Friendswood (37 page)

“Hal,” she said, holding her hand up to him. “And my grandson.” Hal hugged her, and then Cully hugged her. They sat across from her on worn upholstered chairs. It seemed the droop on the side of her face was slightly righting itself.

“I've missed you so much,” she said. “Oh, I've got Scrabble here and the knitting club, and once in a while some professor comes over and tries to teach us something. I've learned all about the planets and the history of Texas, for sure. I can tell you all about it, Jim Bowie, Sam Houston. It's like they want me to get my college degree now, in the old folks' home, so I can finally make something of myself!”

“Grandma, all that learnin'!” Cully rubbed at the knees of his jeans, hooked his feet behind the legs of his chair. Hal loved his son. He could not have come here without him. Why not? Why was it so hard for him to come here for an hour or two and sit with his own mother?

“We brought you something.” Cully reached into the bag and pulled out the daisies they'd bought.

“Oh, aren't those lovely!” she said.

A woman in a wheelchair nearby moaned, rocking back and forth, clutching her belly. “It hurts so much. It hurts so much where the baby's coming!” Another woman patted the moaning woman on the back. “It's okay, dear. It's okay.”

“It hurts!” The woman in the wheelchair moaned again. “Oh, God, it hurts!” She bent over her belly. The other old woman comforted her again. “That was a long time ago, sweetie. How many did you have?”

There was a gleam on his mother's face, softening her wrinkles, her
blue eyes bright. “It's sad the way Maureen keeps feeling it. She can't seem to forget the childbirth and remember the children.”

A Mexican nurse sat at a table by the bookcase, eyeing everyone as if they were about to steal something (what would they steal and where could they go?).

“Well, I keep myself busy here, and I don't want you to worry, but I miss y'all. I just want to lay these ol' eyes on your beautiful faces.”

Cully's face was all marked up, especially the gashes on the right side by his eye, indented in three finger-shaped wounds. That morning, Hal watched Darlene rub Vaseline over the scabs. They would probably scar, but he realized his mother's cataracts were so bad now she likely couldn't see them.

Hal took her hand, and this seemed to appease her.

She told a lot of jokes. Hal never remembered his mother telling jokes before. There was the story about the one-breasted woman, and the dirty joke with the preacher. Maybe she'd always had this salty side, and he was just now noticing it. “How's my football player?” she said.

“Alright, I guess.” Cully shifted in his seat. “The end of the season didn't go so well.”

“Well, that's football,” she said. “Hal, how's that business of yours?”

He'd always lied to his mother, felt the need to rise to her hopes for him, to do as much as he could to please her, even from afar. She leaned toward him now. He had not had a drink in more than two weeks, and last night's lovemaking reunion with Darlene had opened something in him, unlocked new hope. He felt the stinging in his eyes as he spoke, “Well, now, not so great. I haven't had a decent sale in a few months. I'm afraid I never will again, to tell you the truth.”

“Oh, honey,” she said. “You've got plenty of time to figure all that out.” She rubbed his hand gently, in a way he'd been accustomed to as a boy. “Your father didn't know what he was really good at until he was fifty,” she said, “and look how much he loved his life at the end.”

Hal remembered his dad angry, furious when he couldn't finally pay the bills for inventory at the hardware store, when the insurance didn't cover all that he'd lost in that flood, indignant when he'd had to take that job at the nursery. And he'd gone around then, defiantly stubbled, in shirts with worn collars and holes in the elbows.

“He told me, you know, ‘I wouldn't have been inspired to start over, wouldn't have even considered it, were it not for my kids.'”

Cully smiled, and the big round scab on his right cheek lifted.

“Oh, he was pretty low after the store flooded. We didn't have any money. He didn't know what to do. Remember, he was about to declare bankruptcy and take a job selling pool equipment if he could get it, when Hodel's brother offered him a job at the nursery. He thought his boys would like it better if he were planting things—he thought you all would learn something. And then, what do you know, he ended up loving it so much himself.”

Hal was in his senior year of high school when all that happened, so involved with football he barely remembered anything else, though an image came to him, as his mother spoke, of his dad coming home, pants smudged with dirt, and Hal had been embarrassed for him.

“He never made the same money again, but we got by,” said his mother.

Cully squinted, tilted his head. “Huh.” Hal couldn't read him, hadn't been able to read him all year. His son might drift away from him just like he'd drifted away from his own dad. But still, there he was for now, in his denim shirt, hair all combed, kindly making conversation.

“But wasn't it hard?” said Hal. “My God, you struggled.”

She shook her head. “It wasn't that bad. He was nice in those years.”

At the window, the Mexican nurse opened the thick, orange curtains. He was unaware at first that he was actually crying—had perceived the tears as perspiration or flecks of moisture flung off the air conditioner in the window. He was afraid to look at Cully, and wiped with the back of his hands at his eyes.

“I remember Granddad then,” said Cully. “He used to take me to look at the fig trees.”

“You remember that?” Hal's mother said. “You were only about five.”

All this past month before the accident, Hal had felt forsaken, but had wanted not to give in to despair like some homeless person. Hal patted his son's muscled arm. “Well, what about that? I'm surprised you can remember it.” He would take it all seriously again. He would learn patience, and teach it to Cully. Every day he'd tend to things, and he'd watch these seeds, these fruits, these branches grow.

L
EE SAT ARRANGING
in an album the old snapshots of Jess which until now she'd kept in a crumpled box. Gradually, she moved the photographs from one side of the desk to the other. For some reason only the blurry ones, the shots with her eyes closed, or departing a room, showing just the back of her dark head, allowed Lee to see her again in a rush, snapped back a memory to her in a way that made Jess seem both alive and dead at the same time, lost somewhere in the universe of the camera eye.

All afternoon, drinking water and then red wine, she searched the newspaper and the Listserves that crowed about the explosions, and she fought off the idea of going to Jess's grave. Lee hadn't known how flammable that soil would be, had no idea the fires would burn all night, that the local college kids would get sick. She looked out for a mention of her name, or the line that might lead someone to her. She'd spoken to Atwater and Mayor Wallen. She'd spoken to Chris Hite. She said the same thing to all of them. She was sorry to hear the boy had been hurt, glad that Taft would have to stop for now. She had no idea who those men were who'd been spotted running away, but of course, there were more people than they knew still angry about what happened at Rosemont and wanting it not to happen again.

Rush called and left messages. “Well, now they're going to do something about it, aren't they? Tom says he's glad he didn't put any money into one of those houses. Call me.” “I'm worried about you. We have to talk.
Call me.” Rush had allowed Taft to touch her, she'd found him funny or flattering, liked the way he went on about her beautiful face, or something. She must have harbored other mysteries too. And what would she say, if she knew what Lee had done? Lee loved her anyway.

She read about a family that had already bought one of the new homes in Pleasant Forest, but were now planning to sue Taft Properties for damages and for fraud, then she heard her neighbors' car doors slamming as they arrived home from work, heard the circling laughter of kids outside on their bikes. She put on her boots and got in the car.

The Quaker church kept its great, gray brick silence, the vast graveyard behind it. Usually it was too painful to look at Jess's stone, the fixed stillness, the inadequacy of the inscription. Since she'd died, her spirit had been unfurled into a world that needed saving,
Jessica Knowles, beloved daughter, 1982–1998.
Lee walked along the gravel path, stepped over the low rock-formed fence. The air smelled of moisture and cut stems, the gravestones like blind thumbs pushed up from the earth. Some of them were mossed over and blackened, so many Browns, so many Turners and McPhersons, and there, the stone for Jack's great-uncle Edwards.

Jess's grave was at the outermost edge, near the fence. Lee didn't remember choosing the marker. Probably Jack had, or she'd done it while she'd been taking the Xanax the doctor had prescribed, those days she'd lost altogether—hours and hours of hushed voices and fatigue like an atmosphere of steel. Jess's gravestone was simple, arch shaped, a gloss on the front, but not on the sides or the back. The marigolds they'd planted there years ago were gone now, and a few dandelions had sprung up here at the edge, where they didn't mow as often, and a big red wildflower, nodding on its stem.

In the oak tree overhead, a bird warbled a testy question, the same sound again and again. Other times when she'd stood there, she'd forgotten where she was. She'd been flown back in time to the funeral, to the blight of coffin lowered into the ground, to the perfectly carved rectangle of dirt. She'd watched that, allowed the large dream like pink bouquets to
assemble in the funeral home, allowed the slim girls to stand around in their black dresses, cheap material catching sheens of light, allowed the stiff-shouldered men to cough, allowed the rose to lie over the wood.

Now she leaned toward the ground, something unfinished there. She could have killed that boy. All the news of burning oil residues, the phone calls, Taft's profession that he'd known nothing, all of it came down to the way that boy had been looking at her, bloody and incredulous. The other day she'd seen him from a distance, outside in the driveway, his face still in bandages, and she imagined the gauze could just barely contain his rage. She still didn't know why he'd protected her.

A ladybug crept along the curved side of the gravestone, slow and implacable. A stream of last, pale light fell on a bush of garish flowers. Her daughter was not here. She tried to focus on what was: the smell of just-cut grass, the darkened glass of the windows in the church, four misplaced bluebonnets.

She walked back to the parking lot, got into her car, and started to pull out. Just ahead, the slim figure of a girl walked along the curb, dark haired and graceful, holding her hair back from the breeze. Lee gently pressed the gas pedal, and as she got closer, she knew who it was.

She let the window down and called, “Hey, Willa? You need me to drive you somewhere?”

The girl turned. Her eyes were swollen, her cheeks raw. “Yeah.” She nodded. “That would be good.”

She went around the front of the car, and Lee saw through the windshield, the gait half tripping as if the shoes she wore were too heavy. Willa got in the car, slammed shut the door.

“Where can I take you?”

Willa shrugged. “Over to Robertson Park? I want to read for a while and I can walk home from there.”

“Where have you been?”

“Just out for a walk.”

“You okay?”

“I'm fine,” Willa said, a thread of contempt in her voice. That boy Cully had said the same thing.

“Well, put on your seat belt,” said Lee.

Willa sighed and fumbled for the latch. Watching the road ahead, Lee heard the metal click.

“How's that rash on your arm?”

“It's almost gone. I just found something written there again this morning.” The girl was upset. Anyone could see that.

“What did you write?”

“I don't remember writing it, that's the thing.” Lee glanced over, and Willa looked stricken, staring down at her thin pale arm, rubbing it with her hand.

“I hope you don't have another allergic reaction.”

“Well at least I've got the medicine now.”

Lee watched the red stoplight, the light glaring off the shiny sedan ahead of her, the bumper sticker that said
ARE YOU PREGNANT? WE CAN HELP
. Here was the daughter of her friend Char, who'd once been as dear to her as anything, and the girl was wanting.

“So what did you write?”

“The street of the city was pure gold.”

“What's the city?”

“I don't know.”

Lee hoped to God the girl had friends, that she wasn't as alone as she seemed right now, in her dirty sneakers, her tattered jeans.

“Maybe you should think about writing more when you're awake.”

Willa smiled slightly. “You can let me out over there.” She pointed to the pavilion near the entrance of the park.

Lee turned into the drive and stopped the car.

Willa dug into her pocket, pulled out a wrinkled paper, and gave it to Lee. “I know you know what happened to me. You don't have to pretend for my sake.”

Lee unfolded the paper, saw the sinister, naive block handwriting:
I AM SORRY FOR WHAT HAPPENED. I WAS DRUNK. BUT I COULD HAVE STOPPED IT. YOU DIDN'T EVEN KNOW YOU WERE THERE. YOU DIDN'T EVEN KNOW WHAT WAS HAPPENING.

Lee reached over and took Willa's hand. “Yeah, I know. I'm sorry. I also know it wasn't your fault.” The girl was holding her here. Lee could hear her breathing. “Who wrote this?”

“It came in the mail today. I'm pretty sure it's from Cully Holbrook.”

The scene outside the windshield seemed to fall away. Lee remembered the boy's face at the hospital, his blue eyes finally visible, staring through the blood. “Oh, God.” She'd wondered why he'd called it a punishment. He'd been in shock, but he must have seen her as some kind of messenger. “But how do you know it's from him?”

“Because he's the only one of them I'd believe. He didn't know they'd put a pill in my drink. He wouldn't have let them.”

The girl was holding her here. The girl needed her. Willa took the note back, and she smoothed it flat on the car seat.

“Well,” said Lee. He wouldn't let her stay with him at the hospital. He'd wanted her gone.

Willa picked up her big, loose purse from the floor. “You're not supposed to hate people, are you? Can you tell me this: did God get you through it, what happened to you? Prayer?” She said it bitterly.

Lee pressed her hands flat against the steering wheel, looked out at the park's green. “That depends on what you mean. I guess it's a kind of believing beyond belief, I mean, beyond the facts.”

“God, you mean.”

“Well, I don't blame God. I don't think I know who He is. I don't know if anybody does.”

“But, then, how can you do
anything
?”

It took a second for Lee to realize the girl wanted to fight with her. “I just do.”

Willa clenched her mouth and wound the leather strap of her purse around her wrist.

“Because there's no other way. My daughter's not any more alive if I'm gone. I have to stay and remember her. Listen to me—” she said. Outside the car windows all around them, the magnolia trees held up white blossoms like lanterns, but the words wouldn't come. She looked down into her lap, and it felt like she might be able to grasp them in her hands, but the words weren't there.

Willa moved closer, and Lee hugged her. She smelled of lemon and chalk. She was not her own daughter, but Lee owed her something. They all did.