Son of Destruction (32 page)

‘Hello,’ the old lady says, blinking. ‘Hello?’

‘It’s me, Grammy. Stephanie. Nenna’s girl?’ She shoves him closer. ‘And this is Dan.’

‘How do you do,’ Dan says, looking into opaque eyes. The disturbing thing about Grammy Henderson is that she is pretty much bald. What little hair she has stands up bravely, a handful of white threads that one of the attendants has brushed to a shine and fluffed so it will look like more. She doesn’t exactly look at him. She just holds up the knot of bones that passes for a hand as though she’s used to having it kissed. Instead, he bends down and carefully – every segment of this lady ought to be stamped FRAGILE – he takes it. It’s like shaking a bunch of dried flowers.

Startled, she looks up, shouting, ‘Company! Stephanie, get my wig!’

Steffy whispers, ‘It’s been years since she wore the wig. This is a very big deal.’

‘What did you say your name was?’

‘Dan. Dan Carteret.’

‘Little Lucy’s boy!’ That flash. As suddenly, Blanche goes back inside.

How does she know? Did Nenna come running with the news? He snaps forward, hanging on the next word, but Grammy’s gone. Amazing how still a person can be, for so long.

Long becomes too long and Dan gives up on her. It’s late. He turns to Steffy, assuming they are done. ‘OK then. Where do you want me to drop you?’

‘Oh, I have to stay. Staff’s night off, I have to feed Grammy when her dinner comes.’ She turns with a steely glare, all teeth. ‘You’re hanging in with me, right?’

This is a moral dilemma that Dan will not have to face.

Grammy has fought her way to the surface. ‘Those poor babies!’ she pre-empts, rolling down a track that was laid more than thirty years ago. ‘I warned Lorna not to steal Sam Carteret’s baby away after Lily died, but she didn’t care. She went up to Charleston with lawyers and took Lucy away from him. I said, “Lorna, that baby is all he has left!” I said, “You’ll be sorry,” and she was. I said, “That girl will never forgive you,” and she never did.’

The next thing Blanche says is so bitter that it astounds him. ‘No wonder Hal Archambault divorced her. She was a mean, willful . . .’ Her mouth is working, but lady that she is, she can’t use that word. Instead she spits. ‘We used to be friends!’

Steffy dabs at the glob with a tissue and Grammy goes on. ‘The Carteret boy was sick with grief, but she was bent on it. I said, “Lorna, if you do this you will live to see history repeating,” but I swear, that woman marched on Charleston like Hitler, she hated all men. That’s why Lily sneaked off to Valdosta to marry Will, and Lucy . . .’

‘Lucy.’

Thoughts rush across the space behind Grammy’s eyes like cloud formations; she reaches out and snatches one. ‘Sam sent Lorna a post card.
Your new granddaughter is named Lucy. P.S., it killed Lily. In case you cared.’

Lily was Lucy’s mother.
Chapter. Verse. Verified. Thud.
My great-grandmother. It’s . . .
Blinking, he tries to shake it off.
In the blood?

‘Lorna had a hard heart before Hal Archambault left her for that tramp, so no wonder, but the divorce turned it to stone. Poor Lucy! She was Lorna’s perfect dollbaby, all dressed up with nowhere to go. No boys allowed in that house, and as for men, men! She looked at men and she saw . . .’

‘Wait.’

‘Liars, fornicators and cheats. Lucy couldn’t go with any boy her grandmother didn’t approve, and nobody was good enough for Lorna Archambault. She had to sneak away from parties at the Fort Jude Club to see poor Hal! I said, “Give that girl little freedom or you’ll lose her,” but she was like the Gorgon, beating Lucy to death with snakes. No wonder it ended the way it did.’

His mouth forms:
How?

With a tremendous effort, Grammy spits, ‘Her girls fell in love and she couldn’t keep them. We all know how that ended, with Lily dead and Lucy dead to her.’

Dan is aware that he is holding his breath.

‘She was awful to those boys,’ she says without naming them because at Grammy’s age people become interchangeable and time is all the same. ‘Both times.’

This rolls in like news in a foreign language. Beggared, he murmurs, ‘Ma’am?’

‘Lily eloped – so sad – and then she died and Lorna swooped down like the wolf upon the fold and took Lucy away from poor Sam, she was a spiteful, controlling old . . .’ Grammy’s mouth knots, twitching while she searches for the euphemism. Finally it pops out like a cherry pit. ‘Witch!’

Steffy murmurs, ‘Wuow, that’s the most I’ve heard out of her in weeks! Here, sweetie, just a little more cupcake, OK?’

But Grammy is rolling now, heading for the exit ramp. ‘It was spite, pure and simple,’ she says, just before she runs down. ‘Spite!’

Dan gives her a gentle push to keep the recital rolling, ‘You said, both times.’

‘She didn’t care how much in love they were. She saw Hal in every man. At least Lucy was forewarned.’ Grammy’s eyes crackle. ‘Thanks to me.’

‘You knew my mother?’

‘Lucy was too smart for her. Sweet girl!’ Abruptly, she seizes Dan’s hand and pulls him close. He can smell death coming out of her mouth. ‘You look like her.’

It hits like a mallet and his breath catches. ‘Yes Ma’am.’

‘Your mother fell in love but she kept it a secret. She had been warned.’

Everything in him rushes forward. ‘You warned her?’

‘God help me, I tried to warn them both!’ Grammy is tiring. She drops his hand.

‘I tried to tell them history repeats itself. It always does.’ She sighs. ‘When she got pregnant, she went where Lorna couldn’t hurt her.’

More, Grammy. More.
‘Who did?’

‘Oh, those poor boys!’

‘Boys? Which boys, Ma’am? Ma’am!’

Lapsing, she comes back with, ‘He was devastated.’

‘Who?’

Used up, Grammy Henderson waves her hand, fighting off invisible flies, but she’s still in there, and at some level she knows that Dan is waiting with teeth clenched so tight that the enamel cracks. She says with finality, ‘Terrible, what got old Lorna, but she brought it on herself.’

Oh, lady, don’t stop now.
‘How? Oh, please, Mrs Henderson, just one more answer. What set her on fire?’

But Blanche has talked a lot for a woman her age – what is her age? Half past ninety and hurtling to the finish line – and she’s spent. She says crossly, ‘That’s enough.’

‘What did it?’
Oh, please
. ‘What?’

With the wave of a southern lady banishing anything unpleasant, she changes the subject. ‘Nenna, has my dinner come?’

‘Not yet, Grammy,’ Steffy says.

‘You were telling us about Lucy.’

Blinking, she asks politely, ‘Who?’

‘Lucy Carteret, remember?’ Dan presses even though he knows Grammy is shutting down. He gives her everything he has. ‘I’m her son.’

‘Don’t.’ Feebly, she swats him away.

‘Please!’

‘Oh, don’t!’ Exhausted, the old woman cries, ‘I want my dinner now!’

Silence overtakes them.

‘I have to go,’ Dan says when it’s clear that this time, Grammy won’t be back.

‘Dude . . .’

He turns. ‘And I’m not kidding.’

‘Dude!’ Then Steffy sees his face, and lets him go.

Alone in her office, Jessie is both glad and sorry she ran into Walker out there at Golden Acres. She loved talking to him after all this time. He’s so dark and remote that these old girls – her friends – are scared of him, but she and Walker go way back. With her, he is so easy! They’ll always pick up where they left off even if it’s another hundred years. It was the best thing about a routine, perfectly pleasant Sunday in Fort Jude. Then on the way out of Mrs Earlham’s room she got in a fight with Wade, but that isn’t the downside.

It wasn’t really a fight, just one of those emergency exits women build out of words when they’re feeling crowded by a lover who is not quite enough and expects too much. Everybody needs a little down time, but Wade got pissed – hurt feelings, she supposes. ‘All right then!’ he said, and dropped her here. After a long day with big old Wade, who wouldn’t know a boundary if he fell over it, she’s relieved to be by herself again, in a place where she won’t be distracted by the pressure of his expectations or weighed down by that sweetly persistent, clueless will.

Jessie did not flee Golden Acres because she was freaking – unlike Dan Carteret, who will admit as much when he comes back to the Flordana at dusk. Old people are ancient history to her. She’ll be living among them when her time comes and she knows it. She just hopes that if he survives her, Wade sees to it that she gets a single room. Hell, even if they check in together she needs a single room.

Yep, she tells herself, and this is not such a bad thing. It’s gonna be Wade.

Seeing Walker today disrupted her; there is shared history. The crackle of what might have been. As long as she was inside Mrs Earlham’s sunny corner room in the assisted living wing, she could put it aside. Their spunky old kindergarten teacher is still bright, and she laughs a lot. She gets around her quarters better than can be expected; she knows more gossip than Jessie. She’s cool; they let her keep her dog. She asked after Walker who, she would not stop reminding Wade, was handsome as Lucifer and smarter than a bundle of whips. ‘I always knew that boy would go on to do great things,’ she said, and when Wade didn’t respond she said, ‘what’s he up to, honey? How is he, anyway?’

‘Oh,’ Wade said carelessly, and Jessie cracked her mouth open wide as a baby bird, hoping to be fed. ‘He’s fine,’ Wade said, and that’s all he said.

When they came outside Jessie couldn’t help checking – was the car still there? – and she can’t help what her heart did when she spotted Walker slouched behind the wheel, but that isn’t it, not really. That isn’t the downside.

Everything came back in on her. Everything.

Hurting, she started in on Wade, but she shut down the fight before it could get too bad. She said what with the party and the fire, the pile on her desk back at the Flordana was so high that scorpions were nesting in it.

Wade came back with: no problem, he’d come in and smash the little suckers flat, so she had to tell him she was really, really tired – which she is, but not in a way Wade Pike would understand. When she flared up at him he got over-solicitous, which he always does. He still thinks that Jessie, who had it all scooped out at nineteen – thank God she would never be pregnant – isn’t really upset when she gets mad at him, it’s only P.M.S. which, OK, it’s a little late for that. She was out of the car and halfway across the courtyard before he could open the door for her.

She needs time and space to sort out the
sorry
about running into Walker, which at the moment is overriding the glad. She sent the desk clerk home and slipped into the office, where she can keep an eye on the front desk and the entrance, in case.

It doesn’t take long to figure out what the matter is. Memory has been rolling in from so far off that for a long time she didn’t hear it coming. Now it hits with all its terrible freight, and mashes her flat.

The tastes, the sounds, the crap they were all drinking that lost, bad night come back in on her, everything rank and sour and so sudden that she shudders. The pain is old but still fresh. Her mouth fills with the taste of mingled snot and blood the way it did when it happened; she feels the cold, hard sand behind her head and under her bare back and she can feel wet sand creeping into her crotch as she gasps under the weight of the sleek, arrogant, angry bastard grinding the sand deeper into her most private part, and before anything she feels the humiliation.

She was never sure which ones ran off and which ones stayed to watch.

A high school sophomore. Stupid kid, what was she thinking, crashing the seniors’ houseparty when it wasn’t even her year, and they couldn’t see her for dirt? Lord knows she was pretty enough, stacked and sexier than those fucking Barbie cheerleaders, and with people who didn’t know, she could easily pass for older which is how she got in the door in the first place, but she was too young! The trouble was, Mollie Regan knew her from church and she never liked her – jealous, Jessie supposes, that woman was still stuffing her bra when she was old enough to afford implants. Jessie blended in fine, she was dancing with Billy Pouncey when Mollie spotted her. Ms. Head Cheerleader dug those purple fingernails into her arm, hissing, ‘You don’t belong here,’ and yanked her off the floor, which is how she ended up out on the curb in the middle of the night.

Her own damn fault for crashing, everybody knew houseparties were for seniors only and it didn’t matter how cute or sexy you were. She was sitting on a cement sea turtle out there on Coquina Alley waiting for Billy or some other boy to come out that she would consent to ride home with in exchange for a little of the one thing Jessie did best. But then Chape’s brand new Jeep came along, filled with sophomore boys scoping the scene like it was their senior year and they were the killer dudes laying waste and pillaging the maidens, come what may. Six first-string players from the FJHS Tarpons riding around drunk as bastards, acting like they ruled the world which they did, in a way, rolling to a stop at the sight of her.

‘Girl, you want a ride?’

Stupid, she thinks now. Stupid, heedless little bitch.

Stupid ever to get in any car with Brad Kalen, never mind who else was along. The boys were all loaded but so was Jessie, so what else is new? Besides, she recognized the car which was Chape Bellinger’s sweet sixteen present before she saw Brad was behind the wheel. She thought it was Chape stopping for her which, given who he was and given where Jessie came from, was an honor. Plus, given how late it was, she could use the ride. But Brad was driving, with Chape out cold and insensible, wedged in the back behind the bench seat, which was full of guys. Brad gunned the motor, laughing. ‘Are you getting in or what?’

He was a little heavier set than most even back then, but he was also a year older than them. Back then he worked out and Jessie is here to tell you that he oiled the biceps and the pecs. With tight gold curls and that big, heavy head Brad Kalen looked like fucking Tiberius, riding in to take the throne. She was a little scared of him so she said, ‘There isn’t room,’ but the guys in the back all said like one person, ‘You can sit on my lap.’