The Hellion (8 page)

just as they'd always planned for us." His sad
  
85 smile was aimed at the ring with which he continued to toy. She dropped her eyes to it and laughed once, a sad little sound.

"Their alma maters."

His pained eyes moved to hers. "While the baby went on to new parents."

She lifted her eyes and nodded silently.

"Do you know who got her? What kind of people they are?"

Oh, God, she thought, can I go through all this again? Must we dredge up old regrets and form new recriminations for what can never be changed? But he waited, and he deserved to know the little she'd been told.

"They're both Baptist, and college graduates. They had one other adopted daughter three years older, and they live somewhere in the Flint area."

"That's all? That's all you know?"

"Yes. They didn't tell you much in those days."

"Not even her name?"

For the first time self-consciousness struck Rachel. She withdrew her hand and picked up her

glass, lifting it to her lips. "Oh, Tommy Lee, what does it matter now?"

With one finger he pushed down on the rim of her glass, preventing her from taking a drink. "It matters, Rachel. It matters."

She didn't want to tell him. She didn't want him to impose new meanings on a decision made years ago by a mixed-up girl scarcely past adolescence. But, again, he had a right to know.

She lowered her glass, drew a deep breath, and admitted, "They let me name her."

"And?"

Even before she answered, she felt a full-body flush, but there was no escaping the truth. "I named her Beth."

His shoulders recoiled against the back of the chair as if he'd taken a load of buckshot, and his shocked face blanched. "Oh, Jesus," he whispered, and jerked from his seat to stand with both palms flat against the glass door as if doing vertical push-ups. "Rachel, I need something a little stronger right now than lime water. Have you got anything else in the house?"

The proof of his habits came as a disappointment, but she supposed this catharsis was

adequate reason for needing a drink.
     
87 She rose from her chair and found her knees shaky as she moved into the family room.

"We never kept much around the house, but Owen had a couple of bottles somewhere in here."

As her voice trailed away, Tommy Lee pressed against the glass, then, realizing what he was doing, snapped back and stared at his own palm prints on the spotless surface. He turned to follow Rachel, scarcely noticing the plush sofas and built-in shelves of the room she had entered. He was trying to blot out the picture of her on a delivery table, giving birth to their daughter, then naming her Beth.

Rachel was squatting before a low set of doors on the far wall. She reached into the cupboard, withdrew a bottle, read its label, and reiterated, "I'm afraid we don't have much of a selection."

His voice sounded just behind her shoulder.

"Anything you've got. That's fine."

"It's scotch."

"It'll do, Rachel. I'm not fussy."

"I don't know anything about mixing drinks." From over her shoulder the bottle was taken out of her

hands.

"I do." She swung around and stood watching as he returned to the kitchen, obviously in a hurry. When she reentered the room he was pouring the lime water down the drain. Then he replaced it with straight scotch, added no more than a splash of tap water, stirred it with his finger, and swung to face her, leaning his hips against the edge of the sink while taking a long drink. Lowering the glass, he noted, "You disapprove."

She turned her back on him and said tightly, "Who am I to approve or disapprove of your life-style?"

"Still, you do," he reaffirmed. Her shoulders were stiff and she stared at the sliding glass door as if studying something in the dark pool. "I needed it to get through this ... this emotional wringer, okay?" He crossed his ankles and draped his empty hand over the cabinet edge in a calculatedly casual pose, though his legs trembled. "Why did you name her Beth?" he asked, so quietly that shivers ran up Rachel's neck.

They were both vividly remembering the many nights they'd lain in each other's arms in a dark parked car, sexually sated, planning their future

and the names of their children. Beth. Their first
      
89 daughter would be Beth, they had agreed. As she remembered it now, Rachel's skin tingled.

In the glass doors he saw her full reflection. Her arms were now tightly crossed over her ribs.

When Rachel's answer came, her voice was far from steady. "I ... we ... I was seventeen, and still in love with you, and I know it was a foolish thing to do, but it seemed a way to bind us to her, even though we had to give her away."

He took another long pull and considered at length before admitting hoarsely, "I have another daughter named Beth."

"Yes, I know." Against the fallen night he watched her face, eyes tightly closed, mouth gaping as if fighting for breath.

He lowered his brows. "You know, Rachel?"

"The announcements of all your children's births were in the Franklin County Times. You have a nineteen-year-old son named Michael and a seventeen-year-old named Doyle, and a fourteen-year-old daughter named ... named Beth."

A sharp stab of exhilaration lifted his ribs.

"So I'm not the only one who kept tabs."

She ignored his remark and stood as before, tightly wrapped in trembling arms.

"Rachel ..." He'd resisted touching her as long as he could. He crossed the room and laid a palm on her shoulder, but she flinched away. Rebuffed, he dropped the hand. "Turn around and look at me."

"No. This is difficult enough as it is." She didn't want him to see her face when she asked the next question, even though they both knew the answer, both remembered those sweet shared secrets in a dark car. Her voice was scarcely more than a whisper as she asked, "Why did you name your daughter Beth?"

He touched her again, and this time she obeyed his silent command, turning very slowly, her arms still locked across her ribs. He stood close, but dropped his hand from her. "Do you want the truth or do you want a lie?" he asked.

"I wouldn't ask if I didn't want the truth."

His glasses still lay on the table, and she could see his eyes clearly now, the pale webbing at the corners, drawn lines angling away from his lower

lids. But the irises and lashes were the
     
91 same clear dark brown of the Tommy Lee she'd known and loved back then. With his eyes fixed on hers, he answered, "Because I was twenty-seven years old and still in love with you."

She felt the shock waves undulate through her body and she turned safely away, dropping tiredly to her chair once again. "Oh, Tommy Lee, how can you say such a thing?"

"So you'd rather have had the lie."

"But you were married to somebody else." It made her feel guilty in some obscure way.

He laughed ruefully. "Yes, one of the three."

"You say that as if you didn't love any of them."

"There were times when I thought I did." Suddenly he wilted, ran a hand through his hair and breathed, "Hell, I don't know." He reached into his breast pocket, came up with a cigarette and lighter, and dipped his head as the two joined. When the cigarette was burning, Tommy Lee poured a fresh drink without asking Rachel's permission, disappeared into the living room, and returned with the crystal ashtray, then took up his

post with hips and hands braced against the edge of the counter.

When her eyes again confronted him, there was a hint of censure about her puckered brows. "Tommy Lee, how can you be so ... so blithe about it? You conceived children with two different women. How could you have done that if you weren't sure you loved them?"

He took a long, thoughtful drag, then a long, thoughtful drink. "Who knows why children are conceived?" he asked ruminatively, then admitted, "I can't really say there ever was much discussion about whether or not Rosamond and I should have had the two boys. What else do you do when you've graduated from college? You find some girl to marry and settle down with, and babies just naturally follow."

"You mean you ... you never wanted them?" She sounded shocked.

"Maybe we never should have wanted them. Roz and I ..." He studied his smoking cigarette with a faraway expression in his eyes. "We got married for all the wrong reasons. Maybe subconsciously we thought that having the boys would pull us together. But it didn't. It was a poor

excuse, and the boys are the ones who paid for
  
93 it." He studied his crossed ankles as he ended quietly, "They're both sorry."

"Sorry?"

He looked up. "Rebellious, troublemakers, in and out of scrapes with school, the law, you name it. Not exactly all-American boys."

"Oh, Tommy Lee, I'm so sorry."

He half turned, stubbing out his cigarette. "Yeah, well, don't be. It was Roz's fault and mine, not yours. Maybe if we'd loved each other more we would have been better parents and raised better kids. I don't know."

"And they live with her?"

He nodded. "In Mobile."

"Do you ever see them?"

"As little as possible. When we're in the same room you can see the sparks in the air."

"Do they write to you?"

He lifted sad eyes to her. "When they need money. Then good ol' dad gets a letter."

Her heart melted with pity. He looked lonely and defeated, and she wondered if losing a child the way he had wasn't more devastating than

giving one up for adoption.

"And what about ... Beth?" The name was difficult for Rachel to say.

He smiled ruefully, shook his head, then crossed to take the chair opposite Rachel, dropped an ankle over a knee, and drew circles on the white Formica with the bottom of his glass. "Beth is hovering on the brink. I'm not sure yet which way she'll go. She and her mother don't get along and I'm out of the picture."

"You had her with your second wife."

It struck Tommy Lee that Rachel had kept close tabs, indeed, but for the moment he answered her non-question by going on, "Yes, my second wife, Nancy. Do you know why I married Nancy?" His glass made dull murmurs on the tabletop. When she looked from it to his face, she found his eyes on the giraffe at her throat. They moved up and locked with hers as he admitted quietly, "Because the first time I saw her, she reminded me of you. Her hair was the same color as yours, and her mouth was a lot the same. And when she laughed, there was always that little half-hiccup at the end, just like you do."

The pause that followed was anything but comfortable for

Rachel. She was embarrassed, yet
      
95 flattered, and her heart seemed to thump in double time while she couldn't think of a single sensible thing to say. She was thankful when he went on. "But before we were married a year I realized she was nothing at all like you. She's a vicious bitch. I married her because I was lonely, and on the rebound from another marriage. That--granted-- wasn't so hot, but at least it was company. I needed the sound of another human voice at the end of the day, and somebody across the supper table. So I married Nancy."

She could well imagine his loneliness at the time, for by then he'd cut himself off from his parents.

"And your third wife, Sue Ann?" she prompted.

He flexed his shoulders against the back of the chair, glanced out at the night, chuckled ruefully and shook his head. "What a joke. The whole damn town knows why I married Sue Ann Higgenbotham." He swallowed the last of his drink, set the glass down and crossed his forearms on the table, meeting her eyes directly. "I think most people refer to it as male menopause."

She smiled at his candor but recalled her mortification upon reading of his third marriage to a woman fifteen years his junior, and one known for her licentious relationships with countless older men around town. She recalled the snickers and raised eyebrows, and the way she'd always reacted to them with a quick defensive anger. How many times had she bitten back a quick defense of Tommy Lee? She experienced again the quick flash of anger she'd felt toward him then for making himself vulnerable to speculation and gossip.

"But did you have to choose someone that much younger than yourself? And a girl like that?"

"Why, Rachel," he noted, grinning, "do I detect a spot of temper?"

She colored slightly, but unloaded her convoluted feelings at last. "I used to get so angry with you for ... for cheapening yourself that way. There were times when I wanted to smack you in the head and ask you just what in the world you were trying to prove! And you realize, don't you, that you left me open to questioning, with all your antics. People remembered that we were practically born and raised together, and they'd come up to me and ask the most embarrassing questions, as if I still kept tabs on you."

"Apparently you did."
              
97

"Don't get smug, and stop trying to evade the issue. I asked you why in the world you got tangled up with somebody like Sue Ann Higgenbotham."