Handling Sin
Page 43
He found the Sheffields happily jabbering together in the rockers on the front porch of the Ambrose Inn. He found Aura in their room on the telephone with his father. Had he forgotten again? No, it was only seven. Was his watch wrong? Was his father in a different time zone? The Azores?
“Just a second, Earley, Raleigh’s here.” Aura put her hand over the receiver. “He already knew about Roxanne; somebody in Midway told him. He won’t come home. The stubborn idiot. I swear, he’s exactly like you.”
Before taking the receiver, Raleigh said, “That is the most preposterous remark that you have ever, ever made! I am not aware that I am either stubborn, or an idiot.”
“Honey, I know you’re not.” She smiled. “I’ll be out on the porch. Try to avoid the old fireworks.”
Before any fireworks started, Raleigh and his father talked for half an hour, by far the longest phone conversation they’d ever had. They talked mostly about Roxanne’s death and Gates’s entanglements and Jubal Rogers’s refusal.
“Little Fellow, nobody in the whole world could have done any better than you’ve done. It’s a by-fuck-miracle, that’s all.”
“You don’t know the half of it,” Raleigh snarled.
“I bet! Coming up with Gates! And Jubal!”
“I told you, forget it, I can’t do it.”
“Son, I’m proud and I’m grateful. By God, listen, I’m not doing nearly so well myself. I’ve had some sad times, Raleigh. Real sad. I went all the way to Memphis looking for somebody. The poor soul’d been dead six years. Six years…”
“You did not lead me to believe you were going to Memphis.”
“Plus! Transmission went on Big Ellie. Tell chucklehead Jimmy Clay I want my old Chevy back. He pulled a fast one on a helpless old man. I didn’t think he had the brains.” The thin merry voice was laughing, but it sounded tired, and it occurred to Raleigh that he had never heard his father’s voice when it wasn’t zestfully (aggravatingly) animated. “So, you’re headed for Atlanta?”
Raleigh pressed the phone hard against his ear, which already hurt. “Daddy? Listen to me. Please, will you please, if you won’t come home, will you just go see a doctor wherever you are? Will you just go do it?”
Laughter. “Oh, Specs, you’ve got more sense than that. I don’t have time to mess with modern medicine. It’s slow and it’s sloppy and it’s stuck-up and it’s missing the point by a mile. Now look, I want you to go back and talk to Jubal again.”
“No. Absolutely not. That man is not about to come to New Orleans, or even across the street. I already told you, he gave me the distinct impression he hates your guts.”
“He does. So you go back over there tomorrow and tell him I’m not trying to repay some by-God-pissy loan. I know I can’t; he doesn’t have to point it out. Tell him the money’s a damn Christmas present. And—now, can you remember this, Raleigh?—tell Jubal, tell him I’ve got Joshua’s child with me. Tell him I know what happened to Leda Carpenter. And tell him that Josh named the girl Billie. Billie. Off an album. Can you remember?”
Raleigh changed the receiver to his other hand. His wrist ached. “Why don’t you tell him? You know where he is now.”
“He won’t talk to me. Will you do this, will you tell him?”
“…Oh, dammit, all right. What were the names again?” And writing them down in his notebook, Raleigh said, “I don’t know what the hell is going on here, and I don’t know why you expect me to keep running your ridiculous errands when you won’t even tell me the reason.”
“I don’t ‘expect’ you to. No reason in the world why you should put up with any of this. I just want you to.”
“Well, I’m sorry, you can’t always have what you want.”
More laughter. “Oh, sure you can, long as you want the right things.”
And here, as usually happened at some point in discussions with his father, Raleigh lost his temper. “Do not start talking that old crap to me. That’s your problem, Daddy, you have always done everything exactly as you pleased, and other people have had to pay the price.”
“Well, no, son. You want to know something sad but so? I didn’t do what I pleased, and other people had to pay the price. I made some dumb mistakes.”
“Well, at least you admit it.”
“You know the kind of smug uptight pisspot you can be, Raleigh? Well, I could, too. I was, too.”
“Listen, I don’t care to stand here and be insulted.”
More laughter. “Oh, Specs. Hang on to Aura. Promise me that.”
“I intend to. You can be sure that I don’t intend…” Raleigh, who was on the verge of making a sarcastic remark about divorce, stopped himself, and instead said, “I thank my lucky stars for Aura.” He was puzzled to hear himself say this, since it was one of his father’s expressions, and not one he was in the habit of using. He could hear the weak loose-throated reedy laughter pulsing in and out of the static of long distance. “Daddy. Speak up, it’s hard to hear. Will you at least tell me if you’re already in New Orleans?…Well, will you tell me why you’re going there?”
Fading chuckles. “I’m going there to do something I’ve always wanted to do.”
“Fine. That’s just great for you. It’s just ruining my life, that’s all.”
“How? Aura said you looked better than you had in years.”
“Sure. Right. I hope you know there’re only two reasons I’m going to show up there the thirty-first. Two reasons!”
Faint laughter. “Well, I know one.”
“One, is to put you in the goddamn hospital. And two, is because I fully expect you to keep your end of this bargain and not give your estate away to strangers. I think you know that if I remain your executor, you can rely on me to deal with matters such as Gates, et cetera, equably. I don’t see what’s so funny.”
“Oh, Raleigh, you can do what the hell you want with the estate. That’s not why you’re coming to New Orleans.”
“It certainly is.”
“Oh bullshit. You’re coming to New Orleans because you love me. So long, Little Fellow, I’ll call you in Atlanta; want to hear about this dumb-ass duel. Oh Gates!”
“I must say you don’t sound very worried about the situation he’s gotten himself into.”
“Well, I’m not worried.” Raleigh could barely hear the voice now. “I’m relying on you. Just like you said. Give that beautiful Aura a great big kiss. Bye-bye.”
“Daddy. Daddy?…Dammit!” Hayes slammed down the phone and rubbed his ear. Then he walked out onto his balcony and took a deep breath of the sea-rich air. Then he lifted his head all the way back to look up at the stars. “Spit at a star and blind an angel,” he said. Then he said, “Mama, you married a nut.”
Aura sat alone on the porch rail of the Ambrose Inn, looking out over the park toward the sea. Raleigh watched her for a moment before he opened the screen door. And looking, he brought her, as if he were slowly turning the lens of a camera, into focus; for once unfiltered by the twins, by himself, by hurried conversations at the breakfast table or frantic searches for car keys. There she was, seated on the white-latticed rail of the long piazza, a slender woman in a soft white dress, wearing a jade bracelet the color of her eyes. The sea breeze moved through her hair. It was brown-gold hair, caught up with small combs, and at the nape of her neck wisps of brown gold curled. She wore a gold wedding ring and gold earrings shaped like shells, and to the left of her mouth was a little mole that she had always hated and he had always loved. She sat there, Aura, full of thought and humor and affection, full of life as strange as the thin fragile bone of her wrist. Behind her gleamed the dark sea and the moon-silver moss hanging from the oaks of Battery Park. Raleigh thought of how, among all the old clipper ships once in harbors like this one, laden with sugar and cloth and rice for the New World, how one, thank God, had carried here the family who, after wandering generations, had given birth to Aura Godwin at the right time, in the right place, for him to find her, and now stand, seeing her here.
“Aura…You are, well: Aura…I guess I’m going to New Orleans.” “You okay?”
“My mother married a nut.”
“Thank God.” She held out her hand. “Aren’t you going to ask
me to call the girls and stay another night?”
“I’m considering it.”
“I couldn’t wait. I called them an hour ago.”
He leaned against the rail beside her. “Are they alive?” “Holly says, ‘Everything’s cool.’ Caroline says, if we’re going to
abandon her without a thought to her well-being, the very least we can do, rilly, is give her the station wagon. I told her I was bringing her a present from you. The message is ‘Kiss kiss kiss.’ How’s Earley?
I don’t like the way he sounds.”
“Don’t worry, I’m going to bring him back if I have to lock him
in the trunk.”
“He told you, didn’t he, that his house has already been
sold?…He didn’t? Some young couple from Hillston bought it. It
really is a cute little house. One hundred and sixty-eight thousand.” “Oh, for Pete’s sake! That house is worth more than that!” “Well, you know him. He didn’t explain he was signing the
money over to Holly and Caroline?”
Raleigh sat down in the nearest rocker. “No. He did not. I trust
he fixed it so they can’t get their hands on it.”
“Nope.” Aura looped her sweater over her bare shoulders. “Nope,
he fixed it so they can get their hands on it.”
Raleigh leaped back up. “I don’t believe it. Are you trying to tell
me that man gave two teenaged girls eighty-four thousand dollars
apiece?”
“More or less.”
“Now, listen to me, don’t you dare say a word to them about it.
We’ll put it in a trust fund.”
“He said he already wrote them a letter.”
“That’s great!”
“Oh, Raleigh, really, there’re worse things than having your children inherit some money. Why don’t you just try to trust them?” “Why don’t I trust them? Ha ha. Aura, the driveway’s going to be
full of cars. FULL.”
“And we already have three. Why don’t we give them the station
wagon?”
“Give it to them?”
“Well, honey, I suppose you could try to sell it to them, but,
frankly, they can afford something much nicer. Maybe you could sell
them your new Cadillac and we’ll keep the old cars.”
“Aura, don’t try to make me laugh.”
“But I love to hear you laugh. Now, let’s go eat, then you can
drive me someplace romantic in your fancy car.” She hopped down
from the porch rail. “I’m starving. It must be the sea air. Or all this
sex. Let’s go to…” And she named the hotel restaurant where the
Sheffields were already dining, and where, as it happened, Raleigh
had so much enjoyed listening to Gershwin last night.
He took her arm as they walked down the wide white steps
banked by azaleas. “Actually, Aura, let’s try someplace else. I was in
that place last night, and to tell you the honest truth, I have to confess, I don’t know how it happened, because you know I don’t drink,
but somehow, all of a sudden, I was, well, drunk as a skunk, and the
piano player was trying to pick me up, and before I’d go back in there
again, I’d as soon dance naked in the streets.”
Chapter 25
Raleigh Leads His Followers South GATES HAYES HAD STILL NOT ARRIVED in Charleston by Friday evening. His older brother had spent the two days waiting and worrying about him, and had even called the young teacher in Midway, Sara Zane, who insisted calmly that she’d never met anyone named Gates Hayes. She persisted in this denial even when Raleigh assured her that while he knew she’d been instructed to say that, he honestly was Gates’s brother. Finally he gave up—what a spy the woman would make!—and said, “Miss Zane, if you do ever meet him, would you tell him it is imperative, imperative, that we be in Atlanta on Sunday. Arrangements have been made to settle a certain situation about which I know my brother’s concerned. Would you please tell him I’m still waiting at the Ambrose Inn, and it’s one hundred and eighty dollars a night!”
More accurately, it was three hundred and sixty dollars a night, not including garage fees, restaurants (and drinks); for Raleigh was paying for Mingo Sheffield’s room as well as his own. He had determined that this was only fair, since (presumably) the unemployed Sheffield never would have come to so expensive a place on his own. Sheffield was, in a way, a business expense, and as such was entered in the insurance man’s meticulous notebook, where all costs connected to his father were accounted, and set against the $2,500 Raleigh had saved by buying Knoll Pond for half of what Earley Hayes had expected to pay. In his fees, he was, of course, very scrupulous; for example, he billed Earley for the carriage ride with Jubal Rogers but not for the drinks in Rusty’s bar. Nor was he even charging his father for his time, only his costs. And if Earley was going to insist he stay in places like the Ambrose Inn, that too was going into the little spiral notebook. Yet, despite the fact that he was not spending his own money (though, in truth, it was his, since his mother should have left it to him in the first place), Raleigh could not stop seeing dollar bills floating past on their way out the French doors and over the balcony. On the other hand, he had to admit that he very much liked his room, particularly because of its memories of Aura. He certainly preferred it to the motels, swamps, thug vans, and slave cabins he’d been in lately. He also liked staying in the same room for more than one night again. He also liked having clean clothes to wear again; not only his new clothes, but the suitcase of his own clothes that Aura had thoughtfully brought him. But, of course, Raleigh was nevertheless a little at a loss. He wasn’t comfortable with leisure, and this room didn’t even have the television with which he’d grown accustomed at home to escape the time between one working day and the next. (Not that he didn’t still feel so guilty about his addiction to this nationally induced opiate that he always kept projects beside his Naugahyde rocker in the family room, so that while he seemed to be dozing off in front of a police chase or family intrigue or expedition to wild kingdoms—for in all honesty, he paid little attention to what he watched—what he was really doing was putting a new plug on the vacuum cleaner or ordering bulbs from a seed catalogue or repairing gears on Holly’s bicycle or circling the nonchalantly scrawled incorrect answers on Caroline’s algebra homework.)
It was because of this new uneasy leisure that, Friday evening, Raleigh Hayes found himself holding a trumpet he had left stored in the attic decades ago. Aura had brought this instrument with her to Charleston. Having replayed Earley’s tape at home, she’d decided that, should Raleigh not be able to locate his father’s own trumpet, he could substitute this one. “Just trying to help,” she’d said. “What a strange list. I wonder if maybe Earley has gone round the bend?”
“Well, I’m glad you finally agree; I’ve told you that for years.” “I wonder why he wants all these weird things? Or maybe he doesn’t want them. Particularly. He just made them up to give you something to do. He just wanted to help you get out of your old rut.”
Raleigh had sighed. “Aura, that is too diabolical to contemplate.”
Aura had turned her husband to look at himself in the beveled mirror of
the tall antique armoire. “Well, it worked, didn’t it?” She’d smiled.
Aura had left the trumpet case on the dresser, and two nights after she’d left, Raleigh had absentmindedly taken it out, shaken the silvered mouthpiece from its careful green velvet wrapping and inserted it in the horn. He was not surprised that at first he could produce nothing but splattering squeaks and incredible pain in his jaws. His face in the mirror was an alarming purple, his neck so distended that he looked to himself like his last sight of Pierce Jimson. Embarrassed, he put the trumpet away, but in a while he picked it back up, and in a while (pausing every few minutes to gasp for breath), he began to play “Cherry Pink and Apple Blossom White,” because this was the last solo he’d practiced, just before he’d precipitately dropped out of the high school band in order to play basketball (and to avoid any more wisecracks about his father’s directing a Negro college band, cracks like “How’s it feel, your dad jiving with jigaboos?”). It was typical of Raleigh’s lifelong need to stretch lines of continuity between the posts of time, that a quarter-century after he put the trumpet down, when he picked it up, he began practicing the same piece again.