Under the Skin (14 page)

“Lizzy went to bed but I sat up, hoping you’d get back soon and I could tell you about this creep who’s trying to frighten me. But you didn’t get back and you didn’t get back and finally I just gave up and decided to go to bed. I fell asleep right away …”

Phillip’s red-rimmed eyes drifted toward the hall leading to our bedroom but he stood patiently listening to Gloria’s story.

“… so it wasn’t till after four that I woke up and realized there was something under my pillow, something lumpy. Well, of course I leaped out of bed—it might have been a mouse or god knows what—out here in the wilds I know anything’s possible and Lizzy’s so careless about—”

“Gloria.” Phillip held up one dirty hand and I could see the scratches across its back, evidence that the chase had led him through the cruel briars and brambles so common in abandoned fields. He looked utterly exhausted. “Could you show me what it was you found?”

My sister seemed for the first time to notice his state of complete fatigue. Without continuing her dissertation on my failures as a housewife, she led the way back to the guest room.

“
There
it is!” She whisked away the pillow to reveal her find: a beheaded Barbie doll in a gold lamé evening gown. Lying a few inches away atop a half-torn card—a queen of hearts—the blond head smirked up at us.

“You see! This
has
to be Jerry’s doing. On my last birthday he threw a big party for me at the club and that was the theme—the Queen of Hearts—invitations, centerpieces, they were all done with big blowups of the card with my head on the queen’s body.”

Gloria leaned in for a closer look at the doll. “I even had a gold lamé dress—but not tacky like this one.” It was hard to tell if fear outweighed annoyance in her tone as she regarded the bizarre little display. “He must have walked right into the house—I
told
Lizzy she ought to have an alarm system but she just laughed and said she’d lost the key to the front door years ago. Well, I ask you …”

When I tried to stem the flow of my sister’s rambling narrative, suggesting that perhaps it would be kind to let Phillip get some sleep before we pursued this case of the
Barbie Who Lost Her Head, he ignored me
—they
ignored me.

Phillip went into full cop mode—checking the French door that led from the guest room to the outside, bagging up the Barbie pieces along with the card—and all of the time treating Gloria’s babbling as seriously as if a major crime had been committed.

At last he had finished and my sister had allowed him to get a shower. I followed him into the bedroom, Molly trailing close behind.

“Sorry about last night, sweetheart.” Phillip yawned hugely and planted a perfunctory kiss on my cheek. “We were in a dead zone and I couldn’t call earlier …”

He yawned again, tossed his robe to the foot of the bed, and slid between the sheets. “Just a few hours and I’ll be good to go … tell your sister I’ll …”

His voice trailed off and I could see that he was half asleep already.

“Phillip,” I said, keeping my voice low. “I’m wondering … how do we know Gloria didn’t put that silly doll under her pillow herself? I sure didn’t see any signs of—”

He was curled on his side, his face covered by his arm to block the light from the uncurtained windows. I could hear his breathing, slow and regular as if he were already asleep.

I stood and watched him for a few moments, torn by contradictory emotions. Part of me wanted to lie down beside him, inhale that clean soap smell, and be soothed by the sound of his breathing.

The other part of me was completely and irrationally ticked off that he’d paid so much attention to Gloria’s so-called fears, that he’d been gone for so long, that he’d ignored—

“Lizabeth, listen, sweetheart …”

The half-mumbled words made me jump. I’d been
sure he was alseep. But he continued, the drowsy, muffled words seemingly dragged out of him. His eyes were still hidden in the crook of his elbow and he was talking into the pillow, but I could understand him.

“You got to get past this … this thing you have about your sister. It’s … messing with your …”

The last word was enveloped in a sudden snore and I realized that I’d been tuned out. Across the hall I could hear Gloria’s music starting up again and suddenly I felt like a prisoner in my own house … and worse, in my own mind.

As I watched him sleep, I considered this man in my bed
—our
bed for quite a while now. Annoyed though I was at his inability to see through Gloria’s obvious attempts at manipulation, still, I was deeply in love with him—this man with whom, for better or worse, I was about to promise to share my life.

I knew he was gentle; I knew he was kind. That he was patient, I had ample opportunity of knowing, none better.

Even the sight of his bald, nut brown scalp, ringed with graying dark hair, inspired the sort of tenderness in me usually reserved for puppies and small fluffy creatures. I knew how I felt—no doubt about my feelings …

I heaved a sigh and sat down on the bench at the foot of the bed. Feelings were all very well.
But what
, I asked myself—that fluttery teenager-in-love self who kept wanting to ignore the adult self asking the hard questions
—what do you really know about Phillip?

Staring out the window at the familiar beautiful view, it was hard to focus on the ugly possibilities raised by Dodie’s letter. The view from my window was, as always, an invitation to meditate—the woods and fields of the farm laid out below me with green fold upon green fold in the nearer distance and then blue shading to rich violet as the ridges marched toward the horizon.

Had it been only three years ago that he had come into my life?

An uneasy memory of the somewhat duplicitous nature of his reason for invading my world—the safe little world I’d built for myself of hard work and grief—nudged at me.
You see! He wasn’t what he said. Even though it all got explained—

The springs creaked as Molly leaped up onto the bed, did the obligatory circling and, sighing heavily, lay down in the crook of Phillip’s knees.

There—what about that? The dogs have trusted him from the beginning. Of course James would cuddle up to an ax murderer. But Molly and Ursa have always seemed much more discerning. And how many men would put up with three spoiled dogs the way he does?

He has, in fact, fit into the life here with barely a ripple. No furniture or collections to find a place for, no personal stuff except for a few pictures of his kids. I couldn’t believe how simple moving was for him—a couple of duffel bags of clothes, three boxes of books and odds and ends, and a file cabinet that fit on the backseat of his car. When I asked where the rest of his stuff was, he said that was all there was
.

Was it realistic for a man in his fifties to have so little baggage—literal or otherwise? I knew about the ex-wife, now happily remarried; had met the children briefly before they’d vanished off to Australia to pursue whatever it was they were pursuing. Marine biology for Seth, I reminded myself, and Party Hearty 101 for Janie, if her infrequent emails to Phillip were any guide.

The horrible things that Sam and Phillip witnessed in Vietnam decades ago seemed not to have haunted Phillip. Sam had suffered through terrible nightmares, flashbacks, depression, but as far as I could tell, Phillip had put that episode behind him forever.

Different men—different ways of dealing with things
,

I told myself, watching the resident pair of redtail hawks wheeling against the deep blue sky. One screamed and dove toward the slope below the house, the sun striking copper glints from his tail feathers. The second continued her lazy arcs then abruptly changed course to head for the tree line of the ridge to the south.

A gang of crows exploded from the trees where the second hawk had gone. Like bits of cinder against the sky, they swirled and coalesced, then moved away in a ragged line.

Behind me Phillip was snoring. Across the hall, another of Gloria’s interminable show tunes was playing—a full chorus this time.

Suddenly I had to get out of the house. Let Gloria weep out more of her story when Phillip finally wakes up, I decided. They don’t need me here for that—the obvious
thing
I have about my sister is too likely to get in the way.

I pulled off my stained workaday T-shirt, replacing it with a cleaner, newer model, and headed out.

“Gloria,” I called over the racket in her room. “I’m off to the grocery store. For god’s sake, let Phillip get his sleep—you can tell him the rest of your story when he wakes up.”

“Naw, Daddy ain’t doing no good these days. But he’s dead set on keeping the trout business going long as he can. It gives him something to get up for of a morning.”

I’d been engrossed in the magazine covers there beside the checkout counter—wondering who all these people were anyway and why it mattered if they were cheating on each other. But that familiar voice … almost at my ear …

The two men behind me had exchanged the ritual farewells—
Let’s go to the house
, the first voice had said.

And
Reckon I best stay here and pay for these groceries
, the other had answered.

Harice Tyler—Brother Tyler to the congregation at the little church I had visited several times for Miss Birdie’s sake—was standing just behind me. Harice Tyler—whose bedroom eyes and slow sensual smile had been so enchanting to me for a brief mad moment that I had imagined—

I could feel a flush rising on my face as I remembered what I had imagined. I inched my cart forward and began shoving my groceries along the motionless belt toward the scanner. The previous customer had paid but now her cellphone was out and she and the cashier were cooing and exclaiming over all forty-three pictures of the new grandchild.

“You got any grandbabies yet, Miz Goodweather?”

This was ridiculous. I couldn’t pretend not to know who it was. Taking a deep breath, I turned and summoned up a polite smile.

“Mr.… Mr. Tyler? I thought I recognized your voice. It’s been quite a while.”

Did his eyes seem to burn into mine? Why was I suddenly so exquisitely
aware
of this dark-eyed preacher from the Church of Jesus Love Anointed—the
snake-handling
church in Tennessee?

I couldn’t help making a quick inventory of his shopping cart—canned biscuits, Treet meat, a bunch of bananas, dried pinto beans, margarine, two loaves of Bunny bread, four pouches of chewing tobacco, a gallon of cherry vanilla ice cream, and a box of Little Debbies.

He caught me looking. “Been doing some shopping for Daddy,” he said, his voice low and confidential as if we were sharing some secret. “They’s a widder woman in the next holler that brings him soup or a big pot of stew now and again, but Daddy, he’s a fool for them Little Debbies.”

What was it in his sleepy-eyed gaze that had me tongue-tied and ransacking my brain for something innocuous to say?

“Did I hear you say your father still has the trout farm?” I finally managed. “I keep meaning to go get some but—”

“Ain’t nothing better than fresh trout,” Harice Tyler assured me. “You come on over this evening, Miz Goodweather, I’ll see you get treated right.”

A nice change
, I thought as I pushed the cart out to my car.

And immediately wondered what, exactly, I’d meant. Trout, trout for supper—that would be a nice change, I told myself as I put the groceries into the back of the car. No need to hurry home—for once I’d remembered to bring a cooler with ice packs for the cold groceries—there’d be room for some trout …

In the next row of cars, Harice Tyler was sauntering toward his truck, two bulging white plastic bags in each hand. Dark-haired, slim-hipped—what an older Elvis might have looked like if no one had ever told him about deep-fried peanut-butter-and-banana sandwiches.

Almost as if he’d heard my thoughts, Harice Tyler stopped, swiveled around, and fixed his gaze on me.

“I’m on my way to Daddy’s place right now—you come along, Miz Goodweather, and I’ll fix you up. All the trout you want—it won’t take no time.”

I could feel my face flush again, as if he’d just made an indecent proposal.

“You remember how to get there, don’t you?” he persisted.

It took me a minute to find my voice.
Why
did this man have this effect on me?

“Yes, I do remember. But I—”

“I thought that you would. You just come along if
you’ve a mind—I got to get going afore this ice cream melts—Daddy asked for it special.”

And I found myself following his truck out of the parking lot onto the road that led back to the bridge at Gudger’s Stand. By the time I got to the bridge, I told myself, I would have decided whether or not I really wanted trout for dinner. That’s all.