His arms crossed his chest. “What if I talk?”
“Huh?” I stopped halfway out the door.
His hands fell to his sides. “What if I answer your questions?”
“Knock yourself out.” I turned back to the bedroom.
“You’re going to stay?”
Rifling through his dresser, I grabbed a t-shirt to replace my dress, and sat on the bed. “You gonna talk?”
He approached. Still naked.
Put some damn clothes on, man. I’m pissed off, I ain’t dead.
We sat cross-legged, face-to-face. A sheet draped across his lap was my only reprieve. We kept our hands to ourselves.
“You got a nerve, askin’ me about gettin’ caught by Slaughter. Why don’t you tell me why you were all over your Leila outside?”
“You saw us?”
“Yeah.”
“I was asking her to stay away from you.”
“You need to stop protectin’ me. I’m pretty sure I survived for thirty-three years without you runnin’ interference.”
“I was doing it for me too.
Didn’t want her telling you things.”
About him.
That made me even more cross.
“I see. So, what about Slaughter and Leila?”
“They’re close. He introduced me to her.”
“They in bed together?”
“I’m sure they’re scheming.” He drew his arms across his chest. “As for in bed together, what they get up to is inconsequential to me.”
“Why would they–”
“I’m no angel, I didn’t always do my best by Leila.”
“You didn’t play away from home, did you?”
His reply was firm. “No, I never cheated on her.”
That made one of us.
“Tell me about her.”
He struggled to find the right words. “She and Slaughter are old friends. I got to know Ellegee through them. We were all young. I needed something.” He shrugged. “Ellegee wrote a recommendation to get me into the Citadel.”
“So you thought you owed him?”
“I thought I loved her. She was very beautiful, unattainable.”
“You do like a challenge.” I scooted a few inches away.
“I never really loved her, Shay.” He clasped my ankle, bringing me back to touching distance.
“Yeah, I can understand that. She’s a real–”
“Piece of work, yes.”
I was gonna say
bitch
.
“So, Leila’s why you can’t handle a relationship?”
“No.”
“But–”
“Isn’t this enough for you?” Exploiting our effortless chemistry, he pulled me into his arms so I straddled him.
“No. It’s really not, Reardon. I’m sorry I accepted the position, because you were right. You warned me not to, but I feel something for you.”
Trying to escape the cage of his muscular legs and arms, I huffed when he tightened his hold. “Jesus Christ, Shay. I’m trying here. I don’t have to turn aside offers.” My heart stopped. “But I do.” My slow pulse returned. “I don’t want to feel, can’t you understand?”
Yeah. Been there. Over it.
His hands roughly knotted in my hair and his lips plucked my earlobe. “I hate thinking about you going home to Palmer every night. That’s not enough?”
I shook my head.
“I’m not sorry you came to me.” His palms trailed up my back, beneath the shirt. “What do you want?”
“You.” I laughed once. “Should be simple, right?”
He lay back, spilling me across his chest. “What else?”
“There’s somethin’ you’re not tellin’ me about Slaughter.”
“He’s family.”
“So were the Hatfields and McCoys, and they certainly didn’t stand on ceremony.”
“He saved my company from bankruptcy at a time when I was incapable of functioning.”
“That’s not all.”
“He gave me something I can never repay.”
“Which was?” I rolled up onto my elbows above him.
His jaw was clamped as hard as his closed eyes. “Time.” Begging me for more time, he opened his blue eyes. “I know what I’m good for.” He rocked against me.
His pain ripping through me, I cried, “That’s not all.”
“Temperance has children.” His swift change of direction made my head spin.
Not understanding where this was leading, I hesitated. “She’d be a good momma.”
“Her three are adopted. They were older, in the foster system, never placed. One brother, two sisters. Temperance and Barbary fought so hard and for so long to get them.” He didn’t say it:
Everyone should have the right to have children.
“I made sure they had the best representation money could buy.”
There he was: money wasn’t a weapon of the wealthy for him, not really
.
“They got ’em,” I whispered.
“And you got me. Won’t that do for now?” he quietly asked again.
I nodded.
His thumbs passed over my face to my mouth. “Can I kiss you yet?”
“Oh, Reardon.” I opened my arms. “C’mere, baby.”
* * * *
Home from the Tides, I skimmed off my dress, settled a skirmish in my closet when I hung it with tender loving care, and headed for a big cup of coffee and the backyard.
Being an all-around masochistic chick, I’d wanted to get back before Palmer left for Sunday fishing. At six AM, the air was thick and sticky, the insects waking from their nighttime torpor. I drank coffee and smoked, rounding the wedding bands on my finger, running a hand around my neck where the pretty necklace from Reardon had hung all night.
The very last stars extinguished, but the moon hung around in the lightening blue sky. Hung around like Palmer and me. Ghostly, as the sun took its turn in the sky.
My daddy had cheated.
My daughter had died.
My husband had left me, if not in body then in soul.
Love, honor, cherish.
I wasn’t upholding any of those vows anymore.
I couldn’t afford to backslide into depression. That was for rich, poetic folk. Zelda Fitzgerald and her Jazz Age tragic elegance, not me and my suburban hausfrau frustration.
I tugged harder at my Marlboro.
Butterflies woke up, those big buttercup yellow ones. They loved Delilah’s garden, attracted to the blues of the blossoms. Gathering in the flowers, they surrounded the statuette of mother and child.
Fluttering with a life as fragile as their delicate wings.
The din of creatures, birds, chattering squirrels saying hello to the morning held promise.
Reardon held promise.
I wasn’t any closer to what had screwed him up so much he believed he was beyond love, but he was trying. And he didn’t have to.
I lay back on the grass, remembered how to find fanciful shapes in the fluffy clouds above.
There was mourning.
But morning always came.
Palmer opened the squeaky slider. “Late night, huh?”
“Yeah.” If he knew what time I came in, it wasn’t because I’d snuggled against him in our bed as dawn cracked through the black of night. It had started the night of the Farmer’s Market. More and more of his belongings–the sweats he slept in on cool nights, his hunting magazines and alarm clock–had migrated to the guestroom, the one no longer reserved for our baby.
Gradually leaving me, as I was him. The same as our marriage dissolving, until one morning I realized the last thing holding us together–two bodies in our marital bed–was a mere memory.
He’d moved to the extra room, the one housing an old futon and boxes filled with photos, albums, and every record of our pasts, and I nearly hadn’t noticed.
I patted the grass beside me.
“Good time?”
I turned on my side. “Not really.”
“Work’ll do that to ya.” Lips twitching in a faint smile, he came so close I thought he was going to cradle my face. I held my breath, held so still, but he stopped short and righted the cup tilting on the ground instead.
Touch me, damn it. Make me want you again.
Clean and sharp, his shaved jaw beckoned my touch. I whispered against it with one fingertip; he craned away.
Heaving onto my back, I shut my eyes. “Why can’t you be with me anymore?”
“I watched you die, Shay, when our Delilah did. I can’t ever.” He shook his head wearily. “I can’t be with you, because you’re gonna leave again like you did then.”
“But that’s because–”
He held up his hand. “I can’t do right by you anymore. And I wasn’t...Jesus Christ, Shay!” He punched the sod again and again until his fingers fell open, and his hand inched toward mine. “I wasn’t man enough to give you a child, and you deserved that. You should be a mother.”
“That’s not true. I lost her, Palmer.”
“I don’t give a goddamn what those quacks said. I failed you
.
I can’t give her back to you. You should just…”
My blood froze. “Just what?”
It was as if I’d opened one of those boxes in the spare room, the one containing tokens and keepsakes. Shot glasses from vacations to Myrtle Beach, Polaroids taken off guard, fair tickets. The memory so long tucked away tumbled out.
Us at eighteen.
Ladson Fair.
Near to being engaged.
His hair licking soft golden arcs across my throat, he bent forward to kiss me in front of the Flying Bobsleds. Hands strong and somehow knowing, roving from my hips to the underside of my breasts.
Palmer was so beautiful.
Fried dough and funnel cakes and Ferris Wheels.
Lights and grease and grime, and the roar of couples and families and rides droning on, and we were just teenagers.
Cattle in pens and cat-calls sliced the air in moos and mewls and men in cowboy boots.
Kaleidoscopes in red, green, blue and clanging amusement rides rising into the night.
At one point I’d laughed so hard, tears rolled down my cheeks. The star pitcher of the Wando Warriors had managed to miss at the hitting booth more than once. He’d blamed my short skirt, saying it distracted him. Then he’d aimed one final throw. Winding up, all beautiful youth, so athletic, so much fun. When he let the ball go, he hadn’t watched its trajectory. His eyes had been on me. He’d wiped my face with his hanky in one hand, accepting the biggest, most hideous stuffed toy with the other.
You can’t go to The Fair without a date,
Momma said.
Be back before eleven,
Daddy would have demanded.
We’d been in love like you only were the very first time.
Our kisses heated and stolen, our advances from shirt front to chest and breast, from waist to the inside of my thighs, the innocent joy of first caresses.
Everything had skipped by us.
Christmases, birthdays, being together.
When you tied the knot that young, there was nothing left but learning to make-do.
I’d loved Palmer greedily. I would let him go because we’d become a faded photo of all those things we’d wanted.
We were going to have fallen asleep among mismatched toddlers’ socks and snuffly kids and toys in our bed.
When Delilah died, all our dreaming did too.
Palmer’s eyes trained on the garden, but he coaxed my palm open. “You’re slippin’ away again.”
I didn’t disagree. There wasn’t even an argument left between us anymore.
“Anything I can do to keep you?”
“You’ve had plenty of opportunity.”