Even though Billy knew the answer, he found the courage to ask the question Elizabeth needed. “What are you talking about?” he whispered.
She looked him in the eye, seemingly oblivious now to the tears that freely coursed along her cheeks. “The talk we had outside Cooter Brown’s…I was strong that day, like I had everything figured out and set before me. I felt like I could live, really live, if you can somehow imagine that. But I’ve been wearing thin, letting in all these…cold thoughts. The strength I was talking about that day, it’s just…” and she held her hands out at a loss for words, revealing nonetheless a frightening loneliness that spoke volumes. Her eyes implored him to speak so she wouldn’t have to.
Billy grabbed her hand with an attempt at the control she’d possessed that day on the levee. And when he spoke his voice didn’t sound as strident as he’d hoped it would, but by God, it didn’t sound that bad either. “Elizabeth,” he said slowly, trying to weave through this planted minefield. “Please don’t think like that. Every day’s not gonna be a good one…there’s always gonna be doubt lingering around, waiting to suck all the good out. But…” and he cleared his throat in an attempt to mask the quivering. Suddenly it was as if a vault door had slammed shut. Anything else he could have said swirled and disappeared. He swallowed. “Everything’s gonna be all right,” he finished lamely, hating himself even as the words left his mouth. He could not meet her gaze as his mind frantically searched for the inspiration that his tongue had mutinously failed to articulate. He felt her unspoken pity and his flesh tightened. He began chewing at his fingernails, noticed he was doing so, and stopped immediately. Fuck it, he told himself mentally. No sense in running any longer. “Tell me…” he said and reached for her hand again.
Elizabeth closed her eyes and breathed as if she’d just finished the final leg of a marathon. Billy could practically see her mind churning behind her closed lids. When they finally opened she began speaking immediately. “I just left Mother’s house yesterday and got on a bus. Rode around the city for hours. Everything hurt; the painkillers didn’t do shit.” Her voice was steady, devoid of emotion. It was as if she read from cue cards. “I haven’t taken the chemo in two weeks. I know I should but it makes me feel worse than I did before. Nothing’s working.
“I called Dr. Mason last week and told him not to call the house wondering why I missed treatments. He tried giving me the old this-is-for-your-own-good crap, but I could tell he wasn’t pushing too hard. He knows the truth as well as I do. They’re not going to cure me. In fact, the radiation will probably kill me sooner than the goddamn cancer, and it’s just all hollow talk now. I guess I’m just now starting to fully realize…” Billy sat motionless as her monologue changed directions. “Mother’s been around the house more often the last few weeks. She hasn’t been as regular over at St. Paul’s like she was for a while. I guess she’s getting used to the idea too. It’s not new anymore. Every once in a while she’ll poke her head into my room or ask me a question when I’m watching T.V., but she’s a bad actor. All her lines are forced and she doesn’t tell me what she’s really thinking. I see fear plastered all over her like a neon sign, but I tell you, I can’t bring myself to care. And if that sounds cruel…”
Billy managed to pull enough breath together to mumble, “You know how I feel about her.”
Elizabeth acknowledged this with a curt nod of the head, assuring him that he’d said enough. “I know…I know how things are. It’s tough to forget how people really are, even when it looks like they’re making the effort to change, or at least bend a little. But it just doesn’t matter to me, Billy,” and she raked a hand through a tangle of hair. “I’m not fazed one bit, it’s like I’m completely empty.” She stopped but Billy didn’t venture anything else. He wanted her to finish.
“So,” she continued. “I’ve been riding around on the busses most days. On the days I’m supposed to go to the hospital I just ride around longer than usual. I can’t stand to be around the house anymore. It’s a prison, a depressing prison where time runs on and on but you never get anywhere.” She held up her hands in perplexity.
“When I’m riding around I just sit there thinking…all this ton of crap reeling around in my head and I can’t stop it. At night all I do is dream about things I don’t want to think about even in the daylight, and all day long I think about them anyway! It’s driving me crazy! I’m chasing things I can’t catch!”
“Tell me, Liz,” Billy said again, leaning closer and squeezing her shoulder.
Another tear slid free. “I don’t want to die, Billy. I know all the stuff I said, but I don’t feel so tough anymore. I’m afraid. When I wake up and the pain’s there, dying is the only thing that’s real. No matter how hard I try to think about something else, it doesn’t work.
“I started a journal when I found out about the cancer. At first it was good, full of the ideas I told you about behind Cooter’s. Now it’s become much harder to write, if it even comes at all. And when it does I find myself writing things that don’t help. Frightening things. There’s nothing else there; I’m like a sieve that’s draining out.” She brought up her hand to brush away the tears that had collected at her lips, tears Billy could not see because of his own. He stared at the floor, but still kept a firm grip on his sister’s hand. When she went on her voice was even quieter than when she’d begun.
“I don’t want you to be frightened for me, Billy. I still believe in the things we talked about, it’s just that there’s a loneliness building inside, and it’s not something that can be fixed. It feels like it’s part of me, a silent thing that waits inside everyone….” Billy finally worked up the courage to look at her and she saw the tears tracking his face. He wiped them away quickly.
“I’m sorry, Elizabeth. I’d do anything to take this away….”
Elizabeth reached up and ran a hand along his face, proving that the tears were okay. “I know you would, Billy. No matter what happens, you’ll always be with me. I know this. I don’t want you to think I’ve given up hope because I haven’t. It’s just harder now….” and her voice trailed away again.
“Jesus,” Billy whispered. “Why is this happening?” The question slipped out even though both knew there was no answer.
Several moments ticked by, and thankfully with them went some of the thick, damaging malaise that clogged the room. Billy slapped his knees and stood up, turning around to pull the covers up to Elizabeth’s neck. “Try to get back to sleep, okay? You’re pale. Don’t worry about Mother, I called her last night and told her you were okay. I’m supposed to go to work today, but I can call in and tell them—“
Elizabeth held up her hand, cutting him off in mid stroke. “No, no, no,” she said firmly. “If you’ve got to work, you work. I’ll be fine right here. I’ve got a splitting headache and I’m going to try to sleep. No sense in you hanging around here for that. I’m not a baby and I’m not an invalid.” Billy was glad to see a bit of color returning to her cheeks. “What time is it?” she asked.
Billy checked the Pulsar. “8:17,” he said.
She attempted a smile that caused her to squint. “God, why’d you have to wake me up so early?” She pawed at him, but it was clear she had little energy. He reached over and rubbed her head, a vestige held over from their childhood. Some things were unchangeable after all. The smile that came to his lips (at the memory and the subsequent truth behind it) brought a soothing wave into the room. Elizabeth visibly relaxed and eased back farther in the bed.
“I brought you those aspirins so the whole day wouldn’t be hell, little sister.”
“Go to work,” she moaned, feigning exasperation. “Turn the fan on high and leave me in peace.”
“You got it.” He walked to the doorway and paused. “I’ll leave a key on the table by the T.V. if you need to take off before I get back.” Her eyes were already closed as she nodded her head.
Chapter 56
An unusually chill breeze rifled Ebenezer’s hair as he s
at in the courtyard of Café du Monde. He was thankful for the hot cup of Espresso even if he was not particularly fond of the taste. Too sweet. The low hanging clouds would have made the area untenable had he forgotten to bring his jacket along, but he hadn’t. He cinched it tighter around his chest, eyeing the four delicate beignets remaining, nestled in the drifts of powdered sugar on his plate. Drifts that got smaller with every gust of wind. He picked up one and put it to his lips. Long practice had taught him never breathe in when putting a beignet to your mouth because the powder would rush down your throat leaving you choking for the next five minutes. Only tourists and fools didn’t know any better. He bit into the pastry, still amazed after the thousands he’d polished off how good they were. He sipped the Espresso and placed the cup on the table near his plate. His other hand went to investigate his errant moustache, a habit of his when sunk in deep thought.
He thought of his wife, Sarah, long lost these many years. The memories were a plague. Out of the corner of his eye he caught sight of the naked ring finger. He flexed his hand into a fist and slowly let it out again. So many years gone by. He remembered the dream he’d had in the hospital: the planes and smoke, the sky gone wild; then also of another he’d not had in a long while: the day with the boat on the chilling waterfront. The memories had hardened to inflexible dreams, forcing detail to every lost moment, never relinquishing the image of her small, white hand as the life ebbed out. Every detail.
They’d been married right before the War, him seventeen and her fifteen. At least that part of the story he’d told Billy was correct: how old he’d been. The rest was only…embellishment. But embellishment somehow gave things worth, he mused. They added color where the years tried to whitewash, sound where Time worked diligently to grind under. So many thoughts in his old head, so many drifting fragments left to wander and bump against his skull as he sat and thought, all of them now overpowered by the memory of her face. Absolutely gorgeous, petite; shiny black hair framed around an image, a goddess. He still recalled this idea sustaining him through many a dreadful day and night during the War, but even now its last vestiges were draining, finishing their diffusion across the Gulf of Years.
He thought about the multitude of letters he’d sent across the ocean, many of them written in times he felt he’d not survive, much less ever see her face again. Because in those letters he’d placed the only anchor to reality he’d had left.
*
Ebenezer began massaging his temple, trying to soothe the vague murmurings. There was no way to turn his thoughts away, however. He was too old, filled finally to the top with things no longer accessible except in dreams. It was suddenly, imperatively, time to make peace with the ghosts he’d long ago believed vanquished. They would be no help in the end unless faced now.
*
He’d come home from the Front. The first days and nights an endless celebration until they finally, almost thankfully, dragged slowly to an end, leaving them alone. There had been no disappointment, the angel he’d prayed to in letters actually existed, actually belonged to him.
They’d moved from Houma to Thibodaux shortly thereafter. One of Sarah’s relatives died and her land and farmhouse had been in the family for generations. Sarah had been next in line. The land was black gold, having lain fallow for several years due to Sarah’s uncle’s illness. A rail line defined the back boundary, and a derelict mill was shoved into the short corner of the property no more than thirty yards from the house, used last during a booming logging operation forty years before. The road had been completely overrun even then. Live oaks filled the front yard, willows and elms in the back. In the past sugar cane yields had been wondrous. As Ebenezer recalled this he smiled again, thinking of Billy. He hadn’t really been deceiving the boy, he told himself. It simply became hard to separate truth from fiction in storytelling.
Five years after his return they’d still been childless, though from no lack of effort. The only thing productive were the fields surrounding the house. Sarah began to withdraw and Ebenezer to doubt. Innocent questions escalated to occasional, and then increasingly frequent, arguments. The War receded to a bearable place in Ebenezer’s mind only to be replaced by another conflict at home. An uneasy tension lay upon their house like a stifling disease. And in his ignorant youth, he had believed everything would be all right. Experience had since proven this theory only yearning: nothing more substantial than a whisper of memory. As an old man he chided himself for these youthful fantasies; the War should have taught him more than that. And if he really looked deep, inside he had, though he’d done his best to deny it.
The situation finally came to a head. The arguments escalated, tensions grew until cables threatened to snap. Two venomous strangers took to inhabiting the house. The crop money would not cure the wrong between them. Avoidance of the wedding bed became frequent. Of course it was plain enough something was being hidden.
And when he found out what that thing was, Ebenezer had wished that a bullet had found him on the European battlefields.
Alone with himself in the Café Du Monde courtyard, Ebenezer stared blindly ahead. The memory was so big, so terrible after these many years in the dark. She’d finally told him, her voice strained from the effort getting the words out. The tears had been many that afternoon. She’d suddenly seemed much smaller, already broken beyond repair. He’d not touched her once during her whole disclosure.
Ebenezer’s unseeing eyes closed as he concentrated on the subtleties. The Espresso was cold, the wind had blown the remainder of the powdered sugar to the levee wall. One of the beignets had rolled off the plate and sat untouched on the iron table.
A man had seduced Sarah while he’d been away, a man turned down by the military because of a birth defect. A man who had plundered everything Ebenezer held sacred amid the many terrifying and mind-numbing days of the War. Only the sum total of her confession made it inside his head, the words he half-remembered vague and mumbled, a terrible indictment seemingly read in another language. But he’d gotten the point well enough; her eyes had told the truth.
She’d gotten pregnant. Of course, she could go to no doctor. The townspeople knew her, her family. The man had packed up and left. And she’d never loved him she pleaded to Ebenezer. She had no idea what had come over her. So she’d had it stopped. There was a person who know how, and so it had been done. But now, it seemed something had gone wrong…
How long had he sat there staring into his wringing hands? How long with his teeth grinding in his head as she continued talking, as if the act of starting had caused a force to awaken that refused quiet any longer. A dam of poisonous water broken free to flood what little remained. He’d watched, impassively as an observer, as his hand balled into a fist, watched with that same passive withdrawal as he’d smashed her in the face with it. Thank God it had only been one before he’d been able to control himself, any more than that and they’d have fried him in the electric chair for murder. He remembered his body humming and jumping as he looked at Sarah lying on the floor, blood dripping from the small gash on her cheekbone. He remembered as she’d dizzily brought herself into a sitting position. Her eyes had been dead then, he knew that too. He’d run from the house, practically tearing the door from the hinges in his rage and terror.
He’d ended up in the old mill, running amok amid the broken and rusting machinery. Smashing and throwing, kicking at anything that appeared breakable, some things that did not. Finally the howls broke free from his chest and echoed in the cracked and leaking confines of the mill like ghosts enraged by the living. How long had he sat there in a heap on the planked floor before the gunshot? There was no way to know. Time had ceased to be, only the sharp staccato report of the single shot served to pin any degree of reality to the veil of nightmare surrounding him.
Now, with the last of the powdered sugar blowing from the table, he remembered his mad tear back across the furrows, how he’d burst through the chest-high sugar cane, tripping over holes and going face down
in the rows, the musty smell of dirt and manure in his nose and caking his lips. And then finally, frantically, taking the porch at a sprint and having unimpeded access to the house due to the screen door’s lopsided yawn from the lone, crooked, bottom hinge.
On the floor in the kitchen, surrounded in a growing puddle of blood had been what was left of Sarah, feebly struggling in the mess. There was a neat dot of blood on her torn blouse, the place she’d always believed her heart to be. The pool of blood continued to grow. Her eyes were as dead now as they’d been when he tore away. The only difference was her body had followed. The .38 was still clutched limply in her right hand.
His madness had kept him going, only that. He’d gathered her up in his arms, the familiar smell of gunpowder and spilt blood filling the air. Her moans had diminished to ghostly whispers by the time he took her outside to the new Ford he’d bought for no more important reason than bringing cow manure to the fields.
The doctor’s office had been twenty minutes away, but Sarah had been dead long before then. Undoubtedly before he’d left the house. Still, he’d screeched into the parking lot, his feet sliding in the skim of blood pooled on the floorboard. The truck had smelled like an abattoir as he’d pulled her from it. He’d kept going. He remembered how surprised the nurse had been when he stream-rolled into the office, the doctor’s efficiency as he’d rushed them to the back. All for naught; Sarah was stone dead.
Or at least they had thought.
There was no hiding the suspicion in the doctor’s eyes as he’d stood over her body, suspicions that were mysteriously quieted forever when Sarah took a mysterious last ghastly breath and opened her dead eyes. The words had been unmistakable, though filled with the grave. She had pointed her finger at him. “Innocent,” she’d croaked. “It was me…I did it…my sin…” And after that, no more.
*
“Sir,” the voice came at him gradually like a train whistle coming around a bend. “Sir,” it repeated, “Do you need anything else? A new Espresso, maybe?”