The Dark Light of Day (27 page)

Mrs. Garrith looked me up and down like I was wearing fishnets
and nipple tassels instead of a simple sundress and sweater. She
opened her mouth to speak, but I cut her off.

“Honestly, toward the end there, he didn’t know if y’all would
show up. Especially since the three of you have such
history
together.”

The smiles from both their faces melted into frowns. One of the other ladies from the crowd questioned this new found piece of
information out loud. “History?”

“Oh sure. You know that these ladies and Mr. Dunn go
waaaaay
back.” I winked.

“Not really.” Mrs. Morrison protested while smoothing the
collar
of her dress before looking down at her feet. She knew what was
coming next. I knew all their secrets, and now they would know that I was the wrong person to fuck with.

“Oh sure, he said that in high school the three of you had quite
the
connection
.” Their faces paled, and Mrs. Garrith looked down
right gray. “Oh, don’t be modest, ladies. It’s perfectly natural to want to experiment at that age with your alternative feelings.”

Alternative feelings
was a phrase the church ladies made famous when speaking about the immorality of homosexuality.

Frank had let that bit of information slip to Reggie one day when
Mrs. Garrith had come in for an oil change. I just happened to
overhear.

“Abigail!” Someone faked shock and shame, though her voice
said very clearly that she was truly entertained by this bit of information. I kept my smile big. Laying into those parasites was more fun than I’d thought it would be.

I was about to finish them off with some inside information
about
Mrs. Garrith using store bought orchids for her entry in the flower
festival —which, believe it or not, would probably have been
considered the biggest secret of them all—when the reverend opened the doors of the church and told us it was time to find a seat. The service would be starting.

I went in first, but not before looking back over my shoulder at
the visibly shaken women. I turned to go in, satisfied that Nan
would have scolded me for chastising the church ladies in public, but I also knew she would have been holding back a laugh.

I sat in the first row marked ‘Reserved for Family’, but since Mr.
Dunn didn’t have any that would be attending, I figured it was a
space that needed to be filled. There were quite a few whispers directed at my bold seating decision.

The reverend tried to speak about Mr. Dunn, but I could tell he
was
struggling to find anything positive to say about a man he barely
knew. Frank rarely left his house, and when he did it was only to work at the shop. Even then, he kept mostly to his office, keeping the blinds shut and the world out. It wasn’t as if he’d even needed to be at the shop, but he made it a point to come in when he wasn’t sinking too low. I paid his bills, both business and personal, and between me and Reggie, we had Dunn’s Auto Body running like a...well, like a well-oiled machine.

The reverend began speaking about life and death and the
rewards
waiting in heaven for those who lived their lives by the light of God and
the good book. It made me wonder: even if I did believe in God or religion or the power of the “good book” did I know anyone who qualified?

Not in Coral Pines.

The reverend asked for a moment of silent prayer, bowing his head and folding his hands in front of him as the crowd followed suit. I did, too, but my mind was not on prayer; it was on what I was going to have to do next.

I wiped my sweaty palms on my thighs. When the reverend said “Amen” and the crowed echoed him, he gestured to me. I took out
the piece of wrinkled yellow notepad paper from my pocket and ironed it out on my knee before heading up the steep steps to the
pulpit.

It was a packed house, and all eyes were on me. They were
probably wondering why the hell I was up there.

I cleared my throat and stared at the paper in front of me. My
opening paragraph was about why I was the one up there,
explaining the nature of my relationship with Frank.

Suddenly, I didn’t feel the need to explain anything to these
people. This wasn’t about them. It was about Frank, a man who, over the last
few years, helped me in more ways than I could have ever repaid
him. I had written the words in front of me and had even practiced reading them aloud at home, but for some reason, I was having a problem reading them now. Instead, I decided to tell them about the Mr. Dunn I’d known.

Straight from my battered and broken heart.

I cleared my throat again and took a minute to gather my
thoughts.
Every small movement from the silent audience caused the old
wooden pews to creek and groan. I took a deep breath and started to speak, the squealing feedback from the microphone caused a few shocked
noises from the congregation. I waited for another moment before
continuing. This time, the sound system cooperated.

“I’m not going to stand up here and say Frank was a saint,
because it’s not true,” I started. “He was a troubled man. He turned to his
addictions to numb his pain when he thought he had nothing left.
There were plenty of times when, after not seeing him for days, I
would go over to his house and find him passed out on the floor. I cleaned him up, put out the cigarettes, emptied the ash trays, and threw away the empty bottles. I wouldn’t yell at him. I wouldn’t tell him how badly he was messing up. Instead, I told him how much his help meant to me, what a difference he made in my life. Then, I would beg for him
to find his way out of the fog. And he would, for days at a time,
sometimes even a few weeks.”

I paused and smiled.

“Those were some really great weeks. There were plenty of other times, actually, when he shouted at me and cursed me to the devil for trying to help.”

I laughed nervously and the audience laughed with me. The
double doors at the back of the church opened. A petite blonde
woman entered, and some of the standers parted to let her by. She held the hand of a little red headed girl with long braided pig tails. All my nervousness dissipated.

“But he had a good side. A
great
side really.” I smoothed my hair behind my ears and grabbed both sides of the podium to steady myself. “Mr. Dunn—”

My heart twisted in my chest.

“Frank was a person who made great mistakes—too many
mistakes, and he knew it. He was also a man who crumbled under
the weight of tremendous grief.” I took a deep breath. “But only
because he had experienced tremendous love. When you experience a love as great as he did, it’s easy to let the sadness and anger consume you.
It’s easier to turn away from those you still have left and give
yourself over to the numbness. He invited the pain in because it helped him
remember, and he numbed it with whiskey when it all became too
much. He once told me that he was afraid he would forget what
Marlena and Mason looked like if he ever tried to move on. Sometimes, he talked about them as if they were in the very next room.”

Everyone knew who I was talking about.

“Now, y’all have had your own experiences with Frank. Some good, some bad... some God awful.”

More chuckles from the congregation. The blonde woman
walked up the aisle and sat herself and the little girl in the first pew. Her bright smile urging me to continue. I smiled back at her.

“I can only tell you about the Frank I knew. He was a man who put a roof over my head when I didn’t have one. He was truly the only person besides my grandmother who never judged me and never assumed the worst of me. He never made me explain myself, even when I owed him an explanation. In his own quiet way, he accepted me into his life without question. In some ways, I think he was trying to make amends. He saved me because he couldn’t save his wife and son from death, and he couldn’t save his relationship with his living son. Frank never asked me questions he knew I didn’t want to answer.”

I took a deep breath, my eyes filled with tears as the memories started to flood into my mind of the last four years.

“But his tremendous love wasn’t gone. It didn’t die with his wife
and son. It survived, in the way he felt about the son he pushed
away, and in the way he cared for me…for us.”

There was a shuffle in the back of the church when the doors briefly opened behind some standers, but I continued on.

“His biggest regret was not the loss of the dead, but the loss of the living. Frank loved his son, Jake, but pushed him away because
he
reminded him of his loss, and he didn’t know how or where to
channel all the pain.”

I held in the tears. These people needed to know about Frank,
they
needed to know he was a person who should be mourned in death, not made into a freak show legend. My voice was raspy, but I
pressed on.

“I’m not making excuses for him, and I’m certainly not saying
drinking himself into oblivion was the right way for anyone to
handle anything. But, it’s what happened. It’s his truth. Frank died full of
regret but certainly not alone. He was a man that you may have
known as Ol’ Man Dunn or Mr. Dunn or Frank... or even ‘Bubba’, for those of you who played football with him in high school.” More laughs. “In the end, though, you didn’t know him at all.”

I noticed that some of the church ladies were pressing their
hankies
to the corners of their eyes, their tears looked real. I was glad to see
I’d gotten my point across.

“Franklin Dunn was a troubled man who lived a troubled life.
To me, he was a friend, a father figure in his finer moments, and
someone I wanted to help when he was in the throes of his agony.”

I paused for a breath.

“I couldn’t save him,” I said. I was holding back the sobs that
threatened to come out after every sentence. “But, I like to think I offered him some sort of comfort in these last few years because he sure as hell gave me the same.” There were a few gasps at my use of the word “hell” in church. But most people seemed to understand the point I was trying to get across.

I looked again toward the little girl who was beaming in the
front pew, her coppery red hair swinging over her shoulders with ever move of her little freckled head. Her sundress was the same coral color as mine. After I had gotten dressed, she’d insisted we match. “Actually, I like to think
we
offered him some comfort.” I looked directly at her.

At the mention of
we
, she crawled over the blonde’s lap and
spilled into the aisle. She dashed up to the pulpit, took a running leap and
flung herself into my arms. I gave her a squeeze and set her on my hip. I looked at her and asked “Because what did we call Frank, baby
girl?”

“Gampaw Fank!” she exclaimed. The whole church laughed at my excited little girl.

“That’s right, baby girl. We called him Grandpa Frank. Did you love your Grandpa Frank?”

“Yes, mama,” she said timidly, earning
oohs
and
aahs
from the
crowd. She’d melted my heart every day of my life. These people
were lucky to even get a glimpse of what she was capable of.

I turned my attention back to the congregation. “I think we
should remember Frank for who he was, not for who he
wasn’t
. He was as much of a Grandpa to my little girl as she’s ever going to get. He was a friend to me when I needed it most, and he was a father who loved his family enough to let their loss destroy him. He loved his son Jake more than anything.” My heart skipped a beat when I said his name,
even after all this time. “And he lived with regret every second of
every
day, right up until the day he died, for not fixing what they once
had. Frank may not be missed by everyone here.” I looked at my little girl and planted a kiss on her forehead. “But my daughter and I will sure miss him. Won’t we, Georgia?”

“Yup!” she shouted and clapped her hands together.

Before I could set Georgia down and walk back to our pew, there was another commotion at the back of the church. Both doors swung wide open and the blinding light of midday invaded the small space of the dimly lit church. I covered my eyes with my free hand to block out the light. My daughter buried her head in the crook of my neck.

I caught a glimpse of the person who made the dramatic exit.
An awareness washed over me. I could only see his back because he was already halfway down the front steps. What I did see stopped the very breath in my chest.

The familiar site of blonde hair and black leather was all it took.

The doors slammed shut with a bang so loud. It echoed
throughout the church and shook the stained glass windows.

Once again, Jake was leaving.

BY THE TIME THE SERVICE HAD ENDED,
Jake was long gone. The sad truth of it all was that, if it hadn’t been for Georgia, I would have run after him, right out of the church. I was glad that I hadn’t. I didn’t need another image of his beautiful face haunting my every move. I had enough to last a lifetime as it was. Even if I had gotten
the chance to talk to him, what would I have said? He hated me
because I’d let him hate me. Because it was easier to have him hate me than it was to deal with allowing someone in my life who I believed didn’t trust me, or what I thought we’d had.