Carry Yourself Back to Me

by Deborah Reed

  Joshua grins. “How are you, Calder?”

  Calder laughs. “Everyone that comes here asks me that. You all know the answer but you ask it anyway. I’m fine. Just fine.”

  “Well.”

  “For a man who’s about to be put to death for something he didn’t do. That’s the part I usually don’t say.”

  “You’re getting a little ahead of yourself. They haven’t even had a trial yet.”

  “No. But I don’t see them out arresting anybody else.”

  Joshua looks as if he’s just been struck with an ice cream headache.

  “You know, your brother is part of the reason I’m in here. He felt the need to exaggerate what I’d told him about Magnus.”

  “I know. That’s why I came. One of the reasons I came.”

  Seeing Joshua causes the grit of the place, the gray walls and stale odors to rise up into Calder’s face. Who would have thought there’d come a day when Calder would be behind bars and his visitor, a clean-cut Pinckney? He feels the same kind of mixed-up shame and gratitude he felt twenty-four years ago when Joshua apologized to him on the front porch.

  “We need to talk,” Joshua says, and stares as if the rest will come through his eyes.

  Calder notices for the first time that Joshua’s accent has changed. “Where are you living these days? You don’t sound like a Pinckney anymore.”

  “I’ll take that as a compliment.”

  “Feel free.”

  “I’ve been all over, but right now I’m back here.”

  “All over, like where?”

  “The world. The last place was out West, Seattle.”

  “I hear it rains like hell out there.”

  “In winter, yeah,” he says a little defensively, though Calder can’t think of a reason why he should. “I don’t know if you know this but it’s snowing outside right now. In the Sunshine State. We’ve got several inches on the ground.”

  Calder does know. He’s seen it from the small window in his cell and heard the guards talking about how their trucks handled on the way to work. “Merry Christmas,” Calder says. “Who’d have ever thought?”

  Joshua doesn’t crack a smile. “Like I said, I need to talk to you about Gabe.”

  “Shoot.”

  “He has a big mouth.”

  “I know you didn’t come here to tell me what I already know.”

  “Why’d you ever give him a job, Calder?”

  “I felt sorry for him. I gave you another chance. I figured I could give him one, too.”

  “He’s not like me.”

  “You married?”

  “What? No. I was. It only lasted a year. Why?”

  “Just making conversation. Never mind. Am I going to have to pull it out of you or are you going to tell me what it is you’ve come to say?”

  “Gabe was protecting me, Calder. That’s why he exaggerated what you told him about Magnus.”

  “Protecting you from what?”

  Joshua clamps his mouth shut. The muscles in his jaw flex and release. “I don’t know if I should say it right here, right now. I need to meet with your lawyer. In fact, I need to get one of my own.”

  Calder feels the weight of something mysterious bearing down on him. It’s the mud on Annie’s hand all over again. He can’t follow what’s happening; he only knows deep down that it’s bad. Really, really bad. “What’d you do?”

  “I didn’t do anything,” Joshua whispers. “But I guarantee it’s not going to make you feel a whole lot better when I tell you who did.”

  TWENTY-SIX

  It was late spring and blood lilies bloomed along the south side of the house where Annie waited every weekend to catch the first glimpse of Joshua’s little red car coming down Lakeview Drive, a cloud of dust trailing behind as he sped above the limit. The thought of him going away in the fall to a private school in Tallahassee became the weight behind every tear, every laugh, every hungry, greedy kiss. It’d be too far for him to visit on weekends. The best they could do would be holidays—Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter when he came home to his aunt in Tampa. Three times total inside a whole school year.

  Annie never asked him not to go, as badly as she wished he’d stay. She knew enough to know that this school was the best chance he had of shaping a life for himself. It would make all the difference where college was concerned considering his earlier years of schooling were worse than none at all when you saw how it looked on paper. He wanted to go to college as badly as she wanted to play music.

  The woods were now full of mosquitoes leaving knots the size of grapes on their skin, so they traded the woods for long drives in the air-conditioned car. When traffic was light they parked on small service roads along Highway 217 and groped in a clumsy frenzy, kissing until their lips were red and tender. One time they went to Disney World and couldn’t stop kissing, even with families swarming in packs and galloping costumed characters in between. They made fun of people standing in lines, though they stood in a few themselves, indoors where it was cool and dark and they could rub against each other unnoticed in the crowd. They rode the Pirates of the Caribbean twice. The line was long and so was the ride and they kissed until Annie thought she would burst with longing.

  When they came out the second time, a father was bent over jerking the arm of his blond-headed son near the exit. The boy’s orange push-pop melted down his arm as he held it up into the sun, away from his father. “I’m sick and tired of this bullshit,” the man growled through his teeth. Then he got down in the boy’s face. “I should have never brought you here in the first place, you little shit.”

  Everyone stopped to stare. A clean-cut man with four kids scattered around his legs stepped forward and gently told the man to take it easy. Joshua squeezed Annie’s hand. His back stiffened, and his free hand slowly curled into a fist. The angry father told the man to mind his own business and dragged his son away by the hand. The crowd dissolved, but the agonized expression on Joshua’s face remained.

  The ride home was quiet. Joshua asked if she wouldn’t mind leaving the radio off, and Annie rode with her head against the window. It wasn’t until they reached the driveway that she sat up and quickly caught her breath to speak.

  Uncle Calder’s truck was parked in a crooked skid near the porch. He hadn’t been to their house in years. Annie immediately thought the worst. Something terrible had happened to her mother.

  She found Uncle Calder standing with his back pressed into her mother’s closed bedroom door, his chin dropped, his chest heaving with anger and tears. When he looked up he cried even harder at how Annie had grown. “I wouldn’t have recognized you on the street,” he said, and slid to the floor where he wept some more. It was clear he’d been drinking.

  Calder crouched next to him. “There’s some fresh coffee in the kitchen. Why don’t we go in there and have a cup?”

  “I just want her back,” Uncle Calder said. He said it again, and then he screamed until his face grew purple. “He’s been gone for four fucking years, Miriam!” He hammered his fist into the door.

  “What’s going on?” Annie shouted. Joshua took hold of her hand, a fresh wave of anguish in his eyes. “Do you want me to go?” he whispered.

  “No. Please stay.”

  Her mother wasn’t saying anything from inside the bedroom.

  “Mom?” Annie yelled.

  “Go away. All of you!” she said.

  Calder took Annie by the elbow and motioned for Joshua to follow him into the kitchen.

  They stood around the table for a moment until Calder finally spoke through all the blinking.

  “He’s in love with her,” he whispered. “It’s not just because he’s drunk. He told her there had been nothing wrong with loving two men at the same time. He said Kearney would have wanted them to be happy.”

  Annie took a seat at the table. The weight of her hips sank into the wood. Joshua slid into the chair next to her. Uncle Calder continued to sob down the hall. “Please, Miriam,” h
e cried. “It’s not fair. Stop punishing me like this. We’ve all been punished enough.”

  “My God,” Annie said, looking at Calder. His eyes skipped between her and Joshua.

  “They had an affair,” Calder said.

  Annie covered her eyes. Joshua rubbed her back.

  “Before Mom locked herself in her room she screamed at him to go away. She said it was all their fault that Daddy was gone. She called it punishment for doing what they did behind his back.”

  Annie’s mouth had fallen open. She closed it, waited for him to finish.

  “From the way they were talking it must have gone on the entire time she was married to Daddy.”

  Annie stood without thinking, without any real awareness of what she was doing, only of the heat burning in her hands and eyes. She ran down the hall and banged on her mother’s door above Uncle Calder’s head. She tried the knob but it was locked. “Open the door!” she screamed. Uncle Calder wept with his head down. He looked up and said, “No, squirt. Please. Leave her alone.”

  Her mother wailed the same way she’d done the day Annie’s father died.

  Annie finally understood why her mother hadn’t wanted Uncle Calder in their house. “Why did you come here? Get out!” Annie screamed. “Get out of our house.”

  Joshua and Calder froze in the hall behind her. Only Calder’s eyes blinked.

  Uncle Calder clambered to his feet and stumbled past the boys. He patted Calder’s shoulder and Calder laid his hand atop his uncle’s as he passed.

  “He can’t drive home like that,” Joshua said.

  “He’s not staying here,” Annie said.

  “I can give him a ride.”

  Annie nodded, but she was already back to thinking of Joshua leaving her in the fall, and in that moment she didn’t want him near her, she didn’t want to be so attached. She closed herself up in the bathroom, put the toilet seat down, and sat there, numb.

  Then all the feelings caught up with her at once. She screamed into a bath towel that clearly needed to be washed. The whole bathroom needed to be cleaned. She could smell the mold from the tub as she choked back tears.

  Calder rapped lightly on the door and came in and sat on the edge of the tub, facing her. They stared at the pink floor mat, brown from their dusty summer feet.

  “Joshua took him home,” Calder finally said. “I told him I’d stay here with you.”

  Annie nodded at the mat. She was pleased that Calder and Joshua got along. They seemed to genuinely like one another, and as she sat there thinking about that she felt a little better knowing how far people could come, how much they could change for the better.

  Her mother never did come out of her room.

  Calder and Annie waited for Joshua in the steely light of the television set. Back-to-back episodes of M.A.S.H. flickered into the otherwise murky den.

  When he finally returned he appeared exhausted, emotionally and physically, looking around the kitchen as if for his bearings. He still had to drive two hours to get home.

  All the feelings she’d had of non-attachment disappeared. She threw her arms around his neck and kissed him, something she’d never done in front of Calder. From the corner of her eye she saw Calder turn away. She stepped back from Joshua. “How’d it go?”

  “I helped him to his bed and took off his shoes. He was out by the time I shut the door. Does he always drink like that?”

  Annie and Calder looked at one another. They didn’t know. They hadn’t the slightest idea about anything.

  Weeks later their mother announced that they were going to start visiting Uncle Calder on the weekends, the same way she’d announced they had to go to church years before. And just like church, only Annie and Calder would be doing the visiting. It was as if her mother and uncle had just gotten divorced.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  They rustle awkwardly into their clothes.

  “Still snowing,” Owen says.

  “Yes.” Annie closes the final button on her blouse. She shakes her hair behind her shoulders and scours the floor for her hair band.

  They end up at the kitchen table, a splotch of red still visible on Owen’s cheek.

  He opens his mouth and scratches his whiskers. He slides his hand across the table toward her then pulls back. Annie crosses her arms and makes a point of saying nothing. She will wait until he fills the silence with his version of the truth.

  He rises from the table and starts another pot of coffee. “Do you mind?”

  “Not at all.”

  He waits at the counter, watching the snow through the kitchen window. Annie watches too. The live oak appears drawn inside all the white. The deep brown lines of bark like shadows, as if the snow-covered branches were the living thing.

  When the coffee is done Owen fills a cup and slides it toward Annie.

  “I don’t know if I can stay,” he says, and the air itself seems to break in two.

  Annie’s throat feels brittle. She’s overcome with a sudden thirst. She stops herself from swallowing the hot coffee in gulps. “Yes, well. No one asked you to.”

  “That’s true, I just thought—”

  “What? You thought what?”

  “Annie.”

  “Say it.”

  “I’m about to become a father.”

  The room turns into a kind of melting fun house, the tree lights swirling in a liquidy stream in the corner of one eye, the white tree coiling upward in the other, until she blinks away the moisture gathering against her will. For a moment she’s paralyzed, even her mouth, because there’s plenty to say to this, a million possibilities to choose from, but not one of them forms a word.

  “I’m sorry,” he says, and it isn’t until he lets go of her arm that she realizes he was touching her.

  Something has died in the center of her, hollowed out and blown away like powdery chalk. She starts to say his name but can’t. It’s no longer in the place she keeps it. She looks intently into his eyes, trying to imagine the two of them in the future. It’s possible to get past this. They could make this work. She will be a stepmother and together they’ll help raise this child, not unlike the one they might have raised of their own. But she cannot see any of it.

  “Congratulations,” she hears her voice say. “You must be thrilled.”

  “I tried to tell you earlier. It’s complicated. I didn’t plan this.” He puts his hands on his hips and sighs as if he’s about to tackle a big project. “This isn’t easy. I mean, a baby, a girl, she doesn’t deserve—”

  “A girl.”

  “Tess said she was on the pill. Maybe she was. Those things happen.”

  “Yes.”

  “The truth is I always imagined it happening with you and I just, I have such mixed feelings.”

  “You need to go home.”

  “Annie.”

  “I’ll get the security guys to pick up a can of gas for you. I’ll make you a sandwich for the trip.”

  “Please. Just wait.”

  “I want you out of here.”

  “I understand. I really do.”

  “You have no idea. You can’t possibly understand.”

  “Annie, it’s me. Come on. Let’s talk this through.” He slides his hand across the table for her to take. She doesn’t even look at it.

  “When is your baby due?”

  He withdraws his hand, takes a deep breath, and coughs into his fist. His eyes burn into hers. “About two weeks.”

  She calculates months, allowing the truth to slowly dawn on her. “So, not only were you fucking her for three months before you left me, but the woman who is now your wife could go into labor at any moment and you’re hundreds of miles away fucking me.”

  “I know it looks bad,” His fists slide across the table toward her. “It looks completely wrong. But you’ve got to believe me when I tell you that I love you. I don’t love Tess, I never did, I just—”

  “Couldn’t pass up a good fuck?”

  “It wasn’t that.”

&n
bsp; “Were there others?”

  “Please.”

  “Tell me.”

  “No!”

  “Fuck you.”

  “Come on, Annie.”

  “Christmas is tomorrow. You’re such a shit.”

  “It’s not as simple as that.”

  “You need to leave.”

  “Just let me explain about Tess. It was a stupid affair, I admit. But I was going to stop seeing her. She actually made me realize what I had with you, and I was about to tell her it was over when she told me she was pregnant.”

  “Oh, that’s such a cliché, Owen. Really. Come on.”

  “It’s true.”

  “So why are you here? What the hell am I supposed to do with the mess you’ve dragged in here? Do you have any idea how ruined I was before you added this on top of everything else? You left me a goddamn letter!”

  He raises his hand to explain at the same rate the blood of embarrassment flushes his face. The mark of her hand fades in all the red.

  She cuts him off. “Did it ever occur to you that staying away at this point would have been the best thing? I was getting over you, Owen. I really was. As hard as it’s been, I felt the heartache in my chest beginning to lift, and now you show up like you’ve got some right to me. Some right to pile it all back on. Did you think I’ve been doing nothing but waiting for you to come home?”

  Of course she’s been doing exactly that, and he senses it; surely he must sense that he has her exactly where he wants her.

  She jumps up and hurls her coffee cup through the living room at the tree. Coffee trails her arm and across the table. It trails the floor and into the lights. It splashes the wooden ornaments and she doesn’t care that he was just a boy when he made them.

  “Get out of here.”

  Owen slowly rises from his chair. “Annie. I don’t want to go. Please. Just hear me out.”

  “Does your wife have this number?”

  “What?”

  “Did you give her my number?”

  “No. Why?”

  “She can’t even call if she needs you?”

  “I didn’t think—”