Sister Mine (30 page)

Chapter Twenty-Nine

C
LAY IS WAITING FOR ME
outside the J&P Building when I arrive.

I'm in a pretty good mood all things considered. I left mother and daughter sleeping soundly. I pulled a drawer out of my dresser, emptied it, and made a makeshift crib for the baby.

Shannon still didn't have any interest in holding her or feeding her but she promised me she'd take care of her if she woke up while I was gone. She said the baby needed to be in good shape for when she sold her. It was the only moment during the couple hours after the birth where I felt a twinge of dread.

Fanci agreed to stay and watch over them for a nominal fee. I made her call and clear it with her dad, who wasn't home. I told her to keep all the doors locked and not to open them for anyone and if a bald guy with a big black mustache showed up to call 911 first, then me.

Kenny listened solemnly to my instructions and informed me they'd be fine as long as Fanci had her stick.

Seeing Clay, I'm flooded with memories of him as an infant. He was a good baby. He hardly ever cried. He had the most intense gaze. Whenever I'd talk to him, he'd furrow his silky little brow and clench and unclench his tiny fists while he studied every part of my face.

I thought he was trying to commit it to memory and I'd assure him that I'd always be around. I wouldn't ever leave him. He wouldn't ever have to try and remember me.

I'm feeling so good I can almost even be optimistic about our meeting with Cam Jack. Maybe something positive can come from finally having the truth out in the open. I don't have anything to fear. This is my boy. He will understand.

“I still don't get this. Why all the secrecy? Why are we seeing Cam Jack in the first place?” he asks me again as we're walking up the shadowy, silent, plush staircase.

Despite my mood, I'm still not brimming with enough confidence to tell him the truth, although I know I should and I know I'm going to regret not doing it.

“What's it about? Do you know him?”

“Not exactly.”

Cam's office door is wide open tonight.

From the moment we crest the staircase, we can see him at the end of the corridor, sitting behind his massive desk, talking on the phone.

We pause in the doorway and he waves us in.

“I don't get it,” he says into the phone. “The poster says, ‘How can there be too many children? That's like saying there's too many flowers.' What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

He listens for a moment.

“There sure as hell can be too many flowers. There can be too many kids, too. People in general. You ever been to India?”

He listens again, nodding.

“No. I haven't either but I've seen pictures.”

More listening.

“Well, it's not my concern, Bill. Not my concern at all. Just thought I'd give you some feedback long as I had you on the horn. You take care now.”

He hangs up and smiles at us.

“Friend of mine,” he explains. “Running for Congress. Has these pro-lifers supporting him. Some of the slogans they come up with.”

He shakes his head, then gets up from his desk. He's in a pair of navy suit pants, a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows, and a gold power tie loose around his neck. He walks toward Clay to shake his hand.

“So here he is. One of Laurel County's finest.”

I hold my breath. I don't know what I expect to happen when they make physical contact, if I expect Clay to burst into flames or for a cartoon anvil to fall on Cam's head.

Nothing happens. I let out my breath.

“It's a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Jack,” Clay says innocently.

The genuine smile on his face and the sincerity in his voice make me hate myself more than I ever thought possible.

I was so caught up thinking about my own discomfort, my own shame, my own fear, I didn't think about Clay at all.

He's unprepared. I've set him up for the biggest shock of his life and he's going to experience it in front of a total stranger who's also his dad.

“Mr. Jack?” Cam asks and shoots me a questioning glance. “There's no need to be so formal. You can call me Cam.”

“Well, thank you.”

Clay looks pleased with himself.

I want to die.

“This is really a lucky coincidence for me that it turns out my mom knows you,” he continues. “I just came up with the idea a couple days ago about contacting you in the hopes that you'd help find a job for one of your former miners, Dusty Spangler. He was one of the Jolly Mount Five. He has a wife and three young children and has had a hard time getting back on his feet since the accident. He doesn't want to go back into the mines, which is understandable under the circumstances, but he knows so much about the mining profession and he's a hard worker and a quick learner. I thought maybe you could find a position for him elsewhere in your company.”

Cam gives him his full undivided attention, watching him with a kind of disbelieving curiosity, almost as if he suspected someone was going to appear with a video camera at the end of Clay's speech and announce it was all a practical joke and they'd be showing the tape at the next board meeting for a good laugh.

“Sure, sure. Why not? Here.”

He shuffles through some papers on his desk and hands Clay a notepad and a pen.

“Write down his name and phone number. I'll see what I can do.”

He glances at me while Clay's busy writing.

“You didn't tell him, did you?”

“I couldn't do it,” I reply, almost in a whisper.

“Well, then.”

Cam motions for Clay to take a seat after he takes the pad of paper back from him. He positions his bulk on the corner of his desk.

“There's no easy way to say this so I'm just going to say it: You're my son.”

Clay smiles and leans forward like he missed the punch line of a joke.

“You're my son,” Cam goes on obliviously. “Your mom and I…well, it was a long time ago.”

“What did you say?” Clay asks.

“I've said it twice already. You're my son.”

“I don't understand. I'm your son?”

He points at himself and looks at me, then back at Cam.

“And you've always known?”

“Unless your mom was lying and someone else knocked her up. She was young. I gave her the benefit of the doubt.”

Clay stands up.

“You got my mom pregnant when she was a teenager, and you didn't take any responsibility for it?”

“No one twisted her arm. It was mutual consent.”

“You didn't take any responsibility for it?” he repeats.

“Under the circumstances, we decided to be discreet.”

“We never decided anything. You decided everything,” I interject. “I was seventeen.”

Clay takes a step toward Cam. I think he might hit him. Or worse. He's also armed.

Cam doesn't sense any of the tension. He gets up from the corner of his desk and walks over to his liquor cabinet.

“That all happened a long time ago,” he says while he pours himself a drink. “It's water under the bridge. No use dwelling on it now. You can dwell on it later if you want. Right now I have a business proposition for you.”

He looks over at Clay.

“You a drinking man?”

“No,” I answer for him.

“Yes,” he says.

He pours Clay a drink, too, and takes it to him.

I don't get offered one.

“I don't know what you've heard about my health,” he says as he moves behind his desk and takes a seat, “but the bottom line is, it's not so good. I need a kidney transplant.”

He glances expectantly back and forth between Clay and me as if we're supposed to know something we don't.

“Which means I need a kidney,” he continues. “I'd be willing to pay you quite a bit. Six figures.”

“Are you crazy?” I gasp. “Are you out of your mind?”

He ignores me and speaks directly to Clay.

“What do you say? You only need one kidney.”

“There's no way,” I cry. “You think you can totally disown a child, deny he's even yours, then invite him over for a drink one night out of the blue and offer to buy a body part?”

“I have to think about it,” Clay says.

“What?” I practically shriek. “There's nothing to think about.”

Clay looks at me coldly.

“He was talking to me, Mom. Not you.”

“Good man.” Cam sits back in his big leather chair. “You think about it. I had to think about it, too. I realize I'm putting myself on the line here. Your mom wanted to keep our relationship secret forever and that was to my advantage. Now that you know we're related you can try and get an inheritance out of me and frankly, you can do whatever you want after I'm dead. Good luck fighting Rae Ann and her family.”

He holds his drink in both hands against his belly.

“The only other problem is it wasn't exactly something I wanted the general public to know about either, if you get my meaning. I thought about it long and hard. Do I want people around here to know I got myself a bastard son? That I knocked up the teenaged daughter of one of my miners? I really struggled with it. You know, the moral ramifications and all. Finally, I came to my senses. I said to myself, Hell, Cam, that was over twenty years ago. Times have changed. Plus you got more money than you know what to do with. You're as close to a king as these people'll ever see. Why would you give a good goddamn what they think? So that's where I stand on it now. You can tell whoever you want because, frankly, I don't care what people around here think of me.”

He moves forward in his chair suddenly and throws back his drink in one gulp. He sets the empty glass down on the desk like a challenge.

Clay gets up from his seat.

“Well, you don't have to worry about me saying anything because, frankly, I do care what people around here think of me.”

He puts his untouched drink down on the other side of the desk.

“And, frankly, I don't want any of them to know I'm related to you.”

         

I FOLLOW HIM
outside. He's walking, but I have to run to stay with him. He won't look at me or talk to me as we head down the street.

He stops suddenly and I end up a couple steps past him before I can correct my own momentum.

“You had no right,” he shouts at me.

His voice is angry, but his face is screwed up like he's about to cry.

“You had no right not to tell me. You knew my whole life who my father was and he was right here in the same town and you never told me. How could you do that?”

“I was protecting you,” I try to explain.

“It wasn't up to you.”

“I'm your mother. It's my job to protect you.”

“Not from my own father.”

“Yes, sometimes it is.”

“No. No. No.” He shakes his head as he chants. “Never. No one has the right to keep that information from a child. I don't care what kind of reasons you come up with. He's my father. Don't you understand what that means? You're not more important because you're my mother.”

“Are you taking his side?”

“Listen to yourself. Sides? You're always talking about sides. This isn't some kind of competition. Is that what it is to you? Even now? He hurt your ego by dumping you so you decided I'd never know who my dad is.”

“No. That's not how it happened.”

I grab his arm but he shakes me off.

“He dumped us. Don't you understand? Not just me. Us. He didn't want to have anything to do with you. I didn't care about myself. But he didn't want you. I hated him for that.”

He keeps shaking his head.

“You didn't give him a chance to even meet me.”

“He didn't want to meet you. He told me if I ever tried to see him…”

I stop myself from explaining further. I don't want to hurt him more in order to try and make my actions seem more justified.

“It was up to me to find out what kind of man he was. It wasn't up to you to decide I should never find out,” he tells me, then takes a few steps away from me.

“I thought I knew you. Now I have to look at you in a completely different way.”

“Don't say that.”

“I don't know who you are. You're not strong. A strong woman would have told her son who his father is. That takes strength and courage. You're a coward.”

The tears finally burst free. They stream down his face.

“I always thought you were so tough. Look at my mom. She doesn't need anybody. She doesn't even need a man. Even though I wished you needed a man. Even though I prayed about it and had dreams about it. Even though I would have done anything to have a dad even if he was just a stepdad. I would've even settled for a steady boyfriend I could have called Uncle Somebody.”

“Clay, I'm sorry.”

“You're not strong at all. How could you do it? Did he pay you?”

I slap him.

It's the loudest sound I've ever heard in my life. Louder than gunfire. Louder than a mine siren. Louder than the silence in our house as I lay awake waiting for my dad to come home from the bar.

I've never hit my son.

He turns and runs. It's not the first time I've seen him do it. I've seen him run off to play with his friends, run to catch the school bus, run after a pop fly, but the sight has never made me sick with grief before. He was always running toward something, not away from me.

Chapter Thirty

E
VERY LIGHT IS ON
in my house. I can see it from the road blazing behind the drooping fringe of the willow trees.

Shannon's car is gone.

The front door opens before I even park my car and Kenny and Fanci come rushing onto the porch with Gimp following arthritically behind them.

“The man with the mustache came here just like you said,” Kenny shouts at me.

I rush over to them. I kneel down and touch Kenny all over to make sure he's whole.

Fanci's dark suspicious eyes ringed in silver don't look receptive to the idea of being touched so I settle for giving her arm a quick squeeze.

“Are you okay?” I ask them.

“Yeah,” Kenny says.

“I would've called you, but they took the phones and hid them,” Fanci adds.

“Who's they?”

“Your sister and the man with the mustache.”

“His name was Dimwit,” Kenny volunteers.

“Dmitri, you idiot,” Fanci turns on him. “It's a foreign name like Jonathan.”

“He didn't hurt her, did he? Or the baby?”

“They were friends,” Kenny says confidently.

“Not really friends,” Fanci corrects him. “They got into a fight, but they definitely knew each other.”

Kenny tugs on my J&P jacket to get my attention.

“I wanted to hit her with a bottle like you said, but Fanci wouldn't let me.”

“You're too little,” she tells him, then glares at me accusingly. “I would've hit them with my stick but you made me keep it outside.”

“Thank God for that,” I say. “You can't go around hitting men with sticks.”

“Why not?”

“Because they hit back.”

I usher them both inside my house.

A delicious rich spicy smell that can only be chicken paprikash hits me the moment I open the front door. A big pot is simmering on my stove.

Fanci sees where my eyes land.

“He showed up with a bag of groceries and started cooking,” she explains. “He said he was making it for the ballerina cop, whoever that is.”

“It smells good,” Kenny informs me.

We all walk over to the stove. I raise the lid.

“It sure does,” I agree with Kenny. “Maybe we should have some.”

I get some bowls and plates down out of the cupboard and direct Fanci to the silverware drawer.

“Why don't you set the table? I'll be right back.”

I go check out Shannon's room.

All of her belongings are gone. If I didn't know Shannon I might say the room was hastily abandoned. The bed is a mess; the drawer made into a temporary crib is still sitting on the floor. But I know it would never have occurred to her to clean up after herself just as it would never have occurred to her to leave me a note. Both acts would have required her to think about me.

I walk over to the drawer and pick up the pillow I had stuffed inside it to make a mattress. I bring it to my nose and breathe in deeply. It smells like baby.

I never thought for one minute that she would try to leave so soon. I thought I'd have at least a couple days to talk her into keeping the baby and sticking around for awhile. I could barely walk from my hospital bed to the bathroom during the first twenty-four hours after Clay's birth, let alone get in a car and drive.

I glance around the room and feel the same helpless, hopeless emptiness and failure I felt eighteen years ago after Shannon disappeared the first time. I was hoping for an answer then, just as I'm hoping for one now, but nothing comes to me other than the thought that maybe eighteen years ago wasn't the first time she disappeared. Maybe Shannon disappeared a few days after her birth, or at least an important part of her did, the part that would enable her to survive the loneliness; maybe the furnished part of her soul took wing with the rest of our mother's soul that day as it flew away from us to live with the angels while our mortal selves remained behind taking our naps.

Fanci and Kenny are sitting at the table when I return to the kitchen.

I spoon the chicken into their bowls, and they fall upon it eagerly.

I get some for myself, too. My junk food binge this morning made me feel sick the rest of the day and I haven't eaten since. Now I'm hungry on a purely physical level where my body is telling me I need to eat, but I can't enjoy the taste of the food. Right now I don't feel like I'll ever enjoy anything ever again.

“Did Shannon and the man leave together?” I ask them.

“They left at the same time in different cars,” Fanci replies as she reaches across the table and pulls pieces of chicken off the bone for Kenny and drops them into his bowl of peppery red sauce.

“What did they fight about?”

“The baby.”

“What about the baby?”

“He said he wanted to help pick out the family she's gonna sell the baby to. He said if she didn't let him help he'd stop any adoption she'd try to do.”

“Did he say how he was going to stop her?”

“He said he could do it because he's the mythological father,” Kenny interjects.

Fanci flashes him an annoyed look. The broad sweeps of silver around her dark eyes remind me of a raccoon's mask in reverse and give her a slightly sinister, wily appearance.

“Biological father, you moron,” she corrects him. “Mythological is a kind of story. Remember? Like the story I read you last night in
People
magazine about Britney Spears having a baby.”

“Is she gonna sell her baby, too?” Kenny wonders.

I freeze with my fork halfway to my mouth.

“He said he was the baby's father?”

They both nod.

Fanci continues, “Then your sister said, ‘Don't remind me. I can't believe I was stupid enough to get pregnant with someone I know.' What's that supposed to mean?”

“Are they gonna sell the little baby?” Kenny asks suddenly with his mouth full of chicken and red sauce dripping down his chin.

“I thought you said it was against the law,” Fanci says. “You said I couldn't give you Kenny to pay for a ride because it was against the law.”

“Using your little brother for cab fare and deciding to let someone adopt your baby in exchange for a lot of cash are completely different things.”

“How?”

“It's too complicated to explain,” I reply, starting to feel a little frustrated, especially because I can't readily explain, even to myself, why they're different. “They're both wrong,” I add. “They're both morally wrong, because in order to sell something or trade something you have to own it and a person can't own another person.”

“But another person can own you,” Fanci quotes me.

“You'll learn more about that when you start dating,” Kenny adds sagely.

My cell phone rings.

It's so unexpected, the sound makes me jump.

I hope against all hope that it's Clay calling to say he's thought it over and he forgives me for lying all these years and he doesn't hate me, or it's E.J. calling to say he's thought it over and he forgives me for using him last night and treating him like shit this morning and we can still be friends, or it's Shannon calling to say she's thought it over and she forgives me for failing to make her love me and we can still be sisters.

“Hello? Shae-Lynn? It's Gerald Kozlowski.”

I'm too disappointed to say anything.

“Please don't hang up,” he adds hurriedly. “Hear me out first.”

“Make it quick.”

“How is Shannon?”

My first instinct is to lie to protect her and the baby but then I realize there's no point to any of it anymore. Kozlowski isn't the enemy. The only person she needs to be protected from is herself.

“As far as I know, she's fine. She had the baby this afternoon. I went out for an hour and she flew the coop.”

This doesn't seem to surprise him.

“What kind of head start does she have?”

“A couple hours.”

“I don't suppose I could convince you to go after her? I'd pay quite a bit.”

“I'm not interested. Plus she may or may not be traveling with Dmitri. I have no desire to run into him again.”

“What do you mean? Has he convinced her to sell the baby to Mickey?”

“I don't know what he's thinking about. I only know he expects to be involved in the adoption decision. Probably so he can get his cut of the profits, too. Apparently, he's the father.”

This information silences him for a moment.

“You're kidding me. That doesn't sound like something Shannon would do.”

“You mean get pregnant with someone she knows?”

“They met when we were working out the adoption with Dmitri's employer. I had no idea they became involved.”

“Well, apparently they did, and he knows it's his baby. I'm assuming the reason he came after her was because he wants his share of the money, too, or he'll contest any adoption she tries.”

“What a bastard.”

I almost laugh out loud at this statement coming from Kozlowski.

“Do you think we can call a truce long enough for you to drive me to the airport tomorrow? I can't get a ride from anyone else.”

“We'll work out something,” I tell him.

I let the kids finish their meal, then I drive them home.

The drama of Shannon's flight and Fanci and Kenny's company kept me distracted, but once I return to my empty house I'm powerless to keep the thoughts of Clay and Cam at bay.

I'm so sad, I don't feel any of the things I usually feel when I'm sad. I have no desire to drink or hurt myself or hurt someone else or have sex with someone I know I'm going to leave. I'm numb. After a lifetime of not crying, I think it might be nice to finally cry, but I can't. There's no moisture in my body. My insides have turned to ash.

I go to my bedroom closet and bring out a box of Clay's old school papers and art projects and spread them all over my bed.

I pick through macaroni necklaces and Popsicle-stick picture frames, reports on George Washington and time lines of dinosaurs, Thanksgiving turkeys made from the outline of his hand and Mother's Day poems written on paper doilies sprinkled with gold glitter.

One of his worksheets from second grade catches my eye. I remember it immediately. It's about jobs. The questions list different jobs and ask the children why each one is important.

Policemen are important because:

Clay has written: they help people.

Farmers are important because:
they feed people.

Teachers are important because:
they teach us things.

Doctors are important because:
they make people feel better.

Bus drivers are important because:
they take people where they want to go.

I'm reading each of his responses when I hear someone pulling into my driveway. I jump up from my bed and rush to the window.

E.J.'s truck comes to a stop beside my Subaru.

I leave the room and go answer the door with the worksheet still in my hand.

“I figure one of us is going to have to be the adult and I know it's not going to be you,” he announces the moment I open the door.

I imagine he rehearsed it and decided he was going to say it fast before I had a chance to say anything stupid first.

“Come on in.”

I turn and walk to the couch expecting him to follow. I plunk down on the cushions feeling like my entire body is made of lead.

He takes a seat next to me.

“We had a pretty good thing going,” I tell him. “I don't want to screw up our relationship by being in love and having great sex.”

“Sure,” he says, frowning. “I can understand that. Who'd want to be in love and have great sex when they could just hang out and argue and drink beer instead?”

“Exactly my point.”

“So this pretty good relationship you're talking about. What is it exactly? A friendship?”

“I guess.”

“Okay. Why is it we can't be in love and have great sex and still have our friendship?”

“What planet are you from? When does that ever work?”

“It works for my mom and dad, although I don't particularly like to think about the great sex part with them.”

I don't say anything. I sit and stare at the floor, not even aware that I'm still holding Clay's worksheet.

“Lib and Teresa have been together for a long time. They seem happy,” he adds.

“It won't work for us.”

“How about we won't be in love but we can still have the sex and the friendship?”

“You have to choose one.”

“Oh, no. No, no.” He shakes his head and holds out his hands like he's stopping traffic. “I know how this works. There's no right answer. If I choose the friendship you're gonna start ranting about how I don't like having sex with you and if you were twenty-five and blond I would've picked sex. And if I pick the sex then you're gonna call me a macho pig and tell me I don't appreciate you as a human being and I only see you as a piece of ass.”

I don't contradict him.

“Why can't I see you as a human being and a piece of ass?”

“It can't work.”

“Why not?”

“Because nothing ever works for me.”

Except for one thing, I continue silently to myself. There was one thing I thought I had succeeded at, but I was wrong about that.

He puts his arm around my shoulders.

“What's wrong?”

“I think I may have lost Clay,” I tell him in a whisper.

“What are you talking about?”

I look down at the very last question on the worksheet.

Who do you think has the most important job?

Through my tears I see Clay's answer written by a careful and determined seven-year-old's pencil: Moms have the most important job because moms make people.