The South Side Tour Guide

by Shelter Somerset

  Her tiny specks for pupils met Andy’s frozen gaze. She shook her head, as if trying to identify him. Andy forced a firmer smile.

  “Let’s go for a stroll around the farm, Lilly,” he said in a light voice. “I haven’t seen you in so long. Leave the kids behind and come with me.” Andy tried to pull her hand, but she shook loose and clung fiercely to Olivia.

  “You’re trying to take my children from me.” Her voice came at him, strained and cavernous. “Stay away. Stay away.”

  Harden stomped his foot, looked to the blue sky. “Christ, Lilly, look what you’re doing to the kids. You’re doing it all over again. Why, Lilly? Why?” Helpless in his pleas, he slumped onto the bottom step and concealed his face with his hands. His shoulders shook. He lifted his tear moistened red face and hollered, “Lilly, Lilly, you’re destroying everything.”

  Andy pushed in closer to wedge apart Lillian and the kids. “You’re in no condition to see the kids, Lillian,” he said with defiance now. “Come with me, and you can see them another time. Don’t you want to spend time with me, your baby brother?”

  He wrenched Olivia from Lilly’s arms and threw his own around her. Why had she allowed herself to become a wasted person? Andy at his worst could never have stooped to such a low-down level, especially if it meant risking losing his own flesh and blood. Where was his Lilly?

  Lillian pushed Andy off her. He stumbled backward and fell on his butt to the gravel. Olivia jumped back into her mother’s arms. The children hugged her tighter, clinging to her shoulders and legs.

  Harden leaped to his feet and, with newfound conviction, swatted Lilly’s hands from Mason and Olivia. “Leave them alone, Lilly. Leave them alone. I’m telling you. Listen to me, now. Leave them be.”

  Silent tears fell hot down Andy’s cheeks. Even the green, lofty cornstalks seemed to shake with mushrooming dread. Lillian tripped and began to weep. All of them were in tears, but each for different reasons. Torn between saving Harden and wanting to see more of his sister, Andy chose to defend Harden, the man whom he trusted at that moment more than anyone on earth.

  He stood, brushed himself clean, and forced his way inside the circle of mother and children. The kids kicked and screamed, ear-shattering screeches that sent the crows cawing from the cornfield.

  Harden pushed Lillian toward the hatchback. “Get out of here, Lillian,” he cried. “Get in your car and leave us. Get out of here. Don’t come back unless I say.”

  Off balance, Lillian tumbled backward. She flashed Harden the finger. “Fuck you, Harden Krane. Mr. Perfect. Mr. Man Who Knows Everything. You’re a perfect asshole, that’s what you are, you fucking bastard.”

  Lillian charged him with her head down. Harden dodged her sloppy attack and, catching her around the waist, again pinned her against the car.

  “Leave Mommy alone! Leave her alone!”

  Olivia kicked at her father’s shins. Harden swept away her fury and continued to subdue Lilly. Mason rushed in and jumped on his father’s back.

  Immobilized against the car, Lillian turned her rage to Andy.

  “You faggot,” she said, slurring her words. “You… you faggot! You’re nothing but a faggot.”

  Harden ordered the kids to cover their ears and hide inside the house. They defied him. Olivia bit his arm, causing him to recoil. Mason began to kick his legs and elbow him.

  “Leave here, Lillian,” Harden said, disregarding his children’s assault. “Leave us in peace. I’m going to call the police if your latest boyfriend doesn’t drive you out of here now.”

  Harden pulled his cell phone from his pocket. Mason swatted it from his hand. Teary eyed, Harden crawled on all fours over the gravel after it. Mason jumped on his back, trying to stop him. Andy recalled the kids climbing on Harden’s back while they’d jumped through the sprinkler and later when they’d played at the swimming pool. Fresh tears rolled down Andy’s face seeing how they attacked him now.

  Andy could bear witness no further. He pulled Mason from Harden’s back, setting him on his feet and demanding he stay put, and dragged Lillian to the car. He looked to the man seated behind the steering wheel. “Get her out of here, will you!”

  Only then did the driver bother to notice the commotion. “Hey, all cool here? What’s up?”

  “Get her in your car and leave now before the cops show up. And don’t bring her back. Go back where you came from!”

  Lillian’s voice, raspy and deep from years of smoking drugs and the throat infections that resulted, bit at the driveway dust agitated by everyone’s flailing arms and legs. “You bastard. You can’t stop me from seeing my children… my children. You… you can’t stop me. You fucking bastard.”

  Her companion succeeded in planting her in the passenger seat. Olivia ran for her. Andy held her back, clutching her arm to the point he could feel the blood pulse through her veins. From an open window, Lilly continued to curse and rave at Harden and Andy.

  “You faggots. You can’t take my kids. I’ll come back for them. I’ll come back.”

  She appeared ready to pass out once the man backed up and drove down the driveway. Exhaust and dust from the Toyota’s wake seemed to mute the crying and commotion. They stood unable to move, speechless. Sporadic sobs choked Olivia.

  Suddenly, “I hate you, Daddy. I hate you!” Olivia sprinted inside with a harsh slap of the storm door. Mason ran after her, followed by another strident slamming.

  Harden, still on his knees, curled into a ball and wept. Andy, almost afraid to approach him, stood stiff. Finally, the breeze seemed to push him closer, and he dropped to his haunches beside Harden and placed a hand on his quivering back.

  “It’s okay, Harden. It’s going to be okay.”

  “Why did she have to come back?” Harden said to the ground. “Christ. Everything was going okay for once. Why did she have to come back, right when things start to go good?”

  “It’s okay, Harden. It’ll be okay.”

  Chapter 20

  MASON and Olivia remained sealed behind their bedroom doors. They ignored Harden’s knocking until he insisted they answer. Curt, murmured responses indicated they continued to breathe. Harden allowed them to sulk without finishing their dinners.

  Downstairs, Andy lowered himself to his knees and wiped the spilt plum juice from the linoleum. He figured bleach would take out the stubborn stain. He walked for the laundry room past Harden, who was rinsing the dishes and stacking them in the dishwasher. He seemed shaken beyond anything Andy had ever seen of him—seen of anyone. A man marred from old battle scars that had emerged to assail him again.

  They remained detached and quiet throughout the evening. Any words Andy longed to express wedged somewhere between his mind and throat. What might he say? Harden’s flimsy attempts to smile and act as if nothing had happened exacerbated Andy’s torment. Shadows replaced the setting sunlight that had filtered through the windowpanes and fixed the furnishings into rock hard uncertainty.

  Over and over, Andy rehashed in his mind the ugly scene that had played out on the driveway. Harden’s fighting Lillian to keep her from the kids had both shocked and excited him. But he could not speak his thoughts. The silence stood impenetrable, like a steel wall. With the swish of shuffling feet and the occasional opening and closing of the refrigerator, Andy also feigned he’d witnessed nothing more than a movie. A terrible and ghastly tragedy.

  By nine, Harden, weakened and battered, pulled himself upstairs by the railing and uttered a pathetic, “Good night, Andy.” Andy remained downstairs alone, sitting at the cold and austere kitchen table, sipping beer without tasting it.

  As a brother, Andy had experienced the disappointment and sadness of losing a sister. But Lillian’s drug addiction had ripped the soul from her children and ex-husband. Her sickness weighed on Harden more than any of them, for no more reason than he was cognizant of its awfulness and had stood helpless against it. He had resided cheek to cheek with the demons.

  The last time Harden and Lillian had v
isited Streamwood, four years ago, Andy had realized something was wrong. Unable to hold a person’s stare, Lillian had seemed agitated, distracted. She had lost discernible weight and looked wild-eyed, and had smoked her mentholated Virginia Slims to excess. The children seemed to sidetrack her more than concern her. At that time, he’d chosen to reject the warning signs.

  Harden had telephoned Andy a year later and confessed he too had understood the symptoms but refused acting. He’d gone to work each day while Lillian had gotten high in her “happy place” in the barn loft. She’d begun an open-door policy with paying tricks she’d met on the Internet (some traveling from as far as southern Minnesota), often while the children were at home. That’s when Harden had butted heads with reality and intervened.

  Neither Harden nor Andy had been successful in convincing her. She’d refused treatment and had run away. Two weeks later, she’d turned up in Streamwood, disheveled and pitiable. Mom had called Andy, fresh back from Iowa, and had begged for his aid. Before he’d arrived, Lillian had fled again. Today had been the first time he’d seen her since.

  Andy had checked off Lillian from his list of reliable people years ago, realizing that she had gone from his life and might never return. He’d relegated her tragedy as a dusty artifact from the past and had wiped his hands clean from it, relieved, almost, that she’d vanished. After all, he had his own melodrama to perform.

  Now she hovered in his life anew. An unrecognizable apparition of her former self.

  Andy figured the kids hadn’t understood Lillian’s outbursts. Her harsh words must have buzzed over their heads. Or perhaps they had heard her rantings often at the height of her drug abuse and paid them scant attention. Or they had wanted to see her so badly she could have pointed guns to their temples and they’d still have clung to her, demanding she remain at their sides.

  With a sigh, Andy finished his beer, tossed the empty can into the trash, and slumped into the basement. That night, he relished the cool and vacuous darkness that enveloped him. He turned off his cell phone, uninterested in returning the calls for his tour business or reading Ken’s inane text messages that had “dinged” throughout the evening, ricocheting through the silence. Dreams came in sharp whispers, like ghosts seeking reparations for former harm.

  The next morning, the children scuffled downstairs an hour later than normal, after Andy had shaved and showered and helped Harden prepare breakfast. Harden had refrained from calling for them. Olivia ate her cold cereal so slowly that she made hardly a mess. She refused the toasted waffles and sausage Harden placed before her. Mason kept his eyes on his toast and orange juice, never looking up long enough to notice that Harden and Andy had begun to clear the table. Afterward, Olivia and Mason wandered into the backyard and sat on the swing set, which had become their refuge. They barely moved on the swings. From the back window, Andy noticed they spoke little to each other, even while alone.

  He was glad for Saturday so he would not have to face the kids’ present funk alone with Kamila. Despite Harden’s condition, Andy was relieved to have him around to shoulder the burden of the anguish that masqueraded as a family. Harden was still in a somnambulistic state. Eyes vacant, mouth tense, save for an occasional synthetic smile to appease Andy. He went about caring for the children, working at the family computer, stacking the dishwasher, as if set on automatic.

  He assumed nonchalance. Yet Harden looked as casual as a man who just had his ears cut off. Andy supposed the best support would come in the form of silent understanding. He refreshed his coffee, washed a load of clothes, scrubbed again the annoying plum juice stain from the kitchen floor that refused to completely come out, and provided Harden the space he seemed to crave while he moped about the house.

  As the morning sloughed ahead, the kids remained outside on the swing with their feet barely moving off the ground. When that bored them, they wandered to the creek. Mason had once told Andy he liked to take off his shoes and socks and kick the water to spur the spotted fish to bite and tickle his toes. Andy imagined he hadn’t done that that morning. Later, they returned upstairs and stewed behind their bedroom doors. Harden’s lighthearted attempts to engage them failed miserably.

  Finally, after preparing a lunch the children had declined, Harden sat at the kitchen table alongside Andy and inhaled. “I talked to my brother,” he said, staring at the cheese and bologna sandwiches untouched on plates. “He and Holly are going to keep the kids tonight and take them to church in the morning. It’ll be good for them to get off the farm. I should have sent them to summer camp. They’d be there now, and Lilly would have missed them, and she would never have given them false hope.”

  “That’s a good idea they get away a while,” Andy said, matching Harden’s soft and reserved tone. “For you too. I’m guessing you told Lance the details?”

  Early afternoon sun oozing through the windows eked sweat from Harden’s troubled brow. He mopped his forehead with a napkin and let his hand drop with a thud onto the table. “He knows. Lance understands. It’s like this each time she’s come back.”

  “How often has that been?”

  “Twice before, same scenario. The last time was last year, just before Christmas.”

  Harden stood and walked out of the room. Andy stared after him and knew it was best to leave him alone. Perhaps, in his desperation, Harden searched for a miraculous remedy that might ease his pain.

  Andy hoped relief might rise above the horizon close to four o’clock, when Mason turned to him before hopping into Lance’s Ford Escape and spoke without needing prompting for the first time since Lillian’s unplanned visit. “At Uncle Lance’s house, the pigeons singing under the roof and the traffic on Main Street makes me feel good,” he said apathetically. “I don’t really know why, just does.”

  In the children’s absence, the tension lessened, but the quiet remained. When Harden’s mother telephoned, he stood talking into the landline like a scarecrow. He barely spoke, although he held the receiver to his impassive face and fiddled with the cord a good fifteen minutes. “No, don’t come over…. I’m okay…. I’m sure…. Maybe, Mom…. All right…. Talk to you later.”

  At five o’clock, Andy grabbed his wallet and van keys. “I’m going to do some food shopping,” he said to Harden, who brooded at the computer console with a televised baseball game playing in the background that Andy was certain Harden paid little attention to. “Anything you need?”

  Harden raised his head to look at Andy, and his eyes, vacant and sad, tried to sparkle with gratitude. “There’s the beginning of a list on the fridge. I’ll give you some money.”

  “Don’t bother. I’ll be back shortly.”

  Andy relished the reprieve away from the Krane house. Under the supermarket’s bright fluorescent lights, his mind cleared from the gloom. The multicolored towers of foodstuffs, the hum of humanity charging with purpose and life, provided him the resolve to end the death knell darkening Burr Oak Farm. He spent extra money on specialty foods (filet mignon, local-grown asparagus, russet potatoes the size of fists), along with taper candles and two bottles of cabernet from a local vineyard.

  Back at the farm, he went about preparing the special meal for Harden. The working oven filled the kitchen with the warmth of labor and decisiveness. Harden shuffled in from the living room, his gray sweatpants stretched in the knees and seat. “What are you cooking?” he asked, his voice grainy and low.

  Andy kept his pitch upbeat. “I’m making us dinner.”

  Harden edged closer to the stove. A shadow of a smile lifted his fallen face. “Smells good. What is it?”

  “Stay back now,” Andy teased with a raise of his elbow to keep Harden from getting too close. “It’s a surprise. Go back to the TV. I’ll call you when everything’s ready.” He took two steps to the refrigerator, tossed Harden a can of beer. “Here. That’ll tide you over for another hour.”

  By the time Andy set the table (complete with dimmed lighting, glittering silverware, and woven placemats),
Harden had showered, shaved his day-old beard, and dressed. Dark-blue jeans and a red polo shirt replaced his grungy sweatpants and T-shirt. Andy, still in cargo shorts, snuck downstairs and changed into slacks and the one Oxford he’d packed. Not until they sat down to the candlelit spread did Andy’s mouth go dry and his head spin.

  What do you think you’re doing, you idiot? Dating him?

  Harden appeared unfazed by Andy’s fussing over dinner. He licked his lips at the juicy filet mignons wrapped in butcher bacon, twice-baked potatoes oozing with cheddar cheese and sour cream, and green bushels of asparagus bound with slices of lemon rinds that sat steaming on porcelain plates. Flickering candlelight glistened in his wide blue eyes. “Looks amazing,” he said, unfolding the cloth napkin across his lap. “I haven’t had a dinner like this since… since….”

  Andy guessed how far into the past Harden might have to travel for the last time he’d enjoyed a fancy meal. He saved Harden embarrassment by saying, “Don’t be afraid to eat up. There’s more warming in the oven.”

  Andy poured them each cabernet in long-stemmed glasses. The gurgle of the plum-red wine resonated in his ears like the gentle sound of wind chimes. Outside, the last pink blush of sun submitted to a cobalt sky. The orbs of candlelight illuminated their shrinking world.

  “Cheers,” Andy said, raising his glass.

  Harden reciprocated his toast and sipped. “Good stuff. What is it?”

  “From a local vineyard,” Andy said, setting aside his wine and feeling his face flush like a schoolboy’s.

  “I’ve never tried any of the wines from here.” He cut into the filet and smiled across the table. “Steak is just the way I like it.”

  “I remembered,” Andy said. “Whenever we would all go out to eat, you’d order your steaks medium rare.”

  “Nice to have meat I can sink my teeth into. Kamila’s spicy ground beef gets old after a while. This is delicious.”

  Delicious. Harden’s choice word tickled Andy. The vocabulary of a mature adult male. Not a boy. But someone responsible and unafraid of his image, devoid of pretense. A word that embodied a universe Andy wished more lived in. Delicious.