Phantom of Riverside Park

by Peggy Webb

  “I’m not fixing to let you find out. Here now, quit that before you get us both to bawling.”

  Actually they were both crying already. And if Fred hadn’t made them laugh, Elizabeth would have gone to her own wedding ceremony looking like she was attending somebody’s funeral.

  “You two sound like a dyin’ calf in a hailstorm,” he said.

  “Hush your mouth, you old fool. I don’t see you doing anything to cheer this girl up.”

  “I’m here, ain’t I?”

  “You might as well be in Tim-buck-two for all the good you’re doing, sitting over there like a tree full of owls.”

  “Quincy, you put me in mind of my first wife. You’re a mighty smart woman. Even if you do have the temper of a wildcat.”

  “I might say the same thing about you. Now get on out of here. Our girl’s gotta get dressed.”

  Fred scooted out the door, but not before he gave her some sassy backtalk.

  “When you get too big for them britches, Quincy, I’m gonna be the first one waiting round to see you bust out of ‘em.”

  “In your dreams.” Quincy slammed the door shut behind him.

  “He didn’t have to leave. I’m already dressed.”

  Granted, it wasn’t much of a dress. The same old pink thing she’d bought for the wedding she thought she’d have with Taylor.

  “No, you’re not.. Here.” Quincy thrust a big box in her direction. Inside lay a simple silk sheath. White. “Every bride ought to wear white. I wore white to every one of my weddings.”

  “Quincy!”

  “Haven’t you ever heard of a self-rejuvenating virgin? That’s me.”

  Still laughing, Elizabeth held the dress up to herself and looked in the mirror. The dress had the elegant simplicity of something the Duchess of Cambridge might wear.

  “I don’t know how to thank you, Quincy.”

  “By keeping that smile on your face. Now turn around and let’s get you in this dress.”

  Elizabeth felt like a woman transformed. She hardly knew herself in the mirror.

  “Oh, Quincy…if I had dreamed of a wedding dress for myself, this is exactly what I’d have dreamed... I look like somebody.”

  Quincy gripped her shoulders, looking fierce. “You are somebody, Elizabeth Jennings. And don’t you ever forget that.” She fumbled in the dress box, and came back with a small blue case. “Here. You forgot something.”

  Elizabeth snapped open the box. “Pearls!” They were exquisite, and by far the most beautiful thing she’d ever owned. They gleamed in the satin-lined case, and looking at them, Elizabeth thought of sun-struck oceans and pale pink sunrises and mysteries so deep that not even Leviathan could unlock them.

  Elizabeth held them against her skin and wished Papa were there to see her. And Nicky.

  “Quincy, you shouldn’t have.”

  “I didn’t. Peter Forrest handed them to me and said you were to wear them. They’re a gift from David.”

  If Elizabeth thought too much about that, she’d start bawling like a baby and wouldn’t be able to stop for two days. He rose up in her vision as she’d first seen him, a man torn in half, equal parts pain and pride, fear and courage. But most of all, equal parts beauty and beast.

  She’d wanted to weep for him, for the physical and emotional pain he’d borne, but his black eyes challenged her, and she knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that the worst thing she could do was display any feeling he might construe as pity.

  And so she’d faced him with all her feelings carefully bottled up inside, just as she would face him in a few minutes when she took a solemn vow before God and Peter Forrest and David’s sister.

  Today, though, she wouldn’t have to bottle herself up and cram down the cork, for what she felt for the man who would soon become her husband was a tenderness that was as warm as it was unexpected.

  “I wish I could have given her pearls,” Papa had said the day Mae Mae died. “I never gave her pearls.”

  There was a tap on the door, followed by Peter’s voice. “Elizabeth, we’re ready when you are.”

  She smiled. David had given her pearls.

  BOOK THREE

  “We are such stuff as dreams are made on.”

  WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

  from The Tempest

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Thomas was finally able to go to the park and sit on the bench again, and if any strangers walked up to him while he was talking to Fred he was going to get up and run. Every one of his and Elizabeth’s problems had started right here in the park.

  He’d been out of the hospital a week after a six-day stay that had seemed like six years. He didn’t get a lick of sleep in that hospital, what with doctors and nurses and no telling what all running around all hours of the day and night, poking pills at him and checking his temperature and monitoring his heart and asking him personal questions like, can we see if we can go to the potty now? That was Nurse Elmore who’d said that. He told her to speak for herself, but he wouldn’t go till he got good and ready, and certainly not with her standing outside the door listening. He couldn’t abide folks listening.

  Thomas lifted his face up to the sun, just glad to be alive, glad to have a friend sitting with him. He’d never dreamed his life would turn out this way, him ninety years old and sitting in a big city park with Fred Lollar instead of enjoying his front porch on the farm with Lola Mae. He still can’t understand why he lived and she died.

  It wasn’t supposed to be this way. He was supposed to go first so he’d be spared the pain of her dying. Sitting right there in the park the memories took hold of him so hard he was transported back to the terrible winter. One of the freak ice storms that sometimes paralyzes the South had come through Tunica. Power lines were down, felled by trees that broke apart under the weight of ice. Phone lines were out. Ponds were frozen over. Even some pumps that hadn’t been well insulated were shut down so that folks were slipping and sliding over the slick roads, borrowing water from their neighbors.

  Thomas was lucky. He still had water, and plenty of heat.

  He chipped ice off the neat stack of firewood beside his back door and carried an armload inside to dry. The sound of Lola Mae’s coughing echoed all the way down the hall. Thomas threw a log on the fire then hurried off to their bedroom.

  “How’re you doin’, darlin’?”

  “Fine. It’s just a cough, Thomas.”

  A coughing paroxysm bent her over double and shot Thomas off the bed in a fever of fear.

  “I’m takin’ you to a doctor.”

  “It’s nothing, Thomas. Just a bad cold. Get me another spoonful of that cough medicine.”

  She had another fit of coughing and his hands shook so bad he spilled cough syrup. It made a red sticky mess on the bathroom floor, but he didn’t stop to wipe it up. He hurried back to the bedroom and cradled her close while she drank her medicine, then without saying a word he wrapped her in a quilt and carried her down the hall and sat down in a rocking chair by the fire.

  “It’s warmer down here,” he told her, trying to forestall any questions about why he’d done it. His real reason he kept to himself: he was terrified of losing her. If he could just hold onto her, the sheer power of his love would keep harm at bay.

  “Sing to me, Thomas.”

  “What do you want to hear, Lola Mae?”

  “The sound of your voice. So I’ll know I’m not alone.”

  He started in with “White Christmas” because Christmas was only two days away and because Bing Crosby was one of her favorites and Thomas’ pitiful imitation always made her laugh.

  She didn’t laugh this time. He thought she’d drifted off to sleep but she spoke up, so soft he had to lean down to hear her.

  “Turn on the lights, Thomas.”

  “The lights are on.”

  “The Christmas lights.”

  He didn’t want to let go of her long enough even to walk across the room to the cedar tree, balled and burlapped and sitting in a
bucket of water in the corner. They’d decorated it together last week using ornaments Lola Mae had collected over more than forty years of marriage--the salt-dough stars she’d made their first year to commemorate their honeymoon, the wooden horse he’d carved the year Manny was born, the angel she’d crocheted the year Elizabeth was born.

  The quilt trailed along the floor behind them as he walked to the tree. He half expected Lola Mae to rise up and give him a good tongue-lashing for dirtying the quilt she called grandma’s flower garden and had pieced together herself. He wished she would. Anything would be better than this pale and fearful silence.

  “There now,” he said, and she blinked once at the lights then closed her eyes and rested her head against his chest.

  He carried her back to the rocking chair and commenced to singing for all he was worth. It was the only way he could keep from showing her how scared he was. Darkness fell around the farmhouse and the fire burned down to a few embers, but he didn’t want to get up and tend it. Lola Mae had fallen asleep and he didn’t want to disturb her.

  Thomas stared into the fire awhile, then he must have dozed off himself, for when he woke up the fire was out and the room was cold. Lola Mae was quiet in his arms.

  “How’re you feelin’, sweetheart?” She didn’t say anything, and when Thomas bent close and touched her cheek it was cold. “Lola Mae?” She lay pale in his arms, as cold as snow.

  He cried out to her, disbelieving. “Lola Mae!” She wouldn’t cheat him like this. She wouldn’t go off and leave him without saying goodbye.

  Of course, she wouldn’t. She was merely resting up because there was lots of cooking to do, it being Christmas, and all. The turkey needed stuffing, and there were pecan pies to bake. Thomas had harvested the nuts from their own trees this fall, and then they’d sat in front of the fire talking while they cracked the shells and picked out the rich meat.

  He adjusted the quilt and pulled her close so she wouldn’t get cold. “What do you want me to sing, sweetheart?”

  I’ll Be Seeing You. Her warm breath brushed against his cheek, and then he could see her standing over by the fire. She was carrying a bouquet of daisies and she was smiling.

  He sang the song that had been on everybody’s lips in the early forties when husbands and lovers went to war while their sweethearts stayed behind.

  Over by the fire Lola Mae blew kisses. I love you, Thomas. I will always love you. Light as bright as the star of Bethlehem blazed around her, and she was as young and pretty as she’d been at seventeen. And then she began to fade.

  “Don’t go,” he cried. “Come back.” Something as soft as angel wings touched his face, and she spoke to him as clear as day. I’ll never leave you, darling.

  Manny had found him there the next day sitting beside the cold ashes holding onto Lola Mae. When he tried to take her away, Thomas scratched and clawed at his son, and Manny backed off by the fire grate.

  “You have to let her go, Daddy. She’s dead.”

  It took a backhoe to dig through the frozen earth and a good mule team to get her casket up the slick hill from the church to the cemetery, and after it was all over and Manny tried to lead him off Thomas stood there like a tree, not saying a word, his tears frozen on his face.

  Manny finally gave up.

  Thomas stood beside his wife till the last light went out of the sky and his feet were so numb he couldn’t even feel his toes. Then he fell down and buried his face in the cold black earth and renounced the Father he’d known and loved all his life.

  “Any God who would take her and leave me behind is no God to me.” The wind whistled through his layers of clothes and soughed through the branches of the lone pine that presided over the dead. “Do You heard me, God?” Far off in the deep woods behind the cemetery he heard the plaintive cry of an owl. “I said, do You hear me! I want no part of You.”

  And then he heard Lola Mae. Stop it right this minute, Thomas. She was standing over yonder by the pine tree holding onto a rolling pin and she was fixing to use it. He could tell by that look on her face.

  And so Thomas stopped it and went home.

  Fred leaned over and jostled him in the ribs, and he crash-landed back in the present.

  “You ain’t sayin’ much, Thomas. Cat got your tongue?”

  “I was just thinkin’ how short life is, Fred. Did you ever get to thinkin’ about that?”

  “Ever since I turned fifty. Or it might’a been sixty. I’m too old to remember anymore. Seems like the days just sped up and went roarin’ by like a freight train. Seems like I been runnin’ for years just tryin’ to keep up with time.”

  “That’s exactly how I feel.”

  “Tirin’, ain’t it?”

  “Yep.” Fred had a way with words when he wanted to. He could cut right to the heart of the matter. Thomas was going to miss him. Terribly. “Elizabeth wants me to move with her down to David Lassiter’s place in New Albany.”

  Fred didn’t say anything for a long time, just sat with his jowls hanging down and his face turned toward the sun.

  “Are you gonna?” he said, finally.

  “I don’t know. Newly weds ought to be alone. That’s what I told her.”

  “What’d she say?”

  “She just said, ‘Papa,’ like she does when she’s thinkin’ I ought to be mindin’ my own business.”

  “Weirdes’ darn thing I ever heard of. No honeymoon. No weddin’ night. The bride and groom not even livin’ together.”

  Thomas wished he could tell his friend the particulars, but Elizabeth had said the less said, the better. On account of Nicky.

  He would trust Fred with his life and didn’t like keeping the truth from him, but still he wouldn’t go against Elizabeth, especially not in something as important as the custody case. They hadn’t exactly told Quincy either, though she had her suspicions. Fred probably did, too. Neither one of them had rolled off a watermelon truck. They had brains.

  “That’ll all change when they get down to New Albany,” Thomas said.

  Wouldn’t it be nice if it did? Thomas could go home to Lola Mae easy if he knew Elizabeth had somebody looking after her. And that David Lassiter certainly had the means to do it. Maybe even the inclination. That was real pearls he’d given Elizabeth. Not the imitation kind.

  “Guess they’ve got a lot on their minds with the custody case. How’s that going?”

  “David’s got her the best lawyer in Tennessee. A professor at Vanderbilt. Wrote a book. A real big shot.”

  “That ought to shake the Belliveaus up right smart. I’d like to be a fly on the wall when they find out about all David Lassiter’s money. Yessir, I sure would.”

  “He could buy and sell the Belliveaus. That’s a fact. Of course, it’s not his money that changes the case. It’s what his money can buy.”

  “Money talks.” Fred slapped his knee, laughing. “Profound, ain’t I, Thomas.”

  Yessir, he was surely going to miss Fred. They quit talking for a while and just sat soaking up the sun, then Fred punched him on the arm.

  “New Albany ain’t so far. I reckon I still got sense enough to drive. They ain’t took my license yet.”

  “Elizabeth says David told her there’s plenty of room on the farm. He says our friends will be welcome there.”

  “Good man. Maybe I’ll come down sometime and stay a spell.”

  Thomas was feeling better already about making the move. He was just fixing to relax and shut his eyes for a minute when he spotted the stranger. Somebody he’d never seen in the park before. A sinister-looking character if there ever was one.

  “Look over yonder, Fred. Is that shifty-eyed feller headed this way?”

  Fred stretched his neck out like an old turkey gobbler, then turned his cap backward so he could see better. An old private eye technique, he’d told Thomas. Fred still fancied himself a private eye.

  “Nope. Looks like all he’s gonna do is take a leak. You gotta quit bein’ so jumpy, Thomas. It ain’t good fo
r your heart.”

  “I got pills for my heart. I’m liable to live to be a hundred and five.”

  “Won’t nobody be able to put up with you that long, you old fart.”

  o0o

  Lately Elizabeth didn’t understand herself at all. Here she was, married to a one of the most powerful men in the South who stood solidly between her and Taylor’s parents, which was the main point of it all, and instead of feeling grateful she was feeling lonely. And sad. Not depressed, but a kind of bone-deep weariness that comes from the sure knowledge that the life you’re in is not a dress rehearsal but the real thing, and whether it’s the way you’d imagined or not, it’s all you’ve got.

  “Grace is God’s loving mercy to us all,” Mae Mae used to say, and Elizabeth knew that her marriage was a merciful act on David’s part and a sure sign of God’s grace, to boot. Yet, here she was thinking about the dreams she’d had when she was sixteen and how not a single of one of them had come true. Not even her wedding.

  Every girl imagines her wedding as being a beautiful sacred affair predicated on love--the starting point for a future full of promise. Hers wasn’t, and now she’s lost that, too. She’s legally married, and even if her future should hold something different, wonder of wonders, the next time around would not be her first.

  She feels like an ingrate--selfish to the core--but when she’d told Quincy that she’d said, “Everybody’s entitled to their feelings, no matter what they are. There are no right and wrong feelings, Elizabeth.”

  She was glad Quincy hadn’t said, “Count your blessings.” At that very moment, her bed was loaded with boxes of stylish, expensive clothes, delivered that morning by a smiling Edwards, along with a bank book with a mind-boggling balance and a handful of credit cards, both in the name of Elizabeth Lassiter.

  You’d think she would at least be grateful, but no, all she’d been was even more depressed. All the possessions in the world didn’t make up for the loss of Nicky and the absence of love.

  She didn’t have to rationalize being depressed over the absence of her son because the grief she felt over his loss was the kind that wouldn’t let you have any rest, even when you shut your eyes in sleep.