Your Killin' Heart

by Peggy O'Neal Peden

  I wanted to say more. I wanted to tell him I cared about him, that I wanted to be part of his life, even the scary parts, that he didn’t have to be able to solve every problem, handle everything. But I didn’t. It was probably way too late for that. The silence stretched. The moment passed. I guess I was afraid that if I said too much he’d disappear, and I really didn’t want him to disappear right then. But I did want to know more about what happened to Hazel.

  Chapter Four

  On a day like today, if I was thirteen,

  I’d be battin’ cleanup, scorin’ runs for my team.

  —Jake Miller, “I Just Want to Be Here with You”

  A few days later I was delivering some cruise documents on West End near The Mockingbird Gallery. On an impulse I stopped in to see Doug’s brother. A half-dozen birds, mostly starlings rather than the signature state bird, chattered around the birdhouse mounted on a post by the walk. It was elaborate, a small model of an antebellum mansion, with thistle and sunflower seeds scattered around the miniature porch. Droppings on the landscaping pebbles below detracted from the charming effect.

  Kenneth was talking with a client in the front room. I waved, not wanting to interrupt him, and he nodded vaguely. As he continued with the client, I wandered around the place. The hot artists were displayed prominently; some of my favorites were in the smaller side rooms off the main display area.

  The Mockingbird Gallery is in an old house, converted in the sixties when the street began to go commercial. The rooms are large and have twelve-foot ceilings. There’s space to see the works well, room to back away and view from different angles.

  Kenneth had taken out a few walls, added quality, well-balanced lighting, and painted everything in soft, pale neutrals. When the walls were bare, it was a bland, personality-less place, but Kenneth had excellent taste and an uncanny sense of the next big trend. The works came and went like traveling exhibitions. The gallery was a marvelous, magical place to be. I couldn’t afford most of the artists Kenneth represented, but I had been coming here long before I met Doug, before I knew there was any connection, and I always left refreshed.

  I was examining a new sculpture by one of my favorite artists when I heard the bell on the door as the client left. The artist’s work was in bronze and, like her other figures, about eighteen to twenty-four inches high. There is a strength and power about this artist’s work that I am always drawn to, her sculptures always of a woman caught in an active, dynamic pose. This one was of a woman climbing a rope, her dress flowing about her, the airy feel of fabric somehow caught in bronze, a dramatic contrast to the tension of the muscles in her arms and legs. At least, I thought she was climbing. She could have been hanging on at the end of her rope. A minute later Kenneth found me. “Nice, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, it’s beautiful. Kenneth, I stopped by to look at those paintings Doug and I picked up at Hazel Miller’s that day. Is that okay?”

  “Of course.” He looked surprised and quickly turned back to the sculpture. “I think her work is getting more complex as she matures.”

  Kenneth understood what made art marketable, the indescribable difference between what would sell and what would not. He also understood, in a way that has nothing to do with style or school or period, the alchemy that turned paint and clay and metal into art. He touched the sculpture tenderly.

  “You’re right. I love her work,” I said.

  “Really? It’s yours.”

  I gasped.

  “I’ve put you through so much grief with this Hazel Miller business. Let this be my apology.”

  “Kenneth, I couldn’t. It’s m-much too expensive.” I was stuttering now.

  “Sure, you can. Wait here. I’ll get a box and some packing stuff.”

  I stood there, my mouth hanging open. This was so out of character for Kenneth Elliott. Doug might have some intimacy problems, but he is good and truly generous. He lives much more modestly than he could, because he gives so much away, although not many people know that unless they’re directly involved with one of the causes he donates to. Kenneth, on the other hand, is selfish and rarely gives anything away unless there’s an angle in it for him, and never without getting public credit for it. Kenneth Elliott, who in all the years I had known him, had never offered me so much as a business card, much less a piece of art, was giving me a five-thousand-dollar sculpture by one of the most popular, read marketable, artists in his gallery. What was wrong with this picture?

  By the time Kenneth had returned with a sturdy box and packing peanuts, I had remembered what prompted me to stop by.

  “Kenneth, if you’ll point me toward those paintings, I’ll find them. Are they on display?”

  “Why?” His tone was sharp at first, then smooth and friendly again. “I’m not sure where they are, actually. Some of them are probably out. Why?” he asked again.

  “No particular reason. I didn’t pay that much attention to them the day we went to pick them up. It didn’t seem that important. I was too busy taking in the wax statue of Jake and all the memorabilia.”

  “We’ll look around when I get this done.” He continued packing Styrofoam peanuts around the sculpture. “Have you seen the new Wingo pieces?”

  “No, which room are they in?”

  “The front one. You must have passed them. I was probably blocking them when you came in. We picked them up just this morning, and I’ve already sold two and have two clients in a bidding war for another. You’ll have to take a look before they go. It’s a real departure for her, I think. Very bold. Tell me what you think.”

  I wandered back to the front room. Kenneth was right. It was a new direction for the Nashville artist. Dramatic, vivid, and dominating, free but somehow very disciplined. I liked them. I liked them a lot. I looked around a bit then went back to the room where Kenneth was taping up the box. He glanced up. “What do you think?”

  “You’re right. It’s a new direction. A couple of them are so large, though. Not everyone would have a place that would be right for them.”

  “True, but in the right space…” He trailed off. “There.” He taped the flaps. “All set.” He looked up and smiled. “You’ll find the right space for this, I’m sure.”

  I smiled. I wasn’t quite sure what to say to this new Kenneth.

  “I’ll carry this to your car, but can you get the door for me?”

  “Sure.” I went ahead of him out the door, holding it as he negotiated the opening and the steps with the box. Then I ran ahead to the Spider and opened the door.

  Kenneth braced the box in the passenger seat so it wouldn’t shift and shut the door. “You shouldn’t have any trouble. But do be a little careful about sudden stops.”

  “I will. Of course. And thank you again.”

  “My pleasure. See you soon. We’ll have to get you and Doug to come over for dinner. Carey and I were talking about that just the other day. Let’s do it.”

  “Sure. I’d love to.”

  As I pulled away, I tried to understand Kenneth’s behavior. Maybe his investment in the sculpture was a lot less than the asking price. Maybe he really did feel guilty about all the trouble he had caused. I couldn’t wait to tell Doug.

  The early twilight of late fall had deepened to full darkness while I was in the gallery, and I drove home carefully in the old 1966 Alfa Romeo Spider, bright red, that my dad bought used when I was a sophomore in college. He believed that when something was engineered well and built well it would last forever, if you took decent care of it. When I go home, Dad always changes the Spider’s oil and drives it around the block to listen to the engine. I’ve taken it to the same mechanic here in Nashville for years, and when Dad’s in town, he’ll take the car over for service but mostly so he can talk with the guy. As the years go by, the Spider and I get more and more stares in traffic, and it gets harder and harder to find parts, but she hums contentedly and has never let me down. People always ask me if the maintenance isn’t expensive, but my standard reply is “not
as expensive as a car payment.” The Spider also has one thing that anything built in the last couple of decades lacks: personality.

  I was halfway home before I realized that I had forgotten to look at the paintings.

  * * *

  I called Doug later and told him about my visit to the gallery. “He gave you what?” Doug was astonished.

  “I know. I don’t get it. But I like it. You think he didn’t mean it? You think I should give it back?”

  “He gave it to you? Because you admired it?”

  “As an apology, he said. For all the trouble he caused.”

  “That doesn’t sound like my brother. Kenneth doesn’t care what kind of trouble he causes anybody. Speaking of trouble, have you heard from the police any more?”

  “No. You?”

  “No,” he said. “I guess they’ve written us off. With any luck, anyway. He just gave it to you?”

  “Okay, it doesn’t make sense. But he gave me the sculpture. I didn’t steal it.” I was getting defensive. “He packed it and carried it out to my car himself.”

  “He could have been an artist himself, you know.”

  “Kenneth?”

  “He was really good. Studied in New York and Paris. He was good, but he wasn’t … wasn’t great. He wouldn’t have changed art, like Van Gogh or Picasso.” Doug paused. “And he wouldn’t have made the kind of money he has. He said once that painting, just doing it, wasn’t enough for him. Said he wasn’t going to starve painting decorating accessories for rich housewives with no taste. So he became a dealer and sells other people’s work. He hasn’t touched a brush in years.”

  “I didn’t know. That he’d been an artist, I mean.”

  “I think sometimes he’d have become a different person if he’d stayed with it. Poorer, maybe, but I think I’d have liked him better. What were you doing at the gallery anyway?”

  “I was passing by. I stopped in because I wanted to look at those paintings, the ones we picked up that day at Hazel Miller’s.”

  “Why?”

  “That’s what Kenneth said. No reason, really. I was driving by and thought I’d stop. I didn’t pay much attention to them the day we picked them up. After all the waiting, we were packing them up and getting out pretty fast. And the guy in the truck was yelling. With all that’s happened, I just wanted to look at them.”

  “Did you get any revelations from them?”

  “No, I didn’t get to see them. At first, Kenneth was helping a client, then he started packing up the sculpture. Then I forgot.”

  “You forgot? Just be sure you get a bill of sale and a statement of provenance on the sculpture.”

  “You don’t think he’d take it back, do you?”

  “He took back Hazel’s, didn’t he?”

  * * *

  I didn’t hear from Doug for several days, nor did I try to contact him. I was busy at work, planning a group sales meeting for an appliance-manufacturing company. Two hundred fifty sales reps, some with wives, husbands, or significant others, would converge in San Francisco in a month. I had been planning it for a year, but this was crunch time. Schedules had to be finalized, room reservations reconfirmed, air tickets issued, receptions and spouse trips planned, audiovisual equipment reserved. No telling how much of it would have to be changed at least once before the meeting. Believe it or not, I enjoy groups like this. I’m a problem-solver, and there’s a puzzle-like quality to arranging group travel. I get the feeling of putting the last piece in the right place when I wrap one up, but at this stage it can be all-consuming.

  Who am I kidding? I put the last piece into place, and then I get a call. Somebody forgot that his son is graduating on the day they’re scheduled to go out. Can he go out a day later than the rest of the group? And if the airline allows that, can this other guy come back a day early? And somebody else needs to check some outsize or weirdly shaped but essential piece of equipment. And can we get three rooms at the group rate for people who are flying on frequent-flier miles? They’re not on the airline list, and somebody forgot to mention them. And can everybody sit in an aisle seat at the front? I don’t really breathe until three days after they get back. The first day back, they’re tired. It’s not until the second or third day that I get the calls about the problems. And by then it’s usually too late to do anything that will satisfy the client, too late for a refund, for sure. They just need to complain. Job security, I remind myself.

  By the weekend, I was ready to unwind, so I called Stick to see where he was playing.

  “I’m at the Bluebird tomorrow night. Come.”

  “It’s probably sold out.” The Bluebird Cafe is a small venue. For a name act, you have to call early in the week for reservations.

  “Probably, but I can get you in.”

  “Thanks.” There was gratitude in my voice until Stick continued.

  “You can carry my equipment.”

  “Thanks a lot.”

  He ignored my sarcasm. “You’re welcome. Meet me there at six. I’m playing both sets.”

  * * *

  I spent Friday night being self-indulgent. I picked out two DVDs: Philadelphia Story and High Society, two of my favorites. I had been wanting to watch them back-to-back, sort of a double-feature, festival kind of thing. Katharine Hepburn, Jimmy Stewart, and Cary Grant brought different qualities to the story than Grace Kelly, Frank Sinatra, and Bing Crosby, but I like both treatments. Who could choose between Bing Crosby singing “True Love” and Katharine Hepburn talking about the yacht she and Cary Grant had spent their honeymoon on? “My, she was yar.”

  I had some leftover salmon in my refrigerator from dinner with MaryNell at J. Alexander’s a few days before, so I cooked a salmon pasta dish, a garlic-and-onion cream sauce over penne, then took a long, hot bubble bath in my antique tub. I had found the tub one Saturday when I got lost in Wilson County, east of Nashville, and spotted it in a front yard with zinnias blooming in it. I stopped to ask for directions from the elderly lady pulling weeds in a wraparound apron just like one I remember my grandmother wearing. She told me how to get back to Lebanon Road and, when I asked, offered to take twenty dollars for the tub. I gave her twenty-five, felt guilty at that, and arranged to pick it up the next week. The inside just needed a good cleaning; the outside took two coats of red paint. It looked great against the white tile in the bathroom, and it fit me perfectly. I could lean back and just reach the water handles with my toes to add a little more hot water if needed. And think.

  Think about Jake living out his songs. Think about a lonely old woman who had gone from the focus of the country-music galaxy to an expensive, solitary bedroom in a house she shared with a couple of employees. I wondered how often the angry kid in the driveway who was so insistent on his rights visited.

  After the soak, I watched the movies and gave myself a pedicure. Red, to match the tub. There is something to be said for a Friday night alone.

  * * *

  I spent most of Saturday raking leaves. The maples were dropping red and gold all over my yard. The leaves were beautiful, drifting across the grass, and they made cool swishing and crunching sounds when I walked through them. I knew, though, from experience, that if I left them there, bright and beautiful and crunchy, sooner or later we’d have a long, hard rain, and they would turn into a sodden, sticky brown mess. They’d be ugly and harder to rake. The other problem was that if I left them much longer, Mr. Morgan would rake them for me. Mr. Morgan’s in his eighties, and each year it becomes harder for me to handle the guilt when I come home to find he’s done something for me that I’ve put off. I saw him start in on his yard that morning, so I pulled on jeans and a sweatshirt and headed out to do my part.

  “How’re you doing, Mr. Morgan?”

  He jumped slightly and turned. He didn’t hear well and hadn’t heard me crunching up toward him.

  “Oh, hey there. I didn’t see you. I guess I’m doin’ all right for the shape I’m in. I thought I’d get a start on these leaves. We’ll pro
bably get some rain this week.”

  I nodded. “It’s a gorgeous day today, though.”

  We raked in comfortable silence, gathering the leaves onto one of Mrs. Morgan’s sheets on the grass. Then we’d each take a couple of corners and pull it to the back, behind our houses, and dump the leaves off the bluff. We watched them fall the first time or two, drifting in the sun, catching in the weeds and brush clinging to the limestone cliff along the way.

  “Won’t be long till we get some really cold weather now,” he said, leaning on his rake. “Mildred thinks we ought to move to one of those new retirement places.”

  “Oh, Mr. Morgan…” I was genuinely distressed. I didn’t want them to go anywhere—and not just because Mr. Morgan tended to fix anything that needed fixing almost before I noticed it. I liked the Morgans, and I didn’t want them to get older, to need to live anywhere except this high-maintenance little house above the river. My parents would be upset, too. They liked the idea of the Morgans keeping an eye on me.

  “We’re not going to do anything in a hurry. I don’t know. All those old people. Mildred would have people around to talk to, but I don’t know. She thinks this place is too much for me to keep up.”

  And it was, of course. Mine was too much for me to keep up, and he had more than forty years on me.

  “I tell her I’m not dead yet, though. They’ve got a cafeteria you can go to if you don’t want to cook, but cafeteria food…” He shook his head. “We’ll see.”

  I could help him more. I promised myself I would. But I knew that he’d end up showing me how to do anything that needed doing. Or that, as usual, I’d just come in from work and see that he’d done whatever needed doing at his house and at mine. And that Mildred would have left half a casserole in my refrigerator.

  We finished the raking—it would all need to be redone next week as more leaves fell—and had lunch, tuna-salad sandwiches with fried green tomatoes on the side that Mildred insisted I share.