CHAPTER THREE GOODBYE
CHAPTER
THREE
Goodbye
Cora sat beside Lee’s hospital bed and gently touched his hand where it lay folded across his chest. There was no reaction.
‘Hey there, handsome,’ she said, struggling to make her voice even and light. ‘You feel like getting up today?’
She searched his eyelids and fingers and lips for signs of movement.
It had been three long weeks since he’d been brought in.
Dr George kept telling her to be patient, and Patsy assured her Lee was in great hands, but seeing him lying there helpless, week after week, tore her into a thousand pieces that she could barely hold on to.
It scared her to realize how badly she wanted him back.
She placed one of his hands in hers and massaged his fingers. The bruising on his knuckles had healed and the lacerations around his wrists had quieted to angry red stripes.
‘You missed Momma’s fish fry last night,’ she said.
She kneaded the length of each finger and then the palm of his hand.
‘I know how you love fried mullet.’ Not even his rhythmic breathing fluttered.
‘But don’t you worry. I’ll make some special for you when you get out of here. All you got to do is wake up.’
Her voice quivered and she stopped talking for a minute until she could speak again with a steady cheerfulness.
The doctor couldn’t say if he heard her or not, so she made sure not to talk about anything that might worry him.
Not his business up in flames with his landlord trying to blame him for the damages, or the men who attacked him bragging across town about what they’d done, knowing they’d never serve a day in prison for it.
She wouldn’t mention that without her job she couldn’t help Momma and Roscoe with the rent money, or that the landlord had threatened to boot them out if they didn’t come up with it soon.
Not a word about staying at Aunt Teen’s to avoid being in the same house as Roscoe, or the talks from Momma about her sinful choices, or how Benny wanted her to stop talking to the papers, afraid she’d wind up in the hospital with Lee, or worse.
‘Do you remember that nice reporter we talked to? From the Pittsburgh Courier?’ she said to Lee’s still form.
‘I wrote to him and told him what happened to you.’ She worked his wrist back and forth, like Patsy told her to, trying to get the blood circulating.
‘He said he’d see about doing a follow-up piece on the repercussions of speaking out and Jim Crow justice.
’ She massaged up and down his arm. ‘He said he’d run it by his editor. ’
As she kneaded and stroked, Roscoe walked in and hovered by the door. He watched her, eyes tight, mouth pressed into a line. Cora turned her back to him.
‘I thought I’d find you here,’ he said.
She inched her chair closer to the bed and rubbed Lee’s shoulder, refusing to look up as Roscoe crossed the room and perched on the window ledge.
‘This has to stop,’ he said.
She felt his eyes on her as she massaged.
‘All of it. Right now.’ His voice was a gathering storm.
Cora let her hands slide down Lee’s arm to his hand. She curled her fingers around his, squeezing gently.
‘Look at him.’ Roscoe motioned to Lee’s fragile body stretched out on the bed. ‘He could stay like that forever.’
Her throat closed. She couldn’t have spoken if she wanted to. Instead, she listened for Lee’s steady breathing, her assurance that he was still with her.
‘I won’t wait around for him to open his eyes, just to watch you run back to him.
’ His voice weighed heavy with hurt and for the first time since letting Lee carry her to his bed, Cora felt shame.
It had been cruel to marry Roscoe, because the truth was, she could never have stayed with him. She was Lee’s. She always had been.
‘I’m trying to do the right thing by you, woman, but you don’t make it easy.’ A caustic edge tinged his voice. She inhaled a slow, steady breath. Wondered if Lee could hear. ‘No more reporters. No more interviews. No more Green’s Whiskey. No more trouble.’
She kept her eyes fixed on Lee. He anchored her in a world where she might otherwise float away to nothing. ‘I can’t do that,’ she said, so quiet it was more sigh than sentence.
He stood from his perch on the windowsill, squaring his shoulders, and pulled himself to his full height. ‘Damn it, Cora,’ he snarled, bristling with fury. ‘That’s enough!’ He jabbed his finger into the air, into the nothing between them. ‘I’m your husband, and I’m telling you to stop.’
She looked up at him, this earnest, irate man she didn’t love and never would. When he took a step toward her, she flinched.
His face fell when he saw her fear and he seemed to slump where he stood.
‘This isn’t working.’ His eyes burrowed into hers.
‘I swore I’d never be like my father, giving up and walking away, but if you won’t stop with all this,’ he squeezed the back of his neck and looked at Lee, ‘there’s nothing to stay for.
’ His words rushed out, like air seeping from a tire, fast and unconsidered and impossible to stop.
Beneath the rotten crust of their broken marriage were years of tender moments, and knowing they’d tarnished all those memories bruised Cora’s heart.
Roscoe had been a comfort and a friend for so much longer than he’d been what he was now.
She should have told him that. And she should have thanked him for what he’d done for her, and said she was sorry she never gave him a chance, and told him she hoped he’d be happy, but there was Lee, lying between the two of them, as he had always been.
She pressed her lips shut and stroked her lover’s hand.
Roscoe shuffled to the door and stopped. The pain in his voice was mirrored in his face. ‘I tried to do right by you.’
Cora recognized his words for what they were: a truth, an apology, a goodbye. In her mind, she wished him well, but in the hospital room, she leaned closer to Lee and waited for her husband to go.