The Lost Saints of Tennessee

by Amy Franklin-Willis

  The hospital gown swallows her small body. When I wrap my arms around her, she feels like nothing.

  Thirty-Six

  1985

  The wind outside is bracing and cool after the hospital’s stale, heated air. I swallow big gulps of it. Rosie waves me over to the exercise track adjacent to the parking lot. With headphones clamped over her ears, my sister walks faster than some people run.

  She cups her hands around her mouth like a megaphone. “Get over here. I’ll race you.”

  Carter, Rosie, and I used to race from our mailbox to old man Cartwright’s house a quarter of a mile down Five Hills Road. She beat us nearly every time. And the few times when she knew she was going to lose, she’d do her best to knock over Carter or me before we reached the finish line.

  “I’m too old to race. The body’s gone.” I pat the small hill of beer belly to prove it. My paunch is smaller than usual, most likely a result of my average weekly beer consumption having dropped to almost zero at Lacey Farms.

  “Oh, please. You’re barely over forty. And that makes me almost forty. If I can do it, so can you.”

  She catches sight of my footwear and stops walking, pointing at the boots. “And what are those?”

  “I’ve been learning to ride out at Cousin Georgia’s.”

  “Horses?”

  I nod. The subject of Elle Chambers is too new to discuss. “Who would put an exercise track next to a hospital? Don’t they know there’s a bunch of sick people in there who would give anything to get out and go for a walk?”

  We fall into an easy pace. She links her arm through mine. It’s almost as if we are twelve and eight again, walking to the dairy bar for a quart of milk for dinner.

  “She thinks she’s going to die, you know,” Rosie says.

  “Mother thinks a lot of things.”

  The night wind gusts and we increase our pace to stay warm. Gold- and rust-colored leaves from the oak trees lining the track scatter across it, crackling beneath our shoes.

  “The whole drive down I kept saying out loud, ‘my mother has cancer, my mother has cancer.’ Trying to make it seem real. When Vi called and told me Mother had to have surgery tomorrow I didn’t feel anything. Nothing. Do you think that’s strange?”

  She pauses, blowing air into her hands. They are Mother’s hands—long, delicate fingers, the wrists narrow and finely boned. We head for a wood bench near the track. Rosie asks for my help in turning the bench so that it faces the trees and not the hospital.

  I pull out a pack of Marlboros from my shirt pocket, offering Rosie one. The wind blows out the match twice. When we get the cigarettes lit, we both lean back and take long drags before letting the smoke out in one long breath.

  “Do you think Daddy still loved Momma?” she asks. “Even at the end?”

  “He loved her more than anything else in the world. Anything. Made him do crazy things.”

  “Such as?” Rosie takes one more drag before throwing the cigarette on the ground, mashing it out with the toe of her shoe.

  “Now that was a waste of a perfectly good cigarette. Why smoke if you’re only going to take two hits?”

  She says she only smokes when she’s anxious, and she can never do it around her singers because they all worry about it ruining their vocal cords. Never mind that half of them are closet chain-smokers. The management isn’t supposed to do it in their presence.

  “Made anybody a star lately?”

  “You heard of Bradley Jason?”

  “He’s got that song out about the little boy who dies, right?”

  “It’s about his brother. Died when he was six. Brad was nine. Damn good song.”

  She says she heard him singing in a dive bar in Austin when she was at a conference. Knew he could be big. Signed him the next week.

  “Pretty good at your job, aren’t you?”

  She shrugs. Sometimes I think she feels funny back home, like she doesn’t want the extra attention just because she has the kind of job most people dream about. Mother used to pump her for details when she came home for Christmas, ignoring the grandchildren, the ham, just wanting to hear about Nashville.

  “You really think Daddy still loved her? Even after that whole mess with Uncle Leroy?”

  I look sideways at her.

  “Come on, Zeke. Daisy told me years ago. Said the two of you found Momma and Leroy kissing out behind the church on Violet’s wedding day.”

  “Daisy shouldn’t have told you that.”

  “Why not? So I’d think better of Mother? I don’t blame her for having an affair. She should have picked somebody besides her husband’s brother is all.”

  “You don’t have a problem with adultery?”

  “Nope. Not when you’ve got five kids and your husband’s gone three weeks out of four. We drove Mother crazy.”

  “That was her job, Rosie. Taking care of us. All of us.”

  She unfolds her legs and hops up, cursing the cold. “Should have brought my down jacket.” Pointing a finger at me, she says, “You’ve never forgiven her for Carter.”

  How good it would feel to let it all out, rid myself of the betrayal and hate I have harbored for Mother. They cling to my insides, with no place to go. I knock Rosie’s finger away with more force than I intend.

  “How does a person forgive a thing like that? Maybe you can forgive the affair. But putting one of your own children into a mental hospital when he was perfectly well enough to live at home? Can you even imagine doing that?”

  She doesn’t answer, and this tells me all I need to know. I take off back to the hospital. Rosie’s footsteps pound behind me. She is breathing hard.

  “Wait a minute.”

  I walk faster.

  “Wait the hell up, Zeke!”

  She catches my arm, forcing me to turn around. “I didn’t mean it like that. I don’t think what she did to Carter was right. I hope I would make a better choice if I were in the same situation.”

  “You hope?”

  She jams her hands in her jeans pockets. “Look, none of us knows what we’d do. We may think we do. But the truth is, we don’t know until we get there.”

  “Maybe you don’t know.”

  I light another cigarette, leaving the pack almost empty. I should’ve stayed in Virginia. Elle will be getting ready for bed now. Is she thinking about me?

  Rosie keeps talking. “She wasn’t going to leave him in State to rot, you know. She needed a break. She was going to get him out after Christmas.”

  “Who says?”

  “She did, Zeke. She told me. If you’d ever talked to her about it, she might have told you, too. What did she say to you tonight? She told me she was sorry about not loving me enough when I was little. Said she was so damn tired by the time I came around. She’s saying good-bye to us, you know, Zeke. She’s getting ready.”

  The truth of this silences us both. Honora will take it the hardest if Mother dies. Mother taught her to bake and to cook, had her over every Sunday since she was tiny. She would never say she favored Honora more than Louisa or any of the other grandkids, but I knew. Could see it on her face when she asked after Honora or watched her open a Christmas present, intently watching my daughter’s face. When she would call our house, she always asked to speak to Honora. Jackie saw it, too. We have two daughters, Zeke. Two. Your mother only sees one.

  “Did she ask you to forgive her?”

  Rosie’s voice draws me back. I nod.

  “And? What did you say?”

  The easy answer is clear. The words are on the tip of my tongue.

  “You couldn’t do it, could you?”

  “I told her I was sorry, too.”

  “For what, Zeke? For hating her all these years? For blaming her for Carter’s death? For being a loser stu
ck in his hometown at a shit job? Jesus fucking Christ. I can’t even look at you right now.”

  She stomps off to her car, a sleek convertible, and slams the door shut.

  “Screw you!” I yell, my voice bouncing off the trees and across the deserted parking lot.

  Mother’s words about Honora press at the back of my mind. It takes ten minutes to drive to Curtis and Jackie’s house, which sits in the middle of a cul-de-sac in Mabry’s only new home development. My ex-wife and her then-boyfriend bought it a year ago. At the time, Louisa told me how fun it was to pick out the carpet and paint colors for her room—the first she would not have to share with Honora.

  No one in my family had ever owned a brand-new home. What was it like to be the first person to inhabit a place? To have pristine walls and floors without scuff marks? Never mind the five bedrooms and six bathrooms.

  Curtis’s shiny F150 XL Supercab with its chrome wheel rims sits in the driveway next to Jackie’s brand-new Thunderbird. I park at the curb and turn off the engine. So far, I have managed never to set foot in the house. The girls always know when I’m coming over and a single horn blast summons them outside. Through the front picture window I glimpse Curtis. He must have seen the unfamiliar car and walks to the front door, throwing it open. The outdoor light mounted above the driveway clicks on, lighting up the interior of my car like daybreak.

  Fuck.

  “Is that you, Ezekiel?” Curtis stands in the walkway. He wears pressed chinos and an oxford shirt, his blond hair parted on the side and slicked back.

  I climb out of the car, telling myself not to punch him just because he is sleeping with Jackie and providing for my children. It would feel so good, though. Quick uppercut. Nice and clean. Rattle the old boy a little.

  “Hey, Curtis. I dropped by to see the girls. Are they still up?”

  “Sure, sure. Come on in.” He waves me in the front door with a smile. “Let me get Jackie for you.”

  Before I can stop him and say, Please, just the girls, he is gone, disappearing down the front hallway that looks as big as our old house. The house smells of cookies baking and I wonder if it’s real or just some fancy upgrade option they chose—“have your house smell like chocolate chip cookies with the superscent ventilation system even when you’re too busy to bake.”

  I take a seat in the living room. The new house must have come with new furniture, too. Five years younger than Jackie or me, Curtis has made more money at his Ford dealerships than my father made his entire life. This also feels like a good reason to hit him.

  The slap of bare feet against the hallway’s wood floor comes toward me.

  “Dad!”

  My youngest throws herself at me. I grab her up—pink nightgown and all—and hang on with all I’ve got. She tucks her head beneath my chin.

  “I missed you,” Lou says softly.

  “Me, too.”

  Recalling how close I came to never seeing her again makes me hold her tighter. Pigeon Forge feels like a thousand years ago now. How did I imagine leaving behind this little creature with her spindly arms and legs?

  She looks up at me with the large brown eyes that make it nearly impossible to deny her anything. I gently set her back on the ground.

  “Something’s wrong with Honora,” she says, grabbing hold of my hand.

  My heart catches. “What do you mean, sweetheart?”

  “Yesterday she stopped talking. To anybody.” She shrugs. “I mean, she doesn’t really talk to me much anyway but she’s not even talking to Mom. Or the boyfriend.”

  When she says boyfriend, she makes quotation marks in the air.

  Jackie walks into the room and gives me a brief hug. The physical contact is suprising—hugs are not something she doles out to me on a regular basis anymore—but then I realize it must be sympathy inspired.

  “Did you see Lillian?” she asks. “The girls and I stopped by yesterday.”

  Lou tugs on my hand. “Will MeeMee be okay?”

  MeeMee is the name Honora came up with when she was a toddler and couldn’t manage “MeeMaw.” The name stuck, and Mother said she never minded since it sounded French.

  Jackie and I share a look above our daughter’s head.

  “I hope so,” I say.

  “Hang on a second, Dad. I want to show you something.” Louisa disappears out of the room.

  Jackie pulls me into the farthest corner, where we sit on a couch covered in what appears to be Holstein cowhide. “I’m going to talk fast because Lou will be right back. Just listen, okay? It’s Honora. She’s been in the kitchen for two days baking cookies. Only stopping to pee and sleep for a couple of hours. It’s crazy. I think it has to do with the boyfriend.”

  “Did you ask her?”

  “Zeke, do you think I’m an idiot? She won’t speak to me. She’s not talking to anyone. She communicates by writing shopping lists of ingredients for me so she can keep baking. She’s having some kind of breakdown here and I need your help.”

  I run my hands down my face. What does Jackie want me to do?

  “Mother thinks Honora is in love with this guy,” I say. “What do you think?”

  She nods.

  “Can’t we get through one crisis at a time? Is that too much to ask?”

  “Have you always whined this much, Zeke? Because I have a hard time believing I put up with it.”

  I’m too tired to fight. Louisa returns holding something behind her back.

  “Ta-da!” she says, revealing a trophy that looks half as big as she is.

  Jackie and I can’t help but smile at our daughter’s glowing face and the size of her prize.

  “I won ‘most-improved player’ on the soccer team this year. Remember how last year I kept missing my shots and forgetting who I was supposed to be defending against? Not this year. I wish you could’ve seen me play, Dad.” Her expression dims. “I kicked butt.”

  “She did, Zeke. I went hoarse at the games screaming for her.” Curtis makes this helpful comment from the hallway, where he appears to be eavesdropping. “And Jackie—” He clears his throat. “Honora is throwing flour in the kitchen. Not that it’s a problem.” He smiles that car-salesman, everything’s-great smile. “Just wanted to give you an update.

  “Thanks, honey,” Jackie says. “Why don’t you go ahead and go to bed? I know you’ve got an early call in the morning.”

  I keep my eyes glued to Lou’s trophy, admiring it from every angle, while they exchange a good-night kiss.

  Louisa tells me I should go talk to Honora. “Maybe she’ll listen to you,” she says.

  “Do you really think that?”

  She raises her eyebrows. “You’ve got to try, Dad. It’s, you know, your job.”

  Jackie watches us from the doorway, inclining her head just the slightest, so I know she is amused by Lou’s comment.

  “Well, in that case, boss,” I say, “I’m going in. What kind of protective gear do you think I’ll need? A helmet? Maybe a chef’s hat?”

  Lou giggles. Jackie even manages a smile.

  The kitchen is twenty by twenty-four feet, at least. Every inch of the island running down the middle of it is covered in wire cooling racks holding cookies—chocolate chip, peanut butter, lemon. My daughter has the oven door open and is peering inside. In profile, the bones of her face reveal the changes of the past year—the cheek and brow finely defined, the round innocence of little-girldom gone. Despite the dyed black hair and ratty pajamas she wears, she is a stunning girl.

  A bag of flour is ripped open on the floor. Honora closes the oven and looks up. Our eyes meet and she inhales sharply.

  “Smells good, honey.” I walk to the island, grabbing the closest cookie. “Tastes great. How are you?”

  She folds her arms across her chest and leans against the counter f
acing me.

  I tell myself not be afraid of my own kid.

  “I missed you, sweetheart. You okay?”

  Her gaze narrows. She shakes her head slowly.

  “You’re not okay?”

  She points as if to say, Bingo.

  I step closer and she holds up a hand. I step back.

  “What can I do?”

  Honora responds with an eye roll and then looks entirely disgusted. She stares so intently I have to break the eye contact. She stoops down to grab something off the floor.

  We are standing two feet apart and all it takes is one quick motion for her to dump the remainder of the bag of flour on my head.

  I wipe what I can off my face, quelling the desire to smash a stick of butter in her hair. The girl is pissed.

  She points again, this time at the doorway. When I don’t move, she scribbles on the shopping list and then holds it up.

  “Get out now” it says.

  “I love you,” I say.

  Honora ignores me and removes a fresh tray of cookies from the oven, shutting the door with a swift bump of her hip.

  My daughter does not want my help.

  I slip out the back door without saying good-bye to Lou or Jackie. The patio furniture trips me up as I make my way in the dark to the gate. A chair crashes to the ground.

  “Everything okay out there?” Curtis calls out from the bedroom window.

  “Fine,” I say. “Just fine.”

  By eleven o’clock, I park in the carport of Daisy’s house and drag myself through the side door.

  “Hey, brother.” Daisy stands at the sink washing dishes. When she looks up at me, she frowns. “What happened to your hair? Did you go gray between the hospital and here?”

  “Don’t ask. Honora’s having a crisis. We don’t know what it’s about or why.”

  My sister dries her hands on a towel. “Is it something big, do you think?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  She wants to ask more questions but stops herself. “You look awful. Go get settled on the couch in the living room.”