Safe from Harm (9781101619629)

by Evans, Stephanie Jaye

  “Jenny and I got married right out of high school. She was pregnant, no surprise there, and my dad said I had to do the right thing. Whether he would have felt that way if I’d been playing college ball, I don’t know, but my knee was busted and I wasn’t and I married her. We lost that first baby, but Jenny stayed married to me, mainly, I think, because she didn’t know what else to do with her life. She didn’t want to move back with her dad, and her mom was living with a guy who had eyes for Jenny—that wasn’t an option. Jenny lost two more pregnancies after that. I was ready to walk, and Jenny was, too, and she’d tell me so when she’d had too much to drink, and then we got pregnant with Phoebe.

  “Do you remember, Bear? The first time you held your baby in your arms? I wanted to be there for that baby. I wanted to be the dad she needed. We both loved Phoebe. She’s what kept us together for a long time.” Mark spooned some mushrooms onto my plate. “My parents helped us with the down payment on a trailer. What does your dad do?” he asked.

  I told him my dad taught calculus at Houston Community College.

  “So you never lived in a trailer?”

  I said, “No.” My dad never made much money when I was a kid, but we did have a house.

  “Where I’m from, the people I’m from, a trailer isn’t anything to be ashamed of. A house was better, yeah, but when you’re starting out, a trailer was a step up from an apartment. You ‘owned property.’ Jenny was happy in the trailer for, ummmm, maybe fifteen minutes. She was a beautiful woman and she could have had any man she wanted. I know that because she told me so five times a day. She should have used that beauty and married a rich man, because beauty is a commodity and it has a sell-by date.” He shook his head. “I didn’t know I was poor growing up. I thought I was middle class. Here in Sugar Land, I’d have been poor. No trailer parks in Sugar Land.”

  “There is one.” I sawed off a bite of steak but I didn’t put it in my mouth.

  “A trailer park?”

  “Off of 59. Near Grand Parkway. It’s close to the paintball place.”

  “Hunh!” Mark worked on a bite of steak. “What about at Clements High School? Do you think there was a whole crew of other trailer park kids there along with Phoebe?”

  “Probably not. But when I met her, Phoebe wasn’t a trailer park kid—Phoebe lived in the most expensive neighborhood in First Colony, and that was all the kids at Clements would know unless Phoebe told them differently.”

  “And that would count with them, right?”

  Was there a place in the world so pure that money didn’t count? If there was, then it wasn’t in Sugar Land, Texas.

  My plate was still full but I stopped pretending to eat.

  “So about a dozen years go by, and then, ahh, four and a half years ago, I’m working at a fourdrinier machine, that’s . . . never mind what it is, it’s a machine that makes paperboard. I’ve been at the job three, four months and it pays some better than the job before that, but not a lot. One day a salesman is walking clients through the work area, and who’s with them? Liz Smith. Turns out Liz owns the damn company.” Mark gave a bark of laughter. “I didn’t know. How would I know? I knew the company was owned by someone named L. L. Smythe; I’d known Liz as plain Liz Smith. I’d never have put two and two together. And when I saw her that day, I didn’t recognize her. The nose is gone, for one thing. She’s had her teeth fixed and she has lost a ton of weight. She’s like, I don’t know—all put together. She’s a blonde now and—I never would have recognized her. But she recognized me, Bear, oh, yes. Liz recognized me. I’m working, not paying any attention to the management and clients walking through—what do they have to do with me? We’re in different worlds. All I know is, some executive woman stops dead in front of me, staring like I’m the Second Coming and she knows for sure she’s got a place in Heaven. She is lit up like a Christmas angel.” Mark gave a snort of laughter. “I look over my left shoulder, look over my right—it’d been a while since a woman had looked at me like that. Besides, there’s something about having your name embroidered on the breast pocket of your coveralls that doesn’t usually work for women in blazers.”

  He put his fork down. He’d been playing with his food, too.

  Mark said, “I know what this is going to make me sound like, but I’m going to tell you anyway. Yep. I was promoted that day. I’ll tell you—those clients? They walked away thinking they’d seen the beginning of one of those old Meg Ryan movies. She tells my foreman she wants me in her office and those coveralls were gone. The very next day, Liz had me training to be a salesman. The deals are falling in my lap, since Liz was doing the real selling—it was my name on the contract, but she was doing the hard stuff. Not that anything is hard for Liz. And, ‘Oh, Mark, now that you’re in sales, you need a new wardrobe’— she chooses everything. ‘It’ll come out of my commissions,’ she says.

  “I’m having lunch with Liz three times a week so she can go over my ‘career objectives.’ And then I’m having dinners with her. And then I’m in her bed.”

  It’s not a surprise. I’d been expecting this part of the story.

  “I told Jenny about Liz. Not about the bed part. But the promotions and all and she knew how Liz felt about me in high school. Jenny’s all, ‘Don’t blow this chance, too—you better make good on this one.’”

  Mark pressed the tines of his fork into his thumb. “It was just Jenny pimping me out. It felt good to be someone’s ideal again. Liz made me feel like none of it was my fault—that it was Jenny who held me back.” Mark made a disgusted face. “I knew it was bull. Even then, I knew it was bull. But I was milking it. An expense account. Me! I got Phoebe new clothes—not from Walmart, either and she was, ahh, she felt pretty in them.

  “Now, I’m not smart, but I’m not stupid, not anymore, and I’m being careful but Liz says I don’t need to worry. Liz tells me she’s on the Pill, and, anyway, we’re both a sneeze away from forty.

  “Only, turns out the pill she was on wasn’t birth control, it was fertility treatments. Less than a week after she saw me, she started trying to have a baby.”

  I was glad I hadn’t eaten that steak. This story had started out Oprah and gone to Springer. Mark nodded at my expression. “Yep. Liz is goal-oriented. She even told me—this is after she was pregnant, she knew enough to realize these would not be words of seduction—she says that with her brains and my looks and athletic skills, our baby will be C-level across the board. Know what that means? C is for CEO. I was a sperm donor, Bear!”

  A well-paid one, I thought.

  The waiter did his discreet hovering act and Mark got him to pack up the rest of the meal and add it to the seafood box in the back.

  “My life was out of control. I had a daughter who was going to need money for college and a wife living in a trailer park who thought someone owed her a house on River Oaks Boulevard. The extra money I’d started making was just enough to give Jenny an appetite for more. I’m sleeping with the woman who writes my paychecks, and that woman tells me, a month and a half into the affair, that she’s having my babies. Two babies. Two. You get that?”

  I got it. I didn’t want it . . .

  “Here’s what Liz communicates, not as bluntly as I’m putting it, but she ain’t mincing words, either: She wants to get married. She’s always loved me, on and on.” Mark gives a tight smile. “If I decide not to marry her—keep in mind I’d never told the woman I loved her, because I didn’t—if I decide not to marry her, she’s sure I would understand that she wouldn’t be able to work ‘alongside’ me anymore. So I’d be out of work, although she would expect me to pay child support on the two babies.”

  I think Fatal Attraction should be required viewing for all men between the ages of thirteen and eighty-five. You think you can eat the cake and the icing and someone else will pay the tab? Watch that movie.

  “And when I sit Jenny down to talk to her, what I get back is
not, ‘Oh, I love you, don’t leave me.’ Jenny thinks this could be her ticket out. Right? You got that? I’d be married to a rich lady and I could make a nice settlement on her. Jenny is excited. Our marriage was clearly over—at least that part I know I didn’t ruin.

  “But Bear, rich people don’t get to be rich people by throwing their money away. Liz’s lawyer has me move out of the trailer and into an apartment while he handles the whole mediation—I’m not even there except for the end when he calls me in and says ‘Sign here’ and I do.”

  I had started this lunch feeling sorry for Mark. I wanted to help him be a stand-up man—the more I heard, the less I liked him.

  “The divorce is finalized three months and one week after Liz promised Jenny the new trailer and the lawyer tells her she’ll get thirty percent of my salary. I’m getting married to my second pregnant wife. Then Jenny finds out that she is going to get thirty percent of nothing. Liz has structured my salary so that I’m not making much more than I was when I was working the fourdrinier machine. And Liz wants me to pay ‘my fair share’ of the household expenses. Bear, when I’m done paying those two women, I got nothing in my pocket. I had to go hat in hand to Liz to ask for money to pay for Phoebe’s school pictures!” He’s smiling as if this is all a funny story and not his own messed-up life.

  “I’m going to have a beer,” he said. “You want a beer?”

  I shook my head. I wanted to go home and take a long walk with Baby Bear and then tuck Jo in bed if she’d let me and then pull Annie into the shower with me and scrub her back and hold my good woman in my arms and tell her I would never stray because even if I didn’t think it was wrong, it is way too complicated for this old guy.

  You know that play, No Exit? One of those French existentialist guys wrote it. It’s about personalized Hell. That’s what Mark was describing to me—my version of Hell. The man could have his house and his garden. You know what? The price was too damn high.

  The waiter brought Mark a frosted glass. It looked good but it was early afternoon and I was going back to the office. If the story was ever over.

  “Then, because that’s not enough, right? God hasn’t punished me enough already. The boys come early and they have to be in the incubator and however I felt about Liz, I loved those boys the second I got ahold of them. What little fighters.”

  Mark threw his hands up, “And then Jenny gets sick. Look. I didn’t love her anymore. But I didn’t hate the woman, and I wouldn’t wish throat cancer on Kim Jong Il—or his son. Phoebe is there and I can’t get her to come live with us, not that Liz is encouraging her to. And, oh my God, when I go over there to get Phoebe? If Mitch, Jenny’s dad, was there, he’d get on me like pitch, he never stopped, what a lowlife I was, that it was my fault his daughter was sick. On and on he went. That old man was a loon. How was it my fault Jenny got cancer? She smoked two packs a day! That’s why she got cancer!” Mark pointed his fork at me. “Do you know Mitch had a life insurance policy on Jenny? With himself as the beneficiary? I could see it if the money had been for Phoebe, for her college fund, say. But for himself? Do you have policies on your daughters?”

  Okay, this was awkward. I had to admit I did.

  “The girls have whole-life policies. If they cash them in when they’re fifty, I think, they’ll be worth a little money. My agent convinced me.”

  Mark looked surprised but he didn’t comment. Instead he continued, “Jenny had a life insurance policy on herself. I think some good-looking salesman talked her into it. That one goes to Phoebe—went to Phoebe. Mitch will get that one, too. The way he lives, he won’t have to work again.” Mark propped his elbows on the table and leaned over to me. “One thing Mitch DeWitt had right. I did have to help out some, you know? Only where’s the money coming from? Not Liz! I barely brought the subject up and Liz crawled right down my throat, grabbed a handful of my testicles and pulled them up to my sternum before she let go. Damn me.” He shook his head at the memory.

  “I pawned my Rolex. I didn’t know how much Liz had paid for it. I didn’t know a watch could cost that much. I gave the money I got to Jenny and right away, I mean, a day after the watch was gone, Liz noticed it was missing. I told her I lost it. I go to sleep and she wakes me up in the middle of the night holding the pawn ticket. She went through my wallet.” Mark drank deeply and then laughed mid-sip, spraying foam across the table. “Oh, geez, Bear, I’m sorry.” He handed me a linen napkin. “Only, Bear, you should have seen her. She’s holding the ticket in my face and she is shaking, she’s so mad. You remember those old cartoons, there’d be a bull, ripping up the sod with his hooves and smoke coming out his nose and the bull is making a sound like a steam engine? That was Liz.” His laugh died down. He pulled a cuff up to show me a blue-faced Rolex surrounded with diamonds. “See that?” he said, “I’m not supposed to take it off. Not even to swim—it’s waterproof to some depth I don’t plan on going to. I wear it when I sleep. She wants that damn watch on, and if I want any peace, I’ve got to wear it.”

  “What’s next, Mark?” I didn’t want to hurry him . . . no, I did want to hurry him. I didn’t want to look like I was hurrying him.

  “This is my plan.” He knew I was getting impatient and he got to business. “First, the memorial service. Next, I’m taking Toby and Tanner to the Hermann Park Zoo, and we’re going to ride the train. I’m going to get the last car in the train, and I’m going to scatter Phoebe’s ashes on the train tracks.”

  “What?”

  “I didn’t have any money when Phoebe was little, but I had enough for the zoo and the train. We went to the zoo almost every weekend. Jenny would pack us a lunch and she’d go have a day with her friends while Phoebe and I went to the zoo. And we always rode the train, even if it rained. She loved it. It made her happy.” He finished his beer and put a platinum card on the table. It was whisked away almost before it settled. “It’s not like she’s going to be in that box anyway, Bear.”

  I knew he was right. I hoped the conductor didn’t catch him.

  “Once that’s done I’m getting a job.”

  “I thought you were working?”

  His mouth twisted. “Not after she sold the company. I follow her around while she looks for investment property. But I’m through with that. I think I can get a job as a golf pro at Bridgewater. I won’t make that much, but it will be my own money.”

  “How’s all this going to go down with Liz? The name change, the job?”

  He gave a shrug. “Guess I’ll find out.” He gave me his perfect-toothed grin. “My granddad says Liz will thank me if I start acting like a man. We’ll see. Liz may be a different breed of woman than what Granddad’s familiar with.”

  “What if she tells you it’s her way or the highway?”

  “She won’t.” A quick, tight smile, no teeth. “As long as I don’t push her too hard, as long as she can spin it, ‘Mark is such an independent spirit,’ something like that. She’s not going to want her picture broken up even more.”

  I thought Mark was probably right about that.

  Sixteen

  The Pickersleys got a huge turnout for Thursday’s seven o’clock memorial service. There’s nothing like dying to make a teenager appreciated. Kids love a tragedy. Something to do with hormones.

  Liz was surrounded by women from the church and I’m glad to report that she was composed and dignified and if she wasn’t warm when she greeted me, neither did she dance around me on her toes, hissing like a lizard. So that was good. I wondered if she would give as composed a greeting to DeWitt when he showed up. After all, she hadn’t told me I couldn’t come. She had said I couldn’t do the service—it was DeWitt she had told not to come. I wasn’t expecting Mitch DeWitt to ignore his granddaughter’s service.

  Liz’s mom, Susan, was there, again wearing beautiful clothes and looking uncomfortable in them. Sue Ellen stood outside the funeral home door and smoked cigarette after
cigarette before dusting the ash off a black jacket and stalking inside. Mark’s grandfather introduced me to his son Jimmy, Mark’s father, who looked mad, and Mark’s mother Lou who looked weepy. Annie Laurie sought them out and told them stories about her times with Phoebe. Dan’s eyes filled and he looked madder than ever.

  Alex arrived and scanned the building. He saw me and headed my way.

  “Where’s Jo?”

  “I thought she was coming with you.”

  “Yeah, well, she changed her mind, but she should be here by now, shouldn’t she? The service starts in fifteen minutes.”

  I interrupted him to greet a newcomer.

  Jonathon Reece had come with his brother David. Jonathon had kept in touch with Brick and Jason, our youth ministers, and had learned about Phoebe’s death from them.

  I shook David’s hand, but it was withdrawn too quickly for me to be able to read the letters tattooed across the knuckles.

  I asked Jonathon where he had ended up interning after leaving us.

  “Mr. Wells, I think God has turned me in a different direction. All the churches I had applied to had already filled their rosters, but by a happy chance, a pastor I know told me his brother’s law firm was looking for an intern. I spent the summer at Cobble and Shelby in Dallas and I loved it. I’ll be taking the LSAT in January.”

  Ahh. That was a disappointment. I really did think this young man was cut out for the ministry. I know many fine lawyers, good and godly men and women. But that’s the thing—I know a ton of them. There are so few gifted young people who feel drawn to the ministry.

  With an effort, I kept my smile on. “That’s fine, Jonathon. I know you’ll be a success.” The idea that our church had played a part in his decision to turn away from the ministry just made me sick. “How does your mother feel about the career change?”

  Jonathon checked out the tips of his shoes. “Fine. Mom’s fine about it.”

  David spoke up, his voice a low purr. “Our mom is getting on her knees every night praying Jonathon will see things true again. It’s a shame your church didn’t protect your interns as well as you protected your own kids.”