Heart of Palm (50 page)

“You all okay?” Dean said. “Sofia, she’s okay?”

“We’re okay,” Frank said. He looked away. Carson saw the moment when Arla’s face flashed into Frank’s consciousness, and then the big questions returned to Carson, the biggest questions—the money. The Fund. Sofia. Bell.
Elizabeth.

“How did you even get here?” Carson said to Dean, remembering the empty parking lot outside.

Dean shrugged, and Carson didn’t ask again. Because it didn’t matter how he got here. It didn’t matter how he was leaving. Or where he was staying, or what he was doing, or how he was doing it. It didn’t matter. It was just Dean, appearing, disappearing, slouching in and out of their lives like a tardy teenager. Too little, too late. Again.

“You took all the money,” Carson said.

“I did,” Dean said. He looked straight at Carson, unflinching.

“Why?”

Dean looked away. “I guess I thought I wanted it,” he said. “I’ve been a little drunk.” He smiled ruefully.
A little
, Carson thought. “I thought it was mine,” Dean continued. He looked back at Carson, then at Frank. “But it isn’t.”

Carson waited.

“Here,” Dean said. He reached into his pocket, pulled out an envelope. “It’s all there.”

Carson opened the envelope. It contained three plastic cards, each stamped with a Bank of America logo. The first one had his own name, Carson Bravo, embossed across the front. The second had Frank’s name, and the third, Sofia’s.

“Credit cards?” Carson said.

“They’re debit cards,” Dean said. “That’s all the money. It’s all in your names, now. Three separate accounts. Two million each.” Carson and Frank stared at him.

“I used a little bit, though,” Dean said. “I gave a little bit to the cathedral. Where we were married. Arla liked that church,” he said quietly. “And I bought a bond. For Bell.”

Carson felt a catch in his throat.

“I know she don’t need it, from me,” Dean said. “You’ll take good care of her, I know,” he said. “But maybe one day she can buy something nice for herself. And you can tell her it was from her Grandpa Dean.”

They were quiet, all of them, and Carson bit the inside of his cheek and then put his head in his hands and tried to process this information, this moment, the three of them sitting together in a dingy clinic waiting room, bruised and battered and barely able to stand, barely able to speak to each other, and yet bound together, somehow, with something that might have been love but was different—harder, tighter, stronger, even, than love. It wasn’t love, in fact. It was family.

Dean slapped a hand to his forehead. “Oh, and there was a little bit more I used. Maybe fifty dollars. Had a few drinks.”

Frank took his cap off, scratched his head, looked at Dean.

“You’re telling us all that money is in a bank in our names?” he said.

“Well, less fifty or so. And the bit for the church, and for Bell.”

“And you’re telling us you don’t want it?” Carson said.

“Nah,” Dean said. “It ain’t getting me nowhere. I figure you three can use it.”

“And what about you?” Frank said. “Where are you going to go?”

“It don’t really matter, do it?” Dean said. “I mean, it never really did, did it?” He leaned down, picked at a sandspur that was lodged in his boot. His skin was sallow, and when he spoke again his voice was quiet.

“I’m on borrowed time, boys,” he said. “Look at me. You think I’m going to be around in a year?” Dean fished in his pocket and pulled out a cigarette, lit it. “So if I’m checking out, what the hell do I need all that money for? Ain’t no need for pockets on a dead man’s coat.”

They didn’t answer.

Dean turned to Frank. “You made an arrangement with the undertaker?” he said. “The ashes ready?”

Frank nodded. “Friday,” he said.

“All right then, Friday,” Dean said quietly. “Friday we’re going to Aberdeen. Scatter your mother’s ashes in the water behind the house.” He took a long drag from his cigarette, exhaled slowly.

The receptionist slid open the glass window. “No smoking in the clinic, sir,” she said sharply.

Dean sighed. “All right, darlin’,” he said. “Keep your shirt on.” She glared at him, slid the window shut, and he grinned. He struggled to his feet, gripping the edges of the metal chairs, and grimacing in pain as he made his way out the door.

“I’ll be outside, boys. They gave me a prescription, so I’m all set. I figure one of you will take me home with you, let me clean up, right?” he said. “Oh, and maybe pay this bill?” He nodded toward the receptionist, chuckled.

“Get in my truck, Dad,” Frank said. “The rain’s stopped. We gotta wait for Mac.”

Dean shuffled out of the clinic, leaving behind a cloud of cigarette smoke.

Carson handed the envelope to Frank, who looked at the three debit cards, looked back at Carson, his face a blank. He shook his head.

“Carson?” Frank said.

“Yeah?”

“This family is nucking futs,” he said.

Carson nodded.

“What’s left of us,” he said. They sat in the waiting room, watching the minutes click by on the clock on the wall, a window air conditioner chugging relentlessly over their heads, the air cold and damp, the receptionist quiet behind the window. Carson felt the beginnings of a hangover coming on. It was going to be a big one.

“Frank?” he said, after a while.

“Yeah?”

“Why did you tell me to leave Will?”

Frank was quiet for so long Carson thought he wasn’t going to answer, and when he did speak, it was in a voice Carson had never heard before.

“Why did you listen?” Frank said.

Carson waited until he was back in his own car, the tinted windows rolled up tight, the air-conditioning on full blast, Frank driving Dean and Mac back to his house to get Mac’s car. And that’s when he put his head in his hands and wept for all of it, for all of them, for relief and for heartbreak. He cried for his dead mother and for Dean and the money—the stupid God-damned money—and for Uncle Henry’s, and Aberdeen, and for his dumb cat Violet. And he cried for Elizabeth, and for Bell, and for the searing, burning hope that he could still win them back. But mostly he cried for himself, and for Frank and Sofia and Will, and for all the ways they would never be the same again.

T
WENTY-TWO

At the condo in Willough Walk, Elizabeth went into the bathroom. She took off her shirt, stained with Mac’s blood, and tossed it in the wastebasket. Then she stepped out of the rest of her clothes and turned on the shower. She ran the water as hot as it would go, until her arms and legs turned pink, and still she could not wash away the afternoon’s events, the vision of Carson’s eyes, wild and enraged, when he found her there with Frank.

When she finished, she put on clean clothes, walked back into the living room, and gazed out through the screened-in lanai to where the retention pond breathed steam into the damp air. The storm had stopped; the rain had dwindled to a steady, stubborn drip off the eaves. She turned back to the condo and looked around. She wondered how long she could reasonably stomach this place, this ridiculous condo. The original plan had been for her to stay here with Arla for a little while, help with the transition, assist her mother-in-law in easing into her new life without Sofia. Her new life alone.

Instead, on Monday Elizabeth and Bell had moved in without Arla, and she’d stared at the lease that night, at Arla’s spidery signature at the bottom, the notation from the owner confirming that Arla had prepaid the rent for the rest of the year. Elizabeth knew the plan, knew Arla had intended to work with Susan Holm on a purchase price once the closing on Aberdeen had been finalized. Oh,
shit
. Everything was different. Everything was so confusing now. What in the hell were any of them supposed to do?

The condo hadn’t seemed like a bad idea at the time. Not a bad idea at all. A couple of weeks ago, Elizabeth wasn’t ready to go back to Carson, wasn’t sure she ever would be. And staying with Arla in the condo for a few weeks, a few months, maybe more, would be fine for Bell, what with the sparkling community pool and the swing set and picnic benches in the common area, a Ping-Pong table in the clubhouse. She’d even registered Bell for first grade here in Utina, not St. Augustine.

But everything seemed all wrong now. The Berber carpet was cloying. The bathroom smelled like paint. The Formica countertops in the kitchen were cold and brittle. Everything was far too clean. Every shade of taupe made her think of Arla; every wall sconce, every chair rail, every tasteful wooden switch plate made her think how Arla would have mocked it. If they’d been here together they could have laughed it all off, could have dealt, over time, with the loss of Aberdeen. Alone, it was all almost too much to bear.

She could go home to Carson. She
should
go home to Carson. She had no money. She couldn’t stay here past the end of the year. Already the cable company had called about an installation fee, or an initiation fee, or whatever it was, and Elizabeth had told them to cancel it, forget it, that she and Bell didn’t need TV or DirecTV or TiVo. It was Carson who liked those kinds of things, not her.

Carson. Frank. Carson. How had this happened? She’d loved Carson when she married him, and she loved him still, but it hurt so much, what he’d done to her for so long. And she’d never understood it before, could never forgive his indiscretions, his infidelities, but she’d turned a blind eye because she wanted Bell to have what she herself had never had—a family, two parents, a house with a lawn and dinner on the table each night. She wondered if the gamble had been worth it.

And the funny thing—if you could see any humor at this point at all—was that now she’d gone and blown her own ace. It was always so clear before: Carson the infidel, Carson the adulterer, Carson the liar. Elizabeth the snow-white victim. But now she’d stooped to his level. Now she was an adulterer, too. And even
worse
—unlike Carson, she’d played with more than sex. She’d played with love. And she’d done it with the one person Carson could never forgive her for. Or could he? Could he forgive? Could she?

Elizabeth, an adulterer. Carson and Frank, brawling like thugs in the muddy drive. Mac Weeden off to the clinic. Blood mixed with rain, palms burning. What were they all coming to?

She sat on the couch nearly motionless for what felt like a long, long time, but when she finally rose she saw it wasn’t yet three o’clock. When the knock came she expected Sofia and Bell, so she wiped her eyes and then pulled the door open, and she blinked to see Susan Holm standing on the doorstep, a bottle of Shiraz in one hand and a corkscrew in the other.

“I’ve been hearing things,” Susan said.

“Come in,” Elizabeth said. She stepped back and pulled the door wide, and she was surprised to find that she was actually glad to see Susan, glad to see someone who wasn’t a Bravo, who wasn’t
entirely
crazy, even though Susan had been shooting resentful looks her way ever since grade school. “Like what?” Elizabeth said.

“Like all of it,” Susan said. “Like cheating husbands and broken hearts and stolen money. You know, the usual stuff.” Susan walked to the kitchen, nosed around in the cabinets until she found the goblets, then uncorked the wine bottle and poured two generous glasses.

“You do seem to be in the know,” Elizabeth conceded.

Susan shook her head. “It’s these Bravos, girl. They’ll be the end of all of us.” She sighed and pushed the glass of wine to Elizabeth.

“It’s pretty early,” Elizabeth said, looking at her watch, but she took the glass.

“Extenuating circumstances,” Susan said. “I’m sorry about Arla, Elizabeth. I know you loved her.”

Elizabeth looked across the condo. Arla’s Felix clock tocked in the hallway. “I did,” she said quietly. “I really did.”

Upstairs, in another condo, a TV blared. It sounded like a soap opera. The music swelled, dropped, swelled again, framing an argument. Man, woman, man, woman.

Elizabeth sipped her wine and regarded Susan. “So what’s this all about, Susan?” she said. “You coming over? I mean, I gotta be honest. I didn’t think you liked me very much.”

Susan frowned, tipped her head. “Oh, of course I like you, Elizabeth. I guess I just didn’t like how much some
other
people liked you.” She tapped a long fingernail on her wineglass, and Elizabeth felt her stomach clench with shame. Oh, God,
Frank
. Could Susan know? About her night of the acrobats? She couldn’t. Could she? Susan grinned then, and lifted the glass to her lips, and Elizabeth willed herself to relax. Nobody knew. She reached over and swept up a tangle of hair ties Bell had left strewn on the countertop. And nobody ever would.

“But that’s not fair to you,” Susan continued. “I suppose I’m finally growing up, Elizabeth. And anyway, I think I’ve got a new guy. It’s time for me to move on.”

“Amen, sister,” Elizabeth said. “I think it’s time for all of us to move on.”

“You, too?” Susan said. “Like, move on from Carson?” She cocked her head, looked hard at Elizabeth.