Riding Shotgun (40 page)

“The kids will do it. I’ve got to call Harmon about my suggestion to the Fincastles. I’m trying to make this deal work. You’ll have to excuse me.”

“I’ll make myself useful.”

Cig bit her lip. She wanted to take on Grace when
she
was calling the shots. Having her sister come over unannounced—not that she needed to announce herself, she never did—put her off balance. She knew she was fishing for excuses. It didn’t matter when she took out after Grace. It mattered that she did it. Pain and anger boiled inside her.

“Come up to the house.”

“Okay.” Grace tagged along thinking that Cig was a touch strange.

Once inside, Cig, reviving her courage, said, “I know you had an affair with Blackie and that he most likely died in the saddle, as they say.”

A long scratchy silence followed.

Grace pressed her lips together. To her credit she replied, “It’s true.”

“It doesn’t hurt me that he betrayed me. I’d gotten used to that. What hurts is that
you
betrayed me!”

“I didn’t think of it that way.” Grace’s eyes moistened.

“Don’t try to wriggle out of this.” Cig pushed Grace into the living room. “Now sit down and shut tap.” Grace did as she was told. “Did you think I wouldn’t care? Did you think I wouldn’t find out? Did you think at all?”

Grace folded her hands on her lap, a curiously restrained gesture. “I don’t know what to say.”

“That’s convenient,” came the sulfuric reply.

Suddenly Grace blazed. “I never loved you less.”

“Oh balls.”

“You didn’t want him anymore.”

“That didn’t mean you could sleep with him.” She rubbed her temples with her forefingers. “Did you love him?”

“No. He was great fun but I didn’t love him.”

“Did he love you?”

“I’m not sure Blackie loved anybody. You just shared his body for awhile.” She paused, her lower lip trembling. “He loved his children. He did do that.”

“So long as he didn’t have to care for them. All this crap about equal child care is just that.” She socked a sofa pillow, putting it behind her back. “As men go, he was responsible, I guess. I don’t think they love children as we do. At bottom, they really don’t. They can give their children up long before we can.”

“He loved them differently.”

“You certainly are defending him.”

“No. Men love differently.”

“Well, goddamned plenty of them can sure walk away from their kids.”

“Those aren’t real men. Those are guys who dumped their sperm somewhere. The point is, he was responsible. He paid the bills, even if he did get overextended. He didn’t drink to excess, take drugs, or gamble. His weakness was women.”

“Then why in God’s name did you have an affair with him?”

Grace blubbered. “I don’t know. It was so innocent in a way?”

“Innocent?” Cig bellowed.

Her voice rose to a thin pitch. “It was.”

“Stop crying—if you don’t I will knock your block off! You make me sick. You stab me in the back but you’re the one sobbing your little traitor’s heart out.”

“It didn’t mean anything. It was fun. You wouldn’t understand. My God, Cig, you’ve been a faithful wife—ruthlessly faithful.”

“Just what the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“You played the hardworking wife who endured infidelities, who stood by her man. You lapped up the respect it brought you.”

“I’m supposed to fuck around like you?”

“A little experience never hurt.” An edge crept into Grace’s wavering voice.

“Well, I guess I just had to live through you.”

Grace flared. “You’re perfect. Pluperfect. I think Mom and Dad took away your allowance once. Everyone had you on a pedestal.” She imitated a newscaster. “Pryor Chesterfield Deyhle, the child who can do no wrong. Straight As. Superior athlete. Always home by curfew. Gag me.”

“Listen here, beauty queen—”

“Don’t call me that!”

“You’ve traded on your looks since you were in kindergarten, you superficial shit.”

“I traded on my looks because they’re all I have. I am not a rocket scientist. With your brain, you could have done anything. So what did you do? You married John Blackwood. Your grades went to hell in college the minute you met him. You gave up.”

“I did not give up. And I didn’t always make straight As in high school.”

“You made them enough times for Mom to wave your report card under my nose and ask why wasn’t I more like my sister.”

“What do you mean I gave up?”

“You could have been somebody.”

“So could you. You didn’t have to marry a meal ticket and move back home. I thought you would take New York by storm.”

“No one takes New York by storm. It takes years to be discovered overnight and what would I be discovered at—having good manners at a party? Jeez, Cig, get real. I have no talent. I can’t see much beyond tomorrow. Will was a good bet. He’s still a good bet. I didn’t know the price would be this high.”

“So you add excitement to this dreary life of yours by seducing
my
husband?”

“Yes. Is that what you want me to say? Yes, yes, YES!”

“Revenge?”

“No. I really don’t think so.”

Cig calmed down. “A reasonable person would not sleep with her sister’s husband. It’s too close to home, forgive the old saw.”

“Cig, you didn’t want him anymore. Be honest.”

“I wanted him. I didn’t love him anymore. I couldn’t trust him. I can’t love someone I can’t trust.”

Grace burst into tears again. “And now you’ll never trust me.”

“Not around a man, no, I won’t trust you. Of course, what have you got to worry about? I’m not going out with anyone. I probably never will.”

“Everyone recently widowed says that.”

“Thank you, Psychology 101.” She threw a pillow at Grace’s head who ducked. “What are you, some kind of nymphomaniac?”

“No. I like men. I don’t sleep with every one of them.”

“Grace, has it ever occurred to you that actions have consequences?”

“Yes—usually after the fact. I never have learned, ‘Look before you leap,’” she ruefully confessed. “You know when Blackie and I started flirting, only flirting mind you, I didn’t think it would lead anywhere. And when it did, I don’t
know, I didn’t worry about it. Like I said, it seemed so innocent.”

‘You knew you were anything but innocent. You tell me everything. You lied about this.”

“I didn’t lie. I—withheld the truth.”

“Liar.”

“Oh, have it your way, Cig. You’re always right! What would you have had me do—rush up and blab, ‘Cig, Blackie and I kind of tumbled into it. Hope you don’t mind. Really, it doesn’t mean a thing.’”

“You could have stopped after the first time.”

“I suppose I could—but I didn’t. And Blackie had enough for everyone. You weren’t cheated.”

“That’s the biggest bunch of bullshit I’ve ever heard in my entire life! Because he has enough energy to have sex with me, it’s okay? What are we, stuffed olives? He just went around jamming in the pimento?”

“How do I know what he thought?”

“Did he say he loved you?”

Grace stalled. “He did but it wasn’t romantic.”

“I am going to throw up. Better, I’ll throw up and rub your face in it.”

Woodrow jumped off the bed upstairs. They could hear him.

‘You’ve got to put that cat on a diet.”

“Jesus, fuck my husband, lie to me, come into my house and complain that my cat is too fat. You’re a real piece of work. The coup de grace.”

“Touché.” Grace put her head in her hands. “What we were doing didn’t seem so awful at the time. I told you that. I didn’t feel like I was sticking a knife in your back. Now, well, now I don’t feel so good.”

“Good. If I’m going to be miserable I’d like you to be positively rotten.”

Grace lifted her head. “I don’t think we’re the first sisters to share a man.”

“Great. You want to go on Oprah Winfrey with other siblings?”

“Thought you threw out your TV.”

“How’d you know?”

“Laura called. She wanted to know if you should see a therapist.”

“Because I threw away a goddamned television set?” Cig snorted.

“She also said you said
goddamned
a lot.”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake.” Cig rose and rooted around in the big rosewood box on the coffee table. She fetched a pack of Lucky Strike unfiltered cigarettes.

“You gave those up!”

“I’m reviving the habit.” She walked into the kitchen, lit the little white tobacco stick off the gas stove, clicked off the flame and leaned against the stove, inhaling that first soothing hit of nicotine. “God bless the Indians who first cultivated this weed.”

“Thank God our family made its fortune in peanuts.” Grace sniffed, having followed her into the kitchen. “I’d feel guilty if we’d made money in tobacco. ‘Course we lost everything in 1865 so I guess it doesn’t matter.”

“We started out in tobacco like everyone else in the seventeenth century.”

“How do you know?”

“I’m reading the Deyhle papers.”

“I don’t remember anything about tobacco.”

“Doesn’t matter.”

“You know, it’s bad for your lungs, it’s bad for the kids’ lungs, and you look like a 1940s movie star in drag.”

“Tough. I need this cigarette. And since when have you become a health fascist?”

Grace barked, “I suppose I need to feel morally superior about something.”

“That’s a riveting insight.”

“Oh, shut up, Cig, and sit down. Just don’t blow that garbage in my face.”

Cig circled her sister, ducked down, putting her face right in front of Grace’s, letting out a mouthful of blue smoke. “Love you, baby Sis.”

Grace coughed, put her hand to her throat, and sputtered, “You’re such a bully. You always were a bully.”

Cig hit the chair with a grunt. “I was bigger than the boys until tenth grade.”

“You’re still bigger than half of them. That’s why you married Blackie. He was taller than you.”

“I did not.”

“Did so. You swore you’d never marry a man shorter than you were.”

“I did not.” Cig leaned back in her chair and put her boots on the table, which also disgusted Grace.

“You most certainly did. We were in your bedroom. It was your senior year in high school and John Root asked you to the prom. You said you wouldn’t go with him because he was shorter than you.”

“That’s not why I didn’t go with him. Georgette DeRosa broke up with him that weekend and he asked me as a second choice. I wasn’t going to be his reserve date.”

Grace twirled her fingers. “I don’t remember it that way.”

“Of course not. You don’t remember the Ten Commandments either.”

Grace clenched her fists. “You’re so clever. You rarely let slip, an opportunity to make me feel stupid.”

“Yeah, well, you rarely let slip an opportunity to make me feel clumsy and plain.”

“That is just not true.”

“Grace, get real.”

“When we were in high school the female model was petite and terminally cute. Every family sitcom had Miss Adorable in it. I’m smaller than you. Is that my fault? You grew into a statuesque woman. You’re very good looking. I think Harleyetta West has had a crush on you for years.” A gleeful glint of malice shone in Grace’s eyes.

Cig laughed. She couldn’t help it. She wanted to hate Grace, but that emotion fluctuated with the sheer enjoyment of her sister’s company.

“Grace, Harleyetta does not have a crush on me and if she did she’d be barking up the wrong tree. I’ve got enough on my hands right now. In fact”—a flash of delicious malice crossed her face—“you probably slept with Blackie because of unresolved sexual conflicts over me.”

Grace’s mouth dropped open. “You have been watching those talk shows.”

They both laughed so hard that Cig almost fell off her chair, the anger dissipating in the ritual of their relationship, the give and take of sisters.

Grace continued, “Lesbian incest. Oh I love it—but I didn’t sleep with Blackie because of some unresolved sexual conflict. He just hit me that way.”

“You went to bed with Frances Atkins though.”

“How did you know that!”

“I’m not entirely stupid. You were spending too much time at the Kappa Kappa Gamma house way back when.”

“Well…” Grace’s voice trailed off. “I’m going to be dead a long time so I can’t see denying myself any pleasure.”

“Obviously. No wonder you’re encouraging my daughter to have a jolly old time.” Cig took a deep drag and rolled her eyes heavenward. “What’d you think?”

“About what?”

“About Frances Atkins.”

“Oh, she was fabulous.”

“She was drop-dead gorgeous, that’s for sure.”

“No one even had a clue. I mean if Frances thought anyone suspected for a single second she would have detonated. How’d you know?”

“I’m your sister. I
know
you.”

“Then,” Grace replied triumphantly, “you did know about Blackie and me.”

“Did not.”

“Did, too!”

Cig stubbed out the Lucky. “Okay, maybe I felt something, but that’s not something you want to feel. I’m not immune to tension or hot looks. But you two covered your tracks, and since he screwed around all the time I’d stopped worrying about the latest. I didn’t think it would be you, but you’re right. If I had thought about it, if I had wanted to know, I’d have known.”

“Feeling is knowing.”

“Not in America it isn’t. Everything has to be spoken before it’s considered real. Spoken, hell, it’s got to be
shouted, advertised, picked over, and analyzed until there isn’t a drop of surprise or originality left. Analysis is paralysis.”

“Don’t get cultural. I don’t need a lecture. This is you and me. And I say feeling is knowing.”

Cig threw up her hands. “You win. You’re right.”

“Jeez, you make me work hard.”

“Tell me. Did you love him?”

“Not as much as I love you.”

“It’s not the same. We’re blood. So you did love him? Tell me the rock-bottom truth.”

Grace nodded, her eyes watery. “He liked champagne or trouble, whichever came first. He was irresistible.” Cig nodded so Grace went on. “I knew he’d get tired of me eventually, and I sometimes think part of his attraction for me was the thrill of playing with fire. It’s one thing to sleep with women other than your wife. It’s another to sleep with your wife’s sister. I knew all that—and I didn’t care.”