Chapter 28
I didn’t go to sleep that night. I stared into the darkness, listening to Russ snore and thinking of that day in the ballpark, the hateful way I’d smiled at Leonard. Outside the Publix, I’d looked right into his eyes and told him I’d hoped his fingers rotted off because of the rot inside him.
I didn’t know if he and the blond girl were engaged or already married.
They’d looked happy at the ball game, his arm around her.
And she’d stood by him through the insults from Russ and Buddy.
I imagined this girl putting her slender arms around Leonard now, consoling him.
It didn’t make me unhappy. I wanted him to be consoled.
There would be no such consoling for me.
I could talk to Mae, eventually, if I could catch her alone when she wasn’t trying to do a million things.
For now, I could guess what she’d say. She’d be even more disgusted by Leonard’s parents than she already was, which was saying something.
She’d probably feel terrible for Leonard, and guilty for judging him so harshly.
I’d have company in that, at least. But Mae wouldn’t be able to change anything.
She couldn’t undo every hurtful thing I’d said and done.
She couldn’t go back in time to that day in New Jersey, and tell me to un-sign the papers.
Mrs. Lifton had been right about one thing: Knowing the truth wouldn’t fix anything. What was done was done.
I thought of my daughter, how light she’d felt in my arms. Even on her first day in the world, even with the injury from the forceps, she’d looked like Leonard.
Now she was three and a half years old, and I didn’t know what she looked like, or what her name was.
If she was alive, she was likely sleeping, and I thought of her waking to light coming in some window, familiar to her, that I’d never see.
Sweet dreams, I thought. Sweet dreams till sunbeams find you.
That was the most I could give her, that wish.
I was still awake when Russ’s alarm clock buzzed.
In the warmer months, he rose before dawn so he could meet his crew early enough to get their workday done before the punishing heat of the afternoons.
He turned on the light only briefly, then turned it off before he whispered my name. I feigned sleep in the darkness.
I wasn’t angry with him. He’d had nothing to do with what happened with the Liftons, or with the baby.
I just couldn’t bear to pretend I felt anything aside from desolate.
I heard him go out the front door. The engine of his truck turned over, then growled alive, then faded as he drove away.
The edges of the bedroom windows lightened to gray, then lavender.
The drilling and hammering started up. And still, I didn’t move. My limbs felt like concrete.
I was still lying there when the phone rang.
Right away, I knew. I don’t think it was any kind of magic telepathy, just a process of elimination.
Russ was busy working. Mrs. Lifton had already called.
A salesman wouldn’t call so early. Even Mae rarely called before eight.
This sounds like a lot to consider while a phone is ringing. I suppose I was expecting him to call.
I jumped up and hurried to the kitchen, all my lethargy gone.
But once I was close enough to grab the receiver, I just stood there.
If you would have seen me then, staring at that ringing phone, you might have thought it was a coiled viper that God himself had commanded me to reach out and pet.
I was scared of what he had every right to say to me.
I had no hope of forgiveness, or of the mercy I hadn’t shown him.
But the phone kept ringing, and I knew what I owed him. Finally, I made myself pick up.
—
Much later, not on this phone call, Leonard told me that day at the Publix, after he watched me get in Russ’s truck, he went back inside with his bow tie still dangling, clocked out, and drove home still wearing the apron.
His parents were both home, happy to see him until they saw his face.
The first thing he said was that he didn’t want to hear any more lies, not one.
His mother sank to the floor, her back against the refrigerator.
His father came up with the idea that they should all go into the living room and try to talk things through like civilized human beings.
Leonard said he wasn’t sure that’s what they were.
He went back to his room, wedged the back of a chair against it, and started packing.
Five minutes later, he came out with his army duffel bag on his shoulder, blowing past his father, who followed him to the front door and told him he was again hurting his mother, hurting her terribly, and that she’d already suffered so much, for years, because he acted without thinking, without trying to stay calm, and here he was doing it again.
Leonard didn’t respond, just threw his bag into the car they’d given him as a homecoming present.
It was a nice car, even nicer than his old Plymouth: a brand-new Chevrolet Bel Air with power steering, royal blue.
His father, still standing in the shade of the house, reminded Leonard he was the one who’d purchased the car, and Leonard, conceding the point, turned around and pitched the keys like a fastball.
His father jumped out of the way, and good thing for him, as the keys hit the terra-cotta bowl by the door with enough force that the bowl shattered.
Leonard took the duffel bag out of the car, turned back to the street, and started walking.
It was a Sunday evening, and nothing was open downtown.
But he had cash from his last paycheck at Publix, and he used it to get a room at a hotel charging off-season rates.
The nightstand in this room held both a Bible and a city directory.
He used the latter to find the phone number and the address listed under Crandle, R.
He found Dolphin Drive in the directory’s map.
In the morning, he walked to the bank where he’d recently deposited the three years’ worth of hardship pay the military had finally decided to send to him.
He withdrew all of it and took a cab to a used car dealership, where he got an exceptionally good deal on a nine-year-old Buick with a dent in the passenger door.
The salesman, also a veteran, noticed the missing fingers and asked what happened.
Leonard told him, and the salesman asked to see his military ID, then went inside and talked with the dealership owner, another veteran, who cut the car’s total price by a third.
This salesman also asked Leonard if he was okay, and mentioned that he looked distressed.
“I’m fine,” Leonard told him. “But thank you, sir.” He made himself convincing. In the last few years, he said, he’d grown particularly adept at appearing one way when he was feeling something else.
The salesman believed him, or at least didn’t press the matter.
He asked if he could take a picture of Leonard by the Buick, as they liked to show off all their satisfied customers with pictures on a board inside the dealership.
Leonard said yes, posed beside the Buick’s good side, then got in and drove twenty minutes west to the Gulf-side beaches.
On the main strip of Treasure Island, he found a diner where he ate a hamburger while staring out the window.
Then he put his shoes in the car and walked down to the shore, not realizing he was talking to himself until sunburned strangers and little kids building sandcastles started giving him looks.
He thought that his sunglasses hid that he was sometimes crying. If they didn’t, he didn’t care.
When night fell, he drove to Dolphin Drive, located our address, and saw Russ’s truck parked in the driveway.
He turned around and drove back over the causeway to Treasure Island, where he checked into a hotel, took a shower, and tried to sleep.
At four in the morning, he drove back to Dolphin Drive, parking far enough away that Russ wouldn’t notice his car, and there he waited.
When I was lying in bed, listening to Russ drive away in the dark, Leonard was still parked on our street, watching.
When the truck’s taillights faded, he drove back over the causeway to the diner, which had a pay phone. He’d already gotten change.
—
“I’d like to talk to you in person,” he told me. “I’m staying on Treasure Island, at the Starlight Motel. There’s a diner across the street, but I could meet you anywhere.”
For what, I thought. Maybe to berate me, as I’d berated him.
Maybe to ask questions I couldn’t answer: Where is she now?
Do you know anything about the people who have her?
How could you have believed them? What the hell is the matter with you?
But he didn’t sound angry. I stood there in my nightgown, squinting at the rising sun.
I couldn’t guess why he was on Treasure Island, so close, but too far for me to walk to. I told him I didn’t have a car.
“I could come pick you up,” he said. “I’m sorry for the rush, but I’m leaving town, probably tomorrow.
I just want to talk with you first. I could wait around a few days if you need time.
I don’t mean to be sneaky, Nora. If you want to wait and talk with…
with Russ, or if you think he should be there, that’s okay. I’ll wait.”
I almost laughed at that, the idea of my telling Russ that I needed to talk with Leonard, and Russ being okay with it.