Deaths of Jocasta (50 page)

Danny hadn’t moved, still standing in the middle of the kitchen with her arms crossed. Elly was distractedly stroking Beowulf. I wondered what they thought of my…confession, there was no other word for it.

“I put shit in Bayard’s bed exactly once. I never did it again. Not after…after I got punished. All the tricks I told you I pulled on him? I lied about them. Not lied…just reversed who did what to whom.” More than anything, this was the past that I wished obliterated. I had used Danny, and my lies to her, as a way to escape it, to deny that it—incest—a word I still flinched to use, had happened to me.

“And…and…” I faltered, afraid to finally let out my most humiliating secrets. I stared at the floor, unable to look at Danny anymore. “I told you he got Uncle Claude’s gun and demanded I give him a blow job…remember I said I refused, daring him to pull the trigger? I lied…I…did it. I was too chicken-shit to say no. Only once did he play with the gun…and it wasn’t loaded. I’d said yes…too often to bother saying no. I just couldn’t…”

I was still unable to look at Danny. Or Elly. I turned away, leaning onto the counter.

“So you see, Danno, I lied a lot. When you said you loved me…it wasn’t me you loved, but the person I’d invented for you. Having sex with you was easy. I wanted…you to touch me. But talking to you scared me. I knew you’d start catching my lies.

“And when you caught enough of them…when you found out who I really was…you’d hate me.

“That’s when I started sleeping around on you. Why I came in drunk and fucked up all the time. Why I told you…everything I did. That wasn’t really me. And it was easier…easier for me, if you hated me for something I wasn’t rather than something I was.

“I’m sorry, Danny.” The past had come to claim me. I was who I was. What had happened had happened. There was nothing else to say. I stood for a moment, took a deep breath, then turned to go.

Danny still didn’t say anything, but she put her arms around me. When I started crying, she put a hand on the back of my head and gently brought my head down to rest on her shoulder.

“Oh, shit, Danny, I’m so sorry,” I said.

“Shh, honey, it’s okay,” she replied, stroking my hair.

“For what it’s worth, Danno,” I said, finally raising my head and wiping my eyes, “you couldn’t have scared me so much if I didn’t…care a lot for you.”

“Mick,” she said, putting a hand against my cheek, “I didn’t believe half those stories you told. And the other half, I had my doubts about.”

“Now you tell me,” I answered, sniffling.

“Blow your nose,” she said, letting go to hand me a tissue.

I noticed that Danny had wet streaks down her cheeks.

“Did I make you cry?”

“No, I’ve been chopping onions,” she responded. “Of course you did, you goof. And,” Danny took me firmly by the shoulders, “what sort of shit do you think I am, that I would…would want to do anything but blow that fucker’s brains out?”

“I am…I was…so ashamed.”

“That’s how those bastards work. They dig their hooks in so deeply, twisting you with guilt and shame. Like you had a choice.”

“I could’ve…told him to go ahead and shoot me. Like I said I did.”

“Bullshit!” Danny exploded. “How old were you? When it started?”

“Uh…maybe thirteen. Just growing tits.”

“Something you had a lot of choice in. How old was he?”

“Eighteen.”

“So a guy five years older than you, in a household where he’s God’s gift to mankind and you’re lower than a dog, demands a blow job, and you could have said no?”

“Well…”

“Tell me this, if you’d run to your aunt with his semen dripping down your shirt, what would have happened?”

I shrugged resignedly. “Nothing. He would have come up with some lie that she wanted to believe.”

“Uh-huh. And you can bet he knew that. He didn’t need the gun. That was just for kicks. Another penis to assault you with.”

I almost started to cry again, stopped only by Danny’s hand on my shoulder.

“Hell, Mick,” Danny continued, “Robbery I can understand. Murder even makes sense at times. But not child abuse. Not sexually abusing a child,” she added vehemently.

“I wasn’t really a child. Not seven years old with a forty-year-old.”

“I thought you had better sense than that,” Danny interrupted. “Don’t rank pain. It hurts. It all hurts.”

“Yeah. And the worst thing is how you go on hurting other people, people you should love, because you got hurt.”

“Naw, the worst thing is being used the way you were used. That’s much worse than anything you did to me.”

“Don’t rank pain,” I told her.

“Deliberate cruelty is always worse,” Danny replied. “What your cousin did to you was deliberate. And cruel.”

“Thank you, Danno,” I answered.

Elly poked her head in the kitchen. She had discreetly disappeared into the living room.

“You two friends again?” she inquired.

“I hope so,” I replied.

“Definitely,” Danny added. “Now…oh, hell, have I burned dinner?”

“No,” Elly said, “I turned the burners off.”

“Good woman,” Danny said as she restarted the chicken.

I got an invitation to dinner. Followed by an invitation to stay the night. Then an invitation to go out to Bayou St. Jack’s with them for the weekend.

“My parents like you,” Danny explained. “Local girl and all that. If they see you talking to Elly, maybe they’ll do likewise.”

I agreed to not only go, but invited them to stay at the shipyard.

“Good,” Elly accepted. “Danny and I can sleep in the same bed. Finally. I’m tired of the couch in her parents’ living room.”

Midway through dinner, Danny turned to me and said, “I guess I owe you an apology, too. I said some things I had no right to say.”

“It’s okay.” I shrugged.

“And go ahead and sleep with Cordelia. You’re both adults.”

“Nice of you to notice,” I replied.

“But,” Danny continued, “six months, Mick. You can have an affair with Cordelia, but if you drop her in less than six months, I’m coming after you.”

“Yes, ma’am.” I saluted.

“I don’t know…I just remember Cordelia right after Kathy died. She seemed…colorless,” Danny said quietly. “I hadn’t known her very long then. It’s the people who don’t cling to you, don’t whine and plead and claim they can’t bear it, that I feel for. Because they bear their own burdens so quietly. She withdrew a little piece of herself. Just wrapped it up and put it away.”

“She’s one of those rare people who doesn’t assume that her tragedies are the worst,” Elly added.

“Not to mention that her love life hasn’t been…well, Roman candles all around,” Danny said.

“Maybe she needs a cherry bomb like me,” I suggested.

“Well phrased,” Danny commented dryly. “So maybe I get a tiny bit overprotective of Cordelia,” she admitted. “But, I mean it, Mick, six months.”

“Danno? What happens if she breaks up with me?”

“It depends on whose fault it is,” Danny said ominously, then in a serious tone, “Just be kind to her.”

“I will,” I promised. “I’ll try.” I wondered if I would get the chance.

“Do that,” Danny admonished.

I nodded, then got up to help Elly with the dishes. After they were done, I dialed Joanne’s number to tell her that I had been wrong about not getting an invitation for the night. Alex answered. Joanne wasn’t home yet.

I told Alex that Danny and I were back on speaking terms again.

“Good,” she answered. “And I was so worried about seating arrangements.” Then she called out, “C.J., all’s well that ends well. Mick and Danny can be safely invited into the same room.”

“Cordelia’s there?” I asked.

“Yeah, she’s keeping me from biting my nails down to my shoulders waiting for Joanne. I don’t think I like the idea that people might shoot at her.”

“She’ll be okay. Joanne’s tough. And smart,” I reassured Alex.

“I hope so,” Alex replied. “Oh, Cordelia says to tell Danny not to let you get into any trouble.”

“Me? Never.”

“Stay away from strange men with bombs.”

“I stay away from strange men, period,” I answered. “Ask Cordelia if I’m still hired.”

I heard Alex asking her and her indistinct reply in the background.

“She says,” Alex came back on the line, “that you can discuss it on Monday and, in the meantime, Danny is not to let you out of her sight.”

“Tell her that that presents problems with going to the bathroom, not to mention sleeping arrangements.”

I heard Alex repeating my comment to Cordelia, then some banter between the two of them and Cordelia came on the line.

“Micky, I am serious. You’ve had two attempts on your life. Betty’s dead, and so are four other women. These men play for keeps.”

“Aw, Maw, if I put on my galoshes and my gun, can’t I go out and play?”

“Micky,” she remonstrated, “I don’t care to spend the whole weekend worrying,”

“Oops,” I said, “then I’d better not tell you what I’m doing.”

“What?” she demanded. “Don’t you dare…”

“Trying to convince Danny’s parents that Elly isn’t an evil influence on their darling daughter,” I interrupted. “We’re spending the weekend out at Bayou St. Jack’s.”

“Show up at the clinic Monday morning. We’ll discuss it,” she replied after letting my frivolity sink in.

“Okay.”

“I mean it,” she said.

“Okay. Bright and early. You got it.”

“Well?” Danny asked, ever the attorney, after I got off the phone.

“We’ll discuss it on Monday. I think my life’s improving.”

“Good.”

“And I’ve got my friends back,” I told them, smiling at both Danny and Elly.

“Now all you have to do is worry about the men who are trying to kill you,” Elly said.

Right. Them.

If I was to be at the clinic bright and early Monday morning, I had to stop by my place even brighter and earlier. Clean underwear had become a necessity. I had borrowed some of Danny’s. But the best way to become an unwelcome house guest is to use up your host’s panties.

Danny insisted on accompanying me, following Cordelia’s instructions to the letter. She didn’t let me out of her sight, trailing me into my apartment and back out, until we had thoroughly inspected my car, in case a bomb had been planted in it.

I told her not to worry about me, that I was packing a pistol, and we waved good-bye. I drove to the clinic, shrugging my jacket back on before I got out. Pistol-packin’ mamas need to be discreet.

“Micky, good to have you back,” Millie greeted me as I poked my head into the office.

“Hi, Micky,” Bernie chimed in.

“Any more threats, bomb or otherwise?” I asked. I was, after all, working. I hoped.

“Nope, all quiet on that front,” Millie answered.

Cordelia came hurrying out of her office.

“I have to go…oh, hi, Micky,” she said with a quick smile in my direction, then continued, “I have to go to the hospital. An hour or two, I hope. Bernie, see if you can reschedule some of my patients, so we don’t get too crunched up. Millie, just carry on,” she instructed.

Both Bernie and Millie nodded.

“Micky, stay out of trouble,” she said as she passed me on her way out.

“I’ll try,” I agreed.

“Hard. Very hard,” she stipulated without stopping. Then she was gone.

“Well, better tell the naked ones to get dressed,” Millie said as she went back to the examining rooms.

Bernie got busy on the phones.

I took a walk around the building, hoping not to find any more bodies.

A few more working lights had been added to the basement. The police, I wondered, or the building staff? Nothing down here but hot air and dirt.

The second floor was being worked on. A few of the rooms had been freshly painted, some with chairs and tables neatly arranged for the day’s activities.

It was too hot to wander around outside, particularly wearing a jacket and leather shoulder holster. I went back downstairs to the clinic office.

“Mick, there was a phone call for you,” Bernie told me. She handed me a number.

“What did they want?” I asked, looking at the number. “No name?”

“Didn’t leave one. She sounded old. Something about wanting to hire you.”

I nodded and headed for Cordelia’s office to use her phone.

The number was long distance, a 601 area code, which meant my mysterious caller was in Mississippi.

I dialed the number.

“Hello?” a querulous voice answered.

I explained who I was.

“Yes,” she answered. “I got your number from Sister Ann. She recommended you highly. I need a private investigator. I’m very sorry, I have to ask you to come out here. I can’t explain over the phone, and I can’t really get around much. I’m an invalid. It’s very important that you come as soon as you can.”