Jane Austen Girl (16 page)

“Hah,” Grier said. “I will if I eat like that very often.”

“Guess you don’t want to split a sundae then?” Andy said, teasing.

“I don’t have an inch of room,” Grier said.

“Me, either, actually,” Andy agreed.

They left the restaurant and drove around for an hour or so, Andy proudly pointing out house after house that her dad had built over the past several years. They were impressive to say the least, styles varying from Cape Cod to English Tudor to Old World French. The one ingredient they had in common was size. They were enormous, ten thousand square feet plus. Grier marveled that such wealth had found its way to rural Timbell Creek.

“Your dad does incredible work,” she said.

“He’s pretty smart,” Andy agreed. “He gets on my nerves a lot, but he always tries to be there for me.”

“You can’t ask for much more than that,” Grier said.

“He could let up on my curfew.”

They both laughed then, and Grier pointed the car back toward town.

They finished the drive mostly in silence, the music blaring, Sebbie snuggled up asleep now on Andy’s lap. Grier wondered how the two of them had gotten so comfortable with each other so fast.

When they pulled up at the Inn where Andy had left her truck, Grier turned the music off and said, “Thank you for that. I really enjoyed it.”

“Me, too,” Andy said, looking as if she wanted to say more, but bending down to give Sebbie a kiss on the head. “Later, sugar.”

Sebbie sat on the seat and wagged his tail, clearly sad to see her go.

I don’t want to be bitter. I just want to forget.

Grier – at twenty-five to the first therapist she allowed herself to be honest with

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Grier remembered the Sunset Years Retirement Home as a place where old people sat on the front porch in rocking chairs, looking as if they had nothing left to do in this life but wait for the end. Growing up, she’d driven by with her mother nearly every morning on the way to school. She actually remembered asking once why people had to end up at a place like that, and her mother had said, “Well, I suppose it’s when they don’t have any place else to go.”

The memory of that answer arrived with a stab of guilt sharp enough to bring an ache to Grier’s midsection. If her mother really was living there now, and she supposed it was true, was that the point she had reached? No place else to go?

The straight county road gave way to curves and hills, the asphalt narrowing in this more rural section of Timbell Creek. Grier drove without letting herself think about what she would do when she arrived at the home, telling herself she just needed to see it.

But when the small sign – Sunset Retirement Home - appeared on the right hand side of the road, she flicked the blinker, and turned into the parking lot, gravel crunching beneath her tires.

The front porch was empty now at four o’clock. She debated putting the car in reverse, backing out, and leaving as unnoticed as she had arrived. But something kept her hand from reaching for the gearshift. Sebbie whined and looked at the door as if to say, “Are we going in?”

“I don’t know,” Grier said. He whimpered again, and she turned off the ignition, rolling the key between both palms. Before she could decide against it, she reached for Sebbie and got out of the car. Her feet led her to the front porch as if they had a mind of their own, and then refused to go a step beyond the main entrance door.

A woman with very short, very bleached blonde hair appeared at the screen door, her smile wide and welcoming. “Hello there, can I help you?”

“I’m not sure,” Grier said.

“Are you here to see someone?” she asked patiently.

“Maxine McCallister.”

“Maxine?” The woman lit up. “Why, she’ll love having a visitor. Can I tell her who’s here?”

Grier swallowed hard. “Her daughter.”

 The woman blinked once, as if surprised, and then said, “Well, sure, I’ll be right back.”

It was clear to Grier that the woman had no idea Maxine had a daughter. She felt like running, but her feet had turned to concrete blocks. She stood planted while two men ninety years old or better, and three humpback little women shuffled into the open room just inside the front door. One of the men looked up, smiled a gap toothed smile, and winked at her. Grier smiled back at him, and felt the hard knot in her chest loosen just a bit.

Two or three more minutes passed before the woman reappeared and said, “Your mama’s not feeling too great right now. Would you mind coming back to her room?”

It took every ounce of courage Grier possessed to force an answer from her mouth. “Yes, yes, sure.”

The woman waved a hand for her to follow, and then led the way down a long white hall, rooms laid out on either side in hospital fashion. Through the doorways, Grier could see that each was a mini-home to its occupants. Crocheted throws in rainbow colors lay at the foot of several beds, homey reminders maybe of things each individual had made over the years. Just the sight of them made Grier swallow back a thick lump in her throat.

The nurse in the Hawaiian-pattern shirt looked back as if to make sure Grier was still following, and said, “She’s just down here.” The woman turned into the last room to the left at the end of the hall, and Grier felt for a moment like she would be physically sick if she stepped over that threshold. But she tucked Sebbie up tighter under her arm, blinked, and stepped inside the doorway.

Her mother sat in a hospital style bed against three stacked pillows, an IV attached to her left arm. “Grier,” she said, her voice an instant reminder of the unfiltered cigarettes she had smoked when Grier was a little girl. Grier could almost smell them now, remembering the early morning car rides. Her mother would drop her off at school on her way to the factory, windows rolled down, even in December to let out the heavy smoke.

“Hello, Mama,” she said, hardly recognizing the two-word croak as her own voice.

Her mother stopped, and then said, “Oh. It’s so good to see you, Grier.”

“How are you?” Grier said, even though she heard the lameness of the question.

Her mother’s smile appeared forced when she said, “I’m good. How are you?”

“Okay,” she managed, beginning to feel that this was a very bad idea.

“Come in and sit down, please.”

Grier walked over and took the chair by the window. The room smelled of lemon-scented cleaner. And even though the building had clearly seen better years, there wasn’t a speck of dirt, dust, or grime anywhere to be seen.

“Who’s your friend?” her mother asked.

“This is Sebbie.”

Her mother reached out, and Sebbie licked her hand, wagging his tail. “Aren’t you a cute young man?”

Sebbie wagged harder, as if he liked the sound of her voice.

“I’m sorry for just showing up like that the other day,” she said then, looking up at Grier.

Grier shook her head and shrugged. “It caught me off guard, I guess.”

“I should’ve known better.”

“It’s okay,” Grier said.

“No, it really wasn’t. But, I’m glad you came today.”

Grier nodded, looked away, then glanced back and said, “What happened, Mama? Why are you here?”

Her mother glanced at the IV, shook her head, and said, “You know, the years just catch up with you eventually, honey.”

The endearment struck Grier like a slap, reminding her of her anger. She sat straighter in her chair. “I’m sorry,” she said.

“It’s not your fault. I earned ending up here, I guess.”

The admission surprised Grier to the point that she couldn’t think of a single thing to say. Memories of her mother’s drinking binges, the faces of men she had long ago forced herself to forget rose up like bannered reminders of the choices that surely had contributed to her mother’s current state of health. But those reminders came with no sense of satisfaction in knowing that there had eventually been a price to pay.

They sat for a few moments, simply looking at one another, words eluding Grier altogether.

“Is there anything you need?” she finally asked.

Her mother shook her head. “No, they’re…they’re really good to me here.”

A man appeared in the doorway just then. Tall, dark-skinned, slumped over at the shoulders. He looked at Grier and said, “Well, Maxine, it looks like you got a visitor.”

“I do,” her mother said. “Come on in, Hatcher, I’d like for you to meet my daughter Grier.”

Grier heard the note of pride in her mother’s voice. She realized this was the first time she ever remembered hearing that. Tears rolled up, and she blinked them back, standing and extending a hand to the man.

“Hatcher Morris,” he said.

“Grier McAllister.”

“Awful nice to meet you ma’am,” he said. “Heard a lot of good things about you.”

Grier glanced at her mother, surprised by this.

“She’s kept up with you over the years, you know,” he said.

Grier had no idea what to say. She couldn’t imagine how her mother kept up with her. It wasn’t like she was famous and in the newspaper every day or anything.

As if sensing her questions, her mother said, “Amazing what you can find out at the county library. I just wanted to know you were all right.”

“Well, she sure is every bit as pretty as you said, Maxine,” Hatcher said.

“Isn’t she though?”

As if she had suddenly stepped into some kind of dream from which she would surely at any moment wake up, Grier felt dizzy and disoriented, her breathing short and shallow. “I think I have to go now,” she said quickly, picking up Sebbie and turning for the door.

“Grier!” her mother called out.

But Grier simply said, “I can’t. I can’t.”

She brushed past Hatcher, and started running down the hall. And it wasn’t until she was in her car, driving fast down the county road that she felt as if she could begin to breathe again.

But her heart still raced as if propelled by jet fuel.

In reality, Grier supposed the fuel was fury. Old. Buried. And still able to revive itself despite the deep hole she had spent so many years digging for it.

Grier could hardly reconcile the woman in that retirement home as the same woman who had brought home new man after new man, ever in search of the right one, the one that would last, be the kind of daddy she’d wanted for Grier.

And they never were. Not for more than a couple of weeks. A month, at best. A breakup was always followed by a new hairdo, a new dress and a string of late nights making the rounds at local watering holes until the new Mr. Right had been lassoed and brought home to introduce to Grier.

By the time she was thirteen years old, Grier did her best to avoid those introductions. Eventually not bothering to get to know them in any capacity, since their shelf life barely outlasted the milk in their refrigerator.

Grier had just turned eighteen when one of those new catches came into her room one night after he and her mama had closed down The Tank, a bar with the watermark of serving its customers until they could no longer say, “Another round, please,” in intelligible English.

Grier had woken up to find his liquored breath choking her lungs like the thick black smoke of burning tires. It was like having a whale on top of her, and for a moment, she could do nothing but panic, unable to breathe or even to get out a scream.

He’d yanked up her nightgown and unzipped his pants when a sound erupted from her throat that she didn’t recognize at first as coming from her. Rage. Pure rage. She’d shoved him off her with the same kind of superhuman surge of strength that might allow a mother to save her child from the imminent jaws of death.

He’d rolled backwards and hit the carpet of her bedroom floor with a thud that brought her mama running down the short hallway between their rooms, her voice floating out ahead of her. “Walt, where are you, honey? I just went to the bathroom and you disappeared—”

Grier had never forgotten the way her mother stood swaying in the muted light of the doorway, the look on her face falling somewhere between disappointment and disbelief.

Her mouth hung slack, the red lipstick she’d left the house in earlier that night now smeared above and below in sickening evidence of what they’d been doing before the Whale had decided to pay Grier a visit during their intermission.

Grier had pulled her knees up under her nightgown, turned her head and squeezed her eyes shut, praying as hard as she knew how that when she opened them, they would both be gone. And they were.

The next morning, she packed what she could fit inside her suitcase and walked out of town with it in one hand and a grocery bag full of books she loved in the other.

The mother she’d left behind bore little resemblance to the mother she’d just seen. And yet, they were one and the same, weren’t they?

The question felt too big to answer.

And so she just drove.

“Find your own girlfriend, butt-face!”

Second-grader Darryl Lee to Third-grader Bobby Jack during lunch period when Cassidy Frampton couldn’t decide who she liked best

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

It was nearly eight o’clock when Bobby Jack left the spec house at the lake. He’d stayed late to make sure the last bit of roof got completed, before the rain they were calling for set in tomorrow.

He was fiddling with the radio as he passed by the log house structure of one of the county’s most frequented beer joints. Bobby Jack nearly missed the BMW parked smack dab in front. Seeing it in the corner of his eye, he automatically hit the brake, even as common sense waved its caution flag.

 He rolled on, but then just as quickly, swerved into the Babbett’s Hair Salon parking lot, threw it in reverse, backed up, and wheeled into the Beer Boot.

He could hear the crowd from his lowered window, and already it was pretty rocking. What was Grier McAllister doing here? He sat for a moment under the immediate realization that it was none of his business what she was doing here.

Still, he threw a glance around the parking lot for Darryl Lee’s truck. Relief washed through him when he didn’t see it. He could hear the band kick into a new set. Drums crashing and banging before a Jason Aldean wanna-be slammed into a country rocker. As if his boots had a mind of their own, Bobby Jack found himself getting out of the truck and heading inside, not giving in to doubts about the wisdom of it.