Saint and Scholar (15 page)

She puttered around in the room for a few minutes, uncertain of what to do with herself, finally sat down with the room service menu and put in an order after deciding she was more hungry than angry. While waiting for the delivery, she took a short, but relaxing, hot bath. Donning a fresh set of clothing seemed anticlimactic with Grant lying in the next room, but her mood had significantly improved. She was being unfair. He was tired.

Still, as she studied herself in the mirror in the garments Sharon had helped her pick, she mumbled, “Hope he finds it satisfactory,” and rolled her eyes. She couldn’t get a reading on the man. Was he hot or cold? He confused her sensors.

When her meal came–a light breakfast of mixed fruit, yogurt and toast, she crawled on top of the bed with it and waited as the inadequate hotel coffee machine dripped weak stimulant into its attached carafe. Once settled, she opened her backpack, pulled out her large sheath of research and leafed through while nibbling.

Minnie had created a booklet many years prior made of carefully documented biographical sketches of certain family members transcribed onto a page with a typewriter. Some pages were photocopies of old photographs that were difficult to make out due to poor contrast, but one had caught her attention. It was the man her father had taken the name of–her great-grandfather, Timothy Adam Gill. She scrutinized the blurry caption, trying to understand what the man must have been like. She’d never met him. Her father had lived with his grandparents for a good chunk of his early childhood. She didn’t know
why
he’d lived in West Virginia during those early years, only he’d moved back to Southside Virginia with his parents sometime during the seventies. She had a hunch.

Against her better judgment, she ferreted her phone out of her backpack and let it do its slow wake-up sequence while refreshing her coffee. Once done, she looked at her watch, realized her mother would be at the police station on graveyard shift, and dialed her cell number.

“Jesus, why aren’t you asleep?” Mom asked in a hushed tone in lieu of “Hello.”

She swallowed hard. If she had noticed the poor quality of the connection, she didn’t say so. “I’m just up doing some work. Listen, I’m about to pass out, but curiosity is killing me and I wanted to ask before I went to bed.”

“What’s up?”

“Did Grandpa serve in Vietnam?”

“He did. Why?”

“Is that why Daddy lived with his grandparents as a kid? Because his dad was deployed?”

Mom was silent for a few moments. “Yes.”

“Why the pause?”

“Oh, honey, why do you want to go digging all this stuff up now? What good is it going to do?”

Carla ignored the question. “Where was his mom? If his dad was deployed, why wasn’t he living with his mother or her family?”

Another long pause. “Honey, I don’t know if that’s my tale to tell.”

Carla ground her teeth from aggravation and stopped as soon as she noticed she was doing it. She had expensive dental work, some of which she was still paying off. “Well, whose tale
is
it then? Everyone is
dead
, Mom.”

Mom sighed. “Listen, Adam’s mom wasn’t doing so good when he was a kid. She couldn’t take care of him by herself. I don’t know if she was psychotic or if she was drug-dependent or what, but they had to institutionalize her. Your granddad Paul wrote a letter from Vietnam asking your great-grandparents to help out because he didn’t think your grandmother was doing so good. It wasn’t her first time getting sick and he hated to leave Adam with her, but didn’t know what else to do at the time. So, Tim and Alice drove down and took him in so he wouldn’t go into the county home. Wasn’t an inconvenience for ’em, you know, since they’d been asking your granddad to send Adam to them anyway, ’cause Tim needed some help on the farm during the summer.”

“Why is that a secret?”

“If it were you in an asylum, would you want your grandkids to know about it? You’d keep it a secret, right? You respected your grandma until she died.”

“I still respect her! She couldn’t help being sick, any more than you could help going off-line after Daddy died.” Carla felt like a bitch for saying it, but she knew it was the only way to drive the point home.

“That was a really shitty thing to say.” Mom sighed on her side of the Atlantic. “Look, I’ve got to get back to work.”

“Mom, I’m sorry, but yes I
would
tell. People who survive bad things shouldn’t feed into the stigmas by keeping their experiences locked up in imaginary boxes. I’d want them to know I got help. It’s okay to get help. Just because you didn’t, doesn’t mean people are any weaker if they do.”

Mom was quiet for a few tense moments and relieved Carla by saying finally, quietly, “Maybe so.”

Carla bid her mother goodbye and turned off her phone to study the picture of the young Tim in his dark seaman first class uniform and sailor hat, smiling at the camera as if he weren’t about to sail into the face of terror in the WWII Pacific Theater. He bore a stunning resemblance to his grandson: the high forehead, the chiseled, square jaw, and bright eyes. Although the picture was black and white, she knew Tim had hair the color of a new copper penny, whereas Adam’s had been quite fair. Ashley was the only one of the three Gill children to remain blond beyond childhood. Tony’s hair was nearly as dark their mother’s and Carla’s fell somewhere in the middle. Her dad had always liked her hair. One day when she was a child he’d whispered, “If you ever cut it, you’ll let all the Irish out.” She’d never thought that was true, even as a little girl, but still she clung to her hair as if it were some sort of security blanket.

She was finally able to make out the scrawled caption beneath the photo:
T. A. Gill: Electrician’s Mate.
She smiled and felt her curiosity unravel just a bit. An electrician, just like her dad.

When she didn’t hear Grant stirring at ten fifteen, she turned off the television set she’d had on to keep her company and quietly pulled the shared door open to peer into the adjoining unit. He was still wearing the clothes he’d traveled in, minus his sneakers, lying prone on top of the covers. His dark hair fell over his face, shrouding his eyes and spilling over his cheeks. His mouth was slightly open, and as she stood there in a stunned silence staring at him, she remembered something about that irresistibly plump bottom lip–a memory she’d apparently suppressed for almost eight years.

Freshman year, when she was Grant’s English composition student, she always sat in the exact same seat for every class, except for that memorable first day. It was third row from the door, four seats back. She wasn’t the only creature of habit in that course section. Two girls from the same small town in the mountains always sat near her. One sat immediately behind her, and her friend took the seat across the aisle to the left. It had only been a few weeks since her father died, so she was in her own little bubble, hearing but not listening, and drawing in the margins of her notebook. Grant had been called out of the room for a moment to discuss some grading issue with another T.A. and the girl behind her leaned across the aisle and whispered, “I’m not even listening to him. I’m just watching his lips move.”

Her friend responded, “Me, too. I love the way he chews on it when he’s thinking really hard.” She giggled. “I saw him with his girlfriend at the student store. She’s not even all that cute. I think she’s Dr. Carter’s T.A.”

“Ugh,
that
dinosaur. I wish he had retired before this semester. He makes folklore so booooring. What’s his girlfriend look like?”

“Olive Oyl.”

Carla seemed to remember seeing him with a tall, thin woman on campus one day, but in her haze hadn’t cared enough to connect the dots that she was his girlfriend. She wasn’t unattractive and she
did
seem smitten by him. Who wouldn’t be? For the rest of the term, those two girls made a point of crowding around him after nearly every class to ask questions that had already been answered in lecture.

The entire semester she was in his course, she’d never raised her hand to contribute a single time, and he’d never shone a spotlight on her by calling her out when she didn’t want to be, although he regularly did that to other students when he thought they weren’t paying attention. She had thought it unusual then.

She approached quietly and knelt at his bedside and placed a hand on his back. When he didn’t respond to the pressure, she slid her hand up to his shoulder and squeezed. He lifted his head slightly, blew his hair out of his face and appeared to concentrate hard for a moment. “What time is it?” he asked as he closed his eyes tight and turned over onto his back.

“Quarter after ten.” She strode over to the curtains to open them a few inches to let in some light.

“Mmm.” His eyelids drooped once more. “Feels like a quarter after
hell
.”

“If you want to sleep some more, it’s okay. I can just poke around the hotel or maybe go explore Dublin a bit.”

His bloodshot eyes flew open wider and he forced himself into an upright position. “I’m up. I’m going to take a shower and we can go. I just need some sun to reset my body clock.”

“Uh…” She gestured to the large picture window and the gray sky beyond it. “Not much sun to be had.”

He blew out a breath and rubbed his eyes. “That’s Ireland for you. Next thing you know it’ll be raining. And we’re without an umbrella.”

Chapter 10

As the fates would have it, the hotel gift shop had one large umbrella left. Grant and Carla crowded under, prepared to make a mad dash toward the airport terminals. Then he came to his senses.

“You know what?” he said. “Just wait here under the awning and I’ll run after the car and bring it around. It’s raining so fuckin’ hard I’m gonna get soaked even with the umbrella, and, well…”

She raised one eyebrow. “Well
what
?”

“I won’t scandalize anyone if my shirt gets wet. I’ve got to teach you how to dress for Ireland, woman.” He leaned back a bit, squinting at her. “Carla, are you not wearing a bra, love?”

She looked down at the white blouse she’d chosen after bathing and gave him a scathing look. “No. I don’t always anymore, especially not when I’m wearing a cami. I don’t really need one, and no one has complained…besides you.”

He returned her expression. “Oh, you need one, love, especially since you seem to be cold all the time.” He was unaffected by her continued glower. “I’m not especially conservative, love, but I have buttons.”

“I’m not a child.” She jutted out her chin. “And you don’t own me.”

As some pedestrians neared them and prepared to run out into the rain, he leaned in close and whispered with his lips nearly grazing her ear, “Let’s make one thing perfectly clear. When it comes to you I have absolutely no qualms about coming across as a possessive jackass. We can argue about it, but it’s not going to get you anywhere. Cope.” He ran off to fetch the car. The woman was going to drive him insane before he had a chance to rein her in. He’d seen the way the men in the lobby had ogled her naked legs and the way her dress clung to her hips as they passed through. Of
course
she was oblivious.

They stopped for a heavy lunch in Cabra, about half an hour from the airport, which was about how long it took for his teeth to stop chattering from the cold rain. It had soaked through his pants down into socks. Although it was nearly June, they’d had to turn the heat to full blast. “I’ve grown used to oppressive heat and humidity,” he said before shoveling his spoon into his thick stew. “Don’t know what I was thinking moving back here.”

“I’m sure you’ll adjust,” she sniped. She sucked her teeth and stared out the window.

He raised a brow at her attitude. “That’s what my friends told me about
America
when I first left here. Now I wonder why I ever feared going. Are you annoyed at me, love?”

“Yes,” she said simply.

“Why?” He thought he knew why. He just wanted her to verbalize it.

She turned slowly away from the window and glared at him. “You’ll get further with me if you ask me things rather than tell me. I get enough of that shit from my brothers.”

“Oh, I see, but…” He leaned back and crossed his arms over his chest. “Don’t you dare compare me to your brothers. They think they’re protecting you from the world, not that I can blame them. Me? I want you in the world, but on my terms.”

“And what are those terms, Grant?”

He huffed and shook his head.
Where did my timid wallflower go?

She narrowed her eyes at him.

Maybe I pegged her wrong. Quiet doesn’t mean easy. How rough is she going to make it for me?
He rested his forearms on the table and leaned forward over his stew. “I don’t think you like me enough for me to tell you.”