The Sound of Glass (36 page)

He pulled away and stood. “I have to leave. I can’t stay here anymore, knowing what I know. Knowing what you’ve done. I don’t know where I’m going, or what I’ll do, but I can’t stay here.”

Edith scrambled to her hands and knees, pulling herself up using the hall table, her limbs heavy and sore. “Please stay. We can
work through this. Do some kind of penance together—community service, maybe. Something good.”

“You know I couldn’t live like that—knowing that somebody got away with killing forty-nine people and that my own grandmother has known all these years. Somebody has to pay.”

“You will, Cal. In the end, you will. You don’t know when to stop.”

He turned away from her and headed toward the stairs.

“Where will you go? Will you try to find her?”

He stopped without turning around. “I don’t know. I just can’t stay here with you. I don’t know what could happen the next time I lose my temper.”

“You need help, Cal.”

His shoulders sagged. “I know. Or maybe just leaving this place will be all the help I need.”

She didn’t call him back, knowing she could never change his mind. As soon as she heard his door shut, she picked up the suitcase and the torn tag and hid them behind the parlor sofa to rebury later, to make sure they would never be found. As she walked from the room she stopped suddenly, almost running into Gibbes.

“You’re bleeding,” he said, touching her chin.

“I know. I bumped into something. How clumsy of me.”

He looked at her with his mother’s eyes, and it was as if Cecelia were looking at Edith with understanding and compassion, and for the first time Edith felt as if her silence had at least given her a moment of triumph, a small restitution paid for Cecelia’s sake. She simply didn’t know whether it had all been worth it.

Gibbes put his arms around her waist, then patted her back as if he were the adult. “It’ll be all right, Grandma. That’s what you told me when Mama died, remember? It’ll be all right. Maybe not tomorrow or even the next day, but one day it won’t hurt so much.”

They listened as drawers were opened and slammed shut upstairs in Cal’s room, and then heard the sound of a suitcase sliding
out from under his bed. Edith took Gibbes’s hand, then knelt in front of him. Her heart ached as she brushed her fingers against his soft cheek, and he looked at her with his mother’s eyes. She had failed to save Cecelia, had failed to raise good men. Gibbes was her only hope, her last chance. “I’m going to take you to the Williamses’. Go on upstairs and pack your overnight bag with a couple of changes of clothes. If you need more, I’ll bring them.”

“Why are you sending me away? Did I do something bad?”

She shook her head, then kissed his forehead. “No, sweetheart. You’re the only one who hasn’t.” She touched his face, wishing she were strong enough to start over, to do a better job with Gibbes. But she was tainted with too many ghosts, haunted by the daughter-in-law she couldn’t save and the faceless passengers on the doomed plane. She’d thought she could justify what had happened, telling herself it was an accident, that being physically and mentally abused by someone you loved did awful things to the way you saw the world. But it didn’t matter anymore what she thought; Cal had discovered her secret and would enact his own twisted sense of justice, and she was helpless to stop him.

She looked into Gibbes’s golden brown eyes and saw Cecelia. “I want you to be happy, and I know you can’t find that here, or with me. At least not right now. Promise me that you’ll be happy, that you’ll see the good in people, and seek forgiveness first. Can you promise me that?”

He nodded solemnly as his arms slid from around her before he turned and headed slowly up the stairs. He stopped and faced her again. “Can I come back here? Is this still my home?”

“Yes. Always. But right now the Williamses can give you the family and guidance you need and that I have failed to provide. I hope you will understand it one day. That you will forgive me for all my failures.”

He studied her for a long time before continuing his ascent as Edith stood at the bottom of the steps, listening to the sounds of her
two grandsons packing their belongings along with the final pieces of her heart. She’d thought of the useless energies of her life, all wasted, all misunderstood. She would be alone until she died. It was all she had left to do. It would take years, she supposed. Wasn’t it true that only the good died young? It would be a fitting punishment for a woman who’d only ever wanted justice for the silent victims of crimes people never spoke about, and those who were only whispered about in confidence.

She stepped out onto the porch and took a deep breath of the fall air that already carried a hint of cooler temperatures. The afternoon lay still in the curve of the river where her beautiful house perched on the bluff, the low tide exposing stagnant pluff mud and listless grass. She felt like that now, sensed her own outgoing tide with each breath.

The wind chimes hung limply, hollow shells of the tumultuous journey that had brought them to her. She willed them to move, to let her know that all of her efforts hadn’t been in vain, but they remained motionless, mocking her.

She turned her back on the river and headed into the house, but paused on the threshold as she felt the stirrings of a breeze at her back, imagined the gentle swaying of the wind chimes behind her. She closed the door without turning around, listening for the faint sound of the glass stones as they whispered together a soft good-bye.

MERRITT

I
set down the suitcase on the dirt floor in the corner of the basement beneath the house, then placed the plane model and the bag of dolls and debris next to it. Last, I placed the letter on top of the suitcase, balancing it so that it didn’t rest flat as a reminder that I wasn’t finished with this—with the suitcase, the letter, the victims of the plane crash. With the memory of my grandmother.
My grandmother
. The woman who’d placed a bomb in her husband’s suitcase, expecting it to explode when he was safely in Miami, and had inadvertently killed forty-eight other people.

It was a horrible tragedy—no, an unspeakable and horrendous tragedy, albeit one that was more than fifty years old, the memory of those lost mostly faded by now, the survivors of their loved ones older now, or dead. Dealing with it would have to wait a little longer, because right now a ten-year-old boy was about to lose his
mother, and I had to somehow find the resources I didn’t believe I had to be strong enough for both of them. I ignored the inner voice that continued to prick my conscience that said there were other, darker reasons for my reticence, an old, familiar voice telling me that I was a coward.

I climbed the steps to Loralee’s room, picking up a shopping bag in my room on the way. I paused on the threshold, listening to her labored breathing, her body emaciated except for the rounded dome of her belly. In the weeks since she’d been in hospice care, I’d seen Loralee gracefully surrendering her life bit by bit. She’d shrunk so much that I doubted she weighed much more than Owen. She’d sent me to Victoria’s Secret to get pretty nightgowns in the smallest sizes, but even those seemed to dwarf her.

The cancer had spread to her liver, which was what had caused her skin to yellow, and had continued its insidious and invasive spread to other organs. She didn’t get out of bed anymore, even to make her two laps around her room to “keep her girlish figure.”

Her bed was littered with Owen’s LEGOs and the Harry Potter book he was reading out loud to his mother. He didn’t like being away from her, and it would be only after Loralee told him to go to Maris’s or head to the store with me that he’d reluctantly leave her side. Several times I’d found him sleeping on the floor in the hallway outside her door, bathed in the light from the Darth Vader night-light, keeping the encroaching darkness away.

Gibbes came by almost every day if his work schedule allowed, usually bringing her flowers, and stayed for a bit to talk with her and to Owen. I always found an excuse to be in some other part of the house, because every time I saw him I thought of the letter. And how the truth kept nudging me, wanting me to face things I wasn’t ready for. I hadn’t shared the letter with him, not yet. I simply didn’t have the courage to watch him put the pieces together, and to confront the aftermath.

The television was on low, showing one of Loralee’s favorite
soaps—one in which even I could now name the characters and who was sleeping with whom. I watched it for a few minutes, then walked over to turn it off.

“Just turn down the volume, please,” she said.

“Sorry—I thought you were sleeping.”

“I was mostly thinking.”

I sat down on the side of her bed. “What about?”

“About what I want to be buried in.” She paused to catch her breath. It was difficult for her to talk, and she paused often between sentences and sometimes words. “I’ve got a really pretty pink suit with a bow at the collar; I’ll show you which one. And I want my hair down and curled the way I like to wear it—nice and big. Will you take care of that for me? I want Owen to remember his mama looking her best.”

“Loralee,” I began, feeling the ever-present sob in the back of my throat.

“And I want you to wear red. Go buy yourself a new dress, and every time you wear it, I want you to remember me and how fabulous we both looked at my funeral.”

A half sob, half laugh erupted from my mouth. “All right. What about Owen?”

A soft smile fell on her lips. “He’ll probably pick his little-man suit with the striped tie, but if he doesn’t that’s all right. Let him wear what he wants to. Maybe he’ll rebel and wear tennis shoes or something. There’s nothing wrong with that. A show of independence now and again is a good thing.” Her breath rattled as she tried to suck in air.

“Got it,” I said, wishing I had my own journal to write down all of Loralee’s child-rearing tips and general wisdom. I had a strong feeling I would need it.

“Where’d you put the suitcase?”

“In the basement. For now. Along with the rest of it.”

She didn’t say anything, but I knew she wanted to. Since we’d
read the letter, she hadn’t said one word about it, and it must have taken all of her strength to keep it inside. I stood and began tidying the items on her dresser, waiting.

Pushing herself up against the pillows behind her, she said, “Lying in bed all day gives a person lots of time to think, and I do believe I have finally figured out something important.”

“And?” I braced myself.

It took a moment until she was ready to speak again. “As you know, my mama taught me a lot. But lying here watching so much television, I’ve finally figured out that everything I’ve ever needed to know in life I learned from my mama and my soaps.”

“Really?” I said, turning around to lean against the dresser.

She nodded, her nostrils flaring as she struggled to breathe. “I’m watching these people and it’s basically the same thing over and over—people never learning from their mistakes so that they make the same ones again and again.” She paused. “And then there’s people who make mistakes, acknowledge them, and then keep picking at that mistake like it’s an old scab, so that it never goes away and they can’t go forward. And then there’s those who stick their heads in the sand, pretending that everything is fine and that nobody can see them there with their heads stuck right there in plain view, and believing that they already know what people think and therefore there’s no point in laying their cards out on the table for discussion.”

She sounded like she’d just run a mile. I poured a fresh glass of water from the pitcher on her nightstand and helped her drink before I began my rebuttal. “If that last part is about me not telling Gibbes about the letter, I told you—that’s temporary. I’d rather just focus on you and Owen right now. I will eventually show him the letter and everything else, and give the suitcase to the police.”

I wanted to tell her that I was still wondering at the truth—the truth that involved the path that had brought Cal and me together, that had started long before we were born, the threads already woven together and knotted in places. At some point I would have to
attempt to unravel them, to pick apart the knots and confront my seven-year marriage to a man who’d married me only because he’d been looking for somebody else. But I couldn’t lie to her, even with a grain of truth. She deserved my honesty, so I kept silent.

She looked at me with tired eyes, but eyes that still had so much light in them. “I get it—you want to cross the creek one stone at a time. But you don’t have to cross the creek alone, you know.” She smiled the smile that was part joy, part friendship, but wholly honest. “I’m running out of time here, and I just can’t wait until you’re ready to ask for my opinion, so I’m going to give it to you whether you want it or not.”

I opened my mouth to protest, but she actually shushed me as if I were an errant child.

It took nearly a minute for her to gather strength, but not nearly long enough for me to prepare myself.

“I know you don’t like saying his name, so I will. Cal found out that his grandmother knew who and what had really brought down that plane, and that’s why he left—either because he couldn’t stand living with his grandmother anymore, or because he was looking for some warped kind of justice. He found you instead, and you feel like a dummy because you married him, having no idea what his story was—believing you were on an even playing field because you both came from pasts you didn’t want to talk about.”

She’d paused often during her speech but took a long rest now, breathing deeply, her chest rising and falling, but the look in her eye told me I shouldn’t interrupt.

She continued. “Knowing you, you feel responsible for your grandmother’s actions, and maybe even just a tiny bit feel like Cal’s taking his anger out on you was justified in some crazy way. It is well documented that women in abusive situations adopt a warped way of thinking just so they can manage their lives. Like telling a person so many times that they can fly that one day they believe it and jump out a window.

“But Cal loved you, Merritt. Even you admit that. Why else would he have married you? When he discovered that your grandmother was dead, he could have let it be. Maybe he thought that you could redeem each other—and maybe for a bit, you did. But he was sick, honey, and I don’t think anybody could have changed him. He knew it, too. He walked into that burning building on his own two legs, of his own free will. Don’t you be hanging that around your neck, either, because that’s just wrong. We make our own choices, and he made his. And now it’s your turn. Show Gibbes the letter and take it from there. You are not the guilty party here, and I promise you that Gibbes won’t think less of you or want to punish you.” She took another deep, rattling breath. “You’ve been dealt a tough deck of cards, that’s for sure, but it’s time to pull up your big-girl panties and move on. Like my mama used to say, you can’t move forward if you always have one foot on the brake.” She closed her eyes, as if all her energy had been completely emptied.

My whole body shook with anger. “You have no right,” I began, then faltered, because I didn’t know what else to say. She had every right, simply because there was nobody else.

“Good, I’ve made you mad. But you’ve got to get louder than that so I’ll pay attention. Go ahead and yell and scream at me and tell me I’m wrong.” She paused, wheezing in and out as she struggled for a deep breath. “A good hissy fit every once in a while is good for you. And if you want to cry your heart out about all the injustices in the world, then do that, too, but come over here first so that I can put my arm around you and pat your shoulder while you cry. Crying alone is never recommended.”

I began to sputter, hot, angry tears I didn’t know how to shed somehow finding their way down my face.

She held up her finger, her voice now considerably weaker and making me feel even worse. “And the last thing I’m going to say on this subject—unless you actually ask for my opinion on it—is that you should give Gibbes a break. Not only is he not too hard on the
eyes, but he’s smart, and funny, and kind—not to mention great with Owen. If you would just stop putting up walls where they don’t belong, and wondering whether he sees you the way you think Cal used to see you, I think you two would make a nice couple. And for heaven’s sake, show some leg once in a while, and use a bit of mascara and lipstick. You have no idea how pretty it will make you feel.”

I stood there, crying harder than I ever remembered crying, feeling like the little girl I’d once been whose mother had made her swim away.
You are so much stronger and braver than you think you are. I just wish you could see you as I see you.
I still had doubts that Gibbes was right, but maybe it was time I stopped fighting the words I didn’t want to hear. Maybe Loralee was right, too, that I’d had one foot on the brake for far too long.

She patted the bed next to her and I curled up at her side, being careful not to jolt her, and let her stroke my shoulder while I cried and hiccuped until I couldn’t. We lay there for a long time in silence, the irony of the situation suddenly hitting me and making me laugh.

“What’s so funny?” she asked, a smile in her voice.

“That I just let a dying woman comfort me. As Owen would say . . . awkward.”

She laughed gently, and I tilted my head to look at her, amazed that I no longer saw her as my enemy, as the woman who’d stolen my father from me, but as a friend. The kind of friend who let me cry on her shoulder despite her own pain.

“Is that what you meant by ‘opening up a can of whoop-ass’ on somebody?” I asked.

“Pretty much. Except I went easy on you, seeing as how you’re family.”

“Bless my heart,” I said.

Her shoulder shook beneath my head. “You’re learning, darlin’. You’re learning.”
She looked at the bag I’d dragged up on the bed with me. “What’s that?”

“I brought you a surprise.”

She smiled again, and I saw how the wattage hadn’t dimmed. I hoped Owen saw this, noticed how strong his mother was, how she counted every blessing even when the basket of blessings was almost empty. That was something she’d said to me when I asked her why she kept smiling, and then she’d written it in her pink journal.

I sat up and upended the bag and watched as the DVD set of
Gone with the Wind
spilled out onto the bedclothes. “I’m tired of being the only person in the world who’s never seen it. Since we finally have a DVD player and it’s conveniently located in your room, I thought now would be a good time.”

“It’s always a good time to watch
Gone with the Wind
, and I happen to have time right now.”

I took off the wrapping and removed the first disk before placing it in the player. I returned to the bed and plumped up Loralee’s pillows before fluffing the extra ones and placing them against the headboard next to hers. “You ready?” I asked, holding up the remote control.

“Not yet. We definitely need a box of Kleenex in the bed between us. I’ve never gotten through this movie without using at least half a box.”

I slid off the bed and retrieved a box from her dresser. “These are for you, then. I never cry at movies. Ever. Besides, I don’t think I have any tears left.”

“Uh-huh,” she said primly as she leaned back against her pillows.

I pushed “play,” then pressed the “next chapter” button to get through the opening credits.

Loralee put her hand on my arm. “What are you doing? The music score is the wings of the movie—it’s part of the experience.”

I looked at her dubiously. “All right, if you say so.” I lay back next to Loralee and we listened to the opening strains of the theme song as she pressed a tissue into my hand.