“Funny how?”
“Like they ain’t got a lick of sense all of a sudden.”
“Dusty never had none to begin with.”
“Hush your mouth. That’s all this is.”
The daughter, skeptical, lay stretched out in Daddy’s recliner, her loose clothing a familiar uniform: ratty bright green sweats and one of Dusty’s stained Dale Earnhardt RIP T-shirts, now far too small to accommodate his paunch. Whatever Chelsea’s complaint, Eileen could be counted upon to take Dusty’s side. Inexplicably. “Think so?”
“No—I know that’s what this is. Once you’ve been through things, you know. You don’t think.”
“You always was the smartest one in any room.”
Ignoring the dig. “You’ll understand one day. I hope.”
Eileen Rucker peered over her glasses, a pair of ugly, cat-eye frames she’d had since about 1970, appropriate considering how Chelsea’s mother’s hairstyle had not changed, either. Then again such a style, American Bouffant, continued in favor by a veritable multitude of aging Eileen Ruckers across the American South. Sometimes their daughters as well.
Not this girl. Long and straight, like the girls wore their hair back in the 1970s. Took a long-ass time with the hot iron, though. Pain in the butt.
All she knew was that her mother needed to start eating more. Eileen must have lost twenty pounds in the last couple of months, and with doing essentially nothing different. Must be a part of getting older, Chelsea thought.
It wasn’t illness, because Eileen stayed too busy: Right now her mother sat hunched over piles of folders and check stubs and documents spread all over the Rucker dining room table. This year it was Eileen’s duty to serve as treasurer of the ELMS. Folks in downtown Tillman Falls called the group the power behind the throne. They had secret meetings, like the Masons, with initiations, liturgy, dogma. Chelsea sure as shit hadn’t been asked to join. The club existed to support women of means and breeding, her mother had told her, not bring them up to speed.
Get a load of that. Her own Mama thinking about her daughter in this way.
Mercy.
Today Eileen’s chitchat felt different. Lecturing. Of greater importance that the normal small talk in which the mother and daughter engaged.
“Dusty’s never acted like this before. Since I got the news, he don’t want to—you know.”
Eileen chuckled through a plume of smoke, coughed. Dismissive, she patted the stiff crust of her beauty-shop hairdo with nails impeccable as always, rings in place, wedding band still worn in deference to her beloved late husband. “Darling, darling angel of mine. Once she gets closer to born, he’ll be excited and happy.”
“Be better if I could at least get some along the way.”
Her eyes, lidded; Eileen, tsk-tsking. “Big Ma-maw taught me that you ain’t supposed to do nothing when you’re pregnant. Your grandmama always said to read a ro-mance book. Take hot baths. Hot as you can stand.”
“You mean cold showers.” She gulped iced tea, so sweet and cold it gave her a forehead spike. Thought about the times with Buddy Lawler. And the idea of parenthood. She needed a shower, all right—her skin was crawling.
But for all the guilt and trouble, Buddy Lawler, as it turned out, hadn’t made for a better lover than Dusty.
Coming fast the first time by necessity, back in the parts department and in a dusty closet as they were, so yes yes, of course it had to be quick; damn stupid decision had been made on a whim, the morning Dusty had called to say he had forgotten to pick up the cat food and litter she had told him to get on his way to work. Selfish little piss-ant. She’d show him.
Sliding into her and feeling good. Telling Buddy so. But his thrusting was awkward, spastic and propulsive, an event primal and brief. Buddy, who’d flirted and cajoled and flat-out told her how effing hot she was and how he dreamed, dreamed, of giving her the high hard one, as he put it with such tact; giving her the high hard one, a state of grace that’d lasted for all of thirty seconds.
How she’d wept, later. Like after the first time with her husband, too, for that matter. They’d been sixteen.
Considering the circumstances she decided to give Buddy another chance, but damn if it wasn’t with the same result despite being conducted under reasonably private conditions and with a six pack of Bud Light, there in her car under the Sugeree River bridge where the teenagers, at the time all still in school, would go to make out. That time she’d climbed on top, planned to control the flow and rhythm. Get what she needed, one way or another.
But Buddy, bless his heart, he’d been extra excited, it seemed, by her being on top. Once she’d peeled her panties off—the smell of her sex had filled the car—and climbed onto him, drawing in her breath, he was hard as a railroad spike, a little thicker than Dusty.
Easing him in.
Moving her hips. A few times. Maybe three or four.
“Oh, wait now, hold on girl…ahhhhh.”
“You finished already—?”
Grunting again in assent, moaning, saying how sorry he was; how sexy she looked and felt; how tight her pussy. “Keep on going. Get you some.”
Grinding, trying, but he popped out of her. “Dude.”
“That’s that.”
Words escaped her. Flustered, she pushed off him.
“We need to get in a bed, honey.” Craning his neck around. “I’m too nervous out like this.”
“Yeah. Okay.”
“Give me one of those beers,” like changing the subject, yanking up his pants. “On the way back we need to stop and get some gum.”
Disgust—with herself, with him, all of it. Feeling only this at first rather than the guilt she’d expected. That came later. And for nothing. The idea that Buddy could have made a baby that fast—or Dusty, for that matter—seemed ludicrous.
“How did Daddy act when you was carrying me and Devin?”
“He acted like your Daddy—a man. A father.”
“‘Funny’ like Dusty’s been?”
She went nuh-uh. “Your daddy had the opposite problem.”
“Which was?”
Demure. “Honey, I couldn’t keep him off me.”
“Lucky you.”
“P’shaw.” Eileen gave Chelsea her full attention. “Dwight, always working so hard, even before my sweet little angels came along, didn’t have time to feel funny about nothing. Work work work. His own daddy had worked hard, and so he did, too.”
“He was gone a lot. That’s for sure.”
“That’s what he always said, that working hard was the least he could do, to honor his daddy and all that he had done for him. And that y’all,” meaning Chelsea and Devin, “were never to want for nothing. Nothing,” stabbing that crooked old index finger of hers, the one she’d caught in the blades of a whirring beater many years before, a break that’d healed badly. She’d refused to go to the doctor. Had wrapped it up in an ace bandage and popsicle sticks. It had hurt her for a year before it fully healed, Eileen always said. After enough time had passed, she had started exaggerating the time it took to heal to two years. Milking the pathos.
Eileen cut two slitted hateful dashes for eyes over at her daughter. “Let me tell you something, little girl.”
She waited.
“You’d best not be mean to Dusty. Not after what he’s done been through in his life.”
Chelsea slammed down the footrest of the lounger. “Mama, Dusty’s a grown man now. His drunk daddy and dead mama don’t excuse everything.”
Eileen drifted into a nostalgic trance: “Poor, poor Dusty. Always so sweet with those big brown eyes. And not having no one to care for him. Not like we did. His two-bit daddy laying up drunk in that trailer, this one time with a black girl,” gasping in horror.
Chelsea’s Gen X snark erupted unbidden. “Oh, lord help me—not a black girl. Heaven forbid.”
“I can’t even think about it. But in spite of all that mess, and then later his grandmama getting sick, poor Dusty come up just fine. T
hanks to us. And to you. Now he starts his own family. Sweet, poor Dusty.”
Chelsea started to make a pointed remark about the unrewarding labors of such service, but didn’t.
“But despite it all, Dusty was always darling and goodnatured about everything. And so grateful to have us all.”
“Mercy, but you lay it on thick. It’s like Dusty has something on you.”
Her eyes twinkled. “I swore I’d never tell you this,” tittering, “but not too long after y’all started dating-dating—after a few months at least?—Dusty come to me and says, he says, ‘Mama Rucker, I don’t understand. It’s like once a month Colette acts like she don’t love me no more,’ and I laughed and laughed and I says, I says, oh my goodness gracious, poor little Dusty.” Beaming and delighted at the memory of his naiveté. “Bless his heart.”
“I guess you set him straight on our little mood type-deals.”
Analytical. “It’s difficult to explain the way things work—things that are complicated, grown-up.”
“It’s just basic biology. How hard does it have to be?”
“Because you mustn’t let children grow up too fast. Once you’ve lived for a good long while, everything’s right easy to understand, but until then—? No. No no no no no no no.”
“You’d just as soon nobody grew up at all.”
Eileen, a rueful smile. “That’s right. I wish you all could’ve stayed little forever.”
Thinking her mother nuts. The opposite of the way it ought to work. Saying so.
“To retain the purity and innocence of childhood?” Eileen glared at Chelsea, got up from the couch. Stooped and grimaced, she reached back and put a hand on her ribcage. “Such would be a miracle in this wicked world.”
Mama had gone back over to the dining room table and her stack of ELMS paperwork. She sat down, licked her thumb and turned over a sheet. She began punching numbers into a calculator, peering down her nose through the glasses.
Chelsea, exhausted, shuffled into the sparkling white kitchen and put her sweet tea glass down on the magnificent granite countertop. Dwight had installed these gray marbled beauties the summer before he died. Feeling more than seeing her mother’s disapproving head shake, she correctly anticipated the familiar ‘appearances’ speech:
“Chelsea Colette Rucker. Heavens to betsy.”
“What now?”
“Why on earth don’t you go and get you some nice things to wear?” Mortification. “People will think we don’t got no money.”
“I was sick this morning. What should I have put on? A prom dress? My durn wedding gown?”
“Sick don’t mean you can’t dress yourself like a normal grown woman.”
Screaming from the kitchen. “I was puking my guts out!”
It was true, but the nausea and dizziness had passed by eight o’clock that morning, but she’d called into work anyway. Doing so made her feel naughty, as when she’d faked tummy or girl trouble to get out of school.
“You better watch raising that voice at me.”
Chelsea snatched her keys from the countertop. “I’m going to go home now and get supper on for Dusty. Maybe he’ll be more like himself tonight.”
Eileen, wringing her hands, looked surprised. “Well, darling. Do you have to go already?”
“I think I should.”
“I feel like—we should talk more.”
Chelsea got a cold feeling inside. “About what?”
Coming over and fussing around with her daughter’s hair, stroking her arms, and putting a hand on the pooch where the baby would live until born, Eileen appeared to shake off whatever had been on her mind: “I wish you’d never moved down the road.”
“That’s silly. It ain’t but five minutes away.”
“Yes, but there’s room here for you, and for Dusty, and your kitties, and this little angel, too.” The budding grandmother stooped down with a grunt. Nuzzled Chelsea’s midsection, baby-talking the unseen fetus. “Isn’t that right my little angel? Oh—I can’t wait to get my hands on you.”
“We’ll have time to talk later in the week. On Sunday, when you come over for dinner? Dusty’s grilling steaks.”
“Sounds like a lot of trouble for only the three of us.”
Leaving through the front door, Chelsea’s eye caught the Thomas Kinkade painting hanging in the foyer, one called Christmas Moonlight. It an arched bridge leading over a stream to a snow-covered, inviting family home, golden windows glowing with warmth. The house in which she stood remained her home but lacked that sense of connection. Rather than caroling in joy, the argumentative voices of the mother and daughter often rang out, strident and spectral, in the spacious rooms and high ceilings.
She paused. “Maybe there’ll be more than three. Maybe we’ll have a guest.”
“P’shaw.”
“I’ll get extra meat.”
“I don’t know what for.”
She could just tell her mother Devin was coming. But that would make her too happy.
Nevertheless, her brother offered a solution: Devin, filling up this house.
Devin, dealing with whatever was wrong with Mama.
Devin.
And as for Chelsea? Or little Colette, as her mother would call her until her dying day?
Billy.
Buddy.
Somebody.
She wished, and wished hard, for a better way to excuse all those thoughts. Maybe an answer would come along. A way she hadn’t considered to feel free and fully alive. Other people obviously had it, even Devin in his own sick and perverted way. She kept guessing in her head; her heart always seemed far too clenched to make any contribution. Hard-hearted—it was a hell of a way for a new mother to feel. It wasn’t right.
Nor was Dusty’s behavior.
It’s because of the baby. He’ll settle down.
But the tail end of a mysterious phone call last night. That Dusty took. When he didn’t realize Chelsea was listening. A new wrinkle. The real reason.
But she had to have proof. If only she had had the courage to tell her mother the truth. Having affairs was one subject about which Eileen Rucker might have held insight.
Thirteen
Devin
Road rolling on beneath Devin's worn tires; drinking, steady, but not getting drunk, a kind of empty plateau with steep drop-offs on every side, frustrating but necessary to Arrive Alive—not usually the goal, but damn if seeing Billy didn't make sense. Talk about some heavy shit, oldschool stuff. Hanging.
When not dialing through the sparse selection of radio stations, Devin, playing the same cassette over and over, the bootleg Grateful Dead concert tape Billy'd given him the semester before the sad summer, the forgotten time, 1990; the cassette, the only media Devin still owned in any form, battered and worn, the mechanism making a faint squeal.
The recording of the show the rock legends had played at McNabb Arena.
An awful night. Nothing good came of it.
Or everything good, actually.
This represented a pernicious state of confusion. Good, bad, all of it mixed up in his mind. Certain he'd eventually get drunk enough to reason it out, though.
Devin, recalling how after the band appeared in Columbia 'hippie' seemed to become a fad, with tons of people besides Billy getting into that noodling Deadhead crap: everywhere you looked roamed girls in flowing skirts and Birkenstocks, and guys, Billy included, growing their hair long and rocking Guatemalan shorts, tie-dyes. The aromatic odor of exotic tobaccos wafted from dorm room windows. That part he understood was not so fresh a development on a college campus. Not in their dorm room, anyway.
Shit’s always made me squirrel-nerved. Gimme a few brews, yo, to feel less present, not more.
The best song the band did at the show came warbling out of the tinny Jetta speakers—'Wharf Rat,' a mournful ditty about a drunk knocking around the San Francisco docks grieving for a lost love, to this day Devin's favorite bit of music he'd ever heard the Dead or any other rock group play
. Recalling how at the concert he'd held his paper cup of overpriced soda pop up in the air in salute as Jerry Garcia, singing about doing time for other fucker's crimes and stumbling around drunk on bur-gun-dy wine, had held rapt the houseful of fans eighteen thousand strong, all standing silent and reverent and worshipful in the massive basketball temple. The lyrics, giving Devin chicken-skin, that song, every time.
The work, resonating.
But a big fight later that night. You and Billy.
Over Libby.
It’d all worked out, though. Until it hadn’t. After which Billy a hero, rather a villain. A vague savior to Devin in some amorphously mysterious manner forever escaping clear recollection.
Next? Dobbs messing around with her. Dobbs, of all people. Had known each other since first grade. Best pals.
Not to mention that Dobbs is gay.
It didn’t add up.
Stop thinking and let the mind lie fallow, boy. Like you done got so good at, as a soft inner cadence called to him. Now here came a voice of reason.
The miles, the clicks, piling up. Boring his way on toward Texas, the awful spots boiling, infinite, all consuming.
But Devin, making it through the first day’s drive fine. No cops, no accidents. A Super 8 in Boise City appeared on the side of the road, some shitburg nowheresville in the panhandle of Oklahoma. No man’s land, which suited Devin’s unique brand of emptiness fine, fine as wine. Ice in a plastic bucket that stank, and then knocking back the fifth of vodka he’d brought until crashing.
Shocked in the morning to discover not how much he’d drank, but how little. Upon arising not long after the sunrise, Devin, starting his day on a high note by retching—hard and sustained—into the stained and mysterious motel toilet, but over pretty quick by his standards. Seeing a gratifying pink accent of blood. Check.
Devin, in the parking lot, cursed the sunlight striking his optic nerves like white-hot daggers. The air, rank with diesel exhaust from big rigs rumbling across the overpass a hundred yards away. The acrid char-smell from What-a-Burger next door smelled like death, but tasty death. Devin, swooning with fresh nausea, felt a sensation mistaken, briefly, as hunger.
Mansion of High Ghosts Page 11