Eat, Drink, and Be From Mississippi

by Nanci Kincaid

  Truely had always gotten along well with Shauna’s mother. He found her accepting and kind. But before he had much chance to express that, Becca and Shelly opened the door.

  “Mama, you okay back here?”

  “Just talking to True.” Suleeta touched his arm, a gesture he appreciated.

  “Hey, Truely,” Shelly said. “It’s good you came. We don’t want Shauna to be alone at a time like this.”

  “Of course not,” he said.

  “Mama, the priest is here. He’s waiting in the kitchen.”

  “Okay,” Suleeta said. “Very good then.”

  Truely picked up his plate of now cold tamales and excused himself. He had never been sure what Shauna’s sisters thought of him. He always felt like they were disappointed in him, that they had hoped that after what Shauna had been through with Pablo the next guy — him — would do better by her, have the guts to make a commitment and marry Shauna. Nothing less would suit them. He sensed that they had given up on him, tolerated him now as an impotent, harmless fixture in Shauna’s substandard life.

  It was clear to Truely that once you had deeply disappointed one woman you found yourself disappointing others without even trying — maybe without even knowing it. It became an involuntary habit. Now he knew that if you disappointed a good woman with your inertia, then you disappointed her sisters too, and her friends, and probably more than anyone else her mother, although Suleeta had never let on. Truely was pretty sure that at this point Shauna’s family looked at him and saw only a ghost of a man committed only to haunting Shauna’s lonely life.

  Eleven

  BY SIX O’CLOCK that evening nearly everyone had gone home. Jerry was loading the car with his and Shauna’s luggage. The plan was for Becca and her husband to drive them to the airport on their way home. Truely lucked out with a few last minutes alone with Shauna. They sat together on the bed in her room. She had crashed earlier, free-falling into the savage reality of it all. He was thankful for the chance to hold her while she cried.

  Afterward Shauna had gotten herself together. She dressed in a black easy-wear travel suit that he had seen her wear many times. She brushed her hair up on her head and put a clip in it. She was quiet, busy organizing her purse and the notebook she carried with all their pertinent information, lists, phone numbers, addresses and assorted folded papers she had paper-clipped everywhere. Truely sat on the bed, just watching her, glad to be in her presence — glad to bear witness to her life and her strength.

  “Truely, do you believe in God?”

  The question had come out of nowhere. He wasn’t expecting it. “I guess,” he answered without conviction.

  “You guess? You’re not sure?”

  “I mean, I can’t prove God exists. Nobody can, right? But that there is a God makes more sense to me than that there isn’t one.”

  “I prayed for Gordo every day he was gone,” Shauna said.

  “You think God didn’t listen?”

  “I don’t understand how God could let this happen.”

  “The enemies’ sisters are praying too, I guess.”

  “Truely, I’m serious.”

  “I don’t know what to say, Shauna. Lots of things happen that shouldn’t happen. Maybe God can’t stop it. Maybe we expect too much from God.”

  “That doesn’t sound like a believer talking, Truely.”

  “Maybe not.”

  “I need you to believe in God, Truely. If God can’t help Gordo get through this — then who will?”

  “We will.”

  “No.” Shauna zipped her purse closed and slung it on her shoulder. “We’re not enough.”

  TRUELY WISHED he could replay those last minutes. Shauna was what he thought of as a backsliding Catholic, same as he was a backsliding Baptist turned occasional semi-Episcopalian or something under Courtney’s tutelage. The best he could tell, God conducted his business in this world with little or no regard to who believed in him and who didn’t. Right now Truely believed in Gordo. Right now Truely had faith in Gordo’s will to live, in the healing power of modern medicine when mixed with equal parts love and luck.

  Normally a man who watched the woman he loves drive off to take flight to the other side of the orbiting earth might call out, “I love you,” or “I’ll miss you, Baby. Hurry back.” Something. But Truely’s last sentence to Shauna was, “I may not have all the answers, Shauna, but I’m not an atheist.” As she and Jerry pulled out of the driveway Truely had called out to her like an idiot. That was the last thing he said before watching Shauna and Jerry drive off to the airport, absentmindedly waving to him where he stood alone in the street.

  Truely noticed that Pablo pulled out of the driveway seconds later, as though he were following them. But that was paranoid. Hadn’t Shauna told him that Pablo lived in an apartment nearby? Hadn’t his car been blocked in the driveway? He was probably just damn glad this day was over, happy to be going home.

  Truely had planned to fly back to SFO that night, but his relentless headache was only getting worse so instead he went back to the Town and Country and took a couple more Extra Strength Excedrin Suleeta had given him, stripped down, and went to bed with hopes of sleep. His body was restless and his mind wandered, but mostly it was his racing heart that kept him worried and bolting awake. He was overcome with a sense of loss — Gordo’s mostly. But also his own.

  It is odd how a man senses loss. He cannot always name what it is that is gone, or soon will be gone. He cannot point to the exact moment the unnamed thing was lost forever, but he knows with relative certainty that it is no longer his, whatever it was or ever had been or might have become. He would try not to know it, of course, for as long as it took him to accept the inevitable. There was plenty of loss to go around — enough for everybody. What he had lost would become clear to him in time. He dreaded the revelation.

  THE FOLLOWING MORNING Truely stopped by Suleeta’s for a cup of coffee before heading to the airport. Shauna’s sister Shelly was there. Her husband, Trey, had had to go home and return to work, but Suleeta wanted Shelly to stay with her longer so she wouldn’t be alone in the house.

  The unlikely trio sat at the kitchen island and drank strong black coffee. Truely had set out several of his business cards on the counter. “I want to make sure you know how to get in touch with me, Suleeta,” Truely said. “If there is any news, call me. Anytime. Please.”

  “Gracias.” Suleeta seemed tired.

  Truely wasn’t even sure she’d heard what he said. But he was determined to push on, try to make his point. It had come to him in the sleeplessness of night that this was what he should do.

  “Shauna promised to post e-mails every day, Truely.” Shelly was eating toast. “You shouldn’t count on Mama to keep you in the loop. Don’t take it personally. You know Shauna won’t have time to call everybody individually. She’ll have her hands full with Daddy. Believe me. Crisis management is not Daddy’s strong suit.”

  “That is wrong to say, Shelly.” Suleeta clanked her spoon on the countertop. “Your daddy is very good with trouble. But this is Gordo this time. This is different.”

  “Shauna will take good care of him,” Truely said. “Both of them.”

  “Good ole Shauna.” Shelly stopped midsentence but her sarcasm was clear.

  “Hush,” Suleeta said. “You talk right about your sister.”

  Shelly looked ready to explain her comment, but her cell phone rang. When she left the kitchen to take the call in privacy Truely took the opportunity to speak frankly with Suleeta. “Look, if Shauna calls you, please ask her to call me. It’s important, Suleeta. I need to hear from her.” Truely tapped his business card for emphasis.

  “Probably Shauna will call you,” Suleeta said. “Don’t worry.”

  “I don’t know. She didn’t call about Gordo.”

  Suleeta looked genuinely surprised. “Why you think not?”

  “I’m asking myself that.”

  “You two still friends, yes?”

&
nbsp; “I hope so, Suleeta. The last thing I ever want to do is let her down.”

  “Why you think you let her down?”

  “I’m not saying I did. I hope to God I didn’t. That’s why I need to talk to her. To make sure. You know what I’m saying?”

  “If you love Shauna, then she understand the rest.”

  “I guess.”

  “Do you love her?” Suleeta asked.

  “God, Suleeta. I think she’s the greatest. I respect her. I admire her …”

  “But do you love her?”

  “Sure I do.”

  “Why you don’t say it then?” Suleeta asked.

  “She knows it.”

  “How she know it if you never say it?”

  “Mama, don’t harass Truely.” Shelly returned to the kitchen, snapped her cell phone closed and held it in her hand like a grenade. “Don’t try to make him say anything he doesn’t mean.”

  “It’s not that I don’t mean it,” Truely insisted.

  “When you love somebody, Truely, you aren’t afraid to say so. In fact, you can’t stop saying so. That’s how it works.” Shelly looked at Suleeta. “Isn’t that right, Mama?”

  “If you don’t love Shauna, then you let her go, Truely.” Suleeta had never spoken to him this way before. “Shauna need a man who wants to marry and make a nice family.”

  Lord, Truely thought, how did they get off on this tangent? He hated to think of letting Shauna go, then finding out she’d met some other guy, married him, had lots of beautiful babies and a house in the suburbs — reducing him to just a name on her Christmas card list to whom she would send a happy family photo once a year with the words Peace on Earth printed on it. “I love Shauna,” Truely said. “You know that, Suleeta.”

  Suleeta and Shelly looked at him as though he had just said the opposite of what he had actually said. “I do,” he said defensively.

  When Truely excused himself to wash up before heading to the airport he overheard Shelly say to Suleeta, “Shauna needs to break it off with Truely, Mama. I told you. Truely’s not right for her. He’s wasting her time. She needs to find somebody else.”

  “Shhhhhh,” Suleeta said. “He hear you.”

  Twelve

  WHEN TRUELY GOT HOME to San Francisco he found that Courtney had e-mailed him three photos of her unbandaged head. If he had just casually glanced at them he might have thought he was looking at the mug shot of a battered Asian woman. He winced at the misplaced smile on Courtney’s face. In one shot she was giving the peace sign — or maybe it was V for victory.

  Truely called to assure her that she was a testament to the wonders of modern medicine. Myra answered the phone. “Hey, Myra,” he said. “You think my sister has gone off the deep end? You couldn’t talk some sense to her?”

  “She like to be beautiful,” Myra said.

  “Did you think Courtney needed to get her face fixed, Myra?”

  “It worth it to her, I guess.”

  “How’s she doing?”

  “She sleeping now. The doctor give her some sleeping pill, said stay off her feet so she don’t swell up too much.”

  “Well then, tell her I called. I’ll call back tomorrow. How about you? How are you doing?”

  “Okay. Just watching TV is all.”

  “Lola okay?”

  “She doing good.”

  “All right then, you take care.”

  “You also.”

  Truely hung up and switched on the TV. He would unpack tomorrow. Right now he just wanted to go for a long run, grind his way up a few hills. Then maybe he would get some Thai takeout and plant himself in front of the TV for the night until it — or he — finally went off the air.

  TRUELY MISSED THE FIRST CALL from Shauna when it came three days later. He came home to find her message on his house phone. “Hey, True. Just checking in. It’s rough. Gordo is being kept unconscious. He opens his eyes sometimes but we can’t tell if he really sees us. He doesn’t answer when we talk to him. Daddy is having a hard time, but he’ll toughen up — he has to. It’s just a shock to see Gordo like this. We can barely recognize him. Pray for him, True. Please. Sorry I missed you. Take care.”

  He had been at the gym when the call came, his cell phone in his locker. He cursed himself. Shauna left no number where she could be reached. She didn’t mention the name of their hotel. There was no way for him to call her back. That fact alone made Truely uneasy. It was unlike Shauna to overlook such crucial details. For that reason he concluded that it was not an oversight.

  He had called Suleeta several times and she had had very little real news. “They taking it one day at a time,” she said once. “Gordo need your prayers,” she said another time.

  At home Truely kept his TV going around the clock, with the misguided notion that he might glimpse Gordo on the screen, maybe bear witness to his accident after the fact — proving to him that this nightmare was no nightmare. The television was as near as Truely could come to the terror. All Truely understood was that it wasn’t right that he should be able to turn this tragedy on and off with his remote control when Gordo couldn’t.

  AT WORK Truely had instructed his secretary to take messages if his sister called, which she had been doing almost daily. But he had instructed his secretary to track him down if a call came in from Shauna — even if he was away from the office she was not to let him miss the call. He had started going straight to the gym from work, keeping his cell phone in his pocket. He needed the distraction of a workout and to be made exhausted by something other than pure worry.

  At night Truely fell asleep with the news on. He channel surfed for news of Iraq, hoping he might get a glimpse of Gordo’s accident — maybe they might rerun the footage weeks later for people like him who needed to see the thing actually happen in order to really believe it. Maybe he would see Shauna and Jerry, the fear in their eyes, as they rushed across the rocky streets, dodging burned-out cars and bombed buildings. Of course, they weren’t even in Iraq. They were in a hotel in Germany, but he felt connected to them only by the television and not much else. He listened for Gordo’s name, shuddered when he saw the aftermath of an explosion or the rantings of an angry mob. Every young soldier who ran across the screen or stood nervously, gun in hand, poised for an interview, became Gordo. Truely couldn’t sleep more than a few hours at a time without waking with a start, wondering if Gordo had died.

  Thirteen

  WHEN TRUELY HEARD the buzzer he ignored it at first. It was late, after ten p.m., time for the local news, which he planned to watch as he always did, already dressed for bed in his old T-shirt and sweatpants. But the buzzer was so insistent that he became irritated — then curious. “What?” he yelled into the intercom. “Who is it?”

  “I need to talk to you, Truely. It’s Hastings.”

  “Hastings?”

  “Buzz me in.”

  He did. He was annoyed and surprised to hear the insistent voice of his brother-in-law. It swept over him like sudden fatigue. When Hastings got upstairs to his doorway Truely was waiting. “What the hell?”

  “Thanks for seeing me, Truely.”

  “Aren’t you supposed to be in Scotland?”

  “I’m back early.”

  “I can see that.”

  “Can I come in? Can we talk?”

  Truely gestured Hastings to come inside. He noticed Hastings’ agitation and felt a small moment of triumph on Courtney’s behalf. “You want a drink or something?” Truely asked.

  “You got any Diet Coke?”

  Truely walked over and turned down the sound on the TV, then into the kitchen space where he kept his meager stash of cold beverages. He poured Hastings a glass of Diet Coke and one for himself too. What the hell. He got a fistful of ice and dropped the cubes into the two glasses. Hastings was standing in the middle of the room, still wearing his coat. “Here,” Truely said. “Take your coat off. Sit down.”

  Hastings peeled off his coat and sat on Truely’s couch the way Truely had never se
en him do — as if he were falling into it rather than sitting upright on the edge ready to dart from the room at the first opportunity. Hastings had never been known for his ability to relax and kick back. He took the Diet Coke from Truely absentmindedly. “Look, Truely, let’s don’t pretend here. Courtney said she told you the whole damn thing. It’s one hell of a mess.”

  Truely wanted to ask, So where have you stowed the little home wrecker? But instead he simply said, “Where is she?” He imagined her waiting it out in a parked car someplace, shivering in the cold, ashamed and sorry.

  “Meghan? She’s at the St. Gregory. We’ll go home tomorrow, face the music. She insisted we come home early. She’s pretty upset.”

  “Lot of that going around.”

  “Look, Truely, if you hate my guts, then I accept that. I know you hate to see Courtney hurt. God knows, so do I.”

  “Why come to me, Hastings? How can I help you?”

  “Like it or not, little brother, you’re my family.” Hastings had taken to calling him little brother in recent years — the same way Courtney did. It was a term of endearment, he knew, but he had never really liked it. “You’re pretty much all the family I’ve got. I mean I’ve got those cousins on the East Coast, but they’re old enough to be my parents — and their kids, well, I hardly know them, never really see them — don’t really like them much anyway.”

  “Process of elimination then,” Truely said.

  “I guess.” Hastings took a sip of his drink.

  It occurred to Truely that Hastings might actually cry. He hoped not. That would be more than he could deal with. “Say what you need to say then. I’m listening.”