Lullaby Road, page 15
She waited to speak until I was right in front of her. Returning home without her baby, however justified, filled me with guilt.
She opened her mouth and I beat her to it. “I had no choice, Ginny!” As much as I hated hearing that bullshit excuse from others, I hated it even more when it came from me.
Ginny buried her red face in the frayed edges of the quilt and began to sob in heaves. I kept my mouth shut and waited for the courage to comfort her without making excuses. The courage deserted me and I went straight to the apology and excuses.
“I’m sorry, Ginny,” I said. “The weather was terrible. I didn’t know how long it would take me—117 was an ice rink, zero visibility, wind—” After a quick breath, I finished up. “I just couldn’t take Annabelle. It would have been too dangerous. Forgive me?”
Ginny stood up on the step and threw her quilted head into my shoulder and went on crying for a minute before answering. “I gave my baby to you!” she wailed. “What kind of mother am I?” She composed herself and without lifting her head from my shoulder, she said: “I can’t do this anymore, Ben. I just can’t. I had to. I had to.”
I rested my hand on her shoulder. “I know,” I said. “You had work and college and no sitter. You made the only choice you could. Phyllis is taking good care of her, I promise. She’s safe and warm and I’ll have her back to you as soon as I can.”
Ginny raised her head. “No,” she said. “That’s not what I meant.”
The front door to Ginny’s side of the duplex opened behind her and I saw what she felt she had to do. I hadn’t seen Nadine, her mother, since we dated ten or more years earlier. Even then I hadn’t really seen her. What I saw was her backside riding a married UPS driver down the home stretch in the cab of my truck while it was parked overnight in the terminal lot. I saw them and they knew and the silence that passed between us was the only goodbye. Ginny was a little girl at the time and already wise in the ways of the world, especially the part of her world that had to do with her mother—a lot wiser than I was. Even as a child, Ginny was the adult in the family.
I’d lost track of them until I stumbled across Ginny, seventeen, homeless and pregnant, while shopping for cello CDs after midnight in the Price Walmart. That had only been five months ago, though it seemed like years. Ginny had been seduced by her mother’s current boyfriend and her mother sided with the boyfriend, who denied everything, and abandoned Ginny, still in high school and three months pregnant, to move to Salt Lake City to “start over” with the boyfriend.
Everything Ginny had done since—getting her GED, having and raising the baby, working two jobs and going to night school—she had done on her own, including saving my little trucking company with her grit and quick wits. Without exaggeration, what she’d actually done was save my life. In the final month of her pregnancy a girlfriend from high school, without Ginny’s knowledge, had contacted Nadine for help. Nadine hung up on her.
The full extent of how overwhelmed Ginny was with life had come down to this—her mother, who had never really been a mother except in name only. For my two cents, and mostly what she’d done to Ginny, a number of words came to mind, and none of them were “mother,” though one of them started with it. Maybe the biggest surprise was that Nadine had come at all. I suspected there had to be a reason, and that reason had little to do with caring about Ginny and Annabelle.
Nadine was a couple years older than I was, which put her at about fortysomething or so. She knew her best qualities, and where and when to apply them, and her trim, coiffed, high-heeled, short-dressed self was on full display—though not for me. At her shoulder was the shadow of a white Stetson tipped low over a pink brow.
“Where’s my grandchild!”
It was a perfect opportunity for me to count ten before I spoke, think about the situation and the emotions and the people involved—take the high road. “Shit!” I said, though discreetly. No one on the next street overheard me—probably.
Ginny kept her head against my shoulder. “They just got here a few minutes ago. I haven’t had a chance to really talk to my mom yet.”
“Here’s your chance.”
Ginny lifted her head and looked at me. A dribble of snot ran from her nose onto the tip of her silver nose ring. Oddly, it reminded me of her as a little girl, a bit of a tomboy, a sharp tongue and a tough sense of humor. At eighteen she still had those qualities, along with a strength that I had come to take for granted. That call—asking her mother for help—must have taken more courage than I could imagine.
With a strained calm, she turned to face her mother. “Let’s talk inside, okay?”
I got a better look at Nadine and the new boyfriend once we were inside. Nadine stood with her hands on her hips champing at the bit to get started on me. She was the well-known piece of work. She had her strengths though. Not many women can manage to be both overdressed and underdressed at the same time. The boyfriend, who introduced himself to me as Rod, a “rancher,” no handshake offered, perfectly fit the role of a Cadillac cowboy—middle-aged and pink, huge biceps available for viewing—and wearing enough cologne to get the attention of the EPA. If Rod was a rancher, and I knew a bunch of real ones, it involved wrangling cats and little dogs and a spread that was fenced by sidewalks and required a lawn mower.
Ginny took a shallow breath and steeled herself. She quickly explained about her sitter being sick, the tests, work, and how I offered to take Annabelle for the day. Doing her a favor.
I was amazed Nadine held her tongue as long as she had. She cut Ginny off with “I bet he does lots of favors for you—and himself.”
Ginny ignored her and continued through Nadine’s interruption. The weather. The smart decision to leave the baby in Rockmuse with a friend.
Nadine huffed. “So he left my grandbaby with a friend? A friend? I can only imagine what his friend is.” She let her words burn in the air a minute. “Oh God!”
I was clenching my jaw so tightly I could feel my teeth cracking. If only to relieve the pressure and make a contribution to the conversation, I said, “That grandchild you’re so concerned about has a name. It’s Annabelle.”
“I know her name!”
Nadine teetered on her heels for a second and I could see her tightening her right hand into a fist. Rod put a beefy arm around her shoulder. “Settle down, honey.” He let us all see a big white-capped grin. “My little filly does have a short fuse.”
“Just when,” demanded Nadine, “are you planning to get—” She took a breath she didn’t need to cover not remembering her beloved granddaughter’s name. “Annabelle back?”
“Tonight,” I said.
“You mean right this damn minute, don’t you?”
“Sure,” I said. “Right after I take a shower. I’ll be back with her this evening, depending on weather.”
Ginny lowered her head. “Thanks, Ben.”
Rod said, “I think that’s the smart thing to do, pardner.”
There was the color of both reproof and intimidation in what he said and how he said it. Rod wanted to let me know he was a tough guy. More than that, he wanted his “filly” to see him being a tough guy. I looked him over and let him see me look him over. Who calls a woman a filly? Pardner?
“Careful,” he warned. “Womenfolk are present.”
He was right, of course, and I counted to ten at least five times in the few seconds it took me to back out of the door.
Ginny followed me out on the porch and closed the door behind her. “I’m sorry, Ben. The important thing is she came when I called her. They’re getting married. I’ve asked to live with them for a while in Reno. Just until I get on my feet.”
“I understand,” I said.
“Do you?” She started to cry again. “I hope so. You’ve been my best friend. Annabelle and I couldn’t have made it through the past few months without you.”
“I didn’t know you were staying in touch with your mother.”
“She phoned me a couple months ago.”
“Well, she’s trying,” I said, not believing a word.
As it turned out, I was wasting my time.
Ginny let out a sour laugh. “She called me to borrow money.”
I pulled her close to me and hugged her. “I’m still your best friend.” I kissed the top of her purple-and-red spiked head. “Five hundred miles doesn’t change that.” It was not my place, nor was I inclined to try to talk her out of her decision. “You’ve thought this through? Quitting college. Everything?”
Ginny nodded.
“When are you leaving?”
“Probably tomorrow. They’re staying at the Holiday Inn while I pack and tie up some loose ends at work and school.”
“I’ll miss you,” I said, and went inside my side of the duplex.
27
Goodbyes to people you really care about don’t happen all at once. Maybe the words get said, but the goodbyes go on. I stood in my duplex and thought of her a few months ago asleep in my old brown recliner, her dress hiked up and holding her belly to relieve the weight, one baby wrapped inside another. For someone I’d known as an adult for such a short time, she was everywhere I looked. The duplex I now owned, my rig, my company, a few thousand dollars in the bank, taxes filed and paid, bookkeeping up to date—on a computer program no less—all this I owed to Ginny.
And I owed the long nights lying awake in my bed missing Claire being gratefully disturbed and somehow comforted by Annabelle’s crying from the other side of the wall. I would be saying goodbye to Ginny often and for years.
The small-capacity hot water heater in my duplex kept me from wasting water and taking long showers. I usually waited until the water turned tepid before I got out—five minutes or ten minutes tops. The hot water had gone to cold and I just let it run. The previous day and the slow, cautious drive back had taken up residence in my shoulders and bloodshot eyes. When I finally turned off the water I could hear knocking at my door. I pulled on the dirty denim work shirt I had been wearing and wrapped a towel around my waist.
By the time I opened the door Rod was pounding instead of knocking. “The women are off shopping. You and me need to have a man to man.”
He reached down to open the screen door and I got there first and set the flimsy hook. I knew it wouldn’t necessarily keep him out, but at least it sent him a message. I was thinking we were a man short for that conversation and I didn’t feel like talking.
“I’m not in a talking mood,” I said.
Rod pulled on the screen door handle and the lock held. “I’ll be damned if you’re going to keep me on your porch like a mongrel dog.”
“Then get off my goddamned porch.”
“Nadine told me the whole story,” he said. “We all know whose baby that is. Don’t try to deny it. You’re a sorry son of a bitch for taking advantage of a naïve high school girl.” With every word his voice grew louder. “Nadine and I are going to do right by her and the baby, even if you won’t. Aren’t you a sweetheart, letting her live next door. I bet you’re liking that arrangement just fine. But it’s over, and you’re going to at least take some financial responsibility.”
This was familiar territory to me. An almost forty-year-old single man cannot be friends with a single teenage young woman with a baby without a few tongues wagging. I usually let it go, except this wasn’t just a tongue wagging. True to form, Nadine fed him a lie to excuse herself and avoid telling him the truth. She probably fanned the flames and pointed him at me just before she left with Ginny, hoping he’d pull some wrongheaded macho bullshit just like this. Rod’s pink face had turned to a bright red. It wasn’t all Nadine’s doing. Rod was the kind of man who could whip himself into a frenzy with nothing more than his own words.
Behind Rod, just coming into view, Earl and Imogene, a couple in their seventies, were taking their daily noon walk, arm in arm, something they did seven days a week. I didn’t know them well, just enough to say hello. Their house was a couple blocks away. The sun had come out and melted the snow off the sidewalk. Earl had been a heavy-machinery operator for the coal mine; Imogene had been an elementary schoolteacher. Earl was pulling his miniature green oxygen tank.
My loud conversation with Rod was exactly the kind of sordid domestic disturbance that I hated and that happened too often in my neighborhood. Calming Rod down wasn’t going to be easy. I had to try. “Let me get dressed.”
My offer at least had him thinking for a moment. “All right,” he said. “Open up.”
I wasn’t going to let him in. If something was going to happen I wanted it in the open. Calling the police occurred to me—for a second. It wouldn’t make a damn bit of difference if I had been the one to call. Rod could be holding a gun on me, or I could be dead on the ground, and they would arrest me. Simply going inside and closing my door would only result in more pounding and yelling. For all I knew he’d kick the door in anyway.
“No, Rod,” I said, as calmly as I could manage. “That’s not a good idea.” If I’d stopped right there maybe things would have been different. Unfortunately for both of us, I didn’t. “You need to cool down.”
Telling anyone, especially a man, to cool down, usually has exactly the opposite effect. It sure as hell did on Rod. For some damn reason being told to cool down seemed to be interpreted as weakness, and weakness was opportunity to press the advantage. He reached for the screen door handle again and I could see he was going to put his back into it this time.
“Stay the fuck out of my house,” I shouted.
“I’m coming in!”
Rod did put his back into it and the lock gave way all at once, so quickly it threw him off balance. In that instant I did what I had been trying to avoid. His left hand was still wrapped in the door handle when I hit old Rod as hard as I could through the screen door wire, my right fist to flesh, from the end of his nose to his jaw. The screen door separated from its hinges and covered him. He stumbled backward off the steps of the porch and I followed. Once the backward momentum started he was helpless to stop. He tried to push off the screen door and I punched him again, harder, through the wire.
By the time he fell, he was on his back on the sidewalk with just part of the aluminum screen doorframe over his face and his white Stetson pushed up revealing his bare scalp. My knuckles were a shredded bloody mess from the wire. I straddled him and with my left hand I threw what was left of the frame aside. I pulled his hat off his head and held it over his face while I punched him again. He was barely conscious beneath his rumpled and now bloody hat when I stood up.
Earl and Imogene were standing a few feet away. Earl said, “Afternoon, Ben.”
I apologized. “He tried to force his way into my home,” I said between breaths. “If the police get involved, remember what you heard and saw.”
Rod began grunting and moaning from under his hat. He was the type to have a gun in his vehicle. I looked to the curb and the Cadillac was gone, probably taken by Nadine and Ginny. Truth be told, he was probably lucky mine was in my cab a block away.
When I turned back to Earl and Imogene, Earl had a smile on his face. I repeated what I had said about remembering. Imogene raised her eyebrows with a wry smile of her own. “Oh, believe me, Ben, I’ll remember.”
I felt the chilled draft between my legs and realized the towel was lying on the ground halfway down my walk. It was only about ten feet, but it was a long, cold ten feet until I reached it and covered myself. Imogene stepped over Rod. Earl could have gone around if he’d wanted. Instead he stepped over as well and pulled the wheels of his oxygen tank across Rod’s chest. Imogene waved back at me as they continued down the sidewalk.
28
I couldn’t hear sirens. Yet. That could mean my neighbors hadn’t called the police. Yet. I grabbed some clean clothes and dressed as quickly as I could. In my stocking feet and carrying my boots, I walked out my door. Three minutes or less. The street was empty. Cadillac was still gone, and so was Rod. But not far. He was sitting on the steps of Ginny’s side of the duplex, his mangled and bloodstained hat in his hands.
“You sucker-punched me,” he said, the fight if not the anger gone from his voice.
“Yes,” I said, “I did. You wouldn’t back off. And only a sucker can be sucker-punched. You might want to keep that in mind for next time.”
Screw John Wayne westerns. I’d been in enough fights to know that when men get into it as Rod and I just had, they don’t just get up and laugh, shake it off, and have a beer together. Rod and I were not going to have a beer together, then or ever—and no laughs, either. He was hurt, and hurt badly. My right hand was throbbing and torn to hell. The only thing both of us could be thankful about was there hadn’t been any guns readily available.
I listened and still didn’t hear any sirens. “You want to talk now?” I asked.
“No.”
“Then maybe you’ll listen.” I sat down next to him and pulled on my boots as I spoke. “You’re not going to believe me. I know that. But there’s another story about Ginny and Annabelle and it’s a sight different than the one you were told.”
“You calling Nadine a liar?” He made certain he made eye contact with me. “Because if you are, I can go again. It might turn out differently.”
I ignored him. Whether or not it turned out better for him, I didn’t want to fight. I didn’t want to fight the first time. “This is what I think,” I said. “I think you’re a decent man—a good man. And if you actually knew me, you might think the same about me. Maybe not. I’ve got a long history of poor decisions, and one way or another every damn day I answer for them. But bedding a teenager isn’t one of them.”
“Still sounds as if you’re calling the woman I love a liar.”
“If you love Nadine and you’ve offered her and Ginny and Annabelle a home, then good for all of you. If you get a few months or a year down the road and you still think I’m a piece of shit, then you give me a call and I’ll let you do whatever you want to me.”
This got him thinking. “The three weeks I’ve been with Nadine have been the happiest of my life. She’s been good to me and like a mother to my three kids. My wife died a couple years ago and they’ve missed the hell out of her. So have I.”
