The Ninth Step (24 page)

“What else?”

“He plays the piano, likes Chopin and Bach. He’s read--”

“What? What has he read?
Penthouse
?
Guns and Ammo
? Something sleazier?”

“The classics. Tolstoy,” Livie said. “Jack London. Faulkner. He’s read
Where the Red Fern Grows
. It made him cry.”

“Oh, us too, do you remember? My god, he sounds perfect, so perfect. Wait a minute. He’s ugly, right? Fat. He chews with his mouth open, farts without remorse--”

“No, silly, but there might be something with the sister-in-law.”

“What makes you say--?”

“Never mind. I’m too tired to go into it.”

They shared a breath.

“Livie? Why don’t you come and spend the night? We’ll have a slumber party. Stella’ll love it. We can initiate her, make her one of the Saunders Sistahs. Get your mind off things.”

Livie said another time. “I really am tired.”

“Well, you better sleep now, tootsie, as much as you can ‘cause you won’t get to after the baby’s born.”

Livie waited for another car to pull through the intersection at the top of Peachtree Lane. Had she said she was having the baby? Was she? Had she decided?

“Were there any sparks?” Kat asked.

Livie laughed. She went down the hill, past the place where Razz had been hit, marking it subliminally in her mind.

“What’s so funny?”

“Most couples have the sparks first, then the baby, hopefully with a good chunk of commitment in the middle.” Livie turned up her driveway.

Had she felt sparks? Had Joe? But how could they know if any warmth like that existed, the air between them was already so charged with other drama.

“Well, did you at least like him?”

“Yes,” Livie said. “I did.”

#

 She thought she would tell Charlie she was pregnant. She decided in the shower the morning after she’d had dinner with Joe. She would talk it over with Charlie and he would help her figure out what to do. She scattered grain for her hens and made the coffee and as it perked, it dawned on her that telling him was going to involve telling the truth about that night after he left her at Bo Jangles. Maybe she should tell him about the other nights, too, the red dress nights. As much as she deplored them, she couldn’t pretend they hadn’t happened, that they weren’t part of her history, a way she had coped with stress . . . once. To say otherwise meant her crimes weren’t forgivable, that she wasn’t human, couldn’t make mistakes and learn from them. And she couldn’t carry that weight anymore. She wasn’t quite sure what had changed, but Charlie would understand.

Or he wouldn’t.

She gathered everything they needed for coffee onto a tray. She would tell him outside, on the front porch, where the light fell in tranquil pools and the morning breeze would carry her words away as easily as it did scraps of bird song.

She was concentrating on maneuvering the loaded tray through the screen door and didn’t see him at first, the man lifting his head from the nest of pillows she kept on the swing. She was frightened for the single instant it took to recognize him. She said his name: “Cotton?” and as she said it, many other details became clear: the pillow creases that hatched his cheek, the navy smudges under his eyes that stood out against the pallor of his complexion, the day’s growth of stubble that darkened the line of his jaw . . .

. . . what looked like a large quantity of blood dried below the shoulder of his shirt.

Her heart twisted with ungrounded compassion, a thinner coil of alarm. “What happened to you?”

“It’s okay. I didn’t mean to--to fall asleep, to be here when you-- I’m sorry. I’ll go.” The words rushed in a stream even as he was on his feet, taking the tray from her, setting it on the table.

“Is that blood? Did someone hurt you?” Her heart was stuttering even as she asked.

But he said no. “It’s from Mom. She died last night, Livie. I couldn’t do anything. I couldn’t stop it.”

“Oh, Cotton, I’m so sorry.” Livie touched his wrist.

His eyes closed.

She took her hand away.

“She must have had a bottle hidden somewhere that I didn’t find.”

“She drank again.” Livie poured coffee into a mug, held it out. “You still take it black?”

He said he did, not looking at the cup but at her and it was as if he could not see enough of her.

She had a searing sensation of his hand cradling her breast, his mouth at her nipple. She bent sharply over the tray, poured coffee for herself, shaking slightly. She invited him to sit and he did, on the swing’s edge.

She sat in the rocker where Charlie usually sat.

Cotton said there had been nothing they could do. “She’d lost too much blood.”

“You were there when she--?”

“I wish I had been. I found her on the back porch steps. I was at a meeting, a--” He paused, pinched the bridge of his nose, put the mug aside and came forward, setting his elbows on his knees. “She knew the risks, maybe she did it on purpose.”

“She was unhappy for a long time, Cotton. You shouldn’t--”
blame yourself
. Livie bit her lip. She couldn’t give him that. “Is Scott coming?”

“He says he isn’t.”

Kat would come, Livie thought. If this were their mom, no matter how estranged they were, they would tend to their mother’s last rites together. Livie couldn’t imagine having to handle all that would need to be done alone. And Cotton looked so raw and hurt.

“He’s only my half brother.”

Livie’s brows rose.

“Scott and I have different fathers.”

“Really.”

“It’s the reason he took off.”

“Your mother told me she was engaged to someone else once, someone wealthy.”
On our wedding day, while I waited in vain for you.
“Was he--?”

“Scott’s father.”

So that was it, Livie thought. She ought to have guessed. She glanced at Cotton and thought,
I was pregnant and unmarried, too.
But the irony and the heartbreak made the words too hard to say. She wondered if Cotton even deserved to know. “That’s why your mom drank,” she said instead. “Unwed mothers were considered such a scandal then. She lost everything. You must see that. Did you and Scott never realize that she might have had a reason to--?”

“She waited until he was grown to tell him the truth; he thought Harold was his dad his whole life and then-- It was a shock. By then she’d been drinking for years. Scott didn’t care why. The damage was--” Cotton didn’t finish. He found a pebble on the porch floor and examined it.

“I wish you’d told me.”

“I couldn’t talk about it.”

“You didn’t trust me.”

“What good was it telling you the pathetic story of my life? So you could feel sorry for me? I didn’t want your pity, Livie. I didn’t want anybody’s pity. I still don’t.” Cotton pitched the stone over the porch rail.

Livie pleated the denim of her overalls. She remembered his pride; she understood the nature of his shame. She had her own.

“I didn’t give a damn about my life until I met you,” he said.

She dropped her gaze.
Why did you leave me then?
The question fell like an anvil into the silence, but she wouldn’t ask. She shouldn’t have to. If he was sincere about making amends, he wouldn’t let her objections interfere. He would talk over them; he would drown them out. Whatever it took to make this straight between them, he would do it, wouldn’t he?

But maybe she didn’t ask because she was afraid to know or better off not knowing, the way Kat had suggested. Because knowing would mean having to confront the reality and Livie didn’t care what conventional wisdom said, sometimes the reality could be worse than anything you could imagine.

“It’s all such a damn mess, I don’t know where to start.” Cotton’s voice was rough.

Her head came up, her eyes collided with his. His were red rimmed. A muscle jumped at the back of his jaw.  

He bent toward her. “There are nights when I dream of you, of us, of how it was between us and it’s so real--” he dropped his chin, needing a space to find his composure-- “and then I wake up and you aren’t there and it’s like reentry. It’s like coming back to hell. That’s why I didn’t look back the other night. I was afraid I had dreamed the whole--ahhh--” He groaned and flung his gaze to the porch ceiling, blinking fast.

Livie’s heart felt as if it were disintegrating. She shouldn’t care; she should not be moved to tears on his behalf. She closed her eyes and when she opened them a moment later, he was looking at her.

“I really didn’t mean for you to find me here. After I left the hospital, I just needed a place to land for a while, a--a safe, a safe place--” He was stammering.

She looked at his hands flat on his knees. His fingers were long and squared off at the tips. The half-moons of his nails were white-flecked. She’d nearly forgotten that. She thought of sliding her fingers into the spaces between his and the hair on her arms rose.

He said he would go; he stood up and thanked her for the coffee, the night on her swing. He smiled his lopsided smile and the look that held them was complicated.

A pause came and stayed without comfort or grace.

They broke the silence together, she saying, “Have you made arrangements?” While at the same time, he was saying. “I have to contact a funeral home.”

And as if they’d cancelled each other out, they fell into another awkward pause.

She broke it. “I know the funeral director in town at Mitchell and Vaughn. I installed a fountain for Hamp Mitchell a few years ago.”

“I guess they’d be in the yellow pages, or if you don’t mind, could you give me directions? I could stop by there.”

“Not wearing that shirt,” Livie said.

And that quickly Cotton was in her kitchen, sluicing water over his face and arms, drying himself with the towel she left for him.

Livie brought him a shirt, one of Charlie’s old oxford cloth dress shirts that she slept in, and she was conscious of this as she handed it to Cotton. And conscious of his bare chest, the bare flat plane of his belly. The air between them felt electric. She hugged herself.

He looked the shirt over a moment and she knew he was picturing the owner from the size, wondering about the man it belonged to.

Let him wonder, she thought, and then she heard Charlie’s truck rattle into the driveway and her heart lurched.

Chapter 18

“Oh, no.”

“What?” Cotton pulled on the shirt. He had an overwhelming wrong time-wrong place sensation.  

“Charlie. That’s his-- He’s my-- We’re doing a job--”

“Livie, gal?”

The boyfriend.
Cotton fumbled with the shirt buttons. It was tight through the shoulders, a little short in the sleeves. He rolled them into cuffs.

The back screen door opened, snapped shut.

Livie flinched.

I’m going to meet the joker dressed in his clothes?
Cotton palmed the sides of his head.

“You see that wreck of a Mercedes out in the road? Reckon we need to call the sher--? Oh, didn’t know you had company.”

The guy who came through the door was old, late sixties, anyway, too old for Livie, please god, and as the old guy’s glance took in the scene, Cotton could see what he was thinking and that he was waiting for a cue whether to be pleased about it.

So, did that mean he wasn’t a boyfriend?

Cotton glanced at Livie. She hadn’t moved; she had her arms wrapped so tightly around herself, he wondered how she could breathe.

The interval became unbalanced. Weird.

Cotton stepped into it. “I’m Cotton O’Dell,” he said, “an old, ah, friend of Livie’s.”

“I know who you are.”

Cotton felt his pulse lag. Somehow,
I know who you are
translated into,
I know what you did
. The man took his hand, but grudgingly. His grip was hard, a warning. His faded blue eyes were flat. They said,
Try me
. He tightened his grasp. Cotton almost winced as much in surprise at the old man’s strength as anything.

“Charlie, it’s all right.” Livie touched his forearm and he let go of Cotton’s hand, but not his gaze.

“Delia died,” Livie said. “Cotton came to tell me.”

He didn’t correct her. He said, “I should be going. I’ll return the shirt.”

“Don’t bother, Livie doesn’t need it back.”

“Charlie!” She spoke sharply.

He put up his hands, took a step back, opened a cabinet, closed it, opened another.

Cotton was pissed too, but he liked Charlie for protecting her, for being there for her. For being in the position where Cotton should have been and wasn’t.

“We were talking about funeral arrangements.” Livie spoke deliberately as if that had really been the case. “Wouldn’t your mom want to be buried next to your dad or with her folks in Louisiana?”

“That isn’t an option. I think local is the best way to go, the place you mentioned.”

“C’mon,” Livie said. She pulled a set of keys out of a purse the size of a saddle bag. “I have an appointment in town anyway. I’ll come by Delia’s house. There’s a box she kept pictures in and papers, I’m sure I saw papers. Maybe there’ll be something about where your dad is buried in there.”

Cotton’s eyes widened in amazement at her offer to come, to help him, but that wasn’t how Livie interpreted whatever she saw in his expression.

She bristled. “Your mom brought out the box herself when you--after you--”

“No, I don’t-- I know you weren’t snooping.”

“It’s probably hard for you to believe, but for a little while back then we were friends.”

“It’s not hard. Livie, she was hard; she was unkind to you. She made your life--”

“It’s okay.”

“It isn’t. You went out of your way for her. She told me before she died how you checked in on her. She probably never could say how much she appreciated your visits, but I know she did. I did--do--too.” Cotton patted his chest. “I appreciate what you did for her.” He was shaking now; he felt as if he might lose it. He remembered why he had come. Because of Anita, that word she had used last night.

Safe.

She had said he needed to be with someone, somewhere safe. He had been passing Smitty’s and he’d meant to go in there and drink himself blind, but that word, safe, had stuck in his brain. He’d thought, and this was totally incongruous, that safe was in the contour of Livie’s collarbone. That it was found in the curve that defined the small of her back, the shape of her ankles, the sweet flow of her breath and he’d come here and put his face down in those pillows outside not intending to stay longer than it took to fill himself up with her essence. But then he’d fallen asleep.