Breeding Ground (23 page)

“Because why?”

“Because that's the only time we clean the house, and you tell me what to wear.”

“That's not true.”

“It is so.”

“Don't you say that to him. I'll give you a bath if you clean up the dishes.”

“Will it be fun when we live with him?”

“Sure. You'll go to a nicer school, and we'll buy new clothes, and you can have a swing set. And maybe he'll make you a playhouse.”

“Could I have a pony? And a dog?”

“He won't have horses. Not after awhile.”

“Why?”

Tara didn't say anything. She looked at the clothes they'd both thrown on the floor. And drank the last of her Coke.

“Why?”

“Stop asking questions! Put the dishes in the sink! Then come pick up your clothes!”

It was late. Giselle was asleep, her wet hair spread across a towel on a pillowcase covered with flying Tinkerbells.

Tara was in her room on her old double bed, clothes and magazines shoved away from her so they lined the empty half.

She was lying on her side turning the pages of a bridal magazine, her head propped on one hand, looking at wedding dresses she couldn't afford but might ask Spence to buy.

She pushed it away and rolled over on her back, the short pink-flowered nightgown rooched up around her hips, one hand behind her head, the other playing with her hair, pulling thick wavey ropes of it out above her chest, letting them fall on bare skin as though she liked the feel.

The only light was her bedside lamp, a small ruffled pink-shaded lamp, and she stared beyond the globe of light at the shadows in the corners of the ceiling.

She'd taken two sleeping pills, but they hadn't done anything yet. She'd probably have to take more. Not so many she couldn't get to work in the morning. But enough to fight the tightness in her chest and the hard hot center just below it.

The writhing beast was awake again. The cat, was how she pictured it. The one that woke up restless, gnawing her insides. It'd been alright for awhile, once Spencer fell in love with her. There'd been calmer nights and easier days when she didn't have that hungry feeling she couldn't make go away.

When the cat lay quiet, she could plan for the future and not feel frantic. She could work for what she wanted then. Wanted and deserved too, because no matter what her mama said, she did it for Gigi as much as herself. It came smooth and calm and peaceful then, knowing how to talk. Being the way she needed to. She could act steadier and take her time and not push when she shouldn't.

The cat curled up and went to sleep when Spence acted like he loved her. When he listened to her and appreciated her. Then she could breathe and not worry. And when the day came that Spence said the words she'd been working toward since she met him, they'd make the cat purr.
With this body I thee worship.
She wanted to be worshipped with his body and his blood till the day Spencer died.

But tonight on the phone something sharp stuck out in Spencer's voice. Something wary and hard that scared her when he said he had to see her, and he'd be there tomorrow after dinner. Something was coming she had to be ready to turn the way it should go.

It could've started at “Private Lives.” She'd seen a shadow in him then. A pulling back when she'd asked him to stop reading and talk to her instead. Usually he was kind and considerate. He'd do what was right and not seem to mind. But that night he was selfish and cold and she'd let him know she didn't like it.

Before when he hadn't agreed to something, when they were first together, she'd been careful not to argue or try to get him to change his mind. But now Spencer belonged to her, and she had rights he had to honor. It was time he learned to put her first and be more attentive.

I want the wedding to be elegant too. Something special folks'll talk about. Since God knows his dad can afford it and oughtta want to help out.

'Course, that could be an awful lotta risk. It pro'bly makes sense to get married quick, with a justice of the peace like with Dwayne.

'Course, Spencer's nothin' like Dwayne. Nothing like Rusty either. Whose one good point was showing up and getting me away from Mama.

I never would've gone with Dwayne if he hadn't gotten me to Europe. And none of the ones since have mattered even a lick.

But Spencer Franklin's the kind you stay with. He's good lookin' and smart as can be, and he practically runs the business. The minute I laid eyes on him, I knew he'd take better care of me than any other man I'd ever seen. And him being a believer and all, he'll never want a divorce, especially once we've had a kid.

He works hard around the house. And he reads to Gigi and plays with her too, so I won't have to kiss Mama's butt to get her to help out. I'll be free to live the way I want, once I'm Mrs. Spencer Franklin whose husband owns his own business.

Or he will own it, when his folks are dead. Him and his boring brother. And it sounds like his mom may go a whole lot sooner than we thought.

But getting Spencer to marry quick, with his mother sick and his trip coming up, might not be so simple. He might insist on a minister too. So I'll have to be careful bringing it up and working my way into it. And I expect I'll have to keep going to church and acting like I like it. But only till we're married. When a lotta things can change.

What was wrong with him tonight? Something. I could hear it as soon as I answered.

Maybe his mother's gotten to him. I gotta believe she's trying. She can't stand me anywhere near him. Even Spence can see that, the knives right there in her eyes.

'Course, Josie Grant could be playing a part. With her talking to Betsy and all. Betts must've trashed me to her. Giving her her prejudiced slant on every paltry thing I ever did. Betts watched Dad and Uncle Joe being as mean as can be, and Mama lashing out like she did, every chance she got, but Betts just watched and turned away, and never gave me a thought.

'Course, Spence being the way he is, if he brings up something from the past, I better be quick to explain it.

That's nothing new. It's been this way forever. Women lying, and criticizing me 'cause men have liked me since I was little, 'cause I know how to make 'em feel good, and want to help me out.

I expect I oughtta keep Gigi with us the whole time tomorrow. Then I can see what Spence is thinking without us getting to talk. Give me a chance to figure it out, without me gettin' rushed.

Excerpt From Jo Grant's Journal:

…I've been thinking about Alice Franklin and Bob Harrison's wife, Rachel. Rachel's probably been on my mind because of Alan working with her baby-Brad and asking about how to deal with him. I don't know Rachel as well as Alice, but I saw her with Brad when we were growing up. And she made me think of Ginger, the shorthaired female mutt who strayed in when I was a kid that we kept and had spayed.

I think we'd had her a couple of years when I found the box of puppies dumped beside the road. I ran home to get a wheelbarrow, and when I got back, somebody'd come by and peppered the puppies with a .22, which made me feel entirely justified in killing whoever that was.

Tom buried the dead ones while Mom drove me to the vet's with the others. I brought the one home the vet said would live, railing against human nature the whole way there and back.

We already had a big male lab a friend hadn't been able to take care of too, but Mom let me keep the puppy. Ginger, our little female mutt, took that new puppy as her own, and she wouldn't even let the lab – she'd always gotten along with fine – even inside the same room with the pup. She followed that little guy everywhere, her head right over him every single second, drooling on his back till he was soaked. She just wouldn't let up, and we had to find him another home. She was bereft, and I felt really sorry for her, but then after two or three days, she was treating the lab like normal and letting him eat her food.

Brad's mom was like that. Protecting Brad every second, trying to shield him from the outside world and what he might not want to hear. Which might've made him think he was defective and couldn't fend for himself.

Alice Franklin let Spence go – Martha and Richard the same way – after she'd spent a lot of time and thought teaching them how to be. 'Course, she was caught up in the business, even when she worked from home when the kids were young, and that probably helped.

Brad's mom, though, in her defense, I think she had two or three miscarriages, or a child died as an infant. Something like that. So that probably made her do what she did. We all react to what we've been through. We don't get to keep clean slates.…

Sunday, May 6, 1962

T
he rest of that week, when Alice was in the hospital, actions were taken that ended in a death more vicious than any Jo had faced before – and threatened her too, before it was over, in ways she couldn't foresee.

She was serenely ignorant at the time, and went about her life that week more content in some ways than she'd been since Tommy died.

She worked two days at White Hall and spent much of her time at home studying Cassius Marcellus Clay, “the Lion of White Hall,” who was both illustrious and infamous, because of his many conflicting traits.

Long before the Civil War, he was Kentucky's most effective supporter of emancipation and had freed his slaves when he'd inherited them at twenty-one, giving away hundreds of thousands of dollars then, when ten cents bought a steak dinner at Delmonico's in New York.

He was six-feet-six, and a legendary hand-to-hand fighter who wore a bowie knife around his neck, even with his evening clothes when he was Lincoln's ambassador to Russia and a close friend of the Czar.

As Jo looked at letters and journals and ledgers, at archival photographs and every receipt, taking paint scrapings and peeling away wallpaper, she became more and more intrigued with him and his family and the history of the house, as she tried to uncover what it looked like in 1865.

She also worked with the horses a lot that week – grooming and training babies for the sales and helping Tom's mare, Maggie, deliver a big-boned bay colt she called Tommy while she tried to come up with a registered name that made sense based on his breeding.

She helped Toss too, in whatever form that took. Though he kept up with what he could – scheduling pick-ups and deliveries of mares, ordering grain and vet supplies, scheduling wormings and shoeings.

Jo talked to Alan on the phone a couple of times, and he came over Saturday and rode Flicker. But he seemed more distant and guarded. More closed and unwilling to stay long enough to talk about anything important. And that ate away at the contentment she'd felt earlier in the week.

She was reasonably sure he was pulling away because she'd told him Tom had talked about him, and there was something she wanted to ask. She wished she hadn't said a word, but was irritated with him too, for running from anything personal the way Tom had after the war. And that meant that Saturday night she sat home and fumed, feeling more restless than normal.

Spence called on Sunday and asked if he could stop by. He said he owed her an update and that he'd ask Alan to come too, so he'd only have to talk about it once.

He couldn't reach Alan, as it turned out, because he'd ridden his bike south to Berea. So Spence left a message with Jack asking Alan to meet them once he got back.

Toss was coaching Buddy as he tried to teach ground manners to Tuffian, so Spencer and Jo could stay at her place. They sat under the arbor in back that stretched the whole width of the farmhouse and threw sticks for Emmy off and on, while Spencer explained what had changed.

“I'd read your notes and listened to the tape by Monday afternoon. I spoke to Tara's Aunt Betsy. And I called Grace in Louisville, and phoned Dwayne too. Then I called Tara that night and told her I wanted to see her Tuesday night, sometime after dinner.”

“So you believed what the others said?”

“I did. It was depressing. It showed me what a fool I was, but—”

“No, Tara's really good at this. She figures out what somebody wants very fast and makes herself look like she's it. And it seems like the persona doesn't slip till she's got the guy committed. Maybe that's why she rushes into marriage. She knows she can't keep it up.”

Spencer nodded, while he opened a bottle of Toss's beer, and stared off across the farm pond beyond a big weeping willow. “Anyway, when I got there to break the engagement on Tuesday night, she wouldn't put Giselle to bed, and I thought it seemed deliberate. Like she didn't want to hear what I had to say, because she knew I'd changed. I couldn't act like I hadn't. I couldn't see her the same way.”

“What kind of person could have?”

“So the next night, Wednesday, right after work, before she went home to get Gigi from the sitter, I waited for her in the parking lot and talked to her in her car where no one else could see us. I asked her about Rusty and how he left, and her time in Louisville afterwards, and why she didn't get along with Betsy – and she lied again about all of it. I didn't refer to Dwayne, to try to leave him out of it.”

“Hearing her lie must've been painful.”

“Necessary, however. The pill that had to be swallowed.” Spencer pulled Emmy into his lap, where she curled up and sighed. “I told her I knew Rusty left her money and the apartment, and other details about her past too, and that we had to stop seeing each other. She could keep the ring or sell it if she wanted, but our relationship was over. Tara went wild. She got absolutely hysterical. More or less as you'd expect.”

Spence didn't say anything else for a minute. He just sat and stroked Emmy's ears, as though that was some kind of comfort. “I told her I didn't want to hurt her, but I wouldn't change my mind. That our views of the world were too different to make anything else possible.”