Faithful Unto Death (8 page)

“So. I take him down to see his mother, and as we walk through the hall, I see his quick looks at the trolleys holding the dinner trays for the patients, his nose sniffing. That’s when I know there is no auntie, because the first thing an auntie does in a crisis is feed the child, am I right?”

I nodded. It’s a generalization—some of my aunts, in a crisis, would first blame it on me, then feed me, but I understood what he was saying.

“Yes. And this child is hungry. If hospital food smells good to you, you’re hungry. When I pass the nurses’ station, I order two dinner trays, whatever is not too awful. And before I left that night, Graham had eaten everything on both those trays. I had them bring me another dessert and he ate that, too, so, three desserts. Have your children ever missed a meal, Mr. Wells?”

I explained that as my children were girls, yes, they had missed meals, but only by choice, and Dr. Garcia nodded.

“That’s a different kind of hunger, though. You know?”

I did.

“So anyway. All that food? That was later. After Graham saw his mother. We go into the room together, and when he sees his mother, her face is a mask, all bandages. She is asleep, thoroughly drugged, thank God. Graham stops short at the sight and he starts to tremble. He put the plastic grocery bag up to hide his face and there are these, these mewlings coming out, little smothered cries. I put my arm around his shoulder and I told him that Victoria was going to be all right. I’d already spoken to my friend, the one who did the surgery. She said Victoria would be fine after she healed. There would be no sign of the injury. His mother would look very much as she had before the attack.

“I told Graham all that, and talked to him about how long it would take to heal, and what Victoria would need to do to avoid infection. I talked to Graham as if he were a grown-up, the person in charge of Victoria’s recovery, because, you know, he was. Graham was all she had.

“So the cries stop, and the trembling slows, and soon Graham brings his face up, tearstained but clearing. He nods. He asks intelligent questions. He puts the plastic bag on the swing-arm table and opens it and takes out a hairbrush. I wanted to tell him not to bother. It didn’t matter about her hair. It was all tucked up in one of those paper shower caps we use. But I didn’t. He slipped the cap off and dropped it in the garbage can.

“Graham separated each curl, starting at the end and brushing the tangles out until it lay around her in a shining, golden mass, very beautiful. Victoria had beautiful hair.

“Graham reached back in his bag and pulled out a picture. He laid it on the pillow next to her poor bandaged face. I saw a picture of a very pretty young woman holding a toddler. Forget the dreadful clothes, and the too-much makeup. Victoria was a pleasure to look at. When I looked up, Graham’s glowing eyes were on me and the message in them was . . . what? I have pondered that moment so many times.

“Because that was the moment, Mr. Wells. I looked into those eyes and I don’t know what he was trying to say, but what my heart heard was ‘help me.’ I am still torn by the randomness of birth. ‘Every night and every morn, / Some to misery are born, / Every morn and every night, / Some are born to sweet delight. / Some are born to sweet delight, / Some are born to endless night.’”

William Blake is one of my favorite poets. I could recite those lines myself.

“So that was the moment, then and there in that hospital room, I fell in love with them. Not with her, you understand, with them. A married woman I didn’t know at all and her son who had asked nothing of me, and had asked everything of me. They needed me. Graham needed me. Need is very seductive, do you agree?”

Dr. Garcia stood and stretched his back; I heard joints popping. “Maybe I should serialize the story, come back tomorrow.” He smiled that deprecating smile.

I assured him that my time was his. I knew that Rebecca would be scrambling to reschedule my appointments. Dr. Garcia smiled his thanks.

“I did not see Victoria without Graham until shortly before we married. It was not a typical courtship. Graham slept in his mother’s hospital room that night, and the next night, I had my sister take him in and keep him until Victoria was released. I’m not an impulsive man, Mr. Wells, and I’m not a stupid one. I did my research. When Victoria was well, I got her a job at the hospital gift shop, and I found an apartment for the two of them. I was subsidizing the rent and her salary, but Victoria didn’t know. I put her in touch with the State Bar so she could get some help with the divorce.

“The divorce was quick. Graham’s father had abandoned Victoria when she was pregnant with Graham. He only showed up occasionally, long enough to knock her off her feet again. Literally, not romantically.

“There was no property to speak of, nothing of his she wanted except for their son, and he didn’t want Graham. He died not too long after,” Dr. Garcia said with satisfaction. “A car accident. DUI. None of us shed a tear.”

Dr. Garcia walked over to the window and leaned his back up against it, resting his bottom on the windowsill, crossing his arms across his flat stomach.

“I’m telling you all this because I want you to understand Graham. I know you didn’t like him.”

My protest died when he held a hand up to stop me. “I don’t blame you; Graham didn’t put himself out to be liked. He wasn’t like Honey. Affection is food and drink to Honey—she can’t live without it. Graham needed respect, and he needed it from me.”

The doctor’s hands had begun to tremble. He cupped them around his elbows to still the shaking.

“I’m going to take advantage of your generosity now, and tell you another story,” Dr. Garcia said. His voice was much lower now. “When Graham came to live in my home, the first day, when he came into my study, he sees David and William’s high school graduation pictures on the wall. And he wants to know where they went to school and I tell him they went to St. John’s.”

He didn’t bother to explain St. John’s to me. Everyone in and around Houston recognizes St. John’s as Houston’s most exclusive college preparatory school. It’s extremely difficult to get into, and influence and legacy status alone will not do the trick.

Dr. Garcia continued. “Right away he says, ‘Will I go to St. John’s, too? Now that I am your son?’”

He passed a hand over his face, then pushed up from the windowsill and came back to sit at the couch.

“Of course, I didn’t know what to say. It wasn’t the money.” He waved the money aside as if the more than seventeen-thousand-dollar annual tuition were nothing. “But the academics are rigorous, even for a legacy. Graham would be a legacy as David and William’s stepbrother. David and William had gone to private school all their lives, and their mother, Gloria, was a well-educated woman, disciplined in her own life and in her children’s schooling. And still it had not been assured that David or William would be admitted to St. John’s. We celebrated, I can tell you, when each of the boys received their admittance letter.

“And now I had Graham, who had gone to marginal schools, and missed a good deal of schooling because of what was happening in his home. His mother, Victoria . . . she was a great beauty, and kind and charming and truly a wise woman, but she was not . . . she did not have an intellectual bent.”

He looked at me to see if I understood what he was saying. I nodded.

“I had never, ever lied to Graham.” He shook his head and opened up his hands as if he were presenting me with a material fact. “I don’t lie, period. I’m not pretending to be a saint, but the habit of honesty is strong in me. So. I told Graham what it would take for him to be admitted to St. John’s. And I told him that Dulles High School—Dulles was the local high school then, Clements High School hadn’t been built—was a very good school, and if he did well there, he could go anywhere he wanted for college. He didn’t hear any of what I said about Dulles; Graham said, ‘Then I have a year to get ready for St. John’s.’

“When I realized he was serious, I said he would have only half a year; he would need to be accepted the spring before his freshman year.” He slapped his thighs. “And he was! The boy worked as though his life depended on it.”

Dr. Garcia was silent, and I thought he had finished his story, but he started again, quietly, as if he were speaking to himself, “Every A, every honor, every award, he brought it to me, not to Victoria. Because”—he clenched his fists and beat them softly against his chest, punctuating each word as he said it—“it was me he wanted to be.
Me
.” Dr. Garcia’s voice broke on that last word, but he shook off the tears. His hands relaxed and sank back down to rest on top of his knees. “Not his father. Not the man who had left Graham and Victoria. You understand? Not the man who had left his wife and son.”

Dr. Garcia put his head down. The tendons in his face and neck were working, and he gave a sharp sniff, but he didn’t reach for his handkerchief.

“That’s why he couldn’t leave Honey,” I said. “He thought that would make him like his father.”

Dr. Garcia nodded without looking at me.

“Or,” I went on, “he thought he would lose your love, lose your respect. Was it . . .” I trailed off. What I had been about to say would have sounded like an accusation.

He heard the words even though I hadn’t spoken them and he was nodding, his hands up in helplessness.

“Yes, yes, for Graham, it was. I couldn’t seem to make him believe that it wasn’t necessary, the perfect grades, the perfect life. My son William divorced his first wife more than ten years ago. I wasn’t happy about it, and what it did to my young granddaughters, but William and I are still close, very close, and I have learned to love his second wife, Phoebe, as I loved, as I still love Liz.”

I wanted to stand up and move around. I felt tense and cramped sitting still so long, but I was afraid if I did, I’d break his flow. I didn’t think anything Dr. Garcia had said was going to help me work this problem out, but he wanted to tell someone, and I was the one he’d chosen.

“Whatever this need was that Graham had,” Dr. Garcia continued, “this need for perfection, it came from inside him. Graham put himself under impossible pressure. He had to be the best at everything. The best grades, the most job offers, the highest paid lawyer at the firm. I know there was some problem at the firm, something he was anxious about, but he wouldn’t tell me specifics. Graham said I was not to worry. He could handle it. If it weren’t impossible, I would think Graham had killed himself, for the terrible crime of not being perfect, not being the perfect lawyer, the perfect husband he imagined he would be.”

I thought about how Graham had kept insisting on his innocence, how it wasn’t his fault.

Dr. Garcia hunched his shoulders, stretching the muscles, then he stood up and offered me his hand. We shook and Dr. Garcia held on to my hand, holding it clasped in both of his.

“That was a long story to tell you to get around to this. This is what I want from you, Mr. Wells. I want you to get Alex to tell you where he was that night. He won’t tell me. There’s something he’s ashamed of. Not killing his father,” he said sharply. “He didn’t kill his father. But I’ve done what I can and I can’t get him to tell me. You see what you can do. It’s on you now.”

Eleven

S
ugar Land is flat, low, and close to the coast. Perfect for flooding. Levees and drainage ditches were first built in the area in 1913. They crisscross the developments now, and they’ve worked admirably at keeping out unwanted water. You’d still be a fool not to have flood insurance. We haven’t had a direct hit from a hurricane in all the time I’ve lived here, but we will. I believe in the Lord’s providence; I believe in insurance, too.

Besides keeping out floodwaters, the levees are a great place to walk your dog or go for a run. That’s what I was doing on the levee after Dr. Garcia left my office. Jogging, not walking my dog. Baby Bear would have loved the run, but he was home. Our house backs right up to the levee and so does the church—it’s a nearly straight, four-mile jog down the levee.

Rebecca, God bless her, had run downstairs to where the ladies class was having a potluck luncheon and brought me up a plate piled high. It was one of those foam plates and it nearly buckled under the weight.

I scarfed it down in my office, the King Ranch Casserole and the Fumi Salad and something I’m not sure of but it was tasty, everything but the broccoli, which I hate and Rebecca knows it but she put it there anyway because it’s good for me and I guess maybe at six-four, two hundred thirty-five pounds, I’m looking nutrition-poor.

I had two hours before my next appointment, rescheduled, thank you again, Rebecca. That would be more than enough time for me to jog home, give Baby Bear a romp, get a shower, and change, maybe have a short visit with Annie Laurie. Annie Laurie could drop me back at the church if she was home. If she wasn’t, I could usually prevail upon Rebecca to come get me, though it would mean stopping off at her house to give her own fat pugs a brief airing before we made it back.

I like the jog, and so I’ve gotten into the habit of keeping shorts and a T-shirt in my office. It’s quiet on the levee, except for this one part where they’re readying the land for another kazillion new homes. Lots of big machinery moving dirt from here to there and back again to here. The levee is raised up high enough so that I can look down into people’s backyards. It’s interesting.

Some people, their backyards don’t have anything the homebuilder didn’t plant. That means not much. Homebuilders spend their landscaping dollars on curb appeal up front.

But some of the backyards, you see half the backyard turned into a kitchen garden, with pots of basil and cilantro, pole beans and tomato cages, hairy zucchini the size of eggplants, Bonnie Bell green peppers as big as softballs and rows and rows of jalapeños, all, I guarantee you, too hot to eat, and it doesn’t matter if you plant the TAMU peppers—something about growing them at home makes them
hot
.

One yard I run past has a batting cage, a basketball goal, and a football sled. I figure the dad is a coach or a Boy Scout leader. Lots of yards have pools or trampolines.

I see quite a few where someone is putting in hard work to have a restful, colorful haven to come home to. There are banks of azaleas and jasmine, great spears of daylilies and irises. Rose-wise, in addition to the ubiquitous Abraham Lincoln, there’s Climbing Pinkie, a beautiful, unpretentious hybrid rose, and Katy Road pink, a River Oaks Garden Club favorite. I know the roses from my grandmother, who loved them, but knowing how much work they are in the hot and humid Houston weather, I never cared to have them in my own yard. You have to spray at least twice a month to keep the black spot off, and that always makes me feel like I’m going to get cancer. Annie Laurie and I stick with azaleas and hibiscus. Once you plant them, they do all the growing work on their own.

Jogging on the levee exercises my body and rests my mind. I try not to think about what might go on in the houses sitting in those yards. I leave that to the Lord unless He dumps it on my plate.

The way He had the Garcias.

While I jogged I was trying to think out what to do. I’ve spent some time with Alex. Honey has attended our church ever since before I came as the new minister. Back then, before the children had chosen sides, toddler Jenasy would be at her side, along with infant Alex on her hip. I remember her showing off Alex as a baby, dressed in these precious little Feltman suits. A tad
too
precious for my taste, but if Annie and I had had a boy, maybe Annie would have dressed him up like Little Lord Fauntleroy, too.

I’d sat in on a good number of Merrie and Jo’s youth classes and activities, and because Jo and Alex were in the same age group, I’d had a chance to see how Alex behaved himself. He was a hotheaded kid, quick to lose his temper, impulsive. Alex had thrown a rock through a window at church camp one year, and the youth minister told me that Alex had apologized, truly full of remorse, as he hadn’t meant to hit the window, he had meant to hit the Curry kid standing in front of it. Since the Curry kid was a lion of a boy and more than able to take care of himself, I didn’t hold that against Alex, though he had to pay for the window. The church met in the old building back then, and during one Vacation Bible School, I caught Alex and three other guys, in their underwear, sitting on the bottom of the baptistery. Seeing how long they could hold their breath. Apparently the question as to who could hold his breath longest had come up, and one of them had the great idea, “Look, here’s some water. Why shouldn’t . . .” Yeah. I wasn’t that happy about that. Long time ago.

I’d gotten into some trouble myself when I was young. If a teen acts too good, I always think there’s a problem; if an adolescent boy acts too good, then I
know
there’s a problem.

Alex was smart and articulate, so of course he was snarky. That’s how you learn to use those skills. I hadn’t seen any real meanness, though, so it gave me hope he would probably grow out of the sarcasm. He’d always seemed like a good kid, but I wasn’t buddy-buddy with the boy. I wasn’t buddy-buddy with any of the kids—I leave that to the youth ministers. In my position, it’s better to have a little distance.

So how was I supposed to get that angry, grieving sixteen-year-old to tell me what he wouldn’t tell his mother or his granddaddy? Alex didn’t need his minister, he needed a lawyer, and I already had Glenn Carter working on that.

I passed some other joggers: a tiny Asian woman with her hair knotted tightly on the top of her head, a spandexed guy so big he made me look small. Guy’s privates were getting so much action I thought it might be safer for him if he wore a sports bra down there. Probably an ex-athlete, though I didn’t recognize him. Shortly after, I came up to a winded Dr. Fallon.

I stopped to greet him. After our meeting in the hospital the day before, I felt Dr. Fallon and I could get along fine. I would no longer have to dread bumping into him. Fallon pulled a sports towel from his waistband and carefully wiped his face and hands before offering me a handshake. I hastily wiped my own hands on my shorts. I told him I hadn’t known he was a jogger and he said he hadn’t been until a few weeks ago, but that his daughter had finally gotten him out running.

I said, “The daughter in California?” and he answered, “The daughter from California,” and started up jogging again, so I waved and picked up my pace. I’d never met Fallon’s daughter. One of his sons and a daughter-in-law and grandkids came on Sundays. Either the daughter never made it to Texas to visit, or she declined to join Fallon in church. Seeing how intense Fallon could get, I wouldn’t have blamed her if she gave the Sunday morning thing a miss.

I was glad his daughter was looking into her dad’s health. Fallon wasn’t that old, he was somewhere in his seventies, but he looked awful out there jogging, gray and drawn and generally unwell. You’d think that a doctor, with all the information and all the finances it takes to maintain good health would, well, maintain it.

By the time I had jogged up to my own backyard, I was winded, too, but only enough to know I’d done my body some good. I wondered how many miles a week Wanderley jogged.

It didn’t catch my attention that the back gate wasn’t latched; I’m not always as careful as I should be, considering the gate opens onto the levee. I did notice that the door that opened off the back of the garage was open. I’m careful to keep that door shut and locked because you can get into the house from the garage. You can, a stranger can, and four-footed guests can, too. So I keep the door shut and usually locked.

When I put my hand on the doorknob, there was a dry crust of mud on it.

Imagine here a long, creaking twenty-five seconds as my body stops cold and my brain ratchets into gear.

Now, only Annie Laurie and I do any work in the garden that’s going to get your hands muddy, and we clean up after ourselves, so I didn’t think it was likely we had left mud on the doorknob. And the mud wasn’t around the knob, the way it would be if a muddy hand had grasped the knob; the mud was on top of the knob, the way it would be, I thought as I stepped back for a better look, if someone had, say, opened the door and swung it wide—put a foot on the knob in order to get a boost up to the top of the door, hung on the gutter to keep balance—and then hoisted themselves onto the roof of my one-story garage.

My eyes traveled up and I saw, sure enough, a trail of muddy footprints, red clay against the black composition roof.

Those footprints went straight to Jo’s bedroom window. Jo’s window opens onto the conveniently low, one-story garage roof. That garage sits in a yard that backs up to the levee. And that levee, again conveniently, is intersected by Elkins Road. My eyes took all that in in two blinks.

All I saw then was red.