Lookaway, Lookaway (30 page)

“It’s a nuanced position so, perhaps, you won’t be able to understand it,” Kate began, as Bo nudged her with his leg under the table. “I am pro-choice but very much anti-abortion.”

Annie: “So … you know that desperate and poor women will have abortions but you want to reserve the right to moralize about their choice.”

Gaston settled back in his chair and laced his hands on his belly, as if enjoying a spectator sport. Dorrie and Joshua looked at each other, as if to say
Now we’re in for something.

“No moralizing afterward, of course. But some strong counseling beforehand.”

“So the Christians who gather at Planned Parenthood clinics to throw blood and yell murderer only differ with you in … in
method
.”

“They disagree with me in more than method for what they’re doing isn’t humane or Christian, and as I said but you steadfastly year in and year out refuse to hear, I am—” Kate hiccupped, inconveniently. “I am pro-choice, because I think there are situations that it is better not to bring a child into—”

“Speaking of children,” Jerene interrupted, just as determined as the women were to have this conversation that it not be had. “I note another Christmas come and gone without any grandchildren.”

Skip popped up to say he and Jerilyn were working on it. Then Jerilyn swatted his arm with a sharp look of disgust. When she moved her arm back she knocked over her water.

“Oh fuck,” she said.

“Jerilyn, my land!” said Jerene. Skip and Jerilyn piled on their napkins to soak up the water.

Gaston said, “I think there’s quite enough infantile behavior without another generation of squalling brats brought into the world. I’m anti-children. I think the Jarvis line should crawl moribund to its whimpering finale—can’t speak for the Johnstons. Diapers, four
A.M.
feedings, kids turning out to be monsters, and the spectacle of them screwing up as adults while the loved ones watch the serial fiascoes. I’d be happy to provide money for any and all abortions, just give your ol’ Uncle Gaston a call—”

Dillard: “You’ve just become so horrible, Gaston. That’s the kind of thing Daddy would say.”

Kate wasn’t through. “I’m an army brat, as you know, up from a military trailer park in Fayetteville, North Carolina, outside of Fort Bragg. I saw desperation there—desperation in women’s lives you can only imagine, Annie, although I suspect you
can’t
imagine it. Real difficult, impossible situations poor women find themselves in. With my mom dead of cancer when I was sixteen, and my father out of the picture, signing up for endless rotations of overseas duty, I ended up working part-time and living in the Cumberland County Women’s Shelter…”

Bo looked at his mother who regarded her daughter-in-law with a half-smile he had seen before. He could read his mother’s mind perfectly. Kate had committed the unpardonable sin, which was not bringing up unsavory topics or having cumulatively drunk a bottle of wine to become thin-skinned and emotional. No, she had shone a light on class, reminded everyone at the table of their privilege and wealth. He could hear his mother thinking,
It’s all well and good you came from nothing and married into something but you are not to carry the nothingness with you, drag it into our house when we have lifted you up, brought you forward. The past, and all that is low and sordid, is to be locked in the vault—just as we have no interest in reliving what transpired in the tyrannical homeplace of my upbringing, with my alcoholic father and enabling mother.
But then Kate did not support Jerene Johnston’s under-the-carpet sweeping, her codes and strictures; he suspected his wife really didn’t like her mother-in-law, even if she admired a certain fortitude about her. Maybe her feud with Annie was a substitute for the feud she dare not have with his mother.

“… and in the shelter,” Kate went on, “every day presented any number of bloodcurdling scenarios, for which sometimes the only answer was an abortion, yes.” Kate had a catch in her voice, and Bo had a horrified sense where this speech was headed.

Bo burst out, “Oh God, leave it alone, Kate!”

“I will
not,
it’s important that we talk about this.”

He felt a tide overtake him, saying intemperately what he would not say, had not said to her in private, now at the dinner table in front of the people he would least like to hear him say it. “Why can’t you let this topic go? It’s just like at church where they hate our guts because you cannot stop giving your complete exhaustive opinion when it’s not appropriate. The Women’s Circle and you going on about protesting the war, and they have sons in the military but your opinion
just has to
keep coming. You’re as bad as Annie in your way—”

Annie: “Shut up, Bo. I love talking to Kate—she’s the only one who’ll talk about anything real in this whole family!”

Bo snapped back, “You don’t like talking to Kate, you want to annihilate her rhetorically, like you do all of us. We all get to be crushed under the weight of your critical opinion no matter what we do. Forgive me if I don’t think your life has cornered the market on perfection.” Bo hopelessly deflected his temper to Annie but he knew he had done damage to Kate, and wished he could be alone with her.

“Oh I don’t claim to be perfect, but I’d put my work over your work any day, preacherman, for the betterment of the community. I have put hundreds of Hispanic families, first-generation immigrants, middle-class blacks who’ve been shafted by the racist banking machine into their first homes, at affordable mortgages. You should see the tears of joy when they turn the key to their new homes. Out of the housing projects or the trailer parks and into a fine new home with their family—do you do anything on that level for people? Just stirring around the old lies and myths and three-thousand-year-old commandments about making graven images and thou shalt nots.”

Kate, pointing to Annie with her wineglass: “Look, sister, you don’t have the swightest—slightest li’l idea what ministering to a congregation entails. And you’ll note we don’t get rich off it, driving around in a sixty-thousand-dollar car for all our good deeds.”

Annie: “If you don’t like the rich, you shouldn’t have married into a rich family,
sis-ter.
Now as for what you were saying about abortion…”

Kate was weepy again. “I could give you an example of one … one sixteen-year-old girl, father in the army—”

Bo: “Katie, please, it’s Christmas. Let’s just…”

A very strange silence settled on the table. Then Annie pounced:

“So you had one. You had an abortion when you were sixteen.”

Joshua and Dorrie simultaneously protested, this is nothing you have to talk about, no reason to pursue this topic, pass the rolls, pass the butter—

Annie went on. “I support you! If you were a teenager with no family around you, you no doubt made the right decision in your circumstances. I would hope you could make this decision without some church-person trying to talk you out of it and making the experience even more miserable than it was.”

Kate stood up.

“Katie, it’s all right, just sit down and—”

“No,” she said, past any emotion. “I’m going to be sick.” She ran from the table to the bathroom, leaving them in silence. There was the faint sound of retching from the bathroom.

No one said anything.

Perhaps, thought Bo, the worst was over.

Annie then said, “I had an abortion when I was in my twenties,” causing Aunt Dillard to gasp a second time.

“Oh for Christ’s sake,” Duke muttered.

Gaston looked delighted, mumbling, “This just gets better and better,” and poured some more red wine into his glass.

Josh put his head in his hands; Dorrie looked to the floor; Dillard gasped. Was this
ever
classic Annie, Bo thought. Kate’s admission made her the center of focus, the authority on the radical topic at the table, so Annie had to pull even.

“It was when my marriage to Destin was over and I became pregnant, despite my usual regimen of precautions. It would have extended the marriage falsely. I couldn’t have given it up for adoption because I’m sure Destin and his family would want the child—”

“But that was the solution right there,” Dillard broke in. “That child could’ve had a home.”

“And that child would know his mother wanted nothing to do with him, and I would be tied to Destin for the rest of my life. My twenty-eight-year-old life with no job and no money and my only choice of coming back here and being the pregnant divorced woman living off my parents and handing a baby over to my ex-husband who, by the way, would be a rotten father.”

“Of course, you could have come home in those circumstances,” Duke said soothingly.

And then Jerilyn, whom no one had noticed, spoke shrilly, verging on hysteria. “Oh that’s just fine! That’s just fucking great!” Now she was standing, swaying … Skip reached up to steady her and she swatted his hands away, glaring now at her mother: “You order
me
to get rid of my baby because ‘think of your father, think how disappointed he’ll be’! But Daddy wouldn’t have cared—and of course, Annie…”

Skip was trying to steady and silence her. “Now Jeri, we swore we weren’t going to tell anyone about our little incident—”

“Oh it was a little incident for you, but it was a big fucking incident for me! You weren’t the one with a vacuum up inside you…”

Duke was stricken, first looking at Jerilyn, then Jerene, who apparently knew all about it and had kept it secret from him, then Skip. It was easier to look at Skip than Jerilyn, so suddenly everyone turned to him.

Skip: “Um, it was like junior year. We used protection but…”

Jerilyn was swaying; she turned too quickly and knocked over her chair. Skip reached up to pull her back, so she wouldn’t fall with it. He looked guilty and babbled for leniency though no one was accusing him of anything: “Jerilyn, now sit down, you’re gonna fall—give me your hand.”

“Don’t you touch me!”

Aunt Dillard: “I know what! Why don’t we all just … just let’s all just stop talking abortions, how ’bout we all do that?”

Joshua: “Jerilyn, I’m so sorry—”

Annie: “Why should any of you be sorry? Having a child you don’t want derails your entire life. Did Mom actually drive you to the clinic?”

Jerilyn ran from the room; Skip followed close behind.

“Does anyone,” Dillard rambled, but more calmly, “truly understand the concept of ‘none of your business’ in this family? Hm? These are all private matters, and it used to be considered terrible manners to talk politics or mention body parts at a dinner table. Civilized people down South were trained not to do it!” She started swaying dangerously in her chair. Bo moved into Kate’s chair to reach out an arm and steady her. Dillard, tearing up, muttered, “Maybe if I’d gotten rid of Christopher, my life would have been much happier.”

Bo moved the wineglass she was reaching for out of her grasp. Dillard stifled a sob, and lifted the napkin to dab her eyes. Bo sighed: it was now officially worse than last year’s Christmas dinner.

There was the punctuating sound of china smashing and everyone turned to Jerene, who had slammed a Christmas-patterned plate onto the edge of the table, shattering it. It had the treble sound of glass breaking.

Bo reflected inconsequentially that it must be really fine porcelain. No one breathed.

Then they watched as she broke a second plate.

“Apparently,” she said calmly, crisp and clear, unfueled by even a drop of wine, “the idea that I could sit here in peace with my siblings and children and my husband and have a nice, quiet, respectful Christmas dinner for the holidays, after all the work Alma and I have done, is an impossible Christmas wish.”

No one looked at Jerene. A mixture of shame, embarrassment, and abject fear seized the table; even Bo’s father was avoiding his wife’s eyes. Bo may have been the first to sneak a look at his mother, who presided at the end of the table with her level, inscrutable stare. She sat back into her chair, returning to her serious serenity.

“Well,” she said, cutting the silence. “I see why we have no grandchildren, with everyone aborting their children left and right.”

Gaston snickered. It was a dark joke but no one else dared laugh.

“Maybe Joshua and Dorrie are my last hope. Everyone knows there’s nothing more cute in this world than a mixed-race child.”

Annie, now wishing she had not played the abortion card, said quietly, “That’s a little patronizing, Mother.”

Dorrie cleared her throat. “But it’s true. Mixed-race babies are pretty damn cute.”

Silence.

“I’m gay,” said Joshua.

More silence.

“Hm, I was beginning to wonder if you even knew,” mumbled Uncle Gaston.

Dorrie raised her hand. “I’m gay, too, let’s just get that out there.”

“But you…” Duke Johnston sputtered out, sinking back in his chair. “You spend so much time together.”

Nervous laughter from Joshua. “Yeah, but not … you know, screwing.”

There was a snore. Dillard, crumpled into herself, was asleep (or passed out from pills and wine) in her chair.

Jerene brought out slowly, gently, “People are mistaken about these things all the time, Joshua.”

Annie: “Oh for the love of God, Mother, he’s gay gay gay! He’s never had a girlfriend! His hair, his clothes, his…”

Then there was a
POP
.

And then there was a thud, of something, someone falling.

Dorrie asked, “Was that…”

Joshua followed up. “Was that a gun?”

Uncle Gaston sprang out of the chair. “Good God, Duke—”

“The pistols!” Duke sprang from the chair.

First Gaston then Duke then Jerene, all briskly walked-ran to the study … it was locked. Duke knocked loudly. “Who’s in there? Jerilyn? What’s going on in there?”

They all gathered at the door.

There was the sound of Jerilyn crying.

“Did you…” Duke was almost unable to find his voice. “Did you hurt yourself, sweetheart?”

“Open the goddam door this minute,” ordered Jerene, and that got the job done.

The lock turned slowly, then the door opened on Duke’s Civil War Study to reveal Jerilyn with her blouse unbuttoned, holding a Civil War pistol. Skip, thank God, was nowhere to be found … Uh-oh, there was a groan behind the sofa. Skip was lying there, Skip was shot. Above the heart, and bleeding, and he was passing out.