When I turned back, I found Tony watching me. “I’ve got a week before my plane leaves,” I said. “And I need to stay the hell away from that woman.”
Tony jacked his eyebrows higher. Then he relaxed and nodded. “Let’s get,” he said. “It’s a little too warm to be sitting inside.”
I pulled the New Yorker into the long driveway and stopped behind a ten-year-old, sage-green Ford F-250. I doubted Mother could climb into that thing from her wheelchair.
Surveying the house for a long minute, I gripped the shifter to steady my nerves. Facing my mother kicked up a ruckus inside my chest.
Dixon had finished building this house just in time to move out. Mother insisted on staying. Almost like she wanted the haunting memories to shadow her day and night.
A two-foot ridge of snow skirted the foundation, stretching its fingers past the car, along the drive, and into the street. Tiny moguls tucked themselves into the risers of the front entrance. There were no footprints leading to the front door.
I slumped my arms over the Chrysler’s steering wheel, and reminisced at my father’s attempt to create stability for his young family. At four and a half, impatiently waiting on my fifth birthday, Dixon had walked me through the framework.
The unfamiliar truck muddled the memory.
I closed my eyes.
Huge sticks of fresh lumber on the grass. Breathing their aroma. Gripping Dixon’s giant finger. Clopping over the springy subfloor, surrounded by pounding, thumping, and men shouting carpenter terms. An electric saw screamed to life, making me jump at Dixon who hoisted me into his strong arms. His beefy laughter and comforting voice, “I got you, buddy. No worries.”
My father had carried me into each unfinished room, pointing out particulars. “Ain’t it grand?” Hammers popped. Sawdust coated my lips. He took my hands and helped me drive a single nail. We stepped onto the porch where he pointed out a long heap of dirt that looked like a giant grave. “No, no son. It’s called a swale. Nobody’s going to get buried there.”
I opened my eyes. A broken swath of white covered the gravel-filled trench now. He’d been wrong. My eyes began to tear up.
Snapping the long door of the New Yorker open, I stepped out of my mother’s version of retribution. When Jasia dropped me off, I’d noticed the “Buy American” sticker Mother had pasted on the bumper after Dixon moved out.
It left me rattled as I walked to the front steps, passing under the majesty of the Cornish Elm we’d planted as a family on move-in day. Leaving footprints in the un-swept front porch steps, I stopped on the landing, took a cold breath, blew out a long white trailer of frozen air, and knocked.
Nobody came.
I stomped twice to fight the prickling in my toes.
The classical Greek, colonnaded wrap-around brought more memories. Renée and I spent hours swinging from post to post like circus players. Until Mom shooed us off. “You’ll wear it out!”
Our mother protected everything like it was for sale.
We’d jump the rail, race to the riser wall, drop flat on our bellies, two of Custer’s soldiers hiding from the redskins, giggling. We giggled a lot. At first. Before Dixon wrecked the car, our mom, and his suburban American dream. Before he moved in to an apartment over a bar.
I clapped my hands together. The sting failed to bring warmth. Stomping around to the rail, I recalled Mother cutting the lowest branch from the Great Elm to prevent climbing. A nub remained, higher than we could have reached.
I spat into the snow at the foot of the thick tree. She should have waited. Dixon’s wisdom told her to. “Let them play. When the tree gets too tall, they won’t be as clumsy.” She shouldn’t have thrown him out.
My gaze traveled higher. The tree topped out around eighty feet. I envisioned Quentin up there, and my heart skipped. “Okay, Mother,” I whispered. “I get you. A little.” The necessity of both parents. One to protect and one to nurture. One to guide exploration and one to push toward self-adventure. My children needed their mother. And they needed me. Dixon was a mess while I was growing up, but I still needed him. The price of his absence had been too steep.
I spun back around and banged my thinly gloved knuckles against the oak door. Stupidity for not calling ahead dissolved into my sore fingers. I tried the glass knob.
It turned.
I pushed inside.
Scents of lavender, oatmeal, and beef stew permeated everything.
I shoved the door closed behind me, and soaked in the warmth.
My bags hit the foyer floor with a wallop, shattering the odd tranquility.
Two coats hung above the little oak bench where we’d tugged galoshes over our shoes.
Almost like I’d never left.
The air behind me moved.
I twisted my head and caught a glimpse of an apparition.
It wheeled to a stop at my heels.
My heart boomed. I jumped. “Crap!” Stumbling over my duffel bag, I managed to get a foot under me and a hand out without cracking my skull against the doorjamb. “Get a bell on that thing, Mother!”
CHAPTER SIX
Who Am I?
She sat with chin high reviewing my appearance. Solidified knuckles kept the chair rock solid. Her keenly pressed turquoise pantsuit emphasized the staunch profile. Dirty blonde hair had collected a few strands of gray, but the age in her face still matched the picture in my Okinawan living room.
“We don’t use the front door.”
“I gathered.” Breath still coming hard, I leaned over to kiss her cheek.
She tilted her head back at the final moment.
My lips barely contacted her taught skin.
An uneasy scent of mentholated floral perfume lingered in her wake.
“You’re very much yourself, Mother.”
“Guess you couldn’t bring my grandchildren.” Her penetrating blue eyes demanded regard.
This same gaze had held me captive until I was twelve-years-old. “We couldn’t afford it.” I’d regressed to adolescence, already in trouble and avoiding punishment. I rested my hand on her shoulder.
She wheeled backwards a quick foot, breaking the connection. “Don’t coddle me.”
“Fair enough. Didn’t think anyone would object if they stayed home, given the circumstances.”
“It’s not like they would have known him, that’s for sure.” She cranked her chair around and whisked it into the living room.
I hesitated. Was she referring to my not bringing them? Or to Dad’s not being allowed in the house for the last twenty-one years? I dropped my coat on the bench and chased after her. “You ban our father from your home, deny Renée and I time with him, and now you expect me to drop your grandchildren off for a family visit?” It was out of my mouth before I could think.
Mother reappeared so abruptly I nearly banged into her chair. “This is still my house, young man. You will show some respect.” She zipped away again.
Anger boiled inside. I clenched my jaw. Grab her chair handles and shove her through the door into the freezing snow! But damned if I did it. She was my mother. Putting up with her evil inconsistencies was part of the mother-child bonding ritual. Even without that confounding relationship, my current need for information on Dixon Pierce’s recent comings and goings mandated decryption of her twisted logic. She held key knowledge necessary to resolve how my father’s lifestyle had left him dead at fifty-six. I sucked a deep lungful of air and blew it out with intentionality. Then I stepped through the living room archway.
The scene stopped me cold.
Granger Pierce was just getting his feet under him. He clutched his sweat-stained Stetson in two hands. “Howdy, Connor.”
Granger stood a couple of inches taller than I, and nearly a head taller than my dad. Ranch work kept him trim and weathered. His sleeves were turned up, revealing the corded muscles of his forearms.
“Uncle Granger,” I said, noting his position behind the coffee table. “What brings you by? Last I heard you and my fath
er weren’t speaking.”
“Came to offer condolences.”
I’d only seen Granger a couple of times since I was about twelve-years-old. Back when he came to town to watch his boys play ball. Sixth grade. After that, neither Dad nor Mom ever mentioned him. Now, here he was in my living room, four days after his brother died.
He glanced at Mother, and then lifted his eyes to me. “I just thought I’d help out with arrangements is all.”
“You and Dad come to terms before—?” A childish thing, but I didn’t care to see Granger in my mother’s house right now. Probably my unhealthy attempt at protecting Dixon’s honor.
He turned his hat in his hands, searching it for an excuse. “Hard times makes hard choices.” He lifted his chin, sure to meet my gaze. His gun metal irises contained an agitated keenness that lined up perfectly with my mother’s frozen blue intensity. “He was my brother, differences or not.”
Holding his stare seemed best, given the western setting, though I considered ducking into the kitchen. What did I know about it? Before receiving notification, I was happily ignorant six thousand miles away from everyone’s business. Climbing into the airliner in Okinawa had made me antsy, self-righteous, and nosy. I didn’t like it A-tall. I’d made my decision to slink upstairs when he finally spoke.
“I best be going, anyhow. Got a couple of heifers fixin’ to calve.” Granger turned to my mother. “I’ll check back.”
Mother remained solemn beside the couch, unyielding creases in her forehead, nodding agreement.
“Seems a little early.” I kept my eye on his reaction. “To be birthing cattle, I mean.”
Granger stepped around the table, easy like a wildcat, and put out his hand.
Instinctively, I grabbed it.
His grip was firm, with the strength of a wild horse. “Some things happen before their time, son.”
My hackles tingled. I couldn’t read anything but genuineness in him. Had I allowed my parents’ prejudices to dictate my behavior?
Granger released me and disappeared out the side door.
In the leftover stillness, I heard him start the truck, and then roll back and forth in a three-point turn to get around the New Yorker I’d parked in his way. He gunned it, leaving an empty space in the nighttime air that surrounded the house.
Neither Mother nor I moved in the time it took Granger to step around me and drive off.
“Helping with arrangements?” I said. “I thought they hated each other. Is he in a hurry to put Dad in the ground or something?” I meant it as a jest, a release valve for my shame. It might have gone over in Nansi’s family. Not here.
Mother deftly manipulated her wheelchair to rocket into the kitchen. She commanded over her shoulder, “You need to clear Dixon’s apartment with the police tomorrow. I’m not paying one more dime than I have to.”
I stood alone in the living room, the thick taste of stupidity coating my mouth. I still wanted to ask Mother about Dad’s death. Now she wouldn’t talk to me. Not tonight. Maybe never.
What a great welcome-home.
A shiver crossed my shoulders and into my neck. I shrugged it off, and moved to the foyer for my bags.
We all despised my father while he lived, now we stood on the edge of psychological breakdown at his sudden absence. Not speaking on hard feelings kept everybody in lockstep with the dirge.
I lugged my baggage upstairs.
Mother hadn’t touched my old room. Farrah smiled her sexy joy over the foot of my bed.
I smirked at her.
McQueen’s Bullitt and Luke Skywalker challenged intruders from their respective posters on the perpendicular wall.
I shook my head at them and flopped onto the rowdy geometry of blue, red, green, and purple patchwork. Grandmother Pierce had quilted it for my birthday after Dixon moved out.
The bedside clock displayed three-thirty in glowing red letters. Add sixteen. Seven-thirty in the a.m. on Okinawa-jima.
I rolled to the phone, snagged the receiver, and cussed. Smacking the handset back into its cradle, I bounced off the bed to my duffel. Digging past the top layer of sweaters, I latched onto my leave paperwork. Inside that folder I discovered the scribbles with the international exchange code beside our home phone number.
Back to the bed, handset at the ready, the clock now read 7:35. Nansi would be out of the house any minute.
I punched in the string of numbers— twice, once incorrectly with a volley of expletives. Silence taunted me while the operator connected to the opposite side of the world. Patsy Cline’s words bounced around inside me. You want me to act like we’ve never kissed. You want me to forget. I mentally traced the length of empty phone line searching for peace from my family.
Nansi’s voice told me to leave my message.
My chest swelled with empty. I told her the flight went fine and my mother and sister were fine, and I was fine, and I’d call later.
I tried to nap.
My eyes kept popping open. Farrah’s sexy red swimsuit failed to prevent thoughts of Dixon’s absence, now permanent, from my life. Quentin and Penelope crowded into my mind, grim faces staring me down. I might never see them again. Tears came unbidden. Emptiness inflated like a bubble around my bed, growing until it occupied every bit of time and space. Bullitt poked his gun at the world, but couldn’t ward off the vacancy. Skywalker held his sword high in an ironic battle against his father for the life of his sister.
I cursed at the pain.
Dixon’s spirit invaded the bubble. His drunken, absenteeism melded with moments of connection. Even as I clasped his thick finger and followed him through the partially constructed house, my grip lost strength.
Mournful gunk emerged out of my misery and collected in my throat. I couldn’t lose my children like Dixon lost Renée and me. I had to discover the truth behind his sudden death. Like Luke uncovering the truth of his Jedi heritage, my mission had to be uncovering of the dark force that drove my father to his grave. Without that truth, the trip home meant nothing more than an end to my marriage and the disintegration of my family.
I lingered on that determination, absorbing Luke’s fierce resolve. Eventually dozing, I dreamed of bombs dropping on the idyllic Okinawan beaches, prophetic precursors to Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Popping awake, heart pounding, I rolled to a sitting position.
Complete darkness peered in through my window. The clock read 8:37.
I grabbed the handset and punched ten numbers into the phone a third time.
An emotionless operator listened to me recite my home number. Telephone exchanges over great distances create a surreal ambience. The walls close in and miles become millimeters positioned around the ear canal.
The fluid gavel of my beating heart anticipated the ring in Okinawa. Each rhythmic thump scooted a wedge of my beginnings with Nansi into mental focus.
It had started with curves. Nansi and a couple of her girlfriends waited in line for the wooden roller coaster at King’s Island, Virginia called the “Grizzly.” Inspired by her shape and the confident way she moved, I nosed in on their conversation. “You’re not afraid of bears?” It landed like a stack of Nansi’s burnt pancakes.
She smirked. “It takes more than a rough ride to frighten me, Cowboy.”
Her girlfriends giggled.
“Do I look like a Montana redneck?” I asked.
“Can you wrestle a grizzly?”
Her sharp mind kept conversation fresh. We bantered playfully and constantly. Until Penelope was born. Until she discovered the one-armed bandit. Conversations stopped. Until she’d given five thousand dollars, a quarter at a time, to the least conversational entity on the planet. Then the fighting began— my lack of compassion pitted against the patience of a slot machine. A true ding-a-ling stole my girl.
I huffed.
“Hello?” Nansi’s groggy voice asked.
“Did I wake you?” Wasn’t it early afternoon in Okinawa?
“Had to get the kids out of bed
.”
“My calculations say its after lunch there.”
“Naps, Connor. The kids need naps.”
“Oh.” Ten seconds of silence deflated me to the flatness of one of my posters. “Figured I better let you know the flight came in okay.” My finger traced the black grid that separated the gray buttons on the telephone.
“Good.”
The sting hit just above my heart. She’s still angry. Because of Sharon. “Mom seems good. For my mother, anyway.” I considered hanging up. Just pretend the line went dead. “It’s cold.” End this discomfort and rejoin the uncomfortable world of Mother and Renée. “Snowy.”
No reply.
I’d been stupid to argue against them visiting her parents. Time I let go of silly fears. Give her room to move. “Maybe you should—“
“Penelope’s crying. Let me put Quentin on.”
“No school?” Talking to a five-year-old was too hard right now. Lets get a handle on this marriage thing first.
“It’s Friday.” A thump. I pictured the phone dangling by its cord. These days dialogue felt like battle maneuvers.
I closed my eyes and rested my forehead in my palm. I’m in our kitchen. Nansi is bent over the stove and I still want her like I did that day she called me Cowboy. Only, sex isn’t going to solve this problem. “Come to church,” she echoed for the hundredth time since my first attempt to get her to the NCO Club, get a few drinks in her, and fix my obsession. So I could move on. Church? What the hell am I going to do in church? Pray she’ll go out with me? “Maybe God will reveal the secret of asking a girl out.” She said it with a grin. Like I didn’t know how to get girls to go out with me.
“Daddy?” Quentin said from the other end of my universe. He didn’t sound like he wanted to talk much either.
“Hey, Buddy. What’s going on?”
“I got to go pee. Momma’s grumpy. When you home?”
I heard gravel in his voice. Not a cold? The kid didn’t do colds well. “I’ll be back soon. You’ll hardly miss me.” My bedroom shrunk like Willy Wonka’s hallway. The phone receiver swelled to sofa size. The sting of a teardrop erupted.
Murder of the Prodigal Father Page 6
