The Lost Saints of Tennessee (23 page)

Accelerated from running, my heart rate now threatens to flatline. The noises of the woods fade back and all I can hear is the child beside me, taking in shaky breaths, scared to speak whatever terrible thing needs to be spoken.

When she begins, I have to lean down so my ear is almost next to her face, her voice is so low.

“The guys are saying stuff like now that Brian's done with me they want a ‘go at me.' Some of them write stupid notes and put them in my locker
.
”

She wipes her nose with the back of her sleeve. “You know what really pisses me off? Nobody, and I mean NOBODY, gives a crap that Brian is having sex. It's, like, what he's
supposed
to do. But because I'm a girl? Now I'm the school slut? I don't want to have sex with anybody else. I wasn't even sure I wanted to do it with Brian. But I liked him.
Really
liked him.”

The flash of anger is gone as her face crumples again. She looks so young, like the tiny girl I used to carry on my shoulders who yelled,
R
un fast, Daddy, run fast,
as she bobbed up and down.

A degree of rage I haven't felt since beating up the Smith boys stirs.

“I was so stupid.”

Her voice draws me back.

“You were trusting. You liked this guy and he broke your heart and now he's being a son of a bitch. How old is Brian?”

“Seventeen. His birthday is in May. He skipped a grade in elementary school. I was going to bake him a hummingbird cake for his birthday.”

“Too bad he's not eighteen. I'd haul his ass down to the sherriff's.”

The corners of her mouth lift. “I'd like to see him in jail. That would be nice.” She exhales loudly. “I'm just so sad, Daddy. About Brian. About Mee-Mee.”

This is the part no one tells you about. The part where your child experiences pain. It used to be my job to make it go away, to kiss the hurt and cover it with a Band-Aid. Now
it cannot be made better. Happy beginning, happy middle,
happy ending that never comes. I want it for her, but she has only to look at her parents to see that happily-ever-after can end.

“I'm sad, too,” I say carefully, worried about saying too
much or too little. This is the longest conversation she and I have had in two years. She has evolved from girl to young
woman without my noticing.

“I'm sad the first guy you really liked was a bastard. I'm
sorry I wasn't here when all of this was happening. I'm sad
about Mee-Mee dying. Your grandmother loved you so much, Honora. I think a part of her will stay with you. I do.”

“Don't give me spirit-in-the-sky shit, Dad. God, why do people think that makes you feel better? She's gone. I'll never get to bake birthday cupcakes with her again. She'll never see me graduate from high school.”

She pushes off from the trunk and stands up, hobbling toward the road. When I try to help she shakes off my arm at first but then relents. I wrap one of her arms around my neck and steady her so she can hop on the good foot. The rain has stopped.

“You're right. Why would that make you feel better?
And guess what? Your uncle died ten years ago and I still miss him. A lot. He would have loved to see you grow up. Your cookies alone would have sent him over the moon.”

We rest for a moment in the clearing near the house.
Honora leans against me, putting her head on my chest. The wind shifts and clouds mottle the sky.

“Love basically sucks, doesn't it?” she says.

“No, not always. Sometimes love is the best thing in the whole world.”

“Until it isn't,” she says, challenging me to disagree.

I want to tell her it can work out. That loving the right someone can make you better than the person you are alone. But what proof do I have to offer?

“You left.” It is an accusation. “You didn't even tell us good-bye, Dad. What kind of
love
is that?”

This is what looms between us, beneath the pain of
Mother's death and the boyfriend's betrayal.

“I'm sorry, Honora. I screwed up.”

She looks up at me. “Why is it so hard to love us?”

More than anything else she has said today, these words leave me breathless.

My girl thinks the reason I'm such a shitty dad is something she or Lou did. How could I forget how innocent they are? People say children are resilient, and maybe that's true, but what is not said enough, or at least not by anyone I know, is how small the world is to a child. It begins and ends with her family and when that breaks down somehow—through divorce, adultery, sickness, death—the child loses trust in every­thing she knows.

“I need you to listen right now. Okay?”

Eye roll.

I step back a little so we can really see each other.
“Lov
ing you and loving your sister is the easiest thing I've ever
done. I loved you before you were born. Do you know that? Your mom and I had been trying for a while to have a baby, and when she finally got pregnant with you, I couldn't believe how lucky we were. I think you and Louisa are pretty much the best thing on the planet. Everything wrong I've ever done when it comes to you girls has had
nothing
to do with you and
everything
to do with the messed-up person I am. Can you
under­stand that, please? It's really important.”

She shrugs.

“I went to Virginia to try and get unmessed up.”

This is the short version. She doesn't need the long one.

“Are you home now for good?”

Of course this is the question she would ask. Can I postpone the answer?

“I'm going back to Lacey Farms. I'd like you and your sister to come check it out.”

“How long are you going to stay there?”

“I'm not sure.”

Her silence confirms my ongoing paternal failure.
Next to us is a toppled old oak tree, broken in half. The sun shines briefly and dances across the trunk.

“The gnomes should be up for a sunbath soon,” I say.

Honora frowns. “What are you talking about?”

“The gnomes. Remember? You used to believe they
lived in fallen tree trunks.”

“That was a long time ago, Dad.”

But it wasn't. It was a few years ago. It could have been yesterday.

Thirty-Eight

1985

Honora gets settled on the couch with her leg up on a bag of ice, surrounded by her sister and cousins, one of whom figures out how to connect the Atari game console to Mother's ancient TV. Space Invaders march across the screen.

I catch Jackie's eye and motion toward the door. We
walk to the back end of the property line, passing a few leftover pumpkins in the vegetable garden.

“What is it, Zeke? Tell me.” Jackie gnaws a thumbnail, her eyes never leaving mine.

“She slept with him. More than once. Then he dumped her. Now he's running his mouth at school.”

“Goddamn, motherfucker, son of a bitch.” She grabs
an old piece of brick off the ground and hurls it at the nearest tree, hitting it dead-on.

“Shit. Shit. Shit. Is she pregnant?”

It never crossed my mind.
Stupid.

“You didn't ask her, did you? Jesus Zeke.”

“I don't think she is. She would have told me.”
God, how I hope this is true.

Jackie paces in front of me, treading a path back and forth between the last rows of Mother's shriveled tomato plants. “We shouldn't have gotten divorced. I shouldn't have married Curtis. This is my fault. I haven't been paying enough attention to her.”

“And I've been gone. Look, right now it doesn't matter whose fault it is. What matters is what comes next. School must be hell.”

Jackie freezes. “What are you thinking?”

An idea spins out as I speak. “Let Honora come back to Virginia with me. Stay for the rest of the school year. Then she can come back to Clayton when Brian and his loser friends have graduated. Let's give her a chance to get away from this guy.”

She collapses into a rusted lawn chair. I kneel down next to her. “Look, we'll figure this out, okay? Maybe Virginia is the right answer. Maybe it's not.”

“You're thinking of moving there, aren't you?”

The idea appears to upset her almost as much as the news about our daughter.

“Cousin Georgia has asked me to stay for a while. Osborne's got Alzheimer's and it's getting worse. There are things I could do there. Be of use.”

“Why not take Louisa, too?”

It isn't just the girls she's thinking about. The heat rises in my face.

“Jacklynn, you've got no right to be thinking what
you're thinking right now.”

“And what might that be?”

“You're not mad at me moving for the girls' sake. You're mad because the possibility of a good screw with your
ex-husband won't be a phone call away. That's bullshit, Jackie.”

She turns her face away, looking back toward the house. Before speaking again, she lowers her voice. “You're not that good of a fuck, Zeke.”

How has this conversation become more about us than our daughter?

“I can't stay here. You can understand that.”

Jackie walks over to a holly bush and twists off a berry, cursing when a sharp leaf scratches her hand. All must not be well in newlywed land. This is not my problem, cannot be my problem.

“I don't want to take the girls away from you. I could never be as good a parent as you are. I know that. If I could, I'd move the three of you out there.”

Her face softens. I put my hands on her shoulders. “Why don't you leave that old car salesman and move out there with me?”

In some ways it would make everything so simple.
There is a pull here, a history with Jackie that will not let go. But an image of Elle's face beneath me as we make love appears in my mind.

The wind gusts out of the east and knocks over the lawn chair. I try to give Jackie my jacket but she bats it off.

“I happen to love Curtis.”

That she has to say it makes it doubtful, but I keep quiet, trying not to betray the rush of relief flooding through me.

“I'll think about it, Zeke. Okay? Honora won't want to go. But maybe it's the right thing. I don't know what is. Give me a couple of days.”

She walks back to the house, leaving me alone in the empty yard. A semicircle stand of poplar trees forms the eastern property line, some well over one hundred feet tall, their tops meeting the sky. I lower myself down on one knee. The wet ground soaks through the thin material of my suit pants. I want to hear the deep timber of my father's voice yelling from the front yard that he needs an extra pair of hands to work on the truck. I want to hear Carter again, the voice most like my own, teasing me for missing a basket. Mother calling to us through the screen door to come in for dinner. Honora's little girl voice at bedtime,
Read one more story, Daddy. Please.

Thirty-Nine

1985

Another leaving day arrives. Rosie pitches in to help pack up the shed. The family still calls my former living quarters “the shed,” even though it looks like a small house now. Mother put flower boxes under the front windows a couple of years back, and Violet makes sure something is always planted in them. Marigolds this month.

Rosie looks around the living room and kitchen, no bigger than a normal house's hallway, and shakes her head. “How long did you live here?”

“Five years before I got married and then since the divorce.”

“Jesus.”

What did I need more space for? My daughters never spent the night; Carter had been dead for ten years. It was just me.

“No wonder you've been depressed.”

I look at the place through her eyes—the beat-up linoleum floor, leftover pieces from when Daddy redid Mother's kitchen floor twenty years ago, the bare walls, the white paint
beginning to peel, the tiny bedroom with a mattress on the floor since I'd never gotten around to getting a bed frame. The fake pine nightstand I found on the side of the road holds a picture of Honora and Louisa when they were little and there is also a lamp with a Budweiser beer–can base. Carter picked the lamp out himself at the Corinth flea market a year after we moved in together.

Rosie calls from the kitchen and asks what she should do with all the pots and pans. I tell her to pack it up; we'll drop it off at the thrift store in Mabry. The only things I want to take with me are my clothes and Carter's. It takes me five minutes to empty the dresser drawers. The hall closet holds Carter's things. It is the only closet in the place, located halfway between the bedroom and the bathroom. My father and I had worked night and day for a week straight putting in the bathroom. Mother kept coming out and saying how silly it was to waste all this time on it when Carter and I could just come and use the bathroom in the house. The thought of having to deal with her every time I needed to piss was enough to make me finish the project as soon as I could.

The closet hasn't been touched in years. I grab a couple of boxes, intending to throw everything in at once. Carter's clothes are on the bottom shelf—jeans, old T-shirts, some socks. I decide that these can go to the thrift store, too. As I toss them into the box, something falls out from between a pair of jeans and
lands on the dusty floor. It is a small, infant-size sweater
faded
to a dull navy color. I remember pictures of Carter and me
dressed in matching ones when we were babies. The cuffs of the sweater are frayed, but it's in pretty good shape for being over forty years old. Rosie comes up behind me.

“How cute. What is that?”

I tell her and she reaches out to touch the sweater gently, as if she is afraid it will crumble. “This was Carter's?”

“Probably. Mother told me Grandmother Parker made them for us when we were born.”

Rosie flops down on the floor, fingers the material. “You're not going to throw it away?”

I tell her no, and take the sweater from her hands. The after­noon light is fading to dark outside, bringing a chill into the room. I want to finish before it settles around me.

“It's still strange having him gone, isn't it?”

I turn my back on her, letting my silence do the answering.

My sister stands up, hands me an old University of Virginia sweatshirt. “I would like to see Carter at forty-three.” She touches the hair at my temples. “I bet he would have gotten really gray on top like Daddy. Maybe a little belly, too?”

I push her hand away from my stomach and she retreats to the kitchen.

After clearing out the clothes, the sight of a basketball at the bottom of the closet makes me smile. Carter used to make me play a game of one-on-one the second I walked in the door from work. When Jackie and I first got married, playing basketball instead of coming in to dinner right away aggravated her. But after a while she seemed to understand it was our way of saying hello to each other after being apart all day.

Not long before Honora was born, Carter came up to Jackie and put his hand on her belly.
I will teach the baby to play basketball,
he said. And sure enough, as soon as Honora learned to walk, Carter took her out in the driveway with a baby-size basketball for her and a big one for him. Her second Christmas we bought a kid-size hoop. You'd have thought we'd given her the moon by how excited she and Carter got.
Look, Uncle Car-Car,
she said,
we can play now
.

Louisa doesn't even remember my brother. He drowned when she was two.

I put the basketball in the save box with the baby outfit, then stand on a chair to check the back of the top shelf. Shoved in the far corner is an old Dixie Maid cigar box. My father smoked Dixie Maids on holidays and his birthday, the only times Mother would put up with the smell of them. The box feels too light to be holding any cigars. Bits of paper poke out the sides, and when I open it, some flutter down onto the floor. A few old newspaper clippings are in the pile.

Carter's wide, messy handwriting fills the pages. A heart
is drawn in the middle of one with the words
Carter loves
Jackie
inside. My hand grips the paper tighter. I knew Carter loved Jackie, but it had never entered my mind that he might be
in love
with her. What other women had he really known, though? I sit on a kitchen chair as sadness steals over me, the ten years between Carter's death and the present slipping away.

Rosie comes up behind me, startling me. “What are you reading?”

I pile the papers back in and shut the lid. “Just some of my old stuff. Why don't you take a break? I can get the rest of this.”

She stares me down for a second, smelling a rat. My sisters always want me to talk, particularly when it comes to Carter. I have never done so and don't intend to start now.

“Let me get this straight.” Her hands are on her hips in
dicating that this may take a while. “You don't want to talk about Carter. You already said you don't want to talk about what's
going on with Honora. What the hell
do
you want to talk about?”

I shrug.

“Fine,” she says, slamming a box down on the counter. Before heading out the door, she tosses a can of Budweiser from the fridge and says I look like I might need it. Her car door slams with an expensive
thunk
.

“Rosie,” I call out the screen door, “don't be mad, okay?”

The words hit her and she rolls her eyes.

“I'll be over at Daisy's when you're done. Going to head back to Nashville tomorrow, so have dinner with us tonight?”

She does not refer to Nashville as home. Clayton is still home for all of us, though, technically, only Violet still lives here. With Mother gone, I wonder if this will change.

I settle myself on the old sleeper sofa in the living room, pop the top on the beer, and take a long drink. The box sits beside me. I finish the beer and then one more before opening the box again, telling myself I don't want to risk spilling anything on its contents.

A paper clip holds yellowed newspaper together. On top is the engagement announcement from the
Mabry Review
for Jackie and me. The next is from the First Baptist newsletter about my going off to the University of Virginia. Carter had circled my name and written
my
brother
next to it. He'd never shown me any of these.

It takes the rest of the afternoon to read through all of them, the light waning until the bedroom lamp is required. There are torn-out sections from Captain Marvel comic books, an article from the Tolliver paper on a local boy who made it to the NBA, and a torn-out page from
The Adventures of Huckle­berry Finn,
when Jim and Huck begin their adventure on the raft. The passage is about how they fished and talked, took swims to stay awake, and drifted down the river looking up at the night sky.

“Nothing ever happened to us at all—that night, nor the next, nor the next.”

And
nothing ever happened to us at all
. . . How I wish that were true.

I place the papers carefully back in the box and put a rubber band around it so nothing will fall out.

After loading up the rental car, I step back inside once more. I stand there, letting the years come back—playing blackjack at the kitchen table; Carter's voice carrying through the rooms as he butchered “Blueberry Hill” in the shower; watching him sleep on the sofa the first night we moved in, one arm thrown across his eyes, the tension finally eased from his face.

The crunch of tires over gravel comes from the side driveway. Jackie walks through the front door, dressed in tight jeans and a sweatshirt with
World's Greatest Mom
written across the backdrop of a rainbow. The girls and I picked it out at the Corinth Walmart two years ago as a Mother's Day present.

“You're leaving us.” It is an accusation.

She walks through the empty rooms.

“It's not a home, Jackie. Not anymore.”

She sits on the sofa, resting her head back against the wall. I watch her close her eyes for moment. “You made it a home for Carter.”

I'm not sure why she is here tonight. We each take a beer from the refrigerator. After opening hers, she takes a long drink.

“Honora got her period this morning,” she says.

Our child will not become the third generation of Cooper girls to get knocked up in high school.

“She got lucky,” I say.

“She deserves a little luck, don't you think?” She fingers an old throw pillow she must have bought years ago. “Honora will go with you. But only until the summer. She's not happy about it. She doesn't want to leave her friends here, but she under­stands, at least a little, that she could be better off in Virginia right now.”

Relief sweeps through me.

“I'm losing both of you,” Jackie says.

I sit next to her, our bodies only inches apart. “You'll bring Louisa to come see us. It's only for a few months, okay? And it's not Mars. Only Virginia.”

Jackie jerks herself off the couch, heading straight for the door. I go after her, putting my hand against the door so she can't open it.

“Jackie.” My voice is low, shaky. “Please.”

Anger turns the color of her eyes a cool blue. “You're lying. You don't plan to be in Bailey for a few months. You want to live there. Can't you see how much Louisa needs you, too? How much she loves you in spite of everything? Everything.”

The room presses in on me, making the images come—one after the other, the click-click-click of a camera. The sky wide and blue overhead. The touch of warm October sun on my face.
Swim with me, Zeke,
Carter says.

Jackie's right fist connects with my shoulder, knocking me off balance. “You son of a bitch. Don't you go off into that shut-down world of yours where nobody can go.”

She comes at me with both hands now, hitting wherever she can. “I swear, Ezekiel, if you don't talk to me, I'll kill you.” Her breath is hot against my face. She is crying.

I hold Jackie's arms against her body. I tell her to stop and I'll talk. Tell her whatever she wants. She goes still.

“Promise?”

We back away from each other, both of us breathing heavily.

“You were thinking about your brother, weren't you? You always get that look on your face when you remember him. Tell me what happened the day Carter died.”

It's a challenge thrown up between us, an old one at that.

“I've told you a hundred times before.”

“Not the whole story. Ever.”

“Yes.”

This is not true. The version I have told everyone from Jackie to my family to the police was part of what happened. But the whole truth of that day has been locked up, playing on a constant loop of memory. Ten years is a long time to keep silent. Inside it feels like a thousand.

All that's left is the telling. And when the story's out, what will remain? Could it possibly be less than what I have now?

“Zeke. You're doing it again.”

I begin before I can think. “We were supposed to be fixing the roof before the winter rains came. You'd taken the girls into Mabry to go shopping. As soon as you left, I turned to Carter and said, ‘Let's go fishing.' The sun was out. Not a cloud in the whole sky. By nine thirty, our lines were launched. I'd never seen Chickasaw Lake look prettier—the water shining so clear you could see straight through to the rocks on the red mud bottom.”

Jackie sinks to the floor against the wall, her eyes holding mine.

“We caught five bass before lunch. Took a break to eat bologna and cheese sandwiches. Almost finished a six-pack. We leaned back to rest. The sun warming our faces. That's when Carter asked me to sing our song, Mother's lullaby for us. Something in his tone felt funny.”

Moist tracks run down Jackie's face. She loved him, too. My throat begins to close up.

“I cracked open an eye and looked over at him. The scars had healed over, leaving thick lines down his forehead, right eye, and cheek. And while Carter hated the way they made him look—scary, like a monster, he said—I was thankful, in part, for them. They reminded me every day of why I was there, watching over him.”

The living room has gone dark and neither of us moves to turn on a light. The small electric heater kicks on, humming near the sofa. Its warmth doesn't reach me.

“What was the lullaby, Zeke? What did he want to hear?”

“You don't remember it?”

She shakes her head.

“When Carter asked me to sing it that day, I said no at first. But I knew he only wanted to hear it when he was feeling sad or afraid or even just tired. I figured what the hell? The beer buzz and the fishing put me in a good mood. So I sang it—‘Good night, my sons, the day is done, wait only for angels to carry your dreams.' I forgot the last line. And then it drifted back up through my memory and it was like I could see the words hanging in the air before me—‘Let sleep begin, so we may meet again.'