Whatever It Takes

by Gwynne Forster

  The movement of Douglas’s jaw was the only evidence of his anger. He spoke gently to his son, but in a firm, no-nonsense way. Nick’s face sagged into a pout when his grandfather ignored his efforts at attention grabbing. The boy caught the first fish, a four-pound bearded catfish, which he showed to his father and grandfather, but not to her. She pretended not to notice the child’s insult.

  The adults caught trout, and when Oscar asked which they should eat for lunch, the word, trout, flew out of her mouth so quickly that Douglas turned and stared at her. If he had asked her, she would have told him why she wouldn’t eat any of Nick’s fish. While Oscar grilled the trout, Douglas picked the guitar and sang folk songs that she would have enjoyed if she had been happier.

  Because her thoughts were elsewhere, she got a splinter under the nail of her right index finger when she attempted to pick up a stick. “What is it, Lacette? What’s the matter?” he said when she said “Ow,” and grabbed her finger.

  She showed Douglas the splinter, and he began the task of removing it with the pliers in his Swiss Army knife. But from her peripheral view, she saw Nick approach them, and it surprised her to realize that she had expected the boy to interfere.

  He did not disappoint her. “Daddy, I think I chewed a bone. See if there are any more bones in my fish.”

  “Come here, Nick,” Oscar called, but the boy ignored his grandfather.

  Douglas didn’t glance toward Nick until after he removed the splinter. Then, he took the boy’s hand, walked a few paces from her and stopped. “If I don’t find any bones in your fish, you’re grounded for one whole month.”

  “But, Daddy—”

  “You and I both know that your grandfather never leaves a bone in a fish that he filets. If you lied, you’re grounded. You did not obey your grandfather, so you lose one week’s allowance. As for your behavior toward Lacette, you’re on the verge of losing my respect. Bring me your plate.”

  “Maybe I already chewed the only bone.”

  “That doesn’t cut it. You asked me to check, and that’s what I’m going to do.”

  She didn’t want to hear more, so she went over to Oscar, who was resting on a boulder, and sat beside him. “Nick is usually a good boy,” Oscar said, “but today, he seems to have taken leave of his senses. He’s not like this.”

  “I’m sure of that,” she replied, and his head snapped around so that he faced her. His eyes narrowed and he moved his fingers back and forth across his jaw as she once saw Douglas do. Finally, he said, “I don’t know what’s gotten into him.”

  She nearly said, “I know,” but didn’t, because she didn’t want Oscar to know that Nick’s behavior distressed her.

  Douglas drove Oscar and Nick home, told his mother good-bye and prepared to leave Hagerstown. “I enjoyed seeing you again,” She told Douglas’s parents, and she spared Nick a reprimand for more bad behavior by calling goodbye to him rather than going to his room where he’d been banished. She didn’t consider that either bad manners or cowardliness; she’d had enough of the boy’s antics and accorded herself the right to avoid more of his insults.

  “I’m sorry for Nick’s behavior,” Douglas said as drove them back to Frederick.

  She didn’t want to discuss it, although she knew he would think he had to do that. Her silence would be like wind-driven sleet in his face, but she wasn’t adept at pretense.

  “I wanted the three of us to . . . to do some serious bonding, but . . . well, I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be,” she said, aware that both her voice and her demeanor bespoke resignation and disappointment.

  Douglas glanced to his right, switched to the right lane and reduced his speed, as if speaking of something important required more concentration than he could muster while driving at seventy miles an hour. “I suppose he’s jealous; you’re the only woman he’s seen me with since he was six years old.”

  She closed her eyes, leaned back and tried to speak calmly. “Douglas, you have to accept that Nick does not like me, and I would find it hard to love a child who behaved toward me as he did today. I’m sorry, but as much as I care for you, I know it isn’t going to work out.”

  “I don’t want to hear that. Let’s leave this topic until a time when I’m not driving, or maybe we ought not to discuss it until you’ve had time for reflection.”

  When they reached her house, he parked, locked the car and walked with her to her door. A warm breeze caressed her face, the moon dominated a cloudless, star-speckled sky, and the night insects and other animals broke the silence. On any other such night, she would have been caught up in the magic, captivated by it and the man at her side, but her heart was heavy as she opened the door.

  “I want to come in,” he said.

  But she shook her head. “I’m too troubled to be good company. Thank you for the day. For all our sakes, I wish it had turned out better.”

  He stuck his hands in his trouser pockets and looked at her, saying nothing, and she didn’t know how to say good night. He stepped closer. “Can we have lunch together tomorrow?”

  “Douglas, I—”

  He grabbed her shoulders. “I’m not giving you up. You hear me? Never! Kiss me.”

  She gazed into his eyes, eyes that reflected the pain he felt, and he locked her to his body. As if by rote, she parted her lips, and he drained her of every emotion, every thought that didn’t concern him. “I’ll see you at twelve-thirty, and I’m buying.” He flicked his index finger across the tip of her nose and left.

  Lacette awakened the next morning groggy and feeling as if she had just run a marathon and realized that the noise she heard was the ringing of the phone. She reached for it and nearly knocked over the lamp on the night table.

  “Hello.”

  “Lacette, were you asleep? What are you doing in bed this time of day? It’s ten-thirty.”

  She sprang out of bed dragging the bedding with her. “What? Douglas?” She glanced at the clock and slapped her hand over her mouth. “Good heavens, I overslept. No wonder I feel as if I’d run a twenty-six mile obstacle course.”

  “Maybe you ought to stay in and rest. I’m great at giving TLC.”

  As upset as she was at having missed a morning at work, she laughed at his humor. “Thanks, but I have three important afternoon appointments. I’ll accept a nice lunch, though.”

  “Consider it done.”

  Her inability to rush troubled her, and she didn’t like the way in which she plodded along. “I’ll be okay as soon as I get some breakfast,” she said to herself. “I just need some food.”

  As she dealt with a difficult and unexpected problem in her relationship with Douglas, Lacette couldn’t know the chasm over which her sister was about to cross or the deepening of the hole that Kellie was digging for herself.

  Kellie hated that she had to ask Mabel for a couple of hours off. A month earlier Mabel sat at a typist’s desk across the aisle from her, and now she was Miss Big Shot Supervisor. She reined in her pride, walked down the hall to Mabel’s office and knocked.

  “Come in.”

  She stepped inside and closed the door. “I’m moving this evening, Mabel. Could I have a couple of hours off, please? I haven’t taken any leave this year.”

  Mabel pushed her chewing gum between her gum and her jaw and looked hard at Kellie. “Lord, I sure hope you don’t plan to move in with Hal Fayson.” Kellie’s jaw dropped, and she fumbled for a chair and sat down. “That’s right,” Mabel said. “You know there aren’t any secrets in this town. Better watch what you’re doing, ’cause that brother ain’t worth shit, and I know four women, including my first cousin, who are living witnesses to that fact. Love ’em and leave ’em. That’s Hal. Girl, the way women act over him, he must have one fantastic bag of tricks. I hope you’re not pregnant.”

  “No,” she said in a barely audible voice, stunned that after the care she’d taken to keep her relationship with Hal a secret, even Mabel knew about it.

  “Don’t be so surpri
sed that I know. I hear he was in Joe’s boasting that he had one of the town’s ‘top chicks,’ I believe is the way he put it, and when Chad York challenged him, he told him right in front of everybody how he met you. Yeah, you can have the afternoon off.” She shook her head. “I tell you, I never would have believed you’d do a thing like this. Your folks must be upset.”

  What could she say? “Thanks a lot, Mabel. I’ll be in tomorrow morning on time.”

  She managed to get out of the office without breaking down. She had known for some time that Hal held the trump card, but it shocked her that he played it so deftly and so ruthlessly. Moving in with him wasn’t her idea, but he’d sworn that he wouldn’t see her again unless she did, and she knew she’d prowl like a cat in heat if three days passed and she couldn’t be with him.

  She had wanted the afternoon off so that she could pack and move before her mother came home from school, for she didn’t plan to announce that she was leaving home until it was a fait accompli. However, she had packed less than half of her things, when she heard the front door open and felt as if her belly had plunged to the floor. A sickening feeling pervaded her as her mother’s footsteps came closer and closer. She didn’t have time to close her bedroom door.

  “What in the Lord’s name . . . Kellie, for God’s sake where have you been? I’ve been out of my mind. Did you stay with that man last night?” She walked into the room and stuck her knuckles to her narrow hips. “Did you?”

  Kellie could feel her jaw twitching and her nostrils flaring, letting off steam as a steer does just before it charges. “Mama, I’ll be thirty-four years old in three months. I don’t ask where you’ve been when you come in at midnight.”

  “But I come home,” she said. “I don’t cause my children to worry that someone may have killed me.”

  “Excuse me, Mama. I’m busy, and I’m sorry, but I don’t feel up to this drama.” She folded several sweaters and some pants and put them into a suitcase.

  “You’re packing. You’re going off somewhere with him.” Her voice rose with each word she spoke. Her hand gripped Kellie’s arm. “Don’t act like I’m not talking to you.”

  “Please, Mama. You’ll be moving into your apartment next week. I’m . . .” Suddenly she stopped folding clothes, straightened up and looked at her mother. She didn’t need to apologize, and she wasn’t going to. “I’m moving in with Hal, and he’ll be here soon to get my things.”

  “You what? Are you crazy? That foul-mouthed man doesn’t even have a job, and my daughter . . . Oh, Lord. This is too much.” She slumped onto the bed beside the suitcase, and tears trickled down her cheeks.

  “Mama, please don’t start with the histrionics. It’s too late now to raise me. You should have done that when I was a child. I want him, and I’m going to live with him. And he has a job.”

  Cynthia jumped up from the bed. “This is scandalous. You ought to have more self-pride.”

  “Really? You have to admit that nobody has found me twisting and turning in the backseat of a car, making out in a garage. And since I’m not married, whose business is it but mine and his? Mama, let’s . . . let’s not say these things. I mean . . . I’m leaving. Don’t make things so that we won’t be speaking to each other.”

  “You want me to just stand here and watch you ruin your life?” Her feistiness gone, she spoke in subdued tones, the fight gone out of her.

  “Think back, Mama, to where this started and why. I have to hurry, because Hal is always impatient about everything.”

  “I hope you can get him to change his style,” Cynthia said, “though nothing’s going to alter the picture that the people of Frederick have of him. Of all the no-good men in this town, you have to choose one who’s also a woman chaser and a professional infidel.”

  “Mama, please let me get on with this. I’m going with him, and nobody’s going to stop me.”

  Cynthia walked to the door, stopped and looked toward the ceiling as if searching for an angle, one thing that would change her daughter’s mind.

  “Try to profit from my mistake, Kellie. I thought I would have climbed Mt. Everest to be with that man, but as I look back, the few hours I had with him are not worth a minute of the hell I’ve been going through ever since.”

  She didn’t want to hear any more. “I’m sorry, Mama. I’ll . . . uh . . . say good-bye before I leave.”

  She finished packing, put the remainder of her belongings in one closet, struggled down the stairs with her suitcases and put them in the foyer. She sat on one of them, chewing her nails until the doorbell rang.

  “You ready?” Hal asked.

  “In a minute. I have to go back upstairs and tell Mama good-bye. I’ll be right back.”

  “Tell her good-bye? Why, for heaven’s sake? She’ll just give you a hard time. Come on.”

  She knew that it was useless to try explaining that, in spite of all the awful things she’d done, she couldn’t treat her mother in that way.

  When Cynthia didn’t respond to her knock, she opened the door, walked into the room and looked at her mother, a forlorn figure staring out the window. She placed a hand on Cynthia’s shoulder. “Uh . . . good-bye, Mama. I’ll call you.” She didn’t expect a reply and didn’t get one.

  When she got to the van, he had the motor running, and she had barely closed the door when he released the brake and accelerated so sharply that the van jumped from the curb. “Let this be the last time you disobey me,” he growled and sped down the street at such a speed that she prayed silently beside him. He was mad, but at least he took it out on the car instead of her. She remained quiet, and tried to stay calm so as not to incite his ire.

  He stopped at a delicatessen on the corner of Ice Street and Gerard Lane. “Get us a six-pack of Budweiser beer.” She turned to him for the money, but he shrugged. “You got money. I just started working today.”

  She went into the store, bought the six-pack of beer and a package of Chiclets. “What else did you buy?” She told him. “You could at least have bought me some chips to snack on with the beer. Jeez. Don’t you even think?”

  She squashed her temper and said nothing. He needed time to get used to them as a couple, but she hoped it wouldn’t take him too long. You don’t believe that, her common sense said, but she pushed that aside, too. “It’ll work out,” she told herself. It has to; I’ve burned my bridges, and I can’t go back.

  While Kellie was rationalizing Hal’s behavior and trying not to see it as a harbinger of things to come, Marshall was on his way to the parsonage hoping to learn something of Kellie’s whereabouts. He hadn’t called her at her job that day, because he didn’t want to raise suspicions about her. Cynthia answered the doorbell after it rang nearly a dozen times.

  “Who is it?”

  “Marshall.” She opened the door. “If you’ve got company, we can talk right here. I still haven’t heard anything from Kellie. Have you?”

  “I’m alone. Come on in. I just called you. Kellie was here when I got home from school. She packed most of her things, and about half an hour or so ago, Hal came and got her. She’s moving in with that awful man.”

  He slumped against the wall. “Oh, my Lord. How could she do a thing like that? He doesn’t even have a job, and when he’s tired of her, she’ll be like the other women he’s used and left.”

  “I tried to reason with her, but she said nobody was going to stop her. Marshall, I told her that what I did wasn’t worth a minute of the hell I’ve lived in ever since.”

  He raised an eyebrow. He didn’t doubt that she was sorry, but he couldn’t absolve her, because he wasn’t a liar. She had hurt him so deeply that he still had nightmares about it. Catching her . . . He shook his body as a bird does after a bath, trying to remove the thought of it from his memory.

  “That’s past, Cynthia. It’s also written in stone. If Kellie gives you her address or phone number, please call me. Meanwhile, I’ll ask Hal’s father if he knows where they’re staying. Good night.”

&
nbsp; When he got back to his car, he phoned Lacette and told her what he’d just learned and added, “I’m devastated.”

  “Come on over here, Daddy, and I’ll fix you some supper, provided you don’t mind ground steak.”

  “Don’t mind? I’m on my way.”

  He parked in front of Lacette’s house and cut the motor, but couldn’t muster the will to get out of the car. For the last thirty-five years, in crisis after crisis—and he’d known plenty of them—Cynthia’s understanding and encouragement, her faith in him and in his ability had sustained him. She had never buckled under adversity, and had given strength and courage to him and their children. For the first time since he left her, he missed her spirit, her fortitude, but now, she could neither influence her husband nor guide her children. Sadness engulfed him as he got out of the car and walked with a heavy heart to Lacette’s front door.

  “Oh, Daddy,” Lacette said, when she opened the door. Her arms opened to him, and he thanked God for her. “Come on in. I decided to cook beef stew instead, but it won’t take long in the pressure cooker.”

  “I’ll eat whatever you cook, but you know I love beef stew.” He didn’t care what he ate, and he didn’t want to make talk. “Lacette,” he said, “I’m just about done in. How did Kellie lapse into this kind of behavior? She has gone against everything that I stand for, everything that her mother and I taught her. Lacette, she’s amoral. She’ll do whatever it takes to get what she wants, and she doesn’t care who she hurts.”

  “I guess I’ve always known her better than you and Mama know her, so although I’m astonished and sorry for what she’s done this time, I’m mainly surprised at the man’s identity.”

  He walked to the window and looked out at the clear sky and young moon. “Funny. That’s the only part I understand; she used him and got the surprise of her life. She thought she’d exploit him and discard him, but instead, she got hooked. That’s what happens to people who are unprincipled. It catches up with ’em.”

  “Come on in the kitchen,” Lacette said. “I have to cook the rice. The spinach won’t take but a few minutes.” They sat at the little table facing each other. “I hope he doesn’t mistreat her.”