Liar's Bench (7 page)

A
t sunrise, I awoke to the quarrelsome cries of grackles that punched through the silence of the countryside.

I rolled out from beneath the quilt, rubbing my swollen eyes. I cocked my ear. Oddly quiet. It sounded like Daddy was still in bed, an abnormal beginning for a Wednesday morning in the Summers house. 'Course there was no going back to normal anymore. Not after losing Mama. I never thought I'd wake up with her gone—gone forever and never coming back. I couldn't believe it had been five days since she passed.

Peeling off yesterday's crumpled funeral dress, I picked out a pair of old blue gym shorts and a T-shirt.
What's the use,
I thought. Coach Grider was never going to let females do track. Take a stand, Mama had said. “It's your right!” I picked up my running sneakers and thought about my first pair, the ones Mama bought me when I first visited her in Chicago for the summer. I was ten. Mama and Tommy's arguments had followed them from Nashville to Chicago, growing louder—uglier. That's when I first took up running. After one of their bigger arguments, Mama took me to the city park in Chicago. I'd been surprised to see people running on narrow asphalt paths around the park's boundaries. I'd asked her why they were doing this. I thought this was a fine thing, especially when I saw a woman doing it. Mama'd said she didn't really know why but reckoned it might be they'd gotten a case of the “Lonely Lucys” or “Freddie Fidgets” (what Mama always called my unsettling times). I'd wished I could run around the park and give it my Lonely Lucys. Mama'd laughed a little nervously. The way she sometimes did when the Freddie Fidgets latched on to her.

A week later, Mama'd said she wanted to look at ballet shoes for herself. We'd gone shopping and instead of ballet shoes, we came home carrying a box of funny-looking shoes with waffle-iron bottoms for me. I was hooked, and so was Mama. She'd gotten a kick out of predicting who'd be the next runner I'd catch up with and then pass.

I looked out to my practice track that carved across the backfields of Summers Homestead, and studied the paths cut into thick scattered tickseed, morning glory, and joe-pye weed. Normally, my homemade running trail was stubbled, but I could see it had been a while since Daddy last bushhogged.

It would have to do. My body was craving a hard run, an escape from the Lucys and Freddies. I hit the path and scared up a doe and her twins about one minute in. I shook off the surprise and ran the first quarter mile, easing into a natural rhythm. Soon, my gait grew strong, and my breathing was lost to the wilds and I let go of yesterday. My legs escaped the earth as I ran the slopes and wore the paths for six miles around. When done, I lifted my hands to the sky and bargained for a better day. For a good hour I cooled down and walked the meadows, almost enjoying its beginning.

With renewed energy, I went back into the house and took a bath; then I picked out a pair of my widest bell-bottoms and a spaghetti-strapped shirt from the clothing already strewn across my bedroom floor. I was surprised to find that the pockets of my jeans were already full—loose change, a few scraps of paper, a lipstick. And Mama's recipe card. I pulled it out and pressed it close to me, inhaling the faint scent of lemon.
Bittersweet.

I tucked the recipe back into my jeans and turned to the chore of having myself a “normal” morning. I rummaged through my nightstand to find the birth-control package that Mama had bought for me earlier this spring after a visit to her city OB/GYN. She'd had me start on them immediately, and made sure I was kept supplied with them ever since.

I'd shrugged and listened quietly when she'd explained the directions, too embarrassed to ask questions or protest. “It's your senior year,” she'd said. “You're going to be smart, get out of here one day, and have a chance at a good life. I don't want you to even think about tying an apron knot or pinning a diaper until you've finished college. That'd be like leaving the birthday party before the cake is served. Here, take them. Just in case. Carry them always.”

I never did get around to building up the courage to tell her there hadn't ever been a “just in case” moment, or that there probably wouldn't be one anytime soon. Maybe never, at the rate I was going.

Still, it kept my cycle regular and helped with the cramps some. I popped the tiny yellow pill into my parched mouth and dry-swallowed, all part of my morning ritual.

I cracked open my bedroom door and listened for Daddy.

Silence.

Padding downstairs to the kitchen, I lit the pilot inside the oven so I could get a start on breakfast for us. While I was waiting for it to heat, I picked up the kitchen phone. The party line was busy. I tried three more times and finally asked Widow Sims if I could use it. I knew it was taboo to call a boy for a date, but this was different. I really needed to call Bobby. Not for a date, but for a talk. I paced back and forth a few times before I finally got the courage to pick up the receiver. My windpipe clogged as I fought to find the perfect words. I let his number ring for a long while before hanging up, sorely disappointed. Where could he be?

When the grandfather clock struck nine, I plugged in the percolator.

My stomach grumbled as I lightly kneaded the biscuit dough. After I popped the bread into the oven, I grabbed a peach off the windowsill, soft and warm from days of sitting. When I was through, I spotted the water glass sitting next to the sink. I lifted it quickly to my nose and sniffed for any signs of whiskey—a boot soakin'.
Water.
A great relief, but I couldn't help feeling a snip of anger, because I couldn't trust my daddy.

Standing at the kitchen window, I stared out at the fields, mechanically gnawing on the peach and mentally chewing on yesterday, and what had been brewing inside me for days. Though my run had helped some, my heart helplessly panned for healing. Answers. Now two hours later, my good energy had slowly been replaced, bit by bit, by anger, a churning ball of rage.
I was looking to point the finger.

If Daddy hadn't boozed, lied, and cheated, I kept thinking. If Mama hadn't left us and hooked up with that good-for-nothing pillhead, none of this would have happened. She would still be here today, living and breathing. If Daddy had never lied to her . . .

At the dinner after the funeral, I'd overheard Ocilla Brown click her false teeth to her nosey group that “if only Adam had never slept around, poor Ella would be here today. Bless her heart,” she added, collecting her Jesus points like S&H stamps to trade with the devil.

I tried to shake off these thoughts, especially since Daddy'd been taking such good care of me this past week, letting me sleep in and fixing meals for us. But maybe Ocilla Brown was right and he was responsible from the start, and worse, he was still hiding something from me. And how could I forget what Pastor Dugin's wife had said long ago . . . ?

Yawning, Daddy shuffled through the kitchen door. “Nearly ten o'clock. I can't believe I slept in so late. Good thing I cleared my court calendar for a few days.”

I slouched over the sink and watched a flock of crows fuss in the yard.
Why, even the birds are mad at him
.

Daddy peeked out the window beside me. “If those rain clouds would pass, we might have a nice day.”

The crows took flight.

If. If. If . . . “Yeah,
if,
” I said, looking at him, my anger coiled tight, ready to pounce at the slightest thing or anything that would allow me to unleash. “Been a whole lotta ‘ifs' in this house lately.” I squeezed past him to hurry upstairs.

I tried to ignore the soft taps on my bedroom door by cramming the pillow tightly over my head, but Daddy was insistent.

“Not feeling well. Go away. Please. Just go away.” I pressed my fingers against my temples—squeezing, pushing—and wishing I could just rub him away.

“C'mon, Muddy, let's talk.”

My temper sparked, quick and reflexive, like flint on steel. “Mudas, not Muddy.”

“Muddy, I—”

“MUD. US. Please stop calling me Muddy, ADAM. My name's Mudas!”

“Watch that sassy mouth, gal.”

“Why should I? You can't get anything right! It's your fault! All of it!” I cannoned off my accusations to the door. “If you hadn't cheated on Mama, there'd never have been a divorce or a funeral, and she'd still be here today. Everyone knows it. . . .”

“Muddy, you open this door right now!”

I paced across hardwoods, single-minded with my anger. “You cheated with that secretary, skirt-chased all those women.”

“We've been through this before. Just one,” he honey-coated. He'd always insisted there'd only been one: just one moment of infidelity with his new secretary, Caroline—the one I'd spilled the beans about when I was five years old. But I knew better, I'd heard about Jackie and Laura, and seems Mama was right, once a snake, always . . .

“Whatever,” I mumbled, his past wedged between us, soldiering walls, always blocking. I'd understood little as a child. But Daddy and Mama's heated whispers grew, and my knowledge grew as I did. And I began to understand more of the words I heard and the glimpses of Daddy's cheatin' ways that I saw. The long office hours. The way the town women hovered around him, leaning in close. And him always sidling closer, flirting, being extra nice and talking especially slow when they were around.

He'd always tell Mama, “It's my job to be nice to them, so they'll do me a favor when I need their help with a case or a witness, or even as a juror.” I didn't understand back then that a small-town lawyer had to be “everyone's” good friend. I wasn't sure I understood it now.

He jiggled the knob, hard enough to rattle the whole door in its frame.

“You know what people say about you, Daddy? Do you?” I pounded into wood. “I overheard Myrtle Dugin calling you a horndog. . . . Yeah, that's right, the pastor's wife. She said you're nothin' but a horndog who chased any skirt you could tomcat it up with.”

“Muddy Elizabeth Summers!” He battered the door. “You ain't too old for me to take a hickory switch and cut your tail, gal!”

“Myrtle Dugin was only saying what everybody already knows! That you're a cheater.
Lord!
It's your lies that killed Mama!” I picked up my funeral dress off the floor, wadded it into a ball, and threw it at my bedroom door. “Just leave me alone! It's all your fault Mama's dead!” I flung the blame into the charged air, ignoring the voice inside that said the fault was mine for being too weak to stay in the city with her. Leaving her in the yard last week. Or for tattling on Daddy long ago.

I pushed back the guilt, letting anger take the lead. “You had a knot in her noose last Friday!
You
sat on Liar's Bench and swore you didn't cheat on her! You brought women into our house and even had Mama cook for them, letting her think y'all were just business friends, her never suspecting you was doing your business in their beds. And all your drinking . . . Lord . . . You drove her away!”

“Your mama had her own problems—”

“No, she didn't. . . . Don't say that.
You
were the problem.” I chewed on my fist. I'd hardly known much about the danger of refreshments at age nine. But when I turned twelve, I'd overheard Grammy Essie's whispers to Papaw. “Ella's taken to hard liquor like most folks to sweet tea, and she's got one foot in the trash with Tommy. Respectable lady sips a few tablespoons every now and then . . . doesn't nurse a bottle every day. . . . Gonna end up like white-trash Oleanna Hogard if she's not careful,” she'd worried to Papaw. I'd fretted for a good week, cried for another, and sulked around for one more after that. I was so ashamed. Ashamed for Mama, and for me. Then Grammy explained to me about the hurts of alcohol, and we'd both prayed for Mama to stop. I'd been praying ever since.

“Open this door right now, young lady.” A hint of desperation had snuck into Daddy's voice, beneath the anger, the denials. For a brief moment I felt ill about the words I'd flung. His voice grew soft, like maybe he'd used up all the fight he had left. Maybe I had, too.

“Muddy, please. Jesus. Jesus Christ, please . . .” He slumped against the door, and I heard a gutted breath slip from his mouth.

Soupy, thick air made it difficult to breathe, and I could feel hot tears starting to gather behind my eyes. “Just go, Daddy.
Please.
”

He hesitated outside the door, like he didn't know what I might do if he waited me out. Finally, after a few silent moments, the heavy fall of his steps retreated down the hallway.

Spent, I sat down on the window seat and curled myself up tight against the frame. Reaching for my stuffed tiger, the one I'd received from Grammy Essie on my third Christmas, I stroked Tuffy's ringed tail and cuddled his thinning, fur body. “I'm Mudas. Mudas,” I whispered into my tiger's tufted ears. I remembered the lilt Mama always lent to my name when she'd call for me. It was a special name, she'd told me, given as legacy in her family. The meaning:
a seed rising from the mud to blossom as a beautiful flower
. Leaning my head out the window, I drank the fresh air and silently cursed my ancestral name, which I'd once loved as a child, because it was carried by my mama and her mama before that.

But now, Mama was gone. I pressed Tuffy's tail to my eyes, hating that I couldn't stop the hurt, hating my weaknesses then and now. Worst of all, it was not, nor would it ever be, a remembered fact that I was named after my great-great-great grandmother. No. What people did remember was the fact that my daddy, Adam Persis Summers, had gone and ruined the name by marking it with the town's annual summer social: the Cow Plop Bingo.