The Wedding Gift (19 page)

Donny stopped speaking for
a minute, he was sweating and he groaned like he was hurt. I was
hugging myself by then and shaking, I just said to him
“
What Donny, what was she
holding?
”

He shook his head a little
and I could feel his hand still in mine. It was clammy.

“
She had a knife, Leeann,
it was just a bread knife, but see I knew it was the knife because
I had heard Deputy Riffler’s wife tell my aunt Lucy once when they
were talking how she hadn’t known that you could cut people up that
bad just using a bread knife. Deputy Riffler’s wife told Aunt Lucy
that Robina must have been so crazy with rage that it made her as
strong as a man. Anyway, Charlie, he was backing up to the window
real fast. God, Leeann, if she looked that bad to me, I can’t
imagine what it looked like to Charlie because she wasn’t any
further away from him than you are to me now. And then, oh shit,
she talked, at least I think she did. It almost seems like I heard
her voice inside and not outside my head and it’s driven me crazy
all these years wondering how that could have
been
.”

He paused again, squeezing
his eyes shut. I had to ask him. “
Donny
…Baby … what did she say?
”

He nodded to himself like
he was going to get this out no matter what. “
She said ‘Roger, Roger?’ like she was asking Charlie if he
was Roger but she didn’t know for sure. ‘Roger, what are you doing
here? I killed you, didn’t I, Roger?’ Leeann, she didn’t even say
it mad like, it was just this real conversational question, like
didn’t I do the wash already or something. When she talked though,
I’ll admit it, I pissed myself like a three year old, and that’s
when Charlie started screaming. I’ll hear him screaming and her
saying that ‘Didn’t I kill you, Roger?’ till I die,
Leeann
.”

I just squeezed his
shoulder, ‘cause sometimes there just aren’t any good words to be
spoken.

“
Then, Leeann, she said,
‘Well that’s okay, Roger, I will just kill you again. I will kill
you as many times as it takes. You know I have to, don’t you,
Roger? You have ruined my life, Roger, and I won’t let you live
unless you are sorry. Roger, are you sorry for what you did, is
that why you came back here?’ Poor Charlie, see Leeann, he couldn’t
talk, not even to beg for mercy, he was crying too hard. He was to
the window by then so I answered her for him. I said ‘Yeah, yeah
Miz Robina, Roger is real sorry, that’s what he came to tell you,
that he’s sorry.’ She looked right at me then and smiled; only it
was a God-awful because part of her jaw had fallen off her face.
Then she said ‘You’re not Roger, neither of you are Roger. I want
Roger! You’re just filthy boys who don’t belong in my house.’ Then,
God Leeann, oh shit, she moved so quick, she raised her arm up and
plunged that knife right into Charlie’s back. He was halfway out
the window by then with me pulling him into the tree. He didn’t
even scream, because the knife just went right through him without
leaving a mark. I thought we were home free, but Jesus she climbed
right out after Charlie, and started clawing at his face; this time
it did make marks. Oh God, it was so bad she tore his face to the
bone with her fingers. I was screaming by then too. Charlie was
just trying to get away from her, but we were in a goddamn tree and
so when he backed away, he fell. Leeann, I heard him hit. When he
hit it sounded like this … this cracking, splatting sound. I guess
I knew then she had killed him. But God help me, I still wanted to
live. I started climbing down, but she was there, ahead of me and,
oh shit, the smell of her. The last thing I remember before the
hospital was her hands coming out at me, and she said, ‘Your turn,
little boy.’ I guess she shoved me, and I would have died too, but
I was hanging straight down from the branch when I hit, so my legs
took it all. See Charlie, he was leaning back from her; I think
that’s why he landed on his head. I don’t know, maybe it just
wasn’t my time
.”

Oh my God, I didn’t know
what to say to him, except the first thing that came into my head.
“
Daddy was right. He always said Charlie
was murdered in this house and that the Willets covered it up. He
was right all along
.”

Donny shook his head.
“
No, not really. The Willets didn’t cover
up anything. They don’t know the story; no one does but me, and now
you. And I told you because as soon as I heard you had moved in
here, I knew I had to convince you to get out of here. I ran into
your mama last week and she told me you were living in this G.D.
house. I came over right away, and George told me you had gone to
Miami, so I’ve been checking every day since then till you got
home
.”

I had me, as Jessie would
have said, some feelings that were shaken not stirred about Donny’s
story. I was scared, of course - I am not a fool - but also I was
feeling for the first time in my life sad and angry that my big
brother was dead. People say that you can’t miss something you’ve
never had, but I don’t know that I agree with that. You can miss
being fed if you are born hungry and, take it from me, you can miss
being rich if you have always been poor. That day I found out I
could miss having a brave, funny big brother who probably would
have been crazy about me, even though I’d never met him. I felt a
lot of things that afternoon: love for Donny Readle, sadness at
never having no memories of Charlie, and something else too. I felt
hatred for Robina Willets, a woman who was haunting my house when
she should have been roasting down in hell long ago for the things
she had done.

Chapter
25

There were a lot of
questions I wanted to ask Donny, but my immediate curiosity was
struck by him saying he had been around all last week.

“
Donny, did you lose your
job with the trucking company?
”

He said no, that he was
home for awhile on leave; that he had a bunch saved up and had
needed to take it. I remembered then that Carlene had not come with
him to my wedding; I got excited, thinking maybe he was on leave as
he and Carlene were in the middle of a divorce. I asked him
straight out if that was why.

He shook his head at me,
looking sad. Then as fast as he had made me happy, he broke my
heart again and set me straight to the facts. He told me he did not
love Carlene; that marrying her had been a mistake, and he had come
back to tell her so … tell her that he knew she had lied to him
about why she had wanted out of Texas. It turned out that Mama was
right - Carlene was trash, and worse, trash with a methamphetamine
problem.

But when Donny had told her
to get out, she had locked herself in the bathroom and started
making cuts all over her body. On top of everything else wrong with
her, apparently sad trashy Carlene had a real ugly history of
cutting on herself when things went bad.

While Donny was telling me
this story, I had a hard time keeping my face from showing my
disgust, and from saying why the hell did you ever start up with
that pig anyhow? But I was not Jessie, so I managed to keep silent,
and let him talk.

Donny said that the real
reason he had taken leave was to get her into a treatment program,
which she had agreed to if he promised not to divorce
her.

Huh? Not divorce her? Well
if he wasn’t planning to divorce her, then what the hell had he
been doing with me half an hour ago?

Now I know I had
participated too (boy had I) and that I was married too, but Donny
was the man, and older, and besides I did not feel rational or
forgiving here. So I jumped up and started screaming at him.
“
You four flushing son of a bitch; you
come out here and have me like some whore you picked up at Downey’s
and then you tell me some horrible ass ghost story to scare the
shit out of me in my own house, and then you go on back and sit and
hold the hand of that cheap, drugged out whore you
married?
”

He stood up and put his
shirt on and just looked at me. I found out then, when green eyes
get cold that they look like glass.

“
Well sure, Leeann, that’s
exactly what I planned when I pulled in here. I’m going now but,
before I do, there’s just two things I want to tell you. That
wasn’t no ghost story I just told you, it was the truth. And
Carlene may be a drugged out whore, like you call her, but at least
she isn’t a gold digging bitch who screws the first man who rolls
down her driveway a few weeks after her wedding
day
.”

I just stood there taking
it. I couldn’t talk, and I didn’t think I would ever be able to
talk again. I took a little step forward towards him, but he was
already getting in his pickup and squealing in reverse down the
driveway before I could even say as much as no … as in, ‘no, you
didn’t mean that; no, I didn’t mean that. I love you, and I know
you love me. I’ll leave George if you ask. I’ll wait for you till
Carlene gets well. I’ll do all of this if you just put your arms
around me one time.’ But he was gone, and he thought I was a gold
digging whore, and he didn’t want to hear how I felt about any of
it.

I turned back towards the
house like a sick dog, and walked in slowly. My hair dye was
sitting on the little table in the foyer and I just went on
upstairs to Robina’s old bedroom and into the bathroom. I did
believe every word of the story Donny had told me, but right then I
didn’t much care. If that murderous corpse of a woman wanted to
come in and shove me out of a window, then I thought maybe she
would be doing me a favor.

Maria had to leave at six,
and though it was still light out, I didn’t like her going before
George got home, not one bit. I tried to think of a reason she
needed to stay but I couldn’t. Jessie was at work till eleven, so I
couldn’t ask her to come over either.

My feeling from a couple
hours earlier of not caring if Robina made an appearance had worn
clean off. I was heartbroken over Donny, but hell that was nothing
new, and I was not really willing to be killed after all. So when
Maria left, I went and sat out front on the verandah and waited for
George to get home.

Maybe because of what I had
done earlier, I had taken special pains with my appearance that
evening. I was in an off-the-shoulder lace peasant blouse from
Dolce and Gabbana and a short gauzy skirt, with lace up sandals. My
hair was white gold again and I was tan as hell from Miami and
spending all that day in the sun too. I looked good, and I needed
to look good.

I needed to convince George
somehow, without breaking Donny’s confidence (yeah I was mad, but I
still loved him), to let me get Father Moray over here to do an
exorcism right away. I was planning to tell George what happened in
the bedroom earlier and hoped that would be enough to convince him
that we were in danger from Robina.

George pulled up in the Jag
right on the dot at seven. George was real good about being on time
for things, I reflected. See, I was trying to make myself feel in
love with George again, him pretty much being my only available
choice. He looked pretty good too; he was tan himself, and wearing
old 501s, and a white shirt. I guessed his meeting had been casual
dress allowed. He was real happy to see me too. He ran over to the
verandah (when you have twelve pillars it’s a verandah not a
porch), and swept me up to his chest.

Chapter
26

“
Baby, I missed you so
much last week. Hell, look at you, Leeann. You got even prettier
while you were gone … how’d you do that? You must have missed me
too, huh? Sitting out here on the porch
”
(well I guessed when you are born rich, then I guess all verandahs
are porches) “
waiting for me. Why, when I
pulled up and saw you, I thought it was the cutest thing I had ever
seen
.”

I let him kiss me real deep
and told him that, yeah I had missed him real bad too, and I let
him pull me on into the house, but I put the brakes on reminding
him of what Doc. Miller said about four weeks when he tried to get
me upstairs right away.

I thought then of what me
and Donny had done out there on the lawn earlier and took a moment
to thank God that I was on antibiotics. Jessie had explained to me
a long time ago that you couldn’t get pregnant on antibiotics,
which was a damn good thing, because neither Donny nor myself were
thinking protection out there earlier. Shoot, we weren’t thinking
at all and that thought made me pull myself up short and remember
that I better stop thinking about Donny right this minute or George
would know I was a cheating, adulterous whore just from looking at
my face. I acted like I couldn’t wait till the three weeks more
were up too, and went over to our fancy antique liquor cabinet,
which George sure had stocked up nice and made him a big old
Johnnie Walker on the rocks.

He sat down on the ivory
velvet couch, in Robina’s (our) living room, and pulled out his
vial and put some white powder down on the coffee table. It kind of
annoyed me, him doing that. I guessed then that my husband was for
sure a damn drug addict and I was a little worried about Robina’s
reaction to him using her furniture this way too. But I decided to
do a couple lines myself as I had had a long day and, besides,
George liked me to party with him, and I needed him to be in a good
mood.