What's Left Unsaid

by Emily Bleeker

  Biting on her pinkie nail, she tried to be patient and let Guy work his way through his own story. It was an old trick she’d been taught about interviewing: sometimes not talking can get a reluctant source to open up.

  “Now, that likely sounds scandalous to you, but I assure you, it is more common around here than one would hope.” He twisted the wrench with great effort, working on loosening something that Hannah couldn’t see from where she was standing. “I tried to marry Megan, but her family thought she was too young, and in retrospect—they were likely right. Rosie was born three weeks after we graduated from Senatobia High School. If you think she’s adorable now, God, you should’ve seen her then. Just the most attentive little thing, like she was taking in the whole world, you know?”

  “I don’t think that’s exactly changed,” Hannah added, perfectly able to imagine a bright-eyed baby girl resting in Guy’s arms. With a little hop, she lifted herself onto the workbench, putting a fist under her chin, supported by her knee.

  “No, no, it hasn’t, has it?” he agreed and swapped out the wrench for some other tool Hannah didn’t recognize. “But Rosie’s momma wasn’t ready for a baby, and I don’t blame her. Megan had always been a beautiful dancer. She’d done all kinds of workshops and summer programs in all kinds of places before getting pregnant, and I wasn’t exactly ready either. I had a baseball scholarship to Ole Miss, full ride and everything. So we planned to put the baby up for adoption. But then I saw her, and I can’t explain it.” He rested his hand on top of the grille of the car and stared off into space like he was experiencing the memory in real time. “I saw her, and I just couldn’t sign those adoption papers.”

  Hannah swallowed and blinked rapidly. The look on Guy’s face, the love and devotion to a child, the captivation with his daughter’s vigor and intelligence—it was the way her father used to look when talking about her. Guy went back to the task he was tinkering with, and Hannah cleared her throat so she could speak without sounding emotional.

  “So, did Megan change her mind, then?”

  Guy shook his head. “Nuh-uh. She signed off her parental rights and moved to New York. She’s done pretty well too. Went to Columbia, been in some Broadway shows, and made a real name for herself.”

  “And you . . .”

  Guy put the tool back on the tray with a clang and slammed the hood shut. This time his hands were actually dirty. He wiped at them and then grabbed a set of keys off the counter.

  “Let’s just say I haven’t played baseball in some time,” he said with a wink, spinning the key ring around his pointer finger. “So, should we try this thing out?” he asked, knocking on the hood.

  That was as much of Guy’s backstory as she was going to get for that moment, but it was enough. Just like Evelyn’s puzzle was snapping together piece by piece, so was Guy’s.

  “Absolutely,” she said, hopping down to the cement floor, dusting herself off in case any sawdust had clung to her clothing. Then she remembered her conversation with Monty. She held up both her hands. “Wait for just a second. I forgot to tell you something super important.”

  Guy palmed the keys and came to stand next to her, half sitting on the workbench next to where she was standing. He folded his arms in mock seriousness, close enough that she could feel his body heat and smell the traces of motor oil on his fingers.

  “I’m all ears.”

  The anxiety about Monty’s decision was coming back full force. She put her hands in her pockets and shrugged.

  “Monty is moving me back to the traffic and education sections. He doesn’t want me to finish the archives. Terry is moving the filing cabinets out over Thanksgiving break.”

  Guy’s head bobbed ever so slightly as he took in the information.

  “So, you’ll be writing again?”

  “Uh, I guess. But I don’t count blurbs about old ladies getting into car accidents and coverage of school spelling bees as hard-hitting journalism.” She’d expected outrage, anger, frustration, just like she’d felt when Monty broke the news. Or gosh, at least one Damn it, but he seemed calm and unfazed.

  “Neither is sitting in a basement, scanning files,” Guy said, and it cut a little too close to a nerve that was still very tender and barely starting to heal. How did he always seem to find her bare spots and irritate them?

  “Uh, yeah, it is. I’m researching an important story that goes beyond the Record and Monty and this little town. It takes time and footwork and”—she lowered her voice—“effing dedication.”

  “I get that,” he said, not taking her bait when she slighted his hometown. “I’m not trying to minimize this particular story, but you don’t know what you have in these new articles. And whether you want to admit it or not, you’ve been under Monty’s heel down there in that cellar. I know it doesn’t look like it, but he’s doing you a favor, shoving you out of the nest, if you will.”

  “I thought you cared more than this. Five minutes ago you looked like you were ready to get into a fight over Evelyn’s love life,” she said, roughly pushing away from the plywood surface they were both leaning on and loading up her belongings. Who was Guy Franklin, anyway? Just some man she’d met a few weeks ago. What did his opinion matter?

  Guy watched her without moving, like she was a toddler throwing a temper tantrum over a piece of candy. This was why she used to think he was arrogant. He was. Once she had her things put together, Hannah donned her bag and turned to face Guy again before heading inside.

  “Oh, and one more thing. I can’t even find any more information until I have Evelyn’s last name, and I can’t find that out without the files from the Record. You know that. So excuse me if I’m a little bit frustrated.”

  “This is your definition of ‘a little bit’?” Guy responded, turning her anger into another joke.

  Hannah bit her lip and gave him a tight, fake smile.

  “I know women down here aren’t supposed to express real emotion, but yeah, I’m upset and—gasp—angry. I have a graduate degree in journalism. I worked for the Chicago Tribune for six years, and I was this close to transitioning into feature writing.” She held her thumb and pointer finger so close together that no light could pass through. “And that all fell apart for me because . . . well, because of some personal things, but . . . this story—Evelyn’s story—could change all that. Do you think reporting about traffic patterns on I-55 and the minutes of school board meetings is writing? No, Guy, this is writing.”

  She patted her bag, stuffed to the brim with research, notes, and leads. It had been empty when she walked off the plane into the Memphis airport three months ago, but now it was so heavy that the strap left a mark on her neck when she was biking to and from work.

  “Whoa, hold on one second, now,” he said, reaching out and resting a hand on her shoulder. “Will you just listen for a second?”

  She stared up at him, hoping he couldn’t feel the frantic pounding of her heartbeat or see the line of sweat that was gathering at her hairline. She wanted to toss his hand off, run inside, and slam the door in his face, but she was worried about looking childish yet again. Showing her feelings was one thing. Acting out of control was another.

  “Yeah, okay.”

  “I wasn’t talkin’ about you writing some fluff piece for the Record. I was talkin’ about you writing for yourself,” he said, his voice soothing and serene. She opened her mouth to respond, but he put his other hand on her opposite shoulder and didn’t let her get a word in. “And if you read these new articles and they don’t tell you enough, then we will find a way to get you what you need. I promise you.”

  “How? It’s impossible without her name. Without the rest of her story,” she said, softening but still on edge.

  “Then we’ll get her name. We will get her story,” he said. His eyes spelled sincerity, and he didn’t seem bothered by her skeptical gaze. She licked her lips and tapped the thick sole of her boot on the garage floor, feeling the heat of her outrage escape from her like steam off t
he asphalt during a summer rainstorm.

  “So I think this means you do care, then. Just to clarify.” She raised one eyebrow.

  “Don’t push your luck,” he said, giving her shoulders a gentle squeeze but not letting go.

  “Why are you helping me, Guy Franklin?” Hannah asked, meeting his warm gaze, the connection just as physical as his hands on her shoulders.

  “Because I like how your brain works,” he said, grazing her forehead with his hand. “And, despite your Yankee stubbornness,” he joked, “you seem to have a good heart.” He lightly pressed his palm against her chest, just under her collarbone. He had to feel it, her racing pulse, the way her skin warmed wherever he touched it.

  The door to the garage squeaked open. Guy dropped his hands and took a giant step in reverse. Rosie called out her name and took Hannah by the hand, spouting information about school, making dinner with Carla, and setting the table at such a rapid speed that it all started blending together. But even after Hannah went inside, making conversation and helping with dinner, and even while Guy was saying grace, she could feel the memory of his hands on her skin, and she wondered what would’ve happened if Rosie hadn’t interrupted.

  CHAPTER 22

  Carla left after dinner was on the table and had been delivered to Mamaw’s bedroom on a tray. Hannah filled Rosie in on the latest developments with Evelyn, with some careful editing, and promised to send the rest of the new pages to Guy as soon as she had a chance to review them that evening.

  After dinner, Guy insisted on helping with cleanup and gave Rosie a pass for once, since the sixth grader had a project due the next day and still was not finished. As Hannah and Guy cleared the table, Rosie poured every ounce of her artistic creativity into the paper bag she’d brought from home to transform it into an “Indian vest.”

  “I know. I know,” Guy said when Hannah rolled her eyes at the concept of a traditional feathered-headband-and-golden-buckle type of Thanksgiving depiction. Hannah collected the dessert plates and put them next to the sink to be rinsed.

  “I wrote an article a few years back about this push by educators in Chicago to teach the real narrative of Thanksgiving,” Hannah said, low enough that Rosie couldn’t hear them in case her thoughts would hurt the girl’s feelings.

  She ran the water and washed off the residue of cake crumbs and frosting before placing the dishes in the sink full of lemon-scented bubbles and warm water. Guy filled the other sink with warm water, set a collection of silverware beside her, and then took up the position to her left and started to roll up his sleeves.

  “A few of us have talked to the administration. It just takes some time for things to change down here. But they do change . . . eventually.”

  “I guess, but I don’t know, how does it not drive you crazy?” Hannah asked, referring not just to the Thanksgiving inaccuracies but to all the microaggressions against anyone seen as different.

  “I wouldn’t assume that it doesn’t. I mean, my momma taught me not to assume . . .”

  “I know you’ve told me this one. I think it’s your nice way of calling me an ass,” she said, remembering the joke from one of their first conversations.

  “Not an ass,” he said, dropping his volume and getting sober, maybe more severe than she’d ever seen him. “But you act like you know what it is like being a person of color, and as well-meaning as you are—you don’t know. And I appreciate your outrage. I promise I do, like I’ve said before—it’s refreshing in some ways. But it’s exhausting always taking care of your outrage when I have enough to be outraged about.”

  Hannah didn’t respond immediately, letting his thoughtful rebuke settle in. Since getting to Mississippi—and, if she was honest with herself, even before—every discussion on racism had somehow become about how it made her feel: embarrassment at her family history, guilt at her “privilege,” desperation to be different, confusion about how to counteract the damage done.

  On a much smaller scale, it reminded her of when she’d found out about Alex’s affair and her relationship ended. Brody, who’d been close friends with Alex in the years he’d been a part of their family, had a sudden urge to fly in from California just so he could punch his former buddy in the face, which felt good to Hannah at first. But when Brody started calling the hospital where Alex worked, trying to get him fired, and found the name of Alex’s new girlfriend and called her family to tell them she was a slut—his anger stopped being about Hannah. It made her feel lonely and isolated, and eventually made her stop talking to Brody altogether.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, wishing he’d been wrong but knowing he was spot-on. “My father had a saying growing up, like your momma: silence is complicity. I learned to speak before I think, sometimes. But you’re right, this is your life every day, and there is zero way for me to understand even half of what you experience.”

  “Let’s put aside the fact that many individuals don’t have the means to just up and move their whole lives.” He made an invisible ball with his hands and placed it on the counter. “As for me, this is my home, and my family is here and community and . . . You know there are things wrong with Chicago too.” He picked up the sponge and wiped down a plate in circular motions as he spoke. “The first time we met, you looked at me like I was gonna rob you blind. Can’t tell me that’s because it’s some utopia up there in the Windy City.”

  “Well, yeah, but you can find crime anywhere.” Hannah pointed as she made her argument, water running down her arm.

  “Sure, but discrimination is everywhere too; it just wears different masks,” Guy said, dunking Hannah’s rinsed plates into the sink of warm water.

  Chicago was not some bastion of equality, and she knew that even when she spent years of her teens and young adulthood disparaging the South and confounding her racist roots. But somehow she’d always seen the South as “the worst” bad guy in the fight, which was making her start to wonder if that heated focus on a faraway villain made her overlook the ones at arm’s reach. When Hannah didn’t respond with some quip or quickly formed opinion, Guy spoke up with an attempt to lighten the mood.

  “But I do see why you love it up there so much—not every city can be the murder capital of the country. Been meaning to ask. Did you guys get a medal for that?”

  “No.” Hannah chuckled, splashing a few drops of water in his direction before plunging another plate into his side of the sink, trying to snap out of her deep thoughts and play along. “It is just one medal. We pass it around, like the Stanley Cup.”

  “Oh, I see,” he said, snickering.

  “You think I’m a bit much, don’t you?” Hannah asked, feeling vulnerable, a youthful tremble to her question. He gave her one of those out-of-the-corner-of-his-eye looks that she wondered if he practiced in the mirror.

  “No, ma’am. Not too much at all.” He continued with his part of the chore, nearly finished with all the plates they’d used. “But I also don’t totally agree with your daddy’s way of doin’ things.”

  “My daddy?” she asked, trying not to allow herself to fall into a repeat performance of her outburst from the garage. She turned off the water on her side of the sink and picked up a towel to start drying the stack of clean dishes in front of her, listening before lashing out this time.

  “You said he moved y’all north because he didn’t want you growing up around all the same things he did?”

  “Yeah, that’s right.” The dry plates stacked up next to Hannah, like every conversation with Guy, one layer at a time. She was determined to listen this time, really listen.

  “So this is how I talk about it with my kids at school.” He stopped and rolled his eyes up toward the ceiling, like he was trying to find the right way to explain what he wanted to say. “When I was a kid, we had this big old magnolia tree in my yard. It was huge, bigger than the one by the courthouse down the street.”

  Hannah tried to imagine the scene in her head. The tree in the main square had branches that touched the top of the tw
o-story building and spread out over a massive stone courtyard. She rode past it nearly every day on her way to and from the Record, and she’d recently started wondering if the lightly tinted autumn leaves were ever going to fall. Guy continued, pulling the plug from the sink, drying his hands, and beginning to unroll his sleeves.

  “The property line goes right through that tree, and at some point, before my daddy owned it, when two neighbors were fighting or something, they hacked into that tree and put a metal fence right through it.” He slashed his finger through the residue of bubbles that hadn’t made it down the drain.

  “By the time I was a teenager, the business picked up steam, and we bought the land next door. So my daddy wanted to take down that fence, make it all one big yard. We spent a week digging the posts out from the ground and hauling the chain-link to the dump. Then we refilled the holes with dirt, till after a while you couldn’t even tell there had been anything separating the two pieces of land . . . except for that tree. The tree had grown around that fence, and they’d become all intertwined.” He linked his fingers, weaving them together like a basket.

  “It’d made that magnolia tree grow all crooked on one side, and half the branches didn’t even have leaves or flowers anymore. My grandpa wanted to cut it down, plant a new tree. But Daddy loved that tree. Said I’d learned to walk under that tree and that my sister Lacey had played house by its roots. He thought it was unfair to cut down something so beautiful because some angry man decided that his problems were more important than that tree.”

  “What ended up happening?” She liked seeing the world from Guy’s steady but firm outlook. So often, she felt like she rode swells of passion or impulse that took her to the highest of highs but then tossed her into the watery depths nearly as often. He reminded Hannah of those freight trains she’d seen in Memphis, unhurried but centered on a track that kept him focused and would eventually lead him to his destination.