Guarded Passion

by Bonnie Dee

  A few hours and potty and snack breaks down the road, we reached Tylerville, the small town where I’d lived most of my childhood. The downtown looked smaller than I remembered, which was saying something, since Sawville was no metropolis. My grandmother’s street looked exactly the same, and her yard was as neat and tidy as ever.

  As I pulled over to the curb and got out, it occurred to me she might not be home, or might not even live there anymore. I felt stupid for coming without calling first. But if I’d called, she might’ve cut me off. So much better to face her rejection in person.

  Frogs leaped in my stomach as I unfastened Travis from his seat and took him into my arms. He was my shield, the darling face Grandma wouldn’t be able to say no to. Even she couldn’t be that much of a hard-ass. He was her only great-grandchild.

  I pushed my heart back down to my stomach as I walked up the path to the house I used to dread coming home to. No one who didn’t live under my grandmother’s regime would understand that dread. The place seemed nice. An abandoned child like me should’ve been glad to land in such a sweet setup. But behind her placid expression and prayer book, my grandma was a bitch on wheels. She had nothing but criticism for every person, every situation, every world news event. Positive words weren’t in her vocabulary. So why was I surprised when Grandma opened the door and stared at me and Travis as if we were a flaming bag of poo on her front step?

  “Hi, Gran. How are you?” I managed a smile, though it practically broke my mouth to curve up the corners.

  “What are you doing here?” She squinted at me almost as if she didn’t recognize me. Maybe she’d developed dementia.

  “It’s Rianna. I came to see you and to introduce you to my son, Travis.”

  She clicked her tongue in disgust. “I know who you are. I’m not interested in seeing your bastard child. I already got stuck raising one of them.”

  “I’m Rianna, Grandma, not your daughter Mary. I thought you might have changed your mind. Travis is your great-grandson. Don’t you want to meet him?”

  Travis chose that moment to start to wriggle in my arms, trying to get down. “Gotta go potty. Now!”

  “Please, Gran, can he at least use your bathroom? Can’t we come in for a few minutes? We drove a long way.”

  Oh God, how could I have forgotten the sound of her clicking tongue? She tsked again but opened the door wider. “All right. But don’t think you can wheedle your way into staying. I’m not running a boardinghouse here.”

  “Not here to stay. Only to visit,” I said curtly as I put Travis’s kicking feet on the floor, grabbed his hand, and rushed him to the bathroom.

  Every detail of the little powder room off the foyer was exactly as it had been five or even twenty-five years ago, from the faux marble sink to the gilt-framed mirror to the pink toilet I sat Travis on. He was too young to pee standing yet, but I supposed I’d have to teach him to shift position soon. He was changing from my baby to a little boy—a boy without a father to model himself after.

  Well, plenty of single moms did just fine, and I would too. I wasn’t like my mother, and that was a success in itself.

  After I’d washed Travis’s hands, leaving splatters of water all over the sink, which I didn’t bother to wipe down, I led him back to the front hall, where Gran waited with arms folded.

  “This is the child.” She stared at Travis, and he gazed back at her with round eyes. “Did you marry the father?”

  “No. You were right to tell me to steer clear of him. I’ll admit that.” I clung to Travis’s pudgy baby hand, though he wanted to let go. I needed to cling to him.

  “You never would listen, and now, here you are, needing my help, just as I expected.”

  My temper flared, but I managed not to let it color my tone. “I didn’t come for anything except to see you again. I’ve been wondering how you’re doing. And…” This part was really hard to say. “I wanted to thank you for all you did for me, taking care of me after Mom left.”

  Apparently even Gran couldn’t find anything negative to say to my olive branch. “I suppose we got on all right,” she finally said grudgingly as she adjusted her gold-framed glasses. “No thanks to your whore of a mother.”

  “May she rest in peace.” I gave a pointed reminder that her daughter was dead.

  Now that I had a child myself, I couldn’t begin to imagine being so callous. No matter what Travis might do in the future, even if he disappointed me in the worst way possible, killed someone even, I could never imagine being so chillingly cold. He was a living, breathing little piece of me, and I loved him wholeheartedly. But I guess my grandmother lacked some basic human emotions. Maybe she’d always been that way, or maybe she’d grown up in an even worse home than me. I knew next to nothing about my great-grandparents.

  I waited for her to invite us beyond the foyer, but Gran continued to stand there as the silence between us grew more awkward. She didn’t ask me a thing about what I’d been doing over the past few years. She didn’t even waste her breath on telling me how whorish I was.

  I bent to get a toy for Travis from the bag and a cookie to keep him quiet. He plunked down on the carpet and began to play. I straightened to face Gran again.

  “How has your health been?” I asked.

  “Fine.”

  “How are the ladies at the church?” I cast around in my mind for the names of her few friends. “Gladys and Rose.”

  “Rose died. Gladys moved to Tuscaloosa to live with her children.”

  “I’m sorry. You were friends a long time. You must miss them.”

  “Not really. Rose chattered all the time, and Gladys was a hypocrite.”

  All righty, then. This visit was going just great.

  “I’m living near Sawville now. I have a decent job.” Or I did for a while. “Travis is nearly four. I’ll enroll him in preschool soon.”

  She glanced at Travis fitting shapes into the holes in a box. “Schooling starts too early these days, in my opinion. There are more practical lessons a child can learn staying at home with its parents.” She flicked a hard look at me. “Two parents.”

  “You certainly taught me how to keep a house immaculately clean,” I said with a faint smile. “I suppose your mother taught you.”

  “Cleanliness is next to godliness. That’s what my mother taught me.” Gran’s eyes blazed as if I’d personally attacked her in some way. Maybe she thought I was making fun of her. And maybe I was a little.

  “My mother was a saint,” she continued.

  Was she trying to convince me or herself? Her voice didn’t sound as if she admired the woman. More like a parrot repeating words that meant nothing.

  “I’m sure she was.”

  “I did everything she told me to. I was a good daughter.” Her lips nearly disappeared as she pressed them into a straight line. “But times change. Girls have no morals these days. It’s not my fault I couldn’t control Mary. Or you.” The hard planes and angles of her face sharpened with her grimace. “Possessed by the devil, this entire generation, what with the drug use and fornicating and homosexuality and turning away from God’s teachings. We’re surely living in the end times.”

  My cue to leave. Absolutely nothing had changed here. I bit my lip. “It must feel that way to you. It must seem like a very different world from the one you grew up in.”

  Go me! I’d changed. I could hold my temper now and cut the mean old woman some slack.

  “I’m glad I came to see you, Gran, but I guess I should start back. It’s a long drive.”

  She frowned. “You’ve only been here a few minutes. At least give the boy some lunch.”

  “Are you asking us to stay for a while?” I could hardly have been more shocked if she threw her arms around me and gave me a hug.

  “I can heat some soup. The child needs vegetables. He can’t survive on sweets.” She glared at the cookie in his hand.

  “Your homemade vegetable soup? I’ve really missed that.”

  “You could
make it yourself. Don’t you remember the recipe?” She led the way toward the kitchen.

  I did remember. I’d made the soup often over the years. “No,” I said. “Could you write it down for me?”

  “You should be able to memorize it. It’s not that difficult.”

  “Grandma, remember that pinafore you sewed for me when I was little?” I changed the subject. The 1950s-style pinafore I wouldn’t have been caught dead wearing to school even at age ten. I used to hide it in my backpack and put it on again just before I got home. “Whatever happened to that? You did a beautiful job sewing that.”

  “I sent it to Goodwill, along with all the other junk you left behind.”

  “Oh. That’s nice. Good to know some other little girl could make use of it.” Whatever she said, I’d turn it around and paint it with sunshine. I might literally kill her with sweetness and the burning intensity of my smile.

  “Let me help you.” I reached into the cupboard to get down the bowls, then took the soup from the fridge and put it in a pan to heat. No newfangled microwave in Gran’s kitchen.

  There was no booster seat for Travis to sit in, and I stood for a moment, trying to figure out how to get him up to the table.

  Gran clicked her tongue in impatience. “Get a stack of phone books from that cupboard over there. They’ll work just fine.”

  “Smart of you to think of that. Thanks.” I beamed at her until my mouth was tired and continued smiling all the way through a very long lunch, until she finally asked if I was high on something.

  “High on life, Gran,” I teased. “Just so darn happy to be here with you.”

  I felt like a scientist who’d discovered a cure—or at least a remedy to mask the symptoms if not heal the disease. The chance of my grandmother and I ever finding common ground was impossible, but I’d learned how to deal with her at last. And the best part? At the end of this self-imposed torture, I could drive away.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Jonah

  How do you tell someone you’ve been lying to him basically his entire life? Micah and I weren’t eager to start that conversation with J.D., so we spent some time sitting in my living room making small talk about sports and local people. I caught them up on what little gossip I’d bothered to learn about Sawville, then distracted my brothers by getting them talking about their girlfriends and the improvements to the bar. After that, it was easy to sit back and just listen.

  J.D. hadn’t sounded so happy since he was a kid, and maybe not even then. The few times I’d seen him after his tour, he’d been so tense and miserable, it oozed out of him. I didn’t know what to say to help him so—as usual—I hadn’t said much of anything.

  Now he relaxed in an easy chair, legs sprawled in front of him, smiling and energized, full of plans for the future. It was pretty obvious Leah had caused his change. She was the heart that pumped new blood through him. I understood that feeling now. It was the way Rianna affected me when we were together.

  Meanwhile, Micah was pretty much like normal, cracking jokes and trying to get a rise out of me while he poked at the fire in the hearth to make sparks. But underneath his teasing, he seemed calmer, more settled somehow, as if he’d finally let go of whatever made him so impatient and restless. He’d apparently found his anchor in Gina, the girl with the mouth and attitude to match his.

  Why not me? Couldn’t I have someone like that too? But I didn’t want to think about Rianna right then. There was too much on my plate to deal with.

  “What are we going to do about Dad?” I interrupted our discussion of the past baseball season. “He’ll be here soon, if he bothers to show. We need to decide where we stand.”

  “Can’t we play it by ear? See what he has to say first?” J.D. asked.

  “I know what he has to say. He needs help. Money,” I said bluntly. “If we give it to him, he’s just going to drink it away.”

  “How bad off is he? I suppose we can’t let the man die homeless in an alley, no matter what he’s done.” Micah gave the fire a vicious prod.

  J.D. sat straight and leaned forward, arms resting on his knees. “I know you guys hate him. But honestly, I barely remember Dad. I’m willing to give the benefit of the doubt that he may have changed. He’s older now and probably had plenty of time for regrets.”

  Micah snorted. “He had a lot to regret, all right.”

  “Was he really that terrible? I mean, other than ditching us, which sucked.” J.D. frowned. “You guys never talked much about him, not even when we were kids. Yeah, I remember he had a hard backhand now and then, but—”

  “It was more than just an occasional hit,” Micah said as he hung up the poker. “But he mostly took it out on Jonah, so it’s no surprise you don’t remember. We shielded you from a lot of things.”

  Micah shot me a look. This was our opening into finally telling our kid brother some harsh truths about our family. Which one of us was going to pull the pin and throw that grenade?

  J.D. studied me with eyes enough like mine he could’ve been my mirror image. “I thought you got into fights a lot, that you guys got into it with other kids at school or…”

  He trailed off, and his frown deepened as he looked back over the years, trying to piece together a story he’d only had fragments of.

  “So it was Dad gave you the black eye and busted your nose that one time.” He shot a look at Micah. “And I remember you hauling me outside, telling me we were going hiking even when I didn’t want to.”

  Micah poured himself a drink at the sideboard, then dropped onto the couch facing J.D. “There’s other stuff. Worse stuff we didn’t tell you about because…well, hell, you were so little, and what was the point?” The muscles in his throat worked as he swallowed. “Stuff about Mom and how she died.”

  J.D.’s eyes widened. “Jesus! You’re not saying Dad had something to do with that?”

  “No. Not that bad,” I finally chimed in. “Although I’m sure living with his drunkenness and his moods didn’t help her problems any. The thing is—”

  “She killed herself,” Micah blurted. “Overdosed, and not by accident. I walked in one day, and there she was, just lying there.”

  “She suffered from depression for years,” I added. “She had her good spells and her bad ones. I guess she just got so low she couldn’t take it anymore.”

  “You told me it was a heart attack.” J.D. sounded dazed. “I never even thought… How could I not have known that about my own mother?”

  “Because there wasn’t any need for you to know,” I said. “You were fucking seven years old and upset enough about losing her. Why tell you she chose to leave you?”

  Micah shot me a look. For a moment, I thought he might inject something about suicidal people being so wrapped up in their own pain they couldn’t spare a thought for the damage they left in their wake. But he only nodded and took a sip of his drink.

  “We should’ve told you when you were older,” Micah added. “But by then…well, hell, the three of us were fighting a lot. Then you joined the army and left, so it just never came out.”

  J.D. blinked and ran a hand over his forehead. He looked as shocked as I must have when Dad turned up alive on my doorstep. It was a helluva thing to learn.

  “You should’ve told me. Christ!” He leaned forward, arms on his knees, and stared at the carpet. Even Micah knew better than to talk for a change. We both sat quiet and waited for him to process.

  At last, J.D. looked up at Micah. “You’re the one who found her like that.” He sucked a breath through his teeth. “That must have been awful.”

  Micah stared at his own hands restlessly turning the glass round and round. “It wasn’t pretty.”

  “I’m sorry, Micah.” Words I’d repressed years too long tumbled out. “I just wanted to get things cleaned up before J.D. got home and, afterwards, never talk about it again. I didn’t really help you deal with it.”

  He shook his head. “Naw. I get it. We all dealt with the shock our own wa
y, even Dad. Probably had a bit to do with his taking off, maybe more than hooking up with that woman. Which brings us back to the subject—what the hell are we going to do about the old man?”

  I wanted to say Let him rot, but I already knew—had known for days, really—I couldn’t do that. As a boy, I’d looked after my brothers. Now, I was going to have to tend to my dying father. Seemed to be my lot in life to be a caretaker.

  The three of us sat in silence for a few moments, the only sound the crackle and snap of the burning log in the fireplace, then J.D. said, “However bad the man is, he’s still our father. It’s our duty to look after him now that he’s old.”

  “He’s not that old,” Micah mumbled. “Not even sixty.”

  “But he’s sick.” J.D. looked at me. “Right?”

  I shrugged. “He looked like he was falling apart. Whether it’s from a disease or from living only on booze, I don’t know.”

  “Either way, we have to intervene.” J.D. bolted up as if ready to take action. But there was nothing to do, so he walked over to take his turn poking at the fire. “He may not have given us a good example to follow, but we know what’s right. You take care of family.”

  Micah raised his glass of whiskey and sneered. “Family.”

  I nodded and sighed. “Family.”

  *

  Nearly an hour later, just as we were getting ready to go and look for Dad at the bar or at Huckaby’s shack, a rusty old pickup clattered up my driveway and wheezed to a stop. Our father jumped out—no, climbed carefully out as if his bones were brittle—and headed toward the house, while his buddy Clyde drove away.

  “Jesus Christ,” Micah murmured as he came up behind me and stared out the door.

  The dead man walking looked about as sure-footed as a scarecrow. I feared he’d slip on the slick drive, fall, and break into pieces, so I went to help him get into the house.