Suburban Renewal (31 page)

The comment, complete with a feigned whiney voice, was so snide and so unexpected, Lauren and I both just stared at Jin in shock. Then Lauren inexplicably teared up. She rose to her feet, picking up her gifts.

“You are absolutely right,” she said. “I am being ungrateful. These people have been so kind to send gifts, I'm going to take them inside and write the thank-you notes immediately.”

Jin and I watched her hurry into the house. I was fairly certain that she was crying.

“Well, shit,” Jin said.

“Don't talk that way in front of the baby.”

Makayla's ears were all perked up, and you could cut the tension in the air with a knife.

“I'm sorry,” Jin said. “I'm sorry about the foul mouth. I'm sorry about hurting Lauren's feelings. I'm sorry. I'm just sorry, sorry, sorry.”

“Jin,” I said, “you'll have to tell me what's going on. There's no way that I can guess. Is there trouble between you and Nate?”

She shook her head.

“Then what?”

“I don't know,” she said, shrugging. “No, I do know. I know exactly. I'm jealous of Lauren.”

“Jealous?”

Jin nodded. “Yeah,” she said. “Why wouldn't I be? Lauren's got her degree. She's got a man who wants to marry her. She's having a beautiful wedding, moving into a home of her own. She's got everything. Everything that I wanted. And I've got…I've got Makayla.”

Impulsively she pulled the child into her arms. The toddler tolerated it for a moment and then wrenched herself away. It was too hot.

“Not that I would trade,” she assured me hurriedly. “I love my baby. I love being her mother. But…”

She let the word hang there. There was nothing more to say.

As the wedding drew closer, Lauren's melancholy lingered. Finally one evening, I just picked up the phone.

“Gilk,” I told her future husband, “I don't know how you can fix this or what you can do, but you're going to have to try.”

“I know she's been kind of blue lately,” he admitted. “I just thought it was wedding jitters.”

“I talked to her about it,” I said. “She's certain about wanting to marry you, but it's as if she's grieving for the life she might have had.”

I heard Gilk sigh on the other end of the line. “I'm so much older than her, of course she must feel like she's leaving her youth behind her forever.”

“I don't think that's it,” I said. “I don't think she's noticed yet that you're closer to her father's age than her own. This is something different. I don't know, Gilk. You're going to have to work something out with her. I'm just not all that keen on seeing my daughter walk down the aisle without a smile on her face.”

“I'll be there this weekend,” he assured me.

He arrived late on Saturday, just as the whole family was sitting down to dinner. His Land Rover was covered with road film. He wasn't his usual impeccably groomed, completely-in-control self, either. He looked tired, mussed, old.

Lauren greeted him with a kiss.

“I didn't know you were coming up this weekend,” she said.

He gave me a quick glance over her head. “I couldn't stay away,” he told her. “I have a surprise for you.”

Lauren smiled, but her heart wasn't in it.

“I hope you didn't buy me anything else,” she said. “You've already bought me too much.”

“I had to buy this,” he insisted. “What's a wedding without a honeymoon?”

I was afraid Lauren was going to profess not to want one.

“Gilk, come sit and eat,” I insisted. “Lauren, everybody, back to the table.”

I quickly set another place and we all sat down with Nate and Jin and Makayla.

The dinner conversation was pleasant, casual. Gilk seemed changed from the man we'd first met. He was not so stuffy, not so sure of himself. In fact, he seemed downright uncertain. He glanced over at Lauren repeatedly, gauging her reaction to everything that was said.

When Makayla got bored with her high chair, Gilk volunteered to hold her on his lap.

“You're still eating,” he told Jin. “I like kids. Remember, I've got four.” He glanced again at Lauren. “But it's been a while and I might need to get back into practice.”

Makayla wasn't content just to sit, but managed to climb all over the man like he was a jungle gym. Gilk handled it with a good deal of patience, even when the toddler scooted back the hair that he'd carefully combed over his bald spot.

Nate finally took pity on the guy and retrieved his daughter.

“So, tell us about the honeymoon you've got planned,” he said.

I could have cheerfully kicked my son under the table. Unfortunately, it was too late to have made any difference.

“Where are you taking Lauren?” he continued. “Fiji? The Caribbean? I hope it's someplace she can show off the tan she's been working on.”

Gilk reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a long envelope with plane tickets. He handed them to Lauren.

“I don't think this is really a bikini place,” he said. “Though I've heard that it's very hot.”

Lauren opened the tickets. She sat there reading them, then she looked up confused.

“Where's Lilongwe, Malawi?” she asked him. “Is that some obscure island?”

Gilk shook his head. “It's in Africa,” he answered. “Sort of tucked in between Zambia and Mozambique.”

“Africa?”

“Lilongwe has the airport. We'll travel from there to Nkhotakota where we're going to spend three weeks. They tell me the sunrise over Lake Malawi is like a view of heaven.”

Lauren's expression was incredulous.

“The accommodations won't be four-star,” he warned her. “Truth is, they'll be Spartan at best. But we won't be in them much. The work schedule calls for twelve-hour days. We're helping to build an orphanage for refugee children.”

She just stared at him for a long moment. Then with a squeal of delight, she threw her arms around his neck.

“I can't believe it,” she said. “I prayed for it and prayed for it, but I can't believe it.”

Gilk shrugged. “I figured if you were willing to give me a lifetime in Waco, the least I could offer in return is an annual mission trip for the two of us.”

2001

T
here was three inches of snow on the ground the morning that Harlan called. Cherry Dale, still comatose since May 1999, had died in her sleep.

She was the tornado's final victim. That was kind of hard to get my mind around. So much had happened. As a country, we'd been in mourning since September 11, and after so many lives lost, one more death should have felt inconsequential. But it didn't.

The world went on. We lived our lives. Things changed every day. The rebuilding of downtown into a walking mall, complete with underground parking, was finished. Most of the businesses, including mine, had reopened into new, updated quarters. We even lured a very fashionable anchor store into our project. The old Lumkee Main Street was now functioning as a typical suburban mall. The only difference from the usual mall stores was that there were the small mom-and-pop businesses that made the community special.

The timing had turned out to be golden. With new technology industries expanding in Tulsa, there was a need for more suburban housing. Growth to the east and south had been ongoing for years. Now suddenly the north suburbs were the place to be. Lumkee was
the fastest-growing community in the metro area. And all around us, subdivisions were springing up everywhere, populated by those people who didn't want to drive to south Tulsa to shop. So with a brand-new mall, clean and easily accessible from the expressway, store traffic was up over a hundred percent from before the storm.

But, of course, the Lumkee we grew up with, the Lumkee we remembered, was gone. And now, Cherry Dale with it.

Doc called me as soon as he heard.

“I want to do a viewing at the funeral home,” he told me. “Edna won't take me. She says I've got no business there, but I feel up to it. Will you take me, Sam? I want to go.”

Of course I couldn't turn the old man down. He probably
didn't
have any business there. It was a bitter cold day and the roads were icy. Doc was old and not very strong anymore. He should stay home by the fire. Viewing was ostensibly for family and close friends. We were really neither. But unlike Edna, I recognized the tie the Doc had. Cherry Dale and Mike had killed Floyd Braydon. Just knowing that fact had kept him alive now for years.

For me, it was still a mixed and muddled mess of feelings. Mike was my friend, but Floyd was my father. I felt sorry for Cherry Dale. I don't condone murder, but my dad did kill my mother. I'd forgiven him for that. Could I forgive Cherry Dale and Mike? I wasn't sure if I truly could. It wasn't the kind of moral dilemma that Gram or Sunday school had prepared me for. I just did what I did best. I kept putting one foot in front of the other, moving forward. And tried to take
comfort in the old hymn we used to sing, “We'll understand it better by and by.”

I sat down for breakfast with Nate, these days known as My Son, the Loner.

Nate worked in his shop, sold his furniture and slept in his room. He never went anywhere, he never saw his friends, he never even talked on the phone.

Jin and Makayla had moved into Tulsa with Jin's brother. Nate hadn't said a word before, during or after the move. It was as if he had no comment on the lives of his baby or the mother of his child.

Corrie and I kept up with her, of course. We missed her around the house. We'd become so used to the noise of a little one underfoot, the place seemed too quiet and empty without Makayla.

Jin was moving on. She was back in school at Oklahoma State's new Tulsa branch campus. It was a comedown from Syracuse, I suppose, but she could leave Makayla with her sister-in-law while she pursued her education. We were happy for her, but sad for Nate. If there had been some big breakup between the two, we never heard any evidence of it. She'd packed up, said goodbye and left. Nate went to his shop as if nothing had happened. Only those of us who loved him could see how much light and joy had walked out with her.

“I'm going to take Doc to see Cherry Dale at the funeral home this morning,” I told him.

Nate glanced up, surprised.

“He wants to see her?”

I nodded. “Yeah, they have…I don't know…she was close to Mike. I think for Doc, that means a lot.”

That seemed reasonable to Nate.

“I'll go with you,” he said.

“What?”

“I'll go with you,” Nate repeated. “I was thinking to go up there myself. I can just go with you and Grandpa.”

I was surprised, but was glad for any indication that he was interested in something outside his workshop.

We picked up Doc a little after one. Edna scolded him and us all the way to the car. We were all so used to her, we didn't pay any attention.

Mullen Funeral Home was in a grand old brick home across the street from the city park. It had suffered some damage in the twister, but was now restored to a former glory that it hadn't shown prior to the storm.

With Nate on one side and me on the other, we helped Doc negotiate the half-dozen steps up to the front porch. His left leg still didn't work quite right, but he was getting around very well. And when he was determined to do something, there was really no stopping him.

The funeral director, Delbert Mullen, met us at the door. He shook hands with all of us, but with Doc first. At least among morticians, age still commanded respect. Cherry Dale, he informed us, was laid out in the blue parlor.

The little room had lots of windows. But without the sunshine, the place was chilly. There was very little furniture. A table with flowers and a visitor's book were next to the door. A long upholstered bench sat in front of the windows. Along the length of the room, raised on a platform to eye level, was the open casket.

Quietly, as if we thought we might wake her, we walked over and looked inside.

Cherry Dale was hardly recognizable as the woman
that I remembered. She seemed tiny and shrunken in the huge mahogany box.

“Poor girl,” Doc said. “I remember when she used to stop by the drugstore with a nickel to buy a candy bar.”

“She looks really old,” Nate said. “How old was she?”

“A few years older than me,” I answered.

“She was forty-seven,” Doc piped in. “The same age as Mike.”

I saw a tear slip down Doc's cheek. I knew that it was as much for his dead son as for the woman in the casket.

“It's terrible that someone should lie waiting to die so long,” Doc said.

I agreed.

Doc grabbed Nate's hand and squeezed it. “I don't want to die like that,” he told him. “If I'm just a vegetable, you put me out of my misery. Do you understand me, Nate?”

“Yes, Grandpa,” he replied.

“I can't ask Sam,” he said. “He'd do it for me, but I already owe him too much. Can you do it, Nate?”

“I can do it, Grandpa,” he said with certainty.

“It's hard to understand why somebody should have to live in a coma for so very long,” I said.

Doc nodded. “I guess she had to do it for Harlan,” he said. “Her lying there, needing care—it's been the making of that boy.”

That was true. In his own way, Cherry Dale's older son had been as troubled as the younger one. Drinking too much, unable to settle down, he'd been jumping from one job to another, one relationship to another, since he got out of high school. Even with Cherry Dale
handing him the Tulsa branch of Pepxercise, he'd hardly been able to make a go of it. He'd still been playing around, more interested in partying than making a profit.

Her coma, and the care it required, forced Harlan to really knuckle down. Responsibility can sometimes break a strong man down. Sometimes it can drag a weak man to his feet. That's what happened with Harlan. He'd finally shown himself to have the same kind of work ethic and financial savvy as his mother. The business was expanding again. Harlan had wed one of his employees and Cherry Dale's first grandchild was due to arrive in the spring.

Cherry Dale hadn't lived to see it, but somehow I was sure she knew.

We were getting ready to leave when Delbert came in and Doc began asking questions about setting up a burial plan. The two went off to Mullen's office and Nate and I were left with the chilly room and the casket. We took seats on either end of the upholstered bench.

Quite naturally, we talked about Cherry Dale, her boys and memories that we shared. At first we stuck just to the happy ones. But eventually, the less pleasant came to mind as well.

“She had a really hard life,” Nate said.

“Yeah, I guess she did.”

“I don't think she ever got over Rusty's death,” he said.

“No, of course she didn't,” I agreed. “She blamed herself.”

He furrowed his brow, puzzled.

“Why would she blame herself?”

I sorted my thoughts in my head and chose my
words carefully. This was Nate. Paw-Paw's Nate. I didn't want him dealing with anything more than he must.

“Rusty thought that he'd killed Floyd,” I said. “When you boys pulled him off Cherry Dale. He thought that the punch he threw was what killed him.”

Nate shook his head, disbelieving. “Well, that's crazy,” he said. “Rusty couldn't have decked a marshmallow.”

“Yeah, well, Cherry Dale tried to tell Rusty, but he wouldn't believe her.”

“He should have asked me,” Nate said. “I knew what really happened.”

My insides tightened in anxiety.

“Heart attack, just like the doctor said.”

He shook his head. “Dr. Billups is a quack,” he said. “It was pills. That's what really happened.”

“How could you know that?” I asked him. “You weren't even there. You got up and went home.”

“I saw the pill bottle,” he said. “The bottle with Uncle Mike's suicide pills. It had fallen on the floor and rolled under the couch.”

“How did you know about Uncle Mike's pills?”

“He told me,” Nate answered. “I asked Uncle Mike once how he could stand the pain. He told me about the pills. He said that as long as he knew that they were there, that he was in control, then he could bear anything.”

“And you recognized the bottle when you saw it in Cherry Dale's house?”

He was quiet for a minute and then answered. “I took the bottle to Cherry Dale's house,” he said. “I had been carrying them around in my backpack for months.”

“What?”

“The day Uncle Mike died,” Nate said. “I stole the pills and put them in my backpack. I carried them around with me.”

“Why?”

He hesitated. “I was planning to kill myself,” he said.

I'm sure I gasped. I felt like a vein in my forehead might pop.

“It's okay,” Nate reassured me. “That was a long time ago. I'm not into that anymore.”

“You wanted to kill yourself? Why?”

“Because I couldn't stand who I was,” he said. “Because I hated myself. I hated everybody else. I just felt bad, worthless.”

“That doesn't make any sense,” I said.

“It did to me,” he answered. “Every day I realized more and more what kind of person I was. And I didn't like myself. I still don't like myself. I don't like myself at all.”

“What kind of person did you think you were?”

“I'm like Paw-Paw,” he answered. “That's who I've always been like. Everybody says so. ‘Nate is just like Floyd. He looks like Floyd, he talks like Floyd. He acts like Floyd.' That was all well and good until I realized that Floyd was a vicious, brutal son of a bitch.”

I nodded thoughtfully.

“I figured that out all by myself,” he told me. “That year I spent so much more time with him and watched how he was. He was mean, Dad. He was mean all the time. And when he was drinking, he was evil.”

“I know,” I told him. “I figured it out by myself, too. But you never let on how you felt. You always defended him.”

“Because we were the same,” Nate said. “When anyone made a comment about Paw-Paw, it was like they were saying it about me.”

“That's not true.”

He shrugged. “Probably not, but that's what it felt like,” he said. “I knew that Mom hated him. I thought she must hate me, too.”

I put my arm around my son. “Nate, your mother loves you.”

He nodded. “I know that now. But then, I just knew that I was like him,” he said. “I didn't want to be like that, so I decided I would kill myself. So I took Mike's pills. But it wasn't that easy. At first I wanted to wait until Mom got over Uncle Mike's death. I thought it was too unfair for me to die right after him. And then I wanted to wait until school was out. And then I wanted to wait until summer was over. I just kept putting it off and putting it off.”

He glanced toward the casket and ran a hand through his hair.

“The night I saw him beat up Cherry Dale, I wasn't waiting anymore,” he said. “Once everybody was asleep I got up and got the pills out of my backpack. I went into the kitchen to get some water. I guess that woke him up. He was more or less sober by then. The fight, the food, a little rest, he was not his crazy self, just his regular one. He asked me what I was going to do. And I told him. I told him what a terrible man he was. That the things he did were evil, truly evil, and that I didn't want to be that way. I hated being like him. And that I was going to kill myself rather than grow up to be that kind of man.”

“What did he say?”

“He said I was making the same mistake that he'd
made,” Nate answered. “He said I was killing the wrong person.”

“The wrong person?”

Nate nodded. “He said that he'd done the same thing. That he'd hated himself. That he'd hated himself so bad that he'd killed your mother when he should have killed himself. He said it wasn't an accident. He said he'd done it cold-blooded. He'd killed her because she'd had enough. She was going to take you and go home. He knew she was right to go. He knew he was bad. He hated himself. So he killed her.”