Elvis Takes a Back Seat (21 page)

I look at the bust sitting on a pew as if he's an orphan, waiting for someone to want him. I don't hate him anymore. In fact, I think I'm beginning to like him. “I still don't understand why Stu wanted us to come here. Seems like an awful lot of trouble for nothing.”

“Getting your faith back is not nothing,” he says as if he's read my thoughts, my heart.

I rub the tension out of my forehead. “I feel like I've been so stupid, so blind.”

“Grief does strange things. Your tears blinded you. But I think you're starting to see more clearly.”

“I think you're right.” I watch as Ivy and Rae emerge from Myrtle and Guy's private quarters.

“Everything okay?” Rae asks.

“Of course.” We move to leave.

“Elvis will be safe here,” Myrtle says, following behind us.

I pass Elvis still sitting in the pew. I feel a need to reach out and touch him. My finger brushes a stud in his upright collar. This should be good-bye. Instead it's “see you later.”

We'll pick up Elvis on our way out of town. Then we'll take him back to Dallas. Or dump him along the highway. Or sell him to the highest bidder. I guess it doesn't matter anymore. Ben is right. It's not about Elvis. It's not even about Stu anymore.

Ben touches my arm, leads me to the car. I remember he was there, leading me away from Stu's grave. There's comfort in his touch, in his presence.

“Do you want me to drive?” he asks.

I shake my head. “No, I'm okay.”

Then I know the truth. I am okay. I don't have the answers. I can't see God. But I know what I hope for. And that's enough in this moment. Even if I have to keep Elvis in the attic forever.

When Ben and Ivy settle in the back, I start the engine, give a quick wave to Myrtle and Guy standing on the top step, then pull away from the curb. My plan when we reach the hotel is to pack and leave. It's time to say good-bye, just as Baldy said.

With a glance at Rae, I say, “You were pregnant with Elvis's baby, weren't you?” I imagine the headline:
Elvis's
Love Child Discovered!
“That's why you left Memphis, right?”

“I was pregnant,” she says.

“Was it Elvis's?”

“The father was …” She shrugs. “This wasn't an environment I wanted for a baby. My baby.” She says the words slowly, as if savoring the fact that it was her baby.

Slowly, like a small child connecting the dots on a mimeograph page in school, I connect the things I know about Rae. “So then you gave the baby up for adoption? To an agency?”

She looks at me, her eyes dark. She touches my hand.

“I gave the baby to my sister.”

Braking at a red light, I feel her words grip me like brakes clamping down on a wheel. For a moment it feels as if my heart doesn't beat, as if everything stops. I can't hear the road sounds, a siren wailing in the distance, the drone of a song on the radio. Silence. My chest feels compressed, like a heavy weight is pushing against it, restricting my breathing.

As if in the distance, I hear a faint
thumping
. It grows louder, and I recognize my own heartbeat pounding in my ears.

Slowly I look at Rae. She meets my gaze, steady, sure. Regret and fear cloud her eyes. I recognize the emotions, know them personally.

A car horn blares behind me, makes my skin contract.

“Light's green,” Ben says.

But I can't move. Can't speak. Can't breathe.

The silence in the car feels like the pregnant moment when a balloon has been inflated beyond its capacity to stretch and an explosion is imminent. As I hastily park the car, I step on the brakes too hard, jarring my passengers and myself. Without a word to anyone, I slam the car door and walk toward the hotel and our room. My one thought is to pack, leave, and go home. It's safe there. I want to crawl into my own bed, pull the covers over my head, and forget this weekend.

A small part of me collapsed when we left Elvis at the chapel. But now my lungs compress, my mind reels from Rae's confession. Is she telling the truth? Maybe she made it all up … about Elvis … about my mother.

I've returned to Topsy-Turvyville.

I pause at the elevator. Before the doors open, Rae reaches my side. When we step onto the elevator, she stands across the small space, looking at me, her eyes wide and watchful. I stare down at the floor and realize we are alone.

“Where'd Ben and Ivy go?” I ask, my voice sounding strange to my own ears, as if my mouth is disconnected from my body.

“Ivy was hungry,” she says. “They went to get a bite to eat.”

I wonder when that conversation took place. Had they told me? Had I not heard? Or had they whispered it behind my back? I know how that happens. After Stu's funeral I heard the whispers—

“How is she doing?”

“Has she eaten?”

“Think someone should stay the night with her?”

Then I'd simply walked on, not caring. But for some reason today, their whispering seems subversive and makes me angry. “Well,” I say, stepping off the elevator, “they could have asked if anyone else was hungry. I hope they won't be long.” I stick the plastic key in the slot and push open the door. “I want to pack and hit the road.”

“They wanted to give us a few moments alone,” Rae says, her voice soft.

“Why would they do that?” I want to lash out at her, but it doesn't make me feel better.

“Do you not want to discuss it?”

“No, I really don't.” But I do. She knows it, and so do

I. But I can't stop my waspish words any more than I can calm the anger pulsing through me. There's an iciness inside me, penetrating my bones, frosting over my words.

She watches me for a long moment and blinks her eyes, assessing me. “As you wish.” She walks toward her room. I've acted foolishly, like a child. I just don't want to agree with her. Which sounds a lot

like Ivy. “So,” I say and she stops, “why'd you lie to me about something like that?”

She turns slowly. Instantly, hot regret presses against my eyes.

“It wasn't a lie, Claudia. I wouldn't lie to you.”

She walks back toward me. She doesn't seem rattled by my accusation or ruffled by my brusqueness. It's as if she expects it, knows exactly what I will say in response to what she's told me. Maybe she's even said it to herself. I'm at a distinct disadvantage. I'm the one shaken to my very core.

“I spoke the truth,” she continues. “I gave you to my sister to raise. She was your mother. She raised you. I am not usurping her, trying to get you to call me Mom. I'm telling you this, not for selfish reasons.”

I open my mouth to ask her why, but the words can't push past the lump gathering in my throat.

“Nor should it change the love you have for your mother. She wanted you. Very much. She made you who you are.”

My world tilts. Slowly, shakily, I sit on the edge of the couch, grasping its arm for support.

“She needed you, your mother did. She couldn't have children anymore … after her miscarriage. It was, you might say, providence.”

The bald-face truth glares at me. I want to turn away from it, to hide, but it also draws me closer, like a child with a magnifying glass. I wonder if that's why Mother never told me about her miscarriage, even after I suffered one myself, because it might have led to my discovering my real birth mother. Birth mother … Mother. My thoughts and memories fracture.

“Then why? Why tell me this at all?”

“Because Stuart asked me to.”

“Stu? He knew?” Another blow slams into my stomach. “When?”

“Toward the end, when he told me about Elvis.”

“Cozy. Any other little secrets you want to tell me now?”

“No.”

“Why didn't Stu tell me?”

“I swore him to secrecy. As he did me with Elvis.”

“Why should I believe either of you. I mean, you believe in ghosts.” It was an irrational statement, but I couldn't seem to think clearly or rationally.

“It's your choice to believe or not. You must make that step yourself.”

“But why? Why not tell me six months ago? Or when Stu was alive? Or when you first came back from Oregon?”

“It wasn't the time. In the end his will prevailed. That's the other reason he wanted me on this trip.”

“But I don't understand. Why would he want so desperately to tell me that you … ?” I can't force the words out. “And about Elvis?”

“I don't know about Elvis. But he believed you had a right to know who your birth mother was. That's debatable. Mostly he knew you'd feel alone after he was gone. He wanted you to know you aren't alone.”

Questions crowd my head, clog my heart with emotion. I don't know where to begin, where to stop.

“So you want me suddenly to call you Mother?” I hear the contempt in my own voice.

“No,” she says simply. “That's not my wish. Beverly was your mother. Always will be. She rocked you, held you,
took you to the doctor, cared for you every day that I could not be there with you. I told you because I want you to see the possibilities. There are other relationships than those you've known, those you cling to. I expect nothing from you, Claudia. Maybe you'll reject me. I'm fine if that's what happens. I've lived estranged from those I loved most. I can continue …” Her shoulder lifts in a slight shrug, making her charm bracelet jangle.

“You asked me once what these charms were for.” She fingers a pointed ballet shoe. “I added one for all the things I didn't get to experience with you, for the milestones in your life. It was my way of staying connected to you.”

Tears are usually salty, but these are bitter and tighten my throat. I think back to the times I thought Aunt Rae didn't care about us, didn't think about us. And all the time she was wishing she could be a part of my life.

It feels as if I've been told the last answer to a crossword puzzle. The answer is a word I'd never heard of, one I can't comprehend, could never have considered. Yet it fits the spaces perfectly.

“I tell you all of this because it's the truth, the truth I've always lived with. It's why I had to go away. Why I lived so long far away from you.”

“How could you … how could you … give away your baby?” I hear the pause in my own voice, the inability to say “give
me
away.” But that's the real question. And yet there are more, many more.

“It wasn't easy, and yet I'm sorry to say it was. I was afraid—afraid of you, afraid I would fail you. It broke my heart to be near you and to hear you call another ‘Mother.'”

She faces the window. Her long silvery gray hair flows
down her back. It's naturally curly, like my own. Where she lets hers loose to be wild and free, enjoying its wantonness, I keep mine short, tamed, which, as Mother always pointed out, is more practical. Am I really more like the eccentric, extravagant aunt whom I never knew, than I am the woman who raised me? Or was I some hybrid combination that would take me a lifetime to sort out?

Rae turns her head to meet my curious, hurting gaze. “I tell you, Claudia, because it is time. I tell you because you cling to the past, to your memories. Memories are fine. But they are not all of life. You must reach out. There's more out in the world for you. I hope, with this news, you realize that.

“I know what I've done. I know why I gave you to my sister to raise. Painful as it was, I don't regret it. It was the right thing to do. It gave you a good, healthy, stable life. It helped heal my sister.

“But I hope you'll see the possibilities in others now, reach out to others in friendship and love. Your mother's dead. Stu is, too. You, Claudia, are not. You must go on with your life and enjoy it to its fullest.”

I turn away from her then. The tears start to flow. But I swat them away with the back of my hand. Anger swells and explodes inside me. “Did Mother ask you not to tell me?”

“No.” No bitterness coats her voice. “It was her right, though. Your father, however, did ask. He asked to protect Beverly, to keep her from being hurt, to protect your family. And I respected that wish. But now they're gone. The truth needs to be told, if only for you to understand, for you to see the possibilities of your life. I'll go if that's your wish.”

I want to tell her to get out of my life. She hasn't helped me. She's confused me. Angered me. Destroyed my
memories. But I can't. The constraints my mother taught me now benefit Rae. “I don't know what I want anymore.”

“One day you will.” She reaches out and touches my hair, running her fingers over the curls. “So much alike,” she whispers, “yet so different.”

“Who is my father?” I ask, looking at her again, this time not hiding the tears. My voice cracks, revealing the gaping hole in my heart.

My own father—my beloved father—died of a massive heart attack when I was in college. “The widow maker,” the doctor pronounced sagely with a sad shake of his head. I mourned him as a daughter should. But he wasn't even my father. Yet he raised me as if he were, as if I was his own. In this moment I love him more. And the love I've always known for my mother swells inside. She never hinted, never indicated I was anything but her daughter. They loved me. I know that without a single doubt.

When Rae doesn't readily answer, cold fear slides down my spine. I think of Graceland, the house, the gaudiness, the Elvis bust sitting in the pew at Faithland Chapel. “Oh, no. Is Elvis my father?”

“I don't know, Claudia. The name of your biological father is one thing I can't give you. But I don't think it was Elvis. There are tests these days …” Shame pinches the corners of Rae's eyes. She says she doesn't regret, but I wonder if that's true.

Sure, medical tests can determine the truth easily enough—and create headlines and nightmares. I could never pursue that.

“It was a crazy time, the sixties. We were coming into our own as women. We were learning everything our
mothers hadn't taught us, maybe because they hadn't known themselves about sex, joy, power, freedom. And so it was wild and irresponsible.”

Then a thought strikes me. “Could Howie …” I can't finish the question.

“No. I'm no prude, but no. Not with Howie. Even
I
had standards.”

I breathe a sigh of relief, but it still doesn't relieve the pressure in my chest. “Do you remember that story you told me as a child, the one about Topsy-Turvyville?”

“Yes.”

“I think I've just moved in.”

“I knew, one day, you might.” Sorrow fills her eyes and deepens the lines around her mouth. “I'm sorry.”

I believe her. I'm not sure why, but I do. “When you said I needed faith … what did you mean?”

“Faith is being sure of what we hope for—”

“—and certain of what we do not see.”

“It doesn't matter if I'm your mother,” Rae says, “or if Beverly birthed you herself. I don't care if you came from Mars. What matters is that you're loved.”

My throat closes as tears course down my face. Rae wraps her arms around me, and I hold on tight.

“I gave you up because I loved you and wanted what was best. Beverly mothered you for the same reasons. But God loves you, too. Even when you can't seem to muster the faith to believe in him, he never gives up on you. He still believes in you.”

She holds me while the bitterness and anger flow out of me.