Nan's Story (22 page)

“Want one?” he asked, offering the pack to Nan. She shook her head, not feeling strong enough to hold it between her fingers. Buddy lit his, puffing until a small cloud of smoke filled the space between the two of them.

“You were pretty out of it when I found you, but you told me enough to figure out what happened. Once I had that, I knew I had to get you out of there. First things first, you know? I was a little scared to move you, but I had to get you out of there…” Buddy repeated, trailing off.

“What happened to Heath? Is he still there?” Nan asked with apprehension.

Buddy inhaled deeply from his cigarette a few times, collecting his thoughts before answering her.

“He’s gone Nan. Listen, I don’t want to tell you too much, but you gotta’ at least know the bare bones. After I got you into the car, I drove around for a little while trying to figure out what to do, but I knew I didn’t have a lot of time. I stopped at a pay phone to call a friend and get some, you know,
advice
.”

“Oh shit, you
told
someone about this?” Nan asked incredulously.

“Don’t freak out Nan. I mean, do you really think I’d do something to make this whole thing worse?”

“Of course not. I’m sorry. What happened?”

“Well, this ‘friend’ owes me a couple of favors, you know?”

Nan didn’t quite know all the way, but she understood that in Buddy’s job down at the docks, sometimes you had to look the other way. You could do it willingly, like Buddy, and rack up a few ‘favors’ in the process, or you could do it with someone’s hands around your neck, twisting forcefully. Either way you did it because not doing it was never an option. Nan nodded. Who was she to pass judgment on Buddy anyway?

“So, he gives me the address of this guy,” Buddy said, waving his hands around the room they were in, “and offered to clean up the mess.”

“Clean up the mess?” Nan asked, wondering, and yet knowing full well, what that meant.

“After I got you here,” Buddy continued without answering Nan, “and was sure you were going to be okay, I went back to the house.”

Buddy put his cigarette out in an ashtray on the desk.

“It’s kind of funny, you know? On my way there, I found myself reciting the 23
^rd
psalm. I didn’t even know I remembered the words ‘til that minute, and the only time I ever said it out loud was the three AA meetings I went to. Yeah, I went,” Buddy said in response to Nan’s raised eyebrows. “Decided it weren’t really for me,” he explained before going on.

“The car was gone, I noticed that the minute I pulled up out front. I didn’t bother to knock and the door was still unlocked, so I went in.”

Nan saw the Adam’s apple in Buddy’s throat bob as he searched for more words. The pain in her abdomen had subsided to a dull thud, but was now accompanied by a small stab of anticipation. Whatever Buddy would tell her next would dictate the rest of her life.

“It was empty. The whole house was empty, including the bedroom. No bed, no chair, no nightstand. Even the carpet had been pulled up. The walls were still damp in spots like they’d been just washed, but there was no blood. There was not one single, solitary drop of blood in that entire place.”

“Cleaned up the mess…” Nan whispered.

“Cleaned up the mess,” Buddy confirmed.

“Where did they take him?”

“I have no idea and don’t wanna’ know. And neither do you, Nan,” Buddy said with finality. “It’s over. If anyone asks, you just say you left him, and leave it at that. Once you get better, I’m taking you home.”

“Where’s home?” Nan asked, realizing that she didn’t really have one now.

“To ma’s,” he said as Nan started to cry.

“Look Nan, it’s just best if you lay low, you know? Stay at ma’s for a while, let some time pass. Why’s that so bad, huh?”

“It’s not bad Buddy, I’m just not sure that mama wants me back. Or CJ for that matter. Isn’t he really better off without me? Jesus, look at my life?
Look at my life!
” Nan said, her voice rising.

“You didn’t see her face when she asked me to come find you,” Buddy replied. “She didn’t just ask, she
begged
. And CJ? He’s still a baby. Give him a couple weeks and he’ll never even remember you were gone. It’s best this way Nan. Look, you’re gettin’ a second chance. Don’t blow it. Just move on with your life and don’t look back. Don’t look back.”

Chapter 15

Charlie was devastatingly quiet as Nan finished her story. She hadn’t looked up at his face once as she spoke, instead lurching forward until he knew everything. Nan imagined she could feel Charlie’s gaze at the top of her head, his eyes narrow with revulsion.

“Charlie? Please say something,” she asked her cheek still on Charlie’s chest.

“I’m…I don’t…” Charlie stammered.

Nan lifted her head and Charlie turned away. She felt something sharp in her ribs when she realized he couldn’t meet her eyes.

“Hey,” she started softly. “It’s okay. It’s horrible, I know.”

“Yeah,” Charlie agreed staring up at the ceiling.

“I…I didn’t mean for it to happen. Charlie, you have to believe me. I didn’t know what else to do…” she said trailing off.

He didn’t respond and Nan felt the pain in her ribs twist uncomfortably.

“I’m sorry Charlie.” Nan’s voice rushed out in a hurry, desperate to fill the empty space between them. “I’m so sorry.”

“There’s just so much Nan,” Charlie replied after another full minute. “So much to think about…”

He cupped both hands behind his head and continued to look straight up.

Old, familiar guilt wrapped itself around her shoulders and she dropped her face in disgrace. Nan wasn’t stupid. She knew that shooting her husband, regardless of the circumstances, wasn’t her only sin, or even perhaps the worst thing she’d done. Well before that blood soaked moment, Nan had turned her back on her son. She’d let her own need for comfort smother her maternal instinct, discarding CJ as blithely as tossing a smoked cigarette from a car window. Factor in the abortion and Nan saw no possible way Charlie could forgive her.

“I know,” she moaned. “I didn’t want to tell you, but there was no other way. I thought I owed you an explanation.”

He didn’t answer. Nan sat up abruptly feeling humiliated yet a bit defensive as she fished around the bed and floor looking for her robe. The speech she’d been working on all afternoon, the one where she’d have to tell him they couldn’t be together, had ultimately proved unnecessary. Charlie wasn’t asking her to be with him. Nan’s story had given him everything he needed to walk away, maybe even run, and never look back.

Nan found what she was looking for and stood, letting the robe drape loosely around her body. She didn’t bother tying it but held it together with her fingers, giving her shaking hands something meaningful to do. Charlie sat up and Nan turned her back as he dressed.

His footsteps softly crossed the room and she heard the sound of the door opening and closing. Nan waited until she was sure he left the house before sliding to the floor where she sat for hours, sometimes crying, sometimes staring vacantly into the dark of her room, before falling into a welcome, dreamless sleep.

Nan awoke to a gray murky light, her body stiff and cold. She saw by the clock on the nightstand that it was only six-thirty and cocked her head to listen for CJ. Satisfied he was still asleep, she stood up and let her robe drop from her shoulders in a pool on the floor at her feet. Nan looked down at her curves, where not even twelve hours before, Charlie’s hands had explored freely. She tried to impress the memory of that feeling in her mind, locking it up as if a treasure she might be able to peek at once in awhile at some future point.

Nan was hoping that by the time Elsie and Joe returned home around noon she’d have herself mostly intact, but the mirror told her she’d have her work cut out for her. As she looked into her own eyes by the light of pre-dawn, she saw them fill with tears and watched as they rolled down her cheeks. She wondered if it was possible to never stop crying and imagined being buried someday with tears still wet on her face.

CJ woke up around seven, smiling and chattering away. He’d dreamt about sailing and Nan’s heart twisted as he recounted scenes similar to those from their picnic a few days before. When he asked her if Charlie would be coming over that day, Nan dug her fingernails into her palms to steady her voice as she told him she didn’t think so. Thankfully, CJ didn’t press further and they went about their morning together.

Nan was curled up in one of the big wicker loveseats on the porch watching CJ play in his yard when Elsie and Joe pulled into the driveway a few hours later. She’d been again thinking about getting a job, and maybe eventually, a place for her and CJ. Nan didn’t move to greet her mother and Joe, never taking her gaze from her son.

“Nan?” Elsie said, rounding the corner of the house. Joe was at the car struggling to pull a bulky grandfather clock from the back seat.

“Hi,” Nan said, glancing quickly up at her mother. It only took that one brief look for Elsie to see that something was very wrong with her daughter.

“What’s happened?” Elsie asked, appearing alarmed that Nan might have hurt herself. Or God forbid, CJ.

Nan couldn’t answer, but instead dropped her head to her chest and started to sob. Elsie was speechless at the ache in Nan’s weeping and sat down on the cushion next to her. She wrapped her arms around Nan, pulling her close, and stroked her hair.

“Shhh. It’s okay Nan,” Elsie repeated over and over. She waved her other hand at Joe, pointing at CJ, indicating he should come get the little boy. Nan never lifted her head from her mother’s shoulder when Joe called for CJ to help him at the car. As CJ passed by his mother and grandmother locked in a rare embrace, his eyes grew wide with wonder.

Once he was out of earshot, Elsie held Nan’s face in her hands, looking her daughter in the eye.

“Tell me what’s going on,” she said, and Nan spilled everything. Since she had never spoken to her mother about the events that brought her back to Portsmouth, it hadn’t occurred to her that Elsie didn’t know all the details. Nan assumed that Buddy told her, but by the expression on her mother’s face, it was clear he hadn’t. In pure Elsie style though, she didn’t skip a beat.

“And what did Charlie say when you told him?”

“Nothing. He said nothing,” Nan replied quietly. “He just left.”

“Hmm,” Elsie murmured as she looked into the distance. It was impossible for Nan to know what her mother was thinking.

“Jesus mama, I’ve lost him. Everything I touch falls apart,” Nan wailed. As was the norm, her mother’s response caught Nan by surprise.

“Oh spare me the pity party Nancy,” Elsie said sharply, sitting back against the cushion.

“What do you mean?” Nan asked.

“Well, it’s no secret that much of what you’ve been through you brought on yourself, I won’t argue with you there. But what really irks me is
why
? I want you to tell me what I did so wrong in raising you that you believed yourself no more deserving than the likes of Heath Merrill. I want you to tell me why you found yourself so loathsome that you wouldn’t allow yourself to be loved by your child. And, while we’re at it, I want you to tell me why you have only been with men you couldn’t love, and won’t fight at all for the one you
do
?”

Nan had always viewed her mistakes as hurting those around her and had waded through a river of guilt over it. But she hadn’t ever considered that the person her actions hurt most was herself. This was new and forced Nan to reexamine her actions in a whole new light.

“Because I hated you,” Nan said, looking at Elsie for reaction to the words that seemed to have floated out of her mouth on their own. Elsie just nodded and looked straight ahead.

“After daddy died, I felt so lost. I was so angry with you for never seeing the good in him. And then to run off and marry Joe like that…it was so easy for you to bury daddy and move on, as if you’d simply been waiting for that day to happen.” Nan spoke quickly, saying things as they came to mind without giving herself a chance to force them back down the poisoned well inside her.

“I married Eddie because I was pregnant, you know that now,” Nan went on. “I didn’t love him and don’t think I ever could have, but I wanted out. I just wanted out of this house and away from you and Joe. I wanted to make sure that I left before you stopped loving me too.”

This last statement turned Elsie’s head.

“How on earth could you believe I’d ever stop loving you? You’re my
daughter
. You can never stop loving your child Nan. Be honest with yourself for a minute. Even when you pulled as far away as you could from CJ, did you ever stop
loving
him? You might have been able to hide from it, but don’t tell me it wasn’t always there.”

A sense of relief flooded Nan as she thought about what her mother was saying. Yes, she might have walked away from her child, but Elsie was right. Nan never stopped loving him. That knowledge in and of itself didn’t snuff Nan’s culpability completely, but it brought her a measure comfort just the same.

“And as far as your father is concerned, make no mistake about it Nancy, I loved that man with all my heart. It tore me up inside to watch him and his affair with Jim Beam. Sure, there were times when I was mad enough to skin him alive. You wouldn’t remember how he was before he started drinking so heavily, but I’ll tell you, very few men could make me laugh the way your father could. He was smart, could fix anything with his two hands and a screwdriver and told a story like nobody’s business. Even once he went to pot, I still loved the man to the degree that for a brief moment after he died, I wished I had gone with him. But I didn’t. I was here with you and your brothers and decades left to go.”