Over and over! It was ever Jodi who was his favorite, and it was Jodi who sat at the dinner-table one Sunday and announced to her parents - hell, announced to all of them -
that she was pregnant and the boy who'd gotten her that way had run off to enlist in the Navy. She wanted to know if maybe Aunt Cynthia over in Wolfeboro, New Hampshire, could take her in until the baby was put out for adoption - that was how Jodi said it, as though it were an old china cabinet at a yard sale. Her news had been greeted by an unaccustomed silence at the dinner-table. For one of the few times in Lisey's memory -
maybe for the only time in Lisey's memory - the constant chattering conversation of knives and forks against plates as seven hungry Debushers raced the roast to the bone had stopped. At last Good Ma had asked, Have you talked to God about this, Jodotha? And Jodi - right back atcha, Good Ma: It was Don Cloutier got me in the family way, not God. That was when Dad left the table and his favorite daughter behind without a word or backward look. A few moments later Lisey had heard the sound of his radio coming from the barn, very faint. Three weeks later he'd had the first of his strokes. Now Jodi's gone (although not yet to Miami, that is years in the future) and it's Lisey who bears the brunt of Darla's outraged calls, little Lisey, and why? Because Canty is on Darla's side and calling Jodi does neither of them any good. Jodi is different from the other Debusher girls. Darla calls her cold, Canty calls her selfish, and they both call her uncaring, but Lisey thinks it's something else - something better and finer. Of the five girls, Jodi is the one true survivor, completely immune to the fumes of guilt rising from the old family teepee. Once Granny D generated those fumes, then their mother, but Darla and Canty stand ready to take over, already understanding that if you call that poisonous, addictive smoke "duty," nobody tells you to put the fire out. As for Lisey, she only wishes she were more like Jodi, that when Darla calls she could laugh and say Blow it out your ass, Darla-darlin; you made your bed, so go on and sleep in it.
15
Standing in the kitchen doorway. Looking into the long, sloping backyard. Wanting to see him come walking back out of the darkness. Wanting to holler him back - yes, more than ever - but stubbornly holding his name behind her lips. She waited for him all evening. She will wait a little longer.
But only a little.
She is beginning to be so frightened.
16
Dandy's radio is strictly AM. WGUY's a sundowner and long off the air, but WDER
was playing the oldies when she rinsed her wineglass - some fifties hero singing about young love - and went back into the living room and bingo, there he was, standing in the doorway with a can of beer in one hand and his slanted smile on his face. Probably she hadn't heard the sound of his Ford pulling up because of the music. Or the beat of her headache. Or both.
"Hey, Lisey," he said. "Sorry I'm late. Really sorry. A bunch of us from David's Honors seminar got arguing about Thomas Hardy, and - "
She turned away from him without a word and went back into the kitchen, back into the sound of the Philco. Now it was a bunch of guys singing "Sh-Boom." He followed her. She knew he would follow her, it was how these things went. She could feel all the things she had to say to him crowding up in her throat, acid things, poison things, and some lonely, terrified voice told her not to say them, not to this man, and she slang that voice away. In her anger she could do nothing else.
He cocked a thumb at the radio and said, stupidly proud of his useless knowledge:
"That's The Chords. The original black version."
She turned to him and said, "Do you think I give a rat's ass who's singing on the radio after I worked eight hours and waited for you another five? And you finally show up at quarter of eleven with a grin on your face and a beer in your hand and a story about how some dead poet ended up being more important to you than I am?"
The grin on his face was still there but it was getting smaller, fading until it was little more than a quirk and one shallow dimple. Water, meanwhile, had risen in his eyes. The lost scared voice tried to call its warning again and she ignored it. This was a cutting party now. In both the fading grin and the growing hurt in his eyes she saw how he loved her, and knew this increased her power to hurt him. Still, she would cut. And why?
Because she could.