Homefires (6 page)

“Oh, yeah.” I reassured her, strangely moved by her need for it. “You’re one lucky couple, like me and Kirk. Bye, Cal.”

I stared after her as she bounded from the room to the excitement of leave-taking and grieved that behind Callie’s dark whiskey irises stretched an endless Mojave Desert.

“I brought you some tomatoes.” Tom Crenshaw, Kirk’s father, stood on our front porch, holding a paper grocery bag brimming with vivid red tomatoes he’d grown in his bountiful garden. A disheveled, blood-shot eyed, graying version of Kirk, he blushed and shuffled his feet awkwardly, embarrassed at having caught us still in bed on a Saturday morning at ten a.m. “I won’t come in, I’m dirty,” he handed Kirk the bag.

“Come on in, Dad,” Kirk insisted gruffly. “At least have a cup of coffee.” The magic word. Docilely, Tom followed him to the kitchen where Kirk’s pot still offered up another brimming cup. I’ve never, before nor since, seen a family who devoured java so ecstatically as the Crenshaws.

I quietly moved to the bathroom to bathe and dress, giving them private moments together. As I soaked in the bath tub, I
thought
how difficult it is to believe this man’s the same one Kirk described as monstrous,
one who drank liquor steadily from Friday after work until Sunday night of each week. A man who raged and pursued his kids like a fiend, chasing them into the woods with his car, where they migrated to thickly wooded areas where he couldn’t follow. Who’d dangled a young Kirk by his ankles above a well over some trivial matter. Today, he seemed okay, though I’d whiffed something foreign before escaping to the bathroom.

Moments later, I heard the front door shut and knew he’d left. Kirk joined me and lounged on the commode. Seemed to just want to be near me. As though I could dispel something. Was being with his father traumatic?

“He can be so – nice,” I said. We rarely visited them. Tom always drank on weekends and Kirk refused to go after the one time we’d happened up on him stinking drunk and on a wild rampage. It scared me spitless. I’d never seen a raging drunk and it wasn’t a pretty sight.

“Oh, there’s not a better man than Dad when he’s sober. Has one of the prettiest gardens in these parts,” he said proudly, then lapsed into stony silence. I got out of the tub and dried off, leaving Kirk still sitting and mulling when I went into the bedroom and dressed in cutoffs and pullover.

“I’m going to gas up the car,” he muttered as he breezed past the bedroom.

“Wait up, I’ll go with you,” I called as his hand hit the front door knob.

“I’m just ridin’ to the gas station.”

I approached him and searched his unreadable features. Did he mean
no, I don’t want you to go?
But it was so at odds with the
can’t stay away from you
Kirk. It just didn’t – fit.

If anything, his face registered bland impatience.

Suddenly, I felt childish and awkward, like when Daddy’d refused to let me go off in a car. I shrugged. “I just...wanted to ride with you. It gets kinda lonely being by myself so much. But just go on without me....” I fought a rising indignation.

He shifted, averting his eyes, and opened the door. “I don’t care. Come on.”

“No. I have things to do.” I marched stiffly to the kitchen and began puttering, hearing the front door slam and the car
leave the drive. Anger battered me for long moments before I realized Kirk’s frustration had nothing to do with me.

Or did it?

My busy hands stilled as I recalled the times I’d heard Kirk’s Mom’s questions go unanswered, ignored by her husband. Few were the times I’d known Tom Crenshaw to take his wife anywhere with him, even on rare
sober
occasions, no more than I’d known him to show her respect or affection. I felt sorry for the poor soul, who’d one time, in her early days, been pretty and full of life and love and enjoyed movies, a diversion denied since she’d married. Perhaps by naming her children after her favorite stars, she reclaimed some of the magic of those carefree, bygone days and so she’d called her first son Roy Rogers Crenshaw. Then, in two-year intervals, they stairtripped downward: John Wayne, Kirk Douglas, Mitzi Gaynor, Randoph Scott, Lana-Ava and Rex Allen.

Tom’s indulgence for his wife’s frivolity sprouted and died there in the birthing bed. Betty’s fun and free-spiritedness had early on taken flight. By the time I met her, she was a wispy shadow of a woman whose focus seemed affixed to sheer survival. From the time I first saw her standing behind her screen door to welcome me into the clean but shabby Crenshaw dwelling, my heart lurched in sympathy, something in me recognizing her aloneness.

Kirk’s love for his parents was solid while his view of them was confused and at times, paradoxical. He spoke of his father in terms of
when he’s sober
this and
when he’s drinking
that, his features bounding twixt pride and sadness. With his mom, his estimation blurred more – the fact that Betty had hung in there and kept the family intact during all the desolation brought both pain and sorrow.

No wonder Kirk’s love signals got muddled. He had lousy role models.

Today, I heard him return and acted busy at the sink. He came up behind me and put his arms around me. Then he laid his head over on my shoulder, gently burrowing, as a child would – agesture of need.

I turned and gathered him in my arms, hugged him for long moments, then took his hand and went to the den to sprawl on the sofa and talk. Today, Betty was the underdog.

“Mama cried at the drop of a hat, over nothing – over
everything.
I never believed the tears were real. Y’know? Like something out of her danged movies. Felt they were manipulative – to gain sympathy. Mama loved being a martyr.” Kirk’s vehement stance shocked me, but I kept silent. It was his life and at last, he was opening up to me. I refused to analyze too deeply.

“She shoulda left him years ago, got us kids out of all that misery,” Kirk added during the dark moment and I wondered about the times he’d
praised
her for the same tenacity. I wondered, too, why it was that not only he, but his siblings as well, seemed much more tolerant of their dad’s drunken railings than of their mother’s passiveness. Seemed that, to the Crenshaws, earning power established one’s worth and despite Tom Crenshaw’s creation of havoc – Hell, his children valued him – the bread winner – more than they did their stay-athome mother. That mystified me. So did the influence the man had on Kirk, a thing Kirk would stoutly deny, to this very day.

Like today, Kirk’s abrupt pivot from
let’s be together
to
I need time alone
reeked of Tom Crenshaw. Of course, I realized the senselessness in attributing Kirk’s genetic quirks to his father. I dared not give voice to my fears. For though he aired his frustrations with me, he remained, during our early married days, fiercely loyal to his parents.

In the end, I reasoned that this was but one of the potholes all newlyweds faced. Adjustments.

I also reasoned that even with all my family mess, I still had it a hundred and ten per cent better than Kirk. I rededicated myself to making it all up to him.

The whole deal left me feeling that a part of the girl in me vacated to make room for more woman.

“Why, you ain’t grown a bit, Sis. Still lighter’n a Gypsy Dandelion.” Chuck had popped in today out of the blue, temporarily evaporating my anger at him.

My feet touched the floor and I clung to my brother, steadying myself, laughing and peering through tears into the good-looking face whose blue eyes crinkled with laughter lines. He would be twenty-three now. “Chuck, you’re just about the best lookin’ guy I’ve ever seen. A blond John Saxon.

“
Just about?
” he mimicked, wide grin framing perfectly even white teeth, knowing I’d paid him my highest compliment.

“Why isn’t – is her name Connie? Did she come with – ”

“No. Actually, Honey, Connie ain’t with me anymore. Gettin’ a divorce,” he stated calmly, succinctly flipping a fleck from his shirtsleeve with his fingertip, a gesture that spoke more than words.

“But – ” I sucked in a shocked breath. “What happened, Chuck?”

“Oh,” he shrugged. “Differences. Just couldn’t be helped. What about you? Things goin’ okay with yours?”

“Oh – great. Great.” I did not pursue why his marriage ended. My heart felt a peculiar heaviness as he plopped down on my turquoise sofa, but he soon had me diverted again, laughing and cutting the fool. Fact was, I was the yo-yo and he pulled the string. He tossed me away and pulled me back. Tossed me away when I mentioned Daddy and pulled me back when I appeased him.

When in his favor, I thought of bygone days when we siblings were the “Three Musketeers,” one for all and all for one. It hurt, the change, especially when I knew Chuck had been a Mama’s boy. I knew the pain of his loss.

I didn’t then and still don’t today know what murky trick of genetics caused the disintegration of trust between Daddy and Chuck except that they were both bullheaded and both plagued with tunnel-vision once their minds were made up. I knew Daddy loved Chuck, just as I knew Chuck loved him, but they just couldn’t get it together. Unforgiveness and pride eroded their chances of reconciliation.

“How’s Trish, by the way?” he asked.

I filled him in on how Trish’s weight problem seemed to be escalating, leaving out that the tension between her and Anne still existed. Chuck had locked horns with Anne aplenty on his own before he split – in his case, it was his own smart-aleck rebellion at doing chores he felt beneath him. Like cleaning the bathroom commode. And I’d thought
does he think that should fall to us mere females?
And though Trish’s pudgy tendency began long before Anne entered the picture, I was convinced the stress of Trish’s position magnified things. I told Chuck Anne had spent a few days in the hospital recently.

“Ulcerative colitis.” Anne still fought her own emotional battles with Daddy.

Chuck’s eyes glimmered when he looked up from the wedding pictures we were going through. “Ol’ man still giving her a hard time?”

“They just don’t always – see eye to eye on things is all, Chuck.” I tried not to sound prim, but Chuck’s nostrils reacted to my defensiveness.

“Tell me somethin’ new, why doncha?” He tossed a picture aside and, whistling through his teeth, opened another album. I bit my tongue, determined not to say anything to drive him away.
Why?
Why did I so tenaciously carry this virtual one-sided commitment.

All I knew was that this was my brother. That
had
to mean something.

I didn’t share my disappointment that our grandparents moved away so soon after I was free to visit them without Daddy’s permission. Despite his animosity toward Daddy, Chuck sympathized to the point of shunning MawMaw and Papa, augmenting their grief.

The vicious cycle spun on. Chuck’s anger roiled restless and indiscriminate, settling in senseless ways.

My brother left as abruptly as he came, his hostility lingering like a dank gray, choking fog. That he could turn off his love for Daddy and MawMaw and Papa – and now, Connie – baffled and terrorized me. Was it only a matter of time before I displeased him and he stopped loving me?

A chill rippled up my spine. I rushed to get the tablet I wrote in when things built up.

Later that night in bed, I shared my fears with Kirk.

“Chuck’s got a lot of junk to get rid of,” Chuck said grimly then kissed my forehead. “ I’ll take you to see MawMaw and Papa, honey, any time you want. Kirk will take care of his girl,” he murmured against my temple, ruffling my hair as I spooned back against him. “ Didn’t I promise?”

“Mm hm.” My lids drooped as his strong arms closed around me, securing me to him.

I was safe.

CHAPTER THREE

I felt
like a bird out of prison,
as the old country gospel song goes.

Kirk and I took our liberties. In the following months, we did everything
if
and
when
we darn well wanted to. We ate, slept and made love that way – even attended church sporadically when it pleased us. After my extreme
daddy-ordered
life and Kirk’s self-parenting existence, we were ready to do our own thing.