Forty
Trudy
Haskel lit the fireplace and offered Shug a drink, but he refused. The three of them stood in Haskel’s foyer. Shug fidgeted and Trudy wished she could speak to him privately.
“Yeah,” was Shug’s response when Haskel thanked him for what he did on that tree. “Nah,” when Haskel asked if he at least wanted a pair of Haskel’s socks for his ride home.
“Obviously,” Haskel said. “We need to keep this under wraps.”
Shug bit his lower lip. Trudy nodded.
“We pretend none of this happened, okay? Deny it if necessary. And after tonight, we never discuss this, ever again—including you, Coach, if you don’t mind—the show must go on as if nothing’s changed.”
“And if June Bug sees things differently?” Shug asked.
“Oh, don’t worry, Coach,” Haskel chuckled. “I’ll have him back to practice next week. You can count on it.” Haskel stuck out his hand, but Shug just looked at it.
“You need a ride back to your car?” Shug asked Trudy.
“I’ll take her,” Haskel said. “In the morning.” He opened the front door and held the handle.
Trudy touched Haskel’s forearm. “Can you give us a moment?”
Haskel cleared his throat. “I’ll go check on June Bug,” and he left.
Trudy whispered to Shug, “I guess you should go.”
Shug bit his bottom lip. “Being afraid doesn’t always look like sitting at the top of a bluff. Sometimes it looks like this.” He gestured with his eyes at the space around them, Haskel’s house. Haskel’s life. Her life.
There was so much she wanted to say. She wanted to kiss him. She wanted to tell him she’d call him tomorrow. She wanted that ride back to her car. Tonight, with Shug, not in the morning.
But it was his place to make a move. He was the one leaving. Next semester. The timing sucked but was out of her control.
There was also so much she wanted him to say.
She wanted him to demand that she leave and come to his place, to bring June Bug there instead.
She wished they’d done that in the first place.
She wanted Shug to do something unexpected.
She wanted him to invite her to come to Tuscaloosa with him.
But he just stood there daring her to close the door.
“Good night, Shug,” she said finally, and he stepped away.
She closed the door and turned to find Haskel standing there, a sympathetic grin on his face.
She fell into his embrace and let him hold her as she replayed the night.
The faces: Dee Dee’s angry glare, Carter and June Bug’s black eyes, Barbara Beaumont’s smugness.
The voices: Shug’s crooning, Carter’s garbled sobbing, June Bug’s wailing.
The sights: that tree growing sideways and all alone.
Shug, barefooted and trying to hang on. Jimmie’s ghost, the first time since he’d died that Trudy had imagined his face and it wasn’t blurry or distorted.
Haskel’s hand moving down her hip, across the small of her back, brought her back to the moment.
Her body should have needed to touch his; she should have craved taking him in, having him hold her and wrap her up and make the world okay.
She should be longing for that more than anything: to surrender, to undress together, to covet that pressure from the inside out that only a man can give.
She tried to conjure a craving, but imagined Shug instead, and longed for his embrace, imagined his fullness as the one pressing into her side.
With Haskel’s chest at eye level, she studied the stray hairs poking out of his unfastened buttons.
She couldn’t look up; she didn’t want to see his eyes because she couldn’t get his instruction that they’d never speak of this night again out of her head.
How would that affect June Bug, who, only hours ago, had been hundreds of feet above the river threatening to jump?
His, Haskel’s, view of life seemed so misguided.
And where did that leave her, in this house with him?
She searched for something diplomatic to say as he pulled her in closer, placed his nose under her ear.
“I think I should sleep in my own bed tonight,” she said, and attributed it to the fact that June Bug was in the other room. Haskel knew better, but said he understood.
Before standing there like that could get any more awkward, a breathless and tearful Lucy Moody opened the front door. “Is he here?” she said. “I need to know he’s okay.”
Haskel opened the guest room for Lucy to peek in.
Trudy knew a peek wouldn’t be enough; she’d have thrust herself into the room, too, if it were Pete.
Lucy was immediately at June Bug’s side, brushing his bangs off his forehead.
He mumbled a sleepy something and Lucy shushed him before Trudy slowly closed the door and gave her fellow mother the moment.
When Lucy finally came out, Trudy stood from the sofa and the women embraced, driven by something primal that only mothers would understand. Lucy sobbed into Trudy’s shoulder.
“It’s all right,” Trudy whispered and rubbed her back.
Lucy settled and pulled away, dabbed her face with a tissue. She said flatly, “You don’t want this.”
“I’m sorry?”
“Get away while you can, Trudy.” The outgoing first lady of Bailey Springs took hold of Trudy’s hands. “They’re coming for you.”
“Coming for me?” Trudy shook her head, though she knew Lucy meant Barbara.
Lucy squeezed Trudy’s hands. “Consider it a blessing.”
“Ready to go?” Haskel stepped in, drying his hands with a towel.
Trudy nodded and let go of Lucy’s hands.
She didn’t ask questions because everything Trudy needed to know was written on Lucy’s face, her eyes carrying a lifetime of suffocation.
Her granite smiles of endurance and nods of phony interest—they were all laying waste to her soul.
And for what? So her husband could run for a more important office?
To drive a bigger wedge between her and her son?
So she could live without real friends, and the ones who called themselves such only a scandal away from abandoning her?
“I’ll be here,” Lucy said, and Haskel drove Trudy home in silence.
Leta Pearl had gone to bed. Pete and Dub had fallen asleep on the couch watching TV, and now the national anthem was playing on CBS.
Trudy switched it off at the rockets’ red glare and carried Pete to his bedroom, helping him wiggle out of his sweatshirt and jeans.
She threaded his arms and legs into his pajamas, his eyes half open.
“Where’s my football, Mama?” Pete asked.
He had been sleeping with the football Shug had given him and begged her to let him take it with him everywhere, but Trudy always made him leave it, “to keep it safe.” She gathered the football from the floor and handed it to Pete, who cradled it in his arm like a sleepy little Heisman Trophy wearing E.T. pajamas.
“Is Missster Coach your best friend, Mama?” Pete asked.
Trudy chuckled. “Coach Meechum is my friend. I don’t know if he’s my best friend. Why do you ask?”
“Because ... every time Mister Coach is around, you sssmile,” Pete explained through a yawn that seemed too big for his head. “And your eyes have sssparkles.”
Trudy smiled, watched him close his eyes, and tucked him in. “Sweet dreams little man.”