Last Will

  “You’ve got to be kidding me. I spent ten years in therapy. My family spent enough money on therapy, it would have cost less if they’d paid the ransom.”

  Wad Cutter

  “Oh my God!” she said in a piercing register I’d never heard from her. “Oh my God!” She sat up in bed and stared at me as though I’d sprouted a second head. “Are you saying they didn’t pay the ransom? They didn’t pay? What kind of—what kind of….”

  Letting the sheet fall away from her, she rose up on her knees, and put both her hands over her mouth. She looked like she was going to cry, which I wanted desperately to prevent.

  “Look, it was a matter of principle for my grandfather not to pay. And paying it was no guarantee I would be returned. It doesn’t matter, anyway. It’s all in the past, twenty years in the past. I don’t even think about it anymore.”

  “Except that it did something to you,” she said. “That’s not normal, Bernie.”

  “I don’t think that had anything directly to do with this particular problem.”

  “Well, that’s not the only problem you have.”

  “I almost forgot. I’m damaged goods. Thanks for reminding me, Mom.” I was royally pissed off, to quote her.

  “I’m not saying that, but it can’t be right for you to have that kind of problem.”

  I pushed her back down on her impossibly small bed, maybe too roughly. I intended to prove that there wasn’t something wrong with me, and she let me, but it was crazy-making. Like having an itch in a place I couldn’t scratch. She felt wonderful under me, but there was no end in sight after another futile ten minutes of it. I couldn’t. There it was: I couldn’t what? Let go? Was it that I couldn’t let go? Of what?

  “That’s starting to hurt,” she said and made a mild effort to push me away.

  After lying next to her for a while, I apologized and got dressed to go. She didn’t say anything, so I let myself out and drove home to a dark house. I didn’t see her over the weekend, not clear on what had happened, or if we’d had a fight. She hadn’t seemed angry, but I spent the weekend not caring that the water was heating. My mother called on Sunday and we had our usual non-conversation, which prepared me for the plunge I knew was on the horizon. I felt it coming on, like you can feel a head cold coming on. What did my mother want from me that she kept calling?

  Getting a bullet to its target is wrapped up in matters of barrel length, powder chemistry, gas compression and rifling. Once the bullet gets there, though, it’s all about energy transference. To get maximum stopping power and tissue damage, you have to terminate the bullet’s trajectory in the target, and that means calculated deceleration. You want a bullet that decelerates on impact, like a wad cutter.

  The Crazy One

  Meda

  I wasn’t ungrateful, but I didn’t want the headache of explaining to Mom that Bernie was paying for her surgery. He didn’t care anything about people knowing he was doing it. He was embarrassed when I thanked him. So I just told Mom it was taken care of and she didn’t have to worry about it. I thought that was enough, because she didn’t ask about it. Instead she waited until Loren and Aunt Rachel got there for dinner and then she started asking me all kinds of questions. She’d been living in her own world for so long she didn’t even understand the real world. It was useless trying to explain it to her. If I’d told her fairies were going to pay for her operation, she would’ve understood that more than what Bernie was doing.

  “Can he do that?” she said.

  “I guess he can, but is he really going to?” Aunt Rachel said.

  “He already has.” I felt like I was talking in a foreign language, because they wouldn’t even try to understand me. Every time I tried to explain it to them, they looked at each other like I was the crazy one.

  “I saw the check. I held the check in my hand. It’s paid for.” I only had the check in my hands for a few hours, and it was made out to the hospital for $500,000. Bernie signed it Bernham S. Raleigh in big, black letters. Very official. I didn’t know why I was carrying the check until Bernie introduced me to the hospital director. I was there to distract him, to keep him from making a fuss over Bernie.

  “I guess I don’t understand how he can pay for my surgery,” Mom said.

  “They did some sort of deal where Bernie donates money to the hospital to buy some piece of equipment and the doctor does the surgery for free and everybody gets to write it off on their taxes. It’s paid for. You just have to finish your antibiotics and get over this bronchitis.”

  I knew I had to apologize to Bernie. Somebody does something like that for you, you have to apologize when you act like a jerk.

  “My question isn’t so much how, but why,” Aunt Rachel said.

  “Because she’s sleeping with him,” Loren said. “Why else would he be doing this? He bought Gramma a new furnace, for Christ’s sake. You saw the necklace he gave her for Christmas. Like he’s going to give her that because they’re friends.” She hadn’t even seen the diamonds.

  “Is it serious, honey?” Mom said. “It must be for him to give you something like that.”

  “With as much money as he’s got, he can afford to give her something like that whether it’s serious or not,” Loren said.

  “Well, it sounds kind of serious to me.”

  “She’s seriously fucking him. I went by your house a couple nights last week and Gramma said you were at his house. She was pissed off at you. ‘Sneaking little whore.’ That’s what she called you.”

  “She’s probably upset because of what happened with her,” Mom said quietly, not wanting Gramma to hear. “All those years she worked for Mr. Gertisson. She won’t say it, but he was our father.”

  “Guess we’re lucky Gramma wasn’t the Raleigh’s housekeeper. That would be gross,” Loren said.

  I stopped trying then, because that was how they thought of everything.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  PROBLEM

  I almost stayed in bed another day, but I admitted to myself that my current state was self-indulgent. It wasn’t a real depression. I’d slept off the real depression, or burned it off with the intense burst of self-loathing that followed the conversation with my mother. Whatever the cause, the thing had fled by Monday morning, so I got up and took a shower. When I came out of the bathroom, Meda was sitting on the edge of my bed waiting for me. I liked that she presumed the familiarity, although it might have been the prerogative of any pretty girl.

  “What song was that?” she asked.

  “It’s from South Pacific.”

  “It’s nice.” When I came over to the bed, she stood up with her hands in her apron pockets. “I’m sorry about how I acted the other night. If you spent ten years trying to get better, then that’s all you can do. I guess you’re just you.”

  “Thanks. That makes me feel better, knowing I’m just me.”

  “I’m really sorry,” she said again.

  I leaned back against the headboard, and looked at her for as long as she would let me. She turned a little pink and started to leave.

  “It’s okay. Can I ask why it bothers you? Why my ‘problem’ upsets you so much?” I drew the little quotes in the air and she frowned at me. “I don’t have to keep trying until it makes you sore, but I got a little caught up in the rhythm of it the other day.”

  “That’s just it. How do you know when it’s over?”

  “I’m perfectly content to stop a lot earlier, after your orgasm.” I enjoyed seeing the way color blossomed in her cheeks. It made me eager to alleviate her anxiety and almost made me forget what I’d been so upset about.

  “It doesn’t seem fair for you to not to enjoy it.” She looked so serious I had a hard time not laughing at her.

  I fought the urge and said, “You know, the means are pleasurable in themselves, without consideration for the end. And I’m not afraid of a little manual labor, so to speak.”

  She laughed more than the joke warranted, and I saw how nervous she was. I felt b
adly that I’d made her work so hard, and in the silence after her laughter, I got her out of her clothes and into the bed.

  Confidence Lost

  Meda

  I tried not to think about it when we started kissing, but once his secret was out, he’d lost a lot of his confidence. He knew what I was thinking, because he leaned up on his elbow and said, “You know, it’s not always. I do manage it sometimes.”

  “Like when?” I asked and he looked a little surprised.

  “I guess I’m a better actor than I thought. The night of the Hall of Fame.”

  I waited, but that was all he said.

  “So, basically, once. What was different about the Hall of Fame?” As soon as I said it, I remembered exactly how it had been different. He had been different. Not quite the same guy who kissed me after the fight, but someone between Bernie and that guy. He had still been wearing his shirt and his bowtie when it was over.

  I didn’t know if he came—that’s what condoms were for—and I didn’t want to know. Afterwards I got dressed to go down and see what Aunt M. was doing. Before I left, he said, “Would you stay with me tonight? We’ll figure something out about the sleeping, okay?”

  “What about Annadore?”

  “Bring her.”

  “It’ll be easier on the weekend. How about if we come Friday night?”

  “And Saturday night?” he asked.

  “And Saturday night.”

  “And the night after?”

  “Hey, are you trying to get me to move in with you?”

  “Okay,” he said, so I knew he was crazy. Who says something like that? “You can come and stay as long as you want. You don’t have to call it ‘moving in’ if that seems weird.”

  On Friday, I packed up a box with some stuff for Annadore and me, clothes and toys and bathroom things, so we’d have what we needed to stay over with him. Gramma glared at me when she saw what I was doing.

  “I hope he pays you well,” she said. “That was the thing I always had to fight with Gertisson about, the money. Stingy old bastard.”

  “Bernie isn’t a stingy old bastard and he’s not paying me to—it’s not like that, okay?”

  “You say. Not the sense that God gave a goat. You’re going to be a whore just like your mother.”

  “Don’t talk like that in front of Annadore.” I heard enough of that from Gramma about Mom when I was a little kid. Probably her mother said things like that to her. Someone who beat her kids with a shoe would say something like that.

  “You know what he’s doing to you,” she said. I didn’t know and I didn’t think she knew either. Whoever Bernie was, he wasn’t Mr. Gertisson.

  Bernie’s idea of me staying with him did not involve sleeping, but he was interested in having sex. As soon as Annadore was in bed, he practically pounced on me. I tried not to think about what his reasons were. When it got late, though, and we were both tired, he went and slept in the bedroom next door. That’s how polite he was: he let me have his bed since I was already in it. I tried to ask him again about sex, about his ‘problem,’ since that’s what he called it. I really didn’t understand why he was interested in sex, because I could see then why he wouldn’t be.

  “My pleasure is vicarious,” he said.

  “Wait here while I go downstairs and look that up.”

  “I enjoy it if you enjoy it. And it feels good trying to get there.”

  He wouldn’t say anything else, so I hoped he had a good time with himself in the other room.

  Sunday night I knew I ought to go home. I didn’t have any intention of staying there with him past the weekend, but I didn’t want to have to deal with Gramma. She might have forgotten our fight, but maybe she hadn’t.

  “Well, just stay,” Bernie said.

  “Yeah, but then I’d have to take Annadore back anyway, because somebody has to watch her.”

  It made me feel bad, because it seemed like I was just using Gramma to take care of Annadore. I thought I was doing okay by her usually, but maybe I was a bad granddaughter.

  Domesticity

  “It’s too complicated,” Meda said, when I suggested that Annadore could stay at the house during the day.

  “No, it won’t be complicated.” We went into the parlor off the kitchen and I pointed out the Dutch door to her and how it would be easy enough to take anything that wasn’t safe out of the room. “Even if you’re in another part of the house, I can hear her if she needs anything.”

  For Monday, that was Annadore’s playroom, and she wasn’t even alone most of the day. Meda checked on her throughout the day, and I read to her and chatted with her. Even Celeste played with her for a while. Mrs. Trentam was notably not involved.

  Monday night, Meda went to dinner with her family and I believe she made up with her grandmother, but at the end of the evening she came back to the house. I liked not just her presence in the house, but the fact that she saw it as a safe place. It felt safer to me.

  She was smiling as she carried Annadore upstairs to put her to bed. I read for a little longer, looking forward to going up in a few minutes, thinking of kissing Meda, the shape of her back like a cello. Whenever I caught myself thinking of the next day or the next week or two years down the road, I turned it off. Instead, I thought of Meda, right then, upstairs, getting ready for bed. I traveled back in time, remembering how she looked hugging my aunt. Meda’s hair had enveloped them both, while her hands pressed gently on my aunt’s back. I thought of some clandestine afternoon in my bedroom, how she had glanced reproachfully over her shoulder at me until I got out of bed to zip her back into her uniform. When the future started to intrude, I set aside my book and went upstairs.

  When I went into the bedroom, Meda was sitting on the edge of the bed, unlacing her shoes.

  “So, how was your grandmother?” I said.

  “Oh, she’s okay. She doesn’t want to be wrong, I think. She wants to be able to say ‘I told you so.’ That’s why she’s so mad at me.”

  “Maybe she’s just concerned about you.”

  “Does she need to be?”

  “Are you asking whether my intentions are honorable?”

  “Oh, I’m not asking anything,” Meda said.

  I wanted to reassure her that I did have honorable intentions, but all the ways I knew of to tell her were dangerous. She was a flight risk.

  We’d had the playroom set up for all of two days when Aunt Ginny came to see me. Meda stuck her head into the office and told me she was there, but when I went out to the front parlor, it was empty. Thinking I’d misunderstood Meda, I went toward the kitchen, and heard my aunt’s voice. She was in the playroom, getting acquainted with Annadore.

  “I came to see you, but Meda said you were busy, so Annadore and I have been playing.” Aunt Ginny was smiling and a little disheveled. I waited for the question that would require me to explain the situation, but it didn’t come. When Meda came into the room a few minutes later, she looked mortified, probably expecting that question, too.

  “I hope you weren’t waiting too long, Mrs. Raleigh,” she said.

  “Oh, dear, I never even went in to see him. I wandered back here and was having such a delightful time I completely forgot why I was here. She’s such a sweet girl.”

  Meda blushed and smiled. We chatted a while longer, and then Mrs. Trentam came down the hall, wondering why we were all gathered there.

  “I was just coming to check on her, but I guess I’ll get back to work,” Meda said.

  “Good,” Mrs. Trentam said. “I want to get started on those curtains.”

  “No, come to lunch with us,” Aunt Ginny said. Meda looked at me in alarm. I shrugged. For all her sweetness, Aunt Ginny was a force to be reckoned with.

  “I really have a lot of work to do,” Meda said.

  “Oh, bother,” Aunt Ginny said.

  Mrs. Trentam and Meda looked at me, wanting me to put a stop to the nonsense and get out of the way of the work they needed to do. Aunt Ginny gave me a look th
at demanded I take charge and bring Meda along for lunch. I don’t know what they were thinking. I wasn’t in charge of my aunt, and it was clear I had no real say over Meda or Mrs. Trentam. I wasn’t even my own boss.

  “I’d love to go, Mrs. Raleigh, but we have a busy day. Maybe some other time,” Meda said.

  Aunt Ginny and Mrs. Trentam both frowned, but Meda carried the day. She and Mrs. Trentam went back to work. Aunt Ginny and I went to lunch.

  “I don’t see why Meda shouldn’t have come with us,” Aunt Ginny said, but the question about our living arrangements never materialized.

  Child Care

  Meda

  A couple times I went to check on Annadore, and Bernie was with her, usually reading to her. It was so funny to see him in a suit and tie, with Annadore on his lap.

  “Bet you never thought you’d provide your employees with day care,” I told him.

  “I don’t see why not. I like the idea.”

  “I mean, you personally, providing the day care.”

  “No, this is a nice break. She’s only bitten me a few times, and she never says, ‘balance sheet’ or ‘cats are so funny.’“

  He seemed happy and Annadore seemed happy. Aunt M. was not happy.

  “Mother’s very upset about you moving in with him,” she said to me at lunch.

  “Well, bully for her.” I didn’t want to hurt her feelings, but it wasn’t her business.

  “You have to know what it looks like that you’re living here.”

  “I guess you’re going to tell me.”

  Aunt M. glared at me and took another bite of her sandwich. She was either trying to figure out the nicest way to say something bad or come up with the meanest thing she could say. “You’re not the only one who’s affected by your relationship with him. Try thinking about Annadore, or even about my family.”

  “I am thinking about Annadore. I think she’s happy,” I said.

  “Now she is, but what about later? Do you want her to be embarrassed for you, the way you were for your mother?”

  I got up and left, because there was no way I could say anything and not wish it back. We didn’t talk to each other for the rest of the day, except for what we had to say to get the work done. I was a little ashamed of myself, because when I went to sleep that night, I knew part of the reason I was still sleeping at Bernie’s was to be contrary.