Lake Overturn (44 page)

He drove past Liz’s dark house, parked in the cul-de-sac, and crept across the Padgetts’ lawn to peer into the garage. Liz’s car and that of her parents were there. This meant her parents were at home asleep and Winston was still at the prom.

Jay cruised the streets for a while, looking for Liz. Where was everyone? Even for the late hour, the neighborhood seemed eerily deserted, the big houses dark and cheerless behind their blazing porch lights.

J
ANET
V
AN
B
EKE
was startled out of sleep by the sound of the doorbell. “Carl?” she instinctively said, groping for him across the bed.

“Mmm?”

“The doorbell.”

“What time is it?”

She took her glasses from the bedside table and held them, still folded, to her eye to make out the glowing red numbers. “Nearly midnight.”

The doorbell sounded again.

“Who on earth?” said Carl, heaving himself up and pawing the floor with his feet for his slippers.

Janet pulled on her bathrobe and followed her husband down the stairs. They both heard Jay before they saw him: “Janet? Carl?”

“Oh. It’s Jay,” Janet breathed.

Jay peered in from the foyer. “Sorry,” he said. “I used my key.”

“What’s going on, Jay?” said Carl. He spread his knees and lowered himself onto a chair at the foot of the stairs. It was a decorative chair, rarely used, and he couldn’t have meant to stay there long.

Jay directed his answer to Janet: “I made a mistake. Can you call the Padgetts for me?”

“What happened, Jay?” said Janet. “Is Winston all right?”

“It’s not Winston, it’s Liz.”

“What happened?”

Jay hesitated. Carl gazed away into the den, apparently content to stand guard while Janet dealt with the boy. Jay had always been more her project than his.

“She ran off.”

“What did you do?”

“Nothing. Just— Could you just please call the Padgetts and see if she made it home?”

“I am not going to wake up Carolyn Padgett in the middle of the night unless I know exactly what is going on.”

“Liz ran off, out by the lake.”

“Did you have a fight?”

“No. I just— She didn’t understand.”

“Jay, have you been drinking?”

“No. Yes.”

Janet didn’t abide drinking, not in her own children and certainly not from Jay. She allowed a long silence to follow his admission. Then she said, “Is there anything else I should know before I call?”

“No.”

Janet went to the kitchen to make the call. In her absence, Jay and Carl said nothing.

“Liz is at home,” Janet said, returning. “She’s all right, but she’s not very happy.”

Jay nodded without lifting his eyes. “Can I stay here tonight?”

“No, Jay.”

“Why not?”

“You know why. This is not your home. Lina should have made that call just now, not me.”

“She doesn’t know them.”

“She should.”

Jay made a sarcastic noise.

“And what’s more, I’m not letting you drive, in the state you’re in. I’m going to call Lina and have her pick you up.”

“No!” shouted Jay.

This was enough to rouse Carl. “Listen, Jay,” he said, “you’re the one who screwed up tonight. I think from here on in, we’ll make the rules.”

“Just let me stay here, please!” This was the voice that had preceded a temper tantrum when Jay was a boy; it had that waver, that seed of hysteria. It was so different from his usual cool key that Jay himself seemed unable to recognize its childish ring. “I’ll go home in the morning!”

“We’ve had this talk before, Jay, and we’re not going to have it again. Not in the middle of the night. I’m calling Lina.”

No sooner had Janet’s back turned, though, than Jay dashed out the front door. Carl and Janet gave each other a look. They walked across the carpet and stood in the open door to see the taillights of Jay’s Maverick disappear around the bend.

Then they closed the door—too soon to see a Buick that had been parked under the low-hanging branches of an oak across the street turn on its headlights and follow.

L
INA STAYED UP
watching TV after Enrique had gone to bed, and eventually fell asleep on the couch, with the dim intent of seeing Jay when he came in. The phone rang, and Lina leaped up to answer it before it awoke Enrique.

“Hello?”

“Lina?”

Lina was so overcome that she had to sit down at the table and gather herself before speaking. It had been an entire season since she had heard Chuck’s voice, as he had obeyed her after their night together and left her alone. She had cleaned his house in the meantime, although it hardly needed it, and seen his little traces: his clothes in the hamper and his coffee cup in the sink. With Abby and Sandra away, he must have been eating every meal out.

“Lina, are you there?”

“Yes, Chuck.”

Lina heard Chuck take a few deep breaths. Then he cleared his throat and said, “I was thinking I could come by, just for a minute, and you could come out . . .”

So, it had happened. Sandra was dead.

“Yes,” said Lina. “When will you be here?”

“Ten minutes.”

Lina sat at the table, overwhelmed by thoughts, waiting for the sound of the car. Enrique staggered from his room to the bathroom. He emerged a minute later with concern in his sleepy squint. “You okay?” he asked.

“Yeah, just can’t sleep. I’m all right, though.”

Enrique nodded and returned to his room.

Lina put on her coat and went outside. She saw Chuck’s Cadillac pulling into a spot up the road. With her heart racing, she walked to the car, opened the door, and eased into the velvety, scarlet interior she had until now only seen from the outside. The front seat was broad and soft as any sofa, and the lights of the massive console of the dash glowed orange like the hot coil of an electric range top. Finally, she looked up at Chuck, who seemed pale and fragile.

A woman’s voice issued from the dashboard: “Passenger door is ajar.”

“Wow,” Lina said as she opened and closed her door. “Your car talks.”

Chuck smiled wanly.

Lina reached for his hand and squeezed it.

“I have to go to Salt Lake tomorrow,” he said. “My flight’s at seven. I should be packing. I
was
packing, but then I ran out of strength.”

“I’m so sorry, Chuck,” said Lina.

“Thanks,”
said Chuck, the word a swing at something he couldn’t see. “I don’t know. It’s sad, isn’t it? It’s hard for me to tell. Am I sad? I just feel still. Everything’s become so simple all of a sudden, and still. She’s gone. Sandra no longer lives in this world. What do we do? We bury her.” By his facial expression, Lina could see that he was surprised at what lay around the corners in this labyrinth. “I wanted to see you. Not for you to give me hope. I don’t want to corner you. But if you wanted to— If you wanted to tell me there was some light at the end of all this . . .”

“Chuck,” Lina said, her eyes brimming with tears, “I love you.”

His shoulders, which she hadn’t noticed were bunched, dropped, and he gave a great sigh of relief. “You love me,” he said with feeling. He fell to her, and she held him.

She did love him. Without realizing it, she had been doing the work of loving him for months. She had protected him from his own feelings by only partially revealing hers. This was what she had been doing back on their night together, when she pretended to be asleep. She hadn’t told him she loved him because she
did
love him—enough to save him from his own love that would have grown out of control if it was fed.

At least this was the gift Lina now credited herself with having given him.

Chuck turned his head and kissed her with lips wet from her own tears. She clutched him. His tongue darted into her mouth, searching out her own tongue to lift it. His hand moved frantically to grip her thigh. His kisses came harder, they moved from her mouth to her neck. Then they ceased and Chuck went limp. “God, I don’t know what I’m doing,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

She hushed him, and a few minutes later he seemed to doze off in her arms.

Lina felt happy and complete, with Chuck returned to her at last. She looked down the line of trailers toward her own. Stars quaked in a puddle in the gravel road. This place wasn’t so bad. A figure caught her eye staggering from the trailer park’s bad neighborhood, holding his arm—a drunk, most likely. As he neared the lane on which they were parked, he was obscured behind the row of trailers. Lina hoped his noise didn’t wake Enrique.

She closed her eyes for a minute and breathed in time with Chuck. Then the sound of footsteps running on gravel startled her, and she sat up.

Lina would later wonder how Enrique knew just where to find her. “Mom!” he yelled, approaching the car.

Chuck started, and Lina got out. “What is it?”

Hugging himself in his pajamas, Enrique stepped from one bare foot to the other on the wet gravel. “It’s Jay,” he cried. “He’s all beaten up.”

Chapter 22

T
he suitcase, whose shiny shell bore no scuffmarks, lay open like a great Bible on her bed, and Connie nervously took articles of clothing from drawers and put them in. Then she took other articles out of the suitcase and put them back in the drawers. How many skirts would she need? She could wear them twice before washing them, three times perhaps, as she wouldn’t be working in them. Standing here between her bed and her bureau, she was essentially blocking Gene’s exit. His accordion door was open and he sat on his bed swinging his legs and watching her.

“Do you need out, Gene?”

“No?”

“Are you sure you’ll be okay until dinnertime?”

“Yes?”

Every answer Gene gave sounded like a question. To Connie it
was
a question, the same one, repeated:
Are you really leaving me alone here?

“Do you want to go over to Enrique’s now?”

“No?”

Connie glanced out the window and saw that Lina’s car was still gone. It was Sunday morning. She knew Catholics went to services at odd times during the week. Did they also go on Sunday morning?

Lina was not at church, but at the hospital. She had spent the night there, while Jay’s arm was set, his face stitched, and his nose bandaged. When the light of dawn started to show over the steaming fields out the waiting-room window, Lina noticed Chuck across the lobby, waving, trying to get her attention. She had thought she wouldn’t see him until his return. She gently rose and left Enrique asleep in his chair.

“They found his car,” Chuck said.

“Where?”

“Off Cherry Lane, by the canal.”

“How do you know?”

Chuck shrugged. “I called a friend in the department. We can go get it now—you and I—and avoid the fee for having it towed.”

Lina looked down. “Aren’t you supposed to be going to the airport?”

“I have just enough time.”

So Lina awoke Enrique to tell him where she was going, and she rode with Chuck to the spot on the outskirts of town, behind a lot full of irrigation supplies (long stacks of silver pipes studded with sprinklers, chain-link bins full of plastic elbow joints and rolls of black rubber tubing), where those boys or men—whoever they were—had chased Jay down. The Maverick was unlocked, and the keys were in the ignition. Lina quickly scanned the weeds for droplets of blood, ashamed for some reason that Chuck might guess what she was doing. There were none. Maybe Jay’s attackers had taken him someplace else. Lina drove the Maverick back to the trailer park, then rode with Chuck back to the hospital. They kissed a dignified, loving, but exhausted kiss—a married kiss—and said good-bye.

“They say he’s doing okay,” Enrique said when Lina awakened him. “They’ll come get us when he’s ready for visitors.”

“Move over,” she said as she nestled in beside him to wait.

Now the suitcase was shut and locked, and Connie stood at the door holding it. “Gene, you’re sure you’ll be okay?”

“Yes?”

“Try to be home from Enrique’s by nine tonight, all right? That’s when I’m going to call. Now, give me a kiss.”

Gene came over, and she kissed the top of his head and gave him an awkward hug.

“Look at me, Gene.” She took his chin, and Gene squinted and squirmed as if the sun could get to him even here, indoors. “Come on. You won’t see your mom for a week.”

He softened a little. His eyes opened and his fingers reached up and took her earlobe.

Connie released a little laugh. “I love you. Be good,” she said.

As she pulled out of her parking space, she noticed Gene watching her leave. It jarred her a bit; she couldn’t remember him ever doing that before, looking out after her, his face like that of an anxious little pug dog in the kitchen window. She gave him a little wave and was gone.

By the time she got to the edge of Eula, she no longer felt rattled but, rather, electrified. As she pulled onto the highway, she gasped at her own audacity and laughed. She was going away!

“S
HOULD
I
MAKE
some eggs for Frank?” Wanda asked, standing over the sizzling pan. Another wave of nausea and hunger—the two were one for her these days—hit her.

“Nope. Won’t eat ’em,” said Coop. “I already got him his cereal.”

Wanda peered into the living room and saw the man cradling a mixing bowl in the crook of his arm and dipping into it a serving spoon, as if to stir batter. Wanda cast her eyes back to the bacon (better not to look!) and, with tongs, broke off a crisp end of a rippled strip, dabbed it on a paper towel, and ate it.

“I’ll call Maria in a bit,” Coop said, “see if she can meet us at the station. She’s probably up, but I like to let her sleep as long as she needs on a Sunday.”

“Uh-huh,” Wanda said. She was having second thoughts about going to the police. If only she could call Melissa! But Wanda remembered too well that awful day when Melissa had hung up on her. She couldn’t spring this on her just when everything was going right. Coop had scared away Alan, their stepfather, all those years ago. Couldn’t he do the same now?

Coop must have sensed her trepidation, because he said, “Best to involve the authorities as early as possible, way I see it. You’re in the right. He’s in your apartment.”

“It’s Hank’s name on the lease,” Wanda replied glumly.

“Your stuff at least. And you can always stay here for a while.”

“Thanks, Coop.”

They ate their breakfast; then, as they were cleaning up, Frank called from the living room, “Coop? Wander?”

“Whatya need, Uncle?” called Coop.

“Come in here. Somethin’ I wanna discuss with ya.”

Coop raised his eyebrows at Wanda. He took a beer from the fridge, cracked it open, and followed Wanda into the living room.

“Thank you,” said Frank, trading the bowl for the beer can. “Sit down, both of ya.”

Coop and Wanda obeyed.

Frank sipped the beer and shifted among his cushions. His eyes didn’t leave the television. “They have pills people take nowadays, help ’em not kill themselves. I saw it on TV. They say that, when you got a lot of relations killed themselves, you’re apt do it, too. I thought I should tell ya, while I gotcha both here, case you might want to start takin’ them pills.” Frank ended by nodding in agreement with himself.

Wanda glanced at Coop. If he had looked at her in the right way, she would have burst out laughing. But Coop seemed determined to take Uncle Frank seriously. He said, “Thanks for that, Frank. I’ll consider it.” And he moved to rise, but Frank stopped him.

“Hold on, now. I ain’t finished. I’m sayin’ you might want to start takin’ them pills, because yer brother Louis killed himself. And . . . and so did yer daddy.”

Now Coop shot Wanda a look, but she no longer felt like laughing. Wanda waited for Coop to say something, and when he failed, she said in a generous tone, “Uncle Frank, our daddy didn’t kill himself. He died— You—”

“I told you all that I killed him, ’cause that’s what he wanted me to tell ya. But I didn’t. He shot himself in the night.”

“You didn’t shoot him?” Coop demanded. He reached out and hit a button on the remote control, turning off the television.

Frank’s face dropped in shame, as if he were suddenly naked. “Turn it back on, please.”

With an exasperated shake to his head, Coop obeyed. “When did he tell you to lie to us? Before he did it?”

“We had a talk by the fire that night. He didn’t want you kids knowin’ what he was about to do.”

Coop’s face was red, the tips of his ears nearly purple. “So he looked at you and said, ‘Frank, I’m gonna kill myself, don’t tell the kids.’ ”

“Not in so many words. With Cooper men, kinder gotta read between the lines. You oughta know that.”

Wanda cried, “Why didn’t you stop him?” It was a belief she held deeply that her father could have fended off all her life’s troubles, had he lived.

“Really, Wander, I didn’t know clearly what he was goin’ to do.”

“How come? How could he ask you not to tell us, and you still not know?”

Frank nodded with that awful smile. “I’ve been askin’ myself that, actually.”

Wanda rose and walked unsteadily to the door, took her jacket from its hook, and wrestled it on. Coop tried to give her a concerned look, but her eyes swiveled unseeingly and she was gone.

Frank continued to Coop, “I almost spoke up when Louis did what he did. But I made a promise to your daddy, see? The gunshot woke me up, and I found him, and I unnerstood what he’d been tryin’ to say at the fire. So I made him a promise not to tell.”

Coop’s thoughts were in disarray. He pushed the button on the remote with finality to stop the noise, and this time Frank didn’t protest. “So all these years I’ve been takin’ care of you, thinkin’ you were suffering under the burden of having killed your own brother, you were lyin’ to me? I resigned you to die, and resigned myself to help you do it, and for what? Why, Frank? You could have lived a man’s life, not . . .
this
,” he spat, indicating, with a toss of his hand, his uncle’s great form on the floor.

Never had Coop seen such a strain on his uncle’s smile; never had it been so ugly. “Thought you kids might forgive me for somethin’,” he said, “but it looks like I had it ass-backward.”

“Looks
like
it,” Coop said, rising. “Don’t know if I’ll be able to scrape together the money for your food and beer this week, Uncle Frank.”

“That’s all right,” Frank said with a trace of pride. “I’ll be movin’ along shortly.”

“Where you gonna go?” Coop laughed and reached for his keys. “You piss yourself half the time I’m not here to haul your carcass over to the john.”

. . . .

T
HE DOCTORS REASSURED
Lina that Jay would be okay, that he needed to be kept under observation for a day or so, and would be required to speak to the police anyway when he awoke; so she took Enrique home and slept. She rose in the early afternoon and ventured into Jay’s room. She sifted through magazines by his bed—sports and hot rods—and gently opened drawers to look through stacks of the clothes Jay insisted on laundering himself—at friends’ houses or at the Laundromat on the boulevard, she didn’t know. What would Jay need in the hospital? A car pulled up outside. Lina quickly closed the drawer and went to the front door.

Janet Van Beke was climbing out of her car. She didn’t come up the steps but turned to wait for a second car that approached down the lane. This car parked, and from it a man Lina didn’t know emerged. He went to Janet’s car, and the two carefully helped Jay out of the backseat. Janet wrapped one of Jay’s arms around her shoulders while the man supported the other, which was encased in an L-shaped cast. With their help, Jay hopped toward the house, heavy-footed and dead-eyed.

“What’s going on?” Lina demanded, coming out onto the porch.

“He’s all right, Lina,” said Janet. “Let’s get him inside, and I’ll explain.”

Lina held the door wide, then quickly cleared Enrique’s things from the recliner. Janet lowered Jay into it, and the man pulled the lever to elevate the footrest. “Okay?” he said, crouching close to Jay’s face.

“Uh-huh,” Jay answered through the gauze in his mouth.

“Janet,” said Lina in an urgent whisper, “what’s he doing here? They said he had to stay at the hospital.”

“Lina, this is Dr. Carlisle. Can we sit down?”

Lina nodded.

“Dr. Carlisle is the Padgetts’ family doctor—and ours, actually—and he felt it would be okay for Jay to return home.”

“Why didn’t they call me?” Lina asked. “They said they’d keep him there for observation and to talk to the police.”

“That’s just it, Lina. The Padgetts think it would be best to keep the police out of this, and so does Jay.”

“What do the Padgetts have to do with this?”

“Lina, don’t get excited.” Janet moved over and patted the cushion beside her. Lina reluctantly sat. “Jay’s going to be all right. That’s the first thing you need to understand. Dr. Carlisle will visit every day and check on him, and before long Jay will be good as new. And this will all be at no cost to you. Everything will be taken care of. Lina, we don’t know all the details . . . but Winston Padgett may have been involved in the attack.”

“Winston? He’s Jay’s best friend.”

Janet bit her lip and nodded.

“They could have killed him, Janet.”

Again, the woman nodded. She took a great breath and said, “Disgraceful. I know. There was lots of drinking involved, on everyone’s part.”

“That’s no excuse! They should—”

Janet placed her hand on Lina’s arm to stop it from gesturing. “On Jay’s part too, Lina. Liz Padgett is very upset. It seems that Jay may have tried to . . . hurt her . . . out by the lake.”

Lina was speechless, swimming in thoughts.

“You see,” Janet said softly, “if Winston Padgett gets in trouble, then so might Jay.”

Lina shouldn’t have looked to Jay. A real mother would have made this decision for her child, would have said,
No, whoever did this to my child must pay
. But Lina wasn’t Jay’s real mother, was she? Neither was Janet. The boy was motherless.

“Jay?” Lina said.

The white of one eye was marred with blood, and from its position under the puffy awning of its lid, it labored to follow the other in meeting Lina. The skin visible between the bandages on his face was taut and mottled, the color of different fruits: plums, berries, old bananas. The bandages themselves weren’t simply white; they bloomed yellow in the middle and were framed by a bloody crust.

This patchwork face composed itself and nodded.

T
HE SKY WAS
clear, there was a cheery breeze, and the sun blazed in the chrome of cars. Wanda charged across Eula in the determined stride she had used six months earlier when she needed to escape her cravings. When she grew tired of men peering up from under the hoods of their cars in their garages, women turning from their gardening to stare at the crazy lady walking, she headed down an alleyway to the canal. As before, it rolled along in swirls and boils, collecting litter in eddies along its walls.

Her father had killed himself. It was something Wanda knew she would never be able to make peace with. When his death had been an accident, Wanda had been permitted a little fantasy in which her father had lived, and so her mother had never drunk, and therefore had also lived, and there hadn’t been the rift in the family, and Louis had lived, and they were all healthy and smart and had get-togethers in Sunnyridge Park with all the grandchildren, the way she saw big Mormon families do. Wanda didn’t visit this fantasy world often anymore, but it was there when she needed it. Until this morning it had been only a stray bullet that prevented it; the fantasy could have just as easily been reality—more easily, actually. It
should have been
.