Break the Skin (16 page)

I took a deep breath. “Cinnamon,” I said.

“Woman’s touch,” said Rose, and she winked at me. She ran her hand over the afghan, and I could see she was satisfied with everything she’d been able to do to turn Tweet’s head. I couldn’t say I approved, but I had to admit that a warm feeling came over me, much to my surprise. That’s how happy she was, how content. So happy I couldn’t help but feel it, too, even though I tried to convince myself that I didn’t for Delilah’s sake.

I thought of the days when Rose lived with us, and I remembered that she always had a way, even when things were good, of making
Delilah feel that she didn’t quite measure up. Rose was always giving her tips on how to use makeup and how to dress, as if Delilah didn’t know how to look after herself. Even when Rose gave her a compliment—maybe she’d say, “It’s really interesting what you’ve done with your hair”—she did it with the back of her hand. One day, she said, “Delilah, those jeans look good on you. They make your butt seem smaller.” It took a while for that one to sink in, for Delilah to understand that Rose had just insulted her. “Where does she get the nerve?” Delilah said to me. “Like she’s some catch.”

But apparently she was, at least to Tweet.

I asked her straight out how she’d done it, how she’d wrangled him away from Delilah.

Rose gave me a sad smile, the kind that said she understood something I didn’t. “Oh, Laney, you think he wasn’t looking?”

“He had Delilah,” I said.

“Sweetie, can’t you see he’d never be able to make a life with her?”

“She loves him.”

“Not enough to matter.” Rose leaned over and blew out the candle. “She went and embarrassed him that night up at Dark Bend. Kissed him in front of all those people, ground herself against him.” Rose shook her head like it was all a shame. “Like she was a whore, Laney. And then she pulled that gun? That was crazy. She’s one of those women who try too hard, who go off the deep end. Women like that always get left out in the cold.”

I knew I was in over my head. Even though I had Lester, I didn’t really know a thing about what it was that brought men and women together and kept them there the rest of their lives. I couldn’t let Rose know that, though. I had to stick up for Delilah.

“You stole him,” I said.

Rose gave me that sad smile again. She even reached out and touched my face. Her hand was warm and I liked the way it felt against my cheek. It made me remember how, when she used to run with me and Delilah, she always had a way of making me feel like I mattered
to her. Whatever her reasons, she liked me. “He found
me
, Laney.” She leaned in and kissed me on my forehead. “Guess my spell worked, didn’t it? You tell Delilah that.”

I COULDN’T
. Not for the life of me. I couldn’t let Delilah know that Tweet had just turned his back on her, simple as that. He took a hard look that night at Dark Bend, Rose said, and decided to set his sights elsewhere. Was it any wonder, the way Delilah was such a tramp that night? And of course, there was the matter of that .38.
Good God, Laney. She’s crazy. Who can blame Tweet for getting away from that mess?

He said as much himself. As I was leaving the house he now shared with Rose, he pulled his old van into the driveway and called to me. He got out and walked across the grass to where I was standing, and I let him come to me with that long, easy stride of his, the one that always made me feel that no matter how dicey things got, he’d stay cool as could be, and everything would be all right.

“Laney-Girl,” he said. It felt good to hear that nickname, like we were old friends who wouldn’t stop getting along just because he and Delilah were on the outs. “Did Delilah send you out here?”

I shook my head. “There’s more to me than Delilah, you know. I can make my own choices.”

He put his hands on top of my shoulders, bent down, and touched his forehead to mine. I breathed in his scent, a smell of sheets left to dry on the line, a clean, fresh scent that made me want to stay close to him forever. “You remember that, Laney. Don’t let her run your life.”

We were whispering, and I wondered what Rose would think if she looked out the window and saw us. Then I realized she probably wouldn’t think a thing because I was Laney Volk—Little Bit. I’d never be a threat to steal another woman’s man.

“Is that how you felt with Delilah?” I asked Tweet. “Like she owned you? Like there was no room to be you?”

“You know the story, don’t you, Laney-Girl?”

I suppose I did. I didn’t know it until he asked me, but once he did, it hit me so hard it nearly made me tear up. It was one of those moments you can’t see coming even though it’s been waiting for you all along. A moment to take your breath away with how true it is. As soon as Tweet asked me that question, it became clear to me that this was the way I’d started to feel about Delilah, like being in her shadow was making me invisible. I didn’t want to say that to Tweet, though—didn’t want him to know I was afraid of losing myself—so I didn’t say a word. I turned my head to the side and told myself not to cry.

He started talking about the day he and Delilah ran that Mustang to Terre Haute and how they came back in that Ford Explorer and she said she wanted all those kids. “It was like she was mapping everything out,” he said, “and it scared me.” I started to tell him that she was only making up what she thought he wanted to hear, but just then he took a deep breath, and I let him go on. “With Rose, I can breathe. She takes things as they come. Delilah always made me feel like I was marching to her time.”

“So you left her?” I wanted to verify what Rose had told me. “You looked around and you found Rose.”

“I’m a grown-up, Laney. We’re all grown-ups here.”

I TOLD DELILAH THAT
. She was waiting for me when I got back to the trailer. She was sitting at the breakfast table, drinking a cup of coffee. “Well?” she said as soon as I stepped through the door, but she didn’t look up from her coffee, as if she was afraid to face what might be coming.

My mouth just started running. I told her about the candle and the silk tulips and the lace runner Rose had on the dining table. Delilah let me yak, until finally she put down her coffee cup, looked me straight in the eye, and said, “What are you trying to say?”

I told her we were all grown-ups, and I guess we’d have to face the fact that sometimes people fell out of sorts and found other people to love.

“It’s no one’s fault,” I said. “It just happens.”

Her eyes went hard. She pressed her lips together in a tight line. Finally, she said, “Now you’ve got Lester, you think you’re the expert when it comes to matters of the heart? Come on, Laney. What could a kid like you really know?”

It was a hurtful thing to say, and I knew she meant it to be.

“You can’t run people’s lives, Delilah.” The words were out before I could stop them. “And you can’t make Tweet love you again. He’s gone. He’s with Rose.”

“Sounds like you’re taking her side.”

“I’m just saying—”

“You’ve said too much, Sister.” She carried her coffee cup to the sink. She turned her back to me. “You better stop while you’re ahead.”

But I couldn’t. I pressed on. I was always a fool back then. Just couldn’t stay away from trouble. Couldn’t look far enough down the road to see where I might be heading. I was living on trust, hoping for a sign of where I should go and what I should do.

I said to Delilah, “You’d miss me if I took a notion to leave.”

She spun around, a scared look in her eyes. “Go back to your mama, then.” She chewed on her lip, and I could tell she was trying to decide whether to say the rest of it. “You’re nothing, Laney. Nothing I’d miss.”

I felt an ache in my throat, and I knew if I stood there a second longer, I’d start to cry. I didn’t want her to see how much she’d hurt me. “We’ll see,” I said. Then I turned and walked out of that trailer, telling myself it was for good.

From a pay phone at the B&L Liquor Store, I called Lester. “Come get me,” I told him, and he said he would.

He took me to his house. He drove the whole way, quiet, like I asked him to. It felt like Delilah and I were at the end, and the thought of it left me all scraped out and empty.

“We’re here,” he said when he pulled into his driveway, like this was our house and where else would we have been going but home?

“Could I just sit here awhile?” Even though it was hot, the sun full up and warming the inside of Lester’s truck, I didn’t want to move, didn’t want to take the next step down whatever road I was traveling. “Please,” I said, and he told me yes.

“I’ll sit here with you, Laney.” He switched off the ignition and without the engine noise such an awful silence settled down around us. “We’ll just sit.”

Then a mockingbird started singing somewhere close by, and the air around us was suddenly full of its song, a stream that went from some of the prettiest music you could ever hear to squeaks and barks and chewks, a whole repertoire of what the bird had listened to and was now imitating: other birds, creaky gates, people whistling, machinery—anything was fair game.

“That’s a mockingbird,” Lester said, and then we just sat there in the sun some more.

Finally, I couldn’t stand the silence, and I said, “I don’t know where to go.”

“We’re here now.” He reached over and put his hand on mine. “We’re right here. You and me.”

At that moment, it was the most wonderful feeling in the world to feel his touch and to hear his gentle voice. That gap between his front teeth made him seem younger than he was. That and his pale skin, hardly marked except for a line of three freckles across one cheek. Those freckles were enough to make me want to touch his face, to brush back the hair poking out from under the brim of his derby hat. It was the hat that made him seem like someone who knew things I didn’t. Someone who had stepped out of another time. Someone who could make magic happen. I needed to know I was worth caring for, and he gave me that. He looked at me with those blue eyes that struck me as being tinged with a beautiful, hard-earned knowing, and he seemed to be saying that he understood what it was to be at a crossroads, that place where your life could go this way or that, and you wouldn’t know until after it was done if you’d chosen the right path.

“Tweet said you were in Iraq.” I said it before I could stop myself, and once I did, I wished I could grab the words from the air and stuff them back into my mouth. “I’m sorry, Lester. I know it’s none of my business.”

“I was in the war.” He didn’t shy away from what I’d asked. It was like he’d been waiting for someone to ask it, so he’d have a chance to tell the story. “When I got out, my folks said I was someone they didn’t know.”

He said he’d told them about the things he’d seen. Horrible things. And the things he’d done. Things he’d had to do to stay alive. One thing put him over the edge. One thing he kept trying to forget even if his folks couldn’t. He didn’t want to tell me because it was too gruesome to tell and he was afraid that like his folks, I’d turn away from him.

“If I tell it,” he said, “you’ll have it in your head forever, and I don’t want that to happen to you.”

I laced my fingers through his. “You can say it if you want. Like you said, it’s just you and me. We’re right here.”

A little breeze came up, and all of a sudden the mockingbird was gone and the quiet was back, and I listened to the wind moving through the leaves on the maple in the front yard, a shivery noise that raised goose bumps on my arms and left me feeling like I’d just opened a door to my heart, and Lester was about to step on through.

“It was in Al-Qa’im near the Syrian border of Iraq,” he said. “Operation Matador. We were after Al-Qaeda fighters. Intelligence told us they were there.”

I knew about Al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden, and everything that happened after 9/11.

“Warplanes were dropping bombs.” Lester wouldn’t look at me. He kept looking down at our hands, still laced together. “Then the Chinooks came in and the gunners were firing. Finally, we were sent in on foot to sweep through homes and mosques—any building where we were convinced Al-Qaeda fighters might still be hiding. In one house, there’d been a wedding going on. I saw the lutes and drums and flutes, the bodies
of men and women. I saw the headless body of a little boy. I saw things like that, Laney.”

I let the seconds go by, feeling inside me such a sadness over what Lester had lived through. He’d been right when he’d been afraid to tell me; now I had it all in my head, and I didn’t know what to do with it.

Then he told me something worse.

“Some of the people were still alive.” His voice broke then, and I watched him as he gathered himself. He took his hand away from mine and rubbed it over his face, letting it linger at his chin as he stared off through the windshield, going back in his memory, I imagined, to what he was about to tell me. Finally, he eased his hand down to his lap. He bit his bottom lip once. Then he turned to me, and in a rush, as if he couldn’t bear to have the words in his mouth any longer, he said the rest of his story. “They were alive, but no one called for the medics. Our sergeant gave the order. ‘Put ’em down,’ he said, and that’s what we did. We put our rifles to their heads. One shot was all it took, and then we moved on.”

“Were they Al-Qaeda fighters? You said it was a wedding, right?”

“It was a wedding. They might have been just folks. No one asked. We did what we were told.”

“You?”

“Yes, Laney. Me.”

That’s when he let go of my hand and turned his face away from me. He looked out his window.

I put my hand on his back and rubbed slow, gentle circles. “I’m still here,” I told him. “It’s going to be all right.” And though I said it, I had no idea how to help him. “Let’s go inside,” I said, and that’s what we did.

We were never lovers. I want that known. We were just two people, a man and a woman, who had each other’s company at a time when they both needed that. I stayed at Lester’s the rest of that day. I slept on his couch. He slept in his bed. Finally, after it was dark, we both got up, and he fried us some hamburgers. We sat at the old chrome-edged breakfast table and ate our burgers and talked a little about nothing that
mattered—just the weather and whatnot and what we’d be doing later at work. Then he said, “I never should have told you that stuff about Iraq.”