“No broken bones. I promise.”
“Then so be it.”
The intercom clicked off. I sank further back on the room’s deep leather couch, cradling a fine cigar and a cup of coffee. Ethan should be going to the rink with his cousins. Lounging beside me with his socked feet on an ornate teak coffee table, John glanced at me, froze, then said quietly, “I’m sorry.”
I shook my head. “How do you have the faith to let them out of your sight for even a minute?”
“They have a mother who does all the worrying for me. She imagines every possible disaster and buys a helmet for it.”
“Seriously.”
John inhaled his cigar, blew out a long stream of smoke, then said, “I’d rather be afraid of losing them than not have them at all.”
“I hope you never lose one.”
“Brother, I know we were raised Catholic, but when did you turn into a Mel Gibson movie?”
“What?”
“You know, the whole ‘torture me some more’ and ‘suffering is good’ thing.”
“The day Ethan and Sherryl died.”
“You weren’t responsible. How many times does everyone have to tell you? You couldn’t have saved them. Yes, you were supposed to keep Ethan at home that day, but you had a fight with Sherryl over whose schedule was more important, so she took him with her. That’s life.”
“Could we drop this subject?”
“No. On a related note, I wish I could figure some way to block every form of communication between you and Ravel. Sherryl’s sister is a twisted woman with some kind of secret guilt of her own. That’s the only explanation for how she treats you. You did nothing wrong, and the fact that you still refuse to believe that shows just how far she’s sunk her tentacles into your brain and short-circuited your common sense. She’s lurking in her lair at Trump Tower just waiting to make your life miserable again. How’s she going to top herself this January?”
“I deal with it when it comes. I don’t want to talk about it.”
The tone of my voice set him back. We smoked in grim silence for a minute. “What’s up with the two little girls?” John asked.
“What do you mean?”
“Girls. Young human females. One approximately seven, the other approximately twelve. You asked Monica to pick out Christmas gifts for them. See, this is how it is with happily married people. They share information. Monica told me you’re playing surrogate dad to a couple of little girls.”
“I’m nobody’s father figure. Just trying to do my part for a couple of needy kids. Cora and Ivy. Good kids. I don’t want to talk about them.”
“Hmmm. Then tell me all about Cathy Deen. Is she a safe subject?”
“There’s not much to tell.”
“Pardon me, but, uh, you’re in a relationship with the woman who’s made People Magazine’s Most Beautiful People issue every year for the past decade. Throw me a bone or two. Some information. Anything.”
“It’s not a ‘relationship.’ We’re friends. She likes talking to me. She needs me. But she could have any man she wants. Even now. She thinks she’s ugly, but she’s still got it.”
“‘It’?”
“She—” I searched for words in the hypnotic movements of the fake computer fish. “She could inspire an army just by smiling.”
“Helen of Troy? You’re falling in love with Helen of Troy?”
“I’m not—dammit, John, don’t make me wrestle you to the floor and give you a wedgie.”
“How bad are the scars?”
“Remember the drywall foreman who played poker with the old man? The one who’d been burned in a firefight in Vietnam?”
“Oh, my God. The guy we called ‘Freddy Krueger’ behind his back? Her burns look like his?”
“Yes. As if someone scrambled the skin, raked a fork through it, then tanned it badly with several shades of leather stain. Red, pink, white, brown.”
“Damn. She let you see her scars? I mean, the ones that aren’t on her face?”
“Not deliberately. But there have been some . . . circumstances.”
“Ah hah.”
“Not like that.”
“Come on, don’t be coy. Admit it. She can’t resist you.”
“Oh, yes, she can.”
John nodded sagely. “Cathryn Deen wants to nail my brother.”
“Don’t make me hold you down and rap your skull with my knuckles.”
“This sexy movie star wants to do my brother,” he continued, grinning. “My brother looks like a big, hairy, survivalist troll—even with a trimmed beard, courtesy of the sexy movie star—and he’s practically a self-flagellating martyr, but he’s caught the world’s most beautiful movie star. Even if she’s scarred she’s still Cathryn Deen, the ‘it’ girl. Wow. Can I tell Monica? This ought to earn me some hotness by association.”
“I haven’t caught her. I’ve just sneaked up on her and stunned her into friendship.”
“Incredible women fall for you, and you don’t get why. Sherryl could have married royalty, Greek shipping heirs, Fortune 500 trust-funders, or one of the Kennedys, but she fell for you.”
“I’m gentlemanly and I have nice teeth. Politeness and good dental hygiene are the key to hotness.”
“You were Sherryl’s rock,” John said gruffly. “She wanted somebody to stand up to her rich family, to tell them all to go take a flying fuck, and you did. You gave her a chance to live her own life, and whether she appreciated that fact later on or not, she loved you for having the balls to marry her without expecting even a penny of her inheritance. And you were my rock when we were growing up and the old man treated me like crap for being fat and shy. You stood up to him. You looked out for me. If it hadn’t been for you I’d have turned into a screwed-up monster just to show the old man I could be a tough prick.” Even as I began shaking my head to dismiss his praise, John clamped a hand on my shoulder and went on, “You’re the rock that never cracks. I have no doubt Cathryn Deen sensed that about you from day one.”
I swirled my coffee then downed it in a single long swallow. Once, standing in Jeb’s gem shop watching him cut and polish a rough, purplish ruby into a rounded cabochon, I heard him telling the biker who had bought the ruby for a big-ass ring, Even the hardest stone has a fracture line in it.
Ethan and Sherryl’s deaths had created my fracture line. I knew the fissure was still there, that a dangerous crack existed in the rock everyone assumed couldn’t be broken. If I believed I could be with my son again, I’d have killed myself long ago. That crack had never healed.
Loving Cathy made me even more aware that I wasn’t solid anymore, and might never be again.
Cathy
The slippery clay floor of the barn’s milk stalls and calf pen now sported a deep, pristine layer of new pea gravel, and the walk-in feed crib, where gaps in the old gray planks let in cold, damp air, received a brand-new plywood floor and walls. Thinking of Thomas, I dutifully helped nail the old planks over the new plywood, to hide it.
Suffice to say I’d never hammered a nail before in my life, and Alberta knew it. My nails skewed at odd angles or bounced free and took flight. One pinged Alberta on the forearm, and she flicked it off as if I’d spit on her. On the next try, my hammer missed its mark and thumped my own left thumb.
I saw stars and leaned against a wall, sweating inside my head scarf. Not only was I clammy with nerves, I was roasting under a silk scarf. Even high in the Appalachians, a Southern December can turn warm overnight. The daily temp hit sixty-five degrees that week. Balmy. The other two women working in the crib with us were dressed in t-shirts. Alberta wore a light flannel pullover. One of the women patted me on the back.
“You’re doin’ pretty good for a gal who spent most of the past year in the hospital or at home in bed,” she said.
“We read all about you hiding in your mansion,” the other put in kindly. “We saw the stories in the check-out line at the Ingles in Turtleville. Sorry. Those gossip magazines are hard to
ignore when the store puts ’em right next to the candy bars.”
“I understand. Thank you.” I only managed to talk between dizzy spells.
Alberta snorted. “If you took off that damned silk burka you’re wearing, you’d be more comfortable and you could see what you’re nailing.” She levered her hammer with ninja-like precision. Sixteen-penny galvanized nails disappeared into the wood after only two or three skillful slams. She pounded another nail into place smugly. “What are you going to do with this barn, anyway?”
“I don’t know, yet.”
“Turn it into some kind of guest house? I know, maybe turn it into a potting shed where your landscape man can store the lawnmower and all the chemicals you’re gonna have him pour onto the wildflowers you’ll call ‘weeds.’” Alberta chuckled ruefully as she whacked nails into a board only inches from my sweaty face. “Let me guess. This spring you’ll have your landscaper plant beds of blooming azaleas around this barn, and camelias, and some nice evergreen arborvitae to give it that Italiente touch city people think is so elegant, and some tulips already up and budding.”
I wiped my forehead with a shaking hand. “So what’s your point?”
She hooted and looked at the others. “Up here in the mountains, what do we call all those plants I just listed?”
They looked uncomfortable. Bullies have a way of making people hate themselves for playing along. “A salad bar for the deer,” one answered.
Alberta guffawed. “Salad bar. For the deer.”
The other woman hurried to add, “But Ms. Deen, your yard sure would be pretty for a day or two, before they ate it.”
Alberta guffawed again.
I went in the house, washed my face with my ice-cold well water, changed the clingy silk headscarf for a lighter cotton one, then headed for Macy’s encampment under the front oaks. Macy worked at a laptop on a small folding camp table in the winter sunshine, bundled up except for fingerless yarn gloves, charmingly Victorian except for the modern camp stove where she created giant pots of stew for lunch everyday. When I pulled up a lawn chair she was listening to a CD of Robert Frost poetry. Two roads diverged in a wood, and I, I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.
“Hi,” Macy said, and flicked off the CD. “Alberta, again?”
“Excuse me for asking this about your spouse, and I don’t mean to pry into her personal life, but . . . is Alberta the Antichrist?”
Macy laughed so hard her braids shook. When she finally caught her breath she folded her hands in the lap of her work skirt and looked at me solemnly. “You need to understand. I came out to my parents when I was fifteen, and they loved me anyway. But Alberta was thrown out when her parents learned she was gay. She lived on the streets of New Orleans for several years. She was beaten up, raped, nearly died from overdosing—you name it. Finally, she cleaned herself up and got a job in construction. She really has bootstrapped it to get where she is, and if she comes across as merciless and mean, it’s just that she feels that it took tough love to set her on the right path, and so that’s what she doles out to other women. So it’s nothing personal.”
The horrifying details of Alberta’s background settled on me like a hair coat. How could I despise her now? “You really know how to take the fun out of my plot to strangle her.”
Macy smiled. “Oh, don’t feel sorry for her. Give her hell.”
“She hates me because I’m pampered, rich, and whiny.”
“Don’t forget straight. She hates you because you’re straight, too.”
“Great. I’ve hit a home run on this one.”
“She thinks straight women have it easy. Nothing—”
“Personal. Okay, maybe she’s right about that. But it’s not like I woke up in my baby crib one morning and said, ‘Gee, I think I’ll choose to grow up white, pretty, rich, Protestant and heterosexual.”
“No, but be glad you had it easy.”
I pointed to my face. “Does this look easy?” I asked quietly.
Macy gave me a wistful and even sympathetic smile. “No, but it looks no worse than the scars the rest of us carry around.”
Okay. I was not going to get much sympathy from Macy, either. I decided to change the subject. I gestured toward her CD player. “I thought you’d be listening to poems by women. Sylvia Plath, I guess.”
“Just because I’m a lesbian doesn’t mean I like suicidal women poets.” But she looked impressed. “You like Sylvia Plath?”
“I was briefly in the running to play her in the movie. Gwynneth Paltrow got the role. This was a phase when my agent thought I might be a serious actress.”
“I love your movies.”
“You don’t have to say that. I was the queen of brainless romantic comedies.”
“You brought a wonderful presence to the screen. A wonderful personality. I always wanted to be you when I watched your movies. A gay you. Don’t tell Alberta, all right?”
“You liked me. Really?”
She gave me a quizzical frown. “Of course. What an odd question from someone who enjoyed such fame, wealth and universal adoration.”
“I’ve seen all the mean things that were written and said about me after the accident. All the gloating and the nasty jokes in the media. The critiques of my recklessly happy life. A lot of that came from women, not men. How could women say such mean stuff about a . . . a sister?”
Macy wagged a finger at me. “Those are women so eager to please the male power structure that nothing else matters to them. They instinctively distance themselves from females who are no longer valuable to men. They secretly fear that your fate is a warning to them. ‘See what happens to women who don’t measure up to men’s standards anymore? See what happens to women who seek status in the world?’”
Macy sighed. “Generally, I don’t frame my beliefs in traditional feminist dogma, but in this case . . . when you lost your beauty in the accident—and, as a result, you lost your career and your status, all because of a superficial asset the male power structure deemed most valuable about you as a person—your fall from grace illustrated just how fragile the female power base is. You see, women who deliberately attract attention to themselves—not only by their beauty, but also by their brains or athletic prowess—women who dare to be something besides demure and submissive servants—are a threat to the male ego and an equal threat to the brainwashed egos of women who haven’t got the courage to demand recognition in their own lives.”
I stared at her. “That sounds much better than thinking I was just a pampered twit and everybody secretly hated my guts. Thank you.”
She patted me on the arm. “Women shiver when something innocent is snatched away by random fate. Your beauty was innocent, you understand. I don’t mean in a child-like way, or naïve, I mean pure.” Macy brightened. “But, on the other hand, losing it was a good thing. The universe clearly has important plans for you, and you need to progress to a new level. This is just a transition.”
“But I was happy being vacuous and pretty.”
“Were you?”
“I got the best concert seats, the best men, the best food, the best vacations.”
“In a few years you’d have become morbidly obsessed about maintaining your looks. Fighting to stay in the limelight. And your husband was obviously a bad choice for a life mate.”
“Now, don’t go trying to make me feel better.”
“I’m sorry. The truth is a necessary pain in the butt.”
“Okay, you’re right. Since the accident I’ve thought about all the beautiful people—not just in show business but in boardrooms and offices and warehouses and walks of life everywhere—clinging to something so fragile. Lucky me. I’m done clinging, whether I like it or not. I don’t.”
Macy chuckled. “Well, at least you’ve identified your dilemma.”
“So . . . you like Robert Frost. Why?”
“I’m a sentimentalist. Emily Dickinson. The Brownings. Frost, Carl Sandburg. Their poetry is music
.” She leaned closer and confided, “When Alberta and I exchanged rings, she gave me a volume of the Romantics. She said, ‘There’s no poem in the world that can say how much you’ve saved my life and made my life worth saving.’”
“You love her dearly,” I said quietly. “And she loves you. I’ve watched how you two look at each other. I’m envious of that level of partnership and devotion.” I regained my grumpy footing. “It’s what keeps me from skewering her with a screwdriver.” Macy chuckled. I went on, “Delta told me . . .let’s see. You were a history professor before you and Alberta met.”
She sat back, nodding. “Was, back in my late twenties. More than ten years ago. A different life.”
“You’re a PhD?”
She shrugged. “Yale.”
Oh, great. Thomas had married a Harvard girl and one of his best friends was a Yale girl. “Okay, I need a thesaurus and an IQ implant before we talk anymore.”
“I wasn’t brilliant, just good at academics. I got my bachelor’s at Duke, here in North Carolina, then my PhD at Yale. Then I came back to Duke to teach. Then my parents died, and I gave it all up.”
“Died?”
“Were murdered in a carjacking outside Boston. Where I grew up.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“Me, too. I miss them every day. I always will.”
“You left everything and started on a new life path?”
“I went to work for a church, was transferred to New Orleans, and met Alberta there.”
“How could you give up your old life that easily? Tell me how to do that.”
“There’s something very freeing about losing the anchors that have always defined you. Frightening, sad, but exhilarating in a poignant way, as well. You’re free to float to the moon and evaporate or sink to the bottom of the deepest ocean. But you’re also free to explore. Some people confuse that with drifting, I suppose. I like to think of it as growing.”
I shook my head. “I don’t think I’m growing. I think I’m shrinking.”
“Give yourself time.”
“Was Alberta ‘growing’ when you met her? Or just mutating?”