Fearless

by Lauren Gilley

  “She thought he had money, I guess, and that was where the first problems started. She hated being drug out into the swamp. My earliest memory in life is of her bitching about the heat and the mosquitos and the noise the gators made at night. She couldn’t cook worth a shit” –

  Ava felt her stomach tighten.

  – “and she wasn’t sweet, and she was awful to Gram. It was a good riddance, really, when she left him. But Daddy was heartbroken. He loved her.”

  They looked both ways and walked across the cross street.

  Mercy sighed and said, “Dee went back to hooking. She eventually started collecting girls of her own, but she never had a place like Dawn House. She’s got a little semi-detached up ahead here, and she used the spare bedroom some, from what I hear, but mostly she sent her girls out to meet the johns at the hotels.

  “And now,” he said with an air of finality, “she’s got AIDS and she’s dying.” He shot her a wry half-smile. “And I don’t even care. How’s that for fucked up?”

  She didn’t know what to say. This felt like one of those moments when she shouldn’t say anything, simply exist as his partner. “Well,” she said, “I can’t cook worth a shit either.”

  His smile widened, and his voice gentled. “Oh, baby, don’t you dare compare yourself. Don’t compliment her like that.”

  She kissed his arm and stroked it with her fingers. Sweet boy.

  The closer they drew to Dee’s house, the heavier Mercy’s steps became, and the more he seemed to be leaning against her, rather than the other way around. Finally, they reached an adorable white semi-detached, its stacked stoop right there on the sidewalk. The shutters and intricate front door were a powder blue. The eave support bracers were ornate, lace-like gingerbread, as was the doorframe, the edging of the glass inset of the door. Brass house numbers on a black plaque. Potted aloe plants on the steps. A wreath wrapped in colored nylon scarves in peach and yellow and the same powder blue as the door. It was a narrow little bungalow, the front façade spotless, one of many just like it painted in candied shades all down this stretch of St. Ann, cars wedged in tight along the length of the curb.

  “It’s very cute,” Ava commented.

  Mercy wrapped a strong arm around her and hugged her tight to his side a moment. “I love you,” he said, his eyes on the door, his voice a breath of sound, like he was saying some final prayer.

  Then he glanced at her. “Pull me outta there,” he said, “if I start to get…” He made a face. “If you think I’ll do something…stupid.”

  If he got violent, he meant. This great big man who treated her like a china doll, who kissed her mother, who’d sat watch by her bedside when she was only eight, and he’d been her best friend, was actually afraid he’d lose his head and become violent.

  Looking in his eyes, she believed him. And she believed in her own ability to pull him back from the brink. She flashed back to five years ago, in Hamilton House, when she’d been the one to back him off of Mason. Not even her father could claim that kind of influence over him.

  She nodded. “I will. I promise.”

  He rang the bell.

  When the door opened, the shadowy entryway surrounded a very tiny woman with gleaming skin the color of polished mahogany, and a cap of short white curls. She wore a short-sleeved white cotton dress that swallowed her slight frame, her wrists delicate and bony, hands crossed with raised veins. Her skin was shiny and smooth, but the deep lines pressed beside her mouth and eyes told the story of her age. She could have been eighty, or sixty, or anywhere in between. She stood up very straight and studied them through the lenses of her glasses.

  “Miss Barbara,” Mercy said, his tone polite, “it’s Felix. Dee’s son.”

  She studied him another moment. “I guess it is you.” Her voice was pretty: soft, heavily Cajun, a warmth to it. “Lord, you sure got big. I don’t even know if you’ll fit in the door.”

  Mercy made a face that wasn’t quite a smile. “I got married,” he said, “and I brought my wife to town. I thought I’d introduce her to Dee.”

  Ava felt Barbara’s eyes come to her. “Married? To this pretty thing? Honey, you’re too big for her. You’ll kill the poor girl.”

  This time, Mercy really did smile. “I’m gonna try real hard not to, Miss Barb. Can we come in?”

  “Oh, sure, sure.” She stepped back and waved them in. “It’s hot out there on the street.”

  By contrast, the dim interior of the house was a blessed ten degrees cooler, the humidity kept at bay by the air conditioning. As Barb closed the door behind them, Ava took a fast look around. This shallow foyer opened up into a sitting room with an Oriental rug laid over the old scraped hardwood, dainty Victorian couches and chairs perched around the room on their slender wooden legs. The fireplace was a gas retrofit, a flat-screen TV mounted above it.

  To their immediate right was a small alcove where a desk and chair sat in a bay window overlooking the neighbor’s siding. A bad view, but a cozy place, easy to miss on the way into the sitting room.

  In the foyer, a claw-foot table sat beneath a silver-framed mirror, boasting an orchid in a china pot and a small silver business card dish stacked with white cards printed with “Miss Dee” in black script.

  Barbara came to stand in front of them. “Now, Felix,” she said, hands going into her dress pockets. “You know your mother’s real sick, don’t you?” She peered up at him over the tops of her glasses.

  “Yes, ma’am. I heard the doctors haven’t given her much time.”

  “They haven’t.” Barb glanced away with a tsk. She dropped her voice a notch. “I always told her to be careful, but did she listen to me? No. And now the poor thing’s…” She shook her head. “Well, you can see for yourself.”

  She turned and led them deeper into the house.

  The sitting room fed into a galley kitchen, and then dead-ended in a T-shaped hall at the back. They turned to the right and passed the open doorway of a bathroom on their way to the closed door at the end.

  Barb paused and turned back to look at them. “She doesn’t look good. Be prepared.” Then she rapped once and went in. “Dee, I’ve brought you visitors. You wanna sit up and see who it is?”

  There was a murmured response from the bed as Barb walked toward it.

  Ava was struck by how ornate and old-fashioned the bedroom was, though she guessed she shouldn’t have been, given that this was New Orleans. The dressing table, stool, highboy and bed were all a dark wood carved with fleur-de-lis and curlicues. The bed was a big four-poster, and the frame of the dressing table mirror was an elaborate shape that curved and twined, the top corners covered with wide-brimmed hats that had been hung on the wooden points. The table itself was a sea of colored perfume and cosmetics bottles. The window was draped with intricate white lace. A trio of framed photos on the wall just to her left evidenced Dee when she was younger, in her prime, each photo of her in a different lingerie getup, flexing and flaunting for the camera, showing off her goods. Two nightstands flanked the bed; both held lamps, ashtrays, and little china boxes, the contents of which Ava didn’t want to investigate.

  And then there was the woman herself, Barb helping her sit up against a stack of white pillows.

  Wasted, was Ava’s first thought. The smiling, round-cheeked blonde in the photos was now this thin, frail creature who’d wasted away to yellow skin and straggling hair. Her large eyes had sunk deeper into her head, her cheeks thinned and grown lined and dry. Her hands, as she plucked at the covers, were nothing but skin stretched over bone, the nails dark and unhealthy. This was a woman who was dying, and she looked the part.

  Visibly weak, she was strong enough to laugh. “Look at little Felix,” she said. “He finally grew into those stork legs.” She waved Barb away as the woman tried to straighten her bed-limp hair for her. “Go get us something to drink, Barb, while I catch up with my son.” Through the heaviness of fatigue, her smile was mocking.

  Ava felt Mercy stiffen beside h
er and took hold of his hand as Barb left the room and shut the door. Mercy’s fingers closed tight around hers.

  “Felix,” Dee said, clasping her hands together in her lap in a girlish gesture. “It is good to see you. I was starting to think I’d never set eyes on you again.”

  “I heard you were dying,” he said, voice flat.

  “I am. But I don’t have to do it in an ugly way.” She gestured to the pretty room around them, and her clean white nightgown.

  “It’ll get ugly. Just wait for it.”

  Dee ignored him; her gaze came to Ava, smile becoming one that Ava found somehow threatening. “Did you bring me a present, Felix? Something new to add to my collection?”

  Mercy’s arm came around her waist again. “This is my wife,” he said, voice dropping, hardening.

  “Ohhh.” Dee’s eyes widened in obvious delight. “I have a daughter-in-law? How nice.” She smiled again, even wider. “You’re young,” she told Ava. “Real young.” Her eyes cut over to Mercy, sly, knowing. “You always thought you were too good for me, but look at you, just like every other man. A young, tasty little slice to make you feel like a big man.” She laughed. “Do yourself a favor,” she said to Ava, “and leave him before he gets you knocked up. You won’t ever be able to get away from him after that.”

  Ava opened her mouth to say something, the anger boiling up like always, but Mercy gripped her hip, asking her to keep quiet.

  He said, “Who’s been paying for your treatment?”

  She sat back, calming. “A friend of mine.”

  “Poor bastard,” Mercy sneered. “Does he know you gave him AIDS?”

  She looked insulted. “I make everyone use a condom. I’m not a fucking moron.”

  “No, you’re just a fucking whore,” Mercy said, hand tightening on Ava’s hip again. “Alright, Mama. You’re dying, I saw it for myself. Peace.” He tried to steer Ava toward the door.

  “Don’t you walk out on me!” Dee shouted. “You little shit. Who do you think you are, that you can talk to me like that?”

  Ava saw the muscle twitch in Mercy’s jaw. “Unlike you, pretentious bitch, I know exactly who I am. And I’ll talk to you any way I want to, after what you did.”

  “What I did? Are you still blaming that on me?”

  “Do you see anyone else here to blame?” His arm slid away from Ava, and he spread it to indicate the room.

  Dee scowled at him. “No thanks to you. You never shoulda done that, Felix. I liked Oliver. I liked all those boys.”

  “Yeah,” Mercy sneered. “They were loads of fun.” Again, he moved toward the door.

  Dee said, “Why’d you even come if you hate me so bad?”

  Mercy went very still, and his voice was quiet. “I needed to see it with my own eyes to believe it.”

  “What? That I’m dying.” She scowled, her lined face puckering. “So you could celebrate? You wanna dance in the street ‘cause your mother’s going to meet her maker?”

  “I want to sleep better at night.” His voice was still low and spooky. “I want to know for sure you won’t be around to sic your men on anyone.”

  “I never did that! Why do you always have to bring up Oliver anyway? He was only trying to protect me.”

  “Protect you from what?” Mercy snarled. His voice lost some of its calm and quiet. “The poor sad man out in the swamp who still slept with your picture beside his bed? Or the eighty-five-year-old woman who cooked his dinner every night? Explain to me, Dee” – he took an aggressive step toward the bed – “just what sort of threat they were to you. What was Oliver protecting you from?”

  She glared at him, refusing to answer. “You look just like him. You always did, but now you act like him too. You think you’re something special. Think you’re better than me.”

  Mercy laughed and the sound was awful. “He was better than you. But he never thought it. He died thinking you were the love of his life.”

  Again, she ignored him, choosing to insult him instead. “You poor dumbass, you don’t even know what he was really like, do you? You still think Remy was worth a shit. I bet you think he spent all that time missing me, out there in the swamp. Why don’t you ask Evangeline O’Donnell who the father of her kid is. It ain’t Larry O’Donnell, I can tell you that much.”

  Ava watched the shock roll through Mercy. Larry had mentioned that he and Evie had a son last night at dinner, that he was in Mobile, working construction. If Colin O’Donnell wasn’t Larry’s son, Mercy had never suspected it.

  Dee grinned with satisfaction. “That’s right. When dumb old Larry went off to fish by himself, dumb old Remy was getting into bed with Evie. How’s that for your saint of a father, huh? Your superhero had a love child with a married woman.”

  Mercy swallowed, his strong throat working. His expression became impassive. “You’re a liar. The only thing you’ve ever been any good at is manipulating people. You can’t manipulate me.”

  When he turned for the door once more, Ava caught at his shirt, intending to help him, tow him along. The poison in the room was going to eat away at him after they left as it was; she couldn’t stand for him to be here one more second.

  Dee said, “He had a taste for little girls, too. Guess it runs in the family.”

  Mercy snapped.

  He charged to the bed, leaning over it, getting in his mother’s face, all his movements as precise and bristling with threat as those of any panther.

  Dee pressed back into her pillows, face going slack with shock.

  “If I killed you right now,” he said quietly, “while you’ve already got one foot in the grave, do you think anyone would come looking for a murderer? Or do you think they’d just slide you into the incinerator like so much trash?” He grinned. “Here’s a better question: Do you think I’d even care? I’d go to jail for you. I’d go, and I wouldn’t lose one second of sleep.”

  Ava waited, not breathing, his name sitting on her tongue.

  “You thought,” he went on, “that you had all the scary boys wrapped around your finger. But you made one very, very big mistake. The scariest boy of all is your son, and you did everything you could to make him hate you.”

  She lifted her trembling chin. “You’d kill your own mama?”

  “I’d kill a traitorous scheming bitch who sells her pussy to whoever’s got the fastest cash. I’d kill her in a heartbeat.”

  One of the pillows was in his hand and he was covering her face with it before Ava could even register what was happening.

  She said, “Mercy,” and he froze, as statue-still as a movie put on pause. “That’s enough,” she said, and he stepped back, chucked the pillow across the room, and headed for the door. The pillow crashed into a collection of framed photos on top of the highboy, and sent them toppling to the floor. Ava heard glass break.

  When Mercy reached her, she laid a hand on his arm. “Go get something to drink,” she suggested. “And I’ll be right out and we can go.”

  “I don’t want to leave you alone–”

  “She can’t hurt me.” Not like she’s hurting you, she thought. “Please. I’ll be just a sec.”

  His acquiescence spoke volumes about his state of mind. With a distracted nod, he let himself out of the room.

  Ava listened to his boots go down the hall and then turned to her mother-in-law. It hit her, as she thought the word: that’s who this woman was. Her mother-in-law.

  She shoved her hands in her back pockets and sauntered closer to the bed, just out of arms’ reach.

  Dee had been deeply rattled, but was recovering, smoothing her hands down her nightgown, taking big breaths. Her eyes were still too-wide, but were livid as they fixed on Ava’s face. “You’re stupid, girl. You think he won’t try to do that to you? You think you won’t be on the news when he kills you?”

  Ava offered her a faint smile. “No, I don’t think. I know. I know he’ll never do anything to me.”

  Dee’s eyes narrowed.

  “You see,” Ava
explained. “I love him. I love him more than anything. He’s my best friend in the world, and he knows that. He’d never let anything happen to me. He’s proved that, more than once.”

  Dee twitched a smile. “You poor stupid–”

  “I’m still talking,” Ava said, and her tone had the frail woman leaning back against her pillows again.

  When she had the floor secured, she continued. “Thank God for him that he won’t ever see you again. But for you – I hope, somewhere, in your black heart – it hurts like hell to know that your own son hates you. Your own flesh and blood wants you dead.

  “Go to hell, bitch.”

  She was quivering she was so furious as she walked back down the hall. She hadn’t ever, not even with Mason, wanted to hit someone so badly. Her breath trembled in her lungs and her fingers curled and uncurled as she forced herself to walk slowly, without grinding her heels into the hardwood. She wanted to run to Mercy. She wished he was small enough to pull up into her lap and wrap him in her arms. She wanted to be the mother he’d never had.

  But she took a deep breath and smoothed her expression as she walked through the kitchen in search of him.

  Barbara was at the desk in the bay window up front, sorting mail into pigeonholes, feet just barely touching the floor because the chair was too tall for her. Mercy stood in front of her, arms folded, one boot set ahead in an imitation of casual. There was still a rigid tension in his jaw, the veins standing out in his neck.

  “…a shame,” Barbara was saying. “And I’ve told her again and again, ‘That’s your boy, Miss Dee. You ought to try to make nice with him.’ ” She glanced up at Mercy over her glasses. “I’ve tried, honey. I really have.”

  Mercy let out a huge breath. “I know, Miss Barb. And I appreciate it. It’s not your fault.”

  Barbara’s wise dark eyes cut over to Ava. She asked Mercy, “You taking your new missus to see the sights today?” To Ava: “Tell him you want to see Marie Laveau’s. It’s not really N’awlins till you’ve been into a voodoo shop.”