The Ninth Step (18 page)

Sonny left space for a response. Cotton couldn’t think of one and Sonny waved his hand. “It’s probably horseshit. You know cons, none of us can tell the truth.”

The wail of an ambulance siren swelled. Cotton felt the vibration through the soles of his shoes.

“You know,” Sonny said in the siren’s wake, “if that accident went down the way you say, it’s not like it’s murder. Is there a statute of limitations? Have you checked?”

“Ten years in the state of Texas.” Cotton explained that Anita had looked it up before Cotton had left Seattle. “It’s been six.”

“Meter’s running.”

“Yeah.”

Sonny glanced at Cotton from under his brows. “You don’t want to go to jail, man, not in this state, not if you can help it.”

“Anita thinks I should turn myself in. She thought you’d agree.”

“I might have back in the day.”

“I do it her way, the AA way and work the steps, that’s the risk I take, right?”

“Yeah, I’m just sayin’, that’s all. I’d hate like hell to see it happen.”

“But the alternative, man-- I mean what if it was your wife dead, what would you do to the driver?”

Sonny wadded his paper napkin into a ball. He didn’t have to answer. It was all over his face.

#

He didn’t expect them to come to the hospital, but they did. Cotton half stood, eyes wide.

Wes’s glance bounced from Cotton to Delia and back to Cotton. “Is it a bad time?” He spoke in a low, deferential voice, a hospital visitor’s voice.

From behind him, Nikki gave a shy wave.

“No, no, it’s fine.” Cotton straightened, feeling caught, embarrassed. He looked at Delia, at her hands curled like claws near her chin, the unkempt wad of her hair. Her mouth and the corners of her eyes were rimed in a white crust. She was as dry as a husk. He said, “She’s just-- She sleeps a lot.” He jerked a helpless sidelong glance, a chagrined glance, at Wes. “This is-- I can’t believe-- You didn’t have to come.”

He heard himself stammering, tried to make himself breathe. He wondered how he could have ever read anything in Wes’s expression except the genuine kindness and compassion he saw there now.

“Nikki wanted to bring your mom a little gift to cheer her up.”

She stepped into view. “I thought she should have something pretty for her room.” Nikki’s smile was grave, a proper hospital visitor’s smile. A smile that worried, that cared.

Cotton felt it like a blow to his chest.

His glance fell to the small blue vase she held in her hands filled with flowers. White daisies mixed with baby’s breath.
For innocence
. He recognized the flowers, his mind parroted the meaning. He couldn’t remember where he parked his damn car half the time, but he remembered Livie’s language for flowers. 

His heart whacked against his ribs. He couldn’t raise his eyes, couldn’t get his mind around the fact that Nikki had come here to bring his mother flowers, while he’d left hers to die in an intersection.

When he looked back, Cotton would think this was the day, the time and the place, where it got real for him, where it started to cut him open from the inside.

Chapter 13

The first time was three weeks after the miscarriage. She dressed in a slim, shimmery-red, body-clinging sheath that swept over her right shoulder leaving the left shoulder bare and red sandals to match, the pair Stella had found in her closet. The man Livie had gone home with that night had slid onto the barstool on her left side and bought her a Manhattan and then another. Livie remembered the tantalizing feel of his breath against her bare shoulder; she remembered the damp imprint of his mouth there, the shock of her instant arousal.

He brought her to his apartment and he’d scarcely closed the door before she was yanking at his tie, the buttons of his shirt. She pulled the dress over her head. He shucked her out of her panties and lifting her, he had her first against the small foyer’s wall. They’d knocked into a table, sending the dish where he deposited his keys, the odd pair of cufflinks and loose change to the floor. She remembered the clatter when it broke. She remembered stepping on a cufflink.

She remembered lying naked underneath him in his bed and opening her legs to him, the hot demand of his tongue, the hard shaft of his penis. She’d taken him inside her mouth; he had taken her from behind. She had done it all without thinking, without remorse.

He’d been a stockbroker, that first one, and successful. One of the wealthier brokers in Houston, he’d announced with pride. He’d built himself up in an attempt to entice her to stay. Whatever she wanted, he promised. “Just tell me your name,” he begged.

But she never did that. She never told any of the men she picked up anything about herself because she wasn’t herself when she was with them. She was no one from nowhere. A genie from a long-lost lamp, a mermaid from an ancient sea. She was grief and despair and loneliness masquerading in a red dress.
A whore, scag, cunt--

--her mother--

“Livie?”

She lifted her chin, met Kat’s perturbed, somewhat perplexed glance in the bathroom mirror.

“The front door was open. Didn’t you hear me calling?” Kat’s gaze fell to what Livie held in her hand. “What’s that?”

“Pregnancy test.” She dropped the small wand into the bathroom wastebasket.

Kat’s eyes widened.

“It’s positive.” Livie caught her breath. Her head felt dangerously light, as if it might float off the stem of her neck.

“Is that good news?”

Livie made a noise, something between a laugh and a groan. “I don’t know. I can’t think. . . .” She turned to the mirror, an antique beveled oval extravagantly framed in a gilded bouquet of roses twined around a gaily fluttering ribbon. It had been a gift from her mother who had paid more for it than she could afford. When Livie had protested, Gus had cupped Livie’s face in her hands, eyes dancing with affection and said, “Sugar, the instant I saw it, I saw you. I couldn’t leave it. I don’t care how many manicures I have to do without.”

Livie touched her reflection in the glass. “It made me sick growing up, all her boyfriends, the sex sex sex in our faces all the time, the way she would say she needed it, that it was her right. ‘I work hard, I deserve to have fun.’ Remember that line?” Livie’s eyes connected with Kat’s in the mirror.

“Yes, but what’s it have to do with--”

“I hate her for it--and then she goes and does something wonderful--”

“Livie--?” Kat moved to Livie’s side.

Her smile was bitter. “I’m exactly like her. The only difference is I’m not exposing my children, at least not yet.”

“Oh, come on, a one-night sexcapade doesn’t begin to qualify you for membership in the Goosie Loosie Gus club.” Kat rubbed a small circle between Livie’s shoulder blades. “Have you told him yet?”

“Who?”

“Joe, silly.” Kat looked uncertain. “Joe is the father, right? You haven’t--? You didn’t go and do something dumb like sleep with Cotton?”

Livie took Kat’s hand and pulled her into the kitchen. “Do you remember our club?”

“The Saunders Secret Service Club.” Kat’s eyes danced. “I was telling Stella about it the other day. We should initiate her. It would be fun, wouldn’t it, the three of us?”

“Yes, but we need to have a meeting right now. I have something to tell.”

Kat groaned. “Oh god, I knew it.”

“Where are the kids anyway? With Tim?”

“Mom has them. They’re still worn out from all the Fourth of July hullabaloo. That’s why I called. I thought we could go shopping, the sales-- Livie, c’mon, you’re scaring me.”

“They let Delia go home. I went to see her.”

“You saw Cotton, you’re starting something---”

“No. He was at work.” Livie opened the refrigerator, studying the contents as if they mattered. “He hired a woman who does home health care.”

“So?”

“So he’s trying to do the right thing. Do you want juice, a glass of iced tea?”

“Do you have any wine?”

Livie let the refrigerator door snap shut and glanced at the clock. “It’s early, isn’t it?”

“You shouldn’t anyway, if you’re pregnant.”

Livie looked down at the still-flat plane of her abdomen. “Maybe the test was wrong,” she said, although she knew in her bones that it wasn’t. What she didn’t know was how to feel.
Disgusted
. Right now, she felt mostly disgusted with herself. Undeserving of the gift of a child. Unworthy. Rotten. Hypocritical.

“Please just say Joe is the dad,” Kat begged.

“Do you think it’s better to tell the truth even if it hurts you to tell it, even if it hurts the people you love most?”

Kat thought a moment. “I guess so. It’s what I teach the kids, that they have to tell the truth no matter what. But then sometimes I--”

“You what?” Livie prompted.

Kat’s mouth twisted into a rueful grimace. “You know. I lie. To Tim, mostly. He doesn’t know the half of what I spend, I hide what I buy. I spend too much on things. Stella’s shoes. He’s right. It was stupid.” She cupped her elbows in her hands, shrugged. “I wish I wouldn’t. I’m not proud of it.”

Livie didn’t say anything.

“Is this about Cotton, all this stuff with his mom? I hate that you’re involved. First, you save a dog, now it’s Delia. I wish you didn’t always have to be so--”

“What should I have done? Hung up on her? Left her to die on her kitchen floor?”

“No. It’s just--”

“Do you think it’s possible Cotton ran out on me for some other reason?”

“Like?”

“Suppose it wasn’t cold feet, or whatever you want to call it, that he couldn’t commit or whatever.”

“But what else could it be, Livie? What other explanation is there?”

“I don’t know.” Livie picked at her thumbnail.

“Look,” Kat cut into her thoughts, “I don’t know what his agenda is coming back here, but--”

“Do you remember when I went away after Cotton disappeared?”

“When you went to Galveston and stayed at that beach house by yourself? Mom and I were worried to death about you.”

“I wasn’t in Galveston. I was at Memorial Hospital having a D&C. I was pregnant, and--and after he left, I miscarried. It was the shock, I think. I was so devastated when he sent the postcard, when I had to face that he wasn’t coming back. I didn’t want to live.”

“Oh, Livie, why didn’t you tell me?”

Her eyes welled and when Kat came and pulled her into an embrace, Livie balanced her forehead on Kat’s shoulder and whispered, “I’m so scared I’ll lose this baby, too.”

“No, Livie--”

“But you don’t know. I don’t deserve to have children. I’m a terrible person.”

“Why are you saying that?” Kat backed up, seized Livie by her arms and gave her a little shake. “You’ll be the best mom in the world, better than me.”

Livie went into the pantry, found a tissue and blew her nose.

“Did you tell Mom? About the miscarriage, I mean.”

“I didn’t tell anyone,” Livie said. “I couldn’t.”

Kat’s glance dipped to Livie’s waist. “So Cotton is this baby’s father, too?”

Livie shook her head. “Joe’s the only man I’ve been with that way.” She hesitated before adding, “Lately,” and going into the breakfast nook, she sat at the table.

And when Kat sat across from her, Livie told her about the stockbroker and the rest of the men who’d followed in his wake, the nameless string of strangers she’d picked up in bars, hotel lobbies, restaurants, the grocery store. She kept her gaze in her lap, shredding the tissue. The tatters drifted like snowflakes over her legs and onto the floor around her chair. Her voice was low--Kat was bent forward, listening--the words were stones. They hurt Livie’s chest. They tasted of shame, a real fear that Kat would hate her.

“It was like a fever,” she said. “But then it was over. After I moved here.”

“But you went with Joe,” Kat pointed out.

“That was--”
different.
The word idled on Livie’s tongue. If she said it, she’d be lying, wouldn’t she? “It was a mistake, like all the rest of them.”

Kat squirmed.

Livie met her glance. “What? I’m like you, I’m not proud of myself.”

“I understand that. I think I even understand why you--”

Livie groaned. “Here we go. Kat the amateur psychiatrist. I’m a nymphomaniac, a sex addict, or, hey, what about bi-polar disease? Wouldn’t that make a great topic of conversation at all the boring cocktail parties Tim drags you to. Those doctor friends of his would probably love hearing all about your poor, demented, bi-polar sister.”

“That’s not--”

“You know what? There isn’t a name you can call me that I haven’t--” Livie jerked down her gaze. What was she thinking, to attack Kat? As if Livie, herself, hadn’t been terrified and sickened by her behavior. She’d even seen a real psychiatrist for a brief time. Vivian Andrus. Vivian had been the one to raise the possibility that Livie might be bi-polar. According to Vivian, Livie’s risky behavior could be a symptom. Dr. Landrus had mentioned sex addiction, schizophrenia and dissociative disorder, too. She’d suggested Livie might be emulating her mother out of long-withheld anger. Dr. Andrus had gathered Livie’s words like threads, tried to fabricate them into a disease suitable enough to hang on Livie’s life, preferably one that would require twice-weekly visits and various medications. Livie had stopped going.

“I wish you had trusted me.” Kat’s chin trembled.

“I know, Cookie. I’m sorry. Livie took her sister’s hands. “But Stella was still a baby; your plate was full. Anyway, I was too ashamed and--and scared. I felt like--”

“Mom.”

“I could see myself becoming her, or worse.” Livie went to the sink. Outside the hens were loose in the chicken yard pecking at the dust. She couldn’t remember if she’d fed them this morning. She covered her face with her hands.

Kat came to stand beside her. “Did Cotton know you were pregnant? Is that why he left?”

“I didn’t tell him. I wanted to. I’d done the test, but--” Livie bit her lip and turned, leaning her backside against the countertop. “I was afraid Delia would say I’d done it on purpose, that she would have tried to ruin the wedding. I was waiting until after.”