A House Divided

by Robert Whitlow

  “You know what I mean.”

  Ray wasn’t sure he did.

  “Did you talk to Roxy about the estate?” Cindy continued.

  “For a few minutes after everyone left the funeral home last night. There’s not much to discuss. Mom had been drawing down a ton on the reverse mortgage before she got sick, and the hospital lien will eat up the rest of the equity she had left.”

  “Did Roxy say anything about all the money your mother gave her to go to college and law school debt free?”

  “No.”

  Cindy shook her head. “If your father had been paying a decent amount of alimony all these years—”

  Ray held up his hand. “Please don’t go there right now.”

  “Sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”

  “Even though there isn’t anything to divide between us except the stuff in the house, Roxy will be a stickler about every detail. She’ll drive me crazy trying to control everything. I bet she changed the floral arrangement on the casket six times before she was satisfied. I thought Mrs. Langford was going to cry.”

  “She can’t help it,” Cindy said. “That’s how she’s wired.”

  Ray glanced sideways. “Be sure you remember that when she starts demanding all the pieces you want from the house, including the hand-painted serving bowl.”

  “Your mom knew I loved that bowl,” Cindy protested. “She told me in front of everyone last Christmas that she wanted me to have it.”

  “Do you want me to remind Roxy of that if it comes up?”

  Cindy faced forward and pursed her lips. “I’m not going to be petty, but part of your being a leader will be keeping your father and sister from running over you.”

  Cars stretched along the entire cul-de-sac and down both sides of the street. Kitty had been a bright light in the community, and the outpouring of support at her death was living proof.

  “There’s Dad’s truck,” Ray said. “But I bet he’s slipped off by himself somewhere.”

  Ray pulled into the driveway and onto the grass beneath a large pin oak tree whose leaves were turning yellow. “Facing a houseful of well-meaning people is going to be hard,” he sighed as he turned off the motor. “I’d rather be alone too.”

  “People deal with loss differently. And I want to support you.”

  Ray glanced at his wife, then reached out and squeezed her hand. They knew about loss. Cindy had suffered the late-term miscarriage of a little girl before Billy was born and another since his birth.

  “We’ll go through this together,” he said, “just like everything else since you maneuvered your way in front of my lab table in ninth-grade biology.”

  Cindy smiled. “You’ve told that story so many times you believe it’s true.”

  “Yeah, I’m like the guys at the jail who convince themselves they weren’t really present when the crime occurred.”

  “Well, you did get in trouble with Mr. Jenkins for staring at the back of my head instead of doing your work.”

  “Your neck looked way better than the frog we were dissecting.”

  Ray leaned over and gave Cindy a quick kiss on the lips. She touched the side of his face with her hand.

  “I loved your mom, and I love her son,” she said.

  “I know.”

  “And she loved me,” Cindy said. “That’s the greatest gift she could ever give. And no one can take that away from me.”

  It had been almost a decade since Corbin entered the master bedroom. So long that he’d forgotten about the picture hanging on the wall opposite the bed—a large, framed wedding photo made to look like an oil painting. He started to back out of the room, but he was already trapped by the memory of the afternoon in May that everyone in attendance thought was pregnant with promise.

  Kitty’s eyes shone with bridal joy. Corbin’s sheepish look was a by-product of the hangover from a last-minute bachelor party held the previous night—the one at which moonshine whiskey of an unknown but potent proof rendered him unconscious and suffering from amnesia from 11:00 p.m. until he woke up the following morning with a splitting headache, still wearing his rehearsal clothes.

  Today Corbin didn’t think about the long-ago headache. He took in every detail of the picture, especially the intertwining of his fingers with Kitty’s. He shut his eyes for a moment and tried to remember what that casual, yet intimate, closeness felt like. With his thumb he rubbed the ring finger on his left hand and touched again the empty place that had been home to his wedding band for twenty-nine years.

  He opened his eyes and sighed. No longer hungry, he put the plate of food on a dresser, sat on the end of the bed, and put his head in his hands. There was a knock on the door.

  “Come in,” he said, wondering who’d tracked him down the deserted hallway.

  It was Branson Kilpatrick, a lifelong resident of Alto who owned a small lawn care business. Corbin had incorporated Branson’s business and represented his son, Tommy, when the young man injured his leg in a motorcycle wreck.

  “Hey, Branson,” Corbin said, getting to his feet.

  Branson glanced at the photo, then quickly turned his gaze to Corbin. “Sorry, Corbin. I didn’t mean to disturb you, but I didn’t get a chance to come by the funeral home last night, and I wanted to give you my condolences before leaving. Like everyone else, I’ll miss Kitty.”

  Corbin reached out and shook Branson’s hand. “I appreciate that. She thought the world of you. And thanks for taking care of the yard after the—” Corbin stopped. He didn’t want to mention the word divorce in the presence of the picture.

  “It’s what I do,” Branson said awkwardly then stared at the floor. “I wish I’d been able to keep up the flower beds.”

  “It’s okay.”

  The two men stood in silence for a moment.

  “Well, I’d better get going,” Branson said. “I guess you heard about my little grandson getting cancer. He’s seeing some kind of specialist later this afternoon, and his mother wants my wife and me to be there too.”

  “I didn’t know about your grandson,” Corbin replied. “Is that Samantha’s boy?”

  “No, Tommy’s boy, Mitchell.”

  “I’m real sorry to hear about that. How old is he?”

  “Just turned five. He’s got that stuff the doctors call non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. No matter what they name it, cancer is bad and I hate it. My daughter-in-law doesn’t have any family close by, and she’s leaning heavily on me, especially since Tommy lost his job at the fertilizer plant.”

  “What happened to his job?”

  “They’re running a bunch of new product over there, but like everyplace else, robots are replacing people. Tommy just missed the cutoff to save his job by a few months of seniority. You know what they say about it raining and pouring. That’s what we’ve been going through—” Branson paused. “I’m sorry. Your family’s loss is the reason we’re here today.”

  “No, no.” Corbin waved his hand toward the picture. “Kitty was always thinking about the other person. Let me know how Mitchell gets along. Tommy too.”

  Branson left. Corbin looked again at the portrait. Kitty’s bright smile never had lost its luster. In the picture, her eyes seemed filled with secret knowledge. Corbin shook his head. He hated it when he slipped into a delusion while drinking, and he didn’t want to start while sober. He picked up his untouched plate and left the room.

  Of course Ray had parked on the freshly cut grass. To Roxy her brother’s action was indicative of his careless outlook on life and constant need for guidance and supervision.

  At twenty-nine Roxy was two years younger than Ray, but ever since she was old enough to stand up and start giving orders, she’d made it her life mission to whip him into shape. As a ninth grader, her knowledge of grammar and composition exceeded that of her brother, so when he came to her with red ink–stained papers, she bailed him out. The same thing happened the following year in an upper-level Spanish literature class. Roxy felt guilty allowing Ray to plagiari
ze her papers for most of his translations, but he was desperate, and she had a soft spot for his weakness that he exploited.

  The codependency that marked their childhood and teenage years faded as they passed through their twenties. Now they rarely talked on the phone and only saw each other when at their mother’s house.

  So far Ray had avoided most of their father’s worst habits, but in Roxy’s opinion, he didn’t have many good ones of his own. He’d returned to Alto after law school because he had no other options and married Cindy, his high school sweetheart, because she was the easy choice.

  Parking on the street, Roxy made sure she left room to maneuver her car in case a vehicle pulled in behind her. She got out of the car and straightened the jacket of her black suit. She’d bought the suit at Nordstrom to wear at meetings when her law firm’s pharmaceutical clients came to Atlanta. After today, she resolved, she would put it at the back of the walk-in closet in her renovated townhome and not wear it for at least a year. It would be a private way to honor her mother’s memory.

  She reached into her pocket to make sure she had a few fresh tissues. She rarely cried, but an encounter with something or someone in the house today was bound to trigger a few tears. She walked briskly down the street. Her slender legs and well-shaped calves were the pistons that propelled her as a long-distance runner. Petite like her mother, Roxy had started running as a tiny but determined seventh grader and hadn’t stopped while earning a BS in chemistry with honors from Georgia Tech and then serving on the staff of the law review at Emory Law School. Once, after a couple of drinks, her father had asked if she was running away from Alto. Roxy’s look answered him.

  Now, with her mother’s death, her childhood link to Alto was severed. As executor, Ray would take twice as long as necessary to close out the nearly bankrupt estate, but once that was done, Roxy could let the eighty miles between Alto and Atlanta turn into eight hundred.

  She reached the front door of the house, took a deep breath, and went inside. The house contained a mixture of contradictory memories. The clash between chaos and order during her childhood had caused her to build walls that she still vigorously protected. Her greatest regret was that her father waited until after she left home for college to abandon the marriage. She still reacted sharply when she heard about couples “staying together for the sake of the children.”

  Ray and Cindy were standing in the living room talking to a neighbor. Roxy avoided them and went into the kitchen, where she surveyed the solemn row of casserole dishes full of calorie-laden Southern comfort food. She picked up a carrot stick from a vegetable tray and slipped into the laundry room to eat it.

  Knowing she couldn’t hide in the laundry room forever, Roxy finished her carrot and returned to the living room, determined to make the next few minutes as positive a memory as possible. She approached Ray and Cindy and touched her sister-in-law on the arm.

  “I need to talk to you,” Roxy said. “In private.”

  “What’s wrong?” Cindy asked.

  Roxy steered her down the hallway toward the master bedroom. Her father was just coming out of the room with a plateful of food.

  “Uh, forgot,” he muttered as he passed by them.

  Roxy didn’t bother to reply. She led Cindy into a small den across the hall, then turned to face her sister-in-law.

  “I want to thank you for all the time you spent with Mom when she was in and out of the hospital over the past few months, and I couldn’t be there. It meant a lot knowing you were with her.”

  “You’re welcome,” Cindy said, her eyes opening wider. “She was a wonderful lady.”

  Roxy pointed to a shelf lined with decorative objects. “Take the hand-painted serving bowl home with you today. I know she wanted you to have it.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes, it doesn’t fit the décor of my townhome. And it will look great on the sideboard in your dining room or on the table as a centerpiece with fresh fruit.” Roxy paused. “Tell you what, I’ll think about where it should go and let you know which option is better.”

  THREE

  The crowd at the house had thinned by the time Corbin scraped his remaining food into the garbage bin in the kitchen and left through the back door. He was proud of himself for staying as long as he did.

  Billy was in the backyard sitting in the limbs of a sweet gum tree. He saw Corbin and waved. “Pops, I found some nails sticking out of the tree!”

  Corbin limped slightly as he made his way across the expanse of soft grass to the tree. After standing up for several hours, his right knee often ached from a high school football injury.

  “Is your leg hurting?” Billy asked when Corbin reached the tree.

  “Yeah, it’s thinking about the Dawson County game when I had to play both offense and defense because one of the other boys had the flu. I’m not up for tree climbing today.”

  Billy laughed. It was one of the most wonderful sounds in Corbin’s life. The boy stood and balanced on the limb.

  “The nails are up here,” he said, reaching with his hand. “I can feel five of them.”

  Corbin shielded his eyes with his hand. “That’s where I built a tree house for your daddy. Eventually the boards rotted and fell to the ground, but the nails stayed. One side of the floor was attached to that limb.”

  Billy looked down at Corbin. A gentle breeze made the remaining leaves on the tree rustle.

  “The floor?” he exclaimed. “I want a tree house up this high.”

  “It was a lot closer to the ground back then. I wouldn’t build a house higher than your daddy could fall from and not break a bone.” Corbin paused as memory of the sharp debate with Kitty about child safety resurfaced. “But it was plenty high. It had walls all around it and a rope ladder that was like the cargo net on the playground at your school.”

  Billy tapped his foot against the limb that supported him. “Could we build a new one?”

  Corbin shook his head. “Not in this tree. Now that Gran is gone, her house is going to be sold so another family can live here.”

  He could see the disappointment in Billy’s eyes. “Hey,” he said. “Why don’t we go fishing at Braswell’s Pond on Saturday? It’s been over a month.”

  Billy’s face brightened. “Will you ask my mama?”

  Corbin glanced over his shoulder at the house. He didn’t want to go back inside. “She’s busy right now, but I’ll call her later. And hey . . . don’t mess up your good clothes.”

  Billy touched his dark blue pants. “I scraped my knee and made a tiny hole, but I brushed it off. She’ll never notice.”

  Corbin winced at the tiny seed of deception. By the time he was a teenager, his own mother had known little of his secret life.

  “Tell her anyway,” he said. “I gotta go. See you later.”

  “Bye, Pops. I love you.”

  “I love you too.”

  Corbin walked around the side of the house. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d heard those words from Ray or Roxy. He made it to his truck without having to talk to anyone else and didn’t look in the rearview mirror as he drove away.

  Ray and Roxy sat together at the kitchen table—Ray facing down a massive piece of double chocolate cake and Roxy nibbling a stick of celery. Ray rolled a mouthful of chocolate around in his mouth for a few seconds before chewing.

  “This cake should be illegal,” he said. “It’s more potent than the bootleg shots Dad and his buddies get from the back steps of the kitchen at Red’s.”

  “You shouldn’t joke about it,” Roxy replied. “That stuff is dangerous.”

  “I wasn’t joking,” Ray replied. “At least he seemed sober today. Maybe it was his way of honoring Mom’s memory. She never gave up on him even if everyone else did. I just hope he doesn’t do anything that gets him disbarred or hurts someone.”

  “Do you know how often he’s drinking?”

  “Not exactly. We eat lunch occasionally, but never at Red’s. I know he keeps a bottle
or two of bourbon in his office, and once he gets home . . .” Ray paused. “He’s always asking if I’ve heard anything from you. You should call him more often.”

  “It’s always so awkward. Did you notice the huge spot on his neck that he missed with his razor? It was embarrassing.”

  “Yeah, he’ll show up in court with a couple of days’ growth sprouting out all over. The local lawyers are used to it, and the judges don’t seem to care.”

  Roxy shook her head. “Has he given up trying to talk you into joining his practice?”

  “Are you kidding? He brings it up all the time. He’s rattling around there by himself with less and less to do. Janelle spends most of her time talking on the phone to her cronies.” Ray glanced over Roxy’s shoulder to make sure they were alone. “And I’m 99 percent sure I’m going to get an offer any day from Simpkin, Brown, and Stamper. I’ve met with them twice. They need another litigator. Nate Stamper watched the last felony case I tried and was very complimentary.”

  “Really?” Roxy raised her eyebrows. “Congratulations. Their office is an architectural eyesore, but by Alto standards, they practice at a high level.”

  “It’s not downtown Atlanta.” Ray gave his sister a dry look. “But they represent the fertilizer plant, the electric co-op, both local banks, a bunch of insurance companies, and anyone in town with significant personal assets. Plus they serve as county attorneys. They scoop off all the cream and leave the other firms to fight over the crumbs. I bet Mr. Simpkin makes as much as some of the senior lawyers at your firm.”

  “It’s possible,” Roxy admitted. “I’ve heard the partners complain that big corporations don’t roll over and pay legal fees without pushback like they used to. And the ladder above me is pretty crowded. I’ll have to stay another five or six years before I have a realistic shot at making partner. And even then . . .”

  It was a rare show of vulnerability for his sister.

  “Hey, I’m sure you’ll catch the eye of the right people,” Ray said in a softer tone of voice. “Remember you didn’t lose a single cross-country race your senior year.”