The Hellion (2 page)

he lowered his mouth to the running stream, rinsed, and spit again. Turning, he found the refrigerator door still open, slapped it shut so hard the appliance rocked, then stared at it.

"Goddamn," he whispered, still staring, disassociated again from all around him. In time he moved back to the living room, where his stocking feet halted at the yellow shirt he'd dropped earlier. He studied it until it became a blurred puddle, and the silence roared around his ears. The sun was warm on his back as he dropped his chin to his chest, slipped his fingers beneath his glasses to press his eye sockets. Suddenly he snapped backward and roared at the ceiling, "Where is everybody!"

But, of course, nobody was expected. Only Tommy Lee. And he was home.

  
The funeral was held on a flawless golden day, the Alabama sky a clear blue bowl overhead. Tommy Lee Gentry was the last to arrive at Franklin Memory Gardens, pulling the white Cadillac up behind the long line of vehicles, then quietly slipping into the outer fringe of mourners circling the grave.

He picked out Rachel immediately,
       
11 studying her back as she clung to her daddy's arm while from all around came the sound of soft weeping.

Rachel. My Rachel. I'm still here ... waiting.

It had been twenty-four years since he'd been this close to her. He'd been a boy then, green and seventeen, and though he was no boy now, even at forty-one being in her presence made him feel like one again, uncertain and vulnerable.

After all these years, all these mistakes, the sensation swept back with unkind intensity.

A pain lanced his heart as he studied her; she had grown so thin. But there were appealing changes, too, ones he'd intrinsically sensed happening through the years, living in the same town as they did. She had acquired style, a thin-boned chic that had perhaps looked healthy until the last half-year had turned it nearly emaciated. Even so, the pearl-gray fabric of her designer dress draped upon her shoulders with a look of understated elegance few could manage, given that thinness. Unlike his own, her hair had gained a reprieve from grayness. It was still as rich as black-belt loam, and equally as dark. She

wore it shorter now, but with an elegant flair that spoke of costly professional attention. Watching her, Tommy Lee felt the old familiar ache in his heart.

  
Rachel Hollis stared at a spray of white roses bound by an enormous satin bow with gilt letters on its streamers. Beneath the bouquet, the polished bronze of the coffin caught the afternoon sun and sent it scintillating along a gleaming crease in the metal, like a white laser. A lone mockingbird perched on a nearby headstone, running through its repertoire. A soft breeze, scented with camellia, caught a streamer and sent it tapping against the coffin cover: Beloved Son and Husband.

But Rachel shut it all out, all the draining ordeal of the past two years, clinging to her daddy's arm until some faint movement of his elbow brought her back to the present. The service was over. Hands squeezed hers, cheeks were pressed to hers, murmured condolences were offered, and finally the mourners drifted toward their cars. Everett's steadying hand turned her toward the waiting black limousine.

Suddenly his fingers tightened on her
     
13 elbow as he demanded in a vehement undertone, "What's he doing here?"

Rachel lifted mournful eyes and for the first time saw the man standing some fifteen feet away. Her feet became rooted and her heart seemed to come alive.

Tommy Lee. Oh, God, Tommy Lee, you came.

She felt herself blanch, and she became slightly light-headed. Her father's thumb dug into her elbow, ordering her to turn and leave, but her body remained riveted, eyes drawn to the man who studied her from such a short distance away. After twenty-four years of avoiding each other at every possible turn, there he was. Deliberately.

Like characters in a ballet they stood poised, gazes fixed, seeing nothing beyond each other.

She could make out his eyes only partially. He now wore glasses, the rimless type with only a strip of gold winking across his eyebrows. The shaded brown lenses hid his upper eyelids and left only enough iris visible to intrigue. Beneath a rich brown leather sports coat the oyster-colored collar of an expensive shirt

had been drawn up tightly by a raw-silk tie.

"Rachel, come," her father commanded sternly. "We have to go." He might as well have ordered a stone carving to move. Rachel's body had gone stiff, captivated by Tommy Lee as he slowly, deliberately crossed the space between them. She held her breath and felt her heart knocking out a warning.

He didn't stop until he was so close she had to raise her chin to meet his gaze.

"Hello, Rachel." His voice was deeper, gruffer than she remembered, and his eyes held a sadness reaching far beyond sympathy. She didn't realize she had pulled away from her father until Tommy Lee captured her icy hand in both of his, squeezing slowly, slowly, but too tightly for the handclasp to be merely consoling. She felt a tremor in his fingers, became aware of how much thicker they were, how much fuller his palms. They were a man's hands now, and it struck Rachel that in the intervening years he'd grown perhaps two inches taller.

But there were other changes, too. He had grown heavy. Even his stylishly tailored sports

coat couldn't quite conceal the extra weight
   
15 at his midsection, and his constricting collar pressed a bulge of skin upward, revealing the fact that his neck had lost much of its firmness. There were deep grooves running from his handsome nose to his well-remembered lips, and lines of dissipation about his eyes. His coloring was not the healthy brown of their youth but tinged with a telltale undertone of pink. Apparently all they said about him was true.

"Hello, Tommy Lee," she answered at last, trying to keep her voice steady.

Of course they'd seen each other many times over the passing years. It was unavoidable in a town the size of Russellville. But never this close. Always, one of them had crossed the street or become politely engaged in conversation with some passerby when the other approached.

But now their eyes clung ... for longer than was prudent. Suddenly Tommy Lee became aware of Everett Talmadge's scowl and dropped Rachel's hand reluctantly.

"Sir," he greeted with a curt nod.

"Gentry," Talmadge acknowledged coldly. The animosity between them was palpable and made

Tommy Lee take a single step back. Still, he could not resist returning his attention to Rachel for a moment longer.

"I hope you don't mind that I came, Rachel. I heard the news and wanted to offer my condolences personally."

"Of course I don't mind. We ..." She glanced guardedly at her father and amended, "I'm so glad you did. Thank you, Tommy Lee." The name sounded ill-suited now that the boy had become a man, yet the years had schooled her till she could think of him by no other.

"I didn't know Owen personally, but everyone around town says he was a wonderful man. I'm sorry. If there's anything I can do ..."

The tears brightened Rachel's deep brown eyes, making them gleam and appear larger, childlike in their threat of full-scale weeping. He reached for her hand again. "Rachel, I shouldn't have come," he said hoarsely.

She felt her control slipping and her heart thrusting heavily in her breast. A blink brought the tears pooling as she rose on tiptoe to press her cheek briefly to his. "No ... no, I'm glad you did. Thank you, Tommy

Lee." Then she spun around, linked her
   
17 arm through her father's, and strode hastily toward the waiting black limousine.

Her scent seemed to linger at his jaw as his eyes followed the car along a row of bare forsythias, around a bend, until it was obscured by a line of gnarled cedars. He sighed, hung his head and stared at the toe of one shiny Italian loafer, then removed his glasses and wearily rubbed his eyes. But her face remained, revived.

What good are regrets? Almost angrily he replaced his glasses, reached for his cigarettes, and lit up with the unconscious motions of the seasoned smoker.

The mockingbird was still singing. The click of the lighter was the only other sound in the deserted stillness. The smell of roses became cloying, and his nostrils flared, drawing in a diaphanous line of gray to obliterate the floral scent. Absently he studied the silver-spindled branches of a nearby crepe myrtle bush. Its leafless limbs appeared pearlescent, like the color of Rachel's mourning dress. Drawing on the cigarette, he turned back toward the

coffin of her husband.

Owen Hollis. What had her life been like with him? Had she been happy? Had he been good to her? What had she suffered during Hollis's bout with cancer? Why had they never had children? And, above all, had she ever told her husband about Tommy Lee Gentry?

He swung toward the only other stone in the Talmadge plot: Eulice, Rachel's mother, dead four years now. He hooked a shoe on the polished curve of marble, braced an elbow on his knee and squinted as the smoke drifted up, unheeded. Why did you do it, Eulice? You and that husband of yours ... and my own mother and father?

He took one last deep drag, but the taste of the cigarette had grown acrid, so he withdrew it from his lips and with a fillip sent it spiraling through the air.

I never should have come here today. What the hell good did it do? He dragged his foot from the tombstone, slipped his hands into his trouser pockets, and turned sadly toward the car.

Nothing is changed. Nothing.

  
Rachel had been running on sheer willpower for

days now, months--for two years,
        
19 actually, ever since Owen had learned he had cancer. Though she'd kept herself from breaking down during the graveside ceremony, she was perilously near it as the black limousine pulled up before the house on Cotako Street where she'd grown up.

Stepping from the car, she raised her eyes to the familiar beige limestone on the double-gabled structure. The entry and portico were fronted by a deep overhang behind wide limestone arches that supported the arm of the house holding her upstairs bedroom. The diamond-shaped framework of the small casement windows matched the diamond pattern of the dark shingles. Her mother's narcissus still bloomed gaily out front, and the azalea and holly bushes were carefully tended, though by a gardener these days. The same English ivy climbed the side chimney. The same cedars flanked the north side of the house. And the same sweetgum tree dropped its spiked artillery on the high-pitched roof and sent it rolling earthward. How many times had she and Tommy Lee, barefoot, stepped on those sweetgum balls and gone howling to one of their mothers in pain?

Either mother. Whichever one happened to be nearby. In those days it hadn't mattered--the families were so close.

Unable to resist, Rachel glanced next door, but the view of the Gentry house was almost completely obscured by the high boxwood hedge that had been allowed to grow along the property line, untrimmed, for twenty-four years now.

Tommy Lee. But he wasn't there. He hadn't set foot on the place for years. As if he'd been watching, Everett took her elbow to guide her up the sidewalk, discouraging her from dwelling on the past.

Inside, the funeral party was gathered. Voices hummed and the scent of expensive cigars drifted above that of fresh-brewed coffee. The faces were those of people Rachel had known all her life: the town's elite. Half were close to her age, the other half closer to her father's.

When she'd weathered what seemed like hours of well-meant condolences until she felt she could stand no more, she slipped upstairs to her old bedroom. It was tucked beneath the gables, its ceiling following the roof peaks, creating a pair of cozy niches. The walls were papered with the same pink

daisies she'd chosen at age thirteen.
  
21 Her hand trailed over the flowers as she recalled that she had brought Tommy Lee up here to show him, the minute the paper was hung. That was in the days when they'd felt free to spend brief, innocent minutes in each other's bedrooms, where they'd often played as toddlers.

The bed was a girl's, a four-poster with a canopy of airy white eyelet to match the tiered spread and the tiebacks at the recessed windows. Though the room was cleared of mementos, the fixtures remained as they'd been years ago, dredging up memories of the days when her mother was alive and everybody on both sides of the boxwood hedge was happy.

At the south window Rachel held back the folds of white eyelet, studying the house where Gaines and Lily Gentry still lived. It was brought clearly to view from this high vantage point several feet above the hedge.

The shared history of the Talmadges and the Gentrys went back even further than Rachel's memory allowed. But what she couldn't remember was kept alive in old photo albums her father could never quite bring himself to throw

away.

The two couples had settled into these houses as young up-and-coming pillars of the community. The men had played golf, the women tennis, and together they'd made up a foursome at bridge. Then, in the same year, both Lily and Eulice had become pregnant. They'd compared their discomforts and hopes and, together with their husbands, the names they'd chosen even before their babies were born.

Rachel and Tommy Lee came into the world only two months apart. Side by side they'd had their diapers changed, been plunked into the same playpen while their mothers drank coffee, and into the same backyard splash pool--naked-- while their mothers sipped iced tea and talked about their children's future. When one of the youngsters inadvertently hurt the other with a careless toss of a toy, the mothers taught them to kiss and make it better, and sat back to watch their offsprings' rotund bodies grow healthy and vigorous.