CHAPTER 26
CARL
There was a moment, as Lila told him about the baby, when everything went haywire.
It felt like his heart had stopped pumping blood and let it all drain down to his feet. He was warm and woozy, on the verge of passing out. His eye twitched. His ears rang. Lila seemed to wilt as she waited for him to speak, and he gathered her in his arms and held her. It was all he could do. I love you, she said. He told her he loved her, too, which the good Lord knew wasn’t enough to describe his feelings, but he couldn’t say the other things he was thinking, the greedy, giddy, kid-on-Christmas-morning thoughts that were flashing through his brain. I got her. She’s mine. She’ll stay.
There were practicalities to tend to: fix up a nursery; get Lila to a doctor for some of those horse-pill vitamins; visit Mama at Riverview and share the news. Before any of that, he was going to marry her. He left her there on the landing and sped over to Crete’s house to ask him for Grandma Dane’s wedding ring, which he knew good and well his brother had no use for. It took a bit of haggling, but Crete finally gave in.
Later that night, as Carl was checking his closet to see if he still owned a tie, Joe Bill, who mostly drifted in a dark current of his consciousness, floated to the surface. He didn’t know what had happened between Joe Bill and Lila, what he had done to her, but the possibility was there. He didn’t want to bring it all up again, drag her through painful memories, but he had to know.
He went to her room and curled up next to her on the bed. She was awake, and she took his hand and kissed the calloused knuckles, then gently pressed her warm mouth against his palm. They hadn’t made love since the attack. It was hard to believe there’d been only the one time, at the homestead, and he wanted, needed, that feeling again, to be enveloped by her, her scent, her taste, her heat. First he had to know. It doesn’t matter, he said. It doesn’t change anything, not my feelings for you or the baby. She let go of his hand, waited. Joe Bill, when he … did he … did he force himself on you …? She looked him in the eye. No, she whispered, her mouth moving toward his, kissing him in a way that drove all thoughts of Joe Bill below the surface. And then she was slipping out of her nightgown, helping Carl out of his clothes, and he pressed against her for the first time in so long and felt that everything was right, everything was as it should be. It was true what he’d said, that his feelings for her wouldn’t change. But though he never would have admitted it to her, he’d lied about the baby. He wanted a child with her, but he wanted it to be his, theirs. When she told him Joe Bill hadn’t raped her, it was like being yanked back from the edge of a crumbling cliff. Rescued. Because he didn’t know how he could have lived every day looking at a child with another man’s face, knowing what that man had done to his wife and what he himself had done in revenge.
They got to work on the house right away. Once he gave Lila free rein, she wasn’t shy about freshening up the place. She was careful with family mementos, not moving a single thing in the china cabinet except to dust it, leaving Mama’s room just the way it was. Everything else, she tackled with a vengeance. Gabby came over and helped her scrub the place down. They left no crevice untouched, wiping out every cabinet, drawer, and closet, oiling creaky hinges, polishing woodwork, dusting ceilings. Furniture was rearranged, slipcovers sewn, rugs aired out, curtains washed and mended. They spent one whole weekend taking all the pictures and knickknacks off the walls, rolling on fresh paint, and then hanging everything back up. When they finished, each room was a different color: yellow kitchen, green bedroom, pink bath. The halls were bright robin’s-egg blue, the baby’s room delicate lilac, because Lila felt certain she was having a girl. Carl wasn’t a fan of the rosy bathroom, but he would have let his wife paint polka dots on the roof if it made her happy. All the windows stayed open while the paint dried, and the house felt fresh and new; it would always be his old family home, but now it was Lila’s home, too.
Carl came home one evening after a day of baling hay—he was taking any job he could that would keep him close by—and found Gabby and Lila in the kitchen with the music blasting, dancing around like a couple of crazies. Lila both aroused and intimidated him with suggestive moves unlike anything he’d seen at local dances, but when he asked where she’d learned how to dance like that, she just laughed and grabbed his hand, and they tried out a line dance Gabby had taught her. It was something, to see her so at ease, laughing and having fun. He could have watched her like that all night. He was glad she had Gabby to keep her company. As flaky as Gabs could be, she was a good, loyal friend.
Carl visited Mama several times after the wedding, trying to smooth things over, but he imagined it was hard for any mother to accept that her son had gotten a girl pregnant and married her at the courthouse. It wasn’t the proper way to do things, no question. The situation was made worse by Mama’s condition, which had deteriorated to the point that the mother he remembered rarely made an appearance. Mama had become the angry, paranoid woman he’d seen in brief flashes throughout his childhood, though Dad and Crete had hidden her episodes as best they could.
From the very beginning, Lila had a hard time with the idea of his mother being separated from the family. He came to realize she hadn’t left the bedroom untouched purely out of respect but because she expected Mama to move back in. She begged him to bring Althea home, promising to take care of her. He argued that it would be difficult to take care of a parent and a baby at the same time, but he knew it didn’t make any difference to Lila. She’d lived with her grandma from the time she was little and couldn’t imagine childhood without her. Your mother is still alive, she said, and he could see how much it hurt her that her own parents were dead, that they’d never know their grandkids. He didn’t have high hopes that it would work out, but he couldn’t argue with Lila. He couldn’t not give her what she needed from him, if he had the power to give it.
Lila wanted Althea’s room to be perfect for her homecoming. She scrubbed the wood floor and made the bed with fresh linens, fluffing the pillows against the headboard and folding the chenille duvet across the bed just so. She cut zinnias and asters from the garden and arranged them in Mama’s milk-glass vase on the dresser. Carl kissed her goodbye, and she smiled in the way that made him want to keep kissing her instead of leaving her behind to make the drive to Riverview. She had plans to bake bread and fix vegetable soup from Althea’s own recipe so dinner would be ready as soon as they returned. She’d even picked mint from the herb bed outside the kitchen, so she could try to make tea like Ransome’s.
Mama sang to herself the whole way back to the house and seemed in good spirits. Maybe it was the right thing to do, Carl thought, bringing her home. Lila was four months pregnant, and there would be plenty of time to work things out before the baby came. Maybe they could somehow be the family his wife wanted. Lila opened the door for them as they stepped onto the porch, and he saw her smile waver as she laid eyes on Althea for the first time. His mother barely resembled the curvy, laughing blonde in the old family photos he’d shown Lila; her hair was thin and gray, cropped short like a man’s, and her flesh kept close to her bones. Her mouth puckered into a frown.
“So there’s the witch,” Mama said, stopping to glare at Lila. “I ain’t scared of you.”
Lila pressed her lips together, shot Carl a determined look, and held the door open wider.