The Feathered Bone (45 page)
Read The Feathered Bone Online
Authors: Julie Cantrell
Hello Sparrow,
I told Bridgette how God gave Adam and Eve everything they neededâplenty of food, good weather, a pretty place to live. But Adam and Eve ate the fruit that wasn't theirs.
They knew it was wrong. And they did it anyway.
They didn't even say they were sorry. Instead, Adam blamed Eve. And Eve blamed the serpent. They both got mad at God.
Bridgette said, “I bet God taught them a lesson.”
I said yes, but not the kind of lesson she's learned from Sax and Boss and LeMoyne. God just wanted them to know that choices matter.
“That's the point of the story,” I said. “Even when we make really bad mistakes, we still have the choice to do better. It's never too late.”
Then I bent down close to her and hugged her, and I whispered to her. I said, “Bridgette, it may take me a long, long, long, very long time, but you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to forgive you. And I'm going to forgive LeMoyne.
And I'm even going to forgive Boss. And all the men who visit. Forgive all of you.”
“Why?” she asked.
“Because,” I told her, “if I let go of all that hate, it'll leave more room for love.”
Monday, November 10, 2008
Maybe five foot five at most, Oliver LeMoyne is a short, pasty, red-haired man with a freckled face and a potbelly. A battered set of crooked teeth jut out beneath a wiry mustache, and his receding hairline stretches long behind a sickening set of weak brown eyes. Bridgette isn't much shorter but even in her midtwenties is heavier than LeMoyne, with bleached tips on the dead ends of her frizzy hair. Neither says a word. They both seem to understand they are no longer in control.
“But she was trafficked too,” Sarah says, defending Bridgette.
“Don't worry,” Jay reassures her. “We realize that and we'll be fair. Now, tell me one more time, Sarah. Is this the man who hurt you?” Jay speaks with a voice as clear and steady as any I've ever heard, as if the entire four-year walk through hell has led us all to this exact moment. A dance with the devil himself.
“Yes,” Sarah says, pointing toward the one-way glass that protects her from the three abductors. “That's him.”
“And this guy? Is he the man you know as Boss?” Jay points to a frail, handicapped man in a wheelchair, the same haggard passenger who boarded the ferry with us from Algiers all those years
ago. How could we have known that the girl we assumed to be his granddaughter had been trafficked for years? That her face had been printed on the side of a milk carton, listed as a missing child. That slaves were, in fact, still being sold across that river.
I point to Boss's wheelchair and say, “Who would have imagined? A man like that running one of the largest prostitution rings in the state?”
“Chains of the heart,” Sarah says. Then to Jay, “Yes, sir. That's him.”
Saturday, February 14, 2009
Valentine's Day
J
AY PULLS AN EMPTY BOX TOWARD HIS CHEST, HELPING ME PACK
my belongings. “I think it'll do you good to move out, Gloopy. Get a fresh start. Someplace new.”
“Yeah, I'm surprised both houses sold so quickly. I figured Mom's would sit on the market for a long time. Especially with all those newer homes that have been built around it since Katrina.” I gather newspapers from the recycle bin and wrap a framed photo.
Jay fills his box with Ellie's old yearbooks. “I'm just glad to see you moving forward. I was beginning to wonder if Carl might break you for good.”
I shudder, remembering the moment Raelynn saved me from taking my own life. “He almost did.”
Jay stops working and looks my way. “You know he's not worth it, don't you?”
I don't answer. I just move closer to Jay, sit on the floor, and begin to pass family photos to him. One shows Carl, Ellie, and me at Disney World. Ellie wears pink polka-dotted Minnie Mouse ears and stares up at Cinderella with the kind of grin that only exists for those who still believe in magic. I'm kneeling next to Ellie, smiling
nearly as big. Behind us, Carl is tall in the background, looking disconnected. The same way The Boss stared from his wheelchair in New Orleans that day. The words Vivienne told me back on the trace rise againâ
“That's not love.”
“I still can't believe he moved out without talking to you about it first. Same thing with the divorce.”
I nod. “I never saw it coming, Jay.”
“I remember.” His tone reveals his deep compassion, as if he'd fix it all for me if he could. “I was with you and Raelynn at the gym.”
I struggle to remember who was around me when it happened. It's all a blur now. “Yep. Right there, in front of the whole town. It's been a slow bleed.”
Jay listens as he pulls another box for the frames. Somehow he has a way of making me feel heard. As if my feelings actually matter. As if I matter.
“But worse things happen, right?” I don't bring up his fiancée's death, but the look he gives me makes it clear. He knows, as I do, what real loss feels like.
I straighten another family photo in a cracked frame. This one shows a happy threesome. Carl, Ellie, and me on the beach, sitting close to one another. It was a photo I kept on my desk. A client once saw it and said, “Y'all look like a cozy family.” I smiled and said, “We are.” I always believed we'd hold tight to one another through life's storms. Never had a doubt.
“But look,” I say, showing it to Jay. “There were plenty of happy times too. I'm telling you, if someone had told me about Carl's affair, I wouldn't have believed it. I trusted him completely.”
Jay raises his eyebrows.
“It's true, Jay. I believed with everything in me that Carl was faithful, honest. It was the reason I married him. Trust. That's what
I believed he offered me. It wasn't always easy with Carl, but I was grateful. I was happy.”
We both look at my wedding photo, the one that shows me smiling in my long white dress and matching veil. I was so young, standing there full of girlish hope, building my life on the dream of forever.
If only I had understood what Viv has taught meâwe marry to heal our childhood wounds.
I hand off the last of the photos and let Jay help me back to my feet. He pulls me up, then nearer. I am caught off guard, but I don't move away. Instead, I allow him to hold me here, against his sturdy chest.
“Amanda.” This is all he says. My name. And yet this one word is packed with meaning. And hope. When Carl said my name, it was in an accusatory tone, or yelled across the house because he needed something. And Jay has always called me Gloopy. But now he's said
Amanda
, and I have never heard anyone say my name with such tenderness. Not like this.
I lift my eyes to his, blue and clear and steady. I don't offer any spoken reply. Leaving my body pressed against his is enough. We stand together, our hearts beating double-paced, as if the whole world has left us here, together.
Jay bends, and I hold for a kiss. Not just any kiss, but Jay's kiss, the kiss I have skirted since we sat knee to knee on our kindergarten carpet squares. But just as he leans in, his cell phone rings. The unexpected buzzing brings an embarrassed smile across Jay's chiseled features. I am filled with desire, like none I have ever known. His phone rings again, and we both move away from the almost-kiss.
He answers the call, and I go back to packing, holding myself together despite the flurry of chemicals igniting within me. Maybe
it's the natural howling of hormones, but all it took was one brief touch and this man set me afire.
To give Jay more privacy, I move to the back of the house and begin to sort items from my bedroom. I am gathering rarely used clothes for the charity box when Jay joins me, near the bed. “Everything okay?”
“No big deal. Jenny again. Called from her mom's so I didn't recognize the number.” He shrugs as if the women chasing him are nothing worth worrying about. Tina, the West Coast Barbie, was one thing, but Jenny is another. Not only does Jenny live right down the road with no risk of ever leaving LP, but she's able to turn the head of any man in town with one quick flick of her wrist. Add her high-pitched giggle or her talents in the kitchen, not to mention her ability to never know the answers to the simplest of questions. She's a man's dream, the mind of an eight-year-old and the body of a teen, the culinary skills of Martha Stewart and the sex appeal of Marilyn Monroe. With Jenny after Jay, I don't stand a chance.
He's not Carl, Amanda. That's not the kind of woman he wants.
I pull a sweater from my closet as Jay looks out my bedroom window, watching my neighbor's teenage son drag a crew of cousins around the yard. They are piled into a plastic kid-sized swimming pool, tied to the back of a four-wheeler. He's racing circles around the lot, trying to get them to fall out of the pool. One girl takes a tumble, twisting and turning across the rutted grass. The others look back as she drops, laughing and holding on for dear life.
Another crew is jumping as high as they can on the aging trampoline. With no safety screen, they try to steer clear of the springing metal coils. In the center a young girl curls into a tight ball, trying not to let the big bounces separate the hold she's got on her own
bent legs. It's an old game called crack-the-egg, a backyard favorite Ellie, Sarah, and Nate used to play.
“How many kids do they have now?” Jay asks, unable to keep track of my neighbor's growing family.
“Only three,” I admit, “but it's kind of like Raelynn's house. Constant commotion.”
I move to get a better look, standing close to Jay. Even without touch, the warmth of his body meets mine. When he shifts his weight, our arms brush together. I don't pull away. Neither does he. Instead, he turns his body closer and places his hand on my waist.
“So tell me about Dex's promotion.” I try to keep us in neutral, but Jay isn't having it. He pushes my hair back from my face with slow hands, and I am no longer a worn-down carton of grief. It's been too long since a man held me. With Jay's touch I become a spiral of stars, swirling through the atmosphere. I can no longer tell north from south, up from down. My skin begins to swim around my bones. It's as if Jay is a magnet, and each particle that builds me is racing wildly toward him.
“Amanda, what are we doing?” Jay no longer speaks sheriff. “You know how I feel about you, don't you?” He rolls his hand from my waist across my lower back. His finger slips beneath the hem of my shirt, skimming my bare skin. My spine shoots sparks. They explode within me. Around us. Between.
“Honestly, Jay. I wish I did know. How you feel.” I speak softly, a nervous kick to my voice. I'm not even sure I remember how to kiss a man. It's been more than three years.
“How can you not know?” Jay laughs gently.
“How could I?” I counter. “For all I know, I'm just another Jenny.”
Now Jay pulls his head back to look intensely into my eyes. “Amanda,” he says. “You're not just another anybody.”
These words erase the dull gray layers that have long settled within me. In this very instant, I am nudged from despair. He has extended the rope, and sound by sound, he pulls me from the mud flats of grief, the swamplands of sorrow.
“You're not just another anybody.”
His message echoes through me and I am free. Free.
I unroll a stretch of bubble wrap across the counter and begin to pack the final stash of kitchenware, one piece at a time. Raelynn reaches into the back of the cabinet and hands each glass to me, pretending again and again to drop a dish.
Beth and Sarah are in the bedroom, stuffing the last remaining items into boxes that Preacher and Jay will load into their pickups and haul to my new condo.
“Gettin' cold feet?” Raelynn empties the shelf and closes the cabinet, stepping over to help me with the final few wraps.