The House on Olive Street (19 page)

Barbara Ann trailed behind her, muttering, “There’s something going on here, with Sable and this Jeff. Something interesting, I just know it.”

“Well, good morning, ladies,” he said cheerily. He didn’t carry a bouquet or anything and was dressed casually, in slacks and a cotton shirt—no tie. It didn’t appear they were running off to get married.

“Good morning to
you,
” Barbara Ann gushed. “Sable’s not ready yet, but nearly. Come on in, get a cup of coffee, and tell us what you two are planning to do today.”

“Oh, just a little business. Tie up a few loose ends. We’re going out to the house so Sable can check with Dorothy and Art, make sure they’re all right alone out there.”

“That can’t be
all,
” Barbara Ann drove on, pulling him into the kitchen and pouring him a cup of coffee. “Sable’s acting so fussy about her appearance, you must have something rather special on the agenda for today!”

“Just loose ends,” he insisted, smiling.

“Aren’t you being awfully secretive?” Barbara whispered conspiratorially.

“Barbara Ann, if I knew of any secrets, I’d tell you at once,” Jeff teased. “Sable, hurry up!” he shouted in the direction of the bedrooms. “I’m being grilled out here!”

“Oh, how tactless,” she huffed.

“Oh how transparent,” he replied, still smiling patiently.

Sable and Jeff had driven for a little while when he reached across the console and patted her knee. “Settle down,” he said. “It’s going to be a nice day.”

“How can you say that? Since when is visiting a grave a nice day?”

“You’ll be surprised. It’s what you want to do, remember? It can be healing, restorative. Just let it happen.”

“Jesus, you’re sick. Do you have any graves you regularly visit?”

“Just one—my dad’s. He died very suddenly when I was seventeen. We were close. I know he’s not really there, but there just doesn’t seem to be any other place I can feel him so strongly.”

“So what do you do there? Talk to him?”

“Yeah,” he said, laughing as though shocked to admit it—or maybe embarrassed. “At first, when the hurt from losing him was still fresh, I’d go there to tell him how pissed off I was at him and also to complain about how terrible my life was without him. I don’t know when it happened, really, but at some point I realized I’d just been to my father’s grave, musing like I do, thinking thoughts to him like he was there hearing me, and I hadn’t yelled at him or complained about anything. I’d just sort of communed with his spirit, like a long-distance phone call, catching him up on events, sharing my thoughts. I rushed out there once to make sure he knew the Braves won the series. Then I felt so stupid, except that I felt better somehow. I went there to apologize for my divorce, to promise to take care of Mom and to ask his advice about starting my own security business.”

“I can’t do that with my child, however,” she said.

“Whatever it is you have to do, it’ll come to you. You’ve been talking about never having seen his grave. You’re ready for something. Who knows what it is, but it isn’t going to be scary, Sable.”

She grasped his hand. “How can you be so sweet? Shouldn’t you be more cynical, given the kind of work you do?”

“Naw, just the opposite. My job is really about making people feel safe. It might involve all kinds of locks, cameras, wires and whistles, but it always starts one on one. I just listen to what people say makes them scared, then we work on handling the scary things.”

“There isn’t a lock you can put on this one,” she said, shivering with fear that she might collapse when she saw Thomas Adam’s little grave.

“I think you’re missing the point here, Sable. This time we’re taking the lock
off
to find safety. It’ll be okay.”

Two hours later they were pulling through the iron gates and into the cemetery. She had expected it to be horrid and bleak, since she hadn’t had any money with which to bury him. It was a pauper’s grave, for the forgotten. But it wasn’t depressing. It was well-groomed and clean. There weren’t many headstones, monuments or statues, which made it look a little less like a cemetery. “Is it far?” she asked nervously as Jeff drove along the winding road, farther and farther into the trees. He had found the grave for her in advance of her first visit, so they wouldn’t have to go searching for it when she was finally ready to see it.

“Not far,” he said. “It’s pretty back here, isn’t it? A nice place to rest, really.”

“Oh please,” she groaned, her stomach twisting inside.

“I bet it’s glorious in the fall, when the leaves are changing. We’ll have to come and see it then.”

“Jeff, really—”

“Here we are. It’s over there, about fifty yards. Come on.”

“Maybe I should go alone,” she suggested, already feeling as though her legs wouldn’t hold her up.

“I don’t think so. You’ve been alone long enough.”

Before she knew it, she was staring down at it. It was a flat plaque. It said:

Thomas Adam Parker
Beloved Son
Rest, Little Lamb

There was a carved silhouette of a small child’s head, bent in prayer on the plaque. Remarkably, it looked as Sable remembered him—a little tuft of hair in back with bangs over his forehead. Instinctively, she knelt to touch the plaque, to caress the face. Jeff knelt too, a little behind her.

“You can’t imagine how precious he was,” she said. “Or how smart. He would have gone so far, if I hadn’t lost him.”

“I bet he was beautiful.”

“He was, which was a miracle in itself. I was too homely for words, and Butch wasn’t that much to look at. But Tommy was incredible. Angelic. Adorable. He should have been the Gerber baby.”

“You never thought about marrying again? Having more children?”

“I can’t,” she said. “I had pelvic inflammatory disease, one final gift from Butch, left untreated for so long that by the time it was found, it was too late. I was sterile. I struggled with the left-over symptoms for a few years and then finally had a hysterectomy. That was over ten years ago now.”

“That’s a shame. You should have had a second chance. Of course, there was always adoption.”

“I wasn’t up to it. I didn’t really want more children after Thomas Adam. I think you can only survive that kind of pain once in a lifetime. I just went on to other things.” Tears gathered in her eyes. “It’s hard to tell what would have become of me if he had lived. Or him. What could have become of him? Years of crippling abuse that I managed, somehow, not to see?”

“You never said—did Butch beat you?”

“Sure,” she said, wiping at her eyes. “But I didn’t know it. He was a son of a bitch who could get ugly when he drank. Not always, but often enough that I should have been able to see it coming. He knocked me around, but I didn’t know he was beating me. I thought he was losing his temper, losing his cool. I never thought he’d touch the baby. How could I have been that stupid?”

“You were young. You didn’t know anything about that.”

“Sometimes even when you know, you don’t know. You should talk to Beth for a while. She’s worse than I was. She doesn’t even have the excuse that she’s uneducated about battered wife syndrome. She knows about it and still thinks it has to do with other women. Oh, she’s slowly coming around, changing her thinking. But I get the sense that she’s staying away from Jack through sheer willpower, not because she knows in her heart that he’s dangerous to her and her child.

“God, if only I could go back in time and do this differently,” she said, her fingertips brushing over the silhouetted face. “If I had it to do again, smarter, I’d have run to Gabby when I found out I was pregnant. I wouldn’t have even
told
Butch or my mother. I should have run for my life, to people who would have brainstormed some ideas with me, shared some survival skills. There were agencies, even then. There was help available, but you
have to at least look for it. It’s like trying to look up a word in the dictionary when you don’t know how to spell it, a part of you thinking it just won’t be there. I didn’t even think there was a place to look for what I needed. I didn’t know what I needed, but I should have tried. I could have found a way to stay in school, at least part-time. I could have had my baby, gotten an education, found a decent career and raised my son in some kind of safe environment.

“He would be nineteen now,” she mused. “I can’t even imagine how handsome, how smart. Sometimes I wish I’d run away from Butch and given Thomas Adam up for adoption. I might not know him now, but somewhere out there would be this young man who might, someday, for some reason, try to find me.

“There should have been an intervention somewhere,” she said, turning to Jeff, tears streaming down her cheeks. “Somewhere along the line someone should have picked this grubby, slutty girl with the bad attitude out of the trash heap and said, ‘Listen up, you idiot! You don’t know how bad it will get if you don’t try doing this differently!’ God, how I wish someone had tried to reach me when there was still time.

“But it wasn’t their fault, whoever
they
are. I was completely deaf. I didn’t know my mother had a disease—I thought she was a drunk. I didn’t know I was being abused—I thought Butch was a normal guy and guys hit when they’re mad. And I didn’t know I had a disease that complemented my mother’s disease. Denial, Elly says, always ends in death. I just didn’t know any of that.”

“Things are getting better in that area,” he said. “Kids are learning about alcoholism and abuse in school now. And birth control, et cetera.”

“I know, I know, but is anyone taking that individual kid and saying, ‘Come here, sit with me a while. Let’s talk about it all. You can stay here the night…the weekend…sleep in clean sheets…while we figure out what it’s going to take to get you out of the quicksand.’ Do you think anyone is doing that?”

“I think so,” he said. “But I don’t think there’s a surplus of them.”

She looked back at the little face on the grave. “Oh, Tommy, I’m so sorry,” she said. “I’m so, so sorry….” She began to cry harder and harder, until she was wailing. She began to feel that inner collapse take her over, but yet it didn’t overtake her. Jeff held her against his solid chest and she let it run out of her, like releasing the toxins of pent-up grief. She wept and wept and felt the hatred and regret and distrust leaving through her tears. Minutes passed and she did not quiet or calm. She cried so hard and for so long, only vaguely aware that Jeff didn’t make her stop, that he didn’t say, “All right, that’s enough, now.”

Finally, her wails and choking sobs began to ebb and she wept softly. That, too, slowed to a sniffle and hiccup. At long last she pulled away from Jeff’s soaking shirt and looked at his eyes. “How long have I been crying?” she asked him.

“I’m not sure. I haven’t been timing you.”

“Oh God,” she murmured, “I’m exhausted.”

“That’s all right. It’s the hardest work you have to do today.”

“I need to have some flowers,” she said. “Can we find some flowers?”

That was easily done. They went to the car, Sable walking weakly with Jeff’s support, and drove to a supermarket in Fresno. By the time she arrived at the
store, she was already feeling stronger. She purchased a bunch of fresh flowers in a vase and they took it back to the cemetery. They stayed only a little while because Jeff said, “It’s hard to do it all in one visit. You’ll have to come back, probably, and I’ll come with you anytime.”

“You’re right,” she agreed. “I’ll have to come back because you do think of things once you’re there, things you have to think to that person. It’s remarkable.”

She slept in the car all the way back to the Sacramento area and beyond. Jeff stopped at a fast-food restaurant and woke her. He told her to take a minute to wash her face, comb her hair, and maybe have a soft drink and then they would press on to her house to see Art and Dorothy.

One look in the mirror told her she had better pull herself together; she wouldn’t want to frighten the little old couple. Her eyes were red and swollen and she felt groggy. She’d had the foresight to bring along a little makeup, not because she expected to have cried all hers off, but because she planned to spend a very long day away from Gabby’s. It came in handy when she realized that she’d left most of her makeup on the front of Jeff’s shirt.

When she came out of the rest room she found him sitting in a booth, waiting for her with a cold drink. He’d managed to wipe off the front of his shirt so that it was hardly smudged. He seemed to know exactly what to do, no matter the circumstances. The fact that he hadn’t bought food, though they hadn’t eaten since breakfast, was perfect. She could hardly handle the smell of greasy food, much less the taste. But she needed the cold drink, and a moment to collect herself before seeing Dorothy and Art. “I’m nervous. Is that silly?”

“I don’t think so, but you’ll be fine. It’ll be good for you to see that everything is all right at your house.”

“I’m embarrassed to face them,” she said.

“Of course you are, but you needn’t be.”

“But what if they think the worst of me?”

“What if they do? Whose loss would that be?”

Ah, yes, that was what he did for her. He made her feel like a valuable treasure. That he could do that while she was as slick and cool as porcelain was one thing. But he could manage that when she looked like an unmade bed and was as unstable as a house of cards.

Art came out of his cottage at the sound of the car door. As Sable walked toward him, she saw Dorothy peeking out through the curtain. Funny, she’d never been in their little house since she gave it to them. “I’m sorry about all the trouble, Art. I hope you’re all right.”

“It weren’t that much trouble, Miss Sable. Jeff’s boys kept the place free of pests till they all lost interest and went away. And me and the missus, we been keeping it up pretty good. Just like you was off on vacation or something like that.”

“I really appreciate it, Art. I don’t want you to worry about it too much. I’m not going to pop in here unannounced and do an inspection. I’d like you to tell Dorothy—”

“Now wait there a minute, I’ll just get her….”