Twilight (9 page)

“Then you gotta hang tough. God created the laws of nature and the heart. Just like gravity, things gotta work a certain way. You can’t mess with the order.”

“Yeah? Wish I’d known that before we …” Cal closed his lips and clasped his fingers together. “Before it went so far.”

Reggie blew the breath between his lips. “There’s not one of us doesn’t have things we regret. But God’s bigger than that. He hung our sin on a cross, and we just gotta believe He’ll take it and make us new.”

He watched Cal struggling with that, knew the battle raged, forces neither of them could see and only Reggie knew were real. Cal wasn’t a wicked man. In fact, he was a good man, better than many. But it didn’t matter, because in the end he couldn’t do it himself. Cal’s eyes came up to him, hollow and tense, and Reggie knew before he spoke which side had won this time.

“I wish I could, Reg. But then I see a little girl with pigtails going up in flames.” His voice got raw, and he wore the haunted look that Reggie had seen before. “I hear her screams.” His throat worked.

Reggie sagged. Some things had no explanation. He could tell Cal God’s ways were above man’s, His wisdom supreme. He could tell him somewhere in the scheme of things even horrors had their place. But there was a hand to his lips. Cal wasn’t ready to hear it.

“Hang tough, bro. Don’t give in.”

Cal nodded slowly. “Can you sit for a while?”

“I can sit all night.” And that’s what he’d do if it kept Cal out of the bottle, or the pills, or whatever he might find to take away the memories.

Gradually the shaking stopped, and Cal looked bone weary. He put his head down on the table and closed his eyes. God may not have the victory yet, but between them they’d won this skirmish. Reggie stood, towering over Cal’s hunched form. With the tenderness of a father, he helped Cal to his feet and got him into bed.

“You made it, Cal. One more time.”

Cal shook his head, then sank into the pillows. “Thanks, Reg.”

Reggie looked at him lying there. People didn’t understand the courage it took for an addict to stay clean. Everyone had bad days. But a bad day to a drunk could be the start of the slide. Reggie looked up and closed his eyes.
No dreams, tonight, Lord. Guard his mind and his soul
.

As soundlessly as possible in that old house, Reggie let himself out. If Suanne was waiting up, he’d explain. But chances were, she’d gone to sleep hours ago. Funny, but Reggie hardly felt tired at all.

Two days later, Cal stood behind Ray as he lay on the red vinyl bench in the shed. With three hundred and ten pounds of weight, counting the bar, across his chest, eyes bulging and his face aflame, Ray puffed out his cheeks and pushed it up. Cal hoped Ray wouldn’t drop it. The bar held one hundred and twenty pounds more than Cal’s total body weight, and his biceps already pulsed from the curls. The bar dipped, and again Ray pushed it up before Cal grabbed and helped him sink it into the brackets.

“Whew, Ray. You’re a better man than I.”

“Your turn.” Ray sat up, his perspiration pungent as an onion patch.

“I think I’ll pass.”

“Come on. I’ll make it lighter.”

“By fifty pounds.”

“Forty.”

“Okay, forty. But you be ready.”

Ray grinned. There was something in Ray’s grin that was less than convincing. Cal took his place, smelling Ray as he did. Ray adjusted the weights, and Cal gathered himself, then eased the bar down to rest on his pectorals and shifted his hands. “How many reps?”

“Ten.”

“Five.”

Ray paused, probably not sure how to divide the difference to keep arguing, and Cal pushed the bar up, expelling his breath as he did. It had not been that long since he’d worked out with the guys on the line. Though he never developed much bulk, he did possess a natural strength and musculature, inherited from his dad.

He managed a set of ten before he hooked the bar and rolled off the bench. His left shoulder joint popped, and he rotated it, releasing the strain. The blood vessels in his arms stood up like snakes. It was an ugly business.

Ray slipped a weight off the ends. “Now shoulder press.”

“No thanks.”

“You chicken?”

“No. Me tired.” Cal shook his arms to loosen the muscles. “Listen, it’s getting hard to breathe in here. You want to walk with me?”

Ray’s face sagged. “It’s dark.”

“So?”

Ray stood sullenly. “I don’t like the woods at night.”

“Suit yourself.” Cal loved the woods at night. Especially the time just between the day’s glory and the splendor of the starlit night. That mysterious unformed twilight. When Sadie was around they had taken many twilight walks and romped long after dark under the stars through rain, snow, or what have you. Even when her hips had grown so stiff that he had to carry her up the stairs, she had never missed a walk in the woods.

The trees were mostly bare against the low November sky, their long, arthritic fingers clashing together in the chill wind. But the underbrush was still dense, some of it up to his shoulders. Cal turned up his collar and shoved his hands into his pockets. His pace was as brisk as the night, though he did not head anywhere in particular.

Once inside the shadow of the trees, he slowed because he could see only a little space ahead. The slice of moon faded in and out of the clouds. To his right an owl hooted its throaty call, then whooshed from its perch after some prey it had heard in the fallen leaves. Whatever it was would never hear it coming.

Cal circled back to the house but stopped mid-step, one boot grinding on the toothed edge of the metal stair as Mildred motioned through the window. He pushed open the lower-level side door obediently. He knew that expression.

“You know, Mildred, Ray’s here to do whatever it is—.”

“Ray does what Ray does. I need you to figure out the thump in my furnace.” Her face said she wouldn’t be talked out of it.

“I don’t know the first thing about furnace thumps. I’ll call you a repairman.” He started for the phone.

“Hmmph.”

He stopped. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing.”

“No way. That was a meaningful hmmph.”

Mildred shrugged. “You with all your training and lecturing.”

“I don’t lecture on furnace repair.” A detail that obviously meant nothing.

“Keynote speaker at the city council banquet …”

Cal started for the furnace. “Show me what it’s doing.” He pulled open the panel and studied the guts of the heater. Everything looked in order as far as he could tell. The pilot was lit, the parts were relatively clean. “So what’s the trouble?”

“It thumps.”

“So you said, but I don’t hear anything.”

“It thumps when it blows.” To prove her word, the furnace drew a long breath through the intake vents and the blower came on with a thump.

“Here it is. Whoever serviced your furnace missed the groove on the filter. Nothing serious.” He refitted the filter. “But you’d think a repairman …” He glanced up at Mildred. “Uh, did Ray change these out for you?”

“Thanks for your time.”

He stood. “Sure.” They clumped up the stairs and found Cissy on the couch, smiling broadly. In contrast to her sister, she was gladly talked out of anything—except Wednesday and Saturday morning vacuuming.

“Well, you’re set.” Cal rubbed his hands.

Mildred grunted.

Cissy patted the pillow. “Why don’t you join us? I have chocolate on the stove and corn in the popper.”

“No thanks, Cissy. Another time.”

“I haven’t seen Laurie back.” Mildred spoke before he could make his escape.

Cal turned. He’d expected as much. They’d lured him in, but he edged toward the door. “Nope.”

“Did you scare her off?”

“Mildred …”

“Just as well. You’re not in any condition for entanglement, and from the looks of her, she’s not in any condition for you.”

Cal stopped. “What does that mean?”

“It’s written all over her. That woman’s been hurt, and she’s afraid.”

Cal frowned. “She just doesn’t open up right away.”

Mildred huffed. “Show’s what you know.”

He knew better, but his fighting spirit flared anyway. “I know a lot.”

“Maybe his vision’s clouded.”

They both spun on Cissy, and she blushed a queer shade of purple and sank into the couch.

“If his vision’s clouded, that’s all the more reason he shouldn’t get involved.”

“I’m not involved. Laurie’s a friend from way back.” And even that was pushing it now.

“That’s deadly.”

“What?”

“I said that’s deadly. Was she your first love?”

Cal swallowed, then turned for the door, but not before he caught the knowing look Mildred and Cissy exchanged as he slipped from the room. After mounting the inside stairs, he crawled into his den to lick his wounds. He knew better than to take Mildred on. But he suspected she would have had her say whether he’d taken the bait or not.

He was still morose when the phone rang an hour later. “Yeah?”

“Cal?”

He leaned on the counter. “Hi, Laurie.”

“I wasn’t sure I should call.”

He said nothing.

“Is it a bad time?”

“No.”

“I kept waiting to hear from you.”

Had she really expected it? “Laurie …”

“I understand why you haven’t called, but, Cal, it doesn’t matter.” He swallowed the dryness in his throat. “What doesn’t?”

“Whatever caused you to react as you did. It hardly warrants an end to our friendship.”

Cal rubbed a hand over his face. “Laurie, I’m not sure where to go with this. I think it would be simpler if we just let it ride.” She was quiet a long time, but he didn’t make jokes or try to get her attention.

“Does that mean you don’t want to see me again?”

“It means we’ve gone eight days without speaking and survived it.” Mostly.

“I see. I’m sorry I bothered you.”

The line went dead in his hand, and he lowered the handpiece to its bed. Mildred would be proud.

Laurie hung up the phone. So that was that. She shoved away the hurt. It was better anyway. She didn’t need him. It was time she stood on her own. But her legs betrayed her, and she stiffened the muscles. The mistakes, the decisions, the responsibilities—did she have it in her? Or was she just the failure Daddy thought her? Had her abilities been criticized, corrected, and denied right out of her?

Laurie pictured her father. Oh yes, she called him Daddy. But had she ever thought of him so? Wasn’t Daddy someone you snuggled up with, ran to with your latest discovery, whose arms scooped you up when you scraped your knee …

She sighed. Was there even one time Daddy had praised her without adding “however”? However, if you had done it this way, if you had listened, if you weren’t so emotional, stubborn, difficult … She had tried so hard to please him. Maybe it wasn’t in her.

If Mother had once stood up and admitted he was a difficult man. If she had once let on that she herself despaired of pleasing him, once given Laurie permission to be herself … Grams had.
Oh, Grams!
And Cal had. He had taken her so much for who she was, it terrified her.

Seeing her affinity, he talked her into taking art, though Daddy said it was a waste. She fell in love with pottery, with creating things from raw material with her own hands. Mother refused to consider a potter’s wheel in the house because of the mess, the smell. Besides, the pots she brought home from school were lopsided. Never mind that they were first attempts.

Laurie gave them to Cal. He still had them on his bookshelf, holding who knows what. She had seen them the other night. It was embarrassing. Over the college years she had improved greatly. But she guessed Cal didn’t see the imperfections. He took things as they were, especially her.

Daddy despised him. The son of a cabinetmaker with only a high-school education, a disrespectful cutup destined for nowhere. The worst part, the part that made her ashamed to this day, was that she saw him that way too. As much as she had thrived on being with him, a little voice niggled inside that he was nothing, would be nothing, would go nowhere.

And he hadn’t. He could have been anything. He could tally numbers in his head faster than she could press them on a calculator. He was bright, creative, good with his hands. He could succeed in any field he put his mind to, but here he was, a clown in Montrose, Missouri. Nowhere.

And she had told him as much when he asked her to forget her studies at UCLA and marry him. She hadn’t known she belonged to him, that their lives were grafted together. He called her a snob; she called him a loser. He accused her of social climbing; she said he was stagnating in the cesspool of Middle America. She was sure that she had hurt him more than he hurt her—because he accepted her even though he knew her for what she was … and she rejected him.

Laurie closed her eyes. Her hand still gripped the phone in its cradle. She wanted to pick it up and tell him she accepted him, no matter what his trouble was, no matter what had caused his overreaction, no matter what had happened in the years they’d been apart, she accepted him. But would he believe her? Did she believe herself?

She drew a long breath and released the phone. Anyway, it didn’t matter. Cal was right. They’d gone eight days without speaking, and she, too, had survived. She would make it on her own. She had fled Brian’s world. She had taken nothing but the children and what she could fit into the Lexus, and the Lexus was in her name.