Son of Destruction

4




Nenna Henderson McCall


I walked home from the office last week. It took all afternoon, minus the times I sat down to think. It’s six miles from Coral Shores to our house, and I had on the wrong shoes!

I was writing speeches to Davis that I wanted to give when Davis finally came in from work. Everybody said don’t marry him, you want somebody local, like Bobby, but Bobby was in love with Lucy at the time. I did want Bobby, but there was nothing I could do. They said, northerners just don’t do like we do and that is true. Davis taught at Junior College, he had the tweed jacket with the suede elbow patches, he was cute and now I’m stuck with him – except I’m not, because it turns out Davis is a rat.

I was at the office when I found out. It was the dead, still hour after lunch. The smartass kid realtors were all kicked back, romancing would-be clients on the phone, heavy-breathing over bayfront condos, square footage and with waterfront views and I was opening my mail, everything the same.

Then it wasn’t. It was the bill. The English Department secretary sends it to me because Davis is notoriously cheap. He calls long distance on the office phone. Usually I hold my nose and pay, but, Fifty calls to Toluca Lake! I must have yelled; when I looked up with my bare face hanging out like a wet girdle on the shower rail, seven kid realtors were texting madly, with flying thumbs and sly, snarky grins.

It’s cousin Gayle. His first cousin, what kind of a failure of the imagination is that? Scrawny Gayle Carson, that Davis grew up with, it’s incestuous, plus! Could he not have had the grace to call her on his cell? ‘Gayle’s invited us to California,’ he said last Christmas, all innocence. ‘Steffy’s never been!’ What was he thinking, using our daughter like that? ‘I can’t wait to see it through her eyes.’ Oh, Davis. I should have known that misty smile was not for me. I didn’t want to know.

I booked the trip, pretending not to know. Leaving that woman’s house after the awful week we spent there, I thought, Out of sight, out of mind. I thought, Got to do something about that, just not now, when I really meant, Not yet. Please God, just not this year. I’d been keeping us going, things as they are, but you can’t, not with everybody watching proof positive smack you in the face. All those kid realtors in their tight little outfits sitting there, just waiting for me to cry. I forgot everything and ran. By the time I realized I’d left my bag, my phone – my keys! – it was too late to go back.

Now I’m not a walker like my friends. They’re mostly free to look pretty and sign up for Jazzercize and waterobics if they want to, or dress up for board meetings followed by long lunches at the club, translation: unemployed. But, frankly, we couldn’t live on what Davis makes, not in this showcase at Far Acres. I wanted to live on Coral Shores with all my friends, but Davis insisted. There’s a world’s worth of difference between here and there; it’s just too far, and last week I went the whole distance. I walked every step of the way.

It was four blocks before I felt my shoes. Mocha slides from Nine West, sand kept coming in the toes but I just went on walking, like walking was the most important thing, which in a way, it was. No. It was the only thing.

I was too upset to wait for the light, even though Harrison Rivard got hit by a truck crossing this very street last year because he was too good to wait for stoplights. He used to live in Europe and you should have seen him when he moved back, all arty and continental, although he was probably CIA, and it was a hit to make sure he didn’t go spilling Company secrets in the bar at the Fort Jude Club. What a way to go, in your bloody sock feet with your groceries smeared all over the road. Poor guy, I never thought!

You don’t think, not when you’re sealed in your car, safe from everything, but walking, you’re exposed, like poor Harrison. Walking is like opening your diary, in a way. Our whole past is out there and to get home, I had to walk through most of it. Northshore Elementary is a mini-mart now, with a parking lot where the playground was, I still have the scar where Brad Kalen jumped off the swing and it hit me in the head and I was excited and sad, remembering. We went to dances in the old box factory all through junior high, all dressed up and obsessing about sex because it was so new, thank God I know more about everything now. I walked past the lake where boys drove us to park in high school and the Dairy Queen where they took us after, and oh, oh!

It’s a good thing nobody I knew saw me out in the open like that, trying not to cry. Outsiders wouldn’t see me looking that much different, but all the girls from Northshore would know it in an instant. With outsiders, you can be anything you want – more interesting, younger, new – but in this town we grow up with a history. We aren’t girls any more but we still know how old each other are down to the minute, we know who wet her pants in first grade and which one threw up in her desk. We’ve bookmarked every guy we were in love with, from third-grade crushes to the Coleman twins in eleventh grade – which twin was I in love with, really, was it Buck, or the sweet one that died? – to Bobby Chaplin in senior year . . . Oh!

Thought isn’t all that good for you. You don’t watch where you’re going. I was walking right over my old house before I even knew it. It’s buried like The Mummy’s temple, down underneath that parking lot.

My whole life used to be in this block. Our parents sold out and moved into condos so the company could build the super-Publix. We were all grown and the neighborhood was going downhill anyway, but it was awful. They tore down all our houses! My whole childhood is buried underneath that parking lot, my ruby ring that I lost in Sallie’s sandbox and my kitten Fuzzy, that we buried in my old back yard. I was walking over my parents’ fights that always came out all right, and birthday parties and almost-sex with Bobby in the glider when we were in ninth grade. Everything I cared about is covered with tons of asphalt which is ironic, because old Lorna Archambault’s house is still standing, right there on the other side of the street.

If you draw a straight line between Holt Realty and Far Acres where I was going, it would bisect the big old banyan tree in Lorna’s front yard. I was like an arrow aimed at the heart of Davis McCall, I could have made it home earlier, but the snaky roots hanging off Lorna’s banyan brushed my face like somebody who loved me when I was little, and it stopped me cold.

‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Oh!’

Lorna used to chase us out of that tree, coming down off her front porch like a battleship. ‘Rats,’ she said, ‘That tree is full of rats and scorpions.’ She said, ‘You girls get out of there before you get hurt, get out and go home,’ but that wasn’t what she meant. She meant that she didn’t want her precious granddaughter playing with dirty little girls like us. She was so shaking-mad that parts of her face flapped, and I remember thinking, You’re so old.

‘Oh,’ I said to that tree even though you’re supposed to be polite to old acquaintances, no matter how much they’ve changed, ‘you’re so old!’

And for the first time ever, I was too. My knees buckled and I slid down the big old trunk and sat there until chiggers or redbugs or something started biting, unless it was the uglies. I jumped up. By that time I was feeling so bad that I had to pat the tree goodbye, and I said, ‘At least you’re OK,’ to make it feel better.

It was time to get home and put on makeup and pray to God that Davis got in today before high school play practice let out and Steffy came home. I wanted to face up to him and get it over with without her walking in, so I walked faster, practicing speeches, and next thing I knew, I was ranting at the stone lions at Pine Vista, two living signs of the ruination of our neighborhood.

Herman Chaplin’s development scheme went bust in the Twenties land crash, before even our grandmothers were born. He had a dream, but as far as he got was the lions and stone markers at every corner and the stucco wedding cake where Bobby grew up.

The Chaplins always were a little bit too good for us, even Bobby, but in high school we never knew it, stupid me, I was in love with him. They went to college up north and settled around Boston and New York, but something happened up there and now all three of them are back, seething around in that big old house like snakes in a basket that’s too small for them.

I used to dream up reasons for us to cruise Bobby Chaplin’s house, back when he ruled the school, but now I drive past on my way in from Far Acres without giving Bobby a thought. Usually I’m sealed in my car with the AC on and my favorite CD, but I’d been walking for too long, and it was worse than crossing 38th Street where Harrison got hit. I ducked my head down and hurried on by, figuring out ways to get back at Davis for betraying me.

That scrawny, lascivious skank, Davis? Really? Is that the best you can do? Wrong. Did you not think I would find out, Davis? No. Were you trying to torture me? No. What are you, retarded? Like, you thought you could get away with it? No. I said, don’t ask, just get the hell out of here. No, you need to guilt him a little bit, make him grovel before you kick him out, tell him . . .

This is embarrassing. I heard Bobby’s front door open and I didn’t hear it. I hoped to God it wasn’t him. I kept going even after somebody called, ‘Nenna?’ and I went faster because I knew it was him.

I didn’t stop until he caught up with me.

‘Nenna Henderson!’

‘Oh.’ Any other day I would have hugged him: Bobby, it’s so great to see you, even though it wasn’t, but I was caught short with my messed-up life hanging out, and partly it was the shock. He’d fallen away in the shanks. In the way of redheads whose lives are over but they don’t know it, his hair had faded to brown. I was too tactful to say, What happened to you? or ask him how he really was. I wanted to say something, but all I could think of was, ‘Oh!’

‘I saw you going by and I had to come out and say hey.’

‘Hey, Bobby.’ He was so friendly – did I smile? Did I look OK or did I look awful? Beyond it, I guess, because he looked all worried, and it pissed me off.

‘How are you?’

‘Don’t ask me now.’

‘I’m sorry. I . . .’ Maybe he was waiting for me to spill so he could pour out his story; maybe he wanted to tell me what brought him down, and God knows we’re all dying to know. I should have said, Are you OK? but it was getting late, I was exhausted, everybody would be home soon and I had cut him off before he had a chance to start.

‘Don’t be.’ Oh, Bobby, don’t linger.

He kept going along beside me. ‘I thought maybe your car broke down.’

‘Not really.’

‘You looked like you could use some help.’

I did, but nothing I could tell him. If I’d shown him mine, he’d have shown me his. We could have hugged goodbye with, maybe, promises of more to come, but not just then. I had to keep going, so I did. ‘Not really. I’m fine.’

Bobby tagged along, whether or not I wanted it. Football captain, May King two years running and there he was following me like a dog. He’d been home in the Florida sunshine for three years but he must have spent it inside, he was that white in the face. He’d gotten skinny in there, but he was grinning and dancing along next to me as though no time had passed, ‘Nenna, wait up.’

It all piled in on me and I started to run. ‘Can’t, Bobby. I’m late.’

‘Late for what?’

It wasn’t just Davis I was mad at, it was him. When you were eighteen you wouldn’t even look at me. ‘I’m in a hurry, Bobby. Why should I stop and talk to you?’

‘I’ve missed you, Nenna. It’s been forever.’ He’s changed but he smiled, just like in our yearbook. Most popular: Bobby Chaplin and Laura DePew. And, this is ironic. Most Likely To Succeed: Bobby Chaplin and Lucy Carteret. ‘Nenna?’

You’ve been home three years. ‘You could have phoned.’

‘It’s. I couldn’t.’

‘And you want me to stop and talk to you?’

‘What are you doing out in this heat?’

‘It’s a nice day, I thought I’d walk.’

‘If it’s car trouble, I can call Triple A.’

‘I’m almost home.’ Home. Davis. Accusations and the fight.

‘Let me ride you, Nenna. You look beat.’

My feet were raw but I wasn’t about to stop now that I was so close. ‘I said, I’m fine.’

At First Street, which you have to cross to get into Far Acres, Bobby did stop, exactly like your dog hitting the electronic fence. ‘OK Nenna, take care.’

‘I’m sorry. I have a lot to do.’

I do. In this town, there’s a ritual checklist: call your lawyer, tell the kids, field a phone call from Coleman Rowell, who must have radar about these things, he’s like a sex vulture waiting to pounce, the list was running through my head. OK, lady, get this over with, then tell Coleman no. Change your hair and dress to kill and go looking for a good man who will for God’s sake do right by you. Bobby would be perfect, we could have started, but I wasn’t about to stop for him. I was bent on getting home. Every nerve and muscle in me was screaming but I had to end my own business before I could think about starting anything.