The Scarlet Thread (2 page)

Her father called her aunt in Merced and made arrangements

for her to spend a few weeks there “cooling off.”

Alex was waiting when she returned, but he proved less malleable than her male parent. He had a few succinct Spanish

words to say about her idea of meeting him in secret. Alex was a

fighter who preferred facing wrath head-on. She had never

expected that he would deal with the situation on his own. He

just showed up at the house one day five minutes after her father

had come home from work. She learned later from a neighbor

that Alex had been waiting down the street for more than an

hour. Her mother, sympathetic to their plight, invited Alex into

the foyer before her father got to the porch and could order him

off the property.

Clutching the steering wheel of her Honda Accord, Sierra remembered how she had felt that day, seeing Alex standing in the

front hallway between her mother and father. She had been so

sure her father would kill him or at least beat him to within an

inch of his life.

“What’s
he
doing here?” She could still hear the anger in her

father’s voice as he dumped his briefcase on the floor. Sierra had

been convinced he was only freeing his hands so he could get

them around Alex’s neck.

Alex stepped around her mother and faced him. “I came to ask

permission to see your daughter.”

“Permission! Like you asked permission to take her to the

prom?”

“I thought Sierra cleared it with you. My mistake.”

“You’re right about that! A big mistake. Now get out of here!”

“Brian, give the young man the chance to—”

“Stay out of this, Marianna!”

Alex stood his ground. “All I ask is a fair hearing.” He didn’t

even notice her standing above them on the stairs.

“I don’t want to hear anything you have to say.”

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. . . ,” she said, coming down the stairs. “We love each other.”

“Love.
I doubt that’s what he feels for you.”

“You don’t understand!” she wailed.

“I understand plenty! Get back to your room!”

“I’m not going anywhere but with Alex,” she said, reaching the

hallway and taking a position beside her boyfriend, and she

knew in that instant that if her father came at him, she’d do whatever she had to do to stop him. She had never been so furious!

Alex clamped his hand on her wrist and firmly pulled her

behind him. “This is between your father and me. Stay out of it.”

The whole time he spoke, he never took his eyes off her father.

“Get out of my house.”

“All I want is a few minutes to speak to you, Mr. Clanton. If

you tell me afterward to back off, I’ll back off.”

“All the way to Mexico?”

“Brian!”

As soon as her father uttered the words, his face turned beet

red. Alex, with his own prejudices, had no intention of letting

him off easily.

“I was
born
in Healdsburg, Mr. Clanton. Just like you. My

father took his citizenship test ten years ago. Not that it makes

much difference. He passed with flying colors. Red, white, and

blue. He’s never taken a dollar of welfare in his life, and he works

hard for what he makes, probably harder than you do in that

plush real estate office you have downtown. We don’t live in a

Victorian,” he said with a swift, telling look around, “but we

don’t live in a shack either.”

His little speech hadn’t made anything better.

“You finished?” her father said, embarrassment burned away

by anger.

“You might enjoy knowing that my father and mother disapprove of Sierra as much as you disapprove of me.”

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Her mouth fell open.

“Disapprove of Sierra?” her father said, insulted. “Why?”

“Why do you think, Mr. Clanton? She’s white and she’s

Protestant.”

“Maybe you ought to listen.”

“I do listen. I’ve got a lot of respect for my parents, but I’ve got

a mind of my own. The way I see it, a bigot is a bigot, no matter

what color he is.”

A long, hot silence filled the foyer.

“So,” Alex said bleakly. “Do we talk or do I walk?”

Her father looked at her for a moment and then back at Alex

with resentful resignation. “We talk.” He jerked his head toward

a room off the hallway. “But I doubt you’re going to like what I

have to say.”

They spent the next two hours in the small office at the front

of the house while she sat in the kitchen with her mother, alternately crying and raging about what she’d do if her father

wouldn’t let her go out with Alex. Her mother hadn’t said much

of anything that day.

When her father came into the kitchen, he told her Alex was

gone. Before she had time to scream recriminations, he informed

her she could see him again,
after
she’d agreed to follow the
rules

the two of them had established. One phone conversation a

night, no longer than thirty minutes and only
after
her schoolwork was finished. No dates Monday through Thursday. Friday

night she was to be home by eleven. Saturday night by ten. Yes,

ten.
She had to be well rested for church on Sunday. If her grades

dropped a smidgen, she was grounded from Alex completely. If

she missed church, same consequences.

“And Alex agreed?”

“He agreed.”

She hadn’t liked any of it, but she had been so much in love she

would have agreed to anything, and her father knew it.

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Now, fourteen years later, he was doing just that.

Wiping tears from her eyes, Sierra drove across the Russian

River bridge and turned right.

She knew her father had hoped things would cool off if he

gave the relationship time to develop cracks. He hadn’t

known Alex then, nor did he see the determination and drive

that burned in him. Alex graduated with honors from high

school and entered the local junior college. Sierra had wanted

to quit school and marry him, thinking it would be romantic to

work and help put him through college. He squashed that

idea. He told her in no uncertain terms that he intended to finish college
on his own,
and he sure didn’t want a dropout for a

wife. He completed two years of work at Santa Rosa Junior

College in a year and a half and transferred to the University

of California, Berkeley, where he majored in business, with an

emphasis in computer technology. She finished high school

and entered a local business college, counting the days to his

graduation.

As soon as Alex returned to Healdsburg, he found a job with

Hewlett-Packard in Santa Rosa, bought a used car, and rented a

small bungalow in Windsor.

When they couldn’t get their parents to agree on the kind of

wedding they should have, they eloped to Reno. Nobody was

very happy about it.

They had been married ten years. Ten wonderful years. All

that time she’d thought Alex was as happy as she was. She never

suspected what was going on beneath the surface. Why hadn’t

she realized? Why hadn’t he told her straight out that he was

dissatisfied?

Sierra pulled her Honda into the driveway of the Mathesen

Street Victorian and prayed her mother was home. Mom had

always been able to reason with Daddy. Maybe she could help

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Sierra figure out how to reason Alex out of his plans for their

future.

Unlocking the front door, Sierra entered the polished wood

foyer. “Mom?” She closed the door behind her and walked back

along the corridor toward the kitchen. She almost called for her

father before she caught herself.

With a sharp pang, she remembered the call she and Alex had

received at three in the morning two years ago. She had never

heard her mother’s voice sound that way before. Or since.

“Your father’s had a heart attack, honey. The ambulance is here.”

They had met her at the Healdsburg General Hospital, but it

was already too late.

“He complained of indigestion this morning,” her mother had

said, distracted, in shock. “And his shoulder was aching.”

Now, Sierra paused at his office door and looked in, half

expecting to see him sitting at his desk reading the real estate

section of the newspaper. She still missed him. Oddly, so did

Alex. He and her father had become close after Clanton and

Carolyn were born—amazing the way grandchildren seemed

to break down walls between people. Prior to her pregnancy,

she and Alex had seen little of her parents. Her father always

found some excuse to turn down dinner invitations; Alex’s

parents were no better.

All that changed when she went into labor. Everyone was at

Kaiser Hospital the night she gave birth. Alex had kissed her and

said maybe they should name their son Makepeace. They had

settled on Clanton Luís Madrid, forging both families together.

By the time Carolyn María arrived a year later, the Clantons and

the Madrids had had plenty of opportunity to get to know one

another and find out they had a lot more in common than they

ever thought possible.

“Mom?” Sierra called again, not finding her in the kitchen.

She looked out the window into the backyard garden, where her

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was in the driveway, so she knew her mother wasn’t off on one of

her many charity projects or at the church.

Sierra went back along the corridor and up the stairs. “Mom?”

Maybe she was taking a nap. She peered into the master bedroom. A bright granny-square afghan was folded neatly on the

end of the bed.
“Mom?”

“I’m in the attic, honey. Come on up.”

Surprised, Sierra went down the hallway and climbed the narrow stairway. “What are you doing up here?” she said, entering

the cluttered attic. The small dormer windows were open, allowing a faint sun-warmed breeze into the dusty, dimly lit room.

Dust particles danced on the beam of sunlight. The place smelled

musty with age and disuse.

The attic had always fascinated Sierra, and she momentarily

put aside her worries as she looked around. Lawn chairs were

stacked at the back. Just inside the door was a big milk can filled

with old umbrellas, two canes, and a crooked walking stick.

Wicker baskets in a dozen shapes and sizes sat on a high shelf.

Boxes were stacked in odd piles, in no particular order, their

contents a mystery.

How many times had she and her brother gone through their

rooms, sorting and boxing and shoving discards into the attic?

When Grandma and Grandpa Clanton had died, boxes from

their estate had taken up residence in the quiet dimness. Old

books, trunks, and boxes of dishes and silverware were scattered

about. A hat tree stood in a back corner on an old braided rag rug

that had been made by Sierra’s great-grandmother. The box of

old dress-up clothes she had donned as a child was still there. As

was the large oval mirror where she had admired herself with

each change.

Nearby, stacked in her brother’s red Radio Flyer wagon, were

a dozen or more framed pictures leaning one upon another

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