Daughter of Deceit (19 page)

While Katharine was deciding where to hang pictures, arguing with the upholsterer, and wandering around the nursery, Bara was having a frustrating day.

She spent the morning making fruitless visits to more friends of her mother. All grew almost as icy as Rita Louise when she explained what she wanted. Some, forewarned, refused to let her in their homes. Others asked her in and heard her out, then requested her to leave. Only one, who had always been sharper than her mother’s inner circle, was any help. She met Bara on her front porch and announced, “I don’t have a thing to tell you, honey, but have you looked at your birth certificate? Maybe it will tell you what you want to know.”

What a brilliant idea. Why hadn’t she thought of that before?

Maybe because she couldn’t recall ever having seen her birth certificate. Did she have a copy? She’d gotten her first passport when she was twelve, so Winnie or Nettie must have shown it to somebody—or had they? When she had gotten her driver’s license, Nettie had taken her down and simply signed a paper stating that Bara was her daughter, born in New York on September 5, 1945. That was sufficient then if you were white and affluent. When Bara renewed her passport a few years later, her old passport and a driver’s license had been identification enough. Things used to be so simple.

She had no idea how she had gotten her Social Security number. She had never seen a card, or needed one, since she had never worked. But the number appeared on her legal documents, so it had to have come from somewhere. Winnie took care of things like that.

Oh, Winnie!
Her love for him was becoming mixed with anger, disgust, and bursts of hatred.

She spent an hour going through her files looking for a birth certificate, then wasted a couple more hours going through Winnie’s papers in the storeroom, trying to find a copy. She found a little more money, but no certificate. By then, the storeroom was beginning to look as chaotic as her house, and sitting in Winnie’s big chair surrounded by his possessions no longer felt comforting, as it used to. Her life had been irreparably split into Before and After.

In the parking lot she saw an employee, who said, “Hey, you aren’t living here, are you? I keep seeing you around.”

She said, “No, I keep needing things that are stored out here. Today I was looking for my birth certificate. Can’t find the danged thing.”

He said, “You can get a copy. Just call down to the state offices.”

Why hadn’t she known that?

She sat in the parking lot and wondered what other simple facts of daily living the rest of the world knew and she didn’t. She called New York from her car. After speaking to half the citizens of the state, and having to plug in the cell phone and keep her motor running to keep from running down the phone battery, she eventually found someone who could give her information about what she’d have to do to obtain a duplicate birth certificate. As they hung up, the woman said, “You need to know that we’re real backed up here, though. Go ahead and request it, but I wouldn’t count on it reaching Georgia in your lifetime.”

By that time it was nearly four, and Bara hadn’t eaten all day. She hadn’t had a drink, either. She considered stopping at a restaurant, but Winnie’s money wouldn’t last forever, and besides, she had all that food she’d bought. Ann Rose had sent Francie over with it late Monday,

That had been an enlightening experience. Francie had asked all sorts of questions, starting with, “Where do you want me to put these things?”

“Put everything in the refrigerator,” Bara had told her with a wave of her hand.

“Everything doesn’t go in the refrigerator, honey.” Then Francie and she began a litany.

“Where is your fruit bowl?”

“I don’t know.”

“Do you keep your bread in the refrigerator?”

“I don’t know.”

“Do you want both the chicken and the pork chops in the freezer, or are you going to use one of them in the next day or two?”

“I have no idea.”

Bara had never known food required so many decisions.

She had no idea where Francie had put most of the stuff, either, but she had seen the pork chops in the refrigerator that morning and remembered a cantaloupe on the counter. Surely she could grill a pork chop and slice a cantaloupe.

Feeling halfway competent at the notion of cooking a real meal, she remembered to lock the door between her house and garage and to arm the security system. She found a shelf of cookbooks and looked up pork chops, but the recipes were all a column long and used words like
braise
that she didn’t understand. They also required things she didn’t have or know where to find if she did have them. In a movie she’d watched as a kid, she had seen a cowboy throw a chop into a frying pan over an open fire and cook it. How hard could that be?

She picked up the iron skillet from the floor and tried to scrape out the dried egg. After a futile two minutes, she hurled the skillet into the trash compacter and reached for a stainless-steel one. She turned the gas on high and stood over the burner while the chop fried, flipping it every few seconds to be sure neither side burned. The meat was eventually hard on the outside and pink inside, but edible.

The cantaloupe, on the other hand, turned out to be full of slime and seeds. Annoyed at having wasted money on the rotten thing, she scraped out the disgusting part and tried the rest. It tasted exactly like it was supposed to. She ate dinner standing at the kitchen counter: the entire cantaloupe, her chop, and a glass of water. Not a bad supper.

Feeling virtuous, she tossed the dishes into a sink overflowing with glasses, mugs, bowls, and spoons, and cursed Foley for firing her staff.

Her eye lit on the case of liquor sitting on the counter. She couldn’t remember putting it there. Had it miraculously appeared in her kitchen to tempt her?

She leaned against the counter and eyed it judiciously. Four thirty, and she had not had a drink all day. She felt euphoric. Healthy, even. She could lick this thing! She had done it before.

But she felt the liquor calling her. To distract herself, she picked up the old envelope she had found Monday morning. She couldn’t remember bringing it into the house, or if she had opened it again since she’d found it. She dumped it out and pawed through the contents.

Her old report cards she set to one side to burn the next time she lit a fire. She browsed through her old letters and found that her worst fears were true. They were inane, often little more than a request for money. “I’m sorry I didn’t write more often,” she murmured to Winnie, wherever he was.

The clippings were mostly about her. Seven years old, dancing with Winnie at a ball. Ten years old, standing stiffly beside Nettie at some function, pouring tea. Gads, how she had hated that dress! At sixteen, winning a track meet. “I was as fast as the wind,” she boasted aloud. Most of the others were pictures of Winnie with various committees. One—presumably the oldest, since it was yellow and brittle—pictured a foreigner who was missing in Atlanta. It asked readers with information about the man, to call the paper. Bara could not imagine why Winnie had kept it.

She shoved the clippings and letters back into the envelope and picked up Winnie’s driver’s licenses. Discarding those too old to have pictures on them, she held the most recent and looked at the dear, familiar face. It shimmered and shifted under the fluorescent light, and became the face of a man she no longer trusted.

“Why did I open that cigar box?” She slammed the license down on the counter. “Just like Pandora, I should have left well enough alone.”

She was reaching for the locket when the telephone rang.

“I’m in the driveway,” Foley announced. “We need to talk. Open the garage door and let me come in.”

“Not by the hair on my chinny-chin-chin.” The line from the “Three Little Pigs” came as an automatic response to his last words. She hadn’t thought of it before, but Foley looked a lot like the Big Bad Wolf in a book she’d had as a kid.

“Seriously. I need to talk to you. Let me in.”

“You hit me!”

“I know. I’m sorry. I got a little out of control. It won’t happen again. Let me in.”

She unlocked the back door, disarmed the security system, and pushed the button to raise his garage door. He parked his black Mercedes, climbed out, and followed her inside.

“Look,” he said, setting his briefcase on the counter, “we got a call from the folks who want to buy the firm. We have to make a decision by tomorrow afternoon. I need your shares.”

She crossed her arms over her chest. “Convince me to vote them the way you want.”

“I don’t want your vote, I want the shares. Then I’ll move out this weekend and leave you everything—both houses, the investments, your precious car.”

She was tempted. If she had been drinking she might have agreed. If Winnie hadn’t raised her to look every business deal over carefully—every business deal except marriage, she thought ruefully—she might have agreed. But she was cold sober and she didn’t like the look in Foley’s eye.

“I’ll have to think about it. I’ll let you know in the morning.”

He shook his head. “There’s no time to think. I need you to sign them over to me now.”

“No deal.”

Before she saw it coming, he’d done a one-two punch to her face and her stomach, smack in the middle of her pork chop and cantaloupe. A rush of hot liquid spewed from her mouth and down his tailor-made suit.

He drew back, disgusted, and swore as he grabbed a paper towel and started wiping his jacket and silk tie.

While he was distracted, she grabbed a long knife from the butcher block on the counter. “Get out of here. Get out!” She could scarcely breathe and she hurt bad, but she would kill him if she had to. She would not be beaten up by another man.

He looked at the knife and at the mess down his once-immaculate front. “I warn you. This is all-out war. You needn’t expect any sympathy from me after this.” He picked up the briefcase he’d set on the counter and headed for the door to the basement.

“So what’s new?” she shouted after him, then hurried to lock the deadbolt.

Back in the kitchen, the shiny bottles drew her like a magnet. She hurt so bad, and she was so thirsty! She felt physically pulled toward the nearest bottle. A longing. A yearning. A sick hollow in the pit of herself that only a drink could fill.

“I deserve a little one, after all I’ve been through,” she informed an invisible jury. “I’ve been very good today.”

Yet even as she poured half a glass of bourbon and threw it down her throat like unpleasant medicine, she was filled with self-loathing. “That’s all I needed,” she pleaded with the universe. “Just one. I’ll go up now and have a little nap before AA.”

As she headed for the stairs, she didn’t notice she was carrying a bottle in each hand.

Her bedroom was on the front of the house, facing east, and a big oak grew outside the window. By late afternoon the room was dim. She switched on all the lights to cheer her spirits. It had been a hell of a day. A hell of a week. She sat on the side of her bed and looked at the bottles she had placed on her nightstand. “I overdid it yesterday, but right now, all I need is one more drink to help me relax. I need sleep so badly. Just a couple of hours, then I’ll get up and go to the damned meeting.”

She finished both bottles and fell across her bed, fully clothed.

Bara didn’t know what woke her. She’d been having the dream again: two big men standing in her doorway, coming for her. She had been terrified. She had run and run, the big heart
thump, thump, thumping
against her chest, but then she heard a loud noise and froze. What was that?

A moment later she knew she was awake, but she was still terrified. Why?

She tried to turn over and drag the duvet over her head, but rolled off her bed onto the floor. Startled, she clutched the silky cover to pull herself up. The whole duvet slid off the bed and piled on top of her. That was good. The room was too bright anyway. Why were all the lights on? What time was it? She crimped her eyes and peered at the clock. Nine fifty. Morning or evening?

Beyond the windows, the sky was black. Evening, then. So why were her drapes open? The maid knew she liked her drapes drawn at dusk.

She pulled the thick cover over her head and lay surrounded by soft darkness, her cheek sinking into the carpet’s deep pile. She was so comfortable. Maybe she would lie there until she died. How long would that take?

“I got nothing better to do.” Her voice was slurred even to her own ears. “Got nothing better to do for the rest of my life than lie here and die.”

She pulled her knees toward her chest in her favorite sleeping posture as a child.

Her stomach cramped. With the pain came memory—fuzzy, but memory. Foley had punched her. Hard. With the memory came rage. “Damn you, Foley!” she muttered, shifting one hand to press against her sore abdomen. “You could have busted my spleen. I could kill you. I could kill you!”

Rage fueled her muscles. She shook off the comforter like a dog shedding water. Pain throbbed in her stomach and face, and she realized she was seeing with only her right eye. She reached up to the left one. It was swollen shut.

“You’ve done it this time, buster!” she warned. “First thing in the morning, I’m calling the cops and swearing out a restraining order. I’ll make them take pictures, too.” All the things she had refused to do while married to Ray. Back then she had still thought it was all her fault.

She pulled herself to her knees by holding on to the rail of the bed. The room, full of unnecessary brightness, swam around and around. She closed her good eye and rested her cheek on the mattress until the dizziness lessened. She hauled herself to her feet and stood until she was steady, then staggered around switching off all the lights except her bedside lamp. She lurched into the bathroom and was royally sick in the toilet. After she rinsed her mouth, she pressed a cold washcloth to her brow. Only then did she dare confront the mirror.

“Hag!” She leaned near to examine the swollen, dark eye and to trace a red mark on her cheek with one forefinger.