Isabella Moon (32 page)

But Francie inspired the domestic in him. She was so solidly middle class, so dedicated to her work and to making her way in the world—something he’d never had to think about doing. Surely it was something that should be rewarded. With each day he spent with Francie, he felt like he was becoming a better person. Each time they made love, he absorbed a bit of her, and she—he was sure—a bit of him. Eventually they would become one person. Indistinguishable.

He almost missed the sound of the dinner bell ringing outside the kitchen of the main house. Years ago it had called his father in from wherever he was on the farm, its clear, mellow tone rolling over the farm’s pastures to tell him to end his day.

It wasn’t until he was in his teens that Paxton realized that the bell wasn’t just some idyllic tradition: it was actually a warning to his father that he should come in and get showered and dressed in time to fix a scotch and soda for Paxton’s mother and himself in the library before dinner was served.

Paxton slid off the hood of the car and got behind the wheel. He didn’t want to have to hear about the visit from the sheriff, but he knew he was going to have to soon enough. The icon on his cell phone blinked with message after message from his mother. The farm was still technically hers, and he was supposed to be looking out for it. There was always the chance that Delmar Johnston would be talking already, pointing the sheriff in his direction. But then, who was going to believe some witless horse wrangler/ handyman over the son of the late Millar Paxton Birkenshaw and his wife, Freida? It couldn’t happen in Jessup County or he’d never have gotten involved in the whole meth deal in the first place. He could handle it if it came up. Francie would stand by him, his mother would stand by him. More important, there were plenty of lawyers who would stand by him, if need be. But he didn’t think it would come to that.

Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof,
he’d often heard his mother say. Today’s evil was Charlie Matter, and it was looking like that situation could get out of hand very quickly. He started up the car, telling himself that he would think of something. He always did.

He slipped up the back kitchen stairs and went to the private bathroom off his bedroom to splash some water on his face and freshen up with cologne. Before leaving the room, he did a quick line to help him keep his edge with his mother. Even ill she could be tricky to deal with.

When he came downstairs to find the library empty, he was pleased. It took him no time at all to mix her Glenfiddich and soda, something he’d learned to do under her watchful eye when he was old enough to hold the bottle steady.

Might as well tell the boy to piss in it, Freida,
his father had said.
Polluting a decent whiskey like that.

But she had ignored him just as she had in so many things right up until the day he collapsed.

While he waited for her, Paxton made his own drink. He preferred a neat glass of Maker’s Mark in the fall and winter. Later, after Derby Day, he’d switch to gin and tonic. He stood at the window thinking of Francie as he watched a pair of Canadian geese glide down from the sky and land out on the glistening pond.

“Where have you been all day?” his mother said from the doorway. She sounded cross, but much stronger than she had in the past few weeks. The oxygen was obviously making a difference for her.

“Mother, let me help you,” he said, crossing the room. She held on to his arm as she descended the two stairs into the library. He picked up the portable oxygen cart and set it down on the rug. “That blouse is fetching,” he said. “You haven’t worn it in a while.”

“I’m not in the mood, Paxton,” she said, settling onto a chair. “Just tell me why I was the one who had to go through that charade with Bill Delaney down at the tenant house Delmar Johnston’s living in.”

There had been times in his life when he could talk his way out of things: the sledgehammer dents on the trunk of her Volvo when he was in high school, the situation with the drunken twit from Boston who’d come down for a local wedding and cried “Rape!” five minutes after she’d ripped her own blouse off in front of him, the sock full of dead baby mice in the housekeeper’s dresser drawer. But he could tell by the aggravated tone of her voice that she wasn’t budging on this one.

“That Delaney,” Paxton said. “I don’t trust him. If he weren’t married to a Lowe, he’d still be in a squad car up in Louisville. He’s never liked me and I don’t like him. No telling what he would’ve accused me of if I’d been there. What was it he wanted, anyway? He went to Delmar’s?”

“That boy aimed a sawed-off shotgun at my head,” she said. “Have you ever had a shotgun aimed at you?”

Angry as she was, Paxton heard a note of panic in her voice. She reached for the oxygen mask and took a long, deep draught.

“Good God, Mother. Delmar Johnston? Were you hurt? Was anyone hurt?”

“It’s drugs, Paxton,” she said. “Sheriff Delaney told me Delmar Johnston is involved in some kind of drug ring. Here in Carystown. Maybe on this very farm! Do you know what that’s going to look like? A gun aimed at my head. Police all over the place. And there are more coming. State troopers.”

“Breathe, Mother,” Paxton said, standing over her. “Don’t let this upset you. It’s all going to come to nothing.”

Her face was ashen. He spoke soothingly to her while she breathed. The doctors had taken out part of one cancer-riddled lung, and she’d had two serious cases of pneumonia in the past six months. The cancer hadn’t spread as yet, but the doctors said it could show up at any time. He wondered idly how much longer she could live.

“Delmar Johnston’s obviously some kind of criminal, Mother, and you never have to hear of him again,” he said. “I’ll send someone over to pack up his things and take them over to the jail. He doesn’t need to come back here.”

“Our farm is a ‘crime scene,’” she said. “The sheriff’s not letting anyone near that house.”

“I said I’d take care of it, Mother,” he said. “I let you down by not being here today. But I won’t let it happen again.”

She gestured toward her drink and he handed it to her, knowing that the doctor had told her she shouldn’t. She drank, grimacing as the scotch hit her tongue. When she handed the glass back to him, it was half empty. She watched him until he started to get uncomfortable. He wished he knew what she was thinking.

“You were with the Cayley girl today?” she said, looking into his eyes. “Is that why no one could find you?”

But he could look right back at her and tell her no.

“Her mother’s going to be buried soon, I hope,” she said. “I don’t know why they haven’t done it already.”

“It was the coroner. The autopsy,” Paxton said. “The funeral’s Monday.”

“I don’t want you going there and making an ass of yourself,” she said, sounding suddenly like the same woman she had been more than fifteen years before, when she first told him to stay away from Francie.

He marveled at the way things hadn’t changed one bit in all those years. To her, he was the same wayward boy with a forbidden crush on a black girl from in town. But he’d spent too much time dreaming about a life with Francie, making her his wife, his partner, his permanent lover. They would continue to play their lovers’ games even after the wedding, he’d decided, maybe even keep the tawdry little apartment over in Middleboro, laughing about it as a lark, an escape from the luxury of his mother’s house. Thinking about Francie—naked, spread over the bed in the tiny bedroom, her pelvis arched in the air to receive him, the sound of the water-filled radiators ticking on in the background, the way her nipples responded immediately when he touched them with his tongue—gave him a sudden hard-on that he hoped his mother wouldn’t notice.

He dropped to his knees in front of her, startling her so that she moved back in her chair.

“You have to know I love Francie,” he said. “I’m going to marry her, Mother. She doesn’t know it yet, but I am.”

Freida laughed in his face. “Don’t be ridiculous, Paxton,” she said. “You’re not going to marry Francie Cayley even if she would have you.”

Stunned, Paxton stood up, his erection quickly fading. He stepped back away from his mother’s chair. The time had come for him to fight for Francie, to show his mother that he was serious.

“I don’t want to talk about this anymore,” she said. “I want to go in to dinner.”

She started to rise from her chair, but Paxton put a hand on her shoulder to keep her from getting up.

“Take your hand off of me,” she said.

“You have to listen to me, Mother,” he said. He spoke slowly, distinctly, as though she just hadn’t heard him the first time. “I’m going to make Francie my wife. We’re going to get married.”

“Over my dead body,” she said. Her cane was in her hand and she banged it on the floor. The small
thump
on the thickly padded rug was probably not the effect she was looking for. “You will not bring that girl into this house.”

“Why do you have to be such a racist? This is Francie we’re talking about. It doesn’t matter what she looks like. You have to understand that.”

She looked at him again in disbelief, then laughed again. He wondered if she wasn’t going crazy. Although crazy would actually be easier in some ways. He would have control of things sooner.

“Lillian Cayley told me you had marriage on your mind,” she said. “Did she tell you that you couldn’t marry Francie because you’re not black? What
did
she tell you?”

What Lillian Cayley had told him was that Francie was too good for him, that she would do everything she could to keep Francie from ruining her life with him. She’d known, somehow, about Janet. She’d told him that he was worse than any low-class player she’d ever seen, and she’d seen plenty in her life’s travels.

You will not break Francie’s heart!
she told him.

“She didn’t understand,” Paxton said. “She was cruel. She didn’t have any idea how much Francie loves me.”

“Don’t you think a daughter would tell her mother something like that?”

“She wouldn’t have listened. She’d made up her mind a long time ago. She never even gave me a chance.”

Freida looked at him pityingly. Her lost son. Her only son. What had she done to him to make him so blindly selfish? He was like his father in many ways, only less sure of himself. She’d made a mistake trying to marry him off to all those girls and was thankful that she hadn’t been successful. No woman would be able to change him, damaged as he was. She was tired of worrying about him. But soon she would be dead and wouldn’t have to care anymore. Probably she hadn’t loved him enough. Or, had it been too much?

The truth was that he scared the hell out of her. The dead baby animals when he was a child, the bruised playmates, the weeping young girls. Their money had insulated him and would continue to do so for a long time after she was gone. But she didn’t want to think about that. As he stood in front of her, pleading, she could see only the blue-eyed, towheaded boy who would fly into the kitchen, leaving the screen door to bang shut behind him, and run into her arms to tell her how far and how fast he’d ridden his pony, a smile lighting his eyes, his entire face. That was the boy who had brought out the best in her, putting a smile on her own lips and the warmth of a mother’s love in her heart.
What had happened to that beautiful boy?

Her thoughts softened her words.

“You’re not the man that Francie needs, Paxton,” she said. “You’re too much for her. Francie needs someone less…”
What was the word she wanted?
“She needs someone less complicated than you are.”

She didn’t know Francie well, but knew enough to see that Francie didn’t deserve to be saddled with a man like Paxton the rest of her life. She didn’t know that Francie was strong enough, and it wasn’t fair to either Francie or her son to put it to the test.

“So you don’t think I’m good enough for Francie either?” Paxton said. “What the hell kind of thing is that for a mother to say?” He was confused. Nothing was as he thought it was. His mother was not like he had thought she was. Maybe she was insane after all.

“I suppose you think I had something to do with Lillian Cayley’s death, too,” he said, running his hand roughly through his hair.

“I can’t talk about this anymore, Paxton,” she said. Her shoulders sagged and she reached for the oxygen mask.

Paxton watched as she held it to her face. As the pure oxygen entered her body, her eyes lost their focus and she closed them so that she looked peaceful, like she was sleeping. If anyone had asked him at that moment what he was feeling, he probably could not have told them. All he knew was that he’d been close, so close, to realizing the one real dream he’d ever had in his life, only to be told—twice now—that he didn’t deserve to have it come true.

34

Miles had decided long ago, before he’d lost his virginity to a fourteen-year-old slut on the floor of a vacant beach house, that he would never, ever pay for sex. So when he opened his eyes in his comfortable room at the Grand Hyatt Atlanta and saw the blonde he’d picked up in the hotel bar the night before rummaging in his wallet, he was peeved. She’d looked a class act to him, not overly made up, and wearing a sexy but not trashy low-cut sweater and boots. Even her tasteful jewelry had fooled him. In the thin strip of sunlight slicing through the blackout curtains, he could see that she had a bad case of cellulite on her behind and sloping shoulders that had been disguised by her long, full hair. He hated to be fooled.