The Wedding Gift (7 page)

George said his daddy had
hardly come up here at all in all the years since his Uncle Roger
got killed, but that it was “
sacred
” to him, and that the cabin
was the one thing he said no to Miz Bethany about changing; her
having wanted to turn it into an A frame house and put up a dock so
she could have parties out there, but George said his daddy and
George, too, had overruled her. I didn’t say anything when he told
me that story, but I thought that the little house must have been
something real special to both of them for them to ever say no to
Miz Willets.

Chapter 10

Last February, right before
Valentine’s Day, I met George behind the Piggly Wiggly store like
usual and climbed into the Humvee. It was real cold that night and
I was shivering. George reached behind him and put this huge white
Neiman's box on my lap. I acted all like, oh you shouldn’t have and
everything but, to be strictly honest, by that time I almost
expected something real nice whenever he saw me.

I already had a pile of
clothes stashed at Jessie’s, though I could not resist wearing my
new True Religion jeans even at the house, figuring rightly that
Mama and Daddy wouldn’t notice the difference between them and my
501’s to save their lives.

But the girls at school
noticed and I loved it. The present that night was a three quarter
length Persian lamb coat dyed pale pink. I started screaming and
jumping around in my seat. I nearly put my elbow in poor George's
eye because I was struggling so hard to get my ratty old puffa
jacket off and that beautiful pink coat on. When I got it on, I
preened at him and asked how I looked. George, he got him that real
intense look on his face that he sometimes had when he was staring
at me. He said all serious like “
Leeann,
you look just like an angel. Girl, you are too pretty to be real. I
want you to wear pink for me all the time. You know, don’t you,
Leeann, that I just want to give you the world, and this ain't all
there is neither. I got your big Valentine's gift out at the cabin
You just wait, Sugar
.”

Well, to be strictly
honest, I had mixed feelings about what he had said. I did like the
presents and sure, hearing that this perfect coat wasn’t my
“
big
” gift got me
real excited too, because by then I knew enough about the costs of
fancy clothes to know it might be ten thousand dollars just for the
coat alone. And shoot, yes, I liked hearing that I looked like an
angel and nice compliments of that sort, but I strictly did not
like being told what color to wear all the time. Why, I loved all
my new black clothes he had given me, and I thought that black was
the most sophisticated color I could ever wear. And then I didn’t
much like that look he was giving me either. George had started
looking and acting recently like he wanted to lock me up just for
himself and keep me forever. Well I just didn’t like that
much.

See, I liked George fine …
most of the time. Well, to speak the truth and shame the devil as
Mama said, I liked him mostly when I was drunk or high or both, and
I liked it when he gave me things. The sex stuff… well mostly when
that was happening I tried to pretend I was somewhere else, and it
took hardly any time anyway. But I knew I wasn’t in love with him.
Being in love was Donny, and though all my dreams had been
shattered by his marrying someone else, it didn’t make my feelings
for him stop. I knew that I would have to marry someone else myself
one day. I just wasn’t ready to think like that yet. After all, I
had been planning my life with Donny Readle since I was seven years
old, and I couldn’t just change it up on a dime, even though I knew
that I would have to one day.

I wasn’t quite eighteen
yet, and it seemed to me like there should be time, but I didn’t
say any of what I was thinking to George. I just leaned against him
in the car and said “
Thank you, Sugar,
you're so good
.” I said it real soft and
sweet like. I mean just because I couldn’t see myself with George
forever like I had with Donny, it wasn’t like I had someone else or
somewhere else to go to. I just decided not to worry about any of
it, and look forward to my present instead.

When we got out to the
cabin, George started hurrying around building up the fire and then
he put out a few lines on the old camp table and poured us both a
shot from his little flask, which was silver, unlike Jessie’s
leather one that she was so proud of. When he had the fire going
real good, George pulled me down beside him onto the bed and
reached into his pocket and handed me this little bitty blue
leather box and said real sweet “
Happy
Valentine's Day, Sugar, I hope you like this
.”

My hands were shaking a
little by that time, I think from the coke, but it might have been
from the look on George’s face too. I opened up the box and there
were two diamond studs and I didn’t know for sure then, but I do
now, that they were three carats each. They were huge, each one
bigger than any diamond I had ever seen in my life except for the
boulder that his mama wore on her finger and shoved in everyone’s
face every chance she got.

To tell you the strict
truth, I did not have a word to say. I sure wished Jessie were
there; she would have made a joke or done a cheer. I thought maybe
I could pretend to faint, but it was okay because, George, he knew
exactly how I should act. He told me in this real thick voice that
he wanted me to show him how I looked in the earrings and nothing
else. When I was buck naked and standing there, George looked at me
with his eyes all popping out of his head and making these little
panting noises and, I have to say it, because it's what I thought
at the time, that he looked just like this old rabid raccoon that
had got trapped in our garbage pails one night. Randy had to shoot
it so it wouldn’t bite Muffin, our cat.

I knew I should be acting
all loving and jumping into the bed with him, but I used delaying
tactics instead. I decided right then, and don’t ask me why, 'cause
I don’t know myself why I did it, but I picked that moment to
discuss with George why he didn’t ever use a condom. It was not
very nice of me, considering what he had just given me, but somehow
I didn’t feel too nice right then.

George didn’t mind, though.
He just laughed and said he liked to really feel me, but then I got
mad and asked him what I would do if I got pregnant, and did he
expect me to just walk in bold as brass to the pharmacy where my
friend Lurlene’s mama worked and try to buy some kind of birth
control? I was getting pretty heated up by then, and I told him
that I thought maybe we wouldn’t be doing nothing of a carnal
nature that day until we had settled this whole contraception
question.

But I should have known
that I wasn’t getting out of doing it that easy, 'cause George, he
just chuckled like I was being adorable, which I purely was not. He
pulled me onto his lap, me being naked except for my earrings, and
I just sat there real stiff while he told me how he had mumps when
he was little, and his mama had told him that made you sterile,
which stupid me, I believed. Like Miz High and Mighty Willets was a
baby doctor amongst her many other accomplishments. So since there
was no way out, I took another slug of wild turkey and we went to
it.

Chapter 11

I guess that was the day it
must have happened, though it could have been the Wednesday
previous, but I think it was that day for two reasons: one, for
some reason, I really hadn’t wanted to do it, which was funny
because we had been doing it twice a week for a couple of months
already so I think my body was just trying to warn me, like
'
Red alert girl, this is a bad
time
'. Jessie says that’s how she can tell
when it's not a good time, her body just tells her and then she
gets even meaner than usual and won't let Mark near her with a
stick. But then this other thing happened too.

After we done it, George
went straight to sleep like he always did. But I was wide awake
because of the coke and the diamonds and maybe still being a little
mad too. So I pulled on my beautiful new pink coat and started
looking at the books on the shelves in the cabin. I don’t like to
read much so it was just something to kill time till George woke up
because there is no TV in that cabin.

Mostly the books on the
shelves were those old Reader's Digest kind that my mama has at our
house, but there was this one big green book that I could see
wasn’t a book at all … it was a photo album. I don’t know why, but
I tried to be real quiet when I took it down. George probably
wouldn’t have given a damn, but I wasn’t sure … it felt like
prying.

The first few pictures were
just old ones of two little boys, some fishing, some with a pretty
woman that I figured was their mama, and a couple stiff ones of
them sitting on the steps of a real big house that at first I did
not recognize.

But then I did … it was the
Willets Mansion, the murder house. I figured out right then that
the two boys were George’s daddy and his Uncle Roger. Roger was a
lot taller than his brother and, as I turned the pages, they both
got older, and heck, for every year older Roger got, he got hotter
and hotter, which I must say came as quite a surprise. Because see,
the Willets men seem to have more money than God, but the ones I
had seen at least weren’t going to make Brad Pitt real nervous.
Roger was real dark too. He must have got his looks from the pretty
woman that I had guessed was their mama. The expression on his face
in the pictures made him look kind of like Jamey Skaggs who is the
baddest boy at Dalton High. You know the type - they are all black
leather and attitude, which to be strictly honest can be awful sexy
to a certain type of girl, though I am not that type, of
course.

I kind of whistled under my
breath '
Well, well, ole dead Uncle Roger
was a smokin' hottie… who knew?
' I wished I
could steal a picture of him for Jessie to see, but I was too
worried to do it, in case George or his daddy noticed. The last two
pages of the album were stuck together so I unpeeled them real
careful and quiet, and saw that they was wedding pictures, wedding
pictures of poor hot dead Uncle Roger and this really beautiful
girl. Believe me about her being a super pretty girl because, since
I look like I do, I am not one to dish out compliments lightly, but
this girl was a knockout.

She was real tall and
slender, with long dark hair and she had her just a perfect face. I
couldn’t tell what color her eyes were, but they were big beautiful
eyes ... and even in those old pictures you could see they were
shining, looking at Roger … and him, Roger, well it was real sweet
'cause he was just grinning at her like she was a horse who had won
the Triple Crown. They looked so beautiful and young and filled up
with pride in each other that I felt like starting to cry for some
reason. Standing beside Roger, wearing a pair of too short tuxedo
pants, was George's daddy, old George Sr. But he was just a scrawny
young boy and you would hardly recognize him now. He had on this
big old grin though, like he was happy for the pretty couple. And
standing beside Roger, there were their parents, who did not look
like they were happy at all. Actually, Roger's mama looked like an
egg sick dog, if you want me to be strictly honest, and for about
one second I felt sorry for the bride, even knowing as I did that
she turned into a crazed murderess later on. I could still
sympathize with any girl who had a bad mother-in-law
situation.

Right then I heard George
stirring and before I could put the album back he asked me what I
was looking at. Since I didn’t see a way out of it, I just took it
over to the bed and showed it to him. He didn’t seem mad ... he
acted like he had never seen it before and he just looked at the
pictures. When he was done he sighed real heavy and closed it. I
knew I shouldn’t ask him, it being something I’m sure was a real
bad subject in his family, but I just had to know, so I did ask
him.

I said straight out
“
George, Honey, does your daddy ever talk
about his brother and all them kids that got
killed?
”

He didn’t seem offended,
but he didn’t say much either. He just said that his daddy would
sometimes tell stories about him and his Uncle Roger when they were
kids, but all the stories usually ended about the time his uncle
left Dalton to go off to architect's school somewhere up north. I
know I should have shut up, but that is not my strong suit as
anyone would tell you. So I kept at him, asking if that was where
his uncle had met Robina, and if he had ever seen any other
pictures of her? Were there any pictures of the kids they had? I
could tell he was getting kind of annoyed with me, 'cause he
answered all short, like telling me that yes, he had seen other
pictures of Robina and that for some reason, and
“
No, he sure as hell did not know
why!
” that the pictures were all over the
mansion still, where she and Uncle Roger had lived, along with
pictures of all his dead cousins, and that yes, he had been in the
house a few times over the years with his mama who for
“
some goddamned reason"
liked to oversee the upkeep of the place herself
whenever a crew would have to go in for painting and such. George
said he didn’t know for sure if his uncle had met Robina back at
the architecture school, because his daddy would get all red when
he asked questions about her, so after awhile he had stopped
asking.