Tiger Lillie (21 page)

18

Lillie

Someone keyed my car down both sides, poured acid on the hood and trunk, and slashed the rag top to strings. I found the damage this morning and vowed to try and stop sleeping with my fan on high. How could I have not heard that? Of course, I should call the police, and they’ll ask who could have done this. I’ll them about my brother-in-law, and they’ll say they will check it out.

Like that will do a thing. The detective, a female with my poor luck, will call me two weeks later and say, “I went out and talked to Rawlins McGovern,” and the next words will have this meaning: “And I was bowled over by his charm and the way he really looked at me when he was talking to me and how could this nice man do something like this?” And then her brows will knit in accusation as if to say, “And I can’t believe you called social services on this perfectly nice family. This car damage is probably another scheme to make the poor dear look bad.”

So I don’t report this. The car is ruined, the acid having eaten through the body so thoroughly I’d basically have to replace all the panels, which I can ill afford even if I could find them. It won’t bring the car back. Nothing can bring that car back. A vacant cab rolls near, and I hail it, riding to work and hoping I can at least sell the darn thing for parts. I decide not to breathe a word of this to Mom and Dad.

Tacy

I told the social worker I would do what she said, but Rawlins wouldn’t let me. So I lied in effect. I felt black with sin. Maybe Rawlins is right about me, I remember thinking.

I don’t know why I was so stupid. I told him just after she left that I had been changing the schedule on my own during the day. I was so proud I was already doing the right thing, Me. Just me, Tacy. I was so happy that I had maternal instincts of my own. I thought he’d be proud of me.

But he tightened his jaw and breathed in and out and he left the room. I heard him call Pastor Cole. Then he shut his study door. That man had some kind of control of my husband, more than just something a firm, demanding pastor could command. But I wouldn’t have dreamed of asking Rawlins about it. Was he demanding sexual favors? Dear heavens, I didn’t know how I could even think such a thing. Maybe it was money, Maybe he was extorting Rawlins for something Rawlins was hiding. He did seem to be hiding something. Even from the beginning.

That night, once again, I sat behind the couch. The moonlight spilled onto the pages of my Bible and I wished, oh yes, I wished I might turn into a silver beam and stream up to heaven and take Hannah with me. The thought of a murder/suicide used to horror me. But Hannah and I were dying by inches. It might have been a merciful alternative to the hell we inhabited.

Look now though, God has taken care of it. Lillie will say, “Tacy was too good for this earth, Daddy.”

Daddy will nod and cry. And Mother will fix a pot of coffee and cover her grief with activity.

I never got to paint those murals in the cottage.

I don’t know why my spirit isn’t ascending yet. I feel the presence of my Savior, an undeniable peace, yet I watch the scene below me. Lillie’s stopped her car and is sliding down the hill toward the Rover.

Rawlins screams for help again, and I wonder what my sister will do. Is Hannah asleep in her car seat in Lillie’s station wagon? Is Gordon comforting my little one?

Lillie

With a June wedding of my own nearing, to a rich guy no less, money coming in from the business, and very little personal expenses to begin with, I figure I can spring for a nice car. I mean, nothing too flashy, nothing that says, “Hey, fiancé, you’ve got a bucketload, so I’m just going to go whole hog and get this cute Mercedes-Benz convertible.” Then again, this is going to have to last me awhile, so I don’t want to go for anything that I’ll get sick of a year from now, either, like a minivan or a sedan. I need a little speed. I really do.

Gordon shuffles along beside me as we walk the lot at the Volvo dealership in Hunt Valley. “You know, I’m not a violent man, sweetheart. But I feel like something needs to be done to send Rawlins a message. I can’t believe what he did to your car.”

“What kind of message? Any message I can think of is illegal, and besides, I always get caught.”

“God must really love you, then.”

Never thought of it like that before.

“What about a restraining order?” he asks.

“We can’t prove he did anything. And I wouldn’t be surprised if he files a restraining order on me first.”

“Just a thought… He’s not done with this, Lillie. You know that, don’t you?”

M’m. “Yeah, I do.”

But I don’t want to think about King Rawlins VIII just now, and I tell Gordon that.

I run my hand along the sun-warmed bumper of a silver Volvo wagon. “What do you think about a wagon? I mean, maybe we should be practical.”

As in kids.

Wow-wee.

“There’s a little seat in the back there,” I say.

“Yeah.” He winds his arms around my waist from behind. He kisses my neck. “Wanna start right away?”

“I’m thirty-two. You’re forty-two. What do you think?”

“Okay. Kids right away. I’m with you there. And in the meantime, the car will be more than practical for your business, running stuff on-site.”

“Let’s test-drive it.”

The car salesman photocopies our licenses, and we head off in the April sunshine, sunroof open, radio blaring—believe it or not, a Pink song. “I’m a hazard to myself,” she sings in her rugged, controlled voice. “Don’t let me get me.”

I love Pink. She asks the questions I ask and feels much the same about herself as I do. If she didn’t sound off with such foul language, I’d hand her CD out on the streets to pubescent girls searching for their own identity. If she didn’t have such a potty mouth, I can guarantee that mothers everywhere would be waiting in line for her next CD.

I sing with gusto. “Don’t wanna be my friend no more—”

“Hey, you don’t have a bad voice,” Gordon says, tattooed arm resting on the open window sill. The tattoo is of a once bare-breasted mermaid, attesting to what we’ll do to ourselves when we’re young. She wears a red bikini top now. What a hoot.

“Thanks. Been singing in church choirs all of my life. Alto.”

“You have that lyrical quality to your speaking voice. I’m not surprised. Hey, if Stan ever needs a backup singer—”

“No way! With this figure?”

He laughs and takes my right hand off the gear stick. “You are perfect. Why would you think I’d want to share my bed for the rest of my life with a stick figure?”

I shrug.

He squeezes my hand. “You know, Lillie, men on the whole don’t like skinny. I don’t know where women get this idea.”

“Well then, I guess I’m the one for you.”

There, that should stop this vein of conversation cold. Although I internally obsess about my figure, I hate talking about it.

“And you’re not a hazard to yourself either,” Gordon says. “I know you’re thinking that the song is just how you feel.”

I just smile a little.

“Really, Lillie. Believe me, ask any of the remaining Remington brothers, and they’ll tell you what being a hazard really is.”

“I guess hazards take many forms. I mean when you think of hazards, you think of sharp rocks or cliffs or windy roads beside ravines. But what about soft hazards, like waterbeds and featherbeds and thick down pillows that can smother a baby’s breath?”

Where did all that come from?!

“Tacy and Hannah.”

“Yeah.”

For some reason, I negotiate the eastern road away from Hunt Valley, planning out a rather large, circuitous route back to the dealership. Hey, the tank’s full.

Gordon turns to look at me. “We’re going by Tacy’s house, aren’t we?”

“Maybe Rawlins isn’t home. Maybe we could pull in for just a bit?”

“I’m game.”

“I just need to see her.”

“I know.”

Five minutes later I turn off Jarrettsville Pike and navigate this car, which I’ve decided to buy since it has a turbo engine that rocks more than even Pink, between the stone posts on either side of their driveway.

“I feel sick, Gordon.”

“I don’t blame you. We need to send some kind of message though. That we’re not afraid of him.”

“Maybe showing up here will do just that.”

I doubt it. But it sounds good, right?

The tires crunch on the gravel of the drive as I pull onto the parking area near the Queen Mother of All Decks. Rawlins’s car isn’t in sight, thank You, God. I exit the car as quickly as possible and run up to the back door, not waiting for Gordon. Time is definitely of the essence and all.

I knock. Philly, the housekeeper, a tiny woman of Greek descent, real name Philadelphia, frowns at me through the window. But she opens the door anyway. “You can’t come in here, Lillie. You know that.”

“Is she all right?”

“She’s upstairs, napping.” Philly’s from the city. No nonsense.

“I mean the baby.”

“She’s napping too.”

Well, let’s see if Rawlins did as he promised. “Did Tacy nurse her to sleep?”

“Get on out of here before I get fired for talking to you.”

I’ve always liked Philly. Gruff but bighearted.

Hannah’s cough echoes even from upstairs.

“Philly, how can you stand this?”

“You better get on, Lillian.”

“Philadelphia!” a foreign voice calls from the top of the steps. “Who is that?”

“Just a salesman!”

I whisper. “Who is that?”

“The new nursemaid.”

“A nursemaid? What does Tacy need a nursemaid for? She doesn’t
do
anything?”

“Just go!”

“Philly—”

“Mr. McGovern brought her in a few days ago. A church lady. There’s a guard coming on duty any minute too. Now get going!” She shakes her head as she shuts the door, and I stare at the cross dividing the panes of glass and see the crucified Christ and wonder, “Did Jesus die for
this?
”

And I know the answer is yes. And right now, like when I think of the sins of the Hitlers and the Husseins, it just kinda makes me mad. Shouldn’t some behavior just be beyond redemption?

Grandma Erzsèbet never remarried. After Teddy disappeared, despite the language barrier, Grandma brought me through. She’d lost her greatest love to a work camp; she knew the reason for separation didn’t much matter: disappearance…gone is gone.

So Grandma held me for hours on end as I cried out tears of loss and frustration for three years, and a tenderizing fork poked my heart again and again with each news report, each false hope. She whispered Hungarian things in my ear, words my brain couldn’t translate. But my heart did. “I know. I understand.”

That was the thing about Grandma. She’d been through so much, my grandfather being taken away, my Uncle Istvàn in the work camps. She knew. More than anybody else, she knew. And that soothed me. Kissing my hair, she hummed songs I would never understand but would never forget either.

Several years later, my mother interpreting, I asked Grandma why she never remarried. She said she’d married a loving man, taken from her by a cruel master. She figured her chances of finding another man like my grandfather were slim and she refused to end up with a cruel master.

“I have more respect for myself than that.”

Tacy, Tacy. How did you agree to give yourself, your
self
away to a mere man? Teddy’s gone, but I’m not. Rawlins is still here, but Tacy has disappeared.

As much as I feel sorry for my sister, there are times I want to shake her silly, knock some sense into her, scrape that vapid expression off her beautiful face and scream for her to go back to the spot where she laid herself down and walked away. And now a nursemaid? Or a warden?

Philly’s standing on my doorstep, cussing me out good, and I guess I don’t blame her.

The name-calling stops. “Don’t you think I saw what was going on, Lillie? Don’t you think I was doing my best to run interference when I could? But you had to come poking around. Now that man has hired another housekeeper, not to mention the fact that the other women from that spooky church, and that guard, are there, keeping a watchful eye when Rawlins is gone. So, thanks to you, now nobody remains for Tacy.”

“Come on in off the doorstep, Philly. We’ll talk about it inside.”

She enters the house. “I could sure use a cup of coffee.”

“I just put on a pot a little while ago.”

She takes off her jacket, folding it neatly and laying it across the back of the living room chair. “And a job. I sure could use a job.”

“I know.” I pick up the jacket and hang it in the closet near the door. “I’ll help you.”

“You’d better.”

I usher her back to the kitchen. My folks are breakfasting at Aunt Luca’s this morning, thank goodness. Daddy’s been coming around just a tad, and I don’t want him hearing this stuff right now. See, I’ve got plans. I’m not sure how all the details will work out, but I’m going to try. Or I think I am. I mean, I
am
a Strong Hungarian Woman. Right?