In the Midnight Rain (39 page)

"We already know that," Rosemary said with a scowl.

Alisha arched a brow. "She was also here looking for her father."

Connie sat back, mouth faintly open. "Her father?"

"This is so good!" Alisha laughed with excitement. "You know how she was asking all those questions that night at our readers' group, about the kids who went to Vietnam? She was trying to figure it out then, who might be the right man."

"Oh, my God," Connie said, and sat forward. "I knew she looked familiar! Oh, my God."

Rosemary felt a slow, soft bud of dread. "Who was her mother?"

"One of those hippie girls. I don't know which one."

A burst of pain broke in Rosemary's chest. "I know which one," she said, and tears welled in her eyes. "It was the redhead. Diane."

Both Connie and Alisha turned to her, alarmed. "What's wrong?"

Rosemary covered her mouth, amazed at the wave of feelings that could still come over her like this, thirty years later. The quick, deep sword of loss. She pressed trembling fingers over her mouth and looked at Connie, who would know. "I kept thinking ... I did know until..."

She stood up, walked away, struggling to control herself. She turned and looked at Connie. "Ellie's daddy was James Gordon," she said, and couldn't stop the tears quick enough. Connie was there, offering her broad shoulder, taking Rosemary into her arms.

"Oh, honey," Connie breathed. "It's all right."

To her credit, Alisha was silent a long time. When Rosemary finally lifted her head and took a deep breath, Alisha said, "I don't understand what just happened, but I sincerely apologize if I upset you."

Rosemary blotted her eyes. "No, girl, it's not you. It's just the way life is sometimes. James was my cousin."

Alisha frowned. "But why—"

"He just wasn't like anybody," Rosemary said, and had to stop when the visions of him came too fast. James laughing, that crooked tooth in front showing. Those golden eyes dancing. The gentleness of the way he looked out for children and stray dogs and every sparrow with a broken wing. "If I tried to put it in words, it would sound too corny, so I won't. He was as good a soul as God ever made, and there wasn't anybody who knew him who didn't wail when his body came home."

Connie took Rosemary's hand and squeezed it.

"It was so plain he was
smitten
that summer," Rosemary said. "And when we found out it was with some little silly white girl—it made us all kinda scared for him. It wasn't like now. And we all worried that she'd just prance on out of here, and leave him all brokenhearted. Which she did."

"She loved him," Connie said. "She begged him to go to Canada, but he thought that would be cowardly, so he went to Vietnam anyway."

Rosemary felt a little dizzy with the idea of that poor girl going off—who knew where—to have that mixed baby by herself. "It couldn't have been easy for her."

"Marcus said she's dead, too," Alisha said.

Rosemary shook her head. "I wonder if Ellie even knew she was black?"

"Never seemed to think so," Alisha said. "And it's just as plain as day when you know." She fell silent. "I guess it was women like her that used to 'pass' in the old days."

They were all quiet for a moment. Then Alisha shook herself. "I forgot the best part! Gwen Laisser—"

Rosemary raised a hand. "Don't say it, girl." There was steel in her voice. She shook her head, and her finger, for emphasis.

"What?" Connie said. "That's not fair!"

Alisha folded her hands, looking at Rosemary, who turned her head to look at Connie. Connie who'd been at her side for going on thirty years, who'd shared the loss of their loves to Vietnam and then their husbands, who would share the empty nest in a couple years more. Connie who'd known James, and now Ellie, and maybe deserved a little something for all of that.

"Connie, I'll tell you, but you have to swear on Bobby Makepeace's grave that you will never tell a soul."

Bewildered, Connie raised a hand. "I swear, Rosemary. On Bobby's grave. What is it?"

"Gwen Laisser is James Gordon's mother. And her real name is Mabel Beauvais."

Connie's mouth and eyes made perfect circles of surprise. Then she laughed. And laughed. "Oh, my God! That's perfect. Perfect." She settled and shook her head. "Boy, Ellie got a little more than she bargained for, didn't she?"

Alisha leaned back in her chair and took a long swallow of soda. "I wonder what Blue's gonna do?"

"Do?" Connie echoed.

"If he lets her go, he's the stupidest man on the planet."

"Or the scaredest."

"Most scared," Rosemary said. She pursed her lips. "I really thought he was in love this time, to tell you the truth."

"Maybe he doesn't want black babies," Alisha said. "He seems liberal enough, but it's different when you think it's you."

Rosemary frowned. "Maybe. I don't see that with him, though."

"No, me either," Connie put in. "How did you hear all this, Alisha?"

She grinned. "I eavesdropped!"

All three of them laughed at the brazenness and the confession. Rosemary stood and walked over to the sink, running the water cold to splash her eyes. "If that man has the sense God gave a monkey, he'll go right after her and bring her home."

Connie lifted her head. "Funny, isn't it? How her mama came in and stirred us up all those years ago, and now it's Ellie who did the same thing?"

"This time, though, we're gonna take the gift God gave us," Rosemary said, blotting her face. "I wish to hell we'd listened to Diane Connor when she was here."

"Don't say that," Alisha protested. "Things happen for a reason."

Rosemary and Connie both snorted at that. "Live a little longer, sugar," Connie said, getting up. "Then tell me that again." She reached for her purse. "Come on. We need to see a man about a girl."

21

E
llie drove straight through to Sweetwater, right through the Big Piney Woods, across the Sabine River, into the lush, overgrown county of her birth. It wasn't yet noon when she drove down Main Street, and she got stuck behind a green tractor for five blocks before her turn, so she had plenty of time to absorb the sights.

After her time in Gideon, Sweetwater suffered in comparison. Though small, Gideon had made an effort to keep up with the times, draw new business and industry, keep growing, by hook or by crook, in whatever ways they could. On the surface, they were much the same: the cafe with wide windows with trucks in front; the shoe-repair shop, the big courthouse in its nest of lawn and trees.

The differences were more subtle. The fashions in the window of the single clothing store were ten years out of date. The Rexall had a sign for a circus seven seasons before in the window, and the barbershop still had a twirly pole. The sun beat down like an iron, and Ellie felt that the trees themselves were sagging.

It was better when she turned off to go down the road that led to her Grandma's house and left the withering town to drive under a thick tunnel of trees joining arms overhead. Here and there, she glimpsed fields of soybeans or corn, then the creeping growth took over again.

Sixty acres of land was cleared around Geraldine Connor's house, so Ellie saw it a long time before she was actually there. It sat, stolid and stable, in the midst of a rose garden, the flowers in full, glorious bloom against the dark-gray house. Down a long drive was the triple garage that had been her grandfather's pride and joy, every cinder block square of it placed by his own hands. It was as ugly as ever, though Ellie smiled to see someone had painted black-eyed Susans on the side facing the house. Probably Geraldine herself.

As she turned into the graveled drive that wound around the neatly clipped lawns, Ellie felt something in her just give way. One minute, she was fine, the next, it seemed like too much effort to keep her foot on the gas. She slowed and stopped, and just sat there for a minute, breathing it in: home.

She visually touched the tiny details that made it so, one by one: the plastic daisies with spinning petals that lined the porch; the battered, peeling milk box by the back door; the fan pattern on the wooden screen door that was repeated on the eaves of the porch itself. With a sense of relief she got out of the car, smiling at the plethora of roses blooming like a catalogue picture in the hot morning, feeding bees by the dozens, who made a soft, blurry counterpoint to the noisy silence of a summer midday.

Geraldine banged out of the house, wearing a pink calico apron over a pair of slacks and a tank top that showed her goosey arms. "Ellie!" she cried. "You're so early! I haven't barely got anything done yet for your visit."

"You know I don't care, Gram." Ellie put her arms around the slim shoulders and breathed in her scent of Jean Nate toilet water. "I just had to come first thing this morning."

Geraldine pulled back, tilting her head down to see through the distance portion of her trifocals. "You in trouble?"

Ellie lifted her arms, let them fall back to her sides. "In a word, yeah. In the very old-fashioned sense of the word."

A depth of sadness Ellie would never have expected crossed her grandmother's face, making her look suddenly very, very old. "Oh, honey," she sighed. "That town is a curse to my daughters."

Ellie burst into tears.

"Come on, darlin'," Geraldine said. "Let's go make us a glass of tea and you can tell me all about it."

* * *

Blue sat on his porch, his feet braced on the railing. Over the tops of his toes, he could see the last rays of daylight fading, till the whole world was engulfed in grayness. In one hand, he held a glass of bourbon, the bottle handy on the floor by his chair. In the other band, he held a fat cigar, purchased for this very evening at the liquor store.

He heard a step on the path and didn't turn, knowing it would be Marcus. It was. "Evening," he said, and sat down in the rocking chair. "Mind if I have a little taste of that whiskey there?"

"Depends on what you're planning to say to me. I've already been visited by the furies, and you yelled at me this morning, and Lanie had my ass about ten minutes ago."

"The furies?"

"Yeah. Connie, Rosemary, and Alisha. Who seem to think they know me better than I know myself."

"Hmmm." Marcus went inside for a glass and poured himself a drink, then took his time settling in. After several savoring sips of the bourbon, he said, "It's that curse, right? You think you're living under some cloud that'll bring bad luck to anybody you care about."

"Yep." He lifted the glass, took a long swallow.

"Well, Job, I can't say that I blame you."

"Thank you." A burn started in his gut as everything came rushing back in—that bed, destroyed under the weight of that roof. His flesh rippled. "Why don't you just get on with it, get it out, and we can drink in peace and quiet. I figure I've earned a good drunk, and don't intend to stop till I'm there. You can join me or not. Up to you."

"All right, then," Marcus said. "Here's what I came to say: Sooner or later, you got to face your own life."

"Well, funny thing is," Blue drawled ironically, "that's just what the hell I was doing, Marcus, my friend. Exactly what I thought. Right when I thought life was just gonna be the same thing, day after day after day, fate sends this—
woman
to me to turn everything upside down, make me feel and think all over again that maybe normal folks would just get over the past and get on with things." He pulled the ring case out of his pocket and shoved it at Marcus. "I was going to ask her to marry me, believe it or not."

Marcus took the case, opened it, and whistled softly. "Beautiful. Good choice for her, too. I don't see her in diamonds."

Blue looked over. "Yeah, that's what I thought, too. Good." Then he scowled and rocked forward, his feet coming down hard on the wooden floor as he reached for the bottle. "Makes no difference now."

"I don't know why not," Marcus commented mildly.

"I don't expect you to." He paused. "You know, she didn't even really fight me. Just kinda left."

"Hurt your feelings, did it?" Marcus shook his head. "You're just being your usual, pigheaded self, Blue. Man, listen—the girl had one shock after another, the kind of things that turn you upside down, things none of us usually ever have to think about." He rattled the ice in his glass restlessly. "Then you throw her out. You're a fool."

Blue stubbornly looked at the trees at the edge of the clearing and thought about what work he'd do tomorrow.

Marcus stood. "I give up. You sit here and feel sorry for yourself if you want. I'm going home." He took the steps and said over his shoulder. "To my woman."

Blue couldn't even summon the profane response he knew Marcus expected.
My woman
gave him too clear a picture of Ellie, curled in sleep, that wild hair all over the pillow. It made him think of her laughing in his kitchen, and teasing him in her country drawl that she tried to make fancier for him.

And all of that just gave him a hole in his gut, a hole he poured bourbon into. He hadn't slept in a long time, and the bourbon was making his head heavy. Wearily, he stood up and went upstairs to his bed, where he fell face-first, blotting out the vision of a woman with plans for his workday tomorrow.