Phantom of Riverside Park

by Peggy Webb

  How much longer could he fill all the roles he’d taken on?

  Though he blustered and postured and claimed to be tough as nails, he looked so fragile standing beside the sink that Elizabeth swallowed a huge lump in her throat. It was her turn to be the caretaker, her turn to be head of the house.

  It would be so easy. All she had to do was cash the check. All those lovely zeroes.

  Best to put temptation out of her sight. She started to fold the check when the creature imprinted in the corner leaped out at her, his hideous face and misshapen body suggesting demons, his wings reminiscent of angels. The gargoyle. The protector.

  Where had she seen that logo? The sight of it sent shivers through her, and even after she put the check out of sight at the bottom of the Mickey Mouse cookie jar she was still chilled, as if an icy wind were blowing through her house.

  “I’m going to look a gift horse in the mouth, Papa.”

  “You think they’re behind the million dollars?”

  They never spoke the name aloud, as if the very sound of it could conjure up the powerful Delta family in the midst of their shabby house in Memphis. Belliveau. Even the thought of it brought back memories so disturbing Elizabeth had to wrap her arms around herself to keep from shattering like a cola bottle tossed on the sidewalk.

  Papa was watching her, his thin lips pressed together in a tight line, his brow furrowed in concern. Elizabeth nodded.

  “If I was twenty years younger I’d go down to Tunica and beat the devil out of him. Should have five years ago.”

  “Papa ... don’t.”

  “All right then.”

  The screen door squeaked, and he sprayed the rusty hinges with a can of W-D 40. He unbent slowly, a proud man who used to lift Elizabeth onto his shoulders with no more effort than it took to heft a glass of iced tea. Now he was stooped like an ancient willow that had endured too much wind and rain.

  “See that you don’t get bit, then,” he told her.

  Soon his deep gravelly voice blended with the flute-like tones of her son at play.

  The check whispered at her from the bottom of the cookie jar, and hope tried to override fear. A million dollars. Not a joke, not a hoax but real. Payable on demand. A miracle for all of them. Especially for Nicky.

  But at what price? Who was behind the extravagant gift and what did he want? Elizabeth had to find out.

  Nicky’s laughter wrapped around her like honeysuckle vines, drawing her to the door. Knuckles white, she clung to the frame.

  “They’re not going to get you, Nicky. Nobody’s going to take you away from me.”

  Chapter Four

  The casinos appeared suddenly, lights ablaze, hugging the Mississippi river on land so flat they seemed to rise right out of the cotton fields. Elizabeth rammed on the brakes of her Ford Valiant and sat in the middle of Highway 4 staring. She hated the Mississippi law that allows gambling along the river and the casinos that sprang out of Tunica’s cotton patches like exotic mushrooms. But most of all, she hated that coming to her childhood home made her feel awkward and uncertain.

  When she’d left five years ago she swore she’d never be back, but now here she was, gawking like a tourist at the aberration that used to be a place she called home. When she was sixteen she would ride around with friends who had vehicles, windows down, drinking in the smells of the rich Delta earth and all the lush plants it spawned - honeysuckle growing so thick along the roadside you could hardly see the fences, gardenia bushes dripping with waxy white blossoms so sweet you could get drunk on the smell, magnolia trees filled with giant blooms bigger than the Bible on the altar of the First Baptist Church where they spilled out of urns every Sunday, the fragrance so cloying you had to hold your nose on the way to the choir loft.

  Used to be, the only thing visible along the riverbanks of Tunica was the Belliveau Mansion. Three stories high, it reigned supreme over the small Delta town, outclassing and outshining even the legendary antebellum homes in Natchez and Holly Springs and Aberdeen. No other house in the state could compare to it. No other cotton planter in the Delta even presumed to compare his house to the Belliveau mansion. Legendary in the War Between the States as the only home in that part of the Delta no Yankees ever set foot in, the mansion had still retained its mystique when Elizabeth was growing up in Tunica. Ghosts protected the home, legend says, an entire platoon of ghosts who sent the soldiers in blue screaming from the premises.

  The Belliveau mansion and everybody in it had an aura of mystery and power that both repelled and attracted her. Taylor Belliveau, only child and heir to the vast Belliveau holdings, might as well have been a god who occasionally stepped down from Mount Olympus to mingle with the mortals. In Tunica she counted herself lucky to catch a glimpse of him whizzing past the Dog and Suds in his red Corvette.

  After she’d won her scholarship to Ole Miss and left the tight caste system of her hometown behind, the lines of class blurred. On the Oxford campus she was Elizabeth Jennings, scholar, and Taylor was merely one of many wealthy planters’ sons whose greatest asset was his looks.

  What was Taylor like now? Did he still have the decadent good looks, the pouty lower lips that spouted false promises, the long-lashed hooded eyes?

  A car horn honked behind her, and Elizabeth eased her car onto the shoulder of the road. The spell she’d been under was thick as cobwebs, and she shook her head to clear it then maneuvered back into the traffic.

  Except for the addition of the casinos along the river and a spate of hotels to accommodate the out-of-state gamblers, the town had changed little since she left. The Belliveau mansion still sat among the pecan groves and cotton fields, but it appeared shrunken, as if Fate had played a trick on its owners.

  Elizabeth used to think up errands so she could drive Papa’s pickup truck past the Belliveau place, sometimes as many as four trips a day. She even resorted to lying, saying she forgot the milk when it was written plain as day at the top of her grocery list. At school the other girls would gather around the lockers between classes and whisper about who had spotted Taylor Belliveau, and more important, which one of them he had singled out for a wink or a smile.

  Though Elizabeth was never a part of that elite group, she always eavesdropped on their excited whisperings, and was always secretly glad they reported only one Taylor sighting while she had bagged two.

  The girl who had gawked at the Belliveau mansion could imagine herself sprouting wings and soaring among the stars. That girl could cry over a baby bird fallen from his nest and weep over the beauty of a rose covered with dew.

  The woman who drove by now barely glanced in the direction of the mansion. She hasn’t had wings in so long she can’t even remember what feathers feel like, and the last time she touched a star was the day Nicky was born. Her tears are locked up safe until some major disaster comes along, and every night she asks God to please keep the big guns aimed away from her little family on number 23 Vine Street.

  Elizabeth’s destination was not the antebellum mansion but a more modern house of cypress and glass on the outskirts of town. Her headlights picked up the mailbox at the end of the driveway, l24 Cypress Grove, last known address of Taylor Belliveau.

  The letter in her purse was four years old, the ink smudged with tears so old they’d turned yellow. She double-checked to make sure of the address.

  When she punched the bell she summoned her courage by imagining she was a Tupperware salesman and this was just another house call. She could even manufacture a bit of boredom if she tried hard enough.

  And then the door swung open and she saw that Taylor Belliveau hadn’t lost one ounce of his good looks. Her only hope was that he’d lost most of his charm.

  The porch light was dim and he squinted out into darkness not knowing what to make of the strange woman who showed up on his doorstep unannounced in the middle of the night.

  “Hello, Taylor.”

  Hands balled into tight fists at her side, Elizabeth suddenly wished she’d called
and set up an appointment instead of rushing out as if her heart had caught fire, fervently wished she’d changed into something besides the uniform she wore for her night job. Her white blouse had a patch that said Quincy’s Cleaning Service, and she turned sideways into the shadows in the vain attempt to hide the logo from Taylor.

  “I didn’t know if I’d find you at this address. I just took off early from work and headed on down.” She stopped talking, ashamed of the way she was babbling, furious at herself, furious at Taylor. She stepped back into the light, chin out, spine stiff, eyes blazing.

  She knew the minute he recognized her: his face turned the color of putty and his jaw got slack.

  “Elizabeth?”

  “We have to talk.”

  “Look, if it’s about the money ...”

  “Honey?” The sleepy voice calling to him from inside the house was female. Taylor looked like a rabbit cornered by beagles. “Who is it, honey?”

  “Nobody, sweetheart. I’m just going out for cigarettes. Go back to bed.”

  Nobody. The word exploded between them, a hand grenade that shattered Elizabeth’s composure.

  “You think I’m nobody. Well, let me tell you about being nobody, Taylor Belliveau. I’ve spent the last five years on my hands and knees scrubbing toilets to support your son.”

  She wasn’t Thomas Jennings’ granddaughter for nothing.

  “For Pete’s sake...” He grabbed her arm and propelled her down the steps toward her car. “Get in.”

  “If you think I’m leaving after coming all this way, you’re sadly mistaken. I’m not that same scared little idiot you shoved under the rug five years ago.”

  “Just get in the car.”

  “I’ll scream my head off.”

  “Look, I don’t want my fiancée to hear. That’s all.” He raked his hand through his hair, and it waved like wheat in the wind. So like Nicky. Her heart squeezed and she gulped air so hot and sultry it felt smothering.

  “Will you just please get in the car, Elizabeth?”

  “I’m not leaving till we talk.”

  “We’ll talk, Elizabeth. I’ll meet you in the parking lot of the school’s gymnasium. Please?”

  Charms oozed from his pores. Fatal charm.

  “Okay, Taylor.” She got in and started her engine. “We’ll do it your way.”

  A moon as big as Texas rode the sky, a moon that became a huge spotlight on Elizabeth’s past. There was the railroad track that divided the town, not merely east from west but haves from have nots. She heard the mournful whistle of the train, remembered the vibration of the wheels in the thin walls in her bedroom, recalled the dreams of her youth.

  “You’re smart, Elizabeth,” Papa would tell her. “That’s your ticket out of here.”

  The scholarship proved him right. Four years, all expenses paid to the University of Mississippi in Oxford. The only caveat: she had to make the grades and she had to stay in school.

  She’d walked around the campus as if she owned the place, free at last, free of the class labels she’d endured in Tunica, free to be anything she chose.

  And then she happened upon Taylor Belliveau, idling the engine of his red Corvette outside the library.

  “Going my way?” His smile melted her right down to the tips of her Adidas.

  She took that ride with him, first to her dormitory and then to paradise and then straight to hell.

  “I’m pregnant, Taylor.”

  They were wrapped around each other, naked on a quilt under the stars. A romantic setting appropriate for the start of a brand new life. Mrs. Taylor Belliveau. Well married, well cared for and well loved. She would paint the nursery yellow, suitable for either a boy or a girl. Taylor would prance around handing out cigars.

  They could both stay in school, scheduling classes so they wouldn’t even need to hire someone to help look after the baby.

  Elizabeth brushed his pale hair off his forehead, smiling down at him.

  “Did you hear what I said? I’m pregnant.”

  “Yeah.” He extricated himself and stood up, the moon dissecting him into two halves, his upper body in shadow, his hips and legs glowing like something carved in alabaster. “I heard you.”

  “I don’t care about a big wedding. We’ll do something small, maybe with your parents and mine.” The wind tore the dying leaves loose from the oak tree and they drifted onto the quilt, red as blood. “Or we could just go to the JP. That’s all right with me.”

  “Do you think I’m going to marry you?” He didn’t move, didn’t even bend over so she could see his face. “Did you actually think that, Elizabeth?”

  She couldn’t talk around the lump in her throat. She pressed her hands, suddenly icy, into the soft mound of her belly.

  “You’re nobody, Elizabeth. Poor white trash.”

  “Taylor, don’t. Don’t say things you’ll later regret.”

  “The only thing I regret is that you didn’t take precautions.” He bent over and began gathering his clothes. She hovered under the quilt watching. “I’ll make all the arrangements.”

  Hope is stubborn, springing to life with almost no encouragement at all. Elizabeth grasped the last tiny shred.

  “It won’t take long to arrange a civil ceremony, Taylor. I don’t even have to buy a new dress.”

  “You still don’t get it, do you?” He sat close, an accident she guessed since all his attention was focused on putting on his shoes. “Elizabeth, I’m not going to marry you. Period. I’ll pay for the abortion, and that’ll be the end of it.”

  “Abortion.” She glared at him as if he’d suddenly grown horns and a tail. “Nobody is going to take this baby away from me. Nobody.”

  “Shhh. Stop yelling. Somebody’s going to hear you. They’ll find you out here naked and think I’m raping you.” He grabbed her shoulders. “It was not rape, Elizabeth. Remember that. What we had was consensual sex.”

  “You’re wrong, Taylor. I thought it was love.”

  So young. So naive.

  All that had changed now. She’d earned her degree in what Papa called the School of Hard Knocks. “Got a PhD, myself,” he often said.

  As she drove through Tunica she searched the darkness for familiar landmarks, the neon sign over what used to be the town’s only motel, the four-way stop sign at the Texaco gas station, the hundred and fifty-year-old magnolia folks called the killing tree because it had been used for so many lynchings.

  The moon had skittered behind a cloud, and when Elizabeth came to the place that used to be Papa’s farm she was glad the land was shrouded in darkness, glad she could barely see the variety store where Papa’s milk shed used to be, glad she could hardly make out the paved parking lot on what used to be Papa’s vegetable garden.

  “So much blood spilled on this land, it sings when I rake my hoe across it,” he used to say.

  The land sang still, and whispered and groaned as she drove past, telling Elizabeth’s history in broken bits and jagged pieces that snatched at her throat and punched holes in her heart. She turned her radio on full volume to drown out the noise, but it was as persistent as bees buzzing around her head.

  North of Papa’s farm was the house where she grew up, squatting in on itself as if it barely had the energy to hold up the rotting shingles. Though she couldn’t see the railroad this time of night she knew it was there snaking around the creek, just as she knew that the curtains were blue chintz and that Judith and Manny Jennings were lying side by side on a rusty iron bedstead dreaming their separate dreams, Manny of rain that would drench the parched Delta earth and Judith of a red satin dress she saw in the Sears catalogue, a dress she knows she’ll never have.

  Elizabeth drove slowly, trying not to look, but the pull of her history was too strong. She had a dreamy sensation, as if her car were floating backward through time, and instead of arriving in Tunica on a hot July night she arrived on a chilly November day when the leaves curled and crunched beneath her feet and the smell of fatback and greens fil
led the house.

  “Mom, I’m home.”

  The woman who had answered her call bore no resemblance to Elizabeth. Except for the blood they shared, they could be complete strangers.

  There was no return greeting, no kiss on the cheek, no hug. Judith Jennings took in Elizabeth, her hair damp with the rain that started somewhere north of Oxford, her arms loaded with books, her suitcases at her feet.

  “I’ll get your father,” she said.

  She’d stayed in the kitchen while Elizabeth told Manny Jennings she had dropped out of school, shut the door when Elizabeth told him she was pregnant, stayed behind her barricade of silence while Manny turned his daughter out of the house.

  “After all we’ve done for you, this is how you repay us.”

  “I’m sorry, Daddy. I didn’t mean for any of this to happen.”

  “You’ve made your bed, you can lie it.”

  Something hot and scalding flooded through Elizabeth as she crash landed in the present, and though her eyes were as dry as the dust that blows through a field of newly harvested cotton, she knew her heart was weeping, crying still from the wound of words spoken so many years ago.

  She drove on, leaving behind that house where once she’d been young and full of dreams, and it was a pure relief to Elizabeth when she saw a spot of light in the darkness.

  The lone security light at the gymnasium cast a small patch of brightness over the gravel parking lot. Elizabeth had to strain to see Taylor’s car parked in the west corner in a thick patch of darkness. He got out quickly and slid into the front seat of her car.

  “Look, I know I told you I’d support the kid, but you know how it is. I got busy and just forgot, that’s all.” He was a small child, begging forgiveness with slumped shoulders and a winsome smile. “I’ll make it up to you, I promise. How much do I owe you?”

  “Taylor, I stopped expecting checks from you in the mail a long time ago.”

  “I sent some. Once a month. You know I did.”

  “For how many months, Taylor? Five, six?”

  Taylor couldn’t look at her. Instead he adjusted the stations on the radio, finding one that played his favorite country and western. Mellow tones filled the car, Garth Brooks moaning another she-done-me-wrong song.