by M. J. Pullen
She turned her head from the intensity of his gaze and wiped the spot with her own hand. “Thanks.”
“Well, I’m on duty until three, but if you need anything, just call, okay? And maybe keep the screaming to a minimum?”
“I will, sorry.”
“Me, too,” he said. He looked behind her toward the house. “I can’t imagine what all this is like for you.”
He turned to walk back to the patrol car, his boots crunching on the gravel. “Um, Officer—Alex?” she called.
“Yeah?”
“There is something you could do to help, actually.”
He brightened. “What is it?”
“Would you have dinner with me tonight? We could do more questions. I could … I could use a friend.”
He smiled. “That’s tempting. But my daughter has a swim meet tonight in Leeds,” he said. “I can’t miss it. Sorry.”
Rebecca waited for him to follow up with some alternate suggestion, but he seemed to have nothing to say. Embarrassed, she settled for saying, “That’s okay, another time.”
“Definitely,” he said, getting into his car. “Take it easy, okay?”
Before she could reply, he was gone, leaving her holding the handkerchief in her fist and twisting her ring.
19
Rebecca could not face the house again that day. Once Alex drove away, she took the cleaning supplies out of her trunk, put them on the floor just inside the front door of the house, locked the door, and left. On the drive back to her father’s house, she promised herself she would return the following day to get started in earnest, minus the ridiculous, self-indulgent tantrums. Today would be for phone calls.
Nurse Kathy confirmed that her mother would have a bed waiting for her at Mountainside the following day. Rebecca took down a list of instructions for her father to follow when contacting the insurance company that afternoon. She reviewed everything with Kathy twice. The nurse patiently and slowly repeated each number, code, and phrase Richard was supposed to use when he talked with the insurance company so that Rebecca could write them down. Richard still had not come to the house or the hospital, but he had agreed to advocate for Lorena with the insurance company and to pay any additional bills. Rebecca could only guess how much treatment at Mountainside was going to cost; she tried not to wonder how much her parents had in savings.
She had a short conversation with Suzanne, who was busy making preparations for a big foundation fund-raiser, as well as her public wedding to Dylan, which had finally been scheduled for October. It sounded like being married for real at the beach had freed Suzanne up to allow things to move forward under the glare of the spotlights. She even giggled once or twice after referring to Dylan as “my husband.” Suzanne did manage to ask polite questions about what was going on in Alabama. They avoided the topic of Marci and Jake altogether.
Next, she called Valerie to find that the airline had indeed survived a short absence by one of its more junior flight attendants. “Don’t worry, doll,” Val said. “Take care of your business. We’ll be here when you’re ready.”
After wavering back and forth, trying to consider how her mother would feel about it, she decided that she had no choice but to order an industrial-sized Dumpster, which the company said it could deliver in two days. An old boss of hers had said once that it was “better to ask forgiveness than permission.” Today, she finally thought she understood what he meant. She would give herself the following day to collect her thoughts and prepare, and then she would simply set herself to the task of clearing away the trash. She would have to atone for her mother’s hurt feelings and embarrassment later.
By five thirty, all her calls were made and there was nothing left to do. After picking up the phone three more times and putting it back down, she located her father’s number in the call list and hit Send.
“Hey, Rebecca,” he answered. He sounded tired. “Don’t worry, I got everything worked out with the insurance and your mother is all set for tomorrow. I even gave them my cell phone number in case there are problems.”
Rebecca knew this was a big deal for him. He hated talking on the phone, and guarded his cell phone number the way most people hid their Social Security numbers.
“Thanks, Dad,” she said. “I really do appreciate it.”
“If anything else comes up, I’ll let you know.” He sounded ready to go.
“Um, Dad,” she said, still debating whether to say what she was about to say. “I was actually wondering if you’re free for dinner. You and Sonia, I mean.”
“Oh,” he said, and was quiet. Clearly the last thing he expected.
“I mean, if you’re busy, it’s fine. I could call some friends,” she said. The last part was a lie, of course, but he didn’t need to know that.
“No, no,” he said, recovering. “That would be great, sweetheart. Come over at seven.”
* * *
Sonia flitted around the kitchen like a hummingbird, with a brightly colored satin robe streaming behind her as she moved. Rebecca wondered how many satin robes Sonia had and whether she ever wore anything else. She pulled out ingredients, put them back, checked a pot roast in the oven, searched for various serving bowls and platters, and checked the roast again. The little dog, which Rebecca had learned was named Bear Bryant, followed her owner anxiously around the kitchen, jumping up and cowering in turns as Sonia whirled. Her little nails made scrabbling noises on the tile floor and the houndstooth check collar she wore glinted with what Rebecca hoped were just rhinestones and not real diamonds.
From what Rebecca could see, it must’ve been a seven-course meal being prepared but Sonia kept apologizing for just “throwing something together,” and insisting that she would have done more “if I’d known more in advance.” She came to the kitchen table frequently in her travels, refilling Rebecca’s wineglass and her father’s sweet iced tea each time they took a sip, while the two of them made awkward conversation about Rebecca’s former classmates.
“Roger Simon is back in town,” Richard said, as Sonia swished back to the kitchen for the twentieth time. “He came into the post office a few weeks ago. Asked about you, of course.”
“Yeah, I heard he was back in town,” Rebecca said. “Facebook.”
Her dad rolled his eyes. He was suspicious of the Internet in general, and Facebook struck him as particularly dangerous and unseemly. “So you know that he’s married, then? Can’t remember his wife’s name. Cute. Blond. Three kids, I think.”
“Of course,” Rebecca said. Roger Simon had been a good friend of Cory’s, and her only high school boyfriend. She did not wish him ill, of course, but his picturesque, professionally photographed life seemed only to make hers look even less desirable. “How’s his law practice?”
“He’s doing well, I think,” her father said. “I hear he still does a lot of stuff for a big paper company in Birmingham. And some of the locals here are going to him now that Beaver Green has retired.”
“Great,” Rebecca said dully. We might need him, too, depending on how things go with Mom. She took a gulp of wine, and Sonia came running with the bottle.
“Is he the one with the ads in the paper? Those cute little girls?” Sonia asked. “He’s sure a good-looking guy.”
Rebecca groaned.
“He and Rebecca dated for a little while in high school,” Richard said. “What was it, your junior year?”
“Sophomore,” Rebecca corrected. “He was a senior.”
“Right,” Richard said. “Of course.”
Rebecca watched his face as her father remembered that they stopped dating after Cory and Roger’s senior year, because Roger was going on to UAB. And there it was, as real and present as a fourth guest at the table: the always-thought but never-spoken fact. While Roger had gone on to college and then law school and a happy life with cute little blond children, his best friend Cory had gone on to death and nothingness, memorialized forever for breaking the state record for passing yards.
Sonia
, however, did not seem to notice that the lost potential of a dead teenager had joined them at the table, or Richard’s crestfallen face, which he quickly corrected with a manufactured smile.
“You dated him?” Sonia chirped, setting down a salad bowl in the center of the table. “Wow, honey, how’d you let that one get away?”
“I’m the one who got away,” Rebecca said. “I mean, he went to Birmingham for school, but he wanted to stay together. He wanted to marry me, actually.”
Her dad raised an eyebrow. “He did?”
Rebecca laughed. “Yes, and I’m sure that would have worked out great since I was not even sixteen at the time. I told him he could be my backup guy if I wasn’t married by the end of college, though.”
“He didn’t want to be the backup guy?” Sonia asked, dishing a large quantity of greens saturated with some dark-colored dressing onto Richard’s plate, and then Rebecca’s.
“He was okay with it at the time.” Rebecca smiled, remembering. “But obviously someone made him a better offer. Besides, I moved to Georgia a year later, and by then I’m sure he had girls lined up outside his dorm at UAB.”
“No kidding they did,” Sonia agreed, serving herself the salad last. Roger Simon had apparently charmed her, whether she had met him in person yet or not.
“Did we mention he’s married?” Richard said pointedly.
Sonia giggled and put her hand on his arm. “I know, I know,” she said. “Hey, just because I’m on a diet doesn’t mean I can’t look at the menu!”
Richard pretended to be annoyed with her, and Sonia leaned toward him with lips puckered, making little whining puppy sounds until he relented and kissed her back. When they parted, Sonia brushed a crumb from his beard with her fingertips, and Richard’s face turned pink underneath. He shot Rebecca an apologetic glance, and she quickly focused on stabbing the soggy salad with her fork. If I can make it through this without throwing up, she thought, Mom’s house should be no problem tomorrow.
“I never understood that,” Sonia said, scooping Bear Bryant off the floor and onto her lap before returning to her own plate. “Why you moved to Georgia for your senior year.”
Rebecca could not tell if she meant she had not understood at the time, which would have been a surprising amount of interest for a young married woman to take in a seventeen-year-old kid, or she had not understood when Richard had talked to her about it more recently.
“Well, I wanted to join a certain sorority, and my aunt Louise was a legacy at UGA. I had to live in Georgia for a year before college to get in-state tuition.”
“Wow. That seems like a lot of trouble just to be in a sorority, doesn’t it, Bearie? Doesn’t it, Bear-Bear? Mommy would never move away from Alabama. It’s where we belong. Yes it is!” The little dog licked her face appreciatively in reply.
“It was important to me,” Rebecca said quietly.
“I guess it must have been. Good for you, then.”
This was the kind of statement Rebecca never knew how to take. Was it a judgment, a compliment, or just awkward conversation? “Well, I was the chapter president my senior year,” she said. “And now I’m head of the alumni group for the entire Southeast.”
Sonia smiled thinly. “That must be really nice. I never got to go to college, so I always wondered what it would be like to live with all those other women and go to college parties and stuff.”
“We also did a lot of charity work,” Rebecca said. “I still do—I volunteer more than a hundred hours a year with the Junior League in Atlanta.” Why on earth was she defending herself to this woman? Rebecca wished she had never come.
“Do you ever get homesick?” Sonia asked. “For Alabama, I mean? And the country? I hear Atlanta has terrible traffic and pollution. And people shoot each other. Maybe you get used to it, if you live there?”
Finally Richard spoke. “It’s no worse than Birmingham. Or anywhere. Just bigger.”
“The murder rate went down last year,” Rebecca said.
“To tell you the truth,” her father said, “I was glad you went to Georgia. Things were hard here, and you had something you wanted to do. You did it. It’s always a little sad for a parent to let go of a child who has grown up, and you surprised us by doing that a little sooner than a lot of kids. But who could blame you? I’m proud of you. So is your mother.”
Sonia stiffened a bit at the mention of Lorena, and excused herself to get the roast out of the oven. “Dad,” Rebecca said. “I didn’t—”
“Let’s not talk about it now, okay?” he said, barely above a whisper. “I know Sonia can be … interesting. But she’s a good person. And she’s trying so hard to get you to like her.”
“She is?” Rebecca said without thinking. “I’d hate to see how she acted if she wanted me to hate her.”
Richard gave her a tired smile and nodded to where Sonia stood trying to decipher a meat thermometer in the next room. “Every single thing she’s made tonight is something new she found on the Internet. Before you called, we were planning to have hot dogs.”
Rebecca glanced back at Sonia, who was looking critically at the overcooked roast. It’s pretty much jerky by the looks of it. “Mom was a good cook. Before—”
“Yeah. She was,” her father agreed. “But she hasn’t cooked a meal in ten years. Maybe more.”
“And Sonia—”
“Can barely boil water. Yes.” He said it softly, but Sonia was busy trying to dig into the carcass and would not have heard him anyway. “But she tries, Rebecca. I love that about her. All anyone can do is try.”
20
That night she lay restless for a long time, unable to get comfortable or to quiet her mind, no matter how many affirmations she tried. One o’clock came and went, with Rebecca berating herself each time she looked at the small red numbers glowing in the darkness. At this rate, she would be too tired to get anything done tomorrow. But tomorrow was keeping her awake, intruding on her night space, creeping in where it did not belong. The house, and more specifically having to face it alone. Her parents, her friends, Alex, and even poor little Tanya Boozer. Whenever she pushed one away, another would shove in.
Each time she closed her eyes, she saw the different pieces of her life as wild animals she’d kept caged for so long—separate and contained. But now the cages were dissolving in front of her. The animals were pawing at the crumbling walls and snapping bars, breaking free, and she was powerless to stop them. She was afraid, yes. But there was something else—a low, guttural growling sound that could be heard apart from the rest. It was a sound of ferocity and wildness, and as Rebecca tossed and turned, she was beginning to think it was coming from inside herself.
She felt less hesitation this time, retrieving the Goddess 3500X from her suitcase. There were no rooms with listening ears flanking hers tonight. For that matter, there was no one within at least a quarter mile of the quiet little house. No interruptions or humiliating experiences awaited. Just bliss and, hopefully, sleep. The only distraction was that Rebecca found it hard to hold on to her visions of Jake, or even the fantasies of movie stars every girl had sometimes. They were all becoming fuzzy, swirling away from her before she could pin them down in her mind.
Eventually she returned the Goddess to the velvet pouch and her suitcase, pacing the tiny room in unresolved frustration. She threw herself back into bed and forced herself to lie still with the pillow over her head until she eventually drifted off. To her annoyance, even as she fell asleep, the images pushing their way into her brain consistently—infuriatingly—included a white T-shirt, khaki uniform, and those damn brown boots.
* * *
Two days later, Rebecca got up and out early, headed straight to her mother’s house. She’d allowed herself the previous day to rest and prepare, reasoning that she would be nearly useless with no sleep and there wasn’t much point in going to the house before the Dumpster was there anyway. It was nearly July, and would be sweltering all across East Alabama, but she hoped the air condition
er was still in working condition. She promised herself she would stay until noon, no matter what.
She was met in the driveway by the Dumpster Dude, who wore a scruffy salt-and-pepper beard and a rainbow tie-dyed DUMPSTER DUDE T-shirt that almost covered his large belly. She had a feeling, as he thrust the clipboard into her hands with nicotine-stained fingers, that the T-shirt was not his idea. “You call the number on the yellow form when you want us to pick up. Takes a couple of days. They say up to five, but usually it’s more like two.”
“Thanks,” Rebecca said.
“Yes’m,” the Dude said.
She unlocked the door as he pulled away, hydraulic brakes hissing and squeaking. Wonder if the neighbors will call the sheriff again for all that noise, she thought. There was a lift in her chest as she thought Alex might be back by. Jesus. I must be lonely if I am hoping the police will show up.
By midmorning, Rebecca would have welcomed law enforcement, or any other excuse to take a break. She had begun in the kitchen, thinking it was the most pressing problem in the house because of all the rotting food, and then quickly retreated to the living room. The kitchen would take working up to, she decided.
At least thirty times she had resisted the urge to run out the door. It was overwhelming to think where to start, with so many piles. There was also the risk, which Rebecca deemed quite reasonable, that she might pull out the wrong bag or box and cause an avalanche of trash, so that she would be found here weeks later, being eaten by squirrels. More than once she thought how easy it would be to just burn the place down. The insurance might pay for all her mother’s health care, with some left over to put a down payment on a small, clutter-free house. This plan was not viable for a number of reasons, insurance fraud and felony being just the beginning. Still, it had a certain dark appeal.
With thick gardening gloves on over her vinyl dishwashing gloves, she felt as safe as she might digging through the mess, and she talked to herself for encouragement as she moved things around. This is just a thing. It might be dirty or smelly or rotten, but it can’t hurt me. At the end of the day, I can shower and be as good as new. It’s a thing, to be moved. That is all.