“Listen,” my father said, his voice low. “I never wanted to tell you the whole story, because I figured you’d think I was lying, just trying to be mean to your mother. Trying to vilify her. But she made the choice to leave, Enza. She left us because she cheated on me, and I couldn’t forgive her.”
I stared at my father, slack-jawed. It was hard to determine if he was telling the truth. His eyes were sad, and when he looked at me, he looked like he might cry.
I had never seen my father cry.
“I suppose I drove her away,” he said. “She had an affair a year or so before she finally left us. She said she was sorry, that she knew it was wrong, that it meant nothing. She said all the things you’d expect someone to when they’re caught, and I think part of her did want to try again. Part of her was remorseful. I knew what a divorce would do to you, and part of me wanted to just find a way to get over it, for your sake.” He glanced toward the lake and wrapped his arms around his middle, as if he were struggling to keep some part of him in place. “But I just couldn’t go on living with her. She was the only woman I ever truly loved, and she broke my heart like I never imagined she could. There are some things you just can’t forgive.”
My father looked smaller then, standing there in my yard, deflated like a balloon that gets away before you tie off the knot. He shoved his hands into his pockets and stared at the dirt between his feet.
“I don’t know what to say, Dad.”
“I don’t expect you to. I don’t know that it’s possible for you to know the whole story, but you should have more than the pieces you have now.”
I imagined none of us would ever know the whole story. My mother had taken that with her into the deep waters of the river, but it would help to know what my father had been keeping from me all these years. Even if he thought keeping secrets would spare me heartache or anger, I hated that he had made that decision for me. I deserved to know what he knew.
“I already lost one of you,” he said, and his voice had the tiniest crack that made me think my father had been faking his bravado for all these years. “I really don’t want to lose you too.”
I nodded, willing myself not to cry. But it felt like my heart was being squeezed by an enormous fist, that it was about to burst like a ripened plum.
“I wish I’d known that sooner, Dad.”
He sighed. “When it comes down to it, kid, some things hurt you so bad you never want to speak about them to anyone. Telling people about it makes it hurt that much worse, over and over, like a nightmare that eats you up every night.”
He sniffed, and my heart shuddered.
“When I heard she died,” he said, “I felt tremendous guilt. I knew she would still be alive if she had stayed with us, and she would have stayed if I’d been able to forgive her. But I couldn’t. I’ve thought about that for a lot of years, wondering why I couldn’t get over it. People cheat and get back together all the time, but I couldn’t.”
“I’m sorry, Dad.” I didn’t know exactly what for, or for how many things. I was sorry my mother had hurt him, sorry she’d left, sorry I’d blamed him and thought of her as innocent, sorry I’d made him into a villain, sorry I hadn’t pushed him to tell me all of this sooner.
He glanced at me, his eyes glassy, and he nodded.
There was a rumbling on the gravel lane to the house, and a police car emerged from the woods. Andre turned toward the sound just as the screen door flew open and banged against the side of the house. Lucille ran down the porch steps and into the yard, stopping short when she saw Andre and Toph by the sheriff’s truck.
My father turned toward the road and squinted. “What’s going on?”
“Dad, I have to take care of something. How long are you staying?”
“My flight’s tomorrow night at seven. Why are the police here? It seems they’ve handcuffed one of your dinner guests.”
“It’s a long story. You should probably get going. Let me call you tonight. Or meet you at the inn. I’ll tell you about it then.”
He watched as the deputy emerged from the car and then ushered Toph into the backseat. “All right,” he said. He sounded sad, like he had when I was a kid, when I’d ask him about my mother.
He was staying at a little inn on the outskirts of New Orleans, not too far from here. He must have bought his plane ticket and booked his room back when I first invited him. He’d ignored me when I told him not to come and kept all of his reservations.
I walked back to the front of the house, leaving my father standing there, staring at the bottle tree, his hands still shoved in his pockets. The wind caught the mouths of the bottles, a low chorus of howls drifting between us.
He felt farther away than ever.
~~~~
By the time I reached the front yard, the deputy was already climbing into the driver’s side of his cruiser, Toph slouched in the backseat. Andre met me as the deputy pulled out of the yard and said, “Well, that’s that.”
“Lucille’s inside?” I asked him.
He nodded. “She’s a little upset.”
He followed me back inside and into the kitchen, where everyone except Lucille was standing by the window. When we came into the room, they all scattered, pretending to refill their glasses and put away the last of the food.
“Is there any pie left?” Andre asked.
Kate rolled her eyes.
“What?” He shrugged. “Arrests make me hungry.”
Kate grinned, looking absolutely smitten.
“There’s chocolate pie in the fridge,” I said, and went down the hall to look for Lucille.
I found her in the downstairs bedroom, sitting at the foot of the bed.
When I opened the door, she looked like she’d been caught rummaging through my closet. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I just had to get away from everybody for a while.”
I nodded and sat down next to her. I expected her to scream at me, to run out of the room and curse me to pieces. But she only sat there, her hands tucked under the backs of her knees, staring at the floor.
“I feel like an idiot,” she said.
“Don’t.”
“I never should have brought him here.”
“This can be the way you leave him,” I said.
“It’s bad when you can trace all of your problems back to one exact moment in time. You know? Like, if I had not made that one bad decision, everything would be different.”
“You can walk away,” I said. “You have a lot of people who’d help you in any way you need.”
She sighed. “If I leave him, I can kiss that internship goodbye. He’ll have them fire me for sure.”
“Surely he can’t do that.”
“His parents are huge donors. Like the kind that have their name on a plaque inside the building. If he says the word, they’ll let me go just to keep on that family’s good side.”
It was ridiculous, but I knew it wasn’t farfetched.
“Then we’ll find you another great job in another theater,” I said. “This isn’t the only one.”
“He used to be an all right guy,” she said. “I was hoping once he was less stressed out, things would go back to the way they were.”
I studied her for a minute. “This isn’t a phase. This isn’t something he gets over. This is the kind of man he is. Do you see?”
She nodded as the tears slid down her cheeks.
“We’ll all help you,” I said. “You know that, right? You could come back and stay with your parents for a while, or even stay here if you wanted. Just until you get back on your feet.”
She shook her head. “I got myself into this. I need to get myself out.”
The door creaked open, and Jack rapped his knuckles against the doorframe. “You two all right in here?” he asked.
I put my hand on Lucille’s shoulder, and she finally looked me in the eye.
“You need to tell him,” I said, nodding toward Jack. “Tell him everything.”
She swallowed hard and
nodded again. Her chest rose and fell as she tried to take even breaths.
I stood to leave and stopped as I passed Jack in the doorway. I lay my hand on his chest as I whispered in his ear. “She loves you, remember, and you are not a caveman.” I kissed him quickly on the cheek and walked back down the hall to the living room, where I could hear the voices of our guests rising again.
Chapter 15
By the time everyone left, it was nearly sundown. A bank of clouds had rolled in from the Gulf, turning the sky a deep shade of slate blue that meant rain was coming. Buck and Josie had gone home earlier in the afternoon, and Andre had stayed to talk to Lucille about how she might best pursue her complaints against Toph. I wasn’t certain she’d end up pressing charges against him, but at least she was listening to Andre.
When they’d finished talking, Jack drove Lucille home, leaving me alone with Kate. It was a relief to have the house nearly empty again, to sit in the quiet and not worry about what Toph might be doing. According to Andre, Toph would be waiting for a magistrate who was on holiday, which meant he’d be in his tiny cell for at least one whole day—maybe two.
In our living room, Kate sat curled up on the couch under an afghan, drinking tea and watching a Christmas movie on TV. Bella had settled in a ball at her feet, ears twitching at the sound of our voices.
I lay down on the floor, flat on my back, staring at the ceiling. I’d poured myself two fingers of bourbon and intended to stay put until the tension that had amassed in my shoulders had melted into the floorboards.
“You survived Christmas with the whole family,” Kate said.
“In the strictest sense of the word—yes.”
“I never saw an arrest go that smoothly,” she said, sipping her tea.
A twist in my gut made me shiver and reach for the bourbon. “The sheriff’s a smooth guy.”
“You’re trying hard for matchmaker of the year here,” she said.
“One of us should be having a good day.”
The dog pricked her ears forward as rain began to pelt the roof. It was quiet at first, but then turned to the steady pounding of a hard evening rain. Bella raised her head and looked toward the front of the house when she heard Jack’s truck rumbling down the lane. Then the slam of the driver’s door, the hurried steps on the porch, the slam of the front door.
His steps were heavy as he walked down the hall and into the kitchen. I expected him to join us, but he didn’t. He stayed in the kitchen, banging around in the cabinets.
Kate turned back to the movie. “You did the right thing today,” she said quietly. “That jerk belongs behind bars.”
“I know it.”
“Lucille knows it too even if she won’t say it.”
“Yeah.” As I gazed at the ceiling, I could barely make out where the cracks in the plaster once were. Jack and I had repaired them last summer, filling each one and then repainting the ceiling. If I focused, I could see the faintest traces of where the lines used to be, like faded pencil marks on an old map. We couldn’t hide every scar completely, no matter how skilled we were.
From the kitchen came the clatter of ice in a glass. More footsteps, more slamming of cabinet doors. The front door opened and closed, the screen door squeaking as it banged shut. Boot heels thumped on the floorboards of the porch.
Kate said, “He must want to kill that kid.”
“I should go talk to him.”
She nodded, leaning over to scratch the dog’s ears.
When I stepped out onto the porch, I found Jack in the swing, sipping a glass of bourbon. The bottle sat next to his feet.
I joined him on the swing and said, “Are you all right?”
He leaned back, staring into the darkness. The rain beat against the house in sheets, a fine mist covering us as the wind blew. “I wanted to snap that kid in half, Enza.”
“I know.”
“She’s not a stupid woman, but goddamn. The things she told me.”
“It’s complicated,” I said, and regretted it immediately.
“It seems pretty damn simple to me. He’s a jackass. She’s got no reason to be with someone like that. He’ll self-destruct and take her with him.”
“I think she sees that now.”
“If he wasn’t sitting in a jail cell right now, I think I’d have gone and beat the shit out of him.” He stared straight ahead, his voice cool and even as he spoke. He was seething on the inside, his left hand gripping the arm of the swing so tightly that his hand twitched.
“You’re not that guy, Jack.”
“Part of me still wants five minutes alone with him.”
I slid my hand over his knee. “I don’t think you have to worry now. She’s had enough of him this time.”
He took a sip from the glass and frowned. “I don’t see why she put up with him for so long. Josie taught her to stand up for herself.”
“That’s the complicated bit. She still loves a part of him. She’s thinking of the guy she fell in love with.”
“She told you that?”
“She didn’t have to.”
After a long moment, he said, “How much of all of this did she tell you before?”
I sighed. “A lot.”
“This is the thing you couldn’t tell me.” His voice lowered.
“Yes.”
He shook his head, knocking back his drink. “If we’re going to make it, you can’t keep things like this from me. Not things about my family.”
The last word hit me hard. He said it like it excluded me.
“She asked me not to tell you the details, Jack. I know how protective you are of her, and I knew if I told you, you’d run over there and yell at her for staying with him, and it would scare her.”
“You don’t always know what I’m going to do.”
“This one was pretty easy to predict. You’re not exactly subtle when you’re in protective mode.”
He leaned back again, raking his hands through his hair. “You should have told me as soon as she told you something was wrong. You shouldn’t have waited until today to get his ass arrested. What if he’d hurt her in the meantime?”
“You were going to back her into a corner. If you had done that, made her choose, she would have sided with Toph, and then she would have left with him. Does he have problems? Yes. Does she know that? Yes. Does part of her still love him anyway? Yes.”
“That doesn’t change anything,” he said, his voice rising. “She’s my family. I deserve to know what’s going on, and I need to know when she’s in trouble.” He poured another shot into the glass.
There was that word again, being hurled like a stone.
“I made her promise to tell you everything after today, or I would. But I knew it needed to come from her.”
“Oh that makes it all better,” he snapped. “You were going to tell me.”
“I was working on a way to help her. I need you to trust me to do the right thing.”
“Dammit, Enza, you don’t get to decide these things! You don’t always know best.” He set the glass down hard on the swing, and the ice rattled.
“Neither do you.”
His gaze shifted from the yard to me. He looked at me for what felt like a full minute, and I bit my lip, wishing I could make him see. He stood abruptly and began pacing the length of the porch.
“Jack, she was so afraid you’d be mad at her and disappointed.”
“You’re damn right I am.” He strode to the opposite side of the porch, like he couldn’t stand to be near me. “But I’m more disappointed in you.”
We were both yelling now, our voices nearly drowned out by the rain. Lightning crackled around us, jagged veins of light flickering across the sky.
“I did what I thought was right, Jack. This way, he’s in a cell. Away from her. She feels like we’re on her side, not judging her. This way, she’s getting away from him. Don’t you see?”
His eyes widened, almost black in the dim light. “If I’d known what was going on, I’d h
ave kicked his ass out of here and back to wherever he came from, and none of this would have happened. You had no right to lie to me.”
“It doesn’t work that way. That wouldn’t help her.”
He groaned, leaning against the banister. “I can’t be with someone who’s not honest with me.”
My heart thudded in my chest, leaving a dull ache. “Jack, I’ve never lied to you. But not everything can happen in the span of time you want it to.”
“That’s the most asinine thing you’ve ever said to me.”
A lump rose in my throat. “I’m done defending myself. If you can’t see that I’m trying to do what’s right, then this will never work.”
His hand gripped the rail like he was trying to break it in two. “Just leave me be. I can’t stand to be around you right now. We need a break.”
“Do you really think I’m that reckless? That careless?”
“You gambled with her safety. That’s reckless. How can you not see that?”
I paused, giving him time to take that back.
He didn’t.
“This will never work if you can’t trust me,” I said. I wanted him to trust me. I wanted us to work.
“How can I trust you if you won’t tell me what’s going on?”
“I told you all that I could without betraying Lucille.” I leaned forward in the swing, resting my hands on my knees. I hated this feeling, but didn’t know what else to say to make him understand.
“I can’t talk about this any more right now.” He was still at the opposite end of the porch, as far from me as he could get.
“I can’t stay with you if you’re going to be like this.”
He said nothing.
“Fine.” I went back into the house, letting the screen door slam behind me.
Bella bounded into the hallway as I marched into the bedroom and pulled a suitcase out from under the bed. I opened the dresser and started throwing shirts and panties into the suitcase, not thinking of how much I might need, just filling it to the top. My heart pounded in my throat, so hard I felt like I’d choke. Suddenly all I could think of was leaving. Driving away into the night, slipping into the darkness without another sound. The thought of staying under the same roof as Jack for one more minute made me sick.
Bayou, Whispers from the Past: A Novel Page 17
