Perennials

by Julie Cantrell

  “Stop this, Bitsy,” Blaire pleads, but my sister continues her charge. “Oh, sure. Everybody loves Lovey. But trust me, you can’t believe a word she says. She lies. Lies so much she doesn’t even know when she’s lying anymore.”

  “You’re drunk.” I reach for her hand.

  She jerks away, hitting Blaire by mistake. This proves too much, and Blaire hurries off into the night. Fisher runs after her, leaving Bitsy and me together in the shed.

  Now she stumbles, falling against the door frame and snagging her dress. “See? All you do is destroy things. Destroy people.”

  “Are you sure you aren’t talking about Whitman?”

  This is what finally does it. She comes at me, full force, calling me everything from crazy to selfish, pathetic to sick.

  “Is that what you really believe about me?”

  She laughs. Laughs! As if I’m truly the most disturbed human being she’s ever known. “I’m the only one who sees through you. I know who you are.”

  Nothing she says makes sense, and despite my determination to stay strong, I revert to lifelong patterns, defending myself, arguing, trying to convince the both of us that I’m not the horrible person she says I am.

  “Can’t you see? You want all the attention, all the time. Couldn’t let us have a happy night. Have to cause chaos wherever you go.” Her voice echoes. Jars rattle.

  I step toward the door, trying to catch my breath.

  She follows. “You really think we want you here? Need you here? Truth is, Lovey, we’re all much better off when you stay away.”

  No matter how hard I fight the hurt, her words bring a sting. Tears rise. I blink them away.

  “Oh, here we go with the tears. Poor, pitiful Lovey.” She speaks with exaggerated drama. Mean and cruel. “Go ahead. Cry! You always were good at putting on a show.”

  Behind Bitsy, Fisher’s truck pulls from the lane, his taillights blurred by distance and heat. The others have left with him, and my ears begin to ring, just as they did during the Reed Incident. My hands are shaking. My stomach, in knots.

  “Why are you saying these things, Bitsy? What have I ever done but love you?”

  She stares, cold. “You’re not who you pretend to be, Lovey. You’re a mess, and now everybody will finally, finally see the truth.”

  “I’m not your enemy, Bitsy.” I make one last attempt to reach my real sister, hoping she still exists. If only she could see that I’m here for her, have been all along.

  But she glares and ends with two words only. “Just go!”

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  I fumble through the keys on the kitchen rack, a hand-painted frame that decorates nearly every home in Oxford. We were just two of the many kids who made this vacation Bible school craft under my mother’s patient direction. My hand clenches now as I grab the key to Chief’s old truck and head for the driveway. Far from the glow of Tiki torches, the surrounding forest has shifted to an inky black. The air, too, seems thick and soaked with tar, heavy and hard against my lungs.

  The engine growls and I peel away, gravel spitting behind. I don’t know where I’m going. Driving fast as Bitsy’s demand echoes: “Just go!”

  I’m four, maybe five miles from the farm before I realize what I’m doing. For years I’ve been a kettle, simmering. But mile by mile, the pain becomes more than I can contain. With my knuckles white against the wheel, I turn to emptier back roads, and there, away from eyes and ears and judgment, I finally scream away the ache.

  I mourn the loss of my sister’s love and the years I wasted with Reed. I roar for the pain my choices brought to Finn and to Fisher, and for the fact that my mother now dances with death. I howl for the husband and children I do not have, and for all the mistakes I’ve made. I wail for that happy, innocent, trusting little girl who once roamed barefoot through these woods, triggering steel-jawed traps in hopes of protecting naive animals, never knowing the one in the gravest danger was me. I cry and I shout and I drive. Drive until the gas gauge goes low and the back roads have me caught in their murky maze.

  The old truck can barely produce enough light for me to see, and these red-dirt paths no longer seem safe. Occasionally, another truck zooms past, one with its engine revving, one’s horn an obnoxious Rebel battle cry. I make a few desperate attempts to follow, but they lose me in their wake, this old engine no match for modern speeds.

  What if Bitsy’s accusations are legit? Am I really responsible for destroying Reed’s marriage? Have I now come in between Fisher and Blaire too? Is it possible I even carved a wedge between Bitsy and Whitman when I reported his behavior with the bridesmaid on their wedding day? Was I jealous, as she claimed? And worse, did I somehow cause my sister to doubt her own husband? Destroying trust in her marriage from the start?

  Maybe I really am as horrible as she wants me to believe. A selfish mess of a soul who only wants what I can’t have.

  Darkness threatens from all sides, but I press on, trying to reach a road I recognize. My GPS has no signal, and there’s not a map to be found in the glove compartment. The sky is starless as I am tossed back and forth through time, trying to line up the plot points of my life.

  Age Eight: Happy, confident, trusting, free.

  Sixteen: In love with Fisher, hopeful we will have a future together, longing to escape Bitsy’s toxic rivalry.

  Eighteen: Letting Mississippi go and leaving Bitsy’s shadow, even if that means losing Fisher. I see no other way.

  Twenty-five: Finishing a year of travel and landing my first real job at Apogee. Hopeful and confident, even though I still miss Fisher and home.

  Thirty: Dating but advancing my career. Successful, focused.

  Thirty-eight: In love with Reed, content with my job and travel. Planning a happy-ever-after with a man I love. All the pieces finally coming together.

  Forty-two: Wake up! Reed is a fraud. My life is not what I believed it to be. Everything shatters as if I’m Jim Carrey’s character on The Truman Show. My reality was a sham, orchestrated by the one I trusted most.

  Forty-five: My age is getting to me. My mother is dying of cancer. My sister hates me. Fisher is with Blaire. My career is tanking. Everything I have ever loved and lived for is being taken from me. And I’m lost, on a dark Mississippi back road, running out of gas.

  Right this second: If I add up all the problems, there’s only one clear common denominator—me.

  The miles grow longer by the minute. I’m beginning to lose hope of finding my way when another pair of headlights peaks atop a far-off ridge.

  Back here, anything could happen. Flagging down a stranger could end badly. But with the gas needle leaning a hard left, I am willing to take my chances, betting I could outrun most of the dangerous men in these parts if it came to that.

  I flash my lights, slow my speed, and wave my arm, hoping for help, but despite all attempts to draw notice, the driver zooms right past me.

  I try my GPS again. Still no signal, which means calling my parents is not an option either. What would I say anyway? “Chief? I’m lost. Can you and Mother come find me?” How pathetic. Maybe Bitsy is right. Maybe I really should pack my bags and “Just go.”

  I fight the urge to pull over and cry myself to sleep, surrender to self-pity and take the easy way out. Instead, I keep driving, determined to find my way through this mess. But just as I start to regain my senses, the tire catches. In a painful jolt my head slams against the steering wheel.

  Suddenly, the truck is sliding sideways. I jerk the wheel and hit the brakes, hard. Too hard. The truck goes into a blurred spin, rotating until the front tire slips deep over the drop of the roadside ditch. At a drastic tilt, I sit, stunned, trying to find the resolve to survey the damage.

  With one back wheel whirling midair, there is no longer any chance of escape. From the trench, the truck’s aged bulbs shine yellow, drawing a slew of bugs to the hazy beams. I crawl from the seat, cutting my way through the swarm to inspect not one, but two flat tires.

  No fla
sh of a porch light. No rebellious rednecks firing guns. No gang of teens drinking beer. With a cloud-cloaked sky, not even the moon offers help tonight. In every direction I find only the long, dark mane of madness eager to claim me as her own.

  I check my phone again, walking as far as the headlights will let me. I try to get a call through to Chief, but the service won’t connect. I find a spare tire, but only one. So even if I could manage to change one of the flats, I’d still be in a jam. And that would do nothing about getting me out of this ditch.

  With no real options I make myself comfortable across the seat, but the fates aren’t done with me yet. I’ve lowered the window to cope with the heat, but now thunder roars and the skies spill. Rain lands hard as hail, leaving tinny echoes on the roof, thuds and thumps across the hood. I hurry to roll up the window but the pane sticks, and I end up half-drenched by the time the glass is sealed.

  Here at the bottom of a steep hill, the ditch swells quickly. Within minutes water laps the door, leaking onto Chief’s old floorboard as lightning flashes white against the never-ending bullets of rain. I can’t imagine the surge will rise enough to matter, but it’s an inconvenient annoyance at the very least.

  I resort to my old childhood strategy of singing away the storm, turning to the familiar tunes Mother would hum when we were young. Church hymns and nursery rhymes, country standards and folk songs. But after thirty minutes, I’ve grown tired of my own voice. Dark thoughts creep in. So I do what Chief would do, and I make myself a plan.

  1.If I’m lucky, another truck will pass, and I’ll try again to flag some help.

  2.If not, I’ll wait for morning, and then I’ll walk until I secure a cell signal.

  3.Then I will make the call of shame, admitting to Chief and Mother that I am, in fact, still a child and that I do, in fact, still need them to show me the way.

  Within an hour the storm slacks, and my stress levels shrink a bit, even if I am covered in mosquito bites and chilled from the rain. I’ve just begun to doze off when my phone rings. It’s Chief, a miracle of no small size.

  “Lovey? You okay?”

  “Um . . . yes and no.”

  “Where are you?”

  “Honestly, I have no clue.” I fill him in on my absurd situation, saying only enough about Bitsy to let him know we had a spat. I put him on speaker and try the GPS, but the positioning system simply won’t work.

  “Stay on the phone. We’ll figure this out.”

  Despite his own exhaustion, my eighty-two-year-old father gets into his SUV and heads out into the night to find his long-lost daughter. “So much for a romantic anniversary.” I try to make him laugh, but his concern is unshakable, and he is far too tired for jokes.

  Again and again the call is dropped, and even when we do maintain a connection, it is weak, our syllables disappearing in the space between us. I’m a mess on this side of the phone as he navigates these rain-soaked hills in the dead of night. Only outlaws and middle-aged flight risks like me would dare roam these roads at this hour. Why do I continue to make things harder than they need to be? Hurting the ones I love?

  It’s a good thirty minutes before Chief’s headlights round the bend. I am nothing but nerves by the time I finally see my father safe. And here.

  I climb through the passenger door and rush toward his SUV, mud sloshing my calves, apologies spilling from my lips.

  “Get in,” he says, handing me a towel to dry myself.

  I don’t make any excuses. I don’t blame Bitsy for my choices. I simply climb into the passenger seat with my head hung in shame.

  He takes a few minutes to examine the truck, its back wheel airborne above the narrow lane, the front fender dented beneath ditch water. “You’re lucky you weren’t hurt, Lovey. This isn’t safe.”

  I nod, the sharp edge of guilt lumping my throat as I rub the towel through my hair. “I’m sorry, Chief. I’m so sorry.”

  “What were you thinking?” His fear begins to subside, and his eyes hold a deep reserve of compassion. After a long pause, he must realize I have no answers. “We’d better call for a tow.”

  A ten-minute conversation with the wrecker service leaves Chief frustrated. “Could be a while. Students keep ’em busy at this hour.”

  “Even in summer?”

  “Seems so.”

  I lean my head against the window as a heavy night steam wraps us. Damp from rain, I shiver, so Chief turns on the heater to warm me, a gesture I find nurturing and kind, especially when the leather seats begin to offer comfort.

  “What were you doing way out here? This time of night?”

  As much as I want to pour out my troubles, I’ve already caused him more than enough worry tonight. I stay quiet.

  “I’m listening, Lovey.” He says this with a sincerity that strikes me. As he watches me in the amber glow of the dashboard lights, it’s almost as if he’s come here tonight for this very reason, to hear me.

  With guarded hesitation, I begin. A small regret here. A halfhearted confession there. But when his voice softens and he shows genuine concern, I let the words flow freely. Before I know it, I’m telling him everything. My whole life’s worth of woes. The unbearable sadness I feel about Mother’s diagnosis. The grief that has already begun to swirl and the fear I have of losing her. The anxieties that are mounting about work, especially having no spouse to share the financial load if Jansana falls through.

  I admit to the confusion I’m facing with Fisher, not knowing whether to give this relationship a chance or to get out of his way once and for all. I even tell him everything about Reed, all of it, including my own naive choices that put me in the palms of a predator.

  And finally, I admit the absolute destruction Bitsy has brought to my life. I spare no detail. Rewinding all the way back through her lies and my truths and how the two have become muddled in time.

  I talk for an hour, at least, right here on this nowhere back road waiting for the wrecker to show. I share every last secret, sin, and shame. And without interruption my father listens. He really listens. He doesn’t argue or advise. He doesn’t get defensive or tell me I’m wrong. He doesn’t make excuses or suggest I got what I deserved for making bad choices along the way. He doesn’t tell me I’m being petty or that I should just get over it or that I have no right to be hurt. He simply lets me know he cares.

  By the time I’ve emptied myself completely, I feel thirty pounds lighter. I’ve finally poured out every last drop of pain that has been brewing within me all these years.

  Chief sits stunned in the driver’s seat, speechless. “I don’t know what to say, Lovey.” He has hugged me and said he loves me at least five times during this confession, but now he takes my hand in his. My breath holds tight, as if the whole world is a fragile web and even one exhale could send us tilting again. I don’t dare move. “All those things Bitsy has said about you. I know they aren’t true. And you need to know that too.”

  This is when I begin to weep, and it isn’t forty-five-year-old Lovey who finally cries on my father’s shoulder. It’s the little girl who first felt the fire of betrayal. She leans into her father’s broad frame, and she slowly begins to heal.

  “You believe I didn’t start that fire? That it’s not my fault Finn got hurt?”

  “I guess I never really knew what happened. Didn’t think it mattered either way. Now I see it did matter. It mattered a lot.”

  I nod and stay quiet.

  “You mattered, Lovey. I made you believe you didn’t, and I’m sorry for that.” He clasps his hands as if trying to put all these broken pieces together again. I expect him to make excuses, argue his case. Instead, he says, “All this time, I thought I was a pretty good dad.”

  “You were. You are. A wonderful dad. Chief, I’m not blaming you.”

  “No. I should have protected you from Reed. I should have stood up for you when Bitsy took aim. I’m sorry.”

  I sit straighter now, twisting the towel, remembering how my grandfather was eager to wring Ch
ief’s neck at the very idea of him jilting my mother. “You didn’t know about Reed.”

  “But I should have.” He adjusts the thermostat. “I should have followed my gut. Never cared for him much.”

  My eyes lift in surprise.

  “He always stuck to calling you Eva. Everybody calls you Lovey. Didn’t sit right with me.”

  I give him a smile now, albeit a weak one.

  “You know what a predator goes after first? An animal separated from her pack. They find the vulnerable ones, the ones who are alone in the world. Fact is, I wasn’t there when you needed me, and there’s no excuse good enough, Lovey. I’m sorry.”

  “We all have things we’d change, but you’re the best father I’ve ever seen. Look at the way you love our mother. You gave us everything by giving us that.”

  “What good did it do if I threw you to the wolves? I wasn’t there to protect you, and that was the most important part of my job, as your father. To keep you safe.”

  “But, Chief—”

  “No. Let me finish. Because you’re right about Bitsy too. We have always given her more slack. That’s true, and it’s not okay. It was never okay. But I guess, well, I guess I always knew you were the strong one.”

  “Bah!” If only he could know how weak I feel right now.

  “It’s true. Your sister could never handle things the way you do. She needed more from us, but we loved you both the same. You know that.”

  My hands fidget nervously. “I know you love me.”

  “More than you can imagine.”

  There is a long silence between us before I finally speak again, my voice soft and pained. “I’m not blaming you.”

  “Oh, I know you’re not placing any blame. But I never thought about all this until now. And, well . . . I guess I should have paid more attention, sorted truth from the lies. Wish I had kept the bad guys from getting to you, so to speak.”