That left Augustus, who at first pretended he wasn’t invested in the situation, but the façade crumbled fast when Madeline didn’t return. She’d always returned, and now she’d seemingly fallen off the map of the world. Whatever residual anger lived in him, for reasons he’d never explained to any of them, and Colleen suspected never would, he shrugged it off now.
One night, Augustus was out looking for Madeline and Evangeline had snuck off to be with him. Irish Colleen, who despite the Irish in her rarely found herself too far in the cups, nursed a tumbler of whiskey. An old photo of August out at the lake sat in her lap. She caressed it, pausing here and there to wipe her tears.
“Mama?”
“Do you know I was raised in a single bedroom shotgun cottage with seven siblings? Our mother gave us the bedroom, though it wasn’t much of anything. She slept on the couch when she wasn’t working one of three jobs.”
Colleen had heard this story so many times she could finish her mother’s sentences, but said nothing.
“There was nothing she wouldn’t give for her children, even when she had nothing to give.” She finished off her amber drink. Her unsteady hand reached for the bottle without looking up, and Colleen took the opportunity to slide it out of her reach.
“Maddy dared say I married your father for the wrong reasons,” she continued. Her words had a slurred edge, but she wasn’t so drunk Colleen would have to devise a way to get her up to her bed safely. “She had no idea how I loved Eliza!”
The name of August’s first wife was rarely spoken in the house. August met her in college up north and married her for love, in a time when Deschanels were still arranging marriages for their advantage. He loved her through her barrenness, despite the pressure to have an heir, and he loved her until she breathed her last after a nasty dance with cancer. And just as no one mentioned Eliza, no one dared suggest that the marriage between August and Irish Colleen, barely a month after Eliza was cold in the grave, was anything less than love as well.
But everyone knew better just the same.
August married once for love and his heart got broken. When he married again, it was duty driving him. He didn’t have the heart to go find love again, and so he looked at what was right in front of him. And August, a man who had first followed his heart, became a man who understood his duty, and in his middle age became the father of seven children by a woman who had nursed the only woman he’d ever loved.
“People say a lot of things when they’re hurting, Mama,” Colleen offered, stopping short of taking a side. While she fancied herself a maternal figure in the household, they all knew Irish Colleen was harder on Madeline than any of them. Madeline had been August’s darling. Of all of them, she was the one he chose to nurture, perhaps believing she had it the hardest as the one absorbing the pain of others. Or maybe because she looked just like him. Whatever his reasons, Madeline was punished for this special attention now.
“Was your father in love with me?” She tossed back a liquid-less sip with a frown and then set the glass aside altogether. “Only God can say. He loved me in the language I was raised in, and that was all I could have ever asked of him. He provided.”
“We’ll find her,” Colleen said. Where was Charles? He was better at this, when their mother was in the type of mood where whimsy trumped her usual pragmatism. “Augustus will find her, and if he can’t, Aunt Ophelia will know what to do. She knows the abilities of every last one of us, and surely there’s someone in the family who can find her.”
“Ophelia? That old coot?” Irish Colleen belted out a grating laugh. “I tolerate her because it’s what August would want. If that woman wasn’t a Deschanel, she’d be begging for change outside Tulane Stadium.”
A wave of anger swept over Colleen, but she channeled it to her hands, which she curled into balls. “That’s not true. You don’t mean that, either. You’re upset about Maddy.”
“Upset?” Irish Colleen rolled her head back against the plush couch pillow. “Oh my dear, she’s doing us all a favor! One less mouth to feed! One less bloody witch to worry about!”
Colleen left her mother in a sputtering, drunken fit of tears and laughter.
* * *
Rory’s heartbeat was the only sound in the dark bedroom. She rode the rise and fall of his chest as he surrendered to his dreamless sleep. She sensed nothing in him, no turmoil, no strain or stress to interrupt his rest. Certainly no mother like hers, armed with words aimed right for the heart.
Sleep wasn’t in the cards for Colleen that night. This wasn’t an especial departure from most nights, where she subsisted on less than five or six hours sustainably, but her family’s angst had begun to catch up to her, like compound interest. Not one of them was in a good place, and Colleen felt the sting of that like a personal failure.
Colleen carefully slipped out of Rory’s embrace, settling his bare arm across his chest. She sneaked from the room on tiptoes and closed the door with a light click.
At this late hour, there’d be no one else in the bathroom she shared with her sisters, but she locked it behind her anyway. Normally the lack of personal boundaries wasn’t a big deal, but tonight she needed to be alone. Not to be in her own head, but to be out of it. To clear it.
Tomorrow, she’d go see Aunt Ophelia. No matter what Irish Colleen thought of her, Colleen knew her to be the wisest woman in this family. Hell, the wisest woman she’d ever met. As the scalding hot water passed over Colleen’s skin, turning her flesh an angry red, she knew this was the answer. Asking for help wasn’t a failure, not when the alternative was worse.
Ophelia would know.
She would know what to do about Madeline. About Charles. About Maureen. About Elizabeth. About Augustus. Even Evangeline, who’d flown under the radar lately, but surely must be struggling, too. Of all of them, Colleen wore her sister Evangeline’s aloofness as a deeply personal failure, knowing full well that if her other siblings didn’t need her so much, she and Evangeline would still be as close as ever.
Colleen lowered herself to the small seat in the corner of the shower. She pressed her face against the porcelain tile and closed her eyes, clearing her mind entirely, as Aunt Ophelia had taught her.
* * *
The exercise in relaxation worked. When Colleen returned to the room, her eyelids were drooping and a lazy softness had passed over her. Yes, she could sleep now, even if only for a few hours.
When she slipped into the room, soft noises gave her pause. Kissing sounds and… moaning. A thin swath of moonlight crossed the room, but it wasn’t enough to cut through the dark and reveal the source of the shapes moving in the corner.
Colleen flipped the light switch. She stumbled back into the wall. There was no way she was seeing what she was seeing, and yet…
Evangeline straddled Rory. She was bent forward over him, her wild hair sprayed out over her naked back, like so many corkscrews.
Rory made a series of confused sounds, flailing about the bed. He looked up at Evangeline and tossed her to the side, gaping in horror as he did, scrambling back against the headboard and to the edge of the bed.
“What the…” His hands were an erratic mess as they traveled over his skin for answers. “I didn’t know… how the hell…”
Colleen fought to keep her knees from buckling. She understood without Rory needing to explain, though she didn’t stop him from his desperate attempts to try. She knew what a heavy sleeper he was. What Evangeline had done.
Evangeline pulled her nightshirt against her skin. Her face was damp with tears. “I tried to tell you… I tried to tell you, Colleen, that I needed you.”
“Get out of my room.”
“You wouldn’t listen. I didn’t know how to get your attention, and then Maddy wanted me to go with her, and I almost did, but then I tried… again to tell you, and you had more important things than me. You always do now.”
Colleen’s eyes trembled in their sockets. Her breaths came short and shallow, and it was a miracle, she t
hought, that they were coming at all, really. She couldn’t look at either of them, not even Rory who was just the witless dupe.
“And I was wrong, but now I need you out of my room, Evangeline. I need you out of my room before I cross this carpet and strangle the life from your body.”
Evangeline fought the tangle of blankets as she stumbled from the bed. Hysterical sobs racked her body. “I only kissed him. I knew he’d think it was you. I only kissed him, Colleen.”
Colleen looked at her, then, finally, with ice in her heart. “Bully for you, because you just destroyed our relationship with only a kiss.”
“Please, Colleen!”
“Out of here, now!”
Evangeline fled the room in tears, dropping her nightgown as she did. When she reached down to grab it, Colleen slammed the door in her face.
She was alone with Rory.
“Colleen, I swear to you—”
“No need,” she replied. “I know what happened.”
His whole body wilted with heavy relief. “Oh thank God. Jesus. Why did she do that?’
“I need you to go, Rory.”
“What? Leena, that wasn’t—”
“I’m not mad at you.” Colleen needed to sit, and soon, or her body would do it for her. All the blood had drained from her extremities. The stars in her eyes would come next. “But I need you to leave.”
He came to her and wrapped her in his warms. She wiggled out. “Colleen, I don’t understand.”
“I just can’t do this right now.”
“What?”
“This. Us.”
Rory’s hands fell back to his sides. Colleen couldn’t look at him. Couldn’t see in his eyes what she felt in his deflated energy. “Us?”
“I love you,” she said, the first time she’d spoken the words first, and not out of duty to respond. “But I’m flailing, Rory. Flailing and failing. Evangeline is right. I wasn’t there, and I didn’t listen. And she’s not the only one. I’ve done it to all of them.”
“That’s not fair to you.” He crossed his arms over his chest, and in that moment, they were friends again, the second boundary closed. “I have never known anyone who does more for their siblings than you. No one. My brother Colin is a good guy, but do you think he loses sleep over me? Or Patrick, or Chelsea? There’s love and then there’s you. You can’t take it all, Colleen. We aren’t built for it.”
“Maybe most aren’t,” she agreed. “Maybe even me. But asking me not to try is asking me not to be who I am. This is who I am, Rory. And not just today. I don’t need anyone to divine my future to know I’ll be leading this family one day. Not because I should, but because I’ll pick up the torch no one wants to carry.”
“That’s not fair.”
“Life isn’t fair.”
“I really do love you, Colleen. The real kind.”
She lowered her head and chanced a smile. “I know. And if I were anyone else, that would be enough.”
“But you’re not anyone else,” he said slowly. He reached for his shirt. Then his pants. “I’ve always known it. I just didn’t think…”
“Yeah.”
“Maybe when things slow down for your family… when they get better…”
Colleen brushed her lips briefly against his and handed him his jacket. “Yeah. Maybe.”
Minutes later, the heavy thud of the front door sounded across the house. Colleen sank to the floor and buried her scream in Evangeline’s forgotten nightgown.
* * *
Charles awoke to the fight between the sisters, first Colleen’s shouting, then the inevitable slamming of doors. When the front door opened and closed, he deduced it was over, one way or the other, and went to survey the damage.
Evangeline’s door was locked. Her sobs were loud on the other side, but Charles had no idea what to do with those, so he decided not to knock. She was alive. That was about all he was responsible for, anyway.
He didn’t dare knock on Colleen’s. He wasn’t ashamed to say his sister scared him, and he didn’t doubt at all that whatever he tried to say in comfort would be woefully inadequate, and that she’d be sure to let him know it.
Charles decided to return to his room, satisfied he’d at least checked on his siblings. When he turned, though, his baby sister stood at the end of the hall, illuminated by the moonlight streaming through the dormer window.
“Lizzy?” He approached her with caution. The uncle of her classmate had died in a construction accident earlier that day.
“Huck,” she whispered.
“It’s not your fault,” he said as he drew closer. “What happened. You know that, right? Predicting something can happen doesn’t mean you caused it.” When he reached her, she was drenched in sweat. His hands floated above her head and wet nightshift helplessly. He sighed. “We need to get you out of this thing.”
“You need to know something, Huck.”
“What’s that, chicken?” Charles ducked into her room and started rifling through drawers, one at a time. How women organized their clothing was a mystery beyond his understanding or interest.
“Mama is going to pay that girl.”
“What girl?” Aha! He reached in and found a blue gown. He tossed it to her and made a twirling motion with his finger. Put this on. We’ll both turn around.
She caught it but made no move to change. “Shelly.”
Charles froze. “What about her?”
“Mama will pay her, Huck, to get rid of that baby. But she won’t do it. She’ll have the baby anyway, and the baby will be a girl.”
His breath sank to his feet. He couldn’t have moved if upended by a bulldozer. “No, that’s not… Mama is paying her to take care of the problem.”
“Yes, but she won’t. You’re gonna have a daughter, Huck. A little girl. But you’ll never meet her as long as you live.”
“What…” Charles closed his eyes. “Why are you telling me this?”
“You deserve to know. Mama wants to control everything in our lives, but this time it won’t work. You deserve to know you’re gonna be a dad.”
“A dad.” The word didn’t sound real even said aloud. He started to ask her if she was sure, but what was the point? What Lizzy saw, happened. Always. This was the burden of being her.
Earlier that day, Irish Colleen had stopped by his room, to tell him it was done. I paid them handsomely. Way more than the procedure will cost. It’ll send that girl to college and hopefully straighten out her life before she tries to ruin another young man’s life.
A little girl. A child, who might have his eyes, or maybe his nose, or even the Deschanel chin. Who might laugh like he did, or approach life with the same gusto. A little girl. His little girl.
Elizabeth pulled the fresh nightgown to her chest. “I thought you should know. That’s all.”
Fifteen
The Measure of a Man
Someone asked Madeline what time it was. She hadn’t worn a watch in years, not since she put the little pink Timex her father gave her for her seventh birthday away in her memory box. She thought about telling this random stoner that she didn’t even know what day it was, let alone the time, but her view for the past week had come with a few lessons. The angle of the sun on the filthy mattress on the far side of the room offered at least a directional answer. No one used that mattress anymore. Not since someone had died on it.
“About dinnertime,” she answered. The junkie rolled over, satisfied.
It wasn’t just the makeshift sundial, though. Her stomach rumbled on cue. It always rumbled now, when she’d shrugged off her three square meals for whatever she could get her hands on. Someone usually sloughed in around noon with a basket from the local food bank, but the offering was random and inconsistent. One time all they had were a few cans of “meat,” bearing indistinct animal shapes as the only clue, and eighteen bags of the sandwich part of ice cream sandwiches.
She’d eaten her share, though.
Yesterday was like Thanksgiving in the drug
house, though. Someone had a brother, or maybe a sister, or maybe not even a relative at all, who worked for McDonald’s on Carondelet. Their connection had snuck them all the burgers that had sat past the allowed time, and she came in with a whole bag of them, beaming like Santa Claus with his sack of toys.
The bread was so hard it could have been used to play Frisbee, but it was the best thing Madeline had eaten in days.
Weeks.
It didn’t have to be this way. She could go home. Let the hot, clean shower wash away the filth of her failed field trip. Slip on clean clothes, pausing long enough to breathe in the fresh but cloying scent of her mother’s Dash laundry detergent. Hell, she’d even be grateful for Colleen’s infamous tuna noodle casserole. Maureen’s vacuous prattling might sound like Nancy Sinatra after the never-ending bray of police sirens. At some point, so many things that had once been relentless annoyances were tinged with an empty nostalgia.
But going home would be more than a failure. More than admitting her dream of traveling the open road, going from protest to protest, offering her time and heart was not as simple as she’d naively hoped.
It was the night to her day. The thin white line between the life holding her back and the life she was meant to lead. It was LSD versus the white light of making a difference.
Still…
Still.
Madeline closed her eyes as her body jerked forward with each thrust of the man riding her from behind. One hand dug into her hips as he grunted his satisfaction, cigarette dangling precariously over their thin mattress. He hadn’t used a rubber, despite her protests, and, come to think of it, hadn’t really checked in to see if she wanted this at all.
She didn’t. But, he’d given her an extra rock-hard cheeseburger, much to the drooling chagrin of all the other washed up, drug-addled inhabitants of the abandoned house on Tchoupitoulas, and lying quietly while he took his fill, while they all watched her with the sad eyes of those who knew, and would have done the same, was about the cost of it all. Would be the cost of it all as long as he had more stale hamburgers to share.
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