Backseat Saints Part 5

I'd gone looking for a hiding spot for me, but I'd discovered Mrs. Fancy's. I rocked up to a kneel and picked the paper out and opened it. It was the birth certificate. In the first-name slot, I read the name Ivy. I glanced down it, looking for a date. The certificate had been issued in 1972, four years after I was born. Ivy's father was listed as Harold James Wheeler, and her mother's name was Janine Fancy Wheeler. Janine was the daughter Mrs. Fancy was visiting right now. The one who had supposedly had her first baby last week.

I'd stumbled upon the secret flotsam of a sad time, and now I was digging in the private pieces of a grief that belonged solely to my friend. I put the birth certificate back. I put the box back, too, exactly as I found it, and then I moved to the opposite side of the closet.

I pulled out two s...o...b..xes from the last row on that side and found some sleek red pumps. The other held cloth espadrilles. I wedged one of the pumps into the other box, and then I wrapped the Target bag tight around the pieces of my gun. I put that bundle in with the single shoe. Phil weaseled up beside me and poked his sniffy head into the box that held the gun. I herded him away with the lid so I could close both boxes up tight and slide them back into their places.

I slid the Stephen King book behind all the boxes, resting on its spine with the cover pressed flat to the back wall. I got up and closed the closet door. Phil ran ahead of me down the hallway back to the kitchen, anxious and yelling. I took a minute to fill his bowl up-it was that or get Pawpy's gun back out and shoot him-and at that thought my hands shook, scattering pellets that Phil hoovered up immediately. I wondered where Gretel was. If Gretel was.

I couldn't walk across the yard and home and find out, though. Not while I stank of shooting and flop sweat and green woods. The truth was all over my skin.

I went to Mrs. Fancy's green-tiled guest bathroom and borrowed a washcloth. I didn't have time for a shower, and damp hair would be suspicious in its own way, so I took a wh.o.r.e's bath in the sink. I washed the gun smell off my hands with Mrs. Fancy's apple-scented soap and then swabbed out under my arms and between my legs. The mirror told me I still looked like sweaty h.e.l.l, but that was a good thing. That could work for me. I threw the wet washcloth into the hamper and headed back to the kitchen.

Mrs. Fancy kept all her poisonous Comet and Pine-Sol in easy reach under the kitchen sink, like me. Neither one of us had babies to worry about. I opened the cabinet and grabbed the first thing that came to hand: Lemon Pledge. I sprayed a fine mist of it into the air like it was perfume and walked through. I grabbed the 409 and sprayed a jet directly on my hands and wiped them through my hair, hiding the smell of shooting as if it were a lover's musk.

I started to put the 409 back, but then I changed my mind and started pulling out all Mrs. Fancy's cleaning supplies. I stood them up in a scattered line on the counter and then got her vacuum out of the hall closet and left it in the middle of the living room for good measure. Set dressing, in case Thom came over to check my story.

Time to go home. My heart started banging against my ribs like it was fighting to get out. I paused to take deep breaths, ten of them, until I felt quieter inside. I set my face to its familiar sweet expression and walked out the front door, my steps steady and unhurried.

Our aqua house glowed, fiercely cheerful, bouncing the morning sun at me hard. The low roof was mostly flat, but there was a sloping point that rose up over the front door. It struck me that it looked like our house was wearing a jaunty hat several sizes too small for it. It was silly looking, and the mint-fresh color made it sillier. It didn't look like a house that would have a wolf inside. Today, it held at least two.

Still, this was probably the first time in my marriage that I'd ever been pleased to have Thom's parents over, especially his daddy. Joe had no trouble wrestling his boots off and thumping his bare feet up on our coffee table like he owned the place. In a way he did; the Grandees gave us nine thousand dollars for the down payment. It was a gift, not a loan, Joe said. Out loud, he said it. Frequently. In public. By now he had to have been repaid twice over out of Thom's considerable store of banked pride. I didn't think of it as a gift so much as another way to keep Thom feeling indebted. If Joe paid his eldest son what he was worth for running all three Grand Guns stores, we'd have been able to afford our own d.a.m.n down payment, and on a house two steps up from Chez Crest.

But today, I was glad to think of Joe Grandee filling up the house like packing peanuts, pouring into every bit of open s.p.a.ce. There would be no room to breathe, but on the upside, Thom and I would be suspended and separated. He could not crash into me.

I opened my front door. Just inside was a tiny square room with parquet flooring, a closet-size s.p.a.ce that hoped to be a foyer when it grew up. Through the archway that led to the living room, I could hear Joe Grandee holding court. I'd come in midtrumpet, and I don't think anyone heard the door swing open over him.

"-married almost five years. What are you waiting for? I thought the one upside of you marrying a d.a.m.n papist was we'd get a pa.s.sel of grandkids. Your mother, she kept saying in the car, what if those shooters hadn't missed? What would you have left behind you on this earth?"

I waited in our wannabe foyer, caught by a silly hope that Thom would choose this moment to tell his father to pull his head out of our business and stick it up his own back end where it belonged. But there was only the familiar silence that meant Thom was supping, spoonful by spoonful, on his daddy's c.r.a.p. It would surely go even sourer in his belly.

"Your brother here, he's bull's-eyed twice on Margie, and they got married half a year after you. What's wrong with you, boy?"

A small, square piece of the parquet floor extended into the living room, surrounded by our oatmeal-colored carpet. I stepped onto that wooden island, directly into my living room. "I'm on the pill," I said in the mildest tone I could muster, and immediately I had four sets of eyes on me.

"That's a little more information than I needed, missy," Joe said. "And where the h.e.l.l have you been?"

He was hulked upright and angry in Thom's own easy chair, centered in the room. He was past fifty, and age had blunted the sharp edges of his athlete's body, but he was still broad-shouldered and solid. He had his booted feet set wide apart and flat against the earth. He leveled the question as if he had a right to the answer, staring me down like he was King s.h.i.t of Poo-Paw Mountain, as my daddy would have said. I felt my eyes getting narrow above the fake smile I'd drummed up for him.

Everything in the room seemed to turn inward to frame him, starting with his own wife. Charlotte was perched on the end of the sofa closest to him with her spine straight and her spiky knees pointed his way. Charlotte wasn't at ease even at home in their own dry-aired mansion, and in my house she sat stiffer than a cardboard cutout of herself.

Larry, the middle Grandee boy, stood on Joe's left, angled toward his daddy as well. He had a broad forehead and a Roman nose like Thom, but under that, his face waffled away in a chinless slide. He was an accountant, and he kept the books for the stores. Joe must have folded him up like the luggage he was and brought him in the cramped backseat of the big black truck.

"What brings alla y'all over here in the middle of the day," I said politely to Joe, but my gaze shifted quickly, almost against my will, going right to Thom. He was at the opposite end of the sofa, sitting way too still. His eyes looked like two pans of something left too long on simmer on the stovetop, seconds away from smoking and going black.

"I believe I asked where you've been, first," Joe Grandee said, stern, like he was the wronged, shot-at husband in the room. I was surprised he wasn't shirtless and barefoot, guzzling milk straight out of the carton while he questioned his son's wife.

It was all the more insulting because I understood what he was really asking. The only question that truly mattered, the one that only my husband had a right to ask. I could read its echo in the crackling air around Thom's head, three words repeating in an endless loop: Who is he. Who is he. Who is he.

"I was next door," I said, jerking my thumb in the direction of Mrs. Fancy's place. "Now what are y'all doing here?" I pulled my eyebrows together, trying to look puzzled. "Is Gretel out back?"

Thom's stony face did not change at the mention of my dog. Neither did the words he was thinking at me.

Who is he was a refrain familiar enough for me to recognize it banging around his head. He started with was a refrain familiar enough for me to recognize it banging around his head. He started with Who is he Who is he and finished by putting me in the hospital. We'd had this conversation plenty, though there hadn't ever been a he. I'd never stepped out on Thom Grandee. I'd never so much as pointed a toe in the direction of that doorway. and finished by putting me in the hospital. We'd had this conversation plenty, though there hadn't ever been a he. I'd never stepped out on Thom Grandee. I'd never so much as pointed a toe in the direction of that doorway.

"Next door?" Joe said, sounding so skeptical that I might as well have said I'd spent the morning skipping on down to h.e.l.l to bring the devil some cool, sweet tea.

I nodded and sent Mrs. Fancy a mental apology for the lie I was about to tell on her. "I'm cat sitting for our elderly neighbor. She comes home tomorrow, so I was giving her place a good cleaning. It was all over filth."

Charlotte's spiky fingers flexed on her knees. She somehow managed to look down her short peck of a nose at me, even though she was seated. "You could have left a note," she said in her needle-thin voice. Charlotte was made entirely of angles. Even her small b.o.o.bies were pointy, so sharp that it was a mystery to me how none of her boys had lost an eye while trying to breast-feed.

"I got Margie and me a set of them mobile phones, Thom. I can track her in a second," Larry said. Mystery solved. Larry had clearly never been breast-fed.

I had to squint to keep my eyes from rolling in their sockets. Track Margie, my b.u.t.t. Larry lived chained to Margie's leg in the few hours he wasn't chained to his daddy's. He seemed happy enough grazing on whatever scant gra.s.s he found around their ankles.

The phone suggestion didn't even register with Thom. He didn't so much as spare his brother a grunt.

Who is he.

"I wasn't expecting company," I said. I plucked at my dirty T-shirt, then ran my palms down the sides of my ancient jeans. Exhibit A. "I must look a mess." I picked my scraggled hair up off my neck and raised my eyebrows at Thom. Exhibit B, and I hoped he could read my answer in the air around me as clear as I could read his question: Do you think this is what a girl wears, how she does her hair, when she goes out to meet a lover? Do you think this is what a girl wears, how she does her hair, when she goes out to meet a lover?

I couldn't stop myself from thinking that if I ever did step out, this would be the way. I would go to and from his arms in a ponytail, wearing clam diggers, no makeup on. I'd look like I'd spent the day gardening instead of on my back. I blinked at the thought, and on the inside of my closed lids I saw Jim Beverly's sweet and boyish monkey face again, his long upper lip and his flat nose, his eyebrows waggling as he made some joke and pulled me down to lie beside him.

"Look at me," I said again, quieter, to Thom, only to Thom. "I'm all over dirt and cobwebs."

Thom pa.s.sed his big palm down over his face, slow, as if he'd been born with a caul and was only now rolling it away. He looked me up and down with fresh eyes. I prattled on. "You should have seen under her beds. I'm surprised I didn't find Jimmy Hoffa buried there in all that filth. I should run grab a quick shower."

I started to turn away, but Thom surged to his feet. My breath caught. He was so fast. His long strides carried him around our coffee table, eating up all the room between us. I took two panicked steps backwards, until the wall stopped me. My hands came up.

Thom steamrollered straight toward me with his bright eyes blind. He was seeing only the shape of me, as a thing to break, as if his parents and his liverless brother weren't clotting up our home. He pushed through my hands like they weren't there, but then his arms folded around me instead of rising up against me. I found myself pressed hard against him, my nose smashed flat against the broad slab of his chest. He buried his face in my hair and inhaled, drawing in sweat and ammonia like he was sniffing daisies.

I smelled him, too, the dark clove scent of my husband, and my eyes closed all on their own. My arms snaked their familiar way around him, and all at once it felt like we were alone in our house.

"They f.u.c.king shot at me, Ro," he said into my hair.

"They what?" I said, glad he couldn't see my face. "Who? What?"

"On my running trail," he said. "They took a couple of shots at me."

"Oh, my Lord," I said. I fake struggled, as if trying to get back to see him, but he held me tight. I turned my head sideways and pressed my ear against him, my face hidden against his arm. The thump and rumble of his heart struck me as beautiful, and I felt my eyes tear up, as if I hadn't caused this mess.

"They shot at at me, Ro. Like they meant business." me, Ro. Like they meant business."

"Who were they?" I asked, embracing his use of the plural.

"I don't know," he said, pulling me closer, too, hard enough to squeeze out half my breath. "I have to tell you something, Ro. She's fine. Okay? She will be mostly fine. But one shot hit Gretel."

"Gretel?" I said. We were finally to the place in the conversation that I cared about, and I couldn't seem to process the word mostly mostly. This time I struggled for real, trying to lean back away from him and see his face, but he clamped me even harder. When he spoke, his voice was flinty, close enough to losing control that it scared me into stillness: "Ro. Please don't give me any c.r.a.p about running your fat-a.s.s dog right now."

"No, baby," I said. "Only what does that mean? Mostly fine?"

Tom sighed and shifted, easing his controlling grasp. "She got hit high in the shoulder. The vet had to take the leg. But she came through fine. She's sleeping."

My knees were glad for Thom's solid body. I trembled and leaned. "Take the leg?" I said. Those words made no more sense to me than "mostly" had.

"Shoot, she won't even know." Joe bulled his way back to the middle of the conversation from the easy chair. I started and felt Thom's reflexive jerk, too, as we remembered together that the room was full of all the wrong Grandees. I wished Margie were here or Thom's youngest brother, Peter. Margie taught middle school science, and that's a job that trains a woman to brook no c.r.a.p. Nothing Joe said ever fazed Teflon Peter, either. He was a beautiful pothead who dropped in and out of jobs and colleges and the beds of pretty young women with good-natured, unshakable ease. But when Joe spoke, Thom turned away from me, one arm still across my shoulder, so the single thing we'd been split and opened to face Joe.

"I had a hunting dog lost a leg when I was growing up," Joe went on. "Trip, I called him. Get it? Trip? After he got used to it, he didn't remember he'd ever had four. He didn't remember his name used to be Blue, either. They aren't the brightest things, dogs."

Larry and Charlotte nodded in unison, like this was wise enough to be engraved on tablets and handed down the mountain. Commandment Eleven, Thy dog shalt have three legs and like it.

I looked up at Thom, trying to call him back, and asked, "What did the cops say?"

He made a scoffing noise, and he stayed facing his daddy. "Kids, maybe? Poachers? They didn't take it too serious."

Joe shook his head, disgusted. "d.a.m.n cops, checking boxes. They aren't going to do a d.a.m.n thing."

I tried to look anything but relieved. Thom let go of me to pace up to the top of the room. He took long loping strides like a riled zoo tiger.

"I want to go see Gretel," I said to his back.

He wheeled on me and said, "She's going to be f.u.c.king fine, Ro."

It got very quiet.

"No call for that," Joe said. No one used the f-word in front of Charlotte. Not when Joe was in the room, anyway. Joe pulled it off as good ol' boy gentlemanly behavior, but I understood him better than that. It was one of the thousand ways he let the world-and his sons-know that his wife was not his equal. Joe shifted in the chair, prepping to rise, and I think we all could feel how electric the air had become, even thick old Larry.

I was trying to think of what to say, of what Thom's Ro would do. It wasn't coming natural. I didn't feel like Thom's Ro. I felt cornered, and I felt Rose Mae rising; excepting fire and locusts, she was the last thing needed in this overcharged room.

I made myself walk across the room toward my husband, trying to block his view of Joe with my small body. He was so on the edge, I knew if Rose Mae pushed him, even a little, the room would be all over blood in seconds. Mine, no doubt, though if G.o.d was merciful and just, it would be Joe's.

I took another step to Thom. I was small and he was so very angry. I didn't understand why Rose felt so excited, almost hopeful. Why she was putting her hand on his broad chest and why his flesh shuddered at her touch.

"Baby," I said, "I'm so glad you're all right. That's the only thing that matters. That you're all right."

It was the right thing. He wheeled back into his lopy pacing. After a moment, Charlotte wrinkled up her nose-peck at me and said, "It's nice you're helping your friend, next door, but you might want to have that shower before you go check on the dog. Or before you go, well, anywhere."

Thom's eyebrows beetled back down as he walked the room. My bullets and his daddy had put him as on edge as I had ever seen him. His ears p.r.i.c.ked and his brow furrowed at every little rumble.

"A shower sounds like a good idea," I said, treading careful, trying to see what Charlotte had said to rile him. Then I had it. Me helping my friend friend. Thom and I didn't have friends, neither of us. He came to me for food, for s.e.x, for talk, for play, for violence, and he had no other needs. We were closed together like two halves of a clam's sh.e.l.l. If I had a friend, she would notice long sleeves and scarves in summer, and unlike Mrs. Fancy, women in my generation had not been trained to look the other way.

It wasn't as if Thom and I were hermits. We were friendly enough with couples at church, and I was in the Ladies' League and helped with food and clothing drives. Sometimes I went to lunch with Margie, but her job and her young boys kept her too busy for it to happen often. Thom hunted with his brothers and his father, and he played on the Grand Guns softball team. Every other Sunday, we choked down his mother's dry-meat roast at an all-family dinner. But Thom didn't like me to have phone calls or girls' night at the movies. That sort of thing brought us back to Who is he Who is he every time. every time.

I said to Charlotte, ultracasual, "I'm going to have to talk to Mrs. Fancy's son or whoever that is who mows her lawn. She might need to go to a.s.sisted living. She seems like a nice enough old lady, but that house... well, look at me, and you'll get a clue how bad it was."

I could feel Thom's hackles lowering as I spoke, but his fingers still fisted and uncoiled in angry rhythms as he paced. It wasn't good, having me in the room, untouchable in every way that mattered.

I said, "I think I will grab that shower."

I took silence as permission and got out, fast-walking all the way down the hallway to our master bedroom. Gretel was alive. I wouldn't think about her leg now. I couldn't. She was alive, and I was not alone. Those were the main things. The vet had said she would be mostly fine. Mostly.

I didn't realize Thom had followed me until I was inside our bathroom. When I turned and saw him, I almost screamed.

"I told them I'd be right back," he said.

He came at me and I backed away, but he was so fast. He bullied me backwards to the wall, and I was half-terrified and half-excited, not knowing which thing he wanted. My hands were flat against his chest, and I looked up, trying to read his face. He kissed me then, hard, first on my mouth and then on my throat with his mouth open like he was trying to eat me up. Big Bad Wolf kisses. His hands on my body gripped me hard enough to hurt.

"You smell like lemons," he said.

"I'm filthy," I said.

"I don't care."

"Your parents are just down the-"

He interrupted me. "I don't d.a.m.n care."

"Your daddy-"

He came back to my mouth again, eating my words, and all at once I was as ready as he was. Kissing him felt slick and secret and dirty. This was like high school s.e.x, male hands seeking desperate paths through my clothing with a room full of parents right down the hall.

"Hurry," I said, and he shoved my jeans down around my ankles. I kicked one foot loose. He jerked his pants down, too, not bothering with the b.u.t.tons. He lifted me and flattened my back against the cold tile. His mouth was on me, and he was grinding into me, hard and good with only the thin cotton shield of my panties between us, and this was like high school, too. I closed my eyes against the sunshine, and there was Rose Mae Lolley, rampant in my head with her Jim Beverly.

I kept my eyes closed, and the world tilted and was darker, and Rose Mae was in Jim's car after a game, parked up by Lipsmack Hill, her shirt pushed up and her bra unhooked. I peeked through my lashes, gasping, and there was Thom in the sunshine with his face twisting and his eyes open. I closed my eyes, and Jim had one hand between Rose Mae's legs, rubbing her through her jeans, and Thom said, "I thought I was going to die, Ro."

I said, "They missed. They missed."

All the while in my head I heard Jim Beverly whispering to Rose Mae, and Rose's hands remembered what it was like to touch Jim, too, her clever fingers counting the b.u.t.tons on the fly of his Levi's, endless crazy-making touching through layers of denim and white cotton. She would cup and grip the outline of him, learning by feel this thing she hadn't seen since they were nine. It was a rigid line of heat that felt nothing like the little-boy pansy blossom she'd seen.

Thom snaked one hand between us and ripped my panties away. Then he was in me, breathing hard, his face buried in my 409-filled hair. He said, "G.o.d, it's like s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g Mr. Clean," but he was grinning. I could feel his teeth against my scalp.

I closed my eyes and heard the ten-year-old echo of Jim Beverly's voice in my head, saying, "I'm going to kill him. I'm going to kill your worthless daddy, if he lays one hand on you again." Jim's hand gripped the undercurve of Rose Mae's a.s.s, pulling her against him to grind as he said, "I'll slip in at night and hold a pillow over his face while he's pa.s.sed out." Jim's fingers followed the inseam of her jeans. "Who would know? Some drunk smothers while pa.s.sed out? That must happen all the time."

Thom was in me, each thrust pushing me up the wall, his face in my hair, just as I liked, and inside I was tipping over. Ten years away, Jim Beverly's words blew through Rose like a wind, lifted her and sent her into someplace new and dazzling. We met there, met and melded for one moment, so real that I heard that old remembered whisper in my own ear. "I'll kill him for you," Jim Beverly said. I opened my eyes and saw my husband's face.

Far away, in a car parked up by Lipsmack Hill, Jim's hand still worked between Rose Mae Lolley's legs. He hadn't known that Rose Mae had finished. He was still living blindly in the s.p.a.ce where her hand cupped him. But I was wholly in the present. Here in my bathroom, I laughed and arched into Thom in the wake he'd caused. I felt so good. We both felt so d.a.m.n good.

That laughy sound from me, so happy, and the way I flexed my back up pushed Thom over, too. We breathed in four or five times together, big cleansing whoops of air, and then his arms lost strength and he let me slide down the wall to thump onto my bare bottom. He relaxed into a lean against the countertop. I pulled off my shirt. My bra was torn, the cups hung down over my ribs, and my jeans were in a bunch around one ankle.

I grinned up at him and he whispered, "This is nuts."

He shook his head and began packing himself away and pulling his shirt down. Half his vinegar was gone, and yet he still smelled dangerous. I was spent, but Rose Mae was a wild thing in me, rioting and pleased.

As soon as he got his shirt tucked back in, Thom said, "I have to go out there. Take your shower," and he was gone.

I took my time, letting hot water pound down on my shoulders while my conditioner set for ten minutes. Even after I got out, I stayed in the bathroom, slowly moisturizing every inch of my skin and then blowing out my long, thick hair.

I think I already knew what Rose Mae wanted to do next. It wasn't what I wanted. I didn't let myself even think it. I didn't let myself think at all. I didn't want to wreck the good peace I felt in my whole body in the aftermath of s.e.x. I didn't want to start again.

I aimed the dryer at my roots to get some volume, staring into the mirror. Rose Mae Lolly stared back at me, not thinking either. She didn't have to think. Her day would come, a day when Thom would hurt me bad enough to loose her. I closed my eyes against her patience. I dried my hair by feel, but she was still there, chock-full of something close to smug. All she had to do was wait.