Jilted

by Varina Denman

  “Does he have any of that tooth gel in his bag?”

  Clyde’s head jerked at the possibility of deliverance. “What’s that?” He grabbed the bag and turned it upside down, emptying its contents onto the couch.

  Nathan held out his hand and stretched for something, but when I leaned toward the pile of goods so he could show me what he wanted, he only screamed louder and threw his head back.

  “There.” I pointed at the small tube. “Squirt some on my finger.”

  Clyde’s oversize hands gripped the tube, completely covering the end of my finger with reddish gel, but I didn’t mind the quantity. I shoved my finger in Nathan’s mouth and rubbed all around his gums.

  “Is it helping?” Clyde asked. “Why is he still crying?”

  “It takes a second.”

  Nathan’s eyes had gone big when he began to feel the numbing effect of the gel, and he licked his lips, looking slightly confused. He whimpered, but not loudly, then rubbed his forehead against my shoulder.

  “Here, let me walk him around a spell.” Clyde gently took the baby, and I noticed his nerves seemed to have calmed right along with Nathan’s—just as quickly as mine had deteriorated.

  He pressed the baby’s chest against his own and stalked from one end of the small trailer to the other, and then he turned and repeated it, over and over, until I thought I might get seasick. With each rotation, Nathan’s eyes drooped a little lower—probably unable to keep up with the room spinning around him—and then finally he laid his head against Clyde’s collarbone, and his eyes didn’t open again.

  “He out?” Clyde asked.

  “Just. Better give him a few more laps around the bases.”

  “Gotcha.”

  I leaned back against the couch cushions. “So what’s the deal with Fawn bringing him over here again?” I asked quietly. “I understand her not wanting to bother Ansel and Velma, but what’s wrong with Neil and Susan?”

  “You want the kid to spend more time over there?”

  “Not really.” I picked through the diaper-bag items, tossing them into a pile. “But I don’t want you to get strapped with the job either.”

  “I don’t usually mind it.”

  “Still, it seems like Susan could take him. Or hire someone to do it for her.”

  Clyde sat down in an upholstered chair and rubbed the baby’s back. “Aw, Lyn, I like having the little guy around.”

  I studied Clyde then. He had left his hair down today, and his blond locks blended with Nathan’s black ones, creating a tangled mix of swirling tiger stripes. I laughed softly. Clyde wasn’t the same person I knew in high school. He wasn’t even the same person I’d known last week. He was different, unusual, interesting. He rocked babies to sleep and enjoyed being a grandpappy. My skin warmed as I watched him.

  “What?” he asked.

  “You don’t look like a grandfather.”

  He glanced down at himself, shirtsleeves stretched tight by muscles, with part of his nine tattoo showing from under the cotton fabric.

  “Guess I don’t, do I?” he said.

  His gaze slid cautiously from his body to mine, and I spoke quickly. “Why did you punch a hole in the wall over there by the door?”

  He peered at the window even though the dusty blinds were shut, and his lips twisted. “Lyn …” He exhaled, and his eyes said everything he couldn’t verbalize.

  I wished I hadn’t asked. “But it’s better now?”

  He nodded once. “It was bad right after I came back, but I’ve worked through the worst of it. Now I only get riled if something really, really irks me.”

  “Like a crying baby?”

  Clyde grunted. “Naw, things like that don’t set me off. It’s more like when a bully kicks a puppy. That sort of thing.” He curled a lock of Nathan’s hair around his finger. “Last week a teenager cut in front of Algerita Parker at the red light. Her reactions are a little slow, you know. And she had to slam on her brakes so she wouldn’t hit him.” Clyde’s eyebrows pulled together as he remembered the incident. “I’ve never seen her scared before, but I reckon she was shook up pretty bad, because she pulled over to the curb for a while.”

  “And you got mad about that?”

  “Not mad enough to punch a hole in a wall, but sure, I got a little ticked at the kid.”

  I looked back at the hole. Who was the puppy that got kicked that day? Clyde was already avoiding my gaze, so I didn’t ask.

  “Fawn and JohnScott seem happy.” It wasn’t the type of thing I would say, and Clyde knew it. His eyes met mine, and he laughed without laughing.

  “Before you go changing the subject, let me get this out.” He crossed an ankle over his knee. “You told me the other day that Neil used to pick on you when nobody else could see or hear.”

  “So?”

  “Two years ago when I found out what he’d been putting you through …”—he stared at me intently—“let’s just say that really, really irked me.”

  Without thinking I glanced at the hole, then away quickly. Clyde found out about Neil a few months after he came back to Trapp. A lot of people found out then. When Neil left the church, the story spread all over town faster than a stout case of chicken pox.

  “He’s making you sweat.” I motioned to Nathan. “Why don’t you lay him on the couch?”

  “How? Won’t he wake up?”

  “It’s worth a try.”

  Clyde slowly got to his feet, crept to the couch, and bent down, hovering a foot above the plaid tweed. When he shifted Nathan, it took both of us to lay him gently on the cushions, but he didn’t wake up.

  Easing off the couch, I followed Clyde into the kitchen. It was open to the living room, and we were both afraid of waking the baby. We ended up sitting on the floor and leaning against the cabinets so a few layers of imitation wood would block the sound of our voices.

  We sat in silence for a few minutes, and I let my gaze fall on his tattoo. The number nine, like the tail end of a Nazi prison brand. Surely they didn’t still do that. “What’s your tattoo?” I pointed, snapping the words quickly before I lost the nerve.

  “What, this?” He pulled his sleeve to expose the rest of the ink—Joshua 1:9—stenciled in script across the curving bulge of his arm.

  I looked away. “A Bible verse?”

  “What’d you think it was?” He laughed softly.

  “Did you get that in prison?”

  “Yep.” I felt him looking at me then. “Gave us something to do, you know?”

  “Oh?”

  “I stopped with five,” he said, “but some guys were covered by the time they got out.”

  I tried to inspect his body without turning my head. Clyde always wore jeans and a T-shirt … but now I wondered.

  “Fawn says I shouldn’t get any more, and I reckon she’s right …” His voice trailed off, but then he mumbled, “You think Fawn needs anything?” He bent one leg and picked at the seam of his jeans. “I want to help her somehow.”

  “What could she possibly need? They’ve got a comfortable living, and as long as JohnScott keeps winning games, his job security is good.”

  Clyde’s shoulders sagged.

  I thought back over the past months and years. Clyde had helped Fawn before she married JohnScott by letting her stay in his run-down house on the Caprock. I was never sure that was a blessing to the girl, since the house was in such bad shape, but he had been able to help her then because Neil wouldn’t.

  My heart hurt for him. Didn’t he know there were other ways to show he cared? Like babysitting her teething toddler?

  I poked his shoulder with the tip of my finger. “You know you can never outgive him.”

  He raised his eyebrows and for a moment attempted to feign ignorance, but he knew good and well what I meant. Neil was the richest man in Garza County, and Clyde w
as one of the poorest.

  “That girl doesn’t need stuff,” I said. “She just needs you. You’ve got tons more to give her than he ever will.”

  Clyde tilted his head back and peered at the overhead light far above our heads. “Neil came back to church last night.”

  “Holy cow,” I whispered. “What happened?”

  “I don’t know. I didn’t go in.”

  “Why not?” Clyde wasn’t a coward.

  “I thought it would make it harder for him, if I was there. He needed the worship service more than I did.”

  “So he didn’t see you?”

  Clyde straightened both legs and crossed his ankles. “He did. In the parking lot.”

  “He talk to you?”

  “Didn’t have to.”

  I shivered as if the air conditioner had kicked up a notch. “And to think you wanted me to go with you.”

  “It wouldn’t have been so bad, would it?” His eyebrows lifted in the middle until they almost touched each other.

  “Neil Blaylock and Lynda Turner showing up at worship on the same night?” I snickered, and it sounded evil to my ears. “I’d say that would have been pretty bad.”

  The way Clyde’s jaw clenched and unclenched told me he wasn’t happy with what I’d said, and I realized I didn’t want him to be upset with me. He was staring at the space between the refrigerator and the cabinet when I slid my hand over his and squeezed his thumb—a silent apology.

  He looked down at our intertwined hands, seeming to study them for an endless time. Then his lips curled into a smile, and he pulled me gently toward him.

  When my head nestled against his shoulder, I felt as though I had just lain down to rest after running a mile. As though Clyde could ease my worries and help me be a better person. As though I was home.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  The football game on Friday night was the first public appearance Clyde and I made together. I say it was a public appearance, but that might have been stretching the truth. I wasn’t sure it counted as an appearance if nobody could communicate with us.

  “You want to stay in the car awhile longer?” He touched the volume knob on the radio with the tip of his index finger, rolled it clockwise, then counterclockwise. If it had been turned on, the music would have blared across the pasture and fought the squawking of the Panther band.

  “No, I’m good.” We would be more visible to the home stands once we were out of the car, but it was past halftime, and the news had certainly already circulated that Clyde and I were together. No reason to hide.

  When he opened his door, the breeze swept through the car, in one door and out the other, blowing away my tension. He sat on the hood, and I leaned against it, glancing at the back of the scoreboard. “What’s the score?”

  “Twenty-eight to six.”

  I felt more uncomfortable talking to him now that we were out of the car, but that was ridiculous, of course, and I forced myself to keep up the conversation. “Nathan still teething?”

  At the mention of the child’s name, Clyde’s face brightened. “Fawn says he’s better today. Probably over there with her and Ruthie right now, crawling up and down the bleachers.”

  “Sometimes the cheerleaders get ahold of him and carry him around.”

  “I know it.” Clyde’s laugh came from deep in his chest. “I’ve seen him running on the track in his tiny football jersey. Wonder where they got that.”

  “Susan had it custom made.” I shouldn’t have said it. I shouldn’t have squelched his joy, but it tumbled out of my mouth.

  I ran my teeth across my bottom lip, tempted to bite down as I listened to the announcer’s voice and the band’s muted tones rolling across the field like tumbleweeds.

  The people looked small.

  “It’s nice over here,” I said.

  “Yeah.”

  “It feels like they can’t see us, but I know that’s not true.”

  His head turned. “You having regrets?”

  Maybe. “No.” I shifted to lean against my other hip. “After all, Blue and Gray already spread the news.”

  “This is different.”

  I crossed my arms. Uncrossed them. Scratched my elbow. “Maybe we should have waited.”

  “For what?”

  For things to be different. Easier. “Hester Prynne, right?” I said.

  His shoulders sagged. “You don’t have a scarlet letter, Lyn.”

  “Might as well. After everything this town has thought about me, talked about me, it’s like I’m finally living up to their expectations. Great Expectations. Isn’t that the one with the convict? What was his name? Your name.”

  “I never should’ve said that.”

  “Tell me his name.”

  He bent his knee so his boot rested on the bumper. “Magwitch.”

  “Magwitch.” I let the name float over my lips. “Magwitch and Hester.”

  “Hush up, Lyn.”

  Clyde’s elbow rested on his knee, and his shoulder and upper arm created a barrier between us—or at least I felt like they did—but I wasn’t sure I wanted a barrier anymore. I wondered if I would ever know what it would be like to be happy with Clyde. Without thinking, I touched two fingertips to the skin just below the sleeve of his T-shirt, where the Bible verse teased me again. He was warm, and the muscle was hard, but when his gaze met mine, I pulled my hand away. “Sorry.”

  His eyes held mine for five seconds, and then he blinked and smiled. “Are you?”

  “No.”

  He didn’t look back at the field, even when the announcer declared another touchdown for Trapp, and the band played another stanza of the fight song. Even when the final buzzer sounded, he only looked at me, into me, and it felt as if he could read my mind, my heart. Then his gaze dropped, and I felt my face flush as he looked at my body.

  “I want to kiss you again,” he said.

  “Might not be the best time for it.”

  “We could really give them something to talk about.”

  I cocked my head for fun, but when he leaned toward me, I stood up abruptly and took three steps away from the car. Gazing at the field, I calmed my heart, which was beating faster—and probably louder—than the bass drum at the top of the bleachers. I shoved my hands in the back pockets of my jeans and didn’t dare turn around.

  I watched as townspeople filtered onto the football field like marbles rolling across a kitchen floor. They were happy. Proud. Free.

  “Why do you care what they think?” Clyde’s voice was gentle.

  “Because I’ve been Hester Prynne for years.”

  “No, you haven’t. Neil just wanted them to believe that.”

  “They would have thought that even without his—”

  “Stop defending him.” The gentleness was gone from his tone, and the bitterness in its place ignited a slow burn of defensiveness between my shoulder blades.

  I turned to confront him face-to-face. “I’m not defending him. I’m just stating a fact. The people in this town would have looked down their pointed noses no matter what Neil said.”

  Clyde crossed his arms and glared. “What is it with you and him?”

  My neck involuntarily turned my face away from his. “Nothing,” I mumbled. “I can’t stand him, you know that.”

  “That’s what confuses me, Lyn. I know good and well you can’t stand him, but I feel like I’m fighting him for you.” He gritted his teeth. “I’m already fighting Hoby.”

  My mind grew foggy from the shock of his statements, and I felt like a crystal vase left outside during a hailstorm. Even though I knew the answer to his complicated question, I wasn’t sure I wanted to admit the truth. Not to Clyde. It would make me sound crazy, simpleminded, pitiful.

  My cell phone rang, and after a few startled moments, I pulled it from my pocket. I
didn’t recognize the number, but I answered it anyway.

  “Yeah?”

  “Did you enjoy the game?”

  I blinked and looked at Clyde. “What do you want, Neil?”

  Clyde’s eyebrows went up questioningly, but I turned away, scanning the empty stands.

  “I wanted to talk to Clyde, but I don’t have his cell. Does the man even have a phone?” Neil’s voice drawled lazily. “Do you happen to have his home number?”

  Of course I had his number, but I wasn’t about to give it to Neil. “I can’t get to it right now.” Only a half lie.

  “Would you mind just putting me on speaker then?” Neil’s tone mocked me. “It’s important I talk to him tonight.”

  I spun on my heel as Clyde muttered, “What does he want?”

  “You.” I pushed the button for speaker and set the phone on the hood of the car, then backed away as though it were a serpent.

  Clyde’s chin jutted forward as he scanned the stadium and parking lot, searching.

  “Clyde …” The voice on the phone seemed too loud for the evening air. “Glad you made it to the game tonight, but it’s too bad you couldn’t sit over in the stands with Fawn and the boy. And me.”

  Clyde scrutinized a dark truck parked on a side street. He crossed his arms.

  “I know that looks like my truck, but it’s not. You remember, mine has a toolbox on the back. That’s probably Cliff Worlow. Over from Slaton? From what I hear, he’s courting Maria Fuentes. There’s a lot of that going on.”

  Clyde jerked his head toward the phone, his eyes shining red in the shadows of the stadium lights. “Why did you call?”

  There was a pause on the other end of the line, and I wondered if Neil was also fighting to control himself. When he spoke, his words were clipped. “Like I said the other day, I want what’s best for my grandson.”

  Clyde sighed, but it wasn’t a humble, tired sigh this time. It was an angry huff of hot air. “Fawn is my family, too, Neil, and I’m not staying away just to suit you.”

  “That might not be such a good idea. You see, I know about your anger problem.”

  Clyde clenched his fists and turned to search the town again.