“She went to Australia,” Cobb said.
“That so? Well, now she’s right back here in Promised Land.”
“You’ve seen her?”
“Came to visit in the VA last week without so much as a by-your-leave, and me all hooked up to tubes and pissing into a plastic bag. I wanna be seen like that? I says to her, ‘You’re lucky I don’t got my gun underneath my pillow, Leela-May. Kindly get your ass out of my room.’ You know what that heifer said?”
A shadow of a smile crossed Cobb’s face. “I can imagine.”
“No, you can’t imagine. Something’s knocked the sass out of her.” Calhoun Slaughter mimicked Leela-May’s voice: “
I do apologize for bothering you, Mr. Slaughter, but it’s very important. I’m begging you to tell me how I can get in touch with Cobb.
Couldn’t believe my ears. If I’d said, ‘Crawl under this hospital bed first and lick my shoes and then I’ll go get him,’ I do believe she would have done it. Someone’s cut that heifer down to size. Now you go and get yourself down the road to pay our respects to Gideon Moore.”
“I can’t do that, Dad.”
“What d’you mean you can’t do that? Where’s your Southern manners? You go and give that crazy old nutter our respects. Tell him I know that him and me ain’t going to end up in the same place, but if he’s willing to put in a good word for me, I’d take it kindly.”
“Dad, I can’t.”
“What’s the matter with you? You’ve had the hots for that girl since she got that prize you should’ve won. And it’s my
belief she’s always had them for you. She sure wants to see you real bad.”
“It’s not for that sort of reason, Dad. She’s always been otherwise engaged.”
“Then go fight for what you want.”
“I can’t. The thing that went wrong concerns her. It isn’t something she’ll be able to forgive.”
“Bullshit. Not forgiving takes too much energy, people can’t keep it up. Believe me, I know this. There’s not a single bastard I can be bothered hating any more. So you go see that wild woman and make things right.”
L
EELA SAT AT
her father’s bedside and held his hand. There was a convulsive movement in his fingers before they went limp. His eyelids fluttered.
“He’s heavily sedated,” Maggie said.
“Why didn’t you take him to emergency sooner?”
“He wouldn’t go. You know how he is.”
“He’s the color of summer squash.”
“That’s when I got the doctor to come. When he started to turn yellow.”
“That’s too late. That’s way too late. How could you have left it so late?”
Maggie sighed. “What would you have done if you’d been here? Kidnapped him? Forged power of attorney? Trussed him and gagged him and driven him to the hospital and signed him in?”
“Sorry,” Leela said, chastened. “For such a kind man, he always was stubborn as a mule.”
“Listen to who’s talking,” Maggie said.
“I used to get so exasperated with him. Now all I can remember is how gentle he was.”
Maggie rubbed her sleeve across her eyes. “You finally noticed.”
“He never recovered from Mama’s death.”
“I can’t comment. I never knew her. And neither of you ever let me ask questions.”
Leela stared at her little sister. “You wanted to ask me stuff?”
“Of course I wanted to ask you stuff.”
“I’m sorry. I guess I was preoccupied with staying afloat myself.”
“I figured that out. And I managed.”
“You can ask me stuff now.”
“What were they like together, Daddy and Mama?”
“I remember them on the porch swing, holding hands.”
“I like that. What else?”
“I remember one night…” The memory agitated Leela. She left the bedside and paced the room. “It was not long before you were born.” She leaned her forehead against the window and stared out.
“Leela?”
“Passion,” she said. “They had that. Mama used to put fresh-picked lavender on his saucer with his morning coffee. She used to put it on my pillow at night. She said it gave you sweet dreams.”
“I remember finding lavender on my pillow when I was little.”
“Me too. I believed Mama came back and put it there. I guess it was Daddy.” Their father stirred and opened his eyes. “Helen?” he said.
“We’re here, Daddy,” Maggie assured him. “Leela and me, we’re both here.”
“I thought I heard Helen,” he said.
“Mama’s waiting for you, Daddy,” Maggie promised.
Gideon smiled and closed his eyes. He floated back to his in-between place.
“I’ll pick some lavender for his pillow,” Leela murmured.
“There’s something else I’ve been wanting to ask.”
“Ask away.”
“The numbers thing. Was he always like that?”
“I was only six, remember? I can’t be sure. But I think it started after Mama died.”
“I suppose it made him feel safer.”
“I understand that now,” Leela said. “I went to a tarot card reader in Boston a few weeks back. Can you believe that? A cynic like me.”
“Is this about Mishka?” Maggie asked.
“When life’s out of control, you grab at straws. You
want
to believe.”
“Why haven’t you said anything about Mishka?”
“You’re touching a bruise.”
“So I figured,” Maggie said. “You want to talk?”
“I don’t know if I can,” Leela said.
“What did the tarot reader say?”
“She said:
Your heart’s desire will come to you but you will have to pay costly dues
.”
C
OBB STOOD WITH
his duffel bag on the porch steps. “I’ll miss you, Dad.”
“Bullshit,” his father said.
“I wish you’d let me stay and look after you.”
“I don’t need looking after. I’ve never let anyone tell me what to do and I ain’t gonna start now. Besides, you need to go fix what you’ve gotta fix.”
“It can’t be fixed.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Well then, I don’t know how to.”
“You’ll figure it out. This freelance intelligence thing—”
“I’m through with that. I’m going to quit.”
“You gonna get back in the army? The real army?”
“Hell no. I’m thinking of teaching math, maybe.”
Like my mother
, he did not say.
“Like your mother,” his father said. “You could do worse.”
“Thanks.”
“Just don’t you leave Promised Land without stopping by Gideon Moore’s.”
“I told you, Dad. I can’t do that.”
“Then you are too damn stupid for your own good, son.”
Cobb shrugged. “Damage’s done by now. Too late to change.”
“You heading up I–95?”
“Yeah. Thought I’d stop by the old Hamilton house first, if it’s still standing. I’m sentimental about the place.”
“It’s covered in kudzu and part of the roof’s fallen in, but it’s still there.”
“Bye, Dad.”
“Bye, son.”
As soon as Cobb’s rental car was out of sight, Calhoun Slaughter made his unsteady way to the phone and dialed the number for Gideon Moore.
Cobb parked opposite the Hamilton house. His father was right. The kudzu was rampant and the roof had caved in, but through the wrought iron gates, he could still see the ghost of the veranda. He remembered lying there, side by side with Leela when they were seven years old, decoding water stains on the ceiling. It might have been yesterday.
Why
was
that?
How was it that a memory from so far back could be more intense, in all its particulars, than last week? He could smell the Confederate jasmine. He could smell the ivory soap on Leela’s skin.
I can see a parallelogram
, she said.
It’s not a parallelogram. It’s a coffin.
I’m so sad about your mama, Cobb.
He could feel Leela’s breath against his cheek, hear her slightly off-key voice singing in his ear,
Hush, little baby, don’t you cry.
He had been so afraid he would disgrace himself by crying that he pushed her away. He had locked his mother’s death inside a box and buried it. It seemed to Cobb that a shadow life, a life that might have been his, was buried under the Hamilton veranda.
He left the car and crossed the road. Someone—probably someone from the sheriff’s office—had placed a padlock and chain on the rusted gates, and the old hole in the wall that they used to climb through was overgrown with dense Cherokee rose. He pushed his way into the Cherokee, head down, arms protecting his face. The matted runners were so unyielding that he had to return to his car and take a tire iron from the trunk. He hacked a passageway into the grounds. The thorns raked him and blood trickled across his cheeks and his hands.
Beyond the wall: further impasse. There was no hint of the former sweep of lawn. The once graciously landscaped grounds were scruffy second-growth wilderness. With the tire iron, he pried loose a path between azaleas and hollies gone berserk until he found the front steps. The house made Cobb think of a Southern belle after too many mint juleps at a ball. She had collapsed in on herself. Her hooped skirts of veranda had slumped into underbrush, the pillars were askew, most of the veranda roof must have blown away at least one or two hurricanes back. The three steps were still in place but when he climbed them and stepped onto the remains of the veranda, his foot went through a soft board. He sank into a quilt of weeds and kudzu and simply lay there.
This was where he’d found Leela toward the end of their senior year. He’d become a regular watcher by then. He had a list of the boys she’d grappled with and the ones who’d taken her panties off.
He had been surprised to find her alone that day, lying more or less where he lay now.
He had crept out of his hiding place behind the azaleas and climbed the three steps and leaned against the veranda railing, arms folded. She was lying on her stomach, her head on her crossed arms, staring down through the boards.
“Waiting for someone?” he’d asked coldly.
“Oh Cobb! Don’t do that! You gave me a scare.”
“Guess I’m not the one you were expecting.”
“I wasn’t expecting anyone. I came here to be alone.”
“Really?” he said. “I thought you came here to fuck.”
She sat up then and hugged her knees and simply looked at him.
“The slut of Promised Land,” he said.
She held his gaze. She did not look embarrassed or shamed. She did not look brazen. She did not look like a slut. Her eyes were open and direct, meeting his.
“I come here when I’m sad,” she said quietly. “I wonder if my father would have been different if my mother hadn’t died. I wonder if I would have been. I wonder what you would have been like if yours hadn’t. I think about how we used to come here together when we were kids.”
It was a knack she always had: the ability to slither between him and his anger, the ability to look at him and dissolve every defense he’d so carefully built up against his yearning. And suddenly they were tearing at each other’s clothes and biting and sucking and kissing. Their lovemaking was violent and desperate, and afterwards they lay on their backs and played their childhood game of reading stains.
“I can see a map of Massachusetts,” Leela said. “See? There’s Cape Cod.”
“That’s not Cape Cod, it’s Chesapeake Bay.”
“I can see wings,” Leela said. “I want to fly a lot further than Chesapeake Bay.”
“You’re glad to be getting away.”
“Yes, I am. I won’t ever come back.”
“I can see a ball and chain.”
“No one will ever chain me down,” she said. “And no one’s chaining you down either, Cobb.”
“The chain’s got your name on it and the ball’s Promised Land.”
She rolled toward him then and pressed her face against his chest. “Don’t say that. I’d rather die than not get away.”
He buried his lips in her hair.
“I don’t mean away from you,” she murmured. “I mean from here. Don’t you wonder who you’ll be somewhere else?”
“We’ll drag Promised Land with us,” Cobb said. “We’ll never be able to cut loose.”
“I don’t believe that. Promise me you’ll visit me in Boston?”
But in Boston she had indeed become someone else, someone who forgot about Cobb, and now there were no stains to be read and no veranda ceiling whatsoever. The rotting floorboards dipped close to the ground and Cobb rolled over and lay on his stomach and pressed his face into the weeds.
“Cobb?”
“You never meant it,” he accused. “Out of sight, out of mind, once you got there.”
“Why haven’t you called? I know your eavesdroppers must have passed the message on.”
“Leela!” He jackknifed himself up. “What are you doing here?”
“Your father called me. He said you wanted to see me. This was where you’d be waiting, he said.”
“Shit!” Cobb said, sucking his hand. “I’ve got a splinter.”
“Hold still. I’ll get it out.”
“Don’t touch me.”
She ignored this. She held his hand steady and pinched the splinter between her teeth. She licked at the puncture and pressed the ball of her thumb against it. “I’m not asking for anything but information, Cobb. If you know where Mishka is, just tell me. Just tell me if he’s dead or alive.”
Cobb turned his head away. He tried to stand, but the soft uneven boards made him lose balance. He had to move like a dog, on all fours.
“
Please
, Cobb.” She was crawling after him. It was like an obstacle race: missing boards, kudzu, chunks of roofing.
“I understand the surveillance. I don’t hold any of that against you. I know you have to do what you have to do. But you’re
decent
, Cobb, and he’s innocent. All I’m asking is if you know where he is.”
“Leela, I can’t—I ca—”
“Please, Cobb, I’m begging you. It’s not knowing that’s so unbearable. I think I could handle any kind of news, but I need to know.”
Cobb could not get air into his lungs. He half turned back, thumping on his chest.
“Cobb, what’s the matter?” There was alarm in her voice. She pitched herself across a fallen pillar. “What’s happening to you?”
He was gasping. He was blue in the face. He was on his feet now and running and stumbling toward his car. Leela ran after him. He locked himself into his car.
Leela leaned across the windshield and mouthed through the glass, “Please, Cobb,
please
,” but Cobb revved the engine and she slid from the hood as he drove off.