Broken Country (Reese’s Book Club)

57. September 28, 1968

September 28, 1968

Leo and I are still cowering beneath the table when we hear the front door opening and footsteps running along the hall.

Gabriel’s or Jimmy’s?

“Beth!” Leo shrieks in terror, and I pull him more tightly against me.

“It’s all right,” Gabriel says, coming into the kitchen. “You can come out, Leo. It’s going to be OK.”

In the bright light of the kitchen, the three of us stand for a moment, looking at each other.

“Thank God,” I say, meaning, You’re alive , and Gabriel reaches out, as he did before, to touch my face.

“I’m going to drive Jimmy back to the farm, but he’ll only go if you come too. I think he wants to make sure you’re back with Frank.”

“No way,” Leo says, clamping himself to my side. “You’re not leaving me.”

“Leo,” Gabriel says, “listen. I won’t be long. You’ll be safe here, I’ll lock the door.”

“No. No. No.”

Leo has his eyes squeezed shut and he shakes his head back and forth, back and forth. He is visibly trembling.

“Leo can come too,” I say. “We can’t leave him on his own like this. We’ll sit in the back together.”

Outside, Jimmy is leaning against the bonnet of Gabriel’s pale blue Wolseley, his whole body tilting to the left, as if he might just slide to the ground in a moment. It’s an incongruous sight, this raddled, red-faced farmer wearing yesterday’s clothes, slumped on a car so spotless and shiny it looks as if it’s come straight from a showroom.

“Into the car, then,” Gabriel says. He is curt, a little sharp, the voice of an irritated parent, not an equal.

Jimmy lifts his head to look at him. “You talking to me?”

“Yes. Let’s get on with it, shall we?”

I have not seen this side of Gabriel before.

“Who d’you think you are?” Jimmy’s voice is thick with alcohol, he is slurring like a cartoon drunk. “You can fuck off.”

“I’ve brought Beth with me, like you wanted. So, please. Do us all a favor. Get in the car.”

To my surprise, Jimmy complies. Perhaps he is responding to Gabriel’s tone, which is crisp and authoritative; perhaps he is exhausted and just wants it to be over.

Gabriel glances at me, raises his eyebrows a fraction; he wasn’t expecting it to be this easy. We’re through the worst of it , his look says.

The drive from Meadowlands to Blakely Farm takes only a few minutes but tonight it feels ten times longer. Jimmy, slumped in the front, asks the same question, over and over. “Why d’you do it, Beth? Why d’you have to do it?”

“I’m sorry, Jimmy, I’m so sorry.”

“?’S’not right. After ever’thing you and Frank have been through. Why d’you do it?”

I don’t know how to answer him except to say that everything we’ve been through is the reason why. I know it. And Frank knows it. The day Bobby died ended something more than just his life.

Leo is gripping my hand so tightly it’s beginning to hurt. He is eleven, still a little boy, really, and he has seen far too much.

“Here we are,” Gabriel says, falsely bright, as we turn into our yard.

The last time he was here was for the wedding. A week ago today, almost impossible to grasp how much has happened since then. Since Jimmy stood in the barn, his brother next to him, watching his bride walk toward him along a roll of red carpet.

Gabriel parks outside the farmhouse and I leap out to help Jimmy.

“Here,” I offer him a hand.

Jimmy looks up at me with a lazy, drunken smile, his eyes half-closed. “Tired now,” he says, dropping his head down.

I pull him toward me but Jimmy resists, slumping back into his seat.

“Here, let me help you,” Gabriel says, switching off the engine. He turns to his son in the back. “This will only take two seconds.”

I see how Frank flinches when we come into the kitchen, Gabriel and I, with Jimmy between us. It is the first time he’s seen us together since he learned of the affair.

“Wasted a whole day and half a night looking for you, you idiot,” he says, turning to his brother. To Jimmy, Frank’s voice is warm and affectionate. He doesn’t look at us. “When are you going to stop scaring the life out of me? You’re a married man now. Going to be a father one of these days.”

“Sorry,” Jimmy says. He topples into Frank’s outstretched arms, leans his forehead against his brother’s. For a long moment, they embrace.

“No more of this, OK?” Frank says, softly. “My heart can’t take it.”

“I’ll get going, then,” Gabriel says, and Frank looks at him for the first time.

“Thank you for bringing him home.”

Frank, thanking the man who has been sleeping with his wife. Somehow his voice is controlled. He really does sound thankful.

But the effect on Jimmy is incendiary, as if he’s been slapped. “Not havin’ that,” Jimmy says, swiveling sharply so he is only a foot or so away from Gabriel. His voice is strangely distinct now. “Thank you for nothing,” he says. “You’ve ruined my brother’s life.”

“Now, look,” Gabriel says. “Let’s not go through all this again. I’ve told you how sorry I am.”

I hear all kinds of things in Gabriel’s voice: frustration, sadness, regret. But Jimmy registers only the note of slight condescension, or at least, that’s what I imagine. There’s no knowing what Jimmy is thinking in this state, or if he’s even thinking at all.

He reaches out and grips Gabriel’s throat with his strong hands, as if to throttle him.

A scream rises from me, long and bloodcurdling. My nerves are shot to pieces.

Frank yells, “Jimmy, no—” and darts toward him.

“All right, all right, keep your—” Jimmy says as he releases his hands from Gabriel’s neck and takes a step back, but the rest of his sentence is lost as, just then, the door bursts open.

It’s Leo.

Leo with a shotgun aimed at Jimmy.

Leo, staggering backward from the force of the gunfire.

Horror seconds, nothing making sense. Jimmy on the floor, silent, motionless, blood pooling across his pale shirt. Frank, kneeling beside him, his palm pressed to the shot wound, trying to contain his sobs long enough to blow air into his brother’s lungs. The child’s screams. Over and over, he shrieks. His face bone-white with shock, shotgun dangling at his side. Gabriel, not moving to comfort him, not at first. As if we have been frozen into some awful tableau, and for a moment, none of us can break free.

“I’m calling an ambulance,” I cry, coming to my senses.

But Frank gets up from the floor. There is blood all over his hands, his face. His right sleeve is soaked in it, all the way up to his elbow.

“Not yet, I need a minute to think. He’s gone. Jimmy’s dead, Beth.”

At this, Leo begins to cry. “Have I killed him? Dad? Have I killed him?”

Gabriel swoops his son up into his arms and Leo wraps his legs around his waist like a small child. Buries his face in Gabriel’s neck. “It’s all right,” Gabriel says, rubbing the small of his back.

But it isn’t all right. It will never be all right again.

Frank is crying too. Silent tears course down his face but his voice is terse, businesslike. “Get the boy out of here,” he says to Gabriel.

“What are you talking about? We have to call the police.”

“I’m sorry,” Leo whimpers. “I’m sorry, Dad. I didn’t mean to.”

“Beth.” Frank’s voice is sharp. “Get them out of here, you go with them. I’ll deal with this. I’ll say it was an accident.”

“I’m not leaving you.”

“Right now. I mean it. You must do as I tell you. Please , Beth.” He yells to make me understand, trying to penetrate my shock, and perhaps his.

“We have to tell the truth about this—” Gabriel says, but Frank cuts him off.

“No. The boy will end up in court. He’s eleven, isn’t he? They will make him testify. Is that what you want?” He looks down at Jimmy’s body. “He’s my brother, let me deal with it my way.”

All Gabriel can ask on the car journey back to Meadowlands is why.

“Why would Frank do that? Why would he take responsibility for something he didn’t do?”

I’m crying too hard to answer him.

My foolish, noble husband, with his misplaced sense of guilt.