Page 24 of Broken Bayou
As I walk past my car, I notice a note slipped under the wiper. It’s from the lawyer, apologizing for missing me this morning and saying he’d like to come back by and introduce himself. I sigh. Great.
Now what? I look at my car. I could load those boxes and drive out of here, that’s what. But Travis just asked me not to go anywhere. And I probably need to straighten out this problem rather than run from it. Dumping my mother’s car in a bayou may turn out to be only a stupid stunt that hurts no one. At least, that’s what I need to tell myself right now in order to placate that part of my brain that has my nerves sizzling like downed power lines.
Birds whistle in the oaks around me as I trudge up the steps and open the front door. The house greets me with a cough of dust. I pause in the foyer. Sunlight scatters through the front windows onto the white-sheeted furniture. I’m halfway up the front stairs when a sound comes from somewhere down the hall, a thumping noise. Close to the kitchen. It’s probably nothing, but with everything that’s happening in this town, I’m not taking any chances.
I bound up the rest of the stairs and find my handgun sitting on the bedside table in the front bedroom. I start to pull up Travis’s number, then realize I never asked for it; he asked for mine. I type in 9-1-1 but feel too foolish to hit call. I settle my breath. It’s daytime. There’s nothing to steal in this house. No one would break in and be that loud. I ease back to the staircase and listen. It’s quiet. But just as I start down the stairs, a loud thud comes from the dining room, and I scream. Abird flies from around the corner, past the stairs to the parlor. Shit. I lower my hand, grab the railing, exhale. At the bottom of the stairs, I find the bird flapping wildly against the parlor window.
I open the front door, take one of the sheets off the chairs in the parlor, and shoo the bird back to freedom. The house is quiet again. No intruder. Thank God. All I’ve ever shot is paper. If a person had come running at me, I’m not sure I could have pulled the trigger. The exact opposite of what my conceal-carry instructor said. “Don’t buy a gun unless you are mentally capable of shooting a person. And,” she’d added, “if you do shoot an intruder, you’d better kill them. Otherwise, they’ll sue you.”
I move to the kitchen and check the warped door. Sure enough, it’s open. I push it closed and pop it with my hip until it stays shut. In an instant, I see Mama dancing into this very kitchen the night of my seventeenth birthday in a swirl of smoke and Cinnabar perfume. She wore a skintight stretch-denim jumpsuit with a thick gold zipper running from her crotch to, in theory, her neck. The zipper was nowhere near her neck, though.
Mabry looked up from her sketchbook. Her little mouth fell open. “Boobs.”
Mama flipped her curled hair and smiled. “Darn tootin’, boobs.” She pointed at the both of us. “And if you girls don’t grow a pair soon, I highly recommend figuring out a way to buy them. These suckers will open doors you didn’t even know existed.”
The Aunts gawked at Mama over their Coke-bottle glasses.
Mama grinned a smeared red grin. “Mabry, sugar, you can come with me after all. Let’s let your sister havehernight.” Mama’s voice slurred a little as she zeroed in on me. “You made it clear you don’t want either of us around. We wouldn’t want to mess up your birthday plans, now would we?” She stumbled a step.
Mabry chewed on her fingernails and stared at me. I wanted to tell Mama no, Mabry was coming with me. But the thought of my date with Travis and having a night to myself shut that voice down beforeI even had a chance to form the first word. Mabry would be fine. She would be with her mother, for God’s sake. But that argument felt as flimsy as Krystal Lynn’s bra.
“Don’t wait up!” she yelled, pulling Mabry toward the shiny red convertible, then whipping out of the driveway, the Judds belting into the hot August night.
Thoughts of that car and Travis and Mama swirl in my head. What had Mama asked of me?
In my late twenties when I thought my years of education made me wise, I told Mama I forgave her. She’d said, “For what? I did my best.” Couldn’t argue with her there. She had done her best. Unfortunately, her best was mediocre, hovering around abusive.
Once when I visited her at Texas Rose after my book deal, she said, “You’re so lucky you had a crazy mother and a retarded sister to help you get all this fame.” It took every ounce of self-control I possessed not to slap her across the face. I’d slapped her before. She’d slapped me, and Mabry. It was our toxic way of communicating when I was young. Another bad habit I had to fix.
I spent years circling Mama and her responses and trying to understand her, telling myself forgiveness is the only path out. I also spent money. On Mama. Doctors, specialists, medication. All trying to find the right balance for her. But balance isn’t Mama’s strong point. She’s rejected more medications than I can count. So I convinced myself I didn’t need her acknowledgment to forgive her. But being this close to my past is showing me just how foolish I’ve been. How can I forgive Mama for that night when I’ve never even forgiven myself?
I find a granola bar I bought at the Sack and Save and make my way back up to the attic. Every creak of the stairs has me jumpy. I tell myself I’m going to come up with a plan with Travis. Talk to the chief, and things will sort out. But the tape in the attic has my skin tingling,and with each step up the cramped staircase, memories tingle as well: Travis sitting on the front porch with Mabry and me, playing cards and laughing. His right eye swollen shut after a fight with someone in his house, probably his dad or one of his brothers. Travis and me walking to get ice cream cones at Dairy King, fishing on the banks of the bayou, running through the woods at night with beer and a blanket. Then I see his worried face in the dark as he grabbed my arms and tried to calm me down.It’s okay, Willa. I’m here.
The boxes filled with Mama’s things are where I left them in the attic. Little boxes of chaos. Krystal Lynn had certainly been a chaos seeker. A term I’d learned in undergrad. Yet even though I understood that term and saw it in action, I still managed to make my own chaos as well. When you grow up in a home where crazy is familiar, it’s hard to designate a new familiar as an adult. You keep making decisions that turn your world into a disaster zone. Like dating and marrying the man in charge of my clinicals. Making a fool of myself on live television. Saving a videotape I should have destroyed.
One at a time, I take the boxes down to the front bedroom and place them on the floor. A sour taste fills my mouth as I turn my attention to the box of old VHS tapes.Guiding LightandAs the World Turnswere as vital to Mama as air and water. She recorded them every day and watched them at night with a vodka and a cigarette. But those tapes aren’t important. Only the one I hid among them years ago is important. Now, more than ever, I need to understand what happened that night.
I swallow, pull a black, rectangular tape out, examine it, and toss it back in.
Did I really think that security tape would be found by someone and used against me? That Ihadto come back to this godforsaken town to retrieve it? In my mind, when I read that letter from the lawyers, yes. It stood out in my memory as something that would be recognized as wrong because it was wrong to me. It would physically stand out,announce itself as trouble, because it was trouble to me. In reality, it just looks like junk.
I pick up another tape. I need to be careful. These tapes could turn into quicksand and suck me into a past I may not want to remember. And even though I want to believe what I did all those summers ago was mostly harmless, something still gnaws at me. I stare at the stack of tapes. The one I’m looking for could have degraded over the years. It could be in such poor shape I’ll never know what was on it. But what if it is watchable? My instincts that night told me to take it, told me to hide it. Now, I need to find out why. I need to understand why Mama asked me to dump that car. I need answers, and the women in my life who were involved in that night are either unwilling or unable to talk to me about it. Mama and Mabry never said a word to me. Maybe Mabry would have at some point but not now. Poor Mabry. It’s no wonder she pushed against me the older we got. After grad school, I’d pulled away from my role as her caretaker. I’d studied in great detail about toxic codependent relationships and thought the distance between us would fix ours. I was young and foolish. The distance only made it worse. Then I’d married Christopher, and Mama moved them back to Louisiana. Mabry never forgave me.
The rotted yellow dress from Mabry’s failed pageant catches my eye. I look down at my phone. Back at the dress. Screw it. I scroll to my favorites and punch her number. It goes straight to voicemail. Her laugh, like the tine of a fork on crystal. “Leave a message.” I hang up. I’ll have to get my answers another way.
I open my Amazon app and start searching for VCRs. The irony not lost on me that I’m depending on the most advanced technologies to purchase one of the least advanced. There are several options, but most take a week to arrive. Finally, I find one I can have overnighted. The shipping costs as much as the VCR but too bad. No way I’m waiting a week. And it says there’s only one left in stock. I read about the hook-up process and hurry down to the kitchen to check the television I’d seen on the counter. It’s as wide as it is deep. Not a new flat-screen, but I hitthe power button, and it sparks to life. Only white static fills the screen, but it works. I unplug it and test its weight. I can get it upstairs where the tapes are scattered, where it and the VCR I plan to hook up to it won’t be seen by a cop who tends to drop by unannounced.
I add the VCR and corresponding cables to my cart and start to click “Buy Now” when I realize I don’t know the address here. I fish the letter from my tote, scanning until I find where the address is printed. I type it into the shipping details and hit purchase. I refresh the screen. It tells me that my order is processing and I’ll be notified when it’s shipped.
My phone vibrates on the floor next to me. I pick it up. It’s Amy.
“Hey,” I say.
She sounds out of breath. “Sorry it’s taken so long to get back to you. It’s been crazy here, Willa. I’m out for a walk. Needed to move.”
“Yeah, it’s been a little crazy here too.” I exhale. Christopher’s ex will have to move down on the list of things I’m worried about. “Look, I did not cheat my way through grad school, and I certainly didn’t sleep with Christopher while he was married,” I say.
“I told you to stay off Twitter,” she pants into the phone.
