The Weight of Glass

by Stuart Heatherington

  “Hold on a second,” Charlie said, her voice a collection of emotions, ready to spill. “You were sexually abused by your stepfather?”

  “You never told her?” Amy’s eyes closed as she made her own assumption. “Of course you didn’t.”

  That’s not fair. “It wasn’t for me to share.”

  “How long did it go on?”

  “Nearly six months.” Amy wiped her face dry.

  Nicole tried to calm her down by rubbing her back. “You think that was the story he told all of you?”

  “No,” I said point blank. “Hell, their ages were all over the place. Probably had a lie for every one of them. I know he didn’t use the baby thing with Becky. She past 40 by then.”

  “Maybe she was lonely.”

  “Or maybe she wanted whatever she couldn’t get at home.” I tried to remember what Becky looked like, but couldn’t pull all the details together from my memory. “When I got that picture, she hadn’t been in the room ten minutes, I bet, before he had her shirt off—”

  “Wait a second,” Charlie said. “I’m lost. Were you being molested at the same time?”

  “No, he hadn’t gotten that far yet.” Amy’s knowing eyes fell on me. “He was busy with other things. Wasn’t he?”

  There was a flickering connection between us, one that scared me. “We should take a break.”

  “Thank you.” Charlie got up from the couch. “I so have to pee. Can you wait on me? I’ll be fast.”

  “We’re coming back though, right?”

  I glanced over at Nicole. “Look, backseat Betty, you’ll get to hear it.”

  “Relax, okay? He always keeps his promises.” Amy placed her hand on Nicole’s neck and turned back to me. “Don’t you?”

  “What do you think?” And I averted her eyes, uncomfortable in the trust they placed in me, the guilt it brought on.

  “I know you will. You always keep your promises,” she said. But I didn’t. I had made a life out of lying to myself.

  Charlie and I made our way inside, but she stopped me in the kitchen as I switched on the lights.

  “You’ve kept a lot of secrets, Daddy.”

  “It’s nothing. It’s old history.”

  “I’ve got a news flash for you. That out there, that doesn’t have anything to do with old history. Did Mom know anything about that?”

  “I never shared any of that with her.”

  He bit his lip, a look of concern in his eyes.

  “What?” I asked. “I’ve got it under—”

  “No, you don’t. You haven’t had it under control in years.”

  “Look, you gotta trust me.”

  “How? I’m too busy worrying about you. Christ, you’re too old to be getting drunk every night.”

  “Well, they say 50’s the new 40.” It amused me that I was technically picking up years. “I’m fine.”

  “Quit with the jokes. You’re not even funny right now,” she snapped.

  I turned my head sideways on the defensive. “What do you want? To start an argument with me?”

  “I want you to change.”

  “Change what?”

  “Change everything, okay? I want to see you grow up and give a damn about yourself.” Her face quivered a little, the way it did when she was little.

  “That it?”

  “One more thing. Right back there, I didn’t mean the other women when I asked what she saw in him. I meant what did your mom see in him?”

  I was caught of guard by the question, by the look in her face. Smooth lines worked the beautiful features around her mouth into a frown. I shrugged my shoulders. “I think she needed to know her life wasn’t over. Four kids and no husband would scare anybody to death. And Warren was good at leading people on. Preach what they need and make ’em believe. Hell, we’re all desperate for something.”

  “I don’t think that’s true,” she answered. “You’re not like that. You trusted in me.”

  “It’s not the same. You haven’t been around enough to know any better.”

  She grabbed my arm. “And you’ve been around too long to know the difference.”

  14

  “Where are you going?”

  I stole a look around the patio and walked out the door and down the steps. I needed a change of scenery.

  “Oh, now you’re not going to talk to me? Hey! I asked you a question,” Amy said. “Go get Charlie and find out what happened. Then give me a few minutes with him before you come down,” I heard her tell Nicole as I hit the carport.

  Under the house I grabbed a large bundle of wood and two old newspapers out of the corner. A flutter of thoughts tripped over those chords deep in the space of my past and shook loose the painful music of memory. And as I stood there I could feel the self-inflicted scars of regret creep in, reminders of the choices I’d made, of loved ones I’d given away like kisses thrown to the dark. Doubt had become the careless direction of a faithless man.

  “Where’re you going?”

  “The beach,” I yelled back.

  “Goddamnit! I said, wait on me.”

  “You’ve got legs. Keep up!”

  “You’re an ass!” She stumbled out into the sand. “What is wrong with you?”

  She found me digging a hole in the beach. Without a word she knelt down and started balling up sheets of newspaper and stuffing them under her knees. I laid out the starter logs in the shape of an overlapping square and together we stuffed them tight with papers and kindling and the last of the wood. Amy dug out a lighter, hand cupping a flame to one corner. Before long the scent of smoke, thick and sweet, carried through the air. Under a black wall of stars we sat on the sand, listening to the roll of waves on the beach. Looking out across the Atlantic, I related to the ocean. To the dark unmoving beds found far beneath its surface. How it labored in a reflection of echoes similar to the ones hidden in the shores of my own heart.

  I felt the touch of her hand. “Are you gonna talk to me now?”

  “What do you want from me?” Looking around, I found Amy raising the hair off her neck, fingers a fuss in the loose strands behind her head.

  “To start over would be nice.”

  After a while she moved close, the gentle shape of her face stretching across my shoulder, eyes searching the horizon to our right. Out of my periphery, the fire lit the corneas of her eyes like brightly shaped lanterns at the foot of a terrifying path.

  I forced my self to turn away. “Looking out there, do you hear anything?”

  “Hear what?”

  I brushed the chill away and pulled my knees into my chest. “I don’t know. Answers, directions…a map guidance system. I’m not asking for much.”

  Amy poked me in the side. “Let me get this straight, you’re looking for a Garmin for life.”

  “Do they have those, yet?”

  “They have Magic 8-balls.”

  I rolled my eyes. “And that’s pretty close?”

  “Without a doubt,” she said. “All signs point to yes.”

  I reached out and knocked her over in the sand. “What, have you got the whole thing memorized?”

  “Only the ones I need to get through the day.” She lay there on her elbows, catching her breath with laughter. “So what do you really want?”

  Now that was an intriguing question. “Some peace of mind.”

  “Well, let me tell you, life takes you to some shitty places before you get to that. Trust me.”

  I knew enough about shitty places than to ask. I grabbed a handful of sand and let it fall from my hand, the wind carrying it sideways. Like a puzzle, I thought a small piece of me drifted with it. “Life’s about coming to the same set of crossroads,” I said finally. “There’s no right or wrong turn to guide us, because we never know what’s in store down the road. Sometimes we make the right decision and think we’ve finally moved on, only you find yourself right back there again, another piece of you dying.”

  “You’re where I was years ago.” The sadness in
her words spiraled around us, left me dizzy in the wake of their meaning. “And you know what? Looking back at my life, I barely understand coming through it. Just knowing we’re shaped by all these things out of our control—we live every bit of this life forgetting that. And for me I had to face that first, before it ate me up inside.”

  “You and damn Dr. Phil. You’re all about selling the tough love. Was that your face-the-depressing-music speech?”

  She grabbed my hand and held it in her own. Shadows from the fire danced across our skin, weaving the light of the flames into soft glows of honey and orange. “Therapy’s a funny thing.”

  “Is that what this is, therapy?” A crescent ring of darkness guarded the outside of her face when I looked at her. “Because I don’t know how to do that. I don’t know how to forget. I think of Jenn everyday. God, I can’t even get past Dad dying, and here I am fixing to be a great grandfather.”

  “You don’t have to forget them.” She touched my chest. “There’s always a place in your heart. Let that be where you remember. But do yourself a favor and take down the reminders—all the photos—anything’ll help. Removing those doesn’t mean you have to let them go.”

  I shook my head. “I don’t think I can do that.”

  “I’ll help you.” She thumbed back at Rabbit’s Hole. “We can start with the shrine.”

  And that’s what it was. I sighed, thinking of the pictures of our family on the wall. All the history. There were chapters that begged to be closed. One in particular.

  “Before we came down here, I pulled one off of Paul.” I straightened out my knees, recalling the photo.

  “I know. I looked at it, too.”

  His head had been thrown back in a fit of laughter. Crisp, energetic eyes, a cascade of small baby teeth, the face of a boy who had understood the meaning of being loved at one time. “I forgot about him. What he was like then.” I tried to swallow the bag of knots in my throat, that bitter taste of misery, which balled up at the back of the tongue. “And I feel bad about that, because I only remember the monster.”

  “I went back and read his prison letters when I started writing the book.” Amy’s finger traced through the sand as if rewriting one of those chapters from our past. “The things he said to me. I think he hated us both.”

  I shrugged. “I’m not saying he wrote you love letters. But he didn’t try to kill you either.”

  Amy rubbed her arms in front of the fire, her words a whisper then, “Please, share it with me.”

  I remembered thinking I was gonna die and it sent a shiver down my back. “Paul told me about Pritchard, what really happened out on the road that night…and he told me a secret. Something he’d been holding onto for years, one that he was a part of as a boy, and I didn’t want to believe him at first. But like anything with Paul, eventually he’d give you a reason to.”

  15

  2006 - Atmore, Alabama came into sight through the windshield of my car and I took it in with the perspective of one of those viewfinder cameras that takes a quarter to work, clicks and glimpses that meant little if nothing at all, and forgotten just as quickly when the camera shut off. It was a small town of about 8,000 people just above Mobile, Alabama and not much different with respect to the other hundred or so towns I passed on the long stretch of I-65 south. It started out as a railroad supply stop after the civil war in 1866, known then as Williams Station, according to a brochure I found at Days Inn. It’d be a quick stop for the night at best. My brother was expecting me the morning of visitation day, and after meeting with him for an hour or so I would turn around in the visitors’ parking lot of Holman Maximum Security Prison and head home. It’d been six months since the U.S. Supreme Court removed him from his long stay on death row.

  I stopped at Cracker Barrel in Montgomery on the way, grabbing some dinner, a large plate of chicken and dumplings. With my stomach stretched out and full for the rest of the drive down, I listened to Stephen King’s voice echoing from out of the speakers as he read Bag of Bones aloud. King was like inhaling a box of chocolate—it was fattening, sure, and maybe chock-full of luscious little things that were bad to eat, but who gave a damn? I was a constant reader.

  On the seat next to the cooler was a scrapbook of sorts. My fingers drummed the top of the yellowing cardstock I’d made from an old file folder seventeen years ago. It was dirty now; coffee rings occupied its absent title. A tear ran a third of the way down its makeshift binding, leaving part of its contents exposed to ruffle in the night air as I cranked down the windows. Birmingham newspaper articles filled its loose spine and made mine stretch with tension when I thought to look at it, which wasn’t often. A decade or more had passed since the last time I’d turned through its pages. Jenn was still alive then. Oh, how things change.

  My cell phone vibrated against my side and I pulled it from my waist, flipping over the visor before I answered it.

  “What now?.”

  “Can we talk?” Amy asked.

  “I told you I’d call when I got checked in.”

  “You know I don’t like to wait.”

  “Well, Miss ‘I’ll make it on time,’ I guess you’ll just have to learn.” My jaw clenched up so tight I could feel the pressure behind my eyes throwing stars.

  Music played in the background. “I told you, I can’t control the shooting schedule of the magazine. Sorry, I can’t be there. It’s not like I’m not going to see him. I’m just not going to make it down today.”

  “Suit yourself.”

  “Since when do you come off?”

  “Since yesterday when you told me you weren’t coming.” I slowed into a turn lane, hitting the brakes up behind a van. “This was your damned idea, remember?”

  “You know, whoop de damn do. Grow up. We can’t have everything we want.”

  I turned hard right across traffic, gassing it. “I distinctly told you I’d call when I got checked in.”

  “What has crawled up your butt and choked off your brain?”

  “Aside from you, do you even need to ask?”

  I could hear her handling the phone, probably ducking into a changing room. “It won’t be that bad.”

  “How the hell do you know? You’re not gonna be there.” I circled through the Days Inn under a sidewalk light and rammed the car into park.

  “All he wants to do is talk. He said he’d explain everything.”

  “Explain what? It’s a little late for that, don’t you think?”

  There was a long pause on her end. “I’m sure it is for you.”

  “You’re damn right it’s too late for me. I don’t even know why the hell I agreed to come down here.”

  “Lee!” She was close to crying and I didn’t care. “The state of Alabama was going to kill him less than a year ago. You could have a little compassion.”

  “Why? Did he and the other two assholes he was with have any?”

  “I don’t want to argue with you over this.”

  “I’m not arguing with you, Amy. I’m telling you that son-of-a-bitch deserved to have his ass fried.”

  “He’s your brother. I know you didn’t get along, but Christ.”

  “Our brother’s a murderer. He’s just never confessed it. If Paul opened his mouth without lying I might have a different point of view. I might actually have some sympathy for his sorry ass.”

  “Why would you? You’re just like him,” she snapped. “You’re both hateful.”

  You go ahead and back me in to a corner. “I might hate people, but at least I don’t enjoy killing them. There’s not a single excuse in the state of Alabama he hasn’t used for this shit. So let’s face facts for a change. You didn’t buy his story when it happened.”

  “Don’t make me a part of this.”

  I nearly yelled, don’t be stupid, but refrained on principle. It wasn’t nice to make fun of the retarded. “A part of this? What part do you think you aren’t involved?”

  “Quit twisting around what I’m saying. I know I’m involv
ed, but I’m not taking any part in your little test of wills with our brother or whatever it is you want to call it.”

  “I’m calling it like I see it.”