Heart of Palm (47 page)

When Elizabeth had called on Sunday and Frank heard her voice on the phone, he’d bolted upright in bed.
This is it
,
he’d thought for one wild second, but then she spoke again and hope turned to a leaden weight in his stomach. “It’s your mother, Frank.” That was all she said, but he knew. Arla.
Mom
.

He’d driven to Aberdeen. Elizabeth told him about the fall the night before, his mother’s walk through the woods, the bleeding, Arla’s insistence that she was fine. The paramedics had carried the body, covered in a sheet, down the front stairway and out the front door. “She’s tall,” one of them said. “Dang.” Arla’s foot—the good one—hung slightly off the stretcher, banging the wall on the way down, and Frank looked away.

“Head injuries,” the paramedic said to Frank, after they’d loaded Arla into the ambulance. “Buggers. They’ll do that—delayed response, you think the person is okay, but the brain swells and—” He snapped his fingers. “I’m sorry for your loss,” he added.

The cop who’d arrived with the paramedics stood at the front door with his arms crossed. He’d graduated from Utina High a year after Frank. He shook Frank’s hand as the ambulance pulled away. “Condolences,” he said. “It’s never easy.” He looked off in the distance, a man who’d seen plenty of death, Frank reckoned. “Call the funeral home,” he said. “They’ll tell you what to do next. You’ll need a burial, or a cremation. They’ll get you sorted.”

And then they’d sat in the kitchen, all of them: Frank, Elizabeth, Sofia, Biaggio, Bell, Dean—the latter staring stone-faced at the clock like some sort of zombie. Carson had driven up from St. Augustine. Gooch was parked under the table, leaning against Frank’s knee. He was nervous, picking up in his dog way the twin scents of death and fear in the house. It was early still, not even eight o’clock on a Sunday morning, and Frank looked around the table and wondered what in the world he was supposed to do next. Sofia’s eyes were red and her hands shook. She leaned into Biaggio, and he put his arm around her shoulder, rocked her like a child.

Frank’s throat had constricted, and he swallowed, put his head in his hands. It was wrong, all wrong, all of it. He’d felt like he was moving backward through a thick haze, the world shapeless, undefined.

“All right,” Carson had said, jarring Frank’s thoughts back to the kitchen table and the smell of death still in the house and Dean’s face, impassive, staring at the clock. “What do we do now?”

They all, for some reason, looked at Dean. It was like they were children again; with Arla gone, the center was missing, they were unmoored.
Come on, act like a father for once,
Frank had thought.
We’re adrift. We’re scared. We don’t know where to turn
.

Dean had pulled his eyes from the clock, risen from the table, walked out of the kitchen.

Oh, God, Mom
.
What are we going to do?

That had been Sunday. They’d vacated Aberdeen on Monday, as planned, and that was hard, Jesus it was hard, cleaning out Arla’s room—the books, the knickknacks, the forty years of flotsam and jetsam that had accumulated around her while she slept and wept and read and drank in that bedroom. Photos of Arla’s parents’ house in Davis Shores. A French-English dictionary. A broken ABBA record. A stack of scorched manuterges, never to be returned to their home churches. Pink Capezio flats.
Babar the King
. A gold-trimmed photo album. Frank had opted not to try to go through everything. He rented a portable storage pod to park on his own lot, and Biaggio helped him box things up, store them away. They would look at them later. They even moved the old Steinway into the pod, the termite wings fluttering like confetti when they rolled the piano down the ramp off the front porch. Then Biaggio and Sofia towed the trailer and the storage unit over to Frank’s property—“Just temporarily,” Biaggio said sheepishly, “until we get us a house.” Elizabeth and Bell were staying in the condo at Willough Walk, the condo that had been planned for Arla. Everyone was waiting. Waiting for the money.

Now it was Wednesday. Carson and Mac arrived in front of the bank. They parked in a space adjacent to Frank’s truck, and they all got out.

“Where is he?” Frank said.

“I don’t know,” Carson said. “I still haven’t seen him. I assumed he wouldn’t miss out on this closing. Do you know where he’s been staying?”

No telling. When they’d finished clearing out Aberdeen, when they’d closed the front door on the empty rooms and the spindly turret for the last time, there’d been no sign of Dean. They’d met with the undertaker yesterday to arrange the cremation, but still no Dean.

“I’m sure he’s facedown in a six-pack somewhere,” Carson said. “Which is fine with me.”

“It’s actually better,” Mac agreed. “If he doesn’t show up for this closing, that makes our job that much easier. They can’t close without him.”

“Fine,” Carson said. “Then we’ll figure out how to contest this by the time he sobers his sorry ass up.”

“Oh, he’ll show up,” Frank said. “He’s not going to miss out on his money.”

They waited in silence, watching a plastic bag scuttle down Seminary Street in the damp wind. At ten-fifteen, Carson sighed, kicked the curb.

“Let’s get started,” he said. “He’ll get here when he’s good and ready.”

“I don’t see the Vista people either,” Mac observed. “Where the hell is Cryder?” Something wasn’t sitting right. Frank wasn’t sure if the situation warranted relief or worry, though he had a nagging feeling it was the latter.

They went into the bank and took a number in a carpeted area reserved for customer service, even though there were no other customers, either at the teller counters or waiting in the customer service area. After a minute, Doreen Bailey waddled out from behind the counter and walked to the number kiosk. “Four!” she called, ticking a number off a list.

“Right here, Doreen,” Carson said. “For shit’s sake,” he muttered.

“Take it easy,” Frank said.

“You shut the fuck up,” Carson said.

“Boys,” Mac said, holding up his hands.

“Beautiful,” Frank said. “Let’s just do this.”

They followed Doreen over to a dark wooden desk. Carson and Frank took the two chairs in front while she settled herself behind the keyboard. Mac pulled up another chair from an adjoining desk.

“Well, boys,” Doreen said. She smiled at the Bravos unpleasantly, then made an effort to lower her head and give her voice a sympathetic cast. “I’m so sorry about your mama, boys. I’m just so sorry. But she’s gone on to salvation. You have to console yourselves with that. She’s gone on to Jesus. Sleeping with the angels.” She reached out and patted Frank on the hand, and he fought the instinct to recoil. He doubted Arla’s heaven had angels in it. Little Debbies, more like.

“It was quite a shock to see your father again, boys,” Doreen said. “The man himself.” She shook her head, rolled her eyes. “Looking like holy hell, I might add.”

Frank stared at her, feeling a creeping unease.

“He’s not one to clean up his act for no one, is he? Not even those fancy developer people.” She shook her head, frowned. “Now, how can I help you?” Doreen said.

“Dean was here?” Carson said.

“Yes. Yesterday. With those people. Vista? One of them was
black
, for heaven’s sake. And he looked like he had
money
, too.” She leaned across the desk, her big, shapeless breasts pressing into her keyboard. “I’d say your daddy’s probably still celebrating. Everyone knows he did very well on that sale. My goodness. Congratulations to the Bravos, boys. Whoop-de-do.” She drew a circle in the air with her finger.

Frank felt sick to his stomach. He looked at Carson, who was ashen.

“What did he do, Doreen?” Mac said. “Did they close already? Did Dean get the money?”

“Well, yes,” she said, looking from Mac to Frank to Carson and back again. “Except for Morgan Moore’s money. That was wired to Memphis. We closed yesterday afternoon. Didn’t you know?”

“The closing was scheduled for this morning at ten,” Frank said. He stared at his watch. 10:20. How could this have happened?

“They called late Monday and moved it up a day,” she said. “They said your daddy had a conflict, needed to meet sooner. A conflict.” She snorted. “A date with a barstool, more like.”

Frank sat back in his chair, felt the weight of this knowledge close in on him like a wrecking ball. Next to him, Carson had not moved. Mac shook his head, speechless, it seemed, for once.

“Is there a problem, Frank?” Doreen said. “I mean, it was his money. I know Arla’s gone on to the Lord, but—”

“Arla’s dead.
Dead
, you stupid cunt,” Carson said. He stood up. “And you just gave that asshole everything.”

Doreen drew back, stared at Carson and then looked at Frank. “Frank, I didn’t—” she began. But then her face flushed red and she pushed back from the desk. “Now listen to me, Carson Bravo. You can’t speak to me like—”

Carson turned on his heel and walked out of the bank. Mac exhaled.

“Doreen,” Frank said. “Can you do a stop payment or something? Cancel it somehow?”

“Of course not,” she said. She was fuming now. “It was his property. His closing. His money. He took a cashier’s check.” Frank looked at Mac, who nodded sadly.

Frank got up and turned to follow Carson out of the bank.

“You Bravos think you’re all that!” she called after him. “You get a little money and think you can talk to people any way you want. Well, I’ve got news for you, and you can tell that animal of a brother you’ve got. The Bravos are nothing but a bunch of rednecks, Frank, and will never be anything but. White trash, is what you are—it’s what your mother was, what your father is. Take
that
to the bank.”

Frank turned back to her. “Doreen?” he said.

She sneered. “What?”

“You’re probably right.”

She started. She wasn’t expecting an agreement.

“But that doesn’t make you any less of a cunt,” he said, and he and Mac walked out the door.

Outside the bank, Carson was leaning up against his car, his forehead on the roof.

“Carson,” Frank said.

Carson turned to him, his face red with fury.

“What do we do?” Frank said.

“You’re asking
me
? You think I know what we’re going to do?” Carson said. “Ask Weeden here. I got nothing.”

“Well,” Mac said slowly. “It’s not looking too good.”

Carson snorted. “You got that right, buddy. It’s over. That bastard is gone for good, and there’s not a damn thing we can do about it.”

“Can’t we sue him or something? Mac?” Frank said.

Mac shrugged his shoulders, looked at Frank sadly.

“You think we’re ever going to find him?” Carson said. “He’s going to cash that check, spread that money around where we’ll never find it. He’s a smart fucking ’neck, and he’s laughing his ass off at us right now. Son of a
bitch
.”

The veins throbbed in Carson’s forehead and throat, beads of sweat emerging on his face in the damp morning air. It was hard to breathe; the air pressure had dropped considerably since they’d been inside the bank. A storm was fast approaching.

And here it was, Frank realized, the end of the road. They had nothing, the Bravos of Utina, nothing. As hard as this was for Frank to swallow, he watched with a strange dispassionate curiosity as this new information completely consumed his brother. Carson’s hands shook as he tried to unlock his car door, but then suddenly he spun around, walked over to Frank.

“It’s over,” Carson said again. He put his face close to Frank’s. “All these years, and now it’s over. We’ve got nothing, little brother.
I’ve
got nothing.”

“Oh, I see. So it’s all about you,” Frank said.

Carson shook his head.

“You’re the one who brought him back here, don’t forget,” Frank said.

“It would have happened regardless. And anyway, she never would have sold without him.”

“Well, now we’ll never see the money anyway—so what did we gain?”

“So it’s all my fault, is that what you’re saying?” Carson said. “I’m the bad guy, right?”

He looked straight into Frank’s eyes, and there was danger there, knowledge.
Elizabeth
. The word flashed through Frank’s mind and he blinked, feeling, somehow, that Carson could see into his soul, see the picture of the woman there. He was right.

“And you think I don’t
know
?” Carson said. “What kind of an idiot do you think I am?”

Frank felt his own anger building now, and he let it grow with a sense of abandon that felt almost like relief. “The worst kind,” he said. “The kind that doesn’t appreciate something good when he’s got it. You don’t deserve her.”

It was the first time he’d acknowledged any sort of sympathy toward Elizabeth, and Carson saw the weight of this statement, understood the significance of Frank’s words.