Homefires (32 page)

“Kirk,” I put my fingers over his lips. “Stop doing this to yourself. I could have discouraged the notion of relocating. I didn’t.”

He pulled my hand away and laced his fingers through mine. “Another thing – if I hadn’t been working on that blasted car the day of the accident, I’d not have sent the kids back to you. I’d have said ‘no, you can’t visit today.’ Deep down, I
knew
you wanted me to intervene but I was so aggravated with missing tools and trying to find the right parts.”

“You were doing what you had to do, honey. That’s you. You take care of us. Stop beating yourself up over it. Here,” I reached to the bedside table and handed him the essay Mrs. Carter had personally dropped by the previous afternoon..

“It’s written by Joanna. Remember the little girl I told you Krissie befriended at school?”

He read it aloud:
“The Person Who I Admire the Most...I admire Krissie Crenshaw the most of all people because she was the most prittiest girl of all. She was a very sweet girl who did everything her mother or father told her to do. I would like to be like her because she was so nice to everybody and she had many friends in her class. I would like to be like her because she was a cristian and when I die I would not have to worry about going to heaven because I would know I was going there. I would like to be like Krissie because she went to church every time there was services. I wish I could have been her because she was loved by everybody. She was my best friend in the whole world. Joanna Coggins.”

“Some tribute,” he said softly, his eyes moist.

“Her life
did
count,” I said.

We embraced and kissed before Kirk took his leave. I watched from my reclining position on the bed as he disappeared to do his Father’s bidding. How on earth could he feel responsible for Krissie’s death?

It was, after all
, my
fault.

“And we want you to sing at our wedding, Neecy,” Moose announced, grinning so big his eyes disappeared into the folds of his cheeks and brow. I forced my preacher’s wife smile. I’d deal with my feelings later. Right now, I needed to be there for Moose.

“Of course,” I said and hugged him, then waited until Roxie finished embracing Kirk, who seemed not at all disturbed that his pal was being railroaded. Rather, he grabbed Moose for a celebratory bear hug while I tentatively embraced the lovely fiancée, whose exuberance had waned by the time I reached her. She smelled heavenly.
Chanel No. 5
, I surmised, another expensive gift from Moose, no doubt. And she was beautiful, as usual, an effortless thing with her full auburn hair that tumbled loose and wild,
a la
Farah Fawcett, and enormous, exotic tawny-gold
eyes that tilted in feline perfection. Her seafoam outfit today was no less sexy because of its more demure cut.

“
Some females are cursed with beauty,”
sniped Callie during one of her Roxie-assessments.
“I’ve seen man-eaters, but this gal takes the prize.”

“She’s one of God’s creatures, Cal,” I’d reminded her – I fear more from duty than conviction. I struggled to cut Roxie some slack and tried not to judge what could actually be a slight personality conflict twixt her and Cal. Roxie was, after all, attending church now.

“Well, we better take off to shop for a ring,” Moose took Roxie’s limp hand, still grinning like he’d just won the Publisher’s Clearing House Sweepstakes. “April 20. Mark it on your calendar, Kirk. We want it done right, man.”

“Sure thing, Moose,” Kirk called, waving from the doorway.

Toby rushed past me, on his way outside again. Again.

Amid the blurred coming and going of loving, caring condolence-bearers, Toby still seemed set apart from the grim drama taking place around him. My curiosity rose and I went to the kitchen window to watch him. His play activity had changed recently, from solitary excursions on biking and trekking over nearby terrain to a role that required a shovel.

Annoyance pierced me today as I watched him, shovel gripped tightly, head for our property’s back corner, actually a low-country sand hill with marshy sod in places. His area of interest sloped away and downward, out of sight from the kitchen window. For days now, his backyard toil had continued and I now wondered what make-believe fantasy held him captive.

At first, his solitary activity didn’t seem extraordinary, since Toby now had no steady playmate. But when he continued to trudge over the hill, day in, day out, I’d asked him, “What’s going on?”

“It’s a surprise,” he’d informed me matter-of-factly. Toby had always been the fun-seeking adventurer of the family. Now, quite frankly, his enthusiasm stirred my anger. After all, he never mentioned Krissie. I certainly didn’t expect him to anguish as I did, but it didn’t seem right somehow that he ignored her absence.

Kirk kissed me goodbye and took off to do visitation.

I showered and dressed. My hair was still damp when the doorbell rang.

“I brought you a cake,” Donna Huntly’s moist eyes belied her flat way of expression. “I know Toby likes them.”

“Where
is
Toby?” Eddie, Donna’s nine-year-old, asked. I pointed him in Toby’s direction and visited with Donna for an hour or so. Today, Donna’s rather curt personality didn’t seem important. Her kind gesture and countenance revealed a bigger heart than I’d ever guessed.

When the Huntleys departed, Toby waved goodbye to Eddie from the hill, then returned to his play. I called him in for lunch, during which he gobbled down a ham and cheese sandwich in record time. Kirk called to say he’d grab a burger at Sally’s Grill. When I returned to the table, Toby said, “s’cuse me.”

“Toby, don’t you want a piece of Donna’s chocolate cake?” I asked as he dashed to the door.

“Later,” he replied and slammed out the back door.

I rushed to the door and flung it open. “What’s going on?” I called to his retreating backside, more irritated than ever at his preoccupation.

“You’ll see, Mom,” he yelled, disappearing over the hill.

I wanted to be alone.
Clung
to solitude. It had something to do with survival.
What?
I’d not yet discovered.

“Please, honey,” Kirk slid his arms around me from behind as I stood gazing at the hilltop beyond which Toby continued to migrate, “do it for me?”

School. Second semester was now in full swing. Classes. All that seemed eons ago.

“Neecy? Will you?” he persisted softly.

I took a deep, ragged breath. What choice did I have? He was right. “Okay.”

Callie hugged me. “You’ve made the right decision, Neece. School is what you need.”

I’d walked out to the church later that afternoon, where she prepared the Sunday Bulletin for the following day’s morning
service. Hers was the small office through which one gained entrance to the pastor’s larger, more masculine study with its leather sofa and chairs, greenery and endless book shelves.

“Those are the last copies,” she said, shuffling and stacking them neatly on her desk.

“You work so hard, Cal.”

“This job is a piece of cake compared to my last one in car sales, Neecy.”

“I know Kirk appreciates all you do. Says you’ve taken lots of pressure off him.”

“Good.” She drew up to her full height, adjusting the belt of her tailored slacks and gazed around, looking for loose ends. Satisfied, she said, “Well, I’ll be off.”

I walked her to her car, a beat up gray hatchback Honda,which astounded me because the old Cal would have sold her soul for a Continental and designer fashions. Nothing but the best. This new Callie cared little for material gain. Her flip-coin side proved as passionate as its opposite one.

The next day at church, Moose had Roxie showing off her diamond, a rock big as the tip of my pointer finger. I squashed down my aversion to what I perceived as her shallowness and hugged her. “It’s lovely, Roxie.”

For the first time, I felt a response. She squeezed me back. “Thanks, Neecy.” Maybe I’d misjudged character this time. My heart began to open up a mite.

After service, Kirk invited Callie, Moose and Roxie to join us at a local restaurant featuring seafood where we had a wonderful meal. Afterward, everyone hung out at the parsonage, laughing and reminiscing the entire afternoon away.

“My goodness,” Kirk looked at his wristwatch, “Only an hour till evening service.”

We all walked to the church for an uplifting, serene time together, then returned to the house and raided the refrigerator and ate leftovers and sandwiches of all varieties. The pantry still bore soft drinks and chips brought in by folks days earlier during the funeral gathering.

I hugged our friends goodnight as they left, hating to see them go.

With the last one gone, I closed the door and locked it, then followed Kirk down the hall. At its end, I glimpsed Krissie’s bed
through the open doorway and my heart lurched. We had not closed her room off, had allowed it to remain an integral part of our living. Not a shrine, simply a place in which to relax and remember the good times and as Kirk disappeared into our room, a collage of Krissie-snapshots strobed through my head:
Krissie raking the perpetual carpet of brown pine needles into tidy little heaps...standing framed in her doorway, dressed in large loop costume earrings, Mom’s high heels and long sleeved blouse caught up and Gypsytied under her small bosom, and a pair of last summer’s shorts – until she gets my startled attention, erupts into giggles and goes clonking off down the hall, exaggerating the swing of her narrow hips...Krissie clowning, making rubber faces for small children....

I froze in my tracks gazing at the room’s stillness, absorbing its silence and Krissie’s
non-being.
Her absence clawed at my flesh and bones and my soul cried for a glimpse, a touch from her. My mind had, most of that day, taken other directions, had somehow ventured from
now,
across some invisible bridge that transported me to a place timeless and survival-friendly.

A place where memory slept.

In that moment, reality hit so forcefully I nearly fell to my knees.

I paid the price of the afternoon’s lapse, however unconscious and however
needed
. By pushing it away, I’d set myself up. The stark cruelty of death shredded me again.

I went into the room, lay on her bed and cried silently, pressing my face into her pillow, inhaling her lingering fragrance, wrapping bereftness about me like a cloak, so that soon, I felt the blessed apathy creep over me. Sorrow replaced the searing anguish.

And I wondered,
Will the pain ever stop?

Looking back now, I’m glad I did not have the answer to that.

CHAPTER TEN

“Come on, Neece,” Kirk turned me from the sink and handed me a towel. “Dry your hands and ride with me on home visitation this morning.”

I dried my hands without argument, running on automatic, knowing he wanted me out of the house for good reasons. After a restless night, permeated with nightmares of searching for my daughter, I was ready to cooperate.