Fragile Beasts (13 page)

The moonlight stops on the wall next to the back door where our calendar hangs. September is pretty empty. I wrote down “SCHOOL STARTS” on our first day and Klint wrote over it “SCHOOL SUCKS.” I also wrote down the date of the Hamiltons’ party, which is now also the date of my father’s death.

Dad wrote down the date of a meeting at the high school next week. I remember the yellow flyer Klint brought home from school for him:

ATTENTION PARENTS OF STUDENT ATHLETES INTERESTED IN THE COLLEGE SCHOLARSHIP PROCESS. DON’T MISS THIS INFORMATIVE MEETING
!

I remember how excited he was. I knew he was already picturing himself strutting into the auditorium. He’d be royalty there—King Carl, the father of the Prince of Diamonds—his gray janitor coveralls a distant memory sitting at home in a wet ball in the washing machine.

I fix myself a bowl of cornflakes and milk and go sit on the back stoop.

Bill’s house is dark, too. On a night like tonight he and Dad should be sitting on his back porch shooting the shit. Right about now I’d come outside and yell over that I’m going to bed, and they’d both smile and raise their beers in a good-night salute.

Klint would already be asleep. He keeps farmers’ hours. I’d lie awake until I heard Dad come back inside and turn on the TV. He spent a lot of nights on the couch after Mom left. The garbled sound of the TV voices and the clink of Dad’s whisky bottle hitting the rim of his glass over and over again would make me drift off. Eventually we’d all be asleep, safe and sound, together in our aloneness.

Dad’s not on Bill’s porch tonight. He’s not on the couch. Where is he? That’s what I can’t wrap my head around. His body’s rotting in the ground, but where is he?

From the front of the house I hear a car door slam and an engine start.

A few minutes later the front door opens and closes, then the back door screen squeaks open.

“What are you doing?” Klint asks, standing behind me.

“Nothing.”

“How long you been here?”

“Awhile.”

I stare out at our backyard. In one corner I can barely make out our old sandbox in the shadows. In another corner is a big oak with boards nailed to the trunk as steps going up to our tree house. All that’s left of the house is the floor. We can’t use it as a hideout anymore, but it’s still a good place to sit.

Our rusted swing set stands in the middle of the yard. The swings are long gone. For a while Klint used it as a bar to do chin-ups but now he does his workouts at the school gym or the Y.

Krystal and I used to play with the slide sometimes. I showed her how she could fill a bucket with water and set it at the bottom and send her Barbies down the silver chute. I told her it was The World’s Biggest Barbie Water Slide.

She loved doing that.

I set down my bowl, stand up, and face Klint.

“Will you take Mr. B?” I ask.

“What?”

“Will you take him when you go live with Coach Hill?”

“What are you talking about? Why would I take that piece of crap old cat with me? Cats are for girls and faggots.”

“How would you know? You don’t know shit about girls, although I guess you know plenty about faggots.”

He gives me a two-handed shove in the chest, and I fall backward off the steps onto my ass. He’s on top of me before I can react, and we go rolling around the yard.

He’s bigger than I am and has more muscle on him, but I’m fast and wire-tough and have the advantage of having been beaten on my whole life by an older brother while he’s never been beaten on by anyone other than his mom and she doesn’t count because she fights like a girl.

We pound on each other until we’re winded. I’ve torn the knee out of my only good pair of jeans, and my right arm feels like it’s been wrenched out of its socket.

Klint’s lip is bleeding, and he has a clump of muddy grass in his hair. He sits up and brushes it away.

I lie on my back, cradling my arm at my side, and try to catch my breath.

“You’re gonna go live with him?” I ask the stars.

“No.”

I look over at him to see if he’s watching me. I don’t want him to see the relief on my face. I feel bad for feeling it. I should push him to go live with Coach. It would be best for him.

“Why not?”

“Shit. You think I want to live with my coach?”

“His daughters aren’t bad-looking.”

“They’re all right.”

His tongue darts out of his mouth and licks at the blood.

“What are we gonna do?” I ask him.

“Run away, I guess.”

“Where?”

“I don’t know yet.”

“What about ball?”

“A lot can happen between now and spring.”

He lies back on the grass next to me.

“It might have been interesting to see what Mrs. Hill looks like,” he says a little regretfully.

“You mean to see if she’s real?”

He smiles.

“Yeah.”

“I still say she’s his alter ego. He puts on a dress and a wig like that Norman Bates dude in
Psycho
and talks in a woman’s voice.”

“Mrs. Hill, we have a game tomorrow,” I say in a low voice imitating Coach.

“Tell the boys I’m rooting for them,” I say in a high, cackly voice.

Klint cracks up.

Besides being the only person he gets mad at, I’m also the only person who can really make him laugh.

H
ow do you begin a conversation with a woman you’ve never met with the intention of asking her if she’d give you two of her children?

I’ve been through many difficult and emotionally taxing experiences in my life and managed to survive all of them with my dignity intact, yet this particular task proved to be more daunting to me than informing my brother some forty-odd years ago that I’d just paid almost a million dollars for a cow.

I made the call last night after the boys and Shelby left.

In a fit of optimism before dinner, Shelby had given me a phone number where the mother could be reached. After dinner, she wouldn’t have dared.

She left the table crying and crushed, giving me a terrible stare filled with pain and humble regret. I knew she needed comforting, but I let her suffer because she needed that more.

I spent a good hour preparing what I was going to say to this woman. I had been told she was horrible. I had witnessed with my own eyes the condition of her sons, both of them trying to act like nothing was wrong: one with stoicism, cynicism, and eventually rage; the other with a puppy dog eagerness to please.

They upset me at dinner, but they didn’t disappoint. If they had cried, if they had asked if I have a swimming pool or a big-screen TV, if they had answered all of my questions politely or unemotionally, I would have fed them, sent them on their way, and would have never given them a second thought. But this wasn’t to be the case.

They are damaged but not ruined.

As for the mother, I was still willing to give her the benefit of the doubt.

This was our conversation:

“I’m trying to get in touch with Rhonda Hayes.”

A woman’s voice tells me, “Just a sec,” and then the name, “Ronnie!!!!” is screamed next to the phone receiver.

“Yeah?”

“Is this Rhonda Hayes?”

“Not anymore. I’m divorced. Thank God. I went back to my maiden name, Welty.”

“But you are the mother of Kyle and Klint Hayes?”

“Yeah. Who are you?”

“My name is Candace Jack. My niece, Shelby, is a friend of your sons.”

“Never heard of her.”

“Regardless. She
is
a friend, and she’s very concerned about them.”

“Is this about their dad dying? Does she want to say she’s sorry?”

“She already did. She was at the funeral.”

“Oh.”

“This goes beyond offering condolences. We’ve heard that you’re planning to take the boys with you to live in Arizona and that they would rather stay here.”

“Where’d you hear that?”

“It doesn’t matter. If you’d be agreeable to my proposition, I’d like to provide them with a home here. They could live with me until they’re finished with high school.”

(A sharp laugh.)

“What kind of perv are you? You think I’m gonna let my boys go live with some lady I don’t even know? Are you an old lady? You sound like one.”

“I’m seventy-six.”

“Seventy-six? Are you crazy? What’s some seventy-six-year-old woman gonna do with two teenage boys? That’s disgusting.”

“I have ample space and ample means.”

“Jesus Christ. Ample space and ample means. Are you crazy?”

“That’s the second time you’ve asked me that, so I’ll assume that means you’re expecting an answer. No, I’m not.”

(Silence.)

“Rhonda … May I call you that?”

“I guess.”

“It was just a thought. I didn’t mean to intrude or presume. Obviously you’re anxious to have your sons live with you again despite the expense and responsibility.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, the cost alone of feeding two teenage boys must be very great. They’ll need clothes and school supplies and money for the never-ending list of things children demand these days. I believe your car insurance will go up quite a bit, and you’ll probably need another car unless you’re planning to drive them around yourself. They’ll need health insurance, too. I imagine they were covered by a plan through their father’s employer.

“But as you know, you can’t put a price tag on familial joy. I’m sure there’s not going to be any tension or unpleasantness when the boys move in with you. I’m sure they’ll adjust happily to their new school and from what I’ve been told, it sounds like they’re going to get along wonderfully with your new husband.”

(More silence.)

“We’re not married.”

“All the better. That way if he decides he can’t stand living with your sons, he can just leave and you won’t have to go through another divorce.”

(More silence.)

“Rhonda, I realize this was a very sudden and unorthodox offer, and I apologize for catching you off guard. I assure you I was only trying to help. I’m going to leave you the name and number of my lawyer in case you’d like to discuss this further. Do you have a pen?”

“What’d you say your name was?”

“Candace Jack. You may be familiar with my last name. I believe all three of your children were born in my brother’s hospital.”

The phone call is playing in my head as I wake up this morning.

It went about as well as I expected. I never thought for one moment that any mother, no matter how selfish and irresponsible, would simply give up her sons to a complete stranger. She would have to be convinced that to do so would be in her best interest yet would appear to the world to be in the boys’ best interest.

I lie in bed for a few minutes gathering my strength. The arthritis in my knees and hip has advanced to a point where the simple act of getting out of bed is excruciating. My doctor has given me pills and injections, but nothing seems to help anymore.

My body has been aging and deteriorating, untouched and unloved, for so many years now I sometimes think of myself as an abandoned house. Echoes of laughter, hurried footsteps, and bright peals of music still resonate inside me, but my exterior is bleak and forbidding.

When the younger Hayes boy began asking me questions about Manuel last night, it was like someone had finally ventured up the sagging front porch steps of my soul and shouted through one of my broken windows, “Hello, in there!”

I sit up slowly as I do every morning and look in amazement at the bony, wrinkled arms and gnarled hands roped in blue veins and wonder how they came to be attached to my body.

I used to be an attractive woman, but I make the claim without the least bit of pride or vanity. My beauty was given to me, not earned. It made the people around me behave either foolishly or dishonestly. The supposed rewards that came with it—the desire of men, the envy of women, the attention of strangers—were of no interest or value to me. I didn’t want to be watched or coveted or disliked on sight. I wanted to be anonymous and left alone.

However, I won’t go so far as to say I wished I was unattractive instead. I’m human. I’m drawn to pretty things. I took pleasure in my reflection in the mirror, in my nicely formed figure and the features of my face, in my green eyes and full lips and my flawless complexion. I loved the way sunshine turned my hair the color of a freshly minted penny. I loved the silky feel of it in my hands as I brushed it.

I had many men in my life, but I never cared about any of them except for Manuel, and I make this claim, too, without the least bit of pride and vanity, or guilt, or embarrassment. Men wanted me, and I let them think they could have me. Occasionally one did have me, but my heart was never in it.

I slept with four men before I met Manuel. I can give an exact reason for each escapade: in chronological order they would be curiosity, pity, three thousand shares of Peppernack Steel stock, and a bottle of Wild Turkey.

My brother saw beauty as a commodity. When I reached a certain age and it became clear I was going to possess this particular asset, he was thrilled that I would eventually be able to help him in his business dealings in ways other than typing, filing, and accounting.

I was intelligent and did very well in high school, so well that I won a scholarship to a secretarial school in Lancaster. Stan let me go with the
understanding that I’d put my newfound skills to use in his fledgling business once I acquired them.

After graduation, I helped him in the front office of J&P Coal for several years until he and his newfound partner, Joe Peppernack, became successful enough to hire their first perky blonde and to let me go to college, which had always been a dream of mine. Stan had no use for school, as he put it, and dropped out in the tenth grade; but he was proud of my education and the fact that he was able to finance it.

I spent all my breaks and summers with him and he put me to work in a different way than before. There was never anything overtly sexual in the instructions he gave me for entertaining men who could be of some help to him. He never said anything to me other than, “Be nice,” yet I knew those two little words implied a wide range of activities.