Beautiful Kate (21 page)

“Well, it’s certainly worth looking into,” I said, enjoying the pun even if Jason did not.

He was growing more excited. “I’m almost sure there’s money in that box. I’m almost positive.”

I wanted to ask him how
much
, but bit my tongue, knowing that he immediately would have pointed out that it was none of my business. Then suddenly his excitement evaporated and he sank back onto the pillows.

“But I can’t go to the bank,” he said.

“The streets ought to be better tomorrow. They’re probably salting them already.”

“I can’t go anywhere.”

“Why not?”

He looked at me with narrowing eyes, as if he only now remembered something very important. “You think I’ve forgotten that night? How you shook me? How you told me to
hurry up and die?”

I asked him what that had to do with anything, and he gave me a derisive snort.

“I just might have an ‘accident’ out there, eh?” he said. “A fall on the ice. Something like that.”

All I could do was shake my head in amazement. “You are something else, you know that?”

“I’m alive, if that’s what you mean.”

On my way downstairs, he yelled for me to tell Junior about the safe deposit box, which I did, barely getting the words out before my little brother had run up the stairs to offer the old man any assistance he could. Within minutes Jason was trying to get the bank on the phone, only to discover that the line was dead (as it was to remain for most of that day). Undaunted, Junior got the jeep out of the garage and roared down our ice-covered drive to the ice-covered street, doubtless slipping and sliding all the way to the bank, where he found that he had to bring a new signature card home for himself and Jason to sign. That done, he sped off in the jeep again to check out the safe deposit box, suddenly the most cooperative son a man could have.

While he was gone, Toni decided to have another go at me. Bundled in boots and two pairs of jeans and a hooded winter coat of Sarah’s, she kept opening the hitherto seldom used sliding doors to the living room, letting in the bracing January air.

“Come on and enjoy!” she said. “Don’t deny yourself like this. Here we have a tree in the living room and blue sky and everything, and what do you do? You try to close it off. You shut it out. And that’s just not like you, Greg. Come on, let’s get into this thing and really
freeze
. Let’s really
suffer
. That’s what it’s all about, isn’t it?”

After patiently closing the doors again, I put my arm around her shoulders and guided her back to the kitchen, which the electric range kept almost toasty. I sat her down at the table.

“You haven’t had breakfast yet, as I recall,” I said. “Let me make you something.”

“How about some gruel? That sounds like something you might be into.”

“How about scrambled eggs instead?”

“Or hardtack?” she countered. “Maybe gruel
and
hardtack.”

“You’re very funny today.”

“And why not? Sitting here in a fucking parka at the fucking breakfast table—what else could I be but funny?”

“Be grateful for the parka. It shows what good care I take of you.”

She picked up her coffee mug and started to throw it at me, but reconsidered and put it back on the table.

“Jesus, I don’t know what’s happening to me,” she said. “You’ve turned me into such a jerk. I think we’ve already played this scene a hundred times, and here we go again.”

I cracked her eggs into a bowl and began to whip them as she went on, sounding reflective now, almost bemused.

“At first, I kept telling myself that it would just be another day or two and I could stick it out till then. I could take almost anything for a couple of days, even this place. But then you changed it to another week and I accepted that too, just so we could be together.
Leave
here together. And now—” She looked up at me. “Just what is the new timetable? Another season? Do we wait till summer now?”

I told her that Junior just might be returning from the bank with some money, possibly enough for Jason to give me a loan.

“Then maybe we could leave in a few days,” I said. “When the weather breaks.”

She gave me a pitying look. “And you expect me to believe that, don’t you? With your old man in the shape he’s in, and the great American diary unfinished? You’re here for good, buster. And we both know it.”

“I don’t know any such thing.”

“So I’ve just got to face it, that’s all. The only way out of here is by myself. With my thumb. And I’m gonna do it too. I figure a couple of rapes and one or two beatings ought to get me back to California. What do you think?”

I told her that she was breaking my heart.

“Yeah, well, you’ll see, buster.”

I brought her eggs and toast to the table and she poured herself another cup of coffee. Squatting next to her, with one hand on her bottom, I lifted a forkful of egg to her mouth. She took a bite and then very deliberately relieved me of the fork.

“I’m in no mood for your games,” she said.

I nuzzled her breast, lost somewhere under the thick parka. “You wouldn’t leave before my birthday, would you?” I asked. “Remember, it’s just two days away.”

“How could I forget?
Forty-four
. Jesus, it’s like living with my own grandfather.”

“Grandpa wants a kiss.”

But all I got was her cheek and the same rueful look. I kissed her anyway, and stood.

“Well, Junior should be back soon. Maybe he’ll have some good news.”

Toni went right on eating.

Despite his service’s motto, the postman was six hours late that day. But among the usual junk mail was a postcard from Sarah, with a picture of Disneyworld on the front, looking like a kiddieland Kremlin. On the reverse side she sent us greetings and said that she was still having a great time. She was staying at a Holiday Inn. Hector had had to return to Miami on business for a day or two. But he would be back soon, she wrote. She just knew he would. Then it was
Love to All, Sarah
, followed by a postscript saying that she missed us but not the snow and would be coming home soon.

Jason scoffed at the whole thing.
“Disneyland! Hector!
What can she be thinking of?”

Nevertheless he kept the card with him in bed.

I did not make it back to the farm until six in the evening, which in the home of Jason Cutter Kendall meant that everyone was already at the dinner table. Little Sarah, perched on her seat pillows, may not have been the first to see me walking up the road, but she most definitely was the only one to come running out to greet me, undoubtedly over Jason’s stern objections. She took the porch stairs in one bound and I had all I could do, still carrying the duffelbag, to catch her in my free arm at the end of the driveway. She hugged me around the neck so tightly I could barely breathe, let alone talk, yet I was quite happy to put up with the discomfort and carried her that way all the way into the house.

My reception in the dining room was much more restrained. Only Mother got up, but as usual she was more mindful of her husband’s wishes then her own and she spent more time clucking over my bruised cheek and brushing at my dusty clothes than she did in welcoming me. I felt no such reticence, however, and gave her a hug and kiss.

“You wash up before you sit down at this table,” Jason instructed me. “You’re not ‘on the road’ here.”

Sarah and Junior were chattering at me, asking where I had been and what I had done and why my face was “all hurt.” But Jason silenced them.

“We’re not interested in any of that now. This is the dinner table and we’ll behave accordingly.”

More than once I had glanced at Kate and Cliff at the far end of the table, but they both were strangely intent upon not looking at me. And in Cliff at least this was so uncharacteristic that I immediately sensed the worst. The thought that he might
know
—that Kate might have told him everything—set my heart sprinting right there in the dining room. I looked at my twin, at the way her hair was done just so and at the freshly ironed dress she was wearing instead of her customary jeans and cowboy shirt, and I could almost feel the change in her, the cool malice coming off her like an emanation of dry ice.

Rattled, I laughed and blurted, “Well, what’s up, siblings?”

Kate, saying nothing, kept her eyes on Cliff, who seemed to have to force himself finally even to glance my way. But that was enough for me to see his pain.

“Welcome home, Greg! Glad to have you back!” I said, and then promptly answered myself. “Well, glad to be here. Home is where the food is.”

Not unexpectedly, the only laugh I got was from Sarah. So I quickly exited to the bathroom to wash up. By the time I returned to the table, Kate and Cliff were both leaving, having been excused by Jason. On the way out Cliff gave me a withering look and said that he would see me later. I nodded indifferently, as if there were nothing unusual in the exchange. But even Jason had caught the difference in Cliff’s attitude.

“What is this between you two?” he said. “Did you have a quarrel?”

“Not to my knowledge.”

After Mother served my dinner, Jason interrogated me about the trip and my bruises and for the most part I told him the truth: that I had hitchhiked to St. Louis, that I had bummed around there, taking in the night life, and that I had been mugged and robbed. I also volunteered that I had learned a few things while I was gone.

“Such as?” Jason asked.

“Smoking. I learned how to smoke cigarettes.”

He solemnly wagged his head. “I’ve been waiting for that. With all your other vices, I wondered when you’d be getting around to that one.”

“I don’t run anymore. Might as well enjoy myself.”

“You could run in college.”

“Woodglen Junior College? You must be thinking of Yale, Father.”

Later I sat on the front porch trying to answer the many questions of Sarah and Junior, both of whom wanted a blow-by-blow account of the “mugging”—or how I lost my money but saved my life while fighting off three St. Louis hoodlums. The kids were properly impressed. But for some reason they were just as interested in my hitchhiking, and I had to tell them who picked me up and where and exactly what was said. My tale of the speeding Cadillac unexpectedly elicited a few wows from Junior, who tended even then to be stingy in his enthusiasms. All the while, though, as I responded to their questions, I was watching for Cliff or Kate to come and invite me to the inevitable showdown. And it happened finally around eight o’clock, when there was still over an hour of light left. Kate, appearing at the corner of the porch, asked me to follow her.

“Cliff wants to talk with you,” she said.

Telling the kids that I would see them later, I followed her back towards the barn. And as we walked, I still found it odd how she was dressed, as if for church, here in the country, on a weekday. At the same time, watching her lissome body move under the silken material and catching her in profile as she turned to see if I was following, I realized that whatever resemblance I thought the stripper Ginger Baby had borne to her was illusory at best, no more than that of an impressionist to a star. And as I followed her into the barn, so close to her now, I felt it all beginning again, that same shriveling of the will, that death of the spirit that had driven me away ten days before. I longed to reach out and touch her, hold her. At the haymow ladder, she stepped aside, facing me, and I realized that my emotion had been strong enough to bring tears to my eyes.

She pretended not to see them. “He’s in the mow, waiting for you.”

“You told him!” I got out.

She did not answer.

“Why? Can you tell me that?”

“I said he’s waiting for you.”

“Let him. I’m asking you why.”

She looked at me with a scalding contempt. “You had to run,” she said. “Like a dog.”

“You don’t know
why
I left?” I waited, but again she made no answer. She just stood there staring at me, her eyes almost frightening in their childlike lack of doubt or compassion.

So finally I turned from her and climbed the ladder to the mow, where I found Cliff sitting on a hay bale, holding his head like a man with a hangover. On hearing me, he got to his feet and turned to face me. The plank floor between us was strewn with loose strands and clumps of hay from the hundreds of bales fed out during the winter. Beyond him one of the haymow doors had been hooked open and the light poured into the dusty gloom, framing him, reducing him to a slender silhouette. I watched as his hands curled into fists.

“This is stupid, Cliff,” I said. “You’ll be fighting over something you don’t know anything about.”

He started towards me. “Oh, but I do. Because Kate told me. She told me what you tried.”

Tried
. The word sang in my head, made me want to fall to my knees and bawl with relief. Though what he thought about me now was bad enough, it was not as bad as the truth. And for that I was grateful. Like a plea bargainer, I almost wanted to confess to this lesser crime, as though that might keep Cliff and everyone else from ever knowing what I actually had done.