Twice in a Lifetime, page 2
Though the sheriff had been right, that at sixteen Tommy was almost a man, it was hard for Clara to see him as anything other than her little boy. She remembered how he had been as a child, in those years before his father died. He had loved to stand beside the piano and sing song after song for as long as his grandmother would play; now the piano was silent. Long ago, when Clara would stand at the sink doing dishes, Tommy would race into the room, shouting at the top of his lungs, rushing to grab her legs as he looked up at her with a smile that melted her heart; now it sometimes felt as if all Tommy wanted was to be alone.
No matter how hard Clara tried to fill the void created by Joe’s death, to give her son the happiness he deserved, she never quite seemed to manage. In her worst nightmares, she never would’ve imagined that things would be like this.
And that made her angry.
“What do you have to say for yourself?” she pressed, slamming the heel of her hand into the steering wheel in frustration. “Answer me!”
But Tommy only yawned and kept staring out the window.
Glancing in the rearview mirror, trying to calm down, Clara took quick measure of herself. She looked exhausted; dark circles underlined her eyes, the result of having been up all night. Her skin was flushed red and marred by a few wrinkles. She’d haphazardly tied her long black hair behind her neck; a few loose strands spilled across her shoulders. Joe had once told her that she was the most beautiful woman he had ever laid eyes on; now, nearly thirty-six years old, she had a hard time believing that that had ever been true.
Clara slowed as they neared the intersection of Harding and Grant; there was such a dip in the road that driving through without braking meant she would bottom out the truck’s undercarriage. Struggling with the gears, she managed to downshift in time to ease through. Twenty years old, the truck had a list of things wrong with it nearly as long as Clara’s arm, but with money tight, patching its faults whenever one became too bad to ignore was the only option she had.
Turning onto Main Street, they passed the bakery, the post office, and Steve Clark, out washing the windows of his barbershop. Two blocks later, they saw the tavern that Naomi’s father owned, shuttered and dark after the previous night’s drinking; unlike the other businesses in town, the Marshland didn’t show signs of life until after the sun had gone down. Clara watched her son as they drove past, expecting some sort of reaction, but he gave none.
They were almost home and she still hadn’t gotten any answers.
“I can’t believe you’re going to just sit there and say nothing,” she snapped.
“Why should I?” Tommy finally replied, yawning again as he ran a hand through his unruly hair; his voice wavered a bit, changing as he was from boy to man. “Besides, you’re doing plenty of talking for both of us.”
“I want to know what happened.”
“No, you don’t,” he said, looking over his shoulder at her; his narrow eyes were dismissive, as if she was the child.
“Yes, I do,” Clara insisted.
“What you want is for me to say something to make you feel better, even if it’s a lie.”
“I want the truth.”
Tommy gave a condescending snort. “Naomi says you never let anything go, like a dog with a bone.”
“Was she there with you?”
Tommy didn’t reply, which was answer enough.
Clara’s heart raced; her fears of the girl’s involvement had been well-founded. “Tommy, she’s nothing but trouble!”
“Naomi told me you’d say that, too. She thinks that the reason you hate her so much is because you’re angry she’s so much younger and prettier than you. Naomi says that you don’t want me spending time with her because you’re jealous she has a future to look forward to, while you’re stuck in this town. You’ve got nothing and no one to share it with.”
Clara was so upset, her hands were shaking even as she squeezed the steering wheel tight. She pulled the truck over, tromping down so hard on the brakes that the tires squealed before bumping against the curb. Tommy didn’t seem the least bit put out, sitting there calmly as if they were out for a Sunday drive. Glancing through the dusty, cracked windshield, Clara realized they were only a block from home.
“You almost went to jail because of Naomi!” she argued. “I don’t want you seeing her again!”
“You can’t stop me.”
“As long as you’re living under my roof, you’ll do what I say!” she threatened, hoping it sounded more convincing to his ears than her own.
It didn’t. “Then I’ll move out,” Tommy replied with a shrug.
Clara felt trapped. This was the way things were between her and Tommy; she pleaded with her son to change, while he mostly ignored her, argued when he didn’t, and in either case kept right on doing as he pleased. The only choice left was to follow through with her threats. But should she actually kick him out of the house? What would happen if she did? She had long since convinced herself that if Tommy wasn’t under her supervision, he’d be worse off. But what if she was wrong? What if Sheriff Oglesby was right? What if some time behind bars was the only thing that could fix what was wrong with her son? Clara shuddered. What would Joe think of what had become of his family?
“I wish your father was here,” she said.
For the first time since Clara had seen him sitting in the jail cell, Tommy showed real emotion. “Don’t say that!” he shouted, whipping around in his seat to jab a finger at her. “Every time things don’t go the way you want, you say that. I hate it! He’s dead and he’s never coming back!”
Before Clara could reply, Tommy pushed open the door, jumped out, and slammed it behind him hard enough to shake the truck. She watched as he stalked down the street and right past their house. He never looked back.
As the minutes passed, Clara’s heartbeat began to slow. The sun rose higher, and more of Sunset woke to a new day, but she still made no move to drive the short distance home. Instead, she sat and thought about her life, about how different everything was from how she’d imagined it would be; it was all upside down, backward, and inside out.
Whenever she thought about all that had been lost, a gaping hole that would never be filled, it hurt. But on this particular day more than any other, the memories were sharper, the pain more raw.
Today was the anniversary of Joe’s death.
Chapter Two
CLARA PULLED INTO the driveway and shut off the engine; the truck shuddered as the motor ticked and hummed. She took another glance at herself in the rearview mirror, breathed deeply to try to steady her still rattled nerves, and got out.
The house had seen better days: its yellow paint was faded and flaking; on the far end of the wraparound porch, one of the eave spouts had come loose and hung precariously; the last time there had been a thunderstorm, the attic had sprung a leak, with water running down the bathroom walls; the flower beds were choked with last autumn’s leaves, weeds poked their way through the cracks in the walk and driveway, and the grass was in dire need of cutting. Everything had decayed since Joe’s death. Clara knew that her husband would have been ashamed; he’d always been so proud of his property, so meticulous in its care, that it would have devastated him to see it in such a state.
But inside was different.
Every week, Clara scrubbed the floors and staircase. Though the furniture was a bit worn and faded, she mended every frayed stitch and straightened every wobbly leg. She dusted the tables until they shone. But she took special care of the fireplace mantel. It was there that she kept her photographs of Joe. They marked every moment of their life together: their courtship, the day they were married, Tommy as a baby, and even Joe smiling proudly in his uniform. Just having them there, seeing him every day, made her feel like he was still around, as if he was watching over them.
The smell of coffee wafted from the kitchen. Inside, Clara found her mother, Christine, staring into the pantry.
“Good morning,” Clara said. “You’re up awfully early.”
Christine nodded absently.
Clara went to the cupboard, grabbed a mug, and filled it with coffee. She sat down at the small kitchen table and looked at her mother.
To her daughter’s eye, Christine Montgomery was still a beautiful woman. Her hair, a silvery white with only a few remaining streaks of black, swept over her shoulders. Though her face became more wrinkled with every passing year, it was as perfectly proportioned as a porcelain doll’s; her green eyes, pert nose, and thin mouth were just where they should be. Even at such an early hour, at almost sixty years of age, she had an air of grace about her.
Still, something was clearly wrong. As Clara watched, Christine took a hesitant step into the pantry, raised her arm as if she was about to grab something, but then quickly moved back, her face a mask of confusion.
“Mom? Is everything all right?”
“Of course it is,” Christine answered with little conviction, offering a smile that never quite managed to reach her eyes. “It’s just that since I was up, I thought I might make breakfast. I put on coffee and then opened the pantry, but that’s as far as I got…” Gesturing at the door, she added, “I kept thinking that if I stood here long enough, it’d come back to me, but I’ll be darned if I can remember what I wanted to make.”
“Why don’t we have pancakes?” Clara suggested, getting up from the table to gather the ingredients she would need.
“Now that sounds like a lovely idea!” her mother enthused.
Christine had always been one of the smartest and strongest women her daughter had ever known. When her husband had unexpectedly died in an automobile accident when Clara was a little girl, Christine had refused to let it keep her from living her life or raising her child as best she could. As Sunset’s librarian, she had an encyclopedic knowledge and was ready and willing to help answer any question. A well-schooled pianist, she played in recitals, at church services, and at the town’s annual Fourth of July picnic. She had plenty of friends, ladies with whom she gossiped, played bridge, and shared recipes. Everyone in town loved her.
But then, a little more than two years ago, something changed.
It began innocently enough; Christine complained that she couldn’t find her house keys, or that she had forgotten the name of her cousin’s youngest daughter. Clara hadn’t paid her mother’s memory troubles any mind. But then, one Sunday morning at church, Christina had repeatedly stumbled over a stanza she had played hundreds of times before. At her daughter’s insistence she had gone to the doctor, but nothing had been found to be wrong. Still, the problems worsened; she blanked on the names of lifelong friends, repeated questions again and again, and forgot to pay her bills. Finally, last year around Christmas, Bob Herring had called Clara to say that Christine had been sitting in her car out in front of his grocery store for more than an hour; when Clara arrived, her mother burst into tears, fearfully admitting that she couldn’t remember how to get home.
Slowly but surely, Christine began to distance herself from her friends, afraid that she would say or do something foolish. She quit her job at the library. She even stopped playing the piano. On the outside, she looked like the same person she had always been. But on the inside, Christine was withering away.
It was painful for Clara to watch. Eventually, with some prodding, she had managed to convince her mother to move in with her, as much for Christine’s safety as her daughter’s peace of mind. While making ends meet became harder than ever, there was simply no other choice.
“Did I hear the truck drive in?” her mother asked after she sat at the table. “I thought you were still in bed.”
“I…had a few errands to run,” Clara lied, thankful that she was getting some eggs out of the refrigerator and her back was turned; that way, Christine couldn’t see her face.
“So early? What was it that couldn’t wait?”
“Something for the bank…”
“Well, I just hope that Theo Fuller appreciates you,” her mother said, taking a sip of coffee. “It’s not often you find an employee so devoted to their job that they’d get up before sunrise on their day off!”
Clara had worked at the Sunset Bank and Trust since the war had conscripted most of the town’s men into the service; after Joe’s death, she’d stayed on. So while what she was telling her mother wasn’t the truth, at least it was believable. But the lie was still distasteful; though Christine had confused Theo for Eddie Fuller, the man’s son, who now ran the bank, Clara felt no need to correct her mother.
“What about Tommy? Is he still sleeping?”
“No, he…He left when I did…”
“That boy! Always up to something! The way he burns the candle at both ends, it’s a wonder he sleeps at all,” his grandmother exclaimed. “It seems like only yesterday he was racing down the steps on Christmas morning, wondering what Santa had brought him. Of course, he’s almost grown up now. It won’t be long before he leaves to start a life of his own.” With obvious pride, she added, “With the job you’ve done raising him, I’m sure he’ll end up right as rain.”
Clara cringed; she had purposefully left her mother in the dark about Tommy’s acts of mischief. Christine had enough problems of her own. For his part, her son behaved differently around his grandmother, more polite, more like the boy he used to be. Clara knew he cared deeply for Christine, that they had always been close, and that he, too, wanted to spare her more headaches, for which Clara was thankful. Still, right now, all she wanted was to talk to her mother about Tommy, to speak of her fears about what he was becoming, of how helpless she felt, unable to do anything to stop it. But she couldn’t say a word.
When it came to Tommy, she was on her own.
Once Clara finished making breakfast, she sat down and ate, talking with her mother about the weather and other innocent topics, feeling both guiltier and more alone with every word. When she finished eating, Clara took her dishes to the sink and began to clean them.
“I’m going to take a bath and get dressed,” she said. “I want to get out to the cemetery before the rain rolls in.”
“The cemetery?” her mother asked, confused. “What for? Is today a holiday? We were just there to put flowers on your father’s grave…”
Clara stopped scrubbing her plate. Her heart pounded and she felt tears rising, trying to overwhelm her already strained resolve. She took a deep breath in an attempt to compose herself. “No, Mom,” she said as calmly as she could. “Today is the anniversary of Joe’s death.”
Christine’s face fell. “Oh, sweetheart,” she said, her voice choking. “I’m so sorry. I should’ve known. It’s just this muddled head of mine…”
Wiping her hands on a towel, Clara sat down beside her mother. She smiled, taking Christine’s hands and giving them a gentle squeeze.
“It’s all right. You shouldn’t be expected to remember everything.”
Her mother wiped away a tear. “How long has it been?”
“Nine years.”
“I can’t believe it. It seems like only yesterday when those men came and…” Her voice trailed away.
Clara forced another smile; she’d had years of practice acting the opposite of how she really felt. “It was a long time ago.”
“It doesn’t matter how much time passes,” Christine said. “Your father’s been gone for decades and there isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t think of him. Even if my memory isn’t what it once was, I could never forget all he meant to me. So don’t ever let go of Joe. Treasure your time together, even if it was short. Keep everything, especially Tommy, close to your heart.”
Clara hugged her mother tightly. Over and over, she told herself to calm down, to keep her emotions under control; she fought back tears while quieting the thunderstorm raging in her heart. It had worked, at least for now.
But when she went to visit Joe, all bets were off.
Clara drove through the open gates of Sunset’s cemetery and the truck bumped down the long avenue that divided rows of tombstones. The afternoon sun glinted off stone and weathered iron markers. In the oldest part of the cemetery, rusted fences cordoned off family plots, while a towering obelisk leaned to one side, a memorial to the Walker family, the first to settle there more than a hundred years earlier.
Turning off the main road, Clara meandered along the creek that bordered the cemetery. Sunlight gave way to shade as she passed beneath tall elms and maples. Gravel crunched beneath the truck’s tires. On occasion, she had seen deer grazing here, their heads rising to watch as she drove past. It was a peaceful place, meant to soothe mourners as they came to visit those they’d lost.
But it had never comforted Clara.
In the years just after Joe had died, she had come often; she had stood in the pouring rain, wiped sweat from her brow, pushed away fallen leaves, and brushed snow from his stone. But now she visited only on the anniversary of his passing. Whereas once she’d sought answers to ease her pain and sadness, Clara had come to understand that the only things waiting for her here were more tears.
And she already had plenty of those.
Clara drove on as the road wound along the creek before finally climbing a short hill; when the truck crested it, she stopped.
Ahead, two men were pitching the pieces of a broken tombstone into a wheelbarrow. Immediately, Clara understood that this was the marker Tommy had been accused of knocking over. Fortunately, Joe’s grave was in the opposite direction, so she wouldn’t have to get too close; she imagined that the men would have been able to sense her shame, as if she was responsible.
