Heart of Palm (38 page)

Carson’s face clouded over, and Frank knew he’d hit a nerve. The heat was brutal, and a cluster of mosquitoes had begun to hover around Carson’s neck, which was slick with perspiration and stretched taut.

“You don’t care about anything,” Frank said. “Except yourself.”

“My wife tell you that?” Carson said. “Sounds like you two have been talking.” He spoke quietly, dangerously now, and Frank saw that this conversation had begun to slide away from the details of the Vista Properties deal. He didn’t answer.

“Have you?”

“Have I what?” Frank said.

“Been talking to my wife?”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“It’s a simple question, Frank.”

“I don’t think it is.”

“Have. You. Been. Talking. To. My”—Carson was close now, his face only inches from Frank’s—“
wife
?”
And just like when they were kids, Carson was faster than Frank, maddeningly so, and Frank didn’t see the hand coming until it connected with the side of his head, a fat slap, degrading more than physically hurtful, the kind of slap you’d give a cow, a horse.

Frank threw himself back at his brother and knocked Carson off balance, and then they grappled, still standing, but scrapping, cursing, until Biaggio’s hands closed over Frank’s shoulders, pulled him back. Frank looked at Carson, and now at Elizabeth, who had come down off the porch with Biaggio and who stood next to Carson, holding him back. She stared at Frank. Her hands were on her husband’s chest. Frank met Carson’s eyes, and then he looked up at Aberdeen, where Sofia and Bell stood on the porch, watching, where Dean hovered in the kitchen door, and where Arla’s face, pale and stricken, was visible in the upstairs window.

Dean was right. The whole fam-damily. The whole damn family. He was sick of them all, suddenly, every one of them, every God-damn dysfunctional one of them, even Arla, even Sofia.

Fucking Bravos. They must all be cursed.

He walked back around the side of the house to his truck.

“Frank,” Biaggio called. He laughed nervously. “Come on now. We got hot dogs.”

Good, Frank thought. I hope you all choke.

F
OURTEEN

Elizabeth tucked the corner of the Hello Kitty sheet under the mattress. She and Carson had just moved the single bed from Frank’s old bedroom on the third floor, where she and Bell had been staying, to the east-facing second-story corner room that had been Carson’s childhood bedroom. So much for Bell having her own bed. The bed they’d borrowed from Frank’s house had been perfect, but the respite was short-lived. Dean needed a place to sleep. Which meant moving the extra bed into Carson’s old room, the only usable room as yet unoccupied. Which meant Bell would be bunking with Elizabeth again, kicking like a showgirl all night long, she had no doubt.

“He’s
who
?” Bell had said as Elizabeth and Carson stripped the mattress in Frank’s room and stood it upright to slide it out the door.

“He’s your granddad,” Elizabeth said. “He’s Daddy’s father. We’re going to give him this bed to sleep in.” She’d looked for a place to grab the mattress, found none. Carson was already shoving his end, knocking the mattress into her shoulder. “Could you wait one second, please?” she said to him, annoyed.

“How come I never met him before?” Bell said.

“He doesn’t live in Utina,” Elizabeth said.

“Where does he live?”

“Who knows?” Carson said.

“What do I call him?” Bell said.

“What?” Elizabeth said.

“What should I call him? Grandpa? Brooke calls her grandfather Pee-Paw.”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake,” Carson said. “Call him Dean.”

“You don’t need to snap at her,” Elizabeth said. “It’s a legitimate question.”

“Whether she should call him Pee-Paw? That’s a legitimate question?”

“I think I’ll call him Grandpa Dean,” Bell said.

“Bell, honey,” Elizabeth said. She glared across the upturned mattress at Carson. “Can you move out of the way? Daddy and I have to move this bed for Grandpa Dean.”

They wrestled the flopping mattress into Carson’s old room, and then Elizabeth set to work on the sheets again.

“You sure this is a good idea?” she said to Carson. “Having him here with your mother?” They’d left Dean out at the concrete picnic table, staring at the water. Frank had left an hour ago, livid, and it had made Elizabeth sad, watching him climb into his truck, his face closed in a frustration and fury that she suspected had to do with more than just Dean’s return to Aberdeen. After the scuffle with Carson down by the water Frank had walked to his truck without another word, without so much as a glance in anyone’s direction. Even hers.

“It’s fine,” Carson said. “It’s his house. Why shouldn’t he be here?”

“Maybe because he deserted her.”

“You deserted me,” Carson said. “And I’d still let you back home.”

Bell stood in the doorway, watching them. Elizabeth shot a look at Carson. “Can you please be aware of what you are saying?” she said.

“I am aware,” he said. “I’m simply stating a fact.”

“Daddy?” Bell said. “Why don’t you stay here, too?”

Carson looked at her.

“Then everyone will be here,” she said.

“I’d love to, sweetness,” Carson said. “But your mother doesn’t want me to.”

Elizabeth wanted to kill him. She stuffed a pillow into its case, threw it onto the bed, and turned to leave the room.

“Come on, Bell,” she said.

“Elizabeth,” he said.

“Wait,” she said. She turned to Bell. “Sweetie, go find Sofia, okay? Ask her to find us an extra blanket.” Bell left the room, and Elizabeth turned back to Carson.

“What?” she said, surprised by the harsh tone of her own voice.

“Come home.”

She sighed.

“I’m lonely,” he said.

“I doubt that,” she said.

“I need you.

“I’m not talking about this today.”

“Then when?”

“Move that chair,” she said. “He won’t be able to get to the bed.”

“We can work it out.”

“And put the lamp over where he can reach it.”

“I love you.”

“I’ll get some towels from the bathroom for him.”

“Are you sleeping with my brother?”

She stopped, turned around slowly. She stared at him.

“Are you for real?” she said.

His face had tightened, and she watched as the familiar flush of rage began to creep up along his jaw and into his cheeks, which had begun to show the first bloated signs of close to three decades’ worth of steady drinking. He was on his way, Carson. Oh, he was on his way. He was more like Dean than he realized.

“Because I will fucking kill him,” he said.

“Carson,” she said. “You are an even bigger ass than I thought.”

A movement at the door—Dean stood on the threshold, awkward, lanky, his jeans cinched tight around his waist. He clutched a green duffle bag. “That fella Biaggio said I’d be in this room,” he said, and Elizabeth felt a little bit sorry for him then, a stranger in his own family’s house.

Carson turned toward the window, took a deep breath.

“I hope you don’t mind Hello Kitty,” Elizabeth said.

Dean put the bag on the bed. “I love Hello Kitty,” he said.

“Bell and I are staying upstairs, if you need anything,” Elizabeth said.

“So we got us a houseful, huh?” Dean said.

“Evidently,” she said.

She turned to walk out of the bedroom, and Carson followed her into the hallway. He stepped in front of her at the top of the stairs, blocking her way.

“Come home,” he said.

“No,” she said, and she pushed past him and felt the weight of his stare on her back as she descended the stairs.

She woke early the next morning. Bell lay beside her, wide awake in a tangle of blond hair and bedclothes. She was staring at the ceiling.

“You okay, Belly?” Elizabeth whispered, groggy. Her right arm ached from having slept on it, balancing on her side all night and teetering on the edge of the bed to try to avoid Bell’s kicking.

“When are we going to go home?” Bell said.

Elizabeth cleared her throat, tried to focus her eyes.

“You want to go home?” she said. She propped herself up on her elbow and winced as her muscles tried to realign. “I thought we were having fun here.”

“I’m having fun,” Bell said. “But.”

“But what?”

“I don’t
live
here. I would like to go back where I
live,
” Bell said, piqued. “And you don’t live here either. And also”—she looked squarely at Elizabeth—“I think you are being very mean to Daddy.”

Elizabeth didn’t know what to say to that. So she changed the subject. “You want me to go make you some breakfast?” she said.

“What do we have?”

“Waffles.”

“What kind?”

“Blueberry.”

“Not buttermilk?”

“No.”

“Why not buttermilk?”

Elizabeth rubbed her eyes. “I don’t know, Bell. I bought blueberry, okay?”

“I like buttermilk.”

Elizabeth stared at her.

Bell sighed. “Whatever,” she said. She pulled her notebook off the nightstand, turned her back to Elizabeth. My God. Was she seven, or seventeen? Sometimes Elizabeth couldn’t be entirely sure.

Elizabeth slid out of the bed and slipped a pair of shorts under her nightshirt. In the hallway and down on the second floor, all the bedroom doors were closed. She pictured them all in their beds—Arla, Dean, Sofia—and she wondered if any of them had slept at all. She walked downstairs to make coffee.

The kitchen was dim, the blue vinyl tablecloth cool and smooth. Elizabeth walked to the window to look out. In the dawning light, Biaggio’s trailer was visible just beyond the driveway, and she put her hand over her mouth to stifle a gasp when she saw Sofia emerge barefoot from the trailer, saw Biaggio hold her hand to his lips and smile.

“No
way
,” Elizabeth whispered. “Get
out
.”

Sofia walked across the yard, pulled the back door open, and stepped quietly into the kitchen. She saw Elizabeth and froze.

“Good morning,” Elizabeth said. She bit her lip.

Sofia stared at her, wide-eyed.

“Busy night?” Elizabeth said. But then she smiled and walked across the kitchen to hug Sofia.

“Oh, my God, Elizabeth,” Sofia said. “Don’t tell.”

“Why not?” Elizabeth said. “You’re a grown woman.”

Sofia flapped her hands up and down. “Oh,” she said. “I don’t know.” Elizabeth was moved by the childishness of Sofia’s gesture, and she thought of Sofia so long ago, when she’d first met her, when she was ten, Sofia was thirteen. Sofia had taken Elizabeth to her room, let her try on her pointe shoes, and they’d brushed each other’s hair, and Elizabeth had been astounded by the cool, smooth wave of Sofia’s tresses, how they ran like silk through her fingers. Red, spun with gold. So pretty Elizabeth wanted to cry, but Sofia had turned her around, ran the brush through Elizabeth’s own pale hair, and said: “It’s like honey,” and Elizabeth loved her. The age difference between them hardly mattered. Sofia had been there when Elizabeth was first dating Frank. She’d been there when Elizabeth took up with Carson. She’d offered little in the way of an opinion about Elizabeth’s choices save that one day, recently, in the Dairy Queen, but Elizabeth always sensed that Sofia knew more, felt more, loved more than anybody knew she was capable of.

“Well, when did this start?” Elizabeth said.

Sofia shrugged. “A few weeks ago.”

“Why now?” Elizabeth said. “You’ve known him for so long.”

“I don’t know,” Sofia said. “Something’s changing. Everything’s changing. You know?” She took a deep breath. “Oh, maybe it’s too much,” she said.

“Do you love him?” Elizabeth said.

“Yes,” Sofia said.

“Then it’s just enough.”

Sofia’s eyes widened again. Then she smiled.

“You know what’s funny?” Sofia said.

“What?”

“I can sleep with him.” She flushed. “I don’t mean—I mean,
that
, too, but, I can
sleep
there. I can fall asleep. I can’t do that anywhere else but here.”

Elizabeth smiled at her. “I’m not surprised.”

“But, Elizabeth,” Sofia said, and the smile dropped from her face. “What are we going to do?” She looked at the ceiling, raised her eyebrows.

“About them?” Elizabeth said.

“About
him
,” Sofia said. “My father. Good Lord.”