something in his voice that might be a trace of mockery, Madalaine can’t tell. “It’s not…right, anyway. She’s not any part of him,” he says.

  It wouldn’t be like Wayne to be sarcastic, Madalaine decides. “What do you want me to do?” she says, when she’s finished the weighing.

  “Make her stop.”

  “Make Lydia stop?”

  “Make Lydia stop.” Again that faint trace of something that riles her in his voice. She’s beginning to feel like she’s in a three stooges non-conversation, always lagging a step. She sits forward in the sofa, signaling that she’s about to stand.

  “Look, Wayne, I’m sorry you’ve got trouble with Lydia. To tell you the truth, I’m sick to death of Lydia. It’s not so much I blame Claire for what happened…but, I mean, Lydia, well, it was Lydia’s idea that Brian double with Claire. Claire must have known that Kevin drives too fast. Lydia should know that kind of thing if she’s any kind of mother.”

  This is beyond Wayne’s ken, these subtleties of old and new angers, these assignments of nuances of blame. He goes back to what he knows.

  “Make Lydie stop,” he says. “She won’t listen to me.”

  “And you think she’ll listen to me?” Madalaine snorts and waves a hand in dismissal, bumping it, as she does, into an arrangement of late yellow tulips that came three days ago. A little shower of large, edge-withered petals falls onto the dusty end table.

  Jennifer appears from the kitchen. “Hi Uncle Wayne,” she says, then addresses her mother. “Why are you two sitting here in the dark?”

  Neither Madalaine nor Wayne have noticed how much the light has drained from the room. They have little real connection one to the other, but share the long custom of seeing what they expect to see. Jennifer points at a light with upraised eyebrows, and when Madalaine nods, the girl reaches under the shade and switches on a lamp.

  “Thanks, honey. Now, please let Uncle Wayne and Mom finish up. I’ll be just a minute longer.” As she speaks, Madalaine gets up and switches on two more lamps. The room comes alive with its evening colors, alive but muted from what they are in daylight. While this is going on, Madalaine’s mind is trying to wrap around the dilemma Wayne has brought instead of a casserole or a plant.

  “I suppose all this is your idea of expressing sympathy,” she says when she thinks Jennifer is well out of earshot.

  “I know this isn’t the time to come askin’ favors.”

  “You’re right about that… Look, I don’t know. I’ve lost my son, my husband just left again because of something to do with Lydia. I’m just too tired, Wayne, I just don’t think I can help you.” She tries to put closure into her voice, and remains standing. Madalaine knows she is telling only part of the truth. The rest is that she’s not sure Lydia is wrong. Who cares what Wayne or any other man wants when it comes to doing what your child needs? Really, just who the hell cares?

  Wayne doesn’t budge from his seat, just sits ramrod straight and leans toward her a little. “You want me to beg? This isn’t for Lydia, it’s for Claire. I was going to ask Ellie,” he tacks on as an afterthought, picking up his cap and fiddling with it.

  “That’s right. That’s exactly my point.” Now Madalaine has said more than she intended. She doesn’t know exactly what her point is, and she is too tired and drained to figure it out. “I don’t know, Wayne, I just don’t know.”

  Then Wayne takes her totally aback. “Can I stay here?”
he says.

  “What? Stay here?” If she keeps repeating what he says she’ll sound like Charles, but she couldn’t grasp what he wanted.

  “I need a place to stay.”

  “You’re not going home? I mean…what about Lydia?” This is too much. Madalaine sits back down into the plush cream upholstery of the chair.

  “I don’t want to be around her, if she’s talking to him.”

  “Oh.”

  “So, can I stay here?”

  Madalaine shakes her head in disbelief. Then she shrugs. “I guess,” she says. “Tonight, anyway.” She gets up abruptly and heads for the kitchen, where she can hear Jennifer opening cabinet doors. “I don’t want you in Brian’s room, but you can sleep in the family room if you want.” A moment after she’s left, Wayne still sitting in the living room, she pops her head back around the corner. He hasn’t even stood up yet. “You were going to ask Ellie? Wayne, you are dumb as cement. Ellie! Good grief.”

  CHAPTER 17

  Wayne hasn’t been home or called in over twenty-four hours, but I cannot think about what threat he means for me to glean from it. And I can’t think about what to say to Claire when she asks where her father is if he doesn’t go to the hospital again today. Of course I admit I’m breaking my promise. I told him that, and that I knew I was bringing him pain greater than the one I tried to wrap in silver paper when I told him about John, and that I was pregnant. My promise, his pain, so what? Nothing matters except Claire, and she is all I will think about.

  I’ve not seen or talked to John in seventeen years and seven months. Once I saw him driving down Main Street. In a panic, I turned my head to Anna Claire, when we still called her that all the time, in a pink snowsuit in her car seat beside me. I don’t count that as really seeing him, but even if you do, it’s been seventeen years. Maybe he got a new car, or moved away. I wouldn’t have known. It’s not as if lawyers and secretaries run in the same circles. I never allowed myself the tiniest gesture—like looking under Attorneys in the Yellow Pages—to find out. Sometimes, if the phone rang and someone hung up, I used to wonder, but even that passed. I was glad when Kathy sold the Kafe, and the building was renovated and expanded into a McDonald’s. I never eat there, though.