by Lee Thompson
He doesn’t know, Raul thought, and his heart softened. It was why he was here, surely, to see his nephew for the first time. Raul said, “Come in, but keep your voice down, please. We’ve had something happen this morning.”
Isaac had the appearance of a champion Roman gladiator about him. He moved cleanly, quickly, but it was nowhere near the speed he could move. In the hall he looked back at Raul and smirked and said, “Why don’t you close the door?”
Raul did. He moved closer and whispered, “Our son died today. We don’t need orders from you, or your theatrics. If you act like your father here, I will escort you from this house and off our property. You’re a guest, don’t forget that.”
“What happened?”
“To me?”
“No, to your kid.”
“A car hit him this morning.” He heard the man from the phone saying: Blame your wife…
“I’m sorry,” Isaac said. He didn’t make a move to touch Raul, but he looked like he wanted to. He said, “How is Genny handling it?”
“It’s too fresh to tell.”
“Do you have anything to drink?”
“Follow me,” Raul said. In the kitchen he poured Isaac a glass of lemonade. Isaac took tiny sips. He smacked his lips and leaned against the counter by the sink in a way that reminded Raul of Steve McQueen.
“You can’t talk to her, can you?”
“It’s too fresh,” Raul said, “for both of us.” Like earlier, with the random phone call, he had the overbearing impulse to spill his guts about all the conflicting emotions and thoughts whipping through him with such violence. But he doubted Isaac would want to hear any of it. He’d known many men like his brother-in-law; jock types, alpha males; men who saw the rest of the world as a place draped in their legendary shadow. He said, “What brings you here?”
“Curiosity.”
“About?”
“I wondered how Geneva was, the kid.”
“Now you know,” Raul said. “Have you ever thought about calling her?”
“Not often. I stay busy.”
“It’d only take five minutes,” Raul said, overcome by what he knew was irrational anger. “You waltz in here like we should love that you’ve swung by, but I’m not thrilled, not at all, and Geneva barely knows you. When have you made any effort to be part of her life?”
“Not often. Do you think we should go in there and distract the women?”
“What?”
“Come on,” Isaac said. Raul followed him. A moment before he’d felt proud of himself, in control, but he was suddenly as lost again as he’d felt before opening the door to this stranger. Regina and Geneva were pacing the living room. Isaac went to his sister and put his arm over her shoulder and kissed her temple as if he’d done it a million times. She blushed and looked flustered as if he’d never shown her affection. Yet Raul thought, by the light, the warmth in her eyes, that she secretly loved it. And he realized too that she needed it, more than anything else right now. Isaac said, “Let’s go out.”
“I can’t,” Geneva said.
“Nonsense.”
Regina cleared her throat and said, “Is anyone going to introduce us?”
She smiled with animalistic boldness at Isaac. He smiled back, friendly as could be, and said, “I didn’t see you there.”
She tilted her head and laughed, uncertain if he was serious. There was a patch of red skin glowing on the hollow of her throat. Raul had kissed that spot more times than he could count in the last three years. But now, it felt cheap, all of it, and he didn’t want to stand in the same room with her as she batted her long lashes at Isaac. The two of them shook hands. She seemed to want to hold on a little too long, and Isaac said, “Can I have my hand back?”
Geneva, as despondent as she was, picked up on her friend’s behavior too. Raul hoped she didn’t tell them to get a room because by the look in Regina’s eyes she would have taken it as permission and acted upon it immediately. Raul said, “I don’t think we should go anywhere.”
Regina said, “I’m game. Have you been around town?”
“I love these seedy little cities,” Isaac said. “Gets the blood flowing, helps you remember you’re alive.”
Geneva said, “You two go do your thing. We’ll be fine. If anything, we need some time alone to talk.”
“Maybe it’d be good for us,” Raul said. “To get out of the house, I mean.”
Geneva shook her head. She sat on the couch and stared at the wall.
“Well,” Isaac said. “Let’s give my sister what she wants.” He nodded at Raul, and said, “It’ll help if you sit close to her when you talk. Go on.”
Raul didn’t move. Regina laughed, stepped closer to Isaac, the scent of her perfume suddenly strong in the air. Her pupils were large and her face had softened and her lips had seemed to swell. It seemed too she had extended her neck, the smooth, soft clean line of it an offering. Did she think Isaac was a vampire? That he wished to take her there in front of his sister and Raul? He didn’t know what to do with himself. Again. He’d never felt even a twinge of jealousy—not with his first girlfriend, nor with Geneva, nor, until now, with Regina. It was all-consuming. They were still there with him in the living room but he could already imagine them parked on some dark back road, in the backseat of an old Mustang, Isaac’s hands up her shirt, cupping her breast, her kissing him, and begging him to hurry, because she was already so close, and he’d declothe her with the skill of a professional, and they’d share their saliva and sweat and heartbeats beneath a million burning stars.
Geneva said, “Raul?”
He glanced her way, sick to his stomach, only a breath away from taking a swing at Isaac.
She said, “Sit with me, please.”
Isaac and Regina looked as if they pitied him, were embarrassed for him, that he should have known what to do without his wife having to guide him. He was two steps from the couch and his wife when Isaac said, “Okay then. I’ll be back later. Don’t wait up.”
Raul couldn’t imagine doing anything else. But he waved them off. Regina wore an expression he couldn’t understand, cast it back over her shoulder like a fishhook and it caught him, almost jerked him to his feet and made him cry out Wait! But then Isaac had his hand on her lower back, and he was guiding her out of the room and out of the house and Raul feared out of their lives. Was she trying to punish him for something? After everything else that had happened today?
He sat alone in the house with Geneva, irritated with her and her best friend and himself. Eventually his wife tidied up the living room—it hadn’t taken much; she kept their house pristine. Raul tried to help her but she told him, “Leave me alone.” Then an hour later she retired to bed without another word, yet the look on her face said that he’d hurt her deeply, only she knew how, and the look said only he knew why. Damn it all, he thought, truly alone. He made a stiff drink and sat on the porch for a while. He watched the streetlights and the road, weary in the quiet stillness. He expected to hear Geneva crying—mere walls and windows couldn’t hide her heartache—and he knew he should be in there with her, spooning her, telling her that somehow they would get through this, get past it, and they’d be stronger, better people for it. His mind was stuck in the rut of Regina though. She’d left her car in the driveway so she’d return tonight, unless she and Isaac went to her house. He had no right to be angry with her. She was a beautiful, single woman. When his cell vibrated, he thought it might be her telling him that she was sorry for the scene she created. He exhaled noisily, the cold crispness of the long, waiting hours settling into his bones. He glanced at the text from his mom:
We love u guys.
He put his phone away and sat there for two more hours. Eventually a new Z28 pulled into the driveway, its lights off. It was white with an orange racing stripe in the middle of the hood. The rims were blacked out. Raul listened to the mild music, dull-sounding due to the rolled-up windows. He thought it was a Johnny Cash song playing, one he’d heard many
times before, but he couldn’t remember the name of now. The windows were tinted and it was too dark to see inside the car. It was how his soul felt, and Geneva’s too, and it was plain hell to worry about.
Isaac and Regina got out. He doubted they could see him in the deep pool of shadow beneath the awning. He watched them with open, murderous contempt. But when they didn’t kiss (Isaac gave her a peck on the cheek like he might his mother or sister), Regina hesitated by the front bumper waiting for more. She looked disappointed as Isaac waved her off and turned to the house. She pouted, something Raul had never seen her do; something that didn’t fit the personality he’d built for her. Was she trying to destroy him, he wondered? Isaac came up on the porch loose-jointed, glanced his way, and said quietly, “Quite a gal,” then he smirked and went inside. Regina hadn’t left. She sat on the hood of her car and stared at the closed garage door similar to how his wife had stared at the wall in the living room earlier, as if she’d lost something priceless and knew she’d never find it again.
Raul wanted to leave it alone (and normally he would have), but he had a heart full of grief, and alcohol sang in his bloodstream. His knees wobbled as he stood after sitting so long. He placed a hand on the railing to steady himself. Over the last three years of unfaithfulness he’d enjoyed her and never once thought about ways in which their affair might end. Nor had he ever considered the repercussions it might bring the three of them.
She looked up, to her left, as he approached. Her expression was blank and he thought she might be looking right through him, searching for a lingering image of a man she’d just met and knew she couldn’t have. He sat beside her on the hood and said, “Did you have fun?”
“That guy is a mystery to me.”
“You like that, do you?”
“What’s with the interrogation, Raul? You’re not the jealous type.”
“I’m not jealous. I’m just confused. What was going through your head? Geneva needed you.”
“She knows I’d drop anything when she needs me. She wouldn’t hesitate to tell me when she does either, for your information. Are you mad at me for trying to have fun? Maybe I needed something to distract myself from what happened to Dominic.”
He nodded. “I never thought of that. I’m sorry.”
“For?”
“For being a jerk.”
“You and Isaac are polar opposites.”
“I don’t think on it.”
“We’re going to have to stop what we’ve been doing, but I don’t know how we can manage it. I look at you and you break my heart. I know you need me more than you ever have, but she needs me even more, and she was there first. But she doesn’t give me something that you give me. How did we ever make such a mess of this? How can we make a clean break without it hurting one of us?”
“We don’t need to talk about that right now.”
“Are you going to be okay?” she said.
“I’ll miss what we had.”
“I meant with Dominic’s accident.”
“Are you going to stay here tonight?” he asked.
“I could.”
“I doubt Geneva will sleep much. She might need your company.”
“You don’t know how to help her.”
“Not really. I feel so out of sorts myself. I don’t know what I feel. Anger. Sadness. Disbelief. Doubt. Fear. Pick one, pick all.”
“You’re going to be all right,” Regina said. She leaned her head against his shoulder. “I wish we could go somewhere, get away, just the two of us, but I know how selfish that sounds.”
“I’ve wished the same thing, so many times.”
“Genny’s a good woman.”
“She deserves better than us,” Raul said.
12
Hazzard parked down the street from where he’d hit and killed the boy. Earlier he’d left his car and looked in a small side window and watched the husband fail miserably at being a man. They both looked lost. Hazzard found the back door unlocked. He passed up his chance (there would always be others) to sneak inside, although his anger at Raul’s phone call still made his skin itch, his scalp prickle with rage. He’d wanted to knock on the door and lay the man flat when he opened it. But he’d restrained himself for reasons he had not been able to understand at the time. The side street was a nice one. People in the area were middle-class. No junk cars here—his Buick stuck out a bit. Barb was in the passenger seat, her head against the side window. It was dark out. She looked like she was taking a nap. He tapped his fingers on the steering wheel. She didn’t stink like he thought she might.
Raul’s wife kept ghosting through his head—one moment, her haggard face outside his cruiser, holding her boy, beating on the window, that kid’s bare foot flopping around; then her there in her living room, all the fight out of her. She’d looked like she’d been ravaged and left to sit in a pool of her own blood, her clothing rent, her hair tangled and knotted, that lovely far-off gaze. She was more beautiful than he had remembered. He wanted to fuck her, strangle her, have her nude on top of him, slapping him as hard as she could, collapsing against him, chest to chest, crying. He grew hard thinking about it and looked over at Barb’s corpse and said, “I’m not unfaithful.”
A short while later he saw the Camaro pull back into the Spencers’ driveway. Through his binoculars he’d watched Raul sitting on the porch, the grieving father motionless, quiet, raging. Hazzard knew plenty about rage. And he knew about jealousy—had seen it many, many times in his law enforcement career. He didn’t yet know the relationship between the wife and the other woman (Sister? Girlfriend? Cousin? Lover?). And he saw the options with which to attack them. The wife was already broken, of course, if she were not a master at feigning heartbreak, like Barb had been. And the other woman seemed a wedge between them, man and wife.
The other man was an unknown quantity and inconsequential. He caught a bit of movement in the upstairs bedroom, saw a glint of the wife’s white face behind the glass and then the curtain falling back into place. It seemed to Hazzard that she already knew, or at least suspected, her husband’s infidelity. Perhaps she was a stronger woman than he first suspected. He had no children and didn’t want any—Barb had been the perfect partner in that regard—so he wasn’t positive what she was going through. The husband was obviously trying to let off steam through his affair, brief physical contact with a familiar body, but this other guy was frustrating him. Fools.
When the woman climbed off the hood of her car and slapped the husband after he said something, she left. The husband hung around outside for a few minutes, his face distraught, his shoulders slumped. Hazzard wondered what he’d said to hurt her so much. He started his car and drove slowly up the street and parked in front of the house. He had to lean forward to see around Barb. The husband pulled his hands from his pockets and stared at them, tense as a high-wire cable. Hazzard said, “Burn with me.” The radio played softly—the Doors, “...killer on the road...”—and he grinned. The husband leaned forward, trying to see who was in the car, but the distance was too great and the night too deep and the streetlights glared off the windows.
Barb had slid a bit in the seat. He needed to bury her. Goodbye, cunt traitor. Was nice knowing you. You were right, sometimes things were great between us. But all great things end.
In the yard, the husband pulled his cell, probably to call and report Hazzard’s car to the police. He pulled it into gear and steered away from the curb. “Be seeing you,” he said, watching the rearview mirror. Then, to Barb, “Well, honey, let’s find you a new home. Somewhere quiet.”
13
Luther made his grandmother and Herman dinner. His boss, Raymond Spencer, called when they were nearly finished. Luther listened to him, his heart sinking. He hung up in a daze. His grandmother asked what was wrong and he told her. Herman barely listened. He had his heart set on fishing. After Luther helped his grandmother to her chair and gave her a cup of hot cocoa and put the television on her favorite channel, he loaded the fishin
g rods and tackle box and pushed Herman out to the car, his older brother protesting the whole time, “I can do it myself.” Herman had a lot of pride, which Luther admired him for, yet he also had a reckless side sometimes, when the mood struck him. He jerked himself into the passenger seat and glowered at Luther.
“Relax, Herm, we’re doing what you want.”
The Impala was almost twice the size of the aluminum boat it pulled. The skiff didn’t have a motor, just oars, because Luther never had a need to take it into deep water. He didn’t have time for that very often, and he didn’t want Herman out too far. Their life jackets were in the backseat with the other gear. Luther wouldn’t let him in the boat until Herman was wearing one, and Luther wore one too, for example, and because it was better safe than sorry.
His brother was silent the whole ride to the lake. They parked near the boat launch. The only other car there was an old Buick. The engine was ticking as if someone had driven it hard and long and recently parked it. Luther backed up to the launch, got Herman out and into the boat without too much trouble, and then backed the trailer into the water. Herman called out when the boat was in position. There was little chance anyone else would come out this early in the year; despite how warm it’d been the water was still fatally cold. As Luther climbed into the boat, his brother said, “What a great night for bass.”
Luther could hear them out there feeding, splashing as dusk began to settle in. They’d only get a half hour to fish but it was always more than enough for his brother. Really all he needed, Luther suspected, was some time out of the house, some time away from their grandmother, a sense of independence. He looked silly in his life jacket, so thin that it all but hung off him. They were Duck Dynasty editions, a show Herman watched religiously, and Luther labeled about the same fun as an enema.
