What You Have Left (5 page)

But the next morning, in spite of himself, he was up at the crack of dawn with his tools. He nailed my screen shut, pruned the chinaberry tree so that its branches no longer reached the roof, and installed deadbolt locks on the doors. For weeks, he slept with the keys on a string around his neck, and unlike my mother, who in my place probably would have stolen them while he slept, I was comforted by the thought that he wanted to keep me close, that I was too precious to be let go.

•   •   •

After we finished our brandy, Lyle and I went back to his apartment and got busy making up for the previous night. We ended up oversleeping and had to hurry to the farm the next morning, when we were supposed to meet Cal. As soon as we turned off Bluff Road, I knew something wasn't right. The newspaper was still in the yard, the porch light still on. Inside, the house was silent, save the ticking of the cuckoo clock on the mantel.

We called an ambulance, but it was too late. Cal sat slumped in his recliner, an empty pill bottle and rock glass on the table beside him. He still had his suit on, and as he sat there, motionless, it seemed as if the wide lapels were pressing down, pinning him against the worn upholstery. He did not look peaceful so much as deflated, his lips parted where the air had left him.

While Lyle was talking to 911, I held Cal's hand like I should have done when he died—like he would have wanted me to, though of course he'd never have asked. I was crying so hard and so loud that Lyle had to take the phone into the bathroom. It was bad enough that Cal was gone, but to think he'd died alone because of me, because I'd left him no choice but to go behind my back, that was almost more than I could take. My tears were making a spotty mess of his trousers. His skin was already cold, his fingers stiff. I would learn later that he'd been dead for hours, that he'd probably taken the pills as soon as we left.

When Lyle got off the phone, he came back into the den and put his arms around me. In between sobs, I tried to make him understand this was all my fault, but he kept insisting I wasn't to blame, that regardless of what I'd said or done, things had turned out more or less the way Cal planned—he'd simply done what he thought was best, and
we had to accept that. I knew Lyle was right, but even so, it would be a long time before I could forgive any of us. He was still holding me when the medics arrived, sirens splitting the morning air. “Careful,” he said, gently prying my fingers loose from Cal's. “You don't want to bruise him.”

 

Around the time Wylie Greer's daughter was born, he had the bad luck to get mixed up with a man he knew—a brand-new father like himself—who got drunk one night and accidentally killed his infant son. The man's name was Lester Hardin, and on Thursday nights he raced his old Ford in the hobby division out at Columbia Speedway, same as Maddy used to. Lester kept to himself in the pit area and never had two words for Maddy and Wylie, but there was nothing in particular about him to make you think he'd hurt his own son. He was just another gearhead who hated racing against a woman and no doubt wished Maddy good riddance when she got pregnant and quit.

It wasn't until Lester heard Maddy was selling the Fair-lane that he tried getting friendly with them. One night in the summer of 1971, he buddied up to Wylie in the infield to inquire about the car. This was a few months after Wylie and Maddy had moved into a clapboard cottage on her father's dairy farm, trying to save for the baby. At the time Wylie was working as a mechanic at the Ford dealership, but on Thursday nights he'd been moonlighting at the track, picking up a few extra bucks clearing wrecks for an outfit called Atlas
Towing. Mostly the job was an excuse to watch the races now that Maddy wasn't driving anymore—that and a chance to talk up the Fairlane to the other drivers. After all the blood and sweat he'd poured into that car, after all the races he and Maddy had won, he hated the thought of selling it, but they needed the cash.

Wylie didn't resent Maddy or the baby or even the prospect of fatherhood in general, though it was true, here in the homestretch, that he'd started second-guessing himself. Every time Maddy grabbed his hand and held it to her stomach (and she did this constantly) he was more convinced that he didn't have what it took, that he lacked the enthusiasm or patience for kids—in short, that he'd make a half-assed father, no better than his own, the kind of man who ends up ruining his family or leaving it.

When Lester ambled over, Maddy was holed up inside the wrecker reading Dr. Spock while Wylie watched the late models take practice laps. Lester offered him a beer from the six-pack dangling on his finger, then tapped his can against Wylie's.

“To fatherhood,” he said. “To babies that sleep all night and look like their daddies.”

Lester's wife, Gladys, was pregnant, too, eight months to Maddy's six, but Wylie didn't feel like talking babies with a guy who acted as though they were just another notch on his belt. In fact, he didn't much feel like talking babies at all. When Lester started telling him about the fancy cigars he'd bought for the big day, Wylie tuned him out and found himself staring at the wrecker's door, the hand-painted silhouette of Atlas straining under the weight of the globe.

By the time Lester finally got around to asking about the car, Gladys had started back from the concession stand with
a milkshake, picking her way through the muddy infield. She had the glazed-over look in her eyes that Maddy was starting to get—like she was so deep in her own private babyland that any minute she might wander off or float away—but the second the mothers-to-be recognized each other, they both clicked into focus. Maddy hauled herself out of the truck, the two of them suddenly carrying on like long-lost sisters, though before that night they'd been nothing more than casual friends. After a minute or so, Lester horned in, trying to make nice with Maddy. He pointed at her stomach and asked her did she have a little Richard Petty in there.

“It's a girl,” Maddy said, an idea she'd been clinging to since the day she learned she was pregnant.

“Ah.” Lester crushed his beer can and tossed it in the grass. “Future race queen.”

Maddy stood there with her arms crossed, staring Lester down until he understood he'd put his foot in his mouth.

“Louise Smith, then!” he said. “Ethel Flock!” These were old-time lady drivers, a couple of Maddy's heroes. She let him off the hook with a thin smile and turned back to Gladys, leaving Wylie and Lester to talk money.

Lester wanted the Fairlane at half the asking price. Wylie almost told him where to stick it, but no one else was interested and Maddy's due date was coming up fast; half was better than nothing at all. At the end of the night, worn down by Lester's haggling, Wylie finally caved. They shook on it, Lester said he'd call as soon as he got the cash together, and that was the last Wylie heard from him.

Over the next few weeks, though, their wives were on the phone almost every day, and before long it wasn't just the
details of Maddy's pregnancy that crowded out all other topics of conversation between her and Wylie—now he had to make room in his head for Gladys's pregnancy, too. Maddy had gained
x
pounds so far; Gladys was up to
y.
Maddy had terrible leg cramps. Gladys had terrible gas. Neither of them believed in pacifiers. Both of them were going to breast-feed. Early on, Wylie had been willing—even eager—to listen, but the more he'd learned about babies, the more he realized he'd never know all that was required, and after a while, he'd simply given up.

When Nat was born, Maddy visited Gladys in the hospital, and afterward she kept Gladys company and helped out with the baby over at the Hardins' place. Wylie got regular reports on Nat—what thick brown hair he had, what a bruiser he was, how much he drooled. Occasionally Wylie also got word through his wife that Lester was having trouble coming up with the money for the Fairlane, that Gladys was on his case for even thinking about buying it, but now that she and Gladys were so close, Maddy didn't want to get involved.

Then one night, when Nat was about two months old, Gladys came home from work to discover him facedown in his crib. The deputy coroner ruled it an accidental suffocation. Wylie heard about Nat before Maddy did, from a guy in parts who'd stopped by the car wash that Lester managed over on Rosewood Drive. Wylie left the dealership early, drove straight home in a steady rain. Maddy was already two days overdue, gingerly pacing the house, and he wanted to give her the news himself, rather than have her hear it from a hysterical Gladys. When he told her, she dropped the ladle she'd been stirring the chili with and walked out of the kitchen. He found her in the bathroom on the edge of the tub, poking at her stomach, and when she looked up at him,
her look said,
Promise it'll be okay,
but also,
You can't make it okay, and if it's not, I'll always blame you.

“She's been kicking all day,” she said. “Now she won't move.”

Wylie put his arm around his wife and told her that what had happened to Lester and Gladys wasn't going to happen to them. He told her, as they sat there listening to the rain and waiting for the baby to kick, that Lester and Gladys's loss tilted the odds in their favor.

Five days later, Wylie was standing in a recovery room at Richland Memorial with his mother and father-in-law, holding his daughter for the first time. “We are so lucky,” Maddy said. “Do you have any idea how lucky we are?” She was propped up in bed, bleary-eyed and red-faced from thirteen hours of labor, but happy—crying with happiness and relief, and gazing at her husband and daughter as if the world started and ended right there. She'd never seemed to doubt that Wylie was cut out for kids, and so he'd been living off her faith in him as if it were his own, although he was sure that faith had less to do with him than with how badly she wanted a baby. Now, as she sat there beaming, he clucked his tongue at Holly and waited to feel something besides scared. He had hoped for what Maddy was feeling—love at first sight, love washing over him like a wave. But here he was, just holding a baby. It could have been anybody's baby. His mother and Cal kept saying she was the prettiest little thing, and she did have pretty lips, but her hands looked too big for her body, and she seemed so feeble, so raw. He took a seat on the bed and played This Little Piggy with her toes, telling himself to give it some time.

Later, after the parents left and the nurse had taken Holly away, Wylie went down to the cafeteria. On his way back, he stopped at the nursery. Looking through the window at the row of babies, he doubted he'd be able to tell which one was Holly, but there she was, staring off into space like a little insomniac, as if she already had a head full of worries. He tapped on the glass and waved, trying to get her attention.

When he got back to the room, Maddy was still awake, sitting up in bed and looking out the door. “I think that's the room Gladys had,” she said. “Right across the hall.” She leaned back, moved her dinner tray so Wylie would have a place to sit. “Do you think I'm a terrible friend?”

It had been five days since Nat died, and Maddy still hadn't spoken to Gladys. This was during the time when everyone still believed Nat's death had been a natural one, before Lester confessed. Out at the track, the hobby drivers had held a charity race to help pay for the funeral, but Maddy had stayed home. She'd skipped the funeral, too. She'd even stopped answering the phone, afraid it might be Gladys.

Wylie kissed Maddy's neck. She tasted salty, like she used to after a race. “You haven't heard from her, either.”

“But I should have been at the funeral. I didn't even send flowers.”

“Then call her,” he said. “She'll understand.”

Maddy sighed. “The thing is, I don't want to.”

Maddy had wanted Wylie to take a week off work when the baby was born, but without the money from the Fair-lane, all he could manage was a couple of days. His mother and Cal were eager to help out with Holly, but Maddy
wanted to feel like she was in control before she let the grandparents swoop in, and from the looks of it, that wasn't about to happen anytime soon. It was amazing, really, how quickly things went to hell. Holly cried and cried and wouldn't stop. Crying wasn't even the word for it. Screaming, shrieking, wailing, she worked herself into a frenzy. The only thing that shut her up was Maddy's breast, and she wanted it constantly—every two hours, every hour. Wylie and Maddy never slept. She accused him of sulking; he accused her of spoiling the baby. In no time, they were on the brink of hating each other, and Wylie felt the weight of it bearing down on him, despair like nothing he'd ever known.

On the third morning, before work, Wylie slipped out of the house during one of Holly's meltdowns, telling Maddy he needed to give the Fairlane a tune-up. She followed him to the door with the crying baby.

“That's it,” she said. “Just run off and hide. Like father, like son.”

Wylie stopped halfway across the yard, made himself breathe. “Fine, honey. You do the car, I'll watch the baby.”

“You wouldn't know where to start,” Maddy said, letting the screen door slam shut.

Wylie had finally gotten around to running an ad in the paper once he realized Lester couldn't afford the car, but in the whirlwind leading up to Holly's arrival, he'd let the ad lapse, and the car had been parked at the end of the lane ever since, a FOR SALE sign fading in the windshield. He swapped out the spark plugs and was almost done changing the oil when he looked up to see Maddy coming down the gravel lane, stone-faced and barefoot, Holly asleep in her arms. She patted the car's fender. “I've come to say my good-byes,” she said.

For three years, that car had been their life, and during the early months of Maddy's pregnancy, it stung Wylie to think of the summers they'd spent in the hobby division, how their climb up the NASCAR ladder was finished before they'd reached the second rung. But eventually he bought into the idea that a baby could be better than racing, that a baby could bring him and Maddy closer together.