If it were not for me finally giving him that first come on, he might never have asked me out again. We might never have known each other the way we did that first summer. But I said it, I realized, out of an earnest response, a feeling beating its way out of my fossilized emotions.
When the symphony ended, the lights came up. I put on my own coat, walking two feet ahead of Harrison. “If you don’t mind, I think I’ll grab some deli food outside and take it back to my room, call it a night.” I expected to be hit over the head with a Coke bottle.
“I always know how to charm a woman,” he said, sarcastic but still self-abasing—so much so that I felt guilty bailing on him.
I waited up for him. “It isn’t you,” I said. “I’m on hold for the time being.”
“I could get us a room tonight.” Before I could say “no,” he said, “I mean, a place where you can talk.”
Of course, talk. Max had said, “Just talk.” “Talk” is what men say when they mean “sex.”
“Talk all night, if you want. I’ll order up a coffee service. I can tell you need a friend. Just please don’t go.” Harrison’s eyes had that effect to which Delia had alluded.
A symphony lobby employee wearing a black suit sold CDs for the pianist but also magazines, packages of nuts, cans of soda, and future concert calendars. I bought a CD along with a tin of mints.
“Let me pay for it,” said Harrison. “Then let’s find a quiet place. I know you’ve got something on your mind. I listen pretty good.”
I laid down the money. Max taught me a thing or two about resistance. “I’m an idiot, and I can prove it, Harrison. But the last thing I need is to spill my guts to you.” Harrison seemed like a sincere man. I wasn’t judging him. But poring over the past with a man I did not know had already cost me a slightly bruised marriage. “If you could go for the car,” I said. “I’ll get the deli food. You want a sandwich?”
His countenance clouded. “I’ll take you back to your place. We could have made a perfect memory, you know.”
“I’ve got memories,” I said. “None perfect.”
The air was stiff in Harrison’s car. The dropping temperature caused a mist to form inside his window glass. He grabbed a tissue and wiped the windshield in angry swipes, back and forth, squeaking against the glass as he muttered.
“If you’re mad, you should be,” I said.
“Don’t make it easier, Gaylen. I don’t need to analyze this. It was a mistake.”
“I don’t need another relationship in a hurry,” I said.
“I did want to talk all night, in spite of what you believe,” he said.
“If I say I believe you, it won’t change anything.” I was feeling guilty for accepting the date. “I know better, but when has that ever stopped me?”
He tucked the wet tissue beside his seat. “You are right about me.” I didn’t know what he meant.
“I’m a jerk, and even if I thought you would spend the night talking, I’d hope for more. I caused my own marriage to fail.”
“Me too.”
“She caught me fooling around.”
“Caught you?” I said it so that I sounded shocked.
“Walked in on me with someone else in the middle of the day.”
“I can’t imagine.” And I couldn’t.
He must have been overcome with a need to confess. “I don’t know why I did it. Racing is like catnip to some women. But even then, it was like I was watching outside myself, standing outside a window yelling at myself to stop.”
“I know that feeling.” I did. It made me hate myself. I felt dirty, finally wallowing in the gutter that swallows up all Syler women.
“You do?”
I fell quiet.
“Why’d your husband leave?”
I said, “You don’t have to share the top ten dirty secrets of NASCAR drivers, Harrison.” I unwrapped the CD and slid it into his console. It was mostly piano, lots of runs and annoying staccato, so much so that he hit the eject button.
“Confessions are best saved for the person you offend,” I said.
“I wish you’d stay,” he said quietly.
“I still love my husband,” I said. “You can’t get mad about that or take it personally.”
“I could be him tonight.”
“You’d settle for that?”
“If you come over to my side, you won’t go back to begging. I wouldn’t make you beg.” He rubbed my arm. I touched his hand. It felt warm and foreign. The body hair on his hand was blond, like electrically fired wires in the gloss of passing lights. He slowed the car, pulling down a side road. He stopped at a traffic light. There were no cars coming or going, so he pulled the stick shift into park. He leaned across the seat and kissed me. He did not kiss like Max. He was large where Max was small and sinewy. I was swallowed up in Harrison. When his arms came around me, I felt like a size two. Braden worried over my size and what I ate. Harrison said, “You feel good next to me.”
“You too.”
He sat back as if he had gotten an idea. “Have you ever tasted liquid chocolate?”
“I’ve heard of it,” I said. It was odd of him to ask.
“I know a place that makes it.”
I couldn’t help but laugh at his cliche overtures.
“Gaylen. I’m not feeding you a line. I never met a girl like you. Think about it. We both live in North Carolina. But here we are in Houston, together. It’s meant to be.”
We kissed again, and I was relaxing.
“There’s this hotel that I’ve heard about. They will send liquid chocolate up to your room with a plate of cheeses. We could order a movie, see if we like liquid chocolate.” He kissed the side of my face. “It would be the first thing we try together.” The smell of his sweat was filling up the car.
“I can’t,” I said.
Harrison had had his fill of me. He started the car and drove me back to the La Quinta. I got out onto the landing in front of the office. Christmas lights blinked across the roof of the La Quinta. They were blue and matched the moon. Because there are no mountains in Houston, the city unfolded in all directions like a kids’ game board, while the moon seemed to hover over all of the lights. Inside the lobby, the old hotel attendant played a Perry Como CD that filtered out through an outside speaker. Amity used to love Perry Como, or I wouldn’t have known about him.
Harrison told me good night. No kiss good-bye, though. I went to the room. Delia wasn’t back yet. I turned up the heat and from a packaged mix made instant hot chocolate in the minipot. There was an old movie on TV. I fell asleep as the credits rolled.
Delia woke me up at two in the morning. I could smell her tobacco and beer. “I got to tell you something, Gaylen.”
I slipped out of my clothes and put on a T-shirt and flannel pants. She dropped her boots one at a time on the floor. She was obviously happy. Then she pulled my phone from her purse. “I forgot to give this back,” she said. “But Tim called. He’s being deployed to Kuwait.”
I wasn’t fully awake yet. “He can’t. Meredith needs him.”
“He said she was holding up. But he is leaving in the morning.” She looked at the clock on the nightstand. “In four hours.”
I slid down between the sheets. “Tim can’t go. He’s the only goodness left in the world,” I said.
“Not the only one. That’s what I wanted to tell you,” she said.
“Delia, what’s more important than Tim going to Kuwait?”
“Avery. I’ve fallen for him, Gaylen.”
“You haven’t, Delia. It’s a one-night stand.”
“I’ve never felt like that.” She whispered as if Mother were in the next room. “We made love in the museum.”
“How is that possible?”
“Avery’s got a friend who has a pass key for special guests who want to tour t
he museum after hours. It’s on account of Harrison and all his connections.”
“Delia, he was playing you. They had it planned. The symphony, museum privileges.”
“Avery said he never met a girl like me.”
“That’s probably true, Delia. But he and Harrison do this all the time. Don’t you know about men?”
She thought it was funny that I was giving her advice about men.
“He let me test-drive his friend Shawn’s Miata. I loved it, and he said he’d get Shawn to give me a good deal. Shawn owes him. Then he drove us to the museum. I was laughing. The lights were out. Then he drove us to a back door he called a special entry. I followed him inside. I mean, I’ve never been inside a museum let alone inside one after dark. I felt like a burglar in a mansion.” Delia said several times, “It was such a rush.” She lay across her bed and in a low confessional whisper, told me, “He took me into this room of paintings. He said there was this man who had a lover named Helga. He was a famous painter and his family didn’t know about her until they found like a whole basement full of paintings, all of them of her. Avery turned on a light, and there they were.”
“What?”
“This whole room was full of Helga, and she wasn’t wearing anything. So he asked me to be his Helga. I didn’t have no self-control after that. Who would for heaven’s sake? He stripped me down and next thing you know we’re making love right under a picture of naked Helga. He told me that when I got back to North Carolina, he was going to buy me a picture just like that for my house.”
“Did you tell him about the money?”
“I told him I’d buy him anything he wants, but what else could I say? I never made love like that. It was true passion, Gaylen.” She slipped down under her linens, her fingers pulling at the long strands of dark hair like a girl spinning flax.
I turned off the light.
Delia kept sighing and then laughing. I fell asleep hearing her laugh and whisper Avery’s name.
Avery’s friend Shawn showed up with the used car right about the time we were coming down the stairs for breakfast. Avery did not lie about Shawn selling us his car. He parked the blue Miata right out from the landing. Delia had been driving my father’s old Ford since Lee sold her car to pay off a gambling debt. She wanted the Miata like she had never wanted anything. “This is exactly the car I’ve dreamed about,” she said, even though she had never mentioned owning one.
“Avery told me to cut you two girls a deal,” said Shawn. “Eight thou, but Avery says you have to drive it to see him in Mooresville.”
I had to go and find a bank and come back with the money. Delia was sitting in the driver’s seat flirting with Shawn.
I asked, “Where is Avery this morning?”
“He’s downtown with his boss, Harrison. He and his wife are visiting Harrison’s family. They brought Avery along because Harrison’s wife has been trying to fix him up with her sister,” said Shawn.
Delia blanched.
“Don’t you worry,” he said to Delia.
“Harrison’s wife wants her sister to date Avery?” I asked.
“They’re close like that, but you two are sisters. I’m sure you understand sisterhood. Maura Harrison has always said she wanted Avery in her family. She’s used to getting her way.”
“Harrison must agree with her,” I said, hoping Delia could keep a lid on her temper. “What with Avery working for him and all.”
Her cheeks were flushed. She was tapping the steering wheel and looking over her shoulder at me, blinking.
“I shouldn’t have said that. I don’t know Harrison too well. Avery says they been married so long they’re starting to look alike,” said Shawn.
I signed the bill of sale, and Shawn told me that since I had bought the Miata from an individual, Texas laws allowed me to drive temporarily without tags for thirty days.
“You say you don’t know Harrison too well?” I asked.
“I’ve been to parties at his parents’ house. The Harrison’s throw big parties.”
“The last name is Harrison?” I asked, curling up at the toes. “What is his first name?”
“Payne. He’s not big in racing yet, not like some of the other race car drivers. That’s probably why you haven’t heard of him. But he’s talented.”
“I’ve heard he plays the violin,” I said, hoping I had not been completely duped.
“Ha! I doubt it. His family made their money in real estate. Payne and his brother were groomed for business. Stories circulate that his daddy sold off part of his grandfather’s land just to help Payne finance his race car hobby.” He took the keys off his key ring and gave them to Delia. “Payne Harrison knows how to play all the games to get where he’s going.”
I packed up our suitcases and climbed in next to Delia. She drove away without saying good-bye to Shawn. We were nearly to Dallas before she said, “Avery told me he loved me.” She batted back tears and gripped the wheel, staring ahead at the southwest highway.
15
NOLEEN ANSWERED the phone, but right after she started talking, Uncle Jackson picked up. They talked back and forth to each other a lot like Amity and Malcolm did. “Jackson, its Gaylen,” she said, while Jackson talked over her saying, “Let the girl talk, Noleen. Go ahead, Gaylen.”
“I’m Gaylen Syler-Boatwright. My father was James,” I said.
Jackson offered his condolences.
“You say you girls are in Dallas?” asked Noleen.
“Passing through thereabouts,” I said.
“You ought to stop over in Garland. Let me cook you girls a meal,” she said.
I accepted, and Jackson gave me directions to the house in Garland. Delia drove into a rest stop. “You take us into the city, Gaylen. City driving makes me too nervous, and I need a pit stop anyway.” She disappeared into the vending overhang.
The rest stop advertised Dallas maps and sights. I locked up the car and went inside. Tourist claptrap cluttered the aisles, advertising cans of road kill, Lone Star ink pens and flags, and toggle-head dolls wearing Dallas Cowboys jerseys.
Royal Crown Cola bottles chilled inside shiny buckets of ice. I bought two along with peanuts and a pair of white sunglasses that looked exactly like a pair worn by Marilyn Monroe.
Delia pressed her face against the glass. I waved her inside. “I met a truck driver says we’re not far from Garland. He’s a good-looking trucker,” she said.
“Delia, don’t,” I said. “For the rest of the trip, no more men.”
“He said he’d buy us supper in Garland.”
“Noleen’s making supper. You’ll offend her,” I said.
Delia picked up an ice-cream sandwich, and we checked out. She handed me the keys. “Want to drive?”
By the time we got onto the interstate, Delia finished off the RC and the ice-cream sandwich. “Your phone’s ringing,” she said. She fished it out of my pocketbook. After several “uh-huh’s,” she handed me the phone. “It’s Truman’s counselor from Angola.”
The counselor called himself Buddy Fortune. His voice was soft as a woman’s, like a tenor who could be a soprano. I figured that he would not be allowed to answer many questions about Truman. But I was wrong.
“I’m Truman’s sister, Gaylen Boatwright.”
“He listed you as his next-of-kin, Mrs. Boatwright. I apologize for taking so long to answer your call. I’ve been on a family vacation. What could I do for you?”
“I understand my brother is in prison for stealing cars.”
“That’s not correct.” His tone grew a shade harsh.
“Can you tell me, that is, are you allowed to tell me what he’s in for?” I asked.
“Thirteen counts of child molestation, nine counts of sodomy against a minor.”
Traffic piled up behind me. When I hit the brake, the driver of the Beetle directly
behind me came down on the horn. Delia tensed and clasped her seat belt into place.
I repeated Truman’s offenses for Delia’s sake.
“That is correct,” said Fortune.
A tightness in my chest caused me to cough. “How long has Truman been in prison?” I asked.
“Thirteen years.”
“How much longer in prison, Mr. Fortune?”
“Eleven more years without probation.”
“Can I obtain court records?” I asked.
“All you want. It’s a matter of public record,” he said. “Just call the parish clerk in Louisiana in charge of criminal records.”
Delia turned around in her seat, pulling an invisible horn to tease a trucker who blasted back at her.
I ended the call. “Delia, get back in your seat belt. Stop attracting attention. You are wanted for questioning. State police get a good look at you and pull us over, I’m not helping you another day.”
She slid back into her seat. “Truman molested,” she said. “All that time Mama said he was a car thief.”
“We don’t know that wasn’t true too,” I said.
“Mama lied all those years and never told us.”
A car cut me off, and I came down on the horn. I kept hitting the horn long after it drove out of sight.
Delia grabbed my wrist, yelling for me to stop. “Gaylen, you done lost it. Stop ‘fore you kill us!”
I could see my mother standing in the doorway of the kitchen. The morning sun came up behind her making her look like a saint in one of Aunt Amity’s paintings. I had asked her about Truman, and she answered with a hint of pepper in her voice, “That boy did things that are unspeakable. I’ll take it to my grave, the things he did.” Just like that her face turned gray, wrinkled, her hair turning coarse and silver. Little pieces of her were fragmented, blowing away, out of my grasp until there was nothing left but dust sifting in the sun.
“I can drive, Gaylen. Pull over, why don’t you?”
Painted Dresses Page 19
