Fortunate Son: A Novel (3 page)

“What did you do about that?”

“Nuthin’. I was glad she was gone. All she evah did was lie around the house and talk about how this girl had bad extensions and that one was a cow.”

Branwyn remembered how May, when she was in a bad mood, had a sour nature. She would bad-mouth everybody except the person she was talking to at the moment.

“So you got tired of all that mess she talked, huh?” Branwyn asked, forgetting for a moment that he’d walked out on her when she was pregnant with his child.

“Even before we started fightin’ I was thinkin’ about you, Brawn,” Elton said. “’Bout how you always had a good word to say ’bout ev’rythang. An’ I was thinkin’ ’bout my son. You know, as soon as I found out that he was home I come ovah . . . but you’as already gone.”

Branwyn loved Elton’s simple language and his artfully told lies.

“Why didn’t you come after you found out where I was?” she asked, swinging her words like an ax.

“I didn’t know, Brawn,” he said, his voice rising into a higher register. “I swear. I went to your mama, but she was mad at me for bein’ a fool. It was only when she seen I was serious about a job and I left May, then she told me about where you was.”

“What do you want with me, Elton?”

“I just wanna see my son, baby.”

“Now how am I supposed to believe that? You left me three weeks after the doctor told me I was expecting. You never came to the hospital once to see your son.”

“I was scared, honey,” Elton said in a forced whisper. “I didn’t wanna see my boy with a hole in his chest, in a glass cage.”

The bell over the door rang, and a small white woman, who had a tiny hairless dog on a leash, came in.

“Hello, Mrs. Freemont,” Branwyn said. “I’ll be right with you,” and then to Elton, “You got to go.”

“What about Thomas?”

“Leave now, Elton. I don’t wanna lose this job over you.”

Elton gave Branwyn a hard look that she withstood with stony silence. Finally he turned away and walked out.

ELTON CAME BACK
four more times before Branwyn agreed to have lunch with him. The florist was on Pico, near Doheny. There was a hotel a few blocks away that had a restaurant Branwyn liked. They prepared a delicious tuna salad that she made sure to have twice a week.

Elton was wearing a T-shirt with a three-button collar and tan pants that hugged his butt. Branwyn had been dreaming about his lips and those hips for the two weeks since he’d first appeared at Ethel’s.

Why does he come by so often?
she wondered each night. On one of those nights, the doctor had made love to her. And while he did, she closed her eyes and remembered the fever that took her over when Elton was in her bed. And when she remembered Elton and the things he did to her, she got so excited that she had one of those soul-shaking orgasms that left her shivering like a leaf—and crying too.

Afterward she couldn’t even talk to Minas. He lay back with his hands behind his head, proud of the way he’d made her holler and cry. He didn’t know, she thought, that she was cheating on him even while they were making love.

That was why she refused the doctor’s proposal of marriage that day after Eric took the blame for her son’s misdemeanor. If he knew the passion in her heart, he’d never give her a ring.

It wasn’t that she wanted to marry Elton. She didn’t dream about a house with him and Thomas anymore. She knew that as time went by, he’d come home later and later each night until finally he’d start skipping nights and then weeks and then he’d be gone. Her mother was right the first time when she compared him to heartbreak. But none of that changed how much she wanted him to kiss her and lay the flats of his hands on her sides.

How could she say yes to Minas Nolan when she was wanton in her heart? And why wasn’t Elton the kind of man that she could run to and live with until she was old and half-blind?

ON THE DAY
she was to meet Elton for lunch, Branwyn brought Thomas to work with her. She made him wear his nice gray cotton pants and the maroon sweater that Eric, with the help of Ahn, had given him for his birthday.

Ethel Gorseman loved little Thomas because he never got into trouble when he was alone. If Eric came into the shop for any reason, the florist kept her eye on him every second. She liked Eric too, but he was a “walking disaster” in her opinion. If Eric ever came in alone with Branwyn, Ethel would hire Jessop, who owned the small arcade across the street, to look after him. She’d give Eric five dollars so that he could eat hot dogs and play video games instead of breaking her vases and tipping over her shelves.

Tommy wished that she would give him five dollars and send him over to visit Jessop when he was there, but she never did. Instead she would tell him about how florists keep flowers alive and why it was such a good job.

That day Branwyn had kept Tommy out of school. The excuse she gave Minas was that he had a cold, but that wasn’t so remarkable. Thomas was used to runny noses and coughing. Most of his life he’d been sick with something.

When Elton came in at noon, wearing his mechanic’s overalls, Branwyn pushed Thomas forward and said, “Elton Trueblood, this is your son, Thomas.”

She said these words almost as a challenge. But when she saw the love and joy in Elton’s eyes, she bit her lower lip and tasted salty tears coming down into her mouth.

Looking at them together, anyone would have known them for father and son. Elton reached out his hand, and Thomas shook it like he had been taught to by Minas.

“I’m your father,” Elton said.

“Pleased to meet you, Daddy,” Thomas said.

For a long time he had been wanting to call someone daddy. Eric said that to Minas, but Branwyn had always told Thomas that Dr. Nolan wasn’t his father. Minas would say that he wished that Thomas was his son too, but that only meant that he wasn’t.

Eric called Branwyn “Mama Branwyn.” But Thomas knew that that was okay because Eric’s mother had died.

Looking up into Elton’s hard, dark face, Thomas was a little scared, but he knew that he had to be nice to Elton because his mother had made him wear nice clothes. And so he let the big man hold his hand as they walked down Pico to the hotel where his mother liked to eat.

Elton kept asking the boy questions.
What’s your favorite color? Do you have a girlfriend at that white school?

While they were sitting in the restaurant, Elton gave little Thomas a problem to solve.

“There’s a man,” he said, “with a fox, a big rooster, and a sack’a corn. He comes to a river where there’s a tiny li’l boat. The boat is so small that the man can only carry one with him across the river at a time. But if he takes the corn, the fox will eat the rooster, and if he takes the fox, the rooster will eat the corn.”

“Then he should take the rooster ’cause the fox won’t eat corn,” Thomas said with a smile.

“Then what?” Elton asked.

“Then he could come back for the . . . the fox.”

“But if he leaves the fox on the other side when he goes back to get the corn, the fox will eat the rooster,” Elton said with a sly smile.

Watching his father’s smile, Thomas forgot the riddle. This was his father he was looking at. His father like Dr. Nolan was Eric’s father. He had the same black skin that Thomas had and the same kinky hair.

“Stop bothering him, Elton,” Branwyn said, feeling that Thomas was confused by being cross-examined like some criminal.

“I’m just doin’ what a father’s s’posed t’be doin’, Brawn,” Elton said. “Helpin’ him to understand how hard the world is to see sometimes. Is he a li’l slow in school?”

“No.”

“I mean, it’s just a child’s riddle really,” Elton continued. “Just a trick.”

He looked at Thomas hopefully, but the small boy only stared at him, the foxes and chickens and grain gone from his head. He was wondering if Elton would come live with them in Dr. Nolan’s big house.

After lunch Branwyn went back to the flower shop and cried. She sat on a stool at the back of the big orchid refrigerator. Thomas stood next to her and held her hand.

“What’s wrong, Mommy?”

“I’m just happy, baby,” she said, choking on every other word.

“You don’t sound happy.”

“Sometimes people cry when they’re happy.”

“What made you so happy?”

“Seeing you and your father together at the same table, talking and telling each other things.”

“Uh-huh.”

Branwyn turned to her son and looked into his eyes.

“Would you want to live with your father if you had the chance?” she asked.

“I don’t know. Would he come an’ stay at our house?”

“No. We’d have to move away from Minas and Eric.”

“Could Eric come live with us?”

“No. He’d have to stay with his own father.”

Thomas thought and thought, standing there in the refrigerated room. He thought about his new father and his brother, Eric. He thought about his mother crying and wished that she didn’t have to be so happy.

“Maybe Daddy could come and visit sometimes,” he said at last. “And then I could still go to school with Eric and read with Dr. Nolan.”

A FEW WEEKS
after Thomas had broken the greenhouse window, Eric came down with the flu. It was a bad flu, and he had a fever of 105. Minas was worried, and Ahn kept boiling eucalyptus leaves and bringing the steaming pots into the boy’s room. Eric was shivering and crying all through the night. He was in pain, and only Branwyn’s company would calm him. She sat up with him for most of three days. At the end of that time, Eric was laughing and playing and Branwyn was very tired, and so she went to bed.

The next afternoon, when Thomas and Eric got home from first grade, Thomas went to his mother’s room and found her still in bed.

“You tired, Mama?” Thomas asked.

“Very much, baby. I sat up so long with Eric, and now all I want is to sleep.”

Thomas and Eric spent many hours at her side that afternoon and evening, both of them trying to make her laugh.

She kept her eyes open as long as she could, but more and more she just slept. Minas wanted her to go to the hospital, but she refused.

“Hospital is just a death sentence,” she told him. “All I need is rest.”

On the third day Branwyn was not better. Eric heard his father tell Ahn that Branwyn had agreed to go to the hospital in the morning.

The blond tank rumbled up to his brother’s room and said, “They’re taking Mama Branwyn to the hospital in the morning. We should pick flowers for her so her room’ll be pretty.”

“The hospital?” Thomas said.

Thomas hated the hospital. He’d been there half a dozen times that he could remember. Twice for pneumonia that had developed after he’d come down with chest colds, twice for broken bones, once for a cut when he fell down on a broken bottle, and one time when he fainted in school for no apparent reason. Every time he went they gave him shots, and twice he’d had to spend the night. He knew that people sometimes died in the hospital, and so when he went to bed later that night, he couldn’t go to sleep. He sat up remembering the stories of how his mother came every day and they looked at each other through the glass bubble. He believed that she had saved him by being there, and he wondered who would be there for her if he was at school.

Thomas went to her room after midnight. Branwyn stayed in her own bedroom when she was sick. She needed everything quiet and “no man kicking around in the bed.”

He climbed up quietly on the bed and stared into his mother’s face. At first he planned just to look at her as she’d told him she’d done when he was asleep in the ICU.

“Didn’t you wake me up?” he asked her.

“No, baby. You needed to sleep to get better and so I just sat there, but I’m sure you knew I was there in your dreams.”

Thomas planned to do the same thing, to sit so close that his mother’s dreams would drink him in. But after a few minutes he worried that maybe she had died. She was so quiet, and he couldn’t tell if she was breathing.

“Mama?”

She opened her eyes and said, “Yes, baby?”

“I know how to answer the story.”

“What story?”

“The one Daddy said.”

“What is it?”

“First you take the rooster to the other side an’ leave him there. Then you come back and get the fox and bring him to the other side. Then you put the rooster back in the boat and take him back and leave him on the first side and you take the corn over to where the fox is. Now the corn and the fox are together but that’s okay, and so you can go back an’ get the rooster.”

“You’re so smart, Thomas. Your father will be very happy.”

“Will you be okay now that I said it?” the boy asked.

“Why you cryin’, honey?”

“Because you’re sick and I don’t want you to die.”

Branwyn sat up. Thomas crawled up close to her and leaned against her slender shoulder.

“Are you scared ’cause I’m goin’ to the hospital?”

“Uh-huh.”

“It’s only for some tests,” she said. “Will you do what Dr. Nolan tells you while I’m gone?”

“Yes.”

“And do you know that I will always be with you through rain and shine, thick and thin?”

“Yes.”

“I’m not gonna die, baby. I’m gonna go in there and stay for a day or two and then I’ll be back here and wide awake.”

“But sometimes people die in the hospital,” he insisted.

“Sometimes,” she agreed. “But even when they do they don’t really die.”

“What happens to’em?”

“They just change. They’re still here in the hearts of all the people that loved them. Your grandmother says that she talks to granddaddy every night before she goes to bed. He’s still there for her whenever she gets sad.

“But you don’t have to worry about that. I’m still strong and healthy. I’m just a little tired, that’s all. You know that, right?”

“I guess.”

“Come here and lie down next to me,” she said. “Sleep with me in the bed tonight.”

And Thomas nestled up next to his mother, and they whispered secrets and little jokes until he finally fell asleep in her arms.

THE NEXT MORNING
Thomas went to wake up Minas Nolan in his bed.

“Mama won’t wake up,” he told his mother’s lover. “But she said that it’s okay ’cause nobody never dies.”