Phantom of Riverside Park (33 page)

“Quincy, you shouldn’t have.”

“I didn’t. Peter Forrest handed them to me
and said you were to wear them. They’re a gift from David.”

If Elizabeth thought too much about that,
she’d start bawling like a baby and wouldn’t be able to stop for
two days. He rose up in her vision as she’d first seen him, a man
torn in half, equal parts pain and pride, fear and courage. But
most of all, equal parts beauty and beast.

She’d wanted to weep for him, for the
physical and emotional pain he’d borne, but his black eyes
challenged her, and she knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that the
worst thing she could do was display any feeling he might construe
as pity.

And so she’d faced him with all her feelings
carefully bottled up inside, just as she would face him in a few
minutes when she took a solemn vow before God and Peter Forrest and
David’s sister.

Today, though, she wouldn’t have to bottle
herself up and cram down the cork, for what she felt for the man
who would soon become her husband was a tenderness that was as warm
as it was unexpected.

“I wish I could have given her pearls,” Papa
had said the day Mae Mae died. “I never gave her pearls.”

There was a tap on the door, followed by
Peter’s voice. “Elizabeth, we’re ready when you are.”

She smiled. David had given her pearls.

“We are such stuff as dreams are made
on.”

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

from
The Tempest

Thomas was finally able to go to the park and
sit on the bench again, and if any strangers walked up to him while
he was talking to Fred he was going to get up and run. Every one of
his and Elizabeth’s problems had started right here in the
park.

He’d been out of the hospital a week after a
six-day stay that had seemed like six years. He didn’t get a lick
of sleep in that hospital, what with doctors and nurses and no
telling what all running around all hours of the day and night,
poking pills at him and checking his temperature and monitoring his
heart and asking him personal questions like,
can we see if we
can go to the potty now
? That was Nurse Elmore who’d said
that. He told her to speak for herself, but he wouldn’t go till he
got good and ready, and certainly not with her standing outside the
door listening. He couldn’t abide folks
listening
.

Thomas lifted his face up to the sun, just
glad to be alive, glad to have a friend sitting with him. He’d
never dreamed his life would turn out this way, him ninety years
old and sitting in a big city park with Fred Lollar instead of
enjoying his front porch on the farm with Lola Mae. He still can’t
understand why he lived and she died.

It wasn’t supposed to be this way. He was
supposed to go first so he’d be spared the pain of her dying.
Sitting right there in the park the memories took hold of him so
hard he was transported back to the terrible winter. One of the
freak ice storms that sometimes paralyzes the South had come
through Tunica. Power lines were down, felled by trees that broke
apart under the weight of ice. Phone lines were out. Ponds were
frozen over. Even some pumps that hadn’t been well insulated were
shut down so that folks were slipping and sliding over the slick
roads, borrowing water from their neighbors.

Thomas was lucky. He still had water, and
plenty of heat.

He chipped ice off the neat stack of firewood
beside his back door and carried an armload inside to dry. The
sound of Lola Mae’s coughing echoed all the way down the hall.
Thomas threw a log on the fire then hurried off to their
bedroom.

“How’re you doin’, darlin’?”

“Fine. It’s just a cough, Thomas.”

A coughing paroxysm bent her over double and
shot Thomas off the bed in a fever of fear.

“I’m takin’ you to a doctor.”

“It’s nothing, Thomas. Just a bad cold. Get
me another spoonful of that cough medicine.”

She had another fit of coughing and his hands
shook so bad he spilled cough syrup. It made a red sticky mess on
the bathroom floor, but he didn’t stop to wipe it up. He hurried
back to the bedroom and cradled her close while she drank her
medicine, then without saying a word he wrapped her in a quilt and
carried her down the hall and sat down in a rocking chair by the
fire.

“It’s warmer down here,” he told her, trying
to forestall any questions about why he’d done it. His real reason
he kept to himself: he was terrified of losing her. If he could
just hold onto her, the sheer power of his love would keep harm at
bay.

“Sing to me, Thomas.”

“What do you want to hear, Lola Mae?”

“The sound of your voice. So I’ll know I’m
not alone.”

He started in with “White Christmas” because
Christmas was only two days away and because Bing Crosby was one of
her favorites and Thomas’ pitiful imitation always made her
laugh.

She didn’t laugh this time. He thought she’d
drifted off to sleep but she spoke up, so soft he had to lean down
to hear her.

“Turn on the lights, Thomas.”

“The lights are on.”

“The Christmas lights.”

He didn’t want to let go of her long enough
even to walk across the room to the cedar tree, balled and
burlapped and sitting in a bucket of water in the corner. They’d
decorated it together last week using ornaments Lola Mae had
collected over more than forty years of marriage--the salt-dough
stars she’d made their first year to commemorate their honeymoon,
the wooden horse he’d carved the year Manny was born, the angel
she’d crocheted the year Elizabeth was born.

The quilt trailed along the floor behind them
as he walked to the tree. He half expected Lola Mae to rise up and
give him a good tongue-lashing for dirtying the quilt she called
grandma’s flower garden and had pieced together herself. He wished
she would. Anything would be better than this pale and fearful
silence.

“There now,” he said, and she blinked once at
the lights then closed her eyes and rested her head against his
chest.

He carried her back to the rocking chair and
commenced to singing for all he was worth. It was the only way he
could keep from showing her how scared he was. Darkness fell around
the farmhouse and the fire burned down to a few embers, but he
didn’t want to get up and tend it. Lola Mae had fallen asleep and
he didn’t want to disturb her.

Thomas stared into the fire awhile, then he
must have dozed off himself, for when he woke up the fire was out
and the room was cold. Lola Mae was quiet in his arms.

“How’re you feelin’, sweetheart?” She didn’t
say anything, and when Thomas bent close and touched her cheek it
was cold. “Lola Mae?” She lay pale in his arms, as cold as
snow.

He cried out to her, disbelieving. “Lola
Mae!” She wouldn’t cheat him like this. She wouldn’t go off and
leave him without saying goodbye.

Of course, she wouldn’t. She was merely
resting up because there was lots of cooking to do, it being
Christmas, and all. The turkey needed stuffing, and there were
pecan pies to bake. Thomas had harvested the nuts from their own
trees this fall, and then they’d sat in front of the fire talking
while they cracked the shells and picked out the rich meat.

He adjusted the quilt and pulled her close so
she wouldn’t get cold. “What do you want me to sing,
sweetheart?”

I’ll Be Seeing You
. Her warm breath
brushed against his cheek, and then he could see her standing over
by the fire. She was carrying a bouquet of daisies and she was
smiling.

He sang the song that had been on everybody’s
lips in the early forties when husbands and lovers went to war
while their sweethearts stayed behind.

Over by the fire Lola Mae blew kisses.
I
love you, Thomas. I will always love you.
Light as bright as
the star of Bethlehem blazed around her, and she was as young and
pretty as she’d been at seventeen. And then she began to fade.

“Don’t go,” he cried. “Come back.” Something
as soft as angel wings touched his face, and she spoke to him as
clear as day.
I’ll never leave you, darling.

Manny had found him there the next day
sitting beside the cold ashes holding onto Lola Mae. When he tried
to take her away, Thomas scratched and clawed at his son, and Manny
backed off by the fire grate.

“You have to let her go, Daddy. She’s
dead.”

It took a backhoe to dig through the frozen
earth and a good mule team to get her casket up the slick hill from
the church to the cemetery, and after it was all over and Manny
tried to lead him off Thomas stood there like a tree, not saying a
word, his tears frozen on his face.

Manny finally gave up.

Thomas stood beside his wife till the last
light went out of the sky and his feet were so numb he couldn’t
even feel his toes. Then he fell down and buried his face in the
cold black earth and renounced the Father he’d known and loved all
his life.

“Any God who would take her and leave me
behind is no God to me.” The wind whistled through his layers of
clothes and soughed through the branches of the lone pine that
presided over the dead. “Do You heard me, God?” Far off in the deep
woods behind the cemetery he heard the plaintive cry of an owl. “I
said, do You hear me! I want no part of You.”

And then he heard Lola Mae.
Stop it right
this minute, Thomas
. She was standing over yonder by the pine
tree holding onto a rolling pin and she was fixing to use it. He
could tell by that look on her face.

And so Thomas stopped it and went home.

Fred leaned over and jostled him in the ribs,
and he crash-landed back in the present.

“You ain’t sayin’ much, Thomas. Cat got your
tongue?”

“I was just thinkin’ how short life is, Fred.
Did you ever get to thinkin’ about that?”

“Ever since I turned fifty. Or it might’a
been sixty. I’m too old to remember anymore. Seems like the days
just sped up and went roarin’ by like a freight train. Seems like I
been runnin’ for years just tryin’ to keep up with time.”

“That’s exactly how I feel.”

“Tirin’, ain’t it?”

“Yep.” Fred had a way with words when he
wanted to. He could cut right to the heart of the matter. Thomas
was going to miss him. Terribly. “Elizabeth wants me to move with
her down to David Lassiter’s place in New Albany.”

Fred didn’t say anything for a long time,
just sat with his jowls hanging down and his face turned toward the
sun.

“Are you gonna?” he said, finally.

“I don’t know. Newly weds ought to be alone.
That’s what I told her.”

“What’d she say?”

“She just said, ‘Papa,’ like she does when
she’s thinkin’ I ought to be mindin’ my own business.”

“Weirdes’ darn thing I ever heard of. No
honeymoon. No weddin’ night. The bride and groom not even livin’
together.”

Thomas wished he could tell his friend the
particulars, but Elizabeth had said the less said, the better. On
account of Nicky.

He would trust Fred with his life and didn’t
like keeping the truth from him, but still he wouldn’t go against
Elizabeth, especially not in something as important as the custody
case. They hadn’t exactly told Quincy either, though she had her
suspicions. Fred probably did, too. Neither one of them had rolled
off a watermelon truck. They had brains.

“That’ll all change when they get down to New
Albany,” Thomas said.

Wouldn’t it be nice if it did? Thomas could
go home to Lola Mae easy if he knew Elizabeth had somebody looking
after her. And that David Lassiter certainly had the means to do
it. Maybe even the inclination. That was real pearls he’d given
Elizabeth. Not the imitation kind.

“Guess they’ve got a lot on their minds with
the custody case. How’s that going?”

“David’s got her the best lawyer in
Tennessee. A professor at Vanderbilt. Wrote a book. A real big
shot.”

“That ought to shake the Belliveaus up right
smart. I’d like to be a fly on the wall when they find out about
all David Lassiter’s money. Yessir, I sure would.”

“He could buy and sell the Belliveaus. That’s
a fact. Of course, it’s not his money that changes the case. It’s
what his money can buy.”

“Money talks.” Fred slapped his knee,
laughing. “Profound, ain’t I, Thomas.”

Yessir
, he was surely going to miss
Fred. They quit talking for a while and just sat soaking up the
sun, then Fred punched him on the arm.

“New Albany ain’t so far. I reckon I still
got sense enough to drive. They ain’t took my license yet.”

“Elizabeth says David told her there’s plenty
of room on the farm. He says our friends will be welcome
there.”

“Good man. Maybe I’ll come down sometime and
stay a spell.”

Thomas was feeling better already about
making the move. He was just fixing to relax and shut his eyes for
a minute when he spotted the stranger. Somebody he’d never seen in
the park before. A sinister-looking character if there ever was
one.

“Look over yonder, Fred. Is that shifty-eyed
feller headed this way?”

Fred stretched his neck out like an old
turkey gobbler, then turned his cap backward so he could see
better. An old private eye technique, he’d told Thomas. Fred still
fancied himself a private eye.

“Nope. Looks like all he’s gonna do is take a
leak. You gotta quit bein’ so jumpy, Thomas. It ain’t good for your
heart.”

“I got pills for my heart. I’m liable to live
to be a hundred and five.”

“Won’t nobody be able to put up with you that
long, you old fart.”

o0o

Lately Elizabeth didn’t understand herself at
all. Here she was, married to a one of the most powerful men in the
South who stood solidly between her and Taylor’s parents, which was
the main point of it all, and instead of feeling grateful she was
feeling lonely. And sad. Not depressed, but a kind of bone-deep
weariness that comes from the sure knowledge that the life you’re
in is not a dress rehearsal but the real thing, and whether it’s
the way you’d imagined or not, it’s all you’ve got.