Faithful Unto Death

by Stephanie Jaye Evans

  He shook his head, a wry smile on his mouth.

  “Such clumsy women we have walking around Fort Bend County, hm? You hear the same things, I’m sure.”

  I had heard exactly those words from women in my own congregation, and I had almost always taken them at face value. Evidently, I needed to be more attuned to what was going on behind the words.

  Dr. Garcia took another careful sip and crossed his legs.

  “Back to my story. Graham guides his mother to the chair, not the examination table, and she sits down. Neither of them is saying a word. He smoothes her hair back off her face, and with a gesture so gentle, so achingly tender, he pulls off her sunglasses. Then he looks at me, this child, this young man, and his blue eyes say to me clearly, ‘Can you fix this? Can you make her the way she was?’

  “Of course, she has been beaten, badly. Her eyes are so swollen she can’t open them at all. I learned later that Graham had himself driven her to the clinic. Twelve years old. Can you imagine?

  “Except for cleaning the wounds, giving her some painkillers, there wasn’t anything I could do. Her husband had beaten her so that the bones of her face, the supra-orbital margin, the frontal process …” He was touching his own face as he named the bones, caught my eye, and amended, “These bones that surround the eyes, they were crushed. They are like honeycomb, you know? Delicate. Victoria was extremely lucky she didn’t lose an eye. But anyway. She had to have a plastic surgeon. I am not a plastic surgeon. I’m an orthopedic surgeon. I had her admitted into Hermann. A friend of mine, she did the work as a favor to me. I’ve repaid her many times; her sons played soccer and all of them were accident prone.” He smiled again, remembering.

  “So I told her son, I told Graham, ‘Can you get me a picture of your mother? A good one so that the doctor will know what she looked like before the accident.’ We both knew it was no accident but that’s what we called it. And he nods and I say, ‘You have a grown-up with you? An auntie?’ And again, he nods and tells me the auntie is waiting in the car. I write down my contact information and give it to the boy to give to his auntie.

  “I don’t know there is no auntie. That the boy gets into the car and drives back home, sneaks past his drunken, snoring father to snatch the picture I asked for, and to gather some clothes for his mother. And then gets back in the car, and using the directions I have written out for an adult, navigates the labyrinthine mysteries of the Houston Medical Center, delivers the picture, and is in the waiting room when his mother emerges from the surgery hours later.

  “I have come to check on her, something I wouldn’t usually do, since she is no longer my patient, and I see Graham, a Randall’s plastic grocery bag at his feet, waiting as if he will wait forever. I ask, where is his auntie? He tells me she has run home to check on her children, she will be right back. This story is taking too long?”

  I shake my head, no, it’s not.

  “You don’t mind?” he says and pours himself more of Rebecca’s horrible coffee. I had poured a cup for myself, to be social, but I never touch the stuff. Not when Rebecca makes it. It eats a hole in my stomach.

  “So. I take him down to see his mother, and as we walk through the hall, I see his quick looks at the trolleys holding the dinner trays for the patients, his nose sniffing. That’s when I know there is no auntie, because the first thing an auntie does in a crisis is feed the child, am I right?”

  I nodded. It’s a generalization—some of my aunts, in a crisis, would first blame it on me, then feed me, but I understood what he was saying.

  “Yes. And this child is hungry. If hospital food smells good to you, you’re hungry. When I pass the nurses’ station, I order two dinner trays, whatever is not too awful. And before I left that night, Graham had eaten everything on both those trays. I had them bring me another dessert and he ate that, too, so, three desserts. Have your children ever missed a meal, Mr. Wells?”

  I explained that as my children were girls, yes, they had missed meals, but only by choice, and Dr. Garcia nodded.

  “That’s a different kind of hunger, though. You know?”

  I did.

  “So anyway. All that food? That was later. After Graham saw his mother. We go into the room together, and when he sees his mother, her face is a mask, all bandages. She is asleep, thoroughly drugged, thank God. Graham stops short at the sight and he starts to tremble. He put the plastic grocery bag up to hide his face and there are these, these mewlings coming out, little smothered cries. I put my arm around his shoulder and I told him that Victoria was going to be all right. I’d already spoken to my friend, the one who did the surgery. She said Victoria would be fine after she healed. There would be no sign of the injury. His mother would look very much as she had before the attack.

  “I told Graham all that, and talked to him about how long it would take to heal, and what Victoria would need to do to avoid infection. I talked to Graham as if he were a grown-up, the person in charge of Victoria’s recovery, because, you know, he was. Graham was all she had.

  “So the cries stop, and the trembling slows, and soon Graham brings his face up, tearstained but clearing. He nods. He asks intelligent questions. He puts the plastic bag on the swing-arm table and opens it and takes out a hairbrush. I wanted to tell him not to bother. It didn’t matter about her hair. It was all tucked up in one of those paper shower caps we use. But I didn’t. He slipped the cap off and dropped it in the garbage can.

  “Graham separated each curl, starting at the end and brushing the tangles out until it lay around her in a shining, golden mass, very beautiful. Victoria had beautiful hair.

  “Graham reached back in his bag and pulled out a picture. He laid it on the pillow next to her poor bandaged face. I saw a picture of a very pretty young woman holding a toddler. Forget the dreadful clothes, and the too-much makeup. Victoria was a pleasure to look at. When I looked up, Graham’s glowing eyes were on me and the message in them was … what? I have pondered that moment so many times.

  “Because that was the moment, Mr. Wells. I looked into those eyes and I don’t know what he was trying to say, but what my heart heard was ‘help me.’ I am still torn by the randomness of birth. ‘Every night and every morn, Some to misery are born, Every morn and every night, Some are born to sweet delight. Some are born to sweet delight, / Some are born to endless night.’”

  William Blake is one of my favorite poets. I could recite those lines myself.

  “So that was the moment, then and there in that hospital room, I fell in love with them. Not with her, you understand, with them. A married woman I didn’t know at all and her son who had asked nothing of me, and had asked everything of me. They needed me. Graham needed me. Need is very seductive, do you agree?”

  Dr. Garcia stood and stretched his back; I heard joints popping. “Maybe I should serialize the story, come back tomorrow.” He smiled that deprecating smile.

  I assured him that my time was his. I knew that Rebecca would be scrambling to reschedule my appointments. Dr. Garcia smiled his thanks.

  “I did not see Victoria without Graham until shortly before we married. It was not a typical courtship. Graham slept in his mother’s hospital room that night, and the next night, I had my sister take him in and keep him until Victoria was released. I’m not an impulsive man, Mr. Wells, and I’m not a stupid one. I did my research. When Victoria was well, I got her a job at the hospital gift shop, and I found an apartment for the two of them. I was subsidizing the rent and her salary, but Victoria didn’t know. I put her in touch with the State Bar so she could get some help with the divorce.

  “The divorce was quick. Graham’s father had abandoned Victoria when she was pregnant with Graham. He only showed up occasionally, long enough to knock her off her feet again. Literally, not romantically.

  “There was no property to speak of, nothing of his she wanted except for their son, and he didn’t want Graham. He died not too long after,” Dr. Garcia said with satisfaction. “A car accident. DUI. None of u
s shed a tear.”

  Dr. Garcia walked over to the window and leaned his back up against it, resting his bottom on the windowsill, crossing his arms across his flat stomach.

  “I’m telling you all this because I want you to understand Graham. I know you didn’t like him.”

  My protest died when he held a hand up to stop me. “I don’t blame you; Graham didn’t put himself out to be liked. He wasn’t like Honey. Affection is food and drink to Honey—she can’t live without it. Graham needed respect, and he needed it from me.”

  The doctor’s hands had begun to tremble. He cupped them around his elbows to still the shaking.

  “I’m going to take advantage of your generosity now, and tell you another story,” Dr. Garcia said. His voice was much lower now. “When Graham came to live in my home, the first day, when he came into my study, he sees David and William’s high school graduation pictures on the wall. And he wants to know where they went to school and I tell him they went to St. John’s.”

  He didn’t bother to explain St. John’s to me. Everyone in and around Houston recognizes St. John’s as Houston’s most exclusive college preparatory school. It’s extremely difficult to get into, and influence and legacy status alone will not do the trick.

  Dr. Garcia continued. “Right away he says, ‘Will I go to St. John’s, too? Now that I am your son?’”

  He passed a hand over his face, then pushed up from the windowsill and came back to sit at the couch.

  “Of course, I didn’t know what to say. It wasn’t the money.” He waved the money aside as if the more than seventeen-thousand-dollar annual tuition were nothing. “But the academics are rigorous, even for a legacy. Graham would be a legacy as David and William’s stepbrother. David and William had gone to private school all their lives, and their mother, Gloria, was a well-educated woman, disciplined in her own life and in her children’s schooling. And still it had not been assured that David or William would be admitted to St. John’s. We celebrated, I can tell you, when each of the boys received their admittance letter.

  “And now I had Graham, who had gone to marginal schools, and missed a good deal of schooling because of what was happening in his home. His mother, Victoria … she was a great beauty, and kind and charming and truly a wise woman, but she was not … she did not have an intellectual bent.”

  He looked at me to see if I understood what he was saying. I nodded.

  “I had never, ever lied to Graham.” He shook his head and opened up his hands as if he were presenting me with a material fact. “I don’t lie, period. I’m not pretending to be a saint, but the habit of honesty is strong in me. So. I told Graham what it would take for him to be admitted to St. John’s. And I told him that Dulles High School—Dulles was the local high school then, Clements High School hadn’t been built—was a very good school, and if he did well there, he could go anywhere he wanted for college. He didn’t hear any of what I said about Dulles; Graham said, ‘Then I have a year to get ready for St. John’s.’

  “When I realized he was serious, I said he would have only half a year; he would need to be accepted the spring before his freshman year.” He slapped his thighs. “And he was! The boy worked as though his life depended on it.”

  Dr. Garcia was silent, and I thought he had finished his story, but he started again, quietly, as if he were speaking to himself, “Every A, every honor, every award, he brought it to me, not to Victoria. Because”—he clenched his fists and beat them softly against his chest, punctuating each word as he said it—“it was me he wanted to be. Me.” Dr. Garcia’s voice broke on that last word, but he shook off the tears. His hands relaxed and sank back down to rest on top of his knees. “Not his father. Not the man who had left Graham and Victoria. You understand? Not the man who had left his wife and son.”

  Dr. Garcia put his head down. The tendons in his face and neck were working, and he gave a sharp sniff, but he didn’t reach for his handkerchief.

  “That’s why he couldn’t leave Honey,” I said. “He thought that would make him like his father.”

  Dr. Garcia nodded without looking at me.

  “Or,” I went on, “he thought he would lose your love, lose your respect. Was it …” I trailed off. What I had been about to say would have sounded like an accusation.

  He heard the words even though I hadn’t spoken them and he was nodding, his hands up in helplessness.

  “Yes, yes, for Graham, it was. I couldn’t seem to make him believe that it wasn’t necessary, the perfect grades, the perfect life. My son William divorced his first wife more than ten years ago. I wasn’t happy about it, and what it did to my young granddaughters, but William and I are still close, very close, and I have learned to love his second wife, Phoebe, as I loved, as I still love Liz.”

  I wanted to stand up and move around. I felt tense and cramped sitting still so long, but I was afraid if I did, I’d break his flow. I didn’t think anything Dr. Garcia had said was going to help me work this problem out, but he wanted to tell someone, and I was the one he’d chosen.

  “Whatever this need was that Graham had,” Dr. Garcia continued, “this need for perfection, it came from inside him. Graham put himself under impossible pressure. He had to be the best at everything. The best grades, the most job offers, the highest paid lawyer at the firm. I know there was some problem at the firm, something he was anxious about, but he wouldn’t tell me specifics. Graham said I was not to worry. He could handle it. If it weren’t impossible, I would think Graham had killed himself, for the terrible crime of not being perfect, not being the perfect lawyer, the perfect husband he imagined he would be.”

  I thought about how Graham had kept insisting on his innocence, how it wasn’t his fault.

  Dr. Garcia hunched his shoulders, stretching the muscles, then he stood up and offered me his hand. We shook and Dr. Garcia held on to my hand, holding it clasped in both of his.

  “That was a long story to tell you to get around to this. This is what I want from you, Mr. Wells. I want you to get Alex to tell you where he was that night. He won’t tell me. There’s something he’s ashamed of. Not killing his father,” he said sharply. “He didn’t kill his father. But I’ve done what I can and I can’t get him to tell me. You see what you can do. It’s on you now.”

  Eleven

  Sugar Land is flat, low, and close to the coast. Perfect for flooding. Levees and drainage ditches were first built in the area in 1913. They crisscross the developments now, and they’ve worked admirably at keeping out unwanted water. You’d still be a fool not to have flood insurance. We haven’t had a direct hit from a hurricane in all the time I’ve lived here, but we will. I believe in the Lord’s providence; I believe in insurance, too.

  Besides keeping out floodwaters, the levees are a great place to walk your dog or go for a run. That’s what I was doing on the levee after Dr. Garcia left my office. Jogging, not walking my dog. Baby Bear would have loved the run, but he was home. Our house backs right up to the levee and so does the church—it’s a nearly straight, four-mile jog down the levee.

  Rebecca, God bless her, had run downstairs to where the ladies class was having a potluck luncheon and brought me up a plate piled high. It was one of those foam plates and it nearly buckled under the weight.

  I scarfed it down in my office, the King Ranch Casserole and the Fumi Salad and something I’m not sure of but it was tasty, everything but the broccoli, which I hate and Rebecca knows it but she put it there anyway because it’s good for me and I guess maybe at six-four, two hundred thirty-five pounds, I’m looking nutrition-poor.

  I had two hours before my next appointment, rescheduled, thank you again, Rebecca. That would be more than enough time for me to jog home, give Baby Bear a romp, get a shower, and change, maybe have a short visit with Annie Laurie. Annie Laurie could drop me back at the church if she was home. If she wasn’t, I could usually prevail upon Rebecca to come get me, though it would mean stopping off at her house to give her own fat pugs a brief
airing before we made it back.

  I like the jog, and so I’ve gotten into the habit of keeping shorts and a T-shirt in my office. It’s quiet on the levee, except for this one part where they’re readying the land for another kazillion new homes. Lots of big machinery moving dirt from here to there and back again to here. The levee is raised up high enough so that I can look down into people’s backyards. It’s interesting.

  Some people, their backyards don’t have anything the homebuilder didn’t plant. That means not much. Homebuilders spend their landscaping dollars on curb appeal up front.

  But some of the backyards, you see half the backyard turned into a kitchen garden, with pots of basil and cilantro, pole beans and tomato cages, hairy zucchini the size of eggplants, Bonnie Bell green peppers as big as softballs and rows and rows of jalapeños, all, I guarantee you, too hot to eat, and it doesn’t matter if you plant the TAMU peppers—something about growing them at home makes them hot.

  One yard I run past has a batting cage, a basketball goal, and a football sled. I figure the dad is a coach or a Boy Scout leader. Lots of yards have pools or trampolines.

  I see quite a few where someone is putting in hard work to have a restful, colorful haven to come home to. There are banks of azaleas and jasmine, great spears of daylilies and irises. Rose-wise, in addition to the ubiquitous Abraham Lincoln, there’s Climbing Pinkie, a beautiful, unpretentious hybrid rose, and Katy Road pink, a River Oaks Garden Club favorite. I know the roses from my grandmother, who loved them, but knowing how much work they are in the hot and humid Houston weather, I never cared to have them in my own yard. You have to spray at least twice a month to keep the black spot off, and that always makes me feel like I’m going to get cancer. Annie Laurie and I stick with azaleas and hibiscus. Once you plant them, they do all the growing work on their own.

  Jogging on the levee exercises my body and rests my mind. I try not to think about what might go on in the houses sitting in those yards. I leave that to the Lord unless He dumps it on my plate.