Year After Henry (22 page)

“Mom?” It was Lisa. Jeanie took her daughter into her arms and held her so tightly she could feel the enormous belly against her body. Lisa's face was alive with the rush that comes from pending motherhood, a freshness in her eyes, her skin radiant. She had her long brown hair pinned up in a neat sweep off her neck. She was wearing a lavender maternity dress, tiny white flowers around the neck. She looked beautiful, and Jeanie told her so, kissing her face several times.

“You angel,” said Jeanie. “I didn't want to pressure you, but I'm so glad you're here.”

“I knew you wanted me to come,” said Lisa. “Just because I don't live with you anymore, Mom, doesn't mean I can't pick up your little hints. Patrick's parking the car.”

Jeanie pushed some of Lisa's brown hair, hair with blond highlights like Jeanie herself used to have, back from the side of her face. Patrick came into the restaurant then. Jeanie watched the expression on Lisa's face when she saw her husband. She knew that look. She had felt it herself once, for Lisa's father.

“There's Chad!” said Lisa. “And Uncle Larry!” And Lisa was gone again.

Jeanie saw her brother-in-law across the room. Larry had on the same gray suit he had worn for their little dinner on Thursday night, and now, with his shoulders back straight, he looked like the teacher he was. Why had they all dreaded this gathering for weeks? It was coming together nicely. It was now more like a birthday party than a commemoration to someone dead and gone from them. The memorial service was joining them again, reminding them that they needed each other more than ever. Maybe Frances was wiser than they had realized, maybe the matriarch in her knew some tricks. As if on cue, Frances appeared out of the crowd, wearing her dark green skirt and jacket, a white silk blouse. Jeanie had expected her mother-in-law to be teary-eyed and mournful. But Frances was smiling. She pulled Jeanie aside to whisper in her ear.

“I invited Katherine,” said Frances, “and she's here.”

“What?” Jeanie asked, astonished. “Does Larry know this?”

Frances shook her head.

“He knows I asked her to bring Jonathan,” she said, “but he doesn't know she actually did. They just arrived. She's leaving right after the service. She's in the ladies' room now.” Jeanie knew her face must have shown the amazement she felt.

“I think you should tell Larry,” she said. Frances nodded across the room.

“Someone already is,” she said.

Jeanie looked over to see Jonathan, very proper in a blue suit, standing just behind Larry, waiting to be noticed. His dark hair had grown longer since she saw him last. The boy himself seemed to have grown taller in the past few months. Chad had been like that, too, sprouting up past the other boys his age. Larry was talking to Leeann Boyle, the real estate agent who had sold the house on Pilcher Street when he and Katherine divorced. Leeann noticed Jonathan first, and smiled. That's when Larry turned to see who was standing next to him. There is something in how a parent looks at a child that gives proof of why it is we live, and love, and die. It's those single moments of elation that make up for the hours and days of madness. Jeanie watched as Larry pulled Jonathan into his arms, holding him close, in that way his own father had never been able to do.

...

By the time Marshall Thompson roared into the parking lot at Murphy's Tavern, the only car he would see parked outside would be Gail's little red Chevy. Inside the bar, they heard the noise of the big bike, and then silence as the engine died. Evie motioned to Gail, who went to the back door and stood there, waiting to unlock it. Sundays, the tavern was always closed. Evie looked over at Billy Randall and Paula Thompson. They had already left their stools at the bar and were disappearing into the back office. She glanced over at Gail, who had now unlocked the door but not yet slid back the bolt. Evie held up one finger.
Give
me
a
second,
the finger said. And then she joined Billy and Paula in Murphy's office.

Evie put a finger to her lips, but by the look on Paula's face, it was obvious she didn't have to tell Marshall's ex-wife to be quiet. The fear Paula still felt was in her eyes, in the fidgety way she twirled a lock of her hair, in the fading bruises still marking her slender arms. Evie glanced over at Billy Randall. Tall and intense, gray among the thick, dark hair, he stood motionless, his ears tuned to the noises in the front room, his eyes narrowed as he listened. Evie wondered if this was how Billy had stood in Vietnam, under the wet and dripping leaves of the jungle, waiting for the enemy, watching, hearing everything that walked or crawled. Billy had won the Medal of Honor before he left that country for good. He had brought his entire platoon out of an ambush alive. Sometimes, seeing him play pinball at the tavern, Evie wondered why his wife had left him as she did. He had come home a hero, to an empty house. Billy was a good man, and anyone who met him knew it. That he was silent much of the time, so deep in thought he might be thousands of miles away, well, why not? It had gone all around the bar how Billy caught up with the man who beat his sister Amy so horribly she was in the hospital for two weeks. This was Pete Fuller, who ran with Marshall's crowd. No one ever knew what Billy did or said, but his sister wasn't afraid to live anymore. It was Pete Fuller, her ex-boyfriend, who started the nickname
Crazy
Billy
.

“Hey, girl, how you doin'? I'm glad you called.”

It was Marshall's voice. Evie heard the back door close and the sound of the bolt as Gail locked it. She saw a slight tremor in the muscle near Billy's mouth, but the look in his eyes didn't change. He didn't even blink. Evie wondered what it was like to be in war, to have bombs falling, to have the enemy trying to kill you at every turn in the road. And yet there was such a gentleness in Billy Randall. He was only eighteen when a helicopter dropped him off on that hilltop in a foreign country, a machine gun in his hands and pure fear in his heart. Billy never talked about it, but his sister did when she stopped by the bar for a glass of beer.

“Want something to drink?” Gail now asked. Evie heard the bar stool scraping back, its legs against the wooden floor. Marshall would be just sitting down on his favorite stool. She heard the sound of a cap being twisted from the top of a beer bottle.

“Come on, what's wrong? I just wanna kiss you.” Marshall's voice. Sometimes, Evie wanted to look back into the childhood of anyone who was fucked up. She wanted to find reasons and clues and answers. But just now, looking at the terror on Paula's face, reasons didn't matter. Would Peter Fuller finally have killed Amy if matters had been left alone? Maybe. And
maybe
means the odds are far too high. She saw Billy straighten, his head cocked back, one ear pointed to the front room. Paula was trembling. Evie reached over and put a hand on her shoulder, hoping to calm her.

“We're not alone,” Gail said. “Got someone in the back, fixing the air conditioner.” That was the cue. In three seconds, Billy Randall had left the back room and gone out to the bar.

When Evie stepped out of the office, Marshall's face was already shocked enough, seeing Billy appear. He sat motionless as Billy went down the bar toward his stool.

“Hey, Marshall,” Billy said.

“Hey,” said Marshall, still trying to assess what was happening.

“You carrying anything?”

“None of your business,” said Marshall. Billy grabbed Marshall from off his stool, flipped him onto his stomach on the floor, and pinned him there. It had happened so fast, no one had seen it coming, especially Marshall.

“That wasn't polite,” said Billy, pressing the man beneath him even harder into the wooden floor. “Evie, come see if he's got anything on him.”

Evie knelt and patted Marshall's pocket, then ran her hands down his legs. It was apparent he had nothing under the tight T-shirt he was wearing. Evie stood up.

“Nothing,” she said. Paula had come out of the back room and now she stood, frightened, watching from behind the bar. Billy pushed Marshall down deeper into the floor. Evie heard him grunt as he struggled to get free. Billy twisted the arm back more and Marshall finally lay still.

“Now you listen to me,” Billy said. “I'm obligated by law to let you know I have a black belt in karate. That way, you see, I can't be sued for not disclosing that fact. But you personally won't have to worry about legal stuff like that. If I'm sued, it'll be by one of your surviving family members, if you got anyone left who gives a shit about you.”

“Let me up!” Marshall shouted. He squirmed again, trying to wrest free, but Billy applied more pressure by pulling Marshall's arm up higher onto his back. Marshall cried out in pain. Again, he quit struggling.

“According to legend, karate began more than a thousand years ago,” Billy said, as calmly as giving a lesson, “when a Buddhist priest named Bodhidharma arrived in Shàolín Sì, a forest temple in China. He taught Zen Buddhism in that temple and exercises to strengthen the mind as well as the body.”

“You fucker!” said Marshall.

“Karate is an interesting art,” Billy said. “It even includes a kind of aerodynamics. For instance, by the time you find your balls, you'll have already found your dick, since balls fly farther than dicks, given that they're round.”

Billy pulled Marshall up off the floor and pushed him into a chair near one of the front tables. That's when Marshall saw his ex-wife, Paula, standing at the bar. He looked from her face, back to Gail's, over to Evie's, and he understood. He'd walked into an ambush. And Billy Randall knew all about ambushes.

“You might call this an intervention,” said Billy. “The way I hear it, Paula here has tried a lot of times to get you to go on about your life and leave hers alone. Instead, you been beating the crap out of her every chance you get.”

Paula started to cry. Marshall looked as if he might bolt from the chair at any second. Billy walked around behind him and put a hand on his shoulder, forceful enough that Marshall seemed to change his mind.

“You're a pretty big fucker, ain't you?” Billy asked. “How tall are you? Must be at least six feet. So why not pick on someone like me, instead of the women you happen to know? I'm standing here unarmed, except, you know, for those little tips I picked up from that old Buddhist priest.”

Marshall sat motionless, his eyes on the floor in front of him. Billy looked over at Gail and Paula.

“Either one of you ladies care to have a turn with him?” Billy asked. “He won't fight back with me here, will you, Marshall?” Marshall said nothing. Both Gail and Paula shook their heads.

“See?” said Billy. “The violence is all one-sided.”

“You'll notice he didn't ask
me
,” said Evie. Billy smiled at this.

“You know how your pal Pete Fuller says I beat the crap out of him?” Billy said to Marshall. “Well, I didn't touch him. It was my little sister Amy who beat him. All I did was watch. Kind of like a referee.”

“What the hell do you want from me?” Marshall said. Gone was the big, baritone voice that boomed out to the world to beware.

“I want you to stay away from these girls,” said Billy. “Now, I don't think all women are perfect. I know there's some who will beat on a man until he lifts a hand to protect himself and the next thing he knows, he's in jail for assault and battery. But that's not the way it is in your case, is it, Marshall? See, what happened with my sister Amy is that she did just what Paula did. She followed the law and got herself a restraining order. And when your friend Pete Fuller beat the daylights out of her, that restraining order was lying on the kitchen table the whole time. Gail over there, she's scared to death to press charges for what you just did to her, afraid you might come looking for her one dark night as she leaves the bar. But you're not gonna do that, are you, Marshall?”

Marshall looked over at Gail, who stared back.

“You need to make a decision for yourself right now,” said Billy. “I can beat the crap out of you before you crawl out of here, just like you did to these two women, if that'll make you feel better. Or you can leave here as if nothing ever happened. No one will know but the four people in this room. Ain't that right, ladies?” All three women nodded. “But if you should get all mad and liquored up some night and come looking for one of these girls, let me give you some valuable advice. I'm gonna teach each one of them karate. And I'm gonna take them out to the firing range, show them how to use a gun. What's more, they each have my phone number memorized. I want them to call
me
long before they dial 911, or the cops. See, you might have heard how I don't sleep much anymore. Well, that's true. I see Viet Cong in the strangest places. So, what's it gonna be?”

Marshall seemed to let out air, as if he were a large balloon. He was growing smaller, sitting there in the chair. Evie noticed that Paula seemed less afraid, as if now that she saw how much of a coward the man really was, it made her stronger.

“Get out of here,” said Billy, “before I change my mind and spread you all around this bar.”

Marshall stood. On his way past Paula, he stopped. She had a confidence about her now, it was true. Evie could only hope it would be there when Billy wasn't.

“I want my right to see the boy,” said Marshall.

“I have no problem with that,” said Paula. “So long as you follow the rules about visitations.”

Gail unlocked the door and let him out. They all stood quietly in the bar, as they had just twenty minutes earlier, and listened as the engine of the big Harley roared to life. Pebbles spit as the bike lurched from the gravel parking lot and whined off down the street. In no time the sound had died away and Marshall was gone. Gail looked over at Billy Randall, who had reached for the untouched beer Marshall left sitting on the bar. He tilted the bottle and drank.