Paint Me Fearless, page 24
“Aioli? Wow. He’s practically a master chef.” Robin laughed. “Where are you now? Sounds like you just went into a store. You’re out of breath.”
“At the grocery store,” I lied, switching off FaceTime, huffing as I placed the empty oxycodone prescription bottle on the pharmacy counter.
The clerk pushed the be-aware-that-this-is-a-narcotic form over for me to sign.
“Yeah, he’s ready to get back to work,” I told Robin. “He’s going to take a supervisory role on the next offshore tour. Hopefully, it won’t be too much strain on his back.”
“Is that necessary? I mean, if y’all need money—”
“—no, we’re fine.” Of course we need money.
Why else would I be selling away my memories? And it wasn’t easy. Because Lenny was home all the time, I had to sneak around, quietly carting Sunny’s art into my car while he was preoccupied or in the bathroom. There were things that Lenny just couldn’t handle, and the extent of our money problems was one of them. He’d practically been doubled over in pain before the kids and I made him go to the doctor. And getting him to agree to have the surgery had been another battle.
The pharmacy clerk took the cash I gave her and handed me the receipt. The other thing Lenny couldn’t handle was the extent of my… habit. And that’s all it was really. I just tended to get a little nervous when I didn’t have stash on hand. Occasionally I’d buy weed from Brad, as it helped me relax when I had a night to myself, like when Lenny was offshore, and the kids were busy.
But now that Lenny was home all the time, and the bills were piling up, I’d been feeling tense and edgy. Wound tight, as Brad would say. And those pills of Lenny’s were just wasting away because he insisted he didn’t need them.
I hadn’t meant to take any, but one night I just couldn’t make the bad thoughts go away. I tried saying the Lord’s Prayer, I tried reading my devotional, and I even tried listening to worship music. But as hard as I tried to hold on to the memory of Sunny’s bright, shiny face, the image was devoured by the excruciating last moments of her broken life.
And then I took one pill. Just one. And I found oblivion.
“Desi. Where are you now? Put me back on FaceTime.”
“I’m headed back to Shady Gully.” My hatred of FaceTime increasing by the minute, I begrudgingly mounted my phone and turned her on again. “You look gaunt,” I snapped. “Like you’re starving. You’re not taking those diet pills again, are you?”
A kaleidoscope of emotions flitted across Robin’s FaceTime face. I really was losing my mind. Lashing out at Robin wouldn’t help anything. “Have you heard from Ernie and Max lately?” I asked nicely, “What’s their take on the dueling churches?”
“No. I get a ‘Happy Birthday’ text or a ‘Merry Christmas’ text, but we don’t talk often. Can you believe that? I’m fresh out of Shady Gully sources.”
“Word is Jesse’s leading on the number of cars in the parking lot, but James landed Brother Wyatt’s attendance the first Sunday, so I guess it’s a wash.”
“Where’d y’all go?”
“We flipped a coin. Landed in favor of Jesse. But when Lenny saw that it was called Jesse’s Church of Christ, we went next door to James’s Church. Lenny’s roots are Catholic, remember, so it’s all getting to be a bit much for him.”
“Poor Lenny,” Robin said.
Eventually Robin signed off to go to her mysterious meeting in Louisville, and I made it to the Shady Gully exit. I processed the pros and cons of my morning. I lost my job and I lost six more of Sunny’s paintings. But I had money to pay bills and a bottle of pills to ward off the bad thoughts. Much like the dueling churches, my morning was a wash.
†††
Micah was at cheerleading camp for a week. Luke was in the midst of finals. And Petey was either on his way to the small town of Naryville to meet Tammy Jo’s parents or hanging out with his friends in Shady Gully. I was helping Lenny pack for his first trip offshore since the surgery.
“I put in the heating pad in case you start aching,” I told him. “Remember, you can make it cold too, if that feels better to you.”
“I got it. I’m gonna be fine. Oh, did you put my Harry Bosch book in?”
“I can’t believe you’re a reader now.” I patted his suitcase top. “Yes, I put it in. You’ll be able to see who did it.”
“Oh, no worries there. Harry always gets his guy.” Lenny’s brow furrowed. “You think I should take a few of those pills with me?”
I held my breath, kept my face normal. “Yeah, just in case. Are you hurting?”
“No, I feel good. Just thinking, in case of an emergency.”
“I’ll go get them. I moved them a while back.” I casually walked out of the bedroom, leaving Lenny to pack his underwear and T-shirts. In Luke’s room, behind some of Sunny’s old paint supplies, I gathered a handful of the pills from the bottle. In the kitchen I sealed them in a bag and brought them to Lenny. When I walked back into our bedroom, I gasped.
Leaning against the bed was Winston. In a frame. I’d never seen it, but the painting captured his little egg-shaped head and his long, droopy ears. His tongue lolled, and his smile was crooked. Sunny had captured his essence perfectly.
“Oh… Oh Lenny. Where did you—”
“I wanted to surprise you. I was gonna leave it where you could find it this week. But you know me, I’m kind of impatient.”
I knelt next to the painting, held it up, pulled it toward my face. “I never knew she did this,” I cried.
“Me neither. The boys and I paid Tom and Wanda a visit yesterday. Looked through his closet, the shed in the back.”
“What did he do? Was he hateful?”
“No, he was meek actually. When we found this in the laundry room, the old reprobate was even contrite.”
“Thank you, Lenny.” My sobs were soundless, just tears falling at will. “I love you.”
“I love you too, Desi. And rest assured, you’ve got all her paintings now.”
I stood up and held on to him for dear life. Several minutes later when he set me aside and whispered that he’d better get on the road, my heart broke in two.
†††
I swallowed half of one of Lenny’s pills with a glass of iced tea. It was early evening, the sun was setting, and I’d set the painting of Winston against the wicker chair on the porch. I kicked my feet up on the ottoman and watched the sun set, hoping relaxation and the notion of my childhood dog would ease me into oblivion.
It didn’t. Maybe because I wanted it so badly. Maybe because I’d only taken half a pill. I wondered if Lenny had made it safely. I wondered if Petey and Tammy Jo had decided to go to Naryville or hang out here with his friends. I wondered about Micah, my little shining star at cheerleading camp in Natchitoches, Louisiana.
I closed my eyes and prayed that the tingling burn in my stomach would spread and settle my qualms, run off my bad thoughts. To hurry the process along, I picked up my phone and called Robin. It took forever for her to answer, and when she did, it was obvious I’d interrupted something. She seemed unusually distraught, along with another ingredient I couldn’t identify. Resolve? Fear? She finally told me she couldn’t talk, but that she’d call me later.
“Okay.” I sighed, sweating in the Louisiana humidity. I raised my housedress to my thighs and fanned my chubby legs. The dress was an ugly tent of a thing with orange and yellow flowers, but who cared? It didn’t bind me up and make me miserable. Eventually, I was going to have to lose weight. I guessed.
I dialed Harry’s number. It was an hour earlier in Santa Fe. I’d like to hear his voice, hear him call me pumpkin again, even if I had to go through Connie to do it. But the line rang and rang there as well. “Okay.” I sighed again, gulping my sugary tea, checking the time on my phone.
A text chimed, and I saw Connie’s moniker. She explained that Daddy was asleep, and she hated waking him since he’d been feeling bad lately. Wow. So that was how it was gonna be. I’d have to go through Connie the Gatekeeper to talk to my father.
I worried that he was sick, that he was aging. I needed to do better checking in with him. I’d add him to my growing list of worries and regrets. Along with Lenny’s health, paying bills, and losing enough weight to make breathing in this humidity easier.
I set my glass of tea down and stared at Winston for a minute. When he didn’t respond, I picked up my phone and sent a text.
Hey, I typed, what’s up?
Several minutes went by before I decided heck with it—I’d take the other half of Lenny’s pill and have some ice cream. And then I heard a ding.
Wolfheart said, Meet you at Cicada in twenty.
Chapter Twenty-One
The Before
Robin (98.4 Pounds)
While I sensed the boredom and neediness in Desi’s voice, I simply couldn’t talk to her. I promised I’d call later, and I would, but first I had to deal with the drama in my own household.
Not only was Dean out of town—again—but Violet and Sterling were about to get on the road to return to North Carolina. “It’s so late,” I told Sterling, worried they’d be driving in the dark hours of the night. “Why don’t y’all just stay here tonight and leave early in the morning?”
“Mom.” He rolled his eyes. “The traffic will be worse then, and besides, ‘Rambler’ likes night driving.” Not only had he named his new car, but apparently it had its own preferences and partialities. I just raised my eyebrows and returned my focus to Violet.
After what she’d told me earlier, I knew I needed some time with her. And I could tell by the way she fidgeted that she was upset. I looked firmly at Sterling, took in his thick dark hair and handsome, muscular frame. “Fine,” I told him. “But I need Violet to help me with something first.”
When Sterling scoffed, Violet made a big show of mocking me as well. After an impressive performance, she followed me into the sitting room in the master bedroom. “Mama,” she said, “why are you making a big deal of this?”
“I’m not. It’s not.”
She plopped her Dr Pepper can on the mahogany coffee table and folded her lithe, lanky frame onto the down feather loveseat. “Whatever.”
“Violet, you are a beautiful young woman.” I moved the Dr Pepper can onto a coaster. “You’re being silly.”
“I’m just not going to go.” She stubbornly tucked a strand of wispy, dirty blonde hair behind her ear. “Dances are dumb anyway.”
A cute boy had invited her to a dance at school. It was spur of the moment, so she was flummoxed because she had nothing to wear. In Violet’s case, this was probably true. She was like her father. Smart, logical, and no nonsense. There would be no space in her closet or in her focused, driven world for something as frivolous as clothes.
She’d been flipping through the cocktail dresses in my closet, happily chattering about this boy’s shy smile and cute dimples, when she saw something she didn’t hate. “Wow, this isn’t horrible.”
It was a $1,500 Antonio Melani dress. “I’m glad you like it.” It was a simple black dress, timeless and elegant. “You could wear it with those red ankle straps we bought you at Christmas.”
“That’s what I was thinking.” She grinned, stepping into the dress, and turning for me to zip her up. “It’s a little short on me, Mama. You’re such a shrimp.”
“Yes, but it’s perfect to show off your long legs,” I told her. “That’s the way the girls wear everything now anyway.” I tugged on the zipper, but it wouldn’t go all the way up.
“Zip it. Come on.”
“I am. Hold on.” It wouldn’t zip, and I knew she’d be disappointed. My mind had already moved to alternatives in my closet when I realized she was troubled. “Don’t worry. I have other outfits.”
“No, you don’t. Nothing like this. I’m just too fat.”
“Violet, that’s ridiculous.” She was tall like Dean and perfectly curvy. “You just need a different size. Maybe I can have it altered. How soon do you need it?”
She twisted with irritation, insisting I unzip her. “It’s so embarrassing. I can’t even fit into my mom’s clothes.”
“It’s because I’m so short—”
“And skinny.”
“No,” I said emphatically. “That’s not it.”
“It’s okay,” she quipped, already pulling on her blue jeans. “Lance is a dork anyway.”
But I saw tears in her eyes when she stormed out of my room.
As I sat now and looked at my beautiful daughter on the love seat, I was stricken with the fear that history was repeating itself. Violet chugged her Dr Pepper and returned it to the mahogany coffee table, once again ignoring the coaster.
How could this be? Had all my dieting and obsessing over my weight caused this? I’d been a horrible example. My mind raced with the best way to address her insecurities. Nothing had worked for me. Mama had always brought up God and church and assured me that Jesus loved me just the way I was, but that hadn’t worked. Sunny had got me diet pills, and that…
Had it worked? If I’d never got the diet pills, I’d probably be as big as Desi now. So yes, it had worked. And yet my life had been defined by my weight. My days were determined by the scales. If the results were good, I’d get out and embrace the day with a little optimism. If not, I’d close the curtains and spare the world the disgust of having to see me.
So maybe the blessed trifecta hadn’t worked after all. Maybe my wise mother, Mabel, had been right all along. I felt a pang of guilt for never telling her about my trip to the fat doctor. She’d have stopped me in my tracks for sure.
“Violet, you’re beautiful. And smart. Please don’t allow these negative thoughts to enter your head. It’s just the devil telling you lies.”
She looked at me strangely, and I realized I sounded just like my mother. And yet I couldn’t seem to stop. “I’ve been thinking, you know that little church right off campus? You and Sterling should go.”
“Oh geez, Mama. I don’t hang around with him at school.”
“Well, you and some of your girlfriends then. And next time y’all come, I think we should all go to that big church downtown. As a family.” Even when Violet’s eyes widened in shock, I pushed on. “Jesus loves you just the way you are. He made you exactly the way he wants you.”
I swear, those words came straight from Mabel.
“Yeah, I know that, Mama. But how does that help me now? In this life? In this world? When I’m such an amazon compared to all the other girls. I feel like everyone is always looking at me and laughing at me.”
“Violet, feelings aren’t reality.” Preach it, Mabel. “They’re probably looking at you because you’re so smart.” I was rather enjoying preaching what I myself didn’t practice, but my sermon was interrupted when Sterling hollered from the kitchen.
“We’re burning daylight! The sun has set! Let’s go!”
Violet jumped up, eager to end the conversation.
“Use the credit card, go to the mall down there, and find yourself something beautiful. Violet, you should go to the dance with this boy.”
“I don’t know.” She shrugged. “Bye, Mama.” She seemed suddenly fine, as if she were already on to the next thing. What a blessing, I thought. Maybe I’d overreacted and she wasn’t at all like me.
†††
I settled down with a glass of wine and my phone. I was just about to click on Desi’s face, when another number popped onto the screen.
It was a Louisville number. From Columbo, Inc. My heart dropped. I’d almost forgot about hiring the private detective. I answered tentatively, “Hello? Xavier?”
“Yes, ma’am. How are you?” He sounded muffled, as if he were in an airport. “I didn’t catch you at a bad time, did I?”
“No. Not at all. Do you… have something?”
“Yes, ma’am. I’m sorry to say, I do.” He cleared his throat. “Actually, I know it’s short notice, but I’m on my way to Lexington now. For another job later. But I could meet you somewhere in town.”
I was having trouble finding my voice. I couldn’t really believe it. All this time, deep down I never really believed Dean would cheat on me.
“Or we could wait until another day. I’ve got some time Tuesday.”
“No. I’d rather meet tonight. In fact, Dean’s out of town… but, ” I said in a squeaky voice, “I guess you already know that.” I attempted a casual chuckle, but it came out as an anguished cry. “You could just come here. To my home.”
“Okay. Are you sure?”
“Yes. I’ll be here. Xavier, can you tell me who she is?”
“Uh, ma’am, I’d rather wait until I can sit down with you. I promise I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”
†††
Fifteen minutes. Those fifteen minutes were the most agonizing and torturous I’d ever had, and yet, they were a precious gift too. I savored them. Like a parent who was oblivious until they got that call in the middle of the night. It was the before to a life forever more defined as the after. After the accident. After the red and blue lights flashed outside my house and the knock on my door divided my life in two. Forever more distinguishing The Before from The After.
I sat quietly at the kitchen table. Unable to drink the wine I’d poured for my conversation with Desi. I found myself doing something I hadn’t done for years. Praying.
Maybe it was looking into a mirror and seeing myself through the insecurities in my own daughter. Seeing the falseness of them. Seeing the destructive power in them. Afraid my baby girl would be consumed by the lies of them.
Maybe it was my mother’s voice and words and will stepping in to speak and act when I couldn’t. Whatever it was, I prayed for grace and strength. In a twisted way, I was even grateful.
