Holding on to Nothing

by Elizabeth Chiles Shelburne

  “Boo!”

  His whole body jiggled with laughter, his curls bopping around and his eyes squeezed shut with glee.

  “Boo!” Lucy said, joining his deep belly laugh with her own, his love for her and this moment contagious.

  She rinsed out her hair and finished her shower, listening to him trying to say “boo,” which came out as “ooo.” She wrapped her towel around her chest after drying off and picked Jared up to get him out of the way, but he clung to her like a spider monkey.

  “Do you need a snuggle?” she asked, sitting down on the closed toilet seat. She held him to her until he squirmed away from her wet hair dripping on his face. She lay him on her lap, so she could look at him. He put his feet on her chest and grabbed at her nose.

  Lucy bent down to kiss Jared on the forehead, smiling as she saw his eyes cross with the effort of tracking her face coming toward him. When her lips touched the tiny cleft between his eyebrows, he squeaked. Lucy loved that sound—the kind only babies make. She stayed there for a few minutes, peppering that spot with kiss after kiss, listening to him squeak after each one, laughter beginning to gurgle up softly from his belly. The sound and smell of her child made her feel even more calm. It reminded her all over again why she was leaving. She kissed him on the forehead once more.

  “Guess we better get going, huh?” she said.

  She walked into the bedroom and finished drying off while Jared crawled behind her into the room. He played peek-a-boo with the sheets hanging off the bed as Lucy pulled on her favorite pair of jeans and her dad’s old UT sweatshirt and wrapped her towel-dried hair up in a messy bun. She pulled a duffel out of the closet and emptied the contents of her dresser into it. When all her stuff was packed, she folded Jared’s clothes from the bottom drawer she’d emptied out for him and placed them carefully on top of her stuff. Looking at all their possessions collected there, Lucy suspected someone else might have found it sad. She just felt ready.

  Jared’s boos were fading into whines—he needed a bottle. She was done in here anyway. In the kitchen, she dropped the duffel by the door and settled Jared into his bouncy seat. His feet stuck out five inches over the edge—she couldn’t count on it as a containment device for much longer, had probably pushed it too far already. One less thing to bring with her.

  “Let’s get you a bottle, buddy,” she said.

  “Mama.” His fist was opening and closing frantically in the sign for milk.

  “That’s right. Mama’s going to get you some milk. Don’t you worry. It’s coming.”

  She shook the bottle until all the powder dissolved. Jared shoved it in his mouth and closed his eyes with pleasure for the first few sucks, like his dad with a beer.

  “But we aren’t going to have to worry about beer any more, are we?” she said, rubbing his cheek with the back of her hand. “Are we, buddy?”

  Jared smiled at her around his bottle. “Mama,” he agreed, his mouth full of milk that dribbled out and down his chin, where it puddled under his neck.

  “Messy baby,” she said and turned to the kitchen to get a wet washcloth. She would wipe him up and move him over to his high chair for the rest of his bottle. May as well get used to it now. By the sink, though, she saw his baby dishes and silverware on the drying rack. She stacked them, searched the rest of the kitchen for his stuff, and put it all in the duffel. Satisfied she’d gotten it all, she grabbed a washcloth. Jared hated having his face wiped, so she smiled at him from the sink and opened her mouth to sing the “clean up” song.

  Before she could sing a note, she heard a sharp crack resound through the air. A fraction of a second later, she heard something smack through the sagging aluminum siding of the trailer. Jared’s bottle fell to the floor.

  She was still looking for where the bullet went, and it took her more than a few seconds to realize the two events—the sharp crack and the bottle thunking to the floor—were connected. She stared at Jared, at his blue eyes, Jeptha’s eyes. His whole body let go. Everything relaxed. She ripped him out of his chair and felt his body, heavy against her chest, like when he was really, truly asleep. When he fell asleep at night, or during his naps, he fought against the physical act. On the verge of surrendering to sleep, his upper lashes tangling with his lower ones, he would suddenly rebel, his eyes opening to look at her once more. She looked at his face, waited for him to push his eyes open, to fight sleep, to surprise her again with one more laugh. She kissed his forehead again.

  “Boo,” she whispered. But nothing happened. His eyes stayed closed.

  “Jared,” she said against his ear as she kissed his face again. “Wake up, buddy. Open your eyes.”

  She shook him slightly, his body jostling loosely in her hands. Then something wet dripped down her wrist. A stream of blood pooled under her bare feet, shiny and thick.

  “Wake up! Jared, wake up!” she screamed, holding him against her chest and frantically brushing the blood off. Then she saw the dark mass of blood on his side.

  “NO! NO!” she yelled. She shook him. “Wake up, Jared, wake up. Wake up. Please wake up,” she said, over and over again, rocking him back and forth, sobbing.

  She grabbed her phone, smearing the numbers with the blood from her hands as she dialed.

  “My son,” she screamed into the phone. “He’s bleeding. He won’t wake up.”

  “Is this Lucy?” the voice said.

  “You have to help him, Ethel. He won’t wake up. I think he might be … Just get them here. NOW.” She threw the phone down and held Jared tight against her body, applying pressure as best she knew how.

  “You’re okay, you’re okay,” she sang in a ragged half-whisper. It was the little made-up song she always sang to him if he was sick or hurt. That, and a kiss, had always made everything better. As she sang, the blood dripped down his leg, wound around her wrist, curled down the side of her hand, and fell, drop by drop, off her pinky into the puddle below her feet. The puddle grew to twice the size of her foot as she sang.

  “You’re okay, You’re okay. You have to be okay,” she sang, rocking him back and forth and back and forth. His eyes were still closed. She stopped singing and stopped breathing, listening for his soft breath, willing his chest to move against hers like it had the night he was born. She waited and waited and waited. Finally, she gasped for air.

  “No!” she screamed, her voice frantic and ragged. He was so still, so unbelievably still. Lucy held Jared to her, breathing him in like she had when he was born, screaming with abandon as his life left him, one steady drop at a time.

  25

  THE CRACK HAD TERRIFIED Jeptha, and the direction of the barrel scared him even more. He scrambled to his feet and ran for his house, Bobby and Deanna right behind him. As they came up the stairs, they heard screaming. Jeptha skidded to a halt—overwhelmed by terror.

  “Go, Jeptha,” Bobby said, gulping breaths in as he ran up the stairs behind him.

  Jeptha pulled the door open, dread and fear drying out his mouth. His body was shaking as he opened the screen door and slammed through the front door. His mind froze at the scene there.

  Lucy clutched Jared to her chest—wild screams tearing her apart as blood dripped off of her arm and onto the floor. Jeptha had never seen Jared so still. Some part of Jeptha, some awful caveman instinct, knew he was dead. It was impossible, he thought, for it to have happened so quickly, and yet, Jared’s skin, usually suffused with a pink that glowed with life, had already taken on a grayish tint. He had only ever seen deer, killed with the perfect shot, so still. So gone. It was not a question of being at peace or not; it was a matter of presence. Jeptha could not stop looking at him, taking in the blood and the ragged hole in the new green frog pajamas Lucy had shown Jeptha a few weeks before. He measured the stillness of Jared’s body, holding his breath without meaning to, but there was no approximating that lack of sensation by not breathing. In Jeptha’s body, there was blood flowing, little cells doing whatever they do, a hum of work he couldn’t hear. With Jare
d, all was quiet.

  Lucy stared at him, a plea in her eyes for what she plainly knew would be a miracle. A plea for a miracle from the man who had done it. Standing there looking down on the scene, he knew he would never not see this vision, knew he had known his last moment of peace on earth. He deserved every moment of horror this memory would forever hold.

  “Call an ambulance,” he croaked, as he heard Bobby come up behind him, retching as he saw Lucy and the baby.

  “Jeptha …” Lucy said. “I can’t wake him up. Help me.” Her eyes were hollow and her face ashen. When he did not move, she screamed, “Help me!”

  “Lucy …” he said. How could he confirm what they both knew but neither wanted to accept? “Lucy … I think he’s …”

  Jeptha couldn’t bring himself to say the word out loud. He reached out for Jared, but she snatched him to her.

  “No.”

  “Okay, you hold him. But sit down. I’m here,” Jeptha said, guiding her down to the couch.

  He knelt beside her, his knees splashing in the puddle of blood on the floor, and put his hand over hers, feeling Jared’s soft skin underneath. It already seemed cooler than Lucy’s. He wanted to scream, to shout, to do anything to make this not be so.

  “I’m sorry,” he said to her. “I’m sorry.”

  There was a moment then when he thought of running. Not away, not to disappear, but straight down the hill to where his gun still lay in the grass. What he wanted more than anything was to swallow that barrel whole in the hopes that he could exchange his life for his son’s, even though he knew it was an exchange that had passed its expiration date. Then he thought of that deer—and all Jeptha could do was stay there with his frantic wife and dead son to face the bullet of pain and regret that would forever be coming for him. He ground his knees into the bloody floor until they hurt.

  “He’s not dead. He’s not, he’s not,” Lucy kept repeating, rocking back and forth with Jared like she was trying to put him back to sleep on a particularly cranky night.

  They both knew Jared was gone, but Jeptha understood that Lucy needed to hold the full truth of that awful knowledge at bay as long as she could. He wished he could do the same. Instead, Jeptha rocked with them, hugging his family in his arms for what he knew would be the very last time.

  PART THREE

  26

  THAT A TAYLOR HAD finally killed someone surprised few in town, but that it had been Jeptha killing his son, or more accurately, Lucy’s son, as everyone thought of Jared, struck everyone as grievously wrong. That Lucy had lost her Jared that way, after losing her parents years before, shook the faith of even the most devout church ladies. The town had gossiped on it for months—on the tragedy of that kind of accident, on how they were sure that it wouldn’t have happened if Jeptha hadn’t been drinking, on how Jeptha deserved every minute of his three-to-five term for involuntary manslaughter, and how glad they were that Jeptha, at the very least, had recognized that fact when he’d walked up to Officer Mullins, his arms outstretched, and pled guilty to every charge they threw at him despite Lawyer Tom’s advice to the contrary. The church ladies, even those who’d never met Lucy, went full crepe—they brought every casserole and every Bundt cake they knew to make to LouEllen’s house and chatted about Lucy behind her back after they left. But a few months before school let out, Travis Cartwright ran off with his teacher, and a few months after that, tobacco prices bottomed out. No one forgot what happened over on the Taylors’ place, but they picked up on new gossip and new stories until finally, three years later, the story of how Jeptha Taylor accidentally killed Lucy’s son was old news, which meant Lucy got some pitying looks when people chanced on her unawares, manning the line at Walmart or serving up drinks at Judy’s, but she was no longer the chum of daily gossip.

  Lucy still found the pity on people’s faces nearly impossible to bear. It reminded her all over again of what she had lost. She barely remembered anything from that first year beyond a deep and abiding sense that she never wanted to see another casserole in her life. She’d spent the first three months on LouEllen’s couch, huddled under an afghan that Miss Irene had knitted especially for the occasion. A mourning quilt, she had called it, when she dropped it off. Lucy didn’t remember LouEllen laying it over her, but she remembered spending every day cuddled up with it whether on the couch or in her bed, trying in vain to sleep at night without seeing the images of her son dying in her arms. Hundreds of times a day, she thought of LouEllen asking if she wanted to stay that night and never once understood why she hadn’t said yes. Jared would be alive if she’d left him with LouEllen that night, gone on her own to tell Jeptha. Her hands shook when she thought of it, of how she’d failed her son, so many times and in so many ways. Her obsession with family, with doing what she thought was the right thing, had gotten her son killed. One tiny decision gone another way and she could have kept him alive and safe. He’d be in her arms or unsteadily trying to walk around the coffee table.

  Trying to keep those visions at bay, she curled up on the couch, immersed in the soap operas that had become her passion. Lucy quickly lost herself in the manufactured drama of the soaps, obsessed with the affairs, illegitimate children, and the many marriages and re-marriages. Somebody was always trying to kill somebody else, and that person would end up living due to the caring ministrations of some insanely attractive doctor to whom the patient would reveal a terrible family secret that inevitably unraveled in spectacular fashion in the patient’s recovery room. In the soaps, a character’s accidental killing of his baby son would be the beginning of the story, the beginning of whatever crazy new plot twist was about to happen. In the soaps, everyone’s husband or wife had been to jail at least once, and most of them had at least one murder to their name. Having a father who had spent a good chunk of his life in jail was the necessary prelude to becoming one of the city’s leading lights. And Lucy had quickly homed in on the first rule of soap operas: no one ever actually dies. No matter how gruesome the death, the supposedly dead character was always alive somewhere just off camera, ready to be called back to the story line at the right moment. For those first three months, Lucy needed to believe that such a thing was possible.

  Even after she’d begun to leave the couch, down twenty-five pounds, her hair a matted, stringy mess, she hadn’t done much. LouEllen fed her every comforting food she’d ever known, took her on long drives, staying far away from the Taylors’ farm, and helped her shower. Showers, for some reason, were the hardest things. She still remembered her first one after that day. While LouEllen sat on the toilet beside her, Lucy had soaped up her hair into a beehive that rivaled those sported by the Mennonite women at Shoney’s on Sundays. She let her arms fall down to her chest and faced the flow of water, knowing that the next step was putting her head under it. She hated being in here, naked and exposed against the white plastic walls, with nothing but a shower curtain to protect her. She took a deep breath, though, and forced herself to walk into the stream of hot water, trying to remember the days when it felt good to stand there as the water blocked out the world and pelted her worries away. With her eyes closed, she saw spots on the backside of her eyelids that were the exact color and size of Jared’s wound. As the soap flowed down her shoulders, the spots expanded, growing larger and thicker, looking like nothing so much as the puddle of Jared’s blood that she had watched form on the floor beneath her when she held him. Her eyes flew open, and the soap stung as it mixed with her tears. She breathed harder and louder, irregularly, until finally she was screaming with rage and fear. She took baths for the next year and a half.

  But these days, three years on, Lucy congratulated herself for being able to shower, for going to work, for getting through what seemed like a normal day. She tried never to think of Jeptha, but thought of Jared every day, all the time. Every three-year-old caught her attention at Walmart, all their whines and tantrums over not getting the toys they wanted, all their smiles and laughs. She longed for him then, stalking young ch
ildren through the store on her break. Each one destroyed Lucy to watch—but she couldn’t stop. Now, Lucy could watch them and still manage to get through her shifts without having to run in a panic to the break room. She was starting to slowly—very slowly—think she might survive the havoc Jeptha Taylor had wreaked in her life.

  “ANOTHER ONE CAME today,” LouEllen said when Lucy walked through the door. “I put it away, but I can get it if you want.”

  Lucy shook her head. She didn’t want to read Jeptha’s letter. He had sent one every week that Jared was gone—162 in total. Or 163 with this most recent one. They always came on Fridays, which was, not by accident, Lucy’s busiest workday. The less time she had to think of the letter arriv ing, the less stressed she was. She’d never opened a single envelope, each one emblazoned with the Tennessee State Prison system logo and prisoner #1070589 stamped on top. She had considered them long enough to have memorized Jeptha’s prisoner number but had never made the leap from holding one in her hand to actually opening it. Even unanswered, the letters kept arriving, regular enough that Lucy had finally noticed a creeping sense of dread steal over her on Wednesdays, getting steadily worse and making her snappish and angry over the tiniest things until the day she found the letter in the mailbox and could get rid of it. In the beginning, she had taken care to place the letters deep into the trash can—burying them under a debris flow of coffee grounds and leftovers showing the first faint fuzz of mold. But one night, six or so months after Jared died, she came into the kitchen and found LouEllen digging a letter out of the trash, carefully wiping coffee grounds off with a just-wet paper towel.

  “What are you doing?” Lucy had screamed at her.