Liberating Paris

by Linda Bloodworth Thomason

And then, it all turned awful when the Duffers got up to speak. They were supposed to tell everyone to eat, drink, and be happy. That the bar was unlimited and on them. But being the affable Duffers, they wanted to do more. And it became apparent, almost immediately, that they were the only two people in the room who had been kept in the dark about all the events leading up to this evening. And you could see by the worried looks on the faces of people who had failed to tell them these things—you could see that these people now knew that was a mistake.

  Tom Duffer, who had clearly had too much to drink, started out by announcing that a lifelong dream was finally coming true tomorrow—a Duffer McIlmore union. And that such a union had almost happened twenty years ago, but didn’t, which just goes to show, when it’s right, you can’t keep a good idea down. And then Susan Duffer helped her husband regale everyone with how much Luke and Elizabeth reminded them of Wood and Kathleen at the same age. How darling they, too, had looked together and so in love. And they had funny stories to go with all the accolades. It went on and on. And was so mortifying that no one seemed able to move or to stop it. Wood set his jaw and stared at the centerpiece. And Milan looked straight at the Duffers and never stopped smiling. And Duff, who had now come back from the ladies’ room, watched for a minute, horrified, and then left again. Mavis, sitting with Mary Paige, began to say that someone should put an end to it. She looked right at Brundidge. Charlotte began nudging him with her elbow. And he had whispered, too loudly, what the hell did they want him to do? Now everyone was looking at them and suddenly Brundidge jumped up and waved his arms in the air and said, “Sorry, Tom, but I’m on the meter here. Paying the babysitter eight dollars an hour. I say everybody loves everybody. Let’s boogie.”

  It was incredibly rude and even after the music started, and Brundidge and a reluctant Charlotte had begun to dance, Tom still looked confused. Later, somebody said Elizabeth and Luke could be heard arguing out by the driving range. And that the Duffers and their daughter had spoken to one another, but never touched.

  After it was over, Wood walked Milan out to the parking lot and asked if there was anything he could do to help her. And without an ounce of sarcasm, she said she didn’t think so. And then she got in her car and drove away, feeling both powerful and sad that her husband was getting smaller in her rearview mirror.

  CHAPTER 24

  It was after midnight and Wood was lying around in his shorts. The leather from his office sofa periodically stuck to the back of his legs. His clothes were piled in the chair beside him. He rubbed his jaw where Luke had hit him and winced a little from the pain. But he was thinking that it also felt good, even earned, like a tender muscle after a hard jog.

  He got up and crossed to his grandfather’s old glass medical cabinet. He retrieved a bottle of cough syrup and took a long swig. He didn’t care that he had already had several drinks at the rehearsal dinner or that he always warned his patients not to mix their medicine with liquor. He just wanted to be unconscious and, so far, that hadn’t happened.

  Wood returned to the sofa and lay down. He was thinking how miserable he felt and how it was fitting that he should feel this way on this particular sofa where he had inflicted so much misery on others. It was here that he had told Carrie Shoemaker, a mother of six, that she had pancreatic cancer. That was a hard one since she already had Crone’s disease and multiple sclerosis, too. Seriously, how much bad news can you deliver before you simply burst out laughing and say, “Hey, you know what? Let’s just all go home.” This was also the place where he told Joe and Shelby Dunne that their only son’s leukemia had returned. And where he held Laura Cahill in his arms because her twins were already dead inside of her—a boy and a girl, facing each other and sucking their thumbs. Whenever his own filmography drifted through his mind, that picture was now forever a part of it. Whenever he kissed his own children goodnight, the Cahill babies were always there with them.

  And there were hundreds of other sad stories in which the participants had sat meekly, holding hands, attempting to swallow the sickening lumps in their throats as they tried to steel themselves against the conveyor of all bad news, Wood McIlmore. Yes, this sofa was exactly where a man with his past deserved to be.

  Now he was looking at all his academic and medical degrees on the wall. He couldn’t have cared less if somebody came along and pissed on them, but he had never really noticed before how much he liked their frames. Milan had chosen a sort of ebony-toned wood with mattes made of cream-colored grass cloth and a thin line of silver. It must have taken her a long time to pick out all the components. He wondered whether, if she had completed her own teaching degree, she would have bothered to frame it with these same ribbons. He decided that she would not have.

  Suddenly, he was hungry. He had barely touched his food at dinner. He reached for a sucker in the glass jar on the coffee table and unwrapped it. These were usually given out to children and he wondered how long it had been since he’d had one himself. Years. He lay there in his underwear with his eyes closed, savoring the sugary lemon taste and thinking that he should eat suckers more often. Now he was trying to imagine a time and a place when they would all laugh about these silly goings-on. Maybe a Thanksgiving or a Christmas with family and friends—the grandchildren off playing in another room and he and Milan and Charlie and Elizabeth and Luke and Duff and everybody sitting around the fire: “Oh, man, your mother was sooo mad, she wanted to kill me.”

  “And your mother! Hell, she had me sleeping at the damn office!”

  Laughter.

  Now a grandchild wanders in. “Hey, what’s going on?”

  “Nothing. Just tellin’ about the time your grandpa was doin’ both your grandmothers.”

  More laughter.

  See? No matter how he arranged it, it just didn’t work. As a southerner and a McIlmore, Wood could pan a little nugget of humor out of almost anything. He could laugh about death, defeat, humiliation—southerners were especially good at that. But infidelity, the arsenic of all human intimacy, he now realized could not be laughed over, even with time added. This was something he hadn’t considered before and, frankly, it surprised and depressed him.

  Suddenly, there was a knock at the door. Someone was calling his name. Someone else was groaning. Wood got up and opened the door. It was Brundidge with Frank Lanier, who was all bent over, holding himself. They entered and Brundidge asked, as though it were important, “What the hell are you eating?”

  “A sucker. What’s the matter with him?”

  Brundidge said, “He OD’d on Viagra.”

  Frank groaned and fell on the sofa. Wood looked at him. He was sick and tired of everyone in Paris bringing their genitals to his doorstep.

  “What the hell’s wrong with you, Frank? Where’d you even get Viagra?”

  Brundidge answered, “Your wife uses it on her flowers and apparently gives it to him by the truckload.”

  That was typical of Frank Lanier—embracing anything that renders the most basic acts of human existence unnecessary: Crock-Pots that do the cookin’ while you’re out carousing, electrodes that exercise your muscles while you lie in front of the TV, and Viagra so you don’t have to get your own hard-on.

  Frank mumbled, his mouth pressed into the leather sofa, “I was trying to kill myself.”

  Wood said, “It’s not poison, Frank. Just because you take a lot of something doesn’t mean it’s going to kill you.”

  Frank curled up, hugging himself, unable to comprehend that this, like so many of his other problems, was the result of impulsive excess. He had decided, after being laid off by the sheriff’s department, that he had bipolar disorder. This was something he accidentally came across (while channel surfing) on a program called Nightline. This caused him to spend his life savings on a very expensive mail-order light, billed as a “Mood Rejuvenator.” He had also earnestly filed a lawsuit after finding a wad of gum in a McDonald’s hamburger, but the case was thrown out after the gum was proven to be Frank’s. He had eve
n attempted a brief flirtation with fame, shipping a thousand headshots of himself, five hundred laughing, five hundred crying, to a so-called Hollywood agent. Frank’s entire life had been nothing but one treacly drama after another. There was only one thing he seemed to have done right, and that was to stand down the Rolling Stones. And now no one wanted to give him credit for it.

  Wood sat next to him. “Why do you want to kill yourself, Frank?”

  Frank said, into the sofa, “Nothin’ to live for.”

  Brundidge spat out the words, “It’s because the Millennium Committee turned down that Coke can of his! I am sick to death of hearin’ about that damn Coke can!”

  Frank looked at Wood, his eyes, pleading. “Can’t you give me somethin’?”

  “I’m sorry, Frank. There’s no medical antidote for Viagra. Did you try whacking off?”

  “Yes.”

  “And?”

  Frank’s voice came from far away. “Nothin’. When I was done, it was still hard.”

  Brundidge walked away. “Aw, man, I don’t even want to know this. Forget the Coke can, Frank! What we should do is amputate your damn dick and put it in the time capsule, ’cause that’s the thing that’ll be here a thousand years from now.”

  A few minutes later, they were in the van. Brundidge was driving. Wood was drinking. Frank was lying in the back, moaning. They had already been to Frank’s house and picked up the Coke can and several shovels.

  Brundidge said, “We’re gonna put it in for you, Frank. It’s not worth killin’ yourself over. Now, I’m one of the few people who knows where this capsule is buried. So, if you ever tell, you won’t have to off yourself, ’cause I’ll do it for you.”

  Frank mumbled, “I’m not gonna tell.”

  “All right then. See that you don’t.”

  Within an hour, Wood and Brundidge had dug a considerable hole, while Frank sat on a rock, hanging his head in agony. They were not far from the Champanelle River now and about a sixth of a mile from Sheriff Marcus West’s house.

  Wood offered Brundidge a sip of the whiskey he had pilfered from a crate in the van. Ordinarily, he might have told Frank to go on home and sleep it off, but since Frank was Milan’s brother, Wood felt in some small way that he was doing something for her. But that was just the liquor thinking, because it was Milan who had denied Frank’s request in the first place. Wood put the bottle back in his jacket pocket and leaned on the shovel.

  “Are you sure we’re in the right spot?”

  “Hell yes. I was here when they put it in. But they used a backhoe.”

  Wood said, “Well, I’ve got a backhoe. Let’s go get it. I can’t stand here diggin’ a damn hole all night. I’ve got a wedding to go to.”

  Suddenly, Frank started to cry, not just quiet tears, but real girlie crying. “I cain’t believe you boys are doin’ this for me! Nobody ever did nothin’ for me in my whole entire life!” He was sobbing now, overwhelmed. “Man, I just love y’all so much.”

  Brundidge said, “All right, Frank, calm down. Don’t get all Long Day’s Journey into Night on us.”

  When they got to Fast Deer Farm, Wood climbed up into the large driver’s compartment of the backhoe and started the engine. Then he backed it out of the barn and went toward the gravel road where Brundidge and Frank were waiting in the van. It must’ve awakened Milan because when Wood looked up at their bedroom window, he saw that she was watching him. He waved and smiled stupidly, and she waved back, as though nothing that he could ever do again would surprise her.

  Wood used only back roads to wind his way to the spot where they had all just been. Once there, he worked the backhoe, which farmhands had taught him how to operate as a teenager, and in a while, he had made the hole twice as deep. And still, there was no capsule. After a while, it was 3 A.M. and Wood and Brundidge, who were now drunk, announced that they were going home. Frank, who was also drunk and still hurting, became hysterical. He had known it wouldn’t work out. Nothing in his whole life ever had. And this entire Coke can thing, keeping it out of the Millennium capsule was just a payback from Milan for losing their daddy’s ashes! That’s all this was, payback! No matter what he did, she was never gonna get over it. In spite of Wood’s inebriated condition, he suddenly became alert. This was a story he hadn’t heard before. He went over and sat down next to Frank.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Nothin’. I don’t mean nothin’.”

  “No. Go on, Frank. You started it. I wanna hear.”

  Frank shook his head, “It’s nothin’! She’s just always been pissed at me, that’s all.”

  “For what?”

  “Ever’thing. It all started ’cause she couldn’t fix Daddy’s face on account of the gun shot was so bad. So Cotrell’s had to put him in the furnace. So now she’s even more upset ’cause, you know, she’s the one who seen it happen.”

  Wood said, “Wait a minute. Slow down, Frank. Saw what happen?”

  “He did it right in front of her.”

  “Did what?”

  “Blow’d his head off.”

  Wood took this in. Then he said, softly, “Shit. She never told me that.”

  “That’s ’cause she don’t want nobody to know. You know Milan, always puttin’ on the dog.” Frank pointed to under his chin. “Stuck it right here.” Frank made a clicking noise. “And he was smilin’ at her, too. Anyway, so Mr. Cotrell calls me to come pick up the ashes. After I did, I went to get my truck washed and to the Dandy Dog. I don’t know. Somehow, they got throwed away. Hell, they was just in a box. They looked like any ol’ thing. So I went back to the car wash and the Dandy Dog, but the trash had already been took away. And Milan, she just freaked out—about how Daddy cannot go back to the Paris dump! That’s all there was to it! And so we’re out there all night, siftin’ through garbage and shit and she’s cryin’ and carryin’ on, ‘We gotta find Daddy, Frank! We gotta find Daddy!’ See, she was always his favorite. At the end, he wadn’t even botherin’ to use the toilet no more. He was just lettin’ her take care of it.”

  Brundidge came over and said, “Hey Frank, shut up. You shouldn’t be tellin’ this.”

  Wood said, “No, let him finish.” Then, to Frank, “Go on.”

  “Well, then all of a sudden, she ain’t cryin’ no more. She gets all crazy and starts laughin’. And I’m thinkin’ maybe she’s caught the schizophrenia. I’ll never forget, she found this old box of Tide and she’s pourin’ it ever’where and sayin’ ‘Lookee here, Frank! Could that be Daddy?’ And then she’d just fall on the ground laughin’. I mean, she was gone! Pickin’ up shit where people had emptied their ashtrays and askin’ me, ‘Hey, Frank, look at this! Do you think this is Daddy?’ And then she’d laugh and say, ‘Nope, that’s just old cigarette butts! That’s not Daddy!’”

  Now Wood had tears in his eyes. Brundidge said, “That’s the worst story I ever heard.”

  Frank said, “Well, she ain’t never forgive me for that.” Then he looked at Wood and added as an afterthought, like it was nothing, “That’s the weekend she went back to school and you knocked her up.”

  Wood looked pained. Brundidge said, “I mean it, Frank. Shut the fuck up.”

  Frank, seeing the effect of his words, was feeling important now. He said, “Well, it’s the truth. That’s what caused the real trouble. ’Cause she got so mixed up about ever’thing, she forgot to take them pills and then she got pregnant. And that’s when she come to me, wantin’ to know if I know somebody who would marry her. And I say, any man would marry you, Milan, ’cept they all know whose kid it is.” He smiled at Wood. “She said she wasn’t gonna make you marry her and ruin your life. And so, I asked a couple people for her. And just like I thought, they said they’d sure like to have a go at her, but they weren’t gonna marry nobody that was havin’ your baby. And she acted like I hadn’t really tried at all, but I did.”

  Wood was staring at Frank now, dumbfounded. Every false assumption he had ever made about his wife, had, in five drunk
en minutes, been cleared up by the town idiot. Why had he never asked her these questions himself? He didn’t know. Could people really lie next to each other for twenty years and never once discuss the thing that seems to be lying there between them? Never once asking, “Say, by the way, did you mean to…” or “Oh, no, surely you didn’t think…” Resentment and suspicion piling up like weathered old tax notices, pinned to the door of a rotting house, not unlike the Lanier house, until one day the foundation gives way and everyone inside is buried alive by the sheer pathetic weight of it all.

  Wood had not known that he could feel such sadness. This was worse than being unfaithful. Discovering that not only had his wife not trapped him, but she had apparently been wandering around in the middle of some Wagnerian hillbilly nightmare, trying to find someone else to marry her. It was staggering.

  He had been so sure that this great sweeping joke had been played on him, with Milan seeming to get everything she had ever wanted out of it. But nothing, he knew in his heart, that was given in complete love. And so, she had set out to earn that and each day fallen a little farther behind because the person she hoped would someday love her had already made up his mind. It seemed he had misunderstood the terms of their relationship as badly as Jeter had misjudged his and Cherry Smoke’s. Wood was sitting on the ground, holding his head in his hands, mumbling.

  Suddenly Brundidge, who had continued digging, let out a yelp. Then he tapped the hard surface of something with the tip of his shovel. “Okay. There she blows, boys.”

  Frank jumped up and began dancing around. “Hot dawg! I knew it! I told ya’ll it was there!”

  “Yeah, you told us, Frank. You’re a regular divinin’ rod.”

  Brundidge struggled to lift the time capsule. Frank jumped in the hole and attempted to help him, jumping around like a game-show contestant who already knows the answer. Brundidge, noticing Wood’s distress, called out, “Hey, what’s goin’ on over there? We’re gettin’ ready to have a ceremony.” Then harshly, “Step back, Frank! Give me some room here.”