West of You

by Christina Metcalf

  He lacked his father’s grace who despite a few extra pounds around the waist still ran with the speed of a leopard. I saw this as he rushed to catch his son’s foul and send it back to the pitcher. The next hit, despite it sailing deep into left field, got Corey picked off at first. Ahhh...he had the speed of a tank.

  “Awww for fuck’s sake.” She dropped her sizable frame on the bleachers causing them to rumble with the force of a small earthquake. She was so different from the feminine icons Cash used to like.

  “God damn it, Hillston. I told you not to feed him before.” she yelled at the coach.

  Part of the crowd gasped and I was about to agree with them condemning a wife for talking to her husband with such disrespect when I realized they weren’t angry about that. Their whispers chided her for her use of “GD.” This is God’s country here and they don’t take kindly to giving the Lord orders. The dirty yankee in me was hoping they’d lynch her but I was pretty sure the Klan didn’t do that anymore. If they did, they likely wouldn’t do it to one of their own. Although, I was unclear on their stance about women mouthing off to their men. So I held out hope.

  Resolution of happiness gonna make you sweat

  Cash gave me directions to the farmstead and told me to go on along Belle was expecting me. He and Jax would be there after they had their parents’ meeting. He said he didn’t want me to get bored and hungry. He remembered how I got when I was hungry. I remember too and it’s not very nice. But he made it sound sexual and I assure you there is nothing remotely erotic about starving to death.

  He hugged me again to say goodbye even though I’d just be up the road. I wondered for a moment if he planned on firebombing the whole place. Not that he was that kind of guy but his hug was filled with the kind of desperation you generally only see in drowners and terrorists.

  Belle met me with the usual southern charm, as effervescent and sweet as a Mountain Dew.

  “I assume you’ve met her.” she asked threading her arm through mine as we walked to the house, the dog circling our feet.

  Tom, Cash’s dad, was on the porch smoking a cigar.

  “She means our daughter-in-law.” he added.

  Belle shot him a vicious look. “Now, why do you have to call her that? She’s not technically married to him, ya know? There’s still hope.”

  “I gave up hope when the grandkids were born.” he exhaled a sweet-smelling smoke. “She’s a part of the Hillston family tree now like it or not.”

  “You hush now. Who asked you?” she smiled at him and he at her.

  Belle’s disgust in Jax didn’t surprise me. She was a firm believer that women should be good hostesses but shoot quietly. Their power was in the silence. But Tom had always been a gentle soul. You’d need to be to spend a lifetime with Belle.

  “We’re gonna go have some girl talk.” she said over her shoulder to Tom.

  That was a southern lady’s way of saying you are not invited where we are going. But I can’t say that bothered him very much. His contentment was written on his face as he watched the sun begin to slide down below the horizon.

  She motioned for me to sit at the kitchen table while she busied herself at the counter. Belle reached into her cabinets and pulled out her china. They were still the same maroon on white design that depicted some good southern families going to watch the battle over a picnic lunch. When I had first revealed the image from under my mashed potatoes Cash had explained that watching battles, particularly those in the War of Northern Aggression, was perfectly fine entertainment prior to cable. I loved those plates.

  Yanking at a stiff drawer she removed a wooden box. When she flipped open the lid, her wisteria silver shone.

  “I always thought these would be yours someday.”

  I smiled flattered at her comment but I also remembered a time only two decades ago when she shouted at Cash that no good southern boy of hers would procreate with a good for nothin’ Yankee. The idea of her good southern bloodlines mixing with the wild Irish from Boston probably kept her up many nights. But eventually her hatred of me simmered to a slow boil, because she probably realized I would never put up with the philandering. That was her saving grace. I wasn’t sure why Jax had. She didn’t seem the type to meekly take what life offered up.

  Belle reached into a canvas grocery bag and pulled out a plastic container of macaroni and cheese, followed by cornbread, green beans, and finally BBQ. She transferred each of the foods onto its own china plate or bowl. And it was only then that I noticed her hands shaking.

  I walked over to her and took over the task as she commanded me from the sidelines. As I finished each item, she took it over to the trash, ripped off it’s label so no one could prove what had been inside, and she buried it several layers deep, even though that meant going elbow-deep into the garbage, something 45-year-old Belle would never have done.

  “Now don’t you go tellin’ nobody about this. I’m perfectly fine. It’s just that some days I don’t quite feel up to all that I used to do.”

  “It’s not some days. It’s every day, Sara. I tell her to get checked out but she won’t do it. Stubborn as that mule of a daughter-in-law we have.”

  “Now, Tom. You hush. I am not stubborn. And she is not our daughter-in-law.”

  I smiled as she flipped a kitchen towel at him. No matter how badly she felt, and it must’ve been awful for her to buy a pre-made dinner every night, she would never ask Tom to help. That wasn’t his role.

  Belle sat at the table and traced her finger along the wooden groove. Tom passed through, squeezed her shoulder, and kept walking. It was probably time for his evening whisky in the study.

  “So what have you been up to for the past ten years.”

  “Twenty-two actually.”

  “Really? Awww. Who’s countin’?”

  She rubbed the table some more.

  “I was sorry to hear about your friend. Cash said she was the reason the two of you got together.”

  I nodded.

  “So tragic.”

  Normally, this is the part where I nod sadly and let them offer up whatever commentary fits their religious persuasion but something in seeing Belle that night, mere smoke of the fire she once was, forced something open inside of me that I swore I would keep quiet after visiting with M’s brother and again after Cricket.

  But as Belle would have said twenty some years ago, it’s not in a Yankee to keep quiet.

  Dear God...justify my love

  “I’ve been thinking about you ever since Cash told us. When he said you were comin’ for a visit on your way out west, I felt like maybe I had summoned you in some way.”

  She reached for my hand and patted it. I let her.

  “I’ve never understood why death has to be so tragic. Why can’t we all have expiration dates and instead of dyin’ we just turn ourselves in when our time comes?”

  She looked up at me for the first time since bringing up the dead M. Water filled her eyes.

  “I guess because as a creation, we’re not really good at doing what we’re told.” I offered.

  “That is true. Look at you Yankees. We just wanted to do what was right for ourselves and you have to come in and tell us how it’s gonna be done.”

  A smile slides across her pale face. Her color was not far off from her china pattern, mostly white with red designs. She was beautiful in a very human way. Twenty years ago she had been ethereal. The past two decades had stolen her angelic countenance.

  “Belle...”

  Voicing her name struck us both as odd. She peered at me, lips slightly parted, with a lack of familiarity.

  “Belle?”

  This time when I used her name it was out of concern. There was a distant look in her eyes like she was trying to make something out on the horizon, like she was trying to determine friend or foe.

  When I called her name a third time, she blinked rapidly and squinted, something she would never have done twenty years ago. “Stop squinching your eyes like that litt
le girl. They’ll stay that way.” Belle also said she tried to spend just as much time frowning as smiling to “balance out the use of the facial muscles.” The ethereal Belle would never have dreamed of using a straw because the puckering action would give you “smoker’s lips.”

  “Belle!” I said much more urgently as I grasped her hand.

  This time Belle seemed like she’d heard me in much the same way you might hear something as you’re falling asleep, garbled and nonsensical but there nonetheless, at least in your mind. She rubbed the back of her palm across her perfectly stenciled eyebrow. Belle’s confusion reminded me of the readjustment necessary when you come out of a dark, cold movie theater into the middle of a sultry, summer afternoon.

  Tom appeared in the doorway as if I had summoned him.

  “Belle, honey.” he said in a voice most people use for quieting a child with an unreasonable demand.

  “Why are you two yellin’ at me?”

  “Because you weren’t answering Isabelle.” he said patiently.

  That was the first time I had ever heard anyone use her full name. I didn’t even know she had one. To me she was always just Belle, like Madonna or Prince.

  “Well, it’s not like I’m deaf. I was just lost in thought.”

  “You didn’t look lost in thought. You looked unresponsive.” Tom chided.

  This was a battle I’d let him fight. I ducked out of the house as they began to battle over whether her “health problems” were actually problems or a mild case of “marital boredom.” Leave it to Belle to hit Tom just where she knew it would hurt. I’m not sick. I’m just bored.

  As I perched on the fence and tried to get the neighbor’s horse to come over so I could pet his muzzle (seriously those little hairs on your hand is the best feeling in the world if you can put aside the fact that those teeth could kill you), I heard the gravel on the driveway give way to a vehicle. I turned around and saw Cash and Jax get out of their cars. Neither one talked. She went to the house with Corey and Caleb while Cash headed my way. I turned around not wanting him to see me watching him in the golden light.

  How different my life would be to have married him instead of Mike. Spending my life in a town where everyone knew the Hillston family. I still remember the looks I got from people he went to school with when he brought me home. It was like I had stolen something that didn’t belong to me and when they heard my accent, you’d thought a Russian had taken over Fort Sumter and declared from this day forward no one could carry a gun or drink sweet tea. Cash Hillston was a symbol of all that was free and right in this town.

  Maybe it was his very belief that he had the right to pursue life, liberty, and happiness that made monogamy so difficult for him. Still, when he came up behind me and grabbed me as I nearly lost my balance and fell off that top rung of the fence, I had the same butterflies that I did decades ago. I wondered if he was still turning heads but only for a second. Men like Cash never grow saggy and sallow even with the extra weight around the middle. That’s a job for womenfolk and no amount of women’s lib can save us from that. M, of course, granted her self a reprieve from the devastating effects of time.

  “Hey, there. What’s a city slicker like you doin’ sittin’ on fences? That’s just askin’ for a spill.”

  “I’m worried about your mom.”

  As soon as I said it, I wanted to take it back so instead I concentrated on calling the stubborn horse over.

  “Here, Sugar.”

  “How do you know the horse’s name is Sugar?”

  “It’s the south isn’t it? Everything’s Sugar or Bubba.”

  He shook his head.

  “Glad we’re back to the geographical stereotypes. Oh how I’ve missed them.” He pounded on the top of a fence post as if he was practicing driving it into the ground. Cash leaned on the fence post, his elbow touching my thigh. We gazed out at the pasture lit in the fading light of the day, the most beautiful part, nature’s “Beauty Face” filter.

  Cash didn’t comment on my concern for his mom and I knew he wouldn’t. Direct communication wasn’t something he felt obligated to do.

  “Jax seems nice.”

  I was quickly running out of topics of conversation but the minute I brought that one up, I realize I should’ve focused on the twins’ ball playing. But from what I saw, that wouldn’t be a great conversation starter either.

  “Does she? Then you weren’t talking to Jax. Musta been another baseball mom. Got some cute ones.”

  I wondered how many he knew well.

  “Fair enough.” I muster.

  “Come on. We’ve known each other long enough not to do that, right?” he asked.

  “Do what?” I feign a lack of understanding.

  “Bull shit each other.”

  I smiled thinking about what Belle would do if she heard him use that word in front of “mixed company.”

  He grabbed a piece of grass and stuck it in his mouth.

  “You are the ultimate southern stereotype right now, leaning against a fence with a piece of grass hanging out of your mouth.”

  He smiled and his eyes crinkled. He made crow’s feet look good.

  “I feel terrible about M...and the world losing her. So unfair.”

  “We didn’t lose her. She killed herself, Cash.”

  “I refuse to believe that. She was always the life of the party.”

  He removed the grass from his mouth and chucked it into the field. It laid spent a few inches from his shoe.

  “I guess she decided the party was over.” I offered meekly letting go of the delusion that Cash would be the one person who would take my word that this wasn’t an accident.

  “How can you say she killed herself? Her car stalled on the tracks.”

  But he clung to the idea that a sweet, smart, funny, beautiful girl had it all just as strongly as everyone else did. But then again maybe Cash had to. Maybe giving up that golden idea that M’s life was the example of what we’re all here to accomplish, would’ve turned his gold to pyrite. Middle age gave us that already.

  “That’s what the newspaper article said.” he added with emphasis as if citing his sources made them true.

  “Fake news mean anything to you?”

  “Oh come on.” he shook his head.

  Like so many times in the past ten weeks I hesitated trying to get him to see my side about the non-accident, accident. But I needed Cash to be on my side. Not that I wanted there to be a side. M had found a terrible way to make me feel isolated, not that this was her intention of course. But it made it worse that in taking her own life she left in such a way that no one believed it. I felt like the kid in nursery school who comes to school with the affirmed knowledge that there is no Santa Clause and that no matter what she says pointing out the many impossibilities in the lore, everyone ignores her and she spends every recess sitting on the log bench alone.

  “M lived in a small town. She knew the train schedule if for nothing else other than sheer annoyance of when that whistle blew. I know she did because I was on the phone with her a couple of times when it did. It was the 1:05. Every day. I knew that from two thousand miles away”

  “But just because she knew when it was doesn’t mean her car didn’t stall on the tracks. Maybe she was trying to out run it. Life of the party always thought she was invincible.”

  He grasped the fence post like he was hanging on. The horse walked toward us.

  “She was a mile off the road, up the tracks, when the train hit her. She had to drive unto the tracks and drive 5,280 feet. That means she had to drive over 3,520 railroad ties. 3,520 times her front tires bounced up over the tie. 3,520 times. I know because I looked it up and that’s how many ties they lay in a mile of track in this country!”

  Cash said nothing. He looked out at the horse. The vein in his neck pulsed. A point in his perfectly square jaw moved. He always grinded his teeth when confronted with something he didn’t want to hear. His face crumbled like he had just watched the entire fall
of mankind flash before his eyes. He shook his head and took off his ball cap. He rubbed the small monkish bald spot on the top and pulled the hat back on, adjusting it low over his forehead, covering up his eyes. My hand returned to the broad part of his arm like it knew its way.

  “Who else knows this?” he asked.

  “Anyone who can read.”

  “Seriously, Sara. Who else have you told that M….that M...did that.”

  “Her brother.”

  “And?”

  “He asked me to leave his house. And I told Cricket.”

  “And?”

  “And she told me to leave.”

  I chose not to tell him about how she thought I was broken and may have had plans for her boyfriend, which I didn’t. I looked out at the pasture.

  “And you.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  I couldn’t tell what Cash was thinking because he hid his eyes and face from me.

  “Are you going to tell me to leave too?” I asked thinking it was more of a statement than a question. I didn’t know why it was so important for me that everyone knew what I did.

  “Of course I’m not going to ask you to leave.”

  I exhaled feeling the pulse in my temple lesen.

  “But I have to tell you you’re hurtin’ people when you say that. You don’t know for sure.”

  “But I do.” I placed a hand on his but he ignored it.

  “No, you think you do. Those are different. God, Sara. That’s the thing I could never get used to with you. You’re so damn intense. When you are committed to an idea, you hold tight even when it hurts you and everyone around you. We’re not meant to be thinking these dark thoughts. You’re poisoning your brain and everyone else around you.”

  I watched the solitary horse munch on the grass and wondered if she ever felt alone in this pasture. Alone was never my problem. I did alone just fine. What I hated was being with someone and feeling alone. The let down of a failed relationship was more painful than none at all. I know Shakespeare said “it was better to have loved and lost” but I’m not sure it is. To put yourself out there and realize that you can never be connected in a way that is unconditional hurts. We are all just one admittance away from someone denying their love for you or losing it altogether. My heart ached knowing there were sides of yourself or thoughts in your brain you couldn’t share and expect to still be loved.