Sweet Water (36 page)

Marisa sank back to her chair seat, wiping her eyes with her fingertips and breathing in great gulps of the chilled waiting room air. Had these two women come in on one of Bob Nichols’ spaceships? And now that they were here, what was to be done with them?

Terry remained speechless, but she felt his hand on her waist. He had probably never seen anything like Mama’s two sisters. Rosemary turned to him. “And who are you, I might ask?”

Ever the gentleman, Terry put out his hand. “Terry Ledger. Friend of the family.”

Aunt Rosemary shook his hand, never taking her laser gaze off his face. Finally, she turned away. “I still want to talk to that doctor. I want to know his qualifications.” She plopped into a chair, picked up a magazine from the coffee table and snapped it open.

Uncle Duane dropped change into the Coke machine and the sound of the falling quarters clanked through the mechanism, followed by the crash of a soda can in the exit compartment. When everyone stared at him as if he had done something wrong, he ducked his head, retrieved his can of soda and seated himself beside Radonna.

Marisa studied the two women,
           
remembering that they weren’t behaving any differently from the way they always had. Neither of them had ever been someone she or Mama could rely on. She walked over and sat down on the other side of the weeping Aunt Radonna. “Look, Terry’s gonna take you back to Agua Dulce. I know you need to get your things and go home.”

Uncle Duane leaned forward, hanging on to his soda can. “Rissy, we can—”

She stopped him with a look and shook her head, then turned back to her aunt. “After you get your car and your things, when you feel better, you can come and see Mama.”

Aunt Radonna looked up from her handkerchief with wet, bloodshot eyes. “But if I leave, what if...what if something happens, Rissy? She’s the only family we’ve got left....What if—what if she doesn’t make it?”

Thanks a lot, Marisa wanted to say, but what she said instead was, “Mama’s on a steady path toward the end, Aunt Donna. It’s a fact you have to learn to live with, just as I have. That’s just the way it is.”

Marisa had to stop and draw a deep breath to fight off another sudden burn in her eyes. She didn’t often put her thoughts about Mama’s prognosis into words and she had never said aloud the words “Mama” and “death” in the same sentence. “Anyway, you don’t need to worry this time,” she continued, her voice shaky. “You heard the doctor. He thinks she’ll pull through. Just go on home and I’ll let you know when everything calms down. You live here. When she gets better, you can come spend some time with her. Maybe I can come over to your place and relax or take a bath.”

“You know you’re welcome to do that, Rissy. Will they let me see her before I go? I want to tell her good-bye....Just in case—”

On a sigh, Marisa glanced up at the wall clock. “You can take my five minutes the next hour.”

****

It was after midnight when Marisa finally convinced Terry to take her aunt back to Agua Dulce. She sensed his reluctance to leave, but he didn’t argue. Leaving Aunt Rosemary and Uncle Duane in the waiting room, she walked with him and Aunt Radonna to his crew cab and stood on the hospital steps, watching him help her aunt get seated and belted in. He was a good man, a responsible man. A caring man. Yet Marisa had an inexplicable feeling of being alone. In fact, she had never felt so alone.

He came back to where she stood. “I’ll go home and get cleaned up, maybe get a nap, then come back.”

Marisa shook her head. “I don’t want you to come back, Terry. Really. I don’t want you to.”

He cocked his head and his eyes locked on hers. “Why not?”

She swallowed to keep from breaking into tears. “We can’t do this, Terry. I’m not able to do this. You use up too much of me. And I’ve already got both hands full with Mama and getting us out of Agua Dulce. I have to find a job. Those are the things I need to think of. That’s where I need to be spending my time.”

“I’ll help you, Marisa. You’re not alone.”

She gave him a damp smile and wiped a tear away with her fingertip. “Terry, we have to be realistic. Or at least, I have to be. There’s no upside here. Things are only going to go downhill for Mama and for who knows how long. Even if I had faith that you and me could become a couple, I wouldn’t impose such a huge burden on you or anyone.”

His head turned away from her, as if he were thinking about what she said.

“Besides all that, I don’t have time for it,” she added, giving him an even easier out. “After all that’s happened this past year, I don’t know if I have anything left inside me. Or I should say, anything I’m willing to risk on a long shot.”

He drew himself up. “You’re calling me a long shot?”

“To be honest, I wish I hadn’t let things go so far between us. It’s just made this conversation that much harder.”

The man who had made love to her, who had whispered the most tender words of affection in her ear, who had driven her to heights of passion she had never known before, changed personalities right in front of her. His eyes turned hard, one corner of his mouth tipped up, but it wasn’t a humorous expression. “Funny, but I didn’t guess you to be chickenhearted.”

“Please, Terry. I know you’re mad and I don’t blame you. But stop and think about it. Once I get me and Mama out of your hair, your life will be so much easier.”

“I’m not looking for easier.”

She pressed on as if he hadn’t spoken. “Without me in the picture you’ll have an easier time dealing with the others. Without me, they won’t argue with you about what you’re doing. You can focus on your development. I know it’s going to be a huge success—”

“I thought what was going on between us meant something, Marisa. What you’re handing me is lily-livered excuses, not reasons.”

“Terry, please—”

“I’ll tell you this much. I can be back here in a few hours. But if you have no faith, if you won’t let me be with you when things are hard, then I guess you’re right. This can’t work. You won’t let it. If you really mean for me not to come back, you can believe I won’t.”

She stood there, dying inside and watching a fantasy slide through her fingers like the West Texas sands. “Don’t come back,” she said.

****

Terry stared out the window at Henry pacing the deck rail in the morning sunshine, as if he waited for Terry to come out and play. Terry couldn’t find amusement or even the usual modicum of entertainment in watching a fucking bird. He hadn’t slept since yesterday morning when he and Marisa had awakened together in Albuquerque. Nor had he showered. He had sweated through his clothes yesterday and still had them on. He smelled worse than a weeklong survival mission in a swamp.

He felt hollow inside, as if everything in him had been ripped out and a gaping hole left. How could things have gone so sour in a matter of hours? How could Marisa take the bond that had grown between them and just throw it away? But that was what she had done. Cut and run, without even allowing him the opportunity to share her problems or help her solve them.

The day away from Agua Dulce with Marisa had been more than he had imagined it could be. He had known attractive women, but never one who was as beautiful inside as outside. With his own eyes, he had watched her forgive her flaky aunt, who had damn near killed Raylene. Who else did he know who would do that? Yet Marisa had taken the aunt under her wing like a mother hen, and moved on. Just as she did everyone she met, including him.

Well, what had happened now was his own fault. He had put his heart out there for her to pummel, had almost told her his feelings. Would have, given a little more time.

What had he been thinking, giving her a role in his contentment? He had never allowed a woman that much power over any part of his life.

From out of nowhere a deeply secreted memory rushed at him. Him, at age six, his mom packed and loading suitcases into her car, all the while telling him a boy should be with his father. He could still remember the feel of his small hand buried inside his dad’s big one as his mom drove away. He had crawled under his bed and cried all night, terrified at her being gone and worried what he had done to drive her away.

He stopped his stroll through the surreal halls of his memory. What the hell was he doing, thinking of his mother? His mom and Marisa were nothing alike.

He left his seat at the dining table and moved to the kitchen, reached into the cupboard for a glass. On the top shelf sat the partial gallon of Jack Daniel’s Marisa had left there the day she came to talk about the water well. He dragged it off the shelf and studied the label. He wasn’t one to dwell on the past or feel sorry for himself. Nor was he one to douse his anguish with alcohol, but today he just wanted to take the edge off the pain.

Childhood intruded again, as if he didn’t have the discipline to will it away. Though he lived in uncertainty and guilt for months after his mother left, her departure hadn’t been the end of his relationship with her, after all. The following year his dad hired on with an oil company and moved to Saudi Arabia. A debate followed as to whether Terry should live with his widowed grandmother or his mom and her new husband.

Given no choice, he ended up with his grandmother on her farm for two years, where they spent summers gardening and canning the vegetables the garden produced. They fed and cared for her small herd of cattle, visited with the neighbors and watched soap operas on snowy TV. He was happy at his grandmother’s, but by fourth grade he had been yanked out of school in the small town where she lived and planted in the home of his mom and her husband in Odessa. In terms of trusting relationships with women, things had gone downhill from there.

He reached for a glass and poured himself two fingers of whiskey. The first sip burned the length of his gullet. The second went down easier and smoothed out his mood. One more drink might actually touch the crimp in his gut. Bottle and glass in hand, he returned to the dining table and the stacks of blueprints and file folders. He swept the whole lot onto the floor, clearing a spot for his bottle and his glass.

By dusk, it seemed like every whiskey-drinking, love-gone-wrong song he had ever heard had played on the radio. Bad business, drinking to the company of country musicians. Making his way to the bathroom, he stumbled over a dining room chair and almost fell. After he finished in the bathroom, making the trip back to the dining table seemed to take too much energy, so he staggered to the bedroom and fell across the bed. As the room spun around him, he closed his eyes. Sleep. He needed sleep.

The cell phone at his belt awoke him. He squinted against the brilliant sunlight that filled the room. He was hot. A drum was beating between his temples. His feet ached. He sat up and glanced down, saw he was still wearing boots. He fumbled the bleating phone to his ear. “Talk to me. And it better be good.”

“Terry?”

Fuck. Walt Grayson, his CPA in Fort Worth. Terry leaned an elbow on his thigh and dropped his forehead into his palm. “Hey, Walt. What’s new?”

Nervous laugh from Walt. If Terry had more strength and if his brain worked better, he would be alarmed. “Not much, with me,” the CPA said. “I’ve been calling your office in Fort Worth. Didn’t you get my messages?”

At least a dozen. At this moment, Terry couldn’t come up with an excuse why he hadn’t returned the calls. “Uh, yeah, I think so. I’ve been busy, Walt.”

“When you headed back this way? We need a sit-down.”

“Why? Am I broke?”

“Not yet. But you could get there if you don’t see some income soon off that development in West Texas.”

“The RV park’s got income. Campers every night. Rancho Casero is still selling.”

“I’m talking real income. Terry, you’ve spent a pile of money. You’ve gone deeper into hock than I’ve ever seen you. You’re maxed out everywhere, man. Debt service on that big-ass
 
bank loan is just around the corner and the RV park and Rancho Casero together don’t produce a revenue stream that’ll cover it.”

On an intellectual level, Terry knew all of that, but somehow there had been a disconnect between his brain and his activities on the ground. “You must have something in mind. What do I need to do?”

“Chick’s on the final leg of that big fancy house in Fort Worth, the one you’re building for that baseball player. That’s a substantial amount of cash outstanding. If you come back here and push it a little you could probably close it this month and pump up your operating account.”

Terry rubbed his stubbled jaw. The baseball player under discussion owed Terry Ledger Homes over a million dollars. Chick was a great construction foreman, a super engineer, but he was a plodder. Not a mover and shaker. The CPA was probably right. Left on his own, Chick would get the mansion built, but he probably wouldn’t get the payment for it collected by the end of the month.

“Other than that,” Walt went on, “for right now, you need to get Larson’s off their dime and close that deal. Either that or move on to another idea.”

Another problem that called for Terry’s personal attention. He had left too much of the Larson deal up to his assistant, Kim. No way could she wrap it up. Even if she had the capability, she didn’t have the authority.

“Uugg,” Terry mumbled.

“Bills from West Texas are coming in faster than the money to pay them. I don’t want to see you get boxed in.”