Skin Privilege (24 page)

‘Still scared of clowns?’

Charlotte laughed as if she’d forgotten her childhood terror. ‘You can get used to a lot of things.’

Except having sex with your husband,
Lena thought. She looked around the trailer, saw the water stains on the ceiling and felt the breeze from the poorly insulated windows. ‘Who’d you piss off?’

‘Sue Kurylowicz.’ When Lena didn’t react, she explained, ‘You’d remember her as Sue Swallows.’

‘Swallowin’ Sue who used to blow guys behind the Stop ‘n’ Save?’

Charlotte laughed again; another thing she had forgotten. ‘Sue’s the assistant principal now.’

‘Jesus Christ, no wonder this place is a sty.’

‘That’s not Sue’s fault,’ Charlotte defended. She indicated the room, the school. ‘You can’t put pearls on a pig.’

‘She sure did blow plenty of ‘em, though.’ Lena shook her head. ‘I can’t believe she’s your boss. God, that must suck.’

‘Oh, she’s not that bad,’ Charlotte murmured, smoothing down her skirt with the palm of her hand. She was more like the Charlotte from the library now: quiet, subdued. ‘I know it doesn’t look that way, but Sue’s been a really good friend to me these last few years.’

‘Like Sibyl?’

She pressed her lips together. ‘No. Nothing like Sibyl’

Lena had caught the flash of fear in the other woman’s eyes, and some of her resolve wavered. The desire to tread softly was new to her, but she tried to go with it, asking, ‘When did the bar close down?’

‘I think it was two weeks ago,’ Charlotte answered. ‘I read about it in the paper. The bartender was selling meth along with shots, apparently.’

‘Deacon?’ Lena asked, shaking her head as she said the name. Deacon Simms had worked for Hank going on thirty years now. He had a felony record and a surly attitude, which made him perfect for the bar but virtually unemployable anywhere else. Hank loved him like a brother.

Charlotte told her, ‘Deacon left a while back. This was some new guy.’

Hank hadn’t told her that Deacon was gone, but then he hadn’t told Lena a lot of things. She knew the bartender had a temper – he was always clashing with Hank – but over the years, Deacon had thrown up his hands a million times and sworn he was never coming back. The longest he’d ever managed to stay away was for three days. He’d run into Hank at one of their AA meetings and all was forgiven.

Lena wondered if Charlotte had seen Deacon at any A A meetings. Of course, if Charlotte was anything like Hank, she wouldn’t have told anyone if she’d seen the Pope himself there, munching on free cookies and drinking coffee. Still, she tried, ‘Do you know where Deacon went?’

‘I haven’t seen him around.’

‘There was this guy,’ Lena began. ‘I saw him outside Hank’s house. He had a swastika tattooed on his arm.’

‘In plain sight?’ Charlotte looked outraged. ‘That’s disgusting. Who was it?’

‘I was hoping you could tell me,’ Lena admitted. The guy was going to be harder to find than she’d thought. Lena was getting close to the point where, short of driving aimlessly around town looking for the thug, she was going to have to get some help. She just had to figure out how to ask Jeffrey for assistance without implicating Hank. It wasn’t like Lena could call up her boss and ask him to help her track down her uncle’s dealer.

‘I’m sorry I can’t help you,’ Charlotte said softly.

Lena shrugged off the apology. ‘Why do you think Hank’s using again?’

‘Who knows?’ she answered, picking at an invisible spot on her skirt. ‘Maybe he’s just tired of feeling things.’

She sounded like someone who knew what she was talking about. And, of course, Lena knew the truth behind her words. ‘I found your letters.’

Charlotte laughed again, but this time there was no joy in the sound. She looked at her hands, then the floor – anything but Lena. ‘I suppose you read them?’

‘I wish I hadn’t,’ Lena admitted.

Charlotte let out a slow stream of air between her lips. ‘There were so many things I said in those letters. Things I’ve never told anyone.’

‘You tried to kill yourself.’

She nodded and shrugged at the same time.

‘Why?’ Lena asked. ‘If you’re so miserable here-‘

‘What, just leave?’

‘Yeah.’

‘It’s so easy for you,’ Charlotte began. ‘You don’t have kids or a house you worked on making a home or a husband who loves you so much he’s willing to give up everything or…’ She stopped herself, reining in her emotions. ‘I love my husband. I really, really do. I can’t tell you what my life would be without Larry. He’s stood by me through all this crap I’ve dragged my family through. Even when I…’ Her voice trailed off. ‘When I took those pills, he was there. He’s the one who called the ambulance. He was the first one I saw when I woke up in the hospital. He took a leave of absence from work even though it cost him a promotion. He cleaned the house and fed the kids and did the shopping and at night he worked part-time at the God-awful motel so we could afford for me to keep seeing the therapist. He did everything while I laid up in bed feeling sorry for myself.’

‘Six years ago,’ Lena recalled from the letters. ‘When Sibyl died.’

Charlotte gave a weak smile. ‘You know, it wasn’t even about her. I mean, yes, of course I was devastated. She wasn’t just dead, but the way she

died just made it so much more awful.’ She stopped, collecting herself. ‘Sibby was so gentle, and for her to go that way…’

Lena didn’t want to think about it, to remember the details. ‘I understand,’ she said. ‘You know I understand.’

‘It made me look at how my life had just happened without me even paying attention. Did that happen to you, Lee?’

Lena had never thought about it, but she guessed that it had.

‘Suddenly, I was this grown-up married woman, driving a minivan and trying to coordinate picking up my kids from soccer practice between finding time to cook dinner and scheduling a date-night with my husband.’

Lena felt claustrophobic just listening to the description, but she felt the need to say, ‘That doesn’t sound so bad.’

‘Exactly,’ Charlotte agreed. ‘Here I was in this perfect life, and all I could think about was that if I had to go to one more church potluck or softball game, I was going to kill myself. And one morning, I woke up and decided to follow through.’

‘Does your husband know about Sibyl?’

‘Larry knew we were close, but not anything more than that.’ She finally looked up at Lena. ‘I think it would destroy him if he knew. Not for the reason you’re thinking, but because he knows… he knows something is missing and he tries so hard to…’

‘Did you talk to your therapist about it?’

‘The Christian therapist who’s also the minister at our church?’ Sarcasm clipped Charlotte ‘s words. ‘Oh, yeah. We talked it out and he prayed for me and Jesus took it away like magic’ Tears fell from her eyes. ‘It’s my cross to bear, Lena. Make your bed and lie in it, right?’

‘But, if you-‘

She shook her head stubbornly. ‘If Larry found out, he would be devastated. I can’t do that to him. You have to understand that I really, really love him. He could deal with just about anything -another man, even – but this, this is something he can’t compete with, and it would just kill him.’

Lena tried to tread carefully. ‘Does he need to compete with it?’

Charlotte gave her a sharp look. ‘You mean was it all just a
phase}’
Her bitter tone implied she’d heard this explanation before. ‘Being in love with someone, feeling connected with someone, like your heart is part of theirs, that’s not a
phase.’

‘I know,’ Lena said, because it sounded like what Charlotte needed to hear.

‘I’ve been with other men, Lee. It’s not like I just haven’t met the right one.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Lena apologized. ‘I wasn’t saying that.’

Charlotte looked at her hands. Her wedding ring was a rock, glittering in the crappy trailer. A man didn’t buy a woman a ring like that unless he was head over heels in love. She told Lena, ‘When Larry and I first started dating, he knew that I was getting over someone. He just didn’t know it was a woman.’

Lena had been the sighted one, but she’d ended up being more blind than her sister. Sitting in Hank’s shack of an office, reading Charlotte ‘s deepest feelings, Lena had remembered all the times Sibyl had shut the door to their room, asking Lena to leave her and Charlotte alone so that they could study. Lena had never guessed exactly what they had been studying.

For years, Lena had blamed Sibyl’s lesbianism on Nan Thomas, the woman she had been living with when she died. It had taken a long time for Lena to accept that her sister’s sexuality was not going to change. Lena had even developed a kind of friendship with Nan. Somewhere in the back of her mind, though, Lena had still thought of Sibyl as some innocent who had unwittingly been plucked from the straight world. If it had started as far back as Charlotte Warren, then her whole notion of why Sibyl had changed was thrown out the window.

The truth was that Sibyl hadn’t changed at all. She had always been that way, only Lena had been too stupid to see it.

Lena asked, ‘Does your husband know that you’re in AA?’

‘It’s kind of hard to hide when you get suspended from your job for being drunk.’ She laughed, though there was nothing funny about what she was saying. ‘This was back when I was in the building instead of stuck out here in the trailer park. I fell flat on my face in full view of the newspaper staff. If it wasn’t for Swallowin’ Sue I would’ve lost my job.’ She smiled. I guess you could argue that it was the middle of the year and it’s nearly impossible to find anyone who’s willing to teach anymore, but I like to think she let me continue teaching because she believes in me.’

‘You’re acting like this is all some kind of joke.’

‘Oh, Lee. If I didn’t laugh about it, I wouldn’t be able to get out of bed in the morning.’

‘Why did you start drinking?’

‘Because it was a slower, more socially acceptable way to kill myself.’ She added, ‘And it helped anesthetize me. I didn’t want to feel anything.’

‘That’s the same thing you just said about Hank.’

‘Yes. It is.’ Charlotte ‘s throat worked. Now that she was looking at Lena, she couldn’t seem to take her eyes off of her. ‘You’re so much like Sibby, you know?’

Lena shook her head. ‘I don’t look like her anymore.’

‘It’s inside,’ Charlotte insisted, holding her hand to her chest. ‘Y’all were always the same inside, too.’

Lena had to laugh. ‘Sibyl was nothing like me. I was in trouble all the time. They probably have a chair outside the principal’s office named after me.’

‘She was just better at getting away with it,’ Charlotte countered. ‘Remember how she used to mouth off to Coach Hanson in biology class?’

Lena felt herself smiling. ‘She ran circles around him. He hated her guts.’

‘Remember that awful music she used to listen to? God, she had such a crush on Joan Jett.’

‘Was it Sibyl who – I mean, was she the one who-‘ Lena felt her face turning beet red. ‘Christ. Never mind.’

‘It was mutual,’ Charlotte supplied. ‘We were both studying on the bed. We had the window open and it started raining outside and I reached over to close it and one thing led to another and it just… happened.’

Lena felt her stomach drop. Sibyl’s bed was by the wall. They had made out on Lena ‘s bed.

‘Are you okay?’

Lena nodded, trying to block the image that came to her mind.

Charlotte took Lena ‘s reaction the wrong way. ‘She never thought you would accept her.’

‘I didn’t,’ Lena admitted, feeling a familiar sadness. ‘I do now, but I didn’t when it mattered.’

‘She knew you loved her, Lee. She never doubted that.’ Charlotte stood and walked over to the window. ‘What’s Nan like?’

‘ Nan?’ Lena echoed. ‘How do you know about Nan?’

‘She called me when Sibyl died.’

‘Oh.’ Lena felt ashamed for not making the call herself.

Charlotte seemed to pick up on this. ‘You had a lot going on, Lee. Don’t worry.’

‘I should have let you know. You were…’ Lena didn’t know how to characterize Sibyl’s relationship with Charlotte. ‘I should have called you.’

‘She sounds kind of snooty on the phone.’

‘ Nan?’ Lena shrugged. ‘Not really. Sometimes she gets prickly, but she’s okay most of the time. I lived with her for a while.’

‘Hank told me,’ Charlotte said. ‘We had a good laugh over that one.’

Lena felt her stomach drop. ‘What else did Hank tell you about me?’

That he was worried about you. That there was this guy you were seeing who was really bad, and he was worried you wouldn’t get away from him.’ She paused, hesitating before adding, That he went to Atlanta with you.’

A lump came to Lena ‘s throat. ‘Is that why he started using again? Because I…’ Lena couldn’t say the word, couldn’t talk about what had happened at the women’s clinic.

‘Listen to me,’ Charlotte ordered, her tone sharp.

She waited until Lena looked up. ‘You cannot make someone use drugs, just like you can’t make them stop. You don’t have that much power over Hank or anybody else. Hank started using again for his own reasons.’

She sounded just like one of his A A pamphlets. ‘Did he tell you his reasons?’

Charlotte shook her head again. ‘Mostly, he just listened to me. I was so wrapped up in myself that I didn’t see what was going on with him until it was too late.’

‘When did he start back?’

‘I’d guess three months ago, maybe four or five if he started slow.’

‘Did he say anything in your meetings?’

‘I can’t tell you what he said in meetings, Lena. You know that.’ She held up her hands, as if to stop the next question. ‘I can tell you that two months ago he told me that he couldn’t be my sponsor anymore. I was hurt, I didn’t really question him like I should have because I was too busy feeling angry and rejected. Part of me was glad when he didn’t show up at the next meeting or any of the ones after that. Sometimes, he’d drive over to the ones in Carterson and I just assumed he was going to those.’

Carterson was about fifty miles away, not a long drive for someone like Hank, who liked to be on the open road.

Lena asked, ‘When did you realize he had stopped going to meetings?’