Homefires (17 page)

He shoved his hands into his pockets and leaned indolently into the doorjamb, but his nostrils, so like Daddy’s, flared. “What about Daddy?
Maude
tried to poison his kids against him and for that, I have no use for her.”

The words splashed like ice water in my face. I blinked and fought to catch a deep breath. What had happened to my family? Anne and Daddy emerged from the bedroom, still exchanging heated words. “I can’t believe you wouldn’t even sit in the kitchen, Joe. It wouldn’t’ve hurt you to come off it and try to be nice for one day.”

He glowered at her. “Well, believe it. If I can’t sit where I danged well please, I’ll go home.” Which he proceeded to do by slamming out the front door, but not before pinning me with his
you’ve jumped camp again
glare
.
I knew Dad was as ticked off as he’d ever been because I’d heard him cuss underneath his breath, which he hadn’t done for a long spell. I felt fresh tears cropping up and swallowed them back. Anne looked at me with helpless fury. Then her gaze softened.

“I’m sorry, Neecy,” she said gently touching my arm. She shot Chuck a disappointed look but said nothing, and I knew in that moment, she feared my brother’s wrath as much as I did.

“Not your fault,” I croaked, watching her trail Daddy, swiped my eyes and returned to the kitchen where Trish huddled in a chair, pale and silent as a little mouse hiding from a tomcat.

“Sorry, Sis,” she said in her soft voice. “Wish I could have done more to prevent all that.”

“Nobody could.” I sat down heavily opposite her, looking over the uneaten apple pie and fruitcake and brimming cups of
tepid coffee. “I don’t understand,” I whispered, tears instantly puddling again. “Why does there have to be so much hatred?”

Trish was silent for long moments as tears riveted pathways down my cheeks. Then I noticed her eyes, though sympathetic, were dry. “You’re lucky,” I said.

She looked a bit surprised at my flat statement. Then clarity dawned. “It’s not that I don’t love MawMaw and Papa,” she said gently. “It’s just that they haven’t been around for the past few years. They just – didn’t come around. I hardly know them.”

“I wonder why.” Sarcasm fit me poorly, but I was tired of hurting and felt a little anger was in order. “I’ve heard Daddy telling you they don’t care about you
.
They do, Trish.”

She smiled a sad little smile. “I’m sure they do – in their own way. It’s just that – they’ve not been there for me, you know?”

I did. With sudden, startling clarity. If they’d wanted to badly enough, they’d have waded through hell to get to us. We gazed at each other, my sister and I, years older than our life spans, understanding too much too soon of flawed human nature.

“So long, Sis.” Chuck appeared in the doorway, did a flippant little fingers to brow salute, his overnight bag in tow. Behind him, Teresa slipped out the front door with a small suitcase. Little Poogie trailed behind, wiping sleepiness from her eyes.

“But Chuck, I thought you were staying till tomorrow – that we’d celebrate together – ”

“Nah.” He gazed toward the open door as if in deep thought, already miles away.

“Why?” I asked, shaken anew at his slight, and slight it was because he knew how excited I’d been when he’d called to say they were coming. He
knew
.

He scratched his head and looked levelly at me. “Cause I don’t like the way you did Dad.”

“The w – ” My mouth dropped open. “I don’t believe I’m hearing right. After all
you’ve
put Daddy through and – ”

“Look, Sis,” his palm addressed me in an I-don’t-wantto-talk-about-this gesture. “Just because you and Kirk are sorta – ” his fingers butterflied hatefully, “
uppity
now he’s a
preacher an’
all
, you’re all at once a do-gooder, a know-it-all. Dad’s not done right by me, but Maude was way outta line back there when she slandered him about the way he treated Mama.”

“But Chuck, she’s your – ”

“Hey. I’m outta here.”

“What about forgiveness, Chuck?” I threw at him, stalking him to the front door. “About family? What about wiping the slate clean? You know, starting all over? With MawMaw
and
Daddy – you need to straighten up things. There is a – ”

He whirled in the open door, nostrils aflare. “What for? Just to get sliced up again?
Hey!
Leopards don’t change spots.” His gaze narrowed fiercely. “By the way,
Sis,
don’t preach at me.”

The door banged behind him, leaving me limp and numb and disbelieving. The thing I’d dreaded most had happened. I watched his car spit gravel on the way out and nearly sideswipe our little VW as Kirk and the kids returned. I still stood there, staring at the space into which Chuck’s car had disappeared, when Kirk followed the kids across the porch with an Eckerd’s bag of film tucked under his arm.

“Uncle Chuck’s
gone
,” Krissie mumbled miserably, shuffling her feet, looking over her shoulder at the same space I mulled.

“Where was Chuck headed in such an all-fired hurry?” Kirk asked, then gazed around inside the house, brow furrowed. “Where
is
everybody?” He popped open our camera and began to load film, not in the least deterred from celebrating the Yule season with his family as I slid down into a kitchen chair . I looked bleakly at Trish, who sipped coffee and played with an uneaten piece of apple pie.

“Where’s Uncle Chuck?” Toby was stricken that the loveable funnyman had disappeared.

“Gone,” I said flatly.

He turned and something in his eyes told me he knew what the drama had cost me, even though I fought like the devil trying to hide it. “What happened?” he asked.

I told him, as unemotionally as possible. “Chuck always was a blockhead,” I finished dismally, raised my eyebrows at Trish, willing her to save the day with a witty rejoinder.

For once, Trish was fresh out.

“And every time anybody called him ‘Toby,’ he’d pop back ‘I not Toby. I
Sup-er-man.
’” I laughed and glanced at Kirk, who drove in silence, barely sparing a smile at my little yarn.

Silence stretched out into a flat-line, aligning with the car engine’s hum. Lordy, I was hungry for adult conversation. For intimacy. I sighed and watched the countryside flow past, motion turning golds, reds and earthtones to heather. Trish was babysitting the kids to give Kirk and me a rare evening out. I devoted myself to protecting his time, to
not
intruding.

So
why
, I wondered, my gaze straying to Kirk’s set profile, why didn’t he talk to me when he
wasn’t
immersed in duty? Like now? “Kirk...,” I began.

“I know.”

He did? A dissonant chord struck inside me. If he did, then why – ?

“Honey,” he hesitated, seeming to grapple. “Look – I’m in school all week, listening to fascinating lectures, talking to interesting people. People who really have something to say. And then I come home and all you have to talk about is – ” He shrugged, looking uneasy.

“About the kids,” I finished his sentence lamely. A pain, deep, deep inside me stirred and then churned. I’d forgotten how blunt Kirk could be. How brutal. Oh, not intentionally and not often, but when the i’s were dotted and all the t’s crossed, it came out that way.

I tightly laced my fingers together and took a deep, steadying breath, telling myself that what Kirk said was, at times, true –
You’re too sensitive, Neecy
– that the same sort of things that bounced off him attacked me like a vicious flesh-eating virus, working from the inside out.

Kirk’s bored with me
. Since he’d begun college nearly four years ago, his horizon had broadened beyond hearth and home.
Has he outgrown me?
The thought flashed like a camera’s shutter, freezing me inside. I typed and edited his term papers and English assignments so I knew how much knowledge he’d assimilated, leaving me behind, intellectually, in a cloud of dust.

“It’s true,” I said in a remarkably even voice, “I really don’t have any...outside interests. Staying home with the children, I’m
rather limited in my contacts.” I hoped the sarcasm and incredible pain didn’t come through and was relieved when I felt him relax.

As usual, I’d left the house in a hurry and didn’t take time to check my appearance. I pulled out my compact and after applying lipstick with my trembling hands, I watched my husband from beneath lowered lashes. His expression was so selfpossessed it angered me.

Why? I couldn’t accuse Kirk of arrogance. That wasn’t it. Rather, the poor farm boy had evolved into an assured, educated man who wouldn’t allow anything between himself and success. His conversation, what little he showered on me,
sizzled
with resolutions for the future.

I’d always admired his zeal and determination, hadn’t I? Even when I felt sometimes like an onlooker, an inconsequential thing batted about like a wad of paper in the path of a tornado. Why did his stony profile now set off some alarm deep inside me?

Maybe
, I pondered, because that infrequent, ruthless expression transforms his familiar features into the impenetrable mask of a stranger. One I feared.

I latched my unseeing focus on the road and, as usual, blamed my
wounded
attitude on
stinking thinking
. Kirk was determined to change his life. I recalled the alcoholic-hell from whence he came and decreed myself glad for him. And, most importantly, I knew Kirk loved me, reassured me daily that he did.

But I knew. I feared that the cold stranger might emerge, the man hidden inside him, the callous, brutal one capable of – God only knew
what
.

“
...days talking with interesting people. People who really have something to say.”

In a heartbeat, a slow, burning resolution began to build in me, underlined with my perfectionist’s strength of will. Yes, by now, Kirk’s psychology savvy had designated me to that compulsive clump of humanity who
must
oversee life’s details while Kirk’s segment supervises the big picture. At least, we complement each other, I now consoled myself.

College: I will go to college. Some way.
It wasn’t altogether a matter of pride prodding me. It was, I recognized with a curious sadness, a thing of survival.

Survival.
I must survive. And suddenly, desperately, I realized I didn’t even know
what.

Kirk’s final year at Spartanburg Methodist crested the horizon that following autumn. Trish enrolled there as a sophomore. My witty, beautiful sister found herself surrounded by male admirers and for the second year, made the cheerleading squad. I studied piano on campus once a week, driving in with Kirk and visiting with Trish in the dorm between her classes. I was as proud of her svelte figure as she but more proud of her inner beauty that – freed from Daddy and Anne’s quarrelsome atmosphere – burst through like sunshine.

Kirk’s father died suddenly of a heart attack that fall. His passing barely caused a ripple in Kirk’s activities. A sad testimony for a Dad to leave, I thought. Could have been so different.

Kirk fully supported my notion of college, as well as further music studies. With the shortage of pianists in church settings, we agreed that I should at least qualify as stand-in musician. But my fulltime college studies would have to wait until after his graduation.

Lizzie Freeman, Possum Creek’s pianist, died suddenly of a brain aneurysm. Beyond our grief lay the need to fill her non-paying position because nothing kills a church service like a labored
a cappella
hymn. Actually, Lizzie couldn’t have read a note of music on a boxcar, but what she lacked in technique she made up for in enthusiasm. Never mind that she was hard of hearing, played too loud and every song sounded the same, you got entertained just watching Lizzie’s fingers flying all over that keyboard with her gray tendrils springing free of hairpins, looking like she was at a party all the time. We missed her plucky spirit dreadfully.