Chapter 4 A Mannequin in the Window
A Mannequin in the Window
As they drove across the Golden Gate Bridge in a friend’s borrowed clunker, Otis took her hand. “It’s going to be all right.” Wise words from the bozo behind the wheel who couldn’t find any meaningful way to ease the pain.
Rebecca hadn’t said much since they’d learned of her brother’s misfortune the day before, but she let Otis hold her hand, and maybe that was what was important.
He couldn’t imagine what she was going through.
She didn’t even look like the Rebecca he’d come to know.
She’d opted for jeans and a T-shirt and scraped her curly hair back in a ponytail.
No jewelry, no glitter, not a sparkle anywhere.
She’d told him more about running away, how she’d left a note on the counter, then slipped out the door and jogged south with her thumb in the air, eventually hitchhiking to San Francisco.
She had written letters to assure her family that she was alive and well, but didn’t mention her location or offer a way to make contact.
Though she’d planned on reconnecting with her brother, who was older by two years and had still lived at home when she’d left, it hadn’t happened. Her old life stood behind a door that she hadn’t been ready to open again, until now.
It was only an hour’s drive up Highway 101 to Santa Rosa. On a street littered with garbage, she pointed to a lime-green house with a rusted gutter and a worn-out truck in the driveway. The landscaping left much to be desired.
After a knock, an unkempt man in tattered khakis and a flannel shirt swung open the door.
Marshall Bradshaw bore only the faintest resemblance to Rebecca, the shorter stature and the shallow cut of their cheeks.
His gray hair was short and sparse and matched the color of the stubble of his beard.
Worry lines creased his forehead, and crow’s-feet spread from his eyes.
When it registered that his daughter had come home, Marshall simply stared. Rebecca stared right back. He eventually moved his head, a short, all-knowing nod. The fact that he hadn’t pulled his daughter into a hug yet was heartbreaking.
“I see,” he finally said.
“I’m sorry.”
His face exhibited a sudden overwhelm of sadness, his cheeks and chin quivering. “Goddammit, Rebecca.” He pressed his lids together, and a pair of tears rolled down his cheeks.
She went to him, giving him a hug that he accepted readily.
“I thought I’d never see you again,” he said, wiping his wet face. “Where have you been?”
“Just ... just gone.” She eventually let go of him. “Where’s Jed?”
“He’s not good,” her dad said, looking as if he’d traveled a long road while embracing his daughter.
“I know.”
“You heard?”
“I was in San Francisco. Saw Hunter Sampson yesterday. He told me.”
Stepping back, her dad looked at her for a while. He was about forty, but looked like he barely had anything left, midlife with a foot in the grave. “He’s at physical therapy with your mom right now. He’s lost, Becca.”
“I’m here now. I’ll help.”
“There’s nothing you can do. There’s nothing any of us can do.”
As Otis put his hand on her back to comfort her, she said, “Dad, meet Otis.” Otis was okay with leaving out specifics. The moment wasn’t right for fiancé introductions or wedding discussions.
Otis shook Marshall’s calloused hand.
Inside, the walls were bare and in need of a paint job. The tile floors had lost their shine. In the kitchen, a tower of dirty dishes rose from a stained sink. A line of empty beer bottles ran along the top of the chipped counter.
They spoke about more trivial things while her dad grabbed a ring of Budweiser with one of six missing.
He took Rebecca and Otis out to the compact back patio bordered by a tall white privacy fence.
It was over seventy out, a good warm day.
Several crushed beer cans made up a small stack in the corner near a pile of wood.
Up high, a few clouds slid by in an otherwise blue sky.
As they sat in wobbly white plastic chairs, Rebecca asked, “What happened?”
Marshall cracked his beer open and took a sip. “You mean since you ran off on us? We looked everywhere. We had the police out.”
“I left a note.”
“Not telling us where you were going. Then you wait a month to send a letter. Do you know what that was like? No, you don’t.” He offered them beers, but Otis and Rebecca declined.
“You pushed me, Dad. You don’t push me. You don’t ever push me.” This was the first Otis had heard of it.
“We were going through a lot. Your brother—”
“There’s no excuse.”
His head bent down. “I know.”
“Is that your way of saying you’re sorry?”
His eyes snapped to her. “Jesus, Rebecca. Yes, fine. I’m sorry. You try living my life for a while. You had no right to run off.”
Rebecca bit her lip. Otis was in way over his head and kept his gaze toward the fence, listening closely. He wondered what her brother had to do with it.
“What have you been doing?” Marshall asked, clearly working hard to be kind.
“It doesn’t matter. Just beatin’ around in San Francisco. What happened to Jed? Why’d you let him go? What was it, the army?”
An affirmative nod. “You think I had any say in it? As if my kids listen to me at all. Hell, I told him not to join, he did it to spite me. He got tricked by the promises of benefits ... and fooled into thinking he was going to save this country. United States pride.” He saluted. “Ten hut.”
A sadder picture Otis couldn’t remember seeing. It was no wonder she ran away.
Marshall shook his head in disgust. “He thought he’d go be a hero, save the world from communism.
He was there three fucking days, Rebecca.
Barely two months of boot camp, then three days in the jungle, and he steps on an M14, what they call a ‘toe-popper.’ Both legs gone at the knees.
Then two months in the VA hospital, and now he’s back home and wishes that toe-popper had taken the rest of him. There’s your hero.”
Bec fought off tears. “Don’t talk about him like that.”
“I told him not to go. He wouldn’t listen. Just like you.” Marshall went for his beer like it was a pacifier.
“I shouldn’t have left,” she said.
He squeezed the can in his hand till it crackled. “You’re damn right you shouldn’t have left. He might have listened to you. They said they’d pay for college and help him buy a house. Didn’t mention that his chances in coming back whole were slim. I told him ... twenty times I told him.”
Car doors shut out front.
“That’s probably them.” Marshall stood. “I need to help.”
In the driveway, Rebecca’s mom had pulled open the back door of their car. Marshall raced over, and together they carried Jed out while Otis and Rebecca watched from the sidelines.
Jed had a long and untrimmed brown beard.
He was certainly the tallest in the family.
His eyes, the color of almonds, reflected pain and rage, and perhaps even confusion.
Maybe he’d once been handsome, but he wasn’t today.
His thick curly hair could use a wash. Hell, all of him could.
Swollen muscles and tattoos poked out of the rolled-up sleeves of his army jacket.
“Holy shit,” Jed said, noticing his sister for the first time.
“Rebecca?” her mom asked, unbelieving. Olivia Bradshaw was the only one who seemed to care at all about her own appearance.
About the same height and build as Rebecca, she wore a long, casual dress with a thick white belt around her slim waist. Straight hair that was more cream colored than blond fell past her shoulders.
Whereas Marshall showed his weariness from the nose up, most of Olivia’s wrinkles had developed around her mouth, as if she’d spent her life biting her tongue and clenching her jaw.
The sadness that she wore like a blanket fell away as she approached Rebecca and made sure she wasn’t dreaming up this reunion.
“I’m sorry,” was all Rebecca could manage to say.
Olivia made a series of grateful sighs as she wrapped her daughter in a hug. “Is this really you, Becca? My God, we didn’t know what happened to you. I ...”
Bec offered a few more apologies and squeezed her mom back.
Everyone gathered in the living room. Otis couldn’t place the musty odor, maybe a spill in the shag carpet that had never been cleaned up.
The walls were painted a scarlet red that someone surely regretted.
Let’s really brighten up the living room!
they might have thought. Then the day after painting: What in the hell were we thinking?
Marshall cracked another beer and handed one to Jed, then one to Otis, who accepted this time. He needed something to calm his nerves, and he silently hoped Bec wouldn’t spring the news of their engagement.
“Who are you, kid?” Marshall asked from the La-Z-Boy throne that Rebecca had mentioned more than a time or two. “What kind of accent is that?”
“London, sir.” Otis sat in a tattered cloth chair with a coffee stain prominent on the arm.
“How do you two know each other?”
Otis held his breath, thinking Bec had to make the play here.
Sitting next to her mother on the couch, she took the cue. “We met on the way to Woodstock.”
“Woodstock. The festival?” Jed asked, rolling forward to join the conversation. “Hot damn, sis. I heard all about that.”
“Yeah, it was pretty wild.”
“Good, good,” Marshall said, denting the can in his hand with not-so-subtle fury. “So you were out getting high with a bunch of hippies while the rest of us were trying to figure out life, trying to help your brother find his way after becoming a war hero.”
In that moment, in the following silence, a church bell rang, but it sounded like warning bells.
Otis wasn’t sure what Rebecca heard in those bells, but the weight of her father’s words had visibly come down on her shoulders. She slightly crumpled in stature, her spine bent forward, and her chin dropped enough to say, I give up.