by Terra Little
It gave him something to do, though. Platters of food needed to be put away, and he attended to the task automatically, as his mind wandered. He stretched out sheets of aluminum foil and covered cakes and pies, sliding them in the refrigerator without really taking note of what he was doing or of how he was doing it. He swept crumbs from the floor, dumped them in the trash can and stood the broom up inside the pantry. He leaned against the counter and devoured a hunk of chocolate cake in three quick bites because, with seeing to everyone’s glasses being filled and their plates piled high, he hadn’t had time to eat a damn thing all day.
Chad was licking frosting from his thumb when the knock came. Though his eyebrows rose, he stayed where he was and let her knock a second time. Then he walked to the back door and pulled it open. He’d known she would come. The only question in his mind had been when.
She had changed out of the classy black dress she wore earlier, into jeans and a T-shirt. The rubber soles of slightly broken-in Nikes squeaked across the floor as she made her way into the kitchen. She stood in the doorway separating the kitchen from the front room, rubbing her arms briskly, as if to ward off a sudden chill.
“She’s really gone,” Pam said.
“She’s really gone.”
“I thought Nikki would’ve still been awake. How is she doing?”
Chad glanced at his watch as he locked the door. It was after eleven. “Last time I checked on her, she was asleep. You could’ve seen for yourself how she was doing if you’d come at a decent hour, Pam.”
“You want me to leave?”
She had never visited Paris’s home, not in all the years since she’d left Mercy and everything was new to her. The photos she’d seen paled in comparison to the inviting warmth of the real thing. She didn’t know what she’d do if he opened the door and told her to get out.
“I want you to turn around and look at me.”
Pam turned slowly and met his steady gaze. He stared at her for several seconds before a grin tilted one corner of his mouth. Unsteady hands rose to scrub across his face roughly. “That wasn’t so hard, was it?”
“All of this is hard. Paris being gone is hard, being back here is hard. I said I was never coming back here and she knew that. I think this must be her idea of a joke, dying on me and forcing me to step foot in this awful little town again. I can’t believe she would do this to me.”
“I don’t think she planned it,” Chad said carefully.
“I did, though. I had it all worked out. We’d die together in a boat crash or else our plane would go down over the Atlantic, on our way to a tropical island. We’d be little old ladies when we went and we’d go together. But this,” she waved her hands in the air, “this feels wrong. Like the world is off balance or something.” She caught herself pacing the floor and came up short, pushed her hands through her hair, and looked at him.
“Seeing you again is hard, Chad.”
He nodded, considering her. “I feel the same way. This isn’t quite like watching you on television or hearing you on the radio. The last time I saw you, you were getting on a bus and mooning the town as the bus rode off into the sunset.”
“You’re exaggerating,” she said, flashing him a shaky grin.
“A little bit, maybe. The concept is the same, though. You left and never looked back.”
“What did I have to look back on?” She waited for an answer, but he didn’t offer one. She shook her head knowingly and moved toward him. “There was nothing here for me except for a town full of hateful people and an orphanage I was too old to live in. I had nothing here.”
“You had Paris,” Chad challenged. “She was here. And after Nikki was born you had her too.”
“I never abandoned them. They always knew where I was and how to reach me. I didn’t have to be here to have a meaningful relationship with them, and I saw them as often as I could.”
“You had me.”
She dropped her head and turned away from him. “See, I knew this would happen if I came here. This is part of the reason I stayed away. When you and Paris got married I thought things had worked out the way they were supposed to. You had Nikki, and Paris was settled. I knew you’d be good to her and treat her the way she deserved to be treated. I couldn’t put myself in the middle of that.”
“You could’ve if you really wanted to. You could’ve been a part of our family, if you cared enough to try.”
She looked at him like he’d lost his mind. “And play what role? Come to visit and do what? Watch you be a husband to my sister and pretend that seeing you with her was normal? Bounce Nikki on my knee and be content with it? I don’t think so.”
“I needed to be a father to my child. Was that such a bad thing, Pam? Can you blame me for wanting to see Nikki grow up?” He heard his own voice and struggled with lowering it for fear of waking the very person they were discussing. “Besides that, you didn’t leave me much choice, did you? You had to know I would go to Paris after you left.”
“Don’t talk about her like she was second best.” She wiped away unexpected tears and pointed a stiff finger at him. “She was a better person than I’ll ever be, so don’t you dare stand here and talk about her like she wasn’t good enough.”
“You’re right. She was a better person than you are. I won’t argue with you on that one. She had spirit and guts and she never backed down from a challenge.” He let her stew on that in the seconds it took him to turn on the tap and fill a glass with water. He drank half of it, set the glass down with a soft thump, and gave her his eyes. “While you were flitting across the country making records and living the high-life, she was here raising a child and making a home.”
She slapped the shit out of him before she could think about it. One second stretched into the next with them staring each other down. Chad licked his lips and watched her mouth search for words with little success.
“Chad, I . . .”
He reached out, wrapped his hand around her neck, and dragged her closer to him, breathing down into her face like he was winded from running a race. “The truth hurts, doesn’t it, Pam? You can’t hop on a plane and run from it anymore, can you? Where are those dark glasses you love to wear like a fucking tragic martyr when you need them, huh?”
“I didn’t come here for this.”
“Then what did you come here for?”
“I came to check on Nikki.” She slapped his hand away and replaced it with her own, absently rubbing the spot where his palm had burned into her skin. “I thought she might want to talk.”
“At eleven o’clock at night, you thought she might want to talk.” It wasn’t a question. “It’s nice to know that at least one thing hasn’t changed, Pam. You’re still as full of shit as you ever were.” He saw the intention in her eyes and quickly put up a hand. “I wouldn’t do that if I were you. The way I feel right now, you might get slapped back. Then we’d both be cowards.”
“Why are you doing this?” Pam was exasperated. “Did you hear what I said? The only reason I came here was to see Nikki. Can’t you just go and get her for me?”
“She’s asleep.”
“Well, wake her up!”
Chad forced himself to look away from her. “She’s not a toy, Pam. You can’t just pick her up and put her down when the mood strikes you. So no, I will not go and wake her up simply because you want to talk. Her mother is dead. We buried her today, in case you forgot. I think letting her sleep is the best thing we can do for her right now.”
“In case I forgot . . .” Pam stared at Chad with her mouth hanging open in disbelief. “What the hell does that mean? How could I forget?” Angry now, she pushed against his chest and sent him stumbling backward. He barely managed to regain his balance and narrowly missed ramming into the counter behind him.
“Pam . . .”
“You bastard,” she hissed through clenched teeth. Then she went wild on him.
Chad tracked the course of her flying hands with his own and finally caught them just as
they came toward his face. He brought them to his chest and held them there, waiting for her to calm down so he could speak. By the time she was done struggling against his hold, she was breathing hard and tiny bubbles of perspiration sat on the bridge of her nose. He watched them catch the light and then he caught her eyes.
“You said you loved me. You said we were best friends and that what we had together was special. We talked about getting married and having children and leaving here together. And then you got on that bus and left me here.” He squeezed her hands and made her look at him. “Eighteen years you stayed gone. What the fuck was I supposed to do?”
“Marrying my sister was the best idea you could come up with?”
“She had my child.”
“She was my best friend.”
“Mine, too,” he said softly. “She filled the hole you left behind. Having her was the next best thing to having you.”
“That’s sick.”
He released her hands when she tugged and then spread his arms wide in surrender when she fisted them in the collar of his shirt. “You want to fight me, go ahead. I’m only telling you what you came here to hear, and you know it. You want me to tell you that all these years I still thought of you? Fine, I will. You want me to tell you that sometimes I looked at Paris and wished she was you, looked at Nikki and wished that it was the two of us raising her? Then that’s what I’m saying. I’m telling you right here and right now that you damn near killed me when you got on that bus. But hell, you knew that already, because I begged you not to go. And you went anyway.” He took both of her hands and held them between his, used them to nudge her back and away from him. “Go ahead and admit it, Pam. Your ego needed to hear that. You got what you came for, and now you can do what you do best, which is run. Only this time have the decency to say a proper goodbye to Nikki, will you? You owe her at least that much.”
“Are you leaving already, Aunt Pam?”
Chad’s head rocked back on his neck and his entire body stiffened as the sound of Nikki’s voice cut through the tension in the kitchen. He wondered how long she’d been standing there and how much she’d heard in the process. He massaged the bridge of his nose with stiff fingers, waiting for the explosion he expected to come.
Pam took a moment to rearrange her expression before she looked at Nikki, and when she did, there was none of the hurt and confusion from minutes ago. Her lips trembled into a gentle smile. “I thought you were asleep,” she said.
“I was and then I heard you guys down here.” Nikki looked from Pam to Chad curiously. She could’ve sworn they were arguing and she wondered what they could possibly have to argue about at a time like this. “Is everything all right?”
“Everything’s fine,” Chad put in evenly. “How are you doing? Do you need anything?”
“Just my mom, but I can’t have that, so I guess not.” She was silent for a moment. And then, “Are you leaving, too, Aunt Pam?”
“Not just yet, but you know I have to eventually, Nikki.”
“I don’t want you to go yet.”
“Then I won’t.” Pam reached out and gently smoothed the creases from Nikki’s forehead.
“Yet,” Chad snapped. Two pairs of eyes trained on him, one irritated and the other surprised, but he ignored the pull of them in favor of concentrating on the simple task of swallowing the rest of his water without choking. “I’m going to bed,” he said and left them standing in the kitchen.
FOUR
Was he angry? Hell yes he was angry, and why shouldn’t he be? Time had somehow gotten away from him and in the space of thirty minutes, he lost all the ground he’d gained in eighteen years. In stepped Pam and out went his self-control.
Since he was being honest with himself, Chad admitted that his anger had been simmering just below the surface all day. Pam had taken her time about coming home, and when she finally did, she chose to hide out like a thief instead of helping him and Nikki with everything that needed to be done. She acted like she was attending the funeral of a distant associate rather than that of her only sister. And then there was Nikki, falling all over Pam and pleading with her to stay, like Pam was visiting royalty. Like she couldn’t see that Pam was itching to be on the next flight, leaving Mercy in the dust again.
It galled Chad that Pam acted like she was the only one grieving over Paris’s death. Hell, the whole town was in shock. Nikki had been prescribed pills to help her sleep, and he was having to dole them out one by one on a nightly basis for fear she’d do something stupid like overdose. Meanwhile, he was desperately searching for ways to reconcile himself with his own sorrow and guilt.
For him it wasn’t a question of worrying about who would take care of him and see to his needs. His marriage was never like that, and he was never that kind of husband. Paris’s death didn’t leave him scrambling to learn how to iron or how to boil water. They had lived together for fifteen years and basically taken care of themselves the entire time. Neither of them had been partial to leaning on each other excessively, so they had each simply stood. He thought what he and Paris had shared was a little like having a roommate. A kind and generous roommate, but a roommate nonetheless.
Nikki was already two years old when Chad finally worked up the nerve to ask Paris to marry him. He was going into his junior year at Georgia State University and she her freshman year the day he glanced up from the campus newspaper he was perusing and saw her taking long strides toward the Student Affairs Center. It never occurred to him to notice the way she walked or the anxious expression on her face. Seeing her had stopped his heart and then started it to pounding in anticipation. As he ran to meet her, he called out to her and then tried to keep his smile in place when she turned and he saw that she wasn’t Pam, but Paris. For a minute, he was sure that Pam had changed her mind and decided against leaving Georgia after all. But she was gone and Paris was there.
Paris was studying social work and he was studying education, so they found themselves in a few of the same elective courses. They studied for exams together and fell into the habit of hanging out before and after classes, just as they’d done years ago as part of a slightly larger group. Paris was easy to talk to and funny in her own way. Just when you thought her mind was off in space somewhere, she’d interject a witty comment with such bull’s-eye accuracy you knew she had only been pretending to be distracted. He began to look forward to talking with her, and somewhere along the way, the evenings they spent together began to take shape and resemble dates.
He thought it began when, after six months or so, Paris brought him home with her to her apartment to retrieve a book she’d forgotten. She lived off campus in a spacious studio apartment, which occupied the entire third floor of a three-story house on the south side of the city. Nikki was six months old then, chubby and dimpled everywhere, with a happy disposition that had instantly sucked him into her tiny universe. If he had occasionally caught himself staring into eyes that he found eerily familiar and kissing little lips that curved just as his mother’s did when she was being coy, he never dwelled on it. He told himself that he was drawn to the child by the sheer force of his genuine affection for children.
Chad never pressed Paris for the details of Nikki’s birth, thinking that it wasn’t his place to ask, but naturally he was curious about the child’s father. He wondered how she managed to support herself and an infant on the stipend she received as part of her scholarship from the university. Her apartment was comfortably furnished, and she was never without money the way most struggling college students were. He was curious to know how she made ends meet, but he never pried.
He was given his first peek into Paris’s private life when she revealed to him that Pam helped her with household expenses. That in itself didn’t strike Chad as odd, since he assumed that though Pam had moved away, they were still as close as they’d ever been. At the time, Pam was just starting to make a name for herself in the music industry. He’d caught a few of her songs on the radio, and Paris had mentioned tha
t Pam also supplemented her income by singing commercial jingles. Until then he hadn’t realized that it was Pam’s voice he was hearing in his head as he picked one can of soup or box of cereal over another, though he shouldn’t have been surprised to find that he was still under her spell.
Chad didn’t really question the fact that Paris had given birth to a child and was no longer with the man who’d made her pregnant. But, he did question the arguments he sometimes overheard between Paris and Pam during their frequent phone calls back and forth. Paris would leave the room to take a call and come back pretending she hadn’t been screaming and crying, just minutes before. Yet his own feelings where Pam was concerned were ambivalent enough that he was content to let Paris keep her secrets and to mind his own business. He pretended he hadn’t heard anything, reminded Paris what page they’d left off on, and kept studying.
Paris was never much of a drinker, though, and she tended to ramble after she drank more than two glasses of anything stronger than beer. The night Chad finally learned the truth, she was well and truly drunk. It was Nikki’s second birthday and Paris had given her a birthday party and invited several of the single parents she knew from school. The party was a success, but Paris was a wreck. No sooner had she seen the last of her guests out of the apartment than she was gulping wine like it was water and crying into her glass. He did what he could to comfort her, but theirs wasn’t an intimate relationship. He had never even kissed her or held her hand in a romantic way, so he patted her back awkwardly and said all the things men usually said to crying women when they wanted them to stop.
She was drunk and it was difficult to follow everything she said, but he got the gist of it fairly quickly. She was angry with Pam because she hadn’t come to Nikki’s birthday party. She said Pam was letting Nikki grow up without taking the time to witness any of the significant events in the child’s life. They had talked about things like this, important things, and made a pact. Pam had promised she would be a part of everything, not just send money and silly gifts. Paris told him the money Pam sent was more than enough and that she didn’t mind doing anything she did, really she didn’t, but it was so unfair to Nikki. Then she had apologized to Chad for losing control of herself and offered him something to drink.
