I calmed her as best I could. I nearly fell asleep with her talking into my ear until I heard the jail matron take the phone from her and hang it up. There was a distant ache, I admitted. But I fell asleep again. I could not fix Delia tonight.
20
NEW YEARS’ CAME and Braden joined me in packing up our belongings to be out of the apartment by the weekend. He had fallen from favored-son status with his father after their visit. He was more lost than I. While I had spent the past week dusting off my resume, he and his partner met on a daily basis to decide how the business would be divided up if they found a seller, but also how they would respond if it did not sell.
That left little time to discuss our floundering lives. The business’s bills that had piled up over the winter would consume what little profit Braden could rake in from his share.
Kimberly said very little to me when I dropped off my extra set of master keys. I only said, “I know what you think I don’t know. If you can live with yourself, then sleep soundly.”
“You deserve each other,” she said quietly.
That erased any doubt that Braden had broken off entirely with her. I knew what I might have said back in the fall before I had taken the road trip. But I was too exhausted to debate her.
Braden met me at the apartment door. “Joseph Fishman says that Delia will do time. Sophie Deals is irate and sounds very innocent and convincing.” He had been sleeping down at the hangar. His hair was shoved under a ball cap.
“How does Delia sound to him?” I asked, although I had a good idea already.
“She sounds emotional and defensive. Most of all guilty and deceitful,” he said.
“Im going to see her again Thursday. They won’t allow more than one visit a week.”
“Fishman wants you to drop by his office tomorrow.” Braden handed me the attorney’s business card. “He’ll want to discuss her attorney fees.”
“There goes her inheritance,” I said. “It’s exactly like Daddy said, that she would find a way to lose it all.” But I had imagined her money falling into slot machines at the Cherokee Casino or being invested in nail wraps or new pets bought off Craig’s List.
“I got my father to pay Fishman an advance.”
“Did you?” I asked. “You might have asked me.”
“I thought you’d be grateful,” he said.
“Braden, my father left Delia and me a quarter of a mil, divided between us.”
“It will take all of her half to pay Fishman.”
“Aren’t you surprised?”
“Your father squirreled away money for years. I knew.”
All of that time, I had not told him because I thought it would change his treatment of me for the wrong reasons. “So you’ve not tried to woo me back for the money, even though it might save the hangar?”
“I’m a lousy businessman, Gaylen. Why delay the inevitable?”
I made him a tuna sandwich, and we ate in the dining room overlooking the pool for the last time. We had painted the walls yellow our first weekend as a married couple. The walls had faded under the constant glare of the sunlight.
“You think you’ll like having a roommate again?” he asked me.
“I met her once,” I told him. “She’s a pharmacist, though. Not likely to stiff me for her half of the rent.”
“What’s that?” he asked, pointing to the last painted dress leaning against the wall.
“My Aunt Amity painted dresses and framed them. The dresses meant different things to different Syler women or women who knew us. That one was for a friend of my mother’s. I barely remember Effie. She had a tomcat of a temper like Mother.” The canvas was five and a half feet tall. The dress was blue and posed in a porch swing. “She had cancer back then. Mother saw to her for a while. But then they parted ways as friends. Mother never said why.” I slid it to the side, revealing my own painted dress. “This small dress was mine.”
“You were a shrimp.”
“I can’t keep the big piece. I’m taking it to Effie’s house this weekend. She’s still alive, but living now in Wilmington. But she didn’t know Mother had died.” I detected pain in her voice when we spoke over the phone. “Taking her this last painted dress may help.”
“There were more?”
“All delivered.”
“So that’s where you were all this time with Delia?”
“It was missional. Where did you think?”
“I thought you were running away from us.”
“I probably was.”
“Let’s break down the bed first,” he said.
I waited an hour in the visitor waiting room before I was allowed in to see Delia. I presented my identification to the captain, who then led me down a corridor to a room where inmates were given forty-five minutes to visit. The room smelled like chlorine mingled with the faint stench of mopped urine. It had been four days since I last visited Delia. She was more sedate than the first time.
“That attorney, he don’t give me much hope of getting out of here, Gaylen.” She was in a simpering mood and could not stop wringing her hands. She looked thinner than before her arrest. “Cant you get me a different attorney?”
“Fishman’s a decent attorney, Delia. I need to tell you that it’s going to take most of your inheritance to pay him.”
She screamed, and that brought the jail guard into the room.
I assured him that I could calm Delia. He took a seat behind her, nonetheless.
“They don’t know nothing about my trial or anything in this place. When I try to ask questions, all I get are nasty comments. These men are nasty in this place. That badge don’t mean nothing. They’re all pigs.”
“Delia, only your attorney can answer your questions. Don’t ask anyone for anything other than your phone call.”
“Then the food makes me want to throw up. And look at this prison getup. Orange. What’s the point of that anyway?”
“So that an escapee can be easily spotted.”
“I want out, Gaylen. I’m beginning to pace.”
“You’re good at making friends. Try getting to know someone.”
“They’re all crazy in here. Not like you.” She was not supposed to touch me after our initial hug. Her fingertips stopped short of mine. “I miss you.” She cried.
I consoled her by saying, “You do have a good attorney. I’m going to see him tomorrow and there’s hope that you’ll get off with a lighter sentence because you’ve committed no other serious crimes.”
She seemed intent on controlling herself.
“Other than mooning Deputy Bob, that is. I don’t think that counts as a serious threat.”
The guard laughed.
“Deputy Bob, he come to see me,” she said.
“That’s odd.”
“Not really. He said that he felt bad for me. He can come in anytime. Have you ever noticed that he has kind eyes?”
“Delia, do you know that without a man in your life, you still have worth?”
“He’s never been married. I used to think he was gay, but now I’m beginning to suspect he’s been waiting for me all along.”
“I put some money in your jail account.”
“There’s not much to buy. Cigarettes is all. I miss shopping with you. Tell me about Garland. Did you have fun with Jackson and Noleen?”
“They’ve invited us back. They’re keeping your Miata for you.”
“Precious angels! Whoever knew we had so much family that cared for us. Why you think Mama never got to know so much of our family?’
“She kept to herself.”
“That’s why I never want to be alone.”
“But you don’t have to take in every stray that comes down the road, Delia.” The talk went back and forth between us until our forty-five minutes had ended. I hugged her again.
I knew that Noleen might say that I was an emotional firefighter. I was learning, as she had suggested, that there were times to let people drop to the bottom of life. But other times, helping a friend in a time of need benefits the soul.
But first things needing to be first, I met the next morning with Delia’s attorney, a Jewish lawyer who was very grave about her case. “Is that an act?” he asked. “Or is she legitimately off-the-wall?”
“It’s not an act.”
“Then we’ve got a perfect insanity defense. You’d have to brace yourself as your sister is placed in an institution.”
“Where would she go?”
“There are state institutions. Mental health is a rat’s maze in this state.”
“Try to keep my sister out of prison.” It was the best I could do for her, and I could not imagine my father could have done any differently on her behalf. I paid Fishman the next advance.
I drove back to the apartment. Braden, realizing our Wilmington friends were not the types to move us, ordered a moving company to pack up the rest of our things. The apartment was empty except for a suitcase with my traveling clothes and toiletries. I opened the laptop and searched for a flight deal to Maine. Meredith had given me instructions on catching Tim’s flight from Maine to Colorado. I could leave the next morning and arrive three hours ahead of Tim.
I called Effie and explained that I could not bring her the painted dress until after Delia’s trial. I took my remaining belongings and locked up the apartment for the last time.
The landing was quiet. There was a biting wind. I had never been so happy to move, in spite of the fact that I had yet to assimilate a plan for what might come next. But I was leaving behind an old skin. The path was not clear, but clearly to move ahead had to be a good thing.
But I had been wrong before.
I left for Maine the next morning with a winter storm moving up the Gulf toward North Carolina. I packed for even colder weather. My flight left on time. The weather cleared crossing over Virginia. The pilot mentioned Virginia Beach, which caused all of the passengers to look out the windows. A cruise ship was in the bay, and several sailing yachts were anchored in the deeper waters. The young man next to me was talkative. He was a freckled teenager who had a fear of flying.
“You ever crash?” he asked.
“As a matter of fact, yes.”
“I knew it. I shouldn’t have come.”
“I was the pilot, though. I think you’re safe today.”
He relaxed, but reached over me and pulled down the window shade. “Didn’t it make you afraid to fly?”
“For the most part, yes.”
“But you got on anyway. That takes guts.”
“I’m needed in Maine.”
“I guess it was like a near-death experience.”
“No tunnels of light. But yes.”
“I saw a movie about a man who survived a crash,” said the young man. “It altered his personality. He, like, got screwed up. But in the end, he decided he wanted to live.”
“That makes sense.”
“So do you ever want to fly again?”
“I gave up my pilot’s license.”
“Are you, like, religious now? Did you find God?”
“I always believed.”
“Do you believe you were saved for a reason?”
“I do. I don’t know what that is yet.”
“Where are you going today?”
“My cousin was caught in the crossfire of a battle at the Iraq-Kuwait border. He’s coming home to the States. I’m flying to Maine to ride home with him.”
“That sounds like a purpose.”
“It’s a start.
The talk calmed him. He read a copy of Creative Loafing and then fell asleep. I asked the flight attendant checking seat belts to bring me a blanket. I draped it over the boy. The sun was coming up. I accepted hot coffee and a wrapped bagel from the attendant. I borrowed the boys newspaper. Creative Loafing was written for an eclectic readership. I read an article about tattoos. I thumbed to the last page of the piece to see how I might have Delia’s daisy removed from my shoulder. It made perfect sense that an all-inclusive article about tattoos would explain removal, but it didn’t.
There was a stopover at LaGuardia. I took lunch inside a deli and then walked the New York airport mall. A bookstore clerk was pushing a cart full of sale items to the store’s entry. I pillaged through and purchased a novel and a journal. Then I picked up a newspaper. A jeweler’s kiosk caught my eye. I stopped and selected a pair of earrings for Delia. I tucked them into my carry-on baggage and waited back at the departure gate until my flight arrived.
The newspaper reminded me of my father sitting at his breakfast, reading the small morning paper that came once a week. That reminded me of how my mother worked at Weyerhaeuser for a time and Daddy cooked me breakfast. I was five and wanted pancakes. My mother, had she been home, might have told me to eat cereal. But not knowing how to suddenly parent two daughters, he complied each morning like a short-order cook. He made them as best he could, but they were yellow and curled at the edges. I ate them out of sympathy for him. He was anxious when he set the plates in front of Delia and me. He had lost his job and was out of work for six months. I could sense anxiety in him, as if we girls might notice the misshapen pancakes and criticize him. So as I ate each bite, I made affirming comments, such as, “Good, good pancakes, Daddy. Best ever!” Then I would chew the rubbery bite, and Delia would scowl. But that feeling never left me, of wanting to help my father feel better about himself.
I read until the plane descended on the Portland landing strip. I located the information monitors. Tim’s flight would land in an hour right next to my landing gate. The pralines and crunch mix I had purchased for him in New Orleans were stuffed into my carry-on.
When the plane taxied into the gate, I stood at the portal. It was a large jumbo jet, and I expected it would take time to see him. But out he came first thing, pushed in a wheelchair by two pretty flight attendants who were doting on him.
He turned positively pale when he saw me, and then he cried and held open his arms. “Gaylen, Meredith didn’t tell me you’d be here.”
I threw my arms around him and held him until he could gain control.
One of the flight attendants said, “Looks like you’ve got your escort, sergeant. We’ll go now.”
The girls smiled at him and then headed across the aisle into the gift shop.
“Meredith was afraid you’d be alone. You have plenty of company it seems,” I said.
He laughed.
“You’ve been a long time from home. I guess you want a pub. There is one down the terminal a piece.”
“I promised Meredith no booze after we graduated college.”
“I wouldn’t tell her.”
“You were always a friend, Gaylen. I would like some food, though, anything but hospital food.”
I wheeled him down to the food court. He ordered seafood chowder and two hot dogs, a box of fries, and two doughnuts. “How is Delia? Staying out of trouble, I hope?”
“In jail in Wilmington.” I told him what happened that day out in front of her trailer. “I tried to help her, but I think I made matters worse.”
“If you loved her, then you did her good.”
I had not looked at it that way.
He took a pain pill with water. “There was this private that was in my unit. Said he had a mother who was a kleptomaniac. He felt terrible when our unit was called to Kuwait. It was the worst time t
o leave her, he said. She was on probation, and he had moved in with her to help her stay straight. But I told him that he couldn’t be around every minute to keep her from stealing. Delia’s going to get into trouble whether or not you are around. But maybe in her old age she’ll settle down. Even golden retrievers settle down, so why not humans? She’ll remember you loved her.”
“What’s in Kuwait anyway?”
“Sand and oil,” he said. “They even got a Starbucks there now. But it’s the way into Iraq now.”
“Do you want to tell me what happened?” I had been of the opinion that men coming home from war would talk about everything but the war. “If you don’t want to, then don’t. I don’t care.”
He pressed his palm into his kneecap and closed his eyes, like he was adjusting a bone or some such. He groaned faintly, but then he started talking. I must have been the first person he told his story to because it came spilling out of him like I’d hit a water main. “Some captain wanted a promotion. It was near to time for retirement, and he wanted a service medal and a bigger retirement check. Because he had never seen battle, he signed his unit out of Oklahoma up for active service. It’s a big sprawling war, so there was plenty of room for more units, but his was a maintenance unit. He had imagined that with nothing to guard but oil derricks in Kuwait and a new base, Fort Wolf, he would have the glory of Middle East landscape on his record without the risk. Only problem was, because he had injected himself into the war, he didn’t have a true duty station. His men were loaded with supplies for a fighting unit that had gone in to soften a region in Iraq. It was my unit. We had gone in first. The locals were unpredictable. They had no guns, but the scud missiles, if they hit close to the target, could blow a hole in the ground the size of a car.
“I was riding shotgun with the Oklahoma captain. The morale in his unit was lousy. His chaplain couldn’t handle the line out the door, and the captain was down men’s throats right and left. We were driving through a sandstorm, and you’ve never seen them like there in the desert. Sandstorms last for days. My whole mouth was like a cave. I heard the zing, and then the captain slumped over. He was hit clean through the head.”
Painted Dresses Page 27
