A Place We Knew Well (26 page)

“An afternoon nap?” she asked.

“Absolutely!”

Avery, bringing out lunch on a tray, heard Martell's follow-up lie: “You need your beauty sleep for homecoming tonight, right?”

“Y-yes, I guess so.”

After lunch, at the doctor's suggestion, Avery drew a hot bath. The new dosage, four round white Miltowns plus two Seconals, appeared to take the edge off her, but he was hesitant to leave her alone in the tub. He left the bathroom door slightly open and, keeping her in view, moved to sit down on the unmade bed. But the sight of it jarred him.

Sarah was a stickler about making the bed. From their earliest days, she'd always had the same unfailing morning routine—get up, put on robe and slippers, make the bed, brush teeth then hair, in that order.

Would seeing the bed a mess stop her the way it had just stopped him? Put her off from taking her prescribed nap? Not wanting to risk it, he quietly tucked and smoothed their bedding into place for her.

In the tub, Sarah began to hum a low, mournful tune. Then slowly, softly, she began to sing a song he hadn't heard in years.

“I am a po-or wayfaring stranger, a-travelin thro-ugh this world of woe.”
Avery sat down on the bed, listening.

“Yet there's no sick-ness, toil or dan-ger in that bright world to which I go. I'm going the-re to see my father….”

They'd sprinkled the aisle of the revival tent with sawdust. Just like at the circus. The smell of it had clogged his nostrils, reminding him then, as it did even now, of his father. Strong arms swinging the honed ax blade high above his head, then down in a perfect arc onto a stump, splitting logs for his mother's cookstove. It was the smell of sawdust, and the bright promise of relief from his crushing grief, that had propelled him out of his seat.

“I'm only go-ing over Jordan, I'm only go-ing over home,”
Sarah was singing in her deep, rich contralto, while Avery, in his mind, was walking the sawdust aisle.
“I know dark clouds will ga-ther 'round me. I know my way is rough and steep. Yet, beauteous fields lie just be-fore me, where God's re-deemed their vigils keep.”

Up at the front of the tent, he'd declared to the preacher his desire, his eleven-year-old's overwhelming need, to “see my father,” to know that his strong arms, mangled and flayed to the bone by the tractor's axle, his life's blood pooled in the dirt of the barn floor, had been made whole again in heaven.

“Yes,” the man had promised. “Yes,” his mother, overjoyed, had nodded to him from afar. And the choir, as if on cue, had sung:

“I'm going the-re to see my mother. She said she'd me-et me when I come. I'm only go-ing over Jordan, I'm only go-ing over home.”

He'd believed it then and, in a post-revival fervor, he'd been baptized and pronounced born again. It was afterward, however, when the promised vision of his father returned-to-wholeness never appeared, when his mother's demands for more and more attendance at church events reached shrill levels, that he'd given up on blind faith and fervent religion, and adopted instead his grandfather's more quiet, more practical spiritual creed. “Life, like the sea, comes at us hard,” he could hear Old Pa saying. “It's kindness—simple, human kindness—that buffers the blows.”

“Why, Wes!” Sarah, in her robe, was surprised to see him there.

“I was enjoying the singing.”

“Of cours-se you were.”

Avery noticed the smiling slur in Sarah's speech, the slight unsteadiness in her step. The pills appeared to be working.

“You know I've always loved your voice.” He stood up to take her arm and help her to the velvet stool in front of her vanity. Did she know—had he ever told her?—how, after his father died, that song came to signal the official end of his childhood?

“You s-should've heard me in high school.” She picked up the tortoiseshell comb she used to untangle her wet hair. “I was the sophomore s-star of the s-senior follies!”

“Really?”

“Oh, yes-s. I even auditioned wi' the great Frank La Forge—touring the S-south in search of the nex' big star! You have any idea who Frank La Forrrge was, Wes?” she asked, yawning widely.

“Can't say that I do, darlin'.” Avery took the comb from her and gently ran it through her hair. It was something he used to love doing when they were newly married. Then Charlotte got big enough to try and took over. Then, at some point, he didn't remember when, Sarah did it herself.

“Frank La Forge trained Mar-yan Anderson. Turned her from a gospel singer 'nto an innernation'l
star.
”

“Is that so? And you auditioned with him?”

“Yes-s. Said I reminded 'im of a young Sigrid Onégin.”

The singer on Beauchamp's record, Avery recalled.

“He invited me to study with 'im in New York.”

“But…” He caught Sarah's eyes in the mirror. “…you chose not to go, right?”

“Cho-se?” Her voice rose and cracked bitterly on the word. “Who told you that?”

His mind raced back, to her early letters, his brief stay in Tuscaloosa. “I…well, actually, I don't know. I just thought…”

“Y'thought wrong, Wes. There was no choice involved.”

“Why not? Dolores wouldn't let you go?”

Sarah's pale face froze with recalled pain. “Kitty got pregnant, Wes.”

“What?” Avery saw his own astonishment reflected in her mirror. He'd dropped the comb on the carpet. As he bent to pick it up, he did the math in his head. He couldn't square the dates.

“After th' dance, night she was Homecoming Queen. Somebody slipped her a mickey. Spanish fly. Whatever. Afterw'rds she couldn't remember who, or what, or even how many.”

“My God!” This happened in high school? When Kitty was what? Seventeen? Same as Charlotte is now. Which made Sarah what? Fifteen?

Her eyes had become ashy coals, burning heat in his direction. “All Mama wanted was for it to go 'way. She made Daddy sell Kitty's car f'r the money, but day it was s'posed to happen…Kitty woke up bleedin'. She lost it. Lost them. Twins.”

She took the comb from him and studied it, fingering the tangle of loose hairs from its teeth into a small nest in her palm. “First time I ever heard th' word
miscarriage.
Or that women in our fam-ly were prone to 'em.” She dropped the nest into the small wastebasket at her feet.

“Oh, darlin'.” Avery drew her up and into his arms. “How horrible for you both.”

For a moment, she leaned heavily against him, head bent, face buried in his shoulder. Then she drew back to tell him the rest of it.

“ 'Twas bad for me, but worse for her. You can't 'magine the things got scrawled in the halls: ‘Whore-Coming Queen,' ‘Kitty, Queen of Alley Cats.' ‘Kitty lost her litter.' Stuff like that.”

Avery stepped her to the bed, helped her sit on it, then sat down beside her, steadying arms around her waist.

“She had to get outta Tuscaloosa…go to a private school upstate. 'Course…they couldn't afford that
and
sendin' me to New York.”

The words
New York
seemed to sap whatever strength she had left. She collapsed onto the bed and lay facedown, shoulders shuddering, chest heaving with dry, despairing sobs. Avery knelt beside her, stroking her hair. “There, there,” he told her, feeling incapable of soothing her. So that's what Kitty meant, calling Sarah the “sacrificial lamb”?

“I know…” She was speaking so softly he had to lean in to hear her. “You got t' Tuscaloosa, you thought us monsters. But…you got no idea…
no idea
how much we scrimped 'nd scraped to keep 'er at that fancy school…only to have 'er run off 'nd join the WAACs…wind up back home…same fix all over again.”

“But…” Questions, explanations were clogging his brain.

“You'd think…” She turned on her side to face him, reached out and grabbed his forearm, her grip surprisingly strong. “You'd think what happen'd to her would've tamed 'er…certainly did
me…
but only made her wilder. She got kicked out of th' army, Wes. Not 'cause she was pregnant…Mama checked…She was dishonor'bly discharged.
Morals
charges! ‘Hellcat in heat,' one guy tol' Mama. ‘Little more than a
whore,
' 'nother guy said. Nobody b'lieved that cockamamie story 'bout Carlo…nobody but
you.
”

“But…” Was Kitty lying back then? And as recently as the other day? Was she even in real estate, as she claimed? If not, where did the money for the Chrysler and the cashmere come from?

“ 'Twas too late to abort,” Sarah rushed on, “all we could hope was she'd lose it…You will never know…,” she said quietly, painfully confessing, “…how long, how hard I prayed she'd miscarry again 'nd be gone 'fore you came.”

“Oh, Sarah.” He felt a rush of pain for her.

Her shoulders sagged. “I know…” She looked lost. Avery knew that look, and the loneliness behind it tore at his heart.

“When I was little, Kitty's wildness…terr'fied me. When I see signs of it in Charlotte, I'm scared all over again. But…I don' know…mebbe a
little
wildness isn't so bad. Because…well…a too tame life…” Her eyes returned to him, squinting as one might at a stranger at a distance, then wandered past him, and through him, to the dark pleated curtains tightly closed against the light; the small chest of drawers where she kept her “unmentionables”; the pale slipper chair and matching footstool where every morning she put on her stockings and every evening she sat to remove them. “…can feel…,” she whispered, her gaze floating to the ceiling, “…like a kind of livin' death.”

Her chest heaved with misery, and a wave of raw pity consumed him. He felt numb and mute and enormously sad. He reached out to stroke her surprisingly dry cheek, remembering Charlotte saying that Sarah was “crying her eyes out.” Was it possible to run out of tears?

He sat with her, adjusting her pillows, the covers, the light beside the bed until, finally, exhausted, she fell asleep.

He unplugged the phone on the nightstand, and closed the bedroom door quietly behind him. How was it, in seventeen years, he'd never heard the whole story…until now? And even if he had heard it, what could he have said or done to help her feel differently? What could he say or do
now
? He felt overwhelmed by Sarah's truth, her guilt and suffering over wishing Charlotte had never been born, and, worst of all, her crushing disappointment. “A too tame life,” she'd said, “a kind of living death.” The words—and the judgment in them—stabbed deep.

Wandering back into the living room, Avery heard the sound, saw the flash of green from his own truck pulling into the carport. He went to the side door to greet Charlotte, intending to tell her that her mother was calm and resting. But the look on her face stopped him.

“What is it, kiddo?”

“Turn on the TV, Dad. The Pentagon's about to make an important announcement.”

“W
here's Mom?” Charlotte asked, warily scanning the living room.

“Took a hot bath and went to bed. Doc Mike changed her pills and”—Avery lowered his voice, glanced toward the hallway leading to their bedroom—“he's making arrangements for Florida San, probably tomorrow.”

Charlotte took a shaky breath and let it out softly. Her face reflected a painful, shifting mix of emotions: worry over her mother's welfare, doubt over the doctor's arrangement, then, finally, a glum nodding assent.
This won't be easy,
her eyes seemed to say,
but we have no other choice, do we?

Avery shook his head.
No, we don't.

She crossed the room to stand beside him. She offered and he accepted a comforting hug. Then, releasing him, she turned and snapped on the TV.

All three networks—Channels 2, 6, and 9—were tuned to the briefing room of the Pentagon, where a spokesman stood at the podium on the flag-draped dais. His statement was delivered bluntly:

“A US military reconnaissance aircraft conducting surveillance over Cuba is missing and presumed lost. A large air and sea search for the plane and its US Air Force pilot, Major Rudolph Anderson Jr. of Greenville, South Carolina, is currently under way, and will continue throughout this afternoon and evening.”

Jimmy Simms was right.

“At the request of the secretary of defense, the air force has called up 24 troop carrier squadrons and their supporting units, approximately 14,000 air force reservists, to immediate active duty….”

When the reporters in front of the podium erupted with questions, the spokesman held up a hand—
No answers,
it said—and stepped aside.

In the shouts that followed him off the dais, before the round, eyeball-shaped logo of the CBS network silenced them, Avery heard the reporters giving voice to his own fears:
“…escalation?” “…retaliation?”
And most sobering of all,
“…World War Three?”

Aware of his instinct to shield Charlotte from his own concerns, not to mention CBS anchor Charles Collingwood's comments—how could his analysis be anything but dire?—Avery snapped off the television.

“They're going to invade Cuba, aren't they?” Charlotte's arms were crossed in front of her chest. Her face was very pale.

“I hope not.”

“Dad,
twenty-four
troop carrier squadrons? Where else would they be going?”

“Look, kiddo…” He stopped, at a loss how to comfort her.

“I'm not a kid anymore, Dad.” She said it sharply. “Emilio says one of the guys got a call through to his parents in Havana. They've been expecting the marines for months….”

Months? Not days or weeks, but
months
? So…who started this mess anyway? Did Khrushchev put the missiles in Cuba so
he
could intimidate us? Or did all our military exercises this past spring and summer convince him that
we
were about to attack them?

“…Castro's ordered everyone on high alert, ready to fight,” Charlotte was saying. “ ‘Fatherland or death,' he's telling them.”

Avery had a painful mental picture: Somewhere in Washington, a fiery, black-browed Curtis LeMay was insisting, “There are no civilians in Cuba, either!” If LeMay had his way…

Charlotte was staring at him and, without warning, burst into tears.

He stepped forward to comfort her, and she crumpled against his chest, wrapping her arms around his waist and sobbing into his shirt. “There, there, Kitten,” he whispered, holding her as he had when she was little, gently patting her back. “All right now, you're all right.”

After a long while, she withdrew from him, blotting her eyes with the sleeve of her sweatshirt. “The thing is, Da-addy…,” she said quietly.

Her quivering break on the word
Daddy
(she hadn't called him that in years) tore his heart.

“I don't understand why all this is hap-pening….” She waved her hand at the television, the room, the whole wide world. “And why
now
? I-I don't want to die. Not now…just when I'm starting to live!”

Nobody's dying,
he wanted to say but didn't. They were both beyond his usual Happy Pappy sugarcoating. Instead, he tried to remember what they'd been talking about before, to pick up the thread before she'd lost it.

“So you found Emilio? At the church?” he asked her, lamely. “What was he doing there?”

Charlotte's eyes hung on him a second too long before she answered, “All the guys from the camp are there, handing out coffee and doughnuts to the crowd.”

“There's a crowd? In the middle of the afternoon?”

“It's a
madhouse,
Dad.” Avery winced internally at the word. “The pews are packed with people praying, and there are long lines waiting for the priests to hear their confessions. While I was there, one woman with a brand-new baby was on her knees, hysterical, insisting somebody christen it immediately, so the poor thing wouldn't wind up in limbo. What the heck is limbo anyway?”

“I have no idea.”

“They're handing out flyers, too.
Eight Simple Air Raid Rules.
I left ours in the truck. And”—she fished a crumpled piece of paper out of her pocket, and handed it to him—“Father Tom asked you to please call him at this number between four and four-fifteen. And…oh, jeez.” She glanced at her watch. “I've got to jump in the shower. Emilio's picking me up at five-thirty.”

“Five-thirty? I thought the dance starts at seven-thirty.”

“He's taking me to dinner first.” She flashed the first smile he'd seen from her all day. “We have reservations at The Villa Rosa.”

In that instant, the screen of mental horrors that had been rolling like newsreel through the back of Avery's mind went blank. He stared at Charlotte and saw, in her smiling eyes, in the wispy, rainy-day curls framing her lovely face, the little girl who'd always loved The Villa Rosa, who requested it for special holidays and birthdays, and insisted that the restaurant's red-and-white checked tablecloths, its dripping candles in straw-covered Chianti bottles, its tinny Italian accordion music reminded her
exactly
of her favorite scene in the movie when Lady and the Tramp shared their first bowl of spaghetti together.

In the midst of all the craziness surrounding them, Charlotte was about to have the date she'd dreamed of for years.

And why not? he thought. With all these two have been through the past few days, why not?

“Gotta go,” she said, turning on her heel, bounding gracefully out of the room, leaving Avery despairing: Where did the years, and that little girl, go?

“
S
AINT
C
HARLES
C
HURCH,
this is Debbie.”

“Thomas O'Meara, please.”

“Father Tom? One moment.”

“Hello?”

“Thomas? It's Wes Avery.”

“Wes…I was, uh…pleased to meet your daughter today…Lovely girl.”

“Thank you. She said you asked me to call?”

“Uh, yes…Well, look, it's an unusual request, but these are unusual times…perhaps you'll understand?”

Avery waited. He couldn't imagine what the priest wanted. But he hoped it wasn't gas. Not even the pope himself could get a fill-up today.

“The monsignor has decided…with everything going on, or about to go on…best not leave our boys, our Cuban boys, out at the camp tonight. They're all deeply concerned…as you can imagine…about their families in Cuba. Monsignor thinks they're better…safer…in a family setting. We have parishioners but…Well, I wondered…with Emilio's plans tonight, if he might stay with you? Only for the night, mind you…we'll need him back for nine a.m. Mass…Until or unless…well…”

The man was frazzled. But if I'd spent hours in a two-person box—with endless lines of people coming in to confess their darkest secrets and deepest fears—I guess I'd be frazzled, too.

“Or, if it's inconvenient…Perhaps Mr. Steve? You two have been…”

“Of course, send him over.”

It made sense, didn't it? That, after the dance, Emilio should stay here. By the look of things, Charlotte wouldn't mind. And Sarah…well, according to Martell, Sarah was out for the night, right? And by the time she woke up tomorrow, Emilio would be long gone to church. Assuming—there was no denying the possibility—there
was
a tomorrow.

Within seconds after he'd hung up, the phone rang, startling him. Was it the priest calling back? He picked it up after the first ring.

“Hello?”

“So I guess I'll see you in the gym.”

Kitty. “You got my message?”

“About the game? Yes. But I drove by the school just now. Sign out front says the dance is still on.”

Avery felt the jab of her suspicion that he'd deliberately tried to derail her. “Yeah, well, I wasn't sure myself when—”

“Right,” she said, obviously not buying it. “I'll see you there.” She hung up.

Avery stood in the empty kitchen, staring at the now dead receiver in his hand as if seeing it for the first time. Bakelite, he remembered, fingering the molded black plastic. Same stuff the Brits used to make hand grenades during The War. Number 69 Bakelite Grenade, he thought, recalling the young paratrooper who'd showed him one, its surprisingly light heft. “Only problem…” the young man had warned him, returning the grenade to its hook, “…if you're the least bit careless, you'll blow your own head off.”

E
MILIO ARRIVED PROMPTLY AT
five with his suit bag, a small duffel, and the white sheet from The Admiral's backseat in hand.

“Mr. A, thank you so much. It's just been…” The boy's face betrayed his shaky hold on his emotions.

“No problem.” Avery waved off the need for further explanation. He tossed the sheet onto the bench beside the door, and ushered Emilio into the guest room that was also the family “shelter.” Emilio's eyes widened at the spartan metal bunks, the floor-to-ceiling racks of food and supplies, and (to Avery's mind) the tomb-like gloom of the place.

“You can change in here,” Avery told him, “but I think you'll sleep more comfortably on the sofa in the living room.”

Twenty minutes later, the youth emerged much more composed—shaved, combed, polished, and sharply handsome in his dark suit, white shirt, and skinny black tie.

Charlotte swept into the living room at five-thirty and stunned both of them into silence. Not because her garnet-red gown set off her pale skin and pearls, her dark eyes and curls to perfection—though the overall effect
was
stunning. It was, for Avery, because at that moment her shy-but-head-held-high elegance, eyes bright with anticipation, cheeks pink with excitement, reminded him—
exactly
—of Sarah on the platform of the Tuscaloosa train station awaiting his arrival. Charlotte was, at this moment, every inch Sarah's daughter. His heart ached at the realization that Sarah wasn't beside him to see it.

The only jarring note, to him, was the one long white glove she wore, its twin held loosely in her hand.

Charlotte creased her brow. “Mom's asleep and I can't decide. Gloves?” she asked, showing him and Emilio one side, the side with the glove on. “Or not?” she said, pivoting to show the other long slim arm, delicate wrist, and pale, perfectly polished fingers.

Emilio, who'd shot to his feet when she entered, grinned. “Either way works for me.”

“I think
not,
” Avery decreed firmly. “You're perfect without them.”

“Thanks, Dad.” She removed the glove, setting both aside on the bench beside the door, gliding over to kiss him on the cheek. “Are we ready?” she asked Emilio, who immediately, proudly, offered up his arm.