by Julia Keller
“Probably,” he said. He tried to stretch out his legs. They had been jammed up under the glove box. There was not much room to stretch, but he did his best. “Except,” he added.
“Except what?”
“You’ll be going back to D.C. any day now, right? To make amends for the damage you did in that store?”
His voice was casual, but still she felt ambushed. Okay, so in the end, he was just like everybody else: trying to tell her what to do.
“Maybe,” she said. She rubbed a thumb against the steering wheel. It was cold. Hell, everything was cold tonight. Cold and pointless.
“Your choice,” he said. “Just a thought.”
So he was not going to push her, after all. He was not going to give her a lecture. He had redeemed himself. She felt a peace returning, even a fragile optimism. “Look, Travis, I’m glad you were here tonight. I don’t know what I would have done if you hadn’t—”
“You would have been fine. You’re a strong woman, Carla. You can take care of yourself. Saw that right away.”
When he said her name, her stomach did a funny little flip.
“I wish I could repay you somehow,” she said. “For taking the time. For listening.”
“Not necessary.”
“I mean it, though.” Carla needed to make him understand. “It’s like—even though I just met you, I can tell you know what I mean. You’ve been through it, too. You’ve seen things. You’ve been through something terrible, something that changed you forever. And the memories—they just keep coming at you, right? And so you have to do things that you wouldn’t—things that you’d never believe you could…” She gave up. She had to hope he would get what she was trying to say. Even if he didn’t, though, it would be enough that he tried.
She had never had this feeling before, with anyone: Like he understood her, without her having to explain everything. His calmness was rubbing off on her.
He shifted his feet. He was getting ready to leave. She reached out and patted his arm, as a way of saying good-bye. It felt funny not to have even touched him, after the intimacy of their conversation. Not so much as a handshake.
Mistake. He flinched and pulled his arm away from her, as if she’d hurt him.
Carla felt a sudden sinking dread. She instantly factored it all in: the skinniness, the pale complexion, the flinch.
Shit, she thought. IV drug user. His arm was probably tender and sore from all the needles. No wonder he had been suspicious of her motives, the moment she’d asked him to sit in her car and talk. When that was your world, it was all you thought about, all you saw. You assumed it was all anybody else thought about, too.
Disappointment turned her voice into a monotone. “See you around,” she said.
He opened the car door. Cold air knifed its way in.
“Yeah,” he said. “See you around.”
* * *
Damn, Bell thought, as the ring tone she had assigned to Sam Elkins cut through her contentment. Damn, damn, damn.
Having to take a call from your ex-husband when you were snuggling in bed with your lover, both of you languid and wet and warm and loose-limbed after a mutually satisfying episode of lovemaking, struck her as absolute proof that the universe had a wicked sense of humor.
She reached across Clay’s body to retrieve her cell from the bedside table. As she did, her nipples brushed his chest, and the moment was electric; his hands were on her hips once more, and he was situating her on top of him. Bell resisted. Cell in hand, she rolled back over to her side of the bed. She did not want to, but she had to. Sam would not call her this late unless it was important. He was a bastard, but he respected her privacy.
She was brought up short by her ex-husband’s tone. It was livid with anger: “Is she there?”
“Sam, I don’t—”
“Is she there? I asked you a question, Belfa. I’d like an answer. I’ve been calling Carla’s cell for the past five hours. Leaving messages. She’s ignoring me.”
Bell sat up in bed. She put a hand on Clay’s chest. It was her silent way of apologizing to him for the interruption. He placed a hand on top of hers—his silent way of telling her it was okay. No more explanation was necessary. He trusted her to handle this howsoever she saw fit.
God, she loved this man.
“I don’t know where she is,” Bell said. Carla wasn’t home; she would have heard the front door open. She never slept through that. “She’s an adult. She can do as she pleases.” She could sense her ex-husband’s ire ratcheting up, even as she spoke.
“Do as she pleases,” he snapped. “Right. Right. Well, what if I told you she didn’t show up at her preliminary hearing today at Arlington Circuit Court? That she was supposed to be there at four p.m.? That her attorney—and the court clerk—have been leaving her messages all week to remind her?”
“Preliminary hearing? Sam, what the hell are you talking—”
He interrupted her with a savageness that took her aback, almost as much as the information did. “Yeah. That’s right. I didn’t tell you, Belfa. She begged me not to. Said you’d freak out. Said you had too much going on as it was. Said she’d tell you herself. Later. In her own way. So I agreed. And I got her released on her own recognizance at the arraignment last week. Hired a great attorney—a buddy of mine. He was going to set up the plea deal today.” Sam blew out some air. “I was a goddamned idiot, okay? I see that now. I didn’t even know she’d left D.C. I only found out tonight when I went by that shack she lives in and started interrogating her roommates. They finally caved. Told me she’d gone back there.” He was clearly seething. “She played me. Our daughter played me, Belfa, and I’ll tell you this—it doesn’t feel too good. It feels pretty damned bad, as a matter of fact.”
Bell had to restrain herself from pointing out to her ex-husband that, under the circumstances, his feelings were the least of her concerns.
“What’s the charge?” she said. A strangeness rose up in the wake of the words when they were applied to her child. To Carla, for God’s sake.
Was this even happening? Or had she drifted off to sleep after she and Clay had made love, and this was a bizarre and harrowing dream?
It was no dream. Sam’s voice on her cell was as bleak as she’d ever heard it.
“Shoplifting,” he said. “Destruction of property. And resisting arrest. Apparently she just kind of lost it in some store at the mall. Went off on the sales clerk. Started grabbing things and throwing them around, cramming some stuff in her backpack and slinging the rest of it on the floor. Something like that. The cops got there and she was uncooperative. She told me—she told me she’s been having flashbacks, Belfa. For the past few months. Times when she feels out of control. And one day—the day in the store—she got to the point where she thought she was going to break into a million pieces. Just shatter, like a pane of glass. That’s how she described it. She doesn’t know why she started taking stuff. Or cursing at the cops. Nothing. She can’t explain it. She just felt like she was coming apart. Exploding. When she came back to herself, she was sitting in a jail cell. I got her out of there as soon as I could. The court clerk’s an old friend of mine. Called me right away.”
“Sam—my God, Sam—why didn’t you tell me?”
His voice softened. “She begged me not to. She said she’d face the charges, do whatever they told her to do. She promised me, Belfa, that if I didn’t tell you, she’d tell you herself. In her own way.” His voice was almost a whisper now. “She was ashamed. She knew you’d be so disappointed in her. I know I made the wrong decision, not telling you, but—but I was afraid. Afraid that if I didn’t agree, she might—do some harm to herself. Our little girl, Belfa.”
By now Clay was standing up beside the bed. The room was dark, but his movements were discernable by the brief rasp of a zipper being pulled up on his Levi’s, by the rustle of a flannel shirt being put on. He’d caught the gist of the conversation, of the burgeoning emergency. He was leaving. And she had to let hi
m go.
Clay knew the night was lost to them. Because Carla always came first. He had understood that from the first moment of their relationship. Bell had never had to spell it out; it was always there, a permanent and unassailable truth. It was a natural fact of their shared universe: There was Carla—and then, miles down the list, there was everyone and everything else.
She felt his hand on her arm as he leaned over the bed. It was a question: Did she need anything? She lifted his hand and kissed his palm, admiring its hardness, a hardness that testified to the physical labor he did each day, building things, creating things. He would understand the subtext of the kiss: No, I’ve got this.
Another man might have tried to stay, insisting on helping her deal with Carla, but Clay Meckling knew her better than that. She would make love to him, but she would not let him into the deepest part of her life. That, too, was something he’d understood from the beginning.
She heard a brief medley of creaks as Clay went down the old wooden staircase. She heard the back door open and close. If she hadn’t had to return to her conversation with Sam and could focus on something else, she also would have heard, in the next minute or so, the distant ruckus of Clay’s truck engine as it came to life in her driveway.
“Belfa?” Sam said.
“You did what you thought was best, Sam. But I had no idea—”
“I know, I know.” His sigh was a deeply troubled one. And then it was as if he had abruptly slipped the shackles of intense emotion. He was back to his old self. Back in control. He was the hard-nosed, slash-and-burn attorney who had risen from a scruffy upbringing in West Virginia to a position of power in a top D.C. law firm, a man who beat the odds. He was a success because he got things done, dammit. He took care of business. He was a winner. And being a winner meant that he did not coddle losers. Even if the loser in question was his own daughter. “Okay, here’s what’s going to happen next. No more chances. No more hand-holding. I’m picking her up tonight.”
“Tonight.” Bell repeated it back to him, so he’d know how ludicrous it was. “It’s late, Sam. The temperature’s minus seven. We’re expecting another foot of snow overnight. In these mountains. And you’re going to drive over here tonight?”
He grunted his displeasure. “Okay, fine. First thing in the morning. I mean early. In the meantime, I’ll call the DA and try to get this thing straightened out. I’ve known him for years. He’ll deal. So you tell her to be ready. Packed and ready. You got that? Am I being absolutely clear here? Or should I repeat it? Go slower? Put it in writing, maybe? Send you a text?”
“Don’t you dare talk to me like I’m one of your interns,” Bell snapped back at him. She’d had enough of his attitude. Enough of his bullying. Yes, this was a crisis; yes, Carla’s future was very likely dangling in the balance. But Bell had done nothing wrong. She did not deserve his scorn. If she’d know about Carla’s arrest—if he had confided in her, which he damned well should have done—she would have handled this differently.
He knew that, too.
There was a pause. “Point taken,” Sam said. It was the closest he would ever come to an apology. Winners never apologized: That was another one of his rules. “I’m just concerned, Belfa. This is a grave situation. I’m about to use up every last favor I have access to. And when that happens—”
“Understood.” Without Sam’s protection, without his influence, Carla could be in serious trouble. Skipping a preliminary hearing was not like blowing off a dentist appointment.
By now Bell was out of bed. She turned on the lamp. She switched her cell to speaker so that she could get dressed while finishing her conversation. “I’ll find her.”
“Okay. And Bell…”
“Yes?” She was all business now, too. Coldly focused. “What?”
“I wish…” He waited. “I wish I’d known how much pain she was in. I didn’t know. I mean, she said things were fine. Said she didn’t need her counselor anymore. Once she moved out, I didn’t see her every day. I just trusted what she told me. We’ve always been able to trust her, right? I never knew she was suffering, I never knew that…” He could not finish. He coughed. Something was in his throat. Yes—that had to be it.
“She’s all grown up now, Sam. We don’t tuck her into bed at night with Mister Gompers anymore.” That was the name of Carla’s favorite childhood toy, a purple plush giraffe. “It was up to her to tell us. To keep us informed.”
“It’s the memories, you know?” Sam said. “Seeing Lonnie Prince get shot. Watching him die. And then the kidnapper. Him, too. God, Belfa, she’s been through hell, hasn’t she? Our little girl has been through hell. The memories filling her head. Do you think—do you think she’ll ever get rid of them?”
“No.” Bell was blunter than she’d meant to be. But she had work to do. She could not let herself slide back into the soft enveloping warmth of her bed—or the similar comfort of lies. “Absolutely no chance of that.” If forgetting were possible, she wanted to say to Sam, don’t you think I would have cut loose the memories of my own royally fucked-up past? Wouldn’t I have done that, instead of having to deal with them every goddamned day of my life?
“So how can she go on?” he said.
“The way everybody does. You find a place to put them. Lock them up. So they can’t hurt you anymore.”
“Does it work?” Sam said. His tone was soft and probing. Plaintive, even.
So he did remember. He remembered that she, too, had a past that cut her each time she brushed against it, and memories that lurked in her mind like dirty bombs with ticking timers.
She needed to go. She had to find her daughter.
“Does it work?” he repeated, assuming she had not heard his question.
“Sometimes,” she said. “And sometimes not.”
Three Boys
1938
It was Alvie’s idea. Vic was driving, but it was because of Alvie that they went in the first place. And to say that Vic was driving was a bit misleading, because you could argue that, at the crucial moment, Vic and Harm were actually at the wheel.
So: All three boys—Vic, Alvie, and Harm—were responsible.
“Let’s take ’er out,” Alvie said.
The screen door had just clicked shut. Vic’s mother had gone back into the kitchen, to do all those mysterious things that mothers did in kitchens, the things that made families run as smoothly and efficiently as that flathead V8. The comparison came to Harm because they had been discussing analogies in English class the week before and he had discovered that he really, really liked analogies. He found them everywhere now.
“Naw,” Vic said. “Supposed to ask my dad first. And he’s at work.”
“So?”
The air was instantly thick with tension. Alvie’s “So?” was a direct challenge to Vic and all the things that made Vic Vic: the authority, the swagger, the assumption of privilege and autonomy. Moreover, the fact that this challenge came from Alvie—little rat-face Alvie, whose father was made fun of by everybody, because he’d been fired from his job as pastor of the Crooked Creek Baptist Church, and how often, really, did a preacher ever get fired?—added several more layers of apprehension to the moment.
Harm felt slightly sick to his stomach. He wished Alvie had kept his mouth shut. He did not like it when his friends argued. It was supposed to be the three of them against the world. Not one of them against another. In the beginning their friendship had been based on proximity and convenience—on the fact that they all lived in the same neighborhood—but as time passed the very habit and longevity of the friendship had acquired its own significance. Now they were cemented in place, like three stones in a wall.
Vic, for all of his bravado, was afraid of his father. That was a well-known fact, without it ever having to be stated out loud. Frank Plumley was a bully. He had been known to slap his wife when she got out of line, when she said the wrong thing to him at the wrong time. He had even done it in public: once in the bleachers at a ball gam
e, and a few times at the Double-D Diner. Frank occasionally shoved and punched Vic, too, and he did not care who saw him do it, but that was different: Adults could always smack kids around. That was expected. That was fine. But most of the men in town held back when it came to their wives. Sure, they hit them—but only at home, when the drapes were closed. So how did you know it happened? You knew because the next day, the woman would wear sunglasses when she did her shopping, even though it was not a sunny day, or she’d have a slight limp, which meant he had kicked her on that side.
But as Harm’s dad always pointed out to him: No man ever hit a woman unless she deserved it. Unless she had asked for it. And if you thought about it, Joe Strayer would add, the blow was really an act of love. A compliment. It meant the husband cared. He thought the wife could learn from her mistakes. There was hope.
Vic did not want to go against his father. Harm could see it in his face, feel it in the way Vic rammed the back of his shoe on the edge of the step, with extra vigor. Vic knew he ought to follow the rule, and wait until his old man came home that afternoon before he took the Ford out for a ride. Ask permission. He knew his dad would say yes. It was a formality, nothing more.
But Alvie’s “So?” had gotten under his skin. He could not look weak. The thought of that was unbearable. Truly, truly unbearable. Thus a brief, fierce battle raged in Vic’s soul. Harm knew it was raging in there, even though only seconds passed, and even though Vic did not say a word. And even though nothing moved in Vic’s face.
Which was worse: defying his father or looking like a chump in front of Alvie Sherrill?
It wasn’t even a contest.
“Wait ’til you see me open her up,” Vic said. Decision made, he bolted from his lounging position on the back steps. Halfway to the driveway, he turned. His friends were still sitting there. “You coming?”
They wedged themselves into the Ford with a sort of manic, pushing gusto. Vic was at the wheel, of course, and Harm was beside him. Alvie was smushed against the door. Alvie was laughing; his laughter had a faintly hysterical edge to it, like a girl’s laugh. Harm would long remember the sound of that laugh. He did not like it then, and he would grow to like the memory of it even less.