“Daddy, can we go?” Fiona rolled up the window and reached for the radio.
“Delly,” Arthur said from the other side of the car. “There’s a letter inside for you. A man dropped it off.” His affected disinterest was clearly a strain.
“Did you frisk him? Get his name?”
“I would never. I want you to be happy any way you can.”
“I’m going for that divorce, Arthur. Don’t care what people say.”
“I wasn’t jealous,” he went on. “I knew he wasn’t a rival.”
“There is no rival.”
“Almost worse. Thrown over for naught.” He tried to catch her eye. “You look pretty, by the way.”
She scowled. “So I been told.”
Arthur, by his expression, didn’t like the sound of that.
* * *
THE SEALED ENVELOPE printed with “Mrs. Franklin” was on her kitchen table.
Adele,
There is an old colored woman in Hancock Bayou in Cameron Parish whose little nephew knows it was not R. J. Bainard who died. Her name is Sally something and everyone knows her in the town. Keep it in your head. Pardon the mystery. Everything is well. I will contact you soon.
Your friend, Abe
Delly returned the note to the envelope and put it in the drawer of her bedside table. Headspun from seeing R.J. earlier and her husband just now, she didn’t even try to decipher its meaning. It seemed more kooky than serious, like Abe himself.
That night she had the old nightmare again, gobs of feathers spiky in her mouth like the bodies of dead insects. Waking with a start, she lay still as her pulse slowed and her perspiration dried. She remembered that she was alone in the house, Fiona gone away. Headlights swept her window. It was nothing—people come home late all the time. But Delly got out of bed composed in the certainty that this could only be bad.
Peering out from behind her curtain, she saw a car up the street creeping forward mailbox to mailbox, a darker shape within the dark night like a shadow moving under a lake. It came to a stop three houses down and extinguished its lights. The driver emerged and looked around briefly before heading her way in a slow trot. Fear slithered down her arms.
She lost sight of the person in the darkness and crouched to the floor in certainty that he was outside her door. Seconds passed. She peeked out her window again. When the car’s headlights came on she recoiled as if electrocuted—the man had looped back unseen. As he drove away, stockpiles of fright suppressed inside her all day blasted outward. She slumped against the bedroom wall and sobbed, her arms clasped over her head as if under the jeers of a hostile crowd.
The man who’d assaulted her four years ago was alive and in Lake Charles. The beast who’d put a knife to her throat last winter was likewise here. And now this strange old lawyer was passing cryptic notes saying everything was fine when it wasn’t. Shaken by fear that in daylight had been bearable, she resolved to call the police right now.
But she didn’t—and the reason was Seth. He was a puppy she’d dismissed with a kick. Yet he was so earnest and kind, his heart groping before him like that damn walking stick, that she told herself it would be cruel at this point to revive her charge against his brother. She’d made it through the ordeal. She’d survived. She would put her trauma behind her and let events take their course. Humility and smallness were her natural state. She wouldn’t recognize herself without an unfair burden to bear.
The logic appalled her even as she embraced it; there was a lie in there somewhere that she feared to unearth. She returned to bed not even wondering who might have been casing her home after midnight. She set her mind to the different puzzle of when exactly she’d lost her mind, and fell into dreamless sleep.
* * *
R.J. HAD DRIVEN around town after encountering Delly at the hospital. By pretending not to recognize her, he’d given himself time to address the challenge she posed or to hit the road again. It wasn’t a hard choice. He’d lived for years at others’ discretion. No way would he do it again.
Adele Billodeau.
He remembered her. He remembered that night. Certainly he’d rushed her, especially after she’d removed her jeans and placed his hand on her pussy only to pull it away in anxious apology. She turned hysterical with self-reproach for leading him on. She couldn’t breathe through her tears and said she was suffocating. He’d hit her then, a cuff on the temple to snap her to. She’d quieted, and he’d realized there was pleasure to be had, like a swift runner lapping a slow one, in asserting power over someone without it. Desire had nothing to do with it. He recalled the scene as grueling. Her body went limp once she realized what was going to happen. He pushed her knees wide and got into position. He’d needed his hand to harden himself but only a little spit to get in. He’d closed his eyes in concentration and willed himself to conclusion. His mouth against her throat had left her slick with saliva, and afterward, in the car’s charged darkness, he’d dabbed her frantically with his shirt to try and make her clean again.
Sweat ran down his sides as he drove. He was sure that if the right person were beside him in the car he could have drawn his pistol and shot that person dead. He fished the weapon from under his seat. It had belonged to Freddy Baez, found in Freddy’s pants with a wad of cash—blood money from Seth, no doubt—when R.J. had switched clothes in the marsh. Heeding Alvin’s warning that Seth wanted him dead, he’d been keeping it handy in case. He fingered the trigger. R.J. had done it before, in Korea. A bang, a recoil, and behold the wonder you’ve wrought, like turning in all your cards for a new poker hand that can only be an improvement.
He was disappointed not to have been able to attend his own funeral. He wondered if seeing Freddy’s ashes interred might have made the man’s murder more real to him, more deplorable. R.J. owed his rebirth to an act of violence for which, truth be told, he was grateful. It’s why so far he’d done nothing against Seth for hiring someone to kill him. His spirits were frankly better now. The little bastard had done him a favor.
* * *
HE WAS LYING in bed with Corinne Meers when their post-coital dialog stumbled onto matters of import. R.J. told her he’d met “someone named Delly” in Joey’s hospital room. Corinne launched into details about her cousin’s crumbling marriage and cracked personality that R.J. found unexpectedly compelling.
Corinne was displeased by his interest. It provoked her suspicion that “Freddy,” as she knew him, was just another horny Latin after every woman alive. He laughed off her jealousy and confessed that he wasn’t a Mexican gigolo but rather was Richard Bainard, Jr.—fugitive, dead man, Block’s heir, all of it. She gave a yip as if poked with a stick. “Did you really do my cousin like she said?”
“Some booze went by, but yeah. We fucked.”
“We? I knew it! She weren’t no damn virgin.”
“That’s what she said?”
“No one believed her. She had a cheap reputation.”
R.J. didn’t like Corinne saying this. Judging Delly was the opposite of judging himself—nobody’s right in her case, everyone’s in his. “You don’t look too upset about what I just told you,” he said.
“That you ain’t Freddy Baez?”
“For starters.”
“My husband’s gonna be a lot less mad I’m leavin’ him for a Bainard instead of a Mexican.”
He absorbed this. “Glad to oblige.” She gave him a big kiss, arms around his neck, bare leg slung over his hip. He told her there were complications, namely that the wealthy scion “R. J. Bainard” was ashes in Orange Grove cemetery. “If I turn up alive, I’m back to my fugitive self. Stay dead, and I’m free and all yours—but broke.”
“Then you got to come clean, baby. ’Cause you a Bainard, and Bainards ain’t broke by a damn sight.” She reached down her hand. “And you sure as hell ain’t dead.”
“I do that, I go to prison.”
“Not if my cousin drops the charge, it bein’ a big lie anyway.” She kissed him again. “I’ll talk to
her. Tell her you regret any misunderstandin’.”
“Then she’ll know I’m alive. Be the end of me.”
“She knows already.”
“You think?”
“She saw you, right? At Joey’s?”
“Stood two feet away.”
“Trust me. A girl don’t forget.”
“She hasn’t said anything, far as I know. To the cops, I mean.”
“Maybe she gonna hunt you down herself.”
“Maybe she likes me.”
“I tell her you think that, she’ll kill you for sure.”
He warned her, “She’s liable to hate you for even saying you know me.”
Corinne shook her head. “For hurtin’ Joey she’s in my debt deep. And that young fella from the hospital oughta softened her some.” She snuggled to R.J., warmed by these racy initiatives. “How bad could it a been, anyway? Lord knows I’d forgive you a roll in the backseat.”
R.J. saw no chance of gaining Delly’s cooperation. It was vile, that night. He’d been drunk; her too. He’d screwed her partly to shut her up, her prattling on about high school and boys with no sense of the world’s real problems. But he shouldn’t have forced her, shouldn’t have hit her. That more than anything else—the smack of his hand on the side of her head, the awful look of defeat in her face—made him want to scratch out his eyes to take the vision away.
“That young hospital guy?” he said at length. “Seth? He’s my brother.”
Corinne sat up. “He goes by Hooker, not Bainard.”
“Even so.”
“Your brother, likes my cousin, who you—”
“Yes,” R.J. said.
“And we ain’t even talkin’ about me and Donald.”
R.J. definitely didn’t want to talk about that. “I’d make it up to her if I could. Your cousin. Meet her face-to-face if she wanted.”
Corinne stopped stroking his shoulder. “That’s just stupid.”
“Somewhere public. Safe, tell her.”
“Why?”
“Make my case.” He studied the bedside wall beyond where Corinne lay. “Make my regrets.”
“She’d throw a fit. Pull a gun, shoot you dead. You don’t know her.”
“Be her right.”
Corinne considered. Seeking Delly’s help could go a couple ways. She might run to the police. It would force R.J. to flee and Corinne to join him in penniless exile, a romantic scenario that wouldn’t last a month. But if Delly could be persuaded to retract the rape charge, he could emerge from hiding, claim his fortune, and Corinne’s life would really get wonderful. “I’ll give it a shot,” she told R.J.
His whimsical proposition had become real. He liked that it terrified him.
Corinne asked how he’d come to take “Freddy Baez” for an alias.
“Name of a man I killed. Who’s now buried under my headstone.”
If R.J. had hoped this confession would make her rethink her ardor, he was talking to the wrong person. In rapid sequence it sparked Corinne’s disbelief, amusement, arousal, and dirty Chinese pictures. She dug him, was the problem; virtue wasn’t a factor. And it might have worked out for her if she hadn’t overestimated Delly and underestimated R.J. in terms of their moral character—and too, if she hadn’t misjudged her husband’s capacity for entering the story in a big way.
THREE
Seth, Delly, Audrey
Lake Charles, late spring, 1957. Weeks have passed since Delly first got the feeling that someone was spying on her house. It’s happened several times since, a car on her street late at night, and still she hasn’t told the police. She worries that once she starts talking she’ll be unable to keep quiet about R. J. Bainard being in town. She doesn’t want to add to the hurt she’s done to his brother. Better that she hurt instead.
Delly wasn’t alone in delaying to do the right thing. It seemed everyone was awaiting the hand of God to sweep down and make it all better. The exception was Alvin Dupree. He remained a busy bee in his labors on Bonnie’s behalf. She was in poor spirits. Her father clung to life, but with such piteous bouts of pain and dementia her most loving reaction was to contemplate smothering him with a pillow. When lucid, he continued to ask about seeing R.J. once more. She was tempted to lie and say that R.J. had committed suicide. It might put an end to his delusions. It might also end him, she feared.
Such calculations were ingrained in Bonnie, a reflection, no doubt, of her mother’s precision with numbers. It was therefore inevitable that she acknowledge the potential upside of R.J. actually being dead. Alvin, sensitive to her ponderings, considered doing the black deed himself. R.J. was a wild card, bound to throw more slime on the Bainard name if no one moved to stop him. And there were Alvin’s own interests at risk. He’d hired Freddy Baez to put a scare into R.J. that would send him out of Louisiana and maybe even the country. A change of plan—that is, waxing Freddy—had become necessary after the Bainard name passed his lips. R.J.’s witness of the unfortunate episode threatened Alvin’s future with Bonnie like a serpent asleep in a toy box. Alvin had killed his nation’s enemies in the Pacific and Korea. Could he do the same to an old comrade?
R.J. himself helped answer the question. After weeks of waiting for Corinne to set up a meeting with Delly, his impatience for action led him to drive his car to Georgia Hill as routinely as if the last years hadn’t happened, as if he still lived at home like any unemployed heir. He trotted up the front steps and banged the knocker. Freddy’s pistol was jammed under his shirt. He felt proud to be launching this frontal attack, though he knew that cowards sometimes leap into the fray simply to end the suspense.
A maid answered the door. Her cry of protest when he shoved past her carried down the breezeway to the sewing room where Bonnie sat in vigil at her father’s bedside. Stepping out to the hall, she recognized her brother at once despite his beard and middleweight gauntness. “Surprised?” he said with a twisted smile that went far to conceal his fear.
“Never.” She smiled back.
Aware of the maid observing them, Bonnie stepped warily into his embrace. Feeling against her abdomen the pistol under his shirt, she mouthed something to the maid over his shoulder. “Please what?” the maid said.
He looked behind him. “You talking to her?”
“Miz Bonnie say ‘please’ to me, but she no say what for.”
He realized his sister had tried to signal the woman to get help. “Please fetch my brother a whiskey, how about?”
“Yes,” Bonnie said, her smile still holding. “Two.”
The siblings eyed each other with the mutual suspicion of strangers dressed exactly alike. Not for them the proverbial bond of twins. Their one shared personality trait was needing only the voice in their head for company.
She pointed to the pistol bulge. “I know you shot that man we buried.”
He blinked but once. “Now where’d you hear such a thing?”
“From Alvin. And I saw him, too—face all gone.”
R.J. processed the information into columns of allegiance and treachery. “Daddy thinks it, too?”
“Daddy’s ill. Right down the hall, but might as well be a million miles. Ah,” she said to the approaching maid. “Drinks. Shall we take them to the sewing room?”
* * *
RICHIE BAINARD HAD many positive qualities. But he did beat his wives from time to time, and that fact alone doubtless condemns him in most people’s minds. R.J., in no small paradox, fell into that category. His first thought on seeing his father withered and frail was of his mother, Esther. His second thought was Good.
The nurse discreetly stepped out. Sister and brother stood at opposite sides of Richie’s bed, leaning inward like competing priests. The pistol in R.J.’s trousers felt redundant and juvenile. His father’s breathing, soft as tidewater under a pier, made the scene feel timeless. “Son?”
“Daddy?”
“That you?”
“I came home.”
“R.J.?” The question became an oat
h. “R.J.!”
“What? What!” He looked vainly to Bonnie to clarify.
Richie arched off the mattress as if hit with high voltage. He gave a cry that was plain if not clear. “Say sorry.”
It confused R.J. He’d planned to bombard his father with end-of-life insults before leaving his presence forever. He hadn’t planned to say sorry. He found that he very much wanted to.
But what appeared to him like an offer of absolution from a father to a wayward son looked otherwise to Bonnie. It offended her to see her brother fill with emotion as he formulated some plea for their father’s forgiveness. She issued an opposite order. “Go on. Tell Daddy you forgive him.”
R.J. took this in sluggishly. “I thought he wants me to say sorry.”
“Why would he? He cares about his soul, not yours. He’s saying sorry. Tell him okay and let him pass peaceful.”
“Forgive him why?”
“Because of Mama. Because of Angel. He’s always felt terrible about how he treated them, and you and Seth just spit on his tries to make amends.”
“He hit Mama.”
“Yes, he did.”
“More than once.”
“Yes, he did.”
“Angel too?”
“Of course.” She told him about that last day when their stepmother, bloody and frightened, sped down the driveway into the oak tree. He’d known only what the public had been told, what the papers said—that accidents just happen sometimes. “Daddy was the one made her crash. He beat her up and she ran away and I guess he scared her from steering right.”
“Scared how?”
“He liked his guns.” She shrugged, not flippantly—it meant the worst was now out and there was no more to tell. She stroked her father’s arm with fretful devotion, like a miser polishing silverware.
“I was fond of Angel,” R.J. said.
“You and every other man.”
“More than fond.”
“Like I said.”
Their father yanked his arm from her grip and raised it as if hailing a taxi. R.J. and Bonnie looked down at him. His eyes were fixed on things not there, like a dog that peers down an empty hallway where floorboards have inexplicably creaked.
Cajun Waltz Page 17
